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I just said that to not appear like an unapologetically massive snob.

And another giveaway 😁 https://www.gog.com/en/game/caveblazers

And still failed that. Ya'll here, who analyze and argue over aesthetics of some fluff piece that gets skipped 99% of time, are definite snobs. 🧐

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/politics/russian-assets-ukraine.html Some good news, the West and specifically the US is moving closer to being able to seize the $300 billion of frozen Russian assets that will then be used to fund Ukraine and continue the war against Russia If this happens there will be an inescapable irony with Russian assets funding the war against .....Russia

It's a fine line between strong personal aesthetic (or whatever else) preferences and snobbery. I think most people who spend a decent amount of time yapping on game forums are going to be walking that line very often. 😛 Edit: and yes that includes me.

....why is his head swelling up like that? It reminds me of a dog toy or a cartoon.

ROFL A Bethesda game nominated for innovative gameplay

Yeah, and it is rumoured to be stationed near Odessa, which is not far away from occupied Kherson Oblast, so I was just curious how true these rumours might be. Similar stunt was performed with the first Patriot which should have been stationed near Kyiv, but they definitelly moved it in the beginning closer to Russian borders and shot down about 4 helicopters.

I've been saying this for years, the true divide is establishment elites vs everybody else. All the other divisions, while not necessarily manufactured (some of them are flat out manufactured) are very purposely exacerbated by the ruling elites to keep the rest of us divided. This is no secret, it's been this way for the entire history of human civilization. While political and social systems may change what has always remained the same is the ruling elites exploiting the differences of the common folk to keep us divided, because we would be unstoppable if we could set aside our petty (petty in a relative sense, these divisions have merit but they pale in importance to establishment vs commoners) quarrels. As long as we're at each others' throats over this bull$#!+ or that bull$#!+ the establishment can keep us under their thumbs with relative ease. The main goal of the ruling elite is to maintain (or expand, depending on ambition) power. Everything else is secondary. Depending on how brazen their attempts at seizing, maintaining, or expanding power are we may label them dictators, although these days anyone who is a dissident is labeled as the next Hitler regardless of their political views or actions, so words like "fascist" and "dictator" have lost all meaning since they're used so liberally.

It has been my very vocal contention for years that all the divisions we are presented with within Western societies (party, ideology, race, gender, age, etc.) are fake faultlines intentionally created to divide the public into manageable groups. The only real and meaningful line of division is the elites versus the rest of us, where the elites are the elites across all the supposedly-different political parties and factions, across all elite institions, and across all countries. And by their very nature they're all totalitarian.

