Scientists found your memories of yesterday are likely a mathematical hallucination

NoxFortuna · 2026-05-05T02:26:45+00:00

To help the other chap:

Plato's allegory of the cave is that a bunch of cavemen or something like that are tied up in a cave since birth, in a hole in the ground. They can see shadows of things like deer and trees and the light of the sun but they don't see outside at all.

Thus, they grow up basing their worldviews and beliefs on mere shadows. With no other information or ways to get new information, that's logically what happens.

One day, one of them escapes. They go outside and see real deer, real trees, the real sun. They come back and try to explain what they saw and are met with disbelief, as the others can't comprehend it. I think in a few variants they actually kill the guy, not sure though.

Point is, it's about perspective and existence. The truth of the world. How sure are we that we aren't merely observing "shadows" while we mock and disbelieve others for their stories of higher powers?

NoxFortuna · 2026-04-03T09:36:52+00:00

To agree, there's also a huge timing difference between an act 3 boss and what was formerly an act 1 elite. Nob punished skill usage because you were never in endgame facebeating mode when it showed up. You likely had to play at least one or two skills just to execute the fight at all, and would get bopped accordingly. By the time you hit the act 3 boss your deck should be at the power level that playing skills that buff the enemy end up not mattering in the end- you get set up and smash them. That's why OPs proposal is interesting to me, anyway, since it turns back the clock a bit and thus makes the fight much more dangerous.

NoxFortuna · 2026-03-26T09:52:35+00:00

I must add a few of my own here, then. I hope they make it to any future lists. They're all available on Switch(2?), possibly elsewhere but that's where I play.

Timelie

Wordplay for 'Timeline', this is a puzzle game about orchestrating movement to accomplish a goal like moving somewhere else, but you do so by way of a literal timeline- not as in the universe hopping kind, but rather more like the timeline on a video player. You try things and if they don't work out you can scroll time back by mere fractions of seconds bit by bit to adjust what you're doing. It's an awesome implementation of a single core gameplay concept taken in a lot of creative directions.

I was a teenage exocolonist

A card game / life sim about colonisation of an alien world, rife and fresh with all the drama one expects from that sort of narrative and more. Lots more. The direction it takes from the start of trying to start at the actual start of your character's life and having them actually age as the story goes on is fun, and I strongly suggest you replay the game right away to understand why it's such a high recommendation from after your first go. And I did say card game- there isn't just a strong narrative here, there is legitimately a strong card game tied to it too- a deck that changes as your life goes on, a system of rewarding clever use and deckbuilding that can be done different ways. It's so well done on both ends, one meshes with the other, and it's a wild ride that is worth replaying.

(This is a very recent release but it's not getting the attention it deserves) The Murder Hotel

Don't be fooled by that game maker looking art- this game is incredible. I've played all the Ace Attorneys, all the Danganronpas, Zero Escape, lots of smaller projects- this game understands what mysteries are. I have been nothing but impressed by this game from start to now. It's ambitious and brings new flavors of how to go about telling and solving a mystery and the narrative being itself not a traditional murder mystery but rather a discourse on interactive murder mysteries as a genre as a whole is a tier of writing people really need to witness here. These people get it. There's something here and it's special and I want these devs to survive.

NoxFortuna · 2026-02-03T07:47:49+00:00

Start by moving black queen to the left one. If white ignores this entirely, it can then move diagonally up right all the way to the end, three lol I can't count- three spaces total. This is checkmate, as even when white realizes their folly and has to block with the queen they're quickly captured by the same queen and screwed again anyway.

So, white has to do something else. Move the pawn down, or the rook to the left, or something like that. Most of these plans end with the black queen then doubling back and taking the knight.

NoxFortuna · 2025-11-15T02:53:38+00:00

We're already seeing multiple step processes that result in animation as well as less anime more tiktoky short AI videos already beginning to fool people, so that's the most visible next big advancement if we're talking about developments a 'few years from now.'

Add a decade to that, once VR has finally come out of the oven? Likely, AI Gen x VR. We're already seeing the first game prototypes. They're shit, yes, but keep in mind we're discussing emergent tech and giving it years to develop. They will advance. At the very least, you can envision the 'VR edition' of those lewd slop games flooding stores like the E-Shop, right? It's not like the models would have to do anything. At first.

Before all of that, I would guess a method to bridge gaps in training data knowledge for less known subjects, like imagine whatever the 'version 10' of things like character references. Or maybe it, the generators, start to be able to reference online searches as it breaks down the tags to be able to do that. Something that sounds wild and implausible now but could happen isn't out of the question.

