Lurker > KanzarisKelshen

It's Microsoft. People who didn't PC game hardcore don't understand just how big a deal microsoft's gaming side was. How big?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN0K58EfJSg

So big that, in a developer conference where the entire point was to talk shop, this commercial aired selling Windows 95 as a Doom machine. The whole point was to sell the appeal of Windows as a games platform. It succeeded, and today, we just don't really play PC games on anything else.

Just E1, really. Nothing else helps him vs multiple dudes. Think of it as a sort of consolation prize that makes it so his scaling is better than 'literally Herta ult but with RNG' against big waves. Here's an example of what Misha is capable of in a situation where he's set up to shine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd2KOvabnP0&pp=ygUJeHVleWkgaHNy

I don't think Misha is good at all in PF. Like at all at all, not even with maximum investment. Jingliu can and should do better than him, especially if the current trends hold where they throw fat adds in. What Misha is very good for is fights with low concentrations of enemies right now. His ult actually does absolutely ungodly damage if you can stack it up and he has eids (up to 770% damage vs one target and about 420% vs two). If anything he should perform decently in the upcoming gamemode that's meant to favor Hunt units for this reason. PF is his nightmare scenario.

Also, Misha is 100% better than Yanqing. Misha is where Yanqing was before this patch, except his ceiling is way higher because all he wants is something that lets him inflict debuffs on hit (most probably a light cone), or abuse his breaking potential. The second he gets that he'll take off like a rocket because his traces give him an actually absurd amount of free EHR. He may never be SSS tier or anything but there's niches he can fill. IDK how Yanqing ever does anything unless we get a support that directly converts speed into damage multipliers.

pyresword posted...

What comes first? Yanqing scoring a gameplay W, Yanqing scoring a story W, or the heat death of the universe?

https://imgur.com/zA0LteK

I feel this says everything that needs be said about this matter

Yep, that is indeed the entryway to the dlc. I feel it leads very directly to endgame so I'd go talk to Panam first before jumping in, but I kinda love that that's how you unlock it. it feels completely earned to get contacted right after wiping the VDBs off the face of the fucking planet. Who wouldn't sit up and take notice?

azuarc posted...

I mean, I'm over 50 hours in at this point, and I've done every gig I could find in 3 districts, as well as tons of general sidequests. I'm just not good at understanding and recognizing themes. I'm able to think of occasional moments that relate to what you've described, but it's not something I would have ever concluded for myself, nor do I see enough of it to feel like it reaches the level of "thematic."

Did you find the zen master? That's maybe the most obvious hint, I feel.

Yeah this game really really really wants you to do the sidequests. Some of them make this very unsubtle. I wouldn't say they're the meat of the game at all, but it's one where the rabbit hole runs pretty deep all told.

azuarc posted...

When the daily pattern started repeating, I was expecting something more to happen. But no, it just sends you on your way.

What, the moment the cube breaks didn't get you? That was one powerful swerve as far as I was concerned.

That was The Sun, by the way. It's a good ending, though IMO there is an even better version of it to be found. You miiiight have gotten a nonconfirmed bug that swaps the dialog tracks. I think I recall this happening to me the first time I played through and not the second.

Also re: gameplay talk, both sandevistan.and hacking are an actual platinum standard for their respective niches. Deeply, deeply satisfying.

FFDragon posted...

I am about to go on a scorched earth revenge tour against the Voodoo Boys.

They done fucked up.

The only canon choice imo. Trusting Bryce makes sense but it deprives you of one of the most cathartic sequences the game has.

azuarc posted...

I have no idea if I'm safe to click on that spoiler or not. I did the World ending.

There is no World ending, on purpose. The endings are (name spoilers) The Devil, Temperance, The Sun, The Star and (Don't Fear) The Reaper. If you just got the first I truly recommend going back to get at least one more. It's devastatingly bad because it's not meant to be a satisfying ending, even if it is a valid one.

Yeah it's a combo of being very depowered + the servants are all weak fighters to begin with save Nezha + we're trying to save these people, not murder the shit out of them + if you die in the game you die for real. Makes combat a super unappealing proposition on every front.

Can you give an example of what type of 'magic is present in people's lives' do you want? 'People use spells to light up candles' is very different from 'divine spirits are real, we know they exist, and their existence affects how we lead our lives' a lot, for example.

