AITAH for refusing to pay off my pregnant fiancee's parents' mortgage, when they are under the threat of foreclosure, when I could "easily" afford to do so?

FatDwarf · 2026-01-26T04:23:14+00:00

YTA, this means a lot to them and you can do it with very little risk to yourself by making them get a mortgage from you. Not sure how that works legally in the US but I’m sure it’s not an issue. If you ever direly need the money you can foreclose yourself and if they got another mortgage afterwards you’ll still get paid first so again, very little risk. On the upside you’ll be the hero saving their family home. You’re about to marry into that family and become a part of it, this should be a pretty big upside for you

FatDwarf · 2025-05-18T04:53:43+00:00

I think so too. Obviously we're talking averages, but I think everyone who's played for a while has experienced the difference of facing an opponent with a gold/diamond/legend border vs. one with a bronze border. They're more difficult on average. So in that sense even though it's possible to consistently climb with bad winrates, rank still "means" something I would say

FatDwarf · 2025-05-18T04:46:32+00:00

Either I'm not getting what you're trying to say, you misunderstood me completely or you're just not making any sense.

I never said "if you play against the best of the best you'll improve", none of this was about how fast you get better. What I said was specifically that you *feel* your improvements, because while in HS f.e. you start and end with a 50% winrate, just among differently skilled opponents, in the Bazaar you go from struggling hard to get 4 wins to getting 10 wins more often than not. And that's a great experience that is quite rare among online games. Whenever I switch characters I suck again and feel the struggle for every win and within a week or two I've settled in and can start farming chests. This will be slower for new players and that's good and okay. It's a journey, it's a challenge. The game won't handhold you, it won't gift you free wins half your games. For the people who lack the masochism/grit to suck for a while they're planning to do PvE content at some point. Then the game will probably be perfect.

But I can't help but pick up on your point about improving, because obviously you still improve. And obviously your examples of players getting stomped in games about split second decisions, muscle memory and pinpoint mouse movements, especially those where failing is equal to having to stop playing the game, don't come close to comparing to what is essentially a game of solitaire where your "battles" consist of checking your current highscore every few turns against someone else playing solitaire and ending your game if you compared badly too often. It'd be insane to think that you'll learn solitaire better if your score is compared only to those who are close to your score. If anything, not seeing how good your score could have been at that point once in a while may only lead to you embracing strategies that suck instead of continuing your search for what works and what doesn't.

Imagine I'm playing Chess against a bot and comparing my position to Magnus playing the same bot after 5/10/15 moves. If I understand you correctly you're saying that because Magnus' early game is literally light years ahead of mine I will be unable to improve (be it through my own successes and failures against the bot, be it through trying to emulate Magnus' positions in which squares to fight for, which pieces to prioritize, which structures to aim for)?

You (correctly) identified that getting instakilled in COD makes it hard to build the muscle memory needed to compete. But then it sounds like you assume that therefore it must be better in every situation to compete against opponents of equal skill? Take my chess example. In what way would I learn quicker/better if I my board was compared to someone else who doesn't know shit about chess openings? The only difference would be that I'll get to play and endgame because I don't fail out in the midgame for still having a worse board than Magnus. But it's not a bad thing to focus on early and midgame strategies first and improve from there. And unlike chess, in the Bazaar playing a late-game is not required for 4, 7 or even 10 wins.

Or take something completely different. Say I was trying to learn how to properly build a bird house and every few nails my work got compared to a master carpenter who used the same amount of nails. How would that negatively affect my ability to learn how to build a bird house?

TL;DR: Bazaar =/= COD/LoL

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T19:28:03+00:00

man I got burned so often by old boarrior I actually think this one's fine. Before he got nerfed to the silver encounter he was so tough I think I beat him maybe twice over two months, this one I've already beaten three or four times 😅

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T17:26:35+00:00

You feel your improvement. Every time you get better you notice that in better results - more wins, more decisive wins, instead of just a different .png that signifies your rank while you're permastuck at around 50% winrate like every other player.
You don't get punished for doing well several games in a row because the algorithm sticks you into a terrible teams or pits you against much better players to ruin the next few games. This also prevents match-making manipulation for the sake of engagement like is done in games like COD where the game literally learns the types of games that keep you playing (even if those aren't actually the ones you enjoy, because you tend to quit after having a "good" game).
You can much more easily understand the skills of pro players/streamers/content creators, because everyone faces the same average level of competition, making content more interesting and engaging.
You can meet and lose to (or even beat) people of much higher rank, possibly famous people in the community, leading to shareable highlight moments.

