In Magic: the Gathering people are discussing "universe beyond" sets. Those are foreign IPs like Doctor Who, LoTR, Marvel, Fallout, Sonic etc injected into magic, which already had fucking good setting and lore.
It brings them lots of money, at least short term, while destroying the game we love.
MtG has become the Funko Pops of gaming.
How does it "destroy" the game? Aren't they effectively existing cards with tie-in art/names? Pardon the lack of familiarity, I only played Magic for about a year with a friend group half a decade or so ago.
Or are they introducing entirely new carda/mechanics now? Or saying that these are somehow involved with the canon setting?
They aren't involved in canon setting, at least yet. But there was a period of "hat set" in-universe sets when quality of art and lore of main sets dropped. Although last few were very decent.
Yes, they aren't just reprints under new names now. They are full sets of some IP without in-universe cards to match them. They are cards that likely won't be reprinted ever (because due to IP they don't even own them, can't reprint on-whim). Which means those "The One Ring" and the likes are only gonna grow in price. Heck, even playable commons like "Loriel Revealed".
They also aren't owning rights for digital distribution on some of those IP even and in Magic Arena those cards are replaced with something else in-universe-ish which doesn't exist in paper.
Yuck, just what Magic needs, more mechanically unique limited release cards.
And if they can make "lore friendly" versions for digital, just publicly commit to releasing those some number of months/years after the tie in set. Make it part of the contract when initially making the tie in. This shouldn't be difficult.
No, they are mechanically unique cards. There's a handful of cards from past Secret Lairs that received Universes Within variants, but now they're making whole Universes Beyond sets that are unlikely to ever receive those variants. Those sets are also Standard legal, and have resulted in the largest and most bloated Standard pool of all time. Thankfully, that hasn't even mattered because Wizards balancing is still awful, so even with such a large cardpool Standard only has two competitive decks.
My biggest issue is just that all of these Universes Beyond sets are advertisements. It really sucks that in our capitalist hellscape, I can't even escape from ads in a cardgame.
Is a tab four spaces or two?
A tab is not made of spaces, it goes to the next tab stop, which is as big as you set it to be.
Let's all compromise on three spaces
recordscratch.wav
Can we make it π spaces? It's such a nice number.
Ouch. This hurts. This hurts so much.
IT'S FOUR.
Hi, it's your friendly nano user here to remind you that it's actually 8.
LEGO enthusiasts ( !lego@piefed.social ) are usually split on the "non-LEGO" compatible sets, especially since the basic LEGO patent went to the free domain. Some people think they're "fake", some other people think it's a way to still afford the hobby when the prices have skyrocketed
I'm conflicted. I prided myself as a kid on having exclusively on-brand LEGOs and always considered Megablox and such inferior in quality, aesthetic, "cool factor", etc.
But on the other hand:
Plus I'm into 3D printing and like the "stick it to the man" aspect of 3D printing that might reduce people's dependence on serving some company's profit motive for things like shoes (Nike, etc), replacement parts (like parts for my washing machine, improving repairability), figurines (D&D miniatures, for instance), and, indeed, toys like LEGO-compatible pieces.
Maybe I should go 3D print me some Bionicles.
My personal opinion is that if another brand can match LEGO's consistent quality I'd be open to it but as long as the quality of the individual pieces remains so freaking low it's not worth it (looking at you Mega Blocks!)
From what I heard there are quite a few brands now that reached Lego's quality (indeed, definitely not Mega Blocks)
Okay that's really cool actually! I remember back when I actually built with Legos there were some specialized pieces made by enthusiasts since Lego didn't have a good equivalent yet, such as steam locomotive wheels for example, or replacement 9V Lego Trains tracks, but those were all different than full on Lego competitors
I’m more pissed about the proliferation of “non-standard” LEGO pieces showing up in actual LEGO sets. Things that aren’t standard windows, bricks, panels/slabs, wheels, and windshields. Kinda ruins the creativity of the set when there is some giant multibrick or custom curvature I’ve never seen before.
Honestly LEGO really hasn’t increased in price very much at all over the last ~20 years. They run about $0.10 a brick in the majority of cases (I think they are now closer to $0.11, but it’s close). I don’t really care for non genuine sets since the quality/tolerances I have found never to be good enough, but if folks like them then great; but to say prices have skyrocketed is just demonstrably false.
