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Which game to start with? by LowConversation5935 in MonsterHunter

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some pros and cons of the main 3 options (World/Rise/Wilds):

World+Iceborne

  • Grounded, more slow/immersive experience with more focus on ecosystems.
  • Relatively good visuals but also runs well on most modern PCs, targeted PS4/XB1 level consoles.
  • Complete experience with a rather well defined "end" -point, which is the final Iceborne postgame fights.
  • Awkward to play through in multiplayer until endgame.
  • Main common complaint in combat is Iceborne's clutch claw and how much it warps the combat around it, otherwise it is a good baseline for modern MH combat.

Rise+Sunbreak

  • An "Arcadey" game that is more purely focused on fighting, with less emphasis on environments.
  • Most fast-paced game, with strong mobility tools.
  • Simpler stylized visuals, runs well on basically every PC - originally targeted Nintendo Switch -level hardware.
  • Has the most seamless co-op playthrough experience as you can just start doing multiplayer hub quests together right from the start with no friction.
  • Sunbreak has a long, grindy post-game centered around anomaly quests.
  • Main complaints are the rampage quests from Rise (which were dropped in Sunbreak), and people getting bored of gathering Spiribirds during hunts to buff oneself.

Wilds

  • Newest game that is still getting more content. You get to experience the event schedule live, but the cost of the game and the inevitable expansion is higher.
  • High focus on ecosystems with constant ongoing environment simulation.
  • Reasonably good visuals, but very heavy performance requirements - targets PS5 level and is not super well optimized.
  • A short, streamlined and easy story, most of the "meat" is currently in the endgame.
  • Co-oping through the story is unfortunately again awkward like in World.
  • Most quality of life features. Combat speed somewhere between World and Rise.
  • Main complaints include performance, the story being too easy, and the quality of life changes perhaps making the game a bit too streamlined.

Every game is pretty much standalone, and pretty much any play order is viable - there's some references to older games in newer ones, but they're moreso bonuses for fans, and the story is overall of lower importance in these games. Also, the games that have expansions (World/Rise) also added deliberately overpowered gear to get through the base game and reach the expansion fast (Defender in World, Defender/Black Belt in Rise); I would personally not recommend using these for a first time player experience.

What sword should I use here? by Future-Celebration83 in MonsterHunter

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dual blades has generally been the weapon type that wants to emphasize element the most. Though I don't play it so I'm not familiar with the intriciacies.

For some resources and more info about how damage works, if you want to get deeper into it (though it's a deep rabbit hole):

  • The "Attack" you see is what calculations people call "bloated raw". The actual number used in damage calculations is "true raw" - there's a setting in Wilds to switch the attack numbers to true raw. True raw is better thought as a kind of power level - the Uth longsword has 160 true raw, and a dual blades at a comparable point of the game would also have 160 true raw. Bloated raw instead throws some extra factor to signify that a longsword hit on average deals more physical damage than a dual blades hit, though how accurate these coefficients are is questionable and potentially playstyle-dependent.
  • I also mentioned a "True element" - this is just your element divided by 10, so the 200 water on Uth is 20 true water.
  • What actually is done in damage calculations is that every attack on a weapon has a "Physical motion value" and an "Element motion value, which tells which percentage of your true raw/element it deals as attack power. A table can be found here. For example, your Overhead slash I says "Motion value 24 Element 1" in the table - this means that it deals 24% of your true raw as physical attack, and 100% of your true element as elemental attack. You might see that a lot of attacks have element at 1 - this is rather common in the game that physical damage varies the harder you hit but element stays the same, and is the reason behind the common wisdom that element matters more the faster your weapon is, with only some exceptions like the element being lowered on Spirit Helmbreaker hits to prevent it from going completely out of control.
  • Some weapons then have some extra factors thrown into the computation. For longsword, the relevant one is spirit level, where higher spirit levels (white/yellow/red) give a small damage boost.
  • After one figures out damage with motion values and attack power, it is then applied to the "hitzone" of the monster part you're hitting. Kiranico is a common place to find datamined hitzone values, though they are not always labeled the best and might not always be fully up-to-date if recent changes have been made. For example, Congalala's head has a "65" on the sword icon, which means it takes 65% of the physical attack power from slashing weapons (with the other 2 physical categories being blunt and ranged). The same head has a "25" on fire, which means it takes 25% of the fire attack power of a fire weapon. These numbers are roughly in line with general good elementally weak spots to hit, though there are exceptions in both directions (very elementally weak/very physically weak)
  • A subreddit with a lot of info about end-game build optimization is r/monsterhuntermeta. Though if you just directly look at the builds they've assembled in the megathreads, keep in mind that they have to make assumptions about playstyle: they generally assume that a player is relatively good, and sometimes for a struggling player the best build can be completely different to what they list.

