• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
    1. Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other...

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other things while I have your attention:

      Welcomes and thanks

      Welcome to all the new users! It's been great to see activity here increasing again lately, and I hope a lot of you end up enjoying the site and sticking around. It's really nice to read so many posts and emails from people who are excited about the principles behind Tildes. (And if you're someone who doesn't have an account yet and emailed to request an invite, I hope to get back to you relatively soon—there are about 2000 requests in the queue right now, and I'm trying to gradually work through them over the next week or so)

      I also want to say thanks to all the long-time users who have been welcoming and answering so many questions from the new people. As I mentioned the other day, my time to devote to Tildes recently is more limited, and it's been amazing to find that in practically every thread I open, people have already answered all of the questions (and often more comprehensively and eloquently than I would have). An extra special thank-you as well to @cfabbro and the other people who have been handling the demand for invites via Reddit, and to @mycketforvirrad, the unsung hero of the site who's constantly doing the thankless, almost-invisible job of re-tagging topics and making sure everything is organized.

      Reminders

      Also a couple of reminders and things to keep in mind:

      Whether you're an old or new user, if you haven't set up a recovery email address on your account, I highly recommend that you do. A lot of people who registered years ago are trying to come back this week and finding that they don't know their password any more, and it's much simpler if they did this. (The site itself really should encourage this more strongly—it's done in a secure and privacy-friendly way, and it's impossible for me to use it to send you any email because there's no way for me to see the actual address)

      It's already been brought up in various threads a lot, but I also want to emphasize that Tildes is not the same as Reddit, and is not trying to be a "replacement" for Reddit. There are a lot of similarities between the sites, but there are also a lot of differences. The site structures are different, many of the site mechanics here work differently, and the types and style of posts that are appropriate are not the same. Please try to look around at the site and the docs and get a feel for the place, don't assume that things will work the same way here as they do somewhere else (or that they should).

      One other aspect that's different between the two sites that's coming up a lot is that Tildes does not have user-created groups, and the groups aren't "owned" or run by specific users. Currently, the only person with "true" moderation powers anywhere on the site (like the ability to remove topics and comments) is me. This isn't because I want to keep absolute control or anything like that, but Tildes has been very quiet for the last few years and more moderators haven't been necessary. If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon. And related to that, the actual main topic that I wanted to talk about:

      Should we try separating the groups more?

      Even though Tildes has almost 30 groups, until now, it's really always just been one community. New users are automatically subscribed to all groups and need to manually unsubscribe if they don't want to see the topics from that group, and logged-out users see everything when they visit the homepage as well. Most users stay subscribed to almost everything, with only some of them unsubscribing from more-niche interests like ~anime.

      I've always intended to make the groups more independent, but the site's activity has generally been too low for that to be feasible. All of the groups needed to be able to reach all of the Tildes users, but there have been significant downsides to doing it this way.

      One of the main consequences (which is becoming more obvious over the last few days) is kind of ironic: by showing all groups to all users to increase activity across all of them, it actually discourages activity in any individual one. For example, I follow video game news closely, and it's currently a very busy time with tons of events and announcements. But I wouldn't want to post all of those announcements to ~games, because it would completely flood the site and annoy everyone.

      I think we should probably take advantage of this current high activity level to try moving the groups towards being more independent spaces. This would involve switching away from the current "opt-out" approach to an "opt-in" one, and would probably need updates to a few different sections of the site to support it.

      A lot of the new users have been asking to add new groups for things they're interested in (sometimes very specific, niche things), and this would allow us to try some of them out more easily to see if they'd be able to sustain themselves. One of the benefits of the groups+tags system here is that it's relatively easy to test something as a group, and if it doesn't work out, all of the posts can just be merged back into a "more comprehensive" group as a tag.

      I've also been receiving a decent number of messages from Reddit moderators that are investigating whether they will be able to migrate their community to a different platform. I've had to tell them that the current structure of Tildes wouldn't easily support it, but making the groups more independent would change that.

      So overall, I'm looking for general feedback about whether we should try this soon, and if there are any major concerns we should be careful about. I also have three specific questions I'd like input on, related to how it could be implemented:

      1. What should logged-out users see on the homepage? Just a list of links to individual groups, and they have to pick a specific one to see any posts?
      2. Should logged-in users still have a homepage made up of all their subscribed groups mixed together (Reddit-style), or should we lean further into the separation by requiring groups to be viewed individually (forum-style)? (I think I'd want the mixed style to be available long-term, but maybe starting without it would help establish the individuality more strongly?)
      3. How should we transition existing users over to the opt-in approach? Should we effectively treat everyone as a new user, and get them to select the groups they're interested in from scratch? Or should we do something like use their activity (voting, posting) to pre-subscribe them to some groups?

      Thanks, please let me know what you think. The current growth and activity is a great opportunity for us to try some new things on Tildes that would be able to move it forward, and I hope we can figure out ways to do it well. (And if it ends up not working, we can always change things back)

      I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      (Edit: and to set expectations, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to reply to anything substantially, but I'll absolutely be reading all the discussions)

      533 votes
    2. What game(s) do you love that you never see brought up in conversation?

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I was playing Motorstorm: Arctic Edge emulated on my Vita and realized I have literally never seen it brought up or discussed online.

      Motorstorm is a dead franchise, but the console games I occasionally see talk of but never the psp version. I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game on the go and has a banger soundtrack too. I played it a ton back in high school on my psp and still boot it up from time to time for a quick hit of adrenaline fueled racing.

      I'm sure others have similar games, maybe it's a "bad" game that you love or just an oldie lost to time.

      90 votes
    3. Game recommendations, specifically

      This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations. This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for....

