CaptPretentious
@CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Patch 1.5.0 Notes! 1 day ago:
Holy crap I see what you mean. That small red one… I just gave up. Fighting Simon blindfolded has to be easier.
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Patch 1.5.0 Notes! 1 day ago:
Hoop jump… Did I miss something? Doesn’t sound familiar, and I got all 3 pieces.
- Comment on Hey look, a giant sign telling you to find a different job 6 days ago:
Yeah, I took it as it’s a barely functional company that’s being held together by hopes and dreams. The food vendors at my local state fair do millions in sales in just a few weekends. Per Wikipedia, Sweet Martha’s Cookies in 2023 made $4.6 million in 12 days.
- Comment on What can you tell from this photo alone? 1 week ago:
- they like jagermeister above all else
- Their apartment is likely messy, (they’re hoarding bottles instead of taking them to the recycling, implying not a hoarder but lack of motivation)
- They play music
- Their last play session didn’t go very good, as the guitar is broken.
- Comment on Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn 1 week ago:
if they just need a face scan… whats stopping a million "donald trump"s from appearing?
- Comment on Don't throw away your old PC—it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy 1 week ago:
I have an old machine been using as a Unraid server for years. It’s an i7-3770 paired with 32GB of ram and like 4x2TB drives.
Finally upgrading it because it’s just not going to keep meeting needs and frankly it’s wicked old (might keep it as a gitlab runner server or something). Finally “upgrading” by taking some old hardware (and bought some new), to have a full compute + storage setup. Proxmox (Ryzen 9 5900XT + 128GB ram) with all the compute and TruNas (Ryzen 7 3700X + 64GB ram + 8x16TB drives [LSI LOGIC SAS9211-8I] [raidz2/82.62 TiB usable]) for storage with a private 10G direct link between the two (Intel X550T2BLK).
- Comment on Why? 2 weeks ago:
“What a refreshing opportunity to boost engagement by confidently telling someone they’re wrong! Thank you for your bold and thought-provoking contribution — your feedback is not only valid, it’s downright essential for the thriving digital ecosystem we all pretend to enjoy. Let’s collaboratively acknowledge that OP is wrong, together.”
- Comment on Gaming Pet Peeves 2 weeks ago:
Actually, what you said unlocked a memory. Though I don’t know if it falls in line with the Gameranx video (I’ll have to go watch that) or your sentiment. But the ‘Players need that catharsis and pay off for all their efforts or else it inevitably starts to feel pointless rather than fun.’ immediately made me think of the first Shadow of Mordor game. It was a great game, undone by a QTE final boss.
But yeah, so many of these games just don’t go anywhere. To your point, the live service games. It’s not 100% with what I intended, but I feel it ends up in the same area… I’m spending all these hours… what am I accomplishing? What’s the point of all of this? It’s just endless padding with endless travel time, side quests, and anything that requires you to wait real time for the quest to progress. Dailies in WoW, were my WoW killer. Some people saw it as “easy gold”; I saw it as non-content meant to drive daily engagement but not actually accomplish anything in the game. It’s all just padding for extra “engagement” or to make a game seem bigger than it is (or should be).
I’ll break down some of the issues I had with the games I listed for better context. And I’ll front this with, I know you don’t have to do side missions. It’s more like, you realise instead of giving you a tight, compact story that’s well crafted, they spent too much time padding it out so it appears to be a bigger game. CP2077, the main story is absolutely dwarfed by all the side content. The main quest line is like… ~35 missions? There are like 70+ “gigs” and the same for “side missions”. The main story is the thing you do the least. With missing mechanics, I can’t help but think it would have been more interesting if it were done in a more linear fashion like Deus Ex Human Revolution. Instead of a giant city that’s mostly empty boxes (the buildings aren’t buildings) and padded out with side quests. Skyrim, the thing that killed it for me, was just how pathetically easy it was to become the leader of the various groups/factions. It felt so unearned. I can only take being handed “wins” left and right because I’m the fucking chosen one… before it’s just dull. It was Medieval Idiocracy. I could have just started learning spells and they’re ready to give me the college because I’m the smartest person they’ve ever seen. Brawndo, it’s what Dragonborns crave. And Hogwarts, walking around the castle, was the best part. It felt magical and alive. Some of the puzzles were fun. But the classes were boring tutorial sections, and the main thing you do in the game is LEAVE Hogwarts to go do unspeakable things in non-descript burrows and dungeons scattered all over the place. That game has 15 main quests, 21 side quests. 95 Merlin Trials…
The tl;dr: An easy way to look at it, CP2077, Hogwarts, and Expedition 33 have similar playtime for just the main quest (per howlongtobeat.com, ~26-28 hours). But how it feels to play the game is drastically different. One had a story to tell and a point to get to, and it does that. The others made a world with a whole bunch of other stuff to do.
