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euthym1as · 2 years

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PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT MALTHUS OMG

I love hearing about people's ocs .. pls i beg

-Dendrograna

THIS IS THE 69th POST LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO

NOW PLAYING: Maverick by The Boyz, MAISON by Dreamcatcher

okay so i'm not gonna reveal too much but i will say i am heavily influenced by star trek and the orville and that should put you on the right path (yes i'm making you guys guess, the mystique of his character is finding out who he really is as you know him)

he isn't a god. if you asked him if he was, he would laugh. no, he's just an engineer. fontaine has those, right?

he can't talk much, he can't stay in one place for too long, or they'll find him and take the one thing he knows how to use to protect himself.

in game he would be an electro catalyst, his signature weapon would be a book that's so worn it shouldn't be a catalyst, but it makes sense for him. the weapon is called Notes of Madness. its passive is based on the longer you've had the weapon, the more powerful it becomes. crit rate substat.

his main attacks, called Spiral of Rationality, would be fibonacci spirals of purple lightning,

because math is the only thing that stayed constant.

his e, called Preliminary Area Assessment, would set down a spiderweb of electro on the field in a sierpinski triangle like so:

his Q, called Circuit's Glow, would pulse the web of electro with electro dmg per tick based on multipliers of the fibonnaci sequence: x1, x1, x2, x3, x5, x8 (x13 unlocks at c6)

he would have a fontainean vision and be classed as a normal vision bearer laying low in liyue it's wrong, he knows that's wrong

his BIS would probably be either 4pc Emblem or 2pc Thunderer 2pc Noblesse. he's sub-DPS focused, and would work great in a taser team. [shhhh yes i gave him synergy with childe]

he has multiple spider and math/geometry motifs, and his constellation looks like the iron spider logo [this is my universe i do what i want]

his voicelines are as follows:

About Yanfei: Yanfei is someone I greatly respect, she's been a huge help in adjusting to Liyue's legislation, and her passion for her work is admirable. I'm trying to get over the antlers. Her and I go out for Crab Roe Tofu every week. She makes it in such an organized way, I like that.

About Keqing: The Qixing is an incredibly adept military organization, and I feel safe knowing she is in its direction. I too, agree with her stance on the humans arming Liyue themselves, and I have some plans about ballistas in the Harbor if she's looking for a secretary of defense.

About Xinyan: She's so cool! Her concerts are so lit, and I always find myself having a blast in her audience. The oldheads who scoff at her have no idea how ahead of the curve she is. Now, if only I could get her an electric guitar...

About Xingqiu: Ah, the short blue-haired nerd. The Guhua one. I met him checking out a book about old Liyuen ghost legends when I was looking up lore about the Adeptus Alatus, the Vigilant Yaksha. He has so many names! Anyways, the kid's got spunk. The Guhua clan is lucky to have him.

About Albedo: Personally, I don't think he exists. I think the Knights of Favonius are using a made up identity to put all of the Spark Knight's dubious bomb making under someone who sounds like he has experience. Someone who lives on Dragonspine? Yeah, there's no way. No human could stand those temperatures.

About Childe: Damnit, he's here, again? Sorry, I have to go. I can't let them catch me. Not when I've made it this far.

Final Ascension: ....This is Scout Unit #4216, checking in. Kepler 2 base, do you read? Kepler 2 base, do you read? I have found the energy source: I repeat. I have found the energy source. Send backup. I still can't get a frequency on this universe's location. Please. I don't know how much longer I can stay here. They're closing in on me... What was that?

his passive is that ruin guards/graders/machines straight up don't attack him, and he gets extra drops from them. they know better.

congrats you opened the read more, here's an art of him i never finished/finished shading because i can't draw his spider claws for shit + HIS TOP IS HARD TO SHADE

edit: i finished it lol

#OKAY THERE HE IS #feel free to send dms and he will interact with your god ocs #fair warning he doesn't like gods #malthusposting #his name has something to do with his cause #keeg writes #alien reader #asks #keeg speaks #oc creation #genshin oc

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akiisame · 3 years

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Genshin impact guide - how to into artifacts

How to into artifacts and team set.

A guide by me for my kawaii @stupidneko and whoever is in need.

Okay, so, as a word of introduction before well start with this long ass post, I’ve never wrote anything like this so be patient with me.

ALSO ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE SO SORRY IN ADVANCE FOR ANY MISTAKES

In my personal opinion artifacts are more important than the characters themselves, they can turn every 4* into a main dps (yes, even amber). 50% of your DMG will come from items, then the other 50% will come from weapon, talents and the character itself, but this is a story for another post.

First let’s take a look at what kind of artifacts do we have. Each and every character have 5 slots for artifacts:

Flower of life - or just flower, for short

Plume of death - feather

Sand of eon - time watch piece

Goblet of Eonothem - goblet

Circlet of Logos - head piece

Each of the pieces have two types of stats: main stats and sub stats. The first two pieces, flower and feather, always have the same main stat.

For flower it's HP

And for feather it's ATK

Then for the rest of them it can be anything, from good main stats like this:

(The following items have high stats because most of them are on max lvl)

... to less of a good stats, like this:

Goblets also are the only artifacts that has the possibility to have element DMG bonus as the main stats:

While head piece are the only artifacts that can have CRIT DMG and CRIT rate as a main stats:

... but they too can have less of a good stats like healing bonus or DEF.

Now, to the sub stats. They can vary from less appealing stats like HP, DEF and Elemental Mastery:

To a great stats like CRIT DMG, CRIT rate and ATK:

Unfortunately that's where the tricky part comes in. You cannot chose which substats the item will have. They will randomly appear. All that's left is to cry and pray.

But how do you get more stats on your item? That's simple, you need to level it up! We call it 'enhancing'. Depending on the rarity of your item( they vary from 1* (one start) to 5*(five stars) ) there are different max lvl cap. I'll mostly focus here on the 4* and 5* items. Max lvl cap for 4* is lv16 and for 5* is lv20.

Every artifact you'll get is always lv1. To enhance an artifact you'll need mora and another artifacts. The main stats will grow with each level, but the substats will update every 4th level (so for 5* item new substats will appear on 4th, 8th,12th, 16th and 20th level). Let's take this 5* feather: Bard's Arrow Feather

As all feathers it has ATK as a main stats and quite decent substats. You can enhance it by giving it other artifacts. You can also auto add artifacts of given level (1*, 2* or below, 3* or below and 4* or below)

Or you can chose items manually if you click on the gray '+' icon. Once you do it, there will be a list of artifacts you can use for enhancing. Only items that are not given to any characters will appear here.

Let’s enhance it up by one lvl (there’s limit of pic so I can’t show it ksmosjnwk). As I said, the main stats got better, but the substats didn't change because that was only the 1st level. So now let's enhance it to lv4. Once we choose enough artifacts to enhance it to lv4 we’ll see an information that one new substat will appear. (It doesn’t always have to be new substats. Sometimes the substats that the piece already have can get a boost).

Let's see what I'll get:

... Yea, I'm going to cry.

But for real now, that's how the artifacts work. Depending on your luck you can get a great items or a depression.

Usually people always aim for artifacts with ATK and CRIT as a both main and substats, but that all depend on you team composition.

But Akii, how do I chose good artifacts for my characters? How do I build my team?

I'm happy you asked. We can have up to 4 character in the team. Usually people aim for a team consisted of one main DPS, one healer and two supports, but ofc that all depends on your style of the game and your needs.

What is the most important in building your team and deciding on artifacts is the characters talents themselves. You absolutely have to check their talents and passives before giving them any artifacts, cause for some of them items with HP as a main stat could be actually good (like Barbara, since her role is only healing she doesn’t make more than 100 dmg on her normal attack but she heals a TONS).

