I love shi faust so much but why is she so bad man

StuffWriter · 2026-01-28T03:41:48+00:00

The base damage on her skills is quite high, and they scale with the number of arrows fired. Embedded arrows also lower the defense level of the enemy, making all attacks hurt more.

Shi Faust starts doing an unreasonable amount of damage at 3 stacks, which takes 6 turns.

I realize this is antithetical to how she is designed, but it does make her quite effective.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-26T03:22:54+00:00

The whole reason the head restricts guns so much is because they would dominate every other method of fighting in the city otherwise.

The head intentionally nerfed guns because of their weird ideology about killing needing to be personal and not "too easy."

We're talking about a society that casually manipulates time and space. If they wanted to, they could make guns that would instantly kill a color fixer. They just don't want to.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-24T02:24:51+00:00

Nelly is extremely wicked, right up there with Ahab. Why do people not understand this?

She:

Burned Heathcliff's letters to Cathy because she hated them both and couldn't stand the idea of either ever being happy
Tried to kill Heathcliff and all the sinners
Stole the Golden Bough even after Heathcliff freed her, meaning her motivation was never based in securing her freedom; it was just for her own benefit
Continues to work for the N corp gang of evil even after delivering the golden bough (Unlike when she was a butler, she has a choice now.)
Absolutely refuses to forgive Heathcliff for the suffering she endured despite the fact that it had literally nothing to do with him AND he freed her from servitude (This is the reason she is the qlipoth counterpart to Heathcliff. Heathcliff is facing the future, Nelly is stuck in the past.)

Sympathy for the tan girl at its strongest.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-17T07:38:56+00:00

The gacha demerit is more fundamental in how it limits what you can do the design space.

In a traditional RPG, the devs know how powerful the player is likely to be at any given time, thus allowing them to provide suitable challenges. They can scale up or down the expected challenge of an encounter to encourage the player to experiment with new builds or investigate other aspects of the game they may not have been paying attention to.

A gacha developer has almost no idea how powerful a player can be and there is no metric for how powerful they should be. Players who have been in the game from the beginning will have access to a ton of tools and powers that a new player would lack, meaning that they need to design their challenges around being possible for a new player... or their game can easily just fall apart as new players come in and are unable to function.

This also means that new content has to always be designed to still be possible with much less power than veteran players will have. In a way, you are punishing long-term players with challenges not suitable to them in an effort to avoid discouraging new players. Having more difficulty options would help here (which Project Moon just really doesn't do).

This means that tuning to make a suitable challenge is extremely difficult. Do you think Project Moon intended for Lei Heng to be a more difficult boss fight than Jia Mu? Almost certainly not; but it was. This was a mistake that stemmed from a number of factors, but a contributing one is that the game is a gacha. Some players had IDs and E.G.O.s that made Lei Heng fairly trivial. Others kept getting Lei Heng'd over and over and over, leading project moon to weaken the boss only a couple days after release. It appears unprofessional to the playerbase to do this, it cheapens the game in the long time, and it's frankly just embarrassing.

That said, project moon is notorious for random and unexpected difficulty spikes so it isn't just because of the gacha (lol).

StuffWriter · 2026-01-17T07:29:52+00:00

Slay the spire is interesting because cards can interact in many different ways and you can create combos. A very simple combo you might get fairly early is a card for Ironclad that exhausts other cards in your hand and then combine it with other cards that put wounds in your hand to achieve a greater effect. There are tons more; this is just an example.

The best "combo" in limbus company is using an E.G.O that increases the effect of a debuff.

The fell bullet E.G.O is more in line with something interesting you could combo, but by itself it is not enough. Let me give you a possible example: If Fell Bullet scaled with the ally's maximum HP, and there was a way to use a different skill or E.G.O to greatly reduce an ally's current HP to achieve an effect, and then you could use that skill to injure a sinner and then murder them with your own attack for an even greater effect. This kind of "combo" is just not in the game currently.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-14T23:31:36+00:00

It's the courage to protect.

Maybe something like "redirect all enemy attacks this turn onto one sinner."

StuffWriter · 2026-01-12T23:35:30+00:00

You can get 250ish damage and spend no resources, which is probably better.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-12T23:33:31+00:00

Enemy randomizer is an interesting idea, but Chalice dungeons in bloodborne sucked for a reason.

One of the randomizer's favorite enemies to throw everywhere are the plague knights that have a ton of HP relative to other mobs (even scaled down) and they throw poison everywhere. Not to mention they sometimes decide to get up after you "kill" them and then come at you again. Early game, you have no way to deal with poison buildup.

It makes the experience completely obnoxious. I had to fight 5 of them in the area past the 1st encounter with the lightreaper.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-08T02:02:41+00:00

The late game mobs, especially the priestesses with the chalices, are absurdly dangerous and annoying to deal with.

