#since most players are just trying to afk for money since there's nothing else to do

[the-aviary-system]

Mood. We've had to stop playing games like this because we'd get unhealthily addicted to "number go up"

Like we'd get a withdrawal like effect, we'd get anxious about missing out on potential number going up if we didn't have whatever idle game we were obsessing over running in the background of our computer 24/7. Doing schoolwork? Keep it in the background and tab in like every 5 minutes to check in on it and buy upgrades. Planning D&D? Same thing.

Other games that use the "number go up" formula often got greedy with their players and kept trying to exploit their addiction to make them spend money, they made it more and more grindy until it was impossible for free-to-play people like us to keep up. (We didn't have a job, so no consistent money, so that's a reason why we were FTP. I dunno if we would've fallen into the trap of spending tons of money on games like these if we had a consistent income)

After getting disillusioned with our latest "number go up" simulator, I decided to try cookie clicker because I heard it wasn't pay to win. Yeah, I used an autoclicker too. And CC was pretty neat and all, it wasn't exploitative, which I appreciate- it was a grindy game in its purest state, grinding for the sake of grinding, gaining numbers for the hell of it, instead of trying to make money off of players- but since it wasn't actively trying to exploit us with FOMO it let us stop and think, and we realized we don't even enjoy these kinds of games that have taken up hours and hours of our lives.

So we made a rule for ourselves. No more of these games. From now on, we only play games if we're actually enjoying them, not just playing it out of obligation to make the number go higher. And it was really hard to stop playing since we got that same kind of withdrawal effect, the little itch in the back of the head that "I could be more productive right now, if I just had one of those games open in the background while I write I would be more productive" but we had to just fight that.

Anyway, that's not to say nobody should play these games. I'm not writing this to shame anyone for playing them, I'm not trying to sound preachy and hope that it doesn't come off that way- this comic just reminded me of our experience with these types of games and I felt like talking about it since we were addicted to these kinds of games for a good while. Some people will definitely be able to handle the addicting nature of these games better than we can. Some people genuinely enjoy the grind because it lets them just turn off their brain for a little while or not have to focus too much on something. Just be mindful to not let it become an addiction, is all.

So yeah that's the story of how we had an addiction to really grindy idle games

-Emyr (he/it)

[diovstheworld]

La Squadra and What Kind of Genshin Impact Player They Are

i don’t know why i made this or put so much effort into this or why i even thought about this omg anyway this is the result of my shower thoughts and severe genshin impact brain rot lmao

୨ ╭ ୨୧ ✦ ︶꒷꒦・⎯⎯・⎯⎯・₊ˎ✧๑

Formaggio:

introduced them all to the game

doesn’t really have a set main that he uses but he does use zhongli in most of his team compositions

has good character builds and normally does like 100-200k with his dps character

carries the team when they co-op together

actually understands artifacts and what stats are good and what each character needs

is probably the only one that actually knows what’s going on

also always wins his 50/50s (and it pisses illuso and ghiaccio off so bad)

desperate to lose his 50/50 to qiqi someday so he can finally have all the characters

has definitely spent some money on this game for sure and probably has c6’d most of the characters lmao

Illuso:

only plays if formaggio co-ops with him (so formaggio can do everything for him)

probably mains ningguang or something. or maybe keqing or mona because he refuses to admit he’s angry he lost the 50/50 (he was pulling for raiden shogun) and calls her his favourite character

has pretty decent builds because formaggio helps him figure out what artifacts are good and bad and helps teach him what all the stats mean

even though illuso probably claims he knows what they all mean despite not having any understanding on crit rate and crit damage until formaggio explained it

lazy player in co-op. probably afk most of the time unless he’s physically beside another member playing the game with him and has no choice but to sit there and do something

still probably does nothing though. especially in boss fights and makes sure he’s locked out of a domain when he’s in someone else’s world

Ghiaccio:

cryo only team for sure

probably a ganyu or ayaka main

joins random people on co-op just to make fun of their character builds

even though his builds are probably worse

likes to think his builds are the best out of the whole team but they’re probably one of the worst

probably rage quits the spiral abyss whenever he loses a star

honestly is probably a menace to play with and none of the team want to co-op with him because he knows his anger will get the better of him when his character doesn’t crit

loses his 50/50s. always.

