#the pvp is even worse

[prototypelq]

Just saw some coop DMC5 videos and hoooo boi I get it why the feature was not fully implemented in the game. Don't get me wrong, even just barebones coop where two players can play one entire level together with just enemy health buffed up like 5 times and double spawns would have been Nice To Have, but yeah making it actually fit well in game would require rearranging 80% of levels, enemy scaling and balancing and just, a ton more work. Plus AI reworking cause it clearly has no idea what to do with more than one player. Still would love for this feature to be actually implemented in game, no matter how barebones it would have been, it seems like a ton of fun.

It's hilarious how the players keep accidentally stealing each other's kills or messing combos by snatching demons to the other end of the arena. There is not even nearly enough space for three sparda idiots on the base game levels. Also I can't even see the Nero player over the lightshow the twins' are pulling off there.

Hilarious, absolutely unbalanced, enemies are just everest-level damage sponges, pure fun

[hacksawboy]

we gotta back up and think about how absurd the ship names are in this fandom what the fuck is coffinshipping

[sniperct]

tanking in ff14 as DRK

very smooth, kinda zen

tanking in wow as anything

healing in FF14

Healing in wow

[crqstalite]

liam 🤝 kaidan

all around beloved on tumblr and hated on reddit

[girlbob-boypants]

Thinking about that game that I liked the art style and combat of but that I fully believed shouldn't have been a battle royale cause it was bad at that and instead should've been a solo game

The streamer I expressed this to said I was wrong and that battle royales are really in so it's good cause it can get a playerbase needed to constantly update things

The game is dead now.

[astralflows]

"sorc healer is bad for pvp because it has shit dcds" excuse me but i have the best dcd, it's called "running away like a coward" and it saves me every time

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

The problem in the Melt's discussion is how you framed the question. Average person obviously doesn't have prosthetics, they *like* their limbs, and so asking "why did you give Melt legs" rather than asking "would Melt even want human legs?" results in a reflexive response of "of course she would, wtf are you talking about?". By the time that response comes, confirmation bias makes any discussion futile.

ok so

So

There’s this trend with depicting disabled people in media, especially where there’s magic, where they at some point magically stop becoming disabled. Most of the time irl disabled people are not a fan of this trope! Because unlike in fantasy in real life you can’t magically regrow limbs, or unparalyze a spine, or stop being deaf or blind. Depending on what the disability is there’s a lot of debate within the disabled community itself as to whether or not they want to be cured as well-typically if it’s something that causes physical pain, like an autoimmune disorder, most disabled people are more on the side of ‘yeah I’d like if I got a cure for this one day.’ But for stuff like missing limbs, wheelchairs, autism, etc? Most people are fine with actually having it- our difficulties usually arise from the fact that non-disabled people around us refuse to make concessions to help make the world more accessible for everyone.

These comments also ignore the fact that not everyone who doesn’t have a limb loses it in an accident. Sometimes people are born disabled, and they are so used to it that attempts to ‘cure’ them of their disability actually bring them more distress than if you’d just attempted to meet them halfway. (Deaf activists in particular prefer it if society focused less on restoring her airing and more on teaching deaf children sign language)

This article I read about disabled people put it really nicely:

“if the only happy ending the writers can imagine for the character is to magically lose their disability, this could be a little depressing for disabled people living in the real world. And sometimes, it is. Not because we can’t be cured. Not because we won’t be cured. But because it means we aren’t recognized as people but only as labels, not as characters but only as characteristics. (Link)

disabled people are more than their disabilities and their disabilities don’t make them ‘non-functional’- just different from the ‘standard’ (loose term but ykwim.) acting like the ideal body is a non-disabled one is ableist, end of story, and trying to say otherwise is just plain incorrect.

[nekoprankster218]

Random Thoughts on CounterSide Origin update

So I don't follow news and updates on my games that often, so I was completely blindsided that this recent CounterSide update was gonna be reworking the entire game basically. Definitely spending a bit more time than usual tonight getting used to what's been moved, what's been changed, and what's been removed. I can certainly see why a lot of this has been controversial with the playerbase.

