I find it insufferable to talk about this because I swear the only people who agree with me are elitist dudebro “git gud” types, who seem to believe their ability to press buttons makes them the most impressive motherfucker on the planet; meanwhile everyone who disagrees with me acts like I’m literally satan for suggesting this but…
I dislike when games have a difficulty system that you have to “unlock” because I enjoy a challenge and want to play on a difficulty that actually engages me.
I don’t dislike games having difficulty options, though I would personally take a game like Nightreign where there is essentially one difficulty and you start at that difficulty and that’s it, not counting things like Deep of Night or Everdarks but I’ll get into that. Over a game like Marvel Rivals’ PvE mode where I have to start at literally the easiest beginner baby mode and then work my way up.
Listen, I think if people wanna play on beginner baby mode they should be allowed to, and you know what else? I don’t think they should get less rewards/loot for it. Yea I think people should be allowed to play PvE games at a difficulty that’s engaging but fun for them, and if they don’t want to play on uber-hard-prepare-to-die mode, then they shouldn’t get penalized for it. HOWEVER I also think people like me should be allowed to jump right into gameplay that’s fun to us.
A bunch of my friends love Marvel Rivals, I… for lack of better explanation; do not. It’s just not my game, I honestly think it has 900 glaring problems but that’s not the point here. The point here is that I heard it has a PvE zombie mode that a friend wanted help with, so I figured I’d give it a shot and see if it’s fun to me. It’s not. But more than that; what made it so boring to me is that everyone hyped up Nightmare 4 difficulty, saying it’s super hard and that it took them weeks to clear it and all that. Now to someone like me that sounds FUN. I play hard games and tend to enjoy struggling against a challenge with my friends, that’s just how I am. I want to be engaged, it’s not some masochistic “I love losing, losing is fun” kinda bullshit. It’s about facing a wall and smashing through it with your friends. Marvel… is not that. Marvel doesn’t know how to do difficulty. Every hero has like, 2 - 3 things they can do, and depending on your build that narrows down to 1 thing you do repeatedly for basically 30 minutes. In the easier difficulties you have to move around a city map clearing waves of zombies as you go, in the later difficulties (starting at Nightmare) you instead are confined to the last zone and just play a sort of defense game instead. First off, that’s more my speed, I don’t want to have to run around a badly designed city map (sorry to anyone who likes it) you’re not making L4D2…. 2, or anything; you’re slapping a bunch of in-between garbage I have to run through to get to the next batch of enemies. Marvel is not a game designed around this kind of gameplay and thusly it’s not very good. Some heroes have vertical aiming, others not so much; so some heroes are better suited for the earlier difficulties and others are way better at the latter difficulties.
For the record I cleared every single difficulty in a row, no failures at all; first try. That’s not me trying to brag, it’s me saying that this isn’t some Nightreign level of difficulty. Do you know what changes between each difficulty? Damage and Health. That’s it. You get more enemies with more health who deal more damage. By Nightmare 4 you just can’t be hit at all or you’re basically dead unless you’re spamming health upgrades exclusively (and maybe some defense) but that’s not really a concern if you’re paying attention and have a team who can, you know; pay attention. It’s very unlikely all 4 of you will go down at the same time and if you do they give you plenty of tokens you can just use to revive and keep going in spite of that. The difficulty here is whether or not you get good RNG on your upgrades. There’s no skill involved, there’s no playing around your abilities, there’s no team dynamic, there’s no need to actually play. I just sorta pressed Shift + LMB and repeated that every 1 - 2 seconds for literally 30 minutes and we won.
You might think I found it boring because it’s not engaging at all, and that’s true; but I also mostly found it boring because it made me sit through like, literally 5 - 6 previous rounds of even less engaging garbage. People have told me this is because “they want you to level your character since Nightmare 4 is so tough.” My counterpoint to that is… what if I just didn’t have to do that? What if the game was balanced so that you just didn’t have to artificially inflate your numbers?
I know a lot of people don’t care for Nightreign, but personally it’s one of my favorite games to come out in the last few years. You know why? Because it’s everything I love about Dark Souls, without anything I hate about Dark Souls. Invasions? Nope not here. Team based gameplay? Literally designed around it. Fun and interesting builds that don’t take hours to put together? Yeah you can just kinda pick whatever you want for each run and go have fun right away.
However above all of that, the gameplay at base is challenging enough for someone like me to enjoy it, but by far the easiest in the series which means even my friends who have never touched a Souls game and come in and enjoy it. The team based gameplay means if someone is really struggling I can pick them up and help them out, the RNG aspect of the drops doesn’t matter because at most we’re spending like 45 minutes on a round, and at least it’s like maybe 10 if we somehow wipe to the first night boss. The difficulty is set in stone, there’s no such thing as an “easy mode” you have to play through before you can go to the “hard mode” that might actually be more engaging.
