Grrl Power #1146 – Pressured selection
I am pretty bad about picking skills in RPGs, but I blame this on games these days as much as myself. In most games, if you want to really maximize your damage output, you have to spend a zillion levels buying up these tiny incremental skills, and then luck out with a good unique drop that complements what you were working toward.
I’m not suggesting that games should let you pick a few skills in your first 5 levels and then you just breeze your way through the game, but it does feel like leveling up is this really incremental experience and you rarely feel any oomph after spending a new skillpoint.
Of course, a lot depends on the back end systems. There’s a huge difference between:
Str: 40 TIMES 1.45% from a series of strength enhancing skills, PLUS 32 points of additional strength from gear
and
Str: 40 PLUS 32 points of additional strength from gear, TIMES 1.45% from a series of strength enhancing skills.
Str: 40 TIMES 1.45% from a series of strength enhancing skills, PLUS 32 points of additional strength from gear
and
Str: 40 PLUS 32 points of additional strength from gear, TIMES 1.45% from a series of strength enhancing skills.
Most systems use the first one, because doing it the other way means that stats can get out of control really fast, and then it becomes more difficult to balance the game between the casual players and the critical skilltree path ‘sploitzers. I get it. It’s just more fun for us minmaxers the other way.
I think it’d be cool to read a LitRPG where the special gift the Isekai Goddess gives the MC is the ability to rearrange the order of operations for stat and skill calculations. MFer would be OP by level 10.
Anyway, Sydney doesn’t have these problems because her mysterious super powers have poor documentation. Also she can’t ALT+TAB over to youtube and find some channel with 30 different optimized builds for the latest patch, so she’s stuck just throwing darts at the board with a blindfold.
The new vote incentive will be up with the Monday comic. I should probably admit that I don’t really get a lot of work done on bonus pics during the week. But yes, it is Sydney centric. (But not airplane bathroom selfies.)
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Give the Lighthook fingers!
this could add to Sydney’s distractions.
this page is set in a bathroom. we have already gone there.
Correction, I believe Frix has gone there.
There are probably pips to allow orb use within the shield for the lighthook and the ppo. Possibly the interconnecting pips between shield & ppo and shield & lighthook.
I still think she should buy that passive for the shield. But it’s her squishy hide, not mine.
Agreed. You’d think this would have been the decision of the higher-ups, too (rather than speed, or whatever it was they had decided she should upgrade next.)
I feel like the skill grid shouldn’t be reflecting in her glasses given it’s meant to be immune to perception/recording by things like cameras and cybernetic eyes, suggesting it’s a psychic/telepathic projection and not actual physical light.
If it can be seen, it would reflect. The question though, is the reflection recordable or is whatever the orbs are emitting also reflecting?
Not if you perceive it with your mind and not your eye
Your mind could perceive it as a reflection.
Let’s be honest, it’s Nth tech. It can be exactly as visible as it wants to be.
I get that reference!
I understand that reference dot gif
We are nearing the point where people can be proud of understanding a reference to understand-that-reference-dot-gif
Maybe. But that’s a really cool looking panel and I’d be sad if it’s gone.
I’d like that panel without thought bubble as a poster or screen background
I will admit it is pretty cool
It can’t be recorded, not that it can’t be reflected: they have no souls, but they are also not vampires
Funny thing about vampires, it’s more a property of the mirrors being silver and thus too pure, than a property of the vampire not to reflect. They should reflect in most modern mirrors, in a shiny fridge door, in Sydney’s glasses if she didn’t have them consecrated…
It also explains why they don’t show up on photographic film coated with silver nitrate. A vampire should, however, be able to take a cell phone selfie.
NOt if you go by Marvel Comics. Blade gets off a murder rap because the bank camera across the street that was on the whole time couldn’t pick up his image! :)
Also, I don’t think ALL mirrors are silver. Highly polished steel works just as well. It’s ‘mirrors’, not ‘mirrors of silver’.
I remember a couple of things where the mirror/vampire thing was that their reflections had withered and rotted away just as corpses would do in the real world. So for a few days a vampire is sort of normal-looking in the mirror, then you have putrefaction and ugliness where they start avoiding mirrors and then for years and years there’s a skeleton in the mirror and the really old vampires you can’t see at all.
