My old iPhone 5s was starting to break down. For one, the battery was going south, but more importantly, I could only charge it if I put the charger in JUST RIGHT, and it would stop charging if you even looked at it funny. Granted, I used that phone a ton, so I’m happy it survived as many years as it did, but it was time to replace it before I drove myself mad.

I picked up an iPhone 7, because I’m not a fan of the larger S models, and paying $100+ more for the 8 didn’t seem to make sense (had the X been out that would have been a harder decision). The 7 is a pretty significant upgrade over the 5s anyway, from its sharper screen to the fact it loads everything up faster. Perhaps most surprisingly though? It runs CoC and CR flawlessly, and I only noticed that my old phone wasn’t in retrospect. For example, in CR I’d sometimes ‘lag’ in a match, seeing units drop milliseconds after they actually did. That might not seem gamebreaking, but when you are pushing 4600+ trophies against equally near-maxed decks, every little bit helps. In CoC the difference is less noticeable, but everything does run smoother and thus things are easier to react to, such as dropping a rage spell at the exact right time to save your archer queen.

All of this reminds me that buying better hardware is the oldest form of Pay-4-Power in gaming. I’ve written about it before, but back in the 90s when my family had broadband, playing UO on that vs people on dial-up was basically like running a legal speed hack. I’d move around the screen faster, I’d load transitions faster, and I had far lower delay on abilities/spells. Getting a newer iPhone is that for mobile gaming, as is having a top-tier PC for traditional PC games.

Speaking of that, the group I play PUBG has been seeing our fair share of chicken dinners lately, and one of the trends is we generally do better when we drop in Yas when it makes sense. A little bit of background on Yas. People avoid it because its the largest city on the map, meaning it takes the most processing power to render, and on slower computers that means lower FPS or even crashes if someone has a real potato of a PC. On the plus side, Yas has great loot, is centrally located, and almost always has vehicles nearby. Since our group has decent to great PCs, Yas isn’t a problem in that regard, and since PUBG is so popular, it’s filled with more ‘casual’ players who likely aren’t running with a 1080GT, so the odds of multiple other squads also dropping in Yas is pretty low. Obviously getting better at shooting people and all that is also a factor, but the option to drop in Yas is a nice little boost.

And on the topic of winning, my favorite unintentional comedy blog has a well-timed post today. It’s another ‘how to win’ post from Gevlon, who current sits at… still zero wins out of 570+ games (keep in mind this is a game where people have won while afk and while getting zero kills in a solo match, so still having zero is impressive in terms of how badly one has to play to accomplish that…). This one delivers on the same level as Gevlon’s “queue dodge to rank up in LoL” advice, or his “haul badgers to get rich” EVE advice.

‘But but but Syn, his rating, his rating! (read in Trump-supporter ‘but but her emails!’ voice please). Here is a fun little experiment for ya; queue up at the exact same time with someone who has a significantly different rating then you. Guess what? You’re most likely in the same game! Why? Because the rating system doesn’t matter. Its literally a fake number that does absolutely nothing right now. It doesn’t change who you play against, and it is worth zero point zero in terms of showing how good a player is, in large part because its a work-in-progress system that the devs really don’t care to actually fix right now.

Want another example of why no one but the dumbest of players takes the ratings seriously? Better player, zero wins Gevlon or Shroud? Because if you are Gevlon-dumb, you believe Shroud is significantly worse at PUBG than Gevlon based on ratings… but then readers here aren’t Gevlon-dumb, now are you?

What is interesting though is how far Gevlon has to twist to try to justify it all to himself and the few readers that don’t visit him for laughs. I’d say he is trolling with stuff like “That’s what streamers do, they just don’t stream the ‘lose on purpose’ part”, because if you watch 10 minutes of Shroud, you know he does stream his early losses, but it’s Gevlon so I don’t think he is saying it to troll, he is saying it because he ignorantly actually believes it. It’s similar to his ‘all devs are corrupt’ theory where the guy responsible for the art in a  single player game is clearly getting paid off by the RMT cartel, despite that making absolutely no sense in any way.

Let’s finish up today with two can’t-miss Gevlon quotes that work perfectly together:

“Show me a bad player, and I’ll show you a bad person” – Gevlon

“If you are in a situation where your win is unlikely, just blow yourself up with a grenade.” – Same Gevlon

Couldn’t have said it any better myself honestly.