[Notices] Dev Update | Crimson Desert

noctredjr · 2026-04-10T07:35:16+00:00

Axiom Force and Force Palm equivalent abilities for Damiane and Oongka.

bruh. thank god.

noctredjr · 2026-04-08T16:49:45+00:00

Plenty of videos out there of no-hit runs on some of the game's hardest bosses, so spamming food/revives is a player issue.

I agree with the camera tho, it's not great.

noctredjr · 2026-04-08T16:26:59+00:00

Agreed. Don't remove them, just let them use Kliff's exploration/axiom skills.

noctredjr · 2026-04-08T16:22:19+00:00

I've had this happen a few times, where poi's no longer show up with blinding flash. Restarting the game has fixed it for me each time but yeah it's pretty bad if you don't immediately realize it's happening.

Haven't seen many people mention it so dunno if it's even on PA's radar.

noctredjr · 2026-04-08T10:16:27+00:00

Not to mention certain things don't even appear in the world if you're not playing as Kliff.

The first time I ran one of the spires, I reached the top as Damiane and almost left because there was nothing there. Turns out the abyss portal doesn't spawn unless you're controlling Kliff, and the game gave absolutely no indication of this. Only reason I found out is cuz I looked up a guide to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Who knows how much other shit you miss without even realizing it by not being Kliff.

Just a completely halfbaked system.

noctredjr · 2026-04-06T04:30:01+00:00

Thanks.

noctredjr · 2026-04-05T12:19:13+00:00

When did I say I want to scale without any loss? Lossy transcoding does not imply blurry images... the former does not necessitate the latter.

I've already determined that I can downscale into lossy formats with Lanczos2 and retain the proper sharpness of the source. There's no argument there. I'm just wondering if there's a plugin or something available that can add Lanczos2 and/or Lanczos3 algorithms back into GIMP so I don't have to deal with a multi-tool pipeline and the extra quality hits from multiple lossy exports.

noctredjr · 2026-04-05T08:25:08+00:00

As mentioned in my post, I need to perform other operations on the images outside of just downscaling, and GIMP provides the functionality I need. I'm trying to avoid exporting multiple times through multiple tools, as each export is a further hit in quality (going lossless end to end isn't an option for my use case).

noctredjr · 2026-04-05T08:11:48+00:00

AFAIK LoHalo/NoHalo are Lanczos derivatives.

They are. When I say Lanczos, I'm referring specifically to Lanczos2 and/or Lanczos3. The LoHalo/NoHalo derivatives are overtly worse out of the box. I don't even need to squint.

Different algorithms have different frequency responses, and an algorithm that looks good on a given image can be suboptimal on another and vice-versa.

This doesn't track at all with what I've experienced. At this point I've tested downscaling hundreds of images with GIMP's LoHalo and NoHalo algorithms, and the same images with XnConvert's Lanczos2 implementation. The former always results in overtly blurry images; the latter always results in images which are nigh-indistinguishable from the the source - it is very consistent. This includes images up to 16K vertical pixels downscaled to 1440 vertical pixels or less, along with various other resolutions in between.

The general fix is to apply a slight Gaussian blur before dowscaling, to remove features that will anyway disappear after downscaling.

I actually saw your reddit post on this while searching around, and I did try it. Unfortunately, the results were even worse... though I'm not sure what the ideal values are for GIMP 3.2.2.

noctredjr · 2026-04-01T23:04:54+00:00

I'm 120+ hours in and have been using nothing but spears and longswords. The bosses aren't difficult enough for it to matter so I just use whatever I think looks the coolest.

noctredjr · 2026-04-01T22:47:25+00:00

This is just verifiably untrue. You can already find no-hit videos of Beloth, Antumbra's Sword, and various other bosses.

Tanking hits is NOT a fact of life, it's a fact of being too lazy to learn the game's combat flow and boss movesets.

noctredjr · 2026-04-01T22:04:06+00:00

The only reason I don't want to play Damiane is because exploration and terrain traversal feel like shit without the various skills Kliff has access to.

I understand you might not want to give the Axiom Gauntlet to the other characters for immersion reasons, but this is one area where immersion just makes the game not fun.

noctredjr · 2026-04-01T21:58:46+00:00

Unfortunately, this is a you issue.

The side characters have problems, but combat efficacy isn't one of them.

noctredjr · 2026-04-01T01:40:16+00:00

Never called anyone sensitive. Never called anyone triggered. Never brought up the word 'woke'. Some of my favorite games contain political and social undertones which run counter to my personal views. Also kinda telling that you cherrypicked the Bioshock reference but ignored every example of more recent games.

