Shorter post than usual, and probably a needless one, or at least out of date, but I figured it would be good to get down, “just in case”.
A (thankfully not as common now) misconception is that Spartan III Alpha Company’s destruction was avoidable, that if they had been trained better, equipped better, they might have survived PROMETHEUS. This is refutably false, and this post is intended to demonstrate that their demise was almost completely out of their control, and, primarily, to show that Kurt couldn’t have done anything better to save them.
(Admittedly, there is a bit of theory crafting coming near the end of this post, and I’m not sure if it’s warranted, I wouldn’t mind Haruspis’ comments, if you do see this post, as it seems to be something brought up initially in MJOLNIR and now with SPI. I doubt I’ll get a response though, and I admit I may be making this a bigger issue than it needs to be or is intended to be with its inclusion, but I’m adding it in as another (potential) factor. That’ll be Point III, and clearly labeled as theory crafting.)
With that said, let’s begin with a deep dive into Operation PROMETHEUS:^[1]
PART I: Sent from the sky
The Spartan III program has had more than a few threads made about it to deal with general misconceptions (I think we’re at like, 4 and counting now) so I’ll let those stand.
Alpha Company in general though hasn’t been delved into with much detail. Admittedly we know the least amount of their training, and etc, but we know it was both harder than their predecessors and an improvement of the Spartan II training, or at least, as mentioned by the Encyclopedia, it mirrored it in many ways:

Secretly based on the hidden world of Onyx, the SPARTAN-Ill program was operated and facilitated at Camp Currahee. a military site hidden deep within the planet's dense jungles. Much of the training regimen conducted at Currahee mirrored that of SPARTAN-II training, with intense physical and team-based exercises, as well as an advanced education conducted by an onsite Al.

• Halo Encyclopedia 2022 edition

We know the first night of their training was drastically different from the II’s. The first night of the II’s training is detailed in chapter 3 of The Fall of Reach, the chapter notes the date and time as 2300 hours, September 23rd 2517.
In this chapter Doctor Halsey gives the II’s a speech about why they’re at Reach, why they’ve been chosen, and etc….and then they go to bed.
Chapter 4 begins at 0530 hours, September 24th, 2517, around 6 hours later. The trainees are woken up by stun baton if they didn’t wake by voice alone:

”Wake up, trainee!”
John rolled over in his cot and went back to sleep. He was dimly aware that this wasn’t his room, and that there were other people here.
A shock jolted him—from his bare feet to the base of his spine. He yelled in surprise and fell off the cot. He shook off the disorientation from being nearly asleep and got up.
“I said up, boot! You know which way up is?”
A man in a camouflage uniform stood over John. His hair was shorn and gray at his temples. His dark eyes didn’t look human—too big and black and they didn’t blink. He held a silver baton in one hand; he flicked it toward John and it sparked.
John backed away. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Only little kids were afraid . . . but his body instinctively moved as far away from the instrument as possible.
Dozens of other men roused the rest of the children. Seventy-four boys and girls screamed and jumped out of their cots.

• The Fall of Reach, chapter 4

Comparatively, this is the first thing the III’s of Alpha Company do after their speech by Kurt:

”We cannot accept everyone, though," Kurt continued. "There are five hundred of you. We have three hundred training slots. So tonight. Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez"—he nodded to the Chief—"has devised a way to separate those who truly want this opportunity from those who do not."
Kurt handed him a tablet reader. "Chief?" To his credit Mendez registered shock for only a split second. He scanned the tablet, frowned, but nodded.
"Yes, sir," he whispered.
Mendez yelled at the children, "You want to be Spartans? Then get back on those ships." They stood shocked, staring at him.
*"No? I guess we found a few washouts. You." He pointed to one child at random. "You. And you." The chosen kids looked at each other, at the ground, and then shook their heads. "No?" Mendez said. "Then get on those Pelicans."
They did so, and so did the others, a slow shuffling procession.
"Drill instructors," Mendez said.
Three dozen NCOs snapped to attention.*
"You will find Falcon Wing aerial descent units on the field. Load them ASAP and make sure your trainees are properly fit-led. Their safe deployment is now your responsibility."
The DIs nodded and ran toward the bundled Falcon Wing backpacks.
The Chief turned back to Kurt. "You're going to make them drop?" He raised both eyebrows in surprise. "At night?"
"The Falcons are the safest drop units," Kurt replied.
"With respect, sir, some of them are only four years old."
"Motivation, Chief. If they can do this, they'll be ready for what we have to put them through.”

• Halo Ghosts of Onyx, chapter 6

Anyone who didn’t jump was disqualified from the program immediately:

A girl with pigtails and missing her front teeth stepped forward. "I'll go first, sir," she yelled.
"Good girl," he said. "Go right to the edge; hang on to the guide line."
She took the tiniest baby steps to the edge of the Pelican, then froze. She took three deep breaths and then with a squeak, she jumped. The wind caught her.
She vanished into the dark.
"Next!" the old Navy man said.
All the kids, Shane included, slowly formed a line. He couldn't believe they were doing this. It was nuts.
The next boy got to the edge, looked down, and screamed. He fell backward, and scrambled away. "No!" he said. "No way!"
"Next!" the man called, and didn't give the kid cowering on the deck another glance.
The next boy jumped without even looking. And the next.

