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In the first 15 seconds of this video, Lavrov does a pretty good sit-down comedy routine, and the audience laughs appropriately.

Guys... lets move the general politics discussion to the general politics thread... (going to move some posts) Edit: I think the bulk of stuff not related to Ukraine and/or Russia is moved to the politics thread now

Starfield got release date: September 6th, 2023 On June 11th there will be "Starfield Direct" showcasing the game in detail, so we will learn what it is, and if there is anything worth looking forward to.

Really excited, and really anxious about this one at the same time...

https://www.techpowerup.com/305609/gsc-game-world-to-show-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-2-at-gdc-2023#comments S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 is going to be released and its looks excellent, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 1 was overall my best post-apocalyptic game ever. Even better than METRO by a little bit So I will definitely be getting this

As I suspected Fire absorbing foes are immune to Light of Pure Zeal. I tested it with a Flame Naga (after removing the condition for LoPZ). Probably due to the "low fire AR" of the flame naga but still. I plan to change LoPZ this way : - 4 zeal (as already implemented by BPM) - 0.8s/4.s cast/recovery (no change) - 100 heal (no change) - 66-84 damages vs everything (equivalent to 3 Immolation ticks). So less damaging than currently but universal. I'm leaving the anti-vessels anti-spirit part altogether because I feel the spell might have been slightly too powerful vs them. Note that with Zeal cost down from 5 to 4 in BPM, this is roughly equivalent vs vessels and spirits as vanilla. - 10 PEN +4 intresic as Tier 9 ability (no change) - Cold/Shock damages for the reasons mentionned before. Pals need something not fire based. Call it "celestial" - Adding Frost and Electricity Keyword to the ability and attack for itemization. Now SC Chromoprismatic Pal could be a thing (style bonus point if Bleak Walker for using all elements) Indeed, it is a known hardcore bug when multiple sources of + duration. I left it because it honnestly doesn't break the game. That is worth reading. Personally, I find that LoH "does its job", as cheap pseudo-emergency healing (though as pointed, not as efficient as BDD to save someone). It heals in the 100ish in the scaling, which is in my experience sufficient. That said, I do understand the issue about okayish cost efficiency (although druid style - and Pain Block - healing over time with long duration are necessarily more cost efficient). It means that it translates also to the pseudo-upgrades. And since they costs 2 Zeals one can feel it even more. Hence the lack of enthusiasm for LoH pseudo-upgrades. Also something annoying about these pseudo-upgrades is that they are Tier 3 and scales as such with PL (since they are not upgrades. Upgrades would scale as the original ability). The pseudo-upgrades basically loose 2 PL for the "original Lay on Hand compoent" (20 health per 3s tick for 5s). And since Healing over Time get double benefit from PL, it is sensitive for both : GLoH isn't that much better healing and HoL heals less than LoH. That's why my proposal is the following : - Both pseudo-upgrades would be kept at 2 Zeals. Original LoH supposed to be used when "sufficient", improved version for better action economy efficiency or Courage utility. - Pseudo-upgrade base healing buffed to 30 health per 3s tick for 6s. That is 90 base healing over 53.33 for LoH (with +2 PL, so roughly in the 60ish). - Robust for 12s. I'm not trying to challenge Pain Block in its own way, but to add a layer of healing. GLoH will have great initial healing of 40 instant, 120 over 6s and 140 for total duration. - Courageous for 18s. Courageous is less good than Robust, but nice utility to support casters (especially since after Courageous, you will still have 1 Concentration with infinite duration from the Tier 2 part of Courageous, as for Resolute but guaranteed by previous Immunity). And HoL will still heals more over a short duration than any ability in the game... bar GLoH and LoPZ

