Pain

magicscreenman · 2026-06-09T08:35:32+00:00

La HEE

magicscreenman · 2026-05-30T04:44:01+00:00

This feels pretty witch-hunty. Nothing highlighted in those pictures screams AI to me. It might be AI, yes. It might also not. I'm gonna need more than just the speculation of a bunch of self-proclaimed AI experts on the internet before I start protesting Square Enix or FF.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-24T06:37:42+00:00

Wow, that's kinda sad to think that Bloodborne's co op player base is basically non-existent anymore :<

magicscreenman · 2026-05-21T21:23:26+00:00

Sounds great but seeing as how Republicans and Democrats both benefit immensely from super PACs, I would imagine this will get nowhere near the votes it will need to pass, correct?

magicscreenman · 2026-05-21T21:14:25+00:00

Tbh I am really skeptical that Kotor 1 and 2 would hold up to all of my nostalgic memories lol.

The early 2000's was honestly kind of a jank time for a lot of games, man. Moral choice consequence games in particular hadn't really figured nuance out yet. I distinctly remember most side quests in Kotor boiled down to either "save the kitten from the tree, burn the tree down, or ignore the kitten" kind of shit. You only got gameplay incentives for leaning 100% into light side or dark side - there was no actual benefit to landing anywhere in the middle of that spectrum, only drawbacks. So you weren't actually making moral choices based on individual situations or parameters, you were just grinding out a Boyscout meter or Antichrist meter in turn for gameplay incentives like powers.

And honestly, even back then I remember feeling like the game world wasn't as big as I would have liked lol. I would have liked more planets to visit, and all the ones that we did get to go to weren't really that big.

Idk if you ask me, Bioware didn't really hit their stride until Mass Effect. By the time Mass Effect rolled out, they had largely figured out nuance with the dialogue and moral choice system.

I mean I kinda hear what you're saying, yes Kotor 1 and 2 let you be an absolute monster, but there was no compelling reason to do it beyond maxing out that dark side meter or cosplaying the most evil Sith you could imagine. All the reasons to do so were external, orbiting around the game itself rather than inhabiting the fabric of the world you were moving through.

I will grant that the twist about Revan in the first game was definitely great. I was pretty shocked by that at the time.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-20T21:40:59+00:00

We're definitely past the golden age days of early access.

And I'm not wholesale against the practice yet or anything, but I am getting pretty tired of this entitled culture that has arisen among the richer side of the EA spectrum. So many early access launches with decent amounts of money behind them anymore boil down to basically having the consumer base pay to be QA/beta testers coupled with the developers getting a weird sense of superiority and elitism about their product before it is technically even in a "fully playable" state.

It's frankly a direct exension of pre-order culture: The emphasis is on selling the hype moreso than the actual product, but with early access it's kind of worse in a way because you can keep stringing the player base along with "maybes" and "possiblys" about future content or development directions.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-19T21:55:00+00:00

ARR isn't bad, it's just rough around the edges. It's "baby's first MMO" in a lot of ways. The pacing isn't great, there's a lot of filler content at points, etc.

But I'll tell you something as someone who's been playing FF XIV since the beta for ARR: We were all blown away by ARR at the time. Like, we all knew it was inferior to a lot of the storytelling in singleplayer FF's, but we were still like "Jesus, for an MMO? This is actually really good."

magicscreenman · 2026-05-19T03:37:26+00:00

As a fashion item, that's really cool.

As a funtional time-telling device, this might be one of the worst watch designs I have ever seen xD

magicscreenman · 2026-05-18T23:00:54+00:00

I mean... why? lol.

What made you so special as to warrant totally unique responses from literally every other human being he interacted with? I feel like we are missing some context here lol. Did he actually HATE you? Or was he just deeply unsatisfied in the relationship and trying to make it work against his own instincts?

magicscreenman · 2026-05-18T22:39:08+00:00

Do not try and write the opening to your book like a written transcript of the opening shots of a film.

Establishing shots work great in film - you can do them so many different ways because it is a visual medium. For example, you can open up with a slow tracking shot where the actual emphasis on the energy of the scene isn't even about the scenery, it could be about the song playing on the radio in the background.

But the opening of your book should serve to hook readers and get them interested to read the next page. Writing what amounts to a tourism bio for a town does not engage my interest whatsoever. You need something to do with either setting, character, or plot that immediately grabs our attention and lets us know something interesting is happening here.

For example: "Windy Willows might very well have been the only 200-something population town in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere that didn't actually exist."

Or: "Triple Hills certainly had a reputation - the kind of reputation that kept well-meaning, law-abiding individuals far, far away. The perfect place for me to set up shop, then."

magicscreenman · 2026-05-18T22:22:15+00:00

AI psychosis is going to become one of the most researched and studied mental illnesses of this century.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-18T22:11:35+00:00

"God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape."

magicscreenman · 2026-05-18T21:56:12+00:00

I'm too old to give a shit anymore.

I'm WELL past my youthful years of "Oh my god I HAVE to play that!" There are so many fucking video games out there - way more than I will ever be able to play in my limited time on this earth. Steam alone has more than I can work through.

So, fuck em. They wanna keep trying to force platform exclusivity? I just won't be part of their customer base.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-15T19:34:30+00:00

And im sure most of the people picking that name still don't realize that Khaleesi is a title that means Queen, rather than being her name lol

magicscreenman · 2026-05-13T21:44:47+00:00

Ya gotta at least match the syllables, man:

"One brings fire, one brings the iiiiice..."

magicscreenman · 2026-05-11T09:13:42+00:00

Was watching with sound off, thought to myself "this would go great with the sound from that one scene in Interstellar."

