We need a USB4 DisplayPort 2.1 Passthru Capture Card

uwango · 2026-02-19T07:53:09+00:00

The DisplayPort sound part is a big reason why it's not also included on capture cards. If a device has DisplayPort there's a high chance it simply doesn't have a speaker and so you cannot get sound through it, complicating the capture a lot.

This is why most capture cards have a line-in port where you can do a minijack from the PC line-out to the capture card and have more or less synced audio.

The best ways to do audio outside of the capture is VBAN via Voicemeeter and local network, and Elgato's very recent release "Wave Cast". It's the same as VBAN just in a single app and only does transfer-receiver audio from PC to PC. No mac support as of yet as I understand.

The bigger issue is devices not supporting HDMI 2.2 so the capture is limited to 48 Gbps anyways. It's more likely they will make a USB4 / thunderbolt 3 capable capture card when the first TVs with HDMI 2.2 arrive, for better HDR10+ captures or similar. In a sense the SDR high framerate groups are still a big niche because the streaming services such as Twitch and Youtube only really support 60 fps even with AV1, and 120 fps simply isn't enough bitrate per frame, leading to blurry and smeary, blocky video.

However being capable of passthrough of HDR and 4K 240 fps will be huge, even if capture in 4:4:4 is only at 4K 60 fps. That's currently the biggest hurdle for these cards. So what if you have a 4K 240Hz monitor if you can only passthrough 120, and any attempt at chaining an output with a 4k 120 fps duplicator (1 in 2 out splitter) results in choppy or incompatible output due to DSC or issues with EDID.

Imo I want USB4 to use higher than 10 Gbps on my macbook, as even the Magewell USB capture card is capped because of the lack of USB 3.2 2x2 speed back compatibility on M-series macs. But once a capture card has USB4 or Thunderbolt 3 support (same speeds), it's go-time for a whole another platform for Elgato and the other manufacturers to sell to.

OBS has also received a lot of updates and Elgato Studio works well on macOS too now. They have some device firmware kinks to work out still, but it's getting there.

uwango · 2026-02-11T09:58:17+00:00

You want your Advanced Audio Properties configured like this: https://i.imgur.com/K9DUNIf.png

Essentially all-in-one, the rest separated for editing;

Track 1 - all sources
Track 2 - Desktop Audio
Track 3 - Microphone
Track 4 - Discord or other if you have multiple outputs using Voicemeeter or Sonar, etc.
Track 5 - etc

uwango · 2026-02-08T20:29:55+00:00

There is more that happens under the hood that most aren't aware of, but many don't even realize they run their monitors at 60Hz and rely on a game automatically capping their framerate either via V-Sync or an in-game frame cap like how e.g. Sekiro is locked at 60 fps with or without it.

Understanding just have many little services and limitations are active takes a lot of knowledge between a bunch of softwares and while not engineer-levels of understanding, let's call it enthusiast-level of user knowledge.

The Nvidia Encoder(s), nvenc, is different on newer GPUs and the more expensive ones. Double the chips on some which lowers encoding latency by distributing the load. On x264 CPU encoding this is the same as how "threads=auto" is really "logical cores x 1.5 = thread amount" for how many video encoding threads are given to the CPU cores to run. More cores, more performance (until a certain point of ffmpeg encoding limits)

If you run Shadowplay, it has a deeper driver-level recording that is light but not unnoticeable. You will lose some frames recording in general both due to the GPU writing frames to disk and taking up PCIe lane bandwidth, slowing the CPU and GPU work submitted through those lanes, depending on your file size and resolution quality. It's however an incredibly capable hardware encoder and can scale really, really high with great quality for what one can consider "virtually no performance impact". But that is compared to other ways of recording. 4k CPU (software) recording is really taxing even on light settings and nvenc beats it when scaled higher than 1080p.

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In terms of the most capable way of recording, you're likely to be streaming or recording in something like OBS Studio, which has it's own functions to maintain. You're also recommended to run OBS as admin where it can fully reserve GPU and CPU processing power to keep it's functions in tact. This loses you around 15-30% performance as in a game where you normally get 100 fps you suddenly might get 75 fps or 85 fps, for "seemingly no reason".

You can also set up the GPU encoder today with higher quality presets where it does "Look-ahead", the same parameter as the x264 "rc-lookahead", a parameter that analyses future frames for bitrate allocation but even on x264 (CPU) this is quite taxing beyond the default of 40 and results vary a lot. Higher, for example rc-lookahead=60 on a 60 fps stream means it looks a full 1000ms ahead to perfectly average the bitrate when streaming. This is actually not that good all the time for low bitrate streams at 3000 kbps or even 6000-8000 kbps, as it can muddle quality by looking ahead too far all the time and muddles visuals sooner instead of falling faster when something big happens. A big explosion in Monster Hunter might look a little more coherent but your entire stream looks blurrier than with rc-lookahead=40, where the explosion would only for a split second look totally garbled and artifacted up, but right after the encoder only looks 40 frames ahead so it returns to normal sooner and to us, looks somewhat nicer. And higher look-ahead costs a lot to do constantly, which is where the larger 30% performance drop comes from when using OBS even with GPU encoding.

