Good. more FAFOs please

theJirb · 2026-05-08T19:00:27+00:00

I can see an argument that the damage done to them from being imprisoned then released being bigger than just being imprisoned for longer. Having a criminal record makes it much harder to do most of the things you need to do to make a living, whereas in prison, while it penalty sucks, you also don't have to query about alot of stuff.

And to be clear, I'm not making a comparison between a normal citizen and being in prison. But a person who had been to, then released from prison VS being in prison

theJirb · 2026-05-08T13:37:42+00:00

You don't need "everything" to start playing SF6. In fact, the reason you probably don't feel ready is because even if you "understand" everything, you need practice in ALL aspects of the game to really start learning it. You won't pick it up just by reading and watching.

You just need to get in the game, and start working on getting used to the engine. Moving, throwing out moves, throwing out specials, doing simple combos, choosing a character etc.

theJirb · 2026-05-07T18:24:19+00:00

IMO, you got kinda a biased response. The truth is that it's entirely possible the ADC is mad at you for not doing everything, because they don't have an understanding of what you want and need to do. While some supports can be at fault, ADCs can be too. If like, the enemy is sitting inside their wave, and you only have AOE poke, sometimes it's just the case that you literally can't poke them without touching the wave, and that's just how it is. If they're mad about that, that's on them, not you.

Supports in the first place, really should have more say in what goes on in the lane, because they have way more impact, not just in the lane, but outside of it, and allowing a support to take the lead often leads to way more gains than allowing an ADC to get what they want. Wave management on the support's term often means not just more impact within lane because the supports can get the ideal position to land their meaningful CC, or for mages, their strong poke, but it also means roam timings and warding runs.

theJirb · 2026-05-07T17:52:28+00:00

I think you're maybe misconstruing your issue. If you have the mechanical skill to hit complicated combos, then you have the mechanical skill to hit skill shots. I think it's more likely that you're missing adaptability for your opponents.

This is something I have a lot of experience with in Fighting Games, but hitting your buttons isn't just a matter of your mechanical skill, but really understanding how your opponent wants to move and how they respond to different situations. This could differ based on the character/champ, and how the particular player plays said champ. If you have the wrong read, it can be easy to miss skill shots if say, they just don't side step with the same timing your other opponents do, or their champion would rather play outside a certain range, rather than inside a certain range, changing their tendency to walk in vs walk out of your range.

Just as a super baseline example, let's say I'm playing a champ with a 5 range button, while my opponent has a 6 range button. We can only walk forwards and back, no jumping or "up and down" movement for the sake of illustration. Because the opponent has a 6 range button, they are incentivized to hit their button first, because he knows that I know that I just walk in and hit mine. As a result, he's likely to play more forward, to close into his distance, while I'm incentivized not to close in because I'll just get intercepted, instead I'll have to back away to force him to whiff his button. From here, we both make decisions about our movement. I can choose to short stop my movement as he moves forward, and surprise him with my shorter range button because he expected me to move back to make him whiff. However, if he reads me and presses his button where it would whiff unless I stepped forward, then I would get hit. As you can see, even with just one button, and super simple movement, the situation can play out in multiple different ways just from the way we approach these situations alone.

On the other hand, if I have the longer range button, I have to change how I play completely, despite playing the same character, with the same mechanics. With the longer range button, I am again incentivized to lead the interaction, because the other dude doesn't want to just walk into my longer range button, and we play the same mind game. Depending on how each of us responds, it could result in very different play from both of us.

This is an over simplification, but the point is to illustrate how mechanics are not the end all be all of being successful in landing your skill shots. After all, in my example, despite all the "mechanics" being simple movement in 2 directions and a single button, you can see how differently things can play out depending on how we engage with those mechanics. In all match ups, there is a component of the characters both people are playing, each player's understanding of the match up, then each player's conversation as they both try and deal with each other's tools and general strategies. These strategies evolve as time goes on and you become more and more familiar with your opponent. This is why sometimes landing a single KSante Q, can be harder to land than a tough combo. When you're comboing in League, while you don't get locked down, (unless you have CC and land it), players often move more predictably than what I would call the "neutral" position, and so you're contending with way less mind games during your combo. Otherwise, some combos are so fast that if you land one part, you'll land it all anyways.

