Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

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By 2018 cancer had unfortunately taken its toll on his brain. Hell, even in a year earlier it already wasn't looking good. Remember the 2017 CoxCon "are traps gay?" question?
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Yeah. I can't see him going anywhere but downhill had he been alive to see the 2020 and 2024 elections. In particular, Trump's tranny ban would probably net him a heart attack.
I agree. The idea that TB wasn't a huge faggot is baffling. He'd totally back trannies on shit like DA:Veilguard, he'd just avoid the writting on focus on the mechanics and just say it's an average game. He was always a leftist, and seeing how every and each of his friends ( Jim, Jesee Cox, The Completionist, etc ) are all super left, it makes perfect sense he'd move to the left with them. He'd probably try to keep it out of the videos as to not lose subs but outside of that I can guarantee he'd be constantly seething about the same shit Jim does.
 
I grew to hate the multiplayer because it wasn't strong enough to support the dreaded 'reach rank 50 in multiplayer' trophy that games always fuck me with,
As a man who grinded out the Tomb Raider remake max level multiplayer, I feel your pain. That was a long 12 hours, and it still isn't the worst thing I've ever had to do for an achievement.
 
I agree. The idea that TB wasn't a huge faggot is baffling. He'd totally back trannies on shit like DA:Veilguard, he'd just avoid the writting on focus on the mechanics and just say it's an average game. He was always a leftist, and seeing how every and each of his friends ( Jim, Jesee Cox, The Completionist, etc ) are all super left, it makes perfect sense he'd move to the left with them. He'd probably try to keep it out of the videos as to not lose subs but outside of that I can guarantee he'd be constantly seething about the same shit Jim does.
It'd be more due to his behind the scenes friendship with Laura Kate Dale than anyone else, I think. TB's whole trap question meltdown and trans rights sperging in genreal was at LKD's prompting (not that any of this stopped LKD from throwing TB under the bus after he died btw) Jesse actually tried to play the whole thing off in the moment by contrast. LKD "consulted" on Veilguard so TB would probably defend it for that reason if he was still around.
 
LKD "consulted" on Veilguard so TB would probably defend it for that reason if he was still around.
Like him or hate him, he was very transparent when it came to disclosing conflicts of interest. I think he'd just have said that he wouldn't talk about it since a friend of his (LKD) was involved.

What I still find interesting (and sad) about TB is that he was never really replaced. No one does the kind of vids that he did and there's still nothing like his work on youtube even today. The youtube gaming scene is different now but I still think there's an audience for his kind of level-headed critique; and I say that confidently because I'm in that audience.

Pewdiepie was almost a carbon copy of the channels just below him and MrBeast has many copycats as well. There are plenty of prank and drama channels and politics grifters but TB was truly one of kind.

Jimbo was as close as someone could get to matching his style and energy but somewhere, something went terribly wrong.
 
As a man who grinded out the Tomb Raider remake max level multiplayer, I feel your pain. That was a long 12 hours, and it still isn't the worst thing I've ever had to do for an achievement.
Man, I remember that well, unfortunately. What an absolutely pointless multiplayer mode.

I'm a completionist with a lot of platinum trophies under my belt. Back when I used to write I'd do articles about some of the worst trophies I endured, which was nicely cathartic. Some of the experiences were so bad they were hilarious. Looking at you, Far Cry 2 platinum.
 
Man, I remember that well, unfortunately. What an absolutely pointless multiplayer mode.

I'm a completionist with a lot of platinum trophies under my belt. Back when I used to write I'd do articles about some of the worst trophies I endured, which was nicely cathartic. Some of the experiences were so bad they were hilarious. Looking at you, Far Cry 2 platinum.
I'm so glad that my brain early on registered achievement hunting as not truly part of 100% a game due to being an external system that got tacked on. It was something like an achievement that was to jump 30,000 times or something on a game where I had everything else that did that to me and then I spent 2 hours mashing jump for it. That and the God of War remasters on the PS3 having random shit tacked on when the original releases on PS2 didn't have achievements denying my 100% completion. Otherwise I'd have suffered some truly awful achievements for 100%. Also, sorry in behalf of so many people that we make you do some awful things for achievements. Our bosses mandate we waste your time sometimes.