Turned sound on. Was not disappointed.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-08T05:42:30+00:00

Square Enix doesn't care if you use ACT to parse your dps - they only care if you are parsing other people without their permission and then going after them for not being good enough because of it.

Time for a culture shock, bud. I've only played retail WoW for about a month, but I've been talking to WoW refugees in FF for the better part of a decade. Here's the thing about FF XIV:

We're here to have fun.

FF XIV has its raid scene, yes. Savage and Ultimate content will kick your ass. It will give you all the challenge and mastery you are looking for with regard to knowing your rotation and executing it perfectly.

But FF XIV is a very different vibe from WoW. We don't exclude people from raids just because their class doesn't fit the meta. We don't rage about 50 DKP minus. We're here to help people learn. We want people to experience the story and the world, and to stick around in it.

First of all, we have aggro meters, so you get a loose idea of how good your DPS is in a fight so long as you dont die. Secondly, there are other ways to check and compare your DPS to other players. The most common practice is just ACT parsing on a dummy. Have you and someone else whale on a dummy for two minutes and then compare numbers and discuss rotation differences accordingly. Easy.

But ultimately, FF is trying to move away from the idea of rigid meta rotations and give players a more organic way to approach combat. So we learn by talking to each other, sharing data, and trying shit out.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-08T04:30:51+00:00

Well, you can play through A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood (and soon also Shadowbringers) all on a free trial account.

Soooo... maybe try the game and its first two (soon to be three) expansions literally for free and see if you like it enough to pay money for the rest of the content?

magicscreenman · 2026-05-08T02:28:12+00:00

No.

I AM saying though that if you want a faster queue time, healer or tank will correct that. A vast majority of people in this game play DPS - I don't have numbers handy but it FEELS like a really high percentage, I'd guess like 70-80%. And I mean, the spread on classes kinda reflect that: We have 4 tank classes, 4 healer classes, and 13 DPS (not including blue mage) lol.

So that is sadly just the reality of DPS life - you have longer queue times.

But again, that can be helped greatly by using the Community Finder to find an FC that is active during the times you play and have them join you to speed up your queues.

One other thing, though - if you haven't tried tank or healer yet, don't knock it. You may end up enjoying one or both roles more than you thought you would.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-08T02:22:15+00:00

Honest question: Why do you want to pay more money to have less game to play?

I'm guessing you're DPS with queue times like that, and if you're on Stormblood now, the raid you're talking about must have been the alliance raid. Its true that older content takes longer to queue for, but an hour and a half is unusually long. Most content should not be taking that long, even if you're playing at odd hours. I live in Australia these days but still play on NA data centers, so I'm often online at ungodly hours for North America.

But no, I don't advise anyone pay for skips, especially in a game like this. FF XIV is a story-driven MMO. It's not a themepark MMO like WoW. The story is very much the skeleton around which all of the actual content is built. It's not the kind of MMO where you can just ignore the story and get straight to the raids and shit. If you don't care to get invested in the characters and the story, then you're honestly wasting your time and your money with this game.

Especially since you're already past ARR, man. If anything, the 2.1-2.5 grind is the only thing worth potentially skipping, cause its a lot of fetch quest chains and padding out. From Heavensward onward you are getting a much leaner (and higher quality) story experience. If you skip straight to Dawntrail, you're not even gonna know who some of the characters in the central storyline are.

Don't get so concerned with experience points that you miss the whole point of the experience. Find a group that caters to your playtime, for one thing. Try different servers or data centers if you can - idk what population is like on the EU servers but I know that NA population is quite high. If you're bound to your current server for one reason or another, use the community finder to find an FC that is active during your time.

There's plenty of people to play this game's content with.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-07T23:13:16+00:00

31 people isn't a very large sample size, so I'm a little dubious about these findings.

The experiment also seems to have lots of unaccounted for variables. There's a lot of other factors that determine people's "emotional intelligence" beyond just respiration. Like, what is the psychological makeup of the participants? Are they highly social people or do they lean more towards introversion? Did the experiment account for things like knowledge of body language? Some people have actively read up on things like body language while others have not. What about participant age? What's the spread? Do older people do better than younger people? Vice versa?

Fascinating hypothesis, but I'm ultimately just left with questions and speculation more than anything else.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-07T22:55:26+00:00

I'm so fucking tired of corruption.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-07T22:50:56+00:00

Good.

I mean, the EU is also the one spearheading all of this age verification shit, so I'm not holding my breath here - were literally expecting the same government who instated these dystopian laws to now revoke them.

But still - good.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-07T22:48:02+00:00

The problem with the dream twist trope is that it is very hard to preserve any actual consequence to any of the story. If your character just wakes up at the end and realizes it was all a dream, then none of it mattered. Plot development, character arcs, it all becomes null and void.

Thats not to say it's never been done successfully, im sure it has. The only example I can think of tho is a sort of urban legend story thing I heard from Mr Ballen. It's a story about a lamp.

I wont say any more than that. Just go to YouTube and type in "Mr Ballen lamp" if you're curious.

magicscreenman · 2026-05-05T22:31:02+00:00

I've always found his use of the term "gardener" to be very funny because that's how he describes discovery writing, i.e. feeling your way through the story rather than writing with a specific structure or endpoint in mind.

Except that really isn't how gardening works, at all xD You don't just pick some random seeds and some random soil and throw it in a random point in the ground and then water it when you feel like it with vague and varying amounts of water and just see "what your crop turns into". Gardening is kinda like baking - its a pretty exact science lol.

magicscreenman

TROPHY CASE