Inspired by Solomon VK's Faufreluche posts.

D20	This staristocrat's badge of office
1	is a golden diadem which projects a hologram of Old Sol from its highest tine, as well as the rest of Man's Cradle-System orbiting about it.
2	is a hideous diamondoid mask made in the image of an alien demi-god from whom their esteemed house claims descent.
3	is an auroran magneto-cloth cape which flares with the oscillations of subtle fields.
4	is a porous meteoric amulet that echoes with the music of the spheres.
5	is a blade of enchained magnetic monopoles channeling ouroboric tangles of plasma - ever-glowing, their patterned glows expressing the cyclical yet self-degrading nature of the cosmos, able to cut through all but the most unnaturally enforced materials.
6	is a scepter containing a degenerate micro-verse within its topping globe.
7	is a battered helmet pulled from the suit of one of the first humans to reach outer space.
8	is a battle standard bearing the heraldry of their family, and topped with the head of a lion, preserved and animated to roaring unlife by cybernetic tubes woven through its flesh and bone.
9	is a halo of abstract mathematics, written directly on the fabric of space-time rather than mere matter.
10	is a pauldron of fused silicon, the remains of an artificial intelligence which almost overcame humanity.
11	is a dilating-lens lantern of an indestructible, orange-green alloy - fully unleashed, its actinic brilliance can guide in a ship from high orbit.
12	is a vial of their own, genetically-perfected blood, crystallized into a ruby-like gem.
13	is a crown of golden rings hovering about each other, each engraved with the zodiac of a different solar system.
14	is a famous artifact of Earth preserved within a temporal stasis-orb.
15	is a set of infrasonic pan pipes that can manipulate the minds of men and machine alike.
16	is a holy book written by the first settler of their world, in an eclectic script unreadable by anyone yet living.
17	is a shield with a brazen, hypercubic boss and a rippling purplish forcefield about.
18	is a labrys bearing edges honed to subatomic sharpness with whetstones hewn from the preternaturally dense heart of a collapsed star.
19	is a bowl holding a fractal bonzai grafted with branches of every fruit-bearing tree of humanity's homeworld.
20	is the head-sized smaragdine egg of some voidborne beast, the inevitable hatching of which is said to herald the end of the universe.

D20	This staristocrat's holdings
1	lie under a dimming sun, weakened by its fusion-harvest which forms the foundation of the staristocrat's wealth.
2	contain no life-bearing worlds, its population sustained only by technocratic hydro-pneumatic despotism.
3	bear the glassy-green sheen and asymmetrical mutations left by ancient nuclear war.
4	are mineral-rich but poor in organics and water, expending most of their export-wealth on life-giving imports just to survive.
5	produce a unique and inimitable spice, and are thus coveted by an extra-solar rival.
6	are either watery or gaseous, with dry, solid ground an unimaginable luxury - the populace living on great rafts or aerostats.
7	have recently absorbed a mass of refugees fleeing a black swan xeno-threat.
8	were enclosed from the common space of comet-cowboys, who plague it with their raids to this day.
9	are nestled among the ruins of an extinct alien civilization, probed only gently for fear of waking their automatic guardians.
10	are slowly but surely having their life-giving atmospheres stripped away by the rapacious solar wind of their red gigantism-suffering sun.
11	are deliberately kept ignorant of the wider galactic community to reduce their capacity to revolt, and so that the ruling class can portray themselves as deific through their technological capabilities.
12	are undergoing a long and delicate process of terraforming which structures cultural and religious cycles around these artificial seasons and critical thresholds.
13	are overgrown with a police state only nominally under the staristocrat's authority, and the computational bureaucracy that's arisen to process all their surveillance.
14	are infamous for their permissiveness, and abound in every sort of vice.
15	are torn apart on a planetary scale for the sake of resource-harvest and industry, and what unruptured ground exists is blanketed in choking smog outside sealed habitats.
16	were recently seized from a treasonous vassal and bestowed upon this staristocrat - the old holder's sympathizers still lurk within the population, evading the claws of inquisition.
17	exist mostly fictitiously, as moving shell-games of companies and titles.
18	are centered on an ecumenopolis with some roads paved with stones hewn before humanity's ancestors came down from the trees - its corners hide occultic dens of our darkest imaginings.
19	are generally scorching, deserts or liquid hells, their structures mirrored and extending tubes of heat exchanges and radiators like a seraphim wings.
20	are verdant in all forms of life - none go hungry, yet many are eaten, and a clan of masked physicians go about the populace to rebuke the tides of plague.

D20	This staristocrat is attended by
1	a harem of genetically-engineered Willendorfian Venuses, bearing a continuous stream of heirs who will duel over the matter of their inheritance in the arena of their crèche.
2	artful historians hunchbent over data-tablets, preserving every moment and detail of the staristocrat's life in imperishable crystalline records.
3	nigh-invisible bodyguards swaddled in light-bending metamaterial cloaks, heat haze auras ready to strike down any offense against their master.
4	clanking cyborg-knights - behind their cuirasses are tanks preserving the most loyal and chivalrous parts of their mortal brains.
5	slaves bearing explosive collars - the tribute of many conquered worlds.
6	a squadron of musclebound eunuch-janissaries raised from childhood with size- and strength-stimulating hormones and non-stop brainwashing.
7	clones of themself educated according to various traditions as diverse yet biologically-partial advisors.
8	the cryogenically-preserved heads of their forefathers, which sometimes dispense shivering, crackling counsel.
9	hovering laser-turrets fitted with targeting algorithms able to anticipate their master's desire to kill before it's consciously felt.
10	an enormous parrot with impeccable skill at mimicry, whose mind has been overwritten with every song recorded by humanity up until the time of its creation.
11	a pair of titanic wolfdogs, with metallic teeth that could rend apart a tank and hides that have turned aside artillery-shells.
12	the plush animatronic companion of their childhood, its digital personality updated to be a competent advisor.
13	a caste of butlers who've served their family for generations, bred like pedigreed dogs.
14	a choir singing their praises, the choir's lungs replaced with cybernetic jet-intakes slatted between ribs, so that they might sing unceasing.
15	a former whipping boy, their oldest friend, bearing the delicate scars of tremendously sophisticated tortures.
16	tumbling jesters dressed in patchworks of impossible colours captured from the coronas of half-real suns.
17	technotheologic angels dancing through the air on wings of incandescent blazons.
18	abductees from primitive worlds fitted with neural implants which make them believe they are simply in an extended dream.
19	a team of chefs who can prepare the delicacies of a dozen worlds, never repeating the same twice in their master's lifetime.
20	grey masters of anagathic science, whisper-arguing over the injections and ointments that will quicken them a while longer.

