my hot take is that main story is bad, while event stories are awesome and enjoyable to read my other hot take is that i hate new mats especially the new chapter 13 mats they are a pain
Hot take: Arknights writing is immersive and enjoyable. The stories got significantly better when they became longer. Siesta 1.0 couldn't even dream to match the emotion of Siesta 2.0. This year has given us HITS: Lone Trail, Adele, Vultures, Silberneherze, Lucent Arrowhead, etc. Zwillingstürme is the only one I didn’t like this year, and that's personal taste. Length isn't an indicator of quality. It doesn't make a story better... nor does it make it worse. It's just a quality as any other. Fictional writing isn't an essay, "concise" isn't even a metric here, text which some call "unnecessary" is exactly what creates atmosphere and flavour. Some people talk about "awesome lore" like it's a list of relevant bullet points, but that's exactly what's boring to me: facts without any emotion behind them. Arknights needed space for its stories because the early stories just had no space to develop the ideas they had and turned out very rushed and unsatisfying. A great part of the fandom just doesn't seem to enjoy the process of "reading" enough, but hey, leave something for us who do, there are plenty of games which are more movie-like in how they tell stories. Tl;Dr Arknights text is long and that's great
The true hot take is wanting the annihilation sweep ticket rolled back because all doctors would get high blood pressure from listening to the proposal Edit: Nevermind 24:41 is the hottest of all takes and Kuma has my full endorsement
something that could be interesting in is is to have a relic recruitment voucher, where you can spend dice or a foltorial to change a recruitment into a relic recruitment, you have a choice in relics but they cost hope
My hot take is powercreep in pve game doeysn't matter and it doesn't kill the game. I would even say that if operators would stay around the same level of power, and meta wouldn't change since year one, game would be awfully boring for a service game
Would absolutely love to see another "hot take compilation" video. Here is my hot take: The hardest content like DoS/POO/Hell stages should be the most rewarding content in the game, and there should be more of it. BUT it should be available permanently, so every player would have the opportunity to eventually "git gud" to clear it and receive the rewards.
My problem with an operator really wanting a support is whether there is an accesible option for the support. I like Nymph and want her but i dont have virtuosa. I can use her S2 without her which is nice, but it sucks that I can't use her S3 unless I spark Virtuosa 💀 If we had a decent four star that maybe didn't have the best damage but had a decent kit and enabled Nymph, I wouldn't be bothered at all.
@@CreamNeapolitan have you actually tried building and playing her? She is not up to scratch. her uptime with Nymph, especially in AoE is awful. She does not solve this problem.
@@lily-_- she's good enough for a 5*, however that's beside the point. The point is if you want to utilize the full-elem damage part of Nymph S3: you CAN have Val, a welfare that everyone can access, to help her pop the elemental bar and have Nymph S3 do her thing.
@@CreamNeapolitan it is relevant because you can't do that. They don't work together because Val isn't good enough. There are good and bad four stars and five stars (for their rarity), and she's definitely not good.
I think there's a difference between the emergent gameplay of finding operator synergies (like cycling between Suzuran and Virtuosa S3s to kill everything, or somethink as simple as putting Blaze behind a defender) and the devs making an operator class that's borderline useless without a specific other operator "supporting" them. AHs are the closest thing we have to this forced synergy working, but at least the individual operators function on their own.
Kinda disagree with your point on my "modules lost there way" take. You pointed out that the community is already agreeing on how ridiculous modules are (which i agree with you), but that wasn't my point. If you go back to cn 2nd anniv Livestream and see the oart about modules, the idea of the system was to give the ability to "customize" your operators playstyle and help undertoned operators to be more fun to use (cn stream unofficial translations). My point was that most modules nowdays are only "x is better then y" and not "x is good for this and y for this" (which is kept on the abyssal hunters modules, its either the really good module for non ah team and the pretty good module but its for all the ah team). But in all honesty, your talk about enemy powercreep got me interested, please make a video about it. Also heres a hot take that i got from watching you, the "if you dont like it then just dont" mentality in the community isnt a positive thing. "If the story is too long for you then just dont read and watch summaries", but i do want to read! Its just that i dont have time for 6-8 hours of story in the next 2 weeks and the final boss (for grinding stage) is a big spoiler! "If you dont like 4*/5* being weaker then 6* then just dont use them". And what if i want to use them for being unique? Why do i have to pick either max strategize team with 4/undertoned 5* or ez mode with 6*? I can just put that "weak" unit in my "meta" team but that would just feel bad (part of the reason why i dont really agree that ak is SUCH a balanced game). The idea of "if you dont like it then dont" is like saying to look the other way when things i dont like happen and act like it never did. Also just to reiterate my point, im not typing this out of being butthurt from you telling my take is meh, its more about explaining myself again since you missed my point. And my added "hot take" is more about biase that many of the community share (which can be seen here as well) that not liking part of the game isnt ok and you should either be quiet or stop playing (that part). And again, your video about powercreep in enemies will be amazing!