Now recently they did add a few higher difficulty options, like a new Deep of Night mode that gets progressively more difficult the more you win the mode. It’s fun and it gives the game something more to do when you’ve beat every single boss. There’s also Everdark versions of the boss fights you can do that gives them a third phase and generally more damage and such. It’s cool to see new moves and get to learn the fight all over again. However outside of Deep of Night level 3+ these modes aren’t super different from the base game. I do understand that DoN3+ can’t be accessed right out the gate, and believe it or not I actually dislike that. Because they let you voluntarily level down if you’re at a level of DoN you’re unhappy with, but you can’t level up without clearing several runs first. Again a run can take upwards of 45 minutes, and even the fastest runs are around 30 minutes.
My point with this is that I want more games to allow me to pick a difficulty from the start, and have access to all the available difficulties. Risk of Rain 2 let’s me just play on Monsoon difficulty on my very first run ever. They don’t bitch and complain that I don’t have all my skills unlocked, or that I might want to know the maps first, or that I need to unlock more characters. If I say “yea I wanna go into the hardest difficulty right out the gate” the game just kinda says yea okay, go have fun.
I recently got into Mycopunk and one thing I was happy about was that it doesn’t stop me from just doing Difficulty Level 7 runs right off the bat. I’m a little sad that it’s Ouroboros mode, the new roguelike mode added to the game; DOES lock you out of higher levels until you clear the previous difficulty.
I seriously don’t know what it is about games locking out difficulty behind clearing previous difficulties. It bothers me because especially in games where I have the numbers, the necessary skill, and the understanding to EASILY clear the previous difficulties, I end up putting the games down before I reach those higher difficulties because I get so bored from not having the game engage me on my level.
If we have placement matches for things like Ranked modes, why not do the same for difficulty? If I want to play at a higher level, let me. If I fail and die repeatedly and don’t get better; that’s on me. If you absolutely must enforce some kind of limit on me “for the sake of me having fun” then do a placement round and see how I do, judge my numbers and skill and what not and rank me in an appropriate difficulty for my skill level.
Long story short, man I’m so happy with Nightreign, I’ve been playing more again now that the game got a balance update and oddly enough they did not touch my main at all. Very slight nerf if anything; and I’m just having fun since my friends have gotten back into it to play their mains now that they got a bunch of buffs.
Please understand that this is the opinion of someone who thinks games like Elin and Kenshi are fun games to bash my head into a wall over until I come up with some convoluted plan to seize victory and then relish in the moment I overcame the odds. A game that goes “hey buddy maybe we should start you on Easy Mode, isn’t it fun to 1 shot everything and not need to worry about damage?” Isn’t for me, I just won’t ever enjoy it. I need to be made to focus and consider my options. I need to have my attention demanded or else I will honestly get lazy, slip up; and feel worse because I somehow managed to die on easy mode lol. Just let me play on the difficulty of my choice, and also stop punishing people who want to play on Easy mode with less loot and worse rewards. If it’s a PvE game then who gives a shit, literally who gives a shit!? Let the people have their fun dammit.
so hard not to become the most annoying person on earth if you're a little excitable and just learned a little about a topic literally no one around you has any interest in
I love a card game that lets you just kinda get stupid with your builds.
These 4 basically just stall out a match while stacking hundreds of poison on every enemy via eating unborn babies.
I have like 12% knowledge of what the hell I’m even doing with this build, but it’s working.
You know technology literacy is dying because I saw this meme with 76k likes
F11 the full screen button? You’re scared of the full screen button? F10?? It opens the menu bar???
Computers are so scary what if I accidentally hit F12 in a steam game and it takes a screenshot. What if I press shift + F12 while in word and accidentally save my document 😖
If you had to learn what the F keys on your computer do through me reblogging this post, then I'm glad you did. Computer literacy is not a skill that gets taught anymore, and it is absolutely one that needs to be taught in order to be learned. Don't ever feel bad for not knowing something, but ☝️ don't ever stop learning learning about your environment, the tools you use, and especially the people around you
Never stop learning+ Never stop sharing what you learned
If you're at work in a retail or hospitality environment and you see a sex worker with a client... no you didn't.
If your boss asks you if you think that person's a sex worker, you tell them you do not believe that. You don't report their presence to anyone. You don't joke about it with a coworker. You don't eavesdrop or bother them.
We're working the same as you are. Leave us alone!
Genuine question here, how would I be able to tell between a sex worker and someone being sex trafficked? I don't work in an environment where I would see either tbh, but when I'm out in public sometimes I do feel concern for women I see in certain situations, so I don't know how I would help and how I even would know? If you don't know it's okay! Just want to open up a conversation maybe
I appreciate the question here because I think it's on a lot of hospitality workers' minds. That goes especially for those who work in hotels and who are made to take training on spotting sex trafficking, like I was, who get some pretty awful advice telling them to report any couples with large age gaps etc.
The most crucial thing to think about is that unless a victim comes to you and explicitly tells you they're a victim or you witness/overhear an attack, you reporting will only harm that victim anyway. If you call the police both the abuser and the victim will lie. If you tell a hotel manager about it and they kick them out, they will go to another hotel and the abuser will be annoyed.
If you see someone who you think may be a sex worker or a trafficking victim but you cannot be sure which - like they're nervous/awkward and there's a big age gap with their supposed romantic partner and they don't seem to know their name as an example - your best bet is to tell them they can reach out to you for help if there's anything wrong, but to only do this if you get a moment alone with them naturally. That way they can come to you or disclose if they want but you don't put them in harm's way.
