Monday Screenshots: Once Human (Dr Teddy and Manibus)

 More Once Human screenshots this fine Monday.

FINALLY got my Dr Teddy!  He heals and can pick you up when you are knocked down.

Manibus and his many noodly appendages descending from the skies

More Manibus action

Riding off towards the mountains

Monday Screenshots but on a Tuesday!

 Welcome to Monday Screenshots but on a Tuesday!  Some shots from my recent adventures in Once Human.

I will never get tired of my kitty cat friend!

Big ole' pike caught in the cave!

Look at all those loot boxes!

Exploring the bear cave

Finding out after a hundred hours played that there is stickers for your guns.  So cute!

I have pet bears using the new ranching system.  Unfortunately they were all called by my home defense systems.

The "Rebecca" deviation will play a piano if placed in your home and provides a source of music to keep other deviations happy!

Once Human Animal Ranching Tips

 Need help with Once Human's new animal ranching feature?  Apparently most of us do because its a buggy mess.  With that said check out this Reddit thread with some tips as I found it helpful.

Once Human Creator: P4wnyhof

 It is Creator Appreciation Week for Blaugust 2024 so I wanted to take a moment to recognize one of my go to Once Human creators: P4wnyhof. You can find his entire Once Human playlist here.  He features a mix of build guides, boss fight breakdowns, and general commentary on the game.

 I found his take on the season resets to be really good. Check it out and dig around his channel if you are looking for help with the game.

Once Human Update 1.1 Patch Notes

 Once Human is trucking along with changes to the game and have a long list of patch notes coming in update 1.1 set to land on August 15th.  The update brings a new animal "ranching" system, an overhaul of the fishing system, improved base building, a new ancient trial, and a ton of balance changes.  There is a lot in the patch but a few items I wanted to touch on.

Animal ranching in Once Human patch 1.1

 First is the headline addition to the game: animal ranching.  This will allow players to build enclosures to keep the various animals in the game.  Players will have to provide the right type of home and the right type of food to keep the animals happy.  With enough positive treatment players will be able to harvest skin and other byproducts from the captive animals.

 I think this is a neat addition and one I had not expected.  I am a fan of "farming" games so look forward to adding animals alongside my garden beds.  I hope this makes it less tedious to gather the animal byproducts needed for many crafting recipes.  It was annoying having to chase down herds of deer or pigs or rabbits and only end up with a couple items per harvest.  Compared to other systems such as mining/logging where you get hundreds of items per gathering attempt the animal harvesting was annoyingly slow.

Fish and chill

 Fishing is also getting an overhaul.  The fishing system at launch was borderline functional and the mechanics from a user interface perspective didn't line up.  Sometimes you catch fish, sometimes you don't.  Choosing a bait from those available in the game also didn't seem to change anything.

 With the updated system a new stamina-based fishing system is coming into play that should solve the user interface situation.  There are also changes coming to bait and it is hinted at that certain baits, such as using fish you catch as bait, will increase the chance at certain predator fish species.  As a fan of fishing games and fishing in games I am looking forward  to the changes!

 

Ancient One plane whale thing!

 There is also mention of a new trial for players who are willing to venture to the top of Chalk Peak.  Not much information is shared about the encounter that awaits players but the image (see above) shared looks really cool.  It alludes to having to jump onto a giant flying ancient one that is part flying whale merged with an airplane!  This is the sort of thematic flair that I love about Once Human!

 The patch also covers a lot of other areas that I want to make brief mention of:

• Server invitations are coming so players can invite friends to locked servers.  It is not clear this can be used to transfer your character but it should help get new players onto your server with you.  There is still a maximum cap so could still lock players out.
• Battle pass and cosmetic shop purchases will now be account wide instead of specific to one character.  Having restarted 3 times I've been waiting for my battle pass to become available on the character I finally settled on playing with!
• They are nerfing some items that make players harder to kill in PvP which seems odd because many builds can one shot players in PvP.  If anything I'd of thought they'd make the defensive items more available to more builds so PvP wasn't a "who shoots first" affair.  With that said PvP is pretty terrible so not sure this changes much about it still being terrible.  I'll still play on PvP servers but not for the PvP right now... just the chance that PvP gets better in the future.

