Lurker > adjl

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


At least it's not a perfect split down party lines, which should really never happen. Still, this one's especially absurd, given that not being able to access contraceptives hurts everyone. Abortion, at least, I can understand men not caring about, or caring more about the fetus than the mother. Birth control, though? The only reason to oppose that is the puritanical "sex=evil" mentality that is only held by a minority even on the right. That almost all republicans are willing to go that far to court that minority's votes is really a reflection of how insane American politics have become.

OhhhJa posted...

-snip-

This is quality content.

BEERandWEED posted...

There are plenty examples of prayer helping but the secular continually refuse to believe.

The value of spirituality in health has indeed been pretty thoroughly demonstrated (though that's less a matter of divine intervention and more a matter of mental health influencing physical health), but that's not what I asked. I asked for examples where reaching a certain global prayer threshold has solved a problem like Covid or school shootings.

Press Y to honk.

JixHedgehog posted...

Nah, havent played the other .. 2?

Definitely would if the female characters were topless or something

Some of them aren't far off it in 2, and at least Sharla has quite a few armour options in 1 that aren't exactly subtle with the fanservice (heck, she's got exactly one style of chest armour that actually covers more than 90% of her boobs). Neither game is light on the fanservice, though X is the king in that regard with how skimpy some of the cosmetic gear gets.

streamofthesky posted...

XC2 combat in a nutshell:
* Every blade has an element (color)
* A "blade combo" is painting by color in specific arbitrarily chosen sequences (see chart below; one of many things Torna fixed, btw)
* You put an orb of the last color from a blade combo on the enemy; it can only have one orb of each color (so make sure you have all 8 colors amongst your eventual 9 blade slots)
* Once a bunch of orbs are up, chain attack
* Need to break at least one orb each "round" of chain attack to get another round. Orbs are targeted randomly (there's an equip item to target damaged ones instead) and take 3 hits. Except... if the opposing color orb is up (like fire/water), it will be auto-targeted and do 2 damage.

Orb color flowcharts (seriously, just keep it up on a screen while playing): imgur.com/a/HO3oT

That's generally a horribly inefficient way to approach combat, as much as that's how the game suggests it should be played (the tutorials are awful, you'll pretty much need to use outside resources to understand it because of how vague the in-game stuff is and the fact that you can't reread it once you have some experience to help contextualize it). It's enough to get through the main game and even some of the superbosses on normal, but that's because the main game on normal is pretty braindead easy. Get into Bringer of Chaos difficulty or some of the harder challenge battles, and you will get your ass handed to you if you take that approach (and not just because of the Elemental Awakening mechanic that buffs enemies considerably if they have any number of orbs on them). Instead, there are basically three different approaches you can take:

• Art spam - As the name suggests, you just spam arts. Specials usually make for a DPS loss with this approach, so you often just leave them out. Driver combo support can be helpful to keep incoming damage down, but may not be necessary (such as with Corvin's evasion art on Zeke, which has virtually 100% uptime and renders him all but invulnerable)
• Special spam - Use your most powerful special as often as possible, interspersing with a 1-orb chain attack after each completed blade combo to avoid Awakening and get rid of the elemental resistance buff orbs give (20% less damage from that element). Depending on how strong the blade's level 1/2 specials are, the chain attack might not be worthwhile, so you may want to use supporting blades to start a blade combo that your main one can't contribute to to avoid actually completing one
• DoT's - Set up one of the level 2 blade combos with a damage over time effect (Volcano (earth-->fire) being the strongest) with the most powerful special you can, then cycle through driver combos to extend the duration indefinitely and increase the damage. This is a particularly popular strategy for BoC, since it doesn't rely on party meter at all and keeps incoming damage low by locking them down with driver combos, and you can get them ticking for the damage cap pretty readily if you're set up properly

In all of these strategies, you should also consider fusion combos, specifically applying Break before starting a blade combo so that all damage dealt while that Break (or a subsequent Topple or Launch) is active receives a very substantial multiplicative damage boost. Fusion combos are largely why blades with multi-hit specials are considered better for chain attacks, since it makes it pretty easy to hit the damage cap for single-hit ones and waste a huge amount of damage potential. Which strategy works best will depend on which blade (and driver, to a lesser extent) you use.

streamofthesky posted...

