Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[Whipstitch]

The love story was tacked on because that's what you do, and the midbattle cuts were because that's the sort of thing that theoretically makes your movie all deep and meaningful if you're lucky. They've given him (or anyone) a reason to care about Dejah Thoris saving her coincidentally saves the world or whatever, not solely because she's the stock Burrough love interest who is less interesting than Bella Swan.

I'm not sure what your point is anymore because the movie you're describing sounds like it contains a bunch of stuff that even you can't pretend to care about.

[Thaluikhain]

I'm not sure what your point is anymore because the movie you're describing sounds like it contains a bunch of stuff that even you can't pretend to care about.

More or less, yeah. The worldbuilding and conflicts of Mars is, IMHO, more important that the internal character and backstory of John Carter.

Now, I might be biased from reading the Barsoom novels (after seeing the movie, though) in which John Carter does not have an interesting personality, but goes to interesting places and does interesting things.

So, (again, IMHO) if the angsty stuff about his dead family doesn't work very well, it doesn't matter because that's just filler in between escaping from somewhere or going to a weird alien city or punching 4 armed monsters.

[Whipstitch]

I'd argue that those scenes you are calling filler aren't actually filler, they're just things that you personally don't happen to care about because you're a genre glutton who's there for the scenery. From a plotting and character development perspective the scenes we're talking about really are load bearing and that they didn't work means the film confused and annoyed a lot of people. After all, most people want to get lost in a seamless experience rather than patiently sit in the theater while the genre savvy section of their brain reassures them good stuff is coming.

Let me put it this way: John Carter needed a reason to give a fuck about staying on Mars once it became clear he could leave. The reason could have been "he's an adventurer who loves adventuring" instead of a romance but if that's the case you really want to establish that rather than present him as a despondent lone wolf who openly states that his goal is to return to Earth. Dejah and the reveal of his loss was intended to address those issues but it was so clumsy that it came across as really half-assed even though a surprising portion of the movie's 2 hour plus run time is devoted to landing that plane. Viewers could choose to ignore the problem, but the problem was definitely still there.

[Josh_Kablack]

Since GOG gave it away a few months back, I have been working through Fallout: New Vegas during my reduced work schedule. Overall the game is mixed, but wow is Dead Money is just painful.

• Trying to do survival horror is meaningless in a game that has spent dozens of hours teaching the player to save-scum. I'm not talking about the minimal rewards main game NV gives for save-scumming on the dialogue tree nor the lockpick and hacking minigames, I'm talking about the fact that the game has a full-lockup crash at least every hour (with anti-crash mod installed on a computer significantly newer than the game itself), and every two or three hours you will glitch through a floor or wall and cannot get unstuck, and some glitches involve corrupting saves files. The main game is literally unplayable if you save less often than every 20 minutes or only use a single save file, so the threat of character death in the DLC is meaningless.
• While the main game is otherwise full of choices about factions and Karma, Dead Money's choices boil down to A> continue linear plot or B>reload game from a save before you started this DLC.
• The removal of your base game equipment is supposed to make the start tougher. Instead it just makes it slower. Since ammo is scarce, you are going to melee the early enemies -- most of whom drop melee weapons to use for repair (NV's repair system is another rant). This should lead to you rationing your health -- but uh, I got the regeneration implant in the main game, so I just find a room, close the door and then go shower, or fix a sammich or something and come back 20-60 minutes of realtime later fully healed.
• OMG, does this game highlight the flaws in the game engine -- platforming elements are nearly unplayable in a 3d engine this unresponsive and the godforsaken "local map" is literally worse than the hey-we-can-do-automapping now in 1988's Bard's Tale III. I had to look up a walkthrough for a broken catwalk section because it really looked like the correct solution was to try to glitch through a wall after failing the impossible jump. (actual solution was to wander off until fully healed and then just run through the toxic cloud and traps because the jump is unlandable on my non-gaming rig)
• The environmental hazards work to discourage the sort of exploration that the main game, and indeed the entire series thrives upon.
• Um, I entered the DLC at high enough level to have max Lockpick, near max Science, near max Repair and near-Max Stealth. And my character just goes along with the "yeah sure, you put a bomb collar on me, nuthin I can do about that" plot instead of having any option at all to at least try to do something clever or sneaky about it for the first several missions. If you want to play up the horror aspect, you should have made a false-hope quest where you gather components to jam the signal only to realize that the dude what put the collars on thought of that already and needed one of those components for his plan.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Dead Money is such a lovely kick in the dick. It goes from being awful to being completely fucking hilarious if you're playing an Unarmed stealth character, too. Ghost Men aren't a problem if you hit them so hard you explode and environmental hazards are almost meaningless when you're fast enough to run past them.
You still get your head blown up, though... but that never gets old for me.

