Rexxitor. Biology nerd. Roguelites, indie games, and TRPGs. Drowning in unused yarn, unread books, and mandatory cat hair.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Christ, do you understand how big this could be if anyone would let it? (they won’t)

    Even a ton of “more environmentally friendly” textiles are as bad if not somehow worse than their already destructive counterparts. I ran the numbers once in an argument and a recyclable shopping bag requires a little over 70 uses just to break even with the comparable pollution it took to make it, but most people who even use them throw them out after less than 20.

    God, I wish it said anything about how resilient it is as clothing in comparison to regular leather. I’ve known about the making of lab-grown ghost hearts and stuff through a similar method for a while now, but this never even occurred to me. I know next to nothing about bacteria, clearly.

    Sadly, there’s still too much money in doing anything else, I’d bet. So many companies put too much effort into PR, greenwashing and general slavery to want to move over, and this would affect more industries than one.



  • Reduced the size of save files by removing summons that don’t exist in the game anymore.

    Well, that seems like something that should have been done a long time ago, lmao. Good thing I went with druid first over ranger, it seems.

    Fixed Thieves’ Tools in the camp chest or inventory of a companion who is waiting at camp not being accessible when lockpicking.

    Ok, taking items from camp, I could see. Talk about useful, and I believe they recently did the same thing with quest items? Which I very much appreciate. Being able to leave that behind should clear up my inventory considerably when I get back to playing.

    But…taking things from a non-present companion feels weird in my head. I’m sure I wouldn’t notice it; I give everything to the resident lockpick anyway, so it would just be clearing up stuff I misplaced in the impossible event that they ever run out.

    But picturing it does break immersion a little bit. It’s fine, it wouldn’t have any real effect in the moment, it’s just…what an odd choice.

    Poor Gale - we know your pain, sometimes it’s easy to read something into a situation that wasn’t there. We’ve sat him down and explained that if someone doesn’t offer him a shoe to eat every time, that doesn’t mean they never will. You’ll find him more likely to stick around now.
    . . . .
    Gale will no longer permanently leave the party if you don’t offer him any magic items while talking to him – unless you’re abundantly clear that you don’t plan on ever doing so.

    Ok, this one I honestly do dislike. I’ve been mildly bothered by every change they’ve made to Gale’s personality, even though I know the one he started out with on release was literally bugged and was never intended to be like that. Because it was also unexpectedly convincing. There weren’t other characters I could think of that were genuinely likable people while also simultaneously being socially inept, grandiose little incels.

    I didn’t even notice it until it was talked about online, because how Gale acted in his glitched romance was just how guys always act towards me irl. For the first time, every male gamer had to put up with everything *I* had to put up with, and they hated it, and I loved it. It felt believable. It was hilarious. I felt seen. And then they toned him down because he was bothering the playerbase.

    This now, with the items and increasing his hesitation to leave in response to a situation you’re not taking as seriously as he needs it to be taken, this feels like more dumbing down.

    This feels an awful lot like avoiding any player unhappiness by making sure it is impossible for anyone to experience a consequence unless they’re dedicated enough to manually and knowingly force it to happen. And that’s not what they initially wanted the game to be.

    It still has hundreds upon hundreds of permutations, right down to differences in the inflection of a sentence, and the sheer dedication is boggling. But then they did things like remove any actual drawback to the tadpoles, of all things, because of the idea of unpleasant consequences that players would bitch about.

    It is ok to have a character that’s rash and presumptuous because his natural ability has given him an ego that far eclipses his social experience. It’s ok to have a character under such duress that they will make questionable, desperate decisions without consulting anyone, based on their presumptions about the player, whether or not those assumptions are correct.

    That is an extremely realistic personality. And one that doesn’t tend to exist, because what if something happens that the player doesn’t like. Real people make choices. Let him have the ability to make stupid ones.




  • It’s really a mix of both. More heavily the way the site has been for years because people love drama more than anything else. If you want the sweet serotonin of karma, you’ve gotta be simultaneously the funniest, meanest, and most jaded person in the room, and everyone is jockeying for that position.

    It just breeds assholes by design. I’ve noticed my own behavior has changed, too, since leaving that place, although partially that’s because I just didn’t want to be like that anymore.

    But it really has been noticeably affected since the protests. I was originally trying to stay for one single sub I was in, because they were the kindest, calmest community I’d met since back when forums were a thing.

    Just the best group, for reasons none of us really understood and some of us kept trying to find psychological commonalities to explain. Truly 98% of them were people I’d chill with irl and I still know a few on discord. And also here. If you’re reading this, hello!

    But the migration away was enough to completely alter the atmosphere imo. A lot of the more conscientious users left for other pastures, leaving behind those that were more neutral or even openly hostile about the protests.

    There began to be fights and insults thrown where before this, any aggression had been unusual. The posts took a turn that reflected that feeling and I really stopped bothering with the place after a few months. I’m still a bit sad about it and there are things that I miss, but there just wasn’t enough to hold me anymore. It seemed to increasingly echo every other part of the site.

    For the moment, this place is quieter but better. We still get dumb shit every now and then, but it’s not to the same degree and hopefully never will be. As above, I blame the demographic. We’ve grouped all the people with stubborn morals into a little room and it turns out they have things in common. I do miss a couple people I used to see everywhere all the time when kbin first ramped up, but we run in different circles and they’ve gotten lost in the crowd.

    And yes, btw, I am also going to name you one of my favorite users to see around. You seem as kind as you are prolific.


  • I’ve never figured out quite how to get the spoiler tags working on kbin and, even if I had, there seems like there may be some jank between mine and other instances regarding that. An attempt was made, anyway, and at least that one seems like it would be easy-ish to forget until my long-awaited Durge run.

    But I can’t even be mad about it because of your name. My liege.











  • For context, earlier this week Hasbro (owner of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering) announced that it would be laying off 1,100 employees as a way to “modernize our organization and get even leaner”. Not soon after, it was revealed that an avalanche of employees from both D&D and MTG had been laid off.

    In an investor meeting in October this year, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks specifically mentions Baldur’s Gate 3 as a contributing factor for a 40% increase in digital gaming revenue, alongside Monopoly Go! and Magic: The Gathering.

    Well yeah, obviously you gotta fire whoever was the cause of a 40% increase in revenue, otherwise that could even raise to 50%. Where would it end?

    Always safer to go with what you know: letting the ravenous mob desperate to throw money at you know just as soon as possible that you’re taking steps to remove anything they liked about your product.

    Do you think they can get lean enough to break even in their future?