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Yesterday I attempted to climb something called Mount Umunhum on my road bike. There are a few good summits in my area that I've been meaning to hit, and this one is about 3500 ft. up. It was a beautiful ride, about 60 degrees and sunny, and I was feeling good on the long climbs. But about 3 miles to the top, heavy winds and rain picked up and I had to turn around. It was crazy how drastically the weather changed when I got near the peak. Anyways, still a great day on the bike, and I'll get it next time.

is an admitted catch-22 for us. am willing to accept a game with bioware-style tangential romances just so long as such fare is optional. simultaneous, am recognizing is no possible way to do romance better than has been done as long as such fare is kept optional and tangential. to task writers with creating an entire romance arc which may be completed through a relative small number o' insular and discrete dialogue encounters that do not substantial alter the critical path plot in any meaningful way is not gonna produce anything more profound than we has seen in multiple games. try and think o' a compelling romance from a book, movie or whatever, which coulda' been complete exorcised from the work w/o altering the plot. nevertheless, optional and tangential is what we demand. am conceding the manifest unfairness o' our demands and accept the wasted resources. am knowing romances is popular and such will be added to many games we choose to purchase and play. therefore, as long as romances kept optional and tangential, the fundamental irredeemability o' romances is acceptable to us. best crpg romance: ravel unrequited love for tno. core. not optional. ravel's romance is developed from ravel's perspective and player choice does not alter it. ravel love for tno is decided not the bioware-style minigame romance. skip ahead to 5:25 when Gromnir speaks o' the possibilities o' game romance, we talk o' ravel from ps:t. disappointed resignation: precise 'cause o' the effort which goes into realizing bioware-style romances, the chances o' the ravel approach being used simultaneous in a title is diminished. what a loss. HA! Good Fun!

Oh, now I get it. We are back to the old argument whether Super Mario is a RPG because you play the role of a plumber or a Sim because you perform the duties of a plumber.

Putting my hands down next to Mamoulian War's. Alpha Protocol has choices that matter, interesting characters, great dialogue. The only problem is Thorton's unreasonable dislike for SIE. The problem with this poll is that it has not been sanctioned with Steven Heck and is therefor lacking a proper code name. I move to name this poll Rubber Kangaroo.

The world is a beautiful place if you can just get out in it and away from the things that detract from it.

If I lived that far away from civilization and, more importantly, light pollution, I would 100% buy a telescope. The night sky is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT experience away from light pollution.

Spent 6 hours last night by the lake, small fire, lots of hotdogs, a couple of glasses of rum and just chilling, listening to a really quiet night, no car sounds, no birds, no wind just the light crackling from the fire. Got up when a helo flew over and disturbed the "moment" or I'd probably have sat there for hours more. I need to do that again. Thanks for the tip GD

Okami HD. The sword became an Easter Egg in Bayonetta. Unfortunately, it is unobtainable in Okami. The Spider Queen.

On a more analytical level: The Neverwinter Nights games were good D&D games. I enjoyed them very much (though Mask was a bugged mess for me). I found Mask of the Betrayer tried too hard to have unique NPCs and cater to the crowd that needs everything to be more strange and awesome than the next. The unique NPCs worked for Torment because of the setting. Since then they have become a staple though that, while in the case of Mask of the Betrayer well written, do tend to be crutches so the writers don't have to create interesting gimickless personalities. The problem with the Neverwinter games, just as the KOTOR II or Dungeon Siege III, and FONV is that while fun, well made games, they all are sequels to other studios' games. FONV more than any of those managed to set itself apart from the previous one (while ironically the NWN games probably differ the most in gameplay from the previous game), but it is just another story told in the same game. There are MODs that have been made to work with both FO3 and FONV, because when it comes down to it, FONV is a huge mod for FO3. Pillars of Eternity has significance already through being the epitome of nostalgia; the kickstarter that made silly amounts of money to resurrect a genre. It could be argued that PoE has impacted the gaming world more than any other Obsidian title. Alpha Protocol tried to break the norm of RPG formulas. It has problems, and wasn't the commercial success it could have been. But it does a lot of things very right in ways that few other rpgs do. It was the boldest project Obsidian did. Outer Worlds was a fun game and I'll always respect that it dared to have boring companions instead of yet another exiled quarter pixie one eighth frost giant vampire heir to the throne of the cloud kingdom. That said, the game just exists and didn't offer the gaming world anything new.

