I mean, this looks like a slam dunk win to me. Guy looks way hotter in a crop top.

Then why did you throw him out?

Which by the way, is an entirely self-inflicted wound. There was nothing stopping Biden from not running in the first place, and instead spending the four years pulling up a new candidate from the likeable semi-progressive crowd like Buttigeg. Instead, it seems the DNC have gotten high huffing their own farts. Biden barely beat Trump the first time and began polling worse almost immediately. Instead of reading the writing in the wall, they invented the narrative that Biden was some kinda “Trump Kryptonite” who would always be able to beat him. That message has always been bullshit, but last night the DNC got to realize how bullshit it is.

Imagine how much of a slam dunk win this would be if DNC spent the last four years working on a strategy to win, like the GOP have. They could deflect on Israel, show a graceful transition of power, and they didn’t have to run a geriatric. Instead, they assumed they had this in the bag again, and might fucking lose because of it again.

I mean, reading that sentence, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they omitted it just to spite the British.

Good. This is the kinda shit Dems should keep doing. It doesn’t matter if it sounds petty, these assholes are a threat to our democracy, they should not be allowed to spew their lies without consequences. If the press refuses to do their job, it falls to whoever is closest to a Republican.

I mean, I don’t wanna undercut this accomplishment, but Bioware games have pretty much always had trash character creators. We’ll need to get our hands on this one to see, but the competition is Elden Ring and Dragon’s Dogma 2, which both have pretty incredible options that have allowed users to recreate tons of characters from real life/pop culture.

It’s only 20% off, but Alpha Protocol has returned to Steam just in time for the sale!

Unironically, yeah according to the data.

Woot woot! Hopefully going to pick up Balatro on sale this weekend.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t touched the game.

The single biggest issue is that the high difficulty is the only thing that actually pushes you to explore the world. If you were able to just kill every boss right away, 50% of the Elden Ring’s content becomes immediately pointless busywork. It already is, but that busywork offers small, incremental rewards that allow you to last a little bit longer, or learn a little bit more about a boss’ moveset. The intended gameplay experience is to run into a brick wall, explore and discover new options and opportunities, and then returning to break the brick wall. For experienced players on their second or third playthrough, you can basically strip out the open world entirely after an initial 2-3 hours of running around to grab what you want.

I’d also like to point out that 90% of the difficulty of bosses has nothing to do with their health or how much damage they do. FromSoftware has really pushed the envelope on boss design and AI, to the point where many of the hardest bosses are difficult because of their moveset. You can especially see this in the DLC, where you’re able to collect Scadutree Fragments to increase your damage and health, but players still have difficulty with many bosses even after maxing them out. Dealing 3x more damage doesn’t mean anything if you can never get a hit in, and taking 3x less damage won’t save you from a fatal grab. You can make an argument for difficulty levels toning down boss AI and making them less aggressive, but I’ll make a different one.

If a player doesn’t want to engage in difficult boss fights, and doesn’t want to be forced to learn combat encounters, they probably don’t want to play Elden Ring. There’s a lot of people who didn’t actually want to play Elden Ring in that 20 million. Only about 27% ended up completing the game. FromSoftware is still making niche games for a niche audience, but now they’re known for their exceptionally high pedigree, which causes people to feel FOMO. It’s okay to not want to play Elden Ring, but no amount of handicap is going to change that feeling for players.

The difficulty is tied to the story and the gameplay though. A lot of things start to break down if the Tarnished is able to travel through the Lands Between unfettered. Should a successful developer who develops niche games for a niche audience be forced to capitulate to the demands of players outside of their niche just because they have a fear of missing out?

Nowhere else to send them, unless you wanna shoot em into space.

The flavor text teally sells this meme.

If you’re one of the many leftists on Lemmy who likes to bitch about how awful the options the DNC gives American voters and you live in Nebraska, seriously consider helping his campaign. Union leaders are exactly the kind of politicians you want fighting for worker protections. Change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes small wins like one pro-labor Senator taking the seat from one owned by corporation, and those small wins add up over time.