#i don’t want to change the game too much. people who mod every aspect until it’s completely different scare me

[fortanreviews]

Big Bad Fortrant: Discord

Hello, I’d like you to welcome to my very first blogpost of my new blog, where I talk about things and share my thoughts regardless of whether anybody gives a fuck or not.

There will be many types of blogposts each with their own tag. And naturally, since Thursday is my least favourite day of the week; Thursdays will be saved for rants. The name of this tag came from an old callout post somebody did for me over 10 years ago.

I originally wanted to go on a rant about my least favourite website in the whole world, Twitter, but I believe I am still struggling to properly put my grievances into sentences without coming across as a rambling lunatic. So, I’ll save it for another time. Instead I will be ranting about my second least favourite website in the whole world, Discord. Now Discord is different from Twitter because I have it on all the time, yet I still despise many aspects of the site and it’s culture.

Discord has more or less become the modern MSN, however the difference between that and Discord is, MSN didn’t have any servers, it had group chats yes, but these group chats were kept to one chat only, there were no multiple channels or threads or anything like that. When MSN fell, Skype became the next popular chatting tool, and when that fell, Discord stepped in to fill in the gaps.

The multiple channels idea was great and it prevented chats from being too crowded. Back in the dark Skype days, a large group chat only had one place to talk in and many topics ended up getting buried by eachother. With Discord, you could create multiple channels.

Unfortunately, over time, this has led to some questionable decisions. Many people have started to use Discord as a substitute for forums. This includes archiving material in said servers, the problem with discords are, you have to JOIN them in order to see them, they’re not public, they’re all very much private. This has led to many people insert download links in their discords for projects such as fangames, game mods and even archived works. Use Internet Archive for that you nimrods! 

And the privacy of Discord has led to another problem, the creation and distribution of echochambers. In my other blog, goddamnwebcomics, there are now two cases of webcomic creators locking themselves in a Discord chat with their rabid fans where nobody is allowed to criticise them. Anyone who raises their voice in any form will be either banned or put in a struggle session. And this is just two examples off the top of my head, there are so many communities that are used for echochambers and even inappropriate behaviour. Yes, Discord’s private nature allows sexual predators to find new victims easier than ever. A lot of people don’t use the old internet etiquette of never showing your face, address or real name. It shouldn’t be done in public but it ESPECIALLY shouldn’t be done in private.

Discord has recently gained more open critique lately from their users, but my main problem is really with the culture of it. The name change update is stupid, but I don’t see a reason to leave the site over it. However, I can eventually see another live chat program replace it as the Discord developers make more and more asinine decisions that make the site more irritating to use. At least users have an option to leave unlike the poor YouTube community. Until then, many people, me included, will continue to use the site despite hating it. Don’t worry, I have no plans of buying Nitro anytime soon.

Let me end this rant on a personal story, because I want all of my rants to come from a certain place of experience. I feel like I’ve seen the enormous flaws Discord had way back when people still loved the site. For that we must go back 6 years. For privacy reasons, every name in this story has been changed. It has also been embellished quite a bit.

I joined Creatividia Discord server after my friend had invited me there, Creatividia was an art group that loved to work on art but also criticise art. The community was nice but they were too obsessed with perfectionism. The leader of this group was a man named Ruth Grondan. Ruth had demoted the co-founder of Creatividia years ago for not being critical enough. When I first met Ruth, I got along with him. I was able to rise through the ranks of the server, but overtime I started doing stupid shit because it was 2017. Other creatividia members weren’t happy with my behaviour, but their problem was, outside of extreme cases they NEVER told me anything. Creatividia was very secretive because a lot of things that happened inside were “confidential information”. Creatividia you see was part of a much larger group, and what happened in Creatividia shouldn’t be spread to the larger group because they often spoke and critiqued people behind their backs.

Eventually, my friend, Ron Mullet, joined the Creatividia Server. He was made fun of a lot behind his back which I didn’t approve of. One day I openly got confrontational with them for constantly attacking Ron, so I was kicked. Ruth told me that he still respected me and my art. My art here was a video editing project that I have been working on for 10 years now. I appreciated that.

However, with Creatividia gone, I never really got proper feedback that I wanted ever again. If I wanted to know how they really felt about me, I tried to ask Ron Mullet who was still in the group but he told me what happens there is confidential information. Later that year, I learned that a friend of mine, Geyeeh, had been invited to the group. I asked Geyeeh about his invitation and he told me “I’m not sure how I would tell it to you”. I thought this could be my chance to get back to Creatividia server because I knew Geyeeh would convince them to invite me back. So I waited and got really impatient so I kept bombarding Ron with questions. I was getting really anxious because I really wanted the feedback. Eventually I got a message from Ruth that I wouldn’t be invited to the group anymore. I was upset and asked Geyeeh and Ron what the hell was going on. For the first time I saw Geyeeh, who was previously optimistic and passionate, very upset with my shit. Yes, I had acted wrong, but I do feel that in a lot of ways, I was justified to be impatient because I had no idea what was happening in Creatividia. It was a fucking silly art group, not fucking Pentagon. I feel that people there were not honest to me and they wanted to keep me out. I do regret how I behaved and I feel I learned an important lesson about compassion and respect.

My friendship with Geyeeh never really recovered after that, we’re still good friends but not to the level we used to be. Overtime people made “smaller” Creatividia servers but in those groups the existence of the main Creatividia server or “Head Group” was a secret. I remember once asking Ron if one person I felt bad for was in head group and he told me “They aren’t, and never ask me anything about that group again”. Both Ron and Geyeeh are very defensive of Creatividia, even if Ron was a victim of their bullying in the past. Geyeeh’s more defensive though, I believe it’s because Geyeeh really has no other community to be part of. They’re his only friends.

The only time I got to see a post from the Head Group afterwards was when someone shared a post talking about me with the name cropped out. However from the way it was written I could tell from the get-go it was written by Ruth. Ruth’s opinion on me and my work had changed in just a few months, calling my work “odd and nonsensical” and he said I would never be allowed in the Head Group again.

I feel Creatividia situation perfectly captures the problem I have with Discord, if Creatividia had been made few years earlier and the group had a forum instead of a discord server, the privacy problem wouldn’t really exist and we would have a much more healthy community. I can’t directly call out Creatividia without burning bridges so the only way I can call them out is by using subtle messages in my art, the fake names I used in this story did come from a group of OC’s I had created that were a parody of the said group. I might deepdive into these OC’s in the coming blogposts, but anyways Discord is awful because it’s used as a substitute for forums, it’s a haven for echochambers and online creeps, and it makes even the silliest community treat themselves like they’re Area 51. That’ll be all.

#big bad fortrant

[mkg-modelmyopia]

Applications Now Closed!

Hello of three hours later~! I appreciate your patience— but I come baring gifts (mainly announcements and one (1) teaser) that will be posted after this. Nothing too exciting, but!

First things first, on behalf of the Model Myopia Mod Team, we want to give a huge congratulations to all our applicants! Please give yourself a huge pat on the back— that was not the world’s shortest app by any means, and we are so proud of you for fighting through it. Yahoo!!

For anyone who didn’t get an app in but had been thinking about it, or had a schedule conflict, or anything- please know that we completely understand. App or no app, we are grateful to have each and every one of you here in this server!

We received an incredible push of extensions— bringing our application count to a grand total offfff (🥁) 66 applications and 56 unique muns! Thank you to all of you for trusting us with your OCs, your time, and (sometimes) your pictures of your pets that we have been enjoying immensely. :] We are so insanely excited to read them all (officially!) and to see what you guys came up with!!

That being said, there’s a few things to note moving forwards:

We don’t know yet how long it will take us to read all the apps, or how long it will take to pick a cast from that list. We will be keeping you guys in the loop as much as we possibly can! That being said, the process for this game involves a lot of individual details— mainly that, in addition to balancing our cast, we also have to balance and ensure the consistency of our world building document. Because of the unique challenges of world building in this game, we may be DMing people to ask whether certain aspects, species characterizations, and dates are alright with you if we change them. Please note that being asked a question like this doesn’t mean anything specific, and your answer will not be used to harm your app in any way. We’ll be asking any follow-ups and permissions before we begin choosing the cast itself, so we know the compatibility of each OC with any others. If you don’t get asked anything, either, it just means that the app fits into our lore with no tweaks required!

Another note. You might notice the (+ 3) now added to the Hopeful’s list, but no + 3 three occupations. This is because the total accounts for the mod OC spots, but the Mod OCs have not currently been decided. For the sake of fairness, we won’t be choosing moderator OCs until we have selected the rest of our cast- that way no app has the interference of being ‘too similar’ or something. On the cast day the cast is decided, though, we will be updating this list with mod OC occupations— for the sake of information access fairness! :catcheer~1:

The current plan is that there will be 18 spots with an additional 3 mod OCs, leaving us with a total cast of 21. However, this isn’t set in stone- we’re flexible. Rest assured that the number of player spots will not decrease, of course, but has the potential to increase (or be substituted for a Mod OC) depending on how our casting process goes.

We’ll be popping in from time to time to do more updates, and as I said- our goal is definitely to keep you all as in the loop as possible! That being said, if you ever have any questions, please feel free to use the questions channel as usual…!

Thank you all very much once again! As of now, the Hopeful’s list has been fully updated. If you don’t see your applicant on there, it’s possible we may have missed it— just shoot me a DM and I’ll get it fixed!

Have a lovely weekend and get some rest~! You’ve all earned it.

#applications closed #mod post

[thelisabug]

#thesims4 #sims4challenge Through the Packs Challenge – By TheLisaBug This Challenge combines using just about all the packs and was inspired by the Legacy Challenge, Runaway Teen Challenge, Rags to Riches and the Not So Berry Challenge. In fact, this challenge was made with the Not So Berry Challenge in mind so much that it uses a lot of game play that the Not so Berry Challenge doesn't use and instead of different colored hair, eyes, etc. each generation has different clothing, house styles and walk styles! Therefore, whether or not you have done the Not So Berry Challenge will not matter. However, doing this Challenge after the Not So Berry Challenge would give you an even more full experience of The Sims 4!This challenge was made with YouTubers in mind to showcase the packs and help people learn what they would like to purchase and what they can do without. It would also be interesting to watch, especially during this time of isolation, I think!There are certain requirements for this challenge, however, with no set required amount of skills and no points to count, it is fun and stress-free as challenges go!

* if you don't own certain packs then make up your own stories and substitute the challenges as needed to what you see fit. If you don’t have a certain trait or lot trait for example, just make one that seems to fit with the story or challenges, skip entire generations if you need to do so*

General Rules: No cheats may be used. 

You may use mods to enhance game play as far as story goes but the mods may not help with skills, careers or finance. That being said, MCC mod does help to not run out of townies, so it is recommended but it is not a must, since you can just restock the townies with gallery sims if you need to do so.Set Lifespan to Normal (Suggested). Making lifespan longer will make the challenge easier and more chill so do as you like :)

Start Generation 1 as a YA with 20,000 simoleons and no skills (a fresh sim). You may make this sim or get them from the gallery, but be aware that some gallery sims may have skills, careers and traits that would give them an advantage.

The Heir to the next generation is suggested to be the oldest child but you can change that if you want the heir to be the first female or youngest, etc.

Every Generation is supposed to complete their Aspiration/s and get to level 10 of their career by the time the heir becomes a YA as well as complete all other things listed. The two exceptions to this is for Generation 1, since Generation 2 moves out as a teen and Generation 2 where you must have at least a five star restaurant to complete your job by the time your child is a teen and you die when your heir is a teen.

There are no requirements as far as skill levels, but some of the things your sims will need to do require certain skills.

There are no points that you must count for this challenge, as it is meant to be free of stress and help you play parts of packs you may not have explored, fully, before and end up with your dream house in the end and a net worth of at least 1 Million simoleans (ie. House can be worth 400,000 and savings can be 600,000). See how well you can do! 

You may age up your next generation Heir only if you have completed all your assignments. Generation 1 is the only generation that can participate in the lottery 

 Your spouse completing the tasks that are assigned do count for your challenge (ie. They can complete an aspiration that you need) 

I recommend you turn Fame off in your settings, with the exception of Generation 8 where you will want fame to be on. 

 You must participate in all Holidays that come with the game at least once during the Challenge and you may add other holidays if you wish. 

 Each generation should take family photos (at least there should be a picture of each heir) and any collectibles or meaningful trinkets and pass them down through the generations (you must not sell anything that is passed down)

Each Generation moves to a different town and builds a specific style home as specified (you may use houses on the Gallery but make sure you can afford them)

Generation 1 – Strangerville Story: You always wanted to escape from your country and come to a land full of opportunity. After years of waiting, you are given a choice. The place you want to live needs more Military presence and there are not enough people willing to sign up. You have been promised full citizenship if you will join their military and “Defeat the Mother”. You always thirsted for an adventure, so you are willing to take this on full force. However, to combat all the pressure and anxiety you want to live in a small house and arrange flowers.

Traits: Erratic, Ambitious, Active

Career: Military (either branch)

Aspiration: Strangerville Mystery

Clothing Style: Vintage

House Style: Trailer/Tiny home

Walk Style:  Tough

Lot Traits: Child's Play, Dog Hangout, Bracing Breezes

You must be a sim who is able to get pregnant

 - You have received a 20,000 Simoleon signing bonus

Build a trailer or tiny home that is no more than 100 tiles with the money given

Marry someone who helped you “Defeat the Mother” and have a child with them Have a baby, via an affair, to produce the second child with a Sage that you meet on a day trip to Glimmerbrook, but don't marry them or move them into the household (the purpose of having your heir be the spawn of a witch/warlock is for Generation 4 to have the Ancient Bloodline trait)

Defeat “The Mother” and become the Hero of Strangerville

Use the flower arranging table to make flower arrangements with all 7 different flowers (you can use candle making instead if you have eco lifestyle & make 7 different candles)

Take a stray dog into your family by the time the middle child becomes a toddler

Middle child has Independent trait as a toddler

The middle child must reach at least level 3 in all toddler skills before aging up

Have middle child (once they age into a child) have the Kleptomaniac trait, have them complete the Rambunctious Scamp aspiration and get responsibility characteristic high before becoming a teen

Middle child never finds any people they really consider good friends but they find that they consider the family dog their best friend Have 3 kids (the middle child must be biologically yours with the spellcaster Sage)

Have middle child take pictures of the their whole family and dog to get pictures for their future place (all heirs must do this and pass the photos down the generations)

Middle child runs away as a teenager the day after becoming a teenager and takes the family dog (if it is still alive. If not alive, take the urn or gravestone), the military medals (do this by placing medal case in inventory and then putting medal on the ground and then putting them into your middle child's inventory), some flower arrangements you like and at least one photo of the dog with them (you must use the cheat “FreeRealEstate on” to move into an empty lot as a homeless sim) to start Generation 2 Generation 2 – San Myshuno Story: As the middle child, you often felt left out. One of your parents was different than your siblings and you never had any good friends, besides the family dog.  Also, the house was way too small for everyone! Plus, you think your parent and step parent are crazy with their talk of “Defeating the Mother”, which you think is nonsense, so you run away when you become a teen. Coming from a town where everyone was either government or oddballs (or both), you always dreamed of being around people that were more cultured, so you decided to live in the city with the dog who you grew up with. The problem is that you have no money for an apartment, so you will be homeless until you save up for one. You will do almost anything and I mean ANYTHING to save enough money to rent one – couch surf, steal, ask for money – anything. The only exception to this is to marry for money, since you will never get married in your life. You are used to going it alone.

Traits as a teen: Kleptomaniac, Snob, Foodie

Career: Earn money fast so you can Own a Restaurant or Bakery that you build (or get from the Gallery) in San Myshuno

Aspiration: City Native

Clothing Style: Chic

House Style: Apartment

Walk Style: Feminine

Lot Traits: Sunny Aspect, Home Studio, Natural Light

-Once you have purchased an easel, dog bowl, bed, toilet, shower, trash can, refrigerator, sink and saved up 1500 simoleons in savings then you may move to a starter apartment in the Spice District

- You can skip school or take vacation days but you must end up with an A grade and high responsibility in range for a trait by the time you age up to YA.

-Learn all city food recipes

-Collect all snow globes

- Have one dog that you took from your childhood home and when it dies you are too sad to ever get another dog

 Do not have a child until adult and spent YA life living it up in the city and running your restaurant

Your toddler heir must have the fussy trait

Have at least 3 sims that you “try for baby” with on the same day so you don't know which one is the father/mother of the child that you end up having (if male make sure you select that you can get pregnant in CAS and if using mods make sure you are ovulating) Do not check to see if you are pregnant until after you hook up with the 3 sims (if you are still not pregnant then repeat this process until you are)

Never Marry

Have only one pregnancy (if you end up with more than one child then pick one for this challenge)Move into a bigger apartment in the Fashion District or Uptown worth at least 100,000 Simoleans while you are pregnant to make room for your child

Have a 5 star restaurant by the time you die

Paint 3 Masterpieces and put them on the wall in your apartment

Let your child have a pet rat

Have your child start researching Vampires on the computer and purchase and read Vampire Tomes in their spare time (you are too busy to even notice)

Die when your heir child is a teenager (you decide how, but maybe poorly cooked pufferfish? Restaurant fire?) but make sure you transfer all inherited medals, flower arrangements, photos, etc. to the household inventory. This starts Generation 3       

Generation 3 – Forgotten Hollow Story: Your parent was so busy with the restaurant, living it up in the city and their painting that you would often sit alone in your room reading books about Vampirism. You were willingly turned into a vampire as a teenager after your parent died tragically when you were just a teen. You were scarred from this mentally and physically and never want to die. You want to live as a creature of the night and become very powerful.

Traits: Evil, Mean, Vegetarian

Career: Law

Aspiration: Master Vampire 

Clothing Style: Rocker/Goth/Egirl/Eboy

House Style: Victorian

Walk Style: Creepy

Lot Traits: Creepy Crawlies, Mean Vibe, On a Dark Ley Line

Make the house creepy with spider webs, damage to the walls, etc.

Sell all the things you inherited, with the exception of the medals, family photos 3 Masterpieces, flowers, snow globes, your parent's urn or tombstone, etc. and start building a home in the style specified. 

 Sell the restaurant by going to the restaurant and clicking the icon next to the restaurant name called “restaurant settings” and there you will find an option to sell it in the lower left corner

Get in a fight

Have a dark themed at least 20,000 simoleon wedding

Collect postcards that your rat brings home from their travels

Have a Spooky Party or Costume Party and earn Gold Have a scar somewhere on your body from a fight you got into 

Be turned into a Vampire as a teenager while you are still sad about your parent's death

Take your rat with you if it is still alive 

 Have at least one vampire child w/ ancient bloodline trait

Have teen get a part-time job

Toddler heir must have the Inquisitive Trait

Marry another vampire with the Good Vampire Aspiration and have them complete it (Caleb Vatore comes with the game or you can find one on the gallery or make your own)

Have an affair and get caught but make up with your spouse

After completing the Master Vampire Aspiration your spouse's influence to be good has made you a better Being. Change your traits of Evil and Mean to something nicer. You can also change the Mean Vibe lot trait to something else at this point. You must change your traits with the retraiting potion (not in CAS) or it will still act as if you have the other traits still.

Write 5 songs on the Napri Parlor Organ and License them 

Be sure that your heir meets Father Winter and befriends him

When your oldest becomes a toddler you adopt a cat

When the heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 4

Generation 4 – Glimmerbrook Story: You grew up angry about the affair that happened with your parents and the fact that one of your parents was pretty mean for most of your life. The closest friend you had was Father Winter and you always felt a special bond with him due to your magical abilities. You have always been drawn to witchcraft from the Ancient Bloodline trait you inherited. You want to move to a place that accepts your eccentricities and lifestyle choices. You want to show your parents that you can be more powerful than they are.

Traits: Childish, Non-Commital, Genius

Career: Secret Agent  

Aspiration: Spellcraft and Sorcery and Purveyor of Potions

Clothing Style: Boho

House Style: Cottage or Tudor

Walk Style: Swagger

Lot Traits: Breeding Ground, Gremlins, Science Lair 

Take the family cat with you if it is still alive, postcards, rat (if alive) as well as the other things Gen 3 inherited

Find a cure for vampirism so you can become a spellcaster 

own at least two cats of opposite sex and breed them at least once and keep all the kittens from the first litter. You may sell any kittens from any litters after that.

Get pregnant with Father Winter's baby (you can marry him or not) before you Woo Hoo with any other sims and, if you are female, you do this before you realize you are gay

Create at least 5 different potions to hand down to the next Generation

Make toddler heir have Angelic trait

Have at least one facial piercing

Be in an unconventional relationship with someone of the same sex and Marry them. 

Complete both Aspirations (wife or hubby can do one and you the other for example)

When your heir becomes a teen they ask if you could perform the Rite of Dissolution on them because they wish to not be a spell caster and you do as they wish

When heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 5

Generation 5– Sulani Story: Growing up with all the cats and your parent's thirst for power, you just want to live a relaxing life free of pets. You believe animals should be wild and free – never owned. You want to become a beautiful Mermaid/man, make friends with the sea life and do some good in the world.

