• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

Post your searing hot takes

yureion said:
i dont trust anyone that wears shorts/skirts in the winter.
i know you cold and if you can lie to yourself than what i'm supposed to expect if i have to deal with you? lol
Click to expand...
Similarly, heavy jackets in summer. It's 30 degrees plus and you walk around in a northface?
 
Everyone's got a different idea of cold, though. 50F isn't cold. 30F is getting there, but if it's dry and there's no wind, that's shorts weather too. 0F with a wind chill factor of -10 is a bit nippy, maybe time to put on some long pants, and if I'm getting alerts sent to my phone to stay inside because I can die of exposure in less than 10 minutes, it's cold.
 
i'm only surprised someone didn't make that comparison earlier

anyways people who wear shorts/short sleeves in winter are fine, people who wear heavy jackets in summer are playing life on ultra hell mode, which is to say they are operating on another level entirely
 
i know some people who wear coats all the time mainly because they're on blood thinners which makes them cold all the time.
 
tbh I think part of it is an age thing

in middleschool I was definitely a t-shirt + shorts person in winter anyways, but by high school it was def too cold to me for that

but also i still wear sweatshirts in the summer even to this day outside just because it makes me more comfortable as a socially anxious person
 
War Incarnate said:
i'm only surprised someone didn't make that comparison earlier

anyways people who wear shorts/short sleeves in winter are fine, people who wear heavy jackets in summer are playing life on ultra hell mode, which is to say they are operating on another level entirely
Click to expand...
one time i accidentally wore a decently heavy coat out to a hike/photography trip on what was (apparently) one of the hottest days of the week. Needless to say not exactly the most fun weekend I've had (I did get some decent pictures though)
 
i am and always have been extremely sensitive to the cold, but one time in the middle of winter, in full snowpants season, i took all my winter gear off outside and was completely fine. i have no idea where this came from, my leading theory is that i was possesed.
 
Gattsu is the worst geography guy on youtube. He just can't make a statement that isn't wrong and poorly researched for the live of his. He's the Adam Conover of geography
 
botw/totk is a terrible example in favor of level scaling and people should stop using it to say pokemon needs it.

for one, botw/totk peak early on because you don't have much shit and you're actually playing by scavenging which is awesome and what the game intends. theoretically level scaling should keep the game feeling scrappy, and keep that difficulty the same, but

it doesn't "normalize" the difficulty throughout the game, it just makes the entire map feel pretty much the same

you're supgrading your armor, getting pages of healing items, having much better weaponry and you can even increase how many weapons/bows/shields you have- in fact, your types of arrow and quantity varies

while the bokoblin is spongier to take the higher level of hits, i'm still at a place where i am fundamentally not at the same "level"; im not just getting items that increase my damage output

15 hours into botw/totk and a dungeon under my belt and im at a point where there is fundamentally no combat challenge in the region that can take me on. worse, every area feels the same. im rarely going to get that "im stronger, so i instantly fuck shit up" effect by going back to my starting grounds, especially not because the enemies feel the same anywho- and when im in "tougher" parts of the map at most its just the elements (switch armor) and maybe having to swing a few more times per enemy

imagine if instead of that, the map had areas of different difficulty, especially correlating to how hard it was to get to the area, or how far out from the middle of hyrule you explored- instead of everywhere feeling the same, you have areas of the map that feel dangerous for far longer (before you get even more upgrades) because they had enemies and level design balanced at a much higher level deliberately, and you have several routes that you learn through playthroughs some are harder, some are easier but take more time, giving actual choices that are meaningful

every open world game should take notes from fallout new vegas having the player go to the city, but either choosing the fast path where you get mauled unless you're a really good returning player, or take the long route that is a bit of tutorialization in a matter. not only does it give character to the locations (people remember things being specifically harder! how many times do you hear people say "yeah, this area on botw's map? that gave me a tough time! haha, memories" [they don't, because everywhere feels the same; at most an annoying shrine or two, but never related to combat]) and it just makes sense in worldbuilding

why does the outskirts of a town feel the same as literal fortresses of monsters in difficulty and variety of species, difference in difficulty can give so much life to a world

i love BotW but after a few playthroughs over the years, i never tend to truly finish it

maybe i'll beat a divine beast, maybe two, get strong enough to where i feel busted and then beat ganon and finish the playthrough, but by the time im exploring enough and have 4 divine beasts? i dont get that far because i get bored, the game isn't interesting because there isn't any friction

ironically i think linear games are much more suited to level scaling because open world games are inherently about curiosity while a lot of linear games are designed with people who might not care that much to play with all the systems in mind. open world games should do everything in their power to have a sense of progression linked to exploration, while linear games tend to have more progression just through linear stories, dungeons, etc.; keeping the player in-line sounds much more reasonable when the loss really isn't that big
 
ant4456 said:
botw/totk is a terrible example in favor of level scaling and people should stop using it to say pokemon needs it.