spent too much money on this game to count at this point (he just wanted to c6 his cryo characters! give him a break!)

he seems like the type of guy to use primogems to refresh his resin lmao (i would never omg that would hurt my soul)

Pesci:

is actually pretty good at the game!

at the start, everyone cheered him on when he hit 1k (and it probably annoyed ghiaccio so bad. why does pesci get the praise for hitting 1k when he’s just hit 50k!)

when he finally learned about artifacts, he got much better at the game

but he just plays for fun and doesn’t really care about his damage. as long as his characters are strong enough to clear the game content!

struggles with getting 36 stars on the abyss but he doesn’t mind

is really good with saving his primogems for characters he wants and hasn’t spent much money on the game at all

average luck on banners. normally gets jean when he does lose his 50/50 and has become a jean main

Prosciutto:

probably didn’t play at first but soon got bullied into it by the rest of the gang (and secretly he wanted to know what all the fuss was about)

he started by watching pesci and eventually downloaded it on his ipad

probably couldn’t get into the game at first but then somehow became good at it without even trying

ghiaccio hates this, especially since prosciutto doesn’t use artifact sets properly or even put them on characters that they’re useful for

i feel like he would be a zhongli main (old men in suits stick together)

doesn’t have specific roles for each character for his team. doesn’t even understand what that means. everyone does big damage or they’re off the team

doesn’t spend money on the game because he doesn’t care enough about it to spend on it but has definitely spent money on it here or there for pesci when he’s been sad he’s lost a 50/50

Risotto:

diluc main for sure. fishcl is also probably on his team

doesn’t understand builds and struggles to know what each character scales off of

googles for best builds etc (he doesn’t want to ask formaggio in case he laughs at him

average character builds, good enough to do all 12 floors of the spiral abyss (but not 36 star it)

i feel like he wouldn’t play the game that much so his resin would probably be wasted most of the time (which i feel like ghiaccio would hate lmao)

i feel like he wouldn’t really spend money on the game unless there was some character he really really REALLY liked and wanted

also probably gets really happy when he loses his 50/50 to diluc since he’s a diluc main

Melone:

i think he would definitely have an all female character team for sure lmao

maybe a yae miko main? or maybe a raiden shogun main

very good builds even though they may not be the most popular builds and he definitely gets some big numbers with those builds (his highest was 100k)

focuses on one character at a time

also knows what characters he wants and saves up for them. sometimes he’s lucky even to get some constellations for them (i feel like he would have c2 raiden shogun or something by accident)

spends a little money on the game but mainly on the welkin moon pack to help him save up more primogems for his favourite characters!

absolutely can 36 star the spiral abyss if he puts his mind to it. i feel like he would have some good tactics in completing the spiral abyss and doesn’t just button mash unlike ghiaccio

Sorbet and Gelato:

i feel like they either have a joint account or if they don’t, they only ever play together in co-op and don’t really play alone

i also feel like they would be fairly good at the game. or if they had a joint account, one would be really good and the other just makes the best of what’s on the account

[ruzhansky]

i pray this will never end, i have my heart open wide

This report is not going to cover my teams, spreads and so on, as it was in 2015. I even don’t know if I should call it a ‘report’, I just want to slop down some thoughts about 2017. Have a nice read.

Why did I return to vgc? I DONT KNOW. As you might remember, I was a tryharder in 2015, but Nats loss and Autumn Series event loss completely broke me. 2016 season wasn’t a thing I’d like to try out (especially with the 2015 wounds) and I got some serious mental health problems in 2016. New pokemon game was a thing that could possibly make my days a bit brighter, and yea, I liked the game, the tapus, the ultra beasts and I became curious about the new format. The first russian tournament was announced to be held in late December, but I was busy with exams prep and haven’t even completed the main story. Though the tournament was tempting. I tested my first ideas on PS which included Instruct spam xd, but Nihilego with proper support showed a real potential at our early days of metagame. I could make it to the tournament (MSS Q1, wow Russia got midseasons...) and somehow won it. It’s like WHATTT how could i... but still. This thing lit something inside me and I decided to give that season a chance.

this is a very bad and old drawing of my mss q1 team xd sorry

January brought the first meta shift, and I started struggling with the team I had. I accidentally joined a random coversation on twitter and then I texted PephanVGC something like hey, did you remember we wanted to talk about teams. And he was very nice to me right from the start, he helped me out with the team and then we started to chat about everything. About friends, life, our past, loneliness and other troubles, and I thought I’ve found a real soulmate. We started to chat every day, but some days ago we were complete strangers to each other. This is so great.

