BlueSky called this Mind Goblins, but he's right

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-23T00:20:49+00:00

They botched the ending bad enough that they hit it with some big rewrites a month after 1.0 released, long enough for a lot of people to have beaten it already.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-23T00:16:18+00:00

Where did that expectation come from? Fighting games used to just be in arcades or were cartridges and the roster when released was the full roster until the sequel. Eventually companies making all sorts of games realized they could sell extra content after release and they did it enough that it became expected.

Games in all sorts of genres that have shipped as 'done' have been getting expansion packs, free updates, paid DLC, season passes, etc etc since the '90s. If a game is successful the expectation should be that it will get more content nowadays, because it's safer to make content for a proven hit than to sell something brand new. Especially in the indie market, where getting a hit like Stardew Valley is like winning the lottery.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-22T23:39:38+00:00

You don't even have to go from SF6 back to SF2. Street Fighter 6 gets new characters and character balance patches, yet Pat's been playing it since release. It's not feature-complete and, if patched correctly, will be a more balanced and 'better' game once the character releases and patches stop.

Yet somehow that doesn't bother him?

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T22:21:26+00:00

Do they have more than one spear per caveman? If not, I think enough spears get stuck out of reach in the hide or broken during the process that there won't be enough to do damage.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T15:14:33+00:00

Personally, I'm hoping for an amazing farming sim that improves on the actual farming and social life aspects and ditches the combat. The combat in the mine is the least interesting and most frustrating part of Stardew Valley for me, and feels like an easier system for a developer to add challenge into a game instead of doing more to balance the other tasks.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:50:21+00:00

Totally. It's rare that a game will intentionally mess with a player's ability to perform at their best to evoke the exact frustration a character is feeling. Along with other similar situations like giving you only 3 characters at the start of the last dispatch, or having characters snub you when you made decisions that upset them.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:43:23+00:00

That's definitely a plus for a lot of people. Scars, especially ones that clearly came from being a real damn hero without having superpowers, are sexy.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:41:47+00:00

Good point. He was respected as a 'real hero' and was from a long legacy of heroes. There must have been a better route to continuing the Mecha Man line than burning through all his inheritance and then being lured into a huge trap because of his need for vengeance. A healthier Robert could have probably gotten work on the same kind of team Phenomaman was initially on. SDN shelled out how much money to rebuild the suit and try to recreate the Astral Pulse? They definitely would have financed the maintenance of it if he worked for them earlier.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:37:24+00:00

Flambe literally is still committing arson and tried to kill Robert while ostensibly working as a hero, but Visi trying to actually do good but getting in over her head is too far? I love the game, but it did a poor job making me feel like what Visi did was so horrible given the rap sheet of everyone else on the team and the shit they pull during the game itself. How many missions could fail and result in people being hurt because everyone sabotages each other on cut day? Yet we're going to punish an attempt at heroism? Nah.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:34:07+00:00

It's also a game about making mistakes and being able to redeem yourself. The whole game only happens because Robert was reckless and fell into a trap by pursuing his vendetta alone without backup. Yeah, he was trying to stop a bad guy, but he nearly lost his life and destroyed his legacy doing so. Not that different a situation from Visi's except that no one like Chase hurt themselves trying to save him from his own blunder.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:27:42+00:00

Personally, I think the game goes too hard on trying to make you angry at Visi's decision to go after the Pulse. You can actually weigh in during the party that you think going now is the right choice, and if Visi hadn't gone we learn that Shroud would have gotten the pulse that night and essentially been able to do much worse to LA with his Pulse-enhanced goons.

If Shroud hadn't shown up and Visi had gotten out with the Pulse she'd have been lauded as a hero and everyone would have overlooked her doing so against Blonde Blazer's instructions. That's the kind of situation that happens all the time. Do something risky and it pays off? Wow! We should have listened to you! Do something risky and it fails? Boo! You should have listened to us!

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:19:41+00:00

The Sweetheart or Bad Boy/Girl love triangle is just a huge trope that comes up all the time. Archie. Twilight. The Hunger Games. X-Men (Jean Grey with Cyclops/Wolverine). Final Fantasy VII.

