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Episode 114 - BuildABank

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 19m·analyzed·May 4, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Pinball podcast hosts conduct randomized draft to build competing banks of 6 games each.

Summary

Tony and Dennis from the Eclectic Gamers Podcast conduct a creative pinball game selection exercise called 'BuildABank,' where they use randomization to select six games each from Pinside's top 100, 101-110, 151-160, 201-210 rankings, and top 10 EM games. They alternate picks from curated pools and build thematic banks (Tony: diverse sci-fi/spec-fic; Dennis: themed sci-fi), then plan to create a Facebook poll for community voting on whose bank is superior.

Key Claims

  • High Speed is Dennis's favorite System 11 game and he ranks it in his top five games overall

    high confidence · Dennis states: 'in part because i know it's your favorite system 11 and... high speed... i put it in my top five'

  • Stern's Indiana Jones pinball is described as 'a total turd' with no reasonable justification for picking it

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly states: 'Stern Indiana Jones is a total turd. There's no way anyone's picking it. I won't even let you pick it.'

  • Magic City (Williams 1967) has a rotating color wheel fountain that was cut for cost reasons, which collectors retrofit with color-changing LEDs

    high confidence · Dennis explains: 'The fountain was always meant to have a rotating color display... a rotating color wheel, but it got cut for cost reasons... they'll stick in a color-changing LED, and the fountain will change colors.'

  • Dennis has commentated Apollo (Blast Off replay version) at Kansas City Championship, which is why he recognized Blast Off

    high confidence · Dennis recalls: 'we commentated Apollo, the replay version, at Kansas City Championship. That's why. That's what that is.'

  • Competitive pinball players who have access to Stars (Stern) love the game for its challenging drops, spinner shots, and strategic depth

    medium confidence · Dennis states: 'competitive players who have access to stars love it they love the challenge of trying to go for the drops they love the spinner shot'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm going to choose for my top one through ten game i'm going to add lord of the rings into my bank because it's one of the greatest journey pins that was ever created it's got great flow it's one of the best themes you could possibly have for pinball”

    Dennis @ early_selection_phase — Establishes Dennis's criteria for game selection: flow, theme quality, and overall experience

  • “The book was so good, and the movie was so bad. But the pinball machine is just so good.”

    Tony @ congo_selection — Reflects on Congo's exceptional quality despite poor source material; notes pinball's ability to transcend IP quality

  • “I flew an attack helicopter, Tony. I flew it straight there. No detours. I didn't stop for fuel or anything. How did that even happen?”

    Dennis @ video_game_section — Expresses frustration with Far Cry 5's narrative inconsistencies during final boss sequence

  • “I want that feel, and quite frankly I like the back glass and it goes with my so far pretty sci-fi theme that's an interesting tactic”

    Tony @ firepower_2_selection — Reveals Tony's emerging thematic strategy for building a cohesive sci-fi/spec-fic collection

  • “I'm going to go ahead and go with Stars just so I have – go with my diversity. And I think people are going to appreciate my diverse bank of games.”

    Dennis @ stars_selection — Demonstrates Dennis's deliberate diversification strategy across game eras (EM, solid state, DMD)

Entities

TonypersonDennispersonRoanoke Pinball MuseumorganizationNick SchellpersonLord of the RingsgameMonster BashgameCongogameKissgame

Signals

  • ?

    collector_signal: Collectors employing thematic curation (sci-fi/spec-fic) alongside era diversification (EM, solid state, DMD) to balance coherence with gameplay variety

    high · I noticed the theme pretty early on... I'm just gonna stick with the thing... I want that feel... it goes with my so far pretty sci-fi theme... for my diversity... Magic City... for my diversity of bank

  • ?

    community_signal: Hosts planning Facebook poll for community voting on competing game banks; contemplating expansion of BuildABank format to additional rank ranges (11-20, 61-70) based on audience response

    high · i will create a poll on facebook... we'll see which uh which one people like and if this this game resonates well we can always do things like... 11 through 20 and 61 through 70

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Stars (Stern) positioned as challenging competitive game with strategic depth; competitive players with access love the game for drop challenges and spinner mechanics

    medium · competitive players who have access to stars love it they love the challenge of trying to go for the drops they love the spinner shot

  • ?

    design_philosophy: High Speed valued for Steve Richie's design work and flow mechanics; John Borg's Kiss geometry praised for ruleset strategy balance between accessibility and aggression

    high · i think it's got great flow i want a steve richie game in my bank... John Borg has a really good geometry... it can be an aggro player... relatively easy to understand but you have the mode selection so there's strategy

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern's Indiana Jones unequivocally rejected as low-quality game with no redeeming appeal; represents bottom-tier Stern release in context of host preferences

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.238

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke Pinball Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to the science and the history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. The museum is open every day except Monday. It houses over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Roanoke Pinball Museum. Don't forget about it.
0:47
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, May 3rd. I don't even know that it's Sunday. Who knows at this point. This is episode 114 I am Tony You are, I'm Dennis It is Sunday while we're recording Who knows when people are listening But we don't have a whole lot Because I haven't been keeping up on much of any news Has there been any news? A little bit on the video game side Yeah, even there I've barely been I don't know Like I talked last time We're rotating at work Who's working from home and who's not me and the other supervisor.
1:28
And this has been my two weeks to work from home and everything just kind of blends together. And so I've not really been tracking anything. It's just like, what day is it? Yeah. I, with our state finally issuing the state opening guidance and that was going on during the last week of its development. So there was a lot of, Oh, they're going to want feedback from you. And then they didn't want feedback from me, I'm assuming because then I got the copy of the finalized plan. And of course, then the summary leaked to the public a little bit early, which I'm not surprised because they gave it out to over 100 people.
2:05
And now, of course, a lot of people asking, well, what does this mean? What does this mean? And I'm hoping we don't have quite as many questions as we did when the stay at home orders were in place. I think the answer in most of these cases that I've seen so far is if it doesn't say, then it's allowed. So that's what I've been telling most people. But anytime there's a change, there are questions. So I've been answering emails this weekend. Nothing overly heavy, but, you know, it's putting in and find out. I put in a couple hours here and there and it's like it all blends, especially when it doesn't feel like I have a weekend. Yeah. Oh, I understand that. Yeah. And I just came off of the pinball show. So here I am immediately talking again and doing them back to back sucks about as much as I knew it would. So, yeah, I was going to ask how how that feels going, just basically burning four or five hours every morning. Every. Yeah, it's it's a bit much. Talking about the same stuff. Yeah, we didn't I mean, we did not. I've gotten the schedules tighter, so it's not been like start at eight and then just keep going. We're starting later and I'm trying to keep things fixed. And so far I've been able to cover kind of different topics. so it hasn't been redundant in the same way but it is a lot of talking and a lot of sitting so the biggest impact is i don't immediately feel like editing egp as soon as i'm done and sometimes i used to do that but uh i just have to have a break so well that's okay yeah but i find time so speaking of time i this might end up being a short quarantine-esque episode but we're gonna go right into pinball because you're probably a little confused by my notes in the pinball section it is cute yes yes it's a suit it's it's described as a super fun game that dennis will force to be played so it sounds somewhat aggressive but it's not meant to be you have kids are you familiar with build a bear i am familiar with build a bear i've been there many a times well this is like build a bear except instead of building a bear we're going to build a bank, a pinball bank of games. Okay. I'm really proud of the alliteration, so we have to celebrate that. So here's how it's going to work. This is inspired by, as people have been sitting around bored on social media, I've seen them starting to do things like, here's a set of four games, and here are four different sets of four games. Which set would you choose to have in your home? I've seen a bunch of those. Yeah. So this is like that, but I'm going to do it a little bit differently. So the way this is going to work is I have already compiled – see, I even did background work for this because there's no other news to talk about. So I have taken the current, as of today, as of this morning, Pennside lists of the top 10 games, games 1 through 10, games 51 through 60, 101 through 110, 151 through 160, 201 through 210 on the Pennside rankings, and then the top 10 EMs, also from Pennside. And what we will do is I'm going to stick these in as sets into random.org, and I'm going to read off whatever the four chosen, the top four, are going to be out of those sets. And we are going to build a bank of each of us, of six games, based off of the four choices that we have. And then I'm going to throw it up as a poll on Facebook and we're going to let people vote and decide, did you build a better bank or did I build a better bank?
High Speed
game
Terminator 2: Judgment Daygame
Star Trek (Data East)game
Starsgame
Firepower 2game
Lethal Weapon 3game
Blast Offgame
Magic Citygame
Steve Richieperson
John Borgperson
Kansas City Championshipevent
Pinsideorganization
Far Cry 5game
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twicegame

