#“are you gonna try it on harder mode yet? have to tried a harder difficulty yet? don't you want to try harder difficulty?”

[murasaki-murasame]

After a billion years of waiting, the 2nd anniversary digest is out, and even though it didn’t talk about quite as much stuff as I expected, the stuff it DID show off was extremely good on just about every level, and oh boy do I have some thoughts about it, lol.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, lmao. There’s so much stuff they talked about, and so much stuff they DIDN’T even talk about. Like how they didn’t talk about the October events and banners even though they’re teased at on the 2nd anniversary website, which I guess means we’ll have to wait longer for info on that.

we also didn’t get any info on a collab, but I assume they’re going to announce that at the start of November and have the collab itself release a few weeks later.

I’m kinda sad that they accidentally leaked out the existence of guns, but I still got to experience all the shock and surprise about it, so that was fun. I’m really surprised that they’re adding a new weapon type so late into the game. Especially since they don’t seem to be planning to retcon any old adventurers into being gun units, which means that they’re going to make up a super tiny portion of the pool. But I still really like how they work, from what we’ve seen of them.

It’s great that Joe got a new gun alt who everyone gets for free, but it really feels like they screwed him over by making him a 3-star, lol. He’s probably gonna get immediately replaced by any light gun units they introduce after this point. But it’s still nice to see him get some love. He was the perfect unit to go for to showcase the new weapon type.

All the changes to weapon and wyrmprints are extremely overwhelming, so it’ll probably be a while until I have an actual opinion on them. But thus far I think it’s fine, but we REALLY need the ability to save wyrmprint set-ups so we don’t have to spend so much time shuffling them about again and again.

It’s kinda sad that it’s such an eldwater sink if you want to equip the same print to multiple units, but it’s much cheaper to do that with event prints, so you can still fill your team out with some good prints. And on the other hand, this is actually why I’m fine with the fact that so many prints are almost identical now, since it means you have way less of a need to actually spend eldwater to get extra copies. There’s like 4+ different prints that all give 30% skill damage, so you’d never actually have a reason to bother getting extra copies of any of them, if you at least already had all these prints before this update. It does make it harder to keep track of if you end up using like 15+ different prints across a whole team, but still, the eldwater cost is more or less avoidable if you just use different prints with the same effects.

I think the weapon bonus thing is going to be the most grindy, long-term part of this update, but I’m cool with it. It gives everyone something to slowly work towards, like when you’re at the stage of leveling your dojos. The issue is that people will want to max their weapon boosts as quickly as possible, but it’s clearly not designed to be rushed like that.

It’ll all take a lot of getting used to, but I’m happy that they’ve drastically cut down on the amount of weapons in the game, and made the progression system more linear. Once everyone gets used to it and more people start playing the game after this update, it’ll become more natural.

We also got a bit of an overhaul to the textures and lighting/rendering for all the 3D models, which still feels like a really strange decision to me. It gives them a really different sort of aesthetic, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think if they made it a bit less ‘harsh’ I’d really like it, but at the moment there’s a bit too much contrast between the lighting and the shading, and the black outlining just looks a bit odd.

We also got the big adventurer balance change, and even though it’ll be a while before we’ve got all the new numbers and stuff for everyone, I already get the feeling that Vice is gonna end up way worse than he was before this. Which is sad, since outright nerfing people always sucks, but I get why they did it. It messed with the balance too much to have a 3-star be in like the top 3 for DPS units across the entire game. At the very least they gave him poison on his S1 so he can afflict that more often now, instead of it just being on his S2.

Just going by what they’ve said, and what we can see in-game, one of the really big changes seems to be how basically all of the healers except Grace now have strength buffs on their S1s, which basically all seem to be 15% for 60 seconds. Which is a really interesting way to make healers more relevant, but I like it. I think it doesn’t stack, so you won’t get as much buff uprime as with dedicated buff units, but it at least means they contribute SOMETHING to the team’s DPS.

One other notable change is how T-Hope now has a 15% strength buff on his S1, which makes it pretty much exactly the same as Patia. So that should make auto eCiella a lot faster, with how often he gets that skill off, lol. This was something I expected him to eventually get via a spiral, but in general a lot of stuff in this balance patch feels like mana spiral upgrades in all but name, which is neat.

Lots of characters also got more status punisher stuff, which should hopefully at least make more units stronger. Most of it’s all pretty self-explanatory, but it’s kinda interesting that Norwin is now a poison punisher unit. I guess it’s one way to make him somewhat relevant to the shadow meta, lol.

They also buffed the older gala units, which is great. At least this way they can put off on establishing the precedent of gala mana spirals, by just directly buffing the old ones. We’ll see how it turns out when all the exact numbers have been datamined, but it seems like they’ve addressed the main isseus with G-Mym, G-Sarisse, G-Ranzal, and G-Euden. 

I also noticed that they added defense debuffs to a fair amount of units, and made a lot of existing defense debuff moves land more often, so that’s interesting.

I’m also pretty excited to try out Pipple with this balance patch, since he now gets a 30% strength buff for himself with his S2. It at least makes it so that it’s always worth using whenever you can.

They didn’t announce anything about new endgame bosses like we expected, but it does sound like we’re still getting some eventually, and it’ll just come up later. Which is a good idea, probably, since we need some time to keep focusing on Agito stuff.

And on the note of the Agito fights, and current endgame content in general, I really like the addition of solo versions of all of them. For one thing it means a new wave of first clear bonuses, but it also means that you can pretty much entirely avoid co-op if you want to. The solo fights seem to give less rewards, but hopefully still enough that you can just stick to doing them exclusively if you want to. I haven’t tried any of it out, but it sounds like they’re all balanced around solo play, which should make it way more easier to do them than it was to try and solo fights that were designed for co-op.

It’s also kinda funny to me that even though they said we’re getting another tier of difficulty for the Agito fights, the only thing we know that we’re getting from it is fancier skins for the Agito weapons. They’ll probably still get stat boosts, but I could see them pretty much just being cosmetic upgrades.

