Month: December 2021

Journal, Labour, Politics

What does polling tell us about next election?

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What does polling tell us about next election?

The answer is not much but does give an idea of the direction. Support declines during this period of time and increasing again when any election happens. However not always certain who going to get that increase in support. Polling is model based on current public opinion, snapshot showing the direction of travel. Any model is subject to margin of error, most of the time you land in the middle. Don’t know is high without any election in sight, more Tory leaning voters who don’t know about 20%. Hyper focus of any election causes people to decide. 

The most likely outcome of next general election, Tory majority smaller than 80. Boris is the glue holding together the Tory majority, one of the reasons behind the decline. Past biases have been reforged; most voters don’t blame Boris but the party. Danger is the feeling loss, sense of grief getting connected to the party after covid.  Toxic party brand coming back would be hard to shake off. Strength of Boris is slowly becoming a weakness, unpopular that now baked in. New Tory voters look similar to the old, any support looks conditional on Boris leadership. Story and message for the Tories exists and voters have general idea what they stand for. Recent events have made some question that belief in Boris. Not willing to abandon the party just yet, patience is draining away. Negative feelings around Boris are starting to settle in. Now just as unpopular as Corbyn was during 2018. No answers yet if that matters. 

Any Labour polling leads mask a complicated picture. Don’t know make any margin of error way bigger than normal. When almost 1/4 of any sample group don’t know and top of swing voters. Starts to get difficult how to produce any polling without wild errors at play. Most voters have negative view of Labour party brand, don’t think they could run things any better. They are clueless about Keir, most not having any opinion on him. Covid is not normal times at all, most voters form some view on leaders of a party within months. Last time this happened was with David Cameron, quickly made himself known during 2007/2008. Labour been flooding the airwaves with policy just nobody is listening. Danger here is without any clear message, voters create that message themselves. Left has tried many times the same message, never working. Bit of humble pie is required here, learning from what the Tories do right and Labour does badly. Voters don’t like insults towards the party they supported, not going to win people over calling them Satan. Lack of positive message about last decade makes it sound like labour failure not winning power. Badly needs an answer to what happened and the party wants moving forward. 

Loads can change but polling with the trend is hinting towards smaller Tory majority. Victory on the back what message however is anybody guess. Unlikely outcomes of hung parliament or Labour collation don’t seem realistic. Labour needs a massive recovery in England, Wales and Scotland. Danger of further decline happening, pain could be far from over yet. Sense of complacency after so much poor performance worries me. Leaning towards the party not improving at all. Major recovery is required to get close, no real evidence that is happening yet.  I don’t think the decline is over yet in certain places or seats. Long trend of decline can be traced back to the 70s. Of course, nothing is certain, politics can be volatile. 

Maybe Labour finds a voice at long last, negative feelings are seal the fate of Boris. Could end up with Labour prime minster after so long. I don’t think covid crisis is going way anytime soon, my gut feeling is voters give Boris one more shot at sorting things out. Tories have been able to reinvent party, even after being in charge for so long. 

So polling hints at smaller Tory majority and long road to recovery for Labour. 

Smite

End of Season 8 smite is unfun but playable

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End of Season 8 smite is unfun but playable

Card games have various deck types, aggro, control and mid-range. Most video games have similar playstyles, smite you often see the above. Aggressive starts lead to snowballs which overwhelm teams. Control seeks to slow the game down but counter any threat reducing risk. Mid-range mixes the two styles together, control the early game and aggressive in the mid game.

Most starter items are aggressive or defensive, do offer some control if you want it.  Each one having different upgrade paths. Always a trade off with pros and cons to each one. Consistency is what makes warrior axe so powerful, other starters like it.

Carry – Death toll, leather cowl, bluestone and glided arrow for magical carries.

Support – Benvolence / Sentinel’s gift and war flag (Very risky option)

Mid – Sands of time, conduit gem

Jungle – Bumba, Eye and Manikin.

Solo – Warrior, warding, tainted, more aggressive options include death toll, bluestone, vampiric.

Moving towards the end of season 8 what are each roles building?

