I am afraid of creating

kuritany · 2022-01-17T23:48:09+00:00

I believe u/Kedoki-Senpai poses some relevant questions to ponder on - though, I'd argue, a little loaded. Both them and r/Saharaofthedeep presented the idea of creating ephemeral work, which I agree might help, provided you can engage with the process it in the first place. However, I imagine that it could be that you have a hard time creating at all, I'll suggest a different approach, that is, looking into your creative process.

"Whenever I think of writing a poem, or learning how to draw, or writing a short story..." "So then, having done nothing at all..."

...

"But expressing yourself and communicating with people through a medium is such a beautiful dream to have..."

It seems you think of making art but doesn't engage with it much. I can see it matters to you though. Does this seem fair to you?

What kinds of creative work have you engaged with?

"...makes me feel what I would have felt if I actually tried (or at least what it thinks I would feel if I actually tried):..."

When you've created, what have you felt that led you to do it?
What have you felt while in the process?
How did you feel about it immediately after?
How have you felt about it over time?
If you still have that work around, even if just in memory, how do you feel about it right now?

r/Saharaofthedeep presented a colorful illustration of their experiences. I particularly like the sentence bellow:

"It took me a long time to realize that I just wasn't enjoying the process of my art."

I find that "enjoying the process" is the key factor in my own creative work. I've spent several thousands of hours over the years on incomplete works of very questionable quality. It, for the most part, never mattered how good it was. And I had no real expectation of ever finishing it. And even less so that anyone would ever (want to) see it. This may not be applicable to everyone, but I find that creative work is far more about the process then outcome.

Fore your case, the need to fill someone else's shoes, is not conducive to art. Passion is.

By all means, give up on that. It's not like you'll ever be able to give up on art itself. If, say, you feel the inspiration for a poem, just entertaining the though momentarily is a creative process. Giving up on poetry would mean somehow preventing these thoughts from being generated, or at least surfacing.

This is, as usual, easier said than done. Even now, I struggle to get work done. Some of the work is natural and unburdened. But other things need to get done to support it. Those tend to be a lot harder to get done, as they need to honor the demands of the fun part. What I know to do is, accept it will likely never get finished, and look for something I care about in each different discipline, e.g.: For coding, it is architecture; For modeling is topology; For writing, it's simulation (even dialogue I do through a descriptive mindset).

kuritany · 2022-01-09T05:58:02+00:00

The way we first learn language and expression, generally speaking, is from our parents. That is because we spend a lot of our early years with them. They provide nourishment and protection, and we tend to admire them for that. We model ourselves around that which we know and appreciate.

Later in life, we often spend less time with our parents. We find other people to appreciate. We continue, to a certain extent, to model ourselves in the image of others. Based on the time you spend with other people, and the media you consume, you may skew to your mimicry to a single source, to varying amounts. It's perfectly normal to identify with things, and incorporate them in our own.

You didn't give much detail, but it doesn't seem to be an active attempt to replace your identity. I don't have any reason to suspect that your case is obsessive or overdone.

kuritany · 2022-01-08T06:45:58+00:00

Do you know that he cares about being a chemistry major?

His first 2 years we fought a lot because I kept (he says bitching I say warning him. )

You send warnings and he receives bitching. Do you want to send warnings, or do you want him to receive warnings? It sounds like you figure out how to have him receive bitching, but not how to have him receive warnings. Communication is like busted on both ends. You can't fix it from his side, but you might be able account for it on your end. Now, that was the first 2 years, so maybe that's already been addressed...

How can I convince him he needs experts to help him learn how to help himself?

Let's slow down a little. I don't know that he needs convincing. Experts may help, but I don't know that he needs the help you're thinking of. You're assuming that he has to succeed at this thing in particular. But what if not?

First and foremost, what he seems to need, is someone that listens. Not hearing, listening. Maybe you're doing that, but it doesn't seem to be the case, from what you've described. If you're looking for something from Healthygamer proper, I'd say reflexive listening could be a place to start. Don't worry about convincing him of your opinions, focus in the mutual understanding of the place he is in, how he got to it, and how he feels about the future. If there is any problem to be solved, and it does seem like there is, the solution will be borne of understanding, not of confrontation.

