Okay, a bunch of thoughts come to mind.

I love Diablo. However, I think a big part of it is the atmosphere and also me being young and never having seen anything like it. That’s pretty hard to recreate. I heard the game Halls of Torment nailed the Diablo atmosphere, but as a Vampire Survivors-like. Basically it’s focused on the grind and progression. Maybe, that’s something for you? Personally, I haven’t found anything that is as fun as Diablo, so every now and then I play Diablo 1 with a new mod, like the new The Hell 3 Mod. It brings back the wonder of the unknown, because there is lots of new stuff in there. I also loved Book of Demons, which is basically a streamlined version of Diablo 1 with a dark comedic twist.

I think you underestimate the satisfaction that comes from clearing levels in Diablo. Yes, it could be a different theme and still work, but isn’t that proof of how potent it is? So the question is, why does it feel like a grind to you? I wager it’s because the magic Diablo had for you got lost over time. You know how they work now, you’ve seen behind the curtain and thus don’t feel the danger, the intrigue like you used to. Maybe you will find it in games like Elden Ring that you don’t see through right away?

About the stats progression: I think a very big part of the fun of progressing your character comes from doing it the way you want. It’s a form of expression. You want to be a Necromancer that only uses Golems or a Mage focused on ice. I think what a lot of Diablo-likes miss is finding a good way to allow lots of expression in character development. Too often I feel boxed in by the class and it doesn’t feel like it’s my Tinkerer, but the Tinkerer instead. A good Diablo-like has abilities that define the character instead of just simple stat increases and cooldown reductions and all that.

Lastly, if you haven’t seen it there is a great Diablo 4 Critique on YouTube that might give some more food for thought!

…because they know how to swear in Russian?

Same

Dark patterns are basically best practices at this point

Definitely worth it even without the community patches!

I want to add that the box office income is simply one of the only objective metrics to compare the success of films.

The revolutionary part is -get this- to use the empty houses -you following?- to house the people who don’t have houses! Genius! We truly are living in the future!

Absolutely, here is the part for the lazy:

I should add that, for all her cheerleading of gen Z, Foster isn’t above being irritated by them. “They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or, like, in emails, I’ll tell them this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”

Yes

+1 for Linux Mint

That’s an easy block if there ever was one.

I don’t think that holds true quite as much today as it did back when Voltaire said it. He was calling out authoritarian structures like the christian church if I remember correctly. While certainly still true in totalitarian systems like dictatorships, it’s a somewhat different situation in democracies for example. In a democracy you are generally allowed to criticize anyone. However, powerful entities like big corporations and the very rich might still abuse the system to sue you into oblivion.

Also this quote gets misused quite often by people who do not understand the difference between hate speech and criticism and by people who think being called out and criticized for their words is the same as being “not allowed to criticized” or silenced.

“By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” - Umberto Eco

Probably because there is less content

Currently I would recommend liftoff, also coming from rif.

I get you, though. A mailman once made a completely inappropriate joke about my last name that I already had heard so many times and I was just dumbstruck. He was so excited and gaudy to let me in on it. I’m sure he thought I wouldn’t know that one. Hopefully he could see the life leave my body, when I monotonously answered “never heard that one before” and remembers that the next time he thinks of a joke about the name of a customer.

Name-based jokes should definitely die. Especially if it’s from people you just met!

However, they are still above ethnicity-, body-, gender-based comedy for basically the same reasons.

If it doesn’t feel clean I need to redo everything!