Bullmaestro's recent activity

  1. Comment on Xbox's Phil Spencer considers PS5 and Nintendo Switch players part of the Xbox community in ~games

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    I think they had something good going on with the Series S, which was a less powerful console for a much cheaper price tag. Microsoft's problem is that they are doing jack shit with their IP's....

    I think they had something good going on with the Series S, which was a less powerful console for a much cheaper price tag.

    Microsoft's problem is that they are doing jack shit with their IP's. For all the studios and intellectual properties that Microsoft own, it's actually downright shocking how few exclusives there are to draw people towards Xbox.

    Prior to their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft owned: Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Wilds, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Deathloop, Brink, Starfield, Doom, Quake, Commander Keen, Rage, Wolfenstein, Halo, Gears, Forza Motorsport, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Kameo, Conker, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Killer Instinct, Sabrewulf, Dishonored, Prey, BattleToads, Blinx The Time Sweeper, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Minecraft, Fable and a few lesser-known IP's that I cannot think of off the top of my head.

    The list of IP's that Microsoft actually owns is absolutely fucking stacked. And now they own Spyro, Crash, Call of Duty, Hexen, Guitar Hero, True Crime, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and so many other Activision Blizzard properties.

    Don't get me wrong. Game Pass is incredibly good value for what it is and I cannot fault Phil Spencer for going all-in on this business model. But that shit doesn't sell you consoles, and it's unlikely we'll see Game Pass supported on any hardware other than PC or Xbox.

    5 votes
  2. Comment on Nintendo shocks competitive fans with strict new community tournament guidelines in ~games

    Bullmaestro
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    I sincerely hope that this kills Melee and Ultimate as esports. Not out of any dislike or disrespect towards the Smash competitive scenes, but rather because Nintendo do not deserve this level of...

    I sincerely hope that this kills Melee and Ultimate as esports.

    Not out of any dislike or disrespect towards the Smash competitive scenes, but rather because Nintendo do not deserve this level of success whilst being litigious assholes towards their fans.

    Player First Games, Ludosity, Fair Play Labs and GameMill wish they had the same level of following as Super Smash Bros has.

    4 votes
  3. Comment on Cities: Skylines II | Official release trailer in ~games

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    A bit off-topic, but as someone who played both Brood War and StarCraft II from closed beta all the way to around 2018-era Legacy of the Void and peaked at both Diamond in 1v1 and Master in 2v2 in...

    A bit off-topic, but as someone who played both Brood War and StarCraft II from closed beta all the way to around 2018-era Legacy of the Void and peaked at both Diamond in 1v1 and Master in 2v2 in the latter sequel game, I have a far less favorable view on Brood War.

    It is a horrendously clunky experience to play and is unnecessarily mechanically intensive to the point where playing it competitively is a one-way trip to severe carpal tunnel.

    Twelve units or one building at most can be selected at once. Macro involves configuring loads of camera hotkeys (CTRL+Function keys) around your base, left-clicking every production building and spamming production hotkeys laid out all the way around your keyboard to produce units optimally. Until Remastered, you couldn't even rebind these hotkeys. But wait, there's more. A glitch existed since the game's original launch that made key presses on your keyboard not register if your left mouse button held down, which resulted in a lot of missed actions.

    Just the proposal from the Brood War Remastered dev team of patching this glitch sent the Brood War community in an absolute uproar, which represents the game's other glaring flaw. The vast majority of hardcore Brood War fans are insufferable elitists who think the game is perfect and that it is a cardinal sin to even think about any balance adjustments or quality-of-life changes.

    A build of the game exists where the 12 unit/1 building selection limit was removed. Unfortunately, this build of this game was only ever shown at BlizzCon and was only ever made playable to those who physically attended the convention that year. The mere suggestion that Blizzard release it as an optional game mode for people who don't want to play with clunky-as-fuck unit selection limits that even Ensemble Studios moved on from in the same year of release with AOE2 is enough to make any BW fanboy's blood boil and incite a heated flame war.

    When your game is balanced around (tournament-legal) movement exploits and glitches such as ones listed below, it's not a sign of a well-balanced game.

