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coconox · 4 months ago

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my 2 cents on the state of whb

i've been contemplating about my thoughts on this game since i never really sat down and processed it, and a month of not playing the game and just keeping up with fandom content/official game news i think i can properly format my words (hopefully idk lol)

if you're looking for a specific section dw i'll properly format everything under the cut so you can just scroll till you find whatever you're looking for (also head's up it's insanely long i'm sorry but kinda not sorry i wanted to just put all my thoughts into one post rather than multiple)

SMALL INTRO

for some context on my experience, i have been playing this game everyday since launch/day 1, i was f2p up until i got juno's card, which i'll talk about later, but just know in advanced that juno was the only case where i've spent money. i uninstalled around the time the announcement was made in regards to no posting full stories of paid content, so almost month ago, and only reinstalled recently to grab certain items to add to the spreadsheet that i've been maintaining since november (aka a month after launch)

i've said it privately to a couple of close friends but i'll say it publicly here: imho, i think they released the game way too early even with the fact that they delayed launch 3 times.

i understand a handleful of bugs are from the fact that the public servers are significantly larger than test servers, but playing this game after the servers kinda stabilized feels like we are the test players, like we're constantly given rough drafts rather than the final copy.

the localization is rough to say the least, but i think i've been so used to it from other gachas that i've played that it didn't really ruin the experience for me,,, except when the text would switch to an entirely different language HJGFDHJGK

from visual bugs to gameplay bugs to voiceline bugs, there's been a lack of communication in terms of what has been fixed and what is still a wip. instead the players just have to "fuck around and find out" in terms of whether something has been fixed or not.

as i continue to state the issues with this game and its direction i'd like to put a disclaimer that i am by no means an expert in any of this stuff lol. i'm just a guy who nerds out over math, spreadsheets, and video games and everything i'll be saying is my personal opinion based on what i've seen/experienced.

THE ISSUE(S)

SOLOMON SEALS AND GACHA

i think the first mistake was them adding solomon seals in the first place. based on what packs in the past looked like, it looked like red keys were originally designed to be for debut characters, but instead they throw a curve ball and add ANOTHER gacha currency that was essentially p2w only up till some point early this year. this ultimately led to there being 2 standard banners, both of which essentially do the same thing except one doesn't have A/B/C-ranks. the fact that now even with realm of seraphim, in order for f2ps to have enough to guarantee with seals, they need to save for a year and a half. that is WAY too long for ONE character. this is of course worst case scenario of needing to hit pity, i'm aware you can get characters early but you should never always expect you'll get early in gacha games, i learned that the hard way during my idk how many years i've been playing gachas lol

i personally think that there's no winning across any of the gacha banners. there's no pity for either of the standards, and debut L/S-ranks have imo too high of a pity for what we're actually receiving per week. we essentially get more or less 1 pull per week in terms of red keys, yellow keys, and seals through dailies/weeklies alone, though of course that can vary cause of the rng key boxes, monthly login rewards, etc.

PANCAKES

there seems to be a general pattern that i've noticed of rather than confronting an issue directly they try to create something new in hoping that fixes the issue instead. an example of that would be the pancake shop.

the old pancake shop was fine as is, we could get a multi for relatively cheap price and get pie boxes everyday (albeit they're rng but pies are pies). what they could've done was add the L-ranks and skip tickets or whatever new thing they wanted to add into that old shop, adjusting the currency wherever necessary. yet instead they just remove the old system entirely and replace it for a new one that no one really asked for? while having the L-ranks in shop are nice, an entirely new system wasn't necessary to make that one relatively small addition. having A+-ranks and lower give gold and books was also not necessary, we have resource stages containing those 2 things and it's very accessible to everyone. what resources we are lacking in however are tears and pies, which are arguably more important than gold and books since those 2 currencies are the core to ascending/lvling characters and their skills.

PIES

i've emailed pb in the past in regards to if there will be other permanent methods for obtaining pies, and their response was holy coin portal and events. those two are NOT stable enough for pie income considering the prices of skills. if there's instances in unholy board where we need to level a character's skills, i'd expect there to be some sort of resource stage that would allow us to get pies so that we can easily obtain that skill level requirement.

"META" GAMEPLAY

i'll explain the quotes in a bit but i do want to put a disclaimer that whb was the first time i've experienced a full on tower defense style gameplay for gachas. i was already familiar with how it works kinda because of neural cloud even though the game as a whole is more like an auto-chess game of sorts, but some story gameplay had tower defense mechanisms and i learned a fair bit from playing that. personally i also haven't played arknights since i'm trying to cut down on the amount of gachas i play but i am aware of its playstyle through friends who like to attempt to drag me into playing it cause of certain characters that i might simp over (*cough flamebringer cough insider cough chongyue cough*)

disclaimer aside, trying to piece together what characters work and what don't genuinely hurts my brain. i put "meta" in quotes because realistically there's only 1: all L-rank light types, ideally at least 1 tank, maybe 1 healer (though a tank can act as both), rest be whatever dps you'd like really (preferably satan considering the fact he can be extremely reliable without his ultimate unlike a few characters). of course, everyone will have a different opinion on what they deem as meta, but that's the general idea i'd personally follow based on what kind of battles have been given to us, what characters are available, etc. the rest tbh are just "cope and seethe" for lack of a better term.

there's a huge type advantage with light and dark types, and i really wish they could buff the other elements more just show they have some spotlight too. i also wish there were more non-light L-ranks. as of making this post, out of the 23 L-rank characters there is currently only 1 non-light L-rank, and it's juno, an L-rank fire marksman.

the part that really "hurts" me the most (don't really know what other word to put here LOL) is the fact that this game is going in a very specific direction of just dps'ing through everything and hope you clear the stage before the enemies kill you.

this game has a huge and imbalanced ratio between dps characters and support characters regardless of element. the fact that we only have 5 healers (NOT including lucifer (victory) considering he's technically a marksman and the healing is from his artifact and not in his skills) and 8 tanks, whereas marksman and close-rangers have twice or thrice the amount is absurd. what pains me more is the fact that for tanks, if you don't have mammon, you're screwed. arguably the best non-mammon option players have that's accessible is bimet. valefor and eligos share the same kit with the fact that their downfall is the possibility that they could be instakilled the second they pop their ult. healers on the other hand are somewhat more lenient. if you don't have lucifer, marbas is your next best, then gamigin (marbas and gamigin can technically be placed interchangeably since their healing differs by 0.1%, it just depends on who you have), then morax, then maybe buer but he only heals 1 unit at a time rather than multiple but i digress. healers still have multiple and very reliable non-L-rank alternatives whilst tanks really only have 1. i really, really hope there's more support units in the future cause man this sucks.

NIGHTMARE PASS

spending $50-$70, on paper, is significantly better than spending ~$400 for a character, and that's really the only "good" thing about it 💀

$50-$70 may feel like nothing to some players, but to a majority, that is a portion of a cost towards food, groceries, rent, etc. basically, i'd assume a majority of people would prioritize surviving than watching pixels on a screen.

i understand at the end of the day pb is running a business, but for kings to be fully locked behind a paywall knowing for a fact that a majority of the player base are 1. casuals/f2ps and 2. are here for the kings is absurd. plus with the fact that typically nightmare pass characters aren't added to standard and aren't always 100% guaranteed to rerun in the future just puts the nail in the coffin for me.

i think it makes more sense for non-kings like juno to be in nightmare pass because it's just additional fun and silly content that arguably won't be tied to the main lore and whatnot, maybe referenced as a silly bit here or there but it'd be more of an easter egg than something important that you absolutely need to know.

personally i bought juno's pass because i love his design, kit, and voice. story was kinda meh for me personally but i really just cared more about the va and gameplay. gameplay-wise, he certainly does not disappoint as a gehenna support unit. but do i regret purchasing him? yes and no. oddly enough this was probably the first i've ever felt guilty in terms of buying something i wanted in a gacha game. yes i regret it in terms of i'm no longer really playing this game anymore, which is unfortunate considering i barely made it through half a year of this game's release. yet at the same time, no i don't regret it because he is a really fun unit. for example, when it's gabriel's rotation in realm of seraphim, juno's, leraye (nostalgia)'s, and leraye's ultimates absolutely DESTROY gabriel in a matter of like <10 or so seconds and it's so satisfying to see. i also just really like his va, scratches a very particular itch in my brain.

anyways before i get sidetracked over appreciating juno, the fundamental flaws of nightmare pass are essentially

you shouldn't need to buy both tiers to get the character. you should realistically need to buy the highest tier and by default it unlocks all previous tiers below it

ui is a bit confusing. i still don't get why f2ps have to unlock parts of nightmare pass that they can't even access/obtain. there should be a clear separation between what f2ps get, what advanced tier gets, and what premium tier gets.

it's too expensive. most bp's i know are ~$10 at the highest tier, though that's considering the fact that bp's i'm familiar with only give cosmetics rather than actual units

from what i've heard through the grapevine, beel (bath) is basically in the same formatting as all the other currently existing bath cards, which are all currently obtainable through gacha. beel has no reason to be in nightmare pass. it genuinely makes no sense as to why pb put him there aside from getting money and that in-turn alienates a majority of the fan base since we can't even view the prologue of card stories if they're a nightmare pass character.

when nightmare pass was first released during christmas, everything was in chaos. the fact that a nightmare pass character needed the other two limited gacha characters gameplay-wise is absurd (mind you, this was before we were given the chance to earn seals through weeklies). everything was too expensive, and rather than an enjoyable christmas event it felt like a "merry christmas, now give us money" kind of situation. i think nightmare pass should not be happening as frequent as it is now. the gap between gabriel and juno was perfectly fine (4 month gap btw), but for a nightmare pass to happen back to back on top of gacha events is too much for both f2ps and p2ws.

the point of buying packs, bp, anything that costs real money in a gacha game is so it makes your gameplay experience easier, paying shouldn't be the main component of your game. personally based on what i've experienced through playing gacha games you should theoretically be able to pull for almost every character on debut just by playing dailies/weeklies/events, yet here we get a bit over a multi per patch (this includes playing realm of seraphim).