high · Stern Indiana Jones is a total turd. There's no way anyone's picking it. I won't even let you pick it.

  • $

    market_signal: EM era games remain viable for home collection due to form factor diversity (2-inch flippers); collector interest in obscure titles like Magic City supported by museum curation

    medium · I don't have a two-inch flipper currently because everything else was solid state. So, again, for my diversity strategy... Nick Schell from the Roanoke Pinball Museum has spoken quite highly of Magic City

  • ?

    product_strategy: Magic City (1967) EM game commonly retrofitted with color-changing LEDs in fountain mechanism; represents aftermarket modification pattern for cost-cut original features

    high · The fountain was always meant to have a rotating color display... it got cut for cost reasons. So what a lot of people will do is they'll stick in a color-changing LED, and the fountain will change colors.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Dennis actively involved in tournament commentary (Apollo at Kansas City Championship); suggests ongoing connection to competitive pinball infrastructure

    high · we commentated Apollo, the replay version, at Kansas City Championship

    • 5:44
    And the rules are going to be so that we don't have the full choice of picking. the randomizer is going to decide out of each of these sets of games of you know roughly equivalent quality four that we are allowed to pick from and we're going to trade off so you you will either start and get to pick first out of the one through ten or i will start and we will alternate so we'll each get to pick first out of half of them we cannot choose the same game so there will be three choices available to whoever didn't get to pick first and the first person gets to four Make sense? That makes total sense. So it's going to be that simple. I have not pre-sorted the games yet, so I've got it all loaded up. We're going to do it. We're going to do it live. We're doing it live. We're going to note what our picks are. So let me go ahead and ask you, would you like to be the first pick first for games 1 through 10, or do you want to be the first pick second, which means you'll pick first on game 51 through 60? I'm going to go second. Okay. So I will be the first pick on these, and here are the top ten, the one through ten that we've got to choose from. That will be in the pool initially. That is going to get sorted out. So that is Medieval Madness, Pirates of the Caribbean, the JJP version, Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Jurassic Park by Stern, Twilight Zone, Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast, Lord of the Rings, Metallica, and Deadpool. So that's the set of games. So I'm now copying these games over. that's the computer doing the work of of uh nope i messed up i i hit copy twice so there we go now i got them in the list so now i'm going to click randomize and the four games that are in the pool are lord of the rings monster bash jjp's pirates of the caribbean and metallica and since i'm going to pick first i am going to choose for my top one through ten game i'm going to add lord of the rings into my bank because it's one of the greatest journey pins that was ever created it's got great flow it's one of the best themes you could possibly have for pinball and i really enjoy the game so it just hits on all cylinders for me so that's the one i'm going to put in my bank you may now pick either pirates monster bash or metallica i am gonna go with Monster Bash. Alright, tell me why. I'm going with Monster Bash because it's got the visual aesthetic and it's just a fun play other than the one specific table that just hates me.
    8:24
    I've always enjoyed that game every time I've played it. I think it's just got good replay ability and fun things to shoot for. Okay, good arguments. Good arguments. So far so good, right? Game makes sense? Makes sense. Alright, so now this time you will get to pick first of our 51 through 60th range. And I'll go ahead and run through those games real quick. That would be, and these are all in order from top to bottom within the range. Congo, No Good Gophers, Fishtails, Kiss, that's the Stern version, Judge Dredd, Guns and Roses, Revenge from Mars, X-Men, Fathom, and Alien. so I've got them in the randomizer thank you because my after doing TPS my voice is totally shot so the four that have survived that are Kiss Congo Judge Dredd and Alien your pick well I think that one's a pretty easy one I'm going to go with Congo darn it That's the one I wanted. Of course, because it's the best one. That's the best one out of that list. What makes it the best of the four? The fact that it is one of those machines that is just... The book was so good, and the movie was so bad. But the pinball machine is just so good. It's got fun shots. The call-outs are enjoyable. it's just nice and especially compared to anything else on the list right there it's just definitely the number one there okay well and it also was the number it was 51 out of the 51 through 60 so i'm not uh dang it why can't i put first every time um because that's not fair no it wouldn't be fair but life isn't fair that's part of the reason i wanted to have that second pick off the first one because I figured everything in the first ten or in the first that would be great and then it'd get rougher and then I figured the final one is going to be the hardest so I wanted the first choice because there might just be one good game there okay that that was smart maybe I maybe I should have decided instead of leaving oh my it's too late it's too late the damage is done. Okay. So given this, I'm going to go with Stern's Kiss for a few reasons. One, my other options are Judge Dredd and Alien. They're both wide body games. I'm not a big fan of putting wide body games in a bank. I don't like Judge Dredd practically at all. And Alien, I love the theme, but I'm not a big fan of the geometry. So Kiss, I actually think John Borg has a really good geometry to the game. And as the code developed, I think it's actually a pretty good game uh the star child multi-ball shot i think it's a lot of fun i think it's fun to feed the gene head the only real thing i don't like about kiss is i don't like the theme but i think the rules are good and i think the layout's good so i it can be an ag it can be an aggro player um i i think it's relatively easy to understand but you have the mode selection so there's strategy involved with it it's a modern game so for those reasons i i'm gonna go ahead and go with the Kiss. And I honestly think it's probably the best number two choice out of these four. I agree, which is why I picked it. So now I'll get to pick first and we're going to go to the, we're now outside of the top 100, but just barely, kind of the 101 to 110 range. So here's what we've got as choices before the randomizer decides what we'll get to pick from. But just so people know the range, we've got Terminator 2 Judgment Day, Earthshaker High Speed Black Knight 2000 Stargate Joker Poker Slugfest Black Hole The Sopranos and NBA Fastbreak Man, it actually feels like there's better choices here than there was in the last year. This actually has an interesting amount of diversity in terms of DMD. This is a big era of diversity. We got stuff from the 70s all the way up to DMD era. So let us see.
    12:55
    How bad does it screw us? Yes. All right. So the top four that will be choosable are NBA Fastbreak, Terminator 2, High Speed, and Earthshaker. Ooh. Yes. Interesting. um so in this instance i am actually going to go ahead and go with high speed yeah in part because i know it's your favorite system 11 and i've now taken it from you but but that would be a silly reason alone to choose it one because i'm building a bank i do want to not just have a whole bunch of modern era dmd games and that's what i've got right now with kiss right and lord of the rings so high speed uh first game that told a story uh it is an excellent system 11 game i put it in my top five so i like it quite a bit more than earthshaker uh nba fast break i i kind of enjoy as a game like i like the idea but i don't really love the layout and terminator 2 i like the layout but anyone who walks away and leaves that skill shot going it's permanently tilted me against that unfortunately really because it is it is these are i like all the actually i like all 10 of these games that were in the list other than slugfest which i think is a pitch and bat and i don't really count it but it is what it is so anyway so i'm going with high speed because i think it's got great flow i want a steve richie game in my bank and i don't have one currently and so it was either that or t2 and um yeah it it it's a fun shooter and i think the the rules are nice for for system 11. Yeah, no, that's a solid choice. That would have been my choice if it had been available. Since it's not, I will continue with the DMDs and I will go with Terminator 2 because you must shoot here and here.
    14:49
    So... But shoot here and here is from Terminator 3. I know, but they're the same game. That's a relatively fair point, actually. They are kind of the same way. They're very similar. I mean, they're not exactly the same. So the shots are different. They've got different things. But for the most part, when they're sitting side by side, there's not a lot of difference in those games.
