I’ve not used it, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Helix

Absolutely iconic, I love it.

Anyway, since thinking of Cult of the Lamb has got that Stupendium song stuck in my head, here it is for any of you who want to share in my curse https://youtu.be/6ywXBNpc-To

I’m not sure I understand what you’re referring to. If by “three tiers”, you’re talking about pre-Hard-Mode, Hard-Mode, and post-Plantera, I don’t think that falls under what is typically meant by “level scaling” (I realise you didn’t use that term specifically, but people up-thread did). Level-scaling would be if a green slime, which dies in 2-3 hits at the beginning of the game, grew stronger alongside the player such that later in the game, it would still take 2-3 hits.

I’m not saying this just to be a persnickety asshole, but instead to make the point that Terraria is so great because it doesn’t have the kind of scaling that Oblivion and many other open-world RPGs have. I love how Terraria has no qualms in repeatedly bitch-slapping you back to spawn if you insist on heading into areas you’re ill-equipped for (and the tiered progression ensures that there’s nearly always some such difficult place, even as the player levels up). I also find it interesting how the tinkerer’s bench acts as a key driver of progression by allowing you to pack more accessory function into fewer equipment slots.

That is to say that unless I’m misunderstanding you, I completely agree with your points, except that I would consider this to be an example of good progression without level-scaling

My friend has had quite severe ill health, including some unfortunate, impromptu hospital trips. I bought them a Steam Deck as a gift, shortly before their health worsened, and it has literally been a lifesaver for them. It has been tremendously powerful for them to have a way to stay connected with their gaming friends, even when they can’t make it to their desk.

I don’t own a Deck myself, but this alone would make me a big fan (though I also appreciate that the Steam Deck has made streamline gaming on my Linux desktop)

A friend who is (was?) a writer told me that it’s tremendously difficult to find work nowadays as a writer, and so much of what is available is just proof reading and copy editing AI slop. Apparently it’s pretty soul sucking, especially when they’re basically forbidden from doing any significant rewrites or error checking, and they’re expecting to be grateful for the opportunity

“Discord just last week shut down a server that was my main local friend group, and we had to scramble to reconstitute it.”

Damn, that sucks. How big was the server? Do you know why it was shut down?

“I’ve seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out.”

I think this is a great example. You can’t distill things down to a formula because these things exist in conversation with each other. An example that comes to mind is the game “Not Tonight”, a Brexit themed Papers Please clone. Mechanically, it does very little to distinguish itself from papers please, but narratively, that’s sort of the whole point: It being a clone specifically leverages the energy of “Glory to Arstotzka” to satirise the UK’s institutional racism.

Surveys don’t capture that games like this aren’t just clones of Papers Please, they’re actively in conversation with Papers Please

I got that trait too. When I first picked it up, some 18 years into the game, I didn’t mind too much, but I didn’t realise that the trait gets worse as you level up? Apparently the version of the trait that my character has can be prevented from progressing by spending more time “outside”, but that just sounds like a scam intended to make me spend more on some new dlc or something.

I agree that hyper focus is a mixed bag. I’ve heard it works best for players with a really clear plan for their character build, so they can use the buffs most strategically, but I have no idea how people can make effective characters based on such RNG mechanics.

Regarding the depressed moodle, I feel your pain; I feel like whoever designed this game needs to read about reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, because it’s fucking dreadful with how easy it is to get into a losing spiral, where you end up with such severe debuffs that it feels impossible to get out of. Honestly, even though all my friends play this game and seem to have a lot of fun in it, I’ve come close to just stopping playing a few times, with how unfun it is.

This might not be helpful advice, because the effect doesn’t seem to proc for everyone, but apparently when you’ve been stuck with the depressed moodlet for a long time (and apparently some other conditions), you start to receive a hidden xp bonus to routine tasks. I always thought it was bullshit they told people to keep them playing, but I tried it once (almost out of spite to prove that it wouldn’t work), and I found that yeah, I did actually see bonus progression from lower level tasks that wouldn’t ordinarily give xp. I found that the “showering” and “eating” tasks were the highest yield, but the xp-farming loop was too grindy and I got burnt out too easily to keep it up alongside the debuffs. I found that the xp multiplier still applied to smaller quests though, like “use wet-wipes to approximate a shower”, or “eat a snack”, and I could do those things close enough to my daily respawn point that it was easy enough to do on the side.

This certainly isn’t a solution though. Like I say, the balancing of this game is out of whack, and it sounds like you’ve been having a grim time of it. I hope that you’re able to break out of this cycle somehow and find aspects of the game you can engage in again, whether that happens via the game gets a big balancing update (unrealistic hope with these devs, I know), or something other way (such as grinding, or finding an exploit in the code that allows you to shed your debuffs)

Given that they seem opposed to literally any real woman that exists, there isn’t an option that won’t piss them off, so I’m here for that, at least.

I don’t think duplicate link protection is what I mean, unless I’m misunderstanding how that feature works. I.e. if I had bookmarks “example.com/a” , “example.com/b”, these are duplicates even though they’re at the same site. But if I visit the page “example.com/c” and I went to go bookmark it, I would like to be able to see a thing that says '"from this site, you have also bookmarked: “example.com/a” , “example.com/b”.

I don’t imagine this is possible. I was probably going to make something to give me that functionality at some point, because I haven’t seen anyone having the same problem as me.

