You did it again. Dodging the question. Again. You KNOW there’s no clean answer to the Israel situation. You’re blaming Biden for walking a highwire nobody would have walked better. And you seem to know it because you won’t address the question head-on.

…and then you change topic.

So at this point, you concede that Biden is as pro-Palestine as is reasonably possible? Or are you just going to keep spreading the Russian propaganda?

People also didn’t like the fact that she and the DNC colluded together to torpedo Sander’s primary at any given chance

And she didn’t. People keep repeating this, but it’s not a fact. The DNC started transitioning over to Hillary after Bernie already had statistically ZERO chance but before he formally resigned. A bunch of people (including Bernie) got pissed about that, but not only is it not unheard-of, it’s downright sensible when Bernie wasn’t even planning to run on the Democratic ticket no matter what happened.

As I keep saying elsewhere. It’s really weird that everyone seems to hate Democrats who run for president more than Republicans who run for President, but for reasons they can never quite pin down to anything related to facts.

I personally don’t like her because of what the Clinton’s have done to the DNC over the last 2 decades, particularly their championing of 3rd way politics.

Bill was a moderate. Yeah, I know. Hillary was further to the left than her husband. Should we have given Trump the 2016 presidency because Hillary was married to a moderate?

Offhandedly blaming every valid criticism as Republican propaganda does nothing but drive people away

“Offhandedly blaming 9/11 on the Taliban does nothing but drive people away”. There’s no question 2016 was Republican propaganda and Hillary. I ABSOLUTELY have valid criticisms about the Democratic party. But that doesn’t mean every stupid criticism should be taken as valid. The Republicans have gotten REALLY good at the propaganda game.

Hillary Clinton was obviously a bad candidate, this is self evident in the fact that she lost to a conman.

As “unpopular” as Hillary was, she was sladed to crush her by historic margins before you account for the Russian hacking scandal. You can disagree with me on that all you want, but if you DON’T get oppositionally defiant on that fact, then you can make no negative statements about her in good faith out of the 2016 election results.

It’s not the job of the DNC to blame voters for not voting for their chosen candidate, it’s their job to give us candidates that we want to vote for

Normally I would agree with you. 2016 was different. If Charles Manson ran for President and won, it’s the voters faults. NOBODY who did the least bit of research wasn’t shitting their pants on election day 2016.

“Sleep now in the fire.” And because we can’t fucking learn our lessons and we STILL blame the perfectly viable Hillary Clinton, we are indeed sleeping in the fire that Zack de la Rocha warned us about.

Which is a de facto admission he knows Israel is committing war crimes with the weapons and that he has the power to stop military aid at any time.

So your take is what. If we don’t start bombing Israel ourselves we’re supporting genocide? It’s a real moving goalpost, almost as if no action by any president would be enough. Almost like this originated from the Trump camp like all the other misinformation.

Nothing disgusts me more than seeing how Americans find some excuse to HATE every Democrat LOVE every Republican, even over issues where the latter is lightyears worse than the former.

Absolute immunity for all official acts by a president, whether technically within their power or not. It’s now possible Trump cannot be held accountable for his attempted coup because he did it as the sitting president - because SCOTUS implied it’s Constitutional for him to attempt to overthrow the government.

The DNC signed it’s death warrant with that one.

Bernie refused to join the DNC. He was doing his usual pump&dump dirty pool of winning a Primary and refusing the nomination so that the Democrats wouldn’t be able to run anyone in the general.

Bernie got screwed

…because he couldn’t get as many votes. None of that superdelegate bullshit people are talking about came to pass. He just wasn’t popular enough among a party he refused to be a member of. Go figure.

Hillary was unlikeable because she was a woman who wasn’t submissive. Sexist people hate that. Everyone who ever met her loves her. The only unlikable thing is her unwillingness to take bullshit. Hillary was in-line to win by a landslide “unlikeable” or not. It took the media buying into a lie and Comey making misleading statements about her being under investigation (with no actual crimes suspected) a week before the election for Trump to win by the tightest margin ever.

