Hi all!
I would like to ask for some help again. My build is more and more finished and seems quiet op at the moment, altough I'm still at act 7. I'm lvl 60 and would like to polish more my build and start using/leveling up and skill gems I'll need later. I'm a juggernaut, main skill is cyclone, I use a two handed sword, I'm a purely phys dmg dealer. So, my questions:
- My crit chance is only 5%. With precise aura it's only 8%. Should I put points on crit chance skill nodes, or is it only advised for builds who focus everything around crit?
- I use two auras at the moment. I read somewhere that players tend to use 5-6 auras endgame. I don't understand how. My two auras at the moment reserve 99% of my mana pool. My mana regen and mana leech is op, so I can play with only 1% of it, but don't know how could I slot more auras.
- Is there any way to support aura skills? I haven't found anything useful only something that gives them bigger radius, but is there maybe something that lowers their mana requirement?
- I use cast on damage taken with molten shell and enfeeble. I could add another red skill gem, but which? Atm I am using one which gives 50% more uptime for molten shell and enfeeble. Not sure if it's useful at all, but have no idea what other red skill could I put here.
Thank you!

Hi all
I'm building a new home in Sydney Australia. I've been provided with the below quote from a reputable company with 20 years experience.
I'm looking for some guidance around further questions that I should look to ask here to ensure that I end up with the best, most efficient product
Thanks
Our quote for the supply and installation of your sauna 2100W x 1600D x 2100H is $20,980 + GST
Our price is inclusive of the following:
Ceiling: Roof to be colorbond (colour tbc by client) with matching capping, underside to be Thermo Modified European Spruce - 140mm x 16mm
External Walling: Thermo Modified European Spruce - 140mm x 19mm
Internal walling and ceilings: Premium Western Red Cedar - 84mm x 10mm
Flooring: slab and finished floor by client
Windows: Qty 2 - 500W x 700D - double glazed windows with clear glass
Insulation: - Mineral wool R2.0 for walling and R 3.0 for the ceilings. Your sauna walling will be lined with authentic aluminium foil reflector for additional insulation and heat retention..
Benches in two levels: Premium Western Red Cedar - 90mm x 17mm
Top Bench - in a straight line - 600mm deep
Low bench - L shaped and both benches - 450 mm deep
Grill: Custom made grill between top bench and low bench
Backrest: Custom made backrests with integrated LED strip lighting (12v transformer, waterproof IP65, aluminum tubing)
Ventilation: Authentic Harvia ventilation inlet to be installed - this allows for natural air recirculation
Door: Full glass door - 690w x 1890h - with clear glass.
Heater: Harvia VEGA Pro BC165
Heater Accessories: Harvia CX180M - external control panel, Harvia heater rocks
Sauna accessories kit: - 4L wooden bucket, 48cm wooden ladle, thermo/hygrometer, sandglass 15min
Delivery: delivery of all sauna timber, components and accessories to clients premises
Installation: full installation by our team of experts
Not Included:
Electrical connections - all electrical connections need to be completed by a licenced electrician
Plumbing
Oiling and Painting

This may sound a little vague. But I continue to have roadblocks and could use some advice. I feel like I literally am just spinning my wheels extensively trying to understand features and ability to quickly build.
I've been teaching myself C#/.net/Azure(Appservice, functions, devops) through classes, YouTube, tutorials, books and lots of code on Github. I hate video learning! 6 months in but 3 months of 25 hours a week specifically .Net. I do feel like I'm starting to confidently understand high level concepts, a lot of stack specific knowledge (Azure) and getting through lots of basic test projects. But I'm finding/feeling that I am so slowed down by my lack of knowledge about features, functions, shortcuts and available Nuget packages (Visual Studio in particular). That it takes me a week to do things that a well versed developer could knock out in a couple hours.
For example (and I'm probably not describing or designing correctly):
My current tests/builds have been trying to build an internal API for feature management (5 total features) literally just setting bool values for enabled or disabled. Then attempting authorization to modify these values. (Don't laugh) For me this encompassed:

1. Building my entities/models
2. Building tables, DB connections etc.
3. Scratching direct connection, SQL admin and learning EF
4. Incorrectly testing/designing many projects utilizing EF and DB Contexts
5. Learning Azure SQL plans. Fucking up and spending $100 on a DB in an hour.
6. Realized that I've never utilized Intellisense, Scaffolding etc. properly and frustrated that have been basically typing everything
7. Learned about Swagger
8. Realized I've been creating horrific dependencies and basically making my API's a two part broken Monolith (Injecting as Services)
9. Found out that NSwag is a thing ... haven't even attempted to crack that configuration/build.
10. Spent a week trying to understand basic identity/authorization and testing user ability to modify the features.
11. Played with JWTBearer Tokens and couldn't figure out how to test without building a frontend with login. This included extensive playing with Azure DevOps and Github workflows to automate deployment.
12. 30 days has gone by... I don't feel like I'm any closer to building a proper functioning, secure API and don't even know where I'm going wrong. I watch videos and experienced devs appear to be able to do this in an hour? Meanwhile I'm sitting here figuring out that I should have and don't need to build my API client. Authorization seems impossible.
13. 3 months in and I'm... Incapable of testing properly, don't know what tools to use, or even know if I'm doing it right (IE don't even know what unit tests are or how to build). Don't know how to do proper logging. Confused how to make things go faster, struggling to write/find code that does what I want then I figure out there are packages that complete some of these tasks I want easily. I mean I feel like these are really basic mistakes/concepts.

My questions are literally how does one pull it together? Is this just how it goes? Am I'm trying to do fullstack and this isn't how anyone does it anymore? Once a dev figures something out do they stick with that method/packages until its proven to be wrong, slow to build or a security risk? Is this cost of doing business/I'm expecting too much for the amount of time spent learning?
ULTIMATELY I'm trying to produce an MVP for a software product and I'm contemplating hiring/partnering with a confident dev to complete things I can't seem to knock out if this just proves to not be my thing. But if I am on the right path I'll continue on if this appears to be the right amount of output for the effort/time.
Thanks for reading/advice!

Super Long Post! But this is a rather huge update that includes GitRepos.
I cover a lot of this stuff in my video found here - https://youtu.be/IxMLU15dUGw (It's like an hour long and goes over a lot of the stuff said here, before they even released this info. They even use some of the same stuff as evidence.)
Discord Link to info - To see the update in it's origional format. https://discord.com/channels/988365908009447485/988662112454836234/1090510064609140867
Full list of assets purchased to make Dark & Darker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16DjiRitUa_R3IkelPNKW0Q8F-H1KFuWXTxxw2q0SCQo/edit#gid=0
Git logs for the first year of development. The earliest entries start at the bottom of the document. It is a little embarrassing showing all our development mistakes and bugs but we believe that is further proof that Dark and Darker was built from the ground up. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qyRk3zyIMuwTOvL3E8zchxw9hiukpKWC/view?usp=sharing
- Although our company was officially founded in October 2021, our development logs go back to September 2021. This can be explained by our company history below.
​
- A bit of background history regarding IRONMACE. Several of our founding members started work as a development team starting in September 2021. The members worked for more than a month in a shabby jiujitsu gym without pay using our own personal PCs as a test of our resolve and teamwork, and also because we had no investors. Once we realized that our members could form the foundations of a viable company, the company was formally founded in late October 2021. The original funds were quickly exhausted and IRONMACE almost went bankrupt as we were unable to acquire investors. Luckily members rallied together and collected funds from over twenty friends and families to bankroll the company for another couple months. This was also quickly exhausted and IRONMACE relied on outsourcing work unrelated to game development to help it survive another month. It was only through grueling meetings and countless, countless, countless rejections that IRONMACE was finally able to find brave VCs willing to fund the studio in 2022. The studio made it point to accept as little money as possible to stay hungry and motivated to get to the current point.
​
1. Our Korean Response to the takedown claim - From Iron Mace
We are Iron Mace, a game developer in Korea developing the PC game Dark & Darker. Through this document, we will deal with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Take Down Notice (DMCA Take Down Notice) filed against us by Nexon Korea Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Nexon”), and our position on allegations of copyright infringement and leakage of trade secrets.
Through its own investigation, Nexon said, "Dark and Darker appears to have been developed by copying and stealing trade secrets and copyrighted information owned by Nexon." said. We want to make it clear that this claim is baseless. Our company, Iron Mace, has never owned or used Nexon's copyrighted materials or trade secrets.
Nexon belatedly registered the copyright related to the P3 project in February 2023, more than six months after Dark and Darker was released, and is claiming copyright infringement against it. The first point of their claim is that one of our members (then director, hereinafter A) illegally moved important assets to a private server “without permission”.
Our response to the above claim is as follows.
Due to the mandatory remote work policy implemented by Nexon in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, A received written approval from Nexon executives to use an external personal server to improve the team's work efficiency from 2020 to 2021. While developing using a personal server for about a year, A asked if it was okay to continue using the personal server. The head of the senior organization responded to the question by telling them to refrain from using private servers. A has agreed to discontinue use of the private server. Instead, we received an exception from the company to work in the office, circumventing the current remote work policy, in order to keep the team working efficiently.
In order to stop using the personal server, A moved the connected system and started deleting trade secret files, but the immediate hurdles (a kind of mid-term evaluation process in the game industry, and if the results are not good, the project may be suspended) , the migration of development systems to internal servers was not a quick and thorough process. As a result, some auto-upload scripts related to the build system were left running. And buildings around the office are closed due to corona expansion, so I can no longer go to work, etc. A made a mistake of using the personal server again without re-approval due to the anxiety of reduced work efficiency and the burden of meeting the schedule and achieving the goal.
At that time, all computers in Nexon's company were monitored using the endpoint solution, so the use of personal servers subject to approval and re-approval was known to Nexon during several months of development. However, during that period, A did not receive a single warning from the security team, and when answering to the head of the higher organization to refrain from using the server, he received an answer saying, 'It's a bit ambiguous to say that it's official/no', so he made a wrong decision. that was hit
A suffered the shock of his previous project being shut down in 2020, and several other projects within Nexon were canceled around the same time. A had doubts about the release along with various circumstances that could only be seen as lack of development support. Later, due to an incident, his trust with his boss was broken, and in June 2021, he finally decided to leave Nexon.
A revealed to members of the development team he had worked with for a long time that he would be leaving the company soon. He cited a lack of support for development as the reason for his departure, and further doubts about whether he would ever be able to launch the project. He also said he welcomes those who would like to join us for the next try. He's likely pushing for a project in a similar genre to the P3 project, but he's made it clear that everything needs to be developed from scratch. The above fact was also proven in the course of investigating a separate individual lawsuit filed by Nexon against A in the testimony collected by the police.
Immediately after Nexon's executives learned of A's plan to resign, their attitude suddenly changed to find A's fault, without any effort to amicably resolve the situation. He then sent an internal audit team to accuse him of stealing files, even though he knew the private server had been used for work for months. Seeing efforts to find out the fault somehow in this way rather than solving it through dialogue, the relationship of trust with the company was completely broken, and A consulted with a lawyer and said that since there are personal information on the personal server, there is no obligation to submit it to the company. After hearing the conclusion, instead of submitting my private server, I completely deleted everything in it.
A was fired due to a claim interpreted differently from his intention, and around August 2021, civil/criminal charges and lawsuits were filed against his house and other assets with omnidirectional seizure and pressure, and several seizures and searches were conducted. has been done up to A's personal case is still ongoing, and claims that he stole or misappropriated these files have yet to be substantiated. He actively cooperated with police investigations every time. Our company was also seized and searched several times during this investigation, but we responded to the investigation with the utmost cooperation in order to prove our innocence. If Nexon's trade secrets were really stolen or misappropriated, nine out of the more than 20 P3 project team members would not have risked joining Iron Mace.
The second issue in the DMCA notice filed by Nexon is the claim that Iron Mace CEO Terence Park abused the suspect's stolen trade secrets and copyrighted material to develop Dark & Darker for his own and Iron Mace's benefit. Our response to this claim is below.
The company's CEO makes it clear that no stolen trade secrets or copyrighted material were used to develop Dark & Darker. Indeed, Terrence Park has repeatedly stressed to his team that in order to maintain the company's vision and branding, third-party trade secrets must not exist by mistake and must be developed from scratch.
Subsequently, in the DMCA notice, Nexon claims that the only way to come up with an idea similar to the P3 project is theft, and as a basis, it claims that the P3 project has never been disclosed to a third party during this period. However, this claim can be proven unequivocally false. Nexon unveiled the P3 in a media showcase in August 2021, and has since written about it in numerous blogs and articles:
https://www.gematsu.com/2021/08/nexon-showcases-12-new-games-project-magnum-project-hp-mabinogi-mobile-more
https://pdf.irpocket.com/C3659/GbYe/dYzj/ICN2.pdf
https://www.donga.com/news/It/article/all/20210805/108384593/1
Nexon also claims in its DMCA notice that no other game has the same "concept, genre, and plot" as P3, claiming to have created an entirely new concept. But none of the P3 concepts are entirely new. A game already on the market called Expedition Agartha is a similar game in the three categories already stated.
Since then, Iron Mace has claimed without evidence that it is impossible to make a test version of Dark & Darker in just 10 months of founding without using Nexon's trade secrets. Our response to this claim is as follows.
The fact that a big game company like Nexon can't develop games this fast doesn't mean that other studios, big and small, can't develop at that speed.
Iron Mace's rapid pace of development was possible for the following reasons.
Iron Mace began development with 18 people, significantly more than the initial P3 team of about 11 people. The percentage of dual programmers doubled to 3 and 6, respectively.
We used as many 3D game objects as possible, purchased from the Asset Store, which account for most of the cost and time required for game development.
Also, with the permission of the artists, it was developed with a focus on game design and programming.
The server code did not exist because there were no server programmers on the P3 project team. However, Iron Mace was developed by employing senior-level server programmers from the beginning to create a stable server architecture.
Fortunately, we have evidence that clearly shows how we developed the game quickly and efficiently, and we will be making it public soon.
We'll soon publish a list of purchased assets used in Dark & Darker development, proving that almost all 3D assets were purchased from the Unreal Marketplace.
And we have tons of videos to see what major milestone builds look like, from early internal playtests to more recent tests. These videos will also be coming online soon, showing you how to quickly and efficiently develop the game from scratch.
Finally, for verification from a technical point of view, we will soon release the Git log and its file list, which is the development history from the first log in the Git repository to the work on the self-developed anti-cheat module. This is a log over a period of about a year or so. This will allow other developers to easily check our progress and check for stolen code or assets. In addition, since the P3 project was written while learning because none of the programmers had any experience using Unreal Engine at the time of the project, using the code and assets of the P3 project as a reference is a dark and darker project.
It wouldn't have helped you in your progress.
In the DMCA notice, Nexon compared and analyzed files from the Dark & Darker and P3 Projects and said, "The number of files with the same name is too many to be a coincidence." claims. And it claims to have found more than 2,338 files with the same name. Our response to this claim is as follows.
They attached the remaining 1,032 resources to Exhibit D, excluding files generated by using the same game engine. Of these, 950 files were either assets purchased from Unreal's Marketplace or files from plugins. The remaining 82 files (41 to be exact, because two files are created with the same file name) also have the same name because of the general concept and official naming convention recommended in the process of developing a typical first-person fantasy game. (See naming conventions and examples below)
Rules for Writing Unreal Engine Official Names
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en/recommended-asset-naming-conventions-in-unreal-engine-projects/
example)
Blueprint (BP_) + Arrow => BP_Arrow (Exhibit D 33p)
Material (M_) + Base (Base) => M_Base (Exhibit D 35p)
If Nexon agrees to provide the file, it is suggested to compare and analyze the actual contents of the files with the same name through a third party. We have provided a list of sources for all “same-named” resources listed by Nexon.
In addition, the DMCA notice claims that the two games' character designs, worldviews, and core gameplay are similar. In response to the above claim, we'd like to say that both games borrow settings from very traditional fantasy worlds. None of this is original, and the similarities to the pointed character classes and use of torches can be found in countless other fantasy games. Both games belong to the classic fantasy dungeon exploration genre, and the similarities can be explained.
In addition, Nexon claims that "Iron Mace purchased graphic assets, including character concept art, from the Unreal Marketplace, but the assets purchased from the Unreal Marketplace and Dark & Darker's assets look different, and there are many similarities with those of P3. ” claims. Our position on the claim is as follows.
Most of the 3D assets were purchased from the Unreal Marketplace, but most of the 2D graphic elements, including concept art and UI, were created in-house. The character concept artwork that Nexon claims similarities to is a reflection of a very traditional fantasy setting. In addition, the concept artwork of the two games was created by the same person, so the painting style is also similar. Soon, our concept artist will organize and disclose that the character concept of Dark & Darker does not infringe on the concept of P3. Through this document, Google image search shows artwork of other popular fantasy concepts, and Dark & Darker's concept art follows the general fantasy world, so it looks similar, but I want to prove that I did not infringe P3's copyright. .
The DMCA notice states that the two games' core concepts, genres, and storylines are so similar that "I am convinced that Iron Mace may have used Nexon's trade secrets to create Dark & Darker." Again, Dark & Darker's concept and settings are all largely inspired by traditional and popular fantasy RPG games. The gameplay of adventurers digging through dungeons full of monsters and treasure in search of riches is so common and common that it could be widely applied in many other fantasy games as well.
Just for fun, we asked ChatGPT to explain the definition of a typical PVP dungeon exploration game, and we got the following response.
----------------------------------Content from ChatGPT------------- ----------------------
In this PvP dungeon crawl game, players compete against each other in dangerous and mysterious dungeons filled with traps, puzzles, and monsters.
Players choose their character from several classes, each with unique abilities and playstyles. They need to explore dungeons, defeat monsters, and solve puzzles to advance deeper.
But besides fighting monsters, players also have to face each other in intense PvP battles. They can attack other players to steal loot or gain an advantage, but you have to be careful not to be suddenly attacked by enemy players.
In the meantime, players can collect loot, weapons, and magic items to help them in their missions. They can also trade items with other players or buy and sell them at NPC shops.
Gameplay requires strategic decision-making, and players must decide whether to focus on attacking other players or progressing through the dungeon. They must manage their limited resources carefully, including weapons, spells, and stamina.
The ultimate goal of the game is to reach the deepest dungeon's floor and defeat the final boss. You should be able to beat other players while doing all of this. The game offers an exciting and competitive experience for players who enjoy both PvE and PvP gameplay.
-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------
Finally, the common characteristics of the two games announced in Exhibit E are generally shared characteristics that can also be found in many other similar games.
Judging from the information presented, it would be difficult for Nexon itself to believe that Iron Mace infringed on the copyright of the P3 project. And Nexon does not provide evidence that Iron Mace used Nexon's trade secrets to make Dark & Darker, only circumstantial inferences.
Finally, Nexon is accusing Iron Mace of violating Valve's SSA and SOCR, preventing us from delivering our games to fans on the world's largest PC gaming platform. We want Nexon to stop making baseless claims.
In order to resolve issues quickly and definitively, we are willing to provide source code, produced assets, and design documentation for comparison between the two companies. We ask Nexon to make a positive impact on gamers and gaming communities around the world by actively working on resolving issues between the two companies.
That's all of that document. Translated by google.
----------------------------------------------------
2. Concept Artist response:
Rebuttal to claims of character design similarity
Hello, this is Dark & Darker's concept artist.
Through this document, we would like to refute the allegation that the concept of P3 was stolen from Dark & Darker.
Nexon claims that Dark & Darker was developed using P3's assets, and claims to be suspicious because of their visual similarity. The contents below are intended to refute this and explain what parts we focused on in class design and why the claim that the results are similar is not valid.
Dark & Darker's classes are made up of classes commonly handled in Dungeons and Dragons and medieval fantasy games influenced by it, and aim for familiar classic fantasy concepts.
Therefore, it cannot be seen that it has the distinctive features of Dark & Darker in appearance or design.
Dark & Darker worked on the class concept based on the following three concerns.
What are the most familiar classes in the memories of classic fantasy fans?
What design can you accept without hesitation even if you are not a fan of classic fantasy?
What is the range that can be expressed with the assets you own (purchased assets)?
P3 and Dark & Darker have the same concept artist (i.e., because I worked on both), the way the characters are portrayed or the painting style may feel similar, but there are significant differences in detailed composition such as costumes.
The following will refute the claim that the classes of P3 and Dark & Darker are similar by comparing each class.
​
Class Comparison 1: Barbarian
When I started thinking about Dark & Darker's Barbarian, I initially tried to work with a barbaric warrior feel like Conan the Barbarian (movie). However, I had to use the purchased armor assets in common, so I had no choice but to switch to the current Nordic Viking feel.
To elaborate more, even if I drew concept art, I did not have enough time to create assets for it, so I changed the direction of the concept art according to the assets.
Images in document.
​
Figure 1: A draft of a Dark and Darker Barbarian that was scrapped in the works.
Images in document.
​
Figure 2: Barbarian used for loading image after drafting
Images in document.
Figure 3 below is various concept art of the barbarian that I referenced during work in this regard. Based on this, we focused on creating a barbarian that fits the worldview of Dark & Darker, and designing it so that there is no particular problem when using equipment of other classes in common.
​
Figure 3: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Nexon is claiming that P3's Barbarian and Dark & Darker's Barbarian are similar.
As explained earlier, Dark & Darker's Barbarian was created based on works from common fantasy worlds, and furthermore, those used in various games.
​
​
Figure 4: P3 and the Barbarian in Dark & Darker
Image in document.
​
Even in the details, of course, there are differences. P3's barbarian is more colorful than Dark & Darker's barbarian, such as horns, Nordic patterns of armor, beard shape, and cape, and the style is mixed. The shape of the helmet may look similar by adopting the design of the actual German helmet (Yelmo de Gjermundbu), but the detailed design is completely different.
​
Class Comparison 2: Fighter
Image in document.
Dark & Darker's fighter is a class specialized in melee attacks wearing typical medieval knight armor. The items in Figure 5 below are reference materials when designing fighters, and are also popularly used, heavy armored warriors specializing in melee attacks.
Through the items in Figure 6, you can see what process the current fighter design came out through
​
Figure 5: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 6: Fighter used for loading image after drafting
Image in document.
​
Figure 7: P3's Tanker and Dark & Darker's Fighter
Image in document.
​
Nexon claims that P3's 'Tanker' and Dark & Darker's 'Fighter' were produced in a similar form. However, as you can see from the picture in Figure 7, except for the open helmet, everything is different, including the appearance, armor design, weapon design, bag, and props.
The figure wearing an open helmet is just a type of expression commonly used to show a character's face because it is obscured.
Class Comparison 3: Ranger
In games and movies set in the Middle Ages, rangers were often depicted wearing hoods, and purchased assets also included hoods. The costumes depicted in the Dark & Darker illustration were designed with reference to the asset costumes you own.
​
Figure 8: Appearance by referring to the clothing on the left and the hood on the right
Image in document.
​
Figure 9: Ranger used for loading image after cyan
Image in document.
​
Figure 10: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 11: P3 and Dark & Darker's Ranger
Image in document.
​
Dark & Darker's Ranger has borrowed the overall color from common designs to keep the sensibility of the old fantasy intact. Also, in order to express the concept of a hunter who fights while hiding in the dark, the use of colors was limited and designed with low saturation.
As you can see by comparing the P3 and Dark & Darker's Ranger illustrations, they are not the same except that they wear hoods and have bows.
​
Class Comparison 4: Wizard
The design that became the basis of the Dark and Darker Wizard is Gandalf from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and it is the most easily recognizable image of a wizard.
​
Figure 12: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 13: Wizard of Dark and Darker with P3
Image in document.
​
Like the image of the other classes described earlier, Dark & Darker's Wizard expressed a more traditional and classic wizard than P3's Wizard. Wearing a long and cumbersome robe for an adventurer's appearance, it was produced with the intention of taking the form of an old man who is old but wise and still capable of fighting.
Class Comparison 5: Log
Likewise, in the case of logs, other than wearing a hood, the P3 and Dark & Darker logs have different components such as weapons and costumes.
In the case of the rogue, we tried to embody the real thief's play, rather than simply wielding a fast weapon such as a dagger (it is actually possible to steal while playing), and for this purpose, the weapon was highlighted at the beginning, and finally It is made in the form of emphasizing the money bag held in the hand.
Rather, in the case of Rogue, the design was made to approach the essence of a thief more than a thief generally seen.
​
Figure 14: Initial log cyan
Image in document.
​
Figure 15: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 16: P3's Thief and Dark & Darker's Rogue
Image in document.
Like the images of other classes described above, P3’s ‘thief’ and Dark & Darker’s ‘rogue’ have different design goals.
Class Comparison 6: Cleric
In general, the class called Cleric is often designed with the Templar Knights as a motif. Dark and darker clerics also adopted a design with a tunic wrapped around chainmail to match this popular design. Also, like other classes, it had to be created based on the assets you have, so I designed it with reference to the assets below.
​
Figure 17: Polyphoria's assets referencing clothing design
Image in document.
​
​
Figure 18: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 19: P3 and Dark & Darker's Cleric
Image in document.
​
From that point of view, if you compare P3 and Dark & Darker's clerics, you can see that there are many differences in armor, costumes, and patterns.
​
Conclusion: P3 and Dark & Darker are different.
​
In this way, the design of the classes expressed in Dark & Darker is only the result of selecting the ones that are most suitable for Dark & Darker among one of the character designs that have appeared in various fantasy games that have been dealt with for decades, and are not designed by stealing P3's trade secrets. didn't
In conclusion, the allegation of theft is only a phenomenon that arises from the fact that the concepts of the two projects are oriented toward a medieval fantasy worldview. We, the development team of Iron Mace, focused on the direction of the game we were aiming for, designed and expressed it accordingly, and revealed that the game was not made by taking the parts that were produced in P3 as it is.

