Mine’s that people who insist on correcting others grammar on internet forums are little shits who peaked in grade six as a teacher’s pet and get off on exerting their “superiority” on others.
Fuck you “less than” is just better than “fewer then.” Think I’m wrong, tell me what these symbols are called “< >” that’s what I thought loser.
“It gets better” is an awful statement. You don’t really know that. Bit of a thought terminating cliche for people who still have such a chance.
Hey, yo! I am superior. Against you anyway.
My hot take: Thor/PirateSoftware is right about some aspects of Stop Killing Games and the damages it could cause to the games industry. He’s wrong about a lot of it because he clearly has still never properly researched SKG and loves to speak before he thinks, but I do tend to agree with his concerns about the business side of things and how studios will be affected.
Thor/PirateSoftware is right about some aspects of Stop Killing Games and the damages it could cause to the games industry.
For example?
Patching a live service game so that it can run “offline” isn’t a small task, the cost of which will inevitably be pushed onto the players. I feel like SKG sorta trivializes the amount of work that is needed to make this happen when they reference homebrew server emulators for previously-shutdown MMOs, as those custom servers take a LOT of effort from the communities that maintain them.
Publishers of live service games will likely increase the costs of subscription fees/microtransactions in order to fund the necessary conversions once a game reaches end-of-life. This creates a new problem for developers/publishers which, to the best of my knowledge, SKG doesn’t suggest a solution to. I don’t see a scenario in which raising development costs (especially at a time when video games are already more expensive) is beneficial to the industry as a whole.
I don’t think this is a reason to be against SKG as a whole, though. Especially not to the “eat my entire ass” level. But it is a nitpick that I have with it.
Why does the game need to be patched to run offline? Why not just release the server code/binary?
Because the game will still attempt to connect to the real servers, unless otherwise modified.
I think… a URL shouldn’t be that hard to program for. At the laziest, you just let it check for an .ini or something.
I mean, a proper server browser would be nice, but I’d much rather the game just not be shelved permanently.
I feel like that is the absolute bare minimum change that you could do to a game to let it continue to function. Think of all the code changes, bug fixes, optimisations and such that get done in even one patch release. However, the organiser of SKG has released a video debunking all of Thor’s claims, including the idea that it would require live service games to be redeveloped into offline ones. He also doesn’t think it should retroactively apply to existing games. So it would be much easier for a new game to be coded from the start to be able to be disconnected. Here’s the relevant section of his video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HIfRLujXtUo&t=2228s
I’ve got a spicy one.
Despite all the patches and updates, Cyberpunk 2077 is still a meh game. I hate the UI, the RPG combat system with damage numbers, the edgy aesthetic and slang words, the lack of vehicle customisation, and the overall lack of non-mission side activities to do in the world.
The ratio of style to substance is heavily weighted in favour of style.
I’ve been complaining about the cyberpunk genre for years and 2077 is basically a distillation of everything wrong with it at current. They use the aesthetic and gut the meat, to the point where they’re often the very things cyberpunk is supposed to be critiquing. Soulless cash grabs its embarrassing we let it happen. 2077 wasn’t even mechanically fun for me. My favorite genre and I feel like we’ve rarely made things better than just reading neuromancer. We should have plenty of really mind blowing rhings with this much time to improve on it but it’s so few and far between 😞
I didn’t dislike it, but it didn’t live up to my hopes after all I’d heard about it.
I don’t regret having bought and played the game, but I never bothered to go back and fully finish all the side missions.
I do think that the edginess is kinda part of the cyberpunk genre. I can’t beat up on them for that.
-
It has high production values, a lot of modeling and texturing and such — I’m amazed how much money they have to have sunk into assets only to use them briefly — but the actual core gameplay didn’t grab me the way, oh, Halo did when it first came out and I played it. Night City is painstakingly created in tremendous detail, but end of the day, the point is to create the backdrop for gameplay, and I feel like they spent a disproportionate making of resources on that.
-
The combat is pretty, but for all of the work that went into various systems, I didn’t play it much differently from the way I would another shooter.
-
I also had been expecting something more like a Bethesda RPG, and got something more Grand Theft Auto-ish with a beefed up skill tree.
-
I wasn’t that impressed with the braindance stuff from a pure gameplay standpoint — it’s kinda “hunt for the hidden object” stuff — but I do think that it was original and it served as a useful justification to show “flashbacks” to earlier events.