      This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations.

      This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for.

      Maybe you're looking for a certain type of experience that can't easily be summarized with genres and tags. Maybe you're looking for a game that will evoke a particular feeling that's hard to put into words.

      Whatever you're looking for, share your desired specificity below, and let people try to recommend games that fit it.

      58 votes
    4. What have yo been playing recently?

      Video games, board games, card games - whatever. I'm interested to know what you all have been playing recently. I've been playing a lot of D&D recently. My players have just delved deep under an...

      Video games, board games, card games - whatever. I'm interested to know what you all have been playing recently.

       

      I've been playing a lot of D&D recently. My players have just delved deep under an ancient keep to save an archaeologist from undead Tomb Spiders. I'm currently planning for this weeks game where they will hopefully encounter the giant spider brood mother.

      On the video game front, I've been playing through Duke Nukem 3D. That's a game that's certainly made the test of time.

      -LTADnD

      63 votes
    5. What game is your current addiction?

      Pretty much the title. We all play all sorts of games, and they generally are all good games. However, every once in a while you start a game that just hits the right notes and you hate putting...

      Pretty much the title. We all play all sorts of games, and they generally are all good games. However, every once in a while you start a game that just hits the right notes and you hate putting your controller or device down, and you can't stop thinking about things you want to do when you get back in front of that game. I figure we could post up our current addicting games so others can search them out as well :)

      My current addiction is Frostpunk. Got it on a whim from the Steam Summer sale, and my Lord am I addicted. It's a really good (to me) post civilization survival game where you try to establish and rebuild life with a new world around you. Surprisingly challenging and the scenarios are very fun. I bought it 2 weeks ago and have 63 hours into it.

      73 votes
    6. Looking for beta testers for my Tildes.net iOS app!

      Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick. Background I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I...

      Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

      Background

      I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

      Features

      Here are the current features of Backtick:

      • Light mode/dark mode
      • Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
      • Front page feed with sorting support
      • View, vote, and comment on posts
      • Reply and vote on comments
      • Collapse comments
      • View notifications
      • Full markdown rendering
      • Text-to-speech for posts and comments

      Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

      I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

      Testing

      If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

      • An iOS 16 device
      • TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

      You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

      Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
      - Ash

      Edit:
      Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

      Edit2:
      I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
      Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

      194 votes
    7. Any popular game genres you just can't get into?

      I'll go first: turn-based combat. While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly...

      I'll go first: turn-based combat.

      While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly excellent turn-based combat. Games that are probably what a lot of people who don't care for turn-based combat make an exception for, for one reason or another. Say they really enjoy how Undertale is "the RPG where you don't need to kill anything", or how Persona 5 is "so stylish". Also, there's the classic JRPGs of old, such as the older Final Fantasy games, or these more military grid based kind of games like Fire Emblem.

      I just don't "get" any of it. I've never beaten a game featuring turn-based combat from start to finish. Yes, that includes Pokemon games. I don't know what it is specifically. I've beaten games of basically every other genre, but when I start any turn-based game because of some friend recommendation or good reviews, I try it, am genuinely invested for a couple hours, then my interest in the game just dies all of a sudden. I don't think it's any one issue really, probably a lot of different things.

      Anyone else never really got into these kinds of games? Or do you have some other game genre that everyone else swears by that you just don't care for?

      83 votes
    8. What irrational video game requirements do you have?

      For me it's bunny hopping. If I can't sail across a map at 100km/h in an FPS, it'll be very difficult for me to get into it. I get that I'm missing out on a lot of good games, but normal movement...

      For me it's bunny hopping. If I can't sail across a map at 100km/h in an FPS, it'll be very difficult for me to get into it. I get that I'm missing out on a lot of good games, but normal movement just feels so empty and slow.

      For those who don't know what bunny hopping is, it's a mechanic in primarily FPS games where you jump repeatedly instead of walking/running. This allows you to move much faster and pull off some complex manoeuvres.

      Anyway I'm curious to see if others have admittedly ridiculous requirements like this.

      49 votes
    9. What are some noteworthy games that aren't available through traditional/common means?

      I originally asked this three years ago and got some great responses. Now that we have a lot more users active here and we're living three years in the future, I'd love to ask it again and see...

      I originally asked this three years ago and got some great responses. Now that we have a lot more users active here and we're living three years in the future, I'd love to ask it again and see what comes up!


      I'm interested in hearing about games that exist off the main map of gaming: games that I can't buy from any of the common storefronts and games that aren't easily playable through an emulator.

      Examples of things I'm interested in hearing about:

      • Long-forgotten abandonware
      • Homebrew games for consoles
      • Romhacks
      • Legally dubious fan-games
      • Total conversion mods
      • ARGs
      • Web games (not ones on sites like Kongregate/GameJolt though)
      • Independently distributed games (that you can't get through, say, itch.io)
      • Games for systems that aren't currently emulatable
      • Games that have been removed from distribution
      • Games with servers or content that are no longer operational
      • Anything else you think fits the question, really

      Tell me about the game(s) you know of and what makes them noteworthy.

      82 votes
    10. What is the most recent game to really impress you?

      Liking a game is easy enough: they’re usually meant to be fun, engaging, or interesting. But being impressed by a game is harder. It could be a particularly impressive set piece in a level, or a...

      Liking a game is easy enough: they’re usually meant to be fun, engaging, or interesting.

      But being impressed by a game is harder.

      It could be a particularly impressive set piece in a level, or a clever, novel game mechanic. It could be quality animations or a plot twist you didn’t see coming.

      Whatever it was that impressed you, share it here. What was it? How did it make you feel? What made it stand out so much from its peer games?


