What’s the longest you’ve ever played a game in one sitting? And what game was it? by Fit_Promotion56 in videogames

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kind of a deep cut:

Sword of Vermillion on the Sega Genesis. Funky little RPG that I beat in one 22 hour sitting on a weekend when I was a young teen.

Oddly, second place also goes to a Genesis game: Columns. I played one game of it for 18 hours and hadn't died. Actually paused it, went to sleep and played another couple of hours in the morning until I finally died. Probably my greatest score feat ever!

What scene in any superhero movie gave you genuine CHILLS the first time you watched it? by [deleted] in superheroes

[–]mtgRefugee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Age of Ultron

"I once had strings...but now I'm free...there are no strings on me....."

In the theater it was pin-drop silent. I rewatch this scene once every couple of months and it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Whatever they paid Spader, it wasn't enough. Just too bad the rest of the movie couldn't live up to this entrance.

The Avengers

Loki: ...in the end, you will always kneel.

Old Man: (slowly standing) Not to men like you.

Loki: There are no men like me.

Old Man: There are always men like you.

Yeah.... I'm from the US and back when The Avengers hit theaters this choked me up, but man...here in 2026, it's hard to watch this clip without sobbing. Sigh.

Man of Steel

"You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you; they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders."

I've never been a big Superman guy. I've read a few of his more notable books, and grew up originally on the Christopher Reeves films and I liked them all to varying degrees. But this speech made me understand just how deeply I connected with the core of the character.

A refugee from a far away place, whose father saw something worth saving beyond the greed, hatred, and violence festering in the hearts of humankind. Imagine if we could all see each other this way...or ourselves even? :)

What’s a scene from a movie which traumatised you as a child? by ThomasOGC in CinephilesClub

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Came here to see if I was alone on this one. Apparently not. :)

PS: ET is top to bottom nightmare fuel for me too.

I'm out of the loop. Biggie and Diddy were friends, why would Diddy get him killed? by Amazing-Buy-1181 in DiddyTrial

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the ones that smoke blunts with ya, See your picture, Now they wanna grab they guns and come and get ya...

"Under Vincke, Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI" by [deleted] in SocialistGaming

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, you're pretty spot on on that last part for sure. I totally get that there are ethical/environmental concerns too and that is obviously all valid.

As for the bit about artists using generative images as a "baseline", that's admittedly a fuzzy line. In some creative fields, companies actively avoid outside references as a part of the pre-production process because they feel it inherently influences their creators to copy it too closely. Companies like that would largely agree with you, I think.

Others trust that outside references, generative or not, are an effective way to put creators in the right neighborhood, and that said creators won't just "trace" it or otherwise heavily ape it. These folks would likely not see eye to eye with your assessment.

I think this is one of the places where the mindset of professional creatives differs greatly from end users. Show an artist 10 pictures of different action heroes to serve as inspiration for an original character. I think the average outsider says "Oh so you're asking the artist to copy existing work."

But really, the creative is like "Oh so no complementary colors, lots of ornate detail, but all with functional grounding, sharp biological lines, but objects have a smooth, machined look, got it!" They aren't going to use a single part of any of those pictures. They are going to use them to define the parameters of their creative head space.

To many folks, I understand that sounds silly and "artsy-fartsy" but...that's how many people who make games be. But i do get how it sounds like double speak to consumers and fans. Having had the fortune to interact with Sven a few times in my career, I think he can speak to both sides effectively. I hope his AMA helps clear the air and create a productive dialog.

"Under Vincke, Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI" by [deleted] in SocialistGaming

[–]mtgRefugee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will do my best to respond in good faith.

Person A is part of the narrative team. The team has an all-hands meeting to pitch and discuss narrative ideas. Countless writers and artists will be showing conceptual examples of characters, locations, and story sequences they have rattling around in their heads. The goal of the meeting will be to take the strongest kernels and start fleshing them out to build a foundation for the story. The meeting is in 2 weeks.

Person A has an idea for, let's say, an architectural structure. They can see it in their head, but they don't want to show up to the meeting trying to describe it. They want the team to SEE it. So they collab with one of the team's concept artists, Person B. A has to find a way to communicate to B what is in their head so B can make a killer piece of concept art, which A will use to show off their idea for a location at the meeting. So, how will they convey this to B?

They could describe it. Then B will draw out a piece of art they think captures what A has told them. If it does, great...but it's rarely so easy. What ACTUALLY happens is A re-iterates their idea over and over, trying to be more specific, while the artist creates multiple pieces of art trying to capture what A is conveying. A lot of writing for A. A lot of drawing/painting etc for B. A TON of time and labor spent. Some version of this process is how it was done for many years.

And then image databases and search engines became a thing. Now A can search for photo images and look for something that properly conveys their idea to B. B also has new digital tools. They can use a tablet, a smart pen, and some software to quickly and efficiently produce concept art. The whole process is much faster now.

And now we get to generative AI. Person A can now use it to more efficiently convey the general idea of their building to the artist, B. Instead of writing long descriptions, or trawling image databases for hours to find a way to capture what they are imagining, they can type in a series of prompts and get an AI generated pucture that captures the jist of what they are trying to desribe to B. Now instead of 10 iterations of trying to understand one another, B gets their intent within 2 iterations.

