While I am not an RTS buff, depending on your internet connection from this Mac’s location, Geforce Now could greatly expand your options (basically most Windows games). You would be playing the games on a cloud server (and could switch to local saves if you ever get a Windows PC)

I mean…I’d say if they’re writing good stories, a subscription is a better business model than ads.

Of course, that’s a high bar for most places, especially on gaming journalism where the only stories are press releases.

I’m not worried about interpreting the NTFS filesystem or individual files of given formats. Mainly, I’m worried about a Windows security-level problem I’ve had where Windows restricts access to whole directories based on user-level permissions, since the old “user” that owned them on a given operating system has been obliterated. It’s an issue I’ve had even when reinstalling Windows to the same computer.

This sounds like something I should be wary of, but it’s the first I’m hearing of it. Any other info?

My biggest worry for this is, there’s probably dozens of black hats out there that have found some very large exploit for Windows 10, and are holding off on abusing it until the day Microsoft ends support.

Currently, my plan is to make a partition for Linux Mint, set up dual boot, see how much of my daily computer obsession I can execute through there, and then try to slowly transition while slowly moving stuff from Windows. (I am vaguely worried I’ll run into that Windows issue where files accessed from outside the OS login are security-restricted. That has even screwed up my Windows reformat fixes)

I’ve been pretty vocal about my annoyance with the roguelike genre. I even have the tag blocked on Steam so they’re never recommended to me - my hope is that Steam shares metrics on tag-blocking statistics.

But, I would guess there are enough fans of them to keep being made.

I enjoyed Class of 09, one of few VNs designed around English VA and auto-continuation, as well as having very tight comedic timing.

That last one is key that so many games utterly fail at - waiting until the line is completely finished from the VA’s laborious delivery and they’ve completely trailed off before reading the next one.

What exactly would that entail? I “own” Hades, thus I can depict Zagreus in my own works, as his likeness is my property? I’m allowed to copy the game to a dozen thumb drives and sell them on the street?

First released in Japan in October 1982, the CD was the second optical disc technology to be invented (–Wikipedia)

Sorta doubting whatever study found proof that a CD can last 200 years…

I’m able to keep these games around because I’m pretty good at ignoring FOMO and microtransactions. I don’t need everything. One fun skin that I like when I’ve already enjoyed the game more than I’ve paid? I’ll consider it. But I don’t need everything from events - sometimes they’re just a good reason to play it together with friends at that time, like when the carnival is in town.

Still, there’s enough games out there that no one really needs to consider those types of baited experiences, especially if you know you’re susceptible.

Always buy new shoes in the afternoon - after your feet have expanded.

…Oh, you mean about the game?

Whenever people say this, I imagine they have adblockers on YouTube?

I can’t say I have strong reasoning for it, but I’ve never set that up, and I’ve gotten a bunch of ad spam around the release…

That’s the thing. I even remember trying to use a guide, but it’s difficult to work past all the “Here are 18 secrets that don’t do anything you can get from the beginning” as well as all the bits you can do out of order. Locating the part of the guide that gives you just enough to keep playing on your own is really difficult.

Many other Metroidvanias are sort of more clearly delineated between story beats, or major powerups you’re meant to get in order, all of which allow you to go places you couldn’t before.

Funny thing is, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Metroidvanias, but…never enjoyed Symphony of the Night. There’s so much forceful encounter repetition, so many dead end items that don’t actually help you “unlock any doors”, and it’s so easy to get into a rut of wandering the castle unsure where you can go next.

I genuinely fault gamers for some of this too, though.

There’s a very small indie game out called “Liar’s Bar”. It’s simple and fun. But, there were still people in forums savagely complaining that the game’s pointless XP system didn’t save correctly after a match - and that it didn’t have skins/emotes to earn for investing time into it.

There’s also MP games I play that I find fun, where I see popular, level-headed streamers complain that there’s been “nothing new” in its past two months. For most players, this wouldn’t even matter because they’re not able to play it nearly as often.

Then there’s games like Back 4 Blood, the late-grown attempt to reinvigorate Left 4 Dead’s magic. For those who don’t know; the game is still fully playable right now. It’s still fun. The developers just don’t add more to it anymore. Yet, as soon as they made this announcement that they were moving on to other games, there were conclusive, prophetic statements out about “Why Back 4 Blood DIED” as though the game is completely gone.

It’s wrong to claim that publishers moved to the constant-update, live-service model forcefully in their own decision-making vacuum. People (maybe not even the people in this thread) asked for this.

I keep telling conservatives this. It makes sense to have some form of suspicion around a message when some corporation has a profit motive behind it. For instance, climate change and companies selling solar panels (although I wish they wouldn’t put SO much effort into that faint connection).

However, that also applies for the inverse - that when insurance drops coverage for Florida homes, it’s because climate change is real and they know it will hurt their bottom line.

You can get Firefox and Opera on the Windows Store. Ostensibly, this is how every other OS works now, although on Linux it’s usually less of a storefront with Candy Crush pushed up front, and more like a commandline entry to get apps by known name.

I think people are just used to the Windows colloquialism of not having a central store, thus getting every app on the web through an installer file - and then, through meaningful distrust and horrific memories of Windows 8, choosing not to use that store when it was added.

I agree with you completely on their over-pushiness. They could do without that.

But the first time choice thing doesn’t sound tenable long-term to me.

Welcome to SuperOS! What would you like to use as your web browser? E-mail reader? Calendar app? PDF viewer? Image viewer? File explorer? Porn viewer? Weather app? VPN?

I can think of distros/OSes that, depending on the use case, people really appreciate having something pre-installed for them. And yes, other times people would prefer their own. But imagine amateur users making a pick from that constant stream of questions, not to mention having weird incompatibilities if they make bad choices.

The opposite end of “The most expensive thing is to be poor”.

It’s a common image for so many millionaires to have a Scrooge McDuck vault, but that’s the thing; so often their millions are out earning them further millions.

I’ve heard this often, but most of the games I see people consume live updates for weren’t initially planned to get such constant updates.

Ex: Dead by Daylight. Released as dumb party horror game with low shelf life. Now on its 8th plus year. Fortnite: Epic’s base building game that pivoted to follow the battle royale trend, then ten other trends. DOTA 2: First released as a Warcraft map. GTA V: First released as a singleplayer game before tons of expansion went into online. Same with Minecraft.

It just doesn’t make sense to pour $500M into something before everyone agrees it’s a fun idea. There’s obviously nothing gained in planning out the “constant content cycle” before a game’s first public release.