CoderKat

Personally I started with kbin and think the dev of it is great. But it's simply not as far along IMO. At least when I was using it, it was critically missing the ability to collapse comments. That single feature is huuuuge for me and probably the most prominent thing that got me to switch to Lemmy.

It also doesn't have an API yet, which means that mobile apps aren't likely to target it. Though I've personally been using a browser cause I haven't found any apps to be good enough yet.

Also, the notifications of kbin felt very buggy to me. I missed a lot of notifications and even when they worked, they don't show the notification or even what the thread title is, so you have to click each one individually. IIRC, clicking the notification also didn't work if your comment wasn't on the first page of comments.

They're not always feature complete. Plenty of games are crunching to finish things last minute and sometimes do last minute cuts because they can't finish things.

But I agree that they'll usually release at the announced date regardless of the game's final state. To be fair to them, advertising is insanely expensive and ad campaigns are often planned with a specific release date in mind. Some software is never gonna be 100%, too, and does need some pressure to just accept some issues or cut some things.

But usually it's just a plain old disconnect between devs and higher ups/project managers. Estimating software dev is insanely difficult and higher ups in charge of the final calls are often either not devs, too insulated from the devs, or sometimes just egoistic to listen to anyone but themselves.

Why would they need to scrape anything (which puts them at legal risks)? Threads is vastly bigger than the Fediverse. What do they care about having 1% more content, especially if a lot of that content is stuff their users don't care about? They don't even need to scrape stuff because humans will naturally repost content. How much of reddit was reposted from other social media sites by humans?

Yeah, it's unfathomable how huge Instagram is. That's a massive number of people who could be easily informed "hey, wanna try our new product?" As an aside, when I googled it, it said there was 2 billion active Instagram users.

I find it silly when people act skeptical of Threads' numbers, since Meta only needed a tiny number of their existing user base to try it out.

It's definitely not the worst. But I consider it overrated (considering how it's perhaps the most popular). Hands down I'd put 9, 10, and 12 above it. I'd maybe even put 8 above it depending on my mood.

The first game is probably the worst. It's very basic. Arguably it's unfair to compare it to later games, given it's age (as an aside, I've only played the GBA remake of it -- I probably wouldn't be able to stand the true original). I'd say 1 < 3 < 2 < 5 < 4 < 6 < 15 < 13 < 14 < 7 < 8 < 12 < 9 < 10. And honestly I could drop 15 a lot further down depending on my mood. I'm clearly biased against the 2D games.

I don't really get why 6 is so popular (there's even another person replying to you mentioning it). It's the best of the 2D games hands down, but I didn't find it as good as really any of the later games. I think I put a lot of weight in the ability for graphics to be able to show emotion and make settings more interesting. I utterly adored the cutscenes that began with the 3D games.

And I hate blizball.

Too far!

Naw, I get it. While it's personally my favourite mini game in all the Final Fantasy games (triple triad has nothing on it), I can totally get it. It starts off really rough and it's quite time consuming.

I soooo strongly agree about the audio. I regularly hear people talking about how good a game's soundtrack is, but most games don't stand out at all where soundtrack is concerned. I can list on one hand how many games have had songs so iconic that I can remember them. That's not to say I don't care for the audio. I recognize a lot of the audio is fantastic and feels just so natural that I don't even notice it as a stand alone piece, but an intractable part of a scene. But I certainly am not gonna go listen to most games soundtracks.

1. Persona 4 - that town/school theme is insanely catchy and burnt into my head. I also can recall the title theme being so good I'd always let it play in full when I started the game.
2. Persona 5 - tons of absolute bangers. Rivers in the Desert is perhaps my single favourite piece of video game music ever. I also love the city theme (I forget the title, "I'm a shape shifter, at Poe's mascarade").
3. Weirdly enough, FFXIII-2 - I specifically recall how good Noah's theme is. It's this somber piece that plays in a dead world setting and is just haunting.

There might be some others I can't remember. But my point is that most game music is not nearly memorable enough that I can even draw it to mind. Let alone have it caught in my head or be able to recognize it later. Even for games I've played a ton of, you could probably play something and I wouldn't recognize it.

But I was talking about music. Non music? Ugh, that's usually worse. My biggest dislike is menu blips. You know, where every time you move the cursor in a menu, it makes a chime noise. In a lot of older games, I find it's so bad that I refuse to play the game with sound on.

(Side note: I'm told that Fallout's music is great, but I'm embarrassed to say I've almost never listened to it, in part because IIRC, the radio feature where all the good stuff can be heard is actually audible to enemies, making it incompatible with stealth.)

Skyrim is definitely my comfort food. Along with Fallout. I can replay those games like nothing else, just like how I can eat mac n cheese damn near every day and never get sick of it!

I think this sometimes, too. But at the same time, I gotta admit there is some feel of convenience with not having random encounters. It can be tedious sometimes when you're just trying to do something and you have to keep doing battles at regular intervals. Eg, revisiting a low level area would be soooo boring because the battles are absolutely trivial and unrewarding and just get in the way.

Perhaps something to be said about the hybrid systems like Persona 5 have, where the battles aren't random, but rather there's enemy indicators that you have to touch to start a battle. So you can avoid battles, but if you're not careful, you'll still end up in a battle. In fact by preemptively accepting the battle, you can gain an advantage (and inversely, if you're not careful, you'll get ambushed).

I personally do enjoy long and open games. But Valhalla managed to go way too far even for me. It very noticeably came at the cost of quality, with many dull side quests. The map was actually too big. It needed to drop a region or two, because there was just soooo many regions.

Odyssey had the same issue. In fact, I found it worse there, because I recall I completed even less of that game.

The DLCs for all the AC games have at least been much tighter and a better example of a reasonable size.

I totally agree with the immunities thing. It's a common issue in RPGs. Eg, games will have countless status effects but none of them work on tougher enemies, making them basically useless. I think a lot of more modern games have understood this issue and tried to fix it.

Eg, for all it's flaws, FFXIII did status effects really great. Poison is actually very potent and a legitimate way to kill even the toughest bosses. Similarly, the death spell was useless in a lot of older games (where it was just a chance of instant death), but was extremely useful in FFXIII because it just straight up dealt heavy damage with a chance of instant death. Spamming it was a valid strategy for a lot of moderately difficult enemies that would otherwise be annoying to whittle down.

While I'm a huge fangirl of the series, they are blatantly "JPRGy" and are always very full of the numerous JRPG tropes, which can definitely give a cliched feeling.

Admittedly, overly complicated isn't a way I'd describe most of the games, but that definitely fits many of the more recent entries (especially 16). IMO, 7-10 and 12 are the peak Final Fantasy games. My personal favourites being 9 and 10. And even they have some cringe moments that I pretend don't exist lol (for 9, everything involving Quina or Eiko; for 10, stuff like most of the outfits and the utterly bizarre laughing scene).