D20	This staristocrat's court
1	is entertained by a vapourous alien intelligence which takes possession of lesser courtiers through a fanciful hookah.
2	has its lesser members partially memory-wiped when they attend it - able to recall their skills, yet unable to remember much of their own identities, and so how to apply those skills for personal benefit.
3	is deliberately, performatively humble, held in barns and suchlike.
4	is overlooked by a cine-dome showing stars, moons, and constellations in fortuitous alignments.
5	is addicted to novelty, and constantly seeks new performances and grotesques.
6	is made up nepotistically of their siblings who did not win the contest to inherit the throne.
7	are waited on hand and foot by fragile ceramic robots imprinted with the tightly-enchained engrams of political criminals.
8	takes place entirely remotely - members are provided radio-devices with frequencies that trigger voice-like vibrations in great bells this staristocrat is in the constant presence of.
9	were at first ironically and now legitimately entranced by a bloody cult of sacrifice and agonies.
10	has been forced to accept elected representatives from among the populace by a revolt - to the grumblings of those who attained their positions through inheritance.
11	is wracked by a scandal involving mistresses overspending from public coffers.
12	is perpetually-wrapped in augmented-reality projections of mythic mimesis.
13	is burrowed among the roots of the biggest mountain of their throne-world, so that it could survive all but the most devastating attacks.
14	are all accompanied by a member of an order of courtesan-assassins implanted with acid-glands in case their charge shows overt disloyalty.
15	solve disputes among themselves with duels, and drill daily with various weapons and fighting styles.
16	is held within a hollow pyramid, with this staristocrat at the top point and many stairs and levels filtering petitioners between them and the entrance at the base.
17	is largely taken over by a conspiracy to poison this staristocrat, and even the uninvolved have begun to circle like vultures.
18	is a ring of stone thrones built to scale with the renown of the one who sits upon them - this staristocrat themself sits like a small child on a throne fit for giants - their seneschal on a stool.
19	is held around a colosseum, where gladiators and vicious alien beasts fight for their amusement and haruspexies.
20	is itinerant, a grand airship which hovers above the realms of hosting vavasours.

D20	This staristocrat's noble flaw
1	is hubris - they believe they can become like God by funding breakneck scientific process.
2	is bravery - they will fight to the last in the face of overwhelming odds, even if better options present themselves.
3	is honour - their thinking is rigid and totally un-utilitarian.
4	is generousity - they give without thinking, disrupting economies and fostering dependence with their largesse.
5	is parental love - they spoil their children on a terrible, cosmic scale.
6	is a thirst for justice - a continent has burned due to their need for a punishment fitting a truly awful crime.
7	is filial piety - their increasingly-senile dowager-mother has them tied around her bony finger.
8	is tolerance - they've cultivated cosmopolitan communities, yet failed to confront division and rising extremism.
9	is an aesthetic sense that is souring into decadence.
10	is persistence - they are a dogged obsessive.
11	is realpolitik - they've alienated possible allies with ruthlessness.
12	is faith - they lean often into outright zealotry.
13	is cautiousness - they often dive into outright paranoia.
14	is competitiveness - they're innovative, but often only in the tortures applied to defeated rivals.
15	is cleanliness - they have advanced to a purgative germaphobia.
16	is contentment - they have come to peace with all things, even if others demand their action.
17	is honesty - they will never lie, even if it benefits them and their people.
18	is is humility - they are overly-convinced of their own incapacity.
19	is romantic love - their spouse manipulates them to their knowledge yet total acquiescence.
20	is imagination - their fancies often end up unproductive or outright destructive.

Wastelander
A thin veil of sand blew across the road, danced in erratic swirls over the cracked pavement, and then capered off into the dunes.
Kaelar watched it spin into a small dust devil that swept past the skeletal branches of dead shrubs and the faded remnant of an old sign sagging into the sand. Rocks and bits of concrete jumped from countless pits and holes weathered into the road, kicked out in front of him with each measured step.
The dust devil whirled up the face of a sandy hill and vanished down the other side. He fingered his water skin, still nearly full. Some of the old folk said dust devils could lead you to water. Kaelar had tried once, but all he’d found was more dust.
He returned his attention to the road and what lay at the end. Or rather, what he would do once he arrived. Most of the Old World had hidden troves of valuable artifacts in broken buildings and infrastructure, the decaying crypts that were once people’s homes. But the treasures were dwindling, and the waste was encroaching. Arable land was a unicorn, and clean water was scarce. And there was no shortage of violent gangs roaming the wastes, circling the small ramshackle communities like wolves, watching for any sign of weakness.
Towns were dying.
Hell, the planet was dying, some said. Murdered by the poisons unleashed by her children back before his father’s father’s time. Maybe it was true.
Kaelar put the thought out of his mind and peered through the shimmering heat at the shattered remains of a city rising out of the ash. Mercury, he called it, for he did not know its true name. In the distant past, something had destroyed the city, blasted its buildings and cratered its parks, unalived its people.
Now nothing remained but the dust of shattered dreams. You could walk an entire day and not cross Mercury. Unwise, but you could do it.
He passed another sign, larger than before but just as faded. This one straddled the highway on great metal legs that did not rust. The edges of the road crumbled and sagged into the sand, mirroring the slow decay of Mercury. Nothing grew out here in the waste but sun-bleached bones and stony cliffs.
He walked on.
The city loomed larger and took shape as the hours passed.
He could make out tiny details now. Windows gaping with no glass, rooftops jagged and crumbling, the rusted relics of countless vehicles choking intersections and the bones of an entire city scattered through debris-strewn streets. He detoured around collapsed walls blocking his way and ravines that had recently opened to swallow entire blocks. This took time, precious hours he did not have to spare. Crap.
Kaelar tipped back his wide-brimmed hat and glanced at the sun, blazing overhead. Ten hours til dark. He had to hurry.
Lowering his hat, he took a small sip from his waterskin. It was hot and tasted terrible, but soothed his parched throat. The air was hotter still, dry but stifling, and hard to breathe when the dust was up. Despite this, he wore old leathers, suffered them for the small protection they offered. A scrape could prove deadly.
He adjusted his canvas satchel, more of an extensive collection of mismatched patches than an actual bag, but strong enough to accommodate even the best hauls. His gloves were fingerless, and weighted across the knuckles in case he had need.
His eyes never stopped moving, scanning ahead, probing into the shadows gathered in doorways and alleys, ever wary of the dangers present within the Old World. Wild beasts were the least of his worries. Men were the deadliest creatures of all.
He dusted off his goggles and glanced at his pistol in a worn leather holster belted at his hip. Each cartridge in the gun’s cylinder was worth a week of clean water. He had four left. If I’m right, I’ll have more after today.
Kaelar moved deeper into the city, to the heart of the ruins. His destination was just ahead, a place he’d searched before but never found the heart to explore past the fourth level.
Today, that would change.
A sudden clattering sound came from an alley to his right.
Kaelar instinctively ducked and leaped to press himself against the side of a rusted-out truck. Peering over the hood, he listened; he watched. No movement. He was surprised to find his pistol in his hand, glinting in the sunlight. He didn’t remember drawing it.
His eyes scanned deeper into the alley, past refuse and debris. Nothing.
Kaelar turned, drew in a deep breath and rested on his haunches with his back against the truck. Something had made that sound. Was someone stalking him? Other scavengers could be dangerous. Some would open your veins just for stepping into what they perceived as their territory. Sweat tracked down through the dust on his face. A moment later he decided he couldn’t leave it to chance. Never leave an enemy at your back, his father had told him. That advice had served him well over the years.
There was no movement as far as he could see in any direction facing away from the alley. Just the skeletal girders and broken concrete of a dead city. That left the alley at his back.
He went to his belly and peered under the truck. Nothing. He stayed there for some time, watching and waiting. Sweating.
When nothing showed, he rose to a crouch and slowly advanced into the alley, pistol leading.
It was deserted. There was nothing of value, not a bit of lead. Clattering came from above, faint and distant. Jaw clenched, he holstered his weapon and shimmied up a drain pipe to the roof.
Strange machines made two neat rows on one side and a small shack with a single door on the other. Sunlight soaked into the roof’s black skin, shimmering up in waves. But that wasn’t what held his eye. A second structure rose beside the one on which he stood, snugged tight to it like lovers. The leeward wall sat in the shade, and something clung there to the brick.
Kaelar couldn’t believe his eyes.
His heart leapt for joy. He rushed to the wall, and reached out with a trembling hand to gently brush the white petals of the vines climbing the brick. It was real. It was alive!
“You can’t have them!” Kaelar felt a hot explosion in the back of his head. The world tilted on its side and the roof rushed up to meet him.
A figure stood over him, dark and terrible and haloed by the sunlight.
“Your kind are not welcome here, Wastelander.”
Kaelar reeled with vertigo. He opened his mouth to speak but a heavy boot snapped out and blasted away his world.
It was alive.