I actually do think there have been some decent changes tho, like:

LOVE that Dives no longer cost Info (I was broke when it came to Info recently) and that I can do Dives while still having World Missions being done at the same time. Also love getting to grind Dives again without having to wait for the next time I can reset them. Edit: OH AND I SOMEHOW FORGOT! But the new system of how they do the Dive squads- *chef kiss* I was also having a problem of my stronger squads getting burned out and failing the Dive because my weaker squads couldn't pull through, so the new system of a single squad just going until it dies before it cycles to the next squad is so far doing wonders for me. We'll see how I do once I get back to the higher coordinates.

LOVE a lot of the freebies they've been giving out for this update, and the special event giving the chance for free Awakened Units!? I'm already close to halfway for my first Awakened Unit testimonial and the time given for this event is REALLY generous for the pretty big rewards being offered. This is definitely a good time to login in for both new and old players just for collecting all the free stuff and promotional rewards.

I like that there's more space on the home screen to play around with when customizing. While I'll need to re-adjust on where I go to click certain stuff, it is nice that the UI isn't covering some of the characters and trophies I squeezed into my home screen (mainly those on the edges and the right half of the screen).

And I'm so far kinda neutral on how they changed the Dupe system and Limit Fusion system, as well as most of the UI changes. I might need a few more days of play before it gets to me or something. I'm mainly neutral rn since a lot of my units were already pretty upgraded before the update so for the time being Limit Fusion (and by extension Skill leveling) won't be so costly for me.

Oh but I do have a few issues still.

WHY would they think that getting rid of Unit EXP in battles was a good idea. That was how I was leveling most of my units at this point. Not just because of Salary Negotiation mats, but also leveling Units starts to get expensive with Coins! And I liked leveling most units that I'd never use via farming battles since I'd get free Quartz without having to invest mats (beyond the Eternium used for those battles obviously).

The current UI does mean that farming the daily limited battles gets a tad bit longer and more tedious, although that is countered a little if one uses the new "Favorite" feature to pin battles. However, the new UI also generally makes the organization of all the side stories and events messy. I like the timeline idea to illustrate when each story is taking place in connection to the Main Story, but it is annoying to scroll through and some of the branches start to get confusing and messed up.

I'm also a bit confused if Limited Time Event stories are still going to be a thing, and if so, where they are going to be located? I saw some previous LTE stories on the timeline UI, but I'm not sure if that means they've been added as permanent side stories as they are currently locked for me; and if so, if LTE stories going forward will be added to the timeline permanently after their run, or if LTE stories are being retired as a feature as a whole and they're adding all the past LTE stories as permanent content now because of that.

So in summary, pretty monumental update that, while having its downsides and areas of needing to get adjusted to, I don't necessarily think it'll be the doomsday others have been complaining about (although this is coming from someone who is currently not too big on PVP, wasn't too deep in Challenge mode or Shadow Palace when it was still around, and doesn't really understand stats, min-maxing, and the technical aspects of gameplay that much).

[neonpigeons]

having a puppy has substantially increased the social interactions I encounter whenever we're in public which is reminding me that I am woefully bad at social interactions

[wp100]

"WoW open world feels dead"

Let's see, There's Classic Era, Cata Classic just came out, Season of Discovery is still a thing, right? Timerunning is going on, Season 4 is a thing so people are doing M+, but not as much because it's the last season and most people just get KSM or KSH and dip (like I did, I got KSM and just stopped altogether lol, first time too, a bit burned out from it lol)

[isekyaaa]

I wanna make a Howl's Moving Castle inspired fic, but the novel version.

[ramons-elevator]

Something I gotta give props to Red Team/ Team Bolas is that even though they are doomed, they all are on the same page

After the first day, Etoiles mentioned and some people here said that it was kinda rough in the beginning for blue and green team, especially when picking their leaders.

Blue has Tubbo, Pierre, and Bad which are three people who would want to be leaders/know how to do things. And Tubbo and Bad having beef in the past probably didnt help.