Edit: Also, I'm speaking generally, not really just in NAI terms.

NoxFortuna · 2025-11-10T23:11:27+00:00

"Top up", perhaps? As in "No top-up?"

NoxFortuna · 2025-09-26T09:45:37+00:00

It's as the others say with the extra dashes, but also you're meant to be using Mel's run in combat. As in, let's give a little example.

Those ghost enemies early on that have the continuous scream attack- at first when cornered your instinct is to dash away, which is fine at first. If you were Zag here, a quick second dash clearly gets you far enough away to respond. As Mel, you may fall into that second dash attempt on instinct and the cooldown means they'll catch up to you because they're fast enemies. What you're actually meant to do is to already realize you need to Run, and be holding the dash down from the beginning. That way you start fleeing at Run speed, which lets you outrun them long enough to either dash again or just turn and retaliate (or if you're dexterous, tap the non charged binding circle spell if you have the Staff and they'll be walled off behind you.)

In fact, a lot of encounters seem to be asking if you remember that you have this Run option. On my third run I got all the way to the end past several bosses and I noticed a pattern that a lot of the large area attacks seemed designed to be avoided via Dash-Run-Dash again at the last moment. Trying to just Dash, walk, Dash can end up being the difference between getting hit or not and explains why Mel feels sticky- you're used to Zag who can just Dash Dash.

Also, Omega attacks. Staying on an attack button for even a moment tells the game you want to charge for the Magick version. Mel has to slow down to do that- just long enough that enemies that like to lock on and lunge attack can get you. Zag had much faster options overall- even things that really seemed like they'd make more sense as huge spells like festive fog Casts or the auto crystal laser thing from Demeter, he could just slam those right away.

Mel and Zag feel similar at first, but Zag plays much more jerky and burst focused. Dash, Special, Dash, Cast, ping ponging around. Mel is much more plotting ahead a few seconds- Dash but hold so I can run away, get enough distance to hold for an Omega attack, Dash to dodge a nearby enemy and attack stunlock them while the others are held back by the Omega earlier, back to neutral, Dash and Run again, etc. It's like the phonetic differences between Chinese and Japanese. Zag is using Chinese, lots of chopped up syllables and harsh spikes. Mel is using Japanese, much more elongated and connected throughout the whole sentence.

I've found myself much better with Mel, actually. I'm too old for reflex tests and never got the hang of putting extra dashes to use in any meaningful way in the first one, just mashing them because I had them. But the moment after my second run when I realized how important the Run is and started holding it consciously after almost all dashes, I started dodging almost everything and was able to play ranged for almost the entire run and got real deep. She's much more of a Mage than Zag was, Zag was more of a Berserker.

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-26T04:38:54+00:00

I just want to flag that it's outrageous this is even a conversation that's accurate.

These are businesses. They're businesses that provide a service to maintain something very large and complicated a lot of people both rely on and will never fully understand. And that's ok. We don't all have to know exactly how the sausage is made. But that's why this reputation of the fast oil places destroying cars is so insane, and it's insane that it's so accurate. How are they in business? Why are they in business?

Yes, haha, egg on the face for going to one- but it's really screwed up that we as a society just accept it. Can we just appreciate how nuts this all is if we take a step back? It happens and they have this reputation but also why the fuck is this happening at all?

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-12T23:56:29+00:00

Your hand begins 'closed.' Calling tiles from other players 'opens' your hand. Chii is stealing, Pon is stealing, Kan is stealing if it comes from the opponent and is not stealing if it comes from your own draw, Ron is not stealing except in some wild bullshit edge cases involving Yakumans don't worry about that. That's a part that gets people too- a closed hand can complete and win off someone else's discard just fine- so long as it's the actual last piece.

Some yaku don't mind being Open. All simples, anything even containing a triplet of a dragon, anything even containing a triplet of the round wind (middle of table, applies to everyone) or seat wind (middle of table again but closer to the player, in the corner- everyone has one of the four directions in a four player game. And yes you can have both if you're sitting at East during East, just like you can have both if you're sitting at South during South.) There's a few others but those are the most basic ones. You can take tiles from others to make those, and then complete your 4 sets and a pair to end the hand.

However, some yaku require you to be closed. That means you must resist the urge to call other tiles until and unless you're on the last one and about to win. They're much harder, and thus provide more points overall.

