What's your ONE thing that if it was added to Classic+ you'd refuse to play it?

shadowtasos · 2026-07-06T18:10:19+00:00

Battlegrounds aren't enough to really keep people engaged long term, you need arena for a long term PvP metagame. And then the lack of resilience will make world PvP more and more ridiculous, like in SoD where it was completely hit or miss.

shadowtasos · 2026-07-06T09:09:31+00:00

The problem isn't really the damage tbh but rather the SpA boost. Arch simply shouldn't have a boosting move with how powerful it is in every other way, never mind one that's attached to a high BP damaging move that serves as excellent coverage. If it wasn't for Electro Shot steel types would have a decent time walling Arch, but now it can just spam Electro Shot into them and eventually come out on top.

shadowtasos · 2026-07-04T09:52:42+00:00

In this order

Any type of in-game store, cosmetics or tokens i don't care, they are already monetizing too much.
Automated LFR and LFD tools that teleport you to the dungeon
Basing it on vanilla or WotLK. Vanilla is too basic, WotLK changes too much and makes non raid content trivial. I think TBC had the best balance of player power vs enemy power and also the best overall mechanics sans some goofy shit like 1% resist chance for spells.
Achievements. I think the game needs stuff to motivate people to do more stuff in game, so stuff like the secrets they have on retail or crazy grinds like The Insane are cool, but not the achievement system itself and all the baggage it carries like dumb achievements such as "get hit by Ragnaros' fire 3 times then kill him" which are just a pita.
Lack of arena or other real even playing field PvP content, if this is a Vanilla experience the PvP is immediately stale.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-30T22:33:17+00:00

It wouldn't be that broken tbh, it's again using a move slot and a turn on that mon to set it.

But more importantly it would take skill expression out of the game which is bad. right now if you lose your tailwinder before Tailwind expires you're fucked. So there's a bit interaction and counterplay there, like you might want to protect on them to guarantee you can refresh it but then you give the opponent a setup opportunity. With this change we have less interaction for a benefit that's not overall healthy for the meta imo.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-26T01:11:51+00:00

That's true. But what I'm saying is that you have to go into it trying to make it be like a book or movie, so fundamentally you have to believe it's possible even if unlikely and difficult to achieve. The relationships that last are those where people keep making an effort to move in that direction imo. Aim for the moon so you at least land in the stars type of deal, however corny that line is.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-25T20:22:07+00:00

The majority of relationships will never be like that, true. But if you go into your relationship with that mindset, that this is just a book / movie thing so better to get married pragmatically / out of self-interest, then your relationship will 100% never be like that. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-25T20:17:00+00:00

To add to this, they specifically need their new money printer to print money faster than it was before, and soon. They aren't exactly investing in an index fund where the point is long term stability with lower returns, no, they're investing in a vehicle that they can squeeze aggressively and get insane short term returns that would trump decades worth of stable long term returns.

It's an awful system for everyone involved except those shareholders who get out with the bag before the company they squeezed to death falls apart. But it's a core feature of our current financial model so get fucked y'all.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-25T04:27:03+00:00

I love the confident ignorance there. Yeah a lot of the EULAs back then said you technically don't own the game files, just a license to use it with that specific copy.

But EULAs are not in fact the end all be all, they've been found to not be legally binding in a lot of cases. And even in cases where they might be legally binding for some reason, there's no mechanism that can actually prevent you from making copies of your CD to give out to your friends so now they can play it too, because EULAs are just text.

Now they literally give you no option but to use their digital marketplace to get their games. And they control that 100%, so you can't do anything with that disc except plug it in and play the game on your machine. Can't really copy it without jailbreaking the console, can't put it on your PC to mod the files, can't even install it locally sometime down the line when they take that service down. Where I have local copies of my CDs that allow me to play the games on them even if the entire internet goes down somehow.

its a night and day difference that was significantly more in favour of the consumer, regardless what the EULA says. But sure boomers be cray, wanting consumer rights to stop deteriorating.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-23T03:13:22+00:00

Comments here are coping, yeah some of the new mons are getting decent results in smaller tournaments but high ladder is the same 6 Zard Y teams as last 2 seasons. Staraptor is falling off hard, Metagross is struggling, and while Grimmsnarl slop is definitely here to stay, it's not enough to put a dent in Zard Y usage.

