Month: August 2015
Uncertainty, fairy tales and economic myths
Uncertainty, fairy tales and economic myths
Uncertainty, fairy tales and economic myths three main themes which have become core parts of UK politics. Uncertainty helped win the Scottish referendum, defeat Labour and block military action. Fairy tales around European union with immigration. Economic myths demonize debt, public spending has become limited as a tool due to political myths.
Uncertainty
Scottish referendum uncertainty around economic policy. Labour fiscal policy [spending policy] which leads to issues with other policy areas. Both suffered from a failure to defend records and vision. SNP controlling Labour line divided Scotland and England.
Uncertainty allowed to grow used to great effect in winning battles but it has created a couple issues which won’t disappear.
Fairy Tales
European union has been turned monster when reality is it not. Same could be said for immigration and spending policy.
Economic myths
Government borrowing should be reduced any spending should be from the private sector.
All three are linked together uncertainty leads to fairy tales and economic myths. World at the same time is full of uncertainty geopolitical risk is high with economic. Established ideology is under attack with powers behind it. Reward behind winning each of these battles is massive remains to be seen who is going to win.
Hearthstone newbie thoughts
Hearthstone newbie thoughts
Hearthstone is a free to play card game based on world of warcraft lore. The result is every card is based on some part of that lore with the whole game being themed within that lore. Quite a new player to hearthstone however I have been watching some hearthstone players who live steam for some time now. However watching and playing a video game are two different experiences. New players are given a basic set of cards for free you’re able to earn cards over time by gaining gold or crafting them.
Boring card game?
Beautiful simple game which is like a onion has a ton of layers. Game has three main types of decks Aggro, Control and value.
Aggro – Glass cannon designed to rush down other decks however can burn out of damage dealing with other threats.
Value – Middle of the road between Aggro/Control seeks value out of your cards mid range style of deck.
Control – Slowest deck in the game designed to counter threats and keep control of the game.
When building your deck you want to have a idea what sort of deck you wish to build. Of course some decks can be themed on top of these main types for example you could have a spell heavy deck or pirate only deck. Some of the best decks in hearthstone focus on 5 cards being the win condition with rest of the cards able to support them. Players changing decks can be rewarded with easy wins depending on what the majority of players are using. Game rewards players who know what decks types are winning and build counters against them. Deck building is major part of the fun learning what works and how to combo cards together.
But random right?
Yep however are certain things you can do to counter that randomness and win most of the time. Missing damage or not taking control of the board can cost you a game even with a better hand.
Going to take myself some time to build up a card collection the game has a ton of cards.
Enjoying this casual card game at the moment looking forward to getting better.
Music Monday: Philip George – Wish You Were Mine
Yet more music this time from Philip George with Wish You Were Mine
Black Ops 3 Beta Final thoughts
Black Ops 3 Beta Final Thoughts
Call Of Duty Black Ops 3 has made some pretty big gameplay mechanics changes. Movement system has been changed again. Advanced warfare took movement system allowed a huge amount of freedom impacting the metagame. Combat along with travelling the map faced with massive changes. Movement freedom is scaled back in favour of a much more controlled pace. That said movement still plays a role but is far more tactical in use. Map is designed to use the movement system with certain routes being options. Movement allows for sliding once more with wall running added. Mechanical the movement has been redone from the ground up with physics changed and new limits put in place.
Advanced warfare worked on PC but movement did not work on console black ops 3 Treyarch has reached a happy median.
Lets take a look at the movement system.
Wall running – One button wall running with you able to fire when running. Based on map design so far let’s players travel around choke points and avoid lines of sight.
Boost jumps – players to boost in whatever direction even when moving. Black ops 3 stops players from being able to move apart from a limited number of directions.
Slide – Returns pretty much unchanged
Forward momentum is another change from Advanced warfare which did not have any forward momentum at all. Of course could be wrong given how I did not play that game.
Changes to the movement system means the game feels much closer to older call of duties and more natural. Movement system is easier to learn but hard to master. Rest of the game is rather much the same as past titles from a design point of view and gameplay mechanics. Call of duty also has dedicated servers along with listen servers. Weapon balance wise is better however does have some issues but Treyarch appear to know what they are doing.
Weapon balance assault rifles are king however SMGs still have a place along with LMGs and other snipers. Shotguns have quite good spread which are balanced with lower range/damage feels better compared to BO2.
Hope Treyarch can find the best balance between weapon classes right now assault rifles are too strong.
Metagame appears camping is best option and could see E sports being quite good.