    15:15
    But compared to them, NBA Fastbreak, like you, it's fine, but it's not a game that I go running to. and Earthshaker is a game that I actually enjoy more than you but it's based upon our conversations on it in the past yeah no Earthshaker would have been my last pick of these four but I'd still rather sit down and play Terminator than Earthshaker so that's the big reasoning makes sense we're going to move to the 151 to 160 range now, and you get to pick first, but just so everyone knows what the ten games that were in the initial pool are, Avatar,
    16:01
    Stars, Star Trek, now this Star Trek is the Daddy East version, Laser War, Xenon, Laser War, Welcome to Xenon, Tube Shot, Bad Cats, Phantom of the Opera Class of 1812 Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines and Transporter the Rescue. Huh. I'm trying to think. I'm not sure I've played Phantom before, but I have played all the others. I don't think I've played Phantom either. Yeah, I don't know if I've seen it at a show. I've known people who own it, but they haven't had me play it. All right. So the randomizer is going, these are the games, and you do get to pick first.
    16:55
    Stars, Laser War, Star Trek Data East, and Class of 1812. Ooh. Stars, Star Trek. Laser War, and Class of 1812.
    17:12
    Hmm. Data East, Star Wars. Is that the, that's. It's the one with Scotty doing the call-outs. Okay. Yeah.
    17:24
    I've played that one a little bit. I've not played that one as much as, well, the others for obvious reasons.
    17:33
    It's kind of a rare one to encounter. I've only ever seen it at TPF. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
    17:41
    Because I think I've normally played the... The Bally? Yeah, the one with the original motion picture art. Yeah, that's the one that I've spent most of my time playing. So this actually, I'm kind of glad I went first because this is actually probably one of the hardest choices we have of the ones we've done. Which one is Stars again? Stars is the stern.
    18:08
    It's, okay, yeah. It has chimes in it, but it is a solid state game. Yeah, I'm looking at a picture of the play field now. I don't know that I've played it. Yeah, I think I have at a show once.
    18:23
    Yeah, I had to look at the play field because I just did not recognize it. I don't think I've played it. I do not recognize it at all.
    18:31
    So, I'm going to go with... Hmm. I'm going to go with Star Trek. All right. Daddy's Star Trek. Why? because I think the laser war song would kill me I don't know enough about stars to make the decision and after all who doesn't like Scotty okay well that the answer would have been me because that would have been my last pick of all these so the one I'm most familiar with obviously is laser war because my brother-in-law owns it that is not what i'm going to pick i'm going to pick stars because i want to win oh that's fine you can win and i know that competitive players who have access to stars love it they love the challenge of trying to go for the drops they love the spinner shot that's on the right uh they love the little they just they love everything about it. It's really, really brutal. It's one of those one more game games that's just got that EM level of brevity but enough depth to the strategy that it worth playing So because of that I going to go ahead And again I trying to diversify And so this is going to get me an early solid state game into my lineup
    19:57
    Whereas if I hadn't gone with Stars, I would have gone with Laser War because I think that the rules on Laser War, actually, that's the first Dada East game. I think it actually is a really good game. And Class of 1812 does have the 1812 Overture sung by chickens. So that has that.
    20:13
    So that alone got me some sympathy, but I'll go ahead and go with stars just so I have – go with my diversity. And I think people are going to appreciate my diverse bank of games. I'm hoping they will. I think that you could very well be right, that they will appreciate your diverse bank of games. I've just – I've never gotten anywhere on – because I played it so little on DE Star Trek, and so I just don't know if it's a good game or not. I've never been able to figure it out. so now we're going to move to the 201 to 210 range and i do need to put in a caveat here that we actually only going to have nine games in the pool because there was no 201 because i guess there was there were two 200th game so then it skips to 202 oh because they were tied yeah and i'll put i put in ties if they were within the range and there was a tie within this range but then that just kicked out the 210 or whatever so anyway it's nine games so if anyone's wondering oh So these choices will be, and this time I will pick first, 8-Ball, Indiana Jones. This is the stern Indiana Jones. Okay.
    21:22
    Solar Fire, Firepower 2, Comet, Monopoly, Star Wars Trilogy. That's the Sega game. Right. Flash. Not Flash Gordon, but Flash. And Lethal Weapon 3. so I click the alright so the games that we have the four of are 8 Ball Firepower 2 Indiana Jones and Lethal Weapon 3 and I will go with Lethal Weapon 3 not a bad choice it's not a bad game everybody dance now it's a good layout the rules are actually decent with the straight up Data East code. You don't need a modified code for it. I think it's a fun shooter. Yeah, Leo gets going, all right, all right, all right, all right, is obnoxious and very annoying. But gameplay-wise for an early DMD game, I think it's pretty good.
    22:25
    And you'll pick what you'll pick, but Stern Indiana Jones is a total turd. There's no way anyone's picking it. I won't even let you pick it. So you tell me, are you going to go with Firepower 2 or are you going to go with 8-Ball?
    22:41
    I'm going to go with Firepower 2 Oh, that's not what I thought you would go with No, 8-Ball is a good game, I really enjoy 8-Ball But in this specific situation, I'm going to go with Firepower 2 And why? Is it because you want that early... I want that feel, and quite frankly I like the back glass and it goes with my so far pretty sci-fi theme that's an interesting tactic that I did not contemplate was going for a thematic bank so that you're like yes there's a theme to this bank the closest thing out of my bank would be monster bash but honestly that's still pretty within the realm of what you of like spec fic so yeah exactly i was gonna say you're still spec fix so okay smart smart or well we'll see once we'll see but we'll see what happens first for our final category but yeah i didn't start out with the plan for a theme but i noticed the theme pretty early on so it's like i'm just gonna stick with the thing well it would have been hard because how would we have known i mean i'm randomizing these lives so how am i gonna you know it would be like okay well there's sci-fi in every single one of these groups of 10 but that doesn't mean we're gonna get sci-fi or spec fic in every single one we don't know well and like i said i mean i even when i went with terminator 2 i would have gone with high speed given the choice so and that wouldn't have fallen into it at all so so now we move to the last one where you get to pick first uh you may need ipdb up i'm almost assuredly going to know what's a lot of these are here are the ems that we will be picking or the randomizer will be picking from masquerade which is gottlieb 1966 trail drive bally 1970 you see i haven't put in the manufacturer in the year to help with lady luck williams 1968 riverboat williams 1964 magic city williams 1967 gusher williams 1958 Blast Off Williams 1967 Olympic Hockey Williams 1972 Surfside Gottlieb 1967 and Wild Card Williams 1977 I think I might have played one of those maybe two I think I might know two of them by name so I'm now doing the randomizer that was my spinner from an EMR alright The four that you get to pick from are Olympic Hockey, Williams 1972, Magic City, Williams 1967, Trail Drive, Bally 1970, and Blast Off, Williams 1967.
    25:40
    Well, I'm almost required to keep the theme at this point to go with Blast Off, but let me pull up IMDb and look at a couple things real quick. Yeah, yeah, I don't know that one. Do I know any of them? I don't know any of these games.
    25:56
    Blast Off 1967. 4,600 produced. I actually think I have played this one. Looking at the back glass, I've at the bare minimum seen this one.
    26:13
    Well, I mean, we play a lot of EMs. the problem is, because the two-player version, four-player version, it's real easy to not keep track of the names. Yeah, this is a one-player game.
    26:27
    So it's entirely possible that I played it and walked away, and who knows. So let's look at a couple of these other games just while we're here. See, that was Blast Off. Trail Drive is a one-player game. Trail Drive. I've seen the art on Trail Drive before. Because I remember the Big Bull. Now I've only seen photos. I've seen the Backglass before.
    26:55
    So. I don't think I've ever played it. I know I've seen pictures of it at the bare minimum. But I don't know if I've ever played it.
    27:04
    So. Let's see. Magic City. We're going to Magic City. Magic City, here we come. 67 Williams.
    27:24
