Demon's Souls for me as well. The game is a perfect examplar of how deliberate design may elevate an artwork beyond the level where lack of polish can harm it. Beyond the numerous means to horribly cheese almost every boss, the large number of overtuned weapons/mechanics and similar oversights is a game with unparalleled atmosphere and level design. I love figuring out obscure mechanics, mastering punishing games, ARPGs with iframe mechanics, slow and/or subtle stories, tone-centric art, and innovative mechanics... so it's practically made for me.
Not sure how many hours I've spent on Demon's Souls, but I'm positive it's 4 figures and that it would be much more if the community had not dried up.
I have still yet to play Bloodborne (soon), but Dark Souls' inferior level design and combat mechanics did not quite make up for its increased content and polish in other areas. I think the general distaste towards DaS2 is overblown or sometimes flat out wrong, but did not appreciate it as much either.
Yet Aliens would have to make use of natural laws to cause an anomaly, just as much so as nature.
It's very interesting, but I find it funny that when confronted with something inexplicable in our current knowledge so many people jump to an intelligence we don't yet understand instead of simply something natural we don't yet understand.
1. Learn to flip-turn if you aren't, because it'll cut down on your downtime when you don't need to rest. Freestyle is the best stroke for burning calories, if you want to work specific muscle groups instead then other strokes may be better for that. Get the technique of your strokes down - it's not as important for swimming to burn calories as for swimming for racing, but it will still help. It's amazing how much more energy efficient a well-executed stroke is than a clumsy one, and it translates to both speed and endurance (and is tied with breathing).
I'm not sure how it actually affects your efficiency, but you might consider resting by treading water instead of holding the lip of the pool. As a guy who played water polo and had to get good at eggbeater, if you try you will get to the point where you can eggbeater indefinitely and casually recover while doing it. It strikes me as a much less awkward position. People tend to find it hard and tiring as a beginner, but hey I guess that means you're burning calories.
2. Since it's so low impact, nothing really beyond the general things like not pushing yourself too hard. Don't hold your breath for overlong, it's not worth the strain because it won't even help as much as having good streamlined breathing for your strokes. And of course, don't run into a wall or dive into the bottom. A swimmer's dive should be very low angle with the surface of the water anyway, if you feel like diving.
3. For freestyle, you want to turn your head to the side as your opposite arm is finishing its reset (nearing full extension). By the time it begins its stroke (pulling), you should be done breathing with your head back down. In this time you should be able to get your mouth to the air mostly by turning your head and only very slightly tilting your neck back. The idea is you don't want to lift the crown of your head up. Exhale through nose while your head is in the water so you can purely inhale (through mouth) when you go up. If you have trouble staying going straight, alternate the side you breath from (every 3 strokes). Make sure you don't drop your arm deep into the water when you breath - it should be easy to fix if you aren't moving your head/spine/shoulders.
On the side you're breathing from, at the time you're breathing your hand should be pulled completely back just above your shoulder/near your neck and around the time to come out of the water to extend and reset its stroke. A neat thing of note with this is that it has just passed your mouth and created a small trough, making it easier to breath. This is good because the less you have to turn your neck, the less torque makes you want to turn the lower parts of your spine and the less you deviate from a hydrodynamic position. In freestyle, your momentum doesn't really stop so it's very impactful.
For breaststroke, at the end of each glide you should be going above the surface. Inhale through mouth then, exhale through nose below. You reset the stroke while above water and should be back to gliding position by the time you're starting the stroke. Think of resetting the stroke as drawing a heart (point away from you) that comes in fairly close below your pecs (at this point you are fairly upright with chest thrown a bit forward, above water breathing), and then the stroke is bisecting that heart as you kick and put your head back in position. Then glide until you reset again. Breathing for breaststroke should be very easy if you're doing the rest right.
Note that for both these and other strokes, the idea is to use as little effort as possible to reach the air during rest position, take a fast breath by inhaling only, and return to a hydrodynamic position before the actual propulsive movement of the stroke begins again.
