Journal

It’s a Sin

| admin

It’s a Sin

HIV/AIDS robbed us of many people during the 1980/90s. Yet the stories behind it never really been told by TV or movies. Ones that survived spent money years ashamed, took years before world became more accepting. Boys were ashamed of being gay or bi, secrecy around the community helped cause it to spread. Every single group even straight woman suffered, pregnant women could give it to children. Many voices within a whole generation of LGBT community were silenced. Disease did not care for gender or age or class or income.

Russel T Davis has given us an insight into HIV/AIDS epidemic. Story follows group of gay young men, with women house sharing in London during the 80s. Campness is high, everybody feels human can relate to them. I recommend watching it.

Not going to spoil the series because it that good. Been rewatching it and almost made me cry.

Smite

Smite 9.5 small changes big shifts

| admin

Smite 9.5 small changes big shifts

Smite like any video is a sandbox that designers set the rules and craft mechanics. Bunch of systems are interlinked one small change can create ripples. Live service games are always changing, require balancing revising past bits of content. 

Pre 9.5 smite was in a bad balance state, balance choices around map design, gods and items was wacky. Top 20 gods over last 5 years had been twisting the balance out of shape, last 3 years being the worse.  In many ways the game had become power creeped not in a good way. Designers was doing minor changes after knee jerk changes, design choices years in the making was causing serious problems. Last patch was the start of undoing some balance changes made in the past.

After 9.5 we saw mainly changes to map design and balance. Two biggest changes camps and minions became slower to clear. Decreasing the amount of gold / xp on the map with some timer changes. Structures like towers became more deadly, dealing more damage with higher hit points.  Everything on the map became more threating early on, don’t really feel it later on. Global health with protection increases for everybody, about 15% on average. Some minor item changes reverting past buffs bringing everything down.

Carry – Minor changes to the game have caused huge benefits for the role. Most gods are safe picks with good clear, mobility and not much in terms of weakness. Slower clear times make more hunters viable, much harder to snowball in duo. Less burst makes everything feel safer, can play more aggressively. 

Supp – Aggressive picks have dominated for very long period of time. Less value now in aggressive picks can’t snowball as easy. Slower early game has allowed more choices to appear. Reducing the threat of the supp but still room to act like a traditional god. 

Middle – Give with one hand take with another. Mage burst has been reduced with extra health reducing burst due item changes. Second spawn of damage camp is way harder to solo, leading to most mages finding it hard to clear quickly. Slower early game has made snowballing way harder. Role feels weaker given the strength of basic attack in general. Power curve has changed but role purpose remains the same. 

Jungle – Extra health has reduced ability burst, increased clear times of camps have created an imbalance. Basic attack just feels better, feels stronger does more against mages can box carry better. Golden blade means clear times can be pushed back up once online. 

Solo – Guardians slowly pushed out of the lane, but Artio dominated at higher levels. Most likely some space for guardians to exist. Warriors acting like traditional frontline zone extender, playing setup not really a threat or bully. Hybrid bully role is now much weaker, high risk high reward playstyle. Indirect changes with huge number of items getting reverting back to older numbers. 

Clear goal was slowing down the early game, reducing the power curve making it feel less punishing early on. Aim was clearly towards the normal players, comments about it in the patch notes. Focus was squarely on reducing snowball by increasing clear times and map complaints. This approach did have some serious consequences, highlight balance issues that need to be addressed. Normally takes a while to understand but becoming clear just days later. 

Smite has three main issues

  • God
  • Map
  • Items

Gods have too much clear, mobility and high ease of use.  Been serious dumbing down when comes to skill ceilings and floors. Can just run at people and it works too well. Just have damage focused archetypes, healers need a support archetype. Flexible picks need some archetype allows them into different roles. Gods have been picked due the snowball or cheese power offer very little else. Right now, we have jack of all trade’s warriors with not much else variety. Early game gods don’t exist, middle or late don’t exist too. Early archetypes should have high base damage but crap scaling. Middle archetypes should have okay base damage with okay scaling. Late archetypes should have awful base damage but high scaling like 500%. Slower general clear times has hurt ability-based playstyles, basic attack focused has suffered much less. Fixing this imbalance make it basic attack gods move towards being middle and late style archetypes. Could even change basic attack scaling for certain gods making them weaker. That would require some reworking of certain pub stomp gods. 

