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maskeraith · 3 years ago

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big eldar scrolls on line post about what i thought about it

may have some spoilers for the morrowind storyline and sidequests idk also I am inevitably gonna compare it to ffxiv a lot as it’s the only other mmorpg I’ve played good luck

Writing this after finishing writing the rest wow this got too long there is a tldr though haha

so the first thing I will say is that eso’s overworld exploration and sidequesting blows ffxiv away completely, there is so much to do and fun to be had in eso simply by exploring around! the enemies feel cool to fight, there are delves and solo dungeons to just stumble across with quests in there, skill points just lying around if you look hard enough, gathering spots that you can just gather from without having to be a specific profession or something, WORLD bosses that you need a group to battle just OUT there it’s really cool! Ffxiv does have some really beautiful environments but in terms of actual stuff to do, there’s literally just fates and they’re pretty shit to be honest, and i guess the sightseeing log??

and sidequests! all my time in the game was spent in the morrowind area (vvardenfall I think? my eso lore is zero watch out) and every sidequest I did had a really engaging storyline. They do mostly amount to fetch quests and slay monster quests in terms of gameplay with some puzzle moments sometimes, but the storylines were captivating enough to justify most of what you had to do. compared to ffxiv which is BLOATED with boring fetch quests with uninteresting storylines eso has it figured out. the characters you meet and their dialogue is great and sometimes you can even make choices which affect the final outcome of the quest which is always fun (your character having the personality of a brick aside). I actually think I enjoyed certain sidequests more than the main story of morrowind they’re that involved

Also there are world events but I didn’t really get into them, there was like a huge tornado which spawned some enemies that give you massive exp, but my horsey was too slow and I only got there at the tail end because they’re great for farming so every player in the world goes there and kills them instantly they seem cool though

in terms of lore, I’m not someone who is super interested in the lore of the elder scrolls universe but I found myself learning a whole lot of very crazy stuff from the friends I was playing with who DO know all about it, and I will say that if the lore of the elder scrolls universe interests you in any way you’ll love this game! so I learned that there are Eras in this universe, and eso takes place in the second era I believe. The other main series games all take place in the third or fourth I think, so eso is able to like set the groundwork for those games and explain the history behind stuff going on in all the main games, which I think is a really good idea, perfect for fans of the lore and stuff. Like I remember the funny talking dog from skyrim and he’s like the primary antagonist of the morrowind main story like woah

The combat is where I think the game started to fall off for me, again with the ffxiv comparison but it just wasn’t reaching levels nearly as interesting as the combat in that game for me.

Firstly, there’s no tab targetting (unless there’s a setting in the menu somewhere i missed?) you actually aim all your attacks, single target, aoe, whatever. for me this made it harder to be able to gain a situational awareness, and I have to keep my camera aimed at the boss and I’m not able to move it around to see if there was anything else going on. I do see how aiming your attacks could actually make the game more appealing to some people, though, as it does give a sense that you are more actively participating in the battle and not just standing there pressing buttons, but for me this sort of thing doesn’t make any difference

The second thing was the amount of abilities you have at any one time - you have 10 abilities and 2 ultimates slotted at any one time. Five and one ult are active at a time, and you have to swap weapons (it’s as easy as the press of a button) to switch to your second bar with the other 5 and 1 ult. This does make the game a lot more accessible I think, but it also means the stuff you get to do is just gonna be a lot more straightforward and spammy compared to the interesting and involved rotations you get in ffxiv. as a tank, I set myself up to put three dots and a debuff on the enemy and then spam my one damaging attack, until I had to reapply the stuff again, and that was basically it. I had some tank cooldowns too like a shield, heal, a grab and so on. I did look up the Most Complicated Rotation to see how hard it could get, which seemed to be stamina nightblade, and even that has “Ability x11″ or something in its rotation

Simple rotations would be fine for me if the bosses themselves were more difficult or complicated to compensate, but honestly nothing was any more difficult or involved than ffxiv. On youtube I’ve watched like 5 dungeons and a trial on the hardest Veteran difficulty, and the dungeons don’t look like anything more than what you would get in other mmos. The trials looks like really great content honestly, but there’s no party finder for them as far as I know so you have to manually gather 11 other people which is never something I enjoy trying to do in multiplayer games lol

i also didn’t super appreciate that the game wanted to like hide a bunch of info from me by default? like a few hours in I complained that it was impossible to know when my dots and self buffs ran out because all I had was like little particle effects on the enemy/myself to go off, and my friends were like “oh yeah you need to turn on these tooltips in the options” like huh?? I need to know this stuff come on

There is some really cool stuff in the combat though! Every player has like a basic bash attack, which can interrupt certain attacks, and then a basic heavy attack, which can knock down staggered enemies (they get staggered if you interrupt them) so there is more to do than just your abilities.

One thing I will mention though, is that I think a huge part of the combat is resource management - you spend stamina/mana on your abilities and if you’re not careful it’s easy to run out. As a tank, blocking takes up stamina, and sometimes I would not manage it correctly and run out and be unable to use my anything for a bit. You get it back by doing heavy attacks (contrary to every game ever) and other like passives unique to whatever build you might have going on. A lot of the game’s difficulty in harder content might come from this, but I didn’t get that deep into any of that sort of thing

I think the way you pick your abilities is really cool - you level up a whole bunch of different skill trees at a time, and you can slot any ability from any tree at any time (other than weapon skills specifically, you must be weilding that weapon) into your 10 slots. Your class has three unique trees, then there’s like a tree for every weapon type, for mage and fighter’s guild, this weird guild called the undaunted, werewolf and vampire, probably more I forgot about. All of them have 5 skills that you unlock as you level that tree, and all of those skills can be morphed into one of two “strong” versions of that skill once you level that specific skill. So there is a huge amount of player choice in how you build your character! I remember getting loads of advice from my friends but also just thinking to myself “but this skill though...” (i am so sorry). There are loads of passives too but they’re kind of lame and you just sort of put your excess skill points in them to make yourself passively stronger. I am sure there are Optimal builds, but playing casually you can literally just do anything

I do think levelling them can sometimes be a pain though because like, if you want the fifth ability in Skill Tree 1 but you don’t really use any of the first four, well actually you do have to start using a bunch of those skills you don’t want because you gain more exp for that skill tree the more of its skills you use, sort of a minor thing I guess

Finally I will talk about how I really do not like the execution of the loot system... So you get armour sets in this game and if you wear 5 of them you get a very significant passive, like whenever you crit you summon a big ghoul to shoot acid, or all of your aoe abilities also taunt. I think this is a super cool idea in theory, and it allows for even further personal customisation of the kind of character you want to play. However..

So the max level is 50, but the real max level is like 180 or something because at 50, you continue to level up but each level just gives you a point to put into these big huge bonus passive skill trees which continue to increase your stats up to the 180th point or something like that. In eso, though, you can go anywhere and do anything and all the enemies are scaled to you. But, it’s actually that you are scaled to the enemies - while below level 50, you get an invisible buff that makes you as strong as a level 50 character. This means that every level you gain, you actually get slightly weaker, if you’re not updating your armour.

Armour drops at whatever level you are, up to the cap of 180 where you are the strongest you can be. So ultimately what this means is every piece of armour you get up until you reach the level cap will quickly become obsolete. Every time I collected 5 pieces of a set and got a cool passive, all I could think was “this will be fun for about 4 levels” because I knew I’d need to swap it all out for stronger stuff. Essentially I felt locked out of seriously farming for the gear sets I wanted until I reached Max Max level, which made everything I collected seem pretty pointless to me.

Also, always being as strong as a level 50 character did kind of make it feel like I wasn’t really levelling up at all? It’s why I broke my rule of “I will get to level 50 before stopping” because I actually was level 50 all along, I got all the abilities from my skill trees that I wanted and ran a bunch of dungeons with them and I was in the 30s, but there were no other skills I could really see myself swapping out so I was essentially “max level”, as far as I was concerned.

so yeah tl;dr these are my two main opinions:

This game is an awesome time running around and exploring the environment, doing quests and running dungeons! If you’re a fan of the elder scrolls world and lore it is absolutely a must play!

Customising your character’s skills and armour sets is a lot of fun, but I do think it comes at the expense of not having a really finely tuned, coherant combat style, it feels a lot like I’m Just Hitting All The Buttons.

The end lol

#long post #i didn't comment on crafting because I didn't do it #tl;dr here as well I think the overworld exploration is awesome but I don't think the combat gameplay is engaging enough to play long term

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crowsent · 4 years ago

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a fuckton of things i want in da4

a few words censored bc tumblr will swallow this in the void if i dont. long ass fuck list ahead

a romanceable dwarf

more romanceable elves/qunari

more elf/qunari/dwarf companions

consistent writing for once

more nb representation

good hair. please just give me good hair options. give me long hair. give me luxurious flowing locks. give me braids. give me good fucking hair options

let me shittalk the chantry

dalish elf npcs that impact the plot in unique ways

dalish elf companions that are proud of being dalish

if it is set in tevinter maybe uh. maybe address the issue of systemic oppression (and slavery) of elves???????

a return of the friendship/rivalry system in da2 but improved. maybe instead of a friendship rivalry sliding scale its friendship/rivalry/animosity sliding scale. bc rivalry is more like. two people pushing each other to be better than they were before. friendly competition. hes an idiot but hes my idiot kind of deal. animosity would be just regular disapproval. i liked the crisis cutscenes in dai so high animosity would be the same as low approval and might make the companion leave still, but theres more variety with high approval. high approval “friendship” would be the “were best friends and we share many opinions and agree on almost everything” while high approval “rivalry” being “we disagree on almost everything but goddamn it youre my friend and ill follow you into the fade if i have to” so you can have a high approval with someone instead of being a kissass

actions and choices having consequences again

multiple endings again (epilogue slideshows dont count)

dialogue wheels with descriptions that match what you actually say

characters from rivain, antiva, anderfels, etc

gifts. bring back the gifts. i want to give my companions gifts

maybe. maybe a focus of non-andrastian religion for once?

let me shittalk the chantry

i know its a stretch, but maybe. diverse skin colours. please?

nd characters that are written respectfully and treated w dignity

please bring back the talent wheel from dao and da2

more bi romance options

more wlw romance options

more mlm romance options

ace romance options

nb romance options

background romances

let me shittalk the chantry

far fetched but maybe a polycule?

i lowkey LOVED the fast-paced feel of da2s combat so maybe bring that back in some form? maybe improved to mesh with the tactics of dai to give players absolute freedom of playstyle whether they want to be like me and rush into every encounter or play more strategically

companions with unique companion abilities

would be nice to explore cities

would be nice if the open world were a little smaller so it doesnt feel empty all the gd time

more mage spells. mages felt like just another class of fighter to me in dai. they dont really have any awe-inducing wow factor like in dao or even da2. if the narrative wants me to believe that mages are powerful and dangerous and that it takes multiple templars to hunt down an apostate, maybe show that? give me strong mages

remove the jump ability. its pointless

a narrative that addresses the oppression that the chantry and templars perpetuated please

bring back the attributes

make the choices in dai matter. mages governing themselves? i wanna see that

let me shittalk the chantry

please bring back the healing magic for fucks sakes

multi-class system between rogues and warriors?

