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We here at Sylph Co. are proud to announce the opening of an official tumblr account. By manufacturing and distributing Pokéballs and Trainer Acessories, we're not just selling supplies, we're selling connections between people and pokémon

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THIS SHIT IS HILARIOUS

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Watch the sun rise in the dawn

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guard up

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not the twitter migrants putting "reblog heavy" in their bios on here... like yeah. that's what we do here

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I don't have the energy in me to make a full post but once again the theme of art keeping you alive and sane and human, keeping you you, whether by self-expression via your own creative process or participation in others', your shitty little hobby is all that keeps you from becoming cursed algae. this is why every hunter is associated with one craft, and why the aegir have super 3d printers to print out your passion or hobby stuff for you no matter how dire circumstances are. for the stagnation of the mind and numbing of the spirit is akin to death. it's a survival necessity

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a lot of arknights gameplay discussion is built on certain assumptions about how people (are supposed to) play arknights, often without being aware that these assumptions are being made, and thus the common gamepress (rip)/reddit assessments of whether an operator is good or bad will be assessing their suitability for a style of play that is not remotely universal, but is still assumed to be universal, because it is the playstyle of the people who are writing these assessments.

this post is not about which playstyle is better, but rather about the way people talk about operator design and viability. if your way of playing arknights aligns with the assumptions that redditors often have about how to play arknights, then their advice is very useful, they are usually correct in their assessment of how suitable an operator is to that particular playstyle. it's also a single player game and how anyone else plays it has no bearing on what I'm doing myself, so in that sense it doesn't really matter to me that redditors talk about arknights in a way that doesn't align with how I play arknights.

I think reddit-style discussion is keeping a lot of players from experimenting and discovering that they actually like a different way of playing arknights more though, because they're caught in the idea that if this is how people talk about arknights, then that must be the right way to play arknights. I also think it causes a lot of players to view a lot of units in a bad light, or rather, they are assessing these operators by metrics that the operator is not trying to meet.

lucilla is often called a bad or poorly designed unit because her debuffs only affect regular enemies instead of the elites that would usually be the main threat. however, the debuffs she applies are very potent when they apply, so when her conditions are met she performs exactly as intended. in gamemodes where regular enemies can grow really bulky like IS or CC or SSS, or maps featuring bulky enemies that nonetheless are not categorised as elites like sarkaz wither aegis, lucilla successfully achieves her intended purpose of outperforming existing hexers in specific scenarios (her fragile can reach the highest value in the game and its only condition is whether the enemy is elite or not) without being a direct upgrade (the rest can actually debuff elites). not many players value what lucilla offers, but if you like engaging with and working around map and operator gimmicks, lucilla is a good operator for you.

wisadel is good at instantly clearing whole sections of the map, which is something many players value, but if you don't /want/ to instantly clear whole sections of the map because you want to actually engage with the map mechanics, she is not a good operator. she performs just as well as lucilla at her intended role, the difference is that wisadel's intended role aligns with the redditor assumption of how to play arknights while lucilla's doesn't. this friction between the assumed way of playing and the way many people actually play was highly visible during the icebreaker games, where a lot of players started bringing aak just to get rid of the other guy's wisadel so that she couldn't blow up the map before they got to actually play it.

"is this operator good" is a question that includes many unspoken metrics, including ones that the person asking might not actually want to judge an operator by. it can be a useful shorthand to speed up discussion of where and how one might want to use an operator, but it is only useful if these unspoken metrics are actually consistent between all participants of the discussion, which in practise is rarely the case. someone who is talking about how one might use lucilla doesn't want to hear that gnosis is better or that it'd be easier to just blow everyone up with wisadel, and someone who is looking for easy to use broadly applicable operators doesn't really want to hear that lucilla is actually really good in specific situations.

the more nicheknights I play and watch, the more I come to doubt how useful it is to talk about operators as being "good" or "bad" to begin with. across all of arknights there is not a single operator that is objectively unuseable. I would also argue that nearly every operator is capable of doing what they're intended to do. every operator has a combination of qualities that is completely unique to them, which means every operator can be in a strategy that relies on that specific operator's qualities to succeed. u-official was specifically designed to be as useless as possible as a joke, and high-level challenge players have still found various uses for a 3dp ranged unit that doesn't attack + doesn't take up deployment slots + can stun enemies + can temporarily make allies stop blocking.

exploiting the unique qualities of operators that are often overlooked for easier to use alternatives is the core principle of nicheknights. the fewer options you have and the more you try to cut down on the amount of operators used, the more each individual operator's unique qualities will shine. just earlier today I saw a clear that used a combination of the aspd debuff inflicted by zaaro and the fact that manual deactivation skills will cancel attack animations to delay mr. nothing's attacks long enough that every attack he does will trigger his stun talent, largely preventing zaaro from doing anything.

arknights also has immense variety in map and enemy design, so use cases for operators often dismissed as too niche to bother actually occur fairly often. every single chapter and story event introduces both new map mechanics and new enemies that make use of those mechanics. often the less straightforward a unit is, the more ways they have of interacting with these mechanics to open up potential new strategies. even without any self-imposed challenges, different gamemodes all have various restrictions and opportunities that make certain operator qualities more or less desirable, and the combination of collectibles and risks you pick in IS or CC can completely change how you approach each map. in RA you can straight up build the map yourself to be as beneficial to your operator of choice as possible.

