gusgalarnyk

@gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Arc Raiders may be the most exciting PvPvE launch I’ve had in a long while. A lot of the comments in this thread seem negative, but I would bet money this game is going to be successful for at least the first 6 months. It’s just too good right out of the gate.

  As for 1 year+, depends on how well the company is at producing new material. I think they have something special with this game. If Hunger comes out, or Marathon (lol), and does something just as compelling I could see Arc having a hard time but I doubt Hunger will eat the same player base and I doubt Marathon will feel very good (they seem like they have too many problems at this point).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the best extraction shooter I’ve played in the genre by like a country mile. Obviously we haven’t seen what the full economy looks like or endgame but there isn’t a single component that doesn’t outclass the competition in my opinion.

  Like the immersion is top tier with the sounds, the graphics, the feedback, the movement. It feels really good.

  The gameplay is also top notch and does things others in the genre don’t do. Namely:

  • variable game length that feels rewarding. I can do a 5-10 min run and get quick and dirty loot with a free load out or I can stay in the map for the full 45 and look for exactly what I want.
  • the items themselves are compelling game play pieces. Like the rare weapons are full on laser rifles and mini missile grenades - they’re cool and change how you play, not your power level. Like in Gray Zone Warfare nothing I get feels meaningful different or cool, other than the bullet spongy nature of higher level zones and even that’s not super noticeable. I had no reason to want to chase loot in that game.
  • the meta game is sick, probably comparable to Tarkov (although I didn’t play enough to actually compare this). Every match I feel like I’m working towards a goal of making the gear floor higher and gear ceiling easier to attain. Again, we need to see what the full game is like but collecting recipes, upgrading my workbenches, and collecting targeted materials feels good.

  I’m positive I’ll get 3+ months of good fun out of this before I might start mixing other things back in. If the end game is really good I’ll be able to make it 5+ months with no content additions I think. The real question for any multiplayer game is can they add material at a fast enough pace to keep it compelling long term. We’ll have to see, but they have dozens of levers to pull on compared to a traditional fps or PvE game. New ARC, new bosses, new map mods, new events, new maps, new guns, new gadgets, new subsystems, new modes. Lot of different angles they can add to in parallel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A deep dive into the rss feed reader landscape⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that’s a very common and logical instinct/bias. I’m fairly confident you and everyone else does this as well. If someone told you two compare two drinks and that one was expensive, the expensive one gets a statistical boon. If someone says this book sucks and the author is an asshole, you’re primed to take previously neutral statements and skew them towards a negative understanding.

  I always read before voting but ya, we have bias my guy and talking about them is good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A deep dive into the rss feed reader landscape⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if it’s Lemmy not standing different opinions than: A) some opinions don’t add much value to any conversation except to say “I disagree” and that’s both not super helpful and in a small community I’d argue it’s healthy for positive engagement to be more prevalent than negative engagement. B) some comments disagree or tear down a solution without offering up a good alternative - which leaves the people with solutions feeling worse for their solution, the problem unaddressed in a different way, and if someone likes their solution or even knows it’s superior to alternatives it becomes very easy to down vote a subjectively wrong opinion.

  In this instance “going to the website” is not a helpful alternative for a tool who’s purpose is to aggregate many desired websites into one location only when they have new content. “Going to the website” would be less efficient both in time and effort. This person saying they don’t get them, while being on Lemmy - a site aggregator - is to me very funny.

  My instinct was to down vote because it was already down voted and for the reasons above, but your comment gave me pause so now I won’t down vote but I also won’t upvote because it’s not content I think anyone should waste their time reading.

  Should there be a neutral response on site aggregators for this very circumstance? Never thought about that before.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not gonna shill for any company, so no worries there, but our governments aren’t breaking up these monopolies so we have to. If my options are a trillion dollar company and a 10 billion I pick the 10 billion.

  I wonder if a company can get to X billion dollars in revenue and not be bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just chiming in as another kobo guy. I like it’s UI better personally but most importantantly it displays books, holds books, battery lasts forever, and is an eink display - like it’s an ereader, I’m not in the percentage of people who can meaningfully discern between the two.

