I think having areas with weaker or stronger enemies is fine. Good, even. So long as you can tell by looking at them what you’re getting into.

Dark Souls generally does this. A rotting skeleton is a low threat. A giant knight in black armor and man sized sword is a bigger threat.

Oblivion will often have dudes that visually and behaviorally are the same, but hit way differently because of the numbers assigned to them. You can’t really look at a scene and understand what you’re getting into.

Other games also do a bad job here. Borderlands for example will have identical looking bandits, but in this area they’re indestructible level 100, and that one they’re push over level 5. The ass-creed Viking one did the same thing. Archers on one side of the river you could ignore, but the far side would one hit you.

I think a lot of studios don’t want to invest in the extra art assets and stuff when it’s cheaper to just use the same monster model and assign it different numbers.

I feel like trying to combine

• high vertical power growth
• non linear “open world”
• power fantasy

all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.

Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.

Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.

A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.

Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600

If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.

I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.

Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.

Oblivion was kind of really bad though. It had the worst level scaling of the genre.

I think the spell crafting was also toned down and more gated than Morrowind. And the equipment I think was overly simplified.

I… I played a lot of guild wars 2. It’s a good game!

But about 40 games total. I don’t want to be a mono-gamer so that’s nice.

Nine Sols is squarely in the “good but not fun” category for me. It is well executed but I did not enjoy most of it. Also the story is a bummer.

I reinstalled Sekiro after finishing it to see if my memory was rose tinted. No, sekiro is still like music. Even cleared the “you should lose this fight” tutorial boss.

I feel like it should be illegal to sell user information like that, but clearly I don’t make the laws.

But yes that’s a good point that stealing bank info is worse than porn preferences. Though the way things are going, looking at gay stuff might be a hazard in some parts of the US.

Man, what a stupid dystopia this is.

I guess. I mean I immediately thought “I don’t want it capturing the porn I look at”, but maybe people really don’t think about privacy at all.

I don’t really see how it makes money, since it’s bundled into windows (right?).

I don’t think I’ve ever desired to have speech as an interface for a device.

Yeah, I could yell at it “Open the browser and go to uhh the order of the stick comic index page” and maybe it would get it right. Or I could just… click on the browser, type oot and pick it from the drop down. Faster, no error, no expensive processing.

I don’t drive (cars are a bad form of transit and I’m lucky enough to not need one) and I’m not hands-full in the kitchen often.

Recall remains a phenomenally bad idea. I don’t understand why anyone would green light it.

I really liked midnight suns. I enjoyed picking what cards to use. I enjoyed the gameplay where you can use your cards, environment, and movement to win effectively. I even liked the socializing parts. Yes, I want to play videogames with Spiderman and hang out with Captain marvel.

I don’t grade papers, but I imagine a bit of flavor stands out favorably from all the other very generic writings.

Thinking about it, a combination of “You need good gear to win” AND “You need good player skill to win” might not be my cup of tea.

I only have ~250 hours in Path of Exile 1, but I never got really deep into theory or build craft. I don’t really love the spreadsheet and forums mode of the genre that much.

I guess we’ll see!

This sounds more my taste. I played a fair amount of PoE1, but a lot of it ended up feeling like I was just running my stats around. I’d win or lose because of gear. Like, I could hand control over to someone who’d never played before and they’d do mostly fine.

Contrast with like Sekiro where handing someone the controller they’ll probably just get stomped, since it has a bigger player skill factor.

A balance of those two extremes sounds nice.

I’m not going to try to change your mind here. Changing someone’s mind means taking care to massage their emotions, make them feel good about themselves and you, and get them to make the decisions on their own for their own reasons. It’s a lot of work. I’m going to skip it.

Have you considered that you might be stupid? I’m not joking. Seriously. Because “I haven’t personally seen it, so I don’t think it’s real” in this kind of context, maybe most contexts, is weapons grade stupid. What else don’t you believe in? Bacteria? France? Submarines?

When you’re done being mad about being insulted, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_transgender_people might be a good entry point.

It is a peeve of mine in a game where it’s like

• go to a cave. It’s empty
• go to a town. Guy says cave is haunted please clear it out
• go back to same cave. Now it’s full of ghosts and skeletons!

I feel like this has become less common in the last decade though

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Gibson, Count Zero

It would never occur to me to go watch someone do a whole speed run. Even less so to watch someone “doing a bit”. Like, making a character that looks like Shrek and invading in a swamp is kind of funny, but I’m not going to watch that.

I don’t know how to explain the complete void that is my interest there. Like, I wouldn’t be mad if it was on in the background. But I just… Don’t find it appealing. Like watching paint dry or looking out my window. It’s there. Sometimes there’s a cat. But I’m never going to be like "sweet let’s go watch outside the window "

This makes me feel kind of alienated.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched someone playing games intentionally, outside of like “how do you do this part?” guides, and maybe a couple hours spectating in games total.

Ok, and a handful of like “let me solo her” highlights that made it to me. But I never like seek it out.

I’m principal Skinner, I guess.

People don’t understand externalized costs

Would rather they invest in, like, housing, food security, climate crisis, any number of other more useful things. I know you could say that about anything- like all the money being spent on movies seems frivolous next to that stuff- but AI is especially dubious.

Our society’s priorities are all wrong, and I don’t think it’s going to get better without a lot of suffering. Maybe not even then.