- Comment on Gaming Pet Peeves 2 weeks ago:
Alright, I’ll limit it to just pet peeves.
Tutorial sections that just suck. Some don’t explain enough, others treat you like you’ve never played a game in your life. Or, when they interrupt you to explain a mechanic in great detail, but it’s too much of an info dump, and you’re just left wondering wtf they just said. One game that I really liked how they did it was BG3. There’s a tutorial, but you can also turn it off on future runs. Worst tutorial I think I’ve ever seen was Xenoblade 2.
Games (and really any consumable media) that just don’t know when to end. There are very few games I’ve completed, mostly because I get bored. The game overstayed it’s welcome and I’m done. The grind isn’t worth the final boss fight or whatever is at the end. Generally, it’s because games (especially RPGs) think grinding is a “fun” mechanic when it’s more of an imbalanced game. Take, for example, Expedition 33, not once in that game do you need to run around grinding levels. You can successfully go through the entire game, only going to each stage once. Fucking fantastic. But then you have games that just went too far with things. Some games, like Skyrim, CP2077, (especially) Hogwarts Legacy, I only know the ending to those games because other people beat them. Ex33 I got 52/55 achievements (just need to win the gestral games and find whatever record I missed). I beat that game entirely in 74 hours. My first run of BG3 (53/54 achievements, only missing the bard one, because I think it’s boring), first playthrough was maybe 120 hours (currently over 700 due to multiple playthroughs). Skyrim… 146 hours… 27/75 achievements. CP2077, 133 hours, 18/57 achievements. Hogwarts sits at 50 hours with 19/45 achievements (that game should be a 20-hour game at most).
Games that don’t really respect your time. This one, Nintendo does a lot. Actually perfect example is Breath of the Wild. It’s a giant fuck off world that’s mostly empty, peppered largely with the same enemies throughout the whole thing. You have a weapon mechanic that encourages you NOT to fight (just get some good weapons and head off to exactly where you need to go). The cooking is bullshit, no recipe book, no making a bunch of something, a stupid cutscene every time. And the entire poop joke… like getting 20 for a poop joke would already be too much, but collecting 900 with (IIRC) no fucking way to track them… Or the fact that the way Nintendo expects you to get arrows is to grind out rupees to buy them. And the exploits used to get arrows or rupees quickly, in a single player game, they actively tried to patch out. That’s just one game, Nintendo does this on SO MANY GAMES, which actually pushed me to “fuck Nintendo” and I didn’t buy and won’t buy a Switch 2.
Some games are combos of these. One game I really like, but I always hit a wall is Satisfactory. Once I get to trains/aluminum, it’s just not fun anymore for me. I work 40-80 hours a week (sometimes I work 5x12s and 8ish hours Sat/Sun)(only sometimes, usually closer to 50 hours a week)… so all the extra planning and time to making a factory… like I just don’t have the fucking time. Same thing with Dune Awakening. The first zone was the best. Getting your first Orni wasn’t too bad, but it was already starting to push it. Having to fucking pay taxes in a game… Oddly, it was about the time I was farming up aluminum, I quit that game too. Maybe I have a pet peeve with aluminum in video games…
- Comment on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" 3 weeks ago:
And with the help of Valve, it’ll continue to get better. Hoping companies like EPIC also take note and really start adding things to Unreal to really push Vulcan and Linux. Like, I don’t want a monopoly or anything, but if big companies make big moves towards supporting Linux, others will follow. ( I know Unreal supports Linux, I’m talking like actively pushing tech, support, pushing for games to be compiled for linux, pushing for native code and not needing compatibility layers, etc.)
