#it's game 3 and they won the first 2

[footnotesandendings]

I cannot recommend going into the Jordan Henderson search term on Twitter, because it is a tire fire, but this last week or two has been EXTRA wild. The baseline is: calling him old, calling for him to be traded and/or shot, "Hooferson," begging for him to be sent back to Sunderland.

Recently, though????

Calling him a pedophile and/or a groomer and/or a rapist (because of how he and Jude got along on England duty when it was assumed Jordan was ~courting him for Liverpool). One thread tagged the actual Merseyside Police. This has been off and on since the World Cup but flared up recently due to the rumors about Jude signing with Real Madrid.

Hooferson got upgraded to "Hitlerson," not sure what spurred that but it really took off for a few days.

And of course now there's God Save The King-gate, where him singing the anthem has ramped up the calls for him to be run out of town and had him dubbed a bootlicking cunt. Not sure why him accepting the MBE in the first place didn't establish that he's chill with the whole thing, but okay.

Things are WILD in the shitbonkers side of Liverpool fandom. I hope their little team trip to Barcelona means he doesn't have to do any interviews that touch on point 3, since it's been picked up by blogs and actual newspapers.

[maegalkarven]

ASFHLHDGH GUYS IT WORKED!

I made an alliance with Gortash, agreed to meet with him near the Morphic pool, THEN went to Iron Throne and saved prisoners, then destroyed the Steel Watch Foundry.

And Gortash was waiting for me near the Morphic Pool like nothing happened.

He probably doesn't even KNOW I went and broke two of his playgrounds the moment he looked away. Banites had no way to communicate with him when he left, I'm-

[ginalinettiofficial]

played the game ok boomer at my family party today, ended up explaining to a room of ~20 of my relatives what fanfiction is so they could understand the question, “in fanfiction, what does AU stand for?”. and then the card’s definition of “AU” was wrong so i also had to get into the concept of “canon”.

can u believe. in front of my whole family. a room full of people, aged 3 to 80. all staring at me intently as i explain the difference between an alternate universe and canon divergence. at one point my mom was like “daina i think we get it” and a cousin and two aunts were like “wait no we’re interested please continue” and i had to say to my own mother in front of god and my i am kenough sweatshirt “sorry but unlike you the rest of them DON’T have to listen to me talk about fanfiction on the regular”. my uncle is a retired judge. my one cousin worked for the federal government in a job that was so classified that for years he literally couldn’t legally tell us about ANYTHING he was working on. and today those men sat and patiently listened to me define “coffee shop AU”.

also, not one, not two, but THREE of the answers for the young folks, i knew solely because they were either plot points on stranger things or they were things i found out whilst reading stranger things fanfics. and then i was the only person in our age bracket (10 people, ranging from ages 9 to 42) that knew who anne rice was, and had to explain yet again that the reason i had this knowledge was because… fanfic.

it was surreal. also my aunt, aged 68, may or may not begin attempting to read fanfic now because, according to her, “there are so many stories where there are these small side characters and i’d just KILL to hear their backstory or like what was going through their minds during the main action!” i’m very happy for her. today was wild.

[the-physicality]

i do think, aside from mercury bias, if bg had been in all season she would have been all wnba, first or at least second. i think people undervalue her because of the rebounding but she is 1000% the worst officiated player in the league, on both sides of the court. so the fact that she's been able to have the performance that she had is incredible, and that she didn't get the acknowledgment really just underscores how much people take what she does for granted.

[dearmrsawyer]

HAPPY VERY LATE BIRTHDAY, JAMILA!! I’m so sorry this is so late but I hope it was absolutely wonderful and that you are well! You are such a lovely friend and human and I couldn’t be happier to have you as a friend. Love!!! 💗💗🥳🥳

Christina!!!!! Late shmate, hand to god i literally haven't known what day it is for months, looked at the date 4 times on my birthday before i realised it was my birthday. agh i'm so glad we're friends and i love you sooo much

[absensia]

WHAT CHESS PIECE REPRESENTS YOU?

A BLACK PAWN. You are a black pawn. Don't let the pawn be misleading, this means you're full of potential. Being the pawn, you're one of two pieces that can move first. But since you're black, you're always one step behind white. Who is it that you're trying to catch up to so badly? Black doesn't always mean you have to be in someone else's shadow. If anything, it means that you can be one step ahead of them, hiding intelligence that no one would consider you even have. Be careful how you use this information because alone a pawn is easy to fall, but too smothered and you won't be able to move. Regardless, you'll become a force of nature by the end of your journey. What would you sacrifice along the way is, perhaps, a better question than what will you become at the end.

tagged by @0azrae7, @ethicsbutcher, and @swanlock <3 / tagging @rosetem, @uendelig, @ow1et, @damnatius, @koldnuya + you!

