Beat Saber & VTOL VR are my recommendations for VR games that can be more then a 30min ExpErIEncE.

You didn’t ask, I know… :-)

Fair enough - semantics. Some people have fun doing this, some don’t. You seem to be part of the second group, no problem with that.

Your initial question was „how do people play those games?“ and „being part of the games online community and/or using the communities resources to play the game“ is one answer. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I am currently into Monster Hunter Rise. It does not exactly do the best job of explaining ingame what „30% Affinity“ on a weapon means. So I looked it up. That was fun to me.

In the end I guess it’s your imperative to research games before you buy them. If they don’t fit your play style, don’t buy them. You don’t mean to say that no one should enjoy „complex“ games, are you?!?

But see, for some people and some genres, the fiddling and trying and testing and redoing IS the actual gameplay.

BG3 is a good example, Factorio came up in this thread as well. And from a certain perspective BG3 is as much of a playground as Tears of the Kingdom. The latter hides the numbers from you, the former invites you to play with them.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I for example can’t seem to get into story driven single player games such as God of War or Farcry. The constant tutorialising drives me nuts…

Ultimate Chicken Horse has quickly become the goto-local-multiplayer in my group.

The game design is so devilishly elegant: you co-create 2D jump&run levels. Together you want to make them so easy that at least one player can finish the level (and get points), but also hard enough that not all of the group get through (no one gets points).

It’s great. Will most likely be on sale. Don’t sleep on it!

More people need to try Starsector. It’s so goddamn good.

Ah, right. Pi-hole only listens for the first jump. I was stupidly assuming that the VPN tunnel exit would be part of this.

Tried that, does not work. When I’m physically „in“ my LAN, my domains resolve correctly. Via VPN only IPs work.

How can I use my Pi-hole as DNS Server also over VPN? I run Wireguard on Unraid. And while the VPN works, I can’t seem to the DNS over VPN to go my way.

Was my first thought too.

Not a shooter or a space RTS, but proper prime directive star trekking. Honestly I don’t even know what you would DO in the game. But I can imagine the UI clearly, so there is that…

Maybe somewhat like to old 90s point and click adventure games, only in 2023?!? I don’t know. I want it though.

Help me here. Never got it, still don’t get it. Please explain like I’m 5.

Check out https://crossplaygames.com/ - for me it’s one of those bookmarks that I get back to again and again over the years.

„Robinsons Requiem“, available on GoG.

It’s a survival horror first person rpg with a semi realistic health system. It’s creepy and hard and so goddamn good. I’m am actually surprised that it gets mentioned so rarely because I would not know of any other earlier game with those now so ubiquitous survival mechanics.

Neptunes kiss.

To get you started on your self-curated list of feeds, you could have a look at https://ooh.directory/

I think it’s neat to not only have the big and obvious sites in your feedreader that push dozens of items per day, but also some assorted small and cozy blogs that tickle your interests.

May I throw „Cassette Beasts“ in the mix? Is it premium as in the seventh installment of a series that lost its soul with the second release? As in costs 60+€ and is a collectathon with no heart? No. Not premium.

But it has

• tons of replayability. Gotta catch them all.
• an intriguing story that is surprisingly mature for a pokeyman game
• fan-tas-tic soundtrack

Also lots of stuff to find and discover. Also also does not break the bank. Also also also does not eat the SteamDecks battery for lunch, because it’s only 2D. And finally, for us old people, the combat is turn based. You will not fail because of lacking reflexes.

Hm. Installing a separate OS is not exactly painless, is it? I mean, I did the same, but just because you could use a pogo stick to get from a to b doesn’t make it a proper form of transportation.

And the whole Apple silicone story makes this point moot anyway. I am very happy that the toolkit exists. Hopefully we see a healthy and easier to use open source tool chain soon (think Lutris like tools) and more native ports down the line.

Yup, worth it. I love that it is just so blatantly videogame-y. The damn mirror? Yeah, sure. Makes sense, game.

I 100% agree with every point you made. And no, I do not want that, at all.

I still think it will play out like this though. Just because the network effect, speed of iNnoVaTIve feature development and marketing combined will favor Meta - a combination of “Why can’t mlem app do X?”, “All your friends are here” and banner ads on Insta. The “OG Fediverse” will still exist, maybe even grow - but federation as a new architecture for all Social Media will be off the table.

According to Fediverse Observer the fediverse currently has 1.8 million monthly active users (src). Instagram in the meantime has 1.44 billion monthly active users (src).

Lets be generous and use the 12 million total user accounts for the fediverse, not the IMHO more relevant active users. Lets then be very conservative and say that only 1% of all Instagram users will try the new Activity Pub based service Threads. By this estimate the Meta-share of the fediverse will bigger then the whole accumulated userbase so far with 14.4 million users. I think that the 1% is quite conservative, given the marketing might that Meta has.

This means that from the start there will be a “second” fediverse - even if completely defederated from the existing one - with people sharing links, writing comments & thoughts and posting pictures. So there is a potential question to be asked - who is defederating from whom here content-wise?

Secondly I think EEE can also aim at “just” the featureset and technicalities. Safe to assume that Meta has more paid engineers and designers on staff then lets say Lemmy (or Mastodon). Those teams will implement features that the users want, that make their life more convenient. Features that take the currently existing “nerdy overhead” out of the fediverse. All the OS services in the fediverse are then under pressure to either adopt or die.

So yeah, capitalism does what capitalism does, making things marketable. Written wearing my Che shirt.

Sounds good, but only in theory.

I think you almost comically underestimate Metas power to bring eyeballs and therefor content to a platform. In due time the vast majority of Activity Pub „stuff“ will happen under Metas regime. The initial services such as Mastodon or Lemmy will merely be a blip on the radar. Sure, they will continue to exist, but the mass adoption and the network effects that come with it will be under Metas claim on the fediverse. And then it’s „embrace, extend, extinguish“ again (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish).