Thursday Night Throwdown: 04/26/12

oh wow that was fast

So fast!

Fantastic

I'll give this a look after Dave's viddy-o

What happens to Beefy Media now? :o

This was uploaded before TNT even finished. True story.

Gotta love the video producers being back! Can't wait to watch it.

This is unbelievably frustrating to watch. He won't even upgrade his skills when his notifications are telling him to.

Thank you for getting these up so fast nowadays! Really appreciate it!

Poor Ryan, so very very bad at the game.

KANEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It's awesome that these are going up the night of now. It's a nice treat when I get home from work!

Poor Ryan, so very very bad at the game.

@Huey2k2

Poor Ryan, so very very bad at the game.

I can't think of any game Ryan has ever displayed an adept ability with. Maps are his worst enemy too. disappointing TNT to be honest

I'm so happy that Vinny is back now and can work his magic on the TNTs again and get these uploaded so quickly!

I forgot how much I missed Vinny behind the wheels.

I love that man

Great showoff of a game no one can get into on a casual level, I.E. will ever get a sustained community of more than 100 people.

• 90% skill-shots that even the best Quake players won't have above 50% accuracy in. (This means us mortals are lucky to have 5% hit-rate)
• Once one team have just 1-2 levels over the other team you can't touch em and they insta-kill you. First game here there was a 5+ level difference, something you can never catch back up with no matter how good you are.
• To ever even have a chance you'd need to spend countless hours and money on the game to even have a chance in hell to win a 1v1 fight.

And that's just to name a few things. Hopefully a TNT of the game will make enough people try this crap and whine on the Uberent forums about how crap their crap is.

No I'm not bitter, just disappointed. I don't have 8 hours a day to sink into this game, so I'll never have fun playing it, but I would've liked to have played it.

I wish I could have stayed up to watch this and join in, but I was too tired :(

@Gremmel said:

Great showoff of a game no one can get into on a casual level, I.E. will ever get a sustained community of more than 100 people.

• 90% skill-shots that even the best Quake players won't have above 50% accuracy in. (This means us mortals are lucky to have 5% hit-rate)
• Once one team have just 1-2 levels over the other team you can't touch em and they insta-kill you. First game here there was a 5+ level difference, something you can never catch back up with no matter how good you are.
• To ever even have a chance you'd need to spend countless hours and money on the game to even have a chance in hell to win a 1v1 fight.

And that's just to name a few things. Hopefully a TNT of the game will make enough people try this crap and whine on the Uberent forums about how crap their crap is.

No I'm not bitter, just disappointed. I don't have 8 hours a day to sink into this game, so I'll never have fun playing it, but I would've liked to have played it.

• Which skill shots are you talking about? The only real skill shots in the game are sniper headshots, and they're as hard as in any game.
• If a team is working together then there shouldn't be a massive level gap, and if there is a gap then you need to retreat and focus on killing on bots for a minute to catch up while the other team is getting cocky.
• You can't directly buy anything in the game to make yourself stronger. Endorsements only give you a small boost in certain areas at the cost of other areas, and products can be won after games. The game isn't designed to be 1v1, if you find yourself in that situation then something's gone wrong.

Once matchmaking's kinks are worked out, the better players will be kept away from the novices and prevent complete rolling. Building a team TNT style is going to lead to the issues above, matchmaking should solve them.

At least it looks like some people had a good time. I'm frustrated that I spent 2 hours downloading the game, 2 days getting used to the thing, and 2 minutes on the server before getting booted by the Giant Bomb 'rush' or whatever happened.

I love how soon these types of things show up on the site now. Awesome stuff.

Daaaaaamn Ryan had like 100k coins. Craziness.

Would have loved to see Ryan deploy a Jak Bot - roll over the enemies with that mofo at his back. Ah well. Personally, since I've spent enough time absorbing both general principles of Dota play from friends, and seeing the MNC stuff on GB before, I got into this pretty easily despite not playing any MOBAs online, though I can see how it could be super confusing.

I'd say new people wanting to get into this should stick to Support classes (Combat Girl, at the moment?) for a few games and just hang back and watch what other people do, but just make sure:

• You check the Pro difficulty is green
• You spend your money - don't get above 2000 unless you're saving for the Jak Bot
• Upgrade!
• And not Leroy Jenkinsing!

You will probably die a lot anyway, at first at least, but keep track of why you died and try to avoid that in the future - if you were sniped, run away earlier, if you were backstabbed, keep an eye on behind you, etc....

Of course, Ryan has the excuse of running a show, so I'm hardly going to harangue him for not hanging back all the time and immediately going to upgrades and running back for bots and all that other boring stuff.

