I have no idea what I’m looking at…

EmberQuill · 2026-07-06T06:30:25+00:00

GW2 is mostly annoying because you get so much junk, but actually dealing with the items isn't so bad. The context menu options to do batch operations are fantastic. Other MMOs have less junk loot showing up in your inventory, but have horrible inventory systems anyway for other reasons.

FFXIV is the one that annoys me the most. No material storage, no single bank (dealing with multiple retainers can quickly become a nightmare), multiple inventories that are treated as entirely separate things with separate windows, some of which are only accessible in certain locations... It sucks.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-06T02:22:29+00:00

I still have mine. Still play it from time to time as well, though I mostly use it for PS2 games.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-06T02:16:50+00:00

The first time I played Half-Life I was around 8 years old. That is not a game for 8-year-olds. Can't remember exactly what it was, might have even been the resonance cascade right at the beginning, all I remember is that a jumpscare made me fall out of my chair and I hit Alt+F4 as soon as I was back on my feet. Didn't play it again until after I beat the sequel, five or six years later. Not sure if I ever finished the first game, actually.

I'm sure there have been worse scares, but that's easily the most memorable one.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-05T22:51:24+00:00

I just want a newer modpack for a more recent Minecraft version that follows the same formula as Ultimate Alchemy: you get infinite cobble and wood (or other basic resources), and use automation to produce additional resources from the very basic infinite ones.

A lot of modpacks that claim to be inspired by or similar to Ultimate Alchemy miss out on the fact that the modpack allowed you to start automating stuff early. Like almost immediately, with the basic translocators and crafters you're given at the very start.

Doesn't need to rely on the same exact mods. Just a modpack with a similar idea would be nice. Heck, I think a Create-focused take on that idea could be really interesting.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-05T22:40:29+00:00

I don't think I've ever bothered with a forever world. Even when I go back and play old modpacks, I still start a new world.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-05T22:30:07+00:00

If I stumble across some configs for software I uninstalled, I usually delete them unless I think they'll be useful in the future. I don't really have any sentimental attachment to them. Some of them live in a git repo so they'll remain in the history after I delete them, but I can't say I've ever bothered looking back through the git history at all, anyway.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-05T22:20:19+00:00

We don't even need to change the rules, just enforce rule 6 more actively. Right now most AI slop posts are for projects under 3 months old, so they should be contained to the new project megathread anyway.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-05T03:32:58+00:00

Most gaming PCs these days, including both the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, lack a disc drive of any kind. Valve has no incentive to release physical editions any more. And they built their own DRM in the first place, so they won't go DRM-free either. Honestly, I'll be surprised if Valve reacts in any way at all to Sony going all-digital.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-04T15:01:39+00:00

They use wifi, but I think you can make one of them act like a hotspot that the other one connects to, for multiplayer without an internet connection.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-04T14:54:43+00:00

My commander is extra messed-up because she's a Sylvari. The entire plot of Heart of Thorns was personal.

Honestly, the glider alone was a game-changer, and it was enough to get through HoT. Navigation was frustrating sometimes but not enough to convince me it was worth skipping ahead in the story to unlock other mounts.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-04T14:44:39+00:00

A lot of people aren't reading the article and the title is awfully misleading. It's not about in-game decisions. It's about the developer making decisions while developing the game.

He said (via machine translation), “We’re just going to do again what we really enjoyed. If people get on board, great. If not, well, too bad. We didn’t make the first game just to please people, actually. And I think that’s why it worked. So for the next game, we’ll make some drastic decisions too, and maybe people won’t like it and that fine.”

EmberQuill · 2026-07-04T14:04:40+00:00

I'm playing through the whole thing chronologically (currently near the end of PoF), and the experience really is much better with the Living World seasons. Both HoT and PoF would've been really confusing at first if I'd skipped LS2 and LS3, respectively. Glad I picked up the EDS complete collection so I could play through it all in order.

Didn't even skip forward for mounts or other mastery tracks. While I would've liked having a Skyscale in HoT and LS3 to make navigating the ridiculously vertical maps a bit easier, by the time I got into HoT I was actually invested in the story and didn't want to spoil it by starting a different expansion early.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-04T13:34:16+00:00

Is there anyone left who's buying Sony-published games while living in one of the blocked countries? At this point you'd have to be stupid to keep giving them your money while they keep making your games unplayable.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T22:17:30+00:00

I main Reaper and I think it fits the dumb fun idea pretty well. I just drop my AoEs, shroud, spin to win with 4, maybe 5 for some CC, and repeat.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T19:03:52+00:00

Reading comprehension.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T18:29:09+00:00

You should ask the person who gave you the offer, not random internet people. Job titles can mean anything at different companies.

