This is true except docker in prod isn't weird. It's the basis of AWS's ECS service. All our prod stuff is docker containers

(except databases which are RDS and Redis elasticache respectively)

The place I left had all it's micro-service architecture in docker containers.

I guess I kind of asked you this already, but how does load balancing work with containers? Is it seamless?

And what were your thoughts on this? Were basically gearing up to shift in this direction

In our case it's done through an amazon ELB and yes, it's seamless. We have autoscaling but also we can add or remove instances at will. Deploying basically happens with rolling replacement of instances. We have 6 instance, 2 replace at a time in 5 minute intervals.

Connect Four has asymmetric strategies regarding long-term threat creation. The first player wants to create threats on odd numbered rows, and the second player wants to create threats on even numbered rows. This is because if neither side wins early, the first player will end up getting the odd row cells and the second player the even row cells on the last column filled.

That's leaving aside the fact that the game has been solved as a win for the first player. In my experience it doesn't play as if the first player has an advantage, despite knowing that the first player should be able to force a win. Here's a strategy page in case anyone is curious:
https://tromp.github.io/c4.html

That is actually a very standard pay to win construction.

Could you please stop using math terms in weird ways that are meaningless. Also since I think you have nfi what "fair" means. Please explain what you think it means. Does the better player win? How often? How should the odds of a comeback evolve through early/mid/late? Fair is meaningless and another one of these handwavey words you use to have some elitist "math" view of game design, which is not based on math at all, but more like "things daveT likes to type".

An inherently asymmetrical game which can be balanced and is fairly well is SC/SC2.

Interested in this as well. This seems very trendy for a variety of reasons. (Think Rusty touched on the utility of it.)

If having a base cost is pay to win, then everything is pay to win. You mentioned SC2. You need to buy a pc and the game to play. Is that pay to win?

Yes, mtg is expensive but it has a cap. Once you have enough cards to create all the meta decks then any additional money you spend will gain you zero edge. And realistically you don't need to cover every single meta deck to be 100% competitive.

(btw. I don't play mtg anymore, mostly cause I got bored but also because the cost of participating wasn't worth it for me.)

I tend to win more times than not, and I'll give it a go!

1) Buy everything you land on (obv)
2) If rules permit, take property over rent
3) Block mutually beneficial deals between other players where possible. Seeding mistrust between players is the best way to do this temporarially. ("Oh man really you're doing that deal? Seems kinda unfair to you")
4) Mercilessly exploit the weakest players with unfavourable deals. Biggest sign they can be exploited is when they dilly dally over whether to buy a property because they've only got £500 left or whatever. Perfect time to step in and say if you buy it I'll give you £500 for it = insta cash for you!
5) Identify the key deal cards early on, try to anticipate them and acquire them at all costs.
6) If rules permit and have a slightly stronger property hand than other players, do creative deals (like lending property and collecting 50% of the rent)
7) Be prepared to defend your deals, if someone starts to step in and offer something better shut them down ASAP either by convincing the player they are trying to screw them over, or some stuff like "excuse me I'm talking here! you can go after"

#4 is the easiest way, but no one likes playing with me any more ()

Talking people into **** deals gives you such an edge. If you're all there just playing vanilla rolling dice and seeing what happens then yeah it's pretty boring and is a luck fest.

Nasty game

Its a COLLECTIBLE card game. LoL has a bunch of heroes that can be unlocked through thousands of hours of grinding (1800 IIRC) or paying.

They are very clearly designed with pay to win elements for the West. (Contrast with pay to win elements in Asian games.)

So what if its a collectable card game? You haven't countered any of my points.

What's the essential difference between spending a few k building a gaming pc and buying SC2 vs spending a few k building a roster of standard decks to be competitive in mtg?

One has utility beyond using it for a specific game perhaps?

Thats just an externality. Again, the cost doesn't have to be exactly the same. The question here is, can you spend money to be better than the next guy.

I say the answer is no, because the next guy will have spent the necessary initial amount to get to the point of being competitive. Lets take another example, golf. Starting out in golf is not cheap. But you don't hear people saying "golf is pay to win". Once you have spent enough to be able to compete, you can't spend more to buy more wins.

Okay. So "pay to win" is a term of art in game design. The rebuttal is obviously one is required to be paid IN/FOR THE GAME the other is not.

When you purchase SC2 there are no subsequent purchases required to win, with MtG there are gatcha mechanics in purchasing the packs to build competitive decks. This is literally the entire method of monetizing the game. Your arguments are absurd and you'd get laughed at for suggesting that in earnest to a professional.

