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This is an (old) parody of an even older (allegedly sincere) meme comparing women in video games. The “ugly western” women were like Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, the ladies from the Last of Us 2, and I think new Lara Croft from the reboot series. The “beautiful and correct” eastern women were all anime characters with huge tits, obviously.

The joke here is of course that all the “western” men are stereotypically masculine and all the “eastern” men are bishonen anime characters and femboys.

I say it was “allegedly sincere” because how could you even tell if something like that is parody or a truly held chud belief?

I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).

The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.

Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?

Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.

The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:

• is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
• has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
• has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
• has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out

These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.

My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.

Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.

I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.

I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.

Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.

Incorrect! Some of them are CIA ops who do it for love of the game!

“Science” doesn’t do or advocate anything, it’s just a method. It’s like pitting Religion against Object Oriented Programming (They’re the same picture)

Anyway, great shitpost

I’ve been noticing people on dot-world in the last year, particularly the mods, have really ramped up calling people tankies and making a big fuss about it. Back when I used my account there, Hexbear might as well have been Satan’s personal instance for how it was discussed. Since I moved here (and can actually see them), it really seems quite overblown.

There’s definitely shitty users all over, and maaaybe the more radical instances let people get away with more bad behavior, but certainly banning whole instances over shit like this is obvious mod abuse.

It’s not like they run background checks on mods, literally anyone could infiltrate the positions and use their powers to sow dischord. I just don’t trust this extreme “we must purge the far left, the anarchist, the communists, etc” turn in Lemmy moderation at all. Really stinks of old fashioned “First they came for the…” behaviors.

I agree that this is the root of all human problems, but I think there’s more to it also. There aren’t 95% of people willing to resist it. I imagine the opposite kind of people, those deeply selfless and incapable of tolerating injustice, also make up less than 5% of people.

And so even though only a small minority are naked power seekers, something like 80+% of all humans are just looking for someone to tell them what to do. They don’t want responsibility, power, or self-determination. They want to be made to feel safe, and be given orders.

You’re understanding of “gig work” is comically outdated. You sound naive or trollish. “Jobs for teens” like fast food work, grocery clerking, and working at movie theaters have always been taken by people who need “real jobs” and not just teens looking for extra money. So you’re wrong that these careers exclusively for kids to get pocket money ever existed, certainly not in living memory.

Secondly, OP isn’t talking about working the carwash for the summer. He’s talking about Uber and AirBNB. Maybe you heard of them? Over the last decade, they’ve caused massive disruption of the hotel and taxi industries by allowing thousands of unlicensed and unregulated “micro entrepreneurs” 🤮 to create a new economy of pay-per-task workers who end up owning all the physical assets (which rapidly deprecate in value) but none of the infrastructure or investments (which do not, or do so on much different schedules).

Houses being bought up for short term rentals has contributed to the housing crisis. Its caused economic harm to inner cities. It’s a looking part of the polycrisis destroying the practical economy and the planet’s livability. But yeah man, the real problem is lazy people just don’t want real adult jobs, give me a fucking break.

Jack Black: Like a Dragon

They’re definitely the werewolf.

Similar to vampires, every dwarven ship has an enormous boulder occupying a conspicuous place in the quarters. Sleeping near this “home stone” is necessary to prevent dwarves from going sea crazy.

You list Wengrow twice, accidentally leaving out David Graeber.

Great post! I wish I could upvote DoE quotes 100 times! One of my favorite books and required reading IMHO.

I’ve been replaying cruelty squad, and the second mission has you take out a CEO addicted to FunkoPops. Anyway, this image reminded me of that. Be nice if someone brought a real “CEO mindset” to a meeting with him.

Yeah, artists who do terrible things or support bad causes are always a bummer. I really liked the band Haim, who just put out a new record. But I got suspicious to check and sure enough, their whole family is extremely Zionist, they just keep somewhat quiet about it.

Crystal Castles was a real blow too, and scary\sad how long predators like Ethan or Dr. Luke can thrive in the music industry.

Rich people always threaten this and never do it, because it’s a John Galt problem. Rich people need poor people to trickle money to for services and goods. If they all move to “Rich Asshole Island” where there’s no laws or taxes, they quickly discover there’s also no workers.

Fuck all of them, I dare every millionaire to leave NYC. They almost certainly cannot. All their wealth is actually tied up in business and assets. In NYC. They could sell them, but to whom? All the rich are fleeing right? If the city or collectives of workers buy them, thats more socialism and proof the rich aren’t necessary.

So no, they won’t leave. They’ll whine and cry and then fund police and paramilitaries and lobbiest to try and force their view. They’ll spend millions propping up friendly candidates like Coumo and running smear campaigns.

In other words, they’ll do what they’ve historically always done when threatened.

I agree with the analysis of the east coast, and will add that the South (“Silicon Bayou” is such a sad joke) is in basically the same place.

But I don’t think the West coast actually has all those advantages either, not anymore. What passes for “innovation” is all some variation on crypto, ai, or “being the Uber of $NICHE.” Throw in some buzzwords like IoT, quantum, blockchain, or “smart” and you’re all set to race with the other founders to get a piece of that sweet sweet VC dollar.

The financiers have taken over everything and are going to drive the economy off a cliff so they can scavenge and sell the parts. They’ve taken over film, gaming, tech, all traditional media, journalism, and they’re using the banner of “privatization” to finish off healthcare, education, postal services, and anything else they can convince idiots to sell them. The bankers are winning.

SE/SO has been on the decline for a long time now. They pivoted to find more ways to monetize the answers and started enshittifying, trying to appeal to business clients and money-people instead of the users and developers who built the knowledgebase. It was good when it felt like a community helping each other, it fell off when it felt like a company milking you to build out their monetized wiki.

At this point, from their perspective, the biggest fuck up was not locking down SE from scrapers and building their own AI. It is in every way the same situation that Reddit is in, just with a more focused and higher quality data set (and fewer, arguably “higher quality,” users).

IS THIS A POLTICAL CALLOUT?! SOMEONE’S HANKERING FOR A CRANKERING! AROOOOOO!

!the_pack@lemmy.world is escaping again!