erin

What an insane take on a sailing expansion for Mount and Blade, of all games. Yeah, the medieval field battle and fiefdom game was super incomplete without *checks notes* ship to ship combat??

Intelligence is an inherited trait?

As the other commenter said, only one person needs the dlc to play the (non-character) DLC content. It also frequently goes on pretty big sales, though right now it’s probably full price since the newest (and imo, best) DLC just dropped. Each DLC is a significant content expansion to the game, and is absolutely worth the asking price (except maybe seekers, which fell a bit flat for me on release. It’s since been rebalanced).

If you wanted to weigh which DLC to consider getting, I would recommend Void if you like the idea of modified items that do cool shit, an alternate ending to the game, and some cool new mechanics. It comes with a dope sniper survivor and a void survivor that trades health for damage or vice versa.

Seekers comes with an alternate path of stages leading to an alternate (very challenging) boss. I find that the seekers boss is a severe difficulty check compared to the ease of reaching the boss, compared to the void boss which you only fight late in a run or after a different boss. Two of the survivors feel lackluster to me, but False Son is an absolute beast and the only melee character capable of truly tanking rather than using i-frames or mobility.

Alloyed Collective is the newest, and comes tons of new mechanics (free for everyone but expanded on in the DLC), a new path to follow, SEVERAL new super interesting boss fights, tons of new stages, and tons of new enemies. Overall, super worth it. The characters it adds are a drone controller (a previously unviable play style) and a loot gremlin that gets tons of really awesome interactions and A Cube.

My list would be Alloyed, Void, then Seekers. Alloyed and Void add the most to the base game, Seekers is mostly alternate stuff that won’t touch your runs, though the new shrines are pretty useful early game.

My only complaint is that “femcel” has largely been reclaimed and repurposed from the incel movement to an ironic label mostly used by queer women.

Chiming in as another poly person, having been poly and monogamous in different parts of my life (currently poly). A lot of people that want to be in a poly situation do not fully comprehend the responsibility involved. It can be easy and casual, but I’ve seen multiple polycules fall apart (dramatically) due to insufficient communication and poor management of expectations. It’s totally possible to be poly, and in a serious, committed relationship. I was. It’s also very very difficult. It takes a lot of work, communication, and trust.

Like you said, I’ve been in relationships with people that truly believe they have infinite love to give, which even if that were true, no one has infinite time and emotional bandwidth. I’ve had a longstanding rule that I’ve set for myself, that any committed relationship I am in must have a rock solid foundation of communication and trust before polyamory is possible, and I always close off my poly relationships until I am at that point in a relationship (obviously assuming my partner is okay with that). People need to communicate their desires going in, and should regularly check in and discuss boundaries, expectations, and hopes for the future in any relationship, and much more so in poly ones.

Fucking talk to each other, people. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and extend the same level of honesty and trust that you wish to receive. If I and my past partners always approached relationships with a communication-first perspective, we would’ve avoided a lot of pain and heartbreak.

Could not disagree more. Nudes don’t have to be “jerk of material.” That’s not why my partners and I send them to each other. They’re more for mutual appreciation. We like looking at each other’s bodies because we’re attracted to each other, not because we’re expecting to rub one out. Also, sounds like you/the people you share nudes with need to take better nudes lol. We take excellent photos with excellent lighting (when the mood strikes us). Taking a “photo of your gooch” from the same angle is the woman equivalent of the right side of the meme. We all should know better.

Pose, angle, and lighting, people!

If that seems good to you, please stay out of education. Also, I’m not your friend, please don’t call me that. It’s patronizing. I brought it up because it was relevant to my greater point and was an amusing anecdote about the wrong way to teach dated literature, not because I’m still stuck on a minor event a decade ago. I’ve had far worse experiences with teachers that actually were formative, in the sense that they were traumatic. Traumatizing kids isn’t “pushing them,” it’s just hurting them in their formative years. That teacher didn’t traumatize me, but for someone less confident socially or in their opinions, it easily could have been. Imagine forcing a shy, neurodivergent kid to argue against 20+ other people for 45 minutes about something as divisive as human nature and morality, while simultaneously shutting down any discussion of the author’s racism, which is very relevant to that discussion. That teacher didn’t know me at all. That could’ve been me.

Well, I’m glad you have a such a broad picture of my psychology from a one off Internet comment about an event that I hadn’t thought about in years. It didn’t make me who I am, the people I chose to spend time with and the excellent teachers that taught me did. Encouraging a lopsided debate about a topic where even discussing the racist bias isn’t allowed is not something that teacher did to help teach or form me.

When Piggy drops racial slurs in reference to the barbaric behavior of the other boys. Essentially, “We’re white! We’re better than this. Stop acting like [slur].”

My problem is not with reading something I disagree with, it’s how it is taught. It was not taught in a way to demonstrate bias, and the author’s views were never even discussed. There was nearly no critical discussion about the validity of the book’s message, it was taken at face value. That’s not teaching.

The majority certainly doesn’t choose the active misery of others, and on the scale of the Lord of the Flies setting, humans have consistently shown collaboration and mutual aid. We’ve documented many instances of stranded groups, and even some people that volunteered to be stuck on a raft together for months, and they always choose to work together, despite their differences. Capitalism, fascism, and radical individualism/nationalism are the root of the societal scale evils, because they’re ideologies that propagate in the hands of the few that are willing to benefit at the cost of the many. Humans have not always lived under capitalism.

Intelligent, compassionate, and a vessel for the author’s racist worldview.

Don’t mind me. I hate that book, and I hate that it’s taught in every school as if it has anything important to say. We’ve run the Lord of the Flies experiment, both accidentally and very intentionally. Every time, we’ve demonstrated that humans are better than that, and the author’s beliefs about human nature were both very incorrect and very racist.

I still resent being forced to debate my classmates about whether human nature was intrinsically “good” or “evil,” directly after reading that book, even though it was 25 years ago. I was the lone voice on the side of “good,” for lack of a “good and evil are subjective terms, but nonetheless humans are empathetic and this book is horseshit” team. I got dogpiled by 20 some other students for about 45 minutes. Fuck you Ms. Brown, and fuck you William Golding. That book has nothing important to say other than exposing its author’s racist insecurities.

At least for me, the idea that a game might someday be unplayable for me doesn’t stop me from wanting to enjoy it. I like multiplayer games, and I have neither the means nor interest to host my own servers for them. I’ve gotten far more than $40 worth of entertainment from Helldivers 2. I think games should stay accessible and not be killed when servers stop hosting, and be available to play offline. However, the lack of those things won’t stop me from enjoying something now. I don’t consider that money lost, it’s spent, as long as I got an equivalent value of entertainment. I didn’t set my money on fire, I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of fun, far more than $40 could buy me elsewhere. I expect to continue enjoying helldivers for years.

You’re absolutely right, that games shouldn’t be killed when they’re no longer supported, and that they should be playable offline and LAN. As things stand though, it’s the same as spending money on an amusement park, or movie, or any other form of entertainment. If you’re not going to be able to enjoy it without those things, that’s your prerogative, but I think you could easily get your money’s worth, especially compared to overpriced AAA competitors.