This is good to hear, I was pretty worried it would be like NSMB which to me isn't just bland (though it is incredibly bland) it is actively a net negative for anyone over 6 years old since it spews power ups at you so hard I can't really find any kind of satisfaction in the gameplay. I'll have to pick it up.

Yeah I wouldn't bother with abusing something like duping unless I didn't like the game and just wanted to get through it quickly.

Starfield came free with my new GPU so I've been able to play it since the 1st. I was pretty hyped for the game even before upgrading the PC. Haven't played a lot yet to know what I think. I'm enjoying what I've played sp far but was hoping Bethesda would be doing something a little more different from their usual formula.

Edit: @John it's actually a 10700F and not a K, which is slightly annoying 'cause that was put in during the emergency repair I mentioned and I didn't get asked what CPU I wanted or what I actually do with my PC. I guess the store assumed an F was fine because I had my own GPU but I actually have a use for a K to decrease render times in things like Adobe. But otherwise it's perfectly fine. Basically running everything on Ultra, even games that gave me problems on Low/Medium haha

So in the dregs of 2020 WFH my old mobo managed to melt (but not the PSU or anything else) so I needed an emergency fix and the store did the best they could. Mobo and CPU got an update, which caused a bottleneck with the old 970 (but at the time it was impossible to find decent priced GPUs)--So my current CPU is an i7-10700F. Obviously a Ryzen would be more optimal but it is what it is, so far things have been pretty solid as I readjust all my games.

I just have one display that's always been a little whack. Cheap and old TV that I like to use as the main display to game on 'cause it's comfy. But it lacks a lot of synergy with PCs since it wasn't meant for this.

Uh huh.

Anyway after ~8 years I finally updated my GPU (and RAM and storage) from an old GTX 970 to a Radeon RX 6750 XT last night. So while I have a lot of little specifications and stuff to take care of I'm finally back to some of the games that I could run but were giving me headaches like Cyberpunk. Feels good doing that myself after building the PC (my first build) so long ago.

I haven't tried logging in on a new device, or at least I haven't encountered that issue? I also think you're right John, we were able to edit and at some point I guess things degraded a bit.

Like I said, I know this can't be Abe's priority or anything so it's not a judgement. Just wanted to make sure this stuff was known.

Well here's the thing, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it mainly because it's a gacha game and that stuff is frought only with peril even if I like 80% of the game. I think I'm not super into live service games either. But I wanted to give it a fair look-in.

I couldn't really find a good thread for this. I know these things aren't the priority, especially since MMM is more a place for us old heads to hang out and pretend there's anything Mega Man left to talk about, but just in terms of making the board run decently again it makes sense we have to place to mention when things go awry.

One thing I'd like personally is to be able to edit my profile again. For instance I don't really want my old personal e-mail attached to it anymore but I can't get rid of that.

I'm sure there's a few other things people have noticed that are still bugging out. I'm not expecting every QoL feature to return like the quick reply or anything, just wanted to mention the profile thing since it's a little more important for some users.

Ending on it's best moments is a very see-through way to have the last word. A manipulative attempt to control people's feelings about the season at the last second and every show does it, but it felt especially egregious in Picard.

"Hey forget all that stuff you thought was stupid in episode 3, look at all your old chums from the 90's are on the bridge!"

Nah, that sounds more like one of the many games attempting to copy it's success like Tower of Fantasy. It's definitely a real game, there's hundreds of hours of story and open world content as well as limited events, etc., and it's not strictly a mobile game unless you're into torture. Mobile is just the main revenue stream because of the Asian market but it's cross platform with PC and console, where it is actually playable imo.

I've played it for a long time (on PC) and in general I still think it's pretty fun, though I'm at a place now where the only excitement comes out of new story patches as I'm caught up with everything else. I didn't like the prologue stuff in the early game at all to be honest, that part is boring to me, but after that there's a solid game with good story and gameplay. In relation to other games of the type it also offers a lot more polish, a key aspect that led to a cavernous drop off for Tower Of Fantasy and the like.

