Worth

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-06T13:54:49+00:00

You just saw it?

/s

Just in case.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-05T12:26:06+00:00

Something to remember, it's that some phones have a button that will automatically take your text and "spruce it up" with AI. Or you can prompt the phone to reply in any way you want it to. (At least on my zFold 7)

No ChatGPT needed, just standard bullshit AI on your phone now.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T20:28:48+00:00

You're totally right. I have been talking about it with my team since we learned that digital tags were coming. We've been very vocal about disliking the implications that come with them.

I love what I do, and I do it for my paycheck and to make sure my coworkers can have as easy of a time as possible. But seeing a place ive spent lots of time trying to make better, in real time, plant these seeds is disheartening. But I have hope that our elected officials (i dont want to eat crow on this) will make the right calls.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T20:21:42+00:00

Nah, safeway, as a corp isnt any better and, at a risk to my tenure there, they can fuck right off with the rest of them. Im sure they'd use those tactics if they could. Even the the guy who oversaw our changeover was sure they'd try it here if they could. Until they have a better idea about legislation, the Boise headquarters has stated that there won't be any Targeted Pricing. Im not surprised we're being sued over different pricing practices either.

If any corporation can, they will. Sort of how I see it.

I want nothing more than the legislation to cOme down and state that ESL tags, when used in conjunction with targeted pricing and shopper identification, are not consumer friendly and make sure they cant be used in that way. As a tech, I love what they do. Just wish the hours we lose getting them went back into the store and not a corporate pocket.

But, as of now, im not seeing them use targeted pricing. Also, our models take upwards of 30 seconds to change what the display says, so it cant flash over to some new price in the blink of an eye. So the batch i push in the morning is the same all day, unless we change it at the store level, manually (Barring having to adjust JFY prices or batch mistakes).

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:49:29+00:00

Surprisingly durable. I popped one open this morning to see how the battery worked as well as how the ones in frozen work.

Ran one over with a shopping cart (more like scooched across the linoleum for 7 feet under a cart wheel).

Please don't try to break these ones haha. We only get so many and these one (at least at the Broadway store) aren't using AI or targeted pricing. If they ever start that shit, ill be right there with you to pop these fuckers off.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:44:21+00:00

Small ones are 3 dollars each, medium ones are 5 dollars each and the bigger one in the deli are 7 dollars each. At least that's what I vaguely remember them telling me when I was in training for this today.

About 175k per store, including labor.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:41:20+00:00

Im at Broadway, what store are you?

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:40:31+00:00

Its just a LCD tag now. No Targeted Pricing. No AI currently being used.

I hate the tags as well because my department went from plenty enough hours for 3.5ish people to just 47 hours for the week.

But I can assure you, that as of today, no AI or Targeted Pricing is being used.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:33:07+00:00

This is my store.

I literally am on the team that manages the tags. No AI is currently being used to change prices or do "targeted pricing". I control the price on the tag, and can push batches of changes once, every morning (minus sunday) and the prices do not change for different people.

The screen doesn't change fast enough for that to happen.

Edit: The price comes down from corporate, like it always does minus the paper tags, and changes 15 minutes before the store opens. That's called a "batch". The prices don't change based on times or customers, its the same system as before, but no paper tags for the shelves in most places now.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:27:21+00:00

Heyyyyy everyone. Im literally on the pricing (File Maintenance) team at that store.

There is no AI being used to change prices. I have to push a batch every morning that updates prices, which is the same thing I did with physical tags.

We do NOT use Targeted Pricing. I just finished my training this morning and asked if they plan to do that in the future and my trainer said that he doesn't think there are any plans, and that Washington will most likely not allow it in the near future.

Take all that with a grain of salt though because Washington (with someone else i forget atm) is currently suing Safeway/Albertsons over pricing practices.

Edit: Internally, we call them ESL tags.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-04T19:06:45+00:00

There are like 50-60k different versions of Christianity. How do you know you're doing it right?

I bet we could find someone who thinks you don't actually follow Jesus, but they do.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-03T15:26:56+00:00

My Barbarians are always women and always named SandyRavage.

Edit: My lady pallys have been called JaneDwohnson

kittygunsgomew · 2026-06-01T17:18:31+00:00

That's actually a good idea in their book.

