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fallintosanity · 4 years

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#3!!!

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

(This is from an idea I started working on back in *checks notes* March of 2018, apparently, jeez. It’s not so much the set-up I’m lacking as the “where to go from here”, which alas is the usual problem I run into when writing.)

Noctis hated his Crownsguard bodyguards.

More accurately, he hated that he had to have them, that he had to be followed everywhere by armed guards, hated that he couldn’t just decide to go places on a whim like Prompto did. Hated the way the other kids in the arcade eyed the Guard nervously, hated how their very presence kept Noctis from blending into the crowd the way he wanted, so badly, to do.

So he ignored them as best he could, tried to act as though they didn’t exist. It wasn’t difficult - they were as discreet as they could be, with their guns and earpieces and black pants and jackets that weren’t technically a uniform but were obviously not casual civilian clothes either. They stayed on the edges of the room where they could see the whole place at one, and sometimes Noctis almost managed to forget they were there.

Today was one of those days. The arcade had just gotten a new co-op shooter, and Noctis and Prompto had waited in line for nearly an hour for their turn to play. Now, with a royal treasury’s worth of play credits, he and Prompto had torn through the early levels and had gathered an impressive audience. None of them seemed to realize that he was the Crown Prince of Lucis; they yelled and cheered and jeered him and Prompto both as they mowed through enemy mooks and made their way to what Noctis suspected was the game’s final boss.

Prompto was a better shot than Noctis, so Noct let him focus on shooting down the tricky incoming missiles and instead trained his light gun on the boss. It was a system they’d developed within a month or so of starting to play together: Noct aggro’ing the boss, his foot light and fast on the dodge pedal, while Prompto dealt with the annoying, hard-to-hit minions and missiles. It worked for them now, too - within a couple of minutes the boss exploded in a colorful burst of digital flame.

As the final cutscene played and Noct and Prompto entered their initials at the top of the high score list, the crowd pressed closer, calling congratulations and praise. Not for the first time that day, Noctis regretted his decision to wear jeans instead of shorts; it was only early July but Lucis occasionally liked to remind its citizens that it was, in fact, primarily a desert country. The arcade had air conditioning, but the press of bodies around them was too thick for the cooler air to get through.

Prompto, who also wore jeans but had cut the sleeves off his t-shirt, didn’t look any more comfortable than Noctis felt. He grabbed Noct by the wrist and tugged him through the crowd toward the vending machines. “I’m dying of thirst here,” he said, with an overdramatic swoon.

Noctis laughed and jostled him. “You’re just saying that so I’ll buy the drinks.”

“Well yeah,” Prompto agreed cheerfully as they fetched up against the vending machine. “You owe me from last week!”

“Hah, I forgot about that,” Noctis said. He fished in his pocket for his credit card and tapped it against the machine’s reader, keying in the codes for a couple of sodas.

“I know you did,” Prompto said, grinning. “That’s why I’m reminding you.” He retrieved the sodas from the slot in the side and handed one to Noct, then took a swig from his own. “Oh man, that hits the spot!”

Noct had just opened his own can when he noticed the Crownsguard approaching them from the side. It was probably one of the newer recruits; Noctis didn’t recognize the man’s face but he did recognize the black clothes, the earpiece, the close-cropped dark hair. The man looked nervous for a moment under Noct’s scrutiny, then swallowed and raised his chin. “I’m sorry, Highness,” he said, “but something’s come up. We need to leave now.”

Something cold knotted in Noctis’s gut. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He spotted a second Guard nearby, his back to Noctis as he surveyed the room. The first Guard started walking toward the arcade’s entrance, not quite herding Noctis and Prompto along in front of him.

“Nothing,” the Guard said, and smiled, though his expression was tense. Prompto stared at him, blue eyes wide, his normal smile faded to unease. The Crownsguard continued, “We simply wish to be overly cautious.”

“Where are we going?” Prompto asked nervously. They’d reached the arcade entrance, the second Guardsman falling behind to watch their exit while a third materialized on the sidewalk and fell into step next to Prompto. Noctis didn’t recognize either of them. Just his luck to be stuck with a bunch of complete greenhorns so worried about being assigned to babysit the Crown Prince that they’d pull him out of the arcade as a precautionary measure.

“It’ll just be a quick ride around the block,” the Guard promised. “While we make sure everything’s all right.” He pointed to a sleek black Crownsguard van sitting at the curb.

