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It's hard to say. Given that he got burned out working on Deadfire, I hope he gets to work on something he's passionate about next. The art and music were definitely high points of both games. It's a shame because in a lot of ways it was close to being an extremely good game but they really fell short in some key places. I dunno, the Barbarian whirlwind attack, the ice fireball that paralyzes people, and the Cipher abilities all stand out for me. The Rogue and Fighter are really forgettable and the Chanter takes too long to ramp up though. So you're saying DOS was born from the egg of the king?

Hero U, of course:

the truth of bikini armor

It should be the same - you're definitely verifying that you're not just missing (via combat log)? There is a very occasional issue with effects that travel like that, where the AoE that gets drawn when you're aiming doesn't precisely correspond to the reality of the level geography. The most common culprit are elevation changes - the drawn AoE definitely doesn't take into account inclines or elevation changes, but for many traveling effects a slight elevation bump will really change how it goes. A related and less common, but still damning, issue is that obstacles that don't affect the drawn AoE may still affect the actual spell effect. I haven't used twin stones nearly as much as other spells, so there may be bugs unique to it, but the few times I used it, it functioned like PoE1/

you do realize this is a joke, yes? kingmaker sold over a million copies three years after initial release and the reason is 'cause the title were bundled with another title, outward, which sold over 600k copies. so the publisher claimed kingmaker sold in excess o' a million copies 'cause 600k + kingmaker solo sales = more than 1 million copies. and the anecdotal, i beat it without a problem stuff is always amusing 'cause is not difficult to find equal compelling anecdotal from many others who sudden found their endgame kingmaker party useless, in part 'cause that is what pathfinder does to the uninitiated player and also 'cause owlcat implementation o' stat bloat to account for reload makes the situation worse for those playing w/o knowledge o' the system and the game itself. build a party with feats and spells appropriate for early game and you may be roll stomping your way to victory for dozens o' hours, only to find that sudden at mid or late levels you can't hit anything with spells or weapons and you can't defend from a constant barrage o' sneak attacks. is not that those players complaining o' kingmaker difficulty spikes were stoopid, but they didn't know in spite of all the available choices, there were a far more limited number o' right ways to play a pathfinder game. pathfinder has trap build and trap feats and trap spells. not enuff special weapons feels? can't respond to that one. is a legit observation though 'cause feels is important, just not particular helpful. that said, am thinking the poe2 approach were much better for weapons than were poe with the ability to customize many weapons a major improvement o' the sequel. it was bad 'cause josh hates ie games? *chuckle* am thinking obsidian did make a mistake and underestimated nostalgia. pillars was never gonna be bg3 although many expected such. no d&d license, so pillars couldn't be bg3 in any event. couldn't be pathfinder for same reasons. so developers tried to identify what made the ie games fun and with poe they achieved great success with many players (which is why the fig campaign for deadfire brought in more money by a fair amount than did the wotr kickstarter... if you want a money argument,) but the problem is that poe turned out being niche and the developers o' deadfire made clear they were going for more niche than were poe. all the d&d, pathfinder and ie game purists who played poe and realized it were not bg3 were not happy to hear that deadfire were gonna get even more distant from the rosy-hued memories o' bg2. obsidian spent far more money on the deadfire development than they did on poe, but they were curious unaware they were making a game with more narrow appeal. and yeah, josh admitted he didn't particular like ie game implementation o' d&d rules, but josh were not the boss on poe. that point appears to be forgotten. what josh did do was he asked the frothing purists offended by poe implementation why per kill xp rewards, pre-buffing, hard counters, spells which became useless after a few levels, prerequisite feats which were individually useless but essential for some later feat or power, and a multitude o' other ie game or d&d staples were essential to a spiritual successor to the ie games? never got decent answers. the problem josh and obsidian made is that they were rational. ignore the, "How PoE weapon, armors and other items never felt special," 'cause such an observation is wholly subjective and kinda meaningless don't change fact people still had their feels. is a significant % of poe backers and purchasers who were expecting their idealized bg3 and when they didn't get it, they were quits with the franchise. am suspecting obsidian, in part 'cause poe were an ip created by obsidian, coulda' made profitable poe games for many years, but deadfire were a colossal blunder o' expectations. obsidian spent more resources making the poe sequel when they shoulda' realized the were necessarily selling to a smaller audience than poe enjoyed. fig campaign revealed just how much support there were for a poe sequel, but while the dollar numbers were better than poe or wotr kickstarters, the number o' backers were actual diminished. obsidian created a rabid fanbase for a homegrown ip and then flubbed the sequel by failing to recognize those rabid fans were more niche and less numerous than poe purchasers. one o' the longest pre release poe threads were ie purists complaining 'bout the announced absence o' per kill exp. serious. there were just no reasoning with the feels crowd, but they were earnest and they were disappointed by poe. HA! Good Fun! (edit) full disclosure: never finished kingmaker 'cause it were so buggy and the terribleness o' kingdom building severe undershot our minimum threshold for fun. however, we understood the appeal o' the title regardless o' fact it wrecked the best part o' the pnp ap. kingmaker appeal were not writing or, ironic, kingdom building. kingmaker were a pathfinder game which implemented a pathfinder ap allowing folks to fully indulge the addictive loot and level grind while presenting players with a decent realization o' paizo combat encounters. is a whole lotta bloat and trash in the pathfinder rules, but (ignoring bugs for the moment) owlcat did a decent job o' implementing pathfinder and they made the game look nice and play intuitive. we couldn't finish kingmaker, but we saw the potential and we understood the appeal.