    And Olympic Hockey. I thought I sounded familiar, but... Magic City does not look familiar at all. I've never... And apparently, is there an Adaball version called Magic Town? Yeah.
    27:46
    What a name twist. Big change. Good job, Williams. Big flex there. They did the best they could, Tony. So much judgment.
    28:01
    Okay. Then there was a couple years later, they came out with the zipper flipper. I know why you know Blastoff. we commentated Apollo, the replay version, at Kansas City Championship. That's why. That's what that is. That's what that layout is. Okay. Let's see. Yes, replay version of this game is Williams 67 Apollo. That's the one we talked about it. That's why it's so familiar. Yep. Okay. Well, yeah, in that case, I'm definitely going to go with Blast Off because it meets the theme and I've actually seen it and talked about it. So. Yeah, actually, that one was a neat one to stream because it's got that that bag of tell in the back box. Right. Where you like you can get the special and stuff. So that that would have been a tempting pick for me if it was available, which it is not. However, that's not too bad because I am more than happy to settle for Magic City instead. It is a center pop game. So for my diversity of bank, even though it's a two-inch one and I'd rather have something like Fantastic or Spanish size with three-inch flippers, I do get to have that nice center pop between the flippers. Also, the back box on Magic City is really cool. That fountain was always meant to have a rotating color display.
    29:31
    So what a lot of people will do is they'll stick in a color-changing LED, and the fountain will change colors. And it looks really awesome when it's done as the designer wished it had been. That's cool. It was going to have a rotating color wheel, but it got cut for cost reasons. So I'm familiar with it because Nick Schell from the Roanoke Pinball Museum has spoken quite highly of Magic City. I can't remember if I've actually played it, though. Maybe. But looking at the layout, I'm comfortable with going for it. It's a relatively straightforward game, but I don't have a two-inch flipper currently because everything else was solid state. So, again, for my diversity strategy, I'm going to go with it. So I'm going to take Magic City.
    30:11
    It's a perfectly good choice. So there's a recap for people so they know. Tony and Dennis Banks. So Tony's bank of six that he is proposing are Monster Bash, Congo, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, Star Trek The Data East Version, Firepower 2, and Blast Off. And my bank is Lord of the Rings, Stern's Kiss, High Speed, S.T.A.R.S., Lethal Weapon 3, and Magic City. so i will create a poll on facebook maybe i'll like merge all the back glasses i have to see how willing i am to photoshop this and uh we'll i'll probably run it for a week so we have it in time for the next show and then we'll see which uh which one people like and if this game resonates well we can always do things like all right well let's do another bank of six but this time we'll do like 11 through 20 and 61 through 70 and just you know do things like that Yeah. No, that's a good idea. This was actually a lot of fun. I rather enjoyed this. Yeah, I thought this would be nice. It's not like it doesn't have the stress of 20 questions. It's right. Or it's more just sort of chill in. But but you can think about all sorts of interesting ways. Like, what would what would I like to have? Or what do I think people would like to see? Would they do they want a sci fi spec fic collection and go, wow, that is that's what we want out of a bank? That's one of the things people like with Pinberg is they like to see some of the banks are thematic like, oh these are all sports themed games. Or do they like the sheer diversity that I bring to the table? I don't know. It kind of reminds me some of the other podcasts I listen to that are more pop culture oriented or lore oriented. They've done where everyone on the cast is done, pick your crew for a Star Trek show.
    32:14
    Or pick your X-Men team where you go through all the X-Men that there have ever been from all the X-Men teams and put together your five-man X-Men team. Stuff like that. Those are always fun listens. And this had a lot of that same feel with the randomizer making it interesting. Yeah, I tried to – yeah, the thought was if I do the randomizer, then it's going to make it – I was hoping for a few tougher picks, which later on I thought kind of like in the Stars class of 1812 bank in our eight ball Indiana Jones Stern edition bank, like where you have to put some – like, okay, well, which – kind of like which turn is the least stinky sort. uh plus though that we did a doing them in the rank bank so that even though we're talking about spreads of 10 the games are relatively on par in terms of their popularity so right apparently i didn't know that indiana jones stern stood the test of time with firepower 2 and lethal weapon 3 but okay apparently for somebody it does oh my god theme for some people theme is all that matters uh yeah that that's a fair point and hey uh there it could have been it could have been a decent uh game i i think that the problem is it just kind of gets to be a little multi-ball heavy but but that's it for pinball that's it's it was shall we play a game so now we can go to video games um my up i have a video game update yesterday i finished far cry 5 so i don't have to whine about that anymore how was that how did it bring closure yeah this oh my god the story is so stupid but um the uh as i unlocked a few more upgrades on my character it got to be a little more fun to play it uh but and the boss fights i mean it was hard it had some hard elements but i was just oh my god everything was such a like all right i'm gonna whine i'm gonna whine a little i have to i have to i'm gonna whine a little bit um So at the end, you have to win over these regions. I win over the last region, and now it says it's time for me to fight – to face the final boss, okay? I immediately get into a helicopter and fly the whatever, 20 miles it is to the guy's place, okay? While I'm doing this, I'm like on the radio with my – all the friends you've liberated and worked with throughout the game. And I just left them, at least one group of the three, because there are three regions. And I just liberated them. They're there. They're all doing their thing. I fly there, land in front of the church. The guy has all my friends kidnapped. Like, how did he do it? I was just there with them. I flew an attack helicopter, Tony. I flew it straight there. No detours. I didn't stop for fuel or anything. How did that even happen? And then I get there. I walk up to his building doors. And then he comes out and then behind me on their knees are all of them.
    35:20
    And he's like, I have all your friends. I'm like, no, you don't. I just flew here. Those are clones. Those are clearly – those are cardboard cutouts of my friends. I don't believe you. And so I didn't believe him. But the game apparently insisted that this was true. So it was like, oh, God. Just that sort of sloppy, sloppy storytelling. All sorts of – anyway. And the ending is the ending, and it's weird too, but whatever. So I'm done with that. So I've decided that I thought, should I go back to King's Quest, or should I go to another game instead? I still didn't feel like doing more puzzles. So instead I decided I just want to hit my head against a wall repeatedly. So I've started Sekiro Shadows Die Twice.
    36:06
    And yes, I've died a lot already. That's the whole point of the game. You die twice. It is. But I've heard that they've done – it's not Dark Souls. So they've done different things. And so far, for example, the checkpoints are much more prevalent. So I don't feel like I'm just re-clearing trash constantly. It's like I'm losing against bosses like I should.
    36:25
    Yeah. I've been playing – besides the normal games that I always play. But I've been playing XCOM Chimera Squad. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's right. You talked about that you were going to get it because there was a big discount. Yeah, it was like 50% off, and it came out on the 24th. And it's actually a lot of fun. The break-in mechanic, or the breach mechanic, is actually really cool.
    36:53
    Because you'll have a situation, and they'll give you, it's like, okay, here's several options to breach. It's like you can breach the main door, and you can put your whole team in to breach the main door. And if you breach the main door, the enemy's on heightened alert because they're waiting for it. And there'll be some positives and some negatives that you get by breaching. Or you can use a breaching charge to blow in the section of the wall somewhere else and breach there. Or there'll be windows you can breach through. Or if you've got the right people or the right equipment, there'll be ventilation ducts you can breach through a ventilation duct.
    37:32
    It sounds like Rainbow Six Siege. You know what? In a lot of ways, it is. And the thing is, they give you, you have different either bonuses or power-ups or, you know, negatives that'll hit you depending upon where you breach and how you breach. Like one breach, it might be like the first person is guaranteed a crit hit with their first shot. Or the first person in has a guaranteed hit. He will hit whoever he shoots at. But then if you're breaching the main door, then you might have a negative where it's like the last person in will have their weapon disabled.