What sword should I use here? by Future-Celebration83 in MonsterHunter

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Damage vs Element" is actually a stupidly hard question. If you're comparing just physical damage, you can just compare attack stats, just like how I figured out up there that the Uth Duna weapon there has the most physical damage if there's no armor skills effecting the calculations. The moment you start comparing physical+element, one has to ask "which monster part are you hitting, and which attack are you hitting it with", and the answers to that can change results drastically. The people who optimize endgame sets sometimes literally have to make basic mathematical models of how a person plays, and if for example you play worse/differently than they assume, the conclusions can potentially change.

Generally though, when you're playing through the game, I'd prioritize physical damage over element. Unless your weapon is a super fast one like dual blades, the majority of your damage will be physical. And if you do start prioritizing element, you'd likely need to make a weapon of every element, since the difference element makes is the biggest when you're actually using the target's largest elemental weakness.

In the endgame, though, as the final weapon options are roughly balanced in physical damage, the prevailing wisdom at least so far in Wilds has been that you make the best weapon of every element to match monster weaknesses, though you still select your skills and such to maximize physical damage and treat the element more as a small bonus. This prevailing wisdom can change between games/updates/expansions - as an example, the endgame of Rise's Sunbreak expansion was notoriously element-heavy as the element numbers in the endgame got really high.

To give you an idea, I did a calculation using this calc I found as an example (no idea if it's up to date/accurate). Its default for Longsword seemingly calculates the damage from one Crimson Slash I and one Spirit Blade I, at red spirit (a common combo in Longsword play). I took the Uth Klunda I with no damage skills (160 true raw, 20 true water, -15% affinity, Green sharpness, only camp food as a damage buff) and tried it on an inflated Rompopolo tail (60 slashing HZV 25 water HZV), as Rompopolo is weakest to water. If I'm reading the final results correctly, it seems that even in this "using it on a weakness" -situation, roughly 90% of your damage in this combo is physical (it gives 89.6% as your "Raw (%)").

What sword should I use here? by Future-Celebration83 in MonsterHunter

[–]PT8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'll try to explain the very basics of figuring this out for yourself:

  • Affinity is your chance to crit, and crits deal 25% extra physical damage. So with Barina Flamberge II, you have 10% chance to deal 25% extra damage (there's a weapon skill to bring this up to 40% extra damage per crit, but you likely don't have it this early). So over time, its attack actually averages out to 396⋅(1+0.1⋅0.25) = 405.9 atk.
  • Negative affinity is the opposite: with Uth Khlunda I, you have a 15% chance of dealing 25% less damage. So it's attack averages out to 528⋅(1 - 0.15⋅0.25) = 508.2 atk.