They also upgraded the amount of weekly chests for HDTs and Agitos to five, and it sounds like we’re gonna start getting double drop events for them soon, so that’s great. In general I think this whole update will make it way easier to actually do endgame grinding, especially with the solo fights.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, which is the new battle royale mode. I haven’t tried it yet, but honestly I actually like the sound of it, lol. I absolutely never expected that they’d add something like this, especially since it’s effectively PVP, but it actually sounds perfectly fine. It’ll probably get tweaked as time goes on, but it sounds like you barely even get any extra rewards from it by winning compared to just dying immediately, and the whole mode is designed to have you start from a blank slate where you and everyone else are at the same playing field, so it’s basically entirely skill-based, and you don’t even need to be good at it to get rewards.

I wasn’t even sure how they’d handle PVP in an action RPG like this, but I think this is a good way to go about it.

We’re also getting a return of the time attack mode, which is . . . worrying, but hopefully now that people are much more familiar with both HDTs and Agitos, it’ll go by a lot more smoothly.  I’m surprised they’re even touching this concept again after how badly it was received the first time, but I’m curious to see how it goes. I know a lot of people really liked it, so hopefully it’s balanced so that you can ignore it if you want to, without feeling like you’re missing out on too much.

They also finally got around to adding sparking, which is great. I honestly wasn’t really expecting it at this point, but after the patch notes got revealed yesterday I figured this was probably gonna happen. I know some people would wish it had been introduced earlier, but I’m glad it’s finally a thing. I still don’t think it’s as much of a make or break issue for me as it is for others, but it’s still pretty much an objective bonus over the old/current system. My main concern with sparking, though, has always been that it might lead them to notably tanking the amount of summons we can do each month as F2P players, which would cancel out the good parts of sparking, but I doubt they’d do that.

Either way, it seems to work in exactly the same way as GBF, in that each summon gets you a unique bit of currency, and when you get 300 of it, you can trade it for a featured unit of your choice. But also like with GBF, your sparks reset after each banner and turn into different items that you can exchange at a store for regular in-game items, so your 300 summons all have to be on the same banner, and you can’t just accumulate a spark by summoning across several banners. Though one thing that seems to be different to GBF is that summons done with diamantum give you twice the amount of sparks, which is really interesting, since it really cuts down on the amount of money you’d need to spend to get a spark that way. It’d still be super expensive to do an entire spark just through diamantum, but 150 summons with diamantum is still way cheaper than 300, lol.

If they keep our monthly summon income about the same as it’s been thus far even after they add sparking, I think that we’d be able to do a spark every 6-8 weeks just from event and log-in bonus rewards. At the moment we get around 150-200 summons per month just from all that, so it seems like it’ll be WAY faster to save for a spark than it is in GBF [where outside of specific holiday periods that have free summon events you’re probably looking at 4+ months of saving to be able to spark].

This at least means it’ll be way easier to plan out my hoarding, since I know that as long as I have 300+ summons saved, I can at least spark a new unit I want. And there’s always the possibility of just getting them early and being able to quit while I’m ahead.

And on the note of summons, we’re also getting 330 free summons total between the anniversary and the end of October, which is absolutely insane. Sadly you can’t save up sparks across banners, so you won’t be able to do a spark JUST from that, but it’d go a long way to helping supplement a spark on a specific banner.

It looks like we’re gonna get a short pre-gala of sorts soon that’ll contain all the previous gala units, but I’m probably gonna skip that, outside of the free pulls. The only one I don’t have from that set is Gala Alex, and at this point I’d rather just chase her when she’s in a future gala remix. If it’s anything like the same type of bonus gala we got for the first anniversary, all the featured units on this banner will probably have lower than normal rates to make up for how many of them will be on the banner, so it’d just be a really low-value banner for someone like me who already has all but one of them. I’m also not even sure if I’d be able to get all the way to 300 summons that quickly.

Either way I’m more interested in saving for stuff like Halloween, Christmas, new gala dragons, and New Years.

We’re also getting Gala Zena on the anniversary itself, and I think everyone saw her coming, lol. She’s not a gun unit, though, which is actually a bit lame, even though I figured it wouldn’t happen. Her being an attack-type light staff unit is really interesting, at least if she ends up working like Heinwald, but I’m still not sure if I’d be interested in actually spending resources to try and get her.

The gala banner is also going to have the new girl from the anniversary event, and a Midgardsormr alt. Though it sounds like he’s going to be non-limited, so he’s not our wind gala dragon.

The anniversary event also sounds extremely interesting. It sounds like we’re time-traveling back 1000 years to when Ilia created her religion, and she seems to basically be a punk biker girl, which is extremely cool on so many levels. It also kinda looks like Zethia is going to be the MC of this event, and it might not even feature Euden and co, which would be a nice change of pace.

I thought Ilia might be our new welfare unit, but going by the preview image for the event it looks like it’ll be Mordecai, who looks like he’s gonna end up possessed by Morsayati or something, since he looks a lot like Morsayati’s human form we’ve seen a few times. I hope he’s a gun unit, just so we can get more of them, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m guessing that Ilia will eventually be playable, but maybe just for the 3rd anniversary event or something.

We also got a tease at the next three main story chapters, which all look really interesting. It seems like the Archangels event is going to pretty immediately become important to the story, and now we’re heading off to North Grastaea. We’re also going to be going to the fairy kingdom eventually, which is cool, especially since the teaser for it heavily implied that Notte will become a playable character then.

Which also reminds me that we’re probably eventually going to get a gun unit from the main story, since we have all the other weapon types already, but I doubt Notte will be a gun unit, lol.

Going by the teasers, I also get the feeling that Leonidas and Chelle will be our next two gala adventurers, and at least one of them, if not both, will probably be a gun unit. I think one of the shots of Leonidas had a gun visible in it, but Chelle’s also apparently the one who introduced guns to the world, so who knows how that’ll turn out. At the very least they did say that we’re gonna start getting new gun units soon, and we might get a lot of them really quickly to help fill out the pool. Which also means that some of the new holiday units might end up using guns, so that’s also worth saving for.