Characters and blades/weapon types don't matter, just colors. Everyone effectively plays the same.

This just isn't true. Characters and weapon types dictate the arts you have available, which single-handedly defines how effective pretty much any approach is going to be. Damage ratios, recharge rates, animation speeds, secondary effects... Even if you are exclusively taking the generally-inadvisable approach of "get 8 orbs and use a chain attack," faster animations with faster recharges (or better yet, innate recharge abilities, like Axes on Zeke or Rex) will help you build specials faster so you can get those orbs sooner. And then there are all the various abilities blades have, which are variable enough to completely define their optimal playstyles, in many cases. Element really only matters if you're trying to match a weakness (and in that case, running Adenine and/or Patroka as a support is a good idea to increase the bonus from doing so) or get a specific DoT effect (like Volcano); it's very rare that trying to build more than 1-2 orbs is actually a good idea.

Of course, as I said, none of this matters for the main game. I only know any of this because I've put some effort into min/maxing endgame play, since that's the sort of thing I like doing. Even then, though, stacking orbs is generally a waste of time compared to just setting Mythra up for level 3 special spam and popping 1-orb chain attacks whenever she lands three of them. Exploiting the overkill bonus is often a good idea to help speed up levelling, but you can get a decent bonus just by popping a 0-orb chain attack right before the enemy dies, which is much, much more time-efficient (not to mention less tedious) than trying to load them up with a full burst to hit the full 1000% overkill.

Entity13 posted...

When I could finally pick up weapons that hit mechanical entities just fine, but were weaker than one or two rounds of weapons I'd already been using by that point,

The anti-mechon weapons are a bit of a bummer in that they throw a wrench into the "bigger numbers=more happy" philosophy that drives progress in RPG's, but they become available at a point when almost all of the enemies you'll be fighting are Mechon (as opposed to <5% of them, aside from the Ether Mine), so they're kind of a necessity if you want any sort of flexibility in the combat for the next 30-odd hours. You still have the option of relying on Enchant, if you'd rather use the strongest available weapons instead, but that locks you into using player-controlled Shulk continuously, which you may not want (especially where Melia really starts to come into her own around that point and switching to her is a nice way to shake things up). I do get that having to downgrade your weapons is a buzzkill, but it's well worth pushing past that because the most interesting parts of the story happen after Sword Valley (plus you pretty quickly get anti-mechon upgrades that are on par with or better than the stuff you replaced with those vendor ones, so it's not like progression stops).

shipwreckers posted...

When you say "replaying 2" do you mean another fresh playthrough, or NG+???

NG+, my first time doing so after playing through regularly back in early 2018 (drifting away roughly when they added the NG+ patch). I picked up the expansion pass before doing so, so it's my first time experiencing any of the DLC. I already had every pre-NG+ and non-DLC blade's affinity chart completed (or thought I did, apparently I missed the last couple of crafting nodes for Gorg, Vess, Vale, and maybe a couple others, but they don't really matter), so I've been maxing out the DLC/NG+ blades as I go. I haven't quite finished the last couple, and I need to do a bit more Love Source farming to get everyone I care about up to S+ trust, but I opted to take a break from that to make sure I had time to enjoy Torna before next Friday (and also because it's just a matter of repeatedly doing challenge battles to max out Shulk and letting merc missions max out Elma, so the interesting part is done).

shipwreckers posted...

Also, what do you think of Torna? (IMHO, the actual STORY of Torna was fantastic, but they put so many artificial grinds to lengthen the game that I ended up watching the final cutscenes on Youtube. Some people overlooked the grind, but even by Xenoblade standards, it was almost unforgivable. But, that's just my opinion, of course.)

