The trigger system is basically just neutered C plus plus but with a nice GUI interface.
Fixed.
I dont think the majority of SC2 modders will get a job in the gaming industry. Many dont even seek to work in that industry. But the road i personally am taking is trying to get some programming experience as a software developer and then work from there. And i dont think my experience with WC3 helped me much, though it might in the future since the field im working in right now has nothing to do with gaming.
QA is also a good way to get into the industry, from what ive heard.
I started all the way back in Starcraft 1. I wanted to see that custom map blizzard gave us with siege tanks instead of vulcans, I think it was called death race. So I decided to give it a shot. My interest grew from that point onward's. I generally suck at competitive ladder and couldn't even defeat the AI. So I built myself a map whereby I was literally in an impenetrable fortress, allowing me to mass air and take out the opposition. Back then I only fiddled with very basic things in the game engine. But when we moved to WC3, i realised there were alot of maps I wanted to see, but no one ever made them. So I figured hell, why not give it a try myself. And it kinda carried from there til where I am now :)
QA is also a good way to get into the industry, from what ive heard.
Yes, it's true... but only if your goal is to become a game designer. They like people from QA for these jobs because analyzing a game system, and its flaws, makes you potentially good at knowing what a game really is, in terms of work to achieve (game mechanics, scripting, 2D and 3D, sounds, animations,...). You learn from QA how a game is done, so you basically should be able to design one, eventually. Since game design is more or less a mix of every job at the same time, working in QA is a good way to start because you inspect every piece of a game.
But don't expect to get a QA job easily, even such a job requires some skills than many people don't have (like good writing, programming, analysis skills,...). I already said that multiple times but I'll say it again, whatever is the career you seek in video games, you need to be able to focus, work fast and be part of a team. Even in QA. As an example I've seen lots of SC2Mapster members here and there having lots of ideas for maps, scenarios or whatever (good ones to be honest, by the way...), and their projects never made it to the end. It's an essential skill in the video games industry to have strong will, if you're too chaotic you just won't make it. Period. It has to be said once and for all, because so many gamers think they can make their own games or start their company. They just need to realize making video games is not just all about fun, it's about working hard.
Starting in QA or not, it's a tough road. With that said, I know some members here could start a career in video games already, if it's really their goal. I'm being harsh here, but I just don't want people to get delusional about how the video games industry really is. Honestly, I'd rather advise keeping this as a passion, and work in a field close enough to video games without actually soaking in it. Programming can be done for other matters than gaming, music as well, and 3D animation too... If you fail in video games (and we're a lot to fail, because we're a lot to seek for these jobs), you must have a plan B.
Im not a pro, actually im a total noob, but i got into it when i was around 5-6 years old on the Warcraft 2 map editor, things were sooo simple back then.
Seems like I have the earliest mapping experience on this forum. The first RTS game I mapped for was Dune II. Or even earlier. I remember I was messing around the first civilization, but there was possible only to change some texts, other leaders say.
Well according to Eiviyn everyone who maps got into it through legos. I personally played with knex or whatever it was called.
But I really got into it during sc1 where I was a kid, like 6 or 8 years old playing around in it. I actually wanted to try and make a map once so I tried copying the thing. It took months, or what felt like it(I didn't care about time when I was that age), for me to actually get something close to what was there. Then later in life I think it was Halo 2 that caught my eye with creating custom content, but I didn't get much into it as I couldn't afford 3ds max so I was contempt with playing other custom maps which were amazing. Then Gears of War PC(halo 2 was also PC) got me into making custom content although I never understood what I was doing with udk. Then littlebigplanet came out on PS3 and I had a blast creating all the working mechanics, luckily I found a guy who could pretty up my level and it was a blast. Then came mod nation racers which was severely limiting compared to lbp. After that was 3d dot heroes which allowed character customization allowing customization of attack animations and others. After that came sc2 which was the main reason I wanted it. After sc2 I went on to infamous 2 which was really simple in creating a variety of mission styles. Although I've been switching between sc2 and infamous 2. Most recently I've been messing with the udk and learning it's ins and outs. I just realized I had UT3 sitting on my shelf last week and plan to make custom mods for it so I can pass the time, also more freedom than sc2 but no fan base.
