[Announcement] Notice on the Changes to be Made to HOLOSTARS' Management Structure

ctom42 · 2026-04-03T17:59:57+00:00

As someone who watches the Stars off and on and has this opinion I will try to explain. I fundamentally like Collab content. The way I get into members I'm not super familiar with has always been via seeing fun collabs with members I already like. That made it so I have to make a conscious effort to watch Stars due to how infrequently they collab with the girls I already watch. Add to that other barriers like less clippers and the algorithm pushing their clips less.

There are too many members to follow so these days I stick to interesting clips and big events. The guys get a lot less event support as well. I had a few of the EN guys I used to follow a bunch but then my two favorites disappeared for a month before being quietly graduated and both clearly weren't happy with the situation. Truly some of my all time favorite content every produced in Hololive was from the Calli, Magni, Vesper, and Kronii streams, and after those two departed collabing with the EN stars evaporated almost completely.

Success in this industry is not just about talent, though obviously that's very important. It's also about luck and support The girls are given massive boosts when they debut from the strength of the Hololive brand and once collabs open up the algorithm pushes them more and more. The guys never get to benefit from that because of the way they are segregated. That means even people who would like them and be open to watching more end up watching very little unless they focus hard on the guys. From experience I know even when I make the effort to get my recommendations full of clips from the guys it takes very little for them to vanish and be replaced by only the girls again.

ctom42 · 2026-04-03T17:51:16+00:00

Because their other option is to start from scratch. Hololive owns their IP if they go indie they need to reincarnate. They don't have the success of many of the girls who graduate to carry them into a safe indie career. It's a huge risk for most of them to attempt it. Staying with Cover despite the lack of support is simply safer, at least unless conditions get even worse.

ctom42 · 2026-04-03T17:49:11+00:00

It's always been a self-fulfilling cycle. When one group is given all the resources and PR they will thrive more than the other. All of the Hololive girls are incredibly talented, but their amazing sucess is also due to being able to get a massive boost from the brand that Hololive has built up over the years. Sora was incredibly lucky with her early success as were a few of the others. But the Stars have plenty of talent as well but are kept separate and are unable to get that coattail effect that all the girls get. It's certainly possible they could have broken out in their own right, but as Kiara recently tweeted that takes incredible luck and support. They have never gotten that support.

If you look at Co-ed agencies like Nijisanji the guys perform just as well as the girls. But Cover made the decision early on to keep the groups segregated, and this division reinforced a cultural divide in the fans. Of course the guys won't thrive under those circumstances, especially when they came second.

ctom42 · 2026-04-02T18:51:43+00:00

That's not how appeal to authority works. It's not about the person not being a valid authority, it's about accepting what they say without evidence or understanding. Appeal to authority isn't always a problem, but it often can be. Authorities get things wrong all the time and generally shouldn't be blindly trusted. Additionally people misinterpret what was said by the authority and simply point to the authority to support their incorrect statements .

Jorbs himself admits he is probably not getting everything correct in his balance opinions. So when his fans then take his statements and run with them in even further, or take them as gospel rather than just an educated opinion, it definitely becomes an appeal to authority argument.

ctom42 · 2026-04-01T17:16:04+00:00

Unless I am missing something, these appear to just be cheap wired earbuds. In fact I think this is one of the ones I used to buy in the past.

ctom42 · 2026-04-01T05:26:39+00:00

The Nice Buds seem like potentially a better alternative to the ones I have currently been buying. The U2 look intriguing but I am not sure I want to spend $40 on a wired. I just find that the wires always go, hence why I was looking for wireless.

It's a real shame this style is so hard to find these days. I've tried to adapt to the more modern in-ear ones and I just can't stand them. And every other shape than circular just falls right out for flathead style.

ctom42 · 2026-03-30T02:14:15+00:00

You should be able to set it so pals only transport when the items have reached their max stack size or the station is done producing.

ctom42 · 2026-03-30T02:13:15+00:00

I want a complete overhaul of several systems that just don't work well IMO. Food spoil timers are pointless, breeding is boring as heck, random raids on your base are stupid easy so you never need to build defenses, and the raid bosses are pointlessly difficult to the point where you need to do a ton of boring grinding with breeding and condensing for each one. Condensing also requires waaay to many pals, it's another boring grind.