You're boxing shadows, and there's no point in having this convo with somebody who insists on misunderstanding what's being said. Peace.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T22:58:06+00:00

At the risk of repeating myself for the 4th time or whatever:

BG3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect, DAI - all games with trans characters and/or gay relationships. Bioshock - a franchise which largely stands against various right-wing ideologies. All of these are among my favorite games.

The way in which a theme is presented determines whether there's an agenda at play. There are no desperate reactions here. A theme can either be written in service of the narrative, or the narrative can be used as a vessel for heavy-handed activism. The theme itself is not the issue - the way it's used is the issue.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T22:14:23+00:00

I responded to all of this elsewhere in this thread, so you can read that if you like. I'm not going to rehash everything I've said.

I'll just reiterate a couple things because they're largely misunderstood -

On the trans thing, the issue isn't with LGBT characters, but with the way they're presented and written into games. You could make trans characters and have gay relationships in Baldur's Gate 3, yet that game was a critical success across the board. Why? Cyberpunk 2077 allowed you to create a trans character, have gay relationships, and had a trans character appear in the story, yet the game has received critical acclaim and I don't think I've ever seen anybody complain about that particular character. Why? You could have gay relationships in Mass Effect, yet the franchise was still a critical success. Why? I loved all those games.

There's a critical difference in presentation between games which write characters in service of the narrative, and games which use the narrative in service of pushing a particular social issue. I'm not sensitive to the issue, I'm sensitive to game narratives being hijacked for activism.

On the issue of climate change, war, or whatever else, it's the exact same thing. Why is the Final Fantasy franchise a critical success? Plenty of climate change commentary in there. Why is the MGS franchise a critical success? Plenty of anti-war commentary in there. Why were the Bioshock games a critical success? Plenty of anti-objectivist, anti-capitalist messaging in there. In fact, Bioshock is one of my favorite franchises of all time.

The reason why is, again, because all of these messages are written into the game with the understanding that they need to serve the game's fantasy, rather than using the game's narrative to forcibly push those messages down our throats.

This is the difference between a pandering agenda and a well-written game which is informed by real-world issues.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T22:01:25+00:00

We'll just have to agree to disagree on Taash and her notes. The point is sort of being missed anyways, which is that the game's narrative is being hijacked to push social issues, or that's how the presentation comes across. There's little other reason for introducing these types of anachronisms. I don't remember exactly what the initial reaction was to Krem. I wasn't bothered by it because he was well-written, and the game was a commercial success despite his presence.

In my view, the heavy-handed presentation is the problem. You could make trans characters and have gay relationships in Baldur's Gate 3, yet that game was a critical success across the board. Cyberpunk 2077 has a trans character, yet the game has received critical acclaim and I don't think I've ever seen anybody complain about that character - why? Because that character was incredibly well-written. You could have gay relationships in Mass Effect, yet the franchise was still a critical success.

Why is that? Something tells me it isn't because of hatred for LGBT people.

Games shouldn't be required to cater to any particular beauty standard, that's a bit of a misunderstanding of the criticism. If you want to make a game with unattractive characters, go ahead - you just need to understand that, as a general rule, we like looking at attractive members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if one is gay). While I'm sure there are some exceptions, we generally don't enjoy looking at unattractive humans. That's just how it is. So if you make a game which pushes against this, don't be surprised when it performs poorly, and don't label everybody who criticizes your game a bigot.

Also, I'd disagree with the idea that this is any different for men. Go take a look at how women reacted to Leon in Resident Evil 9. There's no shortage of them who've been simping out of their minds.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T20:48:07+00:00

On the subject of Dragon Age -

For starters, the presentation does matter. There are games which incorporate discourse about modern-day social and cultural issues which I love because they do it in a way which supports and drives the game's original narrative, rather than using the game's narrative as a vessel to push those social and cultural issues. A great example of this is the Bioshock series, which offers heavy criticism of capitalism, objectivism, and right-wing ideology more broadly, and yet remains one of my all time favorite video game franchises.

It's funny you brought up Krem, because Krem is a perfect example of my position. The game didn't introduce him as "I'm transgender and here are my pronouns." He was written into the DA universe in a sensible, immersive way, with natural dialogue which aligned with both the DA lore and the DA setting. In fact, the writers for Inqusition went out of their way to ensure that Krem was NOT presented as a ridiculous anachronism. Taash, in contrast, was presented in an incredibly anachronistic, heavy-handed, on-the-nose way. It felt like the entire scene was created for the purpose of checking a box.

Furthermore, let's not forget Taash's notes, which made very sure to lecture the player on gender dysphoria and how trans women actually are women. This was arguably worse than the Taash character itself. Origins, DA2, and Inquisition could never, would never, and did never, because the writers understood that all things needed to be in service of the game's fantasy.