Getting no XP for fights or skill checks is not good either...

I really like OP endgame mages but I'd be lying if I said I didn't also enjoy PoE's more useful at lower levels ones even if I thought they were lacking at the top end. It's not a trade off I'd like to keep though and I had a few arguments discussions about it with some posters in the PoE section who wanted magic to be essentially mundane. I didn't think a fireball should just be a grenade or a missile spell just be different VFX arrows, make them a little more magical.

The D&D/Pathfinder rules and setting are much more appealing to me than any other system. I like my mages weak in the beginning and very powerful later. And balance be damned. Still really enjoyed PoE and Deadfire. There are many things that work better in these games. For example: you can click on a body beside a character and the body is selected, instead of the character. Better to reach max level and see all the spells and abilities the game has to offer than to pass difficult skill checks to win a million xp in a single quest in order to reach level 20 in Pathfinder (the grimoire quest for the pirates). And I definitely get tired of pre buffing... As for D:OS, I played the first one 2-3 times (never finished one of my runs) and I could happily replay it again if I had the time. But once was more than enough for the second one. The armor/magic armor system is too annoying, no more option to start a battle with status effects like in the first one. Poison cloud, flame arrow to blow it up, electrocute or freeze water... That was really fun. BG3 will be closer to what I like than D:OS2 and D:OS so I imagine it will be good for me.

I can only imagine that he didn't have that much control over the game direction for those 2. What's funny is that IWD2 is my favorite IE game.... Tbh I could have lived with the city and the story, because the art was gorgeous. Although I do agree that the city felt empty and a pale shadow of Baldur's Gate (the cities in Kingmaker suck too). I played PoE when the last patch came out and to be honest all the classes felt underwhelming. The mages didn't have any cool spells that make mages cool...Oh my god, you made me remember the health mechanic in the game...I had suppressed that atrocity. D:OS is a spawn of something unholy, I do not wish to think about...especially because BG3 is shaping up to be like it.

I've been busy nursing a man-flu, so I can relate... kind of. Couldn't watch anything, suffering way too much from a common cold. Man-flu winging: Dash my hopes, will you. Although experience tells me you're right. For every K-On!, there's a large number of Love Live!s around... Sometimes my YouTube suggestions are pretty fun. I knew that there was a Sailor Moon fighting game, just now how apparently popular it is as a tournament game. Not bad. Jupiter looks pretty badass in the video with her high kicks there.

My first playthrough of PoE ended with me hating the game after spending hours grazing through attrition. It did improve significantly with the releases of the WM 1 and 2, but at launch it was really bad. Deadfire was worse, because they threw out an armor system that was ok (though still prone to naked or full plate with no in-between) and implemented one where there was often no benefit to wearing full plate over padded armor. On top of that they did some wacky inversion mechanics (because making -35% mean -35% is for rubes) that their own designers didn't understand. Oh yeah, and detecting traps is now tied solely to perception, so if you don't haul the gun lady along with you there's a very good chance you'll stumble into a tpk trap cluster. The Pathfinder games use a dumbass system with equally dumb things like natural attacks being completely different than unarmed attacks or bonuses not stacking except if they're dodge bonuses. To top it off Owlcat can completely butcher it where if you were to import a PnP CR 30 enemy, like ****ing Cthullu, it could get stomped by a mid game encounter in WotR because apparently they balanced it around insane min-maxers dipping to ramp up their bonuses into the stratosphere. Point is, all these games have ****ty mechanics and I don't think those are the reason they're good or bad. There's a charm to Kingmaker that PoE just didn't have for me. I can't really quantify it but there's a reason I have so many more hours into a game I've only beaten once compared to one I've gone through three times.