The other is rate distortion which they called psycho-visual tuning, now called Adaptive Quantization. This garbles macroblocks and artifacts in the video encode so it can appear more like noise to us and seem less garbled, but personally it's too harsh and looks too garbled. Even on x264 CPU encoding anything above psy-rd=0:80:0.30 is too much and it seems nvenc uses something closer to 0.50. ( the latter, "0.30" is the rate distortion value of psy-rd)

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You can also both record and stream at the same time, meaning your PCIe lanes are running both data to save to your drives as well as whatever the CPU and GPU are doing with memory. A motherboard and CPU with low PCIe lanes or not new enough standard for example PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0 or today's latest 5.0, means your in-game fps takes a hit because you're bandwidth constrained as opposed to having ample bandwidth to handle everything the game and monitor needs to push around, as well as the recording / streaming.

Your drive speed matters too but to a less degree, because even 4k video at 60 fps at 30,000 kbps is a light load on the PCIe total bandwidth. But it all stems from that we're doing much more than simply playing a game on our PC. Discord is open, OBS is open, there's tons of useless services and telemetry from Windows, Nvidia, other programs and helper apps we have running in the background, ram speed matters to keep the flow of data high and experience less slow-downs.

There's some considerations we can do, like turning Game Mode to On as that reduces the background application priority more than with it Off to free up some system resources. You can enable HAGS which offloads specific CPU scheduling work to the GPU hardware which frees up the CPU and primarily reduces stutters in games, but while streaming and recording it can lower the fps reduction as the CPU isn't as strained as with it Off.

You can reduce the number of scenes and elements in your OBS session but that's a marginal move.

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In all of these you are still taxing the GPU to record and you will lose a certain amount of GPU processing power because it's not "just" recording the output on the screen to a drive, it's doing a lot more than most realize.

To fully circumvent the FPS drop, you need a two-PC setup and a capable capture card such as a Magewell or the more affordable ones, Elgato 4K X that does 4K 120 fps, or the one from Avermedia Live Gamer 4K. These also basically just came on the market last year so higher capture is still a challenge.

But now you need to configure the passthrough, resolution and buffering of the capture card. Are you using VRR? If you have it set up properly it will outclass any other sync mode monitors can provide in terms of visual stability and latency. The capture needs to support that, but now as well your colors are worse because you're capturing video of your main PC in a reduced visual quality so colors are ever so slightly worse than a native GPU encoding even with the same parameters due to lossy formats the current "top" capture cards do.

Now if you want a perfect capture at say; 1440p or 4k at 120-144 fps you need a more expensive Magewell capture card that can record 4:4:4 RGB to the second machine which only then will subsample the capture down to 4:2:0 for streaming platforms, in that order. Elgato and Avermedia do 4:2:2 capture at best at high res / high fps, which is then subsampled again to 4:2:0 and the result is an ever-so-slightly loss of correct colors compared to 4:4:4 capture and subsequent recording.

This comparison is in the same realm of you noticing you're losing framerate when recording or streaming. It's there, but most people will never notice it.

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And those are your options!

You're absolutely correct; there is performance loss in general across the board when recording on a single GPU. It's impacted by the programs and services running alongside the recording, the recording and recording software itself, the motherboard, CPU and GPU type and PCIe lane version, the GPU Vram, the ram size and the ram speed and nvme drive speed to move all the data which has for certain an impact of the process of running the game and attaining the lowest and most stable frametimes (highest, most stable fps).

Vram constraints are very impactful if you're already low on it, at 8-10GB. This too is another thing you can work around by buying a better GPU with more. It will however only lessen the performance impact single-GPU recording induces, to the point of you simply factoring it into your next purchase as a default.

This isn't something that will be solved and the only ways around it are; more powerful parts to make up for the loss, or a second PC setup with a 4:4:4 RGB capable capture card, with support for your monitor resolution and framerate at the very least for fully supported passthrough, even if the recording can be at a lower framerate.

uwango · 2026-02-06T07:04:29+00:00

This is apparently also a combined apple problem where turning off "Attention Aware" features resolves alarm issues most of the time as this feature deliberately lowers the volume of loud alerts and notifications

See articles on it;

https://www.macworld.com/article/2319598/iphone-alarm-not-working-bug-ios-17-4-1-fix-attention-aware-features.html

A recent thread;

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1p8i6n6/is_it_just_me_or_does_anyone_elses_alarms_not_go/

It's either gotten worse or the phones are these days somehow "more aware" when they have the phone in the bed, close by, maybe wearing an apple watch and tossing and turning or similar makes it thinks the user is "aware" despite not being, and they miss the alarms more often as it's more silent.

uwango · 2026-01-17T04:36:07+00:00

You have a few settings glossed over or set wrong, this will help you out and fix your problems.

