Earthboom's recent activity

  1. Comment on I used to love Marvel. Now it feels like homework in ~tv

    Earthboom
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    Everyone agrees Iron Man was the trendsetter. The genius of Marvel was they then bottled the magic and replicated it. The entire first phase and second phase, anything with origin stories, was...

    Everyone agrees Iron Man was the trendsetter. The genius of Marvel was they then bottled the magic and replicated it. The entire first phase and second phase, anything with origin stories, was just iron man over and over and over. We watched Iron Man so many times we lost track. The second magic trick they pulled was capitalizing on comic book hype and of seeing comic book characters on the screen for the first time: cameos.

    We wanted to see iron man on the screen with other heroes. That sums up the MCU. The formula was boxed and cloned over and over without soul until the present day.

    Really, as much as I hate what the MCU has become, I can't deny the money making machine we saw spawn overnight and continue for a lifetime in Hollywood years. How many people got rich from this enterprise? Lost count. The fact it's still hobbling along says a lot. Now it's in the hands of a company all too familiar with burnout and fatigue and experts at necromancy to revitalize and revive franchises for repacking and reselling.

    It's perfect. We will see Marvel movies 1/2, the timone take well after Marvel is dead to the comic book fan. It's now Paw Patrol and the Star Wars franchise. Literally just there to print money. They told me money doesn't grow on trees but my TV tells me otherwise.

    As an aside, RIP to my boys DC. WB failed you and Marvel ran circles around you. I may never see my comic book heroes on the screen for another few decades yet. They're a casualty that doesn't get mentioned enough.

    Another aside, the TV universe for marvel was awesome for a hot minute there, until it wasn't. Daredevil was so awesome but they tried to bottle that up too and it degraded faster than the MCU.

    Also RIP to Spiderman. One of my favorite heroes but I don't know what they're doing to him.

    2 votes
  2. Comment on The decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes: The most overrated metric in movies is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked — and yet has Hollywood in its grip in ~movies

    Earthboom
    (edited )
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    A very good read, but I take something else away from it that doesn't just affect movies. I forget if I was in a discussion with people on here or on reddit about popular media and the ratings...

    A very good read, but I take something else away from it that doesn't just affect movies. I forget if I was in a discussion with people on here or on reddit about popular media and the ratings they get, but one stance I've taken in response to things like Rotten Tomatoes, which, by the way, is only one head of a giant hydra, is the age of earnest, nuanced, and critical views to give readers an informed opinion to help them make a decision, is over. Or at least buried underground, and in my opinion it's done because critics hurt media producers. They are an effective check on content producers by threatening a negative review which will drive sales away. They're needed and do a public service, but to be a good critic you need to be anonymous and need to have integrity and good character, otherwise you become a weapon for the content producer.

    Whats happened is, like everything else, the counter balance of criticism has become controlled for a profit. Rather than roll the dice, or God forbid actually become masterful at your craft, it's easier to buy the ticket master, the review aggregate, and control the entire process from start to finish. The end result is trash is rated highly and the part that burns me is the viewers actively defend the trash they love and support. This lowers the bar for quality for everyone else and tells the producers they can continue churning out trash and make things of less quality and it'll continue to be bought. This has affected the movie industry and it has also affected the gaming industry but gamers are very much in denial.

    This was the argument. Baldur's Gate 3 was panned by metacritic, which is touted as being better than ign and rotten tomatoes, but if all reviewers across all publications are controlled, metacritic just shows you trash, trash in, trash out, as having a 97% with mobs of fans fervorously defending that 97% for a bunch of reasons.

    But let's stop to take a look at what that number says. It says everyone everywhere that metacritic touches agrees that game is either flawless or close to it. Flawless. Really? It's flawless? I haven't seen a flawless game since maybe pong, pacman, tetris, because those games are simple enough to be flawless. Everything else that's even slightly more complex has flaws by sheer nature of complexity. All programs have bugs, Baldur's Gate 3 is no different with thousands of bugs fixed every subsequent patch since release. That very fact alone shows the game was not released in a complete fashion. There's bugs ranging from benign to moderate to game breaking.

    But let's say we forgive the bugs, we shouldn't, that 97% is also implying all other aspects of the game could use no improvement. The UI, controller scheme, settings, performance, combat, atmosphere, writing, score, are all near or are flawless.

    That's simply not true. It's a good game but simply not true. The UI and inventory is acknowledged as being a mess yet it got a 97%. The writing has been both amazing and silly or clunky at times, and it holds a near flawless score.

