The blaze has officially ignited!

The May 2025 Backlog Burner is officially live. Use this topic to post about the games that you play.

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• It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.

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• Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.

• Playing Bingo is optional and not required.

• You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.

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For me it's:

Pants below the natural waist. What can I say, I grew up during the Britney Spears' Time.

Long socks with shorts. Also, invisible socks, apparently I just hate crew or 1/4 crew socks.

ADDENDUM.
This popped up in my feed I see that no one has defended capri pants, yet...I like how at some point in society, a "cupped" clothed ass was considered so provocative.

Message for Deimos or anyone else on Tildes development

I'm putting this here after writing the rest of my post, but could we please get an "expand edit window" option, unless there is one and I'm blind? The preview window's great but the edit window's locked to 6 lines and I would appreciate some more since it would make editing a long post like this much easier. Thanks.

The actual post

There has been a lot of gaming buzz regarding extraction shooters as of late, with the closed alpha of Bungie's Marathon currently underway, the second tech test of Embark Studio's ARC Raiders starting just now, and the recent news of the cancellation of a Titanfall extraction shooter from EA/Respawn. As someone who's played and enjoyed extraction shooters before I've been following these and observing the discourse surrounding them (except the Titanfall one, I didn't even know that was a thing til the news of its cancellation) and I've been somewhat dismayed to see a lot of confusion, mixed messaging, and general disdain for the genre. So I've decided to put my own thoughts and definitions of it down here, and clear up the most common misconceptions or falsehoods I've seen repeated ad nauseam elsewhere.

A brief introduction to extraction shooters

First off, what IS an extraction shooter, what makes it different from other shooters, notably battle royales, and which games qualify as extraction shooters? An extraction shooter, as its core gameplay loop, is a shooter where you enter a map with loot and AI enemies scattered about, and the goal is to gather loot and extract from the map with it. However, you need to get out alive - should you die, you will lose everything (with some exceptions) in your inventory, including the gear you went in with. On top of that, the most popular and successful extraction shooters are PvEvP - you will be competing with other real players for loot, and taking loot off their bodies can be just as profitable if not more so than taking it from PvE enemies. It is optional though, and it is entirely viable to play as a "rat", sneaking around and gathering loot without drawing attention and extracting without anyone noticing.

Not a battle royale

Extraction shooters are also frequently confused with battle royales as both games have players inserted into a PvP map where they scavenge gear. However, the similarities more or less end there. With battle royales, you do not risk losing your items on death as all players are dropped in with nothing and don't have a stash to draw from or store items in, so any "loot" found is merely a means of securing victory for the current round. PvP is also mandatory, as the goal is not to get loot but to be the last team/person standing. To facilitate this in a timely manner, battle royales have a shrinking map mechanic that forces the remaining players into a smaller playable area as time goes on to force them into a confrontation. Extraction shooters do not force PvP or have shrinking maps but do have their own ways of drawing players towards each other, through loot-rich points of interest and extraction zones. Some parts of the map will have greater quality and/or quantity of loot, which will naturally draw players in, and there are a few designated areas where you can actually leave with your loot which will also increase your odds of encountering other players either trying to take your loot before you can leave, or trying to leave themselves. Because it is not forced though, PvP encounters are a much more unpredictable and organic experience in extraction shooters.

What extraction shooters are out there?

So which games count as extraction shooters? The current leaders in the genre, which also happen to be some of the longest-lasting ones, are Escape From Tarkov (EFT) and Hunt: Showdown. EFT is a rather hardcore modern military FPS with a heavy focus on realism - guns are extremely customizable, ammo types and armor can make a huge difference, bullets are extremely lethal even from AI enemies, and a good headshot will drop even the most geared and armored player so there's always risk. It has a cult following but its hardcore emphasis makes it unapproachable for most. It also has periodic progression wipes where players have to start over from scratch to keep things fresh and more fair for newcomers, but is a major turnoff for players that don't like to lose what they've earned. Hunt is an FPS set at the end of the 19th century with a bit of dark magic/voodoo theme. Guns are reflective of the times and rather limited in terms of rate of fire and reload speed, which results in more drawn-out firefights where every bullet counts. For each round, the focus isn't to get loot around the map but rather to track and hunt down a bounty boss monster, then extract with that bounty. These two games are what will come to mind first when extraction shooters are mentioned, EFT more so.

I won't go over cancelled (Titanfall), discontinued (The Cycle: Frontier), or side game-mode (The Division's dark zone/survival) extraction shooters here, which is basically almost all of them sadly, so I'll talk about the two biggest up-and-coming ones instead, Marathon and ARC Raiders.

