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Honestly, even though I'm perfectly aware that none of my LPs are anything special, I'm pretty OK with them. (Except for that first aborted attempt at Lunar 1, of course) My big things is a) yeah I re-read my LPs too sometimes I cringe when I see my hideous typos, b) I really didn't have a great grasp of what I was doing for my first real LP, and if I had done it now it'd look a hell of a lot nicer, and c) the challenge I chose for my FF2 LP just wasn't really enough to sustain an LP and I really should have chosen something that was way harder (honestly that's why I never submitted that LP to archive.) Although for some of you all saying that your future LPs will never be as good as one you did, I kinda feel like Dragon Song might be that for me. Although I kinda feel that's because Dragon Song was such an easy target; all I had to do was go "LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT." Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 23:03
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Ambisagrus posted:"hey, just so you know we were a lot younger when we made these and probably said some poo poo we wouldn't say now." This is something I don't regret: deciding to make my LPs family friendly. As much as I like bad words, this means I don't have to worry about in 5 years from how when some random word goes from good offensive to bad offensive.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:03
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Camel Pimp posted:Although for some of you all saying that your future LPs will never be as good as one you did, I kinda feel like Dragon Song might be that for me. Although I kinda feel that's because Dragon Song was such an easy target; all I had to do was go "LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT." In all honesty LPing really bad games is far more impressive, because it really I can't imagine playing a bad game all the way. Let alone making an LP. It's hard enough doing one for a game I like.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:12
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Kaubocks posted:Since then it's been rough.  My regret is you not saving the BN3 LP like you said you would.No, but jokes aside, I had the counter-intuitive good fortune to lose the first two LPs I did here 4-5ish years ago, as WaffleImages ceased to exist and I switched to LPix in time to save the BN4 LP. BN2 went on to be done by MissEchelon in a very enjoyable way, and BN3 has been passed on. After two goddamned years of being a thread, it's in other hands now, though I'm providing a very brief commentary period despite some misgivings. Wish I didn't have to, but my biggest regret in retrospect is how abysmally long it took, purely because of how much I stopped wanting to write for it. I'm utterly sick of writing SSLPs. Like was said earlier, SSLPs are so exacting. One has to be meticulous as all hell to convey everything they want to, and it feels like I have to set aside way too much time and energy to write them. I may attempt to stream things in the future, but they'll almost certainly be casual, not comprehensive, plays done for my own fun. LPing became too much like work and too little like a hobby, over time, especially as my own standards and expectations of myself increased. Nowadays, I'm considering myself retired. But god, BN4. I was out of my goddamned mind, literally. The BN5 segment of the LP has a bit in the Nebula Factory where I apologized for an absence and thanked my thread for being understanding and supportive, as I'd just been released from a psychiatric ward I'd been put on for a week. What I didn't say was that it was following a suicide attempt, and I resumed LPing again during the outpatient care month to follow. In a strange way, I used the LPs as a way to both vent my unstable flip-flops between anger and bitter disappointment while reminding myself of happier times in life. Indeed, I will be forever grateful for the kindness and positive feedback I received from my threads. Memorably bad derails aside. Considering Something Awful was, and is, Something Awful, I was astonished by the concern and positivity showed to me in my LPs. It cheered me up whenever someone said they laughed at something, or a particular update was enjoyed especially. Even then, I'm still startled whenever someone recognizes me anywhere else. I'll never consider myself a "big name LPer", nor a veteran given I registered here in 2010. And yet people seem to have greatly enjoyed what I wrote. For the BN4-6 LPs, to a lesser extent the later BN1, though, I'm overall quite happy with them. BN4 is a cesspit of pure hatred, and watching my sanity erode in the LP (as if from the terrible game itself) is funny even to myself in retrospect. And because I (almost) always recorded the bossfight videos without commentary, there's nothing for me to go back and be appalled by commentary-wise from there. BN5 went far better than I expected, and BN6 was genuinely fun. Vietnamese Crystal was/is funny as hell, and the existence of the Volcano Bakemeat cooking contest in that thread remains my favorite thing to ever come from being here. And, privately? I'm quite open about previous events now. I've moved on and improved myself, and I know a lot of people are too ashamed by their problems and sources of depression and anxiety to admit them. So I hope to show them all that making other people happy really can give a sense of accomplishment to someone, and little acts of kindness or a good laugh can mean a whole goddamned lot to people who lack any of either. Plus, my goal in doing the BN LPs was to vindicate the series, as it had always been viewed with contempt from others. I remember a long time ago, some guy got booed in a crowd at some game convention for asking if any Battle Network characters would make it into one of Capcom's crossover fighters. Booed. With Capcom disintegrating into a churning froth of terrible decisions and stupidity, people have looked back at MegaMan titles they never played before, and the BN games have had a sort of revival in esteem. Whether or not I contributed even a tiny bit to people trying out the series, I'm pleased with more people getting into them. But screw doing SSLPs anymore, seriously.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:15
