MSL Group Selection Ceremony – This is where the pro gamers who qualify are introduced and the groups are selected. Initially, they all walk in and get to do a “ceremony”.
Most people just come out and pose for the camera but they started giving prizes for the “best ceremony”. So this is what happened.
I also find it hilarious that the audience is exclusively women.
Well so today I learned that you can basically call Comcast, complain that your monthly bill is too high, and they will give you a discount. For the last 6 months we’ve been doing the standard intro internet deal for ~$25 after all the taxes and fees. After the 6th month finished it skyrocketed to ~$65. So after I called them it went back down to ~$35 for the next 6 months.
I’m wondering if I could argue even more and get back down the the original ~$25 fee.
I’ve been playing Demon’s Souls recently.
This game doesn’t fuck around. Assuming you don’t grind souls to level up vitality, most regular dudes will kill you in 2 unblocked hits. There are periodic stronger units that will kill you in 1 hit. Bosses will always kill you in 2 or less hits. Every time you die, you lose all your current souls and the entire level is restarted. If you die before reaching your body, you permanently lose all the souls. There are no checkpoints and you cannot pause the game. There are often traps and explosions that will automatically kill you unless you avoid them.
I’ve beaten 2 and a half worlds. And I’ve noticed this:
Seriously, spears are so broke. The combat system for this game is based around guarding/dodging and attacking. When you guard/dodge, you take no damage. When you attack, you are vulnerable. You have a limited amount of stamina which limits the number of guards/dodges/attacks you can perform before requiring rest. The challenge is learning enemy attack patterns and knowing when to defend and when to attack. That’s the case for most weapons like swords.
Once you get a spear, this whole concept is gone. You can simultaneously hold up your shield and poke the enemy with the spear. Meaning if you mess up the timing, you’ll still be guarding and take no damage. Plus, the spear is so freaking long that you out-range every enemy and most of the time you can kill them before they get into attack range. My process for going through a level is running up to a guy, poking him till my stamina runs out, then backing up to let it recharge. Rinse and repeat until dead.
There are these skeletons in world 4-1 that roll around, jump up, and rape you. I took about 10 practice runs fighting the first skeleton to learn how to fight him with sword and shield. It required a lot of dodging and finding holes in his attack. Then I got a spear. I stand still and guard. When he rolls near me I poke him. Game over.
For example, here is someone beating Black Phantom Satsuki on New Game+ with Spear and Shield. This is apparently a “relatively” difficult enemy to fight and I can imagine it being hard with sword and shield. If you mess up your sword attack timing you’ll probably die. But this guy in the video has like 9 health (top left bar) and would get 1 shotted easily. It doesn’t matter though because even if he misses with his spear pokes, the shield protects him. 99% of my fights are like this except I can kill enemies in 2-4 hits.
Besides that, I’ve noticed that bosses are less “challenge” and more “find some glitch to exploit to kill him”. When you walk around, other players can leave hints on the ground. Most of the time, there is some weird alcove where someone writes a hint “Safe place”. So you stand there and either the boss can’t see you or his attacks will always get blocked by some column. Then you safely fire 100 arrows at him. I’ve killed ~4 bosses like this. I guess I could actually try and learn the boss patterns and kill him with melee attacks. But it’s just not worth it. It will take at least 1-2 tries to learn the boss patterns. Each time I have to restart the entire level and risk losing all my souls I collected. It’s easier to spend 10-15 minutes shooting arrows. I carry 300 arrows with me at all times just for this reason.
My ARCC Secret Santa painted me a really cool shoebox, and even drew me some piggies!
Awesome box
Oink!
“We know she’s not a cool Monokuro Boo piggy like us, but we hope you love her just the same <3”
I went to the DMV today to try and get a license/registration.
There was a line of 15+ people extending out the door. This is only what I could see from my car and doesn’t include anyone already inside.
I decided to check Amazon Lightning deals just now and Demon’s Souls was on sale for $15.
Danbala? More like DANBALLLLLLLLLIN.