Across gamedev, indiedev, and solodev, I hardly ever see anyone trying to make a gacha mobile game.
Why?
How come everyone is trying to make shitty souls likes, rouge lites, metorvanias, and top down bullet hells or zombie games, or the like?
Yet nobody really wants to make a waifu collector gacha, and get paid.
I understand that there are infrastructure costs in terms of servers and all that (I used to work in IT and DevOps so I know how it all works and what it takes).
Still, gacha, are some of the most profitable games out there *if* done right. There is both a ton of competition (where isn't there?), but also massive demand for the *next* thing.
I understand that these days they aren't exactly small team projects but it can be done, and you could pull it off via kickstarter or with a publisher if you got a solid demo/prototype.
Most big publishers salivate at the sound of gacha. They print money. Most of EAs and other big publishers profits come from mobile.
I'm sure it would be easier to pitch something like that then another open world Souls Like or yet another crafting game or whatever.
Here is a use case...
Puzzle and Dragons came out in 2012. It is a Match 3 puzzle game with team building. The dev team was originally only 4 people at release. Then it grew to 20, and in 2014 to 40 people, and eventually around 120 people. Still this is a pretty small team compared to many AAA studios or popular game devs.
Puzzle and Dragons after a year of release made 183 million dollars and eventually by 2013 and 2014 a billion dollars. In 2015 it made 1.5 bullion.
It was the first mobile gacha to reach a billion dollars.
It made over 7 billion since then. Not bad for such a small team. It's still making money, mostly from Japan and NA. NA now only makes about 600k or so, but the game has been around for 11+ years and now we got everything from Genshin to a million other gachas.
Still, a game like PAD but with updated graphics, and actual dungeon crawling instead of a tower like progression that it uses (think Mortal Kombat towers) would probably make a shit ton of money. The mechanics are pretty deep.
You don't need to make a billion or even a million or even 600k. A small team making 100-500k after costs would still be fine to start. It's doable. Over time you would make more if you didn't piss off your community and released regular content.
Then you got games like Epic 7. Lots of people love the game, but hate the RNG gear grind, hate how stingy it is, hate how grindy it is, hate how unbalanced it is, etc.
Yet if you made a game just like it, but eased up on the grind, eased up on the RNG, eased up on the bs, and you actually were involved in the community with good communication which E7 lacks, you would have a winner. People would spend money in it.
Even with all it's bs the game makes around 5 million a month.
I guess my question is, why do so many devs including indie devs prefer to live in despair and mediocrity, making almost nothing from Steam sales and releases, when they could at least try making a gacha which could possibly net them way more money in the long run?
Even if the game isn't amazing and it would End of Life in a year or 2, you'd still make money, because there are a ton of whales out there willing to throw tens of thousands of dollars to acquire their favorite waifu or epic weapon.
People will spend money on pretty and sexy anime girls! That is a fact.
People will also spend money on acquiring gear and building their roster and box.
I mean just look at things like Diablo Immortal, where people spent upwards of $100,000 dollars. Dudes like Tectone spent hundreds of thousands on games like Genshin. People in Puzzle and Dragons would spend thousands on a banner. This is normal in gacha.
So why not try to profit off that? Why make shitty Steam games that barely get noticed and barely make any money? Why make shitty mobile rpg games or puzzle games without the gacha element?
Even if you made a Steam game, why don't any of you simply make waifu collectors? That shit will sell.
Am I the only one who realizes this? Why make a shitty derivative souls like, or yet another Vampire Survivors clone when you could make a waifu collector and get paid?

So, I've been trying to track this down on some of Bungie's halo websites, Halopedia, and a few of the other wiki sites and the few times they did have an answer, it wasn't really conclusive. I know that the carbines and spiker weapons behave more like human guns with how fast their projectiles are, but do we know how fast the Plasma rifles, Pistols, and Needler's projectiles travel in canon? I know they're probably still a bit too fast for most humans to dodge when fired close enough, but you also have moments where Chief and other Spartans supposedly dodge plasma volleys a lot easier than they dodge bullets. The reason I'm asking is cause I'm going to be writing a crossover fanfic with Titanfall and I'm trying to compare projectile speed with Pilot reaction speed (which funny enough, is on average in the 20-30ms range, with the really augmented pilots who get cybernetics and stuff like that being as fast as the 5-10ms range)

Hello all! I am looking for assistance to replace GPU on my current rig. I am not very knowledgeable in most cases about PC hardware specs to know between two pieces if its a small or big upgrade/downgrade. Below is the link to my current build (AMD CPU and GPU), which I ordered most parts in late 2020, except for RAM I just ordered this week. I am also considering upgrading my CPU soon. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/sYs4Wt
On top of that, I could afford a very strong PC but it would not be worth the money for me since I typically play less-demanding games (see below), and it's not important to me to be playing anything on Ultra. If its any reference, I bought this GPU (Radeon RX 5600 XT 6GB) in Nov 2020 for 367$ CAN (including shipping and taxes) and I've been very satisfied with it.
For my game usage, I play on and off World of Warcraft, and usually games a few years after release after getting them on sale, or replay older classics and emulators of older consoles. -The most "demanding" games I've recently played are PC Insomniac's Spider-man 1, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Destiny 2, Doom Eternal, Halo Master chief Collection, Mass Effect Legendary edition, and Fallout 4 with the recent update. -The bigger games that come to mind that I plan on eventually playing on a new rig are Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Horizon: Forbidden West, and the other Insomniac Spider-Man games (SP2 and Miles Morales).
If you were me, what kind of GPU would you get? Would you stick to AMD? -In a nearby shop from my house, I could go pickup a GIGABYTE Radeon RX 7600 8GB 128-bit GDDR6 priced at 413$ CAN (taxes included). -I could order on newegg.ca a ASRock Radeon RX 6600 8GB GDDR6 RX6600 CLD 8G at 307$ CAN including shipping and taxes.

If you're filling lost within your career path. Here the experience of Derek Delost CEO of DotYeti. From being a marketer to business owner.
After a year-long search and evaluating over a hundred businesses, Derek Delost found DotYeti, a graphic design platform where companies can access an entire creative team in exchange for a fee.
“I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, so the search process was very long.”
Inspired by the book Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel, Derek created a ‘mission statement’ that allowed him to narrow down his search.
“I wanted a business with really strong established processes and management a great team in place so I could leverage my past experience and focus on growth. because I knew those were not my strengths. So, understanding that my strengths were sales and marketing brought me to look at a broad range of businesses and really figure out what I wanted to focus on.”
He considered his competitive advantage, but he also had another factor to think about: passion.
“I'm gonna be doing this all day every day. I have to enjoy it. If I enjoy what I'm doing and I know how to do it, I think innately I'm gonna be more successful,” said Derek.
“And then another big part of it is just trusting your instinct, you know, and if something kind of feels right or doesn't feel right”.

