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DranSeasona

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Posts posted by DranSeasona

  1. I loved XBC3, and I found myself much more engaged with FR than Torna… evidently since I haven’t even finished Torna yet. lol That ending was something else, and I loved how so much was tied together fairly well by the end.

     

    One of my favourite moments:

     

    Spoiler

    For real though, when Rex showed up dual-wielding saying “ I like your attitude, kiddo”, I was clapping excitedly! lol

  2. On 5/5/2022 at 8:12 PM, bel said:

    do you remember when this first started and they were projecting like 3 million deaths from covid with zero precautions taken and conservatives were like WHAT THAT'S RIDICULOUS but based on this I think that would be pretty accurate

    Probably more, to be honest… I understand that 1 million is the official verified number, but my understanding is that tracking has been difficult even at the best of times. So frankly… the real number is undoubtedly higher. 


    For example, most places in the world seem to have not been paying the best attention to post-Covid deaths, many of which could have  easily happened exclusively as a result of complications from having just finished fighting Covid off (like sudden boughts with not-Covid-induced pneumonia)… I’m not sure why anyone would consider such deaths as actually independent from Covid.

     

    So as far as I’m concerned, if we all really just let the chips fall where they would with zero interference, this could have easily devestated the entire human race all on its own.

  3. Well, Covid knocked my house out of commission for a while (father-in-law accidentally brought it into the house), but we’re doing much better so thought I would drop in! :)

     

    I’m telling you though… despite almost certainly being the latest Omicron sub-variant going around (ie the “least dangerous overall” one, allegedly), it hit really bad… daughter ended up going to the hospital the first night due to breathing difficulty. We are all fully vaccinated too… so if this is what “mild” looks like, I would hate to see what would happen to someone who has not gotten vaccinated…

     

    In other news though, my wife managed to complete her decade-long saga to complete her BA, and will hopefully be accepted into an Occupational Therapy Masters program this week! So that’s exciting…

  4. Myself, I finally completed the Pokedex in Shining Pearl the other day. After months of having no luck getting a Slakoth swarm in-game, I finally managed to snag one through Wonder Trade. :) 

     

    And my daughter just started playing Sword with me. She always loved watching my son and I play, and really took to Zacian (who she calls “Wolfy”). Now she is excited to get her own!

  5. 9 hours ago, Tyranogre said:

    It's GameFreak.

     

    Were you expecting anything else?

    I mean, ILCA have heads of their own too, right? I would have hoped that someone on the dev side in either or both organization would have noticed that the base programming code is not the same and might not be compatible? 
     

    It is quite strange to me that something like this was so easily overlooked when this is a huge piece of their business (ie. the unique coding for Pokémon). I work in a Technology setting for a Canadian bank, and while sure people are people and can screw up easily… we have monitoring controls in place for this very reason…

  6. 41 minutes ago, EH_STEVE said:

    I'd actually like Nintendo to just do a Switch Series X for the next gen, maybe work in new peripherals, but make a more powerful portable/dockable Switch.

    Definitely seems like the natural direction to go in, eh? The Switch definitely has some… er, opportunities they could fairly easily take advantage of…

  7. 4 hours ago, April said:

    oh i'm not passing judgment on it, just that the portability is half the reason and the other is just playing nintendo games. it's not like there's really anything special about their vision beyond a few obligatory early games each time like ARMS lol

    I disagree that there is never an overarching vision (besides money, which yes, I get that they are a capitalist company lol). I think the fact that they actually do try different things even in the modern age clearly demonstrates that there’s a degree of creative pride at work, even with the typical bottom line discussion wrapped in. Nintendo is well known for innovation and some would say being the “king of left field”. If money was literally the only explanation for every decision, why would they not have just joined the “pissing contest”, as Ty put it, decades ago? That’s what literally every other “AAA” publisher and company has been doing since the early 2000s and even 1990s…

     

    They clearly want to make money as easily as possible, but I don’t get the overly cynical vibe I am feeling, here… The “Nintendo quality” notion is not based on marketing alone, despite the mistakes/imperfections we still see in them as an overall company and brand.

