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thefearisoneself · 6 months

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Jax might be one of the creators?

I could be totally off base here but here's some thoughts I've been having

Our first introduction to Jax outside of his place in the intro is him asking Caine "Is this one of your NPCs, or is this a new sucker? Because if it's a new character, we're going to have to redo this whole theme song."

Now first off, since as far as we and assumably the characters know, Caine is an autonomous AI, the question of 'Is this one of your NPCs?' especially in the way it's said strikes me as if there's an oddly familiar relationship between the pair. If Jax did create Caine and this game his particular flavour of befuddlement at Caine's possible NPC generation would make more sense IMO.

Secondly, Jax seems weirdly invested in the theme song's completion? He doesn't seem annoyed they have to do it in general like Zooble, just that they have to do it AGAIN.

Moving away from this initial moment, he's also the one to suggest the adventure for Pomni. While he's annoyed with what the Gloinks end up being, he again isn't annoyed by the adventures themselves like Zooble, which you'd kind of assume a character like him might be, but if he was the one to set up the idea as the game's developer it makes some amount of sense he'd be amused by these antics because he made it like that to some extent, and he does seem to have fun on the adventures once they get into it as well.

Then there's of course him having keys to everywhere when Ragatha suggests he literally shouldn't be able to do that. Silly joke that the asshole character can do basically whatever he wants? Probably, but it could also be hold over from his abilities as the game's developer.

He's also easily the calmest and most put-together character of the cast, going with the flow of everything and having no real urgency to do anything but enjoy the ride and watch the other characters suffer at Caine's unintentional hands.

Somebody else also noted that Jax is weirdly upset about abstracted Kaufmo being put in the cellar. This could either imply they were friends, or that Jax has a personal grievance with what happens to abstracted people. If we assume it's the latter for the sake of this theory, I can imagine it would be pretty frustrating to have your playerbase go through this game-breaking bug and the only way to 'fix' it is just to sweep it under the rug.

Another thing that could easily be a throwaway but for the sake of this theory is Jax' last line in the pilot "Sheesh, lay off it, since when are you an expert on the digital world?" would also make sense if he's the actual creator of said digital world, it would be a personal offence to suggest Kinger knew more.

On top of everything, if we assume that Jax is telling the truth about having been there for years, that implies some interesting things. We know from Goose's Q&As/Tumblr/Twitter that Jax is the youngest member of the cast, being only 22, along with Zooble.

But Zooble is also the most recent character to join the circus before Pomni, while we don't know exactly how long before, it at least exempts them from the weirdness that this timeline creates in terms of Jax.

If Jax was stuck here for any more than 4 years, he wouldn't have even been an adult yet, which seems pretty suspicious given the ages of everyone else when they presumably would've gotten stuck in the program.

Of course headset aside we don't actually know the circumstances of how anyone else got stuck in the game or for how long, but it does give me pause to consider that detail about Jax.

So ultimately I could see it being revealed later down the line that Jax was some kind of tech revolution prodigy who created Caine and this world, but being young as he was had no real idea of the ramifications of what he created or ultimately how to manage it. I have no clue how he got trapped, or ultimately if he even is, but that's theorizing for when we hopefully have more to work with.

Regardless, take all this with a grain of salt, I fully recognize all of this could just be connections I'm making of nothing, but it's something that's been plaguing my mind and I'd be remissed if I just let it sit and never put it out there if it did end up being true in the end.

Hope you guys enjoy my massive overanalysis of Jax' actions in the pilot and hopefully we get to see more from this gang in like 3-6 months' time.

#the amazing digital circus #Jax #tadc jax #tadc theory

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sonicreferencephotos · 4 months

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Why I Dislike Sonic Speed Simulator

I sometimes see people in the notes of Speed Sim refs saying that maybe they should start playing it/get back into it. I want to ask, for your sakes, that you do not. The only reason I still play it is for this blog. I would love to stop. I keep going so that no one else will have to play to unlock characters for references. I will also be adding a disclaimer to future Speed Sim posts. Maybe this is a bit excessive, but this game is starting to break me.

I understand that some people like the game, and you all control what games you choose to play. In my opinion however, playing Speed Sim is really, really not worth it.

If you want a specific explanation of the problems, you can read it below the cut

Problem 1: Gameplay

The gameplay of SSS is simple, to put it kindly. There are a few different aspects of the game, each of which has only the bare minimum amount to do.

You can run around the world. This lets you collect rings and experience. You can also destroy badniks, which exclusively consists of doing repeated homing attacks until you destroy them. They can technically hit you, but all that does is knock you back.

You can do time trials. Actually somewhat fun. Not much more to say about them.

You can enter races. PvP races which are fine. Fun at first, get boring when you have to grind for race tickets.

You can fight bosses. By "bosses" I of course mean "Eggman" and "Eggman but with more health." It is almost exactly the same fight. You run around breaking shield generators, dodging the same two attacks, and then deal a set amount of damage to him before the shield returns. Repeat. Your prize is spins on (one of) the gacha wheels.

You can complete quests. Actually decent! At least until you run out of quests. Good thing there are daily quests to keep you "entertained" with their repetitive tasks. Also, ignore the fact that the tasks for quests are just engaging with the rest of the mediocre game.

All of the above mechanics grow dull and grind-y very quickly. Soon, every part of the game becomes a chore. The game itself even seems to have realized this, and thus includes an auto-run feature, so you can collect rings and xp without needing to do anything!

I am generally of the opinion that it's a bad sign if a game is un-fun enough it needs to add in the ability to skip the gameplay, but that's just me (that's part of why I stopped playing Star Rail).

Problem 2: Skins

We all know the real reason people play SSS isn't the game itself: it's the cool outfits! 95% of which are only available during limited events and/or by spending actual money. You can also expect to do a lot of boring grinding if you don't spend money. Speaking of spending money...

Problem 3: Microtransactions

Time to talk about the true "heart" of the game: Robux. Now, I will give Speed Sim itself half a pass on this one, as from what I've seen, Roblox as a whole has what I would consider an unsavory emphasis on microtransactions, especially for a game with a playerbase of 50% children aged 12 or under, and another 15% between 13 and 16 (Statista: Roblox user distribution worldwide 2022, by age group). With that being said though, Sonic Speed Simulator doesn't seem to have any qualms about asking for money wherever they can.

I could make a whole other post about all the ways this game offers for you to spend money. You want more spins on the gacha wheels? Spend money! You want to get three gacha eggs for the price of one (certain vending machines only)? Spend money! You want to skip the animation you have to watch every time you buy an egg from said gacha machines? Spend money! You want to do less grinding for xp/race tickets/event objectives/candy/whatever? Money, money, money!!!

The game has a lot of the trademark warning signs for a cash grab gacha game:

Several different kinds of currency, most or all of which can be purchased with premium currency

Many different skins to unlock, using the assorted currencies mentioned above (including ones that are specifically only purchasable with premium currency)

Gacha wheels. Many, many gacha wheels. (Not counting the dozens of vending machines, I can think of at least four)

Grindy gameplay that can largely be skipped by spending money

Again, if a game is un-fun enough to have an option for players to spend real money to skip the gameplay, that's a bad sign.

Problem 4: Crunch

I haven't done much looking into it myself, but I've seen many people say that GameFam (the company that creates Speed Sim) treats its employees very poorly. The game advertises its weekly updates, which requires a lot of crunch in order to get content out quickly. This is obviously bad for the people involved, and also has negative effects on the game.

Many features are clearly rushed, and there's a general lack of polish. From glitching through the map, to races starting several seconds before or after the countdown ends, to untextured models, to many small bugs, it's clear that the developers are not given enough time to clean things up before they have to move on to the next week's content.

