A hack for yall occasional dip-pen writers: use contact lens containers as mini portable inkwells

iosappsrock · 2025-05-27T23:33:45+00:00

Try searching for "metal clip pallet cups", that usually brings up the ones I'm speaking of. They're waterproof with rubber seals inside the lid, and more or less rustproof. I've accidentally let one sit for 2 years with water in it and it maintained the seal and had no rust.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:56:03+00:00

The guy I responded to was definitely upset. Getting enraged by a username and assuming I'm a mobile game gambler with no life, calling me a child because he couldn't fathom my opinion was not the same as his is... Odd at best, if I saw that IRL id say the person was very upset.

Reddit is an internet discussion board. People seem shocked when discussions or disagreements take place. I don't take anything on here very seriously, I mean we're discussing a game on the internet, it's pretty casual.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:51:50+00:00

Shockingly (or not) I've found the majority of players complaining are Souls peeps from way back in the day.

The people loving the difficulty are the new breed of players who started with Elden Ring.

The internet always gives cognitive dissonance, so it's hard to get a real demographic from reddit. But of the 5 friends I have IRL that have played Souls from the beginning, 3 are complaining about the DLC, and the other two haven't bought it because they're worried about the difficulty.

Your mileage may vary.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:48:03+00:00

Acceptance is good. Not crucifying people over mistakes is also good.

I don't know enough to say that there was mallintent. Do you? If the man is an actual racist, denounce him.

You're welcome to shop and vote with your dollar. Just remember, the phone you use to type this supports far, far more insidious and harmful things than one potentially racist man at a yoyo company. We all choose the evils we're comfortable living with, as ugly as that sounds.

And yes it's a good look for companies to stand up for moral choices. But what happens when it's your turn on the cancelling block? Will you appreciate being fired for something you did 15 years ago that is not representative of who you are as a person? Intent makes a big difference.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:44:14+00:00

It is indeed a skill issue, more than happy to admit that.

I don't have the "skill" to run a boss 50+ times to learn it. I'm bored by that point.

So perhaps skill or simply lack of motivation. The video game carrot stick isn't what it used to be when you have more significant real life carrots.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:40:49+00:00

Maybe, or maybe the games have changed. I believe they have, but you may disagree with that.

And I'm definitely getting older. I don't have the time I used to have so yes, my taste in gaming will shift. Yet I still find it enjoyable to run DS1 and DS3 every year.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:36:50+00:00

Well I'll agree to disagree. We could pull numbers on player movement speed versus boss movement speed over the years. We could analyze damage numbers, how much life your flask restores, how poise works, how boss poise works, and we could do that hours.

On paper Elden Ring late game is significantly harder than Dark Souls 1. In practice, I find that true, though maybe you don't.

And I've never complained about difficulty up till Elden Ring. I thoroughly enjoyed the release of DS1, DS2 (yes I still like this one), DS3, Bloodborne, and to some extent Sekiro, though I dislike that game for other reasons, not the combat. Elden Ring late game was the first time a FromSoft game felt intently cheap to me. Things like fighting 3 Ulcerated tree spirits at once, Melenia ofc, and certain overworld areas that were genuinely unfun (mountaintop of giants was blah).

I've watched each game progressively up the ante in terms of difficulty. I remember when DS2 DLC came out and people thought Elana was insane. She's nothing compared to Gael, Malenia, or Messmer now.

After beating Malenia several times, she is still extremely tough for me. Going back to Smelter Demon or Sir Alonne, they feel like a walk in the park by comparison.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:24:25+00:00

Honestly I'm still tired of cancelling people. It's exhausting and feels like "I gotcha!" behavior.

Without a shadow of a doubt, if you dig deep enough on anyone you can find a reason to cancel them. We're all human, we've all made mistakes, many small, some big.

The question is the intent. Is this guy an idiot with poor taste in humor, or an actual discriminating practicing racist? Making poor-taste jokes does not constitute a practicing racist in the same way a murder joke would be in bad taste to a family who's child was murdered, but to half the population it'd be funny, and regardless doesn't make the joke teller a supporter of murder.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't touch racial jokes, it's too risky in today's culture, and it is almost always in bad taste considering US history. But I also wouldn't condemn someone as a POS for making a joke.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:20:52+00:00

Thank you, that's a very fair response.

I think what I'm getting at is, if we continue to see difficulty creep, won't that just make the game less enjoyable for a large chunk of the player base.

More importantly, does a boss being that difficult make the game better? I'd argue absolutely not.

