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Episode 21 - Sombra Wins?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 30m·held·Nov 6, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers hosts launch designer tournament and reveal top-5 designer rankings.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss their personal activities (audiobooks, work, LED upgrades) before launching a 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designers Tournament bracket with 10 designers selected by Pinside rankings. They then pivot to ranking their personal top 5 pinball designers, with both hosts independently selecting Steve Ritchie as number one, followed by discussions of Pat Lawler, John Trudeau, John Borg, Brian Eddy, and classic designer Steve Kordek.

Key Claims

  • Attack from Mars is Tony's favorite pinball machine of all time

    high confidence · Tony explicitly states this when explaining why Brian Eddy is his number five designer

  • Medieval Madness is in Tony's top five to top ten pinball machines

    high confidence · Tony mentions it when discussing Brian Eddy's design work

  • Steve Ritchie's games are characterized by flow-based design philosophy

    high confidence · Both Dennis and Tony repeatedly emphasize flow as Ritchie's defining design characteristic

  • Pat Lawler is a 'toys guy' designer focused on mechanical integration rather than flow

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly contrasts his own flow preference with Lawler's toy-focused design philosophy

  • Steve Kordek invented the modern two-flipper bottom layout (1948, Triple Action), modern drop targets (Vagabond, 1962), and multiball with playfield locks (Beat the Clock, 1963)

    high confidence · Dennis provides detailed historical attribution with specific game titles and years

  • Dennis owns/has owned Skylab (Kordek design), Three Coins (Kordek design), and Firepower (Ritchie design) as core collection pieces

    high confidence · Dennis discusses his ownership and play experience with these specific machines

  • John Borg's Iron Man was designed on a tight/cheap budget but plays brutal and fun

    medium confidence · Dennis states this as interpretation of design constraints and player experience

  • Ghostbusters has been particularly strong for John Trudeau in the current year (implied 2016 context)

    medium confidence · Tony mentions 'what Ghostbusters has been this year' when defending Trudeau's #4 ranking

Notable Quotes

  • “Steve Ritchie is the king of flow. His design style is my favorite to play. So it's just by default, he has to be my number one.”

    Dennis @ ~49:00 — Captures Dennis's core design philosophy preference and unanimous top-1 pick

  • “Can Steve Ritchie really be anywhere other than 1?”

    Tony @ ~48:30 — Rhetorical agreement showing convergence on Ritchie's designer supremacy

  • “I think Creature from the Black Lagoon might be the best integrated theme in all of pinball.”

    Dennis @ ~30:00 — High praise for John Trudeau's theme integration on a specific classic title

  • “He designed the worst game of all time... Indy 500. And I'm sure he regrets it every day.”

    Tony @ ~38:00 — Humorous but clear dismissal of Dennis Nordman's Indy 500, acknowledged as a design failure

  • “Metallica, a lot of people would probably say Metallica is John Borg's best game. Many people, I would guess, might say Metallica is the best pinball game ever made.”

    Dennis @ ~20:30 — Establishes Metallica's elite status in community discourse

  • “I like that Trudeau seems to be a risk taker with his designs... more so than any other modern designer.”

    Dennis @ ~27:00 — Characterizes Trudeau's design philosophy as experimental relative to peers

  • “While Three Coins wasn't a game I really liked a lot... I wouldn't recommend them as great examples of his best designs. Overall, as an innovator, I think Steve Kordak needs to be on the list.”

    Dennis @ ~44:00 — Distinguishes between innovation/historical significance vs. fun playability for legacy designers

  • “For every as amazing as Lawler's games are... Steve Ritchie has just turned out game after game after game that just play and flow and are so wonderful.”

    Tony @ ~50:00 — Direct comparison establishing Ritchie's consistency advantage over even highly-regarded Lawler

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonBrian EddypersonDennis NordmanpersonGeorge GomezpersonJoel BalserpersonJohn BorgpersonJohn Papadukeperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Eclectic Gamers launching 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designers Tournament with 10 randomly-seeded designers, following earlier 1980s era game tournament format

    high · Dennis explains bracket structure, designer selection from Pinside Top 100, random seeding via random.org, and voting via Google Form

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Both hosts independently converge on Steve Ritchie as universally #1 designer; reflects strong community consensus on designer hierarchy

    high · Tony: 'Can Steve Ritchie really be anywhere other than 1?' Both tally to same result before announcing

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dennis Nordman's Indy 500 is widely recognized as design failure (worst game), though other designs (Party Zone, Scared Stiff, Whitewater) rehabilitate his reputation

    high · Tony: 'He designed the worst game of all time... Indy 500. And I'm sure he regrets it every day.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: John Trudeau identified as risk-taker designer; designs don't always succeed (WWE criticized as wrestling match difficulty) but show strong theme integration and willingness to experiment

    medium · Dennis: 'John Trudeau seems to be a risk taker with his designs... more so than any other modern designer... This doesn't always pan out. I think WWE is an excellent case in point'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Clear demarcation in pinball design: 'flow' designers (Ritchie, Kordek) vs. 'toys' designers (Lawler, Trudeau); hosts have different preferences but recognize complementary importance

    high · Dennis: 'I'm more of a flow guy, not a toys guy... I think that blends so well to the core of what physical pinball is.' Discusses Tony's preference for Ritchie's flow vs. Lawler's mechanical toys

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.270

0:00
Welcome to the Collected Gamers Podcast. This is episode 21. It's Saturday, November 5th. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to be talking about pinball, video games, and a little bit of tabletop this week. I have been doing nothing that I was supposed to do this last week. I've literally done nothing but burn through the last two books of The Wheel of Time. The Wheel? Yeah, yeah. The Wheel Weaves is The Wheel Wills. And it's, as is, I'm not quite done. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the final book. So even after all of this, you still aren't done with it? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's 14 books plus a prequel, which I have not read the prequel, and it's not part of the books I've been reading right now.
1:09
And, yeah, it's a considerable... They're large books, too, very large. I mean, the last three audiobooks have all been over 35 hours. Oh, yikes. Yeah, so I have, let's see, what's my audiobook count, say, for the last book? I have 13 hours left, and this last one was 40 or 42 hours.
1:41
So what are you going to do when you finally, finally finish? I'm going to catch up on the, like, month of podcasts I'm behind on. I've actually started, I am so far behind on podcasts that I've actually started going through and deleting all my news and political podcasts.
2:02
Because by the time I listen to them, they're going to be so far out of date, it's not going to matter. Like none of them, because 90% of all of those things have to do with the election. And frankly, the election is probably going to be over before I get around listening to them. Yes. so I've just been like I can delete that I can delete that it's good you're making wise strategic decisions I mean I don't even know let's see after my clean up let me pull it up here on my phone I have 60 un-listened to podcasts so far hmm that's quite a few I have zero but I did just get caught up today. So, yeah. I don't think I've listened to a podcast. My oldest podcast is from the 3rd of October. Well, it has been a long time with the wheel. Now that you've reached the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, you'll be able to get back on schedule. It's going to take me a while to catch up. I can tell that for sure. We'll see what happens. Maybe once I clear out a few more political podcasts and stuff and news-related stuff, it'll be better or just or just listen to the most recent episodes of all the various ones you have when i start up new podcasts and try them out i usually just start with the most recent one and then i usually i try and give like three episodes before i decide whether or not i'm going to keep them in the list and then when i pull them from a list i might put them back later they continue on because sometimes shows especially young shows will make improvements but i don't want to sit through that so i'll i'll skip it and uh just try them again later when i feel like i need to do some well we're going to hit on some of that later on because we're going to talk about pinball podcasts that we listened to to complement our video game discussion last time it's a rough world podcasting yeah so what have you been up to the last couple of weeks oh gosh okay well i've been playing lots and lots and lots of battlefield one and i've been playing quite a bit of overwatch as well and i've been also putting in some time on the forrester horizon 3 and hitman so i've been doing some video game stuff i took a week off of work last week i just i have so much vacation piled up that i try and just consume it and then i don't really do anything i worked around the house mostly but that did let me get in uh through some of my video game stuff uh last episode where we had our discussion about american pinball and released all that research i had worked on I wanted to note that it seemed to get a lot of reaction in the sense that we've had a lot of people access the data. I see how many people have gone and looked into the folder to pull whatever documents they want, and it has been pretty sizable. Most of that, I'm assuming, is coming from Pinside, where I announced the episode, outside of just our podcast thread.
John Trudeau
person
Mark Ritchieperson
Pat Lawlerperson
Steve Ritchieperson
Steve Kordekperson
Chad H.person
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Pinsideorganization
Attack from Marsgame
Medieval Madnessgame
Ghostbustersgame
Metallicagame
Jurassic Parkgame
Twilight Zonegame
Firepowergame
  • ?

    community_signal: John Borg's design versatility notable: creates 'brutal' games (Iron Man, Walking Dead) with different layouts and philosophies despite shared difficulty reputation

    medium · Dennis: 'you take a game which by almost any definition is stripped down... he made it brutal and he made it fun to play... but then you take Walking Dead, which is also brutal, but it's got a totally different layout'

  • ?

    product_concern: Data East-era pinball games (including Jurassic Park) suffered from poor coding/rules implementation, later fixed by community contributor Chad H.

