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cobysev

@ cobysev @lemmy.world

Posts
18
Comments
481
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Shamelessly stolen from Reddit

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  • As a military veteran, this makes me a little sad... but the whole military discount thing has always made me feel weird. I mean, I'm no hero. I spent 20 years sitting at a desk, fixing computers. Why should I deserve a discount over any other office worker?

    I currently live in an area far away from any military bases, so I've mostly stopped asking about military/veteran discounts. Most people here aren't used to military being around this area anyway so there's rarely a discount to offer. And I don't really care if I get a discount or not; it doesn't hurt me to pay full price.

    But I've definitely worked with service members who would boycott businesses near our bases if they refused to provide a military discount. Some people get really entitled about their status. Those were the worst people I had to deal with in the service.

  • Call of Duty and Battlefield 6 will both require Secure Boot on Windows

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  • Man... Call of Duty: United Offense was the game my squadron played all the time while we were deployed to Iraq in 2007. Someone had a cracked copy they brought with them and we installed it on all our computers in the squadron (we were an IT squadron).

    Once a day, around lunchtime, we'd shut down the whole squadron for about 30 minutes. We'd hang signs on our doors that said we were closed for "simulated warfare training." Then we'd jump into a massive free-for-all match and shoot everything that moved until there was one person left standing. Someone had dozens of custom maps people had made online, so we always had some new and unique map to play with.

    I don't miss Iraq, but I do miss those days. CoD was my favorite FPS series back in the day. Now it's complete garbage.

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (the 2009 original, not the 2022 reboot) was the first time I felt like the franchise wasn't trying anymore. I mostly played the campaign mode and that was the first campaign that was basically just a carbon copy of the previous game. Same exact plot, same exact ending, just a new villain who took over for the villain in the previous Modern Warfare game.

    Black Ops was kind of weird, but not that bad. However, I completely lost interest when trying to play Black Ops 2 and haven't bought a new game since. I hear they're up to Black Ops 6 now?

  • Which games made you go into an "addiction phase"?

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  • No doubt, it's a fun game, but not $30 fun.

    Then again, my idea of game prices is a bit skewed. I don't think ANY game is worth $60. I buy all my games on sale, and for most of them, I wait until they're $20 or less before I buy.

    At a full price of $30, I'd expect to eventually find it on sale for $5-10 if I waited long enough. But the developers don't plan to ever lower the price, which is a big negative for me. If I didn't get a copy for free, I'd probably still not own it.

    As far as gameplay itself, I'm annoyed at the random swarms of bugs attacking my factories. I just want to build and create, but having to also defend from attack and then repair my stuff afterward... that makes Factorio frustrating for me. But that's my own personal opinion, I know that's what makes the game fun for so many others.

    That's why I like Satisfactory so much. The wildlife is only aggressive if you bother them, and there aren't packs of them roaming around. You can relax and enjoy the atmosphere and get lost in your build process without being bothered.

  • Which games made you go into an "addiction phase"?

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  • I just bought Factorio after finally learning it never goes on sale, lol.

    I always try to buy games on sale, so I've been avoiding Factorio on principle. Their developers refuse to lower the price because they feel there no point in setting a price for a game, then discounting it every once in a while to draw in new players. They believe it's a $30 game, so they want everyone to pay $30 to play it, period.

    Fortunately, I won a Steam key for it in a raffle, so I got it for free. And I'm glad, because I don't feel it's worth even $30. It's not a bad game, but I personally would've paid $10-15 max for it.

    fyi there's no hyperfocus type of ADHD; that's just a broad effect of executive dysfunction

    True, but explaining the nuances of ADHD in a thread that's not specifically focused on it is complicated. Especially since we're still trying to define the vague differences between ADHD, autism, ADD, and a few other cognitive disorders. Some things are merging under umbrella terms (e.g. ADD doesn't really exist anymore; it's now a form of ADHD) and other distinctions are getting blurry, with too many cross-over symptoms to clearly define. Much easier to just point out that one of my greater symptoms of ADHD is hyperfocus.

