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A good and synergistic party composition is much more impactful than individual decisions about MC or SC. There are great MCs and there are great SCs. Some classes receive really good (and fun) abilities as SC later on (it might also depend on the party composition whether a high level ability is very useful or not) - while some classes don't, but they get better stuff in the early and/or mid levels. The latter classes usually are better MC material, but even that is just a rule of thumb. And then also never forget your preferences. If you for example like Paladins and have most fun imagining yourself to be a pure hearted Paladin in this game then by all means play a pure hearted Kind Wayfarer Paladin. The classes and abilities are balanced well enough and you won't step into severe traps when building up your char. Also there's always the option of retraining (not race/class/arributes, but the rest).

An impressive feat of engineering, the Apollo Guidance Computer (the computer built for the Apollo that landed on the moon) Weight: 32kg, power consumption 55 Watt (yes, fifty five) and 2 Kilo Words of memory (a unit I haven't seen since Computer Science classes back in University)!

For some reason this came to mind

When I think of the hardest fights in SSS and FS + the megabosses on Upscaled PotD, I don't think that an optimized party of the best SC classes feels "cheaty god mode" - as long as you don't (ab)use certain mechanics beyond their intended use. Which is also very fun to do but another topic IMO, and mostly relevant for solo. Also if you play with the full BPM complement (including nerfs), most of those OP tricks will be disabled (strand of favor, OP barring death door, OP salvation of time, OP wall of draining, OP unbending, OP blood sacrifice, OP brilliant...).

Well for most of classes, most of the most powerful spells and abilities are at tiers 8 and 9. But that depend of how are you playing I suppose.

The good single classes are about 10x stronger than any multiclass you can make with that class in it (ok maybe slight overexaggeration on the 10x but not that far from the truth :P), those classes being wizard, monk and rogue. (this is for solo btw, these classes shine even MORE in a party) That being said there are some classes which perform exceptionally well as multiclass and not really that much better or even worse as single class, the most prominent one being probably priest. (once again this is for solo, in a party I'd NEVER multiclass a priest) As everyone else mentioned here before Multiclasses shine early, but especially in a party fall off very fast, I'd say at around level 13-15 when you get your pl 7-8 abilities on a SC. Big exceptions are the classes that don't get anything massive after PL 7, the priest gets their strongest tool even at pl 6. (In a party it's still super benificial to go SC, due to slower xp gain)

I guess you didn't mean to adress me with "Youhou" but that it's just an exclamation of joy. But I'll respond to this anyway. 😄 I don't like it when cooldowns are used as a basic mechanic or cornerstone of a system. See Tyranny or Diablo etc. Although one could see recovery as a sort of cooldown, it's not really for me because it's universal: all actions (except walking) have to wait until you can act again, while cooldowns on abilities only affect the use of that ability. Thus a system with ability-cooldowns as the go-to mechanic usually leads to a behaviour where you spam all abilities you have to prevent to wait for any cooldown to complete - and then you start the cycle anew. As a result the player tends to pick up as many different abilities as they can. For the opposite reason I also don't like fixed, non-replenishable resources (see Guile etc.) - because they do the opposite: abilities fight for the resource points and players will get motivated to only pick very few of those abilities which will need that "fuel". Both approaches limit the player in a way that I think is "unfun". Recovery is kind of a cooldown for the whole character. This prevents the (imo) awful results ability cooldowns will lead to. When I talk about cooldowns I mean ability-cooldowns that only prevent the usage of that (or a certain subset of) action. That doesn't mean that cooldowns cannot solve problems easily - like spamming spiritshift for spike healing when you are a shifter - without putting the whole character into a pause (like recovery does). If they are not everywhere they are not too bad per se. I just realize that spiritshift should have a longer animation phase though - could solve some problems and make cooldown redundant... but that's another discussion. I still wouldn't put abilitycooldowns into a system if there's only one small use-case. As I wouldn't do that with any mechanic really since it makes the mechanics less systemic and less predictable. But since there's already cooldowns in Deadfire's system (Grimoire switching causes a cooldown on spells only, there's a cooldown on modals like proficiencies and chants - but weapon switching induces no cooldown but adds recovery time, reloading is basically a cooldown for that specific weapon, but I digress...) I think it's okay to use them to prevent spammage in certain situations - without locking the whole char down - like recovery would do. I don't know about any cooldown with Forbidden Fist though. It puts a stackng curse on you that raises its cost by 1 wound. Afaik nothing (besides getting knocked out) prevents you from using it over and over again - as long as you have the wounds for it. Or what did I miss? Oh, good point. That would get lost with an per-encounter ability, true. Hm... But on the other hand: Form of the Fearsome Brute and other shapeshifting stuff (Changeling's Mantle) are not cancelable either. And do players really use that feature of "cancelablility" (is that a word?) often with Spiritshift? It makes a lot of sense with weapon prof. and chants - but I believe Spiritshift gets cancelled almost never (unless Shifter who gets pummeled too badly - but still weird action to unshift just in order to heal imo). So... one reason more to implement it as a proper "non-funky" modal, eh? But actually FotFB leads me to these other thoughts: Generally a good idea imo. Not as a modal though. Form of the Fearsome Brute already is a shapeshifting spell and that kind of works. At least handling Spiritshift the same as FotEB would add consistency. But on the other hand: what about Shifter? 🤔 4 shifting spells in one tier sounds bad. Just add 1 form in every tier until PL4? 🤔 Thinking about it more I would actually prefer to see FotFB getting implemented like I would like Spiritshift to be implemented: as a proper modal. This would add consistency and make FotFB more attractive, too (to me at least).