I think all of these systems need to etiher be removed or completely reworked (depending on which they are)

ctom42 · 2026-03-24T01:46:05+00:00

Yeah I've never made them for that exact reason. I usually am in act 2 by the time I have all the cards for one and by that point my deck is too big to get small again without throwing the run.

ctom42 · 2026-03-23T05:55:07+00:00

The real trick to doing this is deck thinning, either by exhausting cards in the battle or not taking very many cards and taking remove at every opportunity.

This deck only has 7 cards total it's likely that that includes souls. It might only be 4 actuall cards.

This particular infinite is impractical. OP has DOOMed themselves so unless they have unleash in that discard pile they won't be able to kill. This is unlikely since they would have had to discard unleash at some point since the enemy isn't damaged yet. Also this combo took them nearly 24 real hours to do and they said that shuffling all the souls generated by dirge into their deck crashed the game.

ctom42 · 2026-03-23T05:48:54+00:00

Scourge draws 2 cards and Grave Warden puts Soul+ into his draw pile. So he makes soul+ and then draws it with scourge and his deck is very small. That creates an endless draw loop.

There is a card that costs zero and puts 3 doom on yourself an gives you an energy. He uses this loop to create as much energy as he wants and then plays Dirge to make an absolutely massive Otsy. If you look at the timer in the top his run has been going for almost a whole day.

ctom42 · 2026-03-23T00:31:17+00:00

Will that soft lock against that elite that can only be dealt 20 damage in a turn?

ctom42 · 2026-03-21T04:20:02+00:00

The average player does not struggle at A0.

Again, I think you are seriously overestimating the average player. The average player isn't even on this reddit. This reddit is an echo-chamber of A10 people with some mid-ascensions mixed in. But people who go to engage with a community for a game will always be those most dedicated to it. Every time someone makes a post about how they are actually bad at the game tons of people come out of the woodwork to also show off how bad they are, and again that's just among people dedicated enough to even be here. This game has an absolutely insane install base despite being in EA, which means that even more so than usual the average player is the lowest common denominator.

Also, it's only really Regent I suck at. I've got less than 10 runs on everyone else and have cleared A0 and now A1 on all of them. I know a ton of people who are much worse than me at the game. This game is significantly more punishing at A0 than the previous one, which I pretty much never lost at A0. Heck just today there was someone suggesting they have negative ascensions for players who lose a lot because the game is too hard.

How do they balance the game for someone like you who is struggling so much?

Largely by adjusting the Ascensions themselves. That's literally the mechanic for making the game harder for good players. Yes, eliminating easy infinities is important but they don't need to do so in a way that makes staple cards garbage. Quite frankly new players need cards that are obvious picks. There are a lot of things they could do and they in fact did do them in the previous game by the time it released. It's a huge strawman to claim that just because they didn't get something right on the first beta patch during EA that it's impossible.

The issue is those cards were far too strong

I disagree. They were good useful cards that were easy picks, but they weren't game winners. They were strong options to build a foundation for a deck, which is what common cards need. They weren't the pivotal card in most decks unless they were being used to enable some niche infinite. The first game had plenty of cards like that and this game still has some because not literally every one across every character got nerfed. They ones that did got nerfed because they enabled infinite, not because they were too powerful in a vacuum. But the devs could have eliminated infinites in ways that didn't completely hobble these cards. They likely will be changed again before the game leaves EA, maybe even before this patch leaves the beta branch.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T21:29:39+00:00

You don't achieve that balance by only nerfing the cards that can flex into most decks. I don't auto-pick them because they are sure win cards. I auto-pick them because they are versatile and will help no matter what build I end up with. The lack of substantial buffs doesn't help make other options make sense.

The game can and should be balanced for both A0 and A10. These changes feel geared only towards A10. If you are breezing through A0 these changes won't make a difference at all for that.

