There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

CleoTheWizard

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

CleoTheWizard OP ,

Tbh it’s the reason I asked. I expected results to look about like this but I’m really interested in the graphs of posts vs active users.

Posting has exploded. I assume a good portion of that is bots. Bots posting news or reposting memes probably. However, a good portion of that must be users posting as well right?

I don’t think that retaining about half of the users that joined in the massive wave is bad actually, it’s the trends that come next where we see what happens. If that line keeps going down for the rest of the year, the platform is probably in trouble.

CleoTheWizard OP ,

Isn’t Reddit currently messing up things with search? And yeah I’d agree with the stable users comment. We shall see what the next few months look like to tell.

I think that the adoption will mostly work in steps. Lemmy is currently functional, not pretty, not stable, not well moderated, not well integrated with federation, and poor discovery but it is functional.

Hopefully the next time a wave hits, Lemmy will be more mature and ready to take in more users who will already have communities set up even if they’re small.

I’m concerned though given the slower pace of updates that’s often complained about though.

Space sim Squadron 42 is "feature-complete" and gunning for Starfield's lunch with massive new video (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It's basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I'm still not confident; waited too long for that.

CleoTheWizard ,

I still kind of doubt it’s going anywhere fast. Because a game with this scope has already signed up for some pretty massive post-launch support. Let’s be generous and say it takes them another 2-3 years to develop this single player and another 5-6 to finish star citizen. That’s very generous.

They started pre-production in 2010. So it’s already been 13 years of development with near unlimited money on SC. So again, add 5 years till a mainstream launch and another 3-5 years of active support and you’ll be well over two decades deep in a single games development. That’s half of someone’s career to develop one game. Now we add another game on top of this.

The other game is admittedly much easier to develop but still it will take massive amounts of support. If Bethesda can’t do it well, why does anyone think this dev can and in such good time? I have my doubts.

CleoTheWizard ,

I won’t tell people what to do with their money, but it’s clear people have bought in to both of these games existing. And if it were my money, I’d want to believe in these devs. But for the rest of us, these games need to materialize as functional and fully featured releases for us to care.

And I don’t think the timeline is crazy so far with their development. What’s wild to me is thinking that a newly founded studio, even a well funded one, can knock out a competent single player and MMO with these scopes. It’s slim chances from an outsiders perspective.

Take a look at what mature and well funded studios are putting out in 2023. The likes of Starfield are actually some of the better cases. I know the incentives are different, but still. So I’m expecting a lot of tooling to need to be done for both these games to exist and exist at an enjoyable playability by the end of the 20s.

Anyways, im not trying to kill enthusiasm for people who enjoy interest in the project but to everyone outside of that, this isn’t reassuring. All large scope games should be considered to be nonexistent until they hit reviewers hands at this point.

CleoTheWizard ,

This is my main concern about the game. With tech that moves this quickly, you have to understand that game companies who are established are living on the very edge of that debt.

Like starfield for example. Who knows how old it’s code is from the start of its development. It’s why Bethesda games break frequently and crash often. When you develop games on a 8-10 year cycle, think of how many hardware generations that is. 3 to 4 right? So when you’re talking about building an engine, then running it and building a game, then supporting it, all over the coarse of 15-20 years of coding? It’s a giant mess to program and there’s no way in hell it can be optimized properly.

Not to mention the massive task of upgrading the game as new hardware and new engine features arrive.

CleoTheWizard ,

Currently emulating the old Crash Team Racing as I make my way through most of the Crash Bandicoot games. The racing game is pretty hard as racing games go.

Still working on Divinity Original Sin 2. Game is fun and it’s a lot better than #1 in that series. It’s a large time investment but I do love the game.

CleoTheWizard ,

I think people don’t often factor in that time in a game is just as much or more a cost than money is.

If I make it super nerdy, my equation for games would be more like fun / (money cost + time cost). But really I don’t actively quantify these things, I just have a sense of it.

The other thing id say is that games recently are being judged more on how they respect the players time. The max game money cost is locked in at $70, likely for a long time. So the thing being optimized right now is the fun/time part. Not respecting the players time is one of the worst crimes a game can commit in my opinion.

That’s what I’m hearing about games like Starfield and it’s always been a criticism for games like assassins creed. Like they’re fun games, but the time investment is far too large for what they offer.

The reason it doesn’t apply to sim games or city builders is because you are largely in control of how best your time is spent. That’s why open world games used to rule Steam for a long time and still somewhat do.

Anyways that’s my rant.

What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games?

I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....