For context; I played Sorc (~lv22, initially easy mode then upgraded up one difficulty when it was too easy) and Rogue (~lv9) on a 3000 series Ryzen 7 and a 3060 gpu with Windows 11 x64.

Starting off with the great

• Art direction is fantastic
• Spells and skills feel great
• Combat still feels slick
• Cinematics team is still one of the best
• I appreciate that its got an M17+ rating
• Mark as junk is a welcome improvement for inventory management. I kinda wish there was more marking types (mark as junk, mark for scrapping, etc)
• Storytelling has definitely stepped up from the Saturday Disney villains of Diablo 3
• Never had a crash!
• I like the revised potion system

I'll start with what could potentially be fixed by launch

• Rubber-banding issues when walking between areas. I kept running into invisible walls and then bounced back to a previous spot when walking between two areas. Most notably the Kyovashad and Eastern Gatehouse/Cathedral of Light.
• An annoying delay after talking to an NPC while the camera pans, preventing you from choosing the next dialog options. I'm a bit of a lore junkie and playing it for the plot.
• Can't always skip dialogue with characters? Couldn't seem to find a pattern with it.
• Subtitles on movies are buggy. Doesn't go away after words are spoken or de-sync within a minute.
• The (dungeons?) felt too too big, overstaying their welcome. I had moments that I was so bored while backtracking that I actually dozed off at the computer.
• Big bosses seem to be mainly damage sponges. The one at the end of Act1 took forever with 2p, despite the pattern not deviating much other than attacks speeding up a bit.
• If I'm playing solo, please for the love of Akarat pause the damn game when I press ESC. Coming back to a dead character after having to run off and do something on a moments notice isn't fun.
• I can see textures loading in as cutscenes play.
• Why can't I right-click and teleport to someone in my party? The friend I was playing with was genuinely angry about it
• It's too easy to miss waypoints. Could we automatically activate them once we step foot into a town?
• Camera zoom levels of the gameplay area (this has been discussed thoroughly by others already)
• Comparing off-hand damage tooltips seems buggy (off-hand skull showing me +1 damage, swapped off-hand showing me +13 damage). How could they both be better than the other?
• Every cellar I went into was the same hallway/room. Did I just have awful RNG?
• My basic lightning arc attack was one-shotting mobs. Chain lightning destroyed everything it touched. The iconic frozen orb spell? Merely tickled the enemies...
• Exit dungeon button is useless whenever I reach for it. Dungeon map doesn't always have "leave dungeon" or leave area. I don't always want to TP back to town.
• I keep pressing "E" by accident during a battle and it is always followed by panic as chunks of my HP are taken out. Remapped it to backspace
• Performance is steady for the most part, but randomly stutters for a few moments.
• Consider unlocking the skill slots for the earlier levels as we gain more skills. What's the point of letting us unlock multiple skills if we didn't have the ability to use them in slots?
• Sometimes pinned locations on the map will show you a red line path that isn't valid

Post-launch improvements?

• Character designer has so little options compared to Lost Ark. The interface to create your character felt really clunky too (eg. left/right buttons instead of a gallery)
• If I was somewhat bored with the "increased drop rates" during beta then I'm not really looking forward to the launch drop rates
• Only realising it now after the beta had finished, I never noticed the music in the game. Is there even any music?
• For a game that was touted as Diablo+MMO I found very little reason to interact with strangers, and even if I wanted I found it very difficult to figure out how.

Things that stop me from buying but unlikely to be fixed, ever

• No offline mode for console. I am not paying a monthly subscription fee to PSN/Xbox to play Diablo solo.
  
• The story-telling mechanisms used are cheap. D4 is too much "telling", not showing
  

-- Over-use of holograms to re-tell events
-- Neyrelle's mum is having the time of her life following Lilith around. Why on earth does she spend so much time leaving diary entries on stone tablets?

• The plot/dialogue is an insult to the intelligence of the M17+ audience. I found Dead Cells had a more intriguing way of telling a story than Diablo 4.

-- After gruesome scene where priest is killed in church, Lilith speaks to guy in hoodie, "Now our true work begins" - that last line cheapened the whole scene. Would have maintained a more menacing tone by ending with "Go to the Dry Steppes and proceed with preparations".
-- Our character is drugged and abducted after their first meal, escape and hours later happily agrees to enjoy a meal with another total stranger (Lorath)
-- A grave danger has been unleashed upon this world, we need to hurry! But first, carry this token around in the snow to a few altars. Then seek blessing from our living Angel. Oh he didn't approve? That's ok, I'll bless you anyways lulz
-- Nobody in town seems surprised by my discoveries about the big baddie. They all seem to be ahead of any developments, why cant they just save the world themselves?

• The world feels TOO big? I felt fatigue looking at the map and thinking about how much walking is required before a mount is unlocked. Parts of the game felt like a walking simulator (could just be a me-problem)
• Sorc skill-tree seems too linear, felt more like a skill-stick.
• Missing the feeling of building a character the way we want and having items supplement that build, rather than the other way around. Most notable after playing D2R prior to D4 beta.
  
• Why no local co-op for PC?
  
• I feel nothing towards the MMO aspects of the game.
  
• I feel next to nothing towards the story of the game.
  
• I thought my friend was lying about how much the game costs (too damn much)
  

Thanks Blizzard for the D4 open beta, but I have now confirmed that the franchise is no longer what I crave for in an ARPG.
This is really sad for me as I always saw Diablo 1 as the genre defining game and Diablo 2/LoD/D2R as the gold standard that every game aspired to be. Hundreds of hours sunk into D1/D2LoD, not even including the time on creating fan apps (mobile app for Runewords) and D2 mods. D3 was ok, RoS fixed it up but the ARPG genre now has alternatives.
Diablo 4 is a decent game. I want it to succeed and I'm sure many will enjoy it thoroughly, but it's not for me.

Hi!
I recently moved to Reno and would love to join a DnD group. (5e preferred, but I pick up fast)
I'm experienced with 5e, albeit mostly as a permanent DM. I would love to experience being a player again.
I love world exploration primarily and character building.
If anyone is looking for a player, hit me up!

Hey guys, I am new with diablo. I bought my first diablo game back in 2016 (diablo 3), at that time I wanted to play ARPG but I was having a hard time understanding the game. I was playing crusader and I didnt understand the game well enough to continue playing the end game. When I heard that diablo is releasing diablo 4 beta on 24-26 march, I was so excited and started playing diablo 3 again with new character (demon hunter) with hungering/strafe build. i did refer on youtube for the build and still having a hard time with it. Sometime I have a low level armor(legendary) with very good stats but at the same time i do have a high level armor(legendary) with mid stats. So idk if i should swap the armor or just keep on using the low level armor (note that eventho i had the game since 2016, i just started playing the game for the past few weeks).On diablo 4, i am having a hard time which stat i should be focus on?. I played two characters, sorcerer and rogue. Idk for rogue should I focus on crit chance and crit damage or overpowered damage etc. ... and should increase the core damage or the basic damage. I do sometime confuse with the meaning of overpowered damage and and other damages since my english is not even that good. Is there anyways I can learn more about the game or guided video about every characters. Pardon my english (second language)

Forges of Ravenshire Preview! Posted in full below or fully formated with images here
Create weapons, armor and shields in your forge, all to fulfill contracts, gain the most gold and become the mastersmith!
Please keep in mind this is a preview copy, provided by B.A Games, things may change between now and release.
The core mechanics of this game are worker placement, resource management and a dash of engine building.
Worker placement: The dice are your workers. Each die will have it's use regardless of number. Your more common resources want low dice, the mystic resources want high dice, and middle dice perform "okay" on either. You gain resources from the space you place your die, whenever you place a die you will also take another die, which will also activate that space.
Then the engine building aspect comes into play, whichever die you take from the board you will cause the same colored guild to trigger on your player board. This is something that starts off basic, but has additional slots you fill in during the game by purchasing tiles.
After 3 turns of dice placing, taking and using your engine, you then go into your production phase. This phase is a resource management dream, trade resources, get bonus resources, and spend said resources to fulfill your contracts, put a finish on your item for bonus points/reputation and get that ever valuable gold for the victory.
The basic resources all work, well, pretty basically, just being used to pay for contracts.
The mystic resources however all have some special ability they can be used for, ranging from modifying dice, weapon finishes (bonus gold or reputation) or trading for basic resources.
The action token is arguably the most valuable resource, you need this resource to gain contracts. Where alot of games have you rushing to complete contracts before your opponent, forges takes a different approach, you can only complete contracts you've previously selected, to choose a contract you simply spend an action token and take it from the display, where the rows available to you are based on your reputation level. You also need the action tiken to refresh the contracts on offer and upgrade your forge and engine building abilities.
AI This AI is pretty clever, each come he will be chasing different priorities, of which contracts to fulfill, which finishes to put on his weapons. He collects cubes and gold rather than specific resources, and when he gets enough cubes (symbolizing a resource each) he will collect a contract based on his reputation level. Depending on the difficulty level he will need to collect 11, 12 or 13 resources to gain one of these contracts. All in all, this slightly abstracted way of paying for contracts keeps him feeling like a human opponent without getting bogged down in needing to track all his resources individually, his priorities give him life and keep him competitive for each games titles.
The difficulty levels are well worked out, a novice shouldn't have too much challenge keeping up with the easy difficulty, the medium difficulty should give a reasonable player a decent challenge, and the hard difficulty really doesn't let you play anything less than a perfect game.
Replayability Each game has 4 different titles as bonus objectives, these range in the type of contracts you're trying to fulfill (weapons, armor, shields), the specific finish on any weapon, or even what quality contracts you're trying to chase.
On top of that there is 4 different bonuses that of which you'll start with one of that will change your focus mildly depending on the game.
Between this and the variability in the game markets each game does have its own unique challenges.
However the core gameplay stays pretty much the same from game to game, yet, this isn't a game I found myself bored with over my 10 plays and one I would gladly play more of, there is just something so satisfying about the core gameplay.
Components: I wouldn't usually comment on these in a Kickstarter Preview, but the components are seriously nice in this, everything double layered, carboard is thick. If the end product ends up anything like this it's going to be a gorgeous game with a nice feel to it.
Final Thoughts: I didn't have much thoughts before going into this one, it's only Sam's second game, and he admitted to not having much experience with solo games. My impressions now, is this is a real work of love, and it's felt in the way everything in the game pulls together so well. The AI feels real and has a good depth to it, albeit, it's still simple to operate due to some good design choices. For those interested this will be hitting KS on April 17th. And I for one have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this. In an era of alot of worker placement hybrids, I haven't seen many be deviant of that meaning deck building hybrids, rather Forges of Ravenshire takes worker placement and still keeps that the main focus, while adding some interesting engine building and a very tight dose of resource management.