The third Guard took a few quick steps to get ahead of them and pulled open the van’s side door. As Noct made to climb in, the man plucked his half-forgotten soda can from his fingers so he could buckle his seat belt, then did the same to Prompto. When they were both settled in the van’s middle row, he handed them their drinks back with a reassuring smile. “It won’t take long,” he said. “Sorry for the fuss. We just want to make sure our prince is safe.”

Noctis waved a hand dismissively, trying not to let his annoyance show. They were just doing their jobs, as much as he might hate it, and honestly it was kind of nice to get out of the crowded, overheated arcade and sit in the relative quiet of the air-conditioned van. The Guard settled into the bench seat behind them, while the other two climbed into the front seats. The engine purred to life and the van pulled smoothly away from the curb.

Noctis downed his soda, tilting his head back to let the air conditioning run over the skin of his neck. Beside him, Prompto slouched in his seat, fiddling with his own can before reluctantly taking a sip. Noctis elbowed him in the side. “Sorry about this,” he said, trying to make his voice light. He tried to be normal around Prompto - loved that, for the most part, he could be normal around Prompto - but the crown had a way of screwing that up. “Being the prince isn’t all fun and high scores.”

Prompto shrugged one shoulder, still twisting the can in his hands. He took another sip with the air of working up to saying something, but his mouth twisted and he leaned against Noctis’s shoulder instead, turning his head to bury his face against Noct’s neck. Noctis blinked - it wasn’t as though they hadn’t ever leaned on each other like this, but usually on Noct’s couch where there wasn’t anyone around to see. And while Noctis generally didn’t count the Crownsguard as “anyone”, he knew Prompto did.

Then Prompto whispered in Noctis’s ear, “So uh, maybe I’m just being paranoid or something, but, um. Are you sure these guys are the guards who came with us to the arcade?”

Noctis opened his mouth to say something, to dismiss Prompto’s worry, to promise him it was fine - but the words didn’t come out. Cold nausea swirled suddenly in his gut. He hadn’t recognized the guards, and while he saw unfamiliar Crownsguard around the palace all the time, it was incredibly rare for his own Guard to get a single new face, much less three at once. Noctis glanced out the window, his stomach sinking as he realized they’d already driven far away from the arcade, out of the bustling downtown and into an ominously empty district of industrial warehouses.

No.

Noctis wracked his brain, trying to remember the last time he’d seen his Crownsguard before the man had approached them at the vending machine. But he’d been ignoring the Guard the way he always did, and honestly couldn’t have said if they even made it into the arcade hours ago. And he definitely had no idea which of his usual roster had been with them - it wasn’t as though he paid them enough attention to notice who was whom.

No…!

“Noct—” Prompto whispered, his fingers tightening around Noct’s wrist. Noct looked down; he hadn’t felt Prompto grab him, but Prompto’s fingers were wrapped around his wrist and his empty soda can was gone, fallen to the floor, and now that Noct had lowered his head it was suddenly hard to lift it again. Prompto was slipping too, his head falling from Noctis’s shoulder as he slumped down into Noct’s lap.

NO!

Noctis tried to reach for his phone, tried to open his mouth to yell, tried to reach for the magic of his bloodline. But his muscles were slow, his body heavy and unresponsive, and the last thing he remembered was collapsing forward around Prompto’s unconscious body.

#sanity replies #fanfiction #final fantasy xv #ffxv #ask meme #audreysfandomblog

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jessiethewitchzard · 5 years

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Ramiel’s fight from NGE 1.11 is hands down my favorite monster of the week encounter from anything ever.

youtube

This is the single most alien monster design I have ever witnessed. Just a blue polyhedron. No visible weapons. No sharp teeth or claws. What the fuck is this thing going to unleash? Is it mechanical? Is it made of water? Surely it’s not organic?

Right off the bat, it sounds like a mix between sephiroth’s backup choir and the sonar pings of a nuclear submarine. It’s a monstrous angel of the lord, as well as a silent enemy approaching unseen from the darkness. Boom. Character introduction DONE. all necessary traits have been conveyed.

but then, you get in close, and it’s made of these minecraft looking cubes. It unfolds into some sort of unfathomable tesseract, with this weird meaty sound like skin being torn away from flesh, raising questions about what the fuck is even going on. Is it... hurting itself? It reveals some sort of central node. Normal logic would say this is it’s heart or brain or reactor core or whatever equivalent it has. Turns out this is the emitter for some sort of weapon. This is more like a dragon opening it’s mouth to breath fire.