I'm generally liking it so far. I'm just at the point where I've got to farm up some materials before crossing the desert (an example of your complaint, I'm guessing), and there has definitely been a lot of "we're going there next to deal with an apocalyptic emergency, but first we'll handle this minor errand" padding out the story, but the combat system feels like it's starting to really come into its own. If anything, I'm actually kind of minding the lack of spongy enemies to give me an opportunity to try out more complex combos, since everything dies so fast that I rarely have time to get even a level 2 special off, but I expect that will improve as I get access to more art/special refill pouch items, fill out skill trees, and get better accessories (I also only just got chain attacks, and that was the trigger for the base game to start throwing HP sponges at me, so perhaps that's about to change). It generally feels more fluid than the base game's combat (especially compared to the early game; early-game Torna obviously doesn't compare as favourably to endgame stuff), which is nice.

I enjoyed both games, but they weren't without their flaws. Mostly the controls: They were serviceable, but so much of it boiled down to "we're making you use the touch screen for the sake of using the touch screen" because there were quite a few actions that would have been better mapped to the L button instead of cramming even more touch screen actions into an already crowded suite of touch screen controls. I also wasn't a fan of ST's overworld travel. I didn't mind the train thing, but the whole "if you mess up and touch an evil train you die instantly" thing meant all overworld travel felt like the worst kind of QTE, which was almost enough to turn me off of the game altogether.

I didn't actually mind revisiting the Temple of the Ocean King. It made for a repetitive environment, certainly, but the backtracking process was streamlined enough to not be a problem, and the actual dungeon content was varied enough to hold my attention.

Frozen was good, but so insanely overrated.

Day 1. I'm going to be thoroughly Xenoblade'd out by the time I finish it, given that I've spent the last month or so playing through Definitive Edition, replaying 2, and now working my way through Torna for the first time, but I'm pretty hyped.

MechaKirby posted...

As much as I ended up loving Xenoblade X, the first month or so was annoying as f**

What got me about the early days of X was how much important information (particularly collectible locations) came from the Japanese Prima Strategy Guide, of all things. I expect user-generated information to be pretty sparse in the early days of games of that scale, even with the Japanese version being out for ~7 months beforehand, but people relying on a paper strategy guide in 2015 was wild.

BEERandWEED posted...

Not enough prayers. Atheism is the work of Satan.

Do you have any examples of "enough" prayers solving similar problems?

FatalAccident posted...

Love when an argument about something serious devolves into semantics

I mean, there's not much serious argument to be had here. The situation was non-violent, so the use of violent measures to resolve it wasn't justified, made especially irresponsible by the failure to take precautions to avoid causing more serious harm (specifically, preemptively calling the fire department). Pretty much everyone agrees the police were in the wrong, pretty much everyone agrees that they probably won't face any consequences and that that's a reflection of just how fundamentally broken America's police are... what's left to say except to critique each others' writing habits?

Diplomacy done right.

It's a trope in a lot of "us vs. them" stories that "us" turn out to be the real villains in the conflict. It's a pretty easy twist to set up, since all you have to do is only show the viewer what the protagonist sees and limit the protagonist's perception to only see Us' point of view at the beginning of the story. Then the protagonist meets some Them in a non-combat setting, understands why Them is fighting and the lies Us told about how righteous Us' cause was, then conveniently the protagonist is also some kind of super-soldier who is able to single-handedly turn the tide in a dramatic final battle that secures a peaceful future for both Us and Them while deposing Us' corrupt leadership.

It's a very straightforward twist that's still effective because everybody loves a good betrayal and unmasking oppressive conspiracies, so it gets used a lot. Lies and betrayal are a very effective ways to build animosity toward a villain without being too heavy-handed in the exposition, especially if the victim is somebody the viewer is invested in.

Conner4REAL posted...

agreed except for the last sentence. Your medical issues dont stop a virus spreading to someone else.