Hopefully I will enjoy this.

Mona Lisa Overbite is the best name

Damn, I missed out on the Lucadeer?! Will it be available to buy in the store?

@ 03:53 - hilarity ensues.

06:17 - Billy Mays!

Vinny's effects made Ryan's face look very Dwarven.

Also, I worked at Staples last year and we had ONE model of mouse that had a ball. It never sold.

UPGRADE YOUR SHIT RYAN

I wish I had a real PC to get games like this. Loved MNC on XBLA.

The dashboard on this game is a Windows 3 nightmare. When the hell did that become the way to present an interface again?

Not upgrading your character or buying things kind of takes out most of the game.

Lots of people like me.

Some.. someone probably likes me.

... Maybe

:(

Thank you Vinnie. Haven't laughed so hard for a long time.

Great quicklook. I'm trying to learn this game and I'm having a great time even if I'm not that good.

@Gremmel said:

Great showoff of a game no one can get into on a casual level, I.E. will ever get a sustained community of more than 100 people.

• 90% skill-shots that even the best Quake players won't have above 50% accuracy in. (This means us mortals are lucky to have 5% hit-rate)
• Once one team have just 1-2 levels over the other team you can't touch em and they insta-kill you. First game here there was a 5+ level difference, something you can never catch back up with no matter how good you are.
• To ever even have a chance you'd need to spend countless hours and money on the game to even have a chance in hell to win a 1v1 fight.

And that's just to name a few things. Hopefully a TNT of the game will make enough people try this crap and whine on the Uberent forums about how crap their crap is.

No I'm not bitter, just disappointed. I don't have 8 hours a day to sink into this game, so I'll never have fun playing it, but I would've liked to have played it.

I understand that not everyone is going to like SMNC, but most of what you are saying is just plain wrong.

First off, the game is NOT 90% difficult skill shots, the only classes that really rely on skill shots to be effective are sniper/gunslinger, and if you are new to the game you should not be playing them regardless.

The level difference is normal for any MOBA style game. The solution to that is to simply kill more bots and not die. It sucks when the other team over levels you, but that is a major part of any MOBA.

Spending money/countless hours to win 1v1 is flat out incorrect. The only things you can buy with real money in SMNC are pros, and outfits. None of the pros you can buy with real money are special in any way, and they all are on the free pro rotation at some point. Outfits do absolutely nothing for your game other than making you look cool, they have no effect on gameplay whatsoever. The only things that give you a *slight* edge are endorsements, you cannot buy endorsements with real money, you can grind them out by simply playing games, but this is true of most F2P games out there. Also endorsements definitely do not give you enough of an edge that skill/teamwork do not matter.

Saying you're not bitter does not make it true. You are out here telling blatant lies about a game, and are obviously upset that the community as a whole is filled with better players than you, which is unfortunate for new people trying to break in, but this is a reality that every online focused game has.

I am not trying to suggest that SMNC is without its faults, the matchmaking right now is not great, and there definitely needs to be some more balancing, but to say that you can just pay your way to victory, and somehow the game mechanics are unfair, is just plan wrong.

@djgoodnews said:

Lots of people like me.

Some.. someone probably likes me.

... Maybe

:(

Don't lie to yourself. It'll hurt less the sooner you accept it.

First TNT I actually got to play in! Plus, I got a shout out from Ryan and to top it off I made the screen grab!

We lost pretty bad in that first game (was my first real match, had only played a couple practice matches before that), but I still had fun.

@Huey2k2 said:

Poor Ryan, so very very bad at the game.

No. He just had critical information deprived from him.

Invite BamSaidTheLady.

Yeah...no I won't.

=(

Anyways, SMNC is great. I've put in 100 hours since being in the beta for months.

Next TNT: put a mic in the control room

I should not have been eating breakfast while watching this, damn you Vinny. :D

@semistardust said:

This is unbelievably frustrating to watch. He won't even upgrade his skills when his notifications are telling him to.

@Huey2k2 said:

Poor Ryan, so very very bad at the game.

Your frustration is delicious.

I need to play this, I really enjoyed Monday Night Combat on XBL.

JeffK reference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup, that Dell monitor is brand new, or Ryan is completely oblivious about the plastic wrap still on the back.

TNT has become elevated as a showcase for Vinny Caravella's performance art that combines studies of the human form and the American pop culture of video games.

One day they will play these videos in museums

Luchadeer plays like a vanguard, my favorite ME class by far?

!

Any man rocking the Devils logo is A-ok in my book!

Dat butt

I love Thursday Night "Throwday"