Miscellaneous Links from 2013

[Grefter]

Yes
Correction, maybe later

Where's my food.

Consequence just being anything happening at all.  It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward.  It just is something happening because of something you did before.

But Grefter, are you sure that's what you want?  Maybe you would prefer a Suikoden choice instead.

Yes
No

You know I can't say no to you.

[AndrewRogue]

Consequence just being anything happening at all.  It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward.  It just is something happening because of something you did before.

No Grefter, every choice must have some massive effect on gameplay that completely turns the game on its head. Just referencing and giving results is not good enough. </Mass Effect 3>

[Lady Door]

Red, blue, or green?

[AndrewRogue]

Countering with the actual legit complaint is so unfair.

[Grefter]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/04/steam_machine_hardware_specs/

Specs for the Steam Machine test systems covered.  Nothing terribly shocking in the announcement if you are following stuff (using off the shelf parts so systems are modular for end users). 

It kind of reads to me like Valve identified a market for custom built gaming machines in a less technically oriented market and are going to capitalize while pushing their thrust into Linux.  Can't say I disapprove.  Anything they develop for streaming content from another networked system is gravy.

[Fenrir]

The best/worst skinner box:

http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/

[Grefter]

Nope.

[Fenrir]

Ok.
The best/worst skinner box that doesn't eat your life for days.

[Fenrir]

But really it's pretty great. I love how the game becomes increasingly more hostile about the monster you've created. Grandma's all " You could have stopped it" and "You make me sick." Then you get "Achievement: Child Labor" for creating a bunch of cookie factories[size]

[NotMiki]

Shameless plug time!  It's gonna be fantastic!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/afarcrymusic/kickstart-dreams-and-prayers-a-far-crys-new-album?ref=live

Oh you don't believe me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUmxHXsxsug

Crank that mother up.

[superaielman]

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/10/rabbis-plotted-to-kidnap-husbands-force-divorces-fbi-says/?hpt=hp_t3


There's a little more context to this than the title, but good lord. *That title*.

[NotMiki]

So the background here is that some exceedingly slimy orthodox Jewish men (I think orthodox, not entirely sure which types of Judaism this extends to) will divorce their wives civilly but refuse to give their now ex-wives a "get" - a document voiding their marriage as a religious matter, so that the ex-wife can remarry according to the laws of the United States but as a practical matter cannot do so because her religion and community still consider her married.  They do this for the sole reason that they are worthless, petty, vindictive assholes.  In New York, part of the Domestic Relations Law allows judges to force Jewish men who initiate civil divorce into consenting to a religious divorce as well.  That law is probably an unconstitutional violation of free exercise of religion, but looking at plan B here, sure does seem like a good one to have on the books.

[metroid composite]

The best/worst skinner box:

http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/

Reminds me a little of of Probes vs Zealot, except it encourages you to spam clicks mindlessly, and isn't really designed to be replayed/experimented with to optimize your build.

EDIT: ok, so the way it works is that prices for things scale up by (1.15)^n.  I actually don't like this system.  In something that feels like it should be an exponential growth system (and is at small values) it actually becomes a logarithmic growth system (in terms of how many cookies per second are increasing).  Like...when you first get a portal, it's a massive econ boost, which lets you buy the next portal faster, but eventually the exponential cost increase starts outpacing how much your income is increasing, so it takes longer and longer to buy a portal.  It's fine during the main progression, but kinda broken once you complete the main progression, and there are achievements like "get 100 antimatter condensers".  Like....that sounds probably not doable within a human lifetime....

[Grefter]

You are thinking way too much about cookie clicker.

Walk away from the Abyss mc.  There are things worse than Shoggoths there.

[Lady Door]

In a wonderful example of what I have decided to spend my precious moments on, I've actually played Cookie Clicker through to 99.9% completion. That is: all the achievements (but one), and all of the upgrades. And then some game+ as well.

Your calculations are overlooking a very, very important part of the game: the upgrades to your purchases. They increase cookie production by percentages, or double the output (multiple times), and so on. Getting achievements also adds to your cookie production (a certain percentage). And then soft-resetting the game gives you an automatic bonus in the form of a reward for total cookies baked at time of reset, in addition to the same bonuses you were receiving from achievements from your last game.

