#vyrelis

[lizzysartwork]

Meet Vyrelis! 👀 Is she a friend, villain, enemy, or ally in Nyxaria’s story? The only way to find out is to subscribe to my Patreon and start reading Chapter 1 of The Siren of Eternal Hunger! https://www.patreon.com/ElizabethRandle

#fantasy #amwriting #newchapter #characterreveal

[galoogamelady]

Is there a skyrim Buttons?

Why yes, what a fine choice! Here, let me get the catalog out...

(he’s also been drawn as different types of elves and I once had a dream where he was a breton fire mage but those aren’t included in the AU list)

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

@vyrelis​

Ngl I’ve been active in the (admittedly American and english-speaking) nonbinary community for nine years and I’ve never heard that word! 

Is this based on a different language? Sorry if I sound ignorant I’m just genuinely really curious! My brain sees “ser” and goes “ah yes, Spanish” 

I, being nonbinary myself, personally in my day to day life tell people to use “Mx.” (if they ask. They usually don’t.), and that’s if they MUST use an honorific. I actually prefer people don’t use honorifics on me because goddamn does it make me feel weird. I just tell them to please for the love of god say my name. That’s what names are FOR. /tangent 

All honorifics are real, though. 

[captainofthetidesbreath]

@vyrelis replied to your post “fans: Blizzard, please make a PvE Overwatch. Blizzard: [reportedly...”

You're expressing a strange lack of critical thinking skills

It’s almost like I oversimplified the matter to make a concise, pithy text post making fun of a portion of a fandom infamous for not being satisfied and for themselves oversimplifying and misconstruing everything relating to this media property!

I know that there is discontent over the idea of Blizzard making an entirely new game with its own full price tag instead of putting all the potential PvE content into the existing Overwatch game and there are fears of Blizzard abandoning the existing Overwatch game for a second Overwatch. They are indeed valid concerns. However, the matter is also a lot more complicated than I’ve seen a lot of this debate states it to be.

At this time, we just don’t know if Blizzard is going to abandon the existing PvP Overwatch for this PvE Overwatch. (Are there similar concerns that Blizzard is going to abandon WoW because they announced Warcraft III: Reforged? Not particularly.) Blizzard has, additionally, talked about franchising Overwatch for the past six months to a year; the idea that the existing Overwatch will be the only Overwatch title isn’t remotely new, including when considering how Blizzard likes to expand its IPs. (History also tends to suggest that Blizzard will try running two Overwatch titles with different playstyles alongside each other, but again, we just don’t know at this time how they will handle them, or even if Overwatch 2 is truly a separate title, though it seems very likely that it will be.)

Additionally, it is also true that there is a general demand of Blizzard to invest in expanding its lore, narrative, and character. The current Overwatch has been criticized since 2015 for being a poor format to deliver narrative content, character development, and world-building due to its nature as a PvP game. (It’s true.) The demands for PvE content within Overwatch is inextricably linked to the forward thrust of narrative and other story content within the game itself. The best way for Overwatch to deliver narrative content is within a PvE setting.

However, the architecture of the existing Overwatch itself is not designed to handle PvE at all. The engine cannot handle it, and if there is a demand to see narrative content developed in-game through PvE content, it’s either continue to invest a massive amount of resources (the equivalent of developing an entirely new game) into the PvE content we have through Archives, which even at its best are intensely limited, or actually create a game that has the architecture to sustain that.

That’s what I’m finding missing through this debate about Overwatch 2. People are acting like the existing Overwatch can sustain the content they’re asking Blizzard to make, when Blizzard has stated continuously for three years that the architecture simply cannot unless you invest all of your development time into forcing the engine to do tasks (like, critically, fully functioning NPCs) that other engines find a piece of cake.

What about Retribution? Retribution is much cited in this debate as to why Blizzard cannot just continue to develop content like that within the existing Overwatch instead of developing a second one. However, Retribution took an entire year of dedicated work to make specifically because the engine Overwatch is built in is not at all designed to handle PvE elements such as AI. Hell, Luna on the Paris map, which is an easy task for nearly every other game as a contextually responding NPC, was a big and intensive experiment for Team 4 to develop within the existing engine. When BOB was added to the game, they needed to rearrange a lot of the game’s architecture to even accommodate him.

It takes a lot of resources to develop the most basic and arguably most necessary element of PvE experience within the architecture of the current Overwatch: NPCs and AI enemies. The game itself also does not handle big maps, which isn’t conducive to PvE experience. We might think that Junkertown or Havana are big, but in the scheme of things, they’re actually small for video game maps. Overwatch just isn’t really designed to have large sprawling maps.

And, yes, Archives manages within small maps, but that’s actually rather limited for a PvE experience. It’s very linear, enclosed, and all narrative content outside of the opening and closing cinematic are contained within banter between party members, instead of through interactions with the environment, NPC characters, and other standard PvE storytelling techniques. It’s also missing a lot of currently cherished PvE aspects, like more player control over direction and at least small ability for exploration within a space. It took one year to give us that. It took six months to similarly give us Storm Rising, which is a shorter and even more narratively limited experience.

Simply put, it is extremely difficult to both continue to develop something that meets the demands for PvE content (which in turn is linked to demands to develop narrative content within the game itself) because the coding of the game itself doesn’t allow it without taking the time to make the engine jump through a complex series of loops and still have the time to develop content that continues to develop Overwatch as a PvP experience.

There’s a choice at this point: pick which experience (PvP vs PvE) to sacrifice fully supporting and developing or franchise.

This isn’t just “we’re going to sell them the PvE content they want instead of just adding it to the existing game we already bought”. This is “the interest, both on an audience and development side, for PvE experience is greater than expected, but our past attempts to integrate them into the existing game is challenging and the resource cost to develop limited PvE content is becoming on the level of developing a whole separate game as is.”

As a result, you cannot demand that Blizzard develop the lore and narrative through PvE content while simultaneously demanding they not franchise and develop other games. It’s like asking Apex Legends to figure out a way to do the narrative lifting of Titanfall within the constraints of its format as a battle royale. It’s just not reasonable to ask.

[skycladobserver]

Are we gonna be able to watch the ova on crunchyroll?

I’m actually not sure. How do they usually handle bonus episodes and such on there?

[kiyosims]

Ultimate challenge, daddify Vladislaus Straud (don't have to, it's your game, I would just love to see your take on him)

stay tuned hehe (it was super hard tho)

[galoogamelady]

Your content is so quality, I follow over 100 blogs but somehow your posts (here and your alt) are the only ones that ever get sent to my non-tumblr-user friends. I could probably unfollow everyone else and still have a Top Quality tumblr experience.

Your non-tumblr-user friends every time they see my content: 

[galoogamelady]

An "Advice: 25¢" booth, but it's compliments for a cap, and you have to pay to give one