One character got grossed out at the ‘putrefaction’ stage and took a bath in boiling water to clean up, coming out as a nice clean mirror-skeleton. And then later took baths in a mild acid nightly for several months until they finally achieved mirror-invisibility. They wanted to be mirror-invisible for a crime they were planning to commit, but in a foreseeable twist the status got them mistaken for a much older vampire.
I like the detail of the lip balm.
The PPO is missing the extra pip in the circular arrangement.
And yes, with such an array of unlabelled abilities I’d spend ages choosing too. Heck, I spend ages when they are labelled!
I hope Krona gets to see the grid again and deciphers it for Sydney some day.
I’m the complete opposite. With no labels and no knowledge, I’d just slam them in randomly and be done.
What Syd’s got is some partial information – she knows which are the ‘passive’ slots associated with each ball now, and she knows where to put a pip for a new PPO attack form, and the rest she’s got categorized by ball or by ball combination. That’s enough to think about for maybe five seconds, for me.
“Do I feel that the shield isn’t protecting me reliably enough? Yes. Get the passive slot it’s bound to be useful. Might be a danger sense to tell me when I need to grab the shield. What else? Don’t need a new attack form, movement powers are adequate, attack power is adequate, throw it to a random slot on one of the other three balls or maybe try one of the linking ball-pair nodes to see what that does.”
Ten seconds, tops. Not knowing what something does means you *WILL* make an uninformed choice, so there’s no point worrying about whether or not you’re making a mistake.
Normally I’d agree, but my brain doesn’t quite work that way. I’m a master of overthinking, and despite hindsight always saying “Was that trip really necessary”, my brain doesn’t want to remember in moments like these. Not until I *have* to make that split-second decision (after which I’d likely still spend hours ruminating on the choice and what could have been done differently).
Is it me or is Sydney getting cuter?
Just you (she has already reached max cuteness for me)
She getting older and wiser? She’s not in panic mode anymore when people find out she’s interested in a guy. Sydney reminds me a lot of my niece, cute as all hell and VERY hyper. I feel for her new hubby, keeping up with her must be very exhausting…
Well, she’s getting older at least :P
She reached max cuteness when she went clubbing wearing that wig and no glasses :)
Try to upgrade the unknown.
Yes, this: put something into Brownie and see if that lets her figure out what it does!
And no, not a passive: how would she know if she suddenly doesn’t sweat anymore is due to Brownie or just that she hasn’t done anything to cause her to sweat?
I’d say to put a passive into the shield orb, and also a passive in the brownish unknown one.
The lighthook one will likely let her bud off a tentacle and have it be persistent, so she can tie up a bad buy and leave, spidey-style. Neat, but not that useful, since she has team members and handcuffs.
On the other hand, the shield orb passive will, by design, likely be something life-saving.
Worst case, she can’t figure out what the brownish one’s new power does at all, but that’s still going to be a pay-off in the future.
Passive in Brownie won’t help her figure out what it is for (specially if it stops her from consuming spicy foods)
We do know there has PROBABLY been a problem with the fly orb at least one other time in its past, which led to Sydney finding the orbs in the first place.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-637-beware-the-history-tab/
(panels 1, 4, 6, and 7)
I thought she had worked this through with Dabbler so she was ready for when this happened?
Did I imagine that?
Sydney is like a gamer playing a game without an English patch or guide. You have to eyeball everything and try to guess what each skill upgrade might be. Sure you have context clues, but the moment she gets the upgrades reality likes to kick in forcing her to rush it.
1st upgrade? Didn’t know she was selecting one.
2nd upgrade(s)? Laser kaju attacking.
3rd upgrade? Bathroom that other people need to use…
Most LRPG novel MCs usually do not run into these problems or they get a useful guide or OP skills that fixes everything even if they pick a bad one.
It’s much worse than that. The not-labelling has to be DELIBERATE.
Seriously. You’re an engineer, and you’re making up a grid like that. The only reason you would do so is if SOMEONE ELSE needed to understand what you’ve done. You already know all the stuff, why do you need the grid?