Can see this title being frustrating but that standard for call of duty. Watching out to see how the xbox version beta goes and PC version. Do have some complaints about the title but looking forward to the single player along with zombies.
Game can be random at times but is rather fun. Was going to avoid this Call of duty game however this beta has changed my mind.
Labour leadership 2015: Impossible choice!
UK Labour party leadership selection is drawing closer to an end with leader position and bunch other senior positions up for grabs. Labour suffered quite a heavy defeat after the general election in 2010 with 2015 being just as bad.
Labour party suffered a defeat in ideology given the image of being incompetent for the last 5 years. Party did not have much time for soul searching to review the defeat. Candidates have to deal with many threats dealing with the Tories claim of fiscal incompetent being the most important. Problem is only one candidate is willing to tackle the claim of fiscal incompetent. Jeremy Corbyn is the only one willing to challenge the fiscal incompetent claim.
Candidates if they want to be taken serious they need to deal with the claim of fiscal incompetent. Impossible choice Corbyn or another candidate with more experience on the front bench.
Corbyn is asking the right questions but has the wrong answers. Other leadership candidates need to start asking the same questions but with better answers. Party should not seek to make the same mistakes as in 2010. Anybody with a vote is being faced with a impossible choice do we start to tackle the lies or go with the flow.
Which of the candidates can offer with Corbyn does come up with better answers and reach out to Tory swing voters.
Andy Burnham along with Yvette Cooper have started to see this and changed strategy. Now faced with a impossible choice does my first preference to towards Corbyn or Cooper.
Weekend Music: Foster The People – Houdini
In order to increase the blog post output lets do some music for the weekend also gives me a reason to seek out more music. Lets kick things off with
Black ops 3 specialists missed opportunity and balance issue?
Missed opportunity when it comes to the specialists characters in black ops 3. For starters art style of each one is rather close to each other. Apart from the cyborg ones which sort of stand out but can still blend into the environment.
Impossible to tell the difference between each one at a distance. Important information to know what sort of specialist you’re facing or what weapon.
From a design point of view also think becomes a missed opportunity gameplay wise. However I can understand why they have limited the power of them just like killstreaks they are very powerful tools.
Rejack is an gameplay mechanic which was removed from the game a couple years ago but has returned. Allows the player to revive with health back to 100. Many people have been saying this ability is overpowered however I think they are missing the bigger picture. Rejack is a passive ability most of the other abilities in the game are something you need to activate. Here a break down so you get the point…
Requires activation
- Gravity spikes – Offensive
- Overdrive – Defensive
- Sparrow – Offensive
- Vision pulse – Defensive
- Tempest – Offensive
- Glitch – Defensive
- War machine – Offensive
- Kinetic armor – Defensive
- Annihilator – Offensive
- Combat focus – Passive
- Ripper – Offensive
- Scythe – Offensive
- H.I.V.E. – Offensive
- Psychosis – Passive
- Active camo – Passive
Does not require activation
- Rejack – Passive
Glitch is very close to rejack but requires the player input in order to make use of it and rather situational. Rejack success may be situational but the activation is not. In game which you die so fast you want a reward which you’re likely to use. Worth pointing out that only situational use for rejack is for you to die. Worse still every second counts if you’re wasting your time trying to kill somebody who should died 100ms ago you’re putting yourself at risk. If anything Rejack is going to become overused over overpowered without a doubt far more powerful situational abilities.
Annoying, frustrating as a gameplay gameplay mechanic no doubt.
Rejack is not that good but better compared to the other abilities.
Problem is they tried to make specialists have limited impact on the game not to over shadow perks or killstreaks but rejack is versatile. Other abilities are far too situational for the average player. As a result they have created something which is going to have quite a big impact on the game.
Still don’t view it as being overpowered just far more versatile compared to the others.
As for solutions….
I think they need to go back to the drawing board coming up new versatile abilities which react with certain perks or items within the game. Giving every specialist a passive power and one which can be activated. Of course I could be wrong with this but would be nice to see specialist impact the game more.
Not 100% on what the best solution would be when it comes to this…and just goes to show you how hard game design can be.
Worth pointing out that gameplay mechanics should be a two way street so the player using it should feel powerful but the player used against does not feel helpful. Which is why killstreaks have been nerfed if anybody was curious that part of the reason why.
Credit to Treyarch however for making it obvious when somebody is using compared to some others which not obvious until you’re dead.
Black ops 3 beta quick thoughts
Game is fun however does have some core balance issues with stealth and specialists.
Also some annoying call of duty randomness but metagame wise could be quite big and fun.
Unlock system has taken a step backwards in my eyes.
Going to do a review and write up on the balance issues soon.