[Josh_Kablack]

It's not difficult. It's bad design that just encourages a lot of reloading and wandering AFK for long stretches.

Honestly, points in the main game scared me more, with "oh shit that Radscorpian is a GIANT radscorpian, or, "wait that's a deathclaw" or "goddamnit Victor, your stupid interruption spun me off target".

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Yeah, there's a reason I only do it with specific characters in mind.

[hyzmarca]

Dead Money is my least favorite of the DLCs. Both Honest Hearts and STOP WAVING YOUR HAND PENISES AT ME! Old World Blues are vastly superior.

[MGuy]

Are you actually playing a Bethesda game without mods?

Note: Not defending the game here but if you're having crash issues I think a lot of the breakages are taken care of through the community mods.

[Josh_Kablack]

Are you actually playing a Bethesda game without mods?

(with anti-crash mod installed on a computer significantly newer than the game itself),

I mean generally I figger by the time Good OLD Games is not merely carrying, but has given a title away as a promo, adequate patching has usually been done, but give me some credit here.

[MGuy]

Missed that bit on my first read through. Bethesda doesn't seem to care about getting rid of a lot of their games' issues and I can't imagine playing one of their games without a pretty hefty load order these days. I figured most of the 'regular' crashes would've been smoothed out with enough of'em.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

My NV mod list is over 200 mods long, and that's just the plugins.
... and the merged plugins.

... my Skyrim one is even longer.

[Prak]

Me, last year: "Personally, I think WotC should just start offering Print on Demand Magic cards, priced per rarity. If they really want to defy the accusations that booster packs are gambling and ignore the secondary market, this would be a good way to do it, and would increase access for all players. Also, no card should ever cost more than $20, excepting premium aesthetic versions of the card."

WotC, last year: "We're announcing a new product! It's called Secret Lairs! They'll be available on our website, with 24 hour duration drops for each! Each one will have special new art for classic and beloved cards!"

So... in December of 2019, WotC announced a new kind of product, Secret Lairs. They're boxes that contain some number of cards, with special new art, and the number and style of art differ from box to box. They generally run $30-$40 but outliers exist. I believe the cards are almost always foils, but I'm not sure.

This started in Dec 2019 with the announcement of the following:

• Bitterblossom Dreams (1 Bitterblossom and four matching tokens, which form a panorama when placed next to each other)
• Eldraine Wonderland (1 each foil Snow-covered basic land with Eldraine setting art)
• Restless in Peace (1 each Bloodghast, Golgari Thug and Life from the Loam in new art)
• Seeing Visions (four foil copies of Serum Visions, each with new art)
• "<explosion sounds>" (one each Goblin Bushwhacker, Goblin Sharpshooter, Goblin King, Goblin Lackey, and Goblin Piledriver, in a cartoon-y style)
• Kaleidoscope Killers (1 each foil Reaper King, Sliver Overlord and Ur Dragon, each in a sort of psychedelic style, but Justine Jones)
• OMG KITTIES! (one each Leonin Warleader, Regal Caracal, Qasali Slingers, Aharbo, Roar of the World, and Mirrir, Weatherlight Duelist in foil, and 2 Cat tokens, all in a cartoon-y style)

Each one would drop for 24 hours, consecutively, from 12-3 to 12-9. Kaleidoscope Killers and OMG KITTIES! cost $39.99 each, while the others cost $29.99.

