Lurker > KamikazePotato

I think Pinwheel is fine, in theory. Honestly just needs more HP and damage to be a real boss fight.

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Voting Form:
Best: Black Dragon Kalameet
Worst: Bed of Chaos

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Ornstein and Smough deserve mention for being a difficulty spike in a game that's already difficult

Dhoulmagus is a decent choice too, the game even assumes you'll die after beating his first form because you don't have to fight it again after beating it and wiping

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MyMainAccount posted...

So you'd say the web serial thing is why you had an audience for the collected edition? Any advice on starting a web series, where to post it, how long of updates to make, how often? That kind of thing. Feel free to throw me a mention or a pm. I've been curious about this kind of thing myself.

As far as starting a web series go, these are the most popular sites I know of for posting fiction:

Royal Road
Spacebattles
Various subreddits (HFY, RedditSerials, ect.)
Scribblehub
Wattpad
Archive of Our Own

There are others, and absolutely do your own research on this, but those the sites I've seen mostly work for people. Each has their foibles. Royal Road is extremely biased towards Fantasy and LitRPG especially, HFY prefers that the stories be oriented towards humans being awesome, Wattpad is a haven for romance, Archive of Our Own is primarily for fanfiction, ect. The trick is just to post it anywhere, everywhere, then prune away the websites where a fanbase didn't materialize. My story didn't take off on Scribblehub or Ao3 at all so I just...stopped posting there and focused my efforts on interacting with RR, Spacebattles, and HFY.

As far as updates goes, it's heavily recommended that you create a large backlog before posting. Currently, I have 7 chapters ahead of the public that are available on Patreon, then an additional 5 chapters ahead of Patreon that aren't posted anywhere yet. The 7 for Patreon are because people don't sign up for Patreon without an incentive. The additional 5 chapters are for my sake. It lets me stay ahead of the story and adjust things as needed. Each chapter goes through several editing passes before being posted. As serial writing can be a bit touch-and-go at times, the ability to respond to fan feedback is invaluable. The buffer lets you do so.

Generally it's recommend that you post a chapter every 1-2 days for as long as possible when starting out. People won't get invested in your story if they don't have confidence that it will continue. This is part of why writing a bunch of advance chapters is important. You can then pare this down to whatever release schedule works for you, but posting at a rate slower than once every 4 days will make it difficult to gain traction. This is especially important for RR, which currently prioritizes short, quick releases due to its algorithm.

Side note: make your story stand out. Give it a memorable title, include cover art right from the start (if possible), hook them in from Chapter 1, ect. If you're not an established author, people won't wait for you to slow ease them into the story. The trust isn't built up yet. Give them a reason to care right away.

Overall, much like any artistic venture, all of this is a crapshoot. You can do everything right and fail. You're much more likely to succeed with these tips in mind, though.

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I also can't remember the last time I played an RPG and encountered a boss I simply couldn't beat. Vast majority of games these days rely more on strategy and pre-planning than raw numbers.

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I figure out a different strategy and beat them without having to grind

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Bump to remind myself to post that list. Had a lot of stuff going on today.

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7.5

Gameplay dragged down the experience for me and prevented me from ever getting fully immersed, and Kiryu's storyline was much worse than Majima's.

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Voting Form:
Best: Vivi
Worst: Eiko

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As someone who hasn't played Far Cry 3, what's so bad about the second half?

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azuarc posted...

I assume they weren't just going to help you produce e-books, though. 30% is terrible for digital copies where there's no production cost, but it's decent for physical.

Amazon has a built-in service for self-publishing your own physical books. I did that myself as well - some people in this very topic have ordered physical copies. If you mean physical in the sense of actual bookstores, that was never in the cards. LitRPG is a genre that exists almost entirely in the online sphere.

Scrappymatt10 posted...

categories

Haha, yeah, one strategy for Amazon is that they let you manually add Subcategories to your book. If you pick Subcategories that are underpopulated, it's very possible to get a Best Seller sticker to show up on your cover when people are doing Amazon searches.

Zylothewolf posted...

Sorry Im late to the party, but congrats, thats amazing!

Thanks man! Everyone's support here has been super appreciated.

MyMainAccount posted...

So you'd say the web serial thing is why you had an audience for the collected edition? Any advice on starting a web series, where to post it, how long of updates to make, how often? That kind of thing. Feel free to throw me a mention or a pm. I've been curious about this kind of thing myself.

Sure, I'll make a more detailed post later today.

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RyoCaliente posted...

