I took one of my kids last weekend (my other kid is too little for movie theaters) and we really enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s as poignant as the first one, since it’s more or less kind of a rehash of the same theme, but it was still well made. Anyway, despite having seen the first movie many, many times, it was still fun seeing the characters reunited and satisfying seeing them overcome their new crisis.
The Russian president said Friday that his country will continue to develop its nuclear arsenal, days after signing a new mutual defense pact with Kim Jong Un....
I like DS1, but it really just depends on my mood. If I want faster paced combat, I go for DS3. If I want slower paced combat, I go for DS1. Also, the first half of DS1’s world design is unmatched in how it’s all interconnected, so I really enjoy the beginning of that game over DS3’s. That being said, fuck Bed of Chaos and that whole lava level. It’s just so bad (even Miyazaki agrees, as they unfortunately ran out of budget and time).
Regardless, I’m beyond hyped for Shadow of the Erdtree this week! Haven’t taken a day off work for a game launch in ages, but I sure as hell did this time.
Haha, I actually don’t hate DS2, it’s just pretty badly balanced (PvE wise, of course; I can’t speak on PvP). The levels are the bosses in that game (with a few exceptions), which makes going through them quite tedious after a failed run. If they dialed down the density of enemies and possibly buffed some of them in compensation, it could possibly almost tie almost evenly with the other 2 games for me. Oh, and got rid of the obnoxious Soul Memory system, god what a terrible idea that mechanic was/is.
What I do really enjoy about the game are the interesting and somewhat diverse locales, with some levels having some great design going on. I love the item and gear variety. I also really liked being able to reinforce my armor along with weapons. It made light armor a lot more competitive in the late game and I am a little sad they got rid of that feature in DS3 (among other things DS3 abandoned). I also enjoyed the sheer number of secrets in the game (Side note: One thing that saddens me in Elden Ring, is how little fake walls and secret passages there are). But it’s not just walls/passages; for example, in No-man’s Wharf, accidentally discovering that those freaky spider things fear fire/light and seeing them retract into the shadows was an awesome detail.
Anyway, I’d love for them to someday truly remaster DS2 and bring the enemy placements more in line with the original DS2 (SotFS is the current “remaster” and there are way more enemies/gank squads in it than vanilla DS2). If they did that and got rid of soul memory, replacing it with the same MP system as DS1R and DS3, I’d love to play through it again.
Sorry for the tangent, I’m just in full on Souls/ER mode this week.
Without a doubt! I played DS1 after DS3 (was always intimidated by the series until a visiting friend forced me to sit down and actually play it, thankfully), so I had that, “whoa!” moment numerous times whenever I’d somehow end up either right inside the hub area or quite close to it after spending hours traversing dungeons and ruins that felt miles away from the hub.
Truly wish FS would make another game designed like it.
Who cares? The community will have player made expansions in a year that will likely be free and of higher quality.
Regardless, BGS is a shell of its former self. Whenever I see people clamoring for TES 6 I just scratch my head and ask why?
Starfield was the final straw for me, I will never get excited for another Bethesda game again. They’ve shown that they refuse to truly shake up their game design. When people asked if Starfield would have the same magic as FO3 or older TES games, they said, “it’ll have the same DNA.” I assumed that meant it’d have fun exploration and interesting quests. While it has some decent quests, the exploration is utterly tedious and just unfun. I truly wish they’d had just focused on fleshing out 2 or 3 planets in one solar system, maybe some instanced, hand-crafted dungeons/whatever outside of it. I have zero interest in exploring proc gen worlds, it’s not that fun in No Man’s Sky and it’s not fun here. At least with NMS, it’s all relatively seamless.
Paris police said 3,000 people gathered in Paris on Monday evening, at a demonstration against the far right, which made historic gains in the European elections on Sunday. Other gatherings took place around the country....
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a 2023 Florida law that blocked gender-affirming care for transgender minors and severely restricted such treatment for adults, calling the statute unconstitutional....
Lots of folks have been yelling this since the dawn of the new populist movement era. Sowing and inflaming interclass division is the best way to keep the people from uniting to take down the ultra rich and their corporations.
Look how much more effort went into it after 2008. That shit show woke up a lot of people to just how fucked up the financial system is, especially after seeing almost no one face any sort of real justice. I’d say the rise of the “tea party” (who eventually transformed into MAGA) came about right around that crisis. A black person being elected also certainly played a part, especially when that black person started trying to lay the groundwork for universal healthcare (the original Affordable Healthcare plan was far better than the extremely neutered, butchered version that eventually got passed).
Sorry, bit of a tangent. I just get so angry about the extreme polarization, because it’s so damn effective at dividing us against the true enemies of the people.
