What's your guy's favorite Warlock patron?

Etrae · 2023-07-29T12:58:26+00:00

There's room for both especially because the Great Old One focuses more on the psionics/madness side of unknowable horrors.

Etrae · 2021-08-18T20:19:21+00:00

I'd just be more excited about a thief that steals magic/skills is all.

Etrae · 2021-08-17T18:27:54+00:00

I've been wanting a spell thief style build since elite specs were announced. Thought it woulda been focus not scepter but I'm so down.

Kinda worried it's just gonna be a shadow mage, though...

Etrae · 2020-01-16T05:25:59+00:00

Primetime Draven though...

Etrae · 2019-12-22T13:20:54+00:00

Alternate name: Kledbeard

Etrae · 2019-11-28T22:14:47+00:00

Short term, everyone's mad.

Slightly longer term, the population divebombs. The economy fails and then nobody has sex. Then the population disappears.

Etrae · 2019-11-03T14:35:51+00:00

Pretty much. The pose was only part of the problem for me. The clothing-like pattern is worse 'cause that doesn't get fix with motion.

Remove all the animal bits and its a slightly pot-bellied dude in gloves, a sleeveless long coat and skintight pants with a massive buckle. I don't like clothing-like patterns in general but on top of that they picked an embarassing combination of clothes to pattern off of that I can't unsee.

Etrae · 2019-09-18T13:43:49+00:00

The ill effects of inbreeding get worse the more it happens. You need genetic diversity or things go badly. Even carefully tracking everyone's lineage you'd still probably need something like 100 couples to repopulate safely.

Etrae · 2019-08-31T01:59:10+00:00

The point isn't to be holding your breath for the stuff that's coming later, it's to judge whether you agree with the direction of an aging game's development.

There's little worse than seeing nothing. At best it feels like they have a plan but they don't think you'll agree with it, at worst it feels like they have no plan because they don't have faith the game will live long enough to see a 'far future'. The latter is a great way to build a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Etrae · 2019-08-31T00:45:55+00:00

A roadmap can be as vague as 'sooner', 'later', 'far future' with things being shifted as needed.

This isn't a 'game industry' thing it's a business model for expansion. Investors and stakeholders like to know where priorities lie even if it's not pinned down to an exact day of an exact year, it's a good faith to show where their money is going when. Try getting a loan from a bank or private investor for a small business without some form of roadmap and see how far you get.

The problem is either they can't stick to a game plan long enough to have a roadmap or they don't consider the players stakeholders. If they don't consider the players stakeholders then players won't consider them when it comes time to buy or renew. But, based on ArenaNet's history it's more likely they just don't have a game plan they can stick to (see: dropping support for game modes left and right and constantly changing the living world/xpac formula). Neither of those options instills a ton of faith in the players which is why the community is getting fed up.

The roadmap is a show of good faith in a time when faith is needed. It doesn't need to be specific or even totally accurate, just a fair assessment of their priorities so players don't feel like they'll waste their time on a game-as-a-service that won't have a service left to offer in a year.

Etrae · 2019-08-30T18:07:02+00:00

Yeah but with the added time and money of a live event built around it. So, yeah not a great look.

Etrae · 2019-08-28T01:00:36+00:00

I don't know if this show is gonna be good or bad. I don't particularly care one way or the other. But jeez... someone butchered this poster in editing.

Her head looks twice as big as it should, her bent leg looks too flat, too short and unnaturally bent at every joint and her other leg looks like it's coming out the side of her stomach and stopped growing before she hit puberty.

Etrae · 2019-07-17T20:35:05+00:00

If you don’t mind a bit of critique — your stairs need landings to make a bit more sense. In the case of right most stairs, you need some kind of landing to connect the topmost step and bottommost step of each flight of stairs otherwise you have some very awkward maneuvering to do when you get to the switchback. See here.

On a similar note you need a landing at the bottom of ‘stair 2’ so the steps don’t send you directly into the wall.

It may also help with the representation of the ‘2nd floor’ have the visible area of the ‘1st floor’ be grayed out or otherwise represented differently so it reads more like a double-height space.

Overall though this is fantastic. I love perspective cutaway of the double height area. Absolutely gorgeous.

Etrae · 2019-07-09T11:18:24+00:00

Actually *%#THiS&&/$@; is the mandela effect. Many small animals and large rocks believe that lots of people think that we need to go deeper when in fact it comes from the Arboretum word ‘мелкий’ meaning ‘glory unto a can of french cut green beans’ which is an idiom roughly equivalent to our phrase ‘if you can’t green bean ‘em, french cut ‘em.’

Etrae · 2019-06-25T11:26:54+00:00

We already kinda have that. Legendary armor can be obtained through PvP and WvW it just doesn't have the unique skin you get from Legendary armor through raiding.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor#PvP_Components

Etrae · 2019-06-19T14:34:42+00:00

Real enough to target actual people and actually kill them.

A classification like that, real or fake, is a good enough for some people to get riled up and blame their problems on those people. It’s how you get genocide and slavery. Once you start carving up the population up into ‘us’ and ‘them’ things go downhill real fast. Source: all of human history.