The last 2 days have been super splurgy. I’ve spent $167, including 2 pairs of jeans, 2 hoodies, 1 hoodie for Allison, 1 pair of workout pants, Star Ocean, Demon’s Souls, a pair of new shoes, and a $0.99 bluetooth headset from Newegg. Clothing wise I’m set for the next year or so. I can now choose between 3 hoodies to go to work in, instead of the same gray one I wear 5 days a week.
Sitting in bed browsing the internet all day, Hokkaido buffet and Harry Potter later tonight. Pretty lame Thanksgiving… the best part is not doing work all day despite planning on using Thanksgiving to catch up on work >.<Β Oh well, this is my last Thanksgiving not at home, next year I’ll have my own place!
I might as well pretend to be productive and make myself some to-do lists.
For Monday: Chinese essay, Chinese presentation, chess lab, embedded lab part 2, robot obstacle avoidance
Next week: edit Chinese essay, present Chinese presentation, finish chess lab, finish embedded lab, finish obstacle avoidance and combine with other code
Finals week: study for exams, clean my room, pack for winter break
Winter break: make a new layout for BaconFriedRice, update ONiB doc, ONiB script, reserve ONiB dance rehearsal rooms, make responsibility lists for ONiB board members, make sure ONiB board members are doing their jobs, get sick of ONiB, work on PiggyTD, blah blah blah
So if you haven’t watched GSL Season 2 Finals, they are being spoiled.
NesTea beat out Fake Boxer 4-3 in a best of seven series. NesTea also beat SlayerSBoxer in the semi-finals 4-0. All of these games were Zerg vs Terran and the vast majority of them were mostly over by the 10 minute mark.
When you watch BroodWar games, you’ll notice that almost every game is macro oriented. You almost always see fast expansion builds, outside of the occasional cheese attempts. This is partially due to the highly evolved metagame where rush/all-in builds typically are ineffective unless completely unscouted.
However, watching these 11 ZvT games was quite disappointing. The majority involved Terran attempting some sort of 2 barracks or proxy barrack strategy that if successful, won the game straight out. If not successful, they would attempt to regroup but would be behind for the remainder of the game. That makes for very boring matches overall. SlayerSBoxer attempted some sort of early game cheese all 4 games and fail all 4 times. Fake Boxer had at least 4 2-rax marine pressure builds, although he succeeded twice.
Why is this the case?
1) NesTea is so good that Fake Boxer and SlayerSBoxer did not think they could win without using cheese. That’s the reason I felt Jaedong 4-pooled Flash two times in a row in the Korean Air OSL finals. Jaedong was getting stomped by Flash in normal play, so he was forced into doing crazy things like 4-pools. I don’t see this being the case as NesTea made some pretty big errors (game 1 and game 2 especially). In fact, Fake Boxer was up 2-0 but still tried to do the same sort of things.
2) There is something wrong with the metagame.
Take a look at BroodWar TvZ. Terran will do a 1 rax into CC (or 14 CC if it’s Flash). He can then either transition into SK Terran (marine, medic, science vessel) or mech (tank, vulture and goliaths for any anti air). Zerg on the other hand will normally 12-hatch (or maybe 3 hatch before pool) and then go mutas, transitioning into ling/lurker/defiler.
If Terran chooses SK Terran, Zerg is forced to harass Terran in order to stop the initial Terran push. The marine/medic ball is too powerful against anything Zerg can throw directly at it (at least until Defiler’s with Dark Swarm). Therefore, Zergs use Muta’s mobility to maintain map control, snipe marines, snipe SCVs, etc. Zerg is trying to stall Terran long enough to get 3rd base and Defiler Tech. Terran is trying to push and stop this. It’s a back and forth fight that is exciting to watch and can go either way the entire time.