DICTATING FANDOM INTERACTIONS

i wholeheartedly believe a fandom is what keeps a game alive. a hindrance to the fan base is a hindrance to the game, which can be seen with the aftermath of pb announcing that legal action will be taken if full stories of paid content are shared publicly. while i understand from a business standpoint that pb would want to enforce the "no sharing full story" thing for paid content since they want players to yk, buy the card, like i mentioned in the previous section, the majority of the player base just cannot afford it.

the people who posted full stories wanted to share to those who cannot afford it, some people may not want only tidbits of the story but rather the whole context, especially those who enjoy dissecting character lore but don't have the irl funds to fully experience it themselves. some people may even want to archive it, cause honestly no one knows how long this game will stay up and we want to archive story so that it's something we can easily look back on. to essentially make players borderline terrified on trying to figure out whether or not it's ok to publicly post stuff in relation to any sort of story content is absurd.

there is also that loophole of what is defined as a paid story. when events end and get put behind a paywall, does that now count as paid story or is that still ok? what about debut L-ranks that are behind seals and there's a 3 month downtime till they're added to standard? or is it just referring to nightmare pass characters? paid stories in the context of the state of the game right now is insanely broad, it's practically at least 50% of this game (i'm exaggerating (or maybe not i wouldn't be surprised if that was actually the case)).

i understand no datamining, while it technically speaking isn't illegal, it's disrespectful to the devs, but a lot of these call to action methods they're announcing are rather extreme imo.

with the most recent cards either being put to standard 3 months after their banner ends or flat out paywalled and not 100% guaranteed to have a rerun, story content as of late has been very sparse. what people want most is a main story update, which we were originally promised to be updated every 3 months and it is now month 6 and we still have nothing.

EVENTS AND EVENT STORIES

event stories being locked behind a paywall after the event ends is probably the first time i've ever seen a gacha game do this. most of the gachas i've played either don't archive event story at all and just rerun it every year, don't rerun or archive the event at all (i.e. if you miss it, cope and seethe), or they archive it for FREE. it feels insanely greedy how EVERY event story needs payment if you ever want to backread an old event.

what also concerns me is the fact like instances like gamigin's event or beleth's event carry so much lore for their respective region and that may never show up in main story, which then screws new players over in not knowing the full context behind every region. events like minhyeok's or bimet's are fine in the sense that it doesn't carry that much lore in comparison to the more recent events. the first few events were like silly banter and getting to know a bit more about the cast.

also changing the event shop from daily pies to a set limit per account was an awful choice it just emphasizes my point earlier of how unstable obtaining pies are in this game.

FULFILLING PROMISES

i think while it was a smart move to list what's gonna be implemented throughout the year, they shouldn't have stated deadlines on when they're doing so.

the following are the things that still aren't implemented yet as of making this post:

new daily chats (expected within february)

friends system (expected within march)

birthday system (more specifically celebrating your bday) (expected within april)

new main story chapter (new chapter expected every 3 months)

if pb were to just say "here's what to expect in 2024" and NOT give specific months, that's fine, but giving these specific months sets an expectation that they would complete it within that timeframe. main story for example is probably the one people have been anticipating the most. by now as of july, if we were to follow the expectation pb gave us, we would currently be on chapter 7, or at the very least chapter 7 would've been released some time this month. we have not even gotten chapter 6 yet. chapter 5 was released in january. it has been 6 months since the last main story update. failing to meet these timeframes will make people upset, because it was mentioned in the announcement that it's 1. a promise (i hope i'm not the only one that takes promises seriously) and 2. in bold yellow text, "what we can realistically expect to see in 2024." the only promises that were fulfilled on-time were the ones in january, the rest have been delayed by at least a month. if you're giving a timeline of what's happening, announce if there's any changes to that timeline, because not doing so will make players believe you were lying to them even though you probably aren't and are instead just falling behind schedule.

i think what hurts more to me is the fact that they aren't publicly communicating these delays. it shouldn't be our responsibility to find out why or when something isn't happening within the timeframe they promised (e.g. by emailing them), it should be up to the devs to communicate that publicly to us. i'm not saying they should overshare what's going on behind the scenes, it can simply just be a simple announcement of "hey, we're very sorry but we're having some technical difficulties with this certain feature and we need more time. here is some compensation in the meantime, thank you for your patience and again, we're very sorry." it's that simple.

FINAL THOUGHTS

i mentioned back in my intro that i feel like this game was released too early purely because the fundamentals of making a bare minimum decent gacha game are just not there. if every patch update has people complaining on what's just recently been added/removed, you're not fully listening to what the audience wants. while i understand pb is a small business, a business is still a business regardless of size and criticism/feedback is necessary especially in a game dev setting.

i've followed this game's news ever since it was teased, which was december of 2022, i've lurked/participated in the fandom (on here at least) ever since september of 2023. i've felt a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions of "omg this is so great" to "why is this even a feature," hoping that over time the game would get better, but the only thing that's improved was server stability (and even that's still a bit rocky 💀).

a huge part of my stay was just being a lurker in the fandom. i genuinely appreciate all the creatives who fulfill asked prompts of characters, make ocs, fanart, write theories, reactions + many more. i love seeing other people's works/opinions and having just a lively fandom made it all more fun.

but at this point this game is just not for me. i've really only stuck around to read mammon's lore but since main story hasn't been updated in 6 months i'll really only chime back in when there's finally an update. it still amazes me to this day that my patience lasted this long. i think i've covered everything i wanted to cover but my memory is swiss cheese so if i forgot something,,, woops 💀

as for the future of the spreadsheet for those who check back on it, it's still being managed by myself and windy, who has been a huge help since day 1 of creating the build lists and team comps and i honestly can't thank her enough for also enduring this pain of a game with me as we've worked on this spreadsheet together hgjdfgh (luv u bestie 🫶). though it's written in the narrative that both of us will eventually quit updating it entirely if this game persists on not having any signs of improvement. when that day comes i'll make sure to post an announcement about it.

as for myself i'm probably still gonna lurk in the fandom/keep an eye out on game news. i doubt i'll be making any fanart anymore unless if i really have the motivation/boredom for it, but currently i'm revamping the "aesthetics" of this account so nothing's really set in stone. maybe i'll make a few whb rambles here or there if some game news really irks me but for the most part i've already been in the process of moving on to other things.

if you've stuck around this long to read this mess of a post, thank you for sticking around and have a cookie, you deserve it 🫴🍪

#good grief this post was longer than i expected LOL #silly rambles #whb

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idollandhero · 8 months ago

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I think in a year we'll look back at our time with Idol Land and think of it like a weird dream. A time when there wasn't a Pretty Series show announced and everything was in limbo. A time where King of Prism was a dead franchise. A time when songs were performed at Pretty Series live shows that wouldn't premier in the anime for years. The game teaser in every single Pretty Series announcement only for it to be delayed again. The YEARS long gap between episodes 2 and 3. The DISASTROUS launch. When we realized it was just a reskinned version of the switch game. Or when we discovered that it was mostly made by some unrelated dev who had only made one failed mobile otome game before Idol Land.

The Pretty Series' pivot to focusing on AiPri & KinPri instead of Idol Land & DanPri makes the past few years of Idol Land content, and the past less than a year of Idol Land actually being out, feel like an illusion.

It's frustrating because the concept of a PriPara mobile game sounds fantastic! When I play games like SIF2 or Idolish7 or whatever I think about what could have been. Was it money problems? or time problems? Or some combination of both. Regardless I can't help but yearn for a game with a budget that this franchise deserves.