      Note: please mark all spoilers

      You can hide spoiler text inside a details block like this:

      <details>
      <summary>Spoilers here!</summary>
      
      Our princess is in another castle!
      </details>
      

      Which looks like this:

      Spoilers here!

      Our princess is in another castle!

      88 votes
    11. Good, quality YouTube channels?

      Hey everyone, It’s my first post here so my apologies if I mess something up. Recently I’ve been refreshing my YouTube homepage constantly because I feel like it’s either: A.) Suggesting me things...

      Hey everyone,

      It’s my first post here so my apologies if I mess something up.

      Recently I’ve been refreshing my YouTube homepage constantly because I feel like it’s either:
      A.) Suggesting me things I’ve already seen before
      B.) Suggesting me things I have no interest in

      So I’m going to go straight to the source and find some good YouTuber Channels I may have not heard of.

      I primarily enjoy gaming critiques, history topics & natural disaster docs (kind of random I know), videos detailing scammers (SBF, Elizabeth Holmes, etc) but I don’t limit myself to these, I’m pretty much open to anything as long as it’s entertaining and/or informative… preferably both.

      YouTubers I currently watch:

      • NeverKnowsBest
      • LiamTriforce
      • Knowing Better
      • Internet Historian
      • Ordinary Things
      • RennsReviews
      • Scott The Woz
      • SAWS
      • ADoseOfBuckley
      • DAngelo Wallace

      Any recommendations are seriously appreciated. I don’t limit myself to a specific genre, but longer form content is definitely preferable.

      120 votes
    12. What are some of your favorite PlayStation 1 games? Any odd or unique ones worth playing?

      Hi y'all, I owned a PlaySation as a kid, but I don't remember playing it much. I was much more stuck to my Nintendo 64 playing Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and MegaMan 64. Well, I got it in my...

      Hi y'all,

      I owned a PlaySation as a kid, but I don't remember playing it much. I was much more stuck to my Nintendo 64 playing Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and MegaMan 64.

      Well, I got it in my head that I wanted to play MegaMan Legends 2, which only came out on PlaySation as far as I can tell. I've started playing through MegaMan Legends again before I get to the sequel, and I'm having a really good time.

      I was hoping I could hear form y'all about some of your favorite games so I could dip my toes deeper into the PS1 library. What are some of your favorites? Anything particularly odd, unique, or with a very specific point of view? I'll try any genre. Some games I've dabbled with or had my eye on to play: Parasite Eve, Vagrant Saga, Xenogears, Koudelka, and most notably perhaps, Metal Gear Solid. I've never played any Metal Gear games, but the story and world building is so interesting from what I know about it that I really want to give it a try. Also, if anyone knows of some cool Japanese only fan-translate games, would really love to hear about those.

      tldr: favorite ps1 game? any weirdo shit i should play?

      edit 03/31: the love for ps1 is HUGE. thanks to everyone for all of the great responses. will respond in time. been taking time to sample a bunch of these. my experience with tildes's gaming community has been awesome.

      49 votes
    13. Steam Winter Sale 2023: Hidden gems

      Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta: What are some lesser-known Steam games that you recommend? Are there any genres you’d like hidden gem recommendations...

      Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta:

      • What are some lesser-known Steam games that you recommend?

      • Are there any genres you’d like hidden gem recommendations for?

      There’s no hard requirement for what counts as a “hidden gem.” Any game that you think deserves more attention counts.


      For general and popular game recommendations for the sale, please use this topic instead.

      79 votes
    14. Mysterious, thoughtful games? A genre I can't define

      Hello everyone, I have been craving a sort of game genre, but I'm not quite sure what it is or if it really exists as a genre at all. It is a game with a lot of existential twists to it. I could...

      Hello everyone,

      I have been craving a sort of game genre, but I'm not quite sure what it is or if it really exists as a genre at all.
      It is a game with a lot of existential twists to it. I could call it Mystery though I feel it falls short.
      The main story tends to be a complete upheaval of what we thought was the basic premise. Think of it like paradigm shift: the game.
      They also tend to be games that you can really only play once. Lucky for me my memory is horrible.

      So far I came up with these games:

      • Outer Wilds
      • Enderal (which is a "total conversion mod for Skyrim", but an amazing game)
      • The Forgotten City
      • Paradise Killer

      Most of these have some kind of cycle involved in them, but I'm not sure if that's coincidental. All of them have you learn how the world works and it's never really what you first expected.
      They tend to be light in battle, which is probably a skill issue bias on my part.

      Honorary mention to:

      • Strange Horticulture
      • Horizon Zero Dawn, but the sequel less so (although still a very good game)
      • The Zero Escape series, although I haven't played the first one yet
      • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (as it really breaks away expectations you got from earlier games too, and the existential dread is dripping off it)
      • Nier Automata
      • Doki Doki Literature Club

      Do you know any others? Or do you know a good match to this list?
      What do you think kind of links all this? Feel like playing one of these games?

      87 votes
    15. To a select minority of less than ten people: please stop getting judo'ed into defending white supremacy

      (EDIT: Those in the comments have asked me to remove specific names. I have replaced names with emoji that I like.) We recently had: a thread whose OP defended a confederate statue erected by...

      (EDIT: Those in the comments have asked me to remove specific names. I have replaced names with emoji that I like.)

      We recently had:

      • a thread whose OP defended a confederate statue erected by white supremacists on purely apolitical grounds
      • a thread whose OP defended scientific racism on purely apolitical grounds

      I'm really annoyed. If you really want to defend something that looks to everyone else like white supremacy, please avoid:

      • Claiming to be apolitical while disagreeing with someone's politics. If you're telling someone else "your political stance is wrong," you're having a political opinion. "You're being too political" is a political opinion the same way "there is no God" is a religious opinion. This happened like a kajillion times in both threads.

