Lurker > adjl

With all four games now on the Switch, I'd guess they just wanted more consistent branding to tie them all together. It's not altogether necessary to do it that way, but I can kind of understand it.

Ironically, the need for so many rupees to upgrade armour means that having all of the random reward chests that give breakable weapons (supposedly because breakable weapons are needed to give meaningful rewards in random chests) just give 20-50 rupees instead would have eliminated the supposed need for the weapon durability system (instead just treating fusion as a temporary buff) and also made armour upgrades feel a lot less tedious. Alternatively, I still think scrapping durability, swapping environmental weapon rewards to different armour pieces, and having the upgrade system affect weapons instead (working through 4-5 tiers of upgrades for each of the four major weapon types) would work better than how grindy and unfocused the armour system is. Also, yes, there need to be transmog slots, because fashion is the true endgame of every RPG.

Of course, in practice, you don't actually need to upgrade more than 1-2 sets to max for defense purposes, since most other sets are focused more on utility and you'll want to swap to a combat-focused one in cases where you're fighting. Still, though, there's definitely room for improvement. If nothing else, by the time you can actually get max defense, you've got enough hearts that you could tank a few hits naked if you wanted to, and you've spent the whole game practicing never getting hit, so it kind of ends up being a little unnecessary.

SilentSeph posted...

The snow boots also don't grant cold resistance or trigger any set bonuses.

In this case, it actually does make some sense. Cold resistance only has two tiers, so you can max it out with only the Snowquill hat and chest. That leaves choosing between snow boots for mobility or the third Snowquill piece for freeze immunity, which I think is a reasonable strategic choice.

SilentSeph posted...

Why not just combine these together, or let any combo of 'cold' related armor trigger set bonuses?

That said, I also kind of agree with this. I wouldn't mind seeing something more along the lines of Monster Hunter's approach to armour (at least the classic one), where each piece contributes a certain amount of points to a couple of different potential buffs, and accumulating enough points to exceed a threshold would grant you that buff. It would have to be simpler than MH's approach (which is a little obscure), but it would give the potential to increase the amount of skill points an armour offered as you upgraded it and give more mix-and-match potential as the game went on. I like that idea better than tying major bonuses to using armour from the same set, and it would allow something like Frostbite giving lots of Cold Weather Attack and a little bit of Cold Resist, with Snowquill reversing that, letting you pick which one you wanted.

They don't pronounce the d. It's "zeh-bruh."

Arguably, BotW and TotK are sequels to WW, in the sense of being Zelda games that put a large focus on exploration and worldbuilding over the more traditional "Here are 4-8 temples to beat then punch Ganon in the dick the end." You just don't get to sail everywhere.

LonelyStoner posted...

I'm going to need you to do the math on this one.

So long as both the grandmother and mother were younger than 9.75 when they got pregnant (which is unusual and profoundly unhealthy, but not unheard of), they'd give birth before turning 11, which means the grandmother would be 20 at the time of her first grandchild's birth.

This is, of course, an absolutely hideous hypothetical situation that should never happen, but is not actually illegal under Colorado's laws so long as the father in both cases is less than four years older than the mother.

MabinogiFan posted...

Tbh that sounds terrifying in its own right. One second you're alive, the next you're dead. You're entire existence and sense of self vanishing in an instant.

Very creepy to think about.

It's scary to think about, but the actual experience would be over too quickly to be frightened by it in the moment.

It's also worth noting that that's how a non-trivial number of road fatalities happen. Sometimes, people don't even have a chance to notice that anything's wrong before they're killed by the impact.

MabinogiFan posted...

That is a lot of money huh. Even if you spent a maximum of 100k a year, you'd still be set for 100 years. You probably couldn't afford a mansion on that budget, but I'd imagine you could still find a very nice house.

More than that, invest that $10 million at a modest 5% return, and you get $500,000 a year for free, which is more than enough to live comfortably on indefinitely.

argonautweakend posted...

The thing about rich people is, they make awful financial decisions all the time. People may say a rich person who still cuts coupons got rich because of that mentality, but they say nothing when they buy a 500,000 dollar brand new Rolls Royce which could be purchased for a fraction of the cost 5-10 years later, because they absolutely do not retain value.

The thing is, those decisions simply don't affect them like they do us. I was talking with my girlfriend about the whole sub thing, and she mentioned how ridiculous it was to spend $500,000 on a father's day present (two tickets). For somebody with 1 billion dollars to their name, that's 0.05% of their money (1/2000). To scale that down, for somebody with $100k (which already puts them quite a bit ahead of most of America), that would be $50, which that person would never think twice about spending for a special occasion. It's a testament to the baffling scale of a billion dollars to realize that, but that's the reality of the situation (and most billionaires have more than just 1 billion).