    medium · Dennis: 'Like a lot of the Data East games, were hampered by having a poor coding, but thanks to Chad H., Jurassic Park and a couple of the other Data East games... have been fixed'

    • 5:01
    And so there wasn't a lot of discussion after that, so hopefully that means I did a good job laying everything out. But anyway, that's not, as I noted then, and I'll note here again, that's not an always-time thing that we plan to do. But if there's ever anything that sort of crops up along these lines again, we may make an exception and we may do a deep research dive. But we're not going to become the deep research podcast, so I just don't want anyone to get confused. We're still going to give our cheeky commentary. Let's see, what else am I working on? Oh, yeah, iTunes. And since I'm always asking for iTunes reviews, I thought maybe I should be giving out some iTunes reviews. Because I don't regularly use iTunes, but I do have an account because I set it up a while ago. So I finally went. I gave the Pinball Podcast a review. I gave Tilt Thru a review. And I gave Slam Tilt Podcast a review. And so two of those I've been listening to for quite a while now. And Slam Tilt is new for me, but they have a really good dynamic. They're kind of like us, but snarkier. and so and they're also sort of out of the Syracuse region so that kind of the that doesn't really matter but I just took note of it since I did live there for a year so I did that and let's see only other things have been work has been really really really busy we lost one of our major contracts unfortunately from a financial standpoint I will not miss the workload but that cost us like 15 percent of our operating income so I was working on budget changes because I work on the budget. And I put those out before I went on vacation, but I didn't hear anything the entire week I was gone. And so when I came back, there was a plan that was sort of laid out. We had a discussion that all the directors got together. We met with a couple of the higher up board members, and it looks like we've got a plan on what we're going to do. No one's going to lose their job. So morale, which of course has been suffering, should be better at this point because no occupations will be terminated to deal with this. We just had to come up with kind of a multi-year ramp up to bring in additional funding. Well, that's good. I'm glad that you're not being forced to make cuts or anything. No, well, yeah, we're not going to have to cut any jobs. We will be trimming back a lot of sort of, I don't want to say frills, But just some of the things that we do or what we tried to do lately to enhance some of our services. So no more team building trips to Vegas? No more team building. No, no. We didn't do a team building trip this year. And by trip, it usually means somewhere around Topeka. It's not a great deal. But, you know, we had to scale back some of the out-of-state travel, which I never take advantage of anyway. But some of the other positions they do for training and such. and some of the things we do with our conference like we're going to do some videography and things this year we won't plan to do that next year and we'll do that and we still have a hole but ever since i started working on the budget which was around 2010 for the 2011 budget was my first really i've always beaten the budget expectations and we have shored up a considerable amount of cash so we don't have to have a balanced budget for a few years and so we can ramp up dues and such without saying it has to be balanced from the get-go and still be in a position where we don't turn into the state of Kansas, which has absolutely no reserves. We have more than half a year's worth of reserves to operate. We could operate without any income for six months. And then the only other thing I've been doing is my LEDs for Jurassic Park. Oh, gosh. I probably should have done Jurassic Park first. Firepower was so easy to swap bulbs that I got spoiled. And Jurassic Park has been a nightmare because to do the GI, I'm having to lift off all the ramps and pull these to get access to the plastics to remove those so I can have access to the bulbs. So as of yesterday, I have all of the GI done. I have all of the bayonet bulbs done. For my birthday, I only got the bayonet-sized bulbs, the number 4447s. So I've placed an order to get the wedge bulbs in and some flashers and such. But most of those are actually, from all that I've seen, they're pretty easily accessible. So I have all the hard bulbs done now. and I'll put a video up on our Eclectic Gamers YouTube page like I did with Firepower with side-by-side from what it looked like incandescent to what it looks like with LED. It's still something of a blended monstrosity at this point. So anyway, it will be finished. It shall be done, and I will not miss working on that because I hate pulling ramps. I see why no one ever did it. At least I'm getting a chance to clean all the plastics and stuff back there while I'm doing it. Well, that's something at least. I can't wait to see the difference. Yeah, I'm hoping it. Firepower, I think, I really liked because in addition to just the extra brightness, which is helpful, some of the colors on the, like, Translight and Backglass, I think they look more natural than they do with the kind of yellowish glow of Incandescent because these are more, these whites are more white than, even the warm whites are more white than Incandescent. So, anyway, it's going pretty well at this point. My fingers hurt, but it's going well. So, anyway, I guess... It's bitter, right?
    10:14
    No, it's not. It's only good to my eyes. But let's go ahead and move on into our first topic. Our first topic, as normal, is going to be pinball. Okay. I know, it's amazing. That's good, because that's what my notes say. That's good. I don't want to get the notes out of order. Oh, we'd never get back on track. This time around, we are starting up another tournament. like we did for the pinball game, the 80s era pinball games. And I'm going to let Dennis talk to you about it because he's the one who set everything up. Well, that's ever so kind of you, though. We must give full credence and credit to Tony because it's his idea that we do one regarding pinball designers. And so this idea came about from Tony back when we were still running the 1980s tournament. We finally had enough time passed with that that I went ahead and started to try and pull some designer names. So we're going to call this the 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designers Tournament. And it's going to consist of 10 designers. And they were chosen based off of having top-ranked solid-state games on the pin side list. Now, I know some of these games have multiple designers credited. I've gone with the names that are most credited as being the quote-unquote designer when it comes to layout sort of stuff. So here are the names, and I'm going to list a couple of games for each one in my kind of run-through. So for those of you who may not know pinball designer names, which is probably a lot of people, you may recognize some of the titles at least. So I tried to go with titles that are well-known. So the name lists are Brian Eddy, who did Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. Dennis Nordham, who did Scared Stiff in Whitewater George Gomez, who did Monster Bash and Lord of the Rings Joel Balser, who did Wizard of Oz and Hobbit John Borg, who did Metallica and Iron Man John Papaduke, who did Theater of Magic and Tales of the Arabian Nights John Trudeau, there are a lot of Johns in this list, anyway Ghostbusters and Creature from the Black Lagoon Mark Ritchie who did Indiana Jones the Pinball Adventure and Taxi Pat Lawler who did Twilight Zone and The Addams Family and Steve Ritchie who did Game of Thrones and ACDC so what I did is I talked to Tony about how do we seed these because all these guys have more than one game to their credit and the games are all rated sort of differently so Tony suggested we don't we just randomize it so that's what we did we took the names I took all 10 of the names and I dumped them in over in random.org's list sort feature, and then I just dropped them into the bracket just sort of in the order that they came out. So because it's a 10-designer team, this round one is actually just two matchups because six designers got a buy and four of them have to face off. So for this first vote, and there will be a link in the show notes to the Google form, and we're doing the voting just like we did last time, it's going to be John Papaduke going against Joe Balser. and Mark Ritchie going against John Borg. That's sort of the layout. Round two will actually have more matchups than this first round just because of the nature of the buys. But, you know, you may see some names that you think are really big and they're going to have an early encounter. You know what? You just got to deal with it because we didn't see them. They were randomly assigned. Yeah, that was my thought originally. That's why I went with the random is because it's like, you know, we could see these and put the obvious big names so they don't meet each other until the end. but honestly i'm not a big fan of when stuff does that or something like this my problem i ran into was i wasn't sure how to do it because for example you take someone like brian eddy he doesn't have a lot of games no most of his games are really really high up there i mean but the three that i know the only three that i know of with him are medieval madness attack from mars and shadow which is probably the lowest rated but we know attack from mars and medieval madness are both top 10 games so if we were to average all of his games he has an advantage versus say a john borg who also has top 10 games but john borg also has a lot of games back from his daddy east era where he's going to be pulled way way down same with john trudeau his his uh gottlieb era stuff is probably going to drag him down even though you might argue that some of his titles are better than some of these other people like you could pick a top title of his that's better than like anything Mark Ritchie did. I'm just using an example. I don't mean anything against Mark Ritchie.
    14:52
    The whole thing was like, how would you do it? Would you take all their games? Would you just take their top 50 games? I didn't know what would be the fair way to seed them. Yeah, I think the only way, if you were going to do anything other than straight random, if you were going to seed them, I think you couldn't use a real demographic, not demographic, but you couldn't really math it out and go based upon this or that. You would have to just sit down and look at them and based upon your personal knowledge, we could have probably built a seed to make sure like Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler don't meet up until towards the end or Trudeau and Gomez don't meet up, that type of thing. I think just straight random is the best way to go in this case because otherwise it would just be arbitrary decisions. Yeah, the only other thing I thought I could think of that It might have worked for seeding, but it's not the same sort of contest would have been to not be designer against designer, but rather designer with a specific game. And then it end up a case of like Brian Eddy has to have his attack from Mars versus his medieval madness. And those would be the first rounds. And then eventually whatever game of his was voted on as the best would face off against, you know, George Gomez's best game sort of thing. But then it ended up being, you're really still voting, you're just voting on the game at that point, not really on the overall thought on the designer, I felt. So I didn't like that idea as much. That's one I toyed with. Yeah, I thought about it, and it just seems like just straight random is the safest way to go. I mean, we just have to, I mean, if we end up with the horrible thing of having, you know, cruddy endings or something, but I don't think it'll happen. I think it'll be okay. No, and I think on our Facebook page, I'll get a picture up of the bracket so people will be able – I didn't run through all the round two matchups here because they're just not valid for voting yet. But I'll get a picture up, and people will be able to see what the next round setups are going to be where these two competitions will put two people in against the other six that got a pass. But anyway, the pass was just because they're random, and go vote. I thought this would be a good time to kind of shift to another pinball topic we have, which is the I thought it would be sort of fun for us, not having to limit it in any way to modern era or anything, but for us just kind of run through who we would say our top five designers are and why. So, Tony, who's your number five? My number five, Brian Eddy. He doesn't have a lot of machines out there, but the thing is, is every machine he has out there is solid and includes my favorite pinball machine of all time, Attack from Mars, and Medieval Madness, which is definitely in my top ten, probably in my top five if I was going to sit down and really draw it up, but it's definitely in my top ten. And that alone, I mean, just because of that and the fact that of all the machines he's made, all three of them.
