Find unlisted trails using new strava segments

Your ads will be inserted here by

Easy Plugin for AdSense.

Please go to the plugin admin page to
Paste your ad code OR
Suppress this ad slot.

As a new Strava user and returning to mountain biking after a ~15 year hiatus, I was at times disappointed with the Strava segment UI. In order to find trails on Strava a user has to change the zoom level and scroll the map around until they appear. Some do not show zoomed all the way out and others do not show zoomed all the way in. This is primarily for non-road trails.
[restrict level=”paidmembers”]
To add to this I also ride in an area where there are (or were) no trails listed on Strava or trailforks. This is due to the area having a very small population but it is located in the middle of a large area of Australian bush – so there should be trails. I don’t expect quality single track with such a low population but even the fire trails are not mapped. 

So I went about riding what was available on google maps and added the trails and side trails to trailforks for other holiday makers in the future. None of it is amazing but did lead to finding another “trick”. When creating segments on Strava and making them public, old ride times from other riders were added – some were six years old. This then opened up access to their rides and other trails in the area I had not found that were not on Strava.

So if you are in an area that lacks strava or trailforks data and want to find more local trails I suggest creating strava segments for the sections you ride (not too long otherwise other riders may not have ridden them), waiting a week or so then the leaderboards for these segments will be populated. You can then check out other rides that include this segment and also stalk the other riders profiles if they are locals for more trails that are not listed.
[/restrict]

Overwatch, improving and learning in gaming

Your ads will be inserted here by

Easy Plugin for AdSense.

Please go to the plugin admin page to
Paste your ad code OR
Suppress this ad slot.

@54674341 mrcool37 writes…
For a few short minutes you feel like part of a team and for someone in that team to bring you down makes me feel terrible, especially with the games mentioned where most of the time you can clearly see your own errors/misjudgements, which are then subconsciously ‘backed up’ by the incoming attacks.

I think you are wrong in the assessment. People do not learn like that.

Given the propensity of people to make errors/misjudgements this is not the case, and people simply do not learn or think about their gameplay beyond “I’m playing a game”. Players typically learn by doing things, making mistakes then correcting mistakes – however for the vast majority of gamers this is not a conscious process. Players need to do things many times incorrectly before it becomes an ingrained idea to not do this. When you add on the number of permutations of “bad things” you can do in a game like ow (in relation to yourself, your team mates, the enemy team, both teams comps, the map in relation to all of the following points) it becomes extremely hit and miss for players to actually improve. The same applies to improving:

This is further compounded by “how to learn”. Using ow as an example at lower tiers a mechanically gifted player can climb reasonbly well simply by aiming well. A player who placed silver after their initial 25 quickplay matches does not know how to play the game but their playstyle will be influenced by their ability to aim well. This will allow them to progress, lets say to mid-plat, relatively quickly because lets face it, the aim ability in this game is pretty garbage at lower levels. They can no longer progress, or they progress much more slowly than before, primarily when they have days where their aim is super on. Because of how they play they do not take notice, or are very slow to take notice, of why they die, how they die and what they are “doing wrong”.

They have had positive reinforcement of bad habits because of their aiming ability. This is also interesting because positive reinforcement probably “sinks in” faster than negative.

Lets have some more overwatch examples. We have a teammate playing s76:

Your ads will be inserted here by

Easy Plugin for AdSense.

Please go to the plugin admin page to
Paste your ad code OR
Suppress this ad slot.

The enemy has a pharah who continually harasses the team from mid – long range.
1) Our teams 76 tries to shoot the pharah consistently but overall is ineffective. This is reasonable to a degree (maybe should swap off) but the player is making the judgement to do the correct thing.
2) Our teams 76 completely ignores the pharah the entire game.

No need to weigh in on the validity of 76 as a pharah counter, the point here is the 76 is ignoring a target they should at least be trying to shoot. Not trying to shoot it is detrimental to the team.

