#and no... i am never going to whale on a POKEMON GACHA GAME... if i ever whale on anything you should kill me

[teriiblog]

agony and pain kabu pokemas come home.... Wife.... Your husband needs you (for me to probably make better teams bc theme skills) but mostly bc I need you carnally

[bellybiologist]

Having Sad Winter Thoughts

So wanted to reminisce about an event that I've always kept close to my heart concerning my late mother (tho she didn't play much of an active part, tbh!)

She was a collector (hot wheels, barbies, Peanuts merch... and a variety of collectable trading cards that circulated before I was born), and she always encouraged my brother and I to keep what we had in good condition because "it could be worth something later". And back before we could make our own money and when she'd buy us anything collectable, like our Pokemon cards, she'd ask us for any Repeats to keep for herself.

I always remembered the old Lego-like wipes box (Chubs Stackables, its called) that she used to keep her Pokemon cards in because of a story that I never forgot.

Pokemon came to America when i was seven, and Cards came out shortly afterward. Us kids were understandably nuts about it, so much so that I still remember an announcement in my elementary school that was banning them outright on school grounds, stereotypically pronouncing them as "Pokey man cards."

We lived in a cul de sac at the time with a bunch of other military families (dad was in the airforce). It was very Ed Edd n Eddy where we knew and interacted with a lot of the kids, and their parents were more a Concept than a reality. So of course, when fads hit, it swept through the street like wildfire. We all were into pokemon.

Even as a seven year old, baby Verzi had her "White Whales" when it came to collecting, cuz the thing I actually want is never easy to get apparently!

For those who were there, you'd remember that the first 151 pokemon were released in 3 sets (Base, Jungle, and Fossil). And in Jungle, my favorite pokemon ever and forever, Butterfree, was released! It was uncommon, so surely, it wouldnt be too difficult. find, right?

Incorrect!!!!!

It took me a good year or so to find, and it drove me fucking insane because when you're little, any small amount of time feels like an eternity!!! But the point of this story takes place earlier. One of the neighborhood kids, an older one who was probably 10-12ish. had an extra butterfree. I coveted it and wanted to trade. He asked for my rare, non-holo Nidoqueen (some rares had holo and non-holo versions. Just to be extra mean. Always remember trading cards are an evolutionary stepping stone to bad gacha games!).

But!! I only had one of those.

But x2!!! I remembered I pulled a duplicate and gave it to my mother.

So i had one of those moments after-school specials had. "Am I gonna steal from my kind and hardworking mother to fulfill my Greedy Little 7/8 year old fantasies??" The answer was yes, though it took a lot of back and forth because back when my mother was younger, she had eyes like a hawk for anything out of place. This woman made sure no one went into her shit in her room. Luckily, she kept her card box in a place that was easily accessible outside (the kitchen counter).

So i went into her blue, little box and took the Nidoqueen I had given her, and made the trade.

I was happy for a good bit, and the butterfree looked so beautiful in my 3 ring card binder! but then the guilt set in. It was crippling.

It only took a couple days before I couldn't take it anymore. So I went back to Older Neighborhood kid. Luckily, Older Neighborhood Kid was cool and let us trade backsies.

Then I secretly slipped the Nidoqueen back into my mom's collection box.

I am 95% sure she never found out, as she wasn't keeping a detailed log of the cards, but I always felt this was a character defining point for me. 😏

I thought about this recently, because in another fit of I Miss my Mom, I had actually found her old card collection box and spent some time going through it.

Unfortunately, the Nidoqueen of my Memory was not present. It could've disappeared for any number of reasons, as it has been ~25 years, several moves, and other events that caused a lot of my mom's stuff to disappear or be thrown away...

But at the very bottom, i found this.

So either I or my brother was able to get her butterfree at some point. 😌 (actual jungle set too! look at the little flower at the bottom right of the card art~)

I honestly have no idea where my own pokemon card collection is. My younger cousins raided and stole a lot of them back when i was in high school, and it never recovered. But I do not know where the remnants are. I'm still in the years-long process of getting through all of the stuff in my apartment and I'm hoping I come across it.

But I'm happy to know i have this card though. My mom's butterfree.

[crystalelemental]

homestuck-and-the-monomyth replied to your post: I believe that, barring my loss of Lift last night...

Congrats, nice job! I remember seeing you frustrated by AR a while back, so it’s cool to see that you’ve pushed through.

Thank you!  Truth be told...I am still frustrated with it.  Kinda.  I’m gonna be posting a lot of thoughts under this cut.