Marathon and the surrounding controversy

Marathon is a sci-fi FPS that uses the lore of Bungie's Marathon trilogy from the 90's as its setting. You play as a "runner" in a robotic shell scavenging the remains of the colony on Tau Ceti IV for scrap to fulfill contracts for the megacorporations involved in the colony's development who now seek to find out what went wrong. It checks the usual boxes for an extraction shooter - you go in with your own loadout, scavenge at points of interest to fill your limited inventory, defeat PvE enemies and other runners for loot opportunities, and try to extract alive before time's up. There are a couple things of note that have resulted in mixed opinions:

• The art direction for runners, gear, and architecture is a sort of mass-produced, neon-colored, smoothed plastic, blocky style, which is a "love it or hate it" kind of thing.
• The gunplay is very similar to that of Destiny, Bungie's last game, which in my opinion is very solid. However, they did make the decision to have mouse magnetism enabled for PC (your cursor will magnetize to targets) to give it more parity with console players, and that has been very unpopular.
• The only queueing option is teams of 3 and the devs have stood their ground on not having a solo or duo player queue, which is a turn-off for players that prefer solo, or don't want to play with randoms and don't have 2 friends to play with.
• Players do not have full customization of their runners but must choose from 6 runner archetypes that have a set of abilities and a specific look, which can be partially changed with a skin. This is also largely unpopular, as Bungie's past titles have featured high levels of cosmetic customization and this feels largely restrictive and monetization-focused instead.
• There is no option for proximity voice chat, which the devs have said was excluded to protect players from toxicity. This has also proved to be very unpopular.
• It will have seasonal progression wipes which will reset faction reputation and clean out player vaults, which is unpopular among players that like to hoard their loot, especially many Destiny players.
• Supposedly there will be more "raid-like" PvE experiences on an as-of-yet unreleased map that takes place aboard the Marathon colony ship, but how mechanically complex those are or whether or not that will be enough to attract PvE-oriented players is pure speculation at this point.
• It will not be free-to-play, but rather released at a "premium" but not full game price point, which most people are assuming to be $40 USD.

The game is set to release in September this year, but based on the feedback Bungie is getting from players in this very first alpha, they will need to take this feedback very seriously and make a number of changes in the few months they have left, or risk a very rocky release and potentially financial failure. Many players seem to want Marathon and Bungie to fail, notably vitriolic Destiny veterans that feel like they were snubbed out of Destiny 3 for this, but as someone with over 2000 hours in Destiny 2 myself I want it to succeed, whether I play it or not. I'd rather there be more fun and successful games than major failures, and wishing for something to fail just because it isn't what you want is incredibly petty.

ARC Raiders, the underdog

ARC Raiders is a third person shooter set in a post-apocalypse where robots called ARC have devastated the surface of Earth and humanity has retreated underground, sending "raiders" to the surface to scavenge for tech and goods. It's developed by Embark Studios, which is made up of ex-DICE (Battlefield) developers, and their other title is the well-received but niche PvP shooter The Finals. Mechanics-wise, there isn't anything particularly unique about this extraction shooter - limited mobility, limited inventory space, PvE enemies, points of interest, extraction points, etc. However, it seems to check all the boxes of what players want and it does it well while making the experience more casual and accessible:

• There are "safe pockets" where players can store a few loot items they won't lose on death (Tarkov does also have this, Marathon and Hunt do not).
• There is proximity voice, and also a quick emote menu for giving vocal commands, directions, and responses.
• The art direction is realistic post-apocalypse with high graphical fidelity and semi-futuristic robots, which is "safe", but still good looking.
• The audio design is phenomenal. Distant gunfire, supersonic cracks of rounds, bullets ricocheting off surfaces, large bots stomping around from blocks away, player footsteps on different surfaces and within enclosed spaces, quadcopter drones buzzing, larger bots with unsettling and deep "roars", and more.
• There isn't a solo or duo-only queue, but there is solo-matching priority at least, so you're more likely to be placed with other solo players.
• There is a clear progression path in the form of a workshop you can upgrade with scavenged materials, and a deep skill tree with multiple branches.
• Raiders are not class or hero-based and are freely customizable by the players in terms of loadout and appearance.
• Chaff PvE enemies are relatively easy to defeat but still dangerous. Aside from eliminating them as threats, they can drop materials or items to recharge your shields so they're not just a waste of ammo. Non-chaff PvE enemies can be significantly more dangerous and harder to defeat but will have valuable loot.
• There is already an example of a PvE "boss" robot guarding a point of interest which requires some mechanics to collect the loot within it. The boss itself is very challenging to defeat, even with multiple teams fighting it, but should reward top-tier loot.
• While the game was initially announced as free-to-play, the devs have since switched to selling it at at $40 USD.
• There are "battle passes" in the game in the form of shops players can unlock using a currency that is earnable in-game, or purchased with real money (like warbonds from Helldivers 2 for any helldivers reading this).

