I agree, but the SPD went through with it. The two largest parties in Germany aren’t interested in bettering the country they’re interested in making press headlines while increasing the wealth of their friends and the wealthy.

The fact that the first three policies I’ve seen come out of this coalition are increasing our national debt, wanting to decrease taxes on the wealthy, and removing a niche path to citizenship for the people we want here the most should be a wake up call for the - what 40% of Germans who voted for these people. They’re antiquated parties incapable of making real progress for the working German.

I find that relativity is one of the greatest frictions against doing better - and it’s frustrating for this reason. 5 years is better than most other countries. That’s true. Is that a good number though, or is it just better? That’s the actual conversation I want to have, and I think relativity ruins meaningful progress and improvement.

Eating bland, unseasoned chicken is better than eating raw chicken - but that doesn’t mean we should settle for it.

Just because other nations have antiquated and arguably bad citizenship requirements doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve ours. And reversing progress is worse than being stagnant, and defending that is encouraging it imo.

This is fucking depressing to read. As someone who moved to Germany two years ago, gaining citizenship is important to us. When we moved here they were just announcing the expedited opportunity and we were stoked to know we were welcome in this country. It reinforced our decision. Now they look to take it away and although the 5 year plan will still exist, it signals clearly that the CDU don’t want highly educated immigration - they will blame immigrants while they raid the coffers of their country - and the SPD will gladly move further to the right if it means they get to stay in power.

This is incredibly disappointing. It’s not enough to change our plans, like if the AFD won, but I consider the grand coalition to be a “continued decline” coalition. If another country offered me and my family a guaranteed path to citizenship, with similar worker rights and benefits as Germany, we’d now have to consider it seriously. As aerospace engineers we’re not exactly struggling to find technical work.

Furthermore the fact that both parties considered revoking citizenship for any reason from anyone is unbelievably terrifying. If anyone’s citizenship can be removed, everyone’s citizenship can be removed and that’s something I completely disagree with. It’s dangerous territory and completely disgusting to read that the SPD considered it.

That’s totally cool by me, it’s a fun game. PoE2 is probably the best ARPG on the market, it’s just falling short of what they sold me (and the community at large) on. But for now, it’s definitely an idle game during mapping with the right build (and the wrong build will see you roadblocked progression-wise).

This is fucking depressing to read. As someone who moved to Germany two years ago, gaining citizenship is important to us. When we moved here they were just announcing the expedited opportunity and we were stoked to know we were welcome in this country. It reinforced our decision. Now they look to take it away and although the 5 year plan will still exist, it signals clearly that the CDU don’t want highly educated immigration - they will blame immigrants while they raid the coffers of their country - and the SPD will gladly move further to the right if it means they get to stay in power.

This is incredibly disappointing. It’s not enough to change our plans, like if the AFD won, but I consider the grand coalition to be a “continued decline” coalition. If another country offered me and my family a guaranteed path to citizenship, with similar worker rights and benefits as Germany, we’d now have to consider it seriously. As aerospace engineers we’re not exactly struggling to find technical work.

Furthermore the fact that both parties considered revoking citizenship for any reason from anyone is unbelievably terrifying. If anyone’s citizenship can be removed, everyone’s citizenship can be removed and that’s something I completely disagree with. It’s dangerous territory and completely disgusting to read that the SPD considered it.

As someone who moved to Germany in the last two years, gaining a permanent right to stay in this country was a part of our thought process. Gaining citizenship, which gives us voting rights and makes us “German” was just as important because we were picking our new home country. Who doesn’t want to feel “at home” in their country, instead of a guest? And earning EU citizenship which further protects us from shitty singular governments like the current grand coalition is even furthermore important.

So yes, this decision sucks ass and it has further cemented my understanding that the grand coalition are centralist or right leaning parties who will continue to allow the decline of society even if it’s more gradual than what the AFD would achieve. Our version of Democrats and Republicans-lite.

