Trump indicates ‘positive’ progress in US-EU trade talks
Donald Trump has indicated there has been progress in US trade talks with the EU, helping send share prices rising on Wall Street, after he commended the bloc for calling to “quickly establish meeting dates”.
“I have just been informed that the EU has called to quickly establish meeting dates. This is a positive event, and I hope that they will,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, saying the EU would be “very happy and successful” if it agreed a deal.
However, the president also repeated criticism of Brussels’ negotiators and defended his decision on Friday to threaten a 50% tariff on EU imports from 1 June, which he postponed two days later until 9 July.
Trump accuses EU of dragging its heels on a tariff deal with the US
Fears of trade war reignited as the American president makes veiled threat on his Truth Social platformLisa O'Carroll (The Guardian)
Downvoted: formal fallacy
There's no connection between premise and conclusion.
I'm appealing to OPs authority and not including a Fallacy in this comment.
...
Oh shit...
Privatizing Occupation: How Israel and the U.S. Replaced Aid with Enforcement
Privatizing Occupation: How Israel and the U.S. Replaced Aid with Enforcement
From discrediting the UN to embedding U.S. contractors, Israel’s Gaza strategy replaces humanitarian aid with surveillance, privatized checkpoints, and displacement.Sarah B. (DD Geopolitics)
Attacks on Ukraine’s draft officers on the rise, fueled by social tension and Russian interference
Attacks on Ukraine’s draft officers on the rise, fueled by social tension and Russian interference
Within a single week in February, several attacks against enlistment offices and personnel in Ukraine took place, resulting in injuries among both military and civilians.Kateryna Hodunova (The Kyiv Independent)
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What does the ban of Sheikh Hasina's party mean ?
Bangladesh: What does the ban of Sheikh Hasina's party mean?
Bangladesh's interim government has used an anti-terror law to freeze all activities of the Awami League, the party of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina. Is there a way for the country's oldest party to remain in play?Arafatul Islam (Deutsche Welle)
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Do you think somebody has to live in a country to have basic news knowledge of what happened there?
The clips of the Hasina cops dumping people off containers and throwing them from roofs were pretty memorable.
Only the people living within the territory are aware about the ground reality.
I live just across the border..... I wouldn't take it to be true what is being shown on the tv screens...... After all, they need to bring in profits against the investments that they have made.........
India-Pakistan escalation shows there is no military solution for Kashmir
This month’s confrontation between India and Pakistan caused a diplomatic, military and political earthquake in Asia and beyond. The tectonic plates will take a while to resettle.
The root cause was all too familiar, dating back to the 1947 partitioning of India and Pakistan and the unresolved issue of Kashmir, control over which remains divided between the two nations.
Pakistan’s official position is that this conflict can only be resolved through a plebiscite, as ordered by the UN Security Council in 1948, while India maintains that its control over its part of Kashmir is non-negotiable.
Since 1989, the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir has been in a state of insurgency, with tens of thousands of people arrested, brutalised or killed. India blames Pakistan for the unrest, but decades of Indian state repression have clearly played a role.
India-Pakistan escalation shows there is no military solution for Kashmir
After the two nations teetered on the brink of war this month amid an increasingly dangerous standoff, now is the time for real diplomacyMiddle East Eye
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Want switch to linux
Hello guys i have a qustion about which distro i should use?
I want to dual boot windows and linux
I just want a safe place away from microsoft eyes to do edit and drawing and other hobbies on my pc.
And playing some games like cs2 & 2d games
Also the distro run my wallpaper engine
Should be popular distro so if i have a problem i can ask about it
Please dont tell me linux mint because i tried it 3 times and everytime i do anything simple the distro goes off and i should re install i won't give it anymore chances
thank you 😖
Edit: thank you guys for typing your suggests. after some search i will give bazzite try and if won't work like i want. I will go with the other suggests
I really enjoyed reading all your suggests
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Okay good, you also included Aurora. I agree almost completely with your previous post that mint is outdated, and an immutable is much better for someone who has no idea what they're doing. No reason to blanket recommend Bazzite, hence the aurora comment.
I'm on Bluefin though, so that's where we disagree 😏 Don't know what it is but I've never liked KDE.
Bazzite is just kinoite / silverblue repackaged as Universal Blue, and then modified to preinstall some qol apps and settings. So if you like the original, but don't want to start with a blank slate, want the nice things out of the box, start with Bazzite/bluefin/aurora (gaming/gnome/KDE).
For people who know what they're doing/want, starting blank slate makes sense. For newbies or people who don't feel like dealing with that 🙋🏼♂️ the latter is a better recommendation imho
It feels dated and ugly
Weird, mine came with Cinnamon, not Plasma
So... do it?
Now to the question which distro, honestly it does not matter YET!
You probably don't even know what a distro is (no offense) but what you did highlight clearly are the needs, namely :
- playing games
- popular
- not Mint because somehow it breaks (would be VERY important to understand why though)
... so that actually narrows things down quite a bit.