It unleashes some sort of power, but even it’s MOST BASIC ATTACK is completely invisible. God works in mysterious ways, right?

Then, it shifts to a different weapon, complete with another weird impossible transformation, and this time is sounds like Alvin and the Chpmunks entering a berserker rage. This second attack’s activation sequence escalates the weirdness, having pieces actually appear from and vanish into thin air(as opposed to “just” changing size and shape), as a SIDE EFFECT of just arming it’s weapons. This thing casually and incidentally violates the laws of physics, and it may well be no more intelligent than a trained attack dog.

it fires the newer weapon, which is larger, and more destructive than the first, filling the entire screen, rather than just poking hole in buildings, and the we the NERV facility retract into the ground to lockdown for combat.

Then, it reverts back to its base form, which ends with a metallic clang. Maybe this is a machine after all. We’ve got a back and forth plot going just from audio cues. It floats above the city, framed from DIRECTLY below, filling the entire sky, and deploys some kind of drill thing to attack the underground NERV facility.

Then we have a shot from the distance that could almost be mistaken for a harmless child’s top. Cut to nighfall. It’s been rotating in place, drilling for several hours. It is slow and implacable, and confident enough to sit down and get to work directly on top of it’s enemy’s base. Notably, it’s drill is also rotating backwards to how a physical drill would. Even this recognizable, physical tool is weird and alien and just wrong.

There are various scenes about ‘oh no it’s drilling into the base’, and the heroes come up with a plan., Part one, the defenders send a barrage of missiles after it. It unfolds into this pinwheel orbital thing. Judging by its previous attacks, this radial symmetry suggests it’s using something like twenty nodes. We still don’t know much about this thing, but monkey brain says big number is more dangerous, so this must be bad. Then, it fires a single laser into space, and whips the now solidly linear beam around like a sword to smack the missiles away.

A concentrated barrage of artillery manages to catch it with it’s pants down(?) and it takes the first defensive action we’ve seen so far, which consists of turning into a heptagonal prism and making a bunch of little barriers to parry each individual projectile. There’s no literal melee combat happening, but we’ve progressed to more and more mundane attacks every time. Invisible force > laser > drill > basically an enormous lightsaber > lots of little shields

Then, it unfolds, and starts screaming. We don’t know a whole lot, but so far, that always means it’s angry. It fires a laser, evaporating the bunkers we’ve seen so far, but the heroes’ plan is working. They’ve procured so many missile launchers that it has to focus on parrying the incoming projectiles.

Now the basic plan to defeat this thing is that they have this huge gun that will use all the power in the entire power grid of japan to fire an enormous laser that should absolutely vaporize anything it hits.

From inside the EVA’s cockpit, we get a look at the thing through various lenses, and finally, the order is given to fire. Several beams are channeled through this big clunky cobbled together sniper rifle, as if the best the heroes have is a a crude parody of Ramiel’s multi-core laser beams, and it takes all the power of Japan just to fire it once. And here, ramiel has been throwing these beams around left and right.

The shot penetrates Ramiels defense, right through it’s core, the only thing it has resembling ‘important anatomy’, and it crumples/explodes/folds/ shifts into this starburst thing like a bullet hole hanging in the air, or shards of broken glass. Visually, it’s hurt pretty bad, probably. At least, we hope it is, unless this was just a weird dodge., but the audio sells it ten times over. It screams like a woman in enormous pain, not a good sound in any context, but so out of place here that it sparks a million questions just at the moment of this thing’s death.

And a death it is, because this previously perfect, geometric abstraction crumples up and starts to sag like a dry leaf in the wind. But that’s no it. There’s one more thing. It spews literal lakes worth of bright red human blood. That’s a good sign, right? it’s smashed and bleeding, and it’s impenetrable divine facade has cracked to reveal, in a very abstract sort of way, a woman who bleeds like anyone else. Step back for a moment, and appreciate that they’ve managed to communicate the idea of dying and coming back to life with an abstract polyhedron.

But then, cut to the center of the impact, and it heals itself. the damage just folds away, and the bloodstains retreat back inside. It reverts to it basic d8 form, as if nothing has changed. Our heroes have blown out the entire power grid of Japan in a crude mimicry of this thing’s basic attack, and it got them what exactly? they drew its attention away from their base? Pissed it off?