It's also not strictly a linear comparison like that, since how disposable wealth is depends more on how much is left afterwards than what percentage it comprises. If you have a million dollars and spend $500,000 of it on some frivolous luxury, you're still in pretty good shape. If you have $100 and spend $50 of it on some frivolous luxury, you're an idiot.

Cacciato posted...

That motherfucker literally said the sound of the implosion could have been the sound of it hitting the floor, like we wouldnt hear thousands of whales doing the same goddamn thing every year.

Especially where the search didn't stop after hearing the probable implosion. If anything, given the massive cost of trying to attempt a recovery operation and the low likelihood of survival, the search continued longer than it should have. Nothing about this gave any impression of "they gave up too soon."

Littlewood pretty much perfectly fits the broad description of what you're looking for, but the core mechanics are quite simplistic compared to Stardew and the like and there isn't a ton of depth to the game. Still, it's probably worth looking at.

Zareth posted...

36 is actually the youngest possible age a grandparent can be without being legally questionable, provided that both parties had children at age 18.

Depends on specific local AoC laws and the sperm donor's age. In Colorado's case, anyone 17 or older is fair game across the board, anyone 15 or 16 can have sex with anyone less than 10 years older than them, and anyone under 15 can have sex with anyone less than four years older than them. There's also a spousal exemption, and 16 or 17-year-olds can marry with parental consent. There doesn't seem to be an absolute minimum age. That means a girl can legally get pregnant as soon as she's physically capable of doing so, so long as the father is less than 4 years older. You could hypothetically get a 20-yar-old grandmother, provided the grandfather was only 24.

Dikitain posted...

Arguing semantics doesn't make that statement any less wrong.

Sure it does. If "it wasn't a thing" means "it didn't exist," the statement is wrong. If "it wasn't a thing" means "nobody cared that it existed," the statement is correct. The semantics of that phrase dictate everything about how correct the statement is.

and praised high rural teen birth rates as evidence that these communities "value life,"

And, of course, not that those communities have utterly ineffectual sex ed, poor access to contraception, and a complete dearth of things to do other than bang each other. Nope, must be that they're all choosing not to have abortions (which, of course, means nobody else should be able to choose to have one).

AltOmega2 posted...

I actually agree with what others are saying about the CEO basically being a murderer via negligence.

One can argue whether or not the CEO actually deserved death for his recklessness and misleading claims, but I think we can all agree that he needed to be stopped, and I'm perfectly fine with death being what stopped him.

SinisterSlay posted...

Rich people get rich by not spending money

That's axiomatically false. Rich people get rich by spending money on things that make them more money. Simply not spending money just prevents you from running out of money.

AltOmega2 posted...

even Bill Gates?

Bill Gates didn't become a billionaire by being a good person. He's now making a quasi-earnest effort to use his billions to do good things, which is good (how that balances out with his previous misdeeds is a complicated moral judgement, but there isn't a ton of point in trying to judge people overall like that), but what he's doing is still a drop in the bucket compared to what he could do. 100 billion dollars is really an absolutely staggering amount of money, far more than any one person will ever be able to spend on themselves without making a genuine effort to piss it away on nothing (like buying Twitter for $45 billion to shitpost without consequence or taking joyrides to space). Meanwhile, paying $1500/month in rent for every single one of the ~585,000 homeless people in the US (which is a very generous estimate for what housing them would cost, given the potential to house families together and find further savings by operating on a large scale) would cost about 10.5 billion per year. Even with no other income, Gates could fund that for 10 years continuously and still have more money left than he could ever spend on himself.

The fact of the matter is that reducing any billionaire's fortune by 99% - an unfathomable loss for any one of us - would still leave them with a minimum of $10 million to their name, more than enough to live the rest of their lives without wanting for anything. Everyone in the $100 billion plus club could have that happen twice and still be in that position. That they give away a couple billion a year is nothing compared to what they're actually capable of, a potential which they resist realizing solely because they like the big number.

Count_Drachma posted...

Did no one learn "hindsight is 20/20"?

Countless things that succeeded could've easily gone catastrophically wrong With any major venture, there's risk.

Is... is Zeus actually defending this sub?

AltOmega2 posted...

it's entirely another to say "it's okay they died because they were millionaires, good riddance"
The latter just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Billionaires*. There are plenty of millionaires that are fine people. Billionaires, however, don't exist without doing many, many terrible things, not least of which is waking up every morning and choosing not to solve any of the countless societal problems that they could solve with zero impact to their quality of life.

