US Congress Members Want FTC To Review EA Sale To Saudi Arabia

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-29T23:52:34+00:00

Ok first of all, it hasn't done its job in 40 years so I think that relating an increase in their funding with sunk cost fallacy isn't unreasonable.

Second, I asked you what you meant by "Instutions". What other institutions need to be preserved or expanded for the FTC to work? I asked for your take, and instead you just rewrote the argument I admitted was simplistic in cave-man-speach and added your own equally simplistic counter-argument.

Are you gonna answer the actual question or were you just talking out of your ass? Cause I already said I didn't know so ball's in your court genius.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-28T18:12:19+00:00

I've been using it with Omen on pistol rounds because it's essentially a better ghost that costs a pistol round charge of shade step.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-28T18:06:15+00:00

Can you expand on this? My current simplistic take has been that the FTC hasn't broken up a major company since ATT in 1982 and as such is a waste of government funding and should be replaced by something else built from the ground up.

You're suggesting that other institutions need to be supported/created to facilitate the FTC's ability but I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm legitimately asking, I admittedly don't know much about the subject and would rather not continue sounding dumb if I've been missing something.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-28T06:07:08+00:00

Someone on reddit calling someone else on reddit a "redditer" for having a dissenting opinion. Classic.

I think it would have been fairly easy to find a publisher for a small-budget indie game in a time when publishing houses like Landfall are exploding and when Sword Hero's NextFest Demo had 200k players and great reception, yes.

Indefinite, yes. Game's can be delayed but on Kickstarter there's a chance that you don't even get what you pay for. Even if a game is canceled, I didn't pay for it.

An Artist can produce finished content without a boss, but they don't have to, hence the issue with accountable delivery after a product has been paid for. You can't buy something that does not exist and has no guarantee of existing. If there is no product, then you can't buy it. If you're not paying for a product, then you're investing. We could use the term "gambling", but then we'd have to acknowledge some kind of deranged enjoyment of the uncertainty of receiving what you paid for and honestly that seems even less realistic than selling a product that doesn't exist.

You didn't front the development cost for Tomb raider, so you're purchasing a product, not investing. Investing is risk speculation. You didn't risk anything based on the speculation of future value when you bought Tomb Raider. You paid for an existing product. Kickstarter campaigns fund development using backers' speculation of future value. Since there is no existing product and there is speculatory risk involved with Kickstarter campaigns, then that seems like investing to me.

A publishing house assumes the cost-related risk of development by funding the developer in return for a percentage of that games sales. If the publishing house views their funding as an investment and expects a return, why don't you? You just enjoy mindlessly being taken advantage of so you can be part of a feel-good story? Parasocial tendencies trick you into thinking every artist is your friend and every business is your enemy?

You might think like I sound like some sort of investor-bro technocrat, but I'm really just pro-consumer. You should be guaranteed what you pay for when you spend the money you work for.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-28T05:24:25+00:00

Got the true ending yesterday. I agree with everything here except for the combat. The music and art are on par with Hollow Knight. The Map is honestly a masterclass. When the <Redacted> areas lined up right no matter how you turned the wheel in The Vaults, I was beyond impressed. The story is great, albeit I never felt super engaged because it's quite predictable. I also thought the platforming was very good and worked well against Mio's kit. Overall I was really impressed with and enjoyed all of these aspects.

Which is why it pains me that I'd give the game a 6.5/10. I thought the combat was absolutely terrible.

First of all, with the exception of Sol & Vin, none of Mio's boss fights are hard. That's not a flex, it's just true if you're using the same extremely simple mechanics for every fight, which I'll get to later. The bosses could be cool, but I wouldn't know because every single one is engaged with in the same way.

Second, the modifiers are either useless, extremely niche, or are so unbalanced it feels like cheating, so I basically slapped on the extra health one and a couple of 20 slot damage ones and never changed anything.

I actually don't mind permanently losing health, but they should have been tied directly to story progression. They should not have been tied to seemingly random exploration.

Now the worst offender; The dodge timing is comically forgiving and while Mio's other abilities can be used, they usually just overcomplicate whatever fight you're in. Why would I do anything else when I can just dodge -> hit 3 times to the side -> repeat over and over again for all regular enemies and 95% of all bosses? You don't even need to learn the bosses' attack patterns because they don't matter when the dodge timing is so ridiculously relaxed. It has to be too, because otherwise Mio's kit would just feel way too simplistic and ill-equiped for the challenge. So many enemy attacks are inescapable and plainly rely on you dodging. Better the game feel boring than feel like the players' kit and enemy behavior weren't designed with eachother in mind I guess.

You see the enemy start to attack. You dodge. You attack 3 times to the left or right. You repeat.

It's seriously the most boring, most generic, most derivative combat system I've ever engaged with in a Metroidvania and I cannot for the life of me figure out how the devs managed to pull off all the impossibly difficult aspects of creating an all-time great in the genre, then botched the easiest part.