Let's take my team for example, I’ll explain what their talents do and choose artifacts accordingly:

Razor as my main DPS

Qiqi as my healer

Xingqiu as my support

And Xiao that is none of the above but I just got him so I really wanna use him lmao

Usually I'd have Bennett in my team that would work as both healer and support, but yea, Xiao happen. Anyway, back to the topic

Since Razor is my main DPS I am focusing mostly on the DMG he can do. That's why when choosing artifacts for him I was aiming for the one with ATK/CRIT.

I do believe right now is a good moment to introduce artifacts sets. Each artifact has its own sets. There are plenty of sets to chose from. Now, the question is, does it matter from which set the item comes? Yes, it does.

Every set has all 5 types of artifacts to offer (a flower, feather, time watch piece, goblet and head piece). Depending on how many of the pieces from the same set you'll have you can get different stats. Let's take everyone's favorite Gladiator's Finale set. If you equip 2 pieces of Gladiator your get additional 18% of your base attack. IT'S A LOT!

But if you equip 4 pieces of Gladiator your normal attack (the single mouse tap, not the skills or the hold tap) will be increased by 35% IF your character has a sword, polearm or claymore (so it doesn't work on characters with books and bows, sorry Amber).

As I was saying, since my Razor is my main DPS and his role is to hit, not deal Electro DMG, I gave him 4 pieces of Gladiator's Finale just so he can have these additional 35%. But his head piece belongs to Wandener's Troupe. Why? Since every character can have 5 different artifacts, and the set's bonuses are only up to 4 pieces, the last one can belong to any other set. I chose Wandener's because it have CRIT rate as a main stats, so it's perfect for main DPS character. (The last piece doesn’t have to be the head piece, it can be any of the other 4 pieces).

You can check the character stats and the difference in the artifacts by going to your character menu and then clicking on the ‘details’.

For example here are my Xiao stats calculated with all the artifacts he has right now on him:

And here I have my Xiao without any artifacts and with 1* weapon:

DO YOU SEE THE HUUUGE DIFFERENCE?

Next we have Qiqi, my healer. One would think that, if she's a healer, then it would be good to have a set that is designed for healers on her, right? Wrong.

Let's take a look on Qiqi elemental skill (You can check your character skills by clicking on ‘talents’ in the character menu):

(APPARENTLY TUMBLR WONT ALLOW ME TO POST MORE THAN 10 PICS IN ONE POST SO ILL HAVE TO PASTE THE INFO FROM WIKI, THANKS)

When Qiqi hits a target with her Normal or Charged Attacks, she regenerates HP for all party members and all nearby allied characters. Healing scales based on Qiqi's ATK. Regenerates HP for current character at regular intervals. Follows the character around, dealing Cryo DMG to enemies in its path.

It's says that the heals she gives is based on her overall ATK. Which means the more ATK she has the better her heals are. That's why, in my personal opinion, it's better to focus on raising her ATK and energy recharge. Ofc, there's nothing wrong in having for example 2 pieces of Maiden Beloved (set's name designed for healers, 2-Piece Bonus: Character Healing Effectiveness +15%) on her. If those pieces main stats will be ATK then this will work amazing, but unfortunately I don't have any artifacts like this.

Next are supports, Bennett and Xingqiu. Since their role is not dealing DMG, but more of a supporting you can give them sets of a 2 pieces. Let's take a look at their elemental burst:

Bennett:

if the health of a character in the circle is equal to or falls below 70%, their health will continuously regenerate. Regeneration scales based on Bennett's Max HP. If the health of a character in the circle is higher than 70%, they gain an ATK Bonus that is based on Bennett's Base ATK. Applies the Pyro element to characters within the Field.

Basically you just ult and switch to your DPS (or whoever you want honestly). If the character you switched to (or Bennett himself, his ult works on him too) HP is below 70%, they will receive heals. If their HP is above 70%, the incoming healing with cease and they will get attack bonus based on Bennet BASE ATK (only when you have him c0, so with no constellations. On c1 (his first constellation is unlocked) there is no HP restriction, so his ult buffs the attack no matter of your character current health). So it’s not the same case as Qiqis. Base attack is the base amount the character have with weapon equipped but without any artifacts on, so the only way to rise base ATK is to maximize character level and to give them weapon with high amount of attack. Then we should focus on giving him as much of an energy recharge as we can so he can load his ult faster. Then it’s up to you whether you wanna make is a healer or side DPS. In healer case you should focus on rising his HP amount by giving him artifacts with that stats and substats cause, on the contrary to Qiqi, the heals he gives are based on his own max HP, not his ATK. In side DPS case you can focus on the overall dmg he makes.

Now let's take a look on my Xiao. His role is a dps, just like Razor. So one would think that it would be the best to max physical DMG on Xiao too, right? Wrong.

Let's take a look on Xiao's elemental skill and Elemental burts:

Skill:

Xiao lunges forward, dealing Anemo DMG to opponents in his path.

Burst:

Greatly increases Xiao's jumping ability. Increases his attack AoE and attack DMG. Converts attack DMG into Anemo DMG, which cannot be overriden by any other elemental infusion. In this state, Xiao will continuously lose HP. The effects of this skill end when Xiao leaves the field.

Both of them covert the DMG into Anemo DMG. Which mean that no matter the physical DMG bonus, if he doesn't have any Anemo DMG he won't be as useful as he could be. That why my Xiao has 2 pieces of Gladiator and 2 pieces of Viridescent Venerer that gives him +15% of Anemo DMG bonus. (y’all have no idea how long it took me to write this thing correctly lmao)

As the last piece i used Wandener's head piece again to give him that additional CRIT rate. (yes, his Anemo DMG can be scaled with CRIT rate, too). Ofc my Xiao still lacks a lot of power we can see on some videos on yt.

Okay Akii, I understand how does the artifacts works and what to which to chose when thinking about the character role, but how do I actually get the artifacts?

That's actually the hardest part. You can get them from domains. Each domain have two sets of artifacts at the same time, which means depending on your luck you'll get the artifacts from the set you want or the artifacts you don't want BUT can use for enhancing later on! Gladiator's and Wandener's don't have its own domain, but can be achieved by fighting bosses like cubes or regisvines and from weekly bosses like Dvalin, Andrius and Childe.

Now that you know everything you need to know about artifacts you can go and start doing the domains...

only to waste all of your resins and get tons of shit artifacts with DEF as a main stats and then start crying after your one good artifact with ATK as a main stat and CRIT as a substat gets shits like HP, DEF and more HP after enhancing. Have fun <3

#genshin #genshin impact #artifacts #genshin artifacts #genshin guide #tutorial #how to #genshin artifacts set #razor #qiqi #xiao #bennett

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littlefreya · 4 years

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Hello Freya! I have a couple of days off from work and I want to go through all your fics!!! Tell me which one's should I read first? I am done with The way to Hell and I am craving for more!!!!!! - 🐼

Hmm if I could recommend top faves of my own stories that would be:

White Honey - Henry x Reader (Romance, smut, loss of virginity, sex) Waking up the morning after you lost your virginity to Henry, you muse of the night before while feeling hungry for more.

Night Drive - Dark!Henry x OFC (Smut, explicit, non-con, breeding) A midnight drive turns into an absolute nightmare once Henry decides to take what he always craved for.

Nice Day for a White Wedding - August x Reader (Explicit Smut, maleDom) What made you think you can get away from August?

The Fee - Geralt x OFC x Witcher!Jason Momoa (Smut, threesome, anal, DP, deflowering, slight dub-con) 🎃 NEW 🎃 A mistake on the way home forced her to cross path with a hideous monster. Fortunately, she was rescued by two witchers, but now there was debt to be paid and she couldn’t afford the payment.

Penny Dreadful - Sherlock x ofc (Romance, smut, ass-smacking, primal play, rough-sex) Sherlock is cold, troubled and upset, his mind is fixed on cracking an unsolved murder. It’s the worst time to disturb him. But his hot-blooded little succubus wants to drag him into sin.

