>Curren. Sweetie. Failing a 6% Speed training isn't cute, but turning
>around and failing a 4% the minute you get out of the infirmary
>is statistically anomalous levels of uncute. You're not an
>XCOM squaddie, for chrissake.

Not to be outdone, BAKUSHIIIN failed a 1% Power training and lost three Mood levels and 10 points off EVERY STAT in the infirmary.

Some days you get the RNG, some days the RNG gets you.

--G.
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in the original Uma thread, Spectrum said:
>I will gripe that some of the UI/UX decisions reflect that this game
>is actually several years old at this point and is a late
>localization.

Yeah, it's a little clunky. I think some of that also comes from the fact that, even if you're playing on PC, it's clearly a Phone Game.

On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that although there's reportedly PvP in this game, it's so thoroughly buried in the interface that I don't even know where it is. :)

--G.
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>On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that although there's
>reportedly PvP in this game, it's so thoroughly buried in the
>interface that I don't even know where it is. :)
>
>--G.

Race -> Team Trials is considered 'fake' PVP where you're racing against shadow copies of other players but it's really a dog and pony (ha) show where you don't strictly need to win but you want to demonstrate skill usage and other things to earn points. The points you get is universally ranked for rewards every period.

Upcoming and what all the tryhards are building for is Champion Meet, which is Actual PVP where you just need to win, though even if you play it and lose you get something.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-04-25 AT 09:57 PM (EDT)
 
>Race -> Team Trials is considered 'fake' PVP where you're racing
>against shadow copies of other players but it's really a dog and pony
>(ha) show where you don't strictly need to win but you want to
>demonstrate skill usage and other things to earn points.

Yeah, I don't really consider it PvP if the other players aren't actually there, presumably pouring abuse into some kind of chat system and generally lowering the tone.

Also,

>you don't strictly need to win

Which is fortunate, because my teams routinely get rinsed, even by the one option for every trial that's worth fewer points. Only my Sprint crew is in any way reliable. :)

--G.
BAKUSHIIIIN
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>in the original Uma thread, Spectrum said:
>>I will gripe that some of the UI/UX decisions reflect that this game
>>is actually several years old at this point and is a late
>>localization.
>
>Yeah, it's a little clunky. I think some of that also comes from the
>fact that, even if you're playing on PC, it's clearly a Phone Game.

Oh hey, about this: I was just watching Reine play, and she grumbled about the clickfest that is Time Trials. Someone in chat noted that they fixed that eventually in the JP version, and so will presumably come along in Global... sometime.

I think it's kind of entertainingly weird that rather than just port the current state of the JP game, they evidently launched Global in the same state that the JP version launched in, rewinding the entire development cycle. I understand why they would have started with the original cast, because drip-feeding new characters is a huge part of how these games make their money, but the fact that the entire game got reset like a clean Windows XP install without any of the patches that dropped since the discs went gold is hilarious to me.

--G.
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>but the fact that the
>entire game got reset like a clean Windows XP install without
>any of the patches that dropped since the discs went gold is hilarious
>to me.

They did the same thing in FGO, and the reason that was given there was "it would be unfair to the JP players for Global to start with all the quality-of-life stuff installed, enough so that they might demanding we compensate them for it."

Now, obviously the games aren't 1:1 comparable, but that was the explanation I was given.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>They did the same thing in FGO, and the reason that was given there
>was "it would be unfair to the JP players for Global to start with all
>the quality-of-life stuff installed, enough so that they might
>demanding we compensate them for it."

In the position of the hypothetical company communications person facing such demands, I would issue everyone involved a copy of this article from The Onion.

--G.
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Ideally yes. In slight defense of FGO doing it, there was an amount of the premium currency given away each week for doing daily logins, and that increased from 2/week to 3/week after a couple years, so giving out ~104 extra currency (30 = 10 pulls in FGO) would've annoyed the JP players.

