Bruh, are you unstable too or just an Internet dweller with one issue on their mind. This guy was being a dick, he wasn’t even expressing his political opinions he was just being a fuckin loser - small communities don’t need to suffer losers trying to ruin the conversation for no other reason than they’re having a bad day.

Also, who says America bombed this guy? He could be a troll in Russia or a red pilled teenager in Tennessee for all we fuckin know.

Tagging doesn’t block someone, it just lets you remember when you wasted time on someone before hand - so you can down vote and move on, or treat them as they’ve been asked to be treated. That’s not censorship. And even if you block someone, it’s only a personal block, I can’t stop them from posting or commenting for anyone but me. Again, not censorship.

And even if it did, why would censorship be the wrong move against a person incapable of having an intelligent discussion regardless of where they’re from? I don’t need every assholes backstory to decide if they’ve suffered too much to be blocked, that’s fuckin crazy. I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to a thread designed to air out your grievances about a specific topic, but a community can’t allow assholes to run unopposed because then it discourages good people from participating.

So no, your friend is acting like a dick head - they should be labeled and treated as such - and when they’re ready to be a mature adult and talk about their feelings productively they should be allowed to. Make a thread sharing your opinions about how shit the US is, id happily participate, literally everyone in the world should have a bone to pick with the US. But don’t defend random assholes for being assholes and pretend it’s because you think they’re upset because they got bombed - that’s a level of crazy, unrelated back story creation that isn’t valuable to the current conversation.

That’s the most red pilled take on therapy I’ve heard. Therapy is where you go to work through your trauma and emotional issues.

I’m not defending America or Americans you fuckin twat, maybe read this chain before cosplaying as this guy’s alt account. We’re talking about how they’re being a dick to people using very common forum lingo presumably because they’re emotionally stunted - Lemmy is too small for immature people to be tolerated.

Fuckin focus on one issue at a time, you wanna debate whether the people of a country should be held accountable for their political systems outputs despite the power being largely decoupled from them - go ahead - but do it in another thread. Maybe where someone’s actually talking about issues, instead of addressing bad Internet behaviors.

Lol. I need you to know, you’re not hurting mine or anyone else’s feelings. You’re not that impactful, powerful, or important.

And yes, the US is a shit hole in a lot of ways.

My point is only to say you’re an internet troll, who’s clearly immature and going through some emotional things right now based off how you treat other humans online. Hopefully you get the therapy and help you need to mature.

Name is DeathToUS, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’ve got rage and maturity issues based on how you’re conducting yourself online. Luckily Lemmy supports a robust tagging and blocking system.

I’m self-hosting my own music as of recently. I’m paying for every song. I don’t have as much music as I did on Spotify, but I’m also A) owning the music B) slowly acquiring more and C) actually paying the artists. For me this is a good step in the right direction.

I’m seeing a lot of comments about music discovery being the reason to not stop paying Spotify. Idk if that’s something I’d agree with. First of all, I personally listen to singles and not albums but I’ve been buying albums simply because that’s easiest for a lot of sites (or cause I’m getting them on vinyl). So swapping over has led me to listening to full albums and thus a bit of discovery. That may not apply to everyone though. Several of those albums or artists have had collabs that have turned me on to other artists, again, maybe the music discovery people think this is child’s play but it’s led to a noticable increase in my collection.

Second, can’t you just use Spotify free version to discover music? That’s what I plan to do if I’m feeling like my current collection is getting stale. But between friends, other web services for discovery, various platforms like YouTube that happen to unveil a song here and there, indie concerts that show off new openers to me, or what have you I feel like my discovery is more than sufficient to grow the list of music I need to pick up faster than I’m burning it down or becoming bored with it.

Also, I don’t understand how discovery can represent a majority of a person’s listening habits. Like isn’t the point of collecting favorites songs and making large playlists to listen to those things. I’ve got playlists with like 48 hours of music on them which cause me to not hear a repeat idk, more than once a month if I’m not seeking them out. That’s partially because I have 3 playlists or so I rotate through but like… Is music discovery so critical and so exclusive to Spotify that it’s worth the subscription. More me it’s not.

Not to yuck anyone’s yum or anything. Just trying to add an alternative perspective to these pro-spotify comments.

This is exciting. The more Linux gets the spotlight the better and I generally love all open source, self hosting, of degoogling vids they do.

I’d like any source saying they only did Linux content because of Emily. They continue to talk about doing the next Linux challenge on the WAN show, they are working on a grapheneOS vod if I’m not mistaken, etc.