Traits: Good, Child of the Island, Child of the Ocean

Career: ConservationistAspiration: Beach Life

Clothing Style: Beachy/VSCO

House Style: Beachy on Stilts

Walk Style: Default

Lot Traits: Sunny Aspect, Quake Zone, On a Ley Line

- Take all inherited items from previous generations, photos, plus anything special your parents give you to display at your new home 

Become a Mermaid/man

Save Sulani

Meet and Island Elemental, have a romantic relationship with him/her, ask them to move in and then have a baby with them and marry them. Your baby will inherit the Sulani Mana Trait from them.

Have a cool beach wedding worth at least 7,000 simoleons

Collect at least 7 treasures at the cave and complete the mural Have at least one child

Toddler heir must have Wild trait 

When heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 6

Generation 6 – Oasis Springs Story: You were always so bored being at the beach all the time. You want some adventure in your life. You want to give your family adventurous vacations (away from the beach) that you never got to have.

Traits: Neat, Bookworm, Clumsy

Career: Education

Aspiration: Jungle Explorer and Archaeology Scholar

Clothing Style: Tomboy

House Style: Mediterranean

Walk Style: Bouncy

Lot Traits: Filthy, Teen Neighborhood, Romantic Aura 

 Collect all 9 Relics

Learn all Selvadorada recipes

Buy at least one memento from Selvadorada

Create at least two Totecallam Death Relics

- Find the treasure room in the TempleBecome friends with the Temple Guardian

Have at least 2 children

Toddler heir must have Clingy trait

Have toddler plays date/s so your heir meets their future spouse

Have 2 dogs

Have heir get married to someone they met at a toddler play date Stay in good standing with your partner

When heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 7 Generation 7 – Brindleton Bay Story: You loved going on vacation with your loving family and seeing all the animals. It made you an animal lover with so much love to give. You want to have a dog and a cat that resemble a wolf and cheetah like the ones you came across on your travels.

Traits: Dog Lover, Cat Lover, Slob

Career: Own a Vet Clinic

Aspiration: Friend of the Animals

Clothing Style: Street Style

House Style: Colonial

Walk Style: Perky

Lot Traits: Breeding Ground, Dog Friendly, Training Ground 

Own one cat and one dog that resemble a cheetah and a wolf

Marry someone you met as a toddler

Train both pets fully

Heir toddler must have the Charmer trait

Collect 10 Different types of frogs ( you can breed them to complete this)

When heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 8

Generation 8 – Del Sol Valley Story: You always felt that the pets in the family were more important to your parents than you. You want to be the center of attention for a change! You want your name in lights!! You want the fame and the fortune!!! You also want to party like it's 2099!!!!

Traits: Self-absorbed, Clubber, Materialistic

Career: Actor/Actress

Aspiration: World Famous Celebrity

Clothing Style: Sexy or Sophisticated

House Style: Contemporary and/or Modern

Walk Style: Snooty

Lot Traits: Convivial, Party Place, Celebrity Home Reach top level celebrity

Have a tiny purse dog

Receive at least one award

Make at least 75,000 Simoleons for your generation

Have at least one biological kid and two adopted kids from “foreign lands”

Change your birth name (just the first name) to something more star like.

Marry another Celebrity

Heir toddler must have the Silly trait 

When heir reaches YA you and your spouse move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 9

Generation 9 – Willow Creek Story: Growing up in the limelight was hard on you.  The paparazzi followed your family everywhere. You just want a simple life with as little people around as possible, besides close family and friends. You got to know some famous musicians and they inspired you to learn an instrument.

Traits: Loner, Gloomy, Music Lover 

 Career: Writer 

 Aspiration: Musical Genius

Clothing Style: Artsy

House Style: Craftsman

Walk Style: Sluggish

Lot Traits: Great Acoustics, Home Studio, Fast Internet 

Write five songs

Marry someone who gave you a tip while playing an instrument on the street

Have at least 1 kid

Have one big dog

Have great relationships with your wife and kids

- Paint 5 bestsellersWrite 5 books

Choose one instrument to play exclusively

Toddler trait can be anything you choose

You have kid/s before your wedding

At your wedding, your spouse dies right after you say “I do” while your oldest is still a toddler. (without mods you just kill them after the wedding in a room with fire or murphy bed, etc. and pretend they died at the wedding so just end the wedding after the vows are exchanged) 

Too sad to move on, you live the rest of your life without a partner.

Get 2 roommates after your spouse dies

When heir reaches YA you move to a starter house in the same neighborhood to downsize and give ½ of your money to them to start Generation 10

Generation 10 – Windenburg Story: Seeing your parent go through life without a partner and you with only one parent, you want to find the perfect partner and have a picture perfect life in every way.

Traits: Family-Orientated, Geek, Foodie

Career: Dream Career of choice

Aspiration: Academic and Leader of the Pack Or Your Choice

Clothing Style: Your Choice

House Style: Your Choice

Walk Style: Your Choice

Lot Traits: Child's Play, Good Schools, Great Soil 

Get a Distinguished Degree at University for your desired career

Join the Order of Enchantment and be able to summon the sprites

Buy the 64x64 or 50x50 Lot to build your dream house

Have a 50,000 simolean dream wedding

Build a ServoHave the best club in town

Have 3 pets of any kind

Marry someone from your club

Have 3-5 Kids

Make sure the Grandchild lives with you along with their parents

- Make at least 5 Items for the home with the Knitting skill (I am assuming the Knitting Pack will be out by the time you get to this point) and complete one of the knitting aspirations

As an Elder, change your clothing to something more age appropriate OR be that “fun” grandparent that is totally embarrassing

Optional: Live to see at least one grandchild , knit them at least one onesie before they are born and teach them everything you know since this grandchild will become the one to move to Evergreen Harbor.

Optional Generation 11 – Evergreen Harbor Story: Growing up you had everything anyone could have ever asked for in life. You want to be free from the confines of a capitalist society and make your own way in life by your rules and truly be your own master. You want to purchase as little as possible. You hate consumerism.

Traits: Freegan, Green Fiend, Maker

Career: Freelance Crafter

Aspiration: Master Maker

Clothing Style: DIY or Makeshift (you can make a lot with knitting if you have that pack)

House Style: Container or Farmhouse

Walk Style: Your Choice

Lot Traits: Off-the-Grid,  At least one other Eco lot trait and one other of your choice 

 Start with Zero simoleons

Dumpster dive for food and craft your own furniture as much as possible

If you choose to have pets they must be strays

Learn all crafting recipes on fabricator, candle maker, Fizzy Juice machine and woodworking bench

Get a lot of food and herbal remedies from your garden

Get decent at yoga and/or meditation and/or herbalism

Do not have your own kids, as you think this is wrong since there are so many kids that need homes in the world

If you want kids then make sure to adopt them and make them their own clothes by knitting

Furnish your house as much as you can with things you made yourself or found in a dumpster

The goal is to have a fully self-sustaining home for you and your family with a nice big garden

[bearpillowmonster]

Persona 5 Review (Confidants)

You can increase relationships with characters, increase your knowledge, guts, charm, proficiency and kindness in your free time for various uses in the future, it’s really intricate and interesting because you’re seeing so many storylines at once and uncovering other characters’ pasts, it’s really engaging. I guess it's possible to not have maxed social stats but I didn't really have a problem with it. I know that there are some things you can only do before or after a palace but I ‘usually’ try to get it done in one run as early as I can, it’s almost like the palaces are the break from taking breaks. Though if you do leave a palace, it restores hp and sp so that’s cool. Also, finishing a palace early opens up a lot of relationship opportunities because they aren’t nagging “You wanna go to the Palace today?”

So, if you can spend time with only so many characters then which ones did I spend time with and which ones do I recommend spending the most time on? Well first off, you can dabble, like just start someone’s route and if you don’t like it then just ignore it and move on, I like how it gives you a chance to meet everyone before any major commitments. Also finishing one up sometimes gives you exclusive personas you can make. 

Let me start with Chihaya, I like the Chihayafuru anime so I went along with it but I really just wanted my money back, I’m not sure if the star actually did anything but the story was just average and that money wasn’t coming back. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with her though I kind of wish I had because I saw a rumor that she helps with something significantly, as long as you have the cash for it, which is very apparent around endgame or even if you had the part time jobs.

Ryuji’s story was average but I use him a lot in combat so I wanted to increase my bond. I’ve seen headcanons that these characters do really crazy stuff and go to prison for it but it’s not true, they’re just a band of misfits, the prison that you see in promos is a metaphorical one, a dream prison held inside their own mind, it’s in the very beginning of the game, just want to clarify that because it worried me going into this game. I finished his confidant.

Queen’s is rather decent, as I mentioned, she was...She acts way too attached to not like him, I mean look at the way she’s clinging to him during that house break in scene, she’s always the one to take initiative and be second in command. What I don’t understand is that if you go somewhere with her and see someone, she’ll immediately play it off “he’s just carrying my books”. She’s also the one that went straight to Alibaba when getting hurt, I like that motherly aspect. I ship my Joker with Queen for him but Kawakami for me (it would be kinda weird for him since she's older and his teacher). It’s the amount of growth we see her character go through, she seems the most genuine even if her side story focuses on her friend.

Panther’s is alright but she wants you to help her get mentally strong, O..k..? I’m not exactly one for Panther so I didn’t choose her romantic route because I think she has more chemistry with Fox. Though she seems to be the most connected to Ryuji for some reason, despite bagging on him all the time. DNF.

Fox, I will say that spending time with him made me appreciate him more and I like the rewards and art that goes with it. He’s actually hilarious, this game has a sense of humor and when it comes to him, it’s just gold, he’s so passionate and proper which makes for the best type of lines and delivery. DNF.

Kawakami, I obviously have a soft spot for but I see that her story is a real thing that bothers her, I’m not a big fan of what she reveals half way through, that seemed kinda pointless other than keeping that a secret but if you have a decent amount of money, I would up her confidant as well, it certainly wasn’t anything I expected. I finished it relatively early but by the end she enables you to go out at night even if you’re tired from mementos or a palace. Imagine my surprise when I instantly like her and then the way they introduce her route...I’ll leave it at that other than I finished her confidant.

Speaking of, quick break in the section to mention this. You would think something as in depth as this game would include a meter or consequence of sorts if you start neglecting people or duties but it’s not as stressful as that, you don’t have a sleep meter so you can do stuff in the evening (though sometimes sleeping will enable certain things like dreams which give you points with characters you spend time with regularly)

Mishima is actually one of the more interesting ones to bond with because his story seems very casual but it’s interweaving with the main one until the end of it and I like where it heads, I usually tried staying nice to him for the most part but making sure he doesn’t go “too too far”. The big thing you get is being able to increase your “other” party members stats as if they were equipped in your main party which can be useful. He was one of the first I maxed.

Yoshizawa is the new girl in Royal, so I tried to get on her good side, I actually met her and thought she was kind of robotic because of how apologetic she was but as time went on and as I grew her her confidant, she became more appealing. She was the first I finished because she only has 5 ranks but it was alright, as I said, she’s new so her story is going to be in there anyway but ranking just gives a bit more context is all. Getting all 5 ranks doesn’t finish it. However, it never seems like it's actually "finished", of course I didn't do the romance route so it might've been longer that way but for the most part, from what I see, the romance routes are mostly copy and paste with different characters outside their confidants. Other than a few dialogue options with different context but they’re the same events. The field trip in particular is the main one that I’m talking about. (I know I just revealed I played Royal, I’ll explain why this review isn’t about Royal towards the end though)

If you want, you can help Caroline and Justine experience human stuff but it isn’t a confidant, it just gives you items.

Sojiro. I only did his about half way because he gifts kindness and sometimes enables you to get coffee which gives you hp or sp. Which is cool but I wasn't sure how the confidants worked just yet and was scared I would drag him into the story unnecessarily but that's not the case for any of them, the consequences are a lot different than you might first imagine. He takes calls from multiple people, some who we figure out, some we might not and then he dresses in that sketchy outfit and says "dress for the job you want." and the way he's dressed makes him look like a pimp so...that's concerning. DNF.

Akechi is a bit questionable but every now and then I would spend time with him. He reminds me of a lion. There isn’t much of story though other than that one thing about his parents. Most of these are just spending time with the character and they start to build more substance about half way through. DNF.

Oracle actually has a really cool personality, I think of her more like a sister type to my character though. You have to have a good level of kindness in order to do a lot (which is the hardest to obtain) Once you do though, it seems to tie into a side quest and it’s really dumb because you change a gamers heart...for cheating. And that leads to...

Shinya. Why does this character even have a confidant? It easily could have been Iwai to help with that sort of thing. I didn't even rank him up, sorry, just wasn't really enough of a reason to.

Hifumi is cool, I like how she’s in a church and plays Shogi, it reminds me of Hunter X Hunter with Gungi. Her story is kind of sad too but not too much different from the “I’m on all the magazines but don’t really want to” she just wants to promote the board game. I waited until after I maxed out Queen to get past Rank 4 for her though because I was wary of giving some of the girls the wrong idea especially since that meeting between her and Queen. But once my character and Queen were official, then I decided to come back to Hifumi. DNF.

Takemi has an interesting take, I ranked her confidant up but wasn’t psyched about it, it provided a source for the guts attribute for a little while, it’s really sketchy in hindsight but the story is a little bit similar to Kawakami, with being shunned and all but Takemi seems to embrace it a lot more. I maxed her confidant, it allowed me to get discounted prices for health items.

Noir. She’s actually what I expected Persona to be like, she’s the neutral in my eyes, kind of bubbly but cute about it instead of overly obnoxious. She takes certain events way better than I expected which is good for her but I think the story would’ve packed a punch during that arc if they went deeper with how she takes it. It’s poetic how she’s acting healthy while her father is not. Not to mention that it’s like she’s planting the seeds for her new self both metaphorically and literally. You can gain some pretty good items if you do it right, SP is always a welcome in my book. DNF.

Iwai. I’m not going to recommend which thing you should prioritize, that’s up to how you want to play the game, you should keep it balanced but this guy requires a pretty high guts level. He can mod your weapons for you which comes in handy, the story is kind of mysterious because you go undercover. You also get discounts. DNF.

I love the idea of Joker bringing around a talking cat the whole time, it’s a total aesthetic, sneaking him some of his food, keeping him in his backpack, he’s as big a part of the team as any, if not the biggest. You don’t really choose to rank him up though, he’s intertwined, you can still choose to be nice to him though. Even though he doesn’t act like him, Morgana kind of reminds me of Daxter with the dynamic, wherever Joker goes, Morgana goes. I let Morgana kind of take free rein and he ended up being the strongest on my team, you don’t know how many “1-More”s I’ve seen this cat do, he was probably the one that was most consistently in my party.

I didn’t mess with that political guy or the journalist.

Also make sure to have figured out what gifts go to which person because once you get the option, it may be hard to get it back if you refuse. Ranking up people outside of the Phantom Thieves affects who is there for the ending so maybe keep that in mind.

Now you may or may not have noticed I missed a specific character, I have been writing this review since I started the game, accumulating different opinions and such, as I mention some in the Palace section of my review. The final days of playing this have pissed me off. From here to the end, I’m going to rant so if you don’t want to hear it and just want to take what I’ve said and leave, now’s the time, I’ve written everything else without this burden on the game hampering my score. However, you need to know this if you want to buy Royal specifically.

Maruki is far and few between, not much substance but I don’t mind sitting down with him once in a while. I only got about half way through so if you want to increase his confidant, do it early because it’s not always available but he helps with SP like the temple in Kichijoji. That’s what I wrote, then I finished the game and I was like “Wait a minute...something isn’t right...” So I looked it up and apparently Maruki is a new character to Royal as well. Alright, fine, so what? Well you need to rank him to level 9, there is in fact a reason and I completely missed it because I played this game BLIND. Biggest mistake and the game doesn’t tell you otherwise. So with Persona Royal, you get an extra semester longer than the original game with new story and new content that deals with Yoshizawa and Maruki in particular. The regular additions to the vanilla game hinted at it but I never knew there was more to it. So, I could’ve played the regular version of Persona 5 and had the same experience. Oh, but to put the icing on the cake. You need to rank up Maruki by November 18th. I only ever had two save files and you know what the one I didn’t finish was at? NOVEMBER FLIPPING 19TH. But wait; How do you play the new content if you can’t go back to the save file? And to that I say “HA” You don’t. I screwed the pooch unless I want to play the entire game again on new game+, has to be the same ending I had too so no finishing early with one of the other endings. Even if I played on the easiest difficulty, have all the stuff from new game+, use all the strats that I figured out afterwards, it would still take forever. The shortest speedrun of this game is 16 hours, that’s enough for a whole other game, I beat Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood in less than that. Why isn’t there a function to skip to a certain section?! I’M PISSED so for now F- this game, if I ever manage to play through those sections at some point then I’ll update this review getting rid of this and making its own review. I’m not just going to look up the cutscenes either, I got Royal instead of vanilla for a reason.

#persona 5 #pissed #maruki #missed my chance #because i did it blind #kawakami #takemi #oracle #noir #queen #ryuji #morgana #chihaya #iwai #sojiro #shinya #hifumi #akechi #mishima #fox #inari #yoshizawa #panther

[pandemonshq]

Welcome, Nicky, please grab your stake on your way to your tumblr to play Draco Malfoy here at Pandemons. I think it’s no surprise to you that we adore your Draco: the marriage of convenience that still highlights the importance of family that every “good” Malfoy has, the Vampire Hunting, the fact that he’s still himself after all these years. ..

And, of course, your request for Alexander Skarsgård --present Fc and Austin Butler--past FC have been accepted.

Nicky’s application is being posted early due to her work on the game to get it up and running, and the relevance of Draco to the larger game plot. While Nicky is not a mod, her assistance made this game possible.

Out of Character Information

Name: Nicky Preferred Pronouns: she/her Age: over thirty O_o Timezone: EST Activity Level: Medium. I co-admin and participate in another roleplay, so depending on what is going on there in conjunction with the regular inconveniences of real life I may not have time to post responses every day, but I have absolutely no concerns that I will struggle to meet and indeed should regularly exceed the minimum requirement. I usually find Draco quite easy to write!

In Character Information

Character's Name: Draco Lucius Malfoy Bloodstatus: pure-blood Birthday: June 5, 1980

Gender and Sexuality: Transgender male, panromantic sex-positive asexual

Gender: 

Draco was six when he informed his parents that he was going to grow-up to be a wizard like daddy, not a witch like mummy. It took them a little time to be certain that their child really understood and meant what he was saying, but once they were convinced, his parents sprang into action to support their son: Lucius didn’t just contact the Daily Prophet to have an adjustment to Draco’s birth announcement printed, he took out a full-page ad. Narcissa sat her little boy down and poured-over lists of constellations with him to find what his new name would be (not that it took Draco long to select his -- “I can be a dragon? I want that one!”). They threw-away and purchased an entire new wardrobe for him (although it had never been the ribbons to which Draco had objected) and anyone who wasn’t quick enough to adjust to Draco’s new name got a painful hex for their lethargy (including Abraxas, once). It wasn’t so much acceptance that Draco got from his parents as adoration -- in all aspects. He was perfect; he could do no wrong. 

It wasn’t until he arrived at Hogwarts that Draco discovered that not everyone saw him through such idealized spectacles -- nor thought gender was as simple and straightforward a thing as the contents of a cauldron. For Draco, gender might as well have been synonymous with genitals, and swallowing a weekly dose of potion was all it took for him to go from girl to boy. The matter was closed...only it wasn’t. There were some people who thought the subject had far more nuance than that (one of the few subject on which he didn’t need losing a war to improve, at least) and then there were those who thought it had far less; who thought that there was no such thing as change. For the most part, they seemed to have come by those ideas from Muggle sources, which made both them and their words easy to dismiss -- mostly. Even a boy with as much blistering self-confidence (arrogance) as Draco is apt to find adolescence an uncertain, confusing time, and he was no exception; some barbs hurt even when you’re certain you don’t care. Having his dueling prowess questioned, his fashion-choices derided, his Quidditch skills discounted…all the things that, to Draco, meant masculinity. Not that witches couldn’t be great duelists or Quidditch players or fashion-plates, too; but Draco’s ideas of how to be a man were all modeled on his father. So to excel at “being a wizard” meant, for him, excelling at all the things at which Lucius excelled. (He was also always rather touchy about his name. He’d picked it himself, after all. It was the best name. His mother had said so!)

These days, Draco is far too used to simply being taken for a wizard to fret; it’s not as though he regularly goes around socializing with backwards-Muggle-thinkers, is it? (Not that all Mudb--Muggle-borns are backwards-thinkers! Some of them have done quite well at getting over their upbringing, and are quite indistinguishable from other wix now! He’s not bigoted anymore, you know!) He no longer focuses on mimicking his father in order to be a “proper” wizard -- in part because he’s grown more comfortable with himself as he grew-up, in part because exposure to the world beyond the immediate circle of his parents taught him that there’s more than one way to be a wizard, in part because an ex-Death Eater has more difficult things with which to grapple...and in part because the pedestal on which Lucius once stood in his son’s eyes has sagged a bit. Now instead of trying to trace anyone else’s footsteps, Draco is simply himself -- and learning to live with that was hard because of his choices and his mistakes, not his gender. Having anyone question his masculinity now on the basis that he takes a periodic dose of the Attisgalli Corrective Draught to maintain a physical form that suits his inner self would be less outrageous than baffling.