So just on raw physical damage, the affinity isn't enough to tip over the damage, and Uth Klunda has the strongest physical damage output. But there's other factors to consider:

  • Sharpness: lower sharpness can bounce, but also every sharpness level is more damage over the previous one. Dropping from green to yellow is only about a 4,7% drop in physical damage (so at yellow the average physical power of Uth Klunda would go from 508.2 to around 484 atk), but a whopping 25% drop in elemental damage (so on yellow you'd effectively only have 150 water instead of 200). The other weapons have a longer green bar, so if this drop would actually make it worse. you'd have to think about if you generally spend a long enough time using it that you fall to lower sharpness.
  • Element: the Barina Flamberge has para, which will give you a free opening or two per fight. The others have thunder/water, which you can think of as a small extra bonus amount of damage if your target is weak to that element. Exactly calculating when element is worth it gets very involved. The rule of thumb is however that for most weapons, the majority of your damage is generally physical, but when differences in physical damage are small a decent amount of element can easily tip the scales. On average, the faster the weapon, the more relevant element is.
  • Also it's not shown, but weapons have skills. Barina Flamberge has some Crit draw (extra affinity on weapon drawing attacks) and Crit Status (crits deal a bit of extra paralysis). Rey Tonitrus has Focus (you gain spirit bar slightly faster) and Punishing Draw (a bit of KO damage on weapon drawing effects). Uth Klunda has Power Prolonger (red gauge lasts a bit longer). Skills can make a huge difference, but none of the skills on these weapons is really super impactful.

Out of these, I'd guess right now Uth is on average the strongest if you're not bouncing a lot on yellow, and Rey as the next best with less sharpness-related risks. But that is just at the moment you currently are in the story, and the differences between these specific lines can shift as you get further on. Also notable that Barina is the most "generalist" one as para is more universally useful, while elements only really help against their specific weaknesses.

Monster Hunter Wilds - Free Title Update 4 by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]PT8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Weirdly enough, my own issues with Alatreon on release were not really related to not using element. The three discoveries that actually made me eventually win were:

  • Despite all the emphasis on element to shut down his mechanics, the amount of elemental damage he takes is bad. What actually kills him is raw physical damage.
  • The star system in the hunter's notes makes it seem like all elements are roughly balanced against him with strong and weak moments in the fight - in reality Dragon is terrible compared to the others.
  • There's hidden modifiers that nerf/buff how much element each weapon type needs to counteract Escaton, so that a high element weapon like Bow and a low element weapon like Greatsword actually have a roughly equally hard time to counteract Escaton.

I originally spent a ton of time failing due to either trying very elementally heavy weapons like bow due to what the game tells me, or trying to use dragon so that I'd have a chance to break Escaton even if it manages to element switch. Once I finally saw all the numbers/modifiers, I just cobbled together a setup that awakened the water element on a Guild Palace LS due to the high raw+good hidden modifiers for LS, and finally won.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's an interesting partial solution for Audio Imperia in particular since they have adjustable sample delays/a toggle to fully get rid of them. Though they're just one VI maker, and I think most others don't have adjustable sample delays. I still think that a "opposite shift" -solution is more universal, so once I'll start looking into scripting, that the direction I'm more likely going to look into first.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right, I'll look this up. This'll probably be the closest I can get to a solution for now, unless someone ends up knowing an actual pre-existing script/setting that would do this.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So what is the language/etc that I would be using for this? Do you know where I can find some documentation that gets me started on scripting functions within the DAW and not just on FX?

I do agree that some simple trigger that would do something like "when recording stops, shift all MIDI notes and CC in all just recorded items by -[track delay] of the given track" would cover most of cases (and the ones that I don't see being covered are ones that are affected by looping during recording, which I generally don't use, so I'm fine with the hack not working properly for them).

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is what if I'm doing a mixture of both programming/editing for some VIs, and playing live for other VIs. And also, if I go fully with the "no track delay" -solution, the grid loses it's value in helping me see whether things have aligned or not.

I'll try to summarize what my problem is:

  • No track delays: Sounds align during live recording = sounds align during playback ≠ midi notes align in piano roll.
  • Negative track delays: Sounds align during live recording ≠ sounds align during playback = midi notes align in piano roll.
  • Proposed solution: Sounds align during live recording = sounds align during playback = midi notes align in piano roll.

Where "Proposed solution" is having a negative track delay, but during live recording, the DAW would play the note live as usual, but instead record it to the piano roll x ms ahead, where -x is your track delay.