I also get the feeling that we might take a break from gala dragons for a while, since we’ve basically run out of good options for them. But who knows. We still need ones for water and wind.

Hopefully with the spark system in place I’ll be able to spark on at least the Halloween and New Years banners, since those are my top two priorities, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s always scary to enter limited holiday banner hell season, but at least they introduced sparking right before it all starts. At the moment I think I’ve got like 150 summons saved up, but I’ve still got most of my reset co-op rewards to go through, and I haven’t touched the Halloween event they added to the compendium, so that’ll add a lot. I think the anniversary log-in bonus will also give us like 2k wyrmite, and if the retweet event succeeds we’ll get an extra 1.2k wyrmite. So as long as they don’t tank our monthly summon currency, I should be able to spark on Halloween if I can commit to saving for it. Which is much easier said than done, lol.

All in all I think I really love this update, but it REALLY changes the entire game, so it’s gonna take a long time to get used to. And thankfully even with the introduction of stuff like sort-of-PVP, it doesn’t look like they’re going in any sort of P2W direction with the game.

Also, there’s still the 45-minute Game Live presentation set to come later tonight, but I’m not expecting that to tell us much, since it’ll probably be targeted at new players. I’m still holding out hope for a Switch port announcement, though.

[y01te-moved]

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

i almost cant even count how many this is but im doing every single one anyways and you cant stop me despite the fact that this obviously took me ages to actually answer

1: if ur reading this ur legally obligated to follow max (sender of this ask) Right Now. Just Do It.

2: i think more ppl with my sense of humor should watch Spider Riders bc listen..  if somewhere along the line that show suddenly gained more popularity again in this fine year of 2019 id be both actually funny for once but also revolutionary. by all technicalities some of my hcs are fucking great but i dont think i could say a lot of them and even be comprehensible outside of orientation based ones that are just rlly controversial. granted im not even sure i could or would actually recommend the show to people cause its kinda dumb a lot of the time and also fairly long at least to my standards so its harder to finish unless ur like really invested in it :pensive:

3: also on that note the next time a horny person even THINKS about Corona im Going to break into their home and then break their knees. i hate that she has so much fanart thats basically just fetish art or otherwise managing to be nsfw in some way shes like 15 at best fuck off!! its rlly only a problem on like. deviantart but it still makes me die inside.

4: character development is hard i never actually keep my ideas and what i have written down on like.  my actual bios for everyone on the same pace so its a confusing mess and i wish i was better at combating that

5: anon and kanon r such good loids i wish people used them more but i think a part of the problem is that i dont always look That hard for things that use them ahdbsadgashdj

6: alex is the best sdv bachelor and im not accepting criticism on that notion. 2nd best would probably be like..  sam except i havent tried hard enough to be friends with him yet which i feel bad abt bc he seems nice

7: i miss the cracking open a cold one with the boys meme that was still one of my favorites

8: (goes BACK to thinking about SR shdfjds) the anime had no right having like so many characters base their ideals off of how brade used to be in the past and all those good takes on like not necessarily Having to resort to violence as the ultimate solution and all that good stuff just to be like, “surprise!! he actually IS still around! but also he’s going to be minimally helpful at all until the last few episodes and otherwise we’re going to make a ton of gags about him trying to hit on the like 2 girls in the team who are also like 15 while he ignores practically everyone else because thats funny!” im still so mad about it. he is the absolute worst and he has no rights. there was also so much potential they seemed like they could have used and were trying to hint at using in terms of further developing more important details about the history of the inner world or at least some of the things that had been going on well before hunter ever showed up and then they didn’t do anything but hint at the idea of brade having known hunter’s grandfather. but even that wasn’t 100% confirmed bc they dodged around it the one time they had hunter ask. its a mess.

9: my taste is so fucking weird and i hate it bc its mostly just, “oh yeah i heard abt this thing and it seems cool im hoping to start getting into it soon!” for most things that are actually cool or popular or all that and never actually get into it, but then i see smth dumb as shit that i know would probably make me look like an absolute fool for liking and im like, “oh yeah yknow what i can do this one” and then i do like it but i cant say much about it either cause i dont wanna look like.   a fool.

10: these have been depressing as fuck so im gonna lighten the mood and say that himbo is a fucking hilarious word and i love it

11: also axel (kh) is a himbo. why? he just is.

12: im also bad at character design i think bc i always worry that my characters look too similar in terms of hair style like all the time and idk if its rlly that bad or not jfhgkf.  that and like. so many of my characters just wear jeans and boots in terms of the lower half of their body its so unoriginal but it always works so well…

13: still disappointed in myself for having never 100%’d even 1 tlodw game. lunatic mode.. Difficult

14: i dont keep up with ace attorney fans but i hope everyone out there agrees that miles has peak vampire energies based on the way he dresses alone

15: re:zero fans have no rights only bc i only ever see ppl talking abt rem and ram like. wh..   was no one ever going to tell me about reinhard or was i just supposed to watch him get introduced in the first few eps and then fall in love w/him immediately before even finding out hes supposed to be a knight which makes him 20x better

16: leon and/or leonhart is like genuinely a good name idk why it just sounds rlly nice

17: ive had like so many technical difficulties with this site since trying to answer this i hate tumblr

18: im pretty sure im like. genuinely just gonna go mute or some shit one day cause honestly ive mostly only ever gotten worse and worse about not actually being able to say things even when i know exactly what thought im trying to say, both physically and like. online. its so weird i feel like i just cant say things. it may just be being self conscious but i restrict myself soo heavily and its WEIRD….  its like being trapped in ur thoughts and it sucks.  probably doesnt even actually mean all that much but it still makes it hard for me to accomplish anything ever which i hate.

19: despite all the titles like ssbu and all that existing for the switch i think id only want one to play the new(er) inside system games i havent had the chance to yet like the spinoff card game and rudymical and also brave dungeon but w/neville and klinsy and whoever else was dlc on that game cause obviously i own the 3ds port but also neville..  good…  i wanna see how she plays..

