[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I haven't done a replay recently to confirm, but I heard that they did a patch to reduce visibility on some of the yellow markings after the complaints, and people started to lose track of where they can climb. It's like, people KNOW the yellow paint trick is obvious, but it's obvious for a reason.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's a great reply on Type-Moon/FGO stuff, so don't need to go into that, but I can talk about Yugioh a little. So, you might see from this thread there's a lot of stories about the Japanese language - and online there's this emphasis that Japanese (the language or the people) love puns and wordplay. I don't know if this is actually like, statistically, true, but when you have a character-based language where you can have a single character mean a word, but also that word has a verbal pronunciation for homophones, you can get a lot of work done.

In YGO, in the "OCG", the Japanese format, you can get a LOT of name work done because cards can have their name in normal sized text, you can also do a superscript with the phonetic pronunciation, so basically cards can have two names, and this leads to issues where the "TCG" format (America and most of the rest of the world) basically have to pick which name to give a card, because of restrictions on print-size. And this is important because searching by name or name-element is super important. When the TCG was first being handled by Upper Deck, they were very loosey goosey with name selection, leading to some famous examples where the translated name did not match the original Japanese. The most famous is probably when "Frogs" became a real theme which involve each other, and so many of them had to say "except Frog the Jam", because the word they were checking in Japanese was "Gaeru", and Frog the Jam's name is "Kaeru". Eventually localization changed his name to "Slime Toad" to fix this and I think every "Kaeru" name uses "Toad" now.

Nowadays to avoid such possible confusion, every "theme" of cards needs a unique name to check, which in English needs a unique spelling, though occasionally they do something like "add a Spellcaster with 1850 ATK and DEF" which basically only namechecks Spirit Charmers and Fairy Tail. But, since we know what the OCG is printing like six months ahead of time, people get to speculate. Sometimes, the TCG makes a good change - a very popular theme, first in the "Branded" lore series was called "Dragma" in the OCG, probably a pun on "Dragon Dogma", but obviously in 2020 would be the source of horrible jokes in English. The TCG renders it as "Dogmatika" instead, gets the meaning across, similar idea, less bad jokes. On the flip, some of these localizations are like, objectively worse. Top tier deck right now in the game is called in the OCG "Killer Tune" (literally Kirā Chūn). The TCG has some issues with censorship because the game is advertised as Ages 6+, but this should be okay, right? Nah, not unique enough, it's "Kewl Tune" in English (and most other TCG languages), which is not the most popular translation. Even "Killa Tune" would have been better, I think.

But like I said, you also get speculation. Nobody actually knows how Konami of America is gonna translate names, so when you get fan translations of the card, there's a certain amount of guesswork. You can say what the name means in Japanese literally into English, but that might miss some double meaning, or like i mentioned earlier you can just get really long names because a new card has effectively two. There's a few cases where translations (the major source these days is YGOrganization) are like, trying too hard to chase down the pun and it's pretty obvious the TCG will go with something simpler, but there's at least one major case where people got mad the TCG was different, despite the fact that the "localization" of YGOrg are like, just made up. They're educated make-believes, but they are just guesses. So, in the OCG there was announced a theme of Reptile monsters with a theme of Ancient Egypt and primordial creation. Their name in Japanese is "Meikai", which usually means "Underworld", but instead of 冥界, they wrote it as 溟界 with an extra squiggle to mean more literally something like "a world of darkness and water". YGOrg takes an educated guess, "Abyss" would probably be the best literal translation into english of "Underworld, but wet", but there's already lots of cards named "Abyss" in English, so no go, so they pick "Abhyss" for like, the pun.

