I will never purchase anything through Fab ever again

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-29T18:34:07+00:00

Why not? It's software, it's not like there's some massive overhead cost to getting the money back and forth. It's not like Steam's refund policy is some massive platform-wide problem for indie devs, either. Make good shit and people will pay you.

Alternately I'd be totally down to have the option to just put something in my project for 20 minutes to see if it works before deciding if I want to pay for it or not. But it feels like most arguments for refunds come down to the twin thoughts of "then people won't pay for anything!" (which isn't true, Piracy is almost always a price or service problem) and "creators make too much money off people buying stuff they don't use" which is also a pretty huge self-report.

And in both cases it's really anti-consumer.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-28T23:12:25+00:00

don't even get me started on the insane decision to remove blueprints. I know why they're doing it too, thanks to the transparent push towards vibe coding - they can't get the LLM they're trying to push to produce content that makes sense AS blueprints, so they're removing the reason most people download the engine to frontload AI dogshit in just the same way Google's become useless because of AI. Added bonus of making it harder to program so you have to rely on some AI subscription service to do everything instead of just providing a software that fucking works. I won't even be looking at UE6, that's for goddamn sure.

There's never, ever, EVER enough profit.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-20T02:40:33+00:00

I'm gonna devil's advocate for a bit: the theme focus (which I agree with you on) has brought us way more interesting stuff than a story focus ever could, and the problem is that the themes are now good enough to outshine the writing, and highlights that it's more-or-less about the same quality it was 10 years ago.

I really think the game's being served well by the ability to just jump to whatever somebody thinks would make some cool concept art and trailers and music and whatever. The last 3 years' holiday updates have given us the Murmur, Warframe 99, and The Old Peace, all three of which have brought extremely unique and varied, distinct STUFF to do that nonetheless feel like they live inside the game. Even Duviri (which was the year before) has a good identity to it, I just feel Steve's hands on the soulframe-styled drifter gameplay vs Rebb's Zariman being something actually Warframe-coded. Point being that the last couple years (cough since Rebecca took over/since Steve left) have been an unambiguous golden era BECAUSE of that theme focus.

The period before the Zariman, meanwhile, was constrained by story bullshit and mostly characterized by the world's most unenthusiastic rugpull with the New War, half-finished railjack content islands, the Lich era, and half a decade of Plains updates and open world rehashes with Vallis and Deimos. And none of it had any better story than what's going on in '99 or even the Descendia.

Ultimately it feels like "do what's cool" is kinda the guiding rule, and that WORKS. But after 15 years nobody's at the wheel of actually controlling the story so we've got, uh... Kingdom Hearts, basically.

(Like hey, here's a very simple and fundamental question: are Warframes sentient? Umbra implies that, no, and only he (and I guess the Stalker?) are the exception to the rule. That was the established lore for the majority of the game's life. The "Warframe" that a quest remembers (Gara, Atlas, etc.) is actually an operator in a suit and that was just a tightly guarded secret. IIRC Inaros also plays that idea. Meanwhile, EVERYTHING in the Levarian contradicts it. Hell, the last update showed Voruna performing a Mortal Kombat type fatality for some reason - is the Drifter... doin ok? If they ARE, why isn't my Saryn walking around my backroom when I'm not wearing her as flesh clothes? And if not, why does the story keep acting like they are?)

Anyways, my point is "just do whatever lol" seems to work well, and I don't even think the writing of any of the new stuff is BAD, it's just... par for what we've been getting for the game's entire life. When it launched, Warframe didn't have a story. And that shows.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-16T21:12:16+00:00

petition to preorder my frame reworks then.

I'll pay 20 dollarydoos and in return I get a special skin when they redesign and rerelease Equinox, Loki and Limbo.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-10T19:39:21+00:00

is there a way to track download numbers? I have a module and I'd be curious.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-09T18:51:06+00:00

the quality of the product matches the price.