And then, the first thing it does after being all but killed is to IMMEDIATELY re-expose its core, and unfold another beam weapon. Then it keeps unfolding. And unfolding. this newest configuration is larger and spikier, and it’s got a whole five points rather than four. Without a single word or recognizable piece of anatomy, we can tell that the kid gloves have come off. It resembles nothing so much as a tesseract rotating in four dimensions.

It fires another invisible beam, this time with enough force to vaporize half a mountain. Shinji gets shook around inside the cockpit of the EVA, just by the back blast. We get a shot of Ramiel stopped for a moment, maybe recharging, or surveying the wreckage or something. Then, it’s drill penetrates the ceiling of NERV HQ. Apparently, Ramiel has been distracted this entire time, but now they’ve got it’s full attention, as it’s done drilling.

There’s a big rousing speech where the boss lady is like “no, give him a chance, he can save the day! we believe in you Shinji!”, during which Ramiel does nothing. Eventually, Shinji heroically gets the gun back in position, and looks down the scope to line up another shot, only to see that Ramiel is pointing directly at him, and charging up another blast. Before he can fire, it unloads, and the beam punches through the remains of the moutain, and devastates the outside of the ship. Luckily, Rei is there to jump in with a big shield and protect Shinji long enough to line up another shot. But there’s this moment of calm after she jumps in, there’s a beat, here she is, she’s saved the day and blocked the attack. But nope. The beam keeps coming. Ramiel doesn’t need ammo. It’s just opening the floodgates and pointing them at the heroes, and Shinji and Rei are surrounded by a blizzard of light with no sign of stopping. Rei’s shield slowly, layer by layer, burns away under the intensity of the blast, but before they’re obliterated, Shinji fires off another killshot.

Ramiel rapidly clamshells shut with a metallic clunk, but then a gout of fire comes out the back. That’s better than blood, right? apparently it can survive losing a lot of blood, but if it’s on fire, that’s gotta be progress, right? It explodes into a rosette of shards and screams again. Same as last time, but then irregular craters appear on its surface, and its cores explode one by one.

It comes and goes, and we never learn a damn thing about it. It’s just... a thing.

#aj oc #nge #neon genesis evangelion #ramiel

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scdojo · 7 years

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Protoss vs Terran - a whole new world

You can see all of the changes here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/20975163

When reading the “Major Changes” coming for StarCraft 2 later this year, the first thing that jumped out at me are how different Protoss vs Terran will look. This blog will go into some detail on my thoughts about how those changes could impact the matchup.

Widow Mine change:

- Widow Mines are now revealed while Sentinel Missile is on cooldown.

Let’s think about early game TvP for a moment. Currently, there is a choice to make. Do I keep my Oracle out on the map or send it home to defend vs drops? Do I risk flying in not knowing where mines are? If I lose that Oracle, I’m going to be really hurting at home. What if the Terran made a proxy Factory and Starport? Maybe I should go for a Robo so I can clean up mass Mines more easily.

Now, none of these decisions matter any more for Protoss. In fact, I’m already planning on opening Twilight every single game now. The power of the Widow Mine’s consistent cloak in the early game has truly been powerful. You simply must have detection – Observers or Oracles – no matter what.

With this change, though, Protoss players will simply trade a Probe for a Widow Mine, and happily go about their day.

Now, this all sounds really silly when I outline it like this. What I wrote above is an outline of what this change does alone in our current version of LotV. In our current version, this would be a brutal change for for Terrans. The thing is, we have to look at it in context of all of the upcoming changes, and this change, in particular (with regards to Terran vs Protoss), has amazing synergy with other changes.

First lets look at the Mothership Core, its purpose, and its removal.

I think that many non-Protoss players are happy to see the Mothership Core go, and that many Protoss players are scared of the same prospect.

What is the function of the Mothership Core? Why does Protoss need such a tool?

The Mothership Core was introduced to help shore up early game Protoss defence. The Protoss race, from the get-go, has been about teching up before macroing. If you make more than a handful of Gateway units before going higher up the tech tree, this generally means that you are going all-in, as the Gateway units simply don’t scale well without upgrades or splash damage.

So, if we look at the current role of the Mothership Core in Protoss vs Terran, it will generally help you (with good positioning of Pylons), to defend your bases early game with a minimum of Gateway units while getting out Robo tech, or an Oracle, or maybe even an upgrade like Blink.