To be brutally blunt, we in the West - or at least our politicians - would not have to fear our elections either if our elected officials were not as incompetent, corrupt and contemptible as the very same autocrats they love to criticise. Recently, our chancellor was filmed stating that he is sick of people complaining about rising food prices and not being able to afford a decent hot meal for their children when a burger with fries at McDonald's is 3.5€. Instead of apologizing and doing something about the (still) overpriced food in Austria, he doubled down. There was an investigation if there's been illegal price fixing between the large players of the grocery market, and it predictably found no evidence thereof. But what evidence would exist in this day and age? Price fixing no longer requires the active participation of employees of a company: they just set their price finding algorithms to the desired gross margins and to not undercut the competition, and if everyone does that, prices will rise in relative unison. In reality, grocery prices in Austria are 30% higher than in Germany, in spite of having similar labor costs, energy costs and, well, virtually the same product lineups. The actual difference between Austria and Germany is that in Germany, there are more than two companies (Rewe and Spar) competing in the regular grocery market and more than two companies (Hofer/Aldi and Lidl) competing in the discount market. What else is needed as evidence? It is painfully obvious that we have an oligopoly problem, and even steadfast believers in the virtues of the free market know that this leads to rising prices and a loss of quality through complacency. We do have a legal means of recourse for that. It would be entirely possible to forcibly break up the REWE group, or if that is deemed too radical, simply make them have to give up half their stores to competing chains. Instead, the companies involved explain the difference in pricing on the number of stores and the generally higher cost of transportation, and nobody questions that, there even have been interviews in the large newspapers with the CEOs of Spar and Rewe where they detailed that their net earnings did not go up in the past two years, while conveniently forgetting to add that their investments of said profit (they have begun building more energy efficient stores now that energy prices spiked) more than doubled in the same time. In the case of Spar that meant an increase in profit of almost 50%, in spite of higher energy, supply and labor costs. Claiming that their margins did not increase unduly is just ludicrous, and a competent journalist would have questioned that immediately. You can guess once if they did. Spoiler: no, they did not. Of course not. Newspapers earn a pretty penny from including grocery ads, and they do not bite the hand that feeds them. When politiicans of the opposing parties suggested that the government create a price comparison and statistics portal so consumers would at least realize how much they are being gouged, they replied that it would be too difficult to implement. Yes, so difficult to implement that the first price scraping website made by one person went up a week later, detailing the price differences and just how much prices rise in unison between "competitors" in Austria. Now people can look at the price gouging and realize that the government is not doing its job, which in this case would be to simply apply existing antitrust legislation. Instead, we are staring at a possible Freedom Party lead government, headed by Herbert Kickl, someone who publically calls himself the upcoming Volkskanzler, which is what the national socialists of yore called the Führer. Great. Just... great. While I have never been an optimist, it does not look like the future is going to be better tomorrow.

Argenta on her advanced class just keeps firing non-stop. Then you get a passive on her to get buffed when someone activates them outside her turn, and suddenly your navigator/officer and her can clear all fights. Snipers are ok to take out far away targets and save you the time of running across the map. They can do some massive crits. The important point is that any to hit bonus above 95% goes to crit chance instead. So all those +to hit abilities are still worth it, even though you have already the max chance of hitting.

To the extent that the East / West division makes sense, I cannot but agree. It seems certain that Russia regards "the West" as not only weak but stupid, too, and even more so than it previously did. This, incidentally, is where an autocrat such as Putin has a clear edge: he doesn't have to think about any forthcoming elections, whereas everbody in the West has to.

I wonder if this is true: https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-patrushev-plan-prigozhin-assassination-428d5ed8 The Wall Street Journal has at least been a very trustworthy source, but I'm not sure if that holds anymore. (Good American newspapers tend to be an awful lot better than the better English newspapers, just as American publishers are head and shoulders above their British counterparts when it comes to fact-checking, editing and overall quality. Sometimes the difference is astonishing. John Cleese, for instance, wrote about this briefly in his memoir.)

relevant to our most recent post explaining punitive damages: cliff's notes explanation-- trump bragging about how much he is worth in testimony during the ny fraud case did not go unnoticed by the attorney for e jean carrol who is going to be asking for punitive damages in an upcoming second defamation case in which trump is already legal determined to be liable and the only thing being considered by the court is damages. as we mentioned above, the magnitude o' punitive damages awards is dependent on the wealth o' the defendant as 'posed to the scope o' the harm suffered by the plaintiff. the more trump proclaims he is sooper wealthy, the greater should be the resulting punitive damages award. another aside, rudy declaring bankruptcy is not gonna impact the recent $148 million defamation judgement. as a general rule, intentional torts cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. the divide between intentional v. negligent behavior is sometimes difficult to discern, but in the rudy scenario there is no legal grey area-- punitive damages is only awarded in the case o' intentional/knowing wrongdoing. bankruptcy for rudy is only gonna be able to shield his assets from other creditors whom we assume is multitudinous. HA! Good Fun!