• Halo Ghosts of Onyx, chapter 6

Now, admittedly we don’t know what happened during their first morning, but I’d wager it would have been classroom instruction or some “light” activities. Even so, their first real activity was much more intense than their predecessors.
Their first test, in many respects, mirrored their deployment: dropped into unfamiliar terrain, forced to rely on their equipment and comrades above all else. They rely on each other, on the knowledge that they would not be alone when they reached the ground.
In later, proper, missions, sealed in armour, with the knowledge that their operations had to succeed, the knowledge that they had completed that first jump might have provided some small bit of comfort. If they could do that, maybe they could do anything.
This would be their main method of deployment, using droppods to get deep behind enemy lines, Strike targets of critical opportunity in places others couldn’t reach.
This is presumably how Operation FIREBRAND, IRON GREAVE, and the majority of their other operations were carried out. The standout and exception seems to be Operation HWACHA, which saw Alpha Company operating as boarding and counterboarding teams against Covenant fleet elements in zero-gee.
Whatever the case, the hallmark of a Spartan III deployment in future seemed to be a sudden, abrupt storm of drop pods appearing without warning to those on the ground.
PART II: Nightmares
A big element to why the Alphas seemed to be killed en-masse was, as Kurt puts it, “a loss of unit cohesion”. He notes that, as the battle continued on, Spartan III’s began to drastically deviate from standard formations and understood tactical doctrines. They would go at things alone, or neglect to cover their teammates, or be caught in a bad position that they should have seen and avoided:

The video from a helmet camera showed a dozen SPARTAN-IIIs limping and falling on a smoldering landscape of twisted metal. There was no unit cohesion. No two-man teams covering one another. In the heat-blurred background, Elites took up superior positions with good cover.
This was his fault. He had failed them. His training hadn't prepared them. He should have rectified the flaws in their Mark-I PR suits and fixed them faster.

• Halo Ghosts of Onyx chapter 8

Kurt puts this down to poor training and a lack of upgrades and rectified fixes to their armour (more on this latter point in Part III), and while this is his motivation to push Beta and Gamma harder, I’m not sure it was their training, truncated as it was, that was the cause.
Instead, Halo Oblivion, either intentionally or unintentionally, might give us a reason for why this situation happened:

Altered mental states were a symptom of combat fatigue, especially in exhausted soldiers who were using too many stim-packs in an effort to maintain alertness.
John knew from his combat psychology training back on Reach that too much combat stress could sometimes result in mindless, murderous rages. But such episodes were heat-of-the-moment events that erupted without warning—not carefully prepared actions like the commanders were suggesting now. He turned to Bah’d. “What kind of combat stimulants are you using?”
“Stimulants?” Bah’d narrowed her eyes. “Be careful what you imply, John.”
“Major, I never imply.” John was puzzled by Bah’d’s testy reaction. Stim-packs were standard issue for UNSC special operations troops—who often had to fight for days at a time without sleep—but they were easy to overuse in the heat of a long battle. “Your commanders are focus-locked on a pointless goal. That’s a classic sign of stim-pack overdose.”
The human brain needed sleep to flush out the toxins that accumulated during periods of wakeful activity, and John knew that going even twenty-four hours without rest could lead to concentration and memory problems. After forty-eight hours, the brain started to shut down for microsleeps, which lasted anywhere from half a second to half a minute—all followed by short periods of confusion and disorientation that could prove disastrous in a combat situation. By seventy-two hours, the brain’s toxin load grew so acute that severe lapses in concentration, motivation, and memory were inevitable—and hallucinatory episodes were common.
The only way to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation was to temporarily increase the signal-carrying capacity of the brain’s synapses.
That was how stim-packs worked—and why they were sometimes necessary in combat. If there were natural methods for accomplishing the same thing, John had never heard of them.

• Halo Oblivion, chapter 1

To reiterate, Operation PROMETHEUS occurred from 0700 July 27th to an unspecified hour on August 2nd, or, in short, 7 days, though it was likely much longer, as Alpha Company would have spent hours in Slipspace and free fall before the first Spartan hit the ground.
In terms of hours, that’s 168 hours minimum.
Because of the operation’s location and lack of other UNSC assets in the area, Alpha Company had no safe spaces to hide, or to rest. While it’s possible fireteams took up sentry in “secure” positions, only some of the teams could sleep, and if those members not sleeping were using stim-packs, they might not have been able to sleep once it was their turn. This would undoubtedly cause a rolling, cascading issue as teams were forced to abuse their stims in order to stay awake and functional, but it had the debilitating issue of impacting their higher brain functions.
In the end, the last ones standing were probably so hopped up on stimulants they’d have probably died from cardiac arrest even if they could be extracted.
Comparatively, Covenant forces were constantly rotating in fresh troops as reinforcements were brought in from existing ground units, and then troops stationed in orbit:

"After two days," the Admiral said, "seven rectors were rendered inoperative and a counterforce was finally organized by existing Covenant units."
”The Covenant counterresponse was neutralized," the Rear Admiral continued, "and over the next three days. Alpha Company destroyed thirteen more reactors."
”But," the Rear Admiral said, "a massive counterforce appeared in orbit and descended to the surface."

• Halo Ghosts of Onyx chapter 8

This is, also, not taking into account that the final extraction craft were destroyed by the final day,if not earlier, trapping the Spartans on the asteroid. There was no escape, nowhere to run to, nowhere to go.^[2]
Which is where part III comes in.
Part III: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
THIS IS HIGHLY CONJECTURE AND THEORY-CRAFTING, PLEASE NOTE THAT WHEN REFERRING BACK TO THIS SECTION
I’ve been a pretty big proponent of SPI armour over the years, one of the most notable (if not the most notable) on the subreddit, I think (and I don’t make that claim lightly). Admittedly, a lot of that has been via a steady increase of information gathered piece-meal from various sources. If you search up SPI in Halostory’s search bar, a lot of posts with comments will have me in there, defending or clarifying something based off of tthe information we have.
But I might have been misinformed, or at least, misjudged some of the information.
How does this relate to Alpha Company and their deaths? Well, I’ve sort of touched on it above, but this recent canon fodder has sort of cemented the idea in my mind:
SPI has lost its purpose and become the antithesis of what it was meant to be, and in an attempt to make it more interesting, it’s actually been made worse.
That is to say, over the years, we’ve learned that SPI isn’t an individual armour, but a program, a suite, of different armours all under the same umbrella of “Semi-Power-Infiltration”.
It’s noted in a few places (Encyclopedia, Mythos, various Canon Fodders) as being a stable of armour with different variants optimized for different needs. The most recent canon fodder took a look at some of those variants…kind of.
Initially, this might seem like a good thing, giving the armour more variants broadens it’s potential as a warfighting platform, increasing individual operators capabilities and providing synergy amongst team members’ individual specialities, and allows characters who wear it to stand out from one another in visual media (which I personally find rather humorous, considering the Armour’s intended purpose.)
But while it might be a good idea from an artistic standpoint, it’s a very bad idea from a logistical/in-universe one.
The newest canon fodder describes SPI as:

