Bjorn

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Posts posted by Bjorn

  1. Posted

    In seriousness (which I feel kinda obligated to post something now that I shit on the post with my first reply) I have pretty limited experience with F2P games.  I've messed around with a few mobile games, and ended up deleting every single one, while paid games have stuck around.  The grind vs mechanical enjoyment of many F2P mobile games are a complete mismatch for me.

     

    Now compare that to the 2 more traditional games I'm familiar with with F2P economies (Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer and Warframe), and in both those cases even though they clearly have a grind that can reach into the hundreds and hundreds of hours to reach late game content, the actual mechanics are so fun that I don't mind.  And in both cases, the quality of the games convinced me to go ahead and spend money, something no F2P mobile game has ever done.

     

    TLDR - A good game is a good game whether it's F2P or not. 

  2. Posted

    Haha, no, I don't feel new anymore, but sometimes something reminds me that some members have been around here for a long time.  I honestly didn't realize that you had been around for less time than me. 

     

    Edited to add: This was an interesting forum to join as well, as there were a couple of people I recognized from other places (SAM and Ben for sure), so it already felt more familiar than all strangers.  I know that at least one other person has also recognized me from the old Joystiq days (same profile image, though different username).

  4. Posted

    It is a different structure than some other forums, but over time I've come to appreciate the particular culture and uniqueness of the Thumbs community.  Each of the huge threads generally serves a good purpose for which individual threads don't.

     

    Life - Like mini-blogs where people talk about their lives.  Babies are born, relationships end, jobs are learned and struggles revealed.

     

    Random Thought threads - Literally random things people think about during the day that don't necessarily feel like they need their own topic.  Often used for smaller thoughts/ideas where taking the time to write something denser would prevent people (me for sure) from posting a new thread

     

    The Business of Video (Space) Games - All topics relevant to the business of games, big and small

     

    Plug Your Shit - A place for people to show off or advertise their projects (we have multiple writers and game designers who hang out here).  Many forums frown on self promotion for commercial ventures, but that's the thread where they are welcome.

     

    Pretty much any game anyone wants to talk about has a thread (or you're free to make one).  Like Clyde, I like having the history of people's thoughts on a game in one place to review if I want. 

     

     

    I also personally think that MOST internet forums feel cliquish when you first join them, because there are new dynamics, people and norms to learn.  I'm on the newish side versus some members (at a measly 2 years), some members have been around for 7+ years (I think, however old the thumbs are, there are members here from the beginning).  Newcomers are always welcome, but this is also an established community of many people who have known each other and been friends for years.  That familiarity will (almost) always feel daunting to some new people, just as it can in real life. 

     

    Anyways, jump in, post, read, learn.  It's a great forum.  It's the last forum or gaming site I visit on a regular basis, as I've grown weary of most other communities or they've died off (RIP Joystiq). 

  5. Posted

    In games with many different characters, I usually find myself gravitating to 5ish characters who I spend 90 percent of my time with, but ultimately I do want every single one just to  have some variety to play around with.

     

    On Warframe, we've actually most been spending our Platinum (cash currency) on things to catapult us forward through the grind.  Experience boosters, credit boosters, Forma to build our Dojo, and a couple of warframes a piece to give us some variety out of the gate.  I think we've spent about $35 ish between 2 of us and we still have another $15ish left in plat.  Now that we've got a great variety of equipment, we might start spending it on cosmetic stuff and progress at the normal rate. 

  6. Posted

    I actually like the content of the podcast! I am picking up what Roman Mars is putting down, generally. Other podcasts I listen to have similar amounts of advertising, too. You Are Not So Smart has 5-6 minutes of ad reads, but they're a) broken up over an hour+ of podcast and b ) feel more like ads that have a purpose in sustaining the podcast than a rambling guy talking about a penny you can get. I don't consider intros or credits to be "wasted", either. People in production deserve to be recognized. It's just so incredibly concentrated on 99 PI.

     

    I probably stated that poorly, it's got so much adroll and production stuff as a percentage of its length.  Now that I'm paying attention to it, there are a lot of episodes where upwards of half the running time is not related to the content of the episode.  I've gone back to skipping it, but it definitely stands out from everything else I listen to. 

  7. Posted

    I read that, and it didn't really help my understanding. Way too specific examples that didn't really resonate with me.

     

    Let's try to take an example of one possible situation (something that does actually happen, across multiple cultures).

