Comments

Is it true?

that's mine :,(

stop yuyuko groping NOW (and make hug art instead :3)

XionGaTaosenai said:

That's the exact point I was making. There are a lot of tropes like "Truck-Kun" and cheat abilities that have become common enough in modern isekai that they're basically cliche, and if you were asking a modern reader what tropes they associate with isekai those tropes would definitely be near the top of the list, but you don't have to have those tropes specifically in order to qualify as an isekai, and there are plenty of classic and foundational works in the genre (particularly older examples) that lack them. In the same vein, pity mechanics and rate ups are definitely dominant tropes associated with gacha games, but they aren't strictly required in order for a game to count as a gacha game - all you strictly need is a core gameplay loop that simulates the operation of a "virtual gachapon machine".

Kantai Collection lacks a lot of the features associated with modern gachas, but that's primarily a product of its age and the fact that it was made before developers learned all the tricks to most efficiently bait players into spending money - KC is the "prototype gacha" that walked so that the others could run, and its success is definitely what inspired the glut of gacha games that we see today. KC pioneered the whole idea of a gamified harem fantasy that all of these other gacha games are built around, and while a lot of more recent gacha games have gotten even worse in that regard, I still very much blame KC for starting the snowball rolling in the first place.

Also, as a Touhou fan who was around to see the initial rise of Kantai Collection, I see a KC fan complaining about whatever the newly popular gacha game is and all I can think is... "first time?"

By that definition Pokemon is also a gacha game. And getting pregnant is also a gacha game.

People just see "browser game with a lot of characters and random mechanics", so immediately think it is a gacha game, forgetting that a core mechanic of such games is the monetization of the gacha mechanic itself which KC lacks any aim of it. The construction poll doesn't form part of the core of the game.

Also dont be an hypocrite blaming KC considering Touhou was one of the first ones coming up with an all female cast of cute moe-anthropomorphic youkai girls way before KC or shipgirls were a thing.

Admiral_Shippai said:

By that definition Pokemon is also a gacha game.

There is indeed a Pokemon gacha game. It's called Pokemon Masters EX.

Admiral_Shippai said:

Also dont be an hypocrite blaming KC considering Touhou was one of the first ones coming up with an all female cast of cute moe-anthropomorphic youkai girls way before KC or shipgirls were a thing.

What does this have to do with anything? Touhou wasn't a gacha, or even a collection game. Touhou didn't start anything, and certainly isn't the first to feature an all female cast. If someone was to be blamed for the "collectible waifu" genre, it would absolutely be KC, but I wouldn't even know if they were actually the first.

Admiral_Shippai said:

By that definition Pokemon is also a gacha game. And getting pregnant is also a gacha game.

I was hoping someone would bring up Pokemon! Pokemon is definitely a borderline case - I personally wouldn't call it a gacha game, but if someone else came up to me and sincerely argued that it was, I'd be willing to hear them out. The two big distinctions are that a) you don't have to spend any numerical resources in order to encounter more wild pokemon, and b) there is a non-randomized way to obtain any pokemon you want in the game, which is trading with other players.

The first point may seem like a pointless distinction, especially when comparing to a game where the resource "spent" to roll the gacha can be obtained by grinding, because in both cases you're ultimately just spending time to do both once the smoke and mirrors are taken away. but it's all about psychology - having to numerically spend a resource in order to roll the gacha makes it feel "more valuable" in the player's mind and encourages them to roll more. The trading, however, is the bigger distinction. Every part of Pokemon's design, especially in its earlier iterations, is meant to encourage players to meet up and trade with each other, and the "gacha" that is wild pokemon encounters is no different. You're not supposed to "roll" over and over again until you get exactly what you want, you're supposed to poke around just long enough to get something valuable that you can then trade for whatever you actually wanted. Note that the strongest and most desirable pokemon in the game - legendaries - tend to be explicitly non-random in how you encounter them, which means that if there's a legendary that you don't actually want long-term, and a "regular" but rare pokemon that you do want but don't want to bother with trying to "roll" for, finding another player who will be willing to trade the rare non-legendary you want for your unwanted legendary is relatively easy. Then again, the physical goods that you get from actual gachapon machines can obviously be traded, so if tradability disqualifies something from being a gacha, then actual gachapon machines wouldn't qualify. Like I said, Pokemon is a borderline case, and there's merit to either interpretation.

Meanwhile, I had been led to believe that ship construction is the primary means via which you're meant to get new units in Kantai Collection, and that outside of your starter ship and a select few early quest rewards like Shirayuki and Akagi, there's no surefire guaranteed way to get any ship - Myschi said that event rewards in KC aren't randomized, but I distinctly remember people making references in comics and comments to having to run events multiple times in order to get what they wanted. And I haven't seen any reference made to players being able to trade shipgirls between each other.

