The Weird Dead State that is Destiny 2’s In-game Communication

Like all modern games, Destiny 2 has an in-game chat function and in-game voice chat. The default settings are push-to-talk, but voice is enabled from the start, as is the chat feature. It’s just a feature that’s always there. After all, parts of Destiny 2 require communication and timing to complete. It’s not just mindless shooting. You need a chat feature, right? In a normal game, of course! In most games, even if you can’t use voice chat, some people will use text chat. If you have a hub area, some people may chat in it. To be fair, most… [Continue Reading]

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The Problems with Region Chat in Warframe

Region Chat, Recruiting Chat and Trade Chat are all very weird things and very different beasts. Recruiting Chat is filled with the same bunch of people trying to get others to join their Rad Shares, sprinkled with the odd recruitment for clans. Trade Chat is mostly filled with people wanting to buy Prime sets for next to nothing or trying to sell their riven mods for huge amounts of Platinum (even if they’re not very good). Region Chat is… a different beast. Because that is where most of the moderators live. Most of the time, moderation in Recruiting Chat and… [Continue Reading]

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The Daily SPUF Discord and other assorted things!

Good news everyone! Times are changing! We’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing and ol’Medic here has set up a Discord server! I mean, why the hell not? We could do with a place to properly chat and meet up and things like that! The server is open to anyone with a validated Discord account. The rules are simple and can be summarized in one sentence: Don’t Be A Dick. There’s some other minor rules as well (such as no spamming and no porn) but Don’t Be A Dick covers pretty much everything. Anyone who sticks around and… [Continue Reading]

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Relays and Region Chat

Despite the loneliness of the Orbiter, the silent life of a Warframe, you are always in contact with other Tenno. Whether it’s via the casual concourses of the Relays or the communication system of Region Chat, there’s always someone to talk to. In a moderated fashion. The thing is though, people seem to think that chat, late night Region Chat in particular, is some weird, creepy place where people talk about lewd things. That’s not necessarily true though. It all depends on what’s being discussed at the time. Conversations can go in weird directions and sometimes you end up talking… [Continue Reading]

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Twitch Chat: The Beast with a Billion Faces

The CSGO tournament ESL Cologne 2016 was this week, and despite the fact that each day began at my 1:30am, I’ve been staying up and loving every single day of it. It has all the highs and lows of high-level CSGO play, the shout casters are among the best in the world, and the production quality rivals traditional sports events. And yet somehow, one of my favorite parts of the tournament is the unfiltered meme-spewing echo chambers in the Twitch chat. Ever since Twitch Plays Pokemon introduced the concept of game streaming to me, I’ve spent countless hours watching various… [Continue Reading]

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Twitch Chat – Hell on Earth

Aabicus thinks that Twitch Chat is somewhat cute. It’s apparently endearing or something. Well he’s wrong. Twitch Chat is probably the most horrible thing I have seen that isn’t violent or gross or whatever. It’s an all-round turn off and a giant sign screaming that we’re all sheep. Especially in major e-sports events. Seriously it’s fucking retarded. The only thing worse is probably a youtube comment section on a particularly bait-y subject. Either way though, it’s the same set of utter idiots who scream and gurgle and shout and drool. And a ton of shitty emoticons and ‘jokes’. People screaming… [Continue Reading]

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Little-Known TF2 Mechanics

In order to make this list, said TF2 mechanic needs to (1) heavily affect some aspect of playing the game normally, (2) be completely unexplained or hidden, and (3) be something I somehow only learned in 2016 despite my pathological addiction to analyzing every facet of this game. I’ve divided the list into three “major” and three “minor” mechanics. Major 1: Projectile Models on some weapons affect aerodynamics. Several of the projectiles in TF2 actually care about the drag on the fired projectile, which means that, for example, most of the grenade launchers fire even more differently than their stats… [Continue Reading]

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Communication makes things easier…

Communication makes the world go round. Actually, that’s a lie, the reason the Earth spins is to do with the conservation of angular momentum and gravity and things like that. But communication does make life a LOT easier in pretty much everything in life. Team Fortress 2 is no exception to that rule. Two things pop into mind when you think about communication in TF2 – heavily community-based servers where everyone knows each other and competitive games. In competitive TF2, communication is a matter of life and death – no matter how good a team is, bad communication will bring… [Continue Reading]

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