Goodeye8

I know It’s just that the term has gotten even more overloaded and vague over time. At least in the 90s you could somewhat draw a really squiggly line where RPG-s had skills and classes and stats-boosting items and xp and all that jazz, and non-rpg games didn’t really have that. But 00s has some games implementing RPG elements into itself and it kicked into full gear in the 10s with AAA non-RPG games adopting xp, levels, skills, stat sticks etc and most AAA RPG-s simplifying by dropping classes and such. Whatever thin line there was in the 90s has been completely eroded in the 10s. If someone wants to call Horizon Forgotten West an RPG I can’t really say it’s not

That’s because Clair Obscur is directly influenced by the JRPG genre which is why it feels almost like not a RPG compared to something that is a western RPG like KC:D2.

But I agree, the term RPG is way overloaded and it needs a more stricter set of rules to define what a RPG is. But it’s been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it, I just laugh when Monster Hunter gets nominated as an RPG because in my mind I would never consider it a RPG.

I don’t think it had a big marketing strategy, but it definitely marketed itself through word of mouth because it definitely deserved all the praise (and now awards) it got.

I don’t think Tencent cares that much about Chinese nationalism to push for a China themed AC. It seems to me like Tencent just likes to stick their hand in every pot and make money. At least that’s what I think, I don’t know what they’re doing behind the scenes.

I’ll rephrase it more clearly then. Selfhosting focuses on the hosting aspect of software. !programming@programming.dev focuses on the development aspect of software. This article talks about the architectural decision made during development. It doesn’t talk about how to host serverless. It doesn’t even talk about why you wouldn’t want to selfhost serverless. It talks about bad software patterns the come with serverless. It also talks about the cost of running those things but even that is geared more towards enterprise level devops people.

It might be an interesting read from the software developer perspective but it’s not interesting from the selfhoster perspective, because the article has nothing to do with selfhosting.

The discussion is off topic for the same reason web development software patterns or the benefits of choosing one language over another aren’t really relevant to the selfhosting community. Because most self-hosters don’t develop the software they host, they set up existing software. Serverless technology itself might be relevant, if there was a project using that, but how the architectural decision impacts software development is not really relevant to self-hosters.

I’m not sure how that’s relevant. I even considered the possibility of them ordering the list based on revenue instead of units sold but even then it doesn’t make sense that there’s no Silksong in the top 20. One of the most anticipated title of the year in its release month makes less revenue than RDR2? And it doesn’t explain any other anomalies, like Helldivers 2, which has been out for over a year, selling better than Snake Eater, which is considered one the best MGS titles?

I’m not calling them liars but I do think their data is incomplete.

Absolute trash source.

No Silksong in the top 20

Konami said MGS Snake eater sold more than 1 million units on the first day so according to the list Helldivers 2 had to sell more than 1 million units last month because it apparently has sold better than MGS?

Had to check what the fuck is a Kickoff Bundle and it’s apparently NFL 26 and some college football 26. Okay fine, but the list also has NFL 26 brought up separately so NFL gets 2 places in the top 20? Never am I going believe people bought the Kickoff bundle for college football.

And then there are some really sus entries like RDR2 (which is a good game but is it really one of the best selling games of last month?)

When you make a statement it’s your responsibility to provide proof because what if you’re talking out of your ass? How would we find any proof in that scenario when it literally wouldn’t exist? How would we know if you misinterpreted a source? How would we know we misinterpreted the correct source? What if we think what you’re saying is so stupid we don’t want to waste our time looking for proof? There are a lot of reasons the burden of proof shouldn’t fall on us, which means the burden of proof should fall on the person who made the statement. They know if what they said is factual and if it’s factual they know where they found this fact and thus it would be significantly less effort for them to find and present the source.

And a few years back you could get the same deal for half the price and in a few years it’s going to cost even more. You’re getting slow boiled because you’re thinking “I’m still getting a good deal”. You’re getting a good deal until you’re no longer getting a good deal and then what? Best case scenario you simply won’t have any of the games you paid to play. Worst case (if Game pass becomes successful enough) gaming is fucked because it’ll become streaming services 2.0 where you have to have 4 different subscriptions active just to play the games you want to play, and good luck trying to buy games when they’ve been priced into high heavens just to make the subscriptions seem reasonably priced (MS already tested that with Outer Worlds 2).

Doesn’t matter how good Game pass was or is, it’s a poisoned chalice and it will irreversibly fuck up gaming if people continue using it.

Now factor publishers cut and the cost of development. At 50% they probably didn’t even recoup their costs.

Of course you’re going to have a hard time finding anything on Google because any game that fails to be a success also drops from search results. But to give an example, Arco. It’s got positive reviews from pretty much everyone giving it a review and yet it didn’t even get more than 200 concurrent players on Steam. I’m not saying it’s some unbelievable gaming experience, but it is a good game. If there’s nothing wrong with the game why was it a failure? Am I supposed to believe they made a game for nobody?

But great things have mass appeal outside their niche. Metallica is an excellent example of that because it’s not only metalheads who listen to Metallica. Same thing with games.

I think we can agree that soulslikes are not for everyone. Lies of p and Lords of the fallen give a rough estimate what the core audience for soulslike is, which is pretty small. But it didn’t stop Elden Ring from being the biggest release of that year, because Elden Ring transcends the genre it’s in. Great games will pull people from outside their niche the same way great songs, shows, movies, books and paintings can reach well outside the box people have put them in.