I mean to say “idol” as in… Oh fuck. Omg I’ve been misspelling idle in literally weeks worth of comments. Woooooow. Okay. Feeling a bit dumb.

I meant idle mechanics. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense but just in case - I’m making the argument that most modern ARPGs since Diablo 2 have not innovated on the gameplay directly but have innovated on the systems of the genre. This behavior has led to what I consider to be a stale endgame game to game that often or exclusively boils down to trivializing the content such that it’s comparable to a slot machine, an idle game like Eggs Inc., or a “phone” game.

I think PoE2 is working hard to evolve the genre to what id consider to be a “next gen” ARPG, where most or all previous games fall into a large “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket. I think No Rest for the Wicked is similarly attempting to evolve the genre. A counter example for the genre is Titans Quest 2 which seems to be falling squarely in the “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket.

I’d like to see more “No Rest for the Wicked” level of swings regardless of if you consider that EA game a hit or miss in its current state.

The measure of a man (which is to say the measure of a person anyone should strive to be regardless of gender) is, by my account, how much they strive to improve the world in ways they may never have had or which may not directly benefit them. You take the pain, the injustice, the hardships, the inconveniences that you or other people face and you convert them through willpower, through privilege, through money, through luck into improvements for all of society. This is far easier said than done, especially every day, but easy shouldn’t be the primary concern for the kind of person we wish to be.

In creating this sub, in seeking help or community or an opportunity to provide you demonstrate the actions of a man. For this I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself today.

Do not confuse this with love, which from a parent (at least) should be unconditional. Regardless of if your parents are proud of you, they should love you. Regardless of your quality or your work or your current position or state you are deserving of love. You are not beyond love, you are not unlovable, you deserve love. Full stop. I can’t offer that to you stranger, but I hope you experience it in your lifetime - more than once ideally. And even more so I hope you get yourself to a mental, emotional, and fiscal place where you can reciprocate that love (or better yet originate that love for someone else).

All I can offer is this act of love in the hopes you feel it, you appreciate it, and it heals (even partially) whatever you’re feeling.

Strive to be a helper of your community and communities you don’t know, to be a builder of bridges, and a giver of gifts and I promise you regardless of if your biological parents did their duty or not - you will find internal peace. You will inspire. You will love and be loved. I wish you had been given what your parents owe you, but if that fails I hope you can continue to turn that pain into improvement internally and externally.

Good luck and hard work.

I think you did a great job of talking about the various issues and I haven’t played noita yet but I appreciate the example. I think there is a way to create a game with a baseline power level of 1x and give the player a range of 0.8 - 1.6x power creep based on their build and 0.8 - 1.6x power creep based on their mechanical skill. Capping the possible player power range from something like 0.6 (a game twice as difficult as it was designed) to 2.5 (a game that’s a slightly more than twice as easy as it was designed) seems feasible to me - a none game dev. I believe this would allow me to have build expression from a power perspective and not reduce the game to a slot machine’s level of engagement. I think the problem is the lower range is closer to 0.1 or worse in the end game maps and the upper end is 100x+ even on the hardest content in the game. That to me is the core issues.

I think part of the fun in ARPGs, something almost all of them do better than say Dark Souls or Hades, is that the individual abilities are way different per character or per class/weapon/etc. I can play a magma barbarian in PoE2 in a way I just couldn’t in Elden Ring in a satisfactory way. I can play a lightning Amazon and a poison archer and a frost monk and the builds are visually (and in the best cases mechanically) diverse enough to make experience a new power fantasy that in itself is super cool. There are items and powers I can’t or wouldn’t experience on one play through that I could in another, and the best games in the genre provide me a ton of variation. That to me is more important to build expression than the power of my build, at least it’s more important than the share it gets in normal conversation. A build for me becomes bland and identical the moment combat is trivialized, but ideally before it trivializes things it can feel expressive if the moment to moment gameplay is unique compared to other builds.