And the web anime was great! But only 12 episodes, and its own budget problems, plus the games delay keeping it finished and in limbo for 2 years! (+ the lack of any western fansubs picking it up, seriously how is do we still only have subs for up to episode 6) meant that it never got the place in the spotlight it deserved. Some people speculated that it was meant to air on TV because the episodes are formatted as such, but with AiPri starting in that slot the same month the show is ending that doesn't seem to be true.

It's hard to say where PriPara is going from here. It's the series 10th anniversary and the arcade game is being shuttered to push players towards AiPri Verse instead. Idol Land's anime finale is going to air to little applause because it's stuck on an app with less than 20,000 active users, and in the same month as the launch of the new series that's slated to be a real PreCure competitor.

Idol Land's EOS hasn't been announced yet, but the missing Nino birthday coord, the April monthly update with entirely rerun coords, and the fact that Idol Land is getting very VERY close to running out of content from the switch game. Well, if not EOS I expect this game to go into maintenance mode pretty soon.

Yeah idk what my point here was exactly, but man Idol Land really was a blur. Sometimes I think we understate exactly how inexperienced the devs really were. The game doesn't have any type of Google Play integration, and when the game launched the account recovery only lasted 15 minutes. I have a newer phone and the game isn't compatible with my hole punch front camera. There's just a black bar there. I only have this problem with older games, anything made in the last 4 years doesn't have this problem except for Idol Land. I honestly think the lack of region locking is because the dev doesn't know how to turn it on. Someone on discord reported that they've been buying gold, and then contacting Google and asking for a Play Store refund. It's worked multiple times and they are not banned. How is a ban for chargebacks not something they implemented day one. Also this game doesn't have any deals or discounts, ever. It's hard to believe that, like every game I've ever played has a buy two and get 50% off the second one bundle. But it's like the devs don't know how to implement anything past basic gacha mechanics. I could also ramble about how expensive the prices are, but I've done it before I won't do it again. Also the photo room, it's implemented pretty badly. You upload a photo for the background and it crops it weird and squishes it and makes it blurry. I didn't know this at launch because it was a paid feature for like six months. The pass itself was a horrible value unless you were buying it specifically to get the episodes early, you got exactly how the amount of gold you paid for. Why not just buy the gold then. But they either realized that, or were preparing for end of service; because they took it down. I'm rambling about things the devs messed up but I haven't even mentioned the first three months of the game. There's been so many points in this game's history where playing a promise was borderline impossible for one reason or another. This game didn't feel finished until that November update that included immediate promises. God there's so much more. The photo competitions just being about editing for some reason. Also they went away, so clearly those didn't work. The amount of coords they've implemented that were broken in some way. Sometimes it was the wrong coord entirely, sometimes the cylume didn't work. It's like the dev team is so small that there's no QA people. Also on that note, Open Dream Land was just fixed in the mid March update. The game went more than 6 months where one of its two unique charts was off sync. Also remember the voice bug, that lasted forever.

I'm sorry I just started rambling lmao. This is the problem when I write posts with speech to text, I say way too much. Ultimately I enjoyed my time with Idol Land, but it's existence feels surreal. Especially because 80% of the features from this game I can turn on my switch after end of service and play, and it's free because I already paid once and never have to pay again. I even have Waku Waku O'Clock on Switch. One day, probably soon from the way things are going, I'm going to wake up and not be able to play Idol Land on my phone ever again. But instead of reminiscing of this game, I will think about the game that could have been if Idol Land got as much love as Prism Rush did.

KASHIKOMA ✌️

#hero text posting

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cool-jpgs-of-wizards-with-swords · 1 year ago

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every day the earth trembles under the weight of my potential. I have a 6 hour video essay about arknights and its ludonarrative in me and you motherfuckers are so lucky. So the thing about it thats the most interesting to me, right, is that there's a Magic Material in the worldbuilding. It's called Oriron. It grows in large, crystalline formations, which disperse a harmful dust which causes infection. Individuals infected with Oripathy die. All that medicine is able to do is slow it down. When they near death and after, those who are infected with oripathy start releasing that same dust that causes infection in others. When enough dust is released, it creates a "Catastrophe;" which can take various shapes, but invariably creates MASSIVE deposits of Oriron which fall like comets from the clouds of dust. Cities in the world of arknights have had to be built on moving platforms that roam across the countryside in order to avoid these catastrophes. (Mortal engines vibes btw.)

This material is also how technology, industry, and magic, all function in this world. Utilizing tools with Oriron, you can utilize it to do literal magic. It's also destroying the entire fucking world. Infected get to use the oriron inside them to do magic instead. neat! This kills them. Slowly, but it does.

Arknights is a gacha game. It's built on the same addictive spending models that have ruined so many fucking lives.

The premium currency of the game is. Oriron. Well. Orundum. There's like 60 different kinds of oriron which are all different upgrade materials because again, Gacha game. It's.

In Arknights, you play as "The Doctor", a figure working for a Pharmaceutical Company that is trying to cure oripathy. Amiya is the idealistic leader of said company. I haven't gotten to all the details about her past with the doctor or much of the lore. But her entire goal is to not betray her ideals of being able to be a force of good in a world that's utterly fucked. Because of. The Premium Currency Of The Game.

Anyway the arknights true ending is a free-to-play fangame because the structure of arknights as a media property WILL not allow it to end. And whether it was intentional or not, the fact that the premium currency of the game is also Magic Supercancer DOES make this a more poignant point for me.

In the end, to give Amiya the future she wants to see, we, the players, as doctors, need to see the real cure for Oripathy. We cannot accept the continued use of Oriron for industry. There are hundreds of thousands of disenfranchized Infected, who might be able to help us transition from a society that depends on oriron to a society that does not.

#arknights #no i havent gotten very far in the game so idk if im directly contradicting lore or something. i know better anyway <3

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reccyls · 1 year ago

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Ikemen Sengoku Birthday Event Guide

Starting from this year (2023 in JP, 2024 for EN), Ikemen Sengoku is implementing a new format for birthday events compared to previous years. This new event type is called a Banquet Event and it has a couple of quirks, hopefully I can explain how the event plays in this post.

Basically, Ikemen Sengoku is going to be taking some elements from Ikepri's party events, but not all of them. First of all, you can't earn the birthday CG for free: you still need to buy that from a 900 coin set as usual, and it comes with all the normal stuff: the story, the CG, some castle avatar items, etc. The main difference is that the story of this event is earned slightly differently from a story event, in that you do battles/lessons to earn points and raise your Banquet Level, which at certain milestones will give you the event story to be saved into your collection. There are other milestones like avatar items and item rewards (closet space, gold, castle gacha tokens, and boyfriend gacha tokens)

How to play is explained below:

Like the Ikepri and Ikevamp birthday events, you do lessons/glam-offs/etc whatever it's called in order to earn points to raise your Banquet Level. What is new to Ikesen is that owning certain themes will increase the points you get from doing battles, just like how having cards of the birthday character will give you bonus points in Ikepri's party events.

Differences from normal story events:

Uses its own stamina system; you can't use normal parfaits or shaved ice to restore stamina. Thus it will run concurrently with other events and not interfere with the stamina needed for those

There is no event friend system here

You do not read the event story and then pass checks. You will instead raise your party level, and at certain thresholds, the event story will be given to you and saved in your collection

The number of points you get per battle can be increased if you own certain themes

Similarities with normal story events:

Lucky time schedule works as normal. There are 2x and 3x lucky times

There are items you can buy that give you event points, as well as items to buy that refill your stamina

You can win or draw event battles like usual. Draws give you half the points of a win.

This is what the game looks like when you enter an event battle:

The deck of cards at the bottom is the list of themes you have that give bonus points. In my case, I only have 1 theme of Masamune that gives bonus points, which is this year's birthday story. As you can see, it gives me +3 points.

The game will automatically select any themes you have that give the highest point bonuses, so you don't have to worry about going through your collection to see if you have something or not.

One thing of note is that there are lucky times (currently there is a 2x lucky time active in the screenshot). As with usual story events, they double the points you get, but they only double the base points. Bonuses from themes are not doubled. To put it in a numerical example:

Winning a battle gives 100 points normally. So if I won a battle, I would get 103 points, since I have a +3 bonus.

During a 2x lucky time, only the 100 points are doubled. Thus I get (100 x2) + 3 = 203 points. I do not get (100 + 3) x2 = 206 points.

Bonus Themes

So, which themes give bonuses exactly? Here is the list for Masamune's birthday event:

(yes I haven't done Masamune's route yet, sssh)

To summarize, you can get the bonus themes from the following:

Buying themes included in special birthday sets

Prize themes from previous years' birthday events (these are ranking rewards for JP, but I believe they were turned into Early Clear rewards for EN?)

This year and last year's birthday story CGs

Pulling them from the special birthday boyfriend gacha

Main route CGs (only the main route counts, the eternal route CG, the extra CG added to the main route, and sequel CGs don't)

So, what are the rewards and the milestones? I don't have a super clear idea of the number of points you need for everything yet, but here is the list of rewards for each party level:

I saw someone on Twitter imply that you need around 25,000 points total to reach the 4th part of the story, but I'll be back to edit this (and reblog with an update) if/when I get close in order to confirm it.

