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Easy Allies |OT3| "That sounds like the GameTrailers guy!"

abrack08

Member
Why did the banish fail anyway? Them trying to explain it got overly complicated, but eventually Ben said roll 11 or higher and Ian got a 13. Needing such a high roll to cast a spell on yourself that you're not resisting seems unreasonable, but I guess this is just nitpicking.

Ben said Therese needed to succeeded basically to show she could compose herself enough while falling to successfully cast the spell. She needed a 16 total, which was 11 + 5 modifier. Ian said 13, which was presumably the total with the modifier added already (so she rolled an 8).

Personally I think Ben does a great job, and is also good at admitting when he makes mistakes (and maybe a bit too hard on himself sometimes as well). I'm much more concerned with TTE being an entertaining show more than following the rules as strictly as possible, and it's one of my favorite things that EZA does (despite having only played DnD once myself and not being that into it).
 
I actually enjoyed my time with Dead Space 3. I played through it with a fellow gaffer and we just had absolutely bonkers weapons that destroyed everything after a while. I rolled with a double stasis sniper rifle and advanced telekinesis. It was a delightful romp. Of course, it was a shitty Dead Space game
 

rtcn63

Member
Dead Space 3 is a better whatever it is than Resident Evil 6. I've played both multiple times and on the hardest difficulties.

With DS3, enemies are much more aggressive in movement, attack, and number due to the action-oriented co-op theme, so stopping power and stasis (which is more lenient in default charges, and can I believe go from empty to full over time) take the forefront over the previous games. This also means that the plasma cutter isn't so great, because it has little to no stopping power.

The machine and chain guns (which IIRC use the military engine and telemetry spike parts respectively) can basically take you through the entire game. Focus on increasing clip size and damage, then pair with an accessory that alters your individual bullets. The electric charge has high stopping power built-in, and then there's the stasis coating which well... slows enemies. More like effectively freezes them on the lower difficulties when combined with the high rate of fire of said weapons.

Played the game again recently so it's all still there in my head. The shooting, as annoying as the enemies can be because of their aggressiveness, is still a lot more enjoyable than in RE6.
 

sora87

Member
Just finished part 1 of the souls retrospective. Script felt a bit rough at some points. Overall it felt like an overview video throughout. There wasn't much new that I learned about the game. With previous retrospectives, I felt a more behind the scenes vibe with lots of interesting info on development such as design stories behind certain levels.

The video felt a bit rushed. It seemed that Brad had a bit of trouble writing the script as this came out a bit later than it was supposed to. Not meaning to be a dick here btw.
Love & Respect.

Now to watch the Matthewmatosis commentary for the 4th time =P

The souls games have been covered to death already, we weren't going to learn any new info or anything really.
 

rtcn63

Member
Still watching the DS3 stream. So Blood's playing Dark Souls 3 soon? Hopefully he finishes TEW first.

The bosses in DS3 are pretty bad. Hitting that damned Metroid Prime in the mouth orbs (even with stasis) can be hard because you have to keep a fair distance away. It's charging attack is spammable BS.
 
I actually enjoyed my time with Dead Space 3. I played through it with a fellow gaffer and we just had absolutely bonkers weapons that destroyed everything after a while. I rolled with a double stasis sniper rifle and advanced telekinesis. It was a delightful romp. Of course, it was a shitty Dead Space game

Co-op tends to elevate games well above their "station." It's the main reason why I've never played more than the first chapter of RE6. I kept asking my brother and friends if they'd play through it with me but they refused to subject themselves to it. :/
 
(Latest) Frame Trap 38

I agree with Kyle on Skullgirls designs (he only brings up Filia and Cerebella but a few more are applicable) and their potential conflict with mass appeal despite success. Ben, being open about loving anime and the like, I certainly would expect to embrace Alex Ahad designs. That made it odd for me hearing his counterpoint to Kyle's thoughts about the general public response, while he's not wrong about the animations creating life and justification for some of the design quirks.

I found it even more weird that after Kyle clarified that it was his personal take, Ben immediately relieved with a "We're always going to have dumb opinions sometimes." spiel afterwards. It was pretty jarring.

