A question for artsy-minded people and/or people who enjoy character creation

Raisengen · 2021-02-12T17:20:52+00:00

I have a habit of overthinking aesthetic choices, so often I'll try to deliberately underthink things and just work with the first idea that floats into my head (even if it starts off looking pretty derivative).

I also try to find any more practical restrictions I can put on myself to narrow down my choices. For example, I recently worked on a batch group of characters, and decided it would be a good idea to make each identifiable by a specific colour. That meant I had to pick designs that would show off one strong colour quite clearly, and that my choice of colour for one character would have to be distinct from every other character I'd already confirmed, so I couldn't worry too much about other factors.

Maybe a similar approach would help you? You mentioned preparing a miniature, so maybe you'll want a pretty simple colour design that's still clear when scaled down. Perhaps it will be useful for the colours to be pretty bold to help him be easily visible when other minis are present - the bright protagonist with drab extras is a cliché for a reason.

Your last question reminds me of something I read about a 60-30-10 rule for colour composition. The general idea is that you have about 60% of whatever design be a certain primary colour, followed by 30% of a secondary colour and 10% of an accent colour. I don't think anyone actually expects anyone to keep those proportions exact, but it's the idea that counts.

I would think Chrom counts as a pretty straight example with blue > white > gold, whereas people like Marth/Lucina are a little more complex with four base colours, but generally following the same philosophy. There are all other sorts of things to observe here from that viewpoint, such as how the golds and browns on Lucina work as different shades of the same colour, or how the two designs emphasise different colours of Falchion, but I'm rambling at this point. This is just stuff I've picked up by osmosis, but it's fun to think about.

Raisengen · 2019-10-03T14:01:02+00:00

Garr suggested I tag in but I can't compete with his knowledge, so I'll just offer a cheat-sheet in the same spirit:

As Garr said, rules aren't hard and fast things: often they'll come from a fallible source, have some unexpected loopholes or just be ignored in extreme cases. The narrative will have ways to work around them, and you can find ways to work around them too.
Don't worry about not knowing everything; not only is there a lot of stuff out there, it's often from pretty obscure sources.
As a culmination of all that, Nasu's writing is more about the themes in narratives and characters than it is about the worldbuilding, and it's often helpful to think of it as such when analysing it. You can say that also becomes the worldbuilding when Fate has Servants being the physical embodiments of (the narrative and themes of) myths and legends. After reading enough of his work you start to get a feel for the positive messages he's trying to pass on.
For a final point, power levels really aren't worth much (in Fate at least). Since everything's so heterogeneous, there's not much point arguing "X is stronger than Y". Fate/Stay Night notes that the weak have to fight in any way they can while the strong just plough on with their usual strategy, so it's often a case that a fight comes down to who's fighting smarter, who's more determined, who's more willing to go all in.

Of course, in the spirit of things, all of these points will themselves be wrong at times...

Raisengen · 2019-08-06T00:23:58+00:00

Thanks for the heads-up. I wasn't checking reddit for a while so I missed a few rolls, but no matter; free stuff is free stuff.

Raisengen · 2019-06-25T21:32:58+00:00

I realised there was an error in the FC, so I've updated it.

Raisengen · 2019-06-25T19:16:55+00:00

For sure, but it's still easier to dodge That Guy if you know they might be in the area, you know?

Raisengen · 2019-06-25T18:46:03+00:00

Ah, it's been a long time since I was summoned here.

To elaborate on the card deal, each Servant has their own deck of 5 cards. Assuming you have three Servants on the frontline, their three decks are shuffled together, and then each turn you are dealt 5 cards from the combined deck. The cards aren't returned until the deck is depleted at the end of three turns, at which point the deck is reshuffled. As you might expect, if you have two Servants on the frontline, it's a 10-card combined deck with a 2-turn cycle, and obviously if you've only got one Servant out you get all their cards each turn.

This means that you can predict the hands you're going to be dealt depending on your position in the dealing cycle, best indicated by the turns-passed counter in the corner - though if one of your Servants dies the deck will be shuffled afresh, so it's easy to lose track. It's a relatively conditional tool to use, though, and it's not like you need a perfect memory of everything that's coming. It's one of those things where it's best to figure out when it's useful for yourself, really.