People, patience & research: The key to move past your entrepreneurial fears

Although Derek’s choice had a ‘mystical’ halo, he didn’t leave anything to chance, especially because his family depended on him. One of his biggest fears before buying the business was leaving the security of a paycheck behind.
“I looked at every single way that I could de-risk the acquisition, and Boopos was a big part of that.”
A large portion of Derek’s upfront investment was on a team of people who knew what they were doing in terms of business acquisitions.
“There was a lot at stake and I went through a whole other process to get through that fear and take that leap. I did a ton of research and I surrounded myself with the best people I could find in terms of lawyers. I hired a business coach, I hired an accountant.
“People who I could trust to walk with me through the process and make sure I wasn't missing anything.”
Besides surrounding himself with expert advice and doing due diligence, Derek considers that patience was key to finding the perfect business to buy.
“I think you have to be patient. When you're acquiring a business, you have to really wait for the right one that's gonna fit for you; there's no real roadmap. Everybody has to find their own kind of way”.

Why sellers also matter

When finding advice on what businesses to buy you’ll usually find tips on what to look for in the financial statements. However, evaluating the sellers might be as relevant as doing the financial due diligence.
“It was really important to me to have good chemistry with the sellers. The founders themselves were fantastic, they were awesome, which is a large part of why the deal got done. They were super transparent through the whole process and very accommodating to all my questions.
“They've really really helped facilitate the transition with the team, specifically the first 30 days”.

Finding the right business

Derek Delost's journey highlights the importance of doing the research and waiting patiently for the best deal, which should also be one that aligns with your passion and skills. In part, Derek credits Boopos with helping him de-risk the process.

So I don't particularly consider myself a hard-core player of extraction shooters. I dipped my toe into EFT and although I enjoyed the gunplay, I hated how in depth and difficult it was. Absolutely hated the fact there was no maps and you had to load one up on a separate screen and work out where you was, also hated the fact that extraction was so tricky, having to locate a certain area or gain a certain key without any clue of where it was (unless you learnt the maps).
Played a LOT of Hunt Showdown, what a game that was.
Purchased GZW but the performance is so poor that I've left that for a few months until they improve optimisation.
But ABI looks like a real breath of fresh air from what I've seen so far. I've watched many different streamers play this game and I'm extremely hyped to get my hands on it.
The QOL aspects of it make it a much more stomachable option than EFT. The map, the healing, the UI, it just seems so much simpler (or casual) and that's what I love.
The gunplay looks very good, the ai looks very balanced (not insanely OP like GZW where you get one shotted by ai from 150m away whilst you're hiding in a bush).
I'm just a bit concerned about the potential P2W aspect that this game COULD have, especially with it being F2P. I don't mind if there's skins/character models for sale, or anything cosmetic.
But what could really be this games downfall is if they lock the best weapons behind a pay wall, or make it super easy for players to purchase in game currency with real money. I totally understand the devs need to make money somehow, I just hope they do it the right way. Even if it's in the form of some kind of battle pass where you can unlock certain things as you level up.
But I'm gonna sit tight and wait eagerly for its release (I hope they bring it forward from July). Game already looks super smooth (street's ahead of GZW in that aspect).
Fingers crossed the release gets pushed forward, July seems so far away!!

Back in the day, yes I am old, you could download / create your own weapons/textures and import them into a folder and use them in game for halo and counter strike. Is this possible anymore?

Hey, so I found an xbox original for sale for 15$ at goodwill outlet. When I got home I opened and it had a copy of Gauntlet Dark Legacy in the disk tray in awesome condition.
I still have copies of halo and halo 2, and a copy of PSO so I wanted to play online from the comfort of my couch like back in the day and figured this would be a good time to purchase since it was so cheap.
The xbox has some type of mod installed called Evolution.
I'm able to save my games to the hard drive with it and play them from the hard drive.
I can also access the original xbox dashboard if I choose to.
But when watching a walk through my dash number is out of date, probably due to the mod.
Is it possible to set up insignia with a modded xbox? Any links or personal success story would be helpful. Or should I just get a second xbox?
I thought I hit the jackpot finding that xbox at goodwill for so cheap, but now I'm thinking it might not be that cool. Especially since it had a stock hard drive and I can only fit one game.