Pephan shared a team with me I instantly fell in love with. It was Winter, so yeah Hail was cool to use, and that was the warmest winter I have :3 though Arcanines already were everywhere, and I removed Life Orb from his Koko to make it Electrium Z Koko AND IT BECAME MY MASCOT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON (i thought so before specs has come to mind...)  Also I played the same team with Pephan at Melbourne Challenge, and I got paired with him on r2... I lost in a close set and got broken so much, but he still helped me a lot with that and taught me how to treat losses less painfully. I love Pephan.

February IC poster with @Elveman yeah we had fun once

Then I built an AFK team too but with fucked item choices (firium arcanine just why), but I also had Scarf Porygon-Z and it was amazing to use. 

I brought Hail team to St Peter (yeah I travelled to St Petersburg) and Moscow PCs, got 1st and 2nd, AFK PZ team - to MSS Q2 AND I WON AGAIN. I was wondering why my enemies rivals didn’t visit our events, but ok, it was not my problem. Especially when our 2016 nats champion became my main enemy.

This was my season flow. I traveled, I played, I was studying at university and it was my graduation year, I had a job and tried to combine it with studying and pokemon, sometimes it affected my results. I was invited to represent Pokemon at Hinode 2017, the huge annual Japanese event in Moscow, with my main rival, famous russian pokemon community moderator and some TCG guys. It was definitely a nice experience. I got money from that just because I told people how amazing pokemon is, I teached them how to battle and showed that there’s much more than Pokemon Go. Yes, I don’t like Go. All pokemon players don’t like Go here.

b-but they’re so young!!! pic from Hinode.

Well, I thought season should have something else besides MSS and PCs, and hell yes, 8 Russian Special Events at 8 different cities were announced in May. Moar travelling! We(my rival, me and our tcg frens) decided to go to St Peter (again), Perm, Astrakhan and Ufa. Someone decided to go to all 8 SE because he wanted to.

The big-big drama started at our community but I don’t wanna share it here.

I graduated, traveled and played, and since my rival missed 2 Specials due to his own graduation and some other issues, my invite made a bit more real. Wait. THE DREAM OF MAKING WORLDS BECAME REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I still needed to put a lot ot work into it. Top 1 vgc gets paid invite, I was 1st, but tcg guy with a good amount of vgc points was second (because he always played vgc after tcg at special events). I thought he will play TCG after all and he won’t interfere with my road to worlds, but I found out that he is going to the city we’re all decided not to go, to grind some tcg AND vgc points. I got angry as a rival and made an impulsive decision to go to Irkutsk Special before Moscow Special. And I went. And got some important points. And pretty locked up my invite. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t sсream it out loud and dance in the shower before the official ceremony in the end of the season. I still had Moscow event.

Huh. Our system this year allowed travelling, and 8 Special Events were held in June and July. Because I had the will and money to travel, because I got a job and combined it with studying at university and somehow haven’t lost it, I visited 6 Special Events. People started to shittalk me. I am wallet warrior, I am noob, I am not worlds caliber, I bought an invite and so on. I even partly agree. At that point winning russian events isn’t close to winning or doing well at EU/US events. Not every SE at regions gave us a strong competition. I am deadly far from WolfeyNails/Markus/etc level. But even with that, should I leave my spot and act like a fucking noble idiot? ‘Oh I am bad and not worlds caliber, guess I should give up now’. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a game I love, a desire to travel, a job and money for that, so why not. If you don’t play and try, you can never ‘get good’. Sitting on a sofa and thinking ‘oh I will never be good enough so I better don’t play’ is a shitty mindset as well. And then twitter drama about ‘free worlds not being elitist’ happened, I’ve become so sick of that.  