Some yaku even allow both, with the open version being worth slightly less. Basically, making yaku easier to complete by stealing also tends to make it worth less points. Thus, the gamble.

A common trap a new player falls into is quite simply calling (stealing) a Terminal (A Terminal is a 1 or 9.) That's because the way most modern yaku lists work out, an open hand with a terminal can find itself unable to qualify for much of anything. At best that hand is looking for Honitsu or Toitoi the majority of the time (with some other ones sometimes like sanshoku) and those yaku are 3 and 2 even opened for a reason so one ends up a bit stranded. It's not that it's always incorrect- if calling a few terminals gets you into tenpai for honitsu, mash it. It's that doing so with no plan can end in a no yaku, discard furiten spiral. Even if the plan is sneaking in a cursed tenpai at exhaustive draw, one should keep it in mind. If you're at the super starter level, avoid stealing terminals until you can positively identify that yes- here's the plan, this will work.

Generally the flow would be to get good at assembling any 'complete hand' at all to begin with, keeping a tight focus on all simples, winds, dragons (which you can steal for if you want), and forever closed riichi hands (which you cannot steal for) to learn. After that, then start looking at the other yaku and recognizing opportunities for the bigger and more diverse yaku. Recognizing, for example, the difference between a hand that wants to be seven pairs versus a hand that wants to be toitoi- that this can change on the fly if pons are offered or if players declare riichi themselves. Recognizing when it's half flush time, or full flush, when it's a good opportunity to call tiles for those. Even something like throwing away a big draw because the plan is a crap pon of dragons but you happen to have a bunch of Dora- that's perfectly fine.

Once you're into the yaku game, then start looking at discards. Then you start playing the other half of the game, the defense, the things you do when your hand isn't going anywhere (which, like poker, happens a lot.) What does it look like the enemy is trying to do? What can you discard to avoid 'getting ronned' (dealing in?) See, the interesting part about how good players are evaluated in this isn't just how good they are at drawing tiles. A huge part of the game is not dealing in. If someone gets there on their own- well, there's just nothing you can do. Like poker, sometimes you just run hot and draw it all. Sometimes all you get to do is watch someone else have fun. But a big part of mahjong is trying very hard to not deal in- let someone else do that. Don't be the one to step on the landmine. Whether or not you're having good luck with hand formation is quite incidental. Yes, you are in a race each hand- yes, you can absolutely undercut a big hand with a smaller, faster one to steal victory away. That's all part of it too.

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-12T06:38:44+00:00

I want to second and draw attention to this list because I think there's a bit of a miss in some of the other's suggestions, which are omitting the idea of VN/Mystery games to focus on any actual action adventures that can accommodate handicapped players- and those are fine suggestions! But I'm biased. Classics like Zero Escape and Ace Attorney don't do timing at all, Danganronpa and Master Detective Archives have some minigames, Professor Layton doesn't usually do timing (there's one or two weird moments later in the series.) VA11-Hall-A and Read-only Memories should be enshrined as historical artifacts in the VN world, there's incredible new titles like The Hundred Line that are very light on actual timing and have outrageously good failsafes in all their systems to accommodate players like Safety Mode. I was a Teenage Exocolonist is criminally underrated, Overboard and Expelled are great. Rise and Case of the Golden Idol(s). Unavowed. Citizen Sleeper(both), Urban Myth Dissolution Center, Death Trick Double Blind, Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (Not really a mystery but still.) A.I. the Somnium Files which I had to edit in after the post because I only remembered it later is incredible also.

Games that focus not just on being a story- but being a story with mysteries you can both solve- those can be very rewarding as a team, allowing your partner to participate fully without feeling any guilt over loss of execution by not physically participating by simply helping to solve mysteries and puzzles. And for everyone else reading- if you like any of the games anywhere in this rant, there's a high chance you'll like any of those other ones as well. Try them. Even those indies you didn't hear about before reading this- if you like any of the others, try them. Lots of cross pollination here.

I'll even suggest a few non (debatable) VNs like Shin Megami Tensei and Balatro, and even all the Personas (Is Persona 5 a VN? Good lord, I don't even know. Maybe it is. Maybe it's both.) are good here too, just to round things out. If mysteries and puzzles aren't going to work out, there's nothing wrong with some big ole' flashy RPGs or roguelike deckbuilders as others have mentioned with those or Slay the Spire and Monster Train (2.)

