thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
No bio...
User ID: 1081
To preface this, it sounds like you look for very different things in your games than I do (eg. I could never get into Elden Ring), so I'm not sure this will be much help. That said...
I'm endlessly drawn to Elder Scrolls games. They're near to what I would call "perfect" games for myself.
That's me, between these and (modded) minecraft. I occasionally branch out (eg, Factorio or various RPGs), but I always find myself being drawn back to the TES games or minecraft.
Unfortunately, I have "gaming OCD" and just can't install any mods, except for bugfix or graphics mods. I want the vanilla experience in games, the way they're "meant" to be played.
As far as I'm concerned, the fact that the Creation Kit is included with the games means customization through mods are the way they are "meant" to played. Bethesda provides a curated vanilla experience for those who want it, but have done more than any other developer I can think of in providing and supporting the ability for players to adapt the games to their desired playstyle. The games' modding community has built amazing things on the canvas Bethesda provided. Eg, in Morrowind there was a mod I used that added the ability to raise skeletal minions through a ritual involving manually placing items (bones, candles, etc) in the correct layout in the world rather than simply casting a spell, though you still needed a spell to trigger the ritual once all the preparations were made.
Not to mention the technical difficulties of installing mods. I've recompiled my kernel and have been an Arch user, but that shit is just too much for me.
Allow me to introduce you to Wabbajack, the "I just want to click install" option for playing modded Skyrim, albeit a bit annoying without a premium nexus account since you have to manually initiate the download of each mod/resource. Nexus has a somewhat controversial similar feature in its collections.
In Morrowind and (maybe) Oblivion I don't mind it, because the magic system is so open. You can craft your own spells,
In Morrowind you can create custom spells in-game that combine multiple (IIRC, up to 8?) spell effects from a preset list, varying the magnitude and targeting of the effect. If you wanted to do anything more complex (eg, a Mark and Recall-like pair that allows you to set multiple destinations and choose from them dynamically, or the previously mentioned necromancy ritual) or even just include preset spell effects that they didn't want you to have access to (eg, restore magika), you needed to resort to modding. As the series progressed, Bethesda pushed spell customization out of the game and into mods, a choice that never really bothered me since I was already used to doing things via mods anyway. And modders have done amazing things with spells in all the games.
launch yourself all across the world map,
Still technically possible in Skyrim with mods (eg, using the buffs from the wind element from Phenderix's Elements) and even the base game with glitches, but this is more a technical restriction to avoid game crashes and performance issues than a real gameplay decision. When Morrowind first came out, it was very easy to crash your game by boosting your Acrobatics and Atheletics skills sufficiently high that you could jump across the island and have the game choke trying to load in all the resources as you flew across the world. If you got them high enough, you'd also start to run into compounding errors in the position calculations leading to all kinds of "fun". Oblivion and Skyrim are much more resource intensive, and this drives a lot of performance tradeoffs to manage that (eg, forbidding Levitation so you can assume players won't be positioned to notice that some objects don't have renderable surfaces from all angles).
nothing is restricted.
This is definitely the primary attraction I've had to the series, but I think it is only through modding that you truly get there.
In Skyrim however, the restrictions are there, and I can't give it a pass on the combat system.
I'm not sure what you are looking for in terms of combat, but the modding community has a lot of options for various playstyles. Even vanilla Skyrim I'd rate higher than Morrowind though, as I found the tedium of missing/fizzling constantly at the start of the game extremely annoying. This is related to the primary reason I tend to play Skyrim more than Oblivion or Morrowind these days. I tend to keep all my skills at a similar level so I can swap between them as my mood changes rather than specializing as the game expects. This doesn't play very nice with the earlier games balance or levelling system though.
Not to mention that the quests are notoriously shallow.
Again, mods. There is a questing mod available that won a Writer's Guild award for its script. Another with one of my favorite game trailers of all time. If you are looking for something more akin to Elden Ring and similar games, see VIGILANT and the others in the series or Darkend (less lore friendly). If you are looking for something that explores the weirder aspects of the games' lore (eg, you want that "I can't believe these mods are lore-friendly" feeling), see Trainwiz's series of mods, notably The Wheels of Lull. And I'd probably be lynched if I didn't at least mention Legacy of the Dragonborn.
In short, I love open-world games that I can easily tweak to my liking and change up my playstyle regularly without too much hassle (eg, starting a new character/playthrough), and Skyrim fits that bill very nicely. Its base game isn't all that great by itself, but the modding community surrounding it has lots of options for nearly everyone.
