There's a trait you can pick that exactly explains my problems.with the game. The trait is 'Dream Home'. It is described as

'You own a luxurious, customizable house on a peaceful planet! Unfortunately it comes with a 125,000 credit mortgage with GalBank that has to be paid weekly.'...

I thought this was a cool way of adding increased difficulty for myself. I tend not to play at the hardest setting because I don't have much time to play. But having to plan ahead and work around this limitation sounded like it would add an interesting wrinkle to the strategy I'd have in the game.

However, when you start the game you discover that the loan has to be paid off in full... And you have unlimited time to pay it off. The only way to be foreclosed upon is if you actively go tell the bank to foreclose on you. It's like they had the idea, but couldn't be bothered to implement it.

What's worse is 120k is nothing in the game. You can easily get there within a few hours of play. This is just one example, but it speaks to the game's complete unwillingness to give the player anything negative or push them any way from their 'freedom'. The sheer fact you are not locked out of any faction or faction mission is another example. There are 0 stakes in the game and you feel 0 connection to the people you meet or places you visit. Not helped by Sarah potentially being one of the most annoying judgemental characters in any Bethesda game I've ever encountered.

Update: I eventually visited this 'Dream House'. It kinda sucked. The planet it is on is kinda ugly. There is more to this mechanic than I originally thought, however. When you visit you can pay 500 credits for 1 week of access as a 'payment' towards the principal. Still very deceptive of the original description.

6.5/7 is fine if you're not paying $70 for the base game. It might be worth it now the costs have come down, but paying a premium price for a mid game justifies some of the shit people gave it.

That said, I played on Game Pass, big fan of the genre, and could only make it a few hours in. Just wasn't for me. But then I really enjoyed The Outer Worlds and people shit on that too.

To many in the region, it was more than just a tree. It was where they proposed, it was where they went to find calm during a tough period, it was where they said their final goodbyes to a loved one etc. To say the tree was iconic would be an understatement. It was a constant in a time of change and a place of undeniable beauty in a world of increasing shit. The kinda place you make a special trip out to once your kids are old enough and show them a part of their local identity, untouched by the passing of time.

At the end of the day, yes it is just a tree. But it is also a many missed memories being made and just one more destruction of something just a little special. It's no surprise people were speculating that some landowner or farmer was refused planning permission after it first happened. Because that is what we're used to, someone selfish taking away something that was just there because it was beautiful.

I'm curious what the design, and reaction to, of Starfield might say about what we'll expect from ES6. For three games now (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield), have been marked by Settlement building and Radiant quests.

While radiant quests were there in Skyrim, in these later games it felt a lot like Bethesda were making it a core part of the mission design structure. There are a lot of blurred lines in Starfield that make it difficult to tell them apart. (That's more a comment on main missions being so generic than the radiant quests being so good, unfortunately).

Settlement building seems to be a core part of Bethesda's DNA now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the narrative follows a Kingmaker style where you build up a settlement of rebels over time or similar. I imagine the other ES staples will be tied to this too, Thieves Guild = establishing a branch within your new settlement to attack Big Bad Evil Vs joining an established one etc.

I really wonder how much of this poor reaction to Starfield makes its way through to actual change, but my feeling is ES6 will have a lot of hype, but similar feelings of disappointment. I hope I'm proved wrong.

I've said it a few times, but I feel like they could have Dr. Doom come in to kill Kang pretty easily. It'd set up a new big bad, introduce the Fox Verse, and even set him up as the leader of any potential Battleworld in the future.

Kang even before the allegations hasn't been received all that well. A soft-reset with Doom might make people excited again. Imo all mystique of the character was already ruined in the Multiverse of Madness post-credits. A FoxVerse Vs MCU battle movie would touch on Endgame levels of hype.

It seems obvious but also: don't drink anything with caffeine before bed and don't eat a good couple of hours before sleep too.

I've had many friends who'd have a tea before going to sleep to 'calm' them without realising most have quite a lot still. Or guzzling down a soda too.

I'm actually excited to see this one. Kamala is a fun character and Iman Vellani captured her essence really well. They have not done a good job of making Captain Marvel or Monica Rambeau as characters we care about, but through the Kamala lens we might during the movie. But a lot of folks skipped on Ms. Marvel thinking she was for kids.