Ultimately, you don't need an entire population to be vaccinated to control a virus. That's the concept of herd immunity: If enough of a population is immune, the virus isn't going to be able to find new hosts to spread to within its infectious window, so you don't get significant outbreaks (and in some cases, the pathogen dies out altogether) and those who remain vulnerable are unlikely to encounter the disease. To that end, if a handful of people don't get vaccinated because they're allergic or otherwise unable to do so safely, that's not the end of the world and there's no need to force them to take that excessive risk.

The problem arises when the unvaccinated population becomes large enough to prevent herd immunity from being reached, which is happening with a number of preventable diseases that had been well controlled (measles being a major one that's seeing actual outbreaks now, and polio making enough of a comeback as to be concerning). That also happened with Covid, and Covid has especially galvanized the anti-vaxx movement to the point where that movement is a very credible public health threat now.

captpackrat posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/3/5/AAQwHjAADevP.jpg

Good ol' lure of the forbidden.

BEERandWEED posted...

1 person does not make polio back.

It very much does. That's the nature of eradication: If a single case shows up, it's not eradicated anymore.

Now, one case doesn't necessarily indicate enough of an outbreak to be worried, but when there's also been Polio found in wastewater in the UK (which means quite a few cases, that have been around for a while) and given that not every case of polio is symptomatic (and given how non-existent it is, even symptomatic cases aren't necessarily going to be tested for polio because many doctors in this generation won't even think of it), finding a single case is still very, very concerning because it may represent a larger problem.

HornedLion posted...

The vaccine did what it was supposed to do and absolutely none of the conspiracy theorists side effects.

The really annoying thing is that vaccines do have side effects, including some very serious ones that are enough to justify skipping future ones for the affected individuals. That risk analysis is already built in to doctors' recommendations, though, so when anti-vaxxers blow the risk out of proportion and start trying to overrule doctors' recommendations, they make it harder to make safe, informed choices. I'm all for pushing to keep the medical and pharmaceutical industries accountable for stuff going wrong, but misrepresenting risks to undermine patients' trust doesn't help do that.

33

papercup posted...

What did Rowling do this time?

More of the usual, far as I know. That usual is just so antithetical to the ideals of Quadball as an organization that they've opted to cut ties with her.

Gaawa_chan posted...

This is a bizarre leap in logic coming from you.

Reading the article again, they are pretty vague about the kid's involvement. It sounds like he followed the fugitive into the house voluntarily, which on my first pass I assumed meant he was trying to protect him in some way, but it could just as easily be read more neutrally and leave open the possibility that he was taken as a hostage, or even just that he also lived there and chose to stay inside instead of leaving when the police showed up (probably not a bad idea, given the high probability of being shot if he opened the door).

Jen0125 posted...

How can a child harbor a criminal??

The same way anyone else does: By using whatever means they have available to protect the person from the police. Kids have fewer means available, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

Now, should they be criminally prosecuted for, say, helping to barricade a door that their older brother is hiding behind (not to imply that's what happened here, since there aren't enough details to infer that)? Potentially not. By virtue of being younger, kids (although 15 is pushing into territory where this excuse doesn't work as well anymore) aren't necessarily going to make good decisions in a high-pressure, emotionally charged situation like that, so calling it a legitimate mistake and letting them off with a warning may be reasonable. That's something that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, based on the details. More broadly, though, there's no reason to categorically say that a child can't help an adult hide from the law.

JigsawTDCII posted...

adjl trying his hand at PO levels of pedantic here

I've always been PO levels of pedantic.

Far-Queue posted...

I'm curious if these clowns think it's less sad that the child who died is 15, as opposed to say a 6 year-old or something. Like, what does it matter? It's f***ing weird to be this hung up on something they're wrong about in the first place.

Mostly, it's a matter of speaking accurately instead of leaving out details for the sake of appealing more strongly to the reader's emotions, which is what you've come across as doing (intentionally or otherwise). That affects people's understanding of the situation, and once they figure out the whole truth of the matter, may lead to them dismissing your position as being histrionic and alarmist and feeling that the police may have been right (see: BS0 having doubts about the police's culpability). Obviously, the police are wrong and there's zero excuse for this. You don't need to leave out details or appeal to anyone's emotions to convey that conclusion.

