wikifeet’s biggest contributor | Expedition 33 Stream 5

4:07:48 This is me in chat, just to explain further because I do think the streamer was unfair to the game here.

GAMEPLAY SPOILER

I fully understand the macro complaint that by allowing a player to do something, you should expect some percent of players to do it and should, in some way, design around that expectation.

I think the more you communicate something is not intended, the more you can excuse it not being perfectly tuned. The existence of a parry means almost anything is possible to beat your head against because it's a complete mitigation tool, which is pretty rare in games like these.

The game tells you from multiple NPCs and a zone "Danger!" Warning that this is not really a fight you are intended to take on at this point in time. In the actual fight, damage numbers and HP pools on both sides also give this away pretty quickly. The problem is that the player is doing enough damage that they can realistically win, but too little damage to keep the time invested:enemy design ratio strong. In this case, the boss is "solved" pretty quickly, and instead of being an exciting challenge, it becomes a tedious grind.

However, because the game is clear that this is not intended to be done right now, I think some onus is on the player to meet the game halfway. There are MANY systems in the game that players can use to get an advantage in battle. Yes, some of them need to be done outside of battle, but i dont think a little battle prep is unfair to ask for when trying to break the intended progression.

I never expect somebody to be min/maxing in a playthrough if they are just playing a game casually (Unless thats a big part of the design), but again there is probably some duty to engage intelligently with the battle systems if you want to take on unintended content.

Off the top of my head:

-Over 100 colour of lumina are being sat on, leaving tons of utility and hundreds or thousands of points of damage on the table
-Lune has a very poorly optimized build, with no real stain generation/utilization engine, and more importantly, no big multihits that would work better around the damage cap. Hell is 2 hits, which at this point in the game is going to lose in DPS to 5+ hit moves by a large margin.
-Resisted elements are being used, which makes the HP sponging even worse. Other weapons and characters are available to hit more effectively.
-Sciel can stack sun infinitely before twilight. Each stack is +25% in twilight, and with 10 hits from gradient attack, this is a big scaling option as the battle goes on (like the streamer asked for).
-Roulette at this point because of the damage cap is huge statistical loss. If an attack does 7k for example, a roulette "win" means +2,999dmg, and a loss means -3,500dmg. The cap is tilting the 50/50 probability to a much more negative spread. I'm pretty sure he has it on multiple characters too.
-A generally unoptimized team synergy.

To clarify, i dont think the player should have to do all these things in a standard playthrough to have fun. But if you want to knowingly bend the limits of the game, you probably have to accept some level of intentionality, and understanding of the mechanics will be required to keep it interesting. Is it really surprising (or even bad?) that walking into something you are told not to, completely unprepared with no strategy except your blind story build is causing you to struggle? That honestly sounds like the way it SHOULD be. Parrying should not just auto win you the battle. It already can stop you from receiving any damage whatsoever, which is already insanely powerful, and tying some ramping damage mechanic to it like suggested would even further overcentralize the mechanic. The streamer should have scouted the fight, failed, and then tuned his builds and strategy around what he learned. That extra effort is the cost of wanting to take things on early.

I genuinely think something about the way Joe approaches critique and criticism is broken, and his playthroughs of FF6 and Chrono Trigger solidified that for me. He's so obsessed whether something is good or not that it comes before anything, he's unable to simply enjoy anything anymore. When he's constantly playing this game of 'if it's good or not' the vibes are awful and the chat is toxic. I also think this is the real reason he's getting less viewers. Who wants to watch someone complain about literally everything? Through that, he's cultivated a chat of bad faith critics and haters because they're the only people willing to stick around

And they said the Baldur's Gate 3 fans were worse. "I think this is bad and this should fix it" is not a hostile take, very minute criticism. You can disagree with it obviously. Are you guys that petty that you can't enjoy something because someone disagrees? Joe is gonna read all of these and think "people are not enjoying side content with 45 min bosses" so he will just do the main quest and be done with it. Ruining everybodies enjoyment with hateful comments