  Kobo being theoretically repairable and not supporting a trillion dollar inshittification machine was good enough for me to swap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify Add Lossless Audio(24-bit / 44.1 kHz FLAC) for Premium Subscribers⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We left this month, wife is moving to YouTube premium as a way to ease her out of straming services and I’m building our collection of music every month through self-hosting so when she’s ready there’s a large library for her.

  It’s been great buying music from artists and listening to whole albums which is not something I normally do.

  Spotify doesn’t support their artists as far as I’m aware, what money they do spend on creators it’s people like Joe Rogan, and they continue to increase the price every month. I’m tired of paying for techno fascist’s next Yacht (or election) and this is just one way we’re slowly pulling away from subscriptions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Ditched Spotify, and How I Set Up My Own Music Stack | LeshiCodes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m self-hosting my own music as of recently. I’m paying for every song. I don’t have as much music as I did on Spotify, but I’m also A) owning the music B) slowly acquiring more and C) actually paying the artists. For me this is a good step in the right direction.

  I’m seeing a lot of comments about music discovery being the reason to not stop paying Spotify. Idk if that’s something I’d agree with. First of all, I personally listen to singles and not albums but I’ve been buying albums simply because that’s easiest for a lot of sites (or cause I’m getting them on vinyl). So swapping over has led me to listening to full albums and thus a bit of discovery. That may not apply to everyone though. Several of those albums or artists have had collabs that have turned me on to other artists, again, maybe the music discovery people think this is child’s play but it’s led to a noticable increase in my collection.

  Second, can’t you just use Spotify free version to discover music? That’s what I plan to do if I’m feeling like my current collection is getting stale. But between friends, other web services for discovery, various platforms like YouTube that happen to unveil a song here and there, indie concerts that show off new openers to me, or what have you I feel like my discovery is more than sufficient to grow the list of music I need to pick up faster than I’m burning it down or becoming bored with it.

  Also, I don’t understand how discovery can represent a majority of a person’s listening habits. Like isn’t the point of collecting favorites songs and making large playlists to listen to those things. I’ve got playlists with like 48 hours of music on them which cause me to not hear a repeat idk, more than once a month if I’m not seeking them out. That’s partially because I have 3 playlists or so I rotate through but like… Is music discovery so critical and so exclusive to Spotify that it’s worth the subscription. More me it’s not.

  Not to yuck anyone’s yum or anything. Just trying to add an alternative perspective to these pro-spotify comments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Ya, I can’t believe how negative people are towards LTT. That channel is the reason I de-googled when I did, dove into home assistant, even checked out Linux (and now use arch full time by the way). I’m not super interested in defending a company let alone a YouTube personality, but like Jesus Christ some most of the people commenting negatively about LTT need to chill the fuck out. They’re not that bad, they clearly pay people well, they’re open and honest about most shit. If your bullshit detector is going off with LTT I think it needs tuning because you’re probably hitting a lot of false negatives IMHO.

  I have no doubt being as wealthy as Linus is is changing him, I have no doubt that’s effecting the company, but there’s nothing I’m seeing as a regular watcher that is glaringly bad or evil and I recognize in myself I’m actively starting to default to “fuck off” for millionaires so like ┐⁠(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠)⁠┌. I don’t think the channel is getting grandfathered in on that clause either, they just seem to like people doing their best.

  I don’t like Linus’s time-theft stance as of late, the most recent multi monitors vid had a comedic discussion between him and an employee and I recognize his job in that role is to be the straight man and say time charging fraud is theft or whatever but it feels out of touch. That’s a negative thing I can point to I guess. Am I gonna consider Linus or LTTY evil or shit because he’s vocal about theft being theft even though I think corpos can fuck off because they’re getting more productivity then we’re getting paid - no, no I’m not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best Co-Op Games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Crawl - technically pvp, arcade game Overcooked - try to manage a kitchen together Duck Game - completely pvp, ducks with guns, very fun

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The entire Social Security database was uploaded on a random cloud server, Whistle-Blower Says⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve got him tagged as “likes Elon” just as a heads up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the amount of Lemmy activity declining?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  /thread

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV - Official Announce Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This looks kinda bad but I can’t place my finger on what it is. I think it’s the like clay like textures and mobile phone like graphics.

