harmonea @ harmonea @kbin.social

Middle-aged gamer/creative/wiki maintainer

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2 yr. ago

A friend of mine, who I know for a fact is a woman, made an offmychest post venting about a serious domestic issue and had people doubt the entire story as fiction, made up just to make a man look bad and watch how the internet soothes a fake woman, based solely on the fact that she said, at one point, "I'm a small female so..."

But like... despite her skill with the language, she literally only speaks English online, so she doesn't know all the nuances. This kind of language connotation judgment is never fair unless the context makes some kind of demeaning intent very, very clear.

Not remembering a joke from an episode that aired 25 years ago doesn't really rank high on most people's shame-o-meters, my dude

Oh, I'm positive yours is by far the more common experience - I haven't met anyone who agreed with me about it, haha. (But starting with "unpopular opinion, but..." is so tainted by popular opinions seeking attention that I couldn't bring myself to say it)

And yeah, the puzzles were simple, but the world was cool enough (until the ending loljk'd it all) that I enjoyed spending time in it even doing the simple stuff.

This is a hard question to answer, because the really unfun ones either get dropped so fast I forget I ever played them unless someone jogs my memory by naming them directly, or I'm willing to just shrug and say "this is probably great to some people, but it's not a genre I like." I guess for this category, I would point to The Witness. I heard so many recommendations for it, but aside from the occasional "oh, neat" when I saw how a puzzle was placed in the world instead of on a board, I couldn't tolerate it for nearly as long as it wanted me to keep doing the thing.

The game I memorably should have enjoyed - that I had the highest hopes for (and the biggest subsequent disappointment for) was Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

At first, I loved the deeply disturbed main character and grim Norse fantasy world being crafted around me, but the combat felt so disjointed from the story (on purpose) that it felt like there was one guy on the dev team who liked combat who everyone was afraid to piss off, so they had to make concessions and put one token immersion-wrecking battle in every so often. And it's mad that Senua has two entire character traits - "psychotic" and "warrior" - and one of them managed to feel immersion breaking.

Then the ending destroyed the bits of the game I DID like and made me feel like a tool for ever having bought into the grim fantasy world to begin with. That shit is everyone's most hated ending trope, and I walked away from the game feeling like I'd wasted my time.

At least it was short.

It's specific to Xi Jinping. Chinese memelords started it in 2013, and the country's censors were so offended by it that the Streisand Effect kicked in.

John Oliver did a pretty thorough breakdown of these places a while back that I really recommend to anyone whose goals are to kill 21 minutes and get mad.

I didn't say they don't make good games. I said they drink the koolaid.

Context matters, and in the context of this thread (whether or not Bethesda games often have Denuvo) that means the anti-piracy "DRM is neat" koolaid (vs them avoiding DRM for self-developed games so they can be modded extensively).

Bethesda the publisher does things differently than Bethesda the developer.

As a dev, they know their modding communities keep their games alive long, long past their expiration dates and will fuck with them as little as they possibly can - this takes them from games to household names to legends that everyone knows.

As a publisher pushing products that aren't intended to be modded, they drink the koolaid.

You have to understand that most accounting departments treat month-end with the same gravity as year-end. My job's accounts payable department starts sending month end deadline reminders on the 15th. It's absurd how much they focus on it.

(This is not an excuse for their abhorrent treatment of an employee, mind you, but it might help explain the twisted logic behind "end of July" possibly working against her.)

I can’t even tell most of you people apart.

Have you ever considered maybe that's the point? Maybe people want to be judged for what they say instead of what image they had on hand when they signed up?

I uploaded a pic while playing with all the shiny features over here, but I was faceless on reddit for years after their introduction of profile pics, because I was there to have discussions, not build a profile. And the one I picked here? It tells you almost nothing about me unless you already know the character in the image, which only people who have a similar niche interest might.

This is like whining about women who don't wear makeup, because "If you have the option why not just snazzy it up with a couple of images tiny bit of eyeshadow. I think it’s shows a bit of personality." Sometimes the active decision not to bother with cosmetic features IS the personality you're looking for.

HA. Is it sad that I know exactly the one you mean from such a vague description... (no, no it's not)

Since you mention you're on an evil playthrough, it's worth noting Minthara is horrendously broken right now. If you have her on another save (since you mention Wyll idk if we're talking multiple saves or what)... All those times you've spoken to her at camp and she jumps straight to the menu with the usual options without the camera even zooming in on her, those were supposed to be special situational dialogue including comments on current events and possible romance triggers. So you literally had no chance with her. Hoping patch 2 fixes her, she's fun.

I was able to bring Astarion and, optionally, Halsin to that particular encounter. I'm not sure if Astarion relies on a particular choice made in his personal quest - he declines until that's done, but I don't know if both outcomes have the same result for the special encounter. Haven't tried a save with any other options yet.

Not all the companions are willing to accept a poly relationship, and if you lock in on one who isn't (like Wyll) everyone else backs off.

(Imagine my surprise when things got serious with Astarion in act 2 and Gale, who I'd never flirted with - I never even got that one scene that starts with the Mystra image - suddenly demanded I choose between them. Awkward.)

And Astarion is just hard to please in general if your character doesn't find chaos and a little death on the side fun.

Acclimatization is a whole thing. I remember thinking 65F / 18C was cold once upon a time, then I moved north and now only bother putting on a jacket if it's below 40F / 5C or so (but now I start seriously suffering above 85F / 30 C where that used to be my ideal temp).

People who pretend certain temps are objectively not that cold or hot have never moved from one climate to another, I think. The person you replied to must be from a hot area.

Celcius really isn't that hard to get used to if you stop getting hung up on conversions and just live in it for a while. Faherenheit also isn't as hard to get used to as people meme it to be. It's all about what you've spent a significant enough time in to get the data points for how stuff feels to you.

Either scale would be second nature to anyone after a year in a new home. I made the change np. I never do conversion math, I just know what it feels like outside and can ballpark the number I remember having a similar feeling in the other place. It's really not a big deal and not worth all the internet yelling that goes on about it.

That's a pity. Still, the setting (time period/tech levels/world population composition etc) is worth taking away as something good that people can learn from, I hope, even if they messed it up so badly.

Oh, you might be right. That's even odder to me then; I haven't played any of the Horizon games myself, but I find their setting premise fascinating. Is it so poorly executed?

If I misunderstood, my bad, but I'll leave it since there are people who rant about BG3 in a similar direction.

Calling DnD bland always strikes me as funny. It's bland compared to most modern fantasy for the same reason Seinfeld is bland compared to most modern sitcoms: it's one of the the foundations upon which most of the rest of what we've consumed since its inception is built. We've seen all the innovations upon its formula, so going back to the original can feel lacking if you don't bother to think critically about why it feels that way.

The important thing is that even without all those innovations, they nailed the source material and created the richest experience they could within its boundaries. If it's not for you, it's not for you, and that's fine - no game is for everyone. But it's a pity you dismiss it so flippantly, and I hope one day you can grow to see what's executed well in a project even when its end goal isn't to your tastes. Or just grow out of trolling, whichever applies. I'm not going to pick that apart.

Astarion's mocap in particular is just excellent. He's so deeply weird and it's completely appropriate. I love how during most normal gameplay, his whole body is constantly on the edge between breaking into raucous laughter or total exasperation. Kudos to the actor(s) and techs that put the whole package together.

Vote federation can be a little wonky, but generally, yeah.

Dunno about over on lemmy, but on kbin we have an "activity" link on each comment exposing all voters.