TL;DR: Open Beta Feedback for Blizzard devs. Please upvote so they see it <3
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Here are my notes on the Open Beta, consisting mainly of UX feedback and some bugs. For background, I have been embedded QA at a AAA studio and had a high focus on Player Experience. My purpose for posting this here is that I hope the devs will find it (we certainly perused Reddit for bugs at my studio). If you feel the need to comment/discuss, please stick to adding to the feedback instead of refuting it. Even if you disagree, this is still valid feedback from a certain type of player perspective. Please do upvote to ensure the devs find it. Thank you!
Overall this was a very positive experience and I am very excited to play the full game, but I do hope there are a few things that get addressed before then. This beta felt very polished but some of the UX things noted felt more unfinished.
These notes are mostly in the order of when I thought of them as I was playing through. There is a section at the end for praise (positive feedback).
Scenario: I played on PS5. I started one of each class and played until reaching Kyovashad or slightly further, and played a Sorcerer to level 25 and the end of the campaign content. I did some of this in networked co-op with one other player, and the rest solo.
Feedback Notes:
I feel like Evade and teleport cooldowns should be half as much as they are. (later found boots that can reduce cooldowns or add more charges, this feel like a step in the right direction).
Need a quicker way to teleport to another player in your party without going to town first. Interact wheel? Map? If it exists, I couldn't figure it out. Appreciated the ability to travel directly to a waypoint from anywhere though. Maybe the player marker on map can act as a waypoint.
Potion upgrade crafting feels wholly unnecessary. Feels like crafting only for the sake of having crafting. No value add. The friction for crafting mats is so minor and only punishes those who have never picked up any crafting mats. Basically if you have mats, you just press the button and now your potion heals you more. No step to go out and seek the materials. The main friction is your character level. Why not just have it automatically increase with each level? Or keep the D3 system where it heals for a percentage of your health. I'm level 20 and already have enough materials to nearly upgrade every tier of the potions up to 90. The materials have no bearing. And I collect them passively, may as well just be gold, or nothing at all.
Want to assign melee button to a skill slot. Wanna go back to my stabby-stabby rogue. Once you spend your first ability point, you cannot go back to just using your weapon. Have unequipped slot act as a melee? Or have melee be an option for assignment? My party partner was so frustrated by this and spent a half hour trying to get it to work and ended up quitting.
Why can't I remap my skills to other buttons from the beginning? I want to have my primary attack on the right trigger, but have to use X and then wait til I'm level 10 to remap it, at which point I have to retrain my muscle memory again.
It'd be nice to have the option to tune the PS5 controller's trigger threshold for an attack. I have to pull the trigger all the way to use my skill but it'd be better to have it only a partial pull (I could be wrong but regardless it'd be nice to be able to tune it).
Item tooltip in inventory covers up the view of the character stats, which i want to see change as I equip the item. Have to constantly dance my cursor on and off the item to compare how the numbers change.
Want to preview all stat changes as a whole for a piece of gear, like the down/up arrows in D3. Currently a +3 damage can be misleading if it removes a +3 intelligence (or primary stat) property in the process, which reduces attack power. Maybe while hovering or comparing an item, show the (+3) next to the current Attack Power, Armor, etc to show how it would change with that item.
I want to disable the clicking sound when I highlight an interactable/lootable object. I see other great sound options in the menu but could not find that. On consoles, since it’s constantly targeting items as I’m walking around, I was hearing it incessantly and it became meaningless.
Can I have the option for item labels to display indefinitely? And/or have the L stick toggle on/off but otherwise no timer? Appreciate having options for how long to display them, but I want longer options than 10 seconds.
Rogue should have more dodge as a class perk. Maybe multiple charges, less cooldown, or no cooldown? Upgradeable dodge? Boots can have these properties but rogue should have it inherent since moving around the battlefield is a core strategy in this class.
Health globes seem to despawn after a short time? Feels like this needs to be much longer. Seemed inconsistent. Maybe they were getting despawned during more intense battles, which is exactly when I want them to stick around for when I need it.
Hard to get used to not being able to walk over a health globe to heal. Nice if it would heal you and give your potion a charge like the healing wells do. Combination of the D3 and D2 health systems. I find that when I see a health globe, I look at my health to see how low it is, press the heal button, then walk over the globe to recharge. Just remove the step and heal me when I walk over it.
Unable to evade away when stunned but able to sorc teleport (“unstoppable”). Let me evade out from a stun please, especially since evade is on a cooldown so I still have to be strategic with it.
UI/UX interactions on the character creation screen are inconsistent. Sometimes I can just hover select an option to see it previewed, and sometimes I have to manually click it to see it. Most of them allow you to scroll through one at a time with D pad, but the Markings options scroll one at a time til it gets to the edge, then scrolls an entire page, skipping 3 of the options if you just continue to press the right D pad.
Class perks (enchantments, book of the dead, etc) have really inconsistent requirements and ways/frictions/times to obtain them. Necromancer gets theirs at like level 3. Sorcerer gets a side quest to go find the book in a dungeon, not sure when that showed up, maybe around level 15 (didn’t notice it til much later.)? But druid at level 15 is just given the perk, no fetch quest required?
If I'm targeting a destructible object with a skill that uses resource, but don't have enough of that resource, just use melee please, instead of just telling me I have no resource and not hitting the object.
I want to pick my character's voice/accent in addition to the rest of the appearance stuff. Don't need to add more, just let me choose from the ones that exist across the character classes - basically I don't want the voice tied to the class, just let me assign the voice to my character as I see fit. This would be even better if you could choose a feminine/masculine voice regardless of the body type chosen.
Can I also pick my pronouns?
Also I want facial hair options on female models (hide this toggle in an option menu if you have to), body hair options (including for women - I want my druid to have hairy legs), and scar options that aren't intentional markings but are more like battle wounds.
The scarring marking color does not really look like scarring. Looks more like paint. (blood is awesome though)
Henna has a lighter outline on some skin tones.
Wish list: Lost and Found loot for high rarity items like in Borderlands. If I’m partied with someone and something they killed generated a legendary for me, I want that item to go to a lost and found instead of requiring that I comb through everywhere they’ve been to ensure I didn’t miss something good.
Are there no more pets to pick up your gold? Or can I have a bigger pickup radius? Feels tedious to run around a bunch of circles to pick up gold. I wish this was more automatic. There’s never a time I don’t want to pick up gold.
I want the big center button on PS controller to open inventory, not map. But I can't remap that one. Want more similar to D3 controller layout, with map on Lstick and inventory on big button. That’s not an option apparently. Why keep changing the controller mappings with each new game? Terribly inconsistent across D3, D2Res, and D4 with very few customization options.
Salvage interface does not match sell interface. Cannot sell individual junk item (can only sell all Junk at once), or sell all of a rarity class like you can in the salvage menu.
Button mappings in sell interface are exact opposite of when in inventory (square to mark as junk in inventory equips in sell menu). The Stash interface matches the Sell screen too. I tried to mark an item as junk while looking at my stash, and it equipped it instead. This felt confusing and annoying.
When you first get to Kyovashad, Boza gives the Raising Spirits quest, and then the next side quest has us seeking out Bozan in Masetad Coffers. Names are too similar and confusing. I thought they were talking about the same person at first.
Distance from waypoint to stash/wardrobe seems a bit long, having to go up narrow stairway or wide path around back. Should place it outside of the inn near the waypoint. And its location on the map is misleading since you have to travel through the building to get to it, instead around the building like it looks on the map.
Aspects tied to an individual item - I wish it were on the slot like kanai's cube. Maybe if you were allowed to re-extract the same aspect at a discount/free for the next item upgrade? Or have one aspect able to equip to each slot, in addition to having them on an item?
Ore generators keep glowing/shimmering after I've collected from it.
I want my character to be barefoot or have sandals. Can the “unequipped” look be minimal foot attire?
I want to be able to zoom out of the skill tree to navigate the whole thing instead of little by little.
Wishlist: I want to send items to stash or sell or salvage them from the field. Like No Man's Sky salvage/refine and trade rocket, or Torchlight's pets that run back and sell at the market. Minimize trips back to town just to sell/salvage. More merchants/blacksmiths littered around are very helpful though.
Very early on, I keep picking up items that say they unlock new looks on salvage, so I want to save them, but I have no idea how long it will be until I find a blacksmith (before I’ve gotten to Kyovashad for the first time). Also my inventory got cluttered up with items that I picked up before I got poisoned and didn’t get a chance to sell before I was forced to kill the merchant. On second playthrough I was able to mitigate that, but first time (when I need the gold a lot more) it felt like I had screwed myself.
Loading screen tips are useful, but go by too quickly of you are on PS5 (first world problems!). It'd be nice to have a place to read those in a menu, since some of them looked pretty useful to know.
Sometimes I see the orange circle like there's an event but there's no event happening. The last time, I came back to it a minute or two later and an event started. Maybe missing a countdown to event start?
I want to change the name of my character. Maybe limit to one change? Or cost a bunch of gold? In D3 I did this by creating a new character, power leveling it, then equipping all the gear from my old one. I don’t think that option is going to be quite as viable here (maybe?)
Appreciate being able to change jewelry and markings after creation, but I also want to change the hair and facial hair too. Character needs a haircut.
Bug: when changing character appearance at wardrobe, the current markings are not selected.
I want to mark something as a favorite or be able to manually sort inventory to set aside items I might use. On console at least, the inventory cannot be manually sorted, only automatically by pressing R3. Then I lose track of which item it was I wanted to keep. Maybe also give me options for how the inventory gets sorted? Sort by type, rarity, value, order of pickup, etc?
Wishlist: small training grounds area in town to test new weapons and abilities, since you cannot use these in town. Maybe attack some dummies in the training area at the NE of town where you first cheered on the recruits?
Lots of inconsistency in what progresses for the party vs what progresses per player. If I interact with an npc, it may show only me the cinematic, or it may pull both of us in. I have no way to know before I start it. If I skip it, and my party-mate does not, when I press to interact on the next step it pulls them out of their cinematic. No obvious indication when it's an action that affects the party as a whole. Side quests do not progress for both of us at all, even if we’re on the same side quest on the same step. Each needs to do the interaction separately. I think this either needs to be made more consistent, or communicated much better to the players what to expect as far as party progression.
Rogue is far more vocal than other classes. The sounds are over exaggerated and a bit inappropriate sounding. This was played on a female Rogue. Haven’t tried male.
I don't want gems to take up space. Moved in the right direction in D3 to allow stacking, but I wish they wouldn't take up space at all, especially that each gem tier and type takes up a stack space. Can they go into another tab like the consumables and quest items do?
When refunding and reallocating ability points, it's difficult to swap points from one first tier ability to another because it temporarily would break a connection to a later ability (so would not allow me to do it). Had to do some weird juggling to make it work. So if I wanted to switch from Claw to Maul, I had to undo points higher in the tree (Shred), spend it on Maul, then undo Claw, then re-spend on Shred. I should be able to just swap points on the same tier. Or what if each tier of the tree unlocked at a certain character level instead of being based on number of skill points spent?
Couldn't salvage an item that I had upgraded, but it still said unlocks new look on salvage (what a tease!).
Bug; around the right of the alabaster monastery entrance is some black spots / Z fighting, maybe something clipping through the snow?
Before the final act boss fight, I did hear the clanking footsteps but didn’t know what it was and thought it was a bug, until my character said I’m being followed. However, during the big boss fight, I did not notice when the Knight Penitent showed up. And when I did see him, I didn’t know he was on my side. I was very confused for the first half of the fight. I finally figured out he was there to help and shield me, which was a nice mechanic. I both loved and hated having to dodge all over the battlefield to avoid getting hit by the poison stuff. Made for an interesting fight but didn't leave me a lot of chances to deal damage since I was constantly playing defense.
Boss enemies have no introduction. I’m just suddenly fighting them and often do not get a chance to look at their design or size them up before engaging in battle. D3 had a nice little intro for each boss where they’d talk to you for a moment and you could appreciate the art and mentally prepare yourself for battle. I couldn’t tell you what the final boss was called or what it looked like, since I was too busy trying not to die through the whole fight.
Lots of running back and forth to previously discovered places that did not have waypoints. Examples: Kor Valar, Horadric Vault, Black Lake. Like, Go from Black Lake back to Horadric Vault back to Black Lake and I’m like “C’mon, I was JUST THERE!” and then I have to find a somewhat nearby waypoint and then trek the rest of the way there. These places should have waypoints or else like a portal that opens in town as a shortcut to return for the quest.
I felt like I was getting weaker as I leveled up. This is likely because enemies are scaling to my level, but I had not found better gear, so my damage felt lower. I even checked to make sure I was on the lowest world tier since I was struggling to get through portions.
Praise (with some suggestions):
Skill system is novel and interesting. Works fairly well. Good balance of D3 style rune choices and D2 style added skill points. Though I do wish each additional point gave a bigger bonus since it’s limited to 5. Appreciate that you can respect for free under level 15, and that you can undo/return a single skill point spent rather than the entire tree. More freedom to try things.
Potion charge system is a big improvement on D3's single use cooldown. Though I kind of wish there was a hybrid approach. Let charges recharge themselves over time? Auto heal when picking up an orb?
Fast travel is nice, skips the step of going to town and then hopping on the waypoint. Just go directly to the waypoint you want (just need this for getting to other players now).
World building is more immersive. There is more showing and less telling. Side quests, inspectable objects, NPC dialog, etc. Much better than the lore book entries. Even when there are lore-book type things the way they’re done is much more from the perspective of the people inhabiting this world and less like an entry in a bestiary. For example, the one about the monk trying to save someone that was killed and resurrected by the Khazra…. It was so emotional and heartfelt and gave you much more immersion into this brutal world than a bestiary entry that tells you that Khazra can resurrect people.
Voice acting is superb. Enough said.
I love that the looks (transmogs) are slot based instead of item based. Can turn off a look on the fly. Big thumbs up.
Also the entire character creator is something I never knew I needed in a Diablo game. I really enjoyed getting to create my own interpretations on the classes. Wakanda Warrior Rogue, Native American Druid, Arab Sorcerer, Necromancer Jesus…. This was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed seeing other people’s takes on them as well. It allowed me to build a little backstory of my character. But also each class is still distinctive enough that I could tell what other players’ classes were just at a glance (mostly from body type).
Oh also the body type diversity is really great.
I like the distinction between cellars and dungeons. Dungeon objectives and bosses were a nice surprise, and a bit of a challenge!
Merchants and blacksmiths are present enough that I rarely, if ever, had to run to town just to offload items despite picking up literally everything.
Camera moves in closer when in a town/village and subtly pulls back when leaving town. Nice.
One hand weapon + offhand is more viable dps now. Haven't had to swap for a 2 handed weapon like I usually do in D3.
Checkmark in dungeons and cellars to indicate you've completed them is really nice. But I wasn’t sure if that persisted the next time I loaded the game. It’d be nice if it did.
I like the persistent world maps but randomized dungeons. This felt like a nice balance. Don’t have to re-explore the area every time you travel back to a place.
Liked that the enemies respawn in the open world.
I like that completion (exploration, cellars, etc) persists across sessions but being able to reset dungeons manually. Less pressure to stay in a current play session in order to maintain maps, etc.
The scenic views are a really cool feature. I want more of them!
So much more moral nuance. I’m loving this so far. Please give us more reason to question why we immediately assume all demons are bad and evil, when it was both demon and angel that created humans. We’ve got the “angels aren’t all that great either” but I want to see the other side of that coin which is “not all demons are literally the worst”. I’m seeing seeds of this with the bloodied wolf and Lilith, and I hope it continues moving in that direction.
THANK YOU for allowing me the option to disable the “I can't use this yet. Not enough Mana.” dialog. Though I had to dig down all the way in the sound (or accessibility?) menu to find it. I’ve been wanting this option since D2.
Appreciate that the “looks” are unlocked for all of your characters, so you don’t have to re-salvage the same items on each.
Some really neat quest mechanics like the pilgrimage. Though I feel like that could go a bit further. Maybe reduce the abilities you can use, make you move slower, no/less healing, or something like that to really make it feel impactful. Right now it's just dark around you but otherwise normal.
Finally fixed my #1 complaint about D3 - We now have split screen inventory management in couch co-op! Yay!
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If I had to pick only one thing from this list to fix before launch, it'd be the inconsistency/lack of communication around what quest steps and cinematics get shared across the party and what is individual. The number of times my party mate and I had to say, "Are you still in the cinematic? Did that advance for you? You have to talk to the guy. Stop talking, I'm trying to listen. Oh geez, I didn't know it was gonna skip your cinematic!" were too many.

