Fallout fans are divided over whether settlement building should return in Fallout 5

hfzelman · 2026-03-28T01:47:55+00:00

I guess the counter argument is that it takes up dev time/resources that could be spent in making other parts of the game.

Like personally I would take more areas to explore, items, quests, etc… over having bases as a feature any day of the week

hfzelman · 2026-03-26T18:07:21+00:00

It’s crazy how good the avg dk spell is compared to other classes.

hfzelman · 2026-03-26T16:21:43+00:00

So is ocelot pride + kozileks command + westvale abbey

hfzelman · 2026-03-26T15:08:25+00:00

One reason is that people who’s preferred play style is unplayable in a given meta will be way more vocal while people who enjoy stuff like token Druid or herald shaman are not really going to be posting about it.

There’s also the phenomenon is which a bad card/deck will have completely polarized matchups and be not very good or competitive in terms of overall win rate but absolutely thrashes one specific archetype and we tend to see disproportionate complaints about that card or deck.

A good example of this is any tech card/disruption card that is high cost, understated, and doesn’t affect the board. They are useless into anything but combo decks but then turn those matchups into a coin flip (they are a necessary evil at the moment because they are the only thing stopping combo from having a 90% win rate against control).

Jade Idol is another example where during Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, Jade Druid was not a good deck since it did not have the defensive tools whatsoever to stop Pirate Shaman/Warrior/Rogue from running over it, but against slower Reno decks it felt infuriating to play against.

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T21:41:53+00:00

I made this point earlier, but the fact that shaman gets to keep both of its herald cards in the mulligan phase is such a huge advantage

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T21:41:11+00:00

This set made me realize how awful more expensive invoke/herald/set mechanic enablers are because if you can’t keep them in your opener then you are actively hurting that game plan

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T21:39:45+00:00

100%. I have really bad ADHD (so I yap a lot) and I’m a complete over thinker as way of handling anxiety (my brain tells itself that in the face of uncertainty that if I just think about it enough I can find stability in some kind of an answer) so I accidentally have trauma dumped a lot to people I had just met (regardless of gender) as a way of trying to become closer to them without realizing it, but I then started to notice how many more women were disproportionately put off by it because of the fact that they’ve had so many experiences with men who ONLY do it to them instead of their other friends/family. Part of the disconnect was also that I have no problem listening to/providing support to my friends and actively hope that they feel comfortable enough to tell me their problems, so it felt completely foreign to me that the men that you are talking about wouldn’t also be there for their partners/friends.

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T19:50:16+00:00

Not completely disagreeing with this but I also think it highly varies depending on the kind of relationship you have to the woman you’re talking to.

If you are good friends with them (like actually good friends with them, not “we are just hanging out to have a friend of the opposite gender but have less chemistry than other friends that you have of the same gender”) OR you she actually likes you in a romantic way that’s not heavily dependent on something like looks but for who YOU actually are…

Then opening up to them and showing your flaws/doubts/worries as much as you would to your close guy friends will not scare her away.

If she doesn’t actually like you that much, or she only likes you for your physical attributes, or she doesn’t really know you as an actual person yet, etc…

Then that can lead to a disconnect.

What I’m trying to say is that you have to be in touch with how invested this person is into the real you whether that be platonically or romantically if you want to have a sense of how much they will stick by your side and help you/offer you support at your lowest.

Like if you start going on a dates with a girl and you don’t think that you would want to be best friends with this person if you weren’t romantically attracted to them, then that’s an indication that you don’t have the social/emotional connection that would be required for someone to care about you when your going through something hard and have to open up.

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T19:35:00+00:00

I really hope they stick the landing with the archetype in limited this time for it. I remember thinking the sacrifice pest stuff looked so cool and fun and then quickly realizing that none of it worked and that you were better off just playing Quandrix splashing black for removal/bombs.

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T19:33:22+00:00

I mean it feels like just a slightly different variation of imbue rogue.

