Monday, September 28, 2015
I made a Twitter account!
Honestly, even though I've been thinking about shutting this down for a while, it still doesn't feel right to me that suddenly you guys are all gone. So I decided to cave in and make a Twitter account. To be quite frank, it's probably more adapted to my current needs in terms of communication than Blogger at this point, though of course I'm going to need to learn the art of tweeting.
I'm shutting this place down.
To be honest, I'm finding it harder and harder to find a reason to keep this place going, so I might as well just stop. It was fun while it lasted, but now it's time to say goodbye. Thanks for the ride, you were all really cool people!
(Don't worry, I'm not deleting everything, it's all staying up (same as my YouTube channel), I just won't be updating it anymore.)
(Don't worry, I'm not deleting everything, it's all staying up (same as my YouTube channel), I just won't be updating it anymore.)
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Unpopular opinion time
Mega Charizard Y is what Charizard should've looked like from day one. It's actually somewhat appealing.
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Gen Goalpost Moving
The worst thing you could do on the internet is become hated enough for people to dig through your dirt. As such, Julie Rei Goldstein's résumé was dug up, and here it is for your viewing pleasure (part 1, part 2). At first it looks harmless enough... until you take a closer look at the "Film" section. She's listed as a "lead" role for the two films she was casted in... but how factual is this? The first listed, "Billie Speare", has a total runtime of 20 minutes. So right away it probably doesn't belong in "Film". But then... look at the poster. Dear Julie is listed under "Co-starring". And judging by the length of that section, she could be anywhere between a supporting actress and part of an ensemble cast. Sound familiar? Yep, so "part of an ensemble cast" (the best case scenario) counts as a lead when she does it, but not when others do it. So essentially, Gen Zed's claim of having the first ever trans VA in a lead role is utterly nuked by Goldstein's own résumé. I want to pretend I'm surprised, but I'm not particularly skilled at lying.
But wait, it gets better. The other "film" doesn't even have her on the cover. What kind of cover doesn't list their lead? Scrolling down, you find out that she's not in the main cast either... oh, there she is. "Rest of cast". I'm not even kidding. She claims to have the lead role, but IMDB lists her under "rest of cast". So by that definition, not only is Meowth a lead. but so is every character of the day in the Pokémon anime's 18-year run. Again, this is right there on her résumé. I wonder if she's been confronted with that yet. I would assume that yes, and I would also assume that her excuse is that IMDB is in league with Gamergate to try and make her look bad.
Meanwhile, over on Wikipedia, Hayden Black's been busy "enhancing" his own page with utter lies. Look at this old version for example. It says this: "Goodnight Burbank made IMDB's Top 50 TV series to premiere in 2011." What, did he think no one would ever check IMDB to verify that claim? No, you're not hallucinating. It was ranked #1641. And this jerkwad had the balls to claim top 50, not even citing his sources in the process, because it was easy as pie to see this was a complete fabrication.
I also want to draw attention to the revision history page. A user named Cellmate27 says this: "Had to change some of the things rewritten by a mounting 4Chan/8Chan campaign to "nuke" this wiki page." I dunno, but making the page more factual is the complete opposite of "nuking" to me. So what about Cellmate27's contribution list? Yeah, you all saw this coming. This is a Hayden Black sockpuppet, pure and simple. Look at the list of gratuitous boasts that were then taken down by the next guy who edited the page. Hey Hayden, Wikipedia requires sources for a reason. And unfortunately for you, there are no sources that prove Gen Zed "has generated a very large amount of positive interest". I wonder why?
These people are acting in utter desperation to try and make themselves seem credible, but they'd already built up such a nasty reputation that the skeletons in their closets are being dug up at breakneck speed. To think they wouldn't have had to deal with this had they not been such irritating people. But hey, you can't expect any better out of a hardcore SJW and someone who tries way too hard to pose as one.
Edit: OH GOD IT'S NOT OVER. In fact, it gets EVEN BETTER. So what of Black's contributions to articles that have nothing to do with him? Take a wild friggin' guess, buddy. (And yes, every word of that sentence is a different link.)
Oh, by the way, the show itself is getting pushed back further and further. They're hoping to have the pilot done and ready to air by the end of the year. And they wonder why people think it's a scam and a cash grab.
But wait, it gets better. The other "film" doesn't even have her on the cover. What kind of cover doesn't list their lead? Scrolling down, you find out that she's not in the main cast either... oh, there she is. "Rest of cast". I'm not even kidding. She claims to have the lead role, but IMDB lists her under "rest of cast". So by that definition, not only is Meowth a lead. but so is every character of the day in the Pokémon anime's 18-year run. Again, this is right there on her résumé. I wonder if she's been confronted with that yet. I would assume that yes, and I would also assume that her excuse is that IMDB is in league with Gamergate to try and make her look bad.
