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I decided to splurge a bit on those Black Friday sales... bought myself a plot of land in Scotland and I'm now officially Lord <real name> (no, not Lord Gorth!) Also pledged a bit of money to their tree planting efforts

It is a strong recommendation for member countries, so if they all publicly agree with it, then it starts to have at least some weight. Here is the NATO document. The relevant bit is #19.i.: https://www.nato-pa.int/download-file?filename=/sites/default/files/2022-11/RESOLUTION 479 - NATO POST MADRID .pdf

That one RGB-less Noctua fan sitting right in the middle of the RGB extravaganza must be feeling very confused.

What's wrong with me? I now have 99 hours in Fallout 4. The only reason I picked it up again was because I heard great things about Far Harbor and wanted to give that a second chance. I'm almost 100 hours in and have not gone to that accursed island. I'm building themed robots to do supply chains between settlements... I have time management issues.

First off, game is amazing, by far one of the best releases this year, and I'm loving every minute of gameplay. But there are a few things that I feel like might need adjusting, and a few potential ideas that I coudl see adding more fun to the game for relatively little effort. Balance Tweaks and fixes 1. Resource drop rates from black widows. Considering there are only 3 respawning widows on the map, the rates for widow fangs and super spider venom need to be adjusted. My buddy and I just spent an entire play session killing widow after widow (4 in total, including the one in the undershed), just to get enough resources to make a single widow dagger - an item that is needed for resource progression. With how hard the widows are to fight, and how few there are on the map, these spiders don't seem like they are meant to be an enemy you farm. If that's the case, they need to drop more of their unique resources, or the recipies that require those resources need to use less of them. 2. The Sour Staff. Love the magic staves, but the sour staff in particular does not respect friendly fire rules, meaning that the sparking ball is shoots out can and will injure not only teamates, but event he caster themselves, even with friendly fire turned off. This makes it nigh impossible to use safely in most fights. 3. The Bird-bath zipline anchor. There is a single pre-generoated anchor located near the bird-bath, but for whatever reason it will only connect to ziplines from inside the hedge. This would be fine, except that there is no way to carry weed stems up to a viable location inside the hedge without building large structures up to the branches. Going backwards from main lab complex there is a gap that can only be crossed in one direction via a zipline, and going forwards from the research station, any materials sent along the ziplines have too much inertia and go flying off onto the ground as soon as the reach the end of the line. 4. Picnic table front edge. The presence of angry bees along the entire front edge of the table makes it effectively impossible to set up a safe zipline to the top of the table. As soon as you get close on the zipline, the bees aggro onto you and throw you off the zipline. There is also a science location inside the soda can on this side of the table that is impossible to reach without building - something that is quite difficult to do when the only way to get materials up to the location is by passing through a gauntlet of angry bees on the rear of the table, who inevitably knock all the resources our of your arm. Some suggested additions 1. Some sort of endgame totem or item used to disable bug spawns in an area around it. There are a few locations around the map, such as the inside of the oak tree, that would be amazing endgame bases, but even once it becomes trivial to clear them out, there is currently no way to prevent insects from respawning in these locations. Obviously this is on purpose - dangerous areas are meant to remain dangerous. but an endgame item, with limited or no renewability that allows you to prevent spawns and set up shop in one of these locations would be a great addition and reward for long-term play. 2. "Secret" Character perks for each of the 4 teens. Nothing huge, but a fun, secret perk that each of the teens can unlock near the end of the game, which is unique to that teen, would be very cool. Obviously Pete could have some sort of bonus to the wizard gear, and Willow might get a bonus while using Black widow equipment. These would be fun, flavorful additions that play off the personality of each teen.

I went to my doctor for a general checkup and everything is green across the board. HUZZAH! But being male, and of a certain age, for the first time I had to undergo an uncomfortable procedure.

It's the only AAA RPG of the past ~15 years I played and enjoyed without any reservation (well, with the exception of the so-so gunplay). Luckily I've yet to play all the DLC yet, and they're said to be some of the best ever developed. But look what's happened since even with Fallout in isolation. (The devs of these games increasingly develop RPGs for players who aren't actually that into the once core values of the genre in an attempt to ever increase their target audience). Fallout New Vegas should have spawned at least a few AAA games that tried to top it at its own game -- but no. Speaking of which, I've yet to play Outer Worlds too. But what I've seen about it, it seems a stripped down and lesser version of NV (and there's even a quest compass leading you all over the place like witcher sensing breadcrumbs, despite the game not even being open world as such -- bugbear of mine). As there's more choice now than there was when NV came out, I went with different games so far.