 Since it is also Creator Creator Appreciation Week (August 11th – August 17h) for Blaugust it is only fair that I share a Once Human creator that has covered the patch in more detail.  Go on over and check out MrApocalyptic's video.

End Game Thoughts On Once Human: Finished LEA Research Labs

 I recently completed the endgame dungeon for Once Human's first season: LEA Research Lab. It was the toughest content I've faced in the game, requiring numerous attempts and different teams to conquer. Now that I’ve finally done it, I wanted to share some thoughts.

One of the LEA Research Lab bosses

 In my initial posts about Once Human, I noted how easy the game was. I was using the same gear I started with well into the later levels. I didn’t upgrade my gear until long after clearing all the normal mode max level content. Nothing in the open world or instanced dungeons (silos/monoliths) seemed to put up much of a fight. It’s worth mentioning that PvP is terrible in this game, so that didn’t push me to upgrade gear either.

 I did eventually upgrade my gear when the hard mode versions were released with phase 3 of the season. But honestly, I didn’t really need to, as hard mode was still too easy. With max-calibrated armor and weapons, hard mode felt no different than the rest of the game: easy.

 Phase 4 of the season introduced the pro modes. At first, tackling the pro mode silos/monoliths I’d done before didn’t present much of a challenge. I could solo them fairly easily, and playing duo with a gaming friend made them even easier. Pro mode initially seemed like just another way to burn through resources for bullets and repair costs.

 Then my buddy and I took on the big phase 4 content: the Forsaken Giant and LEA Research Lab. The Giant took a few tries, but the failed attempts were more about learning the mechanics (we went in blind) than about gear. Then we ventured into LEA Research Lab and hit a wall. We couldn’t finish it as just two players. We managed to get through three of the four challenges, but not the final one. Even when grouped with four players, our first teams failed. Had we finally encountered challenging content in Once Human?

 I’ll give a hesitant “sort of” in response. The lab is laid out in progressive stages, with fights that teach the mechanics for the final stage. The final stage then combines all the previous mechanics, along with a boss that, as my buddy put it, “won’t leave me the f!*$ alone” throughout the fight. It’s a long battle with overlapping mechanics, requiring solid coordination and fully upgraded gear to succeed.

 However, even with good gear and coordination, the unpolished nature of Once Human starts to show. Quirky movement, unreliable button presses, no line of sight for enemies hitting you, janky animations, desync between client and server—these issues didn’t matter much when the content was easier, but they rear their head in this final fight. This means a lot of the challenge comes down to battling the game itself rather than the actual encounter.

 Perhaps the most frustrating part is that by the end of the fight, even with max upgraded gear, all your armor—and sometimes weapons—are broken. No armor means everything kills you in one hit. A broken weapon means no damage. In theory, you could bring an entire extra set of gear or portable repair potions (if you’re lucky enough to have access to them, which I’m not), but that’s not a viable strategy in the middle of the fight. The gear damage happens way too fast. You shouldn’t start a single boss fight at 100% durability and end up at 0% and broken before it’s over.

 Another source of frustration is the line-of-sight and battlefield visibility issues. In the final phase, a lot of ranged attackers spawn, conveniently sitting in corners and behind walls, plinking away without line of sight. All you know is that you’re taking damage, often from something hitting you through the floor because they’re in a pit on the other side of the map. It doesn’t help that there are flying enemies throughout the fight as well, and with no way to get a wider view of the battlefield, you spend a lot of time not knowing what just killed you.

 Then there’s the hit detection issue. Guns are hitscan, so in general, they’re almost foolproof for hitting targets. But if you switch to melee (assuming weapon swap responds reliably), it’s a lesson in frustration. You might as well rule out ever being a melee-oriented build in this game. But that only applies to players—enemies, on the other hand, suddenly have massive range and hit detection well beyond where their attacks animate. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hit when it looked like the enemy swung at the air. The animation is horrendous (which is easy to overlook in the rest of the game when you’re killing things in a few hits).

 The issues with the interact feature also rear their ugly head. For PC, this is the F key. In parts of the fight, you need to pick up objects to throw them at targets. It can be maddening trying to get one to pick up, and the animation is so slow that more deaths than not come from simply trying to pick up the item you have to pick up! Then mix in how terrible F can be when trying to revive teammates, and it’s just a big F in chat.