20: i miss when i could be passionate abt cave story it just makes me feel tired seeing it sometimes at this point but it also still holds a great significance to me so its just confusing and im not sure how i feel abt it

21: the SR novels were cowards only on account of not giving us any official design for petra but also for writing igneous like.  That.  novelverse igneous is just too bitter in general and like i get it but they couldve done a lot more with him even though he is still somewhat respectable in the end, granted its hard cause like holy shit hes so fucking mean to hunter literally who asked for that. im just glad the anime let him be somewhat more idk..  i guess sociable while still keeping a lot of the inherently essential aspects his personality had like his almost over the top loyalty to the prince and taking things like training/combat in general very seriously. its just good and animeverse igneous is so good id die for him thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[jorrmungandr]

Timespinner: A True Successor Arises

You may not have heard of this game, I certainly hadn’t when it came out. It’s a modest Kickstarter success from a few years back, at first glance merely yet another indie game drowning in labels. It’s a pixel art throwback metroidvania with LGBT characters and time travel! Very easy to overlook, at the end of the day.

But, I’m here to tell you that this game is the closest any has come to recapturing the magic of the Igavania games, those entries in the Castlevania series that abandoned linearity in favor of free-roaming exploration and RPG mechanics. But, the good ones, developed by Koji Igarashi, not Castlevania 2.

First of all, the graphical style is great. You see a lot of pixel games that don’t aim for any particular era, and so they end up looking like a real mish-mash of styles. They abandon the actual constraints that lead to the creation of pixel art in the first place, and thus end up just using it as a crutch for simpler visuals. But Timespinner feels specifically like a Playstation 1 or Sega Saturn game, along the lines of Astal or Breath of Fire 3 or Legend of Mana.

They absolutely nailed that look. Where it is pixelated, but clearly drawing on more nuanced and complete artwork that simply cannot be properly rendered thanks to limitations of the hardware. In this case, the limits are self-imposed, trying to recapture that old look. It all fits together perfectly, only missing the occasional gimmicky 3D effects that were rampant in the era.

As for how it plays, it’s wonderful. Movement feels smooth and snappy, you can climb up ledges so platforming isn’t too stressful, and it has some really fun gimmicks. Very early on, you gain the ability to stop time at the press of a button, allowing you to reposition yourself away from enemy attacks, or use them as platforms.

This gimmick isn’t actually all that central. Mostly used for dodging boss attacks and getting to the occasional secret area early on. The more prominent system is the orbs.

You use orbs to attack, starting with a simple blue orb that you send out to bonk enemies with. Soon, you get an orb that turns into a sword, then one that shoots flames, and it just goes off from there. It allows for an incredibly wide variety of weapons, without having to get into the weeds of itemization. You see, orbs level up alongside your character, as you kill enemies, so if there’s one you like... you can just keep using it.

In addition, orbs provide more customization options. You can use them to make spells and rings. Spells are your classic Castlevania sub-move, using mana. Rings provide some minor bonus, faster regenerating mana or taking less damage or allowing orbs to set enemies on fire. Every orb grants you one of each, in addition to being a weapon you can use.

So, as you go through the game, your options expand apace. Getting a new orb feels like a big deal, a suitable reward for beating a boss or discovering some obscure secret. It gives you a great incentive to explore every nook and cranny as you go along.

But, the game isn’t without its problems. The main complaints I could imagine are: it’s short and it’s easy. Both of those are true, but I don’t think they’re actually marks against the game.

I finished the game in about 10 hours. And I do mean finished, I got 99% map completion, all orbs, saw all the endings. As a result, though, I felt like the game didn’t have any padding whatsoever. There was never any egregious backtracking through old areas, no palette swaps. Every area feels tightly designed, there’s incredibly convenient and ubiquitous fast travel.

There are a handful of sidequests in the game, most of them involving exploring to find an item, or gathering a particular drop from a particular enemy. Even these didn’t feel repetitive or annoying, the items dropped easily, the items you had to find were in logical areas, guided loosely by the dialog. 

This is not a hard game. It does have a harder difficulty mode, which I haven’t tried, but I doubt even that is especially challenging. If you’re looking for something that’s going to really push your platforming or dodging skills, look elsewhere. But I don’t think the game is trying to be hard. What it’s trying to do is replicate the Igavania games, and none of them were difficult either, especially not the vaunted classic Symphony of the Night.

I think Metroidvania games in general are better when they aren’t too hard. You’re gonna be wandering around and exploring, you don’t want to be constantly on your toes trying to survive an onslaught of tough enemies. It becomes exhausting, making you treat each adventure away from a save point as a desperate trek through enemy territory, rather than a jaunt around the neighborhood.

So, I will admit that it is a short and easy game, but I don’t think that’s a problem. Wait for a sale if you must, but do play this. It’s just really solidly made, a love letter to a period and type of game that I enjoy a great deal.

If you have any affection at all for SotN or the DS Castlevania games, buy this game immediately. It may not be as expansive, but it succeeds in capturing the essence of what made those games great.

[crystalelemental]

Okay, now that I've sat on it for a few days, let's talk EO5.  Short version: not my favorite, but not the worst.

Let's start positive.  I've mentioned before that difficulty in this game is either Normal or Hard.  There is no Easy mode.  While that initially freaked me out, their Normal mode seems more like EO4 Easy than the standard difficulty of earlier games.  I cannot express enough how good that is.  If difficulty returned to pre-EO4 days, I'd probably lose interest.  Hell, if I had started the series prior to EO4, I likely wouldn't have kept going.  The series turning to have an Easy mode is honestly what got me invested.  Remember kids: if you want a hardcore challenge game, that's what a Normal or Hard mode is for.  There's no reason there shouldn't be an easier difficulty for ease of access for casual players, and if you refuse to accommodate that, you're basically accepting a significant loss in player base outright.

