Nephrited's recent activity
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Comment on The results of the 2019 Census in ~tildes
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk
Nephrited Link ParentIn my case I've seen quite the opposite. Topics on Tildes are somewhat predictable, and while that's not a bad thing, I don't feel the need or desire to contribute basically...ever. It is what it is.In my case I've seen quite the opposite. Topics on Tildes are somewhat predictable, and while that's not a bad thing, I don't feel the need or desire to contribute basically...ever. It is what it is.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk
Nephrited Link ParentA lot of the early posters, myself included, have dropped off. I still lurk, but I don't even log in these days. Logged in just to comment this. When my browser forgets this cookie, I probably...A lot of the early posters, myself included, have dropped off. I still lurk, but I don't even log in these days.
Logged in just to comment this. When my browser forgets this cookie, I probably won't be logged back in again for another few months.
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Comment on What is your favourite light theme? in ~comp
Nephrited Link ParentThe human eye is just fine with looking at the lux levels that come out of a screen, and using light themes is in many cases actually better for your eyes than dark. The idea that light themes are...The human eye is just fine with looking at the lux levels that come out of a screen, and using light themes is in many cases actually better for your eyes than dark. The idea that light themes are automatically bad for your eyes is pure nonsense, it depends on where and how you're using your screens.
I'm mobile and unwilling to do my usual full on spiel explaining it, but the summary version is thus:
Am a UX designer as a significant portion of my job. The issue that hurts your eyes is contrast, not light coloured pixels. If you're in a bright environment you want a light theme. If you're in a dark one, you want a dark theme. If you can, at home, setup bias lighting for your screens, it will massively reduce eye strain.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes
Nephrited Link ParentLinks cease to work for one of four reasons: The link has been manually deleted by an admin. You've been banned from the server being linked to. The link's time limit has been reached. The link's...Links cease to work for one of four reasons:
- The link has been manually deleted by an admin.
- You've been banned from the server being linked to.
- The link's time limit has been reached.
- The link's user cap has been reached.
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Comment on Which subscriptions do you consider to be worth their cost? in ~talk
Nephrited Link ParentGSuite is somewhat famously exempt from data mining, largely because it's Google's "regulations compliant" service. See: https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=enGSuite is somewhat famously exempt from data mining, largely because it's Google's "regulations compliant" service. See: https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=en
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Comment on Any D&D players on here? in ~games.tabletop
Nephrited LinkBeen DMing games for 20-odd years now! One of my highest voted comments on Tildes is about D&D ^^Been DMing games for 20-odd years now! One of my highest voted comments on Tildes is about D&D ^^
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Comment on Apex Legends in ~games
Nephrited Link ParentI loved the smart pistol dearly. It still took skill to use, but it was a different kind of skill to aiming. Easy to counter too, but Respawn ultimately took it away in order to streamline...I loved the smart pistol dearly. It still took skill to use, but it was a different kind of skill to aiming.
Easy to counter too, but Respawn ultimately took it away in order to streamline gameplay in the second game.
Peacekeeper and the epic choke is great.
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Comment on Emoji don't mean what they used to - The pictorial language has moved away from ideography and toward illustration in ~humanities
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Comment on Emoji don't mean what they used to - The pictorial language has moved away from ideography and toward illustration in ~humanities
Nephrited Link ParentNope, that's the whole of the message meaning. You understood it! Job done.Nope, that's the whole of the message meaning. You understood it!
Job done.
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Comment on Apex Legends in ~games
Nephrited Link ParentMostly true, there are some exceptions though. The passives can be quite strong and used to gain intel without your opponents knowing. Bloodhound and Wraith's passives give intel on your opponents...They do succeed in making a decent game out of it. The abilities of the heroes are subtle and have very tight application. No skill can be triggered without audio-visual feedback so you can't use a skill to gain information or advantage without an opponent knowing about it.
Mostly true, there are some exceptions though. The passives can be quite strong and used to gain intel without your opponents knowing. Bloodhound and Wraith's passives give intel on your opponents near constantly with no indication, Pathfinder gives information on the map (with some interaction time), and Caustic's passive gives intel without necessarily telling your opponents (although it's obvious enough if you know how he works).
The only bad side of the game is it's gunplay. Aiming is ...weird. I can never seem to align the gun properly with the enemy despite never having problems with that in games ranging from ArmA 3 to R6 and OW.
I could not disagree more with pretty much all of the rest of this though. Apex is based on the source engine, the same as Titanfall 2 and Team Fortress 2. If you can aim in either of those games, you can aim in Apex. For PC users have a fiddle with your mouse settings. I always recommend a single wide movement should rotate the camera 180 degrees.
The shotguns are pretty much all useless, they have no stopping power and unless the enemy is literally in front of you, you might as well shoot with foam darts.
The shotguns are far from useless, but they are designed to be used as health shredders at close range. The Peacekeeper in particular is good for removing chunks of armour, with the trade off being the long reload time between shots, with their range improving dramatically if you can get a choke addon for the weapon.