 If that wasn’t bad enough, the problems with weapon swapping come into play. Sometimes weapon swap works, and sometimes it doesn’t—or maybe it swaps, but then you press fire, and it swaps back to the other weapon. Even worse is trying to swap between a tactical item, like a grenade, and back to a weapon. More often than not, you end up throwing several grenades before realizing your weapon never came back up. They need to get tactical items off the hotbar and onto a dedicated button, like in any other shooter game.

 The inconsistent registering of actions extends to everything, it seems. Reload your gun? It regularly doesn’t register that the reload finished, and your next action cancels the reload. Apply a healing activator and the animation finishes, but the healing doesn’t apply until a second later, which means you accidentally cancel the heal, thinking it’s done. As mentioned, tactical items like grenades are very quirky.

 I’ve posted before that Once Human has no right to be as popular as it is. Any mainstream developer would get torched over how buggy, unfinished, and unpolished this game is. Yet the gaming community and players keep giving Once Human a pass. Even I am giving it a pass. I keep logging in. I keep playing. I keep fighting the game as the primary challenge, with the content’s difficulty level coming second.

Inventory management should NOT be a mini game!

 It is "old man rants at the open sky" time.  Games, especially RPGs, should NOT make managing your character's inventory a game in and of itself!  It is irritating and detracts from otherwise great games.

 This topic came to mind after I read Nerd Girl Thoughts post on Crashlands.  She describes how the game has the audacity to have an unlimited inventory:

Did I mention you can carry, well, everything? One of most annoying parts of crafting-focused games is that you never know what you’re going to need later, so you’re spending resources crafting a million chests just in case those early game resources are needed again later on. Not in Crashlands, because your inventory is infinite. If you can pick it up, you can carry it. No inventory management, no chests, no worries.

 The "crafting a million chests" hits close to home for me right now playing a lot of Once Human.  My house has chests... everywhere.  Chests for all the logs that I keep piling up.  Chests for overflowing collections of disassembled parts.  Chests for that thing I may just need a week from now.

 Fortunately Once Human at least lets crafting supplies be sourced from the crates without having to go and get it out of the crate (well at least most of the time; some inconsistency with some of the crafting stations that don't do this).  Also Once Human lets players carry a lot of misc items for free in their backpack.  Nice but still irritating with so much in the backpack.

Ashes of Creation's inventory

 Even with the quality of life features Once Human has it still has "manage your inventory back at base" in it's core loop which is a common offender for my "old man rants at the open sky" trigger.  It makes sense that you go out on an adventure in a game and then return home to prepare for the next adventure.  But it's a game so I want to relax and enjoy my home; not micro manage inventory!

 Another big offender in games is various currency tokens.  Massively multiplayer games especially LOVE their currency tokens and even more than that they LOVE being inconsistent about the tokens.  Some go into a currency bank and others go into inventory or sometimes it goes to some hard to find account wallet you don't even realize you have.

 Once Human as a recent example for me is a poster child for inconsistency.  Where did that starchrom you just picked up go?  Oh it's just tracked as a number on your inventory screen.  Picked up some stellar planula?  That is in your backpacck.  Got a blueprint fragment?  That is in the blueprints screen.  Oh you got the other thing called blueprint? That is in your inventory.  Once Human content creators are making bank on just explaining the inventory management interfaces in this game!

 If it's not obvious by now I don't like managing inventory which is why you will see me barking about games like Ashes of Creation planning a "tetris like" inventory management system or why you will see me rolling my eyes at a game like Star Citizen trying to make an entire career path in the game for "loading a ship".  Just stop.   Let me play the game; not an inventory UI!

Monday Screenshots: The Many Faces of Heartlessgamer

 It is time for Monday Screenshots but with a Blaugust slant!  As we are in the "Introduce Yourself" week what better screenshots to feature than the many faces of the characters I've played recently across games.

 

New World

Throne and Liberty Global Beta

Once Human

Pax Dei Alpha Test

Enshrouded

Battlefield 2042 playing as Irish with my favorite skin

Call of the Wild: the Angler

New World open beta

Oldie but goodie - my Guild Wars 2 launch character... ummm yeah

July 2024 In Review

 Blaugust 2024 is here which means July 2024 is over! Let's take a look at what happened on the blog in July.