  This isn’t giving next gen to me and the trailer felt was less put together than they usually do. I guess I like the more realistic or hyper realistic style the cinematics have always pushed in my heads.

  That being said, I hope it slaps. I miss a solid dawn of war that my pals and I can play. Nothing like Dark Crusade LAN parties back in the day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well I haven’t read his biography or even really followed him so… I came in with this new watch, have experienced very few things from them as a company, and a couple of the experiences were just a bummer.

  I’ve got nothing against the guy, maybe everything you said is correct, I don’t wish him ill - just pointing out some things I experienced with this redesign announcement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Did you watch the video where the creator talks about adding more features? I also got the ick from that lol. He talked about throwing in a cheap compass module and not being able to promise how good it was and then said “you’re welcome”. Maybe I’m being a Karen lol (oh god I should have died a hero), but I didn’t like that whole exchange. If I recontextualize it to “a friend of mine shooting the shit about his project” it’s not bad at all - just my lazy friend complaining about some feedback. But the fact that it’s the founder making his supposed baby and having no interest in making the most jam packed, high quality product, makes me a bit upset.

  There’s that Kickstarter knife going on right now, and watching their video where they’re obsessed with putting a whole bunch of bullshit into this knife and doing it elegantly - idk… Felt like a stark contrast from that to this “your welcome for a cheap compass module” attitude.

  Idk. I buy things based off of vision and belief in execution right now and this guy makes a slim epaper watch vision feel like a vision of money bags instead. And now the execution misses the mark for me. Vibes are all off. RIP, might get one after reviews now but ya writing this out has convinced me to cancel.

  I hope it still slaps for everyone and it’s successful. I want more epaper everywhere - love the tech.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oof, I actually really liked the square screen design of the preliminary images. It had a much cooler retro sci-fi vibe to me previously, now it looks a bit forgettable and basic.

  I want to know the thickness, because I might just cancel based off this redesign. Which is unusual for me but ya, I’m not digging it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Titan Quest II released in Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s on my to do list. It seems like it’s lacking the playstyle customization that I’m interested in but I look forward to playing through it.

  PoE2 promised engaging, methodical combat but as of right now has failed to reach that mark. The end game is that of PoE1 which the developers claim they don’t want but I’m not seeing the design choices to slow things down in a meaningful way. Let’s hope they figure it out, I have no doubt the first ARPG to figure this out will bring in larger numbers than most have seen to date.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This boomer couple would be hit with $700,000 tax bill if they sold their mansion⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s just nice reading everyone ripping this article to shreds. Thanks for making my day brighter.

  Taxes are a percentage of profit/income/wealth. If someone is getting hit with nearly a million dollars in taxes I would argue that likely means they need to be getting hit with even more taxes. We tax the wealthy too little practically everywhere in the world, and one doesn’t get millions of dollars wealthy without systemic injustice - not even speaking about hundred millionaires and billionaires who should absolutely have 95% of their wealth taken away and redistributed to the public for the betterment of the species and the planet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Titan Quest II released in Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m arguing some of the developers know it’s broken (including arguably all PoE leads and No Rest for the Wicked leads)(I would extend this to an even larger group but I won’t to keep it verifiable).

  I don’t think all isometric ARPGs copy D2 because they think it’s not broken, I think they do it because it was an innovative genre defining game for its time, most of the devs look back to it with nostalgia, and it was a blockbuster hit. And I wouldn’t minimize the innovations in the scene to just QoL. I think what PoE1 and 2 and LE are doing around their systems is very innovative, including their financing model and tech. I would argue that they’re still fundamentally maintaining the moment to moment loop while expanding all the subsystems that give the game as a whole massive complexity and content - and that’s great but will inevitably pale in comparison to a game that innovates the moment to moment gameplay. I think most genres have innovated their core moment to moment gameplay compared to their genre defining counterparts 25 years ago, but that ARPGs haven’t.