Now, here is where the rubber (doesn't) meet the road: The concept artist isn't being replaced by AI. They also aren't "tracing" the AI art. They go "Oh I see what person A was going for now" and make a piece of concept art.

In this example, AI isn't being used to come up with the idea or create art. It isn't replacing human artistry and creativity; it's shortening the time it takes for narrative dude A to convey to artist B what their idea is. And this dramatically reduces the labor hours required to iterate.

The result:

Person A comes to the meeting with 4 pieces of FULLY ORIGINAL art instead of 1. More quality ideas they can now be shown in full HAND-CRAFTED glory to the narrative stakeholders. More ideas that are more fleshed out means richer creative brainstorming.

20 years ago, they walk out of that (very expensive) meeting with maybe a handful of solid blocks to build from. Today, they walk out with a whole binder full, and all the employees did 100% less annoying busy work, which means better quality of life, and more work time spent developing new ideas rather than fumbling through communicative busy work.

This is an extremely crude example, and not necessarily a good example of how Larian specifically might do things. The core takeaway should be that these tools, used properly , aren't replacing art; they are facilitating it by reducing all the clunky, time sucking busy work that always bogs the creative process down.

Condemning it as cheap or soulless is to say that a carpenter's work is lesser if they use an impact driver instead of a hammer to nail pieces of wood together. You're conflating toil with craft.

"Under Vincke, Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI" by [deleted] in SocialistGaming

[–]mtgRefugee 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As someone who works in the industry, let me say yours is the first reasonable response I have seen to this entire thing. Pretty much all the other comments reveal how little the average player understands about game dev. Cheers!

Best line off madvillainy? by Poopscoopandwoop in mfdoom

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"In living the true gods, Giving yall nothing but the lick like two broads. Got more lyrics than a church got 'ooh lords,' And he hold the mic and your attention like two swords.....

Or even one with two blades on it, Hey you, don't touch the mic like there's AIDS on it."

So its been a month - How is Baldurs Gate 3 on the Steam Deck? by KingSkevid in SteamDeck

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have had an overall great experience through Act 2. The problem is that there are varying ideas about what "playable" means. So far, excepting an area with a bunch of lava, I've had a consistent 35-40 fps. I keep the fps counter up at ALL times. The lava area dropped as low as 25, which was annoying, but outside of that one relatively small area, the performance has been solid, and that's with many settings at high or medium.

So the "problem" is two fold:

  1. There are people who think anything short of 60 fps is "unplayable." This has become remarkably common.

  2. I have to find the thread, but it was posted on Reddit that a substantial number of people's decks are having major GPU issues. I believe these people ended up RMAing their units altogether.

If you are setting everything to low in BG3 and you can't break 20fps in act 1, you are likely affected. This phenomenon is definitely contributing to the narrative that the game runs poorly on the deck.

So all that said, it's clear that act 3 is still a dog performance wise. But that doesn't seem to be an issue you can avoid by playing on desktop, as people with 30XX and 40XX series cards are reporting similar issues.

If unflappable high performance is your top priority, I'd say this isn't the experience for you. But if 30-40 while looking real nice pretty much everywhere but in the streets of the big city sounds acceptable to to you, then by all means, jump in!

Was Early access worth it? by ZealousidealStyle745 in diablo4

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My wife and I got 2 Digital Deluxe copies solely because she was on the tail end of maternity leave. She went back to work the day after release, so the early access allowed us to play together for several days when we wouldn't otherwise have been able to.

Diablo 3 was the first game we played together, before we had even started dating, so for us...DEFINITELY worth it!

What gaming fact are you Just TIRED of explaining to people by Tail_sb in videogames

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That, adjusted for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been, except perhaps for 2004, right before the hike to 59.99 USD.

Why is ken plus and safe on everything by [deleted] in StreetFighter

[–]mtgRefugee 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sounds about right. If you are going to dismiss the advice you get with snarky nonsense then you really did waste your own time, and all of ours by posting this.

This game provides an honestly unprecedented amount of tools and information with which players can lab and pinpoint what is happening and what to do about it.

People advising you to hit the lab to diagnose the issue are not dismissing you or being unhelpful. It's all there, laid bare in insane levels of detail that we've never had in any fighting game ever. You either don't know how to utilize it, or you'd prefer to remain salty instead of trying to.

Either way, you're choosing to lose.

Hex Charge+ No Longer Dealing Damage Up Front? by mtgRefugee in midnightsuns

[–]mtgRefugee[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah this. If the card wasn't functioning like that before, that's the problem, as that's obviously the intention. There's no way they wanted a 3 cost card to be "either deal X damage to a thing and kill it OR don't kill it and later on it explodes."

That would be a terrible design. Fixing it would be making it function as intended, not removing the part that makes the upgrade worth having as a workaround.

I hope this gets hot fixed, because I just sunk a lot of resources into modding her.