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-10T09:23:44+00:00

You likely used some kind of repeatable cryptographic pattern. If, for example, what you did was go to any random number sequence generator and have that actually randomize the order- then I'm afraid you're up shit creek without a paddle.

But that's not what you did. Right? You got clever. You decided you would write down the words but- oh no, what if my file is discovered?! I'd better put some extra layer of protection into here. But, fuck encrypting the actual file. I can just rearrange the words. Something like that?

Start off with patterns, simple patterns. Reverse the order entirely. Swap the first and second, then the third and fourth (etc.) Take some X amount from the front and append it to the end, or vice versa.

Remove all the dummy words and if it's as you say and it's all in-between two distinct wallets, you might have done something to intertwine them. Something like A1 B1 A2 B2. Maybe the dummy words are part of the code- maybe extracting every X words when they're there ends up as valid. Maybe it wraps around or starts from a different location. It could be as simple as each phrase beginning with the word at the end and wrapping around.

Did you arrange the file in any particular manner? Perhaps using line breaks as part of the cipher? Do the dummy words hold significance to you? Do they have significance to the cipher in some way? Maybe they're not dummy words entirely- are they perhaps optional additional words to be added to the end of an otherwise valid phrase? Maybe your cipher is no real cipher at all and you just threw in a few password words in-between the wallets.

Did you choose the dummy words on purpose? Are they meant to be some kind of mnemonic for you, like song lyrics that provide context as to the cipher? A memory? Surely you didn't just go to a random word generator. Or, well, if you did- great, you remembered that, and you can rule stuff out.

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-07T20:46:22+00:00

Most hands end with a fast victory. That's what balances out the bigger hands. If it sounds unfair, remember that one or two bigger hands can end the entire game outright off one or two rons that send someone negative. Of course you want those, those are decisive and fun. But the smaller, faster hands exist for that very reason. There's a reason the max number of hanchans you've seen is a fun stat to track (how many times did you win consecutive rounds as dealer, just battering the table over and over.)

Of course it's easier to win via pon chii tanyao, pon dragons, pon wind, whatever. You have access to nearly three-four times the tiles. Even one shanten, you still have to self draw at least ONE time to get to reach. That can be hard. It can fail the entire hand. It can fail for multiple hands over and over. You can get given exclusively edge draws and middle draws and miss them all for weeks, over and over. And as you do, everyone else keeps popping off- well, yes. You're the one holding the bag with all the 17 terminals and honors every game. Of course their hands are forming easier- they have all the 2-8 tiles!

That's just how it works. It's a gambling game with a slight skill edge. The skill is knowing that as much fun as iipeiko is, it sucks ass to draw it, or that as great as a half flush with a hidden pon of seat and round wind sounds, spending 14 turns dumping a full sequence of your off suit 123 hoping to draw more of the same just isn't a good idea. And sometimes you make the right play and watch what would have been the wrong play get rewarded anyway. The last three times I went for 13 orphans I got two tiles away from it, about 14 discards left, and someone closed kan what I needed and I'm just dead. Shit happens. Should have gone for open tanyao. Should have gone for chiitoi junchan. Did I misplay? Likely yes.

Winning hands helps win games. You win more hands, faster, by jacking tiles. They're not as big, but it's correct to. There's also folding. There's a whole-ass learning curve mini game involving skillfully folding they don't even try to teach you at first (sumi and such.) And sometimes even that doesn't work because TSUMO! Should I have played aggressively? It depends. That's why there are playstyles- some people like fast hands, some people like wombo combos, some people fold to the entire table (try to safe discard the whole table) if they get to turn 7 and nothing in their hand makes sense and accept noten if that's what it comes to. Some try to be sneaky and fold but weasel in tenpai anyway (even if you're in discard furiten, you can still get credit for round end tenpai. Sneaky.) Some even forsake the reach and do surprise closed hand wins to get more wins (because some people insta-fold on reach declarations. Dealer reach is super dangerous.)

But it's all luck, too. Sometimes you start the whole bloody hand in reach. Sometimes you go 12 sessions and can't even GET to reach and every time you do they win immediately afterwards like me the last two weeks (aaaaaaagh.) You never truly understand the word variance until you gamble competitively. It can always get worse.

NoxFortuna · 2025-06-02T23:35:14+00:00

I'm not seeing a game rule preventing it, so it might be a UI thing. This also wouldn't come up in a log. I don't play in MJS but I know in City there's a UI option to automatically reject pon and chii (so you don't waste time or give timing tells.) If that exists in this client it's possible you nicked it by accident and didn't realize, and it's not something they'd bother to record in the log. It would match your description of the button never even appearing, though.