Dex only Variant Whirling Axes Barbarian Guide – Season 12 (Shungite)
Introduction
People call me Kiki. Coming at ya with another experimental bad barb guide
Purpose
Just another Guide to fit the new season
Why
People have been asking me and this is just 1 variant you can make, and then create your own variation if you desire. I wont judge but I will judge if you don’t use grimward.
Base Skills
20 Grim Ward (pre-reqs find potion, find items)
20 Whirling Axes
20 War Cry (pre-reqs howl, taunt, shout, battle cry, battle order)
20 Double swing
1 point wonders,
Choice of mastery, Edge weapon, Pole arm, Blunt
increase stamina
Increase speed
Counter attack
Puncture
Iron Skin
Natural resistance
Frenzy
Leap (optional)
Cleave
Stun
Bash
Whirlwind
** if you don’t know Critical hit doesn’t reduce while Whirlwind-ing , however deadly strike, and Crushing blow reduce to 1/3. and chance to cast things.
Stats
STR – depends on your gear. Or your choice of build. or none strengthless
DEX – Synergy to Whirling Axes. As much as you want. I have 500 with gear.
VITALITY – As much as you want
ENERGY – Ain’t nobody worried about that
Gear
Helm
3 socketed Arreat’s Face with 3 Ber runes , (or 2xBer, 1 cham for cannot be frozen if preferred)
or Phys facets.
Or at least 2 ias speed Jewels to hit higher break point for dual-wielding frenzy,
Body
Fortitude runeword in a Sacred Armor base, but it can also be in any base you like visually.
For Dex only option: Enigma runeword makes it possible to not need str with Anni and torch
Belt
String of Ears, PDR life leech
Verdungo’s Heart Cord
Immortal king belt,
Gloves
Steelrend, the new meta! Melee Splash and Crushing blow and damage. preferably with Life on Hit corruption
Laying of Hand, preferably with Life on Hit corruption
Immortal king glove, Str and Dex, IAS if paired with IK belt
Boots
Gore Rider
Optional: Shadow Dancer for the 30% Faster Hit Recovery and dex
Weapon
2-handed option
Breath of the Dying runeword in either a War Pike base or a Thunder Maul base. Thunder Maul benefits from extra damage and undead damage
Dual-wield option
2x Breath of the Dying runeword in a Berserker Axe base, or whatever base you think looks cool
On swap
Heart of the Oak x2
Or paired with Radament’s Sphere for Desecrate skill
Budget option: + 3 Warcry stick x2
Or paired with Radament’s Sphere for Desecrate skill
+7 Battle Order option: Heart of the Oak and at least +3 Battle Order roll on Call to Arms (or +3 BO stick bought from NPCs)
* Battle Order on CTA caps at +3 for Barbarian class. Even if the roll is +4, +5 or +6, the Barb does not benefit from the extra points. Also dual CTA doesn’t work.
*Its possible to get more skills from synthesized item,
**optional swap 2 Oath RW to cast lvl +20 Heart of the wolverine Spirit. but you must have a Wisp ring or the spirit will vanish. it is huge buff to damage and ar.
Amulet and Ring combos
Angelic Wings amulet with +1 skill corruption with Angelic Halo ring x2 or substitute one with Raven Frost
*All rings should, if possible, benefit from having physical damage reduction or faster cast rate corruptions.
WW benefits more with Angelic set
Attack rating is king, Prove me wrong.
**optional swap 2 Oath RW to cast a lvl +20 Heart of the wolverine Spirit. but you must have a Wisp ring or the spirit will vanish. the combo is Angelic set with Wisp
Charms
Annihilus
Hellfire Torch
9 Barb Masteries grand charms
+Res, +Life small charms (whatever you need to cap/fill in)
Mercenary
Act 3 Precision Aura, My personal choice
Buff AR, and Critical hit**
** if you don’t know Critical hit doesn’t reduce while Whirlwind-ing only deadly strike reduces
Act 2 Blessed Aim aura
Buff to AR
Gear
Helm
3 socketed Vampire Gaze
Steelshade, life on hit is pretty good.
Budget option: 3 socketed Tal Rasha’s
In sockets: 1 melee splash damage + 15% increase attack speed jewel and 1-2 15% increase attack speed jewels
Armor
Eth Fortitude runeword
Gladiator’s Bane Socket it with whatever you want (Ethereal Gladiator’s Bane is also a thing)
Gbane has always work for me and I don’t know how.
Eth Stone runeword
Weapon
A2 Pride runeword for more AR and a huge one and damage
A3 Last wish, Expensive but give Damage and other perk nice to have.
Lawbringer RW for decrepify is decent option. Ive had good use with that.
Gear Comments
The gear is common Barb stuff. There are a lot of options, but I will elaborate briefly on my personal choices:
Helm: Having 3 Ber runes instead of two + a splash damage jewel in the helm will drastically increase your survivability, in my opinion. It is an expensive option, but it’s worth the value for any Whirlwind users as there aren’t many places where you can get a good source of physical damage reduction without Stormshield. Phys Facet are an option but there getting expensive even for non perfects, a high grimward does the same job, but Facet arent penalized when breaking immunes. Example when -100% grimward break its reduce to -20%, then -% from facet would kick in without a penalty so what the -% is at. or you can cast howl on phy immune and they run away then bash them one at a time.
at least 2 ias speed jewel can help hit max break point with 2 Berserker axe using frenzy.
Armor: Fortitude is BIS for the ED, as well as its defensive mods (chilling armor when struck, all res, etc.).
Enigma is also a great option for the faster run/walk, and of course, the Warp (nerfed Teleport) skill for mobility. And more skill points for Whirling Axes Chances, and keep merc buff near by for his buff.
Gloves: Steelrend is the new meta now that it has melee splash over Laying of Hands for the increased attack speed, the extra damage to demons. But steelrend lack attack speed to help break point. Ik gloves too when paired with ik belt
Belt: String of ears, Verdungo’s both good. Ik belt too when paired with ik gloves
Boots: Gore Rider boots are the standard option for the deadly strike, crushing blow and open wounds mods. Shadow Dancers are another option for the extra DEX and massive 30% faster hit recovery.
Jewelry: Angelic Halo (ring) and Angelic Wing (amulet) as a set give a huge increase in attack rating, and more attack rating is always great with Whirlwind, as the skill halves your attack rating when active. Try to prove me wrong trying to use something else, and then you don’t have as much attack rating.
Its not that big of a deal to have Cannot be frozen you can live without it; WW it would do more damage being slower.
Weapon: In Diablo 2, physical damage-based builds are lacking in damage and are very weapon-based for damage. The Breath of the Dying runeword seems to be the only decent damage dealing weapon of all the weapon. You can try anything you find, but the BOTD will dominate. I’ve tried it all. For bases, War Pike seems to be the most useful with range. Thunder Maul does have more damage, but ultimately, with either base, every monster dies within 1 WW.
Dual wielding BTOD, just having extra 30 all attributes, give Whirling axes more damage but lessen your main damage. But now you can frenzy form more Whirling axes chances and then mix WhirlWind.
On swap: Buffs, or Desecrate for grimward.
Merc gear: Pride runeword increases your attack rating substantially so that you don’t really need the Angelics.
Playstyle
The playstyle is very straightforward, not too different from other melee builds: you start by buffing yourself with Battle Command, then Battle Orders and finally Shout. If you got dual oath on swap and wisp ring. buff the spirit. Then, you go on attacking with Whirldwind, while occasionally casting Grim Ward to increase you and your party’s physical damage potential. If you have Enigma, you can Warp (nerfed Teleport) to a mob, Whirlwind, Warp to another mob and to keep merc next to you. Dual wielding BTOD, just having extra 30 all attributes, give Whirling axes more damage but lessen your main damage. But now you can build frenzy charges for more Whirling axes chances and then mix WhirlWind. And plus you get to run super fast!
Some numbers if your still reading, so I hit about 5k+ Whirling axes with 78% proc and 92% with frenzy charges. And about 2-3k max damage dual wielding on WW. 8-10k damage on tmaul WW. Is it good? Its clearing faster than non-Whirling axes barb. That all I can see. Grimward op and AR is king prove me wrong.
Leveling
aint that kind of guide. Check my Path of diablo 2 General purpose tips and trick leveling Guide (coming soon). Maybe that can help. ik set op.
Summery
If there anything to take away and you’ve shat on this build and disagree with everything and claim it does not have enough damage or AR. The TLDR just max Grim Ward and then figure the rest out. Its great extra damage for you and your party. BOTD and angelic set is plenty of damage and AR without any skills points and going naked with it. Again Grim ward op. and AR is king prove me wrong.
Videos coming soon

I want to give anyone looking for any feedback on possible employment opportunities for a company called Alliance Consumer Group. They are known for owning several brands that offer a variety of products, including: NEBO, TRUE, iPROTEC, THAW, and HALO.
This community is based on real life personal experience of a spouse of a former employee. My spouse worked their ass off for this company as a sales representative and made the most calls and followed their sales process and was provided weak sales leads to accomplish the company’s desired sales goals. They basically are a churn and burn sales force that will cycle through prospective employees, you may produce 5 sales a week but that is calling over 300 customers in a work week. They provide quality sales leads their top performers and new hires are left to churn through old sales lists of past employees who were and are forced to leave the company as they don’t meet the quota, you may end up making sales and building a client base. However, when you do not meet sales goals and quotas they slowly push you out. Then when you leave they pass all your sales efforts onto the next performer and hire new people to perform just like you did.
Sadly, I would express dissatisfaction with the management, describing it as stressful and degrading to new employees.
Be careful when you choose to accept a position a a field sales associate.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

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A quick thanks to u/aMANTEIGAdo for the Liiry fanart