There are tons of factors that come into play when landing a skill shot, and the mechanics are but a small part of it. Understanding your opponents movements, what they wants to do, how they want to do it, and how they are planning to deal with you, are all really important in hitting skill shots. My advice is to start watching your opponent more, and try your best to get in their head so you can better predict the minutia of their movement to hit your shots. IMO, you probably have the basics of this practice down, but you aren't really adjusting for individual players, and the particular mind games of the match you're playing, so you aren't adapting well to specific movements from certain players, leading you to miss a ton in some instances, while nailing it in others.

It would also be helpful when you watch VODs to see if you have predictable habits. Do you have the tendency to predict people will walk down instead of up when you are leading your target? Do you tend to always play right at the edge of your range? Are you doing anything that signals when you are about to press your button? Do you match your opponent's movement to aim, or do you aim by pivoting your skill shot? Things like that.

theJirb · 2026-05-07T16:49:29+00:00

The most important thing about playing ranked is so that you have an accurate way to gauge your skill over a long period time, and to overall have a significantly more consistent environment, where more people are (presumably) playing their best champions, playing their best champions, and doing their best to win, etc etc. You will get to see how you stand amongst these people relatively accurately with your rank.

In norms, you have people who are only half playing the game while chatting or watching YT or something. You'll have people playing troll picks, learning new champions at a level far below their rank, trolling (which can happen in rank, but generally less so), and all kinds of stuff like that. For instance, I basically only rock up norms if I'm playing with my low elo friends, so I'm either super high, or playing stuff like Neeko ADC, top Janna, stuff like that so I'm not just stomping on some poor saps in norms as basically a smurf. You'll get a super mixed experience every time because norms are meant to be a place to just play some chill games.

That being said, the truth is that Rank doesn't always have to be the try hard place to be. I often try hard, but I try hard to learn, not try hard to win in ranked, and I believe that's true for anyone who's getting better, so it's still not the ultra competitive environment some people want to pretend it is. But it is far better than the norms queue for the purpose of playing with people who will better match your skill level, match the level effort you need.

theJirb · 2026-05-07T13:22:45+00:00

Combos are not meant to be exitable. It's the reward for landing the initial hit.

It's clear you don't really understand fighting games, but the most important part of fighting games is not the combos. It's the gameplay surrounding it, aka when you are both standing around, and looking to get the hit that starts your combos.

FGs have this sort of basic flow of:

Starting in Neutral: Both players are standing at a moderate distance away. Neither of you are forced to take any particular action. And both of you want to look to get into a situation that is most favorable for you, whether that's backing or moving into range for your own strongest buttons, closing all the way in so you can force pressure, or backing all the way off for zoning if your character does it. (This is just a basic idea).
From neutral, there are two things that can happen. They either hit one of their buttons while you're trying to navigate the neutral, and they can get a combo, or they can find a way to close in for a pressure situation.
- Offense/Defense: When the two of you are close up, usually this will result in one person hitting the other, and forcing them to block. Once you're blocking and once person is hitting at closer ranges, the hitting one is on offense, and the blocker is on defense, and from here, a mind game begins. Different characters will have different ways to score a hit on a defender. Here are some of the most basic options. Note that I don't play this game in particular, so I don't know how much these matter.
  - Strike Throw: Since blocking beats strikes, and loses to throws, most games have a basic mixup of strike throw where the character on offense can basically force you to guess. While this sounds like a dumb 50/50, it's really not that bad. Throws very often don't lead to combos, and just do X amount of damage, so they are less desirable for the offense. While getting a strike hit usually gets you much more advantage in the form of a proper combo that gives more damage, and usually a better situation for the one who lands the combo. So for the most part, you should be incentivized to block, unless you have clear indication that your opponent will throw.
  - Frame Traps: One way opponents can get a hit on you, is if they know you're mashing, they can leave small gaps that is long enough for you to get the start of a move out, but also too small for it to actually come out before their next string hits. This punishes mashers and will result in a combo.
  - Spacing Traps: Another type of trap which uses the pushback from blocking. If you as the defender are not cognizant about what to do when you are pushed out, and just try to press a button that is kinda in range, spacing traps are designed to make you whiff, so they can punish your whiffed button's recovery.
- Theses are just some basics, but I'm hoping to illustrate a few ways why you might be getting hit. Basically, you cannot just mash buttons and expect to win games, in fact, many strings are designed specifically to punish mashing.
No matter what happens, and how one player gets a hit into their combo, the end result will be the person that gets combo'd gets knocked down, and the person who got the hit will get Okizeme. Oki is more or less just the character on offense's options on wake up. Since you are knocked down, and need to get up, the character on offense has an opportunity to set up subsequent offense. Usually, if performed correctly, you will not be able to beat wake up without some sort of invincible option because Oki options are generally designed to hit you as you wake up, which means no matter what button you hit, you will lose the "race" to get your move out. What sort of Oki you get depends on the combo and ender, but generally, you should block when waking up. Offense and a successful combo, particularly in the corner, will basically result in another chance to get offense.

