Random Rants LXIV: Who's Acting Like a Child Now?

[Arakhor]

I spent three days fasting whilst awaiting an operation for a pneumothorax a few years back. Fortunately, I had several books to take my mind off matters, but it was not fun in the slightest.

 

[jackelgull]

Try going really far south, so that it's always night

There are fatwas for that. Some suggest using Mecca as a guide, others suggest using the nearest country where dawn and dusk are distinguishable.

 

[Dachs]

I don't normally watch Let's Plays, but I've been watching some for the new Paradox games, Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV, on the grounds that I don't want to buy them because Paradox games usually suck at release and have dubious design choices that they eventually iron out, yet I still want to have an actual opinion on them based on something more than innuendo.

HoI 4 looks okay so far, yet I have to admit, I'm getting really annoyed with some of these LPers and streamers. I'm okay with it when they're bad at pronunciation, or when they're bad at history, or even when they make poor operational decisions. Nobody's perfect. (Although the Axis gameplay videos...let's just say "never read the comments" goes double for those.)

But I can't stand it when they just don't notice stuff that's staring them in the face. It's like, check your freakin' alerts, dude. Please stop half-assing this.

 

[JohannaK]

Oh, yes, that kills me. You need patience. Moments that kill me is wen they have a naval invasion in the middle of the screen and still face to notice it.

 

[jackelgull]

To be fair though, in EU4, sieging takes so long, especially when your the Ottos taking on Byzantium, that I just kind of put the game on speed 5 and tune out, which leads to some stupid things like the Byzantines organizing a counterattack and taking Yanya while I'm not paying attention.


So if the players found themselves in that kind of tedium I'd understand.



And I agree Dach, second reich best reich

 

[Commodore]

HoI 4 looks okay so far, yet I have to admit, I'm getting really annoyed with some of these LPers and streamers. I'm okay with it when they're bad at pronunciation, or when they're bad at history, or even when they make poor operational decisions. Nobody's perfect. (Although the Axis gameplay videos...let's just say "never read the comments" goes double for those.)

But I can't stand it when they just don't notice stuff that's staring them in the face. It's like, check your freakin' alerts, dude. Please stop half-assing this.

To be fair, it is a little hard to focus on the gameplay when you are also trying to give commentary and be entertaining while playing the game. I used to get annoyed at LPers too for making obvious mistakes until I became a LPer. I noticed that my level of play is significantly worse while I'm recording one of my videos when compared to my level of play when I'm just playing a game for fun and focusing completely on what I'm doing in the game.

 

[Dachs]

To be fair, it is a little hard to focus on the gameplay when you are also trying to give commentary and be entertaining while playing the game. I used to get annoyed at LPers too for making obvious mistakes until I became a LPer. I noticed that my level of play is significantly worse while I'm recording one of my videos when compared to my level of play when I'm just playing a game for fun and focusing completely on what I'm doing in the game.

Oh, I don't mind drops in the quality of gameplay. I'm very familiar with the TF2 and Overwatch stream/video communities, and in both of them it's really obvious when the video maker is getting serious, because s/he stops talking and starts killing dudes.

But in Paradox games, you can pause, and you're usually making LPs/streams of play against the AI, and you get alerts for when stuff comes up. So, for example, this guy I'm watching right now has been blathering on about which technology choice he should make. Which is fine. Explaining things is good for people who make gameplay videos with commentary. But he didn't freakin pause. So he's been sitting there for over an in-game month dithering over which technology to pick. I get that you want to keep the game moving, and that Paradox games have an awful lot of dead time that's hard on LPers, but you can, say, make a decision while paused and then use the dead time after unpausing to explain things.

I'm sorry, it just drives me up the wall to see this. I feel ridiculous for getting so annoyed about other people playing noncompetitive games on the internet for fun.

 

[Commodore]

Oh, I don't mind drops in the quality of gameplay. I'm very familiar with the TF2 and Overwatch stream/video communities, and in both of them it's really obvious when the video maker is getting serious, because s/he stops talking and starts killing dudes.

But in Paradox games, you can pause, and you're usually making LPs/streams of play against the AI, and you get alerts for when stuff comes up. So, for example, this guy I'm watching right now has been blathering on about which technology choice he should make. Which is fine. Explaining things is good for people who make gameplay videos with commentary. But he didn't freakin pause. So he's been sitting there for over an in-game month dithering over which technology to pick. I get that you want to keep the game moving, and that Paradox games have an awful lot of dead time that's hard on LPers, but you can, say, make a decision while paused and then use the dead time after unpausing to explain things.