I ended up giving my whole life's history. Basically it was my curiosity with sc1 at first and other games allowing user created content.
Well, it all started when I visited my first Warcraft III modding site (Gwyida, then Haven, Diplo and currently Hiveworkshop) and well, I occasionally mod on the Starcraft II Galaxy Editor at my cousin's house (Because I'm gonna get the game at the end of the year, due to exams), so yeah(:
For me, it started in my child-hood years of playing with Lego.
Eiviyn's theory still stands unchallenged.
EDIT:
@Trieva: Go
Dunno whether you've watched sc2streamster/mapcraft, but I guess if you did you would've known the joke :p
Mapcraft is a podcast with Mozared, Eiviyn, Me and a guest (usually the leader of a big sc2 project), and during one episode Eiviyn asked the guest whether he played with legos, and set up a theory that Mapping was the natural evolution of playing with legos (Well, "mapping or minecraft" is what he said)
We've been asking our guests the "Did you play with legos?" question ever since.
-_-_-_-_
So, at first I would've posted "I started with Wc3", but the other posts made me think further back.
So: Legos! Ive played with legos as long as I can remember. And I guess this is where my "game making" started. I didn't only build stuff with legos - I have a box of those Lego Duplos or whatever they're called, the fucking huge ones, and I've got a board to place them on. I used these together with marbles (normal lego wouldve been too much work to use together with marbles) and created sort of levels, gave my brother some restrictions (Like how many blocks he can jump or so) and let him play through it, lol. There were more details to the game I can't be bothered to get into.
Then, seventh grade, I made a sort of game based on paper. Turn based arena style game, you had a character, got money for fighting other players/classmates, and upgraded those characters attributes, sometimes unlocking new abilities. Almost the entire class played that, lol. Of course, the next year they thought they were too cool for it or something and simply didnt play it, but a few of my friends still did (And the game got better). The next year we went to high school and got the SC2 beta.
Over the years I had picked up and dropped Wc3 at least five times. I tried making maps for myself (for some reason I just loved creeps and wanted to play with them instead of the usual races). Eventually a friend of mine got me to actually buy the game (This is Croatia, back when I first played wc3 in like third grade or so, most of games here were pirated. I honestly can't think of one person that bought games for the full price at that time) so that we could play on Battle.net, and we mostly palyed the map "World War III" (No supply or wood needed for units, multiple gold mines per base)
Then we made our own version of it. Even over a year later my friends brother sometimes sees it being hosted (Its not exactly very popular, but people actually still play it. Our version is called "World War III Renewed". It got disapproved on Hiveworkshop (Over after a year of waiting) for "Terrain doesn't look good", whoever decided to do that obviously didn't understand the amount of units that were going to be on the map and that doodads would just block pathing. I usually end up having an entire army of shredders just to get rid of trees.)
I didn't play much of TFT because of some problems my friend had with it, so we couldn't play together. We tried making a sort of zombie invasion map, the setting being a school and the characters school kids (Come on, what person doesn't want to see his school flooded by zombies?), and I learned some triggering there.
Then came the SC2 Beta, and eventually the editor with it, and I dropped the zombie map to work on SC2. I honestly had absolutely no problems with triggering, the only trigger tutorial I read was about dialogs, I worked the rest out on my own based on what I had learned in WC3. I got into the data editor rather quickly and started working things out myself after only about 3-4 tutorials.
I started with a sort of base defense map. Zerg would come from three directions, and you had a few warpgates and had to warp in units to defend. Later on I thought about adding heroes, and due to a combination of editor bugs and me just starting to learn, everything failed miserably xD
At that time I saw that there were very little hero oriented maps (With heroes I mean wc3 style heroes), and I liked the hero siege/defense style maps (Practically all I played when my friend wasn't around), so I decided to make one myself and just forget that previous defense map. And due to a combination of lazyness and computer problems, I'm still working on that hero siege/defense xD
I have even created a robot with lego once. It was a vehicle, made of legos, with 4 wheels and a little electic engine from a toy, connected to the weels. And there was a battery and a transistor, to control power on the engine. And there was a wire coming from my computer to the transistor, to control it. Then I've cerated a little assembler program to send a signal via this wire. So, when you click a button on a screen, the robot start to move. Then you press another button and robots stops. And then you press the 3rd button, which sends sound signal, and robot plays the sound, because electric engine works like a speaker. Now I understand, it was a fuckin' real world unit with the ability to move and with a sound actor.
during one episode Eiviyn asked the guest whether he played with legos, and set up a theory that Mapping was the natural evolution of playing with legos (Well, "mapping or minecraft" is what he said)
We've been asking our guests the "Did you play with legos?" question ever since.
