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This discussion is exactly why JE Sawyer is burnt out.

Yeah, White March was a massive improvement and Deadfire built on those improvements too. Deadfire is a good game, if it has an intrinsic weakness it's still the Quest for Balance, though it's toned down a lot from PoE1. The irony with that is despite all the balancing you hit the level cap (pet peeve of mine) with about a quarter of the game to go- and it's worse for PoE where I hit the level cap in part 1 of TWM. Most of the issues with PoE1 have been covered- too much of everything, really- but I think that the fundamental problem was, paradoxically, that too much effort was put in. So it was too big, had too much writing, too much combat and everything had been exquisitely balanced. But, balanced gameplay is one of those things that people say that they desperately want, but don't actually want (well, excluding multiplayer type games). What they want is something that is interesting, and not too imbalanced. If you look at well regarded RPGs and hybrids from the late 90s to early 2000 you see... System Shock 2, hopelessly imbalanced; Deus Ex, full of exploits; Baldur's Gate 2, full of exploits and not very balanced; Planetscape: Tournament, where literally (and seemingly literally literally) no one likes the combat. And the successful contemporary RPGs have much the same pattern- the 'fun' of DOS2 is finding the appropriate ludicrous exploit for a particular battle, not its finely balanced systems because they aren't balanced at all.

What ShadySands said in my case. Was very excited for another BG-esque isometric party-based game that was supposed to be a spiritual successor to BG2...BG2, after all, is one of my top ten favorite games of all time and I still enjoy it - and then I actually played it. They had tried to "improve" on so many different things over BG2 that it felt like they'd miss something critical: BG2 was fun...and PoE was not. I couldn't get into PoE's new setting, I couldn't get into the writing style, I couldn't get into the voice direction, and most importantly, the gameplay made me want to curl up and die because of how annoying and demanding every single battle was, no matter how minor. I didn't even consider buying the second game - not unless it had a completely different set of creative leads at the helm. But I do wish it did better, since people clearly loved the series and got something out of it that I didn't, and I obviously want the isometric CRPG genre to not be completely dead.

I've just got an invitation to join the Illuminati. It's a little strange that they'd recruit people from random e-mail addresses, but that's probably because they require a leap of faith or something. I'm sure nothing bad will come out of giving them my credit card details, right?

An ungoshly amount of filler battles that takes so long to get through. The BG series had hundreds of filler battles...but they usually only took literally maybe 30 to 60 seconds to get through. In PoE, they still take just about as much time and consideration as a "real" battle, and it's such a danged drag when it just keeps happening endlessly. You would really have to enjoy the core combat mechanics in order for that not to be an issue, and I just...don't.

Would you say the part added great value to the film? That Gollum was...precious? ... ... I'll get me coat.

For me, Pillars' biggest misstep was the ungodly amount of filler battles you had to suffer through. Also, there were so many enemies that would teleport around the battlefield that tactical positioning of your meat shields to protect your squishies was meaningless. Also also, I don't remember if tank classes had aggro pulling skills, but if they did then they weren't worth a damn, because I surely would have used them and I couldn't hold aggro on my tanks.

The writing clearly suffered from the "more = better" crap that was going on back then. I still blame Planescape: Torment for this. We all thought that more text = better rpg, because of a single miracle case of a game that came out like 20 years ago. Oh boy how wrong we were. Turns out it's really not the amount of text, but the quality of text that matters. Lots of the stuff in PoE1 could have been cut out and nothing of value would have been lost. Stuff like reading the "souls" or whatever that was didn't help it either..

Four and a half thousand year old board game uncovered and played. I have a fondness for board and card games, so it was a lot of fun to watch.

Shroud of the Phantasm does indeed work. The 4 living illusions die very quickly from having very little health and will proc the raw damage from Effigy's Husk, the shock damage from Least Unstable Coil, and the attacks from Effort's Valiant Demise (obviously not Vengeful Defeat or Carnage procs). Oddly, though, the attacks from Valiant Demise have just the base 7 penetration- no bonus penetration from the weapon quality. No idea why the copies get Effort's attack on death perk but not the bonus penetration. So the net effect right now is that the damage is pretty paltry other than Effigy's Husk's raw damage. If these items do get their scaling fixed it could be pretty potent, though.

