Xpovos' Blog - Apr to Jun 15 (170 followers)
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Jun07
GTASC - Period 20: IcosagonPermalink
Sorry about the late post tonight. Family event meant I was gone for most of the day and while (obviously) a lot of this is pre-cooked, I couldn't do nearly as much as I normally do, plus my planned post ended up being way too much and is getting moved into a separate blog for later so that this doesn't run into a major length problem.

So, let's have a look at this past period: the cut-off moved up pretty sharply--a 44% increase from last week and enough to finally get our trendline moving back up. The past few periods have stagnated and had actually brought our trendline to near zero! Not much pressure indeed.

The extra scoring seems likely to have come about because of the fairly recent release of the ODST DLC for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The release of that DLC pushed Halo MCC back to the top of the scoring games list once again, the fifth time Halo MCC has topped the charts in 20 periods. Never underestimate the popularity of Halo!

New game releases (or DLC/TU) are a major driver of scoring this year, we're seeing. Other relatively new arrivals, MASSIVE CHALICE, Beach Buggy Racing, and Sparkle Unleashed all made the top ten in terms of scoring for the period as well, though in Massive Chalice's case the score was made up in bulk by one gamer who earned 42% of that game's points for the contest for the period by being the first (and as of cut-off) only gamer to 100% the title. Hat's off for the impressive accomplishment. Stand by for decay, drama, and quite likely elimination.

  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 5
Last week: 9

The score increases meant more pressure, so fewer freebie survivors, and even then most of them had to use bonuses, so definitely not 'free'.

  • Failed to Bonus

7 Teams with 8 bonuses lost.
40 Individuals with 41 bonuses lost.

The rapid score rise from last week to this week may have caught some of these folks by surprise.

  • Personal Notes

An extremely quiet week for me as I focused on grinding gold for https://www.trueachievements.com/Diablo-3/achievements.htm because: why not. There really was nothing else pressing in the week and it was a good way to spend time for my other goals, even if unimpressive. The week was more interesting outside of gaming, but who cares? Gaming! Grind that gold!

  • Highlight

Diablo IIIAll That GlittersThe All That Glitters achievement in Diablo III worth 88 pointsPick up 5,000,000 gold.

I love isometric dungeon crawlers. They are my gaming panacea. Diablo in particular holds a massive sway over me, and Diablo 2 will forever be one of the finest games ever made. That said, Diablo 3 at launch was riddled with problems, and even by the time they got to the console release, it wasn't "right". This achievement demonstrates that problem pretty well. Earning it to get the monkey off my back was definitely a highlight.

Since I love the game, I have no problem playing it endlessly for many hours, but that's exactly what this achievement requires, and to do it efficiently, you need to play in a manner that is less fun than normal play. The problem is compounded by bugginess in the gold drops. No, the achievement itself is not buggy, but the spawn rate of the trigger is. At a minimum the RNG is broken. Based on the data points I collected while grinding this, there's something significantly wrong with the mechanics of the game. Fortunately, that's all moot now as we move on to Reaper of Souls. Finally, the game can be proper fun again.

  • Lowlight

271 TA for the week on 5 achievements worth points? Yeah, that's pretty low. Any my over-confidence was almost a disaster for the team. At least I spent my time grinding, though Diablo 3 was only the visible beneficiary.

  • Started

None. I've settled back down again, but we're getting close to Bean Dive time. What will happen then? And bonuses next period... will that shake things up?

  • Completed

#100 https://www.trueachievements.com/Diablo-3/achievements.htm (per my DLC settings)
Posted by Xpovos on 07 June 15 at 01:06 | There are no comments on this blog - Please log in to comment on this blog.
Jun02
Obscure HumorPermalink
I have a very strange sense of humor. I'm well known in my circle of friends for telling jokes that almost no one gets. Even my dear wife only gets the majority of them, and mostly because she's put up with them for so long that there's been a kind of osmosis.

The problem is that normally the jokes reference multiple somewhat obscure things. Since my interests are in and of themselves esoteric, it's not surprising that at least one element of any given joke is unknown to a wider audience. As such, not many have the proper frame of reference to 'get' the joke.

I ran into this problem headlong last week. I was feeling particularly creative with this joke, so I made it into an image. I'll post it here and see if perhaps it gets any bites from the folks here.

External image


So... anyone 'get' it?
Posted by Xpovos on 02 June 15 at 16:52 | There are 7 comments on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
May31
GTASC - Period 19: The Face of the EnemyPermalink
Greetings once more, my erudite followers. We've just finished Period 19 of the GTASC and in so doing we may have finally met the enemy.

Truly, we are our own worst enemies when dealing with our own human failings. Perhaps I'm making too big a deal out of it, but so many of the contestants being eliminated each week have bonuses available, or can survive by scoring such a miserably low number of achievements, that it seems, surely, they're just not interested. If apathy towards a contest you put even some mild effort into joining isn't the very picture of self-defeat, I'm not sure what is.

With so many defeated by their own inner demons, the path for those of us still intent on competing is a little less competition and a little more patient waiting.


Stayed Alive. Walked the Line. But Never Comes the Cloudless Sky.

  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 9
Last week: 12


  • Failed to Bonus

6 Teams with 6 bonuses lost.
41 Individuals with 46 bonuses lost.

  • Personal Notes

I expected F1 2013 to be a skill test, but it turns out to be more of a skill test than I expected. (The game has vaulted into my top ten for ratio games with just a handful of achievements won, and not much of that is appreciation from it being GwG). As a result a large part of the week was spent driving (or more accurately, failing to drive) a very fast vehicle around a very twisty track. Practice makes perfect, though and things got better as the week went on. Outside of not crashing my immediate concerns for the week involved working towards completions for https://www.trueachievements.com/Assassins-Creed-3/achi....htm and Child of Light. Despite the belief that this would be a harder week than normal for very good reasons, it turned out not to be that way at all. Hardly any extra effort was required; and in fact it was mostly more of the same building for later, without scoring anything too big, than has been going on for weeks.

  • Highlight

Assassin's Creed IIICompletionistThe Completionist achievement in Assassin's Creed III worth 219 pointsComplete ALL progress tracker grid entries.


When they say ALL progress tracker grid entries, they mean ALL. Not the worst grind I've ever done, but a big one all the same.

  • Lowlight

There's no achievement tied to wrecking your car in F1 2013, but if there were I'd have earned it many times over. It gets the honorary badge. Among the actual achievements I'll go with

Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers (Xbox 360)Deft DuelistThe Deft Duelist achievement in Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers (Xbox 360) worth 7 pointsWin a Multiplayer Duel


Mostly because the game I won was a disaster on the part of my opponent. I truly wish the matchmaking could tell the difference between low skill players and low card base players in games like this. It's not fun to destroy someone who is no good at the game, but neither is it much fun to lose because they've got all the cards for a well-teched deck.

  • Started

F1 2013: Taking advantage of the GwG. Or, maybe not. I really thought this was a game I could 1000; and I still believe that, but every day it beats me down and I dashboard depressed.

  • Completed

Good, now I can give back the copy of https://www.trueachievements.com/Assassins-Creed-3/achi....htm I've been borrowing for a few months and get back to focusing on Black Flag. But first, for next week...
Posted by Xpovos on 31 May 15 at 00:00 | Last edited on 31 May 15 at 00:13 | There is 1 comment on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
May25
Memorial DayPermalink
Today is the day we in the United States honor the members of our armed forces who have fallen fighting our wars. It is a grave responsibility of the state to call upon its citizens to make the ultimate sacrifice in order that the rest of us might live the life we hope for.

Calling upon our volunteer soldiers has become particularly thorny over the past sixty years as our wars have become less and less about clear military objectives than about political objectives, no matter their merit. Stopping the spread of communism is a fantastic goal endorsed by popes and politicians; but that doesn't mean fighting in Vietnam was a good choice. Regardless, 58,000+ men died in that jungle effecting our flawed strategy. Their sacrifice is not less because their politicians failed them.

The Vietnam war seemed interminable. The U.S.-involved portion of World War 2 took about 4 years (December 7th, 1941- August 18, 1945). In contrast, the U.S.-involved portion of the Vietnam war was 14 and a half years. (November 2, 1963* - April 30, 1975) Over time these political wars have tended to be longer and longer and without any kind of clear victory, like we had with V-E Day and V-J Day. This is a natural consequence of fighting for ideology rather than objectives.

I set all of this up as a preface to my point for the day. It is right and proper that we remember all those who have died for our country, even in wars we do not agree with, because they died in service. But as we remember and honor their sacrifice, it is necessary we do more than just take a moment of silence before we grill another hot dog. In my mind, the greatest gift we can give our servicemen is the sure knowledge that if they are called upon to give their lives, that it will be for an obtainable objective, not one that sits upon the restless sands of ideology.

As we stare down the historical end of two conflicts in Iraq over the past two decades which might as well be one war punctuated by an armistice, and to the future of unending conflict with Islamic militants and perhaps even a new Cold War with Russia, we will have to deal with ideological conflict for a very long time. Unless we choose to change that.

Therefore, I ask today, as I have every year on this day for the past five years, "When will the banners and victory parades celebrate the day our better world was won?"



*Date of the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, which was a major turning part in American involvement towards openly hostile confrontations with the Viet Cong. The actual start date of the Vietnam War for the U.S. is a debatable point, since there was never any declaration of war.
Posted by Xpovos on 25 May 15 at 15:40 | Last edited on 30 May 16 at 15:10 | There are no comments on this blog - Please log in to comment on this blog.
May24
GTASC - Period 18: All Quiet on the GTASC FrontPermalink
Another week of near silence. After a period of more than two days with no posts to the discussion forums, I had to break the silence. I feel much the same way about the scoring. There was very little action to be found. And yet we had a significant number of teams use their bonuses to stay alive, even in the absence of heat. Was this a week for national vacations that I was unaware of?


  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 12
Last week: 15


  • Failed to Bonus

4 Teams with 4 bonuses lost. This is a decrease from last week of 50%, and might be part of the reason why the week was so lacklustre. With the teams falling into the bottom not having any bonuses available they were left with only what they could score, which this week just wasn't enough.

32 Individuals with 36 bonuses lost.

  • Personal Notes

Things got a little busy, so the slowness wasn't all bad, but it means I don't have all that much to talk about even for my own side. So I'll leave it with a simple "Congratulations, chrisie81 "

  • Highlight

Child of LightShowstopperThe Showstopper achievement in Child of Light worth 88 pointsInterrupt 3 foes at the same time.

I was concerned after I got a little deeper into the game that I wouldn't be able to pull this off without some very complicated work. To earn it during normal play was a huge relief.

  • Lowlight

I'm going to go with the collective apathy that seems to have hit the contest this week.

  • Started

I started Borderlands 2 (Xbox 360) because some friends of mine were starting a co-op run. Shooters aren't my thing, and I didn't have a great experience in starting the first Borderlands game. But the prospect of playing with friends won out.

  • Completed

I finished Carcassonne more out of a search for a completion than anything else. I need to get more completions to stay on track for my goal, and this is one that was just sitting there in Card and Board, no less. Easy pickens.
Posted by Xpovos on 24 May 15 at 00:25 | There are no comments on this blog - Please log in to comment on this blog.
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