The End of Samurai Champloo The gang separates. Fuu takes a walk, Jin duels a master swordsman, and Mugen goes toe to toe with a gang led by DIO. A great ending to a great show.

Uf, that's a good question. I would also add Skull&Bones to that. I really don't get that one. You had ship combat in AssCreed. You have Sid Mayer Pirates. Marry the two and you have a game. Add grinding, and microtransactions and you have a Ubi game.

They forgot the other Senior Engineer who has nothing else to do chiming in to criticize the indentation.

Dutch Disease rears its ugly head again.

you don't have to do an all-MC or all-SC party, you can mix and match. just saying. that being said, I would not read too much into your experience on the first island; on the first island with PotD the battles are extremely hard and a bit overtuned... but in a way where certain builds can absolutely stomp or suffer and it doesn't reflect accurately for the rest of the game, where everyone gets more options and your gear becomes better. for example, an SC druid with charm beasts/hold beasts pretty much wrecks the digsite but that's more an accident of how the encounters in that area are designed and not truly representative of their typical power level (at least until you get greater maelstrom). Similarly, a debonaire will absolutely wreck gorecci st with their charm ability, but that's also not representative of their typical power level.

It is bit double edged sword thing, as almost all the countries where there has been socialist goverment-managed economy have had socialist revolution because majority of people there didn't have money or food and no prospect for better life which lead them to support socialist revolutionist who promised them better life. So they were already countries which economy was failing, but it is true that socialists who have taken over those countries don't have good track record when it comes to fix their countries failed economies. Usually their policies have lead their countries to worse than they were before revolution, but often they have suffered from trade sanctions from the world riches countries for various reasons.

I did mean to address you because you already told your hate of Cooldoown previously. Good to see a more in depth analysis about the reason why. FF has no real cooldoown, but if you want to use FF ability as a wound generator, you have to wait for the expiration of the curse. Basically it is a soft cooldoown 😉 And cast spells. Shifter can't cast spell while shifted. So it would be a significant nerf. Shifter would be hurt but I usually consider Shifter as slightly OP since they don't have a real drawback (want to cast a spell ? Cancel your form). They would still get increased duration, versatility of forms and a good healing. They could choose twice the same form. They could use +1 Tier 1 items and effect to get more shifts, and Brilliant/Potion of Enlightenment of course. So they would be fine. Good point. FotFB could get a little rework once a solution has been found for Spiritshift. So basically I consider Tier 1 cast and Cooldoown both acceptable (minor adjustments could be needed). But now I will have to check if this can be implemented.

Rare clip of Bethesda and Pirahna Bytes's race to be master the open world RPG:

Hey, when it finally comes out in 20 years, maybe your motivation will return.

Bruce represents "we" apparently. South African white trash 😛 😛 😛

First impressions of Expeditions: Rome are rather meh. They try hard to get the historic details right. Which makes the English accents rather cringy. Especially on whiney teenager Julius Caesar sending you on a fetch quest. I'll also have to reread line of sight rules, as enemy archers don't seem to have other characters block their LOS, while my archer gets blocked by the mere idea there could be someone blocking LOS eventually. It must be a alternate reality quantum LOS block. EDIT: I read the tutorial for LOS fine. IT just turns out the information given is wrong. They claim characters block line of sight and an unobstructed line of sight is required to shoot someone, but that is not actually how archery works according to the devs on the Steam forum. I tried to comment that they may want to change that tutorial pop-up, so players don't feel they are given wrong information, but the steam forum for Expeditions: Rome is restricted in posting. Seems I'd have to pre-order to post the comment, then refund the pre-order. I think I'll just choose to ignore the game. Changes since Viking: no time limit in the game. Not changed: ranged combat is overpowered. I loved Conquistadors. I felt Vikings did a lot of things wrong and ultimately did not finish it. An hour of playing the Rome demo and I know I'm unlikely to even buy it on sale.

