Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

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Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:51 am

Image

Here's to our first 5 hour podcast!
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:58 am

You haven't even reached the Giant Bomb standard average yet, and they've done it for years.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby JaoSming on Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:58 am

yaaaa, fuckin' enjoy that one! lol

I love Ep 6 :)
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:02 am

benji, always nice to have your words of encouragement.

We're getting there, as far as duration goes. Aren't their podcasts 3 hours long? Our first 3 hour podcast is out of the way, so...

Longevity? To be seen.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:22 am

Just saying you need to step your game up before I accept your projections as coming from a valid sample size. Especially since you're running around everywhere trying to call this peer-reviewed science.

All I'm trying to do is get investors (and maybe the SEC) to look more closely at the reports you're publishing.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:26 am

Sample size shmample size.

Valid science is for pussies.

My horoscope says I'm right.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby shadowgrin on Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:13 am

Watching Jao's jiggle porn in a loop for 3 hours is more entertaining than the recent podcasts. Just saying. Granted Jao's is porn...
HE'S USING HYPNOSIS!
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Andrew on Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:29 am

Anything in particular you dislike about them?
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby JaoSming on Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:45 am

Lack of Jao jiggles :?:
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Andrew on Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:55 am

We'll have to start posting the videos along with the episodes, then.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:19 am

Given shadowgrin's perversion, I guess all the podcast is missing is some sexy long moaning from Andrew and me.
Eleftherios "Leftos" Aslanoglou
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Andrew on Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:52 am

I don't know if I can manage that with an Australian accent. That demands a very specific kink on the part of the audience.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:41 am

There was that part that hinted at a Game of the Year discussion where most of it centered around games two years older or more because there was basically only one non-sports/sports-entertainment game from this year even mentioned.

And the entire open world discussion was fraudulent and intolerant since neither of you have beaten both Saints Row 2 and Saints Row: The Third, neither of which have the horrific mission and progression structures of GTA IV or the first Assassins Creed. (And also have good gameplay rather than whatever it is those two titles have.)

Although it seemed weird because of the way I interpreted it with that question thread. If it had just said:
Since news is a little slow this time of the year, we turn our attention to some other games that we’ve been playing.

I wouldn't have expected a Game of the Year discussion.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Fri Jan 18, 2013 3:32 pm

Well, what do you know, we had planned to do a Game of the Year discussion, and then we realized we hadn't played much of this year's games. Guess we left that in the description. You have a point there.

I have actually played Saints Row: The Third, and you're right, it was A LOT OF FUN, with none of the things that bothered me in GTA IV. Slipped my mind completely for some reason. It's one of those games you can just go back and have fun, no matter if you're doing a mission or just fucking everything up. Felt the same way about Just Cause 2, and its "EXPLOSIONS" theme. Which I didn't mention either. Yeah...

Well, sorry to disappoint you. We hope we'll get better as time goes on, and we'll try to do our homework better before each podcast.

Anything else that you didn't like in the episodes so far? Something you liked?
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:02 pm

I forgot about Just Cause 2 too. The grappling hook is a far more important mechanic to gaming as a whole than almost anything else in the genre.

I didn't listen to anything else because I assume it's mostly about the dreadful topics of NBA 2K13 or NBA Live speculation.

Someone should put time stamps on the podcast summaries.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:41 pm

I mention that because I saw that one of the podcasts continued the malicious lies that overall ratings are necessary. After poking through that one, and the one I still had, plus Jan 7 which I downloaded during writing this I'll offer some nonconstructive hateful whining.

I still question whether you guys are saying things because things need to be SAID about the subject or if it's because you want to convey a concept, idea or argument related to that subject. A lot of times I find myself saying "okay, and..." but you've moved on because the subject was talked about in some manner and thus success.

