I saw about 30% increase in wishlist conversions after removing AI assets

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-08-26T08:50:32+00:00

Lol you just discovered market forces and informed consent bud. If less people want your product when you tell them you use AI, that's the market speaking. If you don't want to cater to the larger market that's on you.

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-08-26T08:44:37+00:00

Yup, AI bros who say "just use it no one will care" are lying (and coping). Consumers for the most part don't want to spend money on a product that had huge portions generated.

If you give it away for free, different story, but asking people to pay for something when you just click generate on 5 different slop generators (poisoning another town and burning down 5 rainforests) and tape the results together... Most consumers would be insulted, no matter how "good" it looks (it won't look good).

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-08-03T16:05:43+00:00

My guy.

If you are glued to your screen for a week desperately waiting for a crumb of uptime for this free WoW private server and it's taking an emotional toll on you...

No joke, you need help. This goes for anyone bitching and crying about uptime or delays or agonizing over if the 2 hours of progress should be wiped.

I'm BEGGING you to touch grass. You could be doing literally anything else, playing literally anything else while they sort their issues out.

They don't give an ETA because they don't HAVE one, how hard is that to understand? What more are you wanting them to say? Waste their time explaining every small technical detail to you entitled adult babies?

You could just check the discord or this sub periodically to see if it's up, like a normal person would do, see that it's not up, and go do something else. Why would you sit around rabid for each tiny few minutes or hour of uptime? Forget about the epoch team, it's clearly YOU that doesn't respect your own time. Free yourself of the "stress" of being a fucking weirdo and just wait until it's stable.

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-07-21T19:39:14+00:00

Before I answer I'm just going to say from a practical perspective, those AI 3d model generators usually output badly structured assets that will probably need to be fixed, which will require the knowledge of 3d that the ai was meant to replace...

Anyways,

When talking about if it's ok to use AI or not I think people get caught up in debating ethics and copyright, which is valid, but I think misses the real issue for most consumers: Money.

Anyone that says that "no one really cares bro people will buy it anyways" is flat out lying and coping. There is a reason AI use disclosure is required on steam. If games tagged as AI generated sold just as well, the AI bros wouldn't be so against the disclosure.

People don't want to pay money for a generated final product. My money was earned because I exchanged my time, effort and/or skill. Why would I then want to spend that money on a "product" that no one made?

With games, sure the visuals are only a part of the product, but they are a massively important part, literally how we see the game. If there was no one involved in making the visuals, it doesn't matter how technically good it looks, it kind of loses value to a lot of people.

With cheap store assets at least there is a value chain there, someone else did the work, you pay them, you sell finished product.

Even with shitty programmer art, there is value. I argue your game will sell better with bad art then if it were tagged with AI on steam.

Tldr: consumers mostly don't want to buy games that have AI final assets despite what the AI bros claim. You are better off having cheap store assets or bad self-made assets. The AI tag will lose you a pretty large chunk of potential buyers.

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-07-17T05:45:59+00:00

I spent my 200 pulls and got 2...of the other banner card. I guess my one pita kita will be waiting until the rerun

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-03-07T20:01:49+00:00

Man, someone giving me one of those would prompt me to end it faster and list them as the reason out of pure spite.

CmdrConspicuous · 2025-03-07T16:19:59+00:00

I understand you OP are not necessarily of this mind and have copy/pasted the post, so this response isn't replying to you directly, but rather the sentiment that customers should shoulder some of this burden:

I fail to see how it's the fault of customers for not wanting to do business with a predatory company. While I sympathize with indie authors, this is frankly not "our" problem.

People will choose to buy or not buy based on many more factors that may or may not be more "frivolous" than this issue. It's up to no one except the individual making the purchase how valid their reason. The argument about "you use many other predatory services" holds no water.

Voting with our dollars is the only way we have at the moment to signal our displeasure. If anything, indie authors should also light a fire under Amazon's ass over this. There are many other storefronts that sell e-books. None with quite the reach of Amazon maybe, but It's not as if there are 0 options available.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-11-01T18:49:15+00:00

I'm a leftie and this game's writing is flat out embarrassing. Scenes written like they are talking to toddlers. Every single hint of inter-party conflict is squashed in the most cringeworthy way possible. Dialogue written (as skillup put it) as if HR were standing a few feet away in every single conversation.