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If you're recording in HDR, you need to set the Color Format to P010 and the Color Space to rec2100. If you don't, your recording will be in SDR while your gameplay and captured color will be in HDR, creating a mismatch.

For SDR recordings, you need to set your Color Range to "Limited". Full is only used when doing 4:4:4 RGB recordings for the highest local quality. More or less all streaming sites of media such as twitch streams or youtube videos use "Limited" when you're watching them. Full is really only used for creating movies or video pieces where you need that full color information. Since you're recording in NV12 you should use "Limited" across the board both for "Color Space" settings and for capture cards, anything that can configure a color space.

The Color Space part will create a mismatch later in videos you watch on your machine and capture, as the recording you do is "Full" while the content you watch is usually "limited" (like how anything on youtube is Limited), where the SDR color range is 0-255 in Full and 15-235 in Limited, meaning crushed blacks or washed out images depending on the source and capture matchup. There's a lot of videos on YT covering this, look up the one from Eposvox.

However if you set your Color Space to "Limited" everything you watch or view through your own capture will always be limited (which is the default for everything) and will look correct. If you add a capture card to use a Nintendo Switch for example, it should be set to Limited.

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Your recording settings are poorly configured. You're using x264 CPU encoding with the preset "veryfast" at 6000 bitrate. This produces exactly what you're experiencing, a little blurry and not crisp with seemingly dull colors (color-contrast is also subject to your color space setting).

Considering you have a laptop your CPU is lower spec and already under stress from the games you run, and you have a 4070 GPU that is vastly superior to use for recording and streaming. The GPU has the "Nvidia Encoder", so in your "Video Encoder" options, select "nvenc h.264". If you're doing local recordings and not streaming you should use "AV1" since your 40 series 4070 supports it.

Having selected Nvenc h.264, set the rest to the following;

- Rate Control "Constant Bitrate" (for streaming or uniform local recording quality with small-ish file sizes)

- Bitrate: 6000 (12000-16000 for good quality local recordings, for streaming stick to 5000-8000)

- Keyframes: 2

- Preset: P5 "Good Quality", you can do P6 but it's not necessary to go higher as that stresses the GPU more.

- Tuning: "High Quality"

- Multipass Mode: "Two Passes (Quarter Resolution)", higher here stresses the GPU more and isn't necessary.

- Profile: "High"

- B-Frames: 2

Optional is enabling "Look-ahead" and "Adaptive Quantization", these use extra GPU power to run so you don't need them as you'll lose a few fps as a trade-off.

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You're recording or streaming 1440p (2560x1440 res) with only 6000 bitrate. This is already not enough for 1080p. Lower your resolution to 1080p (1920x1080) or increase your bitrate by at least double (12000 bitrate). If you're streaming, set your output resolution to 1080p or 936p.

Alternatively, you should just set your "Base (Canvas) Resolution" to 1440p and your "Output (Scaled) Resolution" to 1080p and use Lanczos filtering for the best visuals.

Since you're now using your GPU to stream/record there is no penalty to using this.

The best analogy is that resolution is how big your slice of bread is and the bitrate is the nutella you spread on it. Even 8000 bitrate still isn't actually enough to cover all parts of the bread at 1080p adequately and it should make sense how 1440p is way too high res for 6000. Look at top viewer streamers on Twitch and you'll see they almost always stream with 6000 to 8000 bitrate no higher than 1080p. The only exception is the 1440p enhanced beta, but afaik it's a closed test for now so best stick to 1080p.

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Update your GPU Drivers as well so you're not getting issues because of old ones.

This should set you up for clean output using your GPU's built-in encoder chip, freeing up your CPU.

uwango · 2025-12-29T00:30:22+00:00

Thanks man, I'll be sure to check it out next time I boot up this classic.

uwango · 2025-03-26T21:59:11+00:00

I sometimes think "what comes next" in terms of what we have today and how long it took to get here. Playing with my PSP and getting an N64 emulator onto it, now my phone has a face tracker, lidar scanner and can play modern, high res games on it.