Though not as robust as mainline Mjolnir suits, SPI armor has proven to be an excellent platform for testing a variety of field attachments and upgrades that would be far more costly (and at greater risk of destruction) applied to Spartan-exclusive missions.

• Canon Fodder: New Year, New Lore

It also goes into description of the different appearances we’ve seen over the years. Of particular note is this depiction from Mythos describing Operation PROMETHEUS. (I know, it’s long winded, but we’re finally back on topic).
The canon fodder goes on to say this about the image:

The top-right depiction of Operation: PROMETHEUS—the mission that saw the annihilation of Alpha Company (the first batch of three-hundred Spartan-IIIs)—seen in Halo Mythos likewise showcases two different variants. The central Spartan’s armor is notably more angular, lacking the traditional curves of the “baseline” Mark-I SPI, while the dead Spartan on the ground has a design which conforms more to baseline but has a much thinner “jaw” and lacks defogging vents.

• Canon Fodder: Nee Year, New Lore

Here’s where this is a problem, jotted out for ease of reading:
You have 300 people sent very far away from any logistics and resupply points, sent to an area surrounded by enemies on all sides.
You have limited space in the drop pods that these 300 people are deployed in. Likely this is filled with weapons, ammunition. Stuff they can carry on their person.
You can send…some number of supply pods (as seen in The Cole Protocol). Larger pods, likely carrying additional explosives, heavy weapons, and, most likely, extra armour to replace damaged ones in the field.
You have these 300 people wearing unique special armour that - to work effectively - must have the plating overlap * perfectly* to achieve proper camouflage. They may all need replacement parts and pieces.
You’ve given some of them unique variants that do not conform to baseline and require different armour plating to work effectively.
I think where I’m going with this is obvious.
Their own specializations and uniqueness (seem to have) killed them….or at least could have contributed to their deaths.
If you’ve just been fighting for a day or two, and your team (or several) makes their way to a supply pod full of armour, and you crack it open to find armour pieces for “SPI Mark I Type B” suits…what do you do if you’ve got Type A? The Type B plating won’t work with your armour. Sure, it might “connect” and have the panels activate, but the plating won’t properly fit, it will give you a bad “seal”, and your camouflage capabilities will be compromised. What does this mean? In short, you must isolate yourself from your comrades in order to not give their positions away, but it leaves you vulnerable.
This isn’t like traditional paradrops of today or the past, this armour is fully sealed, it needs to be to function. It is the only thing keeping you alive. The more variation, the harder it is to supply, the harder it is to supply, the more people die.
It’s especially egregious when the differences seem so….minor. It seems almost needless, at least with what we see in Mythos. What benefit did that one more angular variant provide over the usual baseline? What benefit does it give that a supplemental attachment didn’t? Was it worth the trade off for added logistical woes?^[3]
Additionally, though likely not intended (despite actually being noted in several points in the books) any particular variation based off specialty or designation would be a hinderance because it enables enemy commanders and intelligence teams to paint a picture of your capabilities.
If you can figure out that Squad leaders are wearing a particular type of armour, say, CENTURION, all you need to do is (generally speaking) target them, kill them, then kill their second in commands, then in the words of a damn fine soldier, “you can kill any poor bastard you like”.
Anything that makes you look like a more important target makes you a dead target - and for an armour based off stealth and invisibility, that’s a terrible idea.
You would think Kurt noticed this and immediately put a stop to it, because it’s getting his men and women killed…but we can see that it continues to happen in various forms
Admittedly, and to reiterate, this is likely just something we kind of need to accept as necessary for Halo’s visual media and how they’ve decided to design characters, but it still feels noteworthy to mention, especially because characters in universe mention it;^[4]

The second companion made a beeline for Hamm. There was no rank insignia on his armor— it was never smart to help snipers identify high-value targets —but the name stenciled on his breast was CUVIER.
The company captain.
Cuvier stopped halfway between John and Hamm. Nobody saluted, but Hamm stood slightly more erect. Had one of John’s Spartan snipers been an enemy watching through a scope, even the subtle shift of posture would have been enough to get the captain’s helmet blown off.

• Halo Silent Storm 8

.

Jones was only halfway up the side of the hill, but that was high enough to see the top of theopposite hill, and the tiny figures who stood there. Not the Grunts who were running this way and that, not the Jackals who lined the edge of the summit, but the shiny armor of the Elites. Those were the targets he wanted, and they seemed to leap forward as the Marine increased the magnification on his scope, and let the barrel drift slightly. Which life should he take? The one on the left with the blue armor? Or the one on the right, the shiny gold bastard? At that moment in time, in that particular place, Lance Corporal Jones was God.
He clicked the sniper rifle’s safety catch, and lightly rested his finger on the trigger.

