interviews with esport teams: AlphaCollective

Draale · 2012-05-19T21:11:21.981208+00:00

You are a pizza burn on the roof of the world's mouth. You are the AT&T of people. You are the opposite of Batman.

Draale · 2012-05-19T20:27:08.974688+00:00

Its cute how you can't refute my points. Your inner skill is showing. May want to learn to play before joining in the discussion.

Jesus the game is in beta and you're already wagging your epeen, crying, "I'm valuable as a person because I'm good at this game! That makes me right!" What points have you made beyond demonstrating without a doubt that you're arguing with yourself rather than anything I'm posting? My point, from the beginning, was that you shouldn't sacrifice WvW for sPvP balance. You then suggested that sPvP is WvW and that they can be balanced identically, which is so idiotic that it's barely worth addressing, which is why I stopped trying to bother as soon as I saw how little you know about WvW or sPvP, confirming my prior belief that you were barely aware they were separate, judging on how you confused "PvP" with "sPvP" earlier.

Before that revelation, however, I (regretfully) tried to mention that melee in a keep siege is nothing like melee in sPvP and so you can't balance them equally, but you're still too busy jumping to conclusions to actually read what I'm saying, and then you go on a rant on how attacking keep doors is ineffectual. You're hopeless, and this discussion is worse than fucking your mom because at least then I'm only balls deep in stupid.

Draale · 2012-05-19T20:07:35.460999+00:00

I like how "melee in a keep siege" when talking about class balance gets translated into "OMG U NUB U DU NOT ATTACK DOAR." It's like the amount of stupid you pour into your posts is so overwhelming that it overflows, and you can't help but get it on mine too and assume I'm saying things that I never even came close to hinting at.

You must play a necromancer, because you're a veritable Well of Stupid.

Draale · 2012-05-19T19:56:42.824239+00:00

You don't have to balance for both, when you only need to balance for one.

Melee in a keep siege. Enough said.

You keep saying that have to be different from each other, but they can't and should not.

You have no idea what WvW is. Okay. I'm done here, enjoy your tantrum.

Draale · 2012-05-19T19:46:19.512731+00:00

The fact you can't understand the most basic of concepts is sad.

It's not my fault that you're illiterate and keep reflexively thinking I'm saying we need to balance around WvW. Even when I say:

You can balance classes for WvW, which is what we're talking about.

I mean, for fuck's sake, you didn't even differentiate between WvW vs sPvP in your first post, so don't get on a high horse acting like how I don't understand the "concepts" when you probably had no idea that PvP was split into WvW and sPvP before this post.

Furthermore, as I stated before, you're not talking about class balance you're talking about population balance. It's not hard to make sure that XYZ class performs adequately in sPvP, while also acknowledging that this class may not perform adequately (for better or worse) in WvW. That is the concept I am talking about, and it is the one that you are struggling to comprehend.

So, to reiterate: You realize you can balance them both right? Why should AN spend a lot of time introducing WvW and then saying, "Fuck all you people who want to play it, but a bunch of twats named AlphaCollective want to feel like they're playing Pro-Arathi Basin so we're not balancing you" again?

antdude · 2012-05-19T19:39:13.144768+00:00

Yeah, this was pretty bad. If we're moving further toward the Knights of Xbox, where full plate armor lets you do acrobatic backflips, I think I'm done with DA. The entire "vision" and feel of DA has been slowly bled out with every new thing that they introduce.

Draale · 2012-05-19T19:34:20.983028+00:00

You can't balance around WvW and you should feel bad for even trying to say you can.

You can balance classes for WvW, which is what we're talking about. What is it in WvW that makes classes magically imbalanced again? Also, you don't have to pick just one. You can aim to balance in sPvP and WvW and PvE. Saying, "fuck people who don't like arenas," and balancing solely around sPvP is idiotic.

Rendle · 2012-05-19T19:30:53.959481+00:00

IIRC, he said that he wasn't offered anything because they haven't spoken to him at all. His blog here seems to support that.

buggeyedbob · 2012-05-19T19:29:42.915634+00:00

It's a nod to "Browncoats" from Firefly and how Firefly was cancelled before its time.

Draale · 2012-05-19T19:26:11.181091+00:00

PvP, not sPvP. There's also WvW. I don't want to see WvW completely imbalanced because of sPvP.

BDS_UHS · 2012-05-19T16:29:37.277514+00:00

Except he's not identical. That's the problem!

Rendle · 2012-05-19T16:25:46.371099+00:00

No, he was not offered a job. They didn't contact him at all. They just got new people without talking to him.

m2thajay · 2012-05-19T16:20:47.668368+00:00

I'm so glad that Dan ended it the way he did. He gave us the closure he knew we'd need.

xunkang · 2012-05-19T16:13:52.899439+00:00

Elaborate heist? Elaborate heist? Elaborate heist?

Draale · 2012-05-19T14:31:22.431767+00:00

sPvP class balance needs to take priority over pretty much everything else.

Fuck you, no. What kind of pompous idiot actually thinks they ought to take priority in the game, before the game is even released and we see how much of the game sPvP makes up?

