Just to nerd out a bit: I think this is justified. He has nanomachines, son. His eyesight is probably perfect, but he adopts a different persona most of the time. He’s a puppeteer and a politician most of the time.

This is when he gets his actual boss theme lyrics too and he finally treats you as an actual fight. No more metal gear, no more speeches. You get the treatment of an equal rival.

Or: Rising Revengeance might like symbolism, but it prefers the subtlety of a giant boulder and memes, and him taking off his glasses just fits the rule of cool.

I’ll add my own anecdote since I installed CachyOS a few weeks ago and have used it daily since. Have some experience with Linux Mint from before, but in the past few years I’ve almost exclusively used Windows.

For me, everything worked with default settings out the box, but I did see the wiki specifically mention “use btrfs if it works, if not, use…”. I even got my *arr stack and Jellyfin up and running relatively painlessly. And some games and programs not made for Arch/Linux.

The thing is I say relatively painlessly, but some of them involved a day of tinkering, diving into the Cachy and Arch wiki pages, etc. I’m fine with that, I find it fun. It’s the price you pay for wanting the benefits of the distro (performance, customisability, etc). And I was very clearly warned going into it, which TBF almost made me not go with an Arch-based distro.

So yeah, they are made a bit painful to use on purpose. Or rather, it’s a side effect of the core philosophies. It’s not for everyone, but it does cater to specific groups, and I think that is good. Kinda like how not every fediverse instance is for everyone (see also: Mastodon vs Lemmy vs Piefed)

I would still without a doubt recommend Linux Mint if someone wants an easy and painless experience after Windows. Heck, because of apt it’s even easier than Windows a lot of the time. And for the stuff that doesn’t work, it’ll happen if Linux gets more traction. Sadly we’re just not there yet.

(Though apparently the main thing out of everything I use in work and outside of it, it’s damned Xbox controllers that I have yet to get around to making function)

Not OP, but I’ll answer from my own perspective. Note that Discord terminology can be a bit weird, since a server is just a unique shared group space, but hopefully makes sense.

So you can:

• Have private chats with one or multiple individuals.
• Start audio or video calls through those chats, and screen share/stream in them.
• I’ll also mention the ability to send not just text, but images, videos, embedded GIFs, files, so on.
• in servers you get the same thing, broken into text and voice channels (the latter allowing the full range of audio, video, and screen share).
• in servers each user can be given roles to determine which channels they can see and use, or edit, among various other permissions.
• Pinned messages, @ mentions for roles.
• Though I don’t use it much anymore, the option to effectively subscribe to a channel on another server to have messages from there propagate over (e.g.: a uni club server announces an event and you see it on another server in an events channel)
• also servers don’t have any upper limits on members, at least not one I’ve ever seen hit
• Bot integration via API.
• oh, also it all works on desktop or mobile (because it’s mostly just a web app, but still)

And key thing is: all very easy to get started with, whether you’re just wanting to join a server, or start an entire community.

Big deal for my uses currently is voice chat and screen share in one place, while still being able to organise stuff into separate channels, pin messages in them, etc.

I think right now if I had to replace it, assuming I could get the people I interact with off (which is either 20 or 1500 people, depending on how much I’d want to carry with me), it’d have to be a mix of Matrix/Stoat and probably Steam’s built-in features. Maybe a classic forum. That is, if I wanted to have all the features I use. I could do with less, but it’s frustrating.

I think the alternatives will get there eventually, self-hosted even, but self-hosting also has a hardware cost.

That said, I really don’t know why software stuff was ever moved on discord. My uses are gaming and university community-related.

Unfortunately it seems very much a mixed bag. For some the more recent patches did a lot, for others they broke things.

(Sadly on Windows) The same happened to me. Decent performance around release, later updates messed it all up. That said I think the latest update did make it run better than ever on my machine, but obviously YMMV.

I do think they’re working on it, they just seem to be lost? It should be a big deal for Capcom if Monster Hunter loses popularity due to performance.

I mean it seems to me the opt-in part is when they say it will be opt-in by it potentially being a button on the toolbar. Though the dev acknowledges not everyone will see that as opt-in.

Source: https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782

I can understand why people have issues with that, but let’s at least keep criticisms to what they’ve actually said?

I feel like this should be an official EU petition like Stop Killing Games as well. Have lawmakers actually tell payment processors that they have no right to deny legal transactions (not just fictional content, but any legal transaction).

Phineas Gage if anyone wants to look the case up. Classic psychology and neurology tale.

Of course this happened before modern scientific standards and procedures were mainstream, so take everything with a grain of salt.

This seems like it fits more of a management/strategy type vibe to me.

Maybe you hear news of the 10 greatest knights of the realm coming to save you. But you don’t know what they’re great at and you only have a limited amount of instructions to give them.

You could have the first knight leave hints by telling him to leave marks in specific places. But he might be the best at combat and would be best sent against some of the other monsters guarding the path. You just don’t have the information.

But honestly, I’m not sure if that makes a player feel trapped. They have power to change things. Maybe you steadily take away that power? I’m just not sure how.

Very interesting question though.

Oh, the journalists wrote and article that you clicked on and shared, and maybe even commented on on their website? And it points out a particularly problematic part of an otherwise pretty good game?

Fantastic, they did their job well.

