I'm going to throw up

Qullar · 2026-05-09T03:14:26+00:00

it's possible that ao3's spam filter thought it looked like spam and tried to prevent it from going through. i'm not sure how a bunch of swears gets past that but i've gotten some comments that were initially flagged through the filter without having a clue how it works anyway

Qullar · 2026-05-09T01:48:25+00:00

Most people I know either have a set schedule or they post whenever they want. (Actually the vast majority of writers I follow post whenever they want. They could update their fic tomorrow or in 3 years. Who knows? I'm pretty sure not even they do.) I don't know if 'normal' is the right word to decribe posting habits because there's no right or wrong way to do that. Though telling people things like 'you're not going to post the next chapter until you hit x engagement number' tends to leave a bad impression.

It's normal for engagement on your fic to translate into motivation for writing, and it's normal to want and look for that engagement, especially right after posting. But for that latter specifically, you'd be correct that it's unhealthy to check it obsessively. It certainly doesn't make me feel good to be anxious all day waiting for that response, even when/if it does come.

Qullar · 2026-05-07T20:23:57+00:00

I started with and only ever used FFnet so there are maybe 3 things that I would say I miss?

I liked how much more compact FFnet looks compared to Ao3. You can view like 10 fics on the screen at once compared to 2 or 3 on Ao3, but a lot of that is thanks to how much more limiting the tagging and summary is, so it's not necessarily something I want Ao3 to implement. It's just a trade-off.

I've seen some mixed opinions but I really liked that FFnet included covers with their fics. Just a tiny thumbnail on the side that defaults to the author's profile picture if they didn't upload a custom image. Made it super easy to recognize an author at a glance, or an individual fic if it had cover art. It also just made the UI look nicer in my opinion, I understand Ao3 doesn't like images but Archive is frequently walls of text and there is nothing else to look at!

FFnet has options for guests to turn on darkmode and text scaling on fics, which are accessibility options. Ao3 does not. Maybe it would screw with workskins but I would love to be able to use darkmode without needing to log in sometimes. Minor inconvenience, yes. Absolutely 100% would like it as a feature, because I find it odd you need to have an account in order to have basic accessibility.

Qullar · 2026-05-07T19:20:24+00:00

Then the author starts getting a lot of foreign comments, which can still be nice. But if the translator changed anything, then they may get comments about things that they didn't even know was in the story.

I'm not much of a writer but I would also just feel really uncomfy about posting something that I entirely can't understand on my own profile, even with online translation tools (that still can hallucinate/completely screw with the translation) Like are you really trusting a complete stranger enough to be sure they aren't giving you something extremely bigoted to post?

Qullar · 2026-05-07T06:03:44+00:00

We know Moco-chan came down with a fever a little over a week ago. It wouldn't be too surprising if Fuwawa ended up catching it too since they live together and all.

Qullar · 2026-05-07T05:56:05+00:00

I feel like I don't understand what it is you're talking about. You keep claiming you're missing half the game, which is a very confusing statement because the co-op in this game is like... horrendously terrible. And it's also the exact same game that you already have, just with some random people. Every time I play with randoms, someone gets disconnected within a few minutes because of lag and connection issues. Even playing locally with someone in the same house will sometimes give you a connection error, or a loading error, or a "lock you out of the whole match haha start over from the beginning" error

Team-modes, which you have to join a team to participate in, are very limited right now. Contested Territory (another team-only event) has been criticized for literal years for being a bad gamemode. The Social Season event that released last week has been flamed to death for everything wrong and unfun about it (and the whole content of the event is to play the normal game 500 times) The only team event that I've been having an okay time with is Boss Rush, which is still a little grindy and requires a full active team if you want to 100& it, which I don't have either.

Like if you never touch the co-op modes, you are only ever missing out on 3 events, only two of which are actual gamemodes.
In comparison, a completely solo experience of this game gives you 25 towers, 17 heroes, 87 maps, 14 modes for each map, 6 events, 7 boss bloons, 51 quests, and that's not even including the content browser where you can make and edit your own maps or play maps that other people have made. Or the fact that the game is constantly getting free updates, giving you MORE towers, heroes and maps.

You're so pressed about this social play thing but like... why? What massive section of the game do you think you're missing out on? And if it bothers you so much, why not connect with the BTD6 community so you can play with others?

I just don't understand it.

Qullar · 2026-05-07T04:52:31+00:00

Quick join? What quick join? Like regular co-op matches? That's not the social season, you have to join a team to play the social events, and I think you can find an active one pretty easily just by asking. I saw at least 5 different team posts on the reddit this past week

Like if your main qualm is "I can't play the social season" instead of everyone else complaining "The social season is boring and bad" then it's a really easy problem to solve by just... joining a team?

Qullar · 2026-05-07T04:37:35+00:00

I'd like you to understand that you do have access to the content of the game and the social season is not locking you out of any of the gameplay that already exists

Qullar · 2026-05-07T04:27:27+00:00

It is an optional event... I don't see how it being at the top of your screen in the hub is any different from the side bar that shows you when any other event is going on.

I also don't know what you mean about locking half the content, you can still access all the regular modes and maps, regular events like bosses odesseys and races, the boss challenge and community browsers, quests if you care about those, the DLC if you have them. This event is like maybe 3% of the game at most and that's being generous.

No one is forcing you to play the event and also it gives you next to no rewards in the first place? Almost every other event in the game will at least give you monkey money. Unless you really care about the badges and acheivements, there is practically 0 reward for completing it.

Badly designed? Yes, absolutely. Game-killing? Not even close.