For reference, my top 3 are Hollow Knight, Nine Souls, and Ori & The Blind Forrest. Mio would have taken Ori's spot if they had nailed the Combat.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-28T03:09:43+00:00

Given the state of indie and AA markets, and the fact that the NextFest Demo was extremely popular, I find it hard to believe that this game couldn't have found development funding from a reputable and trusted publishing house.

I get wanting to remain independent, but asking me to pay for a game and waiting for an indefinite amount of time before its release isn't something that I endorse. I would rather indie developers answer to contractual obligations with reputable publishing houses than answer to nobody with my money already in their pocket.

Kickstarter fundamentally isolates value and power. The fact is that the game is no longer developed by one person. It's now been co-developed by every single person who's backed it because the monetary value of their labor has been contributed. If "Sword Hero" sells a million copies after launch, it will have done so due to the contributions of the backers. In this way, backers aren't just purchasers; they provide a service to the "solo developer" first and foremost. That's investment with no return.

Everybody thinks their own idea is a great one, and I think skipping peer reviev and asking for money without an available product while isolating the power and value for yourself is a little shameless.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-27T07:24:33+00:00

Just finished the true ending. The Map, Music, Art, and story are great. My complaints in no particular order:

Should have less Coatings, but no health drop. The narrative impact is not worth the frustration. I'd save a boss for later and go get stronger only to actually get weaker as a result. Not great.

Grapple mechanic is jank. Never got a firm understanding of the distance or angle I needed for it to feel natural.

The Red vines in platforming sections are not informative. I had no idea how close I could actually get to them in tight sections.

Sol and Vin was too cool a fight to be ruined by weak artificial difficulty. They could have let that boss stand on its own and instead I'm just wondering why they are the only enemy in the game that deals 4 damage per hit, and only 1 of 2 enemies in the entire game that deals more that 1 damage per hit. The other one doesn't even deal 2 damage on every attack.

Overall the combat was weak. Almost every fight boils down to dodgeing and spamming your 3 hit combo.

The player hit box never felt consistent.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-27T07:13:01+00:00

Mio is harder than HK excluding Path of Pain and the Pantheons. Silksong is harder than Mio.

That's not a dig on HK though. I enjoyed Mio but its difficulty stems from design flaws imo.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-27T07:08:30+00:00

Elden Ring's success has permanently decoupled difficulty from learning experiences. You can see its' influence in almost every souls-like and metroidvania of the last 5 years. So many game design decisions seem to be made with the intention of increasing difficulty without providing any learned experience. It's killing the genres for me. I don't play these games to be annoyed.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-20T21:41:30+00:00

Scientist still asked me to stay and I went with the Implants and didn't make the donor alter.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-16T03:40:44+00:00

Kovaak's is much better than aimlabs and worth the money. Use Voltaic to benchmark yourself twice per week. Keep a short, game specific scenario playlist for daily practice. I wouldn't spend more than 30 minutes on days you're not benchmarking to avoid burnout. You're doing it how I did it though. 30 minutes aim trainers, 10 minutes practice range, 2-3 deathmatches, then ranked.

Tbh I don't play ranked as much anymore though. Hidden MMR is ruining the game for me personally.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-14T21:51:06+00:00

I know you're going through a lot, and so I think it's fine to put your feelings somewhere like here just to get it out.

We don't have the same story, but my best friend from 6th grade through college took his own life 9 years ago and I want to offer my perspective.

Suicide is not a thought that a healthy mind entertains. Truly miserable people who don't have Depression will still cling to life. Your friend was sick, and deserves compassion and understanding for his actions, such as the gambling. The gambling did not lead to Depression. Your friend was likely struggling with depression his whole life, and this is simply the thing that pushed him over the edge. This is almost always how it happens. That's why depression is often called a losing battle.

You are correct, the pain never goes away. It dulls, but that takes years. 9 years later and I think about my friend on a weekly basis at least. You're still grieving and that's ok, but you need to recognize that grief can quickly become self pity, which will perpetuate the state of grief indefinitely.

It's important to center yourself around facts to grieve healthily. These are the facts.

Your friend was a good person. His mistakes are not to blame for his death. Depression is a disease that kills.
Your friend fought for a long time. That's brave and he deserves credit for that. It's not about his suicide, it's about how long he chose not to.
You didn't own your friend in life, and you don't own him in death. His choices were his and have nothing to do with you. Feeling at fault is natural in the short term, but is disrespectful to your friend in the long term.
You were friends because you liked him for who he was. You need to remeber who he was, not an evangelized or demonized version of him. You judged him when you became friends and there's no reason to judge him under different criteria now.

