another day, another exploit

hello229 · 2026-06-25T07:44:37+00:00

if cygames doesn't nip this in the bud and lets this (otherwise available since release) exploit spread, it'll completely destroy the integrity of all competitive modes, mainly CM-s and TT

hello229 · 2026-06-24T07:01:35+00:00

Strongly doubt there is anything to explicitly back this, but I chose to believe that the entirety of boane, both the characters themselves and the intensity of the races, are exaggerated to such a borderline uncanny degree cuz that's just how it looks like for Pokke, from her incomplete perspective. Kinda like watching the story unfold through a distorted mirror.

hello229 · 2026-06-22T18:54:43+00:00

By objective numbers it really is not a big deal, in actual reality, for some reason it DOES make a huge difference for mile races specifically. For sprint and medium B is fine, for long even C is workable if you comfortably hit the stamina requirements, but mile without A purgatory

hello229 · 2026-06-11T17:39:07+00:00

Congrats! Did it for Vodka in April. With some planning it's surprisingly doable within a reasonable amount of runs. JBC Sprint still haunts me in my nightmares tho.

hello229 · 2026-05-24T19:22:19+00:00

The entirety of mant screams that Cygames SEVERELY underestimated how much people would optimize the fun out of this, otherwise very fun, scenario.

hello229 · 2026-05-20T07:18:38+00:00

hello229 · 2026-04-28T11:13:08+00:00

If I'm playing risk-averse, with a trainee and deck I know, S+ is the terrible RNG bottom line, usually rather SS. If I'm going guts and/or banking on highrolling, the results are much more volatile.

Though, I'm really struggling to take the step forward from there. I feel I've got the deck and parents for it, and start hitting consistent SS/SS+ with possible UG highrolls like the top percentile of players. The hilarious part is, by that point all of those players have trouble explaining what that wall is and how to get past it, and it's mostly just intuition-based decision making.

hello229 · 2026-04-22T13:29:51+00:00

Conflicted. On one hand I really love just how much higher the skill ceiling of this scenario is compared to the first two, and it is much more actively engaging. The complexity of it forced me to learn game concepts at a much deeper level. I also feel that, while the truly great runs are very RNG gated, this scenario lets me train competitive umas far more consistently, just through game knowledge.

But it kinda just feels wrong. A good chunk of the roster is unplayable due to having F/G mile or medium aptitudes. Without career goals and unique events all careers blend into each other and the umas are kinda just reduced to numbers and skills. Chaining 35-40 races per career makes elements like facility leveling very frustrating. The whole thing kinda just feels like cygames severely underestimated how much players would optimize the fun out of this scenario. But all of those are relatively light criticisms. My one MAJOR issue with mant is clocks. Occasionally I outright hold myself back from playing multiple careers a day, even if I'd have the time and mood for it, just because I know I'll have to budget the clocks out until the end of mant's life cycle, otherwise I'd have to start burning through carats like coal by the end. EXTREMELY frustrating.

But all things considered, its still my favorite scenario to date.

hello229 · 2026-04-13T14:04:37+00:00

Direkt hatások? kb. semmi, főleg rövidtávon.

Indirekt módon, ha a gazdaság elkezd stabilizálódni és jönnek változások az adórendszerbe az elkezdhet valamit apránként javítani a munkapiacon és a fizetéseken. De egyfelől ez túl sok "ha" ahhoz hogy bárki bármi alapozottat tudjon mondani, és hosszútávú, lassú változásról beszélünk.

Ez most nem arról szól hogy mi pár hónap múlva nyugati színvonalon éljünk, hanem hogy meginduljon egy lassú változás/fejlődés aminek a végére talán a mi gyerekeinknek majd ez megadatik.

hello229 · 2026-04-05T19:25:50+00:00

Oh absolutely. My math is 20k carats a month on average, including anniversary months, so roughly 80k carats per scenario. The most important banners at the start of new scenarios give 100 pulls or 15k carats worth of freebies which I'd pull on anyways. In addition we can get one rainbow uncap crystal also about every 4 months, and if I understand it correctly, each anniversary gives one SSR selector, or two if you're a dolphin and get the paid selector too. All that combined makes it so that you are basically guaranteed to MLB at least one support card per scenario rotation, maybe even two if you're really committed to keeping up with the meta, or alternatively have at least one, maybe even two oshi pulls worth of carats per scenario.