    • Hold Lurkers - Lurkers cannot Hold Position, unless they're grouped with a unit that can, commonly an Overlord.
    • Lurker Stacking - Lurkers can be stacked on top of one another using an exploit, stacking several of them in a single point at the top of a ramp turns it into a meat grinder.
    • Fast Spider Mines - Using an exploit, you can place down two Spider Mines in very quick succession next to each other when it would normally incur a cooldown.
    • Hopping - Using unit/building collision to phase units past obstacles.
    • Mutalisk micro - i.e. using intricate frame-perfect patrol micro or the even more complicated Chinese Triangle Technique to kite and kill Scourge without losing momentum. It is the sole reason why ZvZ is such a cancerous matchup and why every single ZvZ ends in muta wars.
    • Interceptor Crushing - Landing Terran buildings on Interceptors can kill them.
    3 votes
  4. Comment on Cities: Skylines II | Official release trailer in ~games

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    One look on the Epic Games Store listed 67 DLC add-ons, priced between £26.99 and £3.39 (3 of these 67 add-ons are free I should add.) The Sims 4 on the other hand has 71 unique sets of DLC,...

    One look on the Epic Games Store listed 67 DLC add-ons, priced between £26.99 and £3.39 (3 of these 67 add-ons are free I should add.)

    The Sims 4 on the other hand has 71 unique sets of DLC, including 14 expansions, 13 game packs (one of which is free), 19 stuff packs and 25 kits. The most expensive expansion pack of these is £35.99 (after a 20% off discount.)

    Now that I looked at it more closely, maybe 'harder than your typical Sims game' wasn't entirely true but they're pretty fucking close, especially when you consider the fact that EA had a six month headstart and haven't even announced a brand new Sims game yet.

    4 votes
  5. Comment on Mark Zuckerberg delivers on promise to pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth as the platform regains users while X shrinks in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
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    Recently bought into X Premium to try it out and have found it a substantially different experience to how Twitter used to be for me in the past. I went from getting at most about 5 - 20...

    Recently bought into X Premium to try it out and have found it a substantially different experience to how Twitter used to be for me in the past.

    I went from getting at most about 5 - 20 impressions on my posts, to analytics that have gone up by six figure percentages. When Elon Musk said that verified accounts would be given far greater priority in their algorithm, he really meant it. It feels surreal to use X and not feel like I've been shadowbanned.

    Threads on the other hand... haven't really used it much since signing up. It lacks necessary functionality that even Mastodon has. How Zuckerberg thinks he's going to compete with Musk when he can't even add basic features like hashtags and trending topics to Threads...

    3 votes
  6. Comment on Cities: Skylines II | Official release trailer in ~games

    Bullmaestro
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    Might give this game a miss. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Cities: Skylines exists and that SimCity has been thoroughly dethroned as the premiere city-building simulator, but the amount of...

    Might give this game a miss.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Cities: Skylines exists and that SimCity has been thoroughly dethroned as the premiere city-building simulator, but the amount of paid DLC expansions that Paradox and Colossal Order shat out for the first game was off-putting to me.

    I don't want to feel like I have to spend hundreds of pounds on a game and its dislodged expansion packs to get the full experience.

    Paradox milked Cities: Skylines with DLC harder than EA milk your typical Sims game. How do I know they're not gonna pull the same shit with the second game?

    23 votes
  7. Comment on Have I Been Pwned? in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
    (edited )
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    My email address returned 18 results. Nearly all of them are your typical username, email address, password leaks. The worst breach was a Korean publisher that used to host a mildly popular MMORPG...

    My email address returned 18 results. Nearly all of them are your typical username, email address, password leaks.

    The worst breach was a Korean publisher that used to host a mildly popular MMORPG that I used to play (FlyFF.) They were the kind of publisher that would ask for all kinds of details on registration like DOB, physical address, etc, and store all that shit in plain text.

    I think part of it is that South Korea has very strict internet registration laws (almost comparable to those of China) where you have your whole online presence tied to your social security number, so any publisher that dipped their toes into the Western market ended up adopting similar practices.

    7 votes
  8. Comment on Just subscribed to Crunchyroll. What should I watch? in ~anime

    Bullmaestro
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    Recommendations based on the presumption that you're either based in the US or have a VPN. Tenchi Muyo: Very strange sci-fi series that was very popular in the nineties. It involves a boy called...

    Recommendations based on the presumption that you're either based in the US or have a VPN.

    Tenchi Muyo:

    Very strange sci-fi series that was very popular in the nineties. It involves a boy called Tenchi who inadvertently awakens a 700-year-old space pirate named Ryoko, and from that ends up attracting a harem of space ladies who want his D. I'd start with Ryo-Ohki if possible, otherwise go straight to Tenchi Universe, then watch Tenchi In Tokyo and GXP afterwards. Avoid Ai Tenchi Muyo.

    Full Metal Alchemist:

    Either the OG series or Brotherhood are fine. Do bear in mind that they heavily diverge after the third arc, with Brotherhood being far more faithful to the original manga. FMA ends on a bit of a cliffhanger which you'll have to watch an OVA to see the true conclusion of, whereas Brotherhood ends exactly as the manga does.

