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supercantaloupe · 4 years ago

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okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

#sasha reviews #sasha speaks #the unsleeping city #unsleeping city #long post #dimension 20 #gd i stayed up way too late to write this #tuc #the unsleeping city chapter 2 #the unsleeping city 2 #tuc2 #antisemitism

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robert-c · 5 years ago

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Why Do We Fall for Con Men, Slick Salespeople, Cult Leaders and Demagogues?

I suppose most of us have wondered about this from time to time. I don’t think I have the “complete” answer, but I do have some thoughts, and hopefully they will give us all (myself included) pause when we feel like signing up or even just hollering “amen”.

While I have my suspicions that most (if not all) of these people share some combination of personality traits, that’s really unimportant. In fact, trying to understand what motivates them runs the risk of “humanizing” them to the point of sympathy. And they WILL take advantage of sympathy to manipulate and cheat you, or win your loyalty and support.

My father was fond of quoting that saying “you can’t cheat an honest man.” Certainly a large number of cons begin with getting the “mark” to think they are going to get away with something of value that they are not honestly entitled to. It might be found money, or a share of insurance fraud just for keeping quiet, etc. Nevertheless, there are cons that do not require the mark to be dishonest or to be attempting to get away with anything. The saying doesn’t cover it all.

Most of us, like to be able to connect with other people. It meets a certain level of social need, as well as giving us a sense that we live in a safe world where others are not dangerous to us. I would never criticize such needs and feelings. However, manipulators use these needs to their advantage. It goes beyond telling someone what they want to hear, which should be the first red flag to signal digging deeper.

Most sales courses will teach mirroring and other techniques to quickly (and artificially) establish rapport with the prospect. For those interested in “advanced protection” I recommend reading a few of these books and courses. When viewed from the standpoint of how to defend yourself from these tactics and techniques they can be quite informative.

Those who are truly accomplished at this manipulation (whether to steal your money, get you to buy, or join, or just vote your support) do more than just tell you what you want to hear; they show you what you want to believe. And most of that is the impossibly simple world of our adolescence.

Remember being a teenager? Everything seemed possible, and everything seemed simple, we knew it all. We knew the world in simplistic black and white terms and thought it could and should always be that way. Things like always being happy – even though few, if anyone’s, teenage years were exclusively happy, we like to think that the world could or “should” be that way. What teenager didn’t chafe under the parental advise that “the world isn’t that simple, there are shades of gray”? A lot of teenagers (myself included) thought that financial success would be easy. After all, we were young, energetic and confident that we had better ideas for almost everything we saw adults doing. Surely that would translate into good wages and comfortable living.

Even after being disabused of these notions, most of us still harbor some sort of emotional fondness for them; like a fairy tale we wish were true, but only know better in the bright light of day. Don’t we still wish that ethical choices were always simple and clear, not gray? Don’t we still want to believe that every day can be full of joy and that financial success can be easily obtained? And if we can’t or don’t have those things, isn’t it easier to blame a “boogeyman”?

So when someone comes along, appearing to have successfully mastered taking those feelings and those attitudes into adulthood, we want to believe it is true, and that we could too. We want to believe from a deep level and only the critical mind, which they are working hard to ensure that we don’t engage, could expose this as a childish and impossible dream. So we take them at their appearance.

Hard as it may be, my advice is that when confronted with something that looks good, double check everything. Not just “too good to be true”, but any good, especially if it feels like what you’ve always wanted. Be sure that you aren’t just responding to an early life urge. Rich people wanting to help you get rich? Why? How? The most honest of the rich got that way providing something of real value others needed or wanted. Even more got rich falsely promising riches and some by trampling over others, while pretending to be the friend of the less fortunate. A man with a huge smile, overly excited and emphasized diction, and a successful life wants you to believe that he never has a “bad day”; and you can too, if only you join him and contribute. A “theory” that explains everything in the world on the basis of conspiracies and little known facts (that you and the other insiders are privy to). Then there is the guy who appeals to your fears and anger, who only wants your vote for the simple solutions you would love to believe would solve all the problems and allay your concerns. Can you stop and realize, that even if you don’t know the answer, it has to be more complex than the simple one being offered. The conspiracy theories that support such “logic” will fall apart when you realistically examine how many people would have to be “in on it” for it to work.

Do a simple “which is more believable” test. For example; 1) either thousands of climate scientists around the world, all with different political/economic ideologies have conspired to shade all of their experimental results to predict catastrophic climate change OR 2) a handful of fossil fuel investors have tried to sow misinformation about climate change, much the same way cigarette manufacturers tried to cloud the evidence that cigarette smoking was linked to increased lung cancer. Which really makes the most sense? While believing things few others do may make us feel special, even “better than”, it isn’t automatically proof of independent thinking. If this theory or “idea” challenges new information, look closely into who might lose their current fortunes if it were true. The people getting rich from the way things are now are typically the ones who can afford to mount disinformation campaigns; not the people who hope to profit from some new way of doing things.

I’ve met a lot of conspiracy theory buffs, and I don’t think they are unintelligent. I think that for various reasons they have confused being a cynic or embracing a minority opinion as a way of asserting their intellectual and personal independence. Whenever I feel that my sense of those things are tied to particular beliefs, that’s when I need to re-examine everything from a more remote and objective position. Because I know, like most of us, that we all want to feel independent and important in our own lives, but that shouldn’t over power reason and facts.

And speaking of facts, let’s separate them from assertions and innuendo. And let’s not get them from the same source that is promoting a particular theory. Corroborate them and look for independent sources. Far too many have come to accept that the only “facts” that matter (real or imagined) are the ones that support their preconceived point of view. Just because everyone has a right to their own opinion doesn’t make all opinions equal on a factual basis. A right to your own opinion is not a right to your own “facts”; no matter how often it is repeated in high places.

#trump #con men #pushy sales people #cult leaders

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years ago

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Germany demands an end to working cryptography

Germany's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer -- a hardliner who has called for cameras at every "hot spot" in Germany -- has announced that he will seek a ban on working cryptography in Germany; he will insist that companies only supply insecure tools that have a backdoor that will allow the German state to decrypt messages and chats on demand.

He's said that he'll ban any service or app that does not comply with the rule.

If this sounds familiar, it should: it's basically the rule Australia enacted in December 2018. It's also been repeatedly proposed by Rod Rosenstein in his capacity as US Deputy Attorney General; and by GCHQ's Technical Director, Ian Levy.

I wrote a comprehensive explainer about this in 2017 when Theresa May proposed it. Here it is again, because honestly, the idea hasn't gotten any less stupid over two years.

Aaron Swartz once said, "It's no longer OK not to understand how the Internet works."

He was talking to law-makers, policy-makers and power-brokers, people who were, at best, half-smart about technology -- just smart enough to understand that in a connected world, every problem society has involves computers, and just stupid enough to demand that computers be altered to solve those problems.

Paging Theresa May.

Theresa May says that last night's London terror attacks mean that the internet cannot be allowed to provide a "safe space" for terrorists and therefore working cryptography must be banned in the UK.

This is a golden oldie, a classic piece of foolish political grandstanding. May's predecessor, David Cameron, repeatedly campaigned on this one, and every time he did, I wrote a long piece rebutting him. Rather than writing a new one for May, I thought I'd just dust off a pair of my Cameron-era pieces (1, 2), since every single word still applies.

Theresa May says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" -- and no doubt many in her party will agree with her, politically. But if they understood the technology, they would be shocked to their boots.

It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want them to be is impossible.

What Theresa May thinks she's saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. Theresa May doesn't understand technology very well, so she doesn't actually know what she's asking for.

For Theresa May's proposal to work, she will need to stop Britons from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

May is not alone here. The regime she proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Theresa May has already shown that she believes she can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the UK are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other EU states and countries like the USA are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or New York could come to the UK with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what Theresa May is proposing:

* All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

Theresa May will say that she doesn't want to do any of this. She'll say that she can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the whole nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though “aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online; and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words: “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in “golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

(Image:

Facepalm

, Brandon Grasley, CC-BY)

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/24/koenig-canute.html

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xanth-the-wizard · 7 years ago

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Random Mountain Encounters (1d100)

(More Random Encounters on Tuesdays! If you like my work, consider supporting me by leaving a tip at my Ko-Fi Page! Image credit: x)

An interesting challenge, but overall I think a successful one! Here are my Random Mountain Encounters (#1-5). Try them out in your campaign and let me know how it goes! Check out all my Other Encounters! See you next week for Desert Encounters!