The Blog

 Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off a full month): 29,200 visits

 This is up about 7,000 from June and there was a spike around 7/5 while I was out of town.  I did not dig into the spike.

 

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 18 (week days minus days I was on my trip)
  
• Posted: 22
• Difference: +4 Woohoo! Lots of good topics to talk about and playing a new game, Once Human, kept the ideas flowing.
  
•  Search Trends
• "throne and liberty beta review", "throne and liberty impressions", and "throne and liberty open beta review" flew to the top this month with lots of Google searchers finding my initial impressions post and then after beta review post.  Look at that mountain in the chart!
• 
  

  

  Look at that mountain in the chart all driven by Throne and Liberty searches.
  

  
  
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" continue to be towards the top still thanks to this post: Best Battlefield!?
• Then another new search trend is cropping up around the game Once Human (see What I Played).  Lots of folks (me included) are searching for information about how seasons and season resets will work.  Here are the most common search terms:
  
  • once human 6 week reset
  • once human seasons
  • once human season reset
  • once human resets
  • once human seasonal wipe
• And for New World searches... well they dropped all the way to page 2 of the results!  It's all Once Human and T&L here baby!
  

What I Played

 For the first month in close to two years the answer for "what I played" is NOT New World.  I basically quit New World cold turkey after coming back from my trip.  I do drop in to reset some long duration trading post listings and to keep my "days since last login" fresh on the company board but that is it. I have not actually "played" the game since June.

 What I have played though is a lot of Once Human (all tagged posts).  I really like the game even though it has tons of issues and is death marching towards a seasonal model that is going to piss a lot of players off with how the server locking has gone.  We'll see if it has staying power after July.

 I also took the opportunity to try out the Throne and Liberty global beta and I shared my thoughts.  I wasn't hooked enough to say for sure I am playing at launch but having broken the New World grip on my gaming time it is entirely possible I give it a go in Sept.  It will be free 2 play so not much risk.

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 In July 2023 I was prepping for my first Blaugust!  

 Season 2 of New World was in full swing and I was posting my daily checklist which was a long standing driver of traffic to the blog as it was picked up on the New World subreddit.  Sort of makes me sad to look back and see how positive we were on New World and just a year later and its doom and gloom.

5 Years Ago

  July 2019 was in the 'no blogging' era and nothing comes to mind.

10 Years Ago

 In July of 2014 I was also not blogging regularly so had no entries.

15 Years Ago

  July of 2009 had us talking about the infamous Darkfall review debacle and eventually we got the real Kieron Gillen Darkfall re-review to talk about.  To be honest the original review was fair.  Darkfall was a turd of a game.  Personally I liked my May 2009 take by taking Kieron's review of The Path and treating it like it was for Darkfall.

 I was also enamored with Battlefield Heroes through the month of July. It still holds a spot in my "best battlefield" list.  Sad that it closed so soon after launching.  It was Fortnite-like before Fortnite!

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In July of 2005 it was a mix of Battlefield 2 posts and posts complaining about World of Warcraft.  Hmmm... that seems familiar.

Once Human Has No Right To Be This Popular

 Once Human is a buggy unfinished game with a laundry list of what should be fatal flaws.  It has no right to be as popular as it is.

 The biggest violation is that cash shop purchase are specific to one character.  I bought my battle pass premium on my first character but since my server locked I had to change servers and thus characters so dont have access to my premium rewards now.  And they are delaying fixing that to August 15th.  How this was ever a problem in the first place is baffling!

 Speaking of servers.  The server design in Once Human is not ideal.  Servers are divided into numerous world shards which spreads players out to a point that its basically a single player game.  Even with this low player density servers are locked which prevents friends from playing together.

 The game has a season model where content resets every six weeks and players start over leveling, unlocking the map, and rebuilding their base.  While some progress carries over such as end game blueprints the entire unfun part of the game has to be repeated.

 Seasons also gate content so players can only progress to certain points and the most rewarding content is available.  This leaves players without much to do while waiting for season phases to unlock and condenses the main end game progression to late in the season.  If you miss out you are out of luck and have to start over in a new season where you wait for the phases to unlock again.