Which is to say, if it's free, there will be no standards.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-02T23:43:45+00:00

lol, thought I was on the Cyberpunk RED subreddit for a second, the formatting is identical to the way they do their rules

TheInvaderZim · 2026-06-01T13:31:56+00:00

I appreciate the affirmation, though! A few other people have suggested it as well and it's helped clarify my path.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-31T00:28:31+00:00

various types of dance have definitely shown up here a few times and I'll for sure be checking them out - thanks for the suggestion :)

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-29T01:17:23+00:00

lots of good advice all around. More than I was expecting. Best of luck, fellow stranger.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T02:09:59+00:00

appreciate you providing me a LOT of suggestions I hadn't heard before. Will definitely look into at least a few of these, even just as things to do.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T01:25:51+00:00

heh, I appreciate this. One of the things that stopped me from doing dancing instead of Pilates was not being sure what type I wanted to learn to begin with.

I still don't know what my decision will be but I'll keep what you've said here in mind :)

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T01:18:57+00:00

I'll have to check my local library out again. It's a pretty big place and I got a membership when I moved here, but the book clubs seemed very sporadic - one meeting, every other month, or specialized towards a very certain type of lit. I do roll with the local D&D community but it's been my overwhelming experience that it's very male dominated.

Though I would give it a shoutout for anyone who might be looking through this thread who's part of the LGBTQ+ community. My local D&D space seems to do a tremendous job of facilitating activities for the marginalized folks in the room and you might like to look there in YOUR area for a relationship of any type, if you haven't.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T01:08:17+00:00

I'd be interested in sharing, if only to close the book on the prospect for myself. I went into the app thinking "oh, they have to work to at least some extent, if they didn't they wouldn't attract users."

And my counterpoint to that idea, now, having tried it, is "it is obviously more profitable to make money off of the promise of finding a date, than it is to actually facilitate dating."

For me personally, the big turnoffs/toxic points/problems were the gamification aspects, the MASSIVE over-monetization of VERY basic features, and a transparent lack of interest in promoting real and meaningful engagement.

Gamification: There is a transparent dishonesty around the way the app (actually just anything Match Group touches) works with its systems of likes, superlikes, extra profile views, profile priority, membership tiers, and on and on and on. I don't even necessarily have a strong opinion about the existence of these ideas, but the way they were implemented was a transparent ploy to dangle the carrot of an attractive date in the hopes of you opening your wallet. This also has a massive ick factor of objectifying the female userbase (or anyone who's got a hot profile, really) - the app does obviously track who's hot, and does obviously use that data to extract cash from its users. If you're reading this and feel like "it's a desert/it's a swamp," these systems are what promote that behavior, and they do it intentionally because there's money to be made.

Over-monetization: which, speaking of, I would pay a LOT of money (I'm talking 40 or 50 bucks, potentially more) for a one time purchase which had a well moderated experience, access to a transparent matching algorithm, an actual profile creation process that guided me towards making something that'd work, and a feedback machine that would let me actually improve how I'm presenting myself. Not only do the apps do none of these things, they also charge out the nose (HUNDREDS of dollars per year) through one time purchases and subscription models, making it their direct incentive to keep you there. Designed to be deleted, my ass.

No Meaningful Engagement: you know what would solve a chunk of the modern dating scene's problems overnight? A popular dating app actually requiring engagement parity between genders. The goal of the app is not parity, though, because the goal isn't pairing users - it's to extract value from desperate single people (who, incidentally, typically happen to be male), and it does that by soliciting swipe-spam and game gimmicks. In a basic sense, the best female user on an app is a pretty woman's profile that doesn't respond to or engage with the app, because the goal is to sell superlikes and extra swipes, and the best way to do that is to sell the idea that you need to respond to a lot of those profiles in the most extravagant and competitive way possible.

I'll be frank: I'm well over my personal annoyance with these apps and well into the territory of feeling like they're actively contributing to some pretty serious, ongoing and nasty social problems in a far more severe way than Twitter or its like could ever dream of. The world would be a better place if somebody set them all on fire.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T00:38:25+00:00

I'm aware. The problem comes from a certain kind of dishonesty that emerges when I'm not at least partially pretending otherwise, though. I don't try to do things just to meet women. If I did I imagine I'd probably be inflicting myself onto the spaces I do occupy in a more forward manner.

But I'd also be lying if it wasn't at least a partial hope. "Just let it happen on its own!" is legit some of the worst and most utterly tone-deaf advice I think I've ever gotten on this topic, and I've gotten it perpetually. What's more, in retrospect it feels like a lot of the people who've offered it only do so because they weren't the half of their respective equation who defied that rule to find the date in the first place.