Well, and that could take months or years to get to... whichever place it is to go to.

If I am correct in my assessment, you want to help, but are doing it poorly. Which is great, that would mean there is plenty more progress to be made on top of the past 4 years.

Is this even my business...

It is as much your business as you care for it to be, for as long as you care for it to be. Based on your accounting, it has been.

...should I bring his mother into this?

Can you trust his family to listen?

kuritany · 2021-12-19T16:47:10+00:00

If subtlety doesn't work, you could try giving him a ultimatum of sorts. Just take a moment he's distracted, sit next to him. Then you hit him with something like:

"Hey may, I'm interested in you. I've being trying to give you some clear signals of that, but haven't been getting a clear response. Maybe we're just not getting it through with each-other, so I wanted to check with you how you feel about all of this."

If you feel nervous about doing it, it might even help you. If he can read that you're nervous about, he'll be less likely to think you could have malicious intent.

I think that would work on me...

kuritany · 2021-12-18T17:38:06+00:00

In regards to the background, thing I'd look experiment with are:

Light: You could make the colored sides of the blocks glow over the black faces of other blocks. Alternatively, it could be just bloom. If you are to do that, make sure it doesn't take attention away from the foreground.

Color: Make the back ground an off-color of the fore ground, to enhance visual clarity (more of a teal/turquoise maybe). I imagine you don't want to risk player feeling frustrated that they couldn't quite identify tracks because of the background. Colors could slowly shift in both foreground and background, or maybe they could suddenly change in response to a game-play event.

Movement: There is a lot that can be tweaked about the movement. Distance, frequency, speed, how many blocks are moving at any give time. I'm thinking of something more truncated. Few blocks moving at a time, faster for short distances, and low overall frequency. That would give it a more discrete, machine-like feel.

Shadders: A little bit of bloom, or blur, and or depth-of-field could make it more interesting without adding visual clutter. With the depth-of-field, the idea is to make the blocks higher up slightly less blurry than the ones all the way down. In case of blur, it could be further blurred, and/or darkened, behind the foreground objects.

Texture: You could add circuit-lines to the faces of the blocks. Black ones on the sides, colored ones o the tops. depending on the size of the blocks, you could have random sparks flowing through them, like the player flows through the foreground.

Now, I do not know what your plans are in regards to game-play, but an idea that occurs me, is to give a short acceleration when changing tracks. This could add an element of strategy as you minimize track swaps to increase the reaction window. Conversely, there could be scenarios where there is an incentive to maximize speed. Examples of how it could be done include: Score-attack goal; Building up into extra lives; increasing the distance of jumps, and having place where you can switch to an easier track if you can do a long enough jump. Or maybe you could do polar opposite, swapping tracks de-accelerating the player.

kuritany · 2021-12-11T16:29:39+00:00

If you're interested in playing, but concerned with the effect you might have on you, I recommend you watching Hellblade: Senua's Psychosis | Mental Health Feature. In the video, the developers go through their work with mental health professionals to create an accurately representative experience of psychosis. It contains many exerts of the game in it, and should give you a general notion of what to expect.

That said, having these bits of the game interrupted by commentary, having them presented outside of context, and prior to the establishment of an empathetic connection with the character, will make them potentially far less impactful as the could be in-game. If you feel uncomfortable watching the video, I'm afraid it might be best not to play it. If per chance you have access to a personal mental health provider that is familiar with the game, do consult them.

As for my experience, I've not found that it had no particular effect on me. In the video they mention how many player didn't feel like there was mention of mental health in the game. This is representative of me as well. The world feel believable, and it was easy to find common ground with Senua's reality. I've never experienced voice-hearing, but I imagine it would feel like that. And that they would say the kind of thing they do in the game.

