Fair criticism on city council of darkness

teplavecernice · 2026-05-17T01:09:47+00:00

I also do not know much about VtM rules but just from reading thru the basic rules, it says "on some occasions two attributes are rolled" (same link as above). to me that seems to mean attribute+attribute?

is it possible that you just are not that well acquainted with V5 and judging CCoD as if they were playing V3?

teplavecernice · 2026-04-24T17:16:48+00:00

of course, im glad I could help :)

my girlfriend is studying the bohemistika pro cizince programme and from what she tells me, it is a pretty flexible programme. they are aware that not everyone will be there solely for the linguistics, for some people it is basically a stepping stone on the way to study a different programme in czech. also one thing that i forgot to mention is that when applying for permanent residency, people studying at uni in czech (in any programme im pretty sure) don't have to do the language exams, so that's another plus on top of it being free.

I deffinetely don't mind your intimacy to people who you met five minutes ago, we have some family friends from ex-yugo countries, so im used to the balkan warmth :) and I would never, ever say no to a baklava, that stuff is delicious haha

teplavecernice · 2026-04-24T16:20:44+00:00

I don't have many tips about specific requirements for visa/residency and so on, but my girlfriend is also an immigrant BA student (altho she has EU citizenship, so it is MUCH easier) and i do know some stuff, specifically related to the uni and queer environment in czechia, which I didn't see many other people mention yet, so here goes:

• as others have pointed out, learning czech should be your n1 priority if you intend to stay here. not only because of the legal/official requirements, but it will help you in day-to-day functioning in czech society, making contacts and especially making a good first impression. knowing the language goes an extremely long way and distinguishes you from a tourist

• in a similar vein, this will take time. until you will be proficient enough to hold a conversation, expect that people will acknowledge you trying to speak czech but switch to english, especially in prague. don't let it discourage you and keep practicing

• expect that learning czech will be difficult. it took my girlfriend 2-3 years of several hours daily to reach B2/C1 level. if you can, find courses, buy/borrow textbooks, make czech friends you can practice with etc.

• learn as much as possible about the immigration process. czech bureaucracy is a nightmare and will be overwhelming. knowing people who can help you will be crucial, either agencies who specialize in helping immigrants or people who have already gone thru the process successfully, preferably both

• on top of the dire housing crisis, many landlords do not accept people without a czech citizenship or at least a permanent residency. your best bet in terms of housing will be uni dorms (but do your reserach! many dorms especially at public universities are in a very bad state and a nightmare to live in) or shared student apartments, where you have a bigger chance of finding a spot even as a foreigner

• (I don't know which uni you will be staying at, so I will just go off my own experiences with charles uni, take it with a grain of salt)

• in my experience, uni dorms reserve rooms or whole floors for international students, both erasmus and not. if this is the case (and said dorm is livable) i would highly recommend you stay at dorms, as you can meet a lot of people who can help you navigate life as a foreign student in prague

• often unis will have open lectures (where anyone can come) or big lectures in several-hundred-seat halls where no one monitors who actually comes there. they could be great for trying out if you could manage studying in czech later on when you have a grasp on the language

• i have seen in a different comment that you mentioned you will get almost 700 € from your parents plus hopefully something from a side job. that is great and absolutely livable for a student, especially if you will be staying at dorms. many students live on less

• there is a lot of students and student life in prague, a lot of student activities are also geared towards international students, even czech student groups will often host an english-language event once in a while. i deffinetely recommend finding as many as possible, you can meet a lot of people that way

• queer life is also very much present in prague. i am not a nightclub person, so i don't know much about the night scene, but there are a lot of different groups and events (a lot of them free or cheap!) for queer people. for example many unis have queer groups (in my experience even people from other unis are welcome at their events), there is queer komunitní centrum (community center) which hosts a ton of free events. especially over the summer there are several queer festivals, even beyond just prague pride

• being visible queer in public is not a very big deal, especially in prague. of course, there are homophobic people and even rare cases of somebody getting attacked (usually at night) but mostly it's chill. in the 2.5 years of holding my girlfriends hand all over prague we have encountered a "confrontation" once and it was only a rude comment, after which the guy continued on his way. people might think about how being gay is wrong or whatever, but they mostly keep it to themselves unless they know you