I... actually don't like Resistance. It's set up in such a way that unless a traitor is incredibly stupid or the group gets lucky, it's very hard for the Resistance to actually win. The only thing that it has going for it is that it's very quick. Is there something I'm not just getting? It seems like if a traitor goes on Mission 1 and doesn't fail the mission, the traitors win because it's impossible to weed people out in the remaining missions.
For my playgroup it's the opposite, there are a few of us who are master spies and unless one of us makes a big play the Resistance usually wins. Mostly because many of us are really good at playing the Resistance side, by now. I actually think it's more in the favor of the resistance members, though not by much and though I might be biased to my playgroup.
For us the average game revolves around 2 or 3 resistance members quickly figuring out that they're both trustworthy and how well the spies can manage not necessarily to trick them into thinking a spy is very trustworthy, but simply not having enough trustworthy people to make the last groups locks. The resistance members can only get this far (and make no mistake, it is far because a small alliance of trust resistance members can pretty strongly control who is allocated to missions) by talking a lot. Given that I know nothing about your playgroup and how things play out for you, I would ask whether you guys talk a lot and usually delay missions until the absolute last chance because I think those are both integral for the resistance's side to win often.
It's definitely not the type of game to play with people who aren't invested (one guy we played with once voted fails as a resistance member because he didn't give a *****/wanted the game to speed up, never again) and can be silly with people who are new or far below the average skill level ("So what do I want to do as a spy again?").
Anyway I love that type of game even when it's a bit imbalanced, because in the long-term it develops into some really fun meta-game stuff. I still have tricks and general rules as a Spy that I've used for ages but I think noone has picked up on. I even have some strategies for when I realize a specific person is starting to think I'm a trusted resistance member, because I know how to make him fully trust me. Finding stuff out like that that works to tip the game in the underdogs' favor (remember spies usually lose for us) is extremely engaging to me. Then there are also 3 really good resistance-side players who, should they all get placed on it, generally make it nearly unwinnable unless we spies get very very lucky.
WW's jungle sustain was and never will be an issue, and feral flare isn't strong enough to make him good. Even with flare he's mediocre at farming compared to other junglers, and his pre-6 game is nonexistent. Compare him to Vi: both want to sit in jungle and hit 6 asap, but thanks to Vi W she kills buffs faster and thanks to her E she kills small camps faster, and thanks to her passive she's as safe as WW. Then if she feels the need to do something in a lane pre-6, her Q makes her better at that than WW. Then after 6, WW ult can be interrupted (this is especially important if you get counterganked) meanwhile Vi ult is very reliable and has a much longer range both on its own and coupled with her Q.
She also does more damage in ganks, she's pretty much better than WW in every way really. Makes almost as good of use of flare too.
I'm looking for recommendations from the group here as to which game would be a good fit to add to my collection. I'm looking for games with relatively simple rules so that it won't scare off more casual friends and family, but complex enough that I'm not going to be bored with them quickly. I'm looking for games that fill a niche my current games don't.
I'll second the cosmic encounter rec, although I myself don't like the game that much (though I'm definitely in the minority) and I'll tell you why - it's one of those games with really open player interaction and at times frustrating mechanics, so you can easily have a situation where for example one person by chance gets attacked several times in a row AND everyone decides to get in on the action against him, at which point he's basically ****ed that game. It almost never feels like a very fair game - but that's kind of the point I guess it's just not really what I like.
I would personally recommend Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, and Love Letter. Ticket to Ride is famous as THE gateway board game - I have yet to play this game with someone not into board games and not have them really enjoy it. It's kind of weird frankly. I'm not hugely into it myself but it's pretty good and it definitely fits the idea of "simple to play but deep". Carcassone is also fairly well-known for this, it's not as deep but it's not boringly simple either, and the expansions are generally very good so it's easy to keep interesting.