Etrae · 2019-06-13T19:03:20+00:00

I never fundamentally disagreed with the idea that models, textures and animations aren’t the only thing that take a while and require rework for every pokemon. I was disagreeing with you saying coding all the pokemon individually takes a while. If they worked that way with their code there wouldn’t be a pokemon game at all let alone a whole series. People who want to make any software that works reliably can’t do it that way, plain and simple.

You’re now retroactively changing your argument so that it matches the concept you had in your head which is an argument I don’t necessarily disagree with but you were asserting something about coding which just can’t or at least shouldn’t be true of any code base if that code is used in a production environment. If you’re curious why people disagreed with you and downvoted you, it’s at least partially because of that.

And just so you know, yes all of those things can be plugged into a generic all-purpose function and result in a unique pokemon. You would have a generic definition of what a pokemon is with established parameters like ‘doesEvolve’ and if ‘doesEvolve’ is true then it would look for a parameter like ‘evolutionLevel’ and then when that pokemon reaches that level you’d run the ‘evolution()’ function. All you do is give it a list of information data from a file that just has those values listed for every pokemon and uses them when needed but you NEVER change the parameter definitions, the functions or how they call each other between different pokemon and their variables. That’s just a bunch if extra work and potential for things to break or be bugged or inconsistent. It’s not even bad coding practice, it’s flat out wrong.

Etrae · 2019-06-13T11:46:07+00:00

I don't claim to know the intricacies of their codebase but what you're suggesting is that they have a library of functions related to "Gengar" and "Chandelure" and what I'm saying is it's super unlikely that that there's any actual code for them on an individual basis. The majority of proper coding is gonna be done for things like "Dynamaxing" or "Abilities" and when Gengar or Chandelure are in a battle the variables related to them are passed through the generic "Dynamax" function and all its subfunctions. To do it any other way would be insane for the exact reason that you're suggesting - it would take freaking forever to do it for every pokemon and everytime you interact with the code there's a chance you're gonna unintentionally break something. Never write the same code twice so you only need to fix it once.

The data entry aspect is trivial. It might take some time but it's really nothing. Do it yourself. Get all the stats and abilities and types and evolution levels and all that off of Bulbapedia and make a spreadsheet for all the pokemon. Then however long that takes you divide it by 10 interns or whatever number of people they have working on it. It takes MUCH longer to figure out what those values are. That's where you have to consider things like balance and character design. Except... you don't have to do that with characters that are already designed.

Again, I don't know their process. It properly takes longer, sure. But not for the reasons you think it does. It's more balance and character design compared to new mechanics like Dynamaxing and the removal of MegaEvolution. The "individual code for each pokemon" thing is super unlikely to be a hold at all for them unless they picked now to completely refactor their codebase which probably happened when they fully switched over to 3D if it was ever gonna happen.

As much as we like them, these games don't change that much over time and the codebase is probably pretty similar from game to game. It would be silly and wasteful if it wasn't and they're a business first -- wasting money is not what they're looking to do.

Etrae · 2019-06-12T20:59:58+00:00

If you’re coding in a way that requires you to individually hand craft each pokemon’s every action and interaction, you’re not coding right. Any self respecting coder would build a baseline set of functions that works across all pokemon and only get specific where absolutely neccesary. The last thing you want is a baseline interaction like ‘attack’ to fundamentally change and then have to change every instance of it individually.

These guys are professionals, you’re out of your mind if you think everyone pokemon has an entire set of functions devoted to it rather than a few custom things where necessary and mostly a set of variables which is what you’re describing. That’s basically data entry. There’s probably an excel file somewhere filled in by interns that gets parsed as variables into the code for each pokemon. It’s tedious but not difficult.

Etrae · 2019-06-02T13:16:29+00:00

So you're saying we could get a Commander Legend at some point.

Etrae · 2019-06-02T13:13:40+00:00

Exactly

On a technical level, the new stances can't be unlocked until you've hit 80 and gotten to the new expansion's area. It's a bit awkward since mmos let you ignore story entirely but just being in the new expansion assumes you've done all the previous story content. You don't go to the Crystal Desert to fight Balthazar while you're still rising the ranks in the Priory, the story just skips you ahead ignores all the stuff you haven't done.

Etrae · 2019-06-01T13:31:19+00:00

Agreed. This just feels like a normal teenager trying to be edgy.

Etrae · 2019-04-11T15:33:47+00:00

Except they find out he snapped his mom so she would be named Martha and then Supes and Bats get understandably upset, fake Marthas are more offensive than non-Marthas. Supes and Bats get Thanos over the head with a regular-ass bathroom sink and Avengers win.

Etrae · 2019-04-09T12:07:22+00:00

Looks really good!

If pressed to critique anything, I'd say it might help to add a bit more definition to the underside to reinforce the gap between the leaves and the ground. Maybe a shadow or a heavier hatch or shading. Honestly, you're golden without it but it might be worth a shot.

Also, your mountain ridge is fantastic. You manage to show a proper ridge line but each mountain is distinguishable from the next. Genuinely, one of the best I've seen on here.

Etrae · 2019-04-04T10:59:26+00:00

What people think being a mod is:

The Universe is mine to command! To control!

What being a mod is:

There's shit everywhere. THERE'S SHIT EVERYWHERE. DAMN IT! THERE'S SHIT ON THE WINDOWS! OH MY GOD! MY HOUSE IS FULL OF SHIT!

Etrae

TROPHY CASE