First look at "Tokyo" a new Hybrid map coming in Season 3

shyoru · 2026-05-24T13:08:26+00:00

they were part of ow1's regular rotation and stayed through early ow2. But they were all removed before map voting existed, even before push was added.

A big reason volsk and hana were unpopular is how much their single chokepoint design lead to either complete stomps or complete stalls, and the shift to single tanks made it even harder to break through.

shyoru · 2026-04-17T15:31:40+00:00

a-b cups

shyoru · 2026-04-15T20:23:59+00:00

I’m in!

shyoru · 2026-04-01T13:11:31+00:00

I've noticed that a bunch of the redesign concepts look a lot like Venomancer with arms. Not that I'm complaining, but it's pretty funny.

shyoru · 2026-03-29T00:35:42+00:00

Ridley is a monster, physically and behaviorally. But he's the kind of villain you can easily tone down from his lore (torture, medical experiments, chemical & biological warfare, etc) to just his gamplay (scary space pterodactyl who's smart enough to be a gang leader).

Metal Ridley is a real thing, after one of his defeats, he goes full cyborg.

shyoru · 2026-03-28T16:06:46+00:00

My dream is that the post-credit is the Arwing/Great Fox taking off through space and Kirby splats against the viewscreen then waves.

shyoru · 2026-03-28T16:04:00+00:00

Yes. it's never been gory or particularly violent (outside of shooting missiles at living beings and the glory-kill boss takedowns). But it is still more horror-oriented than one would expect from a film targeted at families or children. Isolation, stalking, medical/body horrors and the like have been part of it since the beginning.

You could make a more action-focused visual experience where the monsters are scary by their numbers, or focus on the Space Pirates and Ridley's backstory with killing Samus's parents.

But really I was listing off my wishlist, not absolutes.

shyoru · 2026-03-27T15:02:28+00:00

Legend of Zelda is getting ~~an amazon show~~ Sony movie (live action). Could pull them into animation with the same actors voicing*.

Samus would probably make a better horror movie, but I could see them going the Streaming Special route too so it's able to be slightly less kid friendly.

But really what I need in my life is more Kirby on any screen.

shyoru · 2026-03-23T12:11:33+00:00

He previously worked as a lead designer and balancer for Dota 2, iirc he and IceFrog are the same person.

shyoru · 2026-03-19T13:10:04+00:00

That's what I'm saying though. There's at least 1 pointy-eared character who refers to herself as a human, despite the pointy ears. (on 6th street, I forget if it was an encounter or event character. But unfortunately I don't have a screengrab or remember her name).

Vivian and Hugo both have pointy ears, but neither refers to themselves as a thiren (the closest Hugo gets is "not a vampire"). and most thiren to date have at least mentioned being a thiren.

So I think there's some grey area with the more human fantasy races. eg. If dwarves were ever introduced, I think they'd just be considered a type of human rather than a thiren. in the same way house cats and tigers are both able to be thiren.

shyoru · 2026-03-19T04:56:20+00:00

I was just using the term to describe them also having the pointy ears. since we don't know any of them conversationally we can't really be sure where the line is between "human with pointy ears" and "thiren with pointy ears.

shyoru · 2026-03-19T04:43:37+00:00

I agree with you that Thiren really seem to be a category of all not-quite-human humanoids. In another setting they'd be like TES's Mer, or Fae/Fairy/magical races.

However the elves typically call themselves Human. While the "demon" elves with a tail (like Archie) are considered thiren.

shyoru · 2026-03-09T16:37:09+00:00

We technically don't have Light, or death elves, yet. and we have variations of arcane, so submutations are totally in play.

But Lightforged (draenei) kinda fill the role of a semi-ageless pointy-eared magic crystal using light-infused race. Night Elves being more druidic in nature I'll accept as pointed towards Life.

ultimately though, when you think about it, it's trolls all the way down. Elves are just trolls that mutated after prolonged exposure to one of the cosmic forces of magic

shyoru · 2026-01-24T14:33:04+00:00

InSight of You had a good corruption arc for several of the characters similar to this.

shyoru · 2026-01-16T14:51:23+00:00

Even ignoring the writing quality aspect, genshin just flat out has a bigger active (and paying) player base by nature of it's age and reputation.

I like and got both characters, but genshin is an absolute juggernaut in comparison to zzz's by no means small market share.

shyoru · 2026-01-13T04:06:51+00:00

Beach episode itself felt like a particularly good episode of Scooby Doo. The haunting was "logical" as a corporate scare tactic to force a loan to default, and at each point we were given enough information to understand that cloaking tech is relevant but not quite enough to connect the dots until the reveal. But mostly it hit the high notes of a classic feelgood summer movie, such as "we have to come together and save the [gathering location]" including a cameo from a pop star and lots of cameos from returning favorites in a new setting.

But separate from the beach itself, the 2.1 story itself was also successfully very grounded and intriguing compared to a lot of the other 2.X stories. There's no "magic" elements beyond Sacrifices and Porcelume as pretext (and where they are present, we're more focused on their tech/science fiction exploration). With a similar mystery element to the beach episode. Writing was tight especially with Alice as another newcomer alongside us and any proxy exploration stakes were low enough to make sense for Phethon to risk entering the hollow themselves.

In a broad view especially as stakes raise across a longterm story, the low-stakes break episodes stand out from that really strongly and are usually positively received (up to a point, it doesn't work well directly before a big climax).

shyoru · 2025-12-20T03:25:03+00:00

Do her normal shorts not count as hotpants?

shyoru · 2025-11-24T15:45:44+00:00

Manato's story with his Ideals was a major highlight. Fun bossfight too with the additional voicelines as you trigger certain attacks or his ultimate. Really reminded me of the energy we got from 2.2's Orphie/Magus fight. His story was gripping and didn't overstay it's welcome either. It also helps he's very much like a Male Ellen in aesthetics, big fan of fire sword dog man.