Love Letter is not very well-known but if you ask me it's a fantastic game, in my top 3 right now for sure. Especially with 3 people the mechanics are very balanced and there's exactly the level of "sometimes ***** happens" that I like, because WHEN someone ****s you over they generally have to take some chance to do so or make some good inference. Even when you just get screwed by blind chance, the matches are short and by the rules the "winner" is determined by racking up a number of matches before others, so it's easy to let go of a single unfortunate match. In fact, a bit of the risk in the game stems from holding onto cards that are more likely to get blindly guessed - because they are more common, because they're cards people tend to hold onto, etc.
As for accessibility + depth, it's perfect in this way I think. It's accessible because every card does 1 thing and has 1 value at the end of the game, but there are multiple actual ways to use them, there are combos, there are things to keep in mind about your opponents, etc - inference and planning are the entire game in the end. You also only ever have two cards in hand, which makes decisionmaking easy on a shallow level, but opens up plenty of opportunity for risk (I'm worried about keeping this card another turn because X could've learned last turn that I had it, I can potentially eliminate someone here but it may reveal that my other card is a high card, etc). On a larger scale, the game includes only 16 cards (of about 8 unique types), a couple small cards to remind everyone what all the playable cards do, and a pouch of small score-keeping cubes. That's it. It also helps that the theme is simple and recognizable but charmingly done. It's kind of comparable to the resistance really.
Speaking of which, there are a lot of games based off of/spinoffs of the resistance/werewolf/mafia that I know are good or have heard are good. Lifeboat is supposedly good if you want to bring out everyone's inner backstabber, and I've played and like both Coup and The Resistance: Avalon.
1
Not sure how many hours I've spent on Demon's Souls, but I'm positive it's 4 figures and that it would be much more if the community had not dried up.
I have still yet to play Bloodborne (soon), but Dark Souls' inferior level design and combat mechanics did not quite make up for its increased content and polish in other areas. I think the general distaste towards DaS2 is overblown or sometimes flat out wrong, but did not appreciate it as much either.
1
It's very interesting, but I find it funny that when confronted with something inexplicable in our current knowledge so many people jump to an intelligence we don't yet understand instead of simply something natural we don't yet understand.
2
I'm not sure how it actually affects your efficiency, but you might consider resting by treading water instead of holding the lip of the pool. As a guy who played water polo and had to get good at eggbeater, if you try you will get to the point where you can eggbeater indefinitely and casually recover while doing it. It strikes me as a much less awkward position. People tend to find it hard and tiring as a beginner, but hey I guess that means you're burning calories.
2. Since it's so low impact, nothing really beyond the general things like not pushing yourself too hard. Don't hold your breath for overlong, it's not worth the strain because it won't even help as much as having good streamlined breathing for your strokes. And of course, don't run into a wall or dive into the bottom. A swimmer's dive should be very low angle with the surface of the water anyway, if you feel like diving.
3. For freestyle, you want to turn your head to the side as your opposite arm is finishing its reset (nearing full extension). By the time it begins its stroke (pulling), you should be done breathing with your head back down. In this time you should be able to get your mouth to the air mostly by turning your head and only very slightly tilting your neck back. The idea is you don't want to lift the crown of your head up. Exhale through nose while your head is in the water so you can purely inhale (through mouth) when you go up. If you have trouble staying going straight, alternate the side you breath from (every 3 strokes). Make sure you don't drop your arm deep into the water when you breath - it should be easy to fix if you aren't moving your head/spine/shoulders.
On the side you're breathing from, at the time you're breathing your hand should be pulled completely back just above your shoulder/near your neck and around the time to come out of the water to extend and reset its stroke. A neat thing of note with this is that it has just passed your mouth and created a small trough, making it easier to breath. This is good because the less you have to turn your neck, the less torque makes you want to turn the lower parts of your spine and the less you deviate from a hydrodynamic position. In freestyle, your momentum doesn't really stop so it's very impactful.
For breaststroke, at the end of each glide you should be going above the surface. Inhale through mouth then, exhale through nose below. You reset the stroke while above water and should be back to gliding position by the time you're starting the stroke. Think of resetting the stroke as drawing a heart (point away from you) that comes in fairly close below your pecs (at this point you are fairly upright with chest thrown a bit forward, above water breathing), and then the stroke is bisecting that heart as you kick and put your head back in position. Then glide until you reset again. Breathing for breaststroke should be very easy if you're doing the rest right.