Transcription Subject: Fink, Landlord/Veln supporter
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
I idly waited in the empty restaurant for this mister Gilt. His secretary had sent me a message saying that he was underway. It’s weird how his secretary has refused to make any phone or face calls, and has only contacted me through messages. It shouldn’t matter though, so long as this Mr. Gilt is a level-headed and reputable leaser.
My train of thought was suddenly interrupted by the jingling of the bell above the entrance. Walking through the doorway had to be the most veteran-looking exterminator I have ever seen. He wore 3 exterminator badges, but far more impressive than that was how he was covered in scars. They were concentrated especially heavily around his neck, most likely from predators attempting to bite through his throat, and somehow he’d survived so many attacks. What did puzzle me further though was how unevenly his fur was shaven and the strange look in his eyes, one that I could not place. “Hello. Mister Gilt, I presume?”
“The one and only. I’m here for the interview and to see the restaurant.” I now noticed that he was wearing a pawsfree headset. Its green light was blinking, like it was on.
“I’m sorry, but are you having a call right now?”
“No! No, I am a very busy venlil and always wear this in case I get an important call.” A bit strange, but I suppose not too out of the ordinary.
“Well, could you tell something about yourself?”
“As you can see, Gilt, er, I have spend decades removing the taint of Venlil Prime and keeping the population safe,” Gilt said in a rather strange way, like he was reading it off a paper; maybe he had memorized the line, expecting the question during the interview. “Now that I’m retired from that lifestyle, I have begun investing my well-earned money in small businesses.”
“That all sounds good. Your secretary already gave me most of the information I needed, like how you’re going to turn this place into a salad-based restaurant; he called it a ‘salad house.’ And I’m sure that I don’t have to ask you what your policy on humans is.” I gave a small chuckle, imagining a veteran exterminator like him welcoming humans warmly into his restaurant.
“You don’t have to worry about me or any employee of mine ever accepting those tainted scum into my establishment. I can’t wait for Veln to be voted in, he will surely make sure that those filthy humans will be cast off our magnificent Venlil Prime,” Gilt said, again quite stiff. He might just be nervous.
“Rightfully said, he sure has my vote.” Speaking of humans, is that one across the street? Over Gilt’s shoulder, I spotted a human making a phone call in an old, rusted-up van. He was looking straight at me, up until he noticed I was looking back and quickly looked away. With relief, I noticed that a pair of exterminators were walking straight towards the car. The human seemed to end his phone call and opened up a window to speak to the exterminators. With that small problem solved, I turned my attention back to Gilt, who seemed to be panicking a bit. I suppose even someone with nerves of steel as him can get nervous over simple things like an interview. He pressed a button on the pawsfree headset, and the blinking light turned off.
Transcription Subject: Vuccen, Krakotl Exterminator
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
Another day, another pointless patrol. I wish they would give us something real to do. But with all those ‘animal’ welfare laws and us no longer being allowed to lock up anyone with predator disease, we have nothing left to do but roam the streets in the hopes we find something that we are allowed to do. My prayers were answered, because not 10 meters ahead of us, I saw a human sitting in the passenger seat of a terribly beat-up van covered in rust and algae. Weirdly enough, it had a sideview mirror on the driver’s side. Finally, something to do. “Come on Cuko, I see a human let’s see if it’s hiding something,” I chirped to my venlil partner.
“Please be nice to them, they hardly ever do anything wrong.” She’s so kind, too bad that she sometimes focuses it on the wrong kind.
I tapped against the window with the talon of my right wing, and the human quickly ended a call and began to crank the window open by hand. “Hey, if it isn’t Burny-bird, how are you two doing?” he said, switching glances between me and my partner.
All of a sudden, I recognized the human’s face; it was the same one that purposely angered me last month [chapter 2]. “Get out of the car,” I demanded while I unholstered my flamethrower.
The human casually placed his arm in the window and calmly asked, “Why, what have I done?” Cuko behind me signed with her tail in agreement.
“Random search, now get out of the vehicle.”
“Sure, ‘random,’ totally not out of some bias to antagonize a specific species,” he said sarcastically as he got out of the car with one hand raised while the other opened the door.
Cuko guided him to the front of the car for a pat down. “Please place your claws on the hood and spread your hindlegs.” If evolving into predators wasn’t enough, they had to be completely bald too. With all those false pelts, humans can hide so many dangerous items without anyone being the wiser.
I wretched when I looked into the car; the floor was littered with mouldy cans of vegetables, nearly empty save for the rotting scraps and overgrown utensils. “W-why?”
The human spoke up while he was being patted down by my partner, “I know what you’re looking at —ough, careful with those nails— and those are not mine, all that junk is from the owner, my friend. I have been urging him to clean it up, and I’ve even thought about doing it for him, but he really should learn to take care of himself.”
I began to sift through the junk, relieved that I am covered from talon to neck in a rubber fireproof suit, not having to coat my feathers in this filth. Outside, I heard that Cuko hadn’t found anything dangerous or illegal on it, and that its name was ‘Maarten.’ I was about to give up on finding anything until I pulled a lever on a small rectangular object I found in the glovebox, and a small knife flipped out. “Aha, got you now filthy predator. Why do you have this?”
“That’s a pocketknife, that’s just a tool. I have it in the glovebox with the rest of my tools to keep this hunk of rust running.”
My partner spoke up with a concerned look on her face, “It’s not illegal to own a knife that small. You probably have bigger ones in your kitchen drawer, we can’t arrest him for that.”
It looked away from me and continued looking at Cuko, as it did before I spoke up. I shudder imagining what predatory thoughts lie behind those binocular-eyes.
Transcription Subject: Maarten de Groot, Human Refugee/Meat dealer
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
Don’t pet her, don’t pet her, she has a flamethrower.
Transcription Subject: Vuccen, Krakotl Exterminator
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
Giving up on finding anything in the front, I slid open the side door, revealing even more junk. At least these look more promising…and not covered in mould. Why is there a dishwasher and 5 blenders in here? “I noticed that the wool on the top of your head is a lot more puffy then on most venlil,” the human carelessly remarked. Of course, it’s going to point out her insecurities, typical predators.
“It is, you don’t have to mention it,” Cuko replied in an annoyed tone.
“It looks good on you, it’s cute.” What?!
“Oh, er, thank you…very much.” I can’t listen to this, she’s to naïve to understand that it’s just tricking her. I continued searching the back of the van for anything, traces of meat, weapons, dead venlil. I opened up one of the 3 large boxes that were hidden behind a piece of plywood that was haplessly placed there. There was a cool box inside. Jackpot! To my disappointment, it was empty, and so was the next one, and the one after that. Stil,l though, why would anyone have these hidden away like this?
“Why are there 3 cool boxes hidden away in the back in back?” I asked, demanding an answer from the human and interrupting it from its conversation with my partner.
“I don’t know, why is any of that stuff in there? On our way over here, we saw a dishwasher on the side of the road and he threw it- well he asked me to throw it in the back.” This is going nowhere.
Transcription Subject: Fink, Landlord/Veln supporter
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
“And that is why you should never combine drain cleaner and aluminium in a metal canister,” Gilt said, finishing his strange explanation.
“Huh, I never knew how to make an acid bomb. Shall we begin with the tour?,” I asked, finally cutting off Gilt’s rambling about chemistry. What a strange person.
The dining area wasn’t much to look at, it was completely empty save for a bar that was bolted to the floor, hence why the previous renters didn’t take it with them. Gilt walked around seemingly at random, looking at the outlets and taking a glance at the empty shelves behind the bar. “Are these taps pressured by gas?,” Gilt asked while he pulled on a lever and being briefly disappointed by the lack of alcohol.
“Yes, I think there was room for 2 canisters, but I have to look that up. May I ask you something? Why do you know so much about chemistry as an exterminator?” Gilt’s tail suddenly began flicking nervously left and right.
“Uhhh, uhhh, I uhh, studied it, yes, I studied it, but I was better cut as an exterminator.” I was unable to get a proper read on him; he sounds like he’s lying or at least nervous about something.
“Shall we take a look at the kitchen?”
“Yes!” Gilt nearly yelled, and he instantly got up and speed walked through the kitchen door. When I walked through the door, he was fawning over the industrial freezer lined against the wall. “This thing is big enough to fit a body inside…hypothetically.”
“…Yes, it would be very useful for you for keeping your vegetables preserved. There is also plenty of counter space, and even a strayu-oven,” I said, doing my best sales pitch.
Gilt immediately took a liking to the oven. “Can this thing make other stuff too?”
“Well, it’s a strayu-oven. I don’t know what else you want to make with it, especially in a salad-house.”
“I don’t know! Perhaps other food that needs to be warm?” Gilt said dismissively, his tail nervously flicking left and right. I think he’s just very nervous.
“I am quite glad you’re an exterminator,” I said, trying to relieve the awkwardness. “I really don’t want to have any humans in any of my buildings, especially not after what I heard on the news not a quarter claw ago.”
He gave a confused ear flick. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s all over the news. Some humans blew up the front of the exchange program headquarters. Those dangerous predators should have never been allowed to stay on our planet.”
Gilt his ears folded back and showed a snarl, something hardly any venlil did and combined with the fact that he looked so dangerous made me instinctively back up. “Those sons of farsuls, I will make them pay! Humanity First is making the humans’ reputation even worse!”
“Calm down sir, you’re no longer part of the force.” He really takes this personally. You can take the exterminator out of the guild, but you can’t take the guild out of the exterminator. “Hey, you seem like a good leaser for this place.” And the only participant. I quickly said, hoping to change the subject. He was a bit intense before, but now, he was starting to scare me. It’s not like I trust this man, but I need to lease this place out too not go under. To many leasers and renters pulled out after going bankrupt, after Venlil Prime left the Federation. All because Tarva wanted to sleep with a predator.
Miraculoisly this seemed to work miraculously, “Oh, great, where do I sign?” His ears lifted up again into a happy expression, though only for only a short moment until his pawsfree headset went off and he immediately answered it. The green light began blinking once again. “What?...No…No…Yes…I already did it, without your help…bye…bye!”
Transcription Subject: Vuccen, Krakotl Exterminator
Date [standardized human time]: February 24, 2137
I noticed Cuko was looking a bit confused at a piece of paper with some venlilian writing on it. “What do you have there?”
“That human from just then, gave me his phone number for some reason.” She’s too naïve for this line of work.
A/N:
As always I really appreciate comments, it gives a lot more satisfaction than a few up arrows.
A special thanks to u/InstantSquirrelSoup for proofreading. Check out his fic: Arxur Hospitality
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I'm really puzzled why Halo Infinite didn't launch with a comprehensive Battle Royale mode that includes both PvP and PvE elements, especially given the game's expansive open world. Imagine utilizing the open-world map for a dynamic Battle Royale scenario, coupled with the varied weapons and gear from Halo 5's Warzone—Light Rifles, Battle Rifles, DMRs, Covenant Carbines, and Bandits, just to name a few.
The potential for integrating a wealth of land vehicles is immense, which could truly maximize their use in such a setting. Picture a 100-player cap with options for 4-man squads, along with trio, duo, and solo play, eventually expanding into a ranked mode. This setup could significantly attract viewers to the Halo Championship Series (HCS) and offer a diverse array of gameplay experiences within Infinite.
Additionally, this mode could provide an extended timeline for monetizing through cosmetics, battle passes, and other in-game purchases. What do you all think? Was this a missed opportunity for Halo Infinite, or is there a reason they opted out of this route?