    38:18
    So the last person in. Yeah, basically it amounts to it's like your gun jammed, so you have to reload. That's what it amounts to. You just, your guy has to reload. And I've actually gotten around that a couple times when I've had that because you get to pick the order your team breaches in, which affects your initiative order for play and affects how your guy's slotted in the initiative order versus the opponent's, since they're going at the, since they have initiative mixed with yours. So you might have, like, one of my guys might go, then three of the bad guys might go, and then three of my team might go or, you know, one and one, or it just balances around based upon everybody's different initiative orders and how you put them in and adjust that initiative. But when you breach, you look around, you can look at everybody you see as you break in, and they're either tagged as surprised, and if they're surprised, they don't get to do anything. they'll be tagged as alert, which means that they'll be able to like take cover and stuff, or they'll be tagged as aggressive, which means they will shoot back before you guys, before you take cover because your entire breach team gets a chance to shoot as they breach before they take cover So you want to target the aggressive people because they will fight back before you get into cover So you need to, you would take a lot of damage that way.
    39:51
    But since your Chimera team is a mix of humans and aliens, like one of the guys who's actually, a lot of the voice work is pretty cool and a lot of the characters are really interesting but one of the guys, he's a sectoid and as you level him up he gets different mind control abilities like you can freak him out and stun him well he's got an ability that he can use on Breach called Levitate and I normally have him as my last guy to Breach because that way if there is an aggressive guy who I've not killed with the people breaching ahead of him, I can levitate that guy and he loses his aggressive turn. So if there's like three aggressive people, I can concentrate on killing two of them and then I'll levitate the last guy and he won't be able to fight back until all my guys get into cover. That's huge strategic value then. Right. Now the other thing is you can also do that if I put him at the beginning, I could levitate an aggressive guy right off the bat, which will lift him out of any cover he has, which means I can guarantee to kill on the guy also if I wanted to. So I've played with having him breach first and levitate a guy, kill the other aggressives, and then his is in cover, and I've done him at the last. It's just a cleanup.
    41:13
    There's a snake man on your team. Well, snake woman on your team. She's hilarious. Snake man. Yeah. Oh, she is hilarious.
    41:28
    She's got this ability that you can grab somebody with your tongue and pull them up to melee range with you. So you can grab an enemy, pull them up to melee range with you, and then you can wrap them up, and then they're locked in place and take damage. Yeah, I remember fighting them in the other XCOM games, and I always was afraid of them. Right. Well, it's really powerful, and it's really annoying. but you can also use that move to pull some of your teammates. If they're in trouble, if they're, if they're being flanked or something and she comes up before them, she can grab the teammate and pull them over next to her. So they're, so they, they're out of the danger they were in. And it has some hilarious voice lines when it happens.
    42:19
    Yeah. Like, she's talking about wanting mouthwash and, like, I did it to one of the characters, and as they were pulled, they go, wee!
    42:30
    I mean, it's just, we'll never talk about this again. I mean, stuff like that. It's just, it's funny.
    42:39
    And I've been enjoying it a lot, even more than I thought I was going to. Oh, good. Yeah, I knew you were concerned because of the things like everyone's got their initiative mixed together, which is not how XCOM has been. Right, and that works pretty well, actually. It also works real well with the way that the team kind of... You've got teams, and your guys can take, as your guys take grave wounds and get hurt and are bleeding out and you're healing them, They will take scars, and when they've got a scar, a scar gives them a negative that lasts forever.
    43:26
    The scar tissue don't go away. Right, but you can get rid of it. You just have to take them out of the team and put them into training for a while to get rid of a scar. But if you don't do that and they take another scar, they might take another scar, or the scar they had might get worse, which will require even more training to get rid of. so what you kind of have to do is balance your guys so they're you know they're they're they're training to get rid of the scar or they're working in the supply area on research for weapons so you can upgrade your weapons and your armor and stuff and right now like say right now i'm running with I can only put four guys out at a time, and I've only got six guys total, which means I've got just enough people to rotate them through one person keeping production up, one person training, and everyone else is part of the strike team. And I've got other missions that would be really helpful to do, but I don't have enough people for it yet. because there's all sorts of side missions that are centered on getting rid of riots and stuff in different areas of the city.
    44:44
    And I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the game so far. Good. Well, anything else you've been playing?
    44:54
    What other games have I been playing that aren't games I've talked about a billion times in the past? Nothing, then. Nothing. I usually only play a couple at a time Yeah I mean because I've been playing that And I've been playing Um Well I've been playing Rule of Waves Still I've got an Italian A new Italian playthrough coming in Because they just put out the patch that added missiles So you can now run up into the 50's and get like early missiles In the mid to late 40's So I've got a whole new playthrough I've been going Through to get a chance to play around with the missiles that they've added. And other than that, nothing. I have been considering reinstalling a couple games that I've not played in years and years and years, World of Warships, and I've got some people who have been pressing me that I should step back into Star Trek Online. Now, well, Eve, I always have people pressuring me for that, but I've had some people mention that I should try Star Trek online again because I haven't played it in, I don't want to say a decade, but it's been at least seven or eight years since the last time I played that game.
    46:13
    So I don't even know if my stuff still exists in that game, but apparently that game has massively changed from what it was when I had originally played it. But I only have so much time Yep, that's all we all have There's only so much time Now there has been some news We like to talk about Overwatch And the Overwatch League And the lockdowns and the quarantines Have already been giving the League a hard time And even without that the league had had some issues recently, but they got rocked again this last week because last year's MVP, Sinatra, announced his retirement.
    47:02
    Sinatra's retirement is a big strike to the league because, A, it's the middle of a season. Yeah, that's, I mean, it looks bad. Yeah, it looks real, and he was last year's MVP.
    47:16
    Yeah, his skin hasn't come out yet. No, but what hurts even worse, I think, is the fact that the announcement was made almost immediately after he retired that he has signed on for a pro Valorant team. Which hasn't even come out. Yeah, it's still in beta, and there is no currently set up esports for it, and Riot's not planning on setting one up for a while. yeah like a couple years is everything I've been seeing yeah they're talking about they want to do it let it grow organically yeah which is what they did with League of Legends and then they kind of stepped in and started providing support took a bunch of it over which is pretty much assumed what they're going to do here so yeah that was a rough blow to the Overwatch League his when he left his talk about it was basically that Overwatch isn't fun anymore so he has issues with it with the 2-2-2 lock and the bans and everything so he's just not having fun anymore so he made the decision and good for him but for the Overwatch League that's rough, that's a rough hit it's huge if for no other reason than it just looks really bad and they've had a fair issue their whole tier 2, tier 3 player training system is pretty much gone at one point all the OWL teams had academy teams and now I think two of them still have an academy team and most of the contenders is just gone.
    49:18