CleoTheWizard ,

Okay so I fully agree on the use of better AI in games as competitors. The AI in games, though sometimes complex, is lacking in a lot of major games and the difficulty setting just basically amps up their damage and health instead of causing them to outplay you.

I think there are two solutions to better competitive games that reduces cheating and they’re already somewhat at work.

The first solution is implementing AI to detect cheating which has been done but very limited in scope. This will require more data collection for the user, but I fully support that if you’re being competitive and not playing casually. Why? Because in person sports also collect plenty of data on you, often even more invasive, to make sure you aren’t cheating. This can be done in collaboration with Microsoft actually because they have the ability to lock down their OS in certain ways while playing competitive games. They just haven’t bothered because no one asks. Same with Linux potentially if someone wanted to make that.

The second important improvement is to raise the stakes for someone who plays any sort of Esport game. I’m reminded of Valve requiring a phone number for CSGO because it’s easy to validate but raises the difficulty and price of cheating and bans. Having a higher price for competitive games is also entirely possible and also raises the stakes to cheat. The less accounts cheaters can buy, the better. Should it ask for a social security card? No. But I think that system bans based on hardware and IP are also important. You can also improve the value/time put into each account to make it more trustworthy. If a person plays CS for thousands of hours, make their account worth something.

And a minor third improvement would be: match people with more matches/xp/hours with other people of similar dedication at similar skill levels. That means cheaters will decrease the more you play and a cheater would have to play for far longer with cheats undetected to get to that point.

There’s plenty that can be done, companies are just doing almost nothing about the problem because cheaters make them money.

CleoTheWizard ,

Well, an oil spill is still probably worse. Depends on volume of spilled oil. Also depends on if that oil is replaced by using renewables.

The typical spill playbook is to slowly clean this up while also creating emissions elsewhere and also disrupting the environment more to repair the pipeline or whatever alternative they have.

CleoTheWizard ,

Only because it isn’t in the United States

CleoTheWizard ,

I like how Americans are treated like some special class. As if the US hasn’t had collateral damage in their attacks that harm citizens of other countries. The US just uses it as a very weak reason to get more involved…

CleoTheWizard ,

“I’m sorry that you were upset about it”

“I feel like I shouldn’t have to keep apologizing but I will anyways”

“I’m sorry if what I did was misinterpreted”

Or my favorite

“It’s not something that I need to apologize for but if it makes you happy”

CleoTheWizard ,

Is that why there’s lead in my hamburger?

CleoTheWizard ,

And for good reason. If they trusted user input and took it at face value even for just the current conversation, the user could run wild and get it saying basically anything.

Also chatGPT not having current info is a problem when trying to feed it current info. It will either try to daydream with you or it will follow its data that has hundreds of sources saying they haven’t invaded yet.

As far as covering the companies ass, I think AI models currently have plenty of problems and I’m amazed that corporations can just let this run wild. Even being able to do what OP just did here is a big liability because more laws around AI aren’t even written yet. Companies are fine being sued and expect to be through this. They just think that will cost less than losing out on AI. And I think they’re right.

(Now former?) Telltale employee: "This is a sore subject, but I feel it necessary to add to the gaming layoff news: Telltale laid most of us off early September. Status of TWAU2, I can't say (NDA)." (twitter.com)

have not seen this picked up in gaming media yet, but i would assume it’s forthcoming if this is accurate (which i see no reason to believe otherwise)....

CleoTheWizard ,

Frankly I bought the Batman series just to support them and I’ll be buying the walking dead series bundle for the same reason. They have to release new stuff though and that’s going to be really really hard to do because they have to make a game that follows up on a major IP that they own from the old company and also make it really well. Not super likely.

That said, the original death of the company before was rough and was mostly about them expanding and not getting more funding. But the business model was also flawed imo. They forgot to significantly upgrade their games and the first big series, TWD, was the best written one. After that, flat.

If you want to know why they struggle, look at supermassive. Those guys eat telltales lunch and dominate the space. Is there room for both? Probably. But they’ve really got to deliver something killer with the new games or they’re dead again.

CleoTheWizard ,

While I agree that these renewables can be effective, they have many problems that stop me from supporting them over nuclear even at a lower cost.

We aren’t recycling solar panels enough, so I’m not optimistic that heavy metals won’t be polluting our dirt in the future. Wind still is killing birds and uses massive amounts of land. And that’s before we get into the cost of transporting these things from china which requires pollution from shipping and also kills wildlife. And then on top of that, there’s a very real human rights problem as solar currently is made mostly by slaves at multiple steps in the supply chain.

