:im-virgin:

When I was a kid, I really liked Modern Warfare 2 and 3. They just have great gamefeel, the maps and movement options feel like they combine well to make all sorts of different strategies work. The progression feels great too, using all sorts of different weapons to unlock their various upgrades and experiment with how they affect your approach to different situations, etc.

I only stopped playing these games back in the day because the playerbase moved on to the newer games and the proportion of cheaters left in the remaining playerbase was too high. So I haven't called a duty in a long time, but recently I picked up MW2 & 3 through IW4x and plutonium respectively, and even today, with just a few weirdos like myself who want to play these games with functioning anticheat, I still feel like these games are great.

Last time I saw a "modern" call of duty game (though keep in mind what I think of as modern call of duty is probably like a decade old) it was all about super high speed movement tech, which also seems to be what other popular arcadey shooters are about these days too. I've never been very good at that sort of gameplay.

Then there's the other side of shooters, the super tactical "esport" kind like Counter-Strike or Valorant. I'm about 20 years too late to start getting good enough at those to have fun with them. I'm glad people like them, but they're not for me lol

Are there any shooters left that sit in this sort of middle ground? Not crazy fast paced, not super slow and tactical, but just a versatile and simple arcadey pew pew?

Just something I was kinda curious about for collection / novelty reasons and I'm not sure where I would start. I know there's not really a practical reason for it, but I think it would be kinda neat to have a DPRK-made pistol or something. Something I can be quite sure no one else I meet will have, ya know?

It is now the year 23NF, counting by the Never Forget calendar. On that fateful day the whole world changed, and we entered a truly new era. Never forget, fellow patriots, how fuckin AWESOME that shit was wooooooo

Previous years:

—Year 1

—Year 2

—Year 3

—Year 4

TL;DR:

Population: 163
-Fortress is now a barony under Baroness Meng Lalturdeduk
-Baroness Meng Lalturdeduk demands stuff like an office and a dining room. So far her demands have been met with laughter.
-Child menace Zulban Mountaindances in a months-long depression after a half year of wanton murder.
-Military crumbling under the light pressure of occasional Forgotten Beast attacks from the caves
-Necessities still seem to be stable
-Read the year 4 post if you want to hear someone who knows how the fortress works talk about it. I barely found my way around lmao

File here

Fluff:

To Queen Olin Estilaban

The dwarves of Roomtheaters have had a harrowing year. I arrived with a group of migrants in the spring, and found that the fortress had been taken over by a strange dwarf calling himself Emperor Edzul. When I arrived, he was overseeing an operation to locate gold in the depths of the earth. When gold was finally located, it was within a deep cave teeming with vicious monstrosities. The military was sent ill-equipped, and it is only thanks to the fragility of these flying cave pests that no one was seriously harmed.

The gold plundered from this dangerous cave was then promptly mixed with copper, and from the resulting alloy this so-called Emperor minted coins. He proclaimed these rose gold pieces to be the official currency of Roomtheaters. I later learned that he had upset an Elven caravan by offering them goods made from animal bones. Perhaps his obsession with currency stems from this?

Edzul (I will no longer be using his assumed title), now satisfied with our stockpile of rose gold coins, turned his attention to another unusual endeavor. It was on the 9th of Hematite that he began to erect a wooden building--like the ones humans live in!--on the northern hill in some misguided attempt to promote positive relationships with other peoples. Every day that eyesore grew taller, The Ochre Tower he called it, and now it teems with foreign visitors. Edzul (if that is his real name) claimed that its genius would be acknowledged by future generations and that the tower will only grow taller, that some day a dwarf shall stand atop it and see no higher point in any direction. I say any fool who tries that is going to start a useless war with elves after cutting down all the available trees.

On the 20th of Malachite, the true danger of the deep cave in which Edzul found his precious gold became apparent. A horrific beast called Geb Gemeshikthag, an evil creature made of snow, emerged from the depths of the caves. Though it was soon slain by a troglodyte, it was a sign of what was to come. Ever since that day, we have been plagued by regular incursions of evil primordial beasts. Our already minimal military has been steadily chipped away, and as I now write to you it is in a dire state.

On the 18th of Limestone, a Dwarven caravan arrived, and Edzul purchased everything they had with stacks of those coins. This was the caravan which accompanied your liaison, the one who offered to turn Roomtheaters into a proper barony. Edzul must have thought it was amusing to designate the nearest newly-arrived stoneworker as baroness. Nevertheless her fellow dwarves accepted her appointment, so you may be displeased to know that Edzul never ordered proper noble accommodations for her. She still eats and sleeps in the same conditions as the rest of us.

On the 20th of Limestone, another ongoing issue with this fortress became apparent. A child named Zulban Onolmatul, the ten year old daughter of the Captain of the Guard, went on a rampage. After toppling a workstation, she murdered a siege engineer in blind rage. On the 22nd of Sandstone, a brawl broke out in the crowded temples near the surface. Several people were killed, mostly dwarves. No one can give a straight answer regarding why the brawl began. I suspect the same child's wanton violence may have been the spark that set it off. On the 6th of Timber, the child's rampages were finally acknowledged and she was convicted of nineteen counts of disorderly conduct and one count of vandalism. And yet, still she roamed free, with no plan to prevent this from happening in the future. Of course it did, on the 22nd of Timber, when she beat the engraver Ineth Loloklid to death. I believe this event (and the truly grisly state of the corpse) may have finally affected the child, because ever since she has been in a deep depression. There have been no further outbursts. Maybe it's just the winter cooling her temper.

