I almost always do physical art. Whenever it has digital elements, the process is very convoluted. I’ll take a physical drawing, scan it, and then trace the lines in GIMP and add colors after. I don’t use any “proper” digital art tools.

I understand the turn of phrase. I don’t quite know what you mean in the application here.

I’m not sure if I entirely follow what you mean by “turning things on their head”. What are you getting at?

I’m not sure what you mean by this. The industrial revolutions were not just about burning coal.

Robber barons were in many ways also tied to coal.

Robber barons are just a more evocative way of framing the period compared to the dry Industrial Revolution term, similar to calling it the Gilded Age, but all the terms are roughly talking about the same time period.

Either of the first two Industrial Revolutions were not named because of the burning of coal in and of itself. Coal burning was part of the widespread and rapid transformation of society. Coal played a part in facilitating previously unthinkable changes in a short time.

The adoption of cars has been more iterative and gradual. In the U.S. there are certain periods important for them such as, depending on how much you think it had an effect, the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. There was also the post WW2 push by Eisenhower to building National highways. But those didn’t radically and quickly change life in the way industrial revolutions did. There was the post-war boom, which if you want to view it through a certain lens, was a kind of revolution for the U.S., in that people found themselves with much more buying power thanks to the U.S. having assumed superpower status.

Similarly nuclear power production has not caused widespread fundamental change in a short period. Nuclear weapons did become a major part of geopolitics, but nuclear power is as far as society is concerned just another way to make electricity.

Change your goal from hurting the bad corporations to supporting the individual creators and good companies.

It is a more sustainable mindset.

Mean at the Haunted Chocolatier…

They have been known to stop rifle bullets, but aren’t rated to do it. Essentially, they can, sometimes, but the manufacturer doesn’t promise it.

There are a lot of variables. He told me he could feel the tip poking at his forehead with his steps as he walked back.

I’m not sure I understand the question.

I once saw a guy wearing a helmet get shot. The bullet embedded into the helmet with the point touching his skin but not harm to him.

I agree. Tech communities have a habit of drastically over estimating how much everyone else cares about the details of tech.

Even something as simple as PC gaming scares off a lot of people because of the perception that you need to be some kind of tech wizard in order to cobble everything together to make a game run. Actual cobbling together of software to pirate (no matter how simple it seems to people in the know) is just a bunch of technobabble.

It is interesting to me that the chorus always talking about “switching” to piracy after every incident is also intimately familiar with piracy already. Almost as if it’s just people who already pirate talking to each other about how hard they are going to pirate. Meanwhile general audiences don’t care.

Precisely. There are games where random factors like a particular loot drop, or doing well in an early battle thanks to random critical hits, or a good randomly generated starting point all determine if the game is reasonably beatable, or if you end up softlocked.

There are other games with certain, let’s says pranks, played on players with one hit kills that can only be avoided with foreknowledge. In modern games, at least these pranks are made shortly alter save points or there is a Dark Souls like way to regain equipment/progress. In a lot of older games, the player is forced to restart a big chunk of the game. At that point it becomes a test of patience rather than skill to replay the same level over and over.

How could mods ban all the bots posing as human users?

Wasteland 3 is a good CRPG style game with modern presentation. There is backstory from the first two games, but the third one is self contained enough that you won’t be confused by the story.

I think making regions safe is a great idea but I would want it tied to a challenging side quest. Like maybe you can intentionally fight a harder version of an area’s enemies to make it safe?

That’s one way to tackle it. The point is that there is something to prevent the experience of being super high level and getting mugged by guys with rusty shivs. I’m throwing out many ideas, which could be refined by specific games.

When it comes to random mobs, a game which relies on them is Kenshi, as an example. Without wandering random mobs to encounter, the game loses a lot of flavor. Kenshi does a few things uniquely, with the main one being that many random encounters that end in defeat don’t end in death. Rather than it being a case where a random mob annoyingly forces a start from a previous save, Kenshi can often be played past the defeat with the player now enslaved, in jail, or injured. The emergent story telling from those fights is what makes the game.

Not every design choice fits every game (obviously). With that in mind, rarely is any specific design choice always 100% good or bad.

I think rather than just taking a vote, it is more useful to think about what makes a good random encounter, and what kinds of game designs work well with them.

I enjoy CRPG styled games. Often in these random encounters happen when moving through an overworld. This kind of design doesn’t disrupt exploration, since once it is over, you continue on your way. It does disrupt when you are going between known points and just trying to tie something up. That can be annoying. Ways that I think can make random encounters enjoyable for CRPG styled games:

1. Not every random encounter has to be combat. Some can be combat, some can be social, some can be vendors, and some can just be flavor. Non-combat encounters can be used as sort of optional bonus content for players to learn about the lore or explore, and they might even feel special since it is a random occurrence the player gets.

2. The ability to put points into some kind of skill that gives the player the option to avoid a random encounter and/or start a combat encounter with a bonus.

3. Encounters should be tied with regions of the overworld in a way that makes sense. Put tougher encounters in endgame areas to discourage players from poking around too early. Make encounters in certain areas tied to the main faction or location in that area.

4. Ease up on certain kinds of encounters as the game goes on, so they don’t outstay their welcome. For example, in the early game if there are lots of low level bandits attacking in random encounters, it can be fun, but it gets old once you are powerful enough to rip through them and are just trying to get bigger things done. Solve this by, for example saying that routes between major hubs are secured thanks to player actions. Now the player can travel between main routes without getting hassled.

5. Be very thoughtful about combat random encounters triggered by NPCs after the player due to player actions. These tend to be more annoying since these are usually higher level NPCs that pack more punch. Making their appearance totally random can be very annoying. It also often feels like a grind if the encounter happens repeatedly. I would prefer the consequences of player actions to firstly always be telegraphed so they know a certain action means a revenge squad is after them. Second, I would prefer this encounter to be scripted- either concretely in a specific location where the game knows the player hasn’t yet been by virtue of the trigger happening while certain areas are still locked by the main story, or in a floating fashion where one of various possibilities is chosen by the game based on whatever triggers first. Once the player defeats whoever is after them, they should never be chased by an identical kind of threat.

These are all CRPG ideas, but I think mostly translate to action RPGs conceptually.

It is an RPG that has blurred the line into FPS with its mechanics to the point where it has so much of both that trying to put it into a single category is pointless.

Based on the look, but not literally a blobfish. An alien of a blobby species that was long considered a food source by another species. Now they’ve got powered suits and a culture of vengeance.