The most popular distribution are the easiet to find (I'm on Debian and SteamOS so I use Arch BTW) and that's a safe choice indeed. Playing games does not narrow things down much as most distro, if not all, do not prevent against playing game and IMHO the optimization specific to gaming are pretty much pointless in most cases.
Your edit point that you are trying a distribution already so yes, please, do go for it. I do suggest though that WHEN things go wrong, like it did with Mint, you take the time to understand WHY. This in itself will help you to either switch to another distribution and arguably more importantly what even is a distribution and finally which one of the remaining ones (if you do actually switch rather than fix) are more appropriate for you.
Finally my last recommendation is to back up your data. That's what IMHO make the difference between having fun distro hopping versus pulling hair out stressing that your last game save, or work notebooks, will not be deleted.
Have fun learning!
I'm sorry to say this, but if you can fuck up Linux Mint, you're in for a rough ride.
My suggestion is installing your distro of choice in a VM along side your primary installation and use that for testing before implementing.
Linux in general is ruthless if you make mistakes. It's tough love, but that's how masters of the craft are born.
I dunno, I started with Debian and then many months later learned that it was one of the harder distributions given the outdated packages.
Glad I chose Debian because Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, PureOS, etc are all derivatives of it.
I get that but at this point shouldn't we get more people on this side. Like I think redhad and canonical are infinitely better than microsoft. Lesser of 2 evils and all. Who knows one day they may start using arch (btw)
Also uwuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu.
I suggest BazziteOS. I have it installed on 2 of my computers for about a year and it works great. It runs KDE and it looks similar to Windows but is much better. Also, I believe it has support for Wallpaper Engine, though I haven't tried it.
It is Fedora based and Fedora also has a sizeable community for any questions and tutorials you may have.
The reason why I recommend Bazziteos is because it comes out of the box ready for gaming, you would have steam, wine, lutris, etc installed almost instantly and ready to play.
Chances are that, if you do break something, it'll be on the Windows side.
Bazzite is very solid for new users as it's very convoluted to access and modify anything system related.
Having said that, if you have any intention to learn how to use Linux distros, and eventually remove Microsoft from your life, immutable distros like Bazzite will limit you dramatically, so I suggest you start with a regular "mutable" distro. Now, if your intention is just to have something that works, scape Windows every now and then, and come back to Windows, it's hard to beat an immutable distro.
Absolutely. Maybe I'm a bit biased. I can't stick to anything immutable (other than my Steam Deck, and believe me, I've tried many times), and always come back to distros I can have absolute control over.
However, I have all my employees running Silverblue (mostly because none of them even know what CLI means 🤣).
I think my first distro was Ubuntu ( but that was because everyone around me was using it only) before I finally migrated to Debian less than a year later. Mint and Ubuntu both use Debian as their base. (Mint technically uses Ubuntu as it's base but has a Debian edition as well for backup reasons).
I know Debian's problem is it's software repos(Debian Stable can be filled with older versions of software). But it can't be denied that it is rock solid (for most part), has a comparatively decent set of software in its repos and a large set of distros use it as their base.
If you don't root your Android, you can barely do anything. The UI on Android hides all of the ugliness of the implementation and that shows up as jarring bugs, which you can do nothing about as an ordinary user. If you use the manufacturer's stock OS it's always a horrible experience as well. They also use kernels which are very far from upstream and have a ton of custom proprietary patches. That's exactly my point regarding flashy nonsense. And that's exactly what Windows does as well.
Chromebooks rely on containers and web apps, but once you need to configure your OS, good luck.
MacOS and iOS rely on the company's complete control of their hardware, OS and apps. They have the most closed system out there and rely on things not changing too much. They also expect users to pay for every little inconvenience.
I've been using Linux for plenty of years now, I'm a fan, I love the model, I love the way it's developed, but I also recognize the issues it has. I love programming and going deep in the system, but that's not what ordinary users necessarily want. That's just the reality, the kernel is not setup and documented in a way that would allow easy comprehension and configuration. If you don't have that, then what can a user do when they have to configure the OS and you always need to do that for one reason or another. Companies like Canonical tried to market a model of keeping the system stable and comprehandable, but it never worked out in practice.
WPE is way too deep in specific windows features to be able to run on linux smoothly.
GitHub - Almamu/linux-wallpaperengine: Wallpaper Engine backgrounds for Linux!
Wallpaper Engine backgrounds for Linux! Contribute to Almamu/linux-wallpaperengine development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
GitHub - LGFae/swww: A Solution to your Wayland Wallpaper Woes
A Solution to your Wayland Wallpaper Woes. Contribute to LGFae/swww development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
To put it another way, if it could handle windows 7 or 10 Mint should run even better.
Remember that when you're using a live USB everything will be slower because you're using a USB as your main drive too.
Probably because it's easy to get used to.
As for the looks, I'd say it looks better than Mac, Ubuntu looks best, but that's so subjective and fairly easy to change anyway.
