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Episode 22 - Overwatch, Pinball Designers, & More!

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Nov 21, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Pinball designer tournament Round 1 results and analysis with personal pinball machine upgrades.

Summary

Two podcast hosts (Tony and Dennis) discuss their recent activities, including finishing the Wheel of Time series, LED upgrades to their pinball machines, and tournament results. The episode features their ongoing 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament with Round 1 results (John Papadiuk defeats Joel Krieger, Mark Ritchie defeats John Borg) and Round 2 matchup previews. The hosts also briefly discuss EM pinball podcasts and video games before transitioning to Overwatch.

Key Claims

  • John Papadiuk defeated Joel Krieger 65.8% to 34.2% in Round 1 of the 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament

    high confidence · Dennis announcing official tournament results

  • Mark Ritchie defeated John Borg 57.9% to 42.1% in Round 1 of the tournament

    high confidence · Dennis announcing official tournament results

  • Dennis completed an LED swap on his Jurassic Park machine, taking over 4 hours compared to 90 minutes for Firepower

    high confidence · Dennis describing his pinball restoration project completion

  • Dennis won his first round at the 403 Club tournament against someone he had never beaten head-to-head before

    high confidence · Dennis describing his tournament results

  • Tony participated in a Pizza West pinball tournament where he pushed all three games to three rounds despite losing some matches

    high confidence · Tony describing his recent tournament participation

  • Dennis Nordman designed Tales of the Arabian Night, Theater of Magic, and Cirqus Voltaire, which are all top 20 games

    medium confidence · Tony discussing Dennis Nordman best games in tournament context—some confusion in transcript about design attribution

  • Dennis Nordman worked on Lexy Lightspeed - Escape From Earth for Multimorphic

    medium confidence · Tony discussing Nordman's recent design activity

  • Brian Eddy has a limited number of production games but they are all highly regarded

    medium confidence · Dennis and Tony discussing Eddie's design portfolio in tournament context

Notable Quotes

  • “I finished my LED swap out on Jurassic Park for the incandescent bulbs... Jurassic Park took me over four hours... I could follow the ball a lot better... I'd lose it if it was dark.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Describes a significant technical restoration project and the practical gameplay improvement from LED lighting upgrades on newer pinball machines.

  • “I think John Papadiuk will win the public support and will actually win the vote... Tales of the Arabian Night and Theater of Magic and Cirqus Voltaire, which are all top 20 games.”

    Tony @ N/A — Shows Tony's prediction for the tournament matchup and reveals his assessment of designer portfolios based on game rankings.

  • “For me it's not [easy]. That one, despite the fact that if Trudeau was up against Nordham, Papaduke, Ritchie, or Gomez, I'd vote Trudeau. Not against Steve Ritchie.”

    Tony @ N/A — Demonstrates the relative strength of Steve Ritchie's reputation compared to other top designers in the community's view.

  • “This is literally my hardest matchup that we've had so far... my literal favorite game of all time is a Brian Eddy game.”

    Tony @ N/A — Shows how personal game preferences can conflict with evaluating designers' overall body of work in tournament voting.

  • “I lean towards eddie because... the fact that there are games by Lawler that I do not like, and I don't know of a game by Eddie that I can name that I don't like to play.”

    Tony @ N/A — Reveals the quality consistency argument in designer evaluation—small body of work vs. larger portfolios with some weaker entries.

  • “Geometrically, they do not play as well. And I could explain why with math, but we're not going to do that.”

    Tony @ N/A — Humorously highlights a design philosophy disagreement about wide-body pinball machines in the community.

Entities

John PapadiukpersonJoel KriegerpersonMark RitchiepersonJohn BorgpersonDennis NordmanpersonGeorge Gomezperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Active 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament generating community engagement with detailed matchup analysis and voting from hosts and presumed broader audience.

    high · Four Round 2 matchups announced with extensive host discussion of designer portfolios and voting considerations.

  • ?

    content_signal: Dennis discovered and engaged with 'For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast' through Pinside, indicating community cross-pollination and growth of niche pinball content.

    high · Dennis was contacted by Nick about the podcast through a pinball site and subsequently caught up on multiple episodes.

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Dennis completed LED upgrades on Jurassic Park machine after similar work on Firepower, demonstrating sustained interest in LED retrofitting in the home collector community.

    high · Dennis documented the LED swap with a side-by-side video showing brightness improvements and better ball tracking on Jurassic Park.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Both hosts participated in multiple pinball tournaments (403 Club, Pizza West) and are showing incremental skill improvement despite not winning overall.

    high · Dennis and Tony both played in tournaments, pushed matches to three games, and reported progress in competitive play.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Community discussion reveals design philosophy divide between flow-focused designers (Steve Ritchie) and experimental/gimmick-focused designers (John Trudeau), with different player preferences.

    medium · Tony describes Trudeau as 'more experimental, so he tends to go with more gimmicks that are often new concepts' versus Ritchie's 'clean flow designs.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.266

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're on episode 22. Today is November 20th. and we're going to talk to you about pinball, video games, and tabletop.
0:33
Well, I guess we should do our intros first. So, Tony, what's been going on? I have been so busy with actual stuff that isn't, you know, like work or, you know, silliness related that I've actually got stuff to talk about. I mean, as listeners will know, I've been going back through the wheel of time since, like, May, and I finished. The day after our last podcast came out, I finished.
1:02
And it's just as good as it ever was. That series ends so strong. I mean, it's one of those series, I mean, it's 14 books. So that stretches it out already. And the books are not small books. They're all pretty major books. And it starts pretty high, and then it drops down just a little bit. But it's not bad. And then there's like a slow part, like book 9 and book 10 are a little slower. Book 10, I think, is like the slowest of the books. And then as soon as you finish book 10, you start with book 11, and it starts ramping up real fast. You hit book 12, and it just pegs out the meter as max, and it doesn't slow down for the rest of the books. So it's definitely one of those. it's got a slump in the middle but the thing is it's one of those where most books you know if you're on like a 1 to 10 scale the slump is like a 5 while the very ending is an 11 so I'm happy I'm glad it's done I can start listening to other things I can start reading other things at the same time when it finished I kind of when it ended like the very last part because I finished it while listening to it as an audio book, not reading it. And it ended and I was just sitting there and it was blank in my headphones and I'm just sitting there like, well, what am I going to do now?
2:35
John Trudeau
person
Steve Ritchieperson
Pat Lawlorperson
Brian Eddyperson
Tonyperson
Dennisperson
Nickperson
Jurassic Parkgame
Firepowergame
Star Trekgame
Medieval Madnessgame
Attack from Marsgame
Shadowgame
Multimorphiccompany
403 Clubvenue
Pizza Westvenue
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
  • $

    market_signal: Discussion reveals pattern where prolific designers (Pat Lawlor, Mark Ritchie) have both hits and misses, while limited-output designers (Brian Eddy, John Papadiuk) maintain consistency.

    medium · Hosts debate whether small, consistently good portfolios beat larger portfolios with some weak entries, with Brian Eddy's 4 games vs Pat Lawlor's numerous titles as key example.

  • ?

    community_signal: John Papadiuk's recent controversies are explicitly discussed as potentially impacting tournament voting, showing how personal conduct affects community perception of designers.

    high · Tony notes he was 'curious to see how John Papadiuk would do in this, if he was going to be more hurt by his more recent escapades compared to the actual high quality machines.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tournament bracket reveals community consensus on designer hierarchy: Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawlor positioned as 'big guns,' with other designers ranked below them.

    medium · Tony states Trudeau 'could take pretty much anybody else' except 'Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler' are 'the big guns.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Pinball venues appear to be actively maintaining diverse machine selection, with multiple tables available for tournament play and different operator choices on what to stock.

    medium · Hosts reference playing multiple different machines at different venues (Star Trek, Jurassic Park, Transformers, etc.) and tournament machines.

  • ?

    restoration_signal: LED restoration difficulty varies significantly by playfield design complexity—ramps and interactive elements substantially increase upgrade time and labor requirements.

    high · Dennis reports Jurassic Park with 'all the ramps and everything' took 4+ hours vs Firepower in 90 minutes; directly attributes complexity to ramp design.