If Terran chooses mech, Zerg still tries to harass with Mutas to keep Terran’s army count and economy down. If the Terran army gets too big, it is unstoppable, so Zerg is forced to prevent this. Zerg will do a lot of quick harass attempts with mutas or mass expand because the Terran’s immobile army can’t move out. It’s slightly more boring due to the turtling nature of Terran, but at no point do you know who definitively has the lead until the first major battle. It’s exciting to watch when the Terran finally unsieges and pushes out.
What is the major difference here? In BroodWar there is a lot of action the entire game and despite all this action, the game remains very close. In SC2, there is always early aggression which basically decides the game. If the Terran is able to inflict damage on the Zerg, then they win. If the Zerg survives the initial push, Terran is screwed. I almost feel like Terran are forced into early aggression to force Zerg into making units. Otherwise, Zerg can just drone up and out macro.
The units are a big part of this I think.
Zerglings with speed and creep are too fast. Terrans can’t compete with this and are forced to have 1 big ball of units that moves out at once. Otherwise, you are guaranteed to get surrounded and killed. In BroodWar, due to cheap medics and firebats, this wasn’t a real problem. Mass Zerglings just get raped by a marine/medic ball, especially with firebat support. In SC2, you can just mass Zerglings and rape everything early on.
Banelings – Is a huge tide changer too early in the game. Good banelings can just outright win a game early on. It also means that Terran’s have trouble walling off and making a big army, which ends games quickly.
Mutas – Give so much map control to Zerg that Terrans have to try and finish the game before they pop. In BW, after the initial set of mutas that harass, they are never made again. Why? Because Terran has Science Vessels with irradiate or goliaths. Both of these HARD counter mutas. Therefore Zerg just builds lings/lurkers/defilers because they are more cost effective. In SC2, Thors were “supposed” to counter Mutas but with magic boxing you need marines with stim to support them, meaning you also need medivacs. Plus Thors are so slow compared to Goliaths that Terran is once again forced to have 1 big ball of units that moves out together, or else they are screwed. Having Mutas forces Terran to tech Thors, Marines, Medivacs, Stim, Combat shields, and weapons/armor for both mech and bio. Back in BW you either tech bio exclusively, or mech exclusively.
Really, I’m not complaining about Zerg being imbalanced (actually, maybe I am). I just really dislike the way the units were made such that they encourage types of play that are boring to watch. I think Terran has some cheesy and annoying things early on that can win them games. But if it goes on too long Zerg just gets too strong. Therefore, Terran is Forced to be super aggressive early and win before 10 minutes. Otherwise they are just lost. Look at BW. You have crazy late game imbalanced spells like Psi Storm, stasis, recall, Dark Swarm, PLAGUUUUU, irriadiate, EMP, and just mass tanks. All of these spells are stupidly powerful. But they balance out because everyone has stupidly powerful spells. Terran late game spells consist of nothing (Hunter Seeker is pretty mediocre). Yet they have to contend with 1 baneling, 1 psi storm, or a few colossus wiping your entire bio army in 2 seconds.
Overall, none of these games in the semi finals or finals were really entertaining. These were about as exciting as the Flash vs Jaedong finals where Flash just stomped on Jaedong 3-0. But the reason those games weren’t fun were because Flash is just a beast and outplayed Jaedong. The GSL grand finals went 4-3, as close as it comes, but was still boring. The seventh game of the grand finals was Fake Boxer 2 rax marine pushing with his SCVs and failing.
Yesterday, I officially accepted the Cisco offer.
I’m quite bitter about it. My Qualcomm offer was nearly approved but not quite, so the recruiter could only tell me what the recommended package was. My Cisco recruiter was apparently out of town, so I couldn’t ask for (yet another) extension. I basically had to make a quick decision, and I chose Cisco.
I think I probably would have chosen Cisco even if I had a longer extension and I knew my final Qualcomm offer. It was mostly about location… I’d much rather be in the bay area than San Diego. Unfortunately, everything else about Qualcomm was better.
I’m a bit sad though, because Intel was still trying to get me an interview, and he called me just today to talk about it. No more free trip to California :(
Anyway, job shit is finally done. Now I can relax! Or actually focus on school, I guess.