Meanwhile, over on Wikipedia, Hayden Black's been busy "enhancing" his own page with utter lies. Look at this old version for example. It says this: "Goodnight Burbank made IMDB's Top 50 TV series to premiere in 2011." What, did he think no one would ever check IMDB to verify that claim? No, you're not hallucinating. It was ranked #1641. And this jerkwad had the balls to claim top 50, not even citing his sources in the process, because it was easy as pie to see this was a complete fabrication.
I also want to draw attention to the revision history page. A user named Cellmate27 says this: "Had to change some of the things rewritten by a mounting 4Chan/8Chan campaign to "nuke" this wiki page." I dunno, but making the page more factual is the complete opposite of "nuking" to me. So what about Cellmate27's contribution list? Yeah, you all saw this coming. This is a Hayden Black sockpuppet, pure and simple. Look at the list of gratuitous boasts that were then taken down by the next guy who edited the page. Hey Hayden, Wikipedia requires sources for a reason. And unfortunately for you, there are no sources that prove Gen Zed "has generated a very large amount of positive interest". I wonder why?
These people are acting in utter desperation to try and make themselves seem credible, but they'd already built up such a nasty reputation that the skeletons in their closets are being dug up at breakneck speed. To think they wouldn't have had to deal with this had they not been such irritating people. But hey, you can't expect any better out of a hardcore SJW and someone who tries way too hard to pose as one.
Edit: OH GOD IT'S NOT OVER. In fact, it gets EVEN BETTER. So what of Black's contributions to articles that have nothing to do with him? Take a wild friggin' guess, buddy. (And yes, every word of that sentence is a different link.)
Oh, by the way, the show itself is getting pushed back further and further. They're hoping to have the pilot done and ready to air by the end of the year. And they wonder why people think it's a scam and a cash grab.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Pokémon Shuffle competition plagued by hacking
(Edit, 21:04 EDT: Fixed the link. For whatever reason I linked to the wrong thing. Sorry about that.)
Because of course it was going to happen eventually. Right now there's an ongoing competition for the otherwise unavailable Charizardite Y, and only the top scorers in each region will get it (although there are other prizes up for grabs). Unfortunately, the game's programming appears to be anything but foolproof, as malicious individuals gained the ability to use unreleased Pokémon to dominate the rankings, and possibly screw legit players out of their Charizardite Y. The chief offender here is, of course, Ditto - while I don't think it's ever going to be intended as an actual support Pokémon, it's still in the game code for whatever reason. I'm assuming it's meant to be a feature in yet-to-be-released stages. Anyway, if you're familiar with Trozei, you know what this does - it's essentially a wild card, being able to match with anything. And what happens when a quarter of the Pokémon on the board are wild cards (provided you use a Complexity -1 to get rid of Fennekin)? Of course the end result is neverending combos, and the results obtained are nothing short of outrageous. While the current top legit players, invariably using the same ol' Mega Gengar + Arceus + two out of Snorlax, Lickilicky and Blissey, scramble to top the magical 100k mark (the current leader in North America is sitting at 99916), some cheaters managed to get as high as 660k by using not only Ditto, but also Palkia, an unreleased Pokémon that provides extra power over Pokémon that are currently available (since there are only two super-effective Pokémon with 80 base power to go along with Ditto, whereas three are required).
It's safe to assume that those competitions are where Genius Sonority is making a mint. Ranking high enough to get a Mega Stone without buying every item available is nothing short of unthinkable, and those items are expensive and add up very quickly. For that reason, many people opt to do only one attempt with all items and pray to Arceus they'll rank high enough. But not everyone does that, and the lure of powerful mega evolutions, especially those like Garchomp, Lucario or Charizard that have typings without a mega in the base game, will be enough to get people to fork over some cash to buy in-game money and do more than one attempt. And don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure that guy that has 99916 points didn't do it in one try.
As a result, hacking deprives them of a lot of revenue - that potentially paid by the hackers themselves, since they can just get their Charizardite Y on their own (so basically they're just assholes who want to prevent someone out there from getting theirs), and that paid by the legit players, who see this and wonder, what's the point, you need to hack to get the stone anyway.
