loobkoob
Last Epoch and Grim Dawn are probably most in line with Diablo, I think.
People have mentioned Path Of Exile, and I've played a lot of it, but I don't think it feels particularly like Diablo any more, even though it started out that way. It's quite unforgiving, and even a lot of experienced players feel like they need to follow build guides rather than work things out for themselves. Its learning curve is hundreds or thousands of hours long. Of course, the reason for that is that it has incredible depth, variety and complexity, which may be a selling point or a deterrent depending on what you like! I definitely like the complexity of it myself, but it's very overwhelming when you're new. The reason I don't think it's all that in line with Diablo these days, though, is simply the pacing of the gameplay. You blow up screens of enemies at a time, and your deaths are often so fast that you're not really sure what killed you.
Path Of Exile also heavily revolves around its trading economy. Item drop rates are balanced around players being able to trade for them, which makes trading somewhat mandatory (unless you're a bit of a masochist). The economy is fairly complex, with there being a lot of different currencies, and quite a lot of factors that can affect the value of an item. I'll let you decide whether you find this appealing or not - some people do, some people don't! I do think it causes some issues with the balance and progression of the game, but it's interesting to say the least, even if you wish you didn't have to engage with it.
Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it's still solid. It's got some good builds, the dual-class system and constellations system make for some interesting variety. It's got an offline mode, as well as online co-op play. Its real selling point, though, at least for me, is it's absolutely soaked with atmosphere. It's very, well, grim, but the world is really immersive and it has a great setting in general with a solid story and some great lore. It also has quite a lot of mods available (including the Reign Of Terror mod I mentioned in another comment in the thread that adds the entire Diablo 2 campaign and all its classes to Grim Dawn).
Last Epoch is more mechanically interesting than Grim Dawn, I think, but it's lacking in the story and world-building. It's still in early access, although its full release is next week. It has quite a lot of depth and complexity, but it's all done in an intuitive way that means you can jump into the game blindly and work things out for yourself fairly easily. It has a good variety of skills, and the fact that each skill has its own fairly comprehensive skill tree means you can play the same skills in very different ways. It has a wonderful itemisation system that does a great job of making you actually engage with the loot you find on the floor (which is an issue in other loot games), and some of the best crafting I've ever seen in a game. The dev team also manages to come up with some really creative and somewhat intuitive solutions to things they perceive as issues in other ARPGs.
Last Epoch's biggest drawback is that its endgame is currently a little lacking in comparison to POE (which has a very rich and deep endgame, but is also a ten-year-old game that's been updated constantly). It's still far, far better than Diablo 4's, though, and will obviously only improve as more is added. Last Epoch has some truly brilliant systems in place for the devs to build off - and frankly, I still think it's great now - but it'll only get better as more content gets added over time.
I love all three games I've talked about for different reasons, and honestly, they're all well worth playing!
I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I'd seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn't look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I'd seen for a major publisher game.
Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.
A reverse image search comes up with a lot of pictures that have been taken in this exact location. I've no idea which is the original, unfortunately.
The past month or so I've started encountering quite a few deepfakes on dating sites. I honestly can't tell they're deepfakes just by looking; the only reason I've realised tell is because they were very obviously Instagram model photos. I reverse image searched them to find where they were taken from and confirm my suspicions that the profile's using stolen photos, only to find that the original photos aren't quite the same. It'll be the exact same shot with the same body but a different face, and with identifying tattoos removed, moles adds, etc.
If they weren't obvious modelling shots that made me want to reverse image search them, I wouldn't have known at all. It makes me wonder how many deepfaked images I've encountered on dating sites already and just not known about because they've been fairly innocuous-looking photos...
Not that your suggestion is necessarily bad in general, but I don't really think it's necessary when it comes to Factorio. I think it should be clear from playing the demo whether 100+ more hours of that seems worth the asking price for someone. It's probably the most representative demo I've ever played; the full game is just the demo but more. There are no surprises down the line. There are no random pivots to other genres, or the game trying to stick its fingers in too many pies. There's no narrative to screw up. There's no "oh, they clearly just spent all their time polishing the first hour of the game and the rest of it is a technical mess". It's the same gameplay loop from the demo for another 50 hours until you "win".
... and then another 50 hours after that when you decide to optimise things. And then another 100 hours when you decide to make a train-themed base. And then another 700 hours when you discover some of the mods that exist...
Also the visuals change with every episode to reflect where all the key ships and stuff are in the system!
Factorio's demo absolutely convinced me to buy it.
Demos only really work well if the game is fantastic and able to convey that in a small slice of the game, though.
It'll let you see which pages you've red!
My experience with therapists, having dated one for several years and having known several others in my personal life, is that they're usually just normal people - often with traumatic pasts themselves - who want to help others. They don't have any magical therapising powers; what sets them apart from just venting to a stranger is that they're genuinely trying to help you, and generally know how to prompt you to be more introspective.
I think a lot of people put the idea of therapy - and therapists - on a pedestal, and people go into it expecting the therapist to just fix things in a nice, simple way. In reality, therapy is about venting, introspection, and attempting to give the person the tools to change things for themselves. It still takes a lot of work (and time) outside of the therapy session for the person to actually see change, and people who don't put in the time or effort probably won't see much benefit from therapy.
Finding the right therapist for you can also be difficult. You need to find someone you're comfortable opening up to, and who you feel "gets" you, which can be easier said than done. And then there's the pricing which can be an issue, of course. With potentially incorrect expectations, and not finding the right therapist, it's easy for people to try therapy and find it useless or actively bad.
As for my experience with therapy itself: I had therapy for some issues relating to sleep. The therapy itself didn't help me, largely because the therapist didn't necessarily have a better understanding of sleep than I did. Which isn't to say she had a poor understanding; I studied psychology in the past, and also spent time looking into sleep myself to try to resolve my issues myself before I went to therapy, so my understanding of sleep is well above average. But it meant she wasn't really able to help me. She did end up pointing me to a resource that resulted in a diagnosis for me, though, so it wasn't entirely wasted. And with what I was diagnosed with, therapy can't really help anyway, so I can't blame her at all!
I've never officially had therapy for any emotional issues or mental health stuff, although obviously having dated a therapist, there was a lot of "casual" therapy. I feel like I probably would have benefitted from therapy quite a bit before that relationship, but since then I do feel I've had the tools to deal with things myself more. I'm sure I'd still probably benefit from therapy, but I'm quite happy now so I've not felt too much of a need.
What's changed about Instagram? I'm not familiar enough to know, but I don't feel like I've heard anything all that controversial about it outside of Meta's general "pay to remove ads" thing. I certainly haven't heard anything about systemic enshittification like I have with Twitter, Reddit and TikTok; have I missed anything?
I absolutely agree about Herbert not being a good storyteller or writer. I found it a difficult read simply because of the prose, and I really didn't like his use of an omniscient narrator. I don't really like omniscient narrators in general, but I found Dune's narrator especially difficult because of how freely it switches between characters. I often found that if my focus slipped even slightly, I'd realise a couple of minutes later I had no idea whose perspective the narrator was giving any more and have to backtrack paragraphs or even pages to work it out.
I think I perhaps appreciated the book more than you, but I didn't find it an enjoyable read. It certainly gave me a greater appreciation of the film, though, which I also very much enjoyed! And I'm glad I read it simply because it's such an influential book in a genre I love - it's interesting to see how so many things have build from its foundations.