The Protoss army has always thrived on working together (a nice way of saying Deathball). While, sure, you could have little harassment groups around the map trying to get things done, if your army isn’t all together and you run into your opponent’s army, you are in a lot of trouble. These types of armies in general are not as mobile as most Terran and Zerg armies, making it a bit scary to move around the map. Counter attacks could come quickly and do lots of damage. This, again, is where the Mothership Core helps out. By leaving an inexpensive unit at home, you would have some degree of defence vs incoming counter attacks, giving you some extra mobility on the map.

So now we have the Mothership Core on the way out. In it’s place is the Nexus, full of new abilities:

Chrono Boost

- Cost: 50 Energy - Duration: 10 seconds - Effect: Boosts a building’s work rate by 100%.

Mass Recall

- Cost: 100 Energy - Effect: After 4 seconds all units in target area are teleported to the Nexus. Units are unable to move or attack during this time.

Shield Recharge

- Cost: 1 Energy per 3 shield restored - Range: 8 - Has autocast functionality - Can be cast on units or structures

All I’ll say about the new Chrono Boost ability for now is that it is infinitely more interesting than the Chrono Boost that we’ve been working with lately. There are actual decisions to be made and APM/Rhythms to be used.

Now let’s talk about the Shield Recharge ability.

I love this ability. It is a fantastic idea. In a world without the Mothership Core OR Shield Recharge, Protoss would be forced to make lots of Gateway units nonstop, making sure they always have enough to simply beat what’s coming at them. This would make a horrible situation where everything you do is stifled. It would kind of look like games on Ulrena, if you remember that map, where Protoss would be extra heavy on Gateway units, waiting for an attack that might never come, thus forcing aggressive builds to utilize those units before their value sank too low in comparison to better scaling from the opponent’s units.

So, here we are with the new Shield Recharge. Now, whether your opponent is dropping with a Medivac into your main base or attacking your front with Roaches, you have some support for your early Gateway army. Defence won’t be a single click of a button that makes it mathematically unwise for your opponent to continue his attack, but rather micro-based. Stalkers, Adepts and Zealots fighting, sometimes kiting, being healed as they are focus fired down. I think that it will be extremely hard for anyone to argue that this will be less entertaining or less fun for either side when compared to the Mothership Core.

I also find it really cool that it will work with Cannons as well. You won’t necessarily have to have units at each base to defend vs smaller attacks in the mid and late game.

So now let’s look at Mass Recall:

- Cost: 100 Energy - Effect: After 4 seconds all units in target area are teleported to the Nexus. Units are unable to move or attack during this time.

It probably isn’t worthwhile to compare this ability with the current Mass Recall on the Mothership Core. The new version is unquestionably better.

Mass Recall probably won’t be used very much in the early game, as it definitely requires a high mana cost, but as the game becomes longer, it should be an extremely strong aspect of Protoss - adding a huge amount of mobility.

And a quick look at the new Stalker:

- Increased Stalker’s Particle Disruptor weapon from 10 (14 vs armored) to 15 (21 vs armored) - Increased Particle Disruptor’s weapon period from 1.03 to 1.54 - Particle Disruptor now gets +2 damage per weapon upgrade, up from +1

The new Stalker will maintain approximately the same DPS throughout the game, but will take over (in conjunction with the Nexus’ new abilities) the defensive roll that the Mothership Core used to have.

One of the problems in early game PvT since the Siege Tank buffs (as well as Liberators in general) was that making Stalkers early on in a defensive manner could be detrimental. For instance, the original Protoss defensive opening of Blink/Observer, was almost completely killed off by the presence of early Tank pushes. You would simply not have the damage or health to fight off a well executed attack from Terran, and thus the build went into obscurity. This forced Protoss into builds based off of a tech unit (most often the Oracle) to slow the Terran down, so that you could buy time to crush an early push all at once. Now:

1. You don’t necessarily need early detection to deal with Widow Mines. 2. The Nexus can heal up lots of damage on your Stalkers. 3. Initial (first volley) damage output from Stalkers are greatly increased.

When you put all of these changes together, Protoss vs Terran, from the Protoss perspective, looks a lot different. - You are no longer forced into either Stargate or Robo for macro openings - You are no longer forced to control the early game with just 2-3 specialized units (Mothership Core, Oracle, Phoenix, etc)

These make me think that early game PvT will likely consist of making a few defensive Stalkers while getting a Twilight Council and a Forge or two. Without an overwhelming need for early detection, Protoss can focus on getting ahead on upgrades and having much higher mobility with a larger and stronger early army than ever before. The more we see the matchup skew towards this, the less each individual unit will matter (unlike now with a huge importance on the specialized units).

