Lurker > adjl

Zeus posted...

Given that the lower class is about the only class which receives a net-positive when comparing what they receive to what they contribute, the claim that they're being screwed is generally laughable.

I dunno man. Not being able to eat sounds like being screwed to me.

Zeus posted...

Plus oil extraction isn't nearly as environment-killing as you think, considering that it's already massively done.

And when it is done, there are invariably disastrous consequences for the local environment. No single drilling project is going to usher in the apocalypse, no, but it's very bad for the area around it, and also contributes further to the global environmental consequences of continued oil drilling and use.
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Zeus posted...

Had they done MACA, they might have got away with it!

Don't you mean MCGA?
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Rockies posted...

adjl posted...

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.

The TV I played on when docked is 120 Hz. I don't think there are any TVs within the past ten years (at least) that are below 60

I've got nothing, then.
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Rockies posted...

Smarkil posted...

most console video games are ~30 fps.

Are they though? Why would people be talking about 60 FPS so much if the games are still 30?

60's considered the gold standard, but many console games end up at 30 because the developers opt to push for graphical fidelity over framerate, and the consoles just aren't powerful enough to let them choose both.

Rockies posted...

I just wonder why this:

doesn't look like it looked when I was playing it

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.
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They were solid games, but I've never particularly enjoyed them all that much. They always seemed to struggle with balancing the core idea of going really fast with the reality of needing to go through levels more slowly until you learned them (since levels that can be sped through on the first try tend not to have that much going for them in terms of interesting platforming). I can see how they would have been appealing for anyone that was interested in playing lots of the game and learning the levels well enough to speedrun them, since then you would get to go really fast, but for just finishing the game, I didn't find it that interesting.
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Veedrock- posted...

I won't apologize for not being up to date on this nonsense.

That's fair, given how quickly the situation's developing.
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They've probably also lost a lot of future preorder revenue for other games, though I expect they'll try to compensate for that by offering really awesome preorder bonuses.
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JOExHIGASHI posted...

No other option allows you to go anywhere as fast as a car.

Eh, that's debatable. In a city, biking can often end up being just as fast as driving, if not faster, thanks to the ability to bypass traffic and the fact that light timing makes much, much more of a difference in transit time than top speed does. With no traffic and no need to stop every hundred feet? A car will definitely win. Same with longer distances. But it's definitely possible for somebody in a city to do their commuting by bike without really losing any time compared to driving.

Firewood18 posted...

Getting a car is just basic adulting when living in a modern urban society.

Also debatable. It's not at all a necessity in many cities, especially ones with decent public transit options or active transportation infrastructure. The personal automobile is one of the biggest challenges in urban planning, simply because it's so hideously space-inefficient (a small car has a footprint of 10-12 square meters, and spends 90+% of any given day doing absolutely nothing). Many cities are still designed around driving, because people cling to it, but the idea that that should be the norm is a major stumbling block for efficient city design.
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argonautweakend posted...

i would have been fine just playing as is without buying s*** or getting cool characters.

Eh, that's debatable. The card thingies you get from the boxes make a major difference in how well you can play (like, the difference between a special attack doing 25% of a health bar and that same special attack one-shotting people). It's definitely a p2w sort of situation, which is pretty ridiculous in a not-free game.
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papercup posted...

I wonder, if they re-implement this system in a few weeks and it's just as predatory if they would issue refunds.

Doubt it. Refund policies typically limit how long after purchase you can get a refund, or how much playtime you can have, and most players would have exceeded it by that point.

papercup posted...

If not, that might be grounds for mass charge backs. It's a scam after all, so getting a charge back would be easy.

I'd guess that's explicitly covered in the game's EULA such that you likely couldn't get a charge back easily. This would not be the first time a game's been updated post-launch in a manner people don't like; allowing a charge back for the whole game over that would be setting a very dubious precedent.

streamofthesky posted...

I like that they're losing stock value not because they made their game s*** and thus their customers are unhappy, but because they're caving in to the "pressure" and making their game slightly less s*** and that means less money from microtransactions.

Eh, it's a bit of both. The backlash was severe enough that it likely would have cost them money in the long term, and "caving" is damage control for that. Directly, the stock price is dropping right now in response to the short term loss of revenue, but it'll likely end up higher in the long run because they heeded the backlash.
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There is also the fact that Belgium is looking at whether or not they should be regulating loot boxes for their gambling-like nature, largely courtesy of their presence in BF2. Backing down from the idea might be an effort to lay low while those proceedings are happening in an effort to keep that particular hornet's nest from being kicked (Belgium alone won't change that much, but they could definitely end up affecting the rest of the EU, and from there other countries).

