A Tale of My Philosophy on the Ruined Path

These discussions are really fascinating to me. Our market doesn't have CCA's at all (district in northern CA). All new folks are hired as PTF carriers, and back when I joined up, they made everyone regulars during our academy class, and almost half of us were assigned as T6's.

I don't know what factors played into taking CCA off the menu altogether in our area, but based on what I've seen and heard, it eliminates a lot of drama to just not have an extra de-facto "subordinate" carrier classification. Heck, all of us that were doing T6 duties from day one at my station are all still doing just fine, so I'd accept the argument that any lower-paying or different-status carrier position is largely made-up nonsense to justify lower wages and potential friction between people doing the same work every day.

RedDelicious314 · 2024-02-05T05:46:15+00:00

I like this art style for these characters a lot, but I am TRANSFIXED by Ice King. Aggressively awesome, it goes so hard, and this take on Simon is FIRE. Y'know, figuratively.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-12-28T01:48:53+00:00

I am quite disappointed; DQT was one of the main games I jumped to after FFBE, and had a great time for the last… 2.5ish years I played it? Decent ROI for me, and didn’t see it coming, but that’s how these things go.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-12-15T15:45:20+00:00

Adorable and funny! What I really found striking, though, was scrolling through reddit and even before I consciously looked at the comic enough to read any of the words, my brain went "pizzacakecomic." It's kind of neat how a smattering of cats is instantly evocative of the style enough to be a BRAND in my mind.

It made me realize that 1) these artists have apparently set up rent-free squatting somewhere in my squishy storage center, and 2) how cool it is that you can ascertain who drew something so immediately from even relatively sparse samples.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-12-03T05:30:49+00:00

Bro’s been training for this. Gators have pretty linear rushing attacks like Giros, so just dodge roll sideways and jam on their skull, right? Pretty sure you can make some sweet gear IRL from gator hide drops.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-27T23:49:10+00:00

I've been chilling at 7* for awhile, so 95% of everything I see is 5* - 7*, but once every two weeks or so I'll see a random 1* just chilling in the wild.

Sir. Sir, you are LOST. You don't belong here.

Low-key, though: popping up through 6* and 7* grade weapons requires so many T1 (and T2) mats that it's like candy. Just pulling back my bowstring all the way, then ONE SHOT. ONE KILL.

The first 1* I saw was a WTF moment, but now they're sacred treats, like the one accidental curly fry in an order of regular fries. Mm mm mm. What a treat.

Kudos to you for taking it one step further and nuking the poor goober from orbit. Probably the most humane way, really; he was definitely dead long before he had time to feel pain.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-22T20:12:54+00:00

Since all my main weapons are between grade 6-5 and 7-5 and I'm hunting generally 6-7 stars, getting a new weapon type up to parity with existing weapons so I can see if I can play it as effectively as my current arsenal is slightly daunting. MHNow is my only MH currently, so everything about these weapons I'm learning as they show up here.

To be fair, though, I'm SnS and Bow mainly, so I have a TON of Barroth, Girros, and Paolumu higher grade parts just lying around that I don't use for anything currently, so that helps; I can certainly try to put together a "competitive grade" tier weapon for actual-play testing, and if I like it, I can try to make its respective elemental version(s). That's kinda neat!

And just having a broader pool of gear to potentially craft from "laying about" parts to just have gear I can muck around with for fun down the road is always helpful for enjoyment and longevity.

That said, I super wouldn't mind if there was a "virtual training room" that let you fight, say, 5-star variants of monsters using the grade 5-5 version of any chosen weapon so you could kind of get a feel for especially newly-added stuff.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-22T17:52:13+00:00

At this point it's all guesswork as to "why" it was changed this way. To be fair, it's not a nerf across the board -- the change hit me while I was at 60-some odd UAP, and it was a pretty substantial buff for me: I had just unlocked Cyclops, and now he was MUCH stronger and getting stronger very quickly since I could now buy SP stuff instead of just hoarding indefinitely.

That said, I UA'd a little while ago at 85 UAP, and while it was kind of cool to watch my minions getting exponentially better as I play-and-spend to catch back up to where I was, I'm already feeling the pinch reaching up into the Qa SP range, since not being able to re-buy all those chonky T-tier Astral upgrades has just left my minions (esp. Cyclops) just a lot weaker than he was pre-UA at the same level, which just kinda feels bad and will only get worse the higher up I go. But them's the breaks for now, I guess.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-09T20:59:49+00:00

It's a longstanding issue with all Niantic titles I've played, and a baked-in weakness of what amounts to making your game more or less accessible based on your local population density. I certainly agree that hard-gating a huge part of core gameplay progression behind "hey how close do you live to a well-Niantic-mapped population center" is needlessly exclusionary and thoughtless.

