BLD

@I-U

How is it easiest? That's difficult to quantify, it really just is. Yes other Primes have more focus on puzzles and exploration, but they're still harder in combat. Best example I can think of is to watch the final boss of FF. It has very simple attacks and gives the player ample time to dodge all of them. Like, 20 seconds between attacks, that sort of thing.

@Moistnado Federation Force is already the easiest Prime game even in single player.

"It's apparently very hard, and perhaps that was the reason not many people bought it — or maybe it just came too soon after its Western debut for there to really be much hype around it. Who knows!"

I knows!

Radiant Dawn wasn't really that hard, but the previous game in the series was given an easy mode in localization, and removed the hardest mode. So in the west it was Easy/Normal/Hard, but Japan had Normal/Hard/Maniac.

Now Radiant Dawn also had Maniac mode, and no easy mode. But they localized it in America as Easy/Normal/Hard. So while the actual corresponding modes were roughly equal difficulty, Radiant Dawn accidentally tricked a lot of western players into playing one mode harder than they thought they were playing.

Then there's the fact it's a direct sequel to an already-niche gamecube game, and a hardcore game on the Wii with no motion gimmicks or sales hooks. And did I mention it came out the same week as Mario Galaxy in the west?

Nintndo has a weird habit of sabotaging the release dates of Intelligent Systems strategy games...

Don't really see how this is worthy of patent, but OK.

I have a host of criticisms with Awakening- primarily its hideously unbalanced gameplay and bland maps - but it tried a lot of new things and introduced a ton of people to the series. It was really fun fighting against streetpass teams in college.

It walked so Conquest could run.

Ms PacMan is still the pacman game I've played most. It was the only one my grandparents had, IIRC it had a bunch of unique stages whereas the OG pacman didn't have much.

Is it really too much to ask to just get all the Pokemon back again?

@KingMike

It's a rom, actually the OG rom, being translated live via LUA scripting. Same as Earthbound 0 on Wii U, or so I heard. Not sure about Earthbound 0 on Switch tho.

Thanks for everyone recommending a Japanese Switch account, I surely love playing farming sims in a language I don't understand. I reckon it really makes me feel like a poor immigrant to a new land.

@nessisonett

Overwatch mostly works on automated systems for harsssment reports, same as any other large game these days. The human element only exists for developing new anticheat.

As a backer- game was OK when I played it last year. Nothing great, but not as bad as Rise Eterna or anything.

That said, the devs have put in WORK over the last year. While I can't say I've played the game since release, I've seen the improvements they made to map design, graphics, and class/character balance, and they all seem pretty great. Nothing that's going to dethrone Fates Conquest in terms of gameplay, but a solid enough sendup to the GBA games.

I want to believe, but we've heard the same line every time before. "Sorry we haven't said much, we'll be more communicative in the future", followed by silence for at least half a year, then repeat. It's been like this since OW 2 was revealed late 2019. That's 2 and a half years of this, now.

Keller was looking real tired in the video. I'm sure the whole team is. Still, it was their decision to all but abandon OW1 for OW2. The dead wait would be bad enough, but by refusing to give even minor updates they're really shooting themselves in the foot.

@MJF

"I literally stopped playing the game the moment I ran into one.
That is not the game I wanted to play at all."

This is hilarious. So you're a massive Metroid fan who didn't even see the reveal trailer for Dread, went in 100% blind with no knowledge of the EMMI, and then you quit 5 minutes in, the moment you encountered the first one?

'k

I loved the EMMI encounters wholeheartedly. Even the one that took me like 20+ tries to get past. Especially that one.

That said, AM2R is still perhaps my favorite Metroid game, with only Dread really matching the smoothness and boss design. I think Doc's points are well-stated even if I disagree.

@Hero-of-WiiU

What makes me say that? Interviews from both IS and KT confirming that's the case. IS made some amount of Silver Snow first, and then left KT to the rest. Interviews say IS did "most" of Silver Snow, although it's unclear if they mean actual programming work or just planning, because the engine for the game is KT's, the same used for FE Warriors.

