In DA2’s defence, the game went from concept to release in 16 months. With a development cycle that fast, it’s a miracle it was even playable; I wouldn’t call its rampant copy-pasting “lazy”. I’d call it many bad things, because that game had tons of problems, but that’s what happens when the beancounters have an unexpected success and want to capitalize on it yesterday.

instead of just playing the game as intended.

I feel like you just unwittingly hit on the problem many series veterans have been having.

People are approaching bosses in Elden Ring like they’re Dark Souls bosses, and in my thousands of hours across the series, the only bosses I summon help for is Sister Friede and the Demon Twins. Everyone else I was eventually able to defeat on my own, because that’s how they were balanced.

But in Elden Ring, you have the open world to grind in and Spirit Ashes and crazy weapon arts that are far beyond any that were in Dark Souls 3, and the bosses are balanced around these things. It’s harder to make a good guess at how powerful a player is at any given time in Elden Ring, so in order to counter the player’s bullshit, the bosses need bullshit of their own.

This, naturally, throws a wrench into the plans of veterans who are used to bosses that are tough but fair and approaching them in that manner. They then promptly get their shit pushed in because they aren’t using the things the encounters are balanced around having simply because they didn’t used to need them.

It makes the bosses binary. Either you get your ass kicked, or you summon help, use a Mimic Tear, and run a train on them. They’re either frustrating or boring, and fights that are frustrating or boring just aren’t fun. I’m not having fun getting comboed to death or just pelting the boss with spells while my goons beat them up.

The magic is gone. Bosses used to be the highlight of Souls games, and now I just want them to be over.

The only time it was challenging was back when AI factions had a hate boner for the player and ONLY the player. Like how they would leave their settlements undefended to march halfway across the map, through territory belonging to a faction they were at war with just to sack the player’s settlements.

Mages are really nerfed despite the story saying they’re super powerful and dangerous.

This is kinda selling mages in the setting short.

Magic in this setting is basically the same as it is in Warhammer 40k: mages get their power from an alternate dream dimension that is also where demons reside, they can spontaneously explode and/or summon demons if they’re not careful, and they’re heavily regulated/repressed. Rogue mages are hunted down and killed by Templars, and everyone else is mostly confined to wizard towers that double as prison camps.

It never comes across in gameplay, but mages and how they’re treated are major plot points in all three games.

Let’s not forget how blatantly the bosses read your inputs. FROM bosses have always done this, but it’s never been so obvious; it kinda breaks the “tough but fair” illusion.

My take is that since players have gotten so powerful, bosses had to adapt…but the only ways to make them stronger have upset the balance between “tough” and “fair”. Hit boxes for attacks have gotten larger, which hurts readability; attacks that you used to be able to dodge now land, even though it didn’t look like it. Bosses hit harder, combo their attacks, and they can even cancel into different combos now.

All of this happened because bosses are balanced around Spirit Ashes and the new insane weapon arts. It’s harder than ever to SL1 the game, because if you don’t have a good Ash summon or a crazy weapon art or didn’t grind for upgrade materials, main quest bosses are stupidly hard. If you did do all of those things, they’re almost trivial.

It’s weird. The bosses used to be the highlight of Soulsborne games, and now they’re the worst part because they’re just not fun anymore. Dragonlord Placidusax is my favorite fight, and it’s not even close. I either trivialize my way through the rest, or just wanted them to be over. The satisfaction of fighting a worthy opponent is gone, because it’s almost always just unfair for the player, or unfair for the boss.

Thank you, sir; I’d saved that a while back for a comment and couldn’t find the original.

They’re far from perfect, I’d be the first person to tell you.

But they’re still light-years ahead of anyone else, because they’re perfectly happy just making tons of money instead of trying to squeeze every last cent out of the storefront at our expense.

Their problem was they counted their chickens before they hatched. They went on a spending spree while expecting an influx of cash from the Saudi PIF. But the deal fell through and suddenly, they were short about $2 billion.

Grimes was also in Cyberpunk, and it was abundantly clear that she’s not an actor.

old.reddit is probably going to be on the chopping block, too. I only go for niche communities these days, but I’m gone for good once old.reddit is gone.

And yes, that’s just. Yet, the same slave going into a spree and killing everybody that crosses his path would be a terrorist.

This is something that an awful lot of people seem to miss.

Kira made it very clear that her and her fellow resistance fighters actively targeted Cardassian civilians and she never showed any remorse over doing so. Civilian casualties are inevitable in a scenario like this, but going out of your way to target them, even if they’re occupiers, is crossing a line.

🎵The wise man builds his house upon the rock…🎵

It’s not nearly as fast-paced or mobile as Warframe, and Helldivers is much more about the chaos you cause with your buddies than grinding for gear and materials. You don’t have to worry about mods or damage types (dealing with armored enemies and fortifications is the most you’ll have to worry about), just shoot bugs/Terminators and call in an airstrike or orbital bombardment on anything guns won’t kill. I’d say it’s closer to Left4Dead than anything else.

You can drop by yourself if you want, but it is an always-online, live-service game, and the focus is on co-op.

In other words, things that are normal about game development, especially for games that are still getting updates. Of course an update will break mods, of course there’s going to be some miscommunication, of course there’s going to be bugs in a game this complex and fixing them takes time.

I’m just glad Larian recognizes that most of us knows how this sort of thing works and to call out that handful who have nothing better to do than to spew their hate on the internet.

When it works, it really works. Weapon sounds and feedback are awesome, airstrikes are immensely satisfying, and the chaos is some of the most co-op fun I’ve had in years.

But you can tell this a AA title, and the developers were unprepared for the size of this launch. Lots of bugs, matchmaking is wonky, and the servers are struggling hard to keep up. Not to mention the kernel-level anti-cheat on PC…the only reason I have it on PC was because a friend gifted me a copy.

If you can look past that, give it a shot. If not, wait a couple of weeks and then try it.

shrug

I already assumed I’m being monitored on my work devices, and write my emails and chats like they’re going to be used in a deposition.

If I’m shit-talking someone, it’s in person or on my personal device.

I lived in Carbondale for a bit, which is a really neat college town. It’s home to Southern Illinois University, one of the wildest party schools in the later part of the 20th century (to the point where city officials banned Halloween celebrations because they were getting out of hand), and it seemed to me like a tolerant, cosmopolitan town in south Illinois.

But then you drive a few miles south, and you get to Anna, one of the most infamous “sundown towns” in America.

Man, I just think about the opening for “Would?” by Alice in Chains. People who underappreciate the bass haven’t heard that song.

Honestly, it’ll probably wind up becoming an American version of The Troubles. Republicans are cowards, and I doubt there are very many who are truly willing to fight and die for their cause. However, there are plenty of people willing to commit terrorist bombings and acts of sabotage if they think they can get away with it, and the US is huge. There are still plenty of places to hide if that’s the case.

And if Trump wins reelection, I can’t imagine many blue states putting up with it, and the same thing will happen from the opposite direction.