#which is why i feel like qp give me more room

[pawterpillart]

Platonic, queerplatonic or romantic vee?

The struggle is real.

[waterlinkedgirl]

NPoT chapter 270-272 summary

I wonder if I can catch up! Since we don’t have chapters this month, maybe I can!

“There’s no choice but to give up one of the doubles...”

The atmosphere at the front is heavy...

The coaches discuss the lineup for the upcoming matches against Germany, but with Germany’s overwhelming power they’re having a lot of trouble.

“Dankmar and Bertie... The probability of winning against those two German pros is zero,” Kurobe says. Mifune looks rather unamused. Saitou, however, has a different idea. “Supervisor, how about pairing up Byoudouin and Duke?” “Don’t say stupid things!” Mifune says, “If it ain’t Byoudouin then who’s gonna go up against the pro Volk?” “Supervisor... Aside from that, we also have the matter of the one who had participated in the Japanese representatives camp, who departed to Germany aiming to become a pro, Tezuka Kunimitsu... There’s evidence that suggests that in the upcoming matches against us, he will be playing in singles.”

“There’s many that want to fight against that guy,” Tsuge says.

Mifune takes his bottle and takes a few good swigs. “Right now there ain’t anyone of the brats that can beat Tezuka!”

”Well~, we and Germany really have way different cards in our hand,” Saitou says. “That speaks for itself. Our opponents are the representatives of the world champion Germany, after all...” Kurobe says.

“What’s gonna come of you bastard coaches givin’ up, coach Saitou?!” Mifune has his back to the others, looking out the window.

“That’s right. None of that scum has given up!!”

We cut to: Kirihara being horribly lost.

He was following Atobe because he was being all sneaky and suspicious, but lost sight of him and now he’s in the German representatives village.

This is where he spots!

(this is where I went Konomi what the actual fluck is your anatomy doing but that aside--)

He wonder what the hell they have for a business with each other, when he notices Tezuka handing a CD to Atobe... Of course this means they’re

SPIES! (right?)

He received something like a super-confidential file on the German representatives...! Hiiie!

I see! So Tezuka just pretended to have gone to Germany to do an infiltration investigation as a double-spy! Putting his life on the line for Japan’s victory... Huh?! If the truth got out won’t it be really bad?!

(this is of course a very, very logical conclusion to come to, Akaya, and I love you to bits for that.)

...which is when he gets caught by security.

“Was machts du hier?!”

So of course, when it comes down to this...

he makes a big effing run for it.

Meanwhile, Amadeus and Ralph are still duking it out, with the first set score being 6-5 for now.

“You play a nice style of tennis...” Amadeus says, “However, I will teach you all the decisive difference between you and me!”

Taste the baptism of a pro!!

(Amadeus using baptism here when Volk has his Wirbel Taufe (lit. Whirl Baptism) technique is a fun detail I want to point out.)

With Dark Side, Amadeus scores off of Ralph, and it becomes set point for the Swiss.

“Our commander has switched gears...” Henri says. “How scary...” Peter whispers.

Amadeus’ Dark Side exposes the opponent’s greatest weaknesses and draws them out. The mental power he displays as he mercilessly and relentlessly attacks them...

“Your greatest weakness is the response delay of the opposite site of your pivot foot after your shot!”

However, Ralph manages to return it.

“Ralph’s scariness is his ability to fix and overcome his weaknesses,” Ryoma says. “Make him miss once, and the next time it’ll be an easy course for him.”

(so like, Shiraishi but faster?)

6-6.

“Thanks to you I’ve become fond of that weakness, Amadeus.”

And now for something completely different--

Zeus vs the temptation of fluffy fur feat. Tanegashima!

A whole line of men of statu(r)e is lined up to hug the koala! Heracles, Hermes, Vulcan, Davide...

Davide?!

He makes a pun about being startled now featuring koala’s, and of course if he makes a pun, you can guess who’s near to drop-kick him?

Bane!

Zeus addresses Tanegashima. “In the semifinals tomorrow against the German team, we, the Greek representatives, will come to cheer for you.” “Thanks☆”

“Game, set.” We cut back to the match between Ralph and Amadeus.

“Won by...

The American representative, Ralph Rheinhart!”

Cheers erupt from the American team. “Ohhhhhh! We won against a pro!” And with 3 wins and two losses, America advances to the semifinals!