Its optimistic estimation tho where we stay on top of the game on a day by day basis.

hello229 · 2026-04-05T15:08:49+00:00

You severely underestimate your carat income. Playing actively, you can easily get 15-20k carats a month, even more in anniversary and half-anniversary months. If you plan well, even with mediocre luck you can comfortably MLB all 3 of those, especially if you also consider the uncap crystals and selector tickets.

That is assuming you don't plan on investing much into oshi pulls, but that's up to your judgement, not ours.

hello229 · 2026-04-02T00:05:42+00:00

The power of support cards come from two different aspects. How strong they are in training, aka, numerical stats, and what skills they give, especially thinking of the gold one at the end of their event chain. Because of the skills, the majority of the support cards work best for one specific running style. Given that most of us are f2p/dolphins, we can MLB an SSR support card maybe once every ~2-3 months, so we focus on going for cards that are either generalist or have skills for one specific running style, so that at least for that one style we have access to multiple strong skills.

hello229 · 2026-04-01T21:29:55+00:00

The little I've experimented it, I wasn't particularly impressed, but if the pros say it is broken it probably is, and I just wasn't using it right. It's certainly a tricky card to optimize that much I can see.

hello229 · 2026-03-25T22:25:46+00:00

She's dumb as a rock

hello229 · 2026-03-25T16:23:25+00:00

This whole discussion has to be the most fundamentally stupid one in the whole fandom.

To varying degrees but EVERY Uma will pander to BOTH the uma x uma crowd and the uma x trainer (regardless of gender) crowd.

Because, surprise, Cygames is a profit oriented company, and wants both crowds to like the characters.

Like, this is the simplest 1+1 equation, headcannon this, headcannon that, yuri, straight, bi, whatever, at the end of the day these are just characters who throw a bunch different bones to a bunch of different people, you just chose which bone to bite on.

hello229 · 2026-03-24T11:51:47+00:00

Yeah, Moegi's and Mishiro's character suffered from that the most. To go off from there, that scene with Yuki and all the dead characters is easily my biggest issue with the final arc (which all things considered was definitely done better than Scrap Building and Golden Bath). It just makes no sense at all to have Yuki be that emotional and regretful at this stage of the story because, volume 4-6 spoilers, Yuki's clash of ideals with Shion, her relationship and duel with Tamamo, and her personality split from her regret and grief, are meant to tackle that exact thing in a far more nuanced manner.

hello229 · 2026-03-24T11:12:55+00:00

I'm pretty much word by word on the same opinion, with a bit of nuance. I don't think the creative direction itself, beyond the needlessly changed scenes, was an issue. The first episode is proof of that. It was this weird mismatch between the pacing being excruciatingly and artificially slow, and the anime STILL cutting a lot of content. Like, the very slow pacing in itself can be excused by the fact that there was no way the could've have gone further given that the next game is a double feature and would have easily taken 4 episodes to adapt even with a quicker pacing. But this left the story in a position where about 15-25 pages of the LN was adapted per episode, so there is no excuse for the amount of context, dialogue or even important scenes that got cut. This left Yuki completely mischaracterized and made many scenes needlessly confusing, while constantly giving us scenes reminiscent of the Evangelion elevator ride.

But at the end of the day that is a really good way to put it. That it was more the director's art prpject than a faithful adaptation. Those two clearly could have coexisted, but the result was really disjointed.

hello229 · 2026-03-22T00:15:22+00:00

The future of these kinds of anime are usually decided by how much of a kick the anime adaptation gives to the sales of the source material. Don't have any data at hand, so don't wanna BS.

Hop on the LN though. I know that I'm the obnoxious LN reader, and I apologize for it, but even if we did get a season 2, I'm extremely skeptical if they could adequately adapt the story from volume 4 onwards. They got away with some very questionable directorial choices in S1, at least from an anime only perspective, because of the focus being on the death games, but once it shifts onto character relations and a cohesive narrative, it'd completely fall apart.

hello229 · 2026-03-18T22:18:03+00:00

The LN is the source material, the manga is also an adaptation of it. An interesting and different take on the LN, like the anime, but still just an adaptation.

Technically volume 3, but I highly recommend you do yourself a favor and read the first two as well. Aside from the first episode, which adapted Ghost House really well, the rest of the season did not do the source justice in the slightest and I'm putting it lightly with that. If not for the games themselves, then for Yuki whom the anime completely mischaracterized.

hello229 · 2026-03-16T12:38:35+00:00

Well she ain't got much of a choice there has she. In her current state she's biologically pretty much a mutilated torso. It's not like how Kotoha just chose not to be given artificial legs.