multiple specialisations that feel like specialisations and not just skill tree+

player-only skill trees

hardening

companion quests that affect their abilities and further dialogue

actual morally grey choices instead of this stupid mage freedom vs templar oppression narrative that is in no way morally grey but is presented as such and thus leaves the conflicts and narratives set up by dao and da2 to be fucking meaningless

bring back the tactics

would be nice to have an origins-esque prologue again. maybe one that would determine future events in game just to give your character better narrative cohesion with the plot

an approval/disapproval system but for companions with other companions. bringing certain companions together may bring them closer or make them pissed off with each other which affects banter maybe quests maybe combat

give me a fucking mabari bioware. give me back my fucking mabari

day/night cycle

a nightmare mode where you have to finish the main quest on a time limit. it is absurd that dai expects me to believe that i have all this time to do wartable missions that can take literal real life DAYS to finish and still thwart corypheus’ plans in time. bullshit

that said. no more wartable missions. waiting for a countdown to finish isnt very fun

let me shittalk the chantry

kal-sharok. ive been hearing about it since dao let me fucking see kal-sharok

dwarven politics

politics in general. my fav dao quest was the succession crisis plotline in orzammar/the landsmeet and wewh in dai

npcs i can talk to. even with generic dialogue like in dao. makes the world more alive

using the environment to your advantage. far fetched but i would love to be able to pull down boulders if were in the mountains or freeze water to get to places as a mage

home base customisation but the customisation choices you make actually. mean something. and do something. or at the very least give more companion dialogue/banter/approval change

laconic and ergonomic codexes. like. sorted by what kind of codex it is, etc etc but then you just get a brief summary of the codex and the option to read more about it so i dont spend eternity scrolling through cards looking for a specific codex entry. cool aesthetic dont get me wrong but real irritating to deal with. also. maybe. the pc making comments about the codex if you do read more about it? like a dalish elf saying “they got it all wrong” when reading a codex about dalish elves written by a human??? that would a) give character to the pc b) incentivise people to actually read the codex to see what was so wrong about it c) summarise the codex for people who want to learn the lore but dont want to spent the entire game reading text

maybe have the merchants in your home base close to crafting stations so you dont have to take a fucking hike if you miscounted the amount of elfroot you need?

let me shittalk the chantry

avvar companion maybe??? interesting lore right there

bring back stat requirements for weapons and remove the class restriction for most shit. obviously a dagger would be better for a rogue than a longsword and a mage would do better with a staff than a sword and shield but its not about efficiency. its about the roleplay. its about the options. give me the option to make a mage with wildly inappropriate stat distribution

bring back sustained mode abilities

traps. bring back traps. bring back the option to stealth into an area, trap the fuck out of it, and go from there

have the three available classes in kind of a rock paper scissors scenario. warriors do real well against rogues who do real well against mages who do real well against warriors. so you can plan your party depending on who/what youll face AND how much their approval will change during the quest you take them on

let me shittalk the chantry

actually resolve the plot points introduced in dai

a more threatening villain. the inquisitor thwarted every attempt made by corypheus in dai. he was not threatening at all

queer characters. background, companions, etc. queer characters

mounts were meh in dai. maybe. make them faster? or less cumbersome? or have your companions on mounts too so theres still banter?

i liked the armour tinting. let me have armour tinting from the beginning

i would really like mages to move and attack at the same time bc lowkey standing in one spot is uhhhhhhh kinda boring

let me check companions friendship/rivalry levels

would be nice if the narrative acknowledged that elves suffered greatly at the hands of the chantry and stopped victim-blaming them

more taverns. specifically like tapsters in dao where theres a dwarf just reciting something in a language i cant understand and if you look its a ballad/poet about dwarven culture and that was a real nice touch let me have that

dalish elf clan. dalish elf clan that does not get murdered please and thank you

meaningful quests. more cinematic dialogue

make found gear / quest reward gear more valuable than crafted gear

game modifiers like in dai were real nice. i want more

let me shittalk the chantry

quests that can be resolved in multiple ways. like connors fate in dao. and for those ways to impact further quests

companions with varying moral alignments

companions that are mutually exclusive (like alistair and loghain) but are both good companions so itd really make you think

a pc that IS NOT a “chosen one” vanilla da2 is my fav dragon age game for one reason and one reason only and that is because hawke is just some random refugee who escaped lothering. no chosen one magic at all. just an ordinary person who is a real good fighter. and that appealed to me more than this “you are the only one who can do it” narrative

let me meet more elvhen gods

if the setting is in tevinter, GIVE ME FUCKING ARCHITECTURE. give me the high spires, the archways, the buttresses, give me statues lining city gates and magic infused into the buildings. tevinter is a land ruled by MAGES give me magical architecture. give me floating buildings. give me fire floating as orbs above the streets like lamps. GIVE ME ARCHITECTURE

SHALE

let me shittalk the chantry

PIERCINGS GIVE ME FUCKING PIERCINGS BIOWARE

more main quests, longer main quests

if it is set in tevinter maybe. maybe address the fact that tevinter has been at war with the qunari for a while? on and off war is still war. and maybe give us the option to influence the outcome of that war?

more voice options. instead of just american voice or british voice, do the thing in dao again where there are multiple voices of different tones to further cement the pcs personality

more armour designs

biased but uh. can. can taliesen jaffe va a character?

i already said qunari companions but specifically saarebas companions

blood magic

FINISHING MOVE ANIMATIONS

please do not let it be as long as inquisition. inquisition was a SLOG in later playthroughs

body sliders. what if i want a tall but lanky qunari? what if i want a buff as shit elf? body sliders

more eye options

let me call out companions

btw bioware. if you really wanted cullen to be a good guy. maybe handle his fucking redemption arc a little better instead of retconning all the terrible and creepy shit hes done in the past k thx

can female walk/run animations not have. so much swaying hips? no one moves like that

personality dialogue that affects future dialogue like in da2 but meshed with the wider range of emotions introduced by dai

keep the race/s*x lock on romance candidates like in dai. keep the fact that some characters can only be romanced by certain races or s*xes

nb and genderqueer options for the pc

cutscenes of companions interacting

ngl i lowkey liked the random encounters of dao so maybe bring that back

my fav quest in dao is the landsmeet / orzammar succession crisis questline but you know whats my second favourite? the rescue mission if the warden gets captured and you have to play as your party members. give me that again

more creepy/dark shit. dai was too lighthearted for me esp after da2 and dao

let me shittalk the chantry

broodmothers. in hd.

red lyrium broodmothers. in hd

companions with different backgrounds. different faiths. different statuses. different families. etc

maybe make the pcs appearance make an impact on the story? like how bull says he likes redheads, but even if you are a redhead, he says nothing about it????? maybe keep track of which slider the player picks so that can affect the story?

i love my inquisitors but maybe. dont. bring the inquisitor in as anything more than an advisor/npc in this game? let me fall in love with a new pc???

if theres gonna be a homebase like skyhold where youre not in armor. maybe give us better clothing?

a kind of gear skin mechanic similar to ac:odyssey where you can change how the gear looks but keep the stats. so you can equip that higher level armour and keep the look and aesthetic of your old armour and you unlock the skins/looks of the armours you discover/make so you can be both powerful AND aesthetic

i enjoyed the nobility/underworld/arcane/etc knowledge in dai unlocking more dialogue options so maybe keep/expand on that but make it more accessible by side missions or companions or something that isnt the abysmal perk system in dai

let me shittalk the chantry

customisable walking animations. does the pc walk straightbacked? slouched? with a swagger? please

since there will undoubtedly be an obligatory fade sequence, maybe have an option for nightmare demons that ARENT spiders. thank you

slap on subtitles and conlang some languages. i want to hear elvish. i want to hear tevene. give me the languages

more dragons. esp if they look vastly different

more bard songs

i am completely biased here, but i would like to hear laura bailey as a va for a character. preferably a voice option for the pc

hey maybe have the true ending actually included in the base game and not in a dlc (tresppasser cough cough)

better val royeaux

please remove the had to do it to em idle animation tis distracting

on that note, more idle animations. maybe some unique to companions?

very trivial but. unique stair climbing/descending animation

bring back talking to companions on the road. maybe with some dialogue that can only be said on the road???

if banter is interrupted, make like rdr2 and pick up where the banter left off

more vallaslin designs please?

if theres another formal scene like dai maybe. give us. decent clothing. or better yet, decen clothing OPTIONS. i wanna decide how i look in a ball full of haughty orlesians

mage vs templar conflict resolved and addressed please. it is NOT resolved in dai. what we got was sequel bait and a slideshow. resolve it please

let me shittalk the chantry

a pro-mage anti-circle circle mage companion like anders

religious person who doesnt victim-blame elves in the codex or in game or anywhere please

characters more like leliana who question the chantry and acknowledge its corruption and greed

unapologetically sapphic companion

idc if its tevinter i dont want to fucking see queer people being disrespected

a true tal-vashoth companion, one who escaped from the qun

have quest decisions affect whether or not a companion will turn hostile to you or not

if IF solas will be redeemed, please do the redemption arc right

more horn options for qunari

an apostate mage who doesnt use me for their personal agenda whilst hiding something from me (morrigan, anders, solas) thanks

i really dig the whole “leader of an army” thing dai was trying to go for. but you didnt actually. lead. anything. would be nice to have that option. command soldiers. send them places that affect further quests. would even use the wartable for its intended purpose. planning wars. battles. like. you get sent word that there are bandits harassing villagers. you can set up an ambush with your soldiers or confront them headon, and theres a new mini-location on the map like the manor you meet vivienne in where you can go deal with the bandits and depending on your choices, there are actually soldiers with you in a field, or traps in a narrow pass, or even in a city. id rather the wartable shit dont return but if they have to, at least this way youre not just waiting real life time for a bunch of text to appear

i am real fucking excited for the possibility that da4 companions can just fucking die on you. good shit. give me that angst

missions that certain companions would refuse to go with you to. you know. so you actually have to use other members of your party instead of the same 3 (three) people all the goddamn time

disabled characters (i want a character who suffers from the same chronic bad leg disease as i do is that too much to ask)

kinda touched on by the da2 combat point but let me do close combat damage with the staff

no multiplayer. and if there is a multiplayer, dont tie it with achievements

let me fucking explore weisshaupt

(i dont think solas will be the endgame villain of da and i dont think da4 will be the last da game but still) again. for emphasis. resolve the plot points dai brought up

full-body scars and tattoo options

companions and npcs changing their opinions about things over time. eg: a pro-circle mage wanting instead for circles to be abolished after a specific side mission or a main quest decision etc

keep the multiple companion quests. and maybe change what kinds of companion quests are available further down depending on choices made in previous companion quests

please for fucks sake give us more characters of colour

let me shittalk the chantry

#dragon age #dragon age 4 #da4 #long post #its 3 am and i am once again putting on my clown wig bc bioware will fucking disappoint me again

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nyctolovian · 4 years ago

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Chapter 16: easy being nice to a bitter boy like him

Welp! I just thought it’d be cool if I posted fic on my birthday. So here’s a milestone chapter of sorts haha

Summary: Shouto's doubts grow

Chapter 1

Bakugou woke up incredibly cranky, even by his usual standards. Shouto was made aware of this by the colourful swearing Bakugou let out when he stubbed his toe on the foot of the bed in the morning. This was followed by a loud slam of the door as Bakugou exited the room to head to the shared toilets.

The two headed to the dormitory’s cafeteria for breakfast (a sandwich, yoghurt and a chocolate-y drink called Milo). The sort of silence they had, which would usually be calm, was now stiff, like Bakugou was looking for the next thing to metaphorically or physically blow up. Shouto didn’t quite want to stand in the way of that.

Then, as they stood at the pickup point, waiting for Preeta to pick them up, Shouto finally asked, “Is something bothering you?”

Bakugou let out a gruff “nah”.

That was a lie and Shouto could smell from a mile away. He frowned at Bakugou in deep thought. However, before he could ask another question, Preeta’s yellow car drove into the pickup stop. Hesitantly, Shouto dropped the subject when he and Bakugou got in the car and Preeta greeted them with a wide, sunny smile. "Are you ready for Day 1 of hero-ing Singaporean style?"

Shouto nodded nervously while Bakugou let out a hum that wasn't quite in assent or disagreement.

"Tough crowd," she huffed out, curling her fingers around the steering wheel. "No worries. You're gonna have a blast at my office, I assure you."

As they travelled, the supervisor gave a quick rundown of what interning under her would entail. Preeta and Co. Hero Offices was located on an entire floor in one of the many office buildings in the central business district. Preeta explained, "We mostly deal with combat situations within that area. It's a hotspot for villains that really want to wreck things big time."

As they drove into the district, Shouto spotted countless skyscrapers and interesting sculptures around. He had heard that there were many important expensive buildings in the area so property damage was apparently a big deal as well. He was slightly worried by this. If there was one thing about their fighting styles that Shouto could call a similarity, it might possibly be the destruction. He and Bakugou didn't exactly have the best track record for keeping fights in their lanes after all.

Soon, Preeta parked in the underground carpark of a fairly unremarkable office building and took a lift from the car park up to the office. As soon as the lift slid open to their destination, they were greeted with a frenzied girl rushing towards them. "Oh my god!" She side-stepped, letting them out. "New interns?" she asked in English, brushing her messy blue hair behind her ear.