    Overwatch Contenders is pretty much over. There's not much left to it. Nobody really plays in it anymore, which means there is no minor league. Everybody's stepping up. The minor league typically is coming up out of the more organic Korean play tournament setups. so Overwatch League did put out a big announcement yesterday about the rest of the season they talked about their new tournament structure that they're putting together for May and some more tournament structure that they're looking to put forward after that and then yesterday the Overwatch League put out a big announcement talking about their plans for the league going through the year. Talked about being excited for the new tournament structure that's starting up in May and possibly extending that tournament structure further. They are still planning on holding in-person expanded playoffs and grand finales in August or September.
    50:24
    I'm going to read a direct quote straight out of their comment. It's, as we head into August, September, our goal remains gathering the teams in one place where we can run an expanded playoffs and grand finals to culminate the season. We're still working on options for playoffs formats and structure, but believe it's important to qualify in more teams to account for the fact that teams will likely finish the regular season with very different strengths of schedule in terms of their opponents because their entire season has just been shot to crud. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it's impressive that they're still running a season.
    51:01
    It is, especially for something designed around homestands and converting to online. Yeah, I mean, all the big desires basically didn't happen at all. We did get a few homestands. They seemed to go over very well with the local audiences, but with COVID, it all disappeared. And because the disease was more progressed initially in the Asian areas, the Asian region, they didn't get to do their homestands. Right. And even then, a lot of the later homestands were canceled before they ever happened, or they were expanded to a point where, not expanded, that's not what I meant at all, but they were planned on and then canceled when they were designed to have like five and six of them, they might have had one. It's definitely been an interesting go for them.
    52:02
    They also talked about that they are working on YouTube to make changes to how YouTube stuff is set up to help build excitement. They also need to work on something to do with their quality of video and audio. They didn't mention this. I'm just saying that because I know I agree with you. The video quality is nowhere near as good as it was during Twitch, and they've had some audio sync problems. Yeah, that's the one that really sticks with me. Yeah, I mean, I've seen some pretty hefty audio sync problems, like five and six seconds. Mm-hmm, yeah.
    52:42
    Also, now I have heard that if you watch them on like MLG.com instead of YouTube, it's not as bad. the bit rate's at least higher so the video's not as bad but there's still some audio sync problems on occasion but since then MLG started just showing the YouTube stream instead of their own stream so it has definitely been an issue overall that is continuing at the same time they are planning on starting the token drops again Token drops will be back But it's only For people watching on overwatchleague.com And the mobile app They're still trying to figure out how to put together a reward system On the YouTube platform This is one of those things that has Kind of hurt them Because A Frankly a chunk of the reviewers Were people who had it on in the background Just for token drops while it was going And B It's hard to reward viewers like they were rewarding viewers at Twitch because there haven't been the token drops. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it'll help. I know a lot of people never, you know, the counterpoint was that there were bot viewings that people weren't really watching and that that artificially inflated the numbers. Right.
    54:08
    So. I mean, I don't know. I'll weigh in at the end. Maybe that's the best way to put it. I don't want to go off on a rant right now. All right.
    54:20
    They did mention that OWL viewership in Asia is setting records because the matches are being played in primetime instead of the middle of the night or the middle of the day. So they're having huge viewership in Asia.
    54:38
    And they did clarify that they are still going to be releasing the Sinatra MVP skin in the next couple of months. and I'm going to read a real quick quote also where they were talked about the tier two and the path to pro stuff and I quote I also want to talk a little bit about the tier two and tier three competitive overwatch we've heard a lot of feedback from players organizations in the community about the path to pro ecosystem well the system has produced many exciting owl players over the last few years we know it hasn't met many other goals that we all have for this part of the pro scene. Our path to pro team is actively exploring potential changes to the model. One early idea we think has a lot of potential is running more community tournaments as we believe the recent breakable barriers and echo tournaments were very successful and fun for the broader competitive community.
    55:30
    So basically they're acknowledging that, yeah, the whole tier two, tier three system is just trash. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I don't know.
    55:43
    I'm trying to think where to start. There's so many places you can start. Yeah. And this is coming from someone who... I really enjoy Overwatch. I still enjoy watching the Overwatch League. And I think that the Overwatch League will, in some form or capacity, be able to continue, even if it continues to be grossly mismanaged, which I think has been a big problem. Yeah. This seems to acknowledge a lot of it, which I'm glad that they're willing to give the feedback. But and Tony and I, with some others, I earlier in the week had shared before this all came out, shared an article that was having a few esports commentators over the ESPN talking about what's going on with the Overwatch League. And then we, of course, have had our own discussions, not on the microphone, about what we think is happening with Overwatch League. So this is my take. The viewership. The problem with the viewership, I think, dates back to we are now in the third season of the Overwatch League. Overwatch League is clearly defined to be the esport league. It's not meant to just limp along like some fighting game scene. It's meant to be a big deal like League of Legends. and I think we saw that in season one and then I think they completely sabotaged themselves in season two because they didn't break what we call the goats meta for three-fourths of the season and it got really boring to watch because the meta was stagnant and the stagnant meta was not interesting. It was from a strategic level there was a lot going on but you're talking about a game where just judging by the cues on ladder most people want to play DPS and you had an entire, almost an entire season where everyone played non-DPS characters. No damage, just tanks, just support. It sucked. And I was critical about how long they let Dive go, but Goats was terrible. I think that's where it cost them a ton of their viewers and they didn't take aggressive steps to get out of it. And since then, it to me feels like they have floundered around trying to find a solution versus okay well we'll go 2-2-2 so you have to have two dps along with two tanks and two support and now there'll be diversity and then everyone played the same uh six characters and they're like okay so now we're going to introduce hero pools and we're gonna we're gonna make it so you can't always play the same characters all the time and then it was like oh well but now the hero pools are being set based off of what's chosen on the ladder so now people are losing out on characters that that aren't ever played in the Overwatch League and it doesn't make any sense. And then it's just bouncing between week one, these are the characters you play, and week two, here are the other, and they just bounce between the two. And it's like, instead of just balancing, they just keep trying to make other changes. And I don't personally from a player perspective disagree with all these changes, but it's like, where's the plan? It seemed like the whole plan was let's have homesteads and then everything will be okay. And now I get it. They got cheated out of their homesteads, but it's like homesteads weren't going to fix the viewership issue. No, they weren't. Well, I mean, let's take the tokens for a viewer. Like, why was that not sorted out before the season started? I don't know. And I wonder, honestly, if part of it is because the announcement came so late because the deal was signed so late to transfer to YouTube from Twitch. Sure I mean I guess but I just shocked that this wasn something they talked about with YouTube and put something in place some model in place or or how they were going to do it Like this this temporary thing where you have to go through the Overwatch League website to, I mean, here I, for those that didn't want, I know most of our listeners don't watch. So for those, you can really speak to this. Like with Twitch, they had the, the whole reward system is easily integrated into Twitch because they do it for other things already. plus they had the whole command center thing where people would subscribe to be able to look from player we haven't even touched on that like you can't do that yeah i subscribed to command centered so i and i mean i didn't use it every match but i used it a decent amount of times where if i wanted to watch a specific player's point of view i'd watch that just that specific player's point of view i think i mean from a viewer perspective is my take my take is the only improvement going to YouTube from Twitch provided was there is probably a higher viewer count and an easier time in finding the VODs and people watching non-live versions of the matchups.