Mine is interest in retro gaming which oh boy, there's a lot:
Bonus points if that person happens to be Gen-Z and comments selection bitching about Gen-Z. I hate the weird elitism retro-gaming community have which as a Zoomer, it does put me off wanting to play older games if I be judge for being too stupid to not get it straight away.
Older millennial, grew up playing NES and after. Emulation is fine and allows everyone to play titles they otherwise might have missed. With you on the sbdke oil.
Mechanical keyboards have several (clicky/thocky/tactile/linear/etc switches, Cherry MX Browns, etc), but if I had to choose one, maybe ortholinear vs staggered.
A picture will probably illustrate it best:
Ortholinear evangelists contend that the staggered layout was invented for mechanical typewriters exclusively to reduce the incidence of typebar collisions and is detrimental to optimal ergonomics. I, as someone who prefers staggered keyboards, just don't want to be ruined for the majority of keyboards out there. (If my muscle memory "learns" that "m" is "here" because I use an ortholinear keyboard at home, I'm worried it'll be awkward to use a standard keyboard on a laptop or whatever and I'll be fat-fingering keys all over the place.) I might switch sides someday. Who knows. But for now, I'll stick with staggered.
Do Balrogs have wings according to JRR Tolkein?
Really? Why is that even a debate? It's been a little while since I've read the books, but I seem to remember Durin's Bane as being described as having the shape of a man, thus no wings.
Other Balrogs are perhaps less clearly described. Unless there's some line that explicitly describes a balrog with wings, I'd assume they don't have them, and even then I'd assume it applies to only the particular balrog in question.
A better Balrog related debate would be determining the exact number of them and whether or not any survived in Middle-Earth into the fourth age. It's possible there are two or more still kicking around.
Okay. First off, why would a creature that lives exclusively under a mountain have wings? Second, I'm now invested in this controversy I and want to know more.
They didn't start under the mountain. They are, effectively, the same creatures as the wizards but corrupted. What makes the scene epic is that Gandalf was facing his match.
So in rhythm games, chart reuse and "piracy" is... a surprisingly big issue that is related to copyright. This warrants a bit more explanation
For example, the IP of Dance Dance Revolution/DDR is owned solely by Bemani and Konami; both are Japanese companies which are not known for being generous with copyright, mind you. The DDR series produces lots of original music which are owned by the IP holders, and just about every chart (the thing you actually play) created for each piece of music in the game is also technically copyright protected
Problem is, DDR got wayyy too popular so there are a lot of clones out there; in fact most arcades in the US would have a "DDR" cabinet when it is actually a clone. Usually something like Stepmania (which is FOSS btw). Would it be considered piracy if someone else uses the official chart even though they are not running one of the officially licensed DDR cabs?
I don't know the details as to how it ended up like this, but it seems like a lot of games strictly ban such "piracy", whereas DDR is a bit of an outlier. Case in point, Beatmania series (one of the oldest rhythm game series) treats such acts as piracy, and the simulation community is onboard with this so all of the ripped official charts would be referred to as "illegal BMS"... but this is compensated by having a massive collection of community charts that have no affiliation with the IP holders of Beatmania whatsoever. DDR... seems to allow all of their charts to be released as simfiles, case in point.
There's also the funny case for Sound Voltex (SDVX). This game was also created by Konami, with lots of official songs/charts and a dedicated simulation community. Problem is that SDVX released a PC version of the game (don't buy their official controllers they are ass), and all of the official charts were reuploaded and became available to anyone playing the simulators. These charts are in a very weird legal limbo as far as I'm aware... but everyone knows that simulator users play the official charts
One of my hobbies is the sport of weightlifting (the snatch and the clean & jerk). There is a rule called the Pressout Rule that keeps lifters from pressing the weight out overhead - basically you can't catch a weight overhead and then muscle it out to full extension. This rule is pretty unpopular with a lot of folks because the judges judging the lift may see your arm shake a bit and decide it was a pressout. I'm not a big fan of the rule.
After diving in and learning it this year, I fully believe learning Vim makes you a better developer and it should be commonly taught to developers. It has done far more for my dev skills than any single AI tool ever has, and I dont have to worry about it hallucinating.
Personally, I think Vim should be made into standard knowledge for anyone who consistently uses a keyboard for their work. A lot more software than I expected supports it, and it makes any form of text editting tremendously better.
