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Picked a hell of a time to go into nursing. Started at the hospital right before things got hot and heavy here in the US. I've had to reuse PPE gowns and don't even ask about the masks. I question the county government mandating everyone wear a cloth petri dish over their noses and mouths, but I suppose they figure people will wear them properly *enough* that the benefits will outweigh the risks. I don't trust that, but then again I see healthcare workers wearing masks wrong all the time. My favorite was seeing two CNAs wheeling an iso patient down the hall. One wore the mask properly. One had a mask cover most of his mouth, more or less, but not his nose. The patient didn't have on a mask at all. Yep. That's all kinds of wrong. Even an N95 mask, which are under lock and key at this point, isn't really more effective than nothing unless its worn properly. Anyhow, it's not too bad where I live. Not a huge number of Covid-19 cases. Maybe famous last words, but I've been living on borrowed time for years, so... :shrug: I am worried about my wife, though. I want to thank you also, Keyrock. Keep moving those goods around the country. We'd all be screwed otherwise. Hell, I appreciate the folks at the local restaurants where I can pick up food. My wife has been doing the cooking for the first time in our marriage, and the learning curve has been steep for her.

Yesterday: Driving a tractor-trailer. Today: Driving a tractor-trailer. Tomorrow: Driving a tractor-trailer. On Friday, however, I get home and get to join the rest of Murica in #QuarantineLife, which will consist of bike riding (weather permitting), vidya games, and day drinking.

I motion to rename Artificial Intelligence to Automated Hindsight

Today during my lunch break I rode up to the top of Mount Umunhum. The views were amazing, you could see all the way across the San Francisco Bay.

Some PS5 gamepad porn: PS5 gamepad is apparently made by Aperture Science.

Whoever wins the election in 2020, we will have a dementia addled buffon with a questionable history for president while the timers on catastrophe continue to count down.

Airstrike. Only way to be sure.

Setting up an old Win98 pc. Managed to get everything working and hooked up to the internet. Since my router is in another room and wasn't sure if a wireless usb adapter would work on this, I instead set up a spare wifi extender that I had and set it next to the pc. I then ran a network cable from the pc to the wifi extender, Ping is a touch high but I now have broadband on my old pc. lol. Also, using something called KernelEX to run Win 2000 / XP versions on Win 98 and it works quite well. I did find it funny transferring some old programs from another pc with a 64gb usb drive. I forgot it was NTFS and while the pc recognised the drive, I couldn't see the files. I facepalmed and said, FAT32! ugh! After reformatting the usb drive to FAT32 and transfered the files, I noticed my usb drive was bigger than my 40gb HDD. Really fun playing around with an old computer to see what it can run. The specs are quite reasonable for this pc and managed to get all the hardware to work. Fantastic playing this on a modern monitor. Plus I have a tonne of old games I can play.

Considering how much fun people had the last time she wore it, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a deliberate choice on her part... Ranker - Queen Elizabeth's photoshopped dress

Hello folks, I'm thinking and re-thinking which combinations of classes make sense, which can benefit from each other and synergies well. But when I think I'm done, I'm not done. I can't find the final solution. Maybe some of your input can help me solve this mess. I have some classes in mind for my party PotD all upscaled. My tank will be a SC Forbidden Fist. Now I want following classes in my team, in any combination that makes sense. I'm even open for other good synergising suggestions. Those classes are: Priest, Druid, Wizard, Pala, Ranger and Cipher. My actual go to town party would be: Ascendant Priest of Eothas/Lifegiver Bloodmage/Bleak Walker Stalker/Bloodmage I'm excited for your suggestions ! Greetings Dyxx

OK, so I met Llengrath, and I was able to get with her in peaceful terms Reward was new Skill with +1 to 3 attributes and Bog Dragon Scales

Looks pretty cool. Seems a bit more promising than what we saw last time, I feel.

Also A higher quality of the same gameplay demo.

It is finally here, after five thousand hours of work, 800 of which were spent on playing, reading and watching the Witcher franchise, here's Joseph Anderson's analysis, part 1: And yes, that 4 hour video is part one. Two more videos to follow.

it's missing the 3rd panel in which the man thinks "should i tell them about my master's degree in electrical engineering and how there were no jobs that were hiring so it was this on nothing?"

Thank you sir!

I'm just doing my job, you're right there on the front lines dealing with the ill. I'm the one who should be thanking you, and I am. Thank you. Everyone in the "essential jobs" fields right now is getting put at greater risk, healthcare field especially, but we also have job security, so it's a blessing and a curse.

Wonder if one can find iodine... Someone out there is coming out of isolation with yellow hands

I highly doubt it and even then I think Trump is more likely to try than Biden who has pretty much been the invisible man since all this pandemic stuff started At least I can go back to voting 3rd party

How about a RES build forbidden fist / goldpact paladin? He's never ever going to die XD, plus if he downs an enemy you get to have that sweet +12 all defenses AoE on your party. Doesn't stack with Moonwell so... but in longer fights definitely cool to pick up.

