TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The strictness won't stick though. Islam is being watered down slowly but surely. Again, it's going in the same direction as Christianity, and is just several decades behind. Years of fundamentalism have brought mostly just violence and secular crackdown, both foreign and domestic. Less than a third of Iranians would classify themselves as Shia Muslims, and about as many Iranians believe in genies as compared to critical religious concepts like "heaven and hell". You can't have an atheistic cultural religion. The continuing failure of "cultural Christianity" to attain widespread appeal proves this.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I think you and Hyperion are agreeing with each other.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Islam is subject to the same critiques that Christianity was in regards to the truth of its dogma. Granted, most atheist influencers got suspiciously quiet whenever Islam was brought up, even recently including Dawkins. But it's still there, and anyone who actually studies the subject and exerts the barest modicum of effort to have consistent worldviews will realize Islamic superstitions are just as fake as Christianity's. Granted, Islam started from a way more extremist/fundamentalist bent than Christianity did when the atheist onslaught started, but I don't really see it following a different path, it's just several decades behind.
On the vibes-based cultural aspect, I doubt we'll see Western mass-conversions. Tate et al. are clearly just cynically "converting" to exploit inconsistencies in the blue coalition. "I'm not sexist, I'm Muslim!" More power to them I say, since the white pro-Muslim feminists are some of the most obnoxious blue tribers in existence. But this pseudo conversion won't be followed on a large scale. Muslim countries are generally a lot worse places to live than Western ones, which saps its overall appeal. "Let's become just like Saudi Arabia" might appeal to a slice of the fringe dissident right, but it will turn off the vast majority of people. In terms of Westerners having some sort of non-religious cultural "religion" to attach to, I also don't see much future for Islam. The fact it's even being discussed shows how bankrupt the prospect of cultural Christianity is, and I don't see Islam getting much further than Odinism or other Paganism did. Most people don't have the energy of the militant vanguard activists, and thus aren't looking for a warlike or "masculine" culture, they just want to get on with their lives.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This story is a great encapsulation of two important phenomena:
- How utterly asleep at the wheel most Europeans were in regards to Russia, especially post-Crimea.
- How much more dangerous Russia could be if they got a handle on corruption. But alas, no dictatorship can really solve corruption since it's too beneficial to the leader at the top for maintaining his position.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
People aren't "projecting forward", they're just parroting what their biased media consumption tells them. The fact that 80%+ of Republicans were positive about the economy in 2019, but then <20% of them were positive in 2023 is a pretty good indicator. They'll overwhelmingly point to inflation being disastrous and wiping out peoples' earnings, yet official data shows real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wages are up since then. When confronted with this fact, they'll then give very thin evidence trying to say the official statistics are all made up, even on a relatively more rigorous site like this one.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Your version might be correct; I don't know, and I'm generally suspicious of all narratives about presidential responsability for economic outcomes.
Yes, this is generally the right way to see it. Presidents aren't really responsible for the day-to-day fluctuations of the business cycle. They only really impact things in the long term.
I declined to invest my money
You really shouldn't try to time the stock market, especially if you're persuadable by political trends.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Trump passed two major pieces of legislation which helped unleash an economy that had been sputtering under Obama.
This is not an accurate retelling of economic conditions, but rather is a skewed worldview based on partisan priors. The economy recovered slowly but consistently over Obama's terms, and was quite good towards the end. Trump just caught the tail end of the bull market before it fell off a cliff due to covid. Trump's tax cuts for the rich did little to improve the economy.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
what is the purpose of the game?
The purpose of a game is to be fun. Difficulty is a big part of that. Something too hard is frustrating, while something too easy is boring. Skill differences between players are wide, which is why the vast majority of games include difficulty options.
The dialogue between the game designer and the player is the point of the game. You seem to be under the impression that the reason games are designed to be hard is to weed out players. I don't think any game designer thinks like this, especially as they are subject to financial incentives that explicitly want the game to find the widest possible audience.