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Dr Pepper posted:In all honesty LPing really bad games is far more impressive, because it really I can't imagine playing a bad game all the way. Let alone making an LP. It's hard enough doing one for a game I like. LPing bad games is fun in a way since you also have a lot of material to criticize and pick apart. Part of the fun of my LP of FF4: The After Years was going into all the various things it did wrong and why they were bad, and part of that makes me want to LP more bad games (if I had more than like one other game I'd want to LP that fit that criteria). Plus it's just fun to see a LPer rip a game apart, like Quovak's LP of the first two Golden Sun games or a lot of The Dark Id's LPs. The only bad part is actually playing those games which is why you'd do games with great gameplay and horrible stories.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:17
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Dr Pepper posted:In all honesty LPing really bad games is far more impressive, because it really I can't imagine playing a bad game all the way. Let alone making an LP. It's hard enough doing one for a game I like. Honestly LPing the game really liked, the whole reason I started lping (that is, Lunar 2) was waaaaay more paralyzing, because I personally was so worried about getting right. Should I try to make the game look as good as possible, or be honest about it's flaws? What do I say about this scene; do I dissect it or let it speak for itself? I actually took out one or two examples of Working Designs' less.... PC script (I actually straight up changed a word... I wonder if anyone noticed), and I almost kind of wonder if that was cowardly. Dragon Song? Screw it, whatever.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:18
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Mega64 posted:LPing bad games is fun in a way since you also have a lot of material to criticize and pick apart. It's a good thing that I truly enjoy playing all the bad games that I LP.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:23
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It's a lot easier to have stuff to say about bad games. I'm LPing a game I think is bad right now and I feel like the commentary's flowing better than on a game I did like. Even if it is harder to maintain the same love and care you'd put into a good game LP for a bad one, it's still pretty satisfying when you come off with a video or update that just presents the game better than the developers could. I said earlier that I felt bad about delaying the final missions of the 007 LP, but I am proud of how I presented those awful, awful missions so that curious minds may never have to suffer that travesty for themselves.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:23
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lps of bad games can be funny but sometimes they can be obnoxious, imo
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Apr 24, 2015 23:24
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Epee Em posted:
No joke I debated mentioning that here. I know it's not really a huge deal since it's basically being redone, but it is something I felt kinda bad about. The longer I took trying to recapture the images for the update I was looking at, the more images would get lost in future updates. It ended up being way more work that I realized and instead of saying anything I just kinda dropped it. Sorry about that. 
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Apr 24, 2015 23:24
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The easy part about LPing games that are very good or very bad is that you can let the game speak for itself. Of course, that also makes things pretty drat boring for the LPer because when the game speaks for itself then what the hell are you saying?
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Apr 24, 2015 23:27
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Another regret I have was my first experience as a co-commentator. I don't regret offering my services, but the call I got to do it was out of the blue and after I'd returned home from a night of celebration with my family. I admit I had one or five drinks, and in the intoxicated mind when the call came I thought to myself "I'm fine, let's do this!" Listening back I missed my introduction and my commentary was a slurred, sloppy mess. I felt really bad after as it wasn't my own LP but someone else's child. But I've made more than a few returns since and I've done my best to redeem myself. The main thing is that for the past few months I've gotten to know a really nice guy over the past few months, commentating on a half hour video has ended up in chats two hours long at times about various things. I'm glad I started it, but after that first time I was very surprised when I got a second call up. After typing all this I've just found out that koboje's X-Com Apocalypse LP is now wrapped up.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:28
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Mega64 posted:The easy part about LPing games that are very good or very bad is that you can let the game speak for itself. Of course, that also makes things pretty drat boring for the LPer because when the game speaks for itself then what the hell are you saying? That's easy! You say stuff like "this game is shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" and "this game is assssssssssssss".