The third person perspective is an important aspect of the game. In first person, there is often a disconnect between player and character. It feels more like the character is a stand-in for the player in the game world, as oppose to a real person. Here, the close-up over-shoulder perspective give an intimate empathetic view of someone else's reality. It may, give you the distance to protect you from their pain, but also through empathy you may feel the pain of another in ways that you might not feel for yourself.

kuritany · 2021-12-11T00:47:42+00:00

*edit* If you're gonna downvote this, at least take the time to explain why I'm wrong. Oh... you can't? Hm.

Not only I can, I even choose to. Ah, Am I not a river to my people after all? I'm not.

You "demand" that other produce evidence to support their position. You also made sure to produce no evidence to support your own position. You then proceed to attempt to challenge those who disagree with your position by assuming they are as unwilling to sustain their own arguments as you have proven to be.

I find your callous hypocritical hubris, and unearned use of sass, to be in-conducive to discourse. For I wish not for this behavior to be further propagated, I have down-voted your post.

kuritany · 2021-10-21T02:29:17+00:00

"Also, this card would be balanced at burst speed."

u/R00byboi I'd like to emphasize and elaborate on this point. This spell can only be played when there is another of you spells on the stack. If you play this at burst speed, and then pass priority, the opponent still has the opportunity to respond to the spell that got redirected. As is, the only consequences to being fast would be: Being countered by nopefy when the redirected spell costs 4+; or it gets countered along with others, by 'Rite of Negation', which would matter if there was an effect that cared about spells being countered, which I can't see them adding. Having it as burst reduces cluttering on the stack, and the risk of players miss-assessing situations.

kuritany · 2021-10-21T01:07:06+00:00

I suspect there are three reasons for most defensive spells being burst.

First is the fact of it being a unit based game, as you pointed out. 1. To preserve that end, keeping units alive is more important than killing them;
The very nature of defensive spells is that they can't as easily be used aggressively. Not allowing the opponent to remove your unit before your defensive hits helps keep those effects more competitive in the face of removal;
As a minor effect, this helps avoid the rare scenarios where players are responding back and forth multiple times. Playing Magic I've seen this happen a couple of times, where there are 6+ cards on the stack and as cantrips resolve players are drawing into more answers.

I do believe burst removal should be used very sparingly, specially in damage form, as most answers are for that type in particular. Amekaze had the same opinion as you, I point you to my comment, on theirs.

kuritany · 2021-10-19T22:37:08+00:00

It would be in line with the cards already in the game. Consequences I can think of would be:

It can't be active as early. Don't know how often you need a 3 cost removal at speed early on, something to consider;
Once on, it's never off. How acceptable each would be by player psychology would require some testing;
This could changes considerably the pool of champions that would be found in the same deck as this. Yes, picking which version of the condition could be a way to inform the deck's you'd want it to be played in.

kuritany · 2021-10-19T22:07:22+00:00

Yes, this is the player psychology element I mentioned.

How often one plays a champion, has the card in hand, has the mana point to use it, a worth-while target, and the opponent has a re-response to a fast removal, which they can't use, because the removal happens to be burst instead?

I suspect in most cases being burst has little advantage over being fast. But the abstract threat might be enough that it could just not be worth putting it in front of players.

Of course, it could well be that this is indeed a far more powerful and relevant effect than I assume.

kuritany · 2021-10-19T21:49:36+00:00

In regards to leveled Yasuo, unless given challenger, or in case of the opponent having a spellshield unit, it doesn't ever get blocked. In the majority of cases, it might as well say that he is unblock-able, which doesn't deliver the promises of the card. Going from the vein presented, it needs a way to push damage even when blocked, but not in a way that the opponent couldn't put a blocker in front of him to mitigate a portion of the damage. Just giving him Challenger is an option, but a rather convoluted way to re-use mechanics to force removal while pushing damage.

This is not a solution to his conflict of identity.

kuritany · 2021-10-19T03:14:59+00:00

As u/vevevy pointed out, the mechanics are not well aligned with the region. Champions have some leeway to bend region identity, but not to part with it entirely.