I’m the opposite, heat sucks but at least it isn’t straight up painful like single digit/subzero temps can be. That being said, I remember being in Kuwait when it was around 130°F out and it was absolutely miserable. I was in the Army and had to stop through their on my way to R&R and the 3 days I was there waiting for my flight were horrible. All the transient areas were just tents, and the portable AC units they had hooked up to them couldn’t keep up and the temps during the day never got below ~90°F.
I’m not an advocate for unlimited pirating, but this is a poor analogy. Stealing is taking something from someone, as in the previous owner no longer possesses that item. Pirating digital media is not taking anything from anyone, as it’s digital and thus still exists. This is why the courts do not call pirating theft, they call it copyright infringement.
Reading comprehension is key. I wasn’t advocating anything, I was simply pointing out that even the law disagrees with you. Pirating digital goods is not theft, it is copyright infringement.
Man, paramedics always have some of the craziest stories. They definitely don’t get paid enough for what they do and have to go through, especially in bigger cities.
I definitely had a keyboard for my Dreamcast. It was my first internet enabled console, as well as my first exposure to online gaming with strangers (previously I had only done direct TCP/IP connections with friends on games like Diablo 1 and Starcraft). Phantasy Star Online was so damn addictive.
When the hell is season 2 of that going to arrive? I know a few months ago they confirmed it was in production, so hopefully soon! Such a great show, Nathan Fielder is the king of dead pan comedy.
NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war....
The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, “except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.
Oh damn, I didn’t realize this was out of EA. I impulse purchased it a couple years ago and it felt pretty lackluster, but I recognized it had a lot of potential so I shelved it rather than refund. Looks like they’ve added a ton of content and gameplay changes, so I’ll definitely check it out again. Hopefully they implement native controller support, as it seems like a perfect candidate for Steam Deck (yes, I know about Steam Input configs, but those are sometimes pretty hacky and don’t feel all that great in a lot of games).
I’d add that local charities will know their communities far better than outside organizations. The locals will likely trust them to a much higher degree versus foreigners. As a result, there’s likely to be less waste as communities will be less likely (obviously not a given) to steal/hoard from themselves versus simply taking resources from outsiders who they have no connection/relationship with.
Of course there are exceptions, particularly for those communities that have been so damaged and are so desperate that this approach isn’t likely to succeed. I’m not a international aid expert though, just my two cents.
You underestimate the PRC’s capabilities. There’s a reason their cyber warfare capabilities are considered to be among the best if not the best in the world. They did the same thing to the US’s Office of Personnel Management databases back in the early 2010s. It’s pretty ingenious, as it allows them to know who everyone works for, how much they get paid, and other useful intel. Additionally, if you ever waged a war, hacking the government’s finance office so soldiers aren’t getting paid would be incredibly effective at demoralizing troops and hurting their effectiveness (e.g. soldiers are stressed/distracted about family at home losing their house, not being able to buy food/pay other bills, etc).
More than 170 attacks have been committed against politicians in the lead-up to the June elections. This violence has put campaigns under tension and is sowing doubts about governability in several regions. Specialists warn that the line between the Mexican state and organized crime is increasingly blurred...
They don’t want to get rid of the cartels. The DEA has a vested interest in staying relevant, as it’s part of the whole law enforcement industrial complex. Hell, one of the deadliest cartels’ soldiers were previously trained by American special forces back in the day ( aljazeera.com/…/us-trained-cartel-terrorises-mexi… ). Guess who trained Taliban? You got it, the US. Who trained many of the guerrillas that would turn into tyrants in South America? Correctomondo, the US once again. We love to destabilize regions for corporate interests.
Pretty much every single social platform has already tried to copy it (e.g. YouTube shorts, Facebook and Instagram reels, I don’t remember what Snapchat calls theirs, etc). The difference is how well TikTok’s algorithm works and the overall user experience, plus the established userbase. Tons of younger people hate Meta and their products, they view them as old people social media, so they’ve mostly failed to recapture the younger demographic at large (except maybe Snapchat, that for some reason has steadily kept a non-insignificant younger userbase).
That being said, I won’t be surprised if a TikTok clone emerges that’s run by some “American” company called LiteStance or something where ByteDance just so happens to be an angel investor.
10,000+ hours is mind boggling to me. That’s ~416 full days, or 3.5 years at 8 hours every day. I’m sure the player has been playing for far longer and wasn’t pulling those kinds of hours in a short span like that, but it’s just crazy to me that anyone can rack up that much time in an MMO before becoming completely burnt out.
I figured the game was abandoned, to be honest. Their updates have been unreasonably slow and what little they did release was insultingly barebones. With how much money they made during their unexpected COVID success, you’d think your first order of business would be hiring a top notch PM and experienced devs to keep your development on track.
