abraxas @ abraxas @sh.itjust.works

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And the scariest part about history I learned in school is that the Vikings always took over the world because they don't need a Cassus Belli.

Yeah, I've noticed there's this weird cross-section of people who ask "do you believe everything you heard on the internet?" about some pretty established facts, and blindly believing Fox News.

The article I had found on the topic suggested linux users provided higher quality bug reports, in addition to more bug reports.

The real issue is that some game companies don't want bug reports because they don't want to fix bugs.

Actually, I think they don't want linux gamers, with their higher technical savvy. Some game dev companies love how 90% of their bug reports come from 10% of their users (and even brag about it). Other companies would rather just not get those 90% of bug reports.

For me, the primary appeal of a Bethesda RPG is that “take off in a direction, you’ll find a story” feel

I don't entirely disagree.

The insanely frequent, lengthy cutscenes cut into the continuous flow

You mean the ship going into warp or landing loading screen? There aren't really a ton of cutscenes. If I had to give a tedious downside, it would be the "power minigame" but at least it ends with a violent encounter with a strongish enemy 9 times out of 10

The choice to use procedural generation was odd and really took away from the more intentional feel of prior Bethesda games

See, THIS might be where my age plays me. My first Bethesda game was called "Arena", and it was all procedural. My second Bethesda game was "Daggerfall" and it was ABSURDLY huge procedural. I've never seen some procedural elements as a downside to extend the plot (and in fact, Skyrim's radiant quest system is procedure), as long as there was sufficient hand-made content.

Now here's the thing. By all reports (both self-reports that can be questioned, but also people who dug into game files), Starfield has more handmade content than Skyrim. It's just that the thousand planets above and beyond that were procedural. I LIKE that balance. A lot. It solves the "Morrowind problem" (Morrowind was slammed at first because the world was SO much smaller than Daggerfall's) for me while still giving you 60-80 hours of handcrafted stories, characters, maps, etc. But I can see how other people who dive into into the procedural content might step back and say "boy this game is so reptitious". Sometimes our gameplay loops define our enjoyment. I know I hated Persona 2 for years for the dumbest reason ever - I got addicted to the casino minigame and lost track of the story, then found the casino game too tedious and I had no desire to play the game anymore.

Yall are getting downvoted, but I think it’s great that you have a game you like.

100%. I get baffled that Starfield gets so much hate, but then some of my favorite games aren't very popular (Book of Hours anyone? lol)

I can even see the perspective of this being a better Outer Worlds

Yeah. Outer world was in reality the polar opposite of Starfield. A game that was excessively theme-driven but had lackluster "everything else" to go with it. A little (less than Outer Worlds used) bit of tongue-in-cheek "Spacer's Choice" could have worked like Vault Boy does in Fallout, and I wish Starfield had done something like that. But on story and gameplay alone, Starfield destroys Outer Worlds.

I think people like myself are just upset that we didn’t get scifi skyrim

This is the funny part. If I had to describe why I love Starfield to someone who had been living under a rock and hadn't ever heard of it, I'd say "because it's like Skyrim in space". In so many ways, if I'm being honest.

The thing is, the biggest critique people have against Starfield isn't all the crazy bugs (we remember those from Skyrim) or the really tropey shit, some skyrimmy feature it's missing, or anything in between. It's that they don't find Starfield "fun" in this hard-to-place sort of way. Perhaps that's you? If so, maybe you can see how someone would feel about Starfield if, for some reason, it clicked as fun from the start.

Now, I have some complaints about Starfield. But most of them have to do with things that Skyrim didn't even try (the shipbuilder, which I hear has improved of late) or the lategame (which means I got my fun out of it).

Also, I've learned not to take downvotes too badly most of the time. Everyone has opinions, and just because I reserve downvote for the rare "this person is an absolute idiot" doesn't mean other people do :)

Strange. I have more playtime in starfield than Skyrim. And the thing that draws me in is the story.

It's like it got most things right that Outer Worlds got wrong.

Honestly, I think just making the forward-burst functionality work for controller users instead of as a "keyboard hack" is enough.

If I had to guess, each graphics cycle is a little less dominant than the last. The iterations on graphics are becoming lesser and lesser. A game from 10 years ago is far improved from a game 20 years ago, but not that much worse than a game from last month.

There are moments of awe (imo, especially in VR when a game "nails it"), but we're pretty desensitized to high-graphics video games of late.

Ah yes, belittle your interlocutor when you can't respond to them. Thank you for justifying this block

Yeah, not the same thing. I'm not saying microtransactions can't be stopped. I'm saying it won't happen through US-based legislation.

And this iPhone monopoly suit is apples-and-oranges to a microtransaction litigation. They're being charged with being in breach of an 1890s law that has held strong, but that has nothing to do with microtransactions. In fact, no relevant law exists except some flimsy gambling statutes that simply do not work. Most importantly, there is no legislative piece to it. Apple broke a big law and has been doing so with virtually no consequences for decades. Nobody's passing new laws against Apple. They're just finally facing the justice that they should've faced a long time gone.

There's a difference between fatalism and realism. I'm not saying the problem isn't solvable. I'm saying it won't happen that way.

Say it with me: nobody is ever going to legislate this in the US.

Yeah. It seems to me while there's a lot of ways to take "capitalism", the moment you point out that people are taking paycuts to do gamedev there's no way capitalism applies to their motivations anymore.

I mean, other than that one song the music was pretty unmemorable.

There have been some incredible OSS games. Take away IP concerns and they have more access to assets. Take away needing to work to live, and people passionate about gamedev would have no obstacles in creating video games with their time.

Capitalism makes some core assumptions that, right or wrong, generally do not apply in the dev world - assumptions of laziness and selfishness. Smith tried to build a framework around "people will never be altruistic or work because of their pride". It was intended both to standardize and limit those selfish behaviors (modern capitalists threw out the "limit" part). You can make your own conclusions about capitalism and most of the business world, but I don't know a developer who would rather sit and watch The Price is Right than be on their computer coding something other people would love.

It's the deal with the devil.

One could argue we have the world's strongest economy because we are business-friendly to a fault. People actually question the fairness of unions, but even with unions our labor protections are more third-world than first-world. But in return, the median income is at least world-competitive, and the typical individual buying power is through the roof. All we had to do to get here is sign away our collective souls to these megacorporations and be ok with the sacrifice of a million lives a year devastated by it all.

You're not wrong, but I've also worked at companies that successfully contested unemployment claims. It can depend by state, but "it was entirely this person's fault" is a bad start. Employers win about 30% of contested claims, and then about 15-20% of appeals (#1 cause for an employer losing a contested claim or an appeal appears to be withdrawing or not showing up for it). (Some numbers)

And the main reason employers lose when they show up is lack of preparation. In a case like the above, if they can show a policy (preferably one signed by her) that directly forbids her onlyfans account, they probably have a pretty good case to shut her down.

That said, they're very unlikely to waste their time and money to fight it. Ultimately (as my current employer's HR put it) "it's just a cost of doing business" and a waste of money to pursue.

She was terminated "for cause". To get unemployment, she's likely to have to fight for it. She's likely to win, but it's not a free thing.

There are valid criticisms to UBI (usually specific to each implementation), but "lazy workers" will never be one of them.