Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jan 21, 2020 10:00:41 GMT -5
It's a constant "I'm dumb" -> "I'm smart" -> "I'm dumb"... There is no middle ground. On the windy cities: a lot of the big cities in Finland are along the shore, so the wind is always blowing from the sea. Some cities have been designed in a way to minimize long straight streets to block the wind somewhat, kind of like this: I don't know how much it helps in the end, but Oulu doesn't have many of those and the cold wind is really bad in the city center.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jan 23, 2020 0:33:13 GMT -5
Interview is February 1st.
Finished Star Ocean 3. Final boss died in literally 10 seconds. It was a riot.
On the whole I enjoyed the game much more this time, although I still don't think I'd call it "great". It has a few significant problems that drag it down, namely that dungeons are huge and visually uninteresting, meanwhile combat goes on too long unless you absolutely abuse the item creation. That said,it felt much shorter this time around. I managed to finish the game in 33 hours, which is 14 hours quicker than my first playthrough. However, just saying "14 hours quicker" doesn't really sum up the difference. I remember by the end of playthrough 1 I was so frustrated that I just blitzed through the final dungeon, ignoring every side path. This time I was ready to be done, but not to the point of being frustrated about it. Guess that's what happens when you just focus on the content you WANT to do and don't stress being a completionist.
I thought this would be the game that ended my SO playthrough, but I made it through. Yet the hardest mountain lays directly before me. Can I overcome nappy time with Edgie?
God save me...
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jan 24, 2020 0:02:29 GMT -5
Was going through an old interview on Tales of Arise for Derman, and I found this little gem:
"We’re upping the intimidation of enemy designs. This comes from the idea that “you should get a greater feeling of accomplishment from defeating an enemy.” While there is also the idea that some female players might not like it if we make the enemies too scary, it is nevertheless important for RPG battles to evoke a sense of accomplishment when defeating an enemy."
Sorry Joey, you can't play the new Tales game. It's too spooky. No grills allowed. (I can hardly imagine how broken up you must be)
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jan 24, 2020 10:01:41 GMT -5
Boy, would that not fly if a game company said that in the US, hahaha.
I don't doubt there is a contingent of female gamers who are just there for the pretty boys, though. In my experience, there is a subgroup of female gamers (not an insignificant percentage) who play just for story/characters and have no professed interest in gameplay. Met a lot of them in college, which was surprising to me because I had just assumed you liked, you know, playing games if you played video games. The games were just a means to an end for them in terms of consuming content (often said content were things that had significant fanbases. I think they got more of that than anything.)
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jan 24, 2020 18:12:48 GMT -5
I mean, isn't Tales pretty reputable among the fujoshi crowd? That's what I've heard anyway. It's not like it doesn't go both ways. As I was saying to Derman, it's not like Automata sold for its innovative gameplay or deep story. We know this because the original Nier did pretty much everything the new one does. What the original didn't have was a flashy combat system and a ton of promotional material involving a woman in a modified french maid outfit. Truly, it's a mystery why it sold so well. A. Complete. Mystery.
-edit- Watched Joker with a friend. It gets my coveted 'okay' out of ten. I wasn't bored for the two hours, nor was I in any pain, nor was I feeling embarrassed for the people involved. As far as major Hollywood movies go, that's pretty much a sign of good entertainment.
Now was it a smart movie?
No.
Pretty much whatever political statements it makes could have been made by any nimrod. It doesn't really offer anything insightful, or a unique take on the situation. I'd say it's more using the politics of today as something around which to hang the telling of a Joker origin story, rather than using the origin story of the Joker to make any kind of statement about modern politics. As long as they were going for the former, that's fine. However the reception which seems to fully embrace the latter has some seriously messed up ideas on political discourse.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jan 26, 2020 18:35:35 GMT -5
Downloaded a turbo mod for DMC5. Holy hell, I feel like a fool for thinking it was ever okay for the game to launch without it. If they really are working on an SE (which I doubt), this had better be mandatory.
Also Derman, are you sitting down? If not, sit down before you read what comes next.
After ten hours of Star Ocean 4... I actually like it.
Okay yeah, the characters are retarded and the writing is awful. Also everyone looks like dolls. I got it. I have eyes. But the combat, though it takes a while to get used to, is actually pretty fun. It offers more options than any other SO game, and also isn't as restrictive with where it places you for attacks. Dodging is not only natural, but effective, and for offense there's more options than "spam the best move an infinite number of times".
Bizarrely, I even like the bosses. Even more than Tales bosses. HEAR ME OUT!
If you've ever looked in to SO4, you'll probably see complaints that bosses take too long. These people are stupid and should be ignored. See, the bosses in SO4 actually do something that I wish Tales bosses would do (words I never thought I'd say): they have mechanics. For instances, the first boss requires that you destroy his carapace to expose a weak point. The second exposes his weak-point whenever he does an attack that connects him to the ground. The third boss is vulnerable when charging his cannon. Hit the boss normally and you'll do 70 damage. Hit them in the weak spot and you'll do 700. So yeah, they take forever if you just bash your head against them like an idiot. But pay attention and you'll find a knob on that door: no pain at all!
