loobkoob @ loobkoob @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

I'm attached the end of your rod, motherlicka

Even if Starmer and the Labour party were pretty much the same except they kept the mask on, that would still be a step in the right direction. Normalising the racism, bigotry, corruption and general inhumaneness that fuels the Tory party is absolutely something we should try to avoid.

However, I don't think Labour is like this. I don't think they're perfect, but I think they're much, much better. They're not going to fix everything overnight, but I do think them getting into power would be an important first stepping stone in moving the country and politics towards being a better place in in 10-15 years. They may not be your ideal party but, if you're pragmatic and have any kind of long-term vision, you'll likely vote for them (or the Liib Dems, depending on which constituency you're in) to make sure the Tories are eliminated.

The Overton window is far too far to the right at the moment and Labour getting into power is important for helping to gradually shift it leftwards. People simply aren't going to vote in a "radical" socialist in the current political or economic climate; they want someone they can see as a safe pair of hands who can work on stabilising things somewhat. Right now, that's Starmer - the boring man who's politically central (by current standards) with a fairly clean record and an air of competence. When, in most constituencies, the options are Labour and Tory, you working to put everyone off Labour is just going to benefit the Tories.

Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good.

That and "Suella de Ville". And she's fully deserving of either title. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but where other politicians I dislike feel like they're either doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or they're selfish, corrupt or incompetent, Braverman feels like she gets off on the cruelty and is a genuinely evil person.

I think calling her the "second coming of Maggie" really undersells Braverman's cruelty and capacity for evil. I think Thatcher really fucked up this country, and we're still feeling the effects of some of her policies to this day. But Thatcher did genuinely think she was doing things for the right reasons - that she was making tough but necessary decisions.

Braverman seems to get off on the cruelty. A lot of her policies and ideas seem cruel for the sake of cruelty. There are plenty of politicians I've disagreed with and disliked, but they've all tended to feel like it's either because they were doing what I'd consider to be the wrong things for the right reasons (ie, they thought it would help, different approaches to what I'd want but with positive outcomes in mind, etc) or they've just been selfish, corrupt or idiotic. Braverman is a whole different thing entirely. The purpose of her policies is often the cruelty, with no tangible benefits that even she can list. She's a genuinely evil person.

Yeah. There are a couple of other factors, too:

• there are general economic issues around the world right now that are affecting most sectors. Borrowing is more expensive, utilities are more expensive, etc
• people had more disposable income and time to spend on things like gaming during COVID lock downs so games companies simply made more money because of that

So gaming (and tech in general) companies have seen a downturn in investment, their audiences are spending less money and the general economy is weaker. It's no surprise so many of them are having to resort to layoffs. Some of that is down to poor management and overspending/over-expansion during the pandemic, and those companies' management obviously deserves criticism. But some of it is just down to a collection of unfortunate circumstances all coming to a head at once.

Not to defend the guy because he seems awful, but a century is just absurd. There's no way I'm going to be thinking in 50 years' time, "damn, I'm glad 80-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried is off the streets, I wouldn't feel safe if he were free". It just seems disproportionately high.

See, I love spreadsheets and being able to optimise things, but I do need to actually be able to feel the impact in the gameplay, too. And yeah, Destiny is terrible for that; the buffs and upgrades you do get just feel irrelevant, for the most part. Especially with the terrible scaling system they use where you never feel any stronger against weaker enemies, just weaker against stronger enemies. When getting a huge numerical upgrade (in terms of gear score) doesn't change anything about how the game feels to play, I think that's poor design.

I don't think looter-shooters (and loot games in general) are inherently limiting, but loot needs to be exciting. I've played thousands of hours of Path Of Exile, and hundreds of hours of other looter games, and what holds my interest is interesting loot and build variety/depth. That simply doesn't happen in Destiny. Compare Destiny to Borderlands, for instance, and you can see how boring the loot really is. Look at games like Path Of Exile, Grim Dawn, or Last Epoch, and you can see how boring the skill trees are. In all of those other games, I've had items drop where I've been excited to redo my entire build to accommodate it, or to make a new character built around it. In Destiny, items just don't feel exciting enough. (Not every game needs to be as complex as Path Of Exile, but Destiny is incredibly shallow.)

And, of course, Destiny's story has consistently been disappointing. There's some great lore there, but they've failed to translate that into a well-told, engaging story over and over again.

Does that make Mastodon the godfather of tits?

Dark really sucks me into a dark damp place

Very few places are darker or damper than Winden!

Bud Light was already a joke for being bad.

Yep. GTA 4 came out in 2008 - 15 years ago - and features the beer brand "Pißwasser", which is clearly mocking Budweiser's name and branding - particularly Bud Light's. It's been a joke for a long time.