    Hunter x Hunter:

    Doesn't really need an introduction. I will say that this one is a slow burner and the first arc is a bit shit.

    Keijo:

    Basically, the author played Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, took the Butt Battle minigame from it, and turned it into a full blown sports series. Don't let the premise or the blatant amounts of fanservice dissuade you. This is a very competently made sports anime which sadly never got renewed for a second season, and even had its manga cancelled due to low viewership. It's one of those series that you'd expect to sell like hotcakes in Japan, but it never did well domestically.

    Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:

    Probably the best mech anime to come out of Japan. Only 26 episodes (two of which are filler clip-shows recapping the first and second halves.)

    Sword Art Online:

    Sadly, SAO only has two arcs that are not complete dogshit, and these are Aincrad and Mother's Rosario. As for why the others are bad... Fairy Dance goes into a tasteless incestuous subplot, Phantom Bullet is incredibly dull, Calibur is three episodes of slice-of-life dogshit (not even the good kind of filler either), and Alicization is when Reki Kawahara truly lost the plot. I will however vouch for Something Witty Entertainment, the creators of an abridged parody series on YouTube that greatly surpasses the original (currently about two episodes away from finishing Fairy Dance.)

    Hajime no Ippo:

    Incredibly good and underrated boxing series where the author (George Morikawa) has really done his research. In chronological order, watch The Fighting first, then the Champion Road OVA, then New Challenger and finally Rising. Unfortunately, the anime series is almost a decade behind the manga because the anime was created by Madhouse, a studio very well-known for doing one very good season and then refusing to touch the series again with a barge pole. HNI is one of the rare times they did a second season, but MAPPA were the ones who did Season 3. Watch those three, and then start reading the manga.

    2 votes
  9. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Bullmaestro
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    I really want to like Age of Empires IV but the game feels so dull and barebones, like an objectively worse AOE2. It forces you through an incredibly dull unskippable tutorial on first bootup that...

    I really want to like Age of Empires IV but the game feels so dull and barebones, like an objectively worse AOE2. It forces you through an incredibly dull unskippable tutorial on first bootup that drags on for way too long, while the campaign mode itself feels like one of those shitty history documentaries you'd watch in primary school more than it telling an actual story. When AOE2's campaigns feel more engaging from a narrative point-of-view, you know Relic fucked up.

    Hades. Very good game. Bought it on Steam because there was a sale on and I needed something new to play on the Steam Deck. It's one of those games that I'd be playing well into the morning if I didn't have to get up for work.

    Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a weird game that I've been playing purely to spend time with a close friend of mine who wanted to do more gaming with me. I absolutely loved Borderlands 2's Assault on Dragon's Keep DLC, and releasing a full-blown standalone game based on the concept of Tiny Tina hosting a D&D campaign should have been a winning formula. But the game suffers from way too many callbacks to past Borderlands games and characters, which were fine in the context of AoDK, but not here. Another problem I have is that Wonderlands' weapons are completely and utterly dogshit. They feel like they have very little impact or feedback, and that the rate in which you level quickly turns enemies into bullet sponges.

    Played a bit of I am Setsuna and I am already finding that game fucking dull. Chrono Trigger remains one of my favourite JRPG's of all time, but this feels more like a small-scale knock-off than a spiritual successor, and from something published by Square Enix, that is downright shameful. Tokyo RPG Factory just cannot make a compelling setting or any likeable characters. This may actually be Final Fantasy XIII levels of bad. It really doesn't give me much hope to ever see a decent Chrono Trigger remake.

    A final game which I only played a few minutes of on Steam (despite it being Verified for Steam Deck, it crashed to a black screen after less than a dozen random encounters), but played a lot of on iOS was Cthulhu Saves The World. Incredible RPG, well worth the relatively tiny price tag I got it for.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on Dad jokes - I'm in need of something fresh in ~life.men

    Bullmaestro
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    Did you know that Norwegian submarines have barcodes printed on their hull? It's so that when they get to port, they can Scandinavian. How does The Rock pee? He Dwaynes his Johnson. Why should you...
    Did you know that Norwegian submarines have barcodes printed on their hull? It's so that when they get to port, they can Scandinavian.
    How does The Rock pee? He Dwaynes his Johnson.
    Why should you never pick a fight with a dinosaur? You'll get jurasskicked.
    Why did Ross Geller drown? He's a bad Schwimmer.
    Why do teenage girls always walk around in odd-numbered groups? Because they literally can't even.
    4 votes
  11. Comment on What online subscriptions do you pay for? in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
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    At the moment, Netflix, Spotify, Google Storage and Disney+. Previously subscribed to Crunchyroll, but I unsubbed for two reasons. The catalog is shit outside of the US & Canada (almost everything...