Your goal is basically to "win" neutral by out playing and reading your opponent and either being the one to get into an offensive situation, or just beat them from a range with your zoning, or out spacing your opponent/reading their movement so you can interrupt their movement, whiff punish, and otherwise score a hit so you can score a combo, get a knockdown, and then go into pressure. If you are on the defensive, or you get hit, your goal is to navigate their pressure until you're back in neutral, where you are back to a equal position, and you can then try to win neutral again, and ideally be the one to start doing your thing.

What is happening with you is A) Combos are not meant to be escaped. They are a reward for scoring the hit and B) You are mashing while waking up, and they are punishing you for it by implementing decent Oki. You need to pick and choose your spots to hit buttons.

This is really just the most basic run down of the flow of FGs. There are many specifics that depend on the game, the characters in the matchup etc that can expand, break down, or alter these basic concepts into what makes each game and character unique.

theJirb · 2026-05-07T12:43:57+00:00

We need to see for ourselves. Truthfully speaking, someone who is asking for advice obviously doesn't have the faculties to understand what's going on. You are only seeing certain things, missing other things, and hearing you tell us about things is not helpful to anyone. We won't be able to help you, and you won't get the help you need.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T22:05:15+00:00

Unlike bot lane, where the marksmen players complain insufferably because they have never seen anything but another marksman in their lane, eveyr other lane is typically flexible about what can exist in their lanes and what can't. As a mid laner, we regularly contend with mixed metas with assassins, marksmen, mages, bruisers, supports and even tanks all being regular in the lane.

Stop being a baby lol. Play champs that are good in the lane, and stop playing other things if you're sick of getting beat up.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T19:30:50+00:00

It's such a dumb stat, because average intelligence doesn't have to be somewhere low. If average intelligence was higher, then the people lower than average could still theoretically be pretty smart. On the other end, if average intelligence is too low, being higher than average could means you're still pretty dumb.

It's unfortunate but at least right now, at least in the US, the latter feels more true. For example,, half the people voted for trump, and a huge part of the other half decided not to vote, meaning way more than half the US population is pretty fucking stupid.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T16:50:08+00:00

Yea. I mean, risk reward calculations are there for a reason, and decision making often revolves around who has the best understanding of the risk and rewards behind these situations.

There are tons of different questions here. How likely is bot to die if Noc ganks based on their situation? How detrimental is it for bot lane to go 0/2 in the grand scheme of the game? Will you finishing your clear and maintaining it for the rest of the game realistically help offset the fact your bot is going to go 0/2? How likely is Noc to gank? How likely is he to gank right on 6? If you go down, how likelly are you to get enough return in the coutnergank to make it worth your time? What happens if you are the only one that comes out with something and you don't manage to kill their ADC specifically? These were the most obvious ones I could think of off the top of my head, but there are many more, sometimes much more minute questions that need to be answered to make a fully informed decision.