That is as long you don't become a degenerate gacha player and just go with the free wishes. I still play it casually and even as an f2p player I have cracked characters and weapons enough to clear the hardest content in the game, so I don't think there's any real reason that anyone should get trapped by the monetization.

Gameplay-wise the exploration is good, they took BOTW's "climb-anything" approach to the open world and in 2020 there wasn't much of that. The story ranges from decent to really good depending on the chapter. Inazuma (all of ver 2.0) for example was excellent and that lasted a whole year. Ver 4.0 just released this week bringing in a whole new region again so hopefully that's fun.

What I liked about the gameplay most was the transformative reaction mechanic of combining different elements in combat. Instead of it being a simple pokemon style thing where water is weak to electric, etc., they made a cool system for different ways elements can react to each other. It's actually a pretty fun interactive system that makes characters all feel distinct. That made the combat really unique and fun. Unfortunately they don't want to expand that any further at this point because they specifically don't want the game to lose casual appeal, and imo that decision makes things far more bland and the content too easy for a verteran players.

For the record I'm talking about playing the actual game itself, which I think is fun. But to be absolutely clear: I think the parent company is awful, so I absolutely do not support them monetarily in any of their games (have been trying out their new one). I do not like gacha as a concept in general for a game either, and I also absolutely abhor the community/fans of the game online, they've done some awful #####.

But I'll stand by that in a vacuum the gameplay and design is still very good even if there's those exterior problems.

I like TOTK but have barely played. Like Rez I got that fix from all these games that tried to clone the formula after BOTW like Genshin Impact so now with that feel and having a lil baby running around it's hard to find time to wander around in the game. But it's fun, it's cool, I'm eager to play more story (just easily distracted by side-things in the game).

I'm very concerned that you seem to have nut on this page.

This is a really cool thread, I've enjoyed reading your stories. MMM is a very unique part of my personality and I believe that is crystallized and indelible. Nothing could give the feeling of this place and those times again, it's functionally impossible. So keeping up with you folks and seeing you all grow is still something I'm invested in.

You all keep being surprised that others here respect you and I think that's more sweet than sad. I very much enjoy what I perceive as Majikn being real with their opinions, I have always thought Majikn was cool for that. I have always understood and liked John's "perpetually faked" self-confidence. And of course I remember you MOX and I understand not bothering with social media--I've pretty much abandoned it too.

I was probably 13 when I started coming here? I'm gonna be 37 (in a row) in August... That's wild.

As for "what have I become?" Well I'll get this out of the way off rip I, like every other human, am also a work in progress.

-Work:
Currently I work in television animation;  I've been an animator, the head of scene planning, and a character builds and rigging artist.

Right now I'm kind of doing two jobs in animation--The industry is in a terrible and historic dry spell so I'm fortunate that I'm multi-skilled. Character builds and rigging artist is my actual main gig under normal circumstances, but I'm currently helping out the department I used to be in charge of (scene planning). Basically without over-explaining how the whole pipeline works, I draw TV cartoons for Disney, Netflix, etc. which is kind of wild if you remember that I got into doing a lot of that stuff VIA this board.

The industry though really breaks you down, like what MOX was talking about. I've been pretty burned out for years, excited to get some vacation time at the end of July.

-Life:
In my personal life I'm engaged (still) and became a father just over a year ago. Covid ruined a lot of possible wedding planning and then we didn't really want to spend ten bands on a party when we knew we wanted to have a kid very soon. And our daughter is amazing.

I'm really into power lifting and fitness in general. I'm trying out hypertrophy stuff right now but strength training is more my thing. I'm pretty strong but always trying to improve. Still super into basketball.

I still play games but not nearly as much obviously. Time is at a huge premium and I do waste too much on games I'm not even totally enjoying at the moment. I play D&D every couple weeks and actually that's been amazing for reigniting my creativity to do personal work--something like that could help you out MOX.