I agree most of their OS specific content is specific to Windows and I can entirely understand why but to suggest they’re incapable or unwilling to do Linux content feels ungrounded.

I liked the technical discussion so thank you. Keep it up, I got into this career because there was always so much to learn.

I think you’re right, I just think you’re tying together two concepts under an a assumption of forced inflation - which again is correct because we do force it every year but I think the distinction is important. We could reduce or increase inflation at the government level because it’s inherently controlled by the government.

But maybe this isn’t as helpful of a distinction as I think it is.

Is that how inflation works? Cause I don’t think it is. Inflation is caused by creating more money than you’re removing from the system - having no effect on actual resources in an ideal setting. So they’re completely decoupled. You could have no growth and no inflation or no growth and tons of inflation, depending entirely on how much money is in the system (which is not the same thing as more houses or food, etc).

Crawl - technically pvp, arcade game Overcooked - try to manage a kitchen together Duck Game - completely pvp, ducks with guns, very fun

/thread

This looks kinda bad but I can’t place my finger on what it is. I think it’s the like clay like textures and mobile phone like graphics.

This isn’t giving next gen to me and the trailer felt was less put together than they usually do. I guess I like the more realistic or hyper realistic style the cinematics have always pushed in my heads.

That being said, I hope it slaps. I miss a solid dawn of war that my pals and I can play. Nothing like Dark Crusade LAN parties back in the day.

Merz sucks, the conservatives suck, and I hope Germany can survive this corporate illness long enough to vote in people who care about improving Germany and the world. The CDU will worsen this country until the AFD win unless the people push back at every level.

We can have a better life in Germany, if we don’t vote for the defenders of the rich and wealthy.

It’s on my to do list. It seems like it’s lacking the playstyle customization that I’m interested in but I look forward to playing through it.

PoE2 promised engaging, methodical combat but as of right now has failed to reach that mark. The end game is that of PoE1 which the developers claim they don’t want but I’m not seeing the design choices to slow things down in a meaningful way. Let’s hope they figure it out, I have no doubt the first ARPG to figure this out will bring in larger numbers than most have seen to date.

I’m arguing some of the developers know it’s broken (including arguably all PoE leads and No Rest for the Wicked leads)(I would extend this to an even larger group but I won’t to keep it verifiable).

I don’t think all isometric ARPGs copy D2 because they think it’s not broken, I think they do it because it was an innovative genre defining game for its time, most of the devs look back to it with nostalgia, and it was a blockbuster hit. And I wouldn’t minimize the innovations in the scene to just QoL. I think what PoE1 and 2 and LE are doing around their systems is very innovative, including their financing model and tech. I would argue that they’re still fundamentally maintaining the moment to moment loop while expanding all the subsystems that give the game as a whole massive complexity and content - and that’s great but will inevitably pale in comparison to a game that innovates the moment to moment gameplay. I think most genres have innovated their core moment to moment gameplay compared to their genre defining counterparts 25 years ago, but that ARPGs haven’t.

And I completely disagree on my expectations being “unrealistic, unknown to the genre, or incompatible”. That’s laughable imo and something only a player incapable of imagining change would say.