When it comes to Aether Raids, I think my biggest frustrations are the same as with every other game mode: rewards are too minimal for 90% of players, they don’t scale properly until you’re really high ranking, etc.  It bothers me a lot.  I really wish they’d start resources with higher amounts and give more incremental scaling as you improve.  “But Steve, why would anyone whale for the top spots if it’s not that much better?”  You...have never had the mental drive to spend all your monthly income on a banner solely because you like the character, have you?  There are other motivations to whale, and most prominent is just the desire to be at the top.  Rewards are often secondary in that case.

Beyond that though, I have come around to kinda liking Aether Raids.  Kinda.  I think a game mode that’s more about using any possible unit is way more interesting than Arena’s plan of BST, total merges, and high-cost skills determining your placement.  Yes, let’s oversaturate that meta with the same boring armor units no one knows shit about because those games weren’t released in the west, then tell everyone to spend all their hard-earned feathers on these characters they neither know nor care about, THEN make them give awkward builds to solely for scoring purposes.  Very clever, Arena, well done.  Fuck the Arena.

AR at least offers variety.  Even if that variety is...occasionally obnoxious.  Lynhardt is a known thing that annoys everyone, having Brave Veronica running around and shutting down Vantage strategies can be annoying, and Ophelia is incredibly hard to stop barring my +Res Caineghis with two Eir buffs and Archer Lucina’s Attack/Res Link buff letting him hang on.  But you know.  I’ll take that.  I’ll take the occasional match where someone set up their Firesweep/Lunge cavalier to throw my unit backwards into the bolt trap to then be annihilated by Duma.  Because at the end of the day, that’s more interesting than another run of Steady Breath/Lightning Breath Fae/Nowi/Tiki.

That said though, Aether Raids has unbelievable problems they desperately need to fix.  As much as I’ll shit on Arena, at least getting to tier 21 is possible, given enough play time.  AR?  AR may as well be impossible for a lot of people.  Unless you’ve got the right tools, I don’t think you can even gain enough points in a week to get to tier 21.  I think it’s only possible right now in Light season thanks to the one free Eir.  And even then, you need pretty much perfect play all season.  I have two Eir, because I really wanted to merge and would have if someone hadn’t reminded me to keep the free neutral one for F2P guides as needed, which meant I could get 160 points per match instead of 140.  That’s actually a substantial difference, and one of the main reasons I could get this far in the first place.  I was stuck at tier 19 until someone pointed out two Eir doubles the bonus.  And so, here we are.  And that’s not even getting into the fact we’re missing the Astra mythic, so every other week is a standstill for every player, sitting around and hoping to just break even without dropping a tier.

There’s also the issue of needing the right tools to take on all the variance you’ll see here.  This isn’t competitive Pokemon, where you can just waltz out and pick up a counter to add to your team.  You have to summon for it.  Caineghis is another huge reason I was able to make it this far, but I initially wasn’t going to pull for him, and only did so to get DD4 fodder for F!Morgan.  Which...okay, probably not gonna fodder him off anymore, but imagine if I’d backed off of that plan.  I probably wouldn’t have made it, because I didn’t have a strong answer in Light season to all those ranged units.  I feel like that’s a huge flaw in your game mode.  Yes, the variance of what you’re facing is great, and I really appreciate that.  But I appreciate it as someone who’s spent money on the game about every month to have access to these tools.

Then there’s the other major issue.  Let’s say, hypothetically, that you want to get your favorite 5* to +10.  That’s your goal.  Well that’s great for Arena, but +10 barely means shit in Aether Raids.  It’s actually a quality I enjoy.  But the tradeoff is, success in AR is about how many different teams you can build to counter-pick the opponent.  So now you run into a conflict of interest.  Wanting to do well in AR necessitates having a wide variety of strong units, but unless you’re spending money, that does generally mean you’re giving up hope on getting a favorite to be fully merged, which then interferes with Arena.  You kinda have to pick which one is most important, and focus on that.  Or, you can just run a bunch of highly merged common units, in which case I hope you enjoy Hero Merit farming for all those feathers.

Bottom line: as someone who likes variety more than a balanced metagame, I actually like Aether Raids at this point.  You know.  Now that I understand how the Fortress works, and which facilities are actually useful, and what a bonus facility does.  It can be fun to see what other people have got.  But I also recognize it is a heavily flawed game mode, necessitating spending of orbs for a wide range of good units, and still not having a mythic to increase Lift on Astra seasons.  I know that second part will be solved with time, but it’s kinda the same as Pair Up mechanics.  You have one unit that can do it.  One.  Maybe...I dunno...don’t implement this thing until you’re ready, and have enough options to work with?  Like, if you don’t have Eir, good luck with AR.  You’re basically done.

But really, all this is less the fault of the game mode itself, and more the fault of gacha in general being exploitative and shitty by withholding characters and options behind a $75 paywall.