Stepos Venzny
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Radiant Historia
The enemies are placed on a grid and your characters have abilities that can move them around or place traps on certain squares, plus as part of the game’s time travel theme you can reorganize the upcoming turn order. Use those together and you can arrange the absolute sickest combos, knocking everyone into a big cluster and then wailing the shit out of that cluster.
Just be sure to play the original DS version and not the enhanced 3DS version with new art, voice acting, and story additions that ruin the tone.
- Correct. The belief that one person is lying is an inherently more reasonable position than believing that a group is conspiring against you. Individuals lie all the time and for all sorts of reasons.
- If I believed you incapable of critical thinking I wouldn’t be pushing you to exercise more of it. Everybody is emotional and everybody is vulnerable to emotional manipulation. That’s why journalists’ bosses push them to write sensationalism, that’s why the algorithms push sensationalism to the readers. Everybody involved is incentivized to be dishonest because dishonesty works.
- I didn’t say it was an advertisement, I said seeing it as an advertisement is not unfounded. You didn’t tell Auzy you disagreed with them when you brought it up in this thread, you said they were crazy for thinking it.
- This bullet point needs further breaking down:
In order to make a post, one needs to personally endorse both the source and content,
When one makes a post without any commentary that separates one’s perspective from that being shared, one already has endorsed both the source and the content.
because by sharing the wrong articles that you found interesting that other people might like to discuss here on this forum, you may be promoting capitalism.
It’s not that you’re promoting capitalism, it’s that you’re extending its reach. If you do not impose your own standards that are separate from those that brought the content to you then the only standards involved are what is profitable for somebody else.
Sharing unique reports from a small political fringe site like thefreethoughtproject.com that are unreported in other sources is a form of promoting capitalism, while in general sharing journalism from large news corporations like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times does not promote capitalism.
I never named any sources, let alone comparing their relative validity. I’ve never heard of your small political fringe site until this thread and have no idea how legitimate or illegitimate it is. But what I’m asking you now is, how did you come to hear of it? My belief so far, as I’ve already stated, has been that you’re sharing things that you saw on social media and you’ve rather conspicuously not denied that. Why do you think you were shown a small political fringe site?
Is it a good source? Is it a bad source? The decision to bring it to your feed was not made by an entity which distinguishes between those two concepts, it only knows your patterns of past behavior and looks to inspire reactions from you. What kinds of reactions? It doesn’t care about that, either. If you spread to others what it spreads to you uncritically, you are extending that fundamental disregard for meaning. But you have the disadvantage of being a human being. People will anthropomorphize the algorithm by projecting your face onto it, read intentions into your words.
So try actually having some intentions for a change.
I’m not actually here to discuss the articles so I’m not going to get derailed by detailing my thoughts on them when the subject I’m in here to talk about is you.
And, no, Auzy is not being a conspiracy theorist because the theory being proposed contains no conspiracy: they’re just accusing one individual of lying. And I’ll reiterate that I think they’re wrong because you don’t think of the messages you share as being your own in the first place. What it looks like to me is that you’re just sharing things that were brought to you on other social media platforms that inspired strong feelings in you and inspiring strong feelings regardless of objective reality is what social media entirely and news stories largely exist to do.
Let’s look at how you behaved in the other thread Auzy mentioned, to illustrate this. You were more talkative in that thread so it’s a better illustration of what I’m talking about.
They say it looks like you’re advocating for people buying guns, you respond by citing a history of conservatives trying to take guns away from progressives with the insinuation that this is evidence that it’s correct for progressives to own guns. They say that that response makes it look even more like you’re advocating for people to buy guns, you respond by saying you wish people didn’t need to own guns but reiterating that they totally do need to own guns. They complain that you are continuing to advocate for gun ownership, you respond by posting a photograph of a man with a message written on his guitar that more people should have guns. (I assume from context I was supposed to recognize him as a sort of appeal to authority, of left-wing street cred for promoting gun ownership, but I’m not into music so I don’t know who it is.)