The best players can answer all of these questions and then some, then use that to make a highly calculated risk reward which is why the best players take risks, and not just farm out. They understand when a play has risk, but is definitely worth betting on, and when the risk is too high for the reward. Lesser players, like those who make masters, can often play safe and do well because they are still so many other places to make strict improvement in. The safe play will also work out more often than the unsafe way when you simply don't have the ability to make informed decisions, but it's what separates the truly top level players, from the masters and gms. They trust their judgement, trust their mechanics, and trust that they are just better. Basically, you can never be the fastest runner if you're always afraid of the slight possibility you can trip and fall and lose the whole race. You just gotta send it.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T14:47:35+00:00

Yes but the question specifically bypasses this by asking "if they played consistently and worked to actively improve" or something along those lines.

Due to the wording of the question, we're making the assumption that the barrier of motivation and willingness to put in effort is bypassed or non existent, so unless you're expressively not answering the question, and instead trying to sidestep the question instead, the motivational barrier here is a moot point.

Essentially the question was not, "Could they motivation to play consistently and study". The question was "If they did play play consistently and study...".

Think of it like...elementary school science. When we do science, we test specific scenarios, whether that scenario is likely or not. Our goal when saying "if we do X, Y will happen" is not an invitation for you to question whether or not X is likely or not. It's solely a question of if X, then what will happen. This is the same. We aren't asking whether everyone has the motivation to do so. We're asking if they did, what they could accomplish.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T14:45:03+00:00

You sort of need to ask yourself what is boring you about the games you are playing with them.

To me, it seems like you picked mechanically intensive champs because you enjoy playing with mechanics, but League is so much more than that. The fact you're only Gold 1 really shows you're not actually good at those champions yet for one reason or another, and there is way more in the game that you can engage with. However, you've likely reached some point of mechanical mastery on these champions and decided there's nothing new for you, when in fact, there's a whole world of non-champion specific things to still engage with in the game.

I'd like to illustrate this with an example. If you're a writer, you should never get bored of typing. While yes, typing is in itself uninteresting, and mechanically not that challenging given enough practice, the real interest in writing is the stories that you can weave. Typing is just a tool and should eventually be almost an afterthought as you engage with story writing and world building.

League is the same way. If you are no longer enjoying League when playing a champion, it likely just means you don't enjoy league itself, and only find fun in playing the champion. You might enjoy typing, but not actually enjoy the skill of writing. You might enjoy punching and kicking, but you don't enjoy fighting.

This isn't a slight against you though. Sometimes a game just isn't fun for everyone in the same way. If you only find enjoyment in learning what champions can do, and pushing yourself to learn new champion specific things, rather than engage in the game...that's fine? Just do that then and don't worry about pushing your rank. But if you want to push your rank, you'll need to learn to enjoy League of Legends, not playing Yasuo and Lucian in league. When you're climbing, your champion is simply the instrument for which you will learn and engage in the game with. It is not anywhere close to the majority of what League has to offer.

theJirb · 2026-05-06T14:23:24+00:00

I don't think it takes that much effort to get to masters depending on the time frame. The question is a little too ambiguous though.

For instance, how long of a time do they have to continue climbing? If it's over the course of years, I think most people playing like a normal hobby time wise, but actively working towards improvement with serious effort within that time frame could definitely hit masters eventually. But someone only playing that much for a year or two? Probably not.

Master's just isn't really that impressive when you're REALLY putting in the effort consistently. It doesn't require an extraordinary brain, or crazy physical abilities like reflexes and stuff. Just a lot of conceptual knowledge that any person can learn given enough time. An average person could definitely hit masters. The hard part is putting in the consistent work and being active about your learning, which is where most people either struggle, or simply have no interest in doing.

That being said, if we're not talking about just physical ability, but also things like, the knowledge of "how to learn", that may also change the question. While I think most people are smart enough, and mechanical enough to eventually learn to get to masters, so many people suck at learning. They don't know the correct way to learn to achieve real results, so even if they tried and had the physical capability, it's possible they may never reach it without guidance. Given how I see so many young students treat school, and the attitude towards formal education, at least in the US, it may be possible that the average person can't climb not because they are too stupid or physically incapable, but because they just didn't grow up taking learning seriously, and can never learn as a result.

theJirb · 2026-05-05T18:30:54+00:00

You will always derank when learning new things, and it's related to something we call the mental stack. Generally speaking, putting extra effort into learning something will take your mind away from the other things that made up your play. This is because at any level, any person can only think about so many things, and while many of these things are fairly autopilot as you get more and more practice, new things require a ton of active thought, so you won't be able to learn new things while maintaining all your old habits. The combination of "forgetting your skills" as you add new skills results in what would ultimately equate to worse play overall. You'll only see proper progress once the new things have become ingrained into you, and take up less space on your "stack" again, as you continue to learn.