 Each server has its own season schedule so if you started on servers at launch and your friends started later you will arrive at the next season at different times.  Characters are tied to servers and can't be transferred (yet).  Its a nightmare to play together with friends if they all don't join at the exact same time.  It is nearly impossible to join friends if you are late.

 If the servers and seasons weren't strikes enough; the basic game play is unfinished (to put it kindly).

 Enemy AI is brain dead.  Enemies can barely manage attacking players let alone actually killing them.  The only real danger is one shot kills to players which often happen due to bugs.  

 Players are also ridiculously overpowered.  With the right build solo players can clear the hardest content in the game in a matter of seconds.  Even if there wasn't the issue with player power the braindead AI makes most of the fights in this game easy.

 Even the main attraction open world "massive multiplayer" events are plagued with bugs and easily abused enemy AI.  Big open world bosses where the best strategy is just building fences everywhere.  PvP events where the first player to shoot wins. Base raid extraction events totally negated by simply building on a cliff or in the water.

 Speaking if PvP there are hackers everywhere.   The games PvP isn't even good but yet ruined further by aimbots, wallhacks, and abusing every bit of terrain in the game.

 The world itself is just a copy and paste masterpiece.  The same buildings, cars, and set pieces are used everywhere.  In the entire game players will only encounter a handful of enemies. 

 Most of the voice lines in the game are not voiced.  The quests are amateur at best and click through material. Towns are deadzones with few characters but lots of empty set pieces; rarely do you see a player.

 This unfinished nature of the quests and towns and they want players to believe they are going to deliver exciting new story content every 6 weeks with the new season?  They are dreaming.

 Many quests are supposed to do something unique but are often just bypassed by dumb enemy AI or buggy game play.  For example a chest inside a fortress that you can just place your car next to and use your car to jump over the wall to get it.

 This bypass mentality permeates the game.  If there is some sort of system in the game there is some way to cheese your way by it and chances are you don't even have to willingly cheese... the game just cheeses itself.

 Memetics are literally a meme in the game with their "meme points".  They are meant to be the crafting tree for base building and crafting, but players can just assign/un-assign points in the system whenever they want so they can spec to get something and then un-assign the points while keeping what they made.  At that point why not just let us get all the trees... we literally have to start over from level 1 for the next season.

 Oh but specializations that go with memetics are totally random and sucks to be you if you don't luck into the best specs.  Your character will just have to go without. Or you will have to rely on other players that did get the lucky spec to bail you out if it's something like refining gold/silver ore.  Why is gold/silver refining a freaking specialization in the first place!?

 We didn't even touch on the true progression for blueprints being a complete random lottery system.  Sure they added some direct buy options but good luck getting enough of the key resource to buy everything you want.  You still have to gamble for enough extra pieces to actually rank up.  At least you keep the progress between seasons when you start all over again...

 This game has so many issues and feels mailed in with the copy/paste and limited enemy variety.  This game has NO RIGHT to be popular.

 Anyway...  I am still addicted to it and playing every day.  I really like the game and so do many others. The Steam charts don't lie: peak concurrent players went up after launch and are staying steady.  So I'm not alone.  Maybe as gamers we just like our broke buggy games that lack polish and feel incomplete? 

Monday Screenshots: More Once Human

 The Once Human addiction continues!

Yes I bought the battle pass for these bad a$$ looks.

A sale in the vending machine!

Disco fever.  The events in this game are always entertaining.

Baby disco ball and mommy disco ball.

Playing with friends.... not sure that is safe.

Lets dance boss man.

Hanging out in the car.

Players need to brush up on their red light green light skills for this boss.

Loot the crate... or don't.

Oh a cute bunn... oh wait... what are you doing!

The fire frog improves your furnace's performance.  I don't want to ask how.

Broken lighthouse.

Freeze!  Fortunately the enemies as well.

Ha, missed me.  Note: the boss freezes you before deploying the lasers so you need to get to cover quickly.

Janitor deviant janitoring on top of the refiner during a purification.

Tunnel

Flying alien space whale in the distance

Fighting a level 60 elite.

Getting a Fast Start in Once Human

 Recently I had a friend start playing Once Human but they were unable to join my established server so I opted to jump to their server.  My main character was closing in on level 50 with a stacked base so I was used to having easier methods of doing things like smelting without needing charcoal.  Having to start over I wanted to get back to easy mode as soon as possible.  I found this guide on YouTube that gets players up and going with electric smelting within an hour and sets a great foundation to continue.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for guidance to get a quick start.

