I actually bought one for my collection. Takes a lot of tweaking, which I think is what detracts a lot of people, but it’s not bad hardware at all.

Have you ever found that game where it plays well, mechanics are solid and the art is also up your alley. But at the end of each round you play you just see the little battle pass section trying to prey on your sense of FOMO, trying to scrape out just a little more, even though the price tag upfront is already a bit higher than what you’d normally pay for a game in the same vein.

I found a game I probably could’ve genuinely enjoyed for a long time. I was talking it up to my friends to buy it on release together so we could play co-op. The demo was really great.

For it to come with a Day 1 battle pass (plus online only access when it had singleplayer modes) makes the developer’s intent very clear: we want more money, and we’ll use every FOMO trick in the book to achieve it. And once you pay, you still have to work for those rewards you paid for.

Cosmetic DLCs are fine. I play a fair bit of DST and I enjoy collecting twitch drops and free skins, and if I wanted to support the Devs more I could buy a pack. That’s upfront and transparent. I don’t get reminded every time I build a chest that “There’s 16 more skins you can unlock for this item”. That would be scummy.

How is your experience with the framework? I’ve been eyeing it as my next upgrade but it is a bit pricy so I’m saving up for it at the moment.

Looking at the pricing for the Framework 16 (prebuilt with Windows, to benchmark), it’s just under x2 the price of the Acer Nitro 5 my partner bought last year with a 3050. Not the worst proposition assuming most of the laptop’s components make it 10 years and the only upgrades/replacements are to CPU, GPU and battery.

The main concern is longevity since it’s a relatively new company. It needs early adopters to commit that initial investment and pay the extra now for the company to survive and scale, and it needs staying power and time in the market in order to attract more confidence and convert sales.

I would like to see it succeed since my personal goal is to just reduce the e-waste I contribute as a heavy tech user. Laptops are just e-waste walking at the moment so I think any reduction to throwing out the whole thing every time it starts to fall behind current developments is good.

Awareness is growing and there is a demand. We just have to see if the demand is great enough to push user repairability in tech.

I have been following the developments for Framework, and really hope the modular design for laptops will go the way of the usb in adoption throughout the industry. We could benefit from less becoming e-waste.

Based on the coverage I’ve seen and what I understand, likely there would be a new motherboard and larger base to house bigger parts and the screen would be maintained.

I do believe they’ll be able to achieve the goal of making laptop lifespans last beyond 10 years, which is why we’d like ways to upgrade. I’m cautiously optimistic about developments here.

I learned to crack open my laptop shell and replace the battery, which saved me 30 bucks when capacity was dead and I was getting a spicy pillow in the works.

My model had an easily searchable servicing guide, and I’d followed it to replace the thermal paste as well. That being said, I am looking for a future replacement as it no longer runs some indie games I have and there’s no way to upgrade its internals to newer standards. My dear laptop is future e-waste, as it pains me to say.

This industry needs to go back to focus on repairability. It would push for more sustainable part and product designs, which has become a big factor in purchase consideration lately.

I enjoy top down stealth games, and haven’t seen this game get discussed much, but it was pretty fun - Serial Cleaner (and sequel, Serial CleanerS)

You play a guy who cleans up murder scenes for an unknown serial killer, all the while evading guards and other security measures. It’s a pretty fun experience, and I do recommend giving it a go if that’s your kind of thing.

There’s also the Marvelous Miss Take, a game where you play a woman on a mission to perform a series of heists. Also a top down stealth game, you get to use some gadgets to distract guards while you sneak past and to your goal.

Both are older indie games, but enjoyable for at least one playthrough.

Yes. I’m looking forward to better search functionality on instances though. It’s kind of hard to search if something’s been asked or posted already on mobile (using Liftoff, but I’ve also tried Jerboa and Connect)

The madlads! (I’m sorry I had to)

No, but I understand that. I’ve been on bad terms with my own mother following an incident last October where I swore at her when she refused to hear me out when I tried to explain myself. The full thing is obviously a bit more complex.

Our only interactions since have been arguments where she’s said very verbally abusive things and it’s hard. She’s done better than her own mom, who’s just generally verbally abusive by only doing so while mad, but there’s some things you can’t say without having to make amends later, and she’s run up a list.

Difficult families are difficult. I hope things improve for you as well.

If you follow the side quest introducing that area, I think there’s an NPC that mentioned that tidbit. Though, my friend didn’t remember that until I brought it up too, so you may have just not encountered it.

The glider placement was a lot less obvious in TOTK for sure.

Similarly, I was completely ignorant about what the chasms were for until 2 days in when my friend casually drops that she’s been exploring [redacted because spoiler markdown isn’t working for me] and I went “Wait, there’s a WHAT?”

I’d missed a pretty critical side quest and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if my friend hadn’t told me.

Times like these are when our inclination to ignore quests for later really bites us in the behind…

As an 8 year old without much of a guide at all, I was a very proud Magician on MapleStory… one who dealt violence with her trusty magic wands and staves… physically.

I didn’t understand what skills and hotkeys were until several years down the line when reading comprehension and life experience improved.

It’s sunk cost fallacy, skinner box loops and more. It starts out fun, somewhat enjoyable. Then eventually it turns into a slog, and grind and you lose sight of why you even find it fun to begin with.

By then you’d be hundreds or thousands of hours in, and you end up commenting about your crappy experience here, I guess.

Pokémon Reborn has been one of the best Pokémon fangames I’ve enjoyed. Never thought I’d see the day it was completed, but it was last year. It supports wondertrade, online battles, trading and more, and has custom terrain effects.

True, I think in Japan kids weren’t considered human until they survived to a certain age due to how child mortality just worked in the past (the exact number slips my mind atm).

Based on Linfamy’s video here, sometimes parents would even “return” children shortly after birth, just because childbirth was safer than abortion measures of the time.

Good point. I do agree it’s more of a modern idea.

Though in a way, you do have to care for your retirement account. You have to make deposits regularly and ensure investments are done responsibly to ensure the best possible outcome.

If you don’t take care of them, then you’ll only get a poor outcome, like not receiving the best possible care but just the bare minimum necessary or even nothing at all, if things are bad enough.

After all, the bible also says “Love they neighbour as thyself”. When your children grow up and become your neighbour, the way you’ve treated them has a possibility of coming home to roost, especially now.

Initially made an account with the instance opened after my country’s subreddit made the shift, but on Jerboa trying to look at other instance content was really rough.

So I joined here since I enjoy the content, and raise the black flag every so often.

I used to subscribe to r/freegames so this rocks! Thanks for creating it!