Why wipe out England? They do a great job themselves. No need for Van der Leyen to start any "cancel UK" campaigns... as for left wing extremism, they are not an urban legend, Europe had those. Germany's "RAF" and "Baader-Meinhoff", Italy's "Brigate Rosse", Northern Ireland's "IRA", France's "Action Directe", Judea's "Peoples Front of Judea", the Basque "ETA" etc. Most of these were very active in the 70's, some survived into the 80's. Today's threat to democracy comes from various extreme right wing and nationalist organizations (way too many to list and several of them are actually represented in their respective national parliaments). Most young people don't understand why The Northern Ireland peace agreement is a big deal still today, because they didn't live through some very bloody years in the UK (3000 dead and close to 50000 wounded). It's something that simmers just underneath the surface and is kept in check by improved living standards. I.e. paper thin and may fall apart if facing a crisis. I think there is a decent reason for European countries being reluctant to get dragged into wars, because once they get started, they get very enthusiastic about it. As for pronouns, I'm sure You ****ing **** is a perfectly valid pronoun... I learned a lot about the LGBT community after moving back to Australia in 2016, as my best and closet friends now are lesbian girls (and a single transgender woman). It makes for some interesting company and they sometimes joke about it when we go somewhere (restaurants, theater, whatever) that I'm the odd one out in the group. Not for being a guy, but for being straight

I decided to give the companions mod a try. Now I roll with my girl Imelda:

Screenshot Citizen One from the FPS event earlier this year (Siege of Orison) Pretty sunrises and sunsets Hoth Microtech looking pretty. The ship in the above screenshots (the "Constellation Andromeda") was supposed to be the largest player ownable ship at the time of the Kickstarter, things got a bit out of hand. For example, this is my character standing next to the front landing gear of an Origin 890 Jump space-yacht, which is classed as a capital-size ship... Below is the one other capital ship available in game right now, the Reclaimer. I do hope the buildings around it maybe give some perspective as to the size. This one I actually got to fly as on the PTU (test server) they tend to hand out ships to try new game loops, since salvaging is new, and this is a capital-size salvaging ship everyone got one to derp around with. I decided to just fly it to a planetary outpost and land it on the largest landing pad available (which only the landing gear fits on. Barely. It overhangs the pad by almost the size of the pad on both ends...). Then I found out there are actually only a few places in the system this thing can actually officially land and be stored/serviced. Welp. This ship looks small in space, and then you put it down like this. Star Citizen does manage to drive home that sense of scale. Talking about landing, perfect touchdown with the Connie. And dang, there's a queue to get in again... (this is actually a bug as these NPCs were body-blocking me from getting in)

and so a harebrained shadowrun style (not shadowrun rules 'course) game but in an indiana jones setting as inspired by the incredibles aesthetic? am cautious optimistic. HA! Good Fun!

Thank you for sharing the article. I strongly detest TW3 and agree that cut-scenes and VA are a resource sink, but it does not mean that the cut-scene-heavy RPGs and action-adventures with light RPG elements (such an inventory system) are going anywhere. I just would prefer to stop calling TW3 and, for example, Assassin's Creed, RPGs. They are not, otherwise Half-Life is and we are role-playing Gordon Freeman. Also, Larian's D&D game has a lot of cut-scenes, and the MC auto-comments OOC and without the player's input, so it is quite "cinematic". Fortunately, as far as I can tell, there is enough freedom to roleplay and develop the player's character.

It is quite frankly difficult to find much use vs late game vessels because it rolls vs fortitude, and lots of late game vessels have really high fortitude (fampyrs, steelclad, etc.). The damage is good, but not amazing compared to barbarian shout spam (probably the closest comparison as a spell-like ability on a martial class). The healing is definitely strong, though. Low penetration would not necessarily be a very serious issue given that Paladin would have 3 different damage types to choose from, and the self immolation abilities have very high penetration. Even with 1 or 2 underpenetration the damage would still be respectable.

Elder Scrolls VI is ten years away

16 times the detail! Jokes aside, I really hope this turns well. I have been giving Bethesda a lot of **** for well over a decade, but I would really love to see them make another game on the level of Morrowind.

Heh.

SEE! All we need is UBI, UHC, UFH and UFE and the extremisms will get all snuffed out.

"" the US is not a racist country"" in other news, bears do not **** in the forest

If they use an AR or an AK

Uhm... yeah, happens to me too, all the time.

I saved this meme a while ago, because I liked it so much.

