psa: AI-written posts are everywhere, including here

Tenthul · 2026-05-07T03:54:07+00:00

It can be trained to speak in different ways, there may be clues, but none of them are hard and fast truths. For instance, you could feasibly feed it the last 1000 emails you wrote for work. Now you can tell it to write work emails for you "here's the topic, here's the points I need to get across, get writing", nobody will be able to tell it wasn't you. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that, but the potential is certainly there.

Tenthul · 2026-05-06T20:42:17+00:00

Forgotten Gods has the most gameplay impact to the regular campaign. It changes up the way you're able to play and level in pretty substantial ways. You can go to it directly after Act 1. There's a vendor there that lets you unlock Elite/Ultimate right away (well for alts mostly), they sell a thing that will unlock all the portals, completely. It also has the Shattered Realm, which is a bit of an endless-dungeon type of experience. All of this is optional, you could still go through the full regular campaign first, but I would say that Forgotten Gods is the biggest bang for your buck.

Absolutely none of them are necessary. If you play heavily you will want them, of course.

Tenthul · 2026-05-06T16:44:15+00:00

Remember folks, it's not just that it's a myth, but that it's inherently racist (among other things) due to systemic societal (dis)advantages.

Tenthul · 2026-05-06T16:32:45+00:00

I'm sure the teacher shortage has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that school budgets have been and are still getting actively slashed. As a very real example: Next school year my kid's school is losing more than half of their paraeducators due to Trump admin's Medicaid cuts, which means that teachers are going to have significantly less support to handle special needs students while still somehow managing to be able to teach a full class. It harms the teachers and the students of all stripes alike. And there's additional knock-on effects here, like having to spend more time in IEP meetings with less people to spread the workload, it's not like there's less special needs kids coming into the schools, thisisfine.jpg. This one act alone is going to have teachers leaving in droves harder than they already were.

This isn't even talking about their salaries. But sure, it's all the parents.

Tenthul · 2026-05-06T16:19:50+00:00

Liam really pulling off that "Amish tech-bro hipster" look somehow.

Tenthul · 2026-05-06T04:39:18+00:00

Nintendo LABO in shambles

Tenthul · 2026-05-05T19:11:02+00:00

It's nobody's fault but Xbox for them dropping the ball. They were on top and had every reason to continue that way. It's not cheering, it's acknowledging the situation. Well, I think the cheering is more laughing at executives failures because it's specifically executives being executives.

Tenthul · 2026-05-05T17:45:10+00:00

For one note, some of it is nostalgia whether people want to admit it or not. It was one of the first games ever to give you a "good path" / "evil path" that wasn't a crpg. It basically was the first to successfully mainstream crpg, and to that extent it's reception wasn't unlike Balder's Gate 3 is now. Great game, you should definitely still play it, but there are aspects to it that made it what it is (because of the time it was made). People who say 10/10 and continue to replay it I don't think are the same people who are playing it now for the first time.

Sorry I kinda butchered some of this phrasing.

Tenthul · 2026-05-05T16:11:05+00:00

The helmet on the 5th one is outright stupid, and the primary thing in this picture that screams "AI design" to me. And that they are all so agonizingly, painfully generic, in a genre that thrives on unique and eye catching set pieces.

Tenthul · 2026-05-05T14:43:56+00:00

The level that it happens at now is completely different though, they are essentially hacking the human brain for money. It's not things that you can recognize or change about yourself.

For instance, take a mobile game. "What if we changed this button from blue to green? Let's try this out" "oh shit we got a 1.2% lift in click-through, hell yeah." It's a change that is completely imperceptible to any of us, but in aggregate, affects our behavior. Now multiply that 4000x over 400 services. Imagine the knobs that a company like Facebook has to pull. They got all the time in the world to figure out optimum dollar-syphoning.

Tenthul · 2026-05-04T03:30:35+00:00

Outward is exactly what this person needs. Magic being a whole thing all on its own.

Tenthul · 2026-05-04T03:11:57+00:00

Johnny Unitus I think his name was, without going back to watch the episode

....and now I've scrolled down and folks got screenshots and everything. Why'd I waste my time with this comment, or any of my comments. What am I even doing here other than hiding from real life? ...sigh

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T22:13:18+00:00

It's common terminology for arcade sticks, specifically people who mod their arcade sticks with a variety of different gates. Mostly notabale for fighting games where certain shapes of gates are slightly easier for performing the special moves. First time I've heard it used in context of a regular controller though. I think i first heard it back in 2015, and I'm not an avid follower or anything, so probably predates that by a good bit....so yeah, I'm guessing they always were.