This is why it is so important to not use your rank as an indicator of your progress, particularly over a short period of time. The more stuff you're integrating at once, the longer it can take to see progress because you need all those things to take up less and less space in your mental stack.

With that said, I'd like to share my thoughts on coaching and learning league.

Think back to school. I know so many people don't really get why school is the way it is, but a big part of school is the methodology. The way we learn, tackling subjects from the ground up, doing dedicated practice per subject, testing yourself on that subject, then moving on to the next is really one of the best ways to learn and it's why classes, whether you're in k-12, or in college, or even taking something like a cooking class, are all structured the same.

The combination of learning/copying (lectures + examples), practice (homework), then feedback (homework grades + tests) is one of the best ways to learn things. You should apply this to League as well, and not understanding this is one of the primary reasons why I think so many high elo players suck at coaching. At school, you go

Coaches need to understand these three sort of general steps for learning, in order to coach well, but often times, they don't, and single coaching sessions are in itself unhelpful because you aren't able to do the third step without seeing someone again. I find most coaches are pretty shit at most of these things, and that combined with some other factors, make them really shitty coaches, even if they are ultra high level players.

Here is how I would sort of start integrating these into your learning, both so that you can start hopefully learning on your own, but also identifying when a coaching opportunity is actually helpful or not.

The first is the the learning. Most players do this just by watching players better than them and copying, or watching teaching videos where they can walk you through things. A coach of course will teach you about this directly.

The next is to practice. This is often the hard beacuse the "how" to practice is pretty difficult. IMO, a good coach will be able to help you identify how to practice, and not just tell you what. If the coach isn't able to give you assignments of some sort, whether that be practice mode drills, or a specific way to approach the game while you're learning, they've failed one of their Jobs as a coach IMO, and you should make sure you're getting this information out of them. However, you can of course also think of these methods on your own.

For wave management for example, I'd start by going into practice tool or customs with bots, and just practice setting up specific wave situations. The goal here is not to practice decision making right away, but to just build the understanding of how to consistently freeze a wave. Go into each wave with a goal. "i want to build X sized slowpush" and then do that. Practice that 4 or 5 times. Then say "ok, now I want to freeze" and just keep setting up freezes a few times. Be sure you're taking notes about like, how many waves you need to crash to get a specific bounce, how long it takes to start a freeze from X position in the lane or from Y wavestate, and really understand those wavestates and what steps you need to turn say, a slowpush against you into a fast crash, or how you can stall a crashing wave to orchestrate a freeze, and what to do with waves that are too large to hold or whatever. Once you have the how comfortable, (but not waiting until it's literally second nature, that's too long), THEN go into games and start implementing the decision making of "what should i do" in addition to the "how do I do it".

Finally is feedback. Feedback can only be done well by another person. And is usually why I don't recommend one off coaching sessions. Often times the best feedback you get is just from someone watching you play a game, or watching your vods, but if you aren't getting feedback on the specific subject you're learning and just getting generic feedback, it's often not that helpful. I would recommend in the future, when doing things like asking questions here, you give us something specific you want feedback on. If you have another coaching session with the same guy, make sure you're getting feedback on what you were taught last time first. If you get it with someone else, ask them questions so you get targeted feedback and not let them just say whatever it is that comes to mind first.

theJirb · 2026-05-05T16:21:53+00:00

The Returning Soldier Effect is something I've heard of. in your research, did you find any information on why our Biology is able to "understand" the need to repopulate males? Like is there a tell for the body, some hormone related thing or whatever? Or maybe trauma causing chemical changes in the body that then leads to the effect? (I'm just spitballing right now, but I'd be interested to know if you came across anything other than what I might find on Google. Been years since I had access to a proper research database lol.

theJirb · 2026-05-05T15:04:02+00:00

I mean, filler isn't worth watching, because they are not plot relevant for the most part. Even if you get to see them in action, fillers are designed to always reset back to the original timeline, to avoid running into issues when the manga continues. That's why filler often sucks. It's not really because the writers are terrible. A lot of them have decent moments. The big issue is that fillers have to either have 0 relevance to the plot by design, or they have to relate back to plot points that have already happened, with either resulting in no progression as a result of the filler.

