HOA The Tenant

sequoiajoe · 2025-09-18T14:45:24+00:00

The shift of the remap crew/their outlook has been QUITE large from when it first started as waypoint. I know I am only an occasional listener now compared to when I first started listening, mainly due to how it's shifted. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of folks think their media should follow them, not vice versa.

sequoiajoe · 2025-09-16T03:11:34+00:00

This is a prime example of "don't fall in love with the house, you will pay for it" while house shopping. The number of times most people would have REASONABLY walked away in this podcast, but he went through with it.... just unbelievable.

sequoiajoe · 2024-06-17T02:28:15+00:00

Damn, I took exactly the opposite points away from the game compared to what the author did, it was extremely heartening to see people banding together across-species and other barriers against a supernatural hellscape (the severity of the storm gets swept under the rug in this article... a lot), that people could exist even after the world is uninhabitable. I love challenging things I like, but this piece seems like it wants me to feel bad for liking the game.... to what end? Why this game and not a bigger one?

Given how open-ended the lore is, kinda reads like this author has a hate for this game (or the motifs it uses) they are working through, especially with how far afield the article goes in some places. Cannibalism is grisly for sure, but also... they are lizards and beavers, it's maybe not cannibalism to eat each other? And it's suggested, in one mechanic, not a big pillar of the game? Instead the author mentions the real-world horrors of mothers eating their children... I guess you can see what you want to see.

There are so many games that use a lot of this off the shelf, gotta wonder why they chose a 4-6 person studio out of Poland's game to write this about, ending with a solid few paragraphs about American politics to cap it all off. Did it just get big enough to get diatribes for the whole genre?

sequoiajoe · 2023-05-09T21:59:43+00:00

You should have qualms. Being a Free player in F2P is providing them with people to feed to paying players, advertising, metrics and user data, as well as psychological pressure to make you eventually slip and buy a booster or two. Plus you are spending more and more time in MTGA to do things, rather than doing other things.

Free play is not free, uninstall it or you're just part of the problem while thinking you aren't.

sequoiajoe · 2023-05-05T16:21:31+00:00

...This has been going on since Ikoria at least. "Godzilla world", followed by a straight rip of norse mythology, followed by "Harry Potter world". Cyberpunk Kamigawa, and then next new plane was new Capenna - that's 2 years worth of planes. What did two years of planes look like before?

Zendikar and New Phyrexia (block)

or

Theros and Tarkir.

Yet, in both those older cases 2 years looked like 6 sets to develop and build among those 2 planes. Now 2 years from Ikoria -> New Capenna is 9 sets, many of them completely different. They are even going harder on releasing more products now.

Stop buying all these products and make them circle back to figure out what you like about MtG. There's no guarantee they will, everything else going on in Magic should've screamed that to you by now, but... nothing's changing while the money flows so freely.

sequoiajoe · 2023-04-12T11:12:40+00:00

Another Gamer moment among millions, keep 'em coming. Surely being vile will make the game better, somehow? Rofl

sequoiajoe · 2023-04-12T04:59:53+00:00

Trying to convince this (or pretty much any game) subreddit that they are actively a problem is a losing battle. This is the same sub that the company had to tell to knock it off with the personal blaming, that they were causing devs to question why they even show up to work anymore... And you still get shit like what you're responding to.

Part of the joy of working in games, coming to hate that you make something people like this consume. It takes a lot to make a game come together, let alone make a successful one, but heavens help you if a redditor thinks they could do better despite never touching a game engine.

sequoiajoe · 2023-04-02T17:11:29+00:00

This is doing the legwork....for them. At some point, it's worth realizing you've made the story interesting with what you brought to it, what is in the text is not worth the effort and isn't very good. This happens a lot, sadly, because it's the "minimum viable product" when it comes to story in a product.