No worries dude, I'm not the holder of truth nor anything. But for real tho, how would you create a game where you have hundreds of characters with different costs, stats and mechanics, but all of them are at the same power level? Theoretically you could balance out the dps and skill cycles so that everyone is literally the same, but at that point, aren't we sacrificing variety? I realize that balance isn't the same for everyone, but since I can use all the ops I like, many of which are considered literally unplayable, the game looks very well balanced for me
Actually I play arknights on the bus on my commute... so skill issue xD (could be that transit is better where I live though who knows.) (I tried to play VR on a bus once and threw up within the first 10 minutes and I don't get motion sickness in any form usually, but God VR on transit was me having actual room temp IQ... Wonder if apple vision could handle it)
about the schedule, i think the rythm for event is good enough as it is now, more would be too much. But a great alternative, and one that Hypergryph already understood is to bring more permanent game modes with great replayability in the game. Reclamation Algorythm is in my opinion one of the best idea they had. The gameplay is different enough that it feels fresh and enjoyable. The issue is that once you're confortably installed ( 100 days or so ), it start to get very easy, boring and repetitive. about the story, i'm gonna say i am very surprised at how many people hate the prose in Arknights. From my point of you, it's some of my favourite writting in any story i have read ( and i consider it very impressive since i can only read the story in english, and i am used to read in my native language, French, which is known to allow one of the best prose, ellegance, and variety of words out of all the languages in the words ) Some part of me want to just call everyone criticizing Arknights prose uncultured pricks that are afraid to read a sentence longer than 3 words, but at the same time i acknoledge that it must feel a bit overwhelming for people that aren't used to more sophisticated litterature. But when you look at what other gacha propose as their story, their worlds might be interesting but Arknights is lightyears ahead of those when it come to quality, writting and character developpement. I tried to play Wuthering Waves at launch and finished the first part of the story, and i can confidently say that Arknights is way better despite being harder to absorb
Ohhhhh, I missed the original hot takes thread. My hot take is that clairvoyance is heavily overrated. It kills all the hype about the lore and makes it so that all the gameplay aspect is already done and discussed when stuff reaches EN. And while I understand that being able to plan your spending is valuable... People need to be ok with getting caught off guard and missing an operator or two.
I don't think westernization is the term you were looking for at all. In fact, I don't really agree with a lot of what was said and had trouble following the logic there. A plethora of east asian visual novels have a lot of text and/or have full voice acting. Granblue Fantasy is significantly older and is fully voiced in Japanese. Path to Nowhere is younger and has full voice acting in multiple languages (Further ex. Steins Gate, fucking Bible Black, most east asian visual novels actually). Plenty of western vns are not voiced including the very cursed Coffin of Andy and Ley Ley. Arknights in terms of voice direction seems to take it cues from Fate Grand Order (who's other vns are voiced). Assistant dialogue, barracks voice lines, and in combat lines are voiced. Everything else is not. This saves on download sizes and more importantly money. AK hires pretty unknown, non-unioned VAs for most of the roles. They can afford it. You can solve the other problem by making it an optional download. At least AK has like 5 voicebanks per character. Fun fact: Yato JP is voiced by the voice provider for Hatsune Miku
Hot take: I don't really care about most of the bear units and actively dislike Gummy. Hotter Take in context of the last: I like Nearl, Spicy Nearl (Degenbracher), Doberman and Ray.
lol yeah the take i submitted definitely wasn't hot, my bad! thanks for the video regardless, and i'd like to see a follow up for sure - Kuma, you're well suited to this format cuz you know what you're talking about haha. next time i'll rephrase >:)
thank you, soph! But It's not like that, I make a lot of mistakes too. But yeah, as you said, having numbers ingame would help so much against the stat misinformation, maybe one day
To the point made about Detroit: Become Human being a "westernized visual novel", I disagree. It's an interactive movie. It is a surface-level comparison to make considering the multiple-choice dialogue, but several games have that, and they wouldn't be considered visual novels. I wouldn't enjoy Arknights' writing *more* if it were presented in D:BH's way, because the writing itself is egregiously verbose. I don't mind reading encyclopedia articles about a given subject, but there is no good reason why I should be sitting on a dialogue cutscene within Arknights for more than half an hour and still be reading. Sometimes less is more, and I feel like being able to tell a compelling story does not also equate to forcing word salad upon the player.
