Desert Island Video Game Draft Playoffs - Round 2 (#4 Tetsujin vs. #5 Insomniacal Fan)

[Capt. Factorial]

Tetsujin​

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo Switch)
2. Diablo II (Nintendo Switch)
3. Pokémon [Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald Version] (Nintendo Game Boy Advance)
4. Oregon Trail (PC)
5. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo Switch)
6. Final Fantasy X (PS2)
7. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo Switch)
8. Jak 3 (PS2)
9. Madden NFL 08 (PS2)
10. Metroid Dread (Nintendo Switch 2)
11. Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo Switch 2)
12. Dr. Mario (NES)
13. Rampage World Tour (Arcade)
14. Spider-Man [2000] (PS1)
15. Zoo Tycoon (PC)



vs.

Insomniacal Fan​

1. Baldur's Gate 3 (PC)
2. Red Dead Redemption II (PC)
3. The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker (Nintendo GameCube)
4. Subnautica (PC)
5. Factorio: Space Age (PC)
6. World of Warcraft (PC)
7. Sid Meier's Civilization IV (PC)
8. Super Smash Bros. Melee (Nintendo GameCube)
9. Dwarf Fortress (PC)
10. Satisfactory (PC)
11. X4: Foundations (PC)
12. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PC)
13. Crusader Kings II (PC)
14. NFL Blitz (Arcade)
15. Tribes 2 (PC)

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

"Breath of the Kingdom", as a composite game, is unbeatable. Combine the joy of exploration and the beautiful desolation of the first game; with the second game's world filled with characters and adventure, and it's perfection.

These games are an example of what's possible when you take systems-driven gameplay (i.e. from the eurojank scene), and hold it to a high standard of production quality and craftsmanship.

 

[whitechocolate]

Dwarf Fortress scores a lot of points with me. I would have picked it if I weren't such a Kenshi head. I could play nothing but Virtua Fighter, Battle Garegga, and a story/legend generator like Dwarf Fortress or Kenshi, and be content.

 

[Warhawk]

These two lists were neck and neck in my initial rankings and upon further review I keep changing my mind back and forth. Ended up going with Insomniacal Fan by a whisker. Part of that was the selection of PC games and not game systems, which I typically don't like playing on.

 

[Tetsujin]

FWIW I had Insomniacal Fan above myself in my rankings.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm riding with Civ4 until Civ4 ain't there no more.

 

[Padrino]

@Insomniacal Fan opened his list with two stone-cold modern masterpieces that I absolutely adore and a Zelda entry that has aged remarkably well. But @Tetsujin grabbed both of the Switch Zelda titles, and they're what brought me back to gaming in a big way. Breath of the Wild, in particular, is such a heavily-weighted selection for me. He could have picked mobile phone garbage up and down his list after that and I probably still would have voted for him in this round on the strength of BotW alone. That game is just a marvel to me.

 

[Srzly]

I went by a scoring system for this round and it’s really unfortunate because you both had the highest scores for me and happened to be playing against each other.

You both have great taste in games.

One game that gave @Tetsujin negative points (not actually) was Breath of the Wild. Maybe a hot take but the breakable weapons—and how frequently they broke—ruined it for me.

 

[Löwenherz]

One game that gave @Tetsujin negative points (not actually) was Breath of the Wild. Maybe a hot take but the breakable weapons—and how frequently they broke—ruined it for me.

I don’t love Breath of the Wild, but weapon durability wasn’t one of my issues. I actually thought it fit well with the theming of exploring the rugged post-apocalyptic medieval wilderness. And I appreciated the added mechanic of carrying around some crappy swords I didn’t care about breaking to use on the random goons of Hyrule, and saving my Infinity +1 lightning sabres for the big bads.

I just wish they had implemented a way to repair the weapons. A little flint and fairy dust at a campfire to reforge a broadsword would have solved the problem people most complain about I think.

 

[Löwenherz]

This might be the Zelda nerds’ version of visiting every baseball stadium in a season.

LINK: Touring Japan for the inspirations for Breath of the Wild

 

[Tetsujin]

So uhhhhhh what’re the rules for the tiebreaker again? Asking for a friend…

 

[whitechocolate]

Coin flip.