On top of that, this was an extremely risky endeavour, which everybody knew going in. That doesn't necessarily mean they deserved to die from it, but it's also not tremendously surprising, and it's hard to feel really bad about that extreme risk coming to fruition.

keyblader1985 posted...

https://i.imgur.com/5fiX7gW.jpeg

That's... damn.

I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing. I'm laughing so hard.

MeatiestMeatus posted...

Did the submarine take top billing in the headlines for a few days? Sure. But if anyone is looking for reports on other issues, those reports are very much out there. Sounds to me like some of you need to source your news better. Instead of following headlines, try looking for the news you're seeking.

That's kind of the issue. Nobody's complaining that they can't find news on all of the other tragic deaths that happened at the same time, they're complaining that these 5 people (at least four of whom were likely horrible) who voluntarily took an extreme risk and ended up dying for it are being given more public attention than hundreds of others dying in far more tragic circumstances. Of particular note is how much money was spent trying to confirm the fate of these five people (and how much more would have been spent recovering the sub had it been found intact), given that that same money could have saved considerably more than 0 lives if allocated toward any of those other tragedies.

wolfy42 posted...

I do wish they would let you pay less if you own the original somehow

While I get the sentiment, that's unfortunately not really possible with games that old. With modern ones, sure, since you can detect if the game is already on the system (Super Luigi U did this, being cheaper to download as DLC if you already owned NSMBU than to purchase standalone), but there's pretty much no way to reliably verify who has what SNES carts.

Indeed. Pretty much the only way they might have suffered is if it lost power and only imploded after falling for some time.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Anyways is Ozmose the person I can't see posting? Is the post as hateful as I imagine it to be?

He's mostly just dodging the question. "I'd wager a majority of Americans don't even know what the supreme court is, let alone who's in it." Not outright condoning anything, but conspicuously not agreeing with the sentiment or making suggestions to the contrary.

BlackScythe0 posted...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/titan-submersible-navy-acoustic-sensors.html

The U.S. Navy, using data from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track hostile submarines, detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the vicinity of the Titan submersible at the time communications with the vessel were lost on Sunday, two senior Navy officials said on Thursday.

So they knew it was gone, but still brought out all their toys to play and kept peoples hopes up.

It's more that when you've got at least two billionaire families wanting answers, "We don't think there's an appreciable chance they survived" isn't an acceptable answer.

Of course, those billionaire families are only too happy to let taxpayers of several countries foot the bill, consuming resources that could have been used to save significantly more than 5 lives, but that's just how billionaires do.

That would be depression, and it's 100% treatable. Start looking for treatment.

ReturnOfFa posted...

it's a far quicker way to die than slowly suffocating to death

I believe he said that before it was confirmed that the sub imploded, in reference to the idea of slowly suffocating in a cramped space with minimal hope of escape. As I said, that's why real subs carry cyanide pills for everyone on board: if they end up with a life support failure, it's really only humane to make sure everyone has an easier out than that.

With more recent information, yeah, their deaths were probably near-instantaneous. Humans can't remain conscious through such rapid pressurization as that, even if they somehow managed not to be crushed by the walls of the sub as it collapsed. So at least they probably didn't suffer.

Just think how many concert tickets he'll be able to afford now.

I think it was specifically how much it sounded like Golden Sun that tipped me off, but yeah. Dude's got a very distinctive style (which is hardly a bad thing).

agesboy posted...

but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMDOIEyu0E

Like three notes in and I could immediately tell it was Sakuraba (I'd forgotten he did BK, it's been quite a while). I couldn't put a finger on exactly what was so distinctive about it, but it was.

SinisterSlay posted...

Somehow I expect more of a slow leak than an implosion.

At those pressure differentials, you don't get slow leaks. If water starts coming in, there stops being an "in" very, very quickly, unless you've got an unfathomably strong hull (at which point, bouyancy becomes a real issue). It's basically the inverse of a balloon popping.

pionear posted...

Well it's probably no different than the people lining up to fly to 'Space' or 'Near Space/Orbit' on one of those Virgin Galactic/Blue Origin Rockets they are making for the uber rich to fly on.

There's always a chance of dying in any vehicle, hell even people on a Bike can get killed.

Nothing is without risk, obviously, but that doesn't mean these things aren't exceptionally, unjustifiably risky. Especially when you've got somebody like this douche insisting that there's no need to be concerned about safety when there's 10,000 feet of ocean sitting on top of you.

