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My friend, have you heard the good news about our Lord and Saviour Lisa Su AMD?

James Fridman's whole twitter is hilarious in "Careful what you wish for" way.

I'm sure there's a word- probably in some germanic language- to describe the slight feeling of satisfaction you get from finding out Bolsonaro has caught 'the little flu' after insisting it's anything from a hoax to nothing to worry about. Just a shame he'll no doubt get all the plasma transfusions etc he needs which the average native or favela dweller couldn't afford in a million years. Then again he'll probably die from the HCQ he's taking, to really double down on irony.

You stop having fun with these types of games when you play them at a "high" level/rank, it becomes about playing the meta and winning. The thing about playing the meta is that it's repetitive and very unfun especially when you aren't winning. I don't see any point in raising your skill in a game that isn't giving you entertainment and you aren't going to go pro and make money out of it

I enjoy how the entire squad shows up in instance cut scenes, like here, at the start of one of the Crystal Tower alliance raids (24man raids) Alexander...one of the raids with a rather interesting backstory (the giant robot is the raid, as in, his inside) Everyone's favourite character (after Alphinaud ), in one of my favourite locations: the steppes. One of the few MMOs where the player character actually has downtime and socializes with the people around her, like here, on the steppes... Even time for some song and dance! Or just chillin' with the homies NPCs actually do useful stuff when you're not around... ...like saving your life, from a distance (and looking cool while doing it) Bucket list: duel on the hand of a giant statue? Check! Meet Tiamat ... (poor girl ) Was I the only one whose first thought was "Alistair Grout"?

Just want to thank you all for the guides, you guys are the best! I just have completed the ultimate challenge with death godlike/ ascendent cipher/ skaen priest. In case if anyone is interested, the link is below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWnrH6Lq2whImLWhcIfFYbsqaV5JnzSZY

Carl Sagan told me it was finite but unbounded.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/07/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-positive-coronavirus-intl/index.html The Brazilian president has tested positive for the virus, this is no surprise considering his appalling rejection of the nature of the virus and its spread

