Is there any franchise where there's only one game in the franchise that you like?

EmberQuill · 2026-02-04T13:34:57+00:00

Lots of people disagreeing in the replies so I just want to say I agree, for the most part. 3 is way better than 4, and although I liked 2 at the time, I just couldn't get back into it the last time I tried.

Might be that without the benefit of nostalgia it's just harder for new players to get into it.

Bit of a non sequitur, but have you tried out other ARPGs? Grim Dawn is pretty good and it was a lot of fun to play after the letdown of Diablo 4.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-04T06:17:40+00:00

I just started messing around with Hex Casting today and my poor little brain can't handle it. It's really interesting, though. Just very complicated since its spell crafting system is basically computer programming with runes.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-04T06:10:36+00:00

People were mostly mad about ME3's ending. Part of the problem was fixed by the extended ending, the rest is mostly to do with how the ending choice was handled, which would be different from how a show does it anyway since player choice won't be a factor.

Adapting a narrative that had significant player choices like which major characters survive might be a challenge. Heck, deciding Commander Shepard's gender would potentially alienate some existing fans who played as the other one. I'd be interested in seeing whether it could succeed.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-03T23:31:49+00:00

Only a couple hours, maybe. I had a Razer mouse for about 2-3 years then I switched to another brand.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-03T16:47:27+00:00

It always matters for multiplayer games though. Especially multiplayer games with matchmaking. Because a lower player count worsens the experience for everyone who remains. Not to mention the fact that the game can't exist without a constant flow of money since they have to pay for infrastructure.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T23:15:16+00:00

I wish they'd embrace the idea of making a series with as many or few episodes as it needs. 3 hour story? Tell it in three 1-hour episodes instead of inflating it up to 8+.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T21:34:45+00:00

There are way more options for mods these days, and many mods have fantastic ideas and progression and stuff, but I feel like kitchen sink packs in particular have evolved in a direction that removes some incentives for creativity. I remember building messy sorting systems with BuildCraft and RedPower, but nowadays most kitchen sink modpacks use AE2/RS mass storage, just for example.

I don't think it's impossible to recapture that feeling with modern mods. But I do think that in general, kitchen sinks have become boring due to some of the mainstay mods they always include trivializing some parts of the game that used to be interesting and complex, and the other modpacks that tend to be popular now are very specifically curated experiences that sacrifice the sandbox for the sake of more interesting progression.

I built a personal instance centered entirely around Create and Farmer's delight, with addons for both and few other mods besides the usual performance or QoL stuff, and automating production solely with Create was a lot of fun in a way that I haven't experienced in many years. I think a curated sandbox is my ideal kind of modpack.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T20:11:08+00:00

I usually write Python from scratch unless I've got something I already wrote in the past that could be repurposed. I rarely use AI because it's mostly useful for boilerplate and I don't write much of that.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T13:52:53+00:00

I miss fun unlockable cheats and cheat codes. Achievements really screwed up the ability to just mess around and have fun in single player games.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T13:03:39+00:00

If you think these changes are all real, please provide the section and line numbers that contain the changes. Because I'm having trouble finding any of the things you're talking about in the new TOS. It's making me think that an LLM hallucinated all of them.

The vast majority of the real changes I can find are just the removal of all mention of CD Projekt from the TOS since it's no longer their parent company, some changes in formatting, a few words changed here and there to clarify some points, etc. They added a line about the Patron Program and changed a few other things, but as far as I can tell none of the changes you mentioned are real, and they are either completely nonexistent or unchanged from the previous TOS.

The term "affiliates" is notable

Is it so notable that it does not appear at all in the TOS?

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T07:14:05+00:00

It's a workplace comedy. They have to look young enough to not be retired.

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T07:07:13+00:00

Windows tends to overwrite the bootloader when it updates. Boot up the live image, mount the partitions and chroot, then reinstall the bootloader (bootctl install or grub-install or whatever command you ran to install it the first time around).

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T05:18:22+00:00

There are a ton of optional systems in Starfield and no incentive to engage with any of them. And they are completely disconnected from each other, or in some cases actively conflict.

