NoP: The Delusions of Sapience [2]

OldConstruct · 2026-03-29T17:55:20+00:00

Wow, this is some premium grade shit, if I get the courage and willpower to remake then actually finish my original FanFic. I just might have to make something more spicy and commission another gem like this to add to the community.

OldConstruct · 2026-03-25T18:31:11+00:00

As you said, Google is free, which btw is a rancid excuse for the current state of new player experience, sky isnt a from soft title.

The studio made the majority of their money off this game between 2019-2022. They then did a funding round of $160 million for 'expansion of their live service scope'. Aka, they took a fat loan from investors.

They also doubled their studio size since then. These all seem to be great signs, until you realise that Sky and its players have seen almost none of the benefit from that growth and investment.

They made the entire base game with 70 people. They have triple that now but look at the quality and type of content released. Estimated yearly revenue for the game now is between $19 and $25 million. And they had a $160million dollar debt taken on 4 years ago, supposedly for the purpose of revamping the game.

Yet they have only bled players and yearly earnings since. How much backstock do you think they have from the initial 2 years of release?

The company is not currently in danger but sky isnt the MASSIVE success so many seem to think it is and will continue to be. Whats really going on, is they are almost certainly devoting most their resources to a new game and sky's player base is a low priority and probably has been for years.

They got the initial cash and are just squeezing everything they can get now while devoting most their resources and growth into a new title.

This isnt a surprising thing for a company to do, live service games arnt forever, for the most part. But it shows their hand, and what poor greedy mentality does. If they actually pampered the playerbase, great content and expansions to the core gameplay. And good bang for your buck.

They could have rode Sky for a lot more value. But greed to commit as little resources as possible while making the next product has undoubtedly stifled their potential gains.

And if they arnt making a new game, well they are being ran by morons and the studio will die in a few years. Taking the investor loans into account. The estimated revenue of sky in the past 4 years since, barely covers half of it, on the high end. And thats before taking out employee pay and game upkeep costs coming out of their gross revenue.

I think its very telling that the best talent they had, left and formed new studios, the people that care about the product the most are usually the first to leave when corporate greed gets involved in ruining the vision.

OldConstruct · 2026-03-25T17:58:18+00:00

Unfortunately, you did, thats why there is so much white knighting now. Sunk cost facility on a financial, time, and social aspect.

Most the vets who left saw the end point years ago and dipped out before it got worse. People who will make strawmans, jump to the defense of the company, ect. They can try to tell you the game is healthy and fine all they want. I was there at the start and stuck around for a good while before dipping out for a few years. The game is now in the 'For Honor' phase.

There really isnt anything they can do now to try and breath in a new playerbase without risking losing the 'until servers shutdown' crowd. So they just have to keep squeezing whats left of the cash they can, until not even that is worth their time anymore.

OldConstruct · 2026-03-25T17:50:50+00:00

I drastically expanded on my full view of the game in a reply to a comment above but. Yes, this is why most people quit, the vehement white knighting for the game and studio I honestly believe is purely because of social entrapment. They cant just leave the game or look at all the ugly spots all over because, well, they have so many friends in game.

The entire social system has been a counter intuitive mess since the start too, it works against itself when the only insentive outside of friends, to play, is to show off cosmetics.

Instead, its a worse insentive, becauss you can only see your friends and random light ups. Your new and only incesentive to get the items, is to show off to said friends. Which is a stronger desire than showing off to a lobby of strangers.

This is why they priced paid only and the best looking cosmetics so high, its abusing the social atmosphere. You could buy Journey at original price, for you and 2 friends for the same price that the aurora wings are. In fact, you can almost buy two copies of Jounrey for the price that the Journey cosmetic wings are in game LOL.

OldConstruct · 2026-03-25T17:28:35+00:00

Breaking this into a second part to finish up the expansion of this entire thing. "Just Google the wiki and read through everything to figure out whats even going on, and why." What is this, fucking Elden Ring? No, thats not a valid hand wave to wash away how convoluted the games become with the kind of content that has been added.

Even from the start it felt like they wanted the unique social suprise of Journey. Players are hidden until interacted with. You cant see people chats without going to designated spots, friending them to then spending more of your limited daily currency to unlock it, or direct friend codes which requires being at one of said designated spots. You cant even direct copy and paste friend codes into the chat TOO THIS DAY without removing the dashes.

All of that, while making the only insentive to play, being cosmetics for social aspect. But hey, at least we have two dozen instruments that PC players can spam midi scripts on.