I have a 5 person level 4 party playing 5e.
I want to give my OP paladin a shield that has him taking a nerf in exchange of helping the other squishy Guys. Somthing to kinda sacrifice himself. This is what I had in mind:
Attunement. +1 AC and advantage on Dex saves while attuned. A target of your choosing can wield the shield instead of you, gaining it's benefits, at the cost of you now taking half the damage AS WELL as him taking the full damage. In addition, When a creature you can see attacks a target that is within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction to magically throw the shield to you targets aid, imposing disadvantage on the attack roll. If the target has a free hand and is willing, it can wield the shield as previously stated. Otherwise, the shield falls to the ground next to the target.
I'm mostly concerned about two things:
1) Should I have him and the target take half damage each instead of adding damage?
2) Should the shield fly back of the target doesn't choose to wield it? It's kinda lame to have the shield fall but if it's flying back that's basically Fighting style Protection with a 30 ft range, a bit OP.
Thanks everyone

I am a grad student that works on AI research and have been involved in projects that take text prompts and generate images, 3D models, and other things. I've worked in this research space for a few years (when the images were still very poor and on early versions of multimodal problems). I came across this thread, while working today and felt very apologetic reading through it. I do think about the ethics of my work constantly, but don't have that many outlets to engage with people outside of the research community. I know there are very real concerns about livelihoods and entire workflows changing, about how to compete with people and businesses who leverage AI tools, and about how copyright should be handled.
I felt inclined to post today because the Blender community is one that has always inspired me, because I used to freelance and struggled for a long time to learn Blender. I never made anything as special as the stuff that is posted here daily. I have a few comments to make about my field (generative AI).

• Some of the sentiments had some misconceptions about the goals of AI researchers. Generally AI researchers are focused on improving a generative model so that it captures the diversity and detail (fidelity) of the datasets they work with. There is intense competition within the AI field to have the best numbers for accuracy. For example in 3D, some of the best data out there is shapes of furniture and artifacts (ShapeNet). A top paper would present numbers claiming that their model can produce furniture shapes that don't lose much detail compared to the original furniture shape dataset. Because it boils down to these simple numbers, the "AI-takes-jobs" problem and framing then becomes a lot more distant. In the moment you're writing a paper, you are just looking at numbers that try to justify your mathematical formulation.
• We have to write ethics statements at the end of papers, but we aren't responsible for understanding more downstream impacts. There are other fields that are slowly integrating with machine learning to study human factors, but there's a disconnect.
• What I am trying to say in the past two points is that because there is pressure and competition within the AI research world, those pressures are leading to these Pandora boxes (ChatGPT, Midjourney) that the law and business fields have not figured out how to safety belt yet. The low-level incentives for an AI researcher are obviously leading to broader impacts that they are untrained for mitigating.
• Image models came first because there are so many more images online. There are generative 3D models, they just are less impressive. It is my personal belief however that people won't like generative 3D outputs as much because they will come in blobs with a lot of artifacts (like a bad handmade ceramic that is hard to work with and work off of).
• For every person who dislikes the AI tool, there is another novice person who feels enabled by it to do 2D/3D creation. That is the new end user for businesses. There are also other creatives who enjoy adopting it as part of their workflow. This will probably lead to significant friction within teams and businesses. The original post I referenced talked about someone disliking that other people could prompt. I understand--I dislike when people use ChatGPT to co-write research papers with me. There are a lot of social dynamics that will be interrupted by AI.
• On a different note, people want to work with people. Good work gets done not because the team has the best technical talent or the best technology, but because people show up for other people.

A way to check AI's power is to assert how much value you see in it. If someone simply generates an image, you can say "I won't pay that much for it" or that you don't believe in it as art. -- But if someone is using AI outputs as part of their process innovatively, putting real effort into building on top of it, then I believe they are creating something of value, even if there is AI involvement. Art has always been a field where the value is assigned by culture and people, so we're all setting the tone right now for how AI is perceived.
tl;dr I am an optimist, and I think that creativity will change--but it will definitely survive.
I am open to questions if people have any. Please be kind. I'm a young and tired student who is scared to post this but I'm just going to hit the button.

Weight Loss Tips.
Weight loss tips: Here are some tips for weight loss:
Eat a balanced and healthy diet: Focus on whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and complex carbohydrates. Avoid processed and high-calorie foods.
Portion control: Eating smaller meals and portion control can help you reduce your calorie intake.
Drink water: Drinking plenty of water can help you stay hydrated, curb hunger, and aid digestion.
Exercise: Regular exercise can help you burn calories and lose weight. Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise each day.
Get enough sleep: Getting enough sleep can help regulate hormones that control hunger and metabolism.
Manage stress: Stress can trigger overeating, so finding ways to manage stress such as meditation, yoga, or other relaxation techniques can help you avoid overeating.
Avoid sugary drinks: Sugary drinks like soda and juice can add unnecessary calories to your diet.
Keep a food diary: Keeping a food diary can help you keep track of what you're eating and make adjustments to your diet.
Remember that weight loss should be a gradual process, and it's important to make sustainable lifestyle changes for long-term success. Consult with a healthcare professional before starting any weight loss program.
Increase your fiber intake: Eating foods that are high in fiber can help you feel full and satisfied, which may lead to reduced calorie intake. Foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes are all good sources of fiber.
Limit your alcohol intake: Alcoholic drinks are high in calories and can contribute to weight gain. Try to limit your intake or choose low-calorie options like wine or light beer.
Find support: Having a support system can be helpful when trying to lose weight. Join a weight loss support group or enlist the help of friends and family to keep you accountable and motivated.
Be mindful of your eating habits: Try to be present and mindful when you eat. Pay attention to your hunger and fullness cues, and avoid distractions like TV or phone screens.
Don't skip meals: Skipping meals can lead to overeating later on in the day. Aim to eat regular meals and snacks throughout the day to keep your metabolism and energy levels stable.
Incorporate strength training: Strength training can help you build lean muscle mass, which can increase your metabolism and help you burn more calories.
Be patient: Remember that weight loss is a journey, and it may take time to see results. Be patient with yourself and celebrate small victories along the way.

v11.00 released in all regions (immediately updated to 11.01)

Builder passives split into 3 tiers by wave (visit discord or reddit for details) many balance changes across builders (visit discord or reddit for details) added Hunterling (Send) with Hunter's Pounce debuff Baneling (Send) -40% area of affect (3.5=>2.5) wave 4 (Marines) +40% damage (5-7=>7-9) added Heavy Particle Beam (Doomsday Machine) beam stack count (thanks Peterk426) fixed Energy Leech (Hybrid Dominator) preventing max energy units from casting fixed area of affect damage missing very large targets due to unit radius fixed Surveillance (Satellite) affecting melee towers (thanks TreeOne7341) fixed visibility of tooltips for hidden opponent stats (thanks knownaim) fixed leaks increasing Security System upgrade cooldown (thanks Cupid) renamed Racial column to Builder in Select mode (thanks Ninefingers) added range indicators for Security System Overburn and Earthshock fixed `!reset_stats` updating scoreboard values (thanks Bullyian) fixed Blood Thirst and Sound of Madness visual blinking effect fixed imprecise Elemental attack range tooltips (thanks Nuxer) fixed usability of map pings by observers (thanks Spaceballs) added more information on ability targeting priorities fixed experience bar progression errors (thanks Speed) deleted out-of-date Russian and Korean localizations fixed Sostenuto (Producer) tooltip text (thanks Amy) fixed gas cap text truncation (thanks Zwischenzug) fixed player reward window appearing for observer reimplemented stun (no longer reduces timescale) updated default range indication model announced high level XIX winners 

 

Detailed Passive Changes

PASSIVE TIERS
Nature
- Tier 1: attackers lose 10% attack speed per damage dealt, stacks 3 times
- Tier 2: attackers lose 10% attack speed and 15% move speed per damage dealt, stacks 3 times
- Tier 3: attackers lose 12% time scale per damage dealt, stacks 3 times
​
Sylphy
- Tier 1: 1.8% damage reduction and attack speed (max 10 stacks)
- Tier 2: 1.1% damage reduction and attack speed (max 20 stacks)
- Tier 3: 1.3% damage reduction and attack speed (max 25 stacks)
​
Beast
- Tier 1: Slaying an enemy grants 2% enemy hp/s regen for 12sec
- Tier 2: Slaying an enemy grants 1% enemy hp/s regen for 12sec and 15% attack speed for 2 sec (can be extended)
- Tier 3: Slaying an enemy grants 1% enemy hp/s regen for 12sec. Upon inflicting 2000 damage gains 15% attack speed for 2 sec (can be extended)
​
Ancient
- Tier 1: Slaying an enemy gives killer 16% of victims hp as shields
- Tier 2: Slaying an enemy gives all attackers 16% of damage each of them individually dealt to that victim
- Tier 3: Slaying an enemy gives all attackers 20% of damage each of them individually dealt to that victim
​
Soul
- Tier 1: 30% of attacks causes target to miss next attack
- Tier 2: 15% of attacks causes target to miss next attack (stacks 2 times)
- Tier 3: 15% of attacks blind target for 1 second
​
Elemental
- Tier 1: On hit, unit gains a static charge. At 15 static charges, the next hit violently discharges all static into the attacker and nearby foes. Enemies are stunned for 1.5s.
- Tier 2: On hit, units gain a static charge providing 0.5% damage reduction. At 20 static charges, the next hit violently discharges all static into the attacker and nearby foes. Enemies are stunned for 1.5s.
- Tier 3: On hit, units gain a static charge providing 1% damage reduction. At 15 static charges, the next hit violently discharges all static into the attacker and nearby foes. Enemies are stunned for 1.5s.
Celestial
- Tier 1: Upon a fatal blow, Divine Aura channels through this unit for 1.5 seconds before granting 1.5 seconds of invulnerability. Summoned units have HP/333 chance to gain invulnerability.
- Tier 2: Upon a fatal blow, Divine Aura channels through this unit for 1 seconds before granting 2 seconds of invulnerability. Summoned units have HP/500 chance to gain invulnerability.
- Tier 3: Upon a fatal blow, Divine Aura channels through this unit for 0.5 seconds before granting 2.5 seconds of invulnerability. Summoned units have HP/1000 chance to gain invulnerability.
​
Ghost
- Tier 1: 20% evade chance.
- Tier 2: 20% evade chance. When falling below 20% hp, gain 15% damage reduction
- Tier 3: 30% evade chance. When falling below 30% hp, gain 25% damage reduction
​
Mechanical
- Tier 1: Units gain +2% attack speed per attack for 6 seconds (max 13 stacks)
- Tier 2: Units gain +2% attack speed per attack for 8 seconds (max 20 stacks)
- Tier 3: Units gain +2% attack speed per second (max 25 stacks). Ranged units lose 4 stacks when taking damage, while melee untis lose 1 stack.
​
Shadow
- Tier 1: Upon death, unit is resurrected with 20% life, shields and 60% less attack speed. Summoned units have HP/333 chance to be resurrected.
- Tier 2: Upon death, unit is resurrected with 30% life, shields and 50% less attack speed. Summoned units have HP/500 chance to be resurrected.
- Tier 3: Upon death, unit is resurrected with 30% life, shields and 50% less attack speed. Unit is resurrected with full energy. Summoned units have HP/1000 chance to be resurrected.
​
Automaton
- Tier 1:Enemy attackers lose 5% damage with each attack for 5s (max 4 stacks)
- Tier 2:Enemy attackers lose 3% damage with each attack for 10s (max 6 stacks). Upon reaching 6 stacks, next attack will stun attacker for 2 seconds.
- Tier 3:Enemy attackers lose 3% damage with each attack for 10s (max 6 stacks). Upon reaching 6 stacks, next attack will stun attacker and nearby foes for 2 seconds.
 

Detailed Builder Changes

Nature

Guardian

• Gained 1.6 attack range
• Fixed Guardian attack animation
• Entangle no longer slows attack speed. It now increases damage taken by 40%

Ranger

• Updated Ranger model to match nature builder theme

Thunderbird

• +6% attack speed (1.8 => 1.7)
• -50% damage (140-153 => 70-77)
• Now attacks closest unit instead of lowest life

Tree Of Travel

• Helping hand 30 => 50% move speed

Tree Of Life

• No longer heals on death
• Water of life now heals on average every 2.5 seconds (down from 3)

Sylphy

Trait level stacks: 1/2/3 => 2/3/4
All merged towers now have both traits at level 2
Glissando

• Added visuals indicator for refund

Dramaturge

• Slow 25 => 50%; duration 1 => 0.55 seconds

Usher

• 4.25 => 4.75 attack range
• Legato 6 => 7 range

Tenor

• 1450 => 1200 life

Staccato

• Accent: 300 => 350% crit damage

Artisan

• 1250 => 1625 life

Solo

• Fixed solo teleport issues on end waves (thanks Nuxer)

Beast

Zergling Warrior

• Gash 25 => 10% attack speed slow
• Gained 1 more upgrade: Raptorling

Raptorling

• Leap Attack: Jumps towards an enemy, and massively slows them on impact

Swarm Host
Upgrades reworked:

• Primal Host now spawns locust near itself; locused gained more damage and duration, and became ranged but lower hp
• Mecha Host: Launches tanky locusts towards enemy; low damage

Grizzly

• Massive => Armored armor type
• Damage: 64-78 => 70-76

Dragon Aspect

• Fixed Emerald Fire doing only 150 damage to nearby targets, rather than 300

Ancient

Sentinel

• Sentinels require 8 stacks now for full buff

Archive

• Parity check (Archive) 8s => average 8s period

Soul

Stahrry

• Fix various Crescent (Stahrry) issues (failing to blind but using energy)

Shadow Fist

• 1.5 => 2 range
• Restored old shadow fist/scorned hand move speed (standard with soul units)

Elemental

Oceanus

• Gained an upgrade: Thalassotherapy

Thalassotherapy

• Tributary: Releases a beam that bounces off enemies doing damage. Last bounce heals an ally based on total damage dealt.

Violet

• Lost Blue Wind
• Gained Fluorescence: debuffs enemy to restore energy on attack to target
• 51-60 => 95-105 damage

Fenix

• Fenix 127-272 => 180-220 damage

Ghost

Wraith and Mercurial

• Traumatize (Mercurial) prioritizes units without Traumatize
• Disturb (Wraith) prioritizes units without Disturb

Forsaken One:

• Added upgrade: Phantasm

Phantasm

• Elusive Shadow: Passive chance to evade attacks. Upon dodging enough attacks, gains 100% evade chance for short duration

Dark Priest:

• Replaced with Eidolon: Attacks deal bonus 2% of targets max hp damage

Meridian:

• Replaced with Melinoe: Attacks deal bonus 2% of targets max hp damage. Emp Shock: After short cast time launches emp missile stunning large group of enemies

Mechanical

Infantry

• 43-63 => 43-47 damage
• 1.8 => 1.6 attack speed

Zeus

• 0.15 => 0.2 attack speed

Leviathan

• Leviathan 2.1 => 1.9 attack speed
• Shrapnel 100 => 80 damage
• Shrapnel 15 => 12.5% slow per stack; 4 => 6 max stacks

Shadow

Skeletor

• +1 min damage (35 => 36)
• 0.9 => 0.8 attack speed

Doppelganger

• 310 => 350 cost
• Lost both previous abilities
• 30-74 => 20-25 damage
• 0.12 => 0.2 attack speed
• Increased attack range slightly
• Fatality (new): gains +4 weapon damage/attack
• Deflection (new): 50% damage reduction from ranged attacks

Lord Of Death

• 50 => 20 max energy
• Conjure Inferno 50 => 15 energy cost

Hades

• Imps lost life regen
• Max number of imps alive 10 => 8
• Hades now gains +1 energy each time he or his imps kill an enemy

Dark Mage

• Standardized Dark Mage movement speed

Automaton

Prototype

• +1 attack range (4 => 5)
• Prototype's self damage is no longer lethal
• Prototype's self damage no longer triggers or interacts with damage related buffs, damage reduction, on hit effects, etc

Pulverizer

• Pulverizer AoE increased due to AoE bug fix

Celestial

Fallen

• Tempt 30 => 15% bonus healing; 15 => 10 energy cost
• Fallen 15 => 10 max energy

 

Links

1. v10.16 Release & Bug Reports
2. v11.00 Beta Testing

 

Feature Requests

1. Continue playing after victory (thanks XOHOX)
2. Allow Practice mode after victory/defeat (thanks FujMs)
3. Colorize send backgrounds by purpose (green=eco,red=offense) (thanks Jamato212)
4. Colorize unit backgrounds by range (melee,short,long range) (thanks Jamato212)
5. Better late-game supply upgrade options (thanks NOOBEv14)
6. Per-wave send unit limits (thanks Biomed)
7. Enhance SS explosion cinematics (thanks mentalmp)
8. Add support for player-camera following in Observer mode (thanks Amy)
9. Smarter Security System targeting without player control (thanks FujMs)
10. !state (!debug) preserves Towers, Resources, Income, and Wave (thanks yare)
11. Add !debug buttons for !builders, !resources, !sticky, etc (thanks FujMs)
12. Add !debug command/mode to support building for players in other lanes (thanks FujMs)
13. Add !rain command to start atmospheric rain effect (thanks Shek)

 

Known Bugs

1. SW3-NTZ WELDTECH Relay fails to follow injured ranged units (thanks yare)
2. Multiple units attempting to merge the same target may "lose" a source unit (thanks tempcopowetu)
3. !restart doesn't restore Security Service (thanks FujMs)
4. Necromancy respawns units at start/tower position on 31+ (thanks Syzygy)
5. Some Towers may be heard through the Fog of War (thanks Nexus)
6. !start (!debug) repeated twice quickly will double-spawn wave (thanks nooga)
7. Multiple behaviors using imprecise multiplicative stat [de]buffs instead of additive buffs (thanks Nexus and Parasite)
8. Unbearable Heat (Mutator) stops damaging units stunned by Elemental passive (thanks Nuxer)
9. Catastrophe (Meridian) implementation doesn't match tooltips (thanks Zvat)
10. Zukar (Wave 29) can get stuck in floor with Mini Boss Mutator (thanks Zarbad)
11. Android (Automaton) fails to respawn if killed by Unbearable Heat (thanks Parasite)
12. !state load (!debug) shows incorrect values for upgraded towers (thanks FujMs)
13. AFK-kicked players intermittently gain full scoreboard visibility
14. Shuffle (game option) disrupts Wave Leader rotation (thanks yare)
15. Venom Sac (Medusa) tooltip states 3 units effected, but only 2 gain impact
16. In coop, (non-follower) pets may escape the high ground (thanks Jacubus)
17. Applying a skin to a building and then switch it's type, only highlight and recolour stay (thanks Jacubus)
18. AoE part of Crescent (Stahrry) may affect 4 units
19. Unison (Crescendo) split damage is amplified by Crescendo damage buffs (thanks Nuxer)

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Lets sit back, kick up & pat our dicks & tits for making it to 50 episodes!