That was the joke. The Tories bumbling incompetence destroying the UK is perhaps the funniest political thing to happen. Imagine being a colonial dinosaur whose empire crumbled and losing the last bits because you got so triggered over the bad yuropeans doing construction work or the lgbts. As to the larger discussion of left-wing extremism.....in our current world they simply do not compare to the right-wing in terms of violence or institutional power. I mean the police weren't defended (closest I could find was a -1% budget change, for the most parts police budgets have increased since 2020), the borders aren't being "opened" or even less regulated, and the notions that former colonies are forever tainted by racism or Capeetialism bad is rejected by basically every ruling political party. Comparatively you have the right wing in power wielding the power of the state to crush their enemies and enact deeply authoritarian systems of social control in the name of fighting "wokeness", something they can't even define. Anyone who thinks the right and left are on the same level has a microwaved potato instead of a brain.

Some context, with helpful links, that might explain - in part, at least - a certain poster's attitude.

I dunno that stuff was more interesting than this thread usually is

Oh, I know. I always wondered about this old story about the constitution only being for white, male land owners. Well, it is based a bit on a true story, even if not written explicitly in the constitution. It just turned out to be a convenient tool to enforce that (i.e. only white, male land owners could vote) From The Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/the-founders-and-the-vote/ Eventually, the framers of the Constitution left details of voting to the states. In Article I Section 4, the Constitution says: The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations. Unfortunately, leaving election control to individual states led to unfair voting practices in the U.S. At first, white men with property were the only Americans routinely permitted to vote. President Andrew Jackson, champion of frontiersmen, helped advance the political rights of those who did not own property. By about 1860, most white men without property were enfranchised. But African Americans, women, Native Americans, non-English speakers, and citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 had to fight for the right to vote in this country. I.e. I still think it was a country founded on in part racism (slave based agricultural economy in parts of it) and in part lack of equality (very narrow and unequal selection of citizens who had a say in the running of the country).

I don't want to get too deep into this anymore, so I'll try to keep it short. (edit: I failed) Defund the police does not mean abolishment of the police. It's meant to stop militarizing them. They don't need assault rifles and tanks (ok, maybe in the US they do, since everyone and their dog owns an AR-15), that's usually where a smaller group of special police forces exist. Defunding the police means reallocating funds to public serves that actively work on preventing issues from happening in the first place, such as better healthcare, etc. etc. Usually it is cheaper to try to prevent a catastrophe from happening than trying to fix it once it already happened. Look at stuff like Uvalde, where the police budget was like 70% (I actually don't remember the number right now, just know it was very high) of the whole towns resources, and when it came to little kids getting shot to mincemeat, it didn't help anything at all. I don't see how this can be considered a radical left ideology. Not super familiar with the minute-to-minute details of american politics, but I'm almost sure they do not want to have less controlled borders, but stopping stuff that effectively has no impact on anything at all, such as Trumps great wall, which doesn't work and is nothing but a money sink. Again, I don't see how this can be considered a radical left ideology. We have people here in germany who want to have 100% open borders. Those people are idiots, and luckily their voices have no power at all, so again.. they aren't a threat to us right now in 2023. I don't know if the US was founded on racism, but they sure lived it out for 200 years (and still do if you consider prisoners working for cents as pretty much slavery with extra steps). Is it really a radical left ideology to not want to enslave people? Personally I love my capitalism. I like to have money (I'm not poor hurr durr), however, I absolutely hate when unchecked capitalism rolls over innocent people and ruins their lives, such as when penny pinching industries turn the environment into toxic wastelands. I'm not saying we never had left wing terror issues. The RAF in germany was terrible and it was a real crappy time, but it's long gone and not a todays-issue anymore. Now we have to deal with stuff like secret right wing terror groups supported by the local police, who are getting away with murdering people for 20 years and for mysterious reasons it seems to be impossible to get everyone involved into jail.

Lexx you have raised this before and there is something you misunderstanding, the radical left or left wing extremism is not necessarily Communism\Socialists The term " radical left " covers several ideological views and not everyone who believes in the left should be considered radical left. In fact most lefties IMO shouldn't be called radical left. So we use it to describe a certain type of left wing thinking and policies But the "radical left " is real and absolutely exists in most countries and manifests there ideological views in different way. In the US the progressive Democrats have several members who espouse radical left policies. That doesnt mean they all extremists. And like the MAGA movement in the GOP it means there are different political views within the Dems. And this is just a normal and organic way that US politics works, not all politicians in a party have the same views https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-progressive-left-fits-so-uncomfortably-within-the-democratic-party/ But what should concern all of us around insidious and harmful radical left policies include things like defund the police less managed or controlled borders revisionist and selective history, like the US was founded on racism and inequality all problems in the world like inequality is because of Capitalism and white people are responsible for this or similar things. The truth about the worst examples of poverty exist in countries with failed governments, lack of governance and corruption. Not Capitalism