Meanwhile, here are all the avatar items for each level, as well as the early clear bonuses:

Early Clear Bonuses:

Is it F2P?

From my experience and a bit of guessing, I think that it'll be possible to achieve all 4 parts of the story as F2P. However, I'm not sure how much further you can get beyond that. Getting points can be pretty difficult, especially since you can't use normal stamina or glamor items to raise your banquet level.

I'll update here at the end of the event with how far I managed to get, simulating what it'd be like as someone who only played Masamune's route and didn't buy any sets/stories or get any themes from the birthday gacha.

I don't feel like I explained this very well at all so if anyone has any questions or if there's anything about this event that's unclear, please feel free to ask!

#ikemen sengoku #birthday event guide

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sonusresonet · 4 months ago

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♛ ; PINNED POST/STARTER CALL

♛ - Independent and Selective "ROVER" from WUTHERING WAVES. Not spoiler free, and adheres/focuses on canon game lore. Please refer to the rules and about page for info before interacting. OC friendly, and multiverse/ship are A-OK! By liking this post, you give me permission to plot, send asks, and interact with you!

♛ - Personal blogs, please make sure not to reblog RP, headcanons, and my writing posts. I will block if you do.

♛ Info

♛ Rules

♛ Verses (TBA)

♛ Mobile Rules under the cut!

I. General

This blog will be between low to medium activity with dark themes present including war, violence, death, etc.

I will tag as any spoilers as I can, but it is not spoiler free and will act on whatever is revealed in the main story of WUTHERING WAVES + some theories that go on about the overall lore and Rover's identity.

I expect basic RP etiquette and will do the same.

I've been on tumblr rp for a while but am just returning now. I'm behind on the terminology now used so please be patient if I don't get something right away. I will be just doing basic formatting when writing.

I want to just write so I won't be paying attention to drama.

I go by Aki and Mun & Muse are 25+.

II. Writing

Each interaction will be its own and not collide with others unless talked about beforehand with both parties.

I'd like to focus on Wuthering Waves verse itself so I will be following canon first and foremost. I don't mind divergencies as long as its nothing major/world changing.

This blog is multi-ship and ships will be built on chemistry and interactions.

I prefer multi-para but don't mind one-liners and short interactions. I like plotting but also don't mind a thread started from an inbox meme, etc. In general, I'm cool with anything.

Feel free to send any memes no matter how old they are! I'll find them eventually.

I play a lot of gacha/anime games so I'm more than happy to create a verse for crossovers.

III. Following/Tagging

I don't have any real triggers and will tag the usual ones accordingly if I reblog something that falls under it. (Most likely not though)

If I follow then I would like to interact at some point. I will unfollow though if no activity between us occurs but will try and reach out when I feel confidant enough too.

As stated above, I want to focus on Wuthering Wave's world as a priority so I'd love interactions from all characters that want to be involved in the world.

#♛; ooc #wuwa roleplay #wuthering waves roleplay #wuthering waves rp #wuwa rp #sonusresonet

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corporatedespair · 3 months ago

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also if any of yall were around back when i expected this to be a gacha series (yes im being serious i planned for this to be a gacha series originally, this was only scrapped because the gl2 studio update didnt drop and i got impatient IT STILL ISNT OUT BTW)

you might remember i had made and released an edit or two for an intro! like uhh, splash art.

here they are. theyre old and no longer representative of the final product. yes, they had custom "ultimate-like" clothes (i still find daves rose theming and the fact buck is wearing a more androgynous-styled celestes outfit kinda cute)

ofc, im no longer able to use these due to the fact its no longer a gacha-centric thing and theyd be both really out of place and tacky...

however...

...that doesnt mean there arent going to be splash renders... (the cathal one is directly inspired by the previously made gacha one, btw!!! just a bit of different posing)

also in case youre wondering, even if gl2s studio update was released i wouldnt go back to trying to make this a gacha series. because:

i since grew out of my gacha thing

ive already committed myself to making this a game. ive always wanted to make a fangame and now i finally am, and i think thats kinda cool despite it being A LOT HARDER than a gacha series.

there are multiple things i want to do that can only be done in a game format, not in a video format. things like slight variations in dialogue depending on previously made choices, freetime events you actually choose, and also multiple "meta" elements. hell, theres even a thing ive been planning real close to the birth of this project, a really big thing.

d293PyB0aGlzIGJpdGNoIGlzIHJlYWxseSB1c2luZyBiYXNlNjQgdG8gYmUgc25lYWt5PyBvaywgb2suIChyZWZlcnJpbmcgdG8gbXlzZWxmIFRIRSBBVVRIT1IpLiB5b3UgZGVzZXJ2ZSB0byBrbm93IGZvciBiZWluZyBjbGV2ZXIsIGkgZ3Vlc3MuIHNlY3JldCBlbmRpbmcu

#behind the scenes

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project-sekai-facts · 1 year ago

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thinking about it stresses me out and i can't explain it well but making the world link events take up an entire event slot instead of it running alongside a different event is such a horrible idea imo, especially if it takes this month's lim banner entirely. and i think it's impossible considering vbs's one is in january and there's the new years fes anyways? unless they make new years perm again like in 2021 but it's going to be so fucking annoying and predictable for any fan that's been waiting for a lim for a while, especially vsers because it basically confirms that the devs STILL aren't treating them like the actual characters and putting them in events with the ocs (let alone having to wait until AUGUST for more fucking lims, yea like we need another fucking one-year gap /s). its genuinely irritating for me if they end up deciding that and not making next event lim. plus it makes the next event from now only six days considering this gacha ends October 31st, and with the event gap, the event has to end November 5th or 6th. and this wl event lasts 12 days and no event has lasted either of those lengths in jp (not to mention the weird fucking chapter-by-chapter thing going on?). sorry for acting angry but i really am disappointed if this ends up being the case without any fucking warning it makes no sense!

yeah the WL event just feels like it needs some work. obviously this is the first one so there's gonna be some problems here and there but this feels like it's pretty messily put together, even for a first run. i understand it taking an event slot because otherwise you'd have to tier two separate events at the same time and that'd just be difficult, but just the sheer amount of time it takes up is too much. maybe shorten the chapters to 2 days from 3, 12 days is too long. it's just gonna be really draining and a pain in the ass to tier, plus it makes the event before it really short. like seriously, 7 days for the MMJ event? i mean the current event is only 8 but normally cheerful carnivals last about 10 because of the format. i mean MMJ wouldn't perform as well as a N25 banner anyway so maybe they're just throwing the 7 day event on them for testing purposes.

since VBS is directly after new year colofes+lims I'm guessing WL lims don't count as actual lims. maybe they don't have hairstyles, i mean they said about MR2 unlocking special cut-ins, so maybe they do that instead of hairstyles. i wonder if they'll be like a bday card where they have their own rarity or something because if the game is willing to run them directly after a fes banner they can't be all that rare? maybe they reappear on future WL events like how all fes cards are on every colofes banner.

i get the feeling that the WL event won't have a specific character focus. they didn't announce a song other than the 3rd anniversary campaign one, so unless they're deciding to count that as Kanade's 4th comm then it doesn't look like this has a specific focus. well, apparently each part of the event/story is focused on a different character so that makes sense I guess. also the 3rd anni campaign commissions are meant to release monthly, and these events are getting dragged out until well past when all unit will've gotten their comm.

i think a lot of adjustments are gonna have to be made to the event starting from the VBS one. like the whole thing feels messy right now. and maybe it's because they haven't really told us a whole lot about how it works still, but there's obvious problems from the get-go like the duration and the amount of gacha cards on top of the fact they're now rerunning 3 lim gachas at a time. how badly does this game want our money they earn way more than any other idol game on the market.

#asks #mod talks #can the game give len a lim on an actual unit banner also

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popsikul · 6 months ago

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The idea of a housamo anime or manga adaptation sounds amazing; the engaging story and episodic VN format are suited for a series perfectly. There are a few issues however, such as how they would implement a main character who has no set appearance. Chapter 12’s revelations complicate this even further, to the point where there would have to be at least one big change to the plot when moving to another form of media. On top of that, the game’s main audience is very niche, having a small playerbase of some queer people in japan and the US, and even smaller audiences in other countries. The game has some political and complex themes in it, and with the character designs heavily focused on attracting gay men it would struggle to garner the attention of larger audiences. The event stories contain about as much content as the main story itself, with some of it being plot relevant or including things that aren’t in the main story — some would be INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT to fit into a series and others just outright impossible. Housamo could have some amazing visuals in an anime, but LW just realistically does not have the budget for that. Even if they used copious fanservice to gain more pull, they already do that with the gacha mechanic that is pretty much funding the entire game. Despite all that though, it COULD accrue its own audience as an advantage of having such a unique story (at least, an audience of people who accept seeing men in speedos instead of women in bikinis). Unfortunately, something like that is pretty far off as it is now. LifeWonders is probably already aware that the best way for them to grow is by keeping up what people demand and that they can supply, that being gacha games.

