Bjorn

Speaking of local history, many cities, big and small, have forgotten or hidden histories in regards to racism, violence and oppression. I know multiple people who in the last few weeks have just learned about 1970 riots, deaths and violence that turned parts of Lawrence into what felt at the time like a war zone (I know a few people who lived in Lawrence at the time who described it that way). A lot of people tend to look at something like Ferguson as this isolated event (both the killing and the protests), but it's one thread in a tapestry of similar events over the last century. This is why working with local leaders and groups is important, as they are the most likely to know that local history, which in turn can become a powerful tool used in protest.

I'd say it's often arrogant. If you want to support African-Americans, immigrants, trans folk, gays, whatever, there is a high, high, high likelihood that there are existing groups and leaders you can seek out and support. By forming their own group, or starting their own events, and assuming leadership roles within those groups and events, white/straight/majority students are very likely actually muddying the waters rather than trying to support actual people. Also, taking the #concernedstudent1950 hashtag and repurposing it is dumb, and ignorant. That hashtag specifically references the year black students could attend Mizzou. It has historical and cultural meaning specific to Mizzou. White students who take it and just try to use it because it's visible and popular are being pretty shitty by being completely ignorant of the history and context of the phrase. Better is to find something that has meaning within your own community, and the most likely place to find that is within existing groups. There was a similar thing at KU over the last week. A white guy was doing a hunger strike at KU, but ultimately stopped because he agreed that his attempt to help had become a distraction away from getting people to listen to black voices on campus. My white activist friends around here have been trying to design events to educate white people about the specific local history/current events they may not have been aware of, to familiarize them with local groups and leaders they can support, and with strategies on how to talk with white friends/family who say shitty things. It's something that can do some good (maybe), but isn't trying to draw publicity away from the people actually affected by all this or to speak for them.

You know nothing, Zeus Cat. Edited to add: High quality top o' the page post here.

I kinda like the meta games, they're (usually) fun to mess around with. The monster clicker one over the summer was dumb though, mostly from having nothing to really do. The auction one is still my favorite.

I build my systems with the intention of upgrading them every 4 years anyways, and I have never hit a CPU bottleneck in that time. Generally, that 4 year mark is when upgrading is worth it to me. Not just to run newer games, but because for non-gaming productivity things have improved substantially (faster/more ram, SSDs, supporting higher resolution monitors, etc.) or I figure that components like hard drives are due to be replaced for stability reasons anyways. That said, I do usually aim for a mid-tier CPU on a motherboard that can support several tiers higher, so that if I were to need to upgrade (or got an upgraded CPU cheap), the system has room to grow if absolutely necessary. I'd be hesitant about building a socket 1151 system within a few months of it's release anyways. I prefer to let new hardware have a year or so of public use to shake out some issues before upgrading. But since my PC doubles as both work and recreation, I care a whole bunch about stability since I cannot afford to have it down for more than a day or two at a time. I really don't know. I used stock coolers forever, and just started using aftermarket ones on my last two builds (both mine and the lady's current PCs) because I was running into some heat issues with the 6300s. I do know that on my next builds I'll go with quieter cooling options though, as mine is like a jet engine when everything cranks up. The lady's got a water cooler put in it, and I've been very happy with that.

I'm still running an AMD FX-6300, a 3 year old CPU that was being beat by multiple Intel options back when I bought it, and I honestly don't see a point in the near future that I will need to replace it (the GPU will need to go before the CPU). Save the money on the CPU, and either just save it or put it towards other components that will pay higher dividends. Or spend the savings on a quiet cooling system.

Totally true! Also, "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

These are two things that I think make "gut sense", but we can look back and see the animosity towards microtransactions (even completely optional cosmetic ones) from the very beginning. There are also plenty of other examples where there's no strict ceiling on what people pay for a game (MMOs, dedicated servers for some games, ridiculously priced Collector's editions). For each of those examples, the people paying for those things are still often paying more than most of the people who buy stuff in ethical F2P games (I know there are a few whales for each game that go nuts, but let's be honest, the typical player isn't actually worried about protecting a theoretical whale they will never meet). I have fairly limited experiences with these F2P games, but I do know the point you're talking about that they hit. But, the question then becomes, does the amount you have to pay to get through that barrier cost more than you would have been willing to pay for the game outright? I'm using Warframe as an example here because it's what I'm playing now, but paying $25 will pretty much push you through all the slog gates I know of without making them feel grindier than many paid games are. $25 for a polished, fun 3rd person, RPG-light shooter seems very reasonable. I would suspect in many of these games, $25 would often be enough to push through the slog. And I'm not even necessarily convinced about the bad design systems. Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with it's expansion now looks like it probably takes upwards of 200 hours for an average player to unlock everything, and it's not like that is a huge game. I think unreasonable expectations on player time are common across many, many games both within pre-paid and F2P. And yet, we tend to see them as a criticism of design more commonly leveled against F2P.

