wosted

@MmmmDoughnuts21 @MrRoflWaffles Terminus worked as a great blueprint for Requiem that just never got more development. These characters are all REALLY interesting to me just they're given the bare minimum amount of in-game material. I feel like bringing the O4 back will fall flat if that remains the same sadly.

I think my biggest issue is the "set crew". On Terminus, they were SO refreshing. Fresh from prison, their quotes were our first look into *who* they are. It was great to hear how messed up Weaver was, how guilty he felt. How strong and determined Grey became. How level-headed and focused Carver was, despite his situation. And I absolutely ADORE the relationship between Maya and Peck in Terminus, which is NEVER brought back ever again! After Terminus... it feels like they all but disappeared from the story entirely. (I have a conspiracy theory that they were supposed to be our handlers for the rest of the DLC, and we would play as the Requiem strike team for the rest of BO6) The BEST moments are when we see emotion from our crew. The Terminus end cutscene, the Citadel end cutscene, the Shattered Veil mid-game cutscene (at least with Weaver), etc. The WORST moments are when I anticipate a reaction or emotion, and it just doesn't happen. Weaver sees Richtofen's family in the test tube in Reckoning? No reaction. Grey sees the Klaus factory (a robot she built)... no reaction. The WORST of all is Reckoning. The entire map, their quotes are focused on convincing others of who to help, and justifying their decision. Yet when the final cutscene plays, they, yet again, have absolutely no dialogue because they're immediately swept into the Dark Aether. The small moments we see with Primis in The Giant show a long history between the characters. Their quotes, on all maps, explain who they are and what they believe. When we capture everyone's soul, we know how impactful it is on these characters' lives. Zetsubou has one of the BEST cutscenes just from character and dialogue alone. Looking back, the literal plot/story of WaW-BO4 really struggled in a lot of different ways. It didn't always make sense, it felt jumbled together from random pieces of intel/radios/cyphers that were hidden from the common playerbase (intel fixes this, and I LOVE the concept). But, between how the player experienced characters and the insane spectacle of events that happened (blowing up the earth/moon, Richtofen taking control, Richtofen multi-verse jumping, Mob of the Dead being in a loop, etc.), it captured players' attention and intrigue in a way that BO6 really didn't even come close to.

TOPIC: WHY IS THE ZOMBIES STORY SO MUCH LESS EXCITING NOWADAYS? was gonna reply in thread about Treyarch's zombs story issues but figured I'd quote instead so we can get more people into the discussion my feeling is that the BO6 story showed us that currently Treyarch is a bit lost and struggling to find that magic and greatness that the Aether story achieved some feel this is down to intel but I actually think it's a much deeper problem I think it comes from a variety of places: - environment and writing teams working out of sync, which is now near impossible for 3arc to fix due to new structure of team and live service - more bandwidth demand on writing team to spend already limited resources on non-core-story writing - total shutdown of map to map back&forth story dialogue with the community (HUGE problem, also inescapable in modern era) - ball and chain of being linked to the wider Modern Warfare universe (partially but not wholly solved by the promise of all-DA BO7) - other teams also having creative input on zombie modes outside of Treyarch (eg mw3) - no giga idiosyncratic leader spearheading the charge inside treyarch to fend off activision and make zombies counterculture to rest of game - fear post BO4 of taking a swing and a miss - craig involvement perhaps more limited than it once was - top down orders for story to be consumable and parseable by all players for fear of people missing things - [REDACTED] my current spiciest zombies hot take which i'm gonna do a vid on when i'm home. it is gonna piss people off a lot but genuinely think it is hurting the story lol. I could go on. When I asked for some modern examples of story greatness to evidence that Treyarch does still know how to bring that story excitement back, Korb replied but much of the stuff they referenced is basically cope about what might be possible, but if you try to point to specific examples of aether level greatness post-Tag, you come up with a list of things so short that anything on there could only be there by happy accident. it's certainly not indicative that the writers are set up to do anything of Aether quality whatsoever, which is where my current post-BO6 story pessimism comes from as always would LOVE to be proven wrong but i'm an evidence guy and the team isn't giving me much evidence to work with to show they can do it. Tag is nearly as old as Nacht was when Shadows came out. That's a long ass time to not have any consistent evidence of current day story greatness IMO.

