General Vtuber Discussion (V1)

[AyoTempus]

I've been in since circa 2.1 and even had been selling someone on the game the other day that was asking my opinion, and that is that ARR is good when you realize what they made in the time frame they had to work with but it's certainly the weakest start to a storyline and the early game experience is the least interesting bullshit. Even I almost quit before level 30 back in the day but stuck it out because I wanted to play a Dragoon, and once I hit it I was more gassed over having my favourite class than anything else and managed to hold my attention long enough to finish. I only really started paying attention to the story around Operation Archon, though that kind of fell off into Heavensward. I also never understood the Haurchefant hype. I forget when it was in HW that I started getting more invested but it almost lost me entirely during that one part where you have the brilliant idea to ditch some shit off a bridge, "Surely no one will ever be able to recover this now!" smash cut to the obvious dude watching you grinning.

A lot of people give Stormblood shit and I don't know why, I was really invested from early on and Shadowbringers/Endwalker is some of the best story I've seen in a game. I'm really interested to see where it goes now since the entire arc they've been playing with since 2.0, maybe even 1.x if you want to get specific on details, whatever could the next grand arc end up being?

Spoiler: FFXIV sperging

In the end while the context for ARR's faults make sense, it doesn't make the story much more palpable and it just feels like a lot of generic MMO filler then a big epic. I personally don't mind and enjoy the "helping the little people" quests as it ties into something that comes in during Shadowbringers to explain why that plot can even happen.

Stormblood's problem for me is that it really didn't properly make Ala Mhigo and Doma feel as fleshed out as I feel it should have been (Ala Mhigo especially feels robbed after I did all the job storylines). Zenos is also a really strange main antagonist that works better in the Endwalker's whole story line concept and theme but he doesn't fit this story of revolution, (attempts at) grounded war, or anything. He's just off in his own little world and he's really really boring to fight due to the forced losses around him and the game doesn't convey why you lose at all very well so he feels like a fanfiction character. The Azim Steppe stood out more the more fleshed out and complete realm then the two main nations which is just asinine to me. Doma is just fantasy Japan/China, and Ala Mhigo is some dust bowl with brown people. All the interesting stuff is relegated to job quests at best, or just don't really show up at all. Ala Mhigo has some really interesting background lore, but it is so irrelevant to the main plot that it is very easy to just not see it or remember it exists even if you know it.

FFXIV is such a slow burn that I fault literally no one for giving up on it, not everyone has enough time or patience to put up with it and I think only Shadowbringers is truly worth it in the end while Endwalker is just fine relatively speaking unless you're super invested like I was when I played it week 1.

Relevant discussion tax: Vesper talked about DnD a little bit ago and he said his campaign will be a homebrew. I personally hope he actually runs it within Elysium as a setting, because if they're going to have this generic fantasy Isekai lore they might as well use it within a generic fantasy TTRPG system like DnD. The only reason I could see why he wouldn't is due to potential issues with Cover wanting to use the setting for some marketing or something, and they don't want to deal with being canon to whatever random things Vesper puts into his game.

 

[lakyus]

Spooder's satanic doodles within an hour

 

[Kalion]

Spooder's satanic doodles within an hour

 

[Empty_Inbox]

Vesper's zatsudan is over, he had plans for launch, plus SEA Youtube was laggy.

I want to just dump all my notes here, but it kinda takes away from watching the VOD? So just some select notes:

• DnD planned for October/November. He wants to do a one-shot and then a longer campaign. A lot of DnD talk, anyone interested should check out the VOD!
• There are already lots of cool ideas for October, so maybe moving some things to further date would be better.
• Was a part of a writing group, kinda likes self-publishing, although it is hard. Knows "the meta" of review-trading.

Vesper mentioned existential dread, so I feel this art is appropriate:

Spoiler: Twitter

 

[Warspite]

Passed to me via a friend: Gura's latest Member post

 

[PassiveUnaggressive]

Passed to me via a friend: Gura's latest Member post

Sounds like Gura is the touch grass queen of Holo Myth if not all of Holo EN. Hopefully she has plenty of friends and family she has been sharing her baked goods with.