I saw this elsewhere as the Coronials.

Hands down Alpha Protocol, because of it's uniqueness, c&c, and replayability.

I guess South Korea and Taiwan learned from SARS, very impressed with the way they handled it. Went to the grocery today, no pasta, rice, cold cuts on the shelves - first time I've experienced something like that, heh. Not quite sure it is all that necessary but I guess school's closing was the catalyst for some people to realize things got real. Did eventually find basmati rice, $9 for 2 lbs, sheesh. And had to check 4 places for it - funnily enough lots of jasmine, white and parboiled rice available. I guess all the panicking people have tastes that supercede desperation 😛

We're going into lockdown. All venues and businesses except pharmacies and groceries stores must close. The gov't has decreed a state of alarm which restricts personal freedoms such as free movement and gives it power to requisition goods, assume direct control of all security forces and deploy the army as it sees fit. This will undoubtedly work well, as it has in Italy, without any risk of mass layoffs. No sirree. Meanwhile in South Korea, smart application of tech, widespread and efficient testing and a well-organized bureaucracy seem to have managed to defeat the epidemic without having to resort to CCP methods. But hey, both left and right agree on this, so we'll call it high statesmanship instead of simply recognizing that both sides are equally blithely incompetent and stupid, and when push comes to shove, they both give strictly zero ****s about the open society.

"Volo how do define " over reaction " when people die? Is it really an over reaction when its your grandparents who get very sick? : You do realize people die from the 'common cold' right? This doesn't mean we ignore advice from doctors. Quaratine yourself if you need to (traceled over seas /have symptoms) but don't go the store and my a trunk full of toilet paper. Don't go spewing racist nonsense over it. At my work, we've given a list of things to do thing (like more cleaning) which makes logical sense and told to absolutely stay home if we aren't feeling well but none of this doomsday scenario. And, I agree. It should be takens eriously because the people it is most dangerous to are those who are already more fragile (elders, little children, already sick people, et al). Be safe. Wash your hands (wich you should always do anyways). But, don't act like it is Armageddon and its the end of times.

Hello everyone! We have a new post up on the Grounded website! In it you will find a link to the PAX East panel with Grounded's Game Director, Adam Brennecke, Senior Programmer, Roby Atadero, and Lead Environment Artist, Sean Dunny, along with our special guest moderator, Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's 'Major Nelson'. We also shared the link to join the Xbox Insider Program so you can sign up before we start our Insider Flight in the upcoming months. You will also find the link to our Steam Page so you can wishlist Grounded today! Review all of this and more on our new post!

not totally related to video games but its Warhammer so what the heck (I must say I got if best some faint awareness that WH even exists few years back and it grow on me quickly even if someone might say its overly edgy sometimes)

I think there is something in that. Not the main reason but probably had some contribution. It took me years to get through the first game. Back when I played bg1 and 2 I had time to play games 4 or 5 hours a day.. now I'm lucky to get 45 mins in am evening.

one thing the rogue suffers from is the general expensiveness of all their abilities, moreso than any other martial class methinks (at least a corpse eater can regenerate resources!). if you're going to go for invisibility, i would go so far as to say even 1-guile abilities--however uncommon--should mostly be ignored. in fact, the only non-invis rogue ability that i can think of that makes sense with an assassin+invisibility approach is pernicious cloud, simply because +25 acc/+pen/+crit dmg on that huge of an aoe is a big effect. but even a single-class assassin can dump points into arcana or alchemy and get some big scroll or poison hits. (explosives don't work because they interact very poorly with assassinate; they are multi-part attacks so the first, minor, part of a bomb explosion might get the assassinate bonus, but not the actual part you care about) if it was actually possible to re-sneak in combat (and smoke veil/shadowing beyond/enduring shadows were just easier/better ways to do that), a naive assassin build would be better, but because we can't the assassin definitely needs a bit of careful planning to get the most out of it. it might even be very close to a trap subclass on higher difficulties due to how lame it is just to assassinate+backstab a single enemy with, say, a dagger compared to the subclass's always-on downside.

Kotor 2 made me look at star wars in a completely new way. No star wars media since has been anywhere near as interesting. I like neverwinter nights 2 as a forgotten realms game but getting the camera todo what I want it to is an exercise in futility.