For example, during these vicious lies it was mentioned that Eric Bledsoe's ratings had gone up and there was some controversy. And then immediately cast off into the ether, along with a BJ Mullins mention. Why is there controversy? What was it really? Is there merit to any position? Bledsoe is basically an all-star player coming off the bench because he's behind a Hall of Famer, he's getting favorable media attention. Is he maybe STILL underrated? Was this a blunder on the 2K Insiders part back when he "originally rated" the players? Is this a flaw in having a mentally challenged golden retriever try to "keep up" instead of 2K auto-updating using data THEY ALREADY GET ala EA's DNA?

During the lies, Andrew briefly explained the potential invalidity of overall ratings then stated they were necessary even while Leftos started pondering some alternative methods. And the topic was closed, onto the award 2K bought from Spike!

Looking at the topics on the last two, there's more roster talk. What exactly IS there to talk about the roster updates? Are they SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED or are they something you have anything to actually say something on? Same with the server shutdowns. Are these topics for two weeks because they exist? What was added in these discussions compared to the ones weeks before? 2K sucks, ratings criticized, people biased, community works... EA's shutting down the servers because I want to speculate about Live 14!

Do I need news recaps beyond setup for the discussion? If it doesn't go beyond that why do I want the ten minute podcast version over the ten second website version? And if there's no discussion...

Andrew is too timid at times. It's part of why Leftos controls most every conversation. There are instances where I'm pretty sure Andrew has a different point of view but he acquiesces to Leftos' analysis. I could "hear" it more than I heard it when Leftos was taking out his frustrations with the "grind" on the open world genre and the GTA series. Maybe it goes the other way as much but the few conversations sampled it went that way. This might just be Leftos finding his voice first.

Has there been any real disagreement on a subject? Andrew got animated on some NBA subjects but it was to agree forcefully.

Maybe these all conspire leading to a situation where it sounds like Leftos lays out his point of view, turns it over, Andrew gives his maybe related one, maybe Leftos thinks of something more to say (maybe in agreement) or moves onto the next topic. Sometimes reverse. I can do this by myself, I don't need you guys.

TL;DR version: The question is still why do I want to listen to this podcast? Is it because I want to hear someone verbalize community-relevant topics or is it because I want to hear YOU TALK about community-relevant topics?

It still feels like I'm only getting one of these.

P.S. Leftos wanted to say something regarding MLB 2K shutting down, but I didn't find it skipping around, did you ever get a chance to share that?

P.P.S. The rating progressions were in 2K10 and I think 2K11 as well. Although it was broken sometimes. (And it showed just how infrequently the Insider actually changes anything, thus why people notice the large jumps.)

P.P.P.S. Andrew says J.R. Smith has been having a decent season on Jan 7th; he's shot 24/75 since. :scold:

P.P.P.S. Slim's scaling is basically reversing compared to realistic stat bounds. It's easy to do if you have the time and can understand anything about NBA stats, even this dope has done it. 99 rating basically = 99% percentile. The game itself has its own hard bounds that you basically ignore. Varejao's rebounding is lower than even Reggie Evans this season. 23% is good high bound to use based on NBA history.

P.P.P.P.S. Just an idea. Record a podcast with nothing NBA/NLSC related, not to necessarily release even, but to illustrate to yourselves a possible scope and breadth of what makes your personalities unique and how to more naturally convey your points. Same with the shooting the shit pre-/post-recording of normal podcasts. I do think you're subconsciously going back to the "list" of stuff that HAS to be said.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby shadowgrin on Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:28 pm

Aw how nice someone wants to be in the podcast.
HE'S USING HYPNOSIS!
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:00 pm

benji, you're bringing up some good points. I can't speak for Andrew and whether he has opinions in disagreement that he doesn't express for whatever reason, but I'd love to fight him some more, trust me.

And in any case, yes, there's a certain list of things we want to mention each time, and we tend to run a lot longer than we expect to on most subjects, so sometimes we might feel forced to end a certain piece of discussion and move on in order to cover the list of things that we feel we HAVE to cover. There's nothing that disallows us from going back to further talk about a point we might've ended short in a previous podcast, but given that we still get performance anxiety (yes, even in a pre-recorded podcast), we can't be perfect.

