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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 25th, 2023

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  • Pretty sure assassin roughly means person who you hire to kill people.

    The difference is effectively one of motive and contract.

    If I’m personally wronged by the victim and I personally plan to kill them myself, that’s first degree murder.

    If I don’t leave the house intending to kill someone, but end up in a fight or situation where I end up intending to cause harm to someone (even if it’s protecting myself), and end up killing someone, that’s generally second degree murder.

    Now if I’m wronged by someone, plan to have them killed, but don’t want to do it myself, so I set up a contract with a hit man and pay money to have a target killed. That’s assassination.


  • If the studio is already rather large and retains a number of employees then you’re either asking for them to divide into small teams and produce a bunch of projects in parallel (none of which will potentially sell well or be able to maintain the momentum the studio has with previous AAA title releases), or you’re essentially asking them to downsize into a smaller studio, laying off 80-90% of their workforce, to produce non-AAA titles again.

    Those smaller projects now have smaller marketing budgets (1/10th each). Smaller marketing budget generally means less sales, unless something goes viral (0.1% of the time or less, so really you need 1000 projects not just 10). Not to mention price point is going to be at $20 or maybe $30.

    Internally on each game you’ll need people to take up the roles of like art director, or whoever decides the look and feel of the art for the game. With AAA titles you used to have one of those (I assume), but now one person has to look after 10 projects, or other people have to step up (one for each project) to do that job. Should they get paid more? Now your smaller projects are costing more money.

    It’s sort of like saying 9 women can make a baby in 1 month. We know that’s impossible. AAA studios are not structured around creating 10 smaller projects.












  • You can find port crystals around the map or via quests. There are also some fixed ones on the map.

    You can place them anywhere… Outside I think? But maybe just anywhere.

    Once you find/place them you can use a Ferrystone while outside to travel to any one you have placed. There is almost always at least one Ferrystone for sale in each town, and it will refresh after a few days when you buy it. It will cost 10,000 gold.

    The number of port crystals you can place are limited (in the first game it was 8 or 9?). You can find roughly 5 per playthrough iirc. You can NewGame+ as many times as you want once far enough in the main quest (retaining most items, equipment, all vocation levels and experience…i imagine any vocation master skills too; generally just the quests and the world reset). I’m still on my first playthrough so haven’t tried.

    But there are no issues finding Port crystals and buying / finding Ferrystones. You DO NOT NEED MTX. That headline was so overblown.






  • Millennial here. Doing alright. SINK tech worker with no pets.

    Was sort of on a track to retire at as early as 45, though recent inflation has made me rethink how much I need saved.

    I bought my condo, 1 bedroom + office, in 2016, and it was within my budget and was slightly bigger than apartments I had rented in the past. Back home though I could use my parents garage when needed.

    Now I feel somewhat trapped because to get even a small place with a garage (I miss working on my car myself), is prohibitively expensive given how interest rates and house values have changed. Sure my condo is up quite a bit in valuation (something like 50% increase in the past 8 years), but homes have gone up quite a bit more, like 100% increase in some cases. Also my HOA dues just keep going up too, and we don’t have a pool or anything crazy. Not to mention developers in the area grab up small starter homes before they can hit the market, bulldozer them, and drop a mansion on the same land that is completely unaffordable for me.

    So my options are stay where I am (and it’s fine for now I guess), or move and expect to have to work much longer, and have a longer commute.

    Pretty much checks all the boxes you said. No debt except mortgage. Emergency fund. 401k. HSA. I’m not house poor. These days I can afford pretty much anything I could want in life except for a slightly bigger house :p

    But I look at how prices are changing and I’m still worried for the future. Ideally I live another 60 years. Statistically another 40 or so. That’s a long time for high rates of inflation and greed to change things.

    Edit: also with all the tech layoffs happening, there’s just an underlying sense of gloom. I’ve been laid off twice throughout my career. Once it took me something like 6 months to find a job. The other time a little under 2 months. Not fun though.