*NOTE: Draco is likely to express things about gender in outdated terminology because of his unfamiliarity with the Muggle world. However if this would make anyone uncomfortable please let me know (on-anon is fine!) because I will happily compromise a fiddly little bit of world building for the sake of my fellow players’ comfort!

Sexuality: 

Perhaps the one area in which Draco actually disappointed his father: he’s just not interested in sex. He doesn’t have anything against it; it’s just not something that motivates him, not something he thinks about unless someone else brings it up first. (Sort of like beets. He has no objection to eating them, and sometimes they can be genuinely delicious, but he’s never gone out of his way for a serving of beets.) That disinterest is what killed his relationship with Pansy (well, that and the fact that Draco had no idea they were dating in Pansy’s mind!) because all her offers and innuendos passed right over his head; he tends to take physical affection on face value and flirtation registers to him as simple banter. Lucius “blames” himself, lamenting that it was his distraction and absence at a crucial stage of his son’s development that left Draco’s “interests stunted.” Draco doesn’t understand the fuss; he’s perfectly happy the way he is and, frankly, given the vast drop in social popularity that the Malfoys faced after the war, it’s probably just as well that his interests are “stunted” because his prospects certainly were.

Former Hogwarts House: Slytherin -- sorted nearly the second the hat touched his head because of course he was, he was Draco Lucius Malfoy, last heir to both the Malfoy and Black families, and the scion of two of the purest lines in all of magical Britain and absolutely guaranteed to do great things!

Infection:

( No. Although I think it would be a fun potential plot to have him be infected either temporarily or permanently later! Actually I feel like “temporary infections” should be a regular effect of his vampire slaying efforts, since he’s likely to be exposed through that! )

Faceclaim: Alexander Skarsgård--present. Austin Butler--past.

Short HeadCanon Topics (please provide at least one paragraph per topic)

Occupation (title and one paragraph explanation): 

None...technically. Malfoys don’t need jobs, after all, so it should surprise no one that Draco hasn’t got one -- and it’s not as though he’s in a position where he can dabble in politics the way his father (and his father, and his father) did, is he? No, Draco has no job, only hobbies...

Or some might say, obsessions. One, actually: vampires. Draco Malfoy is a vampire hunter, possibly the first proper vampire hunter in over a hundred years. There hadn’t been a need for any in ages; vampires and wix had learned to co-exist long ago. Vampires had never really been accepted as ordinary people -- but they’d been fashionably exotic creatures, not scorned like half-giants or distrusted like goblins. The Malfoys in particular had been happy to socialize with (and take the money of) vampires, particularly back in the day; after Voldemort’s firstrise it became less acceptable for pure-blood wix to associate with any groups of non-wix unless they were serving the Dark Lord as well -- and vampires never did. Even as werewolves let themselves be courted and giants agreed to be bought, vampires kept their distance. So the Malfoys drifted away from them...

Until now. Until Astoria’s infection.

At first, Draco’s sole focus was in curing her -- and he hasn’t abandoned that hope. But as time passed and all his best efforts came to naught, those hopes have dwindled to a sort of cold, shriveled desperation. He still brews-up the occasional draught; still pieces-together scraps of old spells in hopes that something, some day, will save her...but that’s not his sole focus any longer. For a long time after the war, none of the Malfoys looked beyond the gates of the manor to the world outside -- but Scorpius is out there, now. He’s attending Hogwarts, moving through the world. Someday he’s going to grow-up and want to find a place for himself beyond the manor’s walls -- and like Lucius before him, Draco is determined to make that world as safe as possible for his child. Unlike Lucius, it’s not the tenuous (and perhaps somewhat exaggerated) threat of Muggles that Draco hopes to stem: it’s vampires, and the ever-increasing rate of infection among the magical world.

For a long time, he’s been fighting this quiet war alone in the dark. Who was he going to turn to for help, after all? Certainly not the Ministry of Magic! If Draco Malfoy walked in their doors talking about the dangers of a group of non-wix, he’d be lucky to just be ushered-away with a lecture on prejudice! No, he’s had to do this by himself -- but maybe not for much longer? Maybe things have finally gotten bad enough for someone else to notice...but will they want Draco’s help, expert though he has become on the subject? Maybe it’s still better for him to go this alone.

Marital Status/Ships: 

(tl;dr - Draco loves Astoria but they aren’t together like that and fidelity isn’t a requirement of their marriage anyway; someone else would have to make the first several dozen moves before he would notice being flirted at, though! READ MORE)

Married to Astoria Greengrass. One might think it would be difficult for a lesbian witch to be married to a panro-ace wizard, but their marriage was never about romance. Yes, Draco very much considers Astoria someone he loves -- but what kind of love? Even he wouldn’t be able to answer that question, especially not these days. Astoria’s current state of vampiric infection makes her...strange. The guilt of not being able to cure her eats away at him too, and affects his every interaction with her. He’s an expert potioneer; why can’t he fix this? She’s his wife, why can’t he save her? His parents managed to keep each other (more or less) safe throughout two wars and a volatile Dark Lord; how could he be so inferior as to be unable to save his spouse from some stupid infection? An infection over which his mother initially wanted Astoria banished from the home, incidentally -- marking one of the few times when Draco has actually vehemently disagreed with Narcissa Malfoy. (One of the others was when he took the Dark Mark; he hopes that this doesn’t turn out like that but sometimes on the worst days, he wonders if his mother was right and keeping Astoria at home is dangerous -- possibly for their son!?) But infected or not, unclean or not, Draco knows he will always love Astoria.

That doesn’t mean he’s sleeping with her, though -- or that he wouldn’t sleep with someone else. Fidelity was never considered an integral part of a successful marriage in his social circles; indeed, a couple that spends so much time in one another’s beds as his parents do is the oddity rather than the norm. (Not that the two of them, especially Lucius, haven’t visited a number of other beds in their time, sometimes apart and sometimes together -- but Draco never found it nearly as entertaining as some of his friends back at Hogwarts did to talk about that.) A dalliance or even a love affair -- or a dozen -- on either his part or Astoria’s wouldn’t impact how Draco thinks about his wife or their marriage at all. Why would it? If he wasn’t something of a social pariah, he probably would have had a dozen little affairs by now -- but it’s not like he cares enough to miss the lack either (only even thinks about it when his father starts lamenting Draco’s lack of interesting experiences). It’s just the sort of thing one expects, that’s all. Of course, these days Draco’s a bit preoccupied, and hunting down vampires doesn’t leave a lot of time for dalliances...but if that leaves his bed a bit cold, it’s not something he’s ever noticed. 

MultiParagraph or Multi Point Topics

Family: 

Nothing matters more to Draco. Growing up, he idolized his parents and thought them perfect; his father was Draco’s model for idealized wizarding masculinity and Draco was determined to follow in his footsteps in every way. Even now, having been brought (quite painfully) face-to-face with their flaws and failings, he still adores and admires them. Not only did they always dote on him (maybe more than they should have) but during the war they proved over and over that they were each of them willing to die for his sake without hesitation -- something that was more than enough to erase any potential resentment he might have felt at having been forced into such misery by their choices. Yes, these days he knows that there are things they were wrong about -- but he still trusts their judgement in most areas, still values their opinion. Still loves them. They made it through a war together on the strength of that love; in these dark days, he still draws comfort from it.

The most important person in Draco’s life today isn’t his parents, though, or even his wife; it’s Scorpius, his precious son and only child. Growing-up in a house with four doting adults and little in the way of child companions meant that Scorpius’s childhood was never lonely but also did little to prepare him for peer socialization. He was always precociously clever; these days he qualifies as an unabashed swot and a distinct introvert. While he has the customary Malfoy sharp silver tongue, he substitutes defensive insecurity for swagger and brittle pride for arrogance. His recent appointment to Chaser on his house team has helped him build a few tentative bridges to his housemates, but his closest friends remain fellow Slytherin Albus Potter and Albus’s cousin, Rose Granger-Weasley. They aren’t the friends that Draco would have chosen for his son, but he has come to appreciate them deeply for the support and affection they offer Scorpius. (Even if Draco still tries to have as little to do with their families as possible.) 

Draco’s affection for his son was always torn in two directions: wanting to give him anything and everything that would make him happy, and wanting to raise Scorpius to be a better person than he ever was himself. The latter did result in more than a few lectures (much more than a few) but that didn’t mean Draco wasn’t still an indulgent parent and Scorpius did indeed receive just about anything he ever asked for, materially. Draco would give his son everything he wanted, if he could -- but even his best efforts can’t cure Scorpius’s mother.

Scorpius was only four when Astoria was infected; when Astoria changed. Sometimes she still seems like herself (less and less each year, though -- or is that just in Draco’s head?) and they can all pretend that everything is fine; others...well. Draco has explained to Scorpius many times that the things his mother thinks she sees aren’t real. (Probably.) That he shouldn’t listen to them, worry about them. And Scorpius says he understands...but Scorpius was four and she’s his mum. While he doesn’t tell his father, he secretly believes every word that comes from his mother’s mouth. He thinks of her less as a Seer and more of a prophet, different from everyone else’s mother yes -- but special-different, not worse. He doesn’t talk about those thoughts to anyone, even Albus and Rose (maybe it would be better if he did; maybe someone could explain things to him better now that he’s older) but instead he nods seriously at all his father’s admonishments and his grandparents’ words of caution...and then goes and listens to his mother anyway.

It probably won’t lead to disaster. His mother would never hurt him, after all -- never tell him anything she’s seen that might lead him to do something dangerous. Not on purpose, anyway.

Childhood/Hogwarts: 

(I’m going to go short on this part because A: I’ve rambled far more than I should have elsewhere and B: we know a lot of this from the books already, so if there’s any part of this I can get away with truncating to compensate for the rest, it’s this!)

Draco was a bully and a bigot and a brat; there’s no denying this. He was spoiled absolutely rotten, and it showed. He also genuinely loved his parents, and they loved him back, although perhaps not always in the most healthy of ways (see: aforementioned spoiling). He had a very good childhood, although school wasn’t as great as he’d expected -- for one thing, stupid Harry Potter didn’t want to be his friend even though he was clearly the coolest person in the whole castle, and for another this horrible Mudblood kept outscoring him in everything. (Potter even managed to out-cheat him at Quidditch every time!) But otherwise, everything was more or less okay -- until the Dark Lord came back, and it all fell apart. Draco went from being a pampered little prince to sobbing in the loo with only a dead girl for company; his two best friends stopped believing in him; Harry Potter nearly killed him; he nearly killed a lot of other people; and then when his favorite teacher finally got appointed headmaster it still didn’t make things better. In the end, despite all of Draco’s efforts he really accomplished nothing. He didn’t decide the outcome of the war; all he did was lose a friend and somehow make it out alive with his parents by the skin of their collective teeth, forgotten and ignored by everyone around them. In the end, he came to nothing and had to count himself lucky for it.

Post Hogwarts: (TW: brief mention of self harm, addiction! Also mentions of other characters that may-or-may-not be considered “game canon” based on discussion with whomever eventually comes to play said characters!) 

Draco knows he’s luckier than he deserves, him and his parents. By rights, all three of them should probably be in Azkaban...but they aren’t. The trials they faced at the end of the war were long, grueling, and humiliating (crying in front of the entire Wizengamot is not an experience that Draco recommends to anyone) and the worst part was that Draco spent the entire process certain that he was going to Azkaban; he only made the effort of testifying with as much honesty and detail as he did because he hoped that his mother, the only one of them not to take the Dark Mark, might be spared incarceration if both he and his father told all they knew. His parents were doing the same thing, largely in hopes of sparing their son from Azkaban -- but fortunately for the Malfoys, what they knew far outweighed what they’d actually done...mostly because they hadn’t actually accomplished much. (If Lucius’s crimes from the first war had been included, things might have gone differently…) Draco failed at just about everything he tried, Lucius had spent most of the war either locked-away or wandless at the Dark Lord’s side, and Narcissa had been “protected” from having to take much action by the combination of her husband’s shame and her sister’s enthusiasm. And then, of course, there was Harry Potter -- surprising witness for the defense. There was no love lost between Draco and his very first enemy, but Harry nonetheless spoke-up for the Malfoys: Narcissa had lied to the Dark Lord, Draco had kept quiet when he recognized them, and Harry had seen through Voldemort’s own eyes that they had not been willing servants -- not by the end, anyway. Somehow, all of that had been enough to spare them…

At least from prison. Public opinion was another matter, so the Malfoys murmured their gratitude, paid their fines, and slunk away behind the walls of their mournful manor, all three of them -- and the house -- much reduced in pride and splendor. Draco spent the next few years wallowing in guilt and nightmares, repeatedly failing to carve the Dark Mark out of his arm, and worrying his parents. Highlights include: a short but bitter confrontation with Gregory Goyle at Vincent Crabbe’s tombstone (not that there was a body to bury, but tradition had to be maintained), a bewildering letter from Pansy regretfully breaking-up with him for the sake of her own future chances (had they been dating?), and a lengthy addiction to Dreamless Sleep Potion (he hadn’t even known you could get addicted to Dreamless Sleep, let alone that repeated doses made it toxic! At least he learned something interesting about potions in the process…). The last thing anyone expected was a wedding to brighten things up, but then again people -- Draco included --  had always underestimated Astoria Greengrass.

Draco, in fact, barely knew who she was -- just the little sister of one of Pansy’s friends whom he knew dimly from school. She certainly made an impression, though, going from introduction to proposal in less than five minutes. It wasn’t romance she was pitching, of course, but a more traditional sort of marriage -- an arrangement of convenience. Draco needed an heir to the family line, she wanted the comforts of wealth and the resources to pursue her interests somewhere no one would bother her (and with access to the right kind of supplies and resources, so she could avoid repeating her Aunt Pandora’s unfortunate fate). The Malfoys needed a dose of respectability, and the Greengrasses were solid middle class pure-bloods who had never been accused of more than peripheral brushes with the Dark Arts. They both stood to gain -- and outliers like Draco’s parents notwithstanding, wasn’t that what all successful marriages were really based on? Certainly in the world in which Draco had been socialized, they were; his parents had always been viewed with bemused confusion for how deeply besotted they were with one another. Marrying Astoria wasn’t an act of passion or romance -- but it made sense. What didn’t make sense to Draco was how easy it was to fall into friendship with the stubborn witch -- but he wasn’t going to complain.

He was happy, which wasn’t something he’d ever expected to feel again after the age of sixteen. And they had a son. Scorpius was the best thing that ever happened to Draco, far better than he deserved -- but he wasn’t going to complain about that, either. One of the many painful lessons he’d learned over the course of his lifetime of mistakes was how to be happy with what he had, and he couldn’t imagine anything better than Scorpius anyway. It wasn’t the sort of “perfect life” he’d anticipated when he was young and foolish -- but it was good.

Until it wasn’t. When Astoria’s magical tinkering left her infected with vampirism ten years ago, the happy illusion of a happily-ever-after fell apart. Draco dove into research, trying to brew a cure -- but nothing worked. He dug deeper, delving into all the family’s information on their pre-Voldemort vampiric connections and then branching-out, calling in the few family favors people were still willing to (or too scared not to) repay and exploring every shabby shop that dealt with the Dark Arts that he could find. He didn’t discover a cure; he did discover that Astoria wasn’t the only recent case of vampiric infection.

Current: 

Draco Malfoy never set out to save anyone but his own family. Unfortunately for Draco’s selfish nature, one of the things he’s learned over the last ten years is that the only way to save Astoria may involve sticking his neck out for other people, too. (Or maybe that’s just the excuse he gives himself. Maybe his pursuit of the vampires who are infecting his world, his home, is more about vengeance than salvation at this point.) That dosen’t mean it’s something that comes naturally to him, or something he likes.

Case in point: he hasn’t bothered to try and convince the wider Wizarding World that they ought to be worried, proactive -- because frankly if he did, who would listen? No, better to keep it to himself because that way at least no one is trying to stop him. Not that such a quest can be a solitary pursuit: one needs resources, information, occasionally even “allies” of a sort (mostly the sort that can be bought with money and favors, not loyalty). Fortunately Draco still has money and the one thing the Malfoy name can still buy aside from gold is favors and connections with those who walk the edges of the Dark Arts (and lower). Not that most of those favors or connections are as open-armed as they once were (turning your back on a Dark Lord and helping to testify against all your old friends so they go to prison while you go free doesn’t do much to endear oneself to anyone) but Draco doesn’t really care if people are grudging or reluctant or downright insulting so long as they do or give him what he needs. This mission isn’t about saving his reputation or restoring the family name; those wistful daydreams evaporated ten years ago. Now he doesn’t even waste time on the hope that Scorpius may be able to redeem their name enough to make a future for himself that isn’t overshadowed by the family’s past; these days, just keeping things from falling apart further is all he can ask.

Of course, he’s doing more than just sitting at home trying to hold his family together. Yes, he spends as much as he can with them -- his son, especially, although that happens less these days now that Scorpius is off at school for months at a time -- but he’s got his mission, too, which can keep him out of the house for days at a time (especially now that Scorpius is at Hogwarts, although with his parents living in the other wing of the manor even when Scorpius was young and Astoria was having a particularly bad day he didn’t have to worry about leaving them alone). There’s nowhere Draco won’t go in his pursuit both of the horrible creatures that are spreading this infection and the knowledge he seeks to cure it -- although it’s certainly easier to get around Knockturn Alley than the halls of the Ministry of Magic, for a Malfoy! He hesitates to involve his son, but on rare occasion he may even ask Scorpius to check something for him in the Hogwarts library, but doing so leaves him sickened at the thought that someone might see and wonder why so he ignores that resource perhaps more often than he should. There’s nothing else he won’t do in his quest, however...even knowing that he ought to be more prudent. It would be awful if the Department of Magical Law Enforcement were to turn suspicious eyes on him, after all -- but he can’t just do nothing, can he?

And maybe, deep down, there’s part of him who still thinks he can get away with it. After all, no matter how repentant he is -- how much he’s changed, how much the way the world views him has changed -- he is still, at heart, Draco Malfoy.

Plots:

#1. The Potters and the Weasleys -- and everyone else whom Draco called “enemy” (or “blood-traitor” or “filthy mudblood” etc) for his entire childhood. Where do they stand now? What happens when they have to work together? When they have to take his word for the things he knows, the expertise he’s accumulated? When he’s the one who knows how to save somebody, not them? When he’s the one fighting the “forces of darkness” while they sat back in ignorant safety as the world quietly shattered around them? Will they be practical about it, will they trust him? Will they be gracious or stubborn, convinced that there are some Marks that can’t be washed away? Will he be an ass? (Almost definitely -- but to what level?)  There’s likely been very little interaction between Draco and most of these people over the last twenty years -- but does that mean the mental scars have softened? How much infected blood does it take to clear away all the blood under the bridge that’s flowed between all of them? I’m looking forward to Draco having to face all the people he’s been avoiding -- and for them to have to (or refuse to) face the fact that this time, he might be on the right side...or is he? In a world where vampirism is becoming more and more common, at what point does a vampire hunter stop being a protector and start becoming the monster? Is Draco once again going to find himself -- this time with the best of intentions -- labeled the bad guy?

#2. Luna Lovegood. She’s more than just “another member of the D.A.” to Draco; she’s the girl who was locked-up in the cellar of his home for months, the girl he was forced more than once to torture. He never thought much about Loony Lovegood before then (she was easy to make fun of, sure, and he’d do so if the opportunity walked in front of him, but she wasn’t someone he was interested enough in to go out of his way to bully her -- he had better targets for that!) but she’s featured regularly in his guilty nightmares ever since. The fact that he later married her cousin just made things more convoluted -- although thankfully the Greengrasses and the Lovegoods had never really had anything to do with one another… Basically: I would love to explore some kind of dynamic with Draco and Luna! Has he been successfully avoiding her since 1998? Did Astoria invite her estranged family to the wedding? Do they run into each other in the shops sometimes -- Draco trying to turn invisible, Luna waving politely? Maybe he tried to apologize once and Luna made him squirm by shrugging it off -- oh well it’s not like you wanted to do it, is it? I could tell that quite well, you’re not a very good liar are you? Anyway, why would I blame you for what Voldemort made you do to me? That doesn’t seem sensible at all...why are you making that face? Have you swallowed a wrackspurt? -- and now every time he sees her, he tries to run the other way out of fears that she’ll be nice. Or maybe she’s not nice. Luna doesn’t seem the grudge-holding sort...but if anything were going to teach her how, surely the Cruciatus Curse would do it! Maybe she doesn’t wave; maybe she scowls until he slithers away, cringing in impotent repentance. Maybe he even tried investing in The Quibbler -- paying to restore the damage the Death Eaters and Hermione had done to the printing press and her father’s home -- as recompense, and Luna threw the money back in his face...or maybe he now, quite unintentionally, owns a “share” of The Quibbler. Something that Pansy and Blaise would probably never stop laughing about if they knew… I don’t know, there are so many options for what direction to take things with the two of them! I’d love to explore ANY.