18:33 The Mystery Enemy is... the ranged power armor from Dorothy's event! I don't remember whether it's the one with higher or lower stats, but it's the one that starts asleep at the start of DV-7.
0:25 I feel that 'required' operator pairings and operators that 'function best when paired with support' are extremely different. The extreme end of the first one would be an operator that cannot be brought into a stage unless you also bring a specific other operator, which I think we can agree is lousy game design if we need to roll the gacha for both. Don't think ritualist and elemental casters are bad enough to be bad game design though, we're just suffering from it being new and therefore lacking enough units in each category (see Warmy being dysfunctional. No, literally her 2nd skill deals more damage against enemies in Burn damage fallout but no one else can apply Burn Damage except Warmy on 1st skill. I believe Ifrit module will come out soon in which case she pairs with 1 specific 6 star. I don't know of any other burn damage operator). 14:28 Even meta players would recommend Kroos for new players, and most meta players would probably also recommend using Lappland as a laneholder while you're new. It's not fair to say "if you care about meta you won't use 5 stars" because even if it was the case that 5 stars are useless when you have 6 stars built [stares at Elysium, Lappland, Bibeak, Liskarm, FEater, Ptilopsis, Specter, Texas, Warfarin, Cantabile, Andreana, Kafka, Manticore, and if you don't have the higher rarity alternatives, Mayer and Amiya and Red and La Pluma, etc.], if they were cheaper, they are more likely to be used as a stopgap even if you strictly follow the meta. 22:12 I disagree. I can already clear everything without Wis'adel, so why does Wis'adel exist? I feel like if you want to add an easy mode to Arknights... just add an easy mode to Arknights. We already have the Story Environment in newer chapters which is far and away a better way of reducing difficulty if you implement it on everything, and maybe I'm just naive but it doesn't seem that hard to implement. 26:19 I don't think he necessarily means the power level of operators, but it may also be how fun those operators are to play with. Like, 12F is cool in the story (maybe? I don't read the story much), but I don't want to play with 12F because he's not fun. 27:58 I mean... if two people both enjoy talking about the meta I think it makes a lot of sense to talk about the meta. Or, for instance, a new player who only cares about the story? Tell him to get Wis'adel. A new player who enjoys difficult content? Tell him not to get Wis'adel. 28:02 Are you sure this is a hot take? Probably two years ago but I don't think it is anymore. 28:06 You can play Arknights in spite of it being a gacha game, not because. Then RNG would make it even worse.
2nd guy is weird asf. He's like trying so hard to make everyone like and not use skips for cleared annihilation. It's just stages with 400 normal mobs with kinda difficult last 2 waves around 350-400 enemy timer.
I'm pretty sure you misunderstood the 5* cost issue comment. The commenter wasn't implying 5* are bad and that's why they should cost less, it's supposed to be a dilemma they are having - they cost more to raise than a 4*, which are cheap and usually get the job done just fine, aside from a few exceptions that are a bit more tricky, while not as much cheaper as 6* - and we all know how stupid 6* could get just because they got e2 and their main skill is s3 or talent 2 does actually something worthwhile. I'm assuming that's what the commenter was talking about here because that's a prevalent take within the community Also, my personal hot take - there's definitely are bad operators, it's just... The game is easy enough to let you get away with using them, but that doesn't make them any better, it just allows you to play how you like
Yeah, the problem with "reading" in Arknights is less with the format (though some adjustments in structuring and readability would be nice), and not with the story, which is usually at least okay, but with the writing itself. Arknights is Purple Prose:the Game. Things that could be effectively delivered in two-three paragraphs are getting stretched into several dozens of lines of dialogue, sometimes either repeating itself, or getting too busy delivering pure exposition.
My issue with the Primal/Ritualist thing is that Primals CANNOT function without the Ritualist (Or in Warmy's case, Ifrit with Delta). It's one thing to benefit heavily from Ritualists. But to have their entire gimmick locked behind another class? It's awful design. Nymph S2 works on its own because it's not focused on her element. Nymph S3 is just unusable without Arturia backing her up. Primals should inflict their own element by default so they can actually use their own kit. Ritualists should be a buff, not the key.