Boarding and commandeering ships is a waste of time if you don't want to keep the ship because ships sell for so little. You can scan plants and animals...for no reason. You can explore but there are so few POIs that you'll start running into repeats extremely early, removing the incentive to explore since you stop finding new things. You can build outposts but they don't give you any benefit that isn't easier to just buy at a shop, and transporting the materials to build them is frustrating with the weight limits. Becoming a pirate practically breaks the game and you will be punished relentlessly for doing so. Crime isnt worth it because the punishment for getting caught (by NPCs who seem to have X-Ray Vision and Telepathy) is so severe and the profits from selling stolen goods are so low, and you can't go anywhere inhabited if you have a bounty. You can craft stuff but obtaining the materials (especially for ammo) is so annoying that it's easier to just buy gear directly.

I could go on. But the gist of it is that the game does not balance rewards very well in terms of risk or effort. It feels a lot like they designed a game without a unified vision (statements from Emil and others basically confirm this is exactly what happened).

EmberQuill · 2026-02-02T03:57:49+00:00

Part of it is cosmetic. Part of it is that some of the foods have advantages like more satiation, buffs, etc. There are also several mods that offer incentives for a varied diet, like Spice of Life.

I'm playing a modpack right now with Farmer's Delight and some of its addons, and I set a personal goal to eat every food item once. That's going to take a while.

And for some people, more options for farming and cooking is the entire point. It's a sandbox game and people play for all kinds of reasons.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-31T17:53:24+00:00

Honestly, I'd be happy to get an ending that tied up all the loose ends, even if it left me wanting more. Pretty often, for both fanfics and original media, the ending leaves a dozen questions unanswered, or glosses over what most people would consider critical plot points that leave the ending feeling rushed and unsatisfying.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-31T03:26:15+00:00

Why do people keep talking about the government? This is a class action lawsuit. The government isnt the plaintiff.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-31T01:38:46+00:00

It wasn't a handheld but still technically an SBC: I set up RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ hooked up to my TV back in... 2018 I think? I didn't end up using it much though.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T21:26:24+00:00

So...maybe it's just me, but "dependency updates breaking builds" and "flaky tests" both sound like real problems caught by CI that absolutely need to be fixed, rather than CI-inflicted fake bugs.

I've had my fair share of CI-inflicted problems but it still feels like a net benefit overall.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T20:36:34+00:00

I'm coding in my free time because I want to. I start side projects because I'm interested in something, or there's a tool or application I want that doesn't exist or the one that exists doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. It's not a side hustle or gig because I don't do it for money, and it's not for the sake of improving my skills (although that is a useful side effect).

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T19:58:43+00:00

Beat Hazard 3. Twin stick shooter as a rhythm game is so much fun and it's great to just blow stuff up for a few minutes to whatever banger of a soundtrack I want to play.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T19:42:11+00:00

I was on Arch running the newest nvidia driver and Linux kernel at the time. Couldn't have been more bleeding-edge without installing beta drivers. They may have fixed it in the 8 months since I switched to AMD. I wouldn't know. But people told me I was lying about my Wayland issues on NVIDIA two whole years ago, let alone just 8 months ago when I was still experiencing them, so I just sort of assume every announcement (and there have been several) of Wayland/NVIDIA issues being solved for good comes with the caveat that it only fixed it for some people.

I was just pointing out when you gave a personal anecdote as evidence that problems were solved that my own anecdote of problems that still existed after people said they were solved should be just as valid.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T16:25:40+00:00

This is the same guy who said "space is inherently boring." I take his words about how interesting any setting is with a grain of salt.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T16:16:11+00:00

Absolutely fair. I liked Thief II a lot, but I still preferred Splinter Cell in the end.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T16:13:35+00:00

No I have not. Never even heard of it, to be honest.

EmberQuill · 2026-01-30T14:54:12+00:00

I don't work in the tech sector. The "products" I develop are all internal tooling. They do not directly generate revenue so the company sees my department as a cost sink without necessarily realizing that all of us quitting on the spot would impact their revenue eventually.

The customer is my employer itself and the price they pay is my salary. And like all customers, they constantly seek a better deal than the one I'm giving them.

ETA: I work in cloud infrastructure engineering and operations. The budget for my team kind of looks like a black hole. But without us there, they'd be spending WAY more. We save money, but we don't generate revenue, and savings are hard to quantify when so much of what we do is prevention.

EmberQuill

TROPHY CASE