Of the players currently being investigated for violation of the league's banned-substance policy, three -- the Saints ' Deuce McAllister and Jamar Nesbit and Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jackson -- have publicly admitted to testing positive for Bumetanide, a diuretic that can be used as masking agent for steroids. In Atlanta, each player is given a card and a recommended meal plan.
Falcons players are fed breakfast, lunch and dinner at the team facility, but that doesn't mean some won't sneak a late-night pizza or have two scoops of vanilla ice cream instead of one. There's also the issue of prescription medicines that are handed out by personal physicians or team doctors.
Some could contain banned substances, although the rest of the ingredients could help curb high cholesterol or lower blood pressure. Naturalistic diets can also present interesting blends of ingredients that could pop up on the banned-substances list, even though they supposedly are of the purist ilk Mother Nature could conjure.
There seemingly are areas of gray that sometimes, by nobody's fault in particular, end up being dealt with in black and white. As firm as the stance may seem, Birch says the NFL does allow for certain ingredients if an investigation shows that a player has had a medical history that requires a prescription containing a banned substance. It is referred to as a "therapeutic-use" exemption. Those players who think they can be excused from testing positive for a banned substance because of a holistic diet, where juices, extracts and all-natural supplements are needed to maintain muscle development or to cut water weight or to provide the needed energy to compete likely won't get the same latitude.
Some extracts that are on our list, typically are in the stimulant category. Those stimulants present problems, particularly in training camp where strenuous activity generates heat in the body, and that could form a dangerous combination. According to a New York Times story, the NFL performs about 10, tests for performance-enhancing drugs to about 1, players each year.
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Selected randomly, players are tested at least once a year, but most are asked to give a urine sample multiple times during the season. In the offseason, players can be tested as many as six times, any time at any place. The overall health of the players is the main reason a banned-substance policy has been in place since , Birch said.
Players gaining an unfair, artificial competitive edge is also a big reason why so many substances are outlawed, Birch added. The NFL and its players union begins the player education of banned substances at the pre-draft combine. Prospects are tested there and provided seminars and paperwork about the NFL's drug program. Not only is a list of banned substances provided, so is a list of banned supplement companies. EAS is the only supplement company authorized by the NFL and the NFLPA because it has agreed to not only use ingredients that are approved but also to develop those supplements in laboratories that follow the proper chain of manufacturing the product.
The most recent Game Maker's Toolkit has a bit about this in WoW, talking about how it gives you a bonus for taking a break in between sessions to incentivize you to not spend so much time on it. Destiny feels like it asks for maybe hours a week once you finish the story, and then doesn't reward you above that as a way of saying "Okay, you have done everything you need to this week, now you are done. In the modern AAA gaming culture, devs seem to want you to play their game forever, giving endless feedback loops meant to keep you chained in to a game and to buy whatever the dev wants to sell you.
Now, I'm not about to say Activision is at the forefront of respecting player purchases, we do have the whole bright engram shader fiasco to deal with, but they do respect your time in this game, with a small investment each week before letting you go free. As to your question, I feel like there should be some reward for doing the hard content, yes. I like this system of rewarding you with different, but not strictly better loot, because it means I don't fall hopelessly behind in the future.
I know this sounds silly in the context of what you are saying, but what if there was for example "Playtime Coins" that rewarded the amount of time you were in combat in the game. People who play more, obviously get more "Playtime Coins" these coins are used to unlock unique perhaps community made so there are infinite variations like some of the Warframe stuff?
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People who just play a minimal amount will still be able to compete, but people who play a ton will be dressed to the nines. There will be 2 groups of people who dislike it, those who feel it incentivizes paying real world money Easily fixed if you are moral enough to only reward them through gameplay And people who legitimately just dont care about cosmetics. The problem with Destiny right now is, ultimately, because of two things Bungie is trying to cater to: PvP and casual players. By catering to PvP, we have: By catering to the casual players, we have: The point is, when everyone is Legend, nobody is.