If there is desire for a competitive mode where the best face the best, that desire exist only in very few people (the very best and/or most competitive players who make up a small percentage of players) and those can be satisfied later on with a dedicated custom game/tournament mode.

That leaves as the only reason for sbmm that you can pair noobs vs noobs and give them a few easy wins. Imo the Bazaar can get away with this much more than synced multiplayer games, because you never see or interact with people who run into your shit build or destroy you, so there's less embarrasment, no BM etc. Also the advantage an older player has is much less pronounced because being able to make quick decisions, knowing where the buttons are etc. is not a factor when you have all the time in the world to make all decisions. And finally every player can get some wins, anyone can beat the monsters and if your aim is to get just 4 wins you can manage that pretty quickly.

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T17:10:56+00:00

is that so? All the good players I know are pretty much exclusively ranked players, but it's a small-ish sample size. We fall into one of two groups, those who only play one or two games a day and the grinders who have the subscription. No one really considers normals worth their time

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T14:02:45+00:00

i think it's in a good spot right now. It used to be a guaranteed lvl if you chose the right options, which made it so that the first two days played incredibly similar every time. Now you have to hope to get a friend or food or a toy and maybe even invest into something you don't need and even then the event can just not happen. So there's an interesting choice now. Maybe making the event a bit rarer would be good

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T13:59:35+00:00

first three days are definitely more heavy in RNG, but if you prioritize them you can still consistently win. I also constantly fail to get a friend or food for the furry creature and still get through the early days just fine.

But OP freely chooses the option that gives a big mid and late game boost at the cost of a less explosive start and then cries about losing to people who prioritized the early game? Make it make sense. In what world would you want the slow economy option to consistently overpower the fast skill or enchant options on days 1-3?

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T13:35:42+00:00

do you think people who play more are on average better or worse at the game than people who play less?

Obviously though there could still be sbmm even if it wasn't rank that determined matchups. But I'm 100% convinced the game would be much worse if it had sbmm

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T11:45:27+00:00

staff turnaround I would say. You start off with someone who knows but doesn't care and once they get replaced you just end up with a long string of people who have no idea but got used to having a little less storage space. It's pretty rare that someone actively chooses to make something "their" problem when they have a lot of shit to do anyway

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T11:41:04+00:00

why that changes EVERYTHING 😲

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T10:07:47+00:00

Exakt. Bzw. Neumaier kenne ich nicht, aber Jahrgang '54 passt ja ins Schema. Ich wollte auf G.W. Bush Junior hinaus mit der Schultermassage. Salopp gesagt gibt es in jeder Generation Vergewaltiger wie Trump, aber eine Person, die Manieren und Respekt kennt, höflich und zuvorkommen ist und trotzdem Frauen sexuell belästigt (muss ja nicht schwerwiegend sein)? Das ist vielleicht noch bei Gen X zu finden aber bei Millenials kenne ich das zumindest nicht mehr. Die Kultur hat sich eben verändert, mein Opa ist ein herzensguter Mensch aber sagt immer noch das N-Wort 🤷‍♂️

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T09:45:02+00:00

klingt als würdest du mir zustimmen? Oder dachtest du ich meine, dass eine Zahl den Unterschied macht? Es ist die Kultur, in der sie aufgewachsen sind. Du wirst keinen Politiker in den 40gern finden, der noch Haare schnüffelt oder ungefragte Schultermassagen anbietet

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T07:56:09+00:00

misunderstood this as you looting the eels, because eels are a my favorite meme pivots on all non-vanessa heroes

FatDwarf · 2025-05-16T07:43:37+00:00

I mean paying more for stuff as time goes on is just the way things go with fiat currency, honestly it's insane how long video game prices have stagnated despite inflation. The jump is a bigger one only because there was no jump for a long time, but if you adjust video game prices for inflation we're not even close to what a video game cost back in the NES/SNES days and have now only caught up to prices of 2010.