I'm really puzzled why Halo Infinite didn't launch with a comprehensive Battle Royale mode that includes both PvP and PvE elements, especially given the game's expansive open world. Imagine utilizing the open-world map for a dynamic Battle Royale scenario, coupled with the varied weapons and gear from Halo 5's Warzone—Light Rifles, Battle Rifles, DMRs, Covenant Carbines, and Bandits, just to name a few.
The potential for integrating a wealth of land vehicles is immense, which could truly maximize their use in such a setting. Picture a 100-player cap with options for 4-man squads, along with trio, duo, and solo play, eventually expanding into a ranked mode. This setup could significantly attract viewers to the Halo Championship Series (HCS) and offer a diverse array of gameplay experiences within Infinite.
Additionally, this mode could provide an extended timeline for monetizing through cosmetics, battle passes, and other in-game purchases. What do you all think? Was this a missed opportunity for Halo Infinite, or is there a reason they opted out of this route?

I've been playing the game since launch and am by no means a game developer or balancer, but I thought I'd start some discussion on how I'd like to see the game's weapons balanced to provide more choice and interesting weapon options.
Overall, I feel that many of the current primaries feel too similar to each other with no distinguishing features and I'd like to see these weapons stand out by offering a higher risk and reward aspect to the player. Guns that offer higher damage, penetration, or explosive traits should be balanced by higher recoil, lower rate of fire, bullet drop etc.
Here are my thoughts on some specific guns:
ARs (Tbh, there are so many of them, making them harder to balance and differentiate)
Adjudicator: Rather than lowering the recoil like in the last balancing patch, I would rather increase the recoil and the damage (to be similar but less than Diligence at 100-120). Additionally, I would give it worse handling like the Dominator or the original Diligence CS (not as bad though)
Tenderizer: I'm OK with not giving this medium armor pen if we can increase the damage (80?) and give it a slight stagger while also increasing recoil (in-between Liberator and Adjudicator) and weapon sway. This would position it as harder hitting than the Liberator, but with less ammo and more recoil.
Liberator Penetrator: I'd like to see the burst fire come back as a quick, 3 round burst option with higher damage (80?) like a Halo 3 BR to offset the lack of full auto and a much smaller magazine size.
Liberator Concussive: Make the gimmick more useful for its trade offs, such as slowing down Brood Commander charges or staggering Bile Spewers out of spewing if you shoot them in the head a few times.
Slugger: Give it back the stagger it had previously, but lower the range by increasing damage fall off and bullet drop. This would prevent it from being used a sniper and more like a shotgun (up close engagements) while offering higher damage potential vs the regular punisher
Eruptor: While I never thought the release version of this weapon with shrapnel was too strong (balanced by slow rate of fire and tendency to kill yourself at close range), I thought it didn't make sense that the large explosive projectile it fired traveled in a straight line like a regular bullet. It would further increase the skill required for this weapon by giving it a slower projectile speed and bullet drop.
Crossbow: I don't agree with the changes this weapon got since it offered something unique in its original form, a large AoE weapon that was difficult to use due to the slow projectile speed and drop, as well as the possibility of killing yourself if used too close to the player. Ammo could have been reduced to 8 or 10 instead of 12 since I never ran out of ammo while using it.
Defender: To differentiate it more from the Pummeler, I'd like to see this get a higher rate of fire (800-900) with a larger magazine (55-60) since it didn't make sense that an SMG had the same magazine size as the Liberator. Recoil should be slightly increased to compensate.
Grenade Launcher support weapon: This only tickles most armored enemies on higher difficulties and I don't see it used much anymore as a result. It could use another reload and damage/penetration that matches the impact grenade.
Breaker: I haven't really used it since the nerf but the magazine should be brought back to 16 with the higher recoil but also higher spread (like an auto shotgun should have).
Let me know if you agree or disagree and why!