  And I completely disagree on my expectations being “unrealistic, unknown to the genre, or incompatible”. That’s laughable imo and something only a player incapable of imagining change would say.

  • to be self-insert character or at least one of many characters as a form of self expression
    • Diablo 4, LE, and PoE2 (going forward “the big 3”) all do this well to extremely well. Diablos transmog system is peak, PoE2 has unbelievably good cosmetics and they’ve just started, LE is a small studio but I still feel like I’m playing my wizard when I play a wizard.
  • I want mechanical self expression ideally in the form of dozens or hundreds of skills and their customization along with a skill tree that enables further customization on how your character plays. My load out of 10 abilities should look and feel and play very differently than your load out of 10 abilities.
    • the big three all do this but do it poorly. Diablo has low variability in abilities, poor customization, and my load out consists of mostly number go up choices. But importantly the bones are there, this makes it neither non-compatible nor unknown to the genre, it just means these devs did a poor job implementing it. PoE has a ton of this but fails to provide a meaningful load out or mechanical skill expression because nearly all builds converge to press a single button to blow up the screen and a second button to move around the screen fast. Again, they have all of the bones and far more customization than I’d ever expect from a game, and yet a lot of it is meaningless the second you close Path builder and actually start playing because it trivializes the game.
  • I want to fight monsters and bosses that are varied, challenging, and uniquely rewarding ideally. Challenging and varied are putting in a lot of work in that sentence so I want to further expound and say combat should feel like a dance, a puzzle, high octane, and skill rewarding (not simply build skill or farming skill, but actual play skill).
    • the big three have varied down, and arguably uniquely rewarding down (D4 sucks at this imo) but they all falter on challenging or good moment to moment gameplay. I would argue PoE2 campaign is pretty good for this, but mid-end game is pretty awful and it really only ever shines in the boss arenas. They seem incapable of further innovating the mob combat because they seem to differentiate good combat in a boss arena (engaging) from good combat while mapping (mindless). LE’s Pinnacle boss is fantastic for this (and I like it better than all PoE bosses at this moment). Even as I heap praise in these areas, I’m rarely using reactive abilities, I’m rarely using multiple skills in a fight that aren’t just buff my one damage skill. Again, none of this is incompatible, none of this is unknown to the genre, all of this is achievable, and in a lot of places already in place just used poorly from a design perspective.
  • I want the pacing around playing to be focused on fighting and clearing encounters more so than exploration and discovery.
    • the big three do this perfectly, as that’s essentially one of the ARPG innovations - fight fight fight and then plan/craft/prepare then fight fight fight. I think poe has some work with their towers and LE has some work with the size and rewards of their maps, but it’s hard to tease out changes here when this is typically the most mindless portion of all the games. They keep me clicking blow up screen at the right pace, I just wish I didn’t have to. Again, this quality is completely inline with the genre and done well.
  • I want an additional system of collectibles that further modify the way I play and look, most consistently this looks like loot or crafting (this however should not be primarily satisfied with #'s go up).
    • again, the big 3 all do this well. I wish the qualities on items were more impactful and not just number go slightly up, but generally they’re doing okay. The uniques being added to PoE2 have been awesome to see, like the song crossbow and stuff, so I’m hopeful. Diablo let’s you collect transmogs. Again, totally typical of this genre.
  • I want to do this with friends in a multiplayer format, ideally at times requiring multiplayer because that opens up a lot of unused design space (looking at you remnant 2 which was awesome or only theoretically Diablo world bosses and black dungeon).
    • multiplayer is possible and rewarded in all of the big 3. Only Diablo has content designed for multiplayer. I think PoE has a ways to go on making this experience more multiplayer friendly, in fact it’s my least favorite to play with friends despite it being my favorite of the three by miles. I wish they’d design more multiplayer content but I understand why they don’t. If the combat wasn’t so screen explosion based it would probably be a decent enough experience. Again, another quality entirely a part of this genre already just not fully implemented well.

