Mama told me not to come.
She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.
We pay for an ad-free tier and our downloads “expired” when we were in the middle of nowhere. They still existed on our device and on the service, we just couldn’t play them.
That got my wife annoyed enough that I think I can convince her to just buy DVDs again. $15/month is 1-2 DVDs/month, and that’s about what we watch anyway. We won’t get Netflix originals, but that’s fine with me. If we ever need any of those, we can just binge for a month.
Yup, and that’s when I stopped buying DVDs and pirating. But with standard without ads being ~$15 with less selection, guess what I’ve gone back to doing?
Fair. I just generally don’t want to goof off in a game, I want a bit of substance. When I wanted a GTA-like game and Rockstar hadn’t made one for a while, I played through the Saints Row series. Yeah, it’s kind of fun to go cause mayhem, but I get tired of that after ~15 min or so.
If that’s what you’re looking for, GTA V is pretty decent.
Them’s rookie numbers.
At the same time?
You absolutely can!
This hits me right in the DIY NAS.
That depends on how easy it is to deal with the explosion when it happens. The issue with lithium-ion is that they can’t just be smothered like an ICE fire, so there’s really nothing you can do once it starts. Also, ICEs don’t spontaneously catch fire when parked in your garage, they tend to catch fire when you’re driving, which means you’re immediately aware when it starts to happen.
An EV catching fire while it charges at night is extra scary because I’m likely to be asleep, and therefore I’ll have a smaller chance to react properly (especially if I need to run up/down stairs to round up small children). So even if it’s less likely, it’s potentially worse because I’m less likely to be able to get away from it safely.
I don’t know much about what a practical hydrogen failure looks like, but my understanding is that it’s quite violent. But maybe they have controls around that now, idk.
If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven
Right. But if A is supposed to be the trusted authority and B proves they aren’t trustworthy, you’re more likely to not believe criticisms of B because “the establishment” has already been proven untrustworthy. That’s how conspiracies gain traction, and any amount of hiding of information gives fuel to detractors.
So people are going to ignore criticism of B because they’ll feel that B is the “underdog” being attacked by “the establishment.” That’s how these things work.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
Sure, but trust is earned. You can’t lie 5% of the time and expect people to believe everything you say, if they find out about that 5%, the other 95% will be called into question. So you need to reserve the lies for when they really count.
Lying will work in the short-term, but it has big consequences in the long-term, so if you’re a long-term entity (e.g. the CDC, FBI, etc), you need to be very careful about how people interpret your message.
Yeah, the goal of “pull off the biggest heist” isn’t particularly exciting for me, especially since money is never an issue in the game.
GTA III and IV are about immigrants who are looking for an honest restart to their life and get pulled into a life of crime. They rise through the ranks so they can get enough power and influence to knock out their masters and truly be free. GTA SA is about trying to do what’s best for your neighborhood (friends and family), then you get betrayed and seek vengeance, again to do the best for your family. Those are good reasons to keep playing, since the player has an emotional attachment to the goal.
V’s goal of getting rich by pulling off a massive heist isn’t particularly interesting, especially when there are only a handful of non-replayable heists in the game. I honestly don’t want Michael to succeed because he’s such a dick, I just want him to go away so Trevor and Franklin’s more interesting stories can play out. But the game ends right after the big heist, and that’s just lame. Neither Trevor or Franklin went into the game wanting to pull off a big heist, so their story arcs seemed woefully incomplete.
So yeah, V is the most disappointing from a character and story perspective. I’ll probably replay the earlier ones, I’m not going to bother w/ GTA V.
A character doesn’t have to be likeable for me to like the character, they just need to be interesting. I like Trevor as a character because he has some complexity in his backstory (especially if you get the epilogue ending), and I think he could be a very compelling character if given the chance. I would never want to meet him in real life, but he has the potential to be interesting.
A lot of protagonists are likeable, Trevor was the opposite and really had the chance to be interesting without being likeable. But Rockstar refused to give him a decent backstory, and we only get glimpses into something that could be truly interesting.
Yeah, but at least it was a relatively new concept for a game, and the protagonist was at least likeable.
Then again, I think I like it largely because of nostalgia.
Really? I’ve seen pretty much no semi trucks in the left lane. In fact, it’s illegal in my area on highways with more than 2 lanes for big rigs to be in the left lane.
I just did a big road trip (800+ miles one way, ~2000 miles total) and only had to pass a big rig on the right once, and that was my fault because I didn’t see the truck pulled off to the side of the road that they were giving space to.
I see a lot of pickup trucks, big SUVs, and minivans camping in the left lane, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
There will always be indies, which is why I mostly buy indies these days. At least they’re doing something interesting, unlike stupid online-only nonsense.
Sure, but there’s only so much you can release for online. You don’t want big content dumps, you want a steady stream, so you could surely have some devs working on a story DLC or two while pumping out that steam of stuff for online.
Hire an online content team to complement your creative SP team, and then you get the best of both.
Really? I thought the story was incredibly bland, and I had to force myself to finish it just to stop the nagging feeling that I’m missing something.
For plot, it’s basically the same as other GTAs:
There are lots of opportunities to make the story truly interesting, but they didn’t do it. For example:
But no, the story left me disappointed.
IDK, GTA V bordered on “bad” for me and ended up just being “meh.” It got a lot of praise, so I kept going back to it thinking I missed something, and ended up forcing myself to finish it. It was pretty bland story- and character-wise start to finish, side content was mediocre, and the gameplay was fun but not particularly unique (felt like SA gameplay with better graphics).
If GTA VI is just GTA V with better graphics and not much else, I’ll probably pass. It’ll probably be successful regardless though for the same reason people keep buying Bethesda games. I want an interesting story where I care about the protagonists (def the case in IV and SA), interesting twists and turns, and something new gameplay-wise (e.g. I loved the gang warfare in SA and more realistic driving in IV). Switching between characters isn’t “new gameplay” imo, especially if I don’t care much about any of them.
Sure, if you’re a defense contractor. Trump is in real estate, and war usually means less tourism. It also means less trade, which can hurt the stock market, and that’s what news orgs equate with “the economy.”
If Trump was a career politician, war would probably be more attractive since people tend to vote for incumbents when at war. But he’s looking to make a legacy, so he wants a high approval rating from his base, and more people to go to his RE properties.
And Trump doesn’t really benefit from a booming economy
Well, he did in his first term, so he needs to stick to that script for his campaign. He relied on small business owners (and people who simp for small business owners), small towns, etc to get elected, and he needs to keep that base happy.
If he keeps the economy going well, those people are likely to stay at his properties and make his family richer, and all of that builds his legacy. The second term is largely an ego thing I think, so he’s even more willing to say whatever to get people on board.
And yeah, Chase Oliver is an awesome protest vote. I think it’s hilarious that some state libertarian parties don’t want to put him on the ballot (e.g. Colorado), because he’s pretty textbook libertarian. Yeah, he’s not perfect, but a third party candidate doesn’t need to be perfect, they just need to represent the frustrations people have with the two major parties, and I think he does that well.
Another option is to not allow copying of digital copyrighted works, but do allow resale/gifting and require storefronts to offer something like that. I can do that with physical goods, and that’s most of the reason I’d want to copy a copyrighted work (e.g. to send to a friend).
I think trademark law is generally fine as-is, but patent and copyright law are atrocious. My proposal:
Gotta bump up that “$/sub” metric!