 

Once Human Surprises

 One of the things I liked about the Once Human demo prior to it's launch was that it kept surprising me.  Every time I felt like the demo was about to get stale something else jumped up to pique my interest.  It may be a puzzle that took me a few minutes to figure out or maybe it was unlocking a new tree in crafting and the possibilities that come with it. Once Human is full of surprises and I wanted to share some that I've learned since launch.

 After I unlocked the garage and got the three main vehicles (motorcycle, car, jeep) in the game I thought that was it for vehicles and it was just about upgrading each of those.  To my surprise I learned about the truck and tractor trailer from the medium and large garages which allow you to create mobile bases.  I had no idea this sort of thing was possible in the game!

  This means players can effectively make a "battle bus" mobile base to roll through towns terrorizing the local deviant population.  When I say mobile base I mean mobile base where the player places and builds the base on the truck or trailer just as they would at their home.  This includes auto turrets, drones, workbenches, and that cute stuffed sheep everyone gets early in the game.

 Taking the mobile base to another level and combining it with the vending machines in the game and voila you have a mobile shop that can be rolled out to your neighborhood hotspot to serve the needs of your customers anywhere anytime (just be aware your mobile home can be destroyed).  

Coming to a neighborhood near you soon!

 It really is mind blowing that a massively multiplayer online game where you can build a base just about anywhere also then lets players build mobile bases that can go and park just about anywhere!  Not only that but then to have things like vending machines which can be advertised/viewed on the map!  Oh and bases (mobile or not) can have hundreds of items in them letting for really impressive visual (and functional) builds!

 Speaking of bases I am amazed how deep and complex they can get.  What we saw in the demo just scratched the surface.  As I near the max level of 50 and start maxing out my memetic skills I am getting into various areas like automated logging and mining platforms, water pumps, water purification, and all of the possibilities that come with combining them together.

 For example I learned today that certain areas (which I'm not quite sure how to identify yet) have contaminated water which you can pump via a water pump and then 1 out of 10 times in purifying it you will get acid (a key end game crafting material that you need TONS of).  Now I need to figure out if I can hook this all up on a mobile base and go out and do some mobile water pumping!

 Also to stress what you can do with these systems as an example: water flows via actual pressure so it needs a pump to go up.  However with some creative planning you can use gravity to your advantage to save on having to pump it.  And a lot of this "just works" without having to think about it.  Just connect A to B and it knows what to do.  Fortunately they are not strict on pipe placement so it's fine if it clips through walls and structures.

 Before you even get to all the cool automated systems that get unlocked with water pumps and electricity there is the deviant system where you can lock your little Pokemon-like creatures up and have them do various tasks.  Some go out and harvest, others product rare materials, and others have just "I didn't expect that" functions.

 One of the surprising ones generates "dark portal" pieces that let you make a portal.  Place one end in your base and one somewhere else and they are connected.  Go in one and come out the other.  Of course one of the first things done was to put one on the ground and encourage folks to jump in only to realize it is a jump to their death.  

 Then I more recently got the deviant Artisan's Hand which generates parts that lets players get around repairing armor/weapons that can't normally be repaired.  You can only repair gear you craft yourself.  Anything traded for or looted is used until it breaks.  With Artisan's Hand you can craft potions that repair the lowest durability item you have equipped.  Equip just the one piece of gear and bingo bango bongo you can repair it without having to be the owner.

 I swear there is a deviant for everything and I just have a handful!  Heck there is a gingerbread house that generates crumbs that can be used to make potions that do nothing other than let you transform into a random object like a tombstone.  It has no purpose as far as I can tell other then letting you hide.

 Oh and I found out the little beaver dudes can not only harvest trees but randomly can show up with a piece of furniture!  Who doesn't like more crap to put in their base.

Little beaver dude found something other than a tree to gnaw back to the base!

 With all these surprises and a never ending supply of what seem like new deviants being discovered I am amazed there is not a central "Once Human DB" that has sprung up.  Maybe I am missing it but I can't find anything like NWDB for New World.  This game really would benefit from something like it!