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Apr 24, 2015 23:28
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Mega64 posted:The easy part about LPing games that are very good or very bad is that you can let the game speak for itself. Of course, that also makes things pretty drat boring for the LPer because when the game speaks for itself then what the hell are you saying? i don't like it when people let the game speak for themselves. i find a lot of SSLPs basically just dump the game into a different format, and I get bored with them. i deliberaly did the opposite and really tried to communicate why I liked Trails in the Sky in my last LP, although i'm a pretty bad writer so I'm not entirely satisfied with the job i did, bringing it back to the main topic.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:29
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I've only done one LP and that's probably how it's going to stay, because I feel like I won't be able to do whatever I play next any justice. I already feel like my first LP wasn't as good as it could have been, and that's with the verbal responses from people who thought it was fine. I just want to do a thing in a suitable format and generate interest in games that would otherwise not be on anyone's mind, and yet I don't think I'm the right person for the job.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:36
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Mega64 posted:The easy part about LPing games that are very good or very bad is that you can let the game speak for itself. Of course, that also makes things pretty drat boring for the LPer because when the game speaks for itself then what the hell are you saying? Wind up desperately trying to convince your LP co-commentators and your viewers that what you're looking at is actually a lost work of Shakespeare while they laugh and view you with complete and utter contempt. Cake Attack posted:i don't like it when people let the game speak for themselves. i find a lot of SSLPs basically just dump the game into a different format, and I get bored with them. I feel you. This is exactly why I got bored LPing Torin's Passage.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:04
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CannibalK9 posted:Like Kaubocks with Saints Row 2, playing through The Void has pretty much spoiled me on all other games. I cut my teeth on Return to Zork and Zork Nemesis, and looking back I've no clue why as I'd no prior experience or desire and was hit with technical limitations from the start. But at least there I had no expectations, the threads were good natured and it was something to do. Oddly enough, your The Void LP features pretty predominately in an article on the AV Club about Let's Play.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:10
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I regret the BlazBlue LP when I think about it. Mostly because I tried to force too much content into the videos, if I could do it again I'd definitely take the same sort of approach as the P4A LP. And play a less bad game. I guess I'd also go back to the Bourne Conspiracy LP and unfuck the audio, because there's three commentators and the leveling is so terrible I don't even care about what it was like. But the Soul Gambler LP was just a honeypot meant to destroy the hopes of everyone that clicked on it and I wish I could do it a hundred more times.
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Apr 25, 2015 04:18
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I probably should finish my Diablo 1 LP. Hard to concentrate when your friends are playing fun multiplayer games. Also putting the "let us" part back into the let's play. Who did that Minesweeper LP with goons as soldiers? Inventive and clever. Not very many blind LPs. Something neat about watching or reading about someone discovering a classic video game moment for the first time. And LPs including tabletop RPGs, CYOAs, and live board games.
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Apr 25, 2015 04:42
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queserasera posted:I probably should finish my Diablo 1 LP. Hard to concentrate when your friends are playing fun multiplayer games. Also putting the "let us" part back into the let's play. Who did that Minesweeper LP with goons as soldiers? Inventive and clever. Not very many blind LPs. Something neat about watching or reading about someone discovering a classic video game moment for the first time. http://lparchive.org/Minesweeper/ Blind Sally, apparently. I was disappointed in the ending, but most of the content until then was hilarious.
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Apr 25, 2015 04:48
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I have said for forever that I really, really hate my Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction LP. Not only has it not aged well, but it was a disaster putting it together. Hell, the commentary for the first few episodes were done in callgraph for gently caress's sake. I was also using a really awful program to edit it and had no idea what I was doing. I don't rewatch a lot of my stuff to begin with (because i put so much work into them that watching them again seems kinda tedious), but having gone back and TRYING to rewatch it I couldn't get past the first episode. It's just awful in my eyes, though I know some people enjoyed it for some reason. The two most fun LPs I've had putting together so far are Lollipop Chainsaw and God of War. It's mostly due to getting to work with other people. I met some really cool people during LC, as well as getting a couple of friends I hadn't gotten the chance to sit down with in a video in a while for it. It also didn't hurt that most people in those videos had no idea going into it what Lollipop Chainsaw was like or about, and reliving those moments of "Woah that thing is crazy and anime as gently caress and I love it" with them was a blast. God of War was different because I didn't really work with them directly, but it was fun to edit (aside from having to manually add subtitles and im not looking forward to having to do that again), especially the educational bits that people sent me. I really want to do more subtitle stuff. The Portal games and Journey were good, but done in programs not really fit for doing subtitle stuff too well, plus I don't have to worry about talking to myself (which i hate doing if you cant tell by my two.25 solo voiced projects) or having to worry about when other people are free to do whatever. My best LP in terms of audio and visual quality is probably always going to be whichever one is most recent. I'm always learning tricks and stuff to make my audio clearer, getting better equipment, etc etc. I've even found a setup for better live commentary if I ever get off my rear end and do another one of those.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:13
