Messages

1

Off Topic / Re: best affordable gaming laptop/desktop?

« on: September 02, 2016, 05:51:25 PM »

For budget good hardware in a laptop, the Inspiron i7559 with the i7 6700HQ & 960M is easily your best bet. I would check Amazon over the Dell website, you can get them there for ~$800 new.

On the other hand you could save up/increase your budget and look into the new 1060 models that are being released at the moment. Supposedly performing within 10% of desktop cards. Any of the 10x series would last you much longer compared to a 960, depending on the games you plan on playing. Starting prices for 10x laptops is like $1500 US, so unless you only want one computer for home/on the go I'd stick with a desktop.

Laptop hardware is getting a lot better, it just comes at less efficient pricing compared to a desktop equivalent. You could probably build a desktop with the same hardware as that laptop and have money left over for something else that's portable, like a tablet or w/e.

The Lenovo y700 is also a good choice, they basically have the same hardware. I personally like the look of the Dell more + the keyboard layout, but the choice is down to aesthetics.

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General Discussion / Re: How old were you when you joined Blockland?

« on: August 30, 2016, 12:51:00 AM »

My oldest memory of this game was playing the demo at a friend's house in grade 6, so ~11-12 years old. 20 y/o now.
Pretty sure I used to just ride down the slopes a lot before I bought the full version.

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Games / Re: Overwatch - New animated short, The Last Bastion (PTR Patch 1.3.0)

« on: August 19, 2016, 03:48:29 PM »

Yeah I'm still not buying into the whole "Supports are screwed by the system :(((" argument. Even if support players are getting less exp than the rest, it seems like it would be remedied by the underdog exp bonus to keep them caught up to their friends. The idea that your team is so good they don't need healing seems kind of flawed considering they track statistics like % of team damage taken healed. We don't officially know how they determine rank gained but I would bet on them using stuff like that. Healers also have other things they can do besides healing to contribute such as assists (Mercy for defensive, Zen for offensive) or racking in a ton of objective time (Lucio especially, but Ana makes a good cart pusher too) If anyone of the supports really suffered from the rank system it'd probably be Symmetra, but if the enemy team gets the first point (which the usually will) most people swap off Symmetra anyway due to diminishing returns on her usefulness. These kind of comments always assume that the healer is doing everything perfectly, which honestly isn't always the case. Believe it or not, it IS possible to have a bad support on your team.

Also since on average 1/3 of the team are supports and the other 2/3 are dps/tanks then it makes sense to have less supports in top 500. Of course there is a bias towards attack heroes which honestly seems expected. If non supports are picked twice as much as supports, a well rounded player might have 1 support in their top 3 due to preferences. I personally think the rest of the team is required to perform a lot more than the supports are, and in general are more skill demanding. None of the supports have a particularly high skill cap in terms of execution, except Zenyatta. If anything they rely a lot more on game sense, which is a general trait anyone improves to go up in ranks. This comment isn't meant to undermine the importance of supports, as they're crucial to winning any game. It just happens that almost any big play made in a game is done by a non-support, while support ults counter those attempts.

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Games / Re: Overwatch - The Summer Games Update (Patch 1.2.0.3)

« on: August 17, 2016, 02:42:19 PM »

https://gfycat.com/SeriousRipeCranefly

MLG 1000 credits.

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Games / Re: Overwatch - The Summer Games Update (Patch 1.2.0.1B)

« on: August 16, 2016, 07:45:58 PM »

Actually I'm pretty sure there's a max rank difference of something like 50 apart. I glitch saw it once when I invited a player to my group.

65 to 15 IS 50 ranks apart, if anything this shows how ridiculous the current maximum gap is.
Tier 2-3 pro players can get matched with someone who could misses 76's ult and probably plays with the arrow keys over WASD.

Also back to the whole people carrying teams vs players sandbagging too hard to win, this game's not like Dota 2 or LoL where someone dying a lot is as detrimental due to shifting in game advantages like gold and levels, it just stops momentum. A single coordinated push can still gain enough momentum in a 5v6, it's just a little harder. Plus higher skilled teams just happen to play way more optimized teams, making a lot of the game revolve around designated play makers (McCree and Genji in the game's current state), with the appropriate team to back them up or stop said strat.

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Games / Re: Overwatch - The Summer Games Update (Patch 1.2.0.3)

« on: August 16, 2016, 07:41:16 PM »

Season 2 has already announced addressing these issues. The max limit you can queue apart will be 500 when the ranking is bumped up to 5000 max. Current ranking that translates to 10 which seems pretty standard to run into. More importantly if you look at the current player skill distribution +/- 10 from the mean 50, it goes down to 9th percentile and up to 86th percentile. If you translate these numbers to CS:GO's matchmaking (Currently the most seriously taken competitive FPS), the mean is about Gold Nova II/III. You can queue +/- 5 ranks in CS:GO IIRC so that'll let you queue up to ~90th percentile MGE and down to ~12th percentile Silver IV.

