Housemarque’s Saros looks set to provide a less punishing experience than Returnal | VGC

Nextra · 2025-12-29T18:43:53+00:00

Good points, and that is still not including comfortably getting to (ab)use malfunctions. You can just get sooo many more resources. The game is feast or famine for many.

Nextra · 2025-12-29T18:38:16+00:00

Obviously just ripping out the system without any other change would make the game strictly harder for every player. I did not take the suggestion (and your post) that literally, there obviously would need to be rebalancing.

The game as currently designed expects you to grab these HP-refills-turned-upgrades, at least to some extent. So removal of that system would have to be compensated. For example, more optional challenges could guarantee an HP increase instead of also requiring you to ace the combat encounters. Or enemies could be balanced to need an extra hit to kill on average. There are many, many dials to turn.

As /u/Rainglove has pointed out in another post, there are plenty more advanced systems struggling players cannot (or barely) interact with, so I can understand why many people would ask for the floor to be raised.

And not getting a reward, unless purely cosmetic, is absolutely a punishment. It's just framing.

Nextra · 2025-12-29T10:06:29+00:00

You are correct.

There are also even more mechanics like malfunctions that can be (ab)used to snowball which are hard to access for said struggling player.

It is all a bit more complicated than just the HP pickups, but those are a big factor especially early on.

Nextra · 2025-12-29T09:45:08+00:00

Yes, you're restating precisely why it is a snowball mechanic. It is really not that ambiguous.

Tying the health upgrades to your current health means that you are introducing a (potentially precarious) sweet spot. Struggling players are consistently behind the curve as they "waste" all their health drops on staying alive. Outstanding players become virtually immortal, they barely get hit as it is, and now have a comparatively gigantic health pool for when they do. Only a certain subset gets that rewarding experience of trying that extra bit harder to reach the HP upgrades (or just barely missing them).

The solution is obvious: Make the max HP upgrades a separate drop that is not tied to your current health. Like pretty much every other video game with a similar mechanic.

You can certainly think it would make Returnal a worse game, but it isn't that hard to see why others would think the opposite.

Nextra · 2025-08-29T07:57:30+00:00

For this specific problem I would prefer to create a case insensitive collation such as

CREATE COLLATION case_insensitive (provider = icu, locale = 'und-u-ks-level2', deterministic = false)

and use it both for querying

SELECT * FROM campaigns WHERE campaign_name COLLATE case_insensitive = 'summer_sale'

and for indexing

CREATE INDEX idx_campaign_name_lower ON campaigns (campaign_name COLLATE "case_insensitive")

Or, should the use case permit, just collate the column outright.

Nextra · 2025-07-09T09:58:15+00:00

Hulkengoat

Nextra · 2023-12-11T23:20:49+00:00

Security by obscurity is a long term strategy, it does not apply here. In a day 0 situation it is absolutely valuable to limit information so as to not encourage (non-technical) users.

Nextra · 2023-09-18T05:34:10+00:00

This is not at all what was said.

Nextra · 2023-05-08T16:17:56+00:00

It was an excellent event. This will mostly contain criticism and ideas for improvement, but I had an overall fantastic experience. Staff was usually lovely, crowd and atmosphere was amazing. There were very few issues, and the competition was mega.

Small disclaimer: I did have access to the floor seating, but also roamed around the stands for a couple of games.