So it’s there for your successor, and you DELIBERATELY left off all the labels… why?
I’m assuming it’s because someone somewhere is monitoring the spheres and what they do, and THEY are determining when Sydney levels up, as opposed to just ‘somehow’ reacting to what she’s done.
So the orbs are a huge testing mechanism, and Sydney hasn’t twinked to the fact.
It also means she does have an audience, and they are doubtless amused with her.
Or the labels might be in a color or mental bandwidth invisible to humans. Remember, this UI wasn’t made for Sydney.
Krona seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the meaning of the orbs when it’s in upgrade mode so maybe one need to be like Krona to be able to read the ‘instruction manual.’
Or there was labelling, the previous owner turned it off, and Sydney doesn’t know how to turn it back on.
Or the manual is physically separate and was somewhere else when Sydney found the orbs.
One of the passives could turn on the instruction manual.
> Most LRPG novel MCs usually do not run into these problems or they get a useful guide or OP skills that fixes everything even if they pick a bad one.
The good thing is that there are no mutually exclusive choices. If Sydney picks a bad one, she’ll still have great powers, and once she gets the next upgrade she can get something better. She’ll be no worse off than before.
Just for the sake of survival, the sheild passive should be high priority
Shield passive for sure. After that, maybe link light hook with pew pew which should be very obvious in effect, or link shield and flight since she uses those the most.
I agree, she’d be able to grab someone and then a “skeeeee” as it powers up. One more Ted down!
Here’s a trailer for the latest Asterix film-Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeBTzUCF4Ng
I feel like you should keep writing this comic until that skill tree is completely filled out!
I… would be greatly saddened if this comic folded and there wasn’t at least a, “hey, here’s what that skilltree was *supposed* to be, people” page.
Maybe it’s time to look at the unknown orb too, who knows what that might unlock.
If she’s making the choice right now (instead of a few weeks ago at Archon), I would pick the center ring in hopes that it would increase the energy pool or regeneration.
Doesn’t she have the communicator to maybe call for Dabbler’s help? We already know she can somewhat interpret the skill-tree, and she’d be a monumental help with it!
The reflection in her glasses is the wrong way round. It’s been flipped to how we see it, but as we’re looking at the back of it the reflection should be the same way round.
Never mind, I see now that’s it’s just rotated as the orbs are still spinning. I wasn’t expecting them to be doing that as that must make selecting a point really tricky.
I dislike games where you have to use a spreadsheet and a higher mathematical exam to try and get the most out of 6 stats and 14 different skills… and a million different items with benefits/drawbacks to half of the skills..
Wait, her balls still rotate while in the Points Mode? That could be awkward…
Listen VAIRY carefully… I will say zis only wurnce..
I think she might have trouble reaching the ones at the top of the circle otherwise.
Kinda surprised they haven’t had a meeting or two with Sydney to discuss what pips she should unlock next at this point. Both so she doesn’t do a rando unlock and that they can upgrade at awkward moments.
They did: when she picked the Florb Passive (that gave her Featherfall)
And yet, she was stuck with decision paralysis.. again. When it should be a matter of ‘upgrade time, consensus was you get to be the lucky pip I unlock next, congrats’
“Allo” is really only ever said on the phone. (Besides sarcastic/ironic uses, of course.)
I think they did discuss. I think she has forgotten.
Listen VAIRY carefully… I will say zis only wurnce..
Listen VAIRY carefully, I will say zis only wurnce…
More shield would be the practical choice. The squishy human can’t do anything if she is dead.
More dakka would be more fun.
More speed would be even more fun.
Her dakka is already enough fun – she can already remodel landscapes with it.
Ditto her speed – she’s capped by the speed limit set by her commanders, not the orbs.
Shield passive, however, helps deal with one of her current weaknesses.
OMG, just connect the forcefield and the airball to make long trips easier!
Is it me but going with my “charge indicator” statement of the other day, the middle looks less populated than previously,
The middle still has the three wedges it had previously. Two that it started off with and one from Sidney’s extra after killing Squidward-monster’s buddies.
