Lurker > MariaTaylor

GTM posted...

They tried to redesign it so its more mobile friendly, but like fired half the staff at one point. and also all the flash games are gone.

So it's like a half finished wip

I think a few years ago flash was basically discontinued and I think even a lot of browsers stopped supporting it. you can still download a flash player to use on your desktop, and get the files for old flash games to be able to play them, but yeah... given how much of neopets was tied to this identity of being 'a website with a bunch of flash games' I basically assumed the site had been killed by this anti-flash movement.

is neopets a thing again

GuessMyUserName posted...

when your dad finally mentions directly to you that he saw your coming out FB post and his resulting monologue has you looking up the symptoms of dementia

what about symptoms of narcissism

Grimlyn posted...

i got a dmca takedown notice for Babe Brawl stealing content from onlyfans

hilarious

that really sucks. sorry to hear she is going through that, and you as well. it can definitely be extremely difficult to be in that position where you see someone you love is going through something, and there's no way you can help them.

I wish life was easier.

I saw someone mention about how vshoujo only seems to recruit people who are already famous (especially the JP branch) and doesn't really do anything to actually promote talent or lift up the industry as a whole

any thoughts on that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Kwj5dbi0c

it was true after all

yeah for the last 2+ years I've mostly been listening to songs I discovered through vtubers and vsingers lol

voltch posted...

Koyori 24 hour stream is not something I will ever watch in full, but the clips coming out are solid.

not even I am insane enough to watch all of that

the biggest thing I see with classic Mario is the inability to hold down the run button

so many of the clips I've seen, they basically walk at default speed the entire time, and never utilize the physics of running to build momentum for bigger jumps.

I'm only saying this because it's in a language she doesn't understand, in a place that she will never read, but...

honestly I'm blown away by the fact that someone who plays video games for a living could take more than five hours to get past the Pursuer. also, hasn't she beaten Dark Souls and other games? but she still doesn't seem to understand how to utilize enemy recovery timing?

I swear I never stop being surprised at how streamers are able to brute force through difficult games without ever learning how to play them. I guess maybe it comes with the nature of splitting your attention between chat and the game? I don't know.

Scholar of the First Sin does make some parts of the game more linear, particularly access to the DLC. That's probably my biggest gripe with Scholar in particular. Vanilla DS2 gives you the keys to open the DLC doors in your starting inventory, but in Scholar they moved the keys to different locations, requiring you to go pick them up after clearing specific sections of the game -- instead of only needing to go to the DLC door of your choice.

I'd still recommend Scholar overall. Better framerate, and it adds content that makes the story feel more complete. Plus, the remixed enemy placements are controversial with some people, but I personally think they are better. It forces you to be cautious and play well - something that is more true to the spirit of DeS and Dark Souls. Vanilla DS2 you could be reckless or make mistakes and still be fine most of the time.

to give a more comprehensive answer;
it's the only Soulsborne game which wasn't directed by Miyazaki

the game itself is quite good. it's in the top half of the Soulsborne games, easily. but being the only game in a franchise not made by the main director is a MASSIVE debuff compared to how much fans are going to nitpick and complain about something online. and once the complaining starts, and you already have that negative reputation, it's almost impossible to recover. people who might actually like the game won't even bother to give it a try, and people who have played and liked it will get exhausted from arguing with an endless supply of haters, so they stop bothering to praise the game at all.

demon's souls - great atmosphere, but clunkiest controls and mechanics. while the bosses are very creative by the standards of when it was released, most of them are extremely easy, and only a few still feel 'creative' by modern standards. actually has fast travel, and the standout qualities of this game are still standout, so it still holds up very well.

dark souls 1 - have to walk everywhere and it's a slog. when you finally unlock fast travel, it's not even convenient. several areas are notably bad, some of the worst areas in all of the souls canon, but people conveniently ignore those sections when rating this game due to nostalgia blinders. if backed into a corner, pretty much every dark souls 1 fan will admit that the entire second half of the game is bad. but it's the patrick star meme where even after they admit all of the bad things about dark souls 1, they somehow still claim that it's better than dark souls 2.

