u/Loud-Passage-4020

Confirmed turtle here and I'm looking to feed my habit some more.

Need I explain the pleasures of turtling? It’s that feeling of being protected when you’re hunkering down and building up one big, beautiful, fortified base. Then I just develop it inward at my own pace, while the world can come knock if it dares.  I don't want to be out there raiding and expanding aggressively, I want to dig in, get comfortable, and let trouble arrive on my doorstep on my terms.

I grew up in a 3rd world country that was bombed when I was 3 so I dunno, that might have something to do with it? It would be pretty funny if that was the actual psychological reason but fact is, I just like that laid back, defensive playstyle that doesn’t demand I micro all the time.

One game that’s given me lots of enjoyment in 2 different ways was Diplomacy is Not an Option, even though it’s brutal in its own way. Some harsh trial and error missions (Abelorn, my nemesis!) but I loved the fact that I’m always growing outward and building chonkier walls and never really venturing beyond the safety of my walls - except for clearing camps - has such a good feel to it. The other part I liked is that aside the difficulty, I could to my amazement turn ON the diplomacy option in the menu, which I though was hilarious, so it becomes chill and just non-challenging then. After Diplomacy, I also played Cataclismo and Here Comes The Swarm, but neither quite scratch the same itch (maybe just because they weren’t the first)

I also enjoy the all time MVP that is Rimworld, and letting me turtle was just one of the things it let me did… By the end, my fortress maze was basically a concrete compound of death, that many entered but none left.  It was also basically a self-sufficient arctic colony run, and  slowly perfecting  that killbox entrance, stockpiling more than you'll ever need, and just waiting out the end of days felt good to my soul. 

Ideally I would want something that combines both, medieval setting but lots of roleplay options and variety. Not Rimwolrd variety, that would be impossible, but maybe something coming close? I want games that reward the defensive, isolationist mindset. Where you wall yourself off from the world and just develop, and the enemies obligingly come to you rather than forcing you out of your shell.

I swear this is just my gameplay preference and not something political. I’m just this kinda person. 

Tl;dr what are the base builders that will let me be the smug little hermit crab in the strongest shell on the map?

I feel like Palia is a good game on your own, but playing it with the person you love turns it into something I didn't expect. It just works because of the way the server works and you constantly switch between instances.

In fact, at first, I felt like I was playing a singleplayer game with an online function (I don’t know why but my first experience reminded me of Where Winds Meet, except cozy). No one I knew really had interest in this game, and I didn’t start exploring community spaces until much later. I had some okayish people I matched with randomly but it was always one off, found some tighter nit roleplaying communities on Discord (not my thing) and Palia also has a tribe on Gameram (surprisingly, I mostly use it for competitive games for quick non random matchups) but none of those quite cut it like playing with YOUR person!

Like we know each other so well, we fall into our roles without ever really deciding on them. That’s the beauty of being so in synch and playing any game together with someone you’re sharing your life with. And Palia was no exception to this beautiful rule. HE does most of the cooking and decorating. Thankfully, lacking OCD I am not picky about where every single lamp goes, and have learned to let him be. And I am the one who runs off to fish and hunt sernuk and then come back to drop a pile of mats on me like a cat bringing home a bird. 

We never planned it, but this is our rhythm and I love how inverted our roles are. This is has ever been the case with us since we played classic Everquest together, and more recently in Loftia while the beta was going on. He’s a homebody pure and simple, a creature of habit, where I am the explorer, the hunter, the one who wants to see what’s over that ledge and beyond the next horizon. It’s a weird synergy we got laughed at for among … ehem serious gamers with capital G, if you get my drift. 

Anyway, we rolling with it and I gotta say, Palia as a couples activity is nothing to sniff at! I thought we peaked at It Takes Two and coop games (fun of the moment) but this is such a different persistent kinda activity we can always decide on if we’re bored out of our minds.

Also, it’s a weird FU to regular roles we both got pushed on to have where we grew up (he likes cooking irl but always got mocked for it, even though he’s incredibly good) so it’s kind of a retreat for the both of us from regular life.

Anyhoo, just a little appreciation letter for the short (but wonderful) time this couple had  in Palia this summer! If you have someone in your life who might be up for it, I really can't recommend it enough, even if it’s a short dip

PS sorry for the rant, TL;DR would just be - does anyone else here play with a partner? (or am I just that lucky hihihi) 👀

More of a love letter than discussion but whatever. This is also going to sound like a stereotype but that’s fine, because it is what happened x)

My boyfriend and me could not, for years, find a game we both enjoyed playing together. He's the type to hundreds of hours into Dune Awakening (and prior to that Conan Exiles) building fortresses and raiding people with the full PvP mode on… and I'm more of a chill base building gal, it started from Stardew but Solarpunk was my latest obsession, and I wanted to play it so bad with him, but we made a compromise… to find the perfect middle ground, the relationship balancing game where our tastes align.