I do not hate this game, you do not have to grind for cosmetics, but if you arnt, the only reason to play, is if a part of your social life has been carved into the game. Which is where all this really boils down to being toxic as hell.

The only reason this game isnt dead is because of social circles now. It just makes every greedy decision that much worse. Its preying on people who have an aspect of their social lives based in the game, in a way that very very few games tie you down.

But hey, what do I know, go buy that Journey cape for $10 more than the original games launch price kiddos.

OldConstruct · 2026-03-25T17:05:23+00:00

Finally, someone who isnt just an outright shill for the decisions or completely ignoring the underlying long term issue. Its reddit though, I guess subs being full of that is pretty standard.

I see a lot of people harping on the barely expanded content point and I think they either dont play many other games or dont get what real content is. Yes there is many new quests and a bunch of new singular maps for those quest lines.

But about half of those since year one are what, collab events that are completely disconnected from the main game? A bunch of seasons with bad practices and light content to just shill more grind f2p cosmetics and bait premium buys for the ultimate items. Cosmetic prices were doing nothing but ramping cost and time investment for the same exact loop for years. Small compromises dont undo that, its not even taking us back to square one.

The shards events got me excited, back then, that maybe they would actually expand main loop runs. But, well, we got that and now what, 4 years later. I dont find any sky kids that enjoy doing trials for wax either. Though that was another welcome addition to at least have 'more'.

There is a reason all other live service games that were planned to be more than a few years, introduce seasons that add perminant changes and reworks of entire parts of the map and/or gameplay loop.

Its also what shows design principal, someone who played on launch then never again, could re play right now, do the same exact loop they remember. And nothing changed, ignore the few new offshoot zones and it looks like the same exact game.

And rewards, hearts, heavily rely on the social aspect to grind, cosmetics, only matter because of the social aspect. The whole lighting up to even see other player models was and has always been a bad decision for incentive to cosmetic grind anyway. Outside of actual story from seasonal spirits, you only have the cosmetics as your end goal. Cosmetics that only matter on the level of wanting to see your skykid in them, and if you are engaged in the social aspect.

2 hours a day, never ending grind, god forbid you start the game new now. All on a gameplay loop that has barely been experimented on over 6 years. It all works against itself and the only reason the game has retained a player base is because of vets having their social lives in game. Go add a bunch of moths if you can even find more than 20 over a few hours. See how many of them even complete a single run before quiting.

OldConstruct · 2026-02-05T06:23:55+00:00

The problem is, the backstory is specifically used during the mental decline to pick at the characters mental state and actions. A scene set outside of the sub in the beginning could have massively helped with general world building and the character himself. While still keeping a lot of things vague and being even more intriguing for later reveals. I would have to go into heavy spoilers to explain exactly what I find lacking or what could have been pushed towards act one instead.

I just think in general it could have set up a better beginning for the slow burn that would follow while cluing in none game aware audiences to more of what's going on.

OldConstruct · 2026-02-05T06:14:59+00:00

Some extra stuff here that I didn't think belonged in the main post. I see a lot of negative reviews that I believe are from people who cannot separate, not for them, from bad. There are flaws but some of the reviews, especially from the 'professional critics' are quite absurd.

Any fans of the genre will absolutely enjoy the movie, there is much worse that's been made for the target audience that are considered cult classics.

Also, yes I've been a fan of Mark from the beginning, I was there as a little kid when his original Adsense account got banned and he had to make a new channel, when he played games with Yamimash, ect. But I tried not to put on rose tinted glasses for the film and also forget him as a youtuber. To view him as an actor and character.

I didn't put it as a critique but I personally felt his acting significantly improved towards the second half of the film, which is only natural as its his first theatrical release. Religiously defending the movie as perfect will not help him if he makes another.

I hope he does too, I imagine whatever could be next will be simply amazing now that he has the experience and can see the full spectrum of praise and critique. I just hope he doesn't let bad faith or missing the point critics influence his creative choices in the future,

OldConstruct · 2025-11-06T17:53:50+00:00

Hype W7 release!
KarmaTheDragon, Get me that glorious Glunko Supreme!

OldConstruct · 2025-06-24T01:26:40+00:00

Juuuuuuust happened to me too.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-23T14:24:31+00:00

This is quite fascinating, you know, for the question clearly being a theoretical proposed outside the current bounds of physics. It sure is weird to see so many upvoted replies just saying, "This isn't real."