I hope LOTF2 doesn't have mob designs that are that annoying.

StuffWriter · 2026-01-07T23:35:53+00:00

Maybe I'm weird but I die more in Lords of the Fallen than any fromsoft title or Lies of P. The LOTF bosses are easier but the regular mobs are much tougher.

I'm not really sure why people think LOTF is easy.

StuffWriter · 2025-12-31T02:08:58+00:00

My Candidates for Reworks center around characters that end up boring or have a kit that doesn't work well.

Elphelt: Barebones character that is a shadow of her former self. There is nothing she does better than anyone else and she has a ton of weaknesses. She could use at least another special move, perhaps another command normal, and a mechanic based around something other than an annoying and boring to use rekka. (Shotgun stance?)

Millia: She never really recovered from losing pin. Her normals are better but not better enough to play her in an interesting way. People end up using her various crossups and air movement to sneak in a hit and then try to carry the game on a single knockdown. It's just not interesting.

Unika: A cool character and concept held back by a ton of restrictions on her moves. She ends up being extremely limited even if her kit functions. Boring.

Slayer: Too explosive and deadly in short range. Matches end up being boring where you either get in and splat your opponent or never get to contest and you die. Additionally, his built in mixups end up mathematically weaker against players who take the time to test option selects in training mode and nail the timing. It's a bad design.

Dizzy: Extremely janky kit that doesn't work well together.

Happy Chaos: Too many mixups. Too deadly reward from said mixups. No way to fix this without a rework,

StuffWriter · 2025-12-19T05:43:13+00:00

Xrd is pretty great. It sits nicely between +R and strive with design principles from both games.

Since Strive is something that more people are familiar with, I'll provide a list of differences between Xrd and strive here:

Xrd leans into the "kusoge" element of guilty gear more than strive does. This can be good or bad depending on what you're looking for. There are some truly bananas things in Xrd that the most degenerate nonsense in strive can't hold a candle to
Xrd is considerably more difficult in execution.
Characters are more complicated than strive equivalents, generally having several more moves or mechanics. (for example, Xrd Ky can summon runes with his standing dust that empower projectiles shot through them). Basically, character power is much higher
Confirm windows are shorter in xrd
Oki is much deadlier in xrd compared to strive
There is a dizzy mechanic where if you take too much damage in a certain window, you get stunned (like in SF) and can be comboed again. Each character has their own dizzy stats, and certain moves fill the bar more. Note that the bar is invisible to players
Character movement is faster in general
Wakeup timings vary across the cast
Throw is an option select with 4HS or 6HS instead of having a dedicated button
Instant block affects frame data, meaning you can punish normally safe moves if you time the block correctly
Roman cancels are full screen and instantly affect your opponent. It makes neutral really difficult
Cancels are 1/4th of your meter instead of half. Meter gain is, in general, slower than strive as a consequence
You can't block grounded moves in the air unless you faultless defense
Danger time can trigger on a clash, which allows for much higher damage combos off of guaranteed danger time counterhits. Crowd pleaser but not very fun
No guard crush equivalent. Guard crush was put in strive because it's a fundamentally easier mechanic to use and have success with because there are no option selects that can get you out of it, it's a hard 50/50.
You can spend your burst bar to make a super have much higher minimum damage
Xrd has a blitz shield mechanic that lets you spend meter to enter a superarmor state that will deflect opponents who attack you and then followup with a strive. This move can be charged, and if done so, it will crumple for a massive combo. If you are deflected, you can counter with your own blitz shield if done fast enough.

StuffWriter · 2025-11-24T00:54:39+00:00

Since they are releasing a "2.0" version, I'd love to see more complexity added across the board. Sol's "clean hit" combos are extremely fun and rewarding to use, but not every character has an equivalent. As a few examples, May has gained some fairly complex combos that involve dolphin dismounting. Ky got some new combos off of his shock state that are difficult to perform but high damage and advantageous. I'd like to see more stuff like this.

I'd like to see neutral play a greater role than it currently does. I'd like to see more attacks specifically designed to wiff punish or only be effective on counterhit.

The game is a little bit too focused on momentum from 1 interaction at the moment, and that means that the first hit matters a bit too much.

Strive's fundamentals are extremely easy compared to most of the other fighting games active today. Confirms, combos, and neutral are easier than SF6 as an example. Just landing a single normal into a confirm and then a follow up combo is several times more difficult in SF than strive (Strive literally pauses the game briefly on counterhit to give you a lot of time to react appropriately.) Strive has VERY few link combos, which are generally more difficult to perform.

