They were ripping off both their users and anyone using affiliate links (including the content creators who promoted them)

During checkout, when you clicked the “find coupon” button in honey (which it prompted you to do on screen during checkout), it would strip out any affiliate link and add their own. So if you clicked on a product from a review, they would strip out the referral link from the YouTube video or website that sent you and indicate they sent you instead and get the commission.

In addition, they were working with online retailers and basically extorting them. They said that if retailers paid them a fee, they got to pick the discount code that was used during checkout. So if there was a 20% coupon and a 5% coupon, stores could pay them to ignore the 20%.

This, in turn, was basically faking out their users, thinking they were giving them the “best deal” like they claimed to.

I mean, as i stated, i can’t really vouch or argue against pf2e, since i dont play it and haven’t really read the rules of it since it was in playtest. That said, just googling, i see some things that could be considered exploits like a reddit thread talking about being able to do 520 damage in one attack, some chatter about a “resentment witch” being able to make power word stun or color spray effectively permanent, and a youtube video by the rules lawyer about “OP builds”, so it seems like there’s at least some system exploitation going on.

Obviously a tighter controlled system is less vulnerable to exploitation (see D&D 4e), but that also doesn’t mean that is necessarily doesn’t exist. Another counter example system with lots of rules and lots of exploitation of them would be shadowrun, especially older versions, which were even worse than D&D in some respects.

yeah, unfortunately the CoC rules have always been kind of a mess. it still has a lot of that early RPG “stream of consciousness” aspect to it.

But yeah, at the end of the day, the number of rules you have is far more relevant to how many “exploits” there are, so CoC/VtM being less “crunchy” will result in less exploits.

A character is limited to one successful treatment of both First Aid and Medicine until further damage is taken.

Pg. 65, under first aid.

i mean, if youre wanting exploitative rule mechanics based on wording/interactions, you need to look no further than base first aid and medicine in CoC; You’re able to make 1 of each per wound you take. Unlike older editions, they’ve done away with the heal cap on it, so if you’re down HP, simply deal yourself 1 HP of damage, make a first aid check. and then make a medicine check to heal at minimum 2 HP. Repeat until full. You can easily reheal yourself to full this way, which is definitely “unintended” based on how healing works (and older editions).

Edit: at the end of the day, my point is that pretending other games cant or dont have exploitative mechanics/builds/whatever is naive at best? It’s not a D&D only problem. It’s just more prevalent in D&D because 1) it has more rules and 2) it has more players.

It’s legit not hard to make an OP/powerful character in either VtM or CoC, assuming youre talking about making a character good at combat (which is usually what people talk about in this context with power gaming). I don’t play PF2e, though, so i cant speak there.

CoC take high dex, put 90+ in handguns, take the pulp talents rapid fire and quick draw, wear a bandolier of guns, and dual wield pistols that you fire 6 shots from per turn. If you dont care about going first, then fast load if you care about reloading, if not, then just take shadow and start combat hidden for two attacks with a bonus die at the start.

For VtM its easy as take fist of caine and lightning strike. If you aren’t playing as elders, this requires gaining some exp first. I know there’s other combos that i cant think of off hand that are pretty potent too.

Each of these do have counters in the form of monsters immune to guns (CoC), or celerity 5 opponents (VtM), but thats no different than a DM in D&D always throwing fireballs at the guy with high AC. It begins to be apparent when its happening all the time that the GM/DM/Keeper/whatever is specifically targeting your weakness.

You’ve obviously gotten the base level answer, but to add some color here - certain types of food, such as dried pasta, rice, beans, grains, high proof alcohol, vinegars, and basically anything frozen to name a few, never spoil in the sense that they’re unsafe to eat.

Flavor, however, is an entirely different matter. Just ask anyone who has eaten freezer burnt food.

Pretty much any high proof alcohol will fall into this category. And, if it’s unopened, it should retain most of its flavor for a very long time. Once opened, however, it can deteriorate relatively quickly, depending on how it was stored.

yeah, its hard to predict what will happen to it, especially after gabe steps down or dies, but depending on how much of the company is broadly owned by employees vs individuals, it can help to shield it from bad decisions. Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact numbers. If gabe + mike own 51+% then it could potentially lead to overriding employee will in a bad decision for money (either through their actions or through inheritance like you say). Or the employees could just collectively make a bad decision too.

AFAIK, most of valve’s stock is held by employees, not private investors. It’s usually a pretty hard sell of “make the company you work at shittier to make more money”, especially since most of the employees probably know gabe personally (valve has less than 400 employees) and likely approve of his leadership.

FWIW, at this point, that study would be horribly outdated. It was done in 2022, which means it probably took place in early 2022 or 2021. The models used for coding have come a long way since then, the study would essentially have to be redone on current models to see if that’s still the case.

The people’s perceptions have probably not changed, but if the code is actually insecure would need to be reassessed

That was changed a while back, the current restrictions are you can only have as many people playing any given game as you have copies in your current sharing library

i mean, thats part of what gives it away. all the current AI generated music has a flat, auto-tuney quality to it. There’s also a fairly limited number of voices it ends up using, so its pretty distinctive when you hear one.

the art and the music are both definitely AI

in 3e, the tarrasque had regeneration, and couldnt die from negative HP. So the idea of building a town that “farmed” an unconscious tarrasque for its meat/bones/whatever was a popular thought experiment for a setting back in the day. IIRC there was also someone who took the idea and published it as an actual book at some point too (which honestly felt kinda scummy to me, since it was basically a big community project/collaboration)

in 3e, summon spells specifically conjured the spirits of creatures that couldnt “die” per se. They would desummon if they lost all their HP and reform later.

i mean, there were plenty of other ways, including things you could do at lower level, that was just the common go to because it required a single high level spell, and usually you fought big T at high level.

the usual go to back in the day was to drown it, because it wasnt immune to that in any way. Simply gate it to the plane of water. There was a number of other work arounds like that too.

i can also confirm that the tarrasque was pretty universally clowned on for being easy in 3.5e. That discussion is basically what drove the whole “town built around the tarrasque” idea on the wizard forums and enworld. That said, it’s probably not as bad as the 5e tarrasque by comparison

I guess that would just be a GPU?

Actually would either be a TPU (tensor processing unit) or NPU (neural processing unit). They’re purpose built chips for AI/ML stuff.

the new 2024 rules allow for this. All half races/species have been removed, and instead you get to mix and match any two you want.