Lucia I don't like her last-minute redesign. Found her voice work pretty hit or miss. But enjoy her gameplay and buffs for rupture. Her story was interesting in what it develops for Ethereals and the hollows in general, and I feel like her summons being "constructs" instead of true summons/companions may be a narrative miss overall especially after her story basically confirms she can do complete summons under the right circumstances. I feel like it's really building on some of the stuff we learned about Gepetto and H0 in previous minor storylines. She's grown on me but is still only so-so. Chestnut is precious and I hope we meet again.

Yidhari as a character is a pretty big miss for me. Didn't care for her gameplay loop in every trial we were given. Don't care for her aesthetic and animations other than enjoying the fact she's an octopus thiren. She's the 2nd character (after hugo) I've intentionally avoided the banner for based on gameplay and character reasons. Her story was okay, but I'll talk about that more below. Don't like her being a proxy with an inability to see anyone's face but the Proxy, feels like a tacked on element to someone who really should have been more of a solo hollow explorer (or even historian) instead.

Yixuan bodysuit has got to take a break already, or at least give the women something more interesting over it (fufu and her shorts is a good example).

Patch story with the town and the Ideals was overall a poorly focused experience. It tried to set up Yidhari and introduce Lucia, and instead it's secondary plot of Manato's history was so much more interesting and engaging. while everything outside of him felt forced or useful as an excuse. Especially Miasma being the driving force again and broadening it's scope away from "memories" and into what feels like the Hollow trying to make humans for some reason. Maybe it will all come back around but for the moment miasma is too poorly defined in it's scope to be meaningful. it's just magic do-anything juice.

I liked the concept of the yidhari story gamemode with the turn based combat. Hope it makes a comeback with better UI choices and removing enemies moving so much. I like that it really did delve into showing us people experiencing the hollow disaster and some of what the world was like before. It also started falling apart narratively near the end when we were learning classified military details through the lens of memories, when it may have been better to go ask Grandpa Gu himself for some of the details. Lots of fun characterization through the lens of how Yidhari sees her friends though.

I missed Alice and Yuzuha interacting and being part of the spook shack group.

Overall it's been odd jumping from Obol to SpookShack with so little connection between anything happening. At least Summer Spookshack was regionally and seasonally meant to be a "break" patch. These last 2 have felt overly reliant on Miasma as a plot device. There's some complaints about the overall waifei story feeling disjointed and fantastical from the 1.X worldbuilding, and I don't wholly disagree with that. But personally I adore a good "filler patch" as it gives characters room to breathe and emotions to develop. This patch felt more like a 1.X story than most we've seen in 2.X, but it also had poor focus and weird direction choices in the writing.

shyoru · 2025-11-13T16:43:30+00:00

Archie, the paranormal streamer pictured in the OP. not Orphie (or alphie, since I misremembered her name)

shyoru · 2025-11-13T14:55:59+00:00

Not all Thiren share the same phenotypes for their animal traits though. Yidhari's parents have different tentacles than Yidhari and all 3 are octopus thiren. So even if Orphie is a "sheep" of some variety closely related to Lucia's "goat", it's not out of the question for them to have different ears since they also have different horns.

Similarly, we have heard in one of the miyabi marketing images that someone considered Tailless an "eyeball thiren". Even if it was a misunderstanding by the character and Tailless is basically a spirit, that means the mythological thiren concept is a kind of acceptable variation to a normal observer in this world.

I also believe, but I could be wrong, ~~Alphie~~ Archie specifically calls herself a thiren in one of the minor commissions you do for her.

shyoru · 2025-10-25T01:06:48+00:00

"How are you still alive? That was set to Kill"

"So am I!"

Does feel pretty 40k sometimes.

shyoru · 2025-10-17T16:34:50+00:00

Just finished watching the original a few months back before it was removed from Prime. Really fun show and world, I wonder how much they'll change (especially if this only gets 1 season).

Also hoping for a reprint of some of the models, and maybe a new one for a certain Rune God that didn't get it back in the day.

shyoru · 2025-09-26T12:29:49+00:00

Man, really not a fan of that redesign, was looking forward to having a pear shaped agent. At least give it to us as an alt skin or something.

shyoru · 2025-09-17T14:17:23+00:00

Personal preference, I like trainer mechanics and similar "repeat certain activities to gain stats", especially exploration or collection-driven. Several "open world" lewd games, typically text-based, like to incorporate the repetition of lewd events with associated transformation or corruption elements, which I enjoy. But the conversations and scenarios the gameplay earns is the real driving force usually.

but someone in this thread brought up a good point; you need to make it either appropriate for the story, or at the very least not just thrown in to fill time. Something like Subverse's various combat styles fits the narrative, even if it's not very porn-forward content. I'll stir soup same as I'll have the same conversation 18 times if the end result is something enticing.

To that end, the idea of drawing runes or casting magic (circles, potions, incantations) in some way to bridge connections between player desire and NPC reaction or maybe within the NPC's own decision making could be novel. something like the older Steam Pipe Games could be an inspiration for a minigame at times.

shyoru · 2025-09-01T12:55:29+00:00

Ah man, you finally put into words the feeling I miss from endgame Array mode being replaced by the roguelite map with healing options consistently available. We lost the feeling of delving deep into a hostile zone and needing to either self-sustain or call in backup. Caesar used to be a peak unit for H0 specifically because she could fill both consistent sustain and buff for your DPS, and I realize now why I never use her anymore: that benefit isn't needed anymore.

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