dark souls 2 - kept the non-linear feeling of demon's souls while avoiding the trap of open world, and adding more convenient fast travel than any game before it. added more weapons and PVP mechanics than any previous game. has a ton of bosses and areas, and the biggest complaint you usually get are how there are so many "Boring" ones. well, first of all, if you remove all of the boring ones, there's still probably more good areas/bosses in DS2 than DS1 just through sheer volume. secondly, I'd take "boring" over "actively bad" any day of the week. never force me to go through blight town in a game that literally does not have fast travel ever again in my life. please.

bloodborne - a masterpiece by all standards of creation. the only downside of bloodborne is the extremely high learning curve. it's not particularly steep -- blood vials are so powerful that even a complete idiot can beat the game by just healing through everything -- but the gap between the bottom and top is VERY high. it legitimately takes beating the game 2-3 times before you ACTUALLY become good at it, and most people never reach that level, and think the game is way harder than it really is. and never understand how truly great and deep the mechanics are. even with this debuff, it's still commonly considered one of the best games made by miyazaki and one of the best games of all time.

dark souls 3 - completely nonsensical lore, area, and gameplay design. you have a key that is placed on the ground directly in front of the door it is supposed to open (exploration anyone?), most of the expanded movesets from dark souls 2 were dumbed down and simplified, and there are almost no standout areas in this game. if any. several frustrating areas, mostly in the last section of the game, with the duke's grand archives being pretty notably unfun and bad (the decline of the quality of the game starts here, but it's not amazing before that either). after grand archive, it's an extremely fast paced rush to a disappointing ending. the quests are more cryptic and impossible to complete without a wiki than ever before. it has fast travel, probably its main redeeming quality.

elden ring - many things that people like about elden ring, were done first in dark souls 2, but this game was made by miyazaki so people actually like it. open world sucks and riding a horse is bad, but at least they included fast travel this time, so it's much better than dark souls 1. similar to ds2 it has a lot of weapons and more varied movesets. additionally, the weapon arts are more interesting and fun in this game, turning ds3's weakness into a strength. does have some problems, like ashes of war and equipment feeling very 'tiered' as opposed to previous games where things were balanced in a more parallel way. combining this with the ease of dropping powerful endgame items to fresh builds, and it becomes questionable. appealing more to casuals isn't inherently a bad thing. but open world is really, really bad. but the game still manages to be good in spite of that, so maybe it's actually secretly great, just debuffed.

as for why a streamer would skip over dark souls 2; why bother playing a game that people aren't going to watch?

my take is just that these talents are able to keep their IP, and they have all gained enough of a following that they can basically continue to thrive as indies without needing to allow vshoujo to take a cut. unless they are getting something from continuing to be in vshoujo, there's no reason to stick around, and probably not any reason to read any deeper into it -- though of course people are going to.

https://twitter.com/8HaChi_hacchi/status/1643961801015689216/photo/1

doomer hachi vibes

Someone gifted me a membership for Toto's channel today. Or, rather, some chad spent like 1200+ dollars gifting a membership to just about everyone who was in the relay stream.

.... why is your sister just okay with having a 16-bit SNES era dungeon in her house? She never thought about calling some adventurers to come clear out the spiders?

The only thing I ever got out of online dating sites was the realization that literally no real person would ever want to date me, and the only person who would ever respond to me is a bot trying to scam me.

Good luck, though.

kateee posted...

snow here too though i was inside a damn building when it happened so i missed it

huge snowstorm coming here tonight and I'm probably going to be 'inside a building' for like 24+ straight hours as a result

I don't.

Every winter I basically die for several months, and then come back to life again in the spring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKdq65RCGD4

'I can't heal anymore, cause I'm damaged.'