OK you are still extremely not getting it, I'll try to break it down into components. First, he makes fun of lifestyle gurus. Second, he is a lifestyle guru. What I'm trying to draw the reader towards here, is the implication that as well as being unfunny and a moronic antivaxxer, he's a hypocrite. This is lampshaded by my sarcastic suggestion that he is trying to indicate that he is not a big fraud like the lifestyle gurus he makes fun of. (The implication is that, in fact, he IS a big freaking fraud.) And no, I have not watched the video from earlier because it has been my experience that they are terrible, much like he, as a person, is terrible. EDIT: What's the gif from/about?

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/uk-sends-brimstone-2-missiles-to-ukraine-to-counter-russian-invasion/ar-AA14o5sf The UK has sent one of its most advanced missiles to Ukraine, the Brimstone 2

Very probably will get this as soon as it's available https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27gr95qe-b

Blood sausage is best when it is fresh from the cooker while it is still hot and creamy. Put on a plate, cut it open, enjoy with some sauerkraut and/or potatoes. If you don't make your own blood sausages (well, who does, it's predictably a rather bloody business ) and have no access to someone offering freshly cooked ones (difficult unless you live close to someone who still hosts a Schlachtfest - or as we call it, a Sautanz), this can be reproduced in some easy steps. Offer one blood sausage to the sausage gods. Cut it up, boil in water for a while, then reduce heat, add the blood sausages and wait until they're hot. Serve with sauerkraut and potatoes, add a mustard of your choice or freshly grated horseradish if you want. Result should look like this: Offering that initial sausage to the gods is an important step though, don't do this with regular water. You'll lose taste. Pretty sure I posted that already.

Outside the amazing interface/HUD (which sadly hasn't caught on), and a few funny limbs cutting, Dead Space has always been what System Shock was like had Michael Bay been responsible for it. It was so linear, so flashy, loud, dumb and so repetitive so fast, I never fully finished it. No wonder it was such a big hit tho.

NATO Parliamentary Assembly Designates Russia Terrorist Regime https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/21/7151071/ anyone know, how much weight this has in the international “waters”? Especially with the fact that no one voted against, nor abstained.

I don't get why majestic is all about that chipmunk pop. I mean, yeah, it's legit horrendous, but he watches anime and girls there are often squeakier and pitchier than...whatever those novelty projects are. Not to mention aural diabetes of typical anime and JRPG soundtracks Aaaanyway, speaking of Rammstein's covers. Tidal brought me this today and I am obliged to share:

Yes all three of those classes can work. But fighters and rangers can get multiple attacks which rogues cannot, and that in my Solasta-playing experience makes a huge difference. All of Solasta is capped at level 12.

Uh, why are you giving him ideas?

Free and Open Source (AGPL v3), source code on Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/noqn/apotheosis Windows Download: https://gitlab.com/noqn/apotheosis/-/jobs/artifacts/main/download?job=publish_win-x64 Linux Download: https://gitlab.com/noqn/apotheosis/-/jobs/artifacts/main/download?job=publish_linux-x64

Well, first Steam specific thread I found, so arise. Steam Sale starts today That made me laugh.

Outer Worlds definitely has the feel of New Vegas. It is a much smaller scale, but the writing and characters are all fantastic in the same way.

Any comparison to NV is a very surface level one. I think a better comparison would be Bioware title - multiple self-contained worlds that can be completed in any order and with couple outcomes to choose from. It’s a bit more complex then that but not by much.

It's not a bad game, and yeah, some of the design is cool. As said, the interface and HUD is AMAZING to this day. It's fully integrated into the game experience, with everything shown in a very non-instrusive way, rather than how things have evolved since. It's as if Looking Glass Studios and their gradual evolution to Thief had died for nothing with games CONSTANTLY reminding that you're just playing a stupid video game. Dead Space: Next-Gen AAA Gaming (this isn't actually Elden Ring, but a popular mock of how Elden Ring would have looked liked had it been developed by Ubisoft et all).

I want three of them! But realistically I'll probably have to settle for one to start with, and progressively replace my other two monitors as OLED pricing drops.

