任是无情也动人

Hoyo games and recent politics

2025-12-01T22:09:15Z

Recently, the HSR forums/reddit has been abuzz with rumors that the upcoming entire 4.0 storyline is in danger because it's JP based, and is getting self-censored due to the recent political climate. The fact that announcement of the 3.8 patch infodump (scheduled for tomorrow) also came with the note that drip marketing for 4.0 won't be included, with no dates given for the delay...isn't helping.

Not sure what this means for the game as a whole. Like, we can't exactly hope that the politics side will die down over the course of the 3.8 patch. We also don't know if the original 4.0 story/setting was entirely or partially or only tangentially affected. So, I guess a lot is up in the air and just...wait and see is all I can do.

( HSR rant )

( Genshin update )

Note to self for future time reference...
https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Archon_Quest_Achievements

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All the hype about monkey

2024-08-23T06:46:50Z

My recs page for youtube, bilibili, etc have been bombarded lately with the new 黑神话：悟空 (Black Myth: Wukong) game.

Been watching various videos, and I have been entertained as much by the cool cutscenes/storyline as by the hilarious reactions of various "journalists" about the game and the various gamering influencers responding to those journalists.

Addendum: After reading a lot of comments, speculation, analysis, etc. (on chinese sites that is), I feel like this video is relevant - 22000字解析：不聊黑神话，我想为西游记解读正本清源

It does seem like the narrative of the game is using an edgy 阴谋论 interpretation of JttW. That said, I think it's not really a big deal for the game to do so? Like, JttW itself was an interpretation of existing folklore based on the POV of the scholars of the Ming/Qing era. That Black Myth as a modern interpretation that is leaning into a lot of modern sentiments (like anti-feudalism, anti-divine, anti-authority...) seems par for the course to me.

And for people worried about foreigners being misled by "incorrect" mythology... em. Really, is it going to do worse than DBZ? Honestly, the real step is to get foreigners even interested in listening to infodumps about chinese myth/history. Whether how accurate it is (a nebulous thing given myth and folklore as a genre) is pretty insignificant. If people are really interested, they'll bother to do the research on their own.

Anyway, not planning on playing it or anything. It's waaay too skill-oriented for my taste.

Though while I was browsing through the linked recs on youtube, I also saw ads and trailers come up for the next GW2 expansion (already?). This would be the 2nd expac I've skipped. The previous one was for the wizard's tower. This one is for Janthir Wilds.

Skimmed through the trailer and it looks... meh. Really. Yeah, nothing to attract me back. -_-

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Nikki franchise goes console game?

2024-06-09T21:29:51Z

Hahaha, latest in the Nikki dressup franchise: Infinity Nikki. They've got a 3D dressup app with Shining Nikki with all the pretty art assets. Why not add the the rest of the world and copy pasta the game mechanics from Zelda: Breath of the Wild? LOL

Seems to be in pre-registration stage still, and for Playstation.

(Not planning to play this, because it's so obviously a huge money sink.)

EDIT: Found more info... looks like there is also PC and mobile versions in the works. Not sure about the release date, but it looks like closed beta is already out.

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Bluestacks getting more and more unusable

2023-12-14T18:35:58Z

Is it just me? Before, I could play one app one Bluestacks, then switch to another game, and repeat with multiple games. Nowadays, it seems like I can play one game, and then as soon as I try to switch to another, the application goes wonky with non-loading black screen and so forth. Have to close out Bluestacks altogether and then reopen it before I can open another app. And then sometimes, even the first time I play something, it will crash the bluestacks app.

Ugh. Is it just a bad emulator now? Or is it an issue of needing to reinstall fresh? Some setting I should change?

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State of the game: Star Rail

2023-09-28T21:48:52Z

Figure I'll add some more commentary for those who don't play the game.

( about team building )

( about character building )

( about my particular team )

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Huh, the new GW2 update is out? Plus, Star Rail update

2023-08-24T17:34:13Z

Still... not feeling the impetus to go back to GW2. And honestly, the graphics for this game is feeling really dated now. Might just log in with the accounts to unlock the update (assume they're similar to how living story updates work, I dunno)...