I end up restarting RPGs several times when I first start playing them so that I can learn the skill trees, then I start planning out my leveling process. It’s one of the few things that I can concentrate on with my ADHD, once I get going. And don’t get me STARTED on describing my Tabletop RPG process!!! We could be here for WEEKS!
Two points into the unknown one, may as well see what it does right off the bat.
Of course, if ‘connecting’ two orbs lets her use both in one hand that changes things radically.
I think that’s how it’s suppose to work, once she levels up each one enough she could work them directly with her mind rather than ball juggle (snerk…) Hey! Just a thought, maybe THAT’S what the last one does! once they are all combined she just needs to hold it!
Putting points into a complete unknown while you’re on a passenger airplane in midair seems beyond irresponsible.
What if it emits an EMP and shuts down all the electronics of the airplane or something else even more dangerous to the civilians around her?
I would connect the lighthook with another orc. My personal headcanon at this stage is that the two-orb limit is too restrictive for a fully upgraded set, so a connection between orbs means one can use one orbs powers while holding a different linked orb.
IIRC Dave has said very specifically that there will be no upgrade that allows her the powers of more than two balls at the same time. That’s the fundamental limitation on her power set and she’s keeping it so that she’ll be an engaging character to write about and have some kind of difficulties to overcome.
The ‘linked’ slots may stand for individual powers that are usable with either orb, (like a long-distance communication thing could possibly appear on the fly orb with the same UI as the Aetherium Causeway, or it could appear on the CommBall – or it could be on both, via the linking slot) or they may be power stunts that require her to be have a hand on both of those particular orbs and allow their powers to interact in ways they normally wouldn’t (like the PPO and CommBall could have a linked pip that allows a “tele-clone” to fire a PPO blast from its location).
When dealing with a large set of unlabeled options I suggest to take the experimental options for optimal future performance.
Connect two orbs, open a new part, upgrade the brown orb.
Upgrading the brown orb is risky, because you don’t know how to make it do anything.
In this case I suggest connecting the brown orb with an often used orb like the tentacle one, so you’ve the highest chance of finding out.
the other point can go to an unknown branch.
The middle is fun, but I fear it will only increase the number of undocumented options(I think it adds a ball, because it’s circular in the middle and requires equal charge to the amount of balls)
Also start pre-documenting what the newest upgrade should be.
Looks like an extra finger has accidentally crept into panel 6…
Actually I believe that is a double positioned finger to indicate she is flicking her finger tip out and back. There are motion lines but the orb overlay kinda hides them.
Lighthook passive is cool if it gives her super strength, telekinesis, mini-lighthooks on her hands, and/or tractor beams. For the other point… I’d be for filling the middle again, or shield passive, or lightbee passive. What if it gives her perfect vision? Night vision? Superman-style X-ray vision? Built-in telescope?
Without a specific goal to work toward, such as getting access to hyperspace travel, perhaps Sydney should be putting her points into activating the orbs she can’t use yet, so she can find out what their ability types even *are*…
Let me guess, the engine problem was because of poor energy flow! I watch magical sci fi,I know the tropes!
For what it’s worth, my guess is that the orbs are powered by spicy food. That would explain why Sydney has such a high tolerance for the heat.
Please forgive me if someone already said this.
Christ, idiot, on an international flight there’s no way in hell there’s only one bathroom on the plane. Go shit somewhere else, mmkay?
She just told the last guy that the toilet was broken, this is flight crew checking on what she did to break it
One of my biggest annoyances with Final Fantasy X was the Sphere Grid’s extreme incrementalism and lack of UI – you can spend up to 3 S. levels in a single move, but any more than that, and you’re skipping spheres on the way past (okay, if you have empty slots in the right place, you can also skip past them), and the more you try spending S. levels as they come in, the harder it gets to keep track of your seven different long-term plans, so you end up having to replan every time you come back to the Grid…
Include an auto-fill feature, where you can move long distance and activate all spheres on your path, or, better yet, a planning feature where you can lay out a path for future levels and follow it until you find yourself unable to activate a sphere, and the Grid becomes much less hostile.