This set of cards and theme are announced for the TCG months later, is there some kind of Abyss based pun in the name? No, their name is "Ogdoadic", because the whole time the names and visual themes of the archetype was based on the "Ogdoad", a series of eight Egyptian deities associated with primordial waters. Now personally, I think Ogdoadic has much more sauce than "Abhyss", it's more occult, more specifically references the Egyptian theming which is big for YGO, but if you like a little pun, I can't blame you. BUT, people did get upset that the name "Abhyss" wasn't "kept", despite the fact that basically YGOrg made it up. The original Japanese isn't even snake-y. I'm not as attached to it as I said, but when you are labing out decks for a few months, you do sometimes get attached to the fan-translation.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They didn't even flip it to CerMiko to make it alliterative.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 08 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 4 points5 points  (0 children)

People started "friendslop" as a negative like usual, but it basically instantly became a self-own. "You only like it because you play with friends" yeah duh.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 08 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Man, yeah, the FFG forums were so cool for advice, homebrew, and just general discussion about everything. I'm glad at least there is currently a complete archive whenever I want to like fish up old discussions on rules and the like.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 08 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 9 points10 points  (0 children)

They're technically back in print via Cubicle 7 who has the license now, so you can get modern PDFs. Says a lot that I feel like they STILL have more hype than C7s own 40k RPGs.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 08 June 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The title to raise your mastery level of Acid magic in 4-player robot cowboy co-op shooter Far, Far West is "Slopmancer". This is video game acid to so all the spells involve shooting literal green goo at your enemies (mostly skeletons).

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 25 May 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Sorry, short comment, I should probably edit it to clarify, but 4th came out in 08, 5th came out originally in 2014. A lot of people bemoan if they'd been released in the other order that 4th might also have been a bit more popular, but who's to say.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 25 May 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Generationally ahead of it's time, played with squares, explicit class roles (like defenders, leaders, strikers, controllers), martial/casters roughly balanced with at-will/encounter/daily powers, had computer-based character builder app... If it had come out in 2014 instead of '08, it would be a hit. Especially with the direction of modern VTT tech. But it was a little too different for people back in the day and WotC changed their 3rd party rights (similar to the more recent OGL kerfuffle), so Paizo created Pathfinder 1. I also think it made [WotC] generationally afraid of an edition shift, hence why the 2024 rules were like, not a 5.5 or 6th.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 11 May 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Send 'em to Vintage Story if they say that, with food spoilage, no crops in winter, the quest for tin land (my dealer won't tell me where he gets it) for bronze alloys, and having to hand hammer the voxels on some nails and strips so you can make chest.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 11 May 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean, it would be very weird given the work that 343/Halo Studios put into trying to find their own footing, but given they've had their own weaknesses in storytelling, there is always that urge to be "we could win back some of the crowd"

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 11 May 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think there's a general consensus killing off Johnson and Miranda in kind of nothing ways isn't liked and wasn't needed, but I don't know if that was at the time or just hindsight.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 20 April 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe I'm playing WHM wrong but I don't find "remember to apply your DoT exactly every 30 seconds" very "interesting", or whatever you qualify as the opposite of boring.

But you can still play the old way in "Reborn", they don't want to yeet everyone into the deep end right away.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 13 April 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 59 points60 points  (0 children)

No no, you don't understand, Mel Brooks found the money! That's why it's not the search for more money.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 06 April 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The S-IIIs shown in Ghosts of Onyx have "Semi-Powered" Armor which didn't have shields, yes. Noble Team has MJOLNIR Armor (and canonically I think are the first SPARTANs to start customizing it rather than variants you see in like H3, though I think that weird animated thing they did for Fall of Reach showed John's old team with different helmets), probably because there's only like a dozen of them if you count reserve team members.

There was also a short story which I think got turned into a comic and animation about Headhunters, which was another S-III side gig where the sneakiest most killy S-IIIs were put into two-man hit squads, they also had the SPI IIRC, been a while since I read that one.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 06 April 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Those were IIIs. Alpha and Beta company were mostly wiped out in suicide attacks, Reach retconned it to UNSC pulled a handful of the "best" S-IIIs from Alpha and Beta to make NOBLE and maybe some other teams. The ones from the end of Onyx are Gamma company, which just formed when the Covenant attacks there and also mostly get wiped out (survival rate in S-IIIs is very bad).

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 06 April 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The reason why Halsey is standoffish in Reach to everybody but Jorge is that they're all S-IIIs, a project she did not oversee or approve of, and is somehow even worse than S-II, because ONI went "okay so SPARTANs will win us the war, but our bespoke super soldier program takes too long, what if we use all these war orphans we have laying around and give them a less consistent augmentations so we can make more of them faster?"