    17:50
    I know he's worked on other machines, but the three where he's been primary designer, because The Shadow's a good game too. They've all been so solid that them being it just makes him have to be there. It's a good pick. I think a lot of people would definitely agree that he should be seen on the list. I will point out, incidentally, he is not on my top five list, but that's just because I had to pick five and I pushed him down because he had so few games. My number five is John Borg. And I chose him because I think he's done a lot of interesting pins and I think he gets overlooked a lot. He's been in the industry a really long time. But in a lot of ways, I think his design style is different than, well, they're all different designers, obviously, but almost that he's got more fluidity to it. Like I can look at a table and I don't always know it's a Borg table until I'm told. Some of them share similar layout features, as you would expect, but he goes and does a lot of different things with his various machines. So, for example, I think Iron Man is an excellent example of how he takes a game which by almost any definition is stripped down, a game that was told to be made on a cheap budget. And he made it brutal and he made it fun to play. Emphasis on brutal. Yeah, sure. But then you take a game like Walking Dead, which is also brutal, but it's got a totally different layout from Iron Man. It's not a stripped down sort of machine. It feels quite a bit different, but it's also really, really hard. Metallica, a lot of people would probably say Metallica is John Borg's best game. Many people, I would guess, might say Metallica is the best pinball game ever made. And that's a Borg design. So I do own one John Borg game. I own Jurassic Park. and I think that's a decent layout. I think it, like a lot of the Data East games, were hampered by having a poor coding, but thanks to Chad H., Jurassic Park and a couple of the other Data East games, incidentally, have been fixed in that regard, so the rules are a lot more fun. But overall, I just think he has a lot of really good design concepts and he's put out so many that I think are good to great that I want him to be in the list, even if he's at the bottom of my list. So who's your number four, Tony? My number four, Mr. John Trudeau. Just for, you know, TX Sector, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Judge Dredd, and frankly, I love the Flintstones. Those machines alone pretty much can guarantee he's going to be on this list. But when you add in what Ghostbusters has been this year, I think the other question is just where does he go on the list? And that's why I went ahead and put him. For me, he was four. He has more games than Brian Eddy that are very good, even though, like I said with Brian Eddy, Attack from Mars is my favorite game of all time. Right. But John Trudeau has so many games that are enjoyable. Even some of the ones that shouldn't be enjoyable, I enjoy. So I went ahead and put him on my list in the number four slot. Well, he's actually my number four as well.
    20:57
    So that was interesting. It's an interesting coincidence. And I guess for me, what I'd say is that I like that Trudeau seems to be a risk taker with his designs. I'd say more so than any other modern designer, at least. Now, this doesn't always pan out. I think WWE is an excellent case in point, a game that I never enjoyed playing, but it is unique. So I'll give it credit with that, with what they tried to do with the ring, what John tried to do with the ring. But sometimes he'll hit a home run. And I think Ghostbusters is an example of that. It's got a pretty unique layout. The Slimer toy is pretty unique. The Magna slings on the Premium LE versions are very unique. And it just works. I also think that John Trudeau tends to be probably the strongest on theme integration. so as much as I don't like WWE when I play it I feel like it's a wrestling match and well I don't because you're wrestling to figure out what's going on and the big ring up at the top kind of slaps you in the face with yo Slim Jim in my ring and I expect some sponsorship money from Slim Jim now and so you know that was it was good theme integration another one I point to is creature from the black lagoon i don't actually care for the gameplay on creature but i think it might be the best integrated theme in all of pinball um his games it's and it's a beautiful game yeah yeah no it amazing a lot of his look really good and his games do tend to be hard Shout out to the Trudeau gap which isn a style of hard that really appeals to me versus just I think what I call more fair brutality of Borg designs But Gottlieb was sort of seen in its premiere days as the worst of the major manufacturers. I think Trudeau's designs get respect for what they tried to accomplish. And so I think games like Victory and games like TX Sector, which I don't think are great games, what they were trying to do, like TX Sector and making it feel like the ball was teleporting around, that Trudeau stuff I think worked really well. So that's why he's my number four. Number three, Tony, what do you got? Number three. Number three had a climb. He had to climb out of a pit because he designed the worst game of all time. I know which one that is. Dennis Nordman designed Indy 500. And I'm sure he regrets it every day. As he should.
    23:25
    And now, to be fair, he did also create Party Zone, Doctor Dude, and Demolition Man, which I feel balance out Indy 500 because I love all three of those games, especially Party Zone. And then it's followed up with Scared Stiff and Whitewater and Pirates of the Caribbean are all also solid games. I know when we were up at the Pinnapalooza, I played probably 10 or 15 games of Whitewater at least. I played Whitewater a lot. I love that game so much. I played a bunch on the pinball arcade. But, I mean, just the way the games play and the shots and this and that And the sheer fun that his Party Zone and Dr. Dude just made me, he had to go on my list. And I put him up at three, even with pulling himself out of the pit that is the stain of Indy 500.
    24:18
    Poor, poor Dennis. He actually, Norton did not make my list. My number three is Pat Lawler. I'm more of a, if I were to describe myself, I'd say I'm a flow guy, not a toys guy. And Pat Lawler is a toys guy. but when it comes to making a world under the glass i think of lawler first and foremost i think twilight zone is a marvel to behold and i think it's a fun player even though it's not a flow game i think games like bonsai run whirlwind and funhouse are so interesting not just because they're fun players but the mechanical integrations each of those took keep us coming back because they're so fascinating and they're fun to shoot and so i just think it blends so well to the core of what physical pinball is. And so that's why I'm really glad to see that toy style and all that showing up on Dialed In and why I want to play Dialed In and love seeing a new Lawler design. I just, I think that, well, it's not my preferred style. It's really, really important to the hobby. He's the master of it. So he gets to be number three for me. My number two is Pat Lawler. Oh, well, I'm not surprised he's even higher up because I have trouble imagining him lower than three but everyone's tastes are different so yeah i don't have a whole lot to add you pretty much said everything that needs to be said about pat lawler i mean he's simply his games are standouts that you know it's a lawler game just by looking at it and for games that can look so good and have so many interesting things and still be so fun to play where it doesn't feel like stuff's getting in the way is amazing now you would probably add roadshow to the list of games whereas you notice i deliberately did not yeah i noticed you ignored roadshow i i wasn't i wasn't gonna call you on it they all make mistakes i enjoy roadshow yeah you know there's certain ones that don't need to be in that one uh roller coaster tycoon sorry don uh definitely does not need to be said but yeah no good pick good pick for number two my number two uh is steve kordak and so i went way back on that one you you really you i did i did but i wanted him on the list so a lot of listeners may not know core deck's name but i will i will summarize him by saying that he is a big deal he spent most of his career with williams though i believe he actually started out with ginkgo and uh i should note i've i've owned two core deck games in my time my three coins that i sold earlier this year was a core deck design and my sky lab which was my first pinball machine and the the one em i still own is also a core deck game. But even if you don't know his name, you know his innovations. So while Steve Kordek didn't invent flipper pinball, he was the one to first put two flippers at the bottom of the play field and have two buttons to control one for each flipper. And that was back in 1948 on a game called Triple Action, which was a Genco title. Then he also, when he did that, he decided that he would use direct current instead of alternating current for those flippers, which gave them enough oomph that they could actually get the ball back to the top of the play field. Before that, they had multiple flippers like Humpty Dumpty with multiple buttons, incidentally, for each set of flippers. And you'd have to be like pass the ball up, up and up if you wanted to ever get it back up to the top again. This was, of course, a huge innovation because the game became much more about skill rather than chance. That's not just the flipper layout that he gets credit for. Kordek invented the modern drop target, which was done in a game called Vagabond, which was a Williams title from 1962. And he also invented multiball, specifically a multiball where the ball could be locked on the playfield and then later released, which he did in 1963 for Williams in a game called Beat the Clock.
    28:13