"Yeah," Preeta replied. She glanced at the folders the girl was clutching as she darted into the elevator and slammed her thumb into the button. "Documents for HeroTech again?"

"Yah lah!" she whined, pulling a face of agony. "Who else?"

Preeta rolled her eyes at the closing lift doors. "That's Charlene by the way. You'll talk to her a lot in the future."

Shouto glanced back at the closed doors. He barely remembered what she looked like already. Sometimes he wished he had better facial recognition skills. Also, Shouto was about 75% certain that was her first name. This felt wildly different from what he is used to…

Bakugou nudged his back, bringing his attention back to their supervisor, who had already walked past the empty reception desk. She pressed her finger on a scanner to unlock the door that led to an open plan office.

It was chaotic with people discussing things or typing away at their computers. Some of them were in office wear, some in casual clothes, and others in their hero costumes. With a quick glance around the room, Shouto estimated a head count of about 15 other people.

"Attention!" Preeta's voice boomed across the room, capturing the attention of everyone. "We have two new interns, Bakugou Katsuki and Todoroki Shouto from UA, Japan. They'll be with us for three months." She gave them both a look and made a sweeping motion, urging them to introduce themselves.

Shouto tried his best to articulate himself in the foreign language, "Hello. My name is Todoroki Shouto. I am 17 years old. Um… My quirk is um…" He held his palms up and simultaneously created a flame and a shard of ice. "My hero name is Shouto. Nice to meet you."

Someone started clapping and the others followed suit. Shouto stiffly nodded and pursed his lips.

Next was Bakugou. "I'm Bakugou Katsuki. 18 years old. My quirk is Explosion and my hero name is DynaMight. I'll be the Number One Top Hero."

Shouto narrowed his eyes at him. Did he really need to say that?

Bakugou's eyes made contact with his for a while before he added somewhat reluctantly, "Nice to meet you."

His greeting was also met with an applause and a short hoot. Meanwhile, Preeta grinned at him and said, "Someone's got more guts than I thought! I like that!" She glanced around the room and said, "Everyone except Charlene is here."

Someone from the corner confirmed that statement.

"Ok! Good! Saves time!" she said, clapping her hands together. "Introduce yourselves as well!"

One by one, the others introduced themselves with their names, positions, and their quirks. Some added special information about themselves and cracked a few jokes that garnered some chuckles in the office. However, between trying to get used to English comprehension, the unusual names and many different information, Shouto's head was swirling. Names and faces seemed to seep out of his brain as the introductions continued.

By the time Preeta smiled down at the two new interns and suggested introducing them to the office facilities, Shouto had already forgotten everyone's names.

Still, he silently followed Preeta as she told them where the pantry, toilets, sick bay, function rooms and her private office were. Then, they walked around the already chattering employees to a steel door behind the large table. There was another fingerprint scanner that Preeta used. "We'll have to get your prints later. This stuff is just a safety precaution. Hero work can get pretty sensitive. Plus, we have expensive equipment." She swung open the door to the most spacious room yet – the training gym.

With its light blue walls, the room looked more vibrant than the rest of the office. Natural light also streamed in from its wide windows, which displayed a view of the city skyline, like a reminder of why they do their work. The equipment, while not as grand as Endeavor Hero Agency’s, was still not to be sneezed at, from its high-tech temperature-regulators to an obstacle course with elements customisable to one’s training needs. There was a large first-aid kit and defibrillator beside the benches and a fire extinguisher fixed upon each corner of the room.

"This is where you will likely begin and end your day. Warm-up in the morning, and self-training in the evening." Preeta smiled as she pointed to a door with her thumb. "The lockers are just over there. Now, get into hero mode, chop chop! I want to see what the two of you can offer on the field."

***

There was a wide grin on Preeta's face when the boys were done showcasing what they could do. "Not bad! Not bad at all!" she said, clapping her hands in appreciation. "We will be working together just fine, I think."

"How about you show us what you've got?" Bakugou said, crossing his arms. He lifted an eyebrow at her challengingly. "Would like to see how *you* fare on the field."

Of course, Bakugou would do something abrasive at some point. Truthfully, however, Shouto would say he was expecting this side of Bakugou to show much earlier. Perhaps that was a testament to what a strange mood Bakugou has been in since this morning.

Luckily, Preeta didn't seem to take any offense in his tone. She just threw her head back and laughed boisterously. "Of course!" she said. She pulled her hair back and her nimble fingers secured the dark red locks in a tight bun. With her originally mid-back length hair tied up, Shouto could see an intriguing feature of her costume.

It was already fairly interesting when she first stepped out from the locker room, changed into her hero attire. Despite her extremely colourful casual outfits, her hero costume was entirely black. She wore black boots, a black jacket, a black pair of pants, and a black undershirt. The only thing that stood out at first were the big black bracelets that resembled Uraraka's. On her back was a metal fixture with six cylindrical tubes sticking out behind her, and behind those tubes was her bare brown skin.

Shouto found this all very curious. This costume must have been designed like this to serve a purpose… but what was it?

As though she read his mind, Preeta said, "How about a little quiz for you two?" She stabbed her hair with several more bobby pins. "Take a guess what my quirk is exactly."

Bakugou made no reaction and Shouto just nodded quietly.

Taking in a deep breath, Preeta swung her arms. Then, she spread them out and leapt to the air. There was a gust of hot air that pushed Shouto and Bakugou back slightly.

They straightened back up to see Preeta shooting upwards like a rocket. Her muscled arms swung forward to grab a slab of metal that hung from above. As soon as she made contact with it, the metal bent to fit the shape of her hands, glowing red-hot. With the momentum, she swung forward and landed with a roll on a lower hanging platform. The spot on the metal that she had grabbed had the marks of her fingers and no longer looked molten. Shouto's eyes widened in intrigue and Bakugou let out a short hum.

Preeta was on her feet before their focus could return to her and, when they did, she was bounding to the other end of the suspended platform. She grabbed a wooden block from a stack at the side and drew her hand back.

The wood burst into flames and she hurled it across the gym, and accurately into a pail of water. Nodding, she leapt off the platform and grabbed onto a pole near the walls and slid down quickly with one arm.

When she was on the floor again, she flashed the two a grin. "That's the gist of what I can do. My abilities are most practical in a real-life scenario to be honest. So," she folded her hands in front of her chest, "take a guess what my quirk is."

"It's heat-related," Shouto mumbled to himself.

"That's a given in my office."

Meanwhile, Bakugou narrowed his eyes. "Is…"

Shouto's eyes followed his gaze to the coated metal pole. He frowned. There were water droplets forming upon it. He took a step closer to it and placed his hand on the pole. "It's cold." Shouto's eyes widened. "Is it like mine?"

"No, not really. I can't just create fire and ice like you."

Bakugou grinned triumphantly. "So it's some heat transfer thing."

"Impressive," Preeta commended. "What else can you tell me about my quirk then?"

"It relies on contact?" Shouto suggested.

"Yes, and...?"

Shouto frowned in thought, as did Bakugou. Bakugou hazard a guess, "Do you store the heat in your body?"

"Nope," she said. "It's all stored in these babies." She tapped the cylindrical bracelets on her wrists against each other. "Insulate against the external climate but in direct contact with my skin."

Curious, Shouto asked, "But how did you shoot through the air?"

"Rapid gas expansion in the cylindrical structures on my back," Preeta explained.

Wide-eyed, Shouto nodded. Bakugou's air of skepticism was also lifted as he looked at Preeta in silent admiration.

"You two are pretty impressive, I must say," Preeta said. "UA really is UA, huh?"

“Preetaaa!” someone interrupted with a sing-song voice. A familiar blue-haired lady popped in.

Shouto was mildly surprised to find himself recognising her as Charlene from the elevator.

Looking towards the entrance, Preeta shouted back, "Yah?"

“Your darling is here!”

Preeta turned to goo as she laughed nervously. "Oh my god," she said. "I just– Well, you two–" She buried her face in her hands for a second as she let out a groan. "Just… stay here. I'll be right back." She made a beeline for the exit and stopped in her tracks right outside the gym. Her face broke into a smile. Preeta's hands were even more animated than before as she began to talk to a rather plump lady just beyond the entrance. The lady's back was towards them but Shouto could spot her handing a small tin box to Preeta, who smiled apologetically. It looked like a bento.

Shouto found his eyes sliding towards Bakugou. “What are they saying?” he asked as he peered towards Charlene.

“Harh? How the hell would I know?”

“Aren’t you always eavesdropping others’ conversations?”

Sighing, Bakugou shot him a glare. “Don’t say that as if I hear your stupid-ass conversations on purpose.”

“Do you not?” he teased.

Bakugou shoved him. “Die, asshole,” he said, rolling his eyes. The exasperated fondness did not escape Shouto's notice.

“Hey, hey,” Charlene interrupted. “I may not understand Japanese but I know fighting when I hear it.”

“Ah,” Shouto replied in English, as he raised his hand up in refutation. “It’s okay. That’s… um… just the way he usually is.”

Bakugou jabbed Shouto’s side harshly, drawing a yelp out of him. “You’re un-fucking-believable."

“Are your interns arguing already? On the first day?” the lady Preeta was speaking to said as she spun around to look at the commotion.

Shouto froze.

The skin of her face had a familiar leathery and discoloured quality to it. Her face was of a darker shade compared to the rest of her body, which was pale. And Shouto found his fingers tracing the scar on his own face.

Those were burn scars. But unlike his, it stretched over her entire face.

“They’re not fighting, they said,” Charlene replied, pulling Shouto back from his dazed state.

“I hope not." Preeta peered back into the gym. When it didn't seem like they were ready to murder each other, she said, "Love, do you want to meet the new interns?"

The scarred woman exclaimed, “Okay!" She walked swiftly into the gym in her high heels, Preeta following close behind. “I’m Kaiqi. Preeta’s girlfriend.”

Bakugou stepped in front of Shouto, hands nonchalantly in his pockets. “I’m Bakugou Katsuki. And he is Todoroki Shouto. We’re both from UA in Japan.”

"Nice to meet the both of you. I hope you'll have an amazing time in Singapore. Even though it's an internship, I think it'd be good to have some fun," she said.

Now that she was closer, Shouto could see the burn scars better now. Such as the way her smile was a little lopsided from the odd swelling in her face. She didn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes either.

The only burn victims Shouto knew were himself and his father. However, while both of their scars were on their face, neither of them had burns as severe as hers, and not over as large an area. He couldn't help but wonder: how did she get those burn scars?

Preeta’s face twisted as though her foot had been stepped on. At that, Kaiqi rested her hand on her girlfriend’s elbow and asked, “What did he say?”

That was when Shouto realised he had spoken aloud. He blinked in shock. Bakugou spun around, staring, and mouthed, "Idiot."

It looked like pulling teeth as Preeta translated what he said into English.

Shouto felt a surge of shame as he apologised for the question.

"It's fine," Kaiqi said, waving her hand. "I get asked about it quite often anyway. It was during a scuffle with a small-time criminal I was chasing after. He overloaded my quirk, which stores heat in my hair, and just caused it to catch fire."

"You're a hero?" Shouto asked.

Laughing, she said, "Used to be but not anymore. I've essentially lost my quirk." She pulled her bangs up to reveal that it was a wig.

His eyes widened. "Oh. I-I'm sorry."

"It's alright, really. You learn to live with things, right?" she said, directing a kind smile at Shouto. "It's been more than 10 years now so I'm fine!" She flexed her arm with a grin.

The dark look on Preeta's face, however, said otherwise. But Shouto dared not press this any further.

***

The rest of the day was taxing. Between figuring out their patrol route, struggling with names, and fumbling through hero equipment, Shouto was drained by the end of the day.

It really didn't help though that the mood had seemingly soured. Preeta wasn't as bright and bubbly as she was in the morning. That wasn't to say that she was gloomy because she still tried her best to ensure the atmosphere was never too heavy. But it was clear something was weighing upon her, and it obviously had to do with whatever happened during Kaiqi's quick visit.

That, however, wasn't the most frustrating part; it was Bakugou's sour mood. He was a little grumpy in the morning, and then it got better with time, even joking around in the gym. Yet, suddenly, he was brooding again, and Shouto hadn't a clue what he should do.