But the rest of the stuff, yeah, it'd be nice if they just got with the program now rather than +2 years from now.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Ideally yes. In slight defense of FGO doing it, there was an amount of
>the premium currency given away each week for doing daily logins, and
>that increased from 2/week to 3/week after a couple years, so giving
>out ~104 extra currency (30 = 10 pulls in FGO) would've annoyed the JP
>players.
>
>But the rest of the stuff, yeah, it'd be nice if they just got with
>the program now rather than +2 years from now.
>
>"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Every now and again in these games some QoL thing does get accelerated. I believe for Umamusume, we are getting one in that Champ Meet Finals will hard set Mood to Great instead of randomized like it was on release. (It got changed to fixed Great later)

For everything else, I actually can totally understand how or why things don't get accelerated. It's one thing to just deploy from your repo the incremental set of check-ins up to a certain point. It's another thing to pick one specific file and fast forward it only, god forbid it has Some Dependency that also needs to get updated that you miss or has Good Reasons to not get fixed by itself.

Haru Urara's flavor text constantly being about not winning feels really weird when you've just finished a run like the one I just finished, in which she ran in 18 races and won 16 of them. :)

And it would've been 17 if not for some bad RNG in a random non-goal race I entered her in to get some more skill points.

(Naturally, she still came in dead last in the Arima Kinen.)

It's just weird to have a character who is absolutely dominating her sport and has been doing so for three years, and NPCs come up being all sympathetic about how she'll Get 'Em Next Time. It's like, were you actually watching?

--G.
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>It's just weird to have a character who is absolutely dominating her sport and >has been doing so for three years, and NPCs come up being all sympathetic about >how she'll Get 'Em Next Time. It's like, were you actually watching?

Fate Grand Order is particularly bad about this lately in its story segments; they'll have you fight a story boss and no matter how badly you spank them and send them to bed without dinner, the next story segment goes "they're too powerful! We have to come up with a special way to beat 'em, or we're DOOMED!"

OOOR, hear me out, let me send my undersized eldritch horror back out so she can finish beating the knees off that fool and we can call this one done.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Aug-06-25 AT 05:53 PM (EDT)
 
Gameplay and story segregation slash plot-based loss is a hell of a thing, and I wish more developers would take the few minutes to just write alternate outcomes, even if it's just "We managed to drive them away, but they'll be back."

The worst part is, they have a type of battle where they require to withstand the boss's attacks for a certain number of turns, which makes the winnable fights really annoying when they pull that trick.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Fate Grand Order is particularly bad about this lately in its story
>segments; they'll have you fight a story boss and no matter how badly
>you spank them and send them to bed without dinner, the next story
>segment goes "they're too powerful! We have to come up with a special
>way to beat 'em, or we're DOOMED!"

This is by far the worst thing about Marvel Midnight Suns, in my opinion. I think it's a great game, I love the combination of deck-building combat mechanics and BioWare-style "social hub" activities, and the Hunter is a fun character with an interesting concept, but every. single. story beat in the goddam game can be summed up as,

"Great work, everybody! That was straight by-the-numbers, we really whipped the llama's ass. Now let's get cleaned up and go lose in the cutscene."

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH.

--G.
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Rhetorical question:

Why does this game insist on making sprinters run the freaking Arima Kinen?

--G.
the beatings will continue until morale improves
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>Rhetorical question:
>
>Why does this game insist on making sprinters run the freaking Arima
>Kinen?
>
>--G.
>the beatings will continue until morale improves
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Story purposes (or Kikuka Sho). Often historically the real horse ran the race. I don't believe natural sprinters need to win the race, just run it.

Of course, with some work (read: juiced up artificial genetics from inheritances), it's often possible to get them to win.

