@GodEmperorDune Love it

Huh, Risk of Rain is on the Switch.

I remember that game.

@Ash extremely same

@TimStone (a reminder)

@Ash Dunno, will have to wait for more confirmation

Yeah

@TimStone Huh.

Seems so, aye

Meanwhile, in mathematics

Was Tales from the Borderlands their last game?

Weren't they doing good with all the adventure games they were making?

@TimStone any news on who bought the IP?

@Wipqozn Maybe I should push out a fix for @Slowpoke

Oh, Walking Dead: Final Season was their last one.

@TimStone cloudflare error for me

@GodEmperorDune Did they have any original IPs?

I thought all of their games were licensed from existing IPs (Borderlands, Walking Dead, etc.)?

@Yuuki sorry should've worded that better... are their games going to disappear from online stores or did someone else acquire that and games will still be sold?

The last Walking Dead isn't even completely out yet. They've only released the first two episodes.

Further reporting states it'll be to finish off The Walking Dead but everything else is axed

@Ash all the devs that could leave, left

because of toxic management

i mean i don't work there, i'm sure there will be more stories about it, but thats the early impression

Seems to be a common problem with gaming companies. Small company culture -> big hit -> massive hiring spree -> small culture doesn't adapt to influx of new blood -> workplace culture problems -> toxicity -> people leave.

I wonder if sales have also died down. I loved the first Walking Dead (well parts of the first game), but haven't liked any of the other games they've made.

Like it seems techbro culture is fine when you have super small teams and people aren't jerks to each other because they actually see each other every day. But then the culture doesn't adapt when they make a hit and drastically expand.

And the way that it persists changes it so that even if you reduced the workforce to its original size, it's different than it used to be.

@Ash Yeah. There is only so much you can do with dialogue choices and QTEs.

But the ending of the first Walking Dead game still hits me every once in awhile. Good writing. Good acting. It worked.

Do telltale games actually have a tree of "this will be a failure if you do like this" or give totally separate endings?

I saw someone mentioning that it didnt matter what you picked because it all ended the same way

But I actually never played it

They are pretty linear. Minor differences in the game based on your choices.

@Moacir many branching games end up merging back on major plotlines to cut scope

@GodEmperorDune I am thinking like Katawa Shoujo(NSFW) for example, where there are actually consequences for what you pick

@Moacir i think there is a different category of games/VNs where wildly diverging storylines and plotlines is the point of the thing so you can replay it over and over until you've 100%ed it

@GodEmperorDune I thought the premise of multiple choice was to have diverging things. If it makes no difference, why even bother?

i think this is easier in heavy text games or VNs where it's just art and writing instead of complicated mechanics and places for bugs. it's still more work to have more branches but it's not as exponentially complex as the stuff telltale did

I think the problem boils down to wanting to tell a story but make it look like the player had any input

imo its more of resourcing

@Moacir It makes a local difference. In the first game, at the end of the first episode, you choose to save person A or person B. For the second episode, only the person you saved is around.

if you have a single choice, you then have 2 branches to support. 2 choices becomes 4 branches to deal with, 3 choices is 8, 4 is 16, and so on. If the differences are small you can focus on improving the overall plotline that all players see instead of chasing down edge case interactions that many players will never get to

@JasonBerkan The problem is that even if you save A or B, rocks fall, they die

@Moacir right, thats the merge back to reduce later complexity

Which made no difference at all if you picked A or B

The game could railroad you and that's it

eh i feel we are arguing in circles about this thing

Yea, this is opinion based, sorry

I understand where you are coming from, and what you mean

I just think it is a cheap trick "Oh look, you saved the dog instead of the cat. Doesnt matter, the food it ate was poisoned"

But also, you understand what I meant

So we kinda agree to disagree

@Moacir yep and that calls back to what @ash pointed out; the first time you play it, these are "wow" and then it starts to get boring and formulaic

I think the only game other than visual novels that I played that I really liked that kinda depends on multiple choice was King's Quest

But then again, its more like puzzle than pick-a-thing

King's Quest is way more guess-the-verb/noun than multiple choice, at least the first six

And they were big on giving you two awful choices and then making you choose.

@ToxicFrog I meant the newer one, not the classic Sierra ones

@JasonBerkan in hindsight, very meta for what their managment has now done

@Moacir Clementine will remember that.

@JasonBerkan oh this wasn't just the walking dead? it seemed very similar to what the show did as well

@Moacir wait, what, there's a new one?

What oh god no

let it stay dead

LET IT STAY DEAD

It is pretty good actually

At least I liked it

@GodEmperorDune No, the Fable based game was pretty similar.

@JasonBerkan bah, lazy and formulaic source of emotion

My team at work is engaging in the regular collective torture of quarterly planning. This meeting is scheduled to run for 3 hours.

