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    5. What would you want in a Digital Card Game?

      ~games Ask (survey)
      So, I quit Hearthstone recently. Not just because of current events, but because I lost my taste for the game. Which is a shame, because Hearthstone is pretty well made and what it simplifies from...

      So, I quit Hearthstone recently. Not just because of current events, but because I lost my taste for the game. Which is a shame, because Hearthstone is pretty well made and what it simplifies from Magic the Gathering and comparible card games is pretty inspired.

      Couple things I Liked

      • You pick one class when you create a deck, and your resource management is doled out every turn without intervention or having to worry about Mana Burn or Flood.

      • It had a sort of chess by mail setup, where you couldn't really interrupt your opponents turn without laying a Secret trap for them that would trigger when a condition was met. I appreciated that you weren't on the clock for having to play an interrupt or cancel an opponent's move, especially since I mostly play on mobile.

      • Finally, it had one of the best UI for getting things done, and letting you know where you wanted to know. The main menu was organized, the deck builder was clean, and the playmat was very polished with the oval minion pieces, while informative on what everything did. I've been trying Eternal recently, and it's certainly an adjustment.

      But to prevent this from being a one sided breakup post, I ask you, dear Tildos, what would you want out of a Digital Card Game? Be it a weird mechanic, playing mode, ideal platform or like this except with that, what would keep you coming back to such a game?

      11 votes

    13. What games would you consider "hidden gems"?

      ~games Ask (survey)
      A "hidden gem" is a game that is considered to be great but not well-known at all. It's something you believe deserves far more recognition and reach than it currently has. A diamond in the rough....

      A "hidden gem" is a game that is considered to be great but not well-known at all. It's something you believe deserves far more recognition and reach than it currently has. A diamond in the rough.

      Though a hidden gem certainly can be a highly polished experience, the term also allows a bit of roughness, leaving room for clunkiness or flaws on account of the game's scope and production values (hidden gems are rarely, if ever, big-budget). It also seems to place a slight premium on novelty and innovation, favoring but not requiring games to be fresh or experimental for their time.

      With this in mind, I'm curious to hear people's opinions and hopefully get some new stuff to check out for when I find myself needing to take a break from Crash and Spyro.

      • What games would you consider "hidden gems"?
      • Why do you feel they fit the criteria?
      • Why do you think they aren't more widely known?
      21 votes

    14. Mark Kern, Classic WoW dev, on why he is boycotting Blizzard

      ~games Tweet

      @grummz: This hurts. But until Blizzard reverses their decision on @blitzchungHS I am giving up playing Classic WoW, which I helped make and helped convince Blizzard to relaunch. There will be no Mark of Kern guild after all. Let me explain why I am #BoycottBlizzard

      14 votes

    16. More about scheduled topics, some group rearranging, and input needed on "content types"

      ~tildes.official Text 683 words
      A few pretty quick things to talk about today, with some input wanted on each: Scheduled/recurring topics As announced last week, the site now has native scheduled topics (which need to be...

      A few pretty quick things to talk about today, with some input wanted on each:

      Scheduled/recurring topics

      As announced last week, the site now has native scheduled topics (which need to be configured by me). There have been a couple of these posted now, with the most recent one being today's "What are you reading these days?" topic in ~books.

      Here's the schedule that I have set up right now. Times are in UTC (Pacific time is UTC-7 and Eastern is UTC-4).

      Topic Timing (UTC)
      ~talk - What are you doing this week? Monday, 15:00
      ~games - What have you been playing? Monday, 16:00
      ~tv - What have you been watching? Tuesday, 16:00
      ~anime - What have you been watching/reading this week? (Anime/Manga) Wednesday, 16:00
      ~books - What have you been reading lately? Every second Thursday, 16:00
      ~creative - What creative projects have you been working on? Every second Thursday (alternating with ~books), 16:00
      ~talk - What are you doing this weekend? Friday, 15:00
      ~music - What have you been listening to this week? Friday, 16:00

      These were all pre-existing topics that had been getting posted consistently. The timings are a bit arbitrary, but somewhere around 16:00 is usually the time the site starts getting more active each day, and I went with every 2 weeks for ~creative and ~books since I think people don't change through those as quickly.

      There are a few other topics I think would be good too, let me know what you think or if this is starting to be too many:

      One other question I wanted to ask, since I'm doing some work related to it: Is there any reason for people to still be able to post new top-level comments in old recurring threads? I'll definitely still allow posting replies to existing comments so conversations can continue, but I can't really think of a reason why anyone would need to post a new top-level comment in any thread except the newest, and may just disallow that to keep people from inadvertently posting in the old ones.

      Group rearrangements

      I deleted the three ~science subgroups (~science.formal, ~science.natural, ~science.social) and moved all the topics back into ~science. These were confusing (I had to keep checking which branch certain subjects were in), and the activity level across the science groups really isn't high enough to need 4 groups.

      I also deleted ~hobbies.automotive and moved the (very few) topics from it back into ~hobbies with an automotive tag. The group was getting less than one topic posted a week, and doesn't seem necessary yet.

      One other change I want to make but haven't yet, because I want input first: I think I'd like to move ~creative into a sub-group of ~arts. What do you think of calling it ~arts.original? Any other possible names that would work better as "content created by the poster?"

      Content types

      Finally, I've also just deployed a change that starts showing a "content type" on each topic. Currently it doesn't do anything other than get displayed in the listings, but the plan is to be able to use this for searching, filtering, and similar purposes. This will be able to cover the common requests like "I'd like a way to see only videos", and will also make some other things easier to customize (for example, there's no need to show word count on Ask topics).

      Here's the list of content types that are shown right now, but I'm fairly sure that I'm forgetting about some others:

      1. Article
      2. Ask topic
      3. Image
      4. PDF
      5. Text topic
      6. Tweet
      7. Video

      Update on Oct 11: if a type for a link topic isn't detected, it will display "Link"

      What other types of content get posted to Tildes that aren't covered in there?

      33 votes