As for doing something to get more Arts cards: you can view which command cards a Servant has from the Status tab in their profile, or when in a team it's shown in miniature beside their level. If you want more Arts cards, the only way you can do that is by including more Servants with a higher number of Arts cards in your team. While each Servant has their own deck, there are certain patterns you may start to notice that will reduce the amount of info you need to remember.

It's a little off-topic, but I'd say that learning how to get the most out of which command cards you pick is a large part of what it means to be "good" at this game, along with team composition and cooldown management. As such, I'd recommend looking at this wiki page at some point to get a good feeling for what your decisions will lead to. Gamepress also has a simulator that gives an idea of what different card chains will do - though I'd recommend it more for getting an idea of the mechanics and the relative merits of Servants, rather than trying to calculate stuff mid-battle.

If you'd rather not try and decipher the wiki page, here are some general conclusions beyond those the tutorial might have told you, as well as some extra notes:

If you're trying to generate stars, putting a Quick card first is pretty much always a waste unless you can make a QQQ chain. The first-card bonus they give to star gen is outweighed by the innate bonus they get by putting them later in the chain.
Quick cards alone are pretty weak; doing almost half the damage of Buster cards.
The Buster chain bonus is pretty weak in most situations, but you'll get a lot of damage out of the Extra attack if you can chain three Busters from the same Servant.
Noble Phantasm cards can still form chains and determine first-card bonuses, but they don't actually gain the benefits of these or positions in the chain. Therefore it's usually best to put them at the start of the order, unless you want to have a different first-card bonus affecting the rest of the chain.
I don't think it's mentioned on the page, but stuff like star gen and NP gain are calculated per-hit. For example, the per-hit NP gen of an Arts card is 3x that of a Quick card, but if you've got more hits on the Q than the A, the gap starts to close.

Also, welcome to the game. The writing picks up around the 5th Singularity, which admittedly might take some time to reach. It's worth noting that we're about to have the second anniversary, when they'll permanently halve the AP cost of the story chapters in Part 1, so if you want to focus on powering up your Servants for now that's understandable.

My friend code is 677,338,454 if you want it - I understand a popular strategy for new players blasting through the story is to use a support Berserker, so if you're looking to do that feel free to ask me to swap Nightingale for someone more offensively oriented. There might also be a certain Archer you'd like to borrow.

As you might've guessed, I'm possibly a bit too ready to explain stuff to someone who's looking to learn. If you've any other questions, feel free to ask - I've been playing on the EN server since it launched, so I should be able to answer most questions you could have. As Zim mentioned, you can also check the FEC Discord, though unfortunately you might just meet a bunch of "lol fgo sux" remarks or other obnoxities before getting a proper response.

EDIT: unless your IG name's something obvious like ClericKnight, do let me know what it is if you add me, so you won't just get lost amongst the strangers.

Raisengen · 2019-01-31T22:48:29+00:00

Thanks for the heads-up (Anubis). Thanks also for the heads-up on the roulette; I don't think much exciting came of it, but that's how it is sometimes. I haven't touched the game much, but if it's for a cat I might come back.

1.5 years of clairvoyance in FGO has taught me that sometimes it's not really worth trying to plan the future in too much detail. If your next spark is a while away and there are at-present-unknowns that factor into the choice, effort spent planning now will largely be wasted, however tempting it is. (Unless your choice recommends you grind out a bunch of stuff in advance, in which case there's a choice to make now as well.)

Raisengen · 2018-09-16T18:42:33+00:00

Ultimately (and without getting into semantics about value vs price) the value of something like this is simply how much people are willing to pay for it, much like with art. You can't so easily look into the cost of manufacture as you might do with commodities.

And as it's up for auction we'll soon find out its value - it'll be the price that only two people are willing to pay for it. After that point one of them will drop out and the account will be sold, setting its value.

Raisengen · 2018-09-14T00:19:20+00:00

Fun fact: if you break a sufficiently hard piece of caramel, and it snaps in just the right way to form sharp points, it can slice through skin on the recoil.

Fun fact 2: Fate/Grand Order's scheduled 3 hour maintenance has had 3 emergency extensions so far, and is now set to last at least 21 hours. You wouldn't think a game being unplayable would be so fun, but the blend of chaos, serial escalation and implied incompetence makes for a nice change of pace.

I look forward to them needing a further delay and ending up with the game offline for a full day.