    So while Three Coins wasn't a game I really liked a lot, it was far more challenging than Skylab, which is a relatively barren and simplistic game. and I wouldn't recommend them as great examples of his best designs. Overall, as an innovator, I think Steve Kordak needs to be on the list, and so he's number two for me. So that brings us down to number one. The big kahuna. I'm going to go ahead and say that we should go ahead and say our number ones at the exact same time. Okay. Because just by listening to the list, I'm pretty certain that we've got the same guy. I think you're probably right. 3, 2, 1 Steve Ritchie Was it hard for you? Because it wasn't hard for me to put him at number 1 I actually said when I was going through the list and putting my list together I was like he's really good he should be on the list I haven't added Steve Ritchie yet where should Steve Ritchie go? Can Steve Ritchie really be anywhere other than 1? I guess maybe I could put him at two and Pat Lawler at one. No, I really can't because for every as amazing as Lawler's games are and as many of his games as I like, Steve Ritchie has just turned out game after game after game that just play and flow and are so wonderful.
    29:42
    Yeah. I mean, for me it was like, okay, let's do a top five pinball designers. who am I going to put in for the spots two through five?
    29:51
    Because I already knew Steve Ritchie was going into the number one slot. Honestly, my biggest debate was whether or not to put Kordak at two or give Pat Lawler two, even though I don't love Pat Lawler the same way other people do. I didn't want a bunch of blowback because I put him way too far down on the list. But no, I mean, Steve Ritchie is the king of flow. His design style is my favorite to play. So it's just by default, he has to be my number one. But there's variety to his style. So what I call brutal fast, like F-14 Tomcat, which honestly is so fast that I'm afraid to play it because I can't keep up with the ball. To those more longer ball time smooth games like Spider-Man, I think. But overall, it's really fun to play his games, I think. Even World Poker Tour or Firepower is an example, which is one of his games that isn't a flow game. But I still think it's fun.
    30:47
    And how many Steve Ritchie games do you own? I own two. I own Firepower and I own the Star Trek game. And I play those two games quite a bit out of my collection, I would say. Right now, it's mostly Firepower because it's the newest one for me. And whenever I only have three minutes, it's like, oh, okay, I can play Firepower twice and I'll be okay. but you know it's just sort of i i like i like the sort of basic design philosophy that he has where on most of his games if you make a if you make a successful shot you're rewarded and that reward is generally a return a return to a flipper so you can shoot again but if you brick those shots you're in big trouble so to me it's like a video game mindset a action video game mindset And Steve Ritchie wants you to move, move, move. Don't hold still. It's all about moving. Yeah, you can trap up and shoot. That's fine. But I mean, the whole point is it's all designed so it can just keep flowing. There's a reason why they use that word and why we use that word. And so I don't like waiting for a pinball machine to do stuff. I don't like having to watch the DMD animation when I can't skip it. And Steve is really good about keeping my wait times down. So thank you, Steve Ritchie. Okay, well, those were our top five designers. We look forward to seeing everyone's votes on the contest we mentioned earlier. So let's go ahead and get rid of our last pinball topic now, which is just sort of a follow-up. We had that question last time from Don about what video game podcasts we like to listen to. So I thought this time we should go ahead and cover the pinball podcasts. And, Tony, I have a feeling your list is probably a bit shorter than mine, so I'll let you go first. Yeah, my list is considerably shorter than yours. Okay. I listen to Tilt Through, the Pinball Podcast.
    32:38
    Let me just double-check to see what else I still have in here. Coinbox, yeah, the Coinbox Podcast. That looks to be about – oh, and Kaneda. I've got Kaneda and Coast to Coast also. Okay. All right, so, yeah, you're about half of what I am. So you're around – I think I've got ten. Yeah, those are the only ones I've got, And that accounts for, you know, like less than a quarter of my total podcast list. Right.
    33:06
    And for me, it's the pinball ones are my my largest quantity. They're not. But many of these aren't all that necessarily frequent. So I can't say that I actually listen to pinball most, but it is the most of my I have like 16 or so. I think I have 17 podcasts currently in what I call my phone subscription. and that's all I'm going to go through is the phone subscription. I do sometimes listen to these, especially to keep up on what's going on. I'll listen to some one-off ones by going to their website, but these are the ones I subscribe to. So for me, Broken Token, Classic Arcade and Pinball Podcast, and I will note all of mine, and I think because every single one Tony mentioned is also in my list, all of his are linked in the show notes. So if you want to listen to any of these or subscribe to them, just follow those links. The more the better. These people need listens too. Broken Token, I just added this one. I just finished the first episode I've been able to, which was the most recent, listen to today. It's sort of a, it's like Game Room Junkies, which is a focus on both arcade and pin collecting. And they seem to be a monthly, as near as I could tell from the schedule. So the Broken Token, as I just noted, Game Room Junkies, arcade and pinball podcast. I named them back in the video game one. So that they qualify here as well. coast-to-coast pinball slash wide world of pinball i have to name them jointly because they're sharing the same rss feed and so if you don't like one you're kind of i mean you'd have to manually do it so you're kind of stuck having to listen to both unless you want to skip episodes which you can do but uh to sort of segregate it beyond that coast to coast is commentary around pinball news and wide world of pinball is about competitive pinball with a particular focus on the ifpa system of points. That would be my description. Canadas Pinball Podcast. I would describe that as originally focused on pin side drama. Then it seemed to become more reactionary to news announcements. But then the host just announced he's burned out and the show's either on hiatus until 2017 or he's not doing it ever again. I don't know. So, I'm keeping it on the list because I'm flagging it as under hiatus, but he sounded very burned out. So, who knows? uh little things i haven't heard because i i haven't listened to a podcast this month okay well you his his very very last episode it wouldn't actually download right for me because i think he deleted an episode and then replaced it and my phone was confused so i listened to the hiatus one through soundcloud which is our host and also his host it's uh it's a brief one and he summarizes you know everything that's going on with that uh he was the most frequent pinball podcaster. Maybe that's why he burned out. I don't know. He was, in some cases, doing more than one episode a day, which would drive me nuts. This is why Tony and I stick to our two-week schedule. Schedules equal structure, and structure equals sanity. Sort of an alliteration for y'all.
    36:03
    Little Kings Pinball Podcast. Yeah. My southern's coming out today. This is another new one. It's actually new overall, and it's new to me because I just started listening to it. It's a two-host system, which we all know is the best system. And I'm not quite sure what the overall focus is going to be in terms of like the direction they're going to go. I'm going to say it's going to be collector and news reaction oriented from what I've heard so far. Then there's Pinhead's Pinball Podcast, Pinheads with a Z. I can never get that out of my head from their little commercial breaks. It's focused on the Australian pinball scene, and it's a three-host system, very news oriented. I also think of all the ones I've heard, they've got the best production value. So it actually feels like a full-fledged radio show. Unfortunately, they tend to only be monthly as well. So you only get to enjoy it once in a while, but they do a good job. Pinball Podcast, which, of course, again, awesome two-host approach to news commentary. They also seem to talk more about mods than any of the other groups that I listen to. And we've had Don on this show before guest hosting, so you already have a feel for at least one half of their equation. They're on a two-week system like we are. Coinbox Pinball Podcast, two-host approach with a focus on the hobbyist operator side of pinball. The schedule is, I would describe, sporadic. They actually just finally had a new episode come out. I think they officially shoot for trying to have one a month minimum, and I think lately it's been more like one every other month. Then Slam Tilt Podcast, two-host commentary approach. As I noted, I've just added them. and as I noted earlier, very, very snarky, but they have a really good dynamic. So if you don't mind some profanity and you like snark, they're definitely the ones to listen to because they have a really good banter. Again, very news focus to target their commentary on. Then Tilt Through, which Tony listed. It's a three host system and its focus is on competitive pinball, but it's not IFPA exclusive. There's not a lot of diving into the point systems and such. Personally, it's my favorite for if you want something that's pinball tournament talk. I'd say go to Tilt Through. I think they're the best ones at it. And then finally, I wouldn't really count them, but I'll throw it out. I do actually subscribe to us. I have to make sure that the episodes download. And I do for a third time. I get to hear it now when we record. I hear it when I edit it. And I do listen to it through to see what I don't like. If I keep saying, you know, like I do all the time, and I try and take notes on this stuff and get better about it. But we are a two-host format, and we do video games and tabletop. Dennis is the better of the two hosts because I will never give you vocal fry you know that you hear my nasal voice and you know that's never going to happen and that gives you comfort and while we're not as snarky as the Slam Tilt podcast we are pretty snarky compared to most of the other ones and we're clean one of the few that are clean lyrically just don't talk to Tony Hess in person if you think we actually always speak that way because that is not the case we are putting on our best Sunday dress and our best foot forward for when we record. Yeah, when I'm not recording and I'm not actively checking it down, I am very blue-collar. I'll go with that. I always go with salty. I'm relatively salty. But anymore, everybody uses salty for angry, and I'm not angry. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I guess I need to – these kids today, they're changing my lingo. Okay, I'll have to revise that. Yeah, like lingo. Yeah. Yeah, hey. Hey, we need to be accepting of this. both the old words and the new. And speaking of old and new, let's go ahead and move on to our first video game topic, the video game segment, normally the second segment of this podcast. We've been for quite a while now, off and on, first with you and now also with me talking about Overwatch. Yes, because you finally played it and suddenly you realized that I was right and it's just a bloody amazing thing. It's enjoyable, I will agree. There are some things they could work on. Symmetra needs some major work, Tony. She needs some major work. I feel really bad for her. She could be buffed a little bit, yes. I mean, that I don't see her on the pro scene is one thing. That I don't see her on the amateur scene says something else entirely. I've seen her on occasion be played in really, really, really amazing ways. But normally what I see is somebody will take her and will play her like at the very beginning for the first couple rounds. or not rounds, but the first couple minutes of a fight, and then they'll switch off. Sure. And I've actually seen her used that way on the pro scene because I've been trying to watch the Overwatch World Cup and related competitions that have been happening lately. And there have been a few high-level teams that will very situationally and always very early rely upon a Symmetra because they're trying to – it's usually the defenders trying to use her teleport to stay close to the first point. Yeah. Otherwise, it's essentially in the pro scene. If they lose the point once, they'll never get it back. My reference to the old and the new, let's hit on the new. There was a new character announced. Yeah, we put it up on the Facebook page when they finally dropped last night, and that is Sombra. Who we've been hinting about for a long while now is now actually announced, and we've got good looks at her, and they put out one of their wonderful animated shorts with her. And I have to say that I hate her already. Yeah, I was going to ask what your overall thoughts were on Sombra. I've seen a bit of a summary of her abilities. And quite frankly, and I know this is still on paper, as I'm really jumping the gun, but hey, we're a commentary podcast, so we jump the gun all the time. I think she's overpowered, and I'm really concerned. I think she's going to get played. I think she might be more critical to teams than Lucio is, though, and that's scary. Yeah, it could be. The ability to lock a team down and basically shut them off so they literally can't do anything for a period of time, and the ability to just totally wipe out a Reinhardt shield.
