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hamofjustice · 11 months

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I don't want to just painstakingly copypaste my triple-layered self-QRT thread about it on Twitter and any other ones floating around but

I am very emotionally invested in seeing Penny, Arven, and (personally) especially Nemona again in the Scarlet/Violet DLC, after GF followed up the best 3 hours of Pokemon game story ever by having to abruptly cut it off the second these lonely kids finish opening up to you and say you can hang out with them anytime. Which you never do. It was some pretty painful whiplash, and I was sure the main point of the DLC was to relieve that, especially when their arcs don't seem quite complete yet. Very clever, evil marketing! But uh... well... about that...

It is very worrying that aside from a little "the story so far" montage, they have not been seen or mentioned in promotional material/footage whatsoever. Y'know, DLC for the game that's about how the real treasure was the friends you found along the way (literally, in Nemona's case), and even if your family and support systems fail you, you still have each other? Written from the heart by someone who said Arven's story is inspired by their own life? With the sappy Ed Sheeran song about reaching out for connection with others, that also seems to be named after Team Star? The game where one of the features the devs seemed most proud of was going on adventures and into boss fights with 3 of your friends? The game that ended with a fully functional and quite immersive bonding adventure with these characters you'd gotten to know and care about, that basically everyone thought was the best part of the game by a mile, and were left wishing the whole game was like that?

Yeah, I (and everyone else) have been driving around alone in that game for 8 months ever since finishing that story. 8 months of minor updates with a ton of the beloved characters functionally or literally gone, while we go around doing online stuff with nothing else to do in the world, with a single player postgame more barren than we had on Game Boy Color (thank god for mints and bottle caps though). I'm left just... wanting to go back to the way things were before I beat the game. Not to be overly dramatic, but this world I supposedly saved feels like one I failed to save. And I'm getting really frustrated. (The framerate hasn't gotten any better, either, but this isn't about that.)

It's like Game Freak (or whoever forced this thing out a year early, or both) never expected you to boot the game up again once you got bored of the Ace Academy Tournament, which the game acts like is the entire total of what you could want from being friends and "rivals for life" with your squad (I mean I'm the sicko that loves Tera Raids, so I'm not that bored, but still). It makes a bunch of implications that your adventure is just beginning, and then it totally just... isn't. Why is the E4 building closed? Why do you only rematch the gyms once? And most of all, for me personally: Why did we get access to our friends' rooms if there's nothing to do or talk about there? (Besides look for character study clues, which they have lots of)

All they could come up with when asked to write a newsletter email about what you can still do in S/V and why you should still be playing it was Raids. That was it. Remember when you had an endless challenge in the Tower/Maison that you could optionally take on with a bunch of story characters as your partners instead of alone, that motivated you to keep getting stronger bit by bit? Remember rematching gym leaders multiple times and watching their teams grow and evolve each time? Yeah, there's none of that here, because that would take more than a week to implement. If you want friends and you want battles, you'll have to do it yourself online now. They're not allocating any budget for that.

Your rival for life, who's so excited you're on her level now, who seems to have the passion and skill to be the your Battle Tower gameplay loop by herself if she wanted to, who battles you for hours offscreen with multiple teams, whose whole character arc is that she finally has someone she can do this with... is fully static, with one kinda mediocre team that never grows or changes. She can't keep up with you and doesn't know what items or EVs are. You have to get lucky to even see her at all. She is no more your rival than your Home Ec teacher is (no offense Saguaro, you're cool too). I think it's really, really sad.

I'm left nostalgic and pining to go back, having to cope through fanfic because my character can't spend the day with - or even so much as take a new trainer card photo with - the girl who said they might be her greatest treasure, without resetting my save, because she and the others are standing somewhere that the camera and internet features are both disabled.

Like, legitimately, I want to keep being friends with these kids the way we were before, and have the ability to do post-game stuff with them, like being able to go out and adventure together whenever in some basic, non-story capacity, or just, I don't know, maybe give them more than one line of dialogue in their rooms? I don't want a new region or new characters. Not yet, anyway.

I thought I was preordering the continuation of their story and rewarding the company for making me care about Pokemon so much again.