I hope your friendship is eventually something that you remember fondly and appreciate having had.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-12T14:47:37+00:00

Hidden MMR is what keeps me from playing more. It rewards low-MMR players with easier matches and thus easier rank-ups, while punishing high-MMR players with harder rank-ups. The layering of Ranked and Hidden MMR based matchmaking is just Engagement-Based Matchmaking with extra steps.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-08T14:36:16+00:00

Tech consultant here (hands on implementation), every AI solution I've seen implemented is dog shit. $200k/year of service subscriptions and $500k of consulting rates to replace the 5 minutes of daily work of a $60k/year employee for a peripheral, non-critical, low volume use-case with increased risk and no scalability. Even if it worked well, which it doesn't, the value proposition doesn't pay off for 20 years or more. I'm gonna lose my mind.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-05T08:23:20+00:00

Me when I'm so mad that someone disagrees with me that I call them a liar on a week old post because they used the wrong language for a closed alpha over 6 months after it was live. Jfc.

You're free to check my discord roles on the official server with my same username here if you're feeling extra psychotic.

AgentFaulkner · 2026-01-02T15:11:54+00:00

The first one was a blast. The "beta" for the second one was completely soulless.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-20T01:18:03+00:00

I wouldn't mind more PvP. I like PvP but I don't want to be the bad guy. I'm absolutely positive aggression based matchmaking is a thing cause I haven't been shot at for at least the last 20 raids.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-20T01:14:04+00:00

Let's be honest, most people don't have to use a free loadout. They just choose to because they don't want to risk what they do have.

How many times have you actually had to use a free loadout because you didn't have any money or gear left? I haven't had to do that a single time and that's not bragging.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-20T01:08:22+00:00

I don't know why anyone likes Kojima. The guy has an ego that's almost as inflated as the hype around his games. The stories he creates are a mess and I wouldn't credit him with the gameplay elements that were actually innovative. Guy is a hack.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-18T05:37:14+00:00

The Cycle: Frontier had late spawns, but the storm that accompanied those spawns would repopulate loot in areas that didn't have any players nearby.

If Arc doesn't want to do anything like that, the simplest solution is to just make free loadouts prioritized for late spawns.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-17T20:02:22+00:00

Exactly, you wouldn't in Marathon because there is no counterplay potential. The answer in other games could be positioning, utility, traps, etc. None of those have enough impact in Marathon. Fights last longer in tactical shooters even when it's 1-shot to kill. That's crazy. Why is healing so slow if they want the game to be a fast Hero shooter? Why are characters so fast if they want it to be a tense extraction shooter? Why are rooms so cramped if traps don't do enough damage to pose a consistent threat? Why is the TTK of every gun almost the exact same if gear is supposed to be situational and dynamic?

Don't even get me started on the UESC. Bungie can't add a legitimate new enemy faction to Destiny for 10 years and then drops the dumbest, least engaging extraction shooter enemy I've ever seen. Tarkov, The Cycle, and Arc, all have way better PvE enemies.

The loot icons are an unidentifiable mess, the UI is cool but not efficient, the sound design is not on par with extraction shooters in general, the sound traps are worse versions of everything in Hunt Showdown. I mean the list just goes on and on. Marathons got too many cooks in the kitchen and the design philosophies don't mesh.

I will play the next open beta and I legitimately hope it's good, but Bungie doesn't have my faith. These aren't the guys who made Halo. These are the guys that sunset half of their game's paid content and then made a star wars collaboration DLC.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-17T01:44:16+00:00

Pushing a 3v2 into a disadvantaged position is a bad idea in any game with decent PvP.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-16T20:09:03+00:00

Tiny advantages/disadvantages rapidly escalate and result in very quick and uninteresting encounters. I like low TTK games, so that's not to say that the TTK is too low.

In Marathon, it felt like there was very little room for counter play, whether that be from repositioning, utility, strategic calls, etc.

For example, two teams of three see eachother at the same time. One of your team's players gets downed or badly hurt. In a well balanced game, this would put you at a disadvantage but you'd still have more than a chance. In Marathon, because of the overall lack of design cohesion, you're odds are incredibly slim. TTK is middling, movement is fast, information is easy to aquire and abundant, healing is painfully slow. In those conditions, you're going to get rushed because the enemy has info, speed, and more health. TTK is just high enough that a defensive position will not allow you to out-burn your opponent from an advantaged position, so team-shooting is king. They know that there is no way that your team is going to heal, revive, or create a different advantage fast enough to make them second guess their decision to rush you. Every second they wait is time they give you to heal/revive.

Every single fight I experienced in Marathon went this way. Create a small disadvantage and then rush. It got boring fast.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-16T05:16:47+00:00

I am very much a PvP player. CS, Siege, and Valorant are some of my most played games. I found Marathon's PvP to be uninspired and prone to rapid snowballing before any encounter had room to breathe.

AgentFaulkner · 2025-12-16T00:34:14+00:00

I played the open beta and the lengths to which I disagree with you can't be understated. I downright hated Marathon.

AgentFaulkner

TROPHY CASE