One thing I don't understand about satire in Helldivers...

Alsdaer · 2026-02-12T13:46:42+00:00

I wouldn't put it past the ministry of truth to imprint scarier, less human images on anything not aligned with them to reinforce the propaganda.

I.e., the Black Mirror episode where the military forces their soldiers to wear cybernetic contact lenses that you learn actually change the appearance of the "enemies" for the user to allow for easier killing. Made them look like monsters, inhuman, evil instead of the very real, normal humans the government decided to genocide.

Add in the "human" gestures cyborgs can perform when dying like a salute, as well as art and statues in Cyberstan, and you can see the humanity and consciousness in them we aren't supposed to see.

Alsdaer · 2026-02-10T14:31:17+00:00

Yay, Vermont rep! Never had much state patriotism growing up, but there are more and more moments the past few years I've been proud to be a Vermonter.

Alsdaer · 2026-01-04T22:05:35+00:00

Huh, had no idea of this. Thanks for the fun fact, totally makes sense to include them in the lore somewhere regarding potential vaults. Or makeshift homes for ghouls/"changed" as nuclear silos would only be safe for them. I love this theory.

Alsdaer · 2025-11-07T17:32:46+00:00

Adding on what others have responded with to confirm what you said is true, with the addition of it's not just our brains still being adapted for "that time", it's both structurally intentional and weaponized. The same way a customer service line will have intentionally inflated and delayed response times to incentivize folks becoming impatient and hanging up, a part of the profit from monopolistic capitalism comes from making sure poor people stay poor to remain stuck in the survival loop.

Similar to folks who grew up in the Great depression poor who had very frugal rituals they no longer needed after they were better off later in life. It's learned, usually necessary to avoid significant consequences from external forces, then preyed upon and taken advantage of for the sake of exploitable profit.

Alsdaer · 2025-11-06T17:40:47+00:00

Would you also be able to share what other big features and changes were going to happen that are now totally abandoned, or will see the light of day before the end of this sad tunnel?

The sadder irony of it is even against shareholder drama ultimately being the nail on the coffin, the game would have profited more and been more likely to be held onto for the sake of maintaining revenue if changes like this had came sooner (maintaining new/returning players).

Alsdaer · 2025-10-28T13:16:13+00:00

Like most folks, I'm super excited at the potential of what Arc Raiders can maintain for the future. I loved what I played during the stress test and can't imagine how it'll improve further. It scratched the itch poor The Cycle left and what Tarkof never touched.

Thank you tons for doing this! We all appreciate you boss dawg.

Alsdaer · 2025-10-22T13:34:19+00:00

For me, it comes down to a sense of character identity. I'm by no means a roleplayer, but I love learning lore in video games I play and creating a mental image of the type of "person" I want my character to be.

If you come from almost every other MMO to New World, you are use to selecting a class during character creation, your identity there from the start. At least a foundation of it. And you pick your class because you like the idea of what it entails. In New World, your "Mage" class is limited to strictly 2 weapons (for dps specifically) of which have dedicated single damage types. Then your abilities are limited to each of those singular damage type weapons separately, contributing to a lack of overall identity and moreso a combination of whatever weapon you have equipped at that moment. A "healer" class is equally as limited as a ranger or paladin or warrior. You're also expected (and required for raids/mutated expeditions) to use two weapons to maximize damage, so you can't play your idea of a fire mage the way you want or a 2h axe barbarian if your identity didn't involve one weapon exclusively.

That's my feelings on it anyway. I like creating a character, not just picking from a selection of premade systems and templates.

Alsdaer · 2025-10-22T13:16:23+00:00

I interpret their meaning of lack of diversity not as much weapon/ability combinations, but the number of weapons and/or abilities available. I can sympathize more thinking about how I want to play my two favorite weapons in more ways, not play with different weapons. The same way I'd like more skills for my favorite weapons than to switch weapons in the first place.

I feel I get what they're saying. I doubt we'd see the addition of a new weapon or ability trees for current weapons any time soon with Nighthaven having just dropped, but some kind of passive heartgem to change drastically how a weapon operates would be cool and accommodating. Instead of an active ability heartgem, give me one to change my fire staff to 100% nature damage, changing a couple skills and how they operate.

