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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1136 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Are you having fun or just killing time?

This week I was able to sink quite a few hours into Deus Ex. I'm going to use spoiler tags because there's always someone who has not yet played the game but might want to do so.

I let Lebedev live. I used the LAM trick to kill Anna Navarre when she came for Lebedev, and now I've got an angry mech (Gunther) on my ass.

During the 'Paul's apartment' sequence I managed to electric prod stun one of the Men in Black mechs, to keep him from exploding along with his loot. Picked up the auto-shotgun and applied a couple of recoil mods to it. I let Paul do most of the killing because he seemed invulnerable, while I, being stealth based and playing on Hard difficulty, can only survive a couple of hits to the chest/head.

I surrendered to the arrest squad and let Daedalus get me out of my cell and onwards to the Armory. Most of my grenades were not kept. I think I had 7 LAMs when I was arrested and only recovered 1 or 2 in the Armory. Oh well. My weapons with their mods were intact. I'm still carrying the GEP gun from the start of Liberty Island, because it's so useful against bots (and cameras, in some situations).

Despite having played almost exclusively non-lethal up to this point, I ended up wiping out most of the MJ12 guards and doctors, because, hey, they know what they're doing is wrong. I let the Mechanic who sells you stuff live though, he seemed alright. While it would have been fun to receive the killphrase for Gunther in Paris from doctor Jaime, I elected to tell him to join me in Hong Kong for roleplaying purposes; gotta keep my bros with me. He was relieved.

Manderley got a rocket straight to the face. Walton Simmons, in the hologram, was unmoved by my lethal prejudice.

I'm now in Hong Kong and have picked up the Dragon's Tooth almost immediately, because I found my way to Maggie Chow's apartment, and then went collecting evidence from the police station, and returned to Maggie's place to find her gone and MJ12 guards swarming out of hidden doors. Turns out Miss Chow is a nasty piece of work. I'll hopefully get to chop her into pieces with the Dragon's Tooth at some point.

new Path of exile one league. I started playing in earnest in delirium league and winter orb is for the first time strongly viable and I've decided to go for a build. it's worked pretty well but I'm holding off on the power stacking shift with ralekesh boots. I parked my wealth in a hinekora's lock and some mirror shards a few days back and they've since uncharacteristically declined ~20% in value to my chagrin. Currently farming 8 mod map drops because it is profitable with a quick map clear time so I'm building up a big supply of charts for the new mechanic.

I have a family member who plays a ton of PoE, and for a few weeks I tried to get into it too. Didn't grip me at all; just kinda felt like moving my dude around the screen spamming attacks with little to no meaningful variation or tactics. Boss fights were a little better. Some kind of event was running which helped me advance more quickly. Growing gardens or some such.

Anyway I know it's a very popular game and a lot of people -- including some with at least decent taste -- enjoy it. But I can't figure out what anyone sees in it. Unless you're a maximal autist you'll just be going with a build someone else developed (the overhead on figuring that out yourself is prohibitive) and the actual gameplay just seems... rote. Easily automatable.

So what do you like about it so much? Is the genre just not for me? It occurred to me that it would almost be more fun as a clicker game.

The appeal isn't quite the moment to moment mechanics of play, although I think they're better than a clicker would deliver. It's kind of like factorio in that you're building and improving an engine that turns map inputs into currency that can be spent improving your ability to turn map inputs into currency with a healthy dose of gambling dopamine hits. In live and recently refreshed trade leagues it's a very engaging puzzle to try and discover niches and farming strategies(which may be more or less synergistic with your build) where you can get more leverage on your time spent. The economy is very dynamic and responds to what builds are popular. If the biggest build of league is winter orb then some of the things that winter orb builds wants can be worth ten or a hundred times as much as they'd be worth in a different league so the inputs to get those items become valuable, the inputs needed to get the inputs needed to get those items become more valuable and so on.

In short it's a big puzzle box with a lot of different axis of skill expression from the ability to run maps more quickly to the knowledge of how to optimize a build and knowing what content to apply that build to. When it all comes together and you're earning absurd amounts of currency because some hunch about where the market would move it feels incredible. Also, its just satisfying to watch the stash tab fill up while you grind.

Thanks, that makes some sense to me. The experience of feeling like you've discovered a way to be extra-effective, and especially outpace others who aren't as clever, is a good one.

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