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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)ZA
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136
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1 yr. ago

  • If you slip, fall and hit your head and loose conciousness during that, in a way such that you are lying exactly on the border between two or three nations, to which hospital will you be brought? And how are insurances going to deal with this?

  • TL;DR:
    It's not hard to earn the ingame currency. No FOMO. Definetly not pay to win, since you get decent equipment, can unlock everything else with little time, it's a PvE Co-Op game with many difficulty levels to serve most player tastes. Buying ingame currency has some dark patterns though, but it's extremely better in comparison to other games with microtransactions.

    Long version:
    You can earn the paid (and sadly obfuscated) currency by playing the game and collecting some stuff. You don't need to pay at all despite the game's price initially.
    It takes me about 15 to 30 hours to get enough of the paid currency in order to buy a warbond (the "battlepass", basically a package of weapons, tools and skins you get access to by buying such a warbond once). And that's me not even trying to farm the currency. I'm sure you can get there a lot faster if you're aiming for farming it.

    It's also not pay to win. I understand the first impression, since it's actual different sets of weapons and armour which are locked behind it. But: on the one hand, you still have the standard warbonds which you don't need to unlock using that special currency; there, a decent collection of items is already present in order to find a style with which you can beat the game. On the other hand, it's a PvE Co-Op game with a lot of different difficulties to choose from. You can play it from extremely easy to very hard. It's not intended to be played solo. Although you absolutely can if you're good. That means: winning is easy. Even with equipment you don't like as much.
    And let's not forget that it isn't that hard to earn the paid currency by playing the game. Unlocking the paid warbonds that way can be another incentive to play and get a feeling of progression.

    What's also very important:
    There is no FOMO. The warbonds stay where they are. You can complete any of them at any time in any order you like. Also, even in the ingame shop, there is not really FOMO: there are literally just four items: two helmets and two armours. Those switch every couple of days. But that switch is a cycle. Meaning, after some days those, you've seen on one day, are back.

    The devs also made clear in a statement that they explicitly don't want that FOMO stuff and don't want it to be pay to win.

    I have more than 200 h in the game and have unlocked every item in every warbond earlier than that. Never paid a cent. Not even for the game itself since I got it as a gift, lol. Also several of the shop items. (That depends on difficulty though. With lower difficulties might take longer.)

    Yes, they are not "the paragon of microtransactions". First, because they still have microtransactions at all. Secondly, because it's obfuscated and superlinear (ratio between spent money and amount of received currency is not the same between the packages: you get much more if you spend a bit more). But if you compare that to other games, which employ microtransaction shit, it's waaaaay better and right at the top, after Deep Rock Galactic.

  • You are literally wrong. Nice article, don't see how that's relevant though.

    Could it be, that you don't know what "intelligence" is? And what falls under definitions of the "artificial" part in "artificial intelligence"? Maybe you do know, but have a different stance on this. It would be good to make those definitions clear before arguing about it further.

    From my point of view, the aforementioned branches, are all important parts of the field of artificial intelligence.

  • I totally agree with Linus Torvalds in that AIs are just overhyped autocorrects on steroids

    Did he say that? I hope he didn't mean all kinds of AI. While "overhyped autocorrect on steroids" might be a funny way to describe sequence predictors / generators like transformer models, recurrent neural networks or some reinforcement learning type AIs, it's not so true for classificators, like the classic feed-forward network (which are part of the building blocks of transformers, btw), or convolutional neural networks, or unsupervised learning methods like clustering algorithms or principal component analysis. Then there are evolutionary algorithms and there are reasoning AIs like bayesan nets and so much much much more different kinds of ML/AI models and algorithms.

    It would just show a vast lack of understanding if someone would judge an entire discipline that simply.

  • Cheers to that. Being welcoming and forgiving with new users or just ones who don't know yet how to state their problem better, is a must. Assholes, like those elitists you spoke of, are not only unique to the Linux bubble, but are a sickness spread through all kinds of volunteer-based software related streams. I mean, just take a look at stackoverflow or forums and github pages of some open-source projects.

    I can understand if someone is annoyed by insufficiently detailed problem threads, if they see that very often, but don't take that out on the user, because that would be the best way to deter people from using that project. And also because it's super unhelpful and inconsiderate.
    That doesn't mean serving someone everything on a silver plate and not expecting anything from the user. It's okay to expect more involvement of the user to solve their own problem. However, do it in a nice way. Some mere hints, even if someone is not at the capacity to completely help, can go a long way.

    As you nicely put it, every user and voluntary contributor is an ambassador of the project.

  • "Tips and recommendations".

    For years I had that turned on in Windoof 10 as it sounded like: "we see you're regularly doing X or having problem Y. Here is a way how to make X simpler and a solution for Y."

    Instead it was nothing like that. It was literally nothing at all. Probably they just tried to shove some ads down my throat, which I luckily didn't see.

    But it has become clear enough: it's not about helping users with useful tips and recommendations. It's about luring them into buying some stuff.

    They can find new clever euphemisms, like EA did with their "surprise mechanics". But it is what it is: ads, digital noise, a waste of resources and probably one of the last incentives I needed to fully switch to a good Linux distro.

    I used Windoof just for gaming anyway. And as I'm already working professionally with Linux, it will hardly be a miss.