CleoTheWizard ,

It really isn’t. Many salient points here that you breezed over. Focus on the US because that’s who we need to fix right now. Solar panel waste is a big problem. Does the US recycle them? Or anything? No not really. They recycle 10% of them.

Now that doesn’t kill the idea, but I would need to see the US sign laws to recycle them or improve that rate before I’d believe that the panels wouldn’t end up wasted.

Next: wind turbines killing bird populations is real even if it’s a minor concern because it stacks on everything you mentioned. Our estimates aren’t great but the ecological impact of these turbines is not well understood over the whole of the US. I like them more than solar, sure, and they’re better than fossil fuels absolutely. Just wish we can understand that these two have issues we need to solve to deploy them everywhere.

As for the land comparison, that’s not a great statistic. The parking lots will only get bigger in the US, I promise. Cars are too prevalent. Maybe in 30 years, not now though. So we have to increase land use. I have yet to see US cities do much more than putting the turbines on pasture land and they usually choose undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere. So yes, valid concern.

The thing about transport is fine if they’re equal, I’m not about to fight you on something you’re this passionate about.

As for the uranium ore extraction problem, my point is that it’s a problem that the west actually has a chance at fixing. They can mine their own uranium, they can find other sources. Meanwhile china owns most of the solar power production. Most of the panels are made by slaves. The cobalt mines involve entire countries worth of human rights issues.

I don’t dislike the use of solar and wind, I just feel that the takes here have been far from balanced when nuclear has some real advantages if you’re being honest about the weaknesses of current renewables.

CleoTheWizard OP ,

I hear ya. It seems like a large portion of what currently stops game streaming is the internet part of the equation. Even in home streaming doesn’t like to be passed through a router and gets slowed down by that somewhat.

CleoTheWizard ,

Yep! Please watch the DBrand tutorial for applying the wrap. It may not be from them, but all wraps work similarly. If you don’t want to watch it, basically you need to: -heat up the edge with a hair dryer (not too hot, just warm) -start with the entire edge lifted off the steam deck and not at all rounded over the corner -you want to slow roll your thumb over the corner and down the side. Apply pressure and pull the vinyl a bit with your thumb as it rolls. If you mess it up, more heat and retry it

CleoTheWizard OP ,

Wow this is good feedback. I’ll just give some short thoughts on what you said, but thank you for all of that. I’ll also use your comment to give more info about what I’m doing.

  1. My program is on the civil side of engineering and is most applicable in space exploration and crossover with other engineering fields. I expect industry would find most of the skills I’d use valuable.
  2. I’ve heard this and I’m prepared, but luckily I’m not doing a thesis if I go for this. I’d be writing papers instead.
  3. One of my goals is to establish good contacts, so this is good to hear
  4. I’m trying to avoid this actually, I’d rather not work and do school at the same time
  5. Very much heard and I’m not considering a PhD unless I find myself either enjoying research or I have a career application for it.
  6. I do actually have a research assistantship lined up so paying for a masters shouldn’t be a problem.
CleoTheWizard OP ,

Yeah I find most of this to be similar to what I’ve heard so that’s good confirmation, thank you.

The reason I’m considering it now is that: 1. I believe it will be applicable to industry and will raise my initial pay and work out in the long run. 2. I don’t want to work through a masters. 3. It will only take me 1 year to do it. And 4. I have a way to pay for it so I expect it to accrue very minimal debt. I have about $25k debt from my bachelors but I expect not much more to come from my masters from scholarships/assistant for a professor.

So I’m viewing this as more of a deal, I wouldn’t consider a masters if any one of these things weren’t the case probably.

deleted_by_author

    •
    CleoTheWizard ,

    I swear these people will let the rich steal their food and housing while they look the other way and blame the nearest minority for their problems

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I don’t think that we need to continue to “think” it’s bad for the games industry. It IS bad for the industry. Period. Very famously, obsidian got less money and lost out on a bonus from the initial release of fallout NV because it didn’t hit 80 on metacritic. We need to stop pretending these scores are objective or reflect anything about user enjoyment of a game. Users maybe, but the critic score is worse than useless. It’s downright misinformation to aggregate critic scores.

    Like the entire point of critics is to provide different perspectives on a game. Why would I want their average? The average of their opinion is not the average gamer opinion and it also isn’t the average of the individual readers opinion.

    I need no further proof than go look up the last 5 games you played on metacritic and try to guess the critic and user score and get within 5 points each time.

    Do you pirate? And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?