#3: Infection. This one’s more just for “me” but I love the idea of still-rather-bigoted Draco Malfoy having to cope not just with the fact that his wife has been infected with vampirism (something he mostly did with a lot of denial and cognitive dissonance tbh) but himself, too. In his “career” as a vampire hunter, he must have encountered a few instances of contamination -- nothing permanent, nothing where the blood went both ways -- but temporary infections? Oh, certainly! I expect the first time absolutely tore him to shreds, emotionally. He’s Draco Malfoy. He’s the purest of the pure. How could he be infected? Inconceivable, insupportable! He’d never recover, never be the same -- only he did recover. And then what choice did he have but to keep going? Each time, I think he’s more sickened by the facts than he is by the symptoms themselves; by the fact that he’s been tainted by something impure. And each time he picks himself back up after and keeps going -- but eventually the toll is going to tell. (Either that, or he’ll have to come to terms with the fact that all blood-purity is nonsense, not just the idea that Muggle-borns have “lesser” magic.) Whether this breaks him down or builds him up better, I’m interested to explore this painful process of involuntary self-discovery!

Other:

Attisgalli Corrective Draught -- a gender reassignment potion designed for use by the entire Potterverse fandom. Offered here both as extra detail on what potion Draco takes, and for anyone else who might want to make use of it either as-is or as inspiration for their own creations!

+Fashion Headcanon: The featureless black school robes and ubiquitous pointed hats were a blessing to Draco, although he didn’t realize it at first; he’d grown-up used to his father’s flamboyant style of dress, and the dullness of the Hogwarts student body was wearying...until he started to realize that there were some wix who didn’t think it suitable for a wizard to dress like that. His father didn’t, wouldn’t have, cared; Draco found it a more troubling perspective. (Of course broad-shouldered, boisterous, assigned-male-at-birth Lucius’s masculinity had never been doubted by anyone; even those who despised him or dismissed him as a vain and foppish fool never thought he wasn’t a wizard.) The plain black robes were easier...safer. They didn’t require any thought; didn’t have room for any self-expression that might make a statement. On the one hand, Draco wanted to swagger into a room like his father would have, peacock feathers trailing from his shoulders and glittering gemstones in his hair, grinning in arrogant superiority...but on the other, he didn’t want to be teased for being too girly. (Not after discovering that that was a thing some people said about things.) His fourth year at school was the hardest: starting your very first day of classes by being turned into a ferret and humiliated in front of half the student body would have shaken anyone’s confidence. The fact that things were unsettled at home didn’t help; his father was more distracted than Draco had ever seen him before, and mother was little better, both of them fretting over the impending return of the Dark Lord and trying (and succeeding, then) to keep their son from thinking that would be anything but a good thing. Maybe if Draco had been more open with his parents about his emotional struggles...but he was at a stage of trying to seem grown-up. To prove they didn’t need to baby him anymore. (To prove that he was ready to help the Dark Lord, too.) So he kept quiet...and had them send him a different, plainer set of dress robes for the Yule Ball instead of the flamboyant, Lucius-approved concoction of dripping blue silk and pearl beading that he’d meant to wear initially. Draco felt safer in the plain (but impeccable!) black -- a feeling that never went away. Even today he prefers understated elegance, dark colors that don’t draw the eye; prefers clothing that is protective in its coverage -- high collars and tall boots (the sole concession he makes to modern fashions is to allow the skirts of his robes to sometimes lift enough to show calves and even knees, albeit always suitably clad in hose or tights or trousers; he’s not a barbarian) and of course: long sleeves. No one outside the family has seen past Draco’s wrists in over twenty years and, if Draco has his way, no one ever will.

#harry potter roleplay #new lsrpg #lsrpg #lsrp #draco malfoy #urinfected

[pkgam]

What Happened to Twitch?

Twitch used to be a pretty good website. I had really high hopes that it would be a competitor to Youtube. It is a live stream platform that was ahead of Youtube as Youtube took a while to do live stuff. It has videos as well such as of past streams or people streaming videos they made for viewing later, viewer interaction features, solid streamers, no audible magic, good mods/staff, etc... Now the issues with the site are virtually endless. Let me give you a rundown of various things I have experienced and I have heard others experiencing which you may or may not have experienced because it’s as if that issues are not even account-specific.

Lately when logging in, every time, they prompt be to get a 6-digit code from my Email to continue to login because they “don’t recognize” my device. Yeah, you know how on every other website that has verification things like this, it’ll keep track of what devices you logged in from so you don’t have to keep verifying? No matter what, it doesn’t do that for me and a bunch of others. It seems to work fine for others though. So it’s user-specific. I have even tried logging in from one PC, then logging into another off the same internet while STILL being logged in to that PC and it’ll ask me to verify on both. It should at least be able to tell it’s from the same IP, but nope.

Try reporting the glitches and problems to Twitch as well. You’ll get nowhere. A recent experience I had with them was I tried to resolve that 6-digit verification thing for months. I explain it, get what looks like a generic copy/paste or automated response that does not address the issue, I respond back saying that wasn’t it and explain it again, then get NO response back, but do get a response back with a survey on how they did. Needless to say I was not satisfied and explained it in a civil way. No response back from them for that either. They used to handle stuff like that so well way back. Like, I remember when The Speed Gamers migrated from Ustream back to Twitch that they were having layout trouble during one of their charity streams in that what they wanted to incorporate on their page couldn’t be done, so they messaged Twitch staff about it and they tweaked the page so they could. Stuff like that was amazing! I don’t see things like that happen anymore.

When finally being able to log in, I’ve noticed that oftentimes my status is set to “offline” when I always have it set to “online”. Alternately I have seen friend’s statuses going to idle despite them being active on the site. So that status part of the site is entirely borked.  Moving on to other topics...

I think users knew when they implemented Audible Magic (basically Content ID for Twitch, automatically hitting videos) and played it off as a benefit to streamers so they can remove copyrighted music in their videos that it was going to go downhill. Remember that a lot of people went from Youtube to Twitch (Or Justin.tv) BECAUSE they were tired of Youtube’s horrible automated systems. Add automation in the mix and, well... it indeed went downhill.

Twitch is clearly inconsistent in their moderation now too. There was this one girl who frustratedly threw her cat behind her on stream and nothing came of it. But on the other hand, there was a girl who got banned for apparent dog yelps off camera with her being there, stating the ban was for animal abuse. Story: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-streamer-furious-over-animal-abuse-ban-amid-alinity-controversy-1296710 Many’ more examples like that out there on various topics.

Also, ever since they implemented automatic moderation of words in chat, there has been a ridiculous amount of people punished for innocent things (you can briefly read what they post before it gets removed from view or use a browser extension to reveal them) because it can’t tell context. At least streamers can turn that off, but it was set to on by default which caused a lot of issues. Still’ does when people have it on as not everyone turned it off.

Streams have been getting very bad audio glitches for me in that they will get more and more distorted until I pause then play the stream. On top of that, the chat will stop scrolling with new messages at times, forcing me to scroll it down manually. With both of these, it’s like having to maintain two fronts while trying to interact. Not fun.

Speaking of trying to interact, ever since they implemented that stream delay of like 20 seconds to cheap on the servers, it has not been the same anyway. They eventually implemented a “low latency” thing which yields faster delivery at the cost of possibly buffering a lot, but it’s still longer than the 2-3 seconds it used to be. Just imagine trying to converse with someone face to face and they respond 20 seconds later first. It’s the most awkward thing to keep track of. (Smashcast doesn’t have that. Just’ saying...) It can be even worse if the stream player itself gets an error and you have to refresh, which does happen fairly often. Making you possibly miss the point the streamer talked to you. Trying to sort it out then just stalls the whole thing because they have to readdress you if you mention it to them which backlogs them responding to others and etc...

For the videos on demand (VOD) themselves, playback is often glitchy as errors happen midway through, they don’t play at all and seeking to a certain part is often very difficult as it doesn’t go where you click. Heck, I heard from others that sometimes you can’t even PAUSE a VOD as that functionality is glitched out. But pausing works fine for me. Why is that? Who knows.

Live streams aren’t much better as they have their own issues. I often get errors and have to refresh the page to get it to run again. Even when not getting an error, I noticed that I’m served a slightly-slower stream than others seem to get. So I have to pause then unpause the video every so often to get it to jump back ahead to the closest point I can see. Part of me wonders if the error and slightly slower stream are related, but don’t hold me to that. I have a good internet connection too.

Twitch streams also get deleted nowadays unless set up to into highlights. Given that many weren’t aware this happened before it was too late (you only had 14 days to save them if not a turbo/prime member and 60 if you are), a TON of content got lost. People argued that it’s to save money because of the hosting costs of video data being large. So rather than streams just being automatically turned into highlights as a precautionary measure, they just let them get wiped because they didn’t care. I’m not entirely sure about that “because” you can save streams to highlights as mentioned. So it’s just going to fill back up again since people now know of it, if not already has filled back up.

Twitch also got rid of PMs so past conversations you might have wanted to look back on or had to catch up on as a backlog were lost. You can do the same sort of thing in whispers if a person allows it in their settings, but what’s the point of getting rid of PMs?... Text is text regardless of where it’s located. This was one of those sorts of changes that I can’t figure out. I “thought” maybe they wanted to unify a private place to talk since both existed at once time, but why not just move the conversation to the other or not have both at the same time to begin with?

Another thing they get rid of for no reason is email notifications to streams you follow. They “say” if you don’t watch a stream for a while they’ll turn off email alerts to it. Which makes sense to not fill up someone’s inbox. Imagine for instance they stream 30 days straight and you don’t go to any of them as sort of a break. That’s 30 emails that are useless to you. Except it doesn’t work. Even streams I watched regular like Bob Ross got email alerts disabled. You can tell that they keep track of when you click an Email link to someone’s stream too because in the URL you’ll notice it recognizes you came from the Email. So there’s no excuse. Oh and there’s no way to toggle that automated disabling of alerts to off as far as I’m aware. So you just have to deal with it. At least they do seem to be consistent about telling you when it does turn off email alerts, but get ready to enter that 6-digit login code just to fix the alerts regardless if the person is streaming or not.

After the Amazon buyout, eventually they started pushing Twitch Prime as well, basically another paid subscription thing like Turbo, only with Amazon benefits added on it. But all the things they push as “prime loot” are complete garbage. Stuff like Raid: Shadow Legends which is hardly a “game”. What made them even think a community of gamers would be into that? Well, maybe they did realize that, but did it anyway as a business partnership for the moolah.

I get the feeling that business partnerships are what’s going on with all the Valorant stuff popping up as well. Only with streamers being able to take advantage of it. For example: People found out to try the game, they need to watch any Valorant stream with drops enabled for a for 2 hours. That lead to people going to streams just for that invite. Many people. Artificial-inflation amounts of people that encourage people to stream it for said numbers and Twitch recommending channels playing it like mad to people, lol! So yeah, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t a business partnership.

You can find many more examples out there of people may or may not having a bug for things, but this should be enough to explain that Twitch is a complete mess. Every single aspect of it. It’s in a state like Youtube where everything is broke and they are ignoring users who message them telling about bugs (which they claim they encourage people to do and they listen to) or maybe are just unwilling to fix any of them even if they know about them. Who knows because they don’t communicate like they used to.

Your thoughts?

Thanks for reading and have a good one!

#twitch #twitch.tv #twitchtv #bug #bugs #buggy #glitch #glitches #support #staff #moderator #moderators #mods #incompetence #unwilling #dev #developer #developers #ttv #stream #streamer #streaming #live #delay #latency #video #game #gamer #gaming

[rpgmgames]

March’s Featured Game: Abigail Fortune and the Dreams of Azure

DEVELOPER(S): Fusoloid ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Adventure, RPG SUMMARY: Abigail Fortune's adventures continue in Paris! As she obtains information about a mysterious treasure called "Azure Dreams", the gentlewoman thief is joined by her old friend, Marguerite "Maria" Montblanc. Together the ladies must discover the true identity of the treasure, find out the truth behind the treasure's owner, and avoid falling permanently into the most wonderful dream...

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! I am Heidi K., also known as Fusoloid. I'm a Finnish university student, and I've been in the RPG Maker community since the early 2010's. I got much more active in following the community after I started developing my own games, however. I love art, studying cultures, and all in all, I'm here to be creative and have a good time!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Fusoloid: The Abigail Fortune series is, essentially, about the eponymous gentlewoman thief and her many adventures. I was inspired to make a story about a thief after binge-watching the first Lupin III anime series in late 2014, and after playing the demo of an RPGM game called Pumpkin Panic! around the same time, I decided to make it a game series on RPG Maker.

How long did you work on your project? *Fusoloid: I've been working on the AF series as a whole since late 2014. Proper work on Dreams of Azure started in 2017, after the release of the first game in the series, The Scarlet Fairy. Of course, even before that, I had outlined the major plot points and many of the characters, and even made some character sketches, though most of my efforts were focused on The Scarlet Fairy until it was released.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Fusoloid: Lupin III is the obvious biggest inspiration behind the series; major characters like Abigail, Marguerite and the Interpol duo of Cynthia and Neil were inspired by the major characters of Lupin III. Games like Persona 5, the Sly Cooper series and even the Uncharted series have inspired me in one way or another. Of course, I've been inspired by other pixel RPGs too, like The Witch's House, Dreaming Mary, Virgo VS the Zodiac and the LiEat series.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Fusoloid: One thing I've had challenges with Dreams of Azure is the more complex battle system I want to implement. Sometimes effects or features I wanted to include in the battle system weren't possible to implement, either due to the restrictions of the engine/plugin, or the complexity of the coding needed for it. Currently I've changed things so that these effects work differently than what I initially intended, but in a similar fashion.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Fusoloid: The story has probably changed the most out of all other aspects! The initial story was set in France like the current one, but the characters and story progression were completely different. Some time during 2016, I realized that the story wouldn't work as an RPG-style game too well, so I rewrote it to what it is now. Of course, that original story idea isn't completely abandoned yet...

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Fusoloid: I've worked on the series mostly by myself, but I've had some help from a certain friend of mine. She did the playtesting for The Scarlet Fairy, and also proofread and illustrated The Scarlet Emperor spinoff novella for me. I don't have any regrets about working (mostly) alone on the series, but I sometimes think I should learn a bit more about how Javascript works... a bit.

What was the best part of developing the game? *Fusoloid: Writing the story and making the art! I love writing dialogue and just writing down ideas for interactions that could be either funny or entertaining to the player or myself. Making the various character portraits is something I enjoy most about making the game's art, and I love conveying the different characters' personalities with their expressions and reactions.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Fusoloid: I often play other RPGM games to become inspired or to find new ideas, often times for puzzles and aesthetic stuff. For example, I would play Pocket Mirror or Dreaming Mary to get ideas for the aesthetic of Dreams of Azure's main location, and then play games like Ib or The Witch's House for puzzle ideas. Of course, I don't want to directly rip off anything, and I like doing my own thing and putting in my own twists as well.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Fusoloid: While I do like all of my character in one way or another, my favorite overall character will probably always be Abigail. She's extremely fun to write, and it's interesting to write a character who disguises her true self under a multitude of different personas. However, at the same time, there's the same person at the core of every disguise, and I want to develop that core character with every new entry in the series. And also, I just love charming rogues with a heart of gold... ♥

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Fusoloid: There isn't anything I regret with The Dreams of Azure, but regarding my game development journey in general, I wish I had started with something small instead of jumping straight into a bigger project. The Scarlet Fairy feels really unpolished in retrospect, and had I known more about the engine beforehand, I think I could've probably created much more creative ways of progression, as well as more interesting puzzles.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Fusoloid: Of course! The Abigail Fortune series will certainly continue after Dreams of Azure, and I already have a multitude of ideas on how the series will continue. AF3 will definitely come one day, but there will be a bunch more stuff coming out before that.

With your current project, what do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Fusoloid: The reaction from the fans! I love seeing how people talk about my stuff and what they liked and enjoyed about it. There's also just the incredibly satisfying feeling of being able to complete something and releasing it into the wild.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Fusoloid: The reaction from the fans, surprisingly. While I love seeing people enjoy my stuff, I'm also extremely terrified of releasing any big project due to my fear of being judged or unjustly critiqued. If it's something big and something I spent a lot of time on, having it be called bad or terrible would be the worst thing I could think of. I think this fear stems from years of bad experiences in my youth... I've done my best to work on this, of course, but I still notice myself getting very nervous.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Fusoloid: If you're thinking about getting into game developing, start from small projects. These projects don't have to be any longer than 5 minutes, as long as you finish them and learn new things about the engine you're using. Secondly, when you start your first bigger project, WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. From puzzles to dialogue to how the story advances, write everything down on a document of some kind so you can easily go through the progression of the plot without suffering and having to come up with things on the fly as you're making the game. And thirdly, BACK UP YOUR PROJECT FILES! Save 'em on an external hard drive, send 'em to an online cloud, send 'em to a friend; anything goes as long as your hard work will be preserved in case of disaster!!

Question from last month's featured dev @doc-saturn: What's something you learned while making this game? Is there anything you're trying to learn how to do right now? *Fusoloid: Parallax mapping! I decided to try out parallax mapping for the first time for The Dreams of Azure, and it's a lot of fun! The maps look a lot better than in The Scarlet Fairy, and it's fun to think of set pieces and decorations for the maps. However, making changes into the maps after having completed them can be a bit of a hassle...

We mods would like to thank Fusoloid for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Abigail Fortune and the Dreams of Azureif you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpgmaker #indie games #pixel games #games #rpg maker #abigail fortune #abigail fortune and the dreams of azure #gotm #game of the month #gotm march #gotm 2019 #2019 #march #fusoloid

[thesevenseraphs]

Director’s Cut: Part II

Hey everyone,

This is Director’s Cut – Part II, a now mega-long update looking at the last six months of Destiny 2 and looking ahead to Shadowkeep, and maybe a bit beyond. If you missed Part I and have an afternoon to yourself, go check it out. 

As the first section grew in length, I figured this section would be the last one. But at some point Avengers wasn’t going to be split into Infinity War and Endgame, either. So there will be another part. I love you 3000.

Looking Ahead (to Shadowkeep)

This fall is a necessary first step in turning Destiny 2 into the game we want it to be.  

It’s been a busy year, so let’s recap:

We assumed publishing control of Destiny and wanted to get something new into your hands as quickly as possible (Shadowkeep!)

We paired it with a free entry point in New Light to welcome new Guardians into the fold.

We wanted to bring Destiny 2 to new platforms to keep heading toward the you can play Destiny anywhere dream (Steam and Google Stadia).

We’re taking the initial steps toward building Destiny as a single, evolving world.

And we’re doing all of this while cranking on a bunch of the systems changes we’ve talked about and will continue to talk about heading into Shadowkeep.

Here’s where we’re going this fall.

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF THE RPG: ADD DEPTH, IMPROVE CUSTOMIZATION

We want to give people who love the RPG aspect of Destiny (like many of us) more stats and depth on the character sheet to sink their teeth into. We want to give players more agency over how they look. We also want armor to have that deep pursuit players love about Destiny—which brings the victory of finding their perfect roll.

Let���s Talk About Armor, Part I: Mods, Stats, and Tradeoffs

In order to allow players to independently pursue gameplay mods and further customize their Guardian fashion, a lot of work has been done to update armor for this fall. We’ve refactored a number of the stats in the game, we’ve overhauled the UI, and we’ve begun to separate capabilities from aesthetics.

Time-out.

Before I go on, I want to interject: It seems like some comments from part I around MTX are being misconstrued. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Maybe it felt too ambiguous. Let me try and clear this up before we get into armor.  

Destiny has and will continue to have Weapons, Armor, Ghosts, Ships, Sparrows, and Shaders that you can earn from activities to prove to the people looking at your character that you did the thing, whatever that thing is: I beat the Raid a bunch; I earned Iron Banner gear; I played a ton of Crucible; I wanted to gather rain in my shoulder pads so I played Gambit a ton; I made a sweet set of Astroshaman gear at the Rune table; I farmed that Strike for the Mindbender roll that makes people rage; et cetera. 

Let me be crystal clear: That isn’t changing.  

What we are doing with the new armor system is saying: Find the perks you want, find the armor look you want, (from the megalist of currently available Destiny 2 armor) and pursue that armor to get the elements/stats you want and combine them to make your Guardian.  

Destiny also has an MTX store that houses things like Sparrows, Ships, Emotes, Ghost Holograms, Weapon and Universal Ornaments. The items in that store rotate and can be purchased with Silver or Bright Dust. And starting this fall, Bright Dust is just another in-game currency that you can earn by completing Bounties, instead of buying a bunch of engrams and sharding them to generate Dust.  

In Shadowkeep, there are armor sets, weapons, Ghost, Ships, and Sparrows coming from the destinations and activities.  

Time-in. Back to Armor.

We started out by looking at what period in Destiny’s history was a good starting place for evolving the stat game (we felt like it was The Taken King/Rise of Iron) and what principles were guiding our new designs (we want to separate gameplay and aesthetics to grant more agency over both). 

There was a deep dive stream about this topic on August 14, but let’s recap some of the high-level points.

Armor now has an Energy meter ranging from 1–10.

You can use materials and currency to level up the Energy value on a given piece of armor.

Mods have both an Energy cost and an elemental affinity. In order for a mod to be equipped, your armor needs to have rolled the correct element and have enough Energy available  (e.g., Hand Cannon Reloader costs three Void Energy to equip, so your armor must have rolled Void and have three Energy available in order to use it).