-Other:
I've gotten more involved in some social issues. It's never been good but the past few years have been really rough on my own groups and the identities of people close to me. Specifically I'm mixed-raced so I've been trying to do some Black-centric stuff around the animation industry but not really enough. It's something I'm passionate about so I'd like to try more of that again. I'm also more recently having a hard time with the way short men are treated in North American societies, if you wanna go down a rabbit hole it's really bad and basically encouraged.

Trying to get better with my own self-esteem/depression issues. I luckily don't have to deal with anxiety, but I also hang with a lot of different age groups and the crew I see most often is between 5-10 years younger than me--which is actually nerve racking at times.

That all sounds bad but I actually feel great in general, I just wanted to put the reality out there of what's also going on in the back of my mind since you all were so open with your posts yourselves.

Coming back over a month later just to agree with Rez entirely. I've watched all of every season and hours of analysis on it because I like that sort of thing.

IMO if season 3 of Picard was season 1, it wouldn't be considered "good". It would just be bad but not insane (like the actual season 1). Everything it did right still fails because of the earlier seasons' frameworks, which is impossible to undo. I hate the concept of removing the technological-horror aspect of The Borg, and I couldn't believe they went to the Borg well for a THIRD time. I detest bringing in Changelings without giving them any kind of interesting development, I've never been a big fan of them but the whole season I felt like they were only used to stroke DS9 fan boners, I would have preferred a deeper story examining human nature (like in this show I used to watch called Star Trek).

So much of the season depends on fixing the past ones that I think the showrunner could've done a better season if they didn't have fix Kurtzman's work. This ends up leaving with moments that are cliche, or just trying to emotionally manipulate our nostalgia (and it worked for a lot of people). But when you plainly look at the story in a vacuum it's pretty lackluster.

I feel like this season is getting so many passes just because it's better than the previous ones, which I understand but do not personally agree with.

Long time no see, but I love the work. Keep it up!

Ghostrunner. My kinda thing.

That being said, you'd think Gamefreak would be a larger company, what with having the world's top grossing franchise by a major margin.

Gamefreak only owns like a third of The Pokemon Company. Nintendo and Creatures Inc. own the rest but Nintendo has large stock portions of Creatures so Nintendo ends up effectively being the major ownership and, thus, beneficiary.

Is this a game or a comic?

A comic he did, and a game he did based on the comic he did.

So I was able to link my PSN stuff to the PC version of Genshin so I'm back on that now. UID is 602516285. Now to catch up on a lot.

I forgot to mention I already have you on my friends' list via Playstation, but you don't see my PSN when you play on PC (I play on PC too, just checked it out on PS4 a couple times) so my account is the one called YoungPorter right now.

I guess we'd call that bird TheRedPrinia

I love that.

So I was able to link my PSN stuff to the PC version of Genshin so I'm back on that now. UID is 602516285. Now to catch up on a lot.

Sweet! I'm trying to get Shenhe now since I'm all about Cryo, gonna need some luck on my side.

Thanks everyone! And I'm sorry to hear that John, that's crazy.

Hope everyone is having some happy holidays where possible. It's tough here with omicron.

Just wanted to finally mention something; I started coming here as barely more than a kid, and now I'm having one of my own!

I perfectly captured Nova’s Seinfeld face.

I've really never watched an episode, but Naruto seems more to be a show about wizards who bought clothes off a "Kyoto street wear" ad on Instagram and run around calling  themselves ninjas. It's Japanese Hogwarts.

Oh damn, and here I was banking so much on your opinion of me.

The true mystery is how anyone could write that I'm a cool dude.

Five stars.

The artwork aside from Zero & ZX is spot on.  It looks how it should looke. 

Agreed for the most part.

I think Magna Centipede looks like Mega Man. That looks great to me. Even Manga Centipede looks good.

Christmas Rico and Ciel don't look totally in theme to me but more importantly I just don't like how they're drawn. Rico has a broken ankle and Ciel's lower body is too small. I quickly put this together, though it's a little tough to see, but the proportions are off from her normal X Dive art.