The whole Lego theory made me laugh but it's quite true. I actually didn't play Lego... that much. I mean my brother had Legos when we were young, of course, but I never really played with them. I was curious about them, but it was my brothers' so I watched him build awesome stuff and I messed with the pieces while he was building it. I had Duplo Lego bricks though when I was even younger, and I remember building houses like crazy with these. I also remember building lots of structures as a child with pieces of wood (like Jenga tiles, but with more pieces like arches, cones, etc.) and rolling my Crash Dummies car at full speed to check how strong the structure was. Hell, that was so much fun...
Quote:
I made a sort of game based on paper. Turn based arena style game
I remember doing that too. I was around 8 or a bit less, I basically used a huge sheet of paper my parents found and made a board game out of it, with motherships, space fighters, planets to colonize and such... Basically, the mothership was like a docking bay for smaller ships and you had to send colonization teams to conquer planets and build defenses on them. Movements were based on maximum distance available per turn, pretty much like Warhammer works (if you move too much you cannot fire this turn, you're better protected in certain areas, and so on...).
Quote:
Over the years I had picked up and dropped Wc3 at least five times.
It hurts to see how NOT unique we all are... I did that too. Actually, my latest TFT map was started just a month before SC2 came out. I never took time to finish it because I was too excited for SC2, but I'll eventually finish it. Actually I'm rather considering converting it to SC2. It's a TD map, almost a clone of another TD map I made years ago, but much more improved. I think I still have videos of it on my Youtube profile, by the way... I want to convert both these maps from TFT to SC2, but they're not on the top of the queue... I'd rather finish Ikari Warriors, Sand Worm Survival, and Paparazzi first, but I'm pretty sure what I'm planning to do with these TD maps is unique in SC2 and could be a lot of fun. You should do that too with your WC3 map(s). :)
Quote:
(Come on, what person doesn't want to see his school flooded by zombies?)
I had the occasion to do that in HL1... Man, it was so freaking fun... I made my entire junior high school with the Hammer Tool, filled with zombie scientists, vortigaunts and headcrabs, and it was a bloody mess (with something like 20 zombies in each classroom). At that time I also did my first mod (more like a full scenario, actually), which was for Gunman Chronicles, a pretty cool HL1 mod. Then I switched to the Unreal Engine for maaaaaaany years and made most of my 3D level editing experience in Unreal 1 and 2, UT, etc etc etc... I made levels for the whole series, it's as simple as that. There were videos of some of my latest UT2004 maps on my Youtube profile but I think I removed them, you could barely see a thing and that's not "pro" enough to be displayed in a portfolio. Come to think of it, I wonder why I never published any of my maps before SC2 came out. I almost always keep my maps all to myself, but I don't know why. Honestly, I've seen worse so I shouldn't be ashamed of my maps like that.
Heck the SC2 stuff was so cool, I just had to see how it worked. After that I wanted to see what else I could do with the editor and here I am still pushing the boundries.
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Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
I created things with legos when I was a kid, also. Me and my brother had even created a judicial and combat system for it, hahah.
But I also know three other people I played legos with who never got into mapping.
So I think a better question would be...who hasn't played with legos?
I created things with legos when I was a kid, also. Me and my brother had even created a judicial and combat system for it, hahah. But I also know three other people I played legos with who never got into mapping. So I think a better question would be...who hasn't played with legos?
I know one guy who doesn't play LEGO. his name in mapster is rageofhell. He kept bitching about putting pricetag in your map ever since he was born.
Oh he's so poor too. I put a direct link to his URL in case you guys want to PM him and send him some money =)
Eiviyn's theory is that almost all mappers at one point in their life before mapping have played with lego or something similar to lego such as knex or however you spell the word.