I think that the direction of Protoss splash actually supports my notions of the new direction of the race:

Disruptor changes

Purification Nova - Purification Nova now detonates on contact with enemy units (not structures) - Purification Nova still lasts 2 seconds before detonating - Damage reduced from 145 (+55 shields) to 135 (+25 shields) - Cooldown reduced from 21 to 18 - When dropped from a Warp Prism the Disruptor’s Purification Nova will be set to a brief cooldown. As it felt a little too strong vs worker lines otherwise.

Quicker cooldown, but much easier to micro against. Less giant swings due to overwhelming splash damage. The cooldown when dropped from a Warp Prism is shocking, to be honest. This was never and to this day is not a problem in professional play. I don’t think that this was on anyone’s list of things that felt too strong agains worker lines. I disagree with this change wholeheartedly. Disruptor Drops are no longer a viable strategy with this change. Even the other change about contact with enemy units would have nerfed them already, but this is insane overkill.

Colossus changes

- Damage changed from 12 to 10 (15 vs Light) - Damage per upgrade changed from 1 to 1 (+1 vs Light) - Range increased from 6 to 7 - Upgrade: Extended Thermal Lance - Range upgrade decreased from +3 to +2 - Cost decreased from 200 / 200 to 150 / 150

Obviously Colossus will shred Marines even harder than before, and it’s nice to make base range a bit longer as well as Thermal Lance a bit cheaper. That being said, this doesn’t seem like a buff or a nerf to me. Just a slight change in roll, from something that you will always just blindly make, to something that you think about whether or not you want. I might be slightly wrong due to numbers, but it seems like that’s the intended direction at least.

I do want to, for a moment, mention the Ghost change:

- Cloak is now available by default on Ghosts - Ghosts now start with 50 energy instead of 75 - Moebius Reactor is re-added to the Ghost Academy. It provides +25 starting energy to Ghosts

If, in fact, the Protoss meta does shift as I think it will, Ghosts could be a pretty cool way to keep things in check. Starting with Cloak makes the fast Ghost rushes (that we barely ever see) more reasonable, and just in general force Protoss to not skip detection all game long. I think it’s a solid idea.

From the Terran side, most of the changes don’t seem to greatly effect the TvP matchup. The Widow Mine change is pretty big for the early game. The fix to Liberator vision was probably called for a while ago. The Cyclone initial volley will help push out harass a bit better, which is a good thing. But overall, there’s not a whole lot there. Of course, as Protoss’s overall play changes some, Terran players will have to adjust accordingly. That’s just common sense.

The overall feel that I get from these changes on the Protoss side of things is that the early game will become less volatile, and the basic Protoss army will feel stronger and more mobile. Mid-game map control could easily become Protoss favoured. In short, this new PvT looks like it will be a lot more like the flavour of PvT in StarCraft 1. Based on the overwhelming majority of comments that I’ve read online about the flavour of Protoss in SC2 in the past several years, I would think people will be happy about this general direction.

In closing:

Having the Nexus enable Gateway units (alongside the higher Stalker damage) to be useful on defence in the early game without making them overpowered offensively is awesome and should make the game more enjoyable for everyone, whether playing or spectating.

BONUS!! Here’s some stuff I don’t like at all from the changes:

High Templar

- Added Psi Blast weapon - Range: 6 - Damage: 4 - Attack period: 1.25

This is so weird. The stated reason is that it will make them easier to control, not running into battle to die.

Who is attack moving their High Templars into battle and losing them like that? This is not and cannot be a change for the pro level, and that I don’t like.

HT attack isn’t the only change like this:

“While we don’t want to make Protoss ability gameplay any more complicated we wanted to try making Observers more useful for ladder players. Currently Observers are selected with the select all army button (F2 by default) which can often bring Observers out of position and to their untimely demise. While we’d like to keep observers in this selection, we are considering adding the ability to ‘deploy’ your observer for increased vision range in exchange for being unable to move.

New ability: Surveillance Mode The observer is unable to move and gains 25% more vision”

Let me rewrite this one - “We noticed that people are bad at StarCraft. Many players have developed bad habits and are too lazy to fix them, so we are going to make those bad habits less bad.”

As a turtley macro player, I’m very excited to have 25% more vision on my Observers. This isn’t the right reason to give me that, though. I disagree with the change, but more so with the stated reason for the change. If you want to use the “easy button” to play StarCraft, then that’s a drawback you should have to deal with. Learn to play more cleanly and you will lose less Observers.