I'm a big fan of the Master Classes.  I like subclassing better in theory, since it offers more permutations, but let's be honest: you never used anything too outrageous.  In EO3, I don't know that subclasses ever actually did anything (they really never felt that dynamic), and in EO4, almost every class had the definitive best option that you should always pick and none of the others were good.  Imperial and Link Landsknecht wanted Runemaster for extra element damage, Arcanist wanted Medic, Runemaster wanted Imperial for even more bonus element damage, Bushi wanted Nightseeker to dual-wield, Dancer wanted Nightseeker to dual-wield for maximum normal attacks, etc.  You really didn't deviate much, and outside of the Fortress and Sniper, I can't think of any classes that didn't have a definitive optimal subclass.  So having two options, both of which are good in their own right and can fit on different planned-out teams, is divine.  I really like how they're split up, too.  Dragoon, which is always more of a tank class, now has an offensive option with the cannon.  Botanist, which usually just heals, has a status-based option.  Harbinger, which was expected to be mostly just hitting status, has an option for debuffs and healing now, and it's awesome.  Classes are really cool, and having your own unique titles for characters?  That's basically all I could ever ask for.

As a smaller thing, I'm also a huge, huge fan of the new level cap increasing monsters.  The Dragons can be neat, but at this phase of life, I'm really over dragons.  They're not that cool, and why are they always the strongest beings at everything?  Find a different creature, dammit!  And find it they did, with the Dryad and the Lamia.  Dryad is like...my ideal, since I love plant girls.  Lamia is super bizarre, but I adore it just the same.  I think this set is a lot more interesting overall than the elemental dragons, and honestly, a lot more fair.  The elemental dragons, on harder difficulties, basically came down to "You'd best have negation of an element for the party or you're dead when they use this attack."  That doesn't happen with these three.  Dryad has a first turn attack that can potentially wipe most if not all of the party, but I only ever saw it one time in the whole fight, which is a lot more manageable.

Lastly, I really like that there are small events in the labyrinth that give experience now.  There were always small events, and they were always great, but the fact that it's been adapted to give extra EXP is divine.  I love that this works for all sorts of events.  My only complaint is that the sixth stratum basically has 0 such events.  It makes sense.  You're not exact in a place for these kinds of events to occur, but it's still frustrating that we have an entire stratum with like...nothing to do but go forward.  Which leads well into the complaints segment.

I really did not enjoy exploring stratum 5 and stratum 6.  Stratum 5 was okay at the start, but the hovering puzzles...were not fun.  You go flying all around the map and it's really hard to keep track of what the fuck is going on as you're zipping around without control.  Neat idea, but not my favorite in execution. Stratum 6 can fuck right off, though.  I'm not a fan of warp puzzles, but they can be done well.  I'm mostly thinking of things like Misty Ravine in EO4, where the "warps" were mostly just reaching the edge of the map and circling back around. It's easy to keep track of, and you can visually see how it works on the map with a few notes.  Stratum 6 does not do this.  It offers a bunch of different colored warp portals, that don't even necessarily warp you to the same colors of portal. They don't even warp you to the same floor, or to the same general area on the floor they warp you to.   It's a convoluted mess that is virtually impossible to keep track of by any means you have with map-making, and frankly, I didn't even explore everything.  There are a few holes in my maps on some of those floors, and honestly?  Fuck it.  I don't even care.  It's so impossible to keep track, and the shortcuts do nothing to mitigate the problems of having multiple portals available, but having most of them throw you outside the area you were trying to explore and having to start all over.  The worst is a succession of 7 portals, all in a row, on floor 26.  One leads to the exit, one leads to another series of portals only one of which leads to treasure that then boots you out of the exploring zone, and the other 5 are worthless.  Look.  I know good level design requires dead ends, otherwise there's no real need to explore anything.  But there is a difference between a dead end that means backtracking a bit, and "you randomly chose the wrong portal in a 1/7 chance gamble, time to redo 10-15 minutes of work to get back to this gamble with slightly improved odds of success."  Yes, looking at your map can help you identify which one might be the correct one.  But this is just stupid, and I don't like it.

In a related vein to "stupid and I don't like it," the plot.  EO5 follows a lot of conventions, and in my mind is almost regressive, going from the more open feeling of EO4's exploration with smaller but numerous dungeons to the standard "technically one dungeon with 6 strata, all 5 floors in length."  It even keeps the locked door bonus areas, the superboss on floor 8 with the town task of figuring out how to get around it, etc.  I'm fine with this, since the formula works either way, but of all the conventions to drop, why drop the one about Yggdrasil being a human-made construct to reverse environmental calamity?  I know EO3 did a separate thing too, but guess what?  That one also wasn't great. It was, by far, the most confusing and poorly put-together.  The true ending boss' motivations weren't so much complex and "make your own interpretations" as it was...just a mess, and contradictory all the time.  But at least they tried.  At least they established the two sides in the conflict and what was going on.  At least they explained the final boss, and tried to explain the final boss.  EO5 doesn't even bother.  "Yeah, the final boss is this dark dragon thing that is the enemy of humanity you must overcome."  ...why?  Yggdrasil's been here forever, and it hasn't wiped out our race yet.  Hell, if we'd never gone up here, there wouldn't be an issue.  You talked about the war that happened in the third stratum, but that's never elaborated on.  Why was it significant?  And then there's my eternal issue with aliens.  I do not mind aliens.  I mind when they're treated as something above humans, and the ones "guiding" humanity forward, like the arken are implied to be.  Fuck off, that's a stupid premise, and you don't even explain where you came from or why.   You're just there.  And that's the issue with the higher strata: everything is just there.  With no rhyme or reason, things are just there.  There's a war.  It was super important, but we're not gonna tell you about it.  There's a deadly dragon thing at the top of the tree you need to kill.  It's super important you kill it, but we're not gonna tell you exactly why.  The Arken watch over humans and guide you forward.  They're super important, but their motivations and reasons for being here aren't.  It's all really bland and unimpressive.