“You could immediately become active as a pro player,” Amadeus says as they reach out to shake hands. “No...” Ralph says, “Participating as soon as the pro tour ended, the skill of unifying your team as a commander to come this far is something that deserves much more respect.”

“Let’s meet again on the court.”

“At least, the veil’s been lifted on the American representatives... This’s become really interesting.”

Spain moves on to the semis with a 3-0 against Russia. (the fun thing about NPoT is that we literally have no idea how the other matches are going to turn out and who the finals opponent will be... currently, Spain seems to be in favour.)

Amadeus closes his eyes and lifts his head to the skies. This year... we didn’t make it either.

“Commander... Nice game.” When he opens his eyes--

All of his teammates, saluting him. He smiles, and closes them again. “Thank you very much.”

Meanwhile, the American team has noticed Ryoma and are shouting elatedly about how he came to watch. Ryoma tells them they’re making too much of a fuss... but that he’s happy to see everyone doing well.

“By the way, where’s my brother?” “Ah, Ryoga, huh,” Dudu starts.

“He’s always had that wanderlust, you know,” Kiko says. “Who knows where his feet led him♪”

“You’ll be able to fight him somewhere... for sure,” Ralph reassures him.

“Let’s meet in the finals, Ryoma!”

(y’all you have audience right below don’t you feel awkward shouting that drthdcrt6uyjcftguyj)

“We gotta beat Germany first!”

Yeah, about that...

Kirihara’s finally been apprehended by the guards.

“Th- That’s why said! I didn’t see anything!” And, in his best attempt at English, “No spy! No spy! I was searching for a friend and I got all dizzy dizzy lost...

Th- This is bad! They don’t understand anything-- Help me!!” (Kirihara you idiot onomatopoeia don’t translate at ALL xdfhcxftghcgh)

“Che che che~” (this is Bismarck’s trademark laugh, more like ‘chi chi chi’ in the original but this conveys the sound better in the English accent imo, don’t question it)

“You can let him go, that guy’s my Kumpan.”

Bismarck leads Kirihara out of there, to one of the courts.

“Thank you... very...” “Heh. Japanese is fine. Just don’t get lost in the enemy’s athlete village again. If you were caught by Volk he’d beat you up like a punching bag (lie)

If it were QP you’d have a court-martial (lie), and if it were Frankensteiner you’d be turned into a cyborg (lie)” (I love what this says about how these guys on the German team are perceived)

Kirihara lets out a yelp.

“Um.. You’re the guy who went against Fuji in the exhibition matches, right?”

“Yeah, I’m Michael Bismarck!

But you Japanese middle schoolers sure are strong, huh!”

Kirihara laughs nervously. "That so? Those guys still got a long way to go.”

(cin game on point)

“However, the German middle schoolers also have a bunch of guys who hate to lose. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. See you then, Kumpan!” “Thanks”

Right when he finishes waving, our attention is drawn to one of those hate-to-lose types. It’s Siegfried, and he looks exactly like he’s unlocked ten’imuhou.

(meanwhile Frankensteiner looks like he’s nnnot gonna be in the tournament anytime soon htxcftgcyhzsg poor guy)

A park, lined with trees and skyscrapers in the background. “Mon amour... It was a bitter decision I made so they would be loved in the future...��

Camus wistfully reaches for his racket as he laments that he had to stop Oswal.

But... If you talked about what I really wanted, fighting with him...

The person who he’d been thinking about, Duke, pops up.

“Camus... Would you like to have a game?” “Even though you appeared just now, you say some funny things, Duke.

Well, it’s not unthinkable that you wouldn’t have understood my tennis in just our mental match.”

“Will you have a game with me?”

“Are you planning on appearing in the Germany matches as well?”

In yet another meanwhile, Tokugawa is going 1 vs 2 against Oni and Irie.

“Should we take a break?” Irie asks, smiling, when Oni notices someone. “Oi Tokugawa... He showed up today as well.”

(it’s him!!!! :D) "Sorry for interrupting your practice! Tokugawa-san... Can I count on you today too?"

Tokugawa nods, and the two of them take off.

“That guy...” Oni looks over them with a certain pride in his eyes. “It seems that ever since they lost against Germany he’s been having practice with Tokugawa every day.

Though they may have been defeated, they are the only pair that has attained a Howling between their skills!”

Highschoolers and middle schoolers alike are preparing for the big day tomorrow, from watching matches of Volk,

(spotted!) to running until the sun sets. It is already late when Atobe knocks on one of the room’s doors. Fuji opens.