Edit: I want to add that Enshrouded, in my opinion, seems like what I had hoped Valheim would develop into with more time.
If you consider taking 4+ years for 1 biome expansion and a few other smaller content updates to be a reasonable development cadence, you are definitely welcome to have that opinion.
What? It’s literally an Early Access game, of course we expect them to add more to the game when the devs themselves have said numerous times that the game is incomplete. I’m done responding to replies though, as it appears some folks are beginning to take personal offense and insulting me for criticizing a god damn videogame.
It’s not feature complete, though? The store page literally says Early Access, and within that description the devs explain what is missing and their rough estimate for how much time is left before version 1.0…
They need to ban all corporate social media, not just TikTok.
The whole conversation around banning TikTok is pretty silly and hypocritical. Meta spies on even more Americans than TikTok does, and just as egregiously. Additionally, Meta is willing to sell much of that data to anyone, including China. So even if the US bans TikTok, all that changes is that now China has to pay more money to access the same information as before. By banning one app and not another, it just becomes painfully obvious that it’s corporate protectionism all in the name of national security, and how many times have we seen other ridiculous laws passed using that as an excuse? E.g. the joke that is TSA, Patriot act and all of its facsimiles, DEA, etc.
The European Commission argues it was Europe’s students and young graduates who were most affected by Brexit’s mobility restrictions. The UK has reportedly responded cooly to the proposal....
Because they only have to start the fire, the native population does the rest. All Russia does is exploit historical cultural tensions within a country and fan the flames online. I’ve always said in the past that some of the research psychologists and sociologists have done over the last century or so was the equivalent of developing WMDs when it comes to psyops. Once a competent psyops department is equipped with how to manipulate people en masse, they can do crazy damage without firing a shot. The US and other countries have done the same thing to great effect.
Edit: I should point out that this form of psyops is most effective in countries with minimal censorship and liberal freedom of speech laws, i.e. most Western countries. That’s why it isn’t as effective when westerners attempt to do the same to countries like China, Russia, Iran, etc.
I love the original patientgamers subreddit so I was stoked to find this community. And because lemmy seems to have a more knowledgeable crowd any topic I posted here had great engagement and discussions, despite the small community. I am too busy to be a mod but maybe I can help by sparking this discussion: what would be needed...
The biggest weakness of Lemmy IMO is how fractured communities can become due to very similar subs on different instances
Agreed, and also why I think Lemmy will never progress past a niche audience despite being capable of doing so. It’d be nice if there was a feature that allowed instances to merge all like-named communities into a singular one. I know cross posting was meant to help address the problem, but that’s a manual process that falls quite short in resolving the core issue.
In regard to Reddit having the same problem, I agree it does to an extent. But like you said, it only allows for synonyms or alternate wording for the same topic in a subreddit’s name. On Lemmy, since instances are different, the fractured communities can be named the exact same thing. Most casual users are not going to realize this and think that the one community they’re in is not active when on another instance, the other like-named community might have grown and is now quite active since they initially setup their subscriptions. They’ll never know unless they happen to run another search and see the alternate community’s user count.
Maybe I’m wrong and it isn’t a big deal. But I do agree that searching and indexing would be a great step in helping discoverability.
Skyrim is one of the best selling games in history. A huge chunk of those sales took place on consoles, where mod availability is limited. This whole concept of modders being the only thing making Bethesda’s games successful is quite exaggerated, IMO.
I won’t deny that mods extend their longevity. I’m just saying that there are plenty of gamers who are content with the vanilla games. Hell, Skyrim was an immediate success at launch, long before much of its mods came into existence. Same with Fallout 3 and 4. I’d argue the open world sandbox-esque design of the games are the main thing that give them longevity for the majority of players, similar to how tons of people still casually play any of the GTA games (and not just their online mode). Hell, most of the time when I see random social media posts for FO4, it’s the vanilla game with people just showing off their crazy settlement builds.
I’m fairly certain the parent commenter is either a troll and/or heavily on the spectrum and is extremely literal while armed with bad information. I’m leaning towards the former.
American intelligence had been tracking the group closely and believed the threat credible. Within days, however, President Vladimir V. Putin was disparaging the warnings, calling them “outright blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”...
Pretty much. It’s as if having massive, invasive privacy intrusion in the name of national security against terrorists/whatever is an excuse to spy on political opponents/activists/etc.
For Many Greeks, Six-Day 48-Hour Work Week Now Set to Begin July 1st (www.thenationalherald.com)
"Inside Out 2" surpasses "Dune: Part Two" as the highest-grossing film of 2024 (variety.com)
Putin threatens to arm North Korea, warns U.S. ally South against 'big mistake' (www.nbcnews.com)
The Russian president said Friday that his country will continue to develop its nuclear arsenal, days after signing a new mutual defense pact with Kim Jong Un....