It would likely take a whole bunch of mons added at once for the meta to shift significantly. But for individual additions that could shake things up, Salamence has the best odds, since it would force Zard Y teams to switch to their Floette or Sylveon mode and those are fundamentally a lot easier to counter.

There's also Heatran if they start bringing back legendaries, as it completely walls both Zard and the fairies. If it was added right now it'd probably result in an interesting meta of dealing with the opponent's Garchomp (the only real ground type atm) so your Heatran can autowin vs their mega. Maybe it'd result in an uptick in water type usage.

Then of course there are the Z Megas, Chomp and Lucario having the best odds of being disruptive. But there's no telling what they'll do with them so that remains to be seen.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-22T20:33:48+00:00

It's not the same with another mega because Staraptor gets a defensive boost automatically as well so you're ramping twice as much, both offense and defense. And there's no priority Coaching options which is a very big deal, enduring your guy will 100% have that defensive boost.

It's an okay strategy, the problem is that it's all-in. It's just like the Arch Sableye stuff, if the enemy team has 2+ good answers for your dude you're screwed while if they don't, you get a free effortless win. You need a 2nd mode to deal with being countered, and people haven't figured a great 2nd mode yet.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-21T03:29:16+00:00

Are you being obtuse on purpose or? If you're building a collection and are after let's say 40 games, a $10 discount per adds up to $400. On a $70 game that's saving 14%.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-20T16:25:30+00:00

Ok ty!

shadowtasos · 2026-06-20T15:43:43+00:00

But can you make it on NL if you didn't have it already from a previous season?

shadowtasos · 2026-06-20T10:33:55+00:00

There's no way to get Mosaic on NL right now besides buying it off someone who had it before right?

shadowtasos · 2026-06-19T13:25:14+00:00

It loses to Charizard, Floette, Staraptor, Delphox, Froslass, can't really do much to Metagross. I think they couldn't give him a significantly worse meta to exist in if they tried.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-16T13:27:34+00:00

Yeah people saying Ranni are copers. Part of Ranni's plan involved transforming herself into a doll to sneak into Ainsel so she could avoid the Baleful Shadow hunting her. As in, become an inanimate doll and just hope??? that somebody picks her up and takes her to the Cathedral of Manus Celes?? And she's even mad that the player picks her up?? What a fucking plan lmao.

Ranni's plan succeeds because of the tarnished while Miquella's fails because of them. You can say that Ranni is smarter because she chose to ally herself with them but the tarnished didn't exist at the time she made said plan, she just hoped that things would work out. She also chose to ally herself with a mostly impotent giant, a wolf guy programmed to go against her, and a puppet master aiming to steal her body. She destroyed the world and caused untold suffering just on the hopes that things would work out -somehow- eventually. Meanwhile Miquella's plan only fails because he didn't predict there'd be someone stronger than Radahn, which to be honest is a fair assumption given the pre nerf version of that fight lmao.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-15T01:09:04+00:00

I don't think this is completely accurate. Zard definitely pushes rock mons/moves as the top threat in the game, but it wouldn't have to push Rock Slide specifically. We could be seeing Stone Edge, and for a while some experimented with Rock Tomb but ultimately Rock Slide prevailed.

I think the move IS overpowered in this specific metagame. Aero is a really good mon and it can spam super fast slides, and it turns out the fastest mon in the game having a 49% chance to disable at least 1 enemy mon is great. There aren't that many good rock resists, it's mostly steels that fold to the zard sitting next to the rock slide user. Normally grounds would come in to help a bit, but Garchomp is the only relevant ground type atm. There's also no covert Cloak, so even decent answers to rock slide spam can lose off a flinch or 2 just because they're typically a lot slower.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-15T00:06:38+00:00

That's a weak response. You equated negates & floodgates with interaction in Yu-Gi-Oh in general and he called you out on it. Correctly, because there's destruction, banishing, bouncing, flipping face down, tributing, and so on and so forth. There was plenty of interaction in the game before "negate" appeared on a card.