Our 76 player is getting ult nice and quick. Well played!
1) Decides to continually solo flank to use ult and gets wrecked every time
2) Stays with the team and ults at appropriate openings.

This example could be extended to non-ults as well and just attempted aggressive plays that result in 5v6 often.

Where the player is failing in both examples is not really related to aim/failing mechanically. They are simply not doing something, yet pointing out they should be, or pointing out the pharah is being a pain will result in butthurt from many 76 players. Both these examples are reasonable to point out.

There comes a point in a players progression where they can no longer play dps effectively. This will be where they cap out unless they look long and hard at how they are playing beyond aiming, which is the first place people will look when actively trying to improve.
w
Taking this further from my experience – I played an off meta support character that was severely vulnerable to dive with unlimited weapon range. So genji/winston were a pain if they played correctly. However I climbed easily to masters+ in soloq and rarely ran into a genji or the like that even bothered to try to kill me. I am not overly mechanically gifted so this is not the case of me brute forcing their faces whenever they tried to jump me. They just did not. Sure this is a very narrow sample yet it once again highlights that players don’t actually know what they are doing.

Approaching any of this from a negative direction is not going to result in good outcomes (see:you feeling sad) and because of how ow skill rating works players should not really be throwing stones in glass houses.. but still. If you were to die out of position four times in a row how do you expect people to respond? First time, ok.. well he will learn. The fourth time? We have played most of this round 5v6 anon can you stop being a total retard.

Setup mega article blog on the cheap?

Content requirements have gone up. If we really wanted to do something with a site to get traffic we need content similar to thewirecutter. Long, in depth content targeted to converting keywords.

Yes, there is a 7,500 word guide for.. paper shredders.

2012 thewirecutter – “revenue is low, about $50,000 a month, but it’s doubling every quarter”.

So how to go about this? On the cheap, at least to start..

Target Low Competition Products

Identify a product or preferably group of products that sell and does not have extensive reviews written . If you look at thewirecutter their roundups work well, because you get coverage for search on more than just the single product. The “not as good” products receive exposure. This product(s) needs to have enough features to write about extensively. I would find it hard to write about a moulded plastic garden chair but something like a tape gun (as an example) I could write about even though I know very little about them. There is the grip, the wheel the tape goes on, the rolling wheel where the tape lives, the plastic tab at the top, the spring loaded thing that holds the tape against the These products are found using amazon best sellers or similar. If we had an active site you could use trending new products to find new products without lengthy reviews written.

So continuing the tape gun example. Search for tape gun on amazon, pick a relevant product, click through to the product page then click through to the category “Packaging Tape Dispensers”.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Office-Products-Packaging-Tape-Dispensers/zgbs/office-products/1068984/ref=zg_mw_tab_t_bs

Here we have the best selling tape dispensers. Sweet. Pick 5-10. The top few best sellers are obvious picks here and then we can go for other models that are high up but look/operate slightly differently for variation.

Tape guns are not the best example because we should aim for something a little more expensive…

Mega Article Structure and Content

Introduction – Introduction to tape guns. Who uses tape guns. Why use. What a good tape gun is. Etc. This is split here and the “additional generic product details” section below.
[Product block linking to best + runner up products]
Additional generic product details
Product 1
Product 2
Product 3
Product 4
Product 5
Overall comparisons if applicable
Pros and Cons of each product.
Multiple buying locations where possible + opinion about the best place to buy (the one we want them to buy from obviously)
Closing

The articles are incredibly detailed buying guides. The will list pros and cons, reference other places on the web where needed and in general try to persuade the visitor to buy the product. and use keywords to target customers who are more likely to convert is key here.

http://backlinko.com/commercial-intent

How to get articles written?

The writers on Fiverr range from terrible to ok. I would not have confidence approaching any of them to write a 5000 word article/review* – because the good ones will be on other freelancing sites already. However because there are so many to choose from we could potentially build a team that writes sections of articles independently we then edit into the mega article.