For that weird tangent:

In case anyone is wondering, I have been avoiding major spoiler pics. Hence mostly chr/scenery. ...that's probably enough picture-spam from me for one week tho. I want to get farther into the game faster.

Tales of Arise: ---Got my 4th party member, Law. He's a hands/feet melee guy. He seems to kick butt and now the party feels more balanced. ---there sure are a lot of loading screens for entering small areas. It's fine on SSD but sometimes it feels like every 10 seconds you're running thru one. ---Some attack moves require two simultaneous button presses, which is hard on my arthritic thumbs. So I finally looked at some combat option menus. Saw default overall combat-style was on "Semi-Auto". There was also Manual and Full Auto. Hm...what is full auto, I wondered? Is it ... what it sounds like? Set it to that. My leader charged into battle by himself...I only had to sit and watch, mostly. Camera still focused on 'leader' but I could move the camera more freely, see everything from different angles, finally notice what the other party members were doing. I started to laugh. I fired up WeMod and toggled unlimited CP/AP (eg mana, action-points, similar), toggled the no-HUD mod I have, and proceeded to run through the next section in this full-auto combat mode. I laughed like a loon, every single time. For some reason it was utterly hilarious to me and I was delighted. A game where I don't have to do anything! Perfect!

Finished first run through Gamedec, all in all not a bad game. It's not as grand, for lack of a better term, as Disco Elysium but I had fun with it. The consequences of your actions they leave up to the end, I am regretting (as I sort of expected) blowing that teenager's head off. The twist near the end is what you'd expect it to be. I did enjoy the cases, if the game had better backing would have been nice to have more of them. Took me 12 hours or so to clear. I guess I'd recommend to grab it on sale.

got a couple crusade bugs, one o' which may impede further logistics progress, so following completion o' midnight fane, am taking a bit o' a break in the hope a few issues get fixed. am thinking if we want relative unencumbered crusade and story progression, it is likely we need replay a significant portion o' chapter three 'cause o' our angel mythic path quirk and 'cause o' crusade bugs, so am reluctant to keep plunging ahead. HA! Good Fun!

Looks better than Kingdom Come.

Hey guys. I got home last night. It’s been a very interesting two weeks or so let me tell you. I started driving north with no particular destination in mind. I followed I-55 north as far as Bloomington IN. I didn’t feel like dealing with Chicago so followed I-39 until Wausau. Then kept going until I ended in up in a little town called Bayfield WI. I got a room in a crappy motel that cost way more than it should have and spent two days there doing nothing. And I do mean NOTHING. I spent the better part of two days sitting on the pier and looking at the lake. I’d never seen Lake Superior before so I can cross that one off my list. After the second day I decided to go home. I turned on my phone and texted my cousin and her husband and told them I was in WI and offered to take them out to dinner. I had not seen either of them in 10 years or more. They live in a little town in the western part of the state. Totally out of the way but what the hell. The next night I met them for dinner and had a great time catching up. They offered to let me stay in their guest house for a few days if I wanted so I accepted. I forgot how much fun they are. Anyway, he is a retired Minnesota state trooper, she is a retired teacher, and they have a business boarding and training horses. Plus a few of their own. Helping them take care of their horses and boarders was thoroughly enjoyable. This led to the best part of the trip… I met someone. They have an equine vet that visits and I got to talking to her and we just clicked. Her name is Gail. She’s a year older than me, divorced with an adult daughter. I asked her out. It went really well. I asked her out again for two days later. That one went well too. Her biggest interests are animals, books, and simplicity in life. That is definitely me. My cousin is all excited about this. She put her “match maker” hat on and you can guess what was doing there. I ended up spending a week with them and had three dates with Gail. It was great. Finally, the time came to go home. Gail and I decided to keep in touch and just see where things go. I live 10 hours and three states away and that won’t change in the near future. Anyway, when I turned my phone back on in Bayfield I got a VM from Stephanie. She finally saw my e-mail I guess. She asked me to please call her. Since I started the exchange I felt obligated and did so while driving to Sparta. We spoke for about 15 minutes and it was awkward but friendly. She asked if we could speak face to face because there was so much she wanted to talk to me about. I agreed and told her I’d meet her for coffee when I got back. I met her this morning. She is working as a supervising RN on the 3rd shift at a big hospital in Memphis. A very nice plum for her. I met her for coffee after work. It’s the first time I’ve seen her or spoken to her since mediation. It was… awkward. She started off right away wanting to apologize again for how things ended. I stopped her and told her it was all in the past. I had forgiven her and she should forgive herself. The remarkable thing is I had. Just then when I saw her I received whatever closure I needed I guess. We spoke for over an hour about Sunny, how we were doing, and happier times. I didn’t get the sense that she is interested in any kind of reconciliation. I tried to subtly imply that was not going to happen. She asked if we could keep in touch and just talk sometimes. I said I’d like that. Maybe some wounds can heal. I put a lot of my stuff in storage before I left. I really had no idea where I was going or how long I’d be gone. Or even if I was coming back at all to be honest. So I’m spending the day putting my house back together. I’m in a much better place now than two weeks ago. It’s hard to believe Sunny’s passing triggered a full on mid-life crisis but I guess that is what it is. Probably not out of the woods but I do feel better. Gail asked me to send her pics of my house and I’m doing it now. I printed and framed a picture of Sunny and put it on the wall next to pics of Bella, Tommy, & Desiree. It’s of her playing in the creek. A happy smile, a happy dog, and a happy memory. The world is going to keep turning… all we can do is go along for the ride. This got really long and rambly again. Sorry about that.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2378385803832/new-zealand-police-arrest-pair-trying-to-enter-auckland-with-large-amount-of-kfc NZ is descending into a criminal nightmare......when will it end? Now police have been forced to arrest people smuggling KFC!!! The depravity of the criminal mind never ceases to concern me @Gorth You lucky you live in Australia, at least you dont have to deal with KFC cartels !!!