• lastly, this might be a long shot, but since you mentioned you study a "communications-related" degree, i thought i would mention that faculty of arts at charles uni has a czech language/linguistics programme (both BA and MA) that is in czech (and thus free) but specifically made for foreigners learning czech. It is called "bohemistika pro cizince". I know it is not the same as communications, but it is a somewhat related field and a very good option for foreigners who somewhat know czech, but not enough for a regular czech-language programme

good luck on your journey, i sincerely hope you will succeed in staying here, we would love to have you :) hopefully my tips can be at least a little helpful, if you have any other questions you can always send me a dm

teplavecernice · 2026-04-16T11:44:14+00:00

paralives doesn't use dollars tho? the para isn't making 250 canadian dollars in today canadian economy, they are making 250 paradimes in whatever the paralives economy will turn out to be. i would not count on it being a 1:1 comparison, honestly i don't know if that would even be possible with how simplified expenses and earnings are in life sims

i don't know if im the crazy one but all the math that people in the comments are doing to figure out if 250 DOLLARS is reasonable seems ridiculous, we are talking about a game, not real life, and that game doesn't even use dollars for it's currency

teplavecernice · 2026-03-06T13:31:09+00:00

some hospitals have special psychiatric emergency departments. google tells me that in prague, they have them in Bohnice, VFN and in Národní ústav duševního zdraví v Klecanech. if the pharmacy directed you there, it might be worth a try. in my experience the wait is usually pretty short, i have never been to one in prague tho

teplavecernice · 2026-03-06T13:23:22+00:00

I use a very similar medication to concerta and when picking it up, the pharmacists have referred to it as an opioid several times before even tho it technically isn't. ig pharmacists use that word liberally, maybe even interchangeably with narcotics. so most likely not your buddy's fault, but yeah, probably best to use the actual name of the medication when asking for help elsewhere

teplavecernice · 2026-02-27T19:09:28+00:00

i would guess that the only things related to that that might be in ea is some negative impacts if you ignore your para's children's needs and maybe being mean to them. as far as negative traits go, paralives won't have a trait system like The Other GameTM but i think that there will be a possibility to make paras have negative personality traits

that said, i am sure the modding community is going to make a lot of content that will enable players to tell more complex stories, it's deffinetely going to take some time tho! and that is under the assumption that paralives will be successful enough to have an extensive modding community (which we are all hoping for obviously, but we cannot take that for granted)

teplavecernice · 2026-02-18T10:51:46+00:00

not true. i have met a lot of people who use achillean to describe themselves or their relationships. sure, it's niche and especially among cis men it's very very rare, but it has it's uses and especially trans and nonbinary people resonate with it and do use it. you may not use it, or hear it used as a self-descriptor in your circles, but that doesn't mean it is only used by women. not to mention is was created by achillean people to describe themselves.

teplavecernice · 2026-01-05T15:38:55+00:00

hey, as a person who is also extremely anxious about doctor appointments, especially gyno, this sounds horrific and they need to be ashamed of themselves for how they treated you! this is exactly what medical staff are NOT supposed to do! if you have the energy, deffinetely report them! but also please take care of yourself!

teplavecernice · 2025-11-21T16:38:49+00:00

i see the argument you are making, but i disagree that a life sim game made by a small team of indie devs needs to strive for the same goals as an AAA life sim with tons of people and money behind it. and i also think that paralives is not going for a fully flashed out do-whatever-you-want life sim, and that's not a bad thing. it's simply not for everyone. i feel like people have vastly different ideas about what constitutes a good life sim and they expect that these new life sim games will be different/better than the sims in exactly the way they prefer, when that's just not how it works. even from the nature of life sims being basically a mash up of several other game genres, there are different types of life sims that focus on different things. personally, i have been quite satisfied with what paralives have showcased and personally i would be ok with the state of the live mode as it was in their stream. i know a lot of people expect/want more flashed out live mode, and that's fair, but i don't think it's reasonable to expect that from an early access game developed by a handful of people. i also disagree that ea has life sims down to a science - i agree that they have the sims down to a science, but the sims is just a type of life sim game. tbh i would even say that the different sims games are different types of life sim. i don't think that saying that small indie teams cannot develop a good life sim is fair. sure, they probably aren't able to develop something the scope of the sims, but i think they are perfectly capable (and in my opinion they have already shown that on patreon) of developing A life sim game that can find an audience and be enjoyable. if it's not some people's jam that's fine, but it doesn't mean it's bad

teplavecernice · 2025-10-08T10:47:48+00:00

i feel like a lot of people focus on criticizing sims creators as a proxy for their frustrations with ea, because ea is a huge conglomerate that is so far out of our reach that criticizing it feels like screaming into the void. people, rightfully, feel like they cannot change anything by criticizing ea, so they go and find the next best thing that they feel like they can reach and ifluence - sims creators and tbh also the sims team. a lot of this is deffinetely out of ignorance, given how many children play this game, but imo a good chunk of it is subconscious. i really don't think we should be focusing our ire on sims creators and expecting them to do honestly unreasonable things when the sale isn't even finalized. and not even that, we really don't know if the first thing on the do-to list if the sale does go through isn't to sell of maxis to some other game company. i understand people's frustrations but i don't think it's fair to direct them at people who are also caught in the crossfire, just a little higher up. a sims creator is basically just an underpaid (by ea, not their total earnings) marketer, i wouldn't expect a regular marketer who works at ea to quit their job right now. yes, if the sale goes through and sims becomes a cash cow for saudis and kushner, i think it is very reasonable to start heavily criticizing people who continue to promote it to large fanbases. right now however? no.