@Ralizah

AMEN. I'll one-up you and say SoJ might be a top 1 game for me.

It's just so ridiculous, it's clearly having fun with how silly it is. And the plot twists, especially in the huge finale cases, are just extravagantly mind-blowing, and surprisingly emotional.

Moreover, the seance vision mechanic, whatever it's called, is a lot of fun and paints your clients into worse and worse-looking corners as the game goes on.

@PhhhCough

It's so funny because the games it overtook could be described as "just another Mario/Zelda game".

Oh, they'd be quick to point out how those games revolutionized the series traditions with more open environments and player freedom.

But of course they wouldn't mention that Elden Ring does the same. They don't know what Elden Ring is, just that it isn't Nintendo.

It's so clear that a lot of people here are just butthurt over the idea that a non-Nintendo game might be better than Zelda or Mario lmao. Pulling out every excuse in the book to justify it. Like, you may be right, the score may fall. It may just be newness bias as some suggest, except... you realize Odyssey and BotW were new games when they were reviewed too, right?

@VoidofLight

Who's making it, then?

IS hasn't made an entire Fire Emblem since Echoes in 2017, and that was a remake with a small team.

The last time IS devoted a big team to a mainline FE was with Fates, which released in 2015 in Japan.

I don't think we have numbers on how many still actively work on FEH, but I can't imagine it's too many these days.

KT made the vast majority of 3H. At this point in time, they're as likely candidates to develop the next FE game as IS, if not more likely.

I don't mind Three Hopes or anything, but you gotta realize this is a spinoff being made by a team that otherwise could be working on a mainline title. Maybe they aren't because IS is working on the next one, we can't know.

Zoroark is easy A-tier, y'all are wild. Faster and harder-hitting than the OG Zoroark by just a smidge, with 1 weakness to dark and 3 immunities to very common types. This boy is unbelievably easy to switch in, Sussy Imposter is just a bonus meme.

@Troll_Decimator

Didn't they outsource the Pokemon model creation for Sword and Shield to another team in TPC? That would include rigging. As for animation, I don't think much is new here. They've had walking/running animations unused since Sun and Moon. Most of the animations are just "Pokemon plays animation and then a beam or some special effect plays".

Granted, they make that work MUCH better in this game than in SwSh. The pokemon walk in battles, and the varied terrains and situations you can get into combat add a lot of variety to what is otherwise still similar canned animations.

I just think it's unfair to present Gamefreak as having some unique and difficult struggle here when a lot of the problems you list were solved before PLA.

@Brydontk

This happened to me too. Wisps do generally have better distance drawing than other objects- but sometimes they don't.

I don't get how anyone could defend this game's pop-in, especially after unlocking Braviary. The whole sensation of flight is kinds ruined when the game doesn’t load stuff because you're more than a few feet off the ground.

Even before that, though, I'd constantly run into issues on Wyrdeer where cliffs and giant rocks would load in at the last second. I have never seen a game in my entire life where pieces of terrain this huge were separate objects that would load in so slowly. My entire route around an area would often have to change based on obstacles that simply didn't load on time.

I still enjoyed the game, but the graphics inarguably compromise the experience in a tangible way.

The feather balls are even funnier to me than the growlithe.

Those are tier 1 pokeballs. They could've even give us the great-ball equivalent, Wing balls? Let alone Jet balls.

I find myself imagining a gamestop rep and a Pokemon rep in a room discussing this distribution, with TPC wanting an extra few thousand dollars to upgrade the feather balls.

People are missing the comparison between NFT and Amiibo here.

Amiibo was a successful attempt at creating scarcity for what is essentially DLC, by tying that DLC to a physical object.

NFTs are designed to do the same thing - take a digital thing and pretend like it's limited and special.

From that perspective it makes total sense they'd be interested in a scam like NFTs.

This is almost certainly related to the recent Youtube takedowns, although whoever did it really didn't need to go after all the other videos too if this is all it was.

Still, nice to see at least some music up.

@chatsworth

Are you going to try and make the same counterfeit argument that was already denunked like 30 comments ago?

