PlzGivHugs

It is a fun game - I bought it and have put a dozen hours or so into it, but it also really doesn't capture the brilliance of Slay the Spire or the other more influential roguelike deckbuilders. In particular, a lot of it feels either clunky or repetitive. It is a good game, but just good rather than amazing.

Using your clones example, the Slay the Spire "clones" that give roguelike deckbuilders a bad name aren't Inscryption or Monster Train or Balatro. Its things like Across the Obelisk and Wildfrost, that are good, but fail to capture what makes others great, and the numerous low-effort copies you've likely never heard of that viewed it as an easy way to make a good game without understanding it. Its not that Roguelike Deckbuilders are bad, obviously, its that lazy, or thoughtless use of the mechanics that is. A game isn't one mechanic, and trying to treat it as such just results in a messy or bad game.

Its a crutch because its expected to hold the game up, rather than the game supporting its own weight. In your bullet hell example, dodging isn't a crutch, it's the foundational mechanic. A better example would be a slot machine system (something that is near-inherently engaging) being added to a bullet hell game, not because it fits but because its fun independently and helps distract from the fact that they haven't put any effort into the core gameplay. The mechanic isn't a crutch, its inclusion as a tacked-on addition is.

The mechanic itself isn't the issue, but how it is implemented.

It depends on how (and where) its implemented is his point. It needs to be woven into the comvat system as it is in FromSoft, Batman, Ultrakill, or Cuphead, not tacked on because its easy or popular. Each of those uses parrying in a different way to enhance its combat. On the other hand, if you take these mechanics without the greater context or understanding of why it works, then it'll tends to stand out as bad, or remain unused. Doom Eternal is an example that immediately comes to mind. The whole game is about fast paced combat, with a plethora of new mobility mechanics, that is, until you encounter one of the enemies you need to parry. Then, the game comes to a grinding halt while you wait for the enemy to take action, so you are able to react, completely opposite the rage-fueled persona and the mobility focus of every other mechanic. Compare that to Ultrakill, where parrying isn't just a reactive way to mitigate damage, its a situational attack that allows you to keep moving and keep up your carnage.

Game mechanics work best when they're cohesive. Parrying, due to its simplicity can be tacked on easily, breaking this cohesiveness if not given the same weight as the rest of the mechanics.

I believe Jack has done a bit for his anti-freebooting campaign, but to my knowledge, it hasn't been much and this is by-far the most formal.

From my understanding, they did land at high-tide (to allow ships to get closer) but in pictures, its still quite the distance. I guess because the beach is shallow, they still had to land a distance out?

They had some idea, although it was less certain than seen in the context of Saving Private Ryan.

First of all, there was efforts to weaken the defenses. Both bombardment from naval ships and dropped bombs from planes were meant to significantly soften the defenses for the landing. According to the plans, this should have significantly reduced the defenses. In reality, the naval bombardment was nowhere near large enough, and the bombers missed their targets due to bad weather. This was only discovered as they reached the beach.

Once the infantry was landing, there was also supposed to be quite a bit more support for them. Specialized amphibious tanks were created, and meant to be driven up onto the beaches to provide cover for the infantry. This almost immediately went ary as the rough water swamped or sunk dozens of the initial tanks, and lead to the use of landing craft for the remaining tanks, slowing down their deployment. Even of those that were launched by landing craft, many were lost.

Also worth noting is that the Normandy beaches, don't actually look that much like the movie. When they land in Saving Private Ryan, it looks like they're only 20 meters or so from the cliff. In actuality, it was much, much further. If you look at the famous photo from the landing, Into the Jaws of Death by Robert F. Sargent, if gives you an idea of what the beach actually looks like and the conditions on the morning - visibility was low, and they were likely a hundred meters or more from the cliff face. Less likely to get shot the moment the gates open then how it looks in the movie, although horrifically even worse in nearly every other way.

If you're really interested in more detail, TimeGhost has an excellent documentary (split into pieces to make it watchable as a series) on the subject on their D-Day 24hrs channel that covers the background, the events of the day, and the details and context surrounding it in extreme detail. That said, its a multi-day watch, given that its 24 hours long.

I'm assumimg you have a store key.

You could post to one of the relevant communities for game giveaaways, such as [email protected] or [email protected]

Standard practice is to pretty much just say what game you're offering, and the dm the key to a random respondent after a day or two.

The only one that comes to mind is Club Penguin's coffee shop. That one is burned into my memory.

Is it just me being set in my ways, or does this look terrible? It seems like its going to make it harder to use URLs and clutter up what was previously clean, functional UI just to highlight rarely-used commands.

Edit: Also isn't hiding the url a security issue? How else do you recognize phishing sites?

My point of contention is that the arguments you're using are flawed, not your intentions. OpenAI, Meta, Disney, ect. are in the wrong because they pirate/freeboot and infringement on independent artist's licenses. It's not their use of technology or the derivative nature of the works it produces that are the problem: making AI the face of the issues moves the blame away from the companies, and allows them to continue to pirate/freeboot/plagiarize (or steal, as you define it) from artists.

Yes, part of my point is that capitalism is bad, but thats further up the chain than what I was arguing. My point is that copyright law and more importantly, its implementation and enforcement is broken. Basically all your issues originate not with AI but with the fact that independent artists have no recourse when their copyrights are violated. AI wouldn't be an issue if AI compananies actually paid artists for their work, and artists could sue companies who infringe on their rights. The problem is that artists are being exploited and have no recourse.

Using allegory to hopefully make my point a bit more clear: Imagine you have a shop of weavers (artists). The comapny running the shop brings in a loom (AI), and starts chaining their workers to it and claiming its an Automatic Weaver™ (pirating and violating artists rights). The problem isn't the loom, and blaming it shifts blame away from whoever it was that decided to enslave their workers. Trying to ban the loom doesn't prevent the shop from just chaining the workers to their desks, as was often done in the past, nor does it prevent them from bringing in Automatic Potters™. If you want to stop this, even ignoring the larger spectre of capitalism, it should be slavery that is outlawed (already done) and punished (not done), not the use of looms.

If you are trying to fix/stop the current state of AI and prevent artists from being exploited by massive companies in this way, banning AI will only slow it and will limit potentially useful technology (that artists should be paid for). Rather than tackle one of the end results of rhe problem, you need to target it closer to its root - the fact that large companies can freely pirate, freeboot, and plagiarize smaller artists.

It isn't current AI voice tech that was an issue. It was the potential for future AI they were worried about. AI voices as they are now, are of similar quality to pulling someone off the street and putting them in front of a mid-range mic. If you care about quality at all, (without massive changes to how AI tech functions) you'll always need a human.

And to be clear, what about AI makes it the problem, rather than copyright? If I can use a voice synthesizer to replicate an actors voice, why is that fine and AI not? Should it not be that reproduction of an actor's voice is right or wrong based on why its done and its implications rather than because of the technology used to replicate it?

Edit: And to be clear, just because a company can use it as an excuse to lower wages, doesn't mean its a viable alternative to hiring workers. Claims that they could replace their workers with AI is just the usual capitalist bullshit excuses to exploit their workers.