 

[masterstocking]

I think I remember that Bae said something about being a dancer in the past back during her debut... Did it ever came up again?

I remember it being when she was discussing her snapback hat collection/hobby with Calli: Bae dances street and hip-hop, and can fake a little breakdancing as well.

 

[Azehara]

There seems to be a lot of weight on the keywords used for the prompt and how strictly you set it to observe keywords. A lot of the posts on the top of the site that are really cool looking use a lot of specific language that look to tie to very specific kinds of visual outputs or styles in order to force certain results in that direction.

I just wanted to make vtuber prototypes. All i got was a fat tiddy girl with nips out. I said swimsuit not sure how I got topless.

Do people really send explicate messages to Rie? REALLY? Okay but I think it comes across as bragging Also how, in her Marrows? How are people getting to her if she's not letting them in?

Rie is possibly the most yab Phase Girl when it comes to the shit she likes or says. Am I surprised that people are asking or sending her lewd shit? No.

So Phase Connect is hiring support staff: https://phase-connect.com/work-with-us/

They're currently after a Talent Coordinator, a Project Coordinator, Video Editor, Social Media and Community Coordinator, and a Graphic Designer.

Pretty sure they did the call for Video Editor about 2 months ago. Not sure if the other positions were there or did some get added.

At first glance I thought it was Gura/Rebecca crossover
View attachment 1773

Thought this was Towa at first.

 

[thequ1eteye]

Kronii has started to show some of her powerlevel lately, which I can respect.
Guess the "controversy" broke some limiters.

 

[masterstocking]

Just because one can, doesn't mean one should

 

[Svarog]

Another chapter Nene's Rust adventures.



ps. don't forget to read the story in the description

 

[Hff201]

Rie is possibly the most yab Phase Girl when it comes to the shit she likes or says. Am I surprised that people are asking or sending her lewd shit? No.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the weirdos from /pcg/ who post disturbingly graphic comments about raping her have broke containment. She's seemed pretty chill about explicit material before (never forget the robot dick stream) so there's probably someone out there doing something extremely fucked to have prompted her to actually make a statement about it.

 

[BioBreak]

Relevant discussion tax: Vesper talked about DnD a little bit ago and he said his campaign will be a homebrew. I personally hope he actually runs it within Elysium as a setting, because if they're going to have this generic fantasy Isekai lore they might as well use it within a generic fantasy TTRPG system like DnD. The only reason I could see why he wouldn't is due to potential issues with Cover wanting to use the setting for some marketing or something, and they don't want to deal with being canon to whatever random things Vesper puts into his game.

I highly doubt anyone in Cover management is that steeped and looped-in on RPGs that they'd know otherwise. Just general observance from Calli's TTRPG sessions with Myth but it felt like she had creative free-reign on it (at least, as far as I can recall). What they probably know about it at this point is that it's certainly filtering for the normie portion of their audience - though I really would just attribute that to Callie's DMing "voice" and general energy. Something tells me Vesper's might do better.

Also kinda surprised he didn't say he knew or liked Dimension 20. Brennan Lee Mulligan is such a fun DM and makes their sessions really fun and entertaining even for the normie crowd.

 

[Empty_Inbox]

Notice regarding AI art:



Checked Ina's twitter to see if she said anything related to that (artists in general hate AI thing), but she is not feeling well today, going to see a doctor.

---

Apparently, Ina has some League experience? Judging by number of videos she doesn't really speak about it:

Spoiler: Youtube video

 

[SoundWave Superior]

So happen to notice this in my feed, now you may ask who cares just a new staff but this guy has a history tried to create a safe space version of twitch that ran out of money before even going live and invested nearly half million of his own cash into it. Former twitch staff member and failed streamer on the platform guy bought his 50 emote slots on twitch buy gifting all the subs he could only to get 15 views on average.