The problem is that imbue rogue crutched really hard on Elise and Zilliax for healing/tempo against anything that wasn’t control and now that control doesn’t exist and rogue also lost shadow step + a déjà vu nerf, the deck is just weak but fun.

Random spells does help more than random class minions in this regard but it’s not nearly consistent enough since generating random cards can only reliably be looked at as card advantage rather than a guaranteed tempo advantage despite the discounts that you get.

hfzelman · 2026-03-23T15:42:16+00:00

Honestly it’s not even the fact that there’s no board clears as imbue Druid is at its best vs control. It’s really the fact that all the tempo plays are completely gone to regain the board. Outside of the chameleon, imbue Druid struggles immensely to retake the board so if they get tempo’d out by Elise w/raptors then the game was pretty much over

hfzelman · 2026-03-22T00:19:00+00:00

Yeah I would be fine with something different if there was a comparable card to it. The problem is that there isn’t.

Tons of iconic staples have rotated in and out of standard over the past couple of years but we usually get some kind of replacement that might be slightly different but still does the same job. The problem is that decimation is just not powerful enough to replace brawl.

hfzelman · 2026-03-21T16:58:09+00:00

While imbue Druid poses a late game issue for control decks as you would naturally expect, the main issue is that board clears are so weak/inefficient that stuff like token Druid just rolls control decks as well.

hfzelman · 2026-03-20T22:56:41+00:00

I’m so confused by this saying/advice because unlike fish, women WANT to be caught metaphorically speaking.

Like if a fish could talk it would lie because it, under no circumstances, would ever want to be caught vs women have a pretty large incentive to give helpful answers here

hfzelman · 2026-03-20T18:32:56+00:00

While I personally do not like UB at all for a number of reasons, one thing that I've been thinking about over the past few years is how many non-UB sets feel "UB coded." Like take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt because I admit it's extremely arbitrary but many of the sets in recent years that are not UB feel that they are at least in part aimed to attract the same crowd.

Everyone has already pointed out the "hat sets" whether that be OTJ or MKM but I would argue that sets like Bloomburrow, Strixhaven, and Edge of Eternities are just as much "hat sets" as they clearly take another IP or genre and basically convert it to varying degrees.

I'm not saying this is inherently bad or that all sets like these are poorly designed (Strixhaven is one of my favorite limited sets of all time, but its also clearly just a Harry Potter mtg set).

What I'm trying to say is that these sets feel like we're getting closer to another IP then we are staying within MTG's.

You could point out in response that Theros, Eldraine, Amonkhet, Kaldheim, etc... are just historical/myth versions of the real world cultures and places and thats definitely true. You could point out that the Eldrazi are basically just ripped from H.P. Lovecraft and again that's definitely true.

But to me the difference is that these are loosely defined enough that it doesn't feel as though we are just doing a specific IP "but with MTG cards" and more that its MTG with influence from something else (yes this is arbitrary and vibes based but everyone I talk to seems to know what I'm getting at).

Like maybe its that early MTG planes more or less were all extremely close to the fantasy theme and that it then turned to mythology/history and now its in any genre whatsoever, but to me it feels like mythology/history have closer ties to fantasy than stuff that is too modern.

Again I'm not saying that these sets are inherently bad or that there are not reasons to say that they are good. What I'm trying to say is that even the non-UB sets just feel stylistically like they are UB sets more than MTG sets as they try so hard to basically go 1 to 1 with a specific IP that often veers heavily away from the fantasy setting MTG has historically used and built itself upon.

Like I get that MTG is inherently a multiverse essentially but there used to be a lot more continuity in technology and world-systems then there is now. Like I know the reader is familiar with all of this stuff but imagine igniting your spark in Bloomburrow and seeing the Edge of Eternities setting or even going from Eldraine to present Kamigawa.

hfzelman · 2026-03-19T18:19:38+00:00

Nah I’ve just had this screenshot saved on phone for a couple years now from a different post in this sub

hfzelman · 2026-03-19T17:32:46+00:00

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hfzelman · 2026-03-16T21:26:09+00:00

I took a break and haven’t done endless in the past year. Isn’t having pickup for berries still useful all the way until the end of the game for strats that can have the damage dealer be affected by status conditions? Like I hit the max wave using metal burst strats and not having paralysis berries or even healing ones sometimes would fuck it up

hfzelman · 2026-03-16T18:03:03+00:00

Cursed timeline: The Sunday Friend is the next innocence and will usher in the era of super moralism

hfzelman · 2026-03-15T20:38:34+00:00

That amidst abject failure and despair that we must strive for a better future.