Maybe I've been spoiled by EO4, where plot came at you in consistent and small chunks, with the extra dungeon giving a ton of backstory depending on how well you explore.  Maybe EO2U did the same, with the explanations of what was happening.  Maybe I'm just really, really attached to the concept of environmental calamity and human efforts to curb the inevitable, and the fallout from their efforts.  This game just...really felt hollow to me.  The story aspect and even the character aspect just feels very limited, and it doesn't feel as engaging.  Add to it a very frustrating final and extra stratum to explore, and there's not as much to keep me invested.  I'll replay it again, probably to mess around with the classes since I love doing that.  But it's...very not as great as most others.  I still think EO3 is my least favorite.  But this one is also not a particularly strong entry of the series in my mind.

[entergamingxp]

GTFO Grand Moff Talks About The Future of the Hardcore Shooter: “We’re a Niche Game”

December 11, 2019 1:00 PM EST

Grand Moff, Svante Vinternatt from 10 Chambers Collective sits down with DualShockers to discuss GTFO, its Rundown, and the future of the game as it goes through Early Access. 

GTFO is a hardcore horror shooter that prides itself on being a niche game. It wants to invoke fear and inspire teamwork. It wants to push its community to the limits with hardcore gameplay. Developer 10 Chambers Collective also plans to support the game for a long time — and with it arriving on Steam Early Access today, DualShockers wanted to know more about the game and its future.

Ulf Andersson and Bo Andersson founded Grin in 1997, a video game development studio based in Sweden which started off making racing games for PC and arcade machines. Eventually, the team at Grin found themselves working alongside publishers such as Ubisoft, Capcom, and Warner Bros. Interactive. After twelve years in the industry, Grin hit financial troubles and closed down with the two founders moving quickly to start up Overkill Software with long-time Grin employee Simon Viklund.

Overkill Software —also based in Sweden— released Payday: The Heist in 2011 which became a success. After working a deal with Swedish based Starbreeze Studios, a sequel was put into the works, later releasing in 2013. Ulf Andersson left Overkill in 2015 and started up his own studio in that same year, known as 10 Chambers Collective.

The self-funded 10 Chambers Collective resides in Stockholm, Sweden with a small development team that has, since the studio’s reveal in 2016, stayed small while focusing on bringing a game with high-quality. Even part of their motto is “our passion is quality.”

“We’re a very small team, so we really have to focus our resources on one thing.”

DualShockers was invited to Copenhagen, Denmark to visit the Unity Technologies building and got hands-on with GTFO. We saw how it had progressed since E3 2018 and experienced exactly what the new Rundown system entails.

After a few hours of buttock clenching scares and uttered profanities, I sat down with Co-Founder and “Grand Moff” Svante Vinternatt to find out some more about GTFO and its future as it approached its Steam Early Access launch. He explains the Grand Moff title was purely for legal and tax reasons, and that the team all do so many different factors in development that no one person warrants just one title.

“We’re a very small team, so we really have to focus our resources on one thing,” he says when asked if the game would introduce an offline mode for those who might want to just experience the game alone. “It’s kind of restricting,” he says, still talking about bots and offline play, “because that’s not a human you can communicate to, so bots could either do good or they could do bad — but they’re not a human being.”

10 Chambers wants to create a game that adheres to their target audience and that audience is one that is into heavy communications. “As you realized when we were playing, you had to speak all the time, and doing that with a bot — It would be really, really restricting on the game experience.” He clarifies that they have no plans to create an offline experience. “So instead of trying to do that, we focus on getting a better PvE experience, putting in more hours and getting those puzzles, getting those gameplay moments really, really fun.“

I bring up PAYDAY 2 and my experience with people not working as a team. I wanted to know how the team behind GTFO had tried to encourage teamwork. “So we actually won’t put matchmaking in early access to start out. We will have it down the road,” he explains. As he explains he mentions that they’re trying to build a community behind the game with a Discord that sits at over 65,000 users. Adding a quick play feature to play with random players opens “a lot of opportunities” for bad experiences. “We feel that matchmaking needs to be done in a way that fits the demanding team play of GTFO. Until we’ve solved that, you will need to be Steam friends with your teammates.”

Vinternatt essentially tells me that, at least to start, the game will be better enjoyed with people you know, or from the community who want to take it seriously. “It will be, in that sense, a little more restricted, but it will also give a better experience for those who actually want to play this kind of game.”

Last month, 10 Chambers Collective released a trailer detailing “The Rundown”, a collection of expeditions that the players can take part in that get progressively harder the further down into the complex you go. There’s a timer — when it hits zero the Rundown gets erased and a new one takes its place, introducing a new series of levels. But what if things go wrong behind the scenes? I wanted to know if they had a backup plan for missing a deadline.

“We will not set the timer until we are 100 percent sure,” Vinternatt explains and mentions only setting a date when they’re sure the content is ready. He also goes on to say how the team wants to be transparent with the community. “We’re gonna be upfront in how we’re doing stuff with the roadmap and with the Rundown. But I keep a lot of stuff secret because you want that feeling of finding something yourself for the first time. As long as we plan ahead and don’t set a date too early, I think we’re gonna have a good flow.“

“There’s gonna be a progression there,” he confirms after I ask if the Rundown was progression based or if players can jump right into the harder levels. “Right now in the current one, I think you have to complete both levels to open up the next area. So completing A1 and A2, and when you’ve done that you can play B1 and B2, but C1 won’t be allowed until the B2 is completed”

“We are thinking about the other variations as well that you complete two or three. And that unlocks a new tier. But there’s always going to be some kind of progression to get down to another tier.” The progression is tied to the Rundown mode, which seems to be the only mode the team wishes to focus on right now, “We are fully committed to PvE,” he says with confidence.

He goes on to detail how the game is going to be varied despite being stuck to this Rundown mode, “It takes steel commitment. We don’t want to grow the team because we want to have control over what we do. However, with the objectives, we are going to make stuff up. Having other objectives and having other tweaks or modifications.” He then references Dungeons and Dragons, as Vinternatt describes the team as a Gamesmaster, throwing curveballs at the players and seeing the outcomes.

“The tools that we have created over the last couple of years are essential for us to be able to produce the new expeditions for each Rundown.” But despite having tools in place to create new expeditions easily, he assures me there is also “a lot of handcrafting” to ensure the game feels good to play and has a good flow. With GTFO heading to Early Access, it allows them to try these out, “That’s why we’re going out and trying out, to see how the community reacts and hopefully they will be frustrated in a good way.”

