new first

RDU (my initial departure today) had a fire alarm

I evacuated to the unsecure zone and outside, then I heard an all clear from a HMSHost supervisor lol

As far as I know the Raleigh-Durham International Airport has not burned down so I assume someone opened an alarmed fire door

Though also a first is this cool shuttle:

The IAD shuttle just goes through the ramp

@Unionhawk "congratulations! your plane as been randomly chosen for it's regular evacuation drill to add that extra real element for crew by dealing with actual passengers. your reward is a trip down the slide!"

Good times

@GnomeSlice what game was this again?

@Wipqozn Far Cry Blood Dragon

I recognize the HUD and the fact that it has a "fuck off" emote

@Nzall ahh right, yeah

@Memor-X Wheeeeee!

Anyone else here seen Come From Away?

I saw it last night and it was SO GOOD

Look ma, I'm famous

@SaintWacko As in saw it in person?

@MBraedley Yeah

I'll probably see it when the local theatre company does a production.

It was really incredible. The set is really well done, and the music is beautiful and the choreography was amazing

Normally by the end of a show I start to get a little twitchy. Not this one, even though there was no intermission

@Fredy31 soo, did they win?

@Nzall

Game still in progress

@Fredy31 so are they winning right now?

Its a close game

MAD is behind, but the last teamfight went in their favor

basically every stat is 50/50

But it seems to be tipping in MAD favor

Mad Wins

So TL needs to win VS GenG, and MAD goes against the China team and wins, we get a 4-way tieç

@Fredy31 And what's the effective result of that?

They didnt explain it yet, how they would tiebreak that

Like, are they genuinely 4 way tied as in everything is equal, or are they just 4 way tied as in same score in the group?

I guess win time seeding, Bo1 bracket

The whole 4 team group is 3 wins, 3 losses

Usually they do tiebreakers with the time you took to win your games, like when we got a 3-way tie in the first group the 2 slowest to win their games go against eachother, and play against the quickest

Because usually if something like that happens, they go to substatistics, which in the case of LoL may be like "which team has the best K/D ratio", "which team killed the most minions", "which team was the fastest to win their games"

Yeah the tiebreaker used is the 'quickest wins'

just wonder if its a braket with a losers bracket or its 1v4, 2v3, those who win this pass, those who dont dont

that is cutthroat af, but still, they dont want to be playing until tomorrow lol

But yeah for the NA and EU teams, right now its lose and go home

@Fredy31 Man, LPL collapsed so hard this year

Yeah, LPL seems to have picked up the Week 2 NA curse

Think LPL was 10-2 first week, and is like 2-9 Week 2

Whats funny is that C9 now did both miracle runs. 3-0 and not getting out (3-4) and 0-3 and getting out (3-4)

i see mid tryndamere has kinda petered out after being a monster in play-ins

well, rumored monster

Well mid tryn did demolish people in the playins, but I guess when you get against good teams, he gets demolished

He gets punished hard

Amumu also GTFOed

but I guess thats because well, I think he went 1-5 in Playins

@Fredy31 i mean, it's possible. but i don't recall seeing too many games where that happened. it might be one of those things that still is really strong but the pros don't pick it because they think "oh, we're playing good teams now that can punish mid tryn"

if ardent meta and weird worlds picks have told us anything over the years, it's that pros don't have the perfect meta read on the game every time

yeah

the meta definitely shifts week to week at worlds

Oh yeah that reminds me

The International 10 was pretty great!

guess leona got prio on amumu because it does many of the same things, just she doesn't need to be smack dab in the middle of everything to stun

but yeah the bot lane meta seems to really be 'get some AOE stun to put MF's bullet time on

Or Aphelios Moonlight vigil, if MF is banned or picked

oh, people aren't picking comet with mf anymore?

didnt check masteries but GenG's ADC playing right now seems to have press the attack

i suppose it's because it's leona + mf

comet mf right now is really strong with a poke support like yuumi or zyra

honestly, for the portion of the MAD v. TL game that I did watch, I think TL did pretty respectably despite inting the level 1 against MF

with the priority on aphelios and mf though, it suddenly strikes me that there aren't that many adcs with good AoE damage potential

it's basically just MF and Aphelios with his flamethrower ult

and ezreal?

ez seems to have dropped off for Jhin

i really like jhin and all, but i'm not sure about his value for pro play since he can't DPS neutral objectives as well as other ADCs

he makes up for it with the ability to catch people, but...

like right now, if tl was playing an adc other than jhin, i think they could've conceivably secured baron

instead, they had to back off at half health

Yep, TL had a fucking slow baron take

like stupidly slow

but hey, 3-3

MAD just needs to win to have a 4-way tie

but hey, like i said, jhin makes up for it with the ability to catch people

jhin packs a punch, just not on neutral late objectives that have 10-15k health

that syndra + rakan initiate onto mf was surprising to me though. i thought it wasn't going to work after geng spotted them with sweeper

jhin is a 'melt 2-3rds of your health in 1 crit'