(I used to be a Manjaro user)
Let's say Manjaro has a bad history and a lot of people don't take them seriously anymore and trust them even less.
At the very least it is quite a messy distro to use.
I personally don't see much value of Mint or Ubuntu over Debian.
They all suffer from the same issue: lack of a user repository. This means any layman is going to immediately be turned off by the distro and the whole Linux experience as soon as they want to install something that isn't in their distro's repository.
Neither derivative distro can be considered 'easier' because of this. Might as well just go with Debian and cut out the middlemen.
Don't fall for the memes. Immutable distros aren't actually easier for noobs.
Let me guess, he's a fedora shill.
(reads further)
Confirmed.
All new users need to be aware of the incessant shilling fedora users engage in on these forums.
My name is none of your business, and I approve this suggestion.
For most of us using Linux distros for years, we already have a preferred distro that is highly unlikely to be Ubuntu or even Debian based, but for first-timers, I honestly believe Mint is the way to go. But seeing how mint has been a flop for you (as another poster said, it'd be great to know what went wrong) an immutable distro (like Bazzite) would fit your current needs better, but these distros are not the best way to start learning about Linux and eventually migrate from Windows entirely.
Honestly I suggest learning in avm first so you can do save states. I recommend doing stunting like nix or a declarative/ composable distro. Learn the new way so that your getting the tools and things that are actually being used.
Don't get me wrong it's not an easy learning curve but I think it's the better method of learning.
Because Canonical put a lot of effort into usability. Pretty much all of the popular recommended beginner distributions are Ubuntu based. Examples: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin, Elementary.
People will recommend other stuff, often that are loved by varioius enthusiasts but these may or may not be that suitable for beginners. Call me skeptical.
I use and recommend Ubuntu because it is easy to install, use, and just works. It is also widely supported and very popular. The one thing I do not like about it is the Snap focus. I would love to recommend Linux Mint but last time I used it major distribution upgrades from the GUI were not supported. Have no idea if they fixed that. Ubuntu upgrades are the click of a button. In my family there are nontechnical users and they have used it for almost 20 years just fine without much help from me.
On the other hand I use Debian if I intend to custom configure something and want a minimal install to start from. Major upgrades on Debian are not a click of a button. On the other hand Debian is not Snap based. My workstation and VPS are Debian for example.
How exactly does canonical make their distribution more usable than Debian?
On the other hand I use Debian if I intend to custom configure something and want minimal a install to start from.
Why?
Major upgrades on Debian are not a click of a button.
They're the exact same as in Ubuntu...
On the other hand Debian is not Snap based.
Which is a benefit to new users. They shouldn't be conditioned to be using snaps, anyways.
Buddy I've got my pronouns in my username please don't misgender me.
Additionally, your response is needlessly hostile. You've offered no additional information and have chosen my comment to be a naysayer on presumably only because it is the top comment on the post. You've contributed nothing but vitriol to this thread.
I couldn't give two shits what distros people use, and I'm not a fucking shill. OP wanted a suggestion, I gave 4. I used tobhse Fedora because it's easy, with a large community, and with the bleeding edge release cycle the newest libraries became available more easily without enabling testing repositories or using sketchy PPAs that haven't been vetted.
If OP weren't noob, and weren't someone who has already broken a mint install three times I'd have recommended that use something Debian based or Arch based, but they are, so I didn't.
Upgrades. To do a major upgrade on Debian you go into the command line. You first adjust the appropriate files in /etc/apt. Then you run a bunch of apt commands.
Ubuntu you are asked if you want to upgrade to a new release and just say yes.
It’s 2025, if you’ve got the space to dual boot, you’ve got space for snapshots. There’s no reason not to set them up. Btrfs, ZFS, LVM, pick your poison. Disk is cheap, your time isn't.
And if “simple stuff” is breaking your system, that tells me three things:
- You’re still using apt-get instead of apt
- You’re ignoring dependency warnings
- You’re probably not fully understanding the commands you’re running — so RTFM
So yeah, I will be telling you to use Mint, with at LEAST daily snapshots.
Sounds more like a hardware issue. Screen black, like it goes off no output? Any visual glitching first? Desktop doesn't respond? How do you know, is it sounds stop or make funny noise?
Search inside the system? Open taps? Not sure what this means
Can you restart the computer? Or will the distro not boot after this?
And this doesn't happen in Windows?
Okay, assuming you’re being honest, it sounds like a hardware issue. Either your RAM is corrupting, or your hard drive is prone to errors. The good news is that you have options to daily drive Linux without ending up in a situation where you have to reinstall everything from scratch.
Like I mentioned earlier, you absolutely need to be making snapshots. I'm currently running Manjiro, and I've completely borked my system like 10 times already. But when I set up my system, I made sure my main partition was BTRFS, which has allowed me to roll back easily through both the UI and in grub rescue mode.
I would also recommend that if you are going to continue to dual boot windows, make sure they're on two separate physical drives. And don't share stuff like your steam library, because windows likes to screw shit up, and steam will throw a fit if you make it read an NTFS drive on Linux.