Map has couple problems pre patch it was clear times, amount of gold / xp and rotations. Rotations have been core issue due how map layout is designed. Travel time between lanes is 15 seconds, camps are easy to access within the jungle. Before 9.5 designers had smart idea of increasing jungle farm with gold / XP. Result was snowball mess something that happened so many times in the past I lost count. Jungle role needs to make choices between farming or attacking, needs be trade off. Death ball group up around camps needs come with trade off. Should not be able to clear lane, clear jungle camps not miss a single bit of lane gold. Changing how jungle map is played and layout would refresh the game. 

Items have too much, with certain trees causing huge balance issues. Once again, we don’t really have early or hybrid items, fine line of balance is off. Universal item trees need be simple stats but should have special archetype trees for certain classes and roles. Too much across too many items leading to power creep and huge issues. 

I do think 9.5 heading in the right direction but loads more that needs to be done. Would love to see huge changes to God balance reworking reducing the W key nature of certain kits. Appears the designers want to focus on items and map over core god design. Maybe that the right way of doing it but I’m having more fun compared last couple of patches. I don’t think hunters are over powered just feel the design of each hunter is too strong with little to no weakness. 

WarFrame

Warframe Tier list 2022

| admin

Warframe Tier list 2022

Broken up war frames into archetypes, should make any tier list easier to create.  Each frame can be seen as a tool, support, DPS, tanks, crowd control and farmer frames. Many frames have similar uses with loads of overlap. Brief description of each archetype. 

  • Support – Frames which offer buff and debuffs, various bonuses which benefit the squad. 
  • DPS – Damage focused frames who kit or parts focus on it. 
  • Tanks – Frames which offer some survival tools allows them to absorb damage. 
  • Crowd control – Focus on controlling enemies
  • Farmer – Make it easier to frame resources or increase the odds

Rating system what does each tier mean. 

S completely broken, A great, B good, C niche, D rework is required

Ideally you want everything in A or B, C some minor changes and D needs big changes. Meta can shift making things in C still good just not used. Minor changes could be required for C, mix of changes between big and small needed for D. Some frames straight up need reworks. 

Minor rework

  • Equinox
  • Trinity 
  • Inaros
  • Loki
  • Limbo
  • Volt

Full rework

  • Atlas
  • Chroma
  • Hydroid
  • Frost
  • Limbo
  • Nyx
  • Yareli
  • Valkyr

Support frames

  • S
  • A – Rhino, Protea, Octivia, Wisp
  • B – Harrow, Oberon, Xaku
  • C – Trinity
  • D – Valkyr

DPS

  • S
  • A – Gara, Ember, Mesa, Octavia, Saryn, Mag, Garuda, Protea, Titania
  • B – Ash, Baruuk, Larvos, Ivara
  • C – Excalibur, Equinox, Nyx, Yareli, Volt
  • D – Atlas, Hydroid

Crowd control

  • S
  • A – Nova, Octavia, Vauban, Limbo
  • B – Ivara
  • C – Frost, Loki
  • D – Nyx

Tanks

  • S
  • A – Gauss, Nezha, Wukong, Zephyr, Hildryn, Revenant
  • B – Atlas, Rhino, Oberon, Harrow, Mirage, Larvos, Ivara, Nidus, Grendel
  • C – Chroma, Inaros, Loki, Volt
  • D – Frost, Valkyr

Farmer frames

  • S
  • A – Nekros, Khora
  • B – Xaku
  • C – Limbo
  • D – Atlas, Hydroid

 

Journal

I have covid

| admin

I have covid

At the start of the week, I tested positive for covid. Finally happened so far been able to avoid it.

Don’t worry I’m rather insulated fully vaccinated including boosters in low-risk group. I have mild symptoms similar to the common cold. I was thinking it was just a cold, started to feel sick about Monday. Worse day so far been Tuesday and Wednesday, feeling much better compared to Thursday. Does not feel like the flu or common cold feels much worse. As a society we should take any illness much more seriously and hygiene. Soap goes long way to reducing infections, air born infections soap does not work. 