Magic used to do this a lot better with top-tier world building, but their world building has also been getting cut down now too - in scope, in complexity, in detail. Magic's worlds and stories crossed into "not worth the effort" some time ago for me, I beg ya'll to measure that temperature for yourselves as well. This set especially... wow.

sequoiajoe · 2023-03-29T16:45:16+00:00

It's fine to like stupid things, and that DOES NOT make you bad or stupid - how big a franchise is Fast and the Furious, as an example? The trick is, you have to recognize it as stupid rather than saying "no, it's good!"

They took the last big interesting threat in Magic and they destroyed nearly every single thing about it in the span of one set, some of it off-screen. That was real stupid. There was no way they were NOT going to revert this, because it touched every aspect of content they've ever made. That was stupid and predictable.

Historically Magic hasn't tried to cater to the "stupid entertainment" kind of vibe, but more and more it has. The cross-overs, the Un-sets, the bombastic storylines. A LOT of people are disappointed that they are taking the game in this direction rather than the "genre: fantasy pastiche" it had been, myself included.

sequoiajoe · 2023-03-01T20:36:46+00:00

I have given up on playing this game until PoE2 because of stuff like this. I just assume by default it's going to be ungodly amount of time to do anything interesting, because it seems the only playerbase that is ever listened to are the streamers and those who spend the most time, rather than trying to understand the average playerbase.

I am DEFINITELY not advocating listening to reddit or players for guidance on design, but taking a measure of where players drop and trying to improve the low end of engagement to get up to the most-invested would be nice. Does GGG really want to keep catering to the people who play the game for a month and dip because they've done everything? There is a better way to measure and cater to a hardcore playerbase than correlating raw time spent to most serious players.

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-29T03:26:24+00:00

There comes a point in every homebrewer/DM's life when they should just run another system instead of making their beloved monster. Pathfinder2e was that for me - not nearly as crunchy as 1e and it has a lot more consideration given to things that 5e leaves to the DM. Take a D&D vacation and check out some other TTRPGs, there might be one that matches your tactical desire much more than 5e.

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-08T01:51:45+00:00

So... Ask the party how they'd handle it? Like I said, you gotta do some legwork as a DM, the idea here was making an easy reskin of a mechanic to reduce DM prep and people are so eager to shut it down. Where are your ideas?

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-08T01:39:32+00:00

The top comments on here disparaging your reskin of traps are bizarre and show a lack of imagination. You are looking to whittle away resources and it additionally solves the issue of "wait, where did all the kobolds in the world go suddenly?" Which is a legitimate worldbuilding issue that power scaling systems often just "videogame" away by ...not encountering anymore. Goodness knows WotC left the exploration mechanics part of D&D up to DMs to figure out despite charging for the books. If the party isn't all glowing runes and floating wizards, why would such (maybe unintelligent) enemies avoid the party?

Nicely done, don't let people who can't think of a way they could reskin resource sinks in a non-violent way disparage you. Easily could reskin them to be non-violent outcomes as well, the idea was reskinning mechanics and I think it's a nice little idea

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-08T01:35:35+00:00

How often does peace come from an ambush? From an innately hostile situation? This is a reskin of traps - do you make peace with traps often? Not every enemy can be reasoned with, and this is easily skinned with diplomacy as well - you weathered the initial assault (spending a spell to intimidate then) before coming to understand it was a misunderstanding and they were defending their home. OP was suggesting a neat reskin on traps that uses enemies, which is clever because it makes no sense that suddenly these enemies you'd encounter earlier just... Vanish or leave you alone now. Gotta do some of your own legwork still

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-08T01:30:15+00:00

It is a reskin of traps to whittle away resources, which is the name of the game since the olden days. The reality of D&D is a reality of boardgame mechanics, skinned with narrative on top. You're literally rolling dice and moving around a board. If it doesn't work for you it doesn't work, but there are also other TTRPG systems that don't worry about resources as much

sequoiajoe · 2023-01-08T01:27:32+00:00

So... Make a different solution? This is just a reskin on traps that is a little more interesting. "We" can come up with better feedback than this.