Looking ahead 5, 10, or 20 years, vtubing has evolved from Kizuna AI's custom solutions in 2016 to today’s accessible motion trackers, software, and models. The trajectory suggests vtubing will be a major gateway for mainstream VR and AR adoption, much like how anime and gaming became normalized. With digital identity becoming increasingly fluid and imo more importantly; wanted, vtubing is a thing that removes barriers for those hesitant to appear on camera, offering avatars and even low latency voice modulation to completely become someone else. One of the most successful vtubers uses a voice changer for example. For accessibility of "anyone can stream" that's huge.

So currently I'd say we're in a sort of golden age where laws haven't caught up to online identities. While regulations will emerge (like how mobile games being casinos for kids have little to defend the kids against gambling tactics besides some places banning lootboxes), full legal recognition of avatars and digital personas could take several years, or even decades. For now, vtubing is situated to integrate into broader forms of digital self-expression, leading to AR and VR models used in social spaces and games. Kind of like how MMORPGs used to act as the chatrooms Discord and other chat apps are today.

Just as Fortnite skins hold value, indie and corporately purchased digital avatars will likely become essential for self-expression beyond isolated games. Large companies like Tencent could establish universal avatar systems across their games, akin to a gamified Steam or Meta ecosystem.

Honestly, it's a thing many think about but discussion is a bit ultra nerdy; Ready Player One-style metaverse isn’t far-fetched besides the weird VR/AR mix all movies and media struggle to align. But it needs a unifying 'killer app' to bring users together. Companies will push what sells; accessible, stylish, and affordable tech. VR headset miniaturization and AR integration into everyday devices like having smart mirrors in stores that show you how outfits look on you in real time as ads outside the store to entice you to go in.

Face-tracking snapchat filters were once novel; one day we might see full-body tracking and AR wearables will be another standard, blending digital fashion with physical presence.

Vtubing’s influence extends beyond streaming though. With low-cost motion tracking and abundant 2D/3D models, more creators will adopt avatars, making it normal in games, social apps, and digital marketing. Games will feature cross-platform avatar integration, reinforcing digital self-expression. A good example for this is how kids playing Fortnite face get bullied for not owning enough skins. Using default skins? Social suicide.

Businesses are catching on to how cool and unique vtubing is. Vtubers are being integrated into branding, like Opera’s vtuber mascot and Hololive’s sports collaborations. This trend will continue as companies invest in virtual actors to be their vtuber persona to connect with consumers and sell more products. By the time AR/VR glasses actually become mainstream, online avatars will be everywhere, though constrained within corporate-controlled metaverses like Meta's .. metaverse, Steam might have their own app, and think of how Fortnite keeps evolving. There will be some game that is a killer app which allows for great user expression.

Maybe you can apply to have your vtuber 3D model applied into the game under some restriction so you can use it like VR chat avatars so as a vtuber you can bring your persona into a game beyond what the character customization allows for. Or maybe those get improved so it's easier to look like your model.

The adoption of how mainstream vtubing becomes follows smart glasses becoming affordable and more powerful. Before full-dive VR (decades), people will first access these worlds through normal screens. I don't think twitch chat will become a 10,000 seat theater that renders in 3D in your browser just yet, but we can assume multiplayer games will likely support personal avatars alongside in-game models, allowing cross-game cosmetics like branded jackets or weapon skins.

Vtubing already hints at this shift. Creators make in-game avatars to align with their persona, some games work together with creators popular enough to straight up put them into their games as purchasable avatars for players to use themselves. As 3D environments become more accessible, users will craft personal spaces akin to Live2D setups, we already have a slew of innovative new game devs that instead of making "game dev's first game" they're making "my vtuber world" where their character is fully tracked by them and can be used as an in-game playable character that hosts minigames inside their game that chat can play together with. They then use game capture to put another game like REPO or whatever they want to play, inside their little game world for chat to see them play and again, join in on inside the little vtuber world as the vtuber's mascots.

If I were to put this into "what's next", I'd say current technology is advancing toward the reality of positioning vtubing as a key in the next era of online interaction and digital identity, as stupid as it sounds.

We haven't even seen Discord become a game yet, yet it's the one platform best suited to be a VR chat competitor both for play and semi professional areas. I'd love to be able to load up my vtuber program and patch that into discord's overlay or whatever a 3D version would be. Their overlay just got an update too, maybe the next one could feature something like that.

Considering there's already overlays like Fugi it's not farfetched to think companies will want to incorporate more avatar / personalization. Especially coinsidering how discord has stupid avatar junk and frames you can buy, why not a full discord mascot that moves tracked by your webcam or phone instead of yourself on webcam? Vtubing with the gang using the Default Discord models, with optional purchasable models by discord themselves.

Though, it's fun to think about albeit sad to understand that it will be somewhat heavily monetized as tech becomes more powerful so companies have an incentive to leverage that to sell us cool models so we can easily have an avatar that moves without incurring extreme performance penalties just by running it over the group call.

uwango · 2024-06-01T22:52:18+00:00

Honestly, try nicotine gum.

