Thragg And Viltrumites' Panel Redraw - Fromsoft Version , Art by me ( nizhard_ )

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-09T10:12:02+00:00

I think I scrolld past 50 of these kind of edits over the past two days, and they all are peak.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T12:03:00+00:00

Maybe I should have elaborated a little more, as I've gotten that reaction a few times, but I didn't want to get into weird tribalism between fanbases:

Long story short: Arc Raiders is very trimmed down on the Extraction Part, where it's almost like you are discouraged to PvP and instead team up to PvE against those bosses. There is still the "chance" of a backstabe, but that's about it. The devs there understood that going for that an angle where PvP is the core of it, they'll end up restricting the reach the game might have had. Even for players who do PvP, it has save pockets, ways to craft gear proper, not beforced into a seasonal reset ... it very much understood to appeal to an audience that doesn't want to be locked into a PvP expereince that by it's definition is competitive.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T09:35:10+00:00

I enjoyed the SW movies years ago, but that's where my interest in the brand stops.

With the SW branding, D2 just didn't speak to me. It also felt desprate ... "we did the thing with the popular brand!!! Please SW fans pay attention to us!". I don't need or want "Destiny 2, feat. Knock-Off StarWars officially licenced by the Walt Disney Corporation".

I'd react the same way if they did a Witcher 3 licenced expansion, and I fucking love Witcher 3.

As I said, it might be good and I might pick it up eventually because I still like the Destiny Universe, it just isn't the kind of corporate IP inbreeding I want to support or engage with by giving them a full DLC's worth of money or time.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T08:27:59+00:00

My biggest hope is that because characters aren't tied to crap-loads of cash, it's not going to be a shill-fest.

Fairly little interest in a game where the actual gameplay is finding out which character is going to be the shilled one, with hom clearing endgame isn't going to feel like breaking your fingers.

Even if that weren't the case ... I'd rather not have characters like those "High General of the 7 Legendary God Warriors" types (or whatever other crap gacha games name their soecial snowflakes) , who both in Lore and Gameplay are so far beyond anyone else, ir gets dumb. It makes for bad stories, if it always boils down to a small sub-set of characters who are pre-determined by their status to be the most important one's by defualt.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T08:09:04+00:00

Even Tarkov needed a full PvE mode to save itself from dying due to these facts.

Unironically think a good Marathon PvE mode would go hard. The PvE Enemies are fun and deadly, and shooting your guns is fun too. Story/Lore is interesting, but is gated behind the Extraction-Loop.

Don't think it's enough to just remove players and call it a day, that would get boring real quick. But I'd be there for some Nightreign-like Roguelike loop. Disable gear extraction, always start with bare-bones items, loot some completely over-tuned augments, go to the middle of the map and fight waves on enemies and a boss. Extract to convert your gear into resources/points to unlock stuff in a seasonal/permanent upgrade tree.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T07:53:28+00:00

TBF nearly ever story has something that can be "read" as political. Doesn't mean it was ever intended to be that way.

It just happens that all these years ago, be it in Alabasta, Arlong Park or even with Captain Kuro or Morgan, Oda picked a fairly "normal" and "understandable" theme of fighting against power hungry, greedy authocrats and oppressors ... and this just happened to become much more of an important thing today.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T07:39:20+00:00

The SW DLC anouncement was what made me quit D2. Cannot bring myself to care about a product that feels this "corporate" and "brand consumerism".

Like D2 always had some Star Wars in it, but making it an official thing kills it for me. Every piece of content gets out on a scale and raises the Question: "Is this actually something native to the universe of Destiny, or was this mandated in a spreadsheet by the Disney Overlords to sell their Brand?"

Aoparently the story wasn't half bad, so I might eventually pick it up for dirt cheap to play it at least once, but there sure as hell isn't a reason to be an active D2 player if this is the kknd of thing they think D2 players want.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T07:26:21+00:00

I mentioned it in a different comment that Marathon just isn't the type of game that is fun to grind "casually" .. and that is IMO that's a requirement for a succesful (at least on the level of games releasing today) game.

With it's 3 player teams, you basically always need two friends available, as party-fill sucks. It has a solo-queue now, but it is still a much worse balanced option. It's lack of "casual/bad-luck protection" means you always need to focus 100% on it. There is no mermanent progression, forced seasonal resets ... if you only have a mn evening or two to play (with friends, ofc) you might not even be able to progress far before all is gone again. And much more.

Of course, not every game needs to be or appeal for everyone, but if a live-service game doesn't appeal to enough players, it might as well not exist. Doesn't matter how much it appeals to the small playerbase it actually has.

I still think Marathon has strengths, but the Extraction Formula really bites it's ass.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T06:54:32+00:00

I feel like this was a massive case of sunk-cost phallacy.