I think Joe needs to remove Roulette. I think it is doing more harm than good. There comes a point with the damage cap that the upside isn't much upside and is only a downside of 50% of the time lowering his damage. He could be doing consistent medium to high damage, and with Crits still hitting the damage cap. I don't think he NEEDS to, but it might be good idea to experiment with different moves and trying to learn how to use character mechanics more efficiently. But, he doesn't need to as what he is doing is working. Also If he doesn't change Versos weapon, if he ever uses him he is gonna be very confused why Verso doesn't do more damage at higher ranks, since I believe the current sword he has on him is 50% damage on rank D but other ranks do not get bonus damage from Rank. He was so close to getting Lightning Dance, if only he had read that crits do another hit. The chatter that told him to read elemental trick just set this expedition back 33 years.

It feels really cathartic to me that at least one other person has similar issues with E33's narrative and writing as I had when I played it. I didn't have any complaints about the gameplay, but the writing is definitely flawed and I'm convinced that people who praise it are fooled by the stellar presentation. If this game had an anime art style, there is no way it would get a pass for all the cringey dialogue, the weird tone shifts or the bizarre handling of the Gustave/Verso switch.

Yeah, he should have waited for 2026 before playing it. Some people are still very much in honeymoon phase and it'll only go down once they find out if it gets GOTY or not, until then they care for nothing less than validation that they have good taste for being that emotionally invested in this.

He could've alt-tabbed out or loaded a previous save from the game menu and left.
To joes credit, the veilleurs are very boring and surprisingly tanky (even the regular ones). They're more for supporting other enemies as saboteurs. Doesn't change the fact that the drawn-out discussion in the end was all him.

Edit: Ramping Damage from consecutive parries sounds like a good idea for a pictos. Like Lune's auto fire skill that deals more damage if she doesn't get hit.

what a bunch of crybabies in this comment section, bohoo he critiqued your game a little grow up

Choosing to grind away a late game rpg bossfight that is taking way too long is the exact same thing as playing mario without the jump button, its an RPG leveling IS THE JUMP.

There is no difference.

You know what, I respect the bit of Joe never using Verso or Monoco. It will make Old Lumière much more entertaining.

I don't understand the defense of that boss by the chat. I never played this myself, but really, it seems the moveset is just too simple for the "point in the difficult curve" they expect you to fight it at. I get that its not a superboss, its a late game mob, but its still a boring uninteristing fight you can casually walk too and beat.

And i'm sure there is a limit break mechanic but the 9999 this early are really demoralizing, and with parries being a potential limiting factor, there should be a pseudo wall, like an random one shot aoe at 75 percent, and maybe another at 50. I dont even mind long fights, i think most of the late game of final fantasy 12(gameplay spoilers for it) is fine and interesting(in the original, not the terrible zodiac age), but puttint a meat shield who has 2 moves in an acessible zone just seems completely unbalanced.

Sincerely, i think most games should just have done what ff13 did and not let you grind ever, but people complained about that so i guess no one wants to actually balance the rpg difficulty curve now.

3:00:12 you can totally learn a Language from the person whose language you don’t understand. I did it. My first teacher didn’t speak anything than Arabic with me, and it was okay

For like 10 years of dark souls is being mentioned everywhere as example of game that has some amazing boss design even when you rush without well prepared character and people are still defensive when someone says boss is boring/not well designed because it is fine only for specific playstyle?

Some of you are really not ready for any discussion when it comes to games you like lol

I think some people are missing the point of contention. Joe isnt saying "fighting this boss right now is boring and tedious", because thats just an agreeable statement on its own. What Joe is actually saying is "fighting this boss right now is boring and tedious, so it was a mistake from the game devs to allow players to do that, because players like me will ignore all the warnings and waste 40 minutes bashing our head against a wall."