You have to remember that in the universe of Umamusume, horse girls being the product of demented eugenics programs for the benefit of dubiously-legal gambling syndicates is just their version of cutesy moe family dynamics. In addition, pumping them full of dangerous untested gene therapies from a guy you met on Craigslist with eighteen testicles hanging from his nose is just cutesy moe after-school club activities. It's the equivalent of our anime landscape's band practice, tea parties, or feet stuff that makes you feel gross just from being in the same room as it.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>You have to remember that in the universe of Umamusume, horse girls
>being the product of demented eugenics programs for the benefit of
>dubiously-legal gambling syndicates is just their version of cutesy
>moe family dynamics. In addition, pumping them full of dangerous
>untested gene therapies from a guy you met on Craigslist with eighteen
>testicles hanging from his nose is just cutesy moe after-school club
>activities. It's the equivalent of our anime landscape's band
>practice, tea parties, or feet stuff that makes you feel gross just
>from being in the same room as it.

"You and I remember Budapest very differently."
—Clint Barton, 2012

--G.
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In which Rin Penrose trains Sakura Bakushin O in Speed and absolutely nothing else, expecting the result to be a short and ignominious meme run. It isn't.

I have two remarks about this.

1) Training Baku for Speed and leaving her Wit at its default level (except for times when it receives some unavoidable bonus points, which happens sometimes) automatically puts me in mind of Monty Python's "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" sketch. She's magnificent, this Uma. She doesn't know when she's beaten. She doesn't know when she's winning either! She has no sort of sensory apparatus known to man.

2) Taking a Thoroughbred and optimizing her for speed, speed, speed, and also speed, so that she can break the light barrier in a sprint but is good for absolutely no other racing purpose? Rin has just (re)invented the Quarter Horse. :)

Although, to be fair, even the shortest race in Umamusume is far longer than a quarter-mile. IIRC the shortest distance the URA runs is 1,200 meters, which is roughly three-quarters of a mile.

--G.
My family had a Quarter Horse when I was a kid. Pal was supposed to be for me to ride when I outgrew our Shetland pony, but he also possessed F-class Wit, and so proved far too skittish and unreliable to trust with a child.
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To quote a chatter, "you don't need brains when you can just outrun your problems".

And to quote Rin, "horse go fast, fuck you!"

Skin was just holding me back, without it I can Bakushin harder!
"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>1) Training Baku for Speed and leaving her Wit at its default level
>(except for times when it receives some unavoidable bonus points,
>which happens sometimes) automatically puts me in mind of Monty
>Python's "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" sketch. She's magnificent,
>this Uma. She doesn't know when she's beaten. She doesn't know when
>she's winning either! She has no sort of sensory apparatus known to
>man.

Well, I mean, is this any worse than Gigi purposefully running Gold Ship into the ground, even racing her at "Awful" mood while threatening to send her to the glue factory, and then being shocked when she kept winning? True, Rin turned Bakushin into an American muscle car (all speed, no finesse), but Gigi managed to get Gold Ship to defy the laws of probability.

>Gigi managed to get Gold Ship to defy the laws of probability.

I'm not sure which of them this is more typical of, Gigi or Golshi. :)

--G.
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"So yeah, the horses, they're training in like cross-country running... they're idols... and they have to go to school. I would just not get up in the morning. I would just give up."
—Rin Penrose on the Uma life

--G.
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I think Rin has expressed a similar sentiment to the idea of calling somebody on the phone once. Or having to go out shopping for non-Blahaj purposes. Or getting out of bed at all.

Which, you know, are all very valid moods.

Couple o' useful websites we didn't link yet:
Race Simulator to see or compare how your horse will do on various tracks (mostly useful for PVP)

Umamusume DB out of game friend ID finder to grab the perfect support for the run you're working on

You're not one to lecture anybody about mommy issues, Air Groove.

--G.
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>You're not one to lecture anybody about mommy issues, Air Groove.

Air Groove's trying to live up to her mother's legacy, King Halo's mom alternates between abusive and dismissive, Symboli Rudolf is living under her folk's crushing expectations, Special Week's mom died shortly after birth...

