lightning-philosophy - Tumblr blog

[lightning-philosophy]

I know they showed them off in LRR's pre-prerelease video. I'll try to find the still.

Some cool-looking tokens from DSK and DSC, since it's my job to tell you people now.

[lightning-philosophy]

Goddamn freaky robots

[lightning-philosophy]

What exactly makes a Death Race different from a normal race?

More death.

[lightning-philosophy]

angus tsui - ss25

[lightning-philosophy]

I had a terrible jund deck made out of random packs i had opened. All basics baby.

Tell me the first Magic card(s) you ever remember playing. I'll start.

[lightning-philosophy]

100 Question Danganronpa Ask Game

1.) Favorite Game?

2.) Least Favorite Game?

3.) Favorite OST?

4.) Favorite Minigame?

5.) Favorite Game Design?

6.) What’s Your Favorite Cast?

7.) Favorite Class Trial From All The Games?

8.) Least Favorite Class Trial From All The Games?

9.) Favorite Execution?

10.) Least Favorite Execution?

11.) Favorite Unused Execution?

12.) Least Favorite Unused Execution?

13.) Favorite Love Hotel Scene?

14.) Favorite Freetime Event?

15.) Favorite Research Lab?

16.) Favorite Game End?

17.) Least Favorite Game End?

18.) Favorite In-Game Moment?

19.) Least Favorite In-Game Moment ?

20.) Happiest In-Game Moment?

21.) Saddest In-Game Moment?

22.) Favorite Random/Unessacary Moment?

23.) Favorite Chapter?

24.) Least Favorite Chapter?

25.) Favorite Anthology Chapter?

26.) Favorite Mascot?

26.) Least Favorite Mascot?

28.) Favorite Monokub?

29.) Least Favorite Monokub?

30.) Smartest Murder Plan?

31.) Hated Murder Plan?

32.) Favorite Culprit?

33.) Least Favorite Culprit?

34.) Favorite Protagonist?

35.) Least Favorite Protagonist?

36.) Favorite Antagonistic Character?

37.) Favorite Character?

38.) Least Favorite Character?

39.) Best Girl?

40.) Best Boy?

41.) Best Character Design?

42.) Worst Character Design?

43.) Favorite Eye Design?

44.) Which Character Has The Cutest Design?

45.) Favorite Major Character?

46.) Favorite Minor Character?

47.) A Character You Think Deserves Better?

48.) A Character You Thought You Would Dislike but Liked In The End?

49.) Who Do You Think is A Underrated Character?

50.) Who Do You Think is A Overrated Character?

51.) Which Character Should Have Survived In Your Option?

52.) Which Character Shouldn’t Have Survived In Your Option?

53.) Which Character Deserved To Survive In Your Option?

54.) Which Character Shouldn’t Have Deserve To Survive In Your Option?

55.) A Character Who Should’ve Got More Character Development?

56.) Which Character Did You Not Expect To Die But They Did?

57.) Who Did You Expect To Die But They Didn’t?

58.) A Character Who Looks Amazing but You Don’t Like?

59.) Which Character Do You Easily Forget?

60.) Which Character Seemed Like They Were Gonna Be Culprit But Wasnt In The End?

61.) A Character You’ve Never Expected To Become A Culprit but They Became One? (Besides Chiaki)

62.) A Character You Can Relate To?

63.) A Character You Relate To But Hate Anyways?

64.) What’s Your Option On The Danganronpa 1 Anime?

65.) What’s Your Option On The Danganronpa 3 Anime?

66.) Favorite Voice Actor?

67.) What Do You Think Of The Fandom?

68.) What Would Be Your Ultimate Title?

69.) Hope or Despair?

70.) Could You Be The Ultimate Lucky Student?

71.) Which Character’s Clothing Would You Like In Real Life?

72.) Popular Option?

73.) Popular Headcanon?

74.) Unpopular Option?

75.) Unpopular Headcanon?

76.) Which Character Would You Like To Meet In Real Life?

78.) Which Character Would You Never Like To Meet In Real Life?

79.) A Character You Would Choose To Have A Sleepover With?

80.) A Character You Would Choose To Have A Roadtrip With?

81.)A Character Who You’d Like To Snuggle?

82.)A Character Who Acts Like A Friend?

83.)A Character You’d Like To See As The Antagonist?

84.)Character as Antagonist Headcannon?

85.)Headcanons If Junko Wasn’t The Mastermind?

86.)Headcanons If Chaiki Surivived

87.)Headcanon on Pregame V3 Characters?

