Rant about Stop Having Fun Guys

In order to get any understand the post, I'm going to have to say what SHFGs are. As the link tells you, they're basically guys who, although MAYBE backed by genuine skill, arrogantly tell other people they suck, even when they don't.

And that's what I'm going to rant about in this post. Because I am completely fed up with people giving me the "you suck" message. The last straw was some comment by a punk calling me and a friend BOTTOM tier players....on a video put up in the later half of 2009, at which point while I'm improved from back then I certainly wasn't bottom tier material whatsoever.

That's what the Stop Having Fun Guys simply don't get: even if you're legitimately skilled, it doesn't give you the right to say so-and-so sucks unless they REALLY, REALLY deserve it. What makes you think you didn't make dumb mistakes before? I'm excessively bugged by microing mistakes, but I certainly don't go around telling Battalion Wars LPers to expand stack units like Flame Vets or Artillery. Heck, here is one of my Perfect S-Ranks in Battalion Wars 2, and the fact that I spent most of that part manually controlling an AA Vet (which has the basis of air units being dangerous) and not even expand stacking Flame Vets only highlights why I'm even doing an LP of the game to begin with.

(Now you can argue that I did TWO n00b bash videos both related to Battalion Wars, but the mistakes involved are unbelievably bad. One of them was about somebody getting their AA units blown up by crowding around a clearly explosive objective that needed to be blown up, which happened because the n00b FRONTLINED the units in the first place when I was using a freaking Battlestation. Keep in mind that the alternative of being the player with the AA units can easily lead to the other player doing incredibly passive Battlestation usage, even to the point of BACKLINING it. The thing has a lot of armor and any range power in combination with practically no evasion ability for God's sake. So yes, I kept meeting up with n00bs who had no sense of shielding. As for the other video, the n00b chose to go ground over sea when they had Battleships for clearing coastal defenses which most of the map is and I had Gunships for mopping up everything that wasn't covered by AA. Me taking the Battleships has the problem of giving the other player the AA units that are to be used against BOMBERS but sometimes the other player will not give the necessary orders anyway, not to mention the rank is at their mercy anyway.)

Anyway, I will grant that I myself don't like when I don't get praise for things like my Majora's Mask 6 Day 17 Mask Run (yes, you can get the maximum possible of 18 non-transformation masks and still kill Majora on the second cycle, I got 17 with imperfect play and probably could have obtained 18, even if I would have to save scum on the Goron race to make sure that Luck Based Mission cooperates), but what really gets aggravating is when people will be so negative to jump to whatever they don't like instead of, oh I don't know, maybe a freaking accomplishment? But oh no, I need to have better recording equipment, never mind that finding out which is ideal would be a royal pain. There is a reason why I don't like others being so negative like that. Not that being overly positive is a good thing either when things like Code Geass's Esoteric Happy Ending has inherent problems, but I'll take Code Geass's ending over Mother 3's ANY day. And you know something? I also prefer positive females over negative females.

Now again, I get bugged by microing mistakes to no end. It doesn't mean I'll push on people to "improve" their games. But the Stop Having Fun Guys think that beyond broken stuff SHOULD BE STANDARD. Like the Fire Emblem 10 SHFGs. If a character is not Haar or a Laguz Royal, they're nothing special. That logic is sickeningly stupid. BOTH have minimized weaknesses for their ridiculous strengths, with the added bonus that certain units inevitably get compared to them. Haar gets fliers compared to him, and then you realize that Marcia, Sigrun, and Tanith will get sniped out of the sky while simultaneously not having that much Strength. Haar is not vulnerable to arrows and he also Hand Axes mages into oblivion, while enjoying plenty of attack power and Speed with which to destroy baddies. The Laguz Royals are even worse, because they get a whole set of characters meant to bring more variety (a good point of Monster Allies in general) inevitably compared to them. All 4 of them already double everything that isn't the last boss, with very good attack and defense values to add to it, to the point where most enemies get 2HKed while having laughable chances of killing them. And the counterbalance that's supposed to stop such stat abuse from the set of characters? Nullified by a skill that they have. Also, because they get their ridiculous stats from base doubling, stat boosters are also more effective on them. Although they'd benefit more from weakness covering because their strengths are so absurd. Watch Naesala with an Energy Drop suddenly 2HK nearly everything on his maps and still 3HK the L16 Generals (on 4-F-1), and giving him a Dragon Shield quickly turns his chances of dying from Redemption=Death from maybe to yeah bloody right. Caineghis, meanwhile, can simply be given an Amulet if you still have one so that he can deal with magic attacks better, which doesn't seem like a big deal until you realize that he 2HKs the L16 Generals with base stats while simultaneously mocking their attacks and thus you don't want him asleep on the job because of Hetzel being so painfully weak-willed. Of course, Nailah and Tibarn are rather well rounded in general, but they're still stupid powerful.

