MeriBeri🍒 @MariBari@witches.town

How bout that new Joseph Anderson video?

Sure was...... a video

@ambyrb @Noelle808 BotW is the ultimate case of a horrible game done well. Everything about it is polished to a mirror shine, but the actual game design at play is... terrible. Just atrocious.

@ambyrb @Noelle808 Side note, I really think BotW is a perfect example of difficulty being done completely wrong. To extend the metaphor, the waves are way too choppy-- the player can become far too strong far too quickly, but the combat can also quickly become an impossible challenge. It seems to snap back and forth between "laughably easy" and "frustratingly difficult" without ever settling on a comfortable difficulty in the middle.

Ironically, Master Mode made the game far more fun for me, because I was allowed to fully use the game's mechanics to my advantage without worrying about it becoming too easy for me. It's a really weird system.

@ambyrb @Noelle808 The best way I can describe this eloquently is that there should be an ebb and flow to difficulty in games. As the player becomes more skillful and learns the game's mechanics, the game should adjust to keep them comfortably within that "sweet spot" of difficulty-- hard enough to be satisfying to the player, but reasonable and fair.

That dance between developer and player, as new challenges and mechanics are introduced to push back against the player's growing skill and knowledge, creates a tidal pattern back and forth in that sweet spot. And in a best-case scenario, the player should be able to choose where that sweet spot is for them.

@ambyrb @Noelle808 All of this!! People seem to peg me as a """hardcore gamer""" because I play difficult games, but honestly I'm just really bullheaded and like tricky combat systems that work well with difficulty. And of course, there are days where I'm just sick of difficult games and I don't want to play them.

I guess my view on difficulty as a game design tool is that games are best when they're at the right difficulty for the person playing, whether it be easier or more difficult. At the same time, from a game design standpoint, it's important that players understand their own limits. An easy version of Dark Souls is just... not fun to play anymore.

Also, whoops, blocked, because you thought you could shout slurs at me on your profile without me noticing. Fucking hell.

I can see why people have started to ban niu.moe on sight. Everyone I seem to meet from there reeks of toxicity and bad rhetoric. Yeugh.

Windows 7 hounded me to get Windows 10, Windows 10 hounds me with constant notifications and updates that could easily just quietly pop off in the background without having to interrupt everything I'm doing in the process.

I'm a writer, and creative flow is important-- having my ENTIRE SCREEN get blocked off with a notification because I've gone a day without updating gets really, really old really, really fast. Especially when the "fast" option to dismiss the notification leads to it popping up every. single. day.

@segfault This just in: People getting malware because they haven't updated their system doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft making Windows 10 excessively annoying and invasive.

While I appreciate the attempt to completely derail my argument by bringing up your really bitter grudge against bad users who refuse to update, that's... not actually what my post is about. Sorry to disappoint.

I think Windows 10 is hands-down the most invasive operating system, by a small landslide. Never before have I been so constantly and consistently hounded about updates, right up to the point where the OS viscerally rips the controls away from me and forces the update regardless of my preference.

Honestly, Microsoft needs to calm the fuck down...

@LottieVixen Good luck!! I believe in you!

@LottieVixen I've been really focusing on improving my self-esteem over the past couple of years, especially in the body image department, and I've actually been making a lot of progress!

Like, the first time I actively accepted a compliment about my appearance was a major freaking event. That's how bad it used to be. 😖

It sounds kind of silly, but my self-esteem just like... won't let me accept the fact that people could find me sexy? I actively have to prove to myself that yes, my loving fiance thinks that I'm hot and that's not just her having really bad taste or something.

I guess one of the ways I prove that to myself is to follow a lot of trans-positive and chub-positive artists and just kind of... soak in the body positivity for a while. It's weird.

Okay so I know that there's a lot of gross fetishization of both trans people and chubby people on the internet, but it just feels so damn good when I find porn artists who actively draw art of trans people and chubby people, especially chubby trans people, double especially when I can actively find representation of my specific body type.

I dunno, it's just so satisfying to know that I'm not a hideous abomination and that people can actually find my body type sexy?? Like there's validation and then there's VALIDATION, you know what I'm saying?

Tired: Ugandan Knuckles isn't a racist meme

Wired: Ugandan Knuckles is a racist meme

Extra-wired: [A straightforward and comprehensive explanation of why Ugandan Knuckles is an extension of harmful stereotyping against real Ugandan people]

Transcendent: Ugandan Knuckles is a meme, and therefore will soon be completely irrelevant. There's literally no point in arguing about it because it will be gone, racism and all, in like a month.

And now, watch in awe as Rowan gets owned by Orphan of Kos over and over for nearly an hour because nobody will co-op with her.

Horizon Zero Dawn, DOOM, Persona 5, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue: Please, for the love of god, just play us for a few hours

Me: Sorry, what was that? I was just doing playthrough #7835 of Bloodborne and wasn't paying attention

Bloodborne, lounging on my couch, wearing sunglasses and sipping from a martini: ye

I think it probably says something about me as a person that upon buying a PS4 and several brand new games that I was excited to play, I almost immediately started yet another playthrough of a game that I have already beaten half a dozen times.

That was kind of an unflattering picture, here's a better one.