Far-Queue posted...

Saying "most people think" is anecdotal at best, and even if it weren't it still doesn't change the facts laid out in the topic title

It does, however, change how that statement of facts is likely to be interpreted. Communication is a two-way street. If you say something in a way that people are likely to misinterpret, you are misleading people (intentionally or otherwise).

VampireCoyote posted...

wtf led you to think this

Why do I think the kid wasn't innocent? Because he was actively participating in a crime (specifically, harbouring a fugitive). Not a crime that deserves capital punishment, obviously, nor any sort of violent response and probably not even a criminal conviction, but he was nonetheless not an innocent bystander.

Why did I think the title suggested he was an innocent bystander? Mostly because catching innocent children in the crossfire is pretty routine for police these days, so my first thought was that this was another example of that and not one of using excessive force irresponsibly against somebody who was actually committing a crime (albeit a non-violent one that didn't warrant such force).

Far-Queue posted...

Nothing in the title is misleading bruh. It's straight fact. Not sure why you're twisting yourself in knots trying to say it's misleading.

Because it's misleading, for the reasons I just explained. Inconsequentially so, since it doesn't change the overall conclusion of "these cops are trigger-happy idiots who murdered somebody for no reason," but misleading nonetheless.

I was scheduled to lose a large amount of blood this weekend, but I opted to move it forward a couple weeks because I'm still recovering from breaking my elbow a few weeks back and I figure the extra fatigue of partial exsanguination would be bad to put on top of that.

Far-Queue posted...

It's strange. A 15 year-old is a child. Full stop. Nothing misleading there.

I'd say most people think of younger children than 15 when they hear the word "child" without other context. Even the article itself specifies "teen," which narrows it down to give a more accurate first impression. It's not wrong, but it does imply something other than the reality of the situation at first glance, which is exactly what "misleading" means.

Far-Queue posted...

Whether this child is innocent is irrelevant. Cops killed him. Nothing misleading there.

Similarly, without further context, "child killed in botched raid" is going to make most people think of an innocent bystander, not an active participant in the standoff. Again, that's misleading. That does not even remotely justify cops killing him, given that neither the cops nor anyone else were in any danger from him and they were extremely negligent in their approach, but that doesn't mean you didn't phrase it in a misleading way. "Title is a little misleading" is a perfectly accurate statement: you're not doing anything that's likely to change the ultimate conclusions people draw (which would be really misleading), but you are stating some of the facts in ways don't necessarily reflect the situation (a little misleading).

"Can't give the majority of fault to the police," however, is not. They could have done many things to prevent this outcome that they chose not to do. Everything about this kid's death is their fault, even though I expect none of them will face any justice for it because police are only ever held accountable if the entire country protests so hard that it grinds to a halt.

Far-Queue posted...

How is the title misleading? Police killed a child in a botched raid. What about that is misleading?

It sounds to me like they deployed flashbangs - which are known to have the potential to spark a fire if you have any training with them like we had in the military - without having the fire department present on the scene. That's negligent. That means the police killed a child by setting his house on fire with him in it.

Doesn't matter that he was barricaded in there with the suspect. If they're watching the house where the fuck are the suspect and child going to go? They could've held off for as long as necessary in order to formulate a plan that didn't involve torching a house with a child inside.

Pretty much. Was the 15-year-old innocent? Doesn't sound like it. Is "child" misleading when talking about a 15-year-old? A little. Does any of that mean that there was any reason at all for police to risk and ultimately take his life? No. Nothing about this is excusable.

That seems really dangerous. Presumably the surface isn't actually hot enough right now to risk burning you, and if it's turning on without the stove being on, you're going to end up not paying attention to it when the stove has been on. That should probably be set to turn on at a higher temperature than that.

JigsawTDCII posted...

Its also been argued to be humanitys biggest mistake by prominent anthropologists:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

Not necessarily saying I agree with that viewpoint, but its worth considering and understanding.

