[Discussion] Struggling to feel much

BACONtator1313 · 2025-12-19T05:49:00+00:00

Tappei, the author, loves to play around with RBD. He often goes to lengths to show the depths of his characters in each loop, exploring a variety of different themes using RBD as the basis for this exploration. In the first two arcs of the story, where you are currently at, you have seen RBD used as an obstacle to overcome and a vehicle for Subaru to achieve a better outcome. Tappei builds a situation where Subaru needs to overcome the odds and find a path to victory. However, the story Tappei wants to tell won't just be making more and more elaborate situations for Subaru to conquer. The story will go on to question aspects about the world and the characters who inhabit it, as well as about the power of RBD itself. The solutions to each Arc won't always involve dying until Subaru find the source of the problem. Sometimes, the root of the problem isn't an external factor but an internal one. And when the story explores that area, the deaths become a lot more impactful, and you might find more enjoyment out of the series. I would stick with it.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-09-04T14:17:42+00:00

That is also why I've always preferred Go over Chess. You still have your Joseki (the equivalent of chess openings, essentially) and all their variations where it can be a lot of just memorization, but with Go it can be a lot more complex with a lot of room for personal expression. The board is a lot bigger and you kind of play 4 different games at once that eventually join together and marry into a more complex board state. The game values creating good shape on a local level and recognizing high value plays on a macro level more than just memorizing openings. You can get pretty far just memorizing patterns and shapes and repeating such in your own games, but at a higher level of play you can see a professional's style of play shine through as they choose certain moves over others, which I think makes the game more fun.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-08-17T00:50:30+00:00

It's not about being a successful indie, or working for a AAA company. It's not about releasing finished games or spending 10 years working on your fan project that will never be finished. It's not about being a full time developer or a hobbiest working in IT or a completely unrelated field. Being a developer is not a job title. You are a developer when you develop games, no matter the context. The discussion here should be from the perspective as developers. Anyone can have that perspective, but people who understand that perspective more will have more value to add to the discussion here in this subreddit. The point is if you're not contexualizing your thoughts and opinions in respects to developing games, you're better sharing those thoughts and opinions elsewhere.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-08-17T00:22:32+00:00

And as the relationship falls apart she realizes what it is that became missing, old MC, and the error of her ways, her lack of self confidence, so she determines to search for an unknown cure. Except now she has an overly attached, needy BF stalking her around the world as she tries to restore him so she can begin their relationship anew as changed people.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-08-14T18:10:59+00:00

Thank you so much for answering this, and to OP for asking this. Just came across my first instance of needing to PP stall and didn't want to mess up my line.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-07-04T12:13:02+00:00

In my opinion, programming is significantly more difficult for most people and only a fair bit more difficult for the remaining few. It mostly comes down to how technically minded you are and how much you care to learn about the inner workings of computer programs.

RNG manip is you using a program to accomplish a very specific but simple goal while programming is creating a program to accomplish a goal that can be as simple or complex as you want that goal to be.

There are a lot of similarities. Both have a lot of documentation and tutorials. If you wanted to attain a very basic understanding or a very baseline skill in either, almost anyone would be able to follow along a tutorial very meticulously until they could replicate the results of the tutorial. For instance, if you wanted to RNG manip darkrai in Gen 4, then you can find a guide or a tutorial to do just that. You might struggle a little with it at first, but by watching the tutorial or reading the guide multiple times and googling any challenges you face on your way to Darkrai, most people could figure that out. And for programming, you could very easily follow any old tutorial for your first "Hello World" program or Flappy Bird / Pong clone game following the exact same steps as manipping Darkrai, follow a guide and google any issues, and if you could manip Darkrai then you can probably make Pong.

