Worth noting that the Microsoft plan comes with 6 users too, the value is well beyond what Proton offer.

I'd be down for something like this on a PVE realm where your own actions are typically what lead to your death. I'm less enthusiastic on a PvP realm with permadeath but I understand the current version isn't for me and that's okay too.

A game came out recently (called Palia) that essentially forces you to make "pals" to achieve certain things and even be able to gather certain resources. My other half has been playing it and was complaining about the "forced" interaction in the game and I told her similar things to what you're saying about Eve, that interacting with others to achieve goals will actually become the best part of the game in the long term.

Pro-tip: this isn't a queue because the game is wildly popular, it's a queue because of under-provisioning and poorly designed services that can't handle a normal load.

It isn't early access if anyone can buy it and they're charging money for it, it's a released product.

They just released the minimum viable product even though the actual devs probably told them not to.

I've also been playing Eve like 10+ years myself and every time I think I've won it I haven't yet.

One of the best aspects of the game is the community around it though, rather than the actual gameplay. In fact, a lot of the gameplay is rather stale these days.

Yeah but Eve Online isn't a good game either 😋

My biggest problem with Proton is the price. Their family plan is $AUD800 (479 Euro) for 2 years at the cheapest price which is obscene. I can get a family plan with the likes of Microsoft (ugh) for just $260/2 years and it includes Office 365 as well.

How much do you care about the actual combat?

There are an absolute ton of games on Steam that cover the exploring and doing quests vibe and the amount of combat in them varies from none to some but not the main focus of the game. Here's a few I've tried:

• https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307550/Craftopia/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401590/Disney_Dreamlight_Valley/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/361420/ASTRONEER/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/648800/Raft/

Also practically anything in the survival and MMORPG genres are full of just chilling in the world content too.

The situation kind of reminds me of titty streamers on Twitch. Everybody seemingly "hates" them yet they make an absolute killing regardless, because the silent majority think it's perfectly fine.

Anecdotally speaking, if it wasn't for medical cannabis I'd be on prescribed opioids + a concoction of other garbage as well.

Money won't change the fact that moderating humans online as a job sucks either way. Plenty of people are stuck in crappy jobs that they hate and only do because not eating is worse.

I disagree. When you are paid for it you become reliant on it to make ends meet in your life, so you're more willing to put up with absolute garbage that you shouldn't have to. This forces people to try to detach from it as a coping mechanism while they fall further down the hole. Paying them won't change a thing about the mental health issues and will probably make it worse.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pay them, but we shouldn't look at it as the fix for this either.

Risk of Rain 2

I tried this one but I couldn't get into it. I just kept getting overwhelmed by enemies and dying and I couldn't figure out why and gave up.

Currently, 7 Days to Die, though I don't like where it's heading.

It's varied over the years and included Total Annihilation, Wow, Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld among others.

Ha, mine does this when I lay down and want to go to sleep, it's pretty damn annoying.

Video games have always been a great distraction from things for me instead.

Yeah, I don't understand who's buying these at all at that price to be honest. I'm not sure if its the profit margin they want or production-related issues due to the low number runs they're probably doing.

You can buy 2-3 cheap Chromebooks for that which will theoretically last 10-15 years though for your $1k. Basically no schools are going to turn that up vs a $1k Framework most of which will not last half that long with kids using them.

Sucks for the environment though as you say, I wish it were different.

Framework laptops are the exact opposite of what you'd want in a school environment. This is how you blow your schools IT budget out the window. Cheap, disposable, consistent configuration and manufacturer supported are the key concerns.

These are kids with various standards of computer literacy throwing them in their bags which they also kick around and treat pretty harshly all day long. A $4k Framework-style laptop is just silly.

This is exactly why right here, cost aside.

I would not hand out hundreds of Chromebooks to kids running some Linux distro I installed even if I could. It's critical to have full manufacturer support in these types of environments.