So personally I’m confident to the extent “the needle has to be threaded (lol)” it’s not critically hard or critically important that it’s gotten perfectly right. I think it just has to be choice from the developers on what the power range is and how much of that is mechanical vs itemization based.

I disagree completely. I think you can have a game that is “about the builds” when engaging in meaningful combat. I think you’re right to hint that people may play these two kinds of games for two different reasons, but I think there’s a massive untapped market for the overlap.

I want the build creation and fantasy expression of typical ARPG’s but I want to use them to do more than just idol click monsters into loot. I don’t like the phone game playstyle of modern ARPGs. It’s not compelling to me to trivialize the gameplay loop in order to get slightly more powerful gear to further trivialize another tier of difficulty.

I think if GGG took their boss combat design philosophy and extended it out to their monsters - mimicking genres like roguelikes or action games - they’d have a lot more success than the hybrid game they’ve produced. I think they’re moving towards that but haven’t quite yet committed publicly to reworking the monsters.

Imagine Hades or Dead Cells or Enter the Gungeon but in Raeclast. I don’t think they’re far off on the player side, a few more abilities per weapon type, especially interactive defensive options, and monsters re crafted to roles in an encounter and they could mimic the compelling gameplay of a rogue-like but give you far more expression than the four guns you have on you or the two weapons and two items or the boons you pick during a run.

I think the genres are wholly compatible. I don’t think the idol vs engaging mindset are and that’s where all the friction seems to be coming from.

I do not believe “everyone” wants to zoom. I like the engaging combat they’re going for. I think the loudest people in the community like the idol game mechanics of most modern ARPGs but I think the genre is ripe for innovation.

Everyone praises their boss design and enjoy that aspect of the game, which to me reads “we like engaging combat with balanced rewards” but when that logic is theoretically applied to monsters we get people throwing online temper tantrums which tells me they don’t know what they want except for the thing they’ve already been given.

They’re missing the mark with the monster design, getting closer than anyone else in the genre (besides maybe No Rest for the Wicked). They need to look at roguelikes such as Hades and make each monster have a “role” when building encounters. Give each monster abilities like the bosses in the game and don’t make it about being auto-hit to death and they’ll have a truly next-gen ARPG.

I’m positive the first team to crack the infinite loot/immense player expression of ARPGs and engaging combat loop of action games (or really all other genres besides idol click farmers) will make the next genre defining game akin to Diablo 2.

I think PoE2 is on the road to doing that but the immense pushback they’re getting online seems to be wearing them thin. Which they asked for, for releasing an unfinished game and not having a clear line in the sand.

I’m still having fun. Pushing T4 maps today.

An API is like a question a service provides that it will programmatically answer. So reddit provided questions for getting all of its content for free. People built front end apps for viewing the content to match their preferences, provide anonymity, avoid ads, etc.

There were a lot of good reasons for reddit to stop providing that service free of charge, but they went full Corporate enshittificatioon where they made the pricing so awful it forced most of the apps to shut down.

Couple that with the protecting of /r/theDonald and other non-humanist political subs and, for me anyway, it was clear that the company wasn’t run by good people but by greedy people and things would only get worse.

Just ban being a landlord guys. Tax owning land that you’re not using out of existence. Rent/leases are simple vectors of wealth transferal - they move money from the poor to the rich. Everyone should own their own flat/house. Every business should own the space they work out of.

There is no good reason housing should be an investment vehicle akin to a stock or a bond.

I left reddit during the API scandal. I had the energy and time to move platforms and so I did. Open software, FOSS, non-for-profit digital solutions are all things I’m trying to support more at the cost of not using those paid or private services. Every dollar out of their pockets (the rich) is another dollar in ours.

It wasn’t a silver bullet. I’ll keep working on this. HL-L2400DW. Freaking nightmare printers are.

Thanks for trying.

Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn’t say it’s been a bug free swap but it’s been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn’t worked yet.