“You get new levels for free continuously, which is a kind of new way of doing things.”

I was curious to know about customization and microtransactions. The team has already explicitly stated there will be no loot boxes or pay to win mechanics available. However, the mention of cosmetics being included in a potential “Support the Dev” pack in the future made me wonder, so I asked if they had plans for a microtransaction store focused on cosmetics, “I guess we could.” he says with uncertainty. He mentions how the game costs $34.99 and comes with the heavily supported Rundown, “We have this Rundown like continuously going, and it’s free. I mean, you get new levels for free continuously, which is a kind of new way of doing things.”

With GTFO still being in its early stages, the team is still unsure how to go about getting extra funds. “Of course, we need to put food on the table and there might be support developer packs. I’m not sure if it’s gonna be a store or if it’s gonna be like something in the future that is like a deluxe edition or something like that.” He does mention that, whatever it is they decide, “it’s going to be something that’s fair.”

Cosmetics, if included, will have to fit into the world of GTFO. “You won’t see someone running around with pink bunny ears. It could be fun to run around like that, but it kind of ruins the atmosphere. This is a serious game. We want to keep it serious.” But 10 Chambers Collective hasn’t really discussed cosmetics as it’s not a priority, “first of all, we just want to get the game out there.”

I dig to find out about character customization in terms of changing armor, and customizing weapons. “Absolutely! We have that plan already and a lot of stuff in the pipeline. But they just haven’t had time to do that yet.” Interestingly, Vinternatt clarifies that it won’t just be visual customization, but players will be able to manipulate weapons and tools through progression. He uses the following example, “Say you have a shotgun you like and a sentry gun, then let’s put them together and make a sentry shotgun.”

As GTFO is a game that’s incredibly dark and stylized to look as if you’re looking through a helmet, I asked about accessibility. I clarified that I wasn’t on about difficulty options, but instead ways of making the game more accessible to the player with features such as HUD scaling and color-blind modes. “We might already. I’m not sure if we already have scaling and stuff like adding what you want.”

“One of the guys in the team is color-blind if it works for him, I guess it works for other people that are colorblind as well,” he informs me. He goes on to say that they haven’t discussed accessibility plans yet. “I know we need to make a decision as a team, but absolutely. I don’t see why not. It’s just a matter of time and prioritization at the moment.”

I wanted to know if GTFO had plans for a more intuitive ping system, similarly to Apex Legends and Fortnite. Currently, the game only allows you to ping doors and lockers. “We have tried different ways of doing pinging. We tried having everything pingable in GTFO, but then people just started moving towards the pings and stopped communicating that much. We felt like that kind of ruined some of that experience.”

Vinternatt explained how the team wants to introduce tools, such as the bio tracker that pings enemies if the player has the tool, that offer a variety of ways to encourage the team to communicate together. “We’re a niche game so it won’t be for everyone. I mean, we’re fine with that. Everyone won’t like this type of game and it’s fine. But hopefully, those people who like it will love it or not.”

With the team constantly talking about supporting GTFO for as long as possible, I was interested in knowing if they had any plans for DLC or expansion packs, even if it’s so early on. “We don’t have any plans right now,” he says while mentioning about still having lots of work to do on the base game. “We want to do the rundown for a long time and give the community more value for their money than they actually expect. So will you see an expansion? We haven’t even talked about it.”

Regarding GTFO and any planned platforms, Vinternatt confirms, “We will start out at PC and Steam” detailing that they’re using Early Access to make the game experience good. “Doing several platforms at the same time with this kind of team would be really tough. So instead, we use that, we take time,” He then adds, “we would love to release on consoles”

I also brought up the rise in streaming services, asking if they’d bring GTFO to platforms such as Google Stadia or xCloud. I expected a similar answer, though he adds “the more platforms the game would be available on the more people could probably play it or we could get some some some extra help in marketing and that kind of stuff through these platforms that that be awesome.“

GTFO has launched on PC for Steam Early Access.

The interview has been edited for readability. The costs of the trip to Copenhagen to experience GTFO were covered by Unity and 10 Chambers Collective.

December 11, 2019 1:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/gtfo-grand-moff-talks-about-the-future-of-the-hardcore-shooter-were-a-niche-game/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gtfo-grand-moff-talks-about-the-future-of-the-hardcore-shooter-were-a-niche-game

[murasaki-murasame]

I honestly wasn’t planning to summon for Gala Thor at first, since I want to focus on saving for stuff like the end of year holiday banners, but he ended up looking really strong and also I want to make Tartarus less of a miserable slog to get through with my light units in any way possible, without resorting to ‘haha dark characters go brr :)’, so here we are, lol.

Results under the cut [plus some of my thoughts about the new Tartarus fight]

I started with about 260 summons saved up [which is part of why I wanted to skip it, since I prefer to have at least 300 summons before pulling on a banner], but in just 60 summons I got:

-Ramona dupe [one day I’ll get Gala Elly . . . ]

-Dupe Liger [now at either 1UB or 2UB, I can’t remember which]

-Dupe Pazuzu and Simurgh [they’re both now MUB so that’s nice, even though I don’t use them, lol]

-Ramiel x2 [I don’t really care much about him one way or another since I have other good shadow dragons but it’s nice to have him]

-Gala Thor

At first I was a bit disappointed by Gala Thor, since he gives a base 50% strength and an additional 45% bonus strength based on your energy stacks, which seemed kinda lame compared to Mars, but it turns out that having just one energy stack gives you a bonus 25% strength, with the other stacks giving an extra 5% each, so basically you almost always have 75% strength, which is really nice, and I think at least puts him at par with Daikokuten.

Also apparently his damage mods when shapeshifted, including his dragon skill, are super high, so he works really nicely with someone like Gala Euden, who I’ve basically ended up maining against Tartarus. 

It’ll be a while before the DPS sim updates, but I think Thor’s probably gonna have a pretty big impact on how strong the light roster is, so that’s neat.