[1] A metal shack shimmers in the light, inside you discover a hideaway for Ice Gnome Guards. They are playing cards and are willing to make bets with anybody [2] It is migration season, thousands of goats are making their way up the mountain. To pass through them is truly a foolish task [3] The remains of an abandoned city lies quietly in a valley between two great mountains. Evidence for the city’s collapse is not well hidden and perhaps even a bit devious in nature [4] Rumors say at the very top of the mountain lies a golden egg. Yes you heard me right, an egg made of gold. I don’t know who laid it so don’t ask! [5] Friendly Stone Golems patrol the mountains in order to help smaller beings climb to the top. They cannot speak and often throw giant boulders for fun. This can be lead to serious misunderstandings of course [6] All of the mountain peaks are covered in snow, all but one. The odd one out is home to a dormant volcano that is home to a civilization of merfolk. Yeah, I don’t understand it either [7] Birds in these cliffs have grown to the size of lions due to their lack of competition when it comes to hunting prey. They are intelligent and offer wisdom or mockery depending on their mood [8] You discover the cavern of a ghoulish green furred beast that is plotting to attack a nearby town and ruin their festival. This information is easy to discover as there are plans strewn about all over the place [9] Nearby two Ancient Dragons loudly argue over a borrowed book completely unaware of your party’s existence [10] There is a dimensional rift cracking through the stone of the mountain range, gravity occasionally reverses, spontaneous magic effects occur, and otherworldly beings appear without warning [11] A dedicated chef and their protégé are hunting a Yeti. The meat is said to be a delicacy. The chef will offer a grand reward to the party if they choose to assist them. Perhaps you may even be invited to dine with the Monarch who ordered it [12] You discover bodies encased in ice scattered around the path. Was this an accident or an attack? Better be careful either way [13] KABOOM! An explosion in the distance as two high level adventurers duke it out. Have them inspire your players or potentially even guide them [14] A ski resort operates on a hidden slope, it is run by Goblins who desire rare metals [15] Hidden among the sparse trees and shrubbery are large ice cocoons freshly opened [16] Shit! A near fatal slip leads to the discovery of an abandoned mineshaft within a deep ravine [17] Harpies. Just some classic Harpy encounters. They want to either eat the party or eat their rations [18] The mouth of a cavern sings sweetly, it’s quiet but insistent and impossible to ignore. Choose a random player, they are hypnotized by the sound [19] After a long night’s rest the party discover they have been separated mysteriously [20] A lone monk sits peacefully atop of the peaks. They claim to have mastered the art of reversing time [21] Howling can be heard every few hours. The source of this terrifying scream can be traced to a Dragonborn Barbarian who refuses to wear a shirt. They believe shouting into the heavens will bring them closer to the spirit of the planet [22] Due to a magical accident hundreds of years ago the mountains radiate elemental energy. Random combustion is not uncommon and neither are Elementals [23] An infectious fungus is spreading across the mountain peaks. If it is not stopped, it will grow to cover the entire range and beyond [24] Broom race season has just begun! Witches and Wizards are flying all around the place without any concern for nature or the party. Watch out for Fireballs! [25] Awoken from sleep, an eager creature excitedly attempts to pass on words of wisdom to travelers. They get a little too excited and start panicking when trying to deliver their speech [26] In the middle of the night a bear has dug into the party’s packs and has stolen the most hilarious item possible. Be it drugs or someone’s underwear. Perhaps both? Fuck, please let it be both [27] Animated objects have escaped from a neglectful master and have built a small but pitiful society. Surely a new home would suit them better [28] Buried deep within the mountain lies an army of undead, your players happen upon this after a small collapse [29] Shattered statues of gold litter the snow, neglected by time. They appear to be adventurers rumored to have gone missing a few months before [30] These alps are home to unpredictable creatures known as Shadows. They are seemingly intelligent but often attack without warning. Your party discovers a village [31] A powerful spirit guardian visits the party and attempts to lead them to their destination. They either take on the form of a four headed deer or a small white fox [32] It’s finally time. Choose one of your players at random, their bag is actually a Mimic. They’ve been keeping quiet for quite some time, but decide it’s finally time to make their escape [33] Atop the highest peak is a pool of clean spring water. Rumors say that those who drink from it will find their true love within a week. It is a well sought after ingredient for potion making [34] Atop the highest peak is a pool of black liquid. Rumors say that those who drink from it have visions of the future. It is a well sought after ingredient for potion making [35] Medicinal herbs grow all around the sierra, they are believed to be able to cure any illness. But they are guarded by poisonous ants who use it to feed their queen [36] Every few weeks a strange light emanates from the mountains in the dead of night [37] Abandoned minecart rails run through entire range and can offer a quicker, but more dangerous, way to travel [38] A stoic Troll lives near the base of the mountain, they know where the party needs to go to finish their quest. But they will only give directions if they can make the beast laugh. They haven’t laughed in almost a century (This can either be really difficult or really easy to achieve) [39] Tireless exploration has lead your party to the cave of a horrendous beast. Describe it in the most haunting and visceral way possible. That way, when they discover it’s a Pokémon they will probably threaten to fire you as their Dungeon Master but it’ll be so worth it [40] Nomadic Bards offer a detour through the mountains. They claim to know a, “Secret Tunnel” [41] Explorers stumble out of a crypt, at first glance they seem to be wounded but the truth is much worse… [42] Intricate traps litter the mountainside to the point of it being ridiculous! The trappers are actually really enthusiastic Cryptid Hunters [43] Shield surfing you say? The God of shield surfing challenges the party to a race offering valuable treasure if they win [44] Within the mountain is a dwarven forge and after a serious accident molten metals begin exploding out from the natural vents and caves. Watch your step! [45] At the base of the mountain lies a restaurant known as, “The Lost Souls Cafe.” It is run by disguised demon lords who love to gamble souls for rare rewards. The bartender quietly warns all who enter to leave before it is too late [46] Beautiful crystals line hard to reach cliffs. If your players are fortunate enough to collect some they will unfortunately discover it begins growing on exposed skin [47] A giant demon known as the Nurikabe blocks the path, it is nearly impossible to pass without employing magic or trickery [48] Rock insects have infested the entire range. Their camouflage allows them to be nearly invisible, watch your step of face their wrath [49] Wounded and dying of exposure, a warrior lies slumped in a pile of snow. She is incredibly strong and is hunting a Warlock who they have sworn to kill. Or perhaps, the person they are hunting is a villain your party has met before [50] Strong winds threaten to force the party off the side of the mountain. Is it the wrath of nature or perhaps a supernatural entity? [51] A squadron of patrolling Samurai ride upon Velociraptors. They are not friendly [52] One of the player’s voices echoes loudly in the valley. The strange thing is, the voice echoes even without any words being spoken [53] The mountains are alive and have large wounds. If the party isn’t careful they may they will face deadly consequences. But the opposite is also true, if the party are able to heal the wounds the mountains may help them on their journey [54] Fairies dance around a roaring waterfall. They act friendly and offer to heal the party, but beware.. They like to trick people into taking leaps of faith [55] Numerous quarries line the mountain range. Villages are littered throughout, all of them are hanging upside down like stalactites [56] A never ending fire burns within a crater. Travelers often come here to collect the flame [57] The only effective means of travel is a long winding road that forces the party to walk in a single file line. It is not much of an issue until something decides to attack [58] Deep within the blizzarding alps a lone peak is laced with flames. It is home to an ancient Dragon and a Sorcerer who worships and protects their master [59] Roll for which player who is going to be kidnapped by a Giant. Have fun! [60] A range of glass mountains shine brilliantly in the light. They were discovered a few days before replacing a large portion of the western coast. Their reason for existing is unknown [61] ZAP! A young spunky witch has accidentally shrunk the party. In a panic she puts them in a pocket dimension within her walking dresser companion. Surely things will be fine, right? [62] Out of nowhere bump into an invisible object. While trying to investigate they may discover a door that leads to an abandoned magical college. Rare magical treasure can be found within but something seems to have made this place their new home… [63] Clouds swirl around the peak, they are dense and have an almost unnatural appearance to them, as if they were stairs leading up to the heavens [64] Avalanche! The party are now trapped in a monster’s den. For a more dramatic challenge, all but one player is unconscious [65] A sickly looking child is wandering alone in the cold, they speak incoherent gibberish. If the party help this child and let them travel along, after reaching a safe destination they will reveal themselves as a spirit of the mountain, rewarding the party with blessings or treasure [66] The mountain pass is long but not too difficult to traverse. However, this specific path is looping over and over again without end [67] Flail Snails emerge from the mountain. They are dangerous but can be easily tamed [68] A meteor blasts through the summit, the debris rains down upon the party. It is quite deadly if they are hit. The crater is smoking and is home to a new mysterious plant [69] Hidden above are small hornet’s nests, be careful not to disturb them for the main hive is home to giant hornets who are not afraid of fighting [70] Within the rubble of a destroyed altar rests a tome with the title, “Hand of Fate” [71] Broken down on the road, a snobby noble offers to pay the party a large sum of money to help the noble and their servants to an important meeting. It takes place in a week and is important in solving interspecies relations [72] Smoke blows up from a dozen chimneys atop a bizarrely shaped house. It is home to a shy alchemist who collects rare materials from the alps [73] While climbing the mountain, the hard rocky surface suddenly begins cracking and weakening as the surface has turned into chocolate [74] Clockwork animals occupy the area. They act like regular animals… All except for Archimedes the glitchy owl. A loud creature that claims to have been created by a space demon [75] Civilians are traveling all throughout the mountain pass. With all of their belongings they venture toward a developing city in the valley. It’s a great/safe place to make new connections [76] Civilians are traveling all throughout the mountain pass. They claim it is a great land of opportunity and wealth, but something much more sinister is afoot [77] Select a random Goosebumps book, this is the new monster/obstacle the players must face [78] Spider webbing covers the entrance to a cave. Within the webs a sign reads, “Fortune readings in exchange for beautiful cups or tankards.” Sounds trustworthy enough [79] You discover a hamlet constructed out of trash and broken tools. Aloft in this pile of garbage, a Goblin’s eye cracks open. “Come have a look. One gob’s trash is another gob’s treasure.” They are a bit of con-gob so be quite careful [80] A camp of miners ask your party to sit down and join them for drinks. They are fascinated by the life of adventure your party leads [81] Poisonous mist swirls around the sierra, be careful not to lose consciousness while it seeps through your skin [82] Built into the side of the jagged stone, a Monk Temple sits peacefully amidst the storm [83] Bound to the mountain, a hellish warrior slaughters anyone who enters their domain. They are horrendously powerful and would wipe out any unsuspecting low-level party [84] Hosting a prestigious singing competition, a Purple Dragon with a tie and top hat invites all to watch this once in a lifetime event. Gods, Spirits, Giants, Beholders, etc.. are all participants [85] A campfire burns brightly on the side of the road, no one is around. Food is roasting, bottles left unopened, treasure left untouched. Do you search for those who set up this camp or take it for yourselves? [86] The party stumbles upon a murder scene and are framed for the crime by corrupt guards who came to investigate the death of a famous hero. The situation seems far too convenient [87] Frozen in ice a monstrous beast is slowly thawing, it’s power is equal to that of a Tarrasque but it does have the dumbest name in the world [88] Mimics as large as houses, disguised as, you guessed it. Houses. They lie in wait, hidden in plain sight among other buildings of an abandoned city. A storm is brewing and the party needs to take shelter. Hopefully they don’t wander into the wrong house [89] Introduce a new or reoccurring cult from your campaign. One of the members is infusing with a demon and will become a powerful antagonist that will continue to be a problem for the players in the campaign [90] The world’s worst rogue has been stalking the party. They want to kill the party or go on an adventure. The choice is yours, but they HAVE to be lovable. A new child to adopt [91] “Oi! You’ve come fer blood, haven’t you?” You are handed a flyer for a Colosseum nearby [92] A misguided entrepreneur has built their new Fast Food restaurant on a summit. They got the place for cheap but business is… Not ideal [93] Throw a Legend of Zelda boss at the players! Some suggestions: Bongo Bongo, Volvagia, Stallord, Stone Talus, Lynel [94] Struck with lightning, an unlucky party member’s eyes begin to glow as they have gained newfound powers. They’ve been selected by a powerful deity to carry out a prophecy [95] A deserted alchemy lab wanders the wilderness, it is sentient and left without a purpose [96] Thrown from the top of the mountain, a wooden chest filled with cursed magic items has been disposed of, never to be found again. Well until you rolled this random encounter [97] The party meets a high level party of badasses. They are kind of jerks and act as secondary antagonists on this journey up or through the range [98] Treasure map! No tricks, no traps. Just some sick loot [99] Let’s try out a traditional encounter. Find a cool monster (preferably displaced) and let the party fight it or perhaps help calm it down and lead it somewhere safe [100] Hidden away from the rest of the world, an observatory keeps track of planetary movement, stars, and unusual phenomenon. The observatory is run by a secret organization that watches over the world. Grand secrets reside within the somber halls

#dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #pathfinder #tabletop #xanth the wizard #dm stuff #random encounters #1d100

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poly-carbon-based-lifeform · 6 years ago

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looking for dm advice if thats ok? ... im a wannabe dm, and its been almost impossible for me to set up an irl game. so ive thought about maybe dming an online game. not even a campaign, just a oneshot to get my feet wet. but im really nervous abt being judged by other online players since 1) ive never dm'ed before 2) im young, 20 yrs old 3) im a girl. any ideas on what to do? sorry this is out of the blue haha

Hey thanks for asking. First to be totally honest, I’m also super nervous about the idea of playing with strangers at all. There are so many horror stories on the Internet about getting put together in groups with people you might hate or might hate you (Old Man Henderson and That Guy Destroys Psionics are some great examples on 1d4chan). I have only actually played with strangers twice ever; once as a player in a Burning Wheel game on Roll20 and the people there were very nice, and in my actual play podcast, where the first episode of the Quiet Year was the first time I’d ever even heard Michael’s and Rebekah’s voices.

All I can say to that is if you’re gonna be playing with strangers, screen them first. Be clear when you’re asking for players that you’re a first time GM and pay close attention to how people respond. You’re not obligated at all to let assholes play with you. There’s a particular difference between someone who wants to be helpful during your first game and a mansplainer who doesn’t think you know anything. If you’re making a game on Roll20, there’s an option to be welcoming to new players, which might help curb your demographic towards people as new to playing as you are to DMing, or even just people with a more welcoming mindset.

If you get a good group, it shouldn’t matter that you’re 20 or a girl. The first time I GM’d, it was a 3.5 D&D game I had written myself and I was 18 or 19 (is that right? 4 or 5 years ago, yeah). I didn’t know what I was doing except that I was having fun, and I screwed up a few times but we just rolled with it. I accidentally stumbled over my words with a character so you know what? he’s just drunk now. And my friends still haven’t stopped laughing about that time I almost wiped the party because I thought the challenge rating in the book was for the recommended groups of monsters, not individuals, so I sent three redcaps against a level 2 party.

In the end my tips for this are just►1. There’s no shame in being a little selective to make it a better experience. Alternatively, fuck anyone who judges you for messing up a little your first time?►2. To be a GM you have to have a general understanding of the rules, but you also have to be willing to just wing it. If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, you could try playing a little bit of Dungeon World where winging it is built into the mechanics, even just as an improv exercise.►3. Have a drink with you throughout the game. DMs talk like five times as much as players, you will get dehydrated. Nobody told me this when I started, not even Matt Colville who taught me everything lol.

I hope this gave you some helpful answers! Feel free to send me any other questions you might have, I enjoy being as helpful as possible.

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

I struggle with the volume of coverage that’s produced every time a Republican announces, or even teases, a primary challenge to President Trump. On one hand, it was notable that former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh threw his hat into the ring this week, as he is a former Trump supporter of some stature (after leaving Congress, he became a nationally syndicated radio host). On the other, covering Walsh and his ilk as serious candidates implies that Trump is actually vulnerable to a primary challenge, and, well … he’s not.

There are plenty of reasons a primary challenge to Trump will probably fall flat. For starters, serious primary challenges are fairly rare; the last sitting president to be denied renomination was Chester Arthur in 1884. (Yes, there was Lyndon Johnson, but he retired before he could properly lose the nomination — although primary challengers probably had something to do with his decision.) Putting that aside, however, the biggest thing Trump has going for him is that he is extremely popular among Republicans — and that’s true in virtually every poll. For example, 88 percent of the GOP approves of his job performance in the latest Gallup poll. (True, Trump approval isn’t quite that high among voters who merely lean Republican, but even polls that incorporate leaners still give him overwhelming intraparty support — 82 percent in one recent poll.)

According to a CNN analysis from December, the only president in the last 70 years who was more beloved among members of his own party (as measured before the New Hampshire primary) was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. And this is important because the only presidents who faced muscular primary challenges in the modern primary era1 were all under 75 percent approval with members of their own party: Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. And yes, all three went on to lose the general election. This is not to say that primary challenges caused those losses; it could just be that only weak incumbents draw primary challengers. Trump is currently not weak among members of his own party (although he is unpopular overall), so it’s unclear if his primary challenges will foreshadow that same result.

Finally, head-to-head polls of the Republican primary give Trump massive leads over any primary challengers. He leads former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who was the first notable candidate to jump in the race, by anywhere from 60 to 85 points, and he even leads high-profile hypothetical challengers like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley by up to 80 points.

But these stubborn facts don’t appear to be deterring challengers — though it’s probably not a coincidence that those who might run are former politicians with no current office to lose. In addition to Walsh and Weld, former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford is considering jumping in. But beating Trump may not be their real goal (Sanford, for example, has acknowledged that it would be close to impossible); instead, they may simply be hoping to spur a conversation about the party’s direction. Earlier this year, my colleague Geoffrey Skelley devised a scale for rating the “success” of presidential primary challengers on this front, from 1 (no-name candidates) to 5 — the (as-yet hypothetical) candidate who manages to successfully topple a sitting president. Right now, I would think that Walsh, Weld and potentially Sanford are somewhere between Levels 1 and 2. They are known commodities and could put together a professional campaign apparatus, but it seems unlikely that they will attract as much support as Pat Buchanan did against Bush in 1992, the model for a Level 2 primary challenge.

But of course, we can’t give them a final grade until after the primary. It will be interesting to see if one of the three is more successful given that they each represent different wings of the party: Weld is a socially liberal New England Republican; Sanford is a fiscal hawk in the wonkish ideological mold of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. And Walsh is a former tea partier who actually shares some of Trump’s controversial stances — for example, he called former President Barack Obama a Muslim and an “enemy of the state,” although he has since said he was wrong for doing so.

So someone like Weld may be best positioned to appeal to the most Trump-skeptical Republicans: those who are liberal or moderate, live in urban or suburban areas, are younger and/or identify as independents. On the other hand, Walsh’s in-your-face style may be needed to actually pry away some of the president’s existing support. Then again, maybe Sanford may hold the most appeal to business-oriented Republicans (and their deep pockets), who have traditionally made up the Republican establishment.

At the same time, if there is only a limited amount of anti-Trump sentiment in the party to go around — say, 10 or 20 percent, based on the polls — there is the risk that Republican challengers split that small share into even smaller pieces, rather than eat more into Trump’s support. For example, a HarrisX national poll from May, when Trump and Weld were the only notable Republicans in the race, gave Trump a 73-7 lead. But HarrisX’s latest national poll, the first to include Walsh, puts Trump at 76 percent, Walsh at 5 percent and Weld at 3 percent. So any additional candidates who jump into the race saying they want to “stop Trump” may make it harder to do just that.

That said, even if the president doesn’t lose renomination, it would still be a bad sign for Trump if one of his challengers gets frisky and siphons off a respectable share of the primary vote. It would put him in a category with Ford, Carter and Bush, which would bode poorly for his reelection chances. Realistically, that may turn out to be the most important takeaway from Walsh’s and other primary challengers’ campaigns.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich

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spoadicdeviance · 6 years ago

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Simple and Clean: The Kingdom Hearts Conundrum

Well it looks like the hype of the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 has calmed down significantly, mostly due to the fact that the game is considered by many to be lackluster. As for myself, I have finished my first playthrough of the game, on proud mode, and done most of the side quests, and while I did like my experience overall, I can’t really refute the criticisms the game has gotten and have to agree that Kingdom Hearts 3 is a disappointment.

I suppose I can’t be too surprised with how the third game in the franchise turned out considering the direction the series has been on since the second game which is actually the third game released but due the number placed at the title the game is still the second game, and I’ll just stop right now before I go on a tangent over the names of each game.

Kingdom Hearts, to me, is a series that captivated me right at the very beginning. I love Kingdom Hearts 1. It’s probably in my Top 20 favorite games of all time. The game managed to encapsulate the whimsy and charm of Disney, while delivering an epic, yet simplistic tale of adventure, light vs darkness, and friendship. The game was fun to play, and the story kept me engaged to the post credits scene. To this day, the game is still one that I would gladly replay and enjoy in its entirety.

Can’t say the same for the other games.

I know, I’m in the minority here on this, but in my opinion, the Kingdom Hearts series peaked with the original game from 2002 while all subsequent games have struggled under lackluster levels, a combat system that favors style over substance, and a convoluted plot with dull, heavy-handed dialog. Heck, a lot of what made Kingdom Hearts 3 such a disappointment to many players can be found in Kingdom Hearts 2 and (to a lesser extent) Birth by Sleep, the two games fans say are the pinnacle of the series.

Now I’m not simply here to say that I like this game over that game end it there. I’m going to explain why I think the Kingdom Hearts 1 (or KH1) is my favorite game in the series while putting into words my disappointment with the later games in the franchise, particularly KH2 and Birth by Sleep. This is going to be a long one so just get yourself comfortable and wait until you finish reading my post before you comment. Let’s go over why Kingdom Hearts 1 is the best in the franchise.

First things first, let’s discuss the levels in these games. The worlds of KH1 are a lot of fun to explore. While not exactly Thief II: The Metal Age complex, they were expansive and navigating them was more than just going from point A to point B. Some of the worlds were almost maze like in their design. There were light puzzle elements to most of the worlds. There was even platforming that, while clunky, added some variety to each level. These different elements made the moment to moment gameplay more than just brawling and therefore playing KH1 never got stale.

It’s quite a different story for the other games. The worlds in the latter games are straight forward in their design. The worlds were usually a singular pathway with the occasional branching off into a mini path, (Enchanted Domain, KH2’s Halloween Town), or central hub area that branches into three-four linear pathways (Beast’s Castle). Just look at the maps of Agrabah from KH1 and KH2 to see the downgrade firsthand.