  • Which games made you go into an "addiction phase"?

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  • You're right, the modding community is probably why Minecraft continues to be so popular. Without mods, Minecraft is kind of boring. At least, in my opinion.

  • Which games made you go into an "addiction phase"?

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  • I spent over a decade addicted to World of Warcraft. Like, I would come home from work and immediately jump on WoW and do nothing else until bedtime.

    Thankfully, Activision buying out Blizzard and then ruining the game made me eventually quit. I've tried to go back, but I can't get into it anymore. It's just no fun.

    The last few expansions, I've spent a week burning through the main questline, then I walk away until they announce another expansion. Endgame content is not interesting enough to keep me after the main story is over. I never even finished the last two expansions; I checked out partway into the story. I think I'm officially done buying expansions for WoW and hoping I can get back into it.

    Other games that I've been addicted to in recent times have been Satisfactory and Enshrouded. Both base building games that have no end, but rely on your creativity to enjoy.

    I have ADHD (the hyperfocus type) and Satisfactory really scratches that itch. Focusing on minute details, trying to make a seamless, efficient, organized factory to produce an end product. And the sky's the limit (literally). You can build hundreds of factories across a massive map and get really creative about style, design, efficiency, etc. it's a really fun creative game.

    Enshrouded is the same, except instead of efficient factories, you're building homes, villages, castles, etc. in a fantasy medieval setting. With questing and monsters and magic too! It's been loads of fun and my friends and I have been super addicted to that game for a while now too. I actually just posted a review about it in !games@lemmy.world yesterday.

    On a side note, I find it interesting to see Minecraft mentioned a lot in this thread. That game first came out when I was in my 20s (I'm in my 40s now) and it was pretty popular when it first dropped. I played it a bit, but besides running around and digging (mining?) a bit, there wasn't really any direction or goals or anything, so I kind of lost interest. I found out years later there's a whole endgame to it, but without any in-game directions, there was no way I would've ever progressed in that game without online help.

    Decades later, Minecraft got a resurgence of popularity with younger generations and now it's suddenly the game of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. One of my baby nephews is addicted to that game now and speaks of almost nothing but Minecraft. Crazy how it can continue being so popular across multiple generations like that.

  • Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited)

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  • I've definitely wasted many evenings building in this game. I actually had to cut off one of my friends; he was exclusively building in my server and would message me all the time, asking me to boot up Enshrouded and leave it running overnight so he could play.

    There is an Enshrouded Dedicated Server you can set up so the game is always running in the background for people to connect to. But I've had problems getting it working, and I'd rather not dedicate resources to hosting a game in the background if I only have a couple friends pop in once in a while.

    So my friends mostly don't play unless I'm playing too, which has encouraged me to spend oodles of time in Enshrouded over the past year. There's a reason it's my #3 most played game despite only being out for a year and a half.

  • Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited)

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  • When I first started playing, when lore was just a small thing you could piece together by reading bits of scrolls and journals scattered around the world, I theorized that The Shroud was keeping the world trapped in stasis. That's why, no matter how much you changed, it'd always reset back to its original state after you left the area for 30 minutes (or logged out and back in again).

    The Flame Altars kept The Shroud out, so you could enact permanent change near them. And your own Flameborn soul ensured nothing changed while you stuck nearby. But no changes would stick anywhere else in the world.

    Of course, now there is tons of new lore in the game and my theory is practically debunked. But it's still my little fan theory. I'm hoping that the final game will have an endgame plot to rid the land of The Shroud permanently. But I've been playing so long now, I'm kind of used to it perpetually being around and I'm not all that concerned with its tenacity now.

  • Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited)

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  • I haven't heard anything specific from the developers about wiping gameplay for a final product, but I will say that I've been playing since it released and I've never once had my progress wiped. The devs have been pretty good about upgrading your progress to match the current build so you don't need to start over. Even with radical changes, your base building is left untouched.