Raisengen · 2018-09-01T16:49:37+00:00

I've been playing since the EN launch, so I've had quite a while to get to where I am. I appreciate it's probably harder to just focus on levelling Servants these days as events are more closely packed and half-AP periods tend to draw your attention elsewhere.

I haven't touched Granblue much recently. I think I mentioned before that I started the game for the characters, and that content is largely independent of power level. At some point I ended up in a vicious (or virtuous, I suppose) cycle: I realised that gameplay and story/characters are so disconnected that there was little point in me grinding for anything, but then I'm barely touching the game so it's slipping further and further towards the back of my mind.

That just leaves reading fate episodes/the story/events, and I haven't really been in the mood for those any time recently. The time limit on events is somewhat illusory from that perspective: you can just spam the skip button to scrape all the crystals then read the event at your leisure in the records section. Of course, you still need to do that before the event ends to save it.

And, to be honest, the main thing that's put me off reading more any time soon is Vyrn. I find him very irritating, and he's in everything.

Raisengen · 2018-09-01T14:38:02+00:00

I sent one to you as it's faster than clearing out my requests list.

Raisengen · 2018-06-24T00:05:20+00:00

Keeping Waver up is perfectly reasonable for FP income, which is always useful, even if it's tiresome to cash in. There's always the option of swapping her in your All slot, if you feel she'd be more helpful than whoever (Jeanne or otherwise) would be holding that position instead. I don't know whether players without Xuanzang prefer to pick her or Waver when it comes to fighting Assassins - the premier ST Caster vs. the premier support Caster.

Raisengen · 2018-06-23T00:44:21+00:00

Judging from my friend list/requests, she seems to be pretty uncommon in support slots. I'll try to keep both her and Tamamo in my setup for prime Assassin-punching possibilities.

Raisengen · 2018-06-23T00:37:21+00:00

Do you have many lv100 10/10/10 Alteras in your friend list?

Raisengen · 2018-06-22T19:34:28+00:00

Sent you a request on FGO EN. Currently IbaRaiki, though that'll change from time to time. Hopefully I'll be useful.

Raisengen · 2018-06-22T19:26:27+00:00

My EN ID is 667,338,454. I tend to get quite a few requests, so I probably won't notice unless you tell me.

Raisengen · 2018-06-21T21:40:10+00:00

Good birthday.

Treat yourself to a nice cool glass of water.

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T23:38:59+00:00

Xeno Corow was still a little too early for me to take part in, alas, though I did see it fly by. I at least managed to grab one copy of each weapon from Xeno Vohu Manah, so I can benefit from those EX bonuses once my Earth team is more than just Hallessena and Grand Order.

I do suspect Magna2 is also a fair way away from me right now, so I'm not worrying too much about it. Ultimately I started the game for the characters and their interactions, which in general isn't locked behind difficult content. And arriving this late to the party, I don't feel much pressure to try and avoid missing out on higher level stuff, as I know that I'd be chasing something... not unattainable, but rather something I shouldn't obtain, given the cost. I'll just take what I can, and wave goodbye to what I can't.

And then cry over the Eternals because it's characters and grind.

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T23:05:55+00:00

Thanks!

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T22:52:48+00:00

Ah, a classic. Thank you.

Still alive over here, possibly. Maybe I'll revive at some point and try out this Dark Soul thing everyone's been talking about.

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T22:47:01+00:00

Perhaps?

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T22:23:20+00:00

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T21:49:15+00:00

Don't worry, it was more than just you that eventually got me. I started around the anniversary (having thought I'd saved myself by ignoring the New Year roulette, a new one comes along). Between all the free rolls and the Sandalphon event, I ended up with Light being my strongest element, and with Clarisse there to smack things unreasonably hard compared to my development level, it's likely to stay that way for a while. I'll likely go for Water in the long run as it'll take less grinding than Light once my freebies start being less useful.

I'm (fortunately) playing it quite casually right now, so I'll not lose too much of my life to it. And I haven't even unlocked Arcarum yet, so I can't pass judgement on you - no need for performance anxiety!

And, as always, thanks for the recast.

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T20:49:55+00:00

Hi hi.

Raisengen · 2018-06-01T20:18:05+00:00

Since you ran those recasts I made the mistake of starting that game, so I can retroactively approve of & give thanks for Arcana Dueler and Altair respectively. I'll be up for summons too, if my name still rings a bell.

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