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I assume that you must... ... ... ...let it go? I like my low-hanging fruits, go away

I think the problem with degrees being a waste of money is that education, much like healthcare, has completely and utterly become a business in the US. Sadly, the fad seems to be catching on this side of the pond as well. It's myopic to try to monetize and extract profits from everything, including that which should be an investment in its own future by society as a whole. Another casualty of the free markets I suppose, because if something -let's say an educated population- can't be assigned a dollar value, it's apparently not worth preserving. I hope all these die hard free market believers are doing great in their math degrees, because it won't be long before that's about the only one that will guarantee a decent paycheck.

As to threads title, I have been a bit provocative with some of the opinion, even if they are not untrue. I don't love VtM as much as other people, though big part of it is the setting. Vampire's a not my thing, and first time I played it I bounced of it pretty hard because of it. Beside that, I think it's a pretty great RPG. What I am not thrilled about, is that a lot of reactivity and replayibility comes from picking various vampire clans - while impressive how the game accomodates even more unusual vampires, it does feel to me like you pick an experience at the start of the game, rather then crafting your character as you go, and having the world react to me. There just some types of reactivity which I admire, but don't find engaging. This is one, another example are two 2nd chapters in Witcher2. It's defenitely good, just didn't like it, like Fallout1&2 or Arcanum. A lot of it is personal taste.

I'd like to weigh in and say that I dropped D:OS2 right after the boat. The writing was unbearable. Oh, and that narrator...

I planted two acres yesterday. A mixed bag of veggies plus a patch where I'm going to resume my quest to grow a perfect tomato. I actually cut four acres but I think I'm getting too old to handle that much by myself. Very sore today.

I have a love hate relationship with the World of Darkness setting. I don't really want to play games set in (roughly) the real world, however here is something appealing about the sheer amount of detail available as a result. There's also something appealing about being able to set it in the town/city you live in (fingers crossed you don't live in somewhere like Milton Keynes however), visiting places you and your friends are familiar with, though with fabricated secrets added on. But ultimately, it's not really my kind of setting. I quite like Ars Magica's Mythic Europe for a similar reason, and its a setting I find my interesting, though obviously the detail is less in a game set in (roughly) twelfth century Europe.

Fifth Update: Iacchus, the Pale Elf Wizard - Randomly Generated Party Challenge, PotD Magran's Fork went much better than the Compass. I started by moving arond the edges of the map, taking down a single troll and eventually running into Ludrana and her goldpact paladins. Raiden engaged the first paladin while I had Alkyone and Surya run towards Ludrana in order to quickly take down the squishy wizard. The paladin broke engagement, Raiden followed him in order to at least flank him, and Iacchus, the one being targeted, activated his arcane veil. Aurora tried to weaken the paladin with a divine mark, though Iacchus himself was much more effective by simply smashing him to bits with the Parasitic Staff, and Ludrana herself stood little chance: A quick victory was achieved, and the next significant battle was against a huge pack of wolves to the north. After the customary start via inspiring radiance, I decided to prevent my frontline from being overwhelmed by using Numitor's Bewildering Spectacle for the first time - with much success: The wolves were mostly busy with each other, so I was able to take down a few of them right away. After the confusion effect ended, the wizards followed up with slicken and chill fog, and in the end, we ended up with zero knockouts, though Alkyone came close: Next up: The big boar battle near the centre. These guys can be tough, and so I started my wizards off with Eldritch Aim to prepare for a longer battle. Also, we prepared with foodbuffs: Surya, who was attempting to cast charm beasts on a number of my foes, got swarmed, but was able to finish his spell: Sadly, he wasn't fast enough to use his second wind before getting knocked out. I reinforced the party with armor of faith while most of the boars were blinded or knocked prone through wizard spells (two of them also being affected by combusting wounds): Numitor summoned the Parasitic Staff, which greatly improved our damage output - aided by an Iconic Projection, the party started to take down the otherwise relatively tough enemies: Victory: Only one knockout in Magran's Fork - a clear improvement compared to earlier efforts

I wonder how many here remembers Fisto?

It's just the worst. I'm sure it's fine, but it gets all the attention in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. I graduated from a nearby state school. Some would probably call it envy, but we did beat them in football 3 out of the 4 years I was there. Plus my cousin went there and he is insufferable.