I guess you'll be back in time for AoT and Stone Ocean. If you feel like coming back early or need help with a game, feel free to give a ring on the frog. This is a bit much to respond to and I don't think a meme or aping our beloved fascist would be appropriate, so I'll just say thanks that was interesting to read. .... .... .... .... Ok just a few things, no read @Bartimaeus !

I don't have much sympathy for other white people whose takeaway from the news that people of colour and other minorities have been disadvantaged by the history of their country is 'man I'm tired of hearing this.' As many people of colour have said, (not me, I'm white!) 'You may be tired of hearing it, but I guarantee we're more tired of living it.' Also, in many cases developed nations have directly contributed to wrecking developed nations and causing situations people want to flee from, so no, I wouldn't take that as evidence we've 'done something right.'

Ngati's Tusk is really nice too, especially with CC support : you are in the melee but you are also a debuff! Pikes and Quaterstaffs get a really good reach with Monk's Instruments of Pain by the way , and I prefer Shea's War Staff rather than Chromoprismatic because I multiclass monk with caster and I have the impression that profit as well for both MC parts. Really good weapon with Forbidden First - Skald in my experience.

I played it approx 2 years ago, and I have enjoyed it. But as you have seen around, it is hit or miss, for me it was big hit

Also: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it…”

A few random points about the current topic (I was going to post more, but then I finished reading the whole thing and realized much of what I said had already been said) - I think its easy to forget that people feel loss more keenly than gain. A lot of people - rightly or wrongly - feel that popularity of a thing makes that thing less special. I think this fuels a lot of the antagonism fans have against other fans; its less about the 'fake fan' and more about fear at the prospect of losing ones own fandom by having it transformed into something you don't recognize. Its less about the fake fan and more about the fan with the issue, really. I think I've mentioned here that fans obsessions can be a bit off putting if you're not a part of the fandom - I've never read A Song of Ice and Fire - even back when I was reading a lot more than I am now - because fans (around the time the second book came out?) turned me off of it (after being told about how great it was that it was gritty and realistic and the singular description of why it was gritty and realistic was that it had a brother ****ing his sister and a lot of death.) I also left a Doctor Who group because the leadership decided at a convention to make fun of Pern dancers. I may not get other fandoms, but I'm not going to mock other people for it. I admit that part of why I haven't gravitated towards more recent animes is...I'm not really that big of a fan (ha) of what I perceive (rightly or wrongly) as the modern fanservice elements in it. Sure, Cobra has had nudity in it, but the nudity has been (so far at least) appropriately situational. Arguably a bit gratuitous, but contextually it makes sense and doesn't detract from the narrative, really. Its probably a lack of experience with modern product, so I'm really put off by my perception of a lot of current anime that may or may not actually be accurate, but I haven't been interested by what I've seen that seems to indicate that fanservice (upskirts that aren't even disguised as coming from a contextually appropriate camera angle to frame action or story, jiggly breasts jiggling all the jiggling time, etc) is at an all time high. It probably doesn't help that there's a certain type of modern character design I don't really like either - which may be a product of growing up on 70s and early 80s anime designs.

I thought I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the discussion as it all kind of falls outside of my domain, but majestic raised an issue I've had a thought on for many years: I really don't think there is much any difference in the way "jocks" and "nerds" (and the other groups that loosely fall into those two labels respectively) view people - women, people of different culture/race, ideology, whatever. Specifically in regards to women, if anything, I think the "nerds" might be even worse than the "jocks", because it seems like the nerds idealize, fantasize, and objectify in all sorts of manners the subjects of their affection which very often seems to create all sorts of really demeaning or even outright possessive views towards them...and never mind not ever being able to form normal boundaries and behaviors towards them. The jocks that "get the girls", on the other hand, at least actually have to try and manage their relationships with those girls to some degree, and that theoretically should help see women as real people...sometimes, eventually? It really depends on how far gone an individual is regardless of which side they happen to fall in - you definitely don't want to be on the extreme fringe either way you go. For this sort of thing (not limited to just the way men see women), interacting with others that aren't like you and being empathetic towards them is probably the best cure-all for just seeing everyone for what they are...normal people. You might still hate dealing with most of them, but you should at least realize that the majority of them are really not much different from each other regardless of which groups any given individual might fall in. In contrast, parasocial relationships, whether about real or fictional people, would not seem to ever really be healthy when taken to such an extreme, IMO.