I created things with legos when I was a kid, also. Me and my brother had even created a judicial and combat system for it, hahah. But I also know three other people I played legos with who never got into mapping. So I think a better question would be...who hasn't played with legos?
whoa. thats similar to me and my brother. I practically assigned abilities to certain lego characters (fully equipped and rigged with custom spears, swords etc) and played as if it was an actual game O_o Not to mention arguing about balance and broken characters lol.
damnn, I miss those times.
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Fixed.
I dont think the majority of SC2 modders will get a job in the gaming industry. Many dont even seek to work in that industry. But the road i personally am taking is trying to get some programming experience as a software developer and then work from there. And i dont think my experience with WC3 helped me much, though it might in the future since the field im working in right now has nothing to do with gaming.
QA is also a good way to get into the industry, from what ive heard.
I started all the way back in Starcraft 1. I wanted to see that custom map blizzard gave us with siege tanks instead of vulcans, I think it was called death race. So I decided to give it a shot. My interest grew from that point onward's. I generally suck at competitive ladder and couldn't even defeat the AI. So I built myself a map whereby I was literally in an impenetrable fortress, allowing me to mass air and take out the opposition. Back then I only fiddled with very basic things in the game engine. But when we moved to WC3, i realised there were alot of maps I wanted to see, but no one ever made them. So I figured hell, why not give it a try myself. And it kinda carried from there til where I am now :)
Yes, it's true... but only if your goal is to become a game designer. They like people from QA for these jobs because analyzing a game system, and its flaws, makes you potentially good at knowing what a game really is, in terms of work to achieve (game mechanics, scripting, 2D and 3D, sounds, animations,...). You learn from QA how a game is done, so you basically should be able to design one, eventually. Since game design is more or less a mix of every job at the same time, working in QA is a good way to start because you inspect every piece of a game.
But don't expect to get a QA job easily, even such a job requires some skills than many people don't have (like good writing, programming, analysis skills,...). I already said that multiple times but I'll say it again, whatever is the career you seek in video games, you need to be able to focus, work fast and be part of a team. Even in QA. As an example I've seen lots of SC2Mapster members here and there having lots of ideas for maps, scenarios or whatever (good ones to be honest, by the way...), and their projects never made it to the end. It's an essential skill in the video games industry to have strong will, if you're too chaotic you just won't make it. Period. It has to be said once and for all, because so many gamers think they can make their own games or start their company. They just need to realize making video games is not just all about fun, it's about working hard.
Starting in QA or not, it's a tough road. With that said, I know some members here could start a career in video games already, if it's really their goal. I'm being harsh here, but I just don't want people to get delusional about how the video games industry really is. Honestly, I'd rather advise keeping this as a passion, and work in a field close enough to video games without actually soaking in it. Programming can be done for other matters than gaming, music as well, and 3D animation too... If you fail in video games (and we're a lot to fail, because we're a lot to seek for these jobs), you must have a plan B.
Im not a pro, actually im a total noob, but i got into it when i was around 5-6 years old on the Warcraft 2 map editor, things were sooo simple back then.
I started with the WC3 World Editor two years ago. That's all.
Seems like I have the earliest mapping experience on this forum. The first RTS game I mapped for was Dune II. Or even earlier. I remember I was messing around the first civilization, but there was possible only to change some texts, other leaders say.
Well according to Eiviyn everyone who maps got into it through legos. I personally played with knex or whatever it was called.
But I really got into it during sc1 where I was a kid, like 6 or 8 years old playing around in it. I actually wanted to try and make a map once so I tried copying the thing. It took months, or what felt like it(I didn't care about time when I was that age), for me to actually get something close to what was there. Then later in life I think it was Halo 2 that caught my eye with creating custom content, but I didn't get much into it as I couldn't afford 3ds max so I was contempt with playing other custom maps which were amazing. Then Gears of War PC(halo 2 was also PC) got me into making custom content although I never understood what I was doing with udk. Then littlebigplanet came out on PS3 and I had a blast creating all the working mechanics, luckily I found a guy who could pretty up my level and it was a blast. Then came mod nation racers which was severely limiting compared to lbp. After that was 3d dot heroes which allowed character customization allowing customization of attack animations and others. After that came sc2 which was the main reason I wanted it. After sc2 I went on to infamous 2 which was really simple in creating a variety of mission styles. Although I've been switching between sc2 and infamous 2. Most recently I've been messing with the udk and learning it's ins and outs. I just realized I had UT3 sitting on my shelf last week and plan to make custom mods for it so I can pass the time, also more freedom than sc2 but no fan base.
