I have a lot to unpack, so grab a big drink if you wish, but please listen to what I have to say in the interest of improving the community with TLC.

Recently, Hextator had made a weapon editor that can be found here: https://github.com/Hextator/KIUWeaponEditor Hextator would, naturally, want the attention to go to him so that people would better thank him for his hard work after going through health problems thanks partially to the Fire Emblem community's idiocy, oh I will get to that. Still, at this point, I had uploaded onto my YT channel 3 videos that have made use of the editor thus far. 2 of them (BBE No Healing/Powers with Fairy (Flies) Orbitars and End-All Arm at V100) aren't speedruns, just me not having had all 108 V100 weapons for the 10 years the Weapon Editor wasn't around, but the third one definitely is, which you can view here:

The video shows how ridiculous Lancer Staff can get in BBE. BBH, it's still top tier but its safety factor issues suffocates its ability to time attack. However, I handled the video intending to call out weapon modifier balance in general. In particular, anybody who has doubts about Overall DEF- being better than Health- in general even from a mathematical standpoint should look at the values provided by this spreadsheet for weapon modifiers to see for themselves: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GH8eIkU9t6vMA2e73ZRoToWNNUor8pUvTf9Xd9YYl3I/edit?usp=sharing

Of course, the question would be about the legitimacy of the weapon, since it would be the big reason why my video wouldn't be on the Leaderboard by now after I had pointed out that the weapon's creation is tool-assisted. I actually made sure to check to make sure I didn't have any illegal modifier combinations based on the information here: https://wikiwiki.jp/shinpalutena/%E7%A6%81%E6%AD%A2%E4%BA%8B%E9%A0%85 (The site is Japanese but the translate feature on Google Chrome would get around that.)

Now it's possible that people could bug Hextator for information about the source code, without consideration for how the Fire Emblem community had exploited him. Hold that thought, because I had made this post just after the Uvalde shooting to call out the way weapon modifiers have been handled: https://warriorsuprising.wordpress.com/2022/05/25/streetpass-reliance-idiotic-or-exposing-a-real-problem-spoilers-its-both/

I already had the idea of making the post in mind BEFORE the Uvalde shooting too. In fact, here's the Discord chatlog from the V100 Competitive server showcasing this to have been the case the day before: [quote]MasterKnightDH — 05/23/2022 I think at some point soon I should write a blog post about Streetpass's role in the inaccessibility of weapon modifiers and how it seeps into ALL standards of KIU's gameplay. I can't prioritize it whatsoever, though, only note as much because I have something to say about it. Hextator — 05/23/2022 how do you mean? cuz fusing legit weapons is super easy now with the solver website if anything the weapon modifiers being inaccessible for some people is because of the lopsided amount of hacked weapons floating around and thus any inaccessibility stems purely from a decision to avoid "cheating" MasterKnightDH — 05/23/2022 I am thinking how StreetPass handles is built off the expectation of the society being actively involved in RL socialization, which Japan is. Although I will say that yeah, as you bring up, hacked weapons IS a problem. Hextator — 05/24/2022 it will continue to be a problem for the people who don't view it as a solution, like the people hacking in weapons do I did make the fusion emulator to reduce the need for third party involvement, but I also understand completely why people would think that even cloning gems is too slow MasterKnightDH — 05/24/2022 I'll have to wait to elaborate, because I do still have to record about everything past....Spin Attack at this point. And yeah, I recorded about Confuse Attack with my Fairy (Flies) Orbitars that simply has Heart Bonus+. I can at least call out needing the Socialization Bonus to get freaking V100 weapons.[/quote] Obviously priorities changed soon enough, although I did eventually get back to working on my Powers video once things with the Uvalde mess were calming down, eventually completing it to have it ready to premiere here this coming Sunday for anybody interested. Still, I had the idea of talking about StreetPass-related problems around anyway simply because KIU's community is not big enough to make hacking involvement to reduce issues with the ever so counterintuitive fusion system a more passive venture. It isn't even big enough to better standardize usage of the Spin Shot technique to a decent degree.

Still, ability can only guarantee so much. So I may as well cite what I've been wanting to see of the community this entire time, something that would have been helpful with the growth in the process as well: self-sufficient compassion.

I need point out that I ended up maining what proves to be the least mobile weapon type in the game that isn't Ancient Staff in its still existent ability to at least Spin Shot, one key reason being because the Mighty Glacier tends to suffer particularly against imbalances, and I would have come out of Smash Bros. Brawl, which definitely had THIS as a particular show of why base unconditional flinching needed to be checked; so I've been interested in seeing how well the game's balance stands. I can tell you how if weapon modifiers were given the same brand of TLC unto themselves that Powers got in general, there would be a lot fewer problems. The problems with weapon modifiers' power curve got so blatant that the Spin Shot technique is something I myself took the longest time to even figure out as anything more than a way to practice Club tactics with the Super Speed Power, and I'm not even sure who else even cares about it to this day. Honestly, I'd rather see more of the Spin Shot technique and less of the Evasion+ abuse and Celestial Fireworks spam on multiplayer; it would certainly highlight useful skills better, which would be more than worth the bias the Spin Shot technique has against Clubs.