    42:18
    I mean, yeah, we're using her ult, but it opens them up for other ults. I mean, if you combine a Sombra with a Zarya and then any damage-causing ult, you have a team wipe without even trying. Right. And that's where I'm imagining I'm looking at and seeing after watching so many matches of – and the Overwatch World Cup is going on right now, actually. And I was – just before we started recording, I was watching the bronze match between Sweden and Finland. and you look at the team makeups and of course at the pro scene where they've totally min maxed and done all the analysis and you see such consistent groupings and i'm seeing these specs on sombra and i'm thinking oh she's going to be a mandatory she's going to be a mandatory character she's going to go in because as long as you have her alt ready you now have a character that could say it doesn't matter if currently in the in the format it's basically if the teams are roughly equal skill and they're going to be fighting over who's going to wipe and who's going to protect the payload or get the point or whatever. Generally, it's the team with the most ults wins or they should. But if she can turn off every single ult, it doesn't matter if they have six ults ready to go. She turns them all off. So I just don't see how you don't run with her. Which means, of course, yet another reason why Symmetra will never be played. Or Torjorne or Hanzo at the pro level. You don't see him too much. There are a bunch. Soldier 76, you don't see at the pro level there's a lot of characters pro level that people don't just spam arrows into a door and then act like they're gods they do at the very very start just like with widowmaker they'll try and get an instant headshot from their base and it doesn't happen they immediately then go back in and then they change their character to genji i'm just saying yeah there i mean there's yeah there's some there's a little bit of hanzo uh more mccree though you McCree, Reaper, Genji, those are... There's like a DPS. I don't know. I mean, it all depends. And what they change after Season 2, we'll probably shake it up again. I had read about 3x3 teams. Most of the World Cup teams I'm seeing are 2x2x2, where you have two tanks, two healers, and two DPS. But the tanks are always Reinhardt and Zarya. The healers are always Lucio and Ana. And then the DPS varies a little bit. And occasionally, you'll see someone do something weird, like take Zenyatta instead of Lucio. but then they lose because they made a mistake. Really? Zenyatta instead of Lucio? Instead of Zenyatta instead of Ana? Ana's nano boost is too powerful. The nano boost is what, yeah. I guess so. I guess that's the reason. That nano boost especially on a Reinhardt can be just devastating Though it is hilarious to see Ana shoot a nano boost at Reinhardt and then have Lucio run in front of Reinhardt and take the hit instead I've seen that happen a couple of times now. Ouch. So, hey, nano boosted Lucio. Have fun with that. Yeah, the nano boost is just too powerful for helping wipe another team, so I guess the logic was get rid of Lucio because Zenyatta's transcendence is so powerful to protect against an attack, much like basically that the ultimates are essentially the same functionally. But in reality, they aren't, because with Lucio, once his move is in place, everyone's got that shielding. With Zenyatta, it actually has to tick. And so there was an analysis done and it explained how if a Reaper fired his Death Blossom off and he was nano-boosted and he can kill with less than, essentially within one tick, that it would be possible for Zenyatta to fire Transcendence and still not actually be able to save people because he doesn't heal enough versus that first hit of damage. And it's just sort of that high-end analysis. Yeah, on my level, casual level, that's not going to matter. I'll go in with Zenyatta all the time. But honestly, it's at the point when I don't choose quick play, but I choose the competitive play, which I've been doing over the last week. If I'm in there and no one on my team is Lucio, I switch to Lucio because I think there should always be one. Yeah, if we have no healers, I will play Lucio. If we have a Mercy, I will normally not play Lucio, but sometimes even then, if I've been playing with a person playing Mercy for a little while and it's obvious that they're not a good Mercy player, I'll switch to Lucio. But it's pretty rare to play, at least in competition, I've seen the competitive that doesn't have a Lucio. And on the other hand, in quick play, I actually play quick play more than anything else because I like to be able to bail out in the middle of a match because of the kids or stuff like that. So I play a lot of quick play. But that also leads to the occasional insanity and the pure BS of, hey, look, they've got Lucio in five Mays. You know what? I'm just going to rage quit this now. All right. And I had actually heard yesterday from Mike, who's guest-hosted a couple times on this podcast, that Blizzard has announced that will no longer be the case on their next update. Quick Play will be one character only. Really? Yes. Quick Play? Yeah, they're going to add another mode where you'll be able to choose to play and you can all be the same character. But they're taking that out of Quick Play. They're going to add, like, casual play or something.
    47:39
    It'll still be a way you can do it if you want. and they're going to add things like being able to go in and do one-on-one or three-on-three matches and things like that it's going to be like incorporated with that sort of stuff but quick play is basically going to be drop in drop out but otherwise like competitive play where no repeats on the same team everyone has to be a different character well that's going to be interesting i mean i've seen some sheer fun where even just two people the two of the same character on the team. I mean, two Junkrats on the team can really be horrible. I guess that would be a good reason to get rid of it. Exactly. And this is why I've not been playing quick play as much lately, is I don't like having to deal with what I call troll teams, where they're just trolling.
    48:27
    I've seen it with Junkrat. I've seen it a lot with Bastion, where there'll be six Bastions on defense. Sometimes you'll see Maze. And it also just looks weird from a conceptual standpoint of there being multiple Lucios and stuff. I think it would be really interesting if every time a character was selected it meant the other team also couldn't use them. Well, yeah, but then you're going to this whole other... At that point you're looking at League of Legends type stuff where you block out characters and this and that.
    48:58
    Because you'd be specifically grabbing characters as quickly as possible to lock it out. Anyway, with Sombra, I'm also a little concerned about her portable teleporter, because apparently she can deploy through that even while it's still in the air. So she just throws it and it will zoom her over. So I imagine she's going to have mobility levels that we're thinking... I mean, she's basically a tracer. Yeah. The mobility thing doesn't bother me so much as the hacking and shutdowns. The fact that she can hack and not just with her ultimate, but normally, and this and that worries me. The teleportation, I mean, it's going to depend upon the cooldown, but we've already got multiple characters who easily end up where you did not expect them to be without it. So I'm not overly worried about that we're already dealing with it with other characters. I am with her because of her ult being the shutdown. Because to me, it says that she's going to be able to get behind you easily. Because unless there's a way to shoot the teleporter out of the air, like unless McCree can kill that thing, then she's going to be able to easily get behind you, more easily than any other character outside of Tracer and Reaper. Then she's going to turn off all of your ults and all your shields. So to me, that's why I think she's OP, is the combination of both. If she was a Reinhardt and had trouble moving in, at least people can try and contain her when they know that it's time for her to be able to ult. But with her ability, just chuck that thing like a grenade and end up behind you, throw it on top of a building and end up beside you, I'm afraid Sombra's dangerous, man. That doesn't even take into account the fact that she can turn invisible. Yeah, we didn't even talk about that part. What the heck? She's a ghost. Ghost. Yeah, she looks like a lot of fun to play and a lot of annoyance to play against. We'll just have to see. I'm definitely concerned that she's going to be an S-rank character coming out of the box. because it just sounds like this stuff is way too useful.
    51:04
    Unless you were playing with a total pickup team and there's no coordination and no communication, then she's probably fairly useless. But on any coordinated team, I think she is going to be the most devastating addition since Lucio. Yeah. Not that Lucio was a devastating addition. He was a launch character. He's a devastating addition. Once they learned him, he's a devastating addition.
    51:27
