#which was a dark time for myself

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

Hey friend! I see you struggling. I'm sorry things have been hard lately. I know that your doing the best you can. You have a project due tonight, and I wanted to tell you I believe in you. You're amazing, you're going to do amazing things. You got this. I believe in you

Take care of yourself. Be blessed in your endeavors <3

Thank you it's much appreciated <3

[muffinlance]

Wan Shi Tong, like the former Admiral Zhao, looked entirely ready to throw down with a teenager.

- Line I almost certainly won't use, so HERE IT IS

[callsthefaithful]

b4 death B) - angel w a little hat below cut <3

tried to stick to their death dates a bit but. idk i only googled for like 5 mins. also i wanted those old news print colours 😌

[cerealmonster15]

jamiazu / ashenviper week day 6: toxic yaoi overblot

SORRY it's very much a rushed mess especially in the lower half jdkslfjksd i was v busy today and trying to hurry to get something done for this before midnight [covers up the clock... i was close enough,,, it's still day 6 in some time zones jkfdlsjfs]

unfortunate that the overblots have so much going on and take me ten billion years to draw otherwise i think id like drawing them more bc they LOOK VERY COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[why-the-heck-not]

24.10.23, tuesday

a week long break from the main priority course started today!! Tomorrow gonna work on the other courses, but decided to have the day off today as a treat etc (can’t take the whole week off, so a day will have to do)

things done today:

a meeting (had to lead it, did a very crappy job on it but at least that’s done)

whole bunch of reading

dishes & general cleaning around while listening to a podcast

a walk

[98chao]

truly i love all of you and i'm so grateful for all the support i get on my vanilla milkshake posts here because i've just seen the way people talk about vanilla milkshake and mysticao on twitter and its genuinely taken 50 years off my life. now i've been reminded as to why i should never join the crk fandom on twitter

[thatonecrookedsmile]

Recovered photo of Joey Drew. Taken December 31, 1944, during a New Year's Eve party at the Arch residence, photographed by George Parker. Photo depicts Mr. Drew shaking hands with an unknown man in a hat. Attempts to identify the man and his whereabouts have been unsuccessful. -The ArchGate Preservation Society.

-Record-

-----

Alternatively: 'Unknown' - Return to the Studio AU.

Even though he was the one who personally invited every guest at the party, when Joey later asked him who the "strange man" was, Nathan had no idea who he was referring to, even with Drew's specifics.

After several years have passed, looking back at the photo, Nathan still has no idea who this man is or how he got into the party.

Joey described the encounter as something that "started out pleasantly, and ended on a very uncomfortable note."

[fireheartwraith]

Defending Forever online is not enough I need a gun

[klysanderelias]

It's always funny to me when a big-name youtuber argues vociferously that souls-like games DO have a difficulty setting, it's Playing The Game Right (leveling, build, using summons, etc), and then later on in the same video will have a fifteen minute long section complaining about how certain boss fights completely invalidate certain builds or require you to drastically alter your style of play, and i'm like... I thought you were in FAVOR of this.

And of course they're not, they just don't understand what a difficulty setting IS anymore, and that's completely fair because I think that most DEVELOPERS don't either, but it means that the criticism they make is always couched in a fundamental misunderstanding of the thing they're trying to criticise (and also usually a complete misunderstanding of where the criticism comes from).

And I want to be clear, I've beaten basically every single Dark Souls game, I beat bloodborne, I played shitloads of elden ring and the reason I didn't beat it was because I got bored, and I've done speedruns and soul level 1 runs of dark souls 3. I'm pretty much the dark souls power player that everyone expects would argue AGAINST having difficulty options.

But.

I've been playing thousands of hours of battletech, and the battletech difficulty screen has been the singlehandedly biggest argument I've had change my mind.

In the game, Battletech modifies difficulty per mission by changing the total health of enemies, changing their skills and experience levels, the usual fare of difficulty curves (although damage is never affected, thank god). But having all these granular options can dramatically change the way the game is played without simply affecting health values or hit percentages.