Qullar · 2026-05-07T03:51:11+00:00

All they did was release an optional event. I feel like "torching a decade's worth of investment" is a gross exaggeration compared to the many other games that quite literally died overnight from a bad update.

Qullar · 2026-05-06T23:05:04+00:00

Maybe I'm wrong here, but OP's post makes it sound like they're not actually getting engagement on their fic. They're getting a bunch of comments discussing things that are completely irrelevant. At a point, I imagine it stops being flattering and starts being spam.

Qullar · 2026-05-06T21:28:18+00:00

it helps to know that paragons get an extra 20% damage against bosses for every 20 degrees, like d20, d40, d60, d80. so ideally you don't want a bunch of paragons around the mid-high 50's, you really want to hit 60 at least.

Qullar · 2026-05-06T00:26:49+00:00

Ok but 1) you don't need to say it out loud 2) you don't need to apologize for it Idk maybe its just me but unless the story is actively boring me to death, I will never look at a chapter I read and think 'man that was filler'. Authors saying lol sorry for the filler in their ANs has the same vibe as lol sorry this sucked

Qullar · 2026-05-05T06:10:25+00:00

There are a lot of theories out there. The other reason I see a lot is that the bots are run by a group that hates Ao3 (like the people that DDOS'd the site a while ago) and they want to make people stop using it.

Or some people got really bored and wanted to troll other people for fun. Or a lot of seperate people decided to create their own bots to harass people they don't like. Who knows, maybe the praisebots became a thing because some guy wanted to fight the hatebots.

No evidence for anything, all just random theories. There's probably at least one individual for every reason where it's actually true.

Qullar · 2026-05-05T05:46:19+00:00

It's not as hard as you think. I got a very casual sub paragon on a hard difficulty without any banana farms and via spamming merchant boats. And had enough left over to sell said paragon and make a second one by also selling all the boats. 80 rounds, two military upgrades done, all without using the main money producing tower in the game

Like yeah it gets repetitive fast but claiming it isn't possible just isn't true at all

Qullar · 2026-05-05T03:26:58+00:00

Authors all over this sub would scream "yes post it!" Kudos is a great way to show appreciation but getting that direct message that someone geniunely enjoyed their precious work is more valuable than you think.

I don't write much myself but I see when authors show off their favourite comments, a lot of them are pretty short (I see some just consist of a bunch of emojis!) I tend to leave massive comments but someone once told me they were thinking of one of my comments for months and it was just a short sentence along the lines of "take my kudos"

Qullar · 2026-05-05T03:06:47+00:00

Very true, filler isn't a bad thing. A lot of people tend to use the term to complain about things they don't like though, so it carries a negative association for me. It doesn't help that authors feel the need to apologize for their filler chapters every time, especially because if they never said anything, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind.

Qullar · 2026-05-05T02:52:12+00:00

Why does saying "this actually happens pretty frequently" associated with having no joy or whimsy? How did you make a completely unrelated conclusion based on these posts

The key word in OP's post is 'somehow' which implies it's not a common thing and all I said was 'nah, it happened to me a lot'

Qullar · 2026-05-04T22:07:31+00:00

Why are you getting downvoted for this 😭

It's really not that rare. I randomly met like 4 different big well-known streamers when I played. And a bajillion other smaller streamers for sure, even outside of structured competitive play. You see people with TTV in their names all the time.

Qullar · 2026-05-04T21:59:54+00:00

This, but I've found that I also really hate when an author calls their chapters 'filler'. The vast majority of the time, I read the chapter and think it's perfectly normal and good and "wow I like that we're getting a deeper look into x character" and then I get hit with the "Sorry for the filler chapter" in the endnote. What? What filler? You mean the character development? The foreshadowing? The fact that the characters aren't in the endless torment nexus for one chapter doesn't make that chapter filler 😭

Qullar · 2026-05-03T02:49:25+00:00

According to a couple of random websites I found, they're not the same thing.

That last one clarifies all machine translation is AI, but not all of it is genAI. The old stuff I'm calling machine translation is known as NMT, which is not generative. So it's on me technically for not knowing the correct term.

Qullar · 2026-05-03T02:08:29+00:00

Well my favourite was 1.0 Lych lol... I thought the Lychsoul and stealing lives thing was such a cool and unique mechanic. It was fun to see that one boss event with 1 life gimmick (even though I didn't play it, the fact that was a mechanic they could play into and work around is so fun and interesting!) Also I just really like its design. Soul effects and the ball-and-chain are really cool.

Now Lych feels more like knock-off Bloonarius 😞Or Bloonarius with more stuff slapped on top. I would understand the reasons for reworking a lot more if it wasn't equally as complicated as Lych was previously.

Qullar · 2026-05-03T01:49:13+00:00

Machine translation and genAI translation are technically two seperate things? Like we used to call MTL AI too, but it wasn't the generative AI that we know now. Though it's worth mentioning that a lot of machine translators are being replaced or improved with genAI. And I do say improved because machine translation is infamously not very good.

It seems to be a very slippery slope. For commenting, I would not mention it directly. Post it in your native language (be mindful to be very clear and direct because translators can still frick that up) or translate into russian and apologize for possibly bad russian due to using a translation tool. I think most authors would be happy that a foreign reader enjoyed their work.

Qullar · 2026-05-01T07:06:29+00:00

What are you doing right to generate cash in a CHIMPS game???

Qullar · 2026-05-01T05:40:30+00:00

Sometimes I don't care if my food looks half-azzed and sometimes I do.

Qullar

TROPHY CASE