The DNC is the party who notoriously dropkicks people on the merest whiff of impropriety. And here we had a fabricated criminal controversy. We played right into Trump’s hands.

…just food for thought. Ever notice how we Americans seem to remember VIRTUALLY EVERY Democratic presidential candidate in a bad light over some sort non-substantial reason or another like “unlikeable” or “tried too hard” or “claimed to invent the internet” or “was a douchebag”? Ever notice how older Democrats still somehow remember RONALD FUCKING REAGAN as the best president of their lives?

The Republicans bought the propaganda machine when Nixon lost. It’s all a goddamn lie.

Learning to play the guitar or code also doesn’t have a difficulty slider, but people of all abled-ness manage it anyways.

Games are about entertainment. They’re not a career. Nobody is paying me to play a Fromsoft game. More importantly, nobody is gatekeeping the entertainment, immersion, and story of music or coding behind me being able to “Git Gud”.

And let’s look at music and coding. Since I can speak a bit to both. For music, OF COURSE there are difficulty sliders. When I took recorder back in school, they had 2 different versions of many songs. When I first learned Christmas music on piano, I learned special “simplified” tracks for the songs. I never “Got Gud” at music, but I still got to the end of the book.

And coding. Coding is the opposite of a Fromsoft game. You’re surrounded by mountains of tools that try to make it easier. When I bring in a junior developer, I’m not giving them some unforgiving code challenge to power through. Maybe they’ll never be good enough to design a specialized cache or optimize queries. So I give them the things they CAN do, and hold their hand so they always succeed. Junior devs don’t ever fail, not because they “git gud” but because I set them up to succeed by this little difficulty slider called “how hard is this ticket to do and how much help do they need from me?”

I hear what you’re saying, but to be fair, younger players don’t start out with those reflexes either. It’s probably harder for older players, but I’m not convinced it’s that much more of a challenge that it’s not worth trying

It’s not about the reflexes, though. It’s that they have opted to take actions that make the game unenjoyable for a significant number of gamers despite it having no positive benefit for ANY gamer.

And much of my Letsplay complaints weren’t about Elden Ring. I mod that. I don’t have the tools to mod Bloodborne, a game I otherwise would like more than Elden Ring because of its storyline.

It is a great apple to apple comparison.

This is the “nuh uh” answer. You never quantified anything. it’s sorta a “fuck you, I know you showed my argument was a fallacy, but I’m better than you so I’m doubling down”. I spend too much time in places where that shit gets laughed at. I’m going back to those places. Enjoy your shit game.

They made a piece of art. You chose to buy it knowing what it was. Git gud

No. I chose to buy Bloodborne because people convinced me that wasn’t the case. Git blocked.

You have so many options to make it easier.

Like the third-party Easy Mode mod.

You bought a game that you knew would be full of “difficult” bosses

I bought a game that I knew had a working Easy Mode mod. I would not have bought it if it hadn’t. Because the designers are assholes, but assholes who can write a decent story.

And now you sit and complain about there not being an official “difficulty slider”.

Yes, I do. And you sit and complain about another human being having an opinion despite the fact you could just NOT complain about other human beings having an opinion. Funny how people “sit and” do things.

Do you also go to a vegan restaurant and complain they’re not inclusive because you can’t order meat?

No, but that’s not an apple-to-apple comparison, making that a False Analogy fallacy. For two reasons. First, whether I agree with it or not, veganism is an ethical position and they’re refusing to serve any meat on the menu because they think it’s morally wrong to. Do you think Fromsoft thinks they’re “going to hell” if they put in a difficulty slider? Second, vegan restaurants are ABOUT veganism. There’s no reason to choose to eat at a vegan restaurant unless you or someone in your party is looking to have a meal without meat in it for some reason. There’s plenty of reasons to play Fromsoft games but at lower difficulty. Most people don’t like Bloodborne or Elden Ring “because it’s difficult/unforgiving”. They like it because of the story. Anyone who would opt out of playing those games because someone else could play them on easier has serious issues.