LeonhartFour posted...

the barrier could be much lower than 250 hours, that'd be nice

Those hours are pure content, though. It's not 'spend 250 hours fetching bear asses', it's 'spend 250 hours playing through three Final Fantasies in a row, which range from very good to comparable to any of classic era FFs'. People sell the game like ass, frankly, and make it sound like the stuff before the paywall is a chore. It's not. It's where 'the final fantasy energy' went while XIII and XV were busy shitting the bed.

---

Unrelatedly, the remarks of 'Sephiroth wasn't that present in ff7' are flabbergasting to me. The dude was fucking everywhere. He's with you from literally the bombing mission to the city of the ancients very obviously! Sometimes he's onscreen, other times he's giving running commentary on everything you're seeing. It's subtle, but he rarely is ever far away. The remakes don't change this beyond making it a bit more explicit, tbqh.

Does it apply the debuff on other chars? If so stick it on someone else for extremely funny ult spam

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Acheron's kit is such a word salad that I only just realized you can overcap on 3 stacks of her Ult.

I noticed this immediately cuz I started playing last week, pulled her before I could farm echoes, and lemme tell ya Acheron without a2 is the greatest struggle I've ever seen in an rpg, and that includes beating superbosses with joke characters

Crazy how much she gains from investment on every level. The more pieces of her power budget I get (traces, cones, etc) the more powerful she becomes. Actual zero to hero stuff.

Gotta be either Vagrant Story or Aconcagua I think. Both of them push the system so hard they almost break the generational barrier.

Definitely the Cyberpunk experience. Takes a bit to click, but when it pops it pops.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Some of these gimmick fights in Shimousa are obnoxious. The assassin one where she NP seals the highest percent and stuns the last attackers is just pointless difficulty addition.

Training you to learn how to use the tools you have. Nobody even talks about that one cause it's free as hell iirc.

That absolutely has an automatic frontrunner in Penny Arcade

And possibly MSPaint Adventures if you wanna go there, but PA is like, an actual absolute automatic lock considering its impact IMO.

Saying Tomb Raider as a series has no good games is super wild to me tbqh

Last Revelation absolutely holds up to this day, the new TR trilogy are all quite good, the first reboot series also had multiple excellent games

People just kinda forget TR is like, a HUGE franchise for a reason and it's not just 'oh, it had Lara'. If the games were not well liked it wouldn't sell as much as it does to this day!

Wanglicious posted...

it's the Saturn.
the hardest part about a mount rushmore of the saturn is getting 4 games.

Lunar, Sakura Wars, Tomb Raider, and, uhh...a sonic game??? Yeah this is a toughie

Final Fantasy 7
Metal Gear Solid
Resident Evil
Tomb Raider

It devastates me to not have Symphony of the Night, Crash, Tekken 3 or Gran Turismo in there but I think this is it. Every single one of these games makes me go 'without them, their genre as we know it doesn't even exist'. You can say that for SotN too specifically, but Tomb Raider has a lot of factors in its corner that tiebreak in its favor. It got the psx rolling, it advanced the conversation on women in gaming as protagonists, and it just sold way more. Too many intangibles to take other games.

FFDragon posted...

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Final Fantasy VIII
Parasite Eve

This top 4 is unfathomably based though and if I wasn't trying to be super objective I would take cues from it btw. Good picks.

trdl23 posted...

Right but this requires not using her in cowgirl form

This is why god invented the hard random ascension function

No matter what RNGsus gives you, you still win

(FWIW I think my favorite animations for her are Ashtart's, because they are just absolutely wildin fluid. But every single ascension has a selling point)

Oh, forgot to say, it's not my favorite NP but this is my favorite chant outside of UBW:

"The return to the Age of Gods, reaching its threshold.
The province of beginnings.
The sound of life blossoming open.
Everything is like a momentary dream.
Edin Shugurra Quasar."

Really conveys the majesty of an entity great enough and powerful enough to make the entire rest of the roster combined look like a speck of galactic dust.

The coolest NP is unfortunately spoilers so I cannot share it just yet. The second coolest shows up in this chapter, though, so you're in for a treat.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Also seeing you guys nerd out over servant stats and damage brings such a smile to my face when I'm just trying to leisurely travel through time w my wife and learn to cook with EMIYA. Maybe save humanity a couple times, who knows?

It's a good time and a great ride so don't worry about it for now. My stance is fgo accounts go through stages of maturation, from rookie to human rights enjoyer (aka has card supports + ideally oberon) to consolidation to true endgame and it takes years to get to the endpoint unless you gigawhale. We chat about this just cause we've done the journey. Stopping to smell the roses is ~100% the correct play.

Xuxon posted...