  So what exactly is incompatible here? I think the answer you’d give is engaging combat, because that’s what I always get when I have this conversation. “All changes that have already been made to the genre are great but no more changes to the genre would be good.” That’s the sentiment I always get. “I want to mindlessly grind mobs while watching a show I can only partially pay attention to on my second screen.” Is something I get a lot as well. Which just feels like a mobile game, an idle clicker, but not what most people want when they go to play a video game including in the ARPG genre. Even if we said there’s room for idle clickers in the genre, why are our stand out examples all idle clickers, that to me feels like a clear sign of stagnation in a genre. Dota, rainbow six, BG3, BioShock, portal 2 - none of these games would be better if they were less engaging such that we could watch TV on the side, so why is it okay when talking about the genre defining games of our Gen in isometric Diablo-like ARPGs?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Titan Quest II released in Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re getting the wrong impression.

  I absolutely like isometric ARPGs, I just like them exponentially more in theory. Most of them have barely innovated on Diablo 2’s core moment to moment loop and it’s something that seemingly everyone is aware of but no studio has yet to be able to fix. I’m looking for good combat, which was what PoE2 pitched in all of their videos, in most of their dev interviews (although as of late it feels like they’re pulling back on this), and has so far failed to deliver outside of the boss arena (and sometimes in the boss arena too).

  I want:

  • to be self-insert character or at least one of many characters as a form of self expression
  • I want mechanical self expression ideally in the form of dozens or hundreds of skills and their customization along with a skill tree that enables further customization on how your character plays. My load out of 10 abilities should look and feel and play very differently than your load out of 10 abilities.
  • I want to fight monsters and bosses that are varied, challenging, and uniquely rewarding ideally. Challenging and varied are putting in a lot of work in that sentence so I want to further expound and say combat should feel like a dance, a puzzle, high octane, and skill rewarding (not simply build skill or farming skill, but actual play skill).
  • I want the pacing around playing to be focused on fighting and clearing encounters more so than exploration and discovery. Elden Ring is fantastic but it’s slow between clearing mobs and escalating the stakes/rewards - relying on the underlying exploration to be meaningful (and it is and it’s a 10/10 but not what I’m talking about in this post).
  • I want an additional system of collectibles that further modify the way I play and look, most consistently this looks like loot or crafting (this however should not be primarily satisfied with #'s go up).
  • I want to do this with friends in a multiplayer format, ideally at times requiring multiplayer because that opens up a lot of unused design space (looking at you remnant 2 which was awesome or only theoretically Diablo world bosses and black dungeon).

  In theory this describes games like Diablo/LE/PoE as well as remnant 2/destiny/borderlands. But classic ARPG’s have so much of these needs theoretically covered that if they’d just tweak the moment to moment gameplay they’d have a perfect game for me. Where as games like Borderlands barely has a dozen skills in the entire game and they barely change how you play (coming from B3 and B4), the combat by the nature of being an fps is more engaging but it’s not much past that - it’s very repetitive and the number of mobs that are interesting or good is low imo. If each quality I’m looking for is scored 1-10 borderlands may have some of them but they score lower than most ARPGs. Remnant 2 was fantastic but it didn’t have the hundreds of hours of content and systems to do that wasn’t grinding story paths (I’d still rate this experience at 10/10). Hades and Enter the Gungeon and most roguelites have fantastic moment to moment gameplay but lack most of the other qualities I’m looking for. Wo Long and DS and all of those are fantastic games with good moment to moment gameplay but similarly lack multiple qualities I’m looking for.

  I honestly think I want an open world Diablo where it’s designed more like a Gauntlet and DND-esque groups in mind, with better combat and better loot and more skills. I want exactly what PoE2 was promising and delivers in their campaign (by and large, some things would still need to improve to score highly in my desired qualities) but which they completely abandon in the mid-to-late game. I want something in between No Rest for the Wicked or Hades or Remnant 2 and PoE 2 or LE or Diablo. And listening to the developers in this space on various podcasts and dev interviews, they know that is what’s missing but seem unable to get there quite yet. I think PoE2, if it doesn’t fix combat, will be an innovation on PoE1 but will be remembered as PoE1.5 and lumped into the age of ARPGS that were still Diablo 2 successors or the age after of innovators instead of the next generation of ARPGs i think we’re on the cusp of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Titan Quest II released in Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think an ARPG without meaningful combat would require a significantly good story for it to be worth it for me. At least at the 20-25 hours of depth level. PoE 1/2 at thousands of hours of depth are struggling to hold me because their combat isn’t very good, and I really like the PoE2 campaign so far.