Toggling mech destruction and lethality means that losing a mech in a mission or having a pilot be knocked unconscious removes them permanently. They're killed, destroyed, you need to go get a new one. That's a HUGE change from the base difficulty where having a mech be completely destroyed in combat just removes the weapon components and costs a ton to repair. Likewise, changing the number of parts required to buy or salvage in order to complete a mech DRAMATICALLY changes the game - the maximum amount of parts you can get from a single mech is 3, and usually you only get 1. Needing 3 parts means that if you're lucky, you could see a brand new mech in a mission, blow its head off, and get one for free. Moving that scale up both means that rare or expensive mechs take much much longer to earn, but also that replacing mechs takes much longer (meaning that losses are even more painful).

Like, every single one of these options can dramatically affect how you play the game or change the feel of it to something much more interesting to you as a player - do you want to play a rogue-like game where you have to save and scrounge to get new mechs, and each mech and pilot is a precious resource you have to protect? or do you want to powerscale fast and constantly get new mechs and rare weapons?

And like, having extremely granular options for gameplay isn't for everyone, but then again, there are the owlcat pathfinder CRPGs that do this same thing, but have a base 'easy-normal-hard' sort of slider that automatically selects certain options, and you can adjust them if you want. If you're not interested in going through each slider you can just say 'I'd like normal please' and the game automatically makes all the selections, but you can also stop and say 'hey actually let me turn on permadeath too' and you can do that.

And I think that when people think about difficulty, they think about the most basic 'health and damage adjustments' sliders, and not ANYTHING else that actually have much more of an impact. I will hit this point to my grave that dark souls would massively benefit from difficulty options like turning off instakill effects (like curse or petrification) or removing the harsh penalty of dying when you can't get back to your bloodstain because a) that's often what drive new players off the most, and b) it doesn't fuckin' matter anyway, all you're losing is souls, the only thing it does is make you have to go grind more to make up for it.

And of course, there are always EXTRA challenge runs people come up with - nuzlocke runs of pokemon, soul level 1 runs of dark souls, hell, when I do Battletech I often add additional challenges like 'no intentional destruction of civilian buildings' or 'each mech must be assigned to a pilot and if one of them is sidelined, so is the other'

But challenge runs aren't difficulty settings, and more importantly there's no way to unchallenge run a game. You can decide to make the game harder for yourself, but you can't make the game EASIER. And when people say that you can, they're lying to you. Like yeah, there builds that are very strong in dark souls, and leveling optimally will make the game easier, but if you don't know what optimal leveling looks like, it's pointless. If you have a deep and thorough understanding of the game, and you check the messageboards, and delve through the wiki, and use a couple of exploits, the game will be easy! And if it's still too hard for you after that? Well, go fuck yourself, you just spent hours of your life doing research only to give up on the game anyway.

And the truth is, most people who argue that dark souls shouldn't have a difficulty slider are doing it out of bad faith, because they have a certain amount of ego riding on 'being good at hard game' as a character trait, and making these games more accessible frightens them because what if being good at dark souls isn't actually getting them into heaven

but also because they're somehow afraid that having extra difficulty options in the game will tempt them into choosing them? And then they won't get the 'true experience'?

Gamers are some of the most fragile people in existence that the mere option of reducing difficulty sends them into hysterics.

[plusultraetc]

oh how the poor sleeping habits tables have turned

[joelletwo]

[Collapsed on my desk] 70 file edits by myself while half of our system was down and i was hunting down a rogue fax number. Finally caught up

[outlying-hyppocrate]

well. did you fucking miss me.

[lucksea]

now that artfight is over i can take some time to properly design them before i make new refs

[bunnihearted]

🐰🕸🌙

[spotsupstuff]

here's a neat vid, go watch it if you haven't yet

there's Some things that i don't completely agree with personally, like attributing the Third sin to Materialism rather than Connection (i'd argue that the Ancients had no big issue with being materialistic, considering their golden attires and such- and that going with Connection overall better addresses both the core of Materialism and relationships overall) and then attributing the word Dynasty specifically to asian cultures but that's more history/word definition beef more than anything djgklsjlcgjkd

oh how i'd love to have a debate with this guy about Ancients...

[gamebunny-advance]

Hmhm~

It finally happened. I finally have a conventionally attractive anime(esque) boy that I can fawn over.