@Addfwyn
@lemmy.mlNot a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.
*MMO-ish in Legends.
I feel save points themselves are becoming an increasingly archaic design choice. Just let us save anywhere, especially in a single player game. I think most people are just suspending games without expressly saving most of the time.
I am really conflicted on this, and I think there needs to be some balance or cost/reward. I mostly agree though.
An example I often use about this is in MMOs. WoW felt like a huge world, especially back in vanilla. You could fly end to end and never hit a loading screen, it felt awesome. If you gave me a map of Azeroth and asked me to label all the zones, I probably could. It's moved a bit more to people teleporting place to place, but I still can fly end to end of a continent.
On the other hand, FFXIV is a series of maps with loading zones between all of them (a necessity because of the older console architecture, I understand) and teleports in every town. You never actually go end to end of Eorzea. If you gave me a map of Eorzea and asked me to label only the three majors cities on it, I doubt I could. It is definitely convenient to just be able to warp around place to place for a trivial amount of currency.
It takes a lot out of the feeling of "world" to just have a bunch of arbitrary areas, I admit. It's a tough balancing act between player convenience and player immersion.
Hate:
-Real Time Timers: Think FF13 Lightning Returns. It doesn't matter how many mechanics there are to alleviate the pressure, they make me so stressed out that I don't enjoy playing the actual game.
-Unrepairable Durability Mechanics: I mean things like Breath of the Wild where you can use a weapon X times before it breaks with no way to repair it. I end up never wanting to use "my good weapon" and tryto beat entire games with a 2x4. If I can go to a vendor and repair my gear, I don't mind as much.
-Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
Love:
-Meaningful Choices: Not two dialogue options with the same end result, but things that shape either story or gameplay. This could be a major branching story choice OR something like a talent tree.
-Base Building: I like build base. It doesn't have to be a city builder or strategy game (Though I absolutely love those), but I am a sucker for games including any degree of base building. It's my favourite part of the XCom games as an example. Bonus if I have to make choices about my base, see previous point.
I don't actually miss much, but I also don't really use my phone a whole lot. I have a smartphone, but it's pretty close to factory settings. I don't really install apps outside Line, I very rarely make calls on it. It probably gets used for transit directions/maps, mail, and Line 90% of the time.
Maybe not a specific feature, but I do dislike the general trend towards large and larger phones/screens. I must prefer the smaller phones we used to have; I know Apple had their smaller phone lines recently but I think they didn't do particularly well.
Japan, you usually use "Taro Tanaka" as the goto placeholder name. Tanaka is a very common surname here and it's super easy to write as well (田中). Sato is actually the most common but also a lot harder to write (佐藤). Tanaka is also a very "working class" name, it litearlly means "in the rice field" and most likely comes from families with a background of rice farmers. Taro also a very common given name; there have been quite a few Taro Tanakas throughout history despite being the placeholder name on most forms and the like. Taro, incidentally means "Big/Strong Son".
I am not sure offhand of a female equilvalent, it's usually Taro as the placeholder.
I was there in for several months in graduate school doing research for my thesis, wasn't part of a tour. Based out of Kim Il Sung university at the time. I spent about a year in South Korea as well prior. Since I wasn't on a formal tour, I was left to my own devices a lot of the time unless I needed a guide to help me get access somewhere.
Technically yes, every rural farming village could have been secretly micced with hidden cameras on the off chance that a foreigner was going to stop by, but that seems unlikely. This was a little over ten years ago so cell phones (which would be a fairly common metric of government surviellence) were not as prevalent in the DPRK yet as they are now, so a lot of people weren't carrying one. I was a no-name graduate student, not a well-known diplomat, I don't think the government was particularly invested in spending large sums of money tracking me. So yes, technically they COULD have, but just as much as any other state could have.
Obviously anecdotal, but from the people I spoke to in the DPRK, generally very well liked. And no, I did not have government minders making sure they said "the right thing". Several programs were quite popular, particularly housing programs. There was a big push for community-based activities during my stay, even smaller towns had community centers where people could go after work to learn new skills or continuing education. The university I was based out of was pretty international as well, but even there people didn't spend that much time thinking about the US, nor did they have a particularly negative view of the average American citizen. More curious than hostile.
will just continue to indoctrinate its population with propaganda.
Oh yes, definitely that doesn't happen in any of those "civilized" western countries right? Nobody making up things like "North Koreans have no word for love" or "We push trains to work every day".
Why would the people of North Korea tolerate the current government other than to resist invasion?
The Kim family has done a lot for the people in the DPRK, and is generally very well liked. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but a lot of the problems stem not from the current DPRK leadership but the international (read: US) sanctions placed on them. Compared to the hypercapitalist hellscape of SK, the work-life balance in the DPRK seems downright utopian. Prior to the US invasion, the Korean peninsula was fairly unified in their support of socialism.
The people would certainly welcome peace, I just don't know how that is possible while the threat of the USA looms. People like to portray them as an aggressive country, but they have never done anything to another coountry except threaten to defend themselves.