    But anyway. So, some news for all you Overwatch fans. If you haven't played Overwatch, play Overwatch. It's fun. Yep, we all love the Overwatch. And you know what? If you don't have Overwatch, you haven't played Overwatch, at least watch the videos, because all the videos they put together are really good. Yeah, they are. Blizzard videos are awesome. They're great shorts. Let's move to our second video game topic. I wanted this one in. I wanted to talk a bit more about Battlefield 1, because I've been putting in, as I noted in my intro, a lot of time on it, and there's been quite a few changes since the beta which is when i had previously played it which and that was all just multiplayer so now i've been able to experience the campaign and i've worked on a number of the multiplayer modes so i just thought i would kind of give some impressions overall because i really enjoy the game that's my bullet point summary battlefield one is an excellent battlefield game on all sorts of levels so what you're saying is it's Call of Duty. Ouch. So mean. I will give, and I must admit, as I think I have admitted before, but I lose track. I haven't played a Call of Duty in a long time. So the most recent Call of Duty I played, and I only played in local multiplayer, was World at War. So we're talking before the Infinity Ward crew broke away and decided it would be more fun to make Titans. there have been a lot of changes but one thing I would based off of that give credit to Call of Duty 4 that I feel Battlefield suffered at was the single player outside of the Bad Company games which are very tongue in cheek and silly stupid quite frankly in terms of what's going on with them the campaigns have been dreck I can't even describe I couldn't tell you the difference between Battlefield 3 and Battlefield Force campaigns, I don't remember them well enough to tell them apart. All I know is I never cared about any of the characters, including the one I was playing, and everything was generic to the degree that you felt like you were just playing tropes, which I know we're going to hit on in the Table Top section. Yay, it's tropes. That's right. Tie-ins galore. It's what I do. This campaign, though, works really, really well. They did a couple of things that I think allow that to be the case. The first is it's not one overall campaign anymore. They broke it into vignettes. So you've got six little stories that you're playing as. Those stories give you a taste of different aspects of the front during World War I and also give you tastes of different aspects of the gameplay that you experience in multiplayer. So there's a campaign that's very tank-focused, where you're a tank driver. There's a campaign that's very pilot-focused. there's a campaign that's very focused allowing you to do the desert stuff so you're getting experience with the cavalry horse you're getting experience with trying to sneak around and break into things stealth is it's not a stealth game, Battlefield's never been a stealth game but it is key in certain instances on how these open maps work that you actually try and just sneak in around and knife people behind or just slip past them so they don't know because they'll destroy you because they're in a vehicle and you can't take out vehicles but you want to take the point so you wait for him to leave i mean there is a strategic element to some of the maps where stealth is important anyway all of the campaigns i feel treat the war with reverence and it's not like a just a pew pew pew yeah well we're soldiers and we're tough i mean it's the way that's not your little mean things they released the other day i don't think i saw the mean things oh you Didn't see the, yeah, where they released, you know, like, screen caps of the guy with the flamethrower burning people, and then they tagged it with the hashtag hot night at the club and stuff like that? No, that is not subtitled while he's actually burning people in the game. Now, you may say that when you're actually playing the multiplayer, but with a single player, they very much take the this is a war that no one liked sort of approach. so it's bleak it's unhappy it's miserable and it's handled very very seriously and the vignettes in some ways are probably elements of World War I that most people aren't very familiar with I have to say that very very loosely because in my opinion most people don't know anything about World War I and in a lot of ways I understand because World War II is not only more timely but for a lot of people it's more interesting but the only vignette that will probably ring a bell for anyone is the final one, the desert one. You can do them in any order actually. There's the furthest right on the screen to select. And that has to do with the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire, which T.E. Lawrence was involved with, or Lawrence of Arabia. Those of you who haven't seen Lawrence of Arabia, watch Lawrence of Arabia. I know it's old. It's still a really good movie. So is this a really good movie, like actual really good movie, or a really good movie like your insane love of crawl good movie no no i think it's pretty universal that lawrence of arabia is a sweeping epic that's not only visually stunning but has an incredible musical score yeah i knew that i just wanted to make fun of you about crawl again i know you did but as i proved that president obama is concerned about crawl on facebook according to the audience we have we need you know like an alpha strike to remove the possibility of a crawl reboot I don't see why we're spending money on F-35s when we can just have fire mares can travel 10,000 leagues in a day I don't understand why we need jets but yes, no anyway so many of our listeners probably don't know Lawrence of Arabia and I feel a little bad for them I wouldn't watch it over and over again but it is worth seeing once anyway, that's the only story that I had any familiarity with and you do not play Lawrence he's just in some of the cut scenes you always play an unknown person in all instances So, campaign. It is good. Bob of Arabia.
    57:37
    Now, in terms of multiplayer, I have not done all of the modes. There are a lot of modes that never appeal to me because they appeal to Call of Duty people, like Team Deathmatch-style stuff. And I get my fill of that in Overwatch. I don't do that in Battlefield. I have played three modes, Conquest, Rush, and Operations. and conquest historically has sort of been well it was not the first thing that I'd say Battlefield was really known for as of 3 at least, Battlefield 3 conquest has been the most popular mode, that's the one where you go and you try and capture various points and the other team's trying to capture the same points and you just fight over those points, kind of like well you know how Overwatch are trying to claim the little circle it's a zone capture type that's more based around your actual team comp and stuff than just who's got the best kd yes yes well supposedly but in the case of battlefield it's more than one point active at a time it's usually somewhere in the order of three to seven so because the maps are much more open that uh that was what the beta that the beta offered that experience on one map i've tried it on all the maps now i believe they're all very very well balanced this was not a problem for dice in the past they've always balanced conquest really well so that still feels really good rush mode which is there are two boxes we'll call them telegraphs in this case where the offensive team is trying to destroy both of them the defensive team tries to protect them and they if they lose they have to fall back several times and the way it's done is someone has to set a bomb on them and if it doesn't get diffused by the defensive team in time it explodes and then there's one box and when both are gone you fall back and rinse and repeat that mode hasn't changed very much. It feels like, I haven't spent as much time on it, it feels like it is better balanced on the map setups than Battlefield 4. Battlefield 4 was horrible. Rush felt totally tacked on and there were just some times where it was like how in the world is defense supposed to guard these? And on the flip side you'd have other maps where it's like how in the world is offense ever supposed to get near these? It's all bottleneck. So there's some issues with Rush on this. I don't want to say it's perfect. There are still some instances where it feels like they weren't the best laid out, but it does look like they actually thought about it this time. So that was really nice. So it wasn't a backburner add-in secondary item this time around. It was a primary concern for them, you think? I think it was. I still don't understand why Battlefield 4 was so awful with Rush. It was the second most popular mode. And it was still the second most popular mode, even with how awful it was. it's just on four well you know four launched with a ton of bugs and the servers were it was a real mess and it's just i wonder they got they were so rushed to try and get out to compete against call of duty that my impression was they didn't spend enough time on the map design and this time they did uh the third multiplayer mode that i've played and the and last is the a new one for them called operations and this is pretty interesting in the sense that it functionally works like a blend of conquest and rush there are usually two points but you're not setting bombs you're going and you try and capture the points you have to get them all claimed as the offensive team at the same time and if they're fully claimed you know they can't be contested no overwatch overtime mode allowed you have to fully claim them and when they're both fully or i should say all fully claimed then defense has to fall back like they would in rush and a lot of times that count will change. Sometimes there's just one point and I've seen it go as high as three. And there are like four different operative modes that sort of campaign themes where, and the way it works is if the defense holds and offense fails to take out every single point, the next game starts the next stage of the operation. It's at the same exact point, but the offense gets help. So they bring in a behemoth. So like a giant killer zeppelin or an attack train that rains artillery. You get that extra support to try and push it through. Offense has three games to attempt to take out all of those points. If they do, offense wins. If they fail, defense wins. And if they don't make it all the way, they get a big old bonus to help them out to maybe do better next time? Right. The first time they get no, they call them these behemoths. Every game, like in Conquest, I should say. In Conquest, every map has a behemoth, and if one team is winning by a lot, and only by what's ever defined as a lot, it's brought out for whatever team is losing. So it's basically the, hey, you're getting raffle stomped, so here's something that might help you out. Yeah, think of it like playing Smash Melee and getting the power-up that gives you your ultimate, except it's actually given to whoever's doing the worst. Interesting. Right. So in the Alpha, which I didn't play, in the Alpha there was a map where there's a giant, massive Zeppelin, and that Zeppelin has multiple gun turrets on it, and it basically is a World War I AC-130 is what it is. And it just rains death. And in the Beta, which I did get to do, was an attack train. the train one part like all the train cars are all side gunner cars and one of the train cars has the ability to do artillery strikes from the train and you can you can capture points with it it's like a it's a vehicle they move around you actually have control so the zeppelin pilot can fly it over to a certain point and start capturing the point every person in the zeppelin counts just like if they were on the ground in operations for the first time the attackers don't get to have a behemoth but if they lose they get a behemoth if they lose again they get the behemoth again and in theory every time they've had to fall further and further back defense doesn't get anything new and they're stuck as far back as they were pushed prior how many points you earn depends how great you did on your defensive stops like how long you lasted for you to give up point a so fall back so okay so at no point does the defensive time side in that case get the bonuses The bonuses are purely on the offensive sides. Right, because let's say the attackers go, and they get all the way through to the very end. Then the defense is lost. They lost that whole map, and it moves. Every operation consists of two possible maps, so it goes to map number two. If they continue to get steamrolled, then it's just over. That's just how it is.
    64:22