#housamo #tokyo afterschool summoners

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neomedievalist · 1 year ago

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finished canto 4. got kicked out immediately for maintenance before i could see the credits. laughed a bit. and then just got really frustrated. Me when i make my game in a format that actively undermines its story. and i dont just mean literally in the sense of maintenance kicking me out and ruining the emotional beats, i mean how the hell are you going to make a critique of capitalism and exploitation in the most exploitative and manipulative medium there is?

i have seen so much defense for limbus by saying it doesnt really count as a gacha game, it's not like the others, oh they give you so much free currency, whatever, the devs are oh so quirkily incompetent. and im gonna be honest i dont really care! the format of a gacha game is not only exploitative it's exclusionary. people without a consistent internet connection cannot experience this story. people who are susceptible to addictive tendencies, especially mentally ill people, who i DARESAY are the majority of fans, either must avoid the game entirely or get unhealthily addicted to it or manipulated to spend money on it.no one is saying that the devs specifically wanted to manipulate people, but the game exists in a format that is foundational on psychological manipulation of vulnerable individuals. and yeah i dare you to tell me it's not that deep!

not to mention how at the same time the story is being compromised morally, it's being actively compromised with things like maintenance but also the incredibly slow release schedule. i wouldn't care that the next canto is in october if it was just released as a complete entity as seperate chapters like umineko or deltarune. it's the fact that it's a ROADMAP. i think we're all thinking it and don't want to admit it--there is a really, really high possibility that limbus never gets to finish this story before it becomes no longer financially viable and the servers shut down. the fact that we're waiting so long for this in anticipation and also being constantly marketed to in between the gaps is just. it's just not acceptable to be honest

#data #limbusposting #i won't ever defend a gacha game and the fact that i talk about limbus company all the time makes me angry with myself #going to be taking a break from playing it lol

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canmom · 11 months ago

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「viRtua canm0m」 Project :: 002 - driving a vtuber

That about wraps up my series on the technical details on uploading my brain. Get a good clean scan and you won't need to do much work. As for the rest, well, you know, everyone's been talking about uploads since the MMAcevedo experiment, but honestly so much is still a black box right now it's hard to say anything definitive. Nobody wants to hear more upload qualia discourse, do they?

On the other hand, vtubing is a lot easier to get to grips with! And more importantly, actually real. So let's talk details!

Vtubing is, at the most abstract level, a kind of puppetry using video tracking software and livestreaming. Alternatively, you could compare it to realtime mocap animation. Someone at Polygon did a surprisingly decent overview of the scene if you're unfamiliar.

Generally speaking: you need a model, and you need tracking of some sort, and a program that takes the tracking data and applies it to a skeleton to render a skinned mesh in real time.

Remarkably, there are a lot of quite high-quality vtubing tools available as open source. And I'm lucky enough to know a vtuber who is very generous in pointing me in the right direction (shoutout to Yuri Heart, she's about to embark on something very special for her end of year streams so I highly encourage you to tune in tonight!).

For anime-style vtubing, there are two main types, termed '2D' and 3D'. 2D vtubing involves taking a static illustration and cutting it up to pieces which can be animated through warping and replacement - the results can look pretty '3D', but they're not using 3D graphics techniques, it's closer to the kind of cutout animation used in gacha games. The main tool used is Live2D, which is proprietary with a limited free version. Other alternatives with free/paid models include PrPrLive and VTube studio. FaceRig (no longer available) and Animaze (proprietary) also support Live2D models. I have a very cute 2D vtuber avatar created by @xrafstar for use in PrPrLive, and I definitely want to include some aspects of her design in the new 3D character I'm working on.

For 3D anime-style vtubing, the most commonly used software is probably VSeeFace, which is built on Unity and renders the VRM format. VRM is an open standard that extends the GLTF file format for 3D models, adding support for a cel shading material and defining a specific skeleton format.

It's incredibly easy to get a pretty decent looking VRM model using the software VRoid Studio, essentially a videogame character creator whose anime-styled models can be customised using lots of sliders, hair pieces, etc., which appears to be owned by Pixiv. The program includes basic texture-painting tools, and the facility to load in new models, but ultimately the way to go for a more custom model is to use the VRM import/export plugin in Blender.

But first, let's have a look at the software which will display our model.

meet viRtua canm0m v0.0.5, a very basic design. her clothes don't match very well at all.

VSeeFace offers a decent set of parameters and honestly got quite nice tracking out of the box. You can also receive face tracking data from the ARKit protocol from a connected iPhone, get hand tracking data from a Leap Motion, or disable its internal tracking and pipe in another application using the VMC protocol.

If you want more control, another Unity-based program called VNyan offers more fine-grained adjustment, as well as a kind of node-graph based programming system for doing things like spawning physics objects or modifying the model when triggered by Twitch etc. They've also implemented experimental hand tracking for webcams, although it doesn't work very well so far. This pointing shot took forever to get:

<kayfabe>Obviously I'll be hooking it up to use the output of the simulated brain upload rather than a webcam.</kayfabe>

To get good hand tracking you basically need some kit - most likely a Leap Motion (1 or 2), which costs about £120 new. It's essentially a small pair of IR cameras designed to measure depth, which can be placed on a necklace, on your desk or on your monitor. I assume from there they use some kind of neural network to estimate your hand positions. I got to have a go on one of these recently and the tracking was generally very clean - better than what the Quest 2/3 can do. So I'm planning to get one of those, more on that when I have one.

Essentially, the tracker feeds a bunch of floating point numbers in to the display software at every tick, and the display software is responsible for blending all these different influences and applying it to the skinned mesh. For example, a parameter might be something like eyeLookInLeft. VNyan uses the Apple ARKit parameters internally, and you can see the full list of ARKit blendshapes here.

To apply tracking data, the software needs a model whose rig it can understand. This is defined in the VRM spec, which tells you exactly which bones must be present in the rig and how they should be oriented in a T-pose. The skeleton is generally speaking pretty simple: you have shoulder bones but no roll bones in the arm; individual finger joint bones; 2-3 chest bones; no separate toes; 5 head bones (including neck). Except for the hands, it's on the low end of game rig complexity.

Expressions are handled using GLTF morph targets, also known as blend shapes or (in Blender) shape keys. Each one essentially a set of displacement values for the mesh vertices. The spec defines five default expressions (happy, angry, sad, relaxed, surprised), five vowel mouth shapes for lip sync, blinks, and shapes for pointing the eyes in different directions (if you wanna do it this way rather than with bones). You can also define custom expressions.

This viRtua canm0m's teeth are clipping through her jaw...

By default, the face-tracking generally tries to estimate whether you qualify as meeting one of these expressions. For example, if I open my mouth wide it triggers the 'surprised' expression where the character opens her mouth super wide and her pupils get tiny.

You can calibrate the expressions that trigger this effect in VSeeFace by pulling funny faces at the computer to demonstrate each expression (it's kinda black-box); in VNyan, you can set it to trigger the expressions based on certain combinations of ARKit inputs.

For more complex expressions in VNyan, you need to sculpt blendshapes for the various ARKit blendshapes. These are not generated by default in VRoid Studio so that will be a bit of work.

You can apply various kinds of post-processing to the tracking data, e.g. adjusting blending weights based on input values or applying moving-average smoothing (though this noticeably increases the lag between your movements and the model), restricting the model's range of movement in various ways, applying IK to plant the feet, and similar.

On top of the skeleton bones, you can add any number of 'spring bones' which are given a physics simulation. These are used to, for example, have hair swing naturally when you move, or, yes, make your boobs jiggle. Spring bones give you a natural overshoot and settle, and they're going to be quite important to creating a model that feels alive, I think.

Next up we are gonna crack open the VRoid Studio model in Blender and look into its topology, weight painting, and shaders. GLTF defines standard PBR metallicity-roughness-normals shaders in its spec, but leaves the actual shader up to the application. VRM adds a custom toon shader, which blends between two colour maps based on the Lambertian shading, and this is going to be quite interesting to take apart.

The MToon shader is pretty solid, but ultimately I think I want to create custom shaders for my character. Shaders are something I specialise in at work, and I think it would be a great way to give her more of a unique identity. This will mean going beyond the VRM format, and I'll be looking into using the VNyan SDK to build on top of that.

More soon, watch this space!

