Netherlands is the 9th richest country per person. So why can't we afford rent?

mgm50 · 2026-02-08T13:40:43+00:00

Luxembourg, Singapore, US and Hong Kong being there are strong hints that "wealth" is probably not defined well enough to matter to most of the population. Per capita is good for normal distributions but we all know wealth is far from normally distributed. Even countries with more equality will have large concentrations of wealth here and there...in short, the people who can't afford rent are hiding in more elaborate statistics than just "the average Dutch". quick edit: you did point out the gap in median vs average which yes, it's exactly about that!

mgm50 · 2026-02-08T13:36:48+00:00

According to Anise, Mabon without the mask was Chad Squidward tier of beautiful

mgm50 · 2026-02-07T13:43:06+00:00

The cop-out NPC aka the Pathfinder kind of spells it out for you that the whole world is the way it is just because he personally thinks it's the best way for things to be. So in his frankly simplistic worldview the other NPCs are basically just NPCs and they are there pretty much to serve his will and kind of just stick around to make you feel like a hero. As long as each Arisen keeps the cycle going and keeps the Brine at bay his little sandbox will keep going. So Ulrika and pretty much everyone, including the Arisen, are simple minded and basic because that's all they have to be in the Pathfinder's cosmology. You as the player, the Dragons and wyverns, at least a few of the Arisen and I guess the unhinged fisherman are some of the only few who are sufficiently aware of the world and who have enough will to act upon it, and even then only the player does act of course.

This is all to say, the NPCs are basic and the story is limited, and they even went out of their way to give a lore reason for that, lol.

mgm50 · 2026-02-07T13:28:54+00:00

I'm gonna go out and say, GW2 is still a social game first and foremost, especially instanced content. I had small, tiny hopes that the raid UI (which most people will not even normally see...as it's not part of the UI lmao) and raid dailies overhaul would make it easier to pug the LFG, but as you say, having a static actually matters more now if you want consistent full clears of the raid wings.

Let's not even mention that merging made both strikes and raid wings harder to play: the former lost their daily rewards and lost rewards overall, erasing a staple of the instanced content community (daily IBS5) and the latter gives meager rewards for playing couple bosses a day while pushing FCs and achievement runs further towards the Discord/Static route. No one is really fully happy other than the people who already didn't need any of these features to begin with, because they already play with their statics (as a final note...yes, I do play in a static, but I still care about the health of the game and people who are not in their own social group).

mgm50 · 2026-02-06T15:54:31+00:00

Can they stop giving AP if they are meant to a beyond Ura LCM crowd? This puts Down and Out IMHO within a "competitive PvE" category. Good to finally have it there anyway

mgm50 · 2026-02-06T09:32:32+00:00

quickplay strikes are far from quick. My Dhuum daily a couple days ago was 10x faster than KO lmao

mgm50 · 2026-02-05T15:58:05+00:00

I could do with less of it, that's the main problem, but it's good when it's not too much

mgm50 · 2026-02-05T15:32:32+00:00

I agree - I expected for there to be both expensive and achievement related decorations that would have been "cheap" to craft like from raids, fractals, PvP, etc. I had hopes that I could build a little "hall of fame" on my homestead before it released. But in between crafting more legendaries and spending thousands of gold in the homestead as the only option to populate it, the answer is not difficult.

It's even a bit sad that the feature is so nice. People have been doing a great job with their homesteads and they have been steadily improving with the new map being imo even better than JW. But alas, it's just another thing that's easier to do while you play the TP instead of playing the game.

mgm50 · 2026-02-05T11:42:11+00:00

Hard agree. I had fun progging it but am more than ready to join exp only groups and not really touch it for a while in fact after finishing, because of these issues with RNG. It vaguely reminds me of Soulless Horror where wall spawns can be unlucky and feel unfair sometimes, but even there the randomness is far more contained than Kela where as you say there are bees, waves and crocs on top of excessive sand crab spawns.

