It’s not that deep. Here’s the two main critiques leveled towards the game in the article.

• you don’t always know the consequences of your actions, and they’re not always predictable: a seemingly sensible choice sometimes ends badly, and a seemingly dumb choice could get you a reward
• you can load a save and redo your things whenever you want, i.e. save-scum

These are both somewhat obvious just from the structure of the game. Ultimately the conclusion the author is shooting for is that this makes Baldur’s Gate 3 a bad game but a good piece of interactive fiction.

The author uses the mechanics of chess often as sort of an example of the pinnacle of game design which to me is telling. Video Games are much broader than that. Insisting that people should not call the thing you don’t like a game but instead “interactive fiction” is pedantry at best, and gatekeeping at worst.

Sure, if you view the game through the lens of chess you will come away with these flaws. But for example, if you always knew the consequences of every choice the narrative tension would be destroyed. Of course chess has no such concern, so if we’re looking at games through that lens then narrative tension is of no value. Ultimately I think this is just a very narrow viewpoint of what games should be.

Not exactly, the guy who runs it became a brave employee shortly after starting it. but they claim to continue to run it independently.

I think there’s a group of people who are just going to avoid quality completely and have entire factories running at normal quality only. Kinda similar to how some people don’t really do nuclear.

If you don’t like the concept of going into space though maybe this expansion is not for you. I think the base game will get the bot upgrades for free anyways.

Same with JK Rowling, Kanye West, Notch, etc. It’s literally so fucking easy for people like this to remain loved by everyone. Just keep your fucking mouth shut. Give nice polite interviews about your job, stay out of politics, let a boring publicity agent manage your social media for you, and enjoy your billions of dollars in peace.

Why is it so hard?

I don’t know… if we assume 8.8oz total for matter and antimatter together. All of that mass will be annihilated and converted into energy. I calculate that would yield 22,421,767,037 MJ, let’s say 22,000 TJ. According to wikipedia, Little Boy had a 63 TJ yield, so this grenade is around 350 times that.

If it was 8.8 ounces of antimatter, it would combine with 8.8 ounces of normal matter to convert a total of 17.6 ounces of mass into energy. That would result in like 700 Hiroshima’s total yield.

Sony and Microsoft do this yeah, but I’m pretty sure Nintendo consoles are sold at a profit.

I’m not sure that’s the right wind farm. According to this guardian article, it’s actually the Keyenberg wind farm that’s being dismantled, a retired site from 2001.

Apparently the site is retired because the operator’s permit ends in 2023. Making way eventually for the mine expansion was part of the original deal allowing the land to be used for wind turbines, and so it’s not indicative of any change in climate policy from the German government. Additionally the turbines are somewhat outdated, having only a sixth of the power output of a modern one. They would have to tear down and modernise the turbines anyway even if not for the mine.

However from a publicity standpoint it’s not an ideal move. Could have given up on the lignite and put new wind turbines in instead, perhaps.

You’re assuming full production for 24 hours a day, I don’t think that’s likely. Maybe 8 hours of full production a day under optimal conditions? Still, ~200 liters a day of potable water seems quite big for a 5x5 area of solar panels.

Seems like a lot of levels required when you can call lightning or moonbeam and get pretty close to the same effect, without any of the multi classing downsides.

If you really want spirit guardians you could also try to talk your DM into letting you take the Orzhov Representative background (from Ravnica).

I kinda skimmed it. So from what I understand, they put a cooling layer behind regular solar panels. Panels get less efficient when they heat up so keeping them cool is where the extra efficiency comes from. The cooling layer is inspired by how plants cool themselves, it seems sort of similar to sweating in a way. Water moves through by capillary action, absorbs heat from the panel, and evaporates. Additionally they discuss:

• using salt water as input water, which will result in some clean water output. It seems you need to kinda flush the cooling layer at night to get rid of salt crystal build up, but this could be a nice bonus in less developed areas.
• use a condenser down the line to recover heat energy from the evaporated output water. Has the potential to raise total efficiency by a bunch of you can use the warm water for heating and the PV generated electricity for power.

They claim the cooling layer doesn’t add much extra cost (6 months extra operation to recoup your investment). I wonder what the lifetime of the cooling layer is compared to the photovoltaics themselves. They use some natural fiber I think so maintenance could be an issue.

Kinda funny that this person correctly explains the silly hysteria people had over E-numbers and then in the same comment spreads some silly hysteria over aspartame.

Aspartame is E951, by the way.

I mean, can’t you write off the purchase cost as soon as you get the asset on the books? Maybe gradually over a 5 year period or whatever. I’d be surprised if they haven’t done that yet.