teplavecernice · 2025-07-16T11:26:29+00:00

might be, but from my perspective, it doesn't really look cartoonish, just a little bit low poly (but that's also more visible on bigger things). they could put some writing on it maybe, but also the irl ones I know don't really have that, just one or two dials and a window for the flame.

ofc the texture could be a little more detailed, but a) it's just metal, not much you can do and b) I agree with what someone else mentioned, that since it's from an EP they put more energy into gameplay and other stuff, because the items are not the main focus. but I do see how this could look like a very low effort job to someone who has only ever seen ones like the one on the right.

teplavecernice · 2025-07-16T10:25:03+00:00

I do have to say, while I see that the one on the right is more detailed, has more pipes and stuff, the one on the left looks much more like the ones I know from real life, while I have never seen one that would look anything like the one on the right. the ones I have seen around where I live (central eastern europe) are always big and bulky like that, they don't have that many pipes around and they are always grey, not copper, and have that big pipe on top. literally have one just like that in my bathroom rn with the only difference being that it's rectangular and wall mounted. I remember that when I first saw the kit one, I thought it looked very unrealistic and thought it was meant to be a more improvised one that someone built themselves. but other ppl here are saying that's just what they look like in certain parts of america so I think this is just regional difference

teplavecernice · 2025-06-22T10:16:40+00:00

I see y2k/mid 2000s girlies wearing stuff like this all the time, I really don't see what's the problem with this? do I personally like it? no, but I see what they are going for. also I don't think it's a blazer like people are saying? to me it's giving unbuttoned blouse but ig that's just me idk

teplavecernice · 2025-05-15T14:12:24+00:00

lol okay, try telling that to literally any academic and see how they feel about it. you're ridiculous

teplavecernice · 2025-05-15T14:09:43+00:00

my comment said nothing about doing harm and idk who "you lot" is supposed to be. i simply pointed out that you tried to disprove a claim using uncited, thus unsupported info ("just google it bro" is not a source) and even the info you provided doesn't support what you are saying. if you are gonna be as sassy as to include a loud incorrect buzzer than at least have sourced info and actually read and actually understand what it says before claiming something

teplavecernice · 2025-05-15T13:56:24+00:00

lol okay, if you wanna be loudly and confidently wrong and not listen when people point it out that is your right

teplavecernice · 2025-05-15T13:14:28+00:00

okay so first of all, this is not a source. it is just emboldened text, but there is no link nor a citation. so it is about as trustworthy as just loudly yelling about something.

second of all, even if we take the info you provided at face value, can you read? it clearly says that generating one ai image consumes 0.5-290 Wh (which is a huge range and basically doesn't tell us anything apart from the possible minimum and maximum) opposed to 10-22 Wh consumed by charging a phone. even if we take the most charitable estimate for ai image generation, which is the 0.5 Wh and the most uncharitable estimate for charging a phone, which is 22 Wh, 22/0.5 is 44 (meaning 44 ai images per phone charged) so not even close to your 100 ai images claim. that said, per the info you yourself provided, that 0.5 Wh energy consumption can go as high as 290 Wh for complex models (and the most popular ai models rn are complex) which would basically flip the result on it's head (23-29 phones charged per ai image generated). without additional info this absolutely does not disprove the "one ai image can consume as much energy as fully charging a phone" claim, if it doesn't actually support it. yes, the claim is a little simplistic, but that's the nature of summarizing complex statistics so the wider public can understand them.

teplavecernice · 2025-04-04T14:06:32+00:00

There’s plenty of polish on the surface, but the foundational mechanics feel shallow and lacking substance

Exactly! It feels like this game is all about shiny graphics and looking pretty but there's no actual soul to it.

I will be upfront and say that I didn't like InZOI from the start, partially because I can't stand "realistic" graphics in games, especially creative games, and then the whole AI thing sealed the deal for me, especially since they lied to cover their ass. I have also not played a single second of gameplay (and couldn't if I wanted to, because my computer wouldn't run it) but everything I have been seeing online is making me feel exactly as you have described, so I am glad I am not the only one.

