I think that quote was from later in his life.

AoE2 is one of a small number of video games I can entertain an argument about building an immense skill gulf between average and top tier players, like chess. But the size of that gulf is just incomparable.

There are approximately as many titled chess masters* as there are total monthly AoE2 players. And truly, the difference between a Candidate Master and a Grand Master is probably as big as the difference between a candidate master and an average player. Grand Masters are just so insanely skilled, they can pull some crazy flexes by forcing their opponents’ moves due to traps they set tens of moves ago.

I watched a GM streamer playing against his subs, with the rule “no matter how bad you’re losing, you can’t forfeit” so that he could show of these stunts. He was doing stuff like promoting every single pawn to a queen (which gets tricky because when you have 8 queens you have to try to not accidentally checkmate your opponent until you get the 9th). Taking only the pawns from his opponent, and then forcing all of the pieces back to their starting square before checkmate. Forcing an “underpromotion mate” (where you win by turning a pawn into a knight rather than a queen, pretty rare circumstance). Drawing basic pixel art with the pieces on the board at checkmate. And these weren’t all against noob players, some of them were quite skilled or even semi-pro, but to someone at the top tier of chess there is almost no difference between semi pro and beginner.

GMs are crazy good.

*All master titles combined, not just GM.

I wanna see Elon play a grandmaster and get absolutely memed on. The gulf between the average person and a top tier chess player is probably 10x greater than the gulf between the average person and a top tier gamer, in any video game. Chess just has such a large player base and literally centuries of tactical/strategic development, few games can even claim to have fostered the level of expertise required to be a top player.

Side note: chess skull is often correlated with intelligence. There might be something there, but at the top levels it’s really just about having played thousands and thousands of games and recognizing patterns between is how often you’ve played. Perhaps some genetal intelligence translates well to chess, but little chess skill translates to general intelligence.

To quote Paul Morphy, who was a worldwide chess champion at 21 years old but retired at 22: “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”

If you’re on lemmy then there’s nothing that new and different about matrix. It’s the same idea for chat apps: you can join an existing server, or host your own. Matrix doesn’t federate, so you just need to add whatever new servers you want to join.

Element is one of the bigger client apps. Matrix.org is the biggest server. Those will get you started.

I’ve checked in on it for the last several months and only picked up like 3 games that sounded interesting. And those only because they were free/included in my prime subscription.

Valve is Augustus Caesar. A benevolent dictator that did much to improve the quality of life of his citizens, but still a dictator. They’ve centralized control over the PC gaming sphere and brought tons of legitimate improvements to the hobby. Now they have no legitimate competitors. Epic Games is a mosquito bite, Prime Gaming is nothing, GOG is the closest thing and even they’re miles behind.

It only took a couple of generations to go from Augustus to Nero. I do not anticipate good things once Gaben retires/dies.

RIP Defect 😭

Europa Universalis 4, and it’s not really a close margin. 1445 hr mark is when you’ve finally completed the tutorial and can start the real game.

Can they disable their steam forums if they don’t want to moderate them?

I really like that there was a whole thing about building a super-weapon where players had to complete quests or whatever to contribute to its development. Then enough players compete the quest and the weapon was completed, and it turned out to be an orbital bombardment that killed enemies and players indiscriminately.

A lot of players were pissed but it’s so aggressively in-character I can’t imagine how they didn’t see it coming.

It’s a little more specific than that, like it has something to do with a way they attempted to streamline the process of switching between mounted and on-foot.

But yeah, still bullshit.

Patent No. 7545191

• [Patent application date: July 30, 2024]
• [Patent registration date: August 27, 2024]
• Relates to a player character throwing an item at a character in the field, which triggers combat.

Patent No. 7493117

• [Patent application date: February 26, 2024]
• [Patent registration date: May 22, 2024]
• Basically an extension of the above, relating to being able to capture Pokémon in the wild rather than just in combat like previous generations.

Patent No. 7528390

• [Patent application date: March 5, 2024]
• [Patent registration date: July 26, 2024]
• Relating to being able to ride creatures in the open world.

Note that every single one of these patents was filed after palworld was released, and they’re all awfully vague about what they actually cover.

I hadn’t played in years and started a new world a few weeks ago. I just started setting up a raill system when the update hit and now the whole thing is fucked. Gotta tear up a bunch of diagonal sections and re-do them noe that the new track angles lead to different accessible grid points. I literally cannot connect new rails to the old rails on the diagonal section 🙃

Seriously, wtf?

Yeah. It’s got all kinds of problems but at its core it “basically works” in a way that Salesforce hasn’t quite figured out, at least for a developer’s workflow.

Salesforce is (unsurprisingly) tailored towards sales teams, not necessarily dev teams. They’ve been branching out into more of a “full business solution” but the dev stuff isn’t really a strong competitor with the bigger names like Atlassian.

Slack (which, admittedly, was acquired by Salesforce) is probably the closest comparison to this.

As does Google chat. It’s been standard for years now.

My favorite fortress fail was from a were-iguana. A visitor turned into a giant iguana in the middle of the dining hall and caused a minor ruckus before my militia dispatched it. 2/10 invasion, really not that special.

Then next full moon there were 7 of them, including my militia commander. Oops. Pay attention to combat logs when you fight a were-creature! Quarantine the bitten!

He just always struck me as a barbarian for some reason

It’s the “two remaining brain cells working overtime” that does it ;)

I spent so many hours in the Sonic Adventure 2 Chao garden, training and breeding the ultimate racer.

BG3 runs like a dream on steam deck.

he is also responsible for several of Nintendo’s other hit games – among them The Legend of Zelda, whose latest instalment just topped many of 2023’s game of the year lists.

Did the author not actually check any GotY lists, or do they only look at GotY lists by hard-core Nintendo fans? Because none of the big industry lists had TotK at the top.

The price rose in one of the fastest-inflating currencies in the world right now? Shocking!

It’s a fun one. Not nearly as open-ended as SDV, but it has more of an actual story to tell so that’s okay.

I recommend the DLC, they flesh out the story a lot.

They’re technically mouse-navigable, but they’re awful at it. The currently-click-selected option is not always obvious.

SkyUI is one of my must-have mods for that reason.

Any map-staring enthusiasts? I’ve been playing Europa Universals 4 lately.

Started as Ethiopia, got up to Egypt before the Ottomans but they got Syria. I got all of the Arabian Peninsula and nearly all of East/Central Africa, but I’ve been so behind in tech that I can’t actually challenge the Ottos (kept them at bay by allying a strong Poland/Commonwealth). Finally, around 1600 I’m caught up and about to start making my final push towards Constantinople.

I just picked up all the DLC in the last steam sale so I’m getting back into it. I’ve played a lot of dwarf fortress so the QoL improvements Rimworld brings are awesome (though I still prefer DF’s simulation granularity).

My Prophet and Leader got married and have 2 children so I’m trying to decide how exactly I want to develop my ideology into a cult centered around that family. Though it’s rough going right now because I embarked without a good builder so I can’t build AC units.

Haven’t used much of the Royalty/psychic powers other than building a throne, though.