  I guess as someone who loved Titanquest when I was a kid, I’m a bit disappointed in Titanquest 2 as of right now. And there are other great slot machine ARPG’s and I don’t have much desire for them as is, so it’s hard to justify this games asking price when the reviews are saying a play through is 4 hours at act 1. Maybe when the story is complete I’ll pick it up, but can you imagine it being €50 instead of €30. I mean even €30 with no crafting and minimal legendaries… Idk, not trying to be a downer but ya - those are my honest thoughts.

  I generally agree with you, a fun short game is worth more money than a forever game to me right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Titan Quest II released in Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It looks like it falls very short of the engaging combat I’m still looking for in an ARPG. €30 for less than 10 hours of an incomplete ARPG at that makes this a wait to buy if ever for me. I’m not certain I have the faith it’ll ever have 30 hours of content, this release feels like a “we’re running out of money” situation more than a “we’re confident in our product” scenario.

  I burned out of Last Epoch in their last patch I think for good, because the combat is so bad. And PoE2 is approaching that for me as well - at least they have an engaging story and a long guaranteed road ahead of content - so maybe this is the slot machine ARPG I keep on hand (but I wish they’d just fix their combat). And I’m waiting for multiplayer to play No Rest for the Wicked, but I suspect it’s not ARPG enough to be a long term game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it safe to assume the guy i went out on a date with, just wants to sleep with me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you know what to do, what to be clear about, and what topics to avoid. I wish you luck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it safe to assume the guy i went out on a date with, just wants to sleep with me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would have taken the eye compliment as a yellow flag and appreciated it as a genuine compliment with no ulterior motives. I think the shoulder massage offer is where I’d draw the line and say, yes that’s clearly someone looking to escalate things physically with you rather quickly.

  At least in my culture that would be seen as strange between acquaintances and still pretty strange between friends. I don’t think Japan is different in this regard so I would recommend clarifying your intentions sooner rather than later.

  You originally brought up your virginity and your long term desires for sharing that with a long term partner. I would not bring that up with anyone you didn’t want to convince you out of that belief. That might not be anyone’s individual intention but that’s the worst case scenario so you should consider it. That means telling a best friend is probably great and would be recommended. Telling an acquaintance or a friend who is also sexually attracted to you - and therefore may not be the best councilor to you for purely your benefit - would probably be an unwise thing to do. Unless of course you want them to convince you out of that belief so that you can more casually have sex, which is fine as long as you’re being honest with yourself on who is really responsible for that change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it safe to assume the guy i went out on a date with, just wants to sleep with me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not certain you provided any signs that he viewed it as a date or even that he liked you. I’m not sure you characterized any motivation on his part that made me think he was into you, except for that part of your conversation was around marriage and it read like you brought that up not him which I guess would be a signal that material was on their mind (but that’s irrelevant if you brought it up I’d say).

  I generally assume all men want to sleep with all women regardless of any other concept or notion, simply because sex is fun and men in my experience seem on average far more willing to do that with just about anyone. That’s not really true, and it’s not really a fair assumption, but I don’t think it causes harm if you don’t act irrationally on it.

  It sounds like he:

  • likes talking to you because he invited you on two outings (both of which you assumed were dates)
  • is rich and therefore when he pays for the food it lessens the implication that it’s a date (although I think that’s fair to keep in mind. To provide a counter example, I pay for friends meals semi-frequently and have always paid for every 1v1 meal with a woman (and most of the men 1v1s among peers or younger) as a thank you for the company. This is not attached to romantic or sexual expectations or desires, it’s just how I was raised and have decided to maintain that practice because I like it).
  • is attractive (by your own admission)

  I’m not certain I can gleam any more information about him out of your text.