88.)Headcanons on Non-Despair AU

89.)Headcanons For An AU You Have

90.)Favorite Danganronpa Ask Account

91.)Favorite Fanfiction

92.)Recomended Headcannon

93.) Favorite Talent

94.) Least Favorite Talent

95.) Your Absolute OTP

96.) Your Absolute BroTP

97.) Any OT3

98.) Favorite Rare Ship

99.) An Overrated Ship Which Is Your NOTP

100.) Absolute NOTP

[lightning-philosophy]

Fallout: New Vegas is all about rebuilding society in the Mojave, and the three given factions all attempt to do so by recreating the past. The NCR models itself on the now-destroyed United States, with all the problems involved. Caesar created the Legion in the image of Rome because he believed it could best thrive in the wasteland. Mr. House is arguably the most forward-thinking with his focus on technology and eventual interplanetary travel, but he still rebuilt New Vegas from his nostalgic recollections of the city. Building on the past isn't wrong, the problem is these three factions don't appear to be learning from anything that happened.

NCR characters never directly acknowledge that they're following the example of a society that destroyed itself. Caesar criticizes them for this, believing the republic functioned best while under the quasi-monarchy of Aradesh and Tandi. But Caesar ignores how 1) Rome also fell and 2) he's confronting the same problem as a brain tumor is on the verge of killing him. Even if you treat his tumor, he's still mortal. Caesar was given an education, and his knowledge of strategy and history let him build the Legion, which he then made anti-intellectual and revisionist. The society he created cannot replace him, and will fragment when he dies. House is more contemptuous of the pre-war world, but he still brought it back, and specifically assigned the Omertas with the role of ruthless mobsters who will kill anyone in their way. Apparently he thought that was a good idea.

This extends into the DLCs, too. Elijah plans to use the Sierra Madre to wipe the slate clean and restore the Brotherhood of Steel to their position of unrivaled power, with himself back as Elder. Every day, Joshua Graham feels the pain of being burned. The Think Tank scientists are all stuck in loops, stuck in the past, stuck with their flaws centuries after believing they overcame their humanity. For all my grievances with Lonesome Road, it fits the pattern, as Ulysses saw a new society forming, saw it burn, and couldn't move on. If you let Ulysses live, he has similar criticisms of the NCR, Legion, and House. They're all idealized recreations, like the Vera Keyes hologram. Let go, begin again.

Benny may be a weird mix of dangerous and absurd, but he contrasts the other factions well. He jumped at the chance to join House, fought his tribe's previous leader to make it happen, then planned to take down House, too. House dismisses Benny as not understanding complex technologies due to his tribal upbringing, but he built a computer lab attached to his suite and studies technology as best he can. Benny doesn't want to relive the past, he wants to move forward, he wants something better. You can kill him and take his role, or, when facing certain death at Caesar's hands, he'll explain his vision and ask you to see it through.

After replaying everything, though the other endings have understandable support, I think the Independent route fits the story's themes best, the only one where something definitively new is being built. The Courier isn't remaking anything. Part of this is simply open-ended roleplaying, allowing the player to imagine the character's completed goal. If you choose one of the other three, the Courier can work to correct their faction's flaws and counter the destructive nostalgia affecting them. The Independent ending isn't necessarily the "best" for the Mojave, the Courier's morality and a hundred other decisions determine that, but it is the most compelling conclusion to the story.

[lightning-philosophy]

The tradition continues and once again, the taplands meant for draft have the most evocative art of the set, that better represents what living in the plane is like, and I *need* to play them just for the aesthetics

[lightning-philosophy]

How would we clarify people executed for rule breaking or other stuff like that? Mukuro, Monomi, alter ego, etc.

For now, just vote "No (executed)". If you want, maybe even reply/reblog saying that you voted that because they broke the rules or something. I've seen people do that

[lightning-philosophy]

Today's Card Is: Peer Pressure

[lightning-philosophy]

Somehow Sayaka manages to invite both Makoto and Leon to her room (probably by mistake). Makoto stumbles upon Leon trying to force things with Sayaka, tries to stop him. In the scuffle Sayaka is knocked out. When she wakes up, she's in the bathroom and Makoto is dead on her room's bed. Everyone naturally suspects her and she knows who it is. What she has to do is convince others with evidence. This is where Kyoko comes in

I think it'd be simplest if Makoto returns to his room (after switching with Sayaka) just because he forgot something, or to check in on his friend. That one edit aside, I like all of this a lot, anon!!

The kicker is that to prove her innocence, Sayaka would have to tell everyone of her own failed effort to be the blackened. She'd save everyone's skins (besides Leon and Makoto and I guess Mukuro), but no one's gonna be all that grateful. Imagine a DR protag who's gotta spend the whole game dealing with a hostile cast, being the first suspect regardless of circumstances, and atoning for her role in getting her old friend killed.

Oh God, imagine her meeting Komaru? Learning that Makoto's sister is a fan? Being asked what happened to her big brother?

[lightning-philosophy]

MtG's got you covered.

I've noticed that I really enjoy this aesthetic.

[lightning-philosophy]

It was my favorite deck. I loved it in modern and extended. When it fell off, I left competitive magic.

