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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Guild Wars2 is very good.

    It downscales your level if you go back to older areas, so you can play with lower level friends. (Though it’s still pretty generous, and the high level friends will be more effective). So if your friends aren’t playing much, you can still coop with them when they do play.

    There’s a lot of content. Most of the maps have stuff just happening. There’s also instanced content for 5, 10, or … I think private convergences can go up to 20?

    There’s not really a gear grind. When you hit max level (which is pretty easy) good-enough gear is very easy to get. A smidge better than that is a little expensive but still very feasible. The fanciest gear is numerically the same, but let’s you reskin and swap stats for free, which is nice.


  • The other day I was updating something and a test failed. I looked at it and saw I had written it, and left a comment that said like “{Coworker} says this test case is important”. Welp. He was right. Was a subtle wrong that could’ve gone out to customers, but the wrong stayed just on my local thanks to that test.


  • I would have questions about how they work with a team and structure.

    Are they going to be okay with planning work out two weeks ahead? Sometimes hobbyists do like 80% of a task and then wander off (it’s me with some of my hobbies).

    Are they going to be okay following existing code standards? I don’t want to deal with someone coming in and trying to relitigate line lengths or other formatting stuff, or someone who’s going to reject the idea of standards altogether.

    Are they going to be okay giving and getting feedback from peers? Sometimes code review can be hard for people. I recently had a whole snafu at work where someone was trying to extend some existing code into something it wasn’t meant to do*, and he got really upset when the PR was rejected.

    Do they write tests? Good ones? I feel like a lot of self taught hobbyists don’t. A lot of professionals don’t. I don’t want to deal with someone’s 4000 line endpoint that has no tests but “just works see I manually tested it”



  • I think having areas with weaker or stronger enemies is fine. Good, even. So long as you can tell by looking at them what you’re getting into.

    Dark Souls generally does this. A rotting skeleton is a low threat. A giant knight in black armor and man sized sword is a bigger threat.

    Oblivion will often have dudes that visually and behaviorally are the same, but hit way differently because of the numbers assigned to them. You can’t really look at a scene and understand what you’re getting into.

    Other games also do a bad job here. Borderlands for example will have identical looking bandits, but in this area they’re indestructible level 100, and that one they’re push over level 5. The ass-creed Viking one did the same thing. Archers on one side of the river you could ignore, but the far side would one hit you.

    I think a lot of studios don’t want to invest in the extra art assets and stuff when it’s cheaper to just use the same monster model and assign it different numbers.


  • I feel like trying to combine

    • high vertical power growth
    • non linear “open world”
    • power fantasy

    all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.

    Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.

    Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.

    A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.

    Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600

    If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.

    I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.

    Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.