This is why I wish linear/act structures games would make a comeback

They care more about putting a dumb whatever the heck on some random ass mountain with nothing else on it and boring exploration so you can claim your game is “an open world xxx% bigger than Skyrim/red dead redemption/etc”

Red dead is one of the only games I think does open world well because the story was still linear and had acts. You could have just released the prologue and the valentine area as early access and people would have tested everything out and have fun with it. Similar with bg3 and act 1.

The other one is genshin impact actually, but that game is live service and released the world in parts. So each part of the world feels like it has meaningful exploration since there’s more than just a korok on this random ass mountain. There will be at least 5 puzzles, the zones have their own stories, quests, and plot lines, and doing that let’s you explore a good majority of the zone. If you were to speed rush the msq on a lot of these open world games you would only really explore 10% of the world.

The older I get the more I hate these open world games. They feel directionless. In terms of world building the newest (open world) pokemon game was easily the worst. The gym leaders and rival gangs had no agency wnd very little personality and impact because you could “defeat them in any order*” (*not really)

When I saw the Witcher 1 remake was not going to be linear anymore I pretty much lost all interest in it.

It feels so hard to stay away from anime like that these days. I honestly feel like the majority of modern anime would be better if it didn’t have any female characters in it at all.

I been in Mexico and if you have an iphone/iPad it will disappear.

I d9nt know of a single person who kept their apple products aside the laptops) for more than a few weeks.

You could leave your androids out in the open and they wont go anywhere. But Apple? Say bye bye.

Nintendo is famous for never going on sale. Used can be hit or miss, game may not work at all depending on how the store vets it.

Nintendo isnt the only company that never puts their games on sale, just the biggest one. They also don’t reduce the prices of the game after xx years. In fact, when they re-released older games, they priced them the same as newer ones. I really think Nintendo is sleazy and their games are mid-to-bad but everyone loves them so. /shrug

Then, there’s mmos. If you like mmos and care about them, you can’t wait for sales if they price hike. By the time it is on sale, the expansion is nearly over and it can be extremely difficult to nigh impossible to catch up. After all, there’s like 1-2 years of content you need to do. These sales are only to bring new and returning people in. Not to be viable options for anyone that actually plays the mmo endgame.

This is going to be the new price point eventually. Because most people can’t wait and most people aren’t paitent. It does make the game pass more valuable to me, I suppose. Because I can’t really afford $70+ games. Games haven’t really inflated like everything else has but we really just need to raise wages because we are being priced out of affording anything.

What if you like Nintendo games?

Most AAA games are being priced at this now. And since people are buying it, it is going to continue.

Like anything else, depends how it is used and how it looks. Games like genshin impact and granblue fantasy versus barely look cgi/3d. You can tell it’s cgi, but it’ll be easy to forget it’s cgi.

But then you have cgi that’s just very obvious. I notice it mostly with anything vehicle or mech based. The drill in avatar the last Airbender, space ships, cars, etc. Often times these things are so noticeable against the 2d environment that it takes you out of what you’re watching. It’s better today, the cgi mechs were less glaring in legend of korra as an example. But it can be difficult to make them “blend”.

I think we are at the point we can make cgi look like anything we want. Puss in boots the last wish barely felt cgi with its painterly style, textures, lower fps, and 2d backgrounds. We don’t need everything to look like disney/Pixar. I think it would be neat to see an anime in the classic anime/etc style that is fully 3d/cgi. Beastars is an interesting anime and style but it doesn’t “feel” anime. It feels much more “western” in vibes, style, etc so I have trouble counting it.

How?

Democrats: we should let minorities and women have rights

Republicans: only white Christian rich men (billionaires) should have rights. We should go back to the days where LGBT and minorities were regularly lynched. We should take them away form their families and commit genocide. (If you dont think the Trump era of when ICE REGULARLY took away children from asylum seekers / border crossers as genocide, you can’t be helped, I’m sorry…)

Democrats: let’s improve the economy for everyone. The economy is always strongest at the tail end of our presidential and the start of the next one.

Republicans: let’s make everyone who isn’t rich be forced into indentured servitude and make it illegal for people to quit their jobs. Oh and let’s cut takes for everyone who makes 10million dollars a year. Oh and let’s raise them on the people who make less than 100k a year and make things completely unsustainable for those below the poverty line and the homeless. Let’s create another economic/housing crisis and blame it on the dems. Why else do they always happens at the start of their presidencies? It can’t be our fault. It’s the demoncrats who are in charge!

Democrats: let’s improve the climate - something is clearly wrong. Climate change is real.