As for your second point, pregnancy can't be a gacha game because it's not a game, and the process of childbearing can't reasonably be called a "gameplay loop". If you do want to apply game logic to the process though, I will say that if you could only "roll" a particular gacha once every 9 months, and then had to wait 20 years before you knew for certain what you got out of that "roll", we would be having a very different conversation. The whole point of a gachapon machine, virtual or otherwise, is that you can crank the lever over and over again until you get the exact result you want, and having kids simply... doesn't work like that.

Also dont be an hypocrite blaming KC considering Touhou was one of the first ones coming up with an all female cast of cute moe-anthropomorphic youkai girls way before KC or shipgirls were a thing.

The difference is that Touhou doesn't have a faceless self-insert for lonely nerds that 90% of the cast have the hots for for no discernable reason (with the other 10% being incestuous lesbians in order to facilitate "girl-on-girl is hot" fantasies). Touhou very much stands out for how little romance and "fanservice" it has - even the yuri is at least 95% invented by fanworks, with the characters in canon mostly just being huge assholes to each other. Touhou is an industry leader in female characters who don't feel like they were designed for the gratification of lonely straight dudes, and it was never the all-female cast or the moe-anthropomorphism that I was taking umbrage with, but the "gamified harem fantasy", or as BlindVigil put it, "collectable waifus", which Kantai Collection absolutely had a central role in popularizing, regardless of whether or not they were the literal first to do it. Take out the self-insert admiral and let the girls lead themselves, and Kantai Collection would be ten times better.

XionGaTaosenai said:

Kantai Collection lacks a lot of the features associated with modern gachas, but that's primarily a product of its age and the fact that it was made before developers learned all the tricks to most efficiently bait players into spending money - KC is the "prototype gacha" that walked so that the others could run, and its success is definitely what inspired the glut of gacha games that we see today. KC pioneered the whole idea of a gamified harem fantasy that all of these other gacha games are built around, and while a lot of more recent gacha games have gotten even worse in that regard, I still very much blame KC for starting the snowball rolling in the first place.

Not really according to Wikipedia where it cites that they intentionally developed the game to not force players to spend money or participate in gacha lotteries. Stating this was so could instead build the brand name with a wide reach for merchandising and franchising.

This is also backed up by the fact Puzzle & Dragons was released 1 year and 4 months before KC which already features a gacha which does use a resource best obtained through purchase and already featured various female characters of which more and more were added as time went on. For it's time PAD was very popular and as a puzzle game that casual players could get into would have definitely had major influence on later games to come in terms of both collecting characters and encouraging players to fork over money for that rare waifu.

XionGaTaosenai said:

The difference is that Touhou doesn't have a faceless self-insert for lonely nerds that 90% of the cast have the hots for for no discernable reason (with the other 10% being incestuous lesbians in order to facilitate "girl-on-girl is hot" fantasies). Touhou very much stands out for how little romance and "fanservice" it has - even the yuri is at least 95% invented by fanworks, with the characters in canon mostly just being huge assholes to each other. Touhou is an industry leader in female characters who don't feel like they were designed for the gratification of lonely straight dudes, and it was never the all-female cast or the moe-anthropomorphism that I was taking umbrage with, but the "gamified harem fantasy", or as BlindVigil put it, "collectable waifus", which Kantai Collection absolutely had a central role in popularizing, regardless of whether or not they were the literal first to do it.
Take out the self-insert admiral and let the girls lead themselves, and Kantai Collection would be ten times better.

Tbf you are ignoring the fact that Tanaka's idea of KC was focused on ww2 ship history but basically using anthropomorphization was a more creative way to give the warships a personal voice, this has been a trend from the majority of events and shipgirls, specially recent ones and the fact people call KC shipgirls tame and boring makes that pretty hilarious as well because KC's does have sex appeal so cant fit under "100% non male-gratification" team but neither for the male-gaze coomer fanservice one.
From something like KC specially when you consider the female fanbase of KC that makes Houshou events and other KC events as well outside of comiket implies the shipgirls arent 100% design for a male gaze only crowd.

I think is fair to say the harem aspect has been exagerated, aside of Kongou, Jingei and the shipgirls that tease like Mutsu and similar ones the rest of the cast basically behave like warships under command till remodel and leveling basically develops the character's personality.

The inclusion of the Admiral is essential in the game as it requires a figure of authority, warships or navy personal cant lead themselves and even between shipgirls there is a chain of command with the Admiral at the top. It wouldnt really be better without the Admiral.