Introduction – Additional generic details : This is basically a description of what the product is, what its purpose is, qualities that are good (and on the flip side qualities you don’t want). This can be quite long, depending on the product type. An outline would need to be written for the writers – this could be split between multiple 500 word jobs across multiple writers. This is intended to pad out the reviews, adding more potential keywords.

Product reviews – This is the meat of the article. The content needs to be written in such a way that it reads like we have actually used the products. The writers will need to use the product reviews on amazon to glean the necessary information. Why it is good, standout features, potential failings, pros and cons etc. An outline is required for this.

Keywords to provide. I have a tool that pulls keyword phrases from amazon reviews, this can assist in quickly narrowing down good/bad product qualities. If “Breaks tape” appears many times this is something to look into. On top of this a tool to pull all the key phrases off the wirecutter will help narrowing down what generic “best of” “your best” etc phrases to use. Finally some quick basic keyword research to round out what we give them.

Initially we should order 10 articles and then sort the terrible writers (and not use them again) and note down the decent ones. If the terrible articles can be edited into something worthwhile we can do so and add to the initial post. We repeat this process till we have 10-15 writers who we know write acceptably, follow our guidelines and use keywords in a decent manner.

In this way we outsource a huge article into many small, manageable pieces of research among a group of writers that do not have the ability to create the whole thing themselves. It will also organically add to the word and language variation as, in my experience, these guys use the same phrases repeatedly – cutting down on manual editing later.

*I would hesitate to put this on the previous copy-writer we had as well even though she was quite good. It is quite a daunting task which is why the idea outlined above of cutting it up into smaller chunks might work well. There is a decent amount of research involved in each section.

More notes

Custom images would assist with lending credibility to the article. Lifestyle images would be preferred over straight up product on white background type deals. They can be used to highlight good/bad points and show differences between each product. If we select a product that is not prohibitively expensive it can be on sold on ebay.

Social and links

Use a social network autoposter to send content to facebook/twitter/pintrest/etc.
Use Fiverr facebook/twitter mentions initially. I used this on the aquabuy hatcher kickstarter campaign with reasonable results. One time payment for one time mention to tens of thousands of fb/twitter users. Key here is to use unique tracking URLs in order to ascertain which are scams and which work. The fact that aquabuy worked quite well for such a niche product leads me to think that a more mainstream product could generate significant traffic. Unfortunately it does not work well for our normal australian sites.
Buy some fb/twitter followers to raise overall status.

Finally

That is basically the plan. It is an attempt to create long, in depth review content on a budget. The type of content that is required now but is expensive (or requires very specific knowledge by one person) to create.

SEO setup for wordpress

Overall the goal is to index content that is content and not junk pages. Category pages could be removed from the below by adding content to each category page – otherwise

1) Permalinks. Change this away from default before starting page/post creation. I like “post name” but day and name / month and name are also ok. You could go for something custom like category+postname but imo this gets a little long, depending on category names used. The default uses post number id or something retarded so you end up with www.sitename.com/12312/ for a post “how to improve at shock rifle” rather than www.sitename.com/how-to-improve-at-shock-rifle”. This can potentially be changed when making posts/afterwards but inexperienced users will probably not notice it and I have had issues changing the slug after posting. Easier to force a meaningful default and leave it at that.

2) Archives use post title+excerpt only or simply list post title. This is to avoid the post showing up in multiple places in its entirety. eg a post about “shock rifle improvement” might be put in the tutorials category and then also tagged for “weapons” “shock rifle” and “cool stuff”. If archives/categories/everything uses full posts the post will be duplicated for each category as well as the date archive it was posted for. 5-6 times instead of having one strong page with the content.

The question of how? I am not sure. I do not recall what I used in the past for this. It might be a default wp option. Maybe not.

