A lot of complaints around release were that the game wasn’t as complex as Oblivion or Morrowind, to the point that it was a disappointment for more hardcore players.

I once read a comment on the old site about how Skyrim’s combat is like mashing WWE action figures together.

I completely agree but I don’t think that’s a weakness at all. Maybe when it released, the game was seen as a grand RPG by more casual people and as a watered down Oblivion by older ES players.

But I think by looking at it not through the lens of a grand RPG, but as a familiar, comforting brain-off experience, it really shines. It really gave us the most it could for how low effort it is to play, and I mean that in a good way.

I remember getting recommended a YouTube video (by the algorithm) called something like “why do we still like Skyrim” and I thought the video was very disappointing. And I think the video’s thesis was about the same as mine in this comment. I wanted it to be something like this:

I associate the game with a long tradition of RPGs that I wasn’t around for, as one of the last great games we got before the priorities of the industry shifted again. The graphics didn’t need to be perfect, the comically small number of VAs didn’t need AI bullshit, the straightforward story lines don’t need to be groundbreaking. The music and atmosphere though are immaculate. It’s a game with a ton of flaws, even some jank that is endearing in hindsight. It just works!

Throw on the modding aspect and you have a very “pure” PC gaming experience. This is exactly what I want from a game, something that’s good enough to just be fun to run around aimlessly in, without feeling like I need a podcast to play in the background, that I can just lose hours in.

I’m playing a much higher effort game now. Workers and Resources Soviet Republic makes the Cities Skylines 2 look like drawing stick figure houses. WRSR is absurdly complex and is super engrossing when you’re in it, if you’re wired to enjoy these types of games. However, I need to be mentally ready to jump in.

With Skyrim I just launched it when I was bored, and I was less bored after.

I insist: Skyrim’s simplicity is what made it work.

I thought it was another one of those meme languages at first.

My reading is that it’s not necessarily a problem with the platforms but society at large.

One example you mentioned: yes, html5 games (and just downloadable itch/steam games) exist and they fill the gap left by Flash games from a gameplay perspective maybe.

But the mainstream appeal of Flash games and animations was different to what we have now. The social phenomenon of people randomly hacking together terrible flash games isn’t the same as the current tiny indie game phenomenon. I feel like the old ones were a bigger piece of the average person’s internet usage than the new one (the average person’s internet usage being 5% LLM 5% web 5% email 25% gaming 30% video and 30% doomscrolling or something like that idk)

I’m struggling to put into words what I mean by this, my comment sounds really vague when I reread it. The specific creative outlet that Flash gave people is not equivalent to what we have now, and the specific entertainment experience of browsing and playing Flash games is different from the experience of scrolling through itch. Am I making more sense?

Like of course the different technologies are different, but it’s where it fits into our lives that it’s really different imo. Hell, we could say this about Flash itself for the last few years before it was discontinued. Just the two thoughts of Newgrounds in 2006 vs Newgrounds in 2016 and how they fit into the internet ecosystem and internet culture are enough to see the difference.

I wonder if there’s a more efficient way to have things sync in blocks or something. I honestly understand very little about server architecture, much less decentralized social network architecture. Maybe having a smaller number of “centralized” (community-run, redundant, independent) nodes distributing blocks of federated data to take load off the actual instance servers that would only need to upload bulk data to fewer places?

Maybe this isn’t very different from how it already operates. Fuck if I know.

That’s without counting the extra money spent on replacing strings, I’m sure using this kind of thing regularly would seriously shorten their lifespan.

The TS80P is lower wattage, technically, but the heating element is right up at the very tip, instead of having a heating element inside the handle with a long metal piece transmitting the heat. It gets hot way faster than you’d expect, it doesn’t feel like 30W at all.

It punches way, way above its weight. Unless you’re soldering pipes, comparing the wattage to traditional irons is misleading. Love that tiny thing.

Only problem is that this design necessitates proprietary tips that are relatively expensive. Not a fan of that, coming from the no name Global South Especiale 2$ firestarter irons that are the norm where I am. Not the end of the world, but worth keeping in mind.

The one I bought came with a USB-C cable that couldn’t handle the current though. That was the only real red flag. Shame too, that cable seemed like it was silicone coated and would have been ideal.

Replying under the top comment but this really applies to all of these, how do these search engines determine what counts as a personal site? For example I had procrastinated for years on finally spinning up a static, barren HTML blog. The infamous Lucidity AI post introduced me to Mataroa and I got over the hump and started writing. Would that get indexed? Etc

Does it just crawl through webrings?

I remember people recommending decentraleyes for some time and then I remember there being an argument against it. I don’t remember what the problem was though.

I understand that the subject of the OP is community space specifically for shedding judgement and all that, but

That URL is very suspect, even knowing that not all anime is made for kids

Which is partially felt more because and is exacerbated by the fact that companies and their shareholders feel entitled to capture every drop of money you have, to the point that buying a pizza comes with the option to spread the cost over four months just in case there’s 10$ from a person that they could only capture by offering the option.

I live half a planet away from America and even I’ve seen it. Disgusting.

Remember when we looked at phone apps that cost more than .99 and thought the developers were greedy?

I only ever participated in the original Place years and years ago, putting down maybe two or three pixels.

Maybe where you’re from it’s easy to separate your government flag as its own symbol that doesn’t represent real people but when you’ve got like 20x30 pixels it’s hard to represent a local community online with something better than a flag. I think we ended up with less than ten pixels inside of a heart iirc.

At least for me, in my own country, I associate flags with popular protests and other symbols make me think of the government. Law enforcement uniforms and mismatched old automatic rifles from fifty years ago. Crippling bureaucracy that operates four hours a week that stretches five hours of paperwork errands into a six month chapter of your life (not a symbol but when you say government that’s what I think of).

Point being I don’t find it weird at all that people wanting to represent themselves will default to a national flag. My understanding is that in like Germany there’s a line where nobody wants to seem too proud of the flag, and in the US people are so desensitized to seeing every McDonald’s have 4000 flags on display, in England the red and white flag has different connotations if it’s in a football context or not, etc etc etc

A lot of flagpoles here are faded and tattered and often with one of the stripes almost separating off the flag. Might be doomerism but I think it looks cool, I think it very much is an appropriate representation.

I’m from Lebanon, this flag is for me, and when the government uses it, it’s using it deceptively to pretend it has any interest in our lives and our problems

I did get shown the ad, I thought “huh, it’s not like Apple to do ragebait marketing”. I thought that was just what that is, and that everyone can see that. The “Newphoria” marketing tagline I think was verging on it as well, but I didn’t see anyone moaning about it online. Much harder to avoid for me because it was on giant billboards and shop signs.

I guess it’s just working as intended if people are recycling it every day into news fodder, not like there’s anything else going on in the world (ongoing genocide? No we have four tweets about Apple’s new ad and boy are these tweets strongly worded!)

This has been happening on and off for months in Lebanon, the pilots have all been landing without GPS lately in case it cuts out again while they’re mid-landing. Utter chaos when it first happened, delivery drivers especially were very lost, and people in general had a tough time dealing with the loss of GPS. We don’t have a rigorous address system so sending locations to each other’s phones is really important here.

I think “sounds more like” is a weird thing to say though for this kind of thing

Funny how the bare HTML makes this feel weirdly personal. Maybe I should get around to making the shitty personal website I always wanted to make fifteen years ago.