Lurker > SydnieStarlight

I've played two (technically three) Persona games. One of them is a lock for a slot in my top ten games of all time, and the other would rate pretty highly as well.

I've played three (main series) Final Fantasy games, including the two that seem to be lauded as the best in the series. I didn't even enjoy either of those enough to finish them, and while the other one was alright, I don't think it'd even be in a *top 50* conversation.

tl;dr: Persona, and it's *not* close~

"The year is almost over," TC says at the very beginning of the best part of the year.

Sure. The arguments in this topic so far for them being appointed have clearly not panned out in reality, so they might as well be elected instead.

If it's "too easy", I at least get a power trip and maybe the story is still engaging.

If it's "too hard", I start having thoughts I can't post without getting modded, and I potentially permanently miss out on story and gameplay content.

Neither is ideal, but if I have to pick one, I'll take "too easy" any day of the week~

I don't think I'd wanna risk it. It's pretty much tainted for me now, but growing up and even into adulthood, it was very near to my heart. Heck, there was a period in college where I would rewatch all the movies about once a month (as background noise while doing other things). I couldn't predict what would happen to me if I just removed that from my life, so probably better not to take the chance.

Besides, kid me would not even *begin* to understand "You're actually a girl and the author specifically hates people like you", so I'm not sure something like this would even work in the first place.

I would be absolutely *shocked beyond belief*.

...that he even bothered. He's been doing everything else he wants with blatant disregard for the law, why would he waste his time on *this one*?

Every time a topic like this comes up, I feel compelled to mention how FF13 was the only main series FF I enjoyed enough to actually finish. That puts it over 7 and 10 at the very least~

Otherwise, I don't think a lot of the answers I could give would be fair because they're in genres I don't care for in the first place. Like, of course I never got into Resident Evil, I don't even like horror!

Why would he do that when he could run a massive campaign (using taxpayer dollars) to hype himself up, then ~miraculously win~ with 97% of the vote so he can pretend everyone loves him?

It dawned on me awhile back that the intersection of "AI-obsessed tech oligarchs" and "diehard Trump loyalists" is absolutely going to lead to an attempt to install an AI-powered Trumpbot as eternal king of America.

Y'know, I've unironically had the thought that AI would be the only way to have a fair and impartial government immune to corruption. The problem with that is that the AI we're getting is specifically tuned to be corrupt...

Surface level, D, but it's complicated.

I think AI *theoretically* has a lot of really good potential value. The problem is that, thanks to ~capitalism~, it's being intentionally and aggressively used in all the worst ways. We're getting the worst version of an AI future possible: one where it's used as a tool by the wealthy to control the masses and keep us in collective poverty.

There were probably earlier examples before I had a proper grasp of the notion of attraction, but the one who truly opened my eyes was Hinata Hyuga. I've had a thing for shy girls ever since~

I posted this in a similar topic not too long ago, but...

I was at an embarrassing age when I realized the name of the Pokemon Chimecho comes from the words "chime" and "echo" and would be pronounced as such rather than "chimmie-cho".

HighSeraph posted...

Do you think Trump is immortal?

I mean, he's definitely not going to willingly leave alive. But even after he dies, I'm not convinced we'll be done with him. There's an alarming amount of overlap between AI-obsessed tech bros and diehard Trump loyalists. I think an AI-powered Trumpbot propped up as eternal king of America is within the realm of possibility.

The World God Only Knows. I'm not sure I'd rate it very highly if you were to erase my memories of it and make me watch it for the first time again. But it got me interested in watching a lot more anime and in genres other than "teen boys with superpowers fighting". Which is to say, its rank is more about what it did for me than my actual enjoyment of it. Not that it's not a fun time, mind you, it's just that I've since seen a lot of series that I would probably rate as being "better".

It also introduced me to my One True Waifu~

Red for me! My parents got it for me to give me something to play on a long road trip. And there's no question that's when it hooked me, I asked for a little Ivysaur-in-a-Pokeball keychain on that same trip~

The Strawhats lined up on that wall and Robin screaming "I want to live!" gave me chills in both the manga and anime, and remains the best single moment in the entire series for me. As far as I'm concerned, Water 7/Enies Lobby is where the series peaked~

Yep, that's definitely one of the topic titles I read today.

