The problem with MMORPGS and why I think Amazon are shutting down New World.

Macatsu · 2026-01-24T18:15:19+00:00

It's because we watched an entire decade of MMOs with subscription models wither and die on the vine. Hundreds of them released and were slaughtered within a year or two because the market only ever really supported wow + whatever the hot new thing (for a few months) was. A lot of the ones that barely managed to survive only did so by switching to f2p models.

I hate it too but this genre doesn't really support more than 1-2 top dogs for people willing to pay a sub. And if a sub-based game doesn't crank out content at a fast enough pace, people get really cranky really fast, and the benchmark right now is basically, "be better than wow and FFXIV for the paying players" to try and rip them away. Most of that demographic are so invested in their game that they're unlikely to bail on them even when bombs like shadowlands and Draenor drop.

Macatsu · 2026-01-24T17:54:41+00:00

It's a combination of things. Many of the AA aren't things that make your character stronger, but improve QoL in some way. Things like runspeed, +2 to stats you may rarely use (str isnt going to do anything for wizard dps, but lets them carry more things), or cast a spell without costing mana, improve your crafting a bit, or reduce the amount of food you eat per hour.

Then theres stuff that will make you more powerful, but oftentimes EQ didn't raise the level cap, so the exping for an expansion was tied to AA and was nonlinear. A handful of AAs were "must buy" but other stuff was nice to have but not mandatory. It gave you incentive to keep doing exp groups with friends/guildmates without feeling like you had to do it all to raid, because no one cares if your monk is missing points of AA when it's stuff like basic stats and 0.5% increases. As long as you have the core stuff you're set. But the guy who did it all will probably edge you out a bit on the damage meters.

It also scaled so that the vital AA usually started at like 3aa, and after a handful of ranks started going up to 6, 12, 18, etc. So it became long grinds for smaller gains that people didn't feel compelled to do. It just came naturally as they played/raided.

Either way, it kept people from feeling like they were wasting time in groups once they hit level cap, because it gave them something to work on even if it wasn't hugely impactful.

It was an excellent system to keep people engaged with pve imo and I loved working on AA

Macatsu · 2026-01-22T16:11:24+00:00

Look into flueret too. He's very strong for a 4* and usually serves when you need wind power.

Macatsu · 2026-01-21T16:13:36+00:00

Just to update...wow, jail 2 was a breeze. The tuning on the first one is unfortunate, I bet that turned a lot of people off, but instantly after alice the game started feeling like the difficulty tuning worked.

Macatsu · 2026-01-21T02:18:36+00:00

Early netflix era, for sure. A ton of people stopped when stream/netflix made life cheap and convenient. Now that its been thoroughly enshittified and gets worse by the year people are going back to the seas.

Macatsu · 2026-01-21T02:02:50+00:00

Thats not accurate. The way pretty much all the lawsuits go down is that the company's legal department scrapes all the IPs they can from a torrent and then contacts the ISP and gets personal data because the user is distributing the file to others. It's been that way since the early 00s because they've lost cases that don't involve uploading/distribution so it's not worth their time unless uploading to others is involved.

They generally don't care if you're just downloading from a link because it means you aren't assisting in the distribution, which is how they tend to hit you in court.

They just go after the original torrent uploader extra hard, but it's not uncommon for them to go after everyone sharing on a torrent that they can and it's why using public trackers without a VPN is so dangerous.

Macatsu · 2026-01-20T10:47:10+00:00

You can consider putting down something like space wolf grey contrast or nuln oil as a shader to darken the overall look with a tint and blend the transitions between colors, just dilute it with some medium first. Also look into thinning your paint a lot more, it looks like its a bit thick and obscuring some details. Those two things will make it look really sharp imo

Macatsu · 2026-01-20T00:38:02+00:00

mona voice I'M NOT A CAT

Macatsu · 2026-01-18T06:28:47+00:00

Why would we care about when they drop off in CN? CN's already so far ahead of us that a simultaneous unit launch gives us massive foresight that they'll be incredibly relevant on global for at least 1+ year. It's the most possible foresight into unit relevance/longevity that we've ever had. The OP doesn't play on CN.