I think there's a factor that was touched on earlier in the discussion but not elaborated on: this was an ambitious, risky project from the beginning. The project to create a new intellectual property that would form the basis of multiple games is a big one. It's one reason why many Hollywood studios, which are typically headed by risk-averse business types rather than dream-big creative types, prefer to mine popular existing worlds for stories than to create new ones (another being, as pointed out earlier, that audiences tend to want the right mix of new content and familiar stories, worlds, or characters). I would argue that the Eora Project (a name I invented just now for lack of anything more real) was considerably more ambitious. Consider: not only did Obsidian leave behind a lot of the familiar fantasy tropes that one gets from a standard, medieval Europe type of fantasy setting. They also made a lot of narrative work for themselves: animancy, firearms, deep backstory based on a history going back thousdands of years, and the rather novel notion that the gods of this world had been very literally created by people who had been disappointed to find that there was no architecture behind their world*. This work isn't just for them, it's for their players: to read, to absorb, to embrace. I was very skeptical of firearms and animancy coming into PoE, and Obsidian did a spectacular job of layering magic and divinity alongside chemistry and spiritualism in a seamless, nuanced way that put my concerns to rest quickly and quietly. On top of all of this, Obsidian made a very clear decision to eschew tropes, clichés, and standard fantasy props in favor of subtlety, nuance, and complex human interactions. No orcs. No good/evil axis. No Mary Sue character written in to tell the player how to think about their decisions. Even the history and the geopolitical environment attempted to have the texture and depth of a real world. Instead of "a nation of vikings who worship the god of war" or whatever, you have trading consortia and muddled interests and the very plausible consequences of having real, embodied gods who can act to change the world. On top of the narrative and world-building ambitions, they decided to try to fix the obvious problems with the Infinity Engine games' mashup of a real-time with pause combat system bolted to a very turn-based D&D game system, not to mention the entrenched balance problems of D&D. So they set out to build their own mechanics where each stat has roughly equal value, each class is equally viable, and there are no trap options. Although they fell short of total success here (and who wouldn't?), they came close enough to their objectives that they reached what I would call a very good result. This, however, came with the cost to the player of a new game system to learn, one with nuances specific to RTwP gameplay, and a more complex build environment to manage, which is overhead when considering a new RPG. As others have mentioned, time economy changes as we age. I bounced hard off PoE and didn't return until White March 2 was released - as a kid with far fewer games to choose from I wouldn't have, but as an adult with limited gaming time and way too many game options, I can't always come home at the end of a day of systems analysis and sign up for some more, voluntary, unpaid systems analysis. When I came back, many changes had been made and there was more guidance on the boards and I dove deep into PoE and am very glad I did. All of this to say that I think this was a massively ambitious project from the outset. Obsidian took on a lot of voluntary challenges in building the Eora world, and staked out some very bold narrative and mechanical ground. I would argue that PoE came out at the right time, and, as others have guessed, I guess that it may have oversold on a bit of a wave of nostalgia. But I am speculating here based on very thin evidence and I haven't looked at the release environment to validate my suspicions about nostalgia - I am mostly working off of my own memory of salivating while waiting for PoE to be released. So then Deadfire came along, and some changes were made and more risks absorbed. Marketing, if it was indeed absent (I just can't comment precisely, but my memories are of reading about this game as a side note on gamer press stories about Fig or crowdfunding, and then getting updates from Fig), is hugely important. Josh Sawyer commented about the voiceover expense in time and money (which I would argue is an indicator that the assumption that it is now required needs to be rethought - but that has been discussed ). The image I most associate with Deadfire's marketing is the picture one still sees on the Steam library page, of Serafen, Edér, Pallegina, and Aloth fighting off... pirate zombies? while tentacles attack? and maybe other pirate zombies are helping? or not? on a ship? It's dramatic and evocative, but evokes to my mind a Johnny Depp movie more than a dark, nuanced, thoughtful RPG meditation on the nature of souls, so I think there's some merit to the argument that it felt like a big departure from the first game. Is familiarity a decisive factor in a sequel's sales? Not necessarily. But it doesn't have to be. It can be one of several non-decisive factors that sinks the ship (you see? I can employ nautical themes, too). For me it was not, because of my experience being skeptical about the first game's themes and then discovering that my skepticism was unnecessary and the seemingly jarring collection of themes meshed together well under the guidance of skilled writers. I started Deadfire and saw a significantly different tone, but still the same deep writing, the nuanced take on personal and collective motivations, and more rumination on the nature of divinity and the interesting notions of souls, reincarnation, and the Wheel. But those are the things I care about. Another player, who cares more about the dark feel of PoE, might have seen sun-drenched beaches and heard jolly pirate shanties being sung as jolly buccaneers freeboot from island to island, and looked away. There are other factors. There are more streams and more let's-plays out there for people to watch before they buy. There are more isometric RPGs out there. Big megahits distort the market and players' expectations of what an RPG should be (Witcher 3, Skyrim, Original Sin 2 - and pour mettre mon propre grain de sel, I enjoy none of those three games). The state of localization was mentioned, an element I hadn't read about, and I agree - in such a narratively-driven game, it's important to get localization right if you're going to attempt it. None of these sound decisive to me, but I think each of them is a factor. And when one has an ambitious project (which Deadfire also was), those ambitions make the project more brittle. Another earlier point that I think is very important: it's too early for anybody to say right now whether the game was successful or not. It sounds like there was a bit of "development hell" involved in the production of the game, at the least for Sawyer himself, so it's unlikely that he's going to be able to look back on things with perfectly clear eyes. For the sake of example: the game broke even recently. That's great news. Even if it never sells another copy, there is room for improvement. If I were an analyst for Obsidian, I'd at least do a rudimentary analysis of the project: if we could cut the "entire game gets VO" deliverable and only lose 5%, 10%, or 15% of sales, would the project meet our profitability targets for a viable project? There are likely other obvious questions to the people at Obsidian - I'm working only with what Sawyer shared in that presentation in Europe and my own speculations. But I wouldn't assume we know for sure that there cannot be a PoE3. I also caution that these discussions can't happen until more time has passed, so again: it's too early to say. This was longer than I expected. I blame Boeroer and his love of Skyrim. * I once described PoE by telling a friend that "it seems to have been a game designed around Voltaire's quote that 'if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him'." My friend, who has worked in the game development industry for decades, said "Such a high-minded concept usually isn't a good sign." We agreed that maybe the game worked because Obsidian didn't reveal that notion until well into the third act.