I gotta say, I'm pretty taken aback by the combination of the text with the deeply unflattering picture. His neck looks like fake leather if it had a fist tightly clenched around it. The lighting makes it look like he doesn't have enough hair for a combover to even reach his forehead but he tried anyway. And maybe this is just the angle, but his nose looks really bent and lopsided.

If I saw a picture of me that was this bad on a magazine cover, I'd be screaming obscenities about it. It makes such a weird contrast with those article titles clearly indicating that the writers are desperate to swallow him.

The first game I thought of was Zero Time Dilemma. It barely got its *first* chance, but Virtue's Last Reward made a lot of promises that ZTD failed to keep. I'd love to see Zero Escape get a more satisfying conclusive entry.

I'd probably call it my #3 Tales game, and #1 and #2 depend *heavily* on nostalgia for their rankings. It even made me retroactively like my bottom-ranked Tales game a little more!

Less and it isn't even a debate. Bigotry in general is actually pretty unpopular, it's just that the people who control the narrative profit from everyone thinking it isn't. So the minority opinion gets amplified so much that it *seems* like it's actually the majority opinion.

Don't get me wrong, racism is certainly still alive and well in America. It's just that it's less "casual racism as a societal baseline" and more "omega turbo racism from extremely loud fringes".

I was at an embarrassing age when I realized that the name of the Pokemon Chimecho came from - and would therefore be pronounced like - "chime" and "echo". For the longest time, I thought it was something close to "chimmie cho".

I mean, if there's any kind of damage I could accept not waking up a sleeping target, it's magic damage. Like, it's *literally magic*. The whole *point* of it is to disobey the rules~

For me, it wasn't just that my teeth were falling out but that, for some reason, I couldn't stop myself from grinding my teeth so hard that I was physically *pushing* them out. I haven't had dreams about that in a long time, though~

I think the final boss should scale with your own level/achievements. Narratively, it's supposed to be the final challenge after which all battles are over, so it oughta feel like it. Give it more stats the higher your level is, a new form for each optional superboss you beat, heck, change its attack patterns on NG+!

At a basic level, it should be the most challenging thing you face during the main story, just not by *too* much. But the stronger *you* are, the stronger *it* should be, so that it doesn't feel lame after beating the superbosses. I want the last thing I do in the game feel like it was worth doing all the grinding and optional challenges for. Gimme something to *use* that final superweapon on~

I *still* can't talk about my favorite character from Clannad because GameFAQs is *absolutely dead certain* that I'm trying to censor bypass the word "fuck".

Under your scenario, he would be remembered as literally Hitler but worse, on the basis of knowing what Hitler did and specifically trying to emulate him anyway.

Alpha Sapphire. It takes what (I feel) was the best gen from a nostalgia standpoint and adds all the neat features from what (I feel) was the best gen in terms of gameplay. Mega evolution, PSS/super training, online secret bases, DexNav, new breeding mechanics. It was just an absolute treat, and I'm so glad I was into it during its heyday~

Pretty much the only things holding it back from being perfect were the reduced difficulty and the lack of a Battle Frontier, and the latter only bothered me because gen 6 is where I could finally get into seriously breeding. (AS over OR because I like Kyogre and Team Aqua better~)

The only aspect of this scenario anyone has any right to be surprised by is that it hasn't already happened.

I just realized I never came back to this!

I think I've got enough to work with now! I mean, a part of me wants to keep adding context to make it *perfectly clear beyond any doubt* what I wanna know, but at a certain point, I need to stop and ask myself if I *really* need more info or if I just wanna gush about what I'm working on~

Anyway, thanks folks! I appreciate the detailed responses~

Hejiru posted...

Oh I guess I should have figured that out from your sig lol. Sorry I tend to glaze over sigs a lot

Yeah, I think most of us do, so, y'know, no biggie~

~

Okay, I worked through some thoughts based on things folks have said here and I think I might actually have a new direction I can take this, where it doesn't really matter if the feat is realistic (in fact, it's *better* if it isn't). So lemme kinda reframe my question (in a way that has probably already been answered):

When dealing with experienced and coordinated raid groups, what would be kind of a general expectation for how long it takes for a world's first clear (at a difficulty level worth bragging about)? This can be pretty broad, I don't wanna, like, presume the difficulty level of this fictional content compared to a real raid. I just want a plausible frame of reference for some characters to be like, "It took [Famous guild X] [Y] [Z]s to clear that, so how did [Protagonists] do it so fast?"