Green team has Forever, Bagi, Etoiles, and Quackity who are again are people who want to be leaders/know how to do things. But also add Max and Antoine who can be silly, but also know how to do things, it probably got messy (keep in mind that i only heard from other ppl)

Then we have Red team, who knows they are fucked. They have Philza, Baghera, Cellbit, and Foolish who are great leaders, but they know that this is survival/PvP. If I remember right that they were kinda like “uh so Philza or Cellbit?” and was the first team to pick their name and leader.

Then after that, they all communicated and just let each other do their thing which I think really helped. Foolish mentioned this after with Tina that they didnt try to tell each other what to do or become actual leaders. They just were like “hey imma make some bread.” “Okay im in the ocean looking for ships” etc etc

Also Slime being a strategist and jumping into other peoples calls was so smart and playing to his element. And as soon as they realized that Carre was a god at PvP, they cheered him on and Cellbit helped communicate with Carre more clearly. Philza using his Minecraft knowledge and scouting for world generated boats and stuff to get more loot and telling everyone.

They all let each other do what they want and played to their strengths. It probably helped that it was a small team and in terms of lore, the characters had things conflicting with each other, but they still respected each other highly.

And when it came down to them fucking giving up, they were 100% on board and even wanted to change their skins and just roleplay it out. They stated over and over again, they didnt want to break up the team at all. They know they were fucked, but didn’t want anything to change.

I need to watch the other Povs to see the other teams, but goddamn. Team Bolas my beloveds. I hope they fucking lose it and get worse <3

[mccoyquialisms]

More bits from the 1st night of the London D20 live show that brought me joy:

The little “ooooohhhhHHHH” bit everyone in the atrium did as they were rolling the bingo cages for their characters

How NUTS everyone went when Lou got Fabian and everyone started chanting “hoot growl”

A second, just as loud cheer when Siobhan got Adaine and her and Lou ran around the stage together

Siobhan, unprompted: “GIVE ADAINE A GUN!”

Emily has apparently named a stray cat after Plug <3

Sydney straight up eating the ground (it’s ice cream, she’s fine. Sort of.)

“It’s a smell so counter to everything human life needs, in a way that almost kills you, but also, only in a way someone from New York can understand, makes you proud.”

The party refusing to call the candy wyverns anything other than “bugs”

Zac interrupting the ongoing banter to announce Skip is already boarded and sucking on the saddle of the wyvern

“I throw a flash grenade.” “I turn into a giant pigeon.” “I cast unseen servant to untie him.” “I shoot a guard.” “Okay, so everyone decides to do something SUPER SUBTLE.”

I mentioned it before but it’s SO good: “the DC is 500. Only a Nat 20 will do it.” Beardsley: [rolls a Nat 20 first try] [pandemonium in the arena]

“Have you seen Succession?”

The gabagool 🤌

“Adaine, we have saved the world multiple times. These are the scariest people we have ever met.”

Lou losing it at Sydney’s grenade having 1 point of poison damage in addition to all the bludgeoning damage

Skip gives Fabian a laser gun. He does not know what it is until he shoots Calroy with it

“Adaine, this gun thing you’re on? I get it.”

Cocaine Bear

“I YEETED YOU!”

Pete and Skip instant besties. Pete and Fabian instant enemies.

“You named him Anus and now I just have to do it the rest of the show!”

“I absolutely hate to add insult to injury…” “THEN DON’T!”

Adaine passing her wisdom save by 1 point to prevent Kugrash’s polymorph spell from turning her into a rat

The absolute ROAR that went up when Skip transformed into Lapin

“Anus?” “Not today.” “Not today WHAT?”

“I thought I was just on another planet starting a revolution I don’t intend to stick around for.” “America!”

Ally confidentially declaring Lapin and Aguefort have swinger vibes

“Do you want to just take him?” “Do you mean in the biblical sense?” “Another exciting use….”

[croaky voice] butterfly in the skyyyy

Pete opening 6 different flavors of seltzer while the rest of the party does kublacaine

Elaine Lee in the house!!!

Kugrash the greatest chaperone who ever lived

Lapin and Aguefort…and they were roommates…..Lapin’s “how do I look?” before they go into the egg fortress lmao

Syd’s perfume missile dealing 68 points of damage to Fabian and instantly knocking him unconscious. “Are you rolling D20s for damage???”