Kyle can have some crazy opinions sometimes, but that wasn't one of them.

On the bright side, Ben's impressions on Divinity: Original Sin 2 have me intrigued. I tried the first one and really disliked it, but I'm hearing from posters on GAF that the overall package (NPC companions, combat, skill usage) is much stronger. I'm considering checking it out.

On the contrary Kyle's dumb opinion had me shaking my head and I was so relieved when Ben spoke (joking) sense. I can certainly appreciate people finding the Skullgirls designs abrasive or offputting, but they are hardly low quality, inconsistent, or poorly represented by their frontwomen Filia and Cerebella. And more than that, I don't think Kyle could be more mistaken when he says that Skullgirls did well in spite of its designs.

The "we're going to have dumb opinions sometimes" was meant to be a joke, but I don't think the delivery did a good job of that so I could definitely see how it would be jarring.

Between the Silicon stuff and not correctly stating the Divinity 2 is fully voiced, there are some things I wish I could change about the last episode.

No, Ben don't walk it back! You were right! Kyle was wrong! Skullgirls designs are pretty good. Pretty pretty pretty good. Cerebella and Filia set up false expectations that everyone's going to have weird hair powers in the same way Ryu and Ken set up expectations everyone's going to wear gis and throw shoryukens. Then I played Blanka. No gi. No shoryuken. What's the deal with airline food?

Besides if any character is more deserving of a spot on the box than Filia or Cerebella, it's clearly best girl Beowulf and his shining chair of justice. Putting Peacock on the box makes me think I'm about to engage in some weird Cupheadsian 1929 era Mickey Mouse hijinx. Now THERE'S a bait and switch.

And as to Divinity 2, while it IS very nearly fully voiced, your own character is not. A minor, but to some people, I'm sure, important distinction. So you weren't entirely wrong about it being NOT fully voiced.

"Dumb" opinion just means an opinion where internet nerds will call you dumb. I.e. not liking LttP or something like that. If everyone's favorites games where SMW, OoT and TLOU, that wouldn't be very interesting or allow for new perspectives to be talked about, and thus it would be bad for business as Kyle said.

Yeah! And I am that dumb nerd. Kyle is obviously entitled to his opinion about Filia and Cerebela being bad, lame, or deceptively non-representative of the cast, but I felt like it was reasonable that Ben called it out as perhaps a little off the mark.
 

Mista Koo

Member
Nope, it's just been the last two years.

I finished Frame Trap earlier and do people think NetherRealm's games look good? Because they're the most successful fighting games around these days and personally, I think they're really ugly game. Their art style is ugly, their animations are janky as hell and up until very recently, their female characters looked fucking terrible.
I would've agreed if we we're talking pre-MKX. MKX and Injustice 2 look great, and in MKX the character designs are generally good too.

I still don't prefer the art style nor the bad animations. Heck I've bought Injustice 2 and barely touched it after I was done with the story. But it is the mainstream fighting game in the US for a reason and it pulls in people like Huber and Jones who aren't exactly fighting game fans. Sure parts of having a mainstream game means BS like microtransactions and experience points, but it did advance the genre when it comes to simplified controls and story modes. Look at the most innovative fighter of this year, For Honor. It removed all the character of a fighter, offered a mechanically unique system, and ran away from the fighting games niche successfully.

(I have more to say about Skullgirls, but I'll have to finish Frame Trap first.)
 
Ryu and Ken set up expectations everyone's going to wear gis and throw shoryukens. Then I played Blanka. No gi. No shoryuken. What's the deal with airline food?

If everyone wore a Gi and threw hadoukens, I actually might enjoy playing a Street Fighter game.


The art, story, and gameplay style are the three main things that bring me and other casual players into NetherRealm games. Players like me don't actually enjoy fighting games, but the dressing is so good, we're willing to give them a chance. I'd totally prefer if the next Mortal Kombat was a third person action adventure game.
 