At will employment is really the crux that erodes all other possibilities of strong worker rights. In most European nations, firing employees functions on a sort of whitelist principle. You may not fire your employee except in one of this specific set of situations. This also puts a burden of proof on the company to demonstrate cause for dismissal. The situation in (most of) the US is more like a blacklist: all reasons for firing an employee are valid except for this specific set of situations. Now the burden of proof is on the employee, to show his situation was part of the blacklist.

If any (or) no reason for dismissal is a valid reason, it takes the tooth out of any worker’s rights law you might seek to enforce. If you cause trouble for the company you can simply be fired (for “no reason” of course). Yes, that’s technically illegal, and you can sue and/or contact the department of labor. They now have to investigate and find proof that you were fired for an illegal reason. Whether you get justice now depends on whether the department of labor is adequately funded, how good (expensive) your lawyer is, how well the company covered their tracks…

This is why many people in the US complain that “they have labor laws, the main problem is lack of enforcement!” The structure of the system is such that good enforcement is required for workers to benefit, but businesses benefit from bad enforcement.

Offsetting your own breath seems unnecessary. A human being does not produce CO2 out of nowhere. It comes from oxygen, which we breathe in, and carbon which we eat. The food absorbs the carbon from the atmosphere when it grows, so taken in total the whole cycle is completely carbon neutral.

The reason CO2 concentration is increasing is because we’re digging it up from the ground and releasing it into the air. Taking CO2 from the air and then putting it back a short time later is not really an issue.

Also, I’m really questioning OP’s numbers here. The CO2 a person produces should be absorbed by about 15 trees, from what I can find. Or is he trying to solve the global climate problem with only potted plants?

Imagine you chose a door, then you are immediately offered to switch your choice to both of the two other doors. If one of the two is the correct one, it will go there automatically and you win.

It should be obvious that switching and betting on two doors is better. But this scenario is actually effectively the same as the original one where a failure door is revealed before you can choose to switch.

They are worse on the environment then gasoline cars due to the rare earth materials needed to make a EV and it is harsher on the environment when it comes to dispose a EV once they reach end of life.

While it’s typically true that making an EV car has more environmental impact than an ICE vehicle, this is more than compensated for by the emissions while driving, says also the EPA. Additionally, new LFP batteries are taking over the EV market and do not require rare earth minerals.

And all a EV car does is demand energy from a power plant which are either using coal or natural gas for the most part. The only “green” efficient power plant option out there is nuclear but no one wants to go nuclear.

Yes, let’s just ignore hydro, solar and wind power altogether. Renewable sources are currently almost 25% of US electricity production (more than coal) and growing rapidly. Also, even if you charge the EV with energy from a coal power plant, it’s still better than a gasoline car. The reason is efficiency. Power plants are more efficient at getting energy from fuel than a car engine, and electrical engines are more efficiently converting energy to motion.

If your concered about the climate and want to take that into account when getting a new vehicle. I always tell people to buy a used vehicle since it already exists and by driving a used car

This is not bad advice, but even better would be to buy a used EV.

This will come to other markets. The Brussels Effect is strong.

How could you learn anything about what people think of microtransactions from the success of a game that doesn’t have them? If a beloved franchise added a sequel with microtransactions in it and that sequel tanked, then maybe you’d have a case. From the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 the most you could conclude is “people will still buy a game that doesn’t have microtransactions,” which is not particularly revelatory.

A bunch of AAA games that heavily feature microtransactions are smash hits and made millions of dollars. Sure, people complain about it, but they also purchase tons of them (may not be the same people, mind you). I’m pretty sure we can conclude that not all people hate microtransactions. Hell, publishers will look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and probably go “man, this game is good but if they put some paid cosmetics in there they could have made even more money.”

And it’s probably true.

If a great game like Elden ring would’ve had cosmetic sets you could buy, would it have undermined the “greatness” of the game? I really don’t see it happening.

I agree with you that people mainly care about the game being good. However a game’s budget is more or less fixed. If From had made a bunch of cosmetic sets it would be taking away resources from making the “main” game, and it may not have been as great and polished as it is.

Also, once you have microtransactions in a game, there’s going to be a temptation to maximize the revenue gained from them, which can lead to the aggressive strategies you mention.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to do mtx without ruining the game, but it’s difficult. Without mtx, the only thing you have to maximize your revenue is to make the game as good as possible, and so everyone involved in the game’s development is aligned towards that goal.

Once you add mtx, there will be people involved whose main goal is to maximize revenue from the mtx (and I’m not saying those people are evil or want the game to be bad; they’re just doing their job). And so a sort of tug of war starts to happen between devoting resources and design decisions to make the game better, or getting people to buy your cosmetics. Finding the right balance through that mess is difficult.

What’s bad about committing early? Do people not know about --amend?