This was followed by Year of the Rat, this past January, which contained one each special art versions of Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni; Marrow-Gnawer; Pack Rat; and five copies of Rat Colony. There were no tokens, despite Marrow-Gnawer creating tokens, and there being something of a trend of including tokens with token generator cards. The set sold for $39.99. All were foil

Then, there was the Theros Stargazing sets, vols I-V. Each volume contained one major Theros god and two minor gods, sharing the major god's color. So Vol I contains Heliod, God of the Sun, and Karametra, God of Harvests and Iroas, God of Victory. These all dropped on Feb 14, for $39.99 each, or you could buy them as a bundle of all five for $149.99. All were foil.

March 8 brought the International Women's Day secret lair, containing one each Captain Sisay; Meren of Clan Nel Toth; Narset, Enlightened Master; Oona, Queen of the Fae; and Saskia the Unyielding; for $49.99. All were foil and borderless. On the 12th, there was the Thalia--Beyond the Helvault secret lair for $29.99, which contained four foil Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, each with different art.

This month, dropped on May 7, there was a Godzilla Lands Secret Lair, which contains one each foil, full art basic land, with art depicting Godzilla (because the newset set, Ikoria, has a tie-in with the Godzilla franchise, because it's about giant monsters). This was $29.99, and the very hyped, very special "Secret Lair: Ultimate Edition," containing one each alternate art Marsh Flats, Scalding Tarn, Verdant Catacombs, Arid Mesa and Misty Rainforest. Each depicts a different plane, Lorwyn, Shiv on Dominaria, Innistrad, Amonkhet and Ixalan, respectively. When it was announced, it was ostensibly supposed to sell for "somewhere above $165" and be available through local game stores instead of on WotC's site on May 29. Then Covid happened, and this was postponed for June 12. In this time, it was revealed most stores only received four or five SLUEs, and the price was going to be anywhere from $275-500.

Finally, just today, WotC announced five Secret Lairs for June--

• Full Sleeves (one each Spell Pierce, Blood Artist, Eternal Witness, Pithing Needle and Inkmoth Nexus with traditional American flash tattoo style art), $29.99
• "Can You Feel With a Heart of Steel!" (one each foil full art Arcbound Ravager, Darksteel Colossus, and Walking Ballista, in a sort of comic book-y art style) $?
• Mountain, Go (four Lightning Bolts, each full art and foil, with different art) $?
• The Path Not Travelled (one each Ajani Steadfast, looking like he's from an X Force comic; Domri Rade, looking like a cowboy; Tamiyo, Field Resercher, looking like a pulp detective; and Vraska, Golgari Queen, dressed like high school dance royalty) All Foil $?
• Ornithological Studies (one each Swan Song, Birds of Paradise, Gilded Goose, Baleful Strix, and Dovescape, all with very realistic birds in the cards. Possible depicting actual real life birds as each of these creatures, but I don't know) $?

So... in 7 months, we've gotten 21 special premium sets, most of which are not any more accessible or affordable than just buying the singles on the secondary market. Almost none of which are announced enough in advance that people could actually budget for them, which means they are de facto intended for people with large amounts of discretionary money they can drop at nearly a moments notice on Magic cards. ie, the MTG Finance Whales.

Oh, and on April 1st, they announced the April Fools Secret Lair, containing Squire, Storm Crow, Goblin Snowman and Mudhole, each with new foil full art. It was announced as an April Fools joke, but was also said that at "some point in the future, after the COVID crisis, they would produce these cards and distribute them to WPN stores to use at their discretion.

In addition, there's been the advent of Box Toppers in booster boxes, special cards that are part of the set they're distributed with, but only available if you buy a booster box, pre-order specials and cosmetics for Arena, the master pass for Arena that costs roughly $25 for each set and if you don't buy it you get very anemic play rewards in Arena for the season, there have been more and more Masters sets which sell for upwards of $8 a pack, Collector's Boosters which sell for, like $20 each, the new Double Masters set which Amazon has up for $16.30 a pack, oh, and the fact that WotC did away with MSRP in Feb 2019.