Now in this thread, you refer back to that and say that was evidence of Auzy being a conspiracy theorist on the basis that… you repeatedly affirmed that you did in fact hold the position they said you held. You consider yourself anti-gun on the basis that in your vision of a utopia they wouldn’t be around and thus you call that accusation unfounded but your action is that you promote widespread gun ownership by sharing this article that says the threat of gun violence is the solution to a societal ill.
You deny that it is a feel-good story but the subject is that there is an organization taking care of those in need. There is a long history of news media framing acts of charity like this as evidence that society is a good place because people are taking care of each other when it would be more accurate to frame it as society being in a bad place because charity is the only avenue these people have for getting help. Fake feel-good stories. Auzy says that article is fundamentally a gun advertisement and, indeed, the headline names a specific model of gun; it could have just said “rifles” but instead it name-drops a Colt product.
Does that prove the article is being deceptive, that you are being deceptive? No. Again, I’m not here to have that argument. What I want to point out is that it’s also not at all an unreasonable takeaway to believe those things because, if it was deception on either or both fronts, this is what that would look like.
You should be choosy about what you share, thoughtful about why you’re sharing it and what your feelings about it are, thoughtful about what it means about you that you’re sharing it. Otherwise, you’re just another unwitting mouthpiece for the raw machinations of capitalism.
I hold every post to the same standard. The reason I only chose to speak up in this one is because of the way you responded to that criticism. You called Auzy a crazy conspiracy theorist, sharing an image of a guy pointing at a bunch of disconnected details. But there is a connection between all of the articles you post: you posted them.
My goal here is to help you understand that you aren’t “the messenger” that saying refers to. The messenger doesn’t choose what messages they share. You weren’t assigned the task of posting these articles, they aren’t answers to questions you got asked. If you keep denying responsibility, keep making defenses of yourself instead of the words you spread, that’s leading down a road of thoughtless regurgitation.
At the time of writing, Auzy’s accusation has a score of 10 and your comeback has a score of 3. Three times as many people seem to disbelieve your intentions as believe them.
Were I in your position, this is the sort of thing that would make me question why it is I come off this way. A good starting place would be to actually respond to specific criticisms of this material rather than using memes as thought-terminating cliches.
See, I don’t think you are being deceptive but I am worried that you post articles without thinking of those posts as coming from you just because other people actually wrote the articles. You got accused of being deceptive because you posted articles that are themselves deceptive and then you ran that accusation against your own intentions rather than the material in question. But the truth is that these words become yours when you share them uncritically so you are responsible for their content.
It’s dismaying to hear those words but it isn’t surprising. I don’t know how much of the sentiment is delusion and how much is dishonesty but, like many Democratic politicians, he has a pattern of painting politics as a bunch of reasonable disagreements that we can and should compromise on when he’s not discussing an individual issue.
So because the issue at hand is whether candidates should accept election results and all other political disputes are momentarily valid, the message he wants us to hear is: “The other guy wouldn’t accept what the voters say but I would. See how much more mature and level-headed I am?”
What terrifies me the most is I think saying that is the right move, politically. Most of his prospective voters are in denial that the right is becoming overtly fascist and would be turned off by the appropriate reaction to the idea of Trump winning again.
I think this disparity in votes and comments is also hugely affected by how the UI has been changing over the years as well as the destruction of third party apps. The site is now designed in a way where active participation is less encouraged than ever before unless you’re running old reddit on a traditional computer with an ad blocker.
Not in the sense where they failed to make it interesting, more in the Breath of the Wild type philosophy where any side-content you do is indirectly progress toward the main goal so there’s a mix of things of varying levels of interestingness in all directions. You have an organization that raises in “power” or whatever they call those points whenever you do a side quest and you need to bank up certain amounts of those power points to do the next story mission or unlock the next region. That progression is paced in such a way that you simply don’t need to do most things.