I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn’t do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That’s my list of pending problems and I’ve been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.

I’m on it boss 🫡 the moment I’m home.

Taxing the rich out of existence is the number one way of protecting democracy AND combatting misinformation AND improving your standard of living.

It’s the most important thing everyone should be pushing all of their political representatives to do. Tax wealth, remove the ultra wealthy.

I think you’re misattributing things here that I think can and should be explained by wealth inequality. Big box stores don’t kill small towns because they destroy competition, they kill small towns because some percentage of money spent at a big box store leaves that small town. It’s not the lack of competition that kills small towns it’s the fact that after those small town businesses close less wealth exists in the hands of people in that small town. There’s less money moving around in that town because a portion of it is being siphoned off to big box store profits which go to shareholders and out of state C-suites and the likes.

Yes, higher density means more taxes are raised per area which means it’s easier to spend on infrastructure in high density areas but you’re missing the point. If wealth was distributed properly we’d have enough money to build all the infrastructure we want comparatively almost regardless of the density of the population. As wealth inequality grows less taxes are being paid to the government in high density and low density scenarios. As wealth inequality grows the more the government is in debt to the wealthy and the less it can spend on vital services. There’s enough money in the system to pay for Internet and hospitals and rail and school to service every person in the US but the money isn’t held by everyone, it’s held by people who have those services covered where they are and so they don’t care if they drain the rest of the country of those things. Wealth inequality explains why small towns are dying because it explains why they can’t afford to stay open, stay profitable, stay connected, stay healthy.

And to circle back around to your original paragraphs, I don’t care how much people like living in big cities they can’t live there on vibes alone. They have to go where the money is, and you best believe when Boeing opens up a new plant in a city they put a whole lot of money into that city (ignoring city special contracts for a moment). I like living in a big city, I want to move to an even bigger city, I’m not because I don’t have a job there right now. I live where the work is. And yes, denser cities means more jobs and more opportunities but that only gets less true and less meaningful the more wealth inequality grows. If I can’t afford to rent a flat in 10 years, the same way I can’t afford to rent a house today then what’s the point? If my job doesn’t pay me meaningfully more in 10 years because stocks have to go up (please read that as wealth inequality) then what’s the point? Cities don’t create jobs or high paying jobs because money moves fast, it’s because that’s where the wealth is. Look at any major city in the US (at least) and you can find the increasingly small list of increasingly massive companies that have offices there and you can trace the money. If Kansas city lost Garmin or Hallmark they’d feel it, if the government went further into debt and had to slash services Kansas City would feel it, if one of the massive freight companies left KC would feel it. The point is cities are built on wealth and the movement of wealth, but if it increasingly is drained out of those cities it will be harder and harder to sustain those cities. It won’t matter where people like living, they’ll have to move to where the money is.

I really do think looking at where money comes from and where it’s going is critical to understanding why the standard of living is declining while there’s never been more wealth or productivity in history. We could all own homes, all have healthcare, have highspeed rail, higher education, if only the rich didn’t exist. We have to tax them out of existence and build a system that works for the overwhelming majority of people instead of the 1%.

“Not as consumers, no. The 1% doesn’t consume more than the 90th percentile.”

But that’s the thing, as the wages of workers goes down their ability to consume goes down as well. Sure they’ll never stop needing food and clothes but new cars, sushi, new TVs, vacations, preventative healthcare, higher education, etc - these things become impossible. Debt will surely be the next step to keep the engine running but that will only accelerate the transfer of wealth because debt is paid to those who have assets. And quite frankly we’re already there - university (in the US), the rise of buy now and pay later programs, healthcare the moment you need to use it - these things require massive debt today. It’ll only get worse.

As wealth gets drained from the working class into the owning class, the only meaningful consumers for the majority of goods and services will be the owning class. Services will increasingly be focused on the wealthy or on methods of serving the poor via borrowing from the rich (which only exasperates their poverty).