In the final days of winter, this Edzul announced his sudden departure. So I write to you in the hopes that you can send a better overseer by the time spring arrives. We need a strong administrator, who can revitalize our military. We need a skilled engineer and architect to design expansions to the fortress, including proper quarters for our baroness and defenses in the caves below. We need a dwarf who can keep our people safe from threats internal and external, who can resolve a child's murderous urges without allowing her simply to remain in a deep depression. I have no doubt that such a dwarf can be found, and where are they needed more than here?

—An anonymous letter from a concerned citizen of Roomtheaters

Other comments:

—The two southern guildhalls on elevation 40 are requesting upgrades to grand guildhall.

—If you're as silly as I am, you should add a few floors to The Ochre Tower on the hill to the north. It doesn't have to all be inn, go wild.

—Of course it is expected that the new standard Roomtheaters rose gold currency be respected.

—Seriously focus on the military things could get bad quick

Unaddressed comments from previous player:

—We are getting more artifacts, and I haven't done anything to secure them. A vault or something might be good, especially since we're letting all these visitors in more or less unimpeded.

—Bedrooms have been addressed, at least for now. I've not been putting cabinets in, hoping that that clears out old clothes rather than letting these guys hoard them in a very egoist way. Further expansion, or plans to do so, is probably warranted though.

—The entry footbridges have cage traps but need weapon traps to really do damage.

—We may want to tap the stream for a water reservoir we can contain in the fort.

—Choose a dwarf to nickname for yourself!

—Dig! What could possibly go wrong?

I've been having this issue for a few days now. Roughly twice a day, for 10-15 mins, my internet just suddenly goes out without any warning. Then it comes back and is totally fine again. ISP says that there's nothing going on on their end (and most of the time when I have an internet outage they do say they're having an issue)

Is the router just fucked? Are there web goblins stealing my interwebs? Is there any way to tell?

Where things like "freedom" are a sincere part of governmental decision-making, and not just an excuse for a few rich old fucks to hoard more wealth. Where there exists a temporarily flawed but fundamentally good organization in every single city in the country devoted only to keeping the community safe and in harmony. Where the people in charge are truly doing their best to make the lives of the common person better.

If the world worked the way liberals think it does I'd have become a cop straight out of high school, I swear. I still harbor thoughts of trying to become a firefighter, but I'm not sure I've got the discipline for it.

I don't really have a point, I've just been chilling and drinking tea and thinking about this. I think this line of thought stemmed from having been mistaken for a cop once or twice and trying to think of exactly the best way to word exactly why I would never in a million years consider it regardless of what you paid me, and thinking about how that concept is kind of hard to understand from a liberal's point of view. To them, saying "cops are fundamentally bad" is like saying "firefighters are fundamentally bad" or "farmers are fundamentally bad." In liberal propaganda, cops are just as necessary (and as enduring) as either of those jobs.

Well--

"There ain't no covid no more--there never was no covid!"

It protects me from a wide variety of things.

"What, you believe in aliens too?"

Sure, why not?

An actual conversation I had with a trucker the other day.

bnuuy

It's like if Touhou had a baby with FF14 raid mechanics. Everything is adorable. It'll make you hate your friends for coming near you when they were supposed to stay away, and it'll make you hate them 5 seconds later for running away from you when they were supposed to stack. I highly recommend it. It might even be a fun game to try to get some people from here to play together, since it's pretty low time investment, intuitive, and doesn't necessarily require voice chat. (It's better with voice chat, funnier without it)

Vintage Story is what happens when one of those people who make the ridiculous complicated Minecraft modpacks gets tired of working with jank ass Minecraft and decides to go make their own engine and do whatever they want with it. It's a beautifully complex, (optionally) brutally unforgiving, wonderful little game that I love immensely. You start out by banging rocks together to make stone tools and foraging for berries and wild carrots and trying not to get murdered by weirdly aggressive wolves and completely normally aggressive pigs. But it quickly opens up into a whole world of making pottery, learning the right ratios of copper and tin to make bronze, accidentally collapsing mines on yourself or accidentally setting entire hillsides on fire because you forgot the hill was made of peat, farming (don't forget to rotate your crops!) and facing evil hordes of eldritch monstrosities.

Also, I just love the mindset of the devs. Check out the "held to high standards" header on that main page I linked.

Anyway, getting to the point: I've already bought the game for myself and a friend, paid for the optional account upgrade that just gives me a different color name and a forum badge, and paid for the "pay what you want" soundtrack. So, the only thing left I can do to give money to this great game is to give it away to some of you guys, if anybody's interested in trying it out!

So, I have three giftable game account key things. First three people to say they want one will get one. So if you're a fan of this sort of silly Minecraft modpack, try it out!

Is there any good way to find like an online class or something that could recreate that experience? I do not want to try to self-teach a language, that sounds awful lol