Many quests are genuinely interesting but other ones are just filler. And some filler between good quests is inoffensive, maybe even a refreshing little diversion. One generic filler side quest is essentially “stand next to this portal and kill all the ghosts that come out of it”. Doing that once in a while is okay, doing it as many times as there are portals to find is torture.
I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?
The short version of that answer is that the sequels do not have what you love about the original but you might also like them for the different things that they are.
Awakening feels less like a sequel (technically an optionally standalone expansion but I’m counting it) and more like a fan mod. It’s nerdier, sillier, edgier, and has that high-effort mod habit of adding concepts that should logically be new mechanics but are executed by old ones because you’re doing it on minimal skill and zero budget. I think that’s a pretty cute vibe but it’s fundamentally just Origins again but worse.
2 has high highs and low lows and, while I personally love it, it’s negative general reception is very fairly earned. The thing that it was trying to do in the first place, story-wise, is something that would already have been divisive even if the rest of the game were flawlessly executed and it was emphatically not flawlessly executed. The simplest way I can describe it is that it is not a story about an adventure, it’s a story about a place. You do not leave that place, you just stay there over the course of several years and experience the historically significant events that are happening there. So the narrative focus for you as a protagonist is on how you feel about things rather than what you’re accomplishing.
Inquisition, conversely, is the least interesting one from a conceptual standpoint but, like, it’s competent from a technical standpoint and the harsh criticisms you tend to hear usually stem from misunderstandings about its design rather than the lack of creative ambition. There’s another new evil horde and you’re another special dude who’s the only one who can stop them and now you’ve got a personal army instead of being an underdog. There’s more political conflict than the first game but the politics are less complex. Ultimately, though, I think the most important factor of any open world game is simply the degree to which you want to spend time in that world regardless of what it is you’re actually doing and it’s an interesting enough world to spend some time in. Certainly, it’s worth trying for free.
For anybody playing this for the first time, an important piece of advice:
Don’t be a completionist. Leave areas before you’ve done everything in them and don’t do any side quests you’re not interested in.
It’s my least favorite Dragon Age but it got a lot more hate than it deserved because other open world games trained people to play it the boringest way possible.
Blurry looks more realistic than blocky, especially on the low-resolution CRT monitors old games were designed for.
Now that we’ve got better screens and games with better graphics, we see early 3D as a stylized aesthetic and a lack of texture filtering fits that aesthetic better but these games’ actual goal they were made with was realism.
“It’s okay to fail” seems like it would have been a more valuable life lesson than “it feels good to beat a really hard video game” and it concerns me that you’re so okay with the amount of trauma this entertainment product caused him.
The fact that you’re sharing this story of years of repeated meltdowns caused by a video game and calling it an example of games being beneficial is pretty surreal.
The ammo system rewarded you with ammo for the opposite color of beam you were using, so you are actually totally free to ignore the power beam most of the time without running into supply issues. Even when you wanted to only use one color, like the light beam when you’re on Dark Aether, use the one you don’t want in combat to shoot crates and plants and stuff to farm good ammo for the fights.
It’s less that they’re easy to get without buying them with real money and more that they’re supposed to be acquired slowly and, when relevant, used sparingly.
My frustration with the discourse is that so many who see the game’s general lack of convenience see that through the filter of these microtransactions and assume ill intent on part of the actual game design when really it’s just genuinely idiosyncratic like the original was.
The truth is, if you’re the sort to be tempted by these purchases in the first place then you’re not the sort of person who would enjoy the game even if you do buy them. I don’t know whether that makes them better or worse, honestly, but if you buy the game it at least doesn’t rub your nose in them like Assassin’s Creed.