    But gamers are the ones that defend the number. The studio gets to sit back and collect the good PR.

    Another game that was buggy, performed poorly, and was memed was The Witcher 3. The zealous fanbase themselves got memed for how often they'd talk about the game as if it was life changing and flawless. Only now can a nuanced opinion be given about the game without fans suddenly appearing to defend it.

    Like the directors the article has mentioned, I've stopped reading reviews for movies and carefully read headlines for games only looking for keywords on performance and stability. Anything else is corrupt and only serves to get in my pocket.

    Quality took a nose dive and people celebrate it. That's what I take issue with.

    In movies it's especially bad with the Hollywood machine churning out math approved formulaic movies that are guaranteed to get a certain ROI. Which is insane. They've made a formula for art to a certain level of accuracy that guarantees sales and likes. Insane.

    Triple A game developers are attempting the same thing to some degree of success with resistance from gamers and some review publications but they're making headway as quality has gone down, games arrive in a broken fashion, and gamers defend it. Eg. Anything Bethesda makes.

    We can shift over to books and see the same thing. Books are bought and sold on the New York Time's best seller and the Oprah Reading List and how books get on there range for all sorts of reasons but seldom is it because of the art of writing. Often times it's because of the message or politics.

    Lastly, because I'm still on one, it's clear that because we're having conversations on ratings that consumers still need them! They want to avoid garbage so bad they seek reviews to help them but due to the corrupt nature of the review system, they get fed garbage anyway and then like it.

    Something in the article stuck with me and that's the line about the adventurous consumer. No such thing. We're all coddled and comfortable and don't want to be disturbed or negatively surprised. So instead of taking a chance on a movie to decide for ourselves, we'll blindly trust rotten tomatoes to steer us into profit and away from thought provoking movies.

    6 votes
  3. Comment on Do advanced civilizations know we're here? in ~space

    Earthboom
    (edited )
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    Well written and I agree with most of what you said and also find this particular line of thought very interesting but I'll add one point to it where we differ. It is possible, as you said,...

    Well written and I agree with most of what you said and also find this particular line of thought very interesting but I'll add one point to it where we differ.

    It is possible, as you said, intelligent life capable of much of what ours is has existed and exists in this day and age. We find evidence of sentient life almost everywhere we look and more still of sentient life capable of transferring knowledge and working in a community. Ants do this just as an example.

    Along this line of thinking, it is not unreasonable to assume intelligent life and sentient life is very, very common, but as you said, it is not the peak. Evolution does not end at intelligence, it ends at the path of least resistance with what just works. Sometimes having a large fang is good enough, nothing else is needed. Ask the shark or crocodile.

    And true to your point, there could have been strange sentient life on this planet building tools and structures that we'll never know about.

    But as you pointed out, they rolled a 1 to our 2 and couldn't overcome environmental changes, something that kills species left and right, we rolled a 2, but that 2 wasn't just our brilliance, it was in culmination with our biological advantages. Our stomachs being able to transition from meat to plants during famine. Our ability to walk vast distances to escape a hostile environment. Our ability to manipulate our environment thanks to our thumbs. Our ability to stand on our hind legs to theoretically see over tall grass. In no small way did these things play a role in our rolling a 2.

    But the chimpanzee and gorilla laugh because for all our gifts and intelligence, they survived too with much simpler survival mechanisms.

    It isn't a stretch to say there is intelligent sentient life everywhere. To look for aliens is to look at life here and understand there is a ghost staring at us from behind the eyes of most life here.

    It's not a stretch to say every planet is probably filled with life.

    But life that can do what we did? Life that can survive the growth of a planet? Life that can write? That can bend the elements to its will?

    That's where I say the sample size is 1. Sure there has most likely been intelligent, communal, element manipulating life we'll never know about, but they did not have our biological gifts that are equally as impressive as our brains. The combination of the two is extremely unlikely. Even finding evidence of animals that can survive as we do is extremely rare and that's telling. Most animals on this planet will die if their environment changes in any meaningful way, if any part of their food chain changes at all, they'll die. Not humans though.

    We're a fluke from any angle. We're what evolution could be, not what it is fated to be. The 17 year cicada has persisted through sheer numbers alone. Sharks are basically roaming stomachs. If it works, it works, that's the goal of evolution.