      • Granting benefit of the doubt to white supremacists or sources only used by white supremacists. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦇 effectively said "OK, so the builders of the statue hired a white supremacist speaker to commemorate it -- but they're not white supremacists and neither is the statue." Seriously, come on. And stop citing the spokespeople of white supremacist groups to prove they're not white supremacists -- they intentionally tone down that shit for the media, which is why you look super tone deaf when people post actual accounts of things they did, like holding town hall meetings about how great lynchings are when they thought no one was looking.

      • Claiming you'd agree with whoever's arguing with you, except for one inconsequential fact you never mentioned any other time. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦈 said that he wouldn't mind if the statue had been taken down legally -- but every other time it came up he said it was wrong to take down the statue at all, because that was whitewashing history.

      • Calling leftists "childish" and "easily-offended." Words like this do have a place in politics, but you've been misusing them. I read both threads front to back -- one or two people ended their arguments with "I'm offended" but basically everyone also said "here's why your view of the world is wrong" or "here's why this is bad and it hurts people." When you start your post by saying "oh, how childish!" and then just repeat the thing you said in the first place, you're basically saying "I'm not listening."

      • Accusing leftists of being unwilling to grapple with the facts. Again, this is allowed and fine when it's true, but you've been abusing it. For instance, in a thread by 🦐 on The Bell Curve the original poster claimed The Bell Curve was state-of-the-art, and leftists were ignoring it. That's not true: there was a huge leftist response immediately after it was published, from academics and popsci guys too. Several people linked leftist articles and takedown videos, which he ignored. Maybe the leftists are wrong, but it's not that they ignored it.

      Here are some of the ways you were possibly tricked into believing white supremacists:

      • They told you their sources were good, and instead of checking, you believed it.
      • They told you left-wing sources were shrill and unresearched, and instead of checking, you believed it.
      • They told you there was a conspiracy against their viewpoint and that's why the criticism isn't credible. (For The Bell Curve, it's the political correctness conspiracy -- for statues, it's the easily-offended liberal masses.)
      • They told you there was more nuance to the situation than it looked like and made an emotional appeal. Intelligent people like to imagine there's no way things could be as simple as they look -- "not everyone would be smart enough to uncover that this apparent act of white supremacy was, in fact, politically neutral!" -- so you believed them.
      • You are probably a little bit racist. (Or even a lot racist.) You might not be racist enough to hate black people, but you might be racist enough to find white supremacists more credible than their victims, even though you know the historical facts say their victims were telling the truth.

      Here are some preemptive comments:

      • I don't want to censor anybody. This thread is not censorship.
      • I do want to shout bad opinions down with better opinions. People who support free speech, which I think is most of the people on this website, also want this. This is an example of me trying to do that.
      • Yes, leftists can do all the things I listed. (And yes I'm a leftist.) When I go to a site like Twitter or Tumblr I see left-wingers saying all kinds of horrible, unsupported shit they heard from their idiot hippie friends. It's frustrating and sickening and it's a giant part of the reason I don't go on those sites very often. But on this site I only saw right-wingers doing this stuff, not left-wingers. That kinda surprised me because usually it's the side with the biggest groupthink bubble that says really stupid stuff and keeps on trucking.

      Thank you and sorry for the long, mean post.

      79 votes
    16. What have your experiences been with losing interest in video games as you get older?

      I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a...

      I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a time.

      Now that I’m a working adult, it’s a bit more difficult to convince myself that spending all day playing a video game is worth it as opposed to doing chores, practicing some more “productive” hobbies (art, exercise, cooking) or socializing. Part of it also seems to do with the fact that when I do get fully immersed into another video game and spend hours and hours playing at a time (thank you elden ring), my standard for dopamine seems to increase, and I’m not as interested in reading or playing music when I could get that instant dopamine hit from playing a video game, if that makes sense. The games I tend to play now lean towards relaxing/cozy games, generally offline games I can play at my own leisure, where I used to be very into the Overwatch/CSGO/Call of Duty scene.

      I’d really love to hear how other people have experienced this, if at all, or what your experiences have been. Have you noticed a shift in the types of games you play? Do you specifically try not to play games to keep a healthier balance with your other obligations and hobbies too?

      122 votes
    17. I need casual, easy going games to help me relax. So, Tildes, what you got?

      I like to play games. So I guess I'm a "gamer"? But: I'm not into arena shooters, MMORPMRPORG grinders, anything with endless cutscenes of exposition and absolutely nothing that needs a "pass" to...

      I like to play games. So I guess I'm a "gamer"? But: I'm not into arena shooters, MMORPMRPORG grinders, anything with endless cutscenes of exposition and absolutely nothing that needs a "pass" to play... so where's my games? I feel like there's nothing for casual-but-not-candy-crush-or-clash-of-clans players like me out there.

      I want something that takes me back to the days of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City 2000 or more recently, Stardew that's not going to make my blood boil or nickel-and-dime me to progress. That doesn't mean it needs to be cute or easy, but more... meditative? Or goofy?

      Given the crowd here I figured you lot would probably have some good recommendations. So: fire away!

      79 votes
    18. Game recommendations, specifically (round 2)

      Looks like there was renewed interest in this idea as the old topic has seen some recent posts. It’s been my experience that older topics don’t tend to get a lot of attention when they resurface,...

      Looks like there was renewed interest in this idea as the old topic has seen some recent posts. It’s been my experience that older topics don’t tend to get a lot of attention when they resurface, so I figure we were due for a refresh.

