To me it mostly comes down to just three things that give the roguelike experience. There needs to be permadeath, there needs to be some kind of clock (traditionally hunger) that encourages messy solutions and exploration, and the player needs a lot of tools (inventory) to be able to come up with creative solutions to problems. A lot of these action roguelikes are mostly lacking in giving the player a lot of tools and encouraging them to experiment, they are a lot more like build slot machines that are mostly about good physical execution and understanding basic synergies. These games are still fun but not really the same vibe as a classic roguelike. But a realtime roguelike can be done, I’d argue Barony is just that.

Katana Zero
Celeste
Cuphead
Opus Magnum

Played the first two, cringy and tedious. And this is coming from someone who loves plenty of pulp and grindy games.

Dicey Dungeons and Wingspan.

I didn’t think it was a choreographed publicity stunt. I just know Altman has used AI fear in the past to keep people from asking rational questions like “What can this actually do?” He obviously stands to gain from people thinking they are on the verge of agi. And someone looking for a new job in the field also has to gain from it.

As for the software thing, if it’s done by someone it won’t be openai and megacorporations following in its footsteps. They seem insistent at throwing more data (of diminishing quality) and more compute (an impractical amount) at the same style of models hoping they’ll reach some kind of tipping point.

This fear mongering is just beneficial to Altman. If his product is powerful enough to be a threat to humanity then it is also powerful enough to be capable of many useful things, things it has not proven itself to be capable of. Ironically spreading fear about its capabilities will likely raise investment, so if you actually are afraid of openai somehow arriving at agi that is dangerous then you should really be trying to convince people of its lack of real utility.

You’re kinda being toxic right now by purposefully misconstruing what I said so you can hit me with a cheap comeback.

Nobody is forced with a gun to play a game with a toxic community either, does that mean it’s not worth complaining about? Perhaps the article should mention the supposed tradeoffs required to police such a community. I say supposed because I’ve played far less toxic games than Vallorant and League that don’t require such invasive software. Perhaps Riot should do some introspection and ask why the games they make foster such bad behavior instead of harming nontoxic players with their policing methods.

It’s relevant because the article acts like strictness is a unimodal thing. Riot decides how far they want to push it and some people will fall on one side and believe chat is overly sanitized while others will fall on the opposite side and believe that chat is overly toxic.

This makes it sound like the only reason someone could take issue with Riot being zealous with their policing is because that person wants to see these toxic behaviors in their game. The article quickly mentions hardware bans like they are magic, even though something like harder to spoof hardware is one of the reasons Riot would give for requiring invasive software.

And similar to how I won’t accept a game requiring such invasive measures I also won’t accept an article glossing over these things. Just like there are many players who see no problem with toxic behavior there are also many players who don’t see any problem with Riot’s measures or are simply uninformed, and the article should be more informative.

I’m all for banning toxic players and cheaters, but the fact that they make you install a rootkit on your system to enable this is too much.

Criticism of China isn’t necessarily sinophobic. However being particularly concerned that a Chinese automaker is doing something most US automakers do might be. Especially when you consider that on an individual level it is less of a concern for Chinese companies to be tracking you then US companies. If you live in the US then local companies will gladly turn over information to authorities or shut off features for some reason. And to be fair I also think it would be better for a Chinese person to use a foreign for similar reasons.

So much clothing, even poor quality clothing, gets discarded for newer clothing before it has even become worn down. Sure we could use better fibers, but even if clothing was more durable it would get discarded at about the same rates because people want something new and opt for a throw out and buy culture rather than an exchange culture. Also we shouldn’t turn back to animal fibers, unethical and its own environmental blight, especially if scaled up to supply the current apparel industry.

I thrift everything that’s not undergarments, and for those I invest in quality ones that don’t get destroyed within a few years.

I only really agree with the endgame being lackluster and that’s something that will certainly improve with time as they add more mechanics that get incorporated into Monoliths. The core gear and skill systems are good, which is something that can make or break an ARPG, so saying the developers are unskilled seems a little harsh.

Until it is more fleshed out though I would definitely recommend Grim Dawn over it, which is a game with a lot of content and polish, as well as modding if it’s not enough. I would recommend PoE, but it’s complex enough that it might be better to wait the 1+ year until PoE2 and try that, maybe also learning PoE if it maintains a large playerbase and good support, they claimed they will continue to release just as many expansions for it.

Opus Magnum. It’s an optimization puzzle game. You have to assemble mechanical arms and other bits (that grab, swing, rotate, push, and pull) into contraptions that assemble resources that look like molecular diagrams. Optimization puzzles aren’t unique but I felt like the pieces you build the contraptions out of in this game are pretty unique, the game is on a hex grid so rotation can play a big roll. Another interesting thing the game does is that to beat a level you simply have to accomplish a proper assembly, which in itself isn’t that hard, but the game grades you on three different metrics (speed, size, cost) and gives you no overall score to tell you how much you should value each metric. In this way it is up to your preferences what you want to optimize for if anything. I had fun trying to minmax every stat separately on every level before building my “compromise” machine was not supposed to make big sacrifices in any field.

A lot of people have mentioned it but I definitely recommend Obra Dinn, haven’t played a mystery game as unique and enthralling.

Even if enemies got a lot stronger you’d still have numbers go up, and less superficially you’d still have significantly more options than a bunch of level 1 characters. I don’t want to feel like Superman when the roleplaying situation is supposed to feel grim and insurmountable. My mood to use caution and diplomacy is really killed when I know I can destroy any encounter. I also just want a fun tactical experience in addition to the roleplaying elements, is that too much to ask?

Currently, the game on tactician, even without abusing resting, consumables, or strong multiclass is too easy in my opinion, and this is coming from someone with no prior DnD experience. I do have a little bit of Pathfinder experience as I got WotR during the Steam Summer Sale.

I didn’t get many bugs with later content, but a big problem with later content is that the player gets immensely stronger but enemies stay about the same. It also becomes way too easy to pass out of combat checks. I doubt this will be fixed any time soon, maybe in the future they will add a new difficulty.