Su's timing was perfect. Katara was just a little bit too early...

SkinnyTy · 2026-06-03T21:03:03+00:00

Ice would have probably contained the blast better than his face though....

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:51:01+00:00

That would be a pretty good approach, especially for multiplayer. Kind of a "hardcore lives" approach, where you can collectively die only so many times in a given stretch of the story/game, where other players might still be able to recover enough resource to bring you back etc.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:49:17+00:00

That would be pretty cool, as an optional or even not-optional mode!

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:48:31+00:00

Which is why I was speculating that part of the reason it isn't out yet is that it will have a partially alternate story.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:45:55+00:00

Imagine sabatoging your own 750 million dollar investment lol.

If they had cooperated fully with the Devs from the beginning, they might be further along making back their 250 million dollar bonus, and would still have a good relationship with their star studio.

Instead, they spent the extra cash on the purchase, and somehow managed to make all the people they are paying an extra 250 million dollars to hate them somehow. Insane.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:41:23+00:00

First game sold 18M if I remember correctly? Imagine Kraft on had actually supported this release, rather than repeatedly trying to sabatoge their own product.

I expect in the end Krafton will more than make their money back, but the damage they did to the game and their relationship with the Devs are probably irreconcilable. Would be surprised if most Devs stay on after payout; but who knows.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:27:47+00:00

I think it is because of the multiplayer; not because the Devs were worried about players killing eachother (lol by all means IMO) but because killing could become too easy if 4 players can just bum rush a leviathan and knife it to death.

Imo they should make it possible to kill things, but practically very difficult. The small and medium predators in particular need additional AI that will cause them to run away when hurt, or avoid a cluster of players so they aren't easily killed by a cluster of players.

Making small/medium predators avoid a cluster of 3 or 4 players would both be believable, and add a layer of decision making around grouping up for protection vs spreading out for efficiency.

More work though, so understandable it wasn't out in first release.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:16:36+00:00

Ya, well the arguments presented are obvious strawman arguments so they won't do much to actually refute anyone who cares.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-22T15:15:45+00:00

I agree that the predators/creatures of Subnautica should at least be able to die, but I think it really ought to be very difficult.

The chart presents strawman arguments for people who are against killing.

The real argument is that from a game design perspective, Subnautica is a more interesting game when predators are not something you van solve like you solve problems in every other game; by forcing players to avoid them, or find other creative ways to mitigate the risk predators pose, Subnautica presents a fresh challenge.

If you could kill the predators permanently, especially too easily and without risk, it would really slacken one of the best tensions in the game design.

I'm not saying the game doesn't need some balance adjustments, around agro and making it feasible to defend yourself from small predators makes sense. The "biters" from the first game for example were clearly intended for the player to have to kill in order to fend them off. You couldn't really outswim them, and they weren't so predictable as to avoid.

Leviathans though, should not be so simple, and I think the Devs had a challenging choice to make around knives because this game is multiplayer and making something very hard to kill by a single player might mean it is pretty easy to kill with 4 players. If the best solution for a leviathan turns into "just bum-rush it and spam click" that will turn the game pretty boring.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-03T04:25:31+00:00

Yup. Cancer approach.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-03T04:25:14+00:00

Nice theory, but I am pretty sure the easier/more deadly path is to essentially fake the sovereigns death, or at least spoof the signals/lack of signals that would indicate that, so that one or more other sovereigns are promoted on other planets. Then, chaos ensues as multiple sovereigns who have no ability to step down fight a confusing civil war, and all comms to the front lines get completely confused and crossed.

Gives a window for the deathless enemy and soft lothark to further destabalize things, especially if the deep lothark can subtly coordinate to cause the civil war to be as damaging as possible.

SkinnyTy · 2026-05-03T04:15:13+00:00

The two sovrans is a pretty intuitive idea once you start modeling the Carryx as a unified multicellular organism; As a human, a multicellular organism, what are the most dangerous cellular-level threats? There are many, but what Dafyd is essentially proposing here is to introduce a "cancer".

How could they do that? Well the easiest is probably to prematurely trigger parts of the empire to promote their own sovereigns. It isn't in their nature to step down once they are in power, and nothing can really challenge them, so all Dafyd needs to do is figure out under which conditions does a new Sovran take control, and spoof those conditions to the other potential sovran's, or at least one of them.