#viRtua canm0m project #vtuber #vtubing #vseeface #vnyan #3dcg

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syrupspinner · 6 months ago

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i defeated/completed Indigo Park

im not used to playing games this big, i mean were talking almost 9gb here

i dont play enough horror games. even then, most of my experience is with action horror like idv where its more of a theme, and rpgmaker games. mascot horror is a bit outside my wheelhouse, but i am aware of it. who couldnt be? i can only imagine its the genre when you wanna make a profit going indie. while the genre itself was popularized when fnaf really took off, this format of a setpiece-heavy horror fps with light puzzle elements was really popularized by poppy playtime. and garten of banban. and rainbow friends. and-

anyway, ive been told that this project is headed by the youtuber UniqueGeese. i cant say im familiar, but it looks like theyre really experienced when it comes to mascot horror. its really neat to see someone with roots in critique and transformative content break out and make their own game. judging from the sheer quantity of videos, he sure seems to know what hes talking about, so its neat to see how the experience of a player translates to developer.

either way, it feels like this was a passion project, not a cash grab. sure, its free, but so is a lot of first chapters. it reminds me about how gacha games give you a bunch of free rolls when you first sign up. well, thats an unfair comparison (at least in indigo parks case), this feels more comparable to a demo for a full game. its not just an enticement, so it feels easier to pay for the rest of the game incrementally instead of watching youtubers play, it feels like a surface-level experiment to give the inevitable next episode something to build off of

so hows the game, anyway? well, its short. the credits rolled about 50 minutes in, and i was taking my time. there wasnt really a gimmick or anything, either. like, there wasnt a thing to make the gameplay stand out or make the puzzles unique. hell, there werent puzzles, the closest was turning around to see a missing gear or two. its refreshing to see something so straightforward, but im worried than not having something special and distinct will make it get lost in the crowd. which is a shame! i had a lot of fun, and id love to see a chapter 2. all i ask is that there be some more accessibility options. i really appreciated the subtitles, but maybe some mouse sensitivity settings would be nice. other than that, just a really solid and charming horror game!

also, full and somewhat nsfw disclosure. the only reason i know about this game is because furries i follow are down horrendous for rambley. they either want to fuck the shit out of him or get transformed/hypnotized into him. i have no idea if this was on purpose? like, when i look at that gangly blue thing from poppy playtime, i think "oh its a cute thing thats scary-fied, for the demographic of kids that wouldve loved sonic.exe and creepypasta a generation ago". its just transparently targeted, yknow? with rambley, i have no idea. like, hes cute in a mascot way, but i think its the personality that mainly draws people in. hes a cute little fella who loves trains and wants you to have fun, and also he sounds like basketball from bfdi. he might count as a shortstack too? hes targeting such a niche that i dont think it could be targeted; like, roald dahl didnt know about inflation, he just invented a new subgenre of kink by accident. i dunno, honestly hes not really my type, but more power to you if you wanna ride his train

#indigo park #defeated #completed

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understandableparadox · 9 months ago

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bottom of the barrel isekai review #3

Todays review: Choose your heros carefully

two BLs in a row... i would make a gay joke at my own expense but i'll be real, gay trash is soooo much more palatable as a whole then straight trash and i'm confident enough in whatever nebulous concept i've adopted as my sexuality to say that with something resembling pride.

so what's on the chopping block? utterly psychotic middle aged men reincarnated in a world ripe for their exploitation? perhaps a swarm of hyper busty vixens parading about on the strings of someone who has no idea how to utilize them? a magic system based on some mmo where its way to clear the author was bullied in or vaguely believed a certain class should be the strongest?

SUPRISIE! WE ARENT EVEN LOOKING AT TRASH TODAY YOU UTTER HEATHENS, WE ARE LOOKING AT SOMETHING VAGUELY COOL, I FUCKING TRICKED YOU, WE AREN'T AT THE DUMPSTERS WE ARE AT THE FARMERS MARKET AND WERE HITTING THE ANTIQUE STORE, GENDER AMBIGUOUS PARENTAL FIGURE WANTS TO PICK UP SOME VINTAGE COOKWARE TO SPICE UP THE GODDAMN KITCHEN

Ramblings aside, my established format usually stats that we have a short opening related to the title then a not so brief summation of the story, but this time the summation of the story will in fact be nothing more than a summation, as I genuinely think you should go ahead and read through this title.

our titular hero shane has been bullied by his friend to play test his beta for a gacha game

a game in which you use magical stones to revive ancient heroes and command them to destroy a collection of horrors from some demonic realm.

shane awakens after a long day of Gameing and finds that he is now stuck within this world, a magical divine sheep provides him after some prodding some game functions, along with a single stone to summon his first hero. from there, the trio set off to solve the darkness of the world and find a way to return back to whence they came. solveing the other mysteries and oddities the world holds for them.

and that's it, you ain't gonna learn a single thing more about this story from me, get the fuck out of my house...

well i'm not done yet and a little bit of this will be spoilers.

ok so why do I like this? the action is bad, the art isn't anything to write home about, the armor and weapon design makes me want to curl up in a small hole, bury me gentle please...

Well as i think i've said prior, A lot of things can be hidden if you have enough meat on the bones of it, to the point where i can ignore the guts of it being playdough and the skin being saran wrap you splashed paint over.

the story itself is overwhelmingly interested in how a world that functions through mmo and gacha logic would work. what happens when you can summon someone who is truly the pinnacle of humanity through shear luck? what about the common rabble that are only lucky enough to be able to afford one pull and end up getting some D grade shitterton, Bob the Spackle artist, special skill Crack Spackle.

what about the fact that you can just tell them to attack things and you can take a nap in the middle of a low grade dungeon? the concept of auto play but introduced to the idea of the world at large.

now lets pull out form smaller game concepts, the heroes are the only ones that can defeat the shadows, and only the summoner can control the heros. meaning that the heroes can only be as heroic as the summoner. a brave man shackled by those who even the gods have abandoned.

what about the towns in games that dont have the right vendors? the ones that cannot give the player things they want, the areas without bazaars or weapon shops or summoning areas or shop functions, what happens to them if they have no draw to keep players in them?

these are the questions that the manhwa loves to explore and I love exploring them with it. now, on to our normal questions.

"Is the underlying story, barring any other concept, good?"

Yes, its both a compelling romance with both the main character and the main love interest being good fits for each other with interesting flaws and qualities. they are not perfect and that makes them fun to follow. even without the romance the story has enough aspects for you to follow if you want to ignore the twinks prancing around.

"on a sliding scale of min to max, how much is the author using this to explore fetish"

0, big goose egg. unless the author has a fetish for being held in their sleep then yeah i guess thats a thing.

"How many story crutches does the author use to explore the story"

I cant exactly see any noteworthy crutches, even the normal "game aspects" thing is something they have to specifically work towards within the story.

"Is the author attempting to use the story as a way to explain why he is not weird."

they are trying to say that gachas are bad and I for one believe they should say it fucking louder for the rest of the world to hear.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am now going to be taking isekai requests to review on top of the ones I have set aside for myself to review. to submit an isekai, please send it to me as an ask with the site where I can read through it.

#shitty isekai #manga #manwha #manhwa recommendation #isekai review

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slumberinglabyrinth · 8 months ago

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I started drafting this like. over three years ago? Lol.

Anyway, I had seen some tweets a while back about how Giffca and Skrimir would be difficult to add to the gacha because powercreep dictates new units strong but Gallian culture dictates the king (in this case, it's supposed to still be Caineghis) is the strongest, and god forbid heroes be lore-inaccurate.

Putting aside established canon, since they don’t care about it, and putting aside ‘stats aren’t entirely diegetic’, which solves this ‘problem’ but is 1) unprovable and more importantly 2) a boring answer, I had arrived at the simple and elegant conclusion that Giffca, at the very least in their youth if not also in the present, is simply stronger than Caineghis.

Some history/context before I talk about Caineghis and Giffca’s experience. Most of what we know comes from the first few pages of Tellius Recollections Vol 1, so I’d recommend reading through those if you want to learn more (not that there's much more to be learned 😔).

On page 11 of Tellius Recollection Volume One, we’re told that Gallia is mostly “a collection of scattered tribal groups of various sizes” (Zarzi, the capital, is stated to be a city, and is probably where most of the Crimean immigrants (which make up a fifth of the country’s population) can be found), and that “from time to time, these groups acknowledge the most powerful of them all as king”.

So, Gallia has the strongest person become king. This is common knowledge and what has driven the concerned posts about the viability of Giffca and Skirmir in heroes, but it's always good to check to see if these things are stated in the text. I’ve touched on it before but this concept probably mostly comes from the country having to fight for its independence, and having a leader that can return from the battlefield alive and not have to be replaced every few months is generally a good idea.

In the roughly 300 years between when the peace treaty with Begnoin was signed following the end of the Second Gallian War and the formation of the Laguz Alliance, Gallia was not at war. Regardless of the exact amount, they had to have gone through a decent number of kings by the time the games roll around, and it would be expected for the King Selection Process to have drifted a little bit from its origins.

