u/jonrah69

I wanted to make this post to open up discussion about a core flaw in the audiences that extraction shooters attract and if it sets them up for failure.

To preface i fell into the extraction shooter phase shortly after the launch of Arc Raiders and played it and Marathon heavily. Both of these games experienced a large user fall off and are currently struggling to maintain their active player base. A lot of people point at many things like lack of updates, and others, but I think there is another thing pushing people away from these games that is discussed less.

While there are many categories of modern gamers, a majority of them i would say fall into two buckets: the more casual type who will play multiple games, engage in multiplayer but not to a competitive extent, and won't spend too long on a single title. The other bucket is the more serious/competitive gamer who will spend significantly longer on a single title and usually engage heavily in the multiplayer/metagame.

The issue with Extraction shooters is I feel they target a much smaller community that is in between the two types i said. Many casual players who don't spend much time on these will feel it is hard to keep up with the gear of others, and as the games balance themselves towards higher gear requirements, they will feel alienated and leave. I think this is especially the case in Marathon which tried to gear itself more towards the competitive type. The issue is the nature of the game does not lend itself to competitive systems, and most forms of competitive tried in these systems have not been well received. Players who play extraction shooters a very heavy amount cap themselves out quickly, and without a strong competitive format eventually leave too. This leaves a small minority of players who play enough to keep up with the gear of others/balancing of the game but not too much that they burn themselves out with no strong competitive scene.

I was wondering if this made any sense to people and if people shared this opinion. My scope is pretty limited to the two i have heavily played so opinions from some people who played Tarkov/Hunt would also be greatly appreciated.

This kind of sounds a bit corny in my head as he is just one man and doesn’t have superpowers or anything; i am also definitely not saying he is the one who made the song or had anything to do with it. However all the details about this search made me think that the perfect person who could maybe help guide our search would be Nardwuar.

Nardwuar is an extreme music nerd with an immense wealth of knowledge, grew up in canada and would be of listening age during the theorized date of the song airing (although he grew up in a different part of canada), has contacts in the Canadian music industry, has interests in the specific genre of music it falls under, and also is very very good at scraping deep/obscure physical and primary resources for his interviews. All of these make him almost designed in a lab for helping with this search. Obviously he is a very busy and succesful person so it may be disregarded or only given a quick glance by him but i thought it would be at least worth a shot. Has anyone thought of reaching out to him? If he were to somehow get as interested as us i am sure he could dig up some very useful material. I tried searching him in this thread and the doc and didn’t see anything.

I know Upbeat Black metal is a bit of an oxymoron but i was introduced to the black metal/dungeon synth genre by the song "Misanthrop" by Blod Besvimelse which trended on tik tok awhile back. While i have enjoyed the truer to genre artists i have found i still have been looking for more like Misanthrop and the rest of the work Blod Besvimelse has on spotify. I really love the more "upbeat" vibe they have and it makes me feel like im in a medieval time actually challenging dungeons but with some hope. I have checked out BSOD/Grausemkait as i belive they are the husband of blod besvimelse and really liked their stuff but it wasn't exactly the same vibe. anyone have any suggestions?

Edit** meant "Looking for help" in title

Edit 2: I am pretty confident this has been solved by user r/rdg04 im genuinely shocked i was able to get an answer for this

Hi all,

I am not sure if this is the right community to post this as this sub seems a bit more crime related, but i have seen some more mystery related content and thought this would be an enjoyable search for the sleuths. This also happened to me a long time ago (summer 2019) so it has been some time but i made a post about it in a different sub around the time so details are still somewhat fresh as i am copying that. so here goes:

Backstory: In the summer of 2019 i was working a summer job in Binghamton NY while i was a student at the university there. Binghamton is a small city in upstate Ny and has a downtown area with a few stores and restaurants.

One day i was driving through downtown Binghamton and i noticed a man dressed abnormally formal for a summer day standing still on the sidewalk completely stoic with his back against a building reading what looked like a large book or pamphlet (or at least pretending to read it as he was holding it up in a way that didn’t seem natural, seemingly intentionally trying to show the cover of it). As i got closer i realized the outside cover of the book had an illusion spiral printed on it (like the black and white spiral you would see spinning in a video to hypnotize someone) covering the entire back cover. I thought it was a bit weird but didn’t think much of it until i noticed multiple people as i drove holding the same/similar thing. Each of them were dressed differently, some formal some completely normal/casual. They were all different ages/races and seemed like a completely random group of people. Also not all of them were pretending to read. Some looked like they were sleeping and were sitting down, some were looking down instead of pretending to read, and some even were walking. Some of the people were holding books similar to what the first man had, others had large papers/posters with the spirals on the back. The only thing uniform between all the people were they were obviously making an effort to show the spiral. There were probably 20+ people i saw evenly dispersed over a ~10 block trip. Some of the books/pamphlets had what appeared like righting on the side without the spiral but I couldn’t read it while driving.

why i find it so mysterious is i never saw anything like this again despite going to the university for 4 years and spending 2 summers there. No other students i talked to saw anything like this. Some research into the area didn’t yield much. It seems a bit strange/pointless if it was some form of performance art and the group of people seemed to randomly assorted for that. I have suspected maybe some cult behavior or strange performance art. If you do any research into Binghamton you will find that a good amount of strange things happen there for the population size.

This is about all the details i can remember and I don’t know why I didn’t post anything about this sooner, but if anyone has any information on what i could have seen or wants to do a little digging and see what they can find let me know. I have done some research but can’t seem to find anything. I hope others are as interested in this experience as i was. Let me know if anyone has thoughts or can figure out what was going on.