Some updates: Conversation & Quest node links can now be deleted, just click the red button: If there's only one remaining link to a node, a confirmation popup will be displayed. If the last link to a node is deleted, the node will still remain in the Nodes list but won't be accessible from the GUI. (I'm not sure that I want to implement some clean-up logic here, maybe at some point expose a list of all nodes and let the user manually delete unplaced nodes from there?) Regarding String Tables (including some stuff I've not documented yet because lazyness) If a mod has StringTable entries with indexes that exceed the highest vanilla indexes, then the lowest of those indexes would be used as the "mod start index". If the user tries to add a new entry and a start index hasn't been detected, a new value between 1'000'000 and 2'000'000'000 will be assigned instead. (Always ending with '000' to indicate in the stringtable files that it's the start index). After that, the new StringTable entries will be added starting from that index. High values and wide ranges are necessary to minimize the risk of mods generating overlapping keys, but won't look nice in the editor... I've now made it so that if a start index is detected, entries exceeding that number will be shortened down to "k+x" in the gamedata editor, where x is the offset from the start index. An example from Spoils of Caed Nua:

I'm sorry, I had to fix that, that was just too low quality and worse (unforgivably!), it didn't loop correctly.

lol what? Read what I wrote again, because this absolutely does not relate to the post you're quoting.

Apart from being terroristic, the current Russian regime is also inhuman towards its own. There is already ample evidence for it, so whether this story turns out to be exaggerated or not does not make much difference. But it is, yet again, an awful story. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/21/russians-accused-of-burning-bodies-at-kherson-landfill Also, info on Russian equipment losses. Serious stuff:

Narutaru 9-13 Well that was something. Unfortunately it appears that the anime was only half of the story and I'll have to finish it with the manga. The anime could stand on its own in many ways.....but I think it introduced a few too many elements that entice with mystery and haven't been delved into. And for some reasons, everytime I see Hoshimaru I laugh. The deadpan expression when he shows up just sets me off.

I love any Blood sausage for breakfast, sliced thin and cooked in oil make an excellent accompaniment for bacon and eggs

Now you sound like Scott Morrison

Yeah none of these studios' websites have anything on their games in production. Here's a recent article with parts of an interview of Warren Spector who was recently hired by OtherSide Entertainment. He's working on a completely different game in their new Austin, Texas studio, whereas the D&D game is being made by their Boston studio. That game is referenced in the second hald of the story in the link: https://wccftech.com/warren-spector-says-nfts-are-ridiculous-dd-game-is-going-well/

This one is hell of an interesting translation

Are you a disenfranchised Dead Space fan? Do you miss cutting off limbs? Are you looking for a spooky atmospheric game filled with tension that's IN SPAAAAAACE? Striking Distance has you covered.

Speed Racer - The Most Dangerous Race (Part 1) Speed finally meets Snake Oiler and the gang of stunt racers (of evil) before the deadliest race ever (think Ice Road Truckers, but with cars and jumping from mountaintop to mountain top and stuff). Racer X warns Speed about how to be careful, Spritle and Chim-Chim do reconnaissance, Speed angrily roughs up Sparky for no reason and Trixie has to deal with floozies throwing themselves at Speed. Spritle and Chim-Chim bring information about a mod that will help Speed compete with the trick racers, but Pops collapses before he can complete it, leaving Speed to complete it alone and rush to the starting line... Above, Speed obliviously signs autographs, while below Trixie reacts. Chim-Chim and Spritle, when scouting, disguise themselves and use a jalopy...for reasons...

That's the weakness of the game's "loop". Running from place to place and triggering dialogue is basically the name of the game. And some kind of "backtracking" is a given in any game that doesn't treat its gameworld as levels, but a confined space (System Shock 2, Prey, Alien:Isolation too, and that's wonderful in there). The "reward" of this is that you are getting as familiar with this place and its characters as if you had actually kinda "lived" there. And there's a payoff for that in the end, without spoiling. However, maybe some sort of fast travel from the map, say from town to abbey and stuff, would still improve things a bit. As would (optionally) highlighting on the map where the crucial path lies, and what your next stop is to progress things further. It didn't bother me enough to become a major annoyance, as the game is this decelerated an experience in general. I heard from some that they had finished this in like 10 - 11 hours. Personally it took me ~23-24. Not only did I backtrack to check for whether there was new (optional) dialogue. On the occasion, I simply stood in the game's forest, and listened and adored the ambience... I recently described Pentiment as less of a traditional game, and more of a mood experience.

"Random system", as if that is not a shot of your rig.