Among other things, this means that the exact reasons for the whole The Strongest Becomes King thing has started to fade from public consciousness. It’s a tradition, sure, and they’ll continue to carry it on, sure, but because the reason for the tradition went away it’s not like people fully remember why they’re doing it anymore. It’s become more of a spectacle or festival than a necessary part of the nation’s survival, so it’s a lot less serious than it used to be.

So, what is it? How do these cats strut their stuff and prove they’ve got it?

It’s probably wrestling. I’m open to it being some other combat sport thing so much as that it’s clear that it’s some kind of competition of physical strength, but I like the idea of it being wrestling over, say, mma or boxing because it’s something where 1) you use your whole body (where they show off all of what they’ve got) and 2) isn’t about breaking your opponent’s face open or otherwise knocking them unconscious (giving your next king brain damage is probably bad). It could be judo or something similar, I guess. Don’t really have that much of a preference so long as it fills those two conditions. Either way, it’s become a literal (non-lethal, all-in-good-fun) battle for the throne.

On paper, but I’ll get to that.

And when I likened it to a festival earlier? It has absolutely turned into a festival, because who doesn’t love to grab some good food with their friends and sit down and watch the most muscular people in Gallia rub their steamy, sweaty bodies together as they try to pin each other to the ground?

*ahem*

Everyone loves a good festival is what I’m saying. It happens a couple times in their lifetime, so since it’s not a life-or-death situation anymore, you might as well go all out.

The basic chain of events is

1) The current monarch announces their intent to step down in the near future

2) Whenever it’s next reasonably possible (ie. not in the middle of a war), the country shifts into festival mode

3) Zarzi hosts the competition, though people take the chance to celebrate all across the land

4) Someone wins and they do the whole ascend-to-the-throne ceremony stuff, though the previous monarch probably sticks around in an advisor role to make sure they can like. not burn everything down

“Okay but Skrimir is considered to be next in line for the throne during RD despite Caineghis retiring after RD???”

I think this is a reflection of things Caineghis and Giffca sought to change after their own experience, but I’ll get to that closer to the end.

Skrimir is well-known because he’s the king’s nephew, very popular, and his strength is readily apparent (remember: numbers aren’t real unless they suit the argument you’re trying to make). While people could (and will) try to beat him at Extreme Gallian Wrestling, basically nobody expects anyone to pose a serious threat to his chances at the throne. Which isn’t to say that he’s now suddenly literally the strongest person in Gallia (Giffca, for example, could totally still launch him into orbit), it’s just that none of the people who could beat him have any interest in the throne.

(Incidentally, this also addresses the concerns mentioned in the tweets that drove me to write this, but I'm not done quite yet)

On paper anyone can sign up for the wrestling competition, and a lot of people do, but in the years leading up to a monarch’s retirement there become clear favorites to win, and like how that happened with Skrimir, it likewise happened with Giffca and Caineghis.

Caineghis appealed more to the younger crowd, like Skrimir. He was hotheaded, passionate, and spoke to their hearts, and is described as having been somehow even less controllable than his nephew. We don’t really know much about Giffca in the past or the present 😩 but he’s shown to be very serious and grounded, which would likely have attracted the attention of Gallia’s ruling class instead.

“There’s a ruling class?” you may ask.

Perhaps that’s not the perfect term, but yes. In Chapter 9 of PoR, Caineghis mentions the “elder statesman” of Gallia being an obstacle to him offering Elincia his full support. Though still a monarch, Gallia’s king is evidently far from an autocrat, and there is some equivalent to a noble class (likely the leaders of the “scattered tribal groups”, though given what Gallians value, war heroes or their equivalent are probably included too) that maintains some amount of sway in the country’s politics.

That brief aside aside, I think the ruling class (king included) of contemporary Gallia, would generally agree that simply having the strongest person in Gallia become king would be both impractical for governance (letting literally anybody walk up and claim the throne sounds like a great way for your country to crash and burn) and very impractical to actually figure out. Are you going to test every single person in the country? How much time would that take? How many resources? It’d be like herding cats!

So, while random people can still join and throw down if they wanted in on the fun, I think that the outcome (read: intended victor) is a thing that the ruling class determines ahead of time, with the tournament used to settle any disagreements should they not be in majority support of any one individual. There’s no way they’d believe their country could survive if they let any random guy run it, so, while the matches weren’t outright rigged (they'd likely be choosing someone strong anyway, so there wasn't a huge need for match-fixing), the tourney was more of an exhibition match that served as a way for the new king to win the approval of the citizens and show that he had the strength they were looking for in a leader.

The intended outcome would also be an open secret among anyone who would make it close to the top, since any runners-up would be prime picks for advisors or similar positions (such as succeeding tribal leaders that are also looking to retire) and as a result, be recognized by those currently in power and approached about their future job prospects.

EDIT: I'm very smart and totally know how to both read and retain information from the two whole paragraphs TR1 gives us. They flat out say that Solhaut (Gallia's first king) was elected, which is more or less what I'm saying the ruling class still does. Gallia has never been genuinely threatened since its independence, so I don't think there's much of a reason for this system to have fallen out of practice.

With all that in mind, I can finally start getting to the point.

Between a younger Caineghis and a younger Giffca, it’s pretty clear to me that Giffca would be selected to be the next king. We don’t really know anything about him. At all. But that’s a clear step up from “worse than Skrimir”, so. Yeah. I think it’s fairly easy for us to envision his younger self to be something like a more grumpy or gruff Ranulf and the ruling class could easily see someone like that being able to grow into a good king capable of making good decisions and leading Gallia in a good direction.

Sounds pretty great, right? Well... I think that an adolescent Giffca noticed that the people around him were rolling out the red carpet for him to be next in line for the throne after the current king retired, and he just didn’t want any of that.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to serve Gallia, but couldn’t someone else sit on the throne? Being king sounded like it would suck. You’d have to sit around leading a country, you’d have no real vacation days to speak of, you'd become a target for entities that sought to harm Gallia… aside from living in the spotlight —if that was even something you wanted— there were no real perks to the job, especially in a country like Gallia where it gave you less power than it did basically anywhere else.

He liked his current job a lot (assistant to the head archivist, which he didn’t realize he was set up with so he could interact with a lot of ministers in preparation for his time on the throne (headcanon alert btw, though since I’m giving him any sort of characterization, I guess that should be a given :P)), and it’s not like anyone ever told him he had to win, had they? He did run a bit cooler than most Gallians, but he liked his freedom all the same.

And so, not realizing the ways in which he had been told to play along (not that anybody expected him not to, since he had never openly said anything close to “hey I don’t really want to do this”), he made it to the finals, put on a good show, and in front of the whole country, in front of their country’s patron (Dheginsea, who was invited as a guest of honor), he threw his match against Caineghis.

And why wouldn’t he? Caineghis was a naturally popular person, and he seemed plenty eager to lead (two traits Giffca sorely lacked), so he’d make a great king, and Giffca could go on with his life, and they’d both be happy.

...Right?

Problem was, Giffca and Caineghis had clashed plenty of times already (Caineghis was the second choice, so they crossed paths plenty of times) so on top of knowing what the plan was, Caineghis also knew that he shouldn’t be able to win against Giffca. They were fairly closely matched in raw strength, but Giffca was much smarter about the way he used it (not to mention that Caineghis was very prone to letting the blood rush to his head). He knew the throne was being forced upon him, and, while he was hotheaded, he had enough self-awareness to know that he wasn’t prepared for this job, which made it all the more baffling that Giffca, of all people, would think him fit for it.

If you had asked Caineghis, he honestly thought that Giffca was a great choice to be king, a far better one than he was. Giffca had everything Caineghis lacked and everything a king needed: he was intelligent, he spoke with clarity, he held is head high, and, until now, he was always just. He was firm in his convictions but knew when he needed to bend a little lest he break, and, in their only similarity, he clearly loved Gallia above all else, so... why? He couldn’t understand why Giffca would push the throne onto someone so unfitting for it. Caineghis knew he was hotheaded, he knew he couldn’t keep his cool, and, even before it was decided that it should be Giffca, he didn’t feel like he was the right person for the job.

They both believed themselves unfit for the throne, and Giffca had acted faster than Caineghis and was able to run away from it. Up until that point, Caineghis had honestly liked Giffca a lot, he held a lot of respect for him, and he... couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand why Giffca would go so far to avoid the throne. As he stood there, declared victor, declared king in front of the whole world, he knew he had lost to Giffca. At what, he didn’t know, but he had undeniably lost.

He couldn’t abdicate. He couldn’t walk away. And in the coming months, strangled by his own authority and responsibilities, he started to understand at least a little why Giffca hadn’t wanted this, but he was never able to understand why he didn’t just say so.

Giffca was able to escape notice in the bureaucratic mess around Caineghis’ sudden and unexpected ascent, but Caineghis never forgot. In the back of his mind, as he was busy with learning the ins and outs of being a monarch, he was always thinking of a way to find out why.

After a year or two, using Giffca’s second-place finish as a pretense, his authority as a king as a cudgel, and Giffca’s match-throwing as blackmail for good measure, Caineghis appointed Giffca as his right-hand man.