For most games this is true, but FromSoft has found a niche where alienating less skilled players is worthwhile for them to prop up the series' reputation for difficulty, which appeals to smug elitists. "Developer vision" arguments are vacuous nonsense that essentially boil down to "you can't criticize any design choices, ever".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This post really gets my troll senses tingling. An account that's less than a week old posting about HBD, which is probably the most offensive topic a leftist would come across. Then starting said topic with "as a black person". Then not really saying much but vague agreement. I could easily see this post being the result of a leftist forum user from some other site saying "Hey guys, I'll go to that place where Nazis justify racism, and pretend to be a black man agreeing with them. Then they'll show us what they REALLY think!!!"
If this isn't the case then I'd suggest posting that essay type post sooner rather than later, as you'll get more interesting answers that way.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I feel like we basically agree with each other.
You've mentioned "arbitrary" in both your comments so I assume you're reading into that word more than what I meant by it. I've never been opposed to players finding high difficulty enjoyable, I was opposed to them wanting to force that on others who may not want that if they'd also like to play the game, perhaps for other reasons like its lore or aesthetic.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
There's a big difference between the drive for completing a tough challenge, and being pretentious for having done so. I get that the smug superiority people get is part of the reward for doing the challenge, but it's best not to make that the central premise. For FromSoft titles it very much is.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
One of the sillier parts of debating the possible inclusion of an easy mode is this exact line of reasoning. "The devs must not include an easy mode as that would ruin the game... except oh wait they already did! It's [any playstyle I think is too easy]!" My response would be to question why easy playstyles are fine, but an easy mode is perceived as such a sacrilege?
The effect of levelling is overstated. It has its biggest impact at the lowest levels, but even there it doesn't make much of a difference beyond giving maybe 1 or 2 more hits of leeway before you're flattened into a pancake. Weapon upgrades follow a similar path of the lower levels everyone will get being pretty impactful, but there's quite diminishing returns after that. The oneshot magic spell (I'm assuming you're talking about the big beam thing?) is good for Twitter clips and YT clickbait but is way too inconsistent to rely on in any capacity for a first playthrough.
You're not wrong about the general point though. There are definitely things you can do to trivialize the game. Using magic in DS1 feels like you're the only character in the game with a gun, and Ash Spirits trivialize every boss in ER (although in a really boring way, the Joseph Anderson critique I linked above goes into that more).
You don't have to play Sekiro using parries. I did hit-and-run tactics for most of my first playthrough, which is low risk and low reward. It's definitely not the best way to play the game and had I not grinded the bosses after beating the game I probably never would have noticed how well-designed most of them are, but it's certainly possible to do. Heck, new players probably gravitate towards it if they've played other Souls games before.
Also, I don't really understand how that is connected to the overall point. Sekiro is the tighter game overall, but it would still be fine if it had an easy mode.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It's more frustrating because many in the community refuse to accept that it's bad. The dragon bridge is a frequent flashpoint on the game, and the scorch marks are one of the goofy defenses that DS stans frequently offer in retort. It's dumb because it's such a massive leap in logic. You can put on the heaviest armor in the game and essentially bodyslam a thin bridge that's just two thin planks, but they won't break because the game generally does not expect you to make big leaps of logic when reading the environment.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
For your first two paragraphs, I agree challenge can be fun, but I strongly disagree that the challenge I would face would be diminished if other players could opt for an easy mode. That's the crux of the debate here. From your last paragraph I feel like we probably agree on this point. An easy mode would allow more people to experience the games if the difficulty would have otherwise precluded them, and it would smash the elitist snobbery surrounding the games to a good degree.
And furthermore, because enemies are so punishing, it forces the devs to design them to be fair.