In short... along with questionable choices in the actual design of sets, color pie decisions which seem arbitrary, the elimination of the Story entries on the WotC site so you have to buy overpriced novels which range from mediocre to outright terrible, or sets with no actual story at all (as happened in the new Theros block), and stories which outright conflict with that being depicted in the set... Magic, as a product, is fucking losing me. The environment of stores tends to be coldly neutral at best, if not actively hostile for some, Mark Rosewater fosters a reputation as being very accessible to the players, but basically is not open to anything which the company isn't already considering and to hell with your arguments. The company tries to portray itself as very progressive and open, but they're literally just trying to cash in with Rainbow Capitalism by producing only Pride products which entail literally the least possible effort (ie, shirts with their brand logos in a rainbow overlay) and will immediately squash any actual representation in their products which endanger their income (Nissa and Chandra becoming a canon WLW couple only to be canonically split up in literally the next novel in the most vomit-inducing comphet terms possible so they didn't endanger China sales, and yes, it's all but confirmed that's the reason, because the apology they issued on their site is literally not available to read from Chinese IPs).

I get it, it's a business. They want to make money, and they.... literally do not owe their customers anything beyond literally what they pay for, I suppose.

But it's incredibly alienating, and while they've gotten my money through Arena pretty reliably over the last few months, including $100 from my stimulus check so I could get the cosmetics for Ikoria, the corporate hand ever digging into my pocket to grab whatever money it can get and slowly growing to threats to grab me by the ankles and try to shake the money out of my pockets is just the start of that.

Actually, I lie. The money thing is the head. Magic's been losing me for a while, mostly because I just don't agree with the creative direction. I don't agree with Black constantly being the villainous color and White constantly being the heroic color, while they constantly claim that no one color is the villain color or hero color, and that every color has good and bad aspects. Magic as a brand invites players to form a connection to the flavor of the worlds they create, and I'm not alone in primarily identifying with Black, and least identifying with White. So that alone feels alienating. And then when people question this, Mark Rosewater will respond with "We've had non-black villains. Nahiri is a villain. The Consulate (from Kaladesh) are villains. Dovin Baan is a villain. And we've had Black heroes. Yahenni is a hero."

Except... Nahiri is not a white character. Sure, her cards are Red White, but they're literally only White because she is a Kor, and Kor are a white race. The Consulate hardly features on page in the Kaladesh story, and it's almost entirely played off as Dovin and Baral are the villains. Dovin is Blue-White, and is probably the best example of a White aligned villain in recent Magic history. But... he is not depicted as a villain in the actual Kaladesh story. Baral is a mono-Blue character, who is... basically prejudice against pyromancers. You could make an argument that he should be Blue-White, because ostensibly he hates pyromancers because he sees them as harmful to others, but honestly, he's a Blue-Black character, because he is entirely motivated by his own hatred and ignores both morality and law to do whatever the fuck he wants, including an actual secret prison. And he's being egged on by Tezzeret, a Blue-Black villain. Oh, and Yahenni is... a Mono-Black vampire Aetherborn (the Black race they made for Kaladesh because they felt Zombies didn't fit), and... very neutral. It's like saying the mercenary you hired to overthrow the capitalist hegemony is a hero because you hired him. And then there's the problem of Aetherborn. I like them! I really do! But they're not Black! They are a short-lived race which spring out of the Aether fully adult, and live in a state of constant hedonism and emotion. They're RED. They're not even undead to justify being Black! Some are just able to drain life force and thus, in the cards, have the Vampire type.

The closest Magic has gotten to an actual White villain in recent history is probably Heliod, the Therosian god of light. Who's... just Zeus minus all the rape. He's arrogant and corrupt and prideful. But sure, there is a White villain in recent Magic. Compared to roughly 47 million Black villains (ok, I exaggerate, but...)