      As such, here’s round 2!


      This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations.

      This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for.

      Maybe you're looking for a certain type of experience that can't easily be summarized with genres and tags. Maybe you're looking for a game that will evoke a particular feeling that's hard to put into words.

      Whatever you're looking for, share your desired specificity below, and let people try to recommend games that fit it.

      26 votes
    19. What if we eliminated "ownership" of link topics?

      It's been a while since we had a topic to generally discuss potential site mechanics, and this is one that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, so I thought it could make a good...

      It's been a while since we had a topic to generally discuss potential site mechanics, and this is one that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, so I thought it could make a good discussion.

      This recent "Suggestions regarding Clickbait and misinformation" topic originally started me thinking about this, because a lot of the potential ways of dealing with those kind of topics involve modifying link topics in some way—changing their link to point somewhere else, editing the title, adding additional links, etc. However, one thing I've noticed on the (rare) occasions where I've performed those kind of actions is that some people are extremely protective of the posts they submitted, and can get upset about even minor title edits because it's changing their post. Some users have deleted their posts after they were changed, because they didn't like the change.

      So... what if we made it so that link topics don't really "belong" to any user in particular? We'd absolutely still want a record of who originally submitted the post to be able to notice behaviors like spamming certain domains, but other than that, if it's a good link/story, does it matter much which user submitted it?

      Here are more unorganized, general thoughts about some of the things this might affect and would need to be considered:

      • Text posts would remain as-is, since in that case the submitter is also the author/source of the post.
      • On that note, it could be a bit weird to lose the connection in cases like a user submitting their own content (such as a blog post that they wrote). Maybe we'd need some way to indicate that, through a standardized tag or something (or even a checkbox when submitting)?
      • Are there other cases where the submitter is important and associated with the content?
      • We could use the space in topic listings where the submitter's username is currently displayed to show different, more relevant data instead. For example, maybe the domain could move into that space instead of being after the title in parentheses, or it could display other info like the name of the actual author of the linked content, the channel name for YouTube videos, etc.
      • If the submitter no longer owns the post, they'd probably no longer have control of deleting it. When could that be an issue?
      • How would this affect user pages? Should links that the user originally submitted still be visible there, even if they're no longer considered posts that the user "owns"?

      Please let me know any thoughts on the overall idea, any of the above questions, and also feel free to point out other aspects of it that I've surely missed.

      (And unrelated, but I've bumped everyone back up to having 5 invite codes available, which you can get from the invite page. I'm still working towards making the site publicly-visible fairly soon, and will hopefully post more info about that before long.)

      79 votes
    20. Daily Tildes discussion - quality concerns

      Yesterday we had quite a few topics posted in ~tildes related to "fluff" content and some similar topics. Today I want to talk about a few related things, and some changes that I'm planning to...

      Yesterday we had quite a few topics posted in ~tildes related to "fluff" content and some similar topics. Today I want to talk about a few related things, and some changes that I'm planning to make in the near future.

      Not a reddit replacement

      First, something I obviously haven't done a very good job of making clear (and needs to be added to the FAQ) is that Tildes really isn't intended to be a replacement for reddit. It's not my goal to have most people want to move here away from reddit. The goal is much closer to a complement—reddit is making a lot of choices to prioritize "quick entertainment" content, often at the expense of more in-depth content and discussions.

      Reddit wants to prioritize that kind of content because it works better for the business goals they have. "Fluff" content attracts the most users, and supports showing far more ads. You can show a lot of (in-line) ads to someone skimming down through hundreds of cat pictures, but you can't really show any to someone that spends an hour having an in-depth discussion inside a single post. So naturally they're going to prioritize quick content—it brings them more users, and directly makes them a lot more money.

      Tildes doesn't have the same incentives, so my goal is to be a better home for that in-depth content that's slowly getting pushed out. Reddit can keep the fluff. It's going to be better at it than Tildes ever will be anyway, due to displaying images and autoplaying gifs in-line, and many other design choices they're making to prioritize that type of content.

      Concerns about current quality, and some changes

      That being said, even though we're really not getting image posts or anything similar yet, we have been getting a lot of "what's your favorite?" type threads, which are especially prominent due to the default activity sort. For example, if I look at what a new user on Tildes would see right now, in the first 20 posts we have:

      • Favorite desktop environment for Arch?
      • Name the online accomplishment you are most proud of
      • What upcoming video games are you looking forward to?
      • What are some TV shows you find yourself constant rewatching?
      • Here's an idea. Comment something really unique (in a good or a bad way) and relatively unknown about a place you're living in or lived in.
      • Name a cool, mostly unknown feature of your OS of choice
      • What are the most influential books to you?
      • What's everyone's favorite movie?
      • So, what have you been working on?

      And a few more that are similar as well. None of these are bad topics at all (especially the ones in ~talk where that should be expected), but they're pretty much all just "casual discussion" and not really what I'd consider particularly high-quality content. I don't want to discourage these or start removing them or anything, but I do think we probably need some changes to make them less prominent (or at least easily avoidable if people don't want to see that type of topic right now).

      So here's my plans for the short term (all three should happen today, I think):

      1. Implement filtering for topic tags - I have a basic version of this almost done now, which will allow people to set up a (global) list of tags, where any posts with any of those tags will be filtered out of their view. There's a "show unfiltered" toggle as well that allows you to easily see everything.
      2. I'll start editing tags on other people's posts and/or giving other users the ability to do this. Primarily, all "what's your favorite?" type topics should have a common tag so that they can all be filtered easily. I'm thinking "ask" or "survey" or something similar, suggestions are welcome.
      3. Allow users to set their default sorting method for the home page and individual groups, and then probably change the default away from "activity".

