@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:

I miss RPing. I’ve filled my hours with other things, but I miss logging on and writing stories with people. I also miss the daily chatting with people I use to chat with about random stuff.

However, the idea of making a new character makes me feel like I don’t have the mental energy. Then I’m not sure how well my RP will be after the ‘break’ I’ve been on.

Anyways, in conclusion – if we’ve RPed at all, you’ve been on my mind and you rock - so thank you for writing stories with me.

I don’t post here very often, if ever, I’m mainly content to just lurk and read and keep up to date.

But this hit me like a brick.

I’ve got no game to play on right now and haven’t for over a year. Part of it is because I’m picky, another part is trust issues, and a third is a general lack of time. But every so often, at least twice a week, I think back and I miss logging on to a grid, seeing the familiar faces, and getting stuck into a bit of chaos.

I’m despondent that the last game that I invested a lot of time in went up in a sea of toxic flames, and I’m saddened by the lack of anything equivalent out there that’s similar in systems and size. I miss the people I don’t talk to anymore, and I miss playing in a codebase I understand.

I would love to find a game out there that fits my specific niche, but at this point I’d have to loosen my stifling standards and try something new.

I think I’ve been sitting on this for a long while, and I needed to let it out.

@dvoraen This is one of my favourite reads lately: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

Oh man.

When I get a cold it lasts for like, four days.

Except the cough. That sticks around for a month.

Two weeks in now and auuuuuuggghhhhh.

Notepad doesn’t need Copilot.

It’s not just multiple alts, but those alts connected multiple times. For example, Sumi in the past used to connect all her alts from three-to-five different devices, meaning over a dozen connections from one player. That’s the number WHO looks at, and the number iberia.jdai.pt sees.

@kalakh This is the variant I’ve seen

@Pavel that is a genuine QoL feature I use daily.

But I don’t need to have Copilot/Gemini/whatever advertised to me every time I open something that isn’t a video game.

I don’t even read the AWS roadmaps anymore because it’s endless updates to Q and nothing about bringing their existing functionality out of minimum-viable-product stage.

AI has its effective areas of use, but it is far narrower than what has been marketed and sold.

Yes. No. “They’re new, they’ll be gone in two weeks.” I’m a male btw.

I noted it down on a lesson on what not to do. Which to be fair I’m doing with a lot of the examples I see here. It’s the weirdest thing, the common sense to actually take something like this seriously doesn’t seem to be very bloody common.

I judge my neighbourhood’s lawns as I drive past.

@MisterBoring this is the same game that made a DL-44 identical in stats to a DL-18.

@dvoraen This is one of my favourite reads lately: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

@Pavel that is a genuine QoL feature I use daily.

But I don’t need to have Copilot/Gemini/whatever advertised to me every time I open something that isn’t a video game.

I don’t even read the AWS roadmaps anymore because it’s endless updates to Q and nothing about bringing their existing functionality out of minimum-viable-product stage.

AI has its effective areas of use, but it is far narrower than what has been marketed and sold.

Notepad doesn’t need Copilot.

@Pavel if I have to read seven hundred different linguistic interpretations of “globes” again it’ll be too soon.

Honestly in regards to “sizeable” I was thinking something like a few dozen. I wouldn’t call it a metric of “success” so much as “a lot of people passed the three-month mark”. Quantifying success objectively is risky territory in this highly subjective hobby.

This is probably my cynicism talking, but the games that keep a sizeable number of players post-Bubble usually have one of two things:

• Inventory/econ/XP/gimme shiny gamified rewards that tickle the MMO brain.
• Sex as a basic premise.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a fantastic musou game that sits down and really works on the Dynasty Warriors formula and I recommend it to anyone who played prior games, even if they were burned by DW9.

The story gets a proper dedicated focus instead of being relegated to mission and character cut-scenes, and works hard to tell the saga of the Downfall of the Han with a combination of historical accuracy, Romance of the Three Kingdoms embellishments, and Dynasty Warriors flair. Respect is shown to what were formally comic relief characters such as the tragedy of Zhang Jiao and the morph of Dong Zhuo into a truly menacing manipulator.

Gameplay is harder and no longer winnable by mashing X/Square. You need to combine light and heavy attacks, Battle Arts, blocking, dodging, and your Musou attacks (which now come close to being full screen wipes) in a far more skill-oriented system. There are less than ten weapons this time around, but each one has a massive moveset and all are completely differentiated from each other in style and gameplay.

Some things did miss the cut, like playing as historical characters instead of the new protag John Musou (who himself is probably the weakest part of the game), but the work done on the gameplay and story more than makes up for it.

@dvoraen AI is an interesting (read: frustrating) topic that comes up at my job quite often. I can usually sort those trying to get it brought in into one of two categories:

• A C-level exec that wants it so they can slap “Powered by AI” on the product.
• A stressed junior/mid developer who wants it to do their job for them.

Setting aside misunderstandings around what AI actually is, both of the above are fueled by a lack of comprehension of the problems they’re facing in their day-to-day life.

The C-level exec wants to sell and thinks a shiny sticker will do just that. But the issues with what we make (and there are always issues in product development, that is a fact of life) have nothing to do with a lack of AI, nor will adding AI provide any tangible benefit. Asking “how do you want to use it in the product” usually results in a blank stare and instructions to just get it done. The only success I’ve had at stopping the AI implementation bandwagon is telling C-level how much it costs to build, run, and maintain.

The biggest issue that I can go into specifics about is that implementing AI in the way our execs often ask will run us afoul of GDPR. Not might. Will. I cannot elaborate further.

For the dev, working under Infinite Crunch, they see an easy way to work faster and more efficiently. They don’t have the time to assess the code being produced by the AI let alone their own code in the grand ecosystem of the product as a whole. Ninety percent of the time, when a dev asks me for a copilot license, their code is actually pretty good. The problem is the gigantic tech debt and clashing design differences etc etc, stuff that needs to be solved by a manager wielding the Refactoring Mallet.

The manager, however, is usually too busy telling C-level how much AI integration costs to build, run, and maintain.

I sound sour about this, and I assure you, I absolutely am. AI is a scalpel being sold as a hammer, and the only people who stand to gain anything from AI implementations are the ones selling it to hapless C-level execs who don’t know better.

In conclusion, there is a detailed (and deliciously crude) blog post I often refer people to when the AI conversation comes up for the umpteenth time. At the very least it’s good for a laugh. https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

@kalakh This is the variant I’ve seen

We were once told on AoA that we needed knowledge:Tatooine at 50 (out of 100 max) or greater to know what a Jawa is.

The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.

So go as vague as you like, justify the skills loosely, and fill in gaps before approval if staff asks for them.