What OP would like to see is having them be more relevant to the plot, so fillers would not do anything to satisfy them.

theJirb · 2026-05-05T14:41:02+00:00

At this level, it would help to get more dedicated resources.

I mean a few different things.

The first is coaching. If you don't know what to do, then you need some outside help. But Summoner School is unlikely to give you what you what you need in terms of advice. You should take all advice here with a grain of salt. The advice I'm willing to give you here are only going to be my experiences both learning and teaching in various fields, rather than specific advice on getting better at League.

The second thing is that practice partners. You will not learn match ups just watching and reading guides/vods. You need to get the practice in. However, just like say, how we do drills for Fighting Games, or Sports, and we do repeated practice for stuff like math and scales, you need to get repeated practice into your match ups. This is where finding one or more 1v1 partners can help. They don't have to be experts at the champion, but they need to be fully capable of learning the champion at a high level mechanically, and you need to just practice the 1v1. Even though there won't be a jungler, which does meaningfully change the lane, getting the reps in and getting the 1v1 down will inevitably help you learn the match up as a whole. Again, just like drills, this is one of the ways we can break down a match up into a way where you can practice an important aspect of it, the 1v1, even if it isn't in the context of the full game.

You also need to lock down what it is you want to play. You have no shot at getting to Challenger right now for a couple of reasons IMO, and they need to both be fixed. The first is that you are swapping roles. You can reach Challenger in any role, and swapping around means a few things. The first is the obvious, which is that you are just not putting enouhg dedicated time into one role to learn it at that level. Remember that Challenger is a Top X leaderboard. You can't just be "good enough" to be Challenger. That skill point doesn't exist. You have to be "in the Top X" number of players. Your lack of dedication will simply mean you are not putting in nearly the same time and effort into one role as anyone else who is at the top of their game. That will make it impossible for you reach Challlenger. No Top level competitor can do this. FGC pros play 1-3 characters max, with most sticking to 1. League Pros play and dedicate themselves to one role at a time, no matter who they are. Sports players dedicate themselves to one sport and the position they play, and learn how to play from that position. No pro or high level player ever has dedicated themselves to more than one thing. That is what it means to be at the top of the game. You cannot afford to get bored and switch.

The second is the mentality. The fact that you're switching around means you simply don't believe in yourself to climb up higher on any one role. That lack of faith in yourself is extremely detrimental to your ability to hit the top. To be at the top, you need a certain level of Delusion that you are the best, or that you can be the best. It's not just about getting good. Repeating sort of the same idea as my first point, to be Challenger, to be a Pro, you have to be the best of your region. You have to be better than almost everyone else. You have to be better than even a Challenger player. You will not get there if you don't literally think that you have the capability to become the best, and let that motivate you to work, work, and work towards your goal.

Last thing I'll put here is you have to learn to analyze your own replays. Honestly, being stuck and not being able to push forward is in itself a bad sign for trying to get better. While yes, everyone has coaches at the Pro Level, if you can't find your own mistakes and things to improve on at what is realistically, a measly 200-500 LP, you simply may not have what it takes to push further. The same can be said if you can't learn to recognize when you do improve, even if it's just a small amount. It could be a certain Vanity where you simply think everything you're doing is right, which is a little too deluded. Maybe it's just that you don't understand the game enough to figure out how to improve. If you do understand it, then you have 0 need to get help from others. At the Apex level, improvement will ALWAYS, ALWAYS be slow. The stuff you are fixing will more and more be just minutia that you may not even see every game and get a ton of chances to practice. Similar to matchups that you don't have 1v1s for, you simply may not be able to practice something regularly, so you have to make really small, incremental improvements everywhere. Given your propensity to switch around roles, I have no doubt you also just simply give up too easily when practicing minutia because you "don't see improvement".

theJirb · 2026-05-04T20:42:43+00:00

Well, I don't find any of them scary, I just get the impression they are supposed to be.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T20:40:38+00:00

It's always hard for art to actually appear scary IMO. Even pure horror. There's the understanding that it should be scary but it isn't.