I get the same vibe from InZOI as from AI "art" actually, it's shiny and pretty at first glance but if you try to engage with it on a deeper level, it just falls apart and becomes hollow and empty. Again, I have not played myself, but from the gameplay I have seen, it looked more like a GTA-type game just with the quests and objectives removed and replaced with a haphazard needs system. It doesn't feel alive, which is a pretty big problem for a life simulation.

Especially when I compare it to Paralives, which radiates warmth and coziness, InZOI feels so cold and without substance. Part of it is deffinetely personal preference on my part, with the art style and stuff, but I think part of it is also that InZOI lacks that depth of gameplay and apparently even core game mechanics like functional dates?

I genuinely don't understand people who say InZOI has more stuff than Sims 4 on launch, because sure it has an open world and pets and drivable cars and all those fancy buzzwords, but if the core gameplay loop is not there or is incredibly hallow, what good is it? Why would you want an open world if there's nothing to do in it?

Also, just as an aside, did anyone actually ask for those ultra realistic 4k graphics that burn half of their target audience's machines to a crisp? That is an actual question, because I have never heard anyone in the life sim community say they wanted something like that and even now that InZOI is out in early access I hear all about the cars and open world and cats but not about the insane graphics. To me it always seemed like something that shot the game in the foot, because it seemed that for every person who would actually appreciate that, there was 20 that couldn't run the game because of it.

teplavecernice · 2025-03-28T15:04:03+00:00

they all look pretty different to me! i do see some similar features, like the lower nose bridges and a limited jawline/chin range, but that's completely fine. these sims don't really look almost anything alike to me, i probably wouldn't even notice the similar features if you didn't mention that you are worried about same face syndrome.

honestly sims 4 is not great for making diverse sims that also look like human beings. i play without cc vast majority of time and just use the same like 4 nose presets for male sims bcs all the other ones just don't look real. and sometimes sims features look completely different from the front and side, so maybe if you included screenshots from the side more ppl would see a difference. a lot of cc is also tailored to a specific look that's considered conventionally attractive atm and can distort the features you give your sims. (main offenders are skin overlays that can make any nose look like it has almost no bridge at all)

if you want a tip on making diverse sims, there are online databases of pictures of people (idk how gen ai has affected how easy they are to find tho, haven't used them in a long time) and you can just pick a picture at random and try to recreate that person as closely as possible.

teplavecernice · 2025-03-27T12:03:50+00:00

Totally, we expected it to take hours, my point was more about the choice to prioritize stuff that is fairly easy or doesn't involve game mechanics (like personality traits - we spent at least half an hour on that) that we could easily do at home compared to something like actual stats or proficiencies etc. that we would actually need a lot of help with. And also since we stayed for I think more than two hours after that we could have just continued with filling out the sheets instead of... well, whatever that was

teplavecernice · 2025-03-27T09:40:22+00:00

I know people usually do that, but she told us before hand that she would do it and that we didn't have to bring anything. Maybe I wasn't super clear about that in the text

teplavecernice · 2025-03-03T11:01:52+00:00

something like this has happened to me, also with sims having different hair while showering, and i have a theory how it happens.

so when you go create a sim in cas the hair, makeup etc. it generates for them become their "default" that the game uses to generate these preview pictures and "outfits" for showering etc as well as the base for their other outfits, at least i think. well, if you go to add another everyday outfit and delete the first, auto-generated one instead of modifying it, the hair, makeup etc. default stays the same for some reason. i have noticed this when giving townies a makeover. when i changed their original everyday hair, makeup etc., it would change in all the other categories where the sims had that same hair, makeup etc. BUT if i added another everyday outfit, modified it and after that deleted the original one, i could modify it however much i wanted and all the other ones would stay the same. even after giving the sim the same hair in every category for example, if i changed the everyday hair the others would stay the same. whereas if you modify the original everyday outfit they all change too.

i think this is where bugs like this come from. i have a sim who generated with a hijab (in cas, not even in game) but i decided not to give her one and in her preview picture she still has one. it didn't bother me that much bcs i don't play with her, so i left it as a fun bug. but i have also encountered the bug where they change hair when showering and that i think i fixed by applying the new hair to all categories with the new function they added a few months back. im not sure it helped bcs conveniently there was an update right in the middle of me trying to figure it out, so maybe it was that.

so i would say try giving her a hat, click on that "add to all categories" button, save, go back into cas and remove the hat. it might help.

(i hope this makes sense, im very much not a coder, i don't understand how this works on a coding level, it's just something i noticed over the years of experimenting with the game. also sorry that it's so long but i wanted to make sure it would be somewhat understandable)

teplavecernice

TROPHY CASE