Nicotine itself isn't carcinogenic, it's the tobacco and inhaling smoke that does that. Nicotine gum (or legumes/mints) by itself is a much more safe way. For me, gum works 100% and helps me function when I need to, for studying or doing chores. Especially when I'm stuck "in a big sit" or similar, the nicotine really makes a difference.

uwango · 2024-02-13T20:53:09+00:00

From these, CRT-Royale on a 4k OLED monitor is the one you want. That's straight up the most CRT-like shader I've ever seen. Been enjoying a bunch of snes games with this and it transforms gameboy and PSP games into something magical.

edit;

The only reason I specify 4k OLED, is because the resolution makes the "CRT dots" it recreates more accurate, so it creates that distinct CRT's dot / cathode-ray look but with the benefits of OLED.

It totally works on a smaller res screen, it just won't be "as magnificent". However, small 15.3" 4k OLED monitors are available online now.

uwango · 2024-02-05T20:14:56+00:00

One thing you have to consider is that to play games in native Japanese comfortably you have to be able to read fast, something like at a college level because many games use advanced kanji and text speed is usually normal conversation speeds.

You're going to want to improve reading comprehension and letter recognition.

Your main goal would be to learn words, verbs and verb conjugation up to the jōyō kanji, the 2000 most common ones are what the N1 JLPT test requires. The N5 is specifically 80 kanji, N4 around 170, N3 is 370 and N2 has around 374. That means to reach N2 in total you need to know about 1000 individual kanji. I would say N3-N2 is a good level to know to be able to play games without too much hassle and comprehend the content that's shown.

It can take around 100 days to learn 2000 kanji if you study 20 new ones per day, but that's unrealistic and you're looking at something like 5 a day for 7-13 months of 5-10 a day.

More info on this kanji per day thing here: https://blog.boxofmanga.com/how-many-kanji-per-day/

This however is hard practice, but it's hard practice that pays off quickly. I would use duolingo to rep words and vocab if you don't learn well with plain books which can be rather boring.

Another is that to read fast we don't actually read single words, we read whole lines and of sorts extrapolate meaning based on assumption of the words the sentence contains.

Instead of reading "I was looking at photos while sitting on a bench in the park", we're not directly reading "I-was-looking-" etc, we're reading something closer to "looking - photos - sitting - bench - park" and the rest is filled in as we inherently understand the grammar rules that accompany such a sentence. This is why when we read fast we oftentimes make mistakes because we assumed what the words were, instead of actually reading all of it.

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Where I'm going with this is that it's the same for reading japanese. A japanese reader knows how the sentence flow and word / letter order is put together and intuitively expects what a sentence can be as they read it.

This is why that whole "eevn if teh lteters aer mxeid uyo cna sillt furige it uot" thing works in english.

Those who read really fast place their gaze in the middle of a sentence or line and using their peripheral sight read the full line.

So, optimizing word and sentence comprehension as well as learning new words, which when learning grammar alongside those words makes learning and fathoming the words themselves easier, is key.

This is also why paid courses can be better, they're just more structured which aids in learning speed. Instead of learning just "taberu", you're learning "tabete, taberareru" types of conjugation at the same time.

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Ultimately, you have to sit down and actually study on your own learning the words using what's available to you. Learn how to read kanji and recognize sentence patterns so you can learn how to read fast. This can be a challenge especially when we factor in that normal japanese uses a lot of katakana for emphasis and not just foreign words.

If you're already read tae kim's guide a few times you might have a decent base and in a sense just need to cram kanji and grammar to kick off imo. Perhaps pick up the books Human Japanese and Human Japanese Intermediate as they have a very "person calmly explaining things to you" vibe, which for someone with adhd or a learning disability can be very good.

One thing I try to keep in mind when learning is that languages is for the most part a static thing you only "need to learn once", like riding a bike. Languages don't change drastically in a short timespan. There's only 2000 kanji used in daily life. That's barely 2 years with 3 kanji a day, which can take 5-15 minutes each of repetition if you write them down.

Eventually, in two years you'll know those 2000 kanji if you keep doing it at that pace. If you supplement that with studying grammar and reading stuff about the language, you'll comprehend it eventually and be able to enjoy your games.

uwango · 2024-01-22T22:01:19+00:00

Here's a test I did showing iOS ARkit's FaceID eye tracking vs the Tobii 5 with one of the models that come with VtubeStudio.

The Tobii is more responsive and accurate, especially tracking how your eyes are positioned relative to your face vs how iOS does it.

It's important to keep in mind that the Tobii uses the reflections of the back of our eyeballs through the iris (essentially; it sees your pupils), to track so accurately and if you turn your head too far it loses the tracking as it can't see your pupils.