3) Yoast seo. Plugin. Primarily to stop unnecessary indexing of cruft. The main changes here are in “Titles & Metas” settings. Post types, Taxonomies, Archives and any other things that end up being created by themes/plugins. An example would be portfolio and pricing tables.

The goal is to not index duplicate content or content that is useless. I would start selecting “noindex, follow” as below. This plugin has a lot of useless functions.

Post types – Posts, Pages, Media (noindex, follow)

Taxonomies – Categories (noindex, follow), Tags (noindex, follow), Format (noindex, follow)

Archives – Author Archives (noindex, follow), Date Archives (noindex, follow)

Other – If you want to prevent /page/2/ and further (noindex, follow)

This allows indexing of all posts and pages but nothing else. This is partially achieved by point 2, but we want to make sure that the pages with excerpts are not also indexed and traffic sent there over the “real” content.

The follow allows search engines to crawl these pages and links on them to find new content but it does not allow engines that follow the directives to index and use these pages in results. These pages will always be weaker than the post/pages they are linking to.

4) Disable sitemaps using yoast for the above sections that were noindex’d. Option for this in yoast. The remaining sitemaps can be submitted to webmaster tools for potentially better indexing.

5) Make sure that posts/pages have the post/page title as h1 and the site name is not taking up the h1 spot. This is very common in themes and generally requires some butchery to fix.

6) Give the front page content beyond a post feed. If the site is to be the hub for au/nz ut then 500-1000 words should be spent explaining this. Use lots of terms for the same thing. eg australia, au, aus. unreal tournament 4, ut4 and include the older title names/abbreviations as well. This might be an ok place for a “history” to go for long tail stuffing.

Why we should steer clear of fps map remakes

@43109673 raxxy writes…
[“Yes, but they don’t hurt for a test of various things, everything will ultimately be remade properly.”] here

I dunno. ut has never been great with acceptance of third part maps in non-custom game modes. This was surely in part because ut99 was so well done that it kind of played ok in everything, so they were not really needed. Even on custom levels the mappers at the time wanted to stick to the formula laid down by epic.

I don’t know if things will get remade “properly”. Do we even want them remade? Deck is a terrible map. Liandri is a terrible map. Rankin it pretty bad.. and so on.

We played an awful version of dm6 (campgrounds) in 2003. It was really simple, unpolished pos. The mapper had probably not played the original quake version enough to understand how/why it plays the way it does. Anyway.. I think overall mapper have no idea and churned it out to get one of their maps played. This also highlights how terrible 2k3 dm maps out of the box as we were happy to play this.. but thats another story.

Here is an example that is currently relevant. quakelive re-released dm6 for quakecon this year (next month?). dm6 is not really considered a good, or balanced map, but it is old and ingrained and.. whatever. Intel are sponsoring the competition and wanted a map redone like a processor box or something. It is quite a good idea imo.. but..

There are a few architecture changes, texture changes, item changes. The biggest thing is a new armor. It was a three item map (mega/ra/ya) and always considered quite difficult to play out of control. For a long time players have discussed adding an extra green or yellow and adding some additional architecture to tone down lg usage a bit.

So they added a new armor. Sweet. Except it is right next to the mega where the in control player can pressure it without repercussions. This is pretty obvious, maybe they wanted it this way, maybe the guy who did the revamp was not aware how the map actually played? Its 25armor and questionable if you should bother pushing out for it.

Great.

So one other change is an additional health bubble at bridge. This may not seem like a lot, but it gives the in control player (with RA) an even tighter grip as this is a common route to rocket jump after ra pickup to go high-mid rl. This player can refresh their health.

Of course there was a chance it was added so the out of control player has extra health when harassing from bridge – quite common. The argument here is that if you take damage while out of control on this map attacking here you are, simply, doing it wrong. To get a stack worth using on the original map would take 60-90 seconds under good circumstances. As the out of control player you only get a few chances to break control on dm6. Taking heavy damage (needing two health bubbles) while harassing RA from above (a very safe option) is almost as bad as dying since the restack will take a large chunk of the 10 minute time limit..