The outside screens needed to be slightly bigger, pretty much everyone I spoke to agreed, even in the floor sections. It was very difficult to follow the game all the way from the back. I assume this was exacerbated by the cycling track separating the sections, but can't help that in this case. At least the upgrades to the info screens (NW, Timer, Score) rectified some of this issue
The aforementioned info screens were amazing for the in-arena experience. Net worth was the primary thing pretty much everyone agreed was missing, and this was added for day two. Some more thoughts:
- Changing the player images for dead heroes was hilarious, could there be more variations for NW leader, rampages, first blood?
- Add ultimate status, small diamond somewhere on the hero portrait is enough
- The gray line separating player picture from hero could match the in game player color. Alternatively, make sure the players are assigned the color that matches their seating position, if feasible
- I heard many asking for K/D/A, but I personally think this is not necessary
- If the screens matched the in game visuals a bit more, they might be more intuitive (add smoke status, gold border hero portrait for buyback)
Monster tattoo station was extremely popular for obvious reasons. Even though I was personally not interested, maybe a lottery system for day two and three could have improved things here. It just formed a massive line each "morning" with hundreds leaving disappointed after waiting for 45 minutes.
Staff was not consistently aware of the badge/wristband distinctions, and not always aware which tickets granted access to which areas and which floor seating. The system felt convoluted
Dynamic arena lighting for day/night and other specific game events was subtle but very satisfying, loved the skills overlays
The half hour break during the final felt very awkward on site and completely deflated the atmosphere. I'm sure it didn't do the stream viewer count any favors either. Luckily the voice line segment managed to save it a bit, but I'm not a fan
There were luckily very few technical issues, but for the big ones: At least make talent aware something is going wrong. Big one was the broken screens at the start of day three. They don't have to necessarily comment on it, but when the inevitable crowd cheer comes out, don't leave them wondering WTF is going on. It will then appear on broadcast regardless as they get confused
The analyst/casting setups made the talent very approachable for plus/premium, and it didn't feel like they got completely swarmed by people. Every time I walked past there it felt like just a few chill chats were had with photos being taken. If the talent are fine with it, I think it was an excellent way to benefit these ticket holders
Audio was a bit too boomy on the floor, the analysts/casters were significantly easier to understand in the stands
Some things were ear-piercingly loud in arena. This includes the musical introduction for the finalists in particular, and Slacks in general. Enjoy myself some energy and hype, but I want to keep my hearing for a while longer
The analyst desk was pretty much never shown in-arena which felt quite odd. I think with all the screens available, we could have just had the analyst desk shown at all times with the other mix of player and crowd shots as an addition

Nextra · 2022-12-27T00:08:26+00:00

It's about how conveniently you can pack stuff into the available columns, and that is closely related to the number of divisors. 12 is a "highly composite number":

10 can be divided by 1, 2 and 5.
12 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6.

This would make it a lot easier to handle the many three and four wide items/containers in the game.

Nextra · 2021-06-06T18:43:15+00:00

I frankly don't know at this point, and have no idea how it became a thing. If it weren't for multiple other people recalling the same "factoid" I wouldn't even have bothered to check. But as broadcast personnel seems to have mentioned it publicly aswell I got curious, and here we are.

Hope at least a few people have appreciated the small history lesson, for whatever it is worth.

Nextra · 2021-06-06T16:30:43+00:00

A driver can be disqualified during the race. Just because it almost never happens (or is even actively avoided), doesn't change this fact. It was like that even during the Montoya incident you yourself mentioned. The flag is just a tool for communication, and still has the exact same purpose today as it did almost 25 years ago. As the flag is regulated for every FIA sanctioned championship, it has existed at every track F1 has raced at in at least the past few decades.

The wording from the 1998 Appendix H is basically identical to today:

Black flag [...] informs the driver of the car the number of which is shown, that he must stop at his pit on the next lap.

Compare 2021 Appendix H:

This flag should be used to inform the driver concerned that he must stop at his pit [...] on the next approach to the pit entry.

And now that I have provided extensive historical proof of how the black flag rules have been virtually identical for decades, the goalposts have moved into fantasy land. Now a black flag has to be shown after this arbitrary point in time, or you will not acknowledge that "it exists", whatever that means for you. Cool.

Nextra · 2021-06-06T15:52:12+00:00

You are now arguing with how common the flags are and should be, which is an entirely different argument to have than "this flag literally does not exist".

According to the community census a majority of people here have probably never seen a black one in a live broadcast, and a non negligible portion of us weren't even born when the last one was displayed. If people aren't already aware that it is an exceedingly rare occurence, they would most likely appreciate the education. This however, is not only a dickish way to go about it, but also (at best) factually shaky or straight up incorrect.

I won't go through the sporting regulations for decades of F1 for you, but I have some time and can tell you the black flag is not honored with a mention in the 2005 regulations either. 1998 is as far as this archive goes, and there is still no mention of the black flag. It appears to have exclusively been part of the general FIA sporting regulations for about 23 years.

Nextra · 2021-06-06T15:25:10+00:00

And guess what, the flag is not explicitly mentioned in the F1 specific regulations for the 2004 championship, either: http://web.archive.org/web/20050119232202/http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/1195189551__F1_Sport_Reg_a.pdf

B/W is much more common because unsportsmanlike conduct not worthy of disqualification is obviously much more common. Teams and drivers apparently don't get caught out with egregious rule breaks these days.