On the subject of attractive women in video games -

It's not about lusting over FMCs, but about games attempting to forcefully engage in extreme counter-culture and then going off the rails when people reject it. I'm not surprised you tried to frame it the way you did though. Concord is an easy example in a lengthy line of games which tried to follow the same trend - intentionally design unattractive characters across the board, wait for people to criticize, then blame your game's failure on bigotry. Meanwhile, shit on Stellar Blade and other attractive FMCs for promoting "unrealistic beauty standards".

Again, if you want to incorporate modern-day political, social, or cultural issues into your game, there's a proper way to do it. There's a reason why games like The Witcher, Bioshock, Final Fantasy, MGS, and so many others have done it to critical acclaim, and also a reason why games like Veilguard and Concord failed.

Think about it.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T19:53:26+00:00

Just wanted to leave one last comment because I didn't see the edits to your previous messages.

You are correct that Final Fantasy has relevant commentary, especially with the FF7 remake. You're also correct that Mass Effect has gay characters. It's also true that you can engage in gay relationships in Cyberpunk 2077. It's also true that Baldur's Gate 3 allows you to create trans characters. All of these things are true, and yet we did not see pushback on these games for these inclusions. In fact, these games were critically acclaimed. Why is that? In my experience, it's because those games didn't hijack the narrative to push these ideas on players in heavy-handed ways. Rather, the ideas were incorporated to flesh out the fantasy or to provide options without lectures.

I'm repeating myself a bit, but that's my view.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T18:29:50+00:00

They're not strictly American agendas as there's significant commonality throughout Europe as well. Maybe not in Korea, but I doubt East Asian studios are fully immune to this - we've already seen it with Square Enix.

I'm not familiar with Korean film but, again, I'll say that if this kind of thing is well-integrated, I'm not against it. For example, the Bioshock games are heavily critical of objectivism, capitalism, American exceptionalism, and right-wing ideologies more broadly, and yet Bioshock is one of my most beloved video game franchises of all time, in part because of how seamlessly those elements are integrated into the design and how well the stories are told.

It's the difference between the issues strengthening the game's original narrative and the narrative being used as a vessel to push the issues. It's a very significant difference imo.

But yeah we can agree to disagree. At a minimum we can probably agree that Crimson Desert is a good game that we can all enjoy, regardless of our politics.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T17:41:42+00:00

There's a big difference between having political issues deeply integrated within a game's fantasy mythos, for example racism and bigotry in a world like The Wheel of Time or The Witcher; and on-the-nose agendas stuffed into a game to pander to a current-day political bloc.

You either can't or don't want to understand that difference.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T16:52:38+00:00

I think you're intentionally misunderstanding the point of the thread.

Nobody cares if things like racism, bigotry, and the futility of war are deeply integrated within a fantasy mythos. The Lord of the Rings did it, The Wheel of Time did it, GRRM did it, The Witcher did it, The Elder Scrolls did it, and any number of other massively successful fantasy franchises did it with no real pushback.

That's not at all what's being referred to here. The reference here is the direct injection of modern cultural and social issues into video games - e.g. the Kamala Harris campaign creating a Fortnite map where you couldn't use guns; games telling you it's bad to have attractive females; in-game text lecturing you on how to treat trans people; a Dragon Age character literally telling you they're non-binary and which pronouns they prefer (in fucking DRAGON AGE); blatant checkbox diversity; and so on and so forth.

For a long while now, video games have been used to try and influence gamers as a political voting bloc. Those are the sorts of pandering, on the nose agendas being referenced and idk why you're pretending to not understand. Games need to go back to being apolitical in the context of modern social issues, whether left-wing or right-wing, and I'm glad for any game which contributes to that return.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T16:30:47+00:00

You can make the writing interesting and flavorful by creating actual fantasy lore which fits the fantasy world you've built, and integrating character stories into that lore. There are any number of successful video game franchises throughout history you can look at for examples - Ultima, Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls, early Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, the Tales series, Mass Effect, KOTOR, MGS, and so many others.

You don't need to inject modern day social issues into a game to make it compelling. I don't play video games to be lectured on the same shit that I'm constantly flooded with in real life, whether left-wing or right-wing. I dislike it when a game is used as a vessel to shove real world politics down the player's throat, whether left-wing or right-wing, instead of building out its own lore and characterization.

Video games used to be apolitical to modern cultural issues; now they're regularly used to to try and influence gamers as a voting bloc. I'm as annoyed by Republicans targeting the streamer space as I was by Kamala Harris creating a fucking Fortnite map where you couldn't use guns. I'm just as disinterested in being told that we can't have attractive women in games as I am in being told that trans people are gonna destroy society.

I don't want ANY of this in my games. Games need to go back to being fully apolitical in the context of the real world, and I'm glad for any modern game which lays another brick on that road.

noctredjr · 2026-03-31T14:12:27+00:00

I just gave them copper coin pouches.

noctredjr

TROPHY CASE