@ZenithVal make them smaller.

☀️🩱🌊 Soon™

i was hacked

jacking off rn

They're back...

@exblackwater friend randomly gifted me this game for new years and I basically finished it in 1-2 sittings. fucking loved this game but it's definitely one I have a really hard time recommending

30. Beyond Citadel (2025) An improvement upon in the first game in every single way. Gunplay is even better, visuals and level design are great, music is amazing, story is really interesting, there's so much to love here. It is also intensely horny and pretty gross, kinda kino

2025 media thread

@FireDolphin2211 more like mid life 2 because it fucking sucks blue shift sweep

late on this but I'm also here :)

@exblackwater @ARealJillPlush ubi's comment about the pizza mozzie skin is still one of the worst aged things about siege

@ARealJillPlush Some people really don't grasp the concept of artistic cohesion and just accept goofy skins because it's "fun". Because of that we're gonna keep getting shitty rick and Marty skins until the end of time. Like remember when the Pizza Moze skin was the most ridiculous thing in r6?

"So you stopped playing the game because of goofy skins?" idk when I grab a game that advertised itself as focusing on cool realistic (with a few liberties) modern day counter-terrorism units I was hoping it would keep that tone/look

Hey so I have a 3D art account where I'm going to post some of the stuff I work on there, @wost3D I don't feel what I work on would entirely be appropriate to post on here, so I'd rather unload it there rather than jumpscare the people who follow me.

@exblackwater shoutout the the comically high volatility in the community whenever the art style shift happened

new hotline fans will never know the excitement everyone felt when Midnight Animal got greenlit 7 years ago

@awesumzombiefac Mixed, I think the shield/armor allows for zombies to act more aggressively than BO1 but I think the resource management becomes annoying especially with how vulnerable their absence leaves you. BO4/BOCW high rounds feel so much more engaging to me because the faster zombies so.

Question: How would you feel if Bo6 had no armor or the shield? But you instead mainly depended on your perk augments for extra protection? And damage scaling from Cold War is removed too due to no armor.

@exblackwater @TheIshikawaRin even if pap is instant the spots can still be in risky spots and pose a threat to the player. firebase z could be a nightmare to pap to on high rounds because the pap and the wunderfizz were in highly crowded areas that you'd still get surrounded in because super sprinters.

@TheIshikawaRin >zombies is cooked because pack a punching doesn't get you killed now you know ever since Cold War they were trying to make zombies more accessible to the casual audience that plays these games now right? Not like high rounds on Cold War aren't difficult in the first place.

I don't get why Treyarch won't make Zombies feel like Zombies again, Black Ops 6 Zombies just feels like more of the same multiplayer/Warzone-ified slop that BOCW feels like Why is Pack-A-Punch an instant upgrade? Where is the important risk/reward of doing it? Zombies is cooked

@Wunkolo Alpha kiiinnda depends. If you're using RGB compressed any image with alpha will take roughly 2x the VRAM. Very much could be wrong or just misinformed on this though but I try to avoid alpha packing for VRC/Unity.

@VIANVOLAEUS @wostedd Even better if you pack four greyscale texture into one texture's RGBA channels.

you probably don't need 4k+ textures being smart with reducing certain texture sizes can decimate your VRAM cost in this example, going from a worst case 240MB > 30MB, down to 1/8th of the original:

@FireDolphin2211 @dotflare3 honestly not too horrid, if it deforms fine and doesn't cause performance issues (see any banban game) it's fine from purely a game engine standpoint

@FireDolphin2211 @Mooreshots1 I better NOT be hearing Halo 2 cutting board slander

To say I need these figures is a under statement.

🎃🐭🎃