“Hey, Fuji. Tezuka’s told me to return the CD he borrowed from you.”

“Thank you, Atobe. Was Tezuka doing well?” “Yeah, much more than usual.”

“Hey, Fuji. Don’t make me run errands for you again.”

It’s the night before the semis. Everyone is gathered in the hall to listen to the head coach. “You bastards! Tomorrow finally is the Big Match! Go take revenge on Germany and shake the world!”

A roar erupts from the gathered players.

“I’ll announce the order for tomorrow!”

(spotted! haha)

“Huh? Koshimae ain’t here.” “Mm. Akaya isn’t here either,” Sanada remarks.

“Can you believe those guys?”

Of course, they’re playing off against each other. Or, well, it looks rather one-sided on Ryoma’s half, with his ten’imuhou.

“Sht... Why?!”

Tezuka-san... and Atobe-san... For the sake of Japan they put their life on the line and cross all kinds of dangerous bridges... I, too...!

“So how about giving up already?”

(I’m yelling because being on top of the game and then telling their opponent to give up is something much more Yukimura than Ryoma in my book... But here we are!)

“Even if I die I won’t give up.”

He, who can’t be called an angel or a devil, when that single man surpasses that wall--

[One day left until the semis against Germany.]

[swampgallows]

for the first time in a while, at least a month, i woke up screaming again. i fell asleep around 4, which i was proud of, feeling myself slowly sliding back toward a preferred schedule. lately i’d still been falling asleep at 6am but would wake up a bit earlier, getting fewer hours but at least seeing more sunlight. the urge to hurt myself yesterday was strong, but luckily there are understanding and generous people in my life to ease me through it, and i am beyond thankful. 

two things have happened.

one, an old face from my previous WoW server has resurfaced and sought me out specifically. a different friend had namedropped them out of nowhere, but was also drunk and wouldn’t extrapolate on why he had mentioned it. he just said the character’s name, then drunk-dialed me a bunch of times until i picked up and then had their “gay roommate” scream across the room that “asexuals aren’t lgbtq!”, then hung up.

but anyway the old face returned. we’ll call them “Pockets�� because it’s 7am and I’ve barely slept and so i’m pullin raver names out of my ass. I met Pockets back on thobro in 2006ish. we’re the same age, and so we’ve known each other for a fairly long time and kind of grew up alongside each other. Pockets eventually got into a relationship with...I guess we’ll say “Dizzy”. Now, Dizzy lives very far away from Pockets. Pockets lives in America, like me, and Dizzy lives in Australia. But as the capabilities of the internet were improving every day (especially with the advent of internet telephony like skype at the time) it was easier than ever to sustain a long-distance relationship. But by the time I had quit WoW in early 2009, Pockets and Dizzy’s relationship had not progressed as one should have. For instance, Pockets had barely seen any pictures of Dizzy. While they chatted all the time, at that point they hadn’t yet had a webcam chat. It had been some years of constant companionship, yet they never had a plan to meet. But that was fair, I thought, since Pockets and I were only 16 in 2006, so planning that thing was kind of difficult. But by 2009, we were 19, and Dizzy was a bit older in the first place, so surely two people who loved each other would want to meet irl, right?

But Pockets said they respected that Dizzy wasn’t so open about their looks or personal life, etc. Okay. Pretty big red flags, though, if someone you’ve spent almost every waking moment with for three years is being this conservative about their identity. They were prominent characters in most of the server’s RP, so there was a lot of talk. “Maybe Dizzy is like... WAY older than they say, and they don’t want to admit it.” “Maybe Dizzy isn’t the gender they say they are.” “Pockets will get fed up with this eventually—they’re young! They can’t just wait around forever.”

So Pockets found me in game, yesterday, and had transferred to WRA, where a lot of thobro refugees (like myself) ended up. And they sought me out specifically because they remember my friendship with them, and that I had known them (and the rest of our community) all that time ago. And Pockets told me, yesterday, that Pockets and Dizzy had finally broken up. They had stopped talking for about two weeks, and for about two solid weeks, Pockets was staring down the cavernous hungry maw of suicide. “Everything was just... so quiet.”

They must have been fucking married by now, I thought. Either way, it had been over ten years! I knew Pockets was taking it really hard. Except... Dizzy and Pockets never met.