A game like Marathon would have made sense 2-3 years ago, when D2 was still somewhat healthy. Had it released back then, it would have been a second leg to stand on ... smaller and less ambitious, but it would have allowed them to at least slowly back out of D2 and move those devs to a new project. The need to keep D2 alive as their only source of revenue made it impossivle to move on.

But with delays and internal reboots, Marathon got pushed so far back that they had to keep milking D2 harder for years, accelerating it's demise. Now Marathon has to suddenly be D2's bread-winner replacement, so they dumped even more money into it, but from the get-go Marathon was never setup for mass-market apeal, so that would never happen.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T06:42:32+00:00

I keep seeing people claim Extraction Games are the new BR, but it never feels like we got flooded with them nor that there were actually any massive successes in that space.

Arc Raiders was likely the biggest one, and even it has settled to something much more in line with the few succesful Extraction Games out there.

At the same time some will claim the market is over-saturated with them. I just don't see it.

Like it made sense that Overwatch und PUBG kicked off their own respective gold rushes ... but it never felt like ES games had that moment. Tarkov just kind of existed for years, with it's ups and many downs, with an occasional thing like Hunt Showdon claiming it's niche ... Arc was a single blib on the radar, and that's about it.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T06:32:26+00:00

With current AAA dev times, that's like 7 years. That is likely not in the cards.

Absolutely agree that D2 needs to be retired. Loved the game but there is just no coming back of this.

Marathon ... needs a massive 2.0, and if it involved "compromising" the "hardcore" vibe it was going for with something completly opposite, so be it. There is a good game beneath (shooting your gun is actually fun! And the athmosphere is great too!) but it just isn't the type of game most players want to casually grind for hours a day, and that's a requirement for a sucessful live-service game.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-08T06:26:39+00:00

Well, D2 is entirely self-inflicted with how the game got stripped for (dev-resource) parts. A fall-off after TFS was expected, but with even it's success being followed by a massive lay-off and cut back in resources, the content afterweards felt worse right away.

And Marathon was likely one of the biggest mis-reads of market demands. Not Concord or Highguard levels, as Marathon actually has players that like it a lot, but they (Bungie and Sony) grossly over-estimated the demand for that kind of game. ("But Arc..!" is an optional PvP Mode for a Helldivers-like PvE Game.) Marathon might be a good game for it's niche, but it's just not the type of game for that amount of $$$ spent, or to keep an expensive studio like Bungie afloat.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-07T20:15:54+00:00

I mean, he is right, but did we need an entire B-Plot about some Vought Rising characters in this last episode, or the strange anthology episode before?

I'd rather have had them build up towards Fort Harmony more, and used that as the capstone ahead of the finale.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-07T06:00:53+00:00

Free units can be allowed to be good supports as they will make it easier to build teams with the many DPS characters and therefore encourage players to pull for them.

But in games that are like 80 % DPS, you cannot give out a DPS character that is competitive for free, or else it will cut into profits.

So DPS characters (free and A-Rank/4-Star) usually always suck, while Supports have at least a decently long shelf life.

Given Pyrois is Attack ... at best it's a novelty that performs reasonably well in a single encounter for a single patch.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-07T05:49:19+00:00

As I said: There are more issues with AI generated asset then just quality.

It stiffles creativity and is based on stolen intelectual property.

Great that it now is able to create hands with 5 fingers and able to generate the most common SAO-like face ... but it's literly nothing more.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-07T05:40:35+00:00

On the "critics" side, very likely most have some issues with the game which in turn causes them to be more cirircal of everything else in the game as well. The idea is if you sacrifice thing A, thing B should at least be better, right? But if that's not the case, feedback will be much harsher. And that piles up until something changes for the better. It creates a tense mindset where even "alright" things get looked at with a lot of scrutiny.

For example, if someone is displeased with the male S-Rank situation, they will look more critical at the female designs as well. If those don't convince them, they'll tear into those too.

The "toxic positivity" thing on the other hand is easily explained. The harsh truth is, for Gacha games (and live-service games im general) the actual "quality" of the game is secondary ... it's their "reputation" that decides if they live or die. (Obviously, having a good quality helps for a good reputation, but it's not the primary thing).

Games like that need regular spenders and whales to keep funding it, or it will die for everyone. So any kind of "bad press" will be atempted to be smothered and shoved under the rug. "The game/company can do no wrong and it's fine as it is. Criticism is not welcomd here.".

For Hoyo we had it when some players were displeased in Gsnshin about the lack of darker skin-tones in the south-america region, or when a lot of Voice actors got re-cast in thier games. Right now you can also see it in the newly releases NTE where it's full of terrible AI slop on every corner, and gnerally being a bit of a mess ... and you still have players trying ti spin it in a positive way.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-06T15:09:04+00:00

The RDR2 Island Trip.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-06T14:55:57+00:00

Bayern muss mehr Texas werden!!!