Same opinion on the Overseer change which is exactly the same.

OK, so that’s really the end now! I’m on vacation right now, but if I have time I’ll write some more about the other changes soon!

#starcraft2 #artosis #balance #article #Protoss #Terran

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jonathanalumbaugh · 6 years

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What I learned

January 13th, 2018, 7th issue. A roundup of what I learned this week, sources linked. Published weekly. All blurbs written by yours truly unless otherwise noted. Grouped in quasi-random order.

Design

Land art is awesome. — 10 Female Land Artists You Should Know

There's free money out there for projects! — The Complete Guide to 2018 Artist Grants and - Artwork Archive

Better design can help guide the user to what they want to do, while leaving them in control. Bad design lets them flounder. — Hawaii missile alert: Blame terrible interface design for the Hawaii debacle — Quartz

Looking at a familiar environment through a photo can give us a new perspective. — January Cure 2018 Assignment 7 - Photograph Your Home - Apartment Therapy

Design-centered companies like IBM seem like the ideal, if there must be monoliths like them. — IBM’s Quest To Design The “New Helvetica”

Things that are interactive get more attention than things that are static. Things that are interactive in strange and unexpected ways, probably even more so. — Ikea’s New Ad Is A Pregnancy Test You Pee On. Really.

The impact of simple choices ("this font or that one?") is important. — The importance of typography in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

International fire code/OSHA guidelines for evacuation floor plans are a thing that exists. — Is there a Standard for Emergency Evacuation Maps? - NFPA Xchange

Basic principles of animation apply to more than just animated films. — Making CSS Animations Feel More Natural - CSS-Tricks

CNC made houses cause quite a stir in the comments section. — The PlyPad: CNC Machine Yourself A Tiny House - Hackaday

Design nostalgia looks to an era that never existed, a charicature of an era that wasn't as glorious as it's made out to be. — That font you hate is coming back in style - The Outline

Git

Yes, a section dedicated solely to all the things I learned about git.

Git is a powerful way of managing projects that have releases, ongoing development, and multiple team members. — A git Primer

Use "git checkout" to use files from a different branch in the current branch. — Git: checkout files or directories from another branch – clubmate.fi

This was supposed to help me deploy my website. — Git: copy all files in a directory from another branch - Stack Overflow

Git can also be used to automate deployment of web apps or websites, especially powerful when combined with post receive hooks. — Setting up Push-to-Deploy with git - Kris Jordan

Order of operations: git commit > git pull > merge whatever needs to be merged > push to server. — When do I need to do "git pull", before or after "git add, git commit"? - Stack Overflow

Finance

In systems of continually growing complexity, administration becomes more and more difficult. — An Alleged Theft of a Billion-Dollar Fund Grips ETF World - WSJ

A lot about retirement accounts. — Congratulations, Your Income Is Too High: Non-Deductible IRA Conversions - Part 2 - Seeking Alpha

Ethereum is a crypto-currency that is built to be used for smart contracts, which function as multi-signature accounts, manage agreements between users, store information about an app, and more. — How Do Ethereum Smart Contracts Work? - CoinDesk

Scandal

In a shitstorm of bad apologies for terrible assaults, a victim accepts her harasser's apology. — Dan Harmon’s apology to Megan Ganz was a moment of self-reckoning - Vox

Excerpt: “We are talking here about destroying all the ambiguity and the charm of relationships between men and women,” explained the writer Anne-Elisabeth Moutet... “We are French, we believe in gray areas. America is a different country. They do things in black and white and make very good computers. We don’t think human relationships should be treated like that.”

What I learned: I'm not really sure.

— Opinion: Catherine Deneuve and the French Feminist Difference

In the almost every one of the differing opinions about Ansari's wrongdoings, even the ones who decry his accuser, there is at least some shred of truth. — The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari

Social media

Facebook has shifted its focus from personal connection to advertising. Can it be saved? Probably only by killing it. — Facebook Can’t Be Fixed. — Facebook (FB) is using an old drug dealer tactic to keep its users hooked to News Feed

In a society anxious to be texted back, we value the ability to put off replying. — How It Became Normal to Ignore Texts and Emails

youtube

Algorithmic systems like Youtube feed off of its users preferences. If we don't like it, it's our fault. — Making a Better YouTube

There is a new dialectic, or at least one that has been brought to the fore by the over-availability of news: virtue signalling vs. engagement. Every inflammatory headline begs to be shared with righteous opinion attached, and every time one is it fans the flames of the 24 hour news cycle. Maybe before long, it'll be called the 1400 minute news cycle. — Seriously, You—Ok, We—Need To Stop Watching The News This Year

Massive systems like Youtube are now almost completely run by algorithms that are exploitative. It's not that there is aberrant behavior in the algorithm; it is built to be exploitative, and it's now being taken to its natural end. And yes, as users, we are complicit. — Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle

We need to consider the root beliefs collectively held by society that have given rise to the services that now run our lives. — Lost Context: How Did We End Up Here?