(Especially noteworthy if you're in the US or another place prostitution is criminalized, sex trafficking victims are routinely arrested even when it's profoundly obvious they're victims. Even if they're eventually let go, that might mean a traumatizing interview at the police station or night in a jail cell!)
To clarify, this isn't meant to dissuade anyone who's had training on how to spot sex trafficking or what to do with that information. This is general advice for Joe Average and their coworkers.
Be safe, and try to keep others safe as well. That's the best we can do as human beans in this fucked up world.
It's absolutely meant to dissuade people who've had training on how to spot sex trafficking! That training is awful, whorephobic, and designed to recruit working class people in hospitality environments into becoming foot soldiers for the surveillance state.
You can read about the issues with that training here:
TL;DR: Sex trafficking is defined so vaguely that in many countries all sex workers are considered to be victims, and despite this police criminalize and harass us all. Hotel workers specifically are given training which targets all sex workers for the purpose of kicking them out of hotels and tipping off the police so we can face further harm.
I made yeto’s pumpkin/goat cheese/salmon soup and it’s changing my life a little bit, like holy SHIT this yeti knows what he’s doing
heyyyyy it’s october again which means it’s time for
✨Yeto’s Superb Soup✨
I had posted a recipe in the comments last year, but I decided to make a better version
Ingredients:
- one 2lb kabocha (you can use an equal-sized pie pumpkin, but in my opinion kabocha has a much butterier texture and nuttier flavor. Also the yeti uses kabocha in the game so it gets points for accuracy)
- 1-3 carrots (last year the store had the fattest carrot I had ever seen. This year I needed 3 carrots to match that volume. Listen to your heart)
- 2-3 celery stalks (equal to the amount of carrot)
- 1/2 white onion
- 6 garlic cloves
- (optional) 2 habanero peppers
- mirin/cooking wine
- 1 box of fish stock (if you want it vegetarian, use kelp dashi stock)
- 1 box of vegetable stock
- 4oz goat cheese. I’ve tried making this with cream cheese and feta, but the flavor really doesn’t land right without the goat cheese.
- 1 cup? (<- it was eyeballed) heavy cream
- .7lb filet of salmon
- ??tbsp olive oil
- 6 tbsp butter
- a few pinches of flour
- thyme, paprika, nutmeg, red pepper flakes salt & pepper
- (optional) gronions to garnish
Step 1) Preheat oven to 400°F/204°C. Slice and deseed kabocha
Step 2) coat the pumpkin in a thin layer of olive oil. Season with thyme (I like dried thyme but fresh is better!), ground nutmeg, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper.
Bake for 30-50 minutes until it’s soft enough to scoop off the rind with a spoon. Thinner kabocha might only take 30 minutes, and thicker kabocha (like below) or a cake pumpkin may take 40+ minutes.
note: if your kabocha/pumpkin is especially thick, your soup may end up tasting sweeter. If you want it more umami, use less of your chosen gourd or maybe add a splash of soy sauce to the broth? Haven’t tried that but it’d probably work
Step 3) Prep all your other veggies while you’re waiting for the pumpkin to bake. Dice the onion and set it aside. Chop the celery & carrots into Chunks and mince the garlique
Step 4) Wait until the timer for the pumpkin has 20 minutes or less left. Heat up your pot/dutch oven on high/med-high heat, melt 2 tbsp of butter, and add the onions. After about 6 minutes, add the garlic. After another few minutes, sprinkle flour and stir, and keep frying until it browns.
Step 5) Add the rest of the butter, the rest of the veggies, and stir. Deglaze the pan with a splash of mirin/cooking wine.
If you timed it right, the pumpkin should be about done. Using a spoon, scoop the rind off the pumpkin. While you do that, periodically check on the veggies, adding another sprinkle of flour and a some of the fish stock as it gets dry. It’ll create a sort of paste and the onions will be pretty browned at this point.
Step 6) Chop the pumpkin & add it to the pot. Add the rest of the stock. If you’re using habanero, slice it and add it now. Add any other seasonings (it may need more salt) to taste. Once the soup boils, turn the heat to low and cover.
Personally, I prefer soups with Chunks in them + I think it’s more authentic to what the yeti made, but if you REALLY feel compelled to blend your soup, do it now.
Step 7) While the soup is heating up, get out a frying pan and add a tablespoon or two of some olive oil/butter on med-high heat. Add the salmon filet to the pan (scale side down) and just let it sit there. Don’t touch it. When it turns opaque halfway up, flip it until it’s fully cooked.
Once it’s cooked, remove it from the pan, remove the skin, and shred it into bite size pieces. If your salmon was really thick like mine was, and some parts of it are still pink, then toss the pink parts back in the pan to let them cook a little longer.
Add the salmon to the soup.
Step 8) Once the soup has been simmering for a few minutes and you’re too impatient to keep waiting, remove it from heat, add the goat cheese & heavy cream, garnish with gronions or whatever herb of choice, and enjoy!
In the game, this soup restores eight hearts, and it truly does feel that replenishing. This soup could cure any disease.