In this instance: Attack of the Earthlings. A game in which you play the alien skulking through air vents, killing the humans that came to your planet.

Yet another entry in the popular series "Games that only melkathi (and maybe Keyrock) plays" And to be relevant with the times: (no it isn't my birthday)

Ah, America.

A dark day for all Americans

Thank you Sir!

Cool thanks, that looks pretty easy to do indeed.

@BMac of Obsidian posted a nice starting tutorial on modding in the modding subforum. It also has follow-ups. I think it's a good place to start: Modding ist mostly done by altering text files that are written in JSON format. So something like (just an example): { "name": "Boar", "model": 324234wefwef, "powers": [ "raw damage DoT", "health recovery" ] } I didn't look into spiritshift specifically, but judging by how other stuff works I believe there are several ways to achieve what you want. I would try to just copy the combat values of the form you like mechanically (here Boar) and paste those into the form that looks nice to you (e.g. Cat). Then you'd have Boar, Cat with Boar's values, Stag, Bear and Wolf in the modded game. You'd lose the original Cat. To preserve the original Cat form you could make a copy of the Cat form before and name it... I don't know... Stelgaer or so - and then replace the Stelgaer's combat values with the Boar ones. Then you would have Cat, Boar, Stag, Wolf, Bear and a new one: Stelgaer. Which looks like a Cat but behaves like a Boar. As far as I know you could even tint the Cat modal of your new Stelgaer form so that it looks more dark/blackish. But that may be too advanced. If you want to look at an example for modding Spiritshift you could download the files of the Community Patch (nop need to install the mod) and browse through the files to see how @Phenomenum altered the "Stag-Carnage" ability from 1/encounter attack to a passive. Also @Harpagornis made a whole mod around Spiritshift and surely has some deep knowledge about how to mod Spiritshift specifically.

One way to isolate different areas within the plot like in PoE1 could be (for example) to have part 1 of the story be in Rauitai, then have part 2 in Valia, and finally have part 3 of the story in the Living Lands. You'd have to make a long journey to get from part 1's area to part 2's area, perhaps by ship (but without any of PoE2's ship issues, just a simple passenger ship journey without incident). A problem I had with PoE2 was that on most of the smaller islands, the combat areas (buildings, caves, dungeons, whatever) felt far too small. PoE1's areas were significantly larger and more involved.

Personally, for open world I prefer the approach of Pillars I and Tyranny: Have a world map consisting of various zones, and restrict movement through either plot or "natural" reasons, e.g. how "flooding" restricts you from entering the areas closer to Twin Elms in Act 2 of PoE, or how Tyranny has the blocked mountain pass in Act 1, and the faction-based access in Act 2. Another possibility that I like, but is a bit less effective, is zones with restriction through enemy level: such as how Dragon Age: origins puts a few high-level encounters in the zone leading to Orzammar; One of the most enjoyable parts was returning and beating'em later in the campaign, or managing to beat them at that lower level on a future playthrough. Unfortunately, these days it'd probably lead to players complaining about a lack of balance , rather than getting the point and coming back later. Deadfire..... kind of took the worst of fully open worlds without getting what makes'em interesting: The open world put a lot less urgency on the plot when you were expected to spend a lot of time just sailing around, which works in a sandbox like Skyrim and New Vegas where you're free to do what you want, but not a more story-driven game; the zone-based exploration meant that the larger zones with an ongoing or connected quest, such as Nemnok's, Shattered Reef and Cignath Mor, were quite interesting, but the single-zone bounty islands or those dots you visited only to plunder the village, drain the pond and pluck the fruit started feeling like busywork rather quickly. The empty/smaller islands also lacked what makes an open world like Skyrim and New Vegas interesting, which is the atmosphere and general feel while wandering the world: the sea shanties definitely added atmosphere, but gaining 20 water, 50 fruit and whatever you found in ruined village #8 by exploring empty island #15 didn't quite have the same attraction as getting to the top of that one mountain and just enjoying the view in Skyrim, or warily exploring the far reaches of the map in Dragon's Dogma: None of those have anything special about them other than existence, but the general atmosphere and lack of urgency can make them enjoyable to explore. The Old City, Oathbinder's Sanctum and Wael's Island had atmosphere, but those were zones/islands large enough to establish that atmosphere while exploring them; For the world at large, a 3rd-person RPG will always beat an isometric in my view, and for good reason. For PoE3, I'd like a few more large dungeons, but barring that, I'd like there to be less "throwaway" locations: make fewer but larger locations with a minor quest beyond "go map these", or add some plot connections and even restrictions if necessary, such as in locations like Cignath Mor or Bekarna's observatory that only became available/relevant during/following a certain quest. I also like Boeroer's idea of letting players choose between a guided playthrough or a "free" playthrough, though it might just end up as double work for the developers.

