Reapy's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentIt's been a bit but I think at least from my recollection that I really liked dark souls 3 as the game that fulfilled the 'dark souls' vision for me. Most of the aspects of it fell filled out an...It's been a bit but I think at least from my recollection that I really liked dark souls 3 as the game that fulfilled the 'dark souls' vision for me. Most of the aspects of it fell filled out an developed, systems made sense, there felt like very little jank through the game. It doesn't have that really cool tight map of dark souls 1, but it is close enough to feel good.
Even with elden ring I feel like there were some things about it that I didn't like, and I found the open world in it just not a great open world. I realized in elden ring that I much preferred the set pieces and discovering all the little traps and surprises along the way as you wound down into the bowls of some level.
Sekiero is well defined on what it wants to be as well and is a great experience. I have not been able to get myself to play through sekiero multiple times though, it felt a little challenging to relearn all the bosses, however I have been able to get through dark souls 3 a few times due to being able to level up past difficulty if wanted.
Overall great games, not sure if you had played them, but I feel like 3 was a great culmination of the dark souls formula.
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Comment on What's your current PC wallpaper? in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentI haven't found a good wallpaper site like wallhaven for straight ease of browsing. I'm always running ad block so not sure if ad free. Generally I just set to my desktop resolution and sort by...I haven't found a good wallpaper site like wallhaven for straight ease of browsing. I'm always running ad block so not sure if ad free. Generally I just set to my desktop resolution and sort by toplists, if I see a game I like or something I'll search in its hashtag sometimes. The images just go right into standard windows folder and I point windows at the folder.
I tried wallpaper engine a while back but I feel like I had some issues where I might have pulled down something that messed my pc up and didn't want to deal with learning the ins and outs to deal with it. I've been very happy with resolution matched images that rotate every now and then
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Comment on What's your current PC wallpaper? in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentThis is me. Every few months I go to wallhaven and browse around for stuff then chuck it in the gallery folder. When I start seeing pictures that do nothing for me I'll go trim the folder down....This is me. Every few months I go to wallhaven and browse around for stuff then chuck it in the gallery folder. When I start seeing pictures that do nothing for me I'll go trim the folder down.
Mostly my pictures are what you mentioned and a lot of game stuff in there too depending what I can find. At work I have a few gaming landscape shots so it's kinda game but still work neutral.
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Comment on Always invest in good tires in ~transport
Reapy Link ParentGrew up in Massachusetts here and when we had the snow tires on it was a huge difference, of course back then I had to drive into work and visit my girlfriend even in bad weather like an idiot. No...Grew up in Massachusetts here and when we had the snow tires on it was a huge difference, of course back then I had to drive into work and visit my girlfriend even in bad weather like an idiot. No snow tires and you could feel the car about to break loose at low speeds, snow tires and you almost didn't realize you were on unplowed roads.
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Comment on Gamescom 2025 megathread in ~games
Reapy LinkI haven't made my way through all the previews yet but poe 2 had their new season announcement and got me hyped up again, lot of posative seeming changes. Finally npc offline trading, I'll...I haven't made my way through all the previews yet but poe 2 had their new season announcement and got me hyped up again, lot of posative seeming changes. Finally npc offline trading, I'll actually get involved with it now.
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Comment on The web could be so much more beautiful in ~tech
Reapy LinkI don't know if I am an outlier, but I hate justified text with every fiber of my being. Splitting words with hyphens on separate lines and random levels of spacing between words makes it...I don't know if I am an outlier, but I hate justified text with every fiber of my being. Splitting words with hyphens on separate lines and random levels of spacing between words makes it incredibly difficult to read. Justification I felt has been solved technically for years, I just assumed we all decided that it was frustrating to read. I've always avoided using justified text my entire life for these reasons.
Anyway, still a cool trick, preferences are preferences.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Reapy LinkFor me it is very useful. I've been a developer a bit over 20 years, but I've worked for smaller companies most of the time so a lot of my tech knowledge is self taught besides what I learned in...For me it is very useful. I've been a developer a bit over 20 years, but I've worked for smaller companies most of the time so a lot of my tech knowledge is self taught besides what I learned in school around 2000, so most of that is outdated short of the algorithms and I'd argue the school was behind current tech stack at the time anyway.