@murgatroid99 Is those one of that meetings that could be solved with a well written e-mail?

@murgatroid99 how long does it usually go for?

@GodEmperorDune 3 hours is pretty usual. That's what makes it torture every time

@murgatroid99 That sounds miserable

@Moacir Sort of, maybe. It's really a dozen+ different subteams describing the goals from the past quarter and next quarter

Well, good luck then

@ToxicFrog The first episode is free on steam

@Moacir the original series killed my interest in that entire genre for over a decade; I'll pass.

Where were you coming from?

@Unionhawk I was actually reading that whole conversation and thought it was @Wipqozn the whole time until I read your comment and scroll back

There's a zeppelin that goes from Undercity to Orgrimmar and vice-versa.

So you can take that next time.

🤔

is there still that one place that has portals to all major cities?

back wehn i played it was the main city in the BC area

Yeah but if you're starting in Hillsbrad, the zeppelin is the easiest and most direct path.

true facts

You could hearth to Dalaran or Zuldazar (Evvy is Horde, IIRC) and take a portal but not everyone has their hearth set to those locations.

hearth is still 1 hour CD?

@GodEmperorDune IIRC, it's like 30 minutes but effectively 15 since pretty much every guild has that perk.

@Yuuki yay that's nice

Also, they took all the portals out of Shattrath (BC hub).

Can't remember if they're still in WotLK Dalaran.

I had a brief, overwhelming urge to play Ragnarok Online earlier today, but then I remembered what a pain to actually get it up and running it is and the desire went away. Mostly.

@ToxicFrog I was always rather fond of RO - but their official English launch still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (Constant rollbacks in the first couple months)

@Chippies Excellent. I greatly approve of @Strixvaria's new avatar then. Good job @Yuuki!

@GodEmperorDune the inn in one of the pandaria towns (the main one?) had a lot of portals to pretty much everywhere you want to go

a bit of a pain to get there on a new character though unless you can somehow get pulled there

@ToxicFrog what do you mean "get it up and running"? I'm guessing it's #justlinuxthings ? :P

should be pretty straightforward on a windows machine

lol

(a JMod was fired for stealing from players)

@Unionhawk For some reason I read that as @Jnat at first and was all "whaaaaaaaat"

@Slowpoke You wathc any of SoCal? youtube.com/watch?v=fUpF5jBOEFY

I might actually turn Yoshi into my new main.

@Wipqozn yoshimitsu in a Soul Calibur game? I don't even

@Chippies yup

honestly, yoshimitsu fits in SC much more than it does in Tekken

there were hardly any moves in Tekken that used his sword, whereas in SC everyone has weapons, so it only makes sense

He's been in every soul game I think

@Wipqozn now that you mention it, I vaguely remember him in the first game

as an unlockable

just vaguely...

He's really weird and it's great

He flies around with a swordcopter

@Wipqozn I just realized you're not talking about the nintendo Yoshi

@Chippies wait, what?

@Wipqozn I saw the whole top 8.

Every character looks super fun. I really liked the look of Maxi in that tourney.

@Slowpoke I've only watched a bit

@Chippies He's been in every Soul Calibur game.

Main thing I want to see is Yoshi and Mitsurigi matches

I saw the finals with Yoshi

and I know mitsurigi was in a few matches

Even Geralt looks fun, which is mildly annoying since I hated the Witcher games.

@Wipqozn I saw you said you might turn Yoshi into your new main, so I got curious if it was some new nintendo game or smash, the only clue I had was the link you posted, so I clicked on it and was skipping through it and was looking for nintendo yoshi in a SC game, because games are weird these days. Saw Yoshimitsu, got a bit surprised and forgot why I was watching the video

after we had the convo, I realized that you were referring to Yoshimitsu as Yoshi :P

@Chippies That's fantastic

also when I hear someone say "SoCal", I think of South California, because that's what I always hear people call it

@Chippies That's what SoCal means haha

although I haven't seen that in quite some time... must've been a thing to call South California "SoCal" many years ago...

socalregionals.com

@Wipqozn oh, so it actually refers to South California, lmao. I thought it was supposed to be Soul Calibur :P

Yeah I gathered that haha

Oh @Chippies, you've provided me with much delight on this night

I am glad I could be of service :P

well I did restart

And initial squad, who did quite well, is @John as a ranger, @GodEmperorDune as a grenadier, @Krazer as a sniper and @MadScientist as a Templar. I will, however, be swapping out @GodEmperorDune on this mission for @TimStone so I can a get a specialist.

😎

@Wipqozn sure, kill off @TimStone sooner

@GodEmperorDune I mean, if I need to toss someone to the wolves then the rookie would make the most sense

i mean only a poor commander tosses rookies to the wolves