I ended up giving my whole life's history. Basically it was my curiosity with sc1 at first and other games allowing user created content.
Well, it all started when I visited my first Warcraft III modding site (Gwyida, then Haven, Diplo and currently Hiveworkshop) and well, I occasionally mod on the Starcraft II Galaxy Editor at my cousin's house (Because I'm gonna get the game at the end of the year, due to exams), so yeah(:
Eiviyn's theory still stands unchallenged.
EDIT: @Trieva: Go Dunno whether you've watched sc2streamster/mapcraft, but I guess if you did you would've known the joke :p
Mapcraft is a podcast with Mozared, Eiviyn, Me and a guest (usually the leader of a big sc2 project), and during one episode Eiviyn asked the guest whether he played with legos, and set up a theory that Mapping was the natural evolution of playing with legos (Well, "mapping or minecraft" is what he said)
We've been asking our guests the "Did you play with legos?" question ever since.
-_-_-_-_
So, at first I would've posted "I started with Wc3", but the other posts made me think further back.
So: Legos! Ive played with legos as long as I can remember. And I guess this is where my "game making" started. I didn't only build stuff with legos - I have a box of those Lego Duplos or whatever they're called, the fucking huge ones, and I've got a board to place them on. I used these together with marbles (normal lego wouldve been too much work to use together with marbles) and created sort of levels, gave my brother some restrictions (Like how many blocks he can jump or so) and let him play through it, lol. There were more details to the game I can't be bothered to get into.
Then, seventh grade, I made a sort of game based on paper. Turn based arena style game, you had a character, got money for fighting other players/classmates, and upgraded those characters attributes, sometimes unlocking new abilities. Almost the entire class played that, lol. Of course, the next year they thought they were too cool for it or something and simply didnt play it, but a few of my friends still did (And the game got better). The next year we went to high school and got the SC2 beta.
Over the years I had picked up and dropped Wc3 at least five times. I tried making maps for myself (for some reason I just loved creeps and wanted to play with them instead of the usual races). Eventually a friend of mine got me to actually buy the game (This is Croatia, back when I first played wc3 in like third grade or so, most of games here were pirated. I honestly can't think of one person that bought games for the full price at that time) so that we could play on Battle.net, and we mostly palyed the map "World War III" (No supply or wood needed for units, multiple gold mines per base)
Then we made our own version of it. Even over a year later my friends brother sometimes sees it being hosted (Its not exactly very popular, but people actually still play it. Our version is called "World War III Renewed". It got disapproved on Hiveworkshop (Over after a year of waiting) for "Terrain doesn't look good", whoever decided to do that obviously didn't understand the amount of units that were going to be on the map and that doodads would just block pathing. I usually end up having an entire army of shredders just to get rid of trees.)
I didn't play much of TFT because of some problems my friend had with it, so we couldn't play together. We tried making a sort of zombie invasion map, the setting being a school and the characters school kids (Come on, what person doesn't want to see his school flooded by zombies?), and I learned some triggering there.
Then came the SC2 Beta, and eventually the editor with it, and I dropped the zombie map to work on SC2. I honestly had absolutely no problems with triggering, the only trigger tutorial I read was about dialogs, I worked the rest out on my own based on what I had learned in WC3. I got into the data editor rather quickly and started working things out myself after only about 3-4 tutorials.
I started with a sort of base defense map. Zerg would come from three directions, and you had a few warpgates and had to warp in units to defend. Later on I thought about adding heroes, and due to a combination of editor bugs and me just starting to learn, everything failed miserably xD
At that time I saw that there were very little hero oriented maps (With heroes I mean wc3 style heroes), and I liked the hero siege/defense style maps (Practically all I played when my friend wasn't around), so I decided to make one myself and just forget that previous defense map. And due to a combination of lazyness and computer problems, I'm still working on that hero siege/defense xD
I have even created a robot with lego once. It was a vehicle, made of legos, with 4 wheels and a little electic engine from a toy, connected to the weels. And there was a battery and a transistor, to control power on the engine. And there was a wire coming from my computer to the transistor, to control it. Then I've cerated a little assembler program to send a signal via this wire. So, when you click a button on a screen, the robot start to move. Then you press another button and robots stops. And then you press the 3rd button, which sends sound signal, and robot plays the sound, because electric engine works like a speaker. Now I understand, it was a fuckin' real world unit with the ability to move and with a sound actor.