    • What will you do? I caught up on my podcast that I was behind on. Yes. Yeah, I know that pile is getting fairly substantial. It was. Now, to be fair, I cheated. I went through and anything that I was well beyond, so like all of the news podcast and the politics podcast and all of that stuff seeing as it was after the election, I just got rid of everything pre-election because none of it mattered anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. And I thinned out a bunch of my video game podcasts because while I hadn't listened to the podcast itself, I had what they also tend to post them on uh YouTube and I'd watch the videos so I got rid of all those and that left me with a much much more manageable list to go through and as of this morning I'm fully caught up so I I'm behind uh now and I was caught up last time but that is the world of podcasts. So besides Wheel of Time and Podcastpalooza, anything else going on?
    3:54
    Yeah, I listened to a short story put out by John Scalzi in an audiobook-only form. It was a little thing he did where he put it out. He said it might come out as an e-book at some time, but he wrote it specifically as an audiobook.
    4:12
    And it was only about two hours long. It was called The Dispatcher, and it was read by Zachary Quentino. You know, Spock from the new Star Trek. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Siler and Heroes and all that stuff. And it was a really enjoyable short story. It was kind of about, it's about a, there's a, it's in the future, because he writes a lot of little kind of mysterious short stories besides his big, epic space opera and big epic sci-fi stuff. He also likes to write these other short stories and mystery books. He did one lock-in that was pretty good. It's kind of a mystery book that's set 20 minutes into the future style.
    4:59
    What it is, is murder is impossible, or almost impossible. Because 99 times out of 1,000, when you intentionally kill somebody, their body vanishes and they reappear in their bed.
    5:15
    So you murder is impossible unless you get the one bad luck one and how it has affected most, you spend most of the short story learning in different ways. It's affected, you know, the world and how it starts. And I mean, the main character is a licensed bonded professional. He's called a dispatcher. And what they do is he works for hospitals and he does other jobs where it is his job to murder anybody who looks like they're about to die. So if you're in a bad car accident, he will shoot you and kill you. because you will reappear in your bed, and your body resets anywhere from 12 hours to 30 days before the murder. So if you were in a bad car accident, he would kill you, and you would wake up in bed and be fine. Oh, all Groundhog Day-ish. All Groundhog Day-ish, except for time's not actually resetting. It's because you can do it with anybody. and it's a mystery. I mean, that's just a little bit of background. That's not the actual story itself. But it's an enjoyable listen. And they offered it for free several weeks ago when it first came out, and that's when I picked it up while I was still listening to Wheel of Time. So it was pretty enjoyable. Awesome. Well, you have been productive. Oh, I've been so productive. And that doesn't even include studying and working on some tests and work stuff. Yeah, it's been crazy. What have you been up to? Oh, not nearly as much. I had a work conference in the last week, so that's why I'm behind on podcasts, because I was at hotel facilities for several days, and I just don't have time to put in headphones and listen to things when I have to actually talk to people. So because of that, I didn't get as much done as I might have otherwise, at least on the listening front, but I did accomplish a few things. So I guess before I go into my What's Been Happening intro, I will intro my intro with a correction from the last episode. During the last episode, as you probably recall, we talked a little bit about Battlefield 1, and I was describing my annoyance with the battle pack system, but I did mention that I thought that they gave you a battle pack every time you leveled your character like in Overwatch and the loot crate thing. That's not true, though. That was for Battlefield 4. There are only the random awards of the battle packs in Battlefield 1. No other way to get them. So my annoyance was actually feeling that. So anyway, correction to everyone involved. When you level, you do not get battle packs. Wrong. Yep. Yeah. There's a lot of wrong lately. so anyway the uh let's see in terms of podcasts i did start another one i started the for amusement only em and bingo pinball podcast the host that's right em bingo machines are cool i've never played one i've only seen them i've not actually played one but i've watched several videos of people playing them and messing with them and they seem kind of cool yes so i'm interested in playing one now. Nick contacted me on one of the pinball sites because being the proper person of respect that I am, my shout out to Steve Kordek on my designer ranking list caught attention to an EM fan like Nick. He said, hey, my show covers a lot of EMs. It's not just bingos, which I know I've seen it in my search list before and I think that's what I just assumed it was a bingo-oriented thing, which I would say yes, it's predominantly bingo. It was interesting to listen to, so he gave me a few key interviews that he had done. So I caught up through all of that and the most recent episodes of his show. So it was interesting because a number of them were about EM pinball coverage and it put me almost in the mood to do another EM pinball project because I'm without a project at the moment, but I should have a project coming up, which I'll say more on it if it doesn't fall through, but I won't know until early December whether or not it's a go or not and it won't be an EM, but one project at a time or I'll get overwhelmed. But anyway, it's an interesting show. I have a link to it in the show notes for anyone who wants to check out a podcast that is more exclusively focused on electromechanical machines. And most of his episodes are really short, like under 20 minutes short. So it's quite digestible.
    9:43
    Speaking of why I don't have a project anymore, it's because I finished my LED swap out on Jurassic Park for the incandescent bulbs. So like I did with Firepower, I've gotten the show notes a link to a side by side video I put together showing the differences on my machine from when I had it as incandescent to when I went LED. And this one was a nightmare to do because of all the ramps and everything. It's like firepower was quick. Like I did all the firepower, I think, in 90 minutes and Jurassic Park took me over four hours. So I should have probably done it first so it could have properly broken my spirit. But I did not. I think it looks pretty good. Yeah, it's a lot brighter. In fact, I played it last night when I got back from the Pizza West pinball tournament and actually went back and turned off the lights to make sure, and I could follow the ball a lot better. It used to be, especially if I played a game like Star Trek, and then I moved over to Jurassic Park, just like sidled over to the next machine, I'd have a lot of trouble tracking the ball because Star Trek is so bright. And then Jurassic Park, it was okay, but in the lower middle of the play field, I couldn't see the ball. I'd lose it if it was dark. So now that's not nearly a problem because I've pretty much doubled the brightness of the table.
    10:59
    But other than that, two pinball tournaments. One of them normally we would have talked about in the last episode, except we recorded a day early, and it was before I went to the 403 Club tournament, where I won my first round, and then I lost my next two. But I was pleased because it was someone I had never beaten head-to-head play. So that was like a little mini accomplishment for me. And then yesterday I went to and out, but they were against two opponents. I also believe I have never beaten head-to-head play, but the matches were all pretty close. So I went three games on both players. So I was pretty... I like it when I see incremental improvement in myself, even if I don't get the wins, at least it tells me, you know what, you are actually picking up some skill. Just a little bit, but it's something. Yeah, I played... I was in the tournament last night at Pizza West, and I did... I lost my first one, won my second one, and then lost my third one. But the thing that makes me happy is I managed to push all of them to three rounds. So I didn't just get stomped out like I normally do. Yeah, I really like going to the three. Even if the games aren't all close games, it makes me feel like maybe there was at least a little bit of a challenge. I beat them once. I beat them once. I know I can do it again. That's right. And I actually had a number of, there was only one that I would, one game, my very last game that I wouldn't describe as particularly close. And it's still, I wasn't blown out. It was just, it wasn't, it just wasn't close. But other than that, yeah, I thought it went pretty well. So anyway, that's all I have for my intro. I remembered one more thing before we move on. Oh dear. I finally got some really, really, really solid use out of my Amazon Prime account besides just free shipping and all that stuff.
    12:57
    The Grand Tour started coming out, which is the new show by the guys who used to do Top Gear. Oh, yes, I remember that.
    13:06
    It's exactly like Top Gear with more money. So, with a bigger budget. I enjoyed it quite a lot. So I saw an ad for it on, uh, on YouTube, I think. Yeah. Like I said, it's really good. Uh, provided you're a, a top gear type guy. I mean, I'm not, I'm not a huge car guy. I mean, I like cars, but I'm not a huge like petrol head type guy. But the way those guys cover everything and do everything is just so funny that I find it very enjoyable. so when they started coming on Amazon when it started coming on Amazon Prime I was watching it. The only thing I don't like is that instead of doing what they, Amazon Prime and normally does with their shows and what Netflix does with their shows where they just release everything at once. They're literally releasing one episode a week like it was on freaking TV. It's like man I cut the cord for a reason. I don't care about that crap. Drop every episode and just let me binge that until it pours out of my ears. The cord is back.
    14:17
    Except your cord overlord. I did that with Black Mirror. I binged Black Mirror when it came out. I binged Luke Cage. I love being able to sit down and just watch it all at once.
    14:29