Even as the day ended and Preeta sent them back to the dormitories, Shouto still couldn't figure out what had gotten him in this mood or what he should do.

Discreetly, he slid his phone out of his pocket and texted the first person he could think of for help. He was waiting for a reply when the car pulled over.

"Alright! We're here!" Preeta said, smiling back at them. "Rest up. It's been a tiring day but we've got more to do tomorrow!"

Bakugou hummed in acknowledgement as he got out of the car.

"Thank you for today," Shouto said as he slid out after Bakugou.

"No problem!" Preeta returned. "Goodbye, kids!"

The two boys waved before closing the car door and watching it drive off. When Shouto turned around, Bakugou was already walking back into the dorm compounds.

Shouto was about to follow after when he felt a vibration in his pocket. He took a look at his phone.

Izuku: good morning!!! (Or evening?)

Izuku: but oh no that doesn't sound good :(

Izuku: i honestly think u should talk to kacchan properly

Izuku: leaving kacchan with his thoughts isnt exactly the best idea

Izuku: maybe talk to him

Shouto: … I think you're right

Izuku: (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Shouto nodded to himself. Izuku had experienced first-hand what it was like to deal with a Bakugou who has been left with his own negative thoughts for too long. So Shouto trusted his friend's advice on this topic. He was about to put his phone away when another message came in.

Izuku: its really nice that u r his boyfriend now! i think sometimes he forgets its okay to ask for help and that he doesnt need to deal with stuff alone. plus i can tell he listens to what u say

Izuku: love really changes a person hehe

Izuku: not in a bad way!!

It was as though a lead ball was launched straight at Shouto's stomach.

There was still the issue that he had to confess that he didn't reciprocate Bakugou's romantic love for him. The day had been so hectic and he had forgotten all about that.

And this conversation with Izuku drove home another problem: when he and Bakugou do break up, how would he explain to his family and Izuku that the relationship they had been overjoyed about not too long ago had just ended?

Shouto felt his lip begin to tremble. He wouldn't know how to face them to be honest. It seems like such a jerk move to have dated someone for more than half a year, only to tell them that he didn't feel any romantic love.

Wouldn't it have been much simpler if he had said that he didn't feel anything romantic for Bakugou from the start? Either they don't start dating or they enter the relationship knowing exactly what they were both in for. Not this… unstable form of a relationship.

What Bakugou needed was something firm he could lean on. Not this… mess of a person who fumbled around with his feelings like an idiot.

"Oi."

Shouto's head shot up to find red orbs staring into him.

"You coming?"

"Y-yeah," Shouto muttered, climbing the flight of stairs to the boyfriend whom he simultaneously wanted to embrace and tear himself away from.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #todobaku #bakutodo #todoroki shouta #bakugou katsuki #bktd #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #fanfic #my writing

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crystalwillow · 4 years ago

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What's your take on PB's customizable LIs?

I have a few thoughts, but, they’re more generalised and apply to bothe the customisable Li’s and the MC’s. And before we dive in I would like to just state that I’m okay with the customisable Li’s now, I can just see where there’s room for improvement.

1. I feel like we need more body inclusivity. And by that I mean having sprites of guys and gals that have a little chub, a rounder face. And they deserve to be desired the same way those with flat stomachs and 6 packs are.

2. I think we need more long hair options for modern male Li’s and MC’s. I hate the stigmatisation that men have short hair and women have long hair. The length of your hair doesn’t determine your gender so I’d like to see more hairstyles.

3. I’d like to have the option to add or take off facial hair and other accessories. Just like we did with a certain attending...

4. Styling options. I feel like we should be able to mix and match more outfits. Say we like the skirt of one outfit and know it would be cute with the top from another.

5. This is something I hope for in a future book. But a book where the male character (could be MC or the main male Li) wears a skirt/dress etc. would be really cool. There’s such a toxic stigmatism there that it makes the man “feminine” if he wears certain things. Well no it doesn’t because guess who was the first gender to wear heels? That’s right! Men! (Please refer to the image below)

6. And it seems as though it was the same or a similar situation with skirts...

Anyway, I’m getting carried away with myself here. As I said at the start of my answer, I like the customisable Li’s. I don’t have anything to pick on style wise, I feel like PB can do a good job at matching a Li’s personality with their style and have different faces that fit well. It’s just i can see the improvements that need to be made. Hense my earlier points plus the fact I wish they would do dark skinned Asian characters because not every Asian is light skinned. Skin bleaching is already such a horrible thing that happens in Asian countries because the darker skinned people over there want to been seen as beautiful and desirable as they are in the media, but a lot of Asian representation im the media is of light skinned Asian’s. Which is sad. Because you are beautiful, loved, gorgeous, desirable and so much more just as you are. You shouldn’t have to go to the lengths of bleachig your skin just to be able to get into a relationship or feel wanted in that way.

I think we also need more diversity on the accent (?) African, Caribbean, French, German, Austrian, New Zealand etc. ... I feel like everyone we encounter is either American, British or Spanish/Mexican. I would love for a love interest to speak with a different accent.

I could go on for days about the areas I can see improvements for so I’m going to cut this off here before it turns into a literal TED Talk 😂😂 But, thank you for your question lovely. I hope I answered it okay for you 😅

#choices stories you play #playchoices #pixelberry studios #choices ask #asked and answered #thanks for the ask!

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rivenroad · 3 years ago

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I’m not really into raiding any more, I just kinda want to level a bunch of characters and chill in any game that I play, but comparing the endgame systems in XIV and WoW is interesting regardless. I can’t comment on what any of the previous WoW expansions were like because obviously I didn’t play during any of them, but for Shadowlands... There are a lot of different systems for gearing up and so on, augmenting yourself beyond just plain gear upgrades. Covenants are a really cool idea, I like being able to gain additional skills and enhancements through conduits or even gear sets and trinkets. XIV is very stable and predictable by comparison. Gear is always very straightforward and there’s no real customisation of classes, in fact we’ve moved steadily further and further away from that as time goes by. I understand the reasoning for it, and I still find the game really fun regardless but it would be nice to see more variation.

On the other hand, I feel like WoW might actually be taking these things too far at the moment. There is so much to do when you hit level 60 to gear yourself for raids, which is fine on a single character, but I can tell that if I wanted to raid on multiple classes, keeping up with everything across multiple alts would be... way too much work. I commend the game for how alt-friendly it is overall but I think I’m more than satisfied to be way behind, just farm old content when I massively out-level it.

This is a point I’ve noticed across the game in general: it doesn’t feel like it respects your time. Sure, MMOs always have an endless amount of stuff to do but I can really feel in WoW the kind of game design that is made to keep you playing constantly, not just every day but for a long time in each session, because there are always things coming up to spend your time on. It’s very good at setting up a trap that you sink hours into. Sometimes, this is actually very fun and enjoyable, but it’s also very, very easy to get burned out on it. As I just mentioned this is a problem with all kinds of MMOs but... I always think of Yoshi-P saying that he would even encourage people to unsub and take a break between major patches and come back when there’s new stuff to do, rather than force people to keep playing constantly without a break, and I think the attitude to this is reflected in each game’s design. WoW seems to keep constantly trying to throw more and more stuff at you to do and as a result I tend to find it more tiring over a certain span of time than I would if I were playing XIV instead.

And often, it tends to result in there being a huge amount of Stuff going on that I don’t want to do because it’s so much effort for so little reward. A lot of the current end-game has potential but ultimately falls flat for me for this reason. The Maw is just not enjoyable in the slightest. I get that they wanted to push the feeling of it being a challenging environment but it’s just fucking dark and grim and I don’t get much satisfaction from it at all. It’s not a surprise that I enjoy the concept of Torghast because I love PotD and they are very similar, but I don’t really want to do it because it’s just so gloomy and dark and not even in a fun way like Revendreth. If they’d done something like, a tower with different floors based on the different zones of Shadowlands, as is the theme with most other stuff in the expansion, that would have been really cool, but the gameplay is not good enough for me to carry how monotonous it is in theme. I’m aware that BfA was extremely unpopular due to its endgame and made a lot of people quit for good, but funnily enough it’s actually one of my favourites because I enjoy the environments, the stories and the experience of simply being in the zones a lot. It really makes a difference.

I have been vicariously living through watching raiders stream, since a world first race happened to be going on at the moment, and I was really curious about it how it differs from XIV raiding. I gotta admit, even though I don’t really raid any more regardless, I don’t think I’d enjoy WoW raiding. WoW has some really cool dungeons and raids - I may not have seen much of the current ones, but I’ve gone through a lot of older ones from all the past expansions and there’s some really fun and impressive design. I can see exactly why it became so popular and why people hold particular expansions in high regard because of it. The more recent ones seem more linear, but even they still feel interesting and open and have a variety of mechanics in them that sets them apart from the now very rigid overall structure of XIV’s dungeons and raids.

However, I enjoy the way XIV’s encounters work more, because it’s basically like learning a dance in a set sequence. It’s very satisfying and fun to learn and execute correctly. I’m also not keen on the ubiquitous use of add-ons for WoW’s raiding, which for both games is a complicated issue I don’t really want to delve into right here, but in short a soft requirement to modify the base game UI and have an add-on that tells you exactly what to do all the time is not my thing.

I also find the faster pace of WoW’s combat kind of overwhelming. Just a personal preference thing, I guess - it’s fun to execute when you know what you’re doing, for sure, and maybe if I was playing it as a 16-year-old or something which is the kind of age many people seem to have started playing the game at I would feel differently... or maybe if I wasn’t so used to XIV, I don’t know. But the pace of it is too much for me.

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catchweightstudio · 4 years ago

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The big Conscript accessibility + options update!

Hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. I’ve been hard at work getting a new demo revision ready for mid-October.

MAIN MENU

Here’s a look at the initial main menu for Conscript. I find it quite atmospheric and have found myself just keeping it on in the background while I work. The last menu for the previous demo was quite rushed so I’m happy with how this one has turned out.

ACCESSIBILITY

Recently, the topic of accessibility has been on my mind. As a developer it’s easy to find yourself resisting against a player’s ability to alter your “vision” of the game. I can understand this sentiment - as I’m somebody who holds my project VERY close to my heart. This topic was inspired by a conversation on the Conscript Discord where I was asked how accessible the game would be. My immediate internal reaction to any questions relating to adding a new unplanned feature is generally “isn’t my damn Trello board already big enough??”

After some reflection and research however, this is a silly way to look at things. Yes, any new feature takes hours or even days to implement - but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. For example, as a developer I end up putting in many extra days and weeks trying to get the game on different online storefronts or even other consoles, all in hopes of trying to expose the game to more people but I would never question this time as anything but time well spent.

Accessibility is the same thing really. There are extra hours of work I can put in to ensure that MORE people can be exposed to the game and enjoy it. So that’s what I’ve been doing, even if it has meant putting extra work hours in every day for the past few weeks.

PAUSE

First, you can now visit the options menu at any time without having to go through the inventory. A tiny change, but it was requested quite a few times.

VISUAL OPTIONS

Something I wanted to solve was text readability. There are now a variety of settings to adjust different properties of the text in-game.

You can now choose between HD and pixelated fonts. Even though low-res pixel font is coherent with the general art style, it is not the most legible typeface to read. Now you can have the option to “HD-ify” the font, which makes for greater readability.

For those with dyslexia who may have trouble discerning between serif style characters, you can now opt for a simple sans-serif font style. This can also be toggled between HD or pixelated.

Text colour can also be changed between white, yellow, green, red or blue.

This is applied to all standard text throughout the game!

And finally, the background opacity of the standard textbox can be customised from 0 to 100. If you are struggling to discern between the text and background it may be easier to have this on 100 so the text stands more.

I feel like all these extra little options will solve the text readability issue for the majority of players. Any colour specific elements will also have non-colour related visual indicators. They are small changes but hopefully go a long way for some.

There are also some extra little visual accessibility options for those who may have trouble focusing on certain elements of the game’s artstyle. You can now zoom the camera in up close to our protagonist, and also alter cursor, crosshair and interaction icon properties such as size and colour. HUD opacity can also be lowered, but it is set to 100 by default.

The screen blood that appears when you take damage can also be turned off now, as can any bright flashes in the game for those who are photosensitive or epileptic. For those who don’t enjoy screenshake, that can be turned off too.