Not once. Not once in over ten fucking years of being in a relationship did they ever meet. And Dizzy had actually been to America a handful of times throughout the relationship. Yet Dizzy never went to meet Pockets.

I don’t know what the rest of the situation was like. If they video-chatted every day, if they called each other all the time, or whatever. Regardless of how you look at it or what the situation with Dizzy was, Pockets was catfished and abused for over ten fucking years. “It’s my fault. I should have left when [etc. etc.] happened...” Pockets told me that they hadn’t even seen end-game content past Cataclysm, despite playing WoW the entire time. Dizzy never wanted to do any of it, but would get upset if Pockets did it without them. So all Pockets did from Cataclysm onward was PVP, and once they reached the top achievements, felt there was nowhere else to go from there and stopped. Dizzy only wanted to play alts and quest. No raids, no PVP, no dungeons even. Just running around and questing, and preventing Pockets from doing any of that content. When someone you have never even fucking met is controlling the way you play a video game and what permissions you have within the game that you pay monthly to play, something is wrong.

Pockets knew they were lacking confidence. They were so lonely and so latched on that they let Dizzy run the show. And Dizzy barely cared. Pockets knew they basically only existed when it was convenient for Dizzy, but outside of that, they were nothing. I felt that about halfway through my relationship with my ex qp, and shared those feelings with Pockets. It took so long to break away and I held on past everything, past my own pain and self-torture, because I had some kind of hope that things would change. And part of me, an insidious part, said that this was the best I was going to get. After all, I’m some broken asexual idiot—”I should be so lucky,” the words rang out in my head, yellowed and worn but enduring and broadcasting itself loud and vivid over and over for years and years and years, tattered even during my childhood, “I should be thankful,”—and this person was my best friend. I should take the affection in the times I could get it. I should just accept that they will want other people sexually because I cannot provide that, and my best friend has a right to be sexual, and they are being so generous by fixing me with their limp novice dick. 

So I bit it back and squashed it down and even after asking six times and getting no answer, “Do you have a problem with hurting me?” it took them falling into the pit of legitimate white supremacy and Nazism for me to finally let go. And I had tried a number of times but felt myself being pulled back, and they, too, were so desperate for some sense of power in their shitty meaningless life (if that wasnt obvious), so lacking initiative and direction that when i floated back upstream, they took it in stride like every other aspect of existence, as if i were just some trash that floated down the river that they, some huge, slack-jawed bloated fish, gobbled up regardless. I existed only when it was convenient for me to exist, and the moment I started being consumed by my anxiety, getting combative, demanding more affection, more outward recognition, I was gaslit and told, literally, word for word, in fun little tumblr doublespeak, “Your feelings are valid, but this is all based on things within your head.” me coming to my QP and saying, “I feel like you dont care about me because I keep asking to hang out and you’re completely ambivalent about it, and when i asked you, ‘Do you want to see me?’ you said ‘You can visit if you want,’. It’s a yes or no question. Do you want to see me?” DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HURTING ME? and then being told it’s “all in my head”, it’s a perceived disinterest. YES, that is what I’m perceiving, which is why I’m trying to address that you are not giving me enough attention and acknowledgment for someone you claim to care about! But obviously, it was me that was the problem, because i was daring to exist outside those convenient parameters. If you didnt want to fuck me right now then what was I even doing breathing your air?

And I’ve been thinking about them a lot because it was around this time 3 years ago that i had started my job, which i had to quit, and had also had a falling out with them, and was mourning that loss. as well as a, in retrospect, MUCH LARGER LOSS of tokin, who had taken his own life that same week. so i tried to turn it into a new beginning, doing my job and being appreciated, but eventually i crawled back and, one-sided as usual, tried to mend things with the QP. But it didnt matter to them. I didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “Oh well,” was their shitty little trademark. Yeah buddy, life is fucking just happening to you and you’re stuck in one place without even a dream of things getting better, or worse, just taking things as they are, apathetically, without interest, wanting for nothing except to fuck girls but not enough to do anything about it, only if they’re delivered to your doorstep.

So here’s the second thing that happened.

Yesterday was coming out day, and a sort of friend-of-a-friend posted their story on facebook. I read it this morning upon waking up.