Not only did the levels lack complex designs, they also had little to no puzzles in them and instead of tweaking the platforming to make it less clunky, the worlds minimize or flat out remove platforming all together. This resulted in worlds where you mostly just walk and fight.

Now these games are not simply all combat. There is something added that is intended to break the monotony, and it’s one of the most out of place aspects of the game; the forced minigames.

To be fair, having minigames isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, even if its put into the main campaign/quest. Games like Jak and Daxter and Donkey Kong 64 have plenty of minigames, however most of them are optional to beat the game. Finishing DK64 requires 50% of golden bananas and minigames give roughly 25% of golden bananas. Final Fantasy IX and Skyward Sword have the player do a minigame, but it lasts for 2-5 minutes out of a 35+ hour campaign and serve more to entice players to do a side quest. Even KH1, the only moments that feel like the game forces you to do a minigame like activity were the race against Rikku at Destiny Islands, the 1 minute of vine surfing at the start of Deep Jungle, and the 2-minute magic carpet escape at the end of Agrabah.

The other Kingdom Hearts games are not as stingy with minigames. As each world progresses, minigame after minigame is dumped on the player. KH2 is one of the worst offenders of this. It doesn’t help that these minigames, unlike the ones from DK64 and Final Fantasy IX, don’t provide a real break from the endless stream of battles. The majority of minigames are just regular fights with an arbitrary stipulation added to it; fight the enemies before the timer runs out, fight the enemies until the timer runs out, fight the enemies while collecting some orbs, fight the enemies while filling the bar onscreen, fight the enemies while depleting the bar onscreen, fight the enemies while escorting a slow ass character. It’s all just more fighting, and it even spills over to some of the bosses as well.

Even the minigames that aren’t centered around fighting, like the rhythm games in Atlantica, are too shallow to provide any sense of fulfillment while playing them. Subsequent Kingdom Hearts games aren’t exempt from this. From Birth by Sleep’s Disney Town world being dedicated to minigames, to the shallow imitation of Nintendogs in Dream Drop Distance, these games also have the same minigame issue that KH2 has.

I have talked about how the games became more combat oriented, however I haven’t really discussed combat itself. This is probably the part where I’ll get the most flack.

Combat in KH1 is a lot of fun and the highlight of the game alongside its story. While basic at first, the fighting gets more complex with the addition of special moves, extra combos, spells, and summons adding variety to the system. Plus, different enemies and bosses a certain attacks and weaknesses. Mashing the x button repeatedly will not get you far, you will have to think and be strategic during battle.

The later games, however, do not have strategy in their combat. Sure, you have different options with drive forms, shot locks, trinity limits, and other sorts of abilities, but at the end of the day, combat from KH2 onward is mostly whaling on the attack button over and over again. The amount of enemies that require certain strategies to defeat them diminish, dodging becomes practically unnecessary, and combat becomes simplified as a whole

Drive forms and trinity limits require little to no strategy when using them. Just activate them and mash buttons while your character zips their way through the battlefield while all sorts of flashy effects fill the screen and enemies go down without a fight. How fortunate that certain abilities could only be unlocked when the player fights with each drive form for a certain amount of time. Forced grinding, what a treat.

The worst offender of this is the context sensitive “reaction commends” that can clear waves of enemies and knock out a huge portion of the bosses’ health. Sometimes it’s the only way to defeat certain bosses. All the player must do during these reaction commands is simple press the triangle button over and over. It’s like a quicktime event only virtually impossible to fail at. There’s a reason why the phrase “press triangle to win” exists.

Magic also got a downgrade as the series progressed. In KH1, magic was not always at your disposal. When your MP got depleted, the player (or companions) would have to use an elixir/ether or land enough melee strikes on enemies to replenish your magic. Despite that, spells and summons were incredibly useful in battle, as well as for environmental puzzles, and the proper use of magic could mean the difference between success and failure.

In the later Kingdom Hearts games, the inverse seemed to be true for magic. Not only were puzzles that require spells became almost nonexistent, removing more variety in level design, but spells and summons became less effective in battle. In KH1, the player could focus on spellcasting, while doing the occasional melee attacks, and get through the game with relative ease. In later games, due to how magic became nerfed, using magic primarily was more of a self-imposed hinderance rather than an alternative style of play. This results in the player using magic almost exclusively for healing. Lucky for those players, MP automatically regenerates after depletion at a relatively quick rate, making ethers useless, which gives the player an unlimited amount of heals.

After KH2’s release, with the emphasis on style over substance, combat in Kingdom Hearts games became more about how to make the player look cool while fighting rather than making the player feel good after the fight.

The reason why it felt good to complete a battle in KH1; the game was actually difficult. Enemies and bosses didn’t just let you pummel them with combos and stylized forms. You had to react to the enemies and the arena you fought in. Even to this day, fights against Clayton, Ursula, Maleficent (human and dragon), possessed Rikku, many more bosses still put me on edge as I fight them.

There was no challenge to the fights in games like KH2 and Birth by Sleep. Since the player has multiples ways to dispose of an enemy, virtually endless amount of heals, and less adversaries that require any strategy outside of “hit me a bunch of times until I no longer exist”, they face little to no challenge while playing latter day Kingdom Hearts games. Bosses that make creative use of the environment you fight are less frequent too. The only way a boss can begin to test the player is when a minigame-like stipulation is added to the fight. Stipulations such as kill all the water clones in this time limit, put the coins in the chest before you can do damage, whatever the heck the Luxord fight was supposed to be, and so on and so forth.

Even then, I still didn’t get that much of a challenge. After three playthroughs of KH2, two of which were on Proud/Critical mode, the combined total of times I died does not even come close to a quarter of the amount of times I died in my first playthrough of KH1. I never even died during KH2’s Sephiroth fight, and I still struggle to defeat him in KH1’s proud mode. The other games provide even less challenge outside of a few endgame/postgame bosses.

And before you reply, the re-releases did not remedy this issue. In fact, the re-release of KH2 gave the player new abilities that allowed the player to cheese his/her way through some boss fights.

Now I have talked about the level design, the moment to moment gameplay, and the difficulty. I supposed that leaves us with the plot of these games.

Do I even have to explain why KH1 has the superior story?

KH1 had a simple yet effective hero’s journey story about a child who wanted to explore the various worlds with his friends but got more than he bargained for when his home is engulfed in darkness and he’s separated from his friends. He goes to various worlds, forms friendships with numerous people, and learns about his newfound abilities as well as the forces that try to stop him on his quest to find his friends. It’s not the most complex of narratives and that’s all for the better. The amount of exposition is kept to a relative minimum, characters can breathe and are not just there to explain the situation, dialogue was never forced or awkward, each world had their own mini-story that’s both entertaining and connects to the overarching plot, and the story is self-contained, no outside material required to understand what’s going on.

You know the pattern by now, but I still need to elaborate. For some reason, Square-Enix thought that they could pull off this grand epic saga spread over multiple games, well they couldn’t. KH2’s plot is a total mess. It’s a constant bombardment of new ideas, exposition dumps, vague allusions to events from games that weren’t even released yet. It was bad enough that the player had to have played a GBA spinoff in order to understand a lot of the plot, but the narrative was so muddled with inconsistencies and unexplained concepts that two more spinoffs had to be made in order for KH2’s plot to make some sort of sense, even then the plot is still convoluted and heavy-handed.

I’ve seen spiderwebs that have less interwoven parts than the plot of Kingdom Hearts, and far fewer holes as well.

And no, this does not make the story “complex and deep”. While I expect a game called Kingdom Hearts 2 would require me to play the first game in order to get a clear understanding of the plot, that doesn’t excuse having to play multiple spinoffs just to get a iota of a clue of what the heck is going on. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, one of the most celebrated series of books ever, contained an epic tale of war across multiple kingdoms and fleshed out worlds with history and culture. Even then, the reader didn’t have to refer to The Hobbit or The Silmarillion in order to follow the plot of the novels. That’s mainly due to the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien, unlike Tetsuya Nomura, can actually write an overarching story.

There’s also the fact that a lot of the plot in these games feels like filler. In KH2, the first visits to most of the worlds don’t connect to the main plot about the nobodies and Organization XIII. It’s not until the second visit to Radient Gardens where the plot starts to get rolling. In Birth by Sleep, almost all of Aqua’s campaign feel inconsequential until the very end. You could cut her story and have her just be a side character in Ventus and Terra’s campaigns and not much would be lost, plot wise.

The reason why I find a lot of the plot to be filler is due to the stories of most of these worlds are retellings of the Disney movies they’re based on while having little connection to the game’s main plot. In KH1, the stories of the worlds were mostly original tales that were intertwined with the game’s main plot. Whether it was dealing with Maleficent’s group of villains, the search for King Mickey, Rikku, and Kairi along with the rivalry between Sora and Rikku, learning more about the keyblade and its various abilities, visiting each world moved the main plot forward while having fun mini-narratives of their own. Even worlds like Wonderland, Deep Jungle, and Neverland focused more on one scene/act from the movie and expanding on it rather than rushing through the cliff notes of the source material.

It seems like for the other games, Nomura just copied and pasted the scripts of the movies the worlds a based on, added interjections from Sora, and called it an original story. It sticks out like a sore thumb and makes visits to these worlds feel more like distractions than anything else.

This longwinded plot also extends to the dialogue. The dialogue in KH1 was natural, aside from a few moments of emphasizing the difference between light and darkness. Characters acted normally, they had actual personalities and chemistry with each other. That was because KH1’s plot was not domineering to the point where the characters were relegated to just be vessels meant to explain the narrative. In games like KH2, conversations don’t feel like a group of people talking amongst themselves but rather like a lecture that the player needs to pay attention to. It makes a large chunk of scenes drag on for what feels like an eternity.

The fact that characters feel more like lore dispensers than actual people leads me to my next point, I don’t care about these new characters. Almost every character introduced from Chain of Memories onward has left little to no impact on me.

Organization XIII are a bunch of cliché Shonen Jump villains, either cackling at how evil they are or brooding over something quasi-poetic until the main character comes in and inevitably defeats them.

Roxas got a 2-hour prologue in KH2 in order for the player to get to know him and I was more relieved than upset whenever he “sacrificed” himself in order for Sora to wake up. Even 358/2 Days couldn‘t get me to care for this guy.

Xion exists solely to die at the end of 358/2 days and then be resurrected in Dream Drop Distance, that’s it.

