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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2709 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 5, 2024

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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I bought starfield. There is a sweet spot with Bethesda games where modders are still active, the price has come down, and the latest official expansions/patches are out.

It has been alright so far. Inventory management was a pain but I changed max carry weight in the difficulty settings to mostly fix that.

The criticisms that it has no soul seem mostly on point to me. But soulless games are sort of my bread and butter since I shamelessly play clicker games.

It's also been a great game for my podcasting habits. I like to listen to comedy podcasts while I play video games. And starfield is a great semi-mindless distraction.

The ship builder seems too difficult right now. Hoping I'll break into it at some point.

I hate ship combat anyways. Juggling power systems seems annoying. All the ships seem to fly in such a clunky way, yet they designed it like a WW1 dogfighting game. If you aren't gonna go for any realism please just give me the Assassin's creed black flag ship mechanics.

The gunplay is kinda fun. I wish it was easier to find it. I'm now looking at a journal full of quests that all seem to involve talking with people. Luckily most of the quests have devolved into shooting anyways. I don't like to talk things out in video games.

A security defense force that wants to halt piracy set me up for a crime and then kidnapped me. I turned down the offer to join them, because they fucking kidnapped me. The game for some reason interpreted that as me wanting to join the pirates, rather than me having a legitimate grievance against kidnapping (a moral grievance, but mainly a gameplay grievance, I was in the middle of a thing don't interrupt me). I have yet to follow through on the pirate request, but I look forward to shooting my way out of that meeting. I guess this is going to be a repeat of the Skyrim army vs army quest line where both sides are objectively dick heads.

The vibe of "computers stopped getting better in the 90's" is a pretty cool aesthetic for a space game. I feel like it neatly justifies all the reasons you might want to have humans still running around doing things. Some of the robots are still a little too smart and self sufficient. I might not have played enough, but they also missed the opportunity to have more super computing complexes. Which is a thing the government and military used to build more of when they needed more processing power for something.

I didn't get deep enough into Starfield to interact with the plot in a meaningful way, but from what I've seen and what I've read online, it's even more barebones than the one in Skyrim.

But at least Skyrim felt like you were exploring fantasy Norway. Starfield didn't feel like a space exploration game at all.

sweet spot

To me, that implies it’ll get worse from here. How so?

Or did you mean that it’s just now crested the hill of being “worth it”?

Yes, I experienced this with Skyrim. I think the optimal years to play Skyrim was between 2014-2017. If you go to try and play it now you get far fewer mod offerings that fit with the latest version of the game, all of its expansions, and each other. There also needs to be time for the mods to "bake". They need to get made by fans, which is slow. And then heavy cross play with the mods where the community is downloading and playing a bunch of the mods together to figure out compatibility.

I think the mod community for starfield is dying out much faster than it did for Skyrim. Thus the sweet spot for playing is smaller and sooner.

I didn't play much Starfield, but i did complete the SecurityVPiracy questline and it reminded me strongly of the Skyrim Thieves Guild questline, in how little of the plot actually makes sense. I have mercifully forgotten most of it at this point, but my overall impression was that it was deserving of the kind of breakdown that the late Shamus Young did for the aforementioned Thieves Guild quests. That said it does at least have one decent (by the game's abysmally low standards) dungeon on a lost, derelict ship.

I quite like Starfield and I agree that the weird fiction that semiconductors or whatever stopped improving in the 90s makes the setting less nonsensical than a lot of sci fi where humans run around with guns but advanced AI and drones exist.

Bethesda games don’t engage emotionally or strategically, but they have a certain pleasing rhythm, like a good police procedural.

I enjoyed the unstated premise in Andor that computer technology in that universe had largely not advanced beyond early 80's human capabilities, excepting the droids which I am now convinced are actually cyborgs.

Any comedy podcasts you would recommend?

Too many.

Tim Dillon is great if you like someone making fun of US culture or government.

Still drinking with mark Normand and Sam Morrill is good for nuts and bolts of standup comedy, movie snobs, and funny complaining.

Matt and Shane's secret podcast is great. Only podcast I'm patreoned to.

Stavys world is good if you want a funny take on peoples interpersonal drama.

Your mom's house if you like gross and offensive internet videos and wish you had more people to share them with.

The episodes of protect our parks on joe Rogan for just a rollicking and little crazy drinking podcast.

Kill Tony for live comedy and roasting.

Chris distefano for wild silliness.

Bad friends for a great buddy podcast with Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino.

Also if you see one of these podcasters as a guest on one of the other podcasts it's usually a good episode.

Surprised not to see Tuesdays With Stories here (Mark Normand and Joe List).

Do you not like it or (I’d be surprised) have not heard of it?

I'd heard of it but never got around to actually watching it. I felt like I was getting too much Mark Normand.

Im also sure I left off five or six podcasts I just forgot to add. The Regs is a recent one I've been listening to, very good group party dynamic. A sober less famous comedians version of protect our parks.

I also didn't list Two Bears one Cave, whiskey Ginger, something's burning, Whitney Cummings podcast, or Dan soders podcast. All of those have had good episodes I enjoyed.

Also Bertcast kinda got me into comedy podcasts in the first place. He would get drunk and have five hour podcasts that were epic. It has significantly changed as a podcast. Some old episodes were pure gold though. And he would have interviews with people that would go onto become rockstar podcasters and comedians.

Your sub list has a good bit of overlap with mine, though I wonder if you'd agree with my opinion that Dillon has moderated quite a bit with his more recent success. His earlier work, up to and including the L.A. porch series was some of the best cultural critique of the 21st century IMHO. Still like his stuff, but he's mellowed now that owns multiple properties and he's not constantly afraid of losing the fleeting success he was clinging to, many such cases.

Any thoughts on lemon party, Ben Avery's podcast? I don't keep up with it seriously but for extremely online types I think it's been a real treat, close to a modern cumtown. Right on the edge of the politically unspeakable too, two of the regular hosts made an appearance on a podcast with Sam and Nick of MDE very recently (had a few fun clips dumped onto my homepage).

Ugh motte ate my comment. Yes agreed Tim has gotten a little less insane with his takes. Had a specific example of him covering a shooting.

Thanks for the rec I'll check it out.

Not OP but Tim Dillon is usually pretty funny.

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