[the-unicorn-system]

genuinely considering stopping playing splatoon alltogether because the devs need to fix so much shit plus its just. not fun anymore. I play a weekend every month at most and thats about it.

but the literally reason i go by the name woomy is BECAUSE of these games, because they had such an impact on me during the Wii U days. every splatfest I say "if nothing changes for the better, ill stop playing" "if frye doesnt win ill stop playing" but i never do, and i think thats why

warning for really big rant in the tags

[athleticbilbao]

i'm gonna murder every benfica dude who doesn't give two shits about women's football suddenly caring and saying they're awful just because the team lost their first game in a whole season 🔫

[etruski]

sometimes im talking to my brother about football and realise what a massive nerd i am. he mentions a random player or team and i start dropping trivia about them, when they last scored etc

[jackross-v]

Audience of exactly 0 people and a pebble will be thrilled to know I got C2 Baizhu with pulls to spare!!

[cherryistired]

3 games in and I already got a clip

[adore-gregor]

It's true sometimes others doubting you really is the best motivation :))

[the-physicality]

this is one of those things that you have to watch more than once to get the full effect

[baekuras]

Killed the Putrescent Knight and also finally that damned Hippo Bayle and also that Knight were easier, even with extra help with the Hippo

or if not easier more enjoyable

[dravidious]

You're quite amazing

Last night I was like "Ah, 8:20 pm, and I've just finished all my Stuff & Things. Perfect timing to go to bed... I'm gonna write an essay about an update for a free-to-play game."

Thoughts on the Path of Champions Constellation Update

Part 1: The new progression is good

In the past, I've ranted about how the progression systems in Legends of Runeterra's Path of Champions gradually worsen the improvisational deckbuilding aspects of the game. In summary, as you progress, your starting deck and its associated strategy become stronger and stronger, while the cards you get mid-run stay the same power level. As your starting deck improves, adding cards to your deck goes from helpful to detrimental, ruining the feeling of getting stronger over the course of the run.

A recent update to Runeterra added a new progression system called Constellations, with a variety of new perks. Some just add more items to your starting deck, and each champion has at least 1 new starting power that further emphasizes their default playstyle, both of which further contribute to the problem. However, two notable perks help to alleviate the problems: Star of Discovery and Star of Legends.

These perks both do mostly the same thing: Add items to cards you get mid-run. Star of Discovery adds a certain item to a certain category of card, such as units from a specific region, or spells of a certain mana cost. Star of Legends adds an item to your support champion. The items given by these perks synergizes with the champion's default strategy, which is something I criticized in the past; building a deck of random cards feels less significant if it's always playing the same strategy.

However, these perks are a definite improvement to the improvisational gameplay. Path of Champions isn't a game about improvising a strategy; it's right there in the name, you choose a champion with a specific playstyle. But that model has always been flawed; in the early game with no star powers or starting items, you rely a lot on card rewards, and you might not get the cards needed to actually play your champion's strategy. In the late game with a powered-up deck and star powers boosting your strategy, you're forced to clog your deck with weak cards that don't synergize with your starting tools.

These perks solve the issue beautifully: By powering up the cards you get mid-run and making sure that they synergize with your champion's strategy, you get the best of both worlds, improving your deck over the run while still getting to play the strategy you wanted to. The deckbuilding used to get worse and worse as you progressed, but they've managed to make it so that progressing enough eventually loops back around to making it good again.

Part 2: Everything about this update is a fucking mess

The new champion released in this update, Viego, has a spell in his starting deck called Possession. As one of his level up rewards, it gets the item Nomad's Medallion, which gives -2 cost. One problem: It doesn't fucking work. After getting this reward, playing a run will reveal that Possession still costs its default 5 mana. It just doesn't fucking work. At all. How the fuck did this not get caught in testing?

Possession + Nomad's Medallion is far from the only mistake in this update. Pretty much everything added has some mistake that came with it. For example, they went back and added new rewards to old adventures, but players who had already gotten all the old rewards would be unable to get any of the new ones. The good news is they've fixed this one. The bad news is that this is the only mistake they've fixed so far.

There's a new weekly quest that rewards you for winning 3 weekly adventures. Background: Weekly adventures are randomly generated adventures that give a reward the first time you complete them. They come in sets of 3, and a new set of 3 replaces the old set each week. Problem: The weekly quest refreshes on wednesday, while the weekly adventuers refresh on monday. That means that either A) You have to wait 2 days before doing any of the weekly adventures, B) You have to do all 3 weekly adventures within monday and tuesday, or C) You have to do one or more of the weekly adventures twice, without getting any rewards for the 2nd run.

Viego has another bug, in his 2nd star power. The power says "Whenever an ally with 4+ power dies, reduce the cost of units in hand with 4+ power by 1." The cost reduction actually only applies to units in hand with 5+ power, so either the power has a typo or the programmers messed up. This is especially egregious because Viego has a unit in his starting deck with 4 power, so basic testing should have revealed this bug.