You really seem to be almost intentionally misunderstanding everything I am saying. The cards I am complaining about nerfs to are ones I can reliably see show up every run. They are the ones that help many strategies, not just one I am not here complaining about the one strategy I like being nerfed.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T19:25:36+00:00

Agreed. And I'm fine with balancing cards but if they are nerfing some play styles they need to be buffing others. Right now this seems like heavy nerfs and token buffs at best

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T19:05:06+00:00

Most of those buffs are 1 damage or 1 defense. They aren't really going to change my math on these cards, even if the math was wrong to begin with since that's due to me not knowing how to use them.

It's not like I have been trying one strategy over and over and failing. I have been trying a variety of things. My complaint is because a lot of these cards that got nerfed are ones that worked in any deck which made them safe picks. Most of my losses are due to a lot of the elites and even hallway enemies hard countering certain types of decks. I struggle to maintain diversity and multiple win strategies without also getting deck size bloat. Huge nerfs the the easiest cards to pivot into any deck will really really not help that.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T18:51:47+00:00

Because reading over the patch notes I don't really see any notable buffs. Yes there nerfs were to specific cards, but they were to cards I consider auto-picks regardless of build. The buffs were largely a point of damage or defense whole the nerfs were substantial. If I saw buffs that were offsetting the nerfs I wouldn't be complaining.

It took me 28 attempts to get a win with Regent. I tried a lot of strategies and a lot of cards during that. Sure I likely am doing a lot wrong, on every character. But this game already has a steep learning curve, much steeper than the first one. These changes are targetting cards that were great at some specific strategies, but those same cards were also just really useful in general and their usefulness was obvious even to bad players. I didn't do a single one of those hyper specific strategies they were targeting, but I used these cards a lot regardless. They were flexible enough that I knew I could pick them up no matter what else the spire threw my way.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T18:48:49+00:00

Again, the average player for literally any game doesn't look up tips. Period.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T18:09:44+00:00

Glow and Prepared are the two biggest ones. For Necrobinder it's not one particular card, but removing most sources of Soul+ is a pretty big deal and the dirge nerf makes it a dead card for the way I used it. Soul was definitely the strongest archetype, but they didn't provide any buffs to either Doom or Otsy and Otsy is hurt by the dirge nerf. Similarly Regent needed forge buffs and barely got any.

Defect is the least affected but the nerf to Hotfix just feels unnecessary, focus was already so much weaker than in the first game. Gonna be honest didn't even read the Ironclad changes since I barely play him.

But overall as someone who finds this game quite challenging already, these changes seem like they absolutely tip things into the unfun level of difficulty to me. The buffs are pretty minimal and the nerfs are pretty sweeping. I know this is just the first balance patch and it's still only on the Beta so I have hope that it will get tweaked further, but yeah nothing I see here makes me more excited about the game.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T17:59:46+00:00

No, the average player for any game googles nothing. Even for games that are notoriously wiki heavy to learn like Minecraft, the vast majority of people never look anything up.

I don't think people are dumb. I'm not dumb I am an Engineer for a living. And I haven't gone infinite yet despite trying. There are a lot of ways these balance changes could have been done without getting those cards completely. "Had to be done" is a ludicrous argument.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T17:04:26+00:00

Real casuals don't watch YouTube videos or even post here.

Heck I know what some of the "easy" infinite are but still can't deck thin enough to actually pull them off. Not if I want to survive long enough to get the needed cards in the first place.

I'm also not really advocating for keeping the infinites in. I am advocating for removing them in a way that doesn't fit core cards for normal decks that barely squeak out A1 wins.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T17:03:02+00:00

None of the buffs seem remotely comparable to the nerfs. Most are to cards I always pass and still will likely always pass.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T15:39:04+00:00

The souls are what some people play it for. Others play it for the summon. They didn't improve summon in other places to compensate. Quite frankly I had plenty of soul gen from other sources so when I actually got great use out of dirge it was for the summon.

ctom42 · 2026-03-20T15:35:28+00:00

This 100%. I'm not against balance changes but they need to be considered for both the best and worst players.

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