Symptoms have started to reduced; dry cough has appeared. Still feel like crap with strong mild symptoms, going to take couple more days. Human body takes a while to deal with foreign infections. Vaccination alone won’t stop covid so need start thinking about how deal with it going forward. 

Politics

Morality is not black and white

| admin

Morality is colourful never just black and white. Politics is about priorities; each choice leads to different outcomes. Choices are talked about in terms of being progressive or regressive. Push and pull factor which means certain priorities viewed as important.  Can pull certain voters with policy or push them away. Example 2 child tax credit limits, pulls voters who view welfare spending as a concern. Policy makes little to no sense, don’t really save that much money and cause great harm. Possible ends up costing more money with later state intervention.

Sometimes voters can support things that are against their own self-interest. Family of four may support the policy even if they get tax credits. Family of four could not support it but won’t vote, view other things as important.  Actions can have very limited consequences if voters don’t notice or view it as important. National insurance for example has increased at the same time income tax has declined. Ignorance plays a part, paying more taxes in general yet the message is otherwise. Does not help when journalists fail to inform or explain what happening.

We treat politics sometimes like a football team, criticism is awful must always support the team. SNP higher education policy on tuition fees has seen reduction in number of poorer students at university. More middle-class students going to university compare to poorer ones. As it turns out most voters who better off vote more compared to ones who don’t. One policy does not match the message or aims but suits the SNP nicely because that big lump of voters who are happy.

Which should get people asking the question what other polices don’t match the reality. Instead, the question is asked is SNP not a progressive party?

Over asking the question why was this outcome picked over the others that help poorer students more. Education policy been focused for very long time on university and ignored other elements. Graduate dominate political parties don’t have a clue what none graduates want. Tuition fees are basically future tax on graduates for middle class families. Helping fund the system for poorer students. Scrapping it means lower tax rates for graduates, less poorer students at uni. SNP has made that choice, again, comes down to priorities.  What is better helping 1/3 or 3/4 of students. Arguments is this more progressive or regressive don’t matter. What matters is are willing to take unpopular choices and understand how run the nation. What matters is why are certain choices being made. What matters is understanding the outcome of each choice. What matters is informing people about the choices on offer.

*Note the examples I used here could apply to any political party. I get the feeling I have misused morality.

Journal, Politics

Ukraine failure of foreign policy and diplomacy

| admin

Ukraine failure of foreign policy and diplomacy

Modern world has created 24/7 news cycle, consumed by one thing. Often forget the smaller events, never reported due lacking the click power. Short snappy stories with so much detail lost, context missing and never explained. Things move quickly, interest is lost just fast any story turns up. Single big event has dozens of small events feeding into it. Russia newest invasion of Ukraine is no different. No formal notice given but last 8 years Russia been at war with Ukraine. No winners here just many losers in European foreign policy terms. Slow drift has become a series of major policy changes over night. History behind Ukraine is important, UK former ambassador to Ukraine wrote an article covering it. Missing the link for now.

I hold a deep concern over everybody escalating consequences are going to be huge. Nobody been honest about the costs involved here, everybody is gambling away. Small eastern European states announcement they want to join EU/NATO, some declaring sooner the better. Finland been talking about; Russian has threatened it along with Sweden. EU directly allowing the finance of weapon purchases. Countless nations increasing defense spending. Germany dropping foreign policy platforms it held for over 30 years. Turkey U turning on banning Russian ships. Been so many more shifts in policy hard to keep track. European geopolitics is changing at rapid pace. Everybody asking questions but very few easy answers on offer.

EU has tried to create single foreign platform, different priorities between east and west made that complicated. Dismissed the concerns of Eastern Europe, paranoid about Russia.  Europe is now waking up to the idea has to defend, eastern European states. Are we really ready for nuclear war over Estonia? Sanctions alone failed to stop Russia, needs stronger deterrence. Stationing troops closer to Russian border, Russia sees that as further escalation. Another escalation on top growing European influence due trade gravity. Every action or statement carries a big risk, things could get worse before things improve.