    Defense doesn't get to retry. The second map is their one retry, basically. offense has three tries to win two maps total the concept's awesome I've tried them all I have one on both sides but I do feel that at least on some of the maps it seems like it's very tilted towards offense I don't know again they're very very long to play fully through can be almost an hour that's a lot of time to commit it's not a mode I turn to a lot I really like the idea of it, but it does seem like, especially once they get the behemoths out, it's just, this is not always a great way to fight the behemoths. I've been on maps, including maps we've won, where we just ignored the behemoths and let them rain death on us. It was just not worth it trying to fight them. We had to be too busy fighting the ground forces to make sure they don't take the points. So a few other clarifications. We talked a bit about behemoths already, so I won't get onto that. We talked about the map, so I won't get onto that. Battle packs. don't these are just like skins that you unlock for your weapons and stuff much like overwatch they're random the awards are random but unlike in overwatch the earning of the battle packs is also random i don't get it i mean yeah you can microtransaction and buy some if you want to buy some but i complete a match i'm the number one player i don't get a battle pack but another time i complete a match i'm like ranked 14 out of 16 and i get one it doesn't there's no rhyme or reason to it they're just randomly given out it's stupid i think that those should i'm okay with them giving there has to be something about the uh that says why the how and why they're given out there's a certain number that are always given out at the end of a match i think they are randomly distributed equally amongst both teams that would be my guess but i don't know but it doesn't know there have been times where i've been number one and number two and i get them and times when i don't and i'm number one and number two i am top ranked a lot in battlefield and i do not always get get a prize when I'm top rank. So I just think they're being randomly assigned and I think that should be... If they want to give out random battle packs, that's fine, but I definitely think that you should get one if you're in the... Well, again, we're doing lots of Overwatch comparisons. You know at the end of Overwatch when you were the top kills or top heals and things like that? Yeah. Battlefield 1 does this at the end as well. You see five characters are noted for... He captured the most flags. He was the best scout. Da-da-da. Those people don't always get the battle packs. So I don't know. It's weird. Would you prefer if it was more like Overwatch's experience system where you earn so much experience and every time you hit a certain plateau of experience, you earn a pack? Yeah, I would. And you just get extra experience when you play.
    67:13
    If you get into that, oh, Bob had the most kills, so you get a little extra experience because you were a little better, but otherwise you still, oh your team won gets you so much experience You didn quit the match halfway through gets you so much experience stuff like that Yeah though i do need to note i do believe you do get a battle pack every time you level okay so they do have a leveling system in play already yes it just so this is just for extra battle packs yes but the volume of the amount they give out for end of matches i mean you have to play so many games before you level up once you're you know past level 20 or whatever that it's the primary source of battle packs, but it's random. So this is weird. I don't know. I just find it odd. I would rather them, if they want to keep it simple, I'd rather them give a battle pack to everyone on the winning team or something. I don't know. Or at least be a little bit more out there about what earns you the battle pack. Yeah. Or let you just say it's random. We just randomly give out so many. And if you're only randomly giving out so many a game, why not give out one to everybody? But it is just weapon skins. So it's not, I don't care that much. I care more about my packs, my loot crates, as I call them, my loot crates in Overwatch than I do in Battlefield, because you don't get to customize the character looks in Battlefield 1, so you always are period-specific to whatever team you're on, which makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense. It's just the weapon skins. As much as I love my Dr. Junkenstein outfit for Junkrat, I can see where something like that wouldn't fit in with this harsh, gritty reality World War I game. Yeah, and in Battlefield 4, I think the weirder outfits, you only ever saw those if you did pure deathmatch, which no one played, because you're always on teams. You're always Russians or Chinese or Americans or something. A couple other things I thought I would note. They have nerfed horses. Horses were OP in the beta. They're still challenging to kill, but not ridiculously challenging where it feels like the horse could kill a tank. So that was a good improvement. heavy tanks heavy tanks i think feel like proper heavy tanks under the beta the light tanks were actually probably the best choice they were single person tanks but they were very very strong now it makes a lot of sense strategically to go with a heavy tank it would still be better to take a light tank if you aren't going to have any support gunners with you but if you know people who are going to help you out then taking something like a land ship or a heavy tank makes more sense and i think a heavy tank always makes more sense than a land ship and i think everything makes more sense than an artillery truck, but sometimes you see people with artillery trucks trying to make an entrance. Artillery is important. It's the king of the battle, or the queen of the battle. Catch it! It is. No, they do great damage. The only problem with artillery trucks is it's so easy to kill them. That's the only issue. And then in terms of the classes, there are four classes. Medic, Assault, Scout, and Support. They're pretty well balanced. I say it with that weird little up-twinge tick in my voice because I think Support probably needs a little bit of help. It's based off of the number of the achievement ranks I've seen on True Achievements of people getting to rank two in Medic, Assault, and Scout, and Support. Far and away, the least number of people are doing up to two on Support. And I think it's because they kind of feel worthless. They resupply ammo, which is great. That's always been a support role in Battlefield games for a long time now. But they don't have a really great way to fight vehicles. So it's like, okay, well they assault can do that and scout can kind of do that and i think they've got some ways where support can kind of try to do that but it's like and how often you need to refill ammo in a game where you die a lot it's not that's even once you die and you respawn you get all your stuff back so medic you know is just more valuable because they're able to revive people so i i just think that support probably needs a little bit of love not a ton but just it's definitely the least played class. I play it sometimes, because they get the light machine guns.
    71:17
    Anyway, that's all I had to say, though, but I really am liking it a lot, and so when I want my more pure, strategic overall battlefield play, this is the game I turn to. It is very good. I do recommend it. I might have to give it a try. I've never... I've played... I think the last Call of Duty I played was Modern Warfare, and I haven't played one since then, and for me it was a all about the single player i never really liked the post like call of duty like the original online play and interaction and stuff maybe battlefield one sounds like with the whole team stuff it's actually might be interesting enough for me to give it a shot and that it has single player game play that's been that seems to actually be interesting because I always liked the single-player game. Yeah. No, Call of Duty for me is, it's a game franchise that chiefly revolves around deathmatch and team deathmatch, but not class-based. So everyone's essentially the same. I mean, you pick different weapons and stuff, but everyone's the same. That's how I think. If that's not true anymore, that may be the case, but that's what I think of it. Yes, and I just think about deathmatch, team deathmatch stuff. That's why I like... I burned my blood back in the Quake days. Games like Overwatch, where you're actually picking tactical character choices. That I like. So I like Team Deathmatch like that. I don't like Team Deathmatch where it's just like Generous Soldiers against Generous Soldiers. Oh, I found the rocket launcher. Yeah, like you said, I had my quake days. That was fine for the time. Shooters have evolved. I like strategic gameplay and tactical gameplay. And so Overwatch and Battlefield appeal to me for slightly different reasons, but fundamentally they both rely upon building teams where character classes make a difference. They determine winners and losers.
    73:08
    Yeah. So let's go to our third and final section, tabletop. And I know you have a fascinating thing for us to go into, a fantasy fascinating. Yeah. I have not played any tabletop games since our last episode at all. And I haven't really done any Kickstarter looking. I haven't found anything interesting. So all I've really done is sit down and been building some character backgrounds and stuff for some of the 5e characters that I've been considering putting together or modifying, like putting actual backgrounds with. I already did with the Barbarian I had from Can't Con, and I've now started doing one with the Paladin I had from Can't Con. but I decided that I was going to try and avoid doing some of the standard fantasy character tropes and stuff that you'd see and that got me to thinking about all of the horrible fantasy tropes that I have actually done in the past in RPGs and stuff and it was just kind of humorous so I thought we'd talk about fantasy tropes and their place or place not to be in RPGs and such. Okay, well, that should be interesting. So where are you wanting to start? Well, I was going to start, one of my standard characters is a dwarf of some kind,
    74:33
    and I have completely in the past embraced the full-on big beard, loves drinking and fighting, no women, or the women look just like the men, Scottish-accented dwarf. I've played so many variations of this character. and that I never even really thought about it being, you know, as a trope in and of itself until I was actually working on my Paladin this year that I got at that pre-gen and started fleshing it out. I realized that really every dwarf I've ever made, Paladin, Warrior, anything else, has basically been the exact same guy. Yeah, I could see that, yeah. I mean, they're all, they've all been the same person, every single one. No matter what they are, good, bad, in between, it's all basically the exact same guy. And every dwarf in fantasy stuff seems to be pretty much variations on the theme. Yeah, that's a good one. One I would bring up that I know I've done is, it seems like any time I've ever played a wizard character, they have always been older and wise and mysterious. It doesn't matter.
    75:48
    Ideologically, they could either be good or bad. But they always have to have that air of mystery. They generally are all of mine that I can think of have been old.
    75:58