    Now you will not binge. I know. You will pick at your hors d'oeuvres. I know. It's just one of those things. It's nice. I think it also helps when you might only have 12 or 13 episodes. To me, it doesn't seem like such a big deal when you binge it and get the whole story and everything, and you're kind of sated, as opposed to when they throw in a whole bunch of episodes that don't really matter that much, and they throw in a whole bunch of episodes of, oh, we took a three-week hiatus, so here's an episode that's got a bunch of flashback stuff to remind you what happened in the first part of the season that was four months ago type stuff. Well, I imagine if the user feedback is negative regarding the incremental traditional approach, they'll probably consider changing it up if the show's popular enough to warrant a second season. The show's going to be popular enough for that. It's like setting records for Amazon for how quickly its viewer numbers and its ratings and stuff are. Okay. Well, I guess car heads can check that out and see if they like it too. Now to talk about the stuff we normally talk about. Yes, we are not a Motorhead podcast, but we do cater to pinheads. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of pinball news. Of course, that's pretty typical in pinball because it's such a small niche hobby. But we do have our 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament going on. So that has filled the void, as we knew it would. You see, it's all planned. It's like a cycle, a cycle of news and entertainment in between the news. so i have the round one results to announce and then we'll discuss the round two matchups so yeah pretty epic pretty epic tones from your vocal cords there for a not too epic uh series of results because they're just so few matchups compared to uh when we did our 1980s machine tournament but uh for round one john papaduke beat joel balser i i hope i'm saying his last name right. And Papa Duke had 65.8% of the vote. And Mark Ritchie beat John Borg with 57.9% of the vote. So Tony, any thoughts on either of those results? I was curious to see how Papa Duke would do in this, if he was going to be more hurt by his more recent escapades compared to the actual high quality machines he's put out in the past and how popular those machines are. So I think that's something that's going to be more seen as we move in and he starts going against bigger name people. but yeah it was that was my biggest curiosity was to see how long and how quick he would go in did you vote for him?
    17:29
    no oh okay I did so I'm not particularly surprised by his result and I for me it came down in terms of why I wasn't surprised it mostly revolved around the fact that I just so many of Papaduke's arguably quite limited count of designs they're just better rated than Bowsers. I think Bowsers probably most well known for the Simpsons Pinball Party I believe is one he designed but Hobbit, Wizard of Oz, which are his more recent games they're more controversial picks when it comes to how they play. I'd say I'm trying not to bias I have my own biases. I'm not a fan of either of those games. I'd say if you were to broadly ask pinball people Wizard of Oz is seen as an interesting idea. A number of people really like the gameplay on Wizard of Oz, like the way it looks. There are some people that don't think it plays all that great. Hobbit I think was more of a miss. I think there are some people that are pretty impressed by what all is packed into it. But when it comes to actually playing the game, I don't know very many people who rave about it. I definitely don't. Yeah, I'm with you. Whereas my problem on the – I set aside, and I assumed a lot of people would, set aside any of the recent stuff regarding Papa Duke. And so you're just thinking about the games that actually came out.
    19:01
    Well, I don't like the rules on most of his games. I find his games overly easy. That's more of a coding issue, not a design issue. And I think in terms of how they shoot, they shoot fine. So I just I think he, you know, he had better design. So that's why I went with him on on round one. What about the Mark Ritchie versus John Borg? Do you recall who you voted for there? I voted for Mark Ritchie on that one. And it was a I figured it would be a really close one. And it was so. Yeah, actually, I almost wondered if it would have been even further apart. I did vote for John Borg. I don't think that's surprising, given in the last episode he was in my top five designers and Mark Ritchie was not. So that just kind of speaks to what table designs I like. But I know Mark Ritchie has a huge fan base and some very popular table designs.
    19:58
    And so I'm not surprised by the result, though. So I expected it. But I did my best to help John out. I just, I wasn't strong enough. So round two matchups. This time, unlike round one, which only had two matchups, we actually have four matchups in round two because, as we noted in the last episode, we basically had no choice but to give six designers a bye for the first round because of the 10 count that we're running with. So we're going to hear a couple of names that we just talked about back in the list. But here are the matchups. I guess we can give our thoughts on each one as we go since they're so brief and we have nothing else to talk about on the pinball segment.
    20:35
    Dennis Nordman will be against John Papaduke. what are your thoughts here Tony? I think Norman is going to take it but that's just me I mean that's where my vote's probably going to go I think I'm leaning towards him as well it's tough for me because Nordham has some game designs that I don't care for so much whereas there's not a John Papaduke design that I hate playing of any of the stuff that came out so I'm still kind of wrestling with that. Personally, I think John Papaduke will win the public support and will actually win the vote. You think so? I do, because I'm trying to... I mean, what's Nordham's best... I mean, what are his best games? I'm trying to... It just... I'm putting him against Tales of the Arabian Nights and Theater of Magic and Circus Voltaire, which are all top 20 games. I mean, Nordham's on this list because he's got a top 20 game, at least one, or else he wouldn't have been here. Yeah, I mean, he's got several of my more well-loved valleys. He's, you know, Dr. Dude and Party Zone, Whitewater from Williams, Demolition Man from Williams.
    21:51
    I mean, yeah, he's got the negative. He's got Indy 500. He's got both the Elvira games. Sure. And so in his case his top games are I would say I mean broadly speaking would be Whitewater and Scared Stiff Those are the two that would put him at the top of the pin side rankings in terms of why his name ended up in our list of 10 And I think those are pretty strong tables But I think people are going to think of the Indy 500s.
    22:21
    Things like Demolition Man are controversial picks. Some people don't like those. They don't like how they play. Some people like them because they're fairly affordable. for as some people want Williams games and you have to move down the tier as the prices have gone up in order to maintain affordability so I just I don't know it'll be it'll be interesting to see I just think Papaduke has a bigger fan base than than Nordham does it's because you of the you know what four games that Papaduke has no I don't think anyone's going to call any of them a dog and I'm just wondering if those negatives because Nordham has some misses if that's going to pull him down and I think it will but I haven't decided that it will pull my vote down I still haven't decided on that one yeah I can see that I mean that's uh I can see some valid concerns with that how people could see it we'll just have to see because yeah it's it's a tough call because neither I mean Papa Duke's tried to stay active but has been failing and then Nordham he has remained active in design, but it's very spread out. He's done things for, I believe he worked on Lexi Lightspeed for the Multimorphic, but no one owns that yet. He did some work with Wonelli. He's done I think he was involved in some regard with Highway to help with their pins. So he's sort of been spread out rather than just focused at one manufacturer. I don't know if that helps or hurts. Some of those games are very difficult. I've still never played a Wonelli. you know we don't see highway pins very much in the around here we saw one briefly and they didn't keep it on location long because it didn't work well but yeah yeah that one disappeared off pretty quick here's a our next one i think we should talk about will be uh mark ritchie is going up against george gomez any thoughts well that's a tough one for me i mean that's one is really tough. I mean, Mark Ritchie obviously has a lot of pens, but Gomez has some pens that are just, especially for some of the more modern pens that are really popular, like Lord of the Rings. Yep. And Johnny Mnemonic, both fairly popular games, or at least I like them. I know some people don't like Johnny Mnemonic that much. I like it. Yeah, I don't know if Johnny Mnemonics is all that controversial as a player game. I just think operators didn't like it too much because that stupid glove was a mechanical nightmare. Well, you know, the claw in Demolition Man also. But Demolition Man is seen as pretty clunky, whereas I think Johnny Mnemonics is fairly well respected as a decent flow game.
    25:07
    So, yeah, I haven't decided here either. I think both of them have very strong games in their repertoire. Gomez, I am leaning towards him, if only because he's got some more recent machines.
    25:23
    And they, again, I'm trying to just think on the design level, but it's hard to separate them from the rules. And the rules have gotten better as time has gone by, whereas Mark Ritchie has been out of it for a while. Yeah, Mark Ritchie's put out some games that are very... they have their own thing. I mean, Taxi's an always popular. Diner isn't a bad game at all.
    25:47
    Big Guns is a pretty awesome game, actually. And Furry Cops. He's got Furry Cops. That's right. Police Force, I believe. Yeah, Furry Cops. Yeah. Well, the issue is, I'm not sure on the Police Force one, but the other ones you named are all System 11, with relatively shallow rule sets. Yeah, that's true. I mean, yeah, the layouts, I think, I enjoy playing all of those. There's never one of those that I shy away from. But, you know, likewise, I've never had this. I'd say Taxi's probably the one I enjoyed the most of the ones you named in terms of one that I would maybe like to have, like to own. But I've also seen pretty much everything that there is to do on it already, and that's okay. It's just compared to, again, we don't want to just think Gomez and Lord of the Rings, which was unusually epic in the scope of depth of what all you could experience in the game. But he's had a few others that were noteworthy, and his work on trying to help at the end of Williams' era, whether or not you want to give him props for Pinball 2000 and his efforts on that or not, I guess depends on the sort of player that you are. But he has misses too, though. See, for me, both of them have some misses. And George had Transformers, which I've never liked. Yeah, I didn't.
    27:12