Not now, Kitten - Henry x Reader (Smut, Dom/Sub, punish sex) Henry is busy building his new gaming PC, but you just woke up feeling extremely bratty and wanting his attention. Well, not you poked the bear.

Also if you miss Ingvild and August - this one was secretly based on them:

One more touch before we die August x OFC (Explicit smut, romance) Set in a cabin on the mountain, August and his woman make passionate, desperate love.

#henry cavill #henry cavill rpf #rpf #henry cavill fanfiction #august walker #geralt of rivia #dark fanfiction

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smallersocksx · 3 years

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Pokemon Journeys Episode 62 + 63 Review (that nobody asked for!)

These reviews I’ve been writing for Journeys have been so well-received I was honestly surprised! I think I’ll only write them for episodes that contribute to the storyline or character development rather than filler-esque episodes.

I know I’m late with episode 62 and a lot of people have already reviewed the episode. I had watched the raw on the Friday and I wanted to watch the sub to have a more informed opinion. However, my Grandmother’s dog was rushed to hospital and I was way too anxious to actually do anything other than worry. Thankfully, he was discharged and is doing a lot better!

Anyways, as usual I will keep my review below the cut, so if you want to read that’s great!

I don’t know how long this post will be given it's about two episodes but I’ll try to break it down into sections.

Build-up and the Beginning:

To be honest this was an episode that I had mixed feelings towards whilst waiting for it to air. As I have mentioned many times, one of the aspects I find frustrating about Journeys is the pacing and development, and once it was confirmed Sobble would be evolving into Drizzile after only one actual episode dedicated towards his development, I was honestly annoyed especially as Sobble was pushed to the side in favour of Grookey being the new “cute” starter.

The beginning of the episode wasn’t particularly great if I was honest, I didn’t understand the point of the television interview and then there was Sobble’s actual evolution scene. When the synopsis described Sobble’s evolution being triggered by him saving another Pokémon, I thought it was going to be something epic rather than him saving an Oddish from a falling berry. I think they could have handled Sobble’s actual evolution a lot better, they could have gone down the route of something similar to Professor Sycamore’s Garchomp when she evolved from Gible to Gabite and then to her current evolution, she was surrounded by the other laboratory Pokémon and Professor Sycamore and it was so wholesome. I think if Goh’s other Pokémon had at least witnessed the evolution it would have made the evolution sequence better, I mean Oddish didn’t even acknowledge that Sobble had saved it.

Drizzile:

For the majority of the episode, I felt so sad for Drizzile, I mean I was a little confused that he forgot about his middle evolution as Renji had it on the screen in Episode 54 (but never mind!). I just felt so sad for him after he saw his reflection and learnt he wasn’t an Inteleon yet. However, Goh’s other Pokémon didn’t help Drizzile feel any better, he was literally being tossed around left and right until he was caught by Big Bro Cinderace (that is my nickname for him) but sadly even Cinderace didn’t understand the extent of Drizzile’s feelings.

Throughout the series, we’ve had a lot of episodes surrounding a trainer and a Pokémon trying to understand one another’s feelings and they have honestly made some of the best episodes such as DP’s Stopped in the Name of Love, where Dawn’s Piplup was physically ready to evolve but emotionally he wasn’t and Dawn didn’t even realise the extent of Piplup’s feelings until Meowth translated for her. There’s even an episode in XY, where Serena didn’t understand Braixen’s attachment to her branch without James’ help. There’s probably even more but these are the two that I can think of at the top of my head. Even in these instances, Dawn and Serena didn’t realise the extent of their Pokémon’s feelings without the help of a third party (which was using Team Rocket a lot better than Journeys)

I went a bit off track, it's a lot easier for a Pokémon to understand their trainer’s feelings than a trainer to understand their Pokémon’s and that's because of a language barrier. Similar to animals in the real world, Pokémon have to use alternative means and signals to express their feelings and I think what made this episode more impactful was Goh not receiving that third party help (although Professor Cerise did give him a hint by notifying him about Pokemon experiencing personality changes when they evolve).

Whilst, I believe part of Drizzile’s depression stemmed from the fact he wasn’t an Inteleon yet, I think he was confused and emotionally drained due to these new innate traits he’s suddenly developed such as laziness. Whilst, the episode does acknowledge and try to address this issue for Drizzile, I don’t think it entirely hit the mark. Compared to the BW episode, A Village Homecoming, where a Zweilous under the care of Iris’ friend evolved into Hydreigon it went on a rampage because it was confused by the sudden change and scared until Iris calmed it down (which was some good development for her). Whilst, I respect the fact Goh gave Drizzile space and time to process his emotions, this ending is a little bit unsatisfactory to me, I’m sad Drizzile is just sat in a cave all alone, I was hoping by the end of the episode he would overcome his depression and accept his new form and traits. Plus, if the writers pull what they did with Farfetch’d and forget Drizzile exists, I’m going over there with a pitchfork!

Goh’s emotional development:

Now I won’t lie, lately, Goh has been getting on my nerves and I hate feeling that way especially given he’s meant to be a main character. However, one of the aspects that was annoying me was his rapid development particularly in the area of battle but this episode did an amazing job of representing Goh’s emotional development.

If this was Goh at the beginning of the series, there would have been no doubt he would have tried to drag Drizzile out of that cave instead he was taking his time and trying to coax Drizzile out until Cinderace decided to drag the poor boy out and it broke my heart seeing the single tear slide down Drizzile’s cheek more than it did every instance he cried as a Sobble.

What I love about this episode is Goh learning from his mistakes and recognising that Drizzile’s personality change was similar to when Scorbunny evolved to Raboot and then Raboot to Cinderace. Although they missed an opportunity with Ash, he could have brought up his experience with evolution and personality change with his Charizard. Anyway! As I mentioned in the Drizzile section it's harder for a Pokémon to articulate their feelings as humans do. However, even humans have difficulty expressing or even understanding their own feelings sometimes and Goh understood that.

That heart-to-heart, Goh had with Drizzile made me cry but it did such a great job reflecting Goh’s emotional development and that moment Drizzile wiped Goh’s tear as Goh had once done for him was so moving. As I previously mentioned, I like the message of giving someone space and time to process their feelings but as I previously mentioned that ending left me with some mixed feelings.

Conclusion:

Whilst, I would have preferred Sobble have more development before evolving and for the actual evolution to have been handled better. All in all, it was a good episode that honestly had me crying. The ending for me was a little unsatisfactory but I definitely think this has been one of the better Journeys episodes to have come out as of late.

Episode 63

It’s a miracle! They didn’t wait for 20 episodes to give Chloe and Eevee development and they went to a different region!

Prologue and Continuity:

At the beginning of the episode, the group are watching the Adult division of the Marine Athletics Race held in Hoenn. Eevee takes a particular interest as a Vaporeon is participating in the race and I really loved this link to her debut episode where she was copying all the Eeveelutions such as walking elegantly like Sylveon and attempting to swim like Vaporeon before nearly drowning (God love her!)

However, I love the fact similar to the Ponyta episode, Chloe takes the initiative and wants to meet Vaporeon and his trainer as it may be good to expose Eevee not only to her evolved forms but also learn from other trainers that have had an Eevee why they evolved them into certain forms (Ash this would have been a great opportunity to call May and Serena! Or even Virgil!)

Kairi and Vaporeon:

I honestly loved the dinner scene after the group tried the racecourse and it's a miracle Ash is actually using Dracovish! I loved the discussion Chloe had with Kairi asking why he chose to evolve his Eevee into a Vaporeon. And I liked the fact his answer was simple, his Eevee loved the sea, was a natural on a surfboard and evolving Eevee into a Vaporeon was a natural fit for the two of them.

I’ve only watched the episode raw, there’s a bit where I assume Goh asked Chloe what she would want her Eevee to evolve into. I think Chloe’s answer focused around the fact she wants Eevee to decide for herself rather than have her or someone else decide her path, a feeling Chloe probably relates to as her classmates all assumed she would want to be a Pokémon Professor like her father. Also, Eevee sleeping on top of Vaporeon was so wholesome, I’m sorry why are not talking about this!