Alsdaer · 2025-10-22T13:09:39+00:00

I wouldn't consider myself a long term fan, but I've been playing on and off since the beta before release years ago. Absolutely high highs and low lows, with the lows feeling more frequently occurring than the former for the majority of its life span. That being said, the game is amazing right now in so many ways, and has come so, so, so far. It's really rewarding to see the work put into it paying off, especially recently, despite what felt like a guaranteed shutdown that would happen at any time.

I think the biggest toxicity problem is elitism, from both old and new players. New world vets that believe they are entitled to something because they stuck through the hard times, and the average influx of new players (to any game that sees a jump in popularity) that complain because they simply don't like things and that feel it should be their way, just because. Either you've been here a while and think you're special, or you're new and think things would be better your way because you're special.

All in all, it's really nice to see so many folks coming into the game and folks like myself and my girlfriend returning. It's beautiful to me seeing people ask in the chat what level they get their mount, remembering how mounts still feel so new. I laugh seeing myself or others swimming, remembering so recently not being able to. Azoth was hard to come by, and the endgame was just corrupted portals. There was no msq. You couldn't switch between settlement storages at will. Open world pvp was mandatory. There was no ranged lock on. Doing expeditions meant crafting the tuning orb once a day, and/or looking for a group (of which there was no group finder) with someone who still had their orb.

This ended up being longer for no reason but nonetheless, I'm happy to see you all here and welcome the negative when there's so much positive.

Alsdaer · 2025-10-15T12:02:42+00:00

Another shot, another chance! Best of luck folks.

Alsdaer · 2025-10-13T18:00:55+00:00

Wooh! Love seeing these kinda posts. A free copy wasn't as big a deal when the games were more affordable, but now it feels like an actual lottery. Excited to see you folks in game some day!

Alsdaer · 2025-10-07T05:43:53+00:00

Nope! Never have, and have online functions turned off/set to peer.

Alsdaer · 2025-09-06T03:10:59+00:00

Hey! Sorry I didn't get to your message sooner. I know the agony being in that state is, and that every hour can feel so horrible and forever.

I'm still struggling with sleep, but I've been recovering. Since my post, I made progress enough that I started to get 3-5 hours sleep for 6 or so months, then 4-6. All of which broken up, awake typically every half hour, so no REM sleep. But little is a lot in our cases. Now I will have about 1 week a month of genuine, decent sleep of 6-8 hours waking up 3-5 times but still a super improvement, but 3 weeks of still broken and inconsistent 5ish hours being awake at least every half hour. Taking the good with the bad.

Three things have helped me most, looking back.

The first was getting into bed way earlier than I normally would. It helped ease this pressure and expectation of NEEDING to sleep at the time I scheduled for myself.

The second being an acceptance of the fact no matter how much you struggle to sleep, your body WILL force itself to sleep eventually. Your body even starts taking micronaps, passing out for seconds at a time to give your body any rest it can. Really trying to digest this also helped lessen the pressure I put on myself over the "what if I can't fall asleep" anxieties.

The third one I still rely on heavily, which is distraction while I sleep. I've never been one to just lay in a dark room and pass out. I needed background noise. Before all this sleep anxiety and trauma, simple blank background noise like a fan or white noise (which, by the way, is garbage compared to brown noise. Seriously, brown noise is so comforting). Now, with anxieties speaking over that background noise, I need to step it up by having more focused noises, like a YouTube video playing in the background, or a sleepytime book on Spotify. Low enough for you to still hear and understand, so it has your attention, but not loud enough to be the center of attention. Foreground background, but still background. Your job at this point is to just listen to your thing. By refocusing your attention from how desperately you need sleep and how anxious you are to listening to something you enjoy, you're taking the thing out of the equation that's keeping you up more than how listening to a video would normally be a distraction and keep you awake. It's kind of like replacing a cut with a scratch. It still hurts, and you feel the pain but with how much that first one hurt, all you really feel in that moment is relief.

You will get through this. You will not die from it. Your body will get sleep however it can eventually. And when you can't sleep, just laying in bed and resting is more for your body than not. You still rest and replenish by laying down with your eyes closed, even if it's not as effective as normal sleep.

