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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • I mean, I guess you’re right as far as I’m willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don’t feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don’t feel like I’m dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it’s perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the “movie” that is this game.

    I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can’t go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don’t super care about this world, it’s not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I’d be okay if it stopped. Idk, that’s a fine thing to make imo. And again, it’s been top of it’s class in execution since it’s inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.

    Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.


  • Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.

    The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.


  • The amount of investment you’d need to reduce your need to work takes the average person multiple decades, that’s literally what retirement is. And even if you only considered a part time retirement that still takes decades. In fact my current understanding is most people’s retirement funds will be insufficient when they go to retire.

    No amount of investing will save the majority of people from needing to work for the majority of their life. The other alternatives to selling your labor to capital, like starting your own business, requires up front investment and even then isn’t a guarantee. The number of jobs that require minimal investment and can serve as a sole source of income do not exist in sufficient quantities.

    So no, investing is not the solution, becoming an entrepreneur is not a solution, at the scale of our society there are few solutions and the primary one is taxing corporations more and taxing billionaires out of existence.

    People deserve a right to live. I’m not saying people shouldn’t plan for retirement, I’m not saying don’t try and start a business. I’m saying to you stop framing it as dependency, that’s a fuckin crazy thought process. The overwhelming majority of people go to school and then get a job. Those people deserve to thrive without having a perfect stock portfolio which will materialize in 40 years, without having a second job, without turning their art into a commercial enterprise.



  • “Dependency on a single wage is the entire problem people are having” is a crazy statement to read from someone who is trying to give advice on the Internet. The entire problem is not that people have one job, it’s that all the profits are going to the fewest people in our society. No one should have to work two jobs to survive, that’s an insane status quo you’re attempting to defend.

    Stop defending the status quo, stop defending corporations, stop trying to normalize surviving this system and start normalizing changing it. We need large societal reform and every additional person who has to work two jobs is another family ready to do so through violent means.


  • PoE2 will be Free-To-Play upon 1.0 launch. For now it’s in what they’re calling Early Access (a Beta period) and requires a €30 euro key. I believe they said they did this because it wasn’t the complete game, they were still looking for feedback, and it’s a bit janky in terms of balance.

    So far it’s been worth every penny, many times over, but I also think the promise they deliver on in the first three acts they fail to deliver on in the end game. I’d recommend people wait if they have other games or ARPG’s to play. I’d also recommend anyone who loves ARPG’s, if they have run out of content elsewhere to give it a try without hesitation. It’s a fantastic game and the best arpg on the market in almost every aspect.


  • I’ve stopped preordering most games, partially because of a backlog, partially because games like 2077 ruined my trust in even “good” companies (and no, I do not think 2077 deserves the redemption arc the Internet gives it). I did however pre-order Path of Exile 2 by a week because I had A) played a beta experience which was terribly fun B) followed all of the content creators talk about the beta’s they played and how even when they complained it felt like choices I’d like (more action focused combat) and C) the preorder I got came with keys for friends I wanted to distribute ahead of time. So I knew for sure I was going to play it, like it at least enough to justify the price, and that I wanted to preload it for a launch party.

    Pretty much the biggest and best reason to preorder is for the preload so you can play at launch. But not every game needs to be played at exactly the launch time (in fact we struggled on launch day of poe2 but did eventually get to play) and all pre-orders should be done as close to the launch date as possible so you can get an easy refund if it sucks.


  • Yes, I confirmed. I live in Germany and hashtags like democrat or berniesanders are blocked and hashtags like Republican and donaldjtrump are not blocked.

    I was only on Instagram for my friends to exchange reels and post life updates like once a year but this crosses another line. Migrating from all these monopolies is such a tax on my time but this is a small way to hurt these big giants.

    I recommend everyone do the same when they have the time. I’d like to learn about RSS feeds and go back to a bunch of individual blogs for friends and family. Decentralized power is I guess the most important characteristic to look for these days. Fuck, this correction period is going to suck.


  • It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

    Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.







  • It’s still a buggy mess for me unfortunately. It can run, but I bugged through the world at the delimane (?) quest and closed it again. I’ve got a top of the line rig and I was so tired of the game bugging out.

    Maybe I’ll push through but everyone calling this one of the best turn arounds is giving them too much credit. They promised us so much, delivered a buggy mess, spent years fixing it, released a dlc which fixed even more and added supposedly a great story, but they still fell very short of their original marketing promises and as I said it still requires resetting frequently enough to be frustrating.


  • Just chiming in, I’m 28, American, immigrated to Germany. Can’t speak for Lemmy but I migrated from reddit when they shut the APIs down. Just want a shelf stable Aggregate site where I can stay up to date on my favorite hobbies and periodically connect with other humans. A healthy political debate is good every now and then but I’m also in the camp that the answers for our current problems are well researched and pretty fuckin obvious so debates have gotten… Idk stale.

    Generally Lemmy feels like reddit but smaller, less polluted, but also less connected with every niche major update.