See, feedback like this is what's been missing from the podcast discussion threads. If we got more stuff like your post on what we didn't discuss enough, which of our opinions we didn't elaborate on, and which segments sounded more like announcements rather than our actual opinions on things, we could try to improve certain stuff, even go back and reiterate.

Thanks for the feedback. No, seriously. I'll try to be more vocal about my opinion on things, and try to get Andrew to say how he REALLY feels. I'll try to not allow the discussion on subjects be a mere announcement of what happened.

P.S. I think it was the fact that I felt it was pretty obvious some of the MLB 2K dev team had been kept to work on NBA 2K, given this year's plethora of stat overlays and commentary about the season, breakdowns per position, rankings in the league, etc, given that these things have been in MLB 2K for quite some time.

P.P.S. Yes, thank you. It was broken sometimes, and it only showed the progression in updates you actually downloaded; i.e. it didn't download the full player progression history from the servers. So when I reinstalled the game in Spring, I got the latest roster as the only point in the graph other than retail. And yes, it did make the poor work of the Insider all too obvious, which is the reason I believe it was removed, that I also mentioned on the podcast.

P.P.P.S. Well, no more talk about Drummond from him then.

P.P.P.S. (shouldn't this have one more P?) Well I know you're a stat-nerd. Those of us that don't understand NBA stats that much need guys like slimm44 to give us scales. Because he actually takes the time to do it, and edit rosters using them. I know what you mean though. We still need people to do the work us lazy asses can't do. And slimm44 actually took the time to research the Coach Profiles and Sliders one by one to see how they affect gameplay and simulation stats in order to find the most realistic combination. So even though his scales may not be a brilliant piece of work that should become a doctoral thesis, I appreciate his research and his work on giving us not just the scales, but a fully edited roster. That's why I've been praising the hell out of him. That's maybe nearly as much as other roster makers do, but slimm's just has that more realism because of his work.

P.P.P.P.S. We've been getting our feet wet on subjects outside of the NBA & Basketball Gaming, but still, this is the NLSC Podcast. We didn't want to go completely outside of the subjects the website focuses on. There's a lot of irrelevant discussion before and after the podcast is recorded, you're usually missing out on half to a full hour of banter, completely unrelated (used to be mostly Jao wanting to take a piss; aah, the good ol' days). Trying to do a podcast that's more like that, and experimenting with other subjects is something we're going to keep trying. Who knows, maybe we'll do an episode where we get drunk and don't talk about basketball (whether real or gaming) at all. As our chemistry builds, we'll feel more comfortable talking about other stuff, fighting each other on them, and having more fun in general.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby shadowgrin on Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:15 pm

Leftos wrote:we'll do an episode where we get drunk

I don't care about the topic, MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!!
HE'S USING HYPNOSIS!
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Andrew on Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:21 pm

I'm not agreeing only to avoid being disagreeable, when it comes to most of the topics that have come up so far we have pretty much had the same opinion...which I guess doesn't always make for great listening. We have talked about that before, so it may be a matter of selecting topics that we do disagree on or at least each talk about from a different perspective. We're still finding our way with that and trying to build chemistry.

In terms of the news, that segment could stand to be briefer and contain less commentary unless there's something work discussing/speculating upon, so that's something we could cut down on. I can see where you're coming from there, so we'll keep it in mind.

As for J.R. Smith, well, jinxed again I guess.

Appreciate the feedback. (Y)
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby benji on Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:08 am

One of the reasons I suggested that last part about non-"NLSC" topics is because it's entirely possible you're both just agreeable or you just agree on the topics that have come up but by testing those other waters may expand how you treat the "NLSC" topics. A lot of what 2K has been doing this generation is related to how the industry as a whole is headed so rather than the narrow tunnel of just 2K vs. Live there's a broad expansion possible to inform the discussion and perhaps bring subtle disagreements to light. For example, to go back to Leftos lamentations about the "grind" of modern gaming, VC has deliberately gone in that direction. Based on their original point valuing (I don't know if the patch has changed this) you got more VC from starting an online game and disconnecting than almost anything else you could "properly" do in the game. (For what it's worth I think there's still a small possibly they fix the PC version come the patch in June by increasing the point generation because it's definitely not working as intended.)