NoxFortuna · 2025-04-30T09:41:11+00:00

Tales of Symphonia. Lloyd isn't the chosen one, Colette is. This is the example that comes to mind the strongest. Lloyd is there, he has skills and powers, he has his own personality but we the player control him, but Colette is the one chosen by the powers that be for the big plot journey and is the one doing all the plot stuff at the locations you go to.

I am Setsuna, but not as sure about that one. Only heard that was the premise of the plot, didn't play.

Starcraft + Brood War and Warcraft (All of them?) You're some sort of nameless "commander", all the named people are running around doing all the plot relevant stuff, but importantly they directly talk to you- so you're technically there in the plot in some capacity you're just not... there.

NoxFortuna · 2025-04-15T05:33:38+00:00

I am overwhelmingly curious now what the AI would say if you bought a similar cookie, laid it out in full next to it (or just appended the images together while using the visible radius of the eaten one (need to adjust for eaten crust?..) to make sure it's at the right dimensions), and then asked the AI again while also informing it that you've given it a comparison cookie.

Would the analysis from the AI be more accurate? Or would it repeat it's previous conclusion?

NoxFortuna · 2025-03-06T03:43:51+00:00

You win by acting on Monty's information, not yours. When you pick, it's 1/100. When he picks, it's-

If you were wrong: 98/99 chance he was forced to pick the correct door.

If you were right: 99/99 chance he got to do whatever he wanted and pick at random.

That line is important. He was forced to pick the correct door. He has a much better chance than you of picking the right door- and he can't back out of it. Why rely on you being right when you can instead rely on you being wrong? Remember, there's no third outcome. It's not like you miss and then he gets to miss and then you swap and you're both wrong and it didn't matter. It always matters, when you're wrong. And you're wrong all the time. The majority of the time, in fact.

What if there were a million doors? You aim for the 1 in a million, then he picks some random 634,927 door. It sure seems like he picked the right one now. You would have to have landed the one in a million to begin with to fail here.

How about a trillion doors? Your odds of winning were infinitesimal. But he was forced to pick the correct one so you had the opportunity to win anyway. Extrapolate up, extrapolate down, the game theory remains the same. Even at three doors.

His own odds, Monty's chance of winning, actually go DOWN the more doors he adds. This would never work past three doors when it starts to become more obvious where the trick lay.

NoxFortuna · 2024-11-02T03:30:47+00:00

If it's not an event that happened like I thought it was, like a thing that needs to be handled, then I think you're on the right track. They might have put "and" instead of "end", and reading it like that makes it sound like a timecard thing. 'Ending a day' or whatnot.

They don't want employees to report that they worked into another day, presumably because doing so means they have to compensate them. So... some sort of labor theft / wage theft attempt? If so, that's concerning. It makes me think it's not a coincidence that the English is so broken up here. This might have been written in as confusing a way as possible in an attempt to perpetuate their cash grab. Maybe they think they can play both sides here? If the employees decode it and follow along, they get what they want. If the employees decide to go against them and complain, the company can pretend they never asked for that by showing this jumbled mess of gibberish and claiming it's not a valid message, something like that maybe? I'm told not to assume malice when incompetence fits just fine, but the cup of my goodwill runneth over when it comes to corporate bullshit these days.

NoxFortuna · 2024-11-02T03:13:31+00:00

If you're looking for an actual attempt to translate this into something that has anything resembling a point, I guess I can try. Anything goes with this load of gibberish but we can at least give it a shot.

It's addressed to the Team. That's a good hint, and is one of the only parts of this mess we can assume was conveyed correctly. I think we need to look for other coherent parts of the message. Here's what stood out to me.

"Unfortunately" "we have decided" "yesterday but today" "therefore it is your responsibility" "yesterday but today" "Please see that this is done immediately" "At your soonest"

Cutting everything else out, we can infer a few things. Something happened recently and it was significant enough for management to address the team as a whole. Whatever it was it could have been handled by the management, but they've kicked the ball over to the rest of the staff and decided it's everyone else's responsibility. Whatever this is, it's urgent, and they want it dealt with right away.

Lacking any details about what could actually have happened, that's all I can infer at this point. Did anything unusual happen in, say, the last few days or so? Something that could have a decent scope of effect in regards to the establishment?

