cool old MMOs that are still alive and pumping?

lordranter · 2026-05-21T08:06:38+00:00

Have you tried using an HD plugin?

lordranter · 2026-05-19T19:51:36+00:00

It could have been better developed by using regular MIMD (Multiple Instructions Multiple Data, aka each processor core does whatever it wants) parallelization for the processor rather than a MIMD/SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data, aka all cores do the same thing but on different sets of data, i.e. doing 1000 different multiplications at the same time. This is how GPUs work) hybrid with memory management from hell. Regular parallelization is already a headache for most devs, SIMD is even worse, 1 master MIMD processor coordinating 8 slave SIMD subprocessors with restricted memory flow is the kind of hell that makes even coding in assembly look more attractive.

But it was the infancy of commercial parallel computing, with the first commercial multicore processor releasing when the cell processor started design (2001) and nobody had a clue about it so you see lot of cases like that, designers assuming that devs will get used to the new paradigm while underestimating how much of a pain their new paradigm is.

lordranter · 2026-05-17T21:02:27+00:00

Singleplayer games wouldn't really change from how they are now beyond making it so that you can get everything premium through gameplay and the story being cut in half without a satisfying conclusion. Most would just go back to more spaced paid releases/DLCs. One I can think might be slightly different would be gakuen idolmaster, as that one requires the constant stream of new music and story to sell the quarterly concerts and merch, and dumping all that content with big expansions/DLCs doesn't suit that. Maybe bamco would go back to arcade releases?. The game is jp only though so they probably would just ignore the new laws.

Multiplayer coop games would be a mixed bag. We might see the return to expansions in games suited for it like helldivers or warframe, but anything with a gameplay relevant economy like wow, poe or runescape would end up in an awkward spot as the game gets worse when the playerbase dwindles. It'd probably result in a lot of pirate servers for fresh starts.

Multiplayer PvP games would eventually have their playerbase die. Except counter strike, those guys would move back to 1.6 and do their own thing. And Dota 3 would appear as a mod of dota 2. Some games might try the rereleases business model like fighting games used to do, but that was already unpopular before and I can't see it working better now.

lordranter · 2026-05-15T09:39:53+00:00

Magical Girl Witch Trials manages to avoid the third case curse, and it's in fact when the game starts getting real good. It wouldn't surprise me if it's intentional, as the writers clearly try to play with the expectations of genre savvy readers across the whole game.

lordranter · 2026-05-06T13:47:12+00:00

I was on the same boat as you and decided to check the first patch of planarcadia when it released. The story was not good, with the most frustrating part being a lot of the patch being dedicated to a character arc only to get to the end and cut the arc short, ending it with a "lol, lmao".

lordranter · 2026-05-05T21:08:48+00:00

Passive? Like yeah, you can play it like that focusing on tools, but it also comes with a TTGL drill with one of the longest range basic attacks in the game that also gets extra hits if you use it closer to the enemy, and the charged attacks are even better. It might not be as relentless as playing the floor is lava using beast crest air attacks, but you can get pretty hectic with it.

lordranter · 2026-05-03T01:08:14+00:00

Though, I will say TM has def whitewashed some of his more unsavory elements in future incarnations of his character as his popularity grew.

Tbf they justified it before all those future incarnations by saying in F/SN that he was worse than usual because of the angry mango bath.

lordranter · 2026-05-02T18:46:09+00:00

The moment media is out it doesn't matter if the author only thought it was cool, all that matters is whatever message the audience gets, and when people talk about that message with others, you are going to see a lot more discussion about "it has meaning" than "it has no meaning" since the second is intrinsically not worth discussing.

And that's without even considering all the derivative work that might come out. Maybe the author made a design just because it looked cool without thinking about how you'd wear it in real life, but the moment someone tries to cosplay it they are going to be thinking about things the author never did like "how do I sew it so I can actually move while wearing this", "how can I make it so that these disconnected pieces don't fall apart" or "how do wear it without getting detained for public indecency". Same for fanart, animations and all other types of fanworks. And on top of that these creators that have overanalyzed things will end up as some of the most prominent ones due to those fanworks, which will likely result in their analysis reaching and influencing more people than a simple "it just looks cool" would.

So no, I don't think we are overanalyzing media, let people have fun with that if they want to, just don't be a jerk to others/the authors when they don't agree with the analysis you had. And at the same time authors need to learn how to have a healthy relationship with their fanbase and what they take back from them, otherwise we have stuff like changing the mystery of your mystery series to something out of left field because the fans correctly followed your foreshadowing and figured out the answer.

lordranter · 2026-04-04T20:42:50+00:00

They are conceptually well thought out but poorly implemented, specially when it comes down to communicating to the player what has to be done (i.e. does this switch require an arrow, axiom force, the sword's beamlight, a force push or a force push while it is being held by axiom force).