And one of the few perks of a game with microtransactions is that there's added incentive to preserve the integrity of the game, otherwise the cash cow dries up. Fortunately, Genius Sonority is aware of those recent developments, as they've banned those people who were dumb enough to use Ditto and Palkia. People like this guy. (Man, just seeing this makes me so happy in my pants.) Those who hacked to get Arceus, on the other hand, are probably not going to get the banhammer, since it IS legitimately attainable... it's just that it's a previous event, and a difficult one at that, so some people may not have it.
Now here's hoping that they beef up their security a bit before doing more competitions. We don't need this to happen every time one of those happens.
Because of course it was going to happen eventually. Right now there's an ongoing competition for the otherwise unavailable Charizardite Y, and only the top scorers in each region will get it (although there are other prizes up for grabs). Unfortunately, the game's programming appears to be anything but foolproof, as malicious individuals gained the ability to use unreleased Pokémon to dominate the rankings, and possibly screw legit players out of their Charizardite Y. The chief offender here is, of course, Ditto - while I don't think it's ever going to be intended as an actual support Pokémon, it's still in the game code for whatever reason. I'm assuming it's meant to be a feature in yet-to-be-released stages. Anyway, if you're familiar with Trozei, you know what this does - it's essentially a wild card, being able to match with anything. And what happens when a quarter of the Pokémon on the board are wild cards (provided you use a Complexity -1 to get rid of Fennekin)? Of course the end result is neverending combos, and the results obtained are nothing short of outrageous. While the current top legit players, invariably using the same ol' Mega Gengar + Arceus + two out of Snorlax, Lickilicky and Blissey, scramble to top the magical 100k mark (the current leader in North America is sitting at 99916), some cheaters managed to get as high as 660k by using not only Ditto, but also Palkia, an unreleased Pokémon that provides extra power over Pokémon that are currently available (since there are only two super-effective Pokémon with 80 base power to go along with Ditto, whereas three are required).
It's safe to assume that those competitions are where Genius Sonority is making a mint. Ranking high enough to get a Mega Stone without buying every item available is nothing short of unthinkable, and those items are expensive and add up very quickly. For that reason, many people opt to do only one attempt with all items and pray to Arceus they'll rank high enough. But not everyone does that, and the lure of powerful mega evolutions, especially those like Garchomp, Lucario or Charizard that have typings without a mega in the base game, will be enough to get people to fork over some cash to buy in-game money and do more than one attempt. And don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure that guy that has 99916 points didn't do it in one try.
As a result, hacking deprives them of a lot of revenue - that potentially paid by the hackers themselves, since they can just get their Charizardite Y on their own (so basically they're just assholes who want to prevent someone out there from getting theirs), and that paid by the legit players, who see this and wonder, what's the point, you need to hack to get the stone anyway.
And one of the few perks of a game with microtransactions is that there's added incentive to preserve the integrity of the game, otherwise the cash cow dries up. Fortunately, Genius Sonority is aware of those recent developments, as they've banned those people who were dumb enough to use Ditto and Palkia. People like this guy. (Man, just seeing this makes me so happy in my pants.) Those who hacked to get Arceus, on the other hand, are probably not going to get the banhammer, since it IS legitimately attainable... it's just that it's a previous event, and a difficult one at that, so some people may not have it.
Now here's hoping that they beef up their security a bit before doing more competitions. We don't need this to happen every time one of those happens.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Pikachu Cup: Smogon vs. the world
So we FINALLY have Smogon's stats for the month of August. Took a while! Anyway, I wanted to compare stats for the Pikachu Cup, so how about we do just that?
First thing we notice is that in the 1630 stats, which are typically what's used for tiering, Pikachu still ranked a solid seventh, so getting that Light Ball at the bare minimum was never in doubt. It's even in front of Raichu, in spite of being labeled as a "shitty Raichu" from the onset. But it's when we play with the weighting that the real fun begins. Without any weighting, Pikachu's fourth, and present on half of all teams (and a mere few percentage points behind Ampharos and Eelektross to boot. But with the most severe weighting (1760), it's down to tenth and only appears on a quarter of all teams. So this essentially confirms the obvious suggestion that the best players were in it to win it and didn't care a rat's ass about Pikachu, and everyone else just wanted to get another useless event move on Pikachu (I may have said this before, but I seriously doubt Endeavor Pikachu will be the next Refresh Salamence in that an incredibly rare move suddenly makes it broken ten years after the fact).