Carry role is building critical strike focused burst build.  Supports are building aura items with team buffs and cooldown. Mid is countering burst heavy jungle by using book of the dead. Jungle is building cooldown, focus on burst. Solo cooldown with some burst. Notice small trend here cooldown, allowing full rotation of somebody kit sometimes even 2 or 3 during each fight. Which has created rather weird yet unbalanced but oddly balanced meta sort of fun but not on receiving end meta. Most powerful roles come to the lobby skill, higher levels of player support, jungle and solo are kings. Lower levels of play damage rules the lobby.

Mana shield mid build is symptom, of far bigger problem, within the balance of smite. Core of the problem is way too much damage and kill potential caused by bloated kits and numbers. Current itemization has caused power curves to accelerate. Rotation of abilities now pretty much kills anybody without extra protections. Add into the mix bloating of kits, faster camp clear times due weaker camps and high mobility gods.

At times smite can feel rather unfun, tanks deal damage but die in same time as before. However, glass cannon damage roles get melted. Reason why healing and shield builds are so good they counter burst. Choice needs to be made do want to fix these problems or keep the same in this state. Undoing some of the changes would require dozens of changes. Not just one thing that needs adjusting loads of tiny connecting things. One solution would be increasing health pools but I don’t think that would be wise.

Needs to be major rebalancing of every role and itemization. We gotten here due to over tuning problems caused by the last couple of patches by increasing the dial.

Physical jungles right now at level 2 have the power to kill mid in one rotation of skills. Nothing new in many respects but does not feel fun to play against it. Most jungles can perform that task that is huge balance issue on display. No longer have early or late game but everything is early. Can still have that chance but at the moment feels way to easy to pull off.

I feel like damage needs to be toned down across the board. Damage kill focused supports should be high risk high reward idea. Supports can do damage and building full tank be a threat.  Understand the community prefers damage on tanks because without it hard / impossible to do anything. I would like there to be some trade off which balances it out.

Fixing the current issues won’t be easy, need to understand what causing the problems and what the problem to fix. Don’t think catch all solution like global anti heal reduction works.

End of the day I still play smite, so must find it still fun to enjoy. Community is not happy with current state of the game, honest discussion needs to happen. Season 9 is around the corner we see what changes.

Video Games

Mass effect – Still good?

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Video game industry has ignored single player titles. Converting games into a service, heavy focus on microtransactions. Very few big budget single player titles that exist. Indie titles however have taken up the mantle filling the gap in the market. Can be hard to find something in the sea of titles. I have recently rediscovered single player games, been playing mass effect series. I should have played this game years ago. Now realised that I should play more genres. Certain genres just have all but disappeared outside of indie releases.

Describe this game as an action RPG, fixed story but can go along many paths. I do have some criticism with the writing but the scale story wise is massive. Some characters can be hollow lacking any depth. Aliens feel different to each other, reflection of human worse or best traits. Effort has been taken in crafting characters; world building is outstanding. At times characters can feel bit wooden but still something to draws you in.

Actions you take have consequences sometimes not always clear what going to happen. The experience is liner yet highly flexible within the rules created by the designers. Appears to be massive amount of replay value going on here not just in terms of challenge. At times the game can be dumb, things standing still as you damage it. Unclear if any challenge can be found. Combat wise the game is rather simple, yet rewarding accurate well-placed headshots.  Not a huge fan of the here better number upgrade but does the job. Still don’t have a clue what half of them do. Simple UI fails to give you information on weapon stats. Vague numbers don’t mean that much and no reference point to look it up. Controls just work but the stamina system is annoying. UI for the first title is rather dated, do wish the remaster did improve it.

Bioware have created world full of different species. Looking forward to completing all three games. Already spent decent amount of time just taking in the world. At times the game can suffer from poor mechanics things just not working. Rather sad that in recent years poor working practises and unsuccessful games have spawned from Bioware. The studio has shown itself to be rather talented, but poorly run with abusive practises. High risk industry can understand the desire to cover any costs making games is costly. At some point need to remember games are about fun.

Most of the things I dislike are minor complaints.  Overall, I enjoyed the experience.