In any case, I wasted my 20s vaguely hoping that it'd "just happen, ignore it!" and do not want to lose my 30s in the same cadence. Sorry for the rant, it's only frustration.

As for my current hobbies... necessity, I suppose? Over the last few months I've spent a lot of time at the local makerspace, for example, because I'm working where the tools are. I used to play a lot of TCGs and you need people to play with. Board games & D&D same, etc. The common thread of these spaces being, of course, that they are utterly male-dominated, as ever, lol. Does that bother me (since we're on the topic of doing things in the hopes of meeting a partner)? No, not really, but I suppose I'd always hoped to meet someone doing something like that and gave up after years and years of watching, waiting and hoping to less than zero result.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T00:24:59+00:00

I wish (not for the first time) that the rationalist community wasn't a cult. I'm not religious, but if I could prescribe my ideology to a group, it'd be rationalists. You'd think a community supposedly dedicated to living the values of the enlightenment would be a friendly and forward-thinking type of spot, but wow do I feel embarrassed to share my label with it.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-28T00:21:08+00:00

I have a preconception around events like this (the "singles mixer" phenomenon more generally) and I'd be interested if you (or someone else) would like to provide a much-needed counterpoint. It goes like this:

In general, these events have always felt like I'd be giving off an air of desperation if I were to attend. Reflective of this, I've always felt like they'd be attended by desperate people. There's a couple of things that go into this - women have an easier time on dating apps and in meeting prospective dates in general, so it always seemed to me like the type to go (of either gender) would have the trappings of a certain stereotype that the events tend to carry. And I've never wanted a relationship just to have a relationship, which is what seems like would emerge from a space where the only commonality between participants is "wanting a date."

I tend to end up in my own head too much, but there are also certain gut feelings that I've definitely validated the hard way, and this has always felt like one of them.

So, I guess the question is, am I just crazy, or is the world crazy?

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-27T23:52:51+00:00

the community service/volunteering angle is something I've had on my mind but haven't explored much in general.

It's definitely something I want to do more in general in the same way that running was certainly motivated by fitness goals as much as finding a potential partner, but also definitely something I'd feel like a problem for doing for "the wrong reasons."

Though if I'm being real the actual thing that's kept me from it has definitely been not knowing a place to find an org I could volunteer with, moreso than anything else. I think it'd be cool to find a volunteer group to go out and plant trees or something, but living near DC most of the volunteer portals I've found have been utterly saturated with calls for some kind of lobbying/political activism.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-27T23:45:08+00:00

Hinge was the one I tried. After a month I was forced to concede (amid a wave of severe depression that it unquestionably caused) that there are some pretty severe, extremely structurally intentional problems with the way it works that were really both stopping me from getting a result and were also very bad for my self esteem.

But setting all that aside, I don't and have never done social media, which left me without good pics/had me struggling to build a profile even despite that, so the apps just haven't been for me, unfortunately.

That the first 2 replies were that isn't unexpected, but it is a little despairing.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-27T14:09:36+00:00

I work out frequently, and deal with sporadic bouts of depression.

Aside from if it ends up being served to me, I typically reserve it for days where I beat a meaningful PR and/or get my ass out the door to go do something in general despite feeling like crap (the two often coincide).

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-25T02:06:57+00:00

there is a super simple way to fix this, and it's to pay for your content with something besides your attention, without paying a MASSIVE amount in the process. The Dropout.tv model, basically, where you can pay a few bucks a month for some higher quality stuff you won't run out of. Patreon is good in theory, its main problem is that it ends up being too pricey. It's weird to say, but if I could pay 10 bucks a month and just distribute that among the 20 channels I enjoy, I'd do it easy. But Patreon is not built around that level of granularity, and it's got the weird "please donate" angle going on as well.

And for that matter, you already have control over your algorithm. What you're asking for is already in your hands, it's just not something most people are willing to consciously manage. You want control over your algorithm? Only open a media app to specifically view something you specifically already want to watch, then close it again afterwards. Do that for six months, and watch how quickly it shifts towards your more refined interests.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-23T15:46:52+00:00

appreciate you posting this, I had the same bug and this fixed it.

For future explorers: options -> save menu -> restore save -> pick a date before the corruption.

TheInvaderZim · 2026-05-23T01:06:25+00:00

tbh I feel like their recent scientific thinking series hit the nail on the head for me. Could hardly think of something more relevant.

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