Sure, you can play for 3hr a week and progress at the same rate as the guy playing 30hr a week. But by essentially giving a giant finger to the guy that would play the game for three years , Bungie is not only alienating part of their fan base, but also slowly watering down their game into another COD reskin. The problem with Destiny is that it tries to do 'too much', and balances everything including ideals that are often incompatible, such as 'balanced PvP' vs 'Super cool stuff in PvE" against each other into a pretty bland, homogeneous experience.
They expected to sell a ton of copies, have players "beat" the game, move on and come back for DLC1. That's basically the 'shortened' version of what they were doing in D1, which was more along the lines of the "MMO Grind". Then when DLC1 comes out, watch as we move the goalposts a teeny bit further".
This works when the base gameplay loop is compelling one way or another see: This doesn't work when your loop is, effectively, boring and lacking. I mean, take it to its logical conclusion Now I spend a dollar to consistently win about 12 cents. They gut the PvE side to make things fair for PvP.
They then gut the PvP side to make things fair for PvE. The only thing that makes sense is like you said, they plan on 'hooking people' with DLC, which has its own sets of problems. I believe Destiny 2 is selling worse than Destiny 1. That said, it's physical copies, as the digital sales are starting to surpass physical, and the PC version hasn't released yet. A while back I made a post about what I call "Texas Gamers.
MMOs like World of Warcraft tend to be the most popular, but Destiny 1 was big in this label as well. I absolutely love video games, but I don't ever want to be stuck to one. I like being able to beat a game, put it down, then move on to the next one. That's actually why I never played the original Destiny. I rented Destiny 2 and really liked the gameplay, and I'll probably buy it later, play through the story, and then put it down while I wait for the expansion.
I fully understand the frustration this creates for long-term players, though. If you want to just play Destiny and perpetually work to expand your character you don't really have that ability with Destiny 2. Once the new expansion drops, someone who stopped playing 2 weeks ago will probably be able to catch up in no time. Bungie has basically given up the endgame in place of casual, temporary players with the hope that they'll keep coming back to pick up the expansions. At the extreme end you can just give PvP players an entirely separate loot pool to PvE or limited loadouts, or CoD style set weapon unlock progression , which gives you absolute free reign to design whatever the hell exotics or random rolls you want in PvE.
What is incompatible is the need to be able to take a PvE character and plop it into PvP and have both modes cater to all audiences ironically though if your PvP character was completely separate to your PvP one then it would make Iron Banner an exciting and interesting event since it could just be a "rules off" PvE free for all. I feel that getting rid of the random rolls for the extra abilities and stats on weapons was a mistake.
That would help immensely in keeping the grind for those who would like to do that. I also feel that way when it comes to simplifying all the subclasses. With the amount of content D2 has, there is more than enough room for experiments with your abilities. I hope through the DOCs they add more choices, and allow players who do not purchase it to also use the new choices. However, I do like that you can get the powerful engrams to level up to max power level, without touching the raid.
So having albeit a more drawn out grind a way to get to the max power is nice. Not downvoting you but I extremely disagree with you. You don't make a longstanding game by making all content available. You make it so people have something to aspire to. Bungie must have some sort of data to support this if they implemented it. No, you make a longstanding game by having actual depth and skill.
Players should aspire to be good , not to unlock content. Warframe used to be like this until they introduced riven mods with randomized stats that did all but the thing the developers said it was meant to do, which was help balance the weaker weapons in the game. A select few have gotten really good since they were always semi viable but now have the privilege of getting awesome mod rolls, but the majority of mods you get are virtually useless because they don't do enough to bring the majority of weapons in line with the top dogs that have only benefited under this system.
I don't have the stats to make any assessment, but my hypothesis is that one of the reasons for introducing the randomized stat system in mods was to get players who had collected everything in the game back on the gear treadmill. Payday 1 and Payday 2 - PvE multiplayer - 1 had a pretty limited XP system, you maxed out relatively easily and had the same as everyone else; however the guns felt good, the hardest difficult was damn hard and the design was pretty good.