Like Joe wanting the game to be changed to better suit his bizarre decisions is just a weird take. I know that every E33 player has had that moment where they spent half an hour on a boss they werent ready for, but i think all of them understand that they werent supposed to do that and that it was their choice to keep fighting it instead of coming back later. Joe seems weirdly apprehensive about acknowledging that fighting that boss was also entirely his choice, and that he kept making that active choice even after realizing he didnt have the damage output to kill this guy in a reasonable amount of time.

Joe has some of the smartest and most unique criticism from any reviewer I've ever seen when playing games.
It's a shame he also has some of the dumbest.
But you probably can't get one without the other.
Edit: after reading some comments a lot of people are taking it way too far though still bad criticism, imo he was just venting often times when Joe vents he tries to turn it into criticism.

The Bloodborne take was his worst take in the entire video lol, that game is utterly incredible and I was just playing it the other day.

People calling Joe’s gut reactions/ moment to moment venting as “criticism” have me so frustrated. It is healthy to express one’s reaction and reassess them afterward.

3:57:54 E33’s defensive mechanics can very easily lead players into taking on tough areas when they’re underleveled because both dodging and parrying nullify all incoming damage. The game kinda just lets players have the option to be stubborn and just skill their way through a fight they “aren’t supposed to win”. The game also sort of introduces this idea of stubbornness early on in the Chromatic Lancelier fight where it one-taps you even on normal difficulty, unless you dumped all your stats into vitality and defense.
Another thing to add to the stubbornness is the fact that C. Veilleur is in the middle of a dungeon where you had to travel to in the overworld, then walk that far into first, making giving up that much more unsatisfying because you then need to start the dungeon from the top again later on.

While yeah, Joe and other like-minded players are being dumb by deliberately choosing to keep the fight going, the fact that it’s pretty easy to get into that situation in the first place remains. AND that if they do persevere and win, they get a huge exp payout. (Which can also lead to snowballing into being overleveled for everything, which can either be fun or boring depending on the player)

2:41:27 Chat is wrong here, the tell on that attack is not auditory its visual. The timing changes but if you parry when the light on the staff touches the ground it works every time.

Is it just me or are Joe's opinions getting more insane by the day? Wtf does he mean "The game shouldn't let me go in here"? Has he never played any open world game before? Does he go straight to Ganon in BotW and then complain about the battle being tedious? Does he want every JRPG to be like FF13, being a straight corridor until the end, so that the player couldn't possibly do stuff earlier than intended?? Almost every JRPG in existence allows the player to visit endgame areas early, but know what? 98% of players just come back later and the other 2% are smart enough to know that they are doing the tedious stuff as a challenge, *by choice*. Only Joe can see a flaw in that.

the big problem here is he thinks he is better than 33 trained AI in game development

Joe is actually so UI blind LMAO

I feel like I'm watching a fan fiction where Joe lost his gamer skills like the NBA players in Space Jam. His failure to engage with much of the game's systems is really giving Elon Musk's Elden Ring levels of bad, like I can't comprehend it. He never intentionally generates or consumes stains on Lune, he only stacks burn. He rarely intentionally stance swaps on Maelle and spams the burn move leading her to be stanceless for half the fight. He doesn't even know how to get Sciel into twilight stance. These are all the fundamental abilities of the characters, not engaging with it is shooting yourself in the foot. Although, there's definitely merit to playing the game how you want to play it; for example my friend did parries only no healing, like Joe, but I used dodges and healing to keep my party up. He was able to utilize all of the "low health do more damage" pictos while I actively avoided those. This led to his fights being higher risk higher reward than mine, which I think is a really interesting separation of play styles. However, at this point it just feels like he's not engaging with the game at all and is on auto pilot until credits roll.

I've yet to watch this stream but these comments, oh boy, they do not bode well lol. Either these are E33 hardcore fans that can't accept someone not liking the game or they're just new to Joe's streams. Someone here questioned if Joe was actually an insane person after this stream….yes. Yes he absolutely is but that's why we love him. We don't always agree with him and some times he makes us angry but we still love him. Can't wait for the madness that is Metal Gear after this!