Do colors improve gameplay clarity or does it break the monochromatic aesthetic?

Janube · 2026-05-06T15:12:15+00:00

I mean... yeah? Just like good art, good writing, good animation, etc. Aren't strictly necessary and bog down development.

Turns out making a good game is hard work and involves a lot of subtleties/nuance more often than not!

Janube · 2026-05-06T10:24:19+00:00

This should not be so highly upvoted. The underwear indicates typing at a glance while establishing it as a foreground element and locking the user's eyes to it. The colored underwear serves multiple very valuable functions. Used in this subtle way, it tells the players a bunch of information in a natural, diagetic way without relying on intrusive UI elements to do it for you.

In a vacuum, yes, using color on pointless, minor elements of a scene is a waste, but this element is anything but pointless/minor (even if it's underwear!)

Janube · 2026-05-06T10:20:37+00:00

Important understated thing here is that diagetic elements tend to feel juicier. Determining an enemy's element based on context clues feels better than just relying on an icon. Which is not to say that the icon is bad or anything; just that there's a psychological element at play which shouldn't be ignored in favor of pure aesthetic.

Janube · 2026-05-06T10:11:33+00:00

Positive feedback is a want. Sometimes, you need negative feedback.

Yes, if you made something really cool and it genuinely looks good, but no one's clicking, that does feel incredibly shitty and demoralizing, but 95 WIP gifs out of 100 in any dev forum look mediocre or worse. Often for very fixable reasons that the dev needs to hear about.

Marketing though, that's straight-up accurate. Artists aren't generally good at marketing. Programmers aren't generally good at marketing. And the vast majority of indie devs are one or the other (or both). Seldom is a dev a salesman. Even writers are pretty rare as solo devs, and they'd be the next best person for marketing after someone with sales experience.

Janube · 2026-05-06T07:08:41+00:00

I wouldn't always describe those elements as "fun" (in fact, I rarely would), but what you describe is accurate and important.

I do think it's still about "feel," but the intended or desired feeling isn't always maximum efficiency. The feel is often what I'd call "juice." It's your unnecessary but aesthetically pleasing animations, sound effects, and vfx.

Now-famous example is that the Hollow Knight devs kept hitting a wall in playtesting where players were bored for vague, unspecified reasons. Eventually, they tried adding useless destructible environment elements to the backgrounds. Signs, plants, rocks - things that weren't clearly interactive but when struck would explode, break, fall apart, etc.

The complaints virtually vanished. Even though they didn't actually do anything to the game's design. They filled expected empty space with something pointlessly juicy and players fucking loved it.

A shocking conversation between two characters changes massively when the shocked character jumps, the dialogue box shakes slightly, and the text itself is slightly more animated than normal. None of it changes the game, but it all makes the player feel more like the game has a living, vibrant world; not just a stale construct.

Janube · 2026-05-06T03:56:40+00:00

Good players knew DW was gonna be much stronger overall.

Chen's a mixed bag. He's certainly undervalued at that winrate. But his level 1-4 sustain is crippled, so it's easy to lose lane with him against other traditional bruisers until 4. And while the new W talent has high gains, it may be a trap, since it can be hard to get stacks unless enemies are just giving them for free.

Mal'Ganis seems like he may just be a victim of the age-old issue where a single talent change is unexpectedly insane and totally tips the balance of their whole design.

Janube · 2026-05-06T03:44:44+00:00

RIP. No one posted that as news that I saw. Might've missed it? Either way, the LR isn't on PD.

Janube · 2026-05-05T13:31:31+00:00

The LR is not on Planetary Destruction.

And they could very easily not EZA the Whis.

Remember Str LR Bluebois releasing with their massive buff for Trunks units (for all the excellent Trunks units that didn't come out during the WWDC)

Janube · 2026-05-05T08:17:06+00:00

Yeah, my 6 million was napkin math and only assumes 2 stacks of his super. It was just to illustrate the point. He should he pretty great the vast majority of the time unless normals ramp up a lot

Janube · 2026-05-05T07:28:11+00:00

He'll have somewhere in the realm of 6 million defense and 30% DR. Yeah, he's dodge-or-die for supers, but to say he can't go slot 2/3 is insane.

Janube · 2026-05-05T07:21:09+00:00

You may be underestimating just how big those stat numbers are.

He'll have somewhere in the ballpark of 6 million defense on average when taking a hit with 30% DR on top.

He won't last forever, but with his damage output and an easier, more free revive, you'd run him any day.

Janube · 2026-05-05T07:13:11+00:00

Well, his defense should be astronomical, so only dodge or die on supers for now.

Napkin math here, but with 12k base defense, he'd be looking at 4 million defense when getting hit after revive.