“I’m going to use my tides of chaos to reroll….worse.”

Tina the butterfly familiar that everyone totally remembers

“Well shit, any house where we kill the people in it becomes our house.”

Pete dissing Fabian so hard he feels the toxic masculinity coming back

Lapin requesting an exam extension for Adaine and Fabian from Arthur via dating app

The collective psychic damage everyone took from the “yar har har” scene

“Pete just starts dancing with a scarf in a way no one else has seen before.” “That’s my fucking thing!!!”

Sydney just enabling every pvp encounter alsdkghsdg. Giving Fabian unlimited capacity to his gun as he’s shooting Pete, with Fabian hitting twice and criting once.

“I can pleasure you or throw grenades, you gotta pick one.” “The first one, obviously!” “Okay!”

Lapin, Adaine and Kugrash chain smoking in the corner suffering through the pain of existence while the rest of party goes nuts around them

Murph incorporating the words “come/coming” as much as possible into Kugrash’s farewell speech while Brennan mimes Gilear’s enormous dick behind him. Not even Fabian’s battle sheet is enough to conceal that hog

“That’s right, I’m the king. And then I jump into the dumpster.”

GILEAR…MY…..OLD FRIEND………Aguefort and Gilear fwb real

“Not another person with their penis frozen to the walk in!”

[antimony-medusa]

on Consequences in minecraft streaming

Okay so one of the real common things that I've been seeing lately is an increasingly passionate call for certain characters to experience Consequences (and the rest of the post always makes it clear that they mean a specific type of definatively negative repercussions) for their actions during QSMP events. And aside from the absolute deja vu of having seen these same calls when DSMP was airing, and how that turned out (sorry, the syndicate did not all have a meeting where they apologized for their sins while tommy told them they were horrible people), I'm not 100% sure if that's going to happen or pan out in the exact way that I think people are aiming for and expecting will happen.

I keep seeing a lot of people saying that it would be bad writing if people don't get "consequences" for their actions, and what they're specifically asking for is punishment and for people to realize what they're doing was wrong. BBH is supposed to repent for furniture thefts and torturing the people keeping him from his kid. Phil is supposed to realize that actually he's good at PVP and apologize for saying that his team has been suffering in purgatory. Tubbo is supposed to fill in his tubhole and only do things other people ask him to do.

But like, so much of the time, what we're seeing is these streamers being interested in writing morally grey characters, just some little guys who make bad decisions, and the thing about characters being morally grey is that they don't always have a come to jesus moment and become morally pure. Sometimes they just keep being morally grey. Sometimes they get worse on purpose.

Maybe BBH never decides that torturing that guy was bad, because he wanted to get his FUCKING KID back. Like, I seriously think you have to be prepared for that character arc to never end in Bad going "that was wrong to do", and maybe his cubito will still be happy. Phil is a dude with anxiety who's been sure that his kids are going to die from the moment he got to purgatory, streaming at 1-4 in the morning while other teams break into their base, even if bolas goes insane and scrapes out a win I think it's way more likely that that team is gonna go "what a wild fluke that's the power of gas masks" and not have a moment where they go "it was unfair of us to assume that we were underpowered, I guess everybody else was the underdogs! Our bad." Tubbo is tubbo, he's already building a new create thing, he is not going to apologize for leaving marks on the landscape with mod packs.

Like, the streamers are interested in making human characters, making interesting decisions, not communicating moral lessons to their fanbases. Bad is operating within a Taken film, not a sermon. Quackity wants his cubito to be pathetic, gay, and out for revenge, not to communicate the importance of forgiveness to those who hurt you. Tubbo's victory condition is having a nice date with Fred, full stop, does not care who he has to run over to get there.

Absolutely I think there are people intentionally doing corruption/villany arcs on the server, and they probably intend for that to lead places. There will be Consequences, as in, things will happen. Cellbit is doing cannibalsm on purpose, and not as a teaching moment about how good cannibalism is for your social bonds. But like, maybe that leads to him being thrown out of his family and not trusted because of his sins, OR maybe it leads to him murdering his way through a federation complex, facing down a bloody cucurucho, and going "you made me into you and I hate this" and eating him. Narrative consequences does not always mean punishment and a return to moral purity. Sometimes people just do bad things, and then repercussions happen, but they don't necessarily "see the error of their ways". The specific call for like— retribution and repentance as the consequences people are going for— for punishment— if a character has done something bad they don't "deserve" good things to happen to them and it's bad writing for that to happen— I just don't think that those are the stories the creators are necessarily interested in telling.