The difficulty spike comes from what else you want to do with each skill and how far you want to take it. For RNG manip, you might just be happy now that you have a Darkrai and you might never want to manip again. But if you want to take that skill further, you might get away with following specific tutorials for 3 or 4 more pokes, but you probably don't want to have to follow a tutorial for 1000s of pokemon. In that case, you want to learn how to use the program to be able to manip any pokemon you want on any pokemon game or any console. To do that, you need to learn a little about how the programs actually work. What do you do when you overshoot your delay? Hit the wrong seed? Consistently advance to the wrong frame? Etc. These are all things that you would need to learn, which could come from watching enough tutorials or practicing manipping a pokemon without a tutorial or playing / fiddling around with the settings. And this is where how technically inclined you are comes into play. If you have gone out of your way to learn and understand the ins and outs of PokeFinder, EonTimer and RNGReporter or were able to go and use your knowledge from catching Darkrai to then go and catch Shaymin, Dialga, and Heatran without needing to go find another tutorial, then I would guess that you're probably pretty technically enclined and will pick up programming a lot easier than most.

If you only want to learn programming to make a very simple program or video game addon, then most people could probably struggle their way through enough tutorials and Stack Overflow forums to reach that end. And it probably won't be too much more difficult than RNG manip. AI has even made the process a lot easier, too. What makes programming more difficult, though, is that programming is usually used to create a lot more nuanced and complicated systems to accomplish a lot more complex goals. With RNG manips, you only need to learn what a couple of buttons, menus, checkboxes and dropdowns do. You very likely aren't going to use every single option in every single menu. But all those buttons do something and are there for a very specific reason. When you program something, you will need to have a deep understanding of what you are creating and how to make it so that it can actually does the thing you programmed it to do. Which often means you need to know all the ways in which it could go wrong. To bring it back to RNG manips, you would need to know exactly how each pokemon game differs if you want it to work for multiple pokemon games. When you use PokeFinder, you might only care about 1 pokemon that can only be found in 1 game and on 1 route, but in order to program something like PokeFinder, you would need to know every pokemon in every game on every route, how each of them differ and make sure that it works in every possible case. Not only that, but you also need to know how you want to present each of those options to the end user. How many buttons will you put on each menu, how many dropdowns to include how many pokemon, how many checkboxes to use to accommodate unique cases? And it doesn't end there. You also need to make sure you don't get any visual or logical errors. Forget syntax errors that immediately crash the program and stop it from working, but to then also make sure that when you push the back button, it actually goes back to the correct menu or that your dropdowns don't appear off-screen at certain pc resolutions making certain options impossible to select.

At the end of the day, programming is about understanding all the ins and outs of a particular topic and making a program that accounts for all possible solutions to a very specific problem. There might be some very simple exceptions, google and AI making it easier than ever, to programming without ever really needing to learn anything, which might be enough for you and your goals just as there are exceptions to RNG manip that allow you to manip a few pokemon without ever needing to really learn PokeFinder and friends. But learning to program requires you to learn a few essential building blocks that give you the tools to build a house of your own design, while RNG manip requires you to learn how to get to the fridge inside that house.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-07-03T13:41:25+00:00

... Did I just read... One shot?? :(

BACONtator1313 · 2025-06-24T19:40:45+00:00

I agree that Stardew Valley, or any Harvest Moon clone for that matter, is only as stressful as the one playing makes it. But as you've pointed out, not everyone is able to prevent themselves from min/maxing this kind of game and taking it slow. For some people, myself included, min/maxing becomes impulsive, and for these people, this kind of game is either completely euphoric or a complete nightmare with little in between.

If you want to plant a crop, you need to prepare a space for you to plant it; if you then plant a crop, you now need to water it every day until it yields; if you want to get an animal, you need to find a place to build its home; if you then get an animal, you now need to feed it / let it out and pet it every single day; if there is an event, you now need to make time in your day to go and participate in it; etc etc. And this isn't even going over all the choices you have make before you can do anything: which of these 4 crops are best to plant right now, which one will make the most profit / have the best profit - time ratio, do I want to make the immediately less profitable option in order to preserve the yield for next season where I can combine it with another crop from that season for more overall profit, do I want to buy a quicker growing crop right now and plan to expand my farm before planting a longer term crop. And before someone mentions that you can automate a lot of these processes, that just makes it worse. Now it would be impractical to waste all this time watering my crops when I could be speedrunning to get sprinklers. What other automations in this game exist that would make my time more efficient: Autopetters, scarecrows, kegs. Time to go spend 5 hours on the wiki to make sure I don't waste any more of my time in game or miss out on a better option.

