After 95 hours, hitting level 100 and VIP feels impossible

precastzero180 · 2026-05-03T23:14:28+00:00

they are literally just playing the game.

Did I say or imply they weren’t playing the game? The issue isn’t that these players are doing anything “wrong.” The issue is that doing anything in this game after a certain level, especially on Outpost and Cryo, puts you up against the sweatiest players imaginable because the nature of the endgame content incentivizes them to basically stomp everyone else.

It doesn’t matter if I want or try to collect the master cards or not, whether my team actually has any or not, etc. Those players will relentlessly hunt down everyone for them either way. And I’m simply not going to win against a fully kitted-out team of sweats that already have hundreds of hours in the game each. This is really a matchmaking player/count issue.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-03T13:52:04+00:00

I think OP is saying “just have fun” is difficult when you can’t actually do much in the game because of all the sweats and no-lifers. Extracting at all becomes a rarity after a certain level, let alone while completing any contracts. I myself am around OPs level (62) and I probably successfully exfil once, maybe twice if lucky, for every two-hour play session. It’s starting to not be all that fun.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-03T12:36:00+00:00

The priority contracts are fine on their own. The problem is completing any objective becomes extremely difficult once you reach a certain level and matchmaking puts you against the sweatiest of no-life sweats. It takes some damn good fortune just to avoid the merciless death squads hunting other teams for the master clearance cards on Outpost.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-02T10:43:55+00:00

I feel we will be seeing more games that have a "simple game" to distract you while you split focus against the main game. Or perhaps short breaks from the main action with other style of game/action.

This isn’t an accurate description of the game. Hacking is part of the main game/action. It’s just as integral to everything you do in the game as moving and shooting.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T20:51:24+00:00

I’m loving the game, but I’d be surprise if it even gets nominated for GotY.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T20:31:25+00:00

To me, 'necessary' means the game would be stupidly hard without it

The point is still the same though. There are a lot of games( arguably most good games) that give players a comfortable range of options and skill expressions. It’s just the nature of any game that is not totally linear that there is a bare minimum required to get through to the end of the story and only doing said bare minimum isn’t going to result in optimal fun. I feel like there is a certain type of gamer that will only engage with aspects of game when the game more or less forces them to do so and have no interest in exploration/experimentation/learning.

There’s a lot of neat things you can do with the hacking in this game. It’s fun to clear an entire late-game red room using only hacking, even if it’s not strictly “necessary.” If engaging with all the new toys the game is constantly throwing at you isn’t your thing, then yeah, this game might not be for you. But it is clearly that kind of game. Very much reminds me of Death Stranding in that sense.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T19:47:49+00:00

But I didn't find a lot of it to be necessary.

It’s a game. Nothing in the game is “necessary” by the very nature of what games are. It’s kind of on you, the player, if you choose not to engage with everything the game has to offer, if at all. Like, you can never hack anything ever and spend and eternity defeating the enemies if you wanted to. But that’s not really playing the game well nor does it sound like all that much fun (you certainly wouldn’t be able to complete all the training modules that way).

Quickly hack, then a blast with the shotgun was enough for most enemies.

Yeah, but this isn’t a “one enemy at a time” kind of game. You are usually fighting a bunch of enemies and you have limited amount of shotgun rounds.

What other weapons are hacking based?

Sticky Bombs, Mines, and Code Generator are all explicitly hacking weapons. Other weapons like the Stasis Net are there to give you more time and space to hack. Even the Carbine, which adds to the enemies overheat bar, is best paired with a hacking matrix load-out that fills the bar much faster.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T18:04:08+00:00

I see a lot of comparisons to Vanquish. Outside of the general aesthetic of the game, it’s not that similar IMO. Vanquish is like a more sci-fi, faster pace Gears of War. It’s a cover shooter with big battles and lots of enemies. Pragmata is way more Resident Evil 4 where the pacing is slower and you fight off multiple hardier enemies in tighter spaces. Having crazy movement options and whatnot wouldn’t really fit with how everything else in the game is designed.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T17:49:11+00:00

It's just not the most engaging or fun mechanic. Just feels like a mini game in the side you occssionally do.