    60:27
    And as an aside, the ads are a little less pervasive than they were on Twitch. But aside from that, everything else is worse. There's no tokens. There's no ability to subscribe to advanced features like being able to look from the player's perspectives that you care about. There are – the bit rate doesn't work right. The audio is drifting all the time. It's like – it's just garbage. It's like they went – everything about season three feels like they cheaped out. I agree. It definitely is nowhere near as good as what it was before. I mean that people are going – like Sinatra going to Valorant, there's always going to be a new hotness. There's always going to be a new game. We don't know that Valorant's actually going to have legs. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It'll probably ultimately at least have its place and have a robust competitive. I mean, but other games survived this. League of Legends has been going for like a decade. Counter-Strike is still a highly competitive watched eSport. It's just that there's no reason for Overwatch to lapse. It might not have the same player count as people move on to new games, but it feels to me like with overwatch one of the things about the balancing and stuff is they've just gone all in on overwatch 2 and one of the things i had learned from that article i referenced was league of legends is adding they do a balance patch every couple weeks why why doesn't overwatch do this if you're looking at a model wouldn't you look at league isn't that the esport so where's where's our constant balancing instead we used to get balancing we got balancing in season one then it feels like as of season two that all the all the developers are on overwatch 2 now and so other than like here we'll we'll throw an ash out and here's an echo and we're not giving you anything else it's just like dragging their feet there was no excuse for there to be so many cutoff points because we had these tournaments sort of cut off stages they were you with stage finals and goats was there for like three-fourths of it yeah it was stupid and and now and it wasn't and it wasn't right with how that ended up being with because everyone was just getting into goats and then suddenly goats went away just in time for finals yeah it was weird it just wasn't it's like no they realized it was hurting their viewership and then they reacted and they reacted too late and they can bring people back i'm sure they can it's just the issue is though it's all harder now because instead of trying to prevent the bleed, they're now trying to pump new blood in.
    63:06
    And so you've got players that are, because while it is more interesting to watch the 2-2-2 and the hero pools where they ban heroes every week, that's very frustrating for the players because they feel like they're not mastering anything. And that's why I think you're seeing like, okay, well, we're going to do May Reaper when we can't play with McCree. And then when McCree's in the game, we're going to go to a hit scan build because they're trying to learn strategies and they don't want to have to relearn something. And we change the pool every week. So it's like I thought when they first said they were going to do hero pools, so they're going to do it like for a month. Like here's a month with these heroes banned and then here's another month. Or keep it dynamic in that way some other games have done where it's like the other team gets to pick a character that's not allowed and you get to pick a character that's not allowed. And then you're trying to counter what they're strongest at and you work around that. Instead, it's this metric thing, and it's just – I thought – I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, you say this because the next thing is going to diverge a little bit from this listing. See, I thought the whole purpose of this was to get away for a month at a time, like you said. and originally the Owl bands were separate from the ladder bands and now they're the same and now then they started they made the announcement yesterday or two days ago that while Owl is in session all the bands will be based upon Owl play and then when Owl is out of session all bands will be based upon GM play and then until owl season starts again then i'll go back to owl based bans for everybody on ladder and everything but they fought so hard against the ability to just cancel out certain players like league of legends and several other games do that it's obviously the route they don't want to go they don't want you to just go oh ban this player and have everybody vote in a team about what character can't be picked but it seems like that would solve a lot of the problem that they're trying to avoid and they're making things worse log it's all based off an algorithm now of of what's getting picked and they keep tweaking how whose play is going to influence it which is what for those that don't understand that's what tony was referring to because we've now ended up with a scenario where the entire ladder which is just regular ranked competitive play that anyone plays in is determining the hero pool algorithm counts and there are characters getting banned that aren't ever played in the overwatch league but they're played on the ladder because the ladder is crap because those of us on the ladder aren't any good at overwatch and not at a league level which is highly structured organized play so even top tier gamers who play in grandmasters they're not the same as it's totally different playing on the as it is playing in the league. It's like playing on a professional NFL team versus a pickup game of flag football. The plays are different. It's totally different. So yeah, it says, because, and here's the thing, all this stuff with the hero pools to me is just an attempt for them to make up for the fact that they are not willing to invest the developer resources to balance these characters constantly. And it's going to be constant. they're not ever going to reach done because every time they add a character everything else interplays you start seeing characters that aren't played you're going to need to tweak it and they were willing to do that but i think and i don't think it's a change in philosophy i just think they decided they had to dump all their resources into overwatch 2 and that's so they just they don't want to waste their time tweaking right now they're trying to get overwatch 2 done so that they can sell it and the thing i was going to touch on that wasn't listed in this is and it was a huge i mean all this stuff the shift to youtube uh the the frustrations with putting in the hero pools let's not forget that for the including just a couple weeks before this season of the league started the massive amount of talent turnover they had yeah like my favorite casters practically almost all of them are gone they they lost so much of their talent as they cheaped out and i mean i'm glad they kept uber and mr x but you had people that were heavily involved in building the overwatch league and when people like monty who as much of a heel as he plays really cared about the game and he's like i'm leaving because they have gone in a different creative direction and they do not listen to my feedback anymore and i don't like the direction they've gone in either and it's like i think monty was right yeah i think whatever he wanted and some of it is again on the viewer side like the homestead we're still stuck with the quote-unquote homestead strategy which is terribly inconvenient like i don't know when to watch anymore i guess 2 p.m today is when it's starting yes it's totally inconsistent now though we've got weekends where there's like one game in American time and they're going to play three over in the Asian region. And then today there were two games in the Asian region and there are three in the American region. And then I, it's like, I don't understand anymore. I don't know when to watch. And they, they said, well, it's all going to be on Saturday and Sunday now. And now it's like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but only sometimes on Friday. And it's like, and I get some of that just changes because they have to reschedule all the stuff that's not been happening but it's just a mess everything's a mess they don't clearly communicate very well it's still a lot of fun to watch and i think it's been more enjoyable to watch this season than last season a lot more enjoyable but that it's like their players are getting burned out uh and they it's just this whole thing this whole league strategy being based in the city was very bold but it also puts in a lot of strings that no other esports experimented with and i just i think if they had just kept