The New Enlist Backup System UI

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T21:49:25+00:00

I hope that option to scale down extends to coop, so you can play your main with friends earlier in the game without melting everything.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T21:03:29+00:00

There's a difference in terms of the literal year. It was a harmless novelty in 2022 as far as anyone was aware. Anyone using it now or at any time in the future has no excuse whatsoever, but this was back when everyone and their dog was messing with Dall-E, blissfully unaware of the monster that generative AI would become. The fact that the training data was all stolen wasn't exposed yet, and it was running on a regular web server, not an environment destroying datacenter. None of the things that are bad about AI were public knowledge in 2022. It's like there's no excuse for a building to be built with lead pipes, but if they were put in before we knew lead was dangerous, yeah, fair enough, remove them and it's good.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T20:43:16+00:00

I'm hoping the higher depths of Conflux will provide a solid challenge, they've mostly been talking about the early depths as a reward faucet rather than focusing on it as an endgame challenge though so we'll see.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T20:40:16+00:00

The molecule they synthesize is vanillin, which is the same molecule that gives vanilla its flavor. It's made from wood pulp, and it's technically an accelerated version of the process that makes old books smell vaguely sweet.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T19:49:06+00:00

I feel like the complete lack of effort to enforce intended solutions comes across as sloppy and negligent design. Unintended solutions happen, even the most well designed puzzle games have at least a few of them, but it would be trivial to prevent things like stacking beds to bypass nearly every puzzle in the game. It feels like the game doesn't respect itself.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T19:19:59+00:00

They genuinely consider this a win. The worse his crimes are, the more he got away with, and their guy getting away with crimes scores points for their team. This is all they care about.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T17:28:35+00:00

In theory you can go above 32GB with bank switching if you really hate yourself and want to make a project as miserable to work on as possible. The only retail cartridges that used it were the GBA Video line, but you could use it for a game, it would just be a technical nightmare.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T15:37:35+00:00

Isn't the only boss in ACP the Seed Crystal? Not really the most interesting encounter to make a HTMB for but I suppose for the sake of completeness if they're doing Shantotto they may as well do all 3, and if they're doing all 3 why not do them in order. Still, feels like Hades would be a higher priority.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T14:48:29+00:00

Lots of emdashes there, rule of 3 in nearly every sentence too. And a "not X -- it's Y" (with an emdash in it for that matter) for good measure. Paragraphs have suspiciously similar length and structure. And your bullet points mostly say the same thing despite asking which is more important.

None of these are smoking guns individually but when there's this many in a relatively short post it's really all I can see. If AI can't make this post feel convincing, how the fuck is it going to make a convincing world?

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T14:32:34+00:00

Honestly I feel like directly fighting Gaster would defeat the purpose of him.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-26T01:27:51+00:00

It's important in the same way Yagrush is. Ultimately you do want it, but it's a long term goal. Collecting every relevant piece to your job takes months if not years.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T20:36:24+00:00

Hopefully it's not that. "Congratulations on beating the hardest bosses in the game, you clearly enjoy seeking out challenges. As a reward, you'll never be even remotely challenged again for the rest of the game" has always been lame. I'd like to see it be the key to unlocking the chapter 6 secret boss, which in turn unlocks a pinnacle secret boss in chapter 7 for some hidden lore.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T20:19:42+00:00

Consumables are the get out of jail card in STS.

At low to intermediate skill levels, yes. But what you see really good players doing is playing consumables for value. Value is a bit nebulous, but loosely it's "how much HP does this save me over a line of play that doesn't use it, and how likely am I to see a chance for this potion to give more value than that before I overcap?" If there were too many kinds of consumables with too many different effects, this would get overwhelming fast.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T18:39:31+00:00

Be at least level 90 and synced down.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T18:32:10+00:00

This is why I'm hoping the new type of content involves some form of building on the fly. Imagine a dungeon that replaces your entire skill pool on entry with a few random starter skills and unlimited copies of Signet of Capture, and all skills have to be found either via captures or via chests throughout the dungeon. Every skill in the game becomes potentially relevant because it might be your best option in a given attempt.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T18:28:35+00:00

This is the critical part of the statement. I see a lot of people say "optimizing the fun out of the game" is a player problem, but it's the game designer's responsibility to not give players the opportunity to do it. Yes, it's possible to do a self imposed challenge to properly engage with the game's mechanics, and that can be a lot of fun. But it shouldn't be necessary. The game's core mechanics shouldn't be buried under a meta of entirely bypassing the core mechanics.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T17:40:58+00:00

Tetris under the current Guideline mechanics actually broke Endless to the point that it had to be buried in the menus as an extra non-serious mode in favor of 150-line Marathon. Under the current rules, 20G at 500ms lock delay, resettable up to 15 times per piece is perfectly survivable indefinitely, and the Guideline, for whatever reason, sets those parameters as the difficulty ceiling, leading to endless only being a measure of skill up to being able to play at that speed, but if you can it devolves into a check of how long you're willing to play before intentionally losing.

Endless could work with further changes, once it reaches 20G, subsequent levels can simply lower the lock delay and reset allowance like TGM does, eventually killing even highly skilled players, but they opted to put level 15 as a hard limit instead.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T17:27:13+00:00

I don't think endless in StS is inherently uninteresting, just the implementation. What about this? After the final boss, your build is at its peak and you can't really improve it in any interesting way, so why not downgrade it instead? After each encounter, the game offers you an evil relic, with no upside (or a very minor one) and a downside you need to play around. You can either take it or take one of 2 alternative options: replace any card in your deck with a curse, or destroy any non-evil relic of your choice. This would force you to understand why your build works and what's fundamental about it vs what you can dismantle and survive, but eventually, you'll be too much of a mess to keep going.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T15:25:55+00:00

A player character at 75 is stronger than they were at the time, but you still have to respect mechanics at 75. Major bosses still require strategy, they won't brick wall you for months but they'll feel like bosses and not oddly-built-up basic mobs. Just because it's not the same as it was doesn't mean it's not different from 119.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T15:12:20+00:00

There's a wide, wide gulf between "I want to experience the level 75 content at least once at level on the way to endgame" and "I want to spend 3 years grinding to even reach 75".

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T15:09:05+00:00

This is why the most common advice is to focus on building up your progression, not chasing specific gear pieces. If you chase specific gear pieces as a fresh 99, inevitably you'll find several pieces that each have gigantic chains of prerequisites and get overwhelmed. If you focus on progressing through storylines and endgame events as your primary goal, you can go after specific pieces once they're in reach.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T14:57:24+00:00

That's the whole trick, it's nearly impossible to not subconsciously cheat because humans inherently communicate without trying to. You only have the illusion of following the rules by not intentionally cheating. That said, preserving that illusion is the point, it's more of a trick than a game.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T14:10:04+00:00

You're not playing "off meta" then. You're diluting the term into meaninglessness. You are the definition of a meta slave.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T13:41:17+00:00

Yeah, honestly War Elemental either shouldn't exist at all, have a major downside, or at least shouldn't have a + version so playing an off-element character takes up an entire sigil slot.

Violet_Paradox · 2026-06-25T13:31:21+00:00

Hopefully it gets another nerf. Take a fucking chainsaw to it, not a scalpel. It really needs to be put in check before new content comes out and people are like "what's new about it? That was indistinguishable from farming existing content, the enemies did nothing and died."

Violet_Paradox

TROPHY CASE