Mista Koo

Member
Finished the hottake, I agree with Kyle that Filia and Cerebella are the worst designs in Skullgirls (especially Cerebella). I disagree that they are bad representatives for the game, I like both of their parasite hair/hat both in form and function but it's the rest of their bodies/outfits that tell us nothing about them. I think Squigly should've replaced Cerebella had she been a launch character, but in general "mostly human monster girls" represents the game well.

It doesn't help that Filia's figure was designed according to the designer's "tastes" and her story starts with her getting groped :X
 
Was I imagining it or did the Allies say they were planning a Persona 5 Spoiler Mode? I'm just about to finish it so I was looking forward to hearing them speak more openly about it.
 

Karu

Member
Oh, Gundam tonight! Bought Steamworld Dig 2 (which is fantastic so far) and will enjoy it alongside the stream tonight, woo.
 
Oh man, Until Dawn was pretty awesome. Now I can't wait for a Hidden Agenda pajama party.

It's funny, I actually bought the game, but decided to just watch GT play through it since I don't have a lot of time at home currently.
 
I was facepalming when he brought that up again.

Yeah, that was weird. That rumour always came off like it was formed from the salty tears of a Nintendo fanboy.

Also, did Damiani say Ni no Kuni 2 was delayed because of Xenoblade 2 or did I mishear that? If he did then that's an enormous leap to take given that they're on completely different systems and Ni no Kuni's the bigger franchise of the two.
 

sora87

Member
It's too bad that EZA isn't about this life but I feel like a group(not all of them but maybe 2-3 and maybe more in a setup where people divide the work duty) stream show of them sharing the pain of getting the ff9 plat would be amazing.

https://clips.twitch.tv/InventiveWanderingPanM4xHeh

Also this

I'd love nothing more than the JRPG crew (kyle/ben/brad) to get together each week and work their way through ff9. I'd up my pateron pledge for it.
 

Zeroro

Member
Excited to hear Ben's thoughts on Danganronpa V3 and see if he ends up coming out of it positively or negatively, because that game's proving to be just as polarizing over here as it was in Japan.
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Really hope they finish off table escapades one day.

They are on episode 70 right now. Each episode gets less and less viewers most likely because people fall behind.

Regardless, I'd love for them to move onto something else one day.

I'd love for them to play mafia, or werewolf or whatever it's called. Not recurring obviously, but something different each week or every few weeks with the 5 of them.
Like risk. Or Catan.
Stuff like that.
 

Hasney

Member
Nah, new arc in D&D. That stuff can be its own show, but I want the story and improved more than specifically playing a board game.
 

farisr

Member
They should stick to what they like which may just be another D&D campaign, and doing what they like is essential to the feel of EZA.

Now, prefacing this part of the post. This is not a suggestion or necessarily something I personally want to replace tabletop/board games. But yeah all this talk about replacing Tabletop when it ends got me thinking.

Hypothetically, if they wanted to go strictly for success/viewcounts and possibly bringing in a good amount of new patrons, I think it's pretty obvious what they should go for just looking at what works on YT, and what's popular on their channel.

An "EZA Watches/discusses" series where they go through a show or anime (that some or all of them may not have watched) episode by episode (showing about 10 minutes worth of edited footage per ep alongside their reaction for fair use purposes) and a discussion at the end of each one. It would seriously bring in a good number of new patrons and funding. And much like how Tabletop is shot, a bunch would be recorded in one sitting and then released over the course of a few weeks/months.

Like it or not, there's a reason why their reactions are the most viewed videos on their channel and this would be an extension of that, expanding outside of the strictly games medium (like they have done already with a few series).
 
I've said it before, them playing D&D is absolutely fine and brings some fantastic moments, but they always go on for far too long. 70 episodes now. 70 hours. That's almost 3 days. Yeah yeah, it's all on Youtube and you can watch it whenever you like blah blah blah...

They need to condense each series down. That way we'd get new stories, new characters, maybe even new Allies. Maybe even Don!

Come to think of it, has Damiani ever done a Fiasco episode? He hasn't has he? I'd like to see that. And Blood.
 

