CleoTheWizard

CleoTheWizard, 1 day ago

I think the high jump could’ve been handled by either holding the jump button down to control the height like most platformers do or by having a system to time the jump in a multi-jump sequence to gain height like Mario 64 used. I also don’t see why a double jump wouldn’t suffice as an unlock in its place.

This is a key example of what I mean by the nostalgia is holding them back. The moves are mostly copies of BK and it didn’t need to be that way.

CleoTheWizard, 2 days ago

I honestly thought I was the only one that has those problems. I think the thing that gets me is when you install a program, the installer closes, you don’t know where in gods name it just installed to, so you type the name of the program and windows is like “sorry never heard of it”, so you go to the programs list and it’s right there.

What you mentioned is particularly frustrating because I too will type full program names and it often switches on the very last letter. It’s even more frustrating that the user can’t manipulate the search by typing a few letters, realizing those letters are shared by two programs, and then typing a few more letters to lead it to your program without moving to the mouse. Instead it acts like you’ve added no info and recommends the same thing.

Also if you go to uninstall a program by right clicking it in start or search and instead of uninstalling it presents you with a list of programs which you then have to go find the program again in and then hit uninstall again. Been that way for 8 years now.

CleoTheWizard, 4 days ago

Who are all these people Jerry?

CleoTheWizard, 4 days ago

The issue isn’t material choice. It’s that plastic can’t be replaced by most materials because of the current function of our containers.

Let me pitch it like this: go to the grocery store. It’s all plastic. The meat? Plastic container. Milk is in plastic. Water in plastic. They’ll even put your potatoes in a pre-packaged plastic sack.

So the issue is that plastic has made its entire niche and therefore is irreplaceable in that niche. Whereas if we would swap over to reusable milk containers and dispensers or refillable chip bags, we’d be miles ahead even if those were all made of plastic still.

The problem isn’t containers, it’s the existence of disposable packing being the only option.

CleoTheWizard, 5 days ago

These companies are obsessed with money. The money they lost on refunds forced by Steam is the punishment.

CleoTheWizard, 5 days ago

It seems that steam pulls refunds directly revenue in most cases which means that the publishers and studios feel an immediate impact in their numbers from them.

Valve may choose to absorb some of the refunds but I don’t see why they would. Sony made the games unplayable in certain regions while telling Steam they wanted the game sold in those exact regions beforehand. They misused the store and I’m sure they paid dearly for it with those refunds.

CleoTheWizard, 4 days ago

Yeah except most consumers no longer care about goodwill when buying new products so they’ve just figured out that it doesn’t matter what they do. So if a company has goodwill at this point, it might as well just be unspent money.

CleoTheWizard, 9 days ago

I don’t know why parents need to assume anything once their kid is old enough to display agency. And sexuality doesn’t need to be assumed, parents should stay out of the sexuality of their children for the most part.

But yeah I don’t see how gender is any different than figuring out if your kid likes broccoli. Just push them a bit to experiment like you would with food. Push them to try on all types of clothes. Show them all types of movies. Buy them toys of different types. Have them make friends with kids of other genders. Allow them to participate in activities that cross gender norms. But most importantly force nothing and go with what sticks.

I aim this particularly at parents in the US who essentially pretend that their children have little to no agency until they’re 13 or so. Give your child that agency and you’ll stop having to assume who they are at all.

CleoTheWizard, 7 days ago

As far as I’m aware, there is a website that allows you to sign up to stop receiving these calls in the US. It’s worked for me and I never get sales calls anymore.

Sign up here

CleoTheWizard, 9 days ago

I loved the PS2 era of gaming a lot. This may be a controversial take, but the PS2 era did not last long enough.

Everything about the aesthetics of the games that the PS2 produced were excellent. In my opinion, this is the point when low fidelity and high quality assets overlapped just enough to make games more comprehensible to their players. That enabled a lot of innovation that the PS3/360 era handled entirely differently. Forget an era, the PS2 is the last part of an entire age of gaming that delineates what I’m referring to.

The PS2 was a huge turning point in what games were and could be in 3D. Prior to this, many games were abstract and the characters were a lump of polygons. With the PS2, this began to change. So we began to get games that our minds had to do a lot of interpreting but could see reality through. Nowadays, I’d argue that your mind does less interpreting and so the resulting picture has glaring inaccuracies.

It also helped that ps2 was primarily played on CRTs or at least plasma which helped the picture look better in plenty of scenes than a PS3. Not to mention the color palette of games after the PS2 turned to muck.

CleoTheWizard, 9 days ago

Oh absolutely, I was going to reference the Gameboy Advance that I grew up on as a part of this phase. Unfortunately, I don’t think those handhelds even got their time in the light that they could’ve had. It seems like they’ve had a long legacy but the DS and GameBoy came and went in but two generations of consoles.

I mean imagine what we could do with a gameboy today. Or imagine how we could easily transform a modern phone into a DS form factor. We’re talking now about running a modern resident evil game in the palm of your hand. Insane power really.