Phrases like 'blue lives matter' and 'all lives matter' didn't exist until the phrase 'black lives matter' started to be used to talk about how black people were frequently killed by police without repercussions. Both phrases are intended not to try to highlight the plight of 'all' or 'blue' lives, but as a direct reaction against a group of people grieving that their lives are seemingly not valued as much as others around them. One key difference between Pedro's comments and Gina's is that Trump is a racist person who made a number of racist remarks and attracted a disproportionately large number of racist followers. Among his supporters were: Two men who beat up a Latino immigrant while saying 'Donald Trump was right.' https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/16/us/trump-supporters-immigrant-beating/index.html (Trump's response was that his supporters were very passionate.) Men who rallied shouting 'Jews will not replace us.' https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-protest-white-nationalist.html (Trump said there were very fine people on both sides.) David Duke https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/1/31/neo-nazis-and-white-supremacists-celebrate-trumps-sotu The Daily Stormer https://www.salon.com/2018/01/16/white-supremacists-to-trump-welcome-back-we-still-love-you/ Usually when people talk about conservative viewpoint being 'persecuted', it means something like 'when I express my horrible opinions, people criticise me.' Pedro's comparison is apt, Gina's is misguided at best, intentionally dishonest at worst. Side note, and I am relatively confident that this will have been explained to you in detail before, but the concept of 'freedom of speech' refers only to the freedom from legal consequences from your speech. It has nothing to do with how a private company reacts to what you choose to say. A private company is allowed to use what you say to determine if your values align with their own, and that is as it should be. If someone decided to express their 'political opinion' that vaccines are a conspiracy run by a cabal of evil Jews who also control the weather, it should be totally fine to fire that person. (And it is.)

I edited this in to the previous post: I consider myself someone that's pretty sensitive to framing. If a character is having an emotional moment and then suddenly you unnecessarily cut down to her chest, congratulations, you've ruined the scene as well was whatever was going on with her, I simply no longer care just as the show obviously doesn't care if it's going to pull that crap. If two characters are supposed to be in love, but never freaking show it and instead they just tell you it over and over instead, I'm not going to buy it. If a character is a child (either literally or even just personality-wise) and starts getting involved with someone that should really clearly be a parent figure but instead inexplicably takes on a creepy sort of adult love interest, you better either avert that somehow or I'm probably going to barf. And...(Evergarden movie spoilers)

I don't think the game is pro feminism man hating propaganda, but I would be lying if I say I didn't notice a lot of the things the OP is mentioning. Who is the villain? Eothas technically.... one of the depicted as male gods. Which gods get the most screen time by far? The female aspect of Berath (only see the male version in opening), Hylea, Magran, Ondra, and Woedica. All female. Wael is up there too, and seems to have a male voice, but.... yeah. Abyddon felt oddly absent and seemed to have no care of White March events, Galawain was practically missing, Skaen had little presence too as anything other than a Woedica lackey, and Rymrgand definitely went more cruel/evil in his screentime, which was fairly short. When you break down the God genders there are more male gods, five specifically. But two of them are Skaen and Rymrgand who at this point can clearly be defined as evil, then there is Eothas which is a whole other thing. There are meanwhile 4 female gods (Ondra is beginning to push it, but only Woedica is clearly evil and to be fair the "god of law and rule" being clearly evil feels like a political statement), and two gender neutral gods Berath who is both, and Wael who is ... Wael. Then you look at faction leaders. There are technically six potential faction leaders. Aeldys, Furrante, Onekaza, Karu, Alvari, and Castol. Four of them are women. Only two of the four main factions have leaders that can't be overthrown from within, both of them are lead by women. Both of the factions that can overthrow their leader are lead by men, even if one of the "overthrows" felt tacked on and sort of out of place. Of all the faction leaders in favor of slavery/working with the slavers, there are only two. I will let guess which two. Also the leader of the slavers? Yeah, it's a man. It get's worse if you check out who leads the various Amaua groups in game, cause there are three outsider groups beyond the main factions. Tikiwara, Port Maje Amaua, and another group I won't mention as this is the spoiler free forum. All but one of them is lead by a woman, and the only leader who is considered incompetent by their tribe is... you guessed it, the lone man. So yes, I can easily understand someone thinking there is a hidden agenda happening here. I don't think there is, but I can see it. For example you could argue the female gods get so much representation because Eothas is the main antagonist and they didn't want all the screentime going to male gods. Also Galawain and Abyddon got a lot of play in the last game, and one of the biggest sidequests and backer beta was knee deep in Skaen. The faction leader stuff is a lot harder to explain, especially considering I have posts claiming Aeldys is the only reasonable faction leader from a morality standpoint. The Amaua being only lead by women seems a bit odd too, I hoping Josh has some cultural backstory reason there.