    At the moment, Netflix, Spotify, Google Storage and Disney+.

    Previously subscribed to Crunchyroll, but I unsubbed for two reasons. The catalog is shit outside of the US & Canada (almost everything is geo blocked including what was previously on FunimationNow), and I refuse to support Funimation as a company.

  12. Comment on Growing living rat neurons to play... DOOM? in ~engineering

    Bullmaestro
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    "What is my purpose?" "You play DOOM." "Oh my god." Jokes aside, I'm baffled and scared by the idea that we can grow neurons to play video games with some form of sentience. The mere idea that we...

    "What is my purpose?"

    "You play DOOM."

    "Oh my god."

    Jokes aside, I'm baffled and scared by the idea that we can grow neurons to play video games with some form of sentience. The mere idea that we are growing living, possibly sentient organisms and condemning them to life in a petri dish for science is kinda terrifying.

    4 votes
  13. Comment on Unity: An open letter to our community in ~games

    Bullmaestro
    Link
    If John Riccitello and his fellow execs announced a 2.5% revenue share policy from the outset, there would have been next-to-no backlash. Epic charge 5% royalties for Unreal Engine use, even...

    If John Riccitello and his fellow execs announced a 2.5% revenue share policy from the outset, there would have been next-to-no backlash. Epic charge 5% royalties for Unreal Engine use, even though the cost-per-seat for an Unreal licence is about half of what it is compared to Unity.

    Leaks from Bloomberg suggested runtime fees would be capped at 4% of revenues, effectively making Unity less worthwhile than Unreal, because what I didn't mention in the above paragraph was that Epic only charge 12% in store fees on the Epic Games Store and will actually waive their engine royalties for any sales made through the EGS, meaning that you'll have to pay almost three times more in store fees and royalties if you developed the same game in Unity and released it on Steam (30% of revenues are taken by Steam, plus 4% from Unity.)

    Here's the thing, as major a rollback this is, Unity have almost wholly eroded the trust between them and their stakeholders with the original announcement, and I really think that any publisher would be stupid to stick with Unity on future projects. Riccitello & Co have categorically proven that they're willing to rip up their old ToS to fit their own narrative and try to milk as much out of developers as they can.

    Godot is free, open source and perfectly serviceable for a lot of use cases. It may not be as feature-rich or supported as other engines on the market, but it still works for a lot of people. If you want industry standard and plenty of support... Unreal is that way.

    I know for damn sure that if I were a game dev, I'd be jumping straight on the Unreal or Godot train right now. Not a huge fan of Tim Sweeney but he's nowhere near as much of a money hoarder as John Riccitello.

    15 votes
  14. Comment on Online payment methods, are there significant upsides or downsides of one vs another? in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
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    Link Parent
    I used to take calls for the Daily Mail. We had one such company run ads on our website and advertise a skin cream called Replennage for £2.95 postage. What they buried deep within their T&Cs was...

    Free trials, or low cost trials often ask for your credit card up front so that they can charge you after "X" number of days when the trial ends. If you forget to cancel, or they make cancelling hard (by making you call, hiding the option, or generally tricking you with dark patterns, it can be very frustrating.

    I used to take calls for the Daily Mail. We had one such company run ads on our website and advertise a skin cream called Replennage for £2.95 postage. What they buried deep within their T&Cs was that you were signing up for a fourteen day free trial and after this, your card would be billed £79.99 a fortnight. The few lucky ones had their card companies block the charges and alert them, but most found out after having hundreds wrung out of their account.

    Replennage calls were some of the worst and most frustrating I ever took while working there, and I dealt with some really fucking toxic customers in my tenure. It's up there with the Lego promotions we used to run, where they'd give participating retailers little to no stock and then pass the burden of handling those complaints down to us.

    Do not underestimate the ability of a Daily Mail reader to go full Karen on you because your company refuses to take responsibility for the ads they choose to allow.

    That call centre job was so horrific that it made me drop my hours and study towards an accountancy qualification. Glad I got out of that industry.

    5 votes
  15. Comment on The misogyny myth in ~life

    Bullmaestro
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    I think the problem is an economic one. The cost of living was a lot lower back in the days of arranged marriages, where daughters were married off to suitors based on wealth and status, not love....

    I think the problem is an economic one.

    The cost of living was a lot lower back in the days of arranged marriages, where daughters were married off to suitors based on wealth and status, not love.

    Hypergamy is not the reason for our societal ills but rather a symptom. Blame the rich strangling the poor out of their wealth.