In other news, have been having fun with Honkai: Star Rail. I am at the point where I am hitting the grind part. Such that I've decided not to further raise the world difficulty for now, even though I'm still rank short of the max rewards difficulty level. Characters are also maxed at 70 (of the 80 cap) which should be enough for most content if I'm reading the various resources right.

Also, yes, I have sunk money and pulled on the gatcha, though not for all of the banners. Got Luocha during his banner because he is pretty. Turned out to be a good choice cuz he is like the top defensive support/healer right now. XD

Though of course my luck being what it is, the free 5 star the standard banner gave me is Bailu, another healer. -_- Not going to do anything with her. My other healer I built is the free 4 star from the story, since she's much cheaper to build. IMO building 2x 5-star healers at the same time would just require too much farming.

After him, I skipped the Blade and Kafka banners. Blade because not too into edgy masochist dudes. Kafka because not planning to invest into DoT gameplay. Currently looking forward to the next banner for 饮月君 (Imbibitor Lunae, lol translation) that's coming up in less than a week. Counting the days now...

Also, been reading Star Rail slashfic on AO3 lately... XDXDXD

EDIT:

Also considering getting the light cone for this next banner as well as the character. Because...well, rawr. ^_-

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Game making

2023-01-31T20:23:24Z

cashew are you still playing around with making games and stuff?

Found this author on bilibili who made some games out of those common ads you see for game apps (which never ends up matching the actual app).

I tried out this one and it's actually quite cute.

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Game concerts in the west

2021-11-23T06:11:42Z

So this is sorta a followup to my previous post

It started when Youtube pushed me an hour long concert performance of Skyrim OST. I also did a brief search on youtube and found a few other Game OST related concert performances which are...pretty much similar to this.

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

Now, I do like some of the skyrim OSTs, and I have a couple versions of Dragonborn Comes on my playlist somewhere. But, em... well, let's not compare how much it costs to hire an orchestra vs hiring professional singers/idols...mostly because it seems to be a pure cultural thing that Western games prefer pure instrumental OSTs exclusively, while Eastern games will have a mix (instrumental versions of songs in game, and vocal versions for advertising and pure showing off). But still, style of music aside, I still gotta say the venue and post-production of the western performance is simply incomparable to the east.

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Game companies in China

2021-10-30T23:24:55Z

Today (technically yesterday in China) is the 6th anniversary of 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings), a PvP/esports game popular in China. And like any self respecting game company (*coughcough*)...in China...they threw themselves a ball.

This is just the intro, in the special stage (stadium?) built just for this party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eU6nUm1Ycc

I look at this and I look at the likes of Anet, or even the larger game companies in the US, and the first thing I can think of is that chinese meme: “世界的参差”. The second thing is, while asian game companies are much more blatant about blood-sucking the user's wallet... at least the users can see where the money is going?

And the third thing that comes to mind is, indeed, the other chinese meme is also true: 现在游戏公司才是真正的唱片公司 (in this day and age, the game industry is the *real* music industry). LOL.

( Zhou Shen's performances at the gala )

There's also a lot of traditional music performances. My favorite is actually this dance 《敦煌秀》, which unfortunately isn't on youtube. There's also this pipa + spear dance performance and this guzheng + ink painting + dance performance.

Cap off with this traditional instruments rendition of Journey to the West mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCu0PgtG8bI

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DUTP fanfic

2021-02-06T03:14:28Z

So recently Dress Up Time Princess had an event that asked players to write fanfic. A lot of it is dross, of course, but there were some good ones.

For context: These are all based on the first "book" of the game, where the Player becomes Marie Antoinette at the eve of the French Revolution. In the game, there's one story route that will let you successfully push through reforms to same the monarchy. With the other route, the revolution still happens, and the good ends there generally result in the Player escaping France with the romance target of her choice.

what's going to be left of the world when I'm not in it, by Etsi Keating (meta-story angst)

Untitled and its sequel Untitled 2, by Angela G.A. (MC x Louis XVI)

Persuasion, by TalaMayumi (MC x Louis XVI)

Another Marie, by Fairylace (MC x Marquis de Lafayette)

untitled 2 by oldlizmar (post-story epilogue)

It's funny that most people wrote either MCxLafayette or xLouis XVI or even xGabrielle but almost nobody wrote xFerson (the more historically accurate romantic pairing).

