Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@NEStalgia "once fooled, always suspicious"
I prefer the more poetic "the boy who cried wolf"...

As for it being "masterful" trolling: all I saw was blatant insulting of a reviewer. We both may not always agree with Damo, but I've never been able to catch him at outright lying in any of his articles or reviews, so regardless of it being trolling or not, I can understand that the site crew jumped in on it, because it was a clear-cut case of not done, and that's putting it VERY mildly.

Could be a returning felon, though, seeing as the profile was relatively new. Either that, or it truly is a new user who isn't really aware yet of the fact that American brashness and/or candor is frowned upon, on a UK-regulated website...

@ThanosReXXX I'm not as good at figuring out the returning felons as Wilton and a few others have been (they opened my eyes to a few!) but in this case I'm pretty confident it's a certain PlayStation fan that's had a string of recurring aliases recently, each of them detected fairly soon. I notice his other recent one appears to be silent at the moment....hmmm...

The country of origin keep changing though....

It has the right writing style, argumentatively passive demeanor, polite but always needs the last word in a passively argumentative way, and finds something to complain about with absolutely everything (unless it's PlayStation.)

So I feel like Switch is on a cart powered with nitrous...but it feels like the twins are kinda dropping off. I understand they have announced successors but it feels like the well is drying up a little early.

Also I've started recording my Japanese speaking...Woo... train wreck... however I'm noticing bad habits a lot quicker.

Six Pack Link BOTW coming right up !

@NEStalgia Yeah, I noticed that behavior as well, and not just in the Astral Chain article.

As for how these losers keep being able to return, is beyond me. I'd expect that even with them making new profiles, it would still be tied to the same IP address or provider, and there's a couple more criteria that could be used to identify people, as you may well know.

Smart people could of course use VPN's and what not, but even those aren't ironclad if you REALLY want to find out who's behind them, and if you have the means to do so, obviously. But the average game site user won't even be using stuff like that, so any counter-measures they might have taken, to not be discovered (if any at all), should easily be bypassed.

And yet, even when people do get banned, they still manage to simply create another account and go their merry way...

Quite baffling, in my opinion, and I'd say that there's still some work to be done on that front, by the site's admins.

@ThanosReXXX That's a hard problem to deal with. They can always generate new email addresses to register. IP tying only makes a fun challenge for the troll sort and makes life a nightmare for rule abiding members (I participate in one (non-gaming) forum that is very restrictive like that. In registering, it blocked my name for no apparent reason, I can't access it from behind corporate VPNs, and carrier nat on wireless networks sometimes flags it sometimes doesn't it, so I get inconsistent access. So I have to schedule time to even reply to people when I'm not on a secured platform, and thus make myself more vulnerable.) It's done an ok job of keeping trolls out...but it's doing an excellent job of keeping actual participants out. IP filters really don't work. Or rather they work, and allow convenient access for only a portion of the real membership. The crafty can work around it, and too many good people get caught in the too-smart-for-it's-own-good attempts to identify through obfuscation.

I think the only way to really deal with it is, unfortunately, extremely tight moderation with zero tolerance one-warning policies etc and overly heavy handed control of discussion. I've been on a few of those forums, too. On one hand they do have far less problem with trolls, since trolls really don't have any fun just being banned instantly all the time even for the tiniest infraction. OTOH, it makes for a terrible forum, because everyone is parsing their own words constantly, trying not to set off any overzealous modding by breaching the tiniest of the loosely defined myriad of rules.

There's no great way to do it...though some of these trolls do get a bit too much leeway. Endlessly goading the site admin, even if politely, in that Astral Chain review, probably warranted one of those "one warning" bans.

@Ryu_Niiyama I think that's normal. As soon as successors are announced, all consoles drop off a cliff. Nintendo's included. Publishers start lining up their efforts for the next console, any strong push from first party to win supporters halts cold, everyone on all sides is just waiting for the better product, and doesn't see much point in sinking more money into the current.

That's the one good thing streaming and gen-less consoles can do...eliminate that awkward cycle.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I know it can be a hassle, both for site owners and members, but with a good set of rules, and a three strike system, it should be doable, in most cases. I don't like how these newcomers and revenants disrupt this site. I want them gone, by any means possible. It's annoying as hell that, while we even can't accidentally plant an f or c bomb, or say "shoot" with an i instead of two o's, these first class a*holes can happily continue to have their way.