    They've got the beard. They're really, really wise because they spent their whole time studying. I've never just said, why couldn't I have a wizard savant? He's stupid. He's really stupid, but he's good at magic. I've never done it. I've never had a young whippersnapper be a wizard. But someone has to learn to be a wizard. You'd think they'd probably be young. I mean, there was a movie from the 80s, not Crawl, though I want to talk about Crawl, called Dragon Slayer. I don't know if you ever saw Dragon Slayer. I've seen Dragon Slayer. Okay. It's about this guy who is an apprentice to an old, wizened, bearded wizard. And the wizard is out of it at the start of the movie. So his apprentice, who is an apprentice wizard, is bumbling his way through the rest of the film. but despite that attempt to be something different in that film, when it's always come to RPGs, I've always seen the wizards be old and wise and mysterious. Always mysterious. Oh, they're wizards. We must be mysterious. Yeah. That is very, very true. I've seen that time and time again. It's all modeled on Gandalf is the thing. And I've fallen right into it. Well, and with my wizards, I've not gone the whole old, I've gone old that I haven't done the mysterious thing quite so much, but I've very much done the old and wizened. But I've always done my wizards as elves, and I actually had an elf at one time whose name was Silvor Leaf.
    77:33
    And he spammed fireball and magic missile. I cast Magic Missile. He never had anything that could even be vaguely considered a support spell ready, because every support spell ready was something that I couldn't use for an offensive spell slot.
    77:55
    And it was so terrible. I feel bad thinking about that character at this point. Here's another one that I fall into a lot, is when I roll an RPG healer, they're always extremely pious. Like, again, based off the guidance in the books and stuff, I was like, well, you know, generally the healers get their power from some particular god that they're choosing to worship. So like in the AD&D era stuff, it steers you that way. But as I think about it, I was like, yeah, but I've never just had them get their power that way. Although they're completely devout, it's all about their god it's all very very fanatic zealot style not necessarily a crazy conversion people but just sort of this ever-present oh i'm i'm playing oh i'm a healer so i'm the religious one i'm going to embrace you with the power of my lord and savior and fix everything you know it would be really interesting for me to ever just totally buck that and play one and be like i'm i'm dying i need the healer okay pray for me there is no god here's a band-aid deal with it or face oblivion i've never done it i've always i've always been dutifully devout good or evil and i've usually done good healers as well i don't think i've ever actually seriously role played in any length of time an evil healer that could be interesting too though requires sacrifice i actually watched a koibu does a series that's called dicing with death and he did where they do, it's him and a friend of his, and they do one-player campaigns. So one of them DMs, the other is the only player involved in the campaign, which is something I've thought about trying because it seems pretty awesome. But he did one where the character he was playing was an evil cleric, and everything he did was based around just subverting the big good and managing to burn down a holy church and doing stuff like that while basically trying to cause as much havoc and terribleness without getting caught and then walking away type stuff.
    80:14
    Because his goals weren't, I mean, he was one guy. His goal wasn't to destroy everything or this or that. he was just trying to make the ground fertile for the great lord to take over later. Right, right, by sowing chaos. Right. So it was a really interesting run. I think it was one of the early Dicing with Deaths that he did, that the video was for. But I've always done Paladin. My Paladins is super zealots when I do a Paladin. I mean they're very we won't take money for this we won't, no we don't need reward time to the point where I've realized it's like wow I was actually a really kind of annoying player when I played a paladin and that's something I actively have tried to avoid doing with my paladin that I got at cantcon and that I'm currently building a backstory for and I've built that into his backstory where he's a he's kind of a zealot, but it's not, you know, he's not like the suit, like a super zealot, super extremist type thing, but it's a matter where he had a personality trait that was on the pre-generated sheet that he likes to quote some ancient hero a lot. So I, you know, basically build up. It's like, there was this old thing where there's an old hero who was, massively good and well-known and this and that, and he wants to be that guy, but he's not super pious. He's just... His whole thing and the way he was raised and everything is based around him being... Him trying to be that guy without actually having the whole super-faith pious ability. All he cares about is... He likes to go around and bless because his god is the god of smiths and this and that so his big thing is blessing smithies because that's his job because that's what his god does but other than that he doesn't really go he's not a true believer he's all about doing the show and doing the going through the forms and what's required because it's what's required but it's not necessarily that important to him, he does it because it's what it's supposed to do and he just wants to be awesome like that guy. The only other, because I normally end up with wizards or healers, cleric types, when I've done RPGs, the only other one that I can think of is I have never rolled a fighter, put one together, where the fighter was intelligent. When we go back to camp, the fighter always has to drink or train with his weapon or whatever. I never have him go, oh yeah, let's go back to camp, I want to read a book. No, see, I've done smart fighters. I've never done smart weapons, but I've done smart fighters. but my thing is Rangers I like to play Rangers a lot because who doesn't want to be Aragorn seriously Strider running through the woods living off the land nothing with your bow and a sword and maybe depending upon how you play it maybe you've got a wolf that hangs out with you or something that like pure freaking nature loving creature that is just whatever, you know,
    83:46
    you shoot a quarter out of the air with your bow, blindfolded, behind the back type stuff. I've played a lot of those.
    83:55
    Though I still like to play that character type, but I tend to move away from, I've moved away from the whole nature loving, protecting nature type thing and into something that's more along the lines of like a well-trained military scout. That whole, and I think it has to do with a lot of the fantasy books I read when I was younger.
    84:16
    You know, I mean, there was, of course, Aragorn and so many others over the years that have been where the one guy type loves nature, lives off the land thing. That's just set itself up that whenever I play and I design somebody like that, that's who it tends to be. Okay, well, did you have any others? Because we've run dry of my tropes.
    84:42
    There's a couple others. Nothing huge and major. I find that I've run into a whole bunch of times, kind of like with you with the wizard, where you always go for the old and wizened and mysterious. I kind of like with the whole sorcerer, which is just a wizard for people who are too lazy to do the math. and figure out their spell slots, and figure out what they're going to want to remember today, so they just have the ability to throw whatever spells they want. They just have less spells they can do it with than a wizard, so they're not as big of a toolbox. I always tend to play those guys as very flighty.
    85:25
    Like, very much of a, ooh, shiny, shiny, shiny! So, do you do them absentmindedly? Sometimes. I've done several that were absent-minded or if they weren't absent-minded they were just very they were very easy to get distracted type character where they'd start following something that was interesting and then they'd find something else interesting and they'd kind of just turn and go that way and that's why they were never, why you know I can't be a wizard because that requires practice and learning this and that I just, you know, it's just stuff, it's magic, I just kind of do it I've done that a bunch of times, but I found that the big things I've seen over the time is like the normal stuff you see like in every movie and every book, the stuff that I found that gets out there and a lot of people see and a lot of people do. And I've never, I've never, can I say that honestly? Let me think. Yeah, I have never in an RPG played a thief. I was just now thinking of Thieves because I wanted to say this one just popped into my head from a gameplay perspective. And I got full respect to the people who play Thieves. But I cannot think of a time where I have been with someone where they were playing a Thief and they didn't kill 15 minutes of game time because they tried to steal everything and were constantly role checking against the GM. Yeah. I hate that. I hate it. It drives me nuts. and I've seen that a lot. I've seen that in con games. I've seen that in games I've been involved with and I think that type of thing is one of the reasons I've never actually played a thief is because I don't... None of that stuff seems that interesting to me. I'd prefer... I like playing the big dumb meat shields and... or like the... or magic eyes or ranger type stuff is where I tend to aim for. And the whole thief... thief oh i want to pickpocket everybody here or even worse even worse i recall playing a time where uh our thief didn't really know any thief stuff he actually he actually broke the trope he broke the trope because he was a with a thief character because it's what made it best but he was designed his thief character to be more of a kind of an intrigue spy type guy he was kind of It was much more about the interaction and charisma and secrets than stealing actual stuff, which meant he was a really awesome character to play with, and he was a lot of fun in social stuff. And then we found out that he had absolutely no ability to do anything with traps or anything. We got stuck somewhere where there were a lot of traps, and we decided going with the best way to break the traps was with my big old dumb barbarian just walked forward and then got healed and then walked forward and got healed. That's how we handle traps. Ouch. So, but I think that's everything I've got. Then that's everything the podcast has for this episode. A nice, normal-sized full episode. So, very convenient. Wonderful. It's almost like it was planned. I know. Amazing. When I was listening to that episode of Broken Token, they were talking about how critical they rely upon OneNote, which I thought was interesting because other than us, thanks to your thoughts when we first started up, it's the first time I've known another podcast I've listened to that admitted that they jointly used OneNote to keep track of everything they wanted to talk about. I like OneNote. It tends to make things very easy. yes very very much if you would like to make things lit dear listeners easy for us you can give us a rating and review over at itunes we really appreciate it it helps with the search algorithm so people actually find this podcast because as we've noted none of our topics are actually in the name other than gamers and if you want to interact with us you can email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com you can also engage with us on facebook facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast that's probably the better of those two methods to reach out to us We are, I believe, out there on Twitter and Instagram Aren't we, Tony? We are on Twitter and Instagram At both places, we are eclectic underscore gamers Excellent, and we should be back in a couple of weeks With all new content But until then, I will say I am Dennis And I'm Tony, and hopefully I'll Play some games or something To have a better tabletop section next time See y'all, bye