Retro to me indicates a certain style/time that people associate with and are nostalgic for. NES/SNES/Genesis/... have this going for it, but I would associate PS2 and GameCube more with the 00's, and I don't think that time is retro yet.

The 00s are absolutely a style/time that people associate with and nostalgic for.

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Here's a story I'm not sure I shared: several months ago, I was approached by a publishing company who specialized in LitRPGs. They were super interested in Outcast, and even offered me a deal right away!

It was bad. Really bad.

I didn't know that at first. Getting courted by a publishing company felt like a dream, and I definitely had stars in my eyes. They said they would get me cover art, an audiobook, an editor, and advertising - how could I not take that? Would I ever get another chance?

Then I talked so some people. Authors and non-authors who I trusted. They took one look at the royalty deal I was offered and told me it sucked. I won't name the company in question publicly, which means I can totally say that they were locking me into 30% royalties, after Amazon takes its cut, for three books straight. So for every $1000 of profit the book produced, I would get $300. 70% gone for...what? Basic support that, with hard work, I could accomplish on my own?

The thing that worried me the most was when I asked them what my advertising budget would be. They refused to commit to a hard number. I also learned that other authors were being offered better deals, which was a hilarious fact because the company said that the deal they offered me was the best in the business. From the start, they had no desire to be straight with me and no real faith in my book.

I looked it over, thought about it, and eventually came to the conclusion that I was being shortchanged by a ton. And maybe I could have argued for a better deal - my story was already pretty damn popular on Royal Road by now - but should I bother? I knew that self-publishing would be much harder, sure. I would have to advertise for myself, get my own cover art, and re-edit Book 1 without assistance. But the profits would be mine. The success would be mine.

The next few months were easily the busiest time of my life. And it was absolutely 100% worth it. Take your 30% royalties and shove it, Company X.

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What word would you use then? Classic? They're definitely not on the same level of recency as anything released in the last decade or so.

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Early 90s movies are retro. Not on the level of talkies obviously, but they're very much old by now.

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paperwarior posted...

I'd say that takes like... 2 full additional generations plus or minus a partial one.

NES-era games were already considered retro by the time the early 2000s rolled around. You don't think that people who are 18 years old now don't consider games released before they were alive to be retro/classic? Same things as radio stations playing 2000s-era songs in their 'Classic Music' sections.

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Final Fantasy X is 20 years old. It's closer on the timeline to Super Mario Bros 1 than games released today.

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https://justpaste.it/8vqax

This is a (non-comprehensive) marketing guide I made for an author discord. It's geared towards serial LitRPG authors, but there's some tips in there that would help everyone.

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I actually consider Pyre a less melancholic game than Bastion or Transistor, honestly.

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9

Fantastic. Best Supergiant game, which is a shame because it sold by far the worst.

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I find that, in practice, the amount of sales you 'lose' from posting a serial and then transitioning it to Kindle Unlimited - especially if you're a new author - is very low. Generally speaking, the people that are reading lots of free serial on websites are the people that don't like spending money in general. And the people that ARE fine with spending money will be more likely to support your work if they have an emotional investment towards it.

Creating your own website isn't a bad idea if you have the expertise, but it's not going to be anywhere near as helpful for a new author as making use of sites that are already popular. I got my start mainly on Spacebattles, but I also posted everywhere I could think of as well. Royal Road, Reddit, Scribblehub, and An Archive of Our Own are just a few examples. The story won't take off everywhere, but that just means you end up focusing on the places that did, which for me ended up being Spacebattles, Royal Road, and Reddit.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/10/11/22720724/netflix-suspends-trans-employee-tweeted-dave-chappelle-the-closer

Free speach folks where you at huh?

*crickets*

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Watching that video just reconfirmed to me that I'm conditioned to feel emotion whenever I hear Dragonsong play.

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HaRRicH posted...

Cheers from a fellow writer dude, that is superb news. =)

Thanks man! Wish you all the success in the world as well :)

StifledSilence posted...

Im late to the party, but congrats dude. I published a book back in 2013 but it didnt sell at all lol. But youre inspiring me to try again. Im happy to see you have success. I also bought a Kindle copy!

How did you go about marketing/hyping your book up? That seemed to be my stumping point the first time.

Thanks so much for the support man! I'll be happy to give any marketing advice I have, although not all of it will be applicable.

Posting my story as a chapter-by-chapter serial is what led me build up the fanbase I needed to help with marketing. The #1 biggest success factor, more than any paid or grassroots advertising I did, was to ask my fans to give support the book on Amazon and give it early algorithm success. This only mattered so much because I'd gotten a fairly large following by that point, though.

