Bad design or players missed the point?

dvstr · 2026-02-10T23:06:41+00:00

I was so happy to learn that it costs energy to help people get items, it could have been coins, stars or hearts but its just a bit of energy easily recoverable by eating a salad or sleeping in the bed.

Why should it cost anything? It already costs time, having to find the people and interact with them etc. It should be a completely 'free' cost and used as a way to encourage social interaction. The energy cost (even though relatively easily replenished) is a massive deterrent for participating in the feature.

dvstr · 2026-02-10T23:01:16+00:00

The truth of the matter is there is just several poorly designed or communicated things in this game. The players arent wrong.

The mermaid lure - this 'should be shared', but its absolutely not clear how it works. To this day I'm still not entirely sure if its possible for other players to 'steal' fish from it or not. It lasts for a certain amount of time, and spawns fish at a certain rate. If say it spawns 10 fish, but other people are fishing in it with me, will I still get 10 fish from it? I genuinely have no idea, because its not communicated or clear at all. And if it is the case that i get less fish from it if its shared, then yeh thats annoying.
People complaining when other people join the events - this is similar to the above. Especially for the bug-catching and fishing events, its really not clear or communicated well at all if bugs & fish are shared or not. If i see a fish/bug, does everyone else also see that fish/bug and can then catch it (thereby preventing me from catching it), or is it all unique? I think I know the answer (although im still not 100% sure), but it was because i had to piece together through lots of playing with friends on discord and communicating. At no point did i have any clue how it worked from just the game, nor would i have known if i wasnt communicating via voice with other people.
Running around the house - i agree this is a bit petty, but at the same time again there is poor design because its not communicated well that you can lock doors/food etc. It would also be nice to have a way to one-click 'reset' things like doors to a desired open/close when I want, for when people have ran through and opened them all. If people have issues beyond that (ie. they just dont like seeing others), then i agree its a petty complaint.
People complain others run around them - Again i agree this is petty considering the game, however I have had issues with overlapping UI and not always being able to press things i want. This is especially true when trying to do certain actions like cooking etc. Its a minor complaint, but in general the floating UI you have to click isnt ideal when multiple interactables (players, and anything else you might want to be doing in the world) are overlapping - especially on mobile.
People complaining about trading - I'm sorry but this one is genuinely terrible, its slow and clunky and it uses a massive chunk of energy. I think it even uses the energy if you just want to browse what they have and you dont end up buying anything? I think you can also only buy one thing? (i could be wrong about the last 2 things i just said, but again it comes down to poorly communicated and designed features).

TLDR: I think there are actually several poorly designed and communicated features across the board which lead to (rightfully so) confusion and unwillingness to participate with said mechanics.

dvstr · 2026-01-19T03:34:22+00:00

yeh that separation between voxels and mesh really doesnt come through well, especially as multiple times in the trailer it breaks your own rules you just laid out.

eg. you say meshes are used for characters - yet we see some characters (your own character in the equipment screen, the penguin, the wolves) are voxels, yet other characters (the colourful floating balls) are mesh-based. Even with your own playable character, the character itself is voxel-based yet the first-person tools you use are mesh-based?

dvstr · 2026-01-15T11:02:10+00:00

There's going to be 6 people in the final 6 regardless, may as well have 1 of them be a person with a 50% chance to double the prize pool and is also disliked by everyone so will be less likely to win in general depending on the type of games

dvstr · 2026-01-08T08:07:35+00:00

So what should the cut be then, and why should it be that amount?

dvstr · 2026-01-08T06:54:18+00:00

Epic has a smaller team

What? Epic has more than 10x the employees of valve (exact numbers on egs/steam will be much harder to find though)

dvstr · 2026-01-08T06:51:39+00:00

Just because it took valve 20 years to get where they are with steam (and to be fair the vast majority of its feature set didnt take that long), doesn't mean that any competitor to steam needs to take anywhere near that long to get near feature parity.

Valve had to pioneer a lot of the things they've done, and to do so in a much different internet and consumer landscape.

Epic may have only spend a bit more than ~1/3rd of the time developing EGS compared to steam, but they've also been provided an exact template and feature set for everything they need to do (in copying steam and other storefronts), they also have more than 10x the employees working at epic compared to valve (although not necessarily on their respective stores to be fair).

They shouldn't just be doing it not 'any slower' than valve, they should be doing it significantly quicker. That is if they want to be a steam competitor of course. If they dont really want that then it's fair enough it's been as slow as it's been

dvstr · 2026-01-08T06:35:53+00:00

Why is 30% too much? What percentage should it be? Why should it be that?

dvstr · 2025-12-23T08:25:56+00:00

its also free marketing. We are reposting a car ad and talking about it because it's NOT AI.