• Halo The Flood, chapter 6

PART IV: THERE’ll BE ANOTHER TIME
New information that’s come to light regarding the operation comes from recent Halo Infinite Intel, about how Deep Winter had select Spartans pulled in secret ahead of PROMETHEUS.
Admittedly, this likely wouldn’t have drastically changed anything, but as John notes in Silent Storm, Spartan effectiveness is dramatically increased and heightened when at optimal team strength, and it seems Deep Winter pulled Spartans to make use of their individual skill sets, a cascading ripple occurs as teams would need to reshuffle and reorganize to fill in and make up to the gaps. The more Spartans removed, the less effective the Company will be, the less ground they can cover, and the greater chance of failure and death, noted here by John:

If the Spartans were attacking separate targets, they wouldn’t be able to support each other—and the efficiency of a Spartan team decreased exponentially each time a member was removed. Dr. Halsey estimated that a Spartan operating alone was only one-sixteenth as effective as a four-member team . . . and sixteen times as likely to get killed.

• Halo Silent Storm, chapter 5

As Kurt himself notes, Deep Winter often operated from a perspective of basic morality functions, which Kurt considered inadequate and a sort of weakness:

What could an AI possibly know what it was like on a real mission? Bullets zinging so close over your head that you didn't so much as hear them hut felt them pass. Or what it was like to get hit, but still have to keep going, bleeding, because if you didn't everyone on your team would die?

• Halo Ghosts of Onyx, chapter 9

Again, little likely changed, but the organizational hurdles and missing members might have effected how Alpha went about their mission, and how quickly they could have completed it.
Which leads us to our conclusion.
CONCLUSION
TLDR: Alpha Company faced a number of factors that led to their demise during Operation PROMETHEUS, and it wasn’t really due to a lack of training, or any sort of deficiency with the Spartans themselves, at least, not that we can see.
Instead, their deaths occurred due to stim-pack overdose, overwhelming enemy reinforcements, and difficult to maintain logistics hampered by additional, and unnecessary issues. While not technically a reason, the loss of select members saved by Deep Winter also probably had an effect on the Company’s overall performance,
In the end, the situation was doomed once the extraction craft were destroyed, and that only hastened Alpha Company’s demise. Kurt, despite his guilt, had nothing to be ashamed of, and their deaths couldn’t be placed on him or the others in the program. At the end of the day, Alpha Company died to factors outside their control and through no obvious faults of their own.
They may have died, cut off and alone, but they did what any Spartan would do, what any Spartan could do;
The impossible.
SUPPLEMENTAL/ADDITIONAL NOTES

• [1]: PROMETHEUS references the Greek God of the same name. A Titan who stole the fire of the gods and gave hope to humanity. In much the same way that Alpha Company gave hope to humanity by delaying the Covenant advance. Of course, this sacrifice went unknown by everyone. Interestingly, Alpha Company’s operations all involve fire in some way. PROMETHEUS has been explained. HWACHA refers to a Korean siege weapon from the 15th century, a cart with dozens of arrows/rockets that would be shot at a target, usually causing mass confusion and panic. Akin to a canister or grapeshot from a cannon. FIREBRAND doesn’t really need an explanation (but seeing as it was their most notable Anti-Insurrectionist operation…yikes, lol). While IRON GRAVE might seem out of place, it harkens back to Prometheus(the deity, not the operation) and his role as a smith. Iron needs to be forged into armour or tools, and based off the timeline, IRON GREAVE might have been Alpha’s first foray against the Covenant proper, hence, its akin to a baptismal experience, or a case of the Company being forged under fire.
  
• [2]: The Mythos artwork depicts a battlefield covered in smoke and ash, but from what I can see, the ground is more or less completely flat with very little deviation on terrain, this means Alpha would need to belly crawl until they arrived at one of the reactors to make best use of their PR systems, slowing them down significantly and, at the same time, meant that once combat was initiated, moving from Reactor Complex to Reactor Complex would have been both incredibly exposed and provided no cover.
  
• [3]: Mirage’s introduction to Infinte also introduces us to the AAP/K-ROC Ordinance Pack, an up-armoured cuirass noted to be cheap and easily available and intended to be worn by Mark I and II SPI. The overall shape makes it seem like it would have fit both Mythos depictions of SPI, and it’s almost certain everyone would have been wearing it, which would have mitigated some of the logistical issues. Assuming a Spartan needed only to replace this aspect of their armour, or their shoulder pauldrons were removed without compromising the rest of the suit’s stealth integrity, logistics issues might have been less of an issue. Other supplemental attachments, like RS/MOONGLOW, rather than entirely different helmets, would have also helped.
  
• [4]: I go into further detail of Spartan appearances and their differing looks (sort of) in this post
  

With that, we conclude another “essay”. Next up (timeline permitted) a character study and a look at love.
~ EternalCanadian

Overview

We’ve seen a lot of feedback posts. D4 is clearly a beautiful game, with awesome moment-to-moment gameplay. And while that’s very important in bringing players into the game, it’s not going to be a driver for the longevity of the game. This post is focused on comparing D4 vs D3 and PoE on the endgame core game loop. Why do players praise PoE’s endgame but find D3’s shallow? How does D4 measure up? You're welcome to apply the same framework to D2 as well, and see why some players prefer D2 and praise it's endgame despite it having many many issues.

The core loop of the game is pretty simple:
Kill monsters → get loot/xp → make character stronger → kill stronger monsters

While many players will talk about PoE’s complex passive tree, or the deep crafting / item system, I actually think some of those design choices are not what makes the game shine (in fact, they are clearly off putting to many players). What PoE does well is actually making each step in the core game loop more interesting. There’s more agency for players, and decisions matter.