@fafonio

A bit of neighborly advice, friend:

When you refuse to answer questions from @kyranosaurus because you "won't engage" in the conversation any longer, it's probably a good idea to not respond multiple times after that point.

Otherwise it'll look like you don't have any answers and so resort to pelting people with points you can't refute with silly age-related insults.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence it looks that way, of course.

@Kyranosaurus

And so it ends as it began, with a cryptobro making excuses for not explaining things and then hurriedly leaving.

@fafonio

"NFTs were never meant to solve problems. They gave an opportunity for artists to benefit from the exclusivity of their digital-only work."

But that's just it - that's a function they don't help at all with, since at the end of the day their art still isn't exclusive, counterfeits can still be easily sold as NFTs. If I sell your art as an NFT, the only thing making your art more valuable than my counterfeit is that your art has some intangible goodwill of rights from yourself, the artist. NFTs do nothing new, then, aside from existing on blockchain servers with high environmental tolls, high transaction fees, and long transaction times.

And by the way, your models and animations are still digital numbers in the end, bits of 1s and 0s. Idk why you keep harping on about them as if they're immune to the exact same problems being discussed.

@fafonio

Except in this case the counterfeit is identical, pixel for pixel, bit for bit, wifh the original.

The value comes from an agreement between the seller (artist) and the buyer, that the purchase grants the buyer certain rights to the image.

Notice how NFTs aren't required for any of that? If NFTs are so cool, why do you need to keep falling back on "But physical art has similar problems!" Yes, it does.

So then, we both agree that NFTs fail to solve those problems?

@RupeeClock

"The associated image is what makes it easier to sell, because sentimental value gets prescribed based on the image itself or who produced it."

Idk why @Fafonio is thanking you, since you basically proved my point in your explanation. So allow me to thank you.

It's not about ownership of the digital art. It's about selling that ownership to someone else. It's exactly as I described with cryptocurrency earlier.

You don't "own" the art just because you bought the NFT. I can create an NFT of Fafonio's art and sell it myself. There's no recourse - not that there's much anyway, on the internet, but with crypto the lack of recourse is literally baked into the system, since a transaction cannot be undone without forking the whole currency. And since the IDs of subsequent transactions are based on previous ones, good luck literally changing the entire global ledger.

Point is, the NFT grants someone no right to the artwork inherently. Like RupeeClock says, people can and have created NFTs of art they don't own. The ownership of the artwork, in the end, comes down to the artist saying someone owns the "real" copy of that art.

@fafonio

Ok. So I own a URL now. Ignoring the fact that this URL is hosted by someone else and can go offline, what am I to do with this URL of mine? What is the function of owning this NFT?

@fafonio

You right now:

"know where you’re going with the questions. Yes, they are obviously stored in an URL…"

You 30 minutes ago:

"I can see how your ignorance shows when you think the blockchain is “just storing an image in an URL”. Yes yes yes… people are paying thousands of dollars just for storing their “jpgs” in an URL. Sure mate…. Sure."

You can tell me that's not what it's about all you want, but then, you pretended not to understand the question at first. Deep down we both know that's exactly what it's about.

@fafonio

Ok, so you understand a lot about NFTs. That's great man. So you can answer the question, right?

When someone purchases a piece of digital art as an NFT, how do they view that art? What digital object does the NFT actually grant them?

@fafonio

You're a graphic designer, right? Do you sell your own NFTs or just go to bat for them online?

@fafonio

Ignoring the other guy who's disingenuously pretending they don't understand the reference to the bored ape yacht club, here's a question for you.

What IS contained in the payload of the blockchain node, when you sell an NFT as art? When you sell your art as an NFT, how does someone view that art?

@fafonio

This is the most long-winded "Just do your research bro" I've ever seen. You typed as much as I have typed in explaining why NFTs are bad, just to explain why you won't explain anything.

@chatsworth

Well, you've once again made my argument for me, via your utter lack of one.

I've made my cases. Anyone who's on the fence, I'll leave you to decide whose arguments you choose to believe:

Me, who's explained every point they set forth.

Or the guy offering tech "advice" who doesn't even know how to use the reply button, and who falls back on soy-based insults instead of offering a single substantive argument.

