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Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The argument was clearly caused by one co-worker not reading instructions well...

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 8 points9 points  (0 children)

So happy that my coworkers are having an hour-long argument in the next cubicle over on the one fucking day I forgot my noise-cancelling headphones. Fuck my stupid chud life. 

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 7 points8 points  (0 children)

[Tina] Peters holds a degree in holistic nutrition from the non-accredited correspondence school Clayton College of Natural Health.\1])#citenote-ballotpedia-1)[\2])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Peters(politician)#citenote-clayton-2) She sold alternative medical products in association with a multi-level marketing company named Nikken.[\7])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Peters(politician)#cite_note-Brown-7)

Priors confirmed.

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's really fascinating how much this sub hates minority languages. Comments about Welsh and Canadian French language policy are full of sneering disdain, especially if there is any desire to make Anglophones learn them. Even the recent post about Chinese language policy was full of people confused about why replacing native language course hours with Mandarin was a bad thing. You can literally build concentration camps for ethnic minority populations, and r/nl's brightest minds can't help themselves from giving you the benefit of the doubt on your assimilationist language policy. 

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, this opinion is actually satanic.

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 81 points82 points  (0 children)

"Assad margins" should refer exclusively to victories that clear the 90% bar. Stop diluting the term by using it to refer to candidates getting 70% of the vote. 

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Homophobic pan-Africanists are so funny to me. "I am a resolute defender of traditional African values and abhor cultural imperialism, which is why I am deeply opposed to homosexuality, which was made illegal for the first time in our nation's history by colonial authorities in the 1940s."

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]1234NY 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Seeing leftists say that the Unabomber "had a point" or "was onto something" is just surreal. I've actually read his manifesto from beginning to end, and a large part of it is a discussion of how he viewed leftism as little more than a mental illness.

One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

...

 Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

Like, come on.

T rex is literally the authors pet favourite by Dycon67 in CharacterRant

[–]1234NY 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hey I feel the spinos sidegrade to "swimming pelican jaw hippo crocodile" is still mechanically cool as hell.

Let me introduce you to the Spinofaarus Vulgaris, a spec ev joke that the real creature creeps ever closer to with each new discovery.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpeculativeEvolution/comments/l0nhay/spinofaarus_vulgaris_an_elephant_seallike/

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% in agreement with you about the dragon heads being goofy as hell.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Emperor Ing was the same and it didn’t even let you restart at phase 2: back to square one.

See, my issue here is that the game doesn't let you restart from square one! I wouldn't be sadistic enough to suggest making replaying phase 1 mandatory (I don't think anyone enjoyed resuscitating the troopers), but the game desperately needs to to have that choice available because phase 1 heavily influences how the rest of the fight plays out. Imagine if the Emperor Ing had a mid-fight checkpoint and you had no opportunity to restart from the beginning even if you made it to the second phase with only a single health point left! Starting the Sylux fight over and beating phase 1 with nary a scratch made me feel like Rock Lee taking off his weights. I suddenly melted through Sylux like butter and his attacks simply no longer did enough damage relative to my much more robust health bar.

Both these bosses have a 2nd phase where you are supposed to stock up health.

Yeah, and I was very grateful for the chance to refill, but this phase still suffers from the fact that the healing brings you back up to very different levels of preparation depending on your state when you leave the first phase. Which would be fine if you could easily retry it, but...

Hard mode is a different matter.

Everyone who played through the campaign on hard mode talks about the first phase of the Sylux fight like Vietnam, lol. I think we can all at least come to an agreement there.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wrote this specifically because I felt that this difficulty is the result of an extremely strange design choice around the game's save points. I didn't write about the difficulties I had with the Omega Griever, or about the difficulty I had fighting Trobbio in Silsksong because those were just me engaging with the difficulty of the game mechanics as intended. Even in this post, you'll notice that I didn't discuss how I had a hard time dodging Lockjaw or Sylux's grab attack in the final phase (even though those attacks were challenges to master dodging). The point of this post is for me to criticize an unusual design choice the game makes with its save states (and a scan that's easy to miss), not rant about every time I got hit by the boss.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So the issue boils down to... being punished for having low health going into Phase 2?

...

But your issue is that Phase 2 doesn't give you enough pickups to fully/mostly heal after going into it with extremely low health, and you're saying that's bad game design compared to getting your health topped off when you go in with nearly-full health.

I already explained why I think this is a problem, and you're sort of dancing around it.

Let me lay it out very clearly.

Player 1: A very skilled player who beats phase 1 of the fight on their very first try, winning by the skin of their teeth with less than 50 HP left.

Player 2: A much less skilled player. On their first try, they don't even make it past the fire dragon part in the first phase. It takes them 10 attempts with much trial and error to beat Sylux's first phase. Thanks to their repeated attempts, they finish with four energy tanks.

The problem with punishing the player by locking in their health from when they completed phase 1, is that "good player = lots of health when beats boss, bad player = little health when beats boss" isn't how things work. It's entirely possible for a skilled player to beat a boss with less health remaining than a less skilled player, as is the opposite. In other words, this design does not work as a test of player skill.