Thank you to anyone who actually read this far. This was a long post, but I wanted to be thorough in my explanation. This is probably the last dedicated post I will make about this, since this is really not what this account is for, but I still think it's an important one.

You are welcome to ask questions about any of this — preferably in the replies so as not to clutter the sonicreferencephotos feed — but otherwise the disclaimers are all I'll be saying on the topic for the foreseeable future. Take care of yourselves.

#not references #sonic speed simulator #roblox #microtransactions

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cerastes · 1 year

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Who are the top must build caster operators? Excluding Eyja and Amiya

The ones you like :) But of course, you knew that, so let's talk Casters.

Casters exist in a perpetual state of weirdness because Hypergryph did an oopsie daisy and created Eyja as a release Operator, forever destabilizing absolutely everything about the class for years because she Did Everything better than other Casters (except Ifrit), even other Caster archetypes that aren't her own. Basically, on release, an objective tier listing for Casters, not just Core Casters, could be "Eyja Tier and Everyone Else Tier" and it'd be correct. Whether it was single target, aoe, constant DPS or burst damage, Eyja Did It Better. About the only other Caster you'd hear about in the conversation was Ifrit, because she was her own weird thing and did her job really damn well, and her unique range and true AoE, plus her ability to land flat DEF and RES debuffs (as opposed to percentage based, which made them very powerful due to the way DEF works and how the numbers tend to be low, thus flat > percentage for DEF) has always been appreciated. In fact, add Ifrit to that list of Recommended Casters, even though we won't discuss her below.

After some years of fighting their own big oopsie, Arknights is finally starting to even out the playing field with Casters. Right now, I'd say the best Caster is in fact Goldenglow (6*), and just, in general, the Mech Accord archetype is solid, with Operators like Kjera (5*) and Click (4*) being, quite honestly, very good! Minimalist (5*) is also an effective fire-and-forget unit, and in general, for your single target needs, Mech Accord is the way to go. The other archetype that's been cooking is the Mystic Caster group, with the likes of Ebenholz (6*), Iris (5*) and Indigo (4*), thanks to their great burst potential. Consider them as the Caster equivalent of Heavyshooter Snipers (Schwarz, Pozemka) in that they need to be more carefully and thoughtfully placed and require a more hands-on approach, paying dividends with incredibly effective Elite and Boss killing power, especially when they don't attack for a few seconds, as for each "autoattack" they have no target in range, they instead save that attack for later, unleashing all attacks (max 3) at once.

So, with that said, I don't particularly like the term "must raise", so let's call this a Hearty Recommended List of Casters:

Goldenglow - Whether it is her S2 for constant output (and AFK strats wink wink) or S3 for a more hands-on approach to evisceration with its great damage per second and global range, Miss Electric WILL send your foes to the principal's office and have them expelled. Her single target damage is incredible and she is absurdly easy to use, plus, thanks to her Talent, sometimes her drones will explode to deal AoE damage, granting her a degree of AoE ability as well. There's not much to say other than Goldenglow is really as powerful as you've heard: Incredibly easy to use, incredibly versatile, and incredibly pink.

Ebenholz - The other big relevant Caster nowadays. Ebenholz tends to have a bit of a worse reputation than Goldenglow, mostly due to incompetence (of the playerbase, not Eben's). The truth is, the absolutely monstrous amounts of damage Ebenholz can put out if played correctly are astonishing, but there's two issues here: 1) He's considerably harder to use than the average unit, as you need to make sure he's placed in a way that allows him to actually shoot all of this damage at the right target, which usually translates to "your entire team set-up, or at least a significant part of it, is built around using Ebenholz properly", and 2) you rarely actually need the amount of damage he outputs, especially relative to the effort needed to squeeze it out of him (when you can just use an easier unit, like Eyja or GG). However, for those moments in which you can definitely benefit from the Big Hits or, let's be honest here, when you just really want to see those big damn numbers, yeah, Ebenholz is a bona fide top pick. For BIG Damage, you'll want to learn to build around his S3, for general use, you want his S2, which is quite similar to W's S2 Claymores.

Kjera - Kjera's freezing ability allows her to output damage and provide team utility -- Freezing is not only a measure of crowd control, it reduces RES by 15 as well -- making her an easy to integrate Operator into pretty much any team, especially if you also use the likes of Gnosis or Aurora for that sweet, sweet Frozen synergy. Even without them, however, Kjera is a solid member of any team and a great team player.

Click - An ol' reliable, cheap, effective damage hose with minor crowd control in the form of Stun, Click is simple to use, cheap to upgrade, and has great hands to high five with after she's done blasting. Not much else to be said about her, she simply works.

Iris - Nice bursty Caster with some fun gimmicks: S1 is her machine gun, making her range a line in front of line and releasing a LOT of very quick attacks very briefly, while her S2 Sleeps enemies for a few seconds (allowing her to charge up Mystic stacks) before waking them up with a burst of Arts damage. Being one of the rare Sleep synergies, it also allows Blemishine to smash enemies over the head with a tire iron, the way knights do, if you use them together. Quite the gimmicky unit, but fun and effective nonetheless.

Indigo - The light machine gun to Iris' heavy machine gun and Ebenholz attack jet-mounted vulcan gun. Her damage is not as high as her fellow Mystics, but she instead has a rather consistent Bind she can apply to her enemies, which is interesting to have on a Caster. A sub-DPS/Support hybrid, and welcome in pretty much any team.

There's other Casters that can get a recommendation, but these are the ones I think are pretty relevant as of right now besides Eyja, Amiya, and Ifrit.

#arknights

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skymagpie · 1 month

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Mists of Pandaria literally took a dwarf character, previously rightfully depicted as a scumbag villain because he wiped out an entire tribe of tauren whilst citing imperialism and racial superiority, and depicted him as a good guy out to protect the pandaren whilst vilifying the tauren for resisting him!

Not to mention that they retconned nearly the entire orc race as evil in that expansion with countless promising orc characters previously depicted as honorable and likable like Zaela, the entire Kor'kron organization, Bloodhilt, ETC becoming Garrosh clones simply because they were orcs and "orcs are inherently bad".

Or that the tie in novels for Mists of Pandaria like Tides of War literally had Baine freaking out and exiling tauren for resisting human and dwarf colonization of their lands.

Vol'jin, one of the only Poc coded monsters to be depicted in a decnet light in MOP, was literally described by the Alliance player as "Disgusting", "savage", and other terms, with the game even adding flies around Vol'jin for this quest.

Before you say thats just the Alliance player's view, white characters never get this description like say human characters when you're playing Horde.

For reference, Shadowlands demonized Dambala, a revered and famous real world loa worshipped in Haiti and many other parts of the World.

The same expansion almost exclusively had PoC coded monsters in the Hell portions, like Zul'jin was in Hell for protecting his lands against colonists that are so proud of their genocide of trolls, their leaders name themselves after it(Trollbanes) the recent Sylvanas novel even clarified that the humans and High Elves knew that it was the Amani's land when they made their homes there from the stone obelisks decorated with troll holy symbols and writing.

It has also been confirmed in recent novels that the tauren gods are fake whilst the night elf gods are real...

And the tauren's oppressor whom had been frequently terrorizing the earth throughout World of Warcraft's history, Magni Bronzebeard, literally got the role of voice of Azeroth like the true Mighty Whitey he is.

Warcraft III for all its racial coding never had anything like this and Warcraft I and II did not have this much racial coding.