So two of the item changes actually skew the balance in favor of the in control player, which.. is the problem the map had anyway. What.

Aerowalk is another example. qw vs q3/ql. I don’t think the mappers that redid aero originally understood how it plays because the q3/ql version plays completely differently. Maps are good because of how they play, not just because they have a particular layout. What is the point of doing a remake if the remake plays completely differently?!

And then you could say that remakes can fix problems – but quite often mappers do not have the understanding (or play time/skill) required to even identify the problems.

Remakes are horrible

Brine shrimp in Australia

The problem of providing live food for their fish beset aquarists until about 1947. It was then discovered in the USA that brine shrimp eggs will remain viable (alive) for at least 10 years when stored in a dry and fairly cool place and will hatch in salty water. This discovery led to the brine shrimp eggs being collected in quantity in their natural environment and marketed on a commercial basis throughout the world as a source of constant live food for aquarium fishes. The eggs cannot be used as fish food because fish cannot digest the tough shells. However the newly hatched shrimp, which the fish relish, do not have a firm shell and can be readily torn to bits by almost all small fish. Live shrimp are caught in San Francisco Bay salt ponts and frozen for shipment to pet shops all over North America.

Brine shrimp are custraceans of the genus Artemia, subclass Branchiopoda, and order Anostraca. They occur throughout the world, living and reproducing only in water of high salinity in natural salt lakes and also ponds where sea water is evaporated to obtain salt. Although they may have descended from ancient fresh-water form, they cannot live long in fresh water.

Species
The Taxonomic status of Artemia has long been controversial, especially in Europe where Artima varies more than it does in the United States. The present consensus is that there is a single world wide species – Artima salina, which has many varieties.

In the United States brine shrimp are best know from the Great Salt Lake, Utah, where the salanity of the water in 1950 was about 25 percent, and in San Francisco Bay, California, primarily in the salt-evaporation ponds. Sometimes these brineshrimp congregate to form ribbon like patterns on the surface of the Great Salt lake nearly half a mile wide and extending for miles out into the lake. They are often so abundant that the water looks red.

Great Salt Lake is the remains of a fresh water lake called lake Bonneville which trained into the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Beause of decreased rainfall and a drop in level, its outflow stopped. Evaporation by the sun then became greater than inflow of freshwater from the Jordan River and the Bear River, and Salt concentration increased. In recent times the lake area has varied according to fluctuations in the lake level, ranging from 2200 square miles in 1873 to 1500 square miles in 1940.

The ancestors of the Great Salt Lake brine shrimp may have lieved in Lake Benneville when it was fresh water and gradually adapted to the increasing saltiness of the lake.

Brineshrimp life history

Adult brine shrimp are about one third of an inch long. The males are smaller, but stronger and more active than females. They have 112 pairs of swimming legs and 2 stalked compound eyes. Disclike gills occur about midway down the legs. The brine shrimps variation in color from pale yellow-green to blood red is caused by the chemical nature of the salts in solution in ponds and lakes where they live.

The adult brine shrimp in Great Salt Lake and in San Francisco Bay die when the water temperature falls below 6C

Brine shrimp eat the free floating algae and other microscopic organisms that occur in brine ponds and salt lakes.

Brine shrimp reach sexual maturity within 18 to 21 days after hatching and reproduce in two ways. If no males are present the females have embryos that develop from an unfertilized eggs. This phenomenon is called parthenogenesis. When mature females and males are present, the male fertilizes the eggs within the reproductive tract of the female. The eggs remain within the body of the female until a touch shell has formed around each one. Then the eggs, which resemble fine brown sand, are deposited in the water where they will hatch if conditions are favorable. If the female deposits her eggs in seawater which has a specific gravity of 1.09 or higher, they will float on the surface and will not hatch but may be blown by the wind or be carried by water currents to beaches – where they remain until it rains and they are washed back into the water. Rain tends to dilute the surface of the water – and when the eggs come into contact with it they hatch because the specific gravity is less than 1.09 and the temperature is higher than 9C.
In many instances the eggs hatch within the ovisac of the female, and the embryos develop to nauplii (larvae) before they are born. Movements of the muscles surrounding the ovisca keep the young brine shrimp in motion. Just before birth occurs, some nauplii are suddenly released from the others and moved towards a funnel shaped aperture ni the ovisac. After a few convulsive movements of the funnel muscles the aperture opens and the nauplii are forcefully ejected into the water.