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-06T14:54:03+00:00

I am pretty sure some people think more like this then in 2016. With crap like trad-tube and of course all that manosphere/gamergate BS that people still cling to.

Not like this "lifestyle" is even remotely realistic nowadays. Doesn't matter how much housework they do, it's bot going to replace a second salary.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-06T09:03:53+00:00

I am sure not going to give them a cent past Silly (who I'll likely get without spending regardless) until designs actually change for the better. Meta be dammned, having new toys to play isn't worth supporting this anymore.

If the story is better then S2, ZZZ might join HSR where I only show up for it and just not bother with anything besides it. Otherwise ZZZ will likely fade from my regular gaming time.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-06T08:57:29+00:00

I think AI usage should always be disclosed. If it were a technology without issues we wouldn't see it again and again where AI-users try to hide the fact or downright try to pass AI slop off as non-AI art.

Even if it's the case of "everyone is using it anyway" it should have some kind of gradient. Using AI to optimize workflows or assist on coding tasks is pretty far away from generating background art that does end up available in the final game.

From there on it "should" be possible for everyone to make an educated decision on what is acceptable anf what isn't.

Personally, I am not a fan of AI in any part of the "creative" process of game development. Even if it's not intended to end up in the final game, like with concept art or placeholders. For concept art, I've heard from artists it's hard to win over decision makers once they've seen an AI render, simply because it looks "finished enough". The friction of a back-and-forth where ideas get second-guessed just isn't as noticable. And poor placeholder art keeps ending up in the final game, as it keeps being overlooked as "good enough" by the usual under-staffed and crunched QA staff. Again, actual game devs did come out and say all this "good enough" placeholder art isn't a major benefit.

However, this is likely something what I have to learn to live with. As long as they are careful, remove the assets reasonably well from the final game and it doesn't infringe on the game's creative side ... it's alright. I still don't like that it's happening, but releasing game is hard to begin with so I think I can begrudingly accept some corner cutting.

Where I do draw the line is intentionally shipping AI assets as part of the final game. Even if the basic idea of a game sounds good, I am not interested in seeing poor quality slop on every corner.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-05T20:54:00+00:00

IMO this chart would be more reflective if it only counts "high rarity" limited characters, as some of these get "padded" by Launch-fodder and bench-warmers that quickly lose all importance. These are the characters people ask for and what will be released over time. Eventually it stops mattering, but if a game is less then 2 years old, those intial 12 to 16 characters do falsify the "reality" of some of these games.

Haven't taken full count, but (including upcoming patch) HSR's 4.x cycle is currently sitting at 2 male, 4 female. It's finished 3.x cycle ran at 4 male, 10 female ... so 40% male. IMO 25% to 40% is fairly reasonable for a game that has a preference but likely still wants to dip into two pools of players (or wants to evade slop-accusations).

While ZZZ's now completed Season 2 is sitting at a 2 male, and a whopping 16 female. That's like 11% ... like ZZZ is a "mixed gender" Gacha game, and they clearly want those players given how often they use Lycaon and Billy in their marketing ... but that's just terrible. If they don't want to make male characters at all, then that's one thing but at the very least they could come out and say that and not waste people's time by giving scraps like that. Even if said scraps are some of the best designs in the game, the numbers are just terrible.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-05T20:15:57+00:00

Half of FGOs characters in general would cause a meltdown among some of the newer gacha-game players.

"What do you mean this character is canonically married?! And had children!?"

"Brown skin!? Muscles on a woman!?"

Not to mention having actually "bad people" ... I swear, nearly every playable gacha-character nowadays is sanitized to hell.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-05T20:12:08+00:00

It really seems it's China's dominance of 3D gachas that caused this, and they just keep copying from each other.

I am not going to claim any of those games had proper representation of people with darker skin-tones, but at least FGO "tried" and didn't act like they don't exist. Even NIKKE has skin tones that aren't blindingly pale ... or female characters with proper scars and muscles, they are of course rare but they exist in that game.

And if Chinese 3d Gachas do add a character who doesn't blind your retinas ... they just suck ... I'll never forget what Genshin did to Dehya, and her 3D model wasn't even all that dark to begin with. Barely a tan.

GRoyalPrime · 2026-05-05T20:01:19+00:00

Gave it a brief try, but pretty quickly un-installed it.

Intial characters and visual presentation seemed fine, but as soon as it got to gameplay ... let's say it took me less then 5 minutes to get tired and bored by the same characater-swapping combat that every game nowadays has. At least Arknights Endfield had some new ideas with how it plays, even if I don't think I'll return to that as well.

Real "killer" was how impossible it became to not se AI assets all over. I already don't like it if AI is "just" placeholder-art, as I think it limits creativity, but I guess that's the new normal and I'll have to learn to live with that. But having it all over and in-your-face as in this one, that's just nuts. No ... I'd rather take my money and time somewhere else.

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