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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

    At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

    Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

    Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

    That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.





  • To add to that last point, I worked for a company (at retail) that claimed to know that keeping customers was cheaper than getting new ones, and corporate even implemented a policy where the clerks on the floor had up to $100 to keep a customer happy. I never once saw that $100 used, and the one time I tried to keep a customer (who had just spent $3000) happy, management refused to let him return a crap $100 printer because he didn’t have the manual in the box. He had left it at home, and was glad to bring it in next time he was in. Nope. And that incident was within a week of implementing that system.

    So even when a company understands that point, it’s still really hard to make good on it at the levels that it can matter.


  • Well, I’ll give it a shot.

    Part of it is that they can’t know the point that someone is willing to stay vs leave, and they’re always optimizing for that point. Saving money is always the goal for expenses in a company.

    Part of it is that they have a budget that they can’t exceed. Sometimes a person is overqualified for the job, and the job simply can’t afford them. Sometimes that person will stay far longer than they should, when they could get paid much better elsewhere, and sometimes they choose to move when they’re only slightly underpaid for their skills.

    Part of it is that there is more to a job than money. Being comfortable, un-stressed, and generally happy is more important at some point than more money. The company tries to balance these things, as it’s often cheaper to relieve or prevent stress than pay someone to put up with it.

    In the end, it’s super complicated, but all about money, on both sides.


  • First off, I think you’re absolutely right about your right to disable “this nonsense”. I support you in that.

    But “this nonsense” is what makes games fun for me.

    I’m not about struggling and finally overcoming.

    I’m about having an adventure. It’s the interactive version of a book, where I engage my brain a bit more and explore or solve puzzles, instead of the book just telling me the answers immediately. I enjoy gun fights in games, but I don’t want to play them even twice. I want to win them and move on to more content. Losing a scenario doesn’t make me feel even better when I win. It just drags me down.

    I have enough things in my life that I’ve accomplished by struggle that I don’t need it from games, too.

    But again, if that’s what does it for you, I think you should have it, too. There’s no good reason you can’t disable it, IMO. (Other than the devs just not providing the option.)



  • I think this happened to me as well. I had something pop my FEP film, and I replaced it, and tried a couple prints, but really didn’t like the whole resin experience, so I sold my printer.

    When the buyer got it home, he told me the screen was cracked. We weren’t sure whether it happened in transit or not, and I’d given him a pretty great price on the thing with a washing machine and a ton of resin, so he decided he didn’t want any money back.

    After learning more about resin printers since then, I now think it was my fault and I feel bad about it. Either way, I’ve definitely learned to check the major components before buying or selling something.





  • I’m going to guess “no”.

    I’m not great at art, but I’m a senior software developer and amateur woodworker.

    A saw that gets you a mostly straight cut when you need a really straight one doesn’t help a ton. It might help you break things down faster so they’re more manageable, but that probably actually means more waste and not a ton of time savings.

    Likewise, code “copilots” right now look great at first blush, but I’ve yet to have it produce any lengthy piece of code that was correct. I had one snippet that I thought was great at first glance, but by the time I was done I had modified every single line of code. Some were very subtly wrong in ways that would create weird bugs.

    As for art, I think AI is great at expressing a feeling, but a final piece is about details. Having it produce something that you can modify doesn’t seem useful for most art workflows, and it’ll trip you up on tiny details that you don’t notice until later, or not at all. There have been plenty of artists tripped up by using AI for the base art and then modifying it, and the company has even published their work publicly, only to be found out by the public because of stupid AI things that slipped past. It saved them some time, but the work wasn’t perfect and it cost them their job.





  • I’m not surprised that it’s lagging behind the other 2. To me, it feels like Honkai Impact 3rd with a coat of Persona 5 paint on it. Everything is flashy and tries to seem complicated, but it’s dead simple so far. I imagine there’s some actual strategy to the combat later, but at lower levels, it’s painfully lame.

    And the writing? Wordy as ever, and so pointless. Skipping through the text quickly makes you miss like 1/3 of it, even if you read super fast. It literally just never shows on the screen, hidden behind some scrolling text area or just not even put onscreen before advancing.

    The weapons are all just balls with faces. They seem like children’s toys instead of useful items, and it’s hard to care about them beyond the stats.

    I’m impressed they made even that $25 mil.

    The only thing that has drawn me in so far is the daily video store thing, and I just thought to myself this morning: “Shouldn’t I just find a good store game instead?”