The natural environment determines whether a female will bear living young or lay eggs. Some shrimp along the coast are washed into a tidepool and left as the tide retreats. If the pool is above the normal high tide line, several weeks may elapse before the sea again reaches the pool. Meanwhile the water in the pool evaporates, and the salinity increases. The brine shrimp at this time bear living young. Evaporation may continue, and the salt percentage rise. More shrimp and less water mean less food and the population may start to decline. Responding to this changed enviroment, the females stop bearing living young and begin laying eggs. When the tide reaches the place where the tidepool was, the eggs are washed out to sea. Though they had lain on the shore for weeks, they now hatch.

The young

The eggs, which are not harmed by low temperatures, hatch in nature in great numbers in the spring. Baby shrimp are born with a single eye and one main set of legs. During growth, they acquire a shell which they shed a number of times during their life time. Changes occur in the body at each molt until, in the adult, there are 2 eyes and 11 pairs of legs and in the case of males, 12 penises.

There are several kinds of fresh water fairy shrimp are closely related to brine shrimp. Water fleas are more distant relatives.

The brine shrimp main enemy in nature are salt water fly larvae, birds and human collectors. So far as known, brine shrimp do not have harmful parasites. An abundance of brine shrimp in some areas may result from a lack of enemies.

How to use brine shrimp

Brine shrimp are valuable. They are excellent as zoological teaching material for classroom laboratories, for the development from egg to larva may be obseved under a microscope in a short period of time.

Brine shrimp are superior for testing insecticides. This crustacean demonstrates a high sensitivity against a broad range of compounds.

Baby brine shrimp have become in recent years one of the standard foodsfor young tropical aquarium fishes, after the fiches have passed the stage where they need microscopic organisms as food. Adult brine shrimp also form an excellent food for larger fish.

Fish hatcheries also use brine shrimp for feeding fish. The Utah Fish and Game Department collected brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake for use as an experimental trout food. The Department found that growth and mortality of newly hatched rainbow trout fed brine shrimp diet were approximately the same as when the trout were fed a turkeyblood and live diet or dry feed, Kokanee salmon fed brine shrimp made excellent growth, while those fed blood and liver or dry food lost weight.

Brine shrimp also aid salt production. They precipitate insoluble calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate impurities from ponds. The shrimp strain these impurities out of the water along with their microscopic food. The calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate particles are not absorbed in the intestine but become incorporated in the fecal pellets which drop to the bottom of the pools. This precipitation occurs before the salt is crystallized in the final stage of solar production.

Brine shrimp buy online are not commonly used for human food because they are too small. However they were so numerous at times in the past that indians inhabiting the Great Salt Lake region dried them for use as food.

Collecting and processing brine shrimp eggs

Brine shrimp eggs in their natural enviroment are found floating on the top of the water or on the shore where wind deposits them. They are netted from shallow water or scooped from the shore, along with mud and sand and placed in buckets.

Processing the eggs without damaging the tender embryos or starting them to hatch is an exacting technique. The mud is washed using a high-pressure spray through a fine screen. This separates out the dead shrimp, parts of dead sigh and birds and other large impurities. Eggs and water then pass through a sluice box which picks up sand. Since wet, fertile brine shrimp eggs since in fresh water, the overflow removes dead eggs, shells and dust, leaving behind the viable eggs and lettle else.