- Comment on Google CEO: If an AI bubble pops, no one is getting out clean 3 weeks ago:
you can fail upwards, con people and still get out filthy rich.
Only if you con the poors. If you con someone who’s rich or “powerful”, then you get punished.
- Comment on ‘Clair Obscur’ Leads The Game Awards 2025 Nominees With 12 Nods; ‘Silent Hill f’ Has Four Nominations 3 weeks ago:
You didn’t really offer any insight as to why you moved on…
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 4 weeks ago:
I hate this mentality.
“You did a thing, you knew what was going to happen” is victim-blaming. It’s increasingly hard NOT to buy a device that has some bullshit tech pushed into it, or AI pushed into it. And I’d bet there was nothing on the sales floor about eventual ads.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 4 weeks ago:
I believe this is their third VR headset.
- Comment on What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype? 4 weeks ago:
I played this with two friends. The progression system is just awful. So we got through the full campaign once and it was fine honestly. Then we were kind of hyped to try going through it again, it was all right definitely harder. And then the third time around we just gave up cuz it was clear that they’re just wasn’t that much game to play, and the enemy is just become bullet sponges and you either grind endlessly to try to level up and gain unknown amounts of power if its power at all.
Intermultiplayer sessions we did have a few epic moments won’t lie. But the cost just wasn’t worth it. And those thin offset the issues that we had.
- Comment on What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype? 4 weeks ago:
Did you play it solo or with people? I found the game to be fairly dull solo. It was better with people but the loot system still allowed a lot to be desired especially if you played with greedy people.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
I was going with Beetleborgs
- Comment on Google pulls the plug on first and second gen Nest Thermostats 1 month ago:
Oh how kind of them! They force disconnect an appliance but give you a coupon to buy the latest model.
And the newest model is different how? It’s a thermostat after all.
Whole reason I got one was because of the promised savings (never saw any, from the learning, just bullshit offers that allowed the electric company access…).
Guess it’s back to the tried and true mercury thermostat.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 1 month ago:
I have had 1 week off the whole year. I have some PTO coming up. I feel guilty using it (even though I shouldn’t).
- Comment on The concept of teen superheroes is stupid and boring 1 month ago:
Some comics are going to translate better if you can go R. Like if you want to portray something truly cruel, dark, painful, tragic, I feel like you’re not really going to get that on anything less than an R. Like DC’s Identity Crisi. Or you could just look at movies that did come out like Logan, or Deadpool. If there’s a Peacemaker film you probably would want that rated R.
- Comment on Elon Musk says he needs $1 trillion to control Tesla's robot army. Yes, really. 1 month ago:
You forgot to mention, that was was fired from PayPal(?) for being incompetent.
And the engineers he hires are either not that great, or (more likely) are having to play fast and loose due to unrealistic expectations. Like the original hyperloop demo that was setup years ago for a competition, instantly rusted and was secured poorly. It’s since been destroyed.
- Comment on Any advice for me a guy turning 18 yo old?? 1 month ago:
Who you are now, isn’t likely who you’ll be in 6 years. You’ll change a lot over the next few years as you become an adult. Legally, becoming an adult is the difference of a day. But actually maturing into an adult takes time and effort. Yes effort, you’ll meet plenty of adults who cling to their highschool self.
I don’t know if alcohol is still placed on a pedestal like it was in my teens, but alcohol isn’t that great. It’s an expensive poison humans can sorta metabolize. It can taste good, but moderation is key. The point isn’t to get drunk. As an adult who can drink anytime I please, is generally would rather just have water.
Now is a great time to get into a fitness routine.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
It was about the goal, not the how.
- Comment on Sony trying to warn the player they're settling for a lesser horse 2 months ago:
Hold on, that’s a real photo? I thought it was a joke or someone!