Like Ive been saying, seizing the fatcats property and monies will fix everything. *checks pamphlet I found on my windshield* The top 1% holds 85% of the worlds wealth! THAT *clappysymbol* AINT *clappysymbol* FAIR! *clappysymbol* Its so simple I dont know why we dont do it.

Perfectly fine from everything I've ever done with it, and I think the general experience is that compatibility with everything is fine, but some games either suffer get a little faster or a little slower, depending on the exact game in question. The latest version of LTSC (2019) is basically a slightly stripped down version of Windows 10 1803, but only ongoing security updates and nothing feature-related. They're going to release one last final version of Windows 10 LTSC sometime within the next year or two, last I heard - most likely will be a slightly stripped down version of whatever the last major version of Windows 10 is. Might decide to upgrade to that when it comes out, I'm not entirely certain yet.

Behold the Eurojank: Marvel in the glory of its stiff and clunky animations!

expanse certainly changed a lot of expectation with sci fi always prefer metal box that were not designed to ever enter gravity or atmosphere style of spaceship

That's 9 shifts for SC lvl 20 at least. Sounds excessive. They way I see it: if it looks like a modal (I also mean the UI element) it should behave like a modal. If it should work like a per-encounter ability: why not make it a proper per-encounter ability (in UI-form and function)? I think the only reason why it's still implemented as a modal is because modals have cooldowns. While it makes no sense for most druid subclasses to have a modal with a cooldown when it's 1/encounter anyway - it makes sense for the Shifter I guess? But I wonder: can't there be a cooldown for a set of per-encounter abilities, too? Looking at Grimoire switching which induces a cooldown to a set of per-encounter abilities (aka the Wizard's spells). I think that would be more consistent with the rest of the mechanics (if doable). Having a thing that looks like a modal (and would make sense to be a modal) but actually works like a 1/encounter ability is just confusing and inconsistent imo. I'd still prefer the shift to be a true modal, but if not I would also be happy with a per-encounter solution that at least has the proper UI elements and not that weird modal/encounter chimaera. 🤷‍♂️ Greater Wildstrike/Wildstrike Frenzy could add 1 shift per encounter maybe? But that would be weird with Lifegiver I suspect. Also the +5/-5 buff debuff with Life giver shifting really messes up the idea of multiple shifts. I personally would just get rid of it since it's complicated and doesn't really do much - especially since the Druid mostly has HoT and not healing on the spot. HoT gets a severe punch in the crotch when you shift back after casting it. Which is almost always the case because Spiritshift is short and it takes some time to cast HoTs after the shift starts - and HoT's durations become longer and longer. So a lot of ticks will suffer from the -5 PL debuff (effectively -3 because the +2 PL passive will always be on). Maybe just give Lifegiver +3 PL to rejuvenation instead of +2 and +5/-5 - and be done with it? No fuss with shifting and multiple shifts. No abuse of Wall of Draining/SoT + Lifegiver shifting-PLs and so on.

Shattered Pillar was nerfed twice: first the wound limit was set to 5. But that didn't do much because you could still use stuff like Torment's Reach to generate more wounds than it costs. So that nerf wouldn't stop the non-stop spammage of ability-driven attacks which was balance-wrecking. So they decided to only let auto-attacks generate wounds. This did the trick - but they forgot to raise the max wound counter up again. Or they thought both together were a balanced nerf (which it is not but I guess that only becomes obvious once you put some hours into playing it).

Nenio's quest is perhaps the worst experience I've had in a videogame. God damn, I will cheat from now on instead of dealing with those damn puzzles.

really hope they fix the stupid pay to confederate system quest guided confederate are much better

Or maybe get 1 Spiritshift per PL?

One possible route you could consider would be cooldowns. Maybe the druid needs to wait for X duration before their Spiritshift is reset, or maybe they need to cast X spells to reset it.

