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First impressions of Stygian: The good: - The Writing - the characters you encounter are interesting. The story is properly lovecraftian. The dialogues are good and the crazy is crazy (and sometimes funny). - The Aesthetics - the art style works for the game. Yes, you aren't going to get nightmares from seeing a mi-go in this game. But it all works and it does get across disturbing when it needs to. - Sanity - Sanity is something you cling to, but it also is the mana pool for your spellcasters, which results in an interesting balance between getting things done and trying to be sane to enjoy the results. The not so good: - Combat - combat can be too punishing. Which would be OK if it always were the result of your mistakes. But the flee mechanic doesn't work in the way it seems to have been envisioned: hold out long enough and make your escape. Then there is the issue that it can be very hard to click on a tile if a corpse is laying there; often you'll end up looting instead of moving and wasting precious action points. - companions can't use their skills to help you out. Need to pick a lock? You subterfuge companion won't do it for you. The bad: -The Save System - the game creates autosaves for everything, but does not let you delete them. Even if you track down the folder on your HD and manually delete them, the game will still list them. Enter a store -> autosave -> leave store - > autosave -> forgot something and re-enter -> autosave The worse: -The Save System - if you create a new character it deletes the saves of your old character. I am liking it, but I hope they overwork that mess of a savegame system.

Perhaps the long hyped bike simulator?

I see myself playing some Celeste soon. I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect.

Mic drop from the Boss, General Mike "Mobile" Holmes":

https://wccftech.com/greenberg-pleasantly-surprised-by-how-much-innovation-content-is-coming-from-the-new-studios/ "At Obsidian, there’s the team working on The Outer Worlds, a team that’s working on Pillars, and a team working on another secret thing."

I want to start out that I won't hold a grudge for anyone advocating for his or her desired feature. If the group that feels strongly about RTwP gets its way, I won't gripe endlessly about it. So, I'm not hashing out this post with furious fingers and rage filled hands. You might find RTwP more exciting, 3x0du5, but I don't. I think it quickly gets messy in a way that overshadows tactical decisions. In Pillars 1, even being extremely careful, a lot of combat would come down to competing mobs. Yes, positioning still played a role. It wasn't always about two mobs clashing in the middle of the screen, but it often came down to that in my game. I haven't spent a lot of time watching gaming videos, but the ones I've seen fairly mimic my own experiences playing the game. So, I prefer turn based because I personally feel I get more out of the various build decisions than I do out of RTwP. In fact, RTwP encourages me to select passive abilities more often than I normally would just so I don't have keep track of them. If people believe that's a deficiency on my part, fair enough. I don't agree, but I won't take it personally either. However, with that said, I do have sympathy for people who've followed the franchise the whole time. I remember RTwP was pretty much central to the original crowd funding scheme. I didn't like it, but I figured that a lot of my favorite games have been RTwP and I would enjoy it. I did. I was happily playing Deadfire before the happy surprise that I had a turn-based option newly available. That's why I'm not going to engage in the battle over the decision in a prospective third installment. I guess I'm just generally kibitzing about the option rather than hard-core arguing over it.

I decided to try the Microsoft Xbox Gamepass for PC Beta Upsilon, or whatever it is called. I mean, it is a buck, and 5 bucks after that, so not a big investment. It did take awhile to update Windows 10, but it ran pretty smoothly and has a nice mix of games to try. I downloaded Void Bastards, Forza Horizon, Vampyr, and Sea of Thieves, so I'll be dabbling in those over the next couple weeks. I was mostly seeing if this would be a good way to play Outer Worlds, and it seems to be. Everything is running well on my somewhat old laptop.

I actually didn't use FoD against Flame Nagas because I thought it would heal them. After meeting them the first time and seeing their low burn AR (wondering "huh, why do flame guys have low burn AR?") I tried to roast them with Combusting Wounds and such and that went horribly wrong. After that I just assumed that all burn damage would heal them.

Thehe - now I have to delete mine as well or I'll look like a total weirdo. 😄

Bad day... You are right. I shall delete my post.

edit: aaand we're cool!

Updates: 4. Dorudugan takes full damage from Dragon's Dowry (it seems his ability to heal 100% of the burn damage doesn't apply to lashes), thus no need to switch weapons 5. Against enemies with burn immunity (magma oozes/flame blights) and high level vessels (pierce immunes included) the Red Hand is the best choice 6. The only enemies that can't be killed/destroyed with Dragon's Dowry/Red Hand are the Bog Lurkers and the obelisks - Eccea's Arcane Blaster and/or Gouging Strike are the best options to deal with them 7. Hauani O Whe remains the only weakness so far - from all abilities/weapons able to destroy the target on kill, the only one able to prevent the split 100% of the time seems to be Disintegration.

good episode. thank you aron eisenberg. "have not actually watched DS9 since it went off the air." w/o more than a moment to reflect 'pon specific episodes, in the pale moonlight and the visitor is getting relative frequent rewatches from us. am knowing ds9 were less in line with the roddenberry ideal than were previous series, but am thinking that were a strength as 'posed to a weakness. weren't fundamental superior for ds9 to be a bit more cynical 'bout the future, but am thinking the possibility for tonal difference made the franchise as a whole stronger. every star trek series, no matter how weak or strong, had at least a few fantastic episodes and Gromnir is more likely to pick individual gems than to try and marathon entire series. HA! Good Fun!

I've already started my second viewing of the year. I just got some visiting family members on the path of the Prophets and their emissary, the Sisko.

great to see Wil find some healing ... he and I are within months in age and so saw myself as Wes aboard the bridge ... would love to do the same; have not actually watched DS9 since it went off the air ...

http://wilwheaton.net/2019/09/so-im-finally-watching-deep-space-nine-for-the-first-time/

I somehow doubt that he's making a non-violent, classless historical RPG with turn-based mode.