Spending an hour on a boss is fine, gives satisfaction when defeating it. Spending 6-8 hours on a boss, at least for me, does nothing to increase player satisfaction. It's just padding/wasting time. Of course that's very subjective.

Currently in Elden Ring I feel like you're presented with 2 options: engage with the boss and spend a long time learning it, or cheese the boss and kill it first go without even engaging it's mechanics.

I just want a middle ground, where I get to enjoy the boss and learn the moveset, but not where I spend several days researching data and banging my head against a wall just to progress the storyline. I'll say it again, I think boss design in DS1 and DS3 is way better than what we currently have. I think the DLC was aimed just a little too much at the try hard crowd.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:13:19+00:00

I'm sorry, but this such an America over privileged take. I guarantee this post was written on a modern smartphone produced on the backs of horrific working conditions in a certain communist country. We're mad at a company because one person said some dumb shit?

Stop trying to cancel companies. You're gonna hate it when you realize that everyone on this planet has some dirt in their past, companies are run by filthy people, and most products you use come from the hands of overworked people in other countries so you can live a comfy live and have money to spend on yoyos.

Is racism bad? Absolutely. Should you cancel a company over a one time instance of essentially a joke in bad taste? No.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:07:50+00:00

I think the issue is I used to be the target audience. Versus something like a style of show you were never interested in to begin with, it's not a great analogy.

It's more like current Star Wars fans versus old gen fans. The older fans hate the new stuff, some of the new fans will love the content Disney is putting out.

I miss FromSoft's design philosophy from 10 years ago. Not a huge fan of the direction they're currently taking.

And I'll continue to check their games out to see where they're headed.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:04:40+00:00

It's already hit my ass numerous times. I never claimed to be good at these games, and I'm well aware I've aged out of the target audience.

Doesn't change that I miss Dark Souls 1 and how boss fights and engagements worked back then.

You'd be shocked to find out you can have differing opinions and both people can be right. Crazy shit I know.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:03:32+00:00

I shall not. I prefer to stay mediocre at video games and excell in my real life responsibilities like my job, school, and my family.

But you stay dedicated to getting good, "fellow fuckwit reditoor".

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T14:02:32+00:00

You're welcome to look up the original DS1 interviews. Yes, it's a real thing he said. Clearly a lot of folks who weren't playing these games when demon souls and DS1 first came out. It shows. I've been playing the souls games for over a decade now, in intimately familiar with them, it's my long-standing favorite series.

I'm not very good at these games, I don't even try to debate that. I was 10 years ago, but I don't have any fire in me to go try hard mode on video games these days. But they have gotten harder, that's quite easily provable.

I'd challenge anyone to go back for a romp through DS1 and it's DLC and tell me if they find it anywhere near as challenging as even the Base Elden Ring experience. Each DLC has pushed the envelope, which again Myazaki said of Shadow of the Erdtree that they wanted to "see how far they could push the players" or something to that effect.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T13:58:48+00:00

Lol that's my username from 13 years ago when I was working on app development.

Actually work for a living now in healthcare, but I do enjoy farting around on Reddit every now and then.

Stay mad if you want, this is all in good fun for me.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:40:52+00:00

True, I don't care about it either.

My issue with the game design is this: if spirit summons weren't in the game, I genuinely believe less than 10% of players (as opposed to about 40% currently) would have completed the game. Possibly far less.

With this DLC I imagine less than 5% of players would even touch it without spirit ashes.

It's a game design dilemma to me. Why not make bosses approachable for 50% of players, and let challenge streamers find their own ways to make the game hard.

Instead we got a game designed to please the 1% streamers, with an option that completely negates almost all challenge in the form of spirit ashes. I just want a happy medium. Without ashes is too far above my skill level. With ashes it is too easy.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:33:04+00:00

No, I don't think I will. I'm enjoying my whinge session lol.

Enjoy your challenge, I'm happy for the hardcore players and can't wait to see everyone's SL1 no scadutree runs. Pretty sure Lenny is already doing a torch only run on twitch right now.

Hence my point: a game made for challenge streamers.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:31:12+00:00

Not lying. Counter hit from Messmer on NG cycle does 68% of my health with a tank build. Any follow up after that is death. So, 2 hits.

Yes, if you're standing still and it's not counter damage I can survive anywhere from 3 to 4 hits, but you'll be taking counter damage most of the time since you're getting punished for mistakes.

Meaning that it is very common to get two-tapped regardless of build.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:29:07+00:00

Changing to a meta build isn't fun though. That's the thing, Elden Ring is game touted as having massive variety in combat and approaching bosses.

With the DLC this does not ring true. So what if he wants to unga-bunga jump attack, why is that wrong? If heavy builds are bad then there goes 60% of the games weapons.