Fundamentally, this means we have additional vectors for tuning things like mods. We could tune their effect (how much speed does the reload effect add?), we could tune their cost (how expensive is this mod to socket?), we could add mods to the pool for a different affinity, et cetera.

When you acquire a mod from the game, it’s like getting a perk that you can put on all armor. So once you’ve found Enhanced Hand Cannon Reloader from pinnacle activities (enhanced perks will come only from pinnacle activities), you’ll be able to socket that mod into new armor that meets its criteria (the mod is not consumed and can be socketed in and out at a small cost).

Here are the elements of armor that can roll randomly:

Elemental affinity rolls between Solar, Arc, and Void

Armor’s starting Energy value can roll randomly as well (they can all be leveled to 10)

Stats all roll random values (intellect, discipline, strength, mobility, resilience, and recovery)

Like in The Taken King, the stats will have break points that decrease their cooldowns (yes, your Sparrow now shows up on the character sheet).

Begin Math Time:

Today in Destiny 2, the base recharge rates convert to a stat value of 30 in the new system. Getting to 30 isn’t too difficult, though of course some people (but certainly not you!) will ride the RNG roller coaster to get the stat they really want to 30. By chasing a good stat roll, you can achieve the fast recharge rates available in the game today without needing to use mods. It is totally possible to put together a +100 intellect build (100 is the cap) without socketing a single mod. Some of the new mods will provide +10 to a given stat to help you shore up stats you care about.

But, that specialization may come with a price. Because you’ve specialized in intellect, you may be making tradeoffs for other stats (e.g., grenades come back slower or something—it really depends on your stat rolls). But if your grenades came back slower, then maybe that Demolitionist perk that you’ve been dismantling (I know, I know, Demolitionist is actually pretty good on non-Primary weapons!) would start to look appealing.

End Math Time.

We’ve made a bunch of armor in Destiny, and we didn’t want to leave behind any of the armor that players can currently pursue. So, we’ve also updated every new drop in the game to integrate and leverage the new system. This means if you want to go back and get the small Titan shoulder pads from Sloane on Titan, you can go chase a roll of them that uses the new system.

A number of the current mods will not work in the new armor that’s dropping this fall. But those mods aren’t being deprecated at this time. For example, your Super mods on your current armor will still work, but Super mods cannot be socketed into the new armor (you could socket your armor with intellect mods instead, though).

We did this because, while we think the evolutions we’re making to armor are a great step for Destiny over the long haul, we want you to decide when you migrate to them.

Part II: The Armor Migration Amplifying depth and choice via the new stats system ushers in some changes to armor. We’ve converted all current Destiny armor to use the stats, so cooldown durations will change as we migrate to the new system. You’ll be able to see the cooldown timers of your legacy armor when Shadowkeep’s patch goes live.

Here’s what we don’t want to happen: you feeling like “the game deprecated my old armor and perks; that time I spent playing Forsaken and its Annual Pass content was a waste, since all of the perks on the armor got turned off while Bungie forcibly migrated to this new system.”

Here’s how we hope this works:

If you’re a pretty hardcore player (or really lucky!) and have a set of armor today with perfect-for-you perks (like a fully loaded Enhanced Gun You Like set of perks), I think you’re going to keep using them for a while. I certainly expect the World First raid teams are going to go in with Forsaken-era gear that they’ve infused up throughout their Shadowkeep Power progression.

As the weeks go by and players approach the Shadowkeep Power cap and start finding mods with enhanced perks, we think that’s when our most invested, progression-chasing players will start to move over. Players can totally mix and match between new armor and the armor they have today as well.

For players without perfectly rolled gear, we think the transition to the new armor system is one they’ll make pretty quickly. In our long-form playtesting, our internal teams (not Velveeta—these are other internal players and playtesters. Sidebar: I’m real disappointed I missed out on the “kraftiest” opportunity in Part I. Good catch, Reddit!) have found that they’ve used their current armor on their “main” Guardian but rapidly switched to Armor 2.0 on their less-played alts.

Remember LiveJournal? Let’s do it.

With how I play, it’s a crude mix of fashion, function, and economic efficiency. I rarely invest resources in an item until it’s an item I know I want to use. I don’t infuse very often unless I need a specific piece/roll for an activity. I do not have a favorite class, I play all three. I tend to rotate them based on what is most effective or needed for group play in a given moment. I personally love it when the game gets hard, and I feel as if we would benefit from more challenge (I really liked how Contest mode enforced an action game skill component on World First attempts!). I totally have my favorite weapon archetypes (which I’ll spare you), and I get really frustrated as a player when there is an archetype I feel like I absolutely have to use all the time because it is far and away the most efficient thing. This is because I do—when playing content that matters—have to be using the most efficient thing. This creates some interesting discussions with the team at work when they create something that is super fun but isn’t actually efficient to use. I will totally mess around and get a triple double in patrol with a weird weapon, but the weird stuff isn’t getting used in a Crown of Sorrows group early in the season. Even then, I want to get through that content as quickly as I can.

My characters generally look HIDEOUS on the climb, and then I start to make them look good again once I get to the end game (and since I’m color-blind, my friends think my characters look pretty hideous in the end game, too). I think for me, I’ll shelve my nicely rolled items, delete everything that I wouldn’t wear raiding, and start using new equipment while I power up and find some looks I like—and then, when it’s time to go on JacketQuest, I’ll infuse up my well-rolled raiding equipment.

End of LiveJournal post.

Back to what I started this with—we want the transition to ultimately be your choice, one that you decide to make when you want to make it. Maybe you’re ready to start tinkering with stats. Maybe you really want to start combining universal ornaments and currently dropping armor to up your fashion game. Or maybe, like me, you’ll do both at the same time (but hopefully with less mocking from your so-called friends).

THE PURSUIT OF POWER: INCREASING PLAYER AGENCY

We’d like the act of chasing Power and stats for your build to be something you have a bit more agency over. Not a full-blown “play whatever you want all the time”—because that means people just find the most efficient thing, rather than dipping their toes into a bunch of different activities—but certainly less restrictive than it’s been in the past.

We’ve also had a long-standing challenge in Destiny of making XP matter, and that feels like a real growth opportunity for us to dig into something we’ve wanted to look at for a while.

This section discusses Power and the changes coming to it this Fall.  

Part I: Powerful Sources, Primes, and the World Like I mentioned in Part I, the number of powerful sources in Destiny 2 ballooned during the annual pass. We’re curating down the sources in Shadowkeep. Our target is to get the number of powerful sources closer to Forsaken-launch levels. In Forsaken, as you over-leveled an activity (meaning your Power gets higher than the activity), the activity’s rewards would become less valuable (the inverse was also true for being under-leveled). In Shadowkeep, we’ve changed that. Instead, the system will advertise a consistent expected powerful reward, regardless of your Power relative to it.

Over the years, we’ve come to discuss several parts of Destiny in terms of short-, medium-, and long-term goals.

In the simplest terms: Short-term goals can be completed in a night or a week, medium-term goals can take several weeks, and long-term goals can take anywhere from a Season to several Seasons. For some folks (like me), getting good at a part of the game may take a lifetime (that’s a personal-mastery goal).

We think reaching max Power can be a medium-term goal for Power-progression-focused players. For those players, we hope pursuit of stats and someday trying out new builds is their long-term goal. I say “someday,” because while we’re taking our first steps in buildcrafting with a new armor/mod framework this Fall, I think we’re going to learn a bunch about what making a viable build in Destiny requires. You’re going to surprise us with crazy, creative things we’ve never seen once this is live—we’re all looking forward to it.

Prime Engrams We’re doing some minor housekeeping on Prime Engrams. They’ll begin dropping once you hit 900, and you’ll accumulate charges for them as you make your way from 750 to 900. We’ve increased the number of Prime Engrams you can earn in a given week and rebalanced the value of each one to account for the increase in volume.

World Drops As far as contributing to your Power level, world drops often feel like a waste. To get away from that, we’ve made some changes that allow these drops to help players progress beyond the soft cap. World drops in Shadowkeep will have a chance to drop at a player’s current Power level.

Here’s an example: A player has an overall Power level of 912. Gloves are their lowest slot at 906. A player might open a Legendary engram and receive 912 gloves (an increase of 6 Power).

We’re making this change because we feel like the world Legendaries are a little undervalued at the moment. This isn’t some grand accelerant for Power progression, but rather a little quality-of-life experiment to reward your free-roaming adventures or random Legendary-activity drops.

Part II: Preparing for New Light One of the essential parts of New Light is crushing the barriers between friends. Today, one of those barriers is the Power level.

To players, Power level can mean “we have different goals, so we don't play together.” A new character starting at 10 Power would naturally feel that they had to go play all this other content—and in many, many hours you can play with the friend who recommended the game to you.

That does not sound very sweet. It’s like telling someone to play a MOBA and then saying “we’ll play with you in 100 hours when you’ve learned to last hit.” (This is what my friends said to me. Do I have bad friends? As I’m writing this, I’m starting to wonder.)

That’s not what we want in New Light.

We want to get new players and veterans colliding quickly. After Black Armory, we made a deliberate choice to try to do this with each Season. Both Season of the Drifter and Season of Opulence had bounties to boost up players’ Power levels. With New Light and Shadowkeep being bigger moments of collision, we’re continuing that philosophy, but optimizing the mechanics to fit the moment.

We’re setting the Power this Fall to 750 for both returning and new players. We want you to all be together when Shadowkeep opens. Here’s what this means:

Every single item in the game is being raised to a Power floor of 750 when Shadowkeep and New Light launch. 

Every item in your inventory (and vault) is going to automatically jump to 750.

It's like a free global burst of infusion for all players.

Which means that right now, you could (should!) stop spending currency to infuse your gear sets or that C-tier of weapons that you're keeping around until the patch notes just in case they are going to be good after the changes (there are many buffs coming and it is very tempting to spoil a bunch of them, but I said this wasn’t gonna be the patch notes!).

Part III: More Power, More Problems (We originally had this as Mo’ instead of More, but I changed it upon the sad realization that there is an entire generation of players who missed out on Biggie, Puffy, and Mase in the Bad Boy era. Yes, it’s kind of weird that I changed this and left the Highlander reference in. Especially when neither is T for Teen.)

I’m the first to say it: Raising the Power of all players globally is indicative of a greater problem. It’s real weird that someone will boot up New Light for the first time and immediately be 750.  

The capital P Power level in Destiny (or Light as it was called in D1) has been asked to do a lot over the years. For a time in Destiny 1, it was one of the only things players had to pursue. In D1, Power/Light meant something in terms of achievement—but that badge of honor had its problems (forever 29 via raid boots, etc).

Destiny 1 put the Light/Power level over the player’s head and drove players to raid and raise it. Over time, we gave players other paths to raising their Light/Power (Nightfall, Iron Banner). We took Light off the nameplate and made it three digits in The Taken King, trying to turn Light into something more like a three-digit item level, but without the stat budgeting assigned to it where the stats dictate true character power.

At D2 launch, we shortened the Power climb, over-simplified the game, made it too easy to get items, focused on bringing new players in, and hoped that players would pursue looks alone as their endgame (we were wrong!) while we continued to build features like what would become Forsaken Triumphs.

During that period, we also democratized Power so that players didn’t need to raid or play Nightfall to reach max Power. They could kind of just do any weekly. Forsaken introduced gold sources onto the map, and over the course of the year, the number of powerful sources continued to increase.

See, Power has a lot to do with the amount of damage players can both deal and receive. In fact, it's the biggest factor in it. It’s also been the thing to pursue. Our gameplay specialists—the roles where dedicated Destiny players come in and participate in long-form playtesting with their imported-from-home character—frequently point out that they can’t engage with a number of parts of the game ’til they’ve “completed the Power climb.” Over the years, we’ve made the Power climb shorter and shorter. We’ve made it easier and easier to reach max Power.

We’ve also introduced things like Triumphs, titles, and Collections to provide additional stuff to do as the prestige of Power waned.

In Shadowkeep, we’re trying something a little different.

First, we’re introducing a Seasonal Artifact, unique and thematic to each Season.

As the artifact levels up, it can do a few things: First, it becomes a source of seasonal artifact mods—unique mods that can be equipped only during that Artifact’s season. These mods may be brand new experimental mods or powerful mods with reduced energy cost enabling players (and us!) to experiment further in the buildcrafting space.

Second, the seasonal artifact can award players a Power bonus, but that bonus is not applied to gear (nor does it increase the Power of future drops), but instead to all of your characters. This is meant to give players who can’t or don’t want to play pinnacle activities a seasonal path to Power. This way, even if a player doesn’t play the raid, Iron Banner, or the [REDACTED], they can still have a high Power value for the Season. Leveling the artifact to raise your Power is meant to be Seasonal character growth. Each Season, we’ll have a new artifact with new mods that change how you play—and the Power bonus will reset.

In addition to curating the list of powerful sources, Shadowkeep will also introduce pinnacle powerful sources. These sources are the only way to earn gear drops above power 950 in Season 8.

Here's the thinking: Pinnacle reward sites can award players Power above 950. This is a way of reclaiming a little bit of the character Power prestige that the initial D1 Power climb created. If you inspect a player and see their gear is 960, you know they’ve done a bunch of pinnacle activities. It’s worth mentioning that as you raise your Power via pinnacle activities, other powerful reward sites will continue to drop powerful sidegrades.

All of this said, Power in Destiny 2 is still imperfect. We’re making some adjustments to it this year for Shadowkeep: things like Seasonal Power bonuses and pinnacle activities awarding pinnacle Power. But when we look to the future, we feel like the Power system may benefit from a rework further down the road. There’s real potential in creating more agency for players, figuring out if Power should be prestigious or not, and taking on the challenge of how to keep players relatively close together Season after Season, while still allowing them to make progress.

Here’s something I miss from Destiny 1: filling bars on my items and using materials to level items. Even though I ended up with more ascendant and radiant materials than I ever could’ve needed, the existence of these materials meant the hunt for powerful rolls could go on longer. I think wanting and needing materials is a good thing—as long as you know what you can do to go pursue that material. I’m glad we’re getting a little more of that back into Destiny with Shadowkeep.

Need Masterwork Cores? Well, we didn’t have a very good answer for that much of the year. Lesson learned.

Stay tuned to bungie.net for the third installment of Director’s Cut. It focuses on the action part of MMO-action game (think: combat and PvP, with a bonus section on the evolving world) coming to Destiny this Fall.

#Destiny #Destiny 2 #Destiny 2: Forsaken #long post

[ladylike-foxes]

Dragon Age Question Meme

Tagged by @galadrieljones ❤️😘 Thank you, Sweets!

Tagging: @wrenbee @joufancyhuh @kvpowers @nerkierants @solverne-02 @ellstersmash @swimming-squids @roguelioness And anyone else who'd like to!

01) favorite game of the series?

Inquisition. I hadn't played Origins or DA2 in so long, I had practically forgotten they existed. I had gotten out of gaming for a long time, until I finally caved when I moved away, and got into Skyrim. I played so much I literally maxed out my levelling, and was starting to get bored...which made me sad. Inquisition not only rekindled my love for Dragon Age, it brought out more fresh inspiration to my creativity overall, and that in turn has improved my life,

02) how did you discover Dragon Age?

I played Origins and DA2 at friends' houses when I was in school, but while I enjoyed them, I wasn't in a place in my life where I could appreciate them. Then I was telling my amazing baby-brother-in-law about how sad I was that Skyrim was feeling stale to me, and he told me to play Inquisition. I was speculative at first, because I was so in love with Skyrim's open-world format and lack of any real Good +/- Evil alignment...but once I got past the Intro, I felt so immersed and so connected to the characters, that now Skyrim feels a little empty in comparison (though I do still love it)

03) how many times you’ve played the games?

Origins and DA2, only once each. Inquisition & its DLCs, 6 times all the way through.

04) favorite race to play as?

Elves. It's a bit embarrassing, but I'm an Elf Person. Though I'm sure it hasn't been obvious at all.

05) favorite class?

ROGUE!!! Especially dual-weild 😍 Mage is super fun too, though, ngl

06) do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time.

NGL It depends on which character I'm playing as, mostly. I also base new decisions based on the effects of decisions in past play thrus and how they played out. If I'm contented with the results in respect to the character, I'll make the same decisions 😂

07) go-to adventuring group?

Solas, Iron Bull, and Dorian, though I rotate Varric and Cassandra in and out a lot, too.

08) which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

😂😂😂 Halesta

09) favorite romance?

Solas, because I enjoy torturing myself. Sera was cute, too. Cullen was fluffy and sweet, and was good for me after my first play thru with Solas. I was in a bad place after the first Solavellan go 'round, cried for weeks. It was not pretty 😂

10) have you read any of the comics/books?

First Flight and Masked Empire

11) if you read them, which was your favorite book?

Masked Empire, hands down. I don't know why, but I couldn't really get into First Flight? But Felassan in Masked Empire, are you kidding?! SWOON.

12) favorite DLCs?

Trespasser. I also love the Descent, especially for the lore! But the Deep Roads scare the ever-loving shit out of me, so I have to psych myself up before I can play it 😅 While I am hot for Ameridan, Jaws of Hakkon didn't really grab me.

13) things that annoy you?

To steal Gala's answer: "Not much. Mostly I get annoyed when parts of the fandom fixate on things that annoy them. That annoys me, because I’m here for the positive vibes, not the negative."

14) Orlais or Ferelden?

Ferelden for the people and culture, Orlais for the varying environments and the history.

15) Templars or Mages?

Mage Rights

16) if you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

Halesta + Laleal Verse is technically the same Verse as Camber + Somber, since their stories converge, but their timelines are a little different. Ghani is Omniversal. She's in any and every Verse. She's in your Verse right now, and you don't even know it 🤫

17) what did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc)

The dogs in Origins and DA2 were Bryna and Nilo, respectively. Halesta's horse is Da'assan and her little fox is Ghestlin ("lil monster")

18) have you installed any mods?

No...PS4 😟

19) did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden?

Noooooo.

20) Hawke’s personality?

She's a spiteful, sarcastic bitch and I love her so much I can't even.

21) did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition?

Ahahaha, God no. I made armor for each companion that I thought fit their personalities.

22) if your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change?

Oh God, uhh, I have no idea.

23) do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

SO MANY. Felassan doesn't die, Halies's father is an Ancient Elvhen Sentinel, she is sent by Fel to kill Solas before he can get the Orb to Corypheus (she doesn't), she knows Solas is Fen'Harel, she saves the Orb from breaking but won't give it to Solas, is able to master the Orb and use the power of the Anchor without losing her arm (though it is severely scarred), etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Also, @galadrieljones , about the barefoot elves: I kinda like that they're barefooted! Though probably because I'm always barefooted 😅

24) are any of your character(s) based on someone?

Halesta's personality is based loosely on my mother combined with certain self-insert aspects of my bipolar disorder. Laleal is pretty much based on a combo of my best friend and my husband. Camber's personality is based a little more accurately on my Momma, and her relationship with Somber is based on mine with my own brother (though we're not twins) when we were younger (we're still close, but you know how things change sometimes with age and distance). And Ghani is just a straight-up personification of my depression and anxiety 😂

25) who did you leave in the Fade?

Stroud. I couldn't live with an alternative.

26) favorite mount?

While Halie has a horse she's very attached to in my fic/hc, I don't use mounts in-game. To quote Gala: "My party and I run around on foot like children and get eaten by bears like men."

#about me #dragon age meme #tag meme #galadrieljones #friend love

[forgottenrealmsrp]

Hello, I am very new to DnD and I would really like some tips on how to play and roll for certain things (Im not too good with examples) etc. etc.

Howdy! Mod Nate here coming at you with some Tips for Beginners. There’s a hell of a lot to cover that I cannot fit into one post (because, let’s be honest, that would be a nightmare), but I will try my best. So, without further ado, hold onto your butts.

The Three R’s

I find there are three main aspects to remember (and master!) when starting off in DnD or other such TTRPG’s. You can sort them into three categories: 

Rules,

Rol(l/e)s, and

Roleplaying

Of course there are heaps of other things to consider in game, but for a beginner, it can get overwhelming very quickly, so we’ll just stick to the Three R’s for now.

Rules

What better thing for a game than rules! The first thing you hopefully would have done if you were gearing up for your first game is to get your hands on a Player’s Handbook (For DnD 5e), or your RPG’s respective rulebook. Hobby stores, book stores, libraries, even video game shops might stock a physical copy of our favourite WotC volumes, but you can also secure them online wherever you may find them. 

Once you have your grubby little goblin hands on a handbook, give it to a friend, and have them read it to you. If that gets too boring, have them explain the rules in detail - you’ll need a pen and a notebook! If that is too time-consuming or - more likely - you don’t actually have any friends, you’ll have to settle for a hurried and often last-minute explanation of the core mechanics of the game, the finer details of which will be left unaddressed until you get your creative spirit crushed by your mean Dungeon Master, or local rules lawyer. 

(Remember kids, if you aren’t sure of where to locate one of these “rules lawyers”, simply talk out loud about your homebrew weapon or Pathfinder game, and they will be sure to find you!)

In this fabled Player’s Handbook you will find a fun breakdown and walkthrough of the game’s races, classes, and backgrounds, all of which you will need to read through several times and then immediately forget. Only after you have asked yourself “Which Bard School is going to make Sildaar Hallwinter not a steaming pile of crap?” for the fifth time in 10 minutes, can you move on to “equipment” and “rules”. Make sure to read these thoroughly, because you’ll learn them pretty quickly after your party’s Paladin once again forgets how many d10s to roll. It’s two, Derek. You asked the exact same question last round. 