Enna has the absolute best doomer vibe

happy late birthday as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lrsnHsPYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEIB8t_24as

NijiEN being in Japan leading to so many good clips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa5-ghmZ_5I

My niece is really into it but I haven't watched it yet. I never have energy lately to watch anime or anything else...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YZrVbEGz2w
Chloe: I won't take a bath
Chat: I won't take a bath either
Chloe: Ew gross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHU_NV6ZzPA

unexpected yamada! this came out of nowhere (will, she did post about doing editing yesterday, but...)

either way I'm happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrCduZRUcz8

amazing Subaru reaction

... does anyone else like Neuro-sama? I can't believe it only took us this long to reach this point, but I think she's hilarious.

1/6 = 1.6/10
2/6 = 3.3/10
3/6 = 5/10
4/6 = 6.6/10
5/6 = 8.3/10
6/6 = 10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlaids915wc

hamburger country

etrian odyssey 1-3 collection hype

I was just wondering if I should replay EO3 in 2023 or wait until an Untold release, but I guess this is good enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X4Ja58dI4w

chainsaw yomi

etrian odyssey the most. interested to see if they will use the skill trees, maps, and game balance from untold 1/2, use the data from the original games, or do something new with it. also since 3 never got an Untold version it'll be very interested to see what they do with that.

release date for advance wars is pretty cool.

the new emblems look pretty cool. if I understood the teaser correctly it seemed like chrom/robin actually share an emblem as a 'bonded' pair which is neat. also if camilla comes with a paralogue that matches her joining chapter that could be insanely hype, as conquest 10 is one of the best fire emblem maps of all time.

Ah okay so you mean the former. Well I guess anyone will have their share of haters.

voltch posted...

I feel like Kiara and Koyori produce that kind of reaction for some.

you mean people don't like kiara/koyori or people don't like their friends?

I haven't really heard of this before. I guess if you mean the latter, well, kiara has a bunch of friends all over the place so I guess I could see how people might not like at least one of them.

AriaOfBolo posted...

curious if this is remotely relatable to anybody: I like almost all of my oshis' friends, but one of them just super rubs me the wrong way. Everybody in the circle likes her, all the fans like her, and I just....don't. Her personality and humor don't land for me even though they seem to land for everybody else. I actually will skip their collabs, even.

mm... not really... I guess... maybe no? I'm not even sure I actually have an oshi per se, to begin with, but even putting that aside there's really mostly only people that I'm not interested in. not many that truly rub me the wrong way. or maybe if they exist I don't pay attention to them anyway.

it probably depends on who you are talking about. if they are a twitch streamer then yes I could imagine them having friends who annoyed me...

pre-emptively posting what I know about the Zaion situation in case anyone ends up being curious about it;

she's talking about her past life too frequently and too publicly on streams
she's making insensitive jokes on streams that management has warned her about
she's developed a habit of privating streams for any reason or no reason at all
she's displayed a flippant attitude of not being interested in changing these behaviors after repeated warnings from management

privating streams is a big deal in this case because the ad revenue from your archived streams can actually represent a pretty decent bit of extra income both for the talent and the company. combining the streams that she has to private for bad behavior, on top of her just privating streams whenever she feels like it for any old reason, and it kinda seems like her personality and issues are resulting a pretty notable loss of revenue beyond what she'd otherwise be expected to earn from the same amount of streaming and content creation.

the other noteworthy thing is how a talent could already have repeated issues, being given repeated warnings, and still showing the same behavior so soon after their debut. like, considering how little time she has even been around, there's barely been any time for her to cause issues and yet she seems to be doing it almost constantly. add onto this the fact that people are most likely to be on thier BEST behavior right after starting a new job, and maybe start to slip over time. if this is her best behavior then Nijisanji could be a bit worried.

anyway it's just a suspension. I think if anycolor wanted to graduate her they would have actually don so. she'll probably be back and maybe fix some of these issues. or she'll voluntarily choose to graduate. or she'll keep doing the same stuff and eventually get fired. I guess either outcome would not surprise me.

yeah that doesn't sound nearly as bad as some of the stories I've heard. it doesn't really affect me anyway since I never order merch...