Spoiler: Links to the info

reddit
Twitter
article about site

 

[BioBreak]

What sort of prompt did you enter to get that character and art style? I've tried in a few of these saying things like "Hololive's Amelia Watson" or "Blonde female detective", "Blonde female Sherlock Holmes", "Blonde anime girl detective" etc. with mediocre to disappointing results in dalle-mini, the stable-diffusion demo, and now this site. I have this stupid comic idea that's Watson-centered and thought maybe i could use some of this AI art stuff to help make it. I dont care about it being great i just want to tell the story without looking like garbage.

Circling back to this, and take this with a grain of salt:

Spoiler: AI Art Autism

What I did was to start with a Watson base image like below to get the AI started and just kept playing with the image strength and filters until I found a result I liked and then used that new AI generated image as the new base image. This was my initial prompt:

"Amelia Watson has short blonde hair and wears a beige trench coat, rainy city background, anime art style"

->

After several tries and when I got the second image above, I used it as the new base image and added a new description to the prompt:

"Amelia Watson has short blonde hair and wears a beige trench coat and a detective hat, rainy city background, anime art style"

-> ->

When the AI finally generated the city background, I used that as the new base image and kept playing with the image strength until I got some better-looking results:


I picked the first one as the new base image and then updated my prompt again:

"Amelia Watson has short blonde hair and wears a beige trench coat and a detective hat, rainy city background, many neon lights, anime art style"


I used the 3rd image above as the new base image and then adjusted my prompt again:

"Amelia Watson has short blonde hair and wears a beige trench coat and a detective hat with dark sunglasses, rainy city background, many neon lights, anime art style"

I feel like the process is far more fun if you're not too set on a particular outcome and just have fun iterating/improving on the better results the AI gave you. If you have a very specific image in your head then it may be better for now to just draw/create it yourself the traditional way or commission an artist to do it.

 

[Aka Split]

Notice regarding AI art:

Perfectly reasonable takes due to potential legal/copyright issues. My mistake was reading comments on Reddit about it, where some people think that AI generated art is the most morally corrupt thing on the planet.

It’s as simple as: 1. Don’t try to pass it off as something you created. 2. Don’t try to mislead the talents and cause them to unknowingly use something in a thumbnail that could have legal issues over who owns the rights to the image (just like they said, ‘keep it off the art tags’, because that is where thumbnail art is generally sourced from).

 

[BioBreak]

Perfectly reasonable takes due to potential legal/copyright issues. My mistake was reading comments on Reddit about it, where some people think that AI generated art is the most morally corrupt thing on the planet.

It’s as simple as: 1. Don’t try to pass it off as something you created. 2. Don’t try to mislead the talents and cause them to unknowingly use something in a thumbnail that could have legal issues over who owns the rights to the image (just like they said, ‘keep it off the art tags’, because that is where thumbnail art is generally sourced from).

Pretty much agree to this. It's a fun, new frontier for generating art many people would've previously gone to an artist for a commission for - which is likely why you're gonna see a lot of the louder voices disavowing it coming from artists themselves as improvements to this down the line will definitely impact the amount of work they will get.

As a fun exercise though, this shit's surreal. As a total non-artist, I got the AI to start from this:



...to these:

 

[masterstocking]

 

[Aka Split]

Pretty much agree to this. It's a fun, new frontier for generating art many people would've previously gone to an artist for a commission for - which is likely why you're gonna see a lot of the louder voices disavowing it coming from artists themselves as improvements to this down the line will definitely impact the amount of work they will get.

As a fun exercise though, this shit's surreal. As a total non-artist, I got the AI to start from this:
View attachment 1788


...to these:
View attachment 1790View attachment 1789View attachment 1791

To further expand on the legality issue; I ANAL, but who would own those images? You? The website? The original artists that the AI was trained on? The artist of the base image that you started with? No one?

No matter which way anyone answers: Would you be willing to go to court to argue your position, just to maybe be able to use a couple thumbnails once in a while? It’s a potentially huge hassle for Cover/the talents for almost no benefit, thus why their position so far is perfectly reasonable.