What a brilliant move that was and so ahead of its time with things like LGBT and other " taboo" subjects. I remember my parents and uncles telling me how it was considered " immoral, un-Christian and pernicious to young minds " so it was banned by the Apartheid government but they still all got to watch it before it was banned Here are some fun facts about this classic movie https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/The_Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show/Fun_Facts

Meh, too easy. France, England and Spain in that order. Next...

I dunno, I think the other isometric games of the time did well enough for that not to be the issue. I mean, I didn't like PoE very much but I still gave Deadfire a shot and thought that it was much better in most respects. Maybe others didn't give Deadfire a chance not because of isometric but because of the first game.

It is indeed incredibly from how little so much can follow. I've probably spent as much time in these threads posting about the things I've watched than actually watching them overall, and in some selected cases a whole lot of time more. You can bet writing about Sailor Moon Crystal took at least twice as long as watching it, but probably more like three or four times as long. That Sailor Moon Eternal post took a total of six hours or so. In a way your watching Sailor Moon was one of the best things to happen to my entertainment consumption in recent years. Sure, there's some crap - okay, make that a lot of crap - I've had to sit through as a result (mostly indirectly), but also a lot of great stuff too, more than I would normally have found. Speaking of comfort zones, have I ever mentioned that watching Steven Universe was that for me? I wouldn't have touched that with a ten foot pole simply because of its looks and the plot blurbs one can find, and it ended up one of the best things I've watched in a long time - and probably the best Western animated TV show I've watched. Yeah, scratch that probably. While I still can say a whole lot about its quality, the distinction is fairly meaningless though to be honest. I don't think I've actually... watched a whole lot else outside of Galaxy Rangers and Bravestarr, and while I liked the sci-fi element of those when I was kid and they were on TV, I was rather not treated to the condescending moralizing that is present in these. Overcoming preconceived notions isn't easy, even when you're used to questioning yourself and your motivations. Funny how that quote was the reason for the essay and I forgot to add it. How silly of me. Time to fix that! That's fine. It's a fun little show that I already find has too short a runtime, although I don't know how long you could possible draw out that concept. In a way it's probably good that it only has 13 episodes, but it could have had 26 or something before growing stale, I think. There are films or TV shows that I like in spite of that making no sense to anyone, and not me either. Yeah, you posted that before and @Bartimaeus replied that he appreciates the art more than whatever else artstyle we were talking about at the time, something about a wandering elf wondering about human existence or learning to appreciate humans beyond the usual elven racism, but I don't remember what it was and I can't find the post right now.

Thoughts and prayers for Obsidian Engineer recovering from tuberculosis.

Remember my two drones? I made them bigger, because it's funny. Then I found out how to duplicate that glitch. So I could have four. But... ...that's a little too big. ...and that's a little too small. ...that's about right. ...but somehow, maybe not as much fun as a single giant one.

Judging by the portrait, in Expeditions: Rome, you can play a hobbit wizard: If you can't come up with a character name, just play a woman. They don't get names. Though I am pretty certain that randomly generated nickname is calling me a bitch: You start on a boat. Which seems to be every other game these days. With teenage Caesar as a tutorial npc. Someone should have told them that a Teenage Werewolf in Expeditions: Rome does not make for a good movie title. At least my boat has pretty green eyes: And it seems I have my own patreon already set up:

Well, here goes a follow up. Warning, contains some more discussion of porn. Minor follow up to the discussion about anime and subculture: edit: Yeah, that was it.

Frieren at the Funeral? Yeah now that you said it I remember I posted it before. My memory is sometimes so random... I remember things from my childhood, but on the other hand I forget things from an hour ago.

Meat Loaf... No more bats out of hell for you 😢 🔥🦇 Edit:...