Daily quests now give a "bronze cosmic vault" which gives 5-10 fragments of a random champion, but they didn't add a vault opening animation for this one, so you can't tell what champion you got the fragments for or even whether you got any fragments at all. You DO get the fragments, it just doesn't tell you. Speaking of fragments, they also broke the "upgradable" notification.

Oh lord, the upgradable notification. Background: You upgrade champions by spending fragments of that champion. You also get wild fragments, which can be spent on upgrading any champion. Before, when you had enough champion fragments to upgrade that champion, the champion select button would glow, and the champion you can upgrade will be moved to the top and glowing with the label "upgradable". This is very useful, and not annoying at all because there's no reason not to upgrade a champion when you have enough of their fragments to do so. It's not like you can spend their fragments on anything else. Obviously, this doesn't consider wild fragments, because that would be stupid; not only is it likely that you want to save up your wild fragments for a certain champion, but giving an upgradable notification for any champion that you could upgrade with wild fragments would make literally every champion "upgradable" once you have enough, making the notification completely useless.

The upgradable notification now takes wild fragments into account.

This is almost certainly a mistake, and a quirk of the new upgrade purchasing UI that came with the Constellations update. But for all of this, every little messy aspect of this update, you have to ask: How did this happen? How did they fuck this up? How rushed was this update that they couldn't find and fix these issues? What the fuck is happening? Is the dev team working off a budget of $2 and a bag of peanuts?

Part 3: Free-to-play games suck

I was thinking about how I'm definitely never giving this game any money when I thought "Well, what if there was an Unlock Everything button that costed $5? Or even just $1? I'd probably buy that so I could… Wait. What would I do then?" I realized that I've spent so much time playing this game just to Make Progress and Get Things that I don't even know what I'd do if I actually had all the things I wanted. I realized that this game is an evil treadmill of FOMO and daily quests that has no purpose other than to drain as much of my time (and ideally money) away as possible. And I fucking fell for it like a chump.

I have so many games, real games that let me play at my own pace, sitting in my Steam library, yet here I am grinding for hours on this treadmill because I don't want to miss a daily quest. I am going to uninstall this game.

After I clear the "Beat Lissandra with Viego" quest because it has a time limit and gives a big fat diamond vault but AFTER THAT I'M QUITTING FOR REAL I PROMISE!

Epilogue: Ultrakill

Even since long before I bought it, Ultrakill has been a fascinating game to experience. I HATE spending money, so I naturally drift toward free-to-play games, but these games often have grind treadmills meant to tempt you into skipping them with microtransactions. Even some real games with no microtransactions have grindy progression mechanics, such as Monster Hunter and most RPGs. I've mostly grown numb to it and just accepted that this is how games are.

It's not, that's a lie, and Ultrakill is the greatest counterexample of all time.

Being as cheap as Mr. Krabs, I first experienced Ultrakill through its demo. Now, Ultrakill is a game with very little progression; the demo has 2 weapons that cost currency to buy, but they're super cheap, you'll get enough to buy them just by playing through the demo levels. There's no grind. Just 6 levels.

I played those 6 levels so many times. I played them until I P-Ranked them, and then occasionally I would just boot up the demo and play through it all again. I had everything, all 2 unlockable weapons, and even all the non-mechanical stuff; the secrets, the P-Ranks, the bonus challenges. There was NOTHING for me to get, but I kept playing anyway, because the game is fucking fun. I want to play games like that. Games where you run out of things to chase, and still keep playing because the game is fun. Rhythm games are a great example; no stats to level up, no weapons to obtain, just pure gameplay. Racing games are another; I've had a blast playing F-Zero GP Legend, just booting it up every now and then to play a quick Grand Prix.

Even games that have progression can play like this sometimes, like my many, many playthroughs of Tales of the Abyss. And games that have a story mode with a clear endpoint are also appealing. I want games where the progression is finite, where you're expected to reach the end, not just keep grinding for currencies on an endless treadmill. Because the best way to know that you truly love a game is when it runs out of things to give you, but you still keep playing.

Okay essay over I just have a thing to put at the end here because this morning I beat Lissandra on my very first try

Stole her own OP Watcher, and even if I had only killed it instead I think I still would've won lol

Finally uninstalled the game afterward. Goodbye.

[callilouv]

ohh man its been a while since ive had fun in an ml match TT had sm fun playing this one ngl the matchmaking was so even and like we were all so aggressive and i think like all throughout the game (early, mid, and late) we were literally jsut . just fighting HWJKGDHJG LIKE BRO FORGET FARMING LETS JUST FIGHT😭 ofc i was a jungler and i needed to kill creeps but after the 5 min mark it was just wreak havoc LMAOO

literally i was the only front liner on the team (sort of cuz i was playing sustain esme) with natalia/novaria/lesley/luo yi yeah we did Not have a fighter help so the enemy is def more tanky BUT the enemy team is just all physical dmg so it was super easy to counter them (not rlly i got destroyed by chou's cc a few times HEPOKFIJ)