So the Doubling down on the racial coding and the "PoC Coded monsters are evil" stuff was done by the modern writers that go "look at how woke we are, two white women are gay an we retconned another white character to be trans, now lets kill some voodoo worshipping savages in the Jungle together!"

Anyhow, sorry I have strong feelings about this as someone whom isn't white myself.

This is sadly a very extensive list and I have no doubt is only part of the problem. I used to play WoW when I was 13 which was 13 years ago and I didn't speak English then so I didn't really know lore. I came back only recently and the few things I played were some BfA (Kul Tiras side), all of Dragonflight and some Legion and a bit of Shadowlands. I haven't touched the other things aside from the vague knowledge of what is going on. I have to keep an eye on these things as I play on because I didn't know most of it.

Hell they do stupid colonialist tropes even with white-coded races, like I am sure the Drust are supposed to be Celtic coded and yet they also have them portrayed as bad for not wanting the Kul Tirans on their land.

I feel like when they do something good for the non-white coded races, it is always played safe for the general playerbase of the cishet white dudes who want their racist stereotypes intact. They always seem to be pussyfooting around the issue without making any meaningful change. They want to make sure they won't offend their biggest racist consumer base and that is so sad. Blizzard has potent racism 10 years behind everyone else.

Also I am sorry you have to write so much, but thank you for sharing this and I hope more people are made aware of it. It's okay to always vent here for anything, and I will eventually catch up with playing the content.

#world of warcraft

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lorwolf-salt · 11 months

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What you receive when you email A (names shortened to align with rules):

“I will start off with some backstory: Q was a volunteer moderator until he was promoted to Head Moderator last June. All seemed well until over time I became aware of his growing unprofessional attitude towards the community, his work, and other staff members. He has been reprimanded twice before for this unprofessional behavior.

I thought things would end with his first reprimand, but sadly, things continued. How he addressed the community was the second issue. His conduct in front of players resulted in moments of conflict where he’d agree with players and state to them that ‘he keeps trying to bash the right ideas’ into the developmental team’s heads. By acting un-unified with the Dev team, if left unchecked I felt that this would create a Dev vs. Head Mod/Playerbase environment. On top of this, Q did not present himself with an impartial attitude. Discussions with others would become quickly heated when he was proven wrong, and he became very agitated by any mentions of religious groups, holidays, or things he disagreed with. Contention continued to rise as his compilation of suggestions work was bullet points at best and full of swearing at worst. The back and forth over the lack of clarity caused a lot of friction between us.

His third reprimand came in January when he broke his contract to divulge lw’s developmental information to others. He claimed he was under the influence at the time, but this was not the first instance that he has shared things without my permission. After stating that we’d need to prioritize our professional relationship while remaining friends, I reassured him I wasn’t angry, just disappointed and needed some time to process. The morning after this professional discussion, he decided to inform me his desire to end his life. As you may already know, my mom passed away last year. What I haven’t told the community yet is that my mom took her own life as a result of her lifelong battle with depression, and I’ve been struggling with it ever since. Q was the first person on our mod team that I entrusted with this information, and yet he decided to put me in the position of wondering if someone I cared about was alive or dead. It was only when he reappeared to talk to a couple of our other moderators that I was informed he was alive. Knowing he was fine, I requested he not contact me as I take time to process. All of this occurred right around the one-year anniversary of my mom’s passing, which he was aware of, making it that much more difficult for me to deal with.

I realized that our friendship was unhealthy and that Q was not a suitable fit for Head Mod. Eventually, I explained this to him and that he was being let go - as this was not the only time he had reacted so strongly and negatively to professional criticism. He once again informed me, as well as a couple of our other moderators, of his intent to end his life. He disappeared for a length of time not letting any of us know if he was okay. When he finally messaged me, I was relieved he was alive, but I felt manipulated and re-traumatized. I explained this to him, wished him well in seeking help and once again asked him not to contact me. Again, he ignored this and continues to this day to do so.

I have also provided a link to a google drive folder where I have included records of our interactions during these events. I have blocked out names and graphic messages about suicide to safeguard the privacy and dignity of the parties involved. I have also deliberately left out many messages between these screenshots, which I felt were extremely personal in nature and sent by someone who was experiencing a crisis. I mean Q no ill-will by posting these messages, I simply want to show my side of the story and proof of his harassment. The screenshots provided are ordered by date the messages were sent, spanning from January - today. The initial instance that Q mentioned his intent to end his life, I unfortunately did not get a screenshot of before he deleted it. As you will see, Q frequently edited and deleted his messages - and I was not screenshotting our conversations at the time he started deleting his messages. When I blocked him on Discord, he proceeded to create alternate Discord accounts to rejoin the server, and he messaged me on Tumblr and emailed me directly. The screenshots of these conversations have been included as well.

In the months since this occurred, I have come to believe that Q knows intimate details about myself that I’ve never shared with him. Additionally, in speaking with our moderators I’ve learned that he essentially stifled communication between myself and the community by instructing users not to message me if he felt I didn’t want to be interrupted - which he did without my knowledge or permission. I entrusted him with being the voice of our community and to inform me of the player’s wishes, which he failed to do effectively in many ways.

As for his request for credits in the game for his work, he was fully compensated for all of his time and work spent on helping us with Lorwolf. I have no desire for Q’s name to appear anywhere on the intellectual property owned by our company, as I have been personally threatened, stalked, and harassed by this individual for several months now. Additionally, I feel incredibly manipulated by this person due to the fact they have forced my hand in revealing the private conversations I have had with them, and making me feel that I have to defend myself by revealing details about my personal life. This is not how I wanted our community to learn about how my mother passed. Because of this, and his own breaching of the contract to begin with, I will not be adding his name to our credits.

As a side note, we allowed Q to play Lorwolf until yesterday, but he has since been banned as a result of him posting this letter on Lorwolf.com, which contained suicidal ideation and other content not suitable for our playerbase. I hope this has helped to explain the situation, please let me know if you have any further questions.” Discord Screenshots:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1blsevQGmKgLlzJNZhhr-9yXodQmdVF99?usp=sharing

Tumblr Screenshots:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TVlpEY95NJddwParyw4E7VVSwK_xapa7?usp=sharing

Email Screenshots:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GxdL0TjpVn3S8zLt-gxPl7XW6hkM13nF?usp=sharing

and honestly after seeing everything, Q feels a lot like an ex boyfriend trying to get back together with her by guilt-tripping. I know this whole thing seems unprofessional and it probably is, but A is in an emotional state rn and i know I wouldve reacted much worse

#long post #submission

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extremelyputridfishbreath · 9 months

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I think she removed her blog due to club penguin staff bad mouthing her for being "rude". Honestly she's right about alot of awful changes, and how greedy staff got with ignoring the playerbase, and only focused on disney advertisements. It felt like a total disconnect between player and club penguin team, where there was a huge partnership between the audience and people working on the game now gone because we had to have multiple advertisements and multiple frozen parties instead of story or orginal.

Really wish Club penguin island had a system like Sky's. Making EVERYTHING membership only was wild.

It also sucks how people who worked on the game were like "yeah this advertisement party was so much fun because I enjoy movie/show" while disney did nothing but use the game as a billboard for a very long while.

I am actually really mad that there was no show or movie, and how early toys or merch became so limited, but disney kept asking the team to do advertising parties constantly.

I understood not many people like her, while yeah rude at times, she was right about alot of unnecessary or rather weird changes to the game itself. Also she kept alot of media that's now lost forever unless someone kept everything from her blog.

I kinda find it mean that someone at the staff bad mouthed her when all she did was make a blog that gathered more players, and was loved something so much to archive it because it is indeed- important to internet history and how the internet changed with technology and the history of human interaction. Now it's gone.

