Michael Duan

Working on Saleblazers, a multiplayer shopkeeping RPG.
@airstrafers

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@TedPillows Hopefully life lol like new buildings, amenities, jobs, repairs

Assets aren’t meant to go up forever past inflation. It’s actually quite bad for innovation and quality of regular life since why bother improving or making anything if it’s better spent parked in assets?

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@MjTheHunter DON’T DO IT!!!!!!!!!

[Saleblazers @airstrafers]

The Immersive Update is now out!

⭐️ Pop Pop has 200+ new voice lines!
⭐️ New character class and item attribute update!
⭐️New physics systems!
⭐️New shop shelves!
⭐️Kazai Village update!

Read the patch notes: https://t.co/8OeCFXolFl

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@SnoweyVR Wait how is this dev letter having an ego?

Asking because I don’t want to accidentally ego players

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

Generally any character that just shoots a lot is a late game character since Valve likes to balance low cooldown range with weaker early stats.

Characters that are good early can still be good late if you take map control since there are permanent buffs they can pick up via sinners sacrifice, urn, midboss, and golden statues.

So, technically any character can be a late game character if you play it right and aggressively.

The only character I think sucks late game this update is Abrams because he just has no range on anything and everyone’s too mobile.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@IntelDeadlock A good compromise is less gun damage falloff then.

Most of the reason mobility is annoying is that you do no damage when they’re barely far from you.

If someone’s constantly floating up in the air the M1 carry should just be able to snipe them out.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@aeterponis On, and toggleable off in settings. People forget controls all the time.

I think as a bonus seeing controls well done are like special game sauce.

Going over to a friend’s house and seeing controls on screen feels cozy for some reason.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@royceybrackets I think it’s more that Deadlock players at higher rank are kinda old. Like 30+ years old.

That’s just the vocabulary of people back in 2012 when League became a thing.

If you look at Reddit threads from 2010 vs. 2026 you’ll see a massive difference.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@Pirat_Nation Aren’t companies like epic games who offer all engine code openly getting screwed by AI?

Any employee can just copy unreal engine and even follow every update’s features live.

It’s also legal for now.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@froggy_dl Ascendant is not high rank at all so you’re gonna have to 1v6 hard carry to get out.

I think I played with you before.

You’re really good but unfortunately Holliday is not a good solo carry character. I bet if you played Seven or McGinnis you’d be Eternus 6.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

(Sci fi game idea I’ve wanted to make)

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

Imagine you are an alien AI probe bot that traverses galaxies for data.

You can’t return to base because it’s too far, so you have to continue with resources you find on your way.

You’ve arrived on Earth but at this point most of your parts are all broken from traversing the last asteroid belt.

Luckily, there’s plenty of carbon and so you seed some intelligent life in hopes that in a few millennium they’ll eventually be able to develop civilizations to be able to repair you.

As you prepare to hibernate in the ocean for 350,000 years, you wonder if this plan will really work out…

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@ZackKorman The big difference is that it’d be people with expert domain knowledge directly creating the software.

No more playing the back and forth telephone game with a giant team of engineers.

(I studied CS so this sucks for me but it is the truth).

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@FarzaTV I’ll just agree with you so I can tell myself that my CS degree wasn’t wasted

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@jogamedev It’s very cool! I still wish it was more mass-unit-like so someone could understand it’s that type of game immediately.

And, I think it’d be better suited for a dark background since Steam players seem to like serious games (as learned/said by the Cult of the Lamb creator)

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@ToxicAssWhore @Hxsykhia In deadlock it’s hard to stat pad without being impactful though.

It’s not like overwatch or something where you can get crazy heal or damage numbers as a bad player.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

I personally believe Steam, as do many platforms, rewards you with more players if your return rates are low, reviews are high, and player spend vs. cost to serve on Steam is high.

IMO this is why so many games have such identical player counts and recent reviews. Steam probably gives visibility in separate exposure buckets based on this data.

You can show only so many games per customer so Steam has to ensure high chance of a happy player for every game shown is all.

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@NickRebornTV NEVER BET AGAINST GARRY NEWMAN!!!!

[Michael Duan @e_Zinc]

@Bensam123TV @pubity China is a really diverse place. The 996 grindset you hear of is mostly in special economic zones like Shenzhen.