I took his criticisms of the combat as basically saying "this system is not interesting enough to form a satisfying gameplay loop". That's a critical statement which I actually agree with, though from my perspective that's a key part of Persona's core design: neither the combat system nor the social link system are endlessly enjoyable, so the player is intrinsically motivated to avoid lingering for too long and properly close the core gameplay loop by advancing the calendar. It's that sort of pendulum-like cadence which gives the series its unique sense of momentum.

I do think that it's a shame RPS's Matt was unable to find joy in P3R's gameplay loop due to disliking the social-link system... but I also see it as an opportunity to better understand the game as a holistic package in a way that can't be achieved through a more carefully measured, quantitative analysis. The way I see things, the game is the game -- I'm much more interested in understanding what's in the game rather than what's not, if that makes any sense.

I tend to prefer clicking through the unscored reviews first since I find that it's generally a mark of a quality outlet. Rock Paper Shotgun in particular is an old favorite of mine, so their's is the first review that I clicked on and let me tell you guys: it's a real firecracker!

Matt clearly didn't have a good time and I had to respectfully disagree with a lot of the points he's made, but even so... his points are well-articulated and sensible. I'm rather glad for his uncommon perspective on the topic and I do think that RPS ultimately picked the right writer for the job. He hasn't particularly changed my mind about a day-one purchase, of course -- the main difference is now I'll have a more nuanced and realistic expectation for what's inside.

It's a pretty different situation under closer examination. The DnD developers are ex-Nexon employees and they (allegedly) pitched the idea internally before deciding to leave and take the idea with them.

Nexon thought that they had a legal leg to stand on because of how IP laws work (i.e.: employee ideas on company time are company IP). Perhaps more importantly; they probably felt a need to retaliate in order to send a message to other employees who might want to try something similar.

Palworld, on the other hand, is made by a team with no ties whatsoever to GameFreak. If Pokemon were a younger franchise they might possibly have a patent case of some kind, but even the 3D games go back almost 24 years now.

History Youtube gets pretty whack about this because Google's adsense algorithm freaks out when words like "Nazi" and "Stalin" appear. To name a few examples:

• "The Famine" in place of "Holodomor"
• Jo. [CENSORED] in place of "Stalin", "The Patsies" in place of "The Nazis"

The second example is particularly amusing, being a video about how Shostakovich circumvented soviet censorship while self-censoring all instances of "Stalin" within the script.

You may be interested in reading this post about the process of packaging Steam.

tl;dr: It's mostly an annoyance reserved for packagers to deal with. Dynamically linked executables can be patched in a fairly universal fashion to work without FHS, so that's the go-to approach. If the executable is statically linked, the package may have to ship a source patch instead. If the executable is statically linked & close-source, the packagers are forced to resort to simulating an FHS environment via chroot.

Yes, exactly. The fans have spoken and we want the real Vaporeon!

It'll take you straight from pre-diabetes to post-diabetes

Dude, I feel a lot of what you're saying. I spent years making awful wages at terrible jobs, then fell ass-backwards into a six-figure career. The whiplash is really hard going from thinking you'll die young and poor into having more than you know what to do with.

With that being said, I have advice to share if you're interested in such things:

• Six figures isn't rich, but it certainly is more than enough. After this point, finding even more money isn't really going to make you much happier, so start prioritizing other important gains you can make in your career (hours, day-to-day job satisfaction)
• Focus on improving emotional intelligence. You can afford stuff now, so you can no longer hide behind notions like "this stuff isn't for poor people like me" -- you need to find actual reasons to say no to things and that requires the skill of knowing why you want something.
• Lots of problems can be solved with money, but you have to be super careful about it or you'll just end up wrecking yourself! Feeling mixed up? Don't buy self-help books -- get therapy. Feeling lonely? Don't buy friends -- take some classes at the local community center. Feeling self-conscious? Don't get a face-lift -- hire a personal trainer and maybe a stylist.
• Money guilt is real and it's OK. Use that feeling to keep yourself down on Earth. Obviously look out for #1 first -- pay off bad debt, max out your 401k, set aside enough cash to max out your insurance deductibles and still live a few months without income -- once you've done that, dial back on the money hoarding. Be better than the assholes who kept you down: tip well, give back to the people who make the things you love, be charitable. Sharing is caring.

Ah, yes, just over five attempts for every human alive. I assume they took the reply addresses at face value and have forwarded 45 billion cease & desist letters to Microsoft's Redmond office?

Could have been MMANAA 😔