V100 weapon usage inspires growth when all is said and done too. Though wouldn't you know it, because the game balanced around weapon modifiers being expected actively enough, enemy durability on higher Intensities proves to be overinflated. I particularly cringe that Miks EVER survive a Skyscraper Club shot at low range at all. Still, investigation of Powers like Pisces Heal on multiplayer is worth the trouble if it means exposing the real issues such as Aries Armor having busted regen showcasing why higher Value increasing Power regen has problems. Unfortunately, the general KIU communities haven't wanted to look into this or ESPECIALLY emphasize with players who get frustrated by these blatant shock factors; instead, they have wanted to subscribe to insults like this piece of offensive racist garbage.

You see why I have to write about all of this thus far, that we should be making sure the community is showing empathy. And I'm still not done.

I should cite that I recently had a bad experience with the Advance Wars 1 speedrun at SGDQ, that the people there only cared to spam the "What's an Airport" meme, a meme that already irked me after its usage in the advertisement for the upcoming Re-Boot Camp on count of promoting the degenerate behaviors. The meme spam was a complete override on my attempts to call out the behaviors of a chauvinist named Mangs. If you don't get what Mangs did, a video titled Mangs & July 2020 explains in lengthy detail with plenty of evidence. And if you're wondering about the relevance, I had made this (set to premiere about 24 hours from now as of posting this) to call out the toxic masculinity in the Advance Wars communities particularly for making it so much harder to combat Mangs' behaviors, which I attempted on repeat occasion by this point. Hextator, I assure you that the Fire Emblem communities, who you mentioned have wronged you, need to answer for their idiocy, the same idiocy that allowed a guy who treats women as trophies to be a celebrated big name especially over that precise point. Although the Advance Wars communities still have problems in their own right even without Mangs, Mangs was fed by the Fire Emblem communities pulling behaviors all over the place. I will say that I didn't help matters in the past, but at least that gives me a reference point that Mangs doesn't even want to basically share candy; he just wants to have punching bags.

What is my concern, then, is the Kid Icarus Uprising communities showing a similar lack of empathy in general if that is not accounted for soon enough. Especially worth pointing out is when the weapon editor can be abused on multiplayer to create min-maxed setups, particularly with weapon types that would be especially nasty with them. Randoms already have blatant power imbalance, so they'd become an even bigger mess. I will at least grant that for using Hextator's weapon editor, the most anybody would need would be an SD Card with enough free space, and the installation method I used does work thanks to step-by-step instructions. However, Hextator's weapon editor is still 10 years into the game's lifespan, after the damage by the power segregation caused by weapon modifiers is already long done, certainly leading to JoeyPals leaving the KIU Speedrun Discord as I noticed just now writing this very segment. At this point, there's a lot of moral complications with the involvement of the weapon editor that would inevitably come up, and that's not even getting into how Hextator was exploited by the Fire Emblem communities to damaging effect.

However, there is hope, and not just from the presence of life.

JoeyPals, I thank you for calling out the weapon fusion system being a counterintuitive mess. Even if I don't find it to be the root cause of the problems involved, the weapon fusion system being pseudo-RNG to get mixed in with the already existing actual RNG in getting needed material did not help matters. A 5 year record holder calling out this issue is a welcome sight.

Abraxas, I thank you for calling out how Uprising Colosseum's members are unpleasant. I can even point out how I had a bad experience with their associate Joshimations because I was, hypocritically I have to confess, desperate for content, a bad experience I end up covering in the Aries Armor section of my Powers video although I neglect to mention about Joshimations' offensive 3DS Friends message. It's really good to see my fellow adept southpaw be also against their unpleasant behavior. We need more of that in this community.

And Hextator, I thank you for making the weapon editor in the first place in addition to keeping the conversation about weapon modifier involvement going. Though I feel that things can only improve by making sure of as much, I am hopeful that things can go better with your health, and that this community would help with that enough. And by the way, I should also mention that a guy named Essarcie, who he told me lives in Texas like you do and he's also none too happy about the February 2021 power grid failures, had come up to thank me for my work on my Game Boy Wars 3 patches. So I'm for things improving in Texas every bit as much as I am for things improving in California.

When all is said and done, the whole handling of things with Kid Icarus Uprising is going to have to be put through TLC. Obviously, we have to figure out what standards will work, something that weapon modifiers are not going to make easy. It is good news, and especially a pleasant surprise after the despair-inducing farce involved with Advance Wars 1's SGDQ speedrun, that there are good people here. The real concern would be complacency. Thankfully, while the weapon editor would allow for easier abuses, it would be more feasible to involve more sophisticated stuff as well, even without the ease of editing in V100 weapons with practically the mere push of a button. I'd be pleasantly surprised by enough changes and diligence to result in active regard to something like Paw Pad Orbitars, which would be a solid way to advertise the game, but I can at least provide my 2 cents and hope that enough people listen.

I recommend having Powers banned on One True Hero, except maybe....I want to say Health Recovery L2. A new file doesn't have Powers unlocked to begin with and collecting them can very well boil down to RNG. I'm testing how reasonable V100 First Blade/No Powers is in general--of course, Boss Battles Hard is straight out, but who is speedrunning that anyway.