Zeusbottom

Depends on the cloud provider. AWS, as an example, have up to three “availability zones” within a single data center. If the customer needs HA, they are encouraged to run their applications in separate availability zones. It means different subnets within the VPC, redundant LBs spread across those zones, and more.

There is also probably DNS-based global load balancing across different data centers.

That’s just the hosting infrastructure. I’m sure Chujo works on the office LAN as well. He might wear the infosec hat also, which means he’s up to his eyeballs in firewall policy.

I don’t envy my brethren in software development orgs. Been there, done that, got that t-shirt long ago.

This is a software development business, which is a positively bananas trade no matter what’s getting written. And the smaller the business, the more hats network guys wear. We work with everything from the server app down to the coffee machine fueling the devs. And 100% uptime isn’t the most crazy demand I’ve heard. I’m sure Chujo is busier than a one-armed paper hanger with jock itch.

At least he’s got money to throw at his hosting company. Scaling up would have been much slower in the old days.

Your roommate Roy is about to get really pissed at you.

“Roy! Where are you buddy?”

“FOR THE LAST TIME I’M RIGHT FSCKING HERE”

For most games, the real consequence of failure in a game is being forced to repeat what just happened. And getting caught in a Groundhog Day-esque situation that repeats once every few minutes suuuuucks.

It’s even worse when a failure causes your character to lose stuff. That’s even more time wasted, in that the time and effort taken to get the thing is gone.

Paint the rainbow on my proud carebear chest if you must. I just want a place to escape to for a little while, a place that doesn’t frustrate the shit out of me.

Space games really aren’t that much fun. They seem fun when I read about them, but they’re not.

NMS is the least worst analogue to Starfield, and I can’t play that anymore because it’s the same thing over and over.

In terms of exploration, it’s very similar to No Man’s Sky, another boring space game. Every planet has similar terrain, similar plants and animals, similar goals, and similar structures. The differences are ambient light shades, colors and patterns on the plants and animals, and clutter in the artificial areas. The player can go scan life forms and blast bad guys. That’s about it.

But I don’t see how it could be any other way. How else does a studio scale up a galaxy such that every one of the 1000-odd planets is its own unique, interesting, engaging snowflake of a setting without spending hundreds of employee-years on each one?

Maybe AI will be the answer, but I’m not holding my breath.

There is, and it absolutely failed to be a comfort when I tried it after I got sick the first time. The comfort mode functioned, but my brain was done with VR. I could not even use Google Earth VR without getting queasy.

VR was fine for me until I landed on a planet in Elite: Dangerous. The rover pitching back and forth was way too much. Never again will I put a headset on.

“You found a piece of metal. Take my spaceship and I’ll take your miserable mining job” wait what?

Starfield pirate facing consequences of his actions

Are you saying you actually got something out of those? Never once got anything and never did I know anyone who did. The odds of winning were 0 as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t unlikely to win, I was not ever going to win. Lol

Ban from an arcade? No. But claw machines have a near zero chance of getting anything. They are definitely rigged. I used to toss a coin or two into one on the way out of the arcade, never got anything. I would let them experience the disappointment a few times, then suggest that maybe spending that money elsewhere will make them feel better.

worry less about closing out quests and winning fights

No worries there, can’t win a single fight after the first five

, and instead focus on exploring

Got to the end of the zone, now what?

toying with the tools & systems,

Always struggled to remember my Tincture of Whatevering and Bag Of Holding

remembering to take it slow

I’m told I’m dying in 5 days unless I find a cure

trust the dice

LOL

Goddamn, gamers can hold a grudge like no other asshole out there. The game has been working fine for years now. It’s time to move on.