Definitely not. I've already responded to your other comment on how these games aren't fair in general. A better lens the "fair" would be "predictable and preventable" that Joseph Anderson has detailed in his video essays on the series. Games like Sekiro nail that concept, while the later bosses of Elden Ring fail horribly. Again, watch the JA critique I linked above for examples of how they do so. Elden Ring is proof that in at least some instances, FromSoft values the elitist snobbery over good game design.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The challenges in these games tend to be very fair
Categorically not true. Enemies can attack through walls while you can't. Enemies can attack through each other while you almost never get allies in the first place (at least prior to ER). Grab hitboxes are notoriously terrible. DS2 has a large emphasis on groups of enemies which is the literal definition of unfair.
Then there's traps like the infamous dragon bridge in DS1 that is just terrible game design. Absolutely no indication that the bridge is a trap other than scorch marks (like somehow fire in the past means a dragon is about to attack you in the present). It also comes right after a difficult boss and could easily make people think they're supposed to go somewhere else when you're actually supposed to dodge around the dragon.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I wouldn't say they're bad games per se, but they're certainly overrated on their own merits barring Sekiro.
Obviously, because they are difficult
Nonsense, they occupy a large cultural space because they're needlessly exclusionary, which appeals to a lot of elitists. Difficulty isn't hard to find, just try any challenge runs or speedruns for games you already enjoy. But there's a reason why speedrunning is incredibly niche while the Souls games aren't. People like to watch speedrunners but not to actually do it themselves, while the Souls games sell millions of copies, and it's mainly because of the elitist snobbery the Souls games have wrapped themselves in.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I personally liked Sekiro because it doubled down on what the Souls games did well while removing most of the crap. One of my biggest pet peeves, the instadeath pits, were removed. This is something that had bugged me since the janky platforming of DS1, but people always defended that garbage with the nonsense elitist difficulty argument. Unfortunately the pits returned in ER, and are actually a pretty big issue in that game despite its dedicated jump button. Sekiro compensated with higher base boss difficulty, but those bosses also felt a lot tighter at the higher levels of play as well. I can pretty consistently do Genichiro, Owl Father, and Inner Isshin damageless, and doing them gives a great sense of mastery. I never got the same feeling with Malenia. ER bosses feel like I'm cheesing an algorithm rather than dueling, and Malenia in particular never felt good even after a bit of practice.
Sure, some people have dumb opinions and justify it with git gud. I wouldn't blame it on the lack of easy mode though.
It definitely doesn't help, as it helps to entrench the series as unwelcoming to players who can't adapt to the arbitrary difficulty. That's the elitism people are defending.
I am generally against taking an established franchise to a completely new direction that alienates many of it's old fans, whether that be adding an easy mode or making it insanely hard.
"It shouldn't have an easy mode because it didn't have one before" is a goofy argument. Further, I feel like you just ignored the point of my hypothetical, i.e. the arbitrary exclusion, rather than addressing it.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Oh man I'm jealous, I could never find any friends to play Factorio with me longterm
Yeah, the wonders of modern technology has made it possible for me to stay in contact with 2 of my friends from college which has been excellent. One of them is super gung-ho about the mod, while the other was keen at first but his interest rapidly waned. Now he mostly just plays other games in the same Discord call while we play SE. Playing games with them regularly has really made me understand how valuable old friends are, since if I didn't have them then I'd have basically no real social contact outside of this forum (which doesn't really count IMO) and work.
Didn't really get viable until I downloaded the real nukes mod and began nuking the crap out of surfaces to get rid of biters. The size of some of those nukes probably should have been cracking the planet if they were real.
Great mod suggestion! I'm always looking for overpowered but not outright cheaty mods, and this looks like a great addition. I'm not too keen on biters myself so this will be a nice way to get rid of them. I thought I saw a "plague rocket" or something that's able to deal with them in the tech tree, but I'm not sure how long it will take to get there.
Think I had almost 150 in one playthrough.