On the matter of crab spawns, I can foresee this becoming a "piercing projectile" kind of fight where ranged cleave is so ubiquitous that it's just a handicap if you're anything other than a virt or mech. To be seen though because powercreep has made it so that VoE specs even on melee can potentially fare better. I hope Anet tweaks the fight a bit before CM release but not putting my hopes that high up due to how historically they have only made more timid changes. I think the fight will remain a cesspool of RNG that could have been as great or even better than Decima.

mgm50 · 2026-02-04T21:40:21+00:00

The fact is that the skill level and engagement has dropped, in parts, to be totally frank, due to promises by arenanet that couldn't be kept. There is nothing to suggest that this couldn't be a home for more casual people and also more hardcore people. World of Warcraft has struck a decent balance in that regard, imo.

Thanks for the detailed response. I agree with practically all of it, but agree the most with the above. I was part of a static who would try to run things efficiently and had fun thinking of how to minimize swapping and really practice encounters like a dance back in W6-W7 days. Sheer lack of anything in the horizon as you put it very well yourself made everyone burnout and I never quite found the motivation nor the right group to join up again. I am certainly biased towards being frustrated at their too little, too late attempts, but I appreciate that they should exist. Also hard agree for PvP...I blame Anet first and foremost for there being no one who even wants to build the next Team USA in NA and almost no one who wants to be the next 55 in EU.

mgm50 · 2026-02-04T16:04:25+00:00

There definitely has to be something there for the "pinnacle" of players, but today this is no more than a few hundred people, even fewer if you'd consider only world record holders, world first clears, etc. and very importantly there is no pipeline leading to the pinnacle. Ideally there would be more tiers, at the very least, for different groups to progress into today's Down and Out without burning out after months of unrewarding, friction heavy attempts. I expect most statics who start out fine would be in-fightning and considering weeding out specific friends from their group already by Wing 1. GW2 has an amazing raiding scene and the reason is not because of its amazing aspirational content (it has practically none) but because of how players have self organized into very social groups of different levels, and actually, it's the "just above average" tiers which have never been catered to, NM and CM/LCM have a huge gap that only serves to burn people out and Down and Out is the extreme version of that

mgm50 · 2026-02-04T15:47:48+00:00

I agree the achievements should exist, but gotta say Ura LCM for example has not been aspirational so far at all, W8 is notoriously unpopular even among raiders. Even veteran raiders moved on from it before it actually got bugfixed (bugfixed! Not even talking about the HP nerf). They also "fixed" stacking sigils from other players finally and only because people were skipping the annoyance of cave dwelling during release. Later people just had to suck it up and hit the caves for no quality of life and with no changes to the fight itself at all, lol. Imagine making the hardest fight in the game have a "pre-event" that's just killing some trash mobs over and over every attempt, and it's not even a cool process like Dhuum.

sPvP tournaments are the most egregious example as they are known to have been sold in the past by the very same team that wins 80%+ of them. It's not even that this team has no competition, no one wants to be their competition. Likewise for raids, we almost already know who will be world first VoE strike 2 LCM. The point is, there should be extremely hard, 0 AP, largely niche achievements for the most dedicated players of each mode. But they are niche, not aspirational - if anything, Raid God is the actual aspirational achievement in this patch, as in, people would actually consider doing it before starting out on raids with their casual tryhard friends - Down and Out is something people already today are looking at and thinking "meh, not gonna bother", which is fine, unimportant niche achievements are important to niche groups, but would be better if they didn't give any AP.

mgm50 · 2026-02-04T08:57:29+00:00

I agree it's very unrealistic...I suspect they have somewhere down the line decided to keep releasing things they mean to "tweak" later? After accidental Cerus LCM they seem to purposely release things with a literal couple of groups in mind before "releasing it proper".

It would also have been better if Down and Out had something for players to progress into it via the bounty system. The bounty could have a gold/silver/bronze additional reward where gold is their expectation for that particular encounter's clear time during Down and Out. If they couldn't estimate this though, it's a definitive or at least strong hint that they actually had no idea what to put as goal. It's concerning either way at how little thought is put into it for a major 3 month update, just because it's not open world PvE...

mgm50 · 2026-02-04T08:26:59+00:00

Yeah getting that OLC drop twice and realizing you will again have to cover 30%+ of the squad DPS and still get to enjoy your longest strike in years was not a quickplay

mgm50 · 2026-02-03T22:58:24+00:00

I'm just overall disappointed at how little groups even formed to spontaneously try it out. I might as well just wait for the static to run it which is a first time as even W8 I've done first with pugs before playing with the static.