- Comment on Spokesperson 2 months ago:
I think you mean '99
Due the storm of ‘Bawitdaba’, ‘Only God Knows Why’, and ‘Cowboy’ being released that year and Napster.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
My first homelab server is running unRAID. No real complaints from me. It’s been running for years no issues other than the crap hardware it runs on (i7-3770, 32GB RAM). I have some file shares, docker, and some VMs. The UI makes it really easy to do stuff, especially if you don’t want to have to research and manage everything.
- Comment on ‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus 2 months ago:
To me, it is a false equivalence. Sport cards are based on people. Though I’d give you, they could just be bound by team and year instead of being random. But like, when Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card came out, no one could have guessed what would happen there.
And MTG is a game that’s constantly evolving. Here, I think the randomness was a planned mechanic that helps keep the game balanced and interesting (or it did like 30 years ago when I played). Might be a different story now, but doing a broken meta deck just was far less likely. Getting an assortment of colors encourages, especially new players, to try different approaches since each color (again, at least in my day) plays very differently.
But these blind box things are largely made to just be a fad. They’re created, hoping they’ll catch on with a demographic, to generate money… and landfill waste. You can go into a card shop and buy/trade/sell sports cards, or game cards (MTG/Pokemon). After the hype for these blind box toys, there’s no more demand. They create scarcity for the sake of driving sales. They employ psychologists for this type of stuff. These aren’t like the coin machines back in the day, where you could actually see the toys. They know that if you could see what was there, sales would tank.
Sports cards are a piece of history, a physical note of what was for a given player at a specific time. MTG/Pokemon are games. In both cases, you could just collect, but there’s more to them. But with the blind box toys, they’re just physical loot boxes. They exist only to be collected. Much like Beanie Babies back in the day. Or literally anything that’s ever called it’s a collector’s item or an investment… It’s just garbage. But now, they add in a known addiction mechanic to it, and target kids and AGGRESSIVELY advertise. You can call them all dumb, sure, that’s fine, I haven’t collected MTG or baseball cards in 30 years because I share a similar sentiment. And I’m not ignoring the tactics, the card games, or sports cards also employ… I do think they could change, and should change, but they won’t. But I believe they are less predatory, but not above criticism or review themselves.
In 5 years, is anyone going to care about a Lububu? No. Does anyone care about the crap my mom collected in her youth, no. But the things she liked to collect, when she walked into a shop, she could see what they had and buy exactly what she wanted. No tactics, just dumb things she liked. Same when I collected Amiibo. I could see what I was buying.
I’m hoping I’m making sense. Just because one thing is kinda sketchy, doesn’t mean it’s fine for another thing to be completely sketchy because “people are just having fun”. It’s not fun when someone goes into financial ruin and you pivot to “well, that was your choice,” because that’s now how addiction works.
- Comment on how do school shooters know how to use guns? 2 months ago:
I shot my first guns in kindergarten. My uncle’s handgun and my grandpa’s shotgun. Lived on the farm, it was just normal. But it was just in the farm, supervised of course. The moment my cousin and I were old enough we were in a firearms safety course so we could go hunting. Hell we used to help make ammo (just reloading shells).
Guns are really simple to use. Reloading for most guns people will ever encounter outside the military is simple. You got the safety switch and the trigger and it’s really point and click at that point. I tell you the hardest part is learning how to hold it correctly. We’ve all seen videos of people holding a gun wrong and shenanigans ensues when they lose control of it. imgur.com/gallery/shotgun-fail-odC6s
- Comment on You're still talking about this? 2 months ago:
And from reports, that really hurt!
- Comment on Aged like milk 2 months ago:
I am. It’s a reality of humanity. Most of us would like peace myself included. But to have peace, you have to be able to defend it. You can’t be passive. It’s kind of the idea of why you would have military, people ready and willing to fight to preserve the peace from those that end peace.
My great-grandfather wasn’t exactly sad when he helped take down the Nazis. And I’m not going to be particularly sad when taking down a neo-Nazi. Sorry, they like to be called maga now.