It can certainly be argued, but I personally see that as roughly similar to Adams' "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." It's not necessarily wrong, but that sort of attitude and approach isn't particularly useful for understanding the modern world or solving its problems.

Sufferedphoneix posted...

I see it differently. To me being overpopulated would mean too many people for hunting and gathering to be sustainable. Instead we must bend nature to our will through farming and breeding a shit ton of Aminals to feed everyone.

I don't mind the way we live but I feel if someone wants to live that kinda life it should be a viable option to the point everyone could do it if they wanted

By that logic, we've been overpopulated for 20,000+ years. Agriculture has been a staple of human civilization for as long as human civilization has been a thing.

Sufferedphoneix posted...

I feel we are overpopulated and have been a long while. A decrease of sorts doesn't mean we aren't still overpopulated.

"Overpopulated" means there aren't enough resources to support everyone. That's not remotely true of the US. The problem is not that there aren't enough resources, it's that the vast majority of those resources are hoarded by a handful of people while everyone else is forced to fight amongst themselves for the scraps.

Every therapist I've ever talked to has said it's important to say their name to take back the power they have over me, so that's what I'm going to do.

rexcrk posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/1/6/AACE4xAADePs.jpg

Not quite as traumatizing as Burrowing Snagrets, but still pretty traumatic.

Metalsonic66 posted...

I can voice chat on Steam with a friend in one game while I'm playing a different game

Indeed. The only time that might come up is trying to chat with somebody who doesn't have a Steam account, but really, how often do you run into somebody that's interested enough in PC gaming to need a voice chat feature to improve it, but has neither a Steam account nor Discord?

Lokarin posted...

A 10mm pistol that was chambered was found at the scene... but that's it, we don't know if it was the alleged "threatener"'s gun or if it just happened to be there

Or if the police planted it to justify shooting five people.

11110111011 posted...

We have actually been fairly stagnant in the US for the last 10 years or so.

Indeed. By and large, the world really isn't overpopulated so much as it has rampant resource distribution problems, and the US is no exception to that.

I could believe that. The wording's a bit ambiguous. Of course, that doesn't mean much when Discord exists and is just generally a better solution than any built-in voice chat these clients have.

ZangsBeard posted...

Its been a hot minute since I played it. I forget I even own it. That being said I think like 50% longer would have been fine; but I enjoyed trying to do the challenges too for more playtime.

That's about where I stand. A friend played through my copy as well, which gave some extra value, and I'm sure the co-op mode (which has been added since I last played) would be a good time. Really, though, it's just good fun.

Muscles posted...

How is what I said not a philosophy of minimizing the government? Keep a military, and make sure businesses don't turn the country into a lawless corporate oligarchy is all I ask for from them, everything else they can fuck off with

Libertarian philosophy tends to explicitly include letting businesses do whatever they want (short of like murder or whatever), under the belief that a free market will regulate itself.

If you've actually got a tear, massaging it can make things worse. If it's that painful, you should probably be getting it looked at.

Pretty much. Cross-platform integration is generally a good thing, but if the only selling point for your client is that you don't need to convince your friends to use it to access basic features, you don't have a very compelling client.

ZangsBeard posted...

Untitled Goose Game is fun as fuck. Makes me want to play it some more. But my switch is in Wisconsin

I do kind of wish it was a bit longer, but at the same time I think it would have overstayed its welcome if it were, and I'd rather be left enjoying it so much that I want more than getting tired of it.

Metalsonic66 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/3/2/AAFUswAADd4g.jpg

"Girl, you're so hot my edition just extended."

Only when I forget one of my electrodes after a particularly intense session.

streamofthesky posted...

Those "homestead taxes" would stay. Institutional investors wouldn't just jump in to buy things up like other housing crashes -- they'd be the ones causing the crash as they desperately flee their investments that are about to turn into debt traps, trying not to be the last one out the door. If holding a property is gonna cost them 20% (for example) per year in additional taxes, it's no longer attractive as an "investment", which is entirely the point...