Path of Exile

Get Loot/XP

• Strategy: What content should you do to acquire loot / xp? Depending on what you’re playing, there’s different types of optimization you can do to maximize your payoff. There’s also a level of personalization for enjoyment - do I want to kill bosses, or do I want to run maps? Appeals to different intrinsic motivations of players.
• Unique Rewards: Different strategies/content giving different rewards is another vector that allows players to opt into the right experience for them. Different content’s optimized to reward different rewards.
• Crafting: Called out separately here because it does fall outside of the core gameplay a little bit, but has a strong appeal and is a big component for a game with so much randomness in loot acquisition as it provides varying levels of agency for the player to target what they want.
• Risk/Reward: There’s often a cost associated with getting rewards. Do I want to run this expensive/rare map, but risk dying? Stakes matter and that experience is thrilling.
• Scarcity: Loot is rare. There are many substitutes, but getting the exact thing you want is very hard to come by. The substitutes are also quite a bit different than just slightly weaker in numbers (see section below). Makes getting loot/crafting exciting because you have so much variance (this item could be completely useless or it could be the best thing in the world).

Make Character Stronger

• Multiple levers of power progression: At its core, the concept is quite simple. How much damage do I do, and how much damage can I take. There are some other minor vectors like how quickly can I kill content (speed), and how efficiently can I progress (magic find). But while simple, the way to improve on each vector has many paths. For damage, there’s base damage, skill multiplier, attack/cast speed, damage type, crit, more multipliers (# of hits/projectiles), penetration, etc. There are many ways for a player to become stronger.
• That tie in with each other: The real depth lies in having these levers tie in with each other. On paper, adding one additional hit isn’t that much different from 100% increased damage. But when things interact with each other they have wildly different effectiveness. What if you also had an ability that said “each hit applies a debuff that reduces enemy defense by x%?”. Now you value additional hit more than increased damage. For defense, what if you had an ability that said “convert x% of max life to energy shield?”, makes modifiers to life/ES a lot more interesting. This allows the players to feel smart in their optimization.
• Trade Offs: Things have trade offs with each other. Substitutes exist, and most players are not using the perfect gear for them. However, they are substituting it with something else. Maybe I couldn’t get enough resistances on my gloves so I opted for a different ring to get resistance instead of damage.
• Breakpoints: Builds/playstyles that come online at certain breakpoints, enabled by getting enough of a certain combination of affixes, or getting a certain combination of unique items. This creates interesting mid/end-game builds that players can strive for, and grows players’ power in a much more interesting different way than numbers going up.
• Finite Character Progression: There’s an end point to your character progression. You are limited by your max level and the number of items you can equip. The constraint is what pushes players to optimize and makes optimization interesting.

Kill Stronger Monsters

• Non-scaled Endgame Content: There is content in the game that is extremely difficult, and does not become easieharder depending on player power. What this means is that this content becomes a goal for players to reach/achieve.
• Individual Progression Path: Oftentimes, these bosses/content are hardeeasier depending on what build you’re doing. They also have their own progression path to unlock, as well as mechanics to learn. This combination means that even upon defeating the apex endgame content in the game, there are still things for players to do that’s challenging. Infinite depth: Some content have infinite depth (Delve). For those that want to compete on that vector, this exists.
• Challenges: Extrinsic motivators are used to encourage players to add a layer of difficulty / grind to the game. “Beat a boss while certain conditions are true to unlock this new cosmetic”.

New Leagues adds elements to this loop. Some leagues expand on how you get loot, some leagues expand on how you make your character stronger. The most successful expansions tend to be ones that do all 3.

Diablo 3

Get Loot/XP

• Strategy: D3 has some variations too, although a bit more straightforward and simple. Crafting mats you run bounties and rifts with a speed build. XP you run GRs with a slightly different speed build. Because rifts are randomized, and all have a boss, you don’t have as much agency in how you want to play.
• Unique Rewards: There are pretty much two choices. Bounties vs Everything else.
• Crafting: Very basic system. Braindead almost. Kadala is pure random. Enchanting is so basic, it doesn’t really have any decision points.
• Risk/Reward: No risk/reward. There’s no consequence to me trying out harder content. There’s no sense of stake.
• Scarcity: Nothing is really scarce. All items are fairly straightforward to get. You can get your build up and running within a day, easily. The scarcity comes from getting ancients/primal ancients which does exist, but aren’t actually that compelling of upgrades (see section below).

Make Character Stronger

• Multiple levers of power progression: There are much fewer levers for both damage and defense. Not necessarily a bad thing, but…
• That tie in with each other: These levers do not really tie in with each other, they each function on their own. As a result, there aren’t really that many combinations and build opportunities.
• Trade Offs: I’m rarely making choices between affixes/gears. I know what’s best, and I can get the best pretty easily.
• Breakpoints: More is better. While some builds can only exist if you put together a set and get the right legendaries equipped, it doesn’t go beyond that (and as we said, it’s easy to get to that point). There’s no chase of getting to a certain % of CDR allows you to be able to infinitely chain something (there used to be, but those builds got nerfed).
• Finite Character Progression: The paragon system basically nullifies all constraints. Optimizing gear? Why does it matter when I can trivialize it with 5000 additional dex? This goes beyond paragons when you start grinding GRs to add base stats to your gear.

Kill Stronger Monsters

• Non-scaled Endgame Content: There is no endgame in D3. You get to endgame within the first hour of play, and from there it’s just seeing numbers go up. Your actual experience as far as challenge goes is the same at hour 1 as hour 500.
• Individual Progression Path: There’s an element of this in getting the hellfire keys. But that’s not really end game content.
• Infinite depth: Exists as GRs. In many ways, I think the GR progression in D3 is better than delve from PoE.
• Challenges: This exists in the weekly challenge rift, but they’re fairly easy to complete so don’t serve as an endgame long term goal.

New Seasons sometimes adds elements to this loop, and sometimes doesn’t. Double Goblin season? I’m still doing the same thing as I was doing before, except I get a little more loot occasionally. No changes to how I would play the game. Latest season with altar rites? Much more interesting way to progress characters, and it shows, people liked the latest season.