I enjoyed playing the game but that achievement and “jennerising” really did leave a sour taste in my mouth (the latter is a drug effect that temporarily changes your body type). Though I found “tropic thunder” giving you dark skin somewhat amusing. Humour is subjective, and I could honestly accept all of these being just a tad too far to be funny anymore, in which case I’d rather the game was more friendly to everyone (and it’s better for its success too).

To have some fun though at your expense; the funnily appropriate way you mistyped a sentence:

try to cancel a game just because an achievement

I assume you missed the word “of” but it lets me ask: just because an achievement is what? Come on, say it.

All that aside:

I’m surprised someone on the fediverse is using “social activist” as a pejorative though tbh. Moving away from centralised social media is similarly a way to speak out against social issues you believe in.

I disagree. All our current storage methods still degrade, not to mention they almost all rely on technology to be read.

If nothing happens, sure. We can keep things preserved, know how to access the data from them, make copies as needed, etc., but that would’ve applied to the Library of Alexandria.

Most, if not all (afaik) MySpace profiles are gone. We can archive all of Facebook and Instagram, but thousands of years is a long time to not have accidents, mistakes, war or even natural degradation destroy some or all of the data carriers.

The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I’ve heard, not even played that).

I’ll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I’ve just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships… It’s Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.

Unlikely to be it since it’s nowhere near from the last 10 years, but CITY 2000 seems like it could be similar at least artistically?

I think the best I can recommend is looking through Steam, searching for “London” and the mystery genre. I didn’t quite catch anything there that fit at a glance, but maybe you will. Similarly could be done on GOG, since it sounds like it could potentially be an older game? Or itch, but maybe the best way to search for that would be by googling london missing friend mystery site:itch.io.

I’m assuming a modern setting, with no supernatural elements and the mystery genre, so that’s the best I could do. It’s going to be very hard to find something without some details being fixed. Point and click? Photos or isometric? Is the player character visible? Do they have any identifying details? Does the pub have a name? Anything like that could do a lot.

You say you watched someone play it on youtube then you might be able to search your youtube viewing history?

If Deep Rock Galactic counts, then Monster Hunter games should as well. The hub is usually a bar/restaurant with food, drinking, and an arm wrestling mini game. You can also randomly cook meat out in the field or go to hot springs.

Many other games do have bars, but without any real interaction. Lego games and Borderlands come to mind.

Stardew Valley has cutscenes at the bar and you can play a mini game there, but not quite as interactively as DRG.

That’s all I can think of right now. It feels like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Saints Row should also have something similar to Stardew at least, but I can’t remember how much you can do in those bars. Same with MMOs I haven’t played in a while like Runescape. I’m sure if I mention them someone else will know though.

As a bonus: with modding, Lethal Company can have a casino with a bar you can get drinks at.

Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I’ll come back to it as well.

And just to do some due diligence:

• Saw it multiple times already, but Homeworld.
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron or many of the other Star Wars flight games before it.
• Imperium Galactica 2. Amazing space RTS with space and ground combat.
• I think one of the Formula 1 games from the era is considered among the best, but I’m not sure which. If you like F1 and racing that’s worth checking out.
• Star Trek Armada is from 2000, but very good too.
• Sid Meier games.
• Nintendo games, including Mario Kart 64. Unfortunately the first Mario Party isn’t as good as modern ones I hear, but may also be up your alley.
• Scorched Earth or Tank Wars for DOS. Worms for a more modern take on the genre.

Very space- and RTS-themed, but that’s what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that’s all I have.

I haven’t seen any further info, other than Warner Bros Warner Bros Discovery taking down a bunch of Cartoon Network games and also Cartoon Network itself recently: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/warner-bros-is-delisting-games-again-a-half-dozen-cartoon-network-releases-have-been-removed-from-sale-on-digital-storefronts/

I’m not entirely sure what scene I would’ve said had me similar when I could still more surely remember those first years. Possibly a game I’ve forgotten since. Maybe one of the Bionicle Mata Nui Games or some other big online game. Or Imperium Galactica 2.

But a moment that will always stick with me is from the first Homeworld game: when you return from your first hyperspace voyage. That entire game was epic, including the intro sequence, but it’s that sequence that I think can stand forever as a masterpiece.

Half Life 2 base now includes the Episodes and they have been delisted. The only thing in The Orange Box now really is Portal, since Lost Coast is also delisted and TF2 is free. Still a great deal tbh for one game, but you don’t need it for basically any item in there.

So I’m not sure what might make you not feel lonely or anxious. Things like how directly you control the characters with you could he factors I imagine, so I’m just going to list a bunch of things:

A shorter one, but Star Wars Republic Commando. You’re a commando unit and work as one.

Dragon’s Dogma, either Dark Arisen or the new sequel.

Mass Effect series.

I don’t know if Earth Defence Force would be like that or not, at the end of the day your NPC allies could be hit or miss (literally, depending on the weapons you use).

Not sure how you feel about party-based RPGs, but there are tons of them.

I’m wondering if RTS games with campaigns would feel right as well. StarCraft’s campaigns have a lot of people constantly talk to/around you.

The Lego games?

Stardew Valley?

Can’t really think of indie games at the moment.

Games I haven’t played so I don’t know if they apply: Persona? Space Marine games?

There is. Newer EA games, anything with Epic Online Services (but especially with a login), etc. They get negative reviews fairly consistently.

Some older games get overlooked, but even then adding in a third party software (not even necessarily needing an account) often lowers a game to a mixed rating on Steam for recent reviews.