Spzi

joined 1 year ago
[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago

Opponent played Ocelot Pride, which boosted my Doppelgang to the moon. Match ended in a draw, too many triggers to compute.

At this point, I could make infinite mana and infinite copies of any permanent on the battlefield, and create flash copies of any card in my graveyard, all at instant speed. Doppelgang on Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer breaks the game.

Screenshot

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It's easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it's just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What's up with the wiggeling, is the camera dangling from a balloon?

I guess if drones can fly into doors on moving targets, an observation drone should be able to hold relatively still.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

One obvious problem would be that some cards are good no matter the cost. I’m going to reanimate an Emrakul even if the card costs 40 mana. Manaless dredge will still be manaless.

Excellent point. Yeah, some things exist which are already kind of broken and could be exploited further. Maybe more generally, MTG uses CMC to balance cards, but also many other aspects (comes into play tapped, draw a card/gain life on enter, ...). So only changing mana cost affects the balancing of different cards differently.


Yes, Llanowar Elves. A silly result could be that people use equivalents (like Elvish Mystic) while the "original" is too expensive. But probably, all ramp cards would probably become more expensive as long as they do the job. Which makes ramp cards kind of pointless, as you point out.

Right, two good objections and a funny video. I like it, thanks.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

I don't see it yet, please help me out. Maybe it helps if you can find a specific example.

Can you describe a scenario how an asshole could game that system?

Generally I think MTG is probably the most capitalism-ruined game. It annoyed me much when starting to play as a teenager. Whenever a friend upgraded their deck, others were kind of forced to spend money as well. Because the rich guy had access to all the powerful cards (= relatively low mana cost for their effect / strong effect for their CMC). Isn't that exactly what a balancing approach would alleviate? Everyone has access to all cards, and all cards receive a CMC which matches how much players value it.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

You're right, this would be very unpractical for analogue play. I thought it has to be digital. But then another person in this post pointed out that Penny Dreadful is a thing, which seems to work with printed cards, although it has it's banlist change from season to season. Granted, checking what is banned/legal (and modifying your deck accordingly) is much simpler than checking each mana cost.

I'm not a fan of capitalism, it was just a metaphor to convey they mechanic. Now that I think closer about this, they even differ in that. I did not have "supply and demand" in mind, since the supply in a digital TCG is essentially infinite. It's more about rating cards based on their popularity, whereas popular items in capitalism can be dirt cheap (e.g. tap water). One of the other major differences is that in capitalism, people can reinvest their capital to gain more capital. I don't see how that could be a thing in 'my' idea. But the system would need some protection against deliberate manipulationg. Yet another person proposed a solution to this; only monitor tournament decks.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

seasonal patches like a video game’s balance

That makes much more sense, yes.

Your other thoughts are also good and welcome. Yeah, tracking what cards tournament players include is probably sufficient!

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Are you familiar with the MTGO format Penny Dreadful?

I was not, thanks! Haha, yes, that is a pretty good implementation of the core idea, with very little overhead. It was funny to read about the implications this can have on real world market prices.

Spending (the equivalent of) 0.942 of a mana on something isn’t functionally different in almost all cases from spending 1 mana on it.

You're right, it does not work so well with the current mana system. Because you still bring whole numbers of lands into play. When those lands produce 1000 mana, you still have either 1000 or 2000 mana, so the 0s are mostly redundant. It would still make a difference for carts which have a significant margin (so that you can play 3 unpopular cards for the cost of 2 regular, or 2 popular for the cost of 3 regular). But for small changes, as you say, it wouldn’t functionally change much.

I like the fine granularity of the cost-balancing approach. Though the binary ban/legalize mechanic of Penny Dreadful might be accurate enough.

 

A shower thought which applies not specifically to MTG, as it would obviously be a different game.

What problem does this idea try to solve?

Balancing. It is hard to balance every card during design phase (or even impossible, as can be shown), which results in some overpowered cards which make the game less fair.

How?

Supply and demand. A card which is played often (by many players, in many games) has it's mana cost increased slightly. A card which is played rarely becomes cheaper.

Implications

This is probably not feasible with most mana costs sitting in the 1-digit-range. We can't make a 2-cost card "slightly" cheaper. So we would either need a mana system which works with decimals (e.g. 3.1415 CMC), or raise the integer system to a higher plateau (e.g. 314 CMC)

It's also only contemplable in digital versions, where a server can monitor every card drop, and adjust costs accordingly.