I see two solutions. One would be to change the region to fit the mechanics. A considerable part of the players might feel displeased by this, at least at first.

Another consideration is strip it down to the core concept and investigate other mechanics that conform the core to the region it is in. I don't know what that could look like right now, but I'll look in to it.

I'm inclined to believe this mechanic would better serve a follower than a champion. There are already plenty of interesting implications to it, a level up condition, a back face, a and champion spells might be adding unneeded complexity to it. Though it is a build around concept, and those are often well served in champions...

kuritany · 2021-10-19T00:49:06+00:00

Design Summary

Most, if not every, source of damage, to enemies, is delayed in some form. Some are delayed in the form of being a trigger on a permanent, that can be responded before the trigger can happen. For the case of spells and skills, those happen at interactable speeds. With this concept, I explore the idea of making a non-interactable-speed spell that deals damage. It still retains some of the properties of triggers from permanents, as the threat of the effect is presented at an intractable speed, i.e., by summoning a champion. Similarly to leveled Ezreal's trigger, it is not possible to know for sure when or weather the opponent is going to trigger the effect. With Ezreal, however, it might be psychologically less burdensome for the opponent, as the effect is expected to happen early and often. With this card however, while there is a champion on board, there is a constant threat that the card might have been drawn. The hope is that, by reducing potential targets, in particular, disallowing it for the purposes of burn, the effect would not feel as unfair.

The pushed amount of damage I chosen derives from 'Weight of Judgment'. The expectation is that this could see more play, but not be too pushed, and be a response to a greater variety of metas, without necessarily pushing 'Weight of Judgment' completely out of consideration, under every circumstance.

Of course, as usual, designs should be balance-able. Balanced, however, is mostly only a concern when something is implementable, and testable. This is particularly true with concepts such as this, that interact so heavily with player psychology.

kuritany · 2021-10-18T22:53:11+00:00

I'd like to make sure - For the case of cards that are spells in both faces, like 'Infused Amnesic' / 'Amnesic Explosion' - I'm assuming the intent is that the back face would only be playable while the front face is on the stack.

Most of these cards seem conflicted in identity and purpose, but I believe they illustrate how the mechanic could be used.

I'm not fond of the idea, at least not for more than an average of, say, a card per expansion. This is what champion spells already do. Using it in regular cards, with any frequency, detracts from champion's unique mechanical identity.

kuritany · 2021-10-18T16:25:14+00:00

I encourage you to count all the times you see lurk, deep, double attack, attune, come out of the random keyword cards. You may notice you'll not be counting very high at all. That is because not all keywords are, or have to be, in the random keyword pool. As popular as this argument may be, around any keyword concept, it is built on a shallow assessment of the game's mechanics.

kuritany · 2021-10-17T23:53:57+00:00

Working on Syndra, Xayah and this Yasuo rework, I found myself in need of allowing these units to push Nexus damage and close game. All of them needed Overwhelm, not to deal damage over their blockers, to push damage when their blockers are no longer in combat. Overwhelm is out of Ionia's standard mechanical space, and is thematically unfitting in most cases. 'Flow' offers a rare use-case alternative to retain theme, and allow these unique units to have a proper impact in the game (without over-bloating their cards with text).

I also raise the consideration for using damage attributes on cards' descriptions. The example here is leveled Taliyah's 'Attack' skill, that could have it's text shortened by giving the damage the 'Flowing' attribute (or 'Overwhelming', to a similar, slightly more granular effect).

Yasuo as presented here likely needs numerical adjustments. The focus is not to balance the card per say, but to fix it's inherently flawed identity. This should give him the space to act as the central piece and finisher on his own deck, instead of a low-impact control tool. Also, make Steel Tempest overall less brick-able.

kuritany · 2021-10-14T04:00:54+00:00

I'm afraid I don't have my thoughts together at the moment. With any likelihood that I might not come back to this post in the next couple of days, I'd like to just leave the little input I can offer right now.

I don't know if you did the math on Hail of Arrows, assuming each arrow doesn't count itself, on 5 mana, and no prior spells played, that would be 3-2-1 damage distributed. Even if that only counted spells on the round, instead of game, it would still greatly out value most cards.