The Ending:

After the incident caused by Goh’s Dewgong (honestly going from the episode preview I thought it was something to do with Team Rocket so Dewgong causing trouble was a nice change of pace and not doing Team Rocket dirty by using them as convenient plot devices!) Anyways, I loved the ending, as Kairi gave Chloe a Water Stone and I love the fact it doesn’t mean Chloe has to use the stone immediately but the stone is around and is there as an option. Chloe and Eevee can keep deepening their relationship which already increases Eevee’s evolution potential as three of her evolutions are triggered by the bond between trainer and Pokémon. Going down the line, I think Chloe meeting other trainers that have an Eevee or one of the Eeveelutions is a great way for her to develop and learn from other trainers.

All in all, this was a great Chloe and Eevee-focused episode (as mentioned in my overall Journeys critique I’m just sad Yamper is being pushed to the side when Chloe’s earlier development is attributed to her bond with him). Hopefully, in future episodes, Yamper can be more involved. Overall, the last two episodes of Journeys have been good. The trailer/preview they showed, Infernape’s BACK!!! Also, seeing more of Ash’s old Pokémon like Hawlucha and Noivern my favourite father-son duo!! Journeys finally delivering on what the fandom wanted! Also, I think I heard Kakihara’s voice in the trailer and if I’m right, I’ll be over the moon, he’s honestly one of my favourite voice actors >o<

All in all, Journeys might have some good content coming up, my only complaint being I don’t like how all the Gen 8 content is being shoe-horned into these mini arcs and we’re hardly seeing any Galar characters.

#pokemon journeys #pokemon #pokeani

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megareviews · 4 years

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Octopath Traveler Combat Review

Hello whoever’s reading this, I’m here to talk about Octopath Traveler’s combat system, and how it sucks. Now you might be wondering, why am I writing about this now, isn’t that game kind of old at this point? Yes, it is, but I only “finished” playing recently since I was working off of a borrowed copy and it’s more the level of disappointment I felt while playing it has stuck with me much more than many other games I’ve played. Since I want to go into game design and development, I thought that it would be good practice to do a deep dive on game mechanics, and it’s easier to write about something that I have strong feelings about to start with. While I have many issues with Octopath, the combat system is what the player is dealing with the most (which in itself is an issue), so the fact that it was lackluster dropped the enjoyability of the game more than if it were better balanced with story and exploration. I’ll try to hit everything that I had a gripe with, from minor things I personally would want changed, to what I view as major flaws that lower the enjoyment for everyone. I will be talking about the post-game boss, because a lot of my issues come into focus during it, so spoiler warning.

For reference, I’ll be talking about the game the way I played it, so I’ll give my main character loadouts in relation to the final boss. Team 1: Hunter Therion, Cleric Alfyn, Sorceror Cyrus, and Thief Olberic; Team 2: Warlord H’annit, Scholar Ophelia, Apothecary Primrose, and Runelord Tressa.

Now the big overarching problem with this game is its simplicity. Making a game simple can be a good thing, and definitely makes it more accessible, but there are a plethora of sub issues that I will be going into throughout this caused by how oversimplified many systems are in this game. For starters there is the lack of skill diversity, as in, there just isn’t very much that characters and enemies do over the course of the game. The offensive skills have 12 possible damage types, 6 weapons (Phys) and 6 elemental (Elem) and there’s only really 4 different ways these are implemented: single hit, multi hit, wide (hits all enemies) hit, and wide multi hit. Multi hits are generally just better due to the break system and damage limits, and wide hits are better the more enemies there are. Those of you good with numbers might have already multiplied those to get 48 ways of hitting an enemy, and I’ll add two, since the Merchant has an single hit untyped skill and the Starseer has a wide untyped skill, for a grand total of 50 that I can remember. Looking at that number I actually don’t know if that looks like a lot for somebody who hasn’t played the game, but the damage types only really matter in the break mechanic of the game and which stat is used for calculating damage. No particular type of damage is better for damage or accuracy skill wise, and the elem skills will do the exact same thing no matter which element is used since they’re only based on the user’s Mag stat. Phys attacks are a bit different since each one is affected by the weapon the user has equipped for that type, but they’re generally all +Str and then +Mag / +Acc / +Crit / +Spd / +Eva. Some Phys skills also have side effects that help differentiate between them, but the basic attacks are the same when the weapons are similar.

Since I brought it up, let’s talk about the two main mechanics of combat that this game has, the break and boost systems. Overall, these systems are pretty good on their own, and most of my issues are rather small here. First up is the break system: hit the opponent with their weaknesses a number of times, and they lose any remaining moves they have this turn, any they would take on the next turn, and all attacks against them deal more damage, though on the turn after the next, they are guaranteed to move first. This is where most of the fun of the game is, figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses, as they are hidden when you first encounter an enemy, only revealed when the weakness is hit, or with the Analyze skill, and then timing the breaks to be the most beneficial to your team. Many enemies belonged to groups with similar weaknesses, so it’s interesting to learn like winged creatures are generally weak to wind and / or spear attacks. The main problem I have with the break system is that once an enemy is broken, all damage types have the same effectiveness. Before being broken, an enemy that is weak to fire will take extra damage than if it’s hit with an ice attack, but while broken these attacks will do the same damage. Any accuracy bonuses don’t matter, since you can’t miss an attack on a broken enemy and speed bonuses only really matter if the order in which skills are cast is important, which there are some cases, usually with buffing allies. Then a bit smaller is how the weakness bar is always ordered, so some damage types are more useful to figure out all of the weaknesses. For example, if a weakness to staves is the leftmost weakness to be found, the player knows that there are no other physical weaknesses and to just start trying elemental ones. There were also some interesting extra mechanics that were only used a few times, such as shuffling weaknesses after a break, or, one mechanic used exactly once in phase 1 of the final boss, rotating through weaknesses when being attacked.

Then we get to the boost system, which complements the break system very well, with only minor annoyances. It makes the player decide between spending power against an unbroken opponent to break them faster, save up to deal massive damage to an opponent once they break, or how frequently turns need to be spent to cast buffs or debuffs. One issue that I have here is that magic users get the short end of the stick again, as basic attacks are the only moves (besides Bewildering Dance, the RNG move) that boosting will cause more instances of the move to occur. Boosting three times on somebody that will basic attack an enemy can cause them to lose 4 shields, while doing the same on a fire skill will just cause it to do more damage, which is objectively better to do when the enemy is broken. This usually isn’t an issue, as the BP can be spent on status effects and healing which will always be helpful, so besides Cyrus (laugh at him, he’s a nerd) there’s always something to spend BP on, thought your personal playstyle might dictate otherwise. Something that’s more personally annoying is how the limit is 5 BP max per character, since the most you can use is 3 per turn. What would be really nice and satisfying would be to break an opponent, have everybody spend 3 BP for full boosted whatever on the break turn, and then have everybody spend another 3 BP on fully boosted whatever else on the second break turn.

Next is another facet of the simple problem, is that there is significantly less character variability than the game wants you to think, and that’s not much in the first place. There are only 96 total skills for player characters, as there are 12 jobs with 8 skills each, and each character has their default job and may also equip a secondary job, letting each character go into battle with 16 skills, ignoring the path actions that grant others conditionally. The 8 base jobs can be simplified into 2 categories, DPS and Utility, 3 if you want to split the utilities into physical and elemental which I see as reasonable, or if you want to stretch it and split the 2 DPSs in the same way. I’ll stick with 3 since I can show how to best simplify them this way, watch. DPS: multiple damage type skills; Phys Utility: one weapon type set of skills, one single target elem skill, and a couple (de)buffs; Elem Utility: a single target elem skill, a wide elem skill, and a bunch of buffs. The advanced classes are even simpler, three of them being every attack type in either weapons or elements and then the remaining one being a bunch of buffs with one multi element skill so that every element had 5 related skills. I’m debating going into each individual job, but there are two that I will be getting into later for sure, Thief and Starseer, for opposite reasons.