Turns out these overlap pretty well, and fair enough for the average person. If you and your friends are as skilled as about half of the game's population (45-55) you'll still be able to queue together. Anything greater than this gap is either a high rank player pulling his team's average down heavily on a smurf to benefit his friend through the underdog system, or people queuing together despite a clear skill difference. Pulled data from here (OW) and here (CS) for those interested.


Also that Cloud 9 example in the video was from competitive launch week, which already had issues like KotH maps giving something like 10% of what they should have been giving. Most of the issues involving supports have most likely been stealth patched by now, and a lot of the evidence involving supports getting low rank gain is on personal experience over any actual data. I could say the same thing for the opposite side on how I placed at 49 and climbed to 66 before I started dropping on a daily basis by playing mostly Lucio. I played most of my placements with a 6 stack (which I'm confident in saying I was probably the 2nd best in, next to another friend) and we all placed within 5 ranks of each other.

All the changes they've announce are definitely a step in the right direction for good matchmaking experiences, as the current gap you can queue at is hilariously wide. Someone in the top 5% at 65 can queue with at the lowest a rank 15, which is literally in the bottom 1% of players. You're more likely to see differences of around 20 ranks where skill differences are really noticeable. I'd take the few upset parties not being able to queue together over the unpleasant matchmaking experiences. Division gating for people who reach a certain rank then get really unlucky losing streaks is also really welcomed coming from personal experience.


In regards to carrying teams, it's definitely possible to an extent due to how strong offence characters are at the moment, but working on stuff like aim and communication on any hero will almost always positively increase your performance instead of being a one trick pony. Good communication is the best thing to have against that MLG Genji on the enemy team, as well as adjusting team comps to adapt to the enemy's strengths. (I.E. get hitscan vs Pharah/don't play Junkrat vs her, Winston/Junkrat vs Genji/Tracer, Reinhardt/Zarya shields vs McCree and discord orb that one really annoying guy killing everyone, etc etc...)

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 18, 2016, 02:36:11 PM »

End result of about 2-3 hours of hunting.
This base is not vegan friendly.

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 14, 2016, 12:06:41 AM »

Killed a bear after an hour long goose chase.
forget the bear AI.

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 13, 2016, 04:49:50 PM »

I am best hunter. Me always summon Huffer.
Also Sev got in the photo. We're currently housing 7 people in the camp but Tiki hasn't moved his fire yet so we'll probably cap it around 10 if anyone is still interested.

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 12, 2016, 04:58:16 PM »

The startup base is looking pretty decent so far. Flattening out the hilly areas is going to take a while, and it's eating through our food.
Also we have like a 50% pants rate with the current members so I'd say we're getting pretty civilized.

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 11, 2016, 10:56:57 PM »

Conga party line assemble, the gang's all here.
There is also a thing you can build to let people spawn on you so we'll never have to go through that again.



Also art.

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Games / Re: Haven & Hearth 2: World 9 | A Blockland Tradition

« on: June 11, 2016, 06:09:02 PM »

Time to boot this game back up and get my clogs eaten by boars.

Tiki linked me this so it's time to get roped back into the forums. I'll send a PM soon enough for the village app.
It's probably safe to assume he'll want to tag along as well so hopefully starting numbers aren't short. Anyone new who is interested should definitely give it a try.

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Games / Re: Dota 2 Megathread: Wraithed

« on: July 27, 2014, 07:15:15 PM »

Skywrath has an easy counter and his name is pugna
little puggy rips him up if he ults

also am i the only one who loves sven
he's such a manly man
i feel amazing playing him and tanking the entire team just because i can
and winning

Better think twice about that Skywrath counterpick.

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Games / Re: Dota 2 Megathread: Wraithed

« on: July 25, 2014, 10:53:31 AM »

He rushed radiance first, continued to go full potato after.

Honestly despite bottom lane getting completely womped on by a solo Undying due to how2stunstack and bad rotations you guys were bad at closing out the game. Then you built a battlefury and we were pretty sure we could win it easily.

Had your team bought those WIP hexes before 4/5 of us had BKB maybe you would have won it but damn those are some questionable item builds.

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Games / Re: Dota 2 Megathread: Wraithed

« on: July 25, 2014, 12:44:00 AM »

Who are Grandpa and Slimabob, you guys recognized me.
Also your builds are bad.