SinisterSlay posted...

Well they could have solved world hunger with their money.
Could have saved those 700 migrants that drowned.
Could pretty much donate every weapon Ukraine needs.
Could build renewable energy for the entire planet.

Nope, spent their money on a submarine to visit an old wreck under the ocean.

And, worse than that, they've now tied up many millions of dollars trying to rescue them, which would be highly questionable even if there were a significant chance of success. That money could have saved a whole lot more than 5 lives.

agesboy posted...

i can think of a couple mid games that have had absolutely baller soundtracks,

See: The entire Sonic series.

Loquacious llama mouths?

It might work, but it's risky. Somebody could drop their ratchet on the way down, and then we'd need to mount a rescue mission for the ratchet to keep up the first rescue mission.

Entity13 posted...

That's actually my #1 hope. The original game is still around, but I imagine the appeal of an old SNES game is limited for the younger generations.

It is, however, a game that has aged excellently (Paper Mario made a few refinements to the battle system, but the first game's still holds up very well), which makes it a prime candidate for giving it some shiny graphics and a modern rerelease. I probably won't pick it up because I can just play it on the Wii VC whenever I want, but I expect it'll do pretty well and hopefully convince Nintendo to do a little more with the Mario RPG idea than whatever they've been trying to do with Paper Mario.

PK_Spam posted...

Why didnt they just have everyone go to the ocean with buckets and scoop the water out? Even if they couldnt empty it, it would relieve the pressure and they could open the hatch and swim up to the top.

That would work, except the sub was designed such that it has to be opened from the outside, so they can't just open the hatch.

Cacciato posted...

The historian was the French guy, I believe.

Yeah, that's my understanding after learning more. RIP to that dude, hopefully he got to see the wreck himself.

Cacciato posted...

And technically one of the billionaires was the 19 year old son of the actual rich dude, so I do feel kinda bad for that guy, if only for his age.

On one hand, yeah, but billionaire sons of billionaires also tend not to exactly be the sorts of people the world is worse off without, so I struggle to be really sympathetic.

Cacciato posted...

The more I read about the pilot/CEO the more he comes off as a piece of s*** though. I guess the company even settled with a former employee they fired because he was calling them out in their safety issues.

100%. I think I'm actually glad he's dying here, though it would have been nice if he didn't take anyone with him. Big tech bro energy, except playing around with things that are actually dangerous and where absolutely nobody should have the tech bro mentality.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Never knew anyone disliked the NSMB games, they were basically just more/new Mario, which is never a bad thing.

It wasn't so much active dislike in most cases as it was that there were just too many in a short time frame with no particular differentiating features. The first one had a pretty lukewarm reception, but Wii was very well received. The issue was that Wii came in November 2009, then 2 came out in August 2012, and U came out in November 2012. Where none of them really had a unique identity beyond "Hey look we're making 2D Mario again!", it got really stale. I didn't even play 2, and I still wasn't ready for U when I got my WiiU in December 2012. I played it a bit, couldn't get into it, then came back like 6-8 months later and had a blast because I was in the mood for another one by then (and it was really good).

Now, of course, it's been like a decade since the last one (U Deluxe aside), mostly because Mario Maker has been filling much of the demand for 2D Mario, so I'm game for another one. It doesn't exactly look groundbreaking or even notably different from NSMB, but it should be a pretty fun time.

Zareth posted...

Is it still going to have the terrible level system?

Most likely. They just called it a graphical upgrade, and moving away from the level system would require a pretty substantial overhaul of the whole game (enough work that they might as well just make a new game at that point).

Though now it's been over 10 years since U (not counting the port), so I'm not opposed to the idea of a new one.

I'm also intrigued by that Silent Hope game. Probably won't be anything amazing, but I'll keep an eye on it.

fettster777 posted...

At least he died doing what he loved.

Yeah. If he hadn't previously been on a dive to the wreck, this job was probably the chance of a lifetime for him. Still a shame, though.

Though, saying this, that last article gave an unofficial passenger list, and none of them were specifically identified as a historian. Earlier reports had suggested 3 passengers, a pilot, and a historian (who I assumed was guiding the tour), but that may have changed. If it is actually just a bunch of billionaires and the company's CEO who cut corners to make a quick buck, I'm less concerned.

Well then I guess I'm just upset for the historian.

NSMBWii was quite good. So was NSMBU, though I had to come back to it a few months later because I'd finished Wii so recently that I wasn't ready for another one. This looks like a similar game, but with an effort to differentiate it with more gimmicks than just a couple different powerups.