Though tbh I think a lot of people are still gonna end up just using shadow units against Tartarus, even if Thor helps bridge the gap between light and shadow units a bit. Which is it’s own whole problem with the game’s balance, lol. I think if they just gave Tartarus poison immunity, that’d probably be enough to actually make everyone use light units in the fight, but I still feel like they need to give endgame bosses way higher off-element damage resistance.

I haven’t managed to get many clears of Tartarus yet, but I have a lot of mixed feelings about the fight. I’m happy to finally have a relevant piece of content to use my light units in, and I like most of the mechanics in the fight, but a lot of it doesn’t really work well in practice, and there’s some really annoying parts of the fight too. Mainly the fact that they decided to keep the enervation mechanic from Void Nidhogg, lol. I quit doing that fight as soon as the shadow Chimera came out specifically because it makes that fight such a goddamn slog, and it continues to be just as awful in Tartarus. And they somehow made it even worse by deciding to give it to you unavoidably at least once in the fight. At least in Void Nidhogg you could dodge everything and never get enervated, but you have to deal with it at least once in this fight.

Also, the whole portal mechanic is extremely cool, and I hope they experiment with more stuff like this in the future, but I feel like every time I go back to the main arena, I have like I have to immediately try and figure out which part of the fight I walked back in on, and usually I have like two seconds to react before one of the screen-wide attacks happens and kills me. It’s really disorienting, lol.

The prison mechanic in general is also kinda hard to wrap my head around, and I feel like it requires maybe a bit more team coordination than is reasonable to expect from a game like this, but really I think it’s just my punishment for never doing High Zodiark, since I think it’s one of the many parts of this fight that are really similar to that fight, and I have absolutely no experience with any of them.

Anyway, now that Tartarus is out it’s making me think back on the Agito bosses as a whole, before we move into the 2nd anniversary where we’ll probably at least get a hint at the next phase of endgame content, and in spite of the various issues I have with them, I think the Agito fights are a huge improvement over the High Dragon fights. You can really tell how Cygames [for better or worse] was trying to shake things up and figure out how to make engaging endgame fights, and for the most part I think it worked out.

The difficulty balance between all the fights [especially counting the Master fights] is kinda all of the place, like how eKai is extremely easy while eAO and eTart are kinda obnoxiously long and difficult if you do them in the intended ways, but I think that at least shows how they kept trying new things. mKai’s also apparently a lot harder than eKai [though I haven’t tried it], so they clearly learnt from the feedback they got from that.

I think Volk and Ciella are probably my favourite of the Agito fights at the moment, for different reasons. Volk feels really well-balanced for the current state of the flame roster, and has mechanics that require a degree of cooperation and coordination without being overly punishing like Tartarus kinda feels at the moment. And on the other hand, I really like Ciella’s fight because it feels like it’s just at the right level of difficulty for me to be able to reliably do by myself. At least on manual. I’ve never really managed to get auto solo to work, but I enjoy doing it manually. Either way, it’s nice to have endgame fights like this that can be comfortably soloed if you have a strong enough team, and I really like how for Ciella you have to build a really tanky, defense-oriented team in order to be able to solo it. I feel like 90% of the game basically punishes you for trying to do anything other than raw damage-dealing, so I really appreciate that Ciella is designed in a way that rewards you for making tanky team comps. It also lets Sylas be genuinely meta for something, which I’m grateful for, and it gave Templar Hope some redemption after he was initially deemed as being kinda worthless after he came out.

I also like how status effects are integrated into the fight mechanics, and [for the most part] both status resistances for each element feel like they have a purpose in their Agito fight. Compared to HDTs where it feels like every element roster is split between ‘units that are good for the fight’ and ‘units that are immediately handicapped’. This is actually one part where I think Tartarus works really well as a boss fight, since unless you can kill him before the poison portals happen, you really need a poison-res character to deal with them.

We still have three more of the Master fights to come out, but either way I really like the Agito fights, and I’m optimistic for whatever the next set of endgame content will be. Personally, I’m still hoping for them to build upon the Imperial Onslaught mode, since that feels like an almost obsolete part of the game, but that sort of wave-based content would be nice to have for endgame co-op.

Also, I still really hope that the Agito bosses end up being DL’s version of the Eternals/Evokers from GBF, where we can eventually get the ability to recruit them as playable characters by doing lots of grinding. They might just get released as gala units instead, but I’d prefer it if they were obtainable through grinding.

On the one hand they’re basically all villains, but on the other hand the recent story chapter made it pretty obvious that they’re probably all being warped and twisted by the masks Nedrick gave them, so it’d be pretty easy to explain how they could eventually be recruited. Also GBF has it’s own share of characters who probably shouldn’t be recruitable for moral reasons but they still are, lol.

Also when you fight them in-game it already looks like they have the same sorts of character model rigs as normal adventurers, and their attack animations all seem at least roughly based on regular weapon types [Volk being a lance unit, Kai Yan being an axe unit, Ciella being a bow unit, Ayaha/Otoha being dagger units, and Tartarus being a blade unit], so I feel like it wouldn’t be hard to make them playable. Ayaha/Otoha would probably be the hardest one to make work unless they get released as two separate characters, but it’s possible that they’d be a unique case where you use them both in combat at the same time, and switch between which one you’re actively controlling. 

It’s probably a bit too early for any of this to happen since the Agito have basically only just gotten introduced in the main story, so it probably won’t be touched upon for the 2nd anniversary, but I still think it’ll happen eventually.

Anyway, all that aside, at the moment I’m basically just gonna keep saving my summons for either a rerun of Gala Elly/Alex, or the holiday banners. In particular I really want to do lots of summons on the New Years banner. I know we’re gonna have Gala Zena or something next month for the anniversary, but if it’s anything like last year we’ll get lots of free summons during her banner, so I’ll at least wait and see how that works out before I spend any resources chasing her.

I also don’t really care much for Nevin and Pinon so even though I didn’t get them, I’m just gonna quit on this banner while I’m ahead, lol