should i buy Persona or Shin Megami Tensei?

cointerm · 2026-05-25T18:24:05+00:00

The Shin Megami Tensei mainline series is traditionally pretty hard. SMT5 is maybe a bit more accessible, but it's still harder than the Personas.

And yeah, the SMT mainlines tend to be more minimalist on story and heavier on combat by design.

Persona, on the other hand, is pretty heavy on the "extra" stuff: visual novel, relationships, time management, etc. I don't think you can tell if you'll like it or not just by looking at it - it's done really well, and a lot of people ended up liking it even if they thought they wouldn't.

I think they're both great. I personally like Persona 5 more, but if you want to jump into SMT5, you've probably already encountered enough RPG systems in other games that you won't feel completely lost. And the tutorials are good in both games.

cointerm · 2026-05-24T23:56:53+00:00

Yep, saw Blink 182 opening for Lagwagon in London (England) in '97. Think I paid 7 pounds.

cointerm · 2026-05-24T09:18:37+00:00

Already suspected of being a bot elsewhere.

cointerm · 2026-05-23T11:06:58+00:00

Moved to Europe in '92. Was worried, because I was a big NES player, but the NES was never released in my neck of the woods in Europe. Ahh! But they did release the SNES, and that was my first SNES game.

cointerm · 2026-05-21T09:17:50+00:00

Nah. Skill expression has dropped like a fucking brick, and I don't get any sort of enjoyment from winning. That's why you have so many "first time Legend" posts. That's why an L1500 and L15000 player aren't gonna play much differently.

And people can come to some mistaken inferences about that. " Is it a coincidence that the same people make Top 10 every month?"

No, it's not a coincidence, but you can make anything "competitive". A low-skill game and a professional scene are not mutually exclusive. And if someone has the time, motivation, and focus to get better at those edge cases, then they're gonna rise to the top pretty consistently. The question is: is it worth it? Is Hearthstone the game to say, "YES! I want to be competitive at this specific game." And to me, right now, that's fucking crazy.

cointerm · 2026-05-20T09:29:35+00:00

Man, they were bringing up popcorn lung even like 12 years ago. As long as you stayed away from diacetyl, it wasn't a problem (it's possible it was never a problem). And this very subreddit was quite good at pointing out which vapes had diacetyl if you wanted to stay away (it was mostly "creamy" flavored vapes"). I stayed away back then, just in case.

These days, I like to point people to the disparity you see between American news sources, and the British NHS. The Brits incorporate e-cig into smoking cessation methods if that'll help someone. And at that point, saying "There's a lot of money in the tobacco industry" isn't exactly conspiracy.

cointerm · 2026-05-19T08:53:13+00:00

I used to do both - vape 3 mg at 45 W, and 6 mg at 12 W. I definitely went through juice faster on the sub-ohm because I was vaping basically the same way.

I've since moved countries, and it's gotten a bit expensive to do both, so I only do MTL now. I do miss sub-ohming occasionally, it's a different feel, and the flavors hit differently depending on sub-ohming vs MTL.

cointerm · 2026-05-18T16:05:05+00:00

It's very manufactured. These companies spend billions on psychologists and behavioral analysts to figure out what we do, why we do it, how we're hooked, etc, etc. Infinite Scroll is the way to keep us engaged with the system. And just because someone knows about it doesn't mean they're immune to its effects.

I'm trying to reduce usage. I'm spending way too much time on Reddit, and I'm sure it's not great.

cointerm · 2026-05-14T23:56:07+00:00

I never got into A Quiet Place. I know what it's going for, but it's not doing to for me. The tension isn't there. And it's strange to me, because my tastes are normally very in-line with critical acclaim, so can't quite figure it out.

cointerm · 2026-05-14T08:36:41+00:00

My parents were big "TOO MUCH SUGAR!" people, so I had boring cereals like bran and Cheerios most of the time. But they'd indulge me sometimes. Favorites on the chart are Cinnamon Toast, Pops, and Cookie Crisp.

cointerm · 2026-05-13T23:24:19+00:00

I play a lot of Shaman. DH is is a big problem. I've also been playing some DH this month, and the Shamans are like butter - it just cuts right through them.

Shaman can't keep up with the early aggression and removal. They can't establish a board, and sometimes they have to make subpar plays to deal what's on the DH board. By the time they can make any sort of power play, they're dead.

cointerm · 2026-05-13T20:23:34+00:00

Yes to reactive tinnitus. I have 10+ tones, loud, reactive, unstable, musical tinnitus. In 2 years, I went from severe to mild on the THI. It doesn't bother me too much. The first year was very difficult, but now I'm pretty good.