• to be self-insert character or at least one of many characters as a form of self expression
  • Diablo 4, LE, and PoE2 (going forward “the big 3”) all do this well to extremely well. Diablos transmog system is peak, PoE2 has unbelievably good cosmetics and they’ve just started, LE is a small studio but I still feel like I’m playing my wizard when I play a wizard.
• I want mechanical self expression ideally in the form of dozens or hundreds of skills and their customization along with a skill tree that enables further customization on how your character plays. My load out of 10 abilities should look and feel and play very differently than your load out of 10 abilities.
  • the big three all do this but do it poorly. Diablo has low variability in abilities, poor customization, and my load out consists of mostly number go up choices. But importantly the bones are there, this makes it neither non-compatible nor unknown to the genre, it just means these devs did a poor job implementing it. PoE has a ton of this but fails to provide a meaningful load out or mechanical skill expression because nearly all builds converge to press a single button to blow up the screen and a second button to move around the screen fast. Again, they have all of the bones and far more customization than I’d ever expect from a game, and yet a lot of it is meaningless the second you close Path builder and actually start playing because it trivializes the game.
• I want to fight monsters and bosses that are varied, challenging, and uniquely rewarding ideally. Challenging and varied are putting in a lot of work in that sentence so I want to further expound and say combat should feel like a dance, a puzzle, high octane, and skill rewarding (not simply build skill or farming skill, but actual play skill).
  • the big three have varied down, and arguably uniquely rewarding down (D4 sucks at this imo) but they all falter on challenging or good moment to moment gameplay. I would argue PoE2 campaign is pretty good for this, but mid-end game is pretty awful and it really only ever shines in the boss arenas. They seem incapable of further innovating the mob combat because they seem to differentiate good combat in a boss arena (engaging) from good combat while mapping (mindless). LE’s Pinnacle boss is fantastic for this (and I like it better than all PoE bosses at this moment). Even as I heap praise in these areas, I’m rarely using reactive abilities, I’m rarely using multiple skills in a fight that aren’t just buff my one damage skill. Again, none of this is incompatible, none of this is unknown to the genre, all of this is achievable, and in a lot of places already in place just used poorly from a design perspective.
• I want the pacing around playing to be focused on fighting and clearing encounters more so than exploration and discovery.
  • the big three do this perfectly, as that’s essentially one of the ARPG innovations - fight fight fight and then plan/craft/prepare then fight fight fight. I think poe has some work with their towers and LE has some work with the size and rewards of their maps, but it’s hard to tease out changes here when this is typically the most mindless portion of all the games. They keep me clicking blow up screen at the right pace, I just wish I didn’t have to. Again, this quality is completely inline with the genre and done well.
• I want an additional system of collectibles that further modify the way I play and look, most consistently this looks like loot or crafting (this however should not be primarily satisfied with #'s go up).
  • again, the big 3 all do this well. I wish the qualities on items were more impactful and not just number go slightly up, but generally they’re doing okay. The uniques being added to PoE2 have been awesome to see, like the song crossbow and stuff, so I’m hopeful. Diablo let’s you collect transmogs. Again, totally typical of this genre.
• I want to do this with friends in a multiplayer format, ideally at times requiring multiplayer because that opens up a lot of unused design space (looking at you remnant 2 which was awesome or only theoretically Diablo world bosses and black dungeon).
  • multiplayer is possible and rewarded in all of the big 3. Only Diablo has content designed for multiplayer. I think PoE has a ways to go on making this experience more multiplayer friendly, in fact it’s my least favorite to play with friends despite it being my favorite of the three by miles. I wish they’d design more multiplayer content but I understand why they don’t. If the combat wasn’t so screen explosion based it would probably be a decent enough experience. Again, another quality entirely a part of this genre already just not fully implemented well.

So what exactly is incompatible here? I think the answer you’d give is engaging combat, because that’s what I always get when I have this conversation. “All changes that have already been made to the genre are great but no more changes to the genre would be good.” That’s the sentiment I always get. “I want to mindlessly grind mobs while watching a show I can only partially pay attention to on my second screen.” Is something I get a lot as well. Which just feels like a mobile game, an idle clicker, but not what most people want when they go to play a video game including in the ARPG genre. Even if we said there’s room for idle clickers in the genre, why are our stand out examples all idle clickers, that to me feels like a clear sign of stagnation in a genre. Dota, rainbow six, BG3, BioShock, portal 2 - none of these games would be better if they were less engaging such that we could watch TV on the side, so why is it okay when talking about the genre defining games of our Gen in isometric Diablo-like ARPGs?

Partially because it’s a tool made by stealing other’s work. AI exists today because hundreds of thousands of artists and writers and real human people did not get compensated for their work. It’s like support Walmart despite it purposefully shutting down small businesses or buying blood diamonds (is that too far?). It’s something made by hurting other people.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” but like it’s not easy. We all are forced to make shortcuts and are forced to be a part of harmful systems. So I wouldn’t judge you if you used AI to generate art, but I would judge you if you pretended it wasn’t unethical and harmful to both the environment and fellow humans.

I think people are particularly up in arms about this topic because the output is, in some instances, so bad or so commercial or so lifeless that it feels like a really poor exchange for taking money away from artists and burning rare materials and energy. Like it’s so easy to NOT do this thing that it feels extra bad when people do it.

I get it, when midjourney first came out I was a huge fan. In fact I think it’s easy to say I love the idea of AI as a tool for quick creative creation. I think it’s incredibly empowering. I just think there isn’t a form of it today that wasn’t created via value extraction from the working class.

I think you’re getting the wrong impression.

I absolutely like isometric ARPGs, I just like them exponentially more in theory. Most of them have barely innovated on Diablo 2’s core moment to moment loop and it’s something that seemingly everyone is aware of but no studio has yet to be able to fix. I’m looking for good combat, which was what PoE2 pitched in all of their videos, in most of their dev interviews (although as of late it feels like they’re pulling back on this), and has so far failed to deliver outside of the boss arena (and sometimes in the boss arena too).

