This pic is so striking but the jammer gives me G11 vibes

Sounds like that other area needs to pull up on those bootstraps and make a water machine for its needs then.

This comment is brought to you by the sigma water machine, buy yours today and lock your grindset on hydration!

(Hopefully obvious but /s)

Sounds like California needs to try out the ligma OS because they can suck my nuts.

Nailed it.

The fun part is that a lot of trading cards have their roots in the early movements for cigarettes. Same idea for the most part, except it was typical for pinups instead of monsters or magic. You bought tobacco to get the cards, so tobacco became popular amongst kids. If you wanted to collect em all, you would buy more boxes of cigarettes, so imo it’s even more of a parallel than just calling out TCGs

The fact that the idea swapped to hooking kids on gambling is honestly a no brainer, especially since the cards were the things helping sell the cigs anyhow.

Her name ends with an A and during our earlier years together we were around a bunch of goats. So I kept calling her (name)-uhuhuh.

Her name in my phone is now that with a goat emoji because it’s both hilarious and she’s goated.

I think there are a few schools of thought towards this type of thing. Me personally, I would want a challenge despite my due diligence and I’m often the person disappointed when I nuke a boss.

However, you will have people that intentionally do the extra stuff so that they are op. Those individuals would hate that if they spent a lot of time doing this and the boss isn’t a breeze they would feel as if their time was wasted doing that content.

A game that comes to mind that recieved a lot of flak for that kind of scaling was last epoch. Every boss gets a shield as you lower their health and it makes having powerful gear, especially in lower areas, feel like less of a boon.

Personally, I think the answer is to move away from pure stats being the indicator of difficulty. Just bumping up health based on level would make a boss feel insane if you dumped most of your levels into less combat oriented stats in the games that have them. So you would feel weak despite being “high level”. The answer to it is having mechanics of a fight be challenging despite your level. If you mess up or ignore a mechanic, you are punished. However, if you’re strong enough you can afford to make those mistakes more often while the fight isn’t just a push over.

This, of course, requires way more effort and actual game design with fun combat so that the game doesnt make bosses feel like a chore or just gimmicks. The easy answer is to just buff stats, which is why most games just make enemies a sponge in high difficulty.

AI357 as in I’d rather eat a .357? Impeccable marketing

I made my original RuneScape account during classic. That account alone has over a year and a half logged in, and is getting nearly 25 years old, as is RuneScape. It is one of a handful of accounts that I’ve maxed out since. I go back to it probably every two years and play for a good while then stop.

The long dark is probably the game I have the most time in that isn’t an MMO, with well over 1k hours. There are other games that could probably compete but I don’t have any way of tracking or knowing.

Knowing that a single game has been such a significant portion of my actual living existence is kind of amazing to me. If anything I’m definitely loyal to what I like, I guess. I’m also really excited with where they are aiming to take the game because I feel as though it gets a lot of unfair flak in the genre, especially compared to osrs.

Not saying it isn’t, but if the reason why you’re saying that is because of the z/y key, I know one of the EU layouts swaps it. German I think?

Totally agree with you, but I would say that the original name made some sense. It used directx and the code name was directx box which became Xbox. Ideally edgy for the market at the time too, I think.

Despite being an avid gamer, I’m not even sure what the release order was after xbone. Being a grandparent or parent and doing it? Fuck that.

Obviously this is just me, but here is a list of the last 5 games I purchased that were not smaller indie titles:

Stalker 2, Elden ring, remnant 2, bg3, dragon’s dogma 2

You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.

Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.

In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don’t own 4.

I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.

It’s just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.

In all seriousness this was the only thing I could think of myself and then I had a moment of thought about a dwarf (irl not rpg) having a stalker. It is something that never crossed my mind. Not to say they couldn’t or anything but I could just feel the realization hit.

Anyway, cheers for the actual definition before the brain rot set in too hard.

I quit a couple years ago for good, but my main account on RuneScape was created in classic as a kid. I had about a year and a half of PLAY time on the account, mind you the vast majority of that was back when you had the hard 5 minute afk timer, so that was at least moderately active play. Then if you add my ironman account I have nearly 1/15th of my whole life logged into RuneScape. I don’t regret it, my whole friend group as an adult stem from those friendships I made online during my young teen years. However, as a modern game as much as I have a place for it in my heart, I found I had more of a negative addictive relationship with it. Maybe I always did, but I didn’t feel a negative mental effect at a young age.

I have over 1k hours in The Long Dark and 7 days to die. Around 500 in space engineers, darkest dungeon, binding of Isaac, enter the gungeon, grim dawn, and satisfactory. ~300 hours in ToME4 and Caves of qud each. That’s just steam stuff though, there are a lot of games that I know are up there that aren’t on steam.

I’m sure I have at least similar numbers to 500-1k if not much higher in Diablo 2-3, and I’m sure more than a few thousand in wow though I lost my og account after wotlk because I forgot the details when I quit so I’m really not sure.

GSC made a decision to not sell the game in Russia considering they attacked their home country. It is also a large part of why they were targeted by Russian hackers. Seems weird to ban a game that isn’t allowed to be purchased (I’m aware there is likely going to be ways around it) but to me it just shows how scared Russia is of it potentially doing well. The game doesnt even NEED anti-russian sentiments, its existence IS one.

100% agree with your message, but just for clarity’s sake I believe you meant “the intolerant will eventually ‘seize’” as in take, like a seizure of assets. Cease is putting an end to something.

Normally I wouldn’t bother to correct someone, but the irony of the mistake is that it contradicts your intended message by saying that if you tolerate intolerance, it will cease to exist.

When we were first learning about it, there were some misconceptions about radioactivity and health. There were even business minded individuals who widely sold it as a miracle cure. This public belief was reinforced by the fact that around that time we discovered hot springs have radioactive elements, (and people have always believed hot springs heal your ailments) which lead to a mass conception radioactivity was actually a miracle cure. A large part of that down fall was when the “Radium Girls” started literally dying because they were told it was totally safe to work with radioactive material, began falling apart and then worked for legal pushback.

I’m not an expert on the matter, so I might be a little off but that is a good overview on why some people have that belief still. As always it’s shitty people looking to make money off of hype. The Radium Girls had a tragic but ultimately fascinating life/story. They would even rub the material on their teeth to glow. Check it out if you’re interested.

I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.

In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don’t think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.

The long dark.

Assuming the game mechanics are still in place? I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll even live a few years on the Great Bear island.

However, if I am in that scenario with real world mechanics? I’m Fucking dead, so hard, so fast. Then again I guess the wildlife would be less aggressive and maybe people would actually be around. Still probably dead, though.

Nah, I’m a little removed when it comes to pain. So if true, I’m definitely at the worst end of the bell curve.

I always assumed the reason they repeated that line and only implied it was for headaches with the animation is because they knew it wouldn’t work and wanted to avoid being called out for false advertising. Honestly if I was ever told it worked I would be absolutely astounded.