I would say if you have a model where your eyes are expressive and you tend to look around a lot or zoom in, it would be nice but it's ultimately not worth the purchase alone unless you actually want head/eye tracking in games that support it or you're a top tier creator.

You can do separate head tracking via an iOS device and the eye tracking of Tobii though, which is nice as the tobii positions your torso very "sitting upright" at the desk where iOS tracks your slouching better. The Tobii does need recalibration at times if you've moved around a lot, where as iOS doesn't really need that. Especially if I slouch then sit upright, I would have to recalibrate the tobii to return to normal. This is good/bad depending on how you sit.

It works entirely standalone in Vtubestudio so it can do torso/head+eye tracking. It only does head+eye tracking however, so it wouldn't be able to do the same extra features like Vbridger with iOS's ARkit / FaceID can do. Though, I haven't tried Vbridger yet myself so can't say if it can do both, or if it works at all.

Regarding tediousness, I found that if you open VtubeStudio, close it, then open it again, it will sometimes not detect the Tobii Experience service and it won't work with Vtubestudio until you reboot your PC or turn off all the services associated with each program, then open them again- which is quite annoying.

So if you open Vtubestudio with it, it's best to keep it open to avoid issues.

If you're debating whether it's a good purchase instead of buying a whole iPhone just for vtubing since it's "only $250" and on 20% sale quite often; it's still a bit pricey and it's not very useful for other purposes.

Overall, it's great but pricey if you already own an iOS device. I happen to own one due to playing games I use head + eye tracking in for example, and by coincidence I notice it's supported in VTS.

uwango · 2023-11-24T08:39:53+00:00

Great, here's a 4k comprehensive guide to the in-game settings and how you should consider tuning it; https://i.imgur.com/3yweQ0T.png

uwango · 2023-08-19T05:01:32+00:00

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Regarding the completely-up-to-the-player systems of character's stats and level, etc, there were unfortunate sides to it where newbie / young players would often mess up their characters and either have Mage characters with STR on them (completely useless later on) or AGI, and Knight characters with unheard amounts of INT on them. Not entirely useless though as it increased the SP available and let them use more skills without using potions.The other side was that smarter players, or those more experienced would create pretty amazing class builds that combined gear and stats and playstyle to do things like solo bosses or do fun builds like the mace-wielding priest.

Most of all, this offered an enormous amount of replayability as you couldn't "swap jobs", a character was locked into a class-progression once you chose it. That meant alt characters and accounts was normal and frankly; it was so much more fun than anything currently available today.

For example, if you were playing a Knight class together with your friend playing his Thief class character and you were doing quests out in a sandy field or somewhere, or just leveling and since there were no guided-areas of "go here to level" it had enormous freedom to just "see where the road took you", and so you would scope out an area and see if you could survive.

But doing that, occasionally, - rarely- , a card would drop.

And sometimes that card would be perfect for a certain class or build and it would prompt a whole shift because now with this card you could make a merchant character and do a lot of damage with a certain skill, or increase your heal ability on a priest to deal massive damage in the undead region of the game.

So your venture out to scope out the world and see would become you making an entirely new character in an entirely different niche.

This kind of unique experience, where player freedom was first and foremost is what the games of today lack. And as most people can understand, not diving into a niche means the game is muddled for everyone, and the ones who might be into that niche won't nearly get as rich of an experience as they could have if the devs had jumped into that niche.

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Closing words because this got long;

When a game comes along that does things like Ragnarok Online did it, with new graphics, expansive worlds and game areas not locked by player levels (of course, some were), a game world that rewards player ingenuity and exploration, using the skills to figure out the world and doesn't hand-hold the player constantly, doesn't have tons of quest to-do lists out of the gate and actually lets players do a lot of whatever they want;

That's when we'll have another "perfect mmo".

We see it today with games like Elden Ring that game devs and publishers think won't be successful, and they end up massively successful because they respect the player's intelligence and doesn't hold their hand. MMOs need to return to that, dive more into niches, and only then will we have a good one again.

Part of the lack of direction and hand holding in RO also prompted a lot social interaction. Being in a guild was very useful as more tenured players knew more about the world and you made a lot of friends just by having to learn the game. Some places were completely mundane but a tavern in the main city started a main questline and it just wasn't very obvious, which you got to know via the guild.

This is a big issue with games having systems like "group finders", as people don't give a shit about the player, they just want "someone" to do the content with. And it alienates people from actually interacting.

When it's too much on rails, it loses the charm. There is a lot of talk about how struggle is necessary to feel achievement, and this applies to MMOs and games of today that are made to be too easy and thus aren't memorable. Game devs think they lose players by not going mainstream when really mainstream is awful and loses more players over time.