    Transformers for me was kind of like WWE in that it was a game that I didn't really like. But when it came tournament time, I always seemed to do really well on it. Yeah, I won in some tournament games on Transformers. my issue with it, I mean, I guess, so in a regard, I never hated playing it. It's just whenever I walk up to it, clunky. That's what I thought. And maybe, I think we were playing an LE version, and maybe that was just a feature. There were toys everywhere. It seemed like the ball smacked into everything, which was good, but then it didn't always go where it needed to go.
    27:53
    Of all of our location pins that we've played since we started playing in 2015, I don't think I've seen ball search activate as much as I have on Transformers. Oh, that's true. That's very true. But again, this isn't the Transformers versus Mark Ritchie, Paul. It is the George Clooney. But those negatives, they do weigh on me. So I'm having some. I'm still thinking on that one. But all right. Third matchup, third of the four, would be John Trudeau is up against Steve Ritchie. Well, we knew one of those matches would come pretty early where it's somebody pretty high ranking and Steve Ritchie with how small of a feat we went. I'm going to have to say I'm going to end up going with Steve Ritchie just because overall it's too many games that I love. Yeah, for me it's not. That one, despite the fact that if Trudeau was up against Nordham, Papaduke, Ritchie, or Gomez, I'd vote Trudeau. Not against Steve Ritchie. Yeah, that's the thing. I think John Trudeau could be with, I mean, for me hands down, pretty much everybody in this list, except for like Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler, I think he could take pretty much anybody else. But I think those two are the big guns and well, that's who he got first step out of the gate. Yeah, but you know, we both picked Steve as our favorite designer last episode, so I'm sure listeners aren't surprised. I think Trudeau will actually put up a decent showing on the percentages, though. Oh, I think so, too. There are a lot of people that are fans of his design format. It's less of a flow format. For me, I always associate more with a more challenging flipper gap coupled with heavy focus on theme integration. He's more experimental, so he tends to go with more gimmicks that are often new concepts on the table than what you would see from Steve Ritchie, who was quite an innovator back in the 80s and before. He was really pushing innovations then, but now he's just more known for those clean flow designs. So I think I'm going to go ahead and give it. My prediction will be Trudeau will lose this, but I think he'll get at least 40%. I could see that. I don't have a problem seeing that. Oh, and I did. I looked it up back to our previous conversation.
    30:19
    Furry Cops is System 11. Okay. It felt like it was from the same era, but I just, there were like 30 System 11 games. But sometimes I want to say something's a System 11 when it isn't, so I have to be careful.
    30:33
    Last matchup, and this one I think is going to be pretty polarizing and frustrating for a lot of people. Pat Lawler versus Brian Eddy. This is literally my hardest matchup that we've had so far. because Pat Lawler has so many games that are just amazing and that I love. But my literal favorite game of all time is a Brian Eddy game.
    31:03
    So it gets back to that question of does the one shining example of a game blind out the other designer in the vote? or is it the entire body of work? And then how do you factor it, again, much like a situation with Papa Duke, Brian Eddy doesn't have a lot of games that went to production that he designed. Right. But the thing is, because of that, his stable of games is all really good. Yeah. We all can identify a bomb that we don't like from Lawler. It's like Steve Ritchie. He has enough games. There's going to be one you don't like. yeah and with eddie it's like oh is it attack from mars or or is it medieval madness that's you know sure our shadow that'd probably be the lowest rated of them but still a good game i enjoy i really enjoy shadow every time i play it yeah a lot of people would say i my sense would be a many people many pinheads would say that shadow is one of the best what they might call b-tier games top b-tier it and brom stoker's dracula are always the two i see mentioned so so i definitely could imagine that but yeah i have not decided how i'm going to cast my vote on these two yet uh in truth i lean towards eddie because uh fair or not the fact that there are games by Lawler that I do not like, and I don't know of a game by Eddie that I can name that I don't like to play, it really pushes me to just say, well, I guess he lucked out by not having as many games, but they were all winners to me. Well, which Lawler games do you not like? Roadshow. We're going to have to agree to disagree on that. Rollercoaster Tycoon. I haven't played it, so I don't know. I played it at Texas. Granted, it wasn't working, but I blame him. it it it was it was mostly functional but the troll was very obnoxious i'm sure he didn't voice the troll but nonetheless uh actually the roller coaster tycoon looks to be a fairly decent layout uh no pat was just willing to uh dabble in wide bodies a lot as well which some of them worked out like twilight zone i think it's a pretty decent wide body layout for being a wide body, but you know my thoughts on wide bodies. You have your irrational wide body hatred. Look, we could go into... Geometrically, they do not play as well. And I could explain why with math, but we're not going to do that. We're going to be merciful to our listeners.
    33:46
    Speaking of merciful, which reminds me of mercy, I think we're ready to segue into the video game portion of the podcast. That was a lovely segue Thank you, I've been working on them I've been trying to make them far more entertaining to enhance and give life breathe fresh energy into our discussions and so we only have one topic for the video game segment this time, but it is a meaty one and that is Overwatch of course, because we're now the Eclectic Overwatch Pinball Podcast That's pretty much how we've been hitting pretty hard lately If I'm not getting contacted on Facebook or whatnot about pinball stuff. It tends to be about Overwatch. People who listen are interested in us talking about Overwatch. Apparently, it's got broad reach like many Blizzard games do. Congratulations, Blizzard. You have another cash cow.
    34:39
    There was a recent patch that introduced a slew of changes to both the PC and the console side of the game. I just figured we should go ahead and cover the major ones, ones that we identify as major, which are going to, I think, universally be agreed upon, and just give our thoughts on that. So, Tony, what I thought we should go ahead is probably go with the most obvious change, which is the addition of the new character, Sombra. We talked about her a little bit when she was formally announced, but now we have both, I believe, actually played her, so I think we can probably give some thoughts, maybe. I'm not a big fan of her, but I don't think she's going to be a problem. I don't think she's going to be a bad character. I don't think she's going to be a character that you see rarely like Symmetra. Though lately I have come up against some seriously hardcore Symmetra players. But she doesn't work with my play style very well.
    35:41
    I've had some issues. I've only gotten to play her a couple of times. And one of those was in one of the new arcade 1v1 matches. but I just, I don't know. I don't feel as useful. Maybe I just haven't figured everything out though. Hacking somebody, you know, as they are, uh, old team and locking stuff down is kind of fun. And watching somebody run over a health pack and not be able to pick it up is humorous.
    36:13
    But I don't know. I don't know if I've played her enough to tell. I know it when people have been playing, I've played against her a lot more and I haven't had anything happen yet where I see somebody playing her and I'm just like well that's annoying or where it upsets me she seems to just fit into a mid tier type character where it's annoying but it's not like rage inducing my overall like you this is not a character type that appeals to me to play a lot the main thing she to me she feels a lot like Tracer. So I'm seeing her like I thought when I saw the notes she tends to get in the back, get behind people and so she can be very annoying in that gnat kind of way where you keep getting stung which is how I associate Tracer where she's so fast she's real good at flanking people. The use of her ult, Sombra's ult, has not come across as OP to me like I feared. I was worried about that. It hasn't been her ability to get in hasn't been so strange as to just totally be dominating in a way that I mean, it's interesting. It's I think I think her old is actually a really good addition. I think it's playing out pretty well. I think the most frustrating thing with her was something that I didn't think too much before, but you already touched on the ability to hack health boxes. And so on some of these maps, there's always that, there's one health of a lot of times that a team will be bottlenecked and oriented towards always grabbing. So if she's able to hack that, it can really disrupt the flow, especially if you're in a pickup team, which is what I'm usually in, and sometimes they don't run with healers. And so you need the health packs if you don't want people to die and have to come running back. How can a pickup team that you're in not have a healer? Don't you always go healer if nobody else does? if I wait and do my pick. But normally what happens, if you must know, is that they start with a healer, and then as soon as they die, they get mad that they weren't offensive enough, and they change their character.
    38:16
    Yeah, I've seen that happen a lot in the past. I'll see someone with Mercy or Lucio, and I'll think, oh, no, we've got the healing covered. I'm not going to just auto-kill myself because someone just... I often don't even realize right away that they switched. I'm not reading that text constantly. So they'll switch away from healer, and I won't know. And by then it's like, well, let's see, do I go healer and give up my 85% charge on Reaper? I don't think so. That's stupid. The ult's too powerful. So while I will sometimes try and bandage that together, no. Even I have my limits. So no, I usually try and make sure there is a healer. But if someone else chose to be healer and then they decided that they didn't want to do it, we just kind of have to live with it sometimes. especially if I'm another like it's not unusual for me to get stuck when I'm in groups and I maybe you've seen this as well where I'll see it's a it's like a Sophie's Choice-esque thing where it's do we go without a tank or do we go without a healer I've been in those situations and it's like what what choice do you do because they're both pretty critical pretty much no matter what so uh and a lot of times yeah I do tend to break on the healer side but it depends on the map Because some maps, I'd just be like, if we're escorting a payload, I'm just like, I want a Reinhardt. I'd be willing to do it without the healer, even, just because the shield's so useful. See, in those situations, I normally go Lucio because he's the best balance, I think, of all-around support.