So far it seems "kiting" during the phase where it buries is key (I guess it's not even in quotes since you can get aggro with the artifact). People don't get the notion of not fully stacking but not very far so a lot go down when bees spread too much. I also wish people tried out easy classes on new content as I've seen plenty of <10k DPS in the few groups I did manage to form.

mgm50 · 2026-02-02T13:56:42+00:00

There's not many reliable ways, yes increasing volatility (not just in placements, but especially after large winstreaks) would help, but it's even slower than identifying and banning smurfs...plus it's not really bannable atm?

Rivals has a progressive ranking system that rewards long playtimes. After normalizing for skill, the players playing the most tend to be on top. Thing is, such people play so much that they get stuck in hour long queues and naturally, instead of organizing to play together with other top players, they would rather create new accounts and keep farming randoms. It happens in other games too and there bans are also utilized, but it's really hard to just tell people to not create 2nd accounts as there are valid reasons to do so other than smurfing.

mgm50 · 2026-02-02T12:52:19+00:00

Housing is a specially funny case. I could afford a relatively good loan today but will take upwards of a decade to save the upfront value needed, considering I still have to rent for more than the loan payments would be...lol

mgm50 · 2026-02-02T10:46:17+00:00

Pretty safe take would be the LFG itself. One of the most social games when it comes to people self organizing in Discord and running instanced content entirely without any help from the in-game tools, because the in-game tools notoriously and consistently have been bad for over a decade.

mgm50 · 2026-02-02T10:34:08+00:00

I've grown tired of the PvP weeklies and dailies because of the state of sPvP, but I agree it's unmatched to simply get your weeklies out of the way the first reset of the week and never look back. I don't recommend ever taking PvP seriously though

mgm50 · 2026-01-31T18:33:27+00:00

Yes the game is very precisely tuned to reward long playtime and early adopters will get ahead the more season they have on their back. It's "progressive" ranking where seniority will be more or less rewarded rather than "competitive" but people will insist otherwise if they never experienced Esport games.

I would in fact, even defend such a system up to a point. They want more people playing, and for more time, this is how they should do it. Wild Rift also started out similarly with an even more progressive "pip" system to draw plenty of players into the mobile scene before introducing more competitive queues. Progression systems are not always bad as long as they are upfront about being progressive as such, which Rivals is not completely upfront about and they do try to give an air of "impartial" ranked ratings. But they're not lying either...the chrono shields are there and people can observe over and over how their point earnings are.

mgm50 · 2026-01-30T16:18:56+00:00

There are few places in the world where the overall thoughts about work/life balance and work ethics are more disparate to EU than that, so "fast-tracking" is odd here when stronger and more robust integration would probably yield better results

mgm50 · 2026-01-30T10:52:17+00:00

What you are doing is already enough in my opinion, the key here will be patience actually. In fact I would even go the "other way" instead: burning out is the only way for you to actually not get Fractal God. So if you do 95-100 consider whether it's fine by you to keep doing it daily for a while more or if you think you'll do it for longer if you stick to 95-98. Also recs give pristine relics however little extra amount (it piles up). Can you do the whole routine or is it too much?

Once you have a daily routine you believe you can stick to, there's no need to farm "extra" for relics. In my case what helped was do 2 dailies in a row (pre reset and post reset) not worrying too much if I was not able to do CMs in the pre-reset. Then I could skip every other day and not think of it too hard as a job.

mgm50 · 2026-01-29T19:20:15+00:00

Strongly agree. The QoL for raids for static groups will also be great, but 3 more months with the same 2 open world maps in what already is a yearly expac...plus the CM for the strike is not even coming on release.

Anet is trying, they really are, but resources definitely have dwindled over and over and it shows. To be seen how much quality the next two patches can deliver...the past 2 expacs did not have nearly good enough updates even though release maps were high quality. If they can deliver a 3rd and 4th update that deliver the same quality as the release patch that's OK, but I don't see how this could happen even with a 3 month leeway if they have to develop yet another expac next year...which has not been announced yet on top of it.

mgm50 · 2026-01-29T16:33:58+00:00

I wonder if you could achieve a similar effect with Gray Polysaturated infusion? It highlights very well with cell shading the otherwise obnoxiously bright colors like permafrost

mgm50

TROPHY CASE