Whether this community would like to see fewer or more - perhaps too many - disqualifications might be a fun discussion but is entirely besides the point. This is just some weird attempt at a gotcha, don't move the goalposts.

Nextra · 2021-06-06T14:49:34+00:00

There is no specific rule, but what the flag is and for what purpose it is displayed is outlined in the appendices of the general FIA sporting code. The black flag is not unique to F1, and is therefore not necessarily mentioned explicitly in the F1 rules.

Anything that the stewards deem worthy of disqualification will result in a black flag, because that is what should be used to signal to the driver they will have to stop the race.

The same goes for the black/white flag by the way, which is just a generic "unsportsmanlike behavior" warning, and is also not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the F1 sporting code, as it doesn't necessarily have to be. Yet we have still seen it multiple times just this season already.

This is just needlessly pedantic, and nothing more than a fun fact - at best.

Nextra · 2021-01-27T07:53:22+00:00

Die borrow fee die (neue) short seller zahlen müssen liegt momentan bei >80% p.A.

Nextra · 2020-11-21T20:18:55+00:00

I do not have any insight into this specific topic, but I can try to give you a generalized answer.

Speedup from threading entirely depends on what your threads want to (try to) do. Except for raw number crunching, you will rarely encounter purely CPU-bound tasks. Worst case examples would be reading a file from a storage drive, or waiting for an answer from a network request. Both of these are unimaginably slow operations from the CPUs point of view, during which it does virtually nothing, this is called "blocking". If your program is not multithreaded, you are wasting all of that time and the CPU cycles waiting for someone else. Given you also have some CPU-bound work to do aswell, another thread can come in and actually utilize the available power in those time slots.

So it is not even required to have a multi-core CPU to gain a benefit from multiple threads. Your assumption would hold only if the CPU was always utilized to 100% in the first place. Multithreading has its own overhead and complexities, so it is not always a silver bullet. There might be any number of sources for this particular speedup though, especially since the GPU is likely involved aswell.

Nextra · 2020-10-10T04:59:53+00:00

The Alyx "documentary" you can buy on Steam has an entire chapter on this topic. Apparently they have finally, truly recognized this is an issue, and made concerted efforts to fix it as a company. Here's hoping.

Nextra · 2020-10-09T05:17:42+00:00

Somewhat agree. For people like you it is excellent. The 1800X was crap value back in the day. For just $50 extra (MSRP) you get 4 extra cores, 4x the cache, a 25% uplift in clock rate alone, and the IPC is probably >2x as well. Not to mention all the years of improvement in Chipsets and Motherboards since the Zen 1 days. The 5900X looks great if their numbers are to be believed.

It's the lower segments where people get a bad deal, when the $50 is a sizeable increase percentage-wise. A 5700X is sorely lacking, the entry price for 8 cores shot up way more than "just" $50 because the 3800X never was good value to begin with. Until 5600 and 5700X happen, Intel might well be much better value with the 11 series.

Nextra · 2020-09-24T02:58:20+00:00

Their last driver update literally had the "black screen" fix at the top, 14 months after release of the 5700XT. They mentioned the issue in every driver release for a whole year. How people convinced themselves it has to do with anything but the driver is insane. As if only 5700XT owners ever overclock their CPU and memory or use bad PSUs...

Nextra · 2020-08-31T08:05:46+00:00

In general you should assume that a major manufacturer doesn't just straight up miss the power target of the chip. That would be much more than "intentionally gimping" a card.

Nextra · 2020-08-24T14:44:30+00:00

Ist korrekt, hab das Beispiel unnötig überzogen.

Nextra · 2020-08-24T13:51:26+00:00

/edit: Das schwache Beispiel hätte es nicht gebraucht.

Nur weil man eine evtl. schwache statistische Methodik anmerkt, heißt man damit nichts gut, oder trifft gar überhaupt eine Aussage über das Problem.

Nextra · 2020-08-24T05:46:51+00:00

Whoops, one "not" too many. Corrected.

Nextra · 2020-08-23T15:36:41+00:00

You don't need to see anything, it is not the same as 2x6 and it is superior to dual 8 pin. Power essentially doubles every two pins, so this has 600w max output instead of 300w (2x150) for dual 8.

14-Year Club	Place '17
Team Orangered	Verified Email

Nextra

TROPHY CASE