I can’t speak for other teams, but Alpha Collective (AC) is preparing for the game six days a week, four or more hours per night. We theorycraft builds, study replays, talk about what we ran into in the Beta Weekend Event (BWE), and formulate meta team comps – a lot of theorycraft.

Oh, nevermind, they've already answered my question. Also, Alpha Collective is the most lulz-worthy fail name I've ever seen.

igonjukja · 2012-05-19T13:53:02.906856+00:00

I think you've forgotten the whole point of this side-discussion. It was me pointing out that your statement, where you claim that capitalism is about the efficient allocation of resources, was incorrect because the metric we use to rate "goodness" is not directly tied to efficient allocation of resources.

You come back, trying to disprove the side arguments, and in doing so undermine your original argument. No where in your definition of capitalism is "the efficient allocation of resources" listed. In fact, it specifically says that the point of the creation of goods or services is for profit. Ultimately, profit is not a direct peg to efficient resource allocation, something you've not argued yet. You agreed with me on theivery but insisted that the laws we make to prevent it are still "capitalism," which is silly because those laws have been around before people had conceptualized a notion of capitalism.

So how about ponzi schemes? Those are entirely voluntary, make use of markets, and fit every entry of your capitalist definition here, but are not efficient resource allocations and yet still reward the person who does them with profit. Furthermore, externalities are an inherent part of markets, and yet your "voluntary exchange" part excludes them. Does that mean that markets are inherently not capitalist? Your definition is an "ideal" and not a reality. It's not an applicable definition to the way capitalism exists in society, and if you wish to go by it, no society has ever had "true" capitalism because all societies have had externalities incorporated into their economic system.

vagaryblue · 2012-05-18T14:47:34.751213-07:00

Right, but that doesn't mean he's ugly per se. I guess the best way I can describe it, using a real life example, would be someone like Adam Carolla. He's not a man who is ugly or hideous, but I think there are few who would say that he's handsome or attractive.

blackhydra866 · 2012-05-18T14:42:11.525822-07:00

Matt Firor. That's a name I haven't heard in ages. Last I remember, he was in charge of the Team Lead project for Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot, which was basically a way to get player feedback on class balance from people who played those classes and were respected in the community.

I remember how stubbornly inflexible he was, unwilling to consider any changes the TLs had suggested because they did not fit his vision of what the class should be, but he would also refuse to ever make suggestions of his own for the TLs to give feedback on. It seems like all of the balancing that DAoC has been doing as of late (and by as of late I mean the past four years or so), which I hear is actually pretty good, comes as a direct consequence of him getting-the-fuck-out-of-the-way.

Anyway, trying to make a single-player story the focus of your multi-player game is ridiculous. It's as absurd as trying to make multi-player the focus of your single player game.

"As MMO online designers, the thing we wanted to make sure we hit the most was that feeling that you're awesome, you're the hero. And we do that through a mix of technology, where when I am confronting a major foe in the game, I'm doing it in an instance where I am alone.

That may sound great, but instances (in my opinion) have been generally negative to MMOs, far outweighing their benefits. I think that going further toward that, giving players incentive to play solo to uphold the pretense that your multi-player game is just like a solo game because it's Elder Scrolls IP, is a mistake. If you want to make people feel like the hero, use the social medium, don't eliminate it. Why the fuck would I buy and pay for an Elder Scrolls MMO if I'm looking for the Elder Scrolls single-player experience of epicness and being the hero?

Two more things troubled me greatly about this article. First, they're talking about introducing PvP, and balancing it? It gives me some small concern as to how that will work out with a lot of the skills in the game, and whether they'll have to rework those skills to fit the MMO world, and how that will effect their single-player quest line. Second, they're releasing next year? Maybe I'm behind the times, but I've only heard about this in the past month. How long has this news about an Elder Scrolls MMO been out?

vagaryblue · 1 day

They never say he's ugly in the books, AFAIK. Just that Dany didn't think he was handsome, because he was so hairy and old.

TheVapourRub · 1 day

I thought Island of annoying Voices was Yoshi Island.

TheVapourRub · 1 day

Clown Faced Helicopter. Bowser, anyone?

igonjukja · 1 day

Yeah, which is why doing that is against the law but I get what you mean.

But this gets to the very root of the issue! It's against the law, not against capitalism. Government is what prevents and deters that, not the inherent system. Government is encouraging the more efficient use of resources, not capitalism.

poeta_aburrido · 1 day

At the end of ep 20, Pierce's brother recommends Skeepers for their margaritas in a yard-long glass. At the end of ep 21, the two Greendale board-people talk about going to Skeepers for "yard margs." I believe they've done so, repeatedly, throughout the series.

poeta_aburrido · 1 day

If only there were a word that describes the joy I get from your misfortune.

poeta_aburrido · 1 day

The next community episode starts at 9 PM EST, 8 central, 7 mountain, 6 pacific/western/whatever those heathens are calling themselves these days.

ReducedToRubble

TROPHY CASE

ReducedToRubble

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login