(To be quite perfectly honest, I always felt bummed out when I had to find randos to play Stardew Valley with, even though my boyfriend was right there in the same room. I did find some really nice people in certain Reddit groups, more luck than on Discord… and some on Gameram since it also has a big tribe for co-op… but it felt about 30% lonesome. We still talked as we played but it just ain’t the same y’know? :(

Anyway, I was kind of skeptical we could even find common ground in gaming, and I have Satisfactory to thank for proving me wrong! Turns out Satisfactory is also the very FIRST game where his different instinct to optimize the hell out of his buildings VS mine to make it all look BEAUTIFUL can complement each other. Satisfactory was just kinda the perfect intersection of our tastes, and I admit some of the reviews also gave me confidence we were making (possibly) one of the best dual Steam purchases ever - or that our relationship would just break if this reeaaaaally turned out to not to be it [...kinda joking, but only kinda]

And Satisfactory literally got EVERYTHING either of us ever wanted! One of the best placement precision building systems, allows for super deep planning, and also has exploration so biomes don’t get stale as your creations keep growing. It also possess that exceptionally addictive depth hidden under a deceptively simple gameplay loop where you start to think about verticals, distance, logistics and the flow in such a way that it never gets repetitive, but the challenge is more about how much work you’re willing to put in to make your creations even bigger, larger, more effective… more beautiful :)

Our current megaproject  is completing this massive factory in the Grass Fields that produces every component we need, and I designed the whole thing with glass walls and an elevated walkway so you can see all the belts running from above. In my mind, this majestic machine edifice is already called the *The Aquarium* because it looks like you're watching machines swim around inside a glass tank from above.

TL;DR  if you and your partner have (seemingly) completely opposite tastes, try a base builder… try Satisfactory! and build your game-bonding up from scratch. I know for sure now this was the hidden overlap in our gaming tastes neither of saw, even though it was right in front of us… and now we capitalizing on it!

I want something where I can build a nice little space and watch it develop and chill beholding my beautiful creations without competing against a survival loop, but also something where you set the pace entirely. Action can be a part of it, just not the kind that encourages sweatiness.

I’m thinking of giving Littlewood a shot now since from a distance it looks like the purest version of what I'm describing - you're literally the post adventure hero who already saved the world and now you just... build a town, set up your own place. Whatever heroes do after they retire, I guess? I think it’s for me but I want more input before I spend my money on stuff I won’t actually play. 

This goes without saying but it would be ideal if it has co-op or a splitscreen feature, so I can play it with my boyfriend. I’m looking highly expectant for Water Me & You to satisfy that couch coop itch, but that is going to be more of a platformer with village rebuilding and gathering mechanics in between the runs, so it’s not a full base builder in that sense.

Should I just soldier through my stupid assumption that Satisfactory is too complication for me and get that? I know it has a co-op mode and playing that with friends sounds like a dream, if only I’m able to get into the mindset for it. It just doesn’t look particularly cozy from the outside so that’s why I’m asking.

TL;DR what's the base builder you play when you just want to decompress and chill, preferably in chill coop?

How do I explain this well, I want an RPG that focuses more on the straightforward FUN aspect of customizing and building up your character(s) with loads of fun abilities and progression mechanics that that can ideally even shape the world around you.

I'm already a fan of ARPGs but I don't have a "main" one like some people. The closest one would be Last Epoch simply because it's the fastest one and you can literally start toying with the spell tailoring system from the get go, and seeing what flavor of damage you like best. It's a low stakes kind of experience and the gameplay is on the easier side so it's my brainless choice when I don't have the mental capacity for running PoE 2.

Also, I don't know why but I just remembered an old hack & slash game that I used to love playing called Dawn of Magic. You wouldn't think to look at it (mixed reviews and probably average without nostalgia glasses) but it had a pretty neat system in which the spell types you chose to learn and specialize in changed your appearance. So for fire you would look more and more like a fire demon/elemental of some kind - bodypart by bodypart - or if you choose the poison spells you turn into an insectoid kind of creature. Oh, and you could also choose between a "good" and "evil" path, which no ARPG that I know lets you do. It's a specific kind of toybox feeling...

BTW I'm not referring to sandbox games, not per se, when I say toybox RPG (love Bannerlord tho)

Heyo people. I've been tweaking my outbound over the last few months and finally found a rhythm that actually gets people to reply. Not a big leap for b2b but a big leap for me personally to see what I learned and applied actually get me some results. Before this I was just scraping lists and doing standard cold email outreach (with what I thought was clever copy, it wasn't all that) or pitching right in the LinkedIn connection request. The reply rates weren’t really good, to say the least.

Recently I switched to a slower multi step approach. I'll view their profile and send a blank connection request, and if they accept I wait a few days before asking a soft question. If they never accept the LinkedIn request at all, I just withdraw it and drop them a short cold email mentioning I tried to reach out. These emails are also getting replies and for once, I’m not surprised at that. Also, I'm managing the whole thing manually in a Notion database right now. It works perfectly fine for my current volume, but I plan to ramp up significantly next month and tracking all this conditional logic by hand is going to get impossible fast.

I really need an automation tool that can handle this exact flow. I looked into Meet Alfred, but it looks like it might be geared more toward standard linear sequences, so I'm not entirely sure if it can handle the specific logic of withdrawing a request and switching to email cleanly. Dripify also came up, but I'm not totally sure how well their email fallback feature actually works for a flow like this. I was also looking at Expandi. A friend's company uses it, and while he doesn't use the tool himself, he says his team is satisfied with the functionalities it has for doing sales at scale. He thinks they run a very similar style of outbound to what I'm doing right now, so it might be a good fit.

I really don’t have much experience in this type of automation, so idk if I’m looking at the right tools to be honest. And we only have the one main account on LinkedIn so I’m not sure how risky it would be to test it out with that. What approach would you recommend me? I need some seasoned sales wisdom here..