Especially funny that I seem to like the fics featuring Louis XVI the most, despite that of all the NPCs, he had the least...well not screentime, but definitely the least focus for romance in the game storyline. Not sure what that says about things.

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I couldn't help myself

2021-01-07T01:35:41Z

I started a second dress up game: Dress Up! Time Princess

It's got a better plot than Love Nikki. Well I mean, its storytelling is based off of otome games, so naturally it's better than Love Nikki's...convoluted mess of grasped straws.

But more importantly, it's 3D! (Yes, Shining Nikki is also 3D but that game isn't available to the US.) Ain't she pretty?

(You just don't get the full effect of the movement graphics with a photo, alas.)

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Pixel Pretties

2020-09-23T02:01:17Z

Been feeling nostalgic for Gaia Online and its avatar making fun. Of course, Gaia is now... eh... not exactly dead but let's just say it's not as it once was. Also, its avatars are too small for my tastes nowadays.

So I found out about a fashion game that originated in China for anime style fashion dress up. In the US, it's called Love Nikki. I used an alternate facebook account that I had around just for gaming purposes. The linking makes it easy to post image snapshots from the game.

The only flaw I can think of is the lack of sort and search options (for shops especially). As my virtual wardrobe fills up, it takes longer and longer to scroll through my dresses, shoes, etc. And I'm "only" on 665/13939 non-hair items. XD

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GW1 on RPGMaker

2020-09-15T20:09:13Z

Found a rec video for this on my youtube recs. Apparently some fan made a RPG version of GW1 pre-searing.

cashew - Are you still doing game making?

Rec videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdxmChRD2epdwSM70v_mcqLTq3xVQ761m

Game: https://j0m0.itch.io/guild-wars-rpg-maker

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Retrospective and tips for PWM in no particular order

2020-01-09T00:07:25Z

EDIT: A lot of these tips have been invalidated since entering the... I guess it's the mid-game right now. So I've made a bunch of edits as of 1/31/20

( hug wall-o text )

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Been playing a lot of Perfect World Mobile lately...

2019-12-26T05:36:37Z

What can I say? It's currently shinier than GW2 and STO.

Also, a cool scene with my cleric.

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New Computer

2019-12-21T05:01:41Z

So I figure I should mention which one I ended up getting. It's this one from Centaurus. (Centaurus Andromeda A1 Gaming Computer - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.0GHz OC, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Radeon RX 570 8GB, 480GB SSD + 1TB HDD, Windows 10 Pro, WiFi. Tempered Glass, RGB LEDs. $897.00) Took its sweet time to ship, and I got it installed and everything last week.

While in the process of moving my games over, I actually found out that Perfect World the PC MMO is pretty much dead, and more surprisingly, replaced with a Perfect World Mobile version that seems pretty popular. A lot of the finicky minutiae of MMOs have been dumbed down of course, which makes it easier to get into. My new characters are still pretty low level, so I dunno how much Pay2Win it is at the endgame. But honestly I'm just there for the pretties.

I use bluestacks for emulator. Not sure if there's better out there.

Alas STO and GW2 have been sitting on the backburner lately. For one thing, there's so much shiny on mobile now. For another, I still haven't kicked my cnovel obsession, and tend to lose track of time whenever another CN catches my interest.

So little time in the day... *sigh*

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My thoughts on the ANet firing JP drama

2018-07-12T18:39:49Z

DISCLAIMER: In case it needs to be said, this post is 100% my own opinions, and does not represent any other person, organization, or cause.

( cut walls of text )

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Pokemon Doujinshi

2017-06-13T18:42:27Z

http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Pokemon-Dating-a-Team-Magma-Grunt-Doujinshi

This is kinda adorable. Game continuity based, looks like.

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NieR Automata presents: Romeos and Juliets

2017-05-23T23:18:49Z

Robots from the 120th century reinterpreting Shakespeare. XD

I've recently got rather sucked into the story for this game, even though I'm never actually going to play it. Most likely. Probably.

... >.>

EDIT: Also finally finished my new GW2 backpiece.

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Comparing GW2 and STO

2017-03-21T23:39:35Z

First of all, disclaimer: I'm really casual where it comes to STO, playing only a single character and not having paid much attention to the meta discussions on reddit, so I can't claim to be all that authoritative on it. With GW2 I think I can speak better toward it, since I've played all classes pretty far and I've read a lot on the high tiers of play (raids/high fractals) so I am familiar with what goes on there.

