#wackd

[become-part-tool]

@wackd what font is this

[tredlocity]

How would you feel about someone building a Val and Isaac themed tabletop roleplaying game for personal, non-commercial use?

sure! that’d be fun

[nightofsnarkshadows]

i said i would post this image when i came back, soooooo

hey

episode 16 coming tomorrow dark shadows

[scriptscribbles]

Unpopular opinions: Jubilee is the only good Dalek story. Heaven Sent was worse than the episodes on either side of it by a tremendous margin.

I’d say Heaven Sent is the vital clever, pretty center of the best Doctor Who story ever, which happens to be three parts. I can’t really extricate any of the three from each other (though in a pinch, Hell Bent’s the best). But I get what you mean. It doesn’t have the radical thematic stabs the other two do.

As for Jubilee, well, I can see what you’re saying there. There’s a very small handful of other pieces I think are also worth nominating, but I get you.

[shinosarna]

wackd

reblogged

your post:

ramblingferret: stephendann: ...

Okay, fine, let’s unpack this a little bit. First off–yes, sure, you debunked my Mario example. Very good. My Pac-Man...

Okay, so. @wackd

First, making a shooter where you’re dropped with guns in a war zone but can’t kill anyone IS making a point about pacifism, whether author wants it or not. It is simply a choice of whether you’re making that point well, or half-assing it for a quick joke. Except because games take months and years to come out, there is no such thing as a ‘quick joke’ in game developent.

Second, both Pac-Man and Punch-Out require you to DO a certain thing. That’s different from requiring you to NOT do a certain thing. Players generally react worse to being forbidden from doing a thing that seems like they could do that. Most notably, when XCOM2, sequel to XCOM introduced turn timers to most missions, forcing you to complete them in a certain time limit, many players reacted extremely negatively to being forced to play in a certain way. Every game has some sort of goals and most have some losing condition - BUT that doesn’t mean ANY losing condition would be fun or engaging.

In game design, there’s a concept called ‘possibility space’ which basically entails all actions player can take within that specific game. It’s important that possibility space be logical and clear to the player. In Punch-Out, you can’t reason with other people because game is about boxing - there is no mechanics for dialogue, so player doesn’t even THINK about dialogue, because it’s literally outside of scope of the game. But here, we talk about a game with enemies and shooting that doesn’t let you shoot enemies, that’s a VERY different situation. Imagine if Punch-Out added a button for talking to opponents that was completely pointless. You could talk to them, but it would do nothing, or perhaps even make enemies instantly knock you out as you’re talking. Would that improve Punch-Out? Does that sound like idea that would be fun for the player? No, it’d be pointless, and frustrating if player would press the button accidentally.

Even then, what we want in our example here is to take ‘shooting enemies’ out of possibility space of this hypothetical game - and I think that “make player restart level” is worst possible way to do that.

The game idea we’re talking about would artificially constrain possibility space in really weird and awkward way - it makes for a good joke, but it’d feel clunky to play. Imagine accidentally grazing an enemy when you were aiming for a bottle that would make a distracting noise, and having to restart a level - does this sound fun? Of course it doesn’t. If you did want to constrain possibility space like that and make player not shoot enemies, there are probably better ways to do that than ‘make player restart level’ which is honestly, a horrible idea that would turn every level into an escort mission, except where the escortee is actively trying to kill you.

I can imagine other ways to remove “shooting the enemies” from player’s possibility space, and probably much less frustrating. Perhaps simply don’t let player shoot when enemies is in the crosshair like some games do with civilians, for starters. Or make enemies invincible. Or both. Restarting the level is a terrible, terrible idea and to me it sounds like a red flag that the game wouldn’t be very fun to play.

And finally - just because people say “I’d play this game!” means nothing. Most people have no idea what makes a good game.

In addition to the pic above - I’ve seen many people say that the right way to do a Superman game would be to have Superman protect Metropolis from threat, and make player invulnerable, but have the CITY have a depleting healthbar you have to protect.

Except, the game like that exists. It’s called Superman Returns, and it sucked, badly, and is actually one of the WORST Superman games. But this line still gets repeated! So as you can see, people saying stuff doesn’t mean squat.

Just because something is a cool idea on paper, doesn’t mean it would be a good game.

[mousathe14]

I know the guys who made the Defenders are responsible for the abysmal Daredevil Season 2 and some of the less great parts of the latter half of Season 1, but.... They aren’t doing a bad job right now.

Like, Defenders is pretty good and the characters are served pretty well.

Like, Luke, Jessica, and Matt are written pretty much at their best in their own shows and consistently so. I have only watched the first two episodes of Iron FIst, I’ll get to the rest later today after my Defenders rewatch, but if the first two eps indicate anything they wrote him as the same idiotic self-righteous man-child as his show has so they got that right too.

And I like Matt more here than I did in DD season 2. A friend was able to articulate that without anyone to preach to, the character became substantially less intolerable. 

As my friends and I were chatting, one of them had sort of come to a realization of why Defenders went over so well and why the characters didn’t deteriorate. It seems that it might actually have to do with having decent precedent to work from. Actually it’s probably better for me to just copypaste that bit of convo than explain it. And removed some irrelevant bits. Also kept an amusing bit.

May as well see if the explanation makes sense to anyone else.

Convo credits go to mah bois @wackd with his insight, @thebibliomancer with his amusing asides, @zarekthelordofthefries for asking all the right questions, and @maxwellelvis for knowing too much.