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:I never stole that Genji Helm. YOU MOTHERFUCKER
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Apr 25, 2015 05:16
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StrixNebulosa posted:http://lparchive.org/Minesweeper/ The gently caress are you talking about? That ending was fantastic. ChaosArgate posted:It's a lot easier to have stuff to say about bad games. I'm LPing a game I think is bad right now and I feel like the commentary's flowing better than on a game I did like. Even if it is harder to maintain the same love and care you'd put into a good game LP for a bad one, it's still pretty satisfying when you come off with a video or update that just presents the game better than the developers could. I said earlier that I felt bad about delaying the final missions of the 007 LP, but I am proud of how I presented those awful, awful missions so that curious minds may never have to suffer that travesty for themselves. I'm also gonna Nth the "bad games breed better commentary" idea that Chaos and others have mentioned. I felt this kind of fire inside me when LPing White Knight Chronicles, even if it was just a variation on "just look at this lovely rear end game, can you believe it just did X". Though on the topic of "user generated" LPs, I had a right proper blast doing the Total Extreme Wrestling LP which I took over from Smasher Dynamo with Blind Sally. The part that made that one so enjoyable was the fact that 80% of our content was if not audience generated, then definitely audience inspired. The majority of the fun came after we put up a new update and various people would post follow-up replies to what happen to their wrestler on that particular show update in character. And then those bits would go on to inform what happened when they appeared next time and so on and so forth. I keep telling myself that one day I'm going to get an Archives account just so that I can dig both Smashers' and our threads out of the archive abyss and get them hosted on the LP Archive with everyone's various reply updates included just best it was some really hilarious stuff and everyone (who stuck around with it, anyway) played off each other amazingly well.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:25
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I should probably go finish your White Knight LP. I was enjoying it a lot but that gamergater dude, onmi I think, just wouldn't stop being horrible in the thread and I had to quit.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:36
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Hoo boy. Where to start for me? I think the biggest problem I have is audio. I have a lovely mic that works fairly well, but it was busted for quite a few of my first LPs and made everything really loud so I had to reduce the noise by a lot. It worked, mostly, but every video has a different level of audio and it's something I need to fix when I have actual money to get an actual microphone, but at the moment, it seems to be okay. I'm also becoming much, MUCH more strict in what I cut out and balance so that I can actually be heard, whereas some videos I didn't even listen back because I couldn't be arsed. As for actual LPs, they're not all that great, I have definitely improved since I started, since, well, the only way I can go is up. After doing so many LPs with Deeds, I'm actually kinda puzzled as to why I wanted to do Populous 3 solo. Because in some of the long videos I am just babbling to myself trying to find SOMETHING to talk about. I might have actually started to go insane, it was unbelievable. Otherwise, I'm just happy I finished it and, worryingly enough, is my most popular thread. That says a lot about me. Bug's Life is fine, there isn't much I can improve on that, since the game is terrible enough. It's always audio. Mark of the Ninja I enjoyed a lot, but I will say I deeply, deeply regret doing the entire game AGAIN in Pacifism. They are by far my least watched videos and my thread just died when people noticed what I was actually doing. I am hoping for another LP of this game, because honestly, it deserves better, it is definitely my favorite game that I've LPed because it's so good. I do hate how it took around eight months to loving finish. I had recorded footage sitting around on my hard drive for nearly six months, it was terrible. The Grinch was a lot of fun because of how much care went into such a bad and low budgeted movie advertisement that has basically nothing to do with the movie. The big regret is that the schedule completely fell apart so, again, the thread died and it finished two months after it should've. Ugh. Otherwise, I liked it. Commander Keen was when things were doing okay, until I realized that I'd been pumping things out at 360p. AHHHHHHH. So now I have problems with both the audio and the visual. It's terrible, at least I had the last three videos in glorious 720p. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the LP and could show off that your childhood sucks. And then we come to my full HD LP of GTA1. And holy crap I wanted this LP to be over by like part 7. Out of 27. There's always something that comes up, it's never perfect. This is probably the only LP where I've actually realized what a terrible mistake I've made, but goddamn I am finishing this piece of poo poo. I suppose that applies to pretty much every LP I've done in that by about halfway I'm bored of it already and just wanna move on to the next one. Maybe I should stop recording the whole game within a week. Overall, I'm happy with how things have gone, the views I've gotten and the whole £1 I've gotten from revenue (I actually don't monetize my vids, because what the hell would I even get from it?) so I always go into my next LP thinking maybe I'll actually like this one when I'm done. I never do.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:47
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My half-assing of Last Scenario still makes me cringe every time I think about it. While I'm okay with the commentary for the most part, the technical side of things was dogshit through and through, even accounting for just how near death's door my laptop was by the end of my attempt at the thread. Badly cropped facesets, my utter lack of gently caress-giving over properly linking music for the first 10 updates, and my stupid decision to capture screenshots AS I WAS PLAYING made for one hell of a badly-executed LP. I think there's even one boss fight where I flat out admit "I forgot I was LPing this game so we join this bossfight already in progress." Thank Christ TheOneAndOnlyT stepped up to do it up right. Now that I actually have a decent computer that should theoretically be better-equipped to deal with LP stuff, I may revisit LPing in future. I just haven't figured out what I want to do yet.