-
Obtaining and managing clothing is a significant chunk of game and content, but I almost never actually see the main character, so the clothing doesn’t have much impact. Maybe if there were a third person camera mode or frequent reflections or frequent looking through a camera or something.
-
Having played some games like Saboteur and Grand Theft Auto, I kind of expected the differences between autos to matter more, given how much work went into creating them and all, but from a mission standpoint, they’re surprisingly interchangeable. A couple missions are easier with some, but a lot of the vehicles don’t really have that much gameplay point.
-
Johnny Silverhand is a major part of the game, but wasn’t really a character that I found very plausible or super interesting. I dunno, maybe if I had been into the punk music scene, it’d be different. I felt like they really were trying to shoehorn a punk band leader into the role. That being said, I did think that most characters were pretty solid.
Lots of good points!
ChatGPT-ass emdashes with spaces on either side
(I know there’s three dashes I’m sorry hahaha)
-
We pivoted from social justice causes like child labour to systemic racism (but only in the first world, not where our actual daily racism is practiced) and transphobia etc because the former requires personal sacrifices while the latter mostly “requires” snarky takes on social media.
I can’t help but notice that identity politics stuff ramped up to 11 right as Occupy Wall Street was fizzling out. I really think the alphabet soup agencies unleashed this monster on all of us
If I wanted to ensure the status quo and prevent real change, I cam think of no better sociological judo than getting the progressive Left hooked on identity politics.
There is only one struggle and it is the struggle between the excessively wealthy and everyone else.
To the kids who make your clothes, you are excessively wealthy.
Yeah. Not a lot of people in the west are comfortable acknowledging the fact that the life of relative luxury we enjoy is a result of decades to centuries of exploitation of other cultures. We enjoy things like cheap clothing, food and electronics because the people who make these things aren’t being paid a fair amount.
The reality is for people reading this comment, a sustainable future is one where you have less. And to get to that future you have to give things up. That is not a popular opinion and basically makes you unelectable. People love to blame capitalism for always demanding more, but the population at large won’t accept less than they already have. People don’t want to stop eating meat; people don’t want to pay more for clothing or electronics.
Personally, I try to do what I can. I went vegan, I stopped driving, I try to use what I have before I get something new. Globally I have more than average, I’d happily live in a world where the collective wealth of humanity is distributed equally among us all. Even if that means I would personally have less.
We pivoted from real activism to bumper stickers and yard signs and campaign donations to candidates who signalled the right wealthy class social virtues in the 90s and haven’t looked back
Armchair activism. The least you could do – literally.
It’s “hashtag activism” these days, which is a term I really hate.
The Snyder Superman movies were good, actually.
Broooo what the fuxkkkk
Are you lobotomised???
yes
The mass noun ‘e-mail’, like ‘mail’, does not get an ‘s’ when speaking about more volume.
It’s as gauche as “y’all” in wedding vows, and leaves a similar impression.
Stay tuned, and we can talk about used-car lot jargon like “the ask” and “the spend” next!
Just thinking about the email one…
I would say one email, two emails… but a lot of email. If it’s an unquantified number then I drop the ‘s’.
My hot take of the month:
Nobody should own land but the government. You should lease it directly from the government. In order to lease land, you should bid for it in an auction based on the monthly amount you will pay the government for it, plus a fixed cost for any buildings already on the property that is set by a government assessor.
The monthly amount should then be regularly updated (probably yearly) based on the value of the property (using effectively the same method for valuation we have for doing property tax assessments already)
If you build a building on land you are leasing, the building is effectively owned by you for the duration you continue to lease it. When you decide not to live there anymore, you don’t sell the land or the buildings to anyone though, the government just takes control of them. The government can then assess and auction that property off to a new leaser and then transfers the fixed building assessed amount to the previous owner. The government makes no money off the building components transaction, and therefore has no reason to under or overvalue the amount.
The total amount the government leases ALL land should replace all current Property taxes, Income Taxes, and Sales taxes (remove those three taxes entirely) currently being collected, and then on top of that fund a universal basic income (including a partial amount for kids). This factors into the yearly updates to the pricing.
Business taxes should be re-imagined around this new paradigm, but would require some more thought in order to handle businesses that use zero land (foreign entities) or have a limited footprint in the country.
Renting (from an existing landlord who is leasing the property from the government) still exists, but landlords can no longer make money by just waiting for property values to increase over time. They have to pay the same amount per month as every other land owner based on the same amount of land in the same area. They become essentially just a long-term hotel business where you pay for the convenience of not having to pay upfront for the building or deal with the maintenance.