    39:47
    Though, like you said, with certain times, the tank might be more important. But I think Lucio helps more overall. Yeah, and on most maps, I do go Lucio. He has my highest play time for a reason. So anyway, Sombra. Yeah, no, the only thing that's bugging me right now, and it's not the character's design problem, is because she's new, everyone's trying to use her, including on maps where I think she's awful. So almost every game, it was really until this weekend, they're doing another free weekend on Xbox. So I've had a few groups where there wasn't a Sombra. But otherwise, there was always a Sombra. and they're hiding the whole time trying to hack health and stuff. And it's like, okay, well, we're a five-player team now. But on the plus side, the enemy team's probably five as well because they've also got a worthless Sombra. Yeah, running around. Yeah, because no one knows how to play her right yet. So it's a mix of trying to learn new things and then they think they're going to hack and they're breaking off on their own, though. And so they're not with the... Anyway, it gets to my frustration on things like trying to capture points and stuff with characters that refuse to fight on points. That's my biggest frustration with Junkrats, is they always think that they need to be in the back and lob grenades. And it's like, okay, well, we just lost overtime. I don't play Junkrat at all. It's how a lot of them do. Oh, I know. I've seen people do it. But, I mean, I play Junkrat very offensively and very forward, and I try to go with a bit more mobility and using my mind to reposition people type stuff.
    41:30
    That's how I tend to play them. I always get on a point if I'm anywhere even close to it because the point's my goal, but I always get on a point with pretty much everybody. It's one of the reasons I don't play any of the sniper classes very much, except for when they're doing the mystery hero brawl where it just randomly changes you every death to a different hero, which is my favorite brawl that we had.
    41:52
    before they came in with all these arcade modes and the new game modes and everything. I love Mystery Hero Brawls the best. Actually, that was what I had down as to transition into was the new game modes. So I'm assuming that it's paralleled well on the PC. So the main strokes of what I'm familiar with are quick play is now light competitive in that every team can only have one of each character type. and then they introduced an arcade mode which now has a 1v1 which rotates you randomly with you and the opponent being the same character, I think it's first to five wins or something along those lines then there's a 3v3 elimination mode where you get to pick, again each character must be unique but you only have one life for each character and Mystery Hero they have a 6v6 unlimited which is kind of like how Quick Play used to be and the Mystery Hero is as you describe. It's a 6v6 where what you are assigned as a character is random and it changes. It's random every time you die. I love that because it's just everything's different. You don't have somebody sitting there playing. It's hilarious because you always tell when you're playing and somebody randoms into something that they primary because suddenly they see they're being awesome.
    43:11
    Yeah. I've only played this mode I think three times currently. I played like four hours the other day. No, I get too frustrated sometimes. I like the idea of it in short bursts. Kind of like competitive. My normal role with competitive mode is I'll play competitive until my team loses, and then I switch to quick play or something else so that I don't get angry. I only play occasionally on competitive, not nearly as much as I probably should, just because with the kids and everything, I feel bad popping up and leaving a competitive game where a quick play game or anything else, I'll just quit. I don't care. Yeah, because it'll fill the slot. Right. But the mystery hero overall, yeah, neat idea. Unfortunately, my first experience was frustrating because we ended up with three Symmetras on our team towards the end, and four of their six players were D.Va. And we just couldn stop them We just couldn stop them anymore They had four Divas of Mercy and I don know what the sixth was It didn matter because the Mercy just kept everyone up in the mech suits with the new buffs to health that she has So it was like we just couldn't damage her enough, and they just kept marching with the little thing, and then I'd die and be like, yeah, I'm going to be all right. No, I'm Symmetra again. I actually got one. I think I got her twice in a row. It was very frustrating. It was like they wanted me to lose. Yeah, I got that one day where I got freaking Hanzo twice in a row. Hanzo. Those Hanzo trolls. I've played him a little bit more, but I don't want to be one of those people. Hanzo mains. I don't hate Hanzo, but I don't really enjoy Hanzo that much. I've seen some people who played Hanzo very aggressively and very good. I mean, they had really impressive scores. And then there's the people who just kind of sit somewhere and just spam arrows through a choke point, hoping for random headshots.
    45:11
    Yeah. What did you think of the 1v1? I liked the 1v1 a lot. I've only played it a few times, but it's enjoyable, and I suck.
    45:25
    Yeah, I wasn't... I didn't get skunked at it when I... I've only done it once. I think it was a good idea. I've never even gotten wiped on it where I didn't win at least, you know, a match or two.
    45:40
    But I'm not sure I'm a strong enough player to ever really be that great at it. I mean, because it's not just... I mean, if I got a character I'm really familiar with, yeah, I had a really good shot, but because I rotate through so many... Yeah, the first time I played it, the very first character that popped up was Sombra, so we were both Sombras.
    46:00
    And I won that one. And then we shifted to D.Va. and I barely lost that one. And then we shifted to May, and I lost that one. And then we shifted to Soldier 76, and I lost that one barely. I mean, he had, like, no health left. Hmm. I don't remember what my original five were, other than I know Sombra was the first character for me as well, but I lost a Sombra. And then I got one is somber with like four health left. I mean, literally nothing left. Yeah, no, the, the worst one is I know my opponent got a perfect when we were both Hanzo. He headshot me. Oh, wow. Yeah. I shot at him. I, I missed him and it was in a tight corridor and he just, his arrow hit me in the head. So that was it. It was a short match.
    47:02
    What do you think of the new map? The Antarctica map? It's, It's exactly what, I mean, for the 1v1 and the 3v3, they needed a smaller map.
    47:14
    I've got no problems with it. It seems pretty nice. I haven't played it enough to really, I haven't learned all the tricks or the nuances or anything, but I'm pretty happy with it all in all. Yeah, I think it's got a decent layout. I actually think it's a little big for the 1v1, but I think it works well for the 3v3. When the 1v1, it did feel a little... Well, like I said, the first time we played it, we were both Sombra, so I think we were both running past each other invisibly at times. Oh, yeah. On my case, we were both Torbjorns.
    47:49
    Torbjorn. Yeah, Torbjorn. And we didn't find each other. It went so long, it then just highlighted both of us on the screen, like Widow Vision style. because we just didn't encounter each other.
    48:04
    And you know why, because we were both hanging out by our turrets. I was just going to stand by my turret. And he won, too, which was sad. I almost had him. I shouldn't lose as Torbjorn.
    48:16
    I'm well trained as a Torbjorn. Speaking of characters, though. I saw your character time on Shornwarn. It's not healer high. He's higher than a couple of the healers. He's higher than Anna. he was when I took that. He might not be anymore. I think he is. I believe in him. So those are the ones where me and Dennis both put screenshots of our hero playtimes up on the Eclectic Gamers Facebook page. Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Exactly.
    48:52
    And had a discussion about it. And I just tried to ignore how sad it is that I think I've got one character I've got more time in than Dennis has in all of his characters combined? Well, you have been playing Overwatch for months longer than me, so there's that. And I also play another shooter quite a bit, so my time is limited. My time is limited by a couple of factors. I wouldn't read too much into it. Instead, I would feel bad that Junkrat is my prime. That would be what I would feel bad about. Junkrat's awesome. If you're on an offensive map, you need somebody who can really push, Junkrat can do you. You defensive map, you need somebody who can help hold the line, Junkrat will hold the line.
    49:38
    I guess he's just great then. I guess all my characters are trash. Just trash. Junkrat will flank. No, I'm not saying everybody else is trash. I'm just saying Junkrat will play. I'm just saying I've never, you know, I've seen scenarios where when people are loading in and Blizzard gives us little tips, I've seen things say such statements as too many snipers, no tanks, no healers, but I've never actually seen something say, not enough Junkrat.
    50:05
    I'm just saying. I have seen too many defensive players. Yes, I have seen that. I have seen that rarely. Rarely. Most of the time I get stuck with people where it's defend these points, like on Hanamura or something, and my whole team went offense for some reason. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Where's the Junkrat when you need him?
    50:29
    I broke, I know I spoke several episodes ago when we were talking about Overwatch. I think it was when Jack Danger was on.
    50:41
