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I love it when people apply operations research technologies to silly things like video games.

One thing I'm missing in this article is a discussion of how useful the ILP techniques really were compared to dumber heuristics. Take the first optimal build as an example:

- We know we will need some items that give us a large boost to our stats thanks to the six-item limit.

- Nashor's tooth seems like an "obvious" choice for the above, given that it supplies 130 units of desirable stats at only 100 gold per unit.

- Once we have that, the Amplifying Tome is really only there to fill out the remaining units of one of the stats.

I guess what I'm saying is the optimal item selection has surprisingly few interactions. That seems like a solution we could get close to with far simpler methods!

> I love it when people apply operations research technologies to silly things like video games To be fair, video games can also be big money. And even if not, some take them very seriously.

Some people with big money takes them very seriously as well.

> this is a useful result theoretically, but it's not very practical in game

Yeah, it's an unfortunate combination - the game itself is too complicated for the analysis to be useful (counters, full builds, game state), and the item space is too simple to need it.

I remember a story about Richard Feynman, where he said he had a dozen or so (?) mathematical "tricks" that he applied to every problem he encountered. When one worked, he looked like a genius. When it didn't...

Off-topic: this is the third blog I come accross in the last month that does not use capital letters at the beginning of sentences. Am I out of the loop? Why is that?

It’s an anti-signal trying to lower the writing’s formalness without actually casualizing the language, usually a quick shortcut for those who compose coherent sentences instinctively and would otherwise need to spend mental energy to go out of their way to not write like that.

It could be that, but also many other languages don't capitalize titles the way English does. It took me a long time as an English learner to learn that it was expected. It still feels very weird to me.

I am German, we write all nouns capitalized.

If I write English I often need to fix some nouns that I have written subconsciously capitalized.

So I think it would be equally acceptable for me to just leave them in?

It might give your writing some unintentional changes to what is emphasized.

In text it might feel like the author is holding back a full caps lock rant.

It’s only considered typical in informal online communities basically

Could be related to bauhaus it creeps up every few years.

https://www.bauhaus-bookshelf.org/bauhaus_writing_in_small_l...

My english major friend in college adopted this affectation because of ee cummings.

Sort of the September of English Lit I figure.

gay online sociolect

>gay online sociolect

the vibe indeed

in my case i think its laziness, holding down shift also feels like an unnecessary distraction. it could also just be me being difficult, ive been told sometimes that i am.

ps: its the future of the internet, get in now, be a cool kid.

Well... First of all, this is a blog post, it's not just casual chat. Second, they seem to capitalise names properly, so it's not just down to 'laziness' or 'limiting distraction'...

Unable to read the article. Totally distracted by the sword cursor and the emojis but nice idea xD

The website with the visitor count at the bottom is quite a blast to the past.

It certainly is. But then again this never really went away if I think of youtube view counts didn’t it?

Number changes with every refresh though.

That's how it's supposed to work...?

To be fair, if I look at the page with 1023 views, and I reload, I could just be seeing 1023 + 1, instead of new_count + 1. I can't prove that's right or wrong, unless the code is client side and I catch it.

Googled around and yep...there are EVE Online gamers using LP as well. What I find interesting is from skimming the content, I don't see anyone doing statistical sampling of opposing force specs, then using that to LP-build that has special applicability towards those specs. I am fascinated by whether it was tried and rejected as not a good strategy by gamers.