I write ̶b̶u̶g̶s̶ features, show off my adorable standard issue cat, and give a shit about people and stuff. I’m also @CoderKat.

  • 3 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Live service games, MMOs, gatcha games, and many hardcore multiplayer games are the worst for this. They love to waste player’s time on some repetitive grind because they want players to keep playing their game. They usually have either microtransactions (often for cosmetics) or a subscription.

    Personally, I love MMOs, but I try to avoid playing any grindy content (or at least as long as I don’t think I’ll genuinely enjoy it). So I’ll usually play a game for a few months (they’re really big games) and then quit for years, if not permanently (I have a bunch of MMOs I intend to someday return to, but have not yet).

    Single player games are generally much better at being genuinely fun. Especially story driven games. I also love open world games because you largely get to make them your own. It’s perfectly valid to beeline the story missions if that’s all you care about. Or you could do just the side quests. Or you could additionally explore like crazy. e.g., with Tears of the Kingdom, you really can ignore most of the shrines and largely focus on the story quests. None of the side quests are necessary, either. You don’t have to explore the depths except for a tiny few places for the story. The vast majority of sky islands can be ignored. But I personally had a lot of fun exploring, so I explored nearly everything and loved it (except most of the depths – they were way too big, empty, and repetitive).

    Some people don’t like long games, though. And that’s fine! There’s tons of short or more streamlined games out there that you can have fun with. e.g., The Last of Us is a fantastic one. The sequel is about 24 hours long for the story and it felt like it flew by in the blink of an eye for me cause I was having so much fun.


  • I also can’t stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited ‘breaks’ whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.

    That feels like a workplace problem. Why would a workplace give them unlimited breaks? And why would nonsmokers not be allowed comparable breaks? This feels odd to me. My recent jobs have been ones where nobody is micromanaging my time, so anyone can take whatever breaks they want. As long as productivity doesn’t obviously suffer, nobody cares. My past jobs in retail didn’t allow smokers to take extra breaks. They’d get the same breaks as everyone else (for an 8 hour shift, that meant a 30 min lunch and 2 x 15 min coffee breaks).


  • Well… I’m not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. We all knew this Supreme Court was not in favour of its citizens. The Supreme Court should have been stacked long ago. Leaving it be with its insane appointments just because stacking it might start a war with the GOP was a short sighted move, as the GOP is always going to play underhanded (that’s how they managed to get so many SCOTUS appointments in the first place). Biden’s insistence on trying to play nice with the GOP has always been his weakness.

    This really sucks for those with student loans who were depending on this. We’re already in an economically rough place for the kinds of folks who would have student loans. Inflation has been sharp in recent years and wages have not kept up. In my field of tech, layoffs have been widespread and new grads would be the most severely impacted (they already struggle to get hired and now they’re competing against an increased number of experienced people).

    As an aside, it’s also a shame that lawmakers have not managed to pass a law for this debt relief. My understanding is that the strike down is specifically because it’s not a congress passed loan forgiveness. But congress isn’t willing to do the right thing (not in enough numbers to pass a law, anyway).





  • The whole CSAM issue is why I’d never personally run an instance, nor any other kind of server that allows users to upload content. It’s an issue I have no desire to have to deal with moderating nor the legal risks of the content even existing on a server I control.

    While I’d like to hope that law enforcement would be reasonable and understand “oh, you’re just some small time host, just delete that stuff and you’re good”, my opinion on law enforcement is in the gutter. I wouldn’t trust law enforcement not to throw the book at me if someone did upload illegal content (or if I didn’t handle it correctly). Safest to let someone else deal with that risk.

    And even if you can win some case in court, just having to go to court can be ludicrously expensive and risk high impact negative press.


  • Cyberpunk is soooo much fun. I can’t wait for the DLC. It got a bad rap when it launched, but at least when I played it (on PC about 6 months after launch), it was really great and didn’t experience any major issues.

    Though it should be noted for those unaware that it is a very dark and mature game. An NPC is violently raped off camera. That makes the game not for everyone’s taste. Personally, I enjoy when games don’t feel like they’re avoiding subjects like that (which can feel jarring, since it’s a real life concern) and it does add an extra level of emotion to the game. Plus of course, getting to have revenge.



  • Seconded. And I’d say they’re more than pretty decent. They have amazing level design, particularly with respect to interactions with the level. Eg, you jump on a ledge and the ledge might start to break. Think stuff like that, repeated dozens of times in various ways.

    Lara is pretty cool. She has that kinda inquisitive yet “I wanna help everyone” power fantasy that I relate to. They did also try to make it like she doesn’t want to kill bad guys (which is realistic – it’s weird more video game characters have no qualms with the first time they kill someone), but it is a video game where combat plays a prominent part, so it doesn’t really work when Lara is kill people by the dozens.



  • Same for Valhalla. Which interestingly canonically has a female player character for the vast majority of the game (the “real world”), but a male lead for the shorter Norse mythology parts of the game. There’s a lore reason for it. Though the game does let you actually choose whichever gender you want for either part (but it does recommend the canonical choices). The modern day character is also a woman and has been since Origins.

    For an older style AC game, AC Syndicate has you play as opposite gender twins in Victorian London. It’s one of my favourite AC games. You do have to play as both twins for some length of the game, but a significant amount of the game lets you choose which to play as (and Evie is more fun to play IMO).









  • All the modern Fallouts are great. While NV is my favourite, I can recommend them all to satisfy this gameplay style itch. That includes Fallout 76. Despite the onlineness of that title, the single player gameplay is pretty much identical.

    Elder Scrolls Online is a bit more different and has more of an obvious MMO feel to it, but it still is a lot of fun for single player exploration. And the sheer size of the ESO world is insane. It’s really great for getting to explore the places we’ve only heard mentioned in the earlier Elder Scrolls titles. The single player quests are still quite well done. And if you enjoy doing dungeons with other humans, the dungeons are fantastic and have great lore. It’s one of the best MMOs out there. ESO will easily eat up a thousand hours. I loved the shit out of it and need to return sometime.