Diablo 4 (Based on what we've seen)

Get Loot/XP

• Strategy: We’ve only seen one type of method of getting loot, that is killing monsters. Dungeons is the primary way we’ve seen it done. This doesn’t seem significantly different from rifts, but the added sigils could make this slightly more interesting than D3. However, we need more ways to play to get loot outside of dungeons, especially since all the dungeons are very samey (kill a bunch of small monsters with a boss at the end).
• Unique Rewards: Unsure yet. Most of the crafting materials I’ve seen can be found in the overworld. I’d be interested in seeing some boss exclusive drops, some crafting materials dropping only off of certain monsters (that you can target, so not loot goblins).
• Crafting: Seems pretty similar to D3 tbh, although the ability to transfer legendary affixes does add an interesting layer.
• Risk/Reward: No risk/reward. Unsure yet what the endgame holds. Sounds like sigils need to be crafted, so if they are not cheap to craft, and failing a NM dungeon means you lose those sigils, that could add some level of risk. We need more of these types of experiences (to be clear, not all experiences need stakes, but there should have varying levels).
• Scarcity: Unsure yet, but legendary gear scarcity wasn’t really real. You acquired them pretty frequently, and the aspects could be gotten. Your build can come online relatively quickly. I’d want to see more scarcity to encourage “make-do” playstyles. You already have “basic” versions in terms of aspects to enable builds, let’s make finding legendaries harder.

Make Character Stronger

• Multiple levers of power progression: There seems to be some more than D3 on the damage side, so it’s a step in the right direction. I think the amount they have may be sufficient for now (given the game hasn’t launched yet). The defensive side could use some work. We need more interesting ways to scale our defense.
• That tie in with each other: They do not tie in with each other at all.
• Trade Offs: Some of the legendary affixes and unique affixes I saw were interesting. They’re kiss-curse so I’m incentivized to build around these effects. I’d like to see more of them, to further encourage players to actively make trade offs in their gearing decision making. Unsure yet whether there are a set of affixes on gear that’s just BiS, which would be a bummer. One question I have is, why would I ever want to use a legendary if I have the sacred legendary? This is the same problem as D3, where you slowly upgrade your gear to ancient/primal ancient. It’s very boring, and I’m not making any trade off decisions. Maybe certain legendary affixes are only available on legendary compared to sacred, etc. I do think there may be trade off decisions you need to make between Uniques vs Legendaries, and if that’s where the game is leaning towards for decisions & trade offs, I’m on board. Just need to make sure it’s executed properly (i.e. Unique effects are extremely powerful but the rest of the effects are likely weaker than legendary/sacreds).
• Breakpoints: I haven’t seen much of this yet, but end game will reveal more. Some of the druid uniques are cool → a black/white effect that you must have if you want to enable a certain build. I want to feel like I have now unlocked a completely new build after acquiring a certain combination of items (this isn’t about viability in terms of damage, this is about a build that I otherwise could not run at all before).
• Finite Character Progression: I think they took out the paragon system and replaced it with a finite-paragon board. This should solve the previous unlimited scaling issue. As long as there’s a cap for your character, this should be fine.

Kill Stronger Monsters

• Non-scaled Endgame Content: Unsure. Is it just nightmare dungeons? Have I already seen all of the end-game during the beta, but with lower numbers? If so, that’s really disappointing. There needs to be pinnacle encounters in the game that’s really hard to beat, that is not accessible to a majority of players. These encounters should not scale with your character, and should be used as a measuring stick for players to stack up against. Ideally these encounters also have specific build-enabling drops. These items don’t necessarily need to be powerful, but need to be different.
• Individual Progression Path: Unsure. Without non-scaled endgame content, this doesn’t matter.
• Infinite depth: I don’t know if this exists anywhere, and that might be okay. For the ultra competitive gamer, there may be no true endgame for them. But for the majority of ARPG players, I think they can find their own challenge and compete on other axis.
• Challenges: Unsure. But this can probably be easily added.

New Seasons - we don’t know anything about seasons. So I won’t comment on it here. But ideally it would look to expand on multiple parts of the core game loop.

Conclusion

While there are many things I think D4 could improve on, the two that stand out the most are:

• Non-scaled Endgame Content: Give players a (good) reason to get stronger.
• Trade offs & Breakpoints in Gear: Add more interesting choices to itemization & builds.

I actually think Diablo 4 has the foundation to be a fantastic game that could challenge PoE. Things that are difficult to change and improve upon (visual style, gameplay clarity & feels) the game does an incredible job on. In my opinion, it is much easier for Diablo 4 to incorporate some of what makes PoE special, while the reverse is much harder. I also don’t believe that adding these changes will lose the appeal of the game to casual players. Most casual players will never encountesee some of this, and what we have currently will be more than sufficient for that group of players.

Ultimately this depends on where Blizzard wants to take the game: Do you want the game to have a rich endgame that can keep core gamers interested for 1-2 months, and a reason to return every season? It’s entirely possible that is not a goal at all, and the investment to get D4 there is just not worth it.

hi :) i couldn't find anything about this, or maybe i just don't know what to search. i have 3 models that track very well without me having to adjust my height, out of like 50. the other models i have to adjust my height to like 4"10 or lower so my feet trackers don't end up by my ankles. i guess its not that big of a deal, but it doesn't feel as accurate if i were to leave it at my normal height. also, it makes my avatar smaller. lol
does anyone know anything about this? i've been trying to make a vroid model and the tracking on him is not very good, even with me trying to match up the proportions with the ones that do track well. does it matter how accurate the proportions are in relation to my real body, or is it something i have to mess with in blender?
(one of the models that tracks really well for me is minase from booth, and most of the avatars from that creator. so i'm wondering if it just depends on how the model is made?) sorry if this doesn't make sense. i'm not sure how to explain it well.
tldr; depending on the model, my trackers end up at my ankles instead of my feet.
if anyone has any insight on this i'd really appreciate it!

