MufinMcFlufin @ MufinMcFlufin @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Well only started using a browser profile, specifically in Chrome, within the last year. I still don't use it for personal use, though. Or chrome for that matter.

I'm the same boat except I was forced to use it because of work some time in the last 2 ish years.

Except for 0⁰

If you want to discuss specifically why someone might pirate a game for the explicit purpose of not liking Nintendo's practices then it sounds like you don't understand the concept of spite and/or don't understand how infrequently that is the primary reason one would pirate a game in comparison to the other myriad reasons.

Pirating a game comes with some inherit risk depending on precise circumstances so a potential pirate would be to weigh how much their desire to play a game compares to the time and effort it would take to get it working (download time, installing emulators, installing drivers, configuring, modifying the game, etc), the risk to the machine they'd be installing it on (the malware that may be installed alongside, the risk of physical damage to hardware modifications that might be required, the potential for your console or your IP being banned from servers, etc), and if it's worth any additional hardware they might require to install it (additional storage space, buying tools to modify hardware, buying hardware mods that could allow hacks, etc)

Not being physically, legally, or financially capable of buying games may make someone willing to risk some, many, or all of these factors. I can't imagine a significant percentage of people who'd pirate a game like Tears of the Kingdom were financially well off enough to easily afford it, but chose to do it with the explicit purpose of saying "Screw Nintendo, they don't deserve the money I easily could give them for this game."

I can however reasonably believe that the majority of the pirates for a game like Tears of the Kingdom would do so because "I can't play the game without better accessibility options that Nintendo doesn't offer, so I need to play it on an emulator that can support what I need", "it's not available in my region other than from brick and mortar stores which are all out of stock or charge absurd prices I can't afford", or "I just want to add a few mods to make the game I love even more enjoyable without risking my console getting banned from online play".

But refusing to discuss other reasons except the most petty feels like you want to disregard other valid reasons in order misrepresent piracy as nothing but a petty practice. Of course I don't know your exact intentions, but that's the vibe I get from your response here.

From what I've heard Valve is already refunding most everyone who asks for a refund given this controversy.

One of my friends made the mistake of linking his PSN account right when he started playing Helldivers 2 then shortly found he was banned from the game. After he did some digging, he found his PSN account was banned for "suspicious activities" despite having not used it in over a year. After even more digging he eventually finds out it was because when they kept charging him for their premium service and he was trying to cancel it, they wouldn't remove his payment information. He checked multiple times with them and they said they did.

Next payment period rolls around and they charge him for another year of service all the same. He tries to get it refunded, he talks to them about how they said they removed the payment info and it's nothing but "well there's nothing we can do about it now" type bullshit. So he goes to his bank and did a charge back on the annual fee, since they keep insisting it's impossible. Wouldn't ya know it suddenly it's very easy to remove his payment info, cancel that premium service, and take care of everything.

All of this was done about a year prior, and he left his account untouched since fuck Sony and PlayStation at that point. I guess they waited until his account was active again being used for a game for them to suddenly realize they really don't like his charge back and deactivate his account entirely, blocking access to everything linked to it, including Helldivers 2.

As far as my personal opinion on whether games such as any of the Soulsbourne titles should be made easier, I'm appreciative of the fact that they don't have difficulty sliders in much any regard. If I beat Dark Souls 3, there isn't a question about if I beat it on the easiest mode, anyone who's gone through the entire experience knows what I also went through. While I agree that most of the FromSoft games are sorely lacking in accessibility options (even more so their older titles), Difficulty is only one of many accessibility options. I would rather they add other accessibility options so that players who struggle with the games as is can have an easier time getting the intended experience than reduce the intended experience down to allow for the lowest common denominator.

As an aside, many of the Soulsbourne games already have something in the way of "easier modes" via alternate weapons, different combat systems, and different play styles. Playing almost any of them primarily using ranged combat reduces the difficulty in most every encounter in the game outside of boss battles. Boss battles often have their own gimmick that you can exploit to make them easier to fight. Often the level design, nearby items (and descriptions), or enemy positions are used as clues to make finding these exploits easier.

As an example, the Taurus Demon in DS1 can be killed fairly easily by baiting him to where the skeleton archers are above the fight, then using a plunging attack on him several times in a row. The intended experience is that you would go into the arena, you may run directly towards the other side, spawn the Taurus demon once you run about halfway through the arena, and notice you're being shot at from behind. You'll likely die, but in the next fight against him you can try to take out the archers via your own ranged weapons, but doing so shows a cleverly hidden ladder that leads up to the archers. The ladder isn't visible when entering the arena but the moment you turn around to look at the archers you can clearly see it next to the doorway you entered from. You can go up the ladder and easily dispatch the archers. I don't remember if every following fight you have to run halfway through the arena to spawn him again or if you have to run halfway through only the first time, but regardless an observant player will notice after taking down the archers that the drop back down the ladder will look very similar to the plunging attack the game teaches you in the tutorial boss fight. If you make the connection and perform that attack on the Taurus Demon it'll take out about 30% of his health depending on your class and weapon. Scramble around his legs (now that you're on the same floor as him) back towards the ladder, climb up, and repeat a few more times for an easy victory. Alternatively you can wait up where the archers were for a few seconds and the Taurus Demon will jump up and fight you there. You now have an alternate wider arena better suited to strafing around him instead of the narrow bridge he spawns in on.