beehunter's high attack speed but low damage made her fairly unremarkable until the game introduced hitcount-based mechanics. corroserum is rarely built because ifrit had been in the game so long already by the time of his release and he's not ifrit, but just the past month there have been two separate maps where a large amount of silenceable enemies approach the blue box in a straight line for him to trivialise. warmy is arguably the most difficult to use unit in global right now because the only way to inflict the burn status that her s2 capitalises on is using her s1, but now there's path of life letting just anyone inflict burn so she's free to use s2 anyway. if the situation where your gimmick unit of choice can shine doesn't exist yet it will be created sooner or later, because these units were created to have their gimmicks exploited.

arknights is a highly varied strategy game that offers many different ways to engage with its mechanics, including some ways to not actually engage with the mechanics and just explode everything instead. the game offers these options so exploding everything isn't the wrong way to play arknights, but the game also offers many other options so it's not the right way to play arknights either, it's just one of the many ways available. an operator that seems way too gimmicky or specialised to see much general use is not poorly designed, they are designed for a particular playstyle that simply differs from the playstyle that is assumed in a lot of operator discussion. units like lucilla or tsukinogi or leto aren't meant for players who ask "when would I ever use this when I have far easier options", they're meant for players who ask "what strategy would allow this combination of qualities to shine".

this is the issue at the root of why a lot of perfectly serviceable operators get stamped as being bad, and also the answer to the question of why arknights would be releasing these bad operators in the first place. crownslayer is a bad unit for the type of player that want to kill everything as fast as possible, but she's great for players who like gimmicks and weird interactions. many recent 5* are bad units for powergamers because they're trying to not to intrude on their existing subclass colleagues by doing something more conditional instead, or they're experiments for new subclasses that don't have an immediate obvious use case. many times throughout the game's history a new operator has been dismissed as bad only to turn out to be very powerful if you play them the way they're designed to, like dorothy, gnosis, ebenholz, and even specter alter.

all of which is to say, operator discussion would be a lot more useful to everyone involved if it talked about what situations would make the best use of the operator's abilities, rather than whether the operator is Good according a metric that is rarely even properly specified.

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Red Dead Redemption 2 was so real for creating the most in-depth, realistic clothing system I've ever seen in any game, and exclusively using it on burly, unhygienic men.

You choose every layer, every accessory, with dozens to hundreds of each to choose from. You can go in and fine-tune minute details like whether or not to roll up the shirt sleeves, or button the collar, or whether to wear your pants under your boots. These clothes get dirty in real time depending on what you do in the game. Mud, dust and blood linger unless washed off. Every garment has a warmth rating based on its material, and the game calculates what temperatures an outfit is suitable for based on the combined total. Dressing too cold or warm for the weather causes health debuffs.

You can choose which way he parts his hair, and whether he gels it. If you eat too much he gets bulkier and gains a double chin, and if you eat too little he can go underweight and get all bony and sallow. Both of these states come with stat changes. His hair and beard grow in real game time, and you need to routinely style and shave his facial hair if you want any style other than a full Santa. You need to bathe him regularly or people will start commenting on his BO, and he'll start visibly appearing filthy long before that. He sunburns in the sun, and in the heat he becomes slick and glossy with sweat.

This shit is IN DEPTH. It blows the customization systems of actual fashion-centric games like tf2, Monster Hunter and Splatoon out of the water in every regard. They honestly look basic in comparison. It's a paradigm shift for sure once you experience RDR2's level of customization. Everything else starts to feel smaller.

The player character all this customization is applied to, and I simply cannot stress this enough, is a 36 year old, 6'3" smoker weighing well over 200 pounds, with facial hair thicker than a sheepdogs, forearms like gnarled tree trunks and a dark, dense forest of body hair covering every reasonable surface. His skin is pocked and marred with scars from a rugged, nomadic lifestyle, and his teeth are the colour of cornbread. He has a thick southern accent, is a known mean drunk and knows how to skin pretty much any North American animal. He has never worn deodorant, flossed or moisturized. He eats canned beans, fruit and the like by simply pouring them into his mouth and gulping, often while walking or riding a horse at full gallop.

I can think of NO better use case for such customization. Not some fresh-faced little twink, not some busty anime babe. Just a gross, hairy, unwashed homeless dude with crippling self esteem issues and a chest broader than a barrel laid lengthwise. A non fashion-centric game, certainly a non-fashion centric character, but for some reason the best clothing and customization system ever concieved, bar none. What the fuck.

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me: i am fundementally opposed to the inquisition as a ruling power. iberia is a record of their atrocities.

my therapist: that's fair

me: but i love it when the inquisitor raises his sacred lantern and promises that he shall fight to his last for the glory of the iberian empire

my therapist: who doesn't

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3DS FE critical hit cut-ins be like

*SHING!*

"THEN PERISH"

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i painted kiesling again! havent posted my halo ocs in a while i hope everyone missed him

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how it feels to fight lawbringer

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So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?