I don't know why you tagged me, I haven't said anything about left-wing extremism. Extremism is not a particularly good term to throw around, and I would say that it tends to be thrown around way way way too much, because the meaning of the word "extreme" would dictate that not that many things can logically qualify as extreme. Also, wanting to wipe England out doesn't have to have anything to do with left-wing thinking at all, although it might. It could be just intense anglophobia, for instance, or whatever. There was once this German guy who wanted to wipe England out but who, I think, was not a left-wing extremist...

@Lexxand @xzar_monty You see another example of left-wing extremism, like I said in a previous post. KP will go on how terrible the far-right is and bemoan the state of the US but he wants to wipe England out, if thats not left-wing extremism I dont know what is

Strawman much? When have I ever said anything about pronouns? I was cool with people's preferred pronouns long, long before your totalitarian left decided to try and score political points with it and "cancel" people over it.

Boosted engagement on the pet (+3 via Champion's Boon) also means Stalker's Link (+10 ACC) against +3 enemies iirc.

I'm also entirely too happy that STD was finally cancelled. I feel bad for being so happy.

As I am back to Civ 4.

As may have been clear from the screenshot thread. I've been poking at Star Citizen again after my rather, hmm, negative attempt late last year, and have been enjoying it this time around, mostly anyway. Just to get this out of the way: no the game is not anywhere near stable yet. If losing all your stuff because the server crashed, you fell through the floor, or a gurney murdered you, or...anyway, if any of that is a major problem then don't bother. Just to recap, a few years ago I bought the cheapest game package available (45EUR before taxes) because I found the game intriguing from a technological perspective as what they're trying to achieve is pretty impressive, scope-wise. Since then I've been checking in every now and again to see where things are at. This has generally been a yearly-ish thing but early this year there was a major FPS event going on so I figured that, despite my very negative experience a few months prior (when literally nothing worked for me), I'd give the gametech demo another go. It was a cluster****. But it was a very promising one. There actually is a game there now. There's not a whole lot of it, and much of it is broken (figuring out which mission types will actually work most of the time is part of the challenge...) but what is there is looking promising, and despite the issues (broken AI, server crashes, and griefers in what was supposed to be a PvE event) I mostly had a good time with the event. Additionally the next major patch (3.18, currently on Public Test Universe, supposed to go live "any time now") will finally introduce proper persistence support, meaning that if the game crashes you might not have lost everything as instead of getting dumped back to your respawn point, losing everything you had on you (or in your ship), you should be able to log back in where you left off with everything still there (assuming you are lucky and log back in to the server you just crashed out of, making sure that is the case is the next item on the todo, but hey, that seems pretty trivial compared to the persistence implementation) To me this is a major leap towards turning this tech demo into an actual game that maybe non-masochists could get some enjoyment out of, and I'm really curious to see whether the content development pace will pick up now that this core tech is implemented. Would I recommend the game to anyone? Ehhhh, probably not, at least not as a "game" as such. For anyone curious I'd probably recommend seeing how 3.18 shakes out once it goes live before deciding whether it's worth the price of entry. Or to try it at the "free fly event" in May ("Invictus Launch Week"), though my personal experience with events (based on last year...) is that is when the game is at its worst, but maybe this time will be different. Heh. I would recommend anyone masochistic enough to join to use a referral code though, the extra starting cash is kinda nice.

Got a request to update my shipping address for the System Shock remake by Nightdive Studios, so I guess that'll be coming out soonish.

The cinematic BioWare-style RPG is dead, it just doesn't know it yet | PC Gamer

I do.

Suicide it is then

Be the change you want to see.

We're not quite yet to r/UkrainianConflict level of crap, at least

Not a high bar sadly.

That's as good reason as any to fire the sunshine state into the sun. But if I'm being honest, England would be my first choice of a place to wipe off the map. Luckily they seem to be doing that to themselves. Not really. Media leaves much to be desired.