Hejiru posted...

I wont be much help to you, but Im curious. You mentioned this was a sequel, what was the original book?

I feel like I'm about to break some kinda rule, but I'm working on the sequel to the book linked in my signature~

...which makes a lot of what I'm talking about right now spoilers, but it is what it is!

Hm, good info so far, thanks! To add a little more context:

-The raid calls for three parties of five, and the multi-floor sections separate one party from the other two. I probably should've clarified that from the start!

-The reason I'm going for that kind of timing is because I want the main protagonist to have that excitement and joy of victory undercut when she logs off to discover she missed a "real world" event her parents were going to surprise her with.

I think there's some logic to cutting out the "world's first" aspect and just have them wanting to try a raid. But on the other hand, I also want their relative success to lead into the following arc. (Players with good accomplishments in the raid get an exclusive invitation to a major PVP tournament, which is the next part of the story.)

Would what I wanna do make more sense if the "informed individual" more overtly guides the group? Like, playing off their insider knowledge as just having crazy good intuition about the mechanics?

I'm writing a (sequel to a) book and need some advice! This is gonna be a long post, so please bear with me!

Context: Broadly, the story is about a group of friends playing a VR MMORPG. They form a guild with the stated purpose of protecting the game's central hub city from player killers. As such, most of them are focused on PVP, with little to no endgame PVE experience. Early in the story, a big content update drops with a new raid, and one of the characters convinces the others to try taking it on and competing for the world's first clear.

(Additional context: The VR technology works by inducing a sleeping state and then connecting the unconscious mind, so the user experiences the game like an incredibly vivid dream. So basically, everyone can play while they sleep. Also, the protagonists commit to doing the raid about a month before the update, and they recruit a party that *does* have raiding experience to help them train on older raids. So they have ample opportunity and guidance to prepare.)

(A little more spoilery context: My intent is to have them finish the raid only to discover that eight other groups have already cleared it. Also, it eventually turns out that someone in the group had extensive insider knowledge about the raid - like, intentionally fed the full details by the lead dev behind it. They don't outright tell anyone what they know, but make suggestions/requests for "silly" reasons that end up being strategically appropriate choices. Just in case these details impact what I'm asking about.)

Here's where I need help. I have some MMORPG experience myself, but I was always way more casual with it. (Most games, I never even hit the level cap.) I never really got into raiding, much less the first clear races. So I'd like to get some insight from people who might know a bit more about it, y'know, to make it more authentic. Really, I kinda have two main things I wanna ask about:

-The raid is a 27-floor tower with three multi-floor challenges (actually six; each one splits the party into two groups) and three major boss fights. Does this even qualify as a raid, technically speaking? I've never really been clear on what separates a raid from a dungeon beyond general scope.

-Realistically, how many attempts would it take a group to clear any given challenge going in blind? How long should a successful clear of each section take? How long for the entire raid? Assuming they can freely retry from certain checkpoints (after the first two boss fights and just before the third), is it realistic that they could clear the entire thing over the course of 8~ hours? Is that *too long*, even for a first clear?

Thanks in advance for any insight! Like I said, I just wanna try to be authentic about this where I can~

I don't think I could even begin to have an idea what my third favorite song would be. I think I'd even have a hard time pinning down my third favorite song by my favorite band.

So I'm just gonna cheat and go with my favorite~

Name: "Through the Looking Glass"
Ability, based loosely on lyrics: Making direct eye contact causes the opponent to become trapped in a trance/nightmare in which they think they're trekking endlessly through a wasteland littered with artistically posed corpses during a winter storm. Meanwhile, in reality, I can dictate whether or not their respiratory organs function.

I can't comment on a lot of these, but...

AceMos posted...

xenoblade X is the only good xenoblade game

I guess this could be right. I'd feel uneasy describing Xenoblade 1 as merely "good" when it's one of the greatest games of all time, and I can't comment on the rest of the series.

legend of korra is better than last air bender (both are GOAT thoe)

PREACH IT, SISTER.

i do not like who ever makes post 371 in this topic

I can't tell if this is a sneaky way of saying you like everyone or if you're just *very* optimistic about how far this topic is gonna go!