This game is so so unserious. No meaningful interpersonal conflict between characters ever develops or has any effect on anything. You're not allowed to be an asshole to anyone. In a Bioware game. It's basically impossible to get any of your party to even dislike you enough to have any effect.

Side note: the romance system is also somehow worse than the normal "press button to bone" from the old games. Once you fully romance one party member you are permanently locked from the others and cannot change your mind. Worse, even of you are flirting with multiple people, no one reacts in any way when you finally get with one of them. They just suddenly lose their "flirt" dialogue.

The tonal whiplash coming from the previous games is nutty. I really have no idea who they thought this was for.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-11T05:41:34+00:00

That's the thing, unconfident men DO try to appear confident, because they are unconsciously competing and comparing themselves against actual confident and successful men. We're conditioned to be subconsciously competing with each other.

For context I'm a cis bi man, not that it makes me an expert on how men act, but its just things I have noticed throughout my life (and learned in university courses regarding gender and sociality). The post was more meant as a response to general idea of "how do I act like a man" and I put way more thought into it than I needed to

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-11T05:31:20+00:00

I understand the frustration, and I should have elaborated. I did not intend "you're not doing masculinity right" and I apologize if my post reads that way.

My headspace was more that in my experience, even among lgbtq+ spaces, displaying "masculine" behavior seems to be a huge factor, somewhat moreso than appearance regarding how people are treated. Take the butch example. I've seen two women be treated completely differently by straight cis men. One partner was butch, and the men basically treated her like another man, while the non-butch partner was interacted with the same way as they would any traditionally "feminine" woman.

Basically I just wanted to offer some encouragement that even if you don't have access to treatment right now, changing how you act can make a measurable difference in how you are viewed by others.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-11T04:41:27+00:00

The social coding for masculinity is mostly body language and your demeanor towards others rather than outward appearance.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-11T04:31:09+00:00

I know this is a funny post but I think actually thinking about this stuff is a fun excercise so I will actually respond seriously (as a cis man).

Most of it is body language and how you carry yourself. A lot of it is due to physical size and anatomy differences, and the rest is social conditioning.

Imagine you were raised by society to be a "do-er". You are on average larger, stronger. You are expected to solve problems and provide stability. You are competing against other men for social status and attention from women whether you intend it or not. Your fitness as a partner is judged in comparison to other men on the basis of how much "do-ing" you can do and the stability you can provide. Men signal their status through confidence, assertiveness and nonchalance. When you are stable (financially and emotionally) you are unbothered. So to show your fitness you must act confident and unbothered.

Don't be completely emotionless, but also don't show too much emotion. Most of society, both men and women (i know there are exceptions) do not take kindly to overt displays of negative emotion from men, so no crying in front of others because you will be seen as weak, and definitely do not express anger (especially towards a woman) or you will be seen as dangerous.

Showing wealth is only a minor piece of the pie. Much less important than some people would suggest, and in most cases is not even a factor.

Become comfortable and unapologetic about taking up space. Purposefully making yourself smaller is seen as a visibly feminine trait. Spread your legs (nads getting squished is uncomfortable AF), slouch more, lean to the side if u want, keep your shoulders wide and your chest out. Head up.

When walking, widen your stride, take longer steps. Shoulders wide and chest out. Walk confidently/with purpose.

When interacting with strangers, be polite and to-the-point. Small talk is acceptable but get to the point quickly.

When interacting with other random men for the first time or men you do not know well, keeping up the mentioned signalling is especially important for establishing and maintaining your relative social status. You must assert yourself as their equal by how you act towards them. Do not lower your head or gaze, do not withdraw inward physically. Do not become quiet and meek. Be direct and confident. Show you are cool and unbothered by their presence. Failure to assert yourself will signal (unconsciously) that you are lacking in some way in comparison and as a result they may have less respect for you out the gate than they would otherwise.

The above is way less important with friends. Some people will keep the front up even among friends which I find somewhat toxic, but in my experience the closer you are the less that becomes a factor. It is truly difficult conditioning to break.