I just meant for style inspiration anyway.

Yeah, nothing I wrote disputes that.

Yeah! I have you on PSN so I saw your Staff of Homa and cried. Actually you have a lot of the cracked characters from early on. I started in the summer so I just got Hu Tao (she was rerun recently) and am hoping for Ganyu soon. You should check out the Inazuma characters and stuff though, the story is getting pretty good.

Kinda with Xero on this one. I wouldn't call Sonic "decent" but it was far better than expected.

But primarily I take an issue with Kotaku here. I have worked on projects for Netflix and I think articles like this are overtly disingenuous about the process of television/filmmaking.

The idea that "Netflix" is one thing making a show is like assuming your Guinness actually was bottled in Ireland.

Whether a show produced for Netflix is successful or not isn't a true marker of a future projects' quality in the way that you should have expectations of something like HBO. Kotaku (and by extension, this thread) invokes the failure of Cowboy Bebop as if that's some metric as to why Mega Man will fail, but they are completely different production studios adapting them for television. And of those umbrella studios how much is farmed out to smaller studios with more specificity?

Like, I've personally worked on movies where you wouldn't necessarily realize our studio was so heavily involved. I know people who don't work for Disney/Marvel but worked on Avengers: Endgame because a VFX studio was hired for support. There's more levels to this stuff than just <company> is producing <product>, and Netflix is first and foremost a platform rather than a service production company.

To put it one last way: You wouldn't expect Uwe Boll and his team to create a motion picture at the same level of quality as Denis Villeneuve's just because both were directing films for New Line Cinema. Articles like this just prey on the general public's ignorance of the industry as a whole.

Now, having said all that...
I personally dislike all these pushes to make live action adaptations, and more often than not adaptations are garbage when the source material was perfectly cromulent. I don't have interest in this project, but I will watch without paying extra it if it hits a streaming service I am subscribed to (as I did with Sonic).

Wow, the art direction in this game is the complete embodiment of "I can't draw girls"

All you need is a midi file and FL Studio. I just take a tune from a Mega Man game, dissect the different parts and fiddle around with them, sometimes changing the harmonies. To make things funky sounding I just slow the tempo down and change the rhythm to a swing. Then I generally use the built in sytrus plug-in to make the instruments; it is extremely versatile.

That last one was Colorman.EXE's theme Mega Man Battle Network. If anyone has a specific Mega Man tune they want as their theme just let me know. I figure Mikero's is gonna be Shadow Man, Delta's would be Knight Man, thinking John's would be Guts Man, Xero's would need to be a mash up of Zero's theme and something X-ey.

That's still a lot more than most would be willing to do. If it helps always thought something like an 8-bit version of Phantom pt.II by Justice would work for mine.

John you should get to the point you can wish for characters in Genshin 'cause holy damn the new 5-star character, Arataki Itto, is insane. He releases today but he's already out in Asia and he seems so sick. Plus that's where the game is far more interesting since the early characters they give out are kinda mid.

I decided yesterday to pull for Eula, another cracked out claymore DPS. I got her and don't regret it at all, she's awesome and I'm addicted to the cryo characters, but am I thinking I might slow roll to snag an Itto if I'm lucky.

I didn't realize this was gonna be an H comic!

I'm surprised you guys can find actual computer stuff despite the terrible trend of such things being purchased en masse in order to set up rigs that solve sudokus while they burn down rainforests using the entire power output of Luxembourg. If I find out any of you guys are into crypto currency I will freaking. I'll do something I just don't know what yet.

Nah I built my PC before that was really a big trend. But the crypto mining craze is part of why I'll have to wait on upgrades.

Nice, that's good to know! I needed the computer fixed quickly for work so I kind of had to trust that the guy at the store was giving me decent stuff. I never really knew for sure because he never mentioned the GPU bottlenecking issue to me (I'm assuming because there's nothing he could really do about it) and I found that out later.