Hayner, Pence, and Olette are like the annoying group of kids you’re forced to hang out with during college orientation, then they think you want to spend more time with them afterwards.

Ventus, Terra, and Aqua might’ve been interesting characters if we had more than 10 minutes dedicated to their friendship and personalities. Birth by Sleep is so focused on explaining the origins of Xehanort, the ways of the keyblade master, and linking its plot to the overarching plot of the series, that I never find myself connecting to any of the characters. The three separate campaigns don’t do the plot any favors. In fact, it makes the story seem disjointed. To be honest, when the characters were either killed, possessed, or banished to the Realm of Darkness, I did not care in the slightest.

It doesn’t help that Tetsuya Nomura can only seem to write 4 or 5 kinds of original characters, resulting in everyone being a Xehanort/Ansem clone or a copycat of the Sora, Kairi, Rikku dynamic. Seriously, the amount of Sora clones in this franchise is absurd.

The worse thing about these new characters is that Square seems convinced that the general audience needs more of them and forces them into the plot at the expense of characters we already have investment in.

The most egregious example of this happens at the end KH2 when during the final fight against Xemnas, rather than allowing the player to use Donald and Goofy, the game forces you to use only Rikku in the fight.

I don’t care that it’s meant to serve as Rikku’s redemption. He seemed to have redeemed himself with his self-sacrifice at the end of the first game. I don’t care about that stupid reaction command in the middle of the battle looks cool. It’s just another example of the game preferring style over substance. I don’t care that I get to fight with Rikku. I want Donald and Goofy.

I know we play as Sora and therefore focus on building his stats/abilities, but we put almost as much time into Donald and Goofy while we played the game. The player had to find the best equipment, do the side quests in order to obtain their ultimate weapon, mastered their trinity limits, managed their A.I. to suit the player’s needs in battle. Then the game rewards your dedication to these characters by saying “Screw you! Here’s a premade character with a default weapon you can’t change, and you only have the final level to learn how he is like in combat. You’re gonna love it.”

I’m sorry, but for an RPG to do that is inexcusable. Imagine in an Elder Scrolls game, before the final part of the main quest, your character is killed, and you must play as a premade Dark Elf Mage for the rest of the game. How about in Persona 5 before the last boss, instead of the Phantom Thieves, Joker gets a party consisting of some random side characters you barely interacted with in the game. Would anyone defend that design choice then?

The fact that I’m forced to only use Rikku in the fight, alongside how easy it is, makes the final battle against Xemnas in KH2 one of the worst final bosses in gaming, in my opinion.

I’ve been ranting about KH2, Birth by Sleep, 358/2 Days, Chain of Memories, but I haven’t talked specifically about Kingdom Hearts 3. KH3 is a weird case because it fixed some issues that I had with the later Kingdom Hearts games while doubling down on the issues it didn’t fix and adding new issues altogether.

KH3’s level design is improved somewhat. There’s still generally not much to do in the worlds aside from walk, fight, and do a minigame, however the actual levels are more open and intricate compared to KH2 and Birth by Sleep. The presentation is the best in the series, not just the graphical upgrade but also cinematography of the cutscenes and animations are more expressive than in past games. Plus, I got to give the game credit for making me like Axel/Lea, who before was just another forgettable side character.

However, combat is even more style over substance with additions like the Attractions Summons. The minigames are still as intrusive as they are lacking in quality. The retelling of the Disney plots is so bad here that there are literally shot for shot recreations of scenes from the movies with Sora, Donald, and Goofy added in the background. The Frozen and Tangled worlds suffer the most from this. Plus, the Pirates of the Caribbean world is based on the third movie despite the fact that no Kingdom Hearts game covered the second Pirates movie. Good luck understanding that plot without seeing the films. Dialogue is just as mind-numbingly dull. Also, you know how the plots of the latter Kingdom Hearts game can be described as having 30-50% filler, well KH3’s plot is almost 80% filler.

All this is combined with new problems such as combat feeling floatier compared to KH2 and Birth by Sleep, the emphasis on Disney over everything else, and the fact that this supposed “conclusion” to the trilogy didn’t fulfill on all the promises of past games, forgot to fill some of the plot holes, and felt like advertisement for games yet to come, makes it hard for me to say KH3 is a total improvement over the other Kingdom Hearts sequels and spinoffs. In many ways, it’s a downgrade.

You know, it feels like Kingdom Hearts is the Guns and Roses of the video game industry. Their first effort is groundbreaking and makes a huge impact on the scene. Subsequent follow-ups do their best to expand upon the initial outing only to end up with well regarded yet still confused end products. Then a new project is in the works and gets constantly delayed during which a revolving door of crew members tries to salvage the development, all the while a talented yet egomaniacal leader is micromanaging every aspect. Then when the long-awaited product is released, reviewers give mild praise while the general public is disappointed and finds the end result to be a mish mash of disparaging ideas while feeling almost unfinished.

Yes, Kingdom Hearts 3 is Square’s Chinese Democracy.

If I were asked to do a tier list ranking of each game in the series, at this moment, it would look like this.

This maybe a bit of a surprise to you since I spent the entire time ranting about KH2’s flaws, so let me explain. After playing KH3, I’ve come to notice more of the positive aspects of the second Kingdom Hearts. While I do think that they serve more to make the game easy and hate the excessive grinding that comes with them, the drive forms do give the player a sense of experimentation with some of these fights. In fact, compared to KH3, 2 has more builds for the player, as well as more balanced. KH2 is still easy as heck, and in my opinion inferior to KH1 in almost every way. However, I now appreciate more of the second game’s strong points.

Also, the music is excellent. I think that goes without saying. Yoko Shimomura is a goddess of music.

So as if this entire post hasn’t made it clear already, I love Kingdom Hearts 1. Unlike the other games in the franchise, it knew where to be straightforward and where to have complexity. It had a robust, dynamic combat system, the plot was self-contained and had more personality than exposition, and the gameplay was varied without being diluted. To this day, I find it hard to understand why most Kingdom Hearts fans prefer games like KH2 and Birth by Sleep over the original Kingdom Hearts.

Who knows? Maybe they like the combat to have some flash and felt the fighting in KH1 is too rigid. Maybe they found the puzzles, exploration, and platforming of KH1 to be more akin to fat that had to be trimmed in service to the aspect of the games that they actually like. Maybe they enjoy the plot because it has such a detailed lore and expands the narrative beyond three guys saving the universe from darkness. Maybe they find the new characters charming and enjoy the parallels between them and other characters like Sora and Rikku.

If that’s how they feel, then that’s more than fine. We’re all allowed to have out take on things and no one should tell someone else that they shouldn’t have their opinion.

That being said, in my opinion, while I do enjoy most of the games in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, the only game that I find exceptional is Kingdom Hearts 1.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 2 #kingdom hearts 3 #birth by sleep #358/2 days #chain of memories #dream drop distance #sora #rikku #kairi #disney #donald duck #goofy #roxas #axel

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of-another-broken-heart · 6 years ago

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I need to get back in the habit of posting snippets of stuff here a little more often... I’ve been doing good with my goal of writing in a physical book a bit each day, but I’ve definitely been missing out on the helpfulness of having a time-stamped reference available anywhere there’s internet to check on some details when my brain is... being... Like That(TM).

My newest diagnosis pretty thoroughly eclipsed some happier news on Friday. I got very invested in making a new D&D character for a one-shot I’ll be joining in on sometime soon. Very counter to my Super-Homebrew Plant Fey Bae Druid for the big campaign I play in, this one-shot character’s most deviant trait is her height. She’s a Mountain Dwarf Paladin, and I wanted her to be BIG for a Dwarf, so I set her height at the maximum given in the race description. When I got to the actual dice-based trait assignment, though, I found out that despite giving a maximum height of 5 feet for Dwarves, the dice rolls only technically supported a height up to 4′8″... so I nudged the base dice rolls up from a d4 to a d6 and “cheated” my way into double 6′s to explain my max-height Dwarf. DM was amused at the PHB discrepancy and very on board for Big Dwarf Paladin. I still have some details to iron out for her, but for the most part she’s ready to play! Her name is Nellian Trueforge, she’s a guild artisan (blacksmith and jeweler) and a devotee of Tharmekhûl, and her holy mission is to spread the good of her craft and her god wherever she may journey. Her Paladin Oath is the Oath of the Ancients, so her whole Thing(TM) is centered around universal good, cheer, positivity... and her biggest flaw is that she’s perhaps a little too optimistic. Her second biggest flaw would be her fairly charmed/privileged life has made the truer realities of suffering foreign to her, so she struggles to understand trauma and cynicism in others.

Friday night I got to play a pretty lengthy “side mission” with my Super-Homebrew Plant Fey Bae Druid, where they accompanied another party member on what was supposed to be a low-level, high-body-count Adventurer’s Guild quest (they are a Warlock with a pact with Belial, and they can collect souls for special crafting projects). Things went smooth and easyfor 75% of the adventure, but the end was an at-level challenge (a summoned kuo-toa Goddess) that we tackled with the help of some of the super nice magical items our DM rains on us on the regular. The scenario was fun, the people involved did some quality role-playing, witty banter, and punning, and I spent some time after the session doing some much-needed character sheet tending and Bag of Holding (spreadsheet) upkeep. I remembered to take my sleep med sometime between 11 and 12, but I think I was up until 5 AM doing document management.

Yesterday (Saturday) I was only up for like... 12 hours. I slept a lot after I finally crawled into bed, and didn’t get up until nearly 3 PM. It was a pretty chill day. Mostly just did FFXIV stuff. Finished my WT book for the week, played around in Hydatos some more (kept getting in instances that would lock early, though, so mostly just farmed low-exp bunnies for chances at Eureka-locked loot... got my first-ever gold chest from them, but didn’t get the loot I wanted)... I took my sleep med, and I am pretty sure I was asleep by 3 AM.

Today I slept a lot, too. I got out of bed... around 1? I don’t remember exactly. I woke up to an alert from some psuedo-fascist comment response on YouTube where they twisted the age-old advice of “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” into “THIS IS WHAT ORWELL WARNED US ABOUT!! THOUGHT POLICING!! THIS IS 1984!!!!!” and that... wasn’t pleasant.

I didn’t make myself in any way presentable for public, but I went out anyway. My brain meds run out tomorrow, so I wanted to get my refills in hand before it felt like a red alert. I also stopped by a gas station, and irresponsibly splurged on a $2 novelty latte from Dunkin - they have a deal on mediums and have the Girl Scout Cookie flavors again. All in all, today cost $30.