    To be human like is to not just win a 2 at survival, it's to win a 2 at a myriad of things. We have no proof in the fossil record of anything like us because nothing was able to be both intelligent and had the biological ability to adapt to a volatile planet.

  4. Comment on Do advanced civilizations know we're here? in ~space

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    Right, so the article is hinting at the nature of things makes it very difficult to peer into the universe with the intent of finding civilizations and structures and other races would have the...

    Right, so the article is hinting at the nature of things makes it very difficult to peer into the universe with the intent of finding civilizations and structures and other races would have the same issues. I'm saying a type 3 civilization would have realized this and, because they conquered their galaxy, would have already figured out these limitations.

    The fact we haven't been conquered or visited by such a civilization doesn't definitely tell us a lot and instead raises more questions, but my takeaway is there's no type 3 civilization and the laws of physics prevent us from going beyond a type 2.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on Do advanced civilizations know we're here? in ~space

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    The approach the article took to show the limitations of seeing the pyramids and what would be required at what distance is answering the Fermi Paradox one way, which echoes what I said about the...

    The approach the article took to show the limitations of seeing the pyramids and what would be required at what distance is answering the Fermi Paradox one way, which echoes what I said about the laws of physics. It's expanding on how the laws of physics make interstellar communication and travel incredibly difficult.

    So the article is saying even if we pointed a telescope in the right direction, unless it was 10AUs, we wouldn't be able to discern or see anything anyway and the truth is in reverse, type 1, or 2 or whatever. In fact, a hypothetical type 3 being as powerful as the category suggests, would have no problems accounting for these issues in physics. A civilization that has used the entire galaxy for fuel would know how to travel vast distances, and how to communicate to account for the issues of time over distance.

    And yet nothing. To me it's telling, sentient life that's able to form civilizations is incredibly rare and there probably is no type 3 due to physics.

    4 votes
  6. Comment on Do advanced civilizations know we're here? in ~space

    Earthboom
    Link
    This was what seemed like a last minute article due the next day. It doesn't say anything new nor anything remotely stimulating. What it says is what's at the beginning which is something...

    This was what seemed like a last minute article due the next day. It doesn't say anything new nor anything remotely stimulating. What it says is what's at the beginning which is something trumpeted in all corners of the internet and answered but the answers are less interesting than the attention grabbing headline.

    Where are all the aliens?

    There's a ton of theories that answer that question, many are incredibly sensible, and some are very involved but just as likely.

    The point being, we don't know, and won't know until we go out into deep space with the answers that are likely being, physics is a bitch, and the rare earth theory.

    The more we study our own planet the more we realize mankind is a fluke and a species like us existing is exceedingly rare considering all that is involved in our evolutionary chain.

    Biology tells us a lot too. Things we take for granted like sweat, our hair, our stomachs, our ears, and more all gave rise to us being able to live anywhere on the planet and to manipulate the materials the planet has.

    But it doesn't stop there, the planet also had to develop in such a way as to provide a peaceful, temperate, and stable environment(s) to allow humanity to develop the way it did. We've almost been wiped out many times and barely survived. Had earth had different predators, a bigger volcano, a meteor, be slightly colder or warmer, we wouldn't be here.

    Over the millions of years just think of the staggering amount of variables that had to go right to give rise to us and that's just one planet that needed a perfect solar system with just the right things.

    One.

    To me, it's absolutely no wonder there's a lack of intelligent bipedal sentient life because even if they were common, with earth having a sample size of 1, physics would then step in. The laws of physics, as we understand them, mean they're pretty absolute the more we study them. They're hard rules that don't get broken and our understanding of spacetime is showing us more and more that go fast does not equal exploring space.

    This either means we sorely don't understand how to be interstellar, and there's a point of view or understanding out there that we'll arrive at eventually to "cheat" the laws of physics, or the laws of physics are all there is and will always prevent interstellar travel and communication and there might be intelligent life out there but they'll never know we're here.

    And these are just two theories out of a sea of theories. Another one being they're already here but we can't perceive them because they operate on a higher dimension. It just keeps going.

    As such, despite it being a thought experiment, it's one that has both no answer and too many answers and does nothing more. Where are the aliens is a poor question.

    26 votes
  7. Comment on What choice should I make at the end of Baldur's Gate 3's second act? in ~games

    Earthboom
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    I'm guilty of googling, but only after I make a choice that I'm questioning. I typically ride my choices out having made the best choice for my character as I role play them. If they're good, they...