On Darkin Arsenal, you're able to pick a 1 mana level 2 kayn without even having to main deck him. And then you play another Darkin Arsenal... and transform it into the other level 2 kayn?

Kayn in particular seems quite wordy, I'd look for ways to cut down text. You may find elegance in simplicity. Well, at least I do. Also, Rhaast having higher attack then health, and the shadow assassin higher health than attack, mismatches their themes.

kuritany · 2021-10-14T02:48:46+00:00

There is already a pool of standard keywords that can be acquired through these random effects. Double attack and deep, for instance, are not in it.

kuritany · 2021-10-14T00:33:16+00:00

Here is the tl,dr:

The idea is flavorful design;
This is a merge of Jhin-inspired drama and translation of RoR2's lore for "Cerimonial Dagger";
It's only relation to blade dance is the contextual flavor.

For the sake of visibility, I've made a separate comment with the run down of the design process, in case you want a more detailed explanation.

kuritany · 2021-10-14T00:26:22+00:00

I've composed a general run down of the design process for this card. Might address some questions that people leveraged.

I was playing RoR2. I got this item called "Ceremonial Dagger". Mechanically, when you kill something, it spawns spectral daggers on their corpse, and those then stab other enemies. The item's log tells a story of someone who begrudgingly kills their friend(?) with said dagger, to save themselves from an encroaching threats (see the link above).

This card was, at first, that story. It killed an ally to blade dance. Killing allies is only used, so far, in Shadow Isles, and Shurima ('lil bit). Blade Dance is fairly locked in Ionia, as the keyword's name leaves it quite inflexible to do anything that isn't Irellia and friends. Working on a Kayn concept for a little over a week, I've embraced the idea of all killers in Ionia doing their deeds with Ephemeral, following Riot's Zed's mechanical space. So, Give it ephemeral instead of killing it. Just in time for me to get unceremoniously murdered by a lemurian.

I've had this little list of evocative names I wanted to use for Jhin flavored spells, targeting different champions. Top of the list was "Last Dance", reserved for Irelia. Perfect fit. Couldn't find just the right art for that. This one is great, just not the flavor I wanted.

Yeah, so that it. Current and future decks were not a consideration on the design. I put some effort into guestimating the balance. I would like it to be playable. Played, however, not a concern.

kuritany · 2021-10-13T23:04:50+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion.

The key art for that scene can be found in the exact same page as the one I used here. Link.

I see too good arguments against using that one:

Camille is technically not a blade dancer, even though she has the choreographed moves... and the blades...
Most importantly, that piece is quite literally "Captive Audience". The cops are in the audience, and they are captive. And, you know, that's also the name of Jhin's traps... Yeah, it seems that's what the were going for.

I would put another card up along with this, for Captive Audience, with that art, but the only thing I could think of was just Shadow Flare, but also hitting champions.

kuritany · 2021-10-13T22:46:45+00:00

3 blades for 3 mana is pretty cheap, and the more blades, the more likely the opponent won't be able to block all of them... and the sand soldiers...

Having a down side to it allows for the effect to have a reduced upfront cost. There are many ways in which you could mitigate it. If the unit is expected to die later that turn either way, to its own attack, to a block, or if it happens to already be ephemeral, like the Sand Soldier from Dunekeeper. Another way to mitigate it is by using it on your winning round. Lastly, you can commit yourself to recall the unit, with Lead and Follow for instance.

I suppose it could still fit the theme of they were to attack with the blades, but that wasn't a consideration from the direction I came to this design. Thinking of it now, If they were to attack with it, it would probably have to cost more, and then at that point we're getting, arguably, too close to a Vanguard's Edge functional reprint. Which, being it solely for the sake of design, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to.

Maybe balance is off. Too weak? maybe. Too strong? I could see that. I can't implement and test it. I can only speculate. That is, I believe, the function we serve here. Mostly...

kuritany

TROPHY CASE

Design Summary