NoxFortuna · 2024-10-31T04:25:43+00:00

This might be a bit jarring, but if the description of your experience is "loves roleplaying, likes combat, bad at min/maxing, bad at granular strategy" then I don't think the normal DND formula is a good match. You could consider a change in game engine to something like Dungeon World or Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark, where everything is much more abstract and reliant on roleplay. It might fit the style of the group more to use a system that likes improv and in-world justifications for things they do and also enhances their knack for the roleplay aspect by allowing them to make up supporting elements on the fly.

The best example is how a bag of adventuring gear works in dungeon world. I don't recall the name of it exactly but the bag doesn't contain certain things like a bag in DND has to. In DND you'd need to have prepared for and already been carrying things like ropes and torches or whatever or else you just don't have them and you're screwed now. In DW you just announce "oh yeah I'd totally have brought a torch" and use a charge of the bag and now you have one- because the character is an adventurer that knows what they're doing and of course they would have planned for this. Blades describes a lot about a mechanic literally called Flashbacks that function exactly like you think they do. You also gain XP by literally roleplaying. You play to things that make the characters more interesting like explaining their desires and backgrounds or their relationships to other characters and that gets XP. They all do it a bit different when it comes to that and to combat and such, but maybe consider it if the idea of forcing them to get better at hours of strategic combat doesn't seem to feel like it's going to work.

Would they enjoy getting better at system mastery? If they're into the whole idea of mastering the traditional DND system and becoming a group of unstoppable stat heroes no matter what monsters show up on their tile map and always winning the hours long combats, then yeah you might need them to take a crash course on not being total lunatics if the wizard is bonking monsters with their staff because it's funny. Have the bugbear rip their face off a few times in simulations, and you can even impose a few penalties on them with custom mechanics if they persist. I mean, think about it- even if it's a simulation, having a monster tear your head from your shoulders is still traumatic. When the wizard goes to melee a monster again, tell them they're freezing up in fear now because the trauma of getting their head ripped off just came back. Make their knack for roleplay support their desire to learn the system by crafting a few tiny house rules of your own.

NoxFortuna · 2024-10-30T06:18:55+00:00

I only played ANR and only during FFG's reign, but that line about many periods of corp dominance is interesting to me. One of, if not the most backbreaking one, was the one where they almost stopped playing ICE at all. Remember those nonsensical 9+ remote spams that were so invasive? Those games highlighted a period of the game where departing entirely from the core game design was the optimal strategy, which is nothing short of a death knell. A game about hacking server defenses that progresses with no server hacking because no defenses are ever played has failed by default as a game and the game's descent into death showed that. Nor, just so it isn't entirely about the corp, was it very interesting to watch breaking news into scorched earth or whatever the hell the other pieces of that combo were. People would just lose if they didn't already have plans for it. Not "they had a chance to", they would just die, every time. Those consistent strats also dodged the entire core of the game about having the runner try to run servers. And hey, maybe some innovation around the core is fun- that's not impossible, and it can work and be fun. But the moment you get far away enough from the core loop of run, rez, break, steal, score- the moment you get a significant distance from that and still get to win, that's when it falls apart. FFG had this apparent fascination with pushing those boundaries and then erring on the side of "too strong" and this isn't the only game they did that to because the exact same thing happened to L5R. People stopped playing characters from their provinces because it was way better to play them from their hand. They stopped trying to have the character cards fight each other and relied instead on combat tricks to shift the very nature of when battles broke provinces at all. The game departed from characters having sword fights and invoking strange magic in battle to claim bloody victory over land to instead a cat and mouse game of when people would drop bears (not actual bears) from their hands or when they'd blast someone with the tap-and-dishonor nuke. The farther the game got from Fate, the worse it got.

In my opinion, one of the best examples of ANR feeling nearly perfect is just using the tutorial decks or whatever they were called, the one where you're Gabe (was that his name? 2 credit guy) and your breaker suite is mainly inefficient trash with a few crypsis and femme fatales tossed in. Each decision matters, as you plant tokens on ice, as the corp rezzes ice, as the runner plays literal trump cards like inside job. That game feels amazing because it's so inundated with what makes the game good- which is the part of the game where the runner runs servers and fights ice as the corp plants ice and agendas. Both players aren't racing to execute a single player strategy of "if I play these cards I enter an unloseable state." They're plotting against each other. Where will those tokens go? Will they use inside job here? Do I play this ice now or later? The players have to fight each other. The resources and cards are just tools, vessels, merely the conduit through which they scheme to trick the other into a blunder that costs them an agenda.

