Not sure if that really counts as “a game” for this community, but I reactivated my old Neopets account after a long hiatus. The site is still broken AF but just as fun as I remembered, and there is talk of an upcoming plot across the boards.

… he sleeps all night and he works all day … ♪

(Thanks, now I have that dumb lumberjack song stuck in my head, lol)

They disappeared after the Calamity was defeated,

… except, conveniently, for the Guardian parts used in the Skyview Towers (the “arms” that grab Link, the control units, etc.), or the dead Guardian atop the Hateno Tech Lab, or the Guardian “daggers” that were formerly turned into Ancient Arrows (which Link can DIY now), or the Purah Pad which is basically a rebranded Sheikah Slate, or the telescope atop Purah’s little lab at Lookout Landing …

Oh and of course the after-credits scene in BotW, where Zelda states that she wants to go investigate Vah Ruta to find out why the Divine Beast stopped working and check whether it can be repaired. The “Calamity” was dead by then as the scene takes place days or even weeks after the final battle, but I guess noone had told the Divine Beasts yet that they were meant to inexplicably go poof along with the main antagonist.

IMHO it would have made a lot more sense to say that the people of Hyrule actively dismantled and destroyed most Sheikah Tech they could find so it would be impossible for Ganon to possess them again. That would explain why there is still some of it left in remote corners of the Kingdom, and it is a more down-to-earth explanation than “it just vanished”.

All in all, it really DOES sound like a lazy “I don’t care” explanation.

Breath of the Wild. Every time Link steps into the light after opening the shrine, the camera pans over Hyrule, with that glorious music … I always get goosebumps and can’t wait to get the runes, catch a horse and start “exploring” again, even tho I pretty much know the entire map by heart already.

“You just turned 100 today - what’s your secret to a long life?” - No matter what the answer will be, I guarantee you that there are millions of people in the world who do the exact same and still die young. But yeah, of course aunt Margharet only managed to live an entire century because she ate three cans of surströmming every week, no doubt. Genetics, healthcare and lifestyle have nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Edit/addendum: Weird speciic example

Something similar was also my no.1 pet peeve on reddit whenever people argued about how the Blood Moon works in Breath of the Wild. It’s an in-game timer of roughly 3 hours, but the game does not tell you about it, nor does it display the timer, and back when the game code wasn’t cracked yet, there were a LOT of outrageously weird theories about how to allegedly make the Blood Moon appear.

So you just “made” a BM happen by running straight into a wall for 3 hours? Yes you got a BM, but not “because” you were running into a wall for 3 hours, but because the effing timer was up. The game does not care for WHAT you do in that time.

So you reloaded and ran into a wall again and the BM happened again? It is STILL not because you ran into a wall - you rewinded the effing timer by reloading a save file from before the event you’re trying to trigger, and then the timer was up again. (They never bothered to check whether it would happen if they did not try to trigger it with their chosen tactic)

It is really really hard to try and convince these people that they’re wrong, because once they’re convinced that a specific action yields a specific result, they WILL keep doing it over and over again until it “works” and then see it as proof. But by the same logic you can also throw tomatoes at a wall until it starts to rain and then claim that the rain happened because you just threw 547 tomatoes against a wall. And then you continue to throw tomatoes because it “worked” last time … and if it doesn’t rain then you just didn’t throw enough tomatoes yet.

The most recent one: EA. I had disliked them and their practices for quite some time now, but there was a game on sale that I found interesting enough to purchase … it was like 2 Euro or whatever, so no big loss. AFTER the download they wanted me to sign an electronic agreement to basically harvest all of my data and requiring me to be permanently online in a singleplayer offline game at all times so they could monitor me, and if I didn’t agree I wouldn’t be able to play the game. No refund. I uninstalled it and will never purchase anything from them again - that was the last straw, the last ever chance I was willing to give them. And no there was no warning of any kind before the purchase - they deliberately waited until after they had my money to “ask” for that bullshit.

Good luck. It’s not an easy feat to consistendly walk that fine line without burning out, especially in the holiday season … take care.