The guys and gal answer some questions about themselves and the show and Dusty gets pretty drunk near the end. hahah

Trivia
- I am a real American https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX_k5_egUAo
-Mark claims he was bored and drunk and wrote down answers in advance...but we all know he wasn't drunk at all. hahaha
-The Table Layout : Mark sits in the middle, Steven to the left, Vanessa to the right, Dusty across, Matt to his left, Cory to the right.
-Steven's mom's mini van is gold. She's our biggest fan btw.
-Steven, Matt & Cory All work together. -Steven somehow lost his computer and hadn't told his employer.
-At the time of the recording, their key demographic were people in their twenties. Now we're all sour in our thirties, hooo raaay!!!
-California and Texas are where most of their USA listeners reside
-A juggalette once followed them on facebook.
-These are the guys Favorite Mystery Science Theatre 3000 show runners. Steven is a Mike guy. Dusty is a Mike guy. Matt is a Mike guy. Mark is a Mike guy. Vanessa is undecided. GOD DAMN IT WOMAN. Microsoft Rory is a Joel guy for robot reasons. Cory hasn't watched enough to care.
​
-The following is the casts fav serial killer Steven: H.H Holmes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes Dusty: Lady Gaga in American Horror Story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga Vanessa: Jeffrey Dahmer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer Rory: Ted Bundy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy Matt: Robert Durst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Durst
-A serial killer may have eaten one of Engineer Rory's relatives
​
-Steven looks like a bag of cream gravy with a beautiful golden wig on top -Dusty looks like Ben Gibbard, but with a beard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gibbard -Cory looks like Abe Lincoln/Amish Cool guy -Mark looks the same as Cory, but has more Mustache than Beard -Vanessa looks like a wrinkly baby, with teeth that are all different shapes
-A guy once approached Cory and inquired if he wanted to get into commercials. Do it, where I am from, a gig like that paaaaaaays.
-Dusty talks about Sweet Dee being in the Fifth Wave, but she isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Wave_(film))
-At this point, the Tim Allen ep was their favorite -Any ep thats about to be posted is usually their unfavorite for insecure reasons.
-The guys played a year and a half of path finder before getting into DND Next, aka 5e
-Matt is insecure about over using Microsoft Sam. But I think it's our favorite NPC
-Jedwyn is a clawhammer guy
-Steven hates playing Jedwyn, as a Warlock is too simple. He's right; powerful but bland/not versatile.
-Steven played a tiefling Alchemist named "Oppenheimer" in a previous campaign -Vanessa once played as "Hagetha Crumbwell" a Witch, during the text/paper games.
-Cory has restarted fallout 4, five times. He likes character building
-Fumbles has been through all the rotating DM's stories. -When Matt first met Dusty, he thought his high pitched Character voice was his real voice.
-Everyone but Matt and Rory went to high school together. Steven met Rory and Matt at the place Steven works at.
-They record on Thursdays at this point.
-Dusty was too drunk to say "Heeeeey" when his Name comes up during the recording. -Dusty texted Cory, who will be our next DM, his character, and it's been approved.
-At the time of this recording, Mark's dad cut his hair off and trimmed his beard. The crew is shocked.
-Jose asks a question. That's Dusty's friend. You might know him, Mr season 5. They did invite him to play before but schedules never met up.
-Carl 7 runs off Crow oil
-Dusty wears boxers -Steven & Cory are boxer briefs -Vanessa goes commando
-Dusty played DnD in middle school and nearly got kicked out for it. It was a conservative school that thought he was playing with black magic. smh, lol
-Cory writes his campaigns like plays with options
-Rory still doesn't know how to play DnD at this point.
-Rory's fav Matt diss is the "suicide by cop" joke, which was made by Dusty.
​
Quotes
"Keep up the good work! If you keep listening, you'll get a prize" - Dusty to us the listeners
"I drive a 2010 Toyota Pussy Magnet" - Mark
"Wait, Rory doesn't work for us?! But me and Matt see him all the time at the job with the other guys" - Dusty, trying to be confusing
​
"Mark, Can you pull out your spreadsheet of our fans ages please" - Dusty, going back to a classic
"Btw, if you ever liked us on Facebook, Cory knows where you live..." - Mark
"But everytime, these people would take this certain course in college, they would text me, "DUDE!!! ONE OF YOUR REALATIVES WITH YOUR LAST NAME IS LISTED AS A VICTIM FOR GACY" - Rory
"I pretty much look like a homeless man, with a beard, but with a hipster nazi youth cut" - Dusty, LoooooooL
"Vanessa looks like that movie star if that movie star smoked cigarettes' since she was an infant" - Dusty
"And we fuel that depression by each privately texting Matt to say, 'you're a horrible person', we're not your friend' " - Dusty, when Matt gets depressed after they record
"I will admit that I did spend more than 30 seconds trying to print something from a turned off Printer" - Steven, being technologically impaired
"Dusty gets everywhere" - Danielle Kay "That's true, my cum stream is quite wide" - Dusty
"I play lawful good in real life! It's getting old!" - Dusty
"A character that can break a grapple while still getting another action, throws a sword more than an improvised weapon and one shot a character...." - A sour Steven on what would be a controversial thing amongst the group and that one dick that rated the show negatively because of it.
"Could you use some kind of wind magic to propel a boat?" - Dusty to Cory, about what's possible in Cory's campaign
"What ends up happening is that I focus on something over there and I'll be thinking, ah shit maybe I should do this, or this, or this and then I try to get back into it but i'm already fucking lost" - Rory, on what he thinks the guys do.

I will start by saying that I despise D3 & haven't play a Blizzard game since SC2, my history with Blizzard games goes like this Diablo->StarCraft->Diablo2->StarCraft2-> THE END
For many-many years D3 was my most anticipated game, when the game was close to release I could spot from a mile away that this was not the game I had in mind & will definitely not be something I would like to play & that was the case in the end, D3 was by far the biggest disappointment I had in my life as a gamer till now, needless to say I skipped it & act like it never happen.
Forward to D4 Open Beta, I would be honest here although the game looked nice I was almost certain that I wont like it for various reasons, so you could say I was somewhat biased before even start playing, well let me tell you although I could find many things I thought needs improvement the devs at Blizzard who crafted this game manage to give me a hard slap in the face & make me admit how wrong I was, yep I never expected to say this but I was wrong because D4 have been crafted exceptionally & the potential for what is going to become in the future is literally limitless.
During the beta I lived and breathed D4, I played for about 44 hours (check this to get an idea https://i.ibb.co/cFCRKM9/Screenshot082.jpg) apart from sleeping and eating I did nothing but play the game trying to see as much as possible, if the game wasn't fun, if I wasn't having fun playing there is no way I would have spent that many hours playing a game in such a short time, & that is the biggest proof that D4 is fun, so the developers imo can be proud because they created a fun game & I'm sure the majority out there agree with that sentiment.
Anyway let's move on with my review, I'm going to split this review in 3 sections, THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE GAME, THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE AS MUCH OR AT ALL & IMO NEED IMPROVEMENT, THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN THE FUTURE THAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN TO PLAY.
So without further ado:
THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE GAME

1. The Game Looks Gorgeous, the visuals & the art direction is on point, exactly how a Diablo game should look like, with that I mean gritty & gory also realistic & serious, so huge props to those responsible for this aspect of the game, they really did an amazing job.
2. The Atmosphere, everything is dark & grim, there is people in distress everywhere, people in need of help, you go out of town & you find either people frozen because there were caught on a blizzard, massacred bodies that were eaten by wild beasts, so many other such examples but the atmosphere feels nice, also I liked especially the icy theme & the heavy blizzard out of towns in the first region of the game.
3. The Sound Design, there is nothing more to say here other than to give my highest praise to the sound design team because they truly did an amazing job & there is nothing to complain about.
4. The Combat, the combat feels really nice (as long you change the combined move+interact+basic attack all-in-one button from the options, else it feels clunky) I had a great time slaying thousands & thousands of mobs while grinding dungeons or taking part on events out in the world map, it felt smooth & neither fast or slow, just perfect somewhere in the middle, it felt really good can't find anything to complain about.
5. The Campaign & the Cutscenes, let's put those two together as they are essentially part of the same thing, the main story, at least what we had the chance to experience on the first zone, looks really nice & I enjoyed it while playing, there is ofc some parts of it that I liked more than others, but it was enjoyable for the most part & I definitely looking forward to see more of it, also the cutscenes in some cases were made in exceptionally way that definitely elevate the presentation to the viewers.
6. The Side Quests, now who would guess that I'm gonna like the side quests of all things on an MMO, I play MMORPGs for the past 20 years more or less & the side quests was never something I enjoyed doing because they are always terrible made & feel like a chore, well I think that more than half of the side quests I did in D4 was fun & interesting because they were carefully crafted & they were really well made, they didn't feel like side quests to be honest but more like a part of the main story.
7. The Transmog/Wardrobe system, I loved this, it's straight 10/10 & I would like to see any game company include this kind of system on their game in the future, it's perfect I love everything about it because it offers so much customization & freedom to alter how your character looks & stuff like that is always welcome.
8. The Cinematics, well those are always top-notch on any Blizzard game but I had to say it anyway, especially the intro, the first trailer we saw deserve to get some awards, definitely.
9. Monster Level Scaling, before I tried the beta I was against this but then I played the game & I was constantly thinking every time I was roaming some before low level area "if not for monster level scaling this area would have low level mobs that would pose no threat to me & I couldn't get any valuable drops out of them whatsoever..." in short it would happen what usually happen on any mmorpg, all low level areas become useless after a point when your level is high enough & there is no point to revisit all those low level areas anymore, also there is one more reason I liked monster level scaling & I thought this kind of feature suit a game like Diablo perfectly, because it would be anticlimactic to exiting a town & every mob you are facing is low level scrap, if that happen it would definitely ruin the atmosphere that this world is bloody dangerous & there is things out there that wanna murder you & eat you alive, & it's very important to feel that way at all times else the game won't feel as fun anymore, at least not for me.
10. Cursed Treasure Chest & Cursed Shrine events, I really like those they have a nice surprise element, instead of getting loot or buffs you get a swarm of mobs in your face, fun mechanic.
11. Legendary Aspect System, the fact that every legendary item found in the game has a kind of super mod, which can be extracted and transferred to any item we desire in order to help perfect the kind of character we are trying to build, is something really awesome & I liked that idea very much, especially when you consider that those Aspect mods have also quality levels like any other mod in the game, that means that you are not only searching for an Aspect you need & once you found it that's it, you want it to have good rolls also & that add to the RNG level & that means that there is something more for us to looking forward to when we are out there hunting for loot.
12. Sorceress Ice Spells, I played a Blizzard Sorceress during the beta (here a link to some gameplay if anyone wanna check how my character plays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZV7S6uUB5M) & I really liked how ice spells look, especially Frost Nova & Blizzard, & I also liked very much how Frozen enemies look, the devs did a really good job with the ice element.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE AS MUCH OR AT ALL & IMO NEED IMPROVEMENT

1. The Bosses, there is a few good ones but for the most part the bosses have many flaws from their mechanics, the level of challenge they offer, even their looks for many of them, they are not good enough also there is many similar looking ones on some dungeons that look like they devs copy/paste them everywhere, & also one great flaw over all regardind the bosses is that they are not memorable, there is many memorrable bosses on past Diablo games but I didn't felt that for the bosses I fought on D4, they seem generic & lack identity, the devs definitely need to do more on that front, we would like to have some scary, challenging & memorrable bosses for D4 please.
2. Skills Customization, this is more or less something most people who played the game agree I think, there is not enough stuff on the skill tree to build really unique characters & have in mind I'm not saying in any way that I would like to see PoE level of depth but there is a middle ground to be found & I think the devs can do much more to offer to players another layer of depth to customize their build, for example why there is no way to alter our skills & what they do although so many people asked for something like that repeatedly in the feedback we gave? why there is no way for example to change Ice Shard from a single row projectile spell to multiple projectiles or to increase the AOE range of my Blizzard or Frost Nova? we need more options Blizzard, we want every skill to have a number of different options for us to choose from in order to be able to create our own truly unique build.
3. Number of Active Skill Slots, it's way too limited atm, I couldn't get any ultimate skill because I couldn't remove any of my current skills from my skill bar because my build would be ruined if I did that, I suggest for two more skill slots if not two definetely one more else it would be impossible for most people to use an ultimate skill, who would choose to put a skill with a CD of 1 minute instead of something else that we would be able to use every few seconds or as often we want as long we have available resources to use? six are not enough Blizzard & most people agree with that, give us more options & don't limit the game to that extent, this could ruin the game for a lot of people you know.
4. Randomness of the Dungeons Layout, I did so many dungeons during the beta & I left kind of disappointed with the level of randomness I experienced, most of the times it was long corridors with a few rooms left & right on your way or a long corridor that open up in a big room at the end that has two more corridors left & right like the letter T, those were the dungeons where we need to find some objects that help to open a door, this was the case for the majority of the dungeons I did during the beta & I can't say I liked that, on that aspect the game missed the point completely on how a procedural generation game suppose to be, if the layout of a dungeon is not random enough, if the layout doesn't feel completely different every time you enter, then it's not good enough, you never felt that way for example while playing D2 so on that aspect D4 falls short & completely miss the mark.
5. Cellars, those super-mini dungeons (they are literary one room in size...) doesn't do it for me, for the most part it kept me wondering what's the point? it was nice when their purpose was to help progress some quest but aside from that to have them all over the map when they are not that fun to do & they doesn't offer any kind of challenge, since you need less than a minute to clear everything there is inside, so ye.. the devs imo need to overhaul this feature, it needs to be more challenging, it needs to be more rewarding, it needs to be worth doing else there is no point for it to be in the game, that's my opinion anyway.
6. Lack of Unique Challenging Mobs, the game needs more tough & scary mobs to fight along with those packs of common & magic mobs we slay in large quantities to spice things up during grind, to offer some challenge, to offer that surprise factor we so much need to make grind more interesting & fun & to also offer to players the chance to get some sweet drops from them because at the end of the day that's what the game is all about, I speak for some kind of Elites, Champions, Mini-Bosses even, that kind of stuff, make them big, make them noticeable, make them scary, & finally make them able to put up a fight & make players feel that this is not a target you erase from your screen with a few push of a button & you move on to the next, but that's an enemy that needs a higher level of focus & effort on our part to put them down.
7. Character Creation, the character creation didn't offer the amount of variety & options I would like to see myself & I fount it very lacking compare to what other games ussually offer, it didn't offer as many options in hairstyles, face types, hair colors, eye colors, & in general there was not as many options & it was impossible to create a character we have in our minds because our options are so limited, this btw would lead to the majority of players look exactly the same & that is not ok, that is actually really-really bad.
8. Fonts, ok this might not sound as important for some, but for me reading dialogues from quests that are written with Arial font (here an example https://i.ibb.co/vZSZR9L/Screenshot037.jpg) ruin the immersion of the game, finding journals during grinding & presented with a story written on Arial font ruin the immersion of the game, watching Arial font all over my status window make me to always wonder WTF!? the devs were thinking when they decided to fill the game with Arial font on everything? did they really feel that this kind of font is fitting for a Diablo game? because there is a lot of people out there who can't fathom why they did that myself including...

THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN THE FUTURE THAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN TO PLAY

1. Skill Enhancing System, I would like to have the option to enhance/alter my skills in unique ways, to have the freedom to choose from a variety of options in order to create my own unique build, this is something the game needs atm as what the skill tree offer to players definitely lacks depth & there is no way to do what I'm talking about from inside the skill tree currently, compared to some other ARPGs it's really disappointing to see what the D4 devs created, especially since they received so much feedback from players years before the game's release & it seems they either never read it or just chose to ignore it.
2. Vertically Based Dungeons, THIS-IS-THE-FUTURE-OF-DUNGEON-CRAWLERS, I experienced a few dungeons in the game where we had to climb down a ladder to a lower level & you already made the first step but let's take this to the next level, now imagine entering a simple dungeon like those we played during the beta but instead of the usual simplistic, small-scale layout we get a huge totally random maze-like map that aside from the ground floor it also has another 3-5 levels either underground or on the upper floors, & each floor has it's own unique boss, now something like that would be so fun to play & will really feel that I'm playing a next-gen dungeon crawler, an ARPG that has some unique, revolutionary design choices & doesn't feel like anything I've played in the past, Blizzard you are in the perfect spot right now to make that revolution happen, to differentiate yourself from the pack, give to nerds out there what they have only dreamed of till now.
3. Secret/Hidden Doors/Rooms & Destroyable Walls, words can't express how much I love this kind of stuff, my enjoyment level would go up considerable if the dungeons in an ARPG offer this level of exploration, exploration is my thing & I can't enjoy a game if there is no secrets to find, if there is no meaning to carefully explore everything, if there is nothing interesting to discover, so put this kind of stuff in the game & make it worth it for us exploration-junkies although I'm certain that this is something anyone is going to love & it will make the game more fun to play for everyone.
4. PvEvP Dungeon, something for PvX fans, now imagine a massive dungeon where 4 players enter at the same time & spawn at random locations, drop rate is boosted & you can really get some sweet loot inside this dungeon but PVP is always ON & you can't turn it OFF, also in case a player kill you everything in your inventory drop in the floor, doesn't this sound like something that would be really fun to play? for me it sure does!