In gaming we’ve seen the same thing happen with Silksong. Same thing happened with Clair Obscur and the JRPG genre. Same thing happen with BL4 and the looter shooter genre. Hades 2 will most likely pull people outside the roguelite genre. Silent hill f will most likely pull people outside the horror genre. When you have so many great games pulling players from outside their niche and hogging all the limelight, how are you going to discover those other great games that don’t get any of the limelight? You won’t, which is why this is a discoverability issue.

But you still have to discover someone putting out the equivalent of Master of puppets. The issue isn’t that too many games get released, the issue is that too many good games get released. When every year 15 master of puppets comes are you going to buy all 15? Are you even going to be aware of all 15 of them?

People will buy what they’re aware of and the issue is that so much good stuff is coming out it’s almost impossible to be aware of all the good stuff coming out. That’s the issue here, great games falling through the cracks because other great games release around it.

The issue is that most people are people of habit and habits are hard to break, especially when they also kinda work. Most bosses in both games can be solved by dashing and slashing better. It’s a strategy that works so it’s a strategy people will apply even if there’s potentially is a better strategy that would make the fight easier.

And so instead of experimenting with different tools to find what works better people will beat their head against the harder option because eventually the harder option will work too (or you give up and call the game too hard). I do the same thing with some Silksong bosses because sometimes I just don’t feel like experimenting.

Like the article mentions, a lot of points of criticism would just as easily apply to Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight had combat that required good reaction and precision. Hollow knight had platforming that required a lot of precision. The difficulty was also pretty punishing in hollow knight where you could easily get beaten by a regular mob if you playing sloppy. Missing maps and runbacks were in Hollow knight. If you’re stuck on a boss the amount of upgrades you can find and grind is limited and if you’ve found everything up to that point the only way to beat the boss is to “git gud”.

Credit to Team Cherry where credit is due. While runbacks are annoying they’re much faster in Silksong due to the character simply being faster. Healing 3 “hearts” at once and, possibly more importantly, letting you heal in the air makes healing far more viable during a fight. I remember in Hollow knight I pretty much gave up trying to heal in most boss fights because it was simply too slow and you’re pretty much a sitting duck. And the increased mobility has definitely made it easier to avoid damage. I think a big reason people complain about taking a lot of damage is because they don’t use the full toolset.

But that isn’t to say there isn’t a legitimate issue here. I think the game has something of a scaling issue. You start the game with 5 masks and if you get hit you lose a mask, which means 5 hits and you’re dead. But by the time you’re in act 2 most hits take 2 masks which means you’re effectively playing with 3 hits and you’re dead. Which again would be fine if by that time you also had roughly double the amount of health, but unless I’ve missed something you’re most likely going to get only 1 extra mask at the start of act 2, which does very little to alleviate the damage because with 5 masks it’s 3 hits and with 6 masks it’s still 3 hits. The game goes on but in terms of health you get weaker. You do get some tools to better evade damage, but since that requires adjusting your playstyle to use those tools (how many people use floating during a boss fight?) I think for most people the extra tools are not offsetting the extra damage they’re taking.

So the game might not be significantly harder than Hollow Knight, but it can feel like it due to it playing very differently to Hollow Knight. In Silksong you kinda have to evade every attack because you’re a glass pistol (not really a cannon), in Hollow knight you could choose to just tank some attacks because one attack doesn’t leave you half-dead. It also means in Hollow Knight you get more chances to make mistakes but those mistakes have a longer lasting effects due to healing being much harder. Maybe the best way to describe it is: “Hollow Knight is like Dark Souls, Silksong is like Dark Souls 3”.

Because two is an improvement on one in almost every way?

The only question is, who will be making the unlocked phones and how much will they cost us?

Fairphone probably. To my knowledge Fairphone 6 can be unlocked and for the less technical, who want to degoogle, they also sell Fairphone 6 with /e/os installed. You won’t get a competitive price for the hardware but rather a fair price for the hardware and under capitalism fair isn’t competitive because the competition regularly resorts to exploitation of third world resources and cheap labor.

I feel like we have pretty good concepts and tools for world gen. If games are going to use AI I’d expect the best results to be in quest systems. Most games struggle to procedurally generate good quests. They end up feeling formulaic in almost every aspect.

I imagine even if the quest structure stays the same simple “go to X and do Y” but you let AI generate a good reason to go on the quest it instantly improves the quality of procedural quests.

But that assumes AI can generate a good reason and I have my doubts about that, and a lot of other things AI supposedly can do.

And why can’t university IT set up the server? No offense but you’re a nobody asking us, also nobodies, how to set up some sort of a funky server on the university network, meanwhile the university pays people to do this for a living.

Where will the server actually be? Will it be in a secure location where only authorized personnel can physically access the machine or will it be behind the trash can in the cafeteria where anyone can access it?

Since you will lose access to it once it’s set up who will monitor the system? Who turns it on in case it somehow gets shut down? Who sets up backups and does rollbacks if something breaks?

What happens to the hardware when research project is over?

To me it all smells like something the IT department should set up. They already know the best practices. They also know whatever security guidelines they need to follow. They will have monitoring systems in place so they could admin the system instead of leaving it without an actual administrator. And they’re probably the ones decommissioning the hardware when the research project is over.

My suggestion is to leave it to the people who are getting paid to do this. It’s one thing to know how to set up a home server on your home network, it’s a different thing to set up a server on an enterprise network.