I've heard people complaining that the shipping prices have gone way up, anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHgfFyyMXf4

oh hey iroha covered my favorite police piccadilly song...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS8iDDbbGWc

ya go my yamada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOLHw5vr0w

another honorable mention to Advance Wars By Web

I started playing it last year and it's really good. I would say it goes beyond just filling the void of Re-Boot Camp being infinitely delayed, because honestly the ability to play online with other real players is an experience that no AW game has actually given me before.

also that makes one more strategy game that should have been in the stats...

Mother 1

"Now it is the weakling's turn."

koyori just streamed persona3 for over 8 hours. she is taking a 1 hour break and then will be streaming minecraft.

AriaOfBolo posted...

Well now I'm curious because the character building in Labyrinth of Touhou is one of the main draws for me! I'm gathering it's a lot more open in EO?

https://aturfah.github.io/eo2u-skillsim/

this is what the builds look like in Etrian Odyssey. Untold 2 uses the classic system where you have access to the full sheet and nothing is locked behind story progress. also has the Grimoire system where you can equip a single skill from any class. (EDIT: Actually characters can only equip a single Grim stone, but the stones can hold multiple different skills. I think up to 5? It's been a few months since I touched the game.)

you get 3 points at character creation and 1 extra skill point for each level. a normal completed build with no extra grinding up to level 70 you'll have 72 skill points to work with, and your characters are always making small progress.

some skills are better in the earlygame, some are better in the lategame. some are good against a specific boss but you might not want them on your build forever. you can 'rest' and sacrifice 2 levels to reset your skill points which can be surprisingly effective. if you do it all the time it's going to massively increase grinding, but you can usually do it once before facing a stratum boss, or if you're struggling with enemies on a new stratum, and the effects of losing 2 levels are barely felt because they're massively offset by the value of having a stronger build for the content you're facing. plus grinding back up 2 levels is usually quick unless you were super over leveled to begin with.

anyway long story short with 70+ skill points to invest into every build, you could make two characters of the exact same class who play completely different. to get a preview of this effect you can start capping skills at the top of the build in the skill calculator, then clear everything, and then start from the bottom. you'll notice that the two builds likely will not even have any overlap before they run out of skill points. (EDIT: This effect is even more pronounced in games like EO5 where your race will also determine which of the class skills you are better or worse at using. Like a human ronin being better at a stab that inflicts blind status with luck, or a therian ronin being better at a massive damage dealing sword slash that scales high damage from their high strength stat. There are also games in the series which allow multi-class builds, such as 3, 4, and Nexus. In that case you're also deciding how many points of those points to invest into your main and sub class.)

Here's the fiefs that you can actually choose as a starting location if you want to play the game without getting immediately run over:
Uesugi (2) : Really strong all around, with a good starting position. I just sat there building up my city for a while and then nearby fiefs starting sending me gold for non-aggression pacts and marriage pacts, which was cool.

Tokugawa (8) : About as strong as Uesugi but has a highly contested starting position. Lots of fighting all around you. It's probably best to let them focus on the weak territories and exhaust their own resources, then try to expand. If you try to expand quickly, you'll be left stretched thin and get attacked from multiple sides.

Kitabata (13) : I didn't test this one myself but it seems like a slightly weaker fief than the above two. Hard, but playable.

Miyoshi (15) : This one is on the average/weak side BUT it has a special property that is worth noting. The merchant is ALWAYS available in this territory which makes it a really interesting choice if you want to go for a more domestic playstyle. As a bonus, the territories around you are fairly weak, so they most likely won't bother attacking you for a while and you can play the simulation game.