Bad decision. Scarcity of TP is going to keep driving value up. They could probably get a few cases in exchange for all that TP in a few days. Can't expect people to make rational decisions in the face of panic beer, news at 11.

Done before but still funny

Interesting question. I would lean towards their own IP's for this. The Outer Worlds is my favorite game world they have created. AP is great, but flawed and not really fleshed out as much. PoE just isn't my setting.

I'd call the most culturally significant Tyranny or PoE, because these IPs were developed as video games first and belong to Obsidian (PoE, at least; not sure about Tyranny). Voted for Deadfire, because it features the qualities I associate with RPGs in general and Obsidian cRPGs in particular - player's agency, interactivity, engaging story and combat. Also tool-tips.

solution: have cnn, washington post and nyt do full length articles confirming existence aliens complete with interviews from air force generals and overnight 2/3 o' the tinfoil hat brigade who current believe a government coverup o' alien contact will be arguing with us 'bout media conspiracies and the impossibility o' alien contact. 'cause legitimacy ruins the conspiracy? is how it worked with coronavirus after all. have early washington post and bloomberg articles warning americans o' coronavirus issues being undersold by china and 'cause the schizotypy, undereducated losers distrust the media to a pathological degree, the loons ignore dangers. if coronavirus warnings had remained blog fodder, the k00ks mighta taken more serious? https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/editorial/opinion--trump-fans-believe-him-over-the-media-on-coronavirus-this-is-dangerous/2020/03/10/950cac91-39ad-458c-a9c2-a44da0bbcb82_video.html on a positive note, am needing give ted cruz a rare positive acknowledgement as he has recent recognized the administration's failures insofar as implementing rational and reasonable coronavirus testing. 'course his acknowledgement came while he were needing maintain self-quarantine, so would look kinda obtuse if he didn't, but is curious how he is an exception as 'posed to rule. HA! Good Fun!

I'm doing a casual playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas. It's one of the games that I greatly respect and feel a compulsion to refresh once in a while, so here I am. I'm still early into the DLCs, but suddenly, somehow, it's 2014 all over again. So many years have passed, and yet I'm again at a loss about I mean, in the end, it's just a small change in the ending slides, but I swear to God that this is the one choice in the entire game that always stumps me.

I also agree that @claudius (from ancient Rome?) makes a valid point. It appears overwhelmingly likely that the main audience for PoE was always that group of players who sort of grew up on Baldur's Gate (or in many cases -- like mine -- even older games than that, titles such as Ultima, Bard's Tale, Phantasie and so on). Thus, it does appear reasonable to suppose that while the enthusiasm was there, it ultimately turned out that although they bought PoE, out of enthusiasm and nostalgia, they found that they had no time to play it and therefore they didn't hang around for Deadfire. I hadn't thought of this before, but it's a very good point.

I like this guide: It's for POTD but it works on hard. It uses custom characters but you can adapt many of the characters in game to the builds. Just make sure autolevel is disabled so you can configure companions manually. The stat spreads will be slightly off, but so what. Your main can be anything, and just pick the other characters to complement him. I recommend a priest in any party. I used the same guide with the following changes: 1. My MC was a ranged wizard with blast talents, not a sword shield tank (see Zeblastian hurstacker build). 2. I used different races 3. I built my priest with sneak attack abilities and the capacity to go ranged if needed (see the Schmemer's needle build). 4, I modified the talents and spell selection slightly. Note that it doesn't have rogue or fighter, but that's up to you.

In my inventory and off cooldown. 👍

Excellent.

