wchigo

It’s all great stuff. I’ll admit I first got turned onto your blogs with your (mis)adventures in the Final Fantasy universe, but I’ve come to enjoy your humour and writing a lot. I’ve read pretty much all your blogs, even if I haven’t commented on all of them (including your ranch pizza one, lulz), and can’t wait for more zany ones… moar food crime blogs? :D

Dropping a comment here just to say I read the whole blog, and it was quite enjoyable. That said, I do not believe I am one of the two people that zp expected to read this blog. XD

Had to come here at 1am after watching to give a big shout out to Jan. My man, that edit at the end with Dan’s voiceover over the cheese video… *chef’s kiss*

A lot of these terminologies confuse me a little, as I am used to playing Chinese Mahjong (specifically in Cantonese), but some of the basics seem to carry over.

A basic thing to always keep in mind is that in order to win, you need 4 "sets" of Straights or Triples and then a Pair, which roughly translates to "Eyes" from Cantonese. Your hand starts off with 13 tiles, but you win with 14 cards, which makes the math up there work (4x3=12 tiles, plus a pair, equals 14). Jan nailed it at one point that it makes it harder to win when you don't have your "Eyes" already set up because now you can only win from one tile, whereas if you had a Straight, it's quite possible you can win from two different tiles (ie - if you had a 4 and 5 in addition to your "Eyes", you could win with a 3 or 6 tile). So as tempting as it might be, it would still be advantageous to pass on a Triple pon opportunity to keep your "Eyes" in tact.

One thing that I'm not 100% sure translate over both versions, but seems like it does, is that most seasoned players will not recognize a certain hand as a "winning" hand, unless they sometimes allow it for a beginner. Generally the higher level players will go for hands of just one suit (Honor tiles are an exception), in which case you can have both Straights and Triples. However, if you are mixing suits, then you should stick strictly to only Straightsor onlyTriples. I'll try and make a visual below.

C = Circles, S = Sticks, M = Characters

1) 1C/1C/1C 3C/4C/5C 7C/8C/9C 5C/6C/7C "Eyes"

2) 9S/9S/9S 2M/3M/4M 5C/5C/5C 3S/3S/3S "Eyes"

3) 1C/2C/3C 4S/5S/6S 7S/8S/9S 4M/5M/6M "Eyes"

So the first hand is acceptable since it only contains Circle tiles, and the third hand is also okay because although it contains all 3 suits, the hand only contains Straights. The second hand would not be acceptable in many situations because there are multiple suits, and a mix of Straights and Triples; I was allowed to win with this hand when my Grandma was first teaching me to play, because I was a newbie. Also, winning with a hand composed of only one suit usually results in higher winnings as well, compared to one with 2 or more suits. And drawing the winning tile will result in higher winnings than taking it as someone else's discard tile. And if a player wins by drawing the tile they need by themselves, everyone pays the same amount. If a player, let's say Player A, wins by taking a discard tile from player C, everyone pays player A but player C needs to pay more than the other two because they threw out the tile that allowed player A to win. If you thought there was a lot of rules to determine a winning hand, there's even more to determine the amount of points/money the winning player gets, including what round it is and even which seat you're in.

I will leave out special hands that you guys have seen like Thirteen Orphans as those hands are heavily luck based and can be hard to win with as you need to collect all the cards by drawing them yourself (closed hand).

Hope this was somewhat valuable, and didn't repeat any information that had been previously provided.

I should probably watch more of Ghibli's catalogue. To date I believe I've only seen My Neighbour Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away.

Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies was always on the list, just never got around to the former and I'm afraid I'd fall into a pit of despair/depression I'd never get out of if I watch the latter, especially in these times...

@nickernzen: There's no 'like' system here, so in lieu of that, I will simply say thank you.

You know, I think I watched The Last Order at some point, but I have absolutely ZERO recollection of what happened in it. Based on your summary, I think I'm better for it.

I will say I loved Advent Children when I first watched it, but a lot of that is probably chalked up to those action scenes, probably some extent the music. I really enjoyed that fight scene with Tifa in the church, and the music really hyped up that scene more for me. Then of course all the action near the end. In fact, all the motorcycle action in AC probably led to those motorcycle sequences in FF7R and Roche. That said, I haven't watched it in years and I don't know how much I'd enjoy it now.

LET ME ON THAT HILL WITH YOU!!!!!

But seriously, I've only played through Crisis Core once but I still hold that game, particularly the ending, up on a pedestal. I'm glad I still have my PSP and my copy of Crisis Core, though as you said it's a damn shame it hasn't been made available to play anywhere else.

Wew, a lot to read over 6 pages.

This is really a bit of a sticky situation. While I don't interact much with the community at large here, in general I feel like GB has a much better community than many other "social" places around the internet, and I enjoy that feeling here. I've also grown up with many of the staff here like Jeff G, Brad S, Vinny C and Alex N from back in their GameSpot days, and I appreciate the direction they've led this site as opposed to the other bigger sites. I have also thoroughly enjoyed all other staff members who have come and gone (I miss Drew every day), and they've had great new hires in Ben, Abby and Jan.