At my current company we can't put our code into an AI so i haven't run it with it having any context to what i'm doing or had it fill out code for me, instead I use it as question engine for things from basic to general verification of simple questions. I'm currently using it a lot for python and I generally trust the results for the type of questions I'm getting back and have learned and discovered a lot in it's usage.
My reason is that I've had to basically self teach myself most everything in my career. I was taught C++ in school and that is it. Leaving college I had to write in C which was very hard to step back from the object oriented I was taught. I was also outside webdev short of hobby projects I built. After a few years and stuff not mentioning I had settled with a core of batch/bash, PERL, and Java depending on the scale of the task. I've since replace the perl part with python because, well, python, so good.
What I've noticed over the years is that learning and building on the job I discover a large amount of holes in my knowledge. I also don't read programmer blogs or anything like that because generally I dislike programmer discourse (another topic in itself) so I really only learn about things when I'm doing them and have time to research approaches. There was always that initial burst of learning with books and tutorials when picking up a language, but it's easy to forget or not mark particular things as important when you don't know the language. In addition languages do change and update, python has keeps adding in new things in the versions and if you aren't digesting all that it is easy to miss things.
Another thing is that as I get older (almost 46) the syntax doesn't sitck as well and it takes me a while to get in the flow of whatever language I'm working with, in between that time I am googling a lot for common things as I will forget control structure or just simple things like how do you open a file in this language. While google is fine mostly, chatgpt is great because you can now add your specifics to the examples and just ask it about new things, it also provides google topics to further research into.
By using chatgpt to run my google questions through instead I've learned about a bunch of different libraries and techniques. I also like to ask it things like whats the most pythonic way to do X because I tend to still always think in java, and then can see if I like what it's showing. These kinds of questions are best answered by 'what's the most frequent thing people do in their code' and I feel like the AI is great at showing you this.
That all said I'm also hugely scared of AI and people's over reliance on it as is mentioned numerous times in the thread. I have been developing for 20+ years and sat on a PC my while life, I know there is a lot I don't understand but I have a reasonably good feel for when i need to double check or pull in more sources from the output. I also know that I don't double check EVERYTHING all the time either when I ask it things that aren't important, but let's be real I've taken many an internet comment /youtube video as truth as well, so not a huge overreach.
But yes I don't like normalizing the entire humanity through chatgpt, after reading some of it you can really feel the patterns of its tones. If you think about it chatgpt is like giving you those AAA blockbuster movies that are just all the same. They are like ok and expected and never BAD, but they will never be good or even close to great. I feel like we should aim for more than lukewarm in the thing we produce. It's going to get ugly for a bit honestly but I hope there is a giant backlash down the line.
In summary AI is incredibly useful, incredibly useless, and potentially very dangerous a trap to fall into.
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Comment on Who’d be into a book club but for retro games? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI have set up wonderful emulation platforms so many times over the year only to play like 10 minutes of games as well. I could only stomach the games I was reasonably good at where the muscle...I have set up wonderful emulation platforms so many times over the year only to play like 10 minutes of games as well. I could only stomach the games I was reasonably good at where the muscle memory had not left, the rest are fair to judge by modern standards and of course the old stuff hardly holds up.
Game design has come a long way besides just the hardware capabilities. Something like shove knight is the perfect example of how far modern game has come along, retro sprites without the retro jank.
That said some masterpieces hold up, I think ps1 era rpgs and forward can still be great, though by now many of them have been remade (for good or for ill sometimes).
But yeah, I'm just another person who can't drop the value of those games I had growing up, but really don't want to play most of them again when there are so many new and great games out there.
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Comment on What’s a plot twist that happened in your own life? in ~life
Reapy Link ParentYes, you guys busted your asses for his 12 percent. His navigation of political stuff probably not anywhere near the effort you guys made executing. It's really important to not go all in on any...Yes, you guys busted your asses for his 12 percent. His navigation of political stuff probably not anywhere near the effort you guys made executing. It's really important to not go all in on any job unless you own the business or are friends with or have evidence that the owner will appreciate and reward going above and beyond. Otherwise you are just the juice being squeezed out.