Takes time before any impact is felt, human misery caused by displacement or economic hit that going to happen. Images already of people trapped at Polish border, racist guards blocking people crossing. Foreign students trapped between borders requiring evacuations. Europe could help but again Russians see any logistics as trojan horse. India wants the students back but my lack the capacity to do it. Need cooperation between various nations, finding staff to fly people back. We already seen nations forget about people in war zones or when states fail. Afghanistan has British nationals with families trapped outside the borders or trapped inside. No plan on deal with countless tragedies, reduced cooperation when we need more. For every person killed that one family now grieving, every tank destroyed that group of families crying over loved ones.

Nobody wins off the back of human suffering, we all lost due this war. European foreign policy has been slow to consider what Russia would think. Fault is shared across Europe, not single action or act to blame but long series of events. Russia own actions have added fuel to the fire, directly attacking or threatening, state sponsored murder. What the strategy was it has failed and produced an outcome nobody wanted. Human suffering is huge going to cause shockwaves for whole of Europe. Credit to the EU crafted a refugee policy within days everybody agreeing to it.UK however still holding firm no visa no entry and hostile towards anybody who not rich. UK failure to deal with growing Russian influence in British politics is shocking. Sadly, British politics has always been about money, buying you whatever influence no questions asked. Foster a society around attacking institutions refused to repair or defend them. UK legal system bending to protect money laundering, white collar crime is viewed as naughty but less serious. Little to no resources spent on enforcement, underinvestment is coming back to bite us. British state is underfunded, legal system is open to abuse. Everybody has opened themselves up to foreign actors, Cyprus is hot bed of Russian money too.

Only plan appears to be escalation, remains unclear what de-escalation would look like. West has some idea what Putin wants but unclear if Ukrainians would be happy with it. Russia wants real leverage, freezing of the current status quo. What that would look like remains unclear, does look like regime change at the moment. Fresh water ports are important to the Russian black sea fleet.

Britain has a chance to show it still great global player in the world. Boris Johnson is stuck, domestic toxic and weak during any crisis. Leadership rivals are attacking him on defence spending. Ranks of the Tory party are hardening against Russia and demanding more must be done. Close personal links to Russia not helpful, leave campaign close ties are painful. Russia western allies are thin on the ground, seeking to distance themselves. Russian influencers who caused so much pain and damage, trying to weaken Europe, repeat the same lines.

Regional stability is precious must be protected at all costs, defending law and order is necessary. Institutions we took for granted need reform, rebuilding. Things can never go back to normal, relationship with Russia is forever changed. Make no mistake things are about to get whole lot worse before anything improves on the ground. Cool heads must prevail otherwise things could get much worse and spiral out of control. Whole host of outcomes which come with various costs and risks. Putin has gambled, Europe strategy around eastern Europe is dead. Only thing that is certain, old order is ripped apart. We must rebuild, reforge and cooperation with Russia. We can’t risk peace in eastern Europe, other nations look unstable already. In the real-world things are never black and white. Only good thing that comes out of this, my desire to visit Ukraine. Learnt enough that looks like it would be a great trip away. I hope that I get a chance to visit it.

European peace is at stake, tinder box in eastern Europe right now. Just hope no cultural or historical items are destroyed by this war.

Update

West does not want military action, sad truth not willing to risk war with Russia. No fly zone would be an act of war, direct action against Russia military. Not even sure it would have the desired outcome, ending the war. We knew about this months ago yet failed to plan. Already the threat of nuclear weapons moving to Belarus. Which creates bit of problem for Eastern European states arming Ukraine. GRU have long history of operations against foreign nations, 2014 Czech Republic. Sending military shipments starts to become dangerous operation. Unlikely have any real impact being so late in day. Reaction so far from the west is not close to appeasement. How we got here weak enforcement and procedures around Russia money. Been reactive to Russia over proactive it starting to show. Borders of Europe faces very big humanitarian crisis, unclear how long it going to last. Europe has acted quite fast about coping with inflows from Ukraine. More needs to be done, more resources not just food and water.