Period: 363.38 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	1000	183379
Rate (per day)	2.75	502.13
Unique Redditors	596	37270
Combined Score	1067824	3114907

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 49330 points, 49 submissions: IsDaouda_Games
   
   1. Gitee, China’s answer to GitHub, to review all code by temporarily closing open-source projects to the public (2797 points, 371 comments)
   2. GitHub can now auto-block commits containing API keys, auth tokens (2626 points, 159 comments)
   3. Cloudflare mitigates 26 million request per second DDoS attack (2612 points, 222 comments)
   4. NVIDIA Transitioning To Official, Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Driver (2303 points, 112 comments)
   5. Hackers find 122 vulnerabilities — 27 deemed critical — during first round of DHS bug bounty program (2138 points, 84 comments)
   6. Dear Europe, here again are the reasons why scanning devices for unlawful files is not going to fly (2108 points, 390 comments)
   7. A Google Cloud employee set a new record calculating the 100 trillionth digit of pi (2053 points, 366 comments)
   8. Nearly 100,000 NPM Users' Credentials Stolen in GitHub OAuth Breach (1985 points, 406 comments)
   9. IBM says it will have thousands of quantum computers for sale by 2025 (1905 points, 361 comments)
   10. Computing Expert Says Programmers Need More Math Quanta Magazine (1729 points, 633 comments)
2. 23717 points, 28 submissions: feross
   
   1. Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users (3403 points, 242 comments)
   2. Python 3.11 is up to 10-60% faster than Python 3.10 (2110 points, 318 comments)
   3. You can't buy a Raspberry Pi right now. Why? (1955 points, 589 comments)
   4. Why Twitter didn’t go down (from a real Twitter SRE) (1879 points, 661 comments)
   5. In praise of ffmpeg (1866 points, 251 comments)
   6. GOV.UK drops jQuery from their front end. (1742 points, 305 comments)
   7. Apple's Swift rewrite of its Foundation framework will be open source (1241 points, 112 comments)
   8. Hackers Claim They Breached T-Mobile More Than 100 Times in 2022 (962 points, 68 comments)
   9. Fake Emergency Search Warrants Draw Scrutiny from Capitol Hill (942 points, 129 comments)
   10. See what JS commands get injected through an in-app browser on iOS (916 points, 111 comments)
3. 23337 points, 24 submissions: speckz
   
   1. NSA urges orgs to use memory-safe programming languages - C/C++ on the bench, as NSA puts its trust in Rust, C#, Go, Java, Ruby and Swift (4158 points, 834 comments)
   2. How we reduced our annual server costs by 80% — from $1M to $200k — by moving away from AWS (3469 points, 621 comments)
   3. Someone is pretending to be me. (1868 points, 172 comments)
   4. "http://http://http://@http://http://?http://#http://" is a legitimate URL (1780 points, 174 comments)
   5. Coding Mistake Made Intel GPUs 100X Slower in Ray Tracing (1773 points, 174 comments)
   6. This Program is Illegally Packaged in 14 Distributions (1257 points, 431 comments)
   7. gum: A tool for glamorous shell scripts 🎀 (1248 points, 70 comments)
   8. Devs don’t want to do ops (1176 points, 529 comments)
   9. Working in the software industry, circa 1989 - Gather round while I tell a tale of old. (1065 points, 119 comments)
   10. Maybe you should do less 'work' (903 points, 199 comments)
4. 22839 points, 24 submissions: iamkeyur
   
   1. Peter Eckersley has died (3162 points, 143 comments)
   2. 20 Things I’ve Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer (2312 points, 341 comments)
   3. Please, stop disabling zoom (2269 points, 449 comments)
   4. I fucking hate Jira (2022 points, 662 comments)
   5. AWS switch from gzip to zstd – about 30% reduction in compressed S3 storage (1927 points, 155 comments)
   6. How I Experience the Web Today (1793 points, 262 comments)
   7. There are no open issues or pull requests on Flask (1480 points, 298 comments)
   8. How to Professionally Say (1414 points, 230 comments)
   9. The Julia language has a number of correctness flaws (838 points, 270 comments)
   10. My business card runs Linux (773 points, 85 comments)
5. 16994 points, 23 submissions: fagnerbrack
   
   1. Stop lying to yourself – you will never “fix it later” (2084 points, 234 comments)
   2. How I’m a Productive Programmer With a Memory of a Fruit Fly (1607 points, 123 comments)
   3. Weezer's Lead Singer is still strong coding (1555 points, 161 comments)
   4. The regex comma dash dot [,-.] (1343 points, 223 comments)
   5. The Code Review Pyramid (1032 points, 118 comments)
   6. The Basics of how QR codes work (970 points, 66 comments)
   7. The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (968 points, 249 comments)
   8. Building a website like it's 1999... in 2022 (938 points, 171 comments)
   9. Headway is a self-hosted alternative to Google Maps which supports 200+ cities across the globe (894 points, 115 comments)
   10. The overengineered Solution to my Pigeon Problem (884 points, 67 comments)
6. 10459 points, 4 submissions: DonutAccomplished422
   
   1. Italy declares Google Analytics illegal (7252 points, 485 comments)
   2. Vodafone to introduce persistent user tracking (1717 points, 220 comments)
   3. US data transfer unlawful according to German procurement authority (1221 points, 181 comments)
   4. Finland is the latest EU country to crack down on Google Analytics (269 points, 35 comments)
7. 9327 points, 5 submissions: DrinkMoreCodeMore
   
   1. ChatGPT Passes Google Coding Interview for Level 3 Engineer With $183K Salary (3952 points, 643 comments)
   2. Typst, a modern alternative to LaTeX, is now open source (2693 points, 383 comments)
   3. The yaml document from hell (1515 points, 298 comments)
   4. The forgotten mistake that killed Japan’s software industry (859 points, 219 comments)
   5. Cppfront, Herb Sutter's proposal for a new C++ syntax (308 points, 107 comments)
8. 8836 points, 1 submission: DeeplyIncomparable99
   
   1. “There should never be coding exercises in technical interviews. It favors people who have time to do them. Disfavors people with FT jobs and families. Plus, your job won’t have people over your shoulder watching you code.” My favorite hot take from a panel on 'Treating Devs Like Human Beings.' (8836 points, 1395 comments)
9. 8572 points, 4 submissions: mitousa
   
   1. I spent a year building a desktop environment that runs in the browser (4978 points, 429 comments)
   2. My web-based desktop project just passed 250k users and it all started here at /programming. Thank you for everything! (2786 points, 207 comments)
   3. Forth: The programming language that writes itself (473 points, 99 comments)
   4. Announcing “Code” 2nd Edition (335 points, 28 comments)
10. 8029 points, 1 submission: piotrkarczmarz
    
    1. "Software is a just a tool to help accomplish something for people - many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools" - John Carmack (8029 points, 653 comments)

Top Commenters

1. AttackOfTheThumbs (9732 points, 741 comments)
2. a_false_vacuum (7551 points, 128 comments)
3. DemiPixel (7194 points, 10 comments)
4. chucker23n (7072 points, 351 comments)
5. L3tum (6735 points, 142 comments)
6. 0OOO00000OO00O0O0OOO (6600 points, 150 comments)
7. Nashesvobodnoye (5881 points, 1 comment)
8. Worth_Trust_3825 (5709 points, 368 comments)
9. dominik-braun (5228 points, 78 comments)
10. renok_archnmy (4901 points, 143 comments)

Top Submissions

1. “There should never be coding exercises in technical interviews. It favors people who have time to do them. Disfavors people with FT jobs and families. Plus, your job won’t have people over your shoulder watching you code.” My favorite hot take from a panel on 'Treating Devs Like Human Beings.' by DeeplyIncomparable99 (8836 points, 1395 comments)
2. "Software is a just a tool to help accomplish something for people - many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools" - John Carmack by piotrkarczmarz (8029 points, 653 comments)
3. Twitter Source Code Leaked on GitHub by geek_noob (7835 points, 774 comments)
4. Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely by Discovensco (7453 points, 1361 comments)
5. Italy declares Google Analytics illegal by DonutAccomplished422 (7252 points, 485 comments)
6. Terry Davis, an extremely talented programmer who was unfortunately diagnosed with schizophrenia, made an entire operating system in a language he made by himself, then compiled everything to machine code with a compiler he made himself. by BitPax (6700 points, 906 comments)
7. StackOverflow to ban ChatGPT generated answers with possibly immediate suspensions of up to 30 days to users without prior notice or warning by 3urny (6633 points, 840 comments)
8. Frontend developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on by AJ12AY (6555 points, 573 comments)
9. "Dev burnout drastically decreases when your team actually ships things on a regular basis. Burnout primarily comes from toil, rework and never seeing the end of projects." This was by far the the best lesson I learned this year and finally tracked down the the talk it was from. Hope it helps. by Difficult_Pop_7689 (6472 points, 321 comments)
10. There aren't that many uses for blockchains by calp (6435 points, 2228 comments)

Top Comments

1. 6466 points: DemiPixel's comment in ChatGPT Passes Google Coding Interview for Level 3 Engineer With $183K Salary
2. 5881 points: Nashesvobodnoye's comment in I scraped 7M programming job offers for 8 months and here are the most demanded programming languages
3. 4086 points: 3CN's comment in NSA urges orgs to use memory-safe programming languages - C/C++ on the bench, as NSA puts its trust in Rust, C#, Go, Java, Ruby and Swift
4. 3876 points: blind3rdeye's comment in StackOverflow to ban ChatGPT generated answers with possibly immediate suspensions of up to 30 days to users without prior notice or warning
5. 3718 points: Karenomegas's comment in Twitter Source Code Leaked on GitHub
6. 3188 points: omnilynx's comment in You should be reading academic computer science papers
7. 2575 points: ForSureLying's comment in How we reduced our annual server costs by 80% — from $1M to $200k — by moving away from AWS
8. 2537 points: 3131961357's comment in Atlassian to cease all operations in Russia
9. 2461 points: itijara's comment in Google announces a new OS written in Rust
10. 2461 points: renok_archnmy's comment in Toyota Accidently Exposed A Secret Key Publicly On GitHub For Five Years

Generated with BBoe's Subreddit Stats

I will start by saying that I despise D3 & haven't play a Blizzard game since SC2, my history with Blizzard games goes like this Diablo->StarCraft->Diablo2->StarCraft2-> THE END
For many-many years D3 was my most anticipated game, when the game was close to release I could spot from a mile away that this was not the game I had in mind & will definitely not be something I would like to play & that was the case in the end, D3 was by far the biggest disappointment I had in my life as a gamer till now, needless to say I skipped it & act like it never happen.
Forward to D4 Open Beta, I would be honest here although the game looked nice I was almost certain that I wont like it for various reasons, so you could say I was somewhat biased before even start playing, well let me tell you although I could find many things I thought needs improvement the devs at Blizzard who crafted this game manage to give me a hard slap in the face & make me admit how wrong I was, yep I never expected to say this but I was wrong because D4 have been crafted exceptionally & the potential for what is going to become in the future is literally limitless.
During the beta I lived and breathed D4, I played for about 44 hours (check this to get an idea https://i.ibb.co/cFCRKM9/Screenshot082.jpg) apart from sleeping and eating I did nothing but play the game trying to see as much as possible, if the game wasn't fun, if I wasn't having fun playing there is no way I would have spent that many hours playing a game in such a short time, & that is the biggest proof that D4 is fun, so the developers imo can be proud because they created a fun game & I'm sure the majority out there agree with that sentiment.
Anyway let's move on with my review, I'm going to split this review in 3 sections, THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE GAME, THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE AS MUCH OR AT ALL & IMO NEED IMPROVEMENT, THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN THE FUTURE THAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN TO PLAY.
So without further ado:
​
THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE GAME
​

1. The Game Looks Gorgeous, the visuals & the art direction is on point, exactly how a Diablo game should look like, with that I mean gritty & gory also realistic & serious, so huge props to those responsible for this aspect of the game, they really did an amazing job.
2. The Atmosphere, everything is dark & grim, there is people in distress everywhere, people in need of help, you go out of town & you find either people frozen because there were caught on a blizzard, massacred bodies that were eaten by wild beasts, so many other such examples but the atmosphere feels nice, also I liked especially the icy theme & the heavy blizzard out of towns in the first region of the game.
3. The Sound Design, there is nothing more to say here other than to give my highest praise to the sound design team because they truly did an amazing job & there is nothing to complain about.
4. The Combat, the combat feels really nice (as long you change the combined move+interact+basic attack all-in-one button from the options, else it feels clunky) I had a great time slaying thousands & thousands of mobs while grinding dungeons or taking part on events out in the world map, it felt smooth & neither fast or slow, just perfect somewhere in the middle, it felt really good can't find anything to complain about.
5. The Campaign & the Cutscenes, let's put those two together as they are essentially part of the same thing, the main story, at least what we had the chance to experience on the first zone, looks really nice & I enjoyed it while playing, there is ofc some parts of it that I liked more than others, but it was enjoyable for the most part & I definitely looking forward to see more of it, also the cutscenes in some cases were made in exceptionally way that definitely elevate the presentation to the viewers.
6. The Side Quests, now who would guess that I'm gonna like the side quests of all things on an MMO, I play MMORPGs for the past 20 years more or less & the side quests was never something I enjoyed doing because they are always terrible made & feel like a chore, well I think that more than half of the side quests I did in D4 was fun & interesting because they were carefully crafted & they were really well made, they didn't feel like side quests to be honest but more like a part of the main story.
7. The Transmog/Wardrobe system, I loved this, it's straight 10/10 & I would like to see any game company include this kind of system on their game in the future, it's perfect I love everything about it because it offers so much customization & freedom to alter how your character looks & stuff like that is always welcome.
8. The Cinematics, well those are always top-notch on any Blizzard game but I had to say it anyway, especially the intro, the first trailer we saw deserve to get some awards, definitely.
9. Monster Level Scaling, before I tried the beta I was against this but then I played the game & I was constantly thinking every time I was roaming some before low level area "if not for monster level scaling this area would have low level mobs that would pose no threat to me & I couldn't get any valuable drops out of them whatsoever..." in short it would happen what usually happen on any mmorpg, all low level areas become useless after a point when your level is high enough & there is no point to revisit all those low level areas anymore, also there is one more reason I liked monster level scaling & I thought this kind of feature suit a game like Diablo perfectly, because it would be anticlimactic to exiting a town & every mob you are facing is low level scrap, if that happen it would definitely ruin the atmosphere that this world is bloody dangerous & there is things out there that wanna murder you & eat you alive, & it's very important to feel that way at all times else the game won't feel as fun anymore, at least not for me.
10. Cursed Treasure Chest & Cursed Shrine events, I really like those they have a nice surprise element, instead of getting loot or buffs you get a swarm of mobs in your face, fun mechanic.
11. Legendary Aspect System, the fact that every legendary item found in the game has a kind of super mod, which can be extracted and transferred to any item we desire in order to help perfect the kind of character we are trying to build, is something really awesome & I liked that idea very much, especially when you consider that those Aspect mods have also quality levels like any other mod in the game, that means that you are not only searching for an Aspect you need & once you found it that's it, you want it to have good rolls also & that add to the RNG level & that means that there is something more for us to looking forward to when we are out there hunting for loot.
12. Sorceress Ice Spells, I played a Blizzard Sorceress during the beta (here a link to some gameplay if anyone wanna check how my character plays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZV7S6uUB5M) & I really liked how ice spells look, especially Frost Nova & Blizzard, & I also liked very much how Frozen enemies look, the devs did a really good job with the ice element.