However, I wouldn't even call this dip in presales Marvel fatigue. I'm a Marvel fanboy. I watched She Hulk and enjoyed it. Yet, Marvel have done nothing to actually invest me into the current phase. It's not a Marvel fatigue but more a multiverse/plot fatigue. I haven't watched Secret Invasion or Loki 2 because... Why?

I find Kang to be such a damp squib of a character. They ruined most of his mystique at the end of Quantumania to the extent he is no longer a real threat. Thanos worked because he was a difficult but not impossible threat. You felt like even the Guardians had a chance against him as slim a chance as that might be.

Kang is an impossible threat. A multi-versal threat that has no limits. He's boring because he can't be overcome.

I've said it before when we were all on Reddit, this Phase would be made significantly more interesting if you use this as the opportunity to introduce Doctor Doom. Have him crush Kang as a threat setting up a more complex, potentially beatable, villain and establishing a power order in one sweep.

Once he's established, bring in the X-Men and FF fighting off incursions, lead up to X-Men Vs MCU as your Summer Blockbuster, have a handful of arthouse y Last Days Of style movies. Go into Battleworld, have some really fun remixes of our established characters, reset the multiverse to a single world with more mundane threats and recast any character who wants out of the franchise.

Instead, this movie becomes a 'eh. I'll see it on Disney+ eventually'.

Played both, and I'd argue that Outer World's is significantly stronger if only for its companions. Starfield I sunk a good few hours into and I struggle to remember one name. Starfield made me the Main Character and there wasn't much room for anyone else. Outer Worlds has some pretty fun companion side-quests.

Starfield wins at the sheer quantity of ideas it threw at the wall, Outer Worlds for the decent to good quality of the ideas it threw at the wall. Neither was brilliant, but on my personal preference Outer Worlds has way stronger bones leading into the sequel.

One QoL improvement I've not seen here is a better journal system. When I can't further a quest line even something vague like 'Continue your journey so learn more' would be great. I have spent time on some quests hunting down a person to discover the quest can only be completed in the next act multiple times now.

This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810's which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.

People who believe 'It was that hot when they were young' likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we're seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes 'It was this hot when we were young'.

Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We're living decades more than someone of that era, we're extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we've had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.

It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).

The multiverse could have been so cool, but they went about it ass backwards. They introduce Kaang in a 'quiet' part of the overall story, where no one really has any stakes and we have little investment in anyone's stories. Everyone is kinda doing their own things, mainly dealing with the aftermath of Endgame. Even Spider-Man, who we should be feeling protective of, decides to have a reset. We didn't care about Kaang because we no long had an investment in any character.

Then we're supposed to feel scared of Kaang? And then in >!Quantumania they straight up just strip him of all mystique to the point the end shot of that movie is just comical with the arena full of Kaang's making the character have 0 remaining intrigue. !< Even had the stuff with Masters not happened they'd lost their chances to make it interesting. Paired with Skrull just not really resonating with the audience at all, it has been misstep after misstep.

!imo the only way you fix it now is have Doom come in the the F4, outright murder Kaang as the actual universal badass and then switch back to the personal less connected stories to tell a series of Invasion stories as the universe crumbles. Lead up to Fox-verse Vs MCU showdown. Then have a battleworld at the end of it and just reset the whole thing.!<

Basically, in trying to make a mainstream product they've ended up with something no one really cares about.

In my experience, even the consumer facing portion suffers from lack of innovation. Look at the big rounds of lay offs this year, fairly uniformly one of the hardest hit teams has been UX Research. If you've worked with a good researcher, you really know their value. But translating value that into hard metrics is tough. A lot of the time CEOs in the private sector will accept Good Enough & fast Vs moving at a reasonable pace.

I don't think there would even be an appetite for hard research at most companies. Takes too long, too much of a risk, the boss' cousin had a really cool idea instead....

Private sector is very good at operationalizing existing technology. Outside of the FAANGs(/MAMAAs) being good enough is too easy, or investing in research is considered to be too high an expense with no guarantee on return.

If one of their goals is to sell premium access to train LLMs this type of gibberish would hurt that. When you can't guarantee that the data source is coherent, then that would have an impact on the final model that is created.

I think a better approach is to transfer comments to a new platform or create new higher quality content. Could the solution to this problem become a guide that goes into more detail?