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Apr 25, 2015 05:50
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I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to make my first LP a narrative one. I really wish I just went full informative for Etrian Odyssey 2 instead of a hybrid of narrative and informative, since I found out I cannot write for beans. I cringe every time I look at my character writing (I have no idea how anyone finds that poo poo remotely amusing), but not the parts where I do normal commentary explaining what's going on and what I'm trying to pull off. I feel like I did a good job with those, and I'm kind of glad I did the Let's Play since I learned some tricks I normally wouldn't have thought of doing in a regular playthrough of an Etrian Odyssey game. Really the thing that bothers me the most is that my commentary style and the visual aids I made for the LP visibly changed as the Let's Play progressed. I kind of wish someone else would come along and do a much better job of showing off the game than I did. Has anyone been tempted to just redo their earlier updates, or actually did that? On the plus side, I'm glad I learned some tricks to make LPing easier for myself, like recording the gameplay and then taking screenshots from the footage. That is a godsend.
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Apr 25, 2015 06:20
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Dr. Fetus posted:Has anyone been tempted to just redo their earlier updates, or actually did that? On a relatively minor level, yes. When I was copyediting White Knight Chronicles to get it ready for archiving I also swapped out all the screenshots where the Avatar appears in the first few chapters because I changed Avatar models halfway through the first game and the inconsistency always bugged me. Beyond that I added in just a few minor jokes or tightened up my explanation of certain gameplay elements. My rationale was that I was doing it for anyone who would be coming fresh into the LP once it went live on the LP Archive... But I haven't heard hide or head from baldurk in well over a month so who knows if anything will be going up on the Archive any more.  I also played through a cheap copy of the original White Knight Chronicles International Edition (the original version of the first game that came bundled with White Knight Chronicles II), so I slipped in a couple of comparisons between how WCKIE played vs. the remake of WKC I. Over all though, just sprinklings of little, probably pointless poo poo mainly to satisfy my own thoughts and feelings on the game more than anything else. Small Frozen Thing posted:I should probably go finish your White Knight LP. I know Artix's rule is "don't smacktalk other people/LPs", but since you brought him up, yeah Onmi was an... interesting unexpected feature to the LP. But I won't go into that any further. But yeah.
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Apr 25, 2015 06:39
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I feel bad for having chosen Company of Heroes as my first LP, opening with some pretty lame attempt at jokes and not editing anything.  The worst is that CoH is a seriously fun game that I kind of want to revisit, especially to finish off the DLC campaigns. It was a great learning experience, at least, and helped me figure out how to edit and get comfortable talking to myself. Although, nowadays, I'm starting to wonder why I LP RTS games without a co-commentator 
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Apr 25, 2015 06:42
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Looking back over my Project Phantasma LP just recently, I'm overall satisfied with how I handled that game's Arena mode to make those 49 matches not so same-y every single time. Though I still have the same regret that I did midway through when I ultimately resorted to abusing the same stage and load out for the last 2/5 of that mode due to game difficulty spiking. For as much as I love that feature of Armored Core games, it really is drat hard to make something interesting out of the arena compared to the regular campaign missions. At least it worked out nicely as far as pacing was concerned. Though hopefully once I am done with MoA a few months or so from now, I hope to actually start working on speaking skills and transition to doing full VLPs. The whole hybrid LP style I've stuck with has more been out of necessity as talking aloud to myself is something I've not been comfortable with, at least compared to having someone else to bounce off with. Or who knows, I might just be overly conscious about how I sound and talking solo ain't that hard. Just uncertainties holding me back in trying different things.