The eggs are then spread out on a thin layer to dry in the guy. When dried they are cleaned once more in a blower, which removes dust left over from the water and any lighters, dead, eggs.

A small sample of the eggs is weighted and then allowed to hatch. The larvae are weighed to assure a high quality yield when the eggs each the aquarist. The eggs are vacuum packed in cans for shipment to dealers, labs and schools as well as commercial fish hatcheries.

UT99 for duel.. go esr

ut99..

There are good memories but if you stop and look at the 1) items and 2) maps, you have to see how horrible it was. Either that or you never really played it enough to appreciate this.

Or perhaps you played with US rules which was even worse!

It had potential (eg 2 jackets + belt or 2 jackets + keg) but the epic mappers* insisted on forcing 1jacket + 1belt + 1pads on every single map. Sometimes no jacket (so out of control played with the equivalent of a green armor that did not stack vs mega+100armor) Also every weapon and full ammo at most weapon spawns.

*and the community 1v1 maps too, yay. Not that q3 was any better in this regard, there were better duel maps floating around for a long time, yet only ztn was commonly used in earlier years.

The jacket/belt spawn time overlap was retarded. The maps we dueled on were laughable. Tempest, seriously? Probably better than playing morpheus or fetid, but really?

Good things.. combat wise you could play any way you wanted, aim, no aim, whatever, and still do well. This, imo, was ut99s strongest attribute. Even more than quakelive you could play without aim. However the bizarre mapping decisions held it back. I know, I know, most people on esr will point to the lack of movement as the biggest thing holding it back, but honestly if you think a game is going to play well by giving one player more than twice the health via pickup than the other player and then allowing them to freely pressure the weaker play on the next spawn then.. you have no hope. Movement or no the item system was broken.

Have to thank epic for turning 2k3/4 into an lg/shock primary hitscan-fest and not fixing the stupid armor spawns. Also adding quad to duel, woo! Will duel in ut4 fix any of these possible problems? Doubtful, epic are set in their ways.

BF4 has dumbed down FPS even more!

@40655475 astro_ant writes…
[“Dumbed down and added crutches like lock on weapons and suppression to lower the skill cap. But still more entertaining than Call of Duty.”]

The problem is this (dumbing down) has been occurring since day 1 in FPS. From a team perspective TDM in quakeworld has amazing depth, both from an individual skill point of view as well as teamwork required. Also the 3-4 popular maps lend to very different play styles – almost to the point of infantry maps / full vehicle maps as a BF3 example.

This depth has been watered down in the decade+ since, especially from a team stand point, to where we are today.

One BF title to another or BF vs COD is hardly the issue. The games are hardly the issue either, well they are but they are the problem because of the playerbase. They simply don’t want that game anymore.

And the saddest thing is that, while the huge skill cap in quake could possibly have been argued as a.. bad thing, in 2000 with small player base, now it would not be such a bad thing. Larger player pools, possibility of matchmaking make these “problems” less glaring.

This is coming from someone that never played TDM in quakeworld and until recently had not even watched it. When it comes down to it the amount of communication and working together is huge compared to BF or COD. And then you add on individual skill caps? We have an awesome game.

Looking for sexy competition? Try Thatsnaughty sex toy competitions!

Fraze attends dreamhack and cries about map changes!

Nice. Did not understand 4 slow + 1 fast to begin with. Glad additional maps were not added as a 7 map pool typically start with drop/drop, which of course, while not required (could be ppddddp) would more than likely happen. Going to seven would probably re-add another fast map.

Ignore fraze, the only reason he is bitching is because his fav map is tox. The majority of his recent games have been on cure and sinister, and it appears, specifically not tox.

His reasoning for being cut over ZTN was due to not practicing it to this point, yet they are not practicing tox?

Of course he might be playing some sort of offline ql, or on aliases*, but why would you change up your practice regime^ on another account or playing offline? In au/nz we don’t really play cure or sinister very much so getting as much time on those while not getting rusty on older maps seems prudent. Which appears to be what he is doing!