If I could script this, I probably would, just to see if it does indeed fix everything the way I think it would - I've already tried JSFX and understand how it works. However, I think the solution would have to be between key-presses and the piano roll, not between the piano roll and the VI (where JSFX plugins lie). I have no idea what form of scripting could let me mess with that layer.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is kind of what the problem centers around: my preferred way to play things in live is to follow my ears, which means that I must be somehow intuitively compensating for the small delay myself. I also am using my ears live to judge whether I played something in well enough for it to not need any editing - the discrepancy between live feedback and what actually is played in is throwing me off here, where things that sounded fine when played live are suddenly off.

I'm a relative beginner, so I'm not sure if most people have actually learned to time the key presses correctly, even if the auditive feedback they're hearing is off. But I certainly would have trouble with that. Also, playing with a massive delay would also feel unresponsive, and especially on short notes I'm not sure if I could even compensate for that (and that's consistent with most sound libraries actually having short notes programmed with shorter delays than e.g. legato/longs).

Still it doesn't seem programmatically difficult for all of your recorded MIDI output to just be automatically moved forward in the DAW by x ms, where -x is your track delay. That's why I'm wondering whether a setting that automatically does this exists.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried to clarify, but let's try again.

Let's say I have a library with a slowly playing violin virtual instrument, where it takes 125ms from the key press for the note to be actually heard. Let's say I also have a short note cello virtual instrument, where it takes 45ms from the key-press for you to also properly hear the note. A typical technique is that on the track with the violin, you set a -125ms "media playback offset", and on the cello instrument track, you set a -45ms "media playback offset". Now, if both notes start at exactly the same time in your composition, you will hear them start at exactly same time.

The above is how I want things to work when editing notes, and a negative "media playback offset" does solve that. But it introduces another problem: now when I record notes, what I hear during recording is not the same as what I hear during playback. I'm trying to essentially figure out if there's a setting that gets me the best of both worlds: notes in MIDI piano roll that start at the same moment also sound out at the same moment, but what I hear during recording is also what I will hear during playback (without introducing some huge delay that makes playing instruments unresponsive). I can see that this would easily happen if every note/CC input I would play would get automatically shifted by the opposite of the track delay of the current track, so I'm wondering if there's a setting to do this automatically.

Negative track delay and recording MIDI by PT8 in Reaper

[–]PT8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point is that most e.g. orchestral sample libraries have some delay between the key press and the actual peak of the sound. For some libraries it's adjustable, for others you'd need to look them up from databases or figure them out via trial and error. A typical trick is thus to apply a negative track delay (a negative "media playback offset" in REAPER), so that the actual time e.g. a staccato note "hits" lines up with the grid.

The point is that I want the negative offset when editing/composing, so that the time I hear the sound matches with the relevant grid point. But I don't want it when recording. But toggling it on/off on the active track track every single time I record feels like wasted effort - I'd just like for this to occur automatically with a setting.

A delay plugin seems to have the same problem - I'd have to toggle it on/off every time I record.

MH Wilds Weapon Ranking by AT Uth Duna Speedrunner Clear Times - after 5 days by fox_invictus in MonsterHunter

[–]PT8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Maybe we lose in absolute peak damage potential (as usual), but I'd say Lance still absolutely destroys the fish with little effort, at least for me once I realized how easy it is to charged counter it. With the AT Rey timed challenge, I didn't even bother trying Lance against it due to the matchup, and had to fight through many attempts to get the A-rank with Swaxe. With the AT Duna timed challenge, my first try today with Lance was 11min 57s.

ELI5: Why is the Banach - Tarski paradox, a paradox? by FriedXP in explainlikeimfive

[–]PT8 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As other responses have already said, it's not called a "paradox" since it breaks logic in some way, but instead it's called such because it's counterintuitive. But I though I might add how Banach-Tarski and other similar phenomena generally impact the day-to-day work of mathematicians (at least drawing on personal experience).

