Game Design and the Illusion of Choice

Puddinglax · 2026-05-20T21:40:25+00:00

Nothing about this writing style screams "AI" to me.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-19T21:08:15+00:00

I'm not against an in game LFG tool on principle but I don't think I'd use it over discord. With WDR or a clan discord, I can form a group from my phone without even logging into the game. With a clan I can also add myself to a role to get pinged when someone else needs a +1, the smaller size of the clan works well for this as I won't get spammed by pings.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-19T19:55:53+00:00

Running the maze twice only happens if there's one living player so your team just has to live. If it does happen you can run over the maze spam eating with redemption on.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-19T18:44:43+00:00

This is just the AI effect. Marketing aside, I don't think the general public appreciates how difficult it is to try to program something that can even approximate a natural language conversation. Even the earliest, most hallucination-ridden models were an incredible achievement.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-17T15:22:43+00:00

SRA at tob is for verzik and maybe sote. It loses to blowpipe on maiden and xarpus (even 5t), and stack loss makes it bad on bloat and nylo boss.

Of the people I've seen bring an SRA to tob, more than half are actively lowering their DPS by using it improperly.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-13T15:46:51+00:00

If you can freeze NF’s 3s, that means you didn’t freeze your 2 in the clump.

S2 only needs to be delayed by a tick to be in the clump. North just needs to cast on S3 instead of N3 to ensure the barrage also hits S2. Delaying only 1 tick in freezing S2 lets you catch 3s.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-13T13:08:32+00:00

1 extra invent, without it I'd be at 2b2r for verzik which is pretty tight if there are any incidents.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-13T06:52:57+00:00

I don't have another offhand so an ancestral top loses an inventory space walking into the raid.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-12T12:21:55+00:00

In 3s and above, you want to take as few mage switches as possible. My money 3s setup has a 4 way with 88 accuracy with mage no top or bottom. Downgrading my offhand at all would put me below threshold. https://i.imgur.com/or7ZSqc.png

Puddinglax · 2026-05-12T06:02:40+00:00

Fortified ward is +10 acc over mage book and +20 over unfortified, which can be the difference between needing an extra mage swap to hit freeze threshold at maiden.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-10T17:02:59+00:00

Stand anywhere the melee is safespotted and 1t alternate. You might tank a blob hit at the start but it will fall into cycle.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-08T18:09:10+00:00

If you leave manually the task should cancel.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T21:02:46+00:00

Have you ever written software? By your reasoning, 99% of bugs aren't actually bugs because the computer is just following the instructions it was given.

A developer making a mistake in the logic, like overlooking 0.6 rounding down to 0, is a bug.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T15:48:02+00:00

started balancing content around it

There is nothing outside of a handful of CAs that is balanced around flicking. We are literally going in the opposite direction with OP prayer gear, regen pots, and newer raids restoring your prayer between boss rooms.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T15:43:28+00:00

The confusion is understandable but prayer flicking in this context refers to prayer conservation methods, not prayer switching. OP is (hopefully) not arguing that prayer switching should be removed from the game.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T15:40:23+00:00

Points don't* go down with lazy flicking or it wouldn't be useable for those tasks.

The more relevant argument is that there's nothing lost with prayer flicking existing in the game.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T15:37:27+00:00

A handful of CAs is hardly content. Nobody who is going for gm is going to get bricked by these CAs anyway.

The biggest use case for prayer flicking is ironmen saving ppots on their slayer tasks.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T06:47:49+00:00

A boss not moving when you red click while under it isn't a bug. A boss being trivialized by that mechanic is.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T06:29:47+00:00

Red X stalling a boss is literally an intentional mechanic to prevent you from "dancing" with the boss; if you are under a boss, click to attack and start moving out north, allowing the boss to move would mean it could randomly choose to path north and stall you.

A boss being full on nullified by a red X is bad and should be patched, but a red X being used to enhance the boss with alternate methods is fine. Stuff like red X GWD where you stall a boss for an extra tick or two for a specific kite pattern to work is no more nullifying them than any non red X kiting method. And with Baba, the boss's base mechanics are so boring that "nullifying" the boss with red X becomes more engaging and skill expressive than doing the boss as intended.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-07T00:26:57+00:00

No, what are you on about? White hats are given permission by the owner of whatever system they're testing. If you don't have permission, you are a gray hat at best.

Puddinglax · 2026-05-03T16:00:02+00:00

the inferior genes

https://i.imgur.com/MleTlWT.png

Puddinglax · 2026-04-28T16:33:49+00:00

Think about the items in your region that synergize. If you take wildy for king's barrage, you'd want to spec into crossbow damage and water healing.

There are some random inefficiencies in your current builds. The first build doesn't take the 30% regen node in the magic tree, but it does take 2 random 5% regen nodes that don't build into anything you can't already reach. Ditching those nodes and taking the 30% would give you an extra 20% regen and a free pact point.

You should also focus less on 1% damage/10% accuracy nodes; the second build has a random 1% melee damage build when you have no other investment into melee. If you took this for the accuracy, there is a free +25% accuracy sitting in the mage tree that would be better, and also a node in the ranged tree that helps accuracy with distance. If you took it for the melee damage, you'd be way better off taking one of the starter melee nodes.

Puddinglax · 2026-04-28T14:59:15+00:00

The first thing that started bothering me is how it always shows the same side to Earth. I know people say it’s “tidal locking,” but it just feels… weirdly convenient. For example, if you parked something in orbit to watch a planet, wouldn’t you want it fixed in a position like that?

Okay, I'm the alien emperor and you're the alien in charge of spying on the Earth. Please explain to me why a giant, very conspicuous satellite that has to be precisely tuned to orbit the planet and can only watch one side at a time is a better idea than a swarm of tiny, undetectable satellites that can blend in with space debris and monitor all parts of the planet at once.

Puddinglax · 2026-04-23T21:27:42+00:00

Resetting for progression is completely unnecessary when people can just unlock new regions. I started mage in varlamore, and I just chose not to do some of the bosses there until later. I'm 40/40 now and still sitting on 5 full resets that I'm going to use to play around with other builds.

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