I can't really be spending on a card anyway for a while, but maybe I can swing it later on when it's actually available. I'm not hardcore about my PC but during the pandemic I've been playing on PC more with friends and stuff.

I hate that her hair and eye colours match each other but then her outfit colours do not got with them at all.

Doesn't really matter in the end because this looks more like Honkai Impact fanart than Megaman. But nothing in this looks good to me in the first place.

Snare: That's a very pretty tree.

Mike: What is your graphics card? I got Dead Cells on sale for $15.81 USD, and that looked like a pretty typical sale price. I also have a loooong ways to go until I even really get the Wish mechanic.

Nah it won't be that long until you can wish, you just need to get into the swing of things and you'll hit is really fast. Anytime you open a chest, do any quest related stuff, or do a domain you'll get points towards AR and the first 20 ranks come pretty fast. Also once you're around then I should be able to jump into your world and help you clap anything since I'm way farther along. My UID is 630723693

My graphics card is a GTX 970. That's an aged card, even though it's still not really "bad". Most things still run fine with it, but I melted my old MB and had to get a new one and a new CPU (i7-10700F). Those in particular have some bottleneck with this GPU. I know specifically Halo Infinite is more CPU intensive than GPU so that's what had me curious, but looks like it's not uncommon and nobody I know is playing the game anymore already.

Well he wouldn't be "Plant Boy" otherwise, Mr. Tomatoe Schtick

Hahah I actually just went back to Minecraft again with the new update. At least that runs alright, even with shaders! :O

: Mikero  29 November 2021, 06:11:03

So I'm not a Halo guy, I've actually never played one before, but some friends were playing Halo Infinite and it's free so I gave it a shot...

I have 5 hours in the game now and about 4 of those is me waiting in loading screens for this ##### to just crash. I've only managed to play with and against bots, and I can say the gameplay is fun but it's not rewarding to play that way (it's endless and there's not even an objective).

My rig isn't amazing, but some parts have been updated since I built it and it almost meets recommended settings, let alone clearing the minimum so I can't figure out what is going on here at all. I should at least be able to get 60fps on medium settings but somehow I'm getting 45 on low and can't actually play with real people. What's crazy is like... Apparently this is a confluence of known bugs that aren't being addressed at all.

I've got a modern mid end PC (Ryzen 5600x and GTX 3070) and even on medium setting, Halo Infinite runs like dog poo. Huge frame rate drops, and I max at 85-90 FPS, where in any other game at those settings I should be pulling 160-200 (Though I cap it at 120).

Splitgate is where it's at. Feels like Halo 3, but has portal guns. It's sick. It's a better halo game than infinite, looks just as good, and can run on a potato.

As for Genshin Impact, I put a few hours into it, just got up to a 4 person party and am liking the gameplay more. I'm hoping they integrate more mobility mechanics as I advance. Definitely getting the waifu collector vibe though, choice jiggle physics.

I recently picked up Dead Cells. Apparently getting your first win generally takes 10+ hours? I got lucky on a legendary item drop, had a really sick build going, and got my first win at about 5 hours of playtime. First day of owning it.

It's a REALLY fun game. Scratches a bit of the roguelite itch I got from Hades, which I'm still working on beating at 32 heat.

Good to know that it's the game. My system is a little janky because I melted the old motherboard. So now my new CPU and board are much better than my GPU and things bottleneck (but there's no way I'm getting a GPU these days). But still, if it's between "minimum" and "recommended" it should at least run.

In Genshin if you get a character like Mona or Ayaka, they have a completely different dash mechanic which is divisive. I got Mona on my second pull and Ayaka pretty early so I love their dash, but it gets stuck on some geometry. Hu Tao also has a unique dash, but it's more cosmetic than mechanical. And yeah, some weird jiggle physics that I don't need, but it sells I guess. I didn't even really notice it until I got Raiden Shogun.