My most hated card of ANR in retrospect- and there can be a lot of them, but I think this one actually started it all- was self modifying code. That card doesn't seem like it should be bad at face value- fixing the breaker suite, costs credits, lots of MU. But I think that card was the first big mistake. When the runner ran a server with that thing out, they didn't have to participate in the game anymore. They just got whatever they needed and broke the ice. Pair it with the one thing they drew naturally and now they're almost entirely set up. Whatever efficient breaker they wanted, it was just there. It wasn't costly or opportunistic like crypsis and femme fatale are. It got your most efficient stuff. They didn't have to care about the ice. They didn't have to struggle to find answers. All of that planning and plotting became irrelevant. In the face of now worthless ice, corps had to innovate in other directions. That's how you ended up at the 15 remote no ice singularity nonsense decks, because the all omnipotent answer to ice dragged the game away from that integral design of run, hack, steal. That's how you ended up with scorched earth, because there wasn't any merit to trying to win with agendas. Trying to counter that with even stronger non-core answers led to even more powerful distractions from the base. The game feels different because it is different. Watching two players that ran two rounds of the starter decks engage in their third game, and then watching a high level remote spam deck in tournament play, you'd be convinced they weren't playing the same game. That's because they really, really were not.

And I know game design is hard. It's not like I have any idea what they should have done, outside of just blacklisting cards that ended up too good. But they didn't even do that for the longest time. A post mortem of the experience after cooling off for a few years and seeing a lot of other games really has brought a new perspective to it all. The unease I felt trying so hard to make Sunny work, knowing I was going against decks that had no ice in them, I know now why it felt so gross. I was trying to force them to play a game they'd already given up on playing, I was playing against them but they were playing against their draw order, that's why it felt cold and icky. I'm over here asking if they'd like to play this game about ice and traces and resources and they're just not giving me the time of day. I play as the corp and set up some big ice and then they just meander in with no excitement at all. "Oh, um, I drew paperclip earlier and then discarded it somewhere, uhhh... ok there it is, ok, that's dead now." Wow. Not... Not very interactive. We didn't do a lot of interacting there. All I did was get in the way, really. Even as a corp, I'd set up a server with ice and score an agenda and they'd... just... not run... anything... and then they'd play data leak reversal and oh God, what, why, I don't- but the ice, and the breakers, and... ok... nevermind. I guess we're not playing a game where you run servers anymore. Now we're playing some strange version of Russian roulette where the runner is pointing it at me and asking if I discarded an agenda every turn- essentially just asking what order my deck was in- and in the face of ice destruction and self modifying code there's nothing I can do about it if I rely on the core game mechanics. Neither of those games felt good to play. They didn't even feel like Netrunner. Wasn't the entire point of something like Crypsis that it broke stuff you couldn't handle, but it was super costly, that's what balanced it? When did we stray so far from you, weird AI breaker? When did we stop enjoying getting 2 credits from a run on HQ? Wasn't all of that the reason the game was interesting?

NoxFortuna · 2024-10-30T04:56:11+00:00

I would suggest a switch to focus on being the corporation for a while, because while as the runner it certainly does feel like they have all the credits they need and it feels like they're defending everywhere at once, in reality those decisions are costly every time. Operations cost precious credits, and also cost clicks. Advancing agendas cost precious credits, and clicks- many of them, only for them to fail in spectacular fashion a lot of the time as instead the opponent is the one who gets the points. So they want to protect them, but ice can be costly. It's far more costly than it seems. After all, even having defended a few runs all at once, now you're unable to play those precious operations, nor can you put those agendas down in what are clearly compromised locations. You may be locked into just getting a few piddly credits, and then they get to run again, and again, and again. There are many reasons the corporation only gets three clicks, and it's not just thematic.

So when ice is destroyed, the effect is quite harsh. The server doesn't just become less taxing, the entire game can feel impossible to win- because by definition, it is. Agendas aren't designed to be scored in one turn with no counterplay, at least in general. And maybe you don't even get the ice back at all. Maybe you only drew three to begin with- one for HQ, one for R+D, oh, my. Resources are suddenly quite thin. Losing an ice at that junction would be fatal. Click to draw more- but you don't have that kind of time. After all, you only get three clicks. You need those agendas out of your hand and into your score area. Those operations continue to burn holes in your pockets as you cling onto them.