Idiot. 

Rol(l/e)s

Once you manage to wrap your head around the rules, you get to the meat of the sandwich - rol(l/e)s. Whoever came up with this idiotic word hybrid (me) needs to report to their editor (also me) and get his ass whooped (still me). 

Now, I know you’ve gotten this far and thought “Wait, Nate, that may have rhymed but you haven’t actually given any tips yet?!??!?!?!!/1!?!?!?!?1?!???????????”. To that, I say yes (or no?), I have(n’t?) given you tips for how to play and roll for certain things, because the biggest tip I have for you is coming right up.

Wait for it.

You cannot build a dragon’s tower without strong foundations. 

Meaning: Only once you have “mastered” the rules and basics of roleplaying (and rolling!) will you be able to spread your beautiful dragon wings and soar as a damn good DnD player. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to learn and remember every single mechanic or rule in the book! Because that would be a nightmare and if you can do it, you will be God. No questions asked. But hey! People make mistakes, or remember things wrong, or guess incorrectly, or even make it up as they go along. Having the handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide on hand for these occasions will save everyone’s sanity at least once, but knowing when to draw the line between fairness and fun will make everyone’s play a whole lot better. 

So! Now that you’ve become God, rolling and role-ing (not a word) are your new best friends. And you know who makes the best friends? DICE! Just google it and have fun, kids, but remember that you have to eat and sleep somewhere warm and cozy tonight, so try not to build your hoard of shiny forbidden snacks too quickly, now. All you will need for starters is your standard 7-dice set: d4, d6, d8, d10*, d12, and d20.

*The d10 often comes in pairs to act as a percentile dice. The die with the ten’s (00, 10, 20, 30, etc.) will act as the ten’s place, and the other die will act as the one’s place. So, if you roll a 60 and a 9, you get a really funny number. If you roll a 00 and a 0, that’s 100! If you roll a 00 and a 1, however, that’s a 1. You die in game and you die in real life. Goodbye.

The handbook will tell you all the dice you will need to roll in order to both run the game, and make your character! That’s right! Maths begins even before the game does. Even Death themself cannot escape the point-buy system. Just submit. 

Stats are fun. 

What do they mean? What do they do? Who even knows what Constitution does?! I certainly don’t! But that’s where you’re in luck, bucko.

This post is already long enough without getting to the good stuff, so I’ll keep it simple. 

Strength - a measure of how well you can do stuff with your muscles. Skills like Athletics (aaaaaaand nope just athletics, huh, really? No fish-lifting skill? Huh? Cowards) will benefit from having some damn good muscles. Also you can stab stuff real good.

Dexterity - a measure of how deft, nimble, and stealthy one can be. Contributes to skills like Acrobatics and Stealth, unsurprisingly. If you can move good, you can groove good. I’d add a skill for dancing if I were you, WotC. 

Constitution - I lied before when I said I had no idea what constitution does, but it was only partly a joke. Constitution contributes to skills like not dying, staying alive, and stopping being dead. Sometimes it determines how much health you have. Sometimes it means you can drink an entire frog. Don’t ask.

Intelligence - Are you a smart cookie? Can you learn languages fluently in a short span of time? Can you destroy scores of defenceless troops with a single pillar of flame? Can you read? Are you kept awake at night by their screams? Intelligence makes you good (or not) at skills like History, Religion, Arcana, and being a nerd. Oh wait. No one is good at being a nerd. Sorry nerdlord. Also, if your intelligence is under 10, you can’t read! Just like me.

Wisdom - Not the smartest cookie in the shed? Like to eat leaves? You and me both, kid! Wisdom is a measure of your STREET SMARTS! so you can throw those nasty pervert kobolds off their rhythm. Unfortunately, starting equipment does not include a money clip. It makes you good at eating dirt and walking through forests and stuff. Also I think you can pet dogs really well?

Charisma - If you’ve ever played a bard, you would know what this is. If you haven’t played a bard, it’s not too late! Quick! Choose a Warlock or a Cleric if you want a Charisma based build! Choose the entertainer background if you must! -sigh- but if you insist, charisma is a measure of how easily you can quite literally charm the pants off a dragon. Also, sometimes you can roast people really well?

Having high skills is all fine and dandy, but the next tier of DnD player character power is owning your low skills. Have low constitution? Your tiefling is sickly or has a weak stomach! Low intelligence? Your character can’t read or write! Low charisma? You cause every single npc interaction to end with you being punched in the face. There is colour and interest in every aspect of your character, so make sure to let your character sheet represent your character as well as you can!

But how do you determine these stats?

Looking in your class description, you will see under the ‘Quick Build’ section the recommended stat scores, backgrounds and/or spells for that character. These are NOT mandatory, but I find them to be a helpful guideline for how to keep your character functional and, well, alive. Stat scores themselves can be determined a few different ways: Point-buy (I have no idea how this works but it looks like a lot of maths and that’s homophobic, so); Cascading, and rolling. 

Cascading (or at least that’s my name for it, I have no other way to describe it) is where you take the values 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 and assign each to one of your stats. For example, before adding racial stat modifiers, I could assign my barbarian’s stats as follows:

STR: 15, DEX: 13, CON: 14, INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 12.

I may have a character-based reason for assigning my barbarian a relatively adequate Charisma score. Maybe he was a particularly intimidating character, or perhaps his iron-will makes his Constitution a 14. Maybe he likes to dance. You could have a particularly burly mage with a strength score of 15, just because you feel like it. Maybe your cleric is part of team sweet-flips? Or your monk could study tomes night and day to get her Intelligence to a lofty 17 points post-modifiers. Balancing stat scores so that you don’t die is awesome, but having a change to shout “YOU DO NOT SEE GROG!” and win 9 times out of 10? Priceless.

Rolling your stats is perhaps the most widely-used way to determine stats, but to be safe, ask your DM (or get crafty if you’re the DM!) about their preferred method. It’s pretty simple: roll 4d6 (the six-sided dice four times), noting down each individual roll. After four rolls, you cross out the lowest roll, and add the remaining three. Repeat five more times and you have some good good stats, bro! Don’t forget to add your racial stat modifiers before you assign your stat scores! 

Modifiers seem pretty confusing as a newbie, but there is a handy table in the PHB to help you keep track. Alternatively, you could subtract 10 from your score, and then half what you have left, making sure to round down! A score of 19 would have a modifier of +4 (19 - 10 = 9/2 = 4.5 ≈ 4, rounding down). A score of 8 would have a modifier of -1 (8 - 10 = -2/2 = -1). Pretty simple, right?

So now I think I can finally address whatever the F*$# I mean by ‘Roles’. What the heck is a role? Do you mean roleplaying? No, dear reader, I do not. A ‘role’ is what I like to call your position in the party. Because yes, on the unlikely occasion that you do manage to wrangle a group of people willing (or able) to play DnD with you, you still have to play with other kids, Derek. That means that the typical balancing applies. You cannot just have a 7-person party filled entirely by bards. Or bees. Though I would prefer the bees. Who would want 7 bards? That sounds like the start of a bad joke. 

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you have enough bases covered in the traditional party makeup that you won’t die immediately, but you also don’t have to deal with 7 goddamn bards, Derek, I swear to God-

You’ll want someone to hit stuff, someone to get hit, someone to help those who get hit, and someone to hit things when you don’t want to get hit. This could be solved any number of ways. Get creative, go hog wild. But not buck wild, Derek. I will not have the “Seven Buskateers” at my table again, do you hear me?!

This brings us to the finale. I’ve been writing this post for half an hour, and we’re finally getting to the good stuff. Thanks for stick with me so far. How about dropping your favourite stardew valley bachelor/ette down in the replies if you’ve read this far? Mine’s Elliot, because he’s beautiful and I love him, just like I love you. :3

Roleplaying!

It’s in the title! The very mechanics of the game! So, the question you’re asking me is: “Nate, how the Flippity Doo Daa do you roleplay?????????” 

And I reply, “How are you making those noises with your mouth? Where am I?! Who are you? Why can I hear each individual question mark even though they shouldn’t have a place in the mortal coil? What are you?!”

And then I tell you about my favourite thing to tell my own players. 

The easiest character to play is one that exists. So? What does that mean???

It means that YOU, my dead, dear nerd, can’t just pull a self-insert every single dang game, Damn it Derek! No one LIKES YOU! GO HOME! You have this opportunity to think of a fun, unique concept, and roll with it. So, how can you create the next Taako, or Nott, or Yashee’rak or Caduceus? 

If you have a concept to work from, that’s great! If not, start from the ground up. Who is your character? What are their likes, dislikes, loves, hates, loyalties, vendettas? I often like to establish both a backstory and a goal for them to accomplish, the simpler the better, to get you on the right track. Perhaps a Neverwinter begger wishes to open their own tea shop in Ba Sing Se? A cursed child of an angel and a demon takes it upon themself to avenge their brother’s death? A simple farm girl falls in love and follows her princess Buttercup across Faerûn? You name it!

Some good questions to ask yourself about your characters personality could also include:

What would they kill for?

What would they die for?

What would they watch someone else die for?

What are some rumours your party members would have heard about your character?

What would they think of your favourite meme?

How do they treat their mum? How would they treat your mum?

Do they have any recurring nightmares? Why?

Etc. Etc. Think of them as a real being, with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears! The more detailed you can get in theory might help in the long run. If you find yourself deviating from these details, however, don’t sweat! That’s a character’s natural development and progression as a character! In fact, if things don’t change as you play, you might have to have a look at your play style. Loosen up. No one is one emotion their entire lives. Characters lie! They hide things and change details and cheat and steal! But they also act kindly, even randomly, and change and grow. Encourage that. Let them grow. They (and your party members!) will thank you for it!

I think that’s all I have in me for now, and oh man there are so many more things I could mention. DMing in itself will have to wait for another day, of course, but I hope this helped! I’m going to die now. 

[lostsolsdestinyblog]

Destiny 2: Forsaken Initial impressions after one hell of a first week of play

We are officially one week into Forsaken and though I have previously waited to post detailed opinions until after the first month, since there is just so much that we’ve experienced in the last week, I’m going to give a take on this initial experience.

First and foremost, Forsaken is so far in my opinion the absolute pinnacle Destiny experience we all hoped it would be. This expansion is incredible and there is almost too much to do and take in, and to that end it can get a bit overwhelming at times. That is not a bad problem to have though and is really a testament to everyone at Bungie and the work they put in to all aspects of the game over the last year.

Story/Campaign

There are many things to cover but I think the first should be the story, lore, campaign and endgame story. This has been nothing short of magnificent. Forsaken took a real hold on me right from the opening cinematic and maintained it all throughout the campaign, through the closing scene and kept going. From the speech Ikora gave when we got back to the tower, to the dialogue when we visit planet vendors, it is deep, it is rich and it is heartfelt. I haven’t even had time to begin thinking about digging into the new lore section of the Triumphs, but all the responses I’ve heard from those who have are nothing short of glowing.

Art/level design/worlds

I don’t know exactly what I pictured as exactly what the Tangled Shore would be like, but it managed to exceed any thoughts I may have had. From the real look at the full Prison of Elders to the wreckage of the Queen’s assault on Oryx, It is just phenomenally done. The crashed Tomb Ship in particular was just a complete OMG moment for me and really managed to hit me in the feels being back in that environment.

The weapon and armor designs are really fantastic this go round too. I know the return of some of the old D1 gear has been hit or miss with people, but I feel like it fits the narrative and there are enough brand new designs to really give people a choice of aesthetic.

The Dreaming City

To the art and design, as GLaDOS would say, this is a triumph. The zone is very reminiscent to me of WoW’s Timeless Isle and that is such a cool thing to have in Destiny because it was easily the best zone I ever played in WoW. I haven’t gotten to do a ton of exploring there yet, but it is a much larger space that I envisioned and full of way more secrets and challenges. I got to finally do quite a bit of the Blind Well yesterday and, after a dozen or so completions now, I think the event is awesome. I think the last 3; Archon’s Forge, EP and now the Well have all been incredibly fun and have managed to have uniquely different reasons for being so. I think these events are a great thing for the game and look forward to each new one we get, but I wish they could get the matchmaking right.

The one place this falls short again is that it’s so difficult to get a larger group of friends together to play and I know the matchmaking in the Well has already been covered by Paul Tassi and others, but I think it goes beyond matchmaking in this instance.

The Dreaming City is the raid zone. Everything there is building up to the raid and yet we are limited to 3 player fireteams and this to me if I could change one thing about Forsaken would be #1 on the list. It should have been a 6 player fireteam zone. I understand all the technical reasons for how Destiny’s worlds work and the challenges of moving us between the different public and private bubbles while matchmaking seamlessly and also keeping us able to be joined at any time by those in our fireteam, but this is not the regular patrol zone. The Dreaming City is a standalone area from the Tangled shore and as such I wish could have been designed to accommodate the bigger groups.

Even if it entailed limiting each area within the Dreaming City to a max of 6 rather than 9 and tuning the enemies/challenges accordingly, I think it would have been worth it. One of the biggest mistakes D2 made for me at launch was forcing raid teams to fracture to do anything else in the game and I think it ended up hurting the game. This is something we discussed at the Summit including wondering if we could get a 6v6 Gambit (the response being that while the idea is good, the mode had been developed, tested and perfected to feel good for 4v4 and they didn’t want to chance changing things and it not feeling as good so close to release.

The return of 6v6 QP and IB has done a lot to give those groups more to do, but I just can’t help but think about what a bonding experience this could have been for raid teams to all be together playing through the Dreaming City and unlocking the secrets around the raid before going in together and I hope it’s something that is considered for the future.

Gambit

I was extremely fortunate to have been a part of the first group to get to play it and it was incredibly fun when we did, but also a bit overwhelming to really get a full sense of everything that was going on. During the Gambit stream a couple weeks ago and then in the free trial day I really got a chance to pick up a lot of nuances and rules of play that I didn’t catch going in blind and it has been exactly what all the rave reviews throughout the spring and summer have suggested. The mode is incredibly fun and deep, the maps are fantastic and the different map/enemy combos really do make it feel quite different every time.

I know there are the complaints we see about sleeper, etc, but honestly I haven’t seen any strategy/weapon that can’t be countered by adjusting your own teams approach so far. The only issue I’ve had with Gambit has been the networking and rules around players dropping/joining. I don’t know how unique my experience has been, but when I play with friends I get zoo errored out of almost every match and usually a game or two in, right before the rewards. In a two day span I was only able to successfully complete two matches. It cost me hours of leveling and not only did I lose out on a bunch of powerful engrams rewards, it also punished my clan mate playing with me as she didn’t get credit for doing the matches with me towards her clan bounty when I kept getting kicked at the end.

To this end I don’t know if the issue is server side or with my Xbox, but it’s been painful. My other issue is with the systems surrounding the disconnects. It has given me a message asking saying I got unexpectedly removed and would I like to rejoin each time, but I have never successfully made it back into a match. I get another zoo error every time and once that fails; there is no way to just join on teammates in an in-progress match. The other issue is with the ban system. I understand that it sucks when people quit and there should be some way to curb that, but I think that right now the system is punishing to many players who’ve been kicked/had the game freeze/get stuck flying in from orbit forever. When the system becomes a punishment to players who are at no fault, then I think it’s time to rethink the system.

Bounties/dailies/ weeklies

There are so many and this is both awesome and overwhelming all at once. I like that bounties are back. I think they give a real reason to go to all the places within the game and have given me reason to actually go do heroic story missions, strikes and adventures. I think to that end these have been a grand slam, but I also think they are a bit overly complex.

I think here the biggest issue for me has been the removal of goals from the milestone page. I was so lost the first few days trying to figure out where I needed to be and what I needed to do to level up and progress and I really wish that we could track more than one bounty at a time and that when tracked, they would be pinned to the milestone page. I know there is only so much space there so it may be a limited number, but I miss not being able to just pull up that tab and see where I need to go next and my progress.

I didn’t even know the daily heroic adventure existed until day 4, and again, there is so much to do now and it is awesome, but it could be a little more defined how things work and when they reset. I know there was also the unintended rested on Saturday that threw a wrench into things, but it’s been hard to prioritize what to do when to not lose things because of the 4 day vs weekly resets. I think it would have been better to just have 7 unique daily events that reset each week along with the weeklies.

Progression

This one it’s still early to really be able to fully give opinions on as one week isn’t enough to get a sense of a 200 power level climb, but I can give my thought on things so far. The first thing is the initial grind from 35/380 to 50/500. I thought this was done really well and the pacing particularly on my second and third characters was really good. I enjoyed the repeat trips through and was able to be perfectly setup for the next grind on each of my 3 characters.

Initially I was taken aback by the high cost of infusion like everyone else, but that has become a bit less of an issue post 500 and I understand the reasoning behind the changes and trying to change the way we think about choosing/upgrading gear. I do have some reservations on upgrading gear still though. Some people had the luxury of having huge stockpiles of masterwork cores, mod components, planetary mats, etc going in and I understand it would be kind of broken for them to basically be able to buy as many of whatever they needed while other have to grind, but I really can’t imagine this system not being punishing for new players or those who didn’t have stock piles.

I’m currently almost our of masterwork cores and not finding many in the world and it’s got me to where I’m just equipping whatever gear I find at higher levels and not wearing the armor I want or in many cases using the weapons I want to. I didn’t mind this on the journey to 500 going through various blue gear, but I don’t like having to play the real endgame using things I don’t really want to and wearing gear I don’t really like.

All that said, so far progression post 500 has felt very good. I’ve managed to gain at least 3-5 levels each day (high of 518 atm) and I’m struggling to complete everything I can that gives powerful gear across all 3 characters before they reset… and that is with the fact that I didn’t do my initial weeklies before the Saturday reset and so lost out on a week’s worth of those activities. Whatever issues Warmind had with capping our progress and particularly in making it difficult for solo players to progress after their milestones were finished have been not just corrected, but made infinitely better in Forsaken.

I actually had to force myself to take this break from trying to finish everything I need to do in order to write this. There have been some bumps in the road so far with the accidental reset, players glitching things and for me, the issues staying connected to Gambit, but as a whole I think it has been easily the best leveling system Destiny has had so far for both solo and fireteam play.

Random Rolls/Exotics/mods

To random rolls, I think they’ve been handled very well since being brought back. I think the possible variations along with the perks themselves have made getting a good version of any weapon a pretty safe bet when they drop. As far as armor rolls, I really haven’t even begun to really look at or care what the perks are at this point as there is no way I can find a set and wear/infuse it as I go with the infusion economy as it stands now, so I’m currently just infusing exotics/ like-kind-items and my few crucible pieces on my titan that have my grenade cooldown mods. Unless there are changes I don’t see myself really trying to build full sets until I hit 600.

Weapons I wish just has glimmer cost associated when infusing say any hand cannon to hand cannon and not just the same kinds of them. I think that would help things a lot and allow us to use what we want more often as we level.

Mods are so much better than before and exactly what I had wished they would be for a long time now, but I am worried that the economy system here is going to be too punishing. I did not have a stockpile going in and I have been able to but 6-7 so far, but I don’t have enough to buy anymore at this time and I’m not finding them as I play. I think I’ve gotten only one or two the last two day. That isn’t going to cut it.

Sandbox/balance

Again it is so early to really get a full sense of things but from what I have played so far of PvE and PvP, this is really, really good. There are so many incredible weapons in every weapon slot/archetype and the ways we can set up to play are just crazy deep. I know there have been the complaints about Sleeper, Telesto, shotguns, etc, but honestly I have not seen any weapon stand out in what has killed me. I’ve seen so much variety and even when I run into a player who is really good with whatever they have equipped, I don’t feel like I’m lacking in ways to combat and counter them. When there are weapons in literally every class that you can say is truly phenomenal, the devs really knocked it out of the park and I really hope that the philosophy of putting it on players to find great weapons that fit their play within the sandbox stays and we don’t see things start to get nerfed because players feelings get hurt when they die to (x) weapon/ability/super.

Supers/new subclasses

These have been nothing short of spectacular. I decided to play my Warlock first at the last minute and on a whim went with the new arc subclass. I can’t even adequately describe how much it exceeded my expectations for what it could be. It feels so powerful and just perfect. I have since unlocked the solar and it’s also amazing (though seems to take a bit too long to level each node compared to the other subclasses).

I did the void Hunter first and outside of a garbage right bumper on my xbone controller it’s been really fun, but probably the biggest surprise so far is the Titan. I decided to do the defender first and it’s the first time in all of Destiny that I can truly say I love the subclass. It just feels so spot on now both in its support capabilities as well as being able to really hold its own offensively.

The only thing that has been an issue I’ve seen is the way we acquire the ability to unlock new supers. I understand tying them to the Blind Well to encourage players to really get in there and try it, but I hope that isn’t the only avenue and that we will have chances for them to just drop anywhere the further we progress with the odds getting higher. I cannot imagine this not being the case and us somehow reaching 600 without unlocking everything.