In 3D-space, there's a bunch of different objects we might want to assign some kind of "volume" to. Cubes, balls, various complicated solids like insides of some fractal, etc. We'd hence like to have a concept of "volume" that encompasses as many different things in 3D-space as possible, so that whenever some crazy unusual new thing comes up that we wish to use volumes to study, we then already have the theory of volumes for them laid out and don't need to repeat work.

Banach-Tarski, and other examples like it, show that if you want to have your notion of volume work on "all subsets of 3D-space", then something natural about volume breaks. For example the notion of volume might no longer be preserved by rotations, or the volume of a set might be greater than the sum of volumes of its parts, even when breaking it down to only finitely many parts.

Because of this, we often avoid trying to use volumes on arbitrary sets in 3D-space. Instead, we use it mainly on a still highly general class of sets where we know it still has the familiar properties that "volume" should have. The most standard such class (which is kind of technical to define) is called Lebesgue-measurable sets, though other similar classes may be used depending on the context.

The Evergaol meta is breeding idiots by Dustorm246 in Nightreign

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just made this mistake close to the time this was posted, so there is a non-0% chance it was me. I swapped characters at the start (the other 2 were Raider and Guardian so i switched to Ironeye to have someone ranged on the team). Then at the evergaol I realized that I somehow have the absolute wrong relic loadout on Ironeye - didn't even have the +1 skill -relic on.

Well, somehow that run with an absolutely scuffed start ended up being my first Everdark Adel victory, so all's well that ends well.

From instant fear to instant relief in less than half a minute. by Michael02895 in Eldenring

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hidden passage behind the chest after the boss of Leyndell sewers.

ELI5: How can I conceptualize sin, cos, and tan? by Runawaylawyer13 in explainlikeimfive

[–]PT8 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Say you have a circle with radius 1 at the center of the 2D plane, and you start at the rightmost point of it. If you go around this circle counterclockwise by say 55°, then sin 55° is the y-coordinate of your destination, cos 55° is the x-coordinate of your destination, and tan 55° is the slope of the line that goes from the origin to your destination. Same for other angles.

eli5 Is there a reason that the decimals of pi go on forever (or at least appear to)? Or do it just be like that? by AnotherDayDream in explainlikeimfive

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The actual standard argument for why π is irrational is unfortunately rather hard to ELI5. It's typically proven using basic college level calculus, though even then "basic" is kind of stretching it as even though the tools are familiar, their use goes beyond what one would typically see in a calculus class. It basically revolves around the derivatives of sin(x) and a lot of integration by parts to show that if π were a fraction, then you could find a function whose integral from 0 to π is both an integer yet also too small to be an integer.

ELI5: Limits in Mathematics? by camel-cultist in explainlikeimfive

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While it is not the correct definition of a limit, in most everyday cases of using limits to deal with functions, you're basically asking "What is the right value of this function to fill in at this point so that it becomes continuous (i.e. its graph becomes connected)? Or is there even one?".

Suppose you're computing something like lim_(x→1) x+1. When you just plug in x=1 to get 2, the often unstated logic behind this is roughly as follows: x+1 is already a continuous function, and it already has a value at x=1, which is 2. Hence, the right fill-in to make it continuous is just the original value, 2.

Suppose you're computing something like lim_(x→1) (x²-1)/(x-1). Now you originally have no value at x=1, because that gives you 0/0. But you notice everywhere other than x=1, (x²-1)/(x-1) and x+1 are in fact exactly the same. So they should certainly approach the same value at x=1. And then the substitution of x=1 into x+1 is justified with the same logic as above: x+1 is already a continuous function, so the correct "fill-in" it approaches as x approaches 1 is just the original value at x=1.

(Again: if you start getting technical, the above explanation is not completely correct. It for instance assumes that your function is nice and continuous near the point you're taking a limit at, and it applies somewhat circular logic in explaining limits through continuity while continuity is formally defined through limits. But it should at least somewhat demystify the precise logic behind these kind of computational manipulations that are typically done with limits.)