I'm not saying that's why she deleted her blog, but you wanna place bets? I'd be heartbroken if someone at club penguin called me annoying or so on. I do not remember who said stuff about her, but I do remember seeing it.

But she had every right to be as critical when disney swept the rug out from under them and used the site as a massive billboard after blackout. We could've had more story events, more fun events with sensei, all of it wasted on disney stuff while merchandise was no longer made, and a magazine limited to uk only. Yeah, I know she was a bit harsh at times but I most certainly do not blame her one bit. Disney did help, but they did alot of harm too. It litterally drove players away.

to be fair to staff, considering sara has openly accused staff of intentionally ruining the game several times and even directly "attacked" (i say it in quotes because she didn't like do anything super bad, but she still. went after him) spike hike during the star wars takeover...i can't exactly not see why staff became wary of her after a point. (examples being here, here, here, and here). i mean sure other than directly naming and shaming spike hike these are small complaints, but sara's blog as a whole became increasingly negative even towards non takeovers like the future party (which to be fair she doesn't HAVE to like every party), so when you take that and the whole. "SPIKE HIKE IS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR GAME GUYS" thing into consideration...i can kind of see why staff started questioning her intentions since there's a world of difference between being called lazy for bugs and going after specific staff members.

granted, sara was probably like a kid or teenager when she ran her blog. i also don't know her or if her opinions changed in the last seven years since her final update! so i'm not mad at her for not understanding how much staff can reasonably do when disney goes "you're doing a takeover/making new items for our latest cashcow", or how easy it actually would be to fix certain bugs on an increasingly older flash game. i also really, REALLY hated takeovers when they were introduced and literally quit during the prehistoric party as a kid, so it's not like her opinion about them, wasn't too uncommon either (even if i've personally come around to most of the takeovers with a few exceptions now).

also like, to be fair to staff it's not exactly like they could say anything besides "elsa is SO fun and she's SO fitting to randomly be in the game :) with no consquences like herbert going after her for making the island colder! go have fun with olaf and anna!! just fun frozen FUN that fits the game totally!!!!!!!!!!" when it's disney we're talking about here. disney, who killed the owl house and acted like it was sad about it later, disney who pointlessly privated club penguins entire twitter account (making it's tweets lost to anyone who's not actively still following it, and nuked it's entire english youtube channel to the point where both her youtube channel and the archive channel made for it were two of the main places to find videos that would've potentially been lost forever- and that's not getting into the rest of the countries who had youtube channels for club penguin who now potentially lost videos of the game forever too!

i'm not saying disney would like, straight up kill the game or fire staff for going "hey, we would rather do original content instead of making items for the good dinosaur"...but i am saying given disney's track record of shutting even beloved games down that actively had passionate staff behind it like TTO? when TTO not only still had fans but also a prototype sequel they surely could've built upon if the original just had to go? yeaaaaah i'm never gonna blame staff for the disney related direction the game went. undoubtedly, even though some staff are fans of starwars, or monsters inc, or what have you, i seriously doubt it was only them pushing for takeovers, if any of them were their idea at all.

i haven't played sky so i can't say much, but not even the membership dilemma was exclusive to club penguin. webkinz went from being pay to play to free to play...which involved literally pulling the rug under users who had bought dozens of pets (a necessity to even keep your account from 'expiring', so one could argue webkinz actively forced you to keep buying pets) from being able to access several games they could formerly play, places in the game they could formerly visit, items and room themes they could formerly own, etc all for new "deluxe members" to be able to own things you could just have by buying new pets to keep your account active, and for free players to honestly have a GUTTED, terrible experience trying to play the game. build a bearville didn't let you even have a cub condo (house) to decorate until you bought a build a bear, animal jam still only allows nonmembers to have two slots of animals they can switch between...and gave members one thousand slots to use. panfu basically paywalled colors and a lot of other things too, though at least they did have gold panda trials and membership days sometimes which i did remember being very fun as a kid. but my point is while that membership model doesn't sound half bad, club penguin was not unique in that aspect (and honestly i'd argue it wasn't good, but not as bad as other mmos of the time).

i also agree about the merch! it's really a shame so much of the merch didn't come to some countries (i'm still baffled the english/uk magazines didn't get brought to america or canada, especially since the game originated in canada), and eventually went on to be phased out altogether. and a movie would've been fun as long as disney was kept far, FAR away from the creation of it!

honestly if you asked my thoughts on the deletion i think it's just as likely she remembered her blog was still up and didn't see the point of it being up with the game being long dead (which made a lot of her posts telling you how to play card jitsu or adopt puffles for example pretty pointless outside of cpps players using the guides or archiving how the game used to play), or that the fandom itself played into that factor bc even with staff not liking her much people were out here impersonating her, cybrbullying her, making twitter accounts dedicated to hating on her, et cetera. or maybe she noticed people started talking about her more, remembered her blog, cringed at it and decided it needed to go…but this is all speculation, and unless sara uses her long defunct tumblr account to say why her blog was deleted we're likely not gonna know the specifics. so maybe staff going "yeah we started thinking she was out to get us" or making a offhand watermark joke when people discovered her twitter account got syspended could've factored in but like. i am almost entirely sure if it was specifically because of people it wasn't just them, especially since iirc all of their criticism towards sara was long after she stopped posting publicly and other than staff speculating she tried to be against the game so her blog got more traffic they didn't really talk about her much, whereas you could find players talking about not liking her far more easily (but i could be wrong) and being waaaay meaner about it

but yeah while i disagree with her or really anyone blaming staff wholly for the takeovers she was 100% right to go after disney. while i think some takeovers are actually really fun or could be really fun if you removed the branding (the marvel takeovers shockingly have little to do with marvel when you look past the branded items, inside out could work without the branding since it's not like it invented the trope of personified emotions, teen beach movie is basically just a summer themed music jam, finding dory could've been an underwater party, even muppets world tour could've been good if it wasn't muppets and leaned towards the world travel aspect!), i would've loved to see more original parties return like the medieval and april fools parties, or even make brand new ones like say, a world penguin day mini party that taught everyone about all the irl species of penguins (especially chinstraps. i fucking love chinstraps)! disney alienated a lot of players (myself included, i left during the prehistoric party and only came back after being devastated by the news club penguin was dying) and well...actually, lets talk about the closure

ignoring cpis imminent closure a year later (which was undeserved, but i didnt see it to the end), i played basically EVERY day club penguin was open the second i found out around februrary 2017. and hoooo boy you couldn't go five seconds without bots spamming vuvuzelas, usually with penguins arranged to make a swastika. the chat filter, while understandably so was waaay too strict to make proper conversation, and while you're not playing an actively breaking game like webkinz post webkinz x overhaul (which is good, because club penguin didnt die selling broken items without saying they no longer function like webkinz is going to), and while staff was undoubtedly being funneled towards cpi which likely made stomping out bots harder....

disney, much like sara predicted killed their franchise...and she was right to call it out, even if she was unfair to staff at times

#like i tried looking for staff talking abt her on known twitter accounts but other than polo making a joke about her twitter randomly going #down and putting a watermark with his name on it and hearing about interviews where billybob and spike hike admitted they didnt trust her #i did NOT see much of them really say much of anything about her (granted i had to use a mirror of twitter because i dont have a account)#but if you look up her name you can literally see a fan wiki acting like shes their fan character sooooooooo #granted that was probably ALSO a kid but like. cant imagine that was great compared to posts she might not have even seen