     

    Anyway, I wasn’t trying to say that BotW plays differently on the WiiU or whatever, my point is, BotW’s reinvention of Zelda is just like reinventing gaming via the Switch. They saw an opportunity to tap into two markets at once, and take a swing at revolutionizing gaming again, in the process. For me, BotW embodies this notion of taking what they have and pushing their creative inspiration as far as possible. Yes, to make money. But I’m sure the actual developers would also like to fancy themselves as artists, too… and art is aupposed to be more to people than just the money piece.

     

    So sure, executive Nintendo obviously are sitting in their boardroom saying, “hm, how can we get the most bang for our buck from these IPs we own or at least heavily influence?” But… are you trying to say that you think this is the only kind of conversation happening in the whole company around strategy, direction, game development, etc.?

     

    I’ve always personally understood their overall strategy being to make money while also trying to spice things up as often as possible, if just from the developers’ points of view to help make the grueling pressures of working in a capitalist-Japanese company more bearable. lol Double whammy of crushing work culture, from what I always hear…

  8. 9 minutes ago, April said:

    the need was just the fact that neither gamecube nor the wii u really sold well lol

    As I alluded to, obviously profit was a major consideration for every decision made. lol But I don’t mind that when it happens to make sense, or even just work out thematically, for other reasons.

     

    That’s why I said I “hope”… obviously they’re ultimately going to be told by the powers that be to do whatever said executives believe to be the most likely way for them to make as much money as they can, as inexpensively as possible.

     

    So sure… if we are in fact close to next gen console for Nintendo, they may very easily consider another dual-launch to take advantage.

  9. I definitely believe that TP should have stayed as a swan song to Gamecube, personally… but truth be told, I believe in BotW’s case, marrying it more or less to the Switch (and to a certain degree, Nintendo’s business strategy going forward from the Wii U sadness) actually was the better choice.

     

    It honestly fit more for me as the beginning of a new era, so to speak, whereas TP was more like… tacked on to the Wii without real need, IMO. SS will always be the true Wii Zelda experience for me… TP will always be for GCN. BotW as a WiiU game just seems… uncanny? Hard to explain but I feel all the stars more or less aligned for BotW snd Switch.

     

    If BotW2 becomes another dual-console game, I would just hope it would be relevant to what the next console is actually trying to accomplish (besides profit, obviously). But if it’s more or less “perfected BotW experience”, I would think even coming out close-ish to the end of the Switch’s lifecycle  (even just defining the latter half or third) would be much more thematically appropriate, anyway…

  10. I started writing a response to the above to continue talking about the slap, but honestly? My point was to try to say I think a bunch of mistakes were made and focusing so intensely on one of those mistakes was silly… so I should probably just drop it. lol I will just shut up about that conversation and talk about BotW, now. :) 

     

    I can’t say that I am surprised, or anything… they have seemed really intent on meticulously making this as “perfect” as possible for quite a while, now. Seems almost obsessively perfectionistic at this point. :P It will probably come out some day… probably…

  11. 6 hours ago, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

    Yeah, but Will Smith could’ve just yanked the mic from Chris Rock. Or get security to escort Chris out. Or made a jab at Rock himself. Resorting to violence, again, doesn’t solve anything. Sure, Chris Rock might have been gotten too far, but the event was on live television. Around the world. Who’d want to hire him for a while after that?  
     
    That, and whining about not getting an Oscar… only to finally get an Oscar means Will is not only a hypocrite but also a jerk. 
     
    Last, replace Chris Rock with anyone else. Would you still let Will get away with that?

    Yes… if literally anyone else was needlessly cruel to his partner like that (again, not just the once but several times), I think it’s pretty normal to expect a strong message to be sent. If not by him or even her, possibly even her son or another person who loves her andceould be quite angry about this.

     

    Sorry, but we aren’t talking only about “right thing to do” or “setting a good example”, or “he who is without sin cast the first stone”, or whatever similar thing you want to say… we are also talking about real people, with real feelings, and not everything is about being perfect when you respond to shitty things.