Other games would do things like give a prompt to lower the difficulty, reduce the health of enemies in the background after repeated failures, or give you optional power ups after X defeats. All of these reinforce the mentality that "what you're doing is right, but you're lacking the skill to do it" when often in Soulsbourne games that's a harmful mentality to have as it'll lead you to keep repeating a tactic or playstyle that's demonstrably not working. In my opinion, that's the core of what fans of harder games like myself want to keep experiencing and why so many are against "easier modes" because it subverts the intended experience we enjoy: recognizing what's going wrong, correcting it to make things go right, and overcoming great challenges.

You're presenting the two options as similar when I'm not entirely sure they are. You've explored making an easy game harder and a hard game easier, but let's look at the other two results from your presented options: making an easy game easier and a hard game harder.

Making a hard game harder is often met with praise because the people who beat or otherwise enjoy the hard game already want and expect a challenge out of the game, so giving them more of that is almost what they expect already.

Making an easy game easier can be met with praise as much as it can be subject to criticism. The Pokemon series has long been critiqued for continually making every next installment easier and easier for the last several generations.

Obviously in your example of making a hard game easier there are people in favor of it but also people against it. The fact that we're having a discussion about this controversy is proof enough that many people want it, but dedicated fans are often against it.

And just like in your example, I don't think I've ever seen someone against allowing an easy game to have harder modes as long as it doesn't negatively impact those playing the easier modes.

The trend I'm seeing amongst these 4 outcomes is usually that allowing the option for a harder mode than the game already allows is often agreed upon by the wider gaming community, but asking for easier modes is often controversial. The trend I'm also seeing is that this remains true regardless of if the game was considered easy or hard in the first place.

Your original post seems to imply that players and fans for hard games are being obstinate and resistant to allowing the same concessions that players and fans for easy games do, when you could use the other two results I brought up to make players for easy games seem just as obstinate. "Us players of hard games are allowing for harder games to be made, why do you fans of easy games seem to be having such a controversy over if easy games should be made easier?" or something to that effect.

In my opinion, the controversy isn't whether hard games should be made easier, it's whether games that fans enjoy should be made easier.

Not to detract from your point, but the word you're looking for is cease. Seize is to forcibly obtain something, like "seizing the means of production."

So are you gonna cite your sources for that 1-9 ratio? Still waiting on the source for your other comment about only 1% of gamers backup their games implying the other 99% use backups for piracy.

You're being just as dishonest as the people you accuse in two different ways: there are people already in the replies to this comment admitting to the same things, as well as making unverified claims that "they're actually pirating, they just won't admit it"

I feel like devices like this aren't really under a false pretense though. Most people who would pirate games like this probably wouldn't buy a third party device so they can copy a friend's cartridge so they can emulate it, they'd more likely just download it and skip the middle man.

The only real way I see it being used primarily for piracy is in areas where Internet activity is heavily monitored/restricted, or broadband isn't available/accessible. Otherwise a 1 month subscription to a VPN and a few gigabyte of Internet usage is far cheaper and easier to a pirate.

Not all games back up to the cloud and you nees an active NSO subscription to be able to backup to their cloud.

I haven't seen this video yet (battery almost dead, gonna watch later) but this device appears to let you backup your saves locally without running it by Nintendo.

Edit: I forgot that Switch cartridges don't hold saves so this device can't do that.

It sounds like how you feel about Rebirth is pretty similar to how I felt about Remake having played the original several times. Not going to say you couldn't or shouldn't have enjoyed it, but there were a ton of story bits and minigames that frustrated the hell out of me.

Yes I both am aware and agree that that would be acting against archives and the like. EA making these games available on Steam however is not the same as Nintendo suing emulators.

What makes you say that this is aiming to make that impossible? I picked up RA2 because it was cheap and I figured if I didn't like the port (doesn't work well, forces you to play on their application, etc) I'd just return it and so far it's been good enough for me to use. The installation process was a lot easier than the original game and I was able to hop straight in and play. Haven't had any issues with it yet.

So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that this is anything but them catering to a different market that being the steam community.

• you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it

That's also true on other OSes, like Android and Windows 11.

You can get rid of bloatware on Android, though. I use a Note 9 which has the stupid Bixby button. I used adb to uninstall the applications associated with Bixby as well as other Samsung bloat and now if I so chose I could bind that button to different actions like media controls.

I don't know if there's a term for that, but imo Rocket League had the same thing going for years. The game used to always queue a team based on the MMR of the highest ranked team member. People complained they couldn't play the game with their super low level friends in competitive play, so they changed it so it would average the rank between team members.

The reason I always hated this change was because an average bronze player can barely compete with an average silver player, and etc through the ranks. If you play in 2v2, then you can have a bronze and gold player against two silvers and the game thinks it's a fair fight. In reality, the gold player is likely going to run circles around both of the silvers while the bronze player barely needs to do anything except try and interfere with the silver team's defence for it to be no competition at all. I can only imagine the problem would have been even worse in 3v3 matches.

At least before when everyone queued by the highest ranked member's MMR, then you had to be selective about who you brought with to make sure they can carry their weight. After the change, they streamlined the smurfing and boosting problems the game already has.

Tried bringing it up in community discussions but the whole community (especially at the time) wanted to do nothing but circle jerk Psyonix's dicks with that same argument: "well Psyonix has the data and you don't, so how do you know this is a problem? They have the data and they made the change so clearly it must not be a problem"

Fair enough, I stand corrected. Was a little factoid I had heard a long time ago and never questioned. Good to know that it wasn't actually true.

The Chicago area has more people of Polish descent than Poland.