To swing back to the discussion earlier in the thread about a game needing to have some worthwhile playtime, one way that publishers for a while were artificially inflating that playtime number was through achievements. It works too. There are people who want to get every penny they can out of a game, and so having some silly achievement like needing to kill 500 of a super rare enemy type that will take 70 hours to get can actually move copies since it inflates the number of hours needed for "100%" on websites tracking that. There's a good number of people who will only buy a game based on how long it takes to get the Platinum for that game, viewing a longer game as more value for their money regardless of quality during the purchase. This is the same reason why Ubisoft has too many collectables or why some games are so miserly with their XP and coin payouts while pushing you to grind.

For work I've had to come up with some time wasters. My personal "favourite" (read the most awful thing I've done) was requiring the player to travel 25,000 miles in a boat, effectively sailing around the world. The fastest boat could only reach 40mph. 625hrs of boat time, minimum. Mandatory boat travel I think we calculated was only a bit less than 3,000 miles when we calculated everything else that was required to 100% the game assuming least efficient sequence of mostly straight lines was used. The publisher wanted us to inflate a 50 hour game to 700 hours. I fucking hate what I've done for work at times.

That all said, I do go after achievements sometimes and I do 100% games. Last game I went after all achievements was Dredge. Really enjoyable to do everything in that game.
 
My personal "favourite" (read the most awful thing I've done) was requiring the player to travel 25,000 miles in a boat, effectively sailing around the world.
Two similar (although far less egregious) achievements I can think of which I actually bothered to do were travelling a certain distance on horse in Darksiders and breaking a certain number of objects with a vehicle in AC: Syndicate.

The problem with both these achievements is neither game actually provided any way to get these naturally: DS had one large area where the horse was useful and in Syndicate like most AC games you spend 99% of your time running across roofs. Simply put, even if knew about these trophies in advance and went out of your way to grind them as much as possible throughout the course of the game you will never, ever come close to having what you need by the time you're finished.

The absolute worst of all time for me, though, was Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise which has a trophy locked behind grinding the hostess mini-game for 6 hours (done optimally), playing roulette for a random amount of hours (love RNG-based trophies), grinding the hardest race in the game for 4 hours (this at least has a banging song attached), and more broadly grinding out the same boss fights over and over again to get the unique upgrade materials to max out your skill tree.

Solo grinding all the covenant items in Dark Souls 3 probably took me longer (fuck the Proof Of Concord Kepts) but all the XP at least made my NG+ and NG++ runs significantly easier.

ETA: I also just remembered the achievement in Thief 2014 for finding every single secret in the game...but they tied the progress tracker exclusively to a companion app that was discontinued by the time I played.
 
Two similar (although far less egregious) achievements I can think of which I actually bothered to do were travelling a certain distance on horse in Darksiders and breaking a certain number of objects with a vehicle in AC: Syndicate.
There's one pseudo factorio idle game I'm playing at the moment that has an achievement that is basically just 'leave your pc on overnight' but the game has basically no reason to actually do that. It's literally just yea waste electricity to get 100%. Most of the time I just don't care about achievements though, I only noticed because I was already close to 100%ing.
 
My personal "favourite" (read the most awful thing I've done) was requiring the player to travel 25,000 miles in a boat, effectively sailing around the world. The fastest boat could only reach 40mph. 625hrs of boat time, minimum.
Just reading this gave me a nervous twitch.

I've only ran into one game so far that was so grindy I gave up on it (bear in mind I'm actively working on the Diablo 2 platinum) and that was Battlezone. After completing every campaign on every difficulty and doing all the other trophies I had amassed maybe 50% of the currency I needed, and the game was a hell of a slog at that point.