Moscow Special. The long-awaited end of the season. Really long-awaited because I felt like every day had 48 hours. I didn’t have special plans for Moscow. I didn’t want win it out as hell, I just wanted everything to end. And it ended. 

the event

party after d1

i remember how to draw

the main scene

turn your main enemies to judges lol

#lifegoals

<3

Despite tons of personal shit happened to me this season, apparently I found myself a better person. i don’t know if this is growing up, I am already 21 and difference between 19 and 21 doesn’t seem too big, though my mind and attitude to some things have noticeably changed.

Got rid of fake elitism, as it was in my early days of competitive and my -most famous year- (2015). I can’t even imagine now but then I thought that competitive is the BEST part we can have about pokemon, and everyone else who likes casual playing or anime are absolute losers and can never be as cool as us. Your dream is completing dex? Breeding a shiny? You love some anime characters and wanna watch fuckin dummies’ anime forever? Uh, dream of becoming a xXxWORLDCHAMPIONxXx just disparages your shitty life goals. I laughed at people i don’t know in person and who didn’t do anything bad to me.

I don’t know what changed my mind in particular. It’s like I just woke up with thoughts “why should I do this”. I saw that people who are not only about competitive can have and reach their own pokemon dreams, they’re valuable too. They can travel not only for competitive. For love to the franchise all of us are fond of. I am sorry for being an asshole :)

Got some skills of loving myself. Yup, y’all might know it was a big problem. Tl,dr: I haven’t a reason to. My only ray of light was being successful enough in vgc and when I wasn’t it became a catastrophe. Bad runs at IC, losses at regionals stages, bad BS sessions? Oh god, i am so shitty, i hate myself - and it was the softest thing I said. It was a mix of hatred and sadness and absolutely wasn’t a great thing to feel.  It cost me a real depression in 2016 - though I didn’t even play that season, it hit me hard. I let it happen, I let myself think and treat the game that way. Now it is slightly better, and it also feels so new. It’s like WOAH you actually may not hate yourself for a loss? In 2015 I had my Nats spot already reserved, but every mediocre regionals stage run made me feel terrible. This season I was fighting for the Worlds (Worlds > Rus Nats) right from the start with no ‘safe options’, I was losing too, but I could cope with that. Though losing is always sad. The difference is in being frustrated and hating yourself for days or week and being frustrated and hating yourself for an evening, and then you’re saying something like enough, it won’t make me better, learning and practice will make me better, so let’s play tomorrow. Pephan helped me out a lot with this. Tons of love to Pephan.

Well, also I reached a dream. When I was 17, I watched 2013 Worlds with excitement, though I understood nothing because I was an OU child. New format? Big event? That was very unfamiliar but holy crap so breathtaking! Two guys were fighting for the honourable title with some beautiful teams and strategies, I felt their drive even when I was so far away. That blew my mind. I told myself that I want to visit Pokemon World Championships too. The long way of getting better started in 2013 and will never end. I won Russian VGC 2014 big event and got closer to my dream. I qualified to Russian National Championships in 2015 and almost made my dream real, finishing 2nd. I got broken and gave up because sometimes it was too hard to keep up. I remembered how I sang lyrics from “Wavin Flag”: ‘when I get older, I will be stronger’. The dream wasn’t dead.  And I tried again. And I did it. The most trivial thing I can say now is do not give up and fight for your dreams, but this is really true!

Every Trainer has a choice To listen to that voice inside. I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone I will carry on! Yeah, this dream will last forever, And this dream will never die, We will rise to meet the challenge every time. (Advanced Challenge) Yeah, this dream keeps us together, This shows that you and I Will be the best that the world's ever seen, Cause we always will follow this dream!

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Nothing can be perfect in one second. I still have issues with rivalry and with the community, though I wonder how we will do in 2018.

Thanks for reading and, finally I can say it, see you at Worlds!

Shout-outs to: PurpurVGC, Loui, PephanVGC, Elveman, Sergey, Annet Ilvers, unhealthy rivalry and Havkai for making this season amazing.