Just don't give up, keep posting questions, and maybe even come back and post stuff like specific crash reports and system info so we can help you better. :)
I'm not sure how you're getting wallpaper engine to work on Linux because it's not supported on anything other than windows.
Are you using Wallpaper Engine? If so you are likely going to keep having issues with your screen blanking while you try and use it, as it's not supported on Linux.
Wallpaper Engine on Steam
Use stunning live wallpapers on your desktop. Animate your own images to create new wallpapers or import videos/websites and share them on the Steam Workshop!store.steampowered.com
My advice: Stick to distros and softwares that are widely used. When presented with options, tend to stick to the defaults.
Just because literally 100% is customizable in the Linux world does not mean you have to customize your system 100%.
That's my motto since 1996 when I started using Linux.
Honestly, Linux Mint is probably the best option. Failing that, Fedora is another good option which is derived from Red Hat, it does things differently to Debian based systems like Mint and Ubuntu, but it's widely supported.
You'll need to iterate what you were doing when it stopped working, 99% of the time, it's down to human error. As someone once said:
"Unix [or Linux] will give you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot. If you didn't think rope would do that, you should have read the man page."
Open Source & Linux - AnduinOS
AnduinOS is a custom Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that aims to facilitate developers transitioning from Windows to Linux by maintaining familiar operational habits and workflows.www.anduinos.com
It's worth noting that fedora is heavily sponsored by RedHat (a subsidiary of IBM) and is the upstream testing ground for RHEL (Redhats commercial offering). RedHat also has close ties to Israels government and it's military.
This is a huge dealbreaker for someone like me so I feel it's necessary to mention.
Not to get into politics but the whole point of Linux is about being open and used by anyone from anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised to see various parts of the Linux kernel, drivers, etc developed/funded by people from Israel, Russia, and many many other countries.
Edit: the point of this message, this type of approach to your OS choice will ultimately result in throwing your PC in the trash if you dig deep enough.
There is a vast difference between a community driven project like Debian taking small contributions from people who happen to be in Israel/incorporating some things from RedHat after lots of vetting and diluting and Fedora being a direct upstream testing ground for RedHat who are the primary contributors and maintainers.
No, this type of approach will not lead to you throwing your PC in the trash, it will simply lead to you being more aware of your software and how it functions,what it contributes to, and what contributes to it. Which is a good thing imo.
For example, I use LMDE. Yes, there are most definitely contributions from redhat in my machine. the difference is between
RedHat engineers -> Fedora.
And
RedHat engineers -> Fedora -> Upstream Project acceptance-> Debian -> LMDE.
I'm not saying you need to stop using Fedora. But everyone draws a line somewhere and I'm simply making my knowledge on this known for people who's line may be in a similar place to mine.
Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Obviously you can't completely rid yourself of all RedHat influence but Fedora is their literal upstream community testing ground and LMDE really does limit their influence heavily and that of Canonical (Ubuntu) by just building off of the more community based Debian (which Ubuntu built off of as well)
Linux Mint Debian Edition.
You say not to suggest mint, but you most probably used an Ubuntu based Mint so that doesn't count.
For gaming, I think it comes packed with most of the required things so imo, try Bazzite.
Also, linux mint it's very easy to use, fi you do something simple and you need to reinstall the distro, maybe something was done wrong from the beginning.
Standard Linux mint is is Ubuntu based, LMDE is debian based. Completely different depending on the issues they had.
Edit: but also plenty of other Debian based distros, including Debian itself would avoid direct Ubuntu (Canonical) and Fedora (RedHat) influence.
Aurora - The Linux-based ultimate workstation
The ultimate productivity workstation, stable and streamlined for you.getaurora.dev
I put Bazzite on an Intel n100 box I'm using as an HTPC. Super easy install and it was ready to go and working just fine very quickly. Jellyfin works really well! It really is quite incredible how far things have come since my first install of Ubuntu 14.04. Atomic could really make some headway on making Linux easy for a typical user. Wine has come a LOOOONG way help keep compatibility too.
Way better than my Ubuntu desktop. The only thing hold me back on putting an atomic distro on my desktop is not familiar with how things like Python venvs would work for development. That and I use a global hotkey program for Team speak since they haven't updated to handle Wayland global keys.
Starving Palestinians storm US aid facility as distribution operation breaks down
By Maha Hussaini and Mohammed al-Hajjar in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
Published date: 27 May 2025 15:58 BST
"Palestinians clamoured for aid and gunfire rang out in chaotic scenes, as a controversial US-Israeli aid distribution scheme turned to shambles.
Journalists in the besiged Gaza Strip said hungry and beleagured residents forced to stand outside a facility holding aid rushed inside because of delays conducting detailed security checks on recepients.
According to Israeli army sources cited by Israeli media, Americans affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had to be rescued once they lost control of the facility."