Anticol

Banned
I've said it before, them playing D&D is absolutely fine and brings some fantastic moments, but they always go on for far too long. 70 episodes now. 70 hours. That's almost 3 days. Yeah yeah, it's all on Youtube and you can watch it whenever you like blah blah blah...

They need to condense each series down. That way we'd get new stories, new characters, maybe even new Allies. Maybe even Don!

Come to think of it, has Damiani ever done a Fiasco episode? He hasn't has he? I'd like to see that. And Blood.

You are completely right. I like TTE but it is almost impossible to start listening again without listening to the past 50 hours. They should make 10 hours campaigns and they should be allowed to keep thrir chatacters or get new ones do whatever they want but keep the campaibgs clearly condensed on YouTube.
 

Karu

Member
Nah, just make a new arc in the same world. Restricting it to a set number of episodes is an awful idea even if they decided to speed up a given arc.
 

Holundrian

Unconfirmed Member
I think it's kinda dangerous dropping something like TTE looking at the numbers tells me that most of the people watching tte are the hardcore so likely patrons.
So while trying to expand your viewership is of course desirable you still need to make sure to not abandon your core I'd say especially as a patreon. Like who can really say how much of a reason TTE is to some people that are already patrons?
I'd say at most they maybe should consider exploring making it easier to catch up/get back in but not sure I'm also honestly also ok if I don't get to enjoy tte if I don't invest the time to follow it.
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Why would I watch a new campaign when I haven't even watched the old one? I wouldn't.

Viewership wise, it'd do even worse than the old one.

Not saying eza has to go mainstream, but we have 70+ of dd, I'd like to see them try something new, more easily digestible, where I can jump in at reasonably any point.

Fiasconauts is a perfect example.

At a later date, go back to dd, not saying to never do it again.
 
They've basically been rushing to the endgame for a while now in TTE. I'd prefer shorter standalone arcs myself (don't have to be in the same world) because I'd rather have that then a rush to the end as soon as interest starts to peter out. That's not very satisfying when you've spent so much time building characters and the world up. And just personally, while I've definitely enjoyed TTE recently, the rushed feeling has basically put me in a mindset where I'm ready to be done with that world and set of characters.

I'd like something new as well. Because at the end of the day, I'm not watching TTE because it's D&D. I'm watching it because of the people at the table.
 

ShadyK54

Member
I say they should just keep doing what they’re doing & change course when they feel they want to try something else or take a break from D&D.
 
I like the D&D show and don't want it to stop, but having some other table-top stuff in the mix could be awesome as well. There have been a few Easy Updates where they have played some games (that Star Wars fighter squadron game, Bloodborne the board game, etc) would love to see that be more regular.

If the allies wanted to do board game streams, or even more produced content like board game reviews, I'd be into that as well. Not Monopoly though, please god :p

I really think the strength of EasyAllies is the group dynamic when there's at least 3 or 4 of them together, hopefully they're thinking of more ways to play into that strength (that are not more podcasts haha).

L&R
 

Karu

Member
Why would I watch a new campaign when I haven't even watched the old one? I wouldn't.

Viewership wise, it'd do even worse than the old one.

Not saying eza has to go mainstream, but we have 70+ of dd, I'd like to see them try something new, more easily digestible, where I can jump in at reasonably any point.

Fiasconauts is a perfect example.

At a later date, go back to dd, not saying to never do it again.
You say they should do something more disgestible and then go on and mention Fiasconauta. There is your answer. They can serve both audiences.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Regarding D&D:
I'd like them to try something other than D&D myself, i suggested Vampire the Masquerade, but there are countless others.

Just because D&D is the most basic choice, and a bit boring and predictable.
But i understand that Ben doesn't have the time to learn a new rule set, and all the trouble it'd require.

That said, the series doesn't really have that drastic of character development, for the most part (aside from Pomper and Yogalla, i guess) so i wouldn't mind them rotating characters more often, be it through harsher deaths, or shorter story lines.

It's fun to see them inhabit new personalities, and exit their comfort zones, even.
But i also understand them, wanting to grow a character and stick with them, even if it can become a bit stale.