      Let me know what you think of these plans, or if there's anything else you think we should consider doing.

      89 votes
    21. What's a sequel you were disappointed by?

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      See title. I thought this might make for an interesting topic and I can't see one like this in the search, so...

      What sorta got me thinking about this - a couple days ago, I noticed that Dying Light 2 got a sizeable update, with a pretty heavy emphasis on changes to the game's parkour mechanics. I absolutely loved the first Dying Light, as well as both Mirror's Edge games - parkour and other kinds of momentum-driven gameplay are my jam - so that got me curious enough to check it out again, for the first time in a year.

      I played for a few hours, got some of the way in, and... felt pretty underwhelmed. It certainly feels better than it did last time I played, and the change to retain momentum during parkour moves does feel pretty nice... but it still feels far too slow and floaty to me. It feels awkward and unresponsive to me. On top of that, the combat updates - while I actually appreciated DL2's changes to the combat over DL1's (a major gripe I've always had with DL1's combat is that sometimes zombies take just one or two hits and sometimes they take twenty, and I have never been able to detect any kind of pattern to it - combat level, game progress, weapon damage, etc., none of them seem to impact it so I have no idea what's up with it), playing it again now... left me feeling pretty disappointed.

      I booted up DL1 for the first time in a while the next day, just intending to compare how it feels - and I've since found myself drawn several hours into it. Even in the first half hour of the game, where your climbing's super slow and everything, it feels so much more snappy and reactive - it feels good. And while my previous gripes with its combat are still present, it feels so much better to me now than DL2's does (for the most part - fighting human enemies still sucks). I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's just something really visceral and satisfying about it that DL2 doesn't have.

      As I've been playing DL1, as well, I've been thinking about its story again. As much as it's maligned for its story, I think it's actually a really interesting subversion and deconstruction of expectations in a lot of ways - while that could be a thread (or video essay, I've thought about it) of its own, the way I see it: despite how the intro and story set him up, Crane actually fails pretty hard at being a hero until towards the end. I mean, the very first thing he does is take a crowbar to the back of the head, get bitten, and get someone else killed. It's a pattern that continues throughout most of the game (and even The Following, I'd argue, even though I don't care for it much). I find it pretty memorable beecause of that, even if it falls flat in some places.

      Meanwhile, Dying Light 2... I honestly couldn't tell you much about the story? It didn't leave any kind of impact on me at all. I'm not really the kind of person who plays games for their stories very often (unless it's something like Ace Attorney where that's explicitly the point), and I have to admit that I went into DL2 with low expectations to begin with (I held off getting it at launch because of Denuvo, by the time I did pick it up reviews were already fairly negative; and I tend to view "your choices really matter!" in advertising as a huge red flag so that wasn't a good sign either), but even so. It might be in part because I actually quite liked DL1's ending - I found it pretty refreshing for a post-apocalyptic zombie game - so DL2 throwing that out didn't sit well with me from the get-go (also part of why I'm not too keen on The Following, but that's a different matter).

      Overall, it just sorta left me thinking about how... even though I'd tried to go in with tempered expectations - all I really wanted was a fun zombie-flavoured parkour game, where climbing and jumping and swinging and stuff felt fluid and rewarding - I still found myself left feeling pretty hollow about it, even after an update that allegedly addressed some of my biggest issues with the game. It's especially frustrating, because the Inner Circle (I think that's what it was called, I can't remember - the second city map) is really, really cool and I would absolutely love to just aimlessly run around it... if the movement didn't feel floaty and awkward. Stuff like climbing to the top of the VNC Tower felt exhilarating and awesome - I could catch a glimpse of something excellent there, but it was so outweighed by everything else.

      So... Yeah. I dunno, I thought this'd make for an interesting question. Have theere any been any sequels you've played that left you feeling underwhelmed, in comparison to the previous game? If so, why?

      alright maybe some part of me just wants to ask this so i'd have an excuse to waffle about dying light and its story a bit but still i think it's an interesting topic nonetheless
      EDIT: formatting

      51 votes
    22. What is "that part" for you in any game?

      We all know it. The boss/area/section of any of your favorite games/well liked games that gives you pause whenever you consider replaying it. An area or boss that sucks so much to go through that...

      We all know it. The boss/area/section of any of your favorite games/well liked games that gives you pause whenever you consider replaying it. An area or boss that sucks so much to go through that you may even reconsider entirely. Who/what hurt you?

      For me it'd have to be either Pontiff Sulyvahn from Dark souls 3, or Nyx from Persona 3. Pontiff just straight up sucks to fight. Unless you're a parry god, it's just nonstop aggression with seemingly few windows, and then the second phase kicks in and you're just skewered endlessly. I can't hack it. Did it once, never again. For Nyx, besides being a long and grueling fight, it loves to pull out the ol' Marin Karin making you pull out the ol' Diarahan. Can't do it. There's a reason I emulated it. Thank god for save states.

      52 votes
    23. What browser extensions do you absolutely love to use?

      I have two that I will highly recommend: Vimium has completely changed the way that I use my browsers. They have extensions for firefox and safari as well, but the link I provided is for chrome....

      I have two that I will highly recommend:

      Vimium has completely changed the way that I use my browsers. They have extensions for firefox and safari as well, but the link I provided is for chrome. If you are used to vim keybindings, it makes websites almost completely navigable using only your keyboard! Here's a video demonstration of it in case you're interested.

      My other is SponsorBlock for youtube. This one makes using youtube a little more bearable by automatically skipping the baked-in sponsorships and advertisements. It has literally cut down my viewing times of some channels by like 20%.