Why do gamers seem to have such an antagonism towards paying money for F2P games? I get it when they are using abusive/manipulative/P2W systems, makes sense. Having gotten into Warframe recently, there's a ton of antagonism in it's community towards paying for things (which otherwise seems really good), with most advice being not to buy Plat, just play. Even though as a system it's very friendly towards players who don't want to spend money. All content is available to everyone. Platinum (the currency you can pay cash for) is tradeable between players, so people can sell rare items they don't want/need to get Plat to buy things that are just a lot easier to buy than grind for. We spent $25 a piece once we knew we liked it, and it's been great. Got us a nice variety of starting gear to give us some more diversity in our loadouts, got a nice boost to stockpile some credits/experience/crafting mats. Is it because it feels like the system can be gamed, so the system must be gamed? Why wouldn't you want to pay to support the dev/game you really enjoy? It's just a very weird attitude to me.

Yeah, effects can be far more entertaining than just damage. In Warframe, all 14 damage types (phsy + elem) have a status effect associated with them that have a chance to proc on each attach. Multiple types of damage can be on one weapon at a time, so you can have a variety of effects that can potentially proc. Though, based on what I've seen so far, an enemy will only have one effect at a time on them.

It would make a good mechanic to be able to load up your power armor and send it off to go sell all your junk while you keep booking it on foot. Would allow selling on the fly, but also introduce a risk mechanic to it.

Warframe seems to have an interesting way of doing damage types/resistances (though I'm still learning, so maybe it will be bunk eventually). There are 4 elemental types, and an additional 6 combos made from combining the 4 core types. There are also 3 physical types of damage. Enemies are generally weak to 2-3 types and strong against 2-3 types. Each faction tends to favor certain defense types. With a primary weapon, secondary weapon, melee weapon and powers, you can generally build to be strong against whatever faction you are playing, with one weapon being a backup to use against something unexpected you might encounter. It feels overly complicated at times, but also because of multiple weaknesses/strengths, you rarely ever feel like "Oh fuck, this thing is strong against fire and that's all I have". I really liked the idea of Runers, which is entirely built around spell combos and chaining effects like that. Unfortunately I found the need to repeat the pretty boring first couple of levels each run to kill my enthusiasm for it.

I generally try to be an advocate for second chances, people fuck up and need room to grow. But, in this specific situation, my understanding is that she serves in a supervisory/training/director role over graduate teachers, and the fallout of her words in that discussion are such that she's lost the respect and authority she had over the people she's supposed to be training. I don't know that she needs to be removed from the university, but if someone in a leadership position fails hard enough, they may have put themselves in a position of simply no longer being able to execute their job duties anymore.

I know the STALKER games exist and are beloved by their fans, but I've never really known a lot about them (or the connection between the games). Edited to add: Oh hey, Stalker totally gets mentioned later on in the cast.

On the idea of what would a Fallout game look like removed from America, a fascinating question to me is what would it be like to have it be a foreign country that wasn't devastated going out and re-exploring the world. In World War Z, Cuba is one of the few (or the only?) countries to survive the zombie apocalypse relatively unscathed, in part thanks to their social/political isolation and in part thanks to being a small dictatorship willing to use brutal tactics to protect the greater population. Cuba ends up taking the lead on a lot of humanitarian aid and rebuilding in the years following the apocalypse. So having a game where say a North Korean expeditionary force ends up stranded in Mexico and has scavenge and survive would be fascinating. I'd also enjoy seeing the Metro devs get a shot at making the Soviet version of Fallout, something big and open world rather than the linear shooter design of the Metro games.

The protests at Mizzou and Yale have spread to some other campuses, including KU. KU students are now calling for the firing of a professor after she showed that she's an ignorant asshat in a discussion about how TAs can handle discussions of racism in the communications classes.

Seems like a simple solution. Landmines.

So I used cheat engine to finish off Greed Mode. If you don't know, there are unlocks all the up to putting in 1000 coins in the machine now (after the ARG was done). But, each character has an increasing chance to jam the machine, meaning that it will take up to a hundred Greed runs in order to do it legit. Fuck that. I like this game a bunch and I do enjoy Greed mode, but I do not want to have to run that mode that much. Spoilering the rest for people who don't want to know what gets unlocked.