Life

A catch-all category for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else, or fits in too many other categories!

There are points in time that we're more likely to work to push beyond our current capabilities; perhaps by preparing for them, we could push even farther. — The Bizarre Motivating Power of Aging Into a New Decade

Spiciness is carried to our brains through nerves in the dermis on our tongues, not through taste buds. — Did You Know That "Spicy" is Not a Taste?

Alcohol hits the bloodstream very quickly (~90 seconds) but takes hours to be fully released into the bloodstream, so BAC can climb even after the last drink. — Here's Why You Vomit After Drinking Alcohol And How To Feel Better After Getting Sick

Discomfort and fear keep us from enjoying ourselves. When we experience them, slow down, check them at the door and forge ahead. — I Was the Youngest Person at the Dump - Kathleen Ann Thompson

The authors argue that inequality is almost the same as it has been for decades, the top 1% is simply receiving their large slice of the pie in salary, rather than in increasing shareholder value pre-Reagan tax changes. — A new study says much of the rise in inequality is an illusion. Should you believe it?

Making room for opportunity to occur is the first step to seizing opportunity. — Opportunity Knocks When You Least Expect It. - Kathleen Ann Thompson

What I learned: The internet is a utopia; it does not physically exist, it's a virtual space that enables the amplification of the moral outrage that is a tool of self-absolution. And now we are no longer able to shape the internet, what we made now shapes us. Excerpt one: "The utopian ideal of the internet—unregulated access to information, pure connectivity—now feels antiquated. Also antiquated: trying to determine if the internet is simply good or bad. Possible and necessary: thinking more deeply about how it’s rewiring our brains and warping our experience of time, about the vistas of reality it’s revealing and creating, and what to do with our positions therein, so that we do not go mad from it all nor flee altogether." Excerpt two: "Communicating every thought about every moral conflict has become so effortless, even obligatory, that it feels like nothing could possibly be informing our reactions beyond the conflicts themselves." Excerpt three: "The myriad reckonings we’re desperate for might be cultivated in the kind of safe space Kaufman describes. Not a literal dream state, but somewhere where you don’t feel watched or compelled to perform. Somewhere private, or where you’re listening to one person at a time rather than a ton of little representations of people all at once. Somewhere where the discomfort of moral responsibility can’t be mowed over with the stimulus of an outrageous story. Where, if you’re disturbed to come upon a transgressive thought of your own, the next move is to pick it apart, rather than to go online and project an image of yourself as perfectly evolved." — Rookie » Editor's Letter

Automating repetitive tasks using whatever tools at hand is a powerful way to reach past a productivity plateau. — Schedule Tasks on Linux Using Crontab

Giving our viewers "everything" is doing our audiences a disservice. Shows like Twin Peaks make us work to understand. — ‘Twin Peaks’ Episode 8 Explained: Recap & Top Theories

B teams at Google (teams that were not composed of top performers) made more significant contributions to the company than its A teams, once again proving that soft skills are incredibly important. — The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students

Figure out your most productive hours and be prepared to work on your most important projects in that time. — Work During Your Hours of Peak Productivity

Google may not be explicitly evil, but it is starting to force web developers to do things the Google way. — Web developers publish open letter taking Google to task for locking up with web with AMP / Boing Boing

Psychology

I have no idea what's going on here. — Carl Jung Was Alt-Right

Contradicting perhaps decades of psychology, personality (as measured by OCEAN, or the "Big Five") shows downward trends in all traits except agreeableness. — Study of 50,000 people shows personality changes throughout life

A free "Big Five" or "OCEAN" test! — Understand Yourself - Personality Test

Beginnings, endings, and other psychological landmarks are powerful times to take advantage of in our lives. — You’re Most Likely to Do Something Extreme Right Before You Turn 30

#Weekly Digest

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