Their relationship from then on was rocky, to say the least. Giffca felt some guilt over what he did to Caineghis, but also felt that forcing him into a job he had been actively trying to avoid was excessive, and Caineghis still felt personally betrayed by Giffca’s actions during the finals match. They were civil with each other for the purposes of not sending the country they both loved so much down a path of destruction, but it took considerable time for them to come to understand each other and stop baring their fangs behind closed doors.

By the time they realized their anxieties about sitting on the throne (which is what lied at the core of their disputes) had been the same, they had both grown into their roles in the government very, very well, and while it still wasn’t something either could do alone, they weren’t really doing it alone anymore, were they?

Since the experience was so miserable for the two of them, it’s only natural that they resolved to do better for whoever was next (as we know, it ended up being Skrimir). I don’t think that they sought to completely upend the whole Fun Wrestling Get Together Festival thing, but with the benefit of hindsight they were able to see that most of their problems were caused by a lack of communication. They made sure that Skrimir actually 100% wanted to lead a country and, while they were at it, made sure Ranulf actually wanted to be his advisor/babysitter as well; they were openly given the freedom of choice instead of being expected to play along like good little kittens.

There wasn’t much beyond that that needed to be changed, though I think that it’s fair to assume that choosing to have Skrimir lead the military campaign in RD Act 3 was a way to have him prove his worth to those who cared (of course, this also included Caineghis and Giffca) before they progressed to the wrestling thing and couldn’t back out. It wasn’t necessarily as a way to manufacture a hero, but it’s not like it’d hurt for him to be one either, y’know?

I guess one last thing to talk about (since I’m in the general neighborhood of the topic) is how, like how the campaign in Act 3 was a humbling experience for Skrimir and a key point in his life where he realized he needed to change course one way or another, the shitshow surrounding Caineghis becoming king was an equally humbling experience for him (and eventually led to him becoming the kind of person capable of having “behaving rationally” listed as their talent in their Tellius Recollection Vol 1 profile).

It wasn’t as if his life was free of conflict before, but it’s easy to imagine that it was mostly smooth sailing. People liked him, he liked them back, and that usually stopped any problems before they started, but with Giffca throwing the match and everything that followed, Caineghis had hit a wall he couldn’t even begin to grasp the shape of.

I’ll repeat myself a little, but from Caineghis’ perspective, Giffca had done a total 180. The people of Gallia (and especially those who approached him) were generally a very straightforward bunch and whenever someone had a problem with Caineghis, they would use their words or their fists to figure it out. Giffca never gave him the chance, and that was a massive wakeup call.

Taking everything at face value got him into this situation, and if he hoped to stand up to those who (unlike Giffca) actually sought to bring harm to Gallia, he’d need to adapt to a world of deceit, lies, and half-truths. He had never needed to stop and analyze someone’s actions, words, or intentions to the degree which he had to with Giffca, but now that he was king, now that he was responsible for an entire nation of people, could he ever afford to be that careless again?

#fe tellius #caineghis #giffca

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kaymarie-bell · 2 years ago

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PLS can u pls elaborate more about silver seeing yuu in dreams before aaaaaand the cursed placed on him PLSSSSSSSSSS 🥹🥹🥹🥹 im really excited for the upcoming ch 7 JAJDJSJSJASK and why do u think its called "episode 7 chapter 1"???????? 🤔 i really hope they add new characters too 🫣

OF COURSE! I'm excited too as you'll see in the essay that's about to follow 😅

As for the naming of the Main Story, TWST formats each dorm into Books/Episodes (i.e. the manga volumes are titled Episode of [Dorm]), and they release it by parts instead of all at once, so they go by chapters. So it just means Part 1 of Episode 7 (Diasomnia) with subsequent parts coming out a few weeks later!

also I think that someone on the twst team has mentioned before that Book 7 is not the end of the Main Story, so it's almost guaranteed that we'll get more characters in the future!

okay now a disclaimer: none of this is confirmed, this is just what my 3 braincells have come up with during the years of waiting for the actual Book to come out. I'm just getting this out there before the plot proves me completely wrong

Short version.

My theories on Diasomnia basically go like this: Silver is a hero-aligned character + He has a curse -> Lilia knows this and will try to break it even if it costs his own safety because hey that's his son -> Malleus will panic at the idea of losing the people he loves -> Overblot

Long version.

• Silver is a hero-aligned character: he's one of three light magic users alongside Rook and Kalim, who are based on the "good guys" of their respective movies. The symbol used to represent him in-game is a sword that looks like the one used to slain Maleficent. He also has similarities to Princess Aurora (attracting animals, being raised in the forest by fae.) As we have seen before, all the hero-aligned characters had a part in causing the overblots in their respective chapters because they followed the same path as their movie counterparts (the Sultan being controlled by Jafar, the Huntsman's betrayal to the Queen.)

However, the relationship between Silver and Malleus doesn't seem like it's bound to go sour at any moment, and it's far closer to the bond shared by their "Maleficent" counterparts rather than the animated "Sleeping Beauty." How could Silver cause the overblot? Read further down

• Silver is cursed: If we take a look at Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent cursed Aurora as a newborn and she had to be raised by the fairies so she could be safe while growing up. What we know about Silver so far is that 1. Lilia found him as a baby and decided to adopt him & 2. He suffers from some ailment that causes him to fall sleep all the time against his will.

Since the characters themselves do not have an explanation to this behavior (so far) it is likely that Silver was already under the effects of a curse when he was found and Lilia is aware of it (which might be why he decided to keep a human child in the middle of a forest instead of trying to give him to a human village.)

And thus, he might have been looking for a cure all this time (could be why he travelled so much leaving Silver on his own so often) and he found it recently maybe? And it somehow involves his own safety in exchange for Silver's, thus the cryptic conversation with Malleus back in Book 6 which originated those "Lilia is dying" theories. (He's part of the gacha pool, that man is NOT dying anytime soon dw.)

I concluded this from "Maleficent" and how the cure to Aurora's curse was the True Love's kiss, but instead of it coming from the Prince, the kiss that worked was from Maleficent herself since she came to feel a maternal love for Aurora after watching her grow up...So if Silver = Aurora then Lilia as his father could be part of the cure.

• What the curse entails (possibly): the sleepiness, a limited-time left to live if it's not broken soon, and the dreams themselves. However I do not have an answer as to who could've placed the curse...if there is a curse, it must be related to his identity before being adopted by Lilia

• Silver has seen Yuu in dreams: In the last part of chapter 6, Mickey recounts seeing a boy with silver hair and aurora coloured eyes in the dream room while Yuu was away. And while Mickey wasn't able to talk to him at the time, this still means that Silver is -so far- the only character capable of accessing the same dream room as Yuu and Mickey. Since (iirc) Mickey and Yuu have concluded that they are in different realms and that their only means of connection is through dreams, it's not too farfetched to believe that Silver might have seen MC in his dreams prior to them getting isekai'd into Twisted Wonderland at least once.

There's also Silver's line in one of the earlier PVs some time ago: "How strange, I feel as if I've met you before." Since he's known all of the Diasomnia boys pretty much all his life, this line has to be meant for MC. It was easy to brush it off as a simple reference to the "Once Upon a Dream" song before the reveal of the dream realm, but now I will firmly believe that there's a connection there until Chapter 7 comes out and disproves it.

There's still no explanation as to why MC has those strange dreams either, so this is the perfect moment for it.

• Malleus' overblot: from what we learned from Idia's ramblings about overblots previously, it seems that long term emotional distress is to blame for the OBs as much as the overuse of magic. And it just so happens that pretty much every single piece of information about Malleus we have confirms that he has been lonely most of his life, leaving him afraid of losing those whom he cares about. Namely the Diasomnia boys and now Yuu.

So what happens if two (or more) of the people he loves are in some sort of danger, which could leave him truly alone? A very sad, scared, and angry dragon. Bonus angst if his grandmother turns out to be the one to blame somehow.

• I truly feel like the narrative for Diasomnia will deal with elements of loss and grief considering that Idia is the one who's going to be helping this time. He has already experienced the pain of losing his brother, so he's the one who could understand Malleus the best...especially if his issues stem from losing his parents perhaps

A lot of my theories depend on Yana taking inspiration from "Maleficent," and I expect to be wrong on most of this once the actual story comes out tbh, but this is what I've imagined the plot to be like until now. I hope it made sense??? I wrote this at like 6 am after an all nighter 😅

If you read this far I love you 💖🌻

#twisted wonderland #twst #Diasomnia chapter theories #diasomnia #twst jp #a few of the predictions I wrote on the other post were in the /jk manner (like Yuu gaining powers) but these in specific I hope to see #in some way #I don't care if I look like a clown after reading the actual Chapter #I'm just happy it finally exists ☺️#📫📬📧#anon ask #long post #twst silver

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