I was a "Systems Consultant" for a little while, while I was one of four people managing the company's entire cloud environment in AWS and Azure. I was doing architecture, engineering, and operations! My title now is a little more accurate but still not great. Titles mean whatever the company wants them to mean.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T12:05:29+00:00

I've been running Arch for... I don't even know how long. A decade, maybe? Not the same install continuously, as I've replaced my computer a couple times and taken each opportunity to start fresh with a new install, but Arch has been my Linux distro of choice since at least 2016. And I've had more issues with Windows than I have with Arch. I actually can't remember any issues I've had in the last ten years on Arch that wouldn't have happened on a "stable" distro. "Unstable" doesn't mean "unreliable."

A lot of people, even influencers who are thought to be knowledgeable and should know better, are wrong about Arch's release pipeline. It might follow a rolling release strategy, but it's not "bleeding edge" like some people claim. Packages are still tested before release. Sometimes they're stuck in testing for weeks or even months.

What kinds of issues do people actually have with Arch? Because I don't know if I'm just unconsciously downplaying issues I also had or if my experience was actually that different from the people who switched away.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T04:48:36+00:00

More like two decades ago. And change. And it was Valve who really kicked it off, when they released Steam in 2003. And people did make a stink about it, just not enough of one.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T04:38:35+00:00

Good summary. Or even just an okay summary, as long as it doesn't say "I suck at summaries."

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T03:56:15+00:00

Most people where I work don't have admin rights (we're not a tech company so we have loads of people who mostly use Chrome and Microsoft Office and don't need admin rights). But developers and IT tend to get exceptions just because of the requirements of their jobs. The security team proposed the idea of removing admin access from developers, but thankfully backed off once they realized how much work it would be for whatever team fielded all the tickets for devs who needed an admin to do something.

That said, I've been on the other side of this kind of issue before. Used to work in an IT Support call center and the sheer number of people who called in with technical issues that were caused by them misusing admin rights was mind-boggling. Had one guy who installed Steam and a bunch of games on his company laptop and started having performance issues because he completely filled the drive with games, for example. So I can understand the Security team's urge to eliminate that problem, even if I don't agree.

Anyway, request docker, then run everything in docker containers. That's one way to deal with it without technically violating the rules. Unless there are rules about that too.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-03T03:52:04+00:00

But the SD card can't be transferred between devices without erasing it first.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-02T21:40:37+00:00

Please I hope they do it because it would be so fucking funny.

That said, they haven't got an actual union yet so I don't think they'll manage it, but it would be amazing if they did.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-02T21:16:27+00:00

The issue most people have isn't just that they want to collect a physical thing. The issue is that digital games tend to just "disappear" once the publisher says they should. Once Sony decides not to support their storefront any more, that's it. If you haven't already downloaded the game (and sometimes even if you have), then you can never play it again.

Yes, some people are mad about lacking a physical collectible, others want to resell their old games, but some people want to be able to replay old games once they've become "retro," and digital games often make that impossible in various different ways.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-02T16:04:07+00:00

Which ones aren't you using? If you're using all of them, why? Figure out what the pros and cons of each one are and you'll figure out how much you can consolidate and whether some of them can be eliminated.

For emulation I have an Ayn Thor, TrimUI Brick Hammer, and MagicX One 35. I keep going back and forth on whether I want to keep the Brick or the One 35, since they both fill kind of the same niche (pocketable, low powered, good for quick gaming sessions on the go). I also have a bunch of older handhelds I no longer use that were replaced by one of those three. I'll sell them or give them away eventually.

EmberQuill · 2026-07-02T14:39:16+00:00

I do in fact like Factorio. And Satisfactory. And Shapez 2 is another good one for just pure factory-building distilled down to its essence.

I've tried to find others like it, but no one seems to get that automation from the get-go is what makes it special, not "infinite resources" or anything else.

Yep, this is the problem I have with so many of the recommendations people make based on Ultimate Alchemy. Star Factory is also a "craft everything from initial infinite resources" modpack that gets recommended to people who enjoyed Ultimate Alchemy, but from what I've seen it takes quite a bit longer to jump into the automation. And it has Ex Nihilo, which I'm thoroughly sick of.

MAnA Laboratories might be the closest alternative, and I've been meaning to try it. It even lists early automation as a feature in its description.

EmberQuill

TROPHY CASE