It is quite clear you don't understand what pay to win means in game design. It doesn't mean you literally ****ing win if you pay more money than the other person.

It is quite clear you don't understand the argument.

The argument made before was that mtg is a flawed game because one person can win by outspending the next. That is not true except for contrived examples.

And saying that pay-to-win is some clear defined concept used by "professionals" is laughable. Pay to win is a derogatory term used by people to denigrate games they don't like. Free to play is the industry term.

You are both wrong. MtG is a clear example of a pay to win game at the casual level. It is built on gatcha mechanics for acquiring cards. There is really no simpler way to implement pay to win features other than what they did.

The idea that it is flawed because of this is inherently stupid and laughable. Many games (MOBAs/MMO/etc) possess P2W mechanics that allow people to acquire more power via paying money. daveT doesn't even understand why people play games. Many times its due to creating addiction-like patterns in players to incentivize repeated behavior.

The problem is that you assume tourney settings aren't a contrived and niche aspect of the game. Tournaments are never the game itself and are a contrived experience that was an exogenous construct after. Your prior example was also painfully silly and elicits pity rather than laughter from most people.

It's an interesting way of looking at it.

I do think though that once you've got the basics to get going:

- A card deck
- A set of golf clubs

Buying better golf clubs or buying a better deck wont make you a better player, but they may well make you get a better score.

Better golf clubs cost a lot, for a what I imagine to be a very small edge.

Better decks in MTG cost a lot, for what I imagine to be a much larger edge.

The ratio between cost/score benefit are completely different. When it gets past a certain point I understand people calling it pay to win as it perhaps might feel a little exploitative.

Mihkel,
you clearly lack imagination

Pay to win simply means that purchasing something will give you an advantage over other players. In the context of in the game purchases. Games that aren't pay to win consist of purely cosmetic changes in their freemium model.

Pay to win can be exploitative, which helps make people a ton of money. Or not. Examples can consists of premium areas in MMOs that paying players get access to. Any game where you can buy collectible items that aren't purely cosmetic. The really crazy Chinese games that are literally "pay more than the other person and win". It runs the whole gamut.

One of the issues I have is spergy responses to specific terms which mean specific things. If we're talking about game design, and you don't know the most primitive of terminology about the subject, how is it possible to have a discussion about the topic when there is an absurd amount of quibbling over basic terminology? Ranging from GTO/symmetry and now pay to win. It becomes difficult to explain how games are designed (to have people play and make money) and how certain mechanics work.

You're probably right. Rather than confusion and pity for that example, there are probably some people who'd give a hearty laugh that would then turn to confusion when they figured out you weren't joking.

But you can feel free to address any issues you have with what I actually posted rather than resorting to a personal insult. I think I have a great grasp of this topic and would be happy to educate you, but I think a basic review of wikipedia or kotaku or smth would be better for you to understand the subject.

you're the one that started with the ad hominems buster, not me

Free to play isn't the industry term btw. It is another term of art that means something else entirely. LoL is both f2p and p2w.

Can you please point out where I made an ad hominem? Your arguments are silly as you don't understand the terminology you're attempting to use and don't really understanding anything about games either apparently. This doesn't mean you are silly. We all say silly things at times, but coming to grips with when we're wrong and don't have the faintest ****ing clue about a subject helps us better educate ourselves in the future.

ETA: FIFA is not f2p but has p2w elements. Perhaps reviewing more games and understanding their mechanics might help you to understand the vocab?

Sure. The discussion had been perfectly civil and courteous until you decided to escalate things with this doozy:

I stand by my assertion that you lack imagination. You can't see the forest for the trees and get lost in industry jargon and minutiae that are irrelevant to the discussion. Yes, mtg has a skinner box design that encourages people to purchase more. Yes, it theoretically has no cap on how much you can spend on it, while a SC2 has a fixed cost.

But the essential question here is: is mtg a bad game that allows people to crush their opponents by outspending them.

And it simply isn't. You conceded that the competitive scene is fair, but that casual games can be unbalanced. But its trivial to balance casual games as well. As long as people agree on a baseline of play (a standard format, or a fixed amount you can spend on cards, or playing limited formats, or preconstructed decks) then it is completely fair and the only way for a player to gain an edge is by outplaying his opponent, not spending cash.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Containers allow you to handle load by adding more containers. This wasn't quite automated when I left but was being worked on. I had to deploy an Nginx server in a container and it was very convenient to be able to test the container locally instead of on a test server, which is how we had been doing it.