{"id":26963,"date":"2015-06-01T00:59:11","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T05:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=26963"},"modified":"2025-10-06T13:44:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T17:44:51","slug":"diecast-106-witcher-3-kickstarter-guy-fieri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=26963","title":{"rendered":"Diecast #106: Witcher 3, Kickstarter, Guy Fieri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like we said at the top of the episode, we recorded this session in <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.mumble.info\/wiki\/Main_Page\">Mumble<\/a>, an open-source VOIP solution. It was pretty much a disaster, audio-wise. Chris spent a lot of the evening being unintelligible to us, and Rutskarn spent a lot of the evening unable to understand anyone.<\/p>\n<p>So we can have Ventrilo and its stupid buggy clipped messages and idiotic lack of a chat window, or we can have Mumble and spend every podcast playing &#8220;What? Say th-t aga&#8211; I didn&#8211; &#8212;- -ou.&#8221; Please don&#8217;t bombard us with suggestions on how to fix Mumble. We played with every setting available and this was the best we could come up with after an hour of trial-and-error.<\/p>\n<p>A shame. I&#8217;m really going to miss that chat window.<\/p>\n<p>On a more positive note, high[er] grade audio equipment is on the way for Rutskarn and I. A mysterious benefactor has made sure we&#8217;ll have solid equipment. I&#8217;m pretty excited.<\/p>\n<p><!--remove original podcast link<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast106.mp3\">Direct link to this episode<\/a>.\n[diecast show=\"diecast106\"]--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/embed\/GpYnxYZB#aZioM8e843BIIEnNzJG1TxZ-8xdcqulGke7VLc-yn30!1v1c\" width=\"711\" height=\"144\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/GpYnxYZB#aZioM8e843BIIEnNzJG1TxZ-8xdcqulGke7VLc-yn30\">Download MP3 File<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/Llh1VbQC#GTFr16xfwmgNo0ASozYNXa_kemVi0syeVbFxKo-yJcw\">Download Ogg Vorbis File<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hosts: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/\">Shamus<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Campster\">Campster<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/witcher.wikia.com\/wiki\/Roach\">Josh<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/\">Rutskarn<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Show notes:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>1:00 We&#8211;come to the D&#8211;cast, we&#8217;re u&#8211;ing Mumb&#8211; this week!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, the audio sounds mostly fine in post, but Chris and Rutkarn struggled with basic comprehension of what was being said. My guess is that the two of them had fluctuating ping, and Mumble is much more sensitive to that. A shame. I think Mumble is better in every other way. The interface is better, exporting is ten times easier, the chat window is immensely useful, and the low latency makes it so much nicer to have a back-and-forth discussion. But &#8220;people can&#8217;t understand each other&#8221; is 100% a deal breaker. So it&#8217;s back to Vent next week.<\/p>\n<p>And no, I don&#8217;t want to have everyone record themselves locally and send me the audio. That would create a ton of synchronization headaches for me, and add layers of complexity and hassle for everyone else, who then need to fiddle with Audacity and send me gigantic audio files. Ugh. This show has enough moving parts already. I think we&#8217;ll just go back to the status quo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2:00 A long, long conversation about Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No, seriously. We talk about it for half the show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>11:00 Shamus and Josh tell tales of being griefed by the Witcher 3 game designers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Really, it looks like the game just assumes you&#8217;ll have some fast-travel points opened up for the boat. If for some reason that&#8217;s not the case for you, then a thirty-second trip can turn into an hour of hair-pulling frustration.<\/p>\n<p>I actually kind of sold it short when I described just how crazy the mob distribution is. One hill in Velen had a tiny group of level 3 cannibals on it &#8211; the lowest of the low in terms of foes. About a ten second run away was a level 20+ griffon. So there was level 3 cannon fodder living right next to a fast-moving boss monster twenty levels above them. Like I said on the show: I&#8217;m not against mixing things up and throwing in some higher-level foes to keep you on your toes, but that&#8217;s just crazy. It doesn&#8217;t even make sense in-world. By the time you&#8217;re ready to take on the griffon, you&#8217;ll be in an entirely different part of the world and have no reason to slog all the way back out to this spot of the wilderness just to fight this one stupid monster.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t ruin the game or anything, but it feels haphazard and random. No point in having a difficulty slider in a game where the mobs vacillate between &#8220;effortless&#8221; and &#8220;impossible insta-death&#8221; in the space of a football field.<\/p>\n<p><strong>35:00 MAILTIME!<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Diecast,<\/p>\n<p>An article on Polygon recently argued that big budget kickstarters with low asking prices were giving people inflated expectations about what an indie team can achieve with a small budget.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?<\/p>\n<p>yours<br \/>\nThomas<\/p>\n<p>p.s. Article link:<br \/>\n&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2015\/5\/19\/8624665\/big-indie-kickstarters-are-killing-actual-indies\">Big Indie Kickstarters are Killing Actual Indies<\/a>&#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>53:00 Game mechanics and personal taste.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Diecast,<br \/>\nIn your opinion, do you think that certain game mechanics are not inherently bad, but rather dependent on the players taste? Personally, I find the turn-based mechanics of JRPGs satisfying, while many others rightfully criticise them.<br \/>\nIf you think so, do you have any personal examples?<br \/>\nOn an unrelated note, I have a question for Chris. Is there any game that he has played that he could reasonably compare to Guy Fieri?<\/p>\n<p>Thomas<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And then we talk about Guy Fieri for ten minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like we said at the top of the episode, we recorded this session in Mumble, an open-source VOIP solution. It was pretty much a disaster, audio-wise. Chris spent a lot of the evening being unintelligible to us, and Rutskarn spent a lot of the evening unable to understand anyone. So we can have Ventrilo and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-26963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diecast-2","tag-witcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59538,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26963\/revisions\/59538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}