u/Electronic_Cut2562

For any of you that have seen the BAM & Wreckless Ben videos, it reminds me of this segment from https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/still-alive

TLDR: A large corporation (BAM) was making it deliberately difficult to sue them after they stole some merchandise, so this youtuber went on a crusade to harass them into compliance and probably made some legal mistakes that he may be in trouble for. In response, a lot of people are saying he should have gotten a lawyer to avoid this.

Frankly, I'm glad he didn't get one. He created a total disaster so that instead of legal court, they got the court of public opinion, which has no maximum sentencing guidelines. There is a decent chance this multimillion dollar company will go under now, which does send a message to other big corporations: lawfare can backfire terribly if you get caught by the public.

>In Street Fighter, the hero confronts the Big Bad about the time he destroyed her village. The Big Bad has destroyed so much stuff he doesn't even remember: "For you, the day [I burned] your village was the most important day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday." That was the impression I got from the Times. They weren't hostile. I wasn't a target they were desperate to take out. The main emotion I was able to pick up from them was annoyance that I was making their lives harder by making a big deal out of this. For them, it was Tuesday.

>It's bad enough to get kicked in the balls because Power hates you. But it's infuriating to have it happen because Power can't bring itself to care. So sure, deleting my blog wasn't the most, shall we say, rational response to the situation. But iterated games sometimes require a strategy that deviates from apparent first-level rationality, where you let yourself consider lose-lose options in order to influence an opponent's behavior.

>Or, in layman's terms, sometimes you have to be a crazy bastard so people won't walk all over you.

>In 2010, a corrupt policewoman demanded a bribe from impoverished pushcart vendor Mohammed Bouazizi. He couldn't afford it. She confiscated his goods, insulted him, and (according to some sources) slapped him. He was humiliated and destitute and had no hope of ever getting back at a police officer. So he made the very reasonable decision to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire in the public square. One thing led to another, and eventually a mostly-peaceful revolution ousted the government of Tunisia. I am very sorry for Mr. Bouazizi and his family. But he did find a way to make the offending policewoman remember the day she harassed him as something other than Tuesday. As the saying goes, "sometimes setting yourself on fire sheds light on the situation".

This is an in depth analysis of one of Jermas infamous bosses, the deeping wall "ladder level" at helms deep in LOTR Two Towers. Link To Gameplay

TLDR: both this level and Gimli are plagued by terrible balance decisions, where a few subtle choices make or break you. Many of them aren't communicated to the player, and these can combine into a monstrosity.

I became fascinated by jermas inability to beat it, since many of us as children managed to, so I installed a PS2 emulator and proceeded to beat it on my first AND second AND third tries as Gimli Lvl 5 on Normal! Was jerma just bad? No, additional playtests with Lvl 1 characters showed that slight deviations in player ladder behavior or character upgrades yields the level either easy, or almost impossible. With perfect technique you can beat the deeping wall with any level 1 character, but certain upgrades can help a lot. I played it over 20 times to figure things out.

Before we see how to win, let's examine all the absurd ways you can lose.

Boulders can insta kill you even from full health. Health upgrades can prevent this, but you are rarely at full health anyway, and there is very little indication of where they will land. It is predetermined, but who's going to memorize that? And since they land near the end of the mission they are maximally punishing: you can waste 7 minutes then get hit in the head with a rock: Game Over

Cutscenes. Jerma claimed that it continues during cutscenes. He was correct. Ladder timers and ladder orc spawns continue. If you start a cutscene slightly behind, the cutscene magnifies this, as more orcs get on the wall WHILE YOU ARE WATCHING A CUTSCENE, you spiral: Game Over

Body blocking. The more orcs on the wall, the harder it is to get by them, meaning more ladders, more orcs, more body blocking: Game Over

Urukai (big orcs) can stunlock you easily. Urukai have more health, longer swing range, a leap attack, and a high chance to knock you down. Parry doesn't help much. Being stunlocked for even a few seconds means more urukai, more stunlocking, more ladders: Game Over

Bad Ladder Priority. This is the true source of the balance instability with this level. It is an exponential. If you can push the right ladders fast enough, there are no orcs and the level is easy. If you can't push them fast enough even briefly, more orcs arrive and any chance of recovery goes to zero very rapidly. To boot, There are two types of ladders, and they behave differently. Following the wrong push order means urukai on the wall, stunlock, body block, more ladders: Game Over

Wrong Gimli upgrades. The issue isn't that he is slow, he has DPS issues. His swing has a shorter range than the other characters, preventing him from killing things quickly. Combine that with the urukai long range swing, and they become hard to deal with one on one, and a group of them impossible. If there are urukai on the wall and you didn't get the right upgrades: Game Over

So how do you win?

Correct Ladder Priority - the three outer edge ladders are Fast ladders. They take just 20 seconds to reappear. The 5 inner ladders are Slow and take 40 SECONDS to reappear. You can consistently beat it (baring boulders), level 1 any character, by ignoring the NORTH most ladder, and going in a consistent pattern. This let's you keep all Slow ladders down 100% (you can push it down the very second it appears) All allied bowman on the wall can fire into the middle, meaning orcs from that northmost ladder are quickly killed off without your help. when Jerma ignored the left side, he was nearly accomplishing a similar strategy and did well.

Kick Enemies Off - You can push enemies off both sides of the wall (front and back) for an insta kill.

Upgrades to Reduce kill time with Gimli - Rush Attack and Charge Attack - These let gimli leap forward, knocking an enemy down. Then you can insta kill them with R2. This is critical for urukai.

Upgrade to reduce stunlock with Gimli - Rising Attack - After getting knocked down, this lets you hit and knock down ALL nearby orcs after standing up.

To recap, The health upgrades are a noob trap, and Jerma wasted XP on them. Despite this, he got within 1 second of beating it with gimli (linked at top, see YT comments), but would have been stuck at the next two levels anyway. Gimli needs higher damage output for the last three missions because you need to kill orcs fast, or you just plain lose. I beat all 3 final missions easily with gimli because I got damage upgrades. Earlier missions like amon hen with Gimli are genuinely difficult because you can't have gotten upgrades yet.

Poetic, how a short man and a dwarf get defeated by ladders. I think he should come back and overcome his fears.