And then WotC stopped publishing the story online, and wanted people to buy novels. And the first one to come out was the novel for War of the Spark, written by Greg Weisman, and which handled the giant crossover of 36 different planeswalkers fighting the big climactic Avengers Endgame-level final battle against Nicol Bolas worse than Endgame handled their's.. Which... goddamned. When your story is worse than Endgame? Oh. And it discarded the vastly popular character development of Jace from the Ixalan story, and it ignored Jace and Vraska's relationship. And it said that Vraska recovered the memories she asked Jace to lock away for her, in a moment of amazing trust between them, denying us the moment that was set up in the Ixalan story, and greatly anticipated, where Jace would literally call out to his captain, Vraska, unlocking her memories from Ixalan, so she could join the fight against Nicol Bolas. It ludicrously depicted characters completely out of character (having the pacifist Karn fighting, for example) or literally just name dropped planeswalkers to jam them into the story that was required to name check 36 goddamned planeswalkers. Oh. And the story picked up pretty much at the moment of Nicol Bolas taking over, rather than showing any of the actual lead up, which, again, we were anticipating.

Then there was the novel's second part, Forsaken. Which featured the one, major, canon gay couple, Nissa and Chandra, breaking up for literally no reason, and Chandra questioning her sexuality, saying she'd always been interested in "Decidedly Male" men (literally the novel's words), like Gideon who the story has always portrayed as more of a big brother to her.

And then there was the ever-increasing money-grubbing, making the game cater more and more to the people who are literally the most harmful to it, the MTG Finance people and the Whales.

So... well, it's Wizards. I don't know why I expect anything.

[GreatGreyShrike]

Hey, you're missing out on some other "high" points about recent WOTC decisions - the company has fucked up in a lot more ways than just the financial and pricing models and story decisions...

IMO, current Standard MTG is a dumpster fire of unfun repetitive garbage; a large part of this is because of the influence of Ikoria's Companion mechanic, which was a terrible decision for a game like magic. However, in addition there are multiple mechanics (e.g. fires, lukka, winota) that allow you to cheat out big things much earlier / for free, so the game basically doesn't allow for 'normal' grindy decks or whatever - if you aren't stealing 2+ permanants (including lands) on turn 4-5, or straight up killing your opponent outright on turn 4-5, then you don't matter and have lost the game - and a lot of the "game" between the best decks boils down to the person who goes first doing their broken shit first and winning on the spot without counterplay being possible. T3feri invalidates multiple whole archetypes from the game from mattering and reduces the game to Hearthstone for the opponent when he's on the field, which means that the 'normal' solution to a metagame like this one - of countering the absurd bullshit - doesn't work.

Another complaint: Ikoria wasn't a great set thematically. In actual play, the things that have stood out as actually good and worth playing are basically the overpowered companions and also Lukka's cheating out bullshit. The set was sold as "Giant Monster Set", and, well... I have seen at least one analysis on another site that used spreadsheets to prove that Ikoria had a slightly above average number of giant monsters compared to other recent sets. Frankly, I think that if the key theme and image of the set needs a spreadsheet to detect whether it's there or not, someone has completely failed.

---

I can't imagine being willing to put money into MTG right now. However, the one unambiguously good thing WOTC has done recently is implement human drafting for Arena. If you would enjoy human drafting on Arena, you might consider learning to draft / getting good at drafting, then drafting sets hard enough to never need to spend money on the game. I learned to draft playing Arena (first drafting experience, ever) and I hit ~60% winrate in BO1 human draft in Ikoria. I completed my collection of Ikoria rares and have ~50% of the Ikoria mythics etc, and a reserve of ~20 mythic and ~25 rare wildcards, along with >6k gems left, without spending money on the game. This did require some time overhead investment in learning initially, e.g. listening to Lords of Limited podcast.

[Prak]

I actually hate human drafting on Arena. I prefer my bot drafts. In fact... human opponents at all are a compromise I make for being able to play Magic on my computer. Now, granted, I'm a miserable hermit. But I prefer my solo player games, and the only reason I play Arena is because they've limited human interaction to five basic messages, and I can mute my opponent when they start spamming "Your go" or "Good game."