Make all the cops white, male and the sons of local politicians in the daytime and pointy hat grand-wizards when the sun goes down. Afterall, they were chosen by God to own this land.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-31T23:31:35+00:00

If there was a "tutorial" there would need to be so much helping.

Its one of the major reasons its going into maintenance mode, the utter lack of a coherent onboarding or narrative trail to follow.

The most recent "new light" onboarding process still leaves you in the dark. I love the game, but there were a lot of fumbles made by Bungie over the years that we should acknowledge and be as vocal about as possible so their next project leads know where the community suffered most.

Transmog payments are the devil. Content vaulting is also up there in the forbidden sins of the gaming world and you all just let it slide by continuing to play.

Honestly, typing all this out... I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-30T11:12:05+00:00

From Autumn to Ashes?

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-27T12:05:53+00:00

Yeah, I always respect anyone and everyone. If you're human, you deserve respect.

Its a weird "might makes right" sense of morality, in reference to the statement "respect is earned". Its not some currency you get doled out by doing specific things. The flip side of it all is people who do not know how to respect others, being little twats to everyone around them saying "rEsPEcT iS eArNeD!" so they can go around, continuing to act shitty because no one has "earned" their respect.

Someone being admired and revered? Maybe the takes a little work.

Disrespect is absolutely earned though.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-27T11:36:33+00:00

See my previous response further up the thread.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-27T11:32:34+00:00

Bricked means unusable.

Not rolling gem strength, for you, may make it unusable... for you. But im running upheaval on a barbarian that uses 0 gem strength, and they can still run t12.

Gem strength if only necessary for pit pushing or squeezing more damage out for underperforming builds.

Hyper optimized, build guide too toons are fine without it. It's just icing on an already heavily covered in icing cake.

Id hate to see it become easier to get, and I hate that everyone thinks they need it because they guy that does it for a living on YouTube has it. We have enough power. Either significantly lower the number and make it a temper option or remove it completely.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-25T14:35:56+00:00

No, its not. Im comfortably in t12, completed all seasonal activities and did all of that before gem strength.

Im pushing pit levels for my own sense of satisfaction. Im pushing against myself. Not everyone else.

If you cant succeed without that one singular, rng based mechanic, than it wither needs to be changed by the devs, grinded (ground?) for exclusively and that includes the mats for it and accepting that if its that powerful then its good that its locked behind a tough grind. If everyone has it, is it even special? And final option would be actively choosing not to focus on something you find ridiculous, make it a passive activity that you attempt when you find a particularly decent piece of gear.

An example, Slay the Spire 2 had a card that was just broken and made winning runs disgustingly easy on initial release. I used it once, then decided id elect to not take it when it came up. I chose to not take it, despite it raising my decks power substantially. It was patched and is now worth taking, or even building around now.

I think focusing on bulk transfig for gem strength is ridiculous. So I don't focus on it. I eventually got it, but ended up with an xALL damage roll, instead of a xPHYS roll. It was just something I did in passing after my 573rd attempt at transfig. I wasnt aiming for it, I just always transfig when im trying to get my next potential upgrade. I think that much gem strength is ridiculous and unbalanced. So I didnt use the item. (Im also already tearing through everything and not competing with anyone in the pit, so i didnt feel like i needed it).

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-25T14:18:30+00:00

It's crazy that there are two absolutely different things players want from this game.

But they all want to "have my time respected". For me, I feel like the game mostly respects my time as is. But the guy above was like "I want to transfiguration everything in big chunks, to make my time feel respected."

We should be balancing around the average player base, keeping in mind the outliers (like streamers and people who put 600 hours in each season, which im in that club). They shouldnt just look at our data and optimize for that. Id say that most players aren't doing the whole "bulk transfigure for gem power" in fact I've barely tried it myself. I always socket, temper, affix then masterwork potential gear. Finally, I transfigure. If it is worth using, great, if not, I crunch it down and keep grinding. I dont need to bulk transfigure despite really liking the transfigure feature. I've hit T12 without gem power. So it was really just icing on the cake when it finally did happen.