They're not asking for it to be banned from the instance, or from Lemmy entirely; they just want it to be moderated out of this community.

Not only wait for the reviews, but wait for the hype to die down a little.

When Destiny 2 released, the entire playerbase was super positive about it - it fixed everything that was wrong with the first game, they said. After a couple of weeks, some players started mentioning there was no real endgame, nothing to chase because of the fixed loot rolls, etc, and that they felt "done" with the game after 80 hours or so. Everyone else told them to shut up, obviously they were burnt out after playing 80 hours in two or three weeks. And then a couple of weeks later, everyone else started to hit the same point - they had their perfect gear already, they'd done all the content, there was nothing left to see.

Watching a game go from incredibly positive reception to a fairly jaded, luke-warm-at-best reception over the course of 5 weeks with nothing about the game changing was quite something. And it basically showed me I should wait a few months at minimum for hype to die down and the opinions to settle before I think about buying a game. That said, I'm a patient gamer anyway and usually wait far longer than that anyway, but yeah, I think Destiny 2 perfectly illustrates why you should wait longer for a community consensus.

It's like if Dali spent too long looking at Saturn Devouring His Son

Plus Edge has support for vertical tabs built in natively. It's wild to me that horizontal tabs are still the default, using up valuable vertical screen space and having illegible names when you've got a certain number of tabs open, when vertical tabs are an option. So props to Edge for offering that.

I think vignette and film grain can both look great in small doses and in the right situations, but they have to be really subtle. If you can actively see them, it's already far too much. Unfortunately, most games go wayyyy overboard with them.

Film grain has a few psychological effects:

• it can evoke a sense of nostalgia, as if you're watching old footage
• it can add texture, which can stop players from perceiving flat textures as being as, well, flat, stop jagged edges from standing out as much, and adding a sense of depth
• it can make something feel more "genuine" - rather than being clean, edited, almost clinical feeling, film grain can make things feel a little more raw and believable
• it can add a "documentary feel", especially combined with camera shake (another thing a lot of games are far too liberal with, but that can be great in the right moment/dosage) which can make the player/viewer feel more like they're in the action themselves
• a lot of cinematic masterpieces were filmed on analogue film. Film grain is something people subconsciously associate with something being cinematic, to the point where a lot of modern film/TV that's shot on digital cameras (and therefore doesn't have film grain) will have digital noise added to emulate the effect. Games do it for the same reason.

As for vignette, I think this is far more niche and definitely something that isn't used well in a lot of games. The biggest reasons to use it are:

• to draw the player/viewer's eye to the centre of the screen/frame
• to reduce the player's peripheral vision - this can be good for horror games to add a feeling of claustrophobia, or in any genre when the player is wounded (although many games will add fairly distinctive bloody overlays rather than a simple vignette)
• during low-light situations - like above, but it can really sell the darkness a lot more (on top of actual low-lighting effects) if there's a well-done vignette.

The thing is, both things need to be used in tasteful quantities, and ideally done dynamically. Just plastering them over the entire screen all the time looks terrible, whereas using them in specific situations and being more selective with how they're applied - like in low-light situations, certain environments, or specific story moments - can work really well. And most developers simply don't do that.

I always find this discussion interesting. I don't personally tend to play Paradox games at all so I've no real horse in the race, but I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the model. It's designed around people being able to buy the specific parts they want, and those specific things having a good level of quality / depth to them.

Like, if you're really into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house thrown into a "kitchen sink" DLC pack that you can copy-paste over and over into your city with no options to customise or expand on that, or would you prefer an entire DLC dedicated to that style so you can build a full district or city in that style?

And conversely, if you're not into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house in that style thrown into your DLC pack that you don't care about and won't ever use, or would you prefer your DLC pack to contain things you are interested in?

Maybe the average consumer does look and think "wow, I really need to spend $404.40 to be able to play the game" and decide against it, I don't know. But personally, if I see a game has DLCs like "specific niche cosmetic option pack #2" then I see them as not at all necessary, and figure I can play the base game first and just buy any additional packs I want later.

Some people like their sugar to have a hint of coffee flavouring to it.

I don't think the controller support is too bad from what little I've played with a controller, but it can feel pretty build-dependent. It's clear some skills were designed with mouse targeting in mind.

I've played hundreds of hours with mouse and keyboard, though, and I think it's shaping up really well. It already feels great, but with more content variety down the line it'll only get better.

Thanks for the summary! Yeah, I can see how anyone who bought the original Planetary Annihilation would have felt burned by all of that. Titans is what I've played and I did have a good time with it, but it seems like getting to that point was a rough time. I'll have to check out Beyond All Reason, I'm not familiar with it but it seems promising from the reviews!