A very common debate in basketball fandom is whether number of championships won is an important metric to judge how good a player is. Some of the greatest players of all time never won a championship (e.g. Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Steve Nash) and a lot of people automatically rate them below other top players who did win rings.
How to best learn from AI in the game of Go.
AI is an extraordinary tool for game analysis because you can set it to analyze every move in ever game you play, and it's stronger than any human teacher. It also overturned a lot of old school opening sequences and ushered in a new meta.
But there are limitations to it. AI can tell you that a move is bad and where it should be played, but it can't explain why. AI plays on a razor's edge, if it can find one specific line of play that works to live in an area, then it won't bother trying to strengthen it, while a human player couldn't read that far ahead. Human play depends on heuristics, like, "It's generally a good idea to place your stones into this shape" but the AI doesn't think in those terms at all, it tirelessly reads out a ton of variations every time.
Once, I was in a room at an event where a professional had flown in from Asia (I forget which country) to give reviews. One of the players getting a review started arguing about something he said, saying, "I ran this through AI and it said my move was good." People have a lot of opinions on that sort of thing, some people would say that the AI is the ultimate judge of whether a move is good or not and that the student was in the right to challenge the pro saying something wrong, while others might say that student should be more respectful and consider multiple perspectives, like, "If you just want to go off AI, then why even bring it to the pro?"
Some people try to focus on playing the "top engine move," seeing that as the best practice to reach optimal play. But others feel like that makes games too "same-y," and leaves gaps in your knowledge against unconventional play, along with the problem that humans can't match it's computational power which that style of play depends on. But, everyone uses it to some degree, it's just too useful.
Also, different online servers have implemented AI tools. The most controversial is Tygem, which introduced a feature where you can pay money to use AI analysis during a game, below a certain (relatively high) rank. Pretty much everyone hates this. Like, you could just run an AI locally, but that's called "cheating" and it doesn't stop being cheating just because you decided to pay microtransactions in a 4000 year old game.
Honestly, I could go on longer than anyone's interested in talking about go controversies, like not too long ago there was a controversy between a Chinese and Korean player where the Chinese player was penalized for not keeping his captures visible, which was a new and kind of obscure rule.
This one is starting to sway one direction more than the other but: Using AI for indie game development. (For music, voice work, art, code, writing, gameplay, etc)
You've probably seen many arguments for and against AI at this point so I won't harp on that too much. It is interesting/frustrating to see where some devs focuses are, and why this has contributed to an insane amount of AI art in games lately.
In Battletech (tabletop miniatures game, huge fiction universe, video games):
I'm into bicycles and there are plenty. This one seems mostly settled now but "disc brakes vs rim brakes" gets some people worked up. Rim brake fans see disc brakes as needlessly expensive and complex. Disc brake fans will point out the better stopping power, especially in wet weather. And it doesn't slowly wear out your wheel rim.
Even a lot of the disc brake fans get heated at the mention of hydraulic disc brakes compared to cable-actuated. They see hydraulic brake-bleeding as the pinnacle of complexity. I used to do my own car maintenance. In that world, bleeding your brakes is considered a very beginner-friendly maintenance activity. I think cyclists are way too resistant to change.
Whether a ball hitting the line should be in or out. You'd think it would be simple, like tennis, but nooooo. Pickleball authorities want to have every line be 'in' except for the kitchen line... but hitting/touching the line does mean it's in, as in 'in the kitchen,' which means you're out.
Then there was the whole rule change about 'let' serves, and the pros straight up ignoring the rules and playing the old way.
:/ ugh. Playing a relatively recent sport can be frustrating, because they're still trying to change rules to make the game better, compared to older sports where things have been set in stone.
I follow football ( !football@sopuli.xyz )
Every year the best player wins the "Ballon d'Or", based on votes from journalists from all over the world.
Criteria tend to change from year to year, and you usually see a lot of fans pushing for their candidate a few months before the award. Ask any football fan and they can always tell you which Ballon d'Or they think got "robbed", usually using their own metrics to justify that choice.
It always seemed a bit weird to me how important the whole thing is when that game is mostly collective.
Who's the GOAT of F1, some say Schumacher, some say Verstappen but the real debate is if it's Latifi or Maldonado
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