A big drawback is that your deck's costs can change over night (or even between consecutive games), forcing players to edit their decks more frequently. A partial solution could be a notification system, and/or scheduling the recalculations to a slower frequency, like once per week or once per month.

A big advantage is that we now have an impartial Big Brother watching the balancing. Humans can err, crowds and echo chambers even more so. When people complain about an imbalanced card, is their cause justified or is it just a small but loud minority? Monitoring the cold hard data seems like a better way, and automated problem solving likewise.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Do you know another TCG which applies something similar?

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

Update: Casting Doppelgang with Flash and Casualty 2 is fun :D

I removed [[Smogbelcher Chariot]] and [[Blooming Cactusfolk]], since they were too situational/slow. Still climbing the ladder ...

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 3 weeks ago

Alright, thanks! I think I understand where you're coming from, and can relate. I'm an ex-Christian, although I guess for ex-Muslims this process is a whole other beast.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about culture and critique - as an leftwing, anti-theist leaning atheist, I often have to cringe about my peers. It feels like false romanticizing, like we did with native americans, or other falsly understood cultures. So many things which I despise in fascism are also present in strict Christianity and strict Islam. Although luckily, very few people take their religion seriously here. So our religious nutjobs are a fringe minority and can mostly be ignored.

Refugees welcome, but I hate it when they try to establish religio-fascist areas here, spewing hate and all their nonsense, occasionally killing someone. I mean, if you want to live like that, go back. If you like our way, be welcome.

Yeah, a sensitive topic which can easily trigger people. I try not to care about the boxes they try to put me in. And I absolutely love the freedom of speech we have here. I don't want that be ruined by migrants who think they speak for Allah, nor by leftists who think every minority shares their values. Like I was one of them. In my youth, with coloured hair and ragged clothes, I was regularly beaten up by (almost exclusively) migrants. Created quite some cognitive dissonance, some effort to justify their deeds, like worse socioeconomic status blabla. Truth is, many people are quite "conservative", naturally more so in less liberal countries of origin. And still, I vote and speak for open borders. Our society must find better ways than building walls. This issue is challenging European core values, with at least two ways to erode the values; we can lose them by allowing hostile subcultures to grow, or we can lose them by closing us off to the outside.

Good lord, 6 years. Poor Aisha. I guess my brain was happy to forget that detail.

So thanks again for this exchange. Stay safe.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 6 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

Other person.

I think there are stories in the Quran or the other important texts (Hadid?) about their prophet marrying a 9yo. Although I've witnessed controversy around her exact age amongst people in /r/DebateReligion. Like some said it wasn't too bad, she was almost 14 or so.

Now your turn, what do you think? And why did you want them not to google?

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago

Right, I should have clarified that. No, not my measure, I agree with you on that. It was just some measure, which seemed better than "do the opposite of what others say". Because actions matter more than words, or so.

 

The deck (60 cards, Historic) is based around the 'perpetually' keyword. It also involves [[Rusko, Clockmaker]], because I simply love that guy.

Here's an overview of the most important general cards:

  • [[Three Steps Ahead]] as a counterspell and to make copies of creatures or [[Midnight Clock]].
  • [[Test of Talents]] to thin the forest.
  • [[Saw It Coming]] because it stays when [[Midnight Clock]] cycles.
  • [[Sheoldred's Assimilator]] to recast own spells, to exile or steal cards.
  • [[Sheoldred's Edict]], because it's too good.
  • [[Tear Asunder]], same reason.
  • [[Ritual of Soot]], because why do so many people play with soot? :(
  • [[The End]] is there still forest?
  • [[Casualties of War]] to reduce biodiversity.
  • [[Druid Class]] for life and ramp. Also a sweet target to make copies.
  • [[Glarb, Calamity's Augur]] ramp and "draw", plus emergency deathtouch blocker.
  • [[Primeval Titan]] for ramp, also helps fetch enhanced lands from [[Vigorous Farming]] which were shuffled.
  • [[Doppelgang]] because we need a sink for our 50 mana.

And here are the perpetual stars:

  • [[Antique Collector]] as a cheap drop for round 2, or to enhance creatures. Note, casting it twice does nothing extra.
  • [[Absorb Energy]], another counterspell. Though I feel this is one of the weakest here.
  • [[Smogbelcher Chariot]] because giving creatures lifelink, deathtouch and menace perpetually is pretty sweet! Love to use it on [[Hall of Giants]] or [[Primeval Titan]].
  • [[Vigorous Farming]] this is a tough one. It needs some time, but boy can the rewards pile up! Today I had a single land producing 12 mana. Also a nice clone target.
  • [[Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer]] you need to have a nice creature or sorcery in grave, then Nashi conjures a copy to your hand and gives that copy flash! When using Doppelgang on Nashi, you can conjure a copy of DG back to your hand, lol.
  • [[Blooming Cactusfolk]] we do have plenty of mana, now we need cheaper spells. It's nice to copy the cactus, and to have spells with X cost.
  • [[Discover the Formula]] for the lulz.

