#whiskeysays

[x-cl-br]

if Bungie sold the cayde cloak on their store, they would be able to fund destiny 2 forever

[atharseif]

After a while, you’ll realize that the good memories hurt more than the bad ones.

@whiskeysays

[x-cl-br]

so I have watched NOTHING about the final shape after the first trailer. i don't know what a prismatic is. this is going to be the best destiny experience of my life

[x-cl-br]

so helldivers is amazing, really awesome game that I've been LOVING every second of

HOWEVER it has made me realize that game community spaces, reddit being the most significant for me, have gotten SO much worse in the past decade.

back when I played destiny, specifically when the malok (maloc? malloc? memory allocate?) update came out, I was glued to the reddit for news and cool discoveries and all that. it was awesome, I felt super engaged and invested in the game even when I wasn't able to log in.

so the helldivers subreddit... and the finals subreddit... and the destiny subreddit nowadays... they all suck. it's all angry discussion about metas, or game design complaints with garbage suggestions for fixes, or complaints about fellow players / the playerbase as a whole. just a constant stream of negativity and now I just can't engage with games in a positive way without logging in

i miss being able to read stuff about a game but now it's all over optimization or grind guides or players complaining about all that stuff. I don't have a solution I'm just kind of mourning that I can't have as much hype for stuff as I used to.

[x-cl-br]

HELLDIVERS 2 STEAM REFUND REQUEST TIPS (how to maybe possibly get your money back)

IF YOU ARE REFUNDING, USE THIS AS YOUR REFUND MESSAGE: "The developers have announced that they will restrict my access to the game unless I sign up for and use a third-party service and account. This requirement was obfuscated at release and waived for three months, before it was announced as a REQUIREMENT to continue to play the game at all."

Use the reasoning "The multiplayer doesn't work" because, well, it won't, unless you make a PSN account (and give Sony those juicy active player numbers that they want so badly).

This request message was built off of some recommendations from folks on the Helldivers discord, as well as PirateSoftware's own refund request (source at 27:19), as he has WAY more industry knowledge than I do. As I understand it, the specific mention of THIRD PARTY SIGNUP is a HUGE red flag for Steam, they take it really seriously, especially since the requirement was obfuscated and waived for months so that we all missed our refund windows.

Even in worst case scenarios where we dont get money back, it'll still send a message to Valve and Arrowhead that Sony's bs is not okay.

And to think, we thought the bugs and bots were bad enough...

[x-cl-br]

the queue is the BEST feature on any social media site ever omg. this is amazing

[x-cl-br]

imagine my shock when Keith David was in hazbin (i forgot Keith David was gonna be in hazbin)

[x-cl-br]

so this weekend I'm doin something kinda special:

ITS MY FINAL DESTINY RAID EVER (PROBABLY)

i roped in a bunch of my friends who definitely do NOT play destiny 2 and I'm making them do vog with me. it's the only raid I beat on day 1, and the last raid that I actually got super into and played a bunch- I mostly skipped all the ones after so vog is very very special to me

so I asked all my friends to do a raid for my birthday and I'm finally cashing it in, super excited to do my last destiny raid with the most important people in my life right now~

[x-cl-br]

so you know how everyone gives the same tip for adhd, which is to split everything up into super small easily accomplishable tasks?

been doing a lot of game dev over the last bunch of weeks and holy shit, USE GITHUB PROJECTS (or some other task board thing, like hacknplan)

being able to have a massive list of tasks that slowly gets sorted into the "done" column as you work??? omg its so good for my brain. like I can SEE my progress and I can SEE how much is left to do but it doesn't feel overwhelming and it brings me pride somehow

[x-cl-br]

aren't we all ball-spawn

[x-cl-br]