    I'm guilty of googling, but only after I make a choice that I'm questioning. I typically ride my choices out having made the best choice for my character as I role play them. If they're good, they do good things, if they're bad, they do bad things, no question. Bg3 has done a decent job at making each choice compelling though and there was one choice in particular that had me second guessing myself due to the magnitude of the consequences and how it affected my love interest. I googled the alternate to the choice and, lucky for me, if somehow would have been worse. So I stuck with the choice I made.

    I guess games like this stimulate anxiety in some people and to avoid it they Google everything ahead of time. In tears of the kingdom, which is loosely a stressful survival, resource management, game, a friend of mine cheated day 1 by exploiting a duplication glitch until he was rich and has the best gear. To me that would have taken the entire joy of the game away because all the intended tension would be gone. He had a blast though.

    Skyrim, a friend of mine spent the first three days exploiting a blacksmith flaw that allowed him to get end game armor at level 1 by using cheap daggers over and over. He was decked out before he hit his first dungeon.

    Why?

    It's kinda like watching scary movies with the lights on. Or bowling with the guide rails.

    3 votes
  8. Comment on Widening US highways doesn't fix traffic. So why do we keep doing it? in ~transport

    Earthboom
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    I think there's a sense of American exceptionalism, always has been. There is some truth to saying we don't learn from others and we want to do things our way, but a less cynical take would be to...

    I think there's a sense of American exceptionalism, always has been. There is some truth to saying we don't learn from others and we want to do things our way, but a less cynical take would be to say the issue, as always, is a tad bit more complex than that.

    Other American industries do take notes from Europe or the East when it comes to architecture, fashion, trains even, believe it or not. Business is after innovation and development to get the edge over competition and it's not above looking across the ocean for new tips and tricks.

    Private business can do this easily enough. They can afford to fly a European consultant for an extended stay to gain some insight into how Europe does it, but we're not talking about private industry here, we're talking about the Department of Transportation, a department that is controlled by congress and they in turn by voters.

    Like any American government agency that isn't the Department of Defense, they're choked for funding which is one of the reasons why our bridges are in dire need of repair the nation over, our highways in the northeast peaked when cars went as fast as 45mph, and train tracks have become privately owned with strong lobbying power to prevent new tracks from being layed down (gross over simplification of another complex issue).

    So funding is a major problem especially when states have a lot of say on how their roads are taken care of. Sometimes, in the case of Pennsylvania, money does make its way to the state. The capital approves the project and then money is then dispersed to whoever won the government contract. There's issues noted with these contractors playing a dishonest game where they stall the project, re evaluate and say they need more due to x y and Z complication, or say the project needs an extension due to x y and z reasons. That's not all of them, but it does happen due to the laws of the state, the power of the unions, and the structure of commonwealth versus a state with more power being in the hands of municipalities than concentrated in the capital.

    New Jersey, by contrast, functions differently with funding coming in from higher state taxes and strict and clear laws saying where that money goes to (the roads) and what happens if workers attempt to pull what happens in Pennsylvania.

    So funding, state laws versus federal laws, and as I mentioned, it's a government institution controlled by congress which means there's an element of politics involved. Politics bought by major car manufacturers that favor highway extensions over public transportation.

    Even if we take that cynical take out, just playing politics, selling the idea of trains to the masses is a big ask considering how embedded the automobile lifestyle is in certain areas of this country. Several cities will have drivers endanger bicyclists before even thinking of using mass transit. Americans are in love with cars and we've been conditioned to be.

    Is it too late? Nah, it's an active battleground. Some cities are doing great work on pushing alternate means of travel and regulating cars. New York recently announced a strategy to reduce car share services. Philadelphia is making headway with bicycle lanes and bringing back the old trollies in a new and improved way. And for as much shit as Amtrak gets, they're trying to expand their fleet and modernize their trains as best they can. They're the ones talking with Europeans on how to improve and design their trains.

    But yes, ultimately there's pride. With blue collar jobs shrinking or being seen as undesirable, the few big contractors that win these bids know how to do roads one way and that way works. They have no interest in bringing in outside counsel because they also know the way that works for them needs to be repaired and they win that too. Regardless if it's asphalt or concrete, that's what their machinery is built for, that's what their workers know, the supply chains are built for it, and the money flows best when you keep it traditional. To take notes from other countries would mean destabilizing an already shrinking field and just like coal miners are still around, so too will these workers. Until they're forced to change, but that would require DoT funding which would require political reform which would require Americans to want it and right now they don't. They love their SUVs.