That is a totally viable party composition. But to be honest every party composition works because the classes are well balanced. If I would have to make a list of "most potential power" of classes in a party I would maybe go like (1. = best ) : Priest Wizard Druid Chanter Cipher Monk Barbarian Paladin Ranger Fighter Rogue Although that highly depends on personal opinion and experience, special build, party composition, item setup etc. - and the classes are quite close in terms of power in general. PoE tends to be (or at least feels) more difficult for Wizard, Priest, Druid, Chanter and Barbarian in the beginning - while they tend to be pretty great later on (but high learining curve). Monk, Paladin and Cipher always work well and Ranger, Fighter and Rogue start great as well but tend to drop off later in the game. This is my personal judgement for Path of the Damed though where there are more enemies. And the more enemies the more valuable AoE becomes and the less impactful single target damage (see Rogue) becomes. On lower difficulties Ranger, Rogue and Fighter don't have that dropoff - or at least you don't really feel it. There are ways to overcome this but you need more knowledge about the game mechanics for that. Official companions in order of appearence (not fix though - but how most people pick them up) are: Wizard (Aloth, +++) Fighter (Edér, +++ ) Priest (Durance, ++) Chanter (Kana, ++) Ranger (Sagani, +) Paladin (Pallegina, +) Cipher (Grieving Mother, -) Druid (Hiravias, +++) Barbarian (Expansion, Maneha, +) Monk (Expansion, Zahua, +++) Rogue (Expansion, Devil of Caroc, ++) The +/- indicate my personal preference (of the character and their banter/quests and fun, not his/her power). Most of times you can rush to a place and pick up your favorite companion though. The order is not fixed. You just have to know where to go and get them. The expansion characters are an exception because you can't just rush there. I know no up-to-date guide (never used one). You can ask me anything though.

In PoE, the rogue class isn't needed, because the rogue role is performed by the "Mechanics" skill, which everyone can learn (a wizard and a cipher are both good for this, as they start with a bonus to mechanics. You'll also run into a wizard companion quite early). There's basically one companion for each class available when it comes to story companions, but you'll have to wait a while for some of them, especially the barbarian, rogue and monk. With the classes you like, you can use a fighter instead of the paladin (until you get a paladin, which takes a while) as the frontliner, a chanter as a secondary frontliner (relatively early), the cipher (takes a while, but still early if you know where to look) either as ranged or melee damage dealer, the priest, wizard and druid as casters (the druid will also double as a melee damage dealer with his shapeshifting ability). This party will certainly be powerful enough to finish the game. You don't get enough companions to fill up your party right away, so it's a decent idea to recruit about two created tavern companions in the early game if you like playing with a full party (this will also make the early game much easier - the early game on PotD, especially two specific regions, is among the more difficult parts of the game). You can replace these guys later on and use them for adventures (which is something to do for NPCs you don't have space for in your party).

So, you get to play as some Olympian Gods and Goddesses. I seem to recall Athena's garb providing much more coverage in most depictions of her, not that I'm complaining: As an aside, Athena clearly doesn't skip leg day. She's got some good definition in her quads and calves. More importantly, I FINALLY got my main man:

I would if I hadn't given it away already because as Melk said, I just want someone to play them. Folks here get first priority but otherwise it's open to anyone who intends to play it soon.

Andrew Yang: Coronavirus outbreak proves we need basic income. I couldnt agree more.

Was just kidding. I thought his criticisms weren't hating, and neither were you.

Finally finished The Witcher 3's main campaign today. Was alright, though I far preferred Hearts of Stone which I did halfway through this playthrough as well. It's enjoyable enough but from a gameplay perspective it's a bit of a death by a thousand cuts and from a narrative standpoint it's also well-written and enjoyable enough but terribly padded out and overall rather insubstantial, like a fantasy RPG Endgame of sorts. I looked the game up on Glitchwave and this review by vodsel felt pretty accurate at the end of the day: With this in mind though, Blood & Wine already starts with a Seven Samurai reference of sorts so I'm definitely digging it for the short while I've played it.

That's a little shortsighted. First of all people should worry that even if thet will not die they can infect someone who could die. Friends, family etc. A common cold is not very lethal and I still avoid spreading it if I catch one even if it's not "big deal". Second of all if allowed to spread freely because not a big deal if you are not old then you eventually will be old at some point in time. And since you can catch it more than once, as being sick once doesn't give you immunity like in some other viruses, that's a concern.

After two weeks break, I was able to again sit in front of my computer and play a game \o/ So back to the Pillars of Eternity. Because I have made silly choice to upscale White March 2, I went back to the vanilla part and entered Twin Elms. Lot of talking and some new quests taken. Hopefully today I can get few more hours as well 🙂

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.

Pathfinder Kingmaker still, and no real feeling of slowing down at all. Definitely a worthy successor to the Baldur's Gates in terms of boss fights, you either get your party wiped or wipe the floor with them. Fought some dudette that spammed destruction spells and I'm sure the AI scripting told her to target the PC preferentially just because a failed saving throw instantly meant she 'won' the fight via game over. So you hide the main character and she gets chunked in about twenty seconds after a couple of lucky criticals instead...

I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 but not BG3.