    We are now at the point where couples struggle to rent, let alone buy homes. Single people are outright fucked by comparison because they have half the purchasing power.

    The difference is, men are starved of affection and desperate to find love. They get disproportionately affected by this because women judge them by their wealth and societal status. If a man is still living with their parents by their mid twenties, it's basically a death sentence for their love life.

    Online dating is a textbook example of this. Men get ignored, ghosted, blocked and sidelined while women get inundated with matches and lecherous messages. Men struggle to get noticed while women have to put all their energy into filtering out bad matches.

    I can almost guarantee that if the cost of living was far lower and if we stopped seeing housing as an investment rather than a basic human right, the manosphere would quickly die out.

    7 votes
  16. Comment on How telling people to die became normal - merciless trolling is a fact of online life that may never go away in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I have two different perspectives on this. First one is that early internet culture (like what you'd see on Newgrounds and 4chan back in their heyday, or even early YouTube) was a lot more edgy...

    I have two different perspectives on this.

    First one is that early internet culture (like what you'd see on Newgrounds and 4chan back in their heyday, or even early YouTube) was a lot more edgy and offensive than it is now. There were also some very pro free-speech comedians like Louis C.K that were big 15 years ago. who promoted the common use of slurs and offensive terminology in their routines.

    I knew it was definitely an influence of mine. I didn't even know the f-word (not 'fuck', I mean the one that also refers to a bundle of sticks and a certain British meat dish) was homophobic until my university days. Before then, I assumed it was just a vulgar curse word that people threw around online, especially on Xbox Live or PC shooters.

    Second one is that I think there are a lot more shitty parents around these days who don't have a clue what to do to raise their children, and will just leave them in front of the PlayStation with a copy of GTA or Call of Duty instead of raising them on responsible internet use. I also think there is a tonne of pressure for every child to have a smartphone and be on every major social media app from the point of elementary school - and that is scary compared to how the world was just twenty years ago.

    As for how the young colleagues behaved, I think it's the fact that more of the modern generations have failed to discipline their children. Acting like this towards another human being would have gotten a kid caned half a century ago. While corporal punishment is an incredibly poor solution that is thankfully long behind us, so is the sadly growing trend of children being allowed to run amok without any kind of consequence, impunity or even guidance from a parental figure.

    Internet anonymity also has a lot to do with it.

    7 votes
  17. Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (September 2023) in ~health.mental

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    I'd say try to reach out to him and talk about it. What brought you both together as friends in the first place?

    I'd say try to reach out to him and talk about it. What brought you both together as friends in the first place?

    2 votes
  18. Comment on Saints Row developer Volition permanently shuts down in ~games

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    Too realistic, ruined the wanted system to the point where you can get busted easily with a 1 star wanted level for being within five metres of a cop and having a gun pointed at your head. Also...

    Too realistic, ruined the wanted system to the point where you can get busted easily with a 1 star wanted level for being within five metres of a cop and having a gun pointed at your head.

    Also too much of a grounded story, had far fewer sandbox features and vehicle variety, and somehow GTA4 Liberty City felt smaller and more compacted than the version we had in GTA3.

    Coming off from Vice City and San Andreas, 4 was a huge disappointment. San Andreas set the gold standard for open world sandbox crime simulators.

    5 rectified a lot of these issues, and had Rockstar released single player standalone expansion packs for it instead of nickel and diming people with GTA Online, it would be the GOAT.

    3 votes
  19. Comment on Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats in ~tech

    Bullmaestro
    Link Parent
    Over 90% of the user base has apparently abandoned Threads. And I think part of the problem is that it's a shittier Twitter clone that lacks the basic functionality which even Mastodon offers. I...

    Over 90% of the user base has apparently abandoned Threads. And I think part of the problem is that it's a shittier Twitter clone that lacks the basic functionality which even Mastodon offers.

    I don't see Elon Musk successfully pivoting X into an 'everything app' before they're inevitably driven to bankruptcy, because it doesn't even offer anything other than the ability to post or DM at present. Sometimes I wonder if Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter was an elaborate shitpost that cost him billions, or if he truly had malicious intent to kill the platform all along.

    6 votes
  20. Comment on Saints Row developer Volition permanently shuts down in ~games

    Bullmaestro
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    Volition had no choice but to reboot Saints Row. When you go from being a knock-off of GTA that only succeeded because GTA4 was so shit, to the absurdity of Saints Row 4, there is no going back....

    Volition had no choice but to reboot Saints Row. When you go from being a knock-off of GTA that only succeeded because GTA4 was so shit, to the absurdity of Saints Row 4, there is no going back.

    It's a shame that Saints Row 2022 was so mid.