Just a review from an old gamer but noob to SC.
I'd heard this game was a total scam and avoided it for all these years. Maybe it was a bad-deal back then, but now: I'm happy to report that this IS a real game with a lot to offer and a lot to do. It has incredible potential! $45 gets you into SC and that is a great deal!
Where I come from: Halo CE-Reach. Wow/Wc3/Starcraft/HotS/OW. Mass Effect. Deus Ex. Subnautica. . Elite Dangerous. No Man's Sky. Dota2. Helldivers2. Escape from Tarkov (7 years). I love spaceships, FPS combat, hot-rodding stuff, buying/selling/stealing stuff, murdering, rescuing, etc. Love PVE and PVP.
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT:
Visuals. Most beautiful game I've ever seen. Most talented art-team ever. Spaceships, environments, gear. Best ever. Constant state of amazement and it runs great on a PC I built for tarkov (5800X3D / 4070ti)
Sound: Very good! Each ship has audible-personality! Guns sound good, character sounds good. A+ sound design.
Movement: Character crawls, runs, walks, climbs, jumps as you'd expect. Climbing works! Great job here. Would love a slide, but that's being greedy.
Controls: Default controls are intuitive to new players and very configurable. Basically perfect.
Ships: The ships are the star of the show. They are unique, beautiful, ugly, serious, silly, etc. The ships are CHARMING and wonderful. I love my razor, cutlass black & blue, msr, herc, avenger, redeemer, retaliator, and the eclipse (3.22)!
Flight: More involved than No Man's Sky, but simpler than Elite Dangerous. Perfect! (3.22).
Vehicles: Incredible vehicles!
FPS Gear: Great looking suits! Fun weapons. Varied fighting styles. Gear can be dropped almost anywhere.
PvE:
1 - Bounties are fun and can result in cargo to sell!
2 - Mercenary stuff is fun, I hope for more variety in the future.
3 - Running cargo makes sense and works and most importantly: involves risk! Delivery makes sense but pays terrible.
4 - Salvage: Did a session on a reclaimer as a box-stuffer. Boring but lucrative, not a fan.
5 - Investigation: cool idea but forced me to EVA in a wreck and EVA just about made this 25 year gaming + vr veteran hurl.
6 - Pay for all jobs is a bit low given what you can make doing cargo or salvage.
PvP:
1 - Is rarely fair - as it should be in an mmo. Rock Paper Scissors, outnumbering, surprise, and gear all play a part as they should. I can't believe they made space-dayz!
2 - Ruthless - perfect! Winner takes all! Day-Z/Tarkov/Rust players, this is the space game for you!
3 - Piracy. Real actual piracy. You lie in wait, ambush someone, take their cargo, sell it to a fence. BRAVO. No game has ever got this right until SC.
Crime:
1 - Can buy your way out of minor stuff - awesome!
2 - People get bounty missions for you and will wait for you outside the hangar doors: cool!
3 - You can HACK THE POLICE DB AND CLEAR YOURSELF?!? Amazing. 10/10.
4 - Jail - which can be reduced with labor, or more crime, or via escape. Awesome!
The Community. SC wouldn't be here without devoted (and spendy) players who are willing to put up with bugs and problems. Most are helpful in general chat. Some are scary-good at ship to ship combat (3.22). We didn't expect to like SC players as much as we do.
WHAT'S BAD ABOUT IT:
Servers. Servers. Servers. Everything listed above in the good section fails on the regular. You fall through those beautiful environments and die. Your quest bugs and fails or can't be completed. NPCs stand still or hover in space doing nothing or shoot you through objects and you die. Massive desync between players. We have to regularly confirm "ARE YOU ON THE ELEVATOR?!" before we push the button it's so bad. Crashes. So many crashes. Everything good or bad about Star Citizen takes a backseat to the very very poor server performance. People regularly run with r_displayinfo 1 on to monitor the server health - that is NOT good for any phase of a game from Alpha to Beta to finished. THIS PROBLEM CLOUDS EVERYTHING.
Flight (3.23): Completely changed the flight model. Less of a pain for me & my crew since we just got here. We have less to un-learn and re-learn. At first glance though: it seems worse in every way. More complicated without reason in canon or out. More difficult without being more fun. All ships feel less capable than they did 2 weeks ago when we started playing SC. Good ships are now bad etc. I can see why many veteran players who love ship to ship combat are very upset and worried. For now, I avoid ship to ship combat because it seems very broken. Will try again in a few patches.
The Focus: This game has 20 unfinished gameplay loops. There's tons to do but any/all of it may break at any point. It's like every time they have a great idea (and they have TONS of great ideas!) they run off and get it barely-up-and-running, then dash off to the next thing. I've been amazed at all the REALLY BRILLIANT ideas that are 60% implemented in a 10+ year old game...
WHAT'S UGLY ABOUT IT:
The Developers: SC has had a lot of $ come in and many years and it's still very much an alpha. IMO that's a mistake on the devs parts. They could be beta by now, even in this era of 'beta forever' development we should expect more. Focus on fleshing out fewer features and basic functionality, spend more $$ on servers. Get the game to a stable beta - still with some bugs & crashes - but out of Alpha. You have to get out of Alpha. It's been years.
The Devs continue to get away with the weirdest project-management model on earth because of:
The Community: Whether it comes from SC Veterans to noobs like me, criticism is NOT well heard in the SC community. Whatever is in the patch notes is like marching orders from a cult-leader. Any discussion on spectrum or reddit that suggests maybe the game should be more functional by now is met with fervor. It's sad because you guys deserve better than this, and these devs can definitely do better!
Recent examples: Helldivers2 publisher almost forced a bad 'feature' in, the players stood up for themselves and said "NO!" and the devs/publisher reconsidered (and that fight continues). Tarkov was exposed for its absurd level of cheating last year, and subsequently tried to change the rules of purchase & up the price. Tarkov players logged off in droves and the company reversed course (and that fight continues). We did this BECAUSE WE LOVE THE GAME.
You are the customer! SC-Devs are creating this beautiful work of art, but it's a work of art they hope to sell you, therefore: you have a SAY. You can complain, you can criticize, you can dislike a new direction. It won't kill the Devs. It will make the game better!
As of right now, it's unplayable, but I want to defend that a little. 3.23 is a big patch for SC. A lot of back-end stuff seems to have changed, and some major front-end stuff is totally different. I've barely been able to complete a quest, run cargo, fight anything, go anywhere, look in my backpack, or drink a space-gatorade. I've seen this happen with many games from WoW on up to Tarkov.
With Tarkov throwing away thousands of players and untold SCU's of good will, I had this thought: if star-citizen was beta and not alpha, it might have just picked up tens of thousands of players this month. It didn't because it doesn't have enough servers. Cue the sc-beliebers devsplaining why future quantum server meshing technology will save the day and just spending some more of their smaug-horde on servers won't help. ;)