My take, likely at room temperature, is that I wish alters and originals were linked such that you could only deploy one of each character, kind of like how Amiya works with her classes. The maybe slightly hotter take is that IS3's slightly branching upgrade system was far superior to the more linear upgrades of IS2 and IS4. It doesn't really matter after enough runs, but I still liked being able to actually set an upgrade goal and focus on it rather than gaining points and having to do A, B, and C to get to the next ABC set.
I like arknights lore, but i hate the way they were telling their story. It is so imbalanced to the gameplay that if you want to know the story. You have to sit your ass down for like 30 mins to read the goddamn thing just for you to clear a stage in less than 2 minutes. The new reclamation algorithm implements a very nice ways to tell their story. And i actually enjoy the story that way. YOU CREATE A GAME, then tell us the story through the gameplay. If you want to tell me the story by reading millions of paragraphs, then i rather buy a book instead of playing your game.
Here is my hot take: we need to stop having reruns, and HG should consider releasing a story with no new 6* operator banner, because reruns for people who already cleared it before is just glorified deadweek, after some time they should just add those events directly into the intermezzi/side story tab without needing a rerun, because there are so much cliffhanging stories that need to be told, when will Mlynar find his brother? Maria is said to have the golden pegasus blood, when will we develop more with that? What happened to Siracusa and Lappland after IL siracusano? What about the whole things with Lemuen? The main story arc 2 still hasn't finished yet, we still has a lot more to tell, there is no clear sign that the arknights story are reaching midway point, let alone the end, we have 5 of the sui siblings, so we at least have 5+ more years for the rest of them to come, the story does not come out fast enough. I need more.
More like a jobless take, ak is a live service game that gives content at a very fast pace, dead weeks are needed, if anything you havent seen how overwhelmed people felt when RA, TFN and a new event were happening at the same time
@@novyknec1113 like I said, all will be added to intermezzi/side story with full PO included with first clear, plus if you think having a job makes you don't have time to play games you are clearly mistaken. Each events is like 1 day reading the story and 7 days farming, interupted with ex stages release in between. I don't even go RA or TFN, those are non lore related things and highly optional, even the skins are optional, RA is also a permanent mode, you can do it anytime. Judging by story content, a9 is severely lacking, another game that is neural cloud which is a side game from GFL has more story, released 2 years after a9, each events lasted for a whole month, yet somehow still has more story than a9. Plus he asked for a hot take. I'm sorry that a dad that has 2 full time jobs can train enough to beat a tekken champ while you're here complaining that a slightly faster story schedule will make you unable to enjoy it, not everyone is playing 50 gacha games and then complain they have no time, and I asked for new story than a full events, which can be accessed anytime, most people would skip all of them anyway.
@@qgvinh8614 you are also not thinking about the devs the dead periods are also time for them to make the next event or future events especially in Ak, where most events always have something new compared to the rest, you just want everything faster so the dead periods feel worse, lol they need time to come out with the event. The story is being stalled for a reason not because they are lazy, and funny you put as an example GFL when they are literally not completing a story that isn't even worth 9 years. Most gachas operate with that kind of act of stalling the stories making you want more even hoyogames do that, because thats how you run a story in the long term, if they run out of history content they will reach a dead point.
@@novyknec1113 I don't talk about GFL, I'm talking about PNC, or project neural cloud, its side game, and if you're actually playing it, it has one of the best story I have ever read in gacha games, each charater banner comes with their own background and stories, the main stories are fantastic, easy to understand, without me needing to google words from another language like how a9 handles its IL siracusano story. Funny you said that because HG has been making 4 games simultaneously, with ex astris, endfield, that one game on steam, and the new leaked IP, if they really lack the time, they wouldn't have spread their human resources so thin, it also due to the fact that they need to come up with something unique every event, which is why it took so long, I genuinely do not need it to change that much, just release more side story events that reuse old events mechanics, it it how PNC keep up with their constant flow of new stories. One final thing is that since the start of a9, the reunion arc has finished years ago, and the victoria arc has spanned as long as it yet it hasn't even finished yet, and this is like, arc 2, which took 3 years already, that's the average time a tripleA game is developed, and by this point even if a9 main story ended at arc 5, which I highly doubt, it would be another 9 years, that's honestly way too long for a gacha game, people have been clowning FGO for being ancient and zombie game carried entirely by the Fate fans for living that long, the game could've died at any point before that, and I am too invested in this world to accept that as a possibility. Honkai impact 3 is the only game in the hoyo family that is worth it, and its first major arc had already ended, the one that has most of my personal favorite characters like Mei, Kiana, Bronya, Himeko, now I have no more interest for the next one and can move on. Both Genshin and Star rail story felt off so drastic I left them there, and I do not have any interest in ZZZ, this kind of live service games that has an overarching story literally cannot be judged normally because they're in a pepetual state of "to be continue", stop making new cliffhanger for each thing and focus entirely until one of them is finished, the Kazimierz story is not finished, the Siracusa story is not finished, the Aegir story is not finished, I won't even have this much gripes if at least one of them is finished.
