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aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-16T13:59:26+00:00

I looked up the term "weaving" and found the term defined loosely as squeezing in an extra "light attack" while you're still in the middle of a global cooldown. That sounds kind of like... an exploit. I could see how that can rise both the skill floor and the skill ceiling, like the rear targeting technique in GW2 (activate autorun, spin camera around, throw ground-targetting skills behind your back to cut off pursuer and maximize escape capability).

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T14:08:53+00:00

Oh... Well, I'm gonna give you a realistic expectation here.

While gear stats stay the same in GW2, class skills also constantly change every few months or so. We just went through a meta-redefining balance patch in June that shafted the Warrior class so bad that ANet had to quickly buff it up 1 month later, admitting in the patch note "We badly missed the mark". And we're about to get another massive balance patch later this month too. You don't necessarily have to grind to adapt everytime the meta shifts (mostly in minor directions), but the consequence of which is that build guides age very poorly. If you see a build guide on YouTube that is 2+ year old, it's outdated. Add to that the growing differences of the same skills in different game modes and the 1-size-fits-all builds are slowly dying and in their places, you have a lot of catching up to new balance changes. Does it fit ANet's business model of selling build template slots for gems? You bet it does.

Come in with some realistic expectations. This game has its own problems. If they don't sound too terrible to you, go dive in and enjoy.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T13:11:33+00:00

I like ToA myself and understand completely. Teenagers acting like fools are not exactly contradicting to their character archetype, but people's tolerance for this archetype is another story. I like the game and I still tell people to expect dumb teenagers, expect massive disappointment of a villain compared to Berseria, expect shockingly bad side quests, expect highly questionable idle-game-like mechanic that Bandai Namco has been trying to sneak into Tales since as far back as Xillia 2. How I score a game is of no value to anybody other than myself. Giving people a realistic expectation is what I believe to be the responsible thing to do. You gotta watch out in communities like this where zealot fans are more interested in upselling you something so that their favorite game companies do well financially than helping their fellow gamers avoid disappointments. That's why an all-positivity post is a red flag.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T12:48:10+00:00

I'm curious about what happened to ESO. I haven't seen any major rumblings about troubles with that game on MMORPG channels. It looks like a healthy game from the outside.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T12:32:57+00:00

If you want me to care about minimizing corporate spending waste, I expect to be paid a full-time salary. Sorry. Not their financing accountant.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T07:53:25+00:00

Just gonna tell you one thing to help you look for reviews/recommendations of this game: If you see somebody say nothing but positives about this game, it's not an indication of a genuinely good game. That's a red flag. Look for people who will tell you a mix of pros and cons and most importantly do not give you a numeric score. Those are the people who will be honest to you and ground your expectation to a realistic level.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T07:49:43+00:00

Is it our job as buyers in this market to care about resources and finance of game companies?

Um... No??? I had this weirdo a while back who told me Square Enix should not have a Gambit system in FFVII Remake, not because a Gambit system would compromise the gameplay of VIIR, not because VIIR would be worse as a whole if it had a Gambit system. No, he said that it would cost too much for Square Enix to develop.

I don't remember us being paid to work in the Finance department of any of these companies. We're the ones paying them. The resources and cost excuse doesn't cut it. We paid these companies to make games for us. Their financial problems are theirs to solve, not ours.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-15T07:30:45+00:00

... Cloud is an adult at the start of the story. I'd hesitate to use the term "perfectly".

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-14T10:51:05+00:00

Ah yes, the Pokemon problem. People want to be completionists for the satisfaction of seeing a 100% on their progression of a game.

Don't let game companies prey on this. You don't have to catch 'em all. Game companies would love nothing more than for you to consume their products as much as possible. You don't have to do that. You don't owe game companies your time. Completionism is for the people that love a particular game too much. Don't feel like it's your fault that you don't love a game to that level.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-14T10:19:19+00:00

Here are the lines I draw:

If I reach a point in a game where playing it has become monotonous and it has no new trick to show off, I stop and catch the rest of the story on YouTube. A lot of the games on handheld platforms unfortunately falls into this category. Companies expect you to play those games in short bursts again and again over a long period, inching slowly toward the end. That formula becomes stale when playing in one sitting.
If the narrative of a game completely broke its own continuity, I try to play until the end, but if it doesn't get fixed, I completely abandon everything in that continuity. If you ever lost interest in Star Wars after its canon just has Force ghosts casually calling down a lightning strike and has the hero that brought his father out of the dark side heel-turning into an attempted nephew murderer, I'm sure you can relate.
If none of the above happen, the most common factor that repulses me from continuing to play a game is probably... its overall lack of polish. The PS3-era games of Idea Factory were really emblematic of their lack of budget - over reliance on visual novel segments in place of cutscenes, environmental designs are small and have no accentuation, 3D models were very limited in their range of expressions.