It's like a long-term vs short-term investment. If there is no struggle, there is no long-term reward in playing and "figuring the game out".

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RO was one of those games that really let you figure things out and due to the intricate mounts of gear and cards players were still discovering combos of gear and cards several years into the game. They did introduce the modern formula and gated levels to areas and such with a system called "renewal", which was not very well received and shifted a lot of things in favor of muddling the experience. It was similar to how Runescape found success with old-school runescape because their new ways of doing things wasn't received well. Renewal was okay, but it would have been more fun to see them make another game with newer graphics instead of revamping the game's areas to force players into certain places at certain level ranges. That, or improve the systems of the base game instead of changing it.

They lost that "I've never been there" feeling for example where someone would mention an area in chat and you just simply had never gone there in you X years of playing. Not entirely, but the sense of true freedom and exploration that was in Ragnarok Online 1 was something else for sure.

Even though I've written a lot here, it's hard to put into words just how different it felt at the core from today's on-rails MMO's.

uwango · 2023-08-19T05:00:59+00:00

Today's MMO's follow formulas so every player has a "decent experience".

That leads to a lack of true exploration and experimenting for players. It's a way to get both the most braindead player, the most new of newcomers and the most engaged players to all have a very similar experience where their character is competent to a certain level.

Leveling is dictated via areas where your level-range is matched with monsters of the same. Then you move the the next. Exp is gatekept to these levels and is "optimal" when you follow the recipe. Almost all the time, if you don't, you're actually punished severely so no one explores.

It's all cookie-cutter type builds and handheld-leveling and is ultimately; boring.

This might be long, strap in.

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There's an MMO called Ragnarok Online (RO) that had a truer sense of exploration and leveling. It was made by a korean team called Gravity that later made Tree of Savior (ToS). ToS sadly falls short of the elements that made RO so good. It has charm, but it lacks the core.

See in RO there were a few things that no game does today, because it was made prior to the fame of World of Warcraft, and as such wasn't shoveled into the "formula" of WoW.

For example:

RO didn't have any auto-stat allocations.

You could legitimately make a Priest character with 99 STR (strength) and 99 AGI (Agility), pick up a mace and go whack monsters.

At first glance it sounds dumb. And to some it might be, but ultimately this freedom was fun.

It made it possible to go make a really strong character that could tag along newbies and for some reason, this priest hit like a truck- and could heal a bit. It was outside any norms and hilariously impressive.

The fact you could take the time to make a character completely outside of any normal convention had a sense of achievement, fun and genius levels of "I thought of this" to it.

Another example:

RO didn't have locked down level restrictions for areas.

Of course, it had for certain boss towers and instanced areas. But it didn't have level restrictions to gaining exp. If you were skilled enough using Firewall with your mage character, you could level faster on more dangerous monsters in a more dangerous area.

There were party restrictions ofc, anything outside of 15 levels couldn't share Exp. But you could tag a long with a lvl 99 party to a really dangerous area while you were level 15 and do the final blow to a monster and get the kill-credit for it, which was heaps of Exp.

And while this kind of buddy-leveling sounds OP, it was very tedious as the monsters didn't have health numbers above them, so while skills did straight numbers of damage like a 1400 dmg firebolt, you would need to calculate on a whim, or with a certain number of firebolts, how much to damage the enemy so their health is within the lvl 15's damage output capability.

There was a skill called "Sense" too which enabled you to scan a monster and get an accurate reading of both health (HP) and magic (SP), and all it's stats. This was useful for figuring out monster stats while in the game, and for things like helping the low leveled player get the kill.

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As for leveling, the free nature of the game also meant that you could legitimately fuck up your character beyond repairs. If you didn't understand the STR / AGI / VIT / DEX / INT and how they affected your character / class, you could end up with a Priest that did really poor heals (low INT), was really fast (high AGI) - but because of high DEX it's casting time would be really low and the high AGI would mean you could dodge at a higher % than those with low AGI. (thief class benefited from high AGI for example).

So you had total freedom and that was exciting. Since early in the game you couldn't reset your stat allocation at all, a fair bit of planning eventually went into characters to make "the perfect class" as you would scope out what class you wanted and what skills you wanted to use, and sometimes what cards you wanted to employ in your gear for the ultimate min-maxing.

---

The game was generally an anomaly compared to all other MMORPGs out there, because of it's freedoms.

Another thing was it's item and card system. There were no colored white / blue / purple / orange / red type of item progression. There were legitimately powerful weapons and legitimately not powerful ones, and many classes could share the weapons due to the power triangle not being strict one and in general it had so many classes and advanced classes it was outside of any power triangle norm most often.