Still randomly play it from time to time. Payday 2 has a loot-grind, with XP, weapons and mods. I got turned off at the point of loot crates and "balance patches" they remedied it a bit but my friends also stopped playing and it still created yet more grind; especially bullet spong enemies , however the game was still pretty solid with a large range of difficulties and mission types and player abilities, even if the combat was a bit shoddy and challenge being more survival than tactics. The long game here comes perhaps from frequent content updates and high end achievements that really are tough to get.
Balance was out of the window, but who cares? Vermintide - Everyone can get, really, the same loot like Payday but it is a mega grind for some parts - anything unused can be pooled to roll new item abilities which can help. The grind did set me into "play daily" and I don't have regular friends playing it alas - high end achievements were added which are mostly out of my reach. However the quality is relatively high; just needs better game modes and maybe PvP like Left4Dead to help me play it more.
The Division - 3rd person sure, but is grindy and I'm playing a lot recently. I skipped this on release bugs, no "endgame" - and some changes made have increased the lootification in some parts, but relieved the need for it in others game never becomes "ultra easy", with more difficulties added.
It takes some time to get up to a decent set of gear but once you plateau apart from some unique weapon abilities and armour sets you're done difficulty-wise. The loot drops are almost excessive for the inventory space you're given everything else bar Borderlands on this list has unlimited slots but allows you to usually find everything reasonably quickly.
The gameplay is quite fun - it's a much more competent 3rd person shooter then I'd given it credit for due to the use of enemy varieties and tech abilities also as a game it looks and feels amazing, very good controls. Hardest difficulties are not terrible and some maps added lend themselves to "figuring it out" then fighting and there is a PvP zone which is tense although band-aided balance wise and some other game modes which are at least interesting to try. I'm still in the "dailies" race but that's fading, I hope I still carry on playing after I'm "done".
Ease of connecting to random people you've played with and an open world environment really help though, compared to compartmentalised levels like in Left4Dead, Payday or Vermintide. I must admit that most of the games on my list I revisit only sometimes but I have lots of hours in them, a lot of the time well past the point of "finishing" the loot grind, and this is without a serious play group that is going for some high end game achievements. Would love to know the high and low points of other games PvE games with co-op.
Killing Floor 2 is in my library, unplayed, for instance. I'm a filthy casual and I never expected to get my hunter to but I'm getting close It shouldn't be that way. What am I striving for if anyone can get there? I haven't even played since the reset because I can catch up pretty easily.
If there's no challenge when I've have nothing to chase after. At this rate I can probably cram my alts up to in the last 2 weeks before the DLC drops. That's takes the fun out of it. People that reach the level cap should be the top tier players. I want to be WOW-ed by them. It encourages me to play more and get better. They're like rockstars and if I put in the time I can be one too. When I learned how to play guitar I practiced everyday for hours. If I didn't have the time I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today.
It should be the same for a game like Destiny. Maybe I'm the minority but I don't think that the philosophy that having the top tier levels more accessible to more players is going to sell more games and make things more enjoyable. There are games that you can finish and I like those games but D1 was a game I kept coming back to because I wasn't finished getting better at it and setting new goals to achieve. The quest was brutal for me. It forced me to play. I noticed a significant improvement in my gameplay. I squeezed it out with blood sweat and tears and it was glorious.
You know what was the best part? PvP is a learned skill. Learning that skill gave a reward.
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There's nothing like that in D2. Destiny wanted to be a slightly MMO game. The line in the sand they drew with D2 unfortunately seems to be leaning much more towards the casual crowd now, as apposed to builing on what they had created the past 3 years of D1. The entitlement and angst alone in this thread would be enough to vindicate my decision if I were a dev. I don't have Destiny 2, but I recognize the difference between being entitled about something and being very passionate about something. Many Destiny 1 players are passionate about the series, and don't like where it's headed in Destiny 2.