Exactly … there would not even have been a shortage if everyone just kept shopping the normal amount instead of trying to hoard stuff. Especially for TP it was completely unneccessary unless your entire family planned to shit themselves eight times a day for weeks on end, yet people acted as if their lives depended on it (and even stole rolls from the public toilets, bought paper towels as backup and the like).

Another delicious “FU” moment, that I was sadly not personally present for but got told in great detail, was when one customer tried to return 100-something packs of TP for a refund after the first wave of Covid was almost over. Turns out he and some buddies had the genius idea to buy “one pack per person” multiple times each day for a couple of weeks (he had a giant bundle of receipts so we know when the packs were bought) and then resell the TP online for profit, but noone bought it… and since TP is a “hygiene article”, we don’t take those back for safety reasons, just like underwear, swimsuits and everything else that is meant to come in contact with human bodies. He was so furious that he started throwing things, screaming about how “we ruined him and will pay for it”, and threatening employees to the point that police had to be called to remove him.

Not the shop security, but actual police. A report was filed and a shop ban issued.

Because of toilet paper.

Cashier here. I managed to outwardly stay friendly and nice during the first wave of Covid, even tho at least 70% of our customers had managed to turn into the most insufferable nuisances in the history of mankind. It was especially exhausting when they started to bulk-buy toilet paper and literally everyone had some sort of super lame excuse why they NEEEEEEED eight packs at once and why we definitely SHOULD make an exception to the “one pack per customer” rule specifically for them.

If you have the same old discussion fourhundredandeightyseven times a day, it gets old pretty fast. But you can’t just tell them to STFU without risking your job, soo … well. It was simply exhausting.

One day I had a proper Karen at the register, who tried to tell me that she was buying the second pack for her poor old neightbor lady which allegedly had a broken hip and couldn’t walk to the store herself (you know, because if you have a broken hip you DEFINITELY stay at home instead of the hospital and definitely also use the toilet yourself, no issues here …) and she simply refused to leave the register. I was honestly contemplating whether I should call security and have her removed when the guy behind her looked at me and said:

“Well, that lady definitely needs twice as much toilet paper as others … because judging by the amount of shit that just came out of her mouth, she’s got assholes on both ends.”

It took all of my remainig willpower to not laugh. Imagine the “Biggus Dickus” scene from the Life of Brian for a mental image of how hard I tried to keep a straight face. Karen got red, huffend and left without buying either pack, and that delightfully snarky guy has been my favorite customer ever since. I might or might not sometimes “accidentally” swipe my own tag across the scanner to give him an employee discount…

The mosquitoes are dead.

In addition to what others have said already;

• Results are rewarded. If you do something right in-game, you usually get something like “good job!” or an immediate positive rating, useful items etc. as a direct reward. That way you immediatly feel like you accomplished something good. In the real world, you do the task, check out and go home - no positive feedback, no feel of accomplishment. You just completed a menial task, that’s all.

• Virtual customers are easier. If you do your virtual job right, they will be happy and nice. In the real world, you can do everything right and still get yelled at for the most bullshit reasons (I work in customer service so I might be biased a bit here) which makes it hard to maintain a positive attitude. In games, you usually don’t have to deal with someone trying to return clearly worn underwear for a refund and then throwing a loud, childish hissy fit when you tell them that you can’t do that.

• Games ususally don’t randomly throw unexpected setbacks at you at the most inconvenient times. They’re predictable, easier and overall more structured. Someone mentioned Truck Simulator in the comments, for example - I haven’t played that game but I highly doubt that it features 3 hour long traffic jams while your virtual avatar desperately needs to pee, the sudden appearance of an angry hornet or giant spider inside the driver’s cabin, flat tyres, naked methheads trying to climb your truck or your virtual boss calling you ingame to yell at you for something that is out of your control.