( Read more... )

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PAD major card list

2015-01-24T19:42:03Z

Christmas Hera, lvl 72, fully awoken
Freyr, lvl 73, ult evo (fire), fully awoken, +1 egg
Yamato Takeru, evoed, lvl 70, fully awoken, +5 egg

Karin, lvl 75, ult evo (phys), fully awoken, +10 egg
Blue Sonia, lvl 96, evoed, fully awoken, +20 egg
Hermes, lvl 80, ult evo, fully awoken, +5 egg
Amon, lvl 71, ult evo, fully awoken, +5 egg

Odin, lvl 92, ult evo, fully awoken, +35 egg
Bastet, lvl 70, ult evo (devil), fully awoken, +15 egg
Green Zhuge Liang, lvl 88, evoed, fully awoken, +16 egg
Perseus, lvl 64, evoed, fully awakening, 0 egg

Light Zhuge Liang, lvl 57, evoed, fully awakening, +16 egg
Sun Wukong, lvl 31, no evo, no awakening, +1 egg

Dark Metatron, lvl 91, evoed, fully awakening, 0 egg
Batman+Batwing, lvl 62, ult evo, fully awoken, +1 egg
Loki, lvl 63, ult evo (balanced), 3 awakening, +9 egg
Lucifer, lvl 82, ult evo, fully awoken, 0 egg
Persephone, lvl 70, ult evo, fully awoken, +10 egg
Hera, lvl 61, evoed, no awakening, +6 egg

Just realized I don't have a lot of + eggs. Mainly cuz I could never settle on a main main... Most of my earlier eggs were put on the healer girls that I use a lot.

Siren, lvl 74, ult evo, fully awoken, +25 egg
Echidna, lvl 70 ult evo, no awakening, +26 egg
Alarune, lvl 61, evoed, fully awoken, +10 egg
Lilith, lvl 62, ult evo (dark), fully awoken, +15 egg
Angel, evoed...

Current priorities are...

Lvling & evoing:
Angel -- evo / ult + lvl
Angelion, Drawn Joker -- ult evo

Awakenings:
Loki -- 1/4 tamadras
Freja -- 0/4 tamadras
I love DeviBear -- 0/8 tamadras
I love PAD Bear -- 0/8 tamadras
Dino Rider Drake -- 1/3 tamadras
Fenrir / Verche / Homura -- awaken using dupes (long term plan)

Skillups:
Vampire, lvl 66, ult evo, no awakening, +5 egg, skill lvl 4
Angelion, lvl 35, evoed, no awakening, +1 egg, skill lvl 2

REM wishlist...
1. Red Sonia
2. Neptune
~~3. Karin~~
4. Haku

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DDoS site

2014-07-17T03:43:07Z

Watch DDoS attacks across the interwebs in near real time!

*sigh* I wasted so much time staring at this site.

http://map.ipviking.com/?_ga=1.106938115.1477390587.1388686673#

(Obtained from the GW2 reddit. Because NCSofts servers have been steadily targeted by DDoS attacks recently. Leading to lag and general unplayability. The sad thing is, the target is more Wildstar, by the same publisher, and GW is just getting splashed in the collateral.)

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MCU x Exalted RPG crunch - Steve Rogers

2014-06-10T17:56:19Z

Because this has been eating up my brain for over a month now and I have 80 pages (WTF brain?) of stuff written down on Google docs...

( cut for those who don't care )

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Ramblings from a fangirl (Exalted/MCU)

2014-05-08T18:57:47Z

So I have been reading a lot of Worm fanfics on the Spacebattles Creative Writing forum. A lot of the best crossover fics I've seen have been with the Exalted RPG. The discussions on those threads invariably get inundated by Exalted game mechanics, so I've learned more about those than I've wanted to.

Anyway, so then I was watching CA:TWS. And throughout the movie, I kept thinking - My god, Cap is such a Zenith (Exalted "sub-class" for the Solar "class"). He would make a great Exalt expy. And then afterwards I ran a google search to see if any Exalt games/fans have tried to create a character sheet for Cap and came across this discussion.

( So anyway my imagination runs away with me... )

EDIT: For my own reference

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