They are publicly venting their frustrations. Public discourse is always good, from both sides. I think the gaming population is blind to what their words and behaviors look like to the outside. There are a number of people pretty clearly mad that their gambling addiction was taken away - that they are entitled to a game which they can play for hundreds and hundreds of hours. They're not saying that the balance is worse, it's less fun to play.
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Their entire argument is that playing for months on end no longer makes them clearly superior to people who don't - and that's entitlement. I'd like to see more ganes take a page from Monster Hunter regarding loot, and make gear something you craft with drops from completing quests. This has the side-effect of making your gear a function not of your luck, but rather of the amount of work you put into the game. The monster drops occur in a significant enough quantity that you're not really relying on luck, but rather, time.
Usually when you're trying to make something you can reliably predict how long it will take you to do so. Most monsters have one or two rare drops, but in practice you have so many rolls at them that it's not hard to get as many as you need. Speaking from my own experience, by the time I was done with Generations I had about a dozen Glavenus Flame Orbs sitting in my inventory and that was after selling some of them for cash. As for talismans, that is a completely separate system for crafting. You don't need talismans to make weapons or armor - they are only there to help you get more armor skills on your set.
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This is a system that had plenty of issues, but as I said, it's a separate topic entirely. I'd rather it not. I spent way more time than I like grinding the same bosses over and over to get my sets and many simply do not have the time or dedication to put forth 10s of hours potentially more if you are unlucky just for one set. I'm fine with loot, but I'm not fine with ceaseless grinding hoping that "this is the time" I get lucky. And what I'm saying is that Monster Hunter solves this problem elegantly by making your gear a function of time and effort rather than pure luck.
Loot-based games are designed to be time sinks. If you want to play a game where everything is handed to you without you having to spend time, then you shouldn't be playing loot-based games at all. I don't think monster hunter did it well at all, but that's where we both agree to disagree. Loot-based games are always going to have some amount of luck involved to them. What is an example of a loot-based game that does it right in your opinion? But do you think that all players even the ones who don't play very much should be able to easily get the highest levels of gear in a loot-based game?
Even if that gear isn't necessary to complete the high-end content? I think that's a game design decision that developers should make. It's up to them to gauge and design the game so that it feels rewarding to most players, not just the ones that dedicate themselves the most. That's how I feel about that. They definitely took the 'balance and accessibility' route in Destiny 2 vs the 'variety and longevity' route in Destiny 1.
The game is fair and open to everyone now, but there is now a point where the game is essentially over, which never happened before.
It's just a big change. Imagine if one day WoW updated the game and removed item levels, so everybody could raid as soon as they hit max character level lol. I think it's a tough act to balance because on one hand you want to keep players engaged as long as possible and for that you can tweak the gear progression and make it steeper and harder the more they progress, on the other hand, you need players to have good reasons to raid and by making them more accessible to a larger quantity of players you might be able to guarantee more sales of post-game content.
I don't think it's an easy problem to solve. There will always be people that prefer putting more effort in than others but when WoW, as an example, made high-level gear more accessible to players with their first expansion, they were able to reach a much larger audience. There are definitely pros and cons to both methods, and I understand and sympathise with both sides.
Having the best loot drops be based upon an otherwise mundane item getting perfect stat rolls is imo a bad way to create long term content. Having spent months, if not years, of my life playing games like WoW and D3, simply giving players a miniscule chance for better loot if they farm something for months is going to turn off as many players as it attracts.
While better players are likely to eventually have better loot, theres incredible tail risk that players can spend weeks running the same content with no reward. The better solution is to create cosmetic or prestige incentives and rewards for hardcore players. Whether it's leaderboards, achievements, special vehicles or skins which can only be gained by perfect play or harder difficulties, there are lots of options that more reliably reward skill and time investment.
I tend to think of loot based character progression as kind of a design failure in general. If it does happen, not hamstringing players on the low end seems like a fair enough bandaid to a bigger core problem. The guy who mentioned how the gameplay should just be made better makes the best point I think. If something is fun enough to play, the stuff surrounding it is just bonus.