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Comment on Help me analyze/understand the background of this AI video? in ~tech
Reapy LinkGoogle veo 3 makes these. All the ones of a person doing a vlog style are from the as well, you can start to see the look and feel of it after a few. Veo I think makes good use of massive server...Google veo 3 makes these. All the ones of a person doing a vlog style are from the as well, you can start to see the look and feel of it after a few. Veo I think makes good use of massive server farms for the amount of quality it can put out. Not sure if the script was generated or part of the prompt though. I believe veo does the lip sync and voice gen though.
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Comment on Ahoy! A historically accurate open-world pirating game set in the late 18th century Caribbean | Trailer in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI feel like way back that realistic simulation was the aim of a lot of PC games. It was perhaps the brand-new ability of computers gave us the feel of doing things we've only read about, like...I feel like way back that realistic simulation was the aim of a lot of PC games. It was perhaps the brand-new ability of computers gave us the feel of doing things we've only read about, like driving a tank or flying military hardware. Over time, I feel like simulation has gone off into the niche and the big budget companies don't touch it at all. MS flight sim seems like an exception here. It seems in my mind that most historically accurate content from companies exists in the wargamming spaces. After that, it is often modding of strategy games that come next.
I think there are a few reasons why they don't sell though. Historical accuracy is generally boring to many people. Accurate simulation is also boring towards gameplay. I think for example of a game in the ps2 era (I forget the name) that was based off an army simulator, and for the gaming release of it they felt it was best to dial up the speed of everything, say a smoke grenade taking 2 min IRL to come online and down to 15 sec in the game version so people don't have to wait so long.
I know one thing for me is that sometimes games are now TOO accurate and too hard to digest. A good example for me are the DHS simulators for different planes. I loved flight sims back in the day, and I really enjoy DHS videos of people that know what they are doing, but I really have no inclination to purchase for myself and figure out how the planes work or even how to get them off the ground. Interestingly, I think the WW2 and below plane sims are ok because the tech on board for using it wasn't as heavy as a modern jet or helocopter so you can reasonably digest enough to get it off the ground at least.
I've found for myself that I think that I actually don't like strategy and wargames games anymore, despite having played them for years in the 90's and 2000's. Every time I get one I don't make it very far as I feel overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do, especially if it is historically accurate. It's like the ability to add so much complexity and accurate has taken away the lighter games of the 90's where they couldn't add as much detail, but made it much more digestible.
Overall, I would say today that you can probably find a game about any kind of historically accurate thing, but finding one that has great production values is very rare. I'll be interested what they do with ahoy, as I feel like the naval game is something that people have been trying to do for decades, yet nobody has really nailed whatever that formula should be IMHO.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentVery nice, enjoy the time with the kids! I found my longer gaming sessions came back to me as they got a bit older. They are in middle and early high school now for me, and they have very firm...Very nice, enjoy the time with the kids! I found my longer gaming sessions came back to me as they got a bit older. They are in middle and early high school now for me, and they have very firm ideas about what they want to do on their own time now, so freed up more gaming, which ironically I miss some of the time doing stuff with them already!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy LinkI'm winding down on blue prince, there is a lot more to discover but I haven't been clicking the button to start the game up lately, but I also doubt it is going to leave my desktop for a long...I'm winding down on blue prince, there is a lot more to discover but I haven't been clicking the button to start the game up lately, but I also doubt it is going to leave my desktop for a long while as I want to discover more of what it has to offer.
I had been having a huge itch to play a turn based tactics game and was searching around for a bit. I had found troubleshooter, abandoned children. People wrote amazing things about the game so I was hopeful, however, I just couldn't make it far. I am probably a bit of a picky snob when it comes to game presentation and while the graphics were fine, I really didn't like the aesthetics of the first few characters you meet, and the way the menu are organized drive me crazy. The story did not grip me at all right off. I typically don't like the genera it is in, which didn't hlep too much.