​
THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE AS MUCH OR AT ALL & IMO NEED IMPROVEMENT
​

1. The Bosses, there is a few good ones but for the most part the bosses have many flaws from their mechanics, the level of challenge they offer, even their looks for many of them, they are not good enough also there is many similar looking ones on some dungeons that look like they devs copy/paste them everywhere, & also one great flaw over all regardind the bosses is that they are not memorable, there is many memorrable bosses on past Diablo games but I didn't felt that for the bosses I fought on D4, they seem generic & lack identity, the devs definitely need to do more on that front, we would like to have some scary, challenging & memorrable bosses for D4 please.
2. Skills Customization, this is more or less something most people who played the game agree I think, there is not enough stuff on the skill tree to build really unique characters & have in mind I'm not saying in any way that I would like to see PoE level of depth but there is a middle ground to be found & I think the devs can do much more to offer to players another layer of depth to customize their build, for example why there is no way to alter our skills & what they do although so many people asked for something like that repeatedly in the feedback we gave? why there is no way for example to change Ice Shard from a single row projectile spell to multiple projectiles or to increase the AOE range of my Blizzard or Frost Nova? we need more options Blizzard, we want every skill to have a number of different options for us to choose from in order to be able to create our own truly unique build.
3. Number of Active Skill Slots, it's way too limited atm, I couldn't get any ultimate skill because I couldn't remove any of my current skills from my skill bar because my build would be ruined if I did that, I suggest for two more skill slots if not two definetely one more else it would be impossible for most people to use an ultimate skill, who would choose to put a skill with a CD of 1 minute instead of something else that we would be able to use every few seconds or as often we want as long we have available resources to use? six are not enough Blizzard & most people agree with that, give us more options & don't limit the game to that extent, this could ruin the game for a lot of people you know.
4. Randomness of the Dungeons Layout, I did so many dungeons during the beta & I left kind of disappointed with the level of randomness I experienced, most of the times it was long corridors with a few rooms left & right on your way or a long corridor that open up in a big room at the end that has two more corridors left & right like the letter T, those were the dungeons where we need to find some objects that help to open a door, this was the case for the majority of the dungeons I did during the beta & I can't say I liked that, on that aspect the game missed the point completely on how a procedural generation game suppose to be, if the layout of a dungeon is not random enough, if the layout doesn't feel completely different every time you enter, then it's not good enough, you never felt that way for example while playing D2 so on that aspect D4 falls short & completely miss the mark.
5. Cellars, those super-mini dungeons (they are literary one room in size...) doesn't do it for me, for the most part it kept me wondering what's the point? it was nice when their purpose was to help progress some quest but aside from that to have them all over the map when they are not that fun to do & they doesn't offer any kind of challenge, since you need less than a minute to clear everything there is inside, so ye.. the devs imo need to overhaul this feature, it needs to be more challenging, it needs to be more rewarding, it needs to be worth doing else there is no point for it to be in the game, that's my opinion anyway.
6. Lack of Unique Challenging Mobs, the game needs more tough & scary mobs to fight along with those packs of common & magic mobs we slay in large quantities to spice things up during grind, to offer some challenge, to offer that surprise factor we so much need to make grind more interesting & fun & to also offer to players the chance to get some sweet drops from them because at the end of the day that's what the game is all about, I speak for some kind of Elites, Champions, Mini-Bosses even, that kind of stuff, make them big, make them noticeable, make them scary, & finally make them able to put up a fight & make players feel that this is not a target you erase from your screen with a few push of a button & you move on to the next, but that's an enemy that needs a higher level of focus & effort on our part to put them down.
7. Character Creation, the character creation didn't offer the amount of variety & options I would like to see myself & I fount it very lacking compare to what other games ussually offer, it didn't offer as many options in hairstyles, face types, hair colors, eye colors, & in general there was not as many options & it was impossible to create a character we have in our minds because our options are so limited, this btw would lead to the majority of players look exactly the same & that is not ok, that is actually really-really bad.
8. Fonts, ok this might not sound as important for some, but for me reading dialogues from quests that are written with Arial font (here an example https://i.ibb.co/vZSZR9L/Screenshot037.jpg) ruin the immersion of the game, finding journals during grinding & presented with a story written on Arial font ruin the immersion of the game, watching Arial font all over my status window make me to always wonder WTF!? the devs were thinking when they decided to fill the game with Arial font on everything? did they really feel that this kind of font is fitting for a Diablo game? because there is a lot of people out there who can't fathom why they did that myself including...

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THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN THE FUTURE THAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN TO PLAY
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1. Skill Enhancing System, I would like to have the option to enhance/alter my skills in unique ways, to have the freedom to choose from a variety of options in order to create my own unique build, this is something the game needs atm as what the skill tree offer to players definitely lacks depth & there is no way to do what I'm talking about from inside the skill tree currently, compared to some other ARPGs it's really disappointing to see what the D4 devs created, especially since they received so much feedback from players years before the game's release & it seems they either never read it or just chose to ignore it.
2. Vertically Based Dungeons, THIS-IS-THE-FUTURE-OF-DUNGEON-CRAWLERS, I experienced a few dungeons in the game where we had to climb down a ladder to a lower level & you already made the first step but let's take this to the next level, now imagine entering a simple dungeon like those we played during the beta but instead of the usual simplistic, small-scale layout we get a huge totally random maze-like map that aside from the ground floor it also has another 3-5 levels either underground or on the upper floors, & each floor has it's own unique boss, now something like that would be so fun to play & will really feel that I'm playing a next-gen dungeon crawler, an ARPG that has some unique, revolutionary design choices & doesn't feel like anything I've played in the past, Blizzard you are in the perfect spot right now to make that revolution happen, to differentiate yourself from the pack, give to nerds out there what they have only dreamed of till now.
3. Secret/Hidden Doors/Rooms & Destroyable Walls, words can't express how much I love this kind of stuff, my enjoyment level would go up considerable if the dungeons in an ARPG offer this level of exploration, exploration is my thing & I can't enjoy a game if there is no secrets to find, if there is no meaning to carefully explore everything, if there is nothing interesting to discover, so put this kind of stuff in the game & make it worth it for us exploration-junkies although I'm certain that this is something anyone is going to love & it will make the game more fun to play for everyone.
4. PvEvP Dungeon, something for PvX fans, now imagine a massive dungeon where 4 players enter at the same time & spawn at random locations, drop rate is boosted & you can really get some sweet loot inside this dungeon but PVP is always ON & you can't turn it OFF, also in case a player kill you everything in your inventory drop in the floor, doesn't this sound like something that would be really fun to play? for me it sure does!