EDIT: Grammar.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
No, her thinking is that women are finally equal to men and therefore that men are suffering because they find having gone from dominating women to merely being on par with them intolerable. She (charitably) doesn't understand that leveling the playing field between men and women only where men previously held the advantage doesn't actually create equality in relationships, which is actually driving this suffering.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
I agree that almost every parent on the planet would prefer to have their child saved than not. I don't know that that preference implies I should try to save them though. I've never saved a kid's life before, but I have been an important figure in one's life and have seen first-hand how quickly people go from thankful to "never contact us again" when they find out, no matter how innocent your intentions or how careful you were to avoid even the hint of sexual behavior. That hurts, a lot, and I now find it hard to feel motivated to risk going through that again for the benefit of people who in all likelihood have nothing but disgust for me. The younger, less bitter me had the will to be somewhat altruistic, but that seems to be fading as I get older.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
This lines up with my feelings quite well. Yet another feminist who can't get over her perspective as a woman. Particularly egregious in my mind is her paragraph on the domestic sphere:
Then there’s the domestic sphere. Last summer, a Psychology Today article caused a stir online by pointing out that “dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise.” No longer dependent on marriage as a means to financial security or even motherhood (a growing number of women are choosing to create families by themselves, with the help of reproductive technology), women are “increasingly selective,” leading to a rise in lonely, single young men — more of whom now live with their parents than a romantic partner. Men also account for almost 3 of every 4 “deaths of despair,” either from a suicide, alcohol abuse or an overdose.
She spares no thought for the fact that while women are no longer dependent on marriage as a means to having a family, men are still very dependent on women and thus increasingly at their mercy.
Sure, and once the euphoria of realizing your kid isn't going to die wears off, you'll be a good parent and start worrying about the next set of risks facing them--namely me. Hence the "Thanks, now gtfo." Helping kids almost always ends up being a net negative for my mental health, to which your response would almost certainly be "not my problem".
EDIT: Also, on a more humorous note, is it even physically possible to give CPR to a person "while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock"? The flexibility required seems inhuman to me...
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
Should I save a drowning child in such a situation? Is it better for a child to die than to develop a strong social bond to a pedophile with all the risks that entails? Or should I save them and stoically endure the eventual "Stay away from my kid, creep!" or just plain "Thanks, now gtfo.", content in the knowledge that I did "the right thing" even while everyone thinks I just did it to get in the kid's pants? Why shouldn't I just say "not my problem" and keep walking?
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
Do these flaws reveal spoilers or ruin the immersion or surprise?
I suppose they could in theory though I don't think I've ever found one that does. Usually just a mesh isn't quite aligned with the one next to it leaving a few pixel gap where the void is visible, or one of the rocks on a mountain is shifted enough that you can see its insides.
Which mods are you running.
Currently the Tempus Maledictum Wabbajack list.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
I'm mostly interested in possibly using this as an excuse to finally learn how to work with 3d graphics on the programming side. I already have some modding experience, though more with the earlier games than with Skyrim.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
I've been playing a lot of modded Skyrim recently and finding lots of instances of objects placed incorrectly causing holes or hidden surfaces to be visible. For those with 3d programming experience, does writing a program to detect and report these seem like a reasonable project as an excuse to learn how to work with 3d graphics for an experienced programmer who is completely unfamiliar with 3d graphics or would this be biting off a bit too much?
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
and I guess anyone else who checks my comment page, hi there!
Or usually browses the global comments feed (www.themotte.org/comments) rather than specific posts...
This rule is going to be applied with delicacy; if I can find not-low-effort comments about three different subjects within your last two weeks or two pages of comments, you're fine.
How would this work with something that strongly influence your thoughts on a wide variety of subjects? Would commonly referencing it in your comments make you a single-issue-poster even where you are commenting on different subjects?
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
How the heck do you people program all day without pulling your hair out?
How kind of you to assume that I still have hair to pull out...
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
This was probably in reference to their unconditional surrender in WWII and the coerced political changes that followed rather than to Perry's gunboats.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
Her dog has often spent the better part of a day up on the cupboard or wardrobe, with my dogs roaming freely at the bottom. Even if they stop barking at him when he's quietly dwelling on top, any attempt to bring him down or take him elsewhere just causes mayhem.
One aspect of this is that dogs are very territorial. You need to show the bigger dogs that the smaller one is free to roam what they consider their territory. Letting them roam while the smaller one is isolated reinforces that this is not the case. Also, accept that there will be mayhem until the desired pecking order is established.
Given the sizes of my dogs, I don't think I can really safely keep them at the same level, at least not without a cage which I don't have.
I'd recommend getting a foldable one for each, but locking them in a separate room (eg, the bathroom) while letting the small dog roam might also work.
I've tried scolding and yelling, feeding all the dogs at the same time, some weird ultrasonic training tool, and yet I'm at an impasse.