JJ could not land an engage to save his life for the first half of the game

had me stressed

if TL/GENG happens again, that fucking Yone is benched AF

Bdd was basically a one man army that game

or at least felt annoying AF to deal iwth

yone is always annoying to deal with

super safe and ridiculous initiate and tons of damage, i hate it

i will constantly gripe over how riot is willing to bend over backwards to allow yone/yasuo to build 2-item 100% crit

even though the adcs went from 4-item crit to 5-item crit

plus yone/yasuo get stat conversions if they over-cap on crit

Does anyone know at what time the EGS Halloween Sale starts? On their coupon site they said it starts today, but not the hour

So they mentionned it: 4-way tie is a single elim, Bo1 bracket

on win times

and since the Mad/LNG game is now long enough, matchups would be Mad/LNG and TL/GENG

4 WAY TIE

If I were to bet, Id say Mad/Geng pass

Interesting they dont do a 3/4th match, for prize money

in the end, prize money isn't worth that much and the general audience is rarely interested in 3/4 place matches

@Fredy31 wait, so there IS actually a 4 way tie now?

yep

The dream is dead.

funny that 100T and TL had more wins in the Group Stage, but the only one that passes from NA is C9

i honestly don't mind sending TL to worlds every year even if they keep getting 3-3, at least it's not TSM rolling over and dying 0-6

heck, i miss clutch. they went 0-6 at worlds too but at least they played like they did in NA

every year that tsm goes to worlds, it's the same story: they become a completely different team internationally and then just wait for nothing to happen and lose

Yep, probably because there was nobody that bombed 0-6 I guess... good NA Worlds

EU is having a shiity one

even if FNC would have probably got out of groups with Upset... and Rogue gave a good performance for being in the Group of death

KR is having a great time. 4/4

CN maybe 2/4 out of groups

@Fredy31 clutch gaming bombed out of worlds 0-6 in 2019

but i still rate them higher than tsm because at least clutch went out 0-6 playing like they did in NA

so there was no room for "if only clutch didn't play like scared little children, they could've made it out of groups"

Yeah last year TSM was sad

Superstar power, lost the first game, then looked like they just decided to roll over and die

international tsm every year is sad, it's like their mentality completely shifts when they leave california

well with Bjerg and DL I guess everybody just played scared against them

and when they showed up against KR and CN where those two would be middle of the line, those don't play scared and dunk them

honestly, i don't buy that bjerg and dl are middle of the pack players in international play. looking at raw player skill alone, i believe they can/could compete with their top-level KR and CN counterparts

but their mentality, however, isn't on the same level

Guess i have a bias against DL, dont know, the hype around him just always annoyed me

dl will take gambles in na that he wouldn't dare to in international play and the same goes for bjerg

good point. Guess they were used of not getting punished for some plays

and when you do that in international play, they get demolished

that's the thing. they weren't getting punished for bad gambles in international play because they weren't taking them

@Fredy31 i personally believe that he is/was legitimately good, he's won lane against KR and CN duos (good duos too) with little to no jungler influence regularly enough that it's not luck

the thing is, in modern LoL professional play, you just can't run away from 70/30 or 60/40 gambles

the mark of international-grade performance these days is taking those risks and being confident enough in your own skill that you can make the high-risk plays work

imo, the days of consistent "100% correct" league play are over

Yeah, the 100% play was done when KR started to lose

there is no way you can play 100% correct League if your opponent just flips the board in your face

GenG and MAD through

guys, I need some advice regarding the Epic Games Store Halloween Sale. I've narrowed it down to these options: Watch Dogs: Legion, Red Dead Redemption 2, Man Eater, Mafia Trilogy or maybe Borderlands 3. I've tried Red Dead Redemption 2 before at the current price point, but I refunded it after 3 missions because it was too slow for me. I tried Watch Dogs Legion before, but I couldn't get it to run acceptably on my computer, so I feel like waiting for my new computer is the better option.

@Nzall what are the good sales? Would have to download epic launcher to get those lol

@Fredy31 counting my coupon, RDR2 is 30 EUR, WDL is 14, man Eater is 12, Mafia trilogy is 10, Borderlands 3 is also 10, but I've also reconsidered that one

@Nzall RDR2 isn't going to get any faster. Either you enjoy the deliberately slow pace or you don't.

@Fredy31 epicgames.com/store/en-US/… you can check everything here

hunh, WDL is not even on Steam

@Fredy31 yeah, it's a Ubisoft game. You can only get through through their own store or the Epic store

it's an exclusivity deal

didnt know Ubi signed exclusive to Epic

hunh

But yeah for me WDL is showing up at 31CAD

Guess the rebates differ region to region

I guess terrible companies go together

In major gaming companies Ubi is not that bad

and I honestly don't know why you would buy your Ubisoft games through the EGS, because last time I did so (which coincidentally was also with WDL, which I refunded for technical reasons) I had to download the game twice because the Epic version wouldn't redeem properly

compared to EA or Blizz lol

You mean the company full of sexual abusers is not that bad?