Soooo a game, which is not paid for nor developed by the community, and is rather purchased with the knowledge that it is a difficult game which will require ample skill to surpass its many challenges, should put in difficulty sliders despite them fundamentally going against the very nature of the game itself?

Fucking YES it should. I didn’t buy ER until I was 100% certain it had an easymode mod. So I got what I wanted out of it despite them shoving both their middles fingers at me and telling me I’m not worthy to buy their product because they’re intentionally hiding the good part (the story) behind gameplay I didn’t want. I’m still pissed that I wasted my money buying Bloodborne. You want me to get over that, cut me a check.

As I said to the other hater, what is with the ER-fanboys turning the chat into full-on-reddit level bitchfest defending it? Why don’t you just let me have my valid opinions? I know, heaven forbid there exists someone who has an opinion that doesn’t match yours.

I found it. It’s in Nexusmods instead of in the game.

If you don’t like spicy food. Don’t buy spicy food

I don’t know about you, but every spicy restaurant I know has a little “difficulty slider” where you get to ask them not to pour a gallon of ghost pepper into it. It’s about making the customer happy.

If you don’t want to “git gud”. You can use summoned spirits. NPCs, other players

Or I can fucking mod the piece of shit and complain about it on forums because it’s fucking stupid. But I want BURN Bloodborne because I can’t mod it.

There already is a difficulty slider. It’s one you set for yourself.

Yeah. I’m getting really good at archery. Think I’ll cut my eye out. Natural difficulty slider

Why is it every time I express a valid criticism about an otherwise story-heavy game with a stupid difficulty-related gimmic the cringe-posse comes out and tries to convince me the game is perfect and no human being would find my opinion valid. Like seriously what I tell my little nieces and nephews, if you don’t have anything nice to say, move along.

In other news, I DO respect the Viva La Dirt League reference.

I think it’d be a bit more difficult than you are assuming however since it is also a multiplayer game. I guess they could limit the difficulty options to offline players only.

For online play, you can just match people who are using the same difficulty, and perhaps disable PVP entirely for Easy difficulty. For everything but PVP, it’s not that big a deal. Seamless Co-Op Mod works with the Easy Mode mod. If modders can make a coherent experience, I’m sure From could. If they wanted to. Which they don’t.

Making it a game about ambiance and story makes it a different game, doesn’t it?

Not really. The experience with the Easy Mode mod in place is pretty much the same. I saw more “You Died” screens on easymode than the typical player sees on regular mode. The only difference is that I didn’t waste my money on Elden Ring by having to give up less than 10% into the game like I did on Bloodborne after 50 hours or so.

Some of us, especially older gamers, just don’t have the reflexes for that type of game. Unfortunately for us, Fromsoft writes GREAT stories and Let’sPlays are still kinda boring.

Honestly how is this gatekeeping?

“Gatekeeping: the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.”

The lack of difficulty sliders make the game inaccessible to people who have no ability or desire for the unforgiving experience, nor any ability/desire to “Git Gud Scrubs”. It’s intentionally left out to exclude those people. That makes it “gatekeeping” by the definition for the word.

This is substantiated by the fact that a mode to make the game easier and a mode to make the game harder are in the top 10 downloaded mods for Elden Ring. If you leave out the loaders and modutils, those same mods are top-5. This is basically unheard of in most games.

You can argue that you approve of this gatekeeping, but it’s silly to die on the “it’s not really gatekeeping” hill.

I was about to say this. At LEAST wait for a 6 belt balancer to think the man can’t be saved.

Nobody knows it but the Turks…

And the scariest part about history I learned in school is that the Vikings always took over the world because they don’t need a Cassus Belli.

Yeah, I’ve noticed there’s this weird cross-section of people who ask “do you believe everything you heard on the internet?” about some pretty established facts, and blindly believing Fox News.