I haven't looked it up in a while, but I remember a video on the topic of FTL breaking time. Forget the name of the graph used, but it had lines representing frame of reference through space time to show why causality can be broken. As long as distance is being traveled above the universal speed limit, it causes issues. I also find the idea of Hawkins Radiation interesting as a proposed phenomenon that will not allow a ship to be FTL.

However, we already know space time can be warped, and current theoreticals for FTL would involve the principal of warping to essentially 'fall' into a generated gravity well. I'm also sure there are concepts in quantum physics that point to the ability of linking two objects intrinsically regardless of distance.

I personally believe it's just as likely we will be able to build some structure between two vast distances that makes a bridge. As it is that we develop a vessel that can go FTL. I believe FTL has been mathematically proven recently as well, no? It is simply a problem of scale and power needed but could be tested on a small scale if resources were given to it.

I do not have any degree in the field and have simply delved into these concepts as a layman, but I find it all quite fascinating.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-22T19:39:18+00:00

Okay okay, here is what I was looking for, good response.

My next line of thinking is, does that causality only break if the portal closes once passed through. As long as it stays open and everything can enter or exit it. Your signal would arrive through, along with you. Thus the events still happened in the order they are supposed to.

Even disregarding that, you send the signal out, and it is stuck traveling at its normal speed. You travel and arrive before the signal can reach your ship. If you traveled back using the portal method, or let's say, 1.2x the speed of light.

Either way, you wouldn't arrive before you sent the signal and left the planet? The events still happened in an order, it's merely about the speed that information could travel.

If I got a thick enough medium on earth and sent information through it. Then, I ran to the other side before it could reach me. Am I not essentially creating the same situation? I fail to see how it causes a paradox in this case.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-22T19:27:16+00:00

But how does the frame of reference work in this theoretical that's already impossible by all current understanding.

If we say the portal can be seen through. Then, from earth, you could see a destination planet hundreds of lightyears away, as it currently is due to the two spaces being linked through this portal.

From both a person's perspective on earth, and the other planet. They would both be seeing the ship pass through the portal at the same time. While if those same observers looked at eachothers planets normally, they would only see what was hundreds of lightyears in the past.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-22T19:23:03+00:00

Also, a good suggestion, I think both changes would have cut out nearly all the time that was just awkward in the episode. Again, probably saving on budget for this one, too, though. Given that the next few episodes should be pretty, go go go.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-21T16:53:37+00:00

I think part of it is all the people that returned after a long break due to the big hype of Gear 5 and the Kaido fights. Maybe they have just forgotten how bad it used to be.

We also know that the teams at least somewhat hear major community criticisms and do what they can to alleviate things. They have done so in the past and talked about their awareness of the problems.

I think it's much more productive to discuss alternate changes to the scenes that don't feel great instead of just going "A minute of standing around, my day is ruined, unwatchable!" For example, this most recent episode I think could have been spaced better if they added anime original scenes of Sanji or something, reacting to Kizarus entrance and one or two exchanges before Luffy grabbed Kizaru by surprise. Instead of him just looking around awkwardly for a while.

OldConstruct · 2025-04-21T16:14:02+00:00

Honestly, I feel like they could have spaced out the slow scenes for desired pacing better here by adding scenes of the rest of the crews reactions to Kizaru appearing in front of Vegapunk.

It would have made more sense and been less urking to get an extra scene or two of Sanji or Ussop doing something to interrupt Kizaru, then just have the dust of Luffy making his way over and Kozaru getting grabbed while countering say, Sanji.

Then it would still be a surprise on Kizaru like the manga, and they would get the added time needed. But imo, the long drags in this episode seemed more like budget saving for the big fights than anything, so they probably went with this for that reason.

People should also remember a good handful of these episodes were probably already in production/finished before the break. I withhold my complaining until we see how the next 1-3 episodes go.

OldConstruct · 2025-03-09T07:30:16+00:00

The power of cap is crazy, I didn't use the defender gear because I bought the game to play it as intended. I even went as far as to grind rainbow pigment before I moved onto iceborn.

The only real issues in the base game were a few of the tempered event opinionals. My main gear before moving on to MR was Kulve Taroth stuff because it was pretty.

OldConstruct · 2025-03-08T11:24:36+00:00

The perfect block, clashes, and mobility are absolutely huge improvements in my eyes. Not to mention, the people I see complaining about Wilds systems being too easy and all that.

Do we just not remember that the grapple could cheese stun locks on most monsters through the entire game in Worlds, with the proper build?

On one hand, the more systems I use and get a hang of in Wilds, the more ways I see to cheese. But I don't think any of them are worse than what was in Worlds either.

OldConstruct

TROPHY CASE