Yeah this is an ad.

It’s one of the best written games I’ve played.

Even ignoring the actually rare setting and well done world building, Aloy’s growth from kid out of her depth into the Savior of the planet, and how she reacts to primitive tribal cultures with beliefs she knows are outright laughable are really well done and really well executed. I’m more of a “play games for the mechanics” person and that’s what originally got and kept me hooked, but the writing works well.

Everything has a huge opportunity cost. You’re giving up alternatives for every choice you make. Lowering variance of high impact attacks has value if you choose to play that way. Missing can turn a battle.

It doesn’t have to be useful to every choice of every build to have its existence justified. There are plenty of choices of spells, equipment, etc that I can look at and tell you “I’ll play 20 different times 20 different ways and never be tempted to use that once”. That’s perfectly fine.

Does true strike not apply to spell slots or per battle/rest attacks? Because an advantage on some of those limited use attacks makes perfect sense to give up an action for.

On top of that, there’s the fact that the system is so reliant on its unique GamePad controller – many games actively require you to use it rather than other controllers, and you can’t even change your system settings without it.

Holy fucking shit nintendo.

I liked cloud of daggers. Moving it is good, because it’s absolutely possible to basically burn it and not have it be that useful past a turn or two, but just taking away positions for enemies to be has value.

Maybe not compared to something higher level like Hunger of Hadar I used a lot with my warlock later game, which covers more ground and affects movement as well, but making it harder for a caster/archer to sit behind a doorway and harass you is useful the way I played.

I was absolutely terrible at that. I had really bad homework grades and completion rates exactly because of shit like that.

“You gave me a 500 word question. I can’t make 1500 words out of it. If I’m going to fail anyways fuck turning it in.” (No, no part of that approach was intelligent, but I just couldn’t fill space with obvious trash. My brain would shut down.)

Yeah, I get shit occasionally in random places for using bigger words when they actually would take multiple sentences to replace.

But there are a fucking lot of people who use big (or obscure) words purely as a kind of signaling that they’re smart, rather than for communication. And it’s usually really obvious to people who have better vocabularies (or better understanding of the jargon in a specific field) that they don’t know what they’re doing.

If after looking up a word, the rationale for the word choice doesn’t become understandable on at least some level, it’s probably nonsense. (There are some super smart people who just don’t know how to communicate though and think the word’s as simple to everyone else as to them.)

This means delisted, not “you lose it”, right?

I honestly don’t know how. Any non Nintendo 3D game it’s instantly super obvious. And any game at all it’s obvious if you just try to navigate a menu with it.

They make the $10 Chinese junk alternates look amazing by comparison.

This really shouldn’t be mind blowing. It’s pretty obvious that proper planning can absolutely result in utilizing dev time effectively. There are loads of underlying technologies you’re using and you don’t have to have the next project fully planned to improve your systems and get prepared for it.

And how much money do you think you’re saving by firing people and hiring a new team 6 months later? Recruitment costs money. Hiring costs money. Onboarding takes a lot of man hours from your whole team, which costs money. And you lose all the institutional knowledge and familiarity, so you lose efficiency, which costs money.

I’m not just talking about the drift. The actual intended product is ludicrously imprecise out of the box.

It changed gaming. The steam deck probably doesn’t happen without the switch. It clearly demonstrated the market for a handheld that manages large scale 3D games with complex mechanics.

But the joycons suck at more than connectivity. Straight out of the box those joysticks are fucking terrible, and they degrade hard and fast.

Fuck everything about blocking the hardware and hardware mods, but if it’s true that he was packaging games with it, you don’t even get to any of that, because they’re probably going to get every dime he has for “selling” their games.

My point is that the “early access preorder” really just means the sale date is 3 days earlier than you’re claiming or whatever.

So if you buy it you get it before if you buy it?

That system is an even dumber one (and not unique to this game).

I wonder how much the reasonably common “being assigned this stance to write about” assignments play a role in this.

I went to meaningfully above average schools by a lot of metrics, including spending, and I still did way more “persuasive writing” assignments where I was handed a conclusion than ones where I was free to draw my own and justify it. So I was literally taught to do this and basically had to unlearn it.

The difference is that they can boil the frog gradually.

Traditional media tries to move people, absolutely. But a newspaper has to address the crazies and try to convert people into crazies in the same paper. If they’re too extreme, more moderate people can see that right away, and it’s easier to minimize engagement with it.

With social media, you personalize the content surfaced. You start by making it seem mostly sane, with an out there idea here or there. Then, as they start to engage with the slightly mild stuff, you move the “mostly sane” in that direction, and the “mild” moves a couple extra steps. Now, you’re part of a movement. Everyone around you is changing their beliefs, and the new ones aren’t that far off from your previous beliefs, so why not follow?

6 months later, you were always pretty left/right-leaning (cognitive dissonance, baybee!!!). But it looks like the consensus is finally shifting your way. It’s just a small step further right/left, and everyone around you is making it too. The world is changing for a better, so let’s be that change.

Having an expansion for an MMO be in early access seems super weird.

I understand the communication that it’s still not as polished as it will be once the community beats it up a little, but the nature of an MMO is to kind of pressure a certain type of player to instantly race through that content. Once it’s available, it “counts”, right? They’re not rolling back outcomes or anything? It’s live?

I don’t do much dessert any more.

Carrot cake with a lot of cinnamon and cardamom and cream cheese frosting is the biggest exception. Or just like chocolate chip banana bread.