    A friend and I spent weeks building a massive pyramid and temple on an empty hill once. One day, we logged in and found that a new village had been added to the game, near the top of that hill. Our base was completely untouched; everything we changed in our build area stayed the same.

    It was weird to see a village spawned right up to our build area, then get cut off right at the border. But we were glad to see that our progress was left untouched.

    Even stuff like XP and leveling has been progressing instead of resetting. I maxed out my character's level and gear and spent months just exploring the game and building stuff, not worrying about character progression. Then when the latest zone unlocked for exploration, I noticed I could level up even higher and upgrade even more abilities in my skill tree. None of my progress was reset for the new zone.

    Heck, even with a formally maxed out character, the new zone was surprisingly challenging and I had to work to progress my character's stats and equipment even more in order to survive there.

  • Have most people never seen a full starry night sky

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  • When I was a kid (30+ years ago), I used to lie in the grass in my yard at night and stare at the stars. I grew up in the forested countryside, so there wasn't much light pollution and I could clearly make out constellations.

    I joined the US military and left home for 20 years. When I retired, I moved back into my childhood home to help my aging father.

    One of the first things I noticed is that almost all the stars are gone. Light pollution from the nearby cities has gotten so bad, my night sky is just a haze now. I can't see stars clearly anymore.

    I've read that light pollution has gotten so bad globally that there isn't anywhere left on Earth - not even Antarctica - that doesn't experience light pollution to some degree. I wish I could go up on a shuttle and see the stars from outside our atmosphere. That must be such an amazing view, completely unfiltered. Like living underwater your whole life and then finally seeing clearly when you lift your head out of the water for the first time.

  • inside job

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  • In panel 2, there are speed lines showing he flew down from above to catch the plane. He didn't fly through the building.

    The joke is that the building was rigged to collapse anyway, poking fun at that infamous 9/11 conspiracy theory.

  • domo arigatto

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  • Nice! I found a Japanese website years ago that let you print out a cutout model you could fold to make a 3D paper version of Domo-kun. That little guy adorned my work desk for maybe half a decade.

  • domo arigatto

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  • Domo-kun! I couldn't remember their names. I was actually living in Japan 20 years ago and I couldn't go anywhere without seeing those things on TV or in store display windows. They were super popular.

  • domo arigatto

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  • Wow... there's a meme I haven't seen in over 20 years. Those brown monster things used to be super popular in Japan back in the early 2000s.

  • Trump’s Stunning Response When Asked if He Has Sexual ‘Age Limit’ Resurfaces as Epstein-Mania Boils

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  • It seems like we didn't vote for this guy and he cheated his way to winning the election. He made suspicious comments about Elon Musk and how he helped with the election, mentioning something about how he's really good with that technology. Which Musk also mentioned, claiming that Trump would never have been elected without him.

    Then there's an active lawsuit going on where several counties in New York state found that absolutely no one voted for Kamala Harris in their location during the election, despite having large groups of Democrat residents. Their electronic voting machines received patches right before voting started, which is highly suspicious. That's being investigated right now.

    It appears that the election was likely stolen and we have a president who was never elected. This is how fascist takeovers start, and unless people organize against the government, they're just going to keep enabling this downfall of our country.

  • Happy noises*

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  • Hodor 👀

  • Are we really seeing the fall of empire, or just the end of our illusions?

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  • The US Military sector will be fine.

    As a retired veteran, I'd like to point out that this topic is a bit too complicated to summarize as "fine."

    The military industry itself with be fine. Heck, it may thrive! But the individuals who make up that military will definitely experience hardship along the way.

    During Trump's first term as president, he tried to ban trans people from serving with an executive order. Which he can do as Commander in Chief over the military. That order was very quickly shut down though, because we had a mostly Democrat government that pushed back against anything extreme he attempted that didn't benefit both parties' goals. He had his hands tied more than once, which is why his first term was relatively quiet. Back then, I was still serving and I remember our military leaders standing up to Trump on that order and making him back down.