On a side note: that work related scenario you described, is one I've been subject to several times. There was either complete restriction of all but the most boring of websites, or the gates were only temporarily opened during lunch break. So, initially, I simply kept private browsing as something for when I got back home at the end of the day, and later on, when smart phones became more common, I just used that to browse to my heart's content. Charged my phone at the office as well...

On a second side note: so, it finally happened: I officially lost faith in human kind. Once you're at that point where even spammers can't be bothered to at the very least make some effort to make a site-relevant topic anymore, and start posting threads asking for crude oil trading tips, then you know that the collective IQ of the entire planet is slowly but surely reaching an all-time low...

EDIT:

Ah... seems like the page was already removed, after Joeynator3000 had already locked it first. Oh, well...

@ThanosReXXX - I opened a huge door right into my face just last week while distracted by my kids. One of my funniest mishaps came when I got sent to my room as a kid. I tried to slam the door so hard it would knock pictures off the wall, but the handle came off in my hand mid pull, and the door quietly clicked shut before I could stop it. Naturally, I immediately assumed I’d die from starvation trapped in that room, but I was also too mad and embarrassed to call for help.

@NEStalgia - Huh, I’ve been reading here a while, but I don’t remember the clickbait period. Not saying it didn’t happen, maybe I just blocked it out, or never got around to clicking in the first place. The only time I’ve been annoyed with NL was last fall during the launch of NSO. I can forgive some of the confusion of facts because it didn’t seem Nintendo were communicating clearly, but there was so much leaping to conclusions, click baiting, troll lathering, and finally an ugly flogging of a dead horse that it left a really bad taste in my mouth and factored in to me just taking a break from the site and mostly only clicking on reviews.

@bimmy-lee Oh it was bad for a little while. The site is mostly an amazon ad space or knee jerk articles to rile up clicks but it is much better than it was right after Tom left. I've pretty much stopped coming here for "news"... I just like the forums (and I participate much less even in that respect as well) and the comment sections (I read the articles I post on of course...). Damo can be a little hostile even if you aren't calling him out so the nonsense that happened yesterday was not surprising. (the poster was wrong but Damo and Ant should have either let it go or been more neutral in their responses).

@NEStalgia I don't know I feel like the twins were a bit underwhelming this gen. I'm not really talking about games that I don't like as I never try to use that as a metric when discussing consoles, but I feel like there were more, AAA mediocre games or controversies than success. Like I don't really get a sense of excitement from people when they talk about the twins beyond the standard shiny graphics and console wars nonsense.

@bimmy-lee You mentioning that door story reminded me of another one of my own: I was left home alone, probably aged 12 or 13, and I was playing a game on my home computer. But I couldn't beat the game, or the high score, don't exactly know anymore which, but either way, I had anger issues back then, so I burst into a rage fit, and threw something in the general direction of my door.

Except, I forgot, that in most rental houses, doors aren't exactly made of the most sturdy material. It's basically just a wooden frame with some pressed wood-fiber plates stapled/glued to them, so next thing I knew, there was a fist-sized hole on one side of my room's door.

After I recovered from the initial shock, I quickly came up with a "plausible" scenario, because my parents would be home soon, so I had to explain what happened, obviously. I just told them I tripped, lost my balance, and landed with my elbow into the door. My father frowned, but said nothing, and my mother always thought I was the most honest kid in the world, so she accepted that explanation.

But I think you can probably imagine how all of that went down, from being angry, to being scared, to having to face the possible wrath of the parents, knowing that even though they weren't the strictest of people, they still didn't take any crap from little old me or my sister...

@ThanosReXXX ". I want them gone, by any means possible."

This, my friend, is why we need all those guns.... The original point & click interface to eliminate pests of all types. Guaranteed effective!

I never had any faith in human kind, so I had none left to shatter. However, it's a shame the thread is gone, I'd have liked to share with them my favorite crude oil trading tip. If you stand in the middle of the oil field or rig, light a match, and throw it on the field, if you look at the color of the smoke, the darker it is, the higher the value is going to climb! This one simple trick the gas station doesn't want you to know about made me a millionaire overnight!

@bimmy-lee Yeah, Ryu kind of got it right so I'll just go with that description

@Ryu_Niiyama I don't know, people seem to be eating up PS4 left and right and it's well praised exclusives. Personally I do have to say PS3 was dismal and PS4 was far far better, but it took years to get there and suddenly dropped off a cliff last year when they rushed out all their big games, and then announced a year of total radio silence.....that's Sony doing their best Nintendo impersonation, I think. They copied the Wii EOL strategy flawlessly. Since you're a PC gamer and PCs self-immolate and/or attempt to form Skynet if I attempt to game on them, I strongly appreciated X1's eventual pivot to being almost what Steam Machine wanted to be, but yeah, it's not exciting if you're on PC (which makes GP Ultra a little redundant.) As for AAA mediocrity and controversies, I don't think that has anything to do with the twins and has more to do with the state of "the industry" (or really, the PC games industry, since that's what those AAAs really represent.) I expect that part to get worse next gen.

