You can tell who actually plays Deadlock by their reaction to Danny, because all the people calling him boring are only interested in his voice lines and don't actually play the game

Look I gotta be honest "don't waste resources sending military aid to interplanar dimensions" doesn't seem that politically extreme even from a contemporary perspective, I'm having a hard time believing it'd be an extreme take in the mid 1900s

I think what happened is that a lot of zoomers started coming of age right around the time that gender ideology was starting to become widespread, and as a result they mistakenly think that "oh it was always like this, and I just didn't know or understand until I grew up"

>patron offers me a boon >ask the patron if the boon is blessed or faustian >it doesn't understand >present some tomes describing what is blessed and what is faustian >it laughs and says "it is a great boon, disciple" >accept the boon >it's faustian

Not every man can be taught to fish

Ivy is way more trans-coded than Celeste but nobody wants to touch that because she's also kind of ugly

Wait, hang on. Deadlock thought. What's to stop players from queueing into the hero they want to "ban", then swapping to the hero they want to play?

Recording my Deadlock thoughts because I gotta get them out somewhere. I had a few concerns about draft. The first issue was that, previously, the matchmaker could gracefully account for individual hero competence, which it can't do if the heroes aren't known ahead of time. It's nice that Valve actually acknowledged this as a major benefit, because most of the player base sure as fuck didn't. They chose to keep this system for unranked, but for ranked, they give competency requirements. This.. isn't ideal to me, but it should solve one of the bigger causes of competence discrepancy by making sure you can at least play your heroes. The second issue was one of toxicity and coercion. Players trying to force other players into their idea of a good team composition. The default hero with a single swap in combination with the competency requirements is... mostly fine, I suppose? I think there'll be a little toxicity, but not as much as when everybody already has their heroes picked out. I still expect to see people be insufferable about it, but it hopefully won't be too bad. My third issue, which isn't strictly about draft, is the ranked/unranked split reducing player counts. This seemed kind of inevitable, but as an Australian, it hits harder due to lower numbers. At the very least, there's a clear difference in match types, where one is for learning and practice and the other is a seasonal competitive model, so it doesn't have an overt "default". It'll be interesting to see how it goes. But more than that, the other changes are genuinely quite interesting. The abandon penalties are fascinating. Much less miserable being on a team with a leaver OR against one, for different reasons. I'm a little concerned that some people will start pushing underperforming players to abandon just so that they don't have to suffer the loss, but we'll see how that goes. I also like that even a comms ban just straight up evicts you. If you're angry enough to be toxic, you're probably not in a position to be competitive anyway. Hopefully it won't be too insufferably oppressive. We'll see. I have very little experience with these "progression" rank systems where you have de-rank protection and the ladder is seen as a climb. I'll be interested to see how that kind of system actually handles. Maybe it'll serve as a proper lure for more players. Probably not emotionally good, but even so. Oh well, let's see how this works out!

"Refund periods should be shorter" when I make a game I'm purposefully adding an achievement that triggers at 110 minutes of playtime to warn the user they're close to the refund cutoff

While calling goyslop a "slur" is definitively retarded, they are strictly correct in that it's a broadly antisemitic or at least anti-zionist term

There's something genuinely pathetic about people using "chud" unironically Like you obviously so badly just want to yell slurs at people but you've arbitrarily constrained yourself because you think it's the magic no-no words that make you a cunt and not your entire personality

I'm uhh I'm sure they did their best and had fun!

Went shopping today

Not many people like politicians, but EVERYBODY hates bureaucrats.

I'm not a religious or superstitious man but you could not pay me to house an authentic sonichu medalion

My headcanon is that Lash's wish is to save Ms. Shelly just so that he can lord it over Bebop

This is the only way to make the urn a viable objective

My two Deadlock hot takes that I will never, ever compromise on: 1) The current pick system is fantastic design and a draft would be measurably worse for all but 6v6 2) 90% of janky buggy "movement tech" needs to be obliterated and replaced with actual well designed mechanics

If anyone's looking to hire Anita Sarkeesian as a consultant, let me make things easy for you: Make your women less attractive Make your men more like women Denounce capitalism at every available opportunity Make sure you have at least one villain that's a thinly veiled allegory for Donald Trump There I just saved you like 10 thousand dollars

The real issue with the whole STS2 thing is that Anita isn't a really a consultant, but rather a political activist that you pay to let her use your game as a vessel for her political activism, and that apparently the STS2 devs were too stupid to realize this.