Sometimes I get the urge to go back and do it. Maybe one day. But it is always one of the first examples that comes to my mind of a trophy list that is completely disconnected with the experience of playing the game. The fact that they appear to be deliberately engineered to be utter bullshit definitely grinds my gears. Publishers are a blight.


The absolute worst of all time for me, though, was Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
Reminds me of my experience with Yakuza 0. Fuck, I love that game, but the minigames could be excruciating- and I understand it's one of the lighter experiences of the series.

I could honestly rant about trophy related shit all day. One example that I hate is seeing trophies that screw you because of your region. Sometimes requirements are so ridiculous they get patched, but only in one region (3D Dot Game Heroes did this, I was proud to achieve it in the more difficult EU version) or they don't take regional differences into account, like Resident Evil: Code Veronica which I will complain about below
So the game had a lot of time restriction related trophies, like completing the game in X amount of time, or achieving A grades in the Battle Mode which was heavily dependant on how fast you finished it. Unlike the somehow superior PS3 remaster, which had version parity, the PS4 port gave US audiences the NTSC 60hz version, and we in the EU got the PAL 50hz version. This meant that the EU version played noticeably slower, both for player movement and screen transition, but the time requirements for rankings remained the same. While not impossible, it meant it was extremely difficult to hit the requirements and you had almost no margin for error, which especially sucks for the main game. Capcom didn't give a shit about fixing it.
 
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Reminds me of my experience with Yakuza 0. Fuck, I love that game, but the minigames could be excruciating- and I understand it's one of the lighter experiences of the series.
This is what has put me off starting the Yakuza series for so long. I know I'll have to get the achievements but I fucking hate Puyo Puyo.
 
This is what has put me off starting the Yakuza series for so long. I know I'll have to get the achievements but I fucking hate Puyo Puyo.
The annoying thing is I love minigames in general, and some of them are indeed great, but too many of them are irritating in some capacity and then it's compounded by having some absurd requirements for them. FF7 Rebirth was really bad for this. I am genuinely nonplussed at how few games get minigames right.
 
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I'm glad I never got into achievement hunting or 100% games, I've seen some stupid ones. The only time I start to care about achievements is when I notice skill or mastery related ones in games I actually enjoy. Only ones I ever bothered to go out of my way for were in Dead Space 1 and 2. First one was easy, just beat the hardest difficulty using only the starter weapon, plasma cutter kicks ass so no issue. 2nd game has an achievement for beating the Hardcore difficulty, which was just the hardest difficulty, but with checkpoints disabled and only 3 saves permitted over the whole game. Both just ask you to learn and master the gameplay, which I found pretty fun.
 
bear in mind I'm actively working on the Diablo 2 platinum
That's nothing. Come back when you have both of the True Crown Collector achievements in MHWo. Those achievements alone take longer than some entire games unless you have godly RNG. Crown hunting has always been a thing for the Monster Hunter community, it is basically our autistic version of shiny hunting in Pokémonbut with less terrible rates needed, however making it an achievement though was evil. The hard part isn't just getting one of the crowns per monster, it's the fact that you need two of them for each monster and you can only get one at a time since they are mutually exclusive for which you can get in a given hunt normally and the achievements are specifically for each of the two different sizes. One for large and one for small. It doesn't count unless you have the gold crown either, so silvers are just reminding you that you got cucked. You'll get a good number of them during the natural gameplay and grind of the game at least, so they are actually worth leaving until the very end since most of the work will happen organically. Still, I think it is around 130-ish crowns needed. A few monsters aren't needed, but you are still going to be at it for a while. Realistically getting both of those achievements is an exercise in mastering the game for every monster. People ask why I have dozens of hunts against some low-level monsters, it is the crowns.

There's also the really esoteric achievements like getting the treasures, asystem I didn't even know existed until I read the achievement list, I've still never figured out how to do so on my own so if I ever decide to do that one I need to look it up and I'm getting pretty close to 2,000 hours in that game. Capcom is evil with their achievements.
 