So no, not objectively lifetimes. I played for about 5 days.

My coworkers, on the other hand, have been warring in the office over it for 15 workdays...

[metroid composite]

In a wonderful example of what I have decided to spend my precious moments on, I've actually played Cookie Clicker through to 99.9% completion. That is: all the achievements (but one), and all of the upgrades. And then some game+ as well.

Your calculations are overlooking a very, very important part of the game: the upgrades to your purchases. They increase cookie production by percentages, or double the output (multiple times), and so on. Getting achievements also adds to your cookie production (a certain percentage). And then soft-resetting the game gives you an automatic bonus in the form of a reward for total cookies baked at time of reset, in addition to the same bonuses you were receiving from achievements from your last game.

So no, not objectively lifetimes. I played for about 5 days.

My coworkers, on the other hand, have been warring in the office over it for 15 workdays...

I've been playing for 3 days, but I haven't left my computer on the whole time or anything, so realistically maybe 10 hours of the game running.

Not sure how many more upgrades might exist that I simply haven't unlocked.  But even something that doubles cost efficiency...if something was borderline worth buying before the upgrade, it'll be cost efficient 5 times after the upgrade, and after the 5th time the price has already more than doubled so it's back to the same cost-efficiency.  But sure, I guess it does depend on how many upgrades are in the game.

[Fenrir]

As you get more golden cookie upgrades, strategy shifts to them.

There's slightly less than one golden cookie per minute, and you have roughly half a chance to get as many cookies as you'd have cooked in 20 minutes. (If you have ten times that already waiting in the cookie bank)

(I kinda stopped there)

*ENDGAME COOKIE CLICKER SPOILERS*

Incidentally this is why the Grandmapocalypse is a big deal. It makes worthless red golden cookies appear instead of regular golden cookies and does nothing else.


Edit: Then later there are prestige cookies

[Lady Door]

SPOILERS also gives you three achievements!

And then the couple added weird things for game+, some of which are triggered based on when you perform the soft reset.

I wouldn't exactly call it a compelling game, but  it's hardly undoable, and there's room for strategy -- or at least optimization.

[AndrewRogue]

I wouldn't exactly call it a compelling game, but  it's hardly undoable, and there's room for strategy -- or at least optimization.

Click faster? >_>

[Lady Door]

More like which upgrades to buy in which order at which times. Also paying close attention to the game so you can catch all the lucky cookie bonuses.

But yeah, sure, click faster.

(Although clicking is really, really inefficient after a short time. Probably only worth it during a lucky cookie frenzy.)

[Grefter]

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/25-best-morrissey-book-quotes.html?mid=facebook_vulture

S.N.O.W.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Dear Square: do something smart for once.  The best quote that doesn't involve Toriyama whining about how he wanted to play a game with his waifu in it.

When asked about the Final Fantasy series as a whole, Yoshida responded, “I am just part of a committee overseeing the longevity of the franchise. It is probably better that I play less of the Final Fantasy series so that I can bring something new to the table. I think I can be more inspired if I keep playing Xenoblade.”

[Captain K.]

I had a power outage tonight and lost my Cookie Clicker progress.

Excuse me while I go kill myself.

[Fenrir]

Maaaaan should have told you you could save by just keeping your URL.

[Dhyerwolf]

Dear Square: do something smart for once.  The best quote that doesn't involve Toriyama whining about how he wanted to play a game with his waifu in it.

When asked about the Final Fantasy series as a whole, Yoshida responded, “I am just part of a committee overseeing the longevity of the franchise. It is probably better that I play less of the Final Fantasy series so that I can bring something new to the table. I think I can be more inspired if I keep playing Xenoblade.”

And linked from that was this: http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-forces-all-staff-to-play-super-mario-rpg-in-order-to-learn-how-to-make-good-rpgs-again/

Maybe they should just consider hiring more workers who actually seem to be competent? (Random snipe: Their second "good" game was Secret Mana. Plan was bound to fail.)