Blightzkrieg posted...

Jesus, this might be bigger than that Xbox One always online stuff. I don't think any meaningful changes to Battlefront can be made at this point but this should save future games.

Realistically, I expect them to throw them back in with minimal changes in a month or two, after they've made their launch window and Black Friday revenue and the media storm has died down. I don't think the game's ever going to bounce back from this, given that it would take a fundamental redesign of the game to make it work with a less exploitative monetization scheme, so all they can really do at this point is get as many sales as they can, then milk as much microtransaction revenue out of the players that stick around.

I also don't think this is going to do much to save the industry from these practices. The only reason EA is backing down is because they overestimated how much they could get away with. They wanted even more than they had in there, and they will continue to work toward that goal. They're just going to be more subtle about it, because they've learned that getting excited and pushing it too far hurts their bottom line. The entire industry still wants this, and so will keep pushing the envelope to get away with more and more (remember when Horse Armour was a big deal?).
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Zero_Maniac posted...

one can in fact deduce that it is very improbable that everything in existence came into existence out of mere coincidence.

That's the fun thing about eternity: Probability ceases to have any meaning. Every outcome - no matter how improbable - will happen on an eternal time scale. On the scale we're looking at, "this is improbable" cannot be the basis for any conclusion.
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Dreaming_King posted...

the thrusters could then be used for quick and powerful stabs or if reverse wielding, burning people.

If holding the sword backwards means they can burn people, holding the sword forwards means they'd burn the user.

There are a whole lot of situations where having a car isn't as necessary as people like to think it is, but it does come in very handy whenever you've got passengers or cargo, are traveling in particularly hilly terrain or bad weather, or for traveling more than ~10 km (presuming a bike, anything past 5 km is pushing it for walking). The whole "freedom" thing gets exaggerated, and is largely a product of car commercial propaganda that most of the population has swallowed without questioning it, but it definitely does come in handy.
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Snuggletoof posted...

Far-Queue posted...

adjl posted...

Reus

Fun game. Been meaning to return to it, only played for a few hours.

I got soooo into that game when I got it in a Humble Bundle! Only 43 hours total, but it was a real fun time.

Last game I played was Fallout 4. But I've been juggling that, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and GTA V.

I've had it in my library for a while, and I impulsively decided to finally play it a couple days ago. It's been a pretty good time.
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ReggieTheReckless posted...

Wait.... Reddit complaints actually got something accomplished and established precedence for future removal of micro transactions in games?

Well I'll be damned

I think it was more the fact that their stock price was actually dropping. The Reddit outrage was just the culmination of everyone's dissatisfaction with everything that had been learned about the game thus far. Everyone was already pissed off, and the reveal that Darth ****ing Vader was locked behind a prohibitive grind to encourage paying for him was the last straw, resulting in a backlash large enough to achieve a real media presence.
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My favourite price.
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To my knowledge, Reus doesn't belong to any series. Prior to that, Path of Exile, which also doesn't. Prior to that, Captain Toad, which is a spinoff from Mario.
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That's not really an impressive feat when you're 16.
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DS3 has seen 66% off sales on Steam before, so it's extremely likely that it'll see another in the fall sale, if not a better one. Similarly, DS2's been 75% off before, and likely will be again. Waiting for the Steam sale is a pretty safe gamble, but I doubt you'll see much more of a sale than what you've got there.
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Xenoblade 2 has pretty much the same sound team that did the first game. There's a very good chance it'll end up with another phenomenal soundtrack.
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quigonzel posted...

But who really wants everything in this kind of game?

Depends what "everything" means. Every possible skin? Probably not. Every weapon? More so. Every character? Definitely. That's not a very useful figure because it doesn't break down what's being unlocked, and just looking at the grand total doesn't really say anything, but it also shouldn't just be dismissed with "well, nobody's going to want everything anyway."
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Cubis101 posted...

But if you don't own a PC, an Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo device, how are you playing games?

Why do you think it's the same people voting "I don't own *system*" in all of those polls?
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Lightning Bolt posted...

Really, why would a god have to be sentient in the same way we are?

Basically. People have a very anthropocentric view of gods, thinking of them as just being super-powerful humans. In truth, that's not at all necessary, and is largely just human arrogance. There's no reason for a god to resemble us in any way.
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Possibly the most racists that target that racism toward fellow citizens, since America is quite diverse while still having some very dedicated racists, but definitely not the most racists period. That title would go to a country where racism is the norm.
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Veedrock- posted...