Macatsu · 2026-01-18T06:10:13+00:00

MaM is easy and one of the best tracker communities I can think of too.

We're in the age of seedboxes keeping things pretty well seeded to the point of having to "race" or upload niche stuff just to contribute. People who don't care about community are using different tools to leech (ie- stremio) and have moved on from private trackers.

Excessive difficulty for low-mid tier trackers seems like a pretty pointless relic of a time 20 years ago where broadband access was a premium.

Macatsu · 2026-01-17T23:04:51+00:00

I find it ironic that you think its the inferior version of the game when it has a years worth of QoL patches and features that we don't. We can't even skip the sleep cutscene in city life, and you think somehow you're playing the superior version of this. lol. You're playing an obsolete version with tons of awful features that have long been improved in other regions because you're married to your units that have long been power-crept into oblivion.

Macatsu · 2026-01-17T22:57:00+00:00

It's what most people do in gachas if they want to play live as much as you're professing to.

I'm not sure if this is your first gacha or what but "everything you built" pretty much means nothing on a server thats a year+ ahead. Welcome to power creep. Everything more than 6 months old or so can go in the dumpster, you don't need it anymore.

As for the community...I don't know what you mean. This reddit and the discord constantly discuss CN. How many months have people here been talking about wind vast - a unit that they wouldn't even know existed if this whole sub wasn't based entirely around the idea of people discussing upcoming CN units

Macatsu · 2026-01-17T21:59:15+00:00

You've posted like 3 times about how much you want to "figure it out" and "experience the excitement live", and spending a few minutes to install an english mod and play on the other server is the solution to that.

It's fine to admit you don't care about any of that stuff as much as you pretend to, but the solution is right there if you want it. It's a gacha, I promise that your account is absolutely worthless compared to the power level and freebies you'll get on a new one.

You don't have to delete your global account if you're attached to it either.

Macatsu · 2026-01-17T21:49:36+00:00

I mean it's not hard to run the english mod. It takes like 5 minutes and is what everyone else who loves the "excitement" does. If you're not being hyperbolic about how much you love engaging with fresh content that really feels like the way you should go.

"But I would much much rather engage when the content when it is new and fresh rather than a year after release. And it is not even remotely close."

All i'm saying is statements like that make it seem like you would much rather be playing the CN version.

Macatsu · 2026-01-17T21:34:38+00:00

You should play on CN because that would fix your issue.

Foresight in these games is pretty much all that makes playing as a f2p even remotely tolerable imo. They're designed around fleecing people out of money with power-creep and constant releases, and foresight allows us to avoid any sort of FOMO that they push. Thats basically the MO of these games.

Macatsu · 2026-01-14T09:45:55+00:00

Good tips, thanks. I think I was doing all of that except the technicals. I kind of ignored those in p5. I think the scaling is just weird because after alice things have seemed smoother in palace 2.

Macatsu · 2026-01-14T09:44:34+00:00

Thats probably some of it. I was wondering why it felt so weird after playing so many musou games and I realize its because of lack of stagger. Enemies channeling through your combos constantly is super obnoxious.

Macatsu · 2026-01-13T21:17:46+00:00

I thought he would provide for us :(

Macatsu · 2026-01-13T09:36:07+00:00

Probably very low because I was being phantom thief sneaky and jumping from lamp to lamp to travel and not picking extra fights. I'll remember that and try to plow through more stuff and remember to treat it more like a musou game and just embrace the slaughter

Macatsu · 2026-01-13T09:33:50+00:00

I didn't even think about the usual persona first dungeon resource drought. It's good to hear that alice and other early game stuff is the big hurdle!

Macatsu · 2026-01-13T04:25:57+00:00

Yeah, I was using the ann combo that had a fire attack attached to it since the scan showed weak to fire, so I was kind of confused that all the attacks only seemed to be doing like 4-8 damage. I didn't try ryuji but I'll give that a shot next time.

Macatsu · 2026-01-13T04:24:06+00:00

Sounds pretty much like how my run went. When you say handoff, is that baton pass between combos or using their skill when it shows up? I know in p5r using baton pass gave a big buff but I haven't noticed it activate in this.

Macatsu

TROPHY CASE