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Starving Palestinians storm US aid facility as distribution operation breaks down
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/30755893
By Maha Hussaini and Mohammed al-Hajjar in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
Published date: 27 May 2025 15:58 BST"Palestinians clamoured for aid and gunfire rang out in chaotic scenes, as a controversial US-Israeli aid distribution scheme turned to shambles.
Journalists in the besiged Gaza Strip said hungry and beleagured residents forced to stand outside a facility holding aid rushed inside because of delays conducting detailed security checks on recepients.
According to Israeli army sources cited by Israeli media, Americans affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had to be rescued once they lost control of the facility."
Starving Palestinians storm US aid facility as distribution operation breaks down
By Maha Hussaini and Mohammed al-Hajjar in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
Published date: 27 May 2025 15:58 BST"Palestinians clamoured for aid and gunfire rang out in chaotic scenes, as a controversial US-Israeli aid distribution scheme turned to shambles.
Journalists in the besiged Gaza Strip said hungry and beleagured residents forced to stand outside a facility holding aid rushed inside because of delays conducting detailed security checks on recepients.
According to Israeli army sources cited by Israeli media, Americans affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had to be rescued once they lost control of the facility."
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I thought that said "paying" and I agreed.
Now that I see it says parrying, I do not.
Perhaps the author just sucks and should stop playing the kind of games that tend to have parrying. What guy in Clair Obscur are you stuck on, bruh?
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***** attacks at light speed.
I love (and plat) both sekiro and nine sols, so I'm all for parrying. But some enemies really have bad telegraphs in clair obscur.
You can trivialize the parrying in Clair Obscur with the difficulty levels (and automate the offensive timing of it altogether).
But it sucks that you can't disable it and have to stare at QTE prompts over the beautiful combat animation.
It’s the QTE debate all over again. If it’s a forced mechanic, meaning there’s no alternative than to learn the pattern and parry effectively, I agree with this guy that it sucks. But I haven’t seen many games where that’s the case.
Modern accessibility standards seem to be doing a better job of making games enjoyable by a wider range of players, giving options to disable QTEs entirely on one end, or offering alternative solutions to fights besides mastery of timing dependent actions on the other.
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"Parry" in monster hunter wilds: too slow to be a reactive option, user must be psychic or memorize monster movements in order to anticipate next potential movement.... I hate it.
I do love parrying as a general concept though.
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huh? perfect block and counterattacks are extremely powerful in wilds and most of them have essentially no windup. if you're relying on something like the insect glaive offset you're gonna have a hard time but most weapons are extremely reactive to the point where it's dumbed down combat in a bad way imo.
compare that to something like 4u charge blade guard points which were also extremely powerful but required you to plan ahead.
user must be psychic or memorize monster movements in order to anticipate next potential movement
if you hate this, monster hunter might not be for you. that's been the meat and potatoes of the game since ps2 and leads to its most impressive gameplay imo.
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I've been playing my for like 20 years, I'm fine with the anticipation part in general it's just stupid for parrying. The time spent waiting for an attack you know is coming is better spent setting yourself up elsewhere as opposed to risking winding up a slow parry. Obviously weapons like longsword were built with that in mind so that's different as it's part of the intended play style.
Perfect block is fine since it's quick enough that it works as it should, but there are a number of weapons that have extremely slow parrys.
memorize monster movements in order to anticipate next potential movement.... I hate it.
this is literally the cornerstone of monster hunter combat
I get that and for 99% of monster hunter it's fine, but a parry should be like a guard/perfect guard for weapons that can't block. Those are quick responses when you're in a situation you know you're going to get hit in. With wilds the majority of the parrys are like 1-2 seconds of winding up when you only have a half of a second to react.
Something like longsword was built for this, so the gameplay is about waiting for attacks, but every other weapon isn't. The time spend waiting to parry is better spent moving yourself into a better position for something else.
After giving it some thought I kinda agree with the author. Not in the hyperbolic sense that it's the worst thing ever, nor in the sense that I don't like parrying because I suck at it, but I agree on the point where he's talking about fencing.
There's so much more creative freedom and depth in actual martial arts, HEMA, fencing etc. that is just completely missing from most games. You don't get the contact feel of your opponent, you can't physically feel what your opponent will do. You can't really gauge how far your attack will reach or, more importantly, how much range your opponents have. You can't choose your angle of attack and, again more importantly especially in the context of parrying, choose how you defend. Your attacks are generally just a button click at which point the character does whatever attack has been programmed. Your defense is just a button click that generally blocks all attacks in front of you. Your parry is also just a button click that if timed right just parries (and sometimes automatically ripostes as well). All the nuance of melee combat is simplified to "one button for blocking/parrying and one button for attacking".
So yeah, parrying does suck until we can turn it into something more engaging than just timing a button press.
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Gameplay has been so on the decline nowadays, that just having an actual reactive counterplay element like a parry is a major positive, even if it's a huge simplification of defense. So, more engaging defense mechanics would be nice, sure, and there's certainly huge underexplored territory on "offensive" actions with non-universal parry type defensive properties to make fighting more interesting, but that doesn't mean what little we do have becomes a negative or less engaging.