      Are there any other extensions that you absolutely love?

      110 votes
    24. What is your favourite cutscene/cinematic in any game?

      For me, it's the intro cinematic to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I never played the defunct 1.0 version of FFXIV, whose final moments are what this cinematic shows if you aren't aware, but...

      For me, it's the intro cinematic to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I never played the defunct 1.0 version of FFXIV, whose final moments are what this cinematic shows if you aren't aware, but there is something about seeing all the bloodshed and destruction while Answers plays in the background that makes an incredibly strong melancholy mood in the trailer and really sells the feeling of this being an end of an era for Final Fantasy XIV, both in-game and in real life. I have to imagine that it's only more poignant if you were one of the people there for the end of 1.0.

      46 votes
    25. Tildes multiplayer games

      I think the population of the site has likely grown to the point where we could get some multiplayer gaming going. While I don't currently have anything in mind, I figure there will come a time...

      I think the population of the site has likely grown to the point where we could get some multiplayer gaming going. While I don't currently have anything in mind, I figure there will come a time when I do so I thought I'd try to get things rolling.

      So, what multiplayer games would you like to try but lack the people for? What is your general availability for playing? Is there anything else people need to be aware of? Interest permitting, a recurring thread may be appropriate, though the exact interval would depend on the level of interest.

      64 votes
    26. What is your most important game?

      I was talking with a friend not too long ago about this, and I'm curious what others have to say. For me there were a few, specific games that ended up playing a big role in my personal history,...

      I was talking with a friend not too long ago about this, and I'm curious what others have to say. For me there were a few, specific games that ended up playing a big role in my personal history, but one in particular that I can say had an immense impact on who I am today.

      The game was STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. In 2007, I graduated high school and got a new laptop. Prior to that, I had a WinXP desktop from...at least 5 years ago, which was never really built for playing games. I really didn't know anything about computers in general, besides some basic maintenance - I genuinely just didn't comprehend "hardware requirements". With the new laptop, I guessed (somewhat correctly) that I could play new things, so I went out and bought a bunch of games I'd always intended to play. Among those, was STALKER.

      I didn't know about that game at all, at the time. I saw it in a Walmart, looked at the back of the box, and it was so neat and strange that I figured I had to try it, not knowing at all whether my computer could even do it. Turns out, it couldn't, or rather, it could, but performance was really poor. ~10-15fps when trying to play in any of the dx9 rendering options. The game worked great in an unlit, dx8 mode, but it looked terrible, so I was determined to see that game the way it was intended.

      Thing was, I had no background knowledge. What do I do? I trial-and-error'd my way through some of the graphics options, but couldn't really connect the dots on which settings did what/how to go about targeting better performance. I started exploring the computer itself, learning the basics of how games work on a PC (the real basics, I mean - as in, what does a gpu do, why does RAM matter, etc). Through that I landed on a first step.

      That was to do a RAM upgrade. I had never done that before, but looked up what all I'd need/how to do it, and from there started really getting in deep to figure out what I could do to get the game to work. I trawled forums and asked folks - what does [this setting] do? Can I change it in the game's files? Which setting has the biggest effect? What effects could I live without?

      That experience, over the course of that last grade-school summer, set up knowledge and skills I would use pretty much all throughout my life from then on. I learned so much, about what different rendering options did, the effects of different things on system performance, how to optimize windows itself a bit for playing games - I explored every avenue. I don't remember the hardware exactly, but the machine I had was not a gaming machine - a Dell Inspiron, it had a 40gb hdd (2007, mind you, low end even for then), and some sort of AMD integrated chip.

      After much time, much trial and error, and even some game modding, I finally got STALKER to run at what I then could consider a playable framerate - a solid 24 lol. At the time, learning about framerate, I came to learn that's what movies run at, so I figured if I could hit that mark it would be good enough. I had saves set up to place me in the most intense areas I could find, and worked to try to get it to 24 in those areas. The end result was something akin to a portable version - lower resolution, some effects disabled, but generally the same look, same game. And in learning how to mod it a bit, I also got to tweak the game a bit to suit my preferences.

      From there I started tinkering with every game I could, and with that computer. Even got to the point of making modified drivers for the integrated GPU - how exactly I couldn't tell you today, but I did squeeze out another 1 or 2 fps doing that (who knows what I must have borked deep down lol). The skills I picked up trying to get this game to run on my computer, opened up the whole world of computers to me, and so this game has a very special place in my memory.

      Do you have a game like this, for you? One which ended up playing a big role for you? Or on a different track, is there a game which to your mind could serve this sort of purpose for a lot of people? I'm curious what you've seen and what you think.

      57 votes
    27. What gaming rumor just won't die?

      In gaming discussion, rumors are very prevalent and powerful. Some rumors keep coming up over and over again and just won't go away despite never revealing themselves. What gaming rumor do you...

      In gaming discussion, rumors are very prevalent and powerful. Some rumors keep coming up over and over again and just won't go away despite never revealing themselves.

      What gaming rumor do you feel like has been around forever and just won't die?

      52 votes
    28. Recommend me a game that _________.

      This post went well in ~books, so I figured we could give it a go here. Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of game you would like...

      This post went well in ~books, so I figured we could give it a go here.

      Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of game you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

      Replies can then recommend games to that individual.

      Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

      31 votes
    29. Potential new groups, and general discussion about the purpose and organization of the group hierarchy

      It's been almost a month since we had proposals for more groups to add. I apologize for taking so long with it—just as a quick explanation for why it's taken so long to get around to: I've been...