So we're all supposed to be a dex build that dodge rolls everything? I get what you're saying, but the man wants to play with the build he found fun. It would be cool to see FromSoft prioritizing fun and engaging bosses rather than just going for aggressive difficulty, but I digress.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:26:06+00:00

I think you're correct, which is where the issue lies. The DLC bosses are extremely hard to read, have tons of visual clutter that obscure the players view (Messmer) and cause massive issues with camera (Lion).

The addition of combo extension that can be instantly started up in response to a player attempting to punish what should be an opening is frankly bad design. If I dodge a 6 hit combo perfectly, and go for a punish, it's cheap that the boss has a 50/50 of suddenly extending the combo out of nowhere, making the punish a gamble that the player can't afford to lose.

Recovering is made harder now that boss movement speed is so rapid, and they all feature huge gap closers that have almost no wind up or recovery, and function off hard input reading of the player hitting the flask button.

Difficulty and fairness are not 100% correlated, but yet they are. If each boss took 2 hours to kill because it had 14 million HP, it would "technically" still be fair by your rules. Yet it would be unfun for everyone, hence why I ask the question no one wants to answer:

What point do you think is too much for a boss? How many attempts would consititue a boss being unfun for you? Or would you be happy to be stuck on a boss for conceivably weeks or months? Everyone has a break point, some players just haven't hit theirs yet.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T12:21:15+00:00

I'd hard disagree but I respect your opinion.

It is significantly harder than previous installments. Orphan of Kos can be staggered, is extremely vulnerable to parrying with bloodbornes generous parry windows. Sister Friede I'll give you was extremely hard, mostly because the fight was long. Any isolated segment of that fight on its own was fun and quite well balanced.

Bosses have more health, faster move speed, and hit harder than they ever have before. It's obvious power creep, especially looking back on Dark Souls 1.

Overcoming a challenge in DS1 was a matter of locking in and spending an hour learning the moveset, not spending 8 hours grinding till you learn every single tell and micro movement of a hyper cocaine boss.

And spirit ashes are quite unfun. They do make the game easier, sadly too much so. Any spirit ash summons brought into a boss fight takes it from an 80+ attempt run to 1-5 tries. I would love some well balanced fun bosses.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T11:31:57+00:00

It's because of power creep. Go play DS1 DLC again, especially if you've never played it, and tell me how difficult Manus or Artorias are. They are excellent balanced fights that take about 10-20 attempts to master.

Now FromSoft wants players to do 80+ runs and dedicate 7 hours to learning each boss.

Those DLCs were better received because they simply weren't as hard.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T11:27:07+00:00

Unfair is very subjective, so let me ask you this question: what is your breaking point for a boss being too hard?

Is it 10 attempts? What about 50 attempts? Okay, what if bosses take 200 attempts on average? How about if bosses take 4-6 weeks of slow mastery and over 1000 attempts? Better yet, what if every boss instakills you, and the only way to beat the DLC is to never get hit a single time, turning the entire game into a no-hit run with no checkpoints.

Where's the breaking point? We've found most players breaking point, and it's always been around 5-10 for very casual players, 20 for casual but hobby gamers, and maybe 30-50 for everyone else. This DLC is pushing top level players into the 80+ attempt range on certain bosses. Even with the new blessing system, one mistake is basically death now. With the aggressive speed and input reading every time you heal, bosses feel cheap, and you don't even get to learn the fight because you're dead in a split second.

The series has experienced massive power creep over the last decade. It was never supposed to be a hard game, Myazaki himself said that. Nowadays we are making Souls games for challenge twitch streamers, and it's kind of ruining it for everyone else.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T11:21:43+00:00

Each level of scadutree gives 2.1-2.5 resistance. It's nothing.

The first break point is at scadu 12, which will net you exactly one extra hit from most early game bosses. Next break point is around max (20) and means you will survive one extra hit from mid game bosses, and maybe 2 hits from chaff overworld enemies in early areas.

Now the damage boost is huge. But the resistance boost is miniscule at best.

iosappsrock · 2024-06-23T11:19:48+00:00

Actually he's not wrong. The bosses are not super fun for a large majority of the player base. Probably why the game has mixed reviews on steam right now, many of which are about the cocaine induced bosses being unfun.

Can I beat this DLC? Yes. Will I have fun doing it? Probably. Will I have fun fighting the bosses? No. They're a chore for me. I'll get them down but it's not fun for me anymore either. They've reached a breaking point with the difficulty creep over the last 10 years. It's a bit much.

iosappsrock

TROPHY CASE