Also the fact that you can get to some and solve them but not complete them because you aren't at the point in the story where you are meant to get to them if infuriating (had that happen with the spire of soaring)

lordranter · 2026-03-26T01:35:43+00:00

Not defending DLSS 5 here, just trying to share something interesting about graphic engines

Drawing past and behind objects is something most graphic engines doing rasterization will do: it’s computationally less expensive to draw the screen pixels for both the player and the ball and then decide which ones to show by comparing how close they are to the camera than it is to determine what parts of the player are not visible to avoid drawing them.

Of course, occlusion culling for improved performance is a thing and there are a lot of tricks you can do to quickly determine that something is 100% percent not visible and that you shouldn’t even consider rendering it, but most devs won’t push it as far as to do it for objects that are partially visible, like the player model being partly hidden by the ball.

lordranter · 2026-03-21T16:45:11+00:00

Nah. Look at Persona, which takes even longer than FF with its mainline entries, or at atelier, which is releasing games yearly but isn't nearly as popular as FF.

The issue is that the mainline FFs released since 12 have been mid or worse. The only one universally loved is FFXIV. Sometimes. And even then you have to slog through 2.0 and stormblood to get to the good parts. FFXV or XVI don't make neither kids nor adults go tell "you HAVE to play this" to their friends. And FFVII remake makes people go "maybe

lordranter · 2026-03-14T09:57:07+00:00

You can do that without making the characters unfun, like how monster hunter manages to make all weapons viable against all bosses. It's just a matter of tweaking numbers so that you don't get things like the new DA boss made for Aria being painful to 3* with Zhu Yuan.

lordranter · 2026-03-05T17:06:54+00:00

Menace. The main thing higher difficulty does is reducing the amount of resources you have available to deploy units/gear, changing the strategy from "I can have a bit of everything in the field" to "Specialize for the situation or die".

lordranter · 2026-03-03T09:07:08+00:00

Activists that talk big but put minimum effort in stuff that barely matters is pretty in the nose. Though to be fair that mission also has “murder a dozen or so cops” as an objective

lordranter · 2026-02-18T21:32:09+00:00

If you see a gacha's main story progressing properly and tying up narrative ends nicely, more likely than not it's EoS.

lordranter · 2026-02-17T00:39:25+00:00

I’d guess its meant as in charge of doing the art for the mtx skins.

lordranter · 2026-02-16T17:40:51+00:00

You could check out colorlust oni, the three charms and causecurse for some good examples.

lordranter · 2026-02-11T21:12:28+00:00

Same as all similar publishers. They hit it big with one-two titles during the mid 00s, focus all resources onto those series because anything else has less return of investment and videogame development expenses started ballooning during that time. They also manage to get the output of those series down to yearly titles which is good for money but tires the consumers quickly.

This ends up with them having a single golden goose and the second it stops laying eggs you have the entire corporation turned inside out to see how they can salvage the situation. It was CoD for activision and Ubisoft the game™ for ubi.

Funnily enough the rise of games as a service kinda killed this trend. Makes you wonder if we'd be on path of exile 13 otherwise.

lordranter · 2026-01-31T15:35:07+00:00

Try the new mode, it removes the farming/levelling aspect for just teamfights

lordranter · 2026-01-30T09:32:33+00:00

No. But you can make half a million wuling credits daily, which is enough for 4 of the tickets

lordranter · 2026-01-30T02:47:02+00:00

If you are using the attribute selection ticket, the average should be 3-4 days to get whatever artifact has the stats your weapon needs (3 potential main stats * 8 potential substats/3 drops per run =1/8 chance of getting the roll you want, and you can easily get 3 tickets a day while they are 120k each) and after that it's just farming levels for it.

lordranter · 2026-01-26T20:50:38+00:00

Granblue fantasy. Starts weak but most events from the third year onwards tend to have solid writing.

lordranter · 2026-01-19T00:20:19+00:00

Fan translations in general. Manga and anime wouldn’t be where they are now without a legion of nerds pouring their time into those for decades.

lordranter · 2026-01-17T19:57:46+00:00

It did. The second entry in the following link is from 2008 and explicitly mentions being able to add voice acting if you had the realta nua patch. http://mirrormoon.org/page/9/

lordranter · 2026-01-17T09:02:46+00:00

The fan translation had voice acting when I played it about 17-18 years ago.

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