You can also try an Omega 3 supplement like fish oil or flax seed oil in his food. It's great for clearing up skin problems

Sounds a bit like Deadfire's ship combat to me. EDIT: An optional feature one could sink a lot of money into, and not be any fun in the end.

Some degrees ARE a waste of money. If there is not demand doe the skills they require. A Master in Art History might land you a job running a gallery or as an editor of an art magazine. But there is not an abundance of those opportunities. Before picking a major a kid really ought to investigate what career fields that education might apply to. And what the potential earnings are. Not that career decisions should be made entirely on money. Take Hurlshot for example. It takes a lot of education and drive to do the job he does. And despite how important the job is I think he knew going into it he will never get rich doing it. So what drives him must be passion and that is worthy of respect. Pursuing passion is never the wrong thing to do but it should also be a decision made knowing what your career prospects are. A college degree is like any other widget you can buy. It has an absolute and objective value. You should never pay more for a widget than what it's worth. The value of the widget might be increased if it's worth something to YOU for your plans and your life. Notre Dame offers an undergrad program in Theology. It costs $50k per year to attend Notre Dame not counting room and board. A graduate with a 4 year degree in Theology will be $200K in debt and the salary of a protestant minister is around $30k. It would be a terrible decision from an objective business sense but if being a pastor is your passion in might still be worth the cost to you.

Posting this here since we often discuss education in this thread:

Such as? Honest question. What has happened is that we didn’t get another RPG, since then, beside crowdfunded projects and recently Outer Words, which was uninspiringly fine. . Bethesda went on to undermine whatever good was in their games with F4&76 (not that I ever cared for their games). I don’t know what Bioware has been doing. There was Witcher3 which was great but barely an RPG - what’s more RPG mechanics were what was dragging the game down. Without doubt, Divinities were the most exciting and innovative thing to happen to RPG, succesfully making a Coop oriented RPG.

I don't remember where I saw it, Something Awful forums I think, opinion on DOSes -- "it's like every character is Minsc". So true.

Elisia has really nice convo with a bard.

That's Larian. Fun games if you can stop yourself from reading or hearing any of the writing. OK, Dragon Commander was also pretty crap as RTS goes.

Neo is back! (to work)

At least he knows what he's doing. Bangs down over mullet back.

There is certainly an implication when you refer to something as "utter rubbish, quite horrendously poor" that people who enjoy said thing have poor taste. Somebody is clearly enjoying James Patterson's work. I'll be honest, all of your examples of bad products that are commercially successful are simply your opinion. It isn't based on any facts or evidence. It is certainly true that good products don't always sell. I have no problem with that part of your argument. But again, I believe your argument breaks down when you try and point to poor quality commercial successes. It is incredibly rare for a bad product to sell well. You keep pointing out stuff that clearly found an audience, and they are all technically sound products. Star Wars, D:OS 2, James Patterson, etc. It's your opinion that they are rubbish. Don't conflate that to mean something more than it is.

Dealer spotted....

Well after the lame MW5, I'm sure they thought the franchise needs a short break. Can't say I wouldn't understand that.

@Hurlshot: My original point, made to @bringingyouthefuture, was that quality and success exist on two different continuums. You cannot claim that success equals quality or that lack of it equals poor quality. That original point still stands. Ulysses, by James Joyce, is rather universally heralded as a literary masterpiece (and quite rightly so) but it's never been a commercial success, not even close. Then you have authors like James Patterson whose stories can be illogical to the point of absurdity, but look at his sales. Deadfire would probably deserve at least twice the sales it got, but that's the way it goes, it's not rare not to get what you deserve. Again, please note that it's you who's talking about "lesser people". There is no such implication in what I wrote. The quality of products and the people consuming or not consuming said products are two different things altogether.

Just out of curiosity: what would be some of those "necessary boxes" it ticks in order to qualify as a quality product? I'm genuinely interested to see your take on this. The graphics are good, I'm pretty sure we'd agree on that, but in terms of storytelling, immersion, music, dialogue options and general creativity (this last one is a fairly nebulous concept, I'm happy to accept), I don't think there was much on offer. Turn-based combat is a matter of taste, of course, and I personally found it totally uninteresting, but I'm not going to call the game poor on that basis alone. I'm perfectly prepared to appreciate games that I don't personally enjoy (like IWD2, for instance), and were I to write a review, I'd give them high marks, but that doesn't apply for D:OS2. No, it is not extremely rare for a poor product to find an audience and sell well. Consider, just for an example, the Star Wars prequels, that second trilogy that came out in in 1999-2002. All three movies are utter rubbish, quite horrendously poor, yet they were massive successes. And we could go on and on with this. And please do not misconstrue what I write. Of course VHS didn't become dominant *because* it was poor. That would an absurd claim, and I never said that.