The idea is to play defensively, build up manabase and reduce cost on spells, enhance spells with flash and creatures with extra abilities. Worst enemy is having things exiled. [[Farewell]] or [[Ugin, Spirit Dragon]] are the absolute worst to encounter.

I think the synergy between Rusko and 'perpetually' is pretty nice. Enhance stuff, drop it in grave, draw it again to enhance it further.

It's a bit sad players have only 20 health. This setup starts to shine when the game is already over.

I was happy to find a working deck (currently around 85% ladder) which uses Glarb and Nashi. Haven't seen them played by anyone else yet. Same for [[Vigorous Farming]] and [[Blooming Cactusfolk]], underrated cards imo.

So, what are your thoughts? Have you played something similar? Have we met online? What would you change?

 

What they actually mean is rather "these two things are very dissimilar", or "these two things are unequal".

I guess in most situations "cannot be compared" could be replaced by "cannot be equated", with less lingual inaccuracy and still the same message conveyed.

To come to the conclusion that two things are very dissimilar, very unequal, one necessarily has to compare them. So it's rather odd to come up with "cannot be compared" after just literally comparing them.

For example, bikes and cars. We compare them by looking at each's details, and finding any dissimilarities. They have a different amount of wheels. Different propulsion methods. Different price, and so on.

When this list becomes very long, or some details have a major meaning which should not be equated, people say they cannot be compared.

An example with a major meaning difference: Some people say factory farming of animals and the Holocaust are very similar, or something alike. Others disagree, presumably because they feel wether it's humans or animals being treated, the motives or whatnot make a difference big enough that the two should not be ~~compared~~ equated.

Can you follow my thoughts? Are 'dissimilar' or 'unequal' better terms? I'd be especially interested in arguments in favor of 'compared'.

 

https://piped.video/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo

Sources: Juliet B. Schor, "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure"


David Rooney, "About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks" E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" | https://www.jstor.org/stable/649749 James E. Thorold Rogers, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The History of English Labour" | https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/rogers/sixcenturies.pdf George Woodcock, "The Tyranny of the Clock," Published in "War Commentary - For Anarchism" in March, 1944


GDP per capita in England, 1740 to 1840, via Our World in Data | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk-since-1270 Nominal wages, consumer prices, and real wages in the UK, United Kingdom, 1750 to 1840, via Our World in Data | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nominal-wages-consumer-prices-and-real-wages-in-the-uk-since-1750

 

Running around with StreetComplete, the app sometimes tells me to leave a note instead, which I do. Short time later, I receive an email that another person has resolved my note. That's nice, but wouldn't it be better to do it all on my own?

I think I need a more powerful Editor for that, and installed Vespucci. Now I'm scared to break things. What are the next steps, how to proceed?

 

The volume of a cylinder is found using the formula V = πr^2^h. Using π = 5, r = 10 and h = 10. Find the volume V.

 

Before, completing the last lesson of a group (e.g. completing 5 of 5) activated a 15 minute boost. Which allowed me stop doing lessons at 4/5 and do practice instead. Later that day, I could complete lesson 5 to get a boost for a new session.

Now, these activation steps seem to be randomly scattered across lessons. Sometimes it's lesson 2, sometimes 5. Never the last one.

Did anyone else notice this? Any idea why? How do you deal with it?

It leads me to learn longer than I actually wanted (because I accidentally trigger boosts), or leads to me 'wasting' boosts, both of which feels bad.

 

https://www.youtube.com/@Brackeys/about


Text version, thanks to @CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world:

Image Text

BRACKEYS

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while. I hope you are all well.

Unity has recently taken some actions to change their pricing policy that I - like most of the community - do not condone in any way.

I have been using Unity for more than 10 years and the product has been very important to me. However, Unity is a public company. Unfortunately that means that it has to serve shareholder interests. Sometimes those interests align with what is best for the developers and sometimes they do not. While this has been the case for a while, these recent developments have made it increasingly clear.

Unity has pulled back on the first version of their new pricing policy and made some changes to make it less harmful to small studios, but it is important to remember that the realities of a public company are not going to change.