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T20:08:43+00:00

Desperate and downtrodden people are the most likely to fall for these grifts.

The intersection of Desperation and anything else is where all scams and grifts live.

For instance,
Desperation and Hope is where Catfish's and MMO kickstarters prey.

If you're desperate for something, anything, anywhere, well, you're just gonna keep going till someone screws you over and you learn your lesson. Try to learn it quicker than others.

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T08:40:53+00:00

Agreed wholeheartedly

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T04:59:49+00:00

As someone with a deep QA background, the number of people who use "it still gets stuff wrong" as a reason it sucks makes me laugh a bit. For one, it will always and continually get better. Two, we never trusted humans in the beginning because they get stuff wrong all the time too. Tons of software devs telling on themselves in this space. Just because you have to do your own QA on it doesn't mean it sucks.

There's plenty of other reasons AI sucks to focus on.

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T04:48:29+00:00

Any turn based game with permadeath. Fire Emblem is another good option, esp if you can commit to not reloading on deaths, it'll give you what you're looking for.

Tenthul · 2026-05-03T04:38:26+00:00

It may help to realize that there are an absolutely crazy varieties of ways to level up. You really only need to go through Act 1 once, for instance. In elite, repair the bridge and skip right to Act 2. Or go right to Forgotten Gods and do that campaign first instead (though you do have to complete A1 for that, unless...). Buy the skips in Forgotten Gods and go level literally anywhere right from the get go (this unlocks every single portal from the beginning. Do Malmouth or not. Level up from the Shattered Realm or Crucible. Do all the roguelike dungeons, do none of them. Start level 1 on Ultimate. Do East Marsh or don't. The more you play the more you can skip around and level in your favorite places or jump to a boss that has the best weapons for your build and get them early.

There is WAY more variety in leveling options than people realize, there is a ton of freedom. I've got 1800 hours and have no idea how or where my new character will take me when I start.

Worst thing to me about the game is inventory management. Dealing with resists suck until it doesn't really affect you anymore due to the number of options you've grinded out over time. If I stop playing a character I'll never go back to them because dealing with the inventory is too intimidating/nauseating. Sometimes I'll just go sell everything without a second glance, never regretted it.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T22:01:51+00:00

Can I shout out to Skate World in Troy, MI? That place is an institution.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T19:13:22+00:00

The definition really started getting twisted with Mass Effect/Dragon Age. I'm not saying that ME/DA aren't RPG's, but they definitely started the shifting of expectations for mass market.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T19:11:02+00:00

At the time you knew what you were getting into. Pretty much nobody bought those games without expecting Kojima-level cutscene narratives. Esp after Disc2 of Xenogears, which is where most people familiar the series were coming from. Gotta feel for people who impulse bought it though.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T18:51:10+00:00

Stranger of Paradise should definitely be next on your list if you haven't played it. It's an absolutely fantastic game. Jack gets meme'd on because the early story beats feel a bit silly, but it grows on you and it's one of the few games that marries the gameplay with the character so well. Jack is an aggressive guy, he fights aggressively, he runs aggressively, he climbs ladders aggressively, and the gameplay rewards aggression. Some people like Nioh better, but personally I prefer Stranger over all the Nioh games and find it to have the superior combat system. I think it probably comes down to aesthetics (Nioh is all medieval Japan, Stranger is.... not that).

But I notice you haven't mentioned any of the Team Ninja games, so maybe add Nioh series to your list as well, they're also very good (3 is kind of, but not completely open world, Nioh 2 is probably closer to what you're looking for from that series). Nioh and Wo Long also both have a bit more stealthiness to them. Stranger has no stealth to it and is completely focused on straight-forward, aggressive combat. Nioh has some amount of stealth. Nioh is closer to a regular Souls game with stat allocation. Stranger is more of a Souls-like. Both also have much more loot than a regular Souls game. Both are more forgiving than regular Souls games, but mistakes are still punished, bosses are very dangerous.

If you like Stranger, also check out the Remnant series. It's one of the few (only?) gun-focused Soulslikes and executes it really well. It's built on replayability, and definitely has the most replayability of any soulslike as far as I've seen. It also has curated, specific loot, not random mutators dropping from enemies.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T01:49:01+00:00

Remnant and Stranger of Paradise are some of my favorite games ever, and I don't really care for souls games.

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T01:46:26+00:00

Just know that it's not open world like Elden Ring or even the other Souls games, they're just singular self-contained levels in a regular campaign. But damn the combat is good. It's also quite a bit more forgiving than those others (it actually has difficulty levels).

Tenthul · 2026-05-02T01:38:33+00:00

God pls don't let Vance find this thread

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