corey

Proton drive / mail is pretty good, but I think Drive is paid

Private GitHub repo (until ms starts scraping those?)

Cryptomator or Veracrypt and put the encrypted container on any free service (Dropbox, gdrive, etc) and it can’t be scraped

This is true but also those 00s unreal jrpgs never quite put all the pieces together like Clair Obscur does in some of the cutscenes/boss encounters. People remember those highs more than the rough edges. The act 2 bosses - music, combat cues, VO - are a lot stronger than anything in 00s unreal jrpg

love it. As a guilty party RE: ranking systems, I’d also love to find a better model.

Fun textures from real sports (underdog, favored but holding back, etc.) get lost too in the pursuit of progression.

Losses shouldn’t be so negative, but it’s hard for these systems to let them be anything else.

the new Beths album is so, so good

upsetting how topical this is for me, a 40 year old man

That server is now quiet as they have sunset development on it, but whatever is born out of that will likely be pretty interesting too. Not that anything WoW-shaped might fit into your life anymore!

It's not the time machine required to "go back", but their recent Season of Discovery was a really interesting experiment. Classic world, new stuff to find (runes that give your class abilities), ways to play (warlock tanks, mage healers, etc.). Overall the closest I've felt to the 2006 vibe.

Yeah I recall enjoying the sheer scope of the book but a lot of questionable choices along the way

Seveneves?

And the recently cancelled Respawn game was a Titanfall Extraction Shooter.

the remotely save plugin is pretty nice, should you wish to sync across devices. though absolutely the $5 tier is worth supporting them

I don’t think players need to be in full tier in a month either, but if the raid is tuned for the avg player having it, it will take 2 months or more

Napkin math based on 2/3/4 bosses for multiple weeks. That’s 2-6 tier pcs per week, the cumulative power gain will be slow. After a month you’d have avg 4 ppl with 4pc bonus. Not a lot.
I don’t think recruiting up to 40 suddenly is a realistic ask of most 20-30 player groups.

To be clear I don’t think the idea of a 2 month prog for less skilled groups is inherently flawed, only that it is a fundamental mismatch for how SoD has been operated and was not communicated in any way ahead of time to manage expectations of the big shift in intent. Which feels bad to me.

I think they have trained the SoD playerbase that raids are generally accessible and clearable within a month, albeit not on the hardest difficulty available.
I think two months of partial clears due to tuning and difficulty isn’t a match for many SoD raids and will kill a fair number of groups.

That's putting words in my mouth. I do not expect PUGs should full clear on release. But his stated rationale and tuning target ensures PUGs will struggle for weeks/months ahead, and not just to full clear it.

Not to mention how problematic the bit about clearing "a couple bosses a week" to power up is for PUGs, alts, etc.

Big fan of SoD, but your team keeps falling back into this trap. Pivoting from a successful series of opt-in difficulties to a single, "hardmode" raid with intentional friction really misunderstands the appeal for many players. Shades of PoE2's current issues.

It was so good! I didn't know I needed Sherlock Holmes under threat of Kaiju invasion until I had it

oh hell yea

how do I form a Homeowners Association

congrats! can't wait to dig into it

Looks great! Congrats

Right? I would have been so mad

you can take solace in the fact that you did not take a photo of it with a different phone

“It’s unclear what Musk knows about how video games are developed or how a studio is run”
Understatement of the century

Now I’m intrigued about how many volumes there are in the Mountain Man Matchmaker cycle

Lived a similar experience - down to "sounding the DOTA alarm" after exams - so I loved this.
Like MMO nostalgia, early era DOTA had such a fun air of experimentation and discovery that feels unique to new genres and the "old Internet".

lovely article and also appreciate the joy of Google image searching "ross lovegrove" to see some real innovative Posing With A Chair photos

"I was extremely lucky and any advice I give you is outdated and suspect" isn't as encouraging as I'd like it to be