Luckily, there are other ways of structuring the development of software. Instead of a company owning and controlling software with a private code base, software can be open source (with a public code base that anyone can contribute to) and publicly owned. Blender - a stable 3D modelling software in the game dev community - is free and open source. In fact some of the largest and most advanced software in the world is built on top of open source technology like Linux.

The purpose of this post is not to denounce Unity because of a misstep, to criticise any of its employees or to tell anyone to “jump ship”. Instead I want to highlight the systematic issue of organizing large software projects under a public company and to let you know that there are alternatives.

I believe that the way to a stronger and more healthy game dev community is through software created by the community for the community. Software that is open source, democratically owned and community funded.

Many of you have been asking for us to produce new tutorial series on alternative engines such as Godot, which is currently the most advanced open source and community funded game engine. I don’t know yet if this is something that we can realise and when.

I can only say that I have started learning Godot.

Best of luck to all of you with your games, no matter what engine they might be built on!

Sincerely,

Asbjern Thirslund - Brackeys

 

https://www.youtube.com/@Brackeys/about


Text version, thanks to @CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world:

Image Text

BRACKEYS

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while. I hope you are all well.

Unity has recently taken some actions to change their pricing policy that I - like most of the community - do not condone in any way.

I have been using Unity for more than 10 years and the product has been very important to me. However, Unity is a public company. Unfortunately that means that it has to serve shareholder interests. Sometimes those interests align with what is best for the developers and sometimes they do not. While this has been the case for a while, these recent developments have made it increasingly clear.

Unity has pulled back on the first version of their new pricing policy and made some changes to make it less harmful to small studios, but it is important to remember that the realities of a public company are not going to change.

Luckily, there are other ways of structuring the development of software. Instead of a company owning and controlling software with a private code base, software can be open source (with a public code base that anyone can contribute to) and publicly owned. Blender - a stable 3D modelling software in the game dev community - is free and open source. In fact some of the largest and most advanced software in the world is built on top of open source technology like Linux.

The purpose of this post is not to denounce Unity because of a misstep, to criticise any of its employees or to tell anyone to “jump ship”. Instead I want to highlight the systematic issue of organizing large software projects under a public company and to let you know that there are alternatives.

I believe that the way to a stronger and more healthy game dev community is through software created by the community for the community. Software that is open source, democratically owned and community funded.

Many of you have been asking for us to produce new tutorial series on alternative engines such as Godot, which is currently the most advanced open source and community funded game engine. I don’t know yet if this is something that we can realise and when.

I can only say that I have started learning Godot.

Best of luck to all of you with your games, no matter what engine they might be built on!

Sincerely,

Asbjern Thirslund - Brackeys

 

https://www.youtube.com/@Brackeys/about


Text version, thanks to @CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world:

Image Text

BRACKEYS

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while. I hope you are all well.

Unity has recently taken some actions to change their pricing policy that I - like most of the community - do not condone in any way.

I have been using Unity for more than 10 years and the product has been very important to me. However, Unity is a public company. Unfortunately that means that it has to serve shareholder interests. Sometimes those interests align with what is best for the developers and sometimes they do not. While this has been the case for a while, these recent developments have made it increasingly clear.

Unity has pulled back on the first version of their new pricing policy and made some changes to make it less harmful to small studios, but it is important to remember that the realities of a public company are not going to change.

Luckily, there are other ways of structuring the development of software. Instead of a company owning and controlling software with a private code base, software can be open source (with a public code base that anyone can contribute to) and publicly owned. Blender - a stable 3D modelling software in the game dev community - is free and open source. In fact some of the largest and most advanced software in the world is built on top of open source technology like Linux.

The purpose of this post is not to denounce Unity because of a misstep, to criticise any of its employees or to tell anyone to “jump ship”. Instead I want to highlight the systematic issue of organizing large software projects under a public company and to let you know that there are alternatives.

I believe that the way to a stronger and more healthy game dev community is through software created by the community for the community. Software that is open source, democratically owned and community funded.

Many of you have been asking for us to produce new tutorial series on alternative engines such as Godot, which is currently the most advanced open source and community funded game engine. I don’t know yet if this is something that we can realise and when.

I can only say that I have started learning Godot.

Best of luck to all of you with your games, no matter what engine they might be built on!

Sincerely,

Asbjern Thirslund - Brackeys

 

Die Französin Ariane Kujawski stellt ihren Landsleuten das winzige deutsche Wort „Na“ vor. Es kann so viele Bedeutungen haben:

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