I don't really play high level stuff. I'm too scared to find proper raid groups and such.
Guild Wars 2 has a similar thing going on with their professions. They're still decently diverse, but ANet has been removing the profession unique buffs etc. and homogenizing them. I think it started back after HoT when Alacrity (recast speed reduction) was changed from being a Chronomancer only buff to being available on other professions as well, and over time they've just removed them more and more.
They're still not homogenised to the level of FFXIV though, and there's uniqueness in mechanics between professions.
I do see the point of doing that though. It removes the "we must bring X for Y buff" reason, but I feel like FFXIV has gone a bit too far in the sense that what makes the jobs unique is almost gone from them. They gave back the unique card buffs on Astrologian, but I don't like the cadence of the cards now. I don't remember exactly how it worked in Endwalker, if you got mana back from drawing or playing a card, but regardless I really enjoyed planning out how I'd play my cards, and wished that the cards had more unique effects than "small DPS boost to melee or ranged". Now we have more effects, but the cadence is gone, I no longer need to plan my cards in the same manner, and there's no little coloured thingies to fill up to get Astrodyne.
That kind of pressure of optimising which cards goes where and ensuring I played cards in a way that maximised Astrodyne was what made Astrologian fun to me. Now it's literally just White Mage. It's really sad.
That's not to say that I dislike White Mage, I love it, it's nice and relaxed, but I preferred the higher tempo of Astrologian, and that's just gone now.
I never experienced pre-Endwalker AST, sadly. I enjoyed the amount of actions you took with it in Endwalker, but the cards being the same was a bit underwhelming. I was excited for the changes to come in Dawntrail but now that we have them I'm a bit underwhelmed. I'm not level 100 yet, and I'm still going through the story so maybe my opinion will change, but I don't think so.
I think what bothers me the most is just how similar WHM/AST and SCH/SGE is to one another. Sage is just a scholar with a manual fairy, and AST is WHM but with cards. I'm also not really sold on the card changes they did for 7.0, I preferred the system in Endwalker.
For me it’s Shuntaro Hida. His retelling of when the bomb dropped, and the events he experienced after. The people walking, heads bloated and their flesh sloughing off like bloodied rags.
Yeah so the solution there is to not just bow down to a dictator. If they want to block Twitter altogether, let them. Let's not pretend that Musk isn't willingly going along with that.
I'm personally on matrix.org, but it's like with Lemmy. It's federated so you can do as you please. I think self-hosting requires a decent amount of resources, but I haven't looked into it all that deeply.
Was listening to my go-to podcast during morning walkies with my dog. They brought up an example where some couple was using ShatGPT as a couple's therapist, and what a great idea that was. Talking about how one of the podcasters has more of a friend like relationship to "their" GPT.
I usually find this podcast quite entertaining, but this just got me depressed.
ChatGPT is by the same company that stole Scarlett Johansson's voice. The same vein of companies that thinks it's perfectly okay to pirate 81 terabytes of books, despite definitely being able to afford paying the authors. I don't see a reality where it's ethical or indicative of good judgement to trust a product from any of these companies with information.
Kan vi inte bara kasta ut Tesla vid det här laget? Nu när gemene man vet om att det är ett fascistföretag som ägs av en nynazist, ska vi verkligen låta sådant ha en röst i vår arbetsmarknad?
Completely unrelated segue, but your comment reminded me of this one vet appointment I had with my dog.
He was in for having his teeth cleaned, and came out with his claws trimmed. They managed to cut into his quick on five claws. I don't even know how they managed to do that, I don't do that and I don't have the advantage of him being sedated when I clip them. Then they had the absolute gall to charge me for trimming his claws.
To top it all off; I had an appointment booked with the groomer next-door a couple of days after that so their "service" was unwarranted and unwelcome.
I don't really play high level stuff. I'm too scared to find proper raid groups and such.
Guild Wars 2 has a similar thing going on with their professions. They're still decently diverse, but ANet has been removing the profession unique buffs etc. and homogenizing them. I think it started back after HoT when Alacrity (recast speed reduction) was changed from being a Chronomancer only buff to being available on other professions as well, and over time they've just removed them more and more.
They're still not homogenised to the level of FFXIV though, and there's uniqueness in mechanics between professions.
I do see the point of doing that though. It removes the "we must bring X for Y buff" reason, but I feel like FFXIV has gone a bit too far in the sense that what makes the jobs unique is almost gone from them. They gave back the unique card buffs on Astrologian, but I don't like the cadence of the cards now. I don't remember exactly how it worked in Endwalker, if you got mana back from drawing or playing a card, but regardless I really enjoyed planning out how I'd play my cards, and wished that the cards had more unique effects than "small DPS boost to melee or ranged". Now we have more effects, but the cadence is gone, I no longer need to plan my cards in the same manner, and there's no little coloured thingies to fill up to get Astrodyne.
That kind of pressure of optimising which cards goes where and ensuring I played cards in a way that maximised Astrodyne was what made Astrologian fun to me. Now it's literally just White Mage. It's really sad.
That's not to say that I dislike White Mage, I love it, it's nice and relaxed, but I preferred the higher tempo of Astrologian, and that's just gone now.