i tried it on potd, in a "fair" way, and it seemed basically impossible, at least as a normie with casual-levels of APM. enemies front load their attacks, which makes it extremely important to be responsive in the early moments of fights, and things could snowball out of control if you couldn't respond; at least with vanilla AI scripting, it became increasingly harder to pull this off. magran's challenge is basically a cheese or pacifist challenge IMO. (this is diffeerent from turn-based mode, which remains a mode of play that i 've been meaning to play; turn-based with 6 second time pressures sounds interesting). edit: what does not help is that deadfire, even on my relatively new and shiny gaming pc build (3700x + 6900 xt), stutters in certain situations (e.g. anytime a mirror image effect happens). the game is still going on even as the frames drop. in rtwp i can just hit spacebar and wait for the frames to settle. in magran's challenge a stutter is basically a recipe for disaster (especially if i was mid-click).

To be honest, my exposure to "real" Australians is a bit limited. Working in a multinational and very cosmopolitan environment, local politics is less of a concern if it doesn't affect the economy. But the Aussies I do know are mostly indifferent. Keep in mind the supremacy of the Murdoch media group (which includes Fox News and Sky News), part of the population are your mix of QAnon cultists, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, bible waving enthusiasts etc. and the other part is the disgruntled, but also disillusioned Australia, who feels the fight against government corruption and the police state methods applied against the few independent media that actually do exist, is soul crushing. In short, I'm not sure it even makes headlines anywhere. Real estate prices making it impossible for young families to own their own home is way more of a concern these days when listening to people talk. The complete collapse of a "normal" economy in the wake of covid meant the expected bubble burst and depression (with a slight reset of real estate prices) in 2020 didn't happen the way it was expected.

See, that wasn't even among the options I have considered. I could also continue to read the manga or watch Tuxedo Mullet run about in that super cheap live action Sailor Moon. I'm probably too hard on K-On!, it tried much more in its second season that I thought it would, and some of it worked - and some didn't. I'll have to admit that Yui made me smile more often than not, and that's a job really well done, considering it was by far and large comedy. Getting me to appreciate that is no small feat. As such I don't mind pure drama shows, otherwise I wouldn't have liked Violet Evergarden. Also, yeah, I agree, and perhaps looking for something that combines Steven Universe's or Sailor Moon's character strength and themes with the quality of writing (although... for SU that was studio interference and for SM mostly not so great source material) and understatedness of the original Cardcaptor Sakura is a quest doomed to fail. I shall venture on, though. Who knows, maybe I'll find a unicorn. Hopefully not with wings. I'm also feeling a little sick today, so no cardio, meaning no Lady Asuka or emi... emouk... whatever the title of that weirdo seinen stuff that I began to watch on Prime video is. Probably not tomorrow either, but who knows, maybe I'll wake up feeling all rainbows and sunshine. Ikuhara was right that when it's around, it is often too much of a focus. Age and maturity differences aside, Mamoru and Usagi were okay in terms of volume. The Madoka movie you didn't watch plays out mostly in Homura's mind. Kyosuke and Hitomi are a couple, and it's not going really well because he's focusing too much on his carreer. Something like that would have been interesting for K-On!. Not turning it into a silly rom-com, but having a counterweight for one of them. Yui having to study for a makeup test was something like that in season one. It's not entirely out there for a group of 17 year olds, after all. I loved Lapis from the get go, but I like these sort of broken characters. Lars just moved from I HATE YOU /Anakin-scream to likeable before he got douchewaffled by Cartoon Network. Not sure what's worse. edit: Speaking of Cardcaptor Sakura, you're really close to one of the all-time greats in this arc (54), so... like, uhm... *whistle*