While watching videos about fitness trackers I noticed that Oura ring allows you to mark factors affecting your sleep in the app. For example you can mark that you consumed alcohol and later see whether alcohol consumption affected your sleep.
Is this possible with any of the Garmin trackers? I have Garmin Fenix 7 and I cannot find anything like this. If this is not possible with the Garmin app is there any other way to do this such as using 3rd party apps?

I got an update we scheduled i485 for Testing & Interview. I thought this was an error. Fast it was scheduled 👈🏽no notice in document-fast it was canceled👈🏽notice was in documents. I did my interview already Testing/interview?! 🙆🏽‍♀️never knew they give test for i485😃
3/6/23 case being actively reviewed/ no notice in documents. I’m just waiting on i485 approval i130 approved 1/28/23.

EKG, Echo, X-ray, pulmonary function, COVID test, and blood tests all came back clean. I am active and athletic, healthy weight, above average VO2 Max, and have no history of Asthma. My issue seems to be getting air in, not expelling air. My blood O2 appears unaffected, at least according to my watch. The air quality where I live (Utah County, Utah) is usually decent, though not exceptional currently due to winter inversion.
My symptoms began completely out of the blue in the beginning of January, where I couldn’t get a satisfactory breath and began feeling lightheaded and experienced tunnel vision. As the symptoms persisted through the following days, I noticed an occasional sense of congestion through my throat and upper chest with a completely unproductive cough.
A couple weeks ago, I came down with something that involved a very sore, red, painful throat, and excessive congestion, but with a very productive cough and running nose, very opposite what I’d experienced previously. While my throat was red and painful, my breathing was far less labored than before though I’d say only at 90% normal function. The pain ceased after 3 days, and the breathing issue returned in step. My congestion has been worse, but my cough has been productive ever since the painful throat.
I typically try to take as deep a breath as possible through my mouth (I am unable to use my nose due to a deviated septum and congestion), and feel the “breath getting stuck” in my throat and upper chest. Occasionally I can take a satisfactory breath with the satisfaction felt in the same areas, throat and chest. I also feel sometimes that my upper chest is covered in a thin layer of paint and unable to utilize my breath.
I am T1D with an A1C of 5.7, and have a history of depression and anxiety (mostly under social circumstances) which I managed with past counseling and current medication which has been mostly satisfactory. I take Aplenzin, Lamotrigine, and Quviviq daily.
I don’t know what to do or try next. I haven’t visited a specialist yet, nor do I know who to visit. I do not hyperventilate, or have any idea what could have brought this on. It has been persistent for 3 months and I’m very tired of it. Any ideas of things I could try?
tl;dr I can’t breath, family practice doesn’t know why.

Has anyone had issues with their Garmin losing performance stats? I went for a run yesterday and my watch acted weirdly where it would automatically pause and when I resume it would restart itself. I had to do a couple of restarts to get it back to normal but when I finished the activity various performance stats have shown as empty such as the race predictors, weekly daily load, VO2. I just went for a run now and everything is empty even on the Garmin Connect app. The graphs have stopped since before it bugged outyesterday. I've got a Forerunner 745, and I occasionally get issues with it. Not often, but often enough to be annoying.

I’ve created a quiz for Engenes everywhere that I wish to participate in…
and it’s about Enha’s Webtoon series, Dark Moon: The Blood Altar!
I’m personally obsessed with this series, and there are so many interesting aspects to it that I wanted to create a fun activity about it. If you want to test your Dark Moon: The Blood Altar knowledge with Engenes everywhere, feel free to also share it with other Enhypen-related communities!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSclCXplQHhQzpQP2vWnmz7bSkDB9YWJ1xqpTnsgTSC6b2RZ4g/viewform?usp=sf_link
I tried my best to adjust the settings to this form so cheating wouldn’t be possible, but unfortunately I couldn’t avoid it at least completely. Therefore, I’d like to ask that if you wish to take the form, please take it honestly, and don’t cheat! Thank you, and I hope you find this little something fun <3

In Mississippi 2017, my mom was in a car accident and was taken to a hospital in an air ambulance. We received bills, and I always sent them to insurance. My mom doesn't speak English so I was having to deal with exchanging information. We hadn't heard anything in years and assumed all was taken care of. However, we just received a bill in the mail stating that the air ambulance company sent the debt to a collection agency. The bill is for $33,000, but they're offering a nearly 50% discount to $19,000 if we pay a lump sum. We have since changed both health and car insurance. We live in Tennessee, and she was a passenger with my dad driving.
New pertinent details:

1. We called the insurance company where the policy was active at the time, and they could not find any claim records from 2017 so they told us to contact the provider because it is their responsibility to file a claim. The date of service was from July 2017.
2. We called the provider and they were able to pull up payment records where health insurance (at the time) paid them $5,000 and auto insurance (at the time) paid them $10,000. These payments happened around October 2017. The balance for bills after these payments were made was about $23,000. They said there was an adjusted amount for $2,000 (is this balance billing?). They would not give any details for the remaining balance and said that we would have to call the collections company for balance information.
3. I am not sure how $2,000 or $23,000 turned into $33k and frankly, I am overwhelmed and afraid to call the collections company.