In terms of a transition over, current owners should be given a monthly number from the government to keep their current property rather than having to go through an auction process. The value of their building can be reimbursed if they move under the new system. Current owners essentially lose the entirety of the value of their land, which for a lot of people would actually be quite significant, especially those who have had the land for a long time, have too much land, or have too much land in a desirable location, or some combination of the above. Condo or other high-density owners, despite “owning” a portion of the land would actually not be impacted very much, since the monthly amounts are scaled on land, not the buildings.
This whole system has some serious benefits for everyone involved (except current owners of signficant land)
First, the removal of private land owners removes the massive drain that real estate is having on our economy. It’s mostly non-productive capital sitting there earning money without doing a damn thing, and removing the incentives around investing in it will make it massively property ownership affordable.
Second, the removal of income and sales taxes is a huge economic boost for the population. You work for $20 an hour, you get to keep the vast majority of it (still probably some minor stuff for union dues, employment insurance, etc.) If you choose to spend that renting more housing, great, you’re paying into the tax base to make life easier for everyone. If you are happy with a smaller property, then great you are leaving more space for others and get to keep more of your money.
Third, the pricing of land and it’s return via a basic income (including kids) will drive people to be more likely to use the correct amount of land. Fuck the Boomers with their 3500 square foot 5-bedroom house on a 10,000 square foot lot in town that they raised 2 kids but that currently only has 2 occupants. Move your ass out to something more reasonable, and make a space available for a family that’s raising their kids now.
Tl;dr: Private ownership of land shouldn’t exist, burn it to the ground and make things better for everyone by taxing property properly.
Disclosure: I own a home, this would hurt me. I still think it’s a good idea because my kids will not be able to afford a home at the current prices, let alone at the prices in 10 years when they start looking, and that’s more of a problem than the pain implementing this would cause me.
How does farming fit into this picture?
Land is still zoned. If it can only be used for farming due to the zoning, then its not as desirable to most people and therefore has a lower lease rate from the government.
If the government decides to change the use of that land, the rental price would increase and then the farmer would likely give it up and lease something else.
It’s not really that different from the current property tax reductions that apply to farms.
Ah, good plan. I didn’t think of that. I come from a country which doesn’t have zoning. (Planing applications are all taken on a case by case basis here.)
That is indeed a hot take.
Why would people ever develop/improve (aside from maintenance/keeping living standards) on their land, build more, change zoning, generation house on the same lot, etc, when that would only result in their government rent (aka tax) going up?
Wouldn’t rich people be able to rent a lot of land for higher prices than normal people, driving the prices up until they control most of the government rentals, then rent it out to the rest of us for insane prices (kinda like now, except their whole revenue has to come from tenants, without the security of being able to sell the land and recoup the losses that way)…?
You say the government makes no money from the transaction of the specific buildings on the lot so they have no reason to overvalue it, except that you said the lots value would depend ont he buildings on it, so the government would receive higher rent fron higher valued buildings in lita so they have incentives to value it higher to collect higher rent…
You misunderstand how the tax works. It’s only on the land. The buildings on it have no impact on the monthly tax amount. That’s why it’s beneficial to densify the land, because then that amount is split between all of the people who live there (or among multiple businesses using it)
The whole rich capturing it all can’t really happen. They can’t actually profit from it sitting there, it all has to be used efficiently or it loses money. People wanting a house don’t have a problem paying for it every month.
If they try to monopolize all the rents (which would be prohibitively expensive) then the government can simply step in and force a sale because its their land and prevent certain groups from bidding on it. Instant monopoly break, or rather the government is the one with the monopoly.
My hot take is that I don’t care what other people’s hot takes are.
I don’t think pineapple belongs on hamburgers either. It tastes okay, but there’s so much extra liquid that it’s like holding a bun full of soup.
You have to grill that pineapple ring for a bit. Slightly less liquid, much sweeter
People should be able to get suicide assistance. Including healthy people.
It’s “fewer than” not “fewer then”
This is peak
Or is it pique?
… Probably both. Peak pique.
I’m shaking and crying rn
deleted by creator
Got his ass
others grammar
others’ grammar
Fixed it for ya!
My hero
deleted by creator
Legos with stickers suck. They should just print it in the parts or not have a design. It’s too much stress on the person building them :/