The whole Lego theory made me laugh but it's quite true. I actually didn't play Lego... that much. I mean my brother had Legos when we were young, of course, but I never really played with them. I was curious about them, but it was my brothers' so I watched him build awesome stuff and I messed with the pieces while he was building it. I had Duplo Lego bricks though when I was even younger, and I remember building houses like crazy with these. I also remember building lots of structures as a child with pieces of wood (like Jenga tiles, but with more pieces like arches, cones, etc.) and rolling my Crash Dummies car at full speed to check how strong the structure was. Hell, that was so much fun...
I remember doing that too. I was around 8 or a bit less, I basically used a huge sheet of paper my parents found and made a board game out of it, with motherships, space fighters, planets to colonize and such... Basically, the mothership was like a docking bay for smaller ships and you had to send colonization teams to conquer planets and build defenses on them. Movements were based on maximum distance available per turn, pretty much like Warhammer works (if you move too much you cannot fire this turn, you're better protected in certain areas, and so on...).
It hurts to see how NOT unique we all are... I did that too. Actually, my latest TFT map was started just a month before SC2 came out. I never took time to finish it because I was too excited for SC2, but I'll eventually finish it. Actually I'm rather considering converting it to SC2. It's a TD map, almost a clone of another TD map I made years ago, but much more improved. I think I still have videos of it on my Youtube profile, by the way... I want to convert both these maps from TFT to SC2, but they're not on the top of the queue... I'd rather finish Ikari Warriors, Sand Worm Survival, and Paparazzi first, but I'm pretty sure what I'm planning to do with these TD maps is unique in SC2 and could be a lot of fun. You should do that too with your WC3 map(s). :)
I had the occasion to do that in HL1... Man, it was so freaking fun... I made my entire junior high school with the Hammer Tool, filled with zombie scientists, vortigaunts and headcrabs, and it was a bloody mess (with something like 20 zombies in each classroom). At that time I also did my first mod (more like a full scenario, actually), which was for Gunman Chronicles, a pretty cool HL1 mod. Then I switched to the Unreal Engine for maaaaaaany years and made most of my 3D level editing experience in Unreal 1 and 2, UT, etc etc etc... I made levels for the whole series, it's as simple as that. There were videos of some of my latest UT2004 maps on my Youtube profile but I think I removed them, you could barely see a thing and that's not "pro" enough to be displayed in a portfolio. Come to think of it, I wonder why I never published any of my maps before SC2 came out. I almost always keep my maps all to myself, but I don't know why. Honestly, I've seen worse so I shouldn't be ashamed of my maps like that.
Heck the SC2 stuff was so cool, I just had to see how it worked. After that I wanted to see what else I could do with the editor and here I am still pushing the boundries.
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
https://media.forgecdn.net/attachments/187/40/Screenshot2011-04-17_09_16_21.jpg
hmmmmmmmmmmm.............. Now that I think about it I started with.... LEGO(tm)
I created things with legos when I was a kid, also. Me and my brother had even created a judicial and combat system for it, hahah. But I also know three other people I played legos with who never got into mapping. So I think a better question would be...who hasn't played with legos?
@Sephiex: Go
Possibly none of us?
I know one guy who doesn't play LEGO. his name in mapster is rageofhell. He kept bitching about putting pricetag in your map ever since he was born.
Oh he's so poor too. I put a direct link to his URL in case you guys want to PM him and send him some money =)
http://www.sc2mapster.com/profiles/rageofhell/
@Sephiex: Go
Eiviyn's theory is that almost all mappers at one point in their life before mapping have played with lego or something similar to lego such as knex or however you spell the word.
whoa. thats similar to me and my brother. I practically assigned abilities to certain lego characters (fully equipped and rigged with custom spears, swords etc) and played as if it was an actual game O_o Not to mention arguing about balance and broken characters lol.
damnn, I miss those times.