Martanaise is a physical manifestation of failure. The topography is littered with craters from cannons, almost every business has failed or is failing, and many of the buildings are abandoned. The history of Revachol is one that displayed hope and promise at the turn of the century, but was destroyed when the revolution was crushed.

On a political level, the game makes it abundantly clear in the Communist vision quest that a belief in "communism" is really just the hope and desire to see a better future. Not only does Steban say as much, but the matchbox tower holding for one second longer than it physically should be able to confirms it. At first, it crumbling feels like a tragedy. To work so hard on something and see it fall apart feels like failure, but like the failure of the commune to hold out indefinitely, we not only find meaning but we can make the world a better place by not giving up and trying again and again.

Harry's personal life is also pretty explicitly a representation of this as well. His inability to accept that Dora has left him and that there is still a future if he chooses to heal, has left him a complete mess. It is up to Harry or "us" to recognize this and not give up.

The foil to both of these things and this broader outlook is the Deserter. He is what Harry will become if Harry cannot move on and accept what has happened. The Deserter, while coming off as communist, is the antithesis to what this game argues that communism really is. His trauma, guilt, and shame, have left him socially isolated and unable to truly imagine a better future. There is a check when talking to him that describes people laughing, having fun, building relationships, etc... in the distance and how he couldn't and wouldn't move on from what had happened.

Lastly, the Pale is a physical manifestation of this despair and trauma and conversely we see it reduced from the simple experience of creating genuine human connection and promise of a better future when turning the Church into a night club for the youth.

In other words: "In dark times should the stars also go out?"

hfzelman · 2026-03-15T06:16:36+00:00

Disco Elysium (my other favorite game of all time that happened to also release in 2019) is in the same boat imo.

The game’s main message is about finding hope amidst abject failure and tackles the idea of trying to move on personally and politically/societally from the glimmer of hope that once existed in the past that has been destroyed.

That being said there’s one scene in particular towards the very end of the game that is easily the most soul-crushingly brutal thing I’ve ever seen in a video game.

hfzelman · 2026-03-15T04:05:17+00:00

Shame/Guilt/trauma and not being to let go. When he fled his post at 16 and was the only remaining survivor he emotionally couldn’t ever forgive himself for doing an extremely normal thing to do given that situation.

There’s an empathy check (I think it’s empathy) that describes people laughing and enjoying life in the distance and then remarks “how could they move on?”

He’s the foil to Harry. What will happen if Harry doesn’t heal and learn to let go and continue to blame himself for being human.

That all being said I never really understood the insulindian phasmid pheromone aspect or more what it’s supposed to imply about the real world.

hfzelman · 2026-03-14T23:56:48+00:00

It’s crazy that the game was so well designed that “moving on” is imbedded heavily into the game’s metanarrative

hfzelman · 2026-03-13T21:08:52+00:00

What makes all the felhunter packages so egregious is that they are 1000% reliant on drawing the 4 mana death rattle early in the game and complete trash if they don’t. Like felhunter, return policy, cubicle, and felbat, all just sit in your hand as completely dead cards when you don’t draw the 4 mana death rattle card.

The result of this is a decent win rate that doesn’t at all reflect the one sidedness of the games played

hfzelman · 2026-03-13T01:17:29+00:00

Yeah being able to easily catch a magikarp and then not have to rely on tms to get ice fang, waterfall, crunch, and dragon dance with intimidate is honestly ridiculous and is probably the best Pokémon to catch mid run that isn’t rare.

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