We've found an immediate firm (but gentle, just enough to get the dog's attention) smack on the nozzle or butt and isolation is much more reliable than any of these.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
For training our dog (a lab/pointer mix) not to bark at or attack our cats when we first got it, we first put the dog in a fold-up portable kennel in living room and then let the cats roam the room freely while we were elsewhere for a bit (1-2 hours at a time usually). After a few days of this, she mostly stopped barking at them and largely ignored them unless they showed interest in her, and they became comfortable being around her. After that, it was a gradual process of closely supervised interactions between them where we showered all of them with attention. Any time she'd bark or lunge at them though, she'd get immediately smacked firmly but not hard on the nozzle and locked up in the kennel for a time out while we kept playing with the cats. After a few weeks doing this and a steady reduction in aggression, we deemed it safe enough to let her be around them unsupervised and now (5+ years later) they're cuddle buddies. I don't know if this would work for small dogs though.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with me or misunderstanding me, so I'll clarify why I said 'Hence Cuties'. The behavior of the girls in the movie is intended as part of an exploration and critique of women's experiences. Critics of the film argue that the movie is morally bad because of how the girls are portrayed while supporters argue there is nothing wrong with the movie itself and that it is instead viewers (eg, "pedophiles") who interpret it in a titillating context who are morally in the wrong. That is, women should be free to make a movie about their experiences without men coming along and sexualizing it.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
Yes I'm a guy, as much as I may wish otherwise.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
It's strange how different people can be. My thin wrists are the only part of my body I actually like. I'll often focus on them to the exclusion of anything else to calm down when I'm feeling bad about myself.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
That is the status quo they are fighting against though. In their ideal world, "flaunting sexuality" wouldn't make you appear as a sexual object to other people unless you intend it to. The fact that it does today is seen as a problem and rather than putting the onus on women/children to not flaunt their sexuality, they prefer to put the onus on the men/pedophiles to not perceive them doing so as sexual.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
There's always room for another stripe on the Progress Pride flag, and if the LGBT community don't want that right now, give it a couple of years until the softhearted and softheaded sociologists work on normalising such attractions.
It amuses me how many people still think there's support in the LGBT community to normalize pedophilia, given that community used to be significantly more supportive of pedophilia and has been backpedaling on it for decades. What they want to normalize is child sexuality, not creepy adults exploiting it. It's no different than the feminist argument against modesty: women [children] should be free to do what they want without men [pedophiles] sexualizing them for it. Hence Cuties.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
That'd probably be a good thing to try. May also need more hands on play time to stave off boredom.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
From this description, it sounds more like a problem of excess energy than lack of training. How much exercise does he get beyond the "train him 10 minutes every day"?
Has it died down? I am not sure.
To be clear, I wasn't asking if such behavior had died down, but rather if the apparent furor over it had.
This suggests to me that it has not gone away. At the same time, the world here is different. Japanese women don't step up or protest, or they don't in the same way that say, an American, might imagine that they should. I don't even want to get into it, but they don't.
While this is true and I wouldn't expect her to cause a scene, I would be worried about her later reporting it to the station attendants. Being a foreigner sometimes excuses such things, but sometimes makes it worse. It'd certainly make it much easier to be identified if she were to, and I had perhaps the incorrect impression that the cultural norms against stirring the pot that typically make Japanese women reluctant to report such behavior weren't as big an obstacle if the perpetrator wasn't Japanese.
At the same time, touching a girl on the shoulder, well, I didn't think I'd be seen as a chikan in the Japanese sense, but a creep in the American sense. And as any man who isn't already a criminal pariah can attest, no appellation has quite the same sting.
Hmm...maybe I was the one projecting then. The impression I got while I was there was that there wasn't much of a distinction. EDIT: Or rather, that there wouldn't be much of a distinction in this situation--moving to touch a dozing girl on the shoulder looks a lot like testing the waters before actually molesting her.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1yr ago
Given the context of being on a train, I'm a bit surprised you put most of the blame on your American background. I recall a fair bit of emphasis on cracking down on men groping/molesting women on trains (eg, with signage reminding men not to do so and encouraging women to report it) when I was there a few decades ago. Has that died down, or is my memory or impression of how seriously it was taken faulty in this case?
I would characterize 'wokeists' as a recent evolution of progressives that is distinct from those who tolerated NAMBLA in the '70s and other groups that did in fact argue against the AoC including for hetero pairings featuring older men and younger women (famously Foucault et al in France). I think they do care about the AoC when the younger of the two is a man, but this is counter-acted by their (charitably) unrecognized biases in recognizing behaviors toward men as being sexual.
EDIT:
if restated as "want activities traditionally seen as sexual to enjoy the plausible deniability of being sexual when it suits them", is an accurate description for how that demographic functions in the sexual marketplace.
I think that's a fair restatement. To build on that, I'd say a key difference between 'wokeists' and other branches of progressives is how they approach the intersection of power and sex. The woke from my perspective see sex as a tool for power, and their policies reflect a desire to control and wield that power while denying it to their opponents whereas other progressive groups have been more focused on freeing sex from such power plays.
Since no-one has commented on the technical question, @ZorbaTHut do you have thoughts here? Is this a reasonable first step into 3d graphics programming?
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