I learned a lot in my time becoming a part time game developer, and last night I learned that big multiplayer experiences are only valuable as a tool to bring people together and give them awesome triumphant experiences as a team

we didn't beat atheon, but we also stopped having fun at atheon, so it's okay that we called it quits I think. barely beating templar while in overtime and spam blocking teleports was THE raid experience, and I'm so god damn happy that I got to have a raid moment one last time with the greatest people I've ever had in my life

[x-cl-br]

does anyone know what the final shape release TIME is? I'm so out of the loop I don't even know when resets happen anymore

[x-cl-br]

DYEING MY HAIR RIGHT NOW

[x-cl-br]

baldurs gate 3 is great because all the strong women in it are willing to carry heavy things for me

[x-cl-br]

looks like Sony is shooting helldivers 2 in the foot. they baby raged at people playing a "playstation" game without making psn accounts

I expected nothing less from the company that requires me to buy a 500usd plastic box just to play a game that caps out at 30fps

[x-cl-br]

it's Friday, and tomorrow is...

TABLETOP NIGHT AT MY APARTMENT

so I'm doing another one of these posts about my custom ttrpg system that i run for my friends. it's been a bit, so to recap: the system was modified from Call of Cthulhu's mechanics, with the express purpose of reducing the importance of numbers and math. my players just want to roleplay a bunch, so removing those barriers lets them do what they want without worrying too much about crunchy numbers, making the whole thing a lot more immersive.

last time, I talked about the players stats: Physique, Motorics, Stealth, Mind, Rhetoric, and Shivers. Everything is binary pass/fail, and players have to roll better than their stat value for a success so that they can still hit those huge nat 20s. As for the weird stat names, the game's vibe is intense horror, so I wanted the stats to feel less like your own attributes and more like a disconnected evaluation of a person's faculties, kind of like an autopsy. the goal is to make it feel a little off-putting and cause just a tiny bit of discomfort before the session even starts.

now, onto the new stuff:

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: WILLPOWER

so this is a secret extra stat that I didn't share in the last post! it works very different from all the other stats because it's more of a consumable meter, like mana, in a way.

What does it do?

players start with 25 willpower (or WP), and can use some of it to buff their rolls. it's meant to be this "power of the human spirit" kind of thing, where through sheer force of will, the characters can alter fate. kind of like when you drop something and catch it before it hits the ground, or like any anime scene where the mc calls on his heart or whatever.

What can you spend WP on?

for a few examples, players can use 2 will to push a roll, meaning they can reroll a failed check, but if they fail again, the consequences will get much more severe. this one's ripped straight from CoC, but I like it a lot so I put it in the wp system.

there's also the higher cost options to REALLY power through a check if you desperately need that success- 5 WP can allow you to retry another players failed roll before the consequences hit or give yourself advantage on your own roll. these can be combined, too- I'm not too picky on it, because none of my players have broken the game using the system, but we'll see what they do this week!

finally, as a last ditch option, 6 willpower can be used to shrug off a non-lethal hit for 0 damage, OR to barely survive a lethal one with 1hp.

it's not perfect, obviously.

these costs are a little finicky, and very much not final- I'd love to tune them a bit more as well as adding a lot more options to use WP on, but that'll come with more play testing with the system. currently, though, I think it's in a good place: players are using it often, and they seem to like how it feels! but there's definitely one question left:

what keeps them from using all their willpower (and how do you get it back)?

so I've been working on this for a bit- there used to be willpower damage from encountering scary stuff or seeing someone die, but that just made it so nobody wanted to burn WP on anything so i axed it. currently, if you run out, you get all your stats debuffed by 2, so it's not super severe, but still pretty bad. to that end, WP comes back from resting, taking medication, or making progress in the story, kind of like a measure of the teams morale. if they're doing good and making progress, their willpower increases.

all in all I think it's a really fun system that I'm very proud of at this point, I love letting the players have those intense hero moments where they can pull through a hard situation with their fighting spirit. it definitely needs work, but im iterating on it almost every session.

Thanks for reading!

I'll be back next week with another one of these because I'm bored at work and don't have much else to do lol