My only real gripe, is spending 1 (sometimes more) entire episode preparing an ambush that:
1) Probably won't even spring into action.
2) If it does, it'll give minimal tactical advantage.

Those points, and there have been a few, slow the pacing to a crawl, and i'm inevitably checking my phone or doing something else for the entire episode, as they reiterate positioning, and check rules etc etc, all amounting to very minimal pay off.

Don't want to sound too harsh, i understand that Ben can't deny them this type of planning, but i think it's still worth to consider the pacing of the show, above D&D's rules, since this is meant for consumption, not just them playing for themselves.

Just my 2 cents.

Also, TTE is still my #1 reason for following EZA, i should say; so was TTA with GT.
 

Bahorel

Member
I am ready for all the Jones hype about Red Dead next Thursday! fuck I'm excited!!

(too bad Trailer Jones is gone ;-; )

edit: wait okay I just noticed there's still a $2 patreon tier for Trailer Jones suggestions even though Trailer Jones is gone? huh
 
Frametrap:

While MvC:I will most likely be truly embraced by the FGC in two years time, that general base will all be talking about and being excited by the next Mortal Kombat.

People in the FGC get mad that NRS tends to let their games lapse after a couple years in order to market their new game, but I think casual fans like myself would rather the new game versus just updates and character releases in the old game. We're in it for the story. We're in it for the new character designs.
 

Fou-Lu

Member
It has already taken quite a bit of time for them to get a grasp of the 5E rules, doing a new system is just asking for trouble. I think they should do a new arc or campaign, but make sure each of the players do a more thorough read of the rules so there can be less time spent figuring out what can be done and how. Ben is a great DM and I know he is very busy, but he could probably get a better handle of the 5E rules too, but I also understand that Huber just likes doing things outside of the ruleset, haha.
 
Just adding my voice to the discuss above, TTE is probably my favourite EZA content – although there are definitely problems. While I'll be sad to see the story end, I don't think anyone would begrudge them a long break after this leviathan of a campaign.

If and when it returns, in whatever guise, my only suggestion would be to better pace fight scenes. I'm not sure if it's a D&D thing or an EZA thing, but there are (what feels like) a ton of 2-3 hour 'battles' with very little pay-off to them. There's got to be a way to speed it up – be it through a turn timer, altering the composition of battles (fewer enemies, but beefier), or some other way. It's at these points that the campaign drags, really. I still listen for the good vibes – TTE is number 1 in hearts – but I'm sure that others will be tuning out because of it. It also just artificially inflates the length of the campaign, making it more off-putting to newcomers.

I really wouldn't mind seeing it being streamed live on Twitch, and then cut into 1 hour chunks and put onto YouTube / SoundCloud over the following weeks. I think it would do a ton to increase awareness / viewership for the series. It's such a great show, and it's pretty heartbreaking to know that so few people are enjoying it.
 

Auctopus

Member
As someone who dropped off around March from D&D, I don't really have a opinion on the styling of the campaigns. Although I am saddened that if you don't maybe watch a month's worth, it's a slippery slope to missing out. I mean, there is absolutely zero chance I have the free time to catch up on this series anymore and it's purely because life got in the way a bit.

What I will add is that I think limiting the campaign to an amount of episodes is a really bad idea, especially with how sporadic the party's behaviour can be at the beginning of the stories. However, if the episodes continue to be filmed in sets of 4 - I kind of wish there was a slightly more robust catch-up at the beginning of each recording.
 

UrbanRats

Member
It has already taken quite a bit of time for them to get a grasp of the 5E rules, doing a new system is just asking for trouble. I think they should do a new arc or campaign, but make sure each of the players do a more thorough read of the rules so there can be less time spent figuring out what can be done and how. Ben is a great DM and I know he is very busy, but he could probably get a better handle of the 5E rules too, but I also understand that Huber just likes doing things outside of the ruleset, haha.
Yeah, as i said, i can see how learning a new rule set would be too taxing on Ben especially, since TTE isn't his only responsibility.

I do think it would make for an hilarious play ground to have Kyle be a trollish Nosferatu, or Huber be a Bruja brute, etc.
 
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