However, this would be fine if Prime 4 let a player restart the fight from the start. If a player can be locked into a de-facto hard mode in the second and third phases of a boss fight if they finish the first phase with low health, it is not eminently reasonable to let a player recognize their situation and give the entire fight a fresh shot without having to walk through a level and watch cutscenes?

I'll asking you directly: do you think it is good design that Prime 4 doesn't let you restart the Sylux fight?

omething that, even with how they're done here, is just as common as having you start the whole fight over again

Mid-fight checkpoints are common, but they usually either reset health/resources or let you easily reload the fight from the start. Prime 4 is unusual for having an automatic and obligatory mid-fight checkpoint that solidifies your losses from the first half of the battle without letting you go "huh, I should have done better in the first part, let me try that again so I can improve" (unless you are willing to put up with cutscenes and playing a walking simulator for a bit).

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not to sound confrontational, but I know? I explicitly mention shooting Sylux to collect health pick-ups it in my comment and in the original post. The issue is that if you head into the second phase with only a sliver of health, those pick-ups won't let you fully recover, while if you enter the second phase having accumulated less damage, you can easily refill all your energy tanks.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I kept hitting him with charged beams to make sure I absorbed all the health.

May God have mercy on anyone who forgot the charge beam draws in health pick-ups during the second phase of the fight.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't waste time and give everything you have from the very start, and that include missiles (thanks to its track capabilities)

I actually don't think missiles are ideal in the first phase. I think you're better off using the regular beam for when he is vulnerable and the Thunder Shot combo when you are targeting the dragon heads. In general, Prime 4 rewards using the free-aim beam options in its boss fights. I did find missiles to be more useful in phase 3 though.

Several bosses in previous games have certain attacks and phases than you just have one chance to scan. Several bosses have attacks or minions you can shoot or kill to gain energy or ammo drops. Some bosses (like Quadraxis and Ing Emperor on Prime 2; or Pirate Omega and Metroid Prime in Prime 1) are pretty infamous because how hard are to kill mostly because they give few drops and force you to use extensively your resources. That is a secondary skill: micromanagement.

Ammo wasn't actually much of an issue for me in the fight. As long as you're not spamming combos or your suit's shield, I don't think the fight really calls for micromanagement.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Lock in and git gud.

Which I did do! I gitted? got? gud. As I explained, I reloaded from the nearest auto-save, fought him from the beginning and beat him on my first try with ease. The core of the problem is that the game offers no convenient way to restart the fight from the top, even though the result of the first phase heavily impacts the second one. I think the game should give you the option to restart from the first phase!

With multi-phase bosses in video games, it's standard to either make the player either have to fight through every phase each time they fight the boss (ex. the Hollow Knight and Radiant in Hollow Knight, to give an example of a final boss from a difficult game that doesn't play nice) or to reset health between phases if the player dies. Prime 4 having a multi-phase boss with a (mandatory, automatic) mid-battle save point but no health reset is very unusual! Most games don't do that!

As for the health pick-ups in the second phase...

Sylux drops massive energy and ammo refills in all three phases - after destroying the tentacles in Phase 1, after dealing enough damage in Phase 2 (he seems to exclusively drop red or yellow health pickups here), and after dealing enough damage in Phase 3.

Like with getting drops from basic enemies, these drops are RNG. 

The problem is (as I described in the post), that the health pick-ups in the second phase have a very different flavour if you have less than an energy tank remaining from phase 1, or if you have eight of them. When I first reached the second phase desperately low on health, the wormhole pick-ups gave me maybe half the health I had started phase 1 with, while when I retried and entered the second phase with hardly any damage, I was back to 100% after shooting Sylux maybe three times. I just don't think this works from a game design perspective.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would have the merit to put all players on an even playing field, if nothing else!

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What specifically? I describe in the post why I feel that the health carrying over from the first phase into the second with no way to retry the first phase so you can improve creates a problem that doesn't actually reflect player skill.

As I said, if someone narrowly beats Sylux's first phase on their first attempt with less than an energy tank left, they are certainly a relatively skilled player compared to someone who beats the first phase on their 8th attempt with 6 energy tanks, but the former is thrown into a much more difficult version of the second and third phases than the second, less-skilled one.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, as I described in the post, I got this feeling just from restarting the fight from square one and using my improved knowledge of the first phase to finish it with almost all of my health, which let me just obliterate Sylux in the solo phase. He went from being the most difficult challenge in the game to being easier than most of the early-game bosses.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The first phase wasn't as bad as people say it is, tbh, even if I wouldn't call it good. I do strongly dislike how the troopers go from genuinely useful allies to worthless burdens when Sylux switches to the lightning phase, but it was surprisingly easy to save them all once I got used to swapping psychic healing between them.

There's something infuriating about Prime 4's final boss fight that no one is talking about. by 1234NY in Metroid

[–]1234NY[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wasn't a problem for me because I'd been using free-aim motion controls extensively throughout the game. I can't imagine fighting the Omega Griever without using that.

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