Worse is yet to come and hardest part.

Journal, Politics

Russia invasion of Ukraine

| admin

Russia invasion of Ukraine

Russia has attacked and invaded Ukraine again, 8 years ago it took Crimea, 4 years later started arming rebels in Donbass.  Everybody knew this day was coming, warned about it but West largely did nothing. Warm words of support but lacks the desire to defend Ukraine. Nothing short of Western troops would stop Putin now.  Sanctions that hurt Russia but cause pain in the west is off the cards. Just bystanders watching Russia declare war against Ukraine. Appears Putin does not desire another frozen conflict but wants puppet state of Ukraine. Remains unclear how far he wants to go. Frozen conflicts caused by Russia in Georgia, Moldova, trouble is coming back to Bosnia. State of emergency in Moldova, Lithuania, others are watching in horror. Threat to none NATO members is real, refugees are likely cross borders to escape.  Sweden and Finland both are talking about NATO membership. NATO summit is due tomorrow, but nations are talking. I do anything to avoid X but I won’t do that is not good enough.

Putin has priced in the cost of sanctions; military action is only option left. No fly zone over Ukraine created by NATO would be a start. I do fear only way to forward is troops to Ukraine.

Journal

Party gate

| admin

Party gate

During the COVID-19 pandemic, rule breaking parties took place in Westminster. Newspapers have nicknamed it partygate, rest of us tried to follow the guidance. Unable to see love ones, could not say goodbye, we all have stories to tell. Covid has caused so much grief, loss now a sense of anger is growing. Rest of us followed the rules, repeated rule breaking went unnoticed. What is grinding my gears is constant lying, no parties happened well it was a work event.

I can understand to a degree the stress and unable to follow the rules. Nobody was ready for this we lacked the structures required or capacity to change how things worked. Which meant that unofficial bubbles had formed within offices at Westminster. Can’t justified obvious rule breaking that goes outside the spirit of the message given to us. Discredit any sacrifice is just flat out insulting. Lack of empathy on display is scary.

I rather that the truth was told, admit to the mistakes and face the punishment. Surely you believe in the rule of law and leading by example. Got to show some respect towards voters who followed the rules with limited social interactions. Clap for the NHS just for show?

I’m angry like the rest of people and don’t like being taken for a fool. Rebuilding the trust with covid still raging is high price to pay for cheese and wine.

Smite

Smite pro league SWC

| admin

Smite pro league SWC

Atlantis leviathan homegrown Latin American team, finally won the SWC.  Squad that been together for years before entering the pro league together. Each player showing off they worthy of the top league. Stand out players in my mind are Jarcorrr / Ronngyu who have been masters in control. Coach for this team Oxiledeon notepad warrior.

Team stuck together after an impressive first season in the pro league. At the key moments the team would choke or find the pressure of big games to much.  That only half the story, Zapman never was part of the original line up. We don’t have full story but bad team environment in two teams caused a roster swap mid-season. Zapman ended up on leviathans’ team full of promise. Two different teams, two roster swaps three titles in a row for him. Looks like Zapman made the right choice. Respect has to be given to whole squad for turning things around. No idea how much of an impact Zapman had on this team. Often so much we don’t know about team the environment. Viewers don’t get to see the drafting or planning or practise just brief bits of gameplay. The team was finally able to click and play dominating sets of smite. Not the best players in every role but best team overall. 

As for Zapman thank you for providing us average players with knowledge to get better. Thanks for the funny moments in ranked too.

Tartarus Titans rocky start to the year made me doubt this team. Credit is due they worked past that rough spot was able to pull it together. Team was unable make a take any games off leviathans. CycloneSpin is somebody Zapman has admitted is scary to play against. Rest of the roster is stacked when you look at the records behind each player. 

Every single player in the league has earned that spot. Viewers like to make jokes about players being washed up or should retire. Been fun watching the league this year, any banter or shit talking has been small.

Due the timing of the event was only able to catch bits of it. Pro games are different game, but are things you can learn. Also, the healing meta here to stay annoying I know.