It hasn’t been implemented yet, but I am working on having brightness and contrast settings too in the future. Even though the game won’t feature much voice acting, I am going to work on having subtitles available not just for voices but also for any kind of hard-to-read environmental text.

AUDIO OPTIONS

Nothing too fancy, but you can now adjust SFX, music and master volume all independently. This required a rework of the audio system so it was actually quite challenging, but happy to have it completed and working.

BLOOD TOGGLE

Blood and gore effects can now be toned down substantially, although it will be left on by default. The reason I decided to include this is because there may be some who are more interested in exploring the history of Conscript without the intense and bloody combat . In my opinion, Conscript is equal parts a history game and a survival horror game, so there will be cross pollination between those two demographics. Most of you will probably leave this on but it’s nice to have it there anyway.

DIFFICULTY MODES

During the Kickstarter campaign, we reached the stretch goal for two difficulty modes but I am going to include some extra ones in the final game. There will now be six difficulty modes in total.

Training (Assist Mode)

This mode will feature checkpoints, increased health capacity and player damage will be increased.

Recruit / Soldier / Veteran

These three will be the standard easy/normal/hard sort of thing from every other game in existence. Enemy damage and item quantity variables will be the main differences between these modes.

War Hero

This will feature more “realistic” elements from modes like Resident Evil Remake’s “Real Survival” difficulty. Item boxes will be unlinked from each other and limited saves will be mandatory. It will contain the same gameplay modifiers as Veteran mode.

Grognard (French for “old soldier”)

This ultimate challenge will include all the features of War Hero mode but with PERMADEATH. Yep, you heard right.

LIMITED SAVE TOGGLE

Limited saving has always been controversial. The reason I opted for this old-school survival horror mechanic is because it introduces a risk/reward style of gameplay where players generally try and squeeze in one extra “task” before the next save, leading to extra hard decisions being made during gameplay. Understandably, not everyone wants to deal with this though. Despite this being the intended way to play, it will an optional toggle at the start of any Conscript playthrough. Note that on the very hardest difficulties it will be mandatory however.

Here’s a look at the game parameter screen before you start a new save:

You will also have the ability to toggle off Kickstarter backer easter eggs if you so wish.

CONTROL SETTINGS

Any action that requires you to hold a button - such as aiming and running - can now be toggled with one button press instead.

Also, I’m going to implement both a quick melee and quick heal feature so that you don’t have to go into the inventory just to break some barrels or use a healing item.

You can also turn off mouse support to play the game with a keyboard only.

CONTROLLER REMAPPING

Full control remapping is now available for both keyboard and gamepad control schemes. This was a complicated and time consuming thing for me to implement but I’m glad to finally have it available.

Hang on a second… did the inventory just change?

BAG STYLES

By far the biggest feature in Conscript history....

This was a fun little extra I decided to make when I was testing out the flexibility of the new options menu. Admittedly it has nothing to do with accessibility, but it is related to the options menu! You can now change the colour of the inventory background. You will be spending a lot of time there so I figured it would be cool to give some small level of customization... there may even be some extra unlockable styles in the full game! Any ideas for patterns or designs?

So that’s what I’ve been working on the past two weeks! What do you think? I know menu heavy things aren't exactly the most marketable features, but I felt it was important to share. Are there any other reasonably in-scope accessibility options you all would like to see?

#gamedev #indiedev #accessibility #indiegame #survivalhorror #horrorgame #conscript

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mary-nesbitt-larking · 5 years ago

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Why I moved from Choices to Lovestruck (and you should too)

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me well that I was a BIG Choices stan. I ran three Choices blogs (begging-for-kamilah, ask-kamilah sayeed and ask-priya-lacroix) for a long time, fulfilling fanfiction requests and interacting with many wonderful people. During my time in the fandom, I made some beautiful friends and created brilliant memories that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Unfortunately, as time passed, I started to notice a decline in the quality of content that Pixelberry were providing, and after a lot of hesitation, I decided to remove the app and leave the fandom. I was very lucky in that a very good friend introduced me to a different app with a similar style. Lovestruck was something that I’d heard about on the grapevine but had no idea what it was or if it could possibly compare to the fun that Choices had given me over the years. After a lot of resisting and stubborn behaviour on my part, I finally gave it a chance and have never looked back since. Here are just some of the many reasons why you should too:

There are no forced love interests in Lovestruck. That’s right. You read that correctly. You choose your love interest BEFORE you start the story so there will never be any frustrating interactions with characters that you’re not interested in. Remember in Bloodbound Book 2 when you go to Paris with Adrian and Jax (leaving the only two female love interests at home) and you were forced to hold hands with one of them (until Pixelberry later apologised and altered the scene)? There is definitely none of that to worry about in Lovestruck. The person you’re interested in is the only character who will show interest in you, and the entire story will be centred around him/her/them.

Speaking of which, it’s time to talk about the fantastic level of LGBTQ representation in Lovestruck. Non binary characters aren’t just side characters. They actually have their own routes, as well as a huge array of adorable side characters. There are also demisexual characters, asexuals and of course, plenty of lesbians and bisexuals. Voltage (creators of Lovestruck) also very proudly celebrate pride month by releasing incredible LGBTQ content.

On the topic of representation, something that has to be applauded is the racial and religious representation in Lovestruck. You can romance Jewish characters, black characters, south American characters, Asian characters and I’m sure the list goes on. Choices fans might be sad to find that you don’t have the option to customise any love interests or MCs, but I think that this is a blessing.

Something that I find very cool about Lovestruck is that there are different stories for every love interest. For example, if you romance one person from a certain book, romancing another from the same book will get you a completely different story with a totally different route. It’s a stark contrast to Choices, in which Pixelberry- quite literally- copy and paste the same lines for all the available love interests.

And along the same lines of copying and pasting, it’s very refreshing to see that Lovestruck doesn’t reuse faces. I always found it terribly off putting when you’d be playing a Choices book and a love interest from another book would be your waiter or waitress.

One brilliant thing about Lovestruck is the way that they present the MC. Every MC has their own unique personality and backstory. Whilst that does mean “less choice”, it’s really refreshing having an MC with parents. With siblings. With a job. A life. An actual story outside their love interest. There’s one MC who discusses her experiences as a woman of colour, and I think that’s exceptionally important for the player.

On a superficial note, Lovestruck has GORGEOUS art. I did love the art in Choices too, but I don’t think it has anything on Lovestruck. The backgrounds are stunning, but it’s the characters who are gorgeous. Not to mention, we get absolutely beautiful CGs. This is something Choices sorely lacks. In the later books, the LIs and MCs even blink and move which I find gives it a more engaging feel. There are also MANY more facial expressions for every character in Lovestruck. Blushing faces, a neutral face, smiles, angry faces, sad faces, shocked faces, anxious faces... It’s not just the same standard five like in Choices.

Another superficial- but very cool aspect- of Lovestruck is that almost every outfit is 100% free. The MCs and LIs will change their clothes whenever appropriate and you don’t have to pay a penny. The only time when outfits will ever cost any in-game currency is if it will mean you gain a CG out of it, but in my personal experience, I’ve only ever seen this being the case for two books.

This is just a side note but something I love in Lovestruck is that adorable animals aren’t paywalled. They’re just there. Your love interest might have a cat- or a bear in one book- and you don’t have to pay to love up on them. They’re just another part of the story.

Still on the more superficial side of things is the music. I will totally admit, I LOVE the music in Choices and have a fair bit of it downloaded to my iTunes. But for anyone hesitant to move over to Lovestruck for the sake of the music, don’t panic! The music is just as brilliant, just as catchy and just as heartfelt.

One of the things that always stressed me about Choices was the in-game currency. Diamonds were expensive and unfortunately, every single chapter would involve multiple diamond scenes. In many books, the diamond scenes were so important to the story that to go without them would mean that huge chunks of plot were missed. The amazing thing about Lovestruck is that if you choose not to do the premium scenes (the currency is hearts) then it does absolutely nothing to the story whatsoever. The heart scenes are purely there to give you a little bonus but whether you choose to do them or not, nothing about the story or your relationship with your love interest will change.

And whilst we’re on the topic of heart scenes, it’s important to note that whilst Choices usually has 3-4 diamond scenes PER chapter, heart scenes only pop up around 9 out of every 12 chapters, and you will VERY rarely find anything that costs more than 30 hearts.

The system to earn these hearts is totally different to Choices. Whilst you could watch ads to earn diamonds a few times per day, plus playing chapters would gain you two diamonds, Lovestruck gives you “quests”. Every few hours, the quests refresh and all you have to do is read a certain amount of chapters of a specified love interest, and you get the hearts. It’s a win/win situation because the more you play, the more you get.

Not to mention, every day you get to earn a puzzle piece and when you complete a puzzle, you win a certain amount of hearts. It seems tedious at first but they add up fast!

And it’s not just hearts you earn, either! In Choices, you would use “keys” to read a chapter. In Lovestruck, you use “tickets”. Some quests mean that if you read a certain amount of chapters, you get given 2, 3 or even 5 tickets so you can just keep on reading!

Since I’ve addressed some of the Lovestruck mechanics, I just want to talk about how much I love that you can fast forward, rewind, autoplay (it plays hands free and there are three different speeds to choose from) and even choose the chapter you’d like to play. This is amazingly refreshing because when it comes to Choices, you have to start the entire book again if you want to get to a specific chapter, AND you have to click through it fast because you can’t fast forward.

Oh, and when you’ve played a chapter, a little heart symbol will appear next to it if it has a premium scene so you know whether or not you need to save your hearts!

I really want to address the smut scenes. I know that sounds like another more superficial topic but I think it’s pretty important. I think there’s something more “mature” about Lovestruck and smut. The sex scenes are tasteful yet somehow sexier. They’re not rushed at all. And Voltage aren’t afraid to include actual kinky moments.

More importantly, though, is that Lovestruck addresses virginity and handles it incredibly tastefully. It’s done in a realistic fashion, too. Sometimes, characters don’t really feel like having sex with their partner. Sometimes they want to at first but then feel anxiety. Sometimes they’re scared. Sometimes they want to stop half way through. Sometimes they have trouble reaching orgasm. All very real scenarios that are addressed tactfully and beautifully. The virgins (be they the MC or LI) in Lovestruck are realistic. They don’t just dive into bed. It’s a process. There’s fear along with excitement. There are moments of panic. It’s not just smut for the sake of smut. It deals with adult situations, something that I always thought Choices struggled with.

Actually, it’s not just sex. These character get anxiety, depression and genuine mental health problems. And it’s dealt with so perfectly, yet so realistically. They’re anxious when it’s appropriate.

I don’t want to bash Choices too badly, as I don’t think Pixelberry are an evil company, but some of the things they did- particularly towards the end- were unforgivable.

Hana Lee’s infertility and the way that it was merely glossed over was appalling. As someone who is also infertile, I can tell you that you don’t just “get over it”, even if your partner is carrying your child.

I’ll also never quite get over the fact that when you’re almost raped in Red Carpet Diaries 2, you have to pay 30 diamonds if you want someone to stay and comfort you. As a sexual abuse victim, I think that’s grotesque, and a glorification of rape.

I can safely say, there is NOTHING like that in Lovestruck, and just to reiterate, all the important plot points are FREE.

To bring this mood back up a little bit, something I think is really cute is that when you’re choosing the love interest you’d like to romance in Lovestruck, you can see sweet little facts about them, including their birthdays, their height and their personality traits.

Sometimes the stories cross over, too, and love interests will appear in each other’s stories. And the cute thing is, if you’re romancing an LGBTQ character, it will be canonical that whichever love interest crosses over will be in an LGBTQ relationship with MC.

There are also fun little side stories that you can play, and to really make things interesting, you can often play the same book but from the point of view of your love interest! These do usually cost hearts but not many at all. 15 hearts can get you things like 4 chapters, for example!

I just want to talk about how wonderful Voltage are as a company, too. You can tell this isn’t about money for them. They just want the best for their players and it shows. They are often asking the community what they want and bringing out polls, and they will always let us have our say.

There are also no false promises of stories being “in the works”. If a story is abandoned, they won’t lie about it. There are no “politician’s answers” from them. Just pure transparency.