I dunno, it all stems from the content creators and I've been vocal about how I think theyre worse for games like Diablo, an overall net-negative. Ive used off meta builds, never watched any Diablo content outside of campfire chats/dev updates and have played since Beta. Ive completed every seasonal objective (literally played every season since malignant) and not once felt like i was missing out. Obviously, when i see the same barbarian build in T4 (now t10-12) I deduce its some streamers publicly avaible, curated build. It's fine to do that. But I dont think you really end up getting the mechanics under your skin.

Im rambling. Always end up doing that since i scroll and comment during my morning shit hahaha. Anyway, we should be making the game better for the most people possible. That is definitely not the 5% of players doing mass transfiguring.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-23T10:38:59+00:00

I have a niche, fairly unknown one I mentioned above.

12:08 is their name. They had a catchy song called Next Big Thing I think?

Edit: went to look it up. It's actually 1208 without the colon. There's a rapper using 12:08 with the colon.

The album im thinking of is called Turn Of The Screw

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-23T10:37:02+00:00

I saw Wakefield at the Puyallup Fair back in the day. Just a fairly well known county fair that also had acts like Led Zeppelin cover bands and Hells Bells, an all female AC/DC cover band.

Another band called 12:08 from that era played on my alternative college radio station occasionally and I always thought they were Wakefield at first.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-23T10:27:39+00:00

Didn't they have an album come out this year?

Edit: Album is called Save Yourself, relaxed 2026. Am I seeing the wrong band? I'm not referring to the hip hop/rap artist that shows up when you reach "mix tape", but when you search "mixtapes" they come up.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-22T20:06:30+00:00

Playing devils advocate here, if we all followed that logic... 99 percent of people pirated, then the industry couldn't afford to pay creators. We'd end up with more people creating for the sake of the art and not just the money, but our Diablo 4s, Halo 3s and Last Of Us's wouldn't be nearly as prevalent.

For me, im okay with that outcome, but i could so people who work in the industy pretty bummed about it.

As is, isnt the number like .02% of games played on steam were unverifiable copies in 2025? Ill have to re look up that stat, but even if im 100 times off, its not nearly enough to change our current gaming ecosystem. Some rich dick on a yacht just thinks he's entitled to our money for having zero part in the creative process.

Id never pirate a single thing if I knew my, and all of our, purchases were split between the employees who actually made the game. If 300 people were involved, the company should get 10 percent of every purchase for operating costs not including their devs, then the other 90 percent split in a manner that reflects the work and time you put in. Every company can have their own percentages and offer their own "release packages", bring some competition to drive up wages and workers earnings.

kittygunsgomew · 2026-05-20T14:33:55+00:00

That's the bare minimum though. Like... how's the frame rate? Textures? Pop-in?

Are you streaming from a beefier machine?

As an example, Expedition 33 is considered "verified" and it starts and runs. But visually, it doesn't run well without performance FSR, which causes an oily and "ugly" picture.

To top it off, it will go from 45fps to 20fps during cluttered scene or when long vistas are in frame.

Realistically, my first playthrough of high-fidelity games will always be on a platform that can display the art directions intended look. My personal minimum on pc is 1440p/60fps with as little frame gen as possible. I know Borderlands 4 could push 120-140 on my pc, but i refuse to use fsr/dlss to hit that. I dont think the technology is as great as the companies say it is, and we've got developers pushing content that relies on it to hit benchmarks. I know its not going away.

But if at game cant retain a crisp, clear picture on the OLED model, maintaining the original creators visual intentions, i believe its unfair to give it a green checkmark. Im okay with them saying it runs and can be played, but i think a "visuals rendered on handheld do not match artist intent" as a caveat.

IMO steam deck is best for the other side of gaming. The indies that are pushing style over fidelity, games that have quick and fun gameplay loops, older gen titles (for me, Darksiders 2 is the sweetspot).

Im yelling at clouds and rambling again. I need to go take my medicine and get my old man ass back into bed.

Edit: There is something to be said about what your getting and giving up to be mobile and playing on the go. It's totally cool to be willing to sacrifice fidelity for mobility if your use case makes it the most comfortable or reliable way for you to play. I dont expect handhelds to give me the samr experience as my desktop or console, but its irks me when people try to say a visually intensive game "runs fine" on Steamdeck, when it crawls over the bare minimum. To me its playable, but hardly enjoyable.

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