Feminism is about giving both sexes the same possibilities if they are able to perform them, and not limit them simply by being the wrong sex. Nowhere do you hate men because you're a feminist. The only thing it's about is allowing everyone the same chances in life. It's not about getting people to do something they're not capable of doing, it's giving them the right to do the job if they CAN do it. How do people have issues with this?

Several people have said that. Why is it a problem to discuss an idea, even a bad idea (or, maybe, especially a bad idea)? Seriously, have you read the arguments against the points of the OP? What are you concerned about? Do you think that people can't understand an argument and come to a reasonable conclusion? Do you not understand that censorship has the opposite effect from what you want it to have? Do you just not understand that if you can censor someone else, then others will censor you?

Well I wouldn't say the game is 'man hating', but there is definately a progressive political lens, compared to the first game. It's made with a conciousness of those particular ideologies. I wouldn't say it's quite star wars hatred of classical thinking level, but there are anti-traditionalist, pro-progress, anti-religious, anti-commerce, anti-colonial, anti-caste themes, drips of intersectionality - the tribalism is through a species metaphor, and doesn't exist at the racial level, the impact of bio sex on behaviour is minimised (which it always is to some degree in some fantasy, but moreso in poe2 and dragon age, than forgotten realms or conan). I got a hint of a transgender type of subplot with one of the companions as well, and some environmentalism too. Xoti is a bit of an exception, because she's warm. I think she might be the only warm or vulnerable female NPC I encountered in the game. For whatever reason though, she's very flirty but I was never able to produce a full romantic relationship with her. Might be a bug, IDK, or perhaps you need 5 reputation or something or maybe that's how they intended it. But warm and or vulnerable is a big no no in feminist inspired writing, so it's not _entirely_ progressive. I am not sure what the source of these is - the creative team, the backer process, the gaming media and the modern establishment, or some combination but it exists. Some people will like that, others will not. For me, I am just not sure it's a direction that is conscious of it's broader audience. I think it's still a great game, and because of the focus on choice, the player doesn't need to align with these ways of thinking. So apart from some awkward flirting, or some preachy dialogue, you don't _have_ to take that route. I don't know that this was anything conscious however. TBH, it's hard to write moral tales for the modern audience. You have this increasing political divide, with the new right, new centrists and then progressives, and they have completely different ideas what makes a moral right. How do you write to that? But I think this is an element that gives some players pause. It's not however the biggest criticism I could level at the game (which would be the ending, that lacks any features of a normal story - character faces challenge, character grows, character overcomes challenge - here the character feels more like a witness than a participant in the main story arc - in the side stories, not so much, there you participant fully, and grow, and so do the NPCs and the world). It's a story based game, and there is some good writing, but the main arc feels more like a setup for a future game, than a story unto itself.

It's better to have the discussion. Shutting it down makes it look like you don't have an argument and this one wasn't even difficult. I don't know if the OP is a troll or a misogynist or none of the above but we can let the arguments stand or fall based on the facts.

You are free to dislike the game, but Obsidian is not responsible for whatever craziness exists in the world, both real and imagined. They are certainly not responsible for how you imagine a hypothetical group of people would have reacted had the game been different. To your specific criticism, in this world there are 5 male deities, 4 female deities, 1 deity with no identifiable gender and 1 twinned deity with a male aspect and female aspect. This mirrors many real world religions but you are, of course, free to be offended by any of it. What do you think is the is the problem with the above setup and how would you fix it? Most gods that you see and talk to in the game are female and berath almost exclusively uses Pallid knight form, ugliest or most hideous god is male, You mentioned Skaen earlier. You also meet Abydon, Galawain, Rymrgand and, of course, Eothas. In addition, Ondra would give Skaen a run for for his money in the ugliest god competition. You are seeing what you expect to see not what is there. The head of Port Maje is male, the jailor is female. The heads of two of the four factions are male and have a female second in command, the other two heads are female with a male second in command. Some ship captains are male and some are female. Etc. Male characters are unlikable? Eder, Serafen? YMMV but I don't find them unlikable. Aloth is grumpy but so is Pallegina. Again, I think you made up your mind before you saw the data and have not noticed the aspects that contradict what you expected to see (an all too common tendency these days). The objective truth is there are likable and unlikable characters of both genders and powerful and weak characters of both genders. If you go through the game and count them, you can verify this for yourself (though reasonable people can disagree on what they find likeable). I don't know if it has influenced them. I also don't know if fear from backlash by anti-sjws has influenced them. They should really ignore all of the noise and write what they want to write.