Meh. The overall "story" didn't grab me, though it had potential. The only parts that annoyed me, were pretty obvious attempts at recreating "Tormement" - the game has it's "What-can-change-the-nature-of-the-man" moment, which falls so very very short. I felt the game got better once you reach the flesh city thing. Overall, it's full of irrelevant wall of text, which while sometimes entertaining don't add up to a cohesive whole.

I'm still enjoying the lockdown. Started drinking around noon then went on a long walk with my son and dogs, it's a shame this will have to end one day.

Hawks’ Forbidden Love Results in a Rare Hybrid.

I'd like to be the lone dissenter here and voice my appreciation for Deadfire's turn-based mode. Initially, upon hearing of the new turn-based mode, I was extremely sceptical. I figured it would make battles tedious, and slow down gameplay. I imagined all the ways the game wouldn't be balanced anymore. I assumed it would be half-baked. Now those assumptions weren't entirely wrong. The mode isn't entirely balanced. There are some abilities that are way stronger than they used to be. Dexterity is now a dump stat, for example. Battles definitely require more patience, and it sometimes gets a little tedious waiting for enemies to take their turn. Sometimes it feels like the mode hasn't been properly implemented. There are tooltips that don't show round durations, instead showing old durations, for example. However, I feel like they aren't deal breakers: Deadfire has never been balanced anyway. Resolve has always been a dump stat except for tanks, and even some tanks don't rely on it. So is one more dump stat suddenly going to make Deadfire significantly worse? I don't think so. It does mean that you can't rely on RTWP theorycrafting/guides. But I view this as a new challenge, something fun, rather than a negative. It's a new meta, if you like. Some are claiming that it 'ruins' Deadfire's mechanics, as if Deadfire's mechanics systems in RTWP are well-designed, and work really well together. They don't. There's very little to ruin, frankly. The entire system is a mess, whether you play it in RTWP or TB. I personally haven't found the tedium too much to handle. And turn-based brings a new way of experiencing combat, one that allows individual actions and abilities to shine in a way that they just can't in RTWP. You experience each action in greater detail than you might if there were umpteen other things happening at the same time. However, I can't deny that occasionally, some battles are tedious, and on POTD sometimes it feels like you're attacking mountains of hitpoints. So it balances out, and ultimately I find myself preferring TB. A lot of the issues seem to have been changed or fixed. I haven't played since 5.0 dropped, so I can't say for sure. But, hopefully, it feels a lot more like it's part of the core experience, rather than something tacked on, despite the aforementioned balance issues. That said, even prior to 5.0, when turn-based definitely felt tacked on, I still felt that it was an excellent addition to the game, and definitely worth experiencing. Ultimately, I really think you should try out turn-based, and do so with an open mind. You'll probably go back to RTWP, just like the others in this thread, but there's a chance you might like it, that it might breathe new life in to the game. Personally I feel that Deadfire's combat is dramatically improved by turn-based, and I'm glad that they implemented it, warts-and-all. And again, I say that as someone who was very sceptical about it, initially.

There's a simpler way to do this than messing around with action points and stuff, using the current mechanics: Characters with 0 init are the active character. They do an action - the init cost of that action is how much init is where they fall on the init tracker, just as it does now. Now the game reduces everyone's init evenly until any character hits 0 - they do an action....repeat from above. The only difference to the current implementation is there's no discrete round count, letting characters that only do "fast" actions act more often compared to characters that use "slow" actions. This does have a problem of course, I admit - and that's buff/debuff duration tracking. If you base it on the originating characters "turns" you penalize fast characters. If you base it on the recipient characters "turns" you again penalize fast characters if it's a friendly or slow characters if it's an enemy. I'm sure there's a good solution though, and I'm sure the devs or someone else could come up with one.

I posted this on the steam forums but want to give my feedback here as well: One action per round works in a DnD like system, however this isn’t DnD. A lot of things are based off speed, and initiative isn’t enough to make up for it. What would help the system a lot is to remove rounds, and just have an inactive tracker, and you get an action whenever your initiative comes up. This means faster characters may get extra actions. Simple Example. You have an initiative of 3 and a monster has one of 7. Round Starts at 0 Initiative 3: You attack Initiative 6: You attack Initiative 7: Monster Attacks Initiative 9: You attack Of course the system is more complex, your weapon, armor, spells cast will raise initiative and cause you to act later but this is the basic idea. This will make DEX viable again for most classes, make a lot of CC worthwhile, and fix faster weapons and lighter armors.

Is the round system necessary? A combat system based purely on a form of initiative would seem better suited to the current system. Combat starts at zero and then characters take their actions based on who has the lowest initiative. Movement (limited by stride), a free action and a full action per turn Actions and movement would all add initiative with recovery penalty acting as a multiplier. The amount added would depend on the distance moved and the action taken so dagger swings would add less initiative than swinging a 2h sword. The character would get his next turn when his initiative is again the lowest. .Interrupts would add initiative to the character hit, delaying their turn.I guess buff/debuff duration is easier to track with rounds and I dont know the technical side but you I'm sure you guys can come with an alternative