Frost collected on the windows as we drove further into the woods. Next to me, my wife of eight years and bringer of many headaches. Now I'll be fair, I contributed to some of those headaches for her as well. But let's face it, we were having marital problems. I know, a cliche sort of story, but a common one in today's modern society.
We were heading to my grandparents' old cabin up north. My aging ancestors said that it would be the best place for us to "reinvigorate the romance" as they put it. Lovely.
But that's not why I'm recording these papers. No, it was something far graver than a failing marriage.
It was 2012 and we had our typical routines. I was an entrepreneur, investing in the stock market with the hopes of making it big. To make the money in this risky scheme of mine, I had to work a regular job just like everyone else. I worked in a factory for cars while my wife, Cassie, was trying to become a hairdresser.
The topic of money was always a strenuous issue for us. Constantly we fought about where the money should be going. Cassie believed that we should save as much as we can, while I was more willing to take the plunge into the market and try to milk this capitalist engine for all its worth.
As you can see, putting those two together created a nasty scenario where two people who wanted to have the best of youthful intimacy, slowly got destroyed by the years of conflicting interests. I still thought she was the most beautiful woman in my life, but the way that she stood in the way of my goals for a better life was starting to make me question this relationship to go on. Hence the cabin.
Now it is December and it's getting close to that date everyone seems to be obsessed over. The end of the world. What a load of baloney.
So that's a little background as to why we're going out to the woods.
But the drive itself was unbearably quiet. Not once did Cassie say anything. She didn't put up much of a fight either when I suggested that we go out to the cabin. Deep down, I think a part of me wondered if maybe she thought this was all in vain and wanted to get it over with. I believe a part of me believes that as well. Perhaps this is all a wasted effort and the ending result will be our inevitable divorce.
But who knows, there's always that slim chance. And when I looked up at the sky, I saw that there was a meteor shower already happening above.
"Hey Cassie, look," I said with childish delight.
She looked up from her window with a stoic expression. But I noticed a slight twinkle in her eye. From what I could tell, she was surprised to see such a glorious display from the beauty of the stars above. Although astronomy was always more of her thing, I still found joy in the little things.
"I'll admit, I wasn't expecting that."
"Right, and once we're at the cabin, we could—"
It just hit me when I realized it. I had no plan going forward. My goal was to get her out of the house. What are we supposed to do the moment we get to that cabin? It's not like I'm going to ask to be intimate right then and there. You got to work things up to stuff like that; especially with how strained our relationship is.
This was going to be more debilitating than I thought. No matter what scenario I thought of, nothing seemed appropriately timed. Make her dinner, watching TV sounded kind of stupid considering that we did that a whole lot back at the house, and frankly I'm not the most creative when it comes to trying to mend a relationship.
"You want to go for a walk later?" she cooed.
My eyes drifted over to her. Looking at her as she fidgeted with her long, light blonde hair.
A small smile grew on my face. At least she was trying to make an effort too. Perhaps there is hope after all. "Sure thing Cassie. I don't mind."
Once we arrived at the cabin, it was within no time that we settled in. Although fully furnished, there was dust everywhere. Surprisingly few cobwebs, so spiders weren't going to be an issue. The old, cabin-like aesthetic with furniture that looked like it dated back to the 1800s and was handcrafted made the entire home feel like it was holding some dark secrets of a mysterious past.
Thankfully my grandparents had been smart enough to remove any food from the house before we arrived. The last thing I'd want is to see year-old spoiled food everywhere, forcing the two of us to clean up any more than we had to.
The only thing I was concerned about was that I spotted something in the closet of the bedroom. My grandfather's guns.
"Couldn't you buy a gun safe old man?"
Cassie peeked over my shoulder and said, "Ugh, why is that even here?"
"Hey, my grandpa was a gun lover. What did you expect to find here?"
"Those things should be melted down."
My wife, though I still love her, was heavily against guns. She believed that they could all be taken away from the civilian population.
Frankly, I thought the exact opposite. I believe that it should be every person's right to get one. Maybe not a semi-automatic or shotgun, a good pistol or revolver would be satisfactory enough for me.
I quickly moved her away from the stash and we returned to our usual business, not thinking about anything else.
The walk would have to happen tomorrow morning. And after driving for the last ten hours, I can safely assume that we wanted to sleep in.
As we were getting ourselves ready for bed, I looked at my wife with hopefulness bubbling in my heart. She always tried to do everything So graceful, considering she came from a family that was quiet, elegant, and frankly made more money than I could ever hope to. Why she wants to become a hairdresser, I had no idea. Perhaps a change of pace or out of spite for her parents.
I thought about saying something to remind her that I still loved her. But before the words could even escape my mouth, there was a flash of a bright light coming from the window.
She looked up and our eyes widened with a fearful stare.
I turned around, wondering what was causing that. It was too bright for me to even see out the glass. Then a loud bang followed afterward, making me believe for a moment that something disastrous was going on. Was it a nuclear war? A random volcano? A freak storm? My mind was racing with every possible scenario. But as quickly as it came, both the sound and the light vanished into the woods.
"Are you okay?" Cassie said, hunkering down behind the bed.
"Yeah— I was afraid I was going to go blind there for a moment."
"I tried to look away as quickly as I saw it. But I was afraid I might go deaf from that sound."
Despite it being freezing outside, I opened the window and looked around. There was no smoke anywhere. Nor was there even a remnant of the light flickering somewhere off in the distance.
I caught the smell though. It smelled like burning rubber. Or perhaps it was more like plastic burning. Either way, it was awful and I quickly shut the door, not wanting any of that to get in.
"That was weird,"
My wife agreed and surprisingly, she wanted me to come to bed. This was a bizarre turn of events for me considering that she never once cared. But perhaps it was because she was scared. Reasonable response.
The next morning, we went about our habits and freshened up. After eating a light breakfast, we finally managed to put on some snow clothes, and go for that walk.
The brisk air and gentle breeze was more than I expected to handle. But I feel like the nervous tension was definitely keeping us warm. I never realized how hard it was to talk to her.
"Cassie... what do you think was that strange light last night?"
Another brief moment passed before she replied, "I don't know. I couldn't get a good look."
Oh well, at least we got to go on this nice walk. Thankfully both of us wore boots because the snow was unusually high.
Not too far down the road though, we spotted a house. There was already a family outside. A man, a woman, and three kids. Two boys, one girl. They were playing in the snow, building snowmen and forts. They waved to us, and it was a bit of a bitter reminder about how we had squandered our marriage with our short-term goals in mind.
Cassie had this longing in her eyes. I could tell she wished that we would have done the same. And if I'm honest with myself, maybe parenthood would've been something nice.
We waved as we passed by, but neither of us wanted to talk about the matter.
Moving further down the road, I could spot some smoke rising from deep within the forest. I looked at Cassie, but she hadn't noticed it yet. I pointed it out to her and we were both curious about what could be causing a fire in the woods?
"Want to check it out?" she asked.
"Only if you want to?"
"Do you or do you not?" she said more forcefully.
"Yes! God all right," I replied back in my own angered way.
I led the way, she followed behind as we trudged through the snow away from the road.
As we got closer, I could smell that horrible stench again. Now I was certain we were getting close to whatever it was that caused that late last night. Perhaps it was a meteorite or a satellite.
Finally, we cleared past the last batch of pine trees and saw what it was. But a huge crater with something metallic in the center.
"Is that a ball?" Cassie remarked from behind.
I moved closer to the edge of the crater, looking down at it. Every time a snowflake touched the metallic surface of the orb, it instantly turned into steam.
I decided to circle the edge of the crater, willing to see if there was a way to get a full view of what it was. Just out of curiosity. I wasn't sure what it was actually; it was a gray orb, no unique details other than that it was 6 ft tall I believe, and that was it.
Well, that's what I thought until I moved over to the other end of the orb and saw that there is an opening to the inside. It looked like a seat. Which made me come to the conclusion that it was a space pod.
"Does NASA build space pods, Cassie?"
"Not to my knowledge. I don't keep up with space stuff."
As I kept inspecting the pod, I noticed that there was some green liquid that was trailing off into the snow up to the crater until it vanished into the woods.
"What in the world?"
Suddenly the piercing sound of children screaming as well as a man and a woman broke through the forest, causing my heart to beat erratically like a pounding drum. Those are sounds I never want to hear.
Cassie's face ran white like the snow around her. She looked almost like she was about to faint just from how sickening those screams were. They had such an oppressive fear behind them, something that may my blood run like freezing water through my veins.
I went back to Cassie and wrapped my arms around her as we kept looking around frantically. Both of our minds raced about what could have caused that sound. But then I remembered that the other cabin was not too far from us. The one with the family.
I managed to convince Cassie that we needed to run back to the house. But in actuality, I just want to get over to the other cabin to make sure that family was safe.
We kept running as fast as we could until finally when we reached near that cabin, I saw with all my despair-inducing horror why they made such a tormented display of shrieks.
Bile came fast up my throat, and I had to hold myself back from throwing up by the horrific display.
My wife also gave way to shrieking, so loud it was that it was actually more irritating for me but I couldn't blame her.
The poor family. That poor, poor family...
We moved on but I couldn't stop thinking about how every single one of them had been torn apart like mincemeat. Scattered about and indistinguishable. There was a hand here, a few toes there, something had shredded them until they were nothing more than a gruesome display of carnage.
We quickly left the scene.
When we got back to the house, I quickly decided to call 911. I told them everything about what we had seen and they said they would send over a squad car to the house.
But that wasn't the whole truth that I gave them. All I told them was about the massacre that happened over at that family home. I didn't tell him about the spherical thing that we found in the woods.
My wife was still anxiously walking around in circles, checking every window as she went.
I ran out to the car, thinking that it would be better if we just left right now. I tried starting the car, but it just kept sputtering but no life. Something was wrong, the car should work, I gave it a full tank of gas.
I got out and noticed that there were some bolts and scraps of metal half-buried in the snow. When I bent down to look underneath, I saw that the entire fuselage had been torn open. Something had deliberately destroyed the car.
Running back inside, I slammed the door shut, and locked it. I went even further to place a chair and wedge the doorknob. Now I was desperate. We had no car, and there was no way I was planning on walking out there again. All we could do was wait for help. At least I was able to make that call on a cell phone because when I went to turn on one of the lights, there was no electricity flowing through. The wires had been cut as well. Whatever did this, it was smart and it was targeting us.
Cassie had at this point started breaking down into tears. She was scared. I was scared. But I knew that I needed to be there for her. Even though our marriage isn't so good right now, there's no way I could leave her in such a vulnerable state.
I felt that maybe I should do something to comfort her, what else could I do? What could either of us do? The only thing that we were able to do was to wait for assistance.
I stretched my hands out to her and pulled her in towards my chest. She didn't even try to fight back, but rather she buried herself. This was probably the most affection I've gotten from her in a long time.
Hopefully, the police can handle this. I wasn't too sure if we could make it all night. Every little cracking sound from the cabin was enough to get my hair standing up. Nothing seemed to have been damaged, so I had to come to the conclusion that whatever "it" was didn't come inside.
It would seem that we were in for a night of no sleep.
The next day, there was a knock on our door. I was disturbed from my rest on the couch with my wife next to me.
I tried my best to get up without disturbing her and made my way towards the door. But I stopped before I went to open it.
"Who's there?"
"Police," a voice said weakly.
I took a deep breath and exhaled. How reassuring.
I opened the door and I saw that a bloody police officer was standing in front of me. He had his hand covering over his abdomen which was dripping with it.
"Geez, what happened to you?"
He was practically about the stumble over until I caught him. Wasting no time, I brought them over to the armchair and I knew my wife would not like to wake up to this.
"Cassie wake up," I ordered, panicking.
When she opened her eyes and saw who was sitting near her, she just about screamed but I quickly covered her mouth, much to her shock until she saw it was me.
"Ben, what is going—"
"No time to explain yet, I need you to go and get me some water!" I cut her off.
As much as I hated bossing her around, time was of the essence. I didn't want to say anything to her but I didn't think this poor fella was going to last.
She quickly got up and ran to the kitchen, faster than I would've expected her. Perhaps it was just the adrenaline rush.
I turned to the poor guy who was wheezing and coughing blood.
"Hey, pal listen, I'm going to need you to tell me what happened?"
"Don't worry, I know this looks bad but I didn't walk all the way over here for no reason. I need you to warn the station,"
"About what?"
Cassie came in with some rags that were soaked and gently pressed them onto his abdomen.
He winced quite loudly, but we both knew this was the best.
"Tell them it's a code Protectorate situation— I... me and my partner, we went to the house as instructed. When we got there, we both nearly lost our sanity. It was so gruesome what we saw.
I could relate to what he's describing. It was a messed up sight and I wished I could unsee that.
"When we went into the house to investigate, something lunged out from the darkness. It cut clean through my partner before he could even have time to react. I fired eight shots into that thing. It was so mortifyingly alien."
"So we're dealing with an alien?"
"I don't know if you can count that thing as one. It was so savage, so brutal. Naked and abominable. I quickly got out of there but that thing managed to get me in the stomach. I fired one more shot near its head and that seemed to scare it away. Then I came here."
Both my wife and I were awestruck. So there really was an alien in our area. And it's killing people, how original. But my biggest concern at this moment was the fact that we were now caught in the middle of it.
The cop coughed a few more times— drips of blood coming down his chin.
My wife quickly rushed over with the cloth to try to clean it out so that he could breathe properly, but he just grabbed hold of her wrist, and through more agitated coughing, he choked, "Leave if you can,"
His eyes quickly went lifeless and he fell limp in the armchair.
His hand released my wife and she quickly backed up into me. Held her in my arms as we both stared at the lifeless man who gave us the only advice I think he could say to us.
But I had to honor what the fallen cop had asked me and I got back in touch with the police to tell them that the cop died after investigating the murder scene. I gave them his name and they were ready to send more help until I cut the lady off and told her that he requested Protectorate. They cut the line after that and I had to deal with questions I had no answers to.
But then a new voice answered, " Please evacuate the area. Your area has been labeled by the Protectorate Extermination Committee as a targeted zone. You have less than one hour to comply with this direct order."
Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear.
No sooner after hearing those words, Cassie ran back to the kitchen and started washing the blood off of her hands. I took a blanket and covered the officer. But I was going to heed his words.
I went upstairs and quickly started grabbing what I could and throwing them back into our bags. We were leaving and that was not up for any discussion. Thankfully Cassie was on the same page as me.
After about ten or twelve minutes had passed, I finished packing, only to hear the pounding beat of a rotor. That was a helicopter flying overhead.
Quickly I went outside and tried to get a good look at it. It was a Blackhawk helicopter flying rapidly.
Out of desperation, I started waving my hands, hoping that maybe they'd land and get us out of here much sooner than what my car could manage for us, but they flew off. I know they saw me, but they simply ignored me.
Cassie came out of the house and asked, "Did they just leave? I heard them flying by and thought that maybe they'd land?"
"I don't think they're looking for survivors. They don’t look like any military group that I recognize."
"What did they look like?" her voice trembled.
"I don't know who they are, but their helicopter was painted black and there was a symbol on the side. It looked like a shield with six wings coming out from the side and an eye in the center of the shield."
We heard the sound of distinct gunfire off in the distance. Whatever it was, I doubt it was military engagement. There was only one firing and it was followed by deafening screams of a man. Only to be drowned out by something unnaturally low and clicky. But this roar boomed across the land.
That was coming from another cabin not too far from us. Whatever it was, surely we were going to be next in the line of fire for this thing. It must have been going around destroying people's vehicles if there were still people around after what happened to that first. I can't imagine all of our neighbors still being here willingly.
I ordered Cassie back in the house, knowing full well that something bad was about to go down when I saw three more of those Blackhawks flying into one single location.
I shut the door again and told Cassie to get down as low as she could. I didn't want a stray bullet hitting either of us, but I couldn't help but remain curious to see if they could get it.
I was expecting them to rain down machine-gun fire, but instead, I saw three huge plumes of fire shoot out from each of the choppers. They were trying to burn this thing. They were hitting it hard too. The amount of flames coming down at such a rapid speed made me think that it could catch the entire woods on fire. Thankfully it's winter, so I don't think a forest fire is likely to happen.
But they never stopped firing and it also seems like they were chasing after whatever it was. My eyesight's not so good, so I wasn't able to get a visual of what it was. But I saw something running on all four, darting through the woods as the Blackhawks chased after it.
"What's happening!" Cassie cried.
I had forgotten about her. I was expecting bullets but I guess it wasn't so dangerous after all.
"They're trying to burn that sick monster."
"Is it working?"
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I think the thing is getting away. Whatever it was, it was weaving fast enough to where the helicopters couldn't keep up. But at least it seems like it couldn't hurt them either.
"They're driving it away. It's moving far away from us. Maybe we could leave right now."
Cassie started panicking and stuttered, "We— we are not going out there,"
"Cassie don't be stupid, we have to get out of here. That creature might come back for all we know—"
"And I don't want to be outside all vulnerable when it gets here!"
That was always something I hated about her. Once she made up her mind on something, there was no way you were going to get her to change her mind.
"It's always about your issues, it's always going to be your way! Don't you realize that there is something that we cannot handle, running around willy-nilly, we've got helicopters outside blasting it with fire that doesn't seem to be doing too much, and you want us to stay here like a bunch of sitting ducks because you're too scared to try and Escape like the officer who died for us, said so!"
"YOU THINK I WANT TO STAY HERE AND GET TORN APART BY THAT SAVAGE!" she got up from her hiding place and pushed me as hard as she could.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't fall down to the ground, but when she gets angry, she's a little extra forceful than you would expect.
She tried doing it a second time, but I caught her arms and threw her back, but not hard enough to make her fall.
"How about you calm down, and THINK!" I shouted back at her with increased ferocity. I was at my limit and I was having thoughts of leaving her here. We were on the verge of divorce anyway and the last thing I should care about is someone who will become a stranger to me and no time.
"I did, I want to hide and not be an open target!"
"And I don't want to sit here like an all-you-can-eat buffet for that thing!"
Before the argument could continue down this heated path, one of those flamers happened to be coming by, burning everything nearby. Thankfully it didn't hit the house or even the yard for that matter, but it was enough to leave me with a shaking stomach.
We both dropped to the ground but I was still curious about what was happening outside.
I crawled up to the front window again and my eyes went wide as I saw one of the helicopters blasting its flamethrower down. Inside the inferno, that creature was walking about untouched by the heat.
I whispered to myself, "It's immune to the fire? How?"
The flames eventually stopped raining down. I think they got the idea too.
I looked up at them as one of the soldiers was changing their weapon of choice from a flamethrower, to something a little more ballistic...
"Run!" I ordered. "To the bathroom!"
Both of us got up and as we got into the first-floor bathroom, the sound of explosions rained down from above. Small-scale explosives were now being used against this alien. It let out another one of those guttural bellows, apparently, this actually hurt it more. I also could hear the constant firing of bullets raining down.
But this was all that I could interpret. Cassie and I were both huddled in the bathtub, praying to whatever God exists that we don't end up being shredded by bullets in the process.
Already I could hear parts of the house getting hit by stray bullets as it seemed like the helicopters were moving more erratically as they chased after this creature again. At least it seems like they were moving away from us, but those were the most intense 30 seconds of my life.
Finally, everything fell silent other than the distant explosions that slowly toned down.
Both Cassie and I were breathing heavily, I even found myself wrapping my arms around her instinctively.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
She wouldn't quit crying. She never responded to my question. Granted it was a stupid question. Nothing about this was okay.
I decided to concede. Perhaps we should just hunker down and hope for the best. Although I was still completely on board with up and going, Cassie was partially right. We would be caught out there in the open and there was no guarantee that these people who were fighting the monster were even going to care about civilian casualties. They certainly didn't mind incinerating entire sections of the woods away, regardless of whatever houses happened to be nearby.
"Cassie, we'll stay here tonight. But I'm using my grandpa's guns."
"I don't care, I want that thing dead. I'll take one myself."
Well, this was a sudden change of heart. Someone who is always against this stuff suddenly wants one. Though I should have known better when I saw her only pick up the pistol.
"If you fail, I would much rather be able to take the easy way out of this mess."
Honestly, I'd rather have that option as well. But I have to try. Plus, if I was to die today, at least I can go down with this beautiful shotgun in hand.
So that would be the update so far. A black ops group is currently leveling the area as best they can to try and kill this thing, my wife is ready to do what she can to avoid a painful way of dying, and I've got a shotgun, scared out of my mind as I wait for this thing to eventually try and get us as well.
And thus began another long night of no sleep.
The clock had now turned to 12:43 p.m. I was dead tired and the exhaustion of staying up for two days without getting any consistent sleep was starting to take its toll.
Thankfully the sun had come up and this creature did not attack during the night. I'm telling you, that is probably the most luck we're ever going to get out of this.
Cassie was getting more sleep than I was, but she refused to leave the bathroom. She stayed in that tub the entire night, while I made myself a little pillow fort in the living room. And before you start getting judgemental of childish behavior, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die in comfort.
All throughout the night, I heard the occasional bursts of gunfire far off in the distance. I tighten my grip around the shotgun, preparing myself for whenever I would need it.
This particular shotgun was a special type that my grandfather was obsessed over. And it packed quite a wallop. A Browning BPS. With sleek, black metal, this high-powered shotgun is all that stands between a ravenous, deadly alien that came from outer space, and me getting torn in half.
And so began the wait.
Hours were going by. Every moment that I heard them chasing that thing out there, was another moment that told me that it wasn't over yet.
I was drenched in sweat, despite the temperature getting increasingly cold with every passing hour. How we managed to survive this whole time is beyond me. I guess the tension alone was enough to make sure that we stayed warm throughout the whole thing.
Then I heard a rumbling sound outside. Then I heard multiple rumblings. And then suddenly a blast of sound exploded so loud that it shattered all of the glass in the house. I was so scared that I almost fired off a shot.
I quickly got up from the pillow fort, Cassie was looking out the bathroom door. She was as confused as I was.
"What are they doing now?"
When I took a look outside, I had a surge of hope. Outside were 8 tanks, as black as the Blackhawks. They were firing off at a distance, firing off their machine-gun fire at the same time as they tried to destroy whatever this thing was with cannon fire from their turrets.
When I peered further out at the patch of woods that were being shredded to pieces by the barrage, I saw that the alien was moving as quickly as they could to avoid. But it kept stumbling around, and explosives kept burning away layers of its skin. There were more helicopters outside that were trying to flame it as well as firing explosive rockets at it.
I was cheering them on. The creature was definitely taking a beating from the constant attacks and it was only a matter of time before that thing would get too worn down. Already I could see parts of its flesh burning off.
"Come guys, get 'em!" I shouted instinctively by the hype of us actually winning. Maybe I would get out of this alive.
From my distance, I had to wear my glasses to get a better view. But my god the battle was intense.
"I think they've nearly killed it!" I shouted in early triumph.
Cassie came out of the bathroom and crawled next to me, wanting to join me and watching as they finally killed that alien. We both watched with anticipation as they finally seemed to be destroying its tough outer exterior.
The animal looked disgusting. That barbaric creature had two long arms with five fingers that looked about as long as a human forearm, it had a triangular-shaped head, rounded around the edges. I distinctly remember seeing it have bluish-gray skin earlier, but I guess after all of the flaming, bullets, and bombings, now it was reduced to a muscular frame.
It staggered after getting hit for over a day's worth and I was surprised that they were willing to keep pounding this thing so hard for that extended time.
Suddenly the sky overhead had a long, loud engine noise burst through the sound barrier.
We both looked up and my heart sank into what felt like ice-cold water because those were F-22s coming down fast from the sky.
I looked over to Cassie who looked like she had frozen over. Without much rational thought, I grabbed hold of her and we both ducked low to the ground.
The glass exploded above us as I heard missiles coming down, explosion after explosion detonating and leveling everything nearby. They were going to keep hitting this thing till it was either ash, or the entire area had been left in ashes.
Cassie kept crying but I also felt a huge overwhelming feeling of dread laying on top of me. I hugged her tightly, wanting to give myself some warmth from the otherwise cold, apathetic attack that we had found ourselves stuck in.
She kept whispering through choked up words, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"
"Cassie, listen, we're going to be alright. You hear that! We are going to live!"
The last explosion was so close to our house that I think part of it was coming apart at that point. The whole house shook violently and Cassie and I were even momentarily lifted off of the ground by how much power was behind that last explosion.
I slowly got back to my feet, my ears ringing exceedingly loud. I can barely hear whatever Cassie was saying to me. I still had the shotgun in hand. I was clutching that thing as my life depended on it.
Everything was a blurry mess, I was so dizzy I couldn't even focus entirely on anything.
Cassie was trying to tell me something. She kept pointing around me, her face full of fear.
Finally, things were going back to normal quickly and I was able to understand what she was trying to say.
"IT'S COMING THIS WAY!"
My eyes widened and as I turned around, the entire wall exploded inwards. I found myself being tossed over the couch and Cassie was quick to try and crawl back to the bathroom. I think she left her pistol there.
When I got a good look at it, I realized it was at death's door. It was all bloody, muscular, one of its eyes had fallen out. And it had this blood-filled shrill escaping from his mouth that made your skin curl in itself. Frankly, it sounded like no animal on Earth.
Bullets started raining in, a little too close for comfort for me.
I had to make a decision, the thing was eyeing down my wife. She turned around towards me, her eyes filled with tears.
Without much hesitation, I pumped the shotgun and unloaded an entire blast into its chest while it was distracted.
It screamed out in a horrific shrill, probably more stunned that a simple firearm is enough to finally get this thing injured at this point.
I kept blasting, pumping, blasting, pumping, repeatedly doing this while screaming as I kept shooting that sick animal. It swung its broken fingers at me, cutting a bit of my leg in the process. I fell down for a moment, but I knew I had to get back up for Cassie. It didn't do so well when I finally was able to get close enough to it, point the double-barrel right at its head, and blast straight into its mouth.
Strangely enough, that wasn't even enough to kill it. It fell back, squirming around in writhing pain, and I was shocked when I saw Cassie come out with her pistol and unload all eight bullets into the creature as well. I joined her in the attack, and we kept shooting at it until it finally stopped moving.
We both were out of breath, completely in shock, and frankly just wanting to go home. Maybe even see a therapist.
I rested on the floor next to Cassie who had lost her strength as well. We were just too tired to even run and I had no intention of getting out on my own.
Through the smoke, four soldiers in full body armored gear painted black entered through the gaping hole in the wall.
I was so tired I was sure I'd lose consciousness. Sure enough, everything faded to black. I could briefly hear the chatter of radios, but what they said I could not remember.
When I woke up, I was sitting in a hospital bed. I looked around in frantic movements, wondering where Cassie was— where my wife was?
I saw her completely passed out in the bed next to me. I was so relieved to see her safe and sound.
When I looked around, I saw that we were in a military infirmary tent. It was still snowing outside, but thankfully these tents know how to keep you warm.
But as I was about to get comfortable in my bed, two guys in suits- not black suits, thankfully they weren't going to be so cliche— walked in with two guards in uniform behind them.
The man who appeared oldest, complete with a bald head and big, bushy, gray mustache said, "Good morning soldier."
I chuckled a little bit. "Soldier? I wouldn't say I'm a soldier."
He had a charming laugh that I could tell you enough that he was more of a ladies' man in his spare time when he wasn't working to be some high-up government official.
"Ah, but weren't you the one who managed to kill that extraterrestrial?"
Clearly, he knew what I had done, so there was no point in lying. "Yes sir,"
"That makes you a soldier I guess. You may be just a civilian, but anyone who has the guts to take on something that took tanks and Blackhawks an entire day's worth of fighting to kill is deserving of such a title."
"I'm honored," I responded with unease.
"Well, I feel like it's the least we can do considering that even though we did most of the work, the fact that you managed to kill that thing with a shotgun and revolver is my definition of bravery. So we will be needing you to do a few favors for us in return for some added benefits for your heroism today."
I was well-versed in this kind of stuff. You watch enough movies, read enough books, you learn a little bit about what they're going to tell you next. Of course, I had to sign the documentation that neither of us would ever talk about what we had seen today. We were to never acknowledge any information that was related to what had happened today. And we were to tell anyone we came across that we had a lovely second honeymoon trying to rekindle our marriage.
But in return, I did get some financial help from these guys. They gave me a reward of $100,000 each. Although I'd like for more, I'm not going to pester them with that feeling. Beggars can't be choosers, right?
Although after all of that happened, I and Cassie did manage to recover somewhat of our marriage for the time being. What happened that day wasn't going to save it though. In 2018, we decided to go our separate ways. But we still get together occasionally to talk about what happened on that fateful winter day in 2012. She says that she still has nightmares of that thing chasing after her. I don't suffer from the nightmares of that thing, but I can understand where she's coming from.
The recent events have changed that. After everything that happened and now that I've been a single man for quite some time now, I recently became more interested in what's going on above us.
I started collecting information about aliens, thinking that they were nothing more than little gray men and the occasional giant monster creature. Oh, how I was wrong. I was extraordinarily wrong about what was really going on in the stars.
But I suppose that isn't relative to this story. Despite all of the horror that I experienced, the horrors I experienced now are far worse, but I think it's time I sign off on this message. And so I will go back to a night of no sleep.

I love spawn and would like to plan a build that’s inspired by him but the whole gun thing might be an issue for some but since medieval spawn exist he might be a bit more easy to translate into dnd what’s your guys ideas
Edit: for those unfamiliar with Spawn. He was once a man named al Simmons a US marine and black ops agent who was betrayed and killed by those he trusted and sent to hell were he made a deal with a demon named Malebolgia to revive him so he could see his wife Wanda again but like demons do malebolgia instead turned Al into a Hellspawn without most of his memories Al finds out it’s been Five years since he was sent to hell and Wanda has remarried and has a daughter. So now on both heaven and hells bad side he is on a course for revenge on those who killed him, Malebolgia, and those who get on his bad side that is classic spawn. Medieval spawn was a knight who died and made a deal with Malebolgia both spawns have superhuman strength and speed they have regeneration, control over chains and has a good amount of magic abilities including resurrecting the dead, firing blasts of necroplasmic energy, teleportation, , flame-breathing, transmutation, manipulation of the elements, shape-shifting, flight, talking to animals, reading minds, invisibility, portal creation, time manipulation, soul manipulation, reality warping, regeneration,,feeding off the evil sins and negative energy of others to augment his strength and increase his necroplasm counter, and curing the sick. Spawn is practically immortal unless beheaded by a weapon of heaven Or by magic that’s about it