The Salieri comparison doesn't show what you want at all IMO. It basically just shows that NP1 Morgan is enough for any farming node that isn't 90++, and that Salieri can do slightly more with BG but still not enough for 90++ (and in fact, that Morgan CAN possibly do 90++ if it's man). But you don't actually want to use BG anywhere except CQs, and the dropoff from BG is much more severe than cranking, so Morgan can 6CE farm events where Salieri might not be able to. And Morgan can use BG in CQs with a single arts crit or CS and way outdamage Salieri even if it's not man. Plus Extha will have grails and gold fous on her.

90++ is also completely unnecessary. Events are 3 weeks long now except for lottos so it hardly matters at all. You can make a few more blue apples or farm pitifully inefficient dead week nodes a bit more, woo. And then for lotto events, you can be like what, 10-15% more efficient farming 90++. Both things are nice to do if you can but they really don't matter.

Uh, no, arts units just use BG literally everywhere because they hit thresholds through it. I play in JP and not just NA. The game is going to change dramatically with the upcoming summer event. 90++ is also not unnecessary, because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, you are going to need a shitfuckload of bond to interact with class score boards. My account that is years and years old had to go out of its way to roll extra berserkers (several! Plural!) just to hit the dang thresholds required. Bond isn't just more quartz, which is enormous, it is also an enormous boost to the power of your faves that lets them perform in ways they otherwise couldn't (to the point it flat out affects what is possible to omnifarm at the highest end, never mind that weaker units have their kits flat out fixed by gaining 30% steroids). You want as much of it as you can get.

MacArrowny posted...

lol comparing NP5 of a story-locked servant to NP1. come on, man.

Morgan's a lot more useful in farming than AA too. There's a reason she showed up in multiple comps for the last lotto and he didn't. Targetable NP charge too good.

Salieri is an automatic np5 if you roll GSSR on any extra class banners like, twice. He shows up en masse because he's the only 3 star that can even drop (well, Xu Fu will pollute the pool soon, but not by a meaningful amount.

Also no, Morgan is not more useful than AA. AA hits thresholds vs literally everything, Morgan doesn't. Again, literal personal experience from playing JP here -- AA eventually solves all farming because he will kill anything you ask him to kill. I legitimately just stopped using him these last two weeks because he finally hit bond 15 from farming every single event for years, but his setup doesn't hinge on the opposition suiting him. He will simply kill, and that will be that.

Fairly reasonable yeah

No reason not to go for it

Yeah Morgan's use case is that she farms anything Man type at NP2+ 100 (might need gfous too I didn't check) and has CQ utility. At NP1 her farming value is unremarkable, just like everyone else's.

MacArrowny posted...

No way does NP1 Salieri outdo NP1 Morgan.

Also Kiyohime and Darius are both AoE 3* Zerks.

NP5 level 70 Salieri with a practical team (castoria/castoria/oberon, MLB BG): 344k turn 3

NP1 Morgan, same conditions (koyan/koyan/oberon, Cranking MLB): 301k turn 3

It's worse in the pre-oberon turns because Oberon's buster up helps make up for Morgan's dogshit skill scaling via Koyan

Morgan really, truly is nothing worth talking about at np1 if she's not hitting Man. Her Man damage is 610k by contrast under the same parameters, just so you get an idea of what kinda gap we're working with. Does this mean Morgan sucks? No, but she's not Arjuna Alter and cannot just be assumed to outshoot everyone simply by existing.

EDIT: Should note that I did not give Salieri the automatic Castoria NP he's entitled to for the privilege of being Arts either, which would push his damage higher. I just went with a super basic setup. If you're curious, non-MLB BG Salieri still outshoots Morgan, and that's literally an F2P setup down the line.

It's not berserkers (because iirc there just aren't aoe 3 star zerks) but Salieri tends to outshoot Morgan at NP1 and they have similar use cases. Can't overstate the power of getting to use black grail thanks to efficient loopage, truly.

MacArrowny posted...

You do not need above NP1 on any Servant imo.

If you want to just do 90 or 90+ nodes maybe, sure. If you want to do 90++ you better fuckin bring kitted out units. And given the requirements for class score boards down the line, there's a fairly strong incentive for doing those harder nodes, frankly. I cannot overstate just how large a boost class score gives to making weak units much more usable in general. The rising tide lifts all ships.

Driving gets a ton better with better cars if it's any consolation

(or bikes)

It's never amazing or anything, but the car jank is very much intentional at this point I think. The high end cars are comically smoother.

