Guild Wars2 is very good.

It downscales your level if you go back to older areas, so you can play with lower level friends. (Though it’s still pretty generous, and the high level friends will be more effective). So if your friends aren’t playing much, you can still coop with them when they do play.

There’s a lot of content. Most of the maps have stuff just happening. There’s also instanced content for 5, 10, or … I think private convergences can go up to 20?

There’s not really a gear grind. When you hit max level (which is pretty easy) good-enough gear is very easy to get. A smidge better than that is a little expensive but still very feasible. The fanciest gear is numerically the same, but let’s you reskin and swap stats for free, which is nice.

I imagine you’d either have no phone, or one of those prepaid with cash ones. You could also probably turn off the cell parts and only use wifi

Probably that many people are like exclusively emotion driven. I don’t think we should all be like purely logical Vulcans. Emotions are very fast and can be a good survival tool. Like if you’re waiting for the train and a bear wanders onto the platform, you don’t need to wait to logically evaluate if it’s a threat. Just run.

But people rely on emotions for everything. We all do this. So you have like someone telling you something factual and uncomfortable, and you just reject it.

“Eating meat is bad for the environment and is cruel to animals. We should all eat a lot less meat” makes a lot of people’s emotions flare up. The facts don’t matter. They feel like they’re being insulted, that the other person is a blowhard, blah blah blah.

The oatmeal did a comic about this, actually: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

I think this is why we can’t have nice things.

What is the discomfort? Are you afraid something will happen?

You should probably talk to a professional about this. I am not a professional, alas.

I once has a girl follow up 2 weeks later asking why we didn’t go on a date? I told her that was the first question she asked me and I felt she wasn’t into the conversation.

I do wonder sometimes what they’re thinking. Like, do they think the conversation is going well when I have to keep resuscitating it?

I’m told people have “different communication styles”, which is fine, but “not asking questions and giving really short answers” doesn’t seem like an effective style here. Like, if someone’s chatting you up at the bar and you’re not interested, then giving short answers can make a kind of sense. But in a dating app where you both showed interest? If you’re no longer interested just unmatch.

No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they’re rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.

Working for free on nights and weekends to “hit that deadline” is not good. You’re just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it’s not as much as the owners.

And then there’s bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like “oh no none of us want to do this but there’s no organized mechanism to resist”

• Profiles with no hooks. They’ll have like 3 unremarkable pictures and a bio that says like “I like hanging out”. What is your match supposed to do with this? It’s extra bad if their bio says like “I hate small talk”.

Side note: small talk plays important roles in socializing and is an important skill. Use it to steer the conversation to interesting topics.

• Getting too in their head and bailing for flimsy reasons. Like, if the guy threatened you definitely do not continue. But I had a friend that was like “he was really sweet and lived nearby, but his hair was browner than his photos and I just wanted blonde”. Like what. That is not a good reason to bail.

No one’s going to be perfect. People are going to be nervous on a first date. Give them a chance.

• Conversely, sticking with a relationship too long. Contrary to the above, sometimes you really should call it. If the guy isn’t treating you with respect, you don’t have to keep going. If you realize you never look forward to seeing them, you should probably end it.

• Chatting too long before meeting. You’re not a real person to them when you’re just over text. You’re missing body language and tone. You want to meet in person quickly.

The general flow for me is like

• Initial message. Hopefully ask something about their profile
• if they respond well, maybe another couple follow up questions.
• clear any deal breakers. Eg: if you have a kid, ask “hey I just wanted to check you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”
• ask if they want to have a date in person to see if you get along
• schedule the date
• go on the date

If the online chat ends and you haven’t scheduled a date, but you want to, that’s bad. You don’t want to be having a second “hey what’s up?” tinder chat.

• related to the above: dead ending the chat. Don’t do that. Like, let’s pretend your profile says you love dragon age. They message you with “I’ve been a dragon age fan since origins! Did you play Veilguard yet? I’m thinking of starting it this weekend”. You respond with "I haven’t played it yet ". What the fuck kind of garbage reply is that? What is the other person supposed to do with that? They essentially have to send you another first message. Good first messages are hard! Give them something to work with. “I haven’t played it yet, but I loved origins! Always played mage. What was your favorite origin?” You almost always want to ask a question.

If this doesn’t come naturally to you , that’s fine. Just remember with your brain “always ask a question”. You need to give them something to work with.