On the other end of the spectrum are the snipers (one of which seems to be capable of one-hit-down an enemy with 4 shields) and the energy LMG (which has an insane DPS output once it has fully charged).
The sniper rifles are only useful with scopes, and even then, weapons like the triple take that do high damage need to be scoped for a duration before they do their max damage.
Assuming armour the one-hit-kill is possible from only one weapon in very specific circumstances - the legendary sniper rifle, which has limited ammo that can't be refilled (10 shots iirc), and even then, it has to be a headshot on a player that isn't wearing a helmet.
On a player who isn't wearing armour, the following weapons will one-shot kill:
- Kraber
- Triple Take (Headshot)
- Longbow (Headshot)
- Mastiff
- Peacekeeper
You really really want armour, and you really REALLY want a helmet.
The LMG you're referring to is the Devotion, which has an insane DPS (over 250, not counting the odd headshot), but has a considerable windup and heavy heavy recoil that needs compensating for. Not to mention an insane reload time.
I think they should also decrease the time between area-reductions, it feels like there is a lot of downtime in the early game and it could remove some pressure from early chokepoints.
If you feel like there's downtime early on, land in zones with better gear. More competition, better loot, and more action! It's the way to win games too.
You can get more of a feel for the weapons in the training area, all of them show up after Bloodhound has finished his bit, and you can experiment on the targets to work out range and damage and spread etc. I spent 30 mins or so going through them all last week to work out how they all played before diving back into the game.
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Comment on Apex Legends in ~games
Nephrited LinkI typed this out for some people in Discord a few days ago, it's valid enough to be copy pasted here: I've got like 50+ hours in the game already, 30 of which are since I said the above. AMA!I typed this out for some people in Discord a few days ago, it's valid enough to be copy pasted here:
Apex is interesting because Respawn made it from the base Titanfall gameplay. (Source engine no less.)
There's class based gameplay, but classes that don't differ in potential damage output - you have to be able to actually use their abilities in order for the selection to actually matter.
The weapons are straight out of Titanfall, recoil patterns and all. I can aim with the VK-47 Flatline and I know the mouse movement to just cancel the recoil (I used it a lot in Titanfall 2, after they got rid of my beloved Smart Pistol). The damage doesn't have falloff, only spread, so if you hit, you know the damage you're going to be dealing, and there's bullet travel time and drop, all of which not only make your weapons predictable but massively raise the skill ceiling for the game.
The ultimate abilities are universally not ultimate. They aren't a press-button-win-fight mechanic like in other class based games, which is extremely positive.
The movement mechanics are Titanfall's in their entirety, with the sad exception of wall-running and the double jump (alas, the Legends are not pilots). This makes getting around extremely fluid, coupled with the ability to quickly reposition using ziplines and the scout balloons.
The respawn mechanic is key. It changes the way a BR game plays, from being "Can we win this fight optimally so we have maximum health for the next fight and the next fight, and the next fight" to being "Can we win this fight?". This encourages risks and combat feels less daunting as a result, as you only need one of your team to get away.
There is forced squad play (3 per squad, no solo players) but you don't need to actually talk if you don't want to. The ping system is incredibly comprehensive, ranging from "I'm going this way" and "Enemy Sighted" all the way to "Sniper scope here, Level 2" and "Someone's been here", with on-screen data fed to all players. The voice lines are varied, your character has a dozen ways to say the same thing, and most importantly, this means the pings are automatically localised, which for EU players reduces the inherent issue with language when attempting to normally communicate in these games.
It even goes a step further by allowing you to automatically convert speech to text, or enable TTS, so you don't have to hear other players (and just read their transcribed voices) or type (dictate and send as text) if you don't want to.
It's not just the combination of these features that makes it a unique BR game, all of these features are unique to any of the mainstream games. (To my knowledge)
tl;dr; Respawn are really really really good at making shooters.
I've got like 50+ hours in the game already, 30 of which are since I said the above. AMA!
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Comment on Emoji don't mean what they used to - The pictorial language has moved away from ideography and toward illustration in ~humanities
Nephrited (edited )Link ParentUrgh. Even your phone isn't displaying them all correctly (I'm curious how old it is / how far behind on updates you are). What I assume you're seeing as a shrug and a female symbol is actually...Urgh.
Even your phone isn't displaying them all correctly (I'm curious how old it is / how far behind on updates you are). What I assume you're seeing as a shrug and a female symbol is actually the woman shrugging emoji. Even Windows displays all of them to an understandable degree (although it substitutes the flags for the country codes).
Windows.
And if you can't work it out with that filled in bit of information you're being deliberately obtuse.
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Comment on Emoji don't mean what they used to - The pictorial language has moved away from ideography and toward illustration in ~humanities
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Comment on Emoji don't mean what they used to - The pictorial language has moved away from ideography and toward illustration in ~humanities
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes
Nephrited Link ParentI never responded to this because I couldn't think of a way you can do anything. I don't like arguing online much. It never goes anywhere, because the kind of people who like to continually engage...- Exemplary
I never responded to this because I couldn't think of a way you can do anything. I don't like arguing online much. It never goes anywhere, because the kind of people who like to continually engage aren't kind of people who admit when they're wrong, or can be swung by discussion, and you're very forceful with your arguments, so I'm scared of saying anything that could potentially be disagreed with.
This is a problem on Reddit as well which is why I only comment there once every two or three months at best. When the site goes public shortly, that'll probably me wiping my hands of it. I don't feel like it's worked out.
I'm wiping my comment history of most of my comments shortly as it is. Just in case I've said anything objectionable to the masses.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes
Nephrited Link ParentYou're genuinely the reason I tend to read and not comment. I'm terrified of you, and you're everywhere, so I'm nowhere. It takes something I'm reasonably invested in to make me speak on the site...You're genuinely the reason I tend to read and not comment. I'm terrified of you, and you're everywhere, so I'm nowhere. It takes something I'm reasonably invested in to make me speak on the site these days. :P
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Comment on Any advice for a first time DM? in ~games.tabletop
Nephrited Link ParentThe books I can understand, but the character sheet and dice? You're missing out!The books I can understand, but the character sheet and dice? You're missing out!
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Comment on Any advice for a first time DM? in ~games.tabletop
Nephrited Link ParentI do actually have a no-electronics rule at my tables, but a lot of new DMs and players don't like that particular bit of advice, so I toned it down a little!I do actually have a no-electronics rule at my tables, but a lot of new DMs and players don't like that particular bit of advice, so I toned it down a little!
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Comment on Any advice for a first time DM? in ~games.tabletop
Nephrited (edited )LinkNote: I've been DMing about 20 years (help me I want to be a PC again), so I have a lot more to add. Feel free to ask anything D&D related, I probably have an opinion on it! My general advice to...- Exemplary
Note: I've been DMing about 20 years (help me I want to be a PC again), so I have a lot more to add. Feel free to ask anything D&D related, I probably have an opinion on it!
My general advice to new DMs is to run a test adventure that has a fixed end-point at the end of the mission. When that mission ends, the campaign is over, characters are scrapped, and the players and the DM set up the PROPER campaign and characters from there.
This allows the players and DM to experiment, with the knowledge that they're not going to mess up the game for good, and it makes it a lot easier on everyone that's involved. It's important to not carry the PCs and such over to the new game, so that nobody who didn't carry the character over feels like they're being left out, and to allow that sense of "Ok, that was the test run. Now for the REAL campaign." This is what the premade characters are really good for in the starter pack.
I always do it for new players as well, run one of these demo test sessions, before inviting them to the real game, as it were.
Another piece of...often backwards sounding advice is not to ask the players for advice on how they thought the game was run after a session. You can ask if they had fun or not, and that's what matters, but the player side of the table is very different from the DM side, and player feedback is generally very unhelpful when it comes to improving how you run a game, and it can get confusing if you try to work with it.
The best way to tailor a game for your players is, at the start the campaign, cycle through a few different mission types. Do a dungeon crawl. Do an urban exploration. Do a political mystery. Focus on combat, then RP. See what your players engage with the most, and use that knowledge to help you target the games feel for them.
Take notes on everything the players do and interact with, if possible. If they bump into an NPC named Jim who the players are rude to, make a note of that. Bring him back. It builds the world into something more whole and realistic. I personally go overboard and quickly plan out entire NPC profiles in the few seconds before a player starts to talk to an NPC, but that's excessive. Just making things up on the fly should do, as long as you make notes of them.
Don't be afraid to fudge the dice rolls behind your screen. Your objective isn't to kill all the players, it's to let them have fun. If a giant monster just rolled a critical hit on the wizard on turn one of combat that would kill the wizard...maybe...don't let that happen. Obviously the players need to be able to be hurt, but sometimes a player death just isn't fun for anyone, especially not at the very start of a campaign. Remember, it's not you vs the players, it's a collaborative story effort.
On that note, the rules are more like guidelines, and as the DM you have total control over the rules. I personally discourage rulebooks at the table, but if you do allow them, remind your players that what you say goes, regardless. If you accidentally fluff a rule and they correct you on it, say something like "Okay, we'll do that next time, but it'll hold for now" or even "Ah okay, let's fix that", but don't allow them to dictate the game.
While on the subject of rules, an excellent (maybe even official) guide is that players can choose one D&D supplement to use, so a character can be made using the Players Handbook and one other book of the players choice. This helps keep things simple, and stops people flicking through a ton of books at the table, at least for new players. Obviously experienced players can negotiate this with you, the DM, at a later date!
And don't be afraid to tell them to get off their phones!
There's literally half a dozen of us! Woo!
I didn't participate in the survey though, as I'm not longer an active user of the site. I just like to check in sometimes.