    During this second term though, Republicans have a majority in the federal government and have basically given Trump a blank check to do whatever he wants with little pushback. So trans people ARE banned now, and he's replaced a bunch of high ranking generals with his own civilian yes men, giving them rank and authority without a career of military service or going through proper legal approval processes. The military leaders told him no once, so he's replaced them with his own loyalists who won't challenge his executive orders now.

    Not to mention, with the push for ICE to round up anyone who's (essentially) not white, we're seeing military members and their families affected by that as well. There was a time when serving in our military was a sort of fast-track to citizenship. I worked with a guy once who was Brazilian, but by serving a term in the US military, he would earn his citizenship and get to stay in America. That's going away under Trump's new regime.

    And Trump is talking about gaining access to voting records, which would just give him more incentive to target anyone who doesn't vote Republican. Everyone, military or not, will be affected if it comes to that. Being an active service member as our country falls to fascism isn't a free pass; if you don't believe in the new order, you're going to be targeted and, at best, kicked out. At worst, you could be labeled a terrorist threat to our nation and "disappeared" to Guantanamo Bay.

    Also, as a 100% disabled veteran, I'm only retired now because my VA pay and benefits can cover my meager and quiet lifestyle without taking on another job. But if Trump has his way, my benefits will be a fraction of what they are (if not removed completely), and I'd be forced to find work to survive.

    Military members (and especially veterans) will suffer. But the military industrial complex will be fine.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • I never saw myself as ugly, but I always just assumed I was pretty average. It's not like people were tripping over themselves to spend time with me. I didn't have supermodel attraction powers or anything; the most attractive people in my school never gave me the time of day. Every person I've ever dated asked me out, but I just assumed that was normal for anyone who wasn't absolutely hideous.

    (For the record, I tried to ask someone out once and it went so wrong, I never had the courage to ask anyone else out again, so the only time I dated anyone was when they approached me. Which happened quite a bit throughout my younger years.)

    I've had friends talk about how jealous they are of certain features of mine (strong jaw, ability to grow a thick lumberjack beard, being taller than most of our friend group, etc.) but I was also jealous of certain features my friends shared, so I didn't ever feel physically superior to anyone. You want what you can't have, right?

    But now I'm in my 40s, my hair is starting to thin, and thanks to a permanently busted leg and two bad knees, I can't exercise without pain and have gained probably 60+ pounds in recent years. All of a sudden, I've realized that people don't really notice me anymore. I don't draw much attention when I go out in public and people aren't as captivated by my conversation like they used to be.

    My wife also used to love pointing out when strangers were staring at me in public. She used to brag that she'd snagged an attractive man and that other girls are just jealous. I used to think she was just trying to hype herself up, since she used to talk down about herself a lot, so I'd play along and praise her for being so lucky (and also let her know how lucky I was for getting to spend time with a woman like her). But it's been years now since she's pointed out anyone staring at me in public.

    It's kind of dawning on me that I may have been pretty attractive as a young man. But like all things, beauty fades with age and I'm in an awkward phase where people aren't really paying much attention to me anymore. It's definitely hitting the ego, not only noticing the lack of attention, but realizing too late that I had that kind of attractive power in my youth. If I hadn't been crippled with introversion most of my youth, I probably could've been extremely popular.

    I will point out, I shared a link to a blog of mine on Lemmy sometime earlier this year and I got a single comment, praising my attractive profile pic on my blog. Which is the first positive thing anyone's said about my appearance in years. That was a wonderful feeling, but also kind of hit hard, realizing that people don't really comment on my looks anymore.

    That profile picture is maybe 5 years old now, and whereas I want to replace it with a more current one, I've been struggling to take one that doesn't make me feel old and ugly. So I'm going to keep using that older one until I feel like it no longer looks like me.

  • Mine Is Now At Boss Level

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  • The casing on the outside of my air fryer is plastic, but the inside, where my food cooks, is all metal. 🤘