Overall, the game is shaping up to be a more accessible extraction shooter for the wider gaming audience and very serious competition for Marathon. No official release date has been announced but they are planning on releasing some time this year.

The stigma around extraction shooters

I've mentioned various things about extraction shooters that may be contributing to their unpopularity amongst the wider gaming audience throughout the post, but for the sake of cohesiveness and for all the folks that just want a TL;DR, I will collate and expand on those ideas here:

• Confusion with battle royales - I've seen some people confuse extraction shooters with battle royales and say "the market is oversaturated with extraction shooters, dead trend chasing game" or something along those lines. It's hard to call a market oversaturated when there's only 2 successful and very niche games in it, but if you incorrectly lump all the battle royales in that makes more sense.

• Escape From Tarkov is a bad poster child - When people do think of extraction shooters (and not mistakenly battle royales), they will default to EFT, which is notoriously hardcore and "sweaty". It would be the same as never having played an RPG, and being introduced to it with Dark Souls, which would understandably turn away anyone that isn't looking for that kind of experience.

• PvP and losing progress - The game always having a PvP element is already discouraging to PvE-focused players, and this is only made worse by the chance to lose your gear if you die. Many players are strongly opposed to losing progress, and losing multiple times in a row due to other players defeating them when they just want to do PvE and get some loot is an awful experience that they don't have to have in a different type of game.

• Progression wipes are anathema to hoarders - On top of potentially losing progress on a round-to-round basis, seasonal progression wipes also threaten to reset progress entirely between seasons, While they are effective at keeping things fresh, players that like to have 400+ items stored away in their vault that they will never use and just admire from time to time revile this concept. Less hoard-minded players may be concerned about their potential inability to max out their progression, the fear of missing out induced by temporary progression, or the pointlessness of even progressing if it gets wiped anyway.

I didn't read any of that, are extraction shooters for me or not?

Well, that depends. If you:

• Don't mind or enjoy a mixed PvEvP experience
• Are ok with the idea of loot and progression being temporary
• Like the higher stakes of potentially losing your inventory and gear, or taking someone else's
• Are ok with inventory management, even in the middle of a round
• Are not terrible at shooters

Then yes, extraction shooters may be fun for you! They certainly aren't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with not enjoying one or the genre in general, but if you do, they offer a very unique gaming experience. If you are interested, keep an eye on ARC Raiders and Marathon - they aim to be more accessible than previous extraction shooters and it's a lot easier to get in on a new game than join one with a veteran playerbase.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

How many languages y'all speak? From how many different language families? How many scripts can you read? Any special grammatical quirks that your languages have?

It doesn't matter if it's A2 level or C2 level, share it with us!

I have been playing Pikmin 2 on Dolphin and have been enjoying it quite a lot.

For the most part, progress has been slow, but today I found the blue Pikmin (I somehow managed to find the yellow ones first and played a bunch of the game without the blue ones), and that just got me so excited that I basically completed Valley of Repose in just one day (the two remaining, farthest caves and every treasure above ground). I’m on day 13 now, have over 90% of the debt paid off, and not a single Pikmin has died on me.

You don’t need to understand the previous paragraph if you don’t know anything about Pikmin. My point is that I’ve been playing through the game rather fast and better than I would on real hardware.

Why?

Save states. ❤️

I love emulation, but I don’t like how “janky” it can be. I don’t like that it doesn’t 100% emulate (pun intended) the “feel” of playing on original hardware.

But boy, oh boy, do I loooooove save states. 🥰

They enhance the gameplay experience so much for me. They enable me to have perfect playthroughs, both in terms of the game’s objectives, as well as my play style (like me not wanting to sacrifice any of my Pikmin, for example).

Do save states make the games too easy at times? Perhaps.

But that’s the point for me.

You see, I don’t want video games to challenge me.

Life already challenges me enough as it is.

I play video games for fun, and I’m not having fun if I’m struggling too much to beat a video game. When I finally beat a difficult challenge in a game, especially if I had to struggle to do so, then I feel frustrated more than I feel that I achieved something.