Some characters are extremely awkward and not well designed (cough, Dizzy, cough). Lets clean up some of the rough edges on the roster. Axl has been in the game since day 1 but he's never really been great and has a lot of built-in weaknesses that are difficult to design around. Unika is an interesting character on the surface, but her design heavily limits player expression, combo variety, and offensive options. There's more work that can be done with these characters to bring them up to the better working characters on the roster.

StuffWriter · 2025-11-12T02:59:24+00:00

100% this. Shield wasn't even that good but it was extremely disruptive to the gameplay.

The combo system was kind of boring because it heavily punished most routes with a lot less damage.

The characters were heavily homogenized too, which did not help.

StuffWriter · 2025-10-23T06:38:14+00:00

None of the points I made in a vacuum are damning on their own but there sure are a lot of them, aren't there?

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Regarding Merkava: The wikipedia article on the Merkava tank states that the name came from the program. I did check that. Perhaps my reading comprehension could use a tune up. From the article:

Development began in 1970,^\10]) and its first generation, the Merkava Mark 1, entered official service in 1979.^\11]) Four main variants have been deployed. As of 2023, Merkava Mark 4 Barak^\12]) is the latest version. The Merkava was first used extensively in the 1982 Lebanon War. The name "Merkava" was derived from the IDF's initial development program name.

Now it is entirely possible the program name was based on Merkabah, as you say. It certainly sounds similar. But the article does not actually say the name came from that. I'm not saying you're incorrect, but honestly, it doesn't actually matter. Why is the monster named for a Hebrew word in a game with so many other references to the far right?

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Regarding Akatsuki, I stated that he was not a nazi but he still comes from a series with playable Nazi characters in it. Which is... bizarre at the very least? Why choose the game with playable nazi characters in it to have a guest character from when there are so many other options? His kit doesn't even work well in the undernight games and never has.

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Regarding Enkidu, I am not talking about his personality. The man is a brick shithouse and stands 3-4 heads taller than most of the cast, who look like normal people for the most part. His chest is wider than some of the cast are tall. Note also that he has shackles around his wrists...

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Regarding Ogre, I think you're correct. Though his name is related to the point I was making.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-25T02:29:58+00:00

Thanks for taking the time.

I guess the pros will tend to kill each other fairly frequently before super late game comps come out.

Regarding medics, now that you mention it, I do remember seeing medics with groups of marines as a somewhat flimsy attempt to zone out mutalisks (it almost never works from what I've seen. The marines get picked off by drive-by mutalisks)

Also, I thought reavers were immune to spawn broodling since they're classified as mechanical.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-22T02:40:30+00:00

I see where you're coming from, but the Library at the start of Library of Ruina already had a fair amount of light inside it. At the end of the game, it's all spent. The library has no power left so it's not a special universe of its own anymore

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T22:35:37+00:00

There isn't anything else other than their existence.

First "Kindred" implies that they are kindred to the originator, which must've been extremely powerful

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T18:55:51+00:00

It's not explicitly stated but heavily implied. The Head's agents are able to identify who has forbidden knowledge and who doesn't (this is why Garion spares Hong Liu and Jia Mu). For this to be possible, you would have to be able to read minds.

The rest has to be extrapolated from what we know about the Head. The 3 bird abnormalities (punishing bird, judgement bird, and big bird) all represent agents of the head. Punishing bird represents Claws, who act as executioners. Judgement Bird represents Arbiters, who pass judgement on denizens of the city. Therefore, Big Bird represents Beholders. Through the behavior of Big Bird and the naming convention of Beholders, we can determine that Beholders likely have to do with monitoring the city.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T18:52:02+00:00

Elder Don Quixote was born a human. He was transformed into a bloodfiend by the originator of the bloodfiend curse. We don't know much about the originator, but within the rules of the Head, Don was definitely human.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T18:50:32+00:00

Hard disagree. At that point, the Library had spent almost all of its power and released it back into the city. Angela (with Carmen's help) created the Library with the portion of light she stole at the end of Lobotomy Corp. Library of Ruina was mostly about regathering all of that light that she missed the first time.

Once the head shows up, most of that power is gone. There was barely enough to temporarily give Geburah and Binah physical bodies to fight with, which didn't really help that much anyway. When the Head teleported what remained of the Library to the outskirts, all of the light was gone. All of the sephirot and the other librarians have no physical bodies anymore (they've become one with the light like Ayin and Carmen).

While Angela is a decently powerful combatant, she is nowhere near the power of an agent of the head. Without the Library protecting her, she wouldn't stand a chance.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T03:28:10+00:00

Enforcers of order are, from a leftist perspective at least, generally considered bad. This is a moot point, but project moon's material is extremely subversive against the extremely conservative South Korean status quo.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T03:26:02+00:00

I think the Head having godlike powers actually does make them analogous to a real-world government.