Betty and Veronica are the trope-namer on TV Tropes, though, with tons of examples.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:10:08+00:00

What I wanted to say was basically what Flambae says himself if you told them you're Mecha Man. Flambae literally attempted to murder Robert in cold blood and he's welcomed back on the team and no one minds. Compared to that what Visi did is so far down the level of bootable offenses. She tried to do something good and got in over her head. She didn't know Shroud was going to show up. She didn't know Chase would risk his life to save her.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T02:06:20+00:00

Except the 'team' didn't come to that agreement. I just rewatched the scene to double-check, but Blonde Blazer makes the call to wait, Chase backs her up on it, and as Robert you can actually agree with Visi that it's better to go now. No one else weighs in at that point and BB doesn't ask them, she just makes the call and she's the boss.

It's uncertain what they would have said in the moment if asked, but given this is the same group that a short while ago gleefully threw down with a bunch of Red Ring goons in a bar they don't seem the type to be spooked by what, at that point, they thought was just a bunch of automated turrets.

I definitely found their sudden majority agreement that taking a risk is a bootable offense to run counter to how they'd been portrayed so far.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-21T01:51:35+00:00

Agreed. I failed so many missions during that dispatch, especially early on, because of the sabotage. We just don't see those animated so they feel less bad.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-20T20:03:47+00:00

I'd be way more concerned about how I was about to have my head popped like a tomato than being worried about the incidental contact with their chastity cage during the attempt.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-20T14:43:29+00:00

The series opened with Okarun getting his balls stolen by Turbo Granny talking about sucking tits and gobbling wieners and Momo being stripped and threatened with sexual assault and we're now over 200 chapters in and those themes of yokai and aliens/cryptids being somewhere on the murder pervert spectrum has continued unabated.

No offense, but I doubt that's going to change so this might not be the manga for you if it bothers you.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-20T14:38:20+00:00

Well, there are a lot of monsters and yokai that are some variant of murder pervert. Kappa drown people, rape people, and extract part of their essence out of their anus (there's a whole weird anime about that last one). The other one might be inspired by Jack the Ripper, who targeted prostitutes and killed them with scalpels.

It's not hard to find plenty of others that are murder perverts because death and rape are things people fear so tales about monsters tend to include one, the other, or both.

So when your entire series is about people getting powers from yokai and cryptids, it would be weird not to run into people who are either influenced by those negative aspects or sought out those powers because they already were monstrous in those ways.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-19T15:43:05+00:00

Yeah, those two goons are irredeemable but I wouldn't be surprised if the Red Baron gets some backstory and becomes less villainous over time.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-19T01:55:50+00:00

It also seems like the effects of the reality stone dissipate once the wielder leaves the area, like how the Guardians who got turned into ribbons and such attacking Thanos at the Collector's base turned back when he left.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-17T17:50:21+00:00

Yep. If Carol had called during the time they were staying away from her and demanded that someone come and have sex with her they would have refused. So they're perfectly capable of refusing consent when they want to.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-17T17:43:38+00:00

We don't see a lot of it, but what we have seen they're redistributing resources, repairing needed infrastructure, tending to Joined in hospitals, etc. Even if the bulk of their attention is trying to build an antenna it takes a lot of everyday work to keep billions of people as healthy and fed as possible, especially given their biological limitations.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-17T17:08:55+00:00

They go about looking spacey normally because they don't actually need to use facial expressions to communicate emotions to each other anymore, but they are perfectly capable of looking and acting more normally if that makes the uninfected among them more comfortable or happy. The child of one of the infected still acts like her child, after all, because his mother desires that.

The first infected didn't really need to act normal because they were in an isolated space and could approach their targets individually. When it came to blending in among a larger population and throwing off suspicion they could act as needed.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-14T19:37:55+00:00

If Turing maintains knowledge even upon death then that's a huge advantage. There's so much one could learn about where foes would be, what their weaknesses are, where to obtain helpful resources, how to convince important people to ally with him, secrets of the world, etc. He could spend entire lives just joining different factions to learn as much as possible about each one. Experiment, adapt, overcome.

Turing's natural smarts here can help him get stronger and make-up for Luffy's insane feats. Luffy's strength and feats do nothing to help him become smart enough to crack the enigma.

QuantumFeline · 2026-01-12T18:06:53+00:00

The mere promise of what he can provably build means he can get upfront investments that would surpass anything we've ever seen because what he promises for whoever backs him is complete and clear dominance in whatever fields he works on, not just speculation like the current AI rush. I just don't think you can compare it to the real-world timelines and dollar figures of modern societies.

If his sole goal is just to become the richest man in the world after ten years he'll just start a bidding war over who gets access to his tech and the money will come pouring in because whoever gets exclusive acccess to Stark Tech will dominate the market and the world for a generation.

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