My responses to Jeff's tweets.
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But what if you would've won the next one?
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But what if you would've won the next one?
IDGAF. I play for my entertainment, not their enrichment.
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I, don't, quite, know, what, you, mean?
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That game cheats.
It's set up to be bastard hard unless you spend money in microtransactions
Not really. Some levels are hard; some are easy. All of them involve a certain amount of luck, and it should be possible to complete any of them without any of the boosters that you can buy from the game's store. Some of the hardest levels, though, might be a 1% or less chance of beating it, but that just means it will probably take a lot of tries before you get lucky.
It does give the option to spend money to buy boosters that make it slightly easier, but lately they've actually added more and more ways to get those boosters for free. You can get 1 free booster per day, and there are ways to get boosters through play as well, by collecting "sugar drop" candies in regular levels or by completing limited-time offers like this one:
Or this, which is apparently the active challenge (I hadn't noticed it until just now):
If it's not obvious, the prize for reaching each of those goals is the group of boosters on that sailboat.
There's confirmation bias and all, but also the fact that the formula is consistent in all of King's games: game is a bastard then miraculously without you playing any differently it will let you win. The transition is not subtle if you watch enough.
...it's luck. It's almost entirely luck. Especially the hard levels.
I play for my entertainment, not their enrichment.
For what it's worth, I've never spent any money in the game (for gold bars, boosters, or any of the other stuff available through the microtransactions)... I've only used gold bars and boosters that it gave me for free.
The iOS game only has levels up to 1520 right now, so here's that (note the stars, which indicate that 1520 is completed even though the gamepiece won't move until there are more levels to complete):
I've also completed levels up to 1525 or so on the computer (new level packs are typically released on the computer probably a week before they become available on iOS).
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I, don't, quite, know, what, you, mean?
Wow! I never knew William Shatner visited our humble forum!
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No, it's not. When the game decides to let you win, a previously "hard" level becomes a near-perfect setup. Even to the point that the distribution changes on the board to make more matches than before.
Luck is when the game auto plays for 5 minutes giving you a score into the multiple millions on a level that should typically 3-star at 125,000.
This is a consistent pattern to me, though.
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That wasn't... a... Shatner impression.
This... is a... Shatner impression... with all... The... dramatic pauses.
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Luck is when the game auto plays for 5 minutes giving you a score into the multiple millions on a level that should typically 3-star at 125,000.
I would be interested in letting a programmed robot play, and obtain results to statistically analyze whether the game cheats.
There's random, and then there is random tuned to failure.
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That would be interesting. You'd have to take into account a lot of different gameplay mechanics though.
For instance, chocolate will spawn if there's chocolate (or a chocolate spawner) on the board and if no squares of chocolate were destroyed on the previous move; it will cover a square that's not already blocked (by chocolate or some other type of blocker), adjacent to either a square of chocolate or the spawner (if no such square exists, the chocolate can't spawn). Additionally, it seems to prefer to consume (or not consume) certain candies. E.g. the chocolate usually seems to avoid consuming striped or wrapped candies until it has no other candies to consume, but it appears to consume color bombs quite readily (which really sucks because it's like it ate your color bomb on purpose). How random is that? I dunno...
Jelly fish prefer to eat "hard" candies like jelly, frosting, and licorice; on a level where jelly fish can appear, it seems somewhat random but may not be... sometimes I feel like more jelly fish only appear after I use one that's already on the board. So is it random? I dunno...
Licorice spawners that drop licorice seem to drop it only after moves where you didn't destroy licorice, kind of like the chocolate spawners. So if you destroy a licorice swirl, the spawner won't drop more of them on that turn, but if you don't destroy one, it will; however this only seems to apply to your actual move, not any combos that fall into place after it... if those combos destroy licorice, more can still fall. The bomb spawners that drop bombs seem to do this too.
Some levels don't have certain colors at all; and/or certain colors might be more rare than others. I don't know how much of this is intentional and how much is random. It often seems like, when you're supposed to collect a certain number of a certain color of candy, that color can seem like it's more rare than usual. (Sometimes there aren't any of the color at all, but "lucky" candies will turn into whatever you're needing, so the level will contain enough of those to get the required number of the color you need.)
Etc.
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A detailed discussion of a freemium game's mechanics
That's a lot of neurons devoted to imaginary jelly beans.
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Most people would've concluded that as soon as they saw the screenshot I posted showing where I've basically beaten the whole game.
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If you think that's bad, you should see how many discussions there are about imaginary hats.
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screenshot I posted showing where I've basically beaten the whole game
To someone not familiar with the game it looks just like any other screenshot of it.
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Yeah but if you read what I wrote in addition to just the screenshot, I said that the iOS version goes up to level 1520 and that I've completed them all.
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But do you have three stars in every level?
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No, but I've completed them (at least 1 star).
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active challenge
For context (now that I knew that there's a challenge to collect orange candies), I spent a while playing the level that never ends and got a bit past the halfway (5,000) mark on that challenge...
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You just have to remember that there is no spoon.
