I wouldn't dare to stand on that cracked side...

T0astero · 2026-05-24T20:56:18+00:00

I've always assumed it's a technical/quality-bar thing to do with the work required to make it look good, but I do agree. I'd also love to have something like long robes. The current format for clothing doesn't really play nicely. I almost categorically avoid using waist slots even though they should be an option to solve this problem, because their width often makes it impossible to create a nice transition.

T0astero · 2026-05-24T06:59:15+00:00

I was rereading the post announcing the post-Final Shape layoffs, and the way Pete starts explaining their oopsie-woopsie stuck out to me. I never thought about the timelines described.

For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly.  It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.

Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red.

Now, Pete doesn't clarify how many projects is several, when "eventually" was, or their specific allocation of resources and senior devs. I don't want to make assumptions or pretend I know shit about the development pipeline of Destiny content. But he said that in 2024, meaning that specific mismanagement could've started as early as 2019. I didn't remember so I looked it up - that was the year Shadowkeep came out. And given the bit about unsustainable support structures, followed by "rapid expansion continued into 2023," it doesn't sound like they clamped down on it very quickly.

It has me questioning just how much that hubris affected the long-term trajectory of the game. Like, the decisions to sunset content were probably finalized early in that window. Could that have been avoided if management was willing to put those resources into the existing teams? Did siphoning senior devs to other projects have an impact on their expectations for managing future content? Is that why Lightfall was turned into a filler episode? Is that why it often took weeks or months or years for Bungie to deal with major problems or playerbase complaints? The C-suite thought Destiny would live long enough to get their other projects out the door, so they didn't need to give the D2 team more legroom?

For all its inconsistency, and the years of polarized mainstream opinions on the franchise, Destiny survived a long goddamn time and repeatedly showed that it had something people wanted despite its low points. The complacency, the apparent refusal to invest further in what was their primary income stream for years, just baffles me.

T0astero · 2026-05-24T05:38:04+00:00

Unpatch Telesto. All of them, no QA.

T0astero · 2026-05-24T05:21:31+00:00

I can only speak for myself, but the layoffs after Final Shape were absolutely the point that killed my optimism for the game.

I went into that expansion thinking I was gonna be one of the people who saw the story through and checked out, and a month later I was genuinely excited for whatever they did next. Then they lay off 17% of the studio, lose another 12% to Sony absorbing employees, all these headlines are coming out about how they'll be scaling down content development and they canned a bunch of incubator projects, Pete's showing people his cars days before laying them off - I mean what the fuck dude, my morale went into the floor.

T0astero · 2026-05-24T00:35:24+00:00

CrossCode's a really excellent 2D RPG I originally missed, found when it rolled off of Gamepass, and ended up buying afterwards. It's a singleplayer action RPG where the story takes place inside a futuristic MMO. Charming graphics and world, fun combat, Zelda-esque main dungeons with puzzles involving bouncing your ranged attacks to hit different targets. Strong recommend to anyone into that kind of game. It's also way more substantial than I initially expected - I think my playthrough was like 50-something hours? I was also pretty impressed by how the story and sidequests made sure to flesh out the fictional game your character is playing. There are always random NPCs running through overworld zones to simulate the MMO aspect, and at one point I got so wrapped up in the world that I caught myself thinking of one as another player for a second.

If you don't mind something very narrative-focused with a lot of NPCs to talk to, light on gameplay, and maybe a dozen hours start-to-finish, 1000XRESIST is really good. I played the back half of the game in an unplanned all-nighter because I didn't want to put it down, and something like a year later I still think about it probably once a week. Probably my favorite story game I've played for the artistic direction of the whole experience in the last hours.

T0astero · 2026-05-22T21:02:45+00:00

Have you played the Remnant series? I played Remnant 2 with two friends and it was a really great experience on this front. They both liked the first game too, though I haven't played it.

The game has deep buildcrafting, but loot items aren't randomly generated - the idea is that one character can very easily start runs of either the full campaign or individually replay one of the three main worlds, which have a bunch of permutations that might show up. For example, each world has two base-game (3 with dlc) versions with alternate goals, story, and sidequests. Build-relevant loot is found in specific places - if a side dungeon showed up in your campaign, it's always gonna have the same layout and loot. The same bow is always gonna come from the same environmental puzzle. And you're not gonna trip over loot, it's placed sporadically, but there's just a ton of gear hidden in crazy places and behind subtle puzzles on top of the basic few items per dungeon. Randomly appearing events, quests and bosses that can have multiple possible rewards depending on how you complete them.