I have a few times, mostly to relive nostalgia of games from my childhood~

It was definitely a very good game *for what it was*, but I don't think I would've called it "the best game ever" at that point, and I *certainly* wouldn't *now*. Heck, its own sequel is already a better game and I haven't even played the paid stuff yet!

Other: "Grab 'em by the [REDACTED]."

We literally had audio evidence of him not just admitting to but *bragging about* sexually assaulting women. That should have been the end not just of his political career but his life as a free man. He should have been in cuffs *the next day*. Yet not only did nothing come of it, it didn't even stop him from securing the presidency.

I can't think of a Trumpier moment than the first instance most of us saw of him being able to say and do whatever he wants, face no consequences, and get everything he desires.

I can't say I'm *super* knowledgeable about the genre, but it seems to me like a lot of isekai series are either very explicitly set in a video game world or the protagonist is explicitly an avid RPG gamer. Either way, I can see how it makes the most sense to conceptualize their ~special powers~ as RPG mechanics.

In the spirit of having just finished rewatching it...

The World Cod Only Knows, in which a fish must save the world by seducing human women.

Oh jeez, I hope that does come to MD, because it sounds a lot like an idea I had that I can't remember if I've posted. (Same basic concept except MD specific, using usage statistics at the end of one season to calculate each card's score for the next season.)

My only complaint is no links, because my favorite deck is a link deck.

If my jumping isn't what causes the death, if they were going to die in that universe anyway and I'm just appearing at the time when it was already going to happen, then no, it isn't immoral. The only thing I'm influencing is whether I exist in that universe or not.

hivebent4life posted...

The majority of Americans view this man as a free speech advocate. The majority of Americans view this man as a strong tough manly man.

Neither of these statements are true and you know that.

Probably Obama. By the time I was old enough to have any understanding of politics, we were already in the "literally anyone would be better than any republican" era that started with GWB, and I feel like Obama was better in the role than Biden.

hivebent4life posted...

Whats crazy is that it was spelled out very clearly in the Project 2025 document exactly what the plan was, and the American people chose to vote for it anyway. The American people willingly voted themselves into fascism.

I'd bet a lot of money that the overwhelming majority of people who didn't vote against Trump have *still* never heard of Project 2025. Don't underestimate the people's tendency to vote on vibes without taking in any policy information. We like to meme about "but her laugh" around here, but most people genuinely do vote *only* for the letter next to the name and always have, at least in my lifetime. They didn't vote *for* Project 2025 because they don't even know what Project 2025 *is*.

Which is a whole other problem in its own right, mind. Being uninformed doesn't magically make the consequences of your choices go away. It's just, y'know, that old line about malice vs. ignorance~

On the one hand, I'm on board with the "it shouldn't have taken this long" sentiment.

On the other hand, with as dire as the situation is, every single MAGA who realizes that MAGA Is bad actually and switches sides over it is a good thing. There are already plenty of MAGAs who either don't realize it or do realize and stay the course anyway. It doesn't do any good to turn away the few who wake up just because they were late in doing so.

...which may be an optimistic interpretation of the situation, but frick's sake, the only thing I *can* do right now is hope.

I'd probably need to take some time to *really* think it over, but my first thought was Genshin Impact's melusines~

Yeah, especially after what they did with V3, the 2x2 is absolutely suggesting this is DR4. (Though, depending on if they copy/extend the V3 title twist, the "x" may indicate more than just multiplying the 2s. Could be a variable between the numbers, or they might be lazy and it's just that, in universe, this is Danganronpa 2102. It may also suggest some kind of interconnection between the two scenarios...wonder if the "original" DR2 story will see some new details here and there.)

The changed character details have me suspicious of the identities of some/all of the cast. I'm also kinda thinking it may poke some fun at how long-running series tend toward remakes/reboots these days, especially if they go the predicted route with the title. So we may be looking at a situation where, for the new scenario, these aren't the characters we actually know from DR2 but rather new characters being presented as the old.

Whatever the case, I, for one, am *pumped as heck*. I think, all factors considered, DR2 is probably my favorite in the series, so I'm looking forward to seeing what more they do with it~

With the state of the world right now, there are two possibilities:

1. God isn't real.
2. God deserves nothing except absolute revulsion.