    How I had zero Genji time. I now have three minutes Genji time. Because every single person on my team went Genji to start the match. and I didn't want to be that guy who broke it out. So we went in with six Genjis. Okay. Yeah, I had a Genji time like that. I've done a little bit more Genji. I still just don't switch to him much. But I don't... You know, again, it's a vicious cycle. I don't want to play him because I'm not very good with him. But if I don't ever play him, I'll never be good with him. That's kind of nice about doing Mystery Hero, though, because I don't find that their little training mode with the bots is very helpful for learning the characters, but doing something like that where I'm forced to play a character, that helps. And I've gone into some quick play matches and I've just said, okay, no matter how bad it gets, I'm going to do Hanzo. I'm going to start to learn how to do Hanzo. And now, I'm not uncomfortable when I'm Hanzo, but I still don't like him. So I was just, you know, as you would expect, you wouldn't like every single character. They play too differently. It would be too hard to like them all. If they all play the same, you might as well go play some silly game like like cod or battlefield battlefield doesn't play the same but they give you a far fewer choices it's it's more realistic we'll say as i use a machine gun in world war one more realistic so as we're starting to talk about the characters we should note that there were a number of characters that did receive some buffs there are also some characters that received some nerfs but i figured let's let's start with some of the buffed characters and i don't know if you've tested all of them out that have received buffs, but the ones I know that have received direct buff enhancement have been Pharah, Soldier 76, Torbjorn. Those are three that I've played that were buffed. I don't know if... I've played Pharah and Soldier since the patch came out. Are there any others that you're aware of that got a distinct buff in some capacity that you've played that I didn't list? Not that I've played that I'm aware of. I could look up the patch notes to see for sure. Well, I mean, if you don't have one highlighted in your mind, that's fine. What were your, I guess, so in your case with Soldier and Pharah, what are your thoughts having tried them now that they've had their enhancements? Do you like the changes to them? I like the changes. I like Pharah's ability that if you play it right, you can fly for pretty much ever, which is something that I like a lot.
    53:10
    I mean, you can't just hold the button, obviously, but you can keep your height so you don't have to come down. You can float long enough to build up your next boost again. That's really nice.
    53:28
    I know they did some adjustments to her damage. Let me see. They increased the minimum explosive damage by 13%. They decreased the minimum knockback to 0%. and they increased the lift of the jump jets by 35%. That's why she can fly more.
    53:49
    And the increase in damage and everything means she's doing pretty good hitting, especially for your near misses and stuff. So that's been going pretty well. Yeah, I've played her a little bit with the changes. I've noticed more on the rockets than on the flight stuff itself. Although when I'm fighting against Pharahs, I'm noticing now they actually can be in the air a lot. So you do have to keep your eyes to the sky in a way that you didn't always like you. She'd be up there briefly, but then, you know, she's going to land. And that's when you could try and get her a lot of times. So I think it's a good change for her. Likewise, I think Soldier 76, I have played him more. I play him more than Pharah anyway. I think that his damage modifications that they have made were an almost necessary move because he is not one of the more common offensive characters I've been encountering, and I think because it was just there were better choices. I agree. And, I mean, they didn't take his damage up a whole lot, but you can tell. And I know looking at the notes, they were supposed to have increased his maximum bullet spread a touch, but I haven't noticed it at all. Yeah, in most situations, I don't think it's all that noticeable, but where I believe it is noticeable is he is very much, in my view, a hard counter to Pharah, and I think it's showing a lot better with these changes that he's a really big threat to her now when she's in the sky because of that spread. I think that spread's more noticeable at the distance as she is when she's up high, so anyway i think it was a very good change i'm sure pharaoh players are frustrated now because soldier is more of a threat than he was before well and i always considered soldier a pretty so a pretty hard counter for pharaoh anyway he's all i'm sure he was always meant to be but just with the the dan i think the damage thing we'll see if it's enough to actually start resulting in a lot more people playing soldier i as of the last week i have been seeing him more I don't know if it's enough to say there's a trend or not. And we'll see what happens, of course, on the pro levels when they release their percentages to know if they're actually thinking that Pharah and Soldier are characters that are worth their time. Offensive characters have always suffered on the pro scene. They've been some of the least popular, I think, outside of occasional situational uses of certain ones like Reaper in particular or Tracer. They're desperately trying to get to a point when they're about to lose and they'll lose anyway because it's the pro scene. So the only other one which I have, which you don't play, is Torbjorn. And Torbjorn needed buffs. He needed them desperately. More so than Soldier and Pharah ever did. Because Torbjorn was seen as a joke. And Torbjorn needs to be respected. As a joke. He needs to be respected. So two changes of note that they did. One is his hammer swings faster now. and that is important because the hammer swings are what determine when a Tier 1 turret gets to be upgraded to a Tier 2 turret. That's a nice help because any time you drop a Tier 1 turret and you can't get it up to 2, it doesn't matter because a 1 is useless. Yeah, they're really weak in terms of damage, and they have next to no health. So it's really easy for people to destroy them. A Pharah or anyone will be able to get up above. The turrets aren't that smart, so it's easy enough to flank them or just peek around a corner and just chip them away, but tier one just doesn't last. The problem with Torbjorn wasn't at the beginning when he could easily get a tier two. It's when there's pressure on the point. Why would you want to stay as him when he's under fire? He's not going to be able to pull out his hammer and upgrade, so he's going to just drop a tier one turret. The turret is a big part of his repertoire. So if it's weak, he is weak, and that's why people don't like him, I think. The other big change, which I'd say actually, from my perspective, having a significant amount of time, you know, in terms of percentages on Torbjorn, is he now passively generates scrap. Which is useful. It's massively useful. The reason is normally if he wants to get scrap, he has to go where people died and he picks up the scrap. On paper, that I'm sure sounded great. That's how Reaper picks up his health balls.
    58:20
    It's a normal thing. It's a normal concept. You loot the bodies when you're done. But Torbjorn, with how Overwatch plays, he's a defensive character. He's hanging back. He's keeping his turret repaired. The enemies, because so many of the attackers, aside from Genji, are ranged attackers, a lot of times where the enemy dies is kind of in the enemy's control zone, not yours. so you're playing him on defense because he's a defensive character the offense is dying in a choke point it's usually not safe for Torbjorn to run up there and start gathering scrap yeah very true so in my instance there were a lot of times where there would be plenty of scrap for me to armor the entire team but I couldn't safely try and get it and it was more important for me to stay alive so that I could keep the turret up or I could keep lobbying my molten gunshots at range then it would be to try and risk dying and then you have to wait for my 20 second return so to me that's actually the biggest change I think they let him have a lower amount of scrap total on him so he needs to just be sure to keep throwing out armor but it just sits there it's balanced by the amount of scrap you collect from a fallen enemy was reduced so yeah I think that was that's perfectly fair but it's nice now so that if Torbjorn can't get near the bodies he still will eventually generate enough and it's a decent clip so he'll generate enough so he can actually start armoring people which again is well he's not a support character he's a defensive character that's a key part of his repertoire because you're giving up a lot of stuff when you go with torbjorn so they needed to do something to make his support aspects better the only thing else i wanted to say on the buff side is i was very surprised they did not make any changes that I saw to Symmetra. They didn't. The other ones, let me go through here now.
    60:13
    They buffed Mercy. Her passive health regeneration now activates when she avoids taking damage for one second instead of three seconds. Yeah, I should have listed that one. I have played her a little bit since that came out. It is noticeable. It is very useful. The problem, I think, for mercy is i her ultimate is still a bit it's a i don't know i don't know how you fix it her ultimate i know they from when the game first came out they reduced the time before everyone is resurrected the problem though and i took a video yesterday of when i did this exploited this on another mercy or tried to but they do the she does the res everyone comes back where they're dead so if They died to an ult. Like, they died because D.Va nerfed this and blew them all up. Then they all just come back in the same spot. Reaper just ults and kills them again. Yeah, I've seen that happen. And so, but anyway, Farah, excuse me, Mercy gets focus fired a lot. At least when I'm Mercy, I swear, I get focus fired more as Mercy than when I'm any other healer. Part of that is she has limited mobility. Part of that is her big old beam tether is a beacon of kill me. I am an angel of Mercy. so this one second versus three second it definitely has made a difference if i can get safely away but if you're obviously for teams that can continue to keep her under focus fire it has changed nothing so you know as long as you target her it shouldn't change anything but uh i've noticed that you know i've noticed a little bit of it so yes that was a i'm glad you mentioned that one because i should not have forgotten that i play mercy quite a bit yeah and the other there was one other buff uh to widowmaker the venom mine will no longer damage the person who placed it so so widowmaker can't be hurt by her own mind and the charge rate on her on the widow's kiss the sniper shot was increased by 20 so maybe more people will play Widowmaker. I don't know. Great, because that's what we need. And now she's not. I don't know. I barely play Widowmaker. Every time I've tried her, I've not liked her. I've felt that I'm not helping the team.
    62:34
    Let's talk about some of the nerfs. Okay, there's a bunch of those. Most of them can be summed up in one way.
    62:42
    Ults charge slower. Yes. I actually think that's a good change, though. I do, too. Yay. It just started to turn into alt spam. I'm glad. And now it seems like in most games people get two.
    62:55
    Three or four of them are highly good at doing chip damage and stuff. But if you're not doing much, it was silly for you to get three every game, I thought. Yeah. I actually had a game where I only got one because I was Reinharding and I wasn't attacking. I was just being the shield. And that was fine. I had it. Because I didn't fire it off right away. So I probably would have earned two had I used it as soon as possible. But, you know, I save it for when it's special.
    63:22