Im pretty sure more than half of the shipgirls arent in love at first sight or thirsty over the Admiral's dick if it ever has one considering the Admiral is genderless. The game tries to give the feel you are actually an admiral first(even permadeath emphazis on the navy theme) instead of being an excuse for an gacha harem idol collection with navy motif like that other shipgirl game ended up becoming today.

Im not aware if you are still play KC but thats was my experience and pretty much what i tend to heard from other who start the game in the last 4 years.

That barrel's itching to rupture any second now.

EDIT: Holy hell, that front sight took a hit and she just keeps on firing.

Judging by the flames and smoke whipping out of the chamber, it looks like she is in danger of cooking-off entirely.

Modern machine guns brag they are supposed to be able to fire for at least 30 minutes on auto with no risk of misfires in combat. She must have been shooting for an hour here to get the barrel that hot.

Blindga said:

Judging by the flames and smoke whipping out of the chamber, it looks like she is in danger of cooking-off entirely.

Modern machine guns brag they are supposed to be able to fire for at least 30 minutes on auto with no risk of misfires in combat. She must have been shooting for an hour here to get the barrel that hot.

Barrel heat has more to do with rate of fire than anything, a sustained fire with a GPMG like the PKP or M240 is 100 round a minute you would want to switch barrel, if cyclic (as fast the weapon will fire) you would want to do so after a minute. Depending on the barrel type you can end up with a red hot barrel in about less 2 minutes on cyclic.

Blindga said:

Judging by the flames and smoke whipping out of the chamber, it looks like she is in danger of cooking-off entirely.

Modern machine guns brag they are supposed to be able to fire for at least 30 minutes on auto with no risk of misfires in combat. She must have been shooting for an hour here to get the barrel that hot.

PKP is probably one of the worse options for sustained fire tbh. They had to give it a near pencil barrel and basically cut down on mass anywhere else they could to get the light weight that's bragged about in regards to the weapon.

It's light, mobile, and basically can't do the things you want an MG to do for sustained contact. You've just gotta have a certain amount of thermal mass and surface area for cooling, along with robustness of the working parts.

poil333 said:

PKP is probably one of the worse options for sustained fire tbh. They had to give it a near pencil barrel and basically cut down on mass anywhere else they could to get the light weight that's bragged about in regards to the weapon.

It's light, mobile, and basically can't do the things you want an MG to do for sustained contact. You've just gotta have a certain amount of thermal mass and surface area for cooling, along with robustness of the working parts.

You are not entirely correct on PKP being not suitable for sustained fire. It has an in-built air-cooling mechanism which provides constant flow of air between the barrel and the casing, thus allowing it to fire more frequently than most GPMGs out there and not overheating. Apart from air cooling it also has an increased barrel surface area for better heat dispersion.

EDIT: You were probably thinking about PK or PKM, which had this issue and required to change barrels quite often. PKP was designed with this problem in mind, so it avoids the same fate

Acheron doesn't need to look, she has her husband Boothill looking out for her

You can use food to summon people, now? I know what I'm using to summon Rasputin when he comes around.

Works mainly with cats, and I would think, pigs,

Claverhouse said:

Works mainly with cats, and I would think, pigs,

Works with my dogs all the time

Is..mini cat crunching it, or screeching her fangs along it?

There are 2 types of people when eating a lollipop, those that lick/suckle on it and those that crunch it.

WAHAHAHAHAHA! Mark my words, this drill will open up a hole in the universe and that hole will become a path for those behind the dreams to those who have fallen, The hopes of those will follow. Those two sets of dreams weave together into a double helix drilling a path towards tomorrow and that's Tengen Toppa! that's Onsen Lagann! My drill is the drill that creates the Hot Springs!

He had have enough of Hitogami's bullshit

Tachyon still crazy.

NNescio said:

Tachyon still crazy.

Every official art make her unhinged, and I like that

I love her expression. It looks like she's not sure what's about to happen

Nice

300 apologems for waiting an extra 2 hours and ultimately downloading 13 gigs, I'm fine with that.

So cute 🥰

ao

Akihabara atre

Another Touhou collab, 2024-05-03

35° 41′ 53″ N, 139° 46′ 20″ E

What if we kissed at the Touhou windows?

You will be forever trapped in a toxic relatioship where it does not matter how good your actual girlfriend is, you'll miss your 2003 ex-girlfriend. The one you can't let go even when it has been two decades since the last time you dated her.

So I try logging in twitter this morning to find they are once again forcing everyone to call it X and now the whole page is dark mode.

Annoyingly for me is how this affects my logging into Skeb. Usually it just logged in right away since the account was already linked now it not only asked me authorize access all over again but seems like it will keep doing that if I clear the browser. I'm guessing Skeb will need to update something on their end to ensure it stays that way.

Her name should probably be read Ukitsu, not Ame + Tachibana. The tag and TLs should prob be updated accordingly.