Came here to say this. The new player experience is an awesome upgrade in terms of getting people into the world and narrative, but you're still thrown into an ocean of systems and content without a map. If you're not following a guide or piecing things together from the wiki it's very easy to get totally overwhelmed.

Always nice to meet another dad.

I would look at some of the tech demos for Unreal Engine 5 and its capabilities. We're at the point now where the engine itself, with sufficient art assets, can look photorealistic more or less out of the box.

Where this is still hardest- and likely always will be- is in faces, because our brains are so thoroughly wired to spot micro-expressions and subtle facial and body language as social animals.

That said, for a game like Doom or Path of Exile, sure, I think we're way past the point of diminishing returns. But for games where you're actually experiencing a story and interested in the relationships and characters involved? Things like Death Stranding, RDR, Cyberpunk 2077, or more recently BG3? All of those same nuances of expression can definitely add to the experience- it's the difference between a mediocre actor and a good or great one.

This right here is how you wind up with Tenochitlan in Texas.

Seconding this. Garuda has been great, all of the advantages of aur and bleeding edge with some fool proofing and ease of use features. It's like pop_os for folks who don't want to jump on the Ubuntu train.

This is 100% the way.

Pine hides their hobby-grade hardware behind in-development software. I owned both a PBP and PPP and much as I'd like to say otherwise, really can't say anything to recommend either.

Unless they're the oceangoing variety, in which case they just hide it under their sea beds.

Did FW ever solve the issue with battery drain during sleep? I owned one of the original batch and sold it because I couldn't effectively use it as a laptop. Other than that it was awesome, great build quality, loved the ethics of it and the form factor, but being unable to use it as a portable computer was a deal breaker.

I mained druid in pre, and while I enjoyed it enough, it was annoying having pretty much all of the build diversity locked behind unique rng. Similarly, while I enjoyed HotA barb, the fact that literally no other build is appealing makes that a non-starter.

So consequently I'll be going with necro for S1. Sever, spear, surge, and lance are all solid builds not locked behind uniques (though they can absolutely benefit from them), so I'm covered both from boredom and balance changes.

All things you mentioned are hardware issues. [...] Because no one will buy an expensive GNU/Linux phone.

There's a difference between budget or low end components and flawed implementation or design. I didn't go in expecting a newer Snapdragon and a 144hz display- but neither did I go in expecting that it couldn't charge when dead. I didn't go to Denny's expecting filet mignon, but neither was I expecting a dirty tennis shoe on a plate. That was the whole point of my comment. The last thing mobile Linux needs is for people's first experience of it to be a semi-functional piece of hacked-together hardware- even if someone's willing to deal with in-dev software, when the thing straight up won't work it's not a good look.

I owned a Pine Phone Pro for a while and it was a disaster. The software is still coming together, which is expected, but the hardware was also hobby project grade. As the previous poster mentioned, battery, camera, and screen were all bad, and on top of that the phone would refuse to charge with most chargers and could not charge at all while not booted, so once the battery was dead you had zero recourse beyond an external charger. The clamshell keyboard also wouldn't work without shimming the pogo pin connectors forward, and even then it was hit or miss. The company was terrible to deal with and only finally accepted a return after escalating a dispute with Paypal. I hate dumping on a company providing hardware for mobile Linux, but these guys seriously do more harm than good.

This is it for me, too. Back before I got into Linux I was forever tinkering with third party stuff to try to make the UI more efficient with things like Enso and Docker, and make it prettier with other stuff, but it was always a ramshackle cludged together mess. GNOME just resolves all of those issues neatly for me, runs faster, and isn't crammed full of bloatware ad crap like modern versions of Windows. And it's more secure, free, and ethically satisfying as a cooperative, trans-national project.

Yep, HotA is awesome for sure, I just have misgivings about investing into barb when that's the only build for it that I enjoy. I'll get bored, and even if I don't, when the wheel turns and HotA is no longer a strong performer three really won't be a plan b.

I've got barb and necro to 60ish too.

Barb is pretty limited imo. HotA is fun, but upheaval is weak and looks dumb, never liked ww, and bleed builds are the exact opposite of what I look for from a barb.

Necro has a ton of good options though. Sever is a fun melee monster, spear is a complete wrecking ball, blood surge will be awesome if it's ever buffed / supported... I'm not big on minions or bone spirit, but still, necro looks like a solid pick.

Druid has a ton of build variety, I just hate how so many of them are unique locked.

Unrelated, but my druid is enough of a beast to face tank him 100-0 while pushing and I feel like not running from him bugs him out- he jumped me today and about 25% through the fight he just started running from me like a treasure goblin. Got quite the laugh out of it, almost makes up for all the times he's jumped me on alts while I'm chasing goblins and training around half the dungeon behind me....

MTX in a $70 game with paid expansions is 100% BS.

Same here, I'm 76 and running kind of a pulverslide build with zero relevant uniques because neither TR or Crone will drop for me. It's making me seriously consider rolling Necro for S1 just to avoid having so many builds locked behind unique rng.

Seasons are a regular reset with everyone starting mostly from scratch. For hardcore competitive players it's a way to compete on leaderboards and such. For more casual players, most seasonal games incorporate some new hook or mechanic into the game, sometimes only for that season, other times retaining them in the core game.

If you're playing through the storyline, I'd say stick with that and don't worry about the season.