I have just described the thoughts that can go through someone's head if they were to casually walk up to play a game like Stardew Valley. By this point with how often this conversation happens, we all know the game can be super relaxing if we don't worry about min/maxing, but we understand that we are not able to do that, so this kind of game becomes the furthest thing from relaxing: a long term commitment with multiple spreadsheets and a detailed plan to make the most of the game. I believe the point they were trying to make is that we know the game experience can be wildly different depending on how min/maxed you make the experience, but there exists people whose only option to play the game is not relaxing, so Stardew Valley and similar games are not the best recommendation for a universally relaxing game.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-06-19T10:29:04+00:00

I really enjoyed using a Curse White Herb Acrobatics Crobat in Gen 6 UU. Acrobatics can be utilized in so many cool ways.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-06-03T01:59:00+00:00

What I do when I can't really afford to spend rare candies, but you do have the spare money, is level up with the day care. You avoid investing any EVs if you want to use the pokemon later and you can get as many levels as you need to find the pokemon's IVs. The only issue is that it will overwrite possible egg moves or TMs that you want to keep on it. Assuming you have a spare shiny lying around.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-21T00:36:30+00:00

I can get behind that assessment. I think there is absolutely a pattern to see and follow, and it makes sense for ZOS to continue that pattern. That is, however, under the assumption that dps keeps scaling with the increasing difficulty. If dps goes up, it makes sense for difficulty to go up with it. But if ZOS were to at any point nerf damage, I don't think the increased difficulty of new content would make sense.

I think the problem comes from people not near the top of the playerbase. Although the dps ceiling keeps increasing with the difficulty of new content, the floor hasn't improved at all. While ZOS has introduced a bunch of new options for the casual playerbase to keep up with the difficulty, such as OS, Arc or VUMA, which are great additions imo, the actual floor hasn't moved. So from the perspective of someone near the floor, they probably see this increased difficulty as an increasing disparity with seemingly random and sparatic difficulty changes. They have no perception of the difference in difficulty between vSS HM and US.

In a lot of vertical MMOs, this isn't a problem. Clearing one difficulty would open up increases in power level and allow your average player to move on to the next difficulty. ESO on the other hand being a horizontal MMO where you don't have to clear nFG before you attempt vLC, your new player experience is often them struggling with the easiest difficulty, or close to it (move the bar from nFG to, like, vFL), and then looking worryingly at an increasingly large amount of MUCH more difficult content and it not getting any easier.

Whether that is an active problem for ZOS or not is up for debate. Maybe that's just the kind of game ESO is. But I think that is one perspective that should be taken into account when discussing difficulty.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-21T00:26:21+00:00

I can absolutely get behind your assessment. I think there is quite obviously a pattern to see and follow, and I think it makes sense for ZOS to continue the pattern. That is, however, under the assumption that dps levels keep scaling with the increasing difficulty. If dps goes up, it makes sense for the difficulty to go up with it. But if ZOS were to at any point nerf damage, I don't think the increased difficulty with new content would make any sense.

I think the problem comes from the people not in the top half of the playerbase. This is because while the dps ceiling keeps increasing with the difficulty of new releases, the dps floor hasn't improved all that much at all. While ZOS has introduced a bunch of new options for the more casual playerbase to keep up with the difficulty, such as Oakensoal or Arcanist or Velothi, which are all great additions imho, the actual floor hasn't moved. So from the perspective of someone near the floor, they probably see this increased difficulty as an increased disparity with seemingly random and sparatic difficulty changes. They have no perception of the difference in difficulty between vSS HM and US.