She mentioned her living situation and how she was living with other women who promised that they would help her, which is, in her words, “a huge red flag”. She says things settled into a routine, and eventually the big problem that she needed help with fell to the wayside in the wake of all of the smaller, but more prolific things: “focused on other fires, both making and putting them out.” She talks about the time she wasted living with these women and how she was “on the edge again”. She trusted people she loved and that loved her to help her, and they couldn’t. But then, after hitting a very low point, she had a breakthrough:

I did something I'm not sure I'd ever done before in my life: I took the initiative to help myself. I researched, found, and made an appointment with a therapist who specialized in this sort of thing. I worked through a tremendous amount of repression. I did mental exercises to actively re-wire my brain, and unlearn my unhealthy coping mechanisms. It was painful.

And then, she wrote this:

Maybe my point is that you can't entrust your journey (ugh, hate that term) to anyone else. You can't let other people tell you who you are or are not. No matter how much you love and trust someone, they cannot do the work for you. They can facilitate it, as [redacted] failed to do, but in the end, it's you... get help, get the best and most objective and impartial help you can, do not let yourself be held hostage by people or environments or your own fucking apathy which benefit from you being inert.

When someone you love offers you help, it's normal to want to take the help, and oftentimes you should. But sometimes, it's too much to give, or they have their own problems or motives, and the help is unreasonable to expect. Do not turn yourself over to someone. Deal with these things on your own terms. Define the terms by which you exist. I lost two fucking years of my life...because I believed that someone else could and would do it for me.

But at least I'm there now. You can get there, too.

I do not know how I can start this journey. I have been trying for ten years, but I have very little direction or resources. I’ve spent the last... god, I guess 8 years, just trying to keep my head above water. Basically since my second year of college, all I’ve really done is survive, and the only times I felt truly alive and like myself were within the rave scene. So I have been clinging to that, and it is a definitive part of me, because it helps me breathe. I don’t think it is “holding me back” because I am not heading anywhere. But I have spent so long gasping for air that I’m almost nauseous from taking a breath. Since I was really young I have cared about electronic music, somewhat in defiance of my live musician parents [drum machines have no soul], and going to thunderdome in a week (!!!) or so is like a pilgrimage to gabber mecca, but also a kind of zenith. 

where do i go from here? I’ve said I want to DJ just because parties dont play the music I want to hear, but within the last few years I have felt myself so plugged up and insecure that I don’t know what I want. I’m too old to be precocious and have lost some of my identity in that way because of it. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I don’t have permission to be new at things. But I have been restrained by permission my whole life. I have earned money yet i’m not allowed to pay for things. I earned my driver’s license by myself yet i’m not allowed to leave my house. i am controlled by my mother’s desperation and neediness and guilt, and by my father’s disconnect and judgment. I am controlled by my siblings’ apathy and my friends’ disappointment in me. i am afraid of not being perfect because then my parents won’t want me, so i put off things that i even want to do and i fear messing up, fear not acquiescing, fear not providing something expected of me, because i will be hurt.

but ultimately i am constrained by my own fears, my fear of pain. i am hurt by the thought that my parents don’t love me and that, to them, i just exist when convenient also, only when they can brag about me, only when they need something done. “I’m worried you don’t get out enough,” my mom says, but all she can offer are words because her heart is closed. she loves by worrying, by stifling, by pity. and i dont want to continue that. i dont want my love to be just good intentions. i want it to be good actions. love, love is a verb.

“I took the initiative to help myself. ... It was painful.”

There is a lot of red tape between my life and my parents’ control. and sometimes doing any action is so exhausting that I cannot do anything for the rest of the day. But I don’t want to be Pockets, waiting for the people who control me to start loving me actively, to have faith in their control benefiting me somehow. I’ve done it before by getting my license by myself. It was slow, and agonizing, and incredibly difficult and drawn-out, but I have it, and it’s mine, and my mom “felt bad”, but I can’t care. Now it’s just a matter of literally getting out the door, without the inquisition, without the mire of their guilt. I am genuinely starving, living on bread and half-expired milk and soda, because I am tired of making my mom cry by asking her to buy things, or coming home with things that, if I had only asked, she would have gotten for me.

I am not asking anymore. I am just going to go get things myself. It will make her cry. She will cry that she is “obsolete”, and that she has “no purpose”, and that she “lives for her kids”, and it will be painful. Like Pockets, I have wasted over ten years of my life banking in good intentions, on the trust that people who love me will help me. Or the trust that even people who are paid to help me will help me. 

"Do not turn yourself over to someone. Deal with these things on your own terms. Define the terms by which you exist."