My new med, for life-long hypothyroid treatment, isn’t fully covered by insurance. There’s a shitty irony to that, I guess. My brain meds are covered, my sleep meds are covered, and my birth control is covered... but my Vitamin D, and my hormone replacements, I gotta pay for.

And like... those are the 2 things I can’t do anything about. I can cope without the brain meds, if I really have to. Hell, if my financial situation improves, coping with my Hellbrain is pretty easy actually. I’ve gone my whole life with my shitty sleep problems, so coping with that again wouldn’t be too big a deal. And while birth control certainly makes my monthly bleeds a whole lot more tolerable, coping with THAT pain was also something I just gritted my teeth through, too.

But my body literally attacking its own thyroid and permanently being incapable of producing life-necessary hormones for healthy bodily functions? My body literally being incapable of producing adequate Vitamin D amounts to stay healthy? Money. More money.

It’s not even a lot of money. The Vitamin D price is like $0.94, and the thyroid hormone replacement is $1.00. But when your income is $0... having an infinite, recurring $2 price tag on your life-critical meds is still an impossible cost.

And I know I just got paid for a house sitting gig. But the majority of that needs to go into my shaky bank account, to keep the damn thing open and pay for another couple months of internet access, because the internet is my greatest tool for coping, socializing, looking for work, and just generally keeping informed about things.

Oh. I got approved for more therapy sessions. I don’t remember if I noted that here. The approval was basically for weekly sessions, from Feb 18 to May 18. There are two big problems with that, though.

1) I cannot afford weekly trips out of town.

2) Even if I could, the therapist is booked solid most of the time, so even if I tried to book as many openings as I could, right now, there would still be weeks where there simply aren’t any open appointments to fill.

So like... I’m still going to try for more. I booked another appointment towards the end of the month, and if I get 1-2 in March, 1-2 in April, and 1 in May, I’ll consider it worth the effort of getting the approval in the first place. That’s still only... a maximum of 6 of the approved 13, though. Less than half. Feels bad.

#personal

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sneha640 · 2 years ago

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Why do small business owners need to learn digital marketing?

Operating and owning a small business comes with some huge challenges. Managing the regular or day-to-day operations of your business can be incredibly time-consuming, leaving small business owners with little to no time to focus on their marketing.

Fortunately, digital marketing has become progressively accessible for businesses of all sizes and is an extremely effective way to reach new consumers and grow your business. The right and proper can help your small business gain a competitive edge, even over larger competitors.

Here, we’ll break down a few of the best reasons why digital marketing is so important for small businesses.

1) Provides an equal opportunity for every business

You can see your small business growth because digital marketing provides equal opportunities to each and every business. It is not a method or strategy only restricted to big corporations or international companies. Small businesses will actually leverage their business with the help of digital marketing. They can stand in perfect or excellent competition with established businesses. Also, they will make full use of digital marketing by engaging different clients on different platforms.

2) Cost-efficient

A few years past, small and big business owners used printed flyers, rented billboards, or placed banners to let people know about their business. However, this costs a lot. Some business owners use these strategies or methods even nowadays, especially in small towns. Nevertheless, the main downside of this method is that it’s impossible to measure its effectiveness.

Even nowadays, it is more effective and cheaper to invest in a digital marketing campaign rather than printing advertising flyers. If you would like to get the most out of your campaign, you have to opt for the services of expert marketers or a trusted digital agency. Don’t deal with amateurs that lack experience in this area.

Overall, thanks to a huge collection of digital marketing tools and fantastic opportunities provided by them, business owners can quickly measure the effectiveness of ads, stop ineffective campaigns, make changes, and invest more in online ads that work well.

3) Builds Reputation and Credibility

When customers will find your business online, it gives a boost to their trust in you. They think that your business is real or genuine. You can develop a better relationship with the consumers with digital marketing. This, in turn, earns your business reputation and credibility. If you are a small business, it will do wonders for you! For larger businesses, it gives a level playing field.

4) Influence marketing

Social media tools like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram hold the power to influence the general audience. The inclusion of social media tools has given birth to influencers. This particular breed of influencers has the incredible power to influence the decision of the general public. Hence, organizations no longer have to endorse celebrities to boost sales of their product or service. The beauty of influential marketing is that even ordinary audiences or people, holding no extra credentials can also become influencers and generate interest from countless people.

5) Customer Engagement

Customer loyalty is dominant in any business. However, new-age customers are fickle-minded. They don’t hesitate even a single second to change to another business if they find a better bargain. The range of products and services available at the click of a button has spoilt the consumers for choices. In such a scenario, you need to engage visitors continuously and interestingly. Digital marketing is a very useful technique to feed information to customers, provide updates, gain feedback, and initiate two-way conversations. Your business will always remain or stay on the top of the minds of consumers!

6)Gives measurable results

With the help of particular tools, you can easily measure results for each and every digital marketing platform. This will help you to evaluate performance and assist you in making decisions.

Looking at the above list of reasons, small businesses should definitely opt for digital marketing. Several start-ups and small businesses adopt traditional techniques of marketing but the results with traditional methods are very slow and are able to attract consumers at a local level only. Whereas, the group of potential customers found online is comparatively very large as compared to the potential customers that are targeted locally.

With digital marketing, small businesses will attract a large audience. Digital marketing is a cost-effective way to transform your business. Hence, it is wise for small businesses to utilize the potential of digital marketing and get ahead in their business.

Max Effect Marketing is a digital marketing agency that helps small businesses and organizations to increase sales, visibility, and engagement through their unique business strategy. So what are you waiting for?

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#Web designing course in Nagpur #digital marketing courses in Nagpur #web design course #web development courses in Nagpur #web development classes in Nagpur #web development courses

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davidrusselblr · 3 years ago

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Asset Management Software in Saudi Arabia: Mistakes, Truths & Best Practices

Erpisto #1 Asset Management Software in Saudi Arabia It is important to be able to comprehend the importance of applications for organizations, regardless of whether they are on-premise or cloud-based.

What do you have?

Who uses it?

How it is supported

What you're paying for

asset management software, processes that are well-designed and easily understood will help you get the most out of your software investments. It ensures you don't use more licenses than you pay for, leaving you vulnerable to legal consequences.

Let's talk about software asset management.

The concept

Common challenges

How to Avoid These

AMS tools: Best practices

Additional resources

Erpisto #1 Asset Management Software in Saudi Arabia

What is software asset management?

Asset management software in Saudi Arabia is an IT practice. Like the overarching practice of IT asset management (ITAM), the primary end goals of AMS are usually to:

Assure compliance

Reduce the risk of being penalized

Security breaches should be avoided

Reduce the risk of unexpected costs

Optimize your investments (i.e. lower costs)

Software is an ongoing, large-scale financial investment that all companies make. The ability for departments, or individual users, to acquire software licenses through software as a service (SaaS) providers means that it can be difficult to understand what software is being consumed by your organization, much less control the financial and legal implications of software use.

The image below illustrates the challenges of managing a wide range of assets. Many of these assets will be covered by your AMS practice.

AMS is now more important than ever. However, it's also more difficult to execute effectively because of the decentralization in software procurement. There is no easy button for asset management--regardless of the tools and content.

AMS has been called a "dark arts", which suggests that it is more than just a tool or technology. It takes skilled resources and the best technologies to cover all platforms and license models.

Common Asset Management mistakes

Because they are not familiar with the difficulties of building a AMS program, many organizations set unrealistic expectations. To build a sustainable and successful AMS program, you must first understand the most common problems.

When setting up a Asset management software in Saudi Arabia program, there are many mistakes that organizations make. These are the three most common errors I see when setting up a AMS practice.

Unrealistic expectations When planning and maturing a AMS program.

It is not possible to identify the source of the problems Roadmap A phased approach that prioritizes a list of essential requirements.

Infringing upon the due diligences AM vendors To fully comprehend the difference between what is possible out of the box and what needs to be customized, professional services or consulting, it's important to understand. This can have a major impact on the cost.

Each of these can cause a AMS project to be delayed or even stopped completely. There is a fourth error in the above list that could be even more dangerous.

Expecting a tool that does all the work. The saying goes, "A fool with A tool can do a lot for you by. "Software discover You can also count license usage. However, no one tool will be able to give you all the answers. It is very unlikely that you will be able to create a AMS practice that works before you implement a tool.

Asset Management Fundamental Truths and Challenges

These challenges are often overlooked or ignored by too many companies. As a result, their Asset management software in Saudi Arabia practices are less valuable. These mistakes are common and often caused by organizations.

Jumping in too fast without any experience

Unrealistic expectations

A phased approach to defining a narrow scope is not the best way to go

Below is a list of the most common AMS problems and their truths.

There is no single solution or tool.

One tool cannot discover all software or the data required to measure all licensing models. It is impossible to find an all-inclusive AMS solution that works for all software.

Certain tools work better with specific vendors or platforms than others. To broaden their reach, some vendors combine or partner with other technologies or content. Take, for example:

Some software, such as Oracle database licensing, requires specific configuration settings and usage information to be discovered.

On the licensing front, the product use rights (PUR) can be very complex--think MIPs and points-based licensing.

This level of specialization requires very specific knowledge on both sides. This is only one reason why a gradual approach to success is important.

Content drives automation

Content is essential in today's AMS environment. It is the responsibility of the customer to create and maintain content. This is difficult unless the scope is extremely narrow. The content covers many areas, including but not limited to:

Discovery

License models/SKUs/PURs

Maintenance

End of life

With product use rights, for example, the default license can be associated with the discovered software. This significantly reduces the effort required to measure compliance.

Complex and ambiguous

License models can be complicated and ambiguous and will continue to evolve. The most complicated software is datacenter software. It may prove difficult to obtain certain information necessary to assess compliance. Some vendor terms may not be clear or measurable, and new licensing models continue to emerge.

Tip: Make sure to verify all terms and conditions before you purchase any software. This will help avoid any confusion. You cannot be certain of your compliance if you don't know how to measure it.

Slow adoption of standards

To further improve automation and reduce dependency on content services, the primary standards (ISO/IEC 19770-1, 2, and -3) were slow to adopt.

These standards, especially -2 and 3 below, will increase adoption. This will decrease the dependence on content that is necessary today to drive automation and reduce AMS efforts.

ISO 19770-1 provides a process framework for AMS. This is an excellent standard for evaluating and establishing baselines for your AMS program.

ISO 19770-2 provides the standard for software tagging (discovery) which software vendors are slowly adopting.