Tamako Market, episode 8. Choi calls Dera a chicken after he doesn't fit into a bird house Kanna built for him, and has to go on a diet. Whenever something happens that Dera doesn't like, either Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor or Beethoven's 5th symphony starts playing. Can't say this isn't trying its damndest to be appealing. Many of the jokes in this episode made me have an inward laugh. I could appreciate the jokes, but they didn't land for me. Par for the course, I'm beginning to wonder what the difference to K-On! is, because K-On!'s jokes were... funnier? Maybe better timed. No idea, really. Haven't watched Okko's Inn, but the experience sounds familiar. I'm not sure something like this happened before***. Sure, there's plenty of films** (or series) I didn't really enjoy but not hate, but those I can always find flaws with, but this doesn't... really have flaws, outside of being too meandering, perhaps. Only four episodes left, and there wasn't even the barest hint of trying to resolve any of the ongoing minor storylines, i.e. Dera's quest for the princess or Tamako and Mochizo's, uhm, would be romance*. The writing is decent, sometimes good and very occassionally brilliant, there's a lot of effort that went into making this and it doesn't look like dreck (okay, that's debateable, but it looks a bit similar to K-On! which I've grown to, well, maybe not like, but not to... mind, I guess). The voice acting work is good, some of it is great. Kanna and Shiori could be better, but they fit their character, so that's not exactly a problem I can find outside of personal preferences. It just doesn't appeal to me that much. I want it to, but it doesn't. In this episode Tamako and her friends go and buy Choi new clothes because it's autumn and getting colder. That should work for the character stuff, but it doesn't. Not really. edit: The footnotes are out of order because I edited them in out of order and didn't want to shuffle them around, plus there's a certain timeline to follow. *Given that the follow-up film is called Tamako Market: Love Story, I'm not expecting that to be resolved in the series though, to be honest. **I suspect that there are films like that and I just haven't watched them. Like Pretty Woman, for instance. Never saw it, and I most likely never will. If I did, it would probably be similar, given its apparent quality but total lack of appeal for me. ***I just realized that it did. I watched The Devil Wears Prada (at the theater, no less, for reasons I don't want to disclose**** ), and the experience was similar, I guess. I didn't hate it, it was actually a pretty well made film with decent performances all around, but just not my thing. ****

Yes, even though I hate college ball, it was nice to see not-Alabama win. @Keyrock How confident you feeling about the 49ers game?

To be honest the Bear Form due to AR and Boar Form due to 40% lash are about as good. BPM Stag Form has the same carnage as Barbs and +10 all def. All are pretty good (BPM Wolf is meant to spam some knockdown and would fit much less for perma form). But I see your point. Spiritshift may feel a bit too good to get an infinite duration. And not impactful enough to just be 1/ encounter.

Football but not NFL related, congrats Bulldogs.

I'm not sure forced father/daughter incest (editor's note: forced by the daughter, dear reader, in case you don't know what this is about) is any better than a pedophile alicorn bringing little children to his crystal lake where they can only visit when they don't tell their parents about him and the three rapists he saved can watch. Wait, now that I have typed this out, nope, not even Manga!Black Lady is as bad as Pegasus.

Probably has more to do with the volume of things produced and consumed than anything else. The other voracious market for film is India, and they have loads of remakes, including Kaante/Reservoir Dogs, God Tussi Great Ho/Bruce Almighty, Sakar/The Godfather, Players/The Italian Job, Papi Gudia/Child's Play, Akele Hum Akele Tum/Kramer vs Kramer, The Proposal/The Proposal, Mahakaal/A Nightmare on Elm Street, Bang Bang/Knight and Day, Kabzaa/On the Waterfront, Ek Ajnabee/Man on Fire, Sauda/Indecent Proposal, Ghajini/Memento, Satte Pe Satta/Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But most movie making countries have dabbled in remakes (either direct or veiled), including things like: China & Hong Kong (A Simple Noodle Story/Blood Simple, Connected/Celular, What Women Want/What Women Want, The Proposal/The Proposal) Japan (Saidoweizu/Sideways, Yurusarezaru Mono/Unforgiven, Ghost: Mouichido Dakishimetai/Ghost) Italy (Stork Day/Groundhog Day) France (The Next/Assault on Precinct 13, The Beat that My Heart Skipped/Fingers) Russia (12/12 Angry Men, The Thirteen/The Lost Patrol, ) UK (Mean Machine/The Longest Yard, Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming/Silent Night, Bloody Night, The Curse of Frankenstein/Frankenstein (Universal), The Mummy/The Mummy's Tomb & The Mummy's Ghost (Universal)) Nigeria (Masoyiyata Titanic/Titanic)* Turkey (The Man Who Saved the World/Star Wars)* *IIRC both of these incorporate bootleg footage from other films with new footage shot for their VHS and film releases respectively.