Another thing is the menu system just felt like a lot of text put into text boxes, with as much configuration sa there was going on there isn't a lot of UI work to organize and present it, which really is fine but I have come to learn that while I love the IDEA of building RPG characters I find that I get overwhelmed hunting down synergies which can turn me off.
The final nail in the coffin for me was animation speeds. It is a pet peeve of mine that I like the characters to move and animate quickly in a turn based game or I get frustrated. XCOM is very guilty of this crime as well, and I'm one to watch cinematic shots all day long, just I don't like when repetitive buff applications feel like a chore or movement skills take too long to settle down before I can click the next thing. In a way I really like to play turn based games by feel where I don't have to always hunt for a perfect play but just generally keep the wall moving forward.
A good example of that is gears of wars tactics. I really ended up loving that game and was upset there wasn't going to be a sequel, there were very obvious issues as the game progressed and with the progression system, but the presentation and pace of playing was amazing. I loved how they were able to combine the enemy turn into simultaneous turns so that when you were rushed by 10 guys they would all run at the same time and your guys would open up on them together. You are still resolving everything turn based but it is quick and really cool feeling. Just avoiding that cycle of camera moves to enemy, enemy pauses, casts a buff where he points at one of his other guys, camera pans to him, other guy puts hands up like yey, pan back to enemy, enemy moves somewhere, pauses, shoots, camera snaps to your char, damage reaction, back to enemy, enemy pauses, camera grinds and pans to the next guy. So much better when the turn is 10 guys rushing you and you fire away into them.
Ok so with that out of the way I landed on rogue trader. I had no clue it was co op, so bonus, we both got it and into co op we go. This was exactly what I was going for. There is such a well polished turn based game under here I had no clue. It feels very turn based tactics with a lot of character building. The effects are great, the animation speed/time is good. It bunches up groups of enemies to move and act at once to speed it up, all th things I was complaining about.
It has an interesting take on npc vendors in RPGs which I realize that I often dislike. NPC stores are not often fun, selling my stuff feels tedious, and you are never well compensated for it. Usually I just look at the expensive stuff in the stores when I get to a town and forget about them, never coming back because I can't afford it now, and other better stuff drops in the combat areas as you forward. The way rogue trader handles it is you build 'profit factor' through the rpg part with other chars, and you can get anything that is up to your profit factor in the trade window, simple. You have to build faction by selling the junk you get in game, which is auto sorted into cargo you just sell for faction rank. So rank up, build overall profit factor, here are all your cool new items.
I just got into the ship combat which on initial take is really cool. I don't know if anybody in boardgame space has played the xwing or wings of glory but the idea feels somewhat similar to that, you are always in motion and depending how fast you are going is how much you can turn. I believe wings of glory had a small PC version made at some point that I had a pretty good time with. This is a little take on it with their own flavor and honestly I really look forward to spending a bit more time with it.
Right now am somewhere in act 2 as the game is opening up. I will say I have a bit of level up fatigue, there are a lot of abilities to pick from and finding synergies takes a lot of memorization from what I had already picked. I wish they had a slightly different method to display the abilities to pick from. But this is a very minor complaint. Overall am loving the game and thinking about grabbing both DLC when the new one comes out soon.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI only last played it when it was released so I have a bad memory, but didn't the combat system involve sitting in combat for a really long time spamming spells over and over to level up? Though...I only last played it when it was released so I have a bad memory, but didn't the combat system involve sitting in combat for a really long time spamming spells over and over to level up? Though honestly I don't recall that bothering me too much. The main thing I remember bothering me was when the two main characters met it was really underwhelming, I felt like there should have been more said but I felt like they just went 'oh hi' and everything moved on. Maybe that just stuck with me over the years I could have interpreted it wrong.
That said I thought the graphics were amazing at the time and the opening song was a long time favorite of mine. It is one of the only PS era final fantasy games I actually finished and beat the ultimate weapons on as well, so I can't really complain all that much!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentYes, 100% I have many fond memories of different blueprints I've made and used over the years even though I know they aren't that great. It is hard to balance because I learned a lot of neat...Yes, 100% I have many fond memories of different blueprints I've made and used over the years even though I know they aren't that great. It is hard to balance because I learned a lot of neat compact building techniques from watching different youtube channels over the years and they are real nice to add to the design arsenal.