for one, botw/totk peak early on because you don't have much shit and you're actually playing by scavenging which is awesome and what the game intends. theoretically level scaling should keep the game feeling scrappy, and keep that difficulty the same, but

it doesn't "normalize" the difficulty throughout the game, it just makes the entire map feel pretty much the same

you're supgrading your armor, getting pages of healing items, having much better weaponry and you can even increase how many weapons/bows/shields you have- in fact, your types of arrow and quantity varies

while the bokoblin is spongier to take the higher level of hits, i'm still at a place where i am fundamentally not at the same "level"; im not just getting items that increase my damage output

15 hours into botw/totk and a dungeon under my belt and im at a point where there is fundamentally no combat challenge in the region that can take me on. worse, every area feels the same. im rarely going to get that "im stronger, so i instantly fuck shit up" effect by going back to my starting grounds, especially not because the enemies feel the same anywho- and when im in "tougher" parts of the map at most its just the elements (switch armor) and maybe having to swing a few more times per enemy

imagine if instead of that, the map had areas of different difficulty, especially correlating to how hard it was to get to the area, or how far out from the middle of hyrule you explored- instead of everywhere feeling the same, you have areas of the map that feel dangerous for far longer (before you get even more upgrades) because they had enemies and level design balanced at a much higher level deliberately, and you have several routes that you learn through playthroughs some are harder, some are easier but take more time, giving actual choices that are meaningful

every open world game should take notes from fallout new vegas having the player go to the city, but either choosing the fast path where you get mauled unless you're a really good returning player, or take the long route that is a bit of tutorialization in a matter. not only does it give character to the locations (people remember things being specifically harder! how many times do you hear people say "yeah, this area on botw's map? that gave me a tough time! haha, memories" [they don't, because everywhere feels the same; at most an annoying shrine or two, but never related to combat]) and it just makes sense in worldbuilding

why does the outskirts of a town feel the same as literal fortresses of monsters in difficulty and variety of species, difference in difficulty can give so much life to a world

i love BotW but after a few playthroughs over the years, i never tend to truly finish it

maybe i'll beat a divine beast, maybe two, get strong enough to where i feel busted and then beat ganon and finish the playthrough, but by the time im exploring enough and have 4 divine beasts? i dont get that far because i get bored, the game isn't interesting because there isn't any friction

ironically i think linear games are much more suited to level scaling because open world games are inherently about curiosity while a lot of linear games are designed with people who might not care that much to play with all the systems in mind. open world games should do everything in their power to have a sense of progression linked to exploration, while linear games tend to have more progression just through linear stories, dungeons, etc.; keeping the player in-line sounds much more reasonable when the loss really isn't that big
Click to expand...
I don't really play a lot of open-world games, but I feel this. It reminds me of the kind of homogeneity that I experienced when I briefly tried to play that open-world ROM hack of Crystal. The fear of letting the player walk into an area before they're ready for it can really hamper this kind of game, I think.
 
I think level-scaling in open-world games is fine, but it has to be used sparingly, otherwise you run into a fuckton of problems and shortcomings you could've easily avoided

With that said, Pokemon needs SOME form of level scaling (or some other way to make the games more difficult), because as is the games feel a tad too easy
 
War Incarnate said:
I think level-scaling in open-world games is fine, but it has to be used sparingly, otherwise you run into a fuckton of problems and shortcomings you could've easily avoided

With that said, Pokemon needs SOME form of level scaling (or some other way to make the games more difficult), because as is the games feel a tad too easy
Click to expand...
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that when judging the dificulty of pokemon games, we should consider the fact that everyone here plays it competitively.
 
my take is that pokemon levels are focused on way too hard when it comes to difficulty in pkmn games when I think it's more stuff like:

-often doubling the mon count of gym leader
-gym leaders having badly designed teams
-IV/EV
-healing items
-shift mode

like the player has every major advantage on top of the fact that yknow. they can catch anything and level up anything they want
 
oh also tho I would like to see GF experiment more like in legends with systems where levels matter less

personally I think Pokemon, out of most RPG series, has some of the most boring leveling and in ways that makes balancing really awkward

in fact i am pretty sure a pokemon without stats in level ups could be better designed- where levels are just moves/evolution and you're incentivized for making a good team, not just grinding

but i know thats an unpopular take
 
ant4456 said:
my take is that pokemon levels are focused on way too hard when it comes to difficulty in pkmn games when I think it's more stuff like:

-often doubling the mon count of gym leader
-gym leaders having badly designed teams
-IV/EV
-healing items
-shift mode

like the player has every major advantage on top of the fact that yknow. they can catch anything and level up anything they want
Click to expand...
One of my hot takes (as far as this forum is concerned, anyway) is that these games being the difficulty that they are is actually fine, but I do generally agree with this. Difficulty in these games is really more a matter of what the player has access to than anything; the hardest difficulty hacks focus more on restricting player tools than buffing the enemies to the moon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top