But I also don't necessarily think the Destiny 1 approach to gear was great. Random perks on gear means running the same dungeon, hoping you get the gear, and THEN hoping you get the right version of that gear. The player can see those multiple levels of required chance and that's extremely off-putting. My solution would be something like a new NPC that offers extremely difficult challenges, or requires multiple completions of a raid, or the defeat of a special boss designed to be more difficult than anything else in the game.
Something that only the hardcore players would even want to do. Completing enough tasks for them could reward points that you can turn and spend on adding perks to your gear. But the RNG over there to get the items to upgrade your weapon is pretty intense. I'm not a huge fan of randomness in MMO type games. And I think a visible grind is always better than an invisible one. You at least know you're making progress when you can see it.
I think it's obviously done as a way to sell more games and build a playerbase, but having lived through WoW's WotLK, what these kind of changes do to a MMO is to radically reduce the quality of the experience to the point that they drive away their core audience leaving a playerbbase who is going to hit maxlevel and then quit. Mark Brown hotlinked to I completely agree with you about driving a core playerbase audience away, as I was also one of the people who quit WoW shortly after WotLK for the same reasons.
I tried Legion, and while it was a damn polished experience, it just felt watered down and different enough, in a bad way, to not keep me around for more than two months. I feel like I'm a living warning to watch what you wish for. Played a year of BC, but dropped because the just-large-enough-to-raid guilds I was tanking for kept imploding when someone's situation would change. I was so psyched for WotLK's changes, but trying to PUG 5-man content as I had in BC, where I earned a rep on my server as a skilled tank, was like going from being a generally-respected member of a neighborhood to a I don't even know what.
In BC, if I announced on general that we were looking for 3 dps for heroic Shattered Halls the replies were too many and too fast to keep up with. Now in WotLK I had no idea why all these people treated me like I was a seditious intern, but everything they did made my job as a tank harder.
I got nothing for that grief except diminished enjoyment. It was like a job. Not even a good job. There's no denying that the cross-realm dungeon matching and later raid matching queue opened the game up to the vast majority of the playerbase. Taking that community away left you at the mercy of WoW's version of 4chan; perfect anonymity and zero accountability.
So I basically quit WoW, only coming back to level a character to the new cap and then quit again as each expansion went on sale. Came here to say this. However the game had lots of tiers of loot, so item levels climbed much higher than in previous expansions much faster.
Because they wanted more people to experience Ice Crown Citadel, they released essentially a baby mode raid inbetween Ulduar and Ice Crown that completely nullified the need to experience the GOOD content. This essentially means you're always playing the latest content, but a lot of the time that content isn't even very good and it obsoletes better more fun content.
It's one of those 'there are different kinds of players' problems. Some people want to just play the content once, be done with it, then come back later for new content. Others want to keep playing the content until they have perfected it. The new Destiny caters almost entirely to the first kind of player I mentioned.
Very true there are different type of players. But what I don't understand is why players who max one character don't start a new one in a different class, with a different build? Leveling alts happens incredibly quick after maxing out one character. Zach enjoyed kayaking and fishing and living life one day at a time. Zachary had a love for life that everyone should take a lesson from. He always thought being angry was such a waste of time and brought so much joy to the people around him.
Zachary had Asthma and unfortunately died fighting for breath on a beautiful pond in Princeton, MA.
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We hope that his spirit will live on not only on Paradise Pond, but anywhere people are trying to live a little more for today, being a little less hurried and maybe saying something nice to someone instead of nothing at all. There are many qualities Zach possessed, and all bring a sense of peace to his family when we think of what Zach brought to each and every one of us.
It is what makes for a happy life. A fun loving, kind life, which is all he ever wanted for people. So, it is with heavy hearts, that we will work to carry on his care for children, generosity, love for hockey and desire to teach all kids to have fun and play. May he be saving.