I get where you are going with this, but I think it breaks down when you try and judge quality on any grounds other than basic functionality. Both VHS and Betamax were quality products. One may be better than the other, but VHS didn't become the dominant product because it was a poor product. D:OS2 is a quality product. It checks all the necessary boxes in order to be deemed as such. It may not be as good as another quality product, but it clearly found an audience and generated sales for a reason. It is extremely rare for a poor product to find an audience and sell well.

“Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.” -Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens"

"Anybody that needs a test gets a test; they're there, they have the tests, and the tests are beautiful," Trump told reporters during the visit, touting the administration's response as more than 270 cases of the virus were confirmed across more than two dozen states as of Friday. "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" he added later. "This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." "The tests are beautiful" -Trump on Coronavirus

Forgot to mention regarding cipher, unfortunately I found them a bit underwhelming on TB. Love ciphers with RTwP but to me their fast(er) cast abilities are under-powered when translated to the action economy of TB. I do wish their buffs were free actions but since most are also debuffs I can see why they were not made so. With that in mind, I do think soul blade multi is a good way to go. Works great with Whispers of the Endless paths as you can apply soul annihilation in an aoe and hack through mobs that much faster. If you are considering playing with the community patch, you could go Mindstalker(soul blade/trickster) and take advantage of extra focus gen from riposte combined with mirror image/LDI. This only really works well with community patch thou since misses are far less frequent and CP changes riposte to trigger 25% on miss OR graze. Oh and regarding Troubadour, haven't played with on TB too much but don't think it's a terrible choice depending on how you play it. iirc, brisk recitation is a dead end as you still only chant one phrase per turn but if you don't use it and take advantage of the extra linger I believe you can hold 3 chants simultaneously in TB. Someone please correct me if I am wrong on how brisk recitation works in TB.

I've been playing TB and wholeheartedly agree that copious amounts AOE to quickly dispatch mobs is key to enjoying it. Fights can feel like they drag on forever without. Here are a few tips that I've picked up from the forums here: Wizard with absolute maxed out Int(Infuse with Vital Essence great here) and Pull of Eora to cover as big an area for as long as possible. Makes it super easy to get most enemies clumped together for nuking. I usually give my tank Upright Captains Belt for immunity to the pull effect to make it easy to keep them positioned just outside the friendly fire AOE zone. In my latest run I have Tekehu as SC druid and have found him indispensable. I have him wearing Deltros cage (+2 electricity PL) and armed with Hand Mortar(upgraded with blinding smoke) + Fire in the hole. As I learned from Boeroer, those hand mortars are a fantastic combined with Avenging Storm. as both the aoe (which is foe only) + blinding smoke trigger bolts from avenging storm this along with his unique foe only aoe spells makes him great for dealing with mobs. You can also get avenging storm from the helm heaven's cacophony(1 per rest) and scrolls(need 13 arcana). Whispers of the Endless Paths(with high Int) is also great for mobs. I have a SC Monk that uses it to great effect. Not hard to get Int north of 30 with DoMP/food/gear which makes the AOE very sizable. Stunning surge refunds the Mortification on crit, and with such a large aoe and with mobs bunched together very easy to get that refund. Skyward kick is a blast as it hits everyone in the aoe cone. Once you get it, Whispers of the Wind offers several ways to obliterate mobs esp when combined with resonant touch. For example the aoe of whispers of the endless paths will get applied for each jump giving you many stacks of resonant touch and since it is a melee weapon it can trigger heartbeat drumming and swift flurry. For fun, you can also use with the hand mortars and avenging storm as described above(thank you Boeroer). Careful, it may melt your video card along with those mobs. This may feel like cheese, but you can get infinite re-use out of Necklaces of Fireball once you get two of them. If you stack two partially used necklaces they refill back to 8 uses. Give 1 or two to non-spell casters to help clean up mobs as needed. Check the wiki, easy to get two of them early on (one from the unique item vendor in Port Maje with the particular Berath's blessing ). Again, thanks Boeroer! I 've found Bloodmage subclass especially fantastic in TB as blood sacrifice (along with many buffs) are free actions. You can hit blood sacrifice multiple times during a single turn if needed to get whatever particular spell level you need. I don't pump might(modifies blood sacrifice) and Voidward ring helps here. Just make sure you have adequate healing queued up(either as a multi or from companions). I usually multi as a Paladin and take Exulted Endurance and the upgrade Greater Lay on Hands. Given the action economy of TB, I find the robust inspiration worth the extra zeal(and having high Int to extend duration of robust helps make up for the lower might). Of course, SC bloodmage is perfectly fine but to get most out of BM make sure you are proactive with the healing so you can hit BS as much as needed making it easy to get those aoe spells back each round.