it tight and tried to do organized and still base it out of la for a longer period of time it had been smarter i think they would have had a much better season three if they held it for another year and we wondered if they were forcing the homestands and the moves too soon before all this other stuff started and i i think they did and i think the reason they did was when you were having like trying to go and get robert craft to pay 20 million dollars to have an overwatch league team they want to see a return on their investment and not in seven years right and so they need to fill the homestand so they can sell tickets and sell merch and and some of it's not working because of covid i understand that but the whole like these this isn't again this isn't like the major league baseball or the nfl where people are just traveling across four time zones we've got new york is out there in china right now or well south korea play i mean it's like or that's when they're playing the time zones right i watched the game this morning was set to be at 5 a.m new york versus chung du and like the casters they're because they're not like mr x was barely awake tony guy is trying to day he's like he's been up since 3 a.m trying to commentate and then next week he'll probably be asked to do it at 3 p.m it's weird it's all weird it's all weird yeah it's it's one of those things that they're all over the place and i know they're doing what they can because of the lockdowns and the quarantines and stuff but at the same time it feels like especially when you've got the casters are separate from each other, watching with different delays and putting everything together, everything feels a little bit more, what's the word I'm looking for?
    71:13
    And I don't know how much of it is that and how much of it is just the audio sync problems with YouTube.
    71:18
    Yeah, a lot of it is that they're all doing this from home. Right. I do understand. Some of my frustrations, it's going to be all right. And I know that Blizzard is aware and they know that they built this up to be a galah. This is supposed to this is not supposed to be a this is not supposed to be some random Rocket League stuff. This is supposed to be a juggernaut.
    71:40
    And they can salvage it, I think, whenever they want, but they have to actually invest the time in it. And I think they're just in a holding pattern while we get through coronavirus. And that may need to be the way it is. But, you know, some of these things have domino effects. Like it's, I am shocked at the amount of turnover in the league and not just Sinatra, but it's like, if we're having turnover in the league, it should be because there are so many awesome up and comers that they are just displacing on sheer skill. The original old guard. This, this is not a game where everyone has to be a top level Twitch shooter. It does not take a high level of reflex to play mercy. So there's no excuse for people to be aging out this quickly.
    72:22
    Right. They're just getting bored. Or they're getting angry and burned out. And I think most of it is a combination of those factors. That they're frustrated. It's constantly changing. You master a hero and then you're told that it plays in a completely different fashion. It's all that stuff mixed together. The schedule. I mean, the schedule is awful. We saw so many people who got homesick under the old model where they were still not traveling all the time. They're just based in L.A. But that was a huge source of conflict for a lot of the South Korean players who couldn't go home during the entire season. Right, and now with the travel and the sheer amount of travel, being constantly on the road, landing somewhere when it was planned to be, but you jump on a plane, you'd fly 21 hours because you're flying to the other side of the planet. you'd land and you'd have a day, maybe two days to get your sleep and everything adjusted, dump the jet lag, get into practice, and then roll straight into a bunch of games and then immediately jump on a plane and fly 21 hours back, knowing that when you get home, you're more likely than not going to be on a plane going somewhere else in three days. Yeah, it's a host of things. even for those who are listening, who are still have stuck with it and don't care at all about Overwatch from an e-sport perspective, what they're going to do will be fascinating. It'll be interesting because they've tried to be so bold and I'm really curious what they're going to do to bring it back. They've put so much money in. I just don't think they could ever bring themselves to pull the plug. Overwatch is still a popular game. There'll always be a niche for it in e-sports, but this was supposed, I mean, These teams cost millions of dollars.
    74:10
    So I'm curious to see what they do to fix the Path to Pro thing. I'm curious to see what the plan is to keep people's interest up in the game. I mean, personally, I think Overwatch needs to go free-to-play. That was the rumor season two, and I was shocked it didn't happen. I'm still shocked it hasn't happened. But the ability to go online and play multiplayer. They could still sell Overwatch 2 for the single-player campaign. But to be able to pick up and play this game, I think that's the next thing that they should do. I think they have to. and then from there, try and build up interest in the league because there's no barrier to entry for people to start playing the game. And maybe the solution to Tier 2 Path of the Pro is to pull the plug on contenders entirely and go back to the more Apex style where people form their own things and they just monitor kind of the home tournament scene. I do agree with them about leaning more on all these tournaments and doing more tournaments. The lack of stage finals, to me, has created no sense of excitement for most of this Overwatch stuff because it doesn't feel like they're playing for anything other than the grand big final. And I think they realized that was a blunder and they need to do more tournaments because they're fun. That's the thing with esports, like fighting game stuff. There are all these little regional tournaments. Every other week, there's a fighting game tournament. And it's like, yeah, you're not going to – not everyone you cheer for is at every single one, but you turn it on and it's fun because it's cool to see people win trophies. It is. That's what we want to – that's how esports are. We like to have winners crowned, not wait all and just have one big thing. I mean let's not forget all this stuff, how sucky World Cup was, the last World Cup. Oh, it was bad. It was really bad. You could tell they didn't – they put no effort into it. And I heard the reason was because World Cup was trying to do a proof of concept to show there was desire for Overwatch League. And now that they have Al, they don't care. Well, then end it. End World Cup if you don't care. Don't put on this half-hearted effort. I think part of the issue is that they are trying so hard to create a system that has obvious ties to regular sports with the home teams and everything. That they've not broken it up into the zones. Like the World Cup, the actual World Cup, the teams come from a bunch of different leagues. And you know what? They're not traveling across the planet during regular league play to play each other.
    76:46
    They're just playing their local areas. If there were enough teams that they could have just NA, just Asia, just Europe, and they played, and then they came together for a big World Cup-like finals, I think they'd be in a lot better place than this every week you're playing somewhere else on the planet. Yeah. I mean, there's just a lot that... It's been a learning experience. It's just I feel like they have they stalled on. All this stuff has been apparent for a while now, and I'm glad they're acknowledging that they need to take steps. But I'm hoping they'll be more transparent about it moving forward. It just feels like they have drug their feet on recognizing that they had some issues. And now it's just a harder lift than it would have otherwise been. And there's no skin off my back for that. But nonetheless, I'm tired of watching badly audio sync to YouTube. Yeah. So that part, you know, and I'm a fan. So that part, you know, figure it out. The first time I had the bad audio sync where the audio was ahead of the video, so every major play I found out about six seconds before I actually saw it, was just the most annoying thing. I will freely admit I've watched a lot less Overwatch League this year than I did even last year because of stuff like that. because the second I start getting bad audio, if it doesn't reset real quick, I just shut it off and do something else. It's not worth it. Yeah, no, I understand. Well, hey, we filled out a whole show. We filled out an entire show, and it worked really well.
    78:38
    Yeah, we know what we're doing. No audio to repeat. Oh, don't say that. The way my computer's been locking and turning and cranking, There's going to be so much stuff that's messed up on my audio, I'm afraid. We'll see. We'll find out. We'll find out when we export. But until then, you can reach out to us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in about two weeks. Other than that, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. See ya.