For the reading the story, I love the story of AK and for the most try to read it when I can, but I do admit some parts can go on and on, like reading between some stages takes 15min or more. I've always been recommending this in the surveys they give, break up the story segments more, instead of 8 15min make them 16 5min segments. For the 6* and balanced game one I disagree with the no 6* AK isn't not an easy game even with them and it already is niche so making it the dark souls of strategy games would limit players even more and besides if you don't wanna use 6* you dont have to because as the other said it is pretty balanced. Also can we take a moment to appreciate how hard it must be to make so many new maps, enemies and bosses and make sure a strategy game is balanced, I would imagine it would be a lot harder to balance it around all the ops in AK then a lot of other gacha games.
sour take: single stage record-level optimization can be very irritating and annoying. it feels like it has the reputation among niche players of being peak strategy gameplay -- and while it has its share of impressive moments and ideas, it's more often than not buried in grinding skill timings and RNG. kinda makes me wish a load savestate button existed in the game after a stage is cleared for the first time (keeping the same rng seed, and maybe with a few edits to the RNG system to compensate), which would solve any and all complaints i have. without RNG: it's often just binary searching skill timings, which can take forever on its own. certain stalls can take 5-15 mins with plenty of precise timings to get to the interesting sections, why should trying to test a timing take that long? with RNG: finding a consistent strategy suddenly goes out the window and it's easy to shuffle your operator positions trying to find any microoptimization that gives you slightly more consistent clears. which implies even more failure. that said plenty of the hard stage records feature insane ideas, and kudos to anyone who finds them or has the patience to grind them out i LOVE ethan rng, some of my FAVORITE moments are when he MISSES 3 onskill binds in a row and now i have to RESET THE STAGE
Hot take : Is good that the stories didn't get voiced. Poor VAs get locked up to read long tangent of a dialogue, imagine hearing kalsit talk in essay or hearing kashchey 8 hours podcast why genocide is cool
I actually am glad that Arknight's story is not voiced because of the reasons mentioned in this comment thread. Another reason is that it can ruin the immersion if the voice acting is not done well. Which is something a lot of gacha games can fumble on
I kind of wish there were some voice acted lines though just small bits of personality to leak through, not full on paragraph by paragraph but small things to give the voices some personality, like a gasp, grunt or one liners. Honestly, it's such a small detail but I feel like it adds so much to the reading experience. Like if a person is agreeing, disagreeing, unhappy, happy, just a bit of personality to start the line with, or to break a unserious moment with a serious line. (Like I get that would be hard for every character, but it would be nice for main story relevant once)
eh, the problem isnt that its a visual novel, the problem is that its a bad visual novel. your legit better off reading the story on an external website where you dont have to tap between each sentance. that or deal with an auto play that's either way to slow, or just fast enough your gonna accidentally miss something if you have a lapse in attention. also i think you misinterpreted what tyaty said, its kinda a common complaint tha 5*s are a bit expensive for how mediocre most of them end up. if they where cheaper, then them being bad would feel like less of an issue. as even if they end up super niche , it doesnt feel like you would have wasted many resources raising them. they wherent saying that some 5*s should have aribitraily cost less, but that all 5*s should cost less, so that the bad 5*s feel like less of a waste to build. as for my hot take, im a bad judge of temperatue, but base and recruitment just sucks ass. im tried of doing 5 minutes of chorse every time i open the app. its legit 60% of the reason i quit the game for the first time. its barely barably now that theres a colelct all button for missions, but honeslty if they didn't implimented it i would never have come back. also jesus christ can we stop debating about what the definition of "bad" is?
I think that is pretty fun using the so called bad operators, and that the saying of "dont use that one because this other exists" its only true for the people that actually have those operators, specially if we talk about limited ops And i bet that the mistery enemy is a senior armed millitant
