Removed by mod

I’m not sure what’s better: The alligator wearing the hat, the conservation instructor seemingly grabbing its tail to stop it, or the alligator just not giving a shit and carrying on with its day.

Dude should just delete his account in a form of internet Harakiri at that point.

and potentially their brand sponsors

Well, there it is. In-game ads in the form of “user-generated content”, from the sound of it. Also has paid mod vibes.

Hope I’m wrong and it’s actually great.

If Musk had a brain aneurysm tonight, it would be a net positive for the human race.

I’m glad you thought of this, because I was very confused by this post. I thought the question was asking which group of countries you’d want to be allowed to visit.

I have a Kwain deck that has no win condition. The entire basis for the deck is to give everyone cards and life and mana and keep everyone alive long enough to draw, resolve, and protect a Divine Intervention. Typically by the time that happens, when I manage it, the entire table has drawn through their entire libraries at least once. I’ve never had anyone - regardless of the power level of the table - tell me they found the deck to be oppressive or unfun to play against. However, it has a Fierce Guardianship in it, so I guess it’s degenerate now.

What’s the criteria for game changers?

If that list is exhaustive, it seems to be “An arbitrary subset of powerful cards in each color, chosen more or less at random”.

As an example, Trinisphere is on the colorless list, which is very good at slowing down degenerate decks and isn’t really problematic in commander in decks that would fall into bracket 3 anyway, but Winter Orb, one of the more hated effects in the game, is suspiciously absent.

Edit: I guess they’re excluding things that fall into the ‘land denial’ category (which itself is very weirdly laid out. What about Liliana of the Veil? It can destroy at least half of a player’s lands, but only a single player, and it’s not the primary function of the card. Their definition of land denial includes ‘multiple players’, so is that fine? Can you play the card if you’re not using it for that purpose?). What if player A plays Enchanted Evening, and player B has Tranquility in hand - are they disallowed from playing it, because it would, due to the current boardstate, destroy all of the lands? What if you have both in your deck - neither card alone destroys lands, but together they do. Same goes for cards like Kormus Bell and Living Lands combined with e.g. Pyroclasm.

In that case, what about Nether Void? Having Trinisphere but not Nether Void is a weird choice. How about Humility, or Smokestack? If I was creating a list of cards that ruin the fun for some subset of the table when they’re cast, those would certainly be on it. Mana Breach doesn’t fit their definition of land denial; neither does Vorinclex, but Vorinclex is explicitly on The List, whereas Mana Breach is not. I’m curious where they got this list from.

My play group has a set of deck building guidelines that we all follow, and a prohibition on mass land destruction is in there. There’s a couple people with lands-heavy ramp decks, which go basically unchecked, because the cards you’d typically use to keep such a strategy in check are disallowed.

The last page of this survey is heavy handed and full of leading questions. It feels like you’re less trying to gather research data and more trying to push an agenda; it would not pass scientific review. The fact that I agree with the agenda being pushed doesn’t change my feelings on that.

A better method would have been to ask the question in a neutral way (e.g. ‘Do you believe that storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation?’ or even better, ‘Storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation’ as a statement, with a Strongly Disagree - Strongly Agree scale), then at the end of the survey provide the information you’re providing in the links below each question.

There’s probably already games where AI generated “every pixel”, just not the code that displays those pixels… This headline only implies art, even though it’s pretty clear they meant the whole game, code and all, and without seeing the whole article, we can’t really effectively comment.

Not pay for their service. Pretty simple. If only there was a way to watch their shows without doing so.

I literally won a “silent but deadly” award at a company retreat

That’s actually a pretty cool thing for them to recognize. Awards and things more often seem to go to the people who talk the most / loudest, just because they’re the ones people remember, but having an explicit acknowledgement that they recognize the value in what you’re saying is pretty neat.

I see what you did there.

In this same vein, Backpack Hero is quite good, too! If you like one, maybe check out the other.

It’s worth noting that Risk of Rain 1 and 2 are very different games (3rd person 3D vs. 2D side scroller), and both are good - so if 2 didn’t grab you, maybe check out 1 and see if that’s more your thing. (The remastered version has a lot of nice QOL stuff and some new game modes and items.)

I got you, fam. It’s not exactly the same - more narrative focused, and slower paced - but it will scratch that same itch.

That’s a fair point, but they could have been up front about it, or at least adjusted their advertising some. They basically told consumers “We’ll get you the best deal, and if we don’t find one, it doesn’t exist”, which is a spurious claim anyway, but it surely misled people. They could have just said “We’ll see if we have any coupon codes available” or something less committal. There still would have been a lot of value for regular consumers… if you weren’t using a coupon code, 5% off is better than nothing and if they weren’t being dicks about the referral links, nobody likely would have cared in the slightest.

If they’d just been a little less greedy, and only inserted their affiliate link for purchases where none was originally present, and actually provided the service they advertised rather than ‘partnering’ with merchants to provide worse coupons, they’d probably never have gotten caught and if they had, nobody would have cared. Could have skimmed a significant but lesser amount forever. But no, they had to go full on villain, and here we are.

As someone who just has no interest whatsoever in competitive multiplayer games (even ‘passive’ competitive, like this sounds to be), or live service titles, I feel completely left behind by AAA developers. It’s a good thing the indie scene is so vibrant, or I’d just have to find a new hobby at this point.

Even if there weren’t a million examples of prior art, the fact that patents on game mechanics are even allowed is just awful for the industry as a whole, and we as players should absolutely rail against this. Every game borrows from other games’ ideas and mechanics - I’d bet money that there hasn’t been a single fully “original” game in 20+ years. If companies are allowed to patent every little mechanic (even ones they didn’t come up with), the industry as a whole will just become impossible to operate in.