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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Console manufacturers haven’t sold at a loss in a long time.

    I agree, it won’t be huge gains directly for them, but even moving people off of Windows benefits them by removing control a competitor (Microsoft) has. I somewhat agree that it won’t be sold at (much of) a loss, but maybe at cost. I’m sure they expect manufacturing prices to go down over time, and engineering was a one-time investment, so sold just below cost doesn’t seem unreasonable to me at launch, which then becomes at cost or above in the future.

    This all depends on if their goals for it are short-term or long. Historically, they seem to target long-term. That’s why I think it’ll be as low as they can make it, which they also said they’re doing by only having 8GB VRAM as cost savings. They want to drop the price as low as they can to compete. They won’t compete at $1k. I doubt they’d compete at $600-700. I suspect they’re targeting $400-500, which seems like a reasonable cost for the hardware too.




  • I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn’t that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)

    5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There’s so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It’s a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you’ve already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It’s stupid.

    Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you’ve got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.




  • Every state (meaning country/government) supports terrorists. They only call it terrorism if it’s a non-state actor though. Ignoring what we do to other places in the world, do you think policing in the US is terrorism? I don’t see any way it isn’t. Violence and fear for political gain is the definition.

    You’ve just drank the kool-aid. You think what the state tells you is true and they can’t lie. Terrorism is a valid and useful tool. Again, it’s why every state uses it. It’s only since about 9/11 where politicians and the media discovered they can call anything they don’t like “terrorism” and get people like you to repeat the drivel.





  • Anno is more city builder with some RTS elements. Definitely not Grand Strategy —arguably RTS.

    I wouldn’t say they’re “incompatible” but they aren’t synonyms. I haven’t seen a grand strategy that is also an RTS, but I could see them co-existing potentially. Total War is close with its battles, except I think creating units and buildings is a requirement for the RTS genre.

    Grand Strategy is generally: you control a nation and operate on a map of the world (sometimes limited to a region). You’re continuously progressing your nation, constructing permanent buildings, unlocking permanent technologies, and improving your economy.

    Examples: Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Total War.

    RTS is: you control an army and win a battle on a relatively small map, where individual people are a relevant scale. You build units during the battle, but very few to no resources come into the battle from anything before, and very little to nothing changes after the battle.

    Examples: Command and Conquer, Dune II, Starcraft.




  • I was watching a video about extraction shooters and it mentioned a F2P Chinese one. I wasn’t that interested in it, but I wanted to give it a try to see what it was doing differently. It didn’t run though, because almost all Chinese games have kernel-level AC. I figure it’s not a big loss. I own EfT, and I’ve got other extraction shooters to play, especially ARC Raiders now.

    That was the last time, and the only time in a very long time, that a game I tried to play didn’t just work.



  • You aren’t someone when playing a video game besides yourself. A third person view doesn’t suddenly make people unable to feel as if they’re playing as that character any more than a first person view does. For example, people can have a similar feeling even from books, with no agency.

    You’re making a weird argument based on some purity metric. Either way, you’re playing a video game and controlling a character in the game. Neither view let’s you be that character. Both let you be immersed and inhabit their role in the world.


  • I was largely being sarcastic. Yeah, Outer Wilds might be the only game that pretty much does it’s own thing I’ve played in many years.

    I’ve been playing The Finals a lot for quite a while now. I would say it’s incredibly innovative and unique. However, it’s still a first person shooter based on capturing an objective point. At its core, it’s derivative. The way everything fits together is unlike anything else though. Just listing features that are shared by other games does not mean it isn’t doing something different.


  • For the PvE aspect, the third person is great. The AI are an actual threat, and having the camera to look around corners or see around the player really helps.

    For PvP I think it’s a negative. It promotes safe play and gives an unfair advantage to certain situations.

    Overall, I think it’s a wash. Personally, I’d slightly prefer first person, but they’ve made third feel very good. I think you need to try it before making a judgement, and try it with an open mind without an opinion already formed. I thought I’d be more annoyed with it than I am.