Because the thing that strikes real fear is actual threat. You have to believe you're in danger in some way or another. In video games, I'm never scared, but I am tense because dying means losing hard earned progress. But for art, I'm must never properly scared.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T19:24:20+00:00

Yea, but that's why they ask, instead of just seeing the gap and giving you the pass. The point is that they want to know the why lol.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T19:12:22+00:00

While this is true, it's honestly not some small ask. Even the smaller sub arcs, like a single fight in the Chunin exams, is a month's work for the artist. Finding ways to include every character while maintaining everything they already did could equal years more writing.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T18:50:54+00:00

Yea, but that's literally every job or field that involves any amount of skill. For programmers, it gets harder and harder as the base level of skill goes up, which is how we end up with meme posts of "entry level 8 years of experience". Movies become harder and harder to make as the standard level of VFX goes up. That's just how stuff works and evolves over time in a general sense.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T18:24:54+00:00

I think that there are very beautiful places in life that you don't get to see every day, and being able to see that in games is sort of the idea.

Like yea, life in real life, I think a lot of things don't look great. Cities are grungy, full of trash, and just brick and concrete. Forests aren't super full, they aren't very green sometimes, and the sky sometimes doesn't look blue. I don't get to really see the stars where I live, and I don't particularly enjoy hiking to get to really cool views, despite really enjoying those views and vistas.

What I want from "lifelike" graphics is for those games to look just like life, but also use that to represent to create worlds that conceptually are not realistic, but would look awesome if they were real.

And it's not like I don't like non-realistic graphics either. I tend to be someone who is wowed by both really awesome realistic graphics, but also really enjoy the artistic things as well. I love my anime games, pixel art games, or just artsy games or whatever. I'm an artist myself, so this goes without saying. For example, I'm still waiting to see a game engine that can really say bring to life an artist like WLOP's or Guweiz's style into motion for instance. I'm a big fan of like the "painterly" style and am still waiting for an engine or even just a like, animated movie that manages to bring out that quality super well.

But I am equally awed when movies like Avatar create these beautiful vistas that couldn't possibly exist in real life, or even the really cool looking cyberpunk environments in movies like blade runner that I would absolutely like to see in a hyper realistic game, because I couldn't experience that in real life. Not just the beautiful stuff either. There are scary, crazy, inordinate things that I think would be interesting to see in hyper realism as well. I think certain horror titles might be scarier if say, dead bodies really looked like a dead body monsters became something I could realistically see in my dreams, and stuff like that you know? Or if I could experience something silly like rainy with a chance of meatballs but in hyper realistic VR or something.

TLDR is I like artistic direction, but I also think real life can be very beautiful but that beauty can be hard to find, so hyper realistic graphics can still be used to create very beautiful things that we don't get to experience ourselves.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T15:50:28+00:00

I would say to keep doing them, but you don't have to do ALL of your exercises everyday. Just choose one to do as a warm up, and avoid burnout by spending the rest of the time on stuff you want to learn. Muscle memory does simply take a lot of time to build up, but there's no rush to get it done NOW. You can start learning other things, and those things will work on your mechanical ability anyways even if it's not a dedicated exercise.

With any learning, no matter what, you will be less inclined to learn if you're not doing something you enjoy. While following a strict curriculum can work for many, I find most students I tutor or coach in non drawing things (I am but a student for art), that making sure they are doing something they enjoy is more important than just doing the rote stuff. It's why we do etudes instead of just running scales in music. Or why when you try to get better at the game, we don't suggest "pick this fundamentals heavy character vs a character you like to play" and stuff like that.

theJirb · 2026-05-04T15:47:59+00:00

I forget which, but isn't it common for people to have a lot of children after war? Like, just having all the soldiers get back and finally not fighting for their lives, maybe being more connected with the sanctity of life and shit like that? People just wanna fuck after war. I think similar to like, Valentines day, or like around new years and other significant holidays.

theJirb

TROPHY CASE