Note that for both these and other strokes, the idea is to use as little effort as possible to reach the air during rest position, take a fast breath by inhaling only, and return to a hydrodynamic position before the actual propulsive movement of the stroke begins again.
1
1
For us the average game revolves around 2 or 3 resistance members quickly figuring out that they're both trustworthy and how well the spies can manage not necessarily to trick them into thinking a spy is very trustworthy, but simply not having enough trustworthy people to make the last groups locks. The resistance members can only get this far (and make no mistake, it is far because a small alliance of trust resistance members can pretty strongly control who is allocated to missions) by talking a lot. Given that I know nothing about your playgroup and how things play out for you, I would ask whether you guys talk a lot and usually delay missions until the absolute last chance because I think those are both integral for the resistance's side to win often.
It's definitely not the type of game to play with people who aren't invested (one guy we played with once voted fails as a resistance member because he didn't give a *****/wanted the game to speed up, never again) and can be silly with people who are new or far below the average skill level ("So what do I want to do as a spy again?").
Anyway I love that type of game even when it's a bit imbalanced, because in the long-term it develops into some really fun meta-game stuff. I still have tricks and general rules as a Spy that I've used for ages but I think noone has picked up on. I even have some strategies for when I realize a specific person is starting to think I'm a trusted resistance member, because I know how to make him fully trust me. Finding stuff out like that that works to tip the game in the underdogs' favor (remember spies usually lose for us) is extremely engaging to me. Then there are also 3 really good resistance-side players who, should they all get placed on it, generally make it nearly unwinnable unless we spies get very very lucky.
2
sometimes they might even convince someone to look at a thread he might otherwise not have, and post a technically on-topic though unrelated post
1
1
She also does more damage in ganks, she's pretty much better than WW in every way really. Makes almost as good of use of flare too.
1
1
I would personally recommend Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, and Love Letter. Ticket to Ride is famous as THE gateway board game - I have yet to play this game with someone not into board games and not have them really enjoy it. It's kind of weird frankly. I'm not hugely into it myself but it's pretty good and it definitely fits the idea of "simple to play but deep". Carcassone is also fairly well-known for this, it's not as deep but it's not boringly simple either, and the expansions are generally very good so it's easy to keep interesting.
Love Letter is not very well-known but if you ask me it's a fantastic game, in my top 3 right now for sure. Especially with 3 people the mechanics are very balanced and there's exactly the level of "sometimes ***** happens" that I like, because WHEN someone ****s you over they generally have to take some chance to do so or make some good inference. Even when you just get screwed by blind chance, the matches are short and by the rules the "winner" is determined by racking up a number of matches before others, so it's easy to let go of a single unfortunate match. In fact, a bit of the risk in the game stems from holding onto cards that are more likely to get blindly guessed - because they are more common, because they're cards people tend to hold onto, etc.
As for accessibility + depth, it's perfect in this way I think. It's accessible because every card does 1 thing and has 1 value at the end of the game, but there are multiple actual ways to use them, there are combos, there are things to keep in mind about your opponents, etc - inference and planning are the entire game in the end. You also only ever have two cards in hand, which makes decisionmaking easy on a shallow level, but opens up plenty of opportunity for risk (I'm worried about keeping this card another turn because X could've learned last turn that I had it, I can potentially eliminate someone here but it may reveal that my other card is a high card, etc). On a larger scale, the game includes only 16 cards (of about 8 unique types), a couple small cards to remind everyone what all the playable cards do, and a pouch of small score-keeping cubes. That's it. It also helps that the theme is simple and recognizable but charmingly done. It's kind of comparable to the resistance really.
Speaking of which, there are a lot of games based off of/spinoffs of the resistance/werewolf/mafia that I know are good or have heard are good. Lifeboat is supposedly good if you want to bring out everyone's inner backstabber, and I've played and like both Coup and The Resistance: Avalon.