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LouNeko
This is a genuine invitation for disscussion.
Let me tell you, over more than a decade I’ve played a lot of Battlefield Bad Company 2, like a lot a lot.
Last year, in December the servers for it got officially shut down by EA. And you know how I felt? I barely cared. It is still one of my favorite games of all time, and while there are private servers still active, I have no intention to play. And the reason for it that is simple. I’ve played enough of that game, I feel fully unsatisfied with the time I’ve spend with it. Its like 2 people growing apart over time.
Just to play devils advocate here. What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games. If you haven’t managed to get enough joy out of something during a decade of you life, then maybe the developer isn’t responsible for your personal issues.
By this time The Crew 2 would’ve been 6 years old. I agree that’s fairly short time to turn of the servers, but would people be still as frantic about the server shut down in say 2028? Wouldn’t 10 years be enough? Why straight up go for indefinite access.
A new map isn’t gonna name everybody stop playing the old ones, look at Counter Strike’s de_dust from 1999, people still play that map religiously even if there are new ones. The old maps were balanced and refined, and have been replaced with a completely imbalanced one. They’ve should’ve been available along side the new one.
I’m running a 1080 Ti, can still do most modern games on high - ultra on 90 FPS at 1440p. Played Hunt maxed out for years no issues, now I got everything on low except textures and barely scratch 70 between compounds. Searching the Steam forums and reddit shows similar complains from other people with even better hardware than mine.
Before I was finding players 2 seconds after I pressed search on Europe servers, now, even though player numbers skyrocketed after the patch, I can go make my self a cup of tea, come back and it’s still hasn’t found anything. Maybe it has something to do with my MMR rank.
Speaking of, you’re right, I noticed the rank changes before the patch. I was always a 4 Star player, sometimes dipped in 5 Star after a good match, sometimes dipped into the 3 Star. Now I’m effortlessly sitting at 6 Stars. How do I know I improved skill wise if I’m already sitting at the max possible rank? Why are mediocre players like me suddenly bundled with sweatlords, who presumably are also 6 stars?
The skins now have rareities that determine their price, this came with the new update.
I’m not talking about minor bugs. The reason why I uninstalled is because if the boss gets killed in my compound by me or anybody else and I open the map, my game freezes and crashes on a regular basis. I validated the game files, I’ve updated my drivers, etc. It is straight up unplayable. I open the map on accident and I’m out. Again I’m not the only one with this problem. This is not some minor bug, this is absolutely unacceptable for a PvP game with permadeath. But that’s the reality of this new shitty Hunt.
That’s why DayZ has open experimental servers running months in advance, and their push to official is largely bug free. But, oh my, Crytek wants a big reveal for big update, who cares about playability, buy our Battlelass.
The best to come of this update was Port Sulfurs new single.
Top guy: least coherent German writing English.
Bottom guy: most coherent native English speaker in a CoD lobby.
Funnily the only Isekai that was somewhat interesting and realistic “Drifters” still doesn’t have a season 2. It’s basically powerful and influential political figures and warriors from random time periods get transported into a medieval fantasy world after their death. All I want is to see is WW2 anime Hitler take over a fantasy kingdom and get killed by Ninjas, is that to much to ask for? It’s realistic in the sense that the main characters are 10 minutes into a fantasy land with magic and beautiful nature and of course they’re already started making guns and bombs.
Most western cartoons are self contained episodes tho, while there is a general recurring antagonist, the conflict has to arise, develop and be resolved within the same episode. Very rarely you get multi episode arcs. Sometimes you get overarching storylines as a driving force that span whole seasons, but the main conflicts remain episodic. Spongebob is still working in the Crusty Crab by the end of the show, Kim Possible is still fighting Dr.Draken and Shego by the end of the series, Homer is still working in a Nuclear Powerplant, etc…
Anime is different in that regard because the story is laid out from start to finish usually over the course of 10-20 episodes. Whether the story has actual substance is a different question. But the thing is, anime can get away with an episode were nothing happens as long as it drives the plot towards a conclusion. But a children’s cartoon where for a full episode nothing interesting happens usually won’t even leave the storyboard.
That’s why “filler episodes” are usually an eastern anime instead if a western cartoon trope.
I’m also an avid lurker of r/onepunchman and I have to say, Tatsumaki fanart is fairly tame compared to Fubuki. Fubuki is also used in the exact same way as Faye in Bebop. Her sexiness is the antithesis to the main characters general indifference. Her being on most of the mangas cover art sporting different outfits in each is another parallel to that. She’s essentially the artists creative outlet for fashion. As for Tatsumaki, Murata (the artist) himself, said that he doesn’t really like drawing petite women, but her appearance is in theme with the rest of the manga, being that the weak looking characters are usually the strongest.
Does her looking like that drive the sales up? Sure.
Does it taken away from the story? No.
That’s why the straight up rapey approach from Ugly Fuehrer during the Monster Association arc was so impactful, because beside her sexualized outfit she is usually treated respectfully by the other characters.
What i mean by “taking away from the story” is if another anime has a girl in a small skirt face a tentacle monster, oh jeez, I wonder what will happen next? This is a story that is being told 100s of times and doesn’t have to be told again. That I completely agree on.
I’d say One Punch Man, is a good example of how to use attractive characters to attract viewers, given that men and women are represented equally attractive and especially the men with a large variety of bodytypes. Saying that Tatsumaki is the only character looking like that and being sexed up is a bad thing should also imply that the Fat Guys superpower being able to eat everything, or Speed-O-Sonic the Twink Ninja wearing skinthight spandex is equally bad. It’s just packaging and appearance.
The problem is that most other anime’s/mangas have only packaging with not character behind it. The fact that people in the subreddit are mostly discussing power levels, possible theories, story implications, etc.instead of simply drooling over the women means that the characters and story is fleshed out enough that the fan service is beside the point. You usually won’t find whole communities like that for run of the mill echi series with zero dept.
It’s weird that the Japan - the country which arguably had the most positive global influence on how fight scenes are filmed and choreographed in movies has had a complete devolution in fight scenes in animation.
Like look at this fight scene from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Look how calm and harmonic it is 99% of the time, followed by quick bursts of action.
Or this scene from Evangelion (1999), Bebop (1998), Hellsing (1999).
There are some memorable modern fights that push the envelope of animation in modern anime like, Madara Uchia from Naruto (2016), Mob Psycho 100 (2019) or Castlevainia (2021).
But overall modern anime fights are composed mostly of flying, still images screaming “HEYAAA”, internal monologues and 3D explosions.
I agree with you, but I have to say that sexualization in anime rarely comes as a surprise. Its usually clear from the very first second that an anime has zero substance beside fanservice.
I’d say there’s a right way to do sexualization and a wrong way, 99% of the time it’s done the wrong way. The wrong way would be all those panty shots, underskirts etc. But take a character like Faye from Cowboy Bebop, while her being all sexed up is part of her character, it does not take away from her position on the raster. She’s essentially a artifact of the 90’s rapid evolvement of western and eastern fashion. This is supported by the fact that she has a completely new outfit in almost every episode, an animation effort that you rarely see in modern anime. Furthermore the whole art style of Cowboy Bebop is very reminiscent of fashion illustration, meaning long legs and extremely thin bodies.
I’d say this is what led to the current fan service situation in the first place. People used to think “we can’t show somebody with this outfit on film, but we can on paper”. The supermodel lookalike characters have become a trope in 90’s anime and over the last 3 decades have been distilled to just their sexiness, not their actual cultural meaning.