PK_Spam posted...

Xenosaga is literally in the trademark info for XC3, and it wasnt there for 2, which had Kos-Mos and T-Elos, so I believe its coming, but were still way too hot on XC3 Future Redeemed to get anything concrete. Maybe next year

Yeah, that's about what I'm thinking. They went thoroughly out of their way to reference Saga in FR, so something's coming, but it won't be happening this soon.

At some point, I'm expecting a Xenosaga remake/port as a surprise reveal, just based on how many allusions Xenoblade 3's DLC story made to it, but I doubt that will happen this soon, especially with the Baten Kaitos remakes on the immediate horizon. Between that, TotK, and only just finishing Xenoblade, I expect Monolith's been pretty busy lately.

potdnewb posted...

sodium is an alkali metal sodium chloride aka salt is a preservative though

It's mostly the sodium ions that do the preserving, by virtue of creating a hypertonic environment that sucks the water out of anything that tries to grow there. Chloride ions also contribute, but sodium is the main one that organisms use to osmoregulate.

If you aren't at least adding garlic to your burgers, you're dead to me.

I hope they announce new games in every one of their series, all coming out next week and each being the bestest game ever. And also a Switch 2 that has a 16k display and runs everything at 600 FPS and is also only $10 because that's how much my allowance is.

What_The_Chris posted...

yeah but they're all billionaires, don't expect much empathy from the common folk

Three of them are billionaires. One's the pilot and one's a Titanic historian giving them the tour, both of whom I'm considerably more upset by.

ArvTheGreat posted...

What do you mean no story line they had lots to work with

Short of adapting one of the Paper Mario or M&L games, the story they had to work with was mostly "Bowser kidnapped somebody important, go get them back."

VideoboysaysCube posted...

The people on the road are the main reason why I rarely ever leave the house. I wish I could take more vacations (which I desperately need), but I just can't stand the aggravation that comes with driving. There's way too many literal psychopaths out there. Either that or they're just completely braindead. Probably from drugs or alcohol. I've avoided so many accidents by driving under the assumption that the cars next to me will do the dumbest thing possible. I had this one close call the other day where a car pulled out directly in front of me. And I waited for it. I was already prepared to hit the breaks and if I wasn't, I would have struck him real good. And things won't get any better. People texting brought on a whole new level of danger. It's just an incredible display of total disregard for other people's lives.

And yet the population as a whole resists efforts to move away from driving being the only practical way to get around, making it a lot harder to justify getting those idiots off the road because doing so would destroy their independent mobility.

MightBeOverSoon posted...

Lol. I'm guessing you've never driven in Europe? Crazy f***s drive mostly with their horns over there.

Depends where you are in Europe. In terms of deaths per 100,000 vehicles, Eastern European countries tend to be quite a bit worse than the US (the highest being Albania, at ~6.5 times more), Western tend to be quite a bit better (with Norway topping the list at 5.4 times lower, not counting San Marino because it's too small to give meaningful numbers). Driving culture certainly changes, which can be a shock and lead to the feeling that you're less safe driving there, but actual fatality stats show that large chunks of Europe are significantly safer to drive in than the US.

MightBeOverSoon posted...

Oddly enough Johannesburg was the most reasonable place I've ever been as far as other drivers went. Granted, it's been a decade.

South Africa on the whole is about 8.5 times worse than the US, though my quick search for by-country data didn't turn up anything for Johannesburg specifically, so perhaps that's being brought up by other parts of the country.

Ozmose posted...

We tend to placate and make excuses for people with mental health problems these days. It's turned into a get out of jail free card to a degree, allowing people to avoid punishment for their bad behavior.

It's in a bit of a weird and very unfortunate position. We're recognizing that jailing (or even executing people) for treatable mental health issues they can't be expected to control themselves is bad, which is obviously a good thing, but the mental health care supports needed to treat those issues simply aren't there (and when they are, most people can't afford them), so the actual solution to the problem never actually happens. By and large, "people are avoiding responsibility by claiming to have mental health issues" is a gross exaggeration of the reality of the situation, mostly from pearl-clutching conservatives who lose their minds at the mere idea of somebody doing a crime and not going to jail for it (while happily supporting white-collar criminals that cause harm on an infinitely larger scale than that one youth what stole a Pepsi), but it's still a really troublesome middle ground where we've recognized that there are better ways to deal with these behaviours, but we aren't actually developing the capacity to employ those better methods.

AltOmega2 posted...

I dunno what that is

I bet this guy's thighs aren't even hot for goat felons.