I didn't speak on the Standard meta, because I'm nearly completely divorced from it. I play Arena, I go on once or twice a day at most, do my wizard chores, maybe try out a new deck idea, and usually I get tired of it within seven games. And I absolutely never play traditional (best of three), both because I get bored quickly when an opponent has already caved my head in with whatever bullshit deck they're playing, and because my hrt and diet of caffeine mean that if I suddenly need to pee in the middle of a game, I don't want to have to wait for two more matches.

[Kaelik]

Giant Monster Icoria Set is literally a set where the metagame is 100% dominated by a 2/3 card and a bunch of decks built around a 1 and 2 drops and a 3/2.

What a colossal failure.

[Mistborn]

Personally I've never understood why people are so attached to dumb directionless decks midrange decks. If interacting with people is that important play a control deck. Far as I'm concerned if decks need a clear synergistic gameplan to succeed that's good design.

[...You Lost Me]

Personally I've never understood why people are so attached to dumb directionless decks midrange decks. If interacting with people is that important play a control deck. Far as I'm concerned if decks need a clear synergistic gameplan to succeed that's good design.

I just wanna play smashy creatures, get some value, and beat aggro decks without the game going to turn 20.

Related to MtG being a trash fire, Wizards has announced an update to the B&R list "that will also address the Companion mechanic."

Here's hoping we see fewer Agents of Treachery and Lurrus. Lord knows I'm sick of them.

[Whipstitch]

Personally I've never understood why people are so attached to dumb directionless decks midrange decks. If interacting with people is that important play a control deck. Far as I'm concerned if decks need a clear synergistic gameplan to succeed that's good design.

From your prior MTG posts I get this strong sense that you can no longer relate to casuals who don't have the good cards memorized and a deep well of metagaming experience to draw upon. It may hit you as inelegant but there's actually a number of people out there who would rather look at a complicated board state and perform triage than engage in staring contests with some guy who keeps a third of his land untapped every turn and has instants for every occasion.

[Foxwarrior]

The best "looking at a board state and perform triage" deck I ever made was one where I'd get out like five artifacts or so and then go "there's probably an infinite combo here somewhere, I just have to figure out what it is." It wasn't very "interactive" though.

[OgreBattle]

Midsommar's got a strikingly bigoted setup, it feels like how Indiana Jones depicts blood sacrifice Hindoos.

Last of Us gets accused of being dirty liberal propaganda but... the Big Feels climax of the first game is murdering the scientists because you're a Freedom Gun American Saving the Kids. The sequel has barely any zombie horror and all the heroes look like the people bringing guns to "FREE AMERICA fro lockdown" rallies

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Last of Us gets accused of being dirty liberal propaganda but... the Big Feels climax of the first game is murdering the scientists because you're a Freedom Gun American Saving the Kids.

Yeah, that was indisputably a bad thing with context. The second game specifically takes a huge, steaming shit on Joel for doing that.

[Kaelik]

Last of Us gets accused of being dirty liberal propaganda but... the Big Feels climax of the first game is murdering the scientists because you're a Freedom Gun American Saving the Kids.

Yeah, that was indisputably a bad thing with context. The second game specifically takes a huge, steaming shit on Joel for doing that.

I cannot speak to the second game, but I'm really not sure it was.

You have a person who is potentially the only human being in the universe who can lead to a cure for the zombie virus. Do you:

A) Immediately murder them so you can vivisect them.
B) Do nothing because you hate humanity.
C) I don't know, try a blood sample first? Do a non murderous biopsy and study it for a bit? Literally anything that doesn't terminate your sole possible cure?

Is there any reason to really believe these random scientists could be sure their murder would lead to a cure? Is there any evidence they made a reasonable decision about trying non murder methods first that might give them more information?

They seem to know literally nothing about how she is immune, they don't have a working theory or anything. There are clearly some steps they could take that might help in not murdering her and even if they didn't any competent set of researchers would do before hand in part because the maximize the chances of actually finding out what is going on if you do eventually have to vivisect her.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I completely agree with everything you said, but I think the writers disagreed. Or maybe they're just really into misery porn.

[Leress]

Another MTG complaint: They got rid of Planeswalker decks, just when they were doing thing to make not completely horrible (the same can be said about Duel Decks) then end up stopping it.