A lot of these top questions really focus on "unlock everything." I can't help but feel bad for these people.

When the alternative is locking content behind exorbitant grinds and/or paywalls, I'd rather see it all unlocked. There's having unlockable content that provides a goal to work toward, and then there's making unlockable content so painfully slow to obtain that people feel they need to spend money to get it. I'd rather the content either be fully unlocked, or be made into proper DLC that's at least honest about charging you for it.
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Zangulus posted...

lihlih posted...

She was like 17 at the time, isn't that legal in most places?

In the United States, thats illegal everywhere.

Eeyup. Legal to sex in many states, but never to make porn of.
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Blightzkrieg posted...

adjl posted...

Blightzkrieg posted...

Apparently people now need to call EA manually if they want to refund their preorder.

That doesn't even sound legal.

It was for people who preordered through Origin. Supposedly there used to be a "refund" button, they removed it and replaced it with a phone number with a 1 hour wait time.

Yeah, that's what I heard.

Veedrock- posted...

What, you think there's a law that requires simple and convenient refund methods?

Could probably make a false advertising claim, given that the preorder was sold under the pretense of being easily canceled.
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Blightzkrieg posted...

Apparently people now need to call EA manually if they want to refund their preorder.

That doesn't even sound legal.
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JoanOfArcade posted...

I'm gonna buy like 40 bucks worth of in game currency for battlefront 2 right now, fight me

>.>
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I find the best way to replace a broken system is to take responsibility for your mistake and buy a replacement.
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OlorinTheOtaku posted...

And adjl, I don't really think "unbreakable laws of nature" can count as a sentient being, let alone the sentient being that was supposed to have made those very same laws of nature. The creation can't be the creator, that just doesn't make sense.

Why does the being have to be sentient?
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Ultima_Dragoon posted...

Because they like looking at women's parts so they think women must love looking at men's parts

Pretty much.
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OlorinTheOtaku posted...

^ I'm not just talking about morals & the way you treat your neighbors though, I'm talking about god himself. As in, whoever created earth, surely someone must have, right?

If we're calling moral forces "god," why not physical ones as well? Unbreakable laws that govern the universe sound pretty godlike to me.
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Is there a magic man in the sky? That seems like a stretch. Are there forces governing the world? That's objectively and measurably true. Are there forces governing the world that aren't necessarily so measurable in the way that inertia is, but are instead vague notions like "the world gets better if everyone's nice to each other" that you kind of have to take on faith instead of being able to clearly observe? I'm inclined to believe so, and as far as I'm concerned, that's all any god is.
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helIy posted...

they came out when lootboxes were already super popular in games like CSGO, TF2, and a slew of mobile games like clash of clans

The key difference being that none of those games are $60. TF2 was once a paid game, but went F2P when they decided the F2P+Microtransaction model made more sense.

helIy posted...

J_Dawg983 posted...

Well they made diablo 3 a shit game and theyre forever on my shit list.

it's way better than diablo 2, so no

Only after they abandoned their original monetization plan that resulted in the core loot mechanics of the game being gutted to promote AH use and thereby make ActiBlizz more money. People saying Diablo 3 sucked are generally saying that because they tried it near launch and were so thoroughly disappointed that they have no interest in giving it another chance, rather than based on trying it more recently.

The only reason the game's any decent now is because people hated the RMAH so much that Blizzard needed to axe it for the game to have any chance of continued success (which is to say, further updates and content releases to sell more copies and entice existing players to buy DLC/expansions, as well as any ability to ever hype a Diablo 4). They made Diablo 3 a bad game with their monetization ideas, and fixed them not out of any sort of good will, but because the bad PR was hurting their bottom line.
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Literally anything paired with "smegma."
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Lil69Leo posted...

Krazy_Kirby posted...

pringles448 posted...

First time missing the biggest event in the world in 60 years.

Complete chaos in the country. Pretty much nothing compares to the sadness in that country right now. ( If you think this is an exaggeration you don't realize how big soccer is in Italy)

no

Oh what is?

The superbowl, obviously. Everyone knows the world outside of America doesn't actually exist.
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

adjl posted...

Sounds like people need to read up on Implicit Association Tests. People have taken IAT's who have spent a huge portion of their lives championing black civil rights that still end up associating black people more readily with negative terms than positive ones. It reveals things that we've been subconsciously conditioned to feel, not necessarily things we'd ever actually act on, and it's more just an opportunity to be aware of the subsconcious biases that are lurking there than an actual "oh no I'm secretly a huge racist."