Congrats! Baby Hazard would make a great nickname for a kid

Yeah, Rebirth is a remake in which most of the actual work was done by the company Nicalis with Edmund providing design and guidance on the rebuild, and Afterbirth is the expansion for it that just came out around Halloween (again, with Nicalis doing the heavy lifting and Edmund giving guidance). Edmund, by his own admission, isn't exactly an expert programmer. The original BoI was built in Flash because it's what he knew, and he ended up seriously pushing up against the limits of what Flash can do with it (which is why a whole bunch of items had to be cut and why some interactions between items got cut, because they'd cause crashes or errors). Rebirth is built in a new engine, which is one of the reasons it can do things the original can't and why a remake of such a recent game was worth doing. Afterbirth also added a new final boss, new challenges and a new mode, all of which really help extend the game if you find yourself wanting to dig deep into it.

I know I made this recommendation before, but I enjoy repeating myself . If I were you, I'd wait for Rebirth to go on a good, cheap sale and pick it up rather than continuing to hammer away at the original. The remake (and it's expansion) are better in every way, at least in part because they control better and the balance has been adjusted. But the difficulty can be really pushed with optional challenges and unlocks. It actually has a tracking system to know which characters has beat which bosses, so it's super easy to know what items you haven't unlocked yet. It's got more characters, and more interesting characters who give you a fairly different experience starting a run. It's also got way more interesting interactions, synergies and weirdo effects when combining items. The odds of being able to see all the items is much higher as well, since there are some items that really mix up the likelihood of pulling different things. I think in the original there were still an item or two I had never seen because of the drop rarity of them.

Haha, that's amazing.

Several of us in another thread were kind of derailing it with talk about whether or not a trope existed. Unable to find one, we started to draft our own, and miffy delivered the perfect name: :clap: So, Baby Got Backstory is when creators use backstory or other explanations primarily to justify the hypersexualized design of a character in-world. It's particularly obvious if the sexualized design matches modern beauty standards even if it's in a fantasy or sci-fi setting that could easily have radically different standards for attractiveness. (Feel free to disagree or edit, I'm just trying to provide a baseline) A good rule of thumb to identify it would be exactly what started this conversation. Person A says the hypersexual design of a character feels out of place. Person B replies, "Yeah, but it's because XYZ." Person C points out that a spade is still a spade, and a convoluted backstory doesn't exempt the design from really just being about having a super sexy design. I was going to spoiler all the original posts from the thread, but it won't let me have that many quote boxes in one post. Just click the link above and it's at the start of the discussion. So, does this exist? Did we miss something obvious searching? Also, anyone on here have a TVTropes account that can create new articles? You can always make a burner Thumbs account if you don't want to admit to us that you have this power. Possible examples that several people identified (I'm not claiming any of these do or don't fit the trope, just ones people threw out as possibilities) Mass Effect is full of them: Edi - In ME, robots tend to follow a very form=function design philosophy. So in order for Edi to have the rockin' sexy body she does, Cerberus has to design a sexy fembot to infiltrate a research facility. The fembot is then captured by Shepard. And when Edi examines the body, she gets into a force of will contest with the resident AI, which results in her gaining control of her new, sexy body. Miranda - Genetically engineered to be "perfect", this includes her physical appearance. (Miffy) Asari - An entire species of attractive, pansexual people who look female who will procreate with any species. Naturally attracted to erotic dancing during their "Maiden" stage of development. (SuperBiasedMan) BayonnettaBayonnetta - Has magic that is powered by her hair which is also her clothing, which steadily uncovers her more and more as she uses her powers.One PieceTwig pointed out the tendency in some animes to justify a characters increasing sexualized design simply because that character is aging, like breast size increasing 1000 percent. (Twig)Knights of SidoniaThe humans are able to photosynthesize (except for the main character because he isn't part of the genetically engineered crop, so to speak), which gives the anime an excuse to showcase lots of naked ladies. Not one naked dude in sight ever, though. (Ozzie)Farscape Like KoS above, does something similar with Zhaan, and she can actually "photogasm" from light. But, she's also a sentient plant and her plantness is something pretty core to the character design that would have existed with or without the photogasming. Worth mentioning thoughJesica Rabbit"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." (SuperBiasedMan)

So the ARG wrapped up over the weekend, secrets were found, new stuff was added to the game. There's a complete writeup of it here. Pretty neat that they actually pulled this off.