    Well, my friend, he’s kinda poor he can’t afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don’t understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the...

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Oh let’s be real here, this is what capitalism does. It chooses the worst possible option for entertainment because it’s what makes the most money. What makes the most money is not making you happy, but getting you to stay subscribed.

    Let me tell you the real secret. You know what it costs to rent a movie online? And stream it? And then never watch it again? Yeah now justify that against streaming services.

    I’ll tell you right now, go get Plex. If you don’t already use a media server, start. Because chances are that you don’t actually watch 90% of what’s on those services. So that $15 a month for content you don’t own could easily be $20 a month on content that you do actually own. Not to mention there’s no ads involved and you can stream as many devices as you want from anywhere. Get friends to pitch in and it’s even better.

    The ONLY argument for this is convenience of all the shows at your fingertips. Except now that’s not the case and they’re on different services, screw it, either pirate the media or buy it used on disc.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Agreed, totally depends on how much you watch. But shopping used DVDs and like I said banding together with friends to buy content eventually begins to work out better for you.

    I’m not someone who consumes tv and movie content en masse so it works out for me to do this and for a lot of people who watch a season or two of a show a month, it’s not that much more expensive to own.

    What I meant about the capitalism concept is that the core idea isn’t about enjoyment or getting to watch what you want. It’s not about convenience anymore. This is a capitalistic cycle where it stops innovating and starts to poison it’s consumer.

    So shows will now be splintered across services, shows will get cancelled for being less profitable, and the overall quality will dip because we’re driving art to the bottom price. Whatever makes shareholders more money. And is this true? I feel like it is. Quality of shows has dipped quite a bit to fit the streaming service pricing.

    We can argue about whether people want that or not, but it’s basically just what’s been done with every other consumer item. Dominate the market, lose money, get the subscribers, and then make their experience shittier over time.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    This will be great considering there is currently little information on which games benefit from the PS5s support for enhanced haptics and triggers.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Ratings. Are. Stupid.

    When it comes to movies and audience scores, sure, look at the rotten tomatoes score or whatever. But everyone should realize that the average score of EVERY CRITIC is just going to be a useless number.

    Not only that but reviewers who represent entire companies like the people at IGN and elsewhere aren’t giving an honest opinion. I know this because a few of them have given their honest opinion before. They got fired for low scores.

    This is the reason that I enjoy watching reviews from people like ACG or SkillUp. They don’t need to give a score because their opinion isn’t a number. Enjoyability isn’t a number. Both of those reviewers enjoy games slightly different than I do, but when I watch their reviews I get a sense of if I will enjoy them.

    Seriously if you go to outlets who give scores on games commonly, stop. Very little time is put into choosing these numbers and they reflect nothing about enjoying a game for you personally. Go watch a review from ACG or SkillUp. Outlets like IGN or PCGamer can’t hold a candle to these guys.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Take a read of this summary (by IGN) of their Madden 22 review:

    “ Madden NFL 22 is a grab bag of decent – if frequently underwhelming – ideas hurt by poor execution. Face of the Franchise, to put it mildly, is a mess. Homefield advantage is a solid addition, but it doesn’t quite capture the true extent of real on-field momentum swings. The new interface is an eyesore, and the new presentation is cast in a strange and unflattering shade of sickly green. It’s smoother and marginally more refined, but in so many ways it’s the same old Madden. In short, if you’re hoping for a massive leap forward for the series on the new generation of consoles (or on the old ones), you’re apt to be disappointed”

    Now, I want you to read that and ask what you’d rate it based on this info (or the whole review).

    IGN has a scale approximately this: 10. Masterpiece 9. Excellent 8. Great 7. Good 6. Okay 5. Mediocre

    I don’t think I need to tell you that the user reviews for this game don’t even reach mediocre. Not to mention the gambling inclusion that IGN doesn’t take seriously in any sports game it reviews. But IGN still called Madden 22 a 6 or an “okay” game.

    I’m not saying they’re lying necessarily but the result is the same. The honest critiques are ignored to keep receiving review codes. That score should be left out entirely but they refuse because it drives clicks. It’s a joke.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I’m not a game dev, but from my modding experience it depends on the game.

    MOST of the games that have these insane file sizes actually do it to cut down on processing and on load time and reduce pop-in. If a texture or level doesn’t need any decompression, it loads faster. So entirely depends on the asset. So a lot of games do still compress textures. That’s why there’s a discrepancy between the data downloaded in steam and the actual runtime storage requirement.

