Mmos and arpgs are intrinsically linked by their gameplay loops. Admittedly, this can vary to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific games being compared, but Diablo 2 was, in many ways, proto-WoW.

Fair point! To be honest, I had a lot of internal conflict about saying anything at all, what with this being a “I don’t care about Star Wars” thread and all. I’ve never let reading the room stop me in the past though lol

Far be it from me to defend most of the goofiness in Star Wars, including its politics, but I don’t think there’s any contradiction in those particular facets of Leia’s character. Being a princess doesn’t exclude her from supporting rebels, nor does it mean she can’t have prejudices. The history of most aristocracies is a bunch of prejudiced nobles supporting various schemes against one another.

Wandering through to mention that your local library almost certainly has a collection of cookbooks spanning decades, and, depending on your area, might even have stuff tied specifically to your region. Take the book, photocopy the recipes you’re interested in, return it, get to cooking!

Thank you for the podcast recommendations! I just finished up my backlog on a couple pods, so I’ve been looking for something new!

Also I wanted to mention they appear to be doing a Black Friday week series of flash sales. $10 or less for featured titles, changes every day.

Looks great!

By way of picking nits though, the green felt playing tables seem like they are superimposed over the rest of the image because the lighting doesn’t seem to be affecting them in the way that many of the other props have a purplish wash over them.

To be clear, this doesn’t actually matter in any significant gameplay way, and it definitely helps those tables in particular stand out, which may have been your intention, so heaping handfuls or salt with this comment.

Thank you for your post!

I was told it was never about the size, it was about how you used it!

After VtM 1’s tumultuous release, not to mention the drama surrounding the sequel’s development, that makes sense to me.

That being said, I don’t think it’s quite as big a leap as the person above is making it sound. To use their words, The Chinese Room are known for “strong art direction, atmosphere, and story, [and] weak gameplay”. They also suggest that the games TCR make are “the exact opposite” of Bloodlines 1. Which is kinda boggling my mind, cause I’m pretty sure the critical and user consensus of that game is that it excelled in its art direction, atmosphere, and story, and fell comparatively short in its gameplay. In fairness, I think he was referring to the limited open world nature of VtM 1 vs the straight linearity of the “walking sim” genre, but still. I’d argue the most memorable section of VtM is the Ocean House Hotel, which is, basically, a linear walking sim level, and it’s not as though the og game did a ton with its open world.

Now there’s an argument to be made that Paradox made the wrong call by doubling down on the peripheral elements of the game, rather than hiring a team that has ARPG gameplay bonafides, but I think that’s only an argument that can be made with the benefit of hindsight. Additionally, is it true that the gameplay/combat of VtM2 is glaringly bad? I can’t speak for myself, but the handful of reviews I read characterize it as serviceable at worst. Which, again, seems right in line with the first game.

I’m very much on the outside looking in though.

It’s not quite filling both barrels with the wedding rings of murder victims, but shades of The Crow nonetheless.

I can understand that, but, from my biased perspective, that take is either unsupported by what I wrote, or requires a remarkably uncharitable reading. I asked for help, he provided it, and suggested I could use ChatGPT in the future to answer questions like this. I confirmed he had found the correct answer and explicitly thanked him for having taken the time to do so. I did reject his suggestion that I should just prompt a chatbot in the future though. I attempted, clearly unsuccessfully, to couch that pushback by underscoring again (for the second time in as many sentences) my gratitude that he took the time at all, but I stand by my question: what is the purpose of this community if the top level response to most questions is, “you should try prompting ChatGPT. It’s like Google but with faster and better results.”

Despite his assertion that I’m a tech hating Luddite, I have no issue with AI output being cited in this forum. When I balked at being told I should use ChatGPT instead of posting here, he assumed I was rejecting AI altogether and decided to take his ball and go home.

Idk, maybe I’m just having a legitimately unpopular opinion here, but my read is that communities like this one exist, in spite of their gimmick being well suited for a chatbot question, specifically because people want to interact with other humans, not bots. So, I stand by my original point, suggesting an OP in this community should prompt a bot is missing the point: not because AI is bad, but because, if they wanted to avoid human interaction, they would have asked the bot already.

On the bright side, I’m reconsidering my hunger for human interaction and am coming around to the idea that maybe it isn’t worth the effort lol

I understand this is not everyone’s default assumption online, but, please, give me the benefit of the doubt that I am engaging with you in good faith.

I have no issue with you having used AI to find the result. Truthfully, I’m surprised that the AI was able to find it so easily where a regular Google search, even with search operators, kept returning wildly inaccurate results. What I commented on, couched by attempting to underline my gratitude first and foremost, was that this whole community is built around, “There’s this thing I vaguely remember, can anyone help me find it?”. As you say, yes, clearly AI is well suited to this task, given it found the item in question based on what I wrote in one go. So, almost every post in this community could have “I plugged your prompt into AI and it thinks this is what you’re looking for: […]”. What then, is the point of this community?

I am arguing that this is not the space to be evangelizing chat bots, not because they are an inappropriate tool for this task (or whatever other issues people might moralize about on here), but because to do so actively robs the community of further content, in the sense that the lesson it imparts is, “Don’t ask here, ask ChatGPT”.

Of course, I could be misapprehending your intent. If so, I’d like to know where I’ve gotten off track.

Apropos of nothing more than my idle speculation, I’d guess they will return to the transport tycoon genre if they are able to do so. Before Skylines took the crown from SimCity as the preeminent example of the genre, they made the Cities in Motion games, which were narrowly focused on improving the mass transit of existing cities (as opposed to building the city itself). I know the second CiM game had some interaction between the city and your efforts as transportation czar (in the same way you could indirectly influence a citiy’s development in, say Railroad Tycoon), but the emphasis was always on transit. I imagine the newly independent team will want to keep their focus narrow, unless another publisher swoops in to replace the safety net.

This is the correct story. I appreciate you finding it. Google was not cooperating. That being said, and I do want to underline that I appreciate you having taken some time to search for it, the entire point of this community is to help one another find esoteric bits of media with a more personal touch than a search engine or an AI chatbot. Responding to any post here with “have you tried AI?” is sorta missing the point, even if you’re factually correct. It’s kinda the “Let Me Google That For You” of the new era.

Thanks for context. It was giving me Ugly Americans vibes, but I knew that wasn’t correct.

Love the pops of color from the leaves. Really elevates the piece.

It’s not.

Yeah, I figured that’s almost assuredly the case on a forum like Lemmy (or Reddit prior to the Exodus) but I don’t know whether it can be extrapolated to the public at large. I’m practically a Luddite compared to many folks around here, but I’m possibly the most advanced computer user among my peers simply because I know a couple Win key shortcuts and I’ve used powershell before (with no comprehension of what I was doing, to be clear).

It seems like most folks are willing to put up with bad UX, whether due to ignorance or apathy.

Could be I’m the minority here, but touchscreens stopped feeling like a value add years ago. Somehow I’ve wrapped back around to a good button or knob being the marker of quality. One of the reasons I chose my current vehicle was because they let the most common controls (climate, radio, etc) stay tactile.