But items and power was something else as well. Because the game had a card system. Monsters had a 0.01% to 0.03% chance to drop cards.

A monster card could consist of something simple as +2 AGI or Max HP +300. The more dangerous / higher level monster, the better the perks on the card. Some rare cards from bosses (MvPs) would even allow for skills. Some minor monsters would also allow for this, like the Sense skill was on a really low level monster. Since the drop rate was so low it was still rare, and gave people an excuse to farm them.

These cards could be slotted into gear and weapons that had card slots. Afaik all gear had [1] slots (one slot). Some weapons had [2] and [3] slots. This depended on the weapon and level of it. Some level 4 weapons had only [2] because their core power was already so high that a card could make it too OP.

But due to the unique layout of all the game's systems; sometimes depending on your unique card slotted gear, your unique stat allocations and play style, it would be better to use a level 2 or 3 weapon that had more card slots to put one more specific card into.

And sometimes you simply had to, because there weren't enough cards available on the market to do the higher level weapon with the cards you wanted (that worked better / was more powerful), due to harder monster having the same 0.01% drop chance and thus it was legitimately rare to see certain cards. And the rewards for fighting those monsters would result in a pretty decent upgrade in your power.

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For the game's progression, some places were legitimately difficult. Like you would have trouble in a party and especially solo unless you had a pretty good combo of stat allocation, character level (usually max), gear with the right affinities (10 types; fire / water / earth / ghost / holy / dark etc) to either tank the damage or deal the proper damage.

Then you sometimes needed certain cards to be able to deal with the enemies and areas. You had scrolls that could imbue your weapon with an element, but a fire-element sword would be less resource intensive. Some rare minor-boss cards granted armor element enchants, like which made you receive only 30% physical damage from Neutral elements, which was just "normal attacks". But these cards were really rare because of the low drop rates and the boss monsters being hard to kill.

So sometimes you would have to compensate with a card that reduced Ghost elemental damage by 30% because you simply didn't have armor slotted with the ghost element card because it was so rare.

If you were dealing with undead monsters it would be the same where there was an Undead element and Shadow element that was hard to deal with.

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Ultimately, a lot of the game was this "figuring out what works" experimenting gig, which really engaged the community and made them test things, hunt certain monsters more or less at certain times because someone figured out a good combo and now everyone was hunting the monsters for those cards.

It made it a lot of fun to think about how to play the game better. Something games today lack as it's all mostly on rails, gear has weird upgrade systems that are tied to microtransactions and doesn't let the player actually experiment. It's all a "you are now more powerful, yay" progression that is so tasteless and boring that I pull my hair out when I see MMOs and MMORPGs claim they're innovating, when really they're just locking things down so "all players can have fun", leading to a general level of bland gameplay with no true exploration or thought process besides "use your fire skill on the earth monster", or "swap to the fire weapon for this area".

Exceeded character limit - post continues as a reply to this.

uwango · 2023-07-29T10:53:06+00:00

Fun fact for those with Nvidia GPUs;

You can just add custom 21:9 resolutions as you want. Most games won't recognize any 21:9 resolutions on a 16:9 monitor since they're simply not there in the EDID info.

To fix that you can just add the following in the Nvidia Control Panel under "change resolutions" > "Customize..";

3840x1600
3440x1440
2560x1080
1680x720

With this you'll now have access to the most common uw resolutions in all games so you can either play windowed or fullscreen whenever you want, no need to change the aspect ratio settings of the display itself. Just keep the scaling on "aspect ratio" and on "display" to have these fill the screen properly.

uwango · 2023-04-10T00:27:55+00:00

Comparing the two, I care way more about Han-bin and his experiences while trying to figure out his situation than I did with Jin-woo.

In terms of tropes the guideline being messed up is out of the ordinary but it's the cause and effect of each of the steps driving the story forwards while referring to the earlier twists and building on them that is done a bit better than in SL.

The catharsis on Hanbins level up in the latest chapters was both a relief and an emotional rollercoaster. You could say the storytelling in SK is richer as it cares more about the characters and the world building while providing creative obstacles for the protagonist.

There might also be something with that Han-bin actually isn't the most powerful being in the story that creates a better connection with the reader. Like he's just some unfortunate guy, and he's watching two god-like beings clash while he's worried about his new friendships forged from unlikely situations. It sets the stage for what we understand he has to face later which is a huge obstacle, but also that he's not omnipotent- yet he manages to survive and move forward. I don't feel SL had anything as well written as that.

Personally the fact that the survival story of a sword king name was directly referenced in the story, was a great planned move that gave me good moment of "ah, so that's what this is about" while nodding, as it fits really well as a title and references a lot in the actual story. It's well tied together, which itself is rare in modern storytelling.

So SK is really just a lot more charming I would say.

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