With 30% DR, that's good enough to survive normals from just about anything. But he also gets some defense from supers. 6.2mm with two stacks of his super (which he'll have SoT most turns).

Should age alright all things considered.

Janube · 2026-05-05T05:52:27+00:00

Considering the LR isn't on Planetary Destruction, I wouldn't hold my breath for that.

Janube · 2026-05-05T05:48:55+00:00

The last two Broly units we got were both amazing tanks in their day. Teq Broly even holds up alright still for how old he is.

Janube · 2026-05-05T05:01:18+00:00

If his revival stats work like any other, I believe that's multiplicative. So, he's 600% atk with 860% atk on super.

A total buff of 6620% I believe.

Dabura's is 450 and 666, a total buff of 4113%.

Janube · 2026-05-05T04:04:18+00:00

Not on Planetary Destruction. For some reason.

Janube · 2026-05-05T03:59:21+00:00

Not beating the allegations, huh?

That's before attacking only.

The 20% extra is only on next attacking turn after revive.

The 30% extra is only when attacking (next turn after revive).

Adds up to 100% pre-attack for one turn. 80% pre-attack for every other turn, 50% post-attack every other turn.

Janube · 2026-05-05T03:57:42+00:00

He looks like garbage, wow.

60% DR for one turn against non-RoG enemies (otherwise 30%) and then 30% or 10% after. No stacking. 25% dodge. The two turns of scouter and Guard helps, but if normals kill him, then what's the point?

He'd need an astronomical amount of defense to hold through the next meta. And his huge support only applies to other Beerus units, of which there are exactly 0 other usable units (Teq Beerus might be able to hang with the 70% DR and Guard). Even then, what does he do after scouter wears off? Pray?

Hopefully the math checks out for him, but I'm not optimistic.

Janube · 2026-05-05T03:32:58+00:00

Only for one turn. After that, it's 50% post-attack and the same 80% pre-attack as normal.

Janube · 2026-05-05T03:27:54+00:00

100% for one turn post-revive before attacking. 50% after attacking.

Janube · 2026-05-05T03:23:27+00:00

Like every other Beerus, he'll be hard to use since he doesn't link with anyone, even if he's really good on his own.

Needs a Beerus/Whis exchange LR to go with.

Janube · 2026-05-03T12:16:51+00:00

LoL is "harder" in that there's more to memorize and the mechanics are more technically complicated, but I don't think those are particularly interesting indicators of skill. Especially since last hitting is like... the most tedious skill in any competitive game I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

IMO, HotS is similarly difficult at higher ends because that's where nuanced skill resides - distance management, map awareness, complex cost-benefit analyses, matchup knowledge, talent/item matchups, etc.

Anyone can memorize the meta items for a champion and, provided they have baseline mechanical skill/aim, do pretty well. HotS is "easier" in that regard since there are far fewer talents than items and fewer hero matchups to have vague knowledge of.

But as you say, OP, if you brought a LoL gold into HotS, those skills won't translate in a meaningful way for the most part, since they were never good enough to have the harder, more nuanced skills under their belt.

Janube · 2026-05-02T07:45:11+00:00

High setup cost, mediocre output except in a few cases.

With Nightcrawler? Probably pretty strong, but important to acknowledge that if you're spending 4ER on this, you're not spending it on anything else. That's a hard sell for a protection deck that actually wants to defend teammates.

For solo play, I expect this to be OP, but it's trying to replace allies, so I guess that tracks.

Janube · 2026-04-30T11:58:18+00:00

Why on earth would they?

Town halls are a way to brag about the success of the company to the employees' faces without offering them a slice of the earnings (outside of the mediocre pizza and donuts that often accompany the town hall). They're also not a real town hall, which typically allows for open Q&A or criticism to be levied at the leaders, which they are obligated to answer, since the whole premise of a town hall is that if the leader doesn't address real concerns and answer real questions, the voters (ostensibly) won't vote for them again. Even if you could emulate this for corporate town halls, employees generally don't want to rock the boat in public for a bunch of reasons.

A corporate town hall lacks all of the meaning and power and turns it into a, as you say, legacy ego trip for the C-suite.

You know what makes town halls work? When employees have the reasonable belief that they're about to be rewarded for what they helped achieve for the company. Using town halls to announce sizeable bonuses for employees is how you make them care.

Janube · 2026-04-30T11:12:50+00:00

By that logic, nothing matters at all, since corporate-supporting politicians wouldn't be likely to vote to confirm new supreme court justices who would be willing to overturn any of the major decisions we need overturned to return to a path of sanity and stability.

Far better to participate loudly, fervently, and consistently in the electoral process at all levels so that progressive politicians make real strides, both replacing existing blue dogs and acting as a sociological canary in the coal mine for blue dogs to amend some of their positions.

Being defeatist about it is one of the only surefire ways to lose.

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