Final thoughts

Again it is still so early in this expansion and there is still so much to see and do in weeks and months to come, but this has been such a Triumph for pretty much every aspect of the game. Yes there are things like Blind Well and the Dreaming City that I think can be even better, but that is the key phrase, EVEN BETTER, because they are already great. I think at this point that would be the area I’d like to see the game grow and improve from here. Weapons, balance, leveling, investment, story, lore, design, new modes… all those things have been taken to entirely new levels of greatness. Now I want to better be able to experience it all with more of my friends and our full 6 player fireteam, be that in areas like the Dreaming City, PvP, and hopefully eventually patrols.

It’s been a hell of a ride so far and we’re a week in. I can’t wait to see what this week brings and into the future :)

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 forsaken #Bungie #forsaken #lost sols

[foxposters781]

Colony Survival For Mac

Cheat codes may be a dying breed in the video game world, but they are alive and well in Pipliz's blocky survival game, Colony Survival. With cheats activated, players are able to fly, teleport, and loot at will, making these codes perfect for players that are primarily interested in the building aspects of Colony Survival. If those sound fun to you, then read on for GameSkinny's list of Colony Survival console commands and cheat codes.

How to Activate Cheats in Colony Survival

I can’t tell us with an amazing idea the worst idea ever but it’s a spa and a house and let my colony house who has them Oh, Bert what and the hell was that who’s coming for me hey how’s it going homies this your word here come well you get colonies of Ivor this is a, game we have to build a base survive, recruiting new people it looks really freaking awesome when I saw the trailer. 7 Zip - Colony Survival - Link 2 - Follow m. Execute your strategy and improve your colony’s chances of survival while unlocking the mysteries of this alien world. Mars is waiting for you. Main Features: Building on a planet not fit for human life challenges you to build a smart, functional colony. Bad planning isn’t about traffic jams, it’s about survival of your. Colony Attack: Download Colony Attack /Mac/Windows 7,8,10 and have the fun experience of using the smartphone Apps on Desktop or personal computers. New and rising Simulation Game, Colony Attack developed by Geek Beach for Android is available for free in the Play Store.

Before using cheats in Colony Survival, you'll need to enable them. Simply press 'T' to open up the game's command line, type the following, and hit enter:

/cheats on

Once enabled, you can use any of the cheat codes listed below by simply opening up the command line with T, typing in the code, and pressing enter. If you want, you can also disable cheats by typing:

/cheats off

List of Colony Survival Cheat Codes

Enable flying (note that you must press F to toggle flying and hold SHIFT to fly faster):

/setflight true

Teleport to your banner:

/teleport banner

Teleport to specific coordinates (x, y, and z should be replaced by the desired coordinate numbers):

/teleport x y z

Change time (replace # with the desired number of hours to move forward)

/time add #

Obtain any item (replace ItemID with the item's ID and # with the quantity of the item):

/loot ItemID #

For this last code, note that an item's ID is not always the same as the name of the item itself. See below for the list of Item IDs.

List of Colony Survival Item IDs

Here is an alphabetical list of all items in Colony Survival that can be spawned with cheats, followed by their corresponding ID:

ItemItem IDAdobeadobeArrowarrowAxeaxeBannerbannerBedbedBerryberryBerry SeedberrybushBowbowBreadbreadBricksbricksClayclayCoal OrecoaloreCoated PlankscoatedplanksCommand ToolcommandtoolCratecrateDirtdirtFlaxflaxFlax Seedsflaxstage1FlourflourFurnacefurnaceGold CoingoldcoinGold IngotgoldingotGold OregoldoreGrassgrassGrass RainforestgrassrainforestGrass SavannagrasssavannaGrass TaigagrasstaigaGrass TemperategrasstemperateGrass TundragrasstundraGrindstonegrindstoneGypsumgypsumIron IngotironingotIron OreironoreLeavesleavesLeaves TaigaleavestaigaLeaves TemperateleavestemperateLinseed OillinseedoilLoglogLog TaigalogtaigaLog TempertelogtemperateMintmintOvenovenPickaxepickaxePlanksplanksPlaster BlockplasterblockQuiverquiverSandsandSaplingsapplingSnowsnowStone BlockstoneblockStone BricksstonebricksStrawstrawTorchtorchWaterwaterWheatwheatWheat Seedswheatstage1Workbenchworkbench

With Colony Survival's cheats at your fingertips, you should have no problem building the settlement of your dreams. If you found this guide helpful, be sure to check out some of our other Colony Survival guides on GameSkinny. Here are a few to get you started:

Do you like City Builder Games where you can design amazing cities, communities and settlements?

These type of games are the perfect way to express yourself and be creative, sometimes without restriction. City management games or general management games on the other hand let you manage everything, whether it’s a city, a business or any kind of system.

It is also very similar to strategy games, but the main difference is that in city builder games or management games your success is not physical survival, but more financial survival.

The main goal is to make money and reach your goals. Most city building simulators have a sandbox mode meaning you can build with an unlimited budget and don’t have to worry about balancing your finances.

These type of games also give you problems to solve, whether it is traffic related or managing your resources, it is always fun to come up with a solution. Build bigger, better and become virtually rich! Here is a list of the best City Builder Games and Management Games you can play!

What is your favorite city building game? Tell me in the comments. If you like this post, please share it with your friends.

The Best City Builder Games

1. Cities Skylines

Cities Skylines is the ultimate city builder game you can play right now.

It has so many possibilities and features for players to create their dream city.

Cities Skylines challenges the player’s management and creative skills, whether you play with money or in sandbox mode.

In the beginning of every city create you will experience the need to expand quickly and get more people to move there.

Until… traffic becomes a problem!

That is one of the main challenges in the game, to find innovative way to solve traffic and expansion problems.

Traffic management, policies, taxation, infrastructure planning, resources, city connections ect. are only a few things you’ll manage during the game.

It also has massive modding capabilities and a big community with a number of awesome DLC content, so customization is virtually unlimited.

What are you waiting for, the people want to move in.

Don’t miss the latest DLC, Industries, which is definitely one of the best!

Find it here – Industries DLC

Get building!

Buy Cities Skylines

2. ANNO 1800

ANNO 1800 is a real-time city building game and it’s the latest edition into the series.

The ANNO Series has the ultimate blend between being a city builder and a city management game while you play through some super interesting campaigns.

The setting is focused around the 1800’s of the Industrial Revolution highlighting colonial trade with a touch of Victorian Era style.

You will have to manage many different aspects to conquer ANNO 1800, like production, supply chains, trade routes, political management and keeping your people happy.

You will ultimately decide what kind of ruler you will be.

Will you be an innovator or an exploiter?

Are you a liberator or a conqueror that rules with an iron fist?

Whichever you choose, be ready for an epic journey. Enjoy this city builder in singleplayer, multiplayer and sandbox mode.

ANNO has visited a few different eras, both historical and future, each giving you a rich storyline which will give you hours of playtime.

My favourite so far was ANNO 1404, but the new ANNO 1800 will definitely be one of the best. What is your favourite?

Buy ANNO 1800

3. Tropico 6

When you are looking for a fun city builder game that is not too serious, the Tropico series might just be perfect for you.

Tropico 6 is one of the latest city building and management games for the genre, with a list of new features.

You are taking the role of “El Presidente” the mayor on your very own little island, build a community from the ground, manage resources, politics, trade and much more.

Playing the main campaigns takes you through 4 time periods all with unique ways to build your settlements:

The Colonial era

The World Wars era

The Cold War era

The Modern era

Tropico 6 is a super fun game and you can play it in a variety of ways with several outcomes by implementing different policies, making decisions based on various factors and growing your rule in across your islands.

A new feature allows you build on various small islands throughout the 4 time periods and later connect them together, which was not the case in previous titles.

Even enjoy some multiplayer city building games with up to four friends.

Will you manage to keep your people happy, balance your production and supply, grow your empire?

Colony Survival For Mac Download

You are the major and the choice of how to build, manage and rule is up to you.

So go and create an economy that your virtual people will be proud of!

Buy Tropico 6

4. Banished

Banished is a city building strategy game that lets you build and manage an isolated society. You literally start with nothing except a few people to control.

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The main goal of this village building game is to develop a sustaining settlement for your people to survive through the various conditions.

It sounds easy enough right, but the thing is people will die if they are not fed or warm enough in the Winter.

You should order them to build, gather, farm and mine to keep your people alive. Banished has all the seasons where you will face challenges during each. For example, in Spring and Summer you need to grow food and gather wood to build houses and have enough firewood.

During Autumn and Winter, people will die if they are not warmed from fire and starve if they run out of food. The game has a few complex systems to understand and overcome before you can really build a large town, but it’s worth every minute.

If you like a real challenge and want to build your own little settlement, Banished is a great game to play.

It’s time to gather some firewood for the Winter!

Buy Banished:

5. Surviving Mars

From the same publisher’s as Cities Skylines, Surviving Mars is another challenging builder.

It is more focused around colony building and survival the different conditions than your usual city builders. Your mission is to build a sustainable settlement on Mars and survive the challenges that is thrown at you.

Being on Mars, there are a lot of factors that can affect the way you build your city which is really fun when you start to understand what needs to happen.

Surviving Mars has a lot of exciting gameplay, challenging environments and many customization to enjoy.

If you like a good colony builder game, this will be perfect for you.

Buy Surviving Mars

6. Frostpunk

The end of our civilization as we know it came fast during the 19th Century, which was supposed to be the peak of human achievement.

Colony Survival For Kids

Frostpunk is a survival city building game that puts you in charge of managing the last city on earth. With a great story and many different ways to play it, you are fighting to survive while its your duty to manage both the people and the infrastructure.

There are many things that plays together, from workers, resources, building strategy, politics and much more.

What decisions will you make to ensure the survival of the human race?

You must do whatever it takes, just survive!

Buy Frostpunk

7. Aven Colony

Aven Colony is a city building game for PC, Xbox and Playstation. You find yourself on Aven Prime, an alien planet several light years from earth, where you need to build a new human colony and survive the conditions.

Like many city builder games, Aven Colony has a lot of challenges in store for you to overcome like the management of resources, environmental factors and the aliens themselves. It can be quite a hard game at first, but when you get into the phase where you know how to balance everything it can be great.

In order to keep your people alive, you need to mine resources, set up defenses and do research in order to overcome some of the challenges you may face. One moment the sun can be shining and the next moment a giant sandstorm approaches to blow everything away.

There are also a variety of different aliens that can attack your colony, from plague spores, hovering guardians and cultist airships. You can defend against attacks by building defensive buildings and do research to improve them.

With all that going on, you will also have to deal with and balance the morale of the people in your colony, as they will hold elections and can vote you out if you don’t take care of their needs. These can be things like crime, food supplies, living conditions, social policies and more.

There are also the option to expand your colony into sub-colonies and grow your population. That is a whole other challenge on it’s own.

Aven Colony can be really challenging at times, but offers you the satisfaction when you keep going.

Go save your people and build your settlement on a totally unknown planet.

Buy Aven Colony

8. Life is Feudal: Forest Village

Life is Feudal: Forest Village is extremely similar to Banished I listed earlier, just with a few more advanced features like the management systems and graphical enhancements.

The key is to build your settlement from nothing with a few peasants, by gathering, harvesting, mining and a lot more.

The setting is in the medieval time with a realistic world, famine, disease and harsh winters. The game has a dynamic ecosystem with changing weather and the world you play on is randomly generated which gives you a unique experience for every town you build.

Life is Feudal is a great game to relax and not take everything too serious, so do you have what it takes to build your own medieval settlement?

Colony Survival Mac Download

Buy Life is Feudal: Forest Village

9. Rise of Industry

Rise of Industry is a complex strategy game in which you are the CEO of your own blossoming company – building an industrial empire that produces and delivers essential products to a growing population

Gather resources by building farms, mines, oil and gas wells and many more.

Fishing planet: bottom power pack for macbook pro. From the most basic materials there will be a wide range of products you can manufacture and ship to towns.

Keep the economy moving and keep the masses’ needs fulfilled.

Facilitate the transportation of both raw and finished products at every stage of production with the help of roadways, trucks, trains, ships, and even zeppelins.

Each mode of travel has its own advantages and drawbacks, and it’s up to you to sort the logistic puzzle.

Rise of Industry is complex enough to keep you entertained for hours and the development team seem to be very active and trustworthy.

So if you love complex strategy game and building your own successful business sounds good then Rise of Industry is a game for you!

Buy Rise of Industry

10. Simcity Complete Edition

Buy Simcity Complete Edition

11. Stonehearth

Buy Stonehearth

12. Kingdoms and Castles

Buy Kingdoms and Castles

13. Urban Empire

Buy Urban Empire

14. Cities in Motion 2

Buy Cities in Motion 2

Conclusion

What is your favorite city builder game?

Did I miss one?

Share it in the comments!

Now that you have a long list of great city builder games to choose from, you can be sure to have hours of fun! I listed the best city simulation games you can still play in 2019.

Please share my post with your friends if you found this post helpful or interesting.

Also read:

Disclaimer – There are affiliate links in this post.

[spiralatlas]

Pax 2017 Panels day 1

Today was an unrivaled success. I didn’t break anything.

Western Dating Sims: Beyond Tsunderdome

Are we having fun: Playing games critically

The State of Queer in games

Western Dating Sims: Beyond Tsunderdome

Barbara Kerr https://ms45.itch.io/ Jack Crnjanin Pritika Sachdev Cassiel Kelner localiser, translates from Japanese to English Shakari former insomniac now indie Jess Zammit games critic Queerly represent me

Not a competition between Western and Japanese dating sims, both are good. But there are trends.(The panel talked a bit about Japanese games too anyway)

Main difference: more established genre in Japan, less accepted in the West.

Basic framework: generic main character. Selection of different kinds of love interests, often very tropey. Situations range from mundane to fantastical.

Kenka Bancho Otome  Dating sim where you are crossdressing as your brother at a fighting school and have to beat the boys to get them to respect. (Not available in English but checking the spelling lead me to an anime adaptation on Crunchyroll, no idea if it’s any good)

Often don't have much family, no mention of that background.

Freshman and Sophomore cute have f/f. (Couldn’t find links for these, sadly)

Saying exactly what somebody wants to hear until they kiss you- is that bad?

Everyone showered DAO characters with gifts.

Desire in the west to mirror the complexity of real relationships.

Examples mentioned: Cute Demon Crashers, Lady Killer In A Bind.

Strategic dating is good:

predictable

choose a character you will definitely like

"Game-Like"

clear differentiation between characters

 learn how to interact with people

Kindness Coins: dating sims are safe. I can't be hurt, if I get scared I can shut it down. Safe space. Explore sex, relationships, communication.

Counterpoint: Strategic dating is bad:

predictable

replicates shitty real life behaviour "I was nice to you, you should date me", like blaming FPS for violence

Not much fun for the developer

Complex games justify complex mechanics

Tusks: gay orc dating sim. Can enable NPC autonomy. harder than he expected.

Queer relationships (Queer and gay used as synonyms a lot this panel :/) Producing your own games allows you to reflect yourself Coming Out On Top: straight dev, lots of consultation. A bit tropey in parts but not too bad. Tusks: complex variables & approval w queer orcs Lady Killer In A Bind BDSM safety warnings in loading screens The Crown and The Flame it's good to be the queen. Pixelberry just lets you bang anybody. Kind of have to pay to follow the f/f path fully in some games.

Further recs:

Astoria Fate's Kiss: greek gods and mythological figures. Equal partnership with Hades. Medusa's story is full of queer characters, often you feel like the only queer character in a game, normalises it. Alex is non binary.

Brooktown High cheesy typical highschool game. Can be a boy or girl but have to be m/f. A bit dated, so bad that it's good. PSP game.

Pixelberry Choices: can date m or f, choose stuff about PC.

Dream Daddy is a very straight gay game but fun.

Date or Die.  

A game about dating Japanese warlords that may or may not be Destiny’s Princess

The Arcana

Paris the City of Love

Fire Emblem: Fates

Great Personality

There was a liveplay of part of Dream Daddy. The audience voted overhwhelmingly to talk to Damien first.

Are we having fun: Playing games critically

Rami Ismail: @tha_rami Alayna Cole: @AlynaMCole Dakoda Barker: @JiroJames David Hollingworth: @CPTHollingworth Jess Zammit: zammitjess

Distinction between playing for work and fun?

We do this because we like games, except for the games we do in fact hate.

Rami: Started making games before he started playing, modding code in simple ways in QBASIC (this is also how I got started).

Alayna: Being paid in neocoins to make people's profiles. Didn't realise until after highschool that coding skills could be used to make games.

(And then I stopped keeping track of who said what)

Took a while to realise it could actually be a job.

Having been a critic changes the experience, doesn't make it less fun just different. Same with reading or watching tv when you're a writer.

Yonder the cloud catcher chronicles: playing to review took away from her enjoyment because she had to get a review done quickly when it's supposed to be played in a slow, relaxing way.

As a creator he’s looking for shortcuts and tricks. Walks back and forth to test out where he thinks a loading point is. "Did you see that cool action scene?" vs "Did you see that cool slow zoom??"

Played intro area of Mario Odyssey. This is so good I’m angry, time to pack up the games industry.

"I wish I could do that"

Used to be a rule never to give 10/10. Now they do it if they just really love a game.

Have to put a game down to play the next one, it’s frustrating.

Criticism doesn't have to be finding flaws but can be figuring out how it works. Creator’s job is to trick the player into believing that the world of the game is real and the plot is important.

What does it mean to you to play games critically?

Looking at the game means looking at the creator. What are they trying to do or say? How do they execute it? Even AAA games have a group of humans behind them.

Rami cheerfully ruined games for everyone eg FIFA goalies perform worst at the end to give more last minute wins. Every game with percentages is lying. If you are told it's 50% accuracy people expect not to lose more than one time in a row. Humans think stuff is "fair" when it's in their favour.

"It's a platformer where you shoot things...about love." How is that mechanic making you feel love?

Bad games can be informative. Earth Defense Force. Defending cities from giant ants. "I want ants. 1000!" "That can't work with the frame rate" "AND LASERS."

Every bit of a game is controlled. Someone chose every detail to be the way it is. Ask why it is the way it is.

Good to question the choices people see as default. "Did you notice every character is a white dude?" Things that are considered important vs things that are just made "the default"

Is there a conflict as both critic and developer? Even the positive feedback made him feel bad, he just focused on any negative aspect. Conscious as a reviewer of not attacking the developer themselves. Still write spiteful humourous reviews, but avoid attacking developer, know there are things they can do better.

Giving feedback is hard. Rather than questioning intent, help them achieve their intent better.

By the time you get most negative feedback, you know about the flaws, have heard about it all before. Let people be angry for three weeks, then fix. Half the time they end up fine with it.

People who play a game a lot will say it's too easy, if you listen to them you’ll make a game that puts off new players.

A player might say "this weapon is too strong" but they mean "the boss is too easy" or "you get the weapon too early". Listen, but not too hard.

Multiplayer game, teams supposed to be balanced, but one team kept winning. Turned out one had louder guns, made them more aggressive so they won.  FEEDBACK IS HARD.

Who you are giving the feedback to makes a big difference. A student, a friend, a developer you want to help, asked to write a snarky review.

Games CAN be fun, but expecting them to be JUST that is reductive. Games can let you feel something, find catharsis.

We are affected by everything we engage with.

Games are part of a wider industry. Pays peoples wages, needs to be looked at critically.

Even if it's just fun for you, someone else might have a different experience from the same game. I won't tell you what games are for you and you don’t tell me what games are for me.

If you're at PAX you spent money to be here, you care.

"just" for fun implies “fun” is not a great value.

Knowing his game helped someone in hospital deal with pain.

If you want to be a good game maker, play lots of games and see how they're made. Keeping a journal of every game he plays.

If you are playing a game and feel something, figure out why.

When giving a student a game, give them a challenge like "explain X to me", so they have guidance, a direction to go in.

Thinking critically in a fun way: fun to write reviews when you're angry. Critical isn't negative, just more active.

You can't force players to engage in any specific way, just make the game and let them do their thing.

Some players will get really angry anyway so just make your game.

Hype can work against you as a reviewer, makes it hard to be objective if the game disappointed you. Can also be hard to say you loved a game if everyone else hated it.

Balance frustration with a sense of achievement. Frustration is a tool, as is a grind. The “random” drops aren’t entirely random: if you haven't gotten anything good in a while it'll give you something nice, and if you get a good drop too early it gets held back. Testing, see how people feel. If people aren't complaining you're doing something wrong. If everyone complains about all classes it's balanced.

Nanojam 3.0: Wacky Live Game Design

Jason Imms, Rami Ismail, Paul Verhoeven, Leonie Yue, Maize Wallin, Lucy Morris

So a little before this started my body went NOPE NOPE NAP TIME, and while I did manage to drag myself in near the end I wasn’t up to taking notes. I had a great time though, it was hilarious. The panel got given silly ideas for games and brainstormed them together, while an artist drew illustrations.

The State of Queer in games

Ashton McAllen @acegiak Saf Davidson @wanderlustin Charlie Francis kennedy @CharliethGfish Alayna Cole @alynamcole queerly represent me Jess Zammit @zammitjess David Hollingworth @cpthollingworth

What have the panelists played in 2017 that was really good queer rep:

Horizon Zero Dawn subtle, sidequests, feels very natural

Tacoma lesbian couple part of the main cast. Very cute, positive and real.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mystery has cute background f/f couple.