Related to the lack of damage types and skills, is a lack of feeling of progression throughout the game. You gain access to 66% of the skills you will ever have by the end of the first quarter of the game, and the last 33% you won’t get until about the last quarter of the game. While the beginning of the a game it makes sense to give the players a bunch of tools rapidly, especially given the whole theme of versatility of the 8 different starting characters the game is based around, skills just scale up with the player’s stats, given through levels and equipment, otherwise they stay the same. While the middle half of the game can be used to mix and match secondary jobs on characters, it’s all just variations on the familiar. While this lack of progression just makes the game a bit boring until you start finding the advanced jobs, the actual issue is how SP scales through the game. The game ends up getting significantly easier as you progress further into the game since the SP costs become a smaller percentage of each character’s SP pools, and most forms of SP regeneration are percentage based, so characters get back SP easier too. For example, I had Ophelia with Second Wind (which I will get to in detail later) and a bunch of SP equipment, which by mid-game meant she could cast most spells and heal back more SP than they cost, and late-game everything was free outside of revive, which took two turns to fully heal. This is contrast to the beginning of the game, where a single skill cast could deplete a character’s entire SP pool, especially the physical jobs, as they usually came with smaller SP pools in the first place.

But where the runaway scaling is the worst, is actually on the thief job. Thief is a physical utility class, so it comes with dagger skills, the mandatory single hit fire skill, phys str and def debuffs, and some slightly more interesting abilities that falloff as the game goes on and you don’t need items or SP as much. All three dagger skills have special qualities, the divine skill uses the characters spd in the damage calculation, but HP Thief and Steal SP are the really broken ones. They both function the same way, hit twice with the dagger, then recover some percentage of the damage dealt to the stat in the name, 50% to HP or 5% to SP. The cost is also the same for each, 6 SP. There seemed to be a bit of a decrease in accuracy for each compared to just basic attacking with a dagger, so early on it was a bit of a risk to use it on enemies, especially if they were unbroken and not weak to daggers, as you would be losing SP to gain 30 health, or getting two dagger hits without boosting. But then, once the total damage of both hits reached 120, or even if you wanted to be safer, the damage of either hit, you start having a move that is free to use and hits more times than a basic attack without using BP, while also being able to heal yourself in a pinch. Now, the max damage you can deal in one hit without the Surpassing Power is 9,999, and you can very clearly see that a thief becomes an invincible slaughterer, as one can either heal themself for 9,999 HP, which is the max, or 999 SP, which is also the max, per turn. Now this might take a bit of set up, such as decreasing the enemy’s physical defense, which I remember mentioning is an ability that the thief job has, or increasing the thief’s physical strength, and there are a few ways to do that, but what I’m saying is it’s pretty much just all lined up for you to do way too easily with next to no drawbacks.

I’ve mentioned two support skills by now, so I should probably talk about them and the issues that they have. There’s 4 for every job, so 48 total, and each character has 4 slots that they can have support skills assigned to with no job related restrictions. This theoretically is about 200000 combinations, but since many support skills don’t synergize well with either the other ones or with the character or just are worse than others, there’s actually a lot less. The first way the options are culled are through support skills that are basically required. First on that list of required ones is that everybody needs Saving Grace, full stop. It changes the equipped character’s max HP from what is listed to 9,999, though if their HP is above their listed max, they can’t be healed any further until they have returned to a normal HP level. This gets very important for many late game bosses, and I feel like every paragraph is opening another two or more topics to go to, as most character’s 2k~3k isn’t enough. After that is some form of SP assistance, as the support skills are the ones with all the fancy %SP recovery. There’s 4 options to choose from: % max heal, heal % basic attack damage done, halve all SP costs, and heal % damage taken. Your magic casters will generally get the % max heal, since they have large mana pools to take advantage of that, and your DPSs will have the basic damage one, with much smaller mana pools and higher physical attack damage. Anyone with the Thief class can skip this, since as I’ve said, they will never run out of mana anyways. The % damage taken isn’t particularly useful as it’s such a small percentage and much less reliable than the others given it’s based on the enemy’s actions and targeting rather than yours. The Halve SP costs skill is situational, as some classes have higher SP costs, but losing the ability to actually regenerate SP makes the longer (and usually harder) fights more dangerous as you still run the risk of running out of mana. I used it on Tressa, since I played her as a caster and her mana pool is a bit lower than the other main casters, plus her Rest ability allows her to regain SP on her own. Third is either of the stat buff skills, once again the choice is based on how the character will be dealing damage. There’s Physical Prowess for Phys attack and defense or Elemental Edge for Elem attack and defense, and instead of being a stat boost like other similar skills from base jobs is that they permanently grant the combat buff to those stats, which means you don’t need to spend time casting the skills that do that AND that they can’t be dispelled by the enemy. What you do with the last slot (or two for thieves) is more open and is going to be where you can have ideas about different builds.

For me though, that last slot went to Surpassing Power on most characters, because by late game, most of my characters were hitting the damage limit pretty easily. Now the damage limit is just the fact that no single attack can deal more than 9,999 damage, because the developers said so. The support skill Surpassing Power, similar to Saving Grace, ignores that, and instead makes the max 99,999, though have fun trying to reach that before your character’s stats max out. Octopath unfortunately has a lot of these kind of arbitrary limits which only seem to exist to highlight an ability that can get around it, like purple treasure chests and Therion’s job ability. By the time I got to the post game boss 5 of my characters were consistently hitting the damage limit, and due to the sometimes absurd amounts of health that opponents had, Surpassing Power just made most of those fights so much faster.

Now a bit of time talking about enemies, because the difficulty scaling of the game is pretty boring, once again due to how simple the game is. This is really an issue among a lot of this type of RPG, since the game is just a numbers game and bigger numbers = harder fights. There’s two points specifically that make Octopath particularly bad with this, the lack of weaknesses on player characters, and enemy health. Since the player characters don’t have any weaknesses like enemies do, you really don’t have to pay attention to what specifically the opponent is doing, at most you can pay attention to whether you are taking physical or elemental damage, but the types are completely irrelevant. There’s a slight exception since there are accessories that reduce specific types of elemental damage, but as far as I could tell it was just better to use accessories that gave stat bonuses. Some enemies had abilities that could inflict status ailments, or had secondary abilities similar to player skills, but they were so few and far between that once again it doesn’t really contribute much. The other issue is with enemy’s health, in that they generally have way too much and causes the game to become so much slower. Fighting basic enemies is almost never a danger to your team assuming you are properly equipped, but the fights can still drag on for 5~10 minutes just whittling down their health. This even applies to fighting enemies that are much lower level than your own team, mostly due to the defensive bonuses that an enemy that hasn’t been broken has. This culminates to a final boss with about 700,000 HP, ignoring all the summons that it has and that it can’t take damage while the summons exist. Again remember that the maximum damage per hit is 9,999 in most cases and 99,999 in the other (which I’ve never gotten close to even with max offensive stats). Then also add in that you probably won’t be anywhere near that first max damage unless the boss is broken too, and you can see why the fights just take so long.