I made plans with a rather cute Masters in Library Science student for a second socially-distanced date, and while I'm not trying to be overly hopeful last night's multi-hour zombie-killing escapade was mutually enjoyable (we spent around six hours on Killing Floor, not a bad first date all things considered).

He'll be fine. He's the embodiment of physical fitness.

We also love Slowpoke Rodriguez.

The weird thing about DotA is that it's fun at a low/casual level and I have been told it gets fun again at a very high level, as well as far less toxic (presumably because players at that level truly understand the dynamics of the game and how ludicrously difficult it is). Unfortunately, the middle levels of skill are unbelievably toxic and the grind to get to very high skill level is brutally long and difficult. As with any team game, playing with a group of friends is light years more fun than playing with randos.

Well, that was fun. I am ready for more. Gimme DLC levels!

You should. I should, too. Not like I do anything more than glorified monkey work but at least it sounds impressive when I half-lie and say I work with PL/SQL, C#, Java and Powerbuilder.

Before work I went to town to pick up my lunchpack from my friends store, as I rolled out to the freeway towards work there was a set of red lights, I was first in the queue, and just before I rolled up, this started playing on my spotify... Those of you who know, will know what happened next

Listening to Critical Role rather than paying attention to status calls at work. Nothing of value is missed. Also got myself new cargo pants.

Social Justice in a nutshell:

I've been sucked back into Conan Exiles. I started over again, and currently have a neat base set up in the desert near thee pirate ship. I've bridged a couple plateaus and have an elevator that takes me to a rich resource area, so I an happy with the location. The new Greek DLC pack is pretty awesome looking.

^ Deadly_Nightshade, Raithe, and I seem to have similar tastes in mobos. I got the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, which is the step between the top of the line Xtreme and mid/high-end Ultra. Honestly, without even knowing the final specs of the Zen 3 chips and what kind of power draw they will have and heat they will put out, the Master is almost certainly much more mobo than I need. I could have gotten the Ultra or even the Elite and the VRM on those would almost certainly be plenty good enough for enthusiast overclocking. What can I say, I couldn't help myself. Enthusiast overclocking with the Master is overkill akin to hunting rabbits with a rocket launcher. For comparison, the Xtreme is hunting rabbits with an air strike.

I've been having a few odd glitches throwing up these days, and as I was doing general computer health check I suddenly realised that half my pc is actually 7 years old now. Motherboard and CPU and a bunch of the core components were all put in back in 2013... So I casually wandered over to my local computer stores "build your own PC" tool, and it's like.... Growl. I've got that aging i5 - 3.4Ghz quad core, with 16 Gb DDR3 Corsair ram that handles most things, but having that general aging process kick in. Now I'm rubbing my hands and cackling like an evil genius as I consider on Gigabyt's Z390 Aorus Ultra Motherboard and the balance of 9th generation i5 3.7Ghz, or the push towards an i7 3.0 Ghz. Or what effect 32GB of DDR4 3600Mhz would have. I'm curious on how an M.2 solid state drive would be for boot and windows install. Of course, when playing around with that sort of "build your own" tool, it gets tempting to slap on the Corsair Hydro cooling system or other such silliness....

Damage shields don't scale for active abilities (Llengrath's Superior Elemental Bulwark, Beetle Shell) so I think it's unecessary. Her Courage is good enough for a brisk Troubadour and Protective Soul is Tier IX so wouldn't scale much.