My questions are:
Would it be foolish to contact this collection agency without a lawyer?
Could we negotiate low monthly payments, or would declaring bankruptcy before anything else can happen be the best course?
​
Edit: balances

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PC keeps crashing and auto-rebooting with this error. Any help? I can post the event viewer log file if requested. Not sure what the issue may be. I stress-tested my CPU and no crash resulted from it. Someone mentioned that it may be a PSU issue. Not entirely sure.
PC Specs: AMD 5800x3d Asus rog strix b450 ITX mobo 16gb ram AMD RX 5700 ITX Silverstone itx 650 watt psu

Description: A fatal hardware error has occurred. Reported by component: Processor Core Error Source: Machine Check Exception Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error Processor APIC ID: 15 The details view of this entry contains further information. Event Xml:    18 0 2 0 0 0x8000000000000000  85731   System DESKTOP-QETVJO8    3 15 5 0xbea0000001000108 0x77cbffc5 0xd01a0ffe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

Hi folks,
I wanted to get some in-hand experience in Google Ads through an internship. As I’m currently working in an IT company and putting my profile on a freelancing site would be a risky thing(my company is strict about moonlighting).
Approaches, I’m following right now.

• Completed Google Search Ads certification
• Google Analytics 4(can analyze traffic, and fetch reports.)
• I use a customized template for competitor analysis. It looks like this.
• Will not directly jump on creating campaigns- I pay attention to the budget calculator and important checklists.

Some personal issues, I’m facing.

1. Have an IT job, so can’t actively search for jobs on social media or freelancing platforms.
2. I’m available from 9:30 to 19:00 EST. But, I won’t be able to leave my current job which begins around 23:30EST(love the concept of different timezones)
3. It’s not like I don’t want to leave my current job, but until I don’t get a permanent role, I won’t be able to take the risk(especially during this recession).

The situation is kinda unexplainable but would love to hear your suggestions:) Thank you in advance!
PS: If anyone is looking to take some workload off his/her shoulder. I would love to help you out. Also, I’ve no issues giving a test or serving a free probation period.

In Mississippi 2017, my mom was in a car accident and was taken to a hospital in an air ambulance. We received bills, and I always sent them to insurance. My mom doesn't speak English so I was having to deal with exchanging information. We hadn't heard anything in years and assumed all was taken care of. However, we just received a bill in the mail stating that the air ambulance company sent the debt to a collection agency. The bill is for $33,000, but they're offering a nearly 50% discount to $19,000 if we pay a lump sum. We have since changed both health and car insurance. We live in Tennessee, and she was a passenger with my dad driving.
New pertinent details:

1. We called the insurance company where the policy was active at the time, and they could not find any claim records from 2017 so they told us to contact the provider because it is their responsibility to file a claim. The date of service was from July 2017.
2. We called the provider and they were able to pull up payment records where health insurance (at the time) paid them $5,000 and auto insurance (at the time) paid them $10,000. These payments happened around October 2017. A provider bill from after the fact saying we owed $23,000. They said there was an adjusted amount for $2,000 (is this balance billing?). They would not give any details for the remaining balance and said that we would have to call the collections company for balance information.
3. I am not sure how $2,000 or $23,000 turned into $33k and frankly, I am overwhelmed and afraid to call the collections company.

​
My questions are:
Would it be foolish to contact this collection agency without a lawyer?
Could we negotiate low monthly payments, or would declaring bankruptcy before anything else can happen be the best course?
​
Edit: balances

I've active application with Tesla Solar. I may or may not become eligible for NEM 2.0 ? I'm very anxious. These are following steps in the process as per Tesla website.

1. System Design
2. Permit
3. Site Assessment
4. Installation
5. City or County Inspection
6. Final Payment
7. Approval to Power On
8. Power On

I posted this in a different thread but figured it would be helpful here:
I’m a Peer Educator at Northeastern and know each of these resources well. There are multiple mental health resources to consider and the best for you is dependent on what your needs are:
UHCS is a non-confidential mental health resource where you can schedule 30-min appointments with licensed mental health counselors. These appointments are NOT meant to be routine appointments, meaning if you are looking for a routine therapist or counselor - UHCS can help connect you to one, but can not be one. They’re more for immediate concerns or just needing to talk to someone. They have mental health walk in hours that are for the same purpose.
[email protected] is a hotline that you can call where you will be immediately connected to a licensed mental health counselor OUTSIDE OF UHCS, meaning Find is NOT through Northeastern it’s just a service available to Northeastern students. When you call, you can ask for long-term therapy options (either telehealth or in-person) or simply just talk through your concerns with the counselor on the other end. It’s a great resource if you’re looking to start therapy or are unsure what you need, but know you want help. It’s free!!
WeCare is a resource that is generally only used when your mental health is affecting your school work - they act as the bridge between you and the school when experiencing a mental health crisis or any other reason that could effect your schoolwork or result in a leave of absence. They’re not a mental health resource, but can be contacted if you need additional support and don’t know where to go!
OPEN and the SVRC is a confidential resource specifically for students needing mental health services related to sexual violence or substance use. You can schedule appointments with their social workers as well and while this (again) isn’t a long-term therapy solution, it is extremely beneficial to talk through. It is one of very few confidential resources on campus.
The Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service is another confidential mental health resource where you can schedule appointments with faith leaders to talk through your concerns and receive guidance/support centered around your faith. They generally have more availability than other resources.
Lean On Me @ Northeastern is a peer to peer hotline that not a lot of students know about! It’s a phone number you can text anonymously and be connected to trained Northeastern students to talk through any concerns, stress, or simply just talk. It’s completely anonymous and you’re allowed to text the hotline as much as you need, but it is not a place to go to during a mental health crisis.
Headspace is a wellness app with a bunch of meditations, courses, and activities all centered around different wellness topics. We have access to a subscription through Northeastern and it’s a super great resource!
Side note - clubs like Active Minds throw a lot of wellness and mental health events and meetings :)
Hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions. Obviously the resources we have here are not adequate, but there seems to be a large lack of understanding about individual resources and what they do. There are people who care and genuinely want to help! <3