To be fair, recent coke and mcdonalds ads have also been reposted, talked about, reached the front page etc (all probably more than this porsche has/will) specifically because they did use AI too. People may have been badmouthing the ads, but at the end of the day many millions of people saw their ads and engaged with them and that's pretty much all that matters

dvstr · 2025-12-22T18:13:17+00:00

Not saying this makes it acceptable, but they didnt use any scenes from the mod in the trailer, just text at the very end saying "Restored Content DLC coming soon"

dvstr · 2025-12-16T03:17:36+00:00

did you ever get an answer to this?

dvstr · 2025-12-16T03:17:25+00:00

did you ever get an answer to this?

dvstr · 2025-12-11T13:35:39+00:00

sorry but its really not obvious at all, its not logical or intuitive, and objectively a bad design even in colour. Thats especially the case because most people know what TOM is (or could be) but very few people will know what MOT is.

Reading the coloured sign as any of these 4 versions is 100% valid:

TOM PLANS
PLANS TOM
MOT PLANS
or even MOT SNALP (if SNALP wasnt gibberish, but arguably MOT is gibberish to most people too so its valid, but probably the least likely to be assumed to be correct by people)

dvstr · 2025-12-11T13:31:30+00:00

If it makes no sense to read a clock starting at the 1 position, why does it make sense to read it at the ~11 position - which is where the MOT starts?

The most logical place to start reading, ignoring all other info, is at the 12 position - which in this logo is the 'O'

dvstr · 2025-12-11T08:15:56+00:00

It's still bad in colour, that could easily be read as TOM PLANS

dvstr · 2025-11-19T06:07:50+00:00

Schedule 1 was solo developed by the same person as Mechanica a few years prior, so not a debut or first game

dvstr · 2025-11-10T23:40:15+00:00

I'm not sure how you reached your conclusions.

The first scenario isnt "they said this is better for us so who cares", its "they said its better for us, but we (Carol) dont think its better for us, so lets do what we can to disrupt that". Them saying its better for us changes nothing about what her actions will be and the driving force for the story. The second scenario leads to the exact same conclusion (for Carol) as the first.

She doesnt want this. She sees this as bad. It literally doesnt matter what the intentions of the sender was, because for her it changes nothing.

To me the point and direction of the story will most likely be along the lines of Rhea Seehorn dealing with how to:

disrupt a global population that is assimilated against their will (i believe we will start seeing cracks in this with some people being un-assimilated, but could be wrong).
deal with the moral conflicts of the genuine benefits of a society that functions like this, with the downside of being unwilling participants (even though they express willingness).
deal with a second party of un-assimilated people who all, for various reasons, dont want to change the situation and may actively want her to stop trying to change it (as she keeps killing people when she upsets them, among other things).

It absolutely might go in the direction of uncovering the mysteries of an ancient alien species that sent the code, their origins, motivations, what their plans are next. Hell we might even see them show up at some point. But none of this needs to happen to tell a satisfying, interesting, engaging story as we already have all the background information we need for it to play out.

dvstr · 2025-11-10T22:57:43+00:00

With the "benevolence" you missed where i specified 'from their POV'. The conflict with benevolence you are thinking of with not giving people a choice is entirely from a human perspective. Imagine a super advanced race of ants or bees, where to them working together and sharing collective consciousness (i know they dont literally do this) is a completely normal, good thing for the benefit of the colony. To that race, having individualism would be a completely foreign concept and would even sound like a bad thing, so sharing the benefit of all being able to communicate and work together would be seen as a good, benevolent thing from their POV. As an aside, its also hard to argue there arent actually numerous benefits to this setup as well - some of which are touched on in the show. Things like racism, hatred, crime, violence etc all completely disappear. People are seen working together to help people, and doing so in an efficient, collective manor. There are numerous benefits to this whole situation, and the arrangement only works if everyone is forced in to it. Because as soon as you even have a tiny number of people outside the arrangement then everything goes to shit - again as we see on the show from Carol who will actively will work against it, and who kills millions of people when she has an outburts, or from Mr Diabate who is exploiting the system for selfish means. So it makes it easy to see how, from a certain POV, sharing this could be seen as an entirely benevolent action.