Community Patch Poll suggested to make chant scaling with PL. I'm wondering about it. For version 1.2, I added a PEN scaling to rooting pain. The reason is that passive abilities do not benefit from scaling (they do get bonus PEN based on their ability level, but not through PEN scaling). I think an ability without scaling PEN is a problem. When it does a fix amount of damages (or Healing ?) the absence of scaling is also a bit meh. The same could be true for modals. Duration scaling for passive/modals/chants could also be suggested, but I think it could mess with balance and there are already abilities (rays for example) for which duration doesn't scale. What do you guys think about passive/modals/chants scaling ? For my part, I think : - PEN should always scale. Not scaling PEN is incredibly annoying at high levels. +1 PL -> +0.25 PEN, as for active abilities. - Fixed damages (such as brutal backlash, rooting pain, dragon trashed, wildstrike) should scale as active abilities. +1 PL -> +5% damages - Healing effects should scale as fixed damages. This is important to make Come, Come, Soft Winds of Death consistent with its damages part. +1 PL -> +5% damages. But I have a concerne abou Ancient Memory and Exalted Endurance because they are already quite good. - Duration should not scale, especially because linger duration scaling would mess with chanter subclasses (and chanters chants are powerful enough as they are) List of targetted abilities (leaving apart duration) : - Exalted Endurance - Providence - Come Come Soft Winds of Death - Dragon Trashed (CP rising damages from 4 to 5 per tick could be unnecessary with an added scaling) - Ancient Memory - Wildstrike Frenzies (they are high level so don't need scaling that much) - Rooting Pain - Brutal Backlash (could also be buffed a bit) - Unbreakable / Unrelenting - (I think Constant Recovery already scales) Am I forgetting anything ?

Woke up, went to get coffee. Coffee pot gone. Sister took it. Sister went away. I'm going to ****ing murder her.

A woman who's a nip too much into smoky eye make-up, too. Also, I think anime is the perfect visual medium for "Choose a boy, a girl or a neither" protag, because you can't tell either way.

Yes, I have it already, and I am using it for Boss Fights. It just increases spell uses, but no spell damage. Still kind of useful for Soul Spear increase.

Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What yeahsciencebitch.jpeg

RIP Ennio Morricone. My favourite movie music maker

Buzzfeed - Judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline halted Apparently, the judge feels it can't continue without a full and proper environmental evaluation...

I get my cast off tomorrow. I am soooo ready. I also need to get a TB test before I report back to work. But I have no idea when I will be reporting, and I really don't want to go to the clinic where they take the test.

Outer Worlds in the New Fallout. That's as close as we can hope to get I am afraid. Obsidian isn't independent anymore. Even if Bethesda would be interested in hiring 3rd party studios (which they weren't interested in for a while now) I don't think Microsoft would be interested in working for another's company IP. And that's assuming Obsidian would be up to another Fallout project after what happened with New Vegas metacritic bonus.

Red Embrace: Hollywood.

I finally got the full crew together.

"The Schindler's List of shark games." I can do one better: Fifty Shades of Chum staring the Mat Damon of sharks.

I'm happy to announce that the mod has reached its 100th download (from actually different users) on Nexus. Apparently, it has been "hottest" PoE2 mod from its release (appears first on Nexus for PoE2 because of number of recent download, I suppose). Once again, thank you for your support ! I advertised for it on Steam forum but got a single "I-would-have-done-otherwisish but vague" comment (my favorites ). However, it received a much warmer welcome on reddit. I don't know how much this contributes to diffusion, but I wanted to share this experience.

Finished the FFXIV Shadowbringer storyline with my Gunbreaker. The last section had some super boring walk-around-some-more moments, but the actual ending was fantastic. Very well done, especially for an MMO. Honestly, I find this game to be a quite pleasant experience all around. You don't really have to grind super hard, you can switch your character class at any time, the characters are likable (except for Lyse, god I hate her), and the story / quest design is mostly well done. The other people in the raids, etc. are usually not toxic either, even if you f- up a bit, which is also something I don't really know from other games. Will probably start with the post-Shadowbringer content now. 20 quests have been released already, and the next batch will arrive in the new patch next month.

Unrelated, but did anyone else hear about MSI's well-liked CEO falling to his death from the top of their headquarters in Taiwan today? Unknown if accident, suicide, or homicide.

Zbrojovka Brno!

Hate to be "that guy", but that shouldn't put worries to rest if that worried you to begin with. Bubonic plague is endemic in areas of Central Asia and elsewhere. It's under control, but there's a chance that an antibiotic-resistant outbreak could get out of control. Note "get out of control" rather than "appear" because IIRC, they already found cases of antibiotic-resistant plague bacteria a few years ago. Misuse of antibiotics is one of those potentially catastrophic risks that don't get nearly enough attention. But hey, at least it's not Corona.