     

    1) In my town is a university that only serves native peoples, it was set up to do that because of their historic lack of access to higher education (it's also built on the grounds of an institution the government used to try and forcibly assimilate native peoples years ago, but that's another story).  This university holds art fairs, pow wows and other public events throughout the year, at which lots of white people go and buy art, learn about native history, meet and hang out with native peoples, etc.  The people going to these events are (probably) not engaging in cultural appropriation. 

     

    2) A middle aged white woman opens up a store that sells art and holds classes based on native art/religion, but employs no native peoples, buys no products from native craftsman and seeks to profit from their image because it is popular and holds certain symbolism among certain crowds.  She's taking someone else's culture to profit from it personally, while cutting off that culture/people from her activity.  In her pursuit of her business, she's also likely making a number of both minor and major changes to the actual style, meaning and history of the work she is providing.  However, her clients are likely to be ignorant of this and view her work as legitimate, and may even come to view actual native work as inferior or wrong in some way. 

     

    A comparison like that can be scaled up or down in impact and severity, but the essential idea holds that someone from outside of a culture benefits from something primarily produced or associated with that culture, often in a way that benefits the outsider but has no benefit or even harms the originating culture.  It doesn't have to be monetary.  It can be as small as just benefiting a person's image.

     

    Appropriation isn't about the spread of ideas, it's about the sterilization of them to fit within the existing dominant culture, which is often the outcome regardless of what the intent was. 

  9. Posted

    I think a large reason for my animosity towards socks is how much I hate having to fold and put them away.  The fewer socks I wear, the less time I have to spend fucking with them on laundry day.  I do most of our laundry.  The lady loves socks, quite often wears them 24 hours a day.  Owns a staggering variety of colors and sizes and material types.  I swear she must wear every pair she owns in a couple of week span.  I just spent as much time putting away socks as I did putting away most of the rest of our laundry.  The result of this, after years, is I wear as few socks as humanly possible in my climate. 

  11. Posted

    I didn't care for bathrobes until the lady bought me a really nice, plush one (like the type you'd use at an upscale sauna or something) for Christmas a few years ago.  I've probably spent more time wearing it than I have any other single piece of clothing over the last few years, since I usually wear it at least some every day.  It's warm, and enveloping, and soft.  Just a great way to start a morning or end an evening. 

  17. Posted

    I think this is one of those theory versus reality problems.  In theory, I agree with you that anyone should be able to engage in activism that they care about in whatever capacity they think they are best suited.  However, in practice, I don't think it works out well when people from the majority try to take leadership roles in causes that are most heavily identified with minority populations. 

  18. Posted

    In general I'd say the game is mostly an iteration on the previous games which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Nothing especially revolutionary but they also didn't mess it up by trying to reinvent everything.  The one thing I would have loved is if the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor could have been implemented in this game instead.  You already have multiple factions and enemies with different strengths/weaknesses, plus a system that puts fear into your enemies.  I think that would have taken it from good to great.

     

    The Nemesis system would work wonderfully in a superhero game, particularly if you could combine the emergent element of it with some developer guidance.  Instead of having fixed minibosses, each player's miniboss could in fact be a henchman that had developed through the Nemesis system.  There would even be the possibility of having a new super villain being born through it with the right circumstances. 

  19. Posted

    I started listening to 99% invisible again, and man there really is just so much advertising. Up to a third of a 15 minute podcast is Roman Mars being smug about a thing you can get if you like how smug he is. It's frustrating in a way that it's not in other places.

     

    I listen at work, and can easily skip the intro and cut off the end.  But after someone else complained about that earlier, I made it a point to listen to an entire episode.  And yeah, 99 has more wasted/advertising time than any other podcast I have ever listened to. 

  20. Posted

    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. 

  21. Posted

    This feels a bit counterproductive

     

    Something just seems a bit off about the notion that if I want to protest in support of a thing, I would need to go find a person that is affected by that thing and ask for their permission first. I don't mean to generalize and I realize there is a lot of nuance around that but looking at the big picture with these issues, I don't think having these kinds of fights between people who ostensibly share the same goals has anything but an overall negative effect on any progress being made.

     

    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. 

  25. Posted

    The main issue with lowballing the CPU is that, if you guess wrong about your requirements for the next decade or so, it's the most difficult and inconvenient part of your computer to replace (outside of the motherboard, which will also have to be replaced if you're upgrading the CPU).

     

    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.

     

     

    Speaking of which... I have no desire to overclock, but in the past I've always ordered after market coolers out of habit. Is there honestly any noticeable benefit to getting aftermarket cooling stuff aside from getting everything to run super quiet (which probably still makes it worth it in my book)?

    But yeah, I think on the CPU side I might step it down even further. The more I reason through it, it just kind of seems like a waste.

    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.