     

    Chris was being a needless prick, and got smacked in the face. Pretty clear cause-and-effect, natural consequence kind of thing. You mean to tell me that you’re perfectly fine with having cruel verbal abuse spewed at people, but if someone gets smacked for behaving in that manner, that’s just too far? lol

     

    Maybe Chris and all his fellow “comedians” should start upping their satire game and not smugly hide behind their profession in order to get away with being cruel and even at times sociopathic. If you have a valid point to make that you want to laugh about, a clever person can find a way to get it across without harming the dignity of an innocent person.

  12. 1 hour ago, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

     
    Yeah, but a punch on one of the grandest stages of all… Will Smith shouldn’t advocate violence as well.

    In theory, sure… but from what I have heard, this isn’t even the first time Chris made this kind of joke at her expense, and she has been quite vocal about her situation and how awful it makes her feel, apparently… so who cares about him being slapped or embarrassed when he says something he knows full well to be awful after past incidents?

     

    Honestly, it’s cowardly to hide behind “free speech” and “satire” (though frankly, the over-reliance on direct ad hominen style jokes that there seems to be the most of in the US is pretty poor quality on the global stage of making actually clever satire) in order to get away with being needlessly hurtful. In real life if you push things too far, someone can easily do much worse than slap you in the face on live television. lol

     

    Sorry to say, but sometimes you just reap what you sow…

  13. 5 hours ago, Destiny Hero said:

    Three Houses had tons of political backstory. Though of course, none of it is relevant to the present-day story, which is bare in every route.

     

    It's relevant here that Game Freak's development is mostly independent from Nintendo and their strict quality. Not that it really makes the inconsistencies of Legends permissible. Pokemon media in general has a lot of strict rules about what can and can't be depicted, so I can't imagine how something like that thing got approved. My friend said the reveal caused a huge uproar.

    As I said in my post, I really don’t agree with how strong your position on the Arceus worldbuilding is… I’m not saying you have to like it or anything, but I don’t get the degree of anger (even frustration), here.

     

    Granted it’s not, like, Arda, or Westeros, or anything… but most of the things you have identified as shameful or something really is not… nearly that bad. Also… is “that thing” you can’t believe got approved still the Pokeball thing?

     

    Honestly it makes so much more sense for  my personal suspension of disbelief anyway to imagine that these already clearly ridiculous creatures have some kind of gene or something unique to them (i.e. not in humans) that can, with some ingenuity, be tapped into in order to “capture” and tame them. As in, the magic is in the super-weapon animals still, rather than the people trying to get by on their cleverness and resolve in a world filled with them. 

     

    The idea of the Pokeball itself being the sole (even primary) source of this mechanic hasn’t made any sense to me since gen 2… Otherwise, we’re just left guessing how a fruit can randomly be tranformed into a space-time altering bug net easily picked away at in a feudal Japanese workshop and adjusted to meet certain different ends of capture needs… long enough before the modern age that it’s a cultural tradition, which then Kurt is one of the last masters of.

     

    Again, not calling it a masterpiece by any stretch… but not sure why this has hit some kind of nerve with some people.

  14. 1 hour ago, Destiny Hero said:

    Is it REALLY pre-technology? They have portable cameras! And this is supposedly only a century before main series Pokemon games, which have more technology than we do now--that'd place Legends around 1920 - 1950. It's wildly inconsistent no matter how you spin it. Besides, they could've pulled a Dynamax or Rotom-phone and said "these balls harness the power of this new Pokemon, Ball Guy," which would eventually go extinct when technological Pokeballs are invented.

     

    We've also got a feudal Japan vibe going on here, yet the village is two years old and already has a full Victorian manor. Whoever was in charge of the worldbuilding for this game seriously dropped the ball, worse than I've ever seen before, and this is coming from the most lucrative franchise in the world. Makes me want to start brainstorming all the other dramaturgical, cultural, and communication roles Game Freak has left unfilled. Legends feels like such a weird mix of Game Freak being Game Freak, and Game Freak actually treating Pokemon with the quality its revenue deserves.

     

    The Arceus branding implies that they're already setting this up to be a side series, so that makes me very hopeful for a sequel that hammers out this game's few issues.

    Not sure what about all this has got you so worked up, but… I would like to offer my own two cents on some of this.

