Some people sell their code packs online, though I guess it could be risky.

I’m basically in TCG Live to practice the game and to figure out how a deck is working before sleeving up in paper.

TCG Pocket is just a fun diversion. 2 free packs a day is like little dopamine hits, for better or worse. I can let my nieces and nephews “rip” a pack open as a reward without thinking “that’s $4 gone.”

TCG Live is for people who actually care about Pokemon TCG and the complexities and depth it offers. It’s not that confusing; there are maybe 3 currencies, and one of its features, like it or not, is that you can’t just swipe a credit card and get everything you want. The only money-to-game translation is buying IRL boosters and scanning in the codes. Yes, the app can be fairly buggy, but it’s what we’ve got for now, ever since they closed Pokemon TCG Online. It doesn’t have trading, which is to prevent people from just having a dozen accounts and amassing all the value into one.

The currencies aren’t too bad: Coins are for cosmetics. Crystals are the “premium” currency for unlocking the battle pass or buying the equivalent of IRL sealed products (boosters, display packs, bundles, etc). Credits are like dust from other TCGs. Duplicate cards beyond 4 are “dusted” and you can convert them into the singles you want for deck building.

TCG Pocket is to slowly attract people into collecting actual cards again. After you get into the cadence of opening your 2 free packs a day, people might start to be interested in collecting physical cards, which pulls them into paying for boosters (rather than just buying singles) and trying the actual card game. It’s just a small bonus that TCGPocket might also earn them a bit of money, largely off of old art and minimal playtest work.

Aggression should be part of a game, but shouldn’t be the only way to play it. Obviously, when a game is optimized, it may be the best way to play (Monster Hunter and HAME speedruns come to mind), but a lot of great games try to design so that different archetypes can coexist and play off one another.

Street Fighter 6 encourages aggression. The Drive Meter system makes it so that turtling and blocking forever will end with you in blowout, taking chip damage and having worse frame disadvantage, as well as removing your ability to use Drive moves and opening you up for stuns. However, also hidden within the Drive System are some of the tools to deter mindless aggression. Drive Impacts are big moves with armor that lead into a full combo, so if you can read a braindead attack sequence, you can Drive Impact to absorb a hit, smack them, and then combo them for 35% of their life total. There are also parries, which can refill your drive meter.

Magic: The Gathering has tried to balance the various archetypes (Aggro, Midrange, Control, and Combo) so that every format should have at least 1 competitively viable deck in each meta archetype. Typically, Aggro will be too fast for a Control deck to stabilize and kill them before they can get their engine set up. But Midrange will trade just efficiently enough (with good 2-for-1 removal or creatures) to stop the aggression, and then start plopping out creatures that Aggro will have difficulty overcoming. And Combo often has nothing to fear from Aggro, since Aggro oftentimes can’t interact with the game-winning combo pieces. And because of this system, Aggro decks have to have sideboard plans ready for whatever meta they expect at an event or tournament. Removal or protection to get over or under Midrange, and faster speed or other types of interaction to take down or disrupt Combo. Magic’s systems (Mana/lands, instant speed removal, and even the variance that comes from being a card game) don’t punish aggro directly, but they make sure that there are usually answers out there.

Good sound design in games makes playing the game a reward in itself!

It’s a real shame; Irvine has lots of great food, and it’s another large east-Asian population center within the LA-OC metro area, but it’s also so staunchly Republican that I can’t stand to watch local news down there.

That’s nothing against the university, though. I have family who got their degrees there, and I even took summer classes on campus once. I dig the school and it was my fallback when I applied for colleges (back when it was possible to have a fallback).

This week has been a bit of UFO 50 and Terra Memoria.

UFO 50 hasn’t hooked me with a single specific game yet, but the entire package together is incredibly compelling and fun. It’s just neat to hop in, play half an hour of a game that makes me think back to playing on my dad’s NES, and then put it down for something else, much like how I played when I was 5 or 6.

I’m still very early on in Terra Memoria, but I think it’s pretty neat! I like the combat system as they’ve introduced it so far, and it looks like there will be a lot of depth and choices to make in combat or team-building (maybe). Something about turn-based RPGs feel perfectly suited for the Deck.

PLEASE revive Inbox!

I’ve subscribed to Shortwave to help bundle and manage my emails, but it’s not quite as clean as Inbox was.

I like the game, and I sure hope I’m a person.

This is a community for people who enjoy Deadlock, and if you dislike seeing it, you can always block it.

The Chromecast with Google TV^™

Bought it, gonna give it a shot tonight. I remember hearing about this while on a bus to class maybe 7 years ago, and even though I wasn’t a Spelunky guy, I wanted this thing immediately. Derek Yu seems to have a pretty good handle on how to make a compelling game, so I’m looking forward to seeing this collaborative project.

I believe Erdogan (and Turkey in general) were big players in getting the wheat trade deal settled, as well as the prisoner exchange, though I could be misremembering. It’s just a weird situation of Erdogan having a history of centralizing power, but also making moves to be more relevant on the global stage.

Is it covert if you know it’s happening and have agreed to it?

Why is this a news article? Why is this posted to this community? It’s a well written article, but it carries no new news, and is just an article by the author of a book that’s about to go on sale.

This game gave me my first real experience of melancholy. A sort of bittersweet sadness, born of what was and what could have been.

To the Moon is an awesome little narrative. One of the games that reminded me that there’s room to feel feelings in games. And the main theme song (I think performed by Laura Shigihara?) is one of my favorite pieces of music to come from a game.

It still exists, but a lot of communities shut down after official matchmaking was implemented.

Back in the golden days of community servers, it sure as heck didn’t.

Maybe I’m crazy entitled, but I feel like if I’m spending a few hundred dollars on this piece of hardware, I shouldn’t have to pay an additional fee to get some of its basic built-in features to work well.

Not quite the full history. Poggers was based on PogChamp. PogChamp was a Twitch emote, of Street Fighter player/content creator Gootecks from when he and Mike Ross did a silly video bit playing pogs by dropping a fight stick on it.

PogChamp was used a ton on Twitch (and other creators made their own versions of the face), until Gootecks kinda got problematic with his remarks on Jan 6th (and other stuff like alternative health and COVID disbelief). I think they replaced his face with a number of other reactions that also fit the bill?

Embracer doesn’t really make a game good or bad. The harm they’ve brought to the industry has more to do with their acquisition of studios and then closing them down after realizing they’ve overextended themselves. In the early days, they were looked at as a potential boon to the industry, offering pay stability for studios with their size, but obviously they made some poor choices and have done irreparable damage to many developers’ lives.