Baldur's Gate got released just 25 years ago today. Completing a hat-trick of PC releases unheard of until today: Grim Fandango, Thief, Baldur's Gate. Man, the end of 1998 was the gift that kept on giving. And yet, this almost never happened. Bioware originally intended to do more typical Bioware things: chasing market trends, rather than saving dying genres. It was Obsidian Entertainment's now CEO who pushed for a deal with history. It's easy to imagine a parallel universe in which Feargus Urquhart slipped in the shower, broke his ankle, called in sick. One in which people never got a taste of BG to begin with. What are they playing instead of BG3 these days over there? Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs | Shacknews Oh yeah. In the context of its time, BG1 was pretty easy on the eye too. The first major promotional material focused on all that for reason. As to cinematics: For as long as they aren't seen like the first movies, I think games haven't reached their full storytelling potential yet. Movies too initially borrowed from what was already there (stage play, theatre...), and look fairly dated and stilted now because of it. The crucial bit is: Movies are static mediums that borrowed from static mediums. Games are interactive and when going fully-on cinematic are borrowing from something static...

50 hours in and I'm still on chapter 2. Did the food planet and now I'm exploring and doing the small missions on planets. Argenta is by far and away the most dps out of any companions. Just needs a little buffing to get her started and then she is mowing down enemies. Snipers seem to be bad, at least on the lower levels. Melee is ok, good for tanking and going assassin gets the damage up there. Probably the same amount of dps or close enough to Argenta, but it needs movement where as the solider is good to go from the start. I need to reroll Pasqal as currently he is just my tech/logic skill mule.

I know, pretty hard to believe that, when a person had no chance to experience Russian mindset. To me, it’s pretty plausible reasoning behind what they are doing. Regaining initiative is just an extra bonus.

This is a community filled with ossified posters who have been talking to each other since before the dawn of these hallowed halls. Do not be so hasty to dismiss the five post rule as overkill, once you have been around for a quarter of a decade you might even appreciate the peace and quiet it brings, a bulwark against the storm. A storm only getting worse, as recently it became grave enough to break through the walls and blow unwanted posts across the forums, like so many fallen leaves in autumn.

I don't mind the animated comic style of the video, but I think the quality of it is kinda bad. Looks like a fan made video and not something official.

I'm glad they didn't put Tamoko in Barrel Gate 3

Off-topic, but art both is and isn't subjective; this has been repeatedly pointed out since at least the 1500s. For instance, while you may like whoever you please and there is essentially no debate about that, if you try to argue that Britney Spears is a better singer than Ella Fitzgerald or that Ed Wood is a better film director than Orson Welles, you just don't know what you're talking about, i.e. you are objectively wrong. Something similar applies to interpretations of artistic works: there's a continuum ranging from the true but trite to the outrageously wrong, when it comes to the question of what a work of art is "about" -- so if you say that Hamlet deals with loss and deceit, you're right but your observation is meaninglessly trite, whereas if you say that Hamlet is an extended metaphor for a frat boy party in Cancun, you're just outrageously wrong. The more interesting questions of interpretation, in this case, would deal with questions such as whether Hamlet is genuinely mad or merely pretending to be so, and whether his status, in this regard, changes during the play.

And at least some have a problem if you encounter the event before getting the rumour

Should have taken a page from Owlcat's book and stacked dexterity on their characters right from the start. Fixing initiative after starting with low dex is pretty hard, and Russia has an advantage, as the pickpocket background gives an initiative bonus. I'll get my coat.

Apologies, but since this is a forum with role-players on it, it's hard to avoid very bad jokes along the lines of "It would be quite a feat for either side to improve their initiative", whenever I see terms like that.

I agree, but I also wouldn't discount an achievement that is making a mass appeal RPG. There is also the thing of Larian being independed studio making such a shiny AAA game, with their own creative stamp on it. That what I wish AAA would be, rather than suit driven cash shop. Just the other day I got a message from a coleague of mine about cRPG recommendions as he is wrapping up BG3. It's not exactly new to him - he owns quite a few of the classics, including original BGs, and just bounced of each of them rather hard. We even tried D:OS2 in coop, and he got fairly quickly bored of it. So BG3 did something right.

Maybe a little niche but...

I like it...