    11 votes
  9. Comment on Black Myth: Wukong – The first hands-on preview in ~games

    Earthboom
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    Context is everything on release it was very much dark fantasy. Even the color pallette is dark mute colors. The themes and settings are dark and grim. The translation is silly and there's some...

    Context is everything on release it was very much dark fantasy. Even the color pallette is dark mute colors. The themes and settings are dark and grim.

    The translation is silly and there's some Japanese culture that doesn't translate the seriousness, but Demon's Soul is definitely a dark fantasy game.

  10. Comment on PlayStation’s first Remote Play dedicated device, PlayStation Portal remote player, to launch later this year at $199.99 USD in ~games

    Earthboom
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    I see the use case because we have 1 tv at home, my partner is usually on it and I don't want to bore her with my games anyway. Currently I use a Nintendo Switch to stream games from my headless...

    I see the use case because we have 1 tv at home, my partner is usually on it and I don't want to bore her with my games anyway. Currently I use a Nintendo Switch to stream games from my headless gaming pc. Works like a charm. We both can be on the couch, I'm half watching and playing games, she's playing games and shopping on her phone. Many couples are like this, or if a parent wants to play a game while the kid does something else. Or if you want to be in bed or in another room.

    The market is there. Streaming from the ps4/5 is also something that's been available for a while now. You can stream to windows, to Linux and android. The Nintendo Switch being what it is, I could stream the ps5 to it as well.

    All they've done is provide an in house solution that doesn't require fiddling with settings or being tech savvy or jailbreaking a switch. Someone can just buy this, pick it up and go.

    But, it is overpriced for what it is and it won't let you leave the house unlike the other solutions out there. I can take my laptop or Nintendo switch and stream to it no matter where I am via VPN. I can also use whatever controller I want.

    200 for a couple doesn't seem ridiculous. It just seems like a tech friendly solution to a modern couch potato couple.

    4 votes
  11. Comment on Black Myth: Wukong – The first hands-on preview in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    I think of Sun Wukong as this larger than life almost cartoonish character making fun of the structure and hierarchy of China when it came out. I think of the souls series as a serious and dark...

    I think of Sun Wukong as this larger than life almost cartoonish character making fun of the structure and hierarchy of China when it came out.

    I think of the souls series as a serious and dark world where one mistep means death.

    I don't think of the two as a pairing I'd ever expect, but I love both media so I'll give it a whirl.

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

  13. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    I've claimed critics are bought, not implying larian did it. There's evidence that influencers getting advanced copies of games and other gifts have a strong incentive to review a game positively....

    I've claimed critics are bought, not implying larian did it. There's evidence that influencers getting advanced copies of games and other gifts have a strong incentive to review a game positively.

    Overall though, I think all of us want concrete proof reviewers are often times bought because that would explain how some turds of movies and games managed to get reviewed as highly as thy do.

    So no smoking gun, but It's something

    It is something many of us suspect is going on.

    We do know bots and paid reviewers are used for Amazon, Walmart, and other services to drive the star rating to where everyone wants to see them.

    I did try to look for sources but it's not in the interest of the reviewer to ruin their meal ticket and the companies are well known for employing NDAs. Getting someone to admit they got bought with favors, gifts or flat out money would shock no one but I suspect no one wants to come out and admit it.

    1 vote
  14. Comment on It’s time to accept save scumming as the best way to play RPGs in ~games

    Earthboom
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    I try not to savescum as much as possible because I want to live with my choices but sometimes the disaster is so bad or I just plain lose, I reload. Like if a main character permanently dies or...

    I try not to savescum as much as possible because I want to live with my choices but sometimes the disaster is so bad or I just plain lose, I reload. Like if a main character permanently dies or leaves the party forever, that takes too much of my experience away. Yesterday though, I fought a giant spider, and then tripped into another boss fight right afterwards and was surprised, my main avatar died died and I thought about reloading, but I stuck it out and a few critical hits later by my barbarian and somehow I 2v5'd a room with my cleric doing some clutch buffs.

    Unexpected, I surprised myself, I was tapped on resources and spell slots from the previous boss and somehow I defeated another one.

    I've kept other decisions though like if kill someone I wasn't supposed to, or accidentally put down a dog, of anger a hag, things like that.

    8 votes
  15. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    I think the marketing, advertising, hype, and tons of reviewers rating games as either flawless or trash has something to do with it. I got advertised divinity original sin all over the place. For...