Takeda (16) : Just like Kitabata is the hard mode version of Tokugawa, Takeda is like the hard mode version of Miyoshi. He's got about the same strength and also starts out in the non-contested section of the map. Only difference is that you don't have guaranteed access to the merchant, so it'll be a bit more challenging.

Oda (17) : Obviously if you pick Oda you'll have a pretty good path to victory, since he's the strongest starting commander. That being said he actually does start in a highly contested area right in the middle of the map. I would actually go as far as to say that Uesugi is the best starting position if you want an easy game, while Oda is the strongest option to play a 'normal' difficulty game but with a strong character.

I actually went and looked up my list of good territories to start with in Nobunaga's Ambition, just in case anyone wants it. Might as well post it now and have it available, rather than waiting till someone asks and them having to wait for me to find it.

This is for the game mode with the smaller map, not the map of full japan. But this would also be the easiest mode for a new player to get into anyway because the game is smaller and therefore faster to complete.

I beat the game with Uesugi Kenshin, starting in area 2. It allows you to gain a foothold in the right side of the map and slowly work your way from right to left.

AriaOfBolo posted...

I wanna get into Romancing Saga, somebody recommended Frontier as a jumping-on point.

Minstrel Song is a remake of Romancing SaGa 1, and it's pretty high quality, too. It's now available on Switch although it's basically the same version that has been out since PS2. I actually think RS3 on Switch is extremely new player friendly though, probably even more than Minstrel Song, despite being a straight port of a SNES game. it's also cheaper than Minstrel Song. so less investment needed to try it out. (I got it on sale for like 2 dollars or something, full price IIRC is still less than 10)

AriaOfBolo posted...

Probably should get into Etrian Odyssey proper too, I've played and liked a good bit of Persona Q and Labyrinth of Touhou.

for Q all I will say is that I don't think it actually made Persona fans or Etrian Odyssey fans happy. so I wouldn't let that influence your expectations too much. it lacks a lot of the core elements that makes EO games great. the same is also true for Labyrinth of Touhou, even if LoT is a fun dungeon crawling in its own way. the appeal of the game isn't excatly the dungeon crawling. that's more of a vehicle for gaining EXP and loot. although the dungeon crawling is a good structure for this type of game, because the dungeon design and exploration in EO is also solid. there are environmental puzzles and, in addition to random encounters, strong mid-boss type enemies you can see on the map. often times there are clever solutions to avoid these bosses so you can come back and fight them later under more favorable conditions. the real draw of the game is the character building and how well designed the battle system, player skills, and enemy encounters are.

look at my post above. this topic contains only a small fraction of the insanity of the kind of person who enjoys playing Etrian Odyssey. I have like 10 different EO related spreadsheets that I personally made, as well as having done paragraphs and paragraphs of character and class analysis that barely anyone else has even read. anyway, point being, neither Labyrinth of Touhou or Persona Q include any kind of character building system, and so they don't represent a real Etrian Odyssey experience to an outsider. Persona Q also uses a battle system that is more familiar to Persona fans, and neither the random encounters or bosses even come close to touching the greatness of the enemy encounter design in Etrian Odyssey. you just have to play one of the actual EO games to see for yourself. Untold2, Nexus, or 5 are good places to start.

Nexus will be the easiest and works almost like a "sampler" of every other game in the series. it contains classes from all of the other games, as well as ported and remixed dungeons from previous games. for the same reason it also might be more appealing to someone that is already a fan of the series, but I do think they did a good job of making it appealing to new players by making the feel of the game more casual and less daunting.

Untold 2 actually has a mode where you can play with pre-generated characters, and has more of a story mode to hook players that otherwise would complain about the game 'having no story.' Although I feel this does eliminate some of the fun of balancing your own party and choosing your classes, it's still better than the Persona Q solution because it still allows players the freedom to customize their own character builds on each of the pre-generated characters.