Ok, time to talk about the other job that particularly stood out to me, the Starseer. It’s a healing support job mostly focused around manipulating the party’s BP. Or at least the good skills it has are focused around BP. The divine skill is a wide untyped elemental attack dealing damage based around the whole team’s BP stock, and one of its utility skills also increases damage when the user uses BP, which you have to for divine skills. Another skill it has increases the BP gain of an ally to two per turn, rather than one. Unfortunately we’re already starting to get into the ok skill territory, as due to the way BP is gained, it is only useful for about half of the duration. After a character uses BP, they don’t gain any for the next turn, and since the max is 5 BP, there can only ever be two turns in a row where you benefit from this, and depending on support skills, the maximum benefit a character can get from this ability is an additional 4 – 6 BP. Now there is a Merchant skill that can give another character 4 BP instantly for the exact same cost. The rest of the skills range from decent but situational to worse versions of other job skills, and remember, Starseer is a secret job, meaning you don’t start with access to it, all the abilities are relatively expensive, and you have to fight a boss to unlock it. Continuing to a decent but situational skill is one that can target either enemies or allies, and prevents all stat buffs from being able to be applied to an enemy or prevents all stat debuffs from being able to be applied to an ally. If you know the enemy is a type to be able to apply either, this can be helpful if you can time it properly. The other skills of the job are mostly more expensive and / or worse versions of skills that other jobs have. From dealing multiple types of damage (worse than just 1 in 95% of cases) to healing over time (enemy’s damage considerably outpaces the healing it provides) to a counter that doesn’t prevent the damage like its counterpart, pretty much every active skill they have is disappointing.

I ran out of steam on that last paragraph, and stopped writing this for about 3 months, so I’ll just get one last point in. There are actually a lot of mechanics in the game that are kind of complicated, but since this game is about oversimplification, much of the most important nuance that the game actually has is hidden from the player. There are a ton of little bits of information that would make decision making in the game so much easier, but because the game refuses to display them, there’s a lot of guesswork. In some cases, this hidden information is obfuscating mechanics that subvert player expectations, so what they thought was an easy decision should actually be harder. The following is a non-comprehensive list of some of the worst offenders of hiding information in my opinion. The stat nuts, which raise character stats permanently, give different amounts of their stat depending on which character eats it. Moves that hit a random amount of times ignore all bonuses and penalties to accuracy and evasion. Items that reduce damage or recover HP/SP don’t say by how much, or whether it is percentage or a flat number. Healing skills scale with the caster’s elemental defense. What makes these and similar mechanics the most annoying is that there are some skills that do list exact numbers or percentages for their effects, so it is inconsistent too.

I will end this now and hopefully I covered everything I meant to. A lot of this was thought up while mowing the lawn or laying in bed trying to get to sleep so if something was lost in the recesses of my mind that’s unfortunate. I hope whoever made it all the way down here enjoyed reading, or at least thought it was interesting, and feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to hear more.

#Octopath Traveler #game mechanics

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chartreuse-gale · 5 years

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Rondo of Blood first impressions

This game is delicious!! Like, I’ve heard for years that it was pretty much the golden chocobo of old school Castlevania titles, but wow. I just finished my first run through of the game and it really is fantastic. I went straight to the source as best as I could with this one (emulated PC Engine raw Japanese original). After finally playing Rondo of Blood, I have to say it’s definitely in my top 3 Castlevanias (Along with Castlevania III and Castlevania 64).

Graphics: The in-game sprite work is gorgeous, definitely the best out of the 16-bit Castlevanias. Also there’s some cool anime style cutscenes. Music: When it comes to Castlevania titles this one’s probably mid to high-tier. Outside of of the song that plays during the boss rush, I didn’t feel bored at any point by the music. It’s very smooth overall. Stand out tracks include the themes for stage 1, and the River stage 4 (not sure if there’s more than one stage 4 or not). I probably haven’t heard the music for all the songs yet (I’m assuming the alternate stages have some different tunes). If I were to compare it to other Castlevania soundtracks, I’d rank it above original Castlevania, Castlevania Bloodlines, and Symphony of the Night; I’d rank it below Castlevania 64, and Castlevania III. It might be around the same level as Castlevania II/Super Castlevania IV. Gameplay: This mostly plays like original Castlevania with some ideas from Castlevania III, some new moves, and a few changes to the core mechanics thrown in. From Castlevania III it brought in multiple playable characters (Rondo has 2), and branching paths. The major departures from Castlevania III are that characters are rescued from locked dungeon cells (which you need to pick up a key to open; these also take up your subweapon slot) instead joining up after defeating a boss, and the branching paths occur mid stage instead of between stages.

There are differences in movement speed (characters move faster), and movement options. Instead of being locked in place with every jump, both characters can move freely (albeit slightly) during a neutral jump. Staircases are easier to navigate, because you can jump onto them by holding up, or drop down from by pressing down+jump. This game also introduced item crashes (which were also used in many games after Rondo): If you have a lot of hearts, you can spend more than usual to activate a more powerful effect unique to each sub weapon. Richter doesn’t have to worry about collecting upgrades for his whip; he can also walk/jump backwards while facing forwards by holding the attack button down; finally he has his this neat backflip double jump he can do before the apex of a neutral jump or backwards jump. Maria can decrease her forward jumping distance by pushing backwards; she also gets a universal double jump, a penguin slide, and a roll; she has a completely different set of weapons/subweapons from Richter.

Classic death traps like bottomless pits are still around, but Rondo has a save function, with effectively unlimited continues. The alternate routes are fun to search for and discover (some are very challenging to find; others are quite easy to uncover). It also offers a stage select, which makes it easier to explore stages for alternate exits and other secrets. Stages and bosses are challenging, but not overwhelmingly so. I’d say it’s a little more difficult than Super Castlevania IV, but a little easier than Bloodlines (Easier than the III NES titles, far far more difficult than Symphony of the Night, Harmony of Dissonance, and both of the Arias). If you can find Maria, she’s got better DPS and much better maneuverability than Richter, but she can’t take as many hits. Story: Plot-wise I only got the gist of what I could grab from the few Japanese words I recognized and the visuals, but this game has a lot of cool moments.: Spoiler Warning:

Spoiler Warning!

Spoiler Warning!!!!!

Okay here we go, Spoilers for some of the cooler/more interesting moments:

- Richter checking out a map of Castlevania before setting out (probably left behind by his ancestors)

- That stage 0 carriage-top battle vs death

- The areas that look like bottomless pits, but actually send you on alternate routes

- Maria being cute as a button, and having some crazy attack where she summons what looks like an alterego double of herself to rapidly punch whoever’s in front of her, and this move has a bizarre input that looks like something out of an SNK fighting game (283 Attack; AKA Down ->Up -> Down/Forward diagonal + Attack).

- The bell that drops either a random item or a fleaman when you strike it. It doesn’t seem to break

- The little moths that fly around lanterns . . . until you break the lantern, then they follow you until you come nearby another lantern . . . unless you break that lantern as well

- The Skeleton that’s just chilling by a table in the room before one of the bosses of stage 3 (or at least one of the stage 3s if there’s more than one of those)

- The hidden giant eye boss that brought me down to 1-hit away from death with a suicide attack after I thought the fight was over

- That section where you’re riding a log down some incline at an angle somewhere between a river and a waterfall, and there’s skeletons chasing after you and these birds fly in with bags, and you can hit the bags to get items, but if you hit the bird by mistake they will fly away, and the last one is carrying a road sign that you can’t really make out, but it still conveys that you should probably get ready to jump, cause it probably means a giant hole is coming up

- The part right after this where you run into Charon (possibly his first appearance in Castlevania game), and he chats with you for a sec before giving you a quick ride across an underground river, and after this if you jump back on he’ll say something different and give you an item, and if you keep doing it he keeps saying something else and giving you different items, and one of those items is a key, but . . .

- The woman who’s held captive in the cell the key belongs to is guarded by a boss, but at first it seems like she’s mesmerized by the boss; she’ll try to grab you, and if she connects she won’t do any damage, but she’ll drain out your hearts. So, I finished off the boss, it vanished, but the life bar was still there with some light, and the woman was still trying to grab me, she I attacked her, and she turned out to be a demon in disguise.

- The second fight scene with Death, on the mast of a pirate ship, wherein he swaps to white robes once he gets serious

- Dracula looking and sounding weirdly young (Sort of reminds me of how Demetri sounds jarringly young in the Dark Stalkers games)

- Maria escaping while the castle is crumbling with all her animal friends (who throughout the game she calls on for her normal and subweapon attacks)

#Castlevania #Rondo of Blood #Spoilers at the end of this post #RoB #First Impressions

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tilbageidanmark · 3 years

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Movies I watched this week - 38

Early 60′s Sidney Lumet X 2:

✳️✳️✳️ “...You have a poet in you, but it’s a damn morbid one...”

