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TwinIon last won the day on November 27 2018
TwinIon had the most liked content!
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3,122 ExcellentAbout TwinIon
- Birthday 05/31/20
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General Gaming Balatro is fantastic, update: 1 million copies sold
TwinIon replied to Biggie's topic in The Spawn Point
I'm such an idiot. I completely didn't recognize that x2 mult was different from +2 mult. I my mind mult was already multiplicative, it didn't register that some cards actually multiply your multiple. I got my first legendary joker that required twenty something discards before it would give x5 and thought, wow, that's a high requirement for a measly 5 mult. Still, I didn't find anything better for a while and when it unlocked I realized how it worked and now I feel like a moron, but those crazy high scores now feel much more doable. -
General Gaming Balatro is fantastic, update: 1 million copies sold
TwinIon replied to Biggie's topic in The Spawn Point
I kind of wish you could see some of the score before you play the hand. Obviously RNG elements shouldn't be taken into account, but having a base number would be nice. I have a simple excel sheet that I've started putting numbers into because I wasn't really sure what the play was. Like when I have the joker that duplicates another joker, not sure if I should duplicate the effect that gives me more chips or more mult. I understand why it isn't there, but I do feel silly whipping out excel to optimize this silly card game. I don't know about you all, but my "endless" runs have all ended pretty abruptly not long after they start. I've had a few runs where I knew I could sail through and "win" after Ante 3 or 4, so I'd slow play every round trying to maximize everything. I just did the challenge where you start with jokers for "every card is a face card" and "every face card has a 1 in 2 chance of paying out 1 dollar", which translated to infinite money. By the time I won nearly every card in my ~65 card deck were enhanced hearts, with about 30 of them being foil (+50 chips) +4 mult aces (a bunch with red stickers), with another 10 foil kings and ~15 +30 chip cards. My jokers gave me continually rising mults for every flush and tarrot played and +30 chips for every face card (which was all of them thanks to the challenge). I was actually struggling to play worse hands in order to trigger more effects every round, because I could easily win every round with my opening draw every time. I bought everything in the shop every round, buffing my hand types and looking for any joker with higher potential than what I had. All of that and I still maxed out at something over 100k per hand, which was guaranteed every hand. So when I got to the $1M boss blind, there was no chance. My other runs where I sailed through to the "win" screen similarly ended in that crazy 300k/500k/1M section. I know people have gotten some crazy scores, so I'm guessing that I just haven't unlocked some jokers that really allow for more exponential progression, because my linearly scaling methods just don't seem to cut it. Those 1M hand and 100M hand achievements seem way out of reach with what I've seen in the game so far. TL:DR - I'm enjoying trying to optimize this game. There is a beautiful mix of simplicity and depth that makes Balatro's success so well deserved. -
PC “You a—holes”: Court docs reveal Tim Epic's anger at Steam’s 30% fees
TwinIon replied to Jason's topic in The Spawn Point
The business model for consoles is significantly different than it is for general computing platforms. There are very different market forces at work that do more to justify 30% take for a Switch game than a PC game. I feel like between the Epic v Apple case and all the discussion around the DMA in the EU that this has been litigated to death, but if you can't differentiate those models, that's on you. I also never said that Valve should give up on their revenue, and I don't think that anyone has been suggesting that. However, it seems rather obvious that they are able to maintain that cut because they run an effective monopoly. Monopolies are not necessarily built from unfair conditions, so this not an indictment, just an observation that Valve now controls what is broadly considered to be a monopoly share of the PC gaming distribution market (70%+). It would take either a huge market shift or regulation to change that in the short run, but monopolies are considered bad for consumers for a reason, and to dismiss those effects here is silly. -
PC “You a—holes”: Court docs reveal Tim Epic's anger at Steam’s 30% fees
TwinIon replied to Jason's topic in The Spawn Point
Yeah, I agree with that. If you're bringing in more revenue, you have the leverage to make a better deal. -
PC “You a—holes”: Court docs reveal Tim Epic's anger at Steam’s 30% fees
TwinIon replied to Jason's topic in The Spawn Point
Apple based their 30% cut on the horrific carrier controlled app distribution of the early 00s and Valve based theirs off of the cost of physical distribution. At the time, neither was really a bad deal. Now that digital distribution has become the norm it's basically unjustifiable for that high of a cut to become standard and the only reason that fees have remained that high is monopoly control. If you're selling a product outside of one of those monopolies, fees go down very quickly. Etsy runs a store, and their fee is 6.5%+payment processing, so call it 10%. On Squarespace once you're paying them more than $23/month the transaction fees go to zero and you're only paying the 3% payment processing fee. If you're only paying for their cheapest plan, then their fee is 10% (which includes payment processing). Those are imperfect comparisons and I'm well aware that Steam offers a bit more value than just a website, but it's not 27% more value. Sweeney and Epic aren't saints and I'm not necessarily defending them, but these fees are way higher than they should be and I think it's bad for consumers that they've persisted for so long. -
General Gaming Balatro is fantastic, update: 1 million copies sold
TwinIon replied to Biggie's topic in The Spawn Point
This game is perfect for the steam deck, though it seems like it would be great on the iPad as well. My best and most fun runs so far have relied on the "+1 mult for every Tarrot card played" joker. In both runs I had that effect duplicated, and then I built up different ways to play as many as possible. Having a guaranteed 200x mult is pretty good, plus playing all those cards meant basically every card in my deck was enhanced. It's also just more fun to play as many cards as possible. I just unlocked the challenges. Some of them look like a pretty good head start and some of them look pretty hard. Overall the game is really great. It's simple and clever and seems like it'll have plenty of replay value. -
Not a lot of surprises and a pretty meh show overall, not that I expected much from Jimmy. I enjoyed the Mulaney bit, Cena coming out naked was a good laugh, but it's hard to deny that "I'm Just Ken" was the highlight of the show. I expected Lily Gladstone to win, but I think Emma Stone was a more deserving. Very happy for Nolan to win Picture and Director. He's great for cinema and Oppenheimer is as deserving a winner as any. I personally would have given the trophy to Spider-Verse, but the first one did win and I think there's a good chance at them winning with the next entry (though I didn't realize it was a different directing team). I just can't feel bad about Miyazaki winning, even if Boy and the Heron isn't my favorite of his. I have never really grasped the metric that Visual Effects is judged on. I loved Godzilla Minus One, and the effects they were able to achieve with that budget are astounding. I can't feel bad about them winning an award, but they were not the most impressive of the year. Also, it's BS that the Academy did a little clip show about stunt guys and how they risk their lives and how essential their work is in the same show where they bring up that the first new category in 20 years is "achievement in casting." I think casting is extremely important, and it might be a round about way for blockbusters to get some credit for their amazing casts. I can just imagine the casting director getting an Oscar for Iron Man while the performance goes unrecognized. Still, stunt guys should have been at the top of the list if they're adding categories. Not only that, but they should retroactively give out awards. Back up a dump truck of overdue statues for Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise, and all the guys whose names we don't know.
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And they're unbanned thanks to the EU. I'm open to the idea that Apple should ban Epic for deliberately breaking the rules, but Apple's decision made it seem like it was largely based on Epic's comments on Apple, which is not good at all.
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