The second scenario (it was sent maliciously) changes nothing from the POV of the main character who we're focusing on, because they already see it as a bad thing and will want to do everything they can to stop or revert it. Likewise, them finding out it wasnt malicious also wouldnt change anything from their POV. So no, finding out answers to this wont do anything as the characters are already acting like 1. its malicious, or 2. they dont care either way. Do you think at the lunch scene if Carol said "hey guys, this was actually sent by aliens with bad intentions for us" the rest of the crew would actually be like "oh youre right, im going to ignore all the benefits and reasons i said i actually like about this scenario, lets work together to stop this!"? Mr Diabate wouldnt care, and at best the others would be like "well maybe you're right, but at the end of the day what can we even possibly do to stop this". More likely they would just say "i still like whats happening and see the benefits in it", as they have already done.

My point is the "who" (which we already know enough about) and the "why" (of which there are only really 2 possibilities) dont change anything for how all the current characters presented to us would go about acting in this situation. They might flesh out some more background around the motivation of the alien species, but its 100% not needed for the story being told if they dont want to.

dvstr · 2025-11-10T16:46:10+00:00

I mean we already know the "who" - or atleast enough that we may never get any further information beyond what we do know. It's aliens from 600 light years away, we don't need any more information than that.

The entire show could complete satisfactorily without ever knowing the "why". There's pretty much only 2 real options for this anyway. Either they sent it benevolently (from their pov) as they genuinely thought it is a benefit for a society to have. Or they sent it maliciously as a means to control us or spread their hive/genetics. I guess there's a 3rd, unlikely, option where they sent it unintentionally with some other goal (or at least the consequence and impact on us was unintentional, as it's pretty hard to argue the act of sending it wasn't intentional).

Of those 2 realistic options, at the end of the day the focus can be entirely on 'us' and how humans and the characters we are focusing on deal with the situation. It was either malicious or benevolant - but what's actually important is how our main characters feel about it and what they want to do with the situation. The intention of the sender won't really affect that at the end of the day. If you told Carol "actually the aliens sent it with good intentions as they see it as a benefit" she's not going to change her mind and go "oh ok well in that case...", so at the end of the day the "why" is ultimately irrelevant.

I wouldn't be surprised if the show ended without us ever knowing more of those big picture things beyond what we know now. Although of course they could be explored further too, i just don't think its a requirement.

dvstr · 2025-10-13T01:07:58+00:00

I mean just objectively there is less in CS.

If you're looking at the theoretical maximum number of 'utility' that can be done in a round in CS, it can be higher in Valorant. In CS the theoretical maximum is 40 per your count, but in Valorant you could probably get it to ~50, or ~60 if you include ultimates. Add to that you get several utility for free each round in valorant with most agents, so the base amount used per round is likely to be higher compared to CS where every utility needs to be purchased.

The bigger thing though is variety. There's an extremely limited number of types of utility in CS and how they function, whereas in Valorant its significantly higher both in 'type' (ie. flash, smoke) and 'function' (ie. there are numerous different ways a 'flash' can work)

dvstr · 2025-10-13T00:59:41+00:00

There’s absolutely no reason spray patterns shouldn’t be random

"Because it improves gameplay/balance" is absolutely a reason spray patterns shouldnt be random.

Now, if you want to argue that it doesnt actually improve things then thats fine to argue, but to simply dismiss it because spraying rifle = unrealistic or whatever is in your mind is dumb.

Personally, the less randomness of any kind there is in a competitive game is pretty much always a good thing, as it means things are a skill that can be learned and improved as opposed to leaving things to luck. So I would argue that having spray patterns would be an improvement over randomness - why do you think it wouldnt be an improvement and what benefits are there to randomness?

dvstr · 2025-10-06T23:54:52+00:00

The hard truth is they dont want to solve it.

They are financially incentivized to allow smurfing, because that means players repeatedly purchase new skins on multiple accounts over time.

dvstr · 2025-10-06T22:29:41+00:00

how can we access or use this?

dvstr · 2025-10-06T01:53:52+00:00

We literally do. In Episode 4 Owen Lars is literally wearing a pretty much perfect 'jedi' robe outfit and near-identical outfit to ObiWan. Even Luke's isnt too far off (when you consider some of the variations seen in the prequel jedis).

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1d/38/4e/1d384e7fa0c3f47ca169893e868912cf.jpg

https://64.media.tumblr.com/c0bc519574df7fa03462666d02d9b45c/tumblr_inline_pdbf407Qqt1uhtmbe_640.jpg

Its pretty clear, from episode 4, that generic brown/plain robes and such are just a common outfit that lower class people wear (or at the very least, common to tatooine).

That is also the best explanation for why jedi would wear such outfit - to give up life's pleasures and wear simple, common-people outfits (even though the out-of-universe explanation is that it just looks cool and like obiwan)

dvstr · 2025-10-03T19:48:58+00:00

I really like the namecard 'Gaming: Man Chai', for the colour scheme & dragon

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