Lumet’s 1962 powerful version of O’Neill’s stage play Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Superb ensemble performance by Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, and very young Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell.

A dysfunctional family of three drunks and a morphine fiend mother bicker and struggles with their own shortcomings, responsibilities and madness.

✳️✳️✳️ The Pawnbroker (1964), first mainstream American film to deal with the psychology of a holocaust survivor. But the combination of a bitter & lonely concentration camp survivor who became a Harlem pawnbroker, the black & Puerto Ricans stereotypes, the money as the only value left for the desperate Jew, Etc. didn’t gel. 3/10.

✴️

Udo Kier’s plays the lead in the new Swan Song, a daring & heartbreaking tear-jerker about a very old gay hairdresser, the “Liberace of Sandusky, Ohio”, who escapes his nursing home in order to style a dead woman's hair.

Beautiful! The best film of the week.

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A thought-provoking documentary, I, Pastafari, about recent efforts by adherents of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (”FSM”) to be accepted as a “real”, non-satirical religion, mostly in The Netherlands and in Germany. "It is a serious offense to mock God". I found it an interesting argument on claimed faith and the nature of traditions. Long live Bobby Henderson!

R’amen!

✴️

Yves Montand X 3:

✳️✳️✳️ First re-watch in over 20 years: Claude Berri’s ‘The Water of the Hills’ stories, AKA Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Two classic period pieces of classic Provence-chic with Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and Yves Montand. Deception, betrayal and revenge. 7+/10

✳️✳️✳️ First watch: Melville’s cool heist ‘policier’ Le Cercle Rouge, with Alain Delon’s glued-on porn-'stache. The ‘Red Circle’ is actually a ‘Red Herring’, as the Buddha quote in the epigraph was made up by Melville: The divergent paths of unknowing men will come together inside the Red Circle... Yeah sure.

Now, off to see Rififi...

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Lennon’s Last Weekend, a Nothing documentary centered around the week-long interviews that Lennon gave DJ Andy Peebles of the BBC up until December 6, 1980, 2 days before he was killed.

✴️

2 Directed by Tony Gilroy, again:

✳️✳️✳️ “I'm Shiva, the God of death.”

Michael Clayton must be my absolute favorite film from the last 20 years. I’ve seen it 12-15 times, and it’s perfect in every sense: every single frame, or cut, the soundtrack, his son Henry’s 'Realm and Conquest' sub-plot, the horses, Monsanto’s Karen Crowder’s double-speak... Every time I’m reminded of it, I'm ‘forced’ to watch it again.

10/10

✳️✳️✳️ 2 years after Michael Clayton, Gilroy assembled many of the same players to do Duplicity: Tom Wilkinson & Denis O’Hare acting, James Newton Howard’s score, Robert Elswit DP, Etc. but this convoluted romance between two industrial spies who double and triple cross each other and everybody else is too clever, with too many complex plot twists. 5/10

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Not a big David Lynch fan, and re-watching Blue Velvet for the second time after many years, I disliked it even more. The brilliant beginning, up to the discovery of the severed ear definitely signifies “This is Andalusian dog for the ‘80″. The rest of it, the sexual slavery, the masochism, voyeurism, fetishism of vintage pop songs left me completely cold.

(Photo Above)

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Based on Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short is another of my regular Guilty Pleasures housing market crash films. Because it’s about my 2004-2010 real estate investment career, and because I was there. 9/10

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More about the shuttered, big American Scam, Frontline’s The Retirement Gamble. I can’t believe that for half my life I let myself live within and (somehow) accept the system. Thanks, Sammy.

✴️

“It’s the corn cubes!...”

Beatboxer Reggie Watts's A Live At Central Park (2012) - Funniest shit of the week!

(Prompt by a refresher on Metafilter.)

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Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh‘s pathological debut film. It influenced me so much, I even had the same wooden cassette cases, to keep my tapes. The four then-unknown actors were all incredible. 100% mature film, not by a 26 year old pisher. The only vague, unconvincing scene is Graham opening up to Ann at the end. 9+/10

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...Compared that to Bitter Moon, another late 80′s erotic ‘thriller’, Polanski’s unwatchable Merde. The man directed ‘Chinatown’ for Christ sake! Four terrible performances (including Polanski’s wife, Mariel Hemingway-lite), in a ‘daring’ exploration of ‘depraved’ sexuality. Truly awful.

1/10

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2 X National Lampoon:

✳️✳️✳️ Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, a 2015 documentary film. I wasn’t familiar much with that history.

✳️✳️✳️ And so, National Lampoon’s Animal House - First watch. I wish I saw it 40 years ago, then maybe it would have worth a chuckle or two. As it is, it was the worst film I saw this week.

✴️

2 short documentaries:

✳️✳️✳️ Ice Ball, a short Vimeo story about Ice Harvesting in northern Minnesota.

✳️✳️✳️ The driver is red, an animated short about the hunt for Eichmann, told by an Israeli Mossad agent.

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The Swarm, a new French horror movie about anthropo-entomophagy (insect eating): Blood sucking grasshoppers!

Meh.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

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evancarmichael · 6 years

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✎ Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who went from writing a play in high school after a classmate was shot and killed to playing Jackie Robinson in movie 42 and being the Black Panther. He's Chadwick Boseman and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules for Success! ★★★ SECRET BONUS VIDEO ★★★ What is the One Word that is most important to Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, will.iam, Oprah Winfrey, and Howard Schultz? Find out here: http://ift.tt/2yEDhU2 ❤ HELP TRANSLATE THIS VIDEO ❤ If you loved this video, help people in other countries enjoy it too by making captions for it. Spread the love and impact. https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?v=dUozbhq8B7s ★ MORE RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU ★ If you enjoyed this video, you may enjoy these other videos from Evan Carmichael: • "COURAGE is the KEY to LIFE ITSELF!" - https://youtu.be/crW3BhiV7Jg • Denzel Washington's Top 10 Rules For Success - https://youtu.be/uFO7bZMk45c • "If You're Going to MAKE IT in this Business, You Need to BELIEVE in Yourself!" - https://youtu.be/YlqafzWTirQ -= CHADWICK'S RULES =- 1. Prove them wrong 2. Don't compromise your beliefs 3. Don't give up on your dreams 4. Find your path 5. Study the greats 6. Have a great work ethic 7. Work on challenging stuff 8. Root for others to win 9. Care 10. Sing! -= BONUS =- * Do something different * Be the best at what you do * Learn to say no ✎ He wanted to write and direct and initially began studying acting to learn how to relate to actors. He graduated from New York City's Digital Film Academy. In 2008 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He got his first television role in 2003, in an episode of Third Watch. He played his first starring role in the film 42, in which he portrayed baseball star, Jackie Robinson. He starred as James Brown in Get on Up. His early work included episodes of the series Law & Order, CSI:NY, and ER. He headlined Black Panther in 2018, the story of Wakanda. He portrayed Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. He will reprise the role in Avengers: Infinity War, scheduled for later in the year. ✔ SOURCES ✔ https://youtu.be/QepSuQYMzpE The View https://youtu.be/KXVDCx3TRS0 Nerd HQ https://youtu.be/SJGioCXnseU DP/30: The Oral History Of Hollywood https://youtu.be/jjm6zdXfJ7Q Rolling Stone https://youtu.be/1fpTDuFfoB0 Tribute Movies https://youtu.be/-HuWE8vSGeM PictureBox https://youtu.be/y5PR5SaVeB8 Oscars https://youtu.be/81_3LKRTPIg theoffcamerashow https://youtu.be/gsTitt-VDuU Sway's Universe https://youtu.be/_cD_BHdAB-w Popcorn with Peter Travers https://youtu.be/nquYdDlyoFw ABC News https://youtu.be/z6r83SJW2jo Larry King ♛ BUY MY BOOKS, CHANGE YOUR LIFE ♛ Some used the ideas in these books to build multi-billion-dollar businesses. I'll give you the simple-yet-powerful formula that they used (and you can) to realize your dreams. Get yours. http://ift.tt/2auuYKa http://ift.tt/2DWNJZU ✉ JOIN MY #BELIEVE NEWSLETTER ✉ This is the best way to have entrepreneur gold delivered to your inbox, and to be inspired, encouraged and supported in your business. Join #BelieveNation and feel the love. http://ift.tt/1DyhRRs ⚑ SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL ⚑ If you want to do great things you need to have a great environment. Create one by subbing and watching daily. http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Modelingthemasters ¿ COMMON QUESTIONS ¿ • What is #BTA?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsY8bmTUVP8 • How do I get one of Evan's t-shirts?: http://ift.tt/1VBOMjE • Why does Evan look like Nicolas Cage?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZHRniTcRwo • Why does Evan make so many videos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEKxGA8xr1k • How do I vote for the next Top 10 video Evan should make? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0arZb0xLIDM ツ CONNECT WITH ME ツ Leave a comment on this video and it'll get a response. Or you can connect with me on different social platforms too: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/evancarmichael • Facebook: http://ift.tt/1t8ruBM • Google+: http://ift.tt/1wAY1Ex • Website: http://ift.tt/LfsMJ5 • Livestream Channel: http://ift.tt/2j1vZP7 • #BelieveNation Forums: http://ift.tt/2jsqFn6 .: MORE ABOUT ME PERSONALLY :. • About: http://ift.tt/1wAY43c • Speaking: http://ift.tt/1wAY1UU ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for watching - I really appreciate it :) Cheers, Evan #Believe