    The 3D models themselves are usually lower space. As is dialog and audio. Though all of those will be mildly compressed probably.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Does the patch size even mean anything anymore? It seems like they just ship out anything that can’t be recompiled on the users end

    CleoTheWizard ,

    After fallout 76, I’m worried. After canceling Prey 2, I’m worried.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Yes but they had an incentive to stay with it. It’s actively profitable. Whereas with star field not so much

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I’m just concerned and will wait for reviews before buying (like everyone should). Bethesda has a reputation for being slow to fix games and having lots of bugs and crashes at release. And even then, they patch them up to being playable and leave the rest for modders to fix.

    What makes you think they stick with their games? They fix bugs for about a year or so after release and move on, just like any other studio. They fix stuff in re-releases but you have to pay for that.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I was reserving judgement. Just giving reasons to be cautious going into this. Everyone should still be excited, I’m just saying “expect a Bethesda game” so look at their recent games and that’s what you’re getting into probably. With those expectations, you’re less likely to be disappointed

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Believe it or not, I think he has a point and isn’t at all a hypocrite. He’d show you how to pirate and torrent stuff (and has before) while also telling you he doesn’t recommend stealing. What he was saying is that the content isn’t meant to be free. The ads pay for the content. So not watching ads means the producer doesn’t get paid. Its a soft form of piracy but he wasn’t telling you what to do about that. He just said “Be aware you’re not giving people anything for their content”. I don’t know why thats controversial, he’s not even suggesting its illegal or even immoral. I never understood the arguments here but I also dont visit twitter

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I see what you mean but I don’t agree. The deal being made here is obvious and you’re signing up to give them data in exchange for watching a video. You’re also signing up to view their ads. You have an option not to be the product at all. You already have the wheat, but you’re giving the middleman less than what was arranged, not just producing less.

    And if you view it as okay to not give them what they’re asking for while getting the content anyways, that’s chill. Just recognize that you’re paying less for the content than they’re asking. This is even more enforced by YouTube and news papers who charge for ad free experiences.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    It is, yes. It’s a separate conversation of if it should be illegal or immoral to keep your privacy this way. But as long as you are violating the intended method of revenue for the content you’re viewing, that’s piracy to me.

    I think most people hear piracy and think it’s immoral or illegal, but there are very valid reasons to pirate content such as game and movie preservation.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Purchasing and pirating don’t have contractural agreements. You don’t have to have a ToS to pirate something.

    If DuckDuckGo does block the ad in their browser, they’ve done the work for you. And if they do not but instead Google decides to serve it to you without ads in a browser, it’s not piracy to not have ads.

    As long as the intended revenue of the content you’re viewing is being blocked, you’re pretty much pirating it. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just a definitional thing.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I want to be clear still, piracy isn’t a problem or wrong necessarily. I’m not pushing a corporate narrative by saying this, I’m more concerned about creators and other sites that use ads for revenue such as newspapers. So if you want to “pay” a site without money, don’t pirate their content. That’s all. That’s similar to what Linus has said.

    But I think this is somewhat similar to asking you for a ticket at the door for a movie. If the “ticket” is watching the ad and they’re asking you to buy the ticket (with premium) or get it from ads, bypassing the doorman would mean it’s piracy. Doesn’t even matter if the doorman doesn’t try to stop you. Doesn’t matter if they don’t pull you out of the movie.

    You being the product is irrelevant to the piracy thing. But it is relevant to the moral thing

    CleoTheWizard ,

    It’s not like you see the ads that have trackers, they get blocked. So it’s still part of the agreement sort of. And you’re also aware that it’s revenue for them. People assume it’s a moral argument, it’s not. You can pirate from absolutely evil people, but it’s still piracy. That’s why I don’t view it as worth arguing over for the most part. I WANT people to realize that it’s piracy but that they’re actually doing something ethical.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    You’re not wrong. But I was just pointing out the validity of talking about the semantics of piracy. I ultimately don’t care what people decide to do, just be aware of what it is you’re doing by blocking ads. Which is most of what Linus was saying.

    CleoTheWizard ,

    Sounds like somebody didn’t poop for a whole week

    CleoTheWizard ,

    I think repairability is a discussion. But we can also talk about how android makers cut updates off sooner which dooms the hardware to be trashed quicker. Or the very real human cost of google killing projects related to android and selling data. Also, a lot of the Apple stuff has to do with cost to repair, not repairability. At the end of the day, Apple can and does repair and resell their stuff. They just charge more to do so. But a lot of their users pay up for it. Would be interesting to see the stats on where broken devices end up for each

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •