That's most tech corporate jobs tbf. Lots of middle managers with nothing much better to do than play musical chairs once a quarter. It's like that XKCD meme about there being the standard that will clean up the mess of there being so many standards. Surely my way of working will solve all our problems of underinvestment and losing key talent...
Bluefold
joined 1 year ago
Yeah. It came out right in the middle of multiple massive games. It also has no quicksave/quickload system which for this kind of game is almost a must. Folks can ignore a system for the challenge, but without it there entirely it puts me off playing. Call it save scummy playing, but it's how the genre has always worked.
The first 10 hours or so of Valhalla are great too. Learning the new systems and making your first parts of the settlement are pretty engaging. It's the other 60+ hours that become a slog. You quickly realise that the main quest chain that was kinda outstaying its welcome is what you can expect for every single kingdom. Yeah, there's some variety, but they're really a slog to get through. The settlement upgrades were pretty good, but your mainly unlock things that would have been 'free' in other games. As the gear system leans towards microtransactions nothing you unlock is really mind-blowing. Especially as you'll have to raid yet a other generic copy-and-paste monastery for the materials to upgrade.
If we look back to a game like ACII's Villa upgrades, they provided access to things that would be behind a perk point today. I remember grinding out my capacity upgrades etc. There was direct tie from my effort to the upgrade. With Valhalla, and the other recent games, I feel like I've got to gring out the lootbox/heka chest(or whatever the premium currency is in a particular game)
That's not to say Mirage is perfect. I really hate the token system and it feels so tacked on. I am enjoying being stealthy again though. I used a cheat trainer to add in one hit kills to Odyssey a while back and it improved the game so much.
To many in the region, it was more than just a tree. It was where they proposed, it was where they went to find calm during a tough period, it was where they said their final goodbyes to a loved one etc. To say the tree was iconic would be an understatement. It was a constant in a time of change and a place of undeniable beauty in a world of increasing shit. The kinda place you make a special trip out to once your kids are old enough and show them a part of their local identity, untouched by the passing of time.
At the end of the day, yes it is just a tree. But it is also a many missed memories being made and just one more destruction of something just a little special. It's no surprise people were speculating that some landowner or farmer was refused planning permission after it first happened. Because that is what we're used to, someone selfish taking away something that was just there because it was beautiful.
The largest owners are Advance Publications and Tencent. Advance also own Condé Nasty (Reddit even used to be under the Condé Nast banner). Weirdly they also own everyone's favorite plagiarism detection service Turnitin.
In my experience, even the consumer facing portion suffers from lack of innovation. Look at the big rounds of lay offs this year, fairly uniformly one of the hardest hit teams has been UX Research. If you've worked with a good researcher, you really know their value. But translating value that into hard metrics is tough. A lot of the time CEOs in the private sector will accept Good Enough & fast Vs moving at a reasonable pace.
I don't think there would even be an appetite for hard research at most companies. Takes too long, too much of a risk, the boss' cousin had a really cool idea instead....
Private sector is very good at operationalizing existing technology. Outside of the FAANGs(/MAMAAs) being good enough is too easy, or investing in research is considered to be too high an expense with no guarantee on return.
One QoL improvement I've not seen here is a better journal system. When I can't further a quest line even something vague like 'Continue your journey so learn more' would be great. I have spent time on some quests hunting down a person to discover the quest can only be completed in the next act multiple times now.
I enjoyed what I played, and the choices felt like they could potentially be impactful in the future. Episode 1 is incredibly short, however. I explored a bunch, picked up most, if not all, the extra resources and it still clocked in at under an hour. Looking back, there were four main 'scenes' that actually contributed to any story.
Good start, but I really hope the future episodes are more substantial.
If one of their goals is to sell premium access to train LLMs this type of gibberish would hurt that. When you can't guarantee that the data source is coherent, then that would have an impact on the final model that is created.
I think a better approach is to transfer comments to a new platform or create new higher quality content. Could the solution to this problem become a guide that goes into more detail?
This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810's which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.
People who believe 'It was that hot when they were young' likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we're seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes 'It was this hot when we were young'.
Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We're living decades more than someone of that era, we're extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we've had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.
It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).
It seems obvious but also: don't drink anything with caffeine before bed and don't eat a good couple of hours before sleep too.
I've had many friends who'd have a tea before going to sleep to 'calm' them without realising most have quite a lot still. Or guzzling down a soda too.