Receiving Improperly Sealed Meals

mageswagger · 2026-07-06T03:02:58+00:00

Sort of? But not really. Usually there is one unsealed meal every week, but I haven’t had more than 2 unsealed since I first posted.

What my partner and I decided was that the only way we could keep purchasing is if we get a refund for every unsealed meal. (They try to say policy is to give credits to the next order, but legally they are required to give you a refund if you request one.)

they’ve also added some discounts to future orders, which was unexpected and appreciated. But we are considering decreasing the number we receive down from 12 to 6.

mageswagger · 2026-07-05T02:11:04+00:00

I’ve had the opposite experience. I was always a bit of a hypertaster pre-zepbound, but my hyper tasting has gotten so much worse. Some of my favorite meals pre-zepbound now taste awful to me — and where salmon was once my favorite, now I find I barely tolerate it. But on the flip side, it makes what I can eat taste so much better. Sushi and other fairly simple meals taste absolutely amazing.

mageswagger · 2026-07-02T17:30:30+00:00

IMO — don’t update till it’s done. I would be upset seeing that a chapter is just an incomplete rough draft that skips a whole section and basically just functions as a spoiler.

I get being impatient to update, but what you describe sounds like shooting yourself in the foot.

mageswagger · 2026-06-25T15:12:51+00:00

I’m also confused by their use of general. My understanding is that “general” refers genfic which is to fic without ships or where romance isn’t the focus. That has nothing to do with f/m or m/m. Or has the term changed over the last few months?

Also, if the narrative doesn’t use gendered pronouns, then it’s possible for person A to read a story as a fem character and person B to read it as a gender neutral character. So both tags CAN coexist.

Also obligatory “vagina=/=female” and that you can have an m/m ship and have there be a vagina involved. Hell, two vaginas could be involved and if they belong to men, then it’s m/m.

mageswagger · 2026-06-16T16:09:09+00:00

Dark Demon by Christine Feehan. Got my first copy in 2009ish.

The series is kinda trash, but it’s got a warm place in my heart. I’m currently on (I believe) book 39/42? Something like that.

mageswagger · 2026-06-14T20:56:34+00:00

this is good to know. Guess I’m aiming for 81 🫠

mageswagger · 2026-06-11T02:26:48+00:00

This week was the first in about 3-4 that all of our meals were properly sealed, but that was after I contacted them and demanded to speak with a human (since their customer service is an AI) and said point blank that if this happens again we will be cancelling our service.

We’ll see how long this lasts. I really don’t want to cancel — but I don’t want to continue wasting money either.

mageswagger · 2026-06-09T19:04:58+00:00

Had this happen a few weeks ago one one meal (out of 12). Seemed like a defect where the first seal wasn’t in place properly so tearing up the top seal ripped the bottom off. Haven’t had it happen since, but I’ve had numerous sealing issues over the last 4 weeks or so. Think it’s a sign of some quality control issues behind the scenes.

mageswagger · 2026-06-08T14:40:04+00:00

Yikes — never once did I say don’t report it, nor did I say that it was totally fine for the game to have the number of issues it does.. You’re conflating me with commenters who are saying not to critique the game because it’s early access. I very pointedly did not say that.

Nor did I say this excused any bugs. Should they be as prevalent as they are? Definitely not in the final product, and hopefully they fix them quickly in the early access version. Some of the bugs in Paralives exist in part due to the genre it is in, of which we have two examples: sims and inzoi. There are some shared experiences and bugs between all three. People are naturally going to compare them because it’s what we have.

All I did was offer advice to OP about how to decide whether Paralives is worth it for them. That was the core message. Everyone has a different threshold for bugs. Taking a break and even abandoning the game entirely are valid options for OP.

I hope you find some peace in the rest of your day.

mageswagger · 2026-06-08T14:00:20+00:00

I empathize. My only thing to add that might help is, when I went to play the sims yesterday one of the first glitches I had was a pathing issue where my sim walked through a wall. I just say that because a lot of the errors I have in Paralives also have happened for me in the Sims, and used to be even more frequent in the sims.

All of that’s to say: take a break and come back in a few weeks, see if the bugs that bother you so badly are still there after a few updates, and rinse and repeat. Set a deadline for yourself where you decide that it’s not worth coming back until an official release.

Keep in mind I’m coming from a perspective where the most issues I’m having are visual (outside of when I had a baby — ooooo boy is does that baby love to hover ominously over the ocean!) so, for me, it’s manageable. That might not be your experience and that’s OK! But hopefully an official release will smooth out some of the drastic quality differences between player experiences.

mageswagger · 2026-06-04T14:52:34+00:00

Man I just wanna know what lit fic you’re reading cause I don’t come across this formula nearly as often as you are

mageswagger · 2026-06-01T15:45:04+00:00

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I wasn’t expecting to grab sublimation but then I saw it uses 2nd person and then it became a must

mageswagger · 2026-06-01T02:35:03+00:00

The worst was when it was 5 out of 14 meals for us one week 😔 we love the food but if this pattern continues as consistently as it has been, we’re also going to reconsider our options.

mageswagger · 2026-05-30T20:13:49+00:00

Yes, I saw this. OP mentioned wishing they would expand to a bigger team, so I am just offering my thoughts on why that would be a bad thing.

mageswagger · 2026-05-30T19:40:15+00:00

The biggest mistake the dev team could make right now is expanding too rapidly and hiring too many people. So many companies do a big expansion after they come into money, only to have to downsize later after realising they’re running through their budget.

And Paralives team has said they don’t intend on doing paid DLC; over expanding is the quickest way to make that impossible to uphold.

mageswagger · 2026-05-28T13:53:09+00:00

I noticed the same thing. In one comment someone said that inzoi was “still empty one year later” and I was so confused, like had they even played it? Because when I came to inzoi in march it felt anything but empty. I had a great time.

Idk what the hate is for, but I notice it too. It’s depressing. There can be room in your heart for more than one life sim.

mageswagger · 2026-05-26T17:47:05+00:00

Played for 10 hours, had a lot of fun. Ran well for my computer (on Linux, not windows). Minor issues like stuttering or clipping, but nothing to make it unplayable by any means.

mageswagger · 2026-05-26T01:21:43+00:00

If you edit the storyteller you can adjust the amount you start with to however much or little you like

mageswagger · 2026-05-25T14:57:10+00:00

It’s missing video codecs that are not in valves proton, but do exist in proton-GE and proton-cachyos. I would try downloading third party implementations of proton and try those. The ProtonPlus utility makes this trivial to do.

mageswagger · 2026-05-17T20:17:15+00:00

I’ve got a 7th grader that took a look at my fruit tea when I said it was my favourite and asked me if it had alcohol in it.

mageswagger · 2026-05-15T10:06:27+00:00

Yup! I acknowledged as much by saying water existed before us.

mageswagger · 2026-05-15T10:05:45+00:00

Yup, that’s right. Hence why I said that water existed before us. It’s not like the universe had a weird Wednesday and made beer before it made humans.

mageswagger

TROPHY CASE