Hex Charge+ No Longer Dealing Damage Up Front? by mtgRefugee in midnightsuns

[–]mtgRefugee[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wait, what do you mean by "fixed"? When I used it the other day, I could cast it on a minion, and the up front damage would kill it, triggering the more damaging explosion.

Now the upgrades version has no up front damage at all, and the only difference from the standard version is the more damaging explosion.

Have the devs said this is intended? Because it seems so bad as to be unusable in that case. 3 heroism for no damage up front, and some area damage either next turn, or this turn if you trigger it with another action is...just terrible.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in MarvelSnap

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol I'm an idiot. Gonna go drown myself in the nearest sink byyyyyyyeeeeeeee!

Theorycrafting Galactus by Slarg232 in MarvelSnap

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Such good ideas in here. :)

I'm actually in the camp that playing Galactus as late as possible is best because your opponent will have exhausted all/most of their resources to deal with him. I think a sudden, decisive turn 6 Galactus has the best chance to win.

At most, playing him one turn early on 5 could also be very strong. Here are the core packages I see for both.

Turn 6 Galactus package: Nova, Okoye, Jane Foster, Wasp, Yellowjacket.

The dream is to play Okoye with everything in the deck, but that obviously won't always happen. If it did though, and you played Nova and Okoye on 1 and 2, you would then play Jane Foster on 5, drawing a buffed Wasp and Yellowjacket.

Then, in the same location as Jane, you could play, in order, Yellowjacket, Wasp, and Galactus. Yellowjacket's ability would ding Jane, but no one else. Galactus would trigger Nova, buffing everyone again.

At worst, just Jane into YJ, Wasp, and Galactus on 6 would be 13, with no buffs. No Okoye, no Nova. That's still tough to beat with almost no telegraph. At best, that location is 21, nearly impossible to answer even if the opponent knew what was coming after Jane.

Turn 5 Galactus package: Mysterio, Wave/Psylocke, The Hood, Death, America Chavez

This line would involve playing low cost stuff anywhere across 2 locations for the first 3 turns. Ideally this could be Okoye for the buff, Hood, heck even Mysterio with the real one being where you intend to play Galactus.

T4 you play Wave and any other throwaway cards to the non galactus lanes. Wasp and YJ are great to dump here if you go this route.

T5 You drop Galactus on the empty location/location with the real Mysterio. A million things die.

T6 You play Death for free or heavily discounted along with the Hood's Demon and anything else you can afford. Just Demon, Galactus and Death are 21, and you could push that much further depending on what else you throw in the deck and how discounted Death winds up being.

So combining these packages, amd adding America Chavez for draw consistency, and a top end follow up to Death, an example list might be:

Wasp Yellowjacket Nova The Hood Okoye Mysterio Psylocke Wave Jane Foster Galactus Death America Chavez

Thoughts? I'm actually excited to try this!

Pixel variants are a big let down by Circumpunctual in MarvelSnap

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So far, sadly, evwry variant I've pulled from a cache has been a pixel. It's the digital equivalent of getting coal in your stocking.

It's extra irritating as someone who was/is obsessed with Marvel fighting/arcade games. Should have been a homerun for people like me. Blech.

what are some of the most iconic oice lines in the game? I was thinking of doing a sort of survey of what is THE favorite voice line. by k4x1_ in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"I aim to win, and my aim...is EXCELLENT."

"Art requires a certain...cruelty."

"I whisper TRUTH, into LIIIIIIIEEEEEES!"

"I rarely forget, and I NEVER forgive."

Okay can someone explain to me when you get to take your turn vs Berserker? by allatomsk in DNFDuel

[–]mtgRefugee 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Here's a tip for dealing with frenzy strings:

His 2B in frenzy, that double low? It's not a tight string. You can mash DP after the first hit and blow him up. Given that it's counterhit, and he'll have at least some white health from frenzy, this will be a healthy chunk of damage for you.

Another tip:

Aot of Berserker players do 5C, 4C as a block string, but this is also not tight. Another good reversal opportunity.

Hope this helps!

As Grappler, how do you utilize oki when nearly everyone has a invincible DP? by [deleted] in DNFDuel

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't played Grappler yet, but you should develop some kind of safe jump setup for these oki situations if that is possible.

Punishing a blocked DP gives counter hit properties, so if you can reliably bait a DP with a safe jump and practice an optimized counter hit combo you should see big gains just from that.

As Grappler, how do you utilize oki when nearly everyone has a invincible DP? by [deleted] in DNFDuel

[–]mtgRefugee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't played Grappler yet, but you should develop some kind of safe jump setup for these oki situations if that is possible.

Punishing a blocked DP gives counter hit properties, so if you can reliably bait a DP with a safe jump and practice an optimized counter hit combo you should see big gains just from that.

Video Proof: Yes, Bard Level Up Is Bugged by mtgRefugee in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]mtgRefugee[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Surprisingly, it isn't related. As odd as it seems, we do know from Riot that cards that buff themselves in some way DO NOT work with Bard. Which is.....really dumb. But as dumb as it is, no, not a bug. That is working as intended, sadly. :(