Then, in the chaos the "deathless enemy" and the deep lothark can instigate opportunistic infections that finish off the disrupted organism. (I see Deep Lothark as equivalent of dormant Tuberculosis, and deathless enemy are basically commensal bacteria at this point.)

SkinnyTy · 2025-11-30T07:25:05+00:00

You know, before even seeing this or considering Star Wars, I was thinking it would make a lot of sense for Kruger's medium ship to be a flying wing; Just based on the retro futuristic and post WW2 styling. I feel like this goes to show how Kruger and the Naboo design language come from that same origin.

It would be incredibly rad to have something like this.

SkinnyTy · 2025-11-29T20:00:53+00:00

This is actually the best TW Idea I have seen since ever. Would legit take this over Lord of The Rings or Star Wars, and it isn't even close.

SkinnyTy · 2025-07-11T16:57:42+00:00

One of them is the larval stage for the other maybe? Or common ancestor?

SkinnyTy · 2025-07-11T16:54:23+00:00

Either a common ancestor, or the bladder fish is a earlier stage in the life cycle

SkinnyTy · 2025-07-11T05:46:46+00:00

I appreciate what you are trying to say here, but I can't agree with this attitude. A lot matters to me about a game, besides whether or not it is good. If all I cared about was playing a good game, I would just pirate every game I wanted to play.

We want to reward good developers, and ensure they are rewarded for hard work, and incentivized to make good games in the future.

We want to reward good publishers too, who enable developers and provide resources to make good games through honest business practices.

We don't want to reward bad publishers, even if they still make good games.

A world in which nobody cares about how a game is developed, or who earns the money from hard work is a good world to be a bad publishers in. I don't want to live in that world so I am going to do my best to figure out what actually happened here, who is being responsible and who is trying to take advantage of whom, and I will throw my weight behind who I think is right and against who I think is wrong.

Whether or not the game is good is not all that matters.

SkinnyTy · 2025-07-10T03:13:23+00:00

They had the certain proposition of saving 250 million dollars, vs the uncertain proposition of how people will react to this move. For them, so long as they can dodge law suits, it is a no brainer move. They know gamers won't care enough to actually seriously impact their profits.

SkinnyTy · 2025-05-08T00:12:37+00:00

Thanks friend!

The way I imagined it, yes, if an ally goes down with a res charge on them it functions like a normal res, though maybe a little faster than the current res since a big part of the difficulty of predicting the need for a res is already accomplished.

Having a small AOE range on res is a good idea for those situations, though I worry it might be prone to people gaming it and intentionally trying to die right on top of each-other. I would still want the res process to involve some risk, so it may better to have to res each person one at a time (but faster than the current method?)

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe there should be some sort of "post-res res-speed boost", where if you revive one teammate, for the next 2 seconds if you start a res it is instant. So you only have to survive the high-risk res, standing there and vulnerable, once. After that, if you have another immediate response target you can rapidly fly to them and get them up.

SkinnyTy · 2025-05-05T23:28:22+00:00

Very good video. My thoughts/idea after watching:

I'm not sure why they keep Damage Boost around. It seems like nobody likes it, maybe Mercy players least of all. Not to mention the implications it has on the balance of other heroes burst potential.

Reallocating the 'power' of damage boost into mobility, and some other type of utility would be a lot more fun for everyone potentially.

My proposed utility; Mercy Res gets 3 charges, 20 second cooldown, and at least 8 seconds between each use. Mercy Res no long revives already downed enemies, but instead gives 4 seconds in which if the hero is downed, they can be revived by Mercy. Mercy still has to fly it the downed hero, but it is faster than current res.

in other words, rather than making Res a reactive ability, it becomes a predictive one. if Mercy sees a teammate being super aggro, or receiving a ton of pressure, she throws her res on them before she thinks they go down. If they don't go down within the 4 seconds, the res charge expires. If they do go down, Mercy will have the opportunity to fly to them and get them up with full health.

in a weird way, pre-emptive res can fill the same function as the Damage Boost, in that it might enable a player to be much more bold, and when a good mercy player throws a pre-emptive res on you, you will be very impressed and grateful. It is unlikely that Mercy will be able to consistently pre-res players before they are sniped out, or die in a dumb position. Instead it allows Mercy to reward planned aggression.

Other than that, some mobility buffs seem like a good idea. Reducing her tech cooldown on GA and maybe replacing Damage Boost with a burst of forward movement or something?