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How does he have me muted and not you? I barely use twitter.
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I don't know. I'm not blocked, because when I'm blocked I can't see them either. Maybe he just learned to ignore my tweets, or maybe it's because he's so insensitive, that my sarcasm flies under his radar.
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Why does it not surprise me that Atwood is a PayPal supporter.
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Compromises are rare enough that you can't judge robustness of security from personal experiences.
However, I'm interested in how he had his card compromised so much.
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Meh. Just using it is enough. In the last 10 years, there's been Playstation Network, Home Depot, Target... those are just the hugest ones I remember.
What amazes me more is when companies like Steam ask for my phone number to "increase security". Uh. Guys, I've never had a card stolen due to something I personally have done, it's always been the big company's incompetent employees who were responsible.
For example when Steam accidentally served up payment details pages to the wrong people last Christmas.
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Oh, he doesn't mean someone used his card, he means the information was illegally obtained.
My bank sent me a new card when Playstation thing happened. And that's because they found PSN on my statement.
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That's probably what he's talking about when he says "compromised". Since banks now pro-actively issue new cards, I'd wager in the majority of cases they've already shut down the stolen one before it could be used.
Still a pain in the ass for the card-holder, though.
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It's a pain because I have to hunt down all the autopays I have in place.
If only there was one place I could edit that redirected payment for me...
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https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/709439374077759489
does that even mean? Did 
get replaced with a bad fortune cookie printer again?
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It means that if someone comes along and observes "we should be able to have any kind of discussion here", they are in the wrong, not the community that opposes their speech.
My response is that their observation is just extending the idea that the community should be civil enough to be exposed to any conversation.
He disagrees and says that civility doesn't replace insight. Meaning that conversations that aren't insightful are not productive (goes a little further than what he originally stated. Instead of just uncivil conversations being censored, the conversation must pass a insightful test).
I disagree and say that the community should be able to decide what is insightful by being exposed to ideas, not let an owner censor and control what the community is exposed to.
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This post is deleted!
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Noooooo! I wanted to see what terrible thing you posted?! (oh well)...
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 42 hours unless flagged)
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Philosophical is ok...
filed under: I don't just derp, I can Plato.
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Did
get replaced with a bad fortune cookie printer again?TODO: a new
fortunedatabase.
Filed under: piping to
cowsay -f head-inmandatory
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For a brief moment, I thought it's
fortran compiler.I guess it's time for more coffee.
Or it's you failed my WTF expectation...
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wtfortunes?
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@xaade said:
A filter for a trainable AI is magnitudes more difficult than the training.
Really, how do you figure that? Even if it wouldn't perfectly solve the problem, a simple word filter would've helped them out a whole lot.
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@xaade That's pretty much exactly what I thought watching it. When I wasn't thinking "But it sure does have a good soundtrack..."
...apparently you posted that long, long ago though. Huh. Hopefully this place calms down with this stuff eventually.
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@Magus said:
"But it sure does have a good soundtrack..."
J-Pop + dubstep. What were they thinking!?!?! Other than, let's make something awesome.
It's interesting to note the similarities between Gatchaman Crowds and Fantastic Four... the celebrity superheros of the Marvel Universe
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@xaade I've always particularly liked how Hajime does not appear to be even slightly sane, despite being the main character and incredibly famous in-universe.
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@Magus said:
Hajime
Berg Katze has a lot of room... in there...
I don't think she's insane so much as she's not scared to explore new ideas, even crappy ones. If it's immediately obvious the idea was bad, she'll immediately back out of it. When she acts, however, she's very consistent and loyal. But while she's pondering, she tends to forgo her inhibitions for her thought experiments.
The ironic thing is that, only O.D. seems to pick up on this.
Every other character is, at one point, offended by something she says.
Another thing that contributes is that she seems to have no fear, and she doesn't feel the weight of the situation. But, if you pay attention, this isn't true either. She's very supportive and even sacrifices herself to save her friends. She absolutely feels the weight of every situation, she just doesn't let that impede her thought process.
If I were to venture a little, I'd say she's the most sane person. To me, it's absolutely insane to never consider new ideas and to let emotion hinder your ability to think. If you notice, O.D. says a lot of things that are characteristic of how Hajime thinks. It's just that.... O.D. rarely speaks out their ideas, and a lot of the time when they do, most people don't even hear it.
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@Onyx said:
waking up with a headache and a hatchet in my hand.
Are you sure you weren't playing Rust?
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@xaade said:
Berg Katze has a lot of room... in there...
Undoubtedly.
But no, the main thing that stood out is that she doesn't seem to think or act like anyone else. She does things no one else considers, and never seems to have any real doubts about the whole arrangement. She's also completely immune to any kind of crowd-mentality, which is both an incredibly good thing and quite strange. But while I may not consider her sane, she's definitely the best and most interesting character in the show, and wish that there were actual people like that around. Her way of looking at things would make her a far better member of society than any super hero I've seen.
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@xaade “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to just grow up already”
Jeff Atwood on Twitter