Winner decides who gets to battle the Garthok.

Defeating the Garthok means you win the tiebreak.

Losing to the Garthok means you died, and the other player wins.

 

[Löwenherz]

So uhhhhhh what’re the rules for the tiebreaker again? Asking for a friend…

Last time we had both players choose a single game from their rosters to go head-to-head in another much shorter voting phase.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Last time we had both players choose a single game from their rosters to go head-to-head in another much shorter voting phase.

I like the coin flip idea better

 

[Löwenherz]

I like the coin flip idea better

Well, the Garthok thing is an option too.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Well, the Garthok thing is an option too.

Oh I absolutely meant the coin flip to fight Garthok

 

[Capt. Factorial]

@Tetsujin @Insomniacal Fan

Uh-oh. Stupid ties.

OK, the tiebreaker rules - as I recall from the past - are that both participants submit a five-game list of their top choices from their list (not necessarily the games selected in rounds 1-5) and we vote again.

Unless any are opposed to those rules, we can start that process ASAP. I'm a bit out of touch tomorrow (I have VIP tix to the Weird Al show in San Jose) so if I don't see anything submitted to me by about 11 AM tomorrow, it ain't happening until tomorrow night late. Suck it.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

I was thinking about how we'd implement a coin flip without actually being in eachother's presence.
After thinking about it for a bit, I have an idea, let me know what you think.

There are web applications out there that generate a random number every minute (called a pulse), and then record that number so that it can be looked up later. (Example, https://random.colorado.edu/.) I'll pick a pulse that will be generated at around 10 PM tonight PDT, `959644`
Tetsujin will pick even or odd. At 10 PM, we can all look up the number on that website, and if the last digit in the random number is of the selected parity, then Tetsujin wins, otherwise I win.


Make sense?

 

[Srzly]

I don’t love Breath of the Wild, but weapon durability wasn’t one of my issues. I actually thought it fit well with the theming of exploring the rugged post-apocalyptic medieval wilderness. And I appreciated the added mechanic of carrying around some crappy swords I didn’t care about breaking to use on the random goons of Hyrule, and saving my Infinity +1 lightning sabres for the big bads.

I just wish they had implemented a way to repair the weapons. A little flint and fairy dust at a campfire to reforge a broadsword would have solved the problem people most complain about I think.

Yes, that may have helped me enjoy if at least repair weapons. I was really excited about it, as I never played the earlier Zelda games (which I still don’t know why) and i was looking forward to seeing what the hype was about.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past it.

Multiple of my friends loved the game so I know my opinion likely isn’t shared by many others.

Anyway, I wish both could advance with the tie. @Tetsujin actually has my favorite games on his list with FFX and probably the best Pokemon games made, but @Insomniacal Fan has ganes like Factorio, WoW (I assume this counts as original WoW Classic too and not just the retail version?), and Civ. Games I’ve poured way too many hours of my life into + some nostalgia favorites like Blitz and Melee that gave them the slight edge in score.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

I was thinking about how we'd implement a coin flip without actually being in eachother's presence.
After thinking about it for a bit, I have an idea, let me know what you think.

There are web applications out there that generate a random number every minute (called a pulse), and then record that number so that it can be looked up later. (Example, https://random.colorado.edu/.) I'll pick a pulse that will be generated at around 10 PM tonight PDT, `959644`
Tetsujin will pick even or odd. At 10 PM, we can all look up the number on that website, and if the last digit in the random number is of the selected parity, then Tetsujin wins, otherwise I win.

View attachment 14329
Make sense?

As I said above, I think we typically do a quicker blitz-poll with each player selecting five of their games to match up. Tetsujin has already submitted a list to me.

If you don't want to do that, I can flip a coin myself.

 

[Padrino]

I don’t love Breath of the Wild, but weapon durability wasn’t one of my issues. I actually thought it fit well with the theming of exploring the rugged post-apocalyptic medieval wilderness. And I appreciated the added mechanic of carrying around some crappy swords I didn’t care about breaking to use on the random goons of Hyrule, and saving my Infinity +1 lightning sabres for the big bads.