US bombed Tabqa Dam in Syria despite being on a no bomb list. With 3 2000 lb bombs, no less. That's the small matter of 9.6 km^3 of water that could have been released down a densely populated river valley. They also then droned three of the experts sent to repair it, during a truce, and swore blind that no bomb had been dropped and no one had been droned... If one hadn't been a dud that would likely have resulted in the largest single incident civilian death toll since Hiroshima if not since the Tokyo fire bombing. To be fair, it was the notorious Talon Anvil task force- which systematically abused command and control shortcuts and completely disregarded civilian casualties- that ordered the strike rather than the normal chain of command, so it's just possible that the command did not know about it at the time. But if anything having rogue operators trying to kill 100,000+ people without knowledge let alone oversight from command is worse than command merely lying about it.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/625546847907364864/hello-i-dont-play-many-games-i-never-played Maybe this?

Kind of? S6 spoilers for anyone lagging, no book spoilers though as I haven't read them

After waiting for a year, it is frustrating to then see devs charge 2x for a Steam copy then an Epic copy. It is not the end of the world. I installed the game through GamePass and will buy it later down the line on deep sale. Now if only IOI wouldn't hold my saves hostage through their always online nonesense. I think @BruceVC that you will be happy to learn that as Hitman3 didn't give me the expected £35 pricepoint, I decided to spend this money on God of War instead. 🙂

Hmmm maybe it wasn't Something Awful that Sawyer said that on. Here's basically All The Stuff He's Said Since POE2 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3856099&userid=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 Notable entries that are kinda about 'that stuff I mentioned'. "This is one of the causes for me being burned out on directing these games. I don't write things to be contrarian or subversive, but nor do I really have any particular interest in conforming to the way in which fantasy stories are most commonly told. You don't fight Eothas in a boss battle at the end of the game because the focus of the story was always on figuring out what he was doing and dealing with implacable gods. If I had wanted it to be sUbVeRsIvE, I would have set the player up for a fight and pulled the rug out from under them. I knew that some players might expect to fight Eothas, but what would the right course have been? To decide that the story isn't really about dealing with implacable gods, but actually about beating the **** out of them? That you should fight some other manifestation of Eothas for no particular reason? Telling the player explicitly that he can't be defeated (which we strongly suggested, but players habitually ignore anyway)? I don't think I'm particularly clever or novel. I don't make these choices in an effort to wow/stun people with my radical takes. The stories I help develop focus on exploring ideas more than they focus on big confrontations. At times, that can be against genre conventions, but I'm not doing it to blow your ****in' mind, man. In the case of Deadfire, it just didn't feel appropriate to fight Eothas. Maybe that was just the wrong story to tell or I set up to be told in a poor manner. " "And to put this all in perspective, the first game sold pretty well. The second game cratered on release and slowly picked up steam, finally becoming profitable in early 2020 (IIRC). Both games reviewed very well. Whether you think it's justified or not, they are the most (professionally) highly-rated Obsidian games to date. Professional reviews of the game were strong and it still sold poorly, both compared to the first title and compared to our competitors. Frankly, PF:Kingmaker, DOS2, and BG3 are all wildly outperforming Deadfire. I've said this before, but if we ever revisit the Pillars universe in this "style" of game, I think it will mean re-examining our approach. If the conclusion is to that we need to change the formula and the format significantly, it draws into question why we would even go back to the series. " Neither of those were quite what I was thinking of, so maybe it was in his tumblr

Speaking of food...I've reached this point with my diet routine where I can almost forget I technically have T2 diabetes. As long as I keep to: less than 25-30 net carbs per day for at least an average of 5 days a week (not hard, salad and meat), eat once or twice a day (don't constantly pop little bits of food in your piehole every hour) , I seem to be fine. No insulin. No other meds. Blood sugar rating generally 100-125 fasting or 140-150 after (most) meals. Once or twice a week I may eat a couple dark chocolate bars or binge-chow a bag of pepperoni sticks, or have some ramen, pizza couple times a month or whatever. So most of the time it's like just staying in this higher "pre-diabetes" range. Guess I don't have a super advanced case so as long as I don't binge-eat junk a lot it's easy for me to manage it with ez tweaks.

First person Arcanum with a dialogue wheel and sexy elf romance. And VATS.

Not quite as the Nicaean Council… close but not quite

HA! Good Fun!

Ah, hell. I have an excuse, it is almost 3 am here. *cough* *cough*

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