  Did he only want to talk to you about relationships and physicality? Was he physically distant or was he escalating touches? Did you catch him giving you signals like checking you out or anything else that might point to a purely carnal thinking?

  Otherwise I’d say right now, it’s safe to assume he wants to have sex with you. It’s also probably unfair to assume that’s all he wants and doubly unfair to assume that that’s his motive for hanging out with you.

  I believe men and women can have platonic relationships, which I think based on some comments you made in this thread you also believe.

  So I’d recommend a couple possibilities:

  • Your gut says he just wants to sleep with you, it’s heavy on your mind, or you just like being very communicative. In this case, communicate clearly and honestly something like "hey, just to get this off my chest I’m enjoying our conversations and 1v1s but as I explain to all men early on, I’m not interested in dating or anything physical right now. If that’s why you wanted to hangout, I understand and you’ve done nothing wrong, but that’s not why I was enjoying hanging out. If that’s not what you were looking for, and you’re okay with just being platonic friends, I can’t wait for our 1v1."
  • If you don’t think he was actually pursuing you, you feel like he was pretty normal hanging out with you, or you just don’t want to broach this subject until you’re certain you both have misaligned intentions I’d recommend continuing as normal, and mentally defining your boundaries while preparing to communicate them when you need to. This would look like (as a random kinda silly example) “he grabs your shoulder once while telling a story or something”, maybe no big deal for you and you move along, “he grabs your shoulder constantly and it’s now abnormal behavior”, you tell him you don’t like this and ask them to stop and then clarify your intentions with him (probably after that event/gathering).

  Please know this is coming from a man’s perspective and it’s as brief as I could make it. Please consider the normal woman wisdom (even if it sucks that it’s required) that you should focus on your immediate physical safety first and emotional/mental safety next at all times. If you get the feeling that clear communication would put you in danger, don’t do it until you’re safe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨introducing copyparty, the FOSS file server⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes I feel so new to setting up my own digital ecosystem because I look at a thing and think “that’s so cool” but struggle to imagine it at home. So could someone help me understand.

  This would be a replacement for something like Google Drive or Proton Drive? The actions I would use this for would be:

  • sending files to friends
  • managing a collection of files like PDFs, music, ISO’s that could be accessible by my friends (or just my household)

  So I would spin this up on my NAS or my main PC and replace those services and accomplish those actions using this software?

  Are there other services or actions I’m missing? Am I misunderstanding the premise entirely?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RETIRED: Readarr - Sonarr for Ebooks Book Manager and Automation⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was just getting this set up, this and the music one, because I want to leave Spotify. Hopefully an alternative solution shows up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ARC Raiders | Release Date Reveal Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The technical alpha slapped and I’m fuckin dying to get back in. I was really hoping for them to open up a beta but now I’m just sad I have to wait till October to play this.

  I understand the delay to get things right, but there’s almost half a year where no game is satisfying this itch which is a shame. Marathon hasn’t been delayed yet and I know Hell Let Loose guys are making an extraction shooter that looks sick as hell that’s due to release this year as well.

  All I’m saying is I would have paid €40 for that alpha it was so good, October will be a slam dunk, but the genre will be more crowded by that time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I 3d printed a custom sized keyboard using open source software and hardware designs.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol. For context, it took me maybe two weeks to get back up to full speed on a new typing layout. When I moved to Germany they moved some keys around on standard qwerty and it took me a couple of days.

  If you’re already touch typing I think most changes are easy to adapt to and don’t overwrite previous muscle memory. Your brain is powerful, believe it is and it will work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I 3d printed a custom sized keyboard using open source software and hardware designs.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I moved to Germany and had to sell my 3d printer for the move, but when I pick up a new one finalizing a custom dactyl keyboard will be one of my first projects. I use an ergodox ez right now (they’re amazing do check them out if you want a pre built solution), but I want as many thumb keys as I can possibly handle so I want to upgrade to a custom solution.