But, uh... I'm really worried that the people who own these characters do not care. And as I said on the trailer's comments before they turned them off (lol), I'll be pissed enough to not buy any more games if I'm right, and we're forced to abandon these poor kids. At the very least, it's some pretty garbage marketing to leave the possibility of that up in the air. If nothing else, that is a frustration that I'm going to keep talking about for a while, even if it ends up being fine.

I thought it was impossible, and I was being silly. Why not have our friends in cute new outfits as promo art when the DLC was first announced, and all they had was promo art? Seems like an easy slam dunk. Oh, they didn't yet? Well, I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

And then they weren't in the trailer either, months later. Are they trying to sell us on it or not?

The whole reason I want the DLCs. Still not a single word acknowledging them, just that little opening montage. Still no hints of how the DLCs have anything to do with Area Zero's ongoing story, either. How is a sea turtle linked with a landlocked crater?

So like... At this point I have to assume both DLCs start with you making your friends cry as they're left alone again, arbitrarily excluded from events they're more than qualified to be invited to, to make room for some new dweebs we don't need, who won't be given nearly enough time to be as compelling as Nemona, Arven, and Penny were, because that makes the trailer look more like a new game, and that's the only way they know how to advertise. More. New. Buy. Consume. Throw away. Buy. Consume. Throw away. I should assume this so that whatever we get can't be worse.

But they're probably not (self-aware enough / allowed / both) to write that. Your lonely / orphaned / anime-binging friends might just cheer you on for getting to go do something cool like being forced to train a new legendary because the story said so, then go back to being statues with as much relevance to your life as an NPC in a third story apartment that tells you what a hold item is.

Can't I just live in Paldea with my friends, in the version of the game we would have gotten if it was finished, instead of being pulled into these adventures for the sake of looking good in a trailer? (which it doesn't btw lol) It's not an unrealistic thing to want when that's what it briefly was, and I was so excited that it would keep being that I've been thinking about it this entire time.

...

I hope I'm wrong about all this, and next year I can look back on this post, happy that the DLC did actually allow us to continue to take care of these characters, conclude Area Zero's mysteries in a satisfying way, fix up some technical issues, let us relive some things that are currently once-only (including letting us see that photo album our character made but we had to screenshot ourselves), and make it fun to keep playing for years afterward, and let that be the model for games going forward, but uh...

They really are not showing me anything I care about in the game I desperately want to care about, that I saw - and wanted to defend - the heart in, despite the circumstances it was produced under, and that really worries and frustrates me. The surprisingly many great things about this game got my hopes up for an awesome postgame full of warm fuzzy feelings and cool things to do 8 months ago that just didn't deliver, and now, I'm not sure if they'll even let me pay for one, at this rate, because they're not advertising one.

Just throw us a scrap. If whoever's in charge here stops caring about this story, I won't care about the next one.

Anyone else feeling this?

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eightyonekilograms · 1 year

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Between twitter and reddit the latter is worse by miles. Every time I'm on that site the front page gives me brain damage.

I'm not saying Reddit doesn't suck, it absolutely does. I just visited the front page while logged out and it's a mess. But I still think Twitter is worse, for several reasons:

Twitter seems way more addictive. This is a felt sense and I admittedly don't have hard data to back it up, but it seems like in my circle, a bunch of people (inc. me) stopped using Reddit years ago, but these same people are still on Twitter despite complaining about it.

Contributing to this is the fact that celebrities and famous members of the Other Tribe are there, which is not true on Reddit. You can argue plenty on Reddit, but you know you're just arguing with Internet randos, and so it is ultimately pointless and unrewarding, which I think contributes to the lack of addictiveness. By contrast, on Twitter you can fool yourself into thinking that your mic drops on MTG or Taylor Lorenz or Glenn Greenwald or whoever are really changing the course of history; that lottery ticket keeps people coming back.