• Don’t non sequitur into sexual details. Sorry, but them’s the norms. Like, a friend was chatting with a match about Star Trek and the guy out of the blue was like “so do you like anal?”. Unmatched.

And a last thought that ended up stranded at the bottom of this post, and I’m writing on my phone so editing is hard:

“But what about people who want to take it slow?” Do you want to date someone who doesn’t want to date? I don’t.

edit: minor error from autocorrect

I have never ever ever wanted to “just be friends” first. I am not looking for a new friend. I have friends. I am looking for intimacy that’s not typically available for friends, and sex.

Furthermore, the timeline and transition points for “just friends” to “dating” are not defined. If I want to kiss now but we’re on a “just friends” track, what do I do? Probably pursue someone who wants what I want, and not spin my wheels hoping the other person will come around

This does not sound like a very common experience.

What is it that makes you uncomfortable? Is it all scenarios? Coffee date? Bar date?

The other day I was updating something and a test failed. I looked at it and saw I had written it, and left a comment that said like “{Coworker} says this test case is important”. Welp. He was right. Was a subtle wrong that could’ve gone out to customers, but the wrong stayed just on my local thanks to that test.

I would have questions about how they work with a team and structure.

Are they going to be okay with planning work out two weeks ahead? Sometimes hobbyists do like 80% of a task and then wander off (it’s me with some of my hobbies).

Are they going to be okay following existing code standards? I don’t want to deal with someone coming in and trying to relitigate line lengths or other formatting stuff, or someone who’s going to reject the idea of standards altogether.

Are they going to be okay giving and getting feedback from peers? Sometimes code review can be hard for people. I recently had a whole snafu at work where someone was trying to extend some existing code into something it wasn’t meant to do*, and he got really upset when the PR was rejected.

Do they write tests? Good ones? I feel like a lot of self taught hobbyists don’t. A lot of professionals don’t. I don’t want to deal with someone’s 4000 line endpoint that has no tests but “just works see I manually tested it”

I’ve definitely had some coworkers that in retrospect we should not have hired. But I’ve also had people I was iffy on that turned out great. Hiring is hard.

I think having areas with weaker or stronger enemies is fine. Good, even. So long as you can tell by looking at them what you’re getting into.

Dark Souls generally does this. A rotting skeleton is a low threat. A giant knight in black armor and man sized sword is a bigger threat.

Oblivion will often have dudes that visually and behaviorally are the same, but hit way differently because of the numbers assigned to them. You can’t really look at a scene and understand what you’re getting into.

Other games also do a bad job here. Borderlands for example will have identical looking bandits, but in this area they’re indestructible level 100, and that one they’re push over level 5. The ass-creed Viking one did the same thing. Archers on one side of the river you could ignore, but the far side would one hit you.

I think a lot of studios don’t want to invest in the extra art assets and stuff when it’s cheaper to just use the same monster model and assign it different numbers.

I feel like trying to combine

• high vertical power growth
• non linear “open world”
• power fantasy

all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.

Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.

Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.

A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.

Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600

If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.

I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.

Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.

Oblivion was kind of really bad though. It had the worst level scaling of the genre.

I think the spell crafting was also toned down and more gated than Morrowind. And the equipment I think was overly simplified.

I… I played a lot of guild wars 2. It’s a good game!

But about 40 games total. I don’t want to be a mono-gamer so that’s nice.

Nine Sols is squarely in the “good but not fun” category for me. It is well executed but I did not enjoy most of it. Also the story is a bummer.

I reinstalled Sekiro after finishing it to see if my memory was rose tinted. No, sekiro is still like music. Even cleared the “you should lose this fight” tutorial boss.

This is a good answer.

At my job, there was a desire to do a big rewrite of the system. It was a disaster. We spent like 8 months on this project where we delivered no value to customers. Then there was essentially a mutiny from the engineering team and we killed it.

We’ve since built on top of the original system and had, in the words of product leadership, “the most productive quarter in the history of the company”.

Now, why was it a disaster? The biggest reason was that people, especially people in leadership positions, did not understand the existing system very well. They would then make decisions based on falsehoods and mythology.

The GOP is a hazard and should be removed from office.

Path of Exile 2 is pretty good. Wasd movement and a dodge roll are nice. Some parts are still rough, but it’s been out like a month.

I don’t really trust that just anyone will make something new and fun. Something that tries to extract money, sure.