The world is getting more complicated by the day, and it's getting harder and harder to do good things without being dragged into murky waters. For anyone that's watched The Good Place, I think they sum it up pretty well in there; in the old days, buying an apple can be seen as a good deed, but nowadays that's uncertain because maybe pesticides that are bad for the environment were used, it was transported poorly which contributes to our carbon footprint and increases global warming, etc. Even the best of intentions end up biting us in the end. While this makes every thing we do and every decision we make harder, I don't believe putting our head in the sand and hand waving these issues away helps anyone, nor is it the morally right thing to do.

The circumstances surrounding this are extremely unfortunate, and I don't wish it on anyone. It could've easily happened to any member of the staff, and it's a shame that it fell on Abby's shoulders when she already receives a ton of flak (earned or otherwise) and seems to enable dogpiling by those with an agenda, who are trying to mix in with those who have genuine constructive criticism.

Due to the timing of my post, a lot of my thoughts are likely going to be echoing sentiments that have already been shared here. It's a bloody shame that I will likely be skipping this podcast due to the presence of someone who has been engaging in pretty toxic behaviour. I appreciate Abby's intentions here and I would have loved to see her play off of Mary Kish, who I adore and wish she would show up on GB more often, and it would have been cool to get to know Riana, with whom I am unfamiliar with. However, I do not want to enable a platform for Merritt.

Personally, I think it's reasonable that it somehow slipped through the cracks and she somehow made it through the vetting process. There have been a lot of comments both ways, both here and in the GB subreddit, about some folks easily locating the allegations, and others having a terrible time finding anything about the accusations. I do not have any issues with that; we're all only human, and because of that we are going to make mistakes. My issue is with the actions, or perhaps lack thereof, after the fact. The staff at GB personally made a vow to hold themselves to higher standards, and I genuinely believe that is their desire and something they are acting on in good faith. It's also a bit disconcerting to see so many people come out and so quickly accuse Abby of double standards of not calling out women when this stuff happens, but so willing to condemn men. GIVE. IT. TIME. This is a ton of information to take in at once, and I'm sure she herself needs time to process all of this. I would imagine she is likely beating herself up over this more than any of us could know, so that kind of unconstructive and unhelpful comments aren't necessary.

On the other hand, I am firmly in support of those who believe the actions taken weren't quite enough. I'm not necessarily saying we need the podcast taken down immediately, as there are likely a lot of workings behind the scenes that we are unaware of, including money and sponsorships, and these details need to be worked out. The action that was taken, the editor's note, is pretty impotent though. As many folks have rightly pointed out, even GB themselves have copped to the fact that there are legions of people out there that only listen to the podcast, and do not interact with the site in any manner. Even myself, someone who up until recently consumed EVERYTHING that GB released, does not interact with the site all that much because I'm usually consuming their content via iOS apps created by fantastic members of the community. Had I not stumbled on to a thread on Reddit about this topic, then come to the site to look at the Beastcast page, I also would have completely missed the editor's note. It's especially not a good look in light of the comments from GB staff regarding allegations at Ubisoft and their essentially not bringing it up at all during the Ubisoft Forward conference, when maybe they should've edited in a little notice at the beginning of the video (something that could have potentially been done here for the podcast as well).

The other issue with the editor's note is that it rings a bit hollow. When this topic was brought up a few casts ago, I could really feel the emotion and empathy from the crew, particularly Alex, as he went about trying to explain his thoughts and how he was going to hold himself to a higher standard. I also do feel like apologies were made for these people "slipping through the cracks." With this editor's note though, it feels like a "Hey, I didn't know at first, we try our best to not let these kinds of things happen, but unfortunately it happened." For me, personally, if there was something like I "I did not know these allegations existed until today and I'm sorry for providing a platform for such a person", I would have felt a lot better about the note.

I don't know if this will be addressed at all going forward, though I hope it will be. It doesn't have to be anything long or drawn out. A post on the site by Abby showing remorse would be good enough for me personally, but again that would not reach anyone who is not a regular frequenter of the site. Perhaps a 1-2 minute little comment on next week's Beastcast would be a better option, and again it's fine to keep it short, but I wouldn't feel good if the editor's note is the only and last comment on what transpired from the staff.

Just want to pop in here and say that once you get the item that lets you party, you can party anytime. The resolve just lets you use empowered riposte, which gives you back health. If you don’t have any resolve, a successful party will give you one bar of resolve.

Seems interesting enough and I kind of appreciate it being a shorter game that you can run many times to get real familiar with it. Some of the trophies needed to get the platinum though, oof...

Despite being a $30 game, I think I’ll wait for a sale before I dive in. Enjoying replaying Bloodborne right now, despite my tremendous backlog...

Oh man, that Donk Donk game drove me crazy. The music and sound effects are just all around terrible, especially compared to say Ringside or any other mini-game. Only halfway through the episode but man, that was bad (the mini-game, not the playing). I feel for Abby having to go through that, it’s so bad. Ughhh...