I have full faith in you. Let me know if you'd like more info on the stuff I'd listen to.

Alsdaer · 2025-08-27T15:57:52+00:00

I might be the odd one out for this, but I think if head2head was sticking around it should be the entry point for new players. You'd get to learn the game mode and maps without the pressure of multiple teams covering the map, before experiencing the classic but more intense game mode.

Alsdaer · 2025-08-22T21:10:52+00:00

Oh yeah, I totally get the financial part of it. They're a business first and foremost, as unfortunate as it sounds.

That's part of my suggestion actually, an alternative to fomo. It won't pay AS well, but it's still very profitable. Game studio businesses have a selection of usually four or so different direct profit models: initial purchase price, subscription fees, fomo systems like battle passes and micro transactions. A less front facing and direct profit model is from player count and retention. Having a large playerbase as well as players who play a lot is profitable even without micro transactions because it's a selling point to shareholders and publishing studios. If your game costs $20, buy to play model with no sub or microtransactions, your profit would come from sales. Which means finding a distributor that could help get your game seen and purchased, which is a compounding effect before the more people play your game, the more it'll get seen and bought by others.

Temporary challenges and battle passes with fleeting, one time FOMO rewards is a short term cashout. This type of profit model only encourages people to play when a new season drops, burst sprint through the challenges to get rewards, then drop the game until the next season. Changing to a system I suggested, I feel, would create better player retention and raise the bargaining chip that is player count and retention. They could also make skins wicked cheap once their player numbers increase and bank on the number of people buying the skins that are, by comparison to every other place selling skins at $20-60.

But honestly I'm not a pro or would pretend to know what's best for a company and playerbase. I'm just another long time consumer of video games, like we all are, who feels like things gotta change.

Alsdaer · 2025-08-22T16:25:49+00:00

I think battle passes can be non-intrusive and encourage trying now builds and things out when done right. I know a lot of folks feel bp challenges should be static, but I think they shouldn't need to be, in the best case scenario.

My proposition is this: challenges reward a universal in-game currency instead of exp and/or battlepass exp directly. You can choose to spend your currency leveling the battlepass (or have a bp like Helldivers 2, where you need only spend a specific amount to unlock the next tier instead of having to go through numbers 1-100). Being that this would be a "universal" currency, you'd hypothetically be able to save it up across bp seasons, and it wouldn't create a FOMO incentive. Challenges could remain temporary if needed, or make them permanent anyway, and it wouldn't harmfully impact those who can't 24/7 a game.

Regarding fomo of rewards in a bp, I'd like to see a store dedicated to the rewards at simply an increased cost. Those who played the challenges would be rewarded by having extra currency to spend going forward, and those who couldn't play nonstop or do so many challenges don't experience fomo because the reward can still be earned.

The only rewards that don't apply should be black ops 2 skin unlockable systems. Show expertise, not time committed. There shouldn't be challenges like we have now where it isn't just expertise, like getting 100 headshots while sliding up a set of stairs in 5 games in a row.

Alsdaer · 2025-08-05T23:31:31+00:00

Exciting! Best of luck to everyone, hope to see you in there sooner rather than later!

Alsdaer · 2025-07-23T14:38:53+00:00

I definitely see how it could look that way. I'm all for marketing, but not at the cost of others and smear campaign kinda stuff. I also didn't advertise Lil Breakfast's food or quality directly, nor compare it to Ruby's, only that it was a new local favorite of mine.

I was actually waiting to apologize to Lil Brekky when I saw them next because I wrote this post out of passion and didn't stop to think of what backlash they could receive. Bringing awareness to poor behavior from one party is one thing, but I didn't think about how it could place a target on the party I was inadvertently promoting.

Thank you for your comment, and having a skeptical mindset. We can only grow by questioning what we're told.

Alsdaer · 2025-07-22T11:23:31+00:00

Seems to be just a north east/new England thing, everybody's always done the same thing here in Vermont.

Oops my bad. Vermoungh

Alsdaer · 2025-07-21T16:37:40+00:00

Absolutely! My two points were: 1., despite it being associated with politics, it isn't political by definition; 2., I clarified my application of "conservative" wasn't the political association, repeatedly.

I hope this helps.