I have a question which may turn out to be a feature request

The question: How easy would it be to use Linkwarden to check whether I have already bookmarked something from the site I’m currently on? To clarify why I’m asking this, I have been generally trying to be more mindful in what media I consume, which means the things I enjoy reading are fragmented pieces that I may stumble upon through word of mouth.

For example, I read post ‘a’ on blog ‘A’ and I enjoy it so much that I bookmark it (‘Aa’) so I can find it for later sharing. Many months later, I am linked to post ‘b’ on site ‘A’, but I don’t remember whether I have been to this site before, and knowing that I had previously enjoyed post Aa may prompt me to actually read post Ab (or properly set aside for later)

Native Firefox bookmarks don’t do this, I know that much. It’s something I’ve been meaning to figure out how to solve, because one of the delightful, if somewhat overwhelming parts about floating on the ‘small web’, is the trust that builds up gradually after seeing sometime put out consistently good coverage

It probably is irrational, but humans are pretty irrational.

I think this kind of tension is inevitable when so many people say “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. Many people with work burnout tried that, and found that they came to hate the thing they love.

Often, when we get stuck in that rut, we can’t undo the harm that it’s done to our passion, and retraining in a different field may be difficult or impossible. Maybe there was a period where it was possible to toe thelp line and make a career out of a hobby, and an attempt to regain some elements of that. In many cases, it’s dumb as hell to keep throwing oneself at the same thing that made someone burnt out in the first place but sometimes, reclaiming something they love is liberating and healing.

I say this speaking as an academic who has always found it hard to separate my work from what I love doing, because even my “extracurricular” projects tend to have a fair bit of overlap with my work. I sometimes wish that I was someone who could have a clear divide between work and fun, but to do that, I’d need to find work much further away from my passions.

For recommendations and discovery (which was a large part of what kept me with Spotify), I’m a big fan of https://listenbrainz.org/ In the time I’ve been using it, the recommendations have gotten way better, and I appreciate their efforts towards transparency. (Yay for open source)

You can import listen data from music streaming services, so if anyone is curious, I’d recommend setting it up and seeing how it goes; I only recently got round to cancelling my Spotify, but before then, I had it set up so my Spotify listens would show up on my listenbrainz.

You’re quite right though that there aren’t any straightforward replacements for Spotify. Personally, I’m returning to the seven seas, which is why I’m so appreciative of listenbrainz — that discovery stuff really was the last big thing chaining me to Spotify

I used to know someone who worked on Assassin’s Creed 3 (and probably other games, but idk). They told me about how surreal and disheartening it was to work somewhere so bafflingly huge. The part of the game they worked on was small and insignificant, but they were the kind of person to take pride in small things done well, and as such, they were pleased with what they had made. It was insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but this was something that they had made, and they didn’t mind being a small cog.

That is, until the game released and they got to see the rest of the game. They were immensely disappointed to see that clearly many components of the game didn’t have nearly the same amount of care put into them, and furthermore, coordination between different teams/systems was poorly executed. The game wasn’t bad (imo), but it was fairly meh, and it certainly felt undeserving of the effort my friend put into it.

They ended up checking out somewhat from their work after that, because they became disillusioned with the idea of being a small cog in a big machine — part of what allowed them to do such good work was that they immersed themselves in what they and their immediate team were working on, but that approach only works if you can trust that the rest of the project is well managed and resourced.

I fell out of contact with that friend, but I often think about them, and how effectively they captured the dismay they felt to realise that in a big machine like Ubisoft, it’s probably naive to care about your work. One of their colleagues had the thing they made not even feature in the game — it was cut, fairly last minute (and they didn’t even find out until release). This story was striking because it highlights how, even in soulless AAA games, churned out by corporate behemoths, there are people who do genuinely care about their work (until the company grinds that care into dust as they wring their workers dry). It’s quite tragic, actually.

The paper mentioned in the OP, ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02067-4 ) (paywalled link)

I wasn’t sure how to lazily and semi securely send you a pdf, so check your DMs

Wish it were possible to safely share this stuff more widely, but in the meantime, internet nerds gotta help each other out

“*Only share your account info with someone you absolutely trust. It’s always a risk to share credentials but use your best judgement.”

As someone who is estranged from my blood family, it’s interesting to me how this category of people who I would feel comfortable sharing my credentials with maps pretty well onto who I would consider to be my found family

Who is David Kinne and what did he do?

Definitely play it. Just remember that “You Died” doesn’t equal failure and dying a lot doesn’t mean you’re bad at the game. Dying lots is a core mechanic of the game.

I’m of the opinion that the difficulty level isn’t that bad, and I’m not saying this in a gatekeepy “git gud” kind of way. I enjoy these games because they feel fair, and whenever I have been struggling disproportionately, it’s either been because I was somewhere beyond my current level (especially in open world games like Elden Ring), or I was doing something “wrong” (like stubbornly using my preferred weapon even though I knew a quirk of the boss meant it was suboptimal)

If the game feels like it’s being unfair to you, take a step back and rethink your approach. Try a different weapon or strategy (this might mean having to go to an easier area to practice the new weapon). Look through your items to see if you have anything that might help (including potentially helpful lore in the item descriptions). If you’re not sure what a thing does, try using it and see — the game won’t explain things explicitly because it wants players to find out in play.

If you like the look of Bloodborne, 100% give it a go — even if I weren’t already a fan of Fromsoft’s games, I’d enjoy Bloodborne for the impeccable aesthetic.

I need to add that to my quotes book, it’s great