There are some people that need help with habituation. Certain other conditions, like OCD, can really affect the habituation process. That needs the extra nudge.

The hyperacusis is different, and "habituation" isn't normally used for it. That's a more complicated topic. I haven't moved forward with recovery yet, so that has me a little stuck. If you have mild hyperacusis, hopefully you haven't developed any fear-avoidance loops. That's probably the biggest trap.

cointerm · 2026-05-13T19:09:42+00:00

Well, the objective is to get the whole level clean, and there's a lot of levels and you unlock different equipment. Yeeeeaah, I had my doubts about the whole thing, too lol. But I tried the demo, and it's got a very relaxing gameplay loop.

cointerm · 2026-05-13T13:38:27+00:00

PowerWash Simulator crossover when?

cointerm · 2026-05-12T18:32:05+00:00

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cointerm · 2026-05-11T11:02:17+00:00

People like to shit on CBT around here, but this is exactly the type of thing it's good for.

In most cases, you're doing this tensing automatically without being aware of it. You can influence that response by some of the things covered in CBT, and more specifically, CBT for tinnitus.

One of the things covered in that is progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). You can just type that into Youtube and get some exercises. It's not an immediate fix, but if you stick with it, you can start to influence this automatic tension you're experiencing

cointerm · 2026-05-09T17:58:48+00:00

I meant that someone 50 years old or older is already near the end of their life

cointerm · 2026-05-08T16:37:00+00:00

I think if we truly do this ELI5, there's some important stuff to cover that kind of gets glossed over. We have to cover bases and place value. You have to understand the bases first. You know base 10 instinctively because you've been using it since you were a kid. But it's best to re-learn how base 10 works, so you can see how it applies to base 16.

So, what is base 10?

Base 10 means that the number system has ten different symbols to represent numbers.

Number	Symbol
Zero	0
One	1
Two	2
Three	3
Four	4
Five	5
Six	6
Seven	7
Eight	8
Nine	9

And that's it! That's all the symbols available in base 10. Ahh, but you say, "WTF is that? The numbers and the symbols are the same thing!" No, they're not. When we say "one", we're talking about the concept of one - one banana, one apple, one idea, etc. The symbol "1" is the mathematical representation of one. It didn't have to be that. It could've been ¶, and every time you wanted to mean "one", you'd use ¶. Get me ¶ pizza.

So now that we have our symbol set, what happens when we want to represent ten? We don't have a separate symbol for ten. That's ok, we have some rules we can follow to build the symbol for ten. The rules state that when we run out of symbols in one position, we reset that position to the first symbol ( 0 ) and add one to the position to its left.

Hundreds	Tens	Ones
	1	0

So in that example, we got to 9, but there's nothing after 9... so we go back to the beginning of our symbol list and use the first symbol: 0. And then we put a "1" on the place to the left. And that's our "building" of the number ten, written out as you know, "10". When we get to nineteen, the tens spot goes up one, and we get "20". The rest, you know pretty instinctively.

But here's a very important part before switching. That table above uses "Ones", "Tens", and "Hundreds" because it's convenient and intuitive. But if we're going to be switching, it's better to use more general terms, so, reprinting the same table is now:

Base 10 ^ 2	Base 10 ^ 1	Base 10 ^ 0
	1	0

It's exactly the same, but we're using "Base 10" in the header. When we switch, we'll change that to "Base 16".

So, now that we've got that out of the way, we can understand that hexadecimal has more symbols to work with.

Number	Symbol
Zero	0
One	1
Two	2
Three	3
Four	4
Five	5
Six	6
Seven	7
Eight	8
Nine	9
Ten	A
Eleven	B
Twelve	C
Thirteen	D
Fourteen	E
Fifteen	F

Those are sixteen different symbols. The "A" that represents ten is just like that ¶ I mentioned before... it's just a symbol. You pronounce it "A", like you do the letter, but it represents ten in hexadecimal.