Bocaj: I'm so jealous of Iron Fist. He has all the money and he got to hug a dragon. Life ain't fair, I tellyawhat

Bocaj: Out of spite I tried to brainstorm a setting where people get different powers by hugging different dragons but then I remembered that sans hugging, thats what Drakengard was.

Wack’d: But yeah what I was gonna say the smart thing the show does is, like

Bocaj: It sure could have used some hugging

Wack’d:  Jessica and Luke both get really standard storylines that could easily be season arcs in their own shows

Except it turns out the Hand is behind them, which brings them into Matt and Danny's nonsense

Zarek: So the way it resolves the different styles is basically making the mundane stuff caused by the magic stuff?

Wack’d: Yeah

In this one specific instance, at least--there's no, like, "Kilgrave was secretly part of the Hand this whole time!" or whatever

Bocaj: phew

Wack’d: But yeah I think, like

Maybe the Daredevil showrunners are just shit because the show they were given to run was Daredevil?

They are pretty good at crafting good stuff out of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage material

Zarek: In the sense that Daredevil inherently doesn't work, or it just doesn't work with their style as creators?

Like, "did the best with what they could" or "just aren't good with this playset"

Wack’d: If I had to hazard a guess--Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie are in the same position with the other three characters that they were when they came on board with Daredevil in season 2

Maxwellelvis: I'm going to say it's probably partially because the specific Daredevil stuff they chose to focus on for a lot of this, namely Stick, and Elektra, and the Hand, no longer work because it's no longer 1983, ninjas are old hat now and this story isn't innovative or groundbreaking anymore.

Wack’d: "Figure out what made this character tick last time and hew as close to that as possible"

The problem is Daredevil season 1 didn't have much of an identity? In the first half we get a kind of dark drama under Drew Goddard's pen, and then it slowly switches to melodrama and camp when Steven S. DeKnight shows up

Wack’d: So Ramirez and Petrie have to synthesize those two approaches while also introducing a ton of new characters and ALSO setting up another series two years from now

Zarek: Steven S. DeKnight is a hell of a superhero name

Wack’d: Which is, like--I don't think I recognized what a tall fucking order that is

Bocaj: Was Daredevil 2 the Iron Man 2 of Netflix too?

Wack’d: Kinda, yeah!

Zarek: Oh shit is Iron Man 2 still on Netflix i still havent seen it

Bocaj: This has been a victory for sentences that i said mostly because I liked the way they sounded

Wack’d: I mean I think, like--the reason I didn't recognize it because I didn't expect it to do as much heavy lifting as it ended up having to

Maxwellelvis: Is the Punisher the Black Widow of Netflix Marvel?

Bocaj: They did have a teamup movie

Wack’d: But yeah in hindsight this makes a lot of sense

Maxwellelvis: They team up a lot, Bocaj.

Bocaj: Avengers Confidential: Punisher & Black Widow:: The Other Avengers Are In It For Five Seconds

Maxwellelvis: I'd assume it's because Nat is like the only other superhero who is perfectly A-ok with murder.

Bocaj: Wolverine and Hawkeye are under Bendis

BENDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS

Wack’d: And so this time Ramirez and Petrie have it easy--they know what a good Jessica Jones story looks like, they know what a good Luke Cage story looks like, they had an entire season to figure out what they had to do with Daredevil

[goodobservationshirley]

"The show likes to forget Joe was an actual asshole a little too much" I dunno. If they hadn't done the timeskip I could get behind it, but Joe stayed out of everyone's lives for like half a decade and put himself together. It's not like everyone immediately forgave him. (Also, I enjoy the ultimate irony behind Donna's proclimation that Joe "won"--he wouldn't have, if Donna hadn't tried to pull a Joe by sending him to COMDEX. He woulda just kept being alone.)

This was specifically said in the context of comparing s1!Joe and s4!Donna. Joe assumed the worst of Donna and confronted her about it. When he realized his suspicions were unfounded and they started talking more calmly, he pointed out that he knew what it was like for people to wrongfully expect the worst from him (or something like that, i don’t have the quote but i think this was the idea?). My comment was just a reminder that Joe more than earned people’s mistrust in him (and it didn’t last that long considering what he did). There’s no common measure between Joe in s1 and Donna in s4 (who is called a villain a lot for some reason but is mostly just unhappily living her life in her own corner?).

So this comment was a tiny tiny TINY critique of a scene I otherwise loved ;)

That said, i don’t really agree with the idea that Joe put himself together before s4. You said it yourself, everything (and everyone) that he has now is an indirect result of that one time Donna tried to get Cam back and failed. It’s not a result of anything he did to get there. But then the beauty of this show is that it gets relationships (of all kinds) and the effects they can have on you really well. So now we have a Joe who spent the last three years having a very good friend in Gordon. A Joe who recently got Cam back. A Joe who, maybe for the first time in his life, has people who care about him and that he cares about. THIS, more than anything else, is most likely what will allow him to slow down a bit and live more in the present, care more about the present. I think i said to someone the other day the only reason Joe seemed so… likeable the past few episodes is because we mostly saw him outside of a work context. But i was missing the point, because just the fact that Joe has a life outside of work is huge development.

[tredlocity]

What's Doris up to when she's not at work or with Minnow?

Watchin TV, movies. Her life is kinda normal, really.