     

    Spoiler

     You are giving a bunch of dates and numbers here, but truth be told I have not heard about any of that being necessarily accurate. I find that Nintendo games taking place in the “distant past” in general when they are shown off have someone high up mention the ”takes place 100 years ago” line, just to have the games imply a much longer period. My favourite example of this is Wind Waker, which I distinctly remember Nintendo Power’s interview with one of the heads stating 100 year or so gap to OoT… but upon playing the game, it’s clear that at least about 500 years (but more likely I would even say 1000 year gap) would have had to pass for things to line up well enough. If anyone said something like this about PLA (which to be honest I never saw anything as clearly stated as that, myself), I would imagine that it was a Japanese-English “lost-in-translation” thing.

     

    For technology… I did not see anything in the game that even necessitates being in the 20th century to work. Cameras (such as the kind the professor was shown to use) for example had existed even in our world by the mid-late 19th century. Anything else is pretty easy to accept for me just as much as literal time travel (since gen 2’s human invented stuff, not even the divine-method we see here) or the ridiculous sci-fi advances Pokémon integrated into its lore from the beginning. Forget magic bug-catching-net capsules/balls… the 90s Pokémon world had artificial life, cloning and gene editing super weapons, magic healing devices so simple apparently that they didn’t have to charge money to use them, putting organic matter in a virtual reality… none of which we can do in 2022 let alone 1990. lol

     

    For the Arc Phone, I can appreciate some may not like it as being clunkiky implemented, but honestly I just interpreted the act as Arceus is giving him/her a mission with a clear promised reward, so having the phone that was helping guide him/her look like Arceus could just serve as a visual reminder of the promise to come when things get tough. You see that kind of thing in the real world all the time… art and objects are used to convey a certain idea and illicit a certain emotion or response.

     

    Though if it helps, and not saying this is necessarily true or anything… but Arceus was probably doing the player more of a favour by making it look like a clearly Pokémon thing rather than an iPhone 11 (which it was before). The player could avoid more trouble maybe with something that he/she could say a Pokémon gave them, rather than a clearly advanced human technological object that this normal looking kid is carrying around. Maybe. lol

     

    For building the Galaxy HQ in a short amount of time (but 2 years? Where did you hear such a specific number and how did I manage to miss it? lol Was it Komodo to the player on the beach, maybe?), why is that a big deal? The town over the course of the game can grow relatively quickly in front of our eyes, after all. I find it pretty easy to accept these people were just pretty industrious due to their eagerness to carve out a new life for themselves. The HQ was probably one of the first shelters they built to protect them from the elements/magic monsters while they got settled, on top of that physical symbolism I mentioned above. Actually… pretty sure Cyllene in a post-game cutscene with Kokodo and the player I saw discussing why they chose the name Galaxy at all references the importance of doing things inspiring to them to help strengthen their resolve.

     

    Finally, the big one… the Pokeball “retcon”, as people put it. Honestly, this makes much more sense, and is more in line with the original lore of Pokémon, as outlined in that big 90s Japan-exclusive book that Did You Know Gaming covered last year… As @EH_STEVE put it, how were we ever going to explain away “Acorn”-made (i.e. apricorn) ancient Pokeballs fron Gen 2’s lore if the ball itself was really the whole story to the shrinking gimmick? It makes a lot more sense if the magic creatures themselves could change their sizes under the right conditions (therefore allowing rough, rudimentary tools to be gradually built upon to take advantage of a naturally occurring phenomenon). So this way, a smart person can figure out a much more grounded problem, rather than just saying “professor so-and-so bippity-boppity-booped this technology into existence somehow, and now we can mass-produce but not adequately explain it”.

     

    Anyway, I agree on two common issues with this game: the sloppy tutorial (had a lot of promise with the refreshingly sour reception most townsfolk give you, IMO), and the sad environmental graphics (as in, why are all tge cliffs tinged purple? lol). But otherwise I loved the risks they took with carving out a new direction for the series here, and look forward to Sc/Vi hopefully building upon it. :) 

     

  15. 45 minutes ago, Stephen 776 said:

    Interestingly, I can't find anything that corroborates gen vi/vii GTS servers being shutdown. Are you sure that happened? I think you're thinking of Gen VII's Pokemon Global Link, which is just for ranked/event battles (Gen VI's PGL probably went down years earlier). Moreover, afaik, Bank only cares about what catridge is in your 3DS; the only identifier it's attached to is NNID (which is in turn attached to your hardware).