I'm not saying that examples like this and what I questioned about the Bledsoe thing above are necessary but expansion like given for them serves two functions: 1. to go beyond what you can read on the site, OS, any place else, etc. 2. provide greater chance to hear the unique takes that you can only get from, currently, Andrew and Leftos. When someone sees that story on OS or the NLSC when it's first posted you want them to be saying "I can't wait to hear what they say about this on the podcast."

One of the advantages of "live" broadcasting is that you don't have to wait for reactions, things can happen and spin off immediately so a disagreement can become interesting because of the instantaneous little path changes.

You don't need to disagree just for the sake of disagreeing, that's no better than saying things because something needs to be said, because all that produces is Skip vs. Stephen A. Smith, Bill O'Reilly, etc. The problem is echo chambers can be worse because they deliberately cut out whatever fraction of the audience disagrees and this slowly just encourages greater echo chambering internally.

But as noted by everybody it may just be a side-effect of people not having yet gotten their mouth-legs.
Well I know you're a stat-nerd. Those of us that don't understand NBA stats that much need guys like slimm44 to give us scales. Because he actually takes the time to do it, and edit rosters using them. I know what you mean though. We still need people to do the work us lazy asses can't do. And slimm44 actually took the time to research the Coach Profiles and Sliders one by one to see how they affect gameplay and simulation stats in order to find the most realistic combination. So even though his scales may not be a brilliant piece of work that should become a doctoral thesis, I appreciate his research and his work on giving us not just the scales, but a fully edited roster. That's why I've been praising the hell out of him. That's maybe nearly as much as other roster makers do, but slimm's just has that more realism because of his work.

I'm not disparaging his work, he's gone beyond just doing the ratings. I just wanted to point out how he's done it because like when I first started doing it there's quibbles to make. And if nobody knows how it works they can't really criticize it and improve it.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby Leftos on Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:20 am

Fine points, once again, benji. Not expecting 2K to do any PC-specific fixes in the patch, though. Been some years since. So unless SP gained is increased/fixed in a later patch (if any) for the consoles, not seeing that happening.

And yeah, we're not planning on disagreeing just for the sake of getting a fight going, even when we agree. But picking topics that can "polarize" the participants and get some fun, heated arguments going (like Jao teasing me about the lack of any improvements in 2K13's Association), is definitely something we can do better, and that will bring some natural, unforced disagreement and discussion.

Curious to see what you think of the latest podcast, the one where we were joined by Arcane, if you ever get around to listening to it. I really hope, and believe, that as we get more used to doing this, we'll get better at the whole thing. It's important we're provided with feedback like yours though, so I really appreciate that.

As for slimm's ratings and tendencies, I've been asking both him and people at OS to get me as many objective ratings scales and formulas as possible, as I'm bent on the idea of us being able to easily update the game as the season progresses by using Roster Editor (and/or REDitor) along with NST grabbing real stats from B-R, HoopData and the like (no response from them on whether NST has permission to mine data, yet; wonder if I did the daily grabbing and then allowed people to download the NST database from the NLSC, thus minimizing the load on their servers, would make them more willing to accept; although I still believe the main issue is them missing out on ad views/clicks revenue, which could be an obstacle hard to overcome).
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Visual Concepts Entertainment / 2K Sports

Used to be "That Tools Guy" around here during the good ol' days. Although you probably remember me as your favorite Podcast host.
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Re: Why JaoSming will never be in the Podcast again

Postby shadowgrin on Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:41 am

So you guys have any metric on how well received the podcasts are like say number of downloads of it or number of relevant posts about the topics in the podcasts threads? So you know how 'successful' you are with the podcasts as you guys continue to do it over time instead of just doing it for the sake of doing it or still be delusional that since the previous 'short' podcasts that didn't require hours were so awesome that the only thing needed to do now is make it more than two to three hours chock full of awesomeness?
HE'S USING HYPNOSIS!
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