Well that sure is an opinion

Guess I missed or forgot an Ubi thing lol

God the industry we love is garbage

@Wrigglenite AT LEAST Ubisoft did SOMETHING about the events and is working on a culture shift, so even if we don't see the results immediately, AFAIK they're working on it

Oh cool they say they're working on it

I guess that's that then

@Wrigglenite well thats already leagues better than Blizz with WE GOT NO PROBLEM HERE while the CFO tweets an article 'the trouble with whisleblowers'

They should be proud of being the least terrible gaming company with a history of rampant abuse

TIL that there's a remake of Startopia

aknowledging a problem is a good step 1

You know what's a good step 1?

Not abusing your employees

never doing so in the first place lol

yeah

the better step 1 is to never make a company in the first place

Y'all have no standards

the best step 1 is to not have been born period

the real reason why we should pursue time travel is so we can retroactively prevent the big bang

@Wrigglenite they're still reshuffling/firing/hiring staff and did investigations into how widespread the abuse is. It takes a while for a company culture to change

Aw it's only been how long now?

Months?

A year and a half?

Poor guys, it takes time to not be a monster

@Wrigglenite The first big report on it AFAIK was Bloomberg, a little over a year ago

Well shucks

You know how it is, some habits die hard

Oh wait

@Wrigglenite pcgamer.com/…

At any rate, I'm not planning on buying Ubisoft games right now

But since you're defending them, I guess you're just not interested in the games

> "We acknowledge the hiring of Bio Jade Adam Granger, but not much progress has been made beyond that, especially given that two additional VPs were meant to be hired [...] the creative team at Ubisoft is composed of white people who are of uniform cultural backgrounds. This leaves us with a lack of confidence in the future shape of the editorial team."

Anyway I'm sure I won't change your mind, but maybe other people will know better now

@Wrigglenite I mean, you've definitely given me things to think about

Then I'm glad

My tone was genuinely awful though, and I apologise for that

This is not a topic I like see people gloss over

I think what I'm trying to do is justify why I'm still playing Ubisoft games while I stopped playing WoW for Blizzard doing some really similar shit, and I've boiled it down to the response of the respective companies. it feels like for me anything better than "they ignore their problems and hope they go away" is enough

From the point of view of someone who does not want to actually change things, it is much better to give the impression that you are making changes so the public will quickly forget as it usually does

So I'm not in the least reassured by their statements and promises

compared to TV where the only one I know that the abused was called was Hellen

Mistyped Ellen, but I stand by my involuntary pun of HELL-en

Some people become monsters when they get any amount of power over others. See the stanford experiment. Or anything like the condo meetings or schoolboards. And sadly, I got really no solution in stopping them quickly and thoroughly

@Fredy31 you should definitely look a bit more into the stanford experiment

Guess thats why you turned your diamond in Wriggle? You were scared of the monster that WANTS POWER inside all of us?

because it's not a good example of "people turn into a-holes when given power"

I don't think that's funny, sorry

@Yuuki oh yeah there was that thing a few months back where a few of the people that participated said it was not a 'neutral' experiment. That they were pushed by the managers of the experiment to 'put the cruelty to 11'

@Wrigglenite sorry for the joke, tried to brighten things with a little humor. But yeah, I do know I'm conviently forgetting about those things. Because really, if you were to boycott all games touched by a triple-A publisher, you would not have much still to play.

And as I said, there's that shit in every industry. I would not be surprised to see the same kind of shit coming out of the people that work on the MCU or Star Wars

And I know its shitty, but still, what do you have for power as a single customer to change things? Boycotts are never fucking respected anyways

And even if they were, will you make 100s of artists and programmers pay for the actions of the few assholes in management?

Make sure those assholes are exposed, and get blacklisted by the industry. But how to make that happen? IDK how

Its a VERY hard question to answer

@Fredy31 joss whedon was recently booted from dc and marvel film projects for possibly those reasons

Like I will always be doubtfull of the use of boycotts because of the MW2 screenshot lol

@Fredy31 That's not how things work

The vast majority of employees do not get paid more as their company reaches goals and makes more money

And those people are already paying for something they didn't do

Well, if a game fails because of the successfull boycott, yeah the guy that is an asshole might lose his job, but the artist team below him too

And when games are successful, employees are laid off all the same

There is just not much good solutions. The solution would be force the media to keep the pressure on, but you know just like me that the media will switch to a new story within weeks and nothing will change

When games are successful, it is not the programmers, and artists, and QA assurance people, and everyone else who get paid more

It's the people at the top

So you sacrificed the fact that you wanted to play x game... for basically nothing

I know, usually the only way to hurt them is hurt their wallets, but as individual consumers, there is not a big difference you can do

company will still do money hand over fist

Really, I think pestering journalists to stay on the story and make the company's stock take a hit every time a headline that 'they are not doing shit' comes out is probably the biggest hit a company may take

hit the investors, thats where you can hurt them

i get that the flash doesn't have a lot of big event storylines, but does DC really need to do Flashpoint for their first Flash movie?

@Yuuki I'm more excited for "Eternals" which I've never heard of before than literally any DC movie they could dream of.

@InvaderSkoodge if they ever made a booster gold movie, i'd be into that. but otherwise, same