Yeah the DLCs made it feel like a full game. The base was a fun proof of concept, the the DLC fleshes that out. Both made me excited to see what version 2 with more time and funding could accomplish.

I hope they build on the more unique systems like the Holographic Shroud and give those systems more opportunities to shine.

That's most tech corporate jobs tbf. Lots of middle managers with nothing much better to do than play musical chairs once a quarter. It's like that XKCD meme about there being the standard that will clean up the mess of there being so many standards. Surely my way of working will solve all our problems of underinvestment and losing key talent...

I enjoyed what I played, and the choices felt like they could potentially be impactful in the future. Episode 1 is incredibly short, however. I explored a bunch, picked up most, if not all, the extra resources and it still clocked in at under an hour. Looking back, there were four main 'scenes' that actually contributed to any story.

Good start, but I really hope the future episodes are more substantial.

I really enjoyed the episode for what it was. It served as a decent introduction for the Disney+ crowd without being too convoluted. Which given this was a continuation of a 15 year old plot thread was handled about as well as it could be.

My biggest complaint was how integrated Rose was into the resolution to the metacrisis. I am not trans and don't pretend to know even a fraction of the struggles they face in our society. The normalisation of Rose throughout the episode and an acknowledgement of how even very well meaning family work to be inclusive felt very natural. However, I did not like how her being trans seemed to have been caused by the metacrisis. It felt like it flew in the face of the normalisation. The reading in the episode is Rose is only trans because of that timelord DNA influence. It felt wrong to reduce her character to being nothing more than a quirk of fate rather than just who she is naturally.

I'd have preferred a 'Lets all hold hands and the family shares the burden' hand waving than what we got. Rose deserved more than what we got and certainly more screen time. It was quite weird the rest of the family didn't go see Wilf. I get they were setting up episode 2, but in the context of the moment it felt really out of character for MumDonna.

To those confused about how Donna and Rose were able to 'Let it go' now rather than back then, Frozen wasn't released until 4 years later so it musn't have occurred to the Doctor... In all seriousness, I'd point to the scene from The Day of the Doctor where Clara opens the unlocked door for the 'clever' Doctors. Sometimes he'll look for the best solution without realising a simple one is in front of him.

The new TARDIS interior was gorgeous, harkens back to the Hartnell console room. I loved the first thing 13 did was start running around. So much room to practise running haha.

All in all, a solid.episode with some flaws. I really liked the new style and you could feel that new budget while still having a Dr. Who charm aliens that looked like they'd been handmade. I'd put it around a 7.5/8 out of 10. Good foundation, interested to see if it is built on. It definitely makes me excited for Ncuti's run.

I'm really loving it. I'm about 40 hours in and just wrapping up with Act 1 in the underdark. Small spoilers for my favourite act 1 moment >!Volo had butchered my eye in camp after a series of poor decisions and when I talked to the Owlbear with speak to animals one of the tags was [one-eyed] unfortunately the Owlbear didn't give a shit about bonding over our injury. That they connected those dots and then recorded new lines for that edge case is hilarious to me!<

I have. It's pretty short and to the point. They're based out of Germany so their requirements for clarity are pretty high by law. They go into quite a lot of detail about what is sent.

In this case they send date, time, language, processing time, number and the type of errors, but not the text itself

However, they do have an optional feature that uses OpenAI to rephrase sentences so that might be training through the back door.

I've been using it for years and have been very happy with the service.

Tbh most employees at a company this size become risk mitigation more than anything else. Once you've reached a certain level of success, you're looking at what doesn't move the needle as much as what makes it move positively. There could be a feature that is a major QoL improvement, but because in a test segment it performed 1% worse than base then it won't be implemented.

Spotify, I believe, still works in the tribe and guild model that they created.

Chapter = people with the same skill set, squad = a group of people from different chapters focused on a single project, tribe = a group of squads focused on a large business goal, guild = a collective of folks who have a shared interest like Data Privacy.

Suffice to say, Agile is an imperfect tool and as you try to scale it, you need an increasing number of people to support it and make it run. Coders and Designers are likely just a fraction of their head count.

I've worked places that don't have that support structure in place and they've stagnated for years struggling to get the most basic of decisions made. Decisions is what it is about too. Rarely do you get actual leadership from the c-level and especially from a CEO. So you end up with a lot of cooks trying to work out why the broth doesn't taste quite right and lacking confidence to just add a bit of salt.