It'd have to be enough tax to make it impossible to fill the rental and still turn a profit, otherwise they'll just pass it on to the tenants and the renting situation will get worse for everyone, and that's quite a bit. Even then, if property values crash because everyone's selling, that in turn lowers the property taxes such that owning a rental becomes more viable, so those that already have the capital to buy are still going to be more likely to snap them up than people that are currently stuck renting. A crash like that would get a few renters who have almost made it to ownership out of the mire, but most won't be so lucky and will just end up at the mercy of whoever ends up buying the property after the price tanks (who will likely bulldoze and develop it, if that extra tax doesn't apply to apartment buildings).

streamofthesky posted...

Yes, and that's what apartments, multi-family homes, etc... can be for.

Apartments are rentals, and the other alternatives aren't always viable. There are stepping stones that can work better than renting, but there will always need to be some degree of rental market to bridge the gap between moving out and owning a home.

streamofthesky posted...

There's already security deposits for this purpose. They withhold it until they verify the property and deduct expenses from it. If anything, the law is too generous for the landlords.

That idea would replace security deposits. If your damage costs are guaranteed to be reimbursed, after all, there's no need for a deposit, which in turn means no opportunities for scummy landlords to withhold the deposit without justification, and on the flip side, no need for landlords to increase rent for other tenants if a bad one causes more damage than their deposit covers (which happens fairly often, and chasing them down for the extra money is generally more hassle than it's worth, which is why everyone else's rent has to make up the difference).

Pets still might be a sticking point, though, since one of the main ways they can rack up extra costs is by leaving bad smells behind, and that wouldn't show up in a video walkthrough. That's kind of hard to solve without having a third-party arbitrator come in before the lease ends to verify the smell complaints, which costs extra money that would have to come from somewhere (though, again, having that cost defrayed among all taxpayers instead of being covered by what's left over from pet deposits that don't get used is generally a better idea), but it's not impossible to solve.

Rex, from Xenoblade 2. Specifically at endgame power levels, which is kind of a lot because shonen protagonist.

agesboy posted...

yeah, uh, you aren't actually a libertarian LMAO

Also this. Being a libertarian involves quite a bit more than just picking a couple of issues and saying "this doesn't need to be regulated by the government." At its core, it's a philosophy of minimizing government involvement as much as possible and letting society sort itself out.

Revelation34 posted...

Tim is bad.

https://i.redd.it/tj7i3tuywu891.png

... Since when does Steam not have voice chat? Pretty much everyone uses Discord instead now, but the feature has been there for at least a decade.

Count_Drachma posted...

Because the US is the largest manufacturer of guns in the world (look it up), guns are always going to be available.

And what do you think would happen to that manufacturing if domestic sales dropped off significantly due to proper controls?

Far-Queue posted...

You gotta evolve, or risk becoming stale and redundant.

Yes and no. Bringing in new ideas to keep things interesting is necessary, but that doesn't mean having to go through full genre changes. Squenix was genuinely surprised that Bravely Default was as popular as it was because they'd spent so many years telling themselves that nobody wanted plain old turn-based RPG's anymore, but the reality is that many of the FF series fans would have been quite happy to stick to something more traditional than the radically different direction it's gone. Some degree of evolution is needed to keep things from becoming stale, but change for change's sake runs the risk of leaving behind perfectly good ideas in an obsessive chase for progress.

Judgmenl posted...

I think the "Action RPG" genre needs to go away. "Action" and "RPG" are two totally different things.

Not at all. Action games can have plenty of room for character growth and customization, no less so than turn-based ones. You can want more turn-based RPG's if that's your preference, but that doesn't mean Action RPG's shouldn't exist, nor that the genres (not that I really call "RPG" a genre of its own anymore) are in any way incompatible.

streamofthesky posted...

For single family homes, I'm all for massive property tax increases that get waived if it's your primary residency, to push scumbag landlords out of the market and lower house prices for people to buy them to own w/ a mortgage.