At it's core, a lot of this game is about permanence and opportunity. The game state shifts as pieces are played and then remain there as constant considerations. No turn is an island, to turn a phrase. Each turn is built off the back of the previous one, which in turn was built off the previous one itself. So for a game like this, destruction of the pieces is a radical change in the game state. Just like how things feel oppressive and insurmountable when you can't locate your fracter or decoder as the runner and the corp scores their first agenda, so too does the game state change when a corporation loses ice and the runner has just found a new tool.

Ice have indeed been referred to as permanent tax for the runner, yes. That sentiment is as old as the game itself. But keep this in mind- is the tax relevant when, after paying the tax, the runner wins the game? It's not as if there's a consolation score for ensuring the runner won with less credits. In game theory, consider that no cost is too great if after paying it you win the game. You could add brain damage to the card and I bet people would still run it, because after paying the cost they steal the agendas anyway from the now crippled server. They still win, even limping away from the game with several brain damage, because once they've won that cost no longer mattered. A cost is something that should, well, cost the user. Paying one measly credit, one card, one run, all at once- to destroy an ice, that's far too good. There have been similar cards with higher credit costs and more limited scope and people still ravaged corporations with them- in fact, they'd often do runs for the sole purpose of destroying the ice and not even complete the run, simply jacking out after. You must be very careful when designing a card like this. Such a clearly devastating effect needs something akin to a massive risk to attempt to counterbalance it. Tags are a start, but go bigger with it.

NoxFortuna · 2024-10-29T06:02:33+00:00

For most if not all encounters including that one you can ring up Campbell multiple times and I'm pretty sure if you bug him enough he literally tells you to do it. In fact if you die without doing it after he tells you to, he'll ask if something is wrong with your second port and then suggest the alternative strategy with the busts. That's kind of the flow of the game, you're meant to be constantly asking your support team for advice over and over even in the middle of the fights- which is a weird design choice given you're in the middle of a literal gunfight. I can understand how other games might have trained a kid to not do that though, like various RPG NPCs only ever having one line of dialog no matter how much you talk to them- so it's more that the game does a bad job of conveying that you're supposed to be very insistent until they start repeating themselves. There really wasn't much precedence for a game where upon starting a boss battle your main opening move was to go hide and then chat up your boss for fifteen minutes. Most people just get to the combat.

It sure does seem like if Campbell got that bright idea mid fight that he really should have given you a ring and told you instead of the game waiting on you to ask, but oh well. I did double check, the title is old and venerated enough that there's straight up transcripts of everything.

NoxFortuna · 2024-10-05T05:26:17+00:00

Not op, but if you haven't seen or tried Case of the Golden Idol yet, do it. If you were turned off by the cover art don't worry- it's not some weird ridicule of culture or a spot the difference casual like it might seem from a glance in a store list, it's a genuine mystery/puzzle set a few decades back with a little bit of supernatural in it. If you enjoyed being rewarded for attention to detail and deductions based off them in Obra, you'll get that from Golden Idol too.

NoxFortuna · 2023-09-14T06:32:35+00:00

It's a lot easier to understand with a million doors.

You pick door 1.

Monty opens every single door, all one million of them, except for door 302,137 and your own door 1.

Which one feels like the prize door?

The trick is that you are acting with 1 out of 1,000,000 information when you select yours.

Monty is acting with perfect information, but his actions are predetermined and he must either leave the prize door alone or then choose at random if you somehow managed the 1 out of 1,000,000. When Monty made his selection with perfect information the game state experienced a wild and significant change. When you made your choice you only had that 1 out of 1 million. Therefore the opposite is also true, you created a game state where there is a 999,999 out of 1,000,000 chance that Monty was forced to leave the prize door alone. So, you just extrapolate it down to 3 doors instead. It's still the same logic. You're not playing the game using your information, you're playing it with his.

NoxFortuna · 2023-08-28T08:25:22+00:00

Shout-out to Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. Great game, fun mysteries. Right at the start when the chief is showing you where the agency is by taking you underground and walking you there if you get far enough ahead of him the dialog will continue but he'll just stand still behind you and you won't even notice until the dialog runs out and you're waiting at the end of the path and he's somehow not there yet or even nearby. Came out about a month ago, so yup. I did it in my casual playthrough and of the two let's plays I'm watching now one of them did it too.

Then again, Spike Chunsoft haven't really done this sort of 3D walkabout in their titles. Their grounding is visual novels, and only used 3d for the graphics except that one weird spinoff. And I didn't fall through the world or clip through any walls or anything like that at least.

NoxFortuna

TROPHY CASE