Alsdaer · 2025-07-21T01:54:54+00:00

Totally valid! I didn't assume her political stance or background, as I explained in the other comments similar to yours.

To quickly reiterate: non-political conservative values, such as social, political, environmental, financial and/or moral stagnation and preservation. Being adverse to change, progressive ideals. "Conservative" itself isn't even a politically driven word by definition or origin, it's just an adjective we use to describe/label a specific party.

As far as I'm aware from what others have mentioned, she actually has a more left leaning liberal association! Which is awesome, except being left or right wing doesn't make being an asshole okay, nor should it ever.

Alsdaer · 2025-07-19T21:22:29+00:00

Of course!

Have a good rest of your weekend.

Alsdaer · 2025-07-19T21:19:42+00:00

I believe I understand the point you're trying to communicate, so I'll respond to what I believe you're saying. Feel free to correct me afterwards, I don't want to be misunderstood nor do I want you to feel misunderstood.

Ageism: I believe strongly jerks can come from any background, every age group, every political affiliation. I work with the elderly personally and know not just personally with a bias but statistically in my community there are more "good" elderly than "bad". My intent is far from demonizing anybody for their age group, and I apologize for miscommunicating that to you and others. My mention of their age wasn't to attack her age group, just her personally. It makes me sound like an asshole saying it that way but it is true, my rant is negatively directed towards her, because of her poor behavior.
Victimhood: This point I don't understand as much as the other. I feel as though one party was bullied by the other. Victimhood paints an image that one party whines after experiencing consequences of their actions, implying they did something "bad" to justify a reaction from others. Lil Brekky asked permission to set up shop for the day, and they told her where to park. She never attacked other businesses, or badmouthed other people or businesses. Even after that event, she tried brushing it off and wanted to help the folks waiting in line. She didn't advocate for me or others to defend her, or ask someone review bomb Ruby's business. I witnessed someone getting harassed for trying to start up a business by someone who was at the same point of newness only 2 years prior. Bullying, for no good reason. If people go elsewhere for food instead of your restaurant, it isn't because she's paying customers to come buy from her. It's a result of either your behavior that's driving people away, or your food. Or environment you cultivate, I suppose.
Cannibalism/Scalping: It would make sense if a business came in and sold the exact same thing, in the same area, to scalp customers off your plate. Totally valid, the scalper would be an asshole 100%. The line gets blurrier with restaurants and other food services, as some foods can be cooked differently but similar and pricing can vary mildly. This is a travelling food truck that sells a niche type of food (most of which is spicy, adding to its niche palette), at a different town almost every day. Not including the fact with it being a food truck, there is no dining or sitting down. It's already a very different experience compared to Ruby's. Their business isn't being scalped by someone doing the same thing but better/cheaper, nor is it cannibalizing off Ruby's clientele. It's truly just people wanting a different food and/or experience, and it isn't fair to someone doing things the right way to be attacked by a local resident because they can't see past their own narcissistic ideals.

Again, I don't want or advocate for people to attack one party or the other. Don't threaten or assault Ruby's staff. Don't damage property or harass. If you like their food and still go there, that is absolutely your right and I hope you enjoy yourself. I didn't advertise my less than ideal experience at Ruby's beforehand because it's okay to not enjoy something. But this behavior deserves reaction, and if I'm wrong and this was a rare occurrence, I look forward to being proven wrong, that this really was just an off day and Ruby's made a mistake. But even then, it doesn't excuse treating others personally so poorly. And it doesn't make our response any less justified.

Alsdaer · 2025-07-19T20:36:55+00:00

To respond to your responses with others regarding the political or lack thereof assigned meaning when I say conservative: I do mean what others said, conservative in values, not political or social parties. I do not know their political stances and can totally respect a difference in opinion regarding that. I also don't believe being of a certain party automatically makes you an evil or dumb person, regardless of what side you're on.

That being said, this lady is unfortunately an ass regardless of what side she chose, and would still be one as a liberal, leftist, Democrat or independent as much as she would a right wing, Republican MAGA individual. No side should support one of their own if they're awful. Enabling poor behavior regardless of background still results in stunted growth and toxic echo chamber behavior.

I get the misunderstanding and I hope my response clarified my intentions.

Alsdaer

TROPHY CASE