Okay, they might not be great mechanics, but at least they're mechanics which reflect the more action-oriented gameplay. "Hit the weak point" is sadly more engaging than "use X attack which has Y element/weakness", because it at least requires you to observe the boss, learn its patterns, and counter them. There's a strategy beyond "set up the best move and spam it".
Maybe Arise can take notes?
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jan 27, 2020 12:30:04 GMT -5
After ten hours of Star Ocean 4... I actually like it. Wait that's not how this was supposed to go! You must be playing it wrong.... I agree that Tales needs to do something with their bosses. In Graces they are usually easier than normal enemies (because instead of fighting 5 quick enemies, you are fighting one slower one), except for the fact that their defense stats make it impossible to stagger them with most of my hits. The only thing they have going for them is that they are not the same recycled enemies you see most of the game, so it's just a nice change of pace to fight something different.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jan 30, 2020 20:00:29 GMT -5
Meh, strategy schmategy. Mashing buttons has been a foolproof strategy in every Tales game aside from Rebirth. That'll get you killed in a hurry.
I really liked Rebirth's battle system from what I understood of it, but I never really knew WTF I was doing due to the moonspeak. Especially when it came to weapon customization. I'd have killed for a menu patch.
I never finished Graces. I think I must have gotten through the childhood arc 3 times and kept losing save data for some reason or another (e.g., playing on other people's consoles, etc.), and, meh, eventually I just said f*ck it. I liked the game well enough, but not enough that I wanted to replay all that lost time. Think I got to the red-and-white haired chick joining my party or something.
My playthrough of Pokemon isn't going well. I've just logged more hours into Slay the Spire instead. Sigh.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Feb 2, 2020 16:57:53 GMT -5
Hm, I've endeavored to write a webscraper to dump all of my posts here. Since I've been here for... 11 years (!), at-the-time inane posts serve as sort of an interesting artifact.
I'm not done yet--I'm still working through some random NO U errors with page loading, but man, I've made a lot of posts. That 4,990 is a lie, since this thread doesn't contribute to post count. I have no idea what my post count actually is.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Feb 2, 2020 20:52:07 GMT -5
Update: I've made 9770 posts (now 9771).
| year | posts | |------|-------| | 2009 | 1797 | | 2010 | 1776 | | 2011 | 1969 | | 2012 | 2065 | | 2013 | 667 | | 2014 | 173 | | 2015 | 118 | | 2016 | 201 | | 2017 | 485 | | 2018 | 259 | | 2019 | 243 | | 2020 | 17 |
From the looks of it, it'll take me approximately another year to two years to reach 1000. Hmmm.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Feb 2, 2020 21:23:23 GMT -5
I bet you've made more posts in 2020 alone than the total of all "admins" in the past 5 years.
Also interview was yesterday. It went very well.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Feb 5, 2020 13:33:23 GMT -5
That scraping thing is a great idea. My post history isn't quite as massive as yours, so I never really felt the need to save all my posts, but since you've been here for over 10 years you could probably do some fun stuff with that data. And it's just nice to have it saved I guess.
I'm almost done with Graces, I'm at the save point right before the final boss. I looked up some of the requirements for the side content and oh boy it looks like a pain. Some of the content requires you to grind specific items and I'm not really interested in trying to find out where to get them, and hoping for the drop. The "place in the desert where you got your arse kicked early in the game" is still kicking my arse even on normal, they are dealing 4k-10k dmg per hit, I have ~3k hp on my guys. So I might not bother with the optional content for now.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Feb 5, 2020 19:17:21 GMT -5
Hmm... I feel like you shouldn't be having much trouble at that point. Again though, been ages since I played it last.
Fun fact about Graces, in case you haven't already picked up on it: the majority of stat-gain comes through titles, not levels. So rather than think, "I'm under-leveled", you may not have been getting enough titles/maxing them out. Not saying that is the problem, just something to keep in mind if you're having trouble.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Feb 6, 2020 12:22:52 GMT -5
If you want to scrape your own posts, Derman, you can do it here: github.com/vermilioncity/abysscI haven't figured out what exactly I will do with all of these posts...
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Feb 6, 2020 14:39:22 GMT -5
Fun fact about Graces, in case you haven't already picked up on it: the majority of stat-gain comes through titles, not levels. So rather than think, "I'm under-leveled", you may not have been getting enough titles/maxing them out. Not saying that is the problem, just something to keep in mind if you're having trouble. I was thinking that might be the problem, because I've been switching between titles to get the most interesting options (recover, artes, CC+ etc.), so I don't have as many of the stat boosts. I also haven't tried the sand place after finishing the final dungeon, that place was worth a few levels and titles, so I might do a little better this time. Set up a neural network and teach it to write forum posts based on your post history of course. Then you can have a bot continue posting on your behalf when you are no longer alive. You can even start selling the bot to other forums as well, as a way to keep them alive even when the rest of the fanbase has abandoned the forums. Also, thanks for the link. Gonna take a look over the weekend.
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