Is my dislike of challenges, whether in real life or in video games a character defect? A sign of weakness?

Perhaps.

I do face challenges in real life. I have to, or else I won’t survive.

But when I come home and sit down to play a video game, I want it to be a fun and chill experience. I want to feel like a champ who breezes through the game. I also don’t want to waste too much time trying to beat one overly-difficult game, but rather experience as many different games as I can.

Life is too short and I don’t want mine to be wasted by challenging video games.

I have nothing but mad respect for you if you play video games for the challenge, but that just ain’t me.

As one of my favorite YouTubers Mr. Sujano would say: “Don’t temp fate, save your state.”

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hello tilderinos! I'm currently on the hunt for a new job, and it's been a very long time since I've had to do any kind of real interviewing to compete for a position. I'm looking for some general tips and, if anyone is experienced in the field of education, tips specific to teacher interviews.

My strengths in interviews are that I'm generally a confident speaker, I know my field well, keep pace with recent developments, and have an enormous amount of experience to draw from.

My weaknesses are that I tend to ramble (adhd!), I lose track of multi part questions (adhd strikes again!), and I'm terrible at quickly recalling specific examples from my mountain of experience. I also feel that, especially when interviewing for positions a bit outside my experience (Eg a 2nd grade teaching position) I come across as naive at best and ignorant at worst.

I also generally have a hard time selling myself with words. I'm very much a man of action, and would love to demonstrate my skill firsthand, but that isn't terribly easy to do in an interview setting.

I hope this topic isn't too selfish of me and I appreciate any feedback I get! Thank you all.

Apologies if I've chosen the wrong topic for this one. My request is broad, so I'm not sure where it should go. Could have fit into an "education" topic, but that doesn't exist so… 🤷‍♂️

I stumbled onto the Manga Guide to Databases, and I'm having a lot of fun reading through it. It's reminded me of other media that is explicitly designed to teach a topic in a fun way. A few examples that stand out:

• The Little Schemer (book)- Teaches recursion in a really intuitive way through a narrative.
• Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~ (game)- Teaches you about Japan and Japanese culture through a visual novel.
• How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (anime/manga)- Does more storytelling than teaching, but there's still a fair bit of teaching in here about how to get started working out

I really enjoy this kind of media, and I'd like to find more of it. What other media have you found that fits this description? Topic and medium doesn't matter as long as the delivery is effective. I don't even care if the media seems designed explicitly to teach the topic or if learning is just a pleasant side-effect of engaging with it.

A while back I read an article about the development of a new Digg platform.

I signed up for an email list about new developments. I got invited to pay $5 USD to join a forum to see updates on their efforts and give suggestions.

I've been advocating for not implementing downvoting.

My reasoning is that having just upvotes like Tildes serves the original purpose of voting on content. It moves the better content towards the top and the poorer content towards the bottom. Downvoting at least on Reddit just becomes a middle finger for most cases.

I was surprised how many other people at this special forum were AGAINST that idea. They really want to be able to give people a middle finger.

Sadly, I saw a preview of the U.I. today and at least for new threads it had a "bury" link.

Oh well. I tried!

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Im just kind of done with Windows and 10 has been stable, but 11 seems to be even more intrusive and I find all the AI 'assistance' to be incredibly annoying. Im just kind of done with MS and Office and I want to try something else.

I dont have many needs. I run LibreOffice spreadsheet and word processor and the only other software I need to work is CORELdraw and CORELpaint as I still do a fair bit of design work on them and Ive been using them for 30 years so I dont want to switch. Other than that its just browsing (Firefox), email (Thunderbird) and TurboTax.

My question is how do I know whats going to work until I try it? And which version of Linux is easiest and most stable? I dont want to have to keep upgrading, I just want a stable usable fairly easy to learn OS that works with what Ive got as Im unlikely to be changing much. Suggestions?

I was reminded this morning of the video in which a physical education teacher is performing a workout dance routine in Myanmar, not realizing that she captured the start of the 2021 coup d'état in the background.

She's wearing a covid mask, dancing to an incredibly upbeat and catchy song while the military vehicles roll in to crush their democracy. I can't recall where I saw this, but I will never forget the comment someone left online about the video which read, "This is decadently post-modern."

To make it even more interesting, the song itself is a parody of authority. It's essentially a song mocking weak men with big egos, and the song title translates roughly to, "Have Mercy, Mr. Tough Guy/Big Shot"

Link to video

What other insane things do we have in 2025 as a result of ubiquitous high-definition cameras?