    Oh, that's another minor thing that popped up that was changed, is dealing damage to, like, Chornborn's turret or Symmetra's teleporter no longer charges your ultimate. And I'm guessing that was part of the reason why, on the more professional scene, why people were discouraged from playing a character like Torbjorn, because it's so easy to attack the turret compared to a professional player. I mean, I can target turrets. So it was just way too easy in a game where it comes down to which team has the most ults they can fire off at a time basically wins that checkpoint. It was, yeah, it was just unfair in a way. It was like, no, we don't want Torbjorn. Or you can beat Torbjorn, but you can't drop your turret. And if you can't drop your turret, then why would you beat Torbjorn?
    64:12
    And we forgot one other buff that I don't know how we forgot it. because I think it's probably the character who got the most buffs overall.
    64:19
    D.Va. Oh, yeah. The ultimate cost to call her mech was dropped by 20%. Her mech health was increased by 200. Or, I'm sorry, increased to 200, so it was doubled. The armor's still 400, so instead of having a total health of 500, she's up to 600.
    64:39
    And her movement speed while firing was increased by 25%. yeah the uh now i believe the recharge change was just so the alt charge slower nerf did not affect her for getting the mech yeah that was that's what it was right so that practically will will visually be no change for anyone everything else though was was a notable buff um and you know our our two-time guest host mike he primaries diva so he'd probably be a good one to ask in terms of it. I've played her a little bit since the change, and the health is definitely noticeable. I mean, it's... That is a big help. I mean, and again, I look back to when I watched, like, the Overwatch World Cup and such. D.Va is, at the professional level, she's the least played of the tanks, and I'm assuming this is an attempt to try and rectify that. Yeah, I can see it. Makes sense to me. Just like on two of the nerfs I highlighted, for me to remember, For Ana and Lucio, I think we're deliberately done because those are 95% of the healer teams at the pro level. It's an Ana-Lucio combo. And so the big nerf on Ana is they changed her ult so the nano boost will no longer boost speed. Good, because Reinhardt should not be keeping up with a speed boosted Lucio, which is really annoying. Yeah, and I know they did that because they're hoping that Ana will now start to use her nano boost on other characters. I have to admit I exploited the speed boost on the nano boost aspect in order to try and maintain an overtime when I trying to prevent a loss and just fire it into the nearest butt of anyone running in front of me and then get them to zip ahead But I know at the pro level nano boosting by Ana was on two things You either nano boosted your Reinhardt or you nano boosted Genji depending on what the other team makeup was. And that's it. That's the only two she would ever buff. She would never boost anyone else. So, we'll see if it has its desired effect. I have to admit, as someone who played Ana as my third most common healer of... I think I have her a little bit higher than Zenyatta on time now. This change does make me choose her less. Because I'm like, oh, well, it doesn't even make you fast anymore. I don't even know if it's worth it. Super strong and all that stuff. Sure, conceptually. But she's my least favorite healer to play, because at her core, she's a sniper, which is difficult for me. I have trouble with being snipers. That's why I don't like Hanzo, I hate Widowmaker, and I don't ever really play McCree, because they're all snipers. Well, so is Anna. I only play her because she's a healer. People need to feel my heal-y love goodness. Lucio, the change, 15%, I believe, reduction on his passive healing. Yeah, 10%. Oh, is it 10? Okay. It was 10% on the healing per second has been decreased by 10% on amp it up. So it's not his standard. It's just when you boost it, when you amp it, that's been reduced by 10%. Because, I mean, I've had multiple times playing Lucio where, you know, So if somebody ults into your team and you freaking amp it up, as long as anybody on the edges are going to be fine. Or, I mean, if you, I mean, Lucio's ult, I use Lucio's ult to counter most people's ults. But between that and amp it up, you can normally keep people from getting wiped out. Okay, I was wondering why when I, because I've played him a number of times since this came out. I was like, I'm not really seeing a huge difference. Yeah, it's only been decreased on the amp it up. So when you boost it, you're not doing quite as much of a boosted healing as you were before. Okay, and that makes sense. I normally amp when I have people by me who are critical. Right, and that's how I normally amp. Or depending upon what, where, when, and why, I think I probably burn amp on speed boost more often than healing. Yeah, I do as well. I mean, at least at the beginning because it's always about getting people back into position. Right. I don't amp unless there's really critical people that I'm trying to keep up, because if it's not super important and I amp and I need it a few seconds later before it's up, and they can mess up, I just don't amp as often. I don't just spam amp every time the cooldown's up. Well, overall for Lucio, I think this is a good nerf. I think it's a nerf that he needed, but at the same time, I also don't see this as being enough of a nerf to change the fact that he's basically a mandatory character. No, he's still going to be a mandatory character. This isn't going to change that. And I don't think Blizzard's intention was ever to have a character be mandatory. So, I mean, honestly, if they don't want Lucio to be essentially S-rank and the only S-rank character, then they're going to have to do something significant. And it's got to be to his speed, I think. It's not his healing. It's his speed that's the problem. But, you know, I don't know what you do. because without the speed, what is he then? He's nothing. Exactly. I did have a game the other day before pre-patch where, oh, it was one of the Mystery Hero games, and we mystery'd into two Lucios, and we just kept bouncing between which of us was healing and which of us was speed.
    70:01
    And, yeah, it was pretty powerful. We'd both go to healing if a couple people got real bad hurt, but pretty much one of us was healing and the other was speed, and it worked really well. Yeah, it's very nice. Very, very nice. So anything else you wanted to talk about regarding Overwatch, Overwatch changes? We'll go ahead and finish the nerfs here because there's a couple big ones. Yeah, those were the only two I wanted to talk about because, as you know, I only care about healers. I know. Mei had her ultimate cost increased by 15% in addition to the 25%, which is good because, man, her giant blizzard freeze thing was just getting annoying because it's so large and it was happening so often. Agreed. Good change. Good nerf. Let's see. And probably the most important, Zarya. The power gain from her particle barrier was dropped by 20%, and the power gain from her projected barrier was dropped by 20%. so Zarya is no longer a mandatory take yeah and I think that change may actually I agree with you I think it's probably enough of a nerf that she will no longer be the partner to Reinhardt in all pro team builds but I haven't watched since the change so I don't know for sure if at that end but I'm definitely seeing her play a lot less at my level yeah because she was just I mean she could if she was you know if she was power boosted up man she was just so strong and she was just so not having, I mean, I remember when the game first started, before they buffed Zarya originally, you never saw Zarya. And then they buffed her, and she was all over the place. And then when they did the last round of stuff, she got a little tweak again, and pretty much she was everywhere constantly. She was mandatory.
    71:53
    And I don't think this will, we're not going to see her as often. She's not going to be the, but I don't think it's nerfed her so much that she's going to disappear.
    72:04
    No, no, I don't think so either. It's just, I think teams will have to evaluate whether or not they want to run a tank that they were running, essentially because it became a high health attack offensive DPS character. And instead, maybe, you know, be more situational, maybe be more willing to go, we can afford to give up the damage on this map. Let's run the hog instead and go with the chains. Yeah, no, I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Any other nerfs?
    72:34
    No, not on the heroes that I can see. There are a bunch of other adjustments made. Ba-ba-ba-ba, is anything important?
    72:45
    Oh, that's right. They completely messed with the amount of XP needed to level. 2 through 13 they didn't touch 14 through 100 has been reduced and then everything after 100 was locked at 20,000 XP and so you'll level to 100 faster and then you should level out makes sense, I don't really care I think the big thing it is that was I think it's more one of those things that it's like oh everybody up through 100 will level pretty quick and they'll get their loot boxes really quick and then after 100 it gets slower and maybe more people will buy loot boxes yeah I think you're right so I think that's the most likely and obvious
    73:49
    thing Okay. Well, then I guess we can move into the third and final segment of the podcast, the tabletop section, which you have something to talk about regarding the digital realm and board games. This is thanks to a discussion I had with Dan from the Pinball Podcast.
    74:10
    And there are a lot of the really popular board games out there that are putting out digital versions anymore. I mean, we've talked in the past about Tabletop Simulator and all the different games you can put in and the different games they have on their collection and stuff. But a lot of other games are getting digital versions that are really fun to play. And they're really nice because you can do solo gaming and or play online. and they're really becoming very common on the mobile platforms like your phones and your tablets and such. I think the big thing with them, what I like so much about them, is for games that have a lot of, what is the word I'm looking for, just stuff to keep track of,
    75:10
    like just normal stuff that happens, like flipping cards and things like that. Some of the tedious things. Right, right. That kind of stuff. It does them all automatically. Like, case in point, one of my favorite digital versions of a game that I also deeply enjoy is Sentinels of the Multiverse. We've played it one time, I think is all that you and I have played it, because I know most of the other people in our group didn't really like Sentinels that much. Yeah, we only did it the one time. Right, so I never pulled it back out. And Sentinels is a co-op superhero game. It's not a deck-building game, because your decks are built and in existence already, but it is a game that you play for,
    76:11