Times you almost think "family drama" is an entry requirement to attend Tracen.

Unless you're discussing Super Creek, then it's a whole different kind of "mommy issues."

>King Halo's mom alternates between abusive and dismissive

It's like the writers realized a little too late that they'd made King Halo completely unlikable, and cast about for ways to make her at least a little sympathetic. And what they came up with was, "Let's make it plain that her mother is even worse." Interesting choice!

>Special Week's mom died shortly after birth...

Shortly after giving birth. Your wording implies an extreme time paradox. :)

>Times you almost think "family drama" is an entry requirement to
>attend Tracen.

... And then there's Taiki Shuttle, whose family back in the US routinely sends her what sounds like entire shipping containers full of meat, evidently because they think you can't get beef in Japan. :)

(And Vodka, whose father is apparently Rin's grandpa from Yurucamp.)

>Unless you're discussing Super Creek, then it's a whole
>different kind of "mommy issues."

Yyyyeah, I... that whole trope is so awkward to me. I've already got a mother, I don't need another one. I normally object to the modern-day usage of "cringe" as an adjective, but in this case I feel like it fits unusually well.

--G.
like how so many Chattini call Raora "Mamma". guys, you are wilting my ardor.
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>It's like the writers realized a little too late that they'd made King
>Halo completely unlikable, and cast about for ways to make her
>at least a little sympathetic. And what they came up with was,
>"Let's make it plain that her mother is even worse." Interesting
>choice!

They also wrote her as being a mom surrogate for Haru Urara, as if they wanted to make it clear that the whole ojou-sama bit was just that...a bit.

>Shortly after giving birth. Your wording implies an extreme
>time paradox. :)

I was assured there would be no math grammar.

>... And then there's Taiki Shuttle, whose family back in the US
>routinely sends her what sounds like entire shipping containers full
>of meat, evidently because they think you can't get beef in Japan. :)

Oguri Cap and Tamamo Cross would no doubt be thrilled to help her with the excess.

>(And Vodka, whose father is apparently Rin's grandpa from
>Yurucamp.)

Vodka's RL father will eventually appear in-game as Tanino Gimlet, who's basically her in every way but with an eye-patch.*

>Yyyyeah, I... that whole trope is so awkward to me. I've already got
>a mother, I don't need another one. I normally object to the
>modern-day usage of "cringe" as an adjective, but in this case I feel
>like it fits unusually well.
>
>--G.
>like how so many Chattini call Raora "Mamma". guys, you
>are wilting my ardor.

Yeah, it's one of those tropes that I've never understood the appeal of, but I'm not one to kink shame.

*To further the reality that the Umamusume family tree resembles a tumbleweed, not only do Gimlet and Narita Brian share a common sire (making her Vodka's "uncle"), but in turn Brian and Biwa Hayahide are siblings.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-25-25 AT 01:51 AM (EDT)
 
>>It's like the writers realized a little too late that they'd made King
>>Halo completely unlikable, and cast about for ways to make her
>>at least a little sympathetic. And what they came up with was,
>>"Let's make it plain that her mother is even worse." Interesting
>>choice!
>
>They also wrote her as being a mom surrogate for Haru Urara, as if
>they wanted to make it clear that the whole ojou-sama bit was just
>that...a bit.

I recognize that her surface archetype isn't in Gryph's wheelhouse, but yeah it's just a bit. She literally has to deliberately practice the laugh. It's all part of the act she has to put on to show confidence because no one in her corner believes in her.

One of my favorite bits from her career is if you <win a certain race against Special Week, Halo is about to do a post race interview but notices that Spe is crying in the background, so she deliberately pitches a diva fit and runs off to relocate the interview so as to distract from Spe's pain and make sure the media isn't covering it.> She's the best.

>>like how so many Chattini call Raora "Mamma". guys, you
>>are wilting my ardor.
>
>Yeah, it's one of those tropes that I've never understood the appeal
>of, but I'm not one to kink shame.