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danielwalkerbiz · 4 years

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Dynamic Programming

Dynamic what?

“Dynamic programming”, an awfully scary name. What does it even mean?? What’s so “dynamic” about programming?

The name was invented by Richard Bellman in the 1950s when computers are still decades away. So by “programming” he really did NOT mean programming as in coding at a computer. Bellman was a mathematician, and what he really meant by programming was “planning” and “decision making”.

Trivia time: according to Wikipedia, Bellman was working at RAND corporation, and it was hard to get mathematical research funding at the time. To disguise the fact that he was conducting mathematical research, he phrased his research in a less mathematical term “dynamic programming”. “The word dynamic was chosen by Bellman to capture the time-varying aspect of the problems, and because it sounded impressive. The word programming referred to the use of the method to find an optimal program, in the sense of a military schedule for training or logistics.”

So what he really meant was “multistage planning”, a simple concept of solving bigger problems using smaller problems while saving results to avoid repeated calculations. That sounds awfully familiar, isn’t that memoization? Yes it is. Keep on reading.

What is Dynamic Programming?

A problem is a dynamic programming problem if it satisfy two conditions:

1) The problem can be divided into subproblems, and its optimal solution can be constructed from optimal solutions of the subproblems. In academic terms, this is called optimal substructure

2) The subproblems from 1) overlap.

1. Optimal substructure

Consider the problem of the shortest driving path from San Francisco (SF) to San Diego (SD). Since the highway goes through Los Angeles (LA), the problem can be divided into two subproblems — driving from SF to LA and driving from LA to SD.

In addition, shortest_path(SF, SD) = shortest_path(SF, LA) + shortest_path(LA, SD). Optimal solution to the problem = combination of optimal solutions of the subproblems.

Now let’s look at an example where the problem does NOT have optimal substructure. Consider buying an airline ticket from New York (NYC) to San Francisco (SF). Let’s assume there is no direct flight and we have to transit through Chicago (CHI). Even though our trip is divided into two parts NYC to CHI and CHI to SF, most often the cheapest ticket from NYC to SF != cheapest ticket from NYC to CHI + cheapest ticket from CHI to SF because airlines do not normally price multi-leg trips the sum of individual flights to maximize profit.

2. Overlapping subproblems

As we have seen in the memoization section, Fibonacci number calculation has a good amount of repeated computation (overlapping subproblems) whose results can be cached and reused.

If the above two conditions are satisfied, then the problem can be solved with dynamic programming.

DP == DFS + memoization

You might have seen posts on coding forum titled “simple DFS solution” and “0.5 sec DP solution” for the same problem. The reason is the two methods are equivalent. They are two different approaches to DP: one is top-down, the other one is bottom-up.

Two ways of Dynamic Programming

Top-down: this is basically DFS + memoization as we have seen memoization. We split large problems and recursively solving smaller subproblems.

Bottom-up: we try to solve subproblems first and then use their solutions to find solutions to bigger subproblems. This is normally done in a tabular form.

Let’s look at a concrete example.

Fibonacci

Let’s revisit the Fibonacci number problem from the memoization section.

Top-down

Recall we have a system for backtracking and memoization

Draw the tree: see the tree above

Identify states

What state do we need to know whether we have reached a solution? We need to know the value of n we are computing

What state do we need to decide which child nodes should be visited next and which ones? There is no extra state we need. We always visit n-1 and n-2.

3. DFS + memoization

def fib(n, memo): if n in memo: # check in memo, if found, retrieve and return right away return memo[n] if n == 0 or n == 1: return n res = fib(n - 1, memo) + fib(n - 2, memo) memo[n] = res # save in memo before returning return res

Bottom up

For the bottom-up dynamic programming, we want to start with subproblems first and work our way up to the main problem. This is normally done by filling up a table.

For the Fibonacci problem, we want to fill a one-dimensional table dp where each entry at index i represents value of the Fibonacci number at index i. The last element of the array is the result we want to return.

The order of filling matters because we cannot calculate dp[i] before we filled dp[i - 1] and dp[i - 2].

def fib(n): dp = [0, 1] for i in range(2, n + 1): dp.append(dp[i - 1] + dp[i - 2]) return dp[-1]

Subproblems

The formula dp[i] = dp[i - 1] + dp[i - 2] is called the recurrence relation. It is the key to solving any dynamic programing problem.

For the Fibonacci number problem, the relation is already given dp[i] = dp[i - 1] + dp[i - 2]. We will discuss the patterns of recurrence relation in the next section.

Should I do top-down or bottom-up?

Top-down pros:

The order of computing subproblems doesn’t matter. For bottom-up, we have to fill the table in an order such that all the subproblems are solved first. For example, to fill dp[8], we have to have filled dp[6] and dp[7] first. For top-down, we can let recursion and memoization take care of the subproblems and therefore not worry about the order.

Easier to reason for partition type of problems (how many ways are there to.., splitting a string into…), just do DFS and add memoization.

Bottom-up pros:

Easier to reason the time complexity (since it’s just the time to fill the table)

No recursion, and thus no system stack overflow although not a huge concern for normal coding interviews.

From our experiences, deciding on top-down or bottom-up depends on the problem. Some types of problems are easier to reason and solve with top-down than bottom-up and vice versa. We will see a breakdown in the next section.

When to use dynamic programming

Mathematically, dynamic programming is an optimization method on one or more sequences (e.g. arrays, matrices). So questions asking about optimal way to do something on one or more sequences is often a good candidate for dynamic programming. Signs of dynamic programming:

The problem asks for the maximum/longest, minimal/shortest value/cost/profit you can get from doing operations on a sequence.

You’ve tried greedy but it sometimes it gives the wrong solution. This often means you have to consider subproblems for an optimal solution.

The problem asks for how many ways there are to do something. This can often be solved by DFS + memoization, i.e. top-down dynamic programming.

Partition a string/array into sub-sequences so that certain condition is met. This is often well-suited for top-down dynamic programming.

The problems is about optimal way to play a game.

#Dynamic Programming #data structures #tech interview #coding interviews #algorithms

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