I want:

• to be self-insert character or at least one of many characters as a form of self expression
• I want mechanical self expression ideally in the form of dozens or hundreds of skills and their customization along with a skill tree that enables further customization on how your character plays. My load out of 10 abilities should look and feel and play very differently than your load out of 10 abilities.
• I want to fight monsters and bosses that are varied, challenging, and uniquely rewarding ideally. Challenging and varied are putting in a lot of work in that sentence so I want to further expound and say combat should feel like a dance, a puzzle, high octane, and skill rewarding (not simply build skill or farming skill, but actual play skill).
• I want the pacing around playing to be focused on fighting and clearing encounters more so than exploration and discovery. Elden Ring is fantastic but it’s slow between clearing mobs and escalating the stakes/rewards - relying on the underlying exploration to be meaningful (and it is and it’s a 10/10 but not what I’m talking about in this post).
• I want an additional system of collectibles that further modify the way I play and look, most consistently this looks like loot or crafting (this however should not be primarily satisfied with #'s go up).
• I want to do this with friends in a multiplayer format, ideally at times requiring multiplayer because that opens up a lot of unused design space (looking at you remnant 2 which was awesome or only theoretically Diablo world bosses and black dungeon).

In theory this describes games like Diablo/LE/PoE as well as remnant 2/destiny/borderlands. But classic ARPG’s have so much of these needs theoretically covered that if they’d just tweak the moment to moment gameplay they’d have a perfect game for me. Where as games like Borderlands barely has a dozen skills in the entire game and they barely change how you play (coming from B3 and B4), the combat by the nature of being an fps is more engaging but it’s not much past that - it’s very repetitive and the number of mobs that are interesting or good is low imo. If each quality I’m looking for is scored 1-10 borderlands may have some of them but they score lower than most ARPGs. Remnant 2 was fantastic but it didn’t have the hundreds of hours of content and systems to do that wasn’t grinding story paths (I’d still rate this experience at 10/10). Hades and Enter the Gungeon and most roguelites have fantastic moment to moment gameplay but lack most of the other qualities I’m looking for. Wo Long and DS and all of those are fantastic games with good moment to moment gameplay but similarly lack multiple qualities I’m looking for.

I honestly think I want an open world Diablo where it’s designed more like a Gauntlet and DND-esque groups in mind, with better combat and better loot and more skills. I want exactly what PoE2 was promising and delivers in their campaign (by and large, some things would still need to improve to score highly in my desired qualities) but which they completely abandon in the mid-to-late game. I want something in between No Rest for the Wicked or Hades or Remnant 2 and PoE 2 or LE or Diablo. And listening to the developers in this space on various podcasts and dev interviews, they know that is what’s missing but seem unable to get there quite yet. I think PoE2, if it doesn’t fix combat, will be an innovation on PoE1 but will be remembered as PoE1.5 and lumped into the age of ARPGS that were still Diablo 2 successors or the age after of innovators instead of the next generation of ARPGs i think we’re on the cusp of.

I think an ARPG without meaningful combat would require a significantly good story for it to be worth it for me. At least at the 20-25 hours of depth level. PoE 1/2 at thousands of hours of depth are struggling to hold me because their combat isn’t very good, and I really like the PoE2 campaign so far.

I guess as someone who loved Titanquest when I was a kid, I’m a bit disappointed in Titanquest 2 as of right now. And there are other great slot machine ARPG’s and I don’t have much desire for them as is, so it’s hard to justify this games asking price when the reviews are saying a play through is 4 hours at act 1. Maybe when the story is complete I’ll pick it up, but can you imagine it being €50 instead of €30. I mean even €30 with no crafting and minimal legendaries… Idk, not trying to be a downer but ya - those are my honest thoughts.

I generally agree with you, a fun short game is worth more money than a forever game to me right now.

It looks like it falls very short of the engaging combat I’m still looking for in an ARPG. €30 for less than 10 hours of an incomplete ARPG at that makes this a wait to buy if ever for me. I’m not certain I have the faith it’ll ever have 30 hours of content, this release feels like a “we’re running out of money” situation more than a “we’re confident in our product” scenario.

I burned out of Last Epoch in their last patch I think for good, because the combat is so bad. And PoE2 is approaching that for me as well - at least they have an engaging story and a long guaranteed road ahead of content - so maybe this is the slot machine ARPG I keep on hand (but I wish they’d just fix their combat). And I’m waiting for multiplayer to play No Rest for the Wicked, but I suspect it’s not ARPG enough to be a long term game.