In the case of the Chattini, there is a bit of logic to it- vtubers generally call the artist who created their model "mama" or "papa", and since Raora designed the model for the Chattini, she's their "mama" in that sense. So not all of them are doing it just to be weird (though there's certainly some who do).

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>In the case of the Chattini, there is a bit of logic to it- vtubers
>generally call the artist who created their model "mama" or "papa",
>and since Raora designed the model for the Chattini, she's their
>"mama" in that sense. So not all of them are doing it just to be weird
>(though there's certainly some who do).

While that is true, I find myself doubting than more than one Chattino in a thousand has made that particular logical leap. :)

Besides, she only designed them in OUR universe; canonically she's just a big fan of an already existing plushie design. Are these people trying to roleplay or not?! They can't have it both ways!

--G.
narrator: they could have it both ways.
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I'm starting to see a pattern in my trials teams. Even after a significant amount of turnover as I pile up more careers, it seems to work out very consistently to:

Sprint team: virtually invincible.
Dirt team: really strong.
Mile team: strong-ish, but very prone to getting RNGd.
Medium team: not very reliable.
Long team: would somehow find a way to lose even if nobody else showed up.

Mind you, that's not helped by the wild inconsistency of team trials themselves. I often find myself squeaking out a win against the team worth considerably more points than mine, then getting absolutely rinsed by the numerically inferior one.

(And that doesn't count the times I've drawn an opponent who's artificially deflated his team numbers by putting one megastar in each team and leaving the other two slots empty. Surely that constitutes a form of seal clubbing and players like that can fuck off? Just me? OK, anyway...)

--G.
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Longer distances are harder and harder for unlucky and free-to-play players to perform well on because you need to hit certain Stamina minimums to have your Umas not just die on the track, which makes it harder to max Speed and have acceptable Power.

Anyone artificially deflating their score isn't actually helping themselves any because you get a hefty % boost to your rating based on your opponent's rating. If the slots are really empty and not just some random 0 rating career, since you can't take anyone out after being put in, it's also highly unlikely they're getting competitive Team Trials results of their own either.

>Anyone artificially deflating their score isn't actually helping
>themselves any because you get a hefty % boost to your rating based on
>your opponent's rating. If the slots are really empty and not just
>some random 0 rating career, since you can't take anyone out after
>being put in, it's also highly unlikely they're getting competitive
>Team Trials results of their own either.

Well, in that case I doubly don't get it. It was already kind of weird, because it's not like you see what your trials team is doing when it's the team on the right side of the screen. I couldn't really figure out how setting a team up like that would be a fun type of seal-clubbing, unless you just really get off on the abstract idea of it happening.

Nevertheless, with my team at the B and B₁ levels (composed mostly of B and B+ trainees, with the odd C and later on my single A-rank runner heading up the Dirt squad), I have repeatedly encountered teams at the "worth fewer points than yours" tier that have only a single A or A+ on each squad with the other two slots blank--and of course they rinse me every time, because their one runner easily places higher than any of mine can manage. Heck, it's pretty much the only time my Sprint squad loses.

I'm not claiming it's common, but I've seen it more than twice.

--G.
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*sigh*

Well, that certainly was a chore. Spent the past week and change working on clearing out all the G1/G2/G3 trophies in the case. And while I may have run Oguri, Sakura, and poor little Haru into the ground, I can finally declare "Mission accomplished."

Now I'm at that point in every gacha game where I've spent days grinding achievements and sit atop a boatload of premium currency with the question of whether to use it or hold it. Decisions, decisions...

>Now I'm at that point in every gacha game where I've spent days
>grinding achievements and sit atop a boatload of premium currency with
>the question of whether to use it or hold it. Decisions, decisions...

you got to know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
know when to walk away
and know when to run
you never count your money
when you're sittin' at the table
there'll be time enough for countin'
when the dealin's done

--G.
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