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Apr 25, 2015 07:08
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My first foray into LP'ing was a joint VLP with Next Tangent of Jedi Outcast (followed up by Jedi Academy). It was two competing runs of the single-player on the second-highest difficulty. It wasn't really that good. The quality was pretty crappy since I was using windows media maker and using subtitles for an action game. Yeah. It really doesn't hold up well. It was mostly saved by the competing videos and competing styles meaning that even if my videos sucked, there were also videos from someone else to cover it up. I could probably do a bit better job of that today now that I have better tools, but probably not good enough to make it worth redoing since I refuse to do voice commentary. I also did another crappy VLP of Armed and Dangerous, which also sucked. I also made the terrible, horrible mistake of putting what I though was an "artistic" "stained-glass" Photoshop filter over the screenshots in the OP. I think I was trying to suggest that the tale was famed in legend. What it actually meant was that some people thought the game actually looked like that and no one wants to watch a hideously ugly game.  I keep getting tempted to do an couple "challenge run" LP's, either of Jedi Outcast on the highest difficulty, or an LP of the Serious Sam games on the highest difficulty in single-player (I find the co-op LP's boring). But I'm smart enough now to know that it's a bad idea. VLP's just aren't my style. The LP that really did form my style though, was Divine Divinity. It was a screenshot LP where I "enhanced" the narrative with additional comments and scenes. Not fourth-wall breaking pure comedy like some LP'ers, though, it was intended to be impossible to differentiate the fake from real stuff. This was mostly only possible because of the freedom the game offered to let me place objects and stage scenes, further enhanced with Photoshop. I also had prepared a lot of stuff ahead of time, like 15-20 updates in advance. I also wisely got feedback and criticism on my writing before posting it and refined that, in the hopes that it wouldn't be terrible. I still screwed up a lot on that LP, I made the mistake of thinking that the starter dungeon was more interesting than it actually ended up being, and I showed off too much of the game's content, which hurt the narrative pacing. My writing was still pretty weak and rough in a lot of places. Still though, I think in the end it turned out really well. I don't think I'll ever manage to do another LP quite like that again. I'm okay with that, as it was a tremendous amount of work.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:22
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I'd say my one regret so far has been when I spent a crap ton of money switching out my audio setup every couple days in search of the perfect setup. At that time I was unaware that higher price didn't necessarily mean better mic on the headset. So a few of my early videos for a time would have the audio recorded by a different headset each video as I tried to figure out what sounded better to me. I have a whole trash bag full of various $100 to $200 dollar headsets because I kept buying different ones and they all sounded horrible to me when compared to my original setup which was the logitech G35. Hell I even have a Blue Yeti mic sitting in my living room somewhere because I tried it out for a bit but wasn't able to get it in the right position. Eventually I ended going back to the G35 but instead of using it's mic I now sport the Samson Meteorite which I'm very happy with. All told it was a very dumb and expensive period, but I learned alot from it. I can't possibly forget that for a time I had a premium license on Xsplit and renewed it because at the time I felt OBS was too hard to figure out. Now I don't even use xsplit because I figured out OBS and it's so much easier, Nor getting Power Director because I wanted to avoid a subscription program like premiere only to have spent more than the subscription would have cost and then eventually getting premiere anyway. Like most I do go back and review some of my earlier work now and again and I can't even really listen to myself in those videos any more especially since the newer ones sound so much better. Doseku fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 17:27
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I regret my first LP because it was a blind SSLP of Earthbound. I regret my second LP because it was a live commentated LP of Devil May Cry 3 with no game sound, so I added random music in and dubbed over the cutscenes with my own hilarious writing. I regret my Binding of Isaac LP because it was garbage. I regret my first Dark Souls LP because it was loving garbage. I regret my Super Castlevania IV LP because my commentary added literally nothing but white noise I regret my Demon's Souls LP because it had mostly bland commentary and was recorded at 360p using a Dazzle. Everything looked like poop. I regret my second Dark Souls LP because the audio quality of the commentary was garbage in the first twelve or so episodes. Still, compared to the first one this is actually watchable. It's also where my commentary stopped being complete poo poo because I switched to post commentary. Now, the above are all LPs I did on other Forums. Out of the two I did on SA I regret my Demon's Crest LP in so far that I was too hard on the game at the end and it came across as too negative. Some people thought I didn't like the game  But I wouldn't have LP'd it if I didn't like it because I'm not one of those super hilarious fellas who play bad games ironically. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just notoriously unfunny and couldn't make something like that interesting. I have yet to regret my Dark Souls II LP, but it's only been a month. It'll come in due time. IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 17:59