Of course, that still leaves the problem of needing to cycle characters through every combat you want them to get experience in…
i wonder what a passive skill for lighthook would look like.
also, we have that unknow passive for atmo orb
and, of course, there is the brown orb, that does have some upgrades, so it must be really important for a previous owner (speculations).
Maybe staying active and holding its last position when she releases the orb?
whatever happened to the idea of pixel(?) (the universe hacking girl) somewhat understanding her orbs? it was touched once and never again…
Krona. Pixel is the were-panther with laser claws.
Didn’t ARC have suggestions on where to spend skillpoints? Did they stop giving advance planning for this at some point?
They wanted her to put another point in the Fly orb to open up the new skill tree, then put a pip in that new line. She did – Mach 16 + opened up aetherium causeway travel.
They wanted her to find out what the dashed segments led towards, but didnt say anything about the pips for that.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-430-sweet-dreams-are-made-of-deez-orbs/
They wanted her to fnid out what the encapsulated points were for. She did – passives.
They wanted her to find out what the linking branches were for. She has not done that yet, so probably that.
Sydney was considering adding a point in the unknown orb – most likely the encapsulated one.
Sydney was considering using a point on the comm orb – most likely the encapsulated one because it might make discovery of what it does easier.
Sydney was considering using a point on one of the other 2 part pip lines in the PPO for a possible different type of attack other than an energy cutting beam/energy machine gun beam (homing missile? mine layer?)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-945-upgradde-with-a-double-dose-of-indecision/
Sydney has also surmised that the center dots might be for getting a more intuitive understanding of the orbs.
So the only other thing that ARCHON specifically was wanting from her was to find out one of the connecting pips.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a definite choice Sydney was expected to make, but that she (and we) have forgotten it.
I’d like to see more systems give out fewer points, but instead just auto-increment every prior buy as you level.
Sure, that 1.45% strength boost at level 1 is not a lot. But because it was the first one you picked, by the time you’re level 30 it’s giving you a 10% strength boost.
Right from the get go, you get to sort of lay out: this is what I am planning on doing.
Okay I am confused, there is no way a military minded org would allow a Sydney to ad lib her skill choices.
You literally have a planning team assigned and debriefs (Dabbler snarking) so that when the next choice happens Scoville knows what to prioritize. I thought I saw this mentioned already.
Plus yes she can still get Dabbler via comms.
As for trouble with airliner crew, did you really let people travel on civilian transport without given these Supers a set of Air Marshal credentials?
Actually, Dabbler might be so busy trying to plan the skill choices that she would miss the debrief joke.
Also, yes, she totally should’ve contacted Dabbler.
My first thought was “yell for Dabbler”, followed by “maybe try your military-issued satellite phone first”. Dabbler could easily whip up some screens or glamors for sufficient privacy / security.
That skill tree and its upgrades are matters of national security, Sydney shouldn’t be winging this alone even if ArcLight hadn’t already made recommendations. Causing a small scene getting Dabbler present, even after grounding the last plane, is far less uncomfortable than the dressing down the brass is going to give her for not doing requesting backup.
Why not? Limited information means uninformed choices. There’s no point in someone who is also uninformed giving someone else guidance about uninformed choices.
There’s about enough information available to make vague general suggestions – try a linking slot, try an encapsulated slot, try a center slot, etc. Make experiments that can show you in general terms how it works. But show me an officer trying to make choices down to the individual slot level, and I’ll show you an officer who has absolutely no excuse to cover their ass if their choice turns out to be wrong.
Syd is the world’s leading expert on this. Nobody – including her commanding officer – knows more about it than she does. Her commanding officer knows that.
What they should have done is sit down with Sydney, talk it out for a bit and then tell her (or more like, agree with her) which to upgrade next.
The point is preparing her so she won’t have to rush a decision, which also includes talking to experts (Dabbler or Zephan know a lot of things Sydney doesn’t about magitech, Maxima et al. know more than her about police and military tactics so they can help her figure out if any of the known pips would be really useful).
This doesn’t mean overriding her – as clearly seen, she doesn’t know what she wants. She would be quite happy right now with an order of “buy the shield orb passive, then out a point in the unknown orb”, because it would get her past her choice paralysis.