Those tests sound like theyre for people who say micro aggression and safe space unironically.

The test is a matter of having two lists of words and being asked to group the words based on certain criteria. In the case of ones that look at racial biases, the first list has terms to do with race, while the second has a variety of adjectives. The test is done in two phases: In the first, the subject is asked to group terms that refer to white people with the positive adjectives, and terms that refer to black people with the negative adjectives, and they're timed while they do that. The second phase switches that around, and they're again timed. Bias is indicated by which pairings take longer to process, since it's much faster to group terms in a manner that's consistent with subconscious associations than in a manner that only aligns with the instructions given.

Like a lot of psychological tests, the actual value of IAT's is very highly debatable. It's often pretty obvious what sort of biases they're looking to expose, and that's inevitably going to colour the results. The results also tend to be too ubiquitous to have any sort of personal meaning, since they're typically aligned more with cultural norms rather than personal behaviour. It can be interesting to realize what subconscious prejudices are lurking in there, but generally people are already aware of those biases, and they don't necessarily reflect action. It's mostly a matter of academic interest, rather than anything with significant practical value.
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

I cant verify what the bible says about marriage specifically, but Im willing to bet neither can they,

I'd also bet there are other passages they're quite happy to ignore because they're inconvenient and don't enable them to feel as self-righteous about doing things they already want to do.
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Sounds like people need to read up on Implicit Association Tests. People have taken IAT's who have spent a huge portion of their lives championing black civil rights that still end up associating black people more readily with negative terms than positive ones. It reveals things that we've been subconsciously conditioned to feel, not necessarily things we'd ever actually act on, and it's more just an opportunity to be aware of the subsconcious biases that are lurking there than an actual "oh no I'm secretly a huge racist."
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shipwreckers posted...

adjl posted...

Pretty sure it predates Judaism as well.

Judaism teaches the genealogy from David all the way back to Adam, so no, within the teachings of Judaism, nothing predates it.

The family unit within Judaism has simply always existed, from Adam and Eve (with their children), to Noah and his Wife (with their children), to Abraham and Sarah (with her children), and so forth.

So, the only way marriage predates Judaism is if you believe that Judaism and the Bible are bullshit (which is fine, most people do these days, but you can't really prove one way or the other; After all, the only sources we have are hand-me-down historical / Biblical accounts).

A fair point, though it does mean that the only way to believe marriage began with Judeo-Christianity is to be a young-earth creationist. Any point that relies on being a young-earth creationist isn't particularly likely to be an intelligent, well-reasoned one.
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shipwreckers posted...

I'm just glad to see EA finally get publicly humiliated for their excessive greed. Bots or no bots, it's very apparent that there's a whole mess of deepseated bitterness within the community against this company (built up long before BF2) that finally came to a head in glorious fashion.

The straw didn't just break the camel's back, it violently shattered it.

This isn't really anything new. Did you forget the time they beat out Bank of America for the Worst Company in America a couple years back?
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Zeus posted...

adjl posted...

Marriage predates Christianity, so...

Judaism is a part of Christian heritage. It's not all New Testament.

Pretty sure it predates Judaism as well.
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Marriage predates Christianity, so...
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Continue after a bad game, generally. Either the series will die anyway if they can't turn it around after that, or other people will like it and I have no reason to want that taken away from them.
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faramir77 posted...

TES_Nut posted...

DirtBasedSoap posted...

Kyuubi4269 posted...

All 'muricans and Canadians share a twang, the range is nowhere near as wide as England so it's easy to note the yank accent.

not true lol

the only time I ever think a North American accent sounds weird is when its a Canadian person. strangest accent of all time.

Northern Midwest and Canadian are pretty much the same thing.

Not to mention that there isn't just one Canadian accent. The stereotypical one is isolated only in Manitoba and Ontario.

Eeyup. It changes to something vaguely similar but still noticeably different if you go further west, and moving east, the Quebecois accent is very distinct, the maritimes have another noticeable one (plus you get Acadians thrown into the mix there), and then nobody can understand Newfies.
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This just in: Accents sound less varied and nuanced to outsiders than to locals.
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ZiggiStardust posted...

Semantics and changing subjects. The tactics of someone who lost an argument, ok?

I agree, but I'm not sure why you're so readily admitting your failure. You didn't really try very hard to make a point.

green dragon posted...

Yes, I get what you're saying , but I still respectfully disagree with you.

Fair enough. Really, that distinction's fairly meaningless in the face of the broader issue of games being hobbled in an effort to further monetize them via deceptive means, which I think everyone can agree is bad.
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