I recall having trouble killing Artorias with spells back when I reached him for the first time, years ago. From Software loves boosting magic defenses for enemies and bosses from DLCs for some reason… My magic-only run in DS2 has stalled when I tried to beat DLCs - it was waaay too grindy for me.

(Counts) Yes.

Open-source, and technology in general. There was a time when I would spend most of my free time playing with niche software, learning about the history of free software movement and trying to get into programming.

Nowadays? Well, I still use and love free software of course. I wasn’t disillusioned in it or anything (especially given the state of modern proprietary software, eg Windows 11). But the interest is gone - I have my comfy setup, and changing or fixing anything in it feels like pain. I can’t stand drama that fills the open source community and prefer to keep VERY, very far from it. Outside of gamedev, programming didn’t work for me that much (as a hobby - I do want to make money off it).

My interest in Fediverse is an accelerated version of this due to the social aspect of this technology - after trying out the microblogging part of Fedi I realized that social media isn’t for me, and so only Lemmy remains in my daily usage.
To be fair, I don’t use the centralized services which the Fedi projects are meant to replace (xitter, instagram, youtube, etc).

The problem with pyromancy is that it is low on uses - and there’s so much fodder in the Archive, I’m afraid it will feel more like playing Resident Evil in Dark Souls (= avoiding most enemies because ammo is too precious).

I mean any magic, not just sorcery, yeah. I want to believe it’s doable.

This is why I absolutely loved classic Doom: finally a shooter with no cutscenes, dialogues or stupid animations that blocks my sight. Neither Doom 3 nor modern Doom are capable of achieving this power!

The sad part is, video games age so much quicker compared to other forms of media. It’s been only 20 years but Morrowind already so clunky that even those who like the game would rather play literally any other RPG over it. 2d games suffer less from this but the lack of accessibility options, unusual controls, technical limitations and their influence on mechanics (e.g. life system) are all still a big problem that gets only worse with time.

Retro games can be enjoyable but whether they are worth the struggle is questionable.

I agree that I can’t talk about genres I’m not familiar with, like platformers and action games (which I guess are the best contenders for retro gamers). With that said, even when I played through widely acclaimed as one of the best RPGs - Ultima 4, I still couldn’t enjoy it. I’m curious how common this experience with popular retro games.

Of course. I am a big fan of the original Doom games (Heretic and Hexen included) myself. But still, I feel like these are exceptions, not the rule.

Public bathrooms and other places sorted by gender. Dating is hard for similar results…

Literally any social gathering that doesn’t sort out bigots (read: most of them) can end up as a disaster if you’re openly queer.

On piefed.blahaj.zone, can see the pinned post only when I switch to the “hot” sort - on “new” none can be seen.

Finally got around to playing Ena Dream BBQ. Damn, this game sure has charm! Playing it in short sessions because it’s very tiring to play (too hyperactive).

I am on Blahaj Zone tho ;)

What I mean is that, when you make your post local-only on e.g. blahaj, you also prevent good people at Beehaw and other safe instances from participating. I DO support moving to Blahaj though, I think it will improve the situation a little. But the struggle will continue nonetheless.

The closest Lemmy can do is making your posts visible only to users from your instance. But there isn’t one single women-friendly instance so IMHO it isn’t a great solution.

All of them, basically