Other than that, Electivire dominates at all levels of play, but it goes from 77% with no weighting to 91% with 1760 weighting - again, unsurprising. Same for Eelektross, which is is actually third at 53% without any weighting, but goes up to a whopping 69% at 1760. And with a field so casual that Pikachu got third, Eelektross finished FOURTH in the actual competition. Heliolisk also seems to be a (relatively) well-kept secret: fifth in the competition, fifth (39%) on Smogon with no weighting, second (60%) with max weighting. Ampharos, on the other hand, experiences a slight decline as skill level goes up, and in fact gets leapfrogged by Eelektross and Heliolisk as the weighting gets more severe. Emolga and Raichu are funny cases, as they were used far less in the competition itself (10th and off the top 12 respectively) than on the ladder (5th and 8th). Inversely, Galvantula was used FAR more in the competition (12th) than on the ladder (a lowly 17th).
Interesting fact: while the detailed stats for Pikachu are relatively similar between the two (although Knock Off seems to have been much more popular on the ladder), there was slightly less use of the Light Ball on the ladder, and slightly more of the Air Balloon. Which makes sense as an alternative to the Eviolite, which is frankly dumb even if you're not planning on using Magneton or Eelektrik (remember, Item Clause is a thing here).
Finally, 26% of the Pikachus in the competition and 21% on the ladder brought Static with them when EVERY LAST POKÉMON ALLOWED is immune to paralysis. Sure, Lightning Rod isn't that much better considering Electric moves were almost absent, but they were still there and did something, even if that something is piddly damage.
First thing we notice is that in the 1630 stats, which are typically what's used for tiering, Pikachu still ranked a solid seventh, so getting that Light Ball at the bare minimum was never in doubt. It's even in front of Raichu, in spite of being labeled as a "shitty Raichu" from the onset. But it's when we play with the weighting that the real fun begins. Without any weighting, Pikachu's fourth, and present on half of all teams (and a mere few percentage points behind Ampharos and Eelektross to boot. But with the most severe weighting (1760), it's down to tenth and only appears on a quarter of all teams. So this essentially confirms the obvious suggestion that the best players were in it to win it and didn't care a rat's ass about Pikachu, and everyone else just wanted to get another useless event move on Pikachu (I may have said this before, but I seriously doubt Endeavor Pikachu will be the next Refresh Salamence in that an incredibly rare move suddenly makes it broken ten years after the fact).
Other than that, Electivire dominates at all levels of play, but it goes from 77% with no weighting to 91% with 1760 weighting - again, unsurprising. Same for Eelektross, which is is actually third at 53% without any weighting, but goes up to a whopping 69% at 1760. And with a field so casual that Pikachu got third, Eelektross finished FOURTH in the actual competition. Heliolisk also seems to be a (relatively) well-kept secret: fifth in the competition, fifth (39%) on Smogon with no weighting, second (60%) with max weighting. Ampharos, on the other hand, experiences a slight decline as skill level goes up, and in fact gets leapfrogged by Eelektross and Heliolisk as the weighting gets more severe. Emolga and Raichu are funny cases, as they were used far less in the competition itself (10th and off the top 12 respectively) than on the ladder (5th and 8th). Inversely, Galvantula was used FAR more in the competition (12th) than on the ladder (a lowly 17th).
Interesting fact: while the detailed stats for Pikachu are relatively similar between the two (although Knock Off seems to have been much more popular on the ladder), there was slightly less use of the Light Ball on the ladder, and slightly more of the Air Balloon. Which makes sense as an alternative to the Eviolite, which is frankly dumb even if you're not planning on using Magneton or Eelektrik (remember, Item Clause is a thing here).
Finally, 26% of the Pikachus in the competition and 21% on the ladder brought Static with them when EVERY LAST POKÉMON ALLOWED is immune to paralysis. Sure, Lightning Rod isn't that much better considering Electric moves were almost absent, but they were still there and did something, even if that something is piddly damage.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Programming oversight, or legitimate feature?
MD4 brings back the infamous level 1 dungeons because why not, and it turns out you can totally break them by bringing Hoopa with you. Since it comes in an item, it's not really part of your team per se, so when it pops out it's at whatever level it's supposed to be normally. So, is that an oversight on the game designers' part, or did they actually intend for it to happen all along? I want to say it's not intentional. In previous games the highest levels you'd ever encounter in such dungeons would be in the low 30s, so to be able to have a much higher-leveled Hoopa do all the work is just silly. So I want to say they just done fucked up... but what if it was supposed to be a well-kept secret? Of course in the era of the internet no secret ever lasts that long, but to be figured out by virtually the first guy to do that dungeon is just silly.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Pokémon Shuffle is a weird game.
TFW when you don't waste too much time on That One Boss, only to be completely stuck on a later boss that's not nearly as infamous. #megaglaliecansuckadick
Well, time to get serious in these Expert stages, I guess.
Well, time to get serious in these Expert stages, I guess.
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