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solradguy · 2 years

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This is to long for the replies so I’m gonna send in another ask, but I agree with the last paragraph of your post about the whole gender thing. The thing I love most about how they’re handling this though is who they chose to do these things with. They don’t pick a random character and go “boom, representation.” They take these characters from their early games who’s gender was either a big aspect of their character or a defining feature of that character and they use that to give this character actual representation that feels like it fits. They use this already huge part of the character that has been there since the beginning and shape it into a character arc, so instead of there being a sudden change that makes no sense, it fits the character. Testament has always been androgynous, Bridget has always been struggling with her gender identity, and it just fits Baiken’s character for her gender to be lost in the war. It surprises me how much effort and respect they put into all of this despite how more than half of their fanbase is probably homophobic and/or transphobic. Times really do change, and I love to see how they take these old tropes plastered onto these characters as a cause for their gender-awakening/transitioning. I’m just hoping the same goes for sexualities, more-so the fact that a majority of the characters are heavily implied to be gay or bi and yet only Venom and Raven officially hold those titles #LetRamBeLesbian

Then again, when it comes to Sol, I think being a Queen fan is just a fancy way of saying I’m gay. Look me in the eyes and say that straight Queen fans exist, you can’t. /lh

YES, yes, exactly!!! They very much could have put all the LGBT rep into throwaway side characters like so many other series do, but instead ArcSys looked at their past characters and knew exactly how to bring them back while advancing their lore in a positive way. ArcSys doing all of this despite GG being very much in the spotlight at the moment just adds to how great it is too. Like you said, a vocal part of their playerbase is homo/transphobic, and a lot of other game devs would have crumpled at the idea of adding even one trans/nb character, but now GG has TWO released BACK TO BACK and it's like a big enough part of their character where it can't just be edited out in countries that ban that stuff either. No "Tracer Overwatch is a lesbian except for in Russia where her and her partner are only gal pals" bullshit here. Also #LetRamBeLesbian

No one who wears a red jacket and owns a Queen vinyl is straight. Source: me

Jokes aside, I still want to see ArcSys say it though. They don't even have to put it in text in a file somewhere, they can just have like a Tom of Finland hanging in Sol's house or like a magazine somewhere with an obvious gay title like Biker Studs Monthly or something idk. But, yeah, there's no way Sol is 100% straight. I know him and Jack-O' are like a thing now, but he's at least a little bi lol

#asks

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irrigos · 2 years

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give us the factory of favors roast i haven't bought an extra ES since i made the mistake of being told Flint was the best one

oh my god i am so sorry. I hate Flint so much that thinking about it makes me actually angry, and I don't understand why people think it's so good (other than AK's writing makes you think he's saying something deep and poetic when he's actually saying absolutely nothing)

ANYWAY the thing about Factory of Favours is that its the lowest rated ES on the subreddits yearly survey. and if you know the FL playerbase much at all, you'd know that a lot of them have bad taste (for example, they like Flint). So, while I'd been hoping that I would play this one and there'd be something really fucked up in it that everyone hated, I had to acknowledge that, if there was something fucked up and awful in it, there would be a section of people who loved it. For Factory of Favours to be this disliked, it had to do the one thing no one can stand:

it is SHOCKINGLY boring.

Okay, let's get into the story

You are approached by one of Mr Iron's employees, because it wants you specifically to investigate what happened to one of the Iron and Misery factories. It used to produce bolts, but has since, for some reason, entirely stopped making anything.

When you go to the factory, it turns out that the clay men who used to operate the machinery have stopped making bolts, instead spending all their time making weird little sculptures of birds, that they trade with each other and the Rattus Faber, in a complex system of favours and debts. The original supervisor no longer leaves her office, surviving off food the Rattus Faber bring her. The other supervisor is a clay man, who keeps track of the debts and favours in a big ledger, and occasionally tells the other clay men what to do.

The bulk of the ES is: you acquire some little sculptures (you can make them or steal them). You trade the sculptures for favours. You trade in the favours to get each faction back to work. Or sometimes you just trade the sculptures themselves.

You use favours to get the Rattus Faber to leave. You use a sculpture to get the supervisor to leave her office and get back to work. You use favours to get the clay men to fix a broken machine, and then to get back to work in general. You use favours to get the clay supervisor to get on your side (although the actual text says that he's not even sure if he wants the favours system to continue or get back to work, so like.... why is he even HERE). when everythings ready, you can get the factory back to work, or, at the last moment, actually decide that this factory is a lost cause (even though you've put in all this work already?) and blow it up. And thats it! That's the end.

If you're wondering why Mr Iron chose you to do this, or how this system started, why the clay supervisor seems to be invested in keeping this system going, why the other supervisor stopped leaving her office, what the clay men are getting out of this, you will go to your grave wondering!

Honestly, this read to me like it was written by someone who wasn't super familiar with or comfortable with writing interactive fiction, or at least Exceptional Stories (which happens occasionally), but this was actually Graham Robertson's fourth ES! He also wrote The Clay Man's Arm (which is less boring, but also... gross), Trial and Error, and The Web of the Motherlings, none of which are particularly well-liked as far as I can tell. It doesn't look like he writes anymore at all (in fact, his last tweet was from 2018, and it was retweeting the announcement of Factory of Favours), so maybe he was getting burnt out, or realizing games writing wasn't actually for him or something. I don't know! It's not really my business anyway. I'm only disappointed because I was ready to insist that actually all of these were high camp and the FL audience just didn't Get It, and FBG should bring him back as sort if a nega-Chandler Groover. Enough stories from the guy who everyone likes! I want more things that nobody likes!

#fallen london #why is this so long lmao. theres not even all that much to say #anyway as i have said: i love talking about exceptional stories #theyre one of my all time favorite parts of FL and i have sooooosososo many opinions on them

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haldenlith · 5 months

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You know, I've seen the "I'm afraid for Mara this season" sentiment and after seeing the trailer for the season (the most recent one), I definitely get it, especially after they showed her and Crow together for a brief moment doing the hand-touch thing RIGHT BEFORE the narration goes "wishes have a price."

And we all know Bungie seems to absolutely love tormenting Crow specifically for some reason. I love Crow, I do, but I am tired of the "look at his SUFFERING!!!!!1111" story beat. We get it, he's tragic. Let's move on and show more of the capability of his character or something. Anything. Please.

But anyway, yeah, I don't think they're going to kill him or do anything with him, honestly. But I am worried they'd be willing to do something to Mara, since she's kind of the last knife they can jab into him and twist. They already fridged killed Amanda (which I am still salty about). The only other major character with deep ties would be Young Wolf, who has the strongest plot armor in the universe thanks to being the main character.

Yes, I know, there are other characters with ties to Crow, but Mara's the only major thread still tied to him that most of the playerbase would be even minutely familiar with.

Also, in my opinion, it's felt like, lately, they don't know what to do with Mara. She feels, to me, like the character they built up and now aren't really sure where to slot her into the story. They'll do things like "look at this amazing power she has, and she probably destroyed a Pyramid ship and wooooo so powerful so mysterious" and then go "Uh... she's a battery powering the way for you guys to go into the Ascendant plane. We guess. Sure. *shrug*" I don't know, it's just felt weird every time she's shown up lately. The last time she felt genuinely relevant to me, like she belonged and was actually well-used and a part of the story, was Season of the Lost.

Well, okay, that's a lie. The Parasite quest felt pretty good and in character, in my opinion, for her. But still. I've said this before, and I still feel this way: it feels like the current writers don't know what to do with Mara. While I'm not sure they'd kill her off, given all the various things that are tied to her, that would be the easiest way to deal with a character you don't know what to do with. So... *shrug*

Though I guess they could shift everything to being under Petra again, since she was the Regent prior to Mara's return anyway, even though, if I recall correctly, that wasn't going too great for her (since everyone is loyal to Mara, not her). I don't know, dudes.