Republicans: climate change is a hoax! Evil democrats just want to take away your comfort of living! let’s turn the future into Wall-E. Everyone who matters can go to space/Mars! (You are not one of those people, I’m sorry to say. If you are one of the ‘lucky’ ones you will be a slave until they can replace you with a robot. Musk legitimately wants to revive company towns.you are actually in indentured servitude if you live there.)

Democrats: we should work together to face the future.

Republicans: if you are not just like me, you are against me! You are evil! No matter what you propose i will work until my dying breath to stop it! What do you mean I just stopped a clean air act? People don’t need clean air. We can just sell it. Poor people? Who Cares about them? People are only as valuable as the worth in their bank accounts. If you aren’t a paying customer, fuck off.

Democrats: its important to learn form history so we don’t repeat it.

Republican: let’s gut education. Let’s burn every book that makes us look bad or promotes diversity. We can’t have people critically thinking. If people are smart and well educated, we lose votes. We want to be a dictatorship like Russia or China! The election was stolen! The holocaust never happened!

Sokka also has very good character growth in terms of healthy and positive male traits. He starts out as a bit abrasive and sexist. The opening scene of episode 1 is actually just Katara going off on him about sexism. The scene is kind of abrasive but again, the character grows really well as the series progresses. And I think Sokka is important too. Showing that male characters CAN change and CAN become better people.

Plus, the show does have another case of character growth, with one of the most compelling in all media when it comes to Zuko. And towards the end of the show, he’s also showcasing a lot of positive traits. The duality with his sister is also important. Because this is one of the only shows that has the female counterpart as more violent/“evil” than a male character. Usually the female character is always the gentle, kind, loving one that tempers the male one. But they flipped that on its head. No, girls can be abusive too.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Both sides have done wrong. Isreal has attacked ambulances unprovoked. Hamas attacked Isreal at a music fest. Isreal retaliated by attacking schools and hospitals (aka, people that had nothing to do with said attack) Isreal has been subjugating Gaza to sub-human conditions for 20+ years. The attack on the music fest isn’t justified but it is understandable.

Again. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

This is nothing new and has been going on for decades. People that live in/near border towns often just zip past the border. The animal shelter in one of these towns told us they get all their animals treated in the US. Everyone I talked to in that town has said similar things about buying groceries in the US instead.

I imagine it is just becoming more common with the insane inflation, shrinkflation, etc.

Sadly, the wrong populace of the U.S owns most of the guns.

When I first started messing with it, I was kind of neat and fun. I like making characters so I was using it for like story prompts and general outlines. Some were better than others, but it was neat for some inspiration and fleshing out. I never took it’s outputs 1:1.

But when I messed with it again recently. It was a lot worse. Like it ignored parts of my prompt. Like as an example a prompt was about a romance story, but the story was about character A and their family. The love interest character was barely a footnote and could have been removed entirely and nothing would have changed with the story outlines it was giving me.

I thought maybe it doesnt like romance prompts, so I tried less specific and more broad prompts from there, and it was the same thing of just… not outputting what I was asking it to. It got worse and worse and sometimes wouldn’t output anything at all.

Ah! Darn. I’m sorry.

Hope you figure something out!

Ah! Darn. I’m sorry.

Hope you figure something out!

Do you have access to those super thick insulated socks? Could allow you to wear those house slippers with a rubber sole.

I live in Canada and those socks are too hot in the dead of winter for me.

Oh man, I feel this one. I moved to a colder climate with my cat in winter and every time I pet her, if I got close to her ears… zap. She was always like ??? About it.

One day it just stopped happening one day and I’m not sure why. So I don’t really have any advice.

You could try rubber soled footwear instead?

Live in a fairly rural area of Canada, the hospital closest to me closes at night. No new patients can come in. They are too understaffed. They used to let in serious emergencies but they don’t anymore. So it’s better to call 911 than to drive someone to a hospital yourself.

If I call 911, they send us to one of the hospitals about twice the distance away. It’s not super far thankfully, 40mins instead of 20 but still.

Again, what is your solution ? It’s unrealistic to expect everyone everywhere will never have an event, etc ever again for the rest of time. Be it a house party or otherwise, the risk is always there. There are consequences to every action but if we care about every consequence like that… it’s honestly better to just end all our lives right here. It would be the most net positive action we can take. But that isn’t a viable solution either, is it? How do we get everyone to agree to committing suicide?

You’re saying a lot of angry words but providing no solutions or suggestions. You’re basically being that old man yelling at clouds. We are social creatures and most people can’t live in complete isolation forever. Even if we try to, our societies just aren’t built for that. People who try often starve to death.

What do you suggest though? Never host another concert, event, festival, etc ever again? You aren’t safe in outside events either - I got my case at an outdoor event.

You’ve always took that risk to go to such events. There’s always an uptick in colds after major ones. Sometimes people are aware thst they feel sick, other times they are asymptomatic but a carrier.