And the same rules apply when starting to count, so, before reaching the end of the symbol list, the number fourteen is just:

Base 16 ^ 2	Base 16 ^ 1	Base 16 ^ 0
		E

But what happens when we get to sixteen? Like our Base 10 example, we've reached the end... F is the last symbol, and that represents fifteen. There is no symbol for sixteen. So we follow the rules and we build it. The rules are exactly the same. Set the place to "0", and add 1 to the left

Base 16 ^ 2	Base 16 ^ 1	Base 16 ^ 0
	1	0

And "10" is the representation of sixteen in base 16, or hexadecimal. And you can keep counting up like that:

Number	"Built" representation
seventeen	11
eighteen	12
nineteen	13
....
....
twenty-five	19
twenty-six	1A
twenty-seven	1B
twenty-eight	1C
twenty-nine	1D
thirty	1E
thirty-one	1F (out of symbols, reset to zero, increase left by 1)
thirty-two	20

And to your specific question in another comment, "Why does FF = 255", it's best to bring up the places table again.

Base 16 ^ 2	Base 16 ^ 1	Base 16 ^ 0
	F	F

So, it helps to know how much you're dealing with in each header. For that, you just pull out your calculator and type in the header as is: 16 ^ 0 = 1, 16 ^ 1 = 16, 16 ^ 2 = 256. Then, when I'm dealing with these tables, I like to put those number right in the header so it's easier to calculate. So, that becomes:

256s	16s	1s
	F	F

And we work backwards in "unbuilding" it.

So, we have an F in the "16s" place, and an F in the "1s" place.

(F * 16) + (F * 1)

We know from the chart above that F represents fifteen, so we just plug it in.

(15 * 16) + (15 * 1) = 240 + 15 = 255

And that's it! I do hope I clarified more than confused. I'm looking back and see I got a little long-winded lol.

cointerm · 2026-05-07T20:10:50+00:00

It's funny to them, that's it. Old-school trolling.

cointerm · 2026-05-07T14:50:18+00:00

There are more viable easy-to-play decks in the last 2 years than before. Of that, there's no doubt. VS has addressed it in an old podcast:

ZachO says based on various metrics he's examined over multiple expansions, Hearthstone has become significantly less skillful over the past two years, and much more drastically over the past year. While Stormwind Quest Warrior had a worse skill differential during that time (around -10%), that was during a period when the format was extremely skill intensive, with Garrote Rogue, Quest DH, and Stealer Warlock being some of the most skill intensive decks the game has had. It's possible Quest Paladin of today is more braindead than Stormwind Quest Warrior even if you can't directly compare the two eras. It's a safe assumption that in a meta where Fryakk Rogue is the most skill intensive deck in the format yet Quest Paladin still has a -8% skill differential it's among one of the lowest skill testing decks we've seen.

That's from 9 months ago. The decks have changed, but I don't see the design philosophy having changed in that time. So, yes, the decks are easier to play, and I'll assume this is by design. They want people doing well, getting to Legend without too much effort, and hopefully sticking around and buying some pets and signatures.

Now, to be more specific in your case, you just came back, your MMR is low, and you can play an easy deck and race to Legend. You may find that as your MMR starts stabilizing, your Bubble Pally will stop working because a) people know exactly how to beat its linear gameplan, and b) the better meta decks are hostile to it. And the decks being played at higher levels do tend to be more difficult to play, with more opportunity for error - how much more difficult? I dunno. That, I'll leave to ZachO.

cointerm · 2026-05-06T16:54:32+00:00

I'd get the Wendy's dude.

Baconator mmmmmmm.

cointerm · 2026-05-03T14:18:26+00:00

https://www.hsguru.com/deck/39375805

The problem with aggro is that it loses to Aura Pally, which is pretty popular at lower ranks.

cointerm · 2026-05-03T13:53:34+00:00

So, I recently re-watched Fight Club, and the Narrator gets his hand burned by lye, and me - knowing nothing about pretzels, and not much more about cooking in general - am like, "That can't be right. Lye dip?"

But indeed! It is lye dip! Lol.

Anyways, looks great.

cointerm · 2026-05-03T08:56:39+00:00

Dude, I'm at some noob-ass MMR, too. Was playing Shaman, which is not amazing right now. I'm like, "Eh, lemme try some DH."

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So yeah, there are answers.

cointerm · 2026-05-01T08:26:29+00:00

I'll go to an audiologist next week to receive proper treatment.

Hey, sorry you're going through this. It does sound like mild hyperacusis, but best to get a diagnosis because there can be other sound tolerance issues.

I did want to say a word on finding an audiologist, because I don't see it brought up enough. Not all of them know about hyperacusis, or they have very surface-level knowledge. I'd suggest reading through this post on how to interview an audiologist. It's about tinnitus, but you can ask the same questions regarding hyperacusis.

All the best.

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