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I frontload my regret during the production process and then try not to look back in case I might regret things in hindsight as well. I've re-recorded the first 0-15 minutes of every LP episode I've ever made between 3-10 times. At first it was because I found out I didn't have anything to say, leading to a huge amount of deleted intros like "Hello, this is [game]....seriously? that's all? this is stupid". Then that practice turned malignant and I started discarding longer pieces of ok'ish recordings as well because at minute 0-15 I did something stupid and I don't know why I couldn't just edit that out in post but it was either all or nothing, like trying to shoot movies with a single take. Luckily, I'm getting better at ignoring my urge to restart a recording. Nidoking posted:It was only within the past few years that I started scrubbing my audio for those annoying saliva noises that I've never found a pop filter to do anything about, and they disgust me every time I listen to anything from before that. I hate that poo poo so badly I can't understand why it didn't bother me at first. All the additional noises make me sound like a grandpa smacking open his mouth, stammering a few words, and then gasping for air from the effort of having formulated a sentence. Learning to recognize the telltale waveform spike of mouth noises and breathing took me a while, and deleting all that takes even longer, but I can no longer not do it.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:02
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I am filled with regrets on past LPs, some of them for abandoning them, some of them for being overambitious, some of them for even thinking they were a good idea (For me to do, as opposed to in general) in the first place. And, oddly enough, I'm in a love-hate situation with my current LP of the Wipeout series. But we'll get to that in a minute. The first ever LP I seriously attempted (Beyond hanging out with YT LPers, being a schmuck in Bad Company 2, etc) was The Thing. I abandoned it in that sodding tunnel where you have to escort two nigh useless NPCs past a small horde of well entrenched soldiers, and, looking back at what little footage I have saved of that... UGH. I was a jerk in the early days, and I'm glad I've grown somewhat, thanks to friends like The Mighty Biscuit. Recettear gets a similar mention, because very often, when someone mentions VLPing a JRPG, I pull the 125 video playlist out as proof that no, this is not a good idea without editing. Despite getting a bit burned out and having all sorts of technical difficulties, I still love the Aftermath LP and what there was of Aftershock and Afterlight. There were some insensitive jerk moments from me that I'd definitely like to go back and erase, but overall, it was enjoyable, and it was mostly entertaining to write. Still bloody tiring though. For all that the audio was shot half the time, and the quality wasn't great, and that I wanted to be super ambitious and do videos going over the history of Rogue Trooper and 2000AD (Which, thankfully, I was able to scale back to podcast style audio segments), I still had a lot of fun with Rogue Trooper. Out of the non-SA LPs, I had fun with Blade Kitten (yes, that one), I enjoyed snarking over Cold Fear, and I at least enjoyed the first third of Hydrophobia Prophecy (gently caress the rest, and gently caress going back to 100% it, however) I'm still mystified that my LP of Musaic Box is still watched a fair bit (Apparently, I'm one of the few people who LPed the game and paid for the full version. )And then, of course, there's Wipeout. Oh man, I regret so much, and yet I still like working on it (With some qualifications). The GoonRace footage for Wipeout XL has yet to materialise, and that is 100% my fault. I got overambitious and wanted to make pretty things for the updates, and scaled that back too. I regret that I hate encoding so much (The computer needs some serious upgrading, and I just can't afford that poo poo), because it slows the LP down, and, as much as I love the series, I'm trying to record/screencap other things so I can post something else (Which is another reason for the delays in the thread right now), because I see all these things I want to LP, dammit! Nonetheless, the folks who've participated in the thread have been cool, and understanding, and friendly, and many of them have made the videos a blast to record post-commentary for, and I love the fact it's one of the few racing games out there with more than just "Here's a race with some music on", because racing games do need some love.  Here's hoping I keep growing, and here's also hoping I do some more co-commentatin', because I very much enjoy that, and the friendships that have resulted.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:24
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I've only done one LP (Aquaria, back in the summer of 2010), and I regret a lot of what I did. Why I did that LP, though, I don't regret at all. I don't remember who it was, but there had been another Aqauria LP that got abandoned not even halfway through the game. I liked what I saw in that LP, and it led to me getting the game and playing it myself. I loved that game, and thought it was a shame there wasn't an LP for it. So, in the summer between high school graduation and starting college, I spent any free time I had outside of my part time job on my LP. Looking back, I had a really weird problem where I posted too fast, which meant there wasn't time in between updates for people to discuss the videos. I am glad I went with subtitles, partially because I hated hearing my own voice in recordings, and partially because that game has beautiful sound and music. I wish I still had the files for it, but I'm pretty sure they've been lost with an old computer being replaced. I've always wanted to do another, but starting college meant I needed to focus on studying. I still want to do another, now that I don't have as much course work, and I'd like to get a couple of friends together to do something dumb and fun. Recording equipment will be the biggest obstacle to that, but I know how I want to do it. Maybe I'll go back and redo Aquaria. I think I'd do voice commentary with a game design buddy of mine and have a second version with no commentary. Honestly, the one thing about my LP that I'm proud of is that it's been recommended in the Recommendations thread a couple of times as a sleep aid.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:37