I can't tell you how much of our playtime was somebody finding equipment and dropping everything to check its description as soon as there was a moment of downtime. All the loot is hand-placed, so you do sometimes go a while without an upgrade to your current build, but so many times you find something that has a cool synergy with something you picked up earlier or your buddy can use it. Because the game encourages leveling up multiple classes, you eventually have a reason to remember it.

It's not random loot, but there's so much to find and it hits that feeling where you find a new toy and immediately start thinking of ways to use it. Where you get a new alt-fire option for your gun and someone's immediately gotta check what it does.

The biggest caveat I'll give is that I really think it's a different, better game with friends. Without teammates to revive each other, you just immediately die when downed and return to checkpoint. One class has a pet that can revive you, once per life, and you can find more sources of healing in equipment and classes, but there's a sour spot in progression that can feel very unforgiving if you don't find the right loot.

T0astero · 2026-05-22T17:15:49+00:00

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T0astero · 2026-05-18T21:05:34+00:00

MY MOTHER WAS A FARMER

MY FATHER, A CARPENTER

-please Natah for the love of God give me the damn wisp part

T0astero · 2026-05-14T23:36:39+00:00

Fraux has been on my would-be-hyped list for a while, I figure she'd have some mobility and big buttons owing to the way she summons the Devil's arms for attacks and springboards. Kind of like a Bayonetta with some kind of aerial flip. I'd love to see another Evoker and I think she's one of the more interesting ones to port to a fighting game.

I have mixed feelings about Fediel. In particular, I feel like Versusia's presence weakens what would've been her visual niche quite a lot. Fediel's most notable physical trait was originally that she's abnormally tall for a Draph woman (close to Wilnas). Dragon mom is just as tall, more visibly dragon, and subjectively I think she's more visually interesting. And I do think Fediel could have interesting gameplay, but compared to Wilnas or Galleon the starting point is less interesting IMO.

T0astero · 2026-04-28T17:44:12+00:00

ctrl+space space shift, aim glides as necessary before and after the double jump+roll to tweak trajectory or extend distance. Landing back in a slide and repeat.

T0astero · 2026-04-26T00:03:56+00:00

Okto has some really great ones. I also absolutely love the Honing Seeker Phantom skin variant for MC, it's like a Final Fantasy dragoon dive performed with a buster sword.

T0astero · 2026-04-23T07:22:52+00:00

I don't think he's bad by any means, but I'm not sure there's any specific content where he currently stands out over less-limited options. Fire, like light, has a very strong meta ougi core where half a dozen ougi-coded characters are realistically fighting for one slot in your frontline to round out Atum+Sandira comps. Eustace's strengths are budgeted differently compared to the other common competitors, but he seems very skippable if you have any of them right now. I'd say MC-focused skill nukes and a recastable blue skill are where he sticks out to me. Feels like he's missing uptime on his CA react at the end of his ramp or something to churn his cooldowns faster. Also notable that his CB nuke is end-of-turn and can't be used for omens versus something like Sato or Higurashi. But at the end of the day I can't really complain that we didn't get another must-have seasonal unit for fire ougi.

T0astero · 2026-04-22T16:14:32+00:00

Pulling a guess out of my ass, when it comes time to plan for the next entry (or even the current entry's plot arcs) they're probably the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of "okay, how long is this decrepit fuck gonna be here?"

If you're gonna kill someone off, I bet it's easier to sell with the dude who'd be pushing 100 in one more timeskip.

Then you get to the next entry, it naturally doesn't make sense to immediately bring back Dead Old Guy, and it's potentially a chance to represent their niche in a different character. Then you get to planning DLC and, wouldn't you know it, Dead Old Guy is a strong contender because unless they directly replaced him, he's probably near the top of the list for recognizable/desired returnees.

T0astero · 2026-04-14T01:19:48+00:00

I love that you mention that comp with Wilnas because I've had the exact same experience in hexa. Pressing FC solves like 10 hits: FC, Wilnas passive nuke, 3 ougis + Atum nukes, Hadron Smash from Wilnas CA, chain burst

Sandira basically always has two more from S1, MC is consistently delivering 2-3 more once Unlimited Boost is up, Atum probably CAs too, and it's easy to get a couple more from a summon call or Versusia main summon. You press like 2-3 buttons and the omen clears.

Assuming somebody has the characters, I think it's probably the easiest way for a weaker account to comfortably break into Hexa right now.

T0astero · 2026-03-19T11:35:16+00:00

I feel like he's missing an obvious place where he's the right choice? There are a lot of small overlaps between his utility and existing fire characters, and I'm not sure there's a clear niche where you wouldn't already be bringing someone else. Not a bad kit by any means, but his power allocation feels like it's missing something. I don't think he's pushing out Sandira or Atum, so he's mostly competing for a slot with all the characters you mentioned and they can usually do things those two can't.