ISO 19770-3 standard provides the transport format, which is intended to drive standardization on the entitlements front.

Cloud complexity

Cloud licensing adds complexity as this is typically (but not always) less of an issue regarding licensing and compliance and more about usage and optimization. Cloud vendors are improving their ability to control usage to avoid noncompliance. This shifts the focus to the customer in order to ensure that they don't purchase too much (i.e. Optimization over Compliance - An improvement over on-premises software.

As cloud services become more common, the tools and technology available to capture and manage cloud-based applications are becoming better.

Asset Management tools selection: Ask the right questions

When planning your AMS initiative, it is important to understand the complexity of your environment.

If you use technology only for basic productivity tasks, and your staff uses Microsoft Office 365 a lot, your licensing will be easier to manage and your scope easier to define. However, if you use many on-premise or cloud-hosted apps, which is very likely, then you need to plan accordingly.

It is crucial to understand the licensing terms that apply to each application when dealing with multiple vendors.

This table will give you an overview of the information that you should know when planning AMS in your company. Although this is not a comprehensive list, it will help you to understand the additional information that you need in order to manage your Asset management software in Saudi Arabia effectively.

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ohhstuffandfluff · 4 years ago

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As someone who designs games and is also neurodivergent, I think at a certain point you butt up against the genuine creative vision of the game, and it can be really tough for designers to deal with making games accessible without compromising what they feel is the best way to experience their game. Obviously, this doesn't apply to straight up accessibility features like button remapping, colorblindness settings, actual functioning subtitles, and other settings that allow for players of all kinds to actually play the base game. These should be standard in pretty much all games now. Adjusting something like level difficulty or game mechanics becomes a lot trickier however. Games with actual difficulty settings (easy, normal, hard, etc) avoid this by, yknow, setting the difficulty lower (side note: games should also stop locking content away behind hard modes, it's super frustrating and gatekeep-y and feels like I'm getting punished for selecting a lower setting) so that players can play to their own style. However, you run up against harder problems in games that have higher skill ceilings, or are trying to drive home narrative or feelings through challenging gameplay. Games like Celeste and Darkest Dungeon both kind of get around this by offering Assist Mode and more-hidden menu options respectively, but both games warn you that part of why the game is made the way it is is to be challenging, and to use these options can sometimes take away from the intended goal, from the feeling of climbing an impossible mountain or braving the depths of Eldritch horror. Some players need these options to play the game at all, and these games acknowledge that, but it does feel like a compromise on the intended vision of the game. An easy mode or an assist mode in Dark Souls doesn't make any sense, it's a game about struggling and dying and to play it "on easy" defeats the purpose and is antithetical to the game's world and story, but that fact alone means that tons of gamers are just cut off from ever playing it. And the designers to a certain extent were probably fine with that, considering what Dark Souls is about.

And then you get games like Splatoon 2, where the whole game is centered around multiplayer battles, and the single player mode is meant to teach you how to use each weapon and other necessary skills. To offer Assist Modes in the main game of Splatoon 2 is impossible, if only because it could be use to give some players an unfair advantage, and allowing it in the single player (base game, not octo expansion, which actually does have a level-skip option once you fail a challenge too many times) could cause players to misunderstand how weapons work in the multiplayer. A level skip could work, but then you just straight up miss out on content. And then, tbh, some levels are just. Meant To Be Hard. The SP campaign is meant to be somewhat challenging, and everyone will struggle with different levels (FUUUUUCK the charger level with the rails). And while not allowing for things like button remapping is DUMB (Nintendo please), these games were designed with intention, with an intended experience in mind (one likely made a little harder because everyone complained the story mode from splet 1 was too easy, which, yeah, kinda), and particularly with a *multiplayer* experience in mind. Nintendo wants you to apply skills from the single player to the multiplayer, and designed specific experiences around that goal. How much can you mess with that intention before it no longer does what it's supposed to do? Hopefully someone smarter than I figures it out soon, I think games on the whole *need* to be more accessible ASAP, but how we go about it without compromising the vision of the designers, the artists who made the game, is still uncharted territory. Where art and accessibility meet is a huge ongoing discussion in the industry at large.

im banning ablebodied and neurotypical people from making games unless they have someone neurodivergent and disabled helping them or testing their game. im literally so sick of being unable to play games because nobody bothered to take into account that certain levels are straight up impossible unless you have extremely percise fine motor skills and reaction times. im sick of being driven to tears from frustration with my very minor hand tremors. im sick of vague directions and fast dialogue leaving me completely lost. im sick of seeing people be unable to play games cus the lack of very simple things like changing keybinds.

i understand that some games are designed to be as frustrating as possible and im perfectly fine with that. but singleplayer splatoon 2 levels shouldnt be making me so frustrated that i wanted to bite my fingers off. its advertised towards kids.

neurotypical/ablebodied ppl can reblog but if you try to be funny im going to block you this post isnt a joke and if you cant take it seriously then ur just ableist <3

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kaylmurray · 7 years ago

Photo

BELOW IS A TRANSLATION OF AN INTERVIEW I CARRIED OUT IN SPANISH WITH http://madridistareal.com

THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW IS THE POST PREVIOUS TO THIS ONE.

Tell us a little about your new adventure in Miami.

I came to Miami from Spain to work for beINSPORTSUSA 5 years ago. I came to take on a new challenge and to helpwith the growth of LaLiga in the USA. The channel also has the rights to Serie A, Ligue 1 and many other sports.

Madridismo remembers you as one of the well-known faces from the international version of Real Madrid TV. How do you remember this time?

It was one of the best experiences of my life, I lived there for 6 years. Everything changed for me, not only in my professional life, but on a personal level too.

With Real Madrid, I travelled to many places around the world and I experienced some very special things.

My first season was the “Juntos Podemos” ** and my last season was the final season of Mourinho.

I missed the tenth, eleventh and twelfth Champions League wins but I was there for three Liga title wins, a Copa del Rey, Cristiano’s arrival, the return of Florentino Perez and the final year of Beckham, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo. It wasn’t such a bad era.

**Juntos Podemos “Together We Can’ was basically a promotional campaign from the local media the club and the fans to urge everyone to unite in the final stages of the season to garner the belief that Real Madrid could beat Barcelona (and Sevilla) to the league title. Real Madrid won the title on the final day of the season. Real Madrid finished level on points with Barcelona but had a better head to head record (2-0 at Bernabeu and 3-3 at Camp Nou).

How does a girl from Middlesbrough end up at the Santiago Bernabeu?

I started my career on Boro TV, the official club channel of my hometown team, Middlesbrough.

After that I studied journalism and during my studies, I saw a casting for the international version of RMTV, which back then was a new project. I screen-tested but I didn’t get the job. A year later, another position became available and this time, I did get it!

Were you already a Madrid fan before you worked at RMTV or did you become a Madrid fan during your time in Madrid?

Before working at RMTV, I wasn’t really a Madrid fan but I remember reading the press when Beckham was going to leave Manchester United and back then, no one was sure whether he’d go to Madrid or Barcelona, and I remember thinking, ‘It has to be Madrid,’ and I don’t know why I thought that.

At that time, I had no idea that one day I would be working at RMTV. But it was impossible not to fall in love with the team after a season like that of 06/07.

What was it like for you as a club insider to experience those team triumphs?

Incredible and unforgettable! I have wonderful memories. Memories like running onto the pitch in Pamplona to interview the players after winning Liga number 31, with security guards chasing me! Celebrating in the mixed zone with the players while they sprayed champagne all the journalists with champagne. I returned to Madrid that night (on a bus) with my friends from “Cinco Estrellas” (one of the well-known Madrid fan clubs).

The journeys back on the team plane after a victory were always a lot of fun too. The memories of the parties with my colleagues in Madrid and Valencia after winning a league or a Copa will also live with me forever.

During the 7 seasons you spent with RMTV, you shared some special times with players an coaches from the first team. Do you have any interesting anecdotes you can tell us?

Many! There were times when some of the Spanish players had to speak in English for promotional campaigns or video messages. It was always fun to teach them to speak English. On the away trips, the players were always telling jokes between themselves and my colleagues at RMTV. I even remember Cristiano putting on the Manchester accent, which made me laugh!

The worst memories were in my first few months in Valdebebas (Real Madrid’s training ground), where Cassano would try and strike the football at me. Back then I didn’t know a lot of Spanish and I didn’t know how to ask him to stop doing it! But guess what? He missed me everytime!

Who is the player or manager you had the best professional/working relationship with?

I’m clear on this one - Ruud Van Nistelrooy. We arrived at the club in the same season, he spoke English and he always had time (he was very kind) for the international version and for our families and friends.

Once Mourinho came in, the Spanish press were at first very belligerent. What do you think this animosity was down to in the pressrooms?

Perhaps it’s because his style as a manager was very different and they weren’t used to a manager like him, especially because the access to the players had been very easy before his arrival. I had never seen journalists with such free access to the players like I had in Spain. But Mou’s mentality to convert the training ground into a “bunker” didn’t go down well.

I know that Mourinho’s era didn’t end well and that there are many people who speak negatively of it, but it’s also worth remembering that he also changed a lot of important things, like the mentality of the team to believe that they were capable of competing with Pep’s Barcelona and he also brought an end to the curse of the Last 16 in the Champions League. *

* For six straight seasons, Madrid did not get past the Last 16 of the tournament.

What’s your opinion of Mourinho of a manager? What was it like to work with him? And with Cristiano Ronaldo?

At first, it was very easy to work with Mourinho, he was very kind with everyone working in and around the club, including those of us from the official channel. In his last season, it was a little different, due to the atmosphere surrounding the club.

I only have good memories of Cristiano. Never in my life had I seen so many people demanding the attention of one single person. But despite this, he was always very kind to us, speaking in English and even on the days when he didn’t have time to speak with us in the mixed zone, he would always say: “I’m sorry! Not today but for sure we can do it next week!”

You presented the Ballon D’Or twice. Was that a lot of pressure?

A lot of pressure, but a huge honour too, one of the biggest honours of my professional life. However, it’s better for Cristiano that I’m not the one presenting the Ballon D’Or because on the two occasions that I did, Messi won! In my defense, I will say that I was the presenter on the ‘Green Carpet’ for the FIFA THE BEST awards last year and Cristiano won, so I’m not the jinx anymore!

I was asked before the second-leg semi about Bayern as a rival.

It won’t be easy, but the Champions League for Madrid is like spinach to Popeye….it makes them stronger!