I have a biased opinion perhaps. I used to playtest for Amplitude. Endless Legend is their only game I dislike Endless Legend has more interesting, races, and playing each of them differs from playing the other races. It has a narrative victory condition on top of the usual victory conditions, where you finish your faction quest line. My problem with the game is that it is extremely slow to get going. A friend among the people who playtested it extensively told me the game does not really start until after turn 100. Age of Wonders 3 diverged from previous Age of Wonders games by giving you two choices during commander creation: race and class. Your race dictates your starting city and race relations, though later you can, as always, absorb any race's cities into your empire and train units of those races. It also affects some resistances and possibly weaknesses for your commander. Your class is more important, as it will lock in your class specific units and spells. These class units can then be of any race you have a city (with the required buildings) of. So if you are a Warlord, in a goblin city you can train a goblin phalanx, in an orc city an orc phalanx.You also choose some specializations, such as fire mastery, for extra research (spells etc). Different classes do play differently (especially the mage and druid, who use a lot of summoned units), while race is mostly a flavour choice. The greatest problem here is that the game allows for tier 3 unit stacks of doom - spam your best unit and fill your armies with it. Once you raced to that, there is no point recruiting anything else. Age of Wonders Planetfall is in a way Age of Wonders 3 in a sci fi setting. It does a lot different though. They fixed a number of things in tactical combat that hadn't worked out in 3. They also changed the way cities grow. The maps are split into many sectors, and as cities grow, they take over sectors (max size 5). Planning your cities becomes a bit more involved, at the same time you loose the freedom you had when you were choosing the exact spot for your city. Planetfall adds garrisons to your cities for the first time in the series, so you don't have to keep defensive armies everywhere. The tech tree has been split and brought in line with other 4X games. It was extremely boring due to being bloated with loads of techs that just slowed down research progress without being interesting (your food production increases by 1... yay...). They have started addressing such issues with updates. Race choice is a bit more important, as it affects your initial tech tree (though you can unlock tech trees of other races that join your empire). While each class comes with it's own secret project - all secret projects requiring you to build the specific class building 3 times and then lasting for 10 turns... On low difficulties the AI in Planetfall is not aggressive at all, so the game can become boring. Melkathi is a forum regular and big time fan of the Age of Wonders series as well as Endless Space and Dungeon of the Endless. According to steam he has 133 hours in Age of Wonders Planetfall, 273 hours in Age of Wonders 3, but only just over 20 hours in Endless Legend. When not posting Mordheim screenshots, he is known to sometimes post relevant replies.

He-heh. Without it Arena fights can be pain in the ass. +30 Deflection (even it decreases on hit) can't be useless. Also, you can pick Quarterstaff profficiency modal which gives +20 Deflection against Melee attacks, but +50% Recovery only for Quarterstaff attacks - so you have +20 melee deflection and no penalty for spells recovery (don't stacks with Mirrored Image, but don't decreases on hit).

It's not cartoony enough and new gen suffers from extreme case of ADD and short attention span so they don't like reading nor anything that resembles a challenge in the slightiest way. THE END.

A guy walks into Barnes and Noble to buy a book about turtles. After a little walking around with no luck, he decides to ask the girl behind the desk if they have any. "Hardback?" she asks. He doesn't hesitate: "Yeah," he says. "And they bury their eggs in the sand."