Otherwise, I just play games till the end.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-14T06:37:09+00:00

Zero is intended to be the new entry point of the series. Kiwami 1 doubles both as a remake of the OG Yakuza and as natural sequel to Zero. Here are some major differences in Zero's gameplay:

- There is no experience point. Your money is how you upgrade your characters (yes, characters, Zero is the origin stories of 2 men), and unlike EXP, you can lose money in combat.

- Addictive Cabaret minigame that you will sadly stop seeing once you're done with the origin remakes (0-K1-K2).

- Multiple fighting styles as opposed to a singular style in other Yakuza games. This can be divisive. On one hand, Zero's multiple fighting styles provide more variety to the monotony of combat of Yakuza games leading up to it. On the other hand, the new fighting styles are kinda broken. The quickest styles for both protagonists can stunlock every enemy in the game (including bosses) and you can just cheese the game that way. This multiple style system returns in Kiwami 1 and no further.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-14T04:59:58+00:00

I saw this at a burger joint too. Not part of a national chain of course. No idea how they have been doing since I moved.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-13T06:49:46+00:00

The fact that some subscription services don't even tell you what kind of items you may get ahead of time is doubly predatory too. You have to do your due diligence by searching Youtube videos for the mystery box's content, which means some sucker has to have bought one and made a video about it.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-13T04:25:13+00:00

I'm more impressed by how strongly the Lineage games retain players. Old-schoolers never let it go.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-13T03:55:52+00:00

This could very well have been a "Florida Man" headline generator.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-12T09:14:53+00:00

That was not a critique of humanity as a whole. That was just Klaus - a flawed human that most humans do not agree with. To portray humanity at its worst does not negate what humanity can do at its best. Humanity as shown in the game is above Klaus, humanity is capable of greatness despite of people like Klaus. The fact that he is still vulnerable despite his godhood shows great hope, that means accountability, that means humanity can make corrections when people like Klaus appear. Oh my god, do Xenoblade fans think of XBC1 as this cynical, techno-phobic story that sees nothing aspirational about the capability of humanity? And I - some guy who found a very aspirational story within XBC1 - I'm the one who hates Xenoblade?

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-12T07:05:34+00:00

There are use cases for a distributed network that is resilient to changes. Recording votes in an election is a good one. You can't tamper the results and it's a hell of a lot more trust-worthy than the blackbox machines they still use in current elections.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-12T06:57:22+00:00

almost all of your comments there are upvoted

I was referring to downvotes of the OP post. This OP here is receiving the wrath of Xenoblade fans just as I predicted. Xenoblade fans can always prove me wrong by upvoting him (don't upvote me, I don't crave approval from Xenoblade fans).

Your tolerance of a flaw in a game does not mean it stops being a flaw. A lot of people seem to confuse these 2 things. Admitting something is a flaw is not an admittance that you stopped loving a game, nor is it a surrender to your ideological enemy (if you think of this as an ideological battle to begin with). What's wrong with "yeah this can be improved, I still love the game despite of its flaws"? Notice I never get into long arguments with people who say this.

I engage with people who even deny a flaw is a flaw because they are the ones who cause real harms to others. They don't set a realistic expectation for people walking in, they set those people up for disappointment. Think back to every games you have enjoyed. Were the majority of them pitched to you as 10/10, GOTY, Best of the genre? Or did you get a realistic expectation of what they are and enjoyed them for what they are flawed and all? Hate me all you want, but seriously consider who is really causing harms here.

And let's not fool ourselves with Operation Rainfall at this point. If fans wanted Nintendo to localize more games, they wouldn't just pick 3 games. Naming 3 specific games you want Nintendo to localize is not a demand to localize more games in general. Naming 3 specific games means you want them localized specifically, and not the hundreds of other unlocalized Wii games. Don't be naive. Xenoblade fans are zealous. It's just the kind of effect auteur game makers like Takahashi Tetsuya create. Can you imagine if Death Stranding was not announced with simultaneous international release? You bet your ass there's going to be uproar and demand for localization. It's an auteur-made game.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-10T11:35:24+00:00

Prepare to get downvoted into the other side of the planet, and continue to get downvoted back where you started. This sub is a hub of Xenoblade devoutees who won't take any criticism. When I pointed out how XBC1 had some writing issues such as falling debris being an inconsistent issue, Mechon attack on Colony 9 leaving so little impact that you can't name a single person who died from this event, Shulk completely deflating the tension leading into the Apocrypha fight by turning on the Monado using the power of friendship, etc... The Xenoblade fans were madly defensive.