The downvote system on Reddit certainly has flaws, particularly how it enables groupthink, but it does keep the most rancid of takes from getting more exposure. By contrast, Twitter has no mechanism to halt the virality of bad takes -- indeed, the whole problem with QRTs is that the worse a post is, the wider it's likely to spread because everyone QRTs it to dunk on it; it supercharges the bad takes instead of burying them

This is an uncomfortably elitist point, but I nonetheless think it's true-- Twitter is worse because all the important people are there. The world is facing a bunch of dire challenges, and we need our political and intellectual leaders to be rising to the challenge-- and instead they're all driving each other insane on Twitter while it eats their brains for engagement. You may have seen studies recently indicating that political polarization is worse among the high-income, high-education (and implicitly, high-influence) people than it is in general-- which is an unprecedented situation: generally elites are way more unanimous than the general public. This is really bad, because it torches possibilities for the kind of compromise and cooperation which has to get sold to the public to get anything done, and I do think Twitter carries a large share of the blame.

#cetero twitter delenda est

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technoskittles · 4 years

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Something’s up....

So regarding the new information regarding Mica’s departure from RoosterTeeth that’s cropped up due to the current events, there are a lot of RT employees publicly saying that they regret not standing up for her against the backlash she received against the community.

And of course, it’s a nice sentiment and all (even if it is a tad late) and there should definitely be some action to back their words. I think we can all agree on that.

But I feel like the praise for making these statements and the criticism for “not doing enough” or “being performative” is largely disproportionate.

When Andy Blanchard (who’s not even with RT anymore) made a statement? A lot of praise that he’s speaking up now.

When Miles Luna made a statement? A lot of praise that he’s speaking up now.

When Jeremy Dooley made a statement? A lot of praise that he’s speaking up now. (I even saw one particular person say he’s still a good person and I remember him saying that he wasn’t, he was a scared person because he was afraid of the community turning on him again after he received so much hate when everyone thought he was replacing Ray.)

When Gavin Free, Geoff Ramsey, & Jon Risinger (the only other people I’ve seen so far) made statements? ....Well you get the picture.

But when Barbara Dunkelman made a statement? I’ve been seeing a LOT more criticism geared towards her. There’s been a few people praising her for speaking up now, but most of the replies I’ve seen on her QRT of Mica’s tweet have been really critical and not as forgiving. I’ve even seen one person demand she give up her host spot for Always Open.

On the other side, Mariel has also received a bit more criticism, though it seems that she’s received more of an even mix of both that and praise.

Notice something?

First off, it’s really odd that two of the top three people receiving the MOST criticism are not only women, but also not even on Achievement Hunter (and some member of AH haven’t even acknowledged Mica’s tweet it seems). But I’m not here saying that criticism isn’t allowed or shouldn’t be brought up.

The community absolutely needs to call RT out - AH and the company as a whole. But directing all of that criticism towards one person - especially in a disproportionate amount towards a Jewish woman rather than all the men who were actually there and involved - is also just sketchy in my opinion. If you’re going to criticize RT, make sure that sentiment is expressed to ALL of the employees. Don’t praise one side and then constantly berate another when, AGAIN, the person you happen to be berating is a JEWISH. WOMAN. who has to deal with her own shit (even if it’s minimal compared to what Mica experienced).

The only exception to this that I’ve seen where someone has received far more criticism than praise for speaking out is Matt Hullum, which honestly is well deserved as the CEO of the company.

I am 100% of the opinion that RT needs to get their shit together and start speaking out more on behalf of their employees, especially since Fiona is receiving the same type of hate and bigotry that Mica had gone through. With that and current events going on, they need to make a statement AND a plan of action to better handle these situations and protect their employees while also diversifying their workspace.

But we also need to pay attention to WHO is receiving the most criticism and ask ourselves why that is.

#roosterteeth #mica burton #barbara dunkelman #RT #i'm not tagging every single person mentioned here but you get the picture #i'm also not saying that barb didn't deserve any or all of the criticism she received #just that it's completely skewed compared to the men of the company who've spoken out about this #tbh I think the only person who I think has done the best so far is burnie #because he hasn't spoken out about this but he just retweeted mica's statement #he gave her that platform without adding in his own two cents #granted if he doesn't shape up or make any changes then obviously my opinion will change #but he's the only one I saw who gave mica the platform without making a huge deal about apologizing #and trying to absolve himself of his actions #so we'll have to wait a bit longer and see what he and the company does about this #because I'd hate to lose Fiona to the same bullshit that Mica went through #esp because I wasn't even around much when Mica did leave #so I didn't even know what was going on

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