Games that I’m confident the average person would love:
- Burnout (3 and/or Revenge)
- Tony Hawk’s Underground (definitely 1 and not 2)
- Shadow of the Colossus (I’m otherwise avoiding games with HD versions for modern platforms but I specifically think this game is weirdly better with PS2-level graphics and performance)
- Ultimate Spider-Man (Spider-Man 2 had better swinging but I think this is the stronger overall package)
Games with a more niche appeal but, dammit, I want you to play them anyways:
- Steambot Chronicles
- Shadow of Destiny
Games that felt like a big deal at the time but I haven’t actually played since I was a kid so take with a grain of salt:
- Evergrace
- Way of the Samurai (1 and/or 2)
- Stuntman
- Def Jam Vendetta & Fight for NY
- Mercenaries 1
- NBA Street (2 was my favorite but all three were great)
- NFL Street (only played 1, presumably 2 and 3 are also great)
A game I know is bad but I want you to play it so that the voice clips will be burned into your brain also:
- Kessen 2
West of Loathing. The RPG stuff is great and the comedy is great but really the main strength is I just enjoy reading its dialogue. The vocabulary and sentence construction have a real sincerity for the setting contrasted against the silliness of the rest of it that makes both parts hit harder.
Similarly, the first three Monkey Island games which achieve that same injection of the heartfelt into the wacky by way of their gorgeous art and music.
But as far as the joy of just doing something it’s hard to beat the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, to just be dropped into a level and be told “do cool stuff for a while”.
I really think modernizing the controls is a bad idea. Lara is probably still going to be as heavy and rigid as in the original, so if all it changes is what analog sticks do then it’s going to set up the players with expectation that it should be responsive in the way that dual analog games are responsive instead of the type of responsiveness you got from the old tank controls so people will perceive the game as being sloppy and unreasonably demanding. And if they change more than just what analog sticks do, if they change the underlying mechanics of movement to be more the way dual analog controls are responsive, it’s going to make the platforming a lot harder because the jumps were designed around the type of precision tank controls offer.
In the modern day, its weird retro tank controls are honestly one of the original series’s biggest strengths for me. In a landscape full of platforming that largely plays itself, old-school Tomb Raider makes platforming feel exciting again by making you stop and think through what you’re doing.
I feel like these conversations get dominated by games with the fewest explicit flaws rather than the ones that have the most to offer but it’s my firm belief that no piece of art can be truly great which is not also kind of annoying. Not because annoyingness is inherent to greatness but because greatness and annoyingness are both the products of an underlying willingness to take creative risks.
So in that spirit, my answer is Steambot Chronicles.
I will admit this is almost entirely gibberish to me but I don’t really have to understand. What’s important here is that you had any process at all by which you determined which answer was correct before writing an answer. The LLM cannot do any version that.
You find a way to answer a question and then provide the answer you arrive at, it never saw the prompt as a question or its own text as an answer in the first place.
An LLM is only ever guessing which word probably comes next in a sequence. When the sequence was the prompt it gave you, it determined that Homer was the most likely word to say. And then it ran again. When the sequence was your prompt plus the word Homer, it determined that Simpson was the next most likely word to say. And then it ran again. When the sequence was your prompt plus Homer plus Simpson, it determined that the next most likely word in the sequence was nothing at all. That triggered it to stop running again.
It did not assign any sort of meaning or significance to the words before it began answering, did not have complete idea in mind before it began answering. It had no intent to continue past the word Homer when writing the word Homer because it only works one word at a time. Chat GPT is a very well-made version of hitting the predictive text suggestions on your phone over and over. You have ideas. It guesses words.
But I don’t think the software can differentiate between the ideas of defined and undefined characters. It’s all just association between words and aesthetics, right? It can’t know that “Homer Simpson” is a more specific subject than “construction worker” because there’s no actual conceptualization happening about what these words mean.
I can’t imagine a way to make the tweak you’re asking for that isn’t just a database of every word or phrase that refers to a specific known individual that the users’ prompts get checked against and I can’t imagine that’d be worth the time it’d take to create.
Other people writing it for you and the openness with which I heard many other students discussing that they weren’t writing their own stuff.