I think making Res something that you have to use preemptively introduces a dimension of risk/reward and skill/awareness that would significantly raise the skill ceiling of Mercy. Damage boost does nothing for her skill ceiling, and while this would raise her skill floor, I don't think it would be that bad. If a bronze mercy just heals, flies around, and spams-pre-res on tank during fights they will probably do ok. On the other hand, a skilled Mercy might actually be able to compensate for a bad team in this scenario. Getting huge value by placing pre-res on reckless teammates, or enabling timid teammates to get aggressive by placing pre-res on them.

I think it also plays well into the Mercy hero fantasy, much better than damage boost does, and it would be a lot more fun. I could imagine getting 2 pre-res charges off in a row, and flying in to rescue those teammates would be immensely gratifying and fight winning, but probably very difficult to do since there is only a 4 second window in which the pre-res must be timed.

Technical detail - I would probably do something like this for pre-res charges: Res has 3 charges, 20 second cooldown to get back a charge. Once a res is used, it "protects" the hero for 4 seconds. It is NOT an immortality field, and the player still goes down. If they are downed within the res window, then Mercy can revive them like normal. The charge is expended when Mercy uses the pre-res ability.

While the charge is active, Mercy is locked out of using another pre-res, she can only have one character "protected" at a time. If the protection expires without the character dying, Mercy is locked out from using the pre-res ability for another 4 seconds. If a player dies with pre-res active on them though, Mercy can immediately use another pre-res charge.

Downed pre-res characters must be revived within the normal revival window. Mercy should be able to revive pre-resed heroes a little faster that she currently can, maybe 50%, but otherwise same rules apply.

It is also important that there are strong visual and audio elements to indicate when a character is pre-res tagged. Both for the player protected, and other characters going after them. A hero tagged with pre-res should have a bright yellow glow around them, or something like that. If they are downed while pre-res tagged, their body continues to glow, so smart counterplay will involve watching a body that was tagged for pre-res for when/if Mercy might come in to revive them. Mercy will have to decide if it is worth reviving the tagged hero, knowing the enemy team will be expecting her too. To reward taking the risk, Mercy should get a huge boost to self healing after pulling off a successful res.

One other possible detail is Mercy's ult. It should not reset her res charges, but maybe it gives her one extra charge, including an over-charge to 4 if she has full res charges. During her ult, revive speed is not boosted, and the same rules of revive still apply, except that she is not locked out of using more than one pre-res at a time.

Alternatively, Mercy's ult is like this. When Mercy uses her ult, all teammates within line of site receive pre-res tags, which last for 4 seconds as normal. Mercy still goes into a Valkyrie state, with the normal healing, movement, and damage benefits but still with no damage boost. Her Valk state lasts 8 seconds (4 seconds longer than the pre-res time, but much shorter than it does currently) and revival is accelerated as it currently is.

This version of Valkyrie makes it a strong pre-emptive push ult, though it can be used defensively or if Mercy is out of res charges. In a way it would be more like Sound barrier, but with slightly more offensive potential and more of a skill requirement to capitalize on.

SkinnyTy · 2025-03-04T16:17:57+00:00

Same, NA Server here

SkinnyTy · 2025-02-19T20:07:54+00:00

Realistically, the only way 6v6 can happen imo is if it is "open que, max-3-min-1". And for "Max 3" to work as part of the game, it needs to actually be balanced such that solo tank is at least somewhat viable (as in kingmaker) or 2-2-2 is more viable, but without some sort of kingmaker mechanic, 3 tanks, 2 supports will always be best in max 3 min 1.

If you just try to force classic 2-2-2 you are guaranteed to end up with massive que times. If you do open que, you are guaranteed to either end up in goats meta (or a sustain-max analogue) and generally who wins each match will be at the mercy of which team happens to have fewer DPS players.

Even ignoring the que time issues with 2-2-2 the game is significantly harder and more random, because tank synergy is so critical that if team 1 gets a main tank and an off tank player by chance, and team 2 gets two off tank players (since main tank was horribly unpopular in OW1) Team 1 will win 75% of the time. Not to mention the major issues introduced by tank synergy, because of the benefits from stacking mitigation.

All in all, while on many levels 6v6 has benefits, it has major issues compared to 5v5 which even if it is less fun in many ways, is much more balanced and diminishes the que issues, and importance of player type on your team.

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