The last thing I want to talk about is the writing style. Lovestruck’s style is worlds apart from Choices. To describe it for you, Choices feels like playing a fun app with cool stories. Lovestruck feels like reading a book, immersing yourself in a novel. And the style is unbeatable.

TLDR; it’s time to cut the apron strings and move on from Choices. Lovestruck awaits! Tagging @lovestruckvoltage because I love you and appreciate you.

#choices stories you play #playchoices #lovestruck #voltage inc #lovestruckvoltage

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lingthusiasm · 5 years ago

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Transcript Episode 34: Emoji are Gesture Because Internet

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 34: Emoji are Gesture Because Internet. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 34 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: And I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about emoji and gesture. But first, my book about internet linguistics is coming out in less than a week from when this episode goes up.

Lauren: Yay! It will be out July the 23rd, 2019. It’s called Because Internet and it’s available in all major booksellers – including an audiobook which you read yourself, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Yes, I did. So, if you like hearing me talk here, you can now listen to me read the book. Or you can read the book in the conventional way with the words in front of your eyes – is also a thing you can do. I’m really excited to get to share this book with you – to finally get to hear what people think about it. It is a really good thing to get it when it first comes out, because if it has any likelihood of hitting any sort of bestseller list, pre-orders and sales in the first week are what’s gonna make that happen. If you can help us make more people pay attention to the book by getting it on any sort of lists, that would be super cool.

Lauren: This episode is a bit of a taster for the chapter on emoji that’s in the book.

Gretchen: Which you were kinda involved with, Lauren.

Lauren: Which is why we’ve chosen this chapter. But there are lots of other topics covered in the book. I’ve been lucky enough to read – you’ll hear how that went in the episode – I’ve read this book. I’m very excited for it. Other topics include things like how we use punctuation to signal tone of voice, the language of memes, and how the first social network you joined influences your internet life. That chapter I felt very seen.

Gretchen: I’ve had a lot of people contact me about that chapter. Because Internet – there are links in the description. There are links on lingthusiasm.com. You can get it. You should get it. I’m really excited to get to talk about it more with people once they get to read it.

Lauren: In other exciting Lingthusiasm news, we’ve added a new tier to our Patreon.

Gretchen: Several people have asked us, very nicely of you, "Is there a way we can support the podcast even more than the $5.00 a month for the bonus episodes?" Now, there is. If you sign up for the Ling-phabet tier – fancifully named ling portmanteau names – for $15.00 a month, we will assign you your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet based on our super scientific personality quiz. We had a lot of fun coming up with this quiz. Then we will add your name or name of choice and symbol to our Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame on the website where it will live as long as you wanna stay at that tier.

Lauren: We are also happy for you to nominate your favourite character of the IPA. We’re happy to put any name within reason. This also makes a great gift for the lingthusiast in your life.

Gretchen: Yes! We’re really excited to provide a way for people who have a bit more money at their disposal to help support the rest of the episodes that remain free for anybody to access. So, think of this as a way of becoming a generous person to support the free episodes which remain free. We really wanna keep them accessible to everybody. Plus, in celebration of both the new tier and the new book, anybody who joins this new tier by August 15th, 2019, will get a book plate – which is a little sticker that you can put in the front of your book for Because Internet – which is signed by me with your name customised on it. We’ll have a form you can fill out. You will get a sticker in the mail that you can put on your copy of Because Internet. The two things go together. Or I guess you could put it on your laptop or something if you wanted to.

Lauren: You could just put it in another book and be like, “Gretchen has signed this book for me.” Stickers are a very flexible thing. Having access to our bonus episodes means that you will be able to access our latest one, which is all about words that only your family use.

Gretchen: We had a lot of fun talking about familects and hearing about all of your familects in the familect bonus episode. So, it’s a lot of a fun. And, of course, if you join at the higher tier, you still get access to the bonus episodes. You don’t lose your access to anything. It’s just an extra thing that you can do if you wanna be super supportive.

Lauren: We’ll also be recording an upcoming Patreon bonus episode that takes you behind the scenes on Because Internet.

Gretchen: You can read the book when it comes out and then ask us your questions about internet linguistics or what it’s like to write a book. Tweet them to us @Lingthusiasm or email us at [email protected]. Both of those are also on the website if you don’t have a pen on you right now – also by August 15th. Same deadline for both. We will answer them in an upcoming bonus episode. You get to hear all about what it was like to write a book about the fast-moving pace of the internet.

Lauren: So much book excitement. So much Patreon excitement. It’s all happening. I’m so excited.

Gretchen: Everything is coming up internet.

[Music]

Gretchen: The reason we wanted to do a very special Lingthusiasm gesture-slash-Because Internet emoji episode is because this is the part in Because Internet where Lauren actually makes a cameo.

Lauren: Yay!

Gretchen: The story goes I was working on the emoji chapter, and I was kind of stuck, and I was complaining about this to Lauren, and Lauren very kindly said, “Well, why don’t you send it to me, and I’ll read and see if I have any comments?”

Lauren: I was really just wanting to read it because I was just really excited to see how the book’s shaping up. It was entirely selfish.

Gretchen: Well, it seemed very altruistic of you. I remember I had this list of gestures and emoji. I had like “thumbs up” and “nodding” and “winking” and “rolling eyes” and “playing a tiny violin in false sympathy” and “high five” and “giving the middle finger” and “shrugging” and all of these things.

Lauren: I highlight this list and I’m like, “These are all very nice examples, Gretchen, but we have a name for these in the gesture literature. We refer to these as 'emblematic gestures.' We can talk about what they are." But I kinda just made this passing comment and sent it back to you.

Gretchen: You sent a bunch of other comments, and they were nice, but this was the one that really stuck with me because you were something like, “You know we have a name for this in the gesture literature, right?” And I was like, “I didn’t know there was a name for these.” I was just making a list of gestures that came to mind because when I was talking about emoji, I like gesture as an analogy to what emoji are doing because gestures and words work in concert with each other. You don’t generally just do one or the other. You often do both. I thought this made a lot of sense in terms of how people integrate emoji with the words that they’re typing. But I was just making a list of gestures that occurred to me. It turns out that what I was also doing without realising it was making a list of gestures that had common names in English because that’s the kind of gesture that’s easy to write down in words.

Lauren: There’s good reason that you did that, because these types of gestures tend to be useable with speech, but they can have a meaning on their own. They’re very culturally specific. For example, not everyone uses the “thumbs up” to mean “good.”

Gretchen: Right. Because in some cultures it means “Sit on this.” It’s like the middle finger. It’s a sexual kind of insult.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Yeah. My list didn’t include stuff like the gesture that you make if you’re trying to give someone directions or if you’re trying to say, “Here’s how I got from my home to this café. I went down this street, and then I went up that street, and then I went over here.” Those kinds of gestures that don’t have conventional names are harder to describe on the page – harder to describe in an audio podcast – but those are another kind of gesture that I wasn’t really thinking about at all.

Lauren: We talk about those gestures that kind of illustrate the speech that we make in our gesture episode. That’s why we did the gesture episode as a video.

Gretchen: Yeah. We did the gesture episode entirely because you were like, “Oh, well, there’s a name for this.” And I was like, “Yeah. Oh, wait. Okay.” So, I’m sitting there, kind of googling/Wikipedia-ing like, “What is this?” I think you were asleep in Melbourne at this point. I’m like, “Lauren, send me all the things. I wanna know more about gesture!”

Lauren: If there’s one thing I like more than talking to you about linguistics it’s the chance to get to talk about gesture, which is one of my all-time favourite subjects. I think I sent you basically my entire undergrad language and gesture course reading materials.

Gretchen: I definitely recall a syllabus – yeah. You’ve taught courses about gesture, and I was like, “Oh, my god. Send me all the things!” So, you sent me – you know.

Lauren: I sent you all the things. So much enthusiasm.

Gretchen: All the things. I started falling down this gesture rabbit hole, which was really cool to me because as a linguist I’m used to being able to have a conversation with someone and just kind of be sitting there being like, “Yeah, well, what you’re saying is fairly interesting, but what I’m actually doing right now is analysing your vowels,” which is a thing that we’ve all had happen to us, have we not? But also, in this case, I could be like, “Oh, well, I’m analysing your vowels and I’m also analysing your gesture.” I’m at a café trying to keep working on the book, and I’m just looking around at everybody and analysing all of their gestures.

Lauren: I always love this point when people start studying gesture, and they’re like, “I just can’t stop paying attention to how people gesture.” And I’m like, “Yeah. It’s pretty great.”

Gretchen: Study linguistics – we’ll render you completely incapable of an ordinary conversation! But, yeah, it was really exciting. That was what kind of gave me – like, “Oh! We should actually do a gesture episode.” And then, Lauren, you were like, “But we have a podcast. This is why I have not suggested that we do a gesture episode.” So, we ended up doing the video gesture episode because I got so into gesture, and it was like, “We’re gonna need to figure out how to do a video.” The thing that made me really excited about learning about gesture was that it actually explains a lot about how we use emoji because there’s a distinction in the gesture between gestures that have conventional names and gestures that don’t. We can see this kind of pop up in emoji as well.

Lauren: I think this is because emoji are really – humans want to gesture. I mean, we all gesture. People who have been blind since birth will gesture even though they’ve never seen other people do it. It’s a really strong compulsion in human communication. I think emoji are allowing us to kind of return having a body to online communication. We always think of typing in chat as really disembodied. But having options like emoji allows us to start expressing those things that we want to express in conversation again.

Gretchen: A lot of times, when we think about having a body online, we think about kind of a video game character-picker body, where you get the hair colour, and you get the clothes, and you have the haircut, and the eye colour, and these kinds of things, and what the figure looks like. But in actual fact, what people are doing with emoji is a lot more about what you’re doing with your body rather than necessarily having a character picker, like an avatar, that kind of follows you around and does all the stuff. You do that in video games, but it’s less common for conversations. So, it was that interesting, like, “What role do gestures actually have in conversation?”

Lauren: We have a few decades' worth of literature of people trying to unpack this and come up with descriptions of the different functions that gesture have. We’ve returned to the existing literature in this area that’s been researching this problem for years and looking at emoji in the context of that.

Gretchen: Yeah. It was really exciting to be like, “Actually, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.” There’s this distinction that seems to work pretty well that people may have been subconsciously porting into emoji. The thing that made me really excited about – so the gestures that have names are called “emblem gestures.” Emblem gestures are things like “thumbs up,” “middle finger,” “peace sign,” and things like that. Emblem gestures have these really narrow constraints for how you have to produce them in order for it to be the right thing. My favourite Canadian-Australian cross-cultural example of this is like when I make the peace sign, I can make the peace sign with my palm facing out away from me or I can make it with the palm facing towards me, and it’s the same peace sign. It’s fine.

Lauren: No, don’t do that! Don’t come to Australia or New Zealand or the UK and do that.

Gretchen: Why not, Lauren?

Lauren: Because that meaning is basically the same for us as the middle finger is. It’s an offensive gesture.

Gretchen: That’s like “up yours,” right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: One of my favourite stories about this is apparently Winston Churchill, during WWII – so during WWII, they had this “V for victory” gesture, which basically looked like the peace sign. But Winston Churchill would often do it backwards. And there’s historic records of people telling him, “Winston, man, come on. You gotta stop flipping off the Nazis.” And he’s like “No, no, no. I’m gonna keep doing this.”

Lauren: Well, no. Winston said, “Oh! Oh, golly. Goodness me. I am a posh man. I didn’t know that it had that meaning –"

Gretchen: And then he kept doing it though!

Lauren: In public. Then, in private, he was like, “Yeah, I totally knew it.”

Gretchen: So, gestures have really narrow standards of form. You have to produce a peace sign in the exact right way, or it might mean "eff off". But these ones that have names and standards of form, they also add an extra layer of meaning to what you’re saying. If you say something like “Good job!” with a thumbs up versus “Good job!” with the middle finger or “Good job!” with rolling eyes or a winking or something like this, those all have –

Lauren: They all mean very different things.

Gretchen: Some of those are sarcastic. Some of those are an innuendo.

Lauren: As you noticed in that list, there’s a lot of – because emblematic gestures are so good at conveying a lot of meaning in a single visual form, a lot of them have been made into emoji. But there are other emoji that also have a similar property that aren’t gestures physically.