• Games ususally omitt the nasty parts and enhance the pleasing parts. Example: the curry cooking minigame in Pokémon SwoSh - you select ingredients, throw them into the pot, stir it for a while and your 'mons will be happy to get a nice meal. What you do NOT have to do: chopping and cleaning the ingredients, sorting out rotten food, cleaning the pots and pans, picking up Pokémon poop after they’re done digesting what they ate, getting IRL back pain from having to carry 427 cans of cream around at all times, setting up and maintaining the fire, disposing of garbage like packaging material or fishbones. You never have any picky eaters refusing to even taste the curry, you never have any ingredients go bad, your utensils will never break and you didn’t have to buy them in the first place as they magically just appeared in your inventory the moment you unlocked the ability to cook curry. and what you cooked always, always looks aesthetically pleasing unless you deliberately fuck up real hard, whereas even the most delicious tasting curry in the real world can look like slop, which just doesn’t feel the same. It is kinda easier to feel satisfied with a virtual steaming hot plate of pretty food.

Also German here. The lack of English(!) dubs on anime sold in Germany pisses me off more than it rightfully should, but if I want to watch Mononoke, Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle and the like, the DVDs always only have the options of German or Japanese audio with complimentary subtitles. I actually prefer the English dub in most of these.

It was also extremely weird to hear Phil Collins sing German lyrics for Disney’s Tarzan. I knew the (English!) soundtrack before I watched the movie and it completely caught me off guard.

Ditto. I tried a couple of alternatives over the years but most of the “free” programs are either not much better than the already built-in thing, or spam the end user with advertisements about paid services (I’m looking at you, Avast!) to the point that they’re a lot more intrusive than any actual virus could have ever been.

Never had any issues with the regular Defender and I’ve been using Windows for ages.

For me, it was Astrid. Watching that fiercely proud, brutally honest and deeply caring warrior lady slowly lose the will to live after Giovanni was gone … that hit hard for some reason. And her reassuring Stella that is “isn’t so bad to be alone” and the like didn’t make it better.

There is a Firefox extension called “I don’t care about cookies” and since I’ve installed it, I haven’t seen any pop-ups like these anymore. But if you have uBlock Origin installed already, better follow the advice of other commenters ;)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t non-commercial use of trademarked stuff ok? I was under the impression that it only counts as copyright infringement if you somehow profit from it, which would not be the case in most communities here.

(I’m not a lawyer tho so I could just be wrong)

I have to question if people are not reporting or if the report thing is just broken

That should be easy to test tho. Just ask someone you trust to report a random post in the community and see what happens - but maybe tell the other mods in the community first so they, too, know that it is just a test and not a real report.

Fair warning tho: at least DM’ing from one instance to another does not seem to work properly at the moment and it might be the same for reports, so it is possible that reports from users on the same instance as you go though, while others never reach the mods.

PS: If you need someone to conduct a test for you, I’d be willing to do it ;)

Breath of the Wild. I mean, yes, there are quests, bosses, temples, shrines, minigames and whatnot, but it is also completely fine to just fetch your favorite horse from the stable and ride across Hyrule, hunting wildlife, watching the sunset, cooking food for your character, maybe have Wolf Link accompany you on a hunt, just taking in the scenery, foarge for mushrooms, looking for shooting stars at night … a little bit of reality escape helps to unwind after a long, hectic day. And this game is unreasonably beautiful as well, despite the simplyfied graphics.

I was trying to unlock a dragon-type safari in Pokémon Y and you can’t just enter a random code for that - you need to find another player who has such a safari in their own game already, share codes with them, and then you both need to be online at the same time at least once. After lots of googling I found a person on reddit, but didn’t have an account at the time so I created one just for that dumb safari.

I didn’t even plan to keep the account in the first place, so I didn’t care for a proper name - that’s the reason I was named “justlookingfordragon” back then. I tried “just_looking_for_a_dragon_type_safari_THX” first but it exceeded the character limit.

After that, I didn’t touch the account again for a few months but eventually started using it proper for giveawys of Pokémon breedjects, and then later Zelda-related stuff. Still never bothered to find a better name and it’s become somewhat of a running gag for me to use that awkward username elsewhere (like for youtube and lemmy for example).