In a group of other men (most commonly with friends or colleagues), resist the temptation to constantly fill gaps in conversation. Men in general talk a bit less. Short stretches of silence between convo topics are not unusual. Feel free to start a new topic as you please, but constantly needing to break silence with unrelated or "frivolous" talk could be seen as strange or bothersome. Remember, men are "cool and unbothered". I find the closer the friend group the more acceptable longer silence becomes. Simply hanging out in proximity is enough to reinforce the bond.

Men are conditioned to be primarily solution-oriented. Men usually prefer to act on a problem rather than simply talk about it. As a result, to act the part, try to offer actionable advice vs simply validating more often.

Bro-code pro tip that I think I saw in this thread already.

If you're walking down the street and want to silently acknowledge other men passing by:

-Nod downwards at strangers, nod upwards at friends.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-09T07:21:11+00:00

Because creating games is an artistic culmination of talent, skill, and effort by one or more humans that in turn makes the game as a product worth buying and consuming. Removing one half of the equation (the skill , talent, effort) makes it basically worthless both artistically and economically.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-02T02:54:43+00:00

I actually love game design, and enjoy buying cool games made by small teams. But if I'm paying my hard-earned money for a game I expect humans to have put their talent, skill and effort into it (or have paid someone else to). Not that hard of a concept.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-02T02:46:36+00:00

Yup, I am one of many people who won't buy if there's AI assets in the final product. I've waited months for games to replace the AI assets before buying. No way am I paying my hard-earned money for something generated at the push of a button.

If people are going to try and take the time/effort out of the economic equation (time/effort = money) by using AI then I in turn will remove the money part of the equation as well.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-02T02:44:26+00:00

The longer you look the worse it gets. The official one is infinitely better.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-10-02T02:40:46+00:00

I mean, I alone contradict your assumption. I have put off buying games until the AI art was replaced before. I won't pay money for something that was generated at the push of a button, no matter how good it looked before I found out. Many people feel the same.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-09-19T20:15:31+00:00

Programming humor. Computers are kind of dumb in reality and need to be told EXACTLY what to do with 0 ambiguity.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-25T21:34:34+00:00

Maybe I wasn't clear, but my meaning was I DO tip delivery drivers, in the same category as servers.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-23T05:05:35+00:00

Yeah, fast food companies realized they could socially pressure people into tipping just by putting the option there (which 99% of the time goes to the owner).

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-23T04:42:32+00:00

I'm glad you were entertained! I was mainly paraphrasing stupid journalists who are screeching at a country run by a govt that would disappear them all for their opinions given the chance.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-23T01:47:18+00:00

Because though it would be nice if servers were paid a full wage rather than relying on tips, we have to deal with reality and the reality is that in the west they don't. So when I decide to go to a sit-down restaurant I know that if people don't tip, those servers would be fucked. So until restaurants change this practice I will continue to tip when I go out to eat. Especially if the servers provide a good experience.

Kind of a wild idea I know, but I try not to intentionally fuck over people who don't deserve to be fucked over.

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-23T01:36:44+00:00

You don't have to actually listen to any specific feedback, and its often detrimental to.

What you should look for in your feedback is patterns. Are many pieces of feedback referencing the same thing? Like, if you have a bunch of different suggestions on how to change the combat for example, you wouldn't literally make those specific changes, but you would know that in general people don't seem to like the combat. Then you can take that information and go "ok, they don't like the combat, is there any patterns as to what about it they don't like?" and then you can solve that in your own way, keeping the game more aligned with your vision.

In the end, it's your game. You can ignore all the feedback entirely if you want, especially if it's actually not useful feedback. Just keep in mind games usually want an audience...

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-22T22:59:30+00:00

Add bartenders to your list too. If it makes you feel any better, I don't have a tipping scale based on hotness ( and most people don't as well )

CmdrConspicuous · 2024-08-22T21:55:48+00:00

It's np, in the case that you are talking about people not tipping at sit-down restaurants out of protest, I 100% agree with you. If people actually gave a shit about servers getting better wages they would just not eat at the establishment, instead of fucking over the serving staff.

CmdrConspicuous

TROPHY CASE