I will buy the explanation that the game is too old to continue to support when they stop adding new microtransactions every six months or so

Appears to no longer be free, so I’m gonna take this down for now. If it was an error and it becomes free again, feel free to repost!

the smell of heavily chlorinated water. i used to spend a heck of a lot of time at the pool when i was a kid, and where i live now there aren’t nearly as many pools, so it’s not something encountered often anymore.

Any PR statement that includes the words “we hear you” can be safely ignored

I only really wishlist games that haven’t come out yet that I’m interested in, to remind me to buy it when it comes out. Only about ten items on mine.

The only one I have found was !hades@lemmy.zip, but it isn’t very active.

Too late, I already own all the Stellaris DLC, my bad choices have been made long ago

Not sure yet! I’ve not bought a lot of games recently, but I do enjoy large swathes of the strategy genre. Stellaris, Civ 5 and 6, Terra Invicta, Frostpunk, etc.

Differences in instance-level topical focus and moderation philosophy, for one. Also physical location and “vibe”.

There are a certain set of bigoted and/or extremist instances that I would judge an instance for not defederating from. There’s a reason I’ve stuck with .world even through some turbulence. Some heinous shit shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone.

As an aside, check out !specialized_instances@kbin.social if you haven’t already.

I missed this one a lot

If someone’s email domain is @ihateminorities.com, I’d say that’s pretty fair grounds for blocking it.

There are some instances that actively promote hateful or extremist content, and exist for the purpose of hosting it. There are others that do not actively support that content but do allow it, anywhere, making blocking one community not enough. Defederation is an important tool and should be used wisely.

Tried posting the video this time instead of a link to the news page.

Some welcome changes to the Lithoid species pack - tweaks to their unique origin, tweaks to Terravore to make it less fiddly. A new advanced space racism civic! (This is one of the weirder parts of talking about Stellaris.) Personally I’m a bit underwhelmed by the new portrait; It’s good art, but I really prefer more out there non-humanoid designs, which is the opposite of what they’re going for here. The quality of life changes to ascension perks and gestalt nodes are welcome as well. This kind of tidying up is why I like the whole concept of the custodian team.

Only real negative thing here is the increase on price for some older DLCs. It’s only two dollars, and they are tweaking them to be better, but I still feel like it’s gonna cause unnecessary backlash for little gain.

For the future, !outoftheloop@lemmy.world

I generally agree as well. This buff to bandages will also indirectly buff ammo boxes even more, and medics will still have their niche in being able to heal others without even using up their bandage supply.

Meaty update here. I’m not one to comment on weapon balance too much, but I do wonder: Do you think that all classes being able to self-heal a bit with the bandage will significantly shake up the game?

(Screenshots taken from the Interface in Game site, here: https://interfaceingame.com/games/team-fortress-2/)

I wanna talk about the game I’m currently absorbed with, Team Fortress 2. TF2, being rather old, allows total customization of the UI, from the HUD to the menus. The default UI is clear, but also dated in places; you can really see where they slapped on new elements that clash a bit with existing ones, like the medals on the scoreboard compared to other elements, or the loading screen for a map, which has the very old Source infobox in the bottom right, a stylized background and panel taking up most of the screen, and a well integrated but still a bit off info bar at the top that was added more recently. The most glaring example is probably the community server browser compared to the newer slide-out tabs and menus for navigating play options. If Valve was still doing major work on this game, I’d say they need a good UI unification art pass.

When browsing TF2 custom HUDs on a site like this, there’s quite a few different styles to choose from, ranging from those that attempt to refine the vanilla HUD to those that make it something entirely different. Many competitive players prefer minimalistic HUDs that put pertinent information like health and ammo count closer to the center of the screen, so that one doesn’t need to divide their attention while fighting. Still others will pick a HUD that is a different style but still “complete” and fleshed out; even others still will fill their UI with memes (which I never understood, but to each their own).

Sometimes you just have to appreciate the little touches, though, like the animations and presentation on a map’s video tutorial and the class select screen. It oozes a particular aesthetic that the game has deviated from, over time.

I’ve bought every Stellaris DLC over the years, and I’m not even a particularly avid Stellaris player (347 hours played (which while notable is peanuts compared to the superfans’ hours) and haven’t played recently). Here’s my thoughts on it:

I buy DLCs day 1 that I am supremely interested in, and everything else I pick up on discount either during a sale or from another site (not sketchy key resellers - I use https://isthereanydeal.com/, which lists more legitimate sites). In multiplayer, all players can use the DLC the host has, so I’ve been the dedicated host for my friend group there. I don’t think the massive amount of DLCs is good, but it is at least tolerable (I liken it to a subscription model) and I enjoy how the devs share some of their insights during the development process. Despite all the flaws it has, Stellaris is a really cool sci-fi 4x game that probably has the least ridiculous learning curve compared to other Paradox strategy games.

It’s a bit divisive amongst enjoyers of the first game, but I played a lot of it and even finished the main story. It’s 100% run based with metaprogression even moreso than the first one - you end up caring a lot about the party you have on your run, but not really that much about individuals across runs. The art style was perfectly translated to 3D, it looks great. There are some wonky UI elements and I think the in-between tedium between locations of interest is a bit too long, but I would recommend.

This dev diary actually goes beyond what just the title implies - they are not only doing some neat experiments with leaders (which, while I generally like the system they drew up for the leader rework a while ago, it had some glaring flaws that they seem to be addressing (looking at you, Generals)) but also sharing some tweaks they’re making to other stuff, like the origins that let you start off in a federation/hegemony. Making those origins not gimp you by spreading out your starting compatriots will be very nice.