5 as mentioned above is the most unique game in the series but it's one of the more story-heavy games that doesn't feature pre-generated player characters. And the dynamics of race/class character building are interesting. so if those appeal to you based on what I've said above, it's probably a good place to start. although the standard campaign dungeon crawl in 5 might be the hardest of the 3, I believe it has difficult settings, so you can play on easy mode if you're really worried.

AriaOfBolo posted...

Is it worth swinging back to the old Ro3K games if I've only played newer ones? (but liked them) (but never had the attention span to finish a game) I think the ones I played are like, 8 and 11, and I have 14 sitting on my backlog.

Nobunaga's Ambition on Genesis for sure is worth AT LEAST trying out. there is a little bit of a difficulty curve getting started, as the territories in the game are NOT all balanced. I can provide a list of the territories where you can start the game and have an enjoyable experience as a new player.

if someone enjoyed Nobunaga's Ambition, then yes I would recommend checking out RoTK 2 and 3. However, I wouldn't just recommend it to any person, since I think most people would find the games slow, obtuse, and boring.

One cool thing to note about EO5 is that you are given the option to create a character of a specific race and class, and then switch them to a class that is normally exclusive to a different race. You can do this at any time after you complete the tutorial.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/2/AAZU_LAAEGuQ.png

Here's some data that I made by calculating the relationship between the capped stats of each race vs the highest racial stat cap. You can see that humans are solid defensively with high HP, Vit, and decent Wisdom. They also have the niche of having the best Luck in the game. And when you need Luck, generally you want to have as much as possible.

What's also interesting is that in addition to your class skills you also have a set of skills that belong to each race. The union skills can be strong enough to build your entire party around them, so that will factor in your choices as well. Although it's still fine to simply start a party with the default race/class settings, clear the tutorial, and continue the game with the same party. Truthfully the default races and classes were balanced with this in mind. But there are other interesting things you can do if you want to mix things up.

EDIT:
So basically to make what I was saying more clear, I'll give an example. Your stats are determined purely by your race in this game, and so switching a race into a non-default class is how you get an alternate stat spread onto a class. Houndmaster is a great example for this. The healing and guard skills of the Houndmaster scale purely based on Level, while hound summoning and hound skills require TP, and bow attacks scale with strength.

For this reason, there are three viable candidates for Houndmaster (some classes really only have 1 or 2)

Therian is the default Houndmaster race. They'll have solid bow attacks, and their healing and guard skills will be good because those scale with level. Their TP sustain is also decent enough. The biggest weakness of the Therian Houndmaster is they will be a little bit more frail, although the Hound itself will still serve as a good tank.

Brouni is an alternate race choice. The healing won't benefit from the high Wisdom stat of the Brouni, but it still scales to your level. Most importantly you'll have lots of TP for summoning the Hound and commanding it to do guarding and healing actions every turn. Additionally, this will be the most durable Houndmaster. Since the Brouni has good HP, Vit, and Wisdom. In addition to a tanky Hound, you probably don't need to worry about the Houndmaster getting killed by stray physical or elemental attacks. Due to their low strength, the Brouni Houndmaster is going to have very weak bow attacks, and will likely spend most of their turns commanding the Hound.

Human (Earthlain) is somewhere in between the two. It's a stronger physical tank than the Brouni, but a little weaker against Elemental attacks. Has the worst TP sustain of the bunch, however, so after you summon your Hound you won't have as much TP for using the different skills. Your bow attacks won't be as strong as the Therian but they will still be quite strong, as humans have the second highest Strength in the game.

All three of them are functional and you can decide which race you prefer for a Houndmaster based on two factors; Which role is needed more for the party OR which race provides a Union skill that the party is currently lacking. If you have a sole DPS character who outputs crazy damage, and your entire offensive strategy is based around them, then it's probably not that important to have a Therian Houndmaster with the highest damage output possible. The extra TP and sustain of the Brouni Houndmaster could be better for supporting the rest of the party, and the Brouni Union skills are also quite good, too.