Gretchen: Yeah. Exactly. Some of the emoji that became popular in the early stages of emoji – things like the eggplant and the peach and the smiling pile of poo – also seem to act in a sort of emblem sort of way. If you say, “Good job!” and then the eggplant emoji or like, “Good job!” and then the smiling pile of poo...

Lauren: Or "Good job!" and the flame – just to give a nice positive spin.

Gretchen: Yeah. Or the flame to make it positive – that adds this extra layer of meaning to “Good job!” in the same way that adding a thumbs up emoji or a middle finger emoji adds this extra layer of meaning.

Lauren: But I think, importantly, just in the same way that gestures have clear cultural differences between different languages or different communities, those emblem uses of emoji also have really specific communities of use.

Gretchen: Yeah. Exactly. Not everyone knows that people use the eggplant as an innuendo. If you don’t know that, then you might use it in its literal sense and be like, “Oh, I’m making eggplant parmesan. Here’s an eggplant.”

Lauren: No, Dad, don’t!

Gretchen: If you search for, I think it’s “eggplant parmesan”/“eggplant emoji” on Twitter, you see a lot of younger people complaining about their parents.

Lauren: But also you can’t use a corn or a cucumber to have the same phallic meaning.

Gretchen: Yeah. Even though the shape is pretty much the same. But they’re not substitutable in the same sort of way, just like you can’t do – the “peace sign” backwards and the “peace sign” forwards are not the same thing.

Lauren: These emblematic ones – basically, because you can name them, they’re easier to spot. But there are other uses of emoji.

Gretchen: Yeah. One of the things that I liked about this is that some of the emblems like the dancing lady in the red dress, which is just – officially, it’s just a dancer. For a while, a bunch of the different platforms had it encoded as different types of dancers. Google had this yellow blob with a rose in its mouth, and I think Microsoft had this disco guy, and Apple had this lady in a red dress. People got really confused when they thought they were sending a lady in the red dress and then their friend got the blob or the disco guy because they had these narrow ranges of meaning. Yet, yeah, these non-emblem-like gestures – they have a lot more room for variation, right?

Lauren: Yep. For example, if I’m wishing you “happy birthday” in a text message, I might send a few emoji to illustrate that. I might send a balloon and a birthday cake and the little party popper, because it’s very celebratory. But I could just as easily send celebratory popper, birthday cake, champagne bottle – because why not?

Gretchen: Or the wrapped gift or some of these other ones. The birthday cakes, for example, they’re also really different across different platforms. They have different numbers of candles. Some of them are chocolate. Some of them are vanilla. Some of them are strawberry. They’re quite different across different platforms. But this doesn’t seem to bother people in the same sort of way. Sending someone a birthday cake emoji doesn’t really have any additional meaning beyond just “This is a birthday cake.” If you know what a birthday cake is, you can interpret a birthday cake emoji. It doesn’t have the additional meaning the way the eggplant or the fire or the dancing girl in the red dress has.

Lauren: And you don’t have to send them in any particular order. You don’t even have to include those emoji. You could just send “Happy Birthday!” like a boring monster.

Gretchen: I really over analyse my birthday messages now because we’ve been doing so much analysis of what people use for birthday emoji. But, yeah, you can send a whole bunch of different things and they’re all equally birthday-like, which is not true of words. If I say “merry birthday,” I am clearly making a joke.

Lauren: Hmm. That is not the standard greeting.

Gretchen: Or if I say, “Birthday happy,” you’re like, “Excuse me, what? Sorry?”

Lauren: You’re not speaking English as she is known.

Gretchen: Exactly. What I liked about this is that these unnamed gestures – so the gestures you use to be like, “Okay, here’s the path that I took to get here,” or, “Here’s the motion that it takes to catch a frisbee or to throw a ball of this particular size and weight” and something like this – those gestures also have a large degree of latitude for variation.

Lauren: Yeah. We see a lot of variation in how people use gestures. Whether it is present or not is not necessarily – it’s not obligatory in the same way that syntax is, for example.

Gretchen: Yeah. There’s all this variation, and you don’t have as many of the communication errors and problems when you’re doing these kinds of gestures that just illustrate what’s actually going on. If I send you “happy birthday” and I put a birthday cake or I put the gift or I put a balloon, that doesn’t change the meaning the way sending you “happy birthday” with thumbs up versus “happy birthday [middle finger]" ... that really changes the meaning there.

Lauren: Thanks. Great.

Gretchen: “Happy birthday – you annoying person.” “Happy birthday – I hate you.” Or like “Happy birthday [rolled eyes]”? Like “Whoa! Excuse me?” “Happy freaking birthday, all right?” So, yeah, it was really exciting to get to kind of realise that this distinction between, okay, there are some emoji that seem to cast a different light on the meanings of the words that they’re associated with. And there’s also some gestures that cast a different light on the meanings of the words they’re associated with. And there are some emoji that don’t seem to change the meaning of the words involved and also gestures that don’t seem to change the meaning of the words involved. They’re just kind of the supplementary illustration. The fact that these distinctions seem to exist for both types was really fascinating to me. Then, I had to be like, “Lauren, can I write you into my book because I figured this out thanks to you. I can’t take credit for inventing this. Is it weird if I make you a character in my book?”

Lauren: I mean, it’s kind of delightful. It’s kind of an interesting extension of our podcast life. But the more I thought about this in relation to the data that you already had in the chapter, the more I was like, “Actually, I think we need to do a really systematic analysis of the parallels between gesture and speech, and emoji and written language.” I was like, “Well, how about we actually write an academic paper together that really drills down into the literature on gesture to see just how far we can take this?”

Gretchen: This actually solved a problem for me too because, I mean, I love a good taxonomy.

Lauren: Who doesn’t?

Gretchen: Who doesn’t love a good taxonomy? Here’s a way of carving up the world into different pieces that illuminate some of the differences between different situations. It’s fascinating. But the other thing about a taxonomy is that it does give names to a whole bunch of different areas. This book is a pop linguistics book. It is a fun book. Like, fun is in the definition. It needs to be fun to read. The problem with saying, “Okay, here’s this academic taxonomy where we have six different names for different categories of gestures” – I was restricting myself deliberately to one or two new words per chapter because that’s about as much as a person can handle.

Lauren: And I was like, “No, all the terminology.”

Gretchen: “We need all the terminology!” And I was like, “Well, this is great. I agree with this terminology. But I just can’t use it all in a book that’s aimed at the general public because most people do not have your decade-plus of experience in gesture studies, Lauren. I really hate to break it to you.”

Lauren: One day.

Gretchen: Writing an academic article meant that I could say, “Okay, here’s the kind of basic distinction, and if you wanna see more with all the terminology in place, go check out this academic article that we wrote together.”

Lauren: One thing I really like about the article is it allowed us to revisit some data that you already had and come up with an analysis of how that fits into this emoji-as-gesture paradigm.

Gretchen: It let me solve some of the questions and things that I had been wondering about from this earlier data. One of the things that was really interesting that came up – so I did a study with a smartphone keyboard app looking at millions of anonymised examples of how real people use emoji in aggregate. One of the things that we came across really early on in this data – so I got them to extract examples of the most common sequences of two, three, and four emoji, because this is a common thing that people do for a large data set of words is they’ll say one of the most common sequences of two, three, and four words. So, let’s try to do the same thing with emoji and see what happens because, obviously, we couldn’t read individual people’s messages. This is a way of kind of extracting from that and figuring out what the common sequences are. The most common sequence of emoji overall is [tears of joy] [tears of joy].

Lauren: Right. Okay.

Gretchen: The second most common sequence is [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy].

Lauren: Okay. Hmm...

Gretchen: Do you wanna guess what the third most common sequence is?

Lauren: I’m going for, hmm, [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy]?

Gretchen: Yeah. Four of them.

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: Once you get to number four, I think it was two kiss faces. So, it did change eventually. We did eventually run out of [tears of joy].

Lauren: Just moved on to more repeating sequences.

Gretchen: Turned out, we looked at the Top 200 sequences of two, and then Top 200 of three, and Top 200 of four, and about half of all of these lists was just straight up repetition of the exact same emoji. This was really interesting to us because a lot of the emoji narratives and media at that point were really excited about the idea of telling stories with emoji of like, “Okay, if you have a [person] and then a [tongue sticking out] and then a [hamburger], maybe that means a person is eating a hamburger,” or something like that. But that’s not what people were doing. People were doing the exact same emoji a whole bunch of times in a row.

Lauren: I remember when you did that paper because I was like, “Huh. That’s some really nifty data.” When it came to thinking about this in relation to gesture, there’s nothing that really fits that with words. If you look at the top combinations of words, it’s like “and the,” “I am” – there’s no repetition. You might occasionally get a “very very,” especially in formal conversation. But that’s definitely further down than [tears of joy] [tears of joy]. If you look at gesture, you often get these repeating movements in gesture, often like an up/down – if you ever watch the news without the sound on, you’ll just see politicians doing these up and down repeating gestures.

Gretchen: These very, like, podium gestures.

Lauren: They’re known in the gesture literature as “beat gestures” because that movement is so rhythmic and observable.

Gretchen: Yeah. When I found out about beat gestures, I was like, “Wait. Okay.” First of all, it’s one of the most common gesture styles. You can observe anybody doing this. When I was in a café trying to write the book, I’d look over and be like, “Oh, that person’s doing beat gestures.” You don’t often see people doing emblems in the wild. For all they’re very exciting, they’re fairly rare. Occasionally, someone will flip someone off or “thumbs up” or something like that, but it’s fairly rare. Whereas, you look over to any conversation, you’re gonna see beats. I was like, “Wait a second. Maybe people are writing [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy] because that’s what they would do in gesture.”

Lauren: It makes sense in terms of the function because a beat gesture is often analysed as being used to emphasise the particular words that they occur with. The more [tears of joy] I send you, the funnier I find something. Or the more heart eyes emojis I send you, the more I completely love something.

Gretchen: Or the more plain heart emoji – even though that’s not a face – the more you love and support something or you wanna indicate your enjoyment of something. All this repetition, even when they aren’t specifically hands or faces – even though they often are hands or faces – seems to be serving a similar kind of emphatic function as the fact that we repeat our gestures so much. It was really exciting to be able to drill down into all of these different things that gesture can do and be like “Oh, wait, yeah, emoji can do that too.” Even though the stories that I had been like, “Oh, well, that’s not real emoji use because that’s just this stunt thing that people do,” it was like “Wait a second. But people do that with gestures too.” People play games like charades where they act stuff out in gestures. It’s just that it’s not your typical type of gesture. But it’s definitely one sub-type of gesture.

Lauren: It’s definitely in a playful context.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s a similar sort of playful context that people try to retell “Les Misérables” or something in emoji. It’s the same thing as trying to get people to guess, “Oh, this is Les Mis” in gesture as well. It’s often treated as a sort of guessing game where the fun thing is can you guess what the other person is trying to depict here. Yeah. So, I wrote you into this book. We started working on this academic article. By the magic of how publishing works, the academic article and the book are coming out pretty much the same time.

Lauren: I’m very excited for both.

Gretchen: You’re also writing up a piece in The Conversation, which is kind of a more accessible summary of the academic articles. There are lots of different ways to engage with this if this is something that you wanna dive into more.

Lauren: I’m really excited that it’s our first full, academic publication together.

Gretchen: Me too! Because we’ve been collaborating on this podcast for so long and yet there’s an academic collaboration too, which makes us just collaborators on more levels.

Lauren: This is further knitting into my day job.

Gretchen: I think the most awkward part about this though was, when I wrote you into the book – and I had your permission to do that – and I was writing this all along and then I was like, “Wait a second. I’m gonna have to refer to Lauren by her last name because that’s how I refer to everybody else in the book.” I’ll say their full name the first time, and then in subsequent references I just say their last name. I can’t be like, “Oh, well, this person, just because we’re friends, I’m gonna call her by her first name. That’s gonna be weird.” But it’s also like I don’t call you, “Gawne.”

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. It’s gonna be so weird reading that.

Gretchen: Yeah. You’re in the index.

Lauren: Oh, I’m super excited about being in the index.