It's reallly nice to just start your own blueprint book and slowly add in things, your red science layyout, your belt layout, or early mall etc. I've had the same blueprint book for a few years now I just keep around between playthroughs. It's nice to crack it open and take a look at how they changed over time or ones I improved on. I don't know that I can ever in one session of playing the game do it all, it's more like each time I feel like playing for a bit I can tackle a new chunk of the game while using the old ones I have going.
Our best blueprint we had done in vanilla I think was a train artillery base. When busting into new areas we'd just place the train track straight till we got near the bugs then cap it off with the station. It would have construction trains show up automatically with some bots to build out the base with flamers and defenses around it, then when constructed it would request some artillery shells which would get dropped in and start firing on the surrounding place. A small artillery shell train would keep it filled up to keep shooting until everything was dead, with enough flamers aorund thee walled off base to keep it alive while they were shooting. It was super awesome and fun to expand with, felt like a huge design success. Though, when we went to play space age we also couldn't remember how it worked heh
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentWith factorio I have found over the years with me that each playthrough I go a little bit farther. Granted I typically am playing with another friend so we tend to push each other when one or the...With factorio I have found over the years with me that each playthrough I go a little bit farther. Granted I typically am playing with another friend so we tend to push each other when one or the other is having a non productive night and we are a bit shot the other is pushing on while the other might got wack some bugs or do a little fun side project.
If you think of it like a rogue like game you can think of the blueprints as the permanent progress you make on it. That blueprint book becomes your ticket into going farther and farther. I believe at some point the factory games become very tedious making new recipes and feel like chores that you can solve only with a blueprint. There are only so many times to put goods a b c and d together to make X or resource chains before the problem feels very similar.
The problems shift become finding methods to quickly lay down factories that can take in items without putting too much manual strain on yourself and getting good blueprints that help do that can really make the game fun to play.
I don't typically like to get blueprints books online but without fail I will get the belt balancer book that is floating out there, it's probably unnecessary but I get a lot of joy putting down those various belt balancers depending what I have going on and they are hypnotic to watch. I also will look for an easy to use train system as well, generally one that has a stacker, some intersections, some blank stations, and some straight pieces with the power and signals on them. I did the work way back to understand the signals but I really like the beautiful intersections people have made as well as solving having your tracks tiling properly already to save time.
For your own build it is very fun to try to get a good "mall" blueprint that will make all the early to mid game items. This helps each playthrough that you do as instead of building the same factories over and over again you can just slap down your mall. I have this gigantic thing called "The FUCKING mall" that has most everything in it, but it has many, what I like to call "random unspecific errors" in it that we have to debug every time.
Another thing to consider is the space age expansion if you don't have that. I felt it really did an amazing job with the problem I mentioned before that building the later recipes all feel a bit tedious as they are the same patterns, new and more ingredients. Space age accelerates the first planet so it feels way less tedious, then you are building a space platform and going to another world. Each world has a different problem to solve with unique recipes that work a bit differently and will be missing a vital resource you'll have to import from one of the others.
A lot of people hated one of the planets when it first came out and I can agree it made me pretty angry how it was set up, but I also found it extremely captivating. In our run we didn't finish off all the planets and didn't make it to the end planet, so we have more to do whenever we go back to it. But i really feel like space age is a perfect addon to the game.
Another thing is how configurable the game is you can take away things that bother you. We had a playthrough where we turned off biter expansion so we didn't have any time pressure to do stuff, if I wanted to build that night I could build instead of running around fixing defenses or needing to secure more resources to keep the ammobelts fed. I've had runs with biters, or runs with the resources set to super huge so you never had to pick up and move your mining so it was a bit more like satisfactory.
Factorio is a really great game so i just like thinking about it a lot, I know it can be a lot and feel like a chore after a bit, but it's a game you can keep going back to over the years and go farther and farther the more you learn each playthrough.
