Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 80

Mythos The Mythosining, Mr. Jeff Green From ... *sigh* The 1UP.com PC Hub, Our RISK: Black OPS Contest, Your Emails and more!

After a long, arduous trek through the jungle we unearthed an ancient relic from the temple of glossy paper. Mr. Jeff Green joins us and he's so awesome, we lost an entire chunk of the show. Sorry about that ... but still awesome!

Thanks to GWJ contributer Michael Zenke you can win a limited edition of Risk: Black Ops (the upcoming Hasbro board game) in our glorious new contest! All you have to do is send in a funny picture that involves a board game of some kind to [email protected]! What could be easier!? Deadline is April 19th!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"Luna Machine" (Benoit Casey) - 0:33:48

Comments

My wife and I have played DDO for about 2 years now. We have played once a week with another couple from out of town, and we always have the same group. Apart from some "Crap, we need an arcane caster" moments, we have really enjoyed the experience. XP is a bit slow on these higher levels, but that should be expected. We really like the twitchy combat, and rather than use a mouse button to swing, I just turn on auto-attack and tab-target through the enemies. Wrapping it up in a D20 shell makes it approachable for us, since we have all played. If Sean wants another take on the game, have him drop me a line.

There's a blog for an NPC in Oblivion... you guys should check it out:
http://livinginoblivion.wordpress.com/

Elysium wrote:

If it makes you feel better, his answers were extremely forthcoming, very informative and very intelligent. Honestly I feel like a stronger and smarter man just for having heard what he had to say.

... that probably doesn't make you feel better, does it?

No, no that don't.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet... but it's a real shame about the missing parts... Did all the recording feeds get nuked? Sounds fishy to me. I'm going to go with conspiracy 3 - Certis retracting what he said about Portal.

rabbit wrote:
Sparhawk wrote:

:D

Hope you enjoyed them there smileys cowboy, 'cause I think you done used up your allotment for the year.

(God I love being a dick. Is there a cure for that?)

Do quotes count?

Gaald wrote:

It's a flaw of mine I guess, I am very picky when it comes to the show and when I feel something is wrong I try my best to fix it. I couldn't this time around, so I wanted to post the blurb for those that might have noticed.

Not to toss your salad too much, but it's that committment to quality that has kept this podcast on my download list while virtually every other gaming podcast has slipped off. The seriousness with which you take the show is evident, and really pays off. It also helps that you modulate your voices... why is it that so many other gaming podcasts are hosted by guys who a) sound identical, so that every show sounds like a demented monologue, and b) seem to speak in their sleep, there's so little inflection in their voices?

Are you going to put some redundant strategies in place? What exactly went wrong?

I'm sure you probably were pretty let down yourselves, and hey don't feel bad we still <3 you.

t0W wrote:

Are you going to put some redundant strategies in place? What exactly went wrong?

I'm sure you probably were pretty let down yourselves, and hey don't feel bad we still <3 you.

Well part of the problem is that the Skype track we record has become just useless as far as a back up is concerned. In fact the reason we all started to record our own tracks is because the Skype feed sounds so horrible during 4-5 person conference calls. Does anyone know any other programs out there that are just as easy to use as Skype and sound as good as Skype used to sound? Just to be clear we know vent and teamspeak work great but we don't want guests to have to go through the hassle of inputing server ip's etc. We want something simple like Skype where you have an account you add a friend and your ready to rock.

Oh and an answer to your question, pretty much everything. It was like the perfect storm.

Gaald wrote:

It's possible but the episode sounded strange to me with the missing section and I thought hmmm, we should probably mention we had problems with the episode.

It's a flaw of mine I guess, I am very picky when it comes to the show and when I feel something is wrong I try my best to fix it. I couldn't this time around, so I wanted to post the blurb for those that might have noticed.

I am glad you all seem to have enjoyed what we were able to put up.

No, we appreciate your obsession. Makes the podcast listening go down smoooooth.

I definitely would have noticed otherwise. Without your comment to give me some insight into what was up, I would have be wondering why you hated Jeff so much. He didn't get a huge amount of talk time in the sections that were there.

Tesla Widget Gadgeteer FTW

It's shocking easy to play.

1) Toss Widgets into room
2) Collect loot while widgets kill everything.
3) Level up
4) Repeat

Obviously this game is still in beta, so some balancing is sure to take place (read: Tesla Widget nerf inc.) and there are other builds that are a lot more dynamic to play. Think of the Tesla Widget as the Beast Mastery specced Hunter or Demonologist Warlock.

Think of the Tesla Widget as the Beast Mastery specced Hunter or Demonologist Warlock.

That was my first thought too. Totally.