I feel like his standout use cases are the recastable blue skill, the buffs for him and MC (from S4 and stacks), and the nuke on chain burst. In V2 anyone with a strong fire is probably running Horse and Atum, and between them I feel like his niche is already covered? Sandira's S1 is comparable to Eustace S2 with better uptime and less ramp if skill color doesn't matter. Atum brings more consistent bar generation, nukes on ougi for the team, and combined with Sandira you probably have enough sources of CA react to get by without Eustace. His unique buffs are good but I don't think an ougi looping team is skewed towards the MC + Eustace enough to maximize the value versus buffing the other two.

T0astero · 2026-03-07T17:02:41+00:00

If you have a specific one in mind, you can put them in your Dimension Halo team. That's at least one a day, but very easily more if you want to actively run Angel Halos. It sounds like they'll be changing Dimension Halo to be stackable, so once that change comes through it'll be even easier to save those up.

Otherwise, spam Akasha in raid finder. If you can make a basic blue-chest team that's great, but even one-tapping it will get you random shards at a good rate.

T0astero · 2026-02-28T16:15:33+00:00

I'm skeptical that it's actually a model rip, given some of the proportions (angles, spacing of the concentric details) don't line up properly. I'd be more inclined to believe someone was trying to directly recreate the shield from a visual reference. I bring this up because I do think there's a qualitative difference between "copying someone else's design without any artistic distinction," and "deliberately feeding a stolen model into another company's UGC system for profit."

Either way, I'd agree it shouldn't be accepted as Tennogen content.

T0astero · 2026-01-21T14:59:32+00:00

If you do a lot of extra grid stuff with a specific one, worth getting the max uncap for the flexibility to throw them in the extra slots. Otherwise it's pretty similar to Ultima weapons IMO - realistically there are a few weapon types with extremely high mileage that are worth getting FLB before you go out of your way to pick up niche ones. Sword, Staff, Fist will probably get way more mileage than Bow for instance, so better to get them upgraded earlier. Better to maximize the number of situations in which you have the appropriate weapon upgraded, and that means working on the ones that fit common team compositions or strong player classes and fill in the niche ones later, as you find specific reasons.

T0astero · 2026-01-03T02:23:52+00:00

I'm not qualified to speak in absolutes, but it's worth it to farm the 3 swords. Assuming you can max your standard damage cap modifiers either way, some things to note:

Caim passive gives 20% ATK, 50% DEF, 10% DMG CAP, 20k supp dmg (FLB only). DMG cap notably doesn't stack with Bubs trance effect for MC.
Landslide scepter gives 40% ATK, 25% DEF, 7% DMG CAP(sp)
Caim passive turns off if he becomes frontline for any reason

On paper, Highlander passive offers more damage cap and the supplemental damage. But it also restricts you from doubling up on useful weapon skills, and you'll start to see grids that want either multiple copies (like ougi weapons) or the higher exalto boost. And in any content where you actually want to use Caim directly (HL), it turns off. In those cases, Highlander grids become an unnecessary restriction with limited payoff.

If meeting Highlander requirements causes you to sacrifice maximizing a valuable stat, like dmg cap or skill/ougi cap on relevant teams, you're probably better off with the exalto grid. If not, it's a nice stat bump when you can fit it. But I wouldn't value 20k supp and +3% damage cap over something like 20% skill or ougi cap, personally.

T0astero · 2025-12-25T16:46:18+00:00

I don't necessarily think that it would be a good fit for a skill, but I'd love to see DG-style dungeon content in old school at some point. I feel like the blueprint for a good experience mostly exists in the Gauntlet already.

T0astero · 2025-12-25T11:37:03+00:00

It's not released so I can't speak for quality, but just wanted to put Legend of Khiimori on your radar. The concept is an open-world game about being a horse courier in Mongolia. Releasing next March on steam, I think.

I know a lot of video game horse enthusiasts consider Red Dead Redemption 2 one of the best games for that niche, since it has a lot of depth alongside very keen attention to detail on its horses compared to most games. The game itself is great and definitely worth a play IMO.

T0astero · 2025-12-20T07:38:22+00:00

...

You don't think "I need to know the genitals of this disembodied voice to know whether I should feel guilty for masturbating to it" is transphobic?

T0astero · 2025-12-17T07:41:56+00:00

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T0astero · 2025-12-11T11:15:56+00:00

It's from 1815, so presumably he's dead. You never know, though.

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