The problem with any cost-increasing approach is that it tends to disproportionately punish good landlords, who aren't nickel-and-diming their tenants enough to absorb the extra costs in their larger margins. That means it's overwhelmingly them who end up selling, either to slumlords who are much less reluctant to jack rent up as far as they need to cover the new taxes (and then some, while also spending less on upkeep), or to developers that also buy up the rest of the neighbourhood to demolish it and build a complex that avoids the new tax while also being able to take advantage of the higher rents the new tax has generated across the market. The renting class - by virtue of having parasites clinging to them for most of their adult lives - generally doesn't have the capital required to take advantage of small housing crashes like that, so most of the buying opportunities that do show up will be snatched up by those that do have the spare capital to win bidding wars.

Any attempt to control rent needs to be comprehensive, not just increasing taxes or putting caps on how much rent can be increased. Every landlord needs to be required to have some percentage of their properties qualify as "affordable," which should in turn be defined based on median local income and not median local rent (my city defines it as 30% less than median rent, which isn't much help when median rent is more than double what median income can afford). Maintenance and livability standards need to be strictly enforced to keep affordable apartments from turning into slums (combined with assistance programs for landlords that genuinely can't afford to maintain their properties without making them unaffordable). Insurance costs and property taxes for rentals need to be based on rent currently being paid, to prevent market fluctuations from forcing rent increases (or forcing landlords who don't want to hurt their tenants to take a loss).

As much as it'd be nice to stamp out landlords altogether, there is in fact a need for renting, and they do provide an essential service. No matter how accessible the housing market is, there's still going to have to be a transitional period between reaching adulthood and having the necessary capital to buy a house, because merely being able to make mortgage payments isn't enough to cover other costs and risks. Landlords effectively provide insurance: By paying a premium over the actual cost of the property, they take responsibility for whatever goes wrong in the house to keep the tenant from having to deal with large, unexpected expenses. As a stepping stone to ownership, that's pretty unavoidable. The problem is that the market has been inflated by overzealous investors such that the capital needed to buy a house is very difficult to attain, made worse by greedy investors driving rent costs so high that amassing any capital is a challenge.

Muscles posted...

and she's not rich at all so she got really f***ed when she had a bad renter, luckily she's had mostly good renters.

This is what really bugs me, because it's something so many landlords use to justify charging high rents, and it's actually a legitimate excuse for many (especially those that generally don't try for excessively high margins and therefore don't have a huge safety net), but it's also really easy to fix:

• Mandate video walkthroughs with the tenants and landlord at the beginning and end of each lease, with both parties having a copy, to provide concrete evidence of who's responsible for any damages if a dispute arises. If the landlord doesn't do this, side with the tenant by default. If there is evidence of the tenant refusing to allow the walkthrough, side with the landlord by default
• If the tenant is found liable for damages and/or missed rent, the government pays the landlord the amount owing (receipts and some manner of common sense check needed, of course, to avoid paying $400 for a can of paint and 20 minutes of labour)
• The government negotiates a repayment plan with the ex-tenant, including garnisheeing wages if necessary

A lot of people will look at this and jump to "why should taxpayers pay for bad tenants?", but it makes a lot more sense to have taxpayers collectively pay for them than to have them subsidized entirely by good tenants (who are almost always going to be less capable of providing that subsidy than the average taxpayer), which is what "I need to keep rent this high in case I get bad tenants." It also ultimately won't end up being that much of a subsidy, because if there's one thing everyone can agree the government is actually capable of doing, it's taking money it believes it's owed from lower-middle class people.

The system as it stands doesn't do anywhere close to enough to protect good tenants (the vast majority of tenants) from bad landlords, nor good landlords (a decidedly smaller proportion of landlords, but still more significant than many might like to believe) from bad tenants, and the result is a market that keeps giving more and more power to bad landlords who fall back on their lack of protections as an excuse for needing that power. Install some proper protections, and you can start making real progress on controlling rent.

Of course, the fact that most politicians who have the power to change these things also own investment properties means getting anything done is a challenge. Pretty much none of them are willing to do anything that will lower their own rental income, so the rest of us suffer.

Can it not be an action JRPG?