It was tragic that the current Soul Calibur dumbed their deflect down to a single simple action instead of the series standard of at least needing to match low/high height zones (mids could be deflected with either, which was a nicely subtle drawback), but it's still better than not having it at all.
Parrying is good. More interesting parrying/defense is better, but that's a level of player and dev effort/investment that's rarely on the table.
I hate parrying so much. I can never get the hang of it in any game. I can play twitch shooters at a decent level, I can play the most challenging platformers without any issue, my reaction time is OK for someone of my age, but give me a parry mechanic and it all falls apart. For some reason, my brain cannot handle video game parrying.
I ended up downloading a mod that extends the parry window by 500% in Claire obscure. I still fucking fail at it at times. It completely ruins the game for me :(
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But the point is you built a timing mechanic in a turn based RPG that is dependent on latency in a world where you are adding arbitrary amounts of latency in the display, the rendering, the controller polling and the platform itself.
That's a bad fit between design and hardware. I'd argue that's always the case and modern gaming SUCKS for timing-based mechanics compared to old ride-the-scanline CRT gaming. And yet they are extremely popular and people seem to assume timing challenges are the only way to make fun mechanics.
No, you were fishing for a bug to dismiss the point the guy was making, but the issue is deeper than that.
I play a bunch of fighting games and I can tell you I can feel combos not working going from PC to PlayStation or from a DS4 to a DS5 or from my PC gaming monitor to my TV.
That didn't use to be the case. Timing could be different in consoles or arcades because those were entirely different games, but if you could do a thing on one TV with one controller you could do it on any TV with any controller on that game. That's not the case anymore.
And yet "react to a visual cue in something the enemy does and press the button in a small frame window" is a much, much more frequent core mechanic now than it was then.
Everything has to cater to the shittiest hardware.
Up until very recently it wasn't uncommon for developers to keep around the most craptastic old CRT TV they could get hold of just to check whether their UI would be unreadable for everybody. Ditto for TV stations.
And even after HDMI became the standard and consoles stopped supporting SD it's not uncommon to have a TV set to the most garbage-ass factory store settings just to check that no matter how stupidly the user has set their TV they can still read text and see all the colors more or less distinctly.
You don't need to care about it, but devs typically do.
The team at Sandfall certainly does, given they did add accessibility options to automate all the offensive QTEs and a bunch of in-game items to make builds based on taking damage instead of parrying.
Because, you know, not everything has to cater to you, but it sure is cool when devs think about these things for a second.
Still, despite all that it's a terrible time to make timing-based minigames like that since you have no control over latency at any point of the user's hardware chain. You simply can't know what type of latency you're catering to. You don't even know the target framerate, which can range from 30-ish to 400Hz. It's absolutely atrocious to do timing-based gameplay in modern gaming.
A lot of attacks will make a "shoonk" sound, and you'll want to parry at the end of the sound. You can almost see it as counting to a metronome.
Also see the Lusters in Flying Waters. Their attack where they dash three times has them crossing their arms, during which you'll see a flash. Press exactly at that moment.
The Abbests have a magic attack, where you'll hear two rumbling sounds before the strike. Again, put it on a metronome, using the first two sounds as a guide.
Try playing without music for just a bit, or keep it down a little if you struggle to hear through it. Going by sound, and paying closer attention to the attacks (and not getting frustrated) eventually made some fights go from being a struggle to even get a single move in, to being completed extremely quickly with almost no damage. Headphones also seemingly got my success rate up. Just study the attacks, and start out with basic dodging.
I'm near the very end of the game, and combat feels like impulses in my brain--physical. It's worked super well for me in most games.
Yeah, I know about the sound. I've watched multiple videos with guides how to parry. Somehow my brain refuses to get it
It's a me thing, I couldn't get the hang of parrying in elden ring, and not even in botw can I do it. But put me on e.g. Interrupt duty in wow, and I won't miss a single interrupt. I could time the bonus jumping attacks in Mario rpg games without any issue.
I'm not a bad gamer by any means, but for some reason I can never ever get the hang of fucking parryibg.
They lost me during the bit about "Do you want to have to not just learn about but care about ticky-tacky coder stuff when you are just a person trying to play a video game?"
In fighting games for example, frame data is essential for learning the game. It's like knowing what the pieces do in chess. They just want to move the horsey around and not worry about all these pesky mechanics. Not all games need to be like that, but it's absolutely appropriate in certain genres.
Parries we're awesome in Sekiro because the entire game was built around them. The parry window was wide and the whole game was built to be a sort of rhythm combat game. It's important to note that the parry wasn't the only tool you were supposed to use. You had to react with Mikiri counters and jumps as well. The whole game came together to make the incredible duels that feel like a dance.
If they wanted to say that developers saw Sekiro's popularity and started shoving parries in where they don't belong then I could see that argument. There's some nuance there that this blanket statement of parries bad misses though.
I call bullshit on fighting games and frame data.