But who is fundamentally in the wrong here?
Bethesda Is Charging $7 For A New Starfield Mission, And Players Are Upset (www.gamespot.com)
Thanks, I hate it (lemmy.today)
Thousands demonstrate against far right across France (www.lemonde.fr)
Paris police said 3,000 people gathered in Paris on Monday evening, at a demonstration against the far right, which made historic gains in the European elections on Sunday. Other gatherings took place around the country....
A Florida law blocking treatment for transgender children is thrown out by a federal judge (apnews.com)
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a 2023 Florida law that blocked gender-affirming care for transgender minors and severely restricted such treatment for adults, calling the statute unconstitutional....
Watch: Local Sinclair Anchors Read Same Shady Script on Biden’s Age (newrepublic.com)
Local news anchors across the country are reading from the exact same script on Joe Biden....
America’s problem is massive inequality – not ‘woke’ educated elites (www.theguardian.com)
Fake populists like Elise Stefanik (Harvard ’06) and Josh Hawley (Yale ’06) attack higher ed to protect corporations and the rich...
Trump will hold outdoor Las Vegas rally in scorching heat. His campaign has extra medics and water (apnews.com)
Brutal cuts and anti-woke agenda buoy Argentina’s rockstar leader (www.thetimes.com)
Ultrakill dev says it's fine to pirate his game if you don't have money to spare: 'Culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it' (www.pcgamer.com)
Fed rule (lemmy.world)
I can't understand why it never caught on... (lemmy.world)
Which is which? (sh.itjust.works)
One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence (www.bbc.com)
One person has been killed and several others injured on a Singapore Airlines flight from London that was hit by severe turbulence....
As Russia Advances, NATO Considers Sending Trainers Into Ukraine (www.nytimes.com)
NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war....
David Cameron urges BBC to describe Hamas as terrorist organisation (www.theguardian.com)
Foreign secretary’s call comes after group releases video of British-Israeli hostage it says died after being wounded in Israeli airstrike...
Steam is now banned in Vietnam (www.eurogamer.net)
V Rising 1.0 review: one of the slickest survival games gets even slicker (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
‘A colonial mindset’: why global aid agencies need to get out of the way (www.theguardian.com)
With the world’s humanitarian system in crisis, many NGOs now recognise that local charities can deliver much more at far less cost...
270,000 UK forces records thought to have been exposed to Chinese hackers (www.theguardian.com)
Payroll data at risk includes names, bank details and addresses of current and former force members, government sources suggest...
Mexico is heading towards its most violent election ever, with 30 candidates murdered, 77 threatened and 11 kidnapped (english.elpais.com)
More than 170 attacks have been committed against politicians in the lead-up to the June elections. This violence has put campaigns under tension and is sowing doubts about governability in several regions. Specialists warn that the line between the Mexican state and organized crime is increasingly blurred...
TikTok parent company says it won't sell, despite possible U.S. ban (www.cbc.ca)
After 10,000+ hours grinding, MapleStory's first level 300 player slams the brakes at 299.99 to rant about the MMO and then quit, all on a dev-promoted stream (www.gamesradar.com)
Valheim: Ashlands Gameplay Trailer (www.youtube.com)
I can’t believe the devs are still alive
New best friend for life! (lemmy.world)
China just made it even harder for people in the country to access WhatsApp and Threads (www.businessinsider.com)
Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its Chinese app store following a government order....
EU wants to undo Brexit, a little bit, for people 18 to 30 (www.dw.com)
The European Commission argues it was Europe’s students and young graduates who were most affected by Brexit’s mobility restrictions. The UK has reportedly responded cooly to the proposal....
How to revitalize this sub?
I love the original patientgamers subreddit so I was stoked to find this community. And because lemmy seems to have a more knowledgeable crowd any topic I posted here had great engagement and discussions, despite the small community. I am too busy to be a mod but maybe I can help by sparking this discussion: what would be needed...
Just weeks before launch, Fallout London is delayed as creator says “Bethesda never changes” (www.pcgamesn.com)
Oklahoma official with white nationalist ties is ousted in recall vote (www.nbcnews.com)
Malaysia mini-mart outlets attacked after 'Allah socks' outcry (www.reuters.com)
CVE-2024-3094: Urgent alert for Fedora Linux 40 and Rawhide users (fedoramagazine.org)
Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack (www.nytimes.com)
American intelligence had been tracking the group closely and believed the threat credible. Within days, however, President Vladimir V. Putin was disparaging the warnings, calling them “outright blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”...