Yes and no. I'd be all for the graphical updates, but as there are spells (possibly also monsters?) that do not reappear in Deadfire, they'd have to redo them specifically for the port—quite a bit of work for a re-release, so I'm not holding my breath. I would not be as enthusiastic about mechanical changes. The first game was balanced around no multiclassing (which by the way would render the multiclass talents utterly redundant), no subclasses, per-rest spells, six skills, and DR mechanics. Changing all that to Deadfire's rules would require extensive, painstaking rebalancing of every in-game area and encounter, which I doubt would happen (much like it didn't happen in BG:EE; I can excuse Tutu/BGT as they were developed for free by modders who contributed their free time to the project.)

i would be happy with PoE1 rereleased with the deadfire engine

Sony and Marvel strike new deal to keep Spider-Man in the MCU

Or Pillars of Empire, the New Microbsidian game. I would pick the Rautai, they are a powerful Gunpowder Civ. Have you ever dream of wololoing with a Cipher Rush ?

Ha - I get lost in town if you turn me around two times with closed eyes. All praise the GPS I say. I studied German language and computer science. I like languages and programming. I'm good at algebra but suck at arithmetik. I like metaphors and also understand the befenits of hyperbole to emphasize a point. People are mixed bags. It's not all logic and rational vs. empathic and feelings. And besides all that: It's still important that if you write down stuff (where people can't hear your tone and see your mimics and gestures) you have to be accurate. Or use emojis... You can't just plant a hyberbolic statement as if it's a known fact and then expect everybody who reads that to get where you are coming from (or want to go with it). Say something like "Wizards are useless" (a statement I read very often when PoE came out - which is utter bolloks) and players in spe read that and think "oh well, them I'll try something else". This is misleading and bad communication. You can't just write like you talk. It can already be enough to write "To me, wizards are useless". This is something diffrent. It shows that it's your perspective and there may be other people who think differently. I think this is especially important in any place where people are searching for advice. God I hate it (hyperbole) when new players come in, say something like "I want to play a damage dealer and thought about two handed fighter" and the first answer they get is "lol nah mate use rogue cause fighters suck at dps rogues rule at dps". Man I could twist their necks for that (again, hyperbole ). Same as "Hi, I want to play a Wizard nuker - what should I do?" - "It doesn't matter, just pick anything because in Deadfire all chars are the same anyway". BAM - you unnecessarily disappointed and mislead a person.

Astronomers watch six galaxies suddenly fire up into quasars.

Oh its definitely a matter of taste. I do not like the way the system feels. And it's not that it's too complicated for me, it just doesn't captivate me and putting builds together doesn't excite me the way it does in D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder. Having a history with the latter is probably a factor, but it's not the deciding factor. And I should probably have been clearer re. my "packing a punch" comment -- I understand and agree that certain builds are very powerful, but I wasn't necessarily talking about builds, specifically, I was talking about how the combat feels on-screen. Animation plays into this, the way spells and abilities behave plays into this, etc, etc. Same with the inspirations / afflictions system -- I understand it's not bad design, and yes, it's straightforward in the way it functions, indeed just like the attribute system (which I'm not a fan of either), but it's not fun to me. So yeah, convoluted was the wrong way to describe it, which makes me 2 for 2 on not explaining myself well but I guess that's what happens in rant-like posts. It's just frustrating. I really *want* to like Deadfire, but in the end I just don't. And if I ever beat it (and I'm close -- level 20, finished most of the base game content, finished Beast of Winter and I'm in Forgotten Sanctum now) it's because I really pushed myself to do so.

I've enjoyed both quite a bit. I haven't had much chance to play Deadfire or visit the forums since I started the game about a week ago, so I'm still only into the second area of the first real city, but I'm liking it a lot. More than the first one, to be honest. I enjoyed Kingmaker also, and I'm part of a rather large Pathfinder tabletop group. I like the background and... ethos? of the Pillars setting more, but I appreciate the familiarity of the Pathfinder setting. I really got a lot of fun out of the kingdom building of Kingmaker at first, but it got to be a hassle in the end. So much was tied into it, though, that it's hard to toggle it off, so I muddled through until I got irritated and stopped playing. I think I'd just finished taking over some bards kingdom a while before I stopped. I'm really digging the ship element of Deadfire much more than I expected. I haven't had hardly play time with it, but the little I have is intriguing.

Going back and forth between Fire Emblem Three Houses, Greedfall, Dragon's Dogma, and Star Wars the Old Republic. Right now mostly Greedfall. Like it pretty well. I do think its funny how much press the game, seemingly from people who aren't familiar with eurojank. I think a lot of people were disappointed when they found out what kind of game Greedfall is. Frustrating 'cause I tried to tell the people I knew what to expect but they thought they were buying an AAA title.

My try. Probably not the best one but this is just my first try on this

Hello all. I was testing and found a weird behavior with this modal (powder burns) that seams a bug. How I tested: I put my companions in different ranges of the target, in a row, in this way: Just for legibility: C1- companion 1 C2- companion 2 C3- companion 3 T- target companion S- a space Test 1: C1-S-C2-S-T-S-S-C3 C3 is closer to T than C1 Test 2: C1-S-C2-S-C3-S-T Expected behavior: That attack has an area damage around the target Found behavior: The area is recalculated over each creature damaged by the area, extending this area. Example: I attack the target, In Test 1: power burns hits companion 1, 2 and target but no companion 3 In Test 2: they are all damaged. Edit: Image

For @bugarup who enjoys the aesthetics of the game

The New Yorker - Trump says he has been treated very unfairly by the people who wrote the constitution