    you play superheroes as part of a team playing against a villain. The villain auto plays. They've got a deck that automatically plays. So nobody has to play the villain. And there's an environment deck that automatically plays when it's turn comes around. and in the digital version all that is of course done by the machine so you can do it, you can play a solo game, that's how I tend to play a lot a four player solo game where I'm just playing all four characters but they've also got online multiplayer play so you can get online and play with other people or the big thing is you can play it as a pass along game and I've seen this with games in the past where like when we went to see Resurrection F there were people sitting ahead of us who were passing a phone back and forth playing Ascension and Ascension is a deck building game of the very classic sense of a deck building game it's a very popular deck building game it's a lot of fun but the game has so many expansions and so much stuff going on that you're looking at a box that if you filled it, you're talking, you know, 20, 30 pound a card, easy hauling around and trying to keep track of, but they were able to just pass their phone back and forth and play the game by go did my turn. It's your turn. Just pass the phone to the next guy. So you can even, you can play games like that with just one phone or one tablet while you're doing something with a group. Like I said, sitting in a movie theater waiting for the movie to start or sitting in line somewhere or something like that.
    78:01
    But it's nice because between that and the online play, even if you don't have anybody with you who wants to play, you can find a game. Oh, yeah. So it's not just the local option, the convenience of that, like you were talking about, the theater scenario of being able to just actually do something like this without hauling the whole mother load of supplies, but also the ability to play with people if you don't know people around you who want to do these sort of games.
    78:29
    Exactly. That's one of those things you can play. I've spoken about it in the past. The one I've got the most time in is Star Realms, which is a deck building game that you and I have played. and it's a deck building game where you actually fight against each other. I've spoken about it many times before and I still play Star Realms every single day.
    78:50
    I'm not going as crazy as I was at one point where I would be running 6 to 12 games at a time. I only tend to play one game at a time and I've been doing lots of online tournaments so I've mainly been just playing my online tournament games and that's it. but in addition to it, another game that's a personal favorite of ours that has a digital version that I own and is very fun is Ticket to Ride Ticket to Ride, you can play against just the computer or you can play it online or you can play it as a hot seat swap game just by passing around the thing so like all the others it's a game that lets you get more play time in even when you're in situations where you couldn't normally play I don't think all of these games have an online ability I know a lot of them do I know Ticket of the Ride does and Sentinels does now and Star Realms has from the beginning and Ascension does I think this is something that in the long run is going to be a great thing for board gamers because sometimes the hardest thing is finding people and taking the time to set up and play the game you want to play and the ability to just fire it up on your tablet and log on and play with a bunch of random people around the country or with your friends or something is going to be a big thing. And I think there's a lot more games that are going to start going this route and adding on to it. Now, a number of these that you've listed, I know we're going to have a bunch of links in the show notes for people so that they can gain access. I see a lot of the ones you've provided are designed for Android device users. Some of them also seem to be oriented around Steam, so people with laptops and PCs that can run that sort of thing would be able to take advantage of these tools. Right, and they tend to be available on Steam. Some of them, or a lot of them, are available on Steam. Most of them are available on Android and iOS. There are a few that are only on iOS.
    81:20
    I don't have an exact list of it. And I know I put a link, we're going to put a link to a digital board game list from boardgaming.com that has a pretty good, though nowhere near complete list.
    81:36
    And in addition to all these different games, a lot of games that have a lot of different housekeeping type stuff, like running timers and tracking health and stuff, a lot of games that now have companion apps that you can get where the game doesn't where you're not playing the game on your thing but you can use your phone or your tablet to help you make everything easier to track during your play time so your play time sped up a little bit yeah those i think those sort of things should be very useful i was wondering do you think that these sort of tools, do you think they hurt the sales of the more traditional board game items? If people could say, well, I don't, you know, I could use this and not have to carry the 30 pounds of stuff to the movie theater, but I could also just use this and never buy the 30 pounds of stuff.
    82:32
    Well, I think that's the concern that you're going to run into. I think with most board gamers, it's not going to. Like the hardcore board gamers, like the hardcore pinball players or the really hardcore video game guys, they're going to want the actual physical version because for a lot of them, I know, and just like with me, part of it is sitting down at a table with your friends and rolling dice or moving cards or doing something. It's part of the interactivity, actually having it there, as opposed to all of us sitting around a table with our tablets or passing a tablet around. It doesn't have the same level of interaction that you would have. So I don't think it's going to hurt it much, because I think most of the people who would have been buying these board games in the first place are going to buy the board games. And then they're going to pick up the ones they really like on digital, so they can play them when they normally wouldn't have the ability to play. But I also think at the same time it's going to flip the other way around. Some people are going to pick some of these games up, get it for $3 on your phone and really like it and end up buying the actual game to play around the table with your friends and family. Yeah, I think your analogies to some of these other industries and how they've approached when there's been digital options introduced into a traditional physical medium, I'm rambling on it but what I mean to say is yeah I agree with you I think that's going to be the case I think it can help drive sales and that alone is probably enough just because it will give better exposure so I think there's a lot to be said for that yeah because I mean it's like Star Realms I mean there's a lot of players but I mean I'm playing in tournaments I'm playing in a tournament right now that is with people from all over the world and we'd never be able to play together ever. I mean, all I'd ever get to play with are the people I play with, you know, at home and at the game night I attend and here and there. But, I mean, I'm playing in tournaments where there's literally hundreds of us in the tournament and there's, you know, three, four, five tournaments running at a time sometimes. Awesome. And one last thing, this literally just came out. I just saw this earlier this week when I was writing this stuff up. There is a new app out.
    85:05
    It's called Dized. I have not tried it. I have not done anything with it other than watch their video and read a few things talking about it.
    85:19
    But I can see the promise in it. What it is is it's an app that you put on your phone, and they will eventually have more. Right now they've only got a few. but they have a game programmed into it where you don't play it on your phone, but you tell the phone like, oh, this is the game I'm playing. Teach me to play it and set it down, and it will walk you through playing the game. So instead of having one of you sit down and read the rule book and learn the rule book and then teach the game to everybody, you could sit down and then with this app, if your game's in it, the app will teach you how to play the game and walk you through a play.
    86:00
    oh wow that's that would be really useful because i think the rules aspect is always the biggest hurdle to getting into the games at the start or at least it is for me yeah no and i it is for a lot of people especially i mean some people i i've played with some people who have these like magical people who can instantly and super easily explain a game and it just goes insane and they're they can especially if you really know a game by heart and then you get other times where nobody's played the game and you're sitting down and it's like, well, this is a 45-minute game, but nobody has ever played this game, so we're going to sit here and learn to play the game all together as one. Yes. Well, at least those magical people now have had their souls sucked into an app. Yeah.
    86:48
    And now they will do our bidding and teach us rules. The always worst thing on the rules wasn't just the sheer overwhelming nature sometimes it feels when you're trying to go through it, but it's when you realize you've missed something and you were misplaying and you have to start fixing it as you go along. That happened to us with the first game we did of Secret Hitler a couple months ago.
    87:10
    Only in a couple little spots. We were really good overall, but just a couple little things slipped through. Well, it's not that I had most of the rules down because of having seen it played enough. Yeah, you are a quasi-magical person.
    87:23
    Only quasi. I'm not that great. But at least you're not stored in an app, so you can be thankful for small favors. Yes, I have not yet lost my soul to an app. There is not a TonyBot9000 out there yet. But if there was, I would include a link in the show notes. Of course. Because that's what we do. Well, I think we covered our show for this evening. We have. All right. Well, we already plugged Facebook. For those of us who like to reach in a more traditional manner, such as email, you can do so at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. I'd also like to remind folks that we love ratings and reviews over at iTunes. It helps other people when doing a search in their podcast software actually find this podcast. We're also available on Twitter and Instagram. In both cases, we are eclectic underscore gamers. And if you go and look on Instagram right now, there is a short little video of me starting the conversation on the tabletop section. That's right. So go check that out. Check out our social media things. And in the meantime, play some pinball, play some Overwatch, and play some tabletop games.