What's funny is I don't even really like Mara, but even I'm like "😬 I am getting not great vibes, fellas."

But uh, yeah, I don't want Crow to (again) be the horse to beat for Pain and Misery value, and I also actually don't want Mara to be the sacrificial shock factor lamb of the season. (I don't want any of the characters being that, honestly.)

#haldie rambles #d2 rambling #with how up and down variable the story has been lately #I think it's reasonable to be apprehensive #also I'm fuckin sick and tired of every time Crow shows up it's Pain Hours #we're done with his growth arc it's concluded #can we please move on to him doing shit and being a capable whole ass character #I don't know if I'll actually play this season #it depends heavily on what the activity will be

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leonsrightlations · 10 months

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[table of contents]

about the novel

The Earth is Online by Mo Chen Huan is a Chinese danmei (BL; gay) webnovel. Although it has romance, it's fairly slow to arrive. The plot is the main focus. The novel's genre is more like sci-fantasy/horror imo. Also, comedy. Here's the summary from the back of the book:

"Ding dong! On November 18th 2017, players are welcomed to enter the game.

Announcing the Black Tower's three ironclad rules -

First, the Black Tower has the right to decide everything.

Second, 6 to 18 o'clock is game time.

Third, all players please strive to attack the tower.

[Loading...]

Ding dong! Have a happy game!"

Further summary from me: The earth's entire population is either eliminated or forcibly recruited as the playerbase for a deadly game. This game is controlled by the Black Tower, an ominous structure that has appeared by the thousands across the globe. Tang Mo, a librarian, is one such player. After entering the game, he awakens a strange ability and gains a powerful prop that links him with another player.

about the translation

This is a casual translation mainly intended as a way to self-study written Chinese. I've decided to post my translations because it's a lot of work to never share with anyone. Please be aware that I'm going to be slow to post and that the quality might not be perfect. Not only am I translating from scratch at a very novice pace, I also work full time and have other things going on in my life. There are other translations available so you don't have to wait if you don't want to.

I'm translating from the official print version of the novel. Since I've never read the original raws, I don't know if there are many differences between the texts. One difference I AM aware of is that the print version has much longer chapters. The first volume is 350+ pages and has only seven chapters. I'm going to do chapter headings based on where the MTLs break off under the assumption that this is where the original webnovel chapters ended.

I started by doing half a chapter a week and I'm currently doing a full chapter a week, but that's subject to change if it becomes too much work or if stuff happens irl.

If you notice any mistakes please feel free to let me know. I would rather someone tell me I got something wrong than continue on in ignorance.

On the off chance anyone thinks about doing it, please don't link me on NU or other similar websites. It's fine if you want to share links informally but since this is such a casual translation project, I don't want to build expectations in others about update speed/completion. I also don't want to get it taken down for copyright violation. Please buy the raws if you can or the official English translation when it becomes available. The print versions come with bonus illustrations (see my icon)! ^_^

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mewtonian-physics · 2 years

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"zuko alone episode" is a reference to avatar the last airbender where in the second season the deuteragonist is isolated from all other established characters. a lot happens in it tht i cant summarize in 500 letters. i think actually you'd have to have seen it to get what i mean. but i basically am trying to say "how does raiden function in the world, how do people perceive him, when he is existing outside of the videogame narrative module". how does he fare w strangers

very fair i have not watched that show so i did not get the reference, i am uncultured or something who knows.

im going to put this under a cut because i will be talking about sexual harassment and thanks to a certain ex-president that will unfortunately include (non-graphic) discussion of assault. homophobia + transphobia will be referred to as well. because people suck, and i don't just mean the ones in the metal gear universe. (has what i've seen from certain sections of the metal gear fanbase heavily influenced my perspective on raiden's general life experiences? yes. yes, it unfortunately has.)

i think raiden and the rest of the world are... i think there's kind of a gap between them, at least from his perspective. he doesn't quite know how to deal with strangers, so more often than not he just... doesn't try. it doesn't help that i think--well, i know, all i have to do is look at the early mgs2 playerbase and even sections of today's players to get an indication of how some people would respond to his existence--he'd have to deal with some pretty awful harassment and that would make him even less inclined to be social. why bother risking it?

that gets even worse after mgs2 because fuck you president johnson [coughs] i mean like. it's bad enough just dealing with that in regular situations. dealing with it from a man whose life you're trying to save? (i'd add specifically that it's the president, but unfortunately that really doesn't make it any more shocking.) at this point the idea of being at ease around strangers is ridiculous to him. since, y'know. he apparently can't do anything without risk. (can you tell i'm really fucking mad about that scene? because i am. i've only found one angle to look at it from that makes any sense and it is, of course, the absolute worst option available.) so he's really not good with strangers. at least, not adults. there's no way in hell he hasn't helped at least one lost kid find their parents or something like that, idk.

also reminder that i do not take rose's word alone as any kind of resource on account of how she does not stop lying so as far as i'm concerned the space between mgs2 and mgs4 is wide open in terms of what happens. i think after he made the decision to separate himself from rose (there is no way he didn't blame himself for what 'happened' and i am of the opinion that he left because the guilt was eating him alive and he was afraid he'd somehow make things even worse if he stayed) his difficulty figuring out what was real and what wasn't just got even worse, and he just... spiraled. not in the way rose told it, but he absolutely did spiral. i don't think alcohol ever really factored into it--the poor guy's head was messed up enough already, not being sure if anything in his life was real, he wouldn't want to risk making that any worse.

i think he probably was just wandering for a while, looking for something to do with himself, not really caring what happened to him. he just wanted to feel like a human being. someone real and tangible. if something could do that, could ground him, then what else really mattered? it wouldn't even bother him if he was badly hurt, as long as the pain could make him believe he really existed.

deciding to rescue sunny was what gave him something to focus on. fast forward to between the time when he left the PLA after becoming a cyborg and the start of mgs4; he perceived himself as a monster and decided that it would be better to isolate himself again, this time from everyone. eva insisted on having a way to keep in contact with him, but he never reached out to her, only ever the other way around. and he didn't even consider anyone else as possibilities. he stopped seeing himself as human. who was he supposed to talk to? in his mind there wasn't anyone left who wouldn't hate him (rose), be disappointed in him (snake), pity him (eva), or be downright terrified of him (sunny). and after that, people... well, that part is canon.

so uh i guess what i'm saying is that when it comes to how he functions in the world... he doesn't. not in regards to other people anyway. he can be quite self-sufficient (though that doesn't mean he always is, just that he can be when he wants to be) but his interactions with the rest of the world are awkward at best and nonexistent at worst.

i think... i'm actually thinking more about pre-mgs2 rn, sorry, but i think the rest of the world would just perceive him as odd, in multiple different ways, how he looked, how he acted. the way he was polite to everyone (or maybe just anxious) but never casual with anyone, never seeming to be friendly, always carried himself with so much tension, never made eye contact, too quiet, too withdrawn. 'effeminate.' (you know how it goes with the homophobia.) because of course so many people would judge him for the way he looked the moment they found out he wasn't a woman (not a man, either, but he didn't even really understand that himself, much less know how to explain it to other people). face too soft, jawline not sharp enough, features too delicate, eyes too large, eyelashes too long, hair too pretty, too feminine in the way it brushed his shoulders. even the general shape of his body was wrong. (note: these are NOT things i agree with they are however things i have seen other people complain about with regards to him. like i said earlier, a lot of my thoughts on his experiences with others were influenced by the reactions i've seen irl people have.) a lot of people would just see him as weird, or 'deviant', or whatever. and he wasn't exactly well socialized as a child (+ i hc him as autistic), so that'd just make things even harder. his experiences with the rest of the world would not be particularly fun ones.

idk. idk. i feel like i'm probably going on about things you weren't asking about at this point. if you have specific questions about stuff lmk i really do enjoy answering questions like these it's just i have so many thoughts that it's not always easy to figure out what i'm actually supposed to be saying lol. hence why it took me two hours to answer this.