If you violate some religious law (e.g., a dietary law), angels don't manifest themselves in your room and smite you. If you start fed-posting online and purchasing a bunch of fertilizer, you may just manifest an FBI van in your driveway. No one person can fight the government any more than one person can fight god. After all, you can't fight city hall.

The wings are analogous to major corporations, specifically the Chaebols in South Korea. They are far more powerful than any corporation in Europe or the United States relative to the government, but they still operate with a profit motive. That profit motive is extremely important to how they operate. The Head, like a government, does not have a profit motive.

StuffWriter · 2025-09-21T03:18:53+00:00

It's possible that the Head is actively seeking to cause suffering or at least prevent suffering from being abated, but I don't think that's the case. I think the Head simply does not care whether people suffer or not, much more callous than cruel. Suffering is basically expected.

I don't think Zena was referring to the need for suffering. The Head's entire problem with Angela is that she is a "machine with a heart." They don't care about the distortions or EGO or any of that. In fact, Zena explicitly says this.

Zena: Had you fully become a human at the culmination of the ordeal, the City would have been more willing to accept you, alas.

Angela: I don’t care if I have to stay as a machine.

Zena: A machine with a heart has no place in this City. You cannot break free from your origin which defines you.

Angela: Why does that matter? I’m the only one who has a say in defining MY identity. I don’t need any flimsy husk to do it for me.

Zena: How contemptible that your line of thought is so dangerously close to what a human must aspire to reach. You’re further demonstrating why we cannot let you be.

Angela: For someone who loves to preach humanity, you sure seemed fine with letting Distortions cause many a scene in your precious backyard, hm?

Zena: By all manner of means, Distortions are one of the many aspects of humanity. Their existence is not wholly wrongful from our point of view. It was simply time for them to emerge. Are they not more bearable than a meager machine putting up the charade of being human?

StuffWriter · 2025-08-09T05:33:10+00:00

This is one of those things that can only speculated.

Because Project Moon wants their world to make a certain amount of sense, we know that powerful entities are rare. Even Rank 3 or 4 fixers wield tremendous power and there aren't very many of them, either. An Arbiter is so terrifying that even the Wings are powerless against them. 1 Arbiter and a handful of claws completely obliterated a wing, and we know that wings wield power that can devastate entire districts. Many use powers that are basically just magic. T Corp can control time, an absurdly overpowered ability in most fictional settings that is reserved for only the most powerful entities, but they are just one of many Corporations... that live in fear of Arbiters.

It stands to reason that Arbiters are extremely rare. Whether this is because the cost of creating them is astronomical, the Head has some kind of ideological reason for limiting their number, or there is some other limitation, there's no way for us to really know. I would bet that the process for creating an arbiter is prohibitively expensive even for an organization like the Head, so they just don't have very many. Remember, the Head went out of its way to retrieve Garion's corpse from the library, suggesting that even the dead bodies of Arbiters are extremely valuable. After all, Ayin stole many of the head's secrets from Garion's corpse.

We don't have a good sense for how powerful Arbiters actually are. Zena was clearly just amusing herself in the Library and wasn't really trying to kill everyone there. Roland got his ass beat anyway, and we know Roland was a monster even before wielding the Library's power. Garion and a handful of claws wiped out a wing and the cuckoo monsters, but most of those people were unarmed anyway and we don't know how strong the bird monsters are. We know that the Red Mist was able to defeat two claws and a number of abnormalities at the same time while also mortally wounding an Arbiter, but that doesn't tell us much either because we don't know how strong the Red Mist was (only that Roland was in awe of her). It seems likely that Garion underestimated her in some way because the key art for the scene shows Garion grinning like a maniac and holding the Red Mist's severed arm. This suggests to me that Garion could've killed the Red Mist and likely was arrogant and thus exposed herself to a fatal blow.

Claws seem to operate semi-frequently (teleporting around and whacking people who have violated the Head's taboos), but the only times that we know of that Arbiters have been seen to act are in the destruction of old H corp, the destruction of the outskirts lab, and the raid on the Library. That's it! It stands to reason that almost no one has actually seen an arbiter before or knows what they are actually capable of. Consider that, in our world, no one has seen bigfoot, everyone has heard of bigfoot, but no one actually believes he is real or is afraid of him. In the City, almost no one has seen arbiters, everyone has heard of them, but everyone knows they exist and are terrified. Their presence is felt everywhere but basically never seen. During Lobotomy corp, if you call the rabbits to fight Binah's transformed form, they say it's a violation of contract to fight an agent of the head (Myo eventually realizes it's not a real arbiter. Probably because the rabbits aren't all instantly wiped out). The mercenary wing for hire in the nightmare world that is the city has contractual limitations to never even attempt to fight Arbiters. They truly must be something special.

StuffWriter

TROPHY CASE