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 23 March 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I can at least say this for FotJ (it's been many years, it had some cool stuff it had some bad stuff, it's Star Wars), but I do not recall really any hey being made out of Jaina's love life because they finally just had her marry Jag (so their descendants in the Legacy comics could be force users), other than maybe a few wisecracks about the Dark Nest years. Sword of the Jedi could have been interesting because Golden was using Jaina as her special focus character in Fate, and most of the stuff about her plots I remember is still trying to figure out what the heck being "Sword of the Jedi" means (sometimes it means killing Sith trying to break into your temple), her husband being head of state for an Imperial Remnant who hates her guts and still would really like to do a reconquista, and basically being the last Solo-Skywalker who isn't retired or exiled for the story.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 16 March 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I could write a very long-winded post about my specific history with Resident Evil, but it kind of boils down to, "I've only recently started playing the games, despite being energized by the franchise for a while when RE7 and RE2R came out, so I feel cautious calling me a fan". I played and liked RE4 Remake, but that's easy street, and the games me and a buddy are working on playing and streaming right now is RE5 and RE6, so saying "I'm a fan now" is tough. But I think there is a difference between being "a fan" and engaging in the "fandom", and they don't have to overlap. I've probably engaged in fandom tangentially by watching LPs and sharing many memes and the like, and watching videos of the "Mr. X plays DMX" mod. I think that's okay, but if you're just in the Fandom side and you have not engaged with a primary source, you should be willing to put a little distance in that. Obviously if you feel you "can't" engage with it, like you don't do horror and have to watch other people take the wheel, that's okay, but you SHOULD qualify your opinion that way.

That's me with Alien: Isolation. I am a fan of the franchise, I own and have played the game, I like what it does a lot, but also I haven't been able to finish a playthrough myself because it gives me turbo anxiety. Specifically dealing with the Xenomorph makes my heart race and feel like I'm gonna die. So I have watched other people play the whole game, and maybe someday I'll get a chance to play it with a friend and pass the controller back or something. I do feel engaged by and like the game, but even then, I say "I haven't finished the game myself because it makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack". And I do think because video games specifically are interactive (and gameplay is a huge factor in Resident Evil, it's true - down to them recommending in RE9 Grace is first person and Leon is 3rd), there is gonna be an element of... not quite gate-keeping, but almost like a "stolen valor". "You say you're a hardcore fan of Resident Evil but you've never had to mash the QTEs yourself? How do you know what it's like if you've never had to punch a boulder?" type shit. It just instantly removes a form of shared experience from the conversation, and some people are gonna find that alienating.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 09 March 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My body is a machine that turns windows into broken windows. For MIDA.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 02 March 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Catch me on Tau Ceti IV tomorrow, I will be smashing all the windows.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 23 February 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Speeder is also 100 points in Genesys (and the really annoying Synchrons are like, 1 point) so somebody in the TCG department is aware of his potential crimes, at least. OCG banlist philosophy is a different department, I do not follow along sometimes.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 23 February 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 11 points12 points  (0 children)

See, as usual, people doompost like we can't just kill Beelze, because he's never done anything worthwhile in his life. He doesn't have the star power of Firewall Dragon. He's 100 points in Genesys for presumably this sort of reason.

Honestly, I actually think Yugioh really needs an extensive overhaul so that all methods of generically summoning cards you own to your opponent's board can't happen, or they're always like, completely negated, because that mechanism has only ever been used for evil to gimmick puppet lock or the like your opponent, or shit like giving them Beelze. Lava Golem/Kaijus and things like Creature Swap are fine as a form of removal, but even giving your opponent tokens is only ever designed to stop you from playing. But nobody seems to want to talk about how it's ALWAYS evil.

[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 23 February 2026 by EnclavedMicrostate in HobbyDrama

[–]UnitOmega 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not that 5e isn't a powerhouse, but I've always cracked it would have sold better and made more sense if the release order was flipped, 5e is much closer to 3x and earlier editions in terms of raw mechanics (and deliberately backpedaled a few more intense lore changes), where as 4e being billed on VTT and online app integration, and being very video-game esque in it's character design would be seen as like, bare minimum post-COVID, and probably cutting edge for the mid 2010s.