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Comment on MiniPC home server recommendations in ~tech
Reapy LinkDoes Intel still have the issues with bad chips? Last year I was overwhelmed at all the options and prices and ended up getting a micro ATX form factor pc in a lian li a3 case and was very happy...Does Intel still have the issues with bad chips? Last year I was overwhelmed at all the options and prices and ended up getting a micro ATX form factor pc in a lian li a3 case and was very happy with the price. For a lot of the amd nucs that had nice specs and prices I kept seeing wildy different reviews saying they had issues randomly. It made me feel like it would be a 500 dollar gamble and I did not want to gamble with that much money.
Ultimately I ended up with AMD Ryzen 7 5700G (for the onboard GPU incase I wanted it) and 128 GB of ddr 4 ram since that's the max that chipset uses and is half price of ddr5 and not building a gaming rig so who cares on speed. Topped off with 2 tb nvme drive that was on sale, and decent mobo and powesupply, spent about 700 or so on it and am really happy with it. It is mich bigger than a mini itx bigger but part prices are cheaper, I can swap stuff if I need, and it's what I am familiar with. I want this to be a long term server in my house to play with as I want and felt another 200 was easily worth it.
But suggestions here are what I found when looking around for the minis, id just check if buying Intel CPU that you get one that doesn't slowly fry itself.
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Comment on Removed Reddit post: "ChatGPT drove my friends wife into psychosis, tore family apart... now I'm seeing hundreds of people participating in the same activity. " in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentI am in line with hobbes argument but agree as well that I think AI and other forms of it will offer more and more power to the few that control it. I have no doubt that there is the potential to...I am in line with hobbes argument but agree as well that I think AI and other forms of it will offer more and more power to the few that control it. I have no doubt that there is the potential to tailor its response towards political ideology and it will be devastatingly effective due to the black box nature of the source of responses.
We are already having a major information issue with the current net and burying information deep in LLMs and their ilk is going to make everything worse.
I do not doubt their use and I am using them frequently for programming tips and have learned a lot from them already, which is really the issue that this tech is not smoke and mirrors and but the ways they are harmful are subtle enough for technically minded people to spot, the layman seems to run right along to their tunes.
I guess in a way I can see how those susceptible to conspiracy theories would run headlong into an llm and never come out. But if we can't regulate conspiracy theories and misinformation, as our us government is freely proving, I don't think we can do anything to stop chat gpt. If I were a sci Fi author I'd have a wild llm faction in the near future already written out.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentThis has become apparent as I've progressed farther in the past few days! I think there is a period where it's easy to be deceived into thinking you see the whole scope of how you can affect room...This has become apparent as I've progressed farther in the past few days! I think there is a period where it's easy to be deceived into thinking you see the whole scope of how you can affect room layouts and stuff but as I uncovered new things and looked back at early things with more 'awakened eyes', I started seeing and opening up more options to target goals. Of course, the game keeps offering more things to want to do too...
This is a truly brilliant puzzle game!
Started back in on POE2 as well. I had skipped .2 but the features from .3 got me to want to get back in. I'm still mid act 2 as I haven't had a lot of time, but I really like the sprint mechanic and am re-enjoying the game again. I don't know that I will want to work on any maps through the end game and am more setting a goal for myself to see the new act and interludes.
Overall i think the last epoch philosophy is more up my alleyway, but it just doesn't have enough content to grab me for very long yet. POE2's campaign is really great, the set pieces, voice acting, and overall graphic quality is peak. I'm going to see how the asyc trading works for me. I disliked trading heavily in poe, but even with the fix in general I'd rather play the game to get things rather than browse lists of items. Had much better time getting currency in the kingsmarch poe 1 with the marketplace, but hated the act of finding things to spend it on and quit.
I'm dreading the upcoming trials mechanics as I see they haven't changed much since .1. I was big fan of the lab even though I sort of hated doing it as I'm a player prone to making big mistakes and disliking timeloss. I liked the idea of sanctum in POE1 but as side content you could choose to engage with if you felt like it, not as a major wall for getting ascendancies.
All in all I'm very excited for POE2 still and looking forward to them filling out all the missing skills and classes as well as finishing off the acts, they are hugely fun to play through as they are right now, and the moment to moment action is great IMHO.