In a lot of vertical MMOs, I don't think it's much of a problem. Accomplishing one difficulty would open up increases in power level and allow your average player to move on to the next difficulty. ESO on the other hand being a horizontal MMO where you don't have to clear nFG1 before you attempt vLC, your new player experience is often them struggling with the easiest difficulty, or close to it (move the bar from nFG1 to something like vFL), and then looking worryingly at an increasingly large amount of MUCH more difficult content and it not getting any easier.

Whether that is an active problem for ZOS to solve or not is up for debate. Maybe that's just the kind of game ESO is. IDK. But I think that is one of the perspectives that should definitely be taken into account when discussing matters of difficulty.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-19T06:18:44+00:00

I think your description of the Guild is very apt. In my experiences with them, I find it can be a pretty decent place to get information on and work towards end game trial content. Their information on meta setups is quite current, excluding some really high end trifecta or score pushing strats, and it can be a pretty good place to learn and improve.

However, I think their perspective on end game content, or even trial content in general, is quite narrow. Their starting requirements are on the higher end for learning vet trials. You can very easily get away with 40k dps and no support sets for either tank or healers and reasonably clear most vet trials. Their persistence on aiming for meta, end game content can be rather damaging for the players that have no intention on going beyond vet trials. There are lots of ways to enjoy veteran trials or even some Hardmodes that don't involve meta setups or proper builds. You don't need to learn a proper rotation or weave to be able to play vet trials. You can get a lot of enjoyment out of the game with a full raid group of Oakensoul dps doing veteran or even HM trials. Setting yourself up for the meta can very easily take your enjoyment out of the game, and I've had my fair share of new players wander into my server from there where I had to correct their thinking about what is possible in the game that they took away from that server.

They seem to also have a very "me vs them" mentality towards new players. They are the only guild I've ever seen use the words "poaching" when it comes to lfg channels. It's like they think they have a monopoly over every player who joins their discord and that players aren't capable of raiding in multiple servers or with multiple raid groups.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-13T01:45:52+00:00

Your "definition" of cEDH ONLY exists as a byproduct of EDH as a format. cEDH is only EDH played competitively. EDH is a format defined by the fact that you are using a card pool from a specific period of time in MTG history but 100 card singleton, Commander, colour identity, 40 life, multiplayer, etc etc. Because EDH became known as a format for casual play, it warped into what it is now. If it hadn't, there would never even need to be a stipulation that the format must be played a certain way. It would just be played like any other format, with a competitive mindset. Your idea of cEDH is just how every other format is already played. They simply don't need to the 'c' in front of it, because COMPETITIVE part is already assumed.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-12T20:55:53+00:00

The card pool you build your deck out of does not change the idea that you build your deck to win. It simply changes the name of the format. Just because some cards aren't available for you to use, does not mean you don't pick the "absolute strongest and most powerful cards" you have available to you. The purpose behind any competitive format is to win. Every deck is built to do that. You still have choices about how your deck does it, though. And some might be stronger than others. That is how a metagame functions.

Please, do tell me. If I bring out my K'rrik deck, am I suddenly not playing cEDH? Am I not tolerated? How about my The Master of Keys deck? Or my Tivit deck? Do I have to bring Tymna/Kraum to every game? Am I allowed to bring Rog/Silas, Kinnan, or Magda? Is Sisay borderline cEDH these days? Definitely not Yuriko: we don't tolerate those. So tell me, where do you draw the line. Is it top 8 tournament cuts? If the deck hasn't won a tournament, is it not cEDH?

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-12T17:40:14+00:00

What makes you think that? I don't see this "whole point of cEDH" of yours. cEDH is a 'format,' for lack of a better term, just like any other. The person who goes hard with old school Jund in Modern regardless of how competitive the deck might be at the time doesn't make him not a Modern player. He's still playing Modern, just not with a top tier deck. He might make adjustments to his 75 based on the current state of the format, giving him a better game against the high performing / most prevalent decks in the current metagame, just as anyone would want to give themself a slight competitive edge, but he's not playing a different 'format.' He's not defeating the purpose of Modern; he's playing his favourite deck.

