OpenStars

OpenStars, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.

I made an alt two months ago when Kbin would never connect. I have barely been back since, so it is now my main. I hoped Kbin would come out if its slump but... that seems unlikely at this point. I'm actually quite happy on Lemmy, especially after the v0.19 upgrade allows blocking of an entire instance. I personally virtually never see any spam (maybe one comment per month) and while connection issues do occur, they are like a handful per week rather than handful per hour (it varies a lot though, sometimes it does get bad for a day or two and then weeks go by without a hitch).

I avoided the initial hurdle of making a Lemmy account for so long and, while it was super annoying, in retrospect it wasn't that bad, compared to all the other problems here and still having to go through all that, eventually.

If anyone is thinking about switching: don't worry unduly about it, just make an account and see if you like it, but you can always keep your Kbin active too, assuming Kbin remains alive.

Also, you may need to try out a few places before you find one that fits you best. But that reduces your anxiety bc you know more and don't need to worry about having to do it again in a worst-case scenario.

OpenStars, 6 miesięcy temu

Kotor also encouraged replays with all options so that you could try the variety of romance situations:-).

OpenStars, 6 miesięcy temu

But the anti-romance dialogues were pretty fun too... (choose one person, then the others get mad at u:-P)

OpenStars, 7 miesięcy temu

Chrono Trigger

The best game of all time, period.

OpenStars, 8 miesięcy temu

Miraheze is similar to how Fandom used to be, before ads entirely took over. There are no ads at all there. It is a site that uses MediaWiki so probably not many of its' sites would be news oriented (with like a single author controlling the content), but instead more wiki content for an entire community to share.

OpenStars, 9 miesięcy temu

https://kbin.social/m/anothereden - a JRPG nostalgia gacha game

OpenStars, 9 miesięcy temu

The only live service game I have and likely will ever allow myself to play is Another Eden, ostensibly a mobile gacha but unlike any others in that genre (and yet... not entirely if you know what I mean:-D - it is less predatory than any modern game that allows in-app purchases that I've ever even heard of but that aspect is not entirely absent from it). It hits the JRPG nostalgia feel for being a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger and Cross, made by some of the same developers actually, and the artwork and music especially are just gorgeous.:-D

And ironically, many people complain bitterly that they want it to be more like GI, with a pity system. Never mind that the gacha can be irrelevant here as you can do everything purely with the free characters (and more effort, especially JP-style i.e. heavy grinding), the FOMO salt is real, and I see now that games are just giving the people what they want, regardless of whether that's good for them or not. On the one hand it keeps further game development going, and people are free to spend how they please, while on the other there are horror stories of people dropping hundreds or even thousands of dollars (I think even USD $ currency), while having little to show for it in the end.

Predatory is predatory, and while on the one hand I'd love to check out GI someday, on the other I just don't think I could stand the gacha elements in it. It warps and twists EVERYTHING it touches, e.g. increasing pressure to make waifu/husbando portraits that objectify both women and men in it, and leads to content that looks visually appealing but in Another Eden at least, has not been tested and is not "fun" to play.

The funny part is that originally I had to choose between GI and AE, and I am so glad that I went the way that I did. Although probably better to avoid any such gacha at all in the future.:-|

OpenStars, 9 miesięcy temu

I mean... you are not wrong, but to put on my debate hat (for the funsies:-D) I suppose the counter-argument is that since they made it so that the ga(t)cha system is itself irrelevant (at least, in the earlier days of the game, before Power Creep became rampant), they seemed to feel like that was the way to keep the game "balanced". It might also go over better in Japan than the more Western world where people might less like this idea of something that is unattainable. Oh, and one REALLY crucial detail is that you can straight-up exchange irl cash for any particular character that you want (well, any OLDER one, while the absolute newest ones are only available by the gambling approach that offers no such guarantees). Those sales only come every so often each year, but with them you can have your guarantee - and e.g. if you pull your desired character in the meantime, then you can select someone else, whoever you want in the list. Also iirc (some of?) the paid banners offer a "guaranteed 5-star", though it lacks GI's system where (eventually) it is the particular 5-star that you pulled for. There is also a second, subscription system where you pay to support the game each month and get increased basically stamina-style rewards, and you select 7 characters where you are guaranteed to get one of those.

So there is a "pity", technically, just not available at all for F2P, and instead comes in the form of a P2W purchase opportunity.

I heard that GI was really bad, but also that was like several years ago, and it has been cleaned up significantly since then. And some banners much worse than others - particularly weapons ones iirc? - where like you get this 5-star weapon and then nobody who can use it. Ofc this is biased, listening to the stories of people who decided to leave it, rather than stay and git gud:-).

It does look gorgeous though, which is kinda weird for a mobile game imho but so long as processing power can keep up...