Asexuality is a term that has helped. It gave me more agency in my verbs, of making a command decision about how I approach sexuality, whereas before I was giving myself, in every imaginable interpretation of the phrase, over to someone else. It hurts that I have to fight so much, that I must fight constantly for personhood, even from those who claim they would do anything to give it to me, even from those who physically did give me personhood. 

For my entire life I have thought my bloodline cursed. I have lived beneath the shadow of my father's greatest failure. I hated him for what he had done. I hated him for the burden he left me. But now... You have shown me truths that I would have never known. You and your allies have gifted me with something that cannot bear a price: Redemption. Thrall, redeemer of the Mag'har, you honor me as none ever have... On this day, a great burden has been lifted from my chest. My heart swells with pride. And for the first time, I can proudly proclaim who I am. I can finally unleash the fury in my heart. 

As long as I know what I stand for, even if I don’t know what I want or how to get it, I can get there. Because I’ve done it before.

When the bread was finished, the tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me eat the bread?” “I will,” barked the lazy dog. “I will,” purred the sleepy cat. “I will,” quacked the noisy yellow duck. “No!” said the little red hen. “I will.” And the little red hen ate the bread all by herself.

Not that I even have my first tattoo yet, but if I ever get a second one, it should be a little red hen on my wrist. It can be my personal shorthand for “take it easy, but take it”. 

[lostsolsdestinyblog]

D2 PvP dropped below 500k players yesterday. Is it time to discuss player population and the state of the game yet?

14 million people/accounts have played D2 since launch. Yesterday's population:

PvP- 490.5k

PvE- 570.9k

Edit: shout-out to Bungie.Net member TattooedOni who pointed out that DTR numbers include Gambit. I did not know that. Yesterday's Crucible was actually 345,415 and hit a low water mark of 268,000 on February 9. Those are as bad as the game has ever seen.

It will be interesting to see what they bump back up to with the release of the Season of the Drifter, but these numbers are reaching the same lows the game saw in D1 year 3 and D2 year 1.

One could obviously make the argument that it's just players siphoning off as the game gets further into each content release, but here's the issue with that; we have been told repeatedly by the anti-sbmm crowd that SBMM was there reason population numbers dropped in D1 and D2 Y1. We also saw the game bombarded by all the "dead game", "D2 sucks", etc comments all throughout year 1 from both community in general as well as from the major influencers.

Yet here we are, after an expansion in Forsaken that was extremely well received at launch and generally hailed as one of the best Destiny content releases and one that "brought back the hobby", and yet we're approaching half-way through the annual pass and not only are people not logging on in droves, there's not even a hint of excitement for season 6.

This isn't indicative of a game that's returned to "hobby" status and it's incredibly worrying for the remainder of the year. So my question is, what went wrong and why are so many leaving the game?

Obviously there's a lot going on right now with Apex having it's huge surprise launch, as well as Anthem and Division 2 out/about to release, and we are in the final week of the season. Those things taken at a glance and in a vacuum would definitely explain away a lot, but it doesn't come close to telling the entire story.

For as much as Forsaken added to the game in terms of investment and things to do/chase/grind for, the numbers have been in a decline since before this season began and have continued to fall throughout. This is something that all these changes to progression and the amount we have to grind for everything was supposed to curb.

"SBMM makes people stop playing", so Bungie removed it and people have stopped playing faster than than they ever did in D1 and considering the current lack of a massive anti-Destiny campaign like the big name influencers waged in year one to help drive people away, it's staggering how quickly players have left what should have been a light-years better Crucible experience over year one with the complete sandbox overhaul and return to 6v6.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Summit and I know the narrative players had going in, the quality of interaction we experienced and now I've seen where we are and there's a massive disconnect for me. I know most of the people in the rooms wanted a far more grindy game, but I never thought that every positive change vanilla D2 gave the game and franchise would be shuttered and we'd see another massive overcorrect; and yet that's what has happened in my opinion. Forsaken and subsequently Black Armory went too far.

I'll start with matchmaking because I've already mentioned it as well as written volumes on the topic over the course of the season. I think we can finally dispel the notion that skill in matchmaking is what's driven population declines, again particularly seeing how well received the sandbox is now vs year one.