Do you think Madrid have the chance to win their third consecutive Champions League this season? What percentage? Knock yourself out!

Of course I think there’s a chance but I don’t want to tempt fate. I’ve seen so many strange and unexpected things this season that you never know. Anything can happen!

Recently, Real Madrid have started to find their stride. There are players like Marco Asensio, Lucas Vazquez and Mateo Kovacic, who began as fringe players/subs and are now taking important steps forward in recent months. What quality would you highlight for each one of them?

I’m a big fan of the three…and who said that Real Madrid did not have a Plan B?!

MARCO - A golden left-foot

His confidence is not for nothing. It’s because he knows better than anyone else just what he is capable of.

LUCAS - Very, very dependable.

The fact that he asked to take the penalty in the shootout in the second final against Atleti and also that he was the first to take it - and scored, tells you everything.

MATEO - His through-balls. For me, he’s very underrated.

Has the fact that you’re a female sports journalist specializing in football presented any kind of handicap for you. Throughout your career, have you had to prove yourself more than a male in your profession might have to?

Sometimes, but a lot less these days. Spain gave me more opportunities as a female in football than my own country did. I am eternally grateful for that.

Finally! Do you miss living in Madrid?

Very much so! And even more so recently because over here everybody’s obsessed with “Money Heist” (a Spanish show, based in Madrid, on Netflix) and when I see Madrid and hear the accent, it makes me really want to return! I’ve always felt at home in Madrid. I’ve been back a few times in the last few years and I am going to keep on doing so.

Thanks for your time, Kay.

Thank you to all of you.

#RealMadrid KayMurray RMTV RealMadridTV CristianoRonaldo RuudVanNistelrooy LaLiga BeINSPORTS

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loreweaver-universe · 7 years ago

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Y’know, today I feel like talking about Disgaea, specifically my problems with Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance.

Spoilers for Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom, I guess.

So, first off, let’s talk about...

The Narrative.

Disgaea 5 tells the tale of edgelord Squall Leonhart wannabe Killia, a former asshole who got redeemed by falling in love with the daughter of the only demon to ever give him a proper ass-thrashing, who spent his time teaching Killia how to find inner peace blah blah blah it’s actually pretty bland. Killia speaks in a constant monotone, half-heartedly tries to get his rapidly accumulating party of Overlord-level demon pals to leave him the hell alone, and is generally just really goddamn boring. It’s not to say this kind of character can’t be interesting--in fact, I name-dropped Squall earlier, and until Final Fantasy VIII went completely off the rails in the second disc he was a legitimately nuanced character and I was interested in seeing where he went. Here’s the problem with all that, though:

The Disgaea series is a parody.

Now, full disclaimer--I’ve only played Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom. I have Disgaea 3 and 4, but I haven’t been able to secure a PS3 to play them on yet, so I’m leaving those out of the discussion (though from what I’m aware those are parodies as well.) However, of the four games I have played, Disgaea 5 stands out as being the only one of them to really take itself seriously.

Well, 2 did as well to a certain extent, but other than the looming issue of “we’re trying to off your evil dad, Rozalin,” Disgaea 2 takes itself about as seriously as Disgaea 1 did, and Disgaea 1 is a farce.

A beautiful, glorious, hilarious, one hundred percent intentional farce.

Laharl is a ridiculous creature. He’s petty, narcissistic, and childish, and while there are serious story beats (Etna being blackmailed, that asshole Angel stealing Flonne’s protective pendant, etc) Laharl never stops mocking his foes, his friends, and the genre itself. Disgaea 1, in short, is taking the piss, parodying the most ridiculous parts of anime and JRPGs (and, hell, American raygun gothic) with delightful glee...which is why, when things turn deadly fucking serious in the final chapter, it’s so goddamn heart-wrenching and effective. That slow burn of Laharl growing to care about Flonne enough that he tears the Heavenly Host several new assholes to try to save her from their judgment (and, even in the best ending, has to talk himself down from murdering the head angel in cold blood because she wouldn’t have wanted him to take revenge for her sake) is one of the most effective tonal twists in the history of media, in my opinion: all of a sudden, it’s not funny anymore.

While Disgaea 1 lampooned the genre as a whole, Disgaea 2 takes a different tack, and lampoons common anime/JRPG character archetypes. The hot-blooded, idiotically honorable melee fighter; the spoiled rich brat of a princess; the annoyingly perverted goblin of a third wheel (and, ugh, I wish that archetype would die already), the plucky little kids who are the least innocent characters in the whole crew other than the aforementioned perv goblin, on and on and on. The goal may be serious, but the characters are almost as silly as they were in Disgaea 1, and I actually think 2 manages an even better balance of humor and compelling storytelling than 1, because not only is the romance between Adell and Rozalin natural, enjoyable, and endearing, the dramatic beats come along without undermining the sheer silliness of our protagonists until it can have the most impact. There’s a moment in one of the later chapters where Laharl from the first game appears without warning, pissed off, heavily geared, and more than a thousand levels your superior.

(Yes, I said a THOUSAND levels. For those of you in the audience who aren’t familiar with the series, the level cap is 9999, and you can reset a character to level 1, storing attained levels for bonus stats. I’ll be talking about the grind later, don’t you worry.)

The encounter with Laharl accomplishes several things over the course of the two fights with him: it delivers a joyful reunion with the protagonist of the first game, which turns to terror when you see his stats, which turns to horror as you send your team into the meat grinder to die helplessly...and then it shows us that something is frighteningly wrong with Rozalin as she is seemingly possessed and tears this impossible foe apart effortlessly. From there the story really kicks into high gear, and like Disgaea 1, transitions into a deadly serious final assault on Zenon’s stronghold, but unlike Disgaea 1 it’s not a shocking swerve in tone--the story’s been building to this over time, gradually reconstructing the genre it gleefully tore to pieces over the previous game and a half.

Makai Kingdom is a very different affair, and can actually be most closely contrasted with Disgaea 5. In the Disgaeaverse, an “Overlord” is a very powerful demon who rules a pocket dimension called a “Netherworld.” Laharl’s an Overlord, for example. Makai Kingdom deals with a set of protagonists on a whole other level of power; these are the Overlords that other Overlords view as gods, and they essentially sit around on their asses playing card games and throwing popcorn at their TV.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Makai Kingdom is a return to Disgaea 1′s attitude--relentless silliness, mockery of itself, with a sharp turn at the end. Whether it accomplishes this goal as well as Disgaea 1 isn’t all that relevant, but it is something we can compare to Disgaea 5.

Disgaea 5 starts off similarly--hideously powerful Overlord-level demons gather together, but the characters are...not exactly dour, but played straight, I guess. There’s no parody, no lampooning; it’s very stock JRPG comedy (and “comedy”), with dramatic tension, a serious approach to its story and antagonists, and predictable story beats obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a mediocre anime or played a mediocre JRPG. Hell, the main villain’s name is Void Dark, and not a single character makes fun of that! There are some interesting designs, and I actually think Majorita is a compelling villain for Usalia, who I likewise enjoy immensely, but the story abandons almost everything that made the previous games’ plots entertaining. Topple an empire, murder some baddies, get your homes back, save your dead love from the creepy brother with the incestuous undertones. That’s it. That’s all. As a story structure, it works just fine, and as evidenced by my love for the rest of the series I absolutely think challenging established conventions is a good thing, but it doesn’t do so successfully enough that it stands out as a worthy entry in the series. Where it does shine is in improvements to gameplay quality-of-life and beautiful animation, which brings me to...

The Gameplay.

Disgaea 5 improves the UI, adds all sorts of neat little quirks to character customization, and improves game control substantially. It adds extra ways to gain stat points (like I said before, character levels cap at 9999 and can be stored for stat bonuses--this game also allows you to train stats for stat points via minigames) and is just generally more in-depth than its predecessors...at the cost of being stupidly easy to grind out.

Yes, I think an easier grind is a bad thing. Let me explain: I have over ten thousand hours in Disgaea 2 alone over the last twelve years. I picked the first two games up when Disgaea 2 was brand new, and have beaten the game dozens of times in the intervening span. Most recently, about five years ago, I created a save file on the PSP port of the game, and I spend idle trips or the time I’m falling asleep grinding it out as kind of an idle game.

Literally everything you do in a Disgaea game gets you experience for something. Weapon mastery, skill exp, character exp, you name it. Hell, you can run randomized dungeons inside your items to level those up, too. It’s incredibly satisfying and makes for a constant sense of progression--even if you don’t level up in a fight you’ve still gotten experience points for the skills and weapons you’ve used, making it stronger, more effective, etc. My personal goal is to, eventually, have one of every character class maxed out on stored levels and every skill and weapon proficiency in the game, which is a deliberately impossible task because it’s just so much fun to chase it forever.

Here’s the other thing: the Disgaea series, due to the ludicrous level cap, is known for its absurdly deep pool of ever-stronger bonus bosses, stretching, yes, all the way up to the level cap. The hunt for those is likewise extremely satisfying, and takes quite a while, especially since the campaign usually caps out at around levels 70-90.

With all this in mind, imagine my dismay when I realized I was blowing through skill and weapon exp and hitting the caps on everything in a tiny percentage of the time I was expecting. To be fair, there is a “Cheat Shop” NPC who can adjust the EXP you gain up and down, which is neat, but I have to crank it down to literally single-digit percentages of normal to get the same amount of chase-time out of it. This is not to say that the game should be inaccessibly grindy; in fact, Disgaea 1 and 2 aren’t. The story campaigns in those games are perfectly completable with the normal skill progression and a small but admittedly grindy amount of extra leveling in unlocked areas. It’s all the extreme bonus content that’s gated behind the postgame grind, and the huge ceiling on skill levels and weapon proficiencies means you’re constantly rising in power and challenging new heights. I think that’s a fantastic reward for being dedicated to the game! And Disgaea 5 in its default state takes that away. I had a character capped out on all proficiencies, subclasses, and aptitudes within my first hundred hours of the game.

It was...disappointing, I guess. All around, mostly; for every step forward it took, it also took a step back. Ultimately, the story takes a backseat to my points about the grind, because the campaign in any Disgaeaverse game is literally about 2% of the game’s content. Disgaea 5 took my grind from me, and that’s why I’m salty enough to have just spent an hour typing up a book report on its failings, I guess.

#disgaea #disgaea 5 #disgaea spoilers #disgaea 2 #makai kingdom #bloggin #inbetween

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