Plus FFVIIR isn't out yet.

@NEStalgia Guns wouldn't do much good, unless I wanted to shoot my own monitor in frustration, which I might actually have done, if I had own any weapon during my anger management issue period...

But what we could do, is hunt them down and bombard their PC with DDOS attacks, or ransomware. That'll teach 'em...

P.S.

The Wii end of life? I think you had better replace that with the Wii U, now THAT was radio silence...

@Ryu_Niiyama While I definitely agree with you that site admins and editors should not let things like these get the better of them, I also think that it's no more than reasonable to defend yourself, when you're outright accused of being a liar and writing a completely biased article, so far as I'm concerned, they had every right to speak out in that regard, even if they may not have chosen the most elegant and/or smartest way to deal with that.

@ThanosReXXX Naa, Wii EOL was bad, which they acknowledged, and is part of why WiiU was rushed out before it was ready. They severely mismanaged the Wii due to the flash in the pan success it had, and that is a contributor to what happened with WiiU.

@ThanosReXXX Haha I have a door story as well. I took a guitar stand to my door once. In generally I'm extremely mild mannered but I was tormented growing up after I lost my eye (it didn't help I was both the only girl in my neighborhood and the quiet, smart one) so I came home from school one day crying and just picked it up and slammed it into the door, knocked a decent sized hole in there.

I'd removed the guitar...I was upset not suicidal...my mother would have buried me in the back yard if I broke my guitar. I told my folks what happened but I remember feeling that it was such a stupid thing to do because it changed nothing...but I was afraid that if I fought back I'd get beat up. My dad is old school traditional sexist so he wouldn't teach me how to fight and my mom never had to really learn for any reason. After that I started reading up on the physics of fighting and some boxing and karate books and sorta taught myself some basics. Came in handy the next time a dude tried to push me around, I pushed back...took a about a year but nobody messed with me after that. Then when I got to high school I signed up for IB and honors classes because most bullies tend to be idiots/underachievers. Humans suck so much.

Agreed that Wii EOL was a cliff drop. They tried to dog paddle with the WiiU because they weren't sure the switch was going to make it...but between losing Iwata-denka and most of the "unprecedented " 3rd party support I kinda get why Wiiu was a whisper at the end. Still my favorite system though. Wii sorta felt like "so now what?" about a year before the wiiu was even announced. I think that Nintendo really didn't expect the the Wii to mostly be a wii sports box (I think they thought they had another NES on their hands...mainstream and sales lots of software to keep publishers) and I think they thought that consumers were smarter than they were (or that they used portmanteau the way the Japanese do) so that they could just coast into the Wiiu sales while their dev teams got a handle on HD. However without 3rd parties to pick up the slack it made it look like the release schedule was barren (even though Nintendo and their closer partners had pretty stacked/close releases imo, I remember blowing a LOT of money during the wiiu days and I bought everything day 1 because I had GCU).

But the twins feel kinda like the WiiU whisper/dog paddle to me (that they aren't hurting for money is the only difference but the releases feel very sparse this year). Or maybe I'm missing the buzz articles.

@Anti-Matter really nice! I like the more detailed background in this one.

@Anti-Matter Looks kool, dood!

I may not be as active the rest of the week. That annual reporting to the state is due Friday so I’ve gotta work nonstop at Admin office starting tomorrow. Have to finish compiling, reviewing, and validating all my data for the eight counties. I’m gonna need to keep the coffee and ice maker on.

@Ryu_Niiyama Your door story kinda made me feel sad that you had to go through all that, but glad you still came out of it in one piece, in the end. But your story certainly was not what I expected, seeing when one starts with "haha", I would normally expect something funny to follow...

And we kinda got into the "door accidents thread within the Chit-Chat thread" to exchange funny and/or comical stories, mainly because I started it with this beautiful example:

@NEStalgia @Ryu_Niiyama Yeah, you both got a good point there. But the Wii U certainly also died a rather quiet death. And at least the Wii still got the latest Just Dance.

@Anti-Matter Once again, some really nice coloring on that picture there. Well done.