So a lot of people have recently been complaining about the poor map condition schedule and I like many want them to greatly increase the map condition availability as well as the boss availability (I personally think there should always be a boss, and at least half the maps should have a special condition at all times)

This has been met with the rebuttal that it would increase queue times on an already declining player base and hurt matchmaking. While i don't notice queue times being an issue at all myself i also play in a region where the game is very popular still so i understand how it could be an issue for others. This is why i think it would go hand in hand with another improvement i really want them to make, spawning much fewer players per match.

While this could sound boring to some i will outline why its a good idea and frame it as a way to solve many other people's complaints. Many people in this game complain that they are 3rd partied every time they PvP, this would greatly reduce with less people. Many PvErs complain that it is hard to get things like matriarch and queen cores because the loot goblins all swarm the queen and matriarch after it dies, this would greatly improve with less people. Many PvErs complain it is hard to do key rooms as if you don't spawn close someone else often does it before you, this would also greatly reduce. Many PvErs complain that the end game is too easy and the bosses become trivial, this would go away with less people. Many trials players complain that it is very luck based as you have to hope not to spawn in with people also doing the same one, this would reduce with less people.

Overall i think these two improvements should really be implemented. Personally i would like them to be pretty drastic but i could understand more step by step improvements. I also understand that the social aspect of this game is a big part, and love that myself. There are so many people already on a map i doubt that would go away even if you halved the total people per map.

I only recently got into VGC after being a long time Smogon player (since gen 4) so i might be getting some things wrong. From my understanding Inciniroar has always been a meta staple in VGC similar to something like a landorus or great tusk due to its role compression and ability to fit on teams. Mons like these aren’t necessarily broken per se and usually aren’t banned in smogon formats as they don’t make the games unplayable or sweep teams with little counters. Due to this these mons aren’t usually hated by smogon players and are actually usually revered positively as the goats. While incineroar is definitely rightly called the vgc goat, i often notice that vgc players express detest and annoyance at it similar to something like an espathra in smogon. They act like it is some broken set up sweeper that breaks unprepared teams when in reality it is just the goat glue mon. Am i getting something wrong about how it has been used historically or do vgc players just have a different attitude towards highly used mons?

Edit: This post was mostly answered quickly but i will leave it up for reference. The following reasons seem to be the cause:

1: Inciniroar has been much higher usage and invalidates more mons than the glue mons typically seen in smogon, something only really comparable to gen 2 snorlax which gets a lot of hate.

2: VGC players are more attached to the personality and creativity aspects of pokemon and seeing the same mon a lot hurts that

3: Band wagon from Wolfey hating on it (partially jokingly)

Some days in the gym i just crave absolutely loud, violent and angry gym music. When i say this i mean the extreme ends of the spectrum like almost straight noise, very bass heavy stuff. I unfortunately have only found a handful of songs that scratch the itch i crave so i was looking for recommendations. When i have searched for loud angry gym playlists in the past i am honestly left disappointed as again, i am looking for pretty extreme stuff. To establish some criteria, it has to be very loud, and consistent enough to wear i can do a full set during the loud parts (so this excludes things with very short climaxes) and preferably fast. I am going to tier some example songs so people can get an idea as surprisingly i would say only one song i have found truly fits the criteria.:

Tier 1 The platonic ideal:

"You might think he loves you for your money..." - Death Grips

Tier 2 scratches the itch but could be more:

33rd Black Glass - City Morgue

Ring a Bell - Death Grips

Only Shallow - My Bloody Valentine

Country Riddim - Hol!

Tier 3: Not quite what im looking for but sometimes acceptable:

Raining Blood - Slayer

Paperwork - Kanye West

Look at me - XXXTentacion

So overall again needs to be extremely loud, violent, and preferably fast with a long enough loud part to do gym sets during the entire loud part. Can be from any genre and can be from artists included here as i am not ultra familiar with all the discogs of people included. The songs also don't have to be good either, many of these songs i would not consider good songs.

I am by no means a crazy cracked or sweaty player in this game but do well enough to have a consistently full inventory and have a large stash of shields/heals/backpacks despite not really knowing most of the better loot events.

I play with one friend usually, so we typically have an extra random. While we typically have good experiences with them they often range in playstyles from hyper aggressive to hyper passive. Many of the very passive ones will often say they aren't the best and want to try and avoid unnecessary conflict which we are usually cool with. The main issue we notice is that sometimes we get in scenarios where we are at a massive advantage but the random still wants to play very passively.

Some examples of this are fights where you have 1-2 enemies downed or heavily damaged and they still don't want to push, situations where you are holding a chokepoint or highground and they still want to disengage, situations where the opponents are occupied with UESC and possibly damaged etc.

I get if you are not confident in your skills, but PvP is an essential part of this game, and if you are always trying to avoid it the only PvP scenarios you will find yourself in are ones where you are at a disadvantage.

A recent specific example of this was during the dire marsh sponsored kit mode. My friend and I were at quarantine around the midway point when we noticed a team was actually doing the lockdown event as the location changed. The location changed again onto quarantine while we were in it, and I happened to have picked up multiple anti virus packs and was playing triage so i could share them. Our random wanted to get out of there but I mention i have the packs and there is no way they will be expecting a team in it in the free kit mode. The random still protested pretty heavily but we eventually convince him to stay. We wait a bit, and low and behold the team shows up and like i had thought wasn't expecting anyone as they were immediately shooting the UESC from pretty careless spots. We ambush them and get the easy wipe and all of the lockdown loot. If our random had kept with his passive nature, he never would have gotten these easy kills and loot.

So overall in conclusion if you are not taking your advantageous spots in PvP you will only ever end up in disadvantaged spots. Even if you aren't confident, you absolutely have to take these shots when you get them or you will lose in the long run. Don't be afraid to push and be aggressive when you have the shot.