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My main regret is our (my/Roboky's) first LP, War for Cybertron. That is almost entirely due to me being an awkward, jumpy gently caress on camera though, and that is what it is. I've considered taking it off Youtube a couple times, but everyone has to be bad before they can be good, and that LP is kind of a milestone in our development in and of itself. It's just mile zero. Beyond that, I'm glad to at least stand by any of the other work we've done, though I hesitate to toast most of it. There's still a ton of things that I don't fully understand, even after some 4-odd years of doing this. Certain LPs of mine, I feel, underperform when you consider how well they came together. Dark Messiah is basically the one that I always think of on this subject; my co-commentators were fantastic in that LP, the game cooperated by giving us funny events often, and even the timings worked very well after the heavy audio editing etc. The engine also cooperated when I strong-armed it into a non-standard ending that capitalized on an emergent joke, the punch line of which nearly killed Roboky and TehWarsmith in the last episode. However, it's still one of our least trafficked and commented LPs. The source material, I'm certain, doesn't help (Dark Messiah was never exactly a very big game), but I'd been under the impression that over time it would even out. I've turned out to be quite wrong about that. On the flip side of things, source material has definitely made one of our LPs over-perform relative to my expectations, though. Dawn of War 2 was great for a lot of reasons, between Roboky and I hitting our groove in a game we both loved to pieces for much the same reasons, me finding a niche with being goofy as gently caress and not taking myself too seriously (surprisingly enough, I do NOT really think about how much I hate elves unless it's for an LP, my avatars aside ), and the logistical victories of Roboky and I figuring out where our sweet spot lengths were. But Retribution, I always felt, was the weakest point of our year-long journey through that game. There was little to say that hadn't already been said, and the game didn't provide as many fun moments due to the changes in the campaign. And yet, the single most enduring request that we get on our Youtube channel is for us to go back and play the other Retribution campaigns, which boggles my loving head because - as we said very explicitly during the LP - they are all basically the same. The only thing I can think of is that it's just Dawn of War 2 being a pretty awesome game, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of the requests we'd get surrounding it. Even though it's like a year later, I feel like I need to go back and find a way to fill these requests now, even though the idea of actually doing a full LP that takes a lot of time is a big fat no way to me.Beyond that, my big regret is not learning to reach out to people sooner, I suppose. Over the last 6 months or so, I've been more and more willing to engage people who worked on the games I'm prospecting (or actively playing) to get their insights, and those conversations will frequently work their way into my commentary. It's even escalated up in the Majesty LP, where the most iconic voice actor in the game turned out to be one of the coolest guys on the planet and has joined us for a few episodes. I sometimes wonder how much traction I could've gotten with that before this point, though. Even ignoring my own personal development over the years (which has been substantial - the me of 3 years ago makes me wince), the conversation when talking to someone when you have 3,000 regular viewers and a published body of work as opposed to 30 and a few videos is completely different. I suppose, in the end, the biggest thing I can say is that I think I feel good enough about what we've been doing that I'm looking for ways to increase our activity, not taper it back or leave it the way it is. I have a few ideas on how to do that, though I need more hours in the day to make sure they get done. It's a pity those are such a commodity for me.
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Apr 25, 2015 19:31
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Breadmaster posted:I had a really weird problem where I posted too fast I can completely understand this. Looking back, that's one of the worst things I ever did, simply because it didn't give the thread time to react to what happened and to talk about it. It was "Event A to Event B" at breakneck speed, with little room for comments beyond that.
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Apr 25, 2015 19:31
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nine-gear crow posted:
That was a fantastic LP, and some of the most fun I've had contributing to a thread. It was great watching everyone try and one-up each other in the thread with more and more OTT shenanigans. I did feel weird at times with my updates, like I was overriding you guys, but everyone worked off each other so well, it never caused any commotion. Also funny how my characters one, like, twice in the entire saga, yet still seemed to be amongst the most popular guys in the run. I almost wish someone would do something similar, maybe a bit more organized. I'd be there first day.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:07
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Dr. Fetus posted:I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to make my first LP a narrative one. I really wish I just went full informative for Etrian Odyssey 2 instead of a hybrid of narrative and informative, since I found out I cannot write for beans. I cringe every time I look at my character writing (I have no idea how anyone finds that poo poo remotely amusing), but not the parts where I do normal commentary explaining what's going on and what I'm trying to pull off. I feel like I did a good job with those, and I'm kind of glad I did the Let's Play since I learned some tricks I normally wouldn't have thought of doing in a regular playthrough of an Etrian Odyssey game. Really the thing that bothers me the most is that my commentary style and the visual aids I made for the LP visibly changed as the Let's Play progressed. I kind of wish someone else would come along and do a much better job of showing off the game than I did. I was actually kicking around the idea of SSLPing EO2 but you showed up and did an infinitely better job than I would have done. So, uhh, I hope that means anything?
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Apr 25, 2015 20:12
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