#ask #anon #raiden

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screechinginthevoid · 2 years

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No, okay. Thats it.

This is a full on ramble. But I need to get this shit off my chest.

I love shooter games. I love when they add lore to them. But r6s and Valorant are FUCKING up big time.

Centering lore and interactions on certain characters kills the lore. Every single character has an opinion. There are countless writers waiting for an opportunity. Hire them. If you Keep adding characters that dont do anything in the lore (like adding operators and then not using them lore wise, ex: jackal) then...you shouldnt have lore its like the characters dont exist

Jackal has no content. The elite skin HAS THOSE SHITTY GOGGLES. theres no New lore of him and the kali and ash storyline is getting no-where. Realeasing lore every time theres a New season doesnt help. UBISOFT isnt shit at writing because they made ASSASINS CREED. it has an amazing story telling and writers. They have no excuse for this.

1) they have countless characters and they Keep adding more and more.

Jackal, flores, capitao, goyo, amaru, Maverick and countless more characters have interesting story lines. Amazing personalities and are full of possibilities And potential. Its good to expand the lore.

2) the ash and kali story line:

Its getting no-where fast. We are updated every once or twice a year. No New voicelines or story telling resources. It was fun at first...now? Its just ..Boring. yes. Kali is up to something. What? Fuck knows! We dont know. Are they also evil? Is kali sending info? To whom? Why? What are they planning? We dont have a FUCKING clue. No idea as far as motives go.

3) r6s extraction

Look. I wont lie I think its cool they expand to the chimera thing w rainbow. But dude. They cant handle r6s' lore. Whose to say theyll do a better work on r6E.

They recicle characters. UBISOFT you can do better.

That amongst Many other things ruin a games lore posibilities. Bad management.

now about valorant:

Okay I get it, you guys have 3 people on the lore team. But its riot games. They made LOL and the lore they have. Is crazy extensive. THEY MADE A SHOW. THATS HOW MUCH LORE YALL HAVE.

Again. Plenty of writers. Maybe its not as easy as hiring them but guys. You are a big company. Im sure you can sort this out.

The Twitter takeover is shit. There. I said It. Four tweets (breach had TWO) some vids and to figure it yourself you go. Cyphers takeover was all about chess. Character have layers. His past has plenty of oportunities. You cant leave it at "his family is deceased and he blames himself".

The chess tweets were probably a publicity stunt for....valorant...chess? Okay. You do you.

Its a shooter. The chess board can be its own separate merch campaign. These takeovers should be for lore only, the community is asking nonstop for more lore. Intricacy its fun until its not. Lore thats too complicated to understand or crack Open Will eventually tire the fanbase and they'll move on to "greener pastures".

You made a shooter and want to add lore to it? Okay. Make it. Fix the issues that come up and Keep the lore going. Its story telling. Its supposed to be entertaining. Not a hook to boost the numbers up when the playerbase starts dying down.

The Twitter take over is not being fruitfull. When you favor characters over others, thats the problem not everybody likes the character youre focusing the content on.

Misterious characters like chamber, cypher. OMEN OR VIPER cant Keep their secrets forever. Maybe lore wise they can. But you cant Keep the lore away from the fans

Let me explain.

Cyphers secrets can be kept unkown to the characters inside the lore. But the fanbase Will not take that shit much longer. They Will get burnt out and tired.

Chambers motives can be kept unkown to brim or viper. And though chamber is quite New. Theres little to no info as to why they do it

Omens and vipers past and how they link eachother can be kept a secret from the characters inside the lore. Furthermore. Its a good way of saying that whatever went down WAS BAD BCS EVEN OMEN AND VIPER DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. But the fans Will tire of not knowing.

There has to be a balance. When the lore is the only thing that keeps bringing New fans in, Thats the problem. Adding games to the Franchise when you can barely Keep the existing games running. Thats the problem.

There has to be a balance. For me its basic storytelling. The best example is overwatch.

Feel free to add to this ramble. Be respectful.

#r6s #valorant #rainbow six siege #r6s jackal #r6 jackal #rainbow six siege extraction #videogame ramble

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autumnslance · 3 years

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For the “Give Me a Character” post: Moenbryda?

Give me a character and I’ll break them down:

How I feel about this character:

As a femroe player, I was thrilled to see her. Moen was brilliant, boisterous, fierce, funny, and loved her friends. She was with us for far, far too short a time and the playerbase is never going to forgive the writers for that.

We continue to hear about her though, as her research and work with white auracite has been the key to the Scions' struggles versus the Ascians, helped capture Fordola in StB, and even in the Ivalice raids and Save the Queen her academic legacy lives on in her colleague Mikoto, who likewise uses what she learned from Moenbryda to aid the WoL.

Even now, our friend watches out for us.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

The only ship we really get for her is Urianger; close friends with possible/probable never-acted-upon feelings. It's wrenching.

Possibly her and either Yda or Lyse; I think Moen likely also knew about Lyse taking on the mask, if she was that close to one or both sisters. But any other relationships are pure speculation as she barely got the time to interact with anyone on screen, and most relationships are informed.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Her and Thancred as drinking buddies (with him losing, badly, every time) is always fun to go back and watch (but I do love to drag our Damned Rogue).

Moen and Lyse as besties also works better for me in general as I love BFF narratives, and Lyse is a woman of strong feelings for her found family, and we got our first real glimpse of that by how hard Moen's loss hit her

There's also plenty of space for the non-romantic side of her and Urianger as best friends since childhood who drew out each others' best sides, balanced each other out, and could have been a nigh unstoppable force together. I can see where Louisoix thought setting them on different paths would be a way to help them grow independently and come into their own that way--but I also think he was wrong in how he handled Moen.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

The closest I can think of is that she and Urianger never really got too far down the romantic side of their relationship, if it was there (and I do ship it). I think they may not have realized while so close in Sharlayan after being together since children, maybe not seeing it until they reunited years later in Eorzea. Or if they did, they each thought it unrequited.

I'll just be over here stewing in the angst, thanks.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

That she hadn't frickin' died mostly. Imagine having her as Thancred's co-tank, swinging axes bigger than most of the other Scions, through all those dungeons. Imagine her brilliant analysis and solutions to problems. Imagine her telling off our enemies. Imagine outfits actually made for femroes to look good in, rather than by accident after being designed on midlander and miqo frames. Just. So much that could have been done, if she had lasted more than a patch and a half.

#Final Fantasy XIV #Lyn Prompts #Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn #Roegadyn #FemRoe #A Realm Reborn #Scions of the Sventh Dawn

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mittelfrank-divas · 3 years

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so i'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there's an interview with developers of the game and they pretty much say point blank that edelgard was intended to be a villain and not morally grey at all (and this is shown more clearly in the jpn version). what's your take on this? does intent matter if it comes off differently in the game itself, esp in the localization?

If we’re thinking of the same interview (that Nintendo Dream one) then that isn’t what it says at all.

Q: Can you tell us which route was made first in order to expand and explore the world?

Kusakihara: The first and second parts of the Empire route.. which is called by the userbase as the “Church Route”, Silver Snow. The progression of Class Leader Edelgard to become the antagonist… that is what we initially decided upon. [...]