One day, I want to play Manaless Dredge just to see what it's like. I won't let the power consume me.

[lightning-philosophy]

I DREW A TOGEPI SHINY CUZ THEY BABY

[lightning-philosophy]

The Nadu Situation

This has become a big topic in the community this week, so I wanted to add my thoughts to the discussion. My focus isn’t on the banning, but on the behind-the-scenes processes that led to it. I’m Head Designer, so I want to focus on the design elements of the situation.

When we make Magic there are a few things we do to try and make it the best it can be. First, we design in what we call an iterative loop. That is, we make something, we playtest it, we get feedback, we make changes on that feedback, and begin the next iteration of the loop. We try to get as many iterative loops in as we can before the set is locked (aka “no more changes”).

No matter where we set that line, there’s a last day to make changes. Moving that line earlier doesn’t change anything other than giving us less iterative loops to improve things. Also, we make lots and lots of last minute changes. The vast majority of them make the game better. I understand there’s more focus on the times we make a mistake, but it represents a truly small percentage of the changes.

Also, whenever we design a card, we ask ourselves, who is this card for? If we’re trying to make game play the best it can be, it helps to understand who will use the card, where they will use it, and what they will do with it. Obviously, in a game as modular as Magic, the players can often zig when we expect them to zag, but in general, this process leads to the best design.

We have two play design teams, one focused on competitive play and one focused on casual play. The competitive play design teams determines which cards they think have a shot at competitive play (remember we’re making predictions as where we think the environment might go,we don’t definitively know; we need to make an environment complex enough as to entertain tens of millions of players). The casual play design team then looks as the cards that don’t play a competitive role to see what casual role they can play.

With that said, let me respond to a few popular lines this week:

“Stop designing for Commander” - The nature of competitive formats is that only so many cards can be relevant. As you start making more competitive relevant cards, they displace the weakest of the existing relevant cards. That’s how a trading card game works. That means that not every card in a set (or even just the rares and mythic rares as the commons and uncommons have a big role making the limited environment work) has a competitive role. As such, we examine how they will play in more casual settings. There’s no reason not to do that. And when you think of casual settings, you are remiss if you don’t consider Commander. It’s the 800-pound gorilla of tabletop play (aka the most played, heavily dominant format). Us considering the casual ramifications of a card that we didn’t feel was competitively viable is not what broke the card. Us missing the interaction with a component of the game we consider broken and have stopped doing (0 cost activations), but still lives on in older formats is the cause.

“Stop making late changes” - Whenever you see an airplane on the news, something bad has happened. It crashed, or caught on fire, or had an emergency landing, or a door fell off. Why do we still make planes? Because planes are pretty useful and what’s being highlighted is the worst element. That focus can lead people to false assumptions. Magic would not be better if we stopped making last changes. A lot *more* broken things would get through (things we caught and changed), and many more cards just wouldn’t be playable. Our process of fixing things up to the last minute does lots and lots of good. Maybe it doesn’t get the focus of the screw ups, but it leads to better design.

“Everything needs to get playtested” - My, and my team’s, job is to take a blank piece of paper and make something that doesn’t exist exist. That’s not an easy thing to do. I believe play design’s job is even harder. They’re trying to make a balanced environment with thousands of moving pieces a year in the future. And if we’re able to solve it on our end, that means the playerbase will crack it in minute one of playing with it. One minute, by the way, is the time it takes the Magic playerbase to play with a set as much as we can. There are tens of millions of you and a handful of us. There simply isn’t time in the day to test everything, so the play design team tests what they think has the highest chance of mattering. They take calculated gambles (based on years of experience) and test the things most likely to cause problems. Will things slip through? There’s no way they can’t. The system is too complex to not miss things.That doesn’t mean we don’t continually improve our processes to lower the chances of mistakes, but nothing we’re going to do can completely eliminate them.

Designing Magic is difficult. Next year is my thirtieth year working on the game, and I think we have the most talented team we’ve ever had. Plus, just as we iterate on the designs in a set, we iterate on design processes of making Magic. How we make Magic today is light years different, and I believe better, than how we made Magic when I started. (”If I have seen further, it’s because I stand on the shoulder of giants.”)

One final thing. I’ve always pushed for transparency in Magic design. No one on the planet has written/spoken about it more than me. I truly believe Magic is better as a game because its players have the insight to understand what we, the people making it, are doing. We do ask for one thing in exchange. Please treat the designers who take the time to share with you the behind-the-scenes workings of Magic design with kindness. We are all human beings with feelings. There’s nothing wrong with feedback, but it can be delivered with common courtesy.

[lightning-philosophy]

Alliances

5th dawn

Feels familiar, I think

Planechase 1

???

Some Duel Deck

I think this is a judge promo series

???

???

I think this is the fake one

This one's a little meaner.

[lightning-philosophy]