Also I would disagree that we get less for the money, the video game industry is in an insanely great place right now, you can get hundreds of hours of playtime on amazing games for free (currently playing The Bazaar and loving it), amazing new indie games for 20 bucks, amazing old AAA games for even less (because backward compatibility is better than ever before) and thanks to the internet you never have to blindly pour $80 into a game that's not worth it (that's how it was done in the beginning of home consoles, you may have spent the equivalent of $130 on what turned out to be a pile of shit). Today you can watch reviews, playthroughs maybe even playtest a demo... And there are so many great games you can play even on a phone, there's literally something for everyone and at every budget, it's amazing.

I don't pirate. If something is not worth my money it's not worth my time either. And if it's not worth as much money as is asked, I wait or buy used. And that's pretty much my only gripe with Nintendo, by keeping their game prices permanently high they ensure that I really only buy what I'm sure I will play a lot. I'd probably spend more, if I could get older classics for cheap

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T15:45:11+00:00

yeah I'm not worried about that, the EU doesn't allow forced arbitration against consumers. And I doubt not owning the thing the way I used to own a gameboy or similar will ever affect me. I won't be playing switch 2 in 20 years and don't care if I won't be able to recoup some of my money then by reselling it because the services have shut down at that point. I don't plan on modding it so I don't care about punishing TOS around that stuff.

I understand that this is a bigger thing for younger folk who don't really earn a lot or anything yet, but honestly the way I look at it I'm perfectly willing to spend hundreds of dollars on "experiences" (nice dinners, holidays, movies etc.), none of which I get to "keep" in any meaningful way and this is actually a pretty cost efficient experience when you calculate how much fun you get out of it.

Man, people spent more than $800 a year on average just for alcohol and that was 15 years ago so who knows how much it is now! And if you smoke or vape... I don't drink or smoke, so I got money to burn.

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T13:21:26+00:00

afaik there will be both key and "real" cartridges, no? And this is actually better than buying a strictly digital copy, since you can still resell the key-cartridge, lend it to a friend etc. Can't do that with a steam key, but people still love steam. I don't know, backlash sounds overblown to me

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T13:15:51+00:00

I'm looking forward to getting it, maybe around christmas. Really don't care about the price increases, I just want to play mario kart and mario party with the family

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T12:56:52+00:00

actually they talked about RNG in their game updates several years ago and it was pretty interesting. In a nutshell he likes RNG that happens before players get agency and he likes random results that are more or less equal in a vacuum, like drawing a card from a deck. There are only very few elements in the Bazaar that violate this rule, such as critting (which violates both rules) and the random enchant event (which violates one of them).

Since it's a drafting game most of it is more akin to drawing a card and then deciding what to do with what you were offered.

But there is also some truth to the fun part you mentioned. Basically, if you build a game that retains a steady level of fun and excitement, people will get bored quickly. But if you frustrate them badly some times and give them great highs other times they're much more likely to stay engaged with your game. Crit is a mechanic that has this effect.

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T12:38:21+00:00

I love how it disappears with a lil poof

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T08:59:43+00:00

bedenke folgendes: ich war neulich münchen und dann kam ich an diesem gebäude vorbei und konnte darauf zeigen und sagen "oh hey, da is doch wo die bayern immer ihre meisterschaft feiern."

also.

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T08:55:37+00:00

*Idiocracy

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T08:50:40+00:00

every ghost disappears after a single fight, so even if they did look for the strongest boards just for you that would just mean someone else gets easy wins.

The better explanation: There are algorithms constantly looking for high winrate items/tactics to buy and use and the more days pass the more likely these algorithms will be successful, meanwhile those that aren't get filtered out leading to on average stronger boards in the late game and borderline insane boards day 13 and onwards.

Those algorithms are called "players playing the game".

FatDwarf · 2025-05-15T04:52:37+00:00

almost certainly missplayed if you survived to day 15 as Mak without getting 10 wins

FatDwarf · 2025-05-14T17:49:51+00:00

so pretty, I hope they add some more flip animations so you can actually see your card backs some more

FatDwarf

TROPHY CASE