      It's been almost a month since we had proposals for more groups to add. I apologize for taking so long with it—just as a quick explanation for why it's taken so long to get around to:

      I've been working on some major background changes related to how groups and the overall abilities of choosing what to see (and not see) on Tildes work, which I was planning to implement at the same time the new groups were added. However, two weeks ago, someone used Tildes's donation page to test over a thousand stolen credit cards. This made a mess in multiple ways, and it's taken a lot of time to clean up and try to make sure it won't happen again (some of it was my fault for not implementing some protections fully/properly). Dealing with that took priority, and it meant that I wasn't able to finish the changes before being (mostly) away over the last week and a bit.

      Anyway, I'm finally getting back on track and am planning to add more groups very soon (and get those larger changes implemented not long after), so let's talk about that as well as some general discussion about the group hierarchy. First, here are the groups I'm currently intending to add and some thoughts and questions about them:

      New groups:

      • ~arts - This is one that I'm a little questionable about. I do think we need a space for these subjects, but there's some strange and confusing crossover with the existing ~creative. I'm not sure if ~arts should replace ~creative, and if we should just have a sub-group or something else for "things created by Tildes users". I'd appreciate input here.
      • ~design - I really like this idea, and think it can cover topics like graphic design as well as physical ones like fashion and architecture.
      • ~finance - This covers some of the other current gaps with existing groups. I'd like to try to fit topics oriented around business in here, as well as ones related more to personal-finance. I'm not certain about the name, but I think it might be the best compared to some of the other comparable options like ~money, ~business, ~commerce, etc.
      • ~games.tabletop - I think this will be a good way to start trying to split up the ~games content a little. For now, I want to just leave video game topics in ~games though, instead of splitting it into its own dedicated sub-group. I know this will probably be somewhat confusing and unintuitive in some ways, but I also think making it so that almost no content goes into ~games itself would be very weird.
      • ~games.game_design - I think this is a useful way to also split out some of the more "theory-based" topics from the other ones in ~games, which tend to be largely more along the lines of news and "ask" discussions. I also want to be able to do some tinkering with a group having multiple sub-groups, and this will make the first instance of that.
      • ~hobbies.automotive - This will be a bit of a test as well. So far, ~hobbies has been quite inactive so it's not truly necessary to split it, but a number of users have expressed interest in it, and I'd like to see if the dedicated sub-group helps motivate more activity about a specific subject.
      • ~science.social - Both the name and being a sub-group are a little questionable here. I'm open to changes, but again, please read below about the hierarchy in general first.
      • ~space - Fairly heavily requested as well, and I feel like it's distinct enough from the existing groups to be worth trying to give a dedicated section.

      Those are all the ones I'm planning to add for now. There are some other groups (and especially some sub-groups) that I think are very good ideas and would work well too, but I want to delay those a little bit to get the structural changes in, since I think that will make a big difference in helping people choose their content too. After these additions we'll have quite a lot of top-level groups (depending exactly what we add, we'll have around 25), and we might want to think about merging some of them before adding even more. On that topic:

      General group hierarchy thoughts:

      I haven't done a good job of defining the purpose of the group hierarchy, or explaining how I think about it. This has caused a fair amount of confusion and debates about the right place for groups/sub-groups, as well as (completely reasonable) questions like why we need groups at all, instead of just using tags.

      I think a lot of the confusion comes from the natural tendency to think about it as a subject-based hierarchy. That is, if subject B is a subset of subject A, it should be a sub-group. However, I think it's going to be more useful to try to treat it as a hierarchy of interest (or disinterest), where the hierarchy is based more around a perspective like "if a user is interested in subject A, they'll probably also be interested in the more-specific subject B".

      I think ~tech and ~comp make a good demonstration. From a subject-based perspective, computers are certainly a subset of technology, so it seems like it should really be ~tech.comp instead of two separate top-level groups. But if you look at it from an interest-based perspective, someone being interested in technology in general definitely doesn't imply that they're also interested in reading technical articles about programming. That's why they're split into separate top-level groups.

      Similarly, ~anime seems to obviously make sense to be a sub-group of ~tv, but I don't think there's nearly enough "interest crossover" to do that. You'd end up with a huge portion of ~tv viewers wanting to exclude ~tv.anime, since it's such a distinct subject.

      Overall, the purpose of the group hierarchy is to help people be able to find and avoid certain types of topics. Using a hierarchy for this will allow us to do things like "I want to see the gaming topics, but not from the League of Legends groups", which are practically impossible to do in a flat structure like reddit has.

      You can also think of the groups as something like "forced" or "implied" tags that are always on all of the topics inside those groups. With a tag-only system, every gaming topic would need to manually be tagged something like "video games" so that people uninterested in them can easily filter them out. The groups system makes this automatic and much more convenient and understandable.

      In the future, I think it will also be very important for the different groups (and some sub-groups) to be able to act as different "spaces" with their own rules, and possibly even different features or design.

      I hope that helps clarify the hierarchy a bit and explain why the organization has been done this way so far (and will likely to continue to be). Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about the hierarchy and the planned new groups, I'm intending to add them later this week unless something else goes horribly wrong.

      And as usual, I've topped everyone's invites up to 10. You can get your invite links here: https://tildes.net/invite

      68 votes
    30. What's your favorite video game? Why?

      I'd like to see everyone favorite games to start a discussion and maybe get some recommendations. My favorite game is either the pokemon series or skyrim. I've played pokemon all my life but...

      I'd like to see everyone favorite games to start a discussion and maybe get some recommendations. My favorite game is either the pokemon series or skyrim. I've played pokemon all my life but skyrim was my first big RPG, which I loved, I have owned it on 4 different platforms!

      44 votes