@chatsworth

You're literally proving my point. You have a vested stake in NFTs, by your own admission. You're openly promoting a gambling scam you yourself are a part of, because if more people came to recognize the grift, you'd be out a revenue source.

Oh, and for anyone playing the NFT drinking game, take another shot for "Cryptobro claims you just 'Don't understand' while not explaining anything.

You people THRIVE off of pretending NFTs and crypto are complex and mysterious and so hard to understand. They aren't. But you NEED that illusion of complexity to obfuscate the scam.

@chatsworth

And here we have a good case study, I think. Someone who is into NFTs and actively promotes them, citing tired arguments about how NFTs "help artists". They don't. There's nothing to stop anyone from taking another's art and selling an NFT of it. Behind the fancy blockchain, the actual payload of an NFT image is just a URL to the image, or whatever the content in question may be.

But then, it makes sense you'd shill for a scam you own stock in. Crypto is, of course, a pyramid scheme based on buying your tokens and then selling them to a bigger fool later. You've gotta do damage control if you're looking to sell them! An artist can only make money on NFTs the same way they could make money joining an MLM.

@Krysus

It's both the chain and the server farms.

Essentially, the blockchain is validated by a bunch of computers checking other compter's work, while also competing to mine Crypto. They all maintain a "ledger" of all previous crypto transactions, which can get to tens of thousands of GB in size.

"Mining" new cryptocurrency requires solving extremely complex equations, to put it simply. These equations, by design, have diminishing returns, so each equation is harder than the last.

So the result is countless computers racing each other, because mining is winner-takes all.

So then you get people buying mass amounts of rigs to mine better. And then the people competing against them do the same.

So now you have 100 entities, each with 1000 computers, competing to solve the equation to mine the next bit of crypto. 1 wins, 99 lose, and all the electricity and power spent by those 99 is rendered essentially worthless and redundant.

Now realize that 100 and 1000, while sorta-big numbers, are rookie numbers compared to the actual scope of this thing.

That's the economic impact of Cryptocurrency. NFTs aren't new in that regard, they're just the ugly ape face of the operation.

To anyone who has the time, I recommend looking up "Line goes up" by Folding Ideas on YouTube. Not a huge fan of the guy, but even if you're like me, I think you'll find his video on NFTs and crypto informative.

@OFFICIALMichi

Yes, very much.

In simple terms, the blockchain doesn't have a centralized server, like your bank has. Instead, cryptocurrency is based on a series of very, very complex equations. When one computer solves the equation, other computers on the network check its work. Think of a class full of students, all solving the same equation.

So, why is this bad? Well, simply put, it's a terribly wasteful way of distributing currency. All the computers are racing to solve the problem first and claim that crypto. A million students all solving a equation is a great way to teach them, but a terribly inefficient waste of most of their time if you only want to get the answer

This in turn leads to people buying farms of computers to solve the blockchain and "mine" cryptocurrency. The end result is, a virtual currency that's advertised as being revolutionary and independent from the material world, is dependent on how much "traditional" money one has. Which defeats the point.

@Scapetti

I was wondering when the usual cryptobro would emerge, telling people to "look it up" without any further elaboration.

Just be honest - you don't actually know what you've bought yourself, do you? You've gotten yourself wrapped up in this scheme and are trying to convince not others, but yourself, that you haven't been scammed. Others comments itch at your self doubt, and so you tell others to "look it up" knowing that if you did the same you'd realize you've been had.

@victordamazio Cryptos are, without exception, remarkably selfish currency systems that only serves to benefit those already weathy with traditional currency enough to buy enough computer equipment.

The nicest that can be said about the technology is that its resilient to Man-In-The-Middle attacks, but at the cost of being open to numerous other, easier methods of fraud and scam.

@ModdedInkling

The gamestop example is a good analogy to crypto as a whole

You only make money on them if a bigger idiot comes after you to pay even more than you did for it.

I think everyone gets the benefits here - Ubisoft gets more money!

Oh man I'll pretend to be excited as if this didn't all leak a week ago!