    I think the marketing, advertising, hype, and tons of reviewers rating games as either flawless or trash has something to do with it.

    I got advertised divinity original sin all over the place. For years. This game went past its target demographic because of massive hype and because people are saying it's awesome.

    You linking obscure crpg games shows a more accurate picture of the core demographic that, like madden, will buy any rpg. The fact this studios previous games are popular doesn't really dispute that point. Just means they marketed better.

  16. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Right. I agree. This game is a normal game launch with the studio being no different or better than others. Trying to herald it as this morally right beacon of hope that's going to change the...

    Right. I agree. This game is a normal game launch with the studio being no different or better than others. Trying to herald it as this morally right beacon of hope that's going to change the industry is just fantasy, but I guess that's just par for the course.

    It's the Witcher 3 and cyberpunk all over again.

  17. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    I'm a little confused. You said the rpg gamer demographic won't just outright buy another rpg and then you linked a bunch of rpgs that have done well? My point is rpg gamers will buy rpg games....

    I'm a little confused. You said the rpg gamer demographic won't just outright buy another rpg and then you linked a bunch of rpgs that have done well?

    My point is rpg gamers will buy rpg games. That's not a false statement. I leveraged that fact to explain why a studio would make an rpg, there are many who will dish out cash for another one, good game or otherwise, just like sports fans will for madden.

    Edit: oh I see, it's the reviews? They're all "fairly" reviewed? Isn't that they sit below 90 add to my point that rpg fans will purchase rpgs to feed a need that won't go away anytime soon? A need a studio will capitalize to make money? It happens this game has a fantastic writing team but even the writing isn't flawless. The relationships could use some work.

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    It's a good game for sure. Warts and all it's still better than a lot of the garbage pumped out year after year, I agree. I'm glad it's a small studio where they can have some leeway to do things...

    It's a good game for sure. Warts and all it's still better than a lot of the garbage pumped out year after year, I agree. I'm glad it's a small studio where they can have some leeway to do things as they wish.

    I take issue with paid for reviewers and overzealous fans because when everyone is shouting "flawless" and "perfect" it takes meaning away from those words, doesn't leave room for discourse or constructive criticism and the bar for quality is lowered.

    We've seen this happen already in our lifetimes. It's a natural byproduct of capitalism, to give less for more. By defending products that are flawed and not using the wide spectrum of 0-100% properly for ratings and reviews, we shrink and compress something to basically 0 or 1. If it's "good" it gets a 1 (85%+) if it's 0 it's anything less than 80% with no room for nuance or discussion.

    Rotten tomatoes died this way and meta critic is showing us how the rest of the internet lost nuance as well. Nobody wants to hear nuance, they just want you to agree with their very strong opinion.

    The very strong opinion now is this game is amazing and flawless.

    It's a good game, lots of things are awesome, but it has warts and can be criticized. Readers and new players should know about the warts, not just hear the echo chamber clamoring about how it's near perfect.

    For example, what's CRPG? Most people don't know that. They just see RPG and don't realize that this game is slow, brutal, sometimes up to chance, requires strategy and a good grip on DnD.

    How many people are actually going to finish this game outside of the core demographic and how many people picked it up because everyone is raving about it?

    4 votes
  19. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Earthboom
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    I recently finished a python program that monitors folders for new container files, logs them to a database, and then submits the file to the right third party service. Then the files are...

    I recently finished a python program that monitors folders for new container files, logs them to a database, and then submits the file to the right third party service. Then the files are monitored and when processed they get downloaded to pre defined categories that serve as folders.

    I did this before I realized pyloader existed and I could have just built on it.

    I did it to replace another python program that stopped being developed and had issues with various python components being the wrong version.

    I just made the same thing without integrating with pyloader and made it leaner while expanding on the features I needed and it's cli based.

    Now I'm working on an azure runbook to inject scripts into VMs but it's deceptively easy. The instructions are pretty easy to understand but the devil is in the fine print. Bypassing the need to have local storage for scripts makes it very difficult. Microsoft didn't intend for you to run scripts in any other way than a physical file which can't be stored in the vm sandbox that does the pushing.

    Next on my hitlist is a C++ application to search for, pull and organize wallpapers depending on sizes into folders via api calls to the wallpaper sites.

    3 votes
  20. Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games

    Earthboom
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep that in mind going forward.

    Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep that in mind going forward.

    9 votes