2nd game has an achievement for beating the Hardcore difficulty, which was just the hardest difficulty, but with checkpoints disabled and only 3 saves permitted over the whole game
Stuff like this really pisses me off. I totally get the appeal --especially for the crazy motherfuckers who do no damage runs of these games-- and it must be incredibly satisfying to pull off, but given there are a handful of sections in Dead Space 2 where you can get randomly insta-killed by cheap bullshit (like the room with the spinning walls you need to stasis) it just put me off ever attempting.

I didn't mind it so much in RE2/3make because both those games only take about 3 hours done optimally (plus you get a way more generous number of saves) and very easy to manipulate, but I gave up at RE4make because the thought of having to redo some of the more annoying sections, like the double blind dude room, on Professional would have made me hate the game.

I mainly aim for games that only require a time commitment/grind because it gives me a chance to catch up on MATI episodes while I play.
 
That's nothing. Come back when you have both of the True Crown Collector achievements in MHWo. Those achievements alone take longer than some entire games unless you have godly RNG. Crown hunting has always been a thing for the Monster Hunter community, it is basically our autistic version of shiny hunting in Pokémonbut with less terrible rates needed, however making it an achievement though was evil. The hard part isn't just getting one of the crowns per monster, it's the fact that you need two of them for each monster and you can only get one at a time since they are mutually exclusive for which you can get in a given hunt normally and the achievements are specifically for each of the two different sizes. One for large and one for small. It doesn't count unless you have the gold crown either, so silvers are just reminding you that you got cucked. You'll get a good number of them during the natural gameplay and grind of the game at least, so they are actually worth leaving until the very end since most of the work will happen organically. Still, I think it is around 130-ish crowns needed. A few monsters aren't needed, but you are still going to be at it for a while. Realistically getting both of those achievements is an exercise in mastering the game for every monster. People ask why I have dozens of hunts against some low-level monsters, it is the crowns.

There's also the really esoteric achievements like getting the treasures, asystem I didn't even know existed until I read the achievement list, I've still never figured out how to do so on my own so if I ever decide to do that one I need to look it up and I'm getting pretty close to 2,000 hours in that game. Capcom is evil with their achievements.
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Just saying.

Stuff like this really pisses me off. I totally get the appeal --especially for the crazy motherfuckers who do no damage runs of these games-- and it must be incredibly satisfying to pull off, but given there are a handful of sections in Dead Space 2 where you can get randomly insta-killed by cheap bullshit (like the room with the spinning walls you need to stasis) it just put me off ever attempting.

I didn't mind it so much in RE2/3make because both those games only take about 3 hours done optimally (plus you get a way more generous number of saves) and very easy to manipulate, but I gave up at RE4make because the thought of having to redo some of the more annoying sections, like the double blind dude room, on Professional would have made me hate the game.

I mainly aim for games that only require a time commitment/grind because it gives me a chance to catch up on MATI episodes while I play.
There's a few games that do this horribly. I had to specifically cheat with Atom RPG when they did a hardcore mode trophy because they didn't bother to make sure it worked properly. Even ignoring the fact that it's a terrible choice to implement in a long RPG game with lots of means for very bullshit deaths (such as my own companion missing and blowing my head off with a critical hit), the game used a 'save and exit' function. No permanent file, it would make a save state when you exit the game, and when you returned to it, it would remove the save state until you exited again. Except sometimes it just fucking randomly deleted the file, so I resorted to backing it up constantly.

I eventually figured out a way to bypass the bug, but the devs didn't seem very interested when I told them.
 
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This is what has put me off starting the Yakuza series for so long. I know I'll have to get the achievements but I fucking hate Puyo Puyo.


Yakuza 0 is a great game but has one of the worst platinum/1000g I've ever seen. If you want to get 100% completion then prepare to learn how to master multiple Japanese card games
 
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