Gameplay-wise, they standard characters they throw at you early on aren't really it. They're fine, but I found the gameplay a lot more fun once I got different characters off of wishes. Especially the ones with with better animations or totally unique mechanics like Hu Tao. Right now it's the first double re-run banner they've ever done. If you need a main DPS you should pull for Eula (she's a phys dmg claymore with high dps and good animations). Albedo can be pretty cracked too, he's a sub dps for most people though not everyone likes his gameplay. He got majorly skipped the first time he came around because his banner was between two OP characters, so now most people are going after him. That was before my time so I have to pick too.

But there's also this new character coming on the next banner named Arataki Itto, and he's a big muscle man with a pig, a club, and a six pack. So it's hard to say if you should save wishes or not.

They actually introduced a rogue-lite mode into Genshin recently, but it was an event so it's gone for now. Now that I'm more into rogue-lites I should give Dead Cells a look-in. Though I'm saving hard right now cash-wise.

I adore this Mega Man needlepoint in the BG. It's the little details.

Has anyone heard from Jake in a while? He got rid of his FB a while back and I can't remember the last time he was on the MBoard.

You can catch him on Discord probably if you specifically tag him.

One of these days I'm gonna knock that ten bell hat right off that liver spotted dome of yours, old man.

Classic "live service" apathy, for sure. And with this thing there's not much incentive for Microsoft to fix anything. The little bit I've experience was a lot of fun.

So I'm not a Halo guy, I've actually never played one before, but some friends were playing Halo Infinite and it's free so I gave it a shot...

I have 5 hours in the game now and about 4 of those is me waiting in loading screens for this ##### to just crash. I've only managed to play with and against bots, and I can say the gameplay is fun but it's not rewarding to play that way (it's endless and there's not even an objective).

My rig isn't amazing, but some parts have been updated since I built it and it almost meets recommended settings, let alone clearing the minimum so I can't figure out what is going on here at all. I should at least be able to get 60fps on medium settings but somehow I'm getting 45 on low and can't actually play with real people. What's crazy is like... Apparently this is a confluence of known bugs that aren't being addressed at all.

BAYBEE GROOT SNARE!

: Mikero  22 November 2021, 18:01:00

I forget the name of it, but I have one like Snare's second photo too. I'm having trouble with it lately as it recently grew a lot all at once but isn't uniform. It has a section of small (like a quarter) sized leaves.

Pilea peperomioides. And if you ever have any plant questions, feel free to shoot me a message anywhere. Although I have mine staked and tied to be somewhat upright, before, I had let it grow without ever rotating it. In the wild, these guys grow on cliff faces so they usually only get sun from one direction to begin with. Is the part with the smaller leaves one of its offshoots? This things create plantlets like crazy.

Pilea that's it!!

The small ones are because I rotated it, it was only growing on the one side and now I know why.

I've seen a LOT of buzz about the Three Body Problem. It keeps creeping up in unexpected places, sooo I guess my book queue will be similar to yours about 12 months ago, Dune and Cixin Liu.

Nice man, let me know what you think. The Three-Body Problem has some interesting stuff about China's cultural revolution and history and that affects some of the viewpoint for this sci-fi. But the concept of a Dark Forest adds a new layer to how I watch/read science fiction and even some real world science stuff.

Hahhah yeah they updated yesterday, new dual banner system and some new content.

I played it a month or two after launch and most of what I remember is being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information and mechanics. Maybe I just equate that with early game in jrpgs, or maybe there was some event going on?

No that makes sense, I think was ignoring reading some of that stuff early on 'cause I wasn't expecting to like it. I thought "it's just waifu collecting" but then I realized I actually really like the gameplay.

For reference I never play any other gacha games. I don't really like the practice and Genshin has a lot of controversies and stuff with that, but I still think they made something very impressive and fun. Especially considering they were just aiming to be another mobile game, but ended up making something equivalent to a AAA title.

I play on PC, personally, which helps it feel like a real game. I only play on mobile if I'm away but need to get my dailies in or something 'cause I was f2p until very recently--but even then I only spent like $20 and am not really planning to spend more for a long time.

Co-op is kinda weak but it exists too!