I always do backstories "backwards": I'll come up with a mechanically interesting/fun concept and when it works I'll figure out a backstory that justifies the build choices I'll make. Example: I will build a SC Berserker focused on Vengeful Defeat, Effigy's Husk, Barbaric Retaliation and (cloned) Ring of Reset and then think about a backstory about a manic guy with a death wish who put on a cursed ring he got from his former wife who now is a Banshee so he can't stay dead but has to rise again and again. Like masochistic Romeo and sadistic Juliet - but without dagger, poison or family feuds...

I'm getting used to staying up until 0700. I had to take the noc shift because of classes. I have advanced nursing practice and advanced pharmacology this semester. With God as my judge, it's not a pecking order thing. Being a specialized nurse with decent overtime might even make more money than a nurse practitioner. It's not that I get to wear a white coat. It's that I'm old. Old enough that I didn't want to go to med school at the time. Old enough that I don't want the physical demands of being a nurse for the next twenty years. Even that's not the case, though. I want as much freedom to help my patients as much as possible without having to answer to someone else. If California goes the same way as about half of the states, I'll be the primary provider and I'll be my own man. I might be a bit of a jackass around here, which I freely admit, but I'm *good* with patients. They respond to me. they trust me. In the past, if I'd posted this late, it would undoubtedly be the result of overindulgence. Now, it's trying to stay awake. Gives me the chance to catch up on random internet jawbonin' about political events. @Guard Dog Keep up the faith, man. I catch up on your posts when I'm here infrequently and feel like we're friends, even if you don't know who I am. Take that as an insult or a compliment as you wish, but I believe you're a decent guy trying to make sense of what I am convinced is a chaotic and capricious world.

The Forgotten Realms should be torched tbh. Ravenloft, Starjammer, or Darksun would make objectively better settings.

In case people are wondering why nobody is posting screenshots, people have independently decided to boycott the thread, to protest Amentep locking threads "for length" always just after I post in them. Obviously a conspiracy to prevent people from looking at my posts. Now I am not saying I support this boycott or that I believe these conspiracy theories to be true, but I am amazed and touched by how people have started this boycott for me. *sniff* Thanks guys and gals. I appreciate it, but for forum peace, start posting again.

By the way, if you know mathematics and are aware of probabilities, you can also ascertain the following: A game that has been around for a substantial amount of time and has been a well-known favorite for all of that time [note: BG2 fulfills these criteria] is likely to be better than a new game that's just coming out. Simply according to the laws of probability. Likewise, a book that has constantly been in print for 170 years (like David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) is overwhelmingly likely to be a lot better than a book chosen at random from those published this year -- and the odds are in its favour for it being better than ALL books published this year. Again, simply according to the laws of probability. Since we are talking about probabilities, we can only make predictions. But the fact is that it realistically isn't easy to beat something that's genuinely been around for quite some time and remains a favourite among consumers.

Troika's ToEE has better combat than any IE game.

Eh, being able to stop time and mind control people who are one offhand comment from leaving the party isn't any more believable to me than everybody pausing (except for reactions) while a skinny nerd waves his hands around to hit them with a ball of fire. I prefer turn-based because I prefer slower paced combat and dislike the micro in late game rtwp games that inevitably gets ****ed up by any ai.

I'm not going to get into what "feels" more "realistic". To me, both feel equally contrived. And if melees don't need much micro, then that means their gameplay potential is wasted because you're just pointing them in a general direction and letting them autoattack. Which to me, "feels" "boring".

The flying mini robot thingy you can get for Parvati’s room is way too loud. It’s just as loud as the normal sized flying robots, so I feel like the noise could be scaled down a little to match it. Not really the biggest problem in the world, but I would take it up with Parvati if I could.

Full VO is unnecessary, and localisation -- if that means translations -- has been an absolute disaster, the translations are really poor. So saving money on those two things would be an excellent idea. I sort of hang my head in shame when it comes to localisation: Obsidian simply have no idea what translation means, and they don't have the requisite knowledge to see how poor the translations are.

Heck yeah and I haven't been on crack for 14 years thank god! That first area of DOS2 on the island and getting off it was hella fun!! I mean it wasn't as nuanced as the Shadowrun story of course or as seamless as the Dragon Age stories, but still the quests and the setup, the exploration, everything was amazing, but its one of those things where you can say it sucks, but unfortunately the sales and popularity make a good case that it didn't ... so if they can get that synergy between action, quest, character, and combat going again the game is gonna be really good. As for you @Wormerine 40 hours is pretty slim ...