Other than my fanbase, I advertised on several different sites, subreddits, twitter, imgur...I actually made a quick marketing guide a while back, I'll fish it out and post it here tomorrow for anyone who's interested.

P.S. If you self-publish, put it on Kindle Unlimited.

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Vote distribution from last topic:

1
1
1
1
1.5
1.5
2
2
2
3

6
6
7
7.5
9

Don't think there's been a day like that!

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Legitimately fascinating results today

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8yV8xUorQ8

https://twitter.com/lalalogay/status/1346052245180309504?t=P7s8pX86vCMGlgz6hDOeUA&s=19

To anyone lurking in this topic who might not understand why Chapelle's behavior is gross/a problem, I think these videos do a pretty good job at summarizing it

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Hmm...maybe I should add Board 8 into the Dedication section. I *did* get a lot of writing experience here! It wouldn't be 'GameFAQs Contests', though, just 'Board 8'.

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I've been out on the loop regarding recent Dave Chapelle stuff and this topic was not a fun refresher course! Like, if I had any interest in catching up on his comedy, it's completely gone now.

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7.5

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Sugiyama definitely had horrible views that deserve to be criticized (and, yes, noted in articles about his passing), but I dont think his death should be celebrated! (Or really any death, but even if there is a line for that I think it would be a pretty high (low?) bar)

Oh, Kobe deserved the same treatment, but people like Basketball more than Dragon Quest

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I have no updates, but I also don't want this topic to purge just yet.

Carry on.

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Anyone have a backup link of the backup link? The data was taken down again.

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Would be sad about this if it weren't for him being a war crime denying asshole

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Samus, Kirby, Ness, and Fox should all be in the 'large boost' tier.

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5

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The game barely even has a story outside of the cheesy intro, honestly.

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The numbers are from 2019 onward I believe, and yeah they don't account for a lot of additional revenue

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https://pastebin.com/LjmaPNam

Full list of twitch streamer revenue

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This is one of those stories that is major for the industry but won't affect most of us at all

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Been a while since there was a new article to get the ACAB juices flowing

https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/10/05/bodycam-shows-minneapolis-officers-hunting-civilians-during-floyd-protests/

https://i.imgur.com/Bxhk5wS.png

https://i.imgur.com/ekZmaYn.png

https://i.imgur.com/9pZ4zdy.png

https://i.imgur.com/u2JaMro.png

https://i.imgur.com/0MdHptK.png

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Team Rocket Elite posted...

That's not the LoL community I know. >_>

LoL has a ton of baked-in systems to curb toxicity. People get banned with consistent regularity if they repeatedly act like assholes. The problem is that LoL has a lot of assholes.

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Shulk is my favorite character in the game and I still thought Smash 4 was iffy. Brawl is when the game's roster started to feel complete.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Riot doesn't enforce those rules evenly for everyone, though. Much worse toxicity than Dunkey's goes unreported every day. Dunkey was banned BECAUSE he was a well known figure.

Don't agree with this. I've seen the examples of what Dunkey was doing and it was a perfect example of shitty LoL toxicity, and he did it extremely often, meaning the reports would have quickly piled up. That's the system working as intended! LoL is actually extremely proactive about weeding out toxicity, it's just that the playerbase is so large that the battle is neverending and impossible to win.

I didn't see any LoL admins comment to say that they were making an example of Dunkey, so if there's a claim going around that he was targeted for being well-known, that claim probably came from...Dunkey.

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Streamers should not be allowed to break the toxicity rules of a game just because they're popular. That's absurd notion. If Asmongold started trolling FF14 players he would have been banned/suspended, and rightfully so.

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Dunkey is a great example of the kind of youtuber who dresses up their videos in shitposts (and a lot of them are) but also puts his real opinions out there as well. That way if people agree with him he can say he was serious, and if people disagree he can say it was a prank bro. Right out of the South Park playbook. See: every video related to JRPGs he's ever made

This is also the guy who trolled people on League of Legends until he banned and then made a video complaining about how he wasn't being given preferential treatment despite being a content creator

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

As always Dunkey speaks for the people.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but if it isn't, Dunkey is kind of an asshole

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They're not cutting 7 Fire Emblem characters. At the very least, Ike and Byleth are very likely to return - Ike for popularity and Byleth for recency.

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'FP1 is better unless you're a Mythra simp' isn't exactly a ringing endorsement

Min Min and Kazuya are just too lame

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The ballot was used to decide a good number of Smash Ultimate choices, too. No way K Rool and Ridley get in 'normally'.

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