I've said this many times already, but we never got to experience year 2 PvP and all the positive changes with any semblance of fair matchmaking in QP or Comp. Comp has its own fair share of issues there, but QP was easy. Just don't remove skill factoring. Yet that's exactly what happened and in a season where I have ranked up valor 9 times, only 1 of those ranks has been in QP because it's so freaking brutal. It's also made my friends stop playing it outside of needed bounties or quests. No one I know wants to log in just play QP because it's fun, like we did throughout D1 and even in D2 Y1.

It also says something that as broken as IB is with rules and scoring, that it's still so incredibly fun with the new Sandbox paired with decent matchmaking and more fair player vs player engagements, that I've ranked up almost 9 Valor ranks playing it.

Then there's the sandbox that is admittedly a lot better than year one and at one point in Forsaken, I thought maybe the best ever. I've dialed back from that a bit as year 2 has progressed and we start to see a rippling of little issues that grew throughout D1 with balancing.

I never thought year 2 needed kill times dialed to 11 and I think that's starting to be an issue with no ceiling for great weapons without breaking play. Special weapons were really well balanced in year one and just simply adjusting the ammo economy and reworking the slotting would have been a huge start there. They didn't need to have best-in-slot weapons in every slot though or the massive performance boosts to shotguns.

Primaries were in a very good place as well by the end with exotics showing how kill times could be quickened without removing the ceiling across the board.

Grenades and ability cool downs needed the biggest buff going into year 2 and those were nailed perfectly. I still contend that had year one had the grenades and CDs we have now, it wouldn't have tanked nearly as badly.

Heavy was too prevalent in year 1, but it had to be to break up team shooting since that was the only way to use special weapons and again, grenades and abilities were so poor that there were no real neutral games.

Then we got fun new supers in year 2, but inexplicably they were given insane damage resistance, durations and/or damage, as well as mods to get them faster. Players with supers in the first minute isn't uncommon. They were too slow charging at launch, but buffing them up to D1 rates would've been great. Instead we went well beyond.

Then finally there's PvE that I used to play all 3 characters every week for years. Now I have played less an hour of PvE in the last month. I haven't played my Titan or Warlock since last November and I'm not looking forward to SotD pushing power to 700 and having to regrind another 50 levels and deal with the ridiculous infusion economy to just be able to wear and use what I like and already have again.

Beyond that, the further up the cap goes, the less and less desire I have to ever even think about leveling one of my other characters again. As long as the current infusion economy exists and forces me to play wearing and using gear I don't like, I won't be touching another character; and for all the awesome content Forsaken did bring to D2 PvE, the experience of playing it was really soured by not getting to use what I had and loved and absolutely hating my characters because they looked like such garbage.

I'll never understand the hard stance taken on this or what meaningful infusion adds to the game. It's the single worst change to PvE ever made.

Then there's the oversaturation of RNG. Grind is fine. Things like Titles were great. RNG dialed to 11 in everything? Not so much.

And finally, I think random rolls were done wrong. I don't think they're bad with the variety of weapons they've added, but making them random rolls of each was a mistake.

Destiny is a looter-shooter and so lots of loot is good. Destiny does in a sense have a lot more loot now, but it's completely undermined by how it was implemented. My 10th version of Better Devil's is still just another Better Devil's dropping. Cashing in a pile of Crucible tokens and getting 6-7 Anonymous Autumn's isn't any more interesting.

What could have been a lot more interesting is if instead of making the different rolls random versions of the same weapon, is had they been their own named weapons. Even if they had the exact same skins, seeing all the different weapon names all with their own unique set rolls would have been way more interesting.

It also could have solved the collections problem for not being able to pull random rolled weapons out. If each was it's own unique named weapon, that isn't a problem anymore. It also gives more clear rewards to chase with a specific named weapon vs a random variation of one, and yeah not all would be as good and there would be standouts, but it would also make kill feeds a hell of a lot more diverse which would go a long way to curbing nerf requests, and if a particular weapon was way too prevalent or good, it would be a hell of a lot easier to tune that one gun vs tuning Better Devil's and having that affect all variations, which seemed to me the entire point of static rolls to begin with.

I hope that these and other player concerns are at least topics of conversation within the studio. I really feel a huge disconnect from this game that I still do love and think could very easily be course-corrected to a game that truly is a hobby game that has something for all levels of investment, but that starts with understanding that the balance needs to fall in-between what D2 was at launch and is currently and ending the cycle of pushing too far when all that's needed is a light touch or digging in and refusing to acknowledge issues as players leave in waves.

We're all here because we love the game and franchise and want it to succeed. I hope the future is bright.