Q: Please tell us about how Edelgard and the Empire’s current status brought about the details seen in the story.

Kusakihara: The character that guides the story has mostly been male characters up until now. The antagonist being a male character as a setting has also been often the case in my opinion… which is why we wanted to release something that is the opposite, to which you can say, a story that is hard to predict, and as such we ended up with a female character.

Yokota: Not only is she a strong character on the front of thrusting the story’s direction, the gap with her cute/endearing points also were present, which has resulted in her becoming a good character in my opinion. And other than that, due to all the previous titles in the series, the thought/impression that the Empire = Antagonists is left upon the playerbase. When you think about the “Empire”, you usually get some sort of “Bad/Evil” image, I think. And as for the story, it really feels like it started from the Romance of Three Kingdoms, but we force them all to take part in school life. In other words, a period in which there was peace must exist, before starting the fires of war. And because of that, someone evil (Villain)… or rather, someone who has to bear a role close/similar to that has to exist, and so we had the Empire bear that burden.

I know this is a translation, so we have to take it all with a huge grain of salt, but the word used above is antagonist, not villain. An antagonist is simply a character who stands opposed to a protagonist. An antagonist can be morally grey or even perfectly good -- protagonist and antagonist are simply about whose perspective the audience is following and sympathizing with. Edelgard is an antagonist in three of the four routes. That’s just a simple fact. Just like Rhea and Dimitri and Claude are antagonists in hers.

The translation seems to get a bit fuzzy, but it seems like the devs went on to say that they chose to call it the Adrestian Empire because the word “empire” has the perception of being bad or evil. But is that any surprise? With all the red and black and the militant imagery, it is clear that you’re supposed to look at Edelgard and the Empire and get the impression that they’re bad. But this is an entire game about how perception and reality are not the same thing.

And this line: “someone who has to bear a role close/similar to that has to exist, and so we had the Empire bear that burden.” If they wanted to say the Empire is the villain, they could have just said that without talking around it like this, and even correcting themselves when they said the word evil/villain! To me, it sounds like they’re saying that the Empire took on a villainous role but they don’t actually consider it evil.

I didn’t want to paste it all here since it gets long, but the devs also go on to talk about how even within their team there was a lot of desire for the Crimson Flower route despite Silver Snow being written first. So it would seem odd to me if they saw Edelgard as evil but still had this strong wish to side with her.

All of that said? No, I don’t think intent matters as much as what’s actually there in the game. I find Word of God to be insightful and interesting, but all it does is provide a bit of background and context. I’m still going to treat the final product as something that I can interpret how I wish.

Even if the above was a mistranslation and it outright said “we set out to make Edelgard an evil villain,” that is not what she is in the game. And like, why would we treat interviews like this as sacred texts but not unused assets? Knowing that Felix could have betrayed Dimitri in AM is an interesting fact that gives us a lot to think about, but the fact is that Felix chooses to remain with Dimitri in canon. Imagine what a jerk I would be if I yelled at every Felix fan that the devs “really” meant for him to leave Dimitri, so they need to stop enjoying their AM Felix content. They have a right to enjoy what is actually in the game just like Edelgard fans do.

#Anonymous #edelgard von hresvelg #meta

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rainofaugustsith · 3 years

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SWTOR: On Companions, Agency and Opinions

I always scratch my head when people say Lana has no personality or agrees with the PC with everything they do. I mean, they're entitled to that opinion. I just don't get it. Lana complains a lot in KOTFE and KOTET, depending on the choices you make. If you save the sun reactor, she yells at you. If you accept Valkorion's power she has a lot to say about it. If you don't tell her Valkorion is in your mind, there's an entire scene of her telling you off about it. If you don't save the Imperials from the Eternal Fleet ship, she's unhappy. In the traitor arc, if you choose to leave Theron behind she argues with you about it and it's made very clear that she's in extreme disagreement with it. In Onslaught she's perhaps more neutral, but not really - she pretty actively trolls Arn and Tau for her own amusement, is seen debating Gnost-Dural on his level, and has that whole ongoing thing about Corellian whiskey. Considering the character had like ten lines in the entire expac, they packed a lot in. In Echoes of Oblivion, she's vocal that she's not happy with the situation. And unlike some of the other companions, most of the time she actually respects and abides by the Commander's decision that she should not come along. What Lana doesn't have is the agency in the game to leave, actively oppose the PC or hold a permanent grudge. Although, for the latter, I think that may be changing. If you choose to kill Theron, there's a bit of awkwardness between Lana and the PC when Theron's name comes up at the end of another expac. She's really not the only companion in that position. With only a few exceptions, the companions do not have the agency to leave a PC or openly fight them. There are other companions that you can literally kick across the room and choke and in the next scene they're smiling and happy to see you. In Ossus and Onslaught you can be a complete asshole to some of the new companions and they really don't react in any lasting way, at least as of yet. FWIW I don't think that's really realistic. I think the way they had things in Dragon Age where the companions actually did change their behavior based on how you treated them and your decisions, to the point of leaving if they were angry enough, is actually way better. And there are some cases where Bioware kind of tests the waters with this: Ashara openly disagrees and debates with the PC in the class story. In her reunion she lets the PC know that she won't be abused by them again if they attack her, and is openly snarky. Akaavi will tell the PC off to their face in the class story. Khem Val criticizes the PC numerous times in the Inquisitor's story and has uncomplimentary things to say during the reunion. Kaliyo all but rolls her eyes at the PC depending on what they say. In KNOTE, if the Imperial Agent says they were in carbonite and were rescued, Kaliyo literally calls them pathetic. She also has a lot to say about the raid on the Spire. Aric Jorgan openly disagrees with the PC if they don't take his side in the Spire assault assignments. Elara Dorne breaks up with the male Trooper if he does certain things in KOFTE, and if a Trooper at all goes with the Empire, she wishes them dead to their face. If a SW kept the collar on Vette in the class story (OMG WHO CAN DO THAT) she tells them off in KOTFE. Lokin will literally sic rakghouls on you if you piss him off in KOTFE. In KOTFE, Xalek walks away and refuses to be recruited if you won't duel with him. Theron criticizes the PC in KOTFE if they kill Kaliyo or Aric, and he also has very strong reactions to a Commander's decisions on Onslaught. But there are a lot of complaints about some of these instances where companions do express their own opinions or there are consequences for them. In the one instance where Bioware really ran with it, the playerbase wasn't happy. Ahem, Koth. Koth had no issue telling the PC when they were pissing him off. He didn't back down. He remembered things the PC had done and didn't let them go, whether they were positive or negative. Even his opinion about Valkorion - yeah, it wasn't something we agreed with, was it? He wasn't smiling and nodding with the PC; he was letting the PC know how Valkorion appeared to him, and yeah, it was frustrating but it was realistic, given that he had grown up in a society where people were conditioned their entire lives to accept Valkorion as a benevolent god.

And so much of the playerbase hated him for it. Leaving and taking the Gravestone was completely in character for him, IMHO. He left the Zakuulan navy because they were killing civilians, he's not going to let you do it too. I personally feel that planting the bomb on the ship was out of character for him and just made him look bad. I think he would have cared about the rest of his crew's safety, since that is an ongoing theme for him. I don't think he really would have asked the Commander to rally the entire Eternal Alliance fleet around him with the knowledge that the Gravestone might be about to destroy them all. But the way he called the Commander out, reacted to their decisions and did things that suggested actual consequences? Great stuff. I actually wish there was more reactivity to how the Commander interacts with the companions. But I also don't think that much of the playerbase would stand for it if they really went there with other characters.

#swtor #swtor companions #swtor critical #fandom critical

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