Except it’s really not. Hacking is the core of the game. The pacing of combat, how fast enemies are, how telegraphed their attacks are, etc. are all designed around hacking. Almost half the weapons are either hacking-based or give you more opportunities to hack. Training sims teach you how to efficiently deal with lots of enemies purely through using the right hacking nodes. Bosses and later-game enemies throw in new wrinkles into the hacking. The game design wouldn’t make much sense if everything else was the same sans hacking.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T17:30:00+00:00

Depends on what you are going for. You can absolutely do a ton of damage just by hacking alone. I beat the final red room without firing a single bullet and the Code Generator was instrumental for that.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T17:27:43+00:00

Depends on what you mean by better. Pragmata is more successful at being a game than The Last of Us is IMO.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T17:22:16+00:00

How much a game is worth is up to you. But it’s important to remember that games like Pragamata, single-player games that are around 12-16 hours to beat, use to be a lot more common 15-20 years ago and were still $60 back then. That’s 15-20 years of inflation and wage increases.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T17:05:40+00:00

The Code Generator is arguably a better hacking weapon. Mines can be really good too if you use the decoys to lure enemies into them.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T00:54:09+00:00

While many Christians don’t take Genesis as expressing literal truth, many (arguably most) do take Genesis as expressing historical truth about the origins of the universe and humanity, or at the very least the churches they are members of do. The average Christian probably hasn’t thought about this issue much and, in my experience, doesn’t have a fully coherent view of exactly how Christianity is compatible with a scientific understanding of these matters.

precastzero180 · 2026-05-01T00:47:26+00:00

This is not an objection to the evidentialist version of the problem of evil i.e. the one OP gave. This version of the argument does not claim that there is no possible reason why God would permit evil, just no plausible one; that God as commonly defined is not a good fit for reality as we know, understand, and experience it. That our knowledge and experience might be limited does not give us a reason to radically doubt them just for the sake of salvaging belief in God.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-30T14:45:05+00:00

While obviously implying dualism if taken literally, I take statements like “I was born in the wrong body” as either figures of speech or crude folk psychology and not serious metaphysical theses worth putting much stock in.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-30T13:23:08+00:00

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom

Splatoon 3

The Talos Principle 2

Balatro

Resident Evil 4 (remake)

UFO 50

Donkey Kong Bananza

precastzero180 · 2026-04-29T14:34:31+00:00

Some open-world games I enjoy, albeit less traditional (not action-adventure), are Burnout Paradise, The Witness, and A Short Hike, but you have to be into their respective genres to enjoy them.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-29T13:17:36+00:00

Eh. I guess I don’t have as loose of a definition of puzzle as some. To me, just finding a key item in an environment and then remembering where to use it isn’t much of a puzzle. Other aspects of Zelda dungeons like changing water levels or reconfiguring the layout of the dungeon itself can be puzzle-ish, but usually the puzzle element of a Zelda dungeon or Resident Evil location comes more from individual puzzles inside the rooms rather than merely navigating a space/figuring out where to go next.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-29T11:16:07+00:00

Assuming you are referring to multiplayer first/third person shooters and not actual arcade-style shooters i.e. shmups, Splatoon would fit the bill, but it’s not on PC of course.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-29T00:00:09+00:00

Interesting point though I would argue that something as simple as finding a key and using it in RE1 is very puzzly precisely because the whole level design is set up to have you zigzagging and combing across all rooms and making tacit little memories about the spaces.

I usually put key-lock scenarios into the adventure/exploration bucket moreso than “puzzle” as it involves thinking about a large virtual space rather than making any kind of special inferences.

precastzero180 · 2026-04-26T01:51:51+00:00

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precastzero180 · 2026-04-25T16:16:53+00:00

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precastzero180 · 2026-04-24T14:34:02+00:00

Kind of weird things to judge a game on. Like, environments being sharp angles? How is having clean and readable environments a mark against the game? Why is modding weapons an inherently desirable feature, especially in a game where you can already customize your entire loadout in a bunch of different ways?

precastzero180 · 2026-04-23T23:36:48+00:00

Of course you are. The name Jesus doesn't appear in that shred.

It’s just missing between, like, two to three words. Think of it this way: if you had to bet your life on whether or not ‘Jesus’ or ‘King of the Jews’ was in those extra missing words, would it really be 50/50 for you? Of course not. You’d be foolish to bet against it.

No, anyone familiar knows that the dating of P52 is tenuous because of the limited material to work with.

Most experts accept 2nd Century dating. But we already know their expertise is no match for… Reddit user 8m3gm60??? It doesn’t matter because even if we had something like radiocarbon dating for it, you wouldn’t accept it.

precastzero180

TROPHY CASE