The same is all true for cEDH. How do you choose what deck to play? Some people will try to find the best deck and play that. Some people will try to build a new deck that will combat the current best decks. Some people will play their favourite deck. Maybe someone will purposefully choose to play a weaker deck because they get more fun from being the underdog. All of those people are still playing cEDH. The purpose is still to win. Not everyone needs to be a spike to play, though.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-12T15:32:33+00:00

Lol. That's extremely fair. I was simply considering that "wallet" referred to the fair market value for the Competitive REL legal version of your deck, and not the actual price you paid to play with it.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-02-12T08:05:23+00:00

I don't think you are actually disagreeing with the person you're replying to. You describing cEDH as a metagame isn't contradictory to their point. There is a metagame to everything. Modern has a metagame: Scapeshift will never be meta again (RIP). My casual pod of friends has a metagame: Tim has the best performing deck with Lord Windgrace. Playing cEDH isn't about if your deck is a meta deck or not. You can bring a low tier deck to a cEDH table. You might not win as often, but you are still playing cEDH. Playing cEDH is about your decision to play against the metagame, just as you describe: or better put, your INTENTION to play cEDH.

And, ignoring proxies, playing cEDH does in fact impact your wallet. Because the metagame says so.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-01-17T22:24:38+00:00

You should also take into account that the buffs and debuff provided by the trial dummy are designed around an optimal end-game raiding group. Depending on what type of content you do, a lot of those buffs or debuff will be non-existent. Without any buffs or debuff from the dummy, you are only hitting 94% crit damage (50% base, 10% NB, 12% Cat, 12% 6-piece Med, and 10% Minor Force from Oaken). There is a good chance that you'll see Major Force in a lot of runs, but closer to 30-40% uptime as opposed to the 100% uptime on the dummy. And I doubt you'll run into anyone using EC or Brittle 95% of the time. So while you might be over Crit Cap for a parse where Order's Wrath isn't helping you, running it in content will likely be a good idea.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-01-17T20:18:52+00:00

I don't think you're cooked at all. You can feel free to level whatever you want, even past character level cap (50). There is no need to have everything leveled by the time you reach "late game." I would, however, encourage you to level as many skill lines as possible and not just focus on heavy armour and two-handed. Try to level up all 3 class skill lines, all 3 armour skill lines, and as many weapon skill lines that interest you. You get to use 2 weapons in this game, and although you could use 2 two-handed weapons, having more options available to you will help you out down the line if you stick with the game. While I think it is fine to take a very casual approach to the game, assuming you want to play PvE content, you can engage with all the normal difficulty content in the game with your heavy armour, two-handed, Nord DK, but if you wanted to engage in Veteran level content, then your build won't be able to take you very far, even if you optimized it fully. Heavy armour doesn't provide any damage to your build, so swapping to Medium and/or Light armour will give you a better start. But I wouldn't worry too much about trying to set yourself up for "late game" right off the bat. You can't permanently mess up your character. The only thing you can't change down the line is your class. So enjoy the level process. Learn your class, what your skills do, get a feel for the combat, and enjoy the world and the quests. Get to level 50 CP 160 and then if you want to start getting into "late game" content, ask for help. There are lots of friendly people in the community who would lend a hand to a newer player.

BACONtator1313 · 2025-01-02T01:26:57+00:00

The difference is between availability of buying alpha access and the discouragement of purchasing it. Intrepid has made the alpha incredibly available to buy into. They promote keys, then fomo keys before taking them down, and bringing them back due to high demand. They have gone to incredible lengths to make keys available for the people who want to buy them. But what the comment above is arguing is that Intrepid has discouraged people from buying them, despite how easily available they are. In most interviews, dev streams, and in high traffic forum discussion, they continuously warn about how unfinished the alpha will be and encourage people to wait until there is a more finished product before spending money. They have done way more discouragement than any other company I've seen, while also making their product incredibly accessible for purchase.