I remember ages ago when SF4 happened I was friends with a pretty solid tournament competitor and talking about this he mentioned that frame counting is for nerds because the only thing you need to know is if you can push a button or not and that happens from intuition, which is true. At least it's true in a good game that has good animation. I've always had a kick of beating sweaties with their "this is minus three" obsession by having solid fundamentals. Some of them got pretty annoyed.
And to this day I will claim that Dragon Ball FighterZ is the best fighting game of the last decade specifically because a) every basic combo route is built out of repeatable, simplistic, easy to remember chunks, and b) you can mash the CRAP out of 90% of that game's links and they work perfectly fine unless you're trying to do a rejump or time an assist extension.
I will die on this hill, except I won't because I'm right. I will survive on this hill. Make a little cottage on it and play fighting games inside it.
That hasn't been my experience at all. Knowing the difference between what's plus, what's minus, and what's block punishable is super important. Knowing if I can set up a frame trap is huge, and it works specifically because it isn't always intuitive. In Tekken especially you need to know your frames for block punishes, when you can sidestep, and what options your opponent has in a given situation.
It's not always mandatory, but it's always useful.
It is super important, but it's not a timing problem, it's a knowledge check.
The thing you want to know is whether you can buffer a button during your recovery and get it off before the other guy. If you can, the timing is often very loose, you mash on that thing and you probably get your punish out frame 1.
And if the game is good you don't learn it by spending a ton of time with a wiki or even with the training mode, you learn it by playing the game and looking at the animations.
If you are a bad game, like the first few Tekkens (yeah, I said it), then you won't get that from the animation, but you can still learn it by trial and error. And crucially, once you learn it it's always the same. In most decent games with consistent base mechanics, anyway.
So no, you shouldn't have to learn whether your jab is four or five frames. That's how the game is put together, but it should be good enough at communicating how fast your button came out that you can intuit when it's safe or effective to put it out after blocking. At least after you try it once.
There are a ton of fighting games that are still grandfathered into the notion of putting complexity in this part of the design. You know, the ones where your fastest attack is different per character so you need to know this particular guy's fastest opener is a crouching medium kick, but only when you're close enough or whatever. I'd argue those games are less elegant without adding anything to the skill ceiling when compared to newer games like my previous DBFZ example, where everybody's jab is probably the same speed and the basic flowchart of what to do after you block an attack doesn't require a textbook and complementary materials.
I will take it one step further:
Timing is not the only skill that is fun and developers should acknowledge this.
The reason we talk about parrying this way is it's everywhere now and people have decided it's what's needed to make turn based games compelling, but it isn't.
The reason they think that is that people have decided that timing a thing is the only exploit-free, skill-driven action you can have at the core of gameplay.
But it isn't.
I find it a bit lazy to default to this approach on everything and it's certainly on everything. Timing is a big part of gaming, particularly in real time action stuff, but there are other tools in the toolbox.
Here's an observation: the reason people keep trying to make metroidvanias and being worse than SotN and its handheld sequels is that modern designers can't get over adapting Soulslike combat where the Igavanias were more concerned with giving you a ton of options. Timing is there, but there's a ridiculous amount of self-expression through tool selection. You can go for a tanky build, you can break DPS and movement a hundred different ways. Getting good at those games makes them look like a broken mess, but it's self-expressive and fun.
Timing a marker to a yellow bar in Clair Obscur or trying to guess when the ridiculous fifteen second windup animation of an enemy is going to trigger a five frame active window is not self-expressive and fun. It's a QTE.
Clair Obscur's combat has other issues with balance beyond that, and you can certainly spec to trivialize the parry even without changing the difficulty level, but the annoying part is the focus everybody puts on the timing minigame versus the actual (pretty solid) turn based game design running underneath.
I can absolutely understand it, not everyone has the time to invest hours into learning attack patterns or parry rhythms.
It is very normal that people only have a few hours a month for gaming, a hour here a hour there, with maybe days in-between.
I agree games often come with features that are worthy of complaint. I really don't think the parry feature that this author speaks on is one of them though. At least not in their given examples. I'll admit I have not yet played Clair Obscur, but the other example given was of Dishonored, a game the author claims is beloved to them. I've played Dishonored 1 and 2 several times over. It is an extremely re-playable series because it offers players a multitude of ways to go about each mission. The parry feature of that game is in no way necessary for many play styles. Forgetting the fact that you can play through the game as a pacifist, parrying isn't even necessary if you wanted to charge every enemy head on as a blood-thirsty maniac.
The author talks about i-frames and hitboxes as if those concepts can't enter into a conversation with casual gamers. Its ok, if you want to play a game that doesn't require a lot of thought when it comes to those two things, but there are tons of games that fit that bill. Even ones that have parry mechanics like Batman and Spiderman games. It's the equivalent of saying that double jumping is a bad mechanic because its not physically possible in real life, so it doesn't belong in video games... Oh wait the same author said that too! Under a picture of Elden Ring of all games!
tldr; The author specifically complains about 100% optional mechanics that in no way affect one's ability to play the game otherwise.