Hey! I love kingdom come. My feelings are hurt

If its been going on for decades, whats triggered the hit squad for you this time?

U.S. has been blowing up civilian vehicles based on faulty intel "accidently" for decades now, this is really nothing new except MSM deciding to report this particular case for some reason. I think it's because they're disgusted with Biden's withdrawal and kinda lost their hero complex in him so decided to get back at him, or something along those lines. It's concerning because nations, like people, pay for their transgressions and I'm afraid all this is gonna back and haunt the U.S. sometime in the near future and my family and myself might be in physical danger.

Every time I see a Russian product I am reminded of my parents' Lada 2105

Massive number bloat.

The constellations will light up permanently. It's funny that you're complaining about the timed/Eothas one, because I think the Magran's challenge (no pausing) is by far the worst. On turn-based mode I can kinda get behind it, but is absolutely bonkers for anything other than story mode.

At that point use the snail shell to make snips. That way you can cut part of a can for weapons. Also I would recommend a war horn for the shells. You blow it to scare smaller enemies, stun comparables and maybe attract apex (wolf spiders until wasp centepedes or frogs are added) enemies as they take it as a challenge to their territory

Just as reference, Dorudugan literally has something like 10,000 health on PotD. hauane o whe can literally have effectively infinite health if you’re not adequately prepared. i get there’s a certain satisfaction of going in blind and winning, but many players collectively have spared you the headache by figuring out the mega bosses and sharing info about it. You do you, but I don’t think it’s weakness to do your due diligence, in the same vein as planning your character in advance: All my characters/parties since the mega bosses are explicitly planned so they have viable options against all the mega bosses; it’s just a part of my character planning. (As a result, my need to ensure certain debuffs land consistently has over time made perception a king stat, in counter to typical stat advice.)

When it's about the best weapon category (not necessarily the best unique weapon) for a Brute I would always say Morning Star. Dual damage, good base PEN and the Brute Force/Spirit Frenzy synergy etc. is really cool - but it is really nice right from the start, too. Just because Knockdown/Mule Kick target Fortitude instead of Deflection. That makes hitting some tough enemies so much easier right away.

No really bugged, but implemened a bit weirdly so that visual cone AoE indicator can be misleading. It shows you the cone where it would be if you really hit the enemy in that particular angle you aimed for. But once the "real" attack and the AoE proc happens the cone will be aligned in a way that its center line would be a straigt line from your char's center point to the target center point. And this might place the cone AoE a bit differently than the indicator showed when you were choosing the target (clicking slightly left or right to the center point of the initial target to make the indicator "hit" the other enemies behind it). Unlike other cone attacks such as invocations, the cone of the WotEP is not bound to the ground but to the enemy you pick. And once you picked that enemy as target the game will use the center of that enemy's circle as anchor point, not where you clicked. But the visual cone indicator used the point where you clicked. It's not a great implementation of course - but I guess nobody really noticed before (and long after) release. Some cone-shaped cipher powers that have to have an enemy as initial target have the same "problem". But often there the cone indicator gets "centered" once you picked your target iirc. WotEP's cone indicator doesn't do this unfortunately. Clear Out/Clear the Path would have the same problem as well - but they have no indicator VFX in the first place so you won't get deceived. I made a quick drawing to explain it a bit better: The best solution to not "trick yourself" with the cone indicator is to pick your target right in the middle of its circle (see red X in the bottom pic). Moving a bit left and right just to bring the indicator to touch other enemies (see red X in the upper pic) won't work. Instead, if you need the cone to move a little bit to the left and right, just move your character accordingly. This might be a problem with disengagement attacks - another reason why I recommend Nomad's Brigandine (immunity to disengagement attacks) when you use WotEP - not only when you enchant it with Offensive Parry (but mostly).