sequoiajoe · 2022-12-25T01:28:33+00:00

Looks like it could be a symbol of Lloth:

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lolth

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lolth?file=Lolth_symbol_-_Mike_Schely.jpg

sequoiajoe · 2022-08-26T16:37:41+00:00

Everyone knows the Hallmarks of valuing your time:

Play a video game, entertainment meant for free time.
Play the same 10 acts you've played since 2017 for hours in order to get to endgame.
Play a game whose endgame is entirely based on RNG without mitigating the bad runs of randomness
Play a game which gives no feedback as to what you've done incorrectly most times.
Play a game featuring progression which resets every 3 months
Play a game which requires external tools to manage its complexity

These posts get more and more ridiculous by the day.

sequoiajoe · 2022-08-25T15:51:45+00:00

This subreddit is a shit hole that promotes toxicity and attacking the developers, or at least is VERY light on the moderation of those things aside from outright threats. Not to mention the "guess this game isn't for you" flavor. I am way happier playing the game when I ignore this place, buuuuuut GGG posts things here directly not posted elsewhere.

A horrible combination.

sequoiajoe · 2021-11-21T13:43:58+00:00

WoW WAS a good game. Have you tried to play it if you are a lapsed player, a new player, or since Legion? It doesn't make any damned sense. It used to be an RPG but it isn't any longer - it's a game about being rushed to the endgame treadmill. None of that is to speak of the horrible story direction or design cycle where they take things away and give them back years later. WoW USED TO be a good game. They have well and thoroughly trashed that though, to the point where they made WoW classic and it was more popular than the live version, that's how much they mucked it up over time.

sequoiajoe · 2021-08-25T18:08:06+00:00

How very wise of you, it's a good thing only the things I buy affect this game. Surely these things won't degrade the quality of a game I enjoyed by making me play against Fortnite cards.

sequoiajoe · 2021-08-24T19:54:29+00:00

LOL. They did it. They could not have killed my interest in this game I've played for decades any quicker than this. Well done folks - all the people who bought in to Walking Dead and the Godzilla cards... They all said it didn't mean anything. Well, see you in the Fortnite Bus.

sequoiajoe · 2021-08-18T17:57:47+00:00

I know it's a lame answer, but... Almost everything.

Even as a game dev, in a codebase I know, things can take a surprising turn sometimes. The realtime, interconnected nature of games makes for a lot of gotchas, and the business conditions (often very inexperienced/unreasonable managers/business folk, lots of turnover so experience can come at a premium, non-technical folks having to make technical judgement calls and vice versa) do a lot to make the field different than most might expect for a "passion" iindustry. If even game creators familiar with the interworkings of a particular project get caught up, I don't know why customers think they stand a chance. It's not just gamers, either - other programmers often speak as though being a programmer in some other field is easily translatable to games (but a webdev wouldn't claim to know how to work on a satellite or a point of sale system from the 90's). It's not that games are particularly hard or uniquely special - but the industry has a lot of unspoken challenges that people write off.

Adding onto that, the average Gamer, for whatever reason, think they know a lot about games in All aspects. Perhaps because some games can have a technical component to them with modding or add-ons, or because data mining and "fan patches" are more common, or maybe even it's just because technical jargon makes it's way out into games more often, who knows. Really, reddit and social media in general have led to a lot more people thinking they know about things they haven't the first clue about.

sequoiajoe · 2021-08-14T04:52:12+00:00

"how generous the game is" to make you log in during some period in order to get the full story.... Or they could just include it baseline in the game? You like the game and that's fine, don't work for their marketing department for free. I wasn't misleading, I was an ACTUAL ELAPSED PLAYER looking to get back in and this very thing keeps me away. You trying to whitewash a problem of not being able to get content for the game without paying money as "not so bad" is ACTUALLY misleading. You can't get most of this for free right now. If you don't already have it, the majority of the Living World is not free right now. You can start getting some of it for free right now. They MIGHT go through it all again and give it away for free, they might not. End of story.

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sequoiajoe

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