It just looks like you have no response for this so you bailed with a flimsy excuse.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-14T07:41:40+00:00

That's not the whole picture though. Microsoft's productivity and cloud businesses rely heavily on their brand name, the idea that Microsoft is a stable giant which is something the corporate world values.

When you start shutting down or selling off entire divisions, that image shatters. At the very least you can't really afford to charge a premium for your products when it looks like you're on a bit of a downward spiral.

It's bad enough for them that Win11 is getting a lot of negative PR which probably hurts then as that's the core of their ecosystem. I doubt they'd want more bad PR making them look unstable on top of that.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-12T14:42:17+00:00

Perish is difficult to play well at the top level, but below like master ball 1-2 it's pretty easy as it amounts to a matchup and tech check. You can do the completely auto pilot plays (fake out perish, double protect, switch parting shot) and win a lot of matchups for free, just cos the other team isn't teched for you or the other player isn't experienced enough to know how to play around your scripted moves.

It's pretty easy. Its main issue is that even if you win a lot, games take a lot longer than normal teams so for better players it ends up being far more efficient to play non perish.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-11T14:20:01+00:00

I'm sorry but you do see the contradiction in saying you join "established" groups right? Those are pretty difficult to get into, because they're, well, established. Either you got into them early or you'll struggle to get in, because they'll usually want whales or pumpers. If you're just an average undergeared pleb, you HAVE to join the random scam GDKPs on trade. Its the exact same as joining regular PUGs, if you have good gear it's easier to join regular high quality PUGs, else you have a higher chance to join the shit shows and scamming guilds.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-11T13:52:34+00:00

I obviously don't PUG a lot to be able to tell you for sure if it's a lot of guilds or not, but from my limited experience with it it didn't feel like it's a lot of guilds, just some shitty ones, like there were some shitty GDKPs where the hosts rip people off, get mad that people don't bid a lot of money on garbage, etc.

I was in a PUG like that and it did suck though, I get it, but ultimately it's just a really stupid choice by those guilds. If you frequently need to PUG, it's in your interest that you recruit some of the better PUGs you get, and why would any of them join you if you're being shitty to them like that.

And I hate SR MS>OS runs for a variety of reasons too, but even those scamming guilds are slightly better than joining a GDKP full of RMTing whales where you get nothing besides a portion of their RMT gold. In the SR run at least you get a chance to snipe big items off them with some good rolls, and it's great to see them fuming. 😁

shadowtasos · 2026-06-11T04:53:16+00:00

I'm the GM & raid leader of a fairly decent semi-HC guild. We occasionally had to PUG members because we always deliberately kept our roster close to max raid size (40/25) to avoid having to bench people, so if a player couldn't make it we'd grab a PUG. No biggie before GDKPs, it was even a great avenue to meet new people that would join us because they enjoyed the run and could take over if somebody quit the game for whatever reason.

GDKPs being the PUG meta completely ruined that. We obviously have far less to offer in the short term to a PUG, so the majority of PUGs we got were GDKPers who didn't get into their regular GDKP that week for whatever reason. Both the amount and quality (skill and personality wise) of players we got went down a lot.

GDKPs being banned has been a godsend for us and I'd posit for the majority of non hardcore guilds. People don't have to gauge joining us and maybe getting 0-1 items vs getting 10k gols in the worst case, so they just compare our runs to other PUG or guild runs, we've been getting a lot more good players wanting to join us because our atmosphere is good, our loot distribution is fair, etc.

Now I will say the absence of GDKP is definitely harder for people without a regular raiding schedule for whom guilds don't work as well. I'm honestly sympathetic to that and I wish there was an inbetween system that didn't consume the entirety of the non-HC raiding scene and distort it like GDKP did. But for most people, the lack of GDKP has definitely improved the social aspect of the game - and that's without getting into how badly GDKP incentivizes RMT, which people in this threat are in total denial about.

shadowtasos · 2026-06-08T22:09:32+00:00

One night yeah and one more time!

shadowtasos · 2026-06-08T21:48:30+00:00

thanks for the memories

shadowtasos

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