     

    Minior is working fairly well so far. I've reached the point where I've gotten so many vanilla/strawberry Alcremie I'm having to specify forms, but they're definitely bringing Alcremie in faster.

    I might just not be communicating properly, but in any case I think I just had a brain blast.
     

    Maybe, somehow, the original physical cartridge’s memory may still exist on my 3DS, and is possibly overriding my newer replacement digital game’s data due to its pre-linked connection to Bank? So… if I delete that if I do find it, then maybe I will be able to link to Bank after all…

     

    Well, I will investigate, but that may well be the issue. I was very confused because the error messages given to me by both Bank and AS suggested a connection to a server from a long defunct game-official-website link…

     

    Sorry for the confusing diversion, then. :P I am glad you are having luck with Minior.

  16. 9 hours ago, Stephen 776 said:

    I legit do not recall GTS shutting down gen vi. Huh.

     

    In either case, I've already sent mons to home via bank multiple times from both my own games and some of my partner's games (mostly his spare Vivillon). Taking care of dexited mons was my first priority.

     

    But with ORAS seemingly dead, I think minior is my best gts fodder. Alcremie has so many forms. So. Many. Forms.

    Oh, if you have already been able to get XY/ORAS games to Bank in your current files that’s fine… the issue is just in if you restarted/lost the old file, there just seems to be no way to make new links from a Gen 6/7 game to Bank after the related GTS servers were shut down last year… 

     

    So assuming the files you had deposited to Bank from before are still the same files (i.e. not restarted), you can hunt/farm Unowns in ORAS for sure. :) Actually, the Mirage Island thing still works, it wasn’t based on the GTS system, after all… I have been able to use that feature in AS even recently. 
     

    But Minior is a good thing to use for GTS currency too, of course. :P Vivillon as you said, as well… but also the Flabebe/Pumpkaboo lines and Oricorio!

     

    For Alcremie… yeah that was a pain to fill out. lol I was able to get it all myself in Sword, but farming the 7 types of candy was frustrating, for sure. At least the twirling mechanic broke the monotony of it a bit… such a random gimmick for evolution, but at least it makes more sense than flipping the DS upside down (i.e. Malamar)…

  17. 11 hours ago, Stephen 776 said:

    other weird things I'm learning about Pokemon as I get back in: unown have some of the most shoddy avaliability before BDSP and PLA.

     

    You're either looking at a daily random in ORAS, or DPPt and nobody wants to do a mass gen iv-->v transfer y;

    Need to actually save scum in ORAS for that unown island, because shoddy availability+many forms=fantastic GTS currency.

    On that note… I have recently discovered that when TPC shut down the servers for Gen 6’s GTS functions, this locked my AS to Pokemon Bank connection to an old file I no longer have access to… meaning it seems at this point impossible for me to deposit Pokémon from my newer AS file into Pokémon Bank. :( 

     

    In other words… I would suggest making sure you actually are able to deposit your ORAS or SM Pokémon into Bank before getting too invested in hunting down specific ‘mons to help fill out the living ‘Dex. :) 

  18. Hey everyone, hope things are going well for you! :) Been another couple months, think I fell off in the middle of a conversation, again… sorry about that. :( lol Home renovations ended up taking a lot of my attention, but I have a cozy new office in the basement now, which is nice.

     

    Crazy few months in gaming… got and played through PLA, started Kirby, pining for Scarlet/Violet now along with BotW2, managed to complete my BDSP Pokedex except the dunb Slakoth line (only Swarm that never wants to show up)…  This is one of those years though where there’s so much good stuff coming out I have to prioritize what I really am willing to buy now and what I would therefore be okay with putting off for a while… not even just because of money, but also the time constraints! 

     

    My kids just had their birthdays as well, and my son tried the Kirby demo and was able to do pretty well on his own. I am hoping this will be the first game we can actually possibly co-op together! Fun times…

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