Well I hope they remain a lot more like the Tesla Widgets they are now and less like the Pyromancer's Wisps. The Wisps are similar to the Widgets yet much less effective since their projectiles are so slow and don't track very well.

I wouldn't mind if they incorporated the Wisp's X amount of shots before disappearing as a minor nerf. I hope they don't go too far as it my favorite class and spec.

I wouldn't judge the widgets too early either. The Widgets cap out at 1-10 damage which is getting a little long in the tooth at level 12. It used to be that I could cast one and clear a few rooms. Now I have to cast 3 to clear a room.

There are upgrades but they come a lot of points further down the tree and they seem minor. I get the feeling come 30 or 40 that 1-10 damage even with 5 of them, a 50% damage boost and a few extra seconds of life isn't going to be very effective.

I am going to try a build with the little crawling bomblets too. The fire turrets are really disappointing.

I don't care for the crawling bombs, because they all seem to track in identical directions. So, when you get more of them its not so much a bonus to the number of creatures you can take out as the damage you can deal to one (or two)

What about my lovely bloodlings , 6 going at a time, all pumped up...with no timer. I just hang back when i enter a room and they scurry off and clear the way.

If you guys are on normal i have a ton of gadgeteer guns purple and gold that are just sitting in the bank.. look for char name 'Mix'.

Mythos talk.

Argh, the temptation!

Gaald wrote:

We want something simple like Skype where you have an account you add a friend and your ready to rock.

Steam Community? There is voice chat in it.

Gaald wrote:

We want something simple like Skype where you have an account you add a friend and your ready to rock.

Shouldn't most gamers already have ventrilo? If you can't find any other solution you may just have to suck it up.

The quality of any one of these solutions is by definition inferior to local recording. Once it goes through the internet it will sound worse than if you just record each mic directly. Even if we did do some magic super-skype, rob wouldn't be able to do the individual track-processing he does to match levels and do compression, and we'd still inevitably run into an issue about once every 40 shows, just to keep murphy in check.

We don't record skype on both ends... We only record it on our studio side. So when the main file got corrupted, we didn't have a back-up. The only case where we can and do use the skype track is when our remote host somehow lost his local recording.

weswilson wrote:

There's a blog for an NPC in Oblivion... you guys should check it out:
http://livinginoblivion.wordpress.com/

Don't go linking dormant blogs. That's bad mojo.

rabbit wrote:

(God I love being a dick. Is there a cure for that?)

A cure for the desire? Would you really want it? Either way, if you find one, don't tell any of the Chicagoland goodjers. They may try to force it on me.

Hey, I actually finished a podcast before the weekend started! Maybe next week I'll try getting back into posting.

I'm a little disappointed in Mr. Green's assessment that Montalban's question was the foolish result of drug use. Frankly, it strikes me that the sort of person who needs to use drugs in order to have thoughts like Montalban's is a very sad example of our species. It's barbs like Mr. Green's that are at the root of all the questions about the lack of creativity in games, industry, and society. I respect Mr. Green very much and wish him nothing but the best that fortune can provide him, but I really wish he wouldn't disrespect creativity in that manner.

For my part, I suppose these days I'd be an invisible NPC, the answer to otherwise inexplicable questions about the difference between reality and the virtual world. In the virtual world, it's simply a white fence. In reality, someone had to paint that fence. Someone had to build it. Someone gets out the mower twice a week and keeps the lawn pristine for your hero ass to saunter through, en route to pillaging and otherwise destroying my garden. Someone planted that garden, and that apple you're now eating is someone's property.

I don't even know why you came this way, hero. Were you lost? Please don't tell me you were just exploring, or running some errand for those assholes in town. And don't bother to apologize. Quit wasting time and save the world already. You do that, and you can have that apple for free. Deal?

(And the same goes for developers, journalists, politicians, and anybody else to whom I'm supposedly an audience or consumer.)

wordsmythe wrote:

Don't go linking dormant blogs. That's bad mojo.

Yes, because everyone who wrote something over a week ago should be ignored? HUH?

I'm a little disappointed in Mr. Green's assessment that Montalban's question was the foolish result of drug use. Frankly, it strikes me that the sort of person who needs to use drugs in order to have thoughts like Montalban's is a very sad example of our species. It's barbs like Mr. Green's that are at the root of all the questions about the lack of creativity in games, industry, and society. I respect Mr. Green very much and wish him nothing but the best that fortune can provide him, but I really wish he wouldn't disrespect creativity in that manner.

Oh, c'mon! Seriously?

Elysium wrote:

Oh, c'mon! Seriously?

He's probably on drugs.

Elysium wrote:

Oh, c'mon! Seriously?

Yes, seriously. I love Jeff's work and that of the folks he's published (especially goodjers), but at best it's a tired and overplayed joke. At worst, it's a real problem.