I just wish they had implemented a way to repair the weapons. A little flint and fairy dust at a campfire to reforge a broadsword would have solved the problem people most complain about I think.

I loved the weapon durability mechanic in BotW. It's very easy to get monogamous about weapons in a video game, but once you accept BotW's durability mechanic, you just stop caring about weapons as a system of value and start treating them as a pathway to experimentation. The mechanic creates opportunities for discovery, critical thinking, and ingenuity that you'd miss out on if the Master Sword was endlessly available to you at all times.

But more importantly, the durability mechanic encouraged play, in the childlike sense of the word. Much like the rest of the game's design, it wanted to disabuse the player of habits learned from decades of gaming in order to restore the player to a state of wonder, to restore in the player a desire to explore, to try, to poke and prod and test the game's boundaries and develop an understanding of how to navigate a dangerous world.

Then TotK improved further upon the mechanic by designing a system that essentially allows you to make whatever weapon you want, in whatever way you want, at any time you want. The devs primed players for flexibility in BotW so that players would have no problem finding their footing with TotK's immensely malleable materials system. Nintendo knows better than just about any other developer how to remind gamers that games are meant to be played, and not just experienced or endured or checklisted.

 

[Padrino]

As I said above, I think we typically do a quicker blitz-poll with each player selecting five of their games to match up. Tetsujin has already submitted a list to me.

If you don't want to do that, I can flip a coin myself.

Personally, I love this style of tie-breaker. It forces the drafters to hone in on what they value most about their own lists, and I'd be terribly interested to see how they develop a top-five for voters' consideration.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I do like the top 5s too because I typically laser in on my own top 5 of lists when voting. Like I definitely favored people with sports game heavy lineups over JRPG heavy lists, which I imagine is my own weird quirk, especially since most of those folks are now off the island.

 

[admira1]

tbh, I actually think I'd vote differently on this one, in hindsight...

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

As I said above, I think we typically do a quicker blitz-poll with each player selecting five of their games to match up. Tetsujin has already submitted a list to me.

If you don't want to do that, I can flip a coin myself.

I'm suggesting an improvement, picking 5 from within the list doesn't really make sense, as everybody knows what the full list is. Effectively it's just a redo of the vote.

My suggestion is just to do a coin flip, where the coin flipper is a external party that flips coins all day, and publishes the results.

I think it would be more fun if the randomness was observable by everybody. If you prefer to flip a coin yourself, I'd take that.

 

[Padrino]

I'm suggesting an improvement, picking 5 from within the list doesn't really make sense, as everybody knows what the full list is. Effectively it's just a redo of the vote.

My suggestion is just to do a coin flip, where the coin flipper is a external party that flips coins all day, and publishes the results.

I think it would be more fun if the randomness was observable by everybody. If you prefer to flip a coin yourself, I'd take that.

I would offer that our Desert Island drafters are a thoughtful bunch who seem quite capable of taking a top-5 on its own terms, apart from the source lists. I can only speak for myself, but there would actually be a lot of potential for my vote to change on a few of these matchups if they were narrowed down to 5 games only.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

I would offer that our Desert Island drafters are a thoughtful bunch who seem quite capable of taking a top-5 on its own terms, apart from the source lists. I can only speak for myself, but there would actually be a lot of potential for my vote to change on a few of these matchups if they were narrowed down to 5 games only.

What if the tiebreaker vote is also a tie? Let's just get it over with and let fate decide. Flip a coin! (Or do my idea please )

Spoiler: On tiebreakers generally

Tiebreakers in sports typically involve adding new information, play an extra set, or do penalty shots, etc. If we wanted to do something like this, the right way to go about it would be to draft a set of new titles and vote on those.

Redoing the vote mostly relies on the inherent randomness of voters. It's just silly to redo with the premise that people forget the context.

 

[Löwenherz]

tbh, I actually think I'd vote differently on this one, in hindsight...

Alternatively, we could just have admira1 change their vote and give us a winner to end this coin flip/pick 5 stalemate.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Alternatively, we could just have admira1 change their vote and give us a winner to end this coin flip/pick 5 stalemate.

Why not let everyone revote then? And then we're right back where we started

 

[Löwenherz]

Why not let everyone revote then?

I’m down