And secondly, what people are often asking for is character conflict— they want people to be socially excluded by characters they feel have been wronged, and learn the error of their ways that way until they apologize sufficiently. Phil is gonna hate BBH or Tubbo is going to hate Roier or something once they return from Purgatory. People want their cubitos to have beef with each other.

But the thing is, on a meta level, I don't doubt that the entire admin team and streaming team on QSMP is just screamingly aware that this fandom cannot be trusted with conflict. The election was just part of it, but I made it through the election, and Purgatory has been so much more unpleasant— and I am not just talking about twitter. This website, tumblr, has been full of people fighting each other for their teams. And I am not just saying "red team fans have been bad", because boy have I been staring in horrified awe at the takes that some red team people have been putting forward (what on EARTH do you mean BBH deserves to have his kid die, touch grass immediately), but if I step outside of red team circles, everyone is talking about how red team people are horrible hypocrites who win too much and only deserve to suffer (I saw this posting the day that blue had back to back wins, so it isn't even tied to how well red is doing). The quality of the discourse has been increasingly unpleasant, and this has been taking place in streamer's chats, on twitter, in discords, and here on tumblr.

Every QSMP streamer is increasingly aware that having conflict with another streamer is basically sending a wave of negativity their way, and setting off bombs in the fandom at the same time. And they're all friends with each other! Sometimes they decide that the story beat they're going for is worth it and just tell each other to stay off twitter, but like, you have got to be prepared that maybe they will just be friends again. And that might be weaker writing, for people to keep forgiving each other, but that is an unfortunate aspect of the technical aspects of this medium and this fandom. Maybe the creators would be more willing to have character conflict if they didn't know that that meant the person they were mad at in-game would get death threats on social media.

Like no fucking wonder Phil apologized for getting mad at Wil within the same stream and before Wil said sorry to him. This is why the French have given up on revolution arcs, you know it's why the women are all very careful to get along with people. All of those creators know the cost of making anyone into a villain, and I'm just saying maybe get prepared that we won't have inner-party conflict. Maybe they'll decide it's worth it for a fun story moment! Maybe they won't. Maybe don't get 100% married to the idea that the only good writing possible moving forward is for people to be thrown out of the community and then repent for their sins.

[witherroze]

I unironically believe that my FAVORITE thing about rats smp is how blatantly obvious it is that the narrative was supposed to be “oh all these lovely rats helped this lovely family in their times of need! truly a friendship against all odds!!”

But the rats just won’t stop trying to murder and steal and lie and cheat.

Like PVP deaths weren’t even supposed to be a thing but day one Martyn and Oli came out swinging and not a single person has been capable of deescalating since, so it keeps getting worse.

[zeb-z]

dude. foolish surviving a 3v1 inside a tiny obsidian box for over a minute, taking away most of the eggs health with phil before dying for the first time. making nuisance of himself, playing smarter not harder, operating as a distraction with half a heart and a dream as phil deals the final blows. then him and cellbit’s collaboration on their base, the large build and crazy fucking lava maze and decoy obsidian boxes making it impossible for the other team to destroy their egg in return. red team winning not by being the better pvp team, but by playing to their strengths - building, strategy, communication, and complete and utter chaos. they started preparing early, they made weapons, they built extensively and prepared traps and decoys. and with their gas masks and bombs and chainsaws and complete refusal to give up, they had to have been terrifying. if they played the tower defense strategy, they would have lost faster than green had. if they had spent time getting just armor and gear and none actually working on their base, they would have lost worse than blue. the red team won by playing smarter, grinding their ass off, and by turning the playing field into incomprehensible chaos even they couldn’t navigate. they didn’t even know where their egg was and they defended it perfectly. it was a well earned victory today - here’s to hoping there’s no repercussions