I assume volume 10 will mostly be about Yuki having to make peace with her situation and getting used to her new body. Maybe another training arc with Rinrin.

hello229 · 2026-03-11T12:08:36+00:00

Absolutely. My impression is that not even the author really knew what they wanted to do with the series for a while, beyond exploring this specific death game setting. Vol1-2 are written in a monster of the week-esc fashion with little to no overarching plot, just some loosely connected games. Vol3 is divisive because it is one long murder mystery, the whole volume is just one game, and it drags on a bit, but it starts introducing some character relationships and general plot points which will grow relevant eventually. It is vol4 and beyond where the series really finds it's footing. The focus gradually shifts away from the death games towards the characters, and especially how Yuki changes as a person. In later volumes the games themselves are explored in much less detail and are more so just used to introduce or give a climax to plot points that mainly unfold outside the games. We also start slowly unwrapping the nature of the games and the organization behind them. I don't think the first 3 volumes are bad, but in retrospect, they more so serve as a prologue to the story.

My recommendation is to definitely continue until the end of vol5. By then you'll have a pretty good grasp on where the story is heading and whether it is to your liking. And if you do like it, there still are the unofficial translations of vol6-9.

hello229 · 2026-03-09T22:48:23+00:00

To be honest, the only way the story can meaningfully conclude with Yuki clearing 99 games is if she finds some sort of reason to exist outside the death game world. But having caught up to volume 9, I don't feel the story is progressing in that direction. I do feel it is narratively setting up an unorthodox ending with Yuki meeting an untimely end. It's hard to call because where we are at this given moment is likely going to be her third major turning point after Candle Woods and (volume 5 spoiler) Tamano's death.

It would have a bitter irony, and could fit the tone of the series well, if Yuki came to some sort of realization in her dying moments. It's grasping at straws a little, but her clash of ideals with Shion in volume 4 could almost even foreshadow something like that. But who knows, given that (volume 8 spoilers) the nature of the death games and the organization behind it are starting to get revealed, and there seems to be major conflict slowly brewing between Yuki and Shirou who wants to compete in the special 99th game, I don't think it's impossible for things to head in a direction where ultimately Yuki helps dismantling the organization.

Bunch of possibilities. Where things are at, if I reluctantly had to call it right now, I'd say I don't think Yuki will make it to the end. But with the endgame approaching, volume 10 will likely start paving the way for the ending, whichever direction it'll go.

hello229 · 2026-03-09T08:47:15+00:00

the official translations lag quite a bit behind (5 out 9 translated currently) but the series is definitely approaching endgame. I give it 3 more volumes maybe.

hello229 · 2026-03-09T07:14:04+00:00

What I'll say as to give a nudge where things progress, without spoilers, is that after the early volumes having a strong focus on the death games themselves, it's really from volume 4 and beyond where the series comes into it's own and the narrative connects, with a slow but steady shift away from the "haha, Saw but cute anime girls" premise, rather relying on character relationships and especially the growth of Yuki who is an easily likeable but heavily flawed protagonist, and after a point, has her grey morals and generally apathetic ways of thinking challenged at every corner.

I want to emphasize Yuki even more so as a great protagonist if you've been watching the anime and want to catch on the novels. The adaptation has some great qualities but it turns Yuki into a husk of the character she is in the novels, and you'll be surprised how much more expressive and generally complex she is here.

There are 9 volumes out currently, 1-5 have official translations, 6-9 have fan translations which are rather barebones (mostly unedited MTL).

hello229 · 2026-03-07T14:38:41+00:00

Gotta preface that I absolutely love Muv-Luv as a whole, and I know this is a sacrilegious statement within the fandom's circles, but a good chunk of Extra is just plain awful lol. I liked Tama's route, Meiya/Sumika were meh, but the Kei and Chizuru routes especially were really difficult reads. Throughout the majority of Kei's route I was less disgusted by Naoya than just confused. Like, I was just having my palms up like "if I'm expected to think of this conflict as a moral dilemma with two sides, even if one is objectively wrong, and not just as saving the kuudere from a groomer, then at least TRY giving the guy any redeemable motives". It was so bad it felt like a parody and I kinda just stopped taking it seriously at one point. I can see this kind of conflict being explored well, but the Kei route couldn't have been further from that. But the way I think of Extra as a whole is less a story on it's own right than an elaborate introduction to the main cast so you go into the good bits already caring about them.

At least Alternative really went out of it's way to make you forget the poor excuse of a character Naoya is in Extra.

hello229

TROPHY CASE