Gretchen: I’m really excited about everything in that index. There’s two different kinds of sparkle punctuation in the index. Oh, my god. The index makes me wanna read this book, even though I wrote the book myself.

Lauren: Of course, we’ve been talking a lot about emoji but even though obviously I think it’s the most exciting and important chapter in the whole book for selfish reasons...

Gretchen: You’re a little bit biased here.

Lauren: I’m a little bit biased and I don’t want people to think that the whole book is just about emoji because there’s obviously a myriad of other great language-y things that exist on the internet. This has really just been a taster of Chapter 5 of the book, which is the emoji chapter.

Gretchen: Chapter 5. I have had people say, “Gretchen, is your book gonna tell me what this particular emoji means?” It is not an emoji dictionary of “Here are all the emoji and their cultural connotations,” because that’s still something that’s changing. That’s still something that’s in flux. Your best bet is still to go somewhere like Emojipedia or dictionary.com, which is providing specific definitions and cultural notes about particular emoji. If you want kind of a bigger story that’s less like “Here’s a list” and more like “Here’s a bigger-picture view at how emoji actually fit into conversation, and why we’re using them, and why they caught on so quickly, and are they still gonna be around in 50 years or 100 years,” that’s what’s in the book – plus all this other stuff about internet linguistics like punctuation and memes.

Lauren: The book is out 23rd of July 2019. For many of you listening to this now, it is out in the wild. You can read. I am excited for you to have this in your future.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet and is available at all good booksellers.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. And I’m in Because Internet as “Gawne,” apparently. To listen to bonus episodes and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include animals, a very cool linguistics job about figuring out how to pronounce all the names on the radio, and direction words like “right” “left” “north” “south” in different languages. If you support us at our new $15 Ling-phabet tier, we will assign you your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet and we will recognise your support on our website. Plus, anyone who joins this tier by August 15 will get a very special signed book plate from Gretchen to add to your copy of Because Internet.

Gretchen: Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm or Because Internet to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our music is “Ancient Cities” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #because internet #because internet book #lingthusiasm #transcripts #episode 34 #emoji #internet language #internet linguistics #gesture #gesture studies #emojis #emoticons

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garageprojectmotorcycles · 5 years ago

Text

Royal Enfield Continental GT650 review / ride report.

When was the last time you read a bad bike review in a magazine or online? Was it the debacle that was the Bimota V Due? Even Braap’s are given a positive spin by reviewers even though they had 5 product recalls in less than a year. So many motorcycle reviews these day are either a reworded press release or a well written advertisement. Now I reckon there are two reasons for that; the sceptic in me says if the magazines don’t write a positive review, then the advertising dollars stop flowing. There are plenty of examples of that car companies having a dummy spit when they don’t win car of the year so it no doubt happens in the motorcycle world too. The other reason is that it’s 2019, motorcycles have been manufactured for a long time, manufacturers have got the basics down pat. This is were Royal Enfield excels, the basics.

I wasn’t planning on writing a review but my bike was getting serviced and it wasn’t going to be ready in time for the Perth Café Racer Run to the Hills ride, so I needed a suitable replacement. As my review of the Benelli Leoncino got an amazing 36 likes (amazing because that’s 34 more than I thought it would get once Ric and I liked it) and a couple of sales, I thought Ric might be open to the idea of handing me the keys to something else. Scanning the showroom floor at MotoMax, a Ducati Sport Classic, Triumph Thruxton, Rickman Honda and a cluster of classics caught my eye. Ric handed me the keys to a mildly customised Continental GT650. Ah well, beggars can’t be choosers.

We both had conditions, Ric’s was simple “Bring it back with a full tank you tight arse bastard and if you drop it, you bu….”. I’m not sure what he said as Peter was saying “look, look” while pointing at a lady across the road who was jogging past. It was far more interesting watching the world go up and down. My condition was the same as always, I wasn’t going to write a positive review just because I got a bike for the weekend. If the bike is shit, then I’ll say so but you don’t have to post the review. So here it is….hang on…before we get to the review, lets get some background.

Royal Enfield sold 32,000 motorcycles in 2017 and not many of those were sold outside of India. They now sometimes sell double that in one month with their top selling model the Classic 350 outselling all their other models combined. It sometimes cracks the monthly top 10 list of number of bikes sold in India. Royal Enfield sells more Classic 350’s in one month than all the road bikes sold in Australia from all brands in one year. Unfathomable figures when you consider the company was at the brink of bankruptcy in 1991.

When Sid Lal’s dad bought the company, nothing really changed until 2010 when the Indian Tech economy boomed and hipsters finally had some disposable cash. Sales picked up and then skyrocketed the company to the fastest growing motorcycle manufacturer in the world. The success of the brand in recent times is partly because they upgraded (think EFI, ABS etc) their Bullet/Classic line to make it relevant while keeping the looks of the old motorcycle. Boomers started realising their bucket lists were getting longer and they were running out of time to cross stuff off. Learners around the world are often restricted to motorcycles that take more time to get to 100km/h than it does for a politician to answer question in parliament and Royal Enfields are perfect for that market.

The increase in sales meant Sid (the CEO at the time) had cash burning a hole in his pocket so off he went to the UK and bought Harris Performance which I remember reading about in the UK magazines for making custom frames for GP bikes. They’ve developed the chassis for all the new models including the Continental GT Café Racer, the Himalayan adventure bike and the recent 650 twins. The Café Racer handled as good as it looked but it didn’t get many hearts racing and only sold in low numbers, hence it was discontinued after a couple of years. The Himalayan has been known to get a few hearts racing which has more to do with them being ridden where they are named after. A devoted fan base will see the Himalayan continue to be developed for many years. The real game changer for Royal Enfield though, are the two 650 twins, the Interceptor and the Continental GT 650. Royal Enfield are exporting more than they are selling domestically and dealers in Oz are selling far more twins than they are of the 350cc and 500cc singles.

I’m not a brand snob so will any bike I can get the keys to. My list of motorcycle brands I’d like to put my bum on is topped, like most peoples, by the Italian exotics such as Bimota, MV Agusta etc. For me, Royal Enfield sits a long way down that list; I’m no fan boy who gets excited when a manufacturer changes the colour and releases it as a 2020 model. I lived in the world of sportsbikes and track days so Royal Enfields never registered on my radar; I always felt they were a little weird looking. Sort of like a girlfriend I had in the 90’s that looked like a cockeyed Nicole Kidman without the Botox. Like my girlfriend, if you ride a Royal Enfield a few times you start appreciate the attraction and you end up falling in love. Since my first Himalayan motorcycle adventure in 2013, I have ridden all of the Royal Enfield models in Australia and in the harshest of conditions that the Himalayas can throw at you and while I still wouldn’t consider myself a fan boy, I would say I was an advocaat. Damn, it’s 11pm and I’m out of beer and wishing I had a liqueur cabinet. Is there an Uber drinks?

The Conti I got had a few subtle changes made to it. The tank hand been replaced with the rounder tank from an interceptor, bar end mirrors had been fitted and the bike had been encouraged to find its voice with some aftermarket reverse cones mufflers fitted. The bar end mirrors worked perfectly, completely vibration free all through the rev range however the bike was a little quiet for my liking. You could certainly hear it under throttle and it let out pleasing pops and crackles on a decline but I’d like a deeper, louder sound. More Tom Jones than George Michael. If you’ve got standard pipes on your bike and you’re bored with it and possibly considering a change of bike, put an aftermarket set of pipes on and you’ll fall in love again. The Interceptor tank looked great on the Conti and helped take my eyes off what I consider to be the ugliest seat in the market. For some reason, Royal Enfield in Australia decided that the dual seat would be standard and the solo seat with a cowling that is used for the promo pics, and is standard in most of the 50 other countries that it is sold in would be option for Australia. I know looks are subjective but the transformation that the single seat makes on this bike is amazing and I wonder why more people aren’t swapping them over when it is such a cheap option. Maybe it’s just me.

I am trying to squeeze myself into my daughters Katy Perry T-Shirt when Andy arrives early on his Ducati Sport Classic. With no time for Small Talk, it was time to Roar into Leederville to meet the others. We took the back roads before getting onto the freeway and this is the Conti’s playground. With narrow 100/18’s on the front and 130/18’s on the back, the bike flicks left and right really quickly. On familiar roads, I found myself turning in too quickly and having to readjust my line which the bike did without drama. Later on in the day when the speeds picked up a little and the mercury wanted to blow its load, the front end felt squirmish when going over the bitumen that is poured into the cracks of the road. No one else felt it so again, maybe it was just me.

Our group heading to the start point of the ride consisted of a Sport Classic with Zard pipes, a Thruxton with Staintunes, a V7 Guzzi with Lanfranconis, a Honda CB1100 with an aftermarket 4 into 1 and a W650 with open pipes. It was amazing listening to all the different sounds as we lined up at the Christmas trees, sometimes known as traffic lights by boring people. The Sport Classic consistently got the jump on the rest of at the lights but the rest of us all had a turn at coming second without any clear next fastest. The Conti is styled as a Café Racer of old but it is no race bike with ligths like they were in the old days. Sid Lal himself says “…we (Royal Enfield motorcycles) aren’t going much faster than 100 miles an hour. If someone wants a quicker motorbike, go elsewhere.” During the week, the media reported that a car was hooning through the tunnel at the outrageous speed of 140km/h. The bar had been set low so there was simply no need to crack the ton in the tunnel. Absolutely no need. By my calcs, I reckon 170+ is possible but as I never break the speed limits I’ll never find out.

Riding along the Tonkin, I rolled the throttle on and off, looking for flat spots but couldn’t find any, it just smoothly accelerates all the way to the redline in a very linear fashion. The 5 speed box has perfectly spaced gear ratios and I rarely looked for a 6th like I constantly do on my W650. We joined the rest of the riders and took off along the escarpment as the pace crept up through the hills. The bike was in its element, enjoying being thrown around and asking for more. I worked my way to the front of the pack and when there was a break in the traffic I gave it what it wanted and took off. On these sort of roads, I neither needed or wanted anymore power, I just enjoyed rolling the throttle on and rolling it off coming into a corner, letting the engine compression slow me down with only a slight dab on the rear brake when needed. The Pirelli Phantoms had more than enough grip and never troubled the ABS system. I considered putting the Phantoms on my bike but baulked at the price so Royal Enfield aren’t skimping on quality to ensure they stay at the $9990 price point.

After a cool down and a group photo, we headed to lunch at Parkerville and to pay our respects to Kevin the kookaburra who had his head ripped off recently by a complete and utter wanker. As we hit the road again, I found my right hand feeling a bit tingly which is a little unusual. My bike has thicker grips so maybe the thinner grips on the Conti passed on the vibes or maybe I’m just old and the years of abuse I’ve given my right hand is coming back to bite me. The suspension soaked up the bumpy roads but my bum was starting to feel a bit numb. The seat looks flat but is actually slightly rounded which was giving me numb bum…which would have come in handy when it also got years of abuse in a previous life. These are the only two faults with the Conti GT that I could find, both of which wouldn’t stop me buying one as I’d change the hideous seat and put thicker grips on anyway. Everything else was perfect; the horn is louder than my cars, the clocks are easy to read, clutch and brake lever action is effortless, the gearbox is ridiculously smooth, riding position is spot on.

At under 10k, the only bike that is comparable to the Conti is its stablemate the Interceptor. The visually challenged Harley 750 is being run out a similar price, Suzuki threw a bikini fairing on its SV650 and called it café racer and is watching them gather dust on the showroom. The Benelli Leoncino and the oddly styled Husqvarna Svartpilen are similar prices but I doubt the circles in the Venn diagram of people interested in these three bikes would overlap.

For $13,000, the W800 from Kawasaki is another option but I’d rather have the Conti and spend the difference on customising it. The only other option is to buy a Triumph Street Twin at $16,000 and then throw some money at it to make it a café racer. Buying a bike that 100’s of other people have got and keeping it standard, doesn’t make any sense to me. If I had Triumph money to spend and the option was to have stock a Street Twin or a one of a kind Continental GT with a big bore kit, killer paint job, custom seat and a custom exhaust then it’s a no brainer. I’m in the minority though as most riders are happy with buying a good looking bike and leaving it alone. The Continental GT can be enjoyed as is but also makes a very smart choice as base for a custom motorcycle.

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