Life is Strange Before the Storm isn't very gay yet but is going to be.

Mighty Games added queer couple to the background of Charming Rooms, support for marriage equality in update in Shooty Skies. Good place to work, big "Vote Yes" sign on the window.

Dream Daddy: lets you choose your previous partner and how child was born, cool as an adopted person. (Also makes it easier to play trans character)

Pyre: choose pronouns

Lady Killer In A Bind lets you skip sex scenes, has an option in the menu you can change at any time. 

Night in the Woods. Background m/m couple.

Little moments that people enjoyed:

Heartstruck app dating sim (you ate the daughter of a president) LI actually SAYS she is bi. (not sure if the same as Lovestruck?)

Hacknet Labyrinths: Incidental queer content is good, rather than PLOT TWIST THEY'RE TRANS.

Criminal Case Pacific Bay: Background f/f in a hidden object game.

Recs from audience:

Overwatch made Tracer a lesbian, but only in extended content. In that case not so bad because of the nature of the game. All back stories are extended content (compare to harry Potter). She has a line in the game where she mentions her girlfriend.

Tides of Torment Numenara: 2 body types and 3 pronouns.

Stumbling blocks and salt:

Mass Effect Andromeda: had trans character tell you her deadname. At least they fixed it.

Where are the explicitly ace and bi characters??

Lost phone turns out to be owned by trans woman, feels really vouyeuristic, inspiration porn. No agency or voice.

Why isn't there more incidental queerness??? So easy!!

Don't rec stuff to us JUST because it's queer if it's not something we'd enjoy. 

Only representation is aliens and robots.

Even in most games with incidental queerness it's a tiny drop in a sea of heteronormativity.

South Park lets you pick your gender etc and you get attacked for whatever it is. The fact it happens to cis people won't make it less awful for trans characters. Game designers need to talk to people with diverse POVs and have diverse teams.

Why not 3 body types, or sliders? Saints Row is the bar.

Encountered none as a reviewer of AAA games over 2017 (was playing as a dude in Mass Effect Andromeda and got bored before encountering any queer content)

Can make Shelob a sexy woman but not add queerness to Tolkein??

Annoyed that it's SO notable that a character has a gender neutral pronoun option.

As a trans person I am escaping my shitty life as a trans person, I don't need that in a game.

List of demands:

Gender neutral pronoun options if there’s a gender/pronoun choice. Charlie will help you.

Bisexual anything.

Asexual humans.

Robots having sex.

Incidental queers.

Explicitly non binary characters, not necessarily androgynous.

#panels #conventions #pax 2017 #pax #recs #queer

[daemonappreciator-blog]

My Experience With The Daemon Forum (The Daemon Page

I feel guilty writing this, because I don't hate this community. But something needed to be said, something needs to change, and if I didn't write this, all these thoughts swirling around in my head were going to consume me. So here it is. A piece on my time spent with The Daemon Forum - be warned, this is going to be long.

I've been a member of The Daemon Forum for over five years now. I've accumulated quite a few posts, and I like to think I've helped out the community a few times. However, I've had several problems with it, and more and more have become apparent the more I'm around it.

But I'll start with the positives. I love the concept of daemonism. Having a daemon has helped me through some truly rough times. Finding my form through personality typing has been a really fun journey. I love surfing the analysis index, it's one of my favorite parts of the place. Having other people around to compare notes which is particularly nice, especially since it's exceptionally difficult to find experienced daemians outside the forum. I've also made several great friends on there; there are lots of friendly people around.

However, if it was all fun and games, I wouldn't feel the need to write this, and unfortunately, the majority of my time spent there was a negative experience. It should come as no surprise that I'm not going to say my account name on TDF, as I would rather not be banned; especially when all I want to do is point out problems that could be solved. I am in no trying to harm the community or drive people away from it; I'm merely sharing my honest opinion of the place - but know it is only my opinion and observations. Other people may have had none of these problems. But they were prominent enough for me to come away with an anxiety attack after every time I posted there, a couple years into it. Anxiety being something I recovered fully from before then, so it's been very unhealthy for me. As it happens, I'm extremely nervous while writing this, because I wouldn't be surprised if there was a major backlash from the community in response to this. But as I said, I have to get this out of my head, and out into the open, or it will never stop bothering me.

So I suppose that's the topic I'll start with. Potential backlash. I've noticed over the years that the staff tends to be quite sensitive to constructive criticism, and it's been punished whenever it's about something other than forum layout or glitches. Someone once posted anonymously about feeling afraid to come out as plural, because the forum treats headmates very differently than a multiple community would, and that they didn't want to be seen as "less than" all the other members just for being a headmate. They seemed scared to me, genuinely worried about this. They weren't accusatory or nasty about it. But the only reply they got was a moderator reprimanding them for 'passive aggression', and they were told they had broken several forum rules (I'm not staff, but I didn't understand what was done wrong, even with the explanation), and were essentially told they wouldn't be warned again. As someone who ran several forums myself, I would immediately get rid of that moderator. If that member was so scared they felt they had to post anonymously, that is not the correct response; especially when there's no provable way to know this is a member who has caused problems in the past. The members of the community are humans with feelings, not robots used to expand your website. I tried treating my members that way once. Didn't work out too well. Anyway, I don't know if that member ever came back after that, though I don't have any way to know who it was. I wouldn't blame them if they left after that, after exposing themself like that, being that vulnerable and being treated so for it. It must have felt awful.

Speaking of plural systems, there was one that joined for a brief stint and then left after posting a thread about real vampirism. It was a poll, asking if anyone on there had psychic vampirism. The post body was used explaining what vampirism was and wasn't, and giving educational resources on the topic. The poll got several votes, but no replies, until a moderator (or it may have been a member acting as a moderator) posted that this would not be discussed because they were 'encouraging members to drink blood' - at no point did they say so. Vampirism being a very real condition with real problems, and not something that occurs by choice; it's essentially a physiological disorder that people are born with. They are the type of people who absolutely need education and experienced peer support to remain healthy, and as the poll proved, there were several vampires on the forum, who were unable to discuss those issues with each other. It's clear the problem wasn't because it was off-topic - the thread was in a section that allows those discussions, and there are several threads for LGBTQA folk there, along with therians and otherkin, not to mention religious discussions, political talks, and so on. Again, it was a very inappropriate response, though it was a different moderator/member this time.

Then there was an incident where a novelist joined up to learn about daemonism. The members were plenty friendly to them, but the moderators met the idea with skepticism and caution. Which I suppose is understandable, since there was no way to know where this person would post their findings, though they said it was just for inspiration for a fiction novel, and that the ideas wouldn't end up being exactly like daemonsim (that already being in The Golden Compass and all). This writer made a thread asking what people think of spiritual daemonsim, and asked that only people who have experience with the topic reply. They were reprimanded for 'tailoring' the responses - however, if you look on just about any thread relating to spiritual daemonism around there, you'll find the majority of the posts by people who do not believe in such things posting about their opinion, and that landside of skepticism seems to really scare off the people who do believe in that - I know those people are around, but it seems they often end up being too nervous to post an unpopular opinion, especially when some people state their opinion as fact and imply ridiculing people who think otherwise. There's a definite worry about looking crazy or not fitting in, at the very least on that topic, because of that atmosphere. So when a mod posted on the author's thread, expressing not only that but also distrust for this person, that kept anyone else from replying. I wanted to, honestly, being someone who sees a spiritual aspect to daemonism. But no one stepped up to the plate after that, and for me personally, it was out of concern that I would be punished for giving them information, and I would imagine others felt similarly. There was a lot of posting about how the members don't know who this person is, and that the questions are 'suspicious' - I don't get that. Any member can see every other thread on these things. That writer could see far, far more incriminating things about the forum than whatever could have been shared there. It's a public forum. There's no huge secrets. That kind of response, is, again, completely inappropriate and in this case, very off-putting and suspicious itself. It implies that for some reason, the forum does not want to discuss spirituality, though to any long-time member, that concept isn't much of a surprise. Whether it's true or not, there is an air of expectation to see daemons as constructs only, and nothing else - including on The Daemon Page, where daemons are explained solely as constructs, psychological; no other view or opinion is even mentioned, and this makes the people who think otherwise feel ashamed - at least, I do. It feels like, while everyone else can talk about how their daemon came to be and their nature and all that, those of us who have differing views have to sit in a dark, quiet corner and listen to everyone else and not speak up, and it makes you feel embarrassed about having your daemon. That is not a feeling I want to have in any community, especially not one about embracing your individuality.

And now I'll move onto that topic. There is an interesting... duality, you could say, to this place. Which is ironic, given that part of the idea of daemonism is to have duality. So on one side, you've got this incredible concept of having a form that perfectly fits you, that is uniquely you, that means something intrinsically 'you'. This is what I love about the forum. It's some deep soul-searching, and self-analysis. On The Daemon Page, it's said that there's a form to fit your personality perfectly, and also a form that you prefer to take when projecting your daemon, and only you can determine both. So, when I joined, what I expected was to see a million different forms, because people are hugely varied and unique. But then you see the other side of this coin. Now, I don't take a problem with this first part - it's entirely up to someone what form fits them. There are a lot of canines. So many canines. And humans are social creatures, that makes sense. If someone feels a coyote is what fits them, then that's good, that's beautiful, and it's good that they aren't ashamed of that even if there are a lots of people with the same form. After all, one form can mean something to every individual. However, it's this next part that sits wrong with me. I have seen, so many times, people try to 'correct' each other about their forms. Say someone says their fitting form is a tiger - it would be no surprise to see someone come around and say 'you're too social for that'. I get it in the Reverse Analysis section - that's where you go on asking people to find forms that fit you, based on what you say about yourself. I mean when this happens in random threads. I've even seen people talking behind the backs of others about this, including but not limited to mocking people for their choice of form, saying people are naive or 'trying to be cool' with their choice, and therefore lying to themselves, and even one case where someone said "*eyeroll*" about someone previously on the forum, and their choice of form.

So there's a feeling of being judged. To add to that, it seems like no matter what your form is, you are expected to act like you have a canine form, even though that just isn't you. For instance, there was someone with a king cobra form, who was rather cold and distant. I saw people criticize him for being himself (he was not breaking forum rules) - and I just think it's weird that they were surprised he acted like he had a king cobra personality, when a big part of the point of daemonism is to celebrate and embrace your personality, and to truly accept your whole self. I also remember him saying he actually didn't want a king cobra form, he would prefer an octopus. But he was the type to only project what fit him best, so he wouldn't deny himself. (I had a couple discussions with him - he thought it was too fitting that people misunderstood him, when the king cobra itself is so misunderstood.) He left not long after he joined, and told me he just didn't feel welcome, despite doing his best to be friendly - he was never nasty, that I saw. On a side note, his cousin, who is also a member, made a video archive thread for reference of different animal movements and sounds, but has since disappeared off the forum. On the thread, before he vanished, a moderator offered to update the post for him if he didn't have time, but it doesn't look like anyone's done anything about it. Which is disappointing, because I was really hoping for a big library of videos. I guess I just wonder if the mods are going to get back to that at some point.

Then there's the whole debate on mixed-breed forms, extinct forms, mythical creature forms, and - the most taboo of them all - human forms. Very often, you'll see people, moderators included, saying these forms can't be 'viable'; the reason being that you can't study these creatures to find out their behavior, and that humans are too varied and individual to use. And while it's been said that you don't have to agree with the works on the analysis index, there's a distinct feeling of an unspoken rule that you do have to agree with them. Because if you take a form for reasons that don't quite match an analysis on the forum, you will have people pointing it out to you left and right - I certainly did, even though I chose my forms based on a combination of analysis and my own opinions of the animals, and to be frank, it is no one's business who chooses what form. On the previous topic, I always found it silly that people think they can determine the personality of someone (this is not including RAs) through scattered posts on an internet forum. I'm sorry, but you cannot know someone better than they know themself, no matter how close you are to them - certainly not as a stranger on the internet, and no one is in the position to tell someone else better about their form, yet as I said, I saw plenty of that. Then, back to my current subject. I recall a couple people who used dragons as forms, someone with a gryphon, and someone with a wyvern. I was really interested in that concept, and I thought it was cool they embraced what they felt fit them. So I looked up their posts, to see if they talked about what it's like to have a mythical form. I couldn't really find much. They would typically talk most about it in their introduction, quickly find out they were expected to choose animal forms, and after that they generally seemed to be cautious about talking about it. One of them stubbornly continued to talk about his daemon like she was just like any other, but his posts would largely go ignored, and it made me feel... awful. The others would typically be ignored, too, whenever they tried to talk about theirs. As an example, if you post in The Daemon Boiling pot, no matter what you post, you'll typically get around ten or so replies. It's a good place to talk about random daemon-y stuff, as a lot of people frequent it. But I hardly ever saw a reply to them on there. It would be odd to see even one. I can only imagine they felt like they were being silently judged, brushed off in the hopes they would change to fit in, and that's no way for a community to be. That's the vibe I got. I always wanted to reply to them, but I was worried that looking associated with them would earn me the same treatment, and I am very ashamed of that.

Then the mixed-breed forms were generally seen as 'trying too hard to be cool', and would be ridiculed - this was said around the forum, even with mixed-breed people present, even if not aimed directly at them. I don't understand how that isn't breaking the rules. But some people are literally a mixed breed. My best friend is half one race, and half another - two that don't get along - and not being able to fit in with either has been a huge deal in her life, and nearly led her to suicide, because she didn't belong anywhere, and she always felt ostracized. Her daemon is a half-dog, half-wolf because of that. And I think it's extremely tone-deaf and insensitive to make fun of people for having a form that means something to them, no matter what their reason may be.

And then there's the human forms. There are members who nearly only project their daemons as humans. Interestingly, they list theirs forms as animals on their profiles - as do most of the mythical forms - probably out of forum expectation, but continue to only use human forms in daily life. These people seem to be ignored similarly to the mythical ones, but receive more than that. I've seen, again, mocking behind their backs, and in these cases, I've seen people question them rudely, act uneasy about them using a human form, make lewd implications, and send insults directly at them for having a human form. I don't understand. I will never understand what the problem is with someone using a form that works for them. I also don't understand the automatic assumption that the daemian and daemon must be having sex in that scenario - first of all, why do people have to intrude on others like that - and second, that's their business. Even if they are doing it, I can't imagine something being wrong with that. As far as I understand, most people have sexual fantasies, not to mention many people feel incredible shame and self-consciousness about sexuality, and if anything, I should think this would help them accept themselves, and boost their self-confidence for dating. But I'm getting off-topic. My point is, what other people do in their own mind has zero affect on others, and no one has the right to nose into it.

Typically, it seems like when someone joins and says their daemon has a human or humanoid form, they are immediately linked to the archive to pick an animal form. Sometimes it's clearly just members being polite, at other times, it seems like it isn't a suggestion. Very often, sadly, I've seen them be patronized, like trying to correct a five-year-old too gently. I've also seen someone say, 'well maybe that's the way they've understood the concept without really knowing it', implying that the way TDF does daemonism, is in some way, 'the one true way', and that people come to be enlightened, as you do often see people having very similar practices throughout their lives, and then change how they do things upon joining the forum, even if what they've done since childhood has worked perfectly well for them.

Which brings me to the subtle rules of the place. The unspoken rules, that you will use an animal form, that you will fit the analysis of said animal, that you will act like a canine form despite your fitting form, and so one. In my search for other daemon communities (I could find none which were active, only essays), I went to Tumblr. This was the only place I could find people posting about the topic. Some of these people are from TDF. I visited every single daemon-related blog, and found, interestingly, that the only one to have any kind of rules is TDF's Tumblr page. While on the other blogs, you find people coming to share their experiences and find out what daemonism is, on the TDF blog, you'll find people asking what they can and can't do. There is a definite 'you can only have an animal form' rule there. While the others say, 'daemons generally appear as animals, but you should use whatever fits you for personal reasons', one even said that you shouldn't use the analysis archive, because it tries too hard to force people into categories that strangers created, and that those animals may mean something different to you. Another said to outright avoid TDF for similar reasons; that the community is too controlling on who can have what form.

There is more than just that, but those unspoken, unclaimed rules are a little too close to an unofficial religion for my comfort. I tried to follow those rules for a long time, and tried to make my friends follow them, too, because that was the kind of precedent the forum set. I was a huge jerk doing that, and I regret it more than I can say. Their questions of "But why do things have to be that way? Why does it matter at all?" is what first got me questioning this. Maybe TDF is just trying to maintain order, but as they've admitted time and time again, the way they do things is absolutely nothing like in HDM anymore, and so rules seem arbitrary and unneeded to me. It seems better to let people do what they want, and to be willing to talk about all those different things.

And this leads me to discussion. It seems to be nearly impossible to get a discussion started on something that is not a popular opinion. Spiritual daemonism, as I said earlier. The ties between your religion and your daemon. Non-animal forms. And many, many more topics. Oddly, a deep, philosophical discussion is particularly hard to get going. I understand people just want to have fluffy fun, and that's great (the fun threads are the ones that by far get the most posts, after all), but when you want to delve seriously into something, despite the sheer size of the community, it seems like it's a rare day that someone steps forward and participates. Maybe it's just me, but I'm the type to really want to figure out topics like this, and while this community should be the place to go for all things daemon, I just can't get anyone to humor me.

It feels like anyone that is different from the unspoken rules is treated as weird. As I said, differing forms, non-psychological views, having more than one daemon, and so on. It's a very gloomy atmosphere to those who fall under those labels.

Now onto miscellaneous problems. There's no way I will be able to cover everything, but I'll put a few out here. Putting a trigger warning on spiders and snakes. That is not what a trigger warning is for, and that light use of the term is offensive and insensitive. This is a forum about animals - censoring some types of animals is incredibly fishy. Some animals are more equal than others, it would seem. At least one of the founders/administrators of the forum left years ago, saying none of it was ever real, and that they 'outgrew' it. That's not a very hopeful light for following members. That particular admin also set a tone of being rude and sharp to the members, if I remember correctly. Come to think of it, I haven't seen an actual admin on there for quite some time, and it makes me wonder who is really running the place - not knowing who is in charge makes me, and several others, feel very uneasy, especially given how odd some of the moderators tend to act.

I also know the vast majority of the members are young to mid teenagers - I was there once, too, I understand, but it seems like they shouldn't be the ones running the place, and it often feels like they are, as some of the moderators are a bit on the younger, inexperienced side, as well. Or maybe I'm just old and judging youth too harshly.

That is another oddity around there. I keep seeing people 'move on' from daemonism, stop talking to or projecting their daemon and leave altogether in their adulthood; thirties or so. It seems I'm one of the few older members left - though I'm not sure I'll come back ever, after this. It isn't like I've done anything other than lurk for a long time, anyway.

When I would post a daemon-related topic of interest to me, something that wasn't the usual "it's my CIEday", "here's a cute picture", "I've changed forms" and so on, I would seldom get replies. It just didn't feel like a community. It felt like there wasn't a real, deep interest in the topic. It felt like I was trying to talk through a one-way mirror, and would just get overlooked constantly, and it made me wonder why. Is it me? Did I say something wrong? Because the silent treatment is something this forum does all the time, it seems. But I wasn't the only one to post more thoughtful threads, and most of them didn't get much conversation on them, either. So maybe it was a general lack of wanting to think deeply. Maybe that's just not the forum's thing. Either way, it disappoints me, because you would think a community claiming to be a resource and encompassing things on this topic would be willing to get all up in it. But maybe it's that atmosphere, again, of feeling afraid to speak up, because you might not fit in, and then people will ignore your posts, too. I know I'm not the only one who's felt that.

And in the vein of people trying to tell others better about themselves, I've seen way too much of that geared toward plural systems. Trying to tell people what their headmates are and aren't. It was, at least at one point, to the point of prejudice.

And while some people feel as though they can't post their opinions (an administrator at least once corrected someone's 'wrong opinion', I wish I was joking), others use the fact it's their opinion to flame and hate. Again, I see too much of that. I will never get why the moderators jump on what they do and ignore those posts. It seems like they have no direction, and no one in charge to determine what needs help and what does not.

For a length of time, this forum made me hate daemonism, and I stopped interacting with my daemon for nearly a year. I've fortunately gotten past that now, and realized that it's up to me to do what I want, even if I can't have anyone to talk to about it. If anyone knows of another active community, that's more open-minded, I would love to join it.

When I started talking to my daemon again, they told me, "That community is like poison, you don't see it at first, and most people don't. But over time it slowly seeps in and makes you sicker and sicker, until you break. Unlike a toxic community, it isn't immediately obvious. But it's still there."

Unfortunately I have to agree with that. I've had quite a bit of anxiety just writing this, and just thinking about the forum makes me break into a cold sweat - again, I wish I was joking. I just want this all over with and behind me forever. And doing this was a necessary part of that. I'm sure the forum will have major backlash to this, and there will be a lot of arguing. But at this point, I don't care. I'm going to stand up and say what's been going on, and no threat of getting a slap on the wrist will stop me.

I hope it was all clear. Of course, if you want to join there, you should, and form your own opinion based on your experiences. This is just what I saw, and what happened to me. Good luck with your daemonism, and don't let anyone make you give up. I just hope the forum also doesn't give up, and makes some necessary changes to make it a healthy community. If it does, I just might come back to talk again.

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