So yes, of course Elincia with her 65% Strength growth, Amiti, and flying mount don't compare, WHO DOES? Oh, but wait, the standard is low turning the maps. Guess what? If pure speed is such a good standard, then why does Kirby's Return to Dreamland, a game that does SO MUCH right, have the Platinum medals basically require you to get all of the coins and not get hit as well? But wait. Having high standards is stupid to begin with. High standards means that almost nobody is able to keep up; the only way they can keep up is through ridiculous effort expecting unhealthy devotion to the game. And those who would argue that I would have just that toward Battalion Wars would only drive the point home: I don't call out other BW LPers on their microing mistakes unless the mistakes are stupid beyond belief.

And also, "arbitrary restrictions"? Watch this bearing in mind that Kirby's Return to Dream Land had been released a few days before and tell me you aren't impressed. I was able to do that because I did "arbitrary restrictions" and was ultimately able to learn the bosses' behavior, not to mention about Super Inhale's useful increased range, rather than massacre them with King Dedede and only learn his brokenness. Yes, King Dedede is SICK in Arena. You can argue that Meta Knight would be more broken, but Meta Knight relies on two moves for any heavy damage input, just like his moveset imbalance in Brawl, so he actually has trouble fast-KOing aerial bosses. (Now that I think about it, the moveset imbalance may be deliberate, but toning it down a bit would help in future games.)

The point is, if you make broken stuff standard, you only set yourself up for being less able to discover stuff. Now it'd be an understandable aggravation when every player in the world would make sickeningly stupid mistakes in general, but if you expect that people should understand overcomplicated stuff before saying ANYTHING, you're just elitists asking for complaints.

Also, let me talk about Glass Cannon metagames. The problem with stuff like chain-grabs and infinites is that they make the first strike EXCESSIVELY important. Want to know what happens when something that is the case? THIS happens. If you don't notice, long story short, only the first minute or so, containing one round of combat, is important. The remaining 5 minutes, before the guy ragequit DCs (can't say I blame him), IS AN ABSOLUTE FARCE. IN A STRATEGY GAME. And keep in mind that the game actually tried to balance against the ridiculous reward you get for immediate center control. SSB doesn't do that very well, unfortunately. So no, you can't make tanking and adapting unimportant because you'll just create boring farces you somehow call matches. But the SHFGs of SSB do so, and Meta Knight is such a curveball to this behavior that they can't handle him. And while I'm on the subject of SSB, don't notice something? All 3 games have problems with virtually unconditional flinching and shoddy Mercy Invincibility. 64 and Melee's offense was low risk with stupidly high reward. There's a reason why Brawl's physics are the way they are, but Brawl stupidly decided to make offense HIGH RISK, which ruins the point of playing a game in the first place: fun. What should have been done would be to fix offense's reward. SSB has this little problem I will call stock advantage camping, where you avoid clean hits because non-KO attacks merely try to mess up your position if you're already within kill percentages, while simultaneously building up the opponent's own percentage to the point where you can KO them, thus effectively getting a full stock lead.

Because the problem with making clean hits TOO important is that you'd have to make up for the speed loss....actually, the idea of clean hit importance itself isn't bad, but it REALLY suffers because of the unconditional flinching. Clean hits already need precision to do their job, but the unconditional flinching alone messes it up, so the only way you're killing somebody is if you catch them REALLY off guard, but good luck catching them off guard if they're faster than you. And if you think I should JUST adapt, then explain why for example Bowser Bomb, a move which in Super Mario Bros. 3 you beat by DODGING, can be outprioritized outright by standard attacks.

But anyway, it's a problem when the general advice is "don't get hit/grabbed." If you are slower, you *WILL* get hit, end of story. The point of tanking is to be able to withstand individual blows to the point where you can actually GAIN from doing something that gets you hit, like repositioning. And if you take away tanking, you take away an important part of strategy that keeps long range attacks from being too strong, to the point where you have to nerf them so much that they basically can't do anything well, and if you do that, the game becomes just a bland close range attack fest, with the added problem that lack of defense validity only makes sure that you HAVE to be faster or lose. Tanking does at least let you break close range combat if need be. Chain-grabs and infinites don't let you do that.

Yes, tanking is versatile and allows for variety in the first place.

But all the Stop Having Fun Guys care about is speed, no real quality. And they try to force others to do the same thing. No wonder "Link sucks."

(*sigh* This post has gone on too long.)