I think with parrying specifically, it's frustrating to see it become a crutch for games to add combat depth, or pop up as the central mechanic everywhere at the expense of exploring new combat ideas.
Dishonored is obviously not a bad example of parrying, so I'll give a bad one I just encountered recently: Slitterhead. The game has plenty of cool combat mechanics, but it repeatedly puts you in scenarios where parrying becomes either your only option or your quickest road to victory, which trivializes the rest of its cool combat ideas.
I think games like Ninja Gaiden II or Bayonetta perfectly handled parrying: it's a tool that unlocks combat depth, but not the only one, and combat is still fun without it. Not to say anything is wrong with a game like Sekiro, but to see games blindly copy this design philosophy is disappointing.
I like parrying in RPGs. Forcing item use is stupid, since the item use is inevitable. It adds a layer of skill to combat, making it something other than menu with cursor. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are phenomenal examples. I do not like it in real-time games, unless it's a core mechanic. The point is it should be a core mechanic, and not something thrown in because other games are doing it.
In my two examples, parrying is no different from blocking/dodging. The difference is simply tighter timing with a higher risk. This is fine, since this is the only thing that's going on. If it's real time, however, I now have this list of things to worry about--enemy positions, my own position, my health, the surrounding environment, being literally pelted with attacks. It's fine in real life, but with a controller? Hell no.
Expedition 33 is great because it's dead simple--a set of dodges and blocks, with a limited move set which just uses face buttons and the triggers, in contrast to Final Fantasy's dozens and dozens of spells. The simpler a game is, the better. See Celeste. It has move, jump, climb, dash. VVVVVV is even simpler--move and flip. Tetris is move and rotate. Paper Mario is just timing with button prompts. Undertale is just a standard RPG, but you move a soul to collect friendliness pellets. Even Horizon is relatively straightforward, with basic movement, aiming, shooting, and a variety of weapons which utilise these mechanics in different ways.
Occam's razor.
Breaking: video game journalist who's bad at video games offers objectively incorrect insight
People (especially fucking game journalists) need to figure out that not liking something doesn't mean it's objectively bad
I remember when people thought quick time events were cool.
There's a lot to be said about the aging of game mechanics and the efficacy of their continued use.
Depends on the game. Parrying in the opening moments of Witcher 2 is a fucking pain, because it consumes 1 bar of stamina, as does rolling dodge, and you only have 2 stamina at that point, which also takes forever to regenerate. If the enemy isn't dead after 2 parries, you're fucked for 20 or so seconds because you have no way to actively avoid damage other than running away
On the other hand, the parries in the Batman Arkham games and Shadow of Mordor feel great.
Parrying Is The Best Thing In Video Games
Parrying Is The Best Thing In Video Games - Aftermath
Everybody’s gangsta until somebody parries your bullshitaftermath.site
In case someone hasn't seen it yet, this is what the first picture in the article is referencing:
like this
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Wow, how did they do that!?
I guess if you can pull that off, parrying is the best.
Just wanted to add a couple of things: the game is Street Fighter 3rd Strike, where you can die due to chip damage. What this means is that even if you block special moves (like Justin's Chun-li did) they still do damage, the aforementioned chip damage.
So Daigo Umehara, the Ken player, had no option other than parry or he would lose the game and Justin Wong, the Chun-li player, would advance to grand finals. Parrying in 3rd Strike is done by inputting forward as opposed to blocking which is done by inputting back. More specifically you have to press forward in a 10 frame window. Since 60 frames equal a second, you have a window of 1/6th of a second to input it and you also cannot hold forward, otherwise you won't be able to use parry for the next 23 frames.
So if Daigo had held forward to parry the remaining hits of Chun-li's attack, he'd die from chip damage (I think). What he did instead was manually parrying every single hit of the attack AND he also parried the attack in the air, which is even harder to do because in the air the frame window is halved (so you have a 5 frame window, or 0,5/6th of a second if my math doesn't fail me), which doubles the difficulty.
And just to add to this: Daigo had actually done it in a match before but it wasn't recorded. Also, the number 37 was chosen at random to make it seem as if there were a lot more hype moments like this. Also also Justin Wong, aside from being one of the best fighting game players of all time, has always been (as far as I know) a cool sport about this, even encouraging people online to do the Daigo parry whenever he plays 3rd Strike just so players (the ones who know how to do it at least) can sort of be a Daigo for a moment.
If you want to know more, I suggest this video: yewtu.be/watch?v=36m-teYaQmE
P.S.: Daigo would go on to lose in the grand finals. But nobody cares about that, to be honest. I don't even know who won it.
The game with the best parring was ghost of Tsushima, you can’t change my mind.
That ding sound when the swords clash was so satisfying.
App Image or AUR package
apt download just in case as that variant of the command also downloads dependencies.
Alberta enters its book banning era
Alberta enters its book banning era
Spare me the 'will someone please think of the children' claptrap.Jeremy Appel (The Orchard)
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