Played the games. Not interested.

A new story in the setting could be good

Retelling the game sounds bad. Conveniently, the reasons why are nicely outlined in the article.

I switched to linux because windows 10 is going end-of-life, and I can’t upgrade to windows 11 even if I wanted to.

It’s been fine, other than some trouble getting mint to dual boot the first time.

I really don’t think Baldur’s gate 3 and whatever the fuck Monopoly go is are the same kind of thing.

At least you can improve inventory in-game (eg: do normal gameplay quest and crafting stuff to get bigger bags). Some monetization is cash or nothing.

Still bad when they make something annoying and then charge to fix it.

Guild wars 2 specifically has a surprising amount of quality of life stuff for free, but you can see places where “we can make money here” won out occasionally.

Baldur’s gate 3 characters aren’t even that complicated. You pick stats at the start from a limited range of options, and then make very few choices when you level up. Some levels you don’t pick anything at all. This ain’t path of exile.

I got a mod for bg3 that gives you a feat every level and holy shit did that make it more interesting.

To WotC’s credit, making character choice really shallow is probably why the game succeeded so well. A lot of people don’t really want a lot of choices, especially when some are traps.

The larian games have some interesting interactions beyond just oil. You can make people slip on ice.

The old Magicka game also had some fun interactions that more games could learn from.

For a generous definition of “these days”, check out the pillars of eternity games. They’re very good and clearly a love letter to Baldur’s gate. Unfortunately the team is now making a Skyrim-like for some reason, but I hope they come back and finish the main game story sometime.

There’s also that solasta game that’s DND 5e but on a smaller budget from a few years ago.

“constantly be jumping while conjuring a skeleton” is pretty stupid and counter intuitive for an optimum thing to do, but it that’s what you should do if you want to level those skills up.

Morrowind also had some bizarre optimum behavior if you wanted to get the +5s on stats when you leveled.

Popularity has little bearing on merit.

Basic income, nationalized health care, public housing, free education. Would solve a lot of problems.

Enforce existing tax laws. Increase penalties for cheating on taxes. Tax unrealized gains. Break up monopolies.

The problems facing work class men are mostly downstream from all of these things.

We should build and fund more public housing.

Unfortunately, a large chunk of the country doesn’t believe the government can or should do anything, so I guess that’s a difficult pitch to make.

Targeted ads should be illegal.

Contextual ads are a compromise I would accept. That is, you can buy ads based on the page content, but not the viewer details. So if I’m looking at a website about bikes, you can have bike ads on there. You don’t need to know I’m a xx year old living in zip code 10001. That’s how ads worked for like decades (centuries?). It’s fine.

A stupid argument I was having about how DND isn’t the best tool for many stories that aren’t about combat + resource management. I know people can have fun with anything but it bugs me when people are like “I do a political intrigue game about secret modern vampires in DND 5e” the same way it might bother some of you if someone was like “I put in my screws with a hammer” or “I add up the numbers in my spreadsheet by hand and type them into the totals row one at a time” or “I don’t use copy-paste I just retype everything”

Like, it doesn’t matter but it bugs me a little.

But I was getting down voted into oblivion so I gave up after someone begrudgingly admitted that yes different games have different focuses.

Climate change deniers should have to stay. Everyone else should probably get assistance moving somewhere else.

Guild wars 2 is a very good game, but very different than guild wars 1.

They both avoid the endless gear and level grind, but gw2 is generally easier and less tactical. You can solo most of it. Builds are a little more limited, but it’s also harder to make a useless character.

They addressed the most common problems with early mmos: other players are never a bad thing. there’s no kill stealing. If you’re doing some event to fight off demons that have invaded the town, and other people show up, the game silently scales up a to accommodate more players, and everyone gets credit. it’s great.

I really like it. I don’t play it every day, but I go back to it all the time.

Have you played Nioh2? It has diablo-like items, but actual combat. It’s very good.

What if leveling up didn’t make number get big, but instead gave you more options in a fight?

Horizontal progression is pretty cool .

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want that. They want to feel cool and competent without actually doing anything. That’s not to say like you need to “earn” your fun or whatever. But that the progress quest number go up don’t think too hard is immensely popular with a lot of people. They don’t want to be challenged.

And that’s fine. It’s a game. It’s just not a game I want to play all the time.

I still remember the thrill when I was a teenager when I clicked a random corpse in Diablo 1’s hell and the unique staff Mindcry popped out.

A response (or status!) on slack that’s like “I’m at the grocery, back in 20” is fine with me. It’s more annoying when someone wanders away with no status and is unresponsive for hours.

Some people are bad at working remote, and want to drag the rest of us down with them, too.

Yes, it’s a slightly different skill set to work remote. You have to be better at the written word. You can’t just roll up to someone’s desk and be like “have a minute?” (which is fucking awful anyway). You also need to be responsive and set your status appropriately. A lot of coworkers just wander off and leave their slack status as active. To my mind if you’re running an errand longer than taking a dump, you should update your status.