All this is largely due to the mobile play stores having no competition or curation. Our mobile games absolutely suck now. There are gems, sure, but otherwise I hate phone gaming despite my phone being my most used device.

I think you’re absolutely correct though, the DS is the best handheld. Slim, powerful enough, very interactive, and a great game library. I highly recommend buying one and modding it, you won’t regret it.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

That isn’t why. PlayStation doesn’t view this as a problem and in fairness, I don’t either. If the game had shipped with this requirement, it would’ve been fine. Many people put up with Ubisoft and they have a whole separate account plus launcher.

What Sony actually wanted was to make it easier on their server side to authenticate purchases and then to use the same PSN account systems to matchmaker for easier cross-play.

Would they collect data? I guess. They can already do that if they want as a publisher. So yeah it’s purely just to use their ecosystem, which makes sense.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

Did I mention server load? What I mean is that having a PSN account means that whatever game is processing your account details doesn’t have to deal with Steam accounts, it just deals with a PSN account the same as it would if you were on PS5.

What I’m saying is it streamlines the code on the developers side of the games they’re publishing and again if Sony is using systems already to authenticate purchases or whatever that can be collected in systems they already have.

This isn’t rocket science, PSN may just be a translation layer.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

I mean yeah this is especially true for online games as this is a form of DRM for Sony and it gives them control to easily reject or accept keys and ban users using their pre-existing systems.

Same thing with cross-play, it’s possible that some of these games were designed to use PSN systems and so that makes integration easy. No clue, but if true it makes sense from Sonys perspective on both of those fronts.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

Correct, I never said it wasn’t buggy either. I’m just pointing out that if you have cross play and you already have console support with console user IDs then it makes sense to just convert PC players into that same console user system.

This is what Xbox used to do when publishing games on Steam and still do with their GamePass stuff. And very similarly, that system also broke things and still breaks things for people.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

Because those systems already exist for the console players. All they’re doing is switching it over to steam but they likely had a translation layer there before to do all the things you’re saying but through PSN instead. Why? Because that system already exists for consoles.

So their options here are that they can take the netcode for consoles and modify it to utilize SteamIDs and fetch data from Steam or they can just turn your Steam ID into a console ID and treat all of the inputs to their systems exactly like they would on the PS5 while fetching them from Steam.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea, I’m saying you’d think that just trying to match the console and the way it handles players would be simpler. Especially when you’re trying to make cross play work. Clearly it wasn’t so they temporarily ditched it. Maybe Sony does just want your data but if that’s true, why would the telemetry gathering be such a big deal? And they also could just use your SteamID for that data gathering. So clearly PSN used to be more integrated than people here are suggesting

CleoTheWizard, 12 days ago

Yes but they likely have existing infrastructure on PSN so it makes sense to do that. Theyre just taking your steam ID and verifying your purchase, then using a PSN ID on their end after the purchase validation for online matchmaking and server side stuff. Not to crazy.

Otherwise they’d have to redo their server code and what not just to handle Steam and for a game that’s already this old, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that.

CleoTheWizard, 11 days ago

I mean sure but I don’t see how this is “half assing it” since you have no idea what happens on the server side.

And look I’m not saying they’re in the right here, I’m just saying that people are quick to jump to them hating their players and wanting their data when this seems to be more like something that’s being done to make their backend function.

CleoTheWizard, 12 days ago

I think this is the biggest myth of conversation. People always tell you to search for people whom you share something in common with, but the reality is that nearly everyone shares something in common and there’s no reason to go searching for it.

The key to a good conversation with a stranger is to initially do two things: 1. Ask details about the stranger and 2. Intertwine that with yourself in some way. You don’t even need to share this part.

Good conversations have these things I’ll call “footholds” where you intentionally give each other details shortly after meeting in order to create those ties in conversation. If you ask where someone is from, you should shortly offer up where you are from as well. Or if you ask about a hobby, offer a light comparison to your own.

Once you have enough of these footholds, the conversation should flow freely. If it ever doesn’t, ask the stranger more about themselves. And trust me, just be interested in what they say.

CleoTheWizard, 13 days ago

He did demonstrate it that way, specifically with a carrot. And it somewhat worked. The problem is they programmed it to do more and more pressure every time it fails meaning that doing the carrot first actually caused a safety issue. He only moved onto his finger because the safety feature seemed to be working.

CleoTheWizard, 13 days ago

Sony should take the hint. Many of these reviews are from people who can’t even get a PSN account in their country. So Steam is about to be flooded with requests for refunds due to the game not being available to some users. I already asked for a refund because of this.

It’s unlikely steam will be able to tell people to just pound sand, so Valve will likely step in at some point and then Sony will be in trouble with the platform itself.

CleoTheWizard, 13 days ago

Apparently this was always a planned feature but probably wasn’t ready for prime time at launch.

CleoTheWizard, 14 days ago

Not sure why they’d publish this, Israel is 100% going to take the land that was bombed and leave them with an even smaller parcel than before. The homes that are rebuilt will be Israel’s homes.