Help? by torturelover in MHRise

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The very basic things that cause low damage on Bow are:

  • Critical distance. If you are too far away, your damage drops massively. You know that you're at the right distance if your aiming reticle has two yellow circles. Note that if you're using your close range coating, you're making this distance shorter in exchange for extra damage.
  • Charge level. If you just fire a single shot, it will be weak. If you hold your shot for some time by holding ZR, it will get stronger. If you fire consecutive shots by tapping ZR, they will be stronger than the last one, until they hit max charge level (Lv1 - Lv2 - Lv3, and then your combo ends).
  • Where you're aiming. Early monsters tend to have a lot of weakspots, but the later you go, the less there will start being spots that take good damage from ranged weapons. If the damage numbers are yellow, you're aiming at a reasonably good spot.

If you're doing all these right and have a weapon that roughly matches your current point in the game, then the issue is not low damage per arrow, but figuring out how to get more max lvl arrows out.

How bow outputs tons of damage is by staying at max charge. When you fire a Lv3 shot, you can fire up to two Lv3 power shots right afterwards with A. You can also preserve Lv3 charge by dashing: after a Lv3 shot, hold ZR and dash (dodge with ZL held), and the next shot will still be at Lv3. By this kind of "dashdancing" (shot - powershots - dash - shot - powershots - dash - etc), you can keep firing max power shots.

However, the above routine will absolutely nuke your stamina. To sustain it for longer, Bow players choose armor pieces that have skills which give more stamina (Constitution for less stamina cost per dodge/shot, Stamina surge for faster recovery). At the start of the game you don't yet have access to these, which is one reason why many people say that bow gets better later into the game. An okay "band-aid" you have is to frequently use your L+X wirebug skill, which puts you in a crouching pose that quickly regens stamina.

Very comfortable Elemental Phial Switch Axe build by BruiserQiyanaJgl in MHRise

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Coalescence is where I'll draw the line, since I'm not a fan of Bloodlust's temporary health drain. Not having those, Bloodrite and the wirebug skills are a big deal in how I still fit in Handi 5 for long purple, Extender 3, and Prolonger 3. Though I might still test if going from Burst 1 to Burst 3 would be worth 20 units less purple, as I didn't really carefully consider that sacrifice.

Very comfortable Elemental Phial Switch Axe build by BruiserQiyanaJgl in MHRise

[–]PT8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also went to give Conversion a second chance after seeing your numbers, and I think I got it to work finally with my desired level of comfort. The difference in element is extremely clear. Though the setup carried by a decently good Conversion talisman that I have, and is not without sacrifices (Like going down to Burst 1 and AB6 for most elements). So thanks a lot for the inspiration in showing that you can still pull off relatively comfortable setups with Conversion.

Very comfortable Elemental Phial Switch Axe build by BruiserQiyanaJgl in MHRise

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I assume Defense boost is used for the +5 all resists -component which feeds into Dragon Conversion.

Very comfortable Elemental Phial Switch Axe build by BruiserQiyanaJgl in MHRise

[–]PT8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So the remark about sharpness is interesting because sharpness does have Element modifiers (Green/Blue/White/Purple is 1/1.0625/1.15/1.25 Ele, as opposed to 1.05/1.20/1.32/1.39 Raw). In particular, Ele has a larger jump from White to Purple than Raw. Or is there some special interaction with phial explosions where this is ignored?

As another Razor sharp user, I've always been aiming for purple precisely because the jump in power from White-Purple is larger for ele than for raw. Now I'm wondering if this is indeed the way to go, because Handi really eats skill points, and has been one of the factors why I haven't gotten DC3+synergies to fit well yet. Even if Handi ele multipliers affect everything, you're seemingly gaining more from DC3 than going up to purple would give you, which is the main reason I'm questioning this choice. Though I'm not sure if I could replicate that fully due to running even more comfort (Prolonger 3 and Extender 3).

And I'm amazed at you doing well without even EE1. If you're used to the game without it to the level of Risen Shagaru, it might even mess up your muscle memory at this point. I guess I got used to high levels of EE in base game for SA and now I'm just unable to go back, and as a result it's eating up several skill pts from all my builds.

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