*Which fraze has specifically (and for some reason proudly) said he never ever does in at least one interview 🙂 Also offline ql? Naughty naughty.

^Lets hide the fact I practice tox but not the other maps, teehee. So clever, noone will think I play it!

In fact given the apparent lack of tox play it is fairly obvious that fraze was decently confident on it, and has not bothered playing it recently. Judging by maps he has picked in previous tournaments, his “dueling while talking” series, his reaction to this new map pool*.. he liked tox and felt confident it being there.

*New map pool being one change. If one single map is such a problem the problem is that one map, not the rest of the pool 🙂

This post could get longer with more pointing out similar things, like there are seven weeks till the event, the map pool was announced 15 days ago, a large majority of people on esr* wanted it changed, etc.

*I know that this is not really a good gauge, after all lots of people liked britney at one point right? However a lot of these are backed up with examples of recent tournaments where the decider map has been tox and has been.. bad. As a spectator I don’t really enjoy it.

My one piece of input for the dreamhack guys would be add something along the lines of “This is the current prelim map list and will be finalised or changed by XYZ date” in future. A week or two (more like 2-3 hours) is enough to gauge the reaction. While I don’t doubt players that want to bitch about changes would find a way it would at least shut down this current argument of “blah blah blah blah they shouldn’t have changed it”.

——
http://www.4seasonsgaming.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5213

I have to question why a donation drive was run on 4sg to send fraze when he says this:

Since there are a few international Quake Live events now, what made you decide to attend Dreamhack Winter?

Fraze: I would be in Europe at the time anyway and its about time I played at an international LAN!

Really. Were people donating paying for a holiday in eu? Maybe they were donating so you could attend from another part of europe. Thats fair enough I guess.

Until you stop and think that since you had the cash to travel to europe already why would you not make dh the destination rather than begging from the community.

Lets not mention that the map list had little to do with fraze attending, he seemed keen to go before the list was even announced.
——

I was excited to watch a tournament without fast map, with a 5 map pool with new maps.

However since I wrote the above dreamhack have reneged on the changed maplist – updating it again and adding tox and aero to the list. Disappointing to say the least and we will be lucky to see anything except bo5/7 being played on new maps.

oh well

BF4 gameplay will probably be the same as BF3

@39181245 WerTicus writes…
[“Less of that please i like to be able to win because of my skills not because i picked the wrong class or vehicle.”]

This will always be a problem in this type of game*. Short of giving everyone a counter to everything.

*class based with vehicles that can only be destroyed by some weapons/vehicles. Hell even just class based games that are rock > paper > scissors style.

Things being OP are fun, they can make games that turn one way or the other quickly. Red armour, quad damage and rocket launcher in quakeworld? Check. UT weapons all being able to instagib players, even with high health? The UT big armour being worth more than three times the next armour down? check. and so on. These things made the games good, along with good gameplay.

However even with the best gear in older FPS you could die, easily. Got red and quad? Maybe the other team will flood you down with spawners. Sure you got six kills but you died away from the red armour room and now the enemy has a rocket launcher in there denying it for the next minute. Got hold of the big armour spawn? Well they have the weapon spawns now and will beat your ass to a pulp shortly.

Of course using these things takes skill, and team coordination, but anything can kill anything. At similar skill levels you get good games. At uneven skill levels you get scorelines of 300-50.

The problem with BF is that everything is just handed out. Realistically with 64 players and the load outs available jets should be gibbed as soon as they come near enemy players. 32 potential stingers (even if they are not good) will take down your jets and choppers, or at the very least deny your area completely.

Everything should be countered as soon as it comes to bear. Tank? 5 RPGs will take care of it.

The only thing this does not apply to is infantry gameplay. You can’t just spawn as a tank to kill three infantry guys.

The above not happening simply highlights the mentality of pub gaming.