Sibuki is bonkers for 90+ even at np1

90++ takes a shitload of investment but thats how it is for everyone, no surprises there

Team Avalon is not meta, its just an easy comp that clears consistently. There's a difference between these things. Meta is when I grab my np5 Arjuna Alter and cave a cq's face in in the minimum amount of turns possible. Generally speaking, the game very heavily incentivizes going mad fast, not slowing down for anything -- as evidenced by how Castoria/Morgan/Merlin showed its faults vs Cernunnos. It'll be enough for just about anything for a while though.

Excellent choice, smartguns absolutely S L A P

Genuinely a phenomenal experience to play with. Wait until you get a smart sniper, I actually made a Luca Blight face IRL when I saw that existed the first time

The branch I'm talking about is Takemura. Check on him to get an interesting dive into the corpo side of things, rather than just the outlaw side that Evelyn and Judy offer. I think you'll enjoy it.

You didn't start the DLC yet so don't worry about it. It's unmistakable when you get the chance to begin it, you'll know it when you see it.

Also yes, losing Jackie is brutal. They put in so much effort into making you care for him that when he actually doesn't make it out your heart totally sinks. You did the right thing sending him back to his mama, BTW. You can completely lose out on a truly amazing quest otherwise.

The game really opens up at this point, and not just because the map opens. This is where Cyberpunk starts to escalate into something truly all its own. I suggest chasing the other obvious branch of the main story a bit just because I think you'll find the major 'companion' to it really fascinating, but Evelyn's branch definitely feels like the natural next step.

Hell of a ride, isn't it?

Only gets crazier from here too. What did you think of the events leading up to this?

I feel like some kind of distinction would be useful between 'game genuinely needs a subscription model to keep lights on/requires paying a one-time purchase up front' live service games and 'game funds itself with mtx, potentially ones that sell player power'. An MMO is worth getting excited about even if it charges a sub. A gacha isn't worth getting excited for until it's proven itself, since the model is fundamentally predatory and not just transactional.

You know what you must do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLXTBbMRxK8

MacArrowny posted...

There are fully voiced gacha games with similar amounts of text to FGO, though. They're not massive, since they use proper compression. CGs are still super rare too, as are animated battle sequences (which are mostly just a character using their NP in the battle engine, not a proper anime cutscene).

I don't feel like CGs are rare. I'm going over my screenshot folder and LB6 had something like thirty to forty at a quick glance. It's a fairly decent chunk. As for games with equivalent text amounts...I frankly cannot think of any. FGO story updates just dwarf anyone else's stuff. Lostbelt 6 was 600k words, for reference (to its detriment IMO cause it was too padded, but hey). Who else is pumping out even half that many story-relevant lines into their content updates?

MacArrowny posted...

lol this is a lie

No, it's factual that voice is by far the biggest thing as far as bloating game size goes. The models and artwork are like a tiny chunk of the filesizes by comparison.

Xiahou_Shake posted...

My one big complaint about FGO at least as someone who played from the global launch up through the end of Epic of Remnant is that for how huge the game is/was, they really did the absolute bare minimum of reinvesting their profits. Like look at something like Honkai Impact 3rd and how horrifically crusty it was at first versus what it became. By all rights FGO should have frequent fully animated cutscenes, full voice acting, massively improved presentation with regular CGs, etc but instead everyone was losing their mind if an event had like, a single voiced scene or even a single CG. Animation updates are nice and everything but man a story this good really deserves better than how it's presented given the ludicrous amount of money the game makes.

They fixed that a lot. Not having voice is a choice to not bloat the game size because just the valentines updates added like...ten gigs to the game size, but CGs are very common these days. Important segments also get animated battle sequences, too.

If FGO was not a gacha game it would be as revered as something like Final Fantasy 14 in online circles for sure. The gacha complaints are fair, but the game has done its damnedest to earn people's praise in spite of it.

Also, now's a good time to post this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB8Rxe7a5TY

When I was talking about the pillar women theme, this is the one. It's Kiara's signature theme.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Oh I get it, I can either do that or do it on hard mode without her buffs.

Have any of you done it on Hard Mode? I'm sure some of you have.

I definitely don't have a good enough roster for that.

There's actually two different forms of hard mode. The obvious one is just not turning any of the buffs on. The real ultra hard mode is turning the first debuff on and then keeping everything else off, and it is an absolutely viciously difficult mess of a challenge. I've done both!

Yes, you too can get the lewd nun

He had it coming so I support this

Did you (minor mission spoiler) Free his old boss from captivity? Golden opportunity to do some 'corporate restructuring' if he doesn't instantly aggro on you