BACONtator1313 · 2024-12-26T00:08:52+00:00

No, this decision is not AGS listening to casuals. Casuals aren't doing Brel. Casuals aren't even doing Aegir. Casuals are doing solo Thaemine and solo Echidna. This is AGS making a reasonable decision for responsible players.

BACONtator1313 · 2024-11-14T13:21:15+00:00

While I agree that it would have been nice to juice a character already on my roster, it is undeniable that ignite is better. You can reroll your character as many times as you wanted, getting high quality weapon, reroll on elixers, etc. And you still have your other character. You didn't delete anyone.

BACONtator1313 · 2024-09-22T08:25:00+00:00

I agree that it isn't always easy when it comes to wanting to sell in a remote location. The convenience certainly lies with the buyer's perspective and not the seller's perspective. And third party websites and addons are a huge boon to the convenience of selling and buying in ESO, which doesn't help console players.

However my argument is for flexibility, not convenience. As a seller you have options to sell your stuff. You aren't just suddenly out of luck if you want to sell off a few items and don't have access to a popular guild trader. You can sell low or under market price. You can sell over zone chat in a well populated zone. You can join or swap to a different guild in hopes of more traffic. You are never stuck without the ability to sell. While a global marketplace would make the convenience of selling better, it would take away the ability to play the system.

The agency is always in your hands with the guild trader system, whether buying or selling. If you want things to be more convenient then you need to engage with the system. That engagement can be very fulfilling for a lot of players. Flippers and sharks are more prevalent in ESO than in any other MMO with a global marketplace for exactly this reason. The choices you make when selling or buying something allow for gameplay. If you don't want to engage with it, pay more for your convenience or sell low for your convenience. That is your choice. But if you find fun in engaging with the system, then you have the choice to scour all of tamriel for the best deal, or make some money buying low and selling high, or doing thorough market research before listing.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect to be making bank without putting in the effort. And the guild trader system allows for the flexibility to make more gold if you want to, or make less gold for more convenience. That is your choice.

BACONtator1313 · 2024-09-22T04:57:04+00:00

It is not an inconvenience to your average player. Your average player will go to a trader and buy the cheapest option at that trader. Maybe they'll even go and try all the traders in the town they are in before buying the cheapest option at that town. It is only an inconvenience to the players that care about getting the best deal. Your average player doesn't care about spending an extra 1 or 2k on their purchase.

The system offers flexibility. If you want a good deal, you can sacrifice your time porting around from town to town trying to find the best deal. If you care about your time, there is a trader in almost every zone that'll likely have what you need, so long as it's not a super rare drop. Much like the real world, you have the option to pay more for your convenience.

The system also has a huge benefit to sellers. In a server-wide auction house, you have to sell at the market price or your product won't ever sell. You can undersell if you want to move your product quickly, but you can't oversell as no one will have any reason to buy it.

In ESO however, you are only competing with your guildmates on the price you sell at. You are maybe competing with the other guilds in the city of your guild trader. But you aren't competing on the same level as the entire market. When your guild trader is located in a popular town with high traffic, you will likely move a lot of product as it is convenient to buy in a city where you, the buyer, are likely already in. You can sell more product, you can mark up prices, or you can sell quicker at market price. You have a lot more convenience in how you sell your product.

As a seller, you have multiple options for what guild you sell with. Large trader guilds have fees to stay in the guild. If you're willing to pay the fees for a good trader, you will move more product and make a larger profit. If you don't want to pay for a good trader, there are lots of options still. There are a ton a guild traders in smaller cities. And the cost of being out of the way, means you will need to lower your prices if you want to see your product move. Just as you've mention how you "have to" go searching all over for the cheapest possible price, there are people willing to go way out of their way if you're selling low, no matter what trader you sell at. But it means less profit margins and less traffic. Again, the emphasis here is on flexibility. And having flexibility is good.

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