I'm sorry, it just drives me up the wall to see this. I feel ridiculous for getting so annoyed about other people playing noncompetitive games on the internet for fun.

Don't worry, I get it. I watch a lot of Markiplier, and I still find myself getting annoyed when he is wandering around in a game for ten minutes trying to figure out what to do next, when he missed the extremely obvious solution that I spotted easily while watching the video.

 

[Dachs]

also internet people playing strategy games don't care enough about pretty borders

 

[jackelgull]

Speaking of paradox, I'm getting tired of all the "nerf Ottomans" threads that have been popping up in EU4 lately. I feel like I can make a checklist about them.
A) OP was playing Byzantium
B) Failed to break Ottos with an alliance, comes to thread to complain they need a nerf
C) People call them a whiny fanboy
D) They insist it isn't about Byzantium, its about how the Ottomans destroyed their perfect alliance, and how they shouldn't be able to do that.
E) People who've played Byzantium post about their own successes.
F) Someone brings history into the mix. Something about Ottomans being poor fighters only winning when they have superior numbers, someone countering that and proving that their professional soldiers were indeed professionals etc.

It feels like clockwork and is old at this point.

also internet people playing strategy games don't care enough about pretty borders

I love the smell of bordergore in the morning

 

[Dachs]

Speaking of paradox, I'm getting tired of all the "nerf Ottomans" threads that have been popping up in EU4 lately. I feel like I can make a checklist about them.
A) OP was playing Byzantium
B) Failed to break Ottos with an alliance, comes to thread to complain they need a nerf
C) People call them a whiny fanboy
D) They insist it isn't about Byzantium, its about how the Ottomans destroyed their perfect alliance, and how they shouldn't be able to do that.
E) People who've played Byzantium post about their own successes.
F) Someone brings history into the mix. Something about Ottomans being poor fighters only winning when they have superior numbers, someone countering that and proving that their professional soldiers were indeed professionals etc.

It feels like clockwork and is old at this point.

This is one of the reasons I don't hang out with the Paradox community anymore.

 

[The_J]

[...]

I thought sick people were exempt from Ramadan. Or is it also like for the travelling, that it's just postponed?

 

[Arakhor]

This is one of the reasons I don't hang out with the Paradox community anymore.

I barely read new threads for that very reason, unless they're dev diaries or the like.

 

[Tee Kay]

Speaking of paradox, I'm getting tired of all the "nerf Ottomans" threads that have been popping up in EU4 lately.

Huh, did they finally make them reasonably powerful in this game?

A) OP was playing Byzantium

Oh. Of course, what else.

 

[Arakhor]

The Great Powers system mentioned in this week's DD will give them even more power.

 

[jackelgull]

Huh, did they finally make them reasonably powerful in this game?



Oh. Of course, what else.

Well, in EU4 the Ottomans are reasonably powerful. They start out with a godlike ruler, a really good starting general and the lower half of the Balkans + half of Anatolia with cores on the other half of Anatolia and a core on Albania. Once you snap up all your free cores, you have no real worthy rivals in your immediate vicinity. The Mamluks should be easy to spank in the first war, the Timurids are paper tigers suffering from near constant Persian separatists while eastern Europe has much free land




In other news, I have searing shoulder pain that won't allow me to sleep.

 

[Arakhor]

I imagine that the Great Powers system will probably make them into the Great Green Glob, but hey, AI.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I can't wait for England/Castile/France in Anatolia! It's such a great fun!

 

[sophie]

I don't know why, but people using the words 'Grexit' and 'Brexit' to describe either Greece or the UK leaving the EU really bothers me. It just seems so lazy to me. I mean, is it really soooo difficult to say "Greek exit" or "British exit"? Or is it that people think they are being so cool and trendy by throwing out stupid little combo words like that.

Sounds like textbook affluenza to me. Maybe you should electrocute them while enjoying a pleasant brunch. That should get those endorphins going. Or, we could always throw a slurve. Get someone to throw down some napalm while you get on your motorcycle and go grab a spork from your murse that you left in your motel. Or a meld of the two ideas. Or neither. I don't know mang.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Affluenza? Is this a new strain of influenza, except it's spread by awful journalism and even worse memes?