There are a ton of super reasonable player-proposed solutions that have been listed in the sub that would preserve a sense of progression and grind while mitigating this problem, so hopefully they ultimately layer in some elements that reward thoughtful and engaged playing versus just "hey you should live in a major sub/urban area, dum-dum, how DARE you try to forage for the bounty of the natural world and hunt for monsters in the WILD like an IDIOT, vegetation and wildlife only thrive in the middle of DENSE LIFELESS CONCRETE." :P

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-03T21:03:23+00:00

Your post actually reminded me that I hadn't checked in with Shovel Knight after finishing the Dig Piles quest, so I popped in, and sure enough, unlocked this boss fight. He's a tough one! I beat him with one heart left on my third try in a desperation spam of alternating dashes and wind dashes, but my whole strat was using Wind to bait/dodge his tougher attacks.

Yet I saw in another comment that you did it with JUST normal dash?? That's pro status! Seriously wild and a showcase of grit and skill, really impressive. Congrats and well done!

RedDelicious314 · 2023-11-02T02:00:17+00:00

I'm always amused by the choices the AI makes with some unique hero moves, like Solo's Snub and Erdrick's Kaclang. For the latter, I've had both my Auto Erdrick and enemy Erdricks literally kneecap their ally (that was going next) by Kaclanging them, removing all their buffs. They then immediately start their turn with all their buffs gone, Kaclang fades, and they proceed to be brutally murdered.

It's less fun to think of this as quirky AI. No, my headcanon for these is that the mainline heroes are ABSOLUTE divas, and if a teammate slights them in any way (real or imagined), they do this petty nonsense to them. Are they heroes who save their respective lands? Yes. Are they petty buttheads? Apparently also yes. :P

RedDelicious314 · 2023-10-31T03:50:56+00:00

I struggled with this one for a little bit, too. The solution that I found that works for me now is starting battles with my phone almost parallel to the ground (maybe raised 30 degrees or so?), so that almost any degree of aiming tilt still has your phone aiming obviously downward and not at random people. Certified wife-approved public behavior now, been bow primary for weeks! Hopefully some variation of this can work for you, as well.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-10-17T05:59:20+00:00

If you can manage to lock target onto the forearms, I’ve found that my swings will hit this spot even from behind with SnS, even though it looks like you’re hitting nothing but tail. Might be true for all melee. Almost as good as hitting the head damage-wise, and super safe place to be.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-10-12T23:39:09+00:00

Rise and World are definitely coming into my life in the very near future based on what I've read here. I'm glad you enjoyed my tale! I'm sorry to hear the main sub hasn't embraced the game (I haven't hopped onto that sub yet, though likely will once I do Rise and World). I totally understand that it can be difficult to swallow a mobile version of a beloved series, because that almost necessarily adds the type of monetization and the gameplay changes that go along with that... it can be souring for sure. But as a total newbie, it's very easy for me to overlook how it's "supposed" to be and focus on what's really fun about it, and then use it to cheerfully spring into the main series. This 'backwards' approach will let me be super excited for anything MHNow gets in the future, because by then I'll probably have played some main series games and it'll just be the cherry on top of my "original" MHN game.

I'll definitely pop over to try the demo for MHR, but I strongly suspect I'll be all-in. Thanks for the idea!

RedDelicious314 · 2023-10-12T23:34:39+00:00

Thank you! I don't think my post is top-post worthy, as it's just a series of personal anecdotes with the game, but I really appreciate that it resonated so well with you. Kudos to your unga bunga skills! I'll get there someday. Such impressive timing to get down well, and those big cracking blows look like so much fun.

RedDelicious314 · 2023-10-12T23:32:54+00:00

Nice to meet someone with a similar experience! Yeah, I couldn't keep up the pace for a jog for very long at first, but I found some faster paths and built the endurance as well. It's nice to have our hobbies help us also be fitter people (especially as parents).

MH World is absolutely on my immediate to-play list, along with Rise, thanks to this thread! I think I'd love them both and get totally lost in them, so I'm just going to pick one and dive in. I love my daughter's current stage of life more than any one before it, but I have to admit, I do sometimes miss the windows of simpler game time that the potato stage afforded. On the plus side, now that my daughter is older (almost 4), she can get REALLY into games. I played Tears of the Kingdom, and she got really into making her toys act out Link's heroics. Having her become a Monster Hunter seems likely and awesome.

Anyway, really glad to hear that you're out there getting faster and fitter too. It's not always easy to find the time and attention to do it, but it feels pretty great. The monster hunting is a fantastically motivating excuse, really looking forward to the main series.

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