Only 150? Those are rookie numbers! Think I got mine over 300 at one point, but there's some attrition between versions as mod authors drop off.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
That's definitely an intriguing idea for sure. I'd probably need to see some sort of indie game or prototype try it first though. It's such an unexplored idea that there's probably some pitfalls with it that we can't think of right now, but it sure sounds interesting.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Late reply. I have not played Dwarf Fortress. I've definitely heard of it, but I was a bit hesitant to try it back when its UI was abysmal. I've heard they had an update that added simple graphics which could be enough for me to give it a go.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Late reply but I enjoy stacking modifiers. Stacking most of them (like siege ability) isn't particularly powerful when you know how the game is properly played, but it sure is fun!
Hard disagree. I think the Souls games and Elden Ring are all pretty mediocre. They're fine at some baseline quality, but they're only remarkable because of the arbitrary high difficulty that breeds elitist protectionism that this post is a good example of. Sekiro is the only title I'd unconditionally qualify as "great". Never played Bloodborne.
Basically any game can be made much more difficult through challenge runs or speedruns, and they'd confer just as much intrinsic pride for beating them as a Fromsoft title would at equivalent difficulty. But those challenges would lose the extrinsic motivator of one being able to pretentiously lord their gaming superiority over others, since e.g. saying "I completed [game] in the any% hitless category in under 14 minutes" is a lot less legible to people who don't play it themselves. Conversely, plenty of people know about the reputation of the Souls series.
Even if you personally enjoy that extrinsic motivator, it's undeniable that it creates other problems. Discussions of the game become worse in a lot of ways, with plenty of obnoxious policing on how you're "supposed" to play the game (e.g. "you didn't really beat Elden Ring if you used Ash Summons" or "you didn't really beat DS if you used ranged/magic"). Then there's the people who are so overprotective of difficulty that they'd say any change that would make the game better but also slightly easier is automatically bad. Think the game craps the bed when fighting 2+ enemies? Git gud. Do you think enemies attacking through walls when the player can't should be fixed? Git gud. Think the terrible grab hitboxes should be adjusted to more closely match the enemy model? Git gud. Fromsoft games are the only series I've seen people unironically defend framerate drops as something that shouldn't be fixed since they "add to the difficulty and atmosphere of blighttown".
Apart from the peripheral issues, the core of the game itself is degrading as From runs along the difficulty treadmill, trying to make ever more difficult enemies that are almost certainly made as hard as they are to preserve the series' reputation for difficulty as opposed to any compelling gameplay reasons. The later bosses in Elden Ring are a good example of this, and are something that Joseph Anderson has gone into at length here.
As for the easy mode discussion itself, I propose a hypothetical to you. Say the challenge runners and speedrunners took control of the development of the series and decided to massively increase the difficulty so it appealed to them personally, but you were now excluded. Your first instinct would probably be to retort with "I'd just get better, adapt to the challenge, and enjoy the game even more!" But let's say this wasn't an option. Say you were either hard-limited on your skill such that you couldn't progress, or that the amount of time it would take you would be so high as to be unreasonable. You'd now effectively be locked out of a series you had greatly enjoyed up until this point. An optional easy mode could fix this and allow you to enjoy the games, but oh wait the speedrunners have decided they don't want to do this. They give some half-hearted excuse answers about "developer vision" as to why they say they don't want it, but you know that at least a big part of the reason is because if they implemented an easy mode, then they couldn't be quite as smug when they say they've beaten the game on discussion forums.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I believe the trigger was put in place to avoid capricious use of the new law, so it could only be used when migration surges happen? I'm not entirely sure. In any case, the main point of the law is to avoid the normal due process that asylum claimants would receive. There currently isn't a law that says people can just be deported without the normal judicial process, so you asking for them to "enforce the damn law" is implicitly asking for something that doesn't exist in the status quo.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The 5000 number is a ceiling, not a floor. It's the maximum before the law triggers and allows the president to use additional measures to reduce illegal crossings. There is currently no cap at all, so the 5000 number, while still being higher than it should be, is massively lower than the status quo.
Never heard of this act before, it's pretty funny =)
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