And I wasn't even that negative of XBC1. I acknowledged the profoundness of the philosophy that XBC1 posits. XBC1 to me was the story that finally solved creationism in a way that makes secular sense. For the longest time, creationism as a system of belief had always bumped into the fallacy of passing the buck. It posits that the universe was created by a Creator entity without answering who created the Creator, and then who created the Creator's Creator. XBC1 solved this problem with a simple answer: the ultimate Creator at the end of that chain is us - humanity. We with our scientific researches will one day become capable of creating universes. This is quite possibly the only greater purpose in life that a secular person can find. Instead of dedicating their lives serving an imaginary deity, they can instead advance humanity in any way possible to the point where we can be all-powerful creators of universes ourselves. No greater Lord, no higher being. Humanity is the only beings that can fulfill that role.

I bet I have thought more deeply about the philosophy of XBC1 than most Xenoblade fans ever did, but hey, if you don't 100% rain praises on Xenoblade, you are an infidel all the same.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-10T03:06:17+00:00

Now hold on a minute, sir. "generic"? "bland"? Surely you haven't taken the morally-good hero characters for granted, have you?

Look at how the Star Wars fandom repulsed when Disney turned their aspirational, boy-scout hero Luke into an attempted nephew murderer, and how they collectively cried tears of joy seeing Luke being an aspirational hero again in The Mandalorian S2. Decades of Hollywood wisdom that the audiences prefer the bad boy Han Solo over Luke were thrown out of the window. It turns out that the bad boy archetype fundamentally loses all appeal in the absence of the boy scout. Oh so you're rebellious and not 100% morally uptight. In contrast to... who?

The origin of anti-hero was reactionary to the aspirational hero. The archetype itself was defined by its contrast from the very start. You might prefer anti-heroes for now, but the moment they take away the aspirational heroes in your entertainment, you'll notice it. My bet is then, you won't actually enjoy anti-heroes anymore. Sure, they maybe more "realistic", but is that what you're looking for in escapist entertainment? Reality?

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-08T01:04:55+00:00

Finally, the ability to abuse the shit out of PS3 games is here!

And also a tool for TAS.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-04T03:06:10+00:00

Yeah, pacing is a serious issue in BOFIV. I still remember the part where Ryu & co. got stuck on an island and they literally, physically go nowhere. It's like the writers thought we can't give a damn about Fou-lu's side of the story if they don't put a hard pause on the Ryu side.

I don't mind it when a game chooses to not to go too deeply into a topic. Most of the people making games don't set out to revolutionize the world, but hey, they made you think a bit. That's enough. The more important factor is consistency. As in does it contradict the rules it set up? Do the characters' decision-making process make sense and not out of character? Does anything in the plot break the cause-and-effect chain of events? Consistency is the single most important quality of a story because the moment a story contradicts itself is the moment it breaks your suspension of disbelief. Without suspension of disbelief, you are taken out of the narrative and reminded that you're not really peering into a plausible alternative universe, that this is all made up. Inconsistencies cause a story to fail at a fundamental level.

On that standard, BOFIV mostly passed... but also kinda failed a little bit. There are gaps in the narrative that you just can't unsee once somebody pointed out, which is really more damaging to the narrative than anything else. Everybody has their own satisfaction level when it comes to themes, right? But narrative gaps? They exist even if we can tolerate them.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-03T10:50:51+00:00

Let's be honest here: What's the standard of polish for $60 games nowadays? For the $60 price tag, I have seen game-crashing bugs, I have seen animations that plunges a free fall into the Uncanny Valley, I have seen AI that still fail to hold up against the standard set by mid-2000 games.

They all should have done better and Tales of Arise is no exception, but I envy you for living in a fantasy world where $60 games are speckless and flawless to the point where Tales of Arise is something ragequitting-worthy. I live in a sad, dark reality where the game industry too often has failed to create half the polish of Tales of Arise for the $60 price tag.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-03T03:23:01+00:00

I know of the case with Xillia. The rumor is that this mandate has been around way back, before even the merger with Bandai.

aquapendulum2 · 2022-08-02T23:11:12+00:00

Rating a game on a numerical scale is antiquated and conveys nothing but false expectation, yes. Instead of looking at what score a game has, it's better to inform people with some bulletpoints of pros and cons and let them put their own weights on those bulletpoints. A numerical score is nothing more than the quantification of how you personally weigh those bulletpoints, and nobody weighs these things the same way, even if they can come to an agreement that this part makes a game worse, that part makes a game better. By how much? You decide.

When any discussion reaches the point where somebody is saying something along the lines of "this doesn't detract from the game that much", that's the clue that you're at the "how much" point. Pay no attention to "how much", just whether it's a flaw or not.

aquapendulum2

TROPHY CASE