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So I take it, starting the 24th, I'll be all alone in the forum because everyone else is playing this at launch, right?

our disappointment in fellow americans who has not expressed outrage and horror over the cecot efforts by the trump administration is impossible to fully communicate... and somehow seven months past might as well be a century removed in our new attention economy. that trump would do this kinda thing surprised us not at all, and you may review our posts since 2017 to confirm that claim. project 2025 was, in part, an effort to assemble a group o' at least marginal competent people who would be willing to advance tribal values either for personal power or 'cause o' a genuine ideological commitment regardless o' legal niceties, so am not surprised there is lawyers and burecrats carrying out the sinister marching orders o' the tangerine tyrant. am not shocked that hardcore maga people who have utmost faith in trumpism and is ok with any excess as long as the libs is being owned would choose the steven miller narrative regardless o' any evidence which might challenge their increasingly myopic world view. where is the rest of america? what serious bothered medicine dan, and others like him who somehow see themselves as reasonable trump voters in spite of hundreds o' examples o' trump excesses, were defund the police, white privilege accusations and talk of reparations for slavery... am thinking the subtext o' the underlying motivation need not be stated aloud for that kinda trump apologist to be understood. folks such as gd is sudden tired of all the negativity, but he somehow still sees equivalency 'tween trump and the dems ordinary incompetence? joe rogan now thinks what trump is doing to immigrants is crazy and inhumane, but is not as if trump hid his plans when he promised a mass deportation of 20 million people. even so, am not certain rogan and the kinda low information bro culture people who helped make trump 2024 possible is capable o' enough self reflection to recognize that their mind blowing gullibility is the cause o' the ice excesses near as much as is kristi noem or tom "cava bag" homan. ... but where is everybody else? even if you subtract the willful obtuse and proud boy adjacent crowds, where is the outrage from the rest of america? am pleased + seven million people came out for no kings. we saw a whole lotta gen x and boomer representation with their fanny packs, npr totes and american flags... not quite the sorros terror campaign republican leadership and fox news described. maybe the next no kings reaches nine million? even so, am not sure how we got past cecot with only a relative small number o' folks showing outrage. disappointed. HA! Good Fun!

Well, finally ran across my own colliding planet system in NMS. I knew of them, but it's rare. Sadly, since every planet is its own "instance", so to speak, you cannot run across from one to the other. The closer you get to the collision line, the more the game felt like it wanted to crash, lol. The world you're on stayed "tilted" in perspective, too - like it's stuck in a sense - vs. the illusion of horizon moving so you feel land stays level. Neat to see "in person" tho.

In regards to games, it's no longer all about "WoW's servers are down" or "my personal ISP is down" - it's now AWS or Google or whoever else is down. 7 Days forum (and some other games) was full of "can't connect/can't play" - I would guess for 7 Days, Epic Online Services (which 7 days now uses for crossplay and other online features) was connected to AWS in some way - I disabled 7Days EoS myself ages ago, since I only SP, btw. When something way worse than this time goes down, it's gonna be fun. People forget how fragile and wholesale/controlled by too few companies, the whole 'net interconnection stuff is.

I might, once it is discounted. I mean, yeah, as I am the only one here on the forum (I think) wo didn't like Bloodlines, so why not. Can't be any less interesting. I didn't like any of the games Troika made. There's just something about these games that never ever click with me.

Not true. We do have standards cucumbers and bananas need to adhere to.

I'm pretty busy. Maybe in November. 2026

Nothing I've seen about it makes me want to play it. *Maybe* I would check it out if it would be on Xbox Game Pass (no idea if it is), but since I canceled my subscription not too long ago because of the price hike, there is literally no chance of me seeing the game in person anytime soon (or ever).

Some idiot at work was whining at me because Confluence was down, the page says there's an issue and gives a link to check status. I'm amazed my coworkers can dress themselves.

I get what you mean. Romance in a lot of RPGs feels forced, shallow, and almost like a checklist feature. You talk to a character a few times, pick the “flirty” dialogue options, give them a gift or two, and suddenly they’re in love with you. Then after the predictable “romance scene,” the story basically forgets the relationship ever existed. There’s no actual depth, no growth, no conflict—just a lazy mini-quest that pretends to be character development. If romance is going to be in a game, it should matter to the narrative, not just exist for a cheap reward or fan service.

Breaking news: Mexico has agreed to pay for the wall, and Canada wants one too.

I understand why people want romance in video games.. However, I've never been a fan of how romance is handled in most video games, especially RPG's. It's always extremely lame, takes minimal dialogue and effort and the main objective is usually just to get them in bed. There's then sometimes some idiotic reward for doing so and the relationship is never brought up again. It's just so stupid. Unless the developers are going to put real time and effort into an in-game romance, then there's no reason for it. And if a players imagination is good enough to find actual substance in past lame RPG' romances, they shouldn't need any prompting or hints of romance to create one themselves in any RPG. Just let your imagination go wild, create your own romance stories and dont' worry about there being no dialogue in the game for it. I mean, there are beloved companions from past games that seriously have no substance or backstory whatsoever, people just love the characters because of what they created in their head while running around with that character for 60 hours.

Obsidian did romance in a game I think once ever, all the way back when they worked on Neverwinter Nights 2. I can't remember any other game where they added romance. I guess they did a little in KOTOR2. Some people cite Fallout New Vegas, but while you can flirt a little there are no full blown romances for the player character without mods. Anyway, I get the impression that they hated working on romance with Never Winter Nights 2 and have decided never to add it to a game they do ever again, which is a shame. I also suspect that they're afraid of offending people. If they don't add LGBT options or if they DO add them, someone is gonna gripe and I suspect this is their way to avoid that. I could be wrong though. All I know is that with every game, there is always some article about some reason that "lead to the decision to exclude romances" as if every game they develop they at one point seriously considered adding romance. No they didn't. lol Its also been said that they don't think they can deliver the kind of romance that players would expect. In my world, that's where you hire talented people that can. At any rate, I do prefer games that have it so if I ever play this game, it will be when I am super super bored. And I certainly won't be paying 70 or 80 bucks for it. I will NEVER pay that much for any video game ever. Dear Lord.

As somebody who enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3, I would argue that even that game handled romance poorly. Characters that I had given little to no focus where suddenly looking to jump my bones by the end of the first act. What started as a polite conversations with Gale and Wyll turned into these weird moments of sexual tension. I'd spoken to each of them an entire three times, including the time I met them. Then again, I can't say that I personally understand the fascination with romance in games like this. Were I in any way interested I'd just play one of those dating sims.

Right, well, I'm a customer too, and this customer says "Great job Obsidian for ditching stupid, useless romances in your RPGs." Their developer resources are much better spent on pretty much anything else.

What about shooting at enemies from stealth first? Then it shouldn't be too bad if the first reload doesn't profit from Heating Up - because stealth has it's own -85% recovery/reload bonus. Completely different approach: the most painless way for me to make my Streetfighter Swashbuckler work very reliably was to turn him into a tank with a large shield (like I did Edér many times before) and "escape" into the middle of an enemy mob in order to get flanked - for real. And then I just let him hack away, always heated up until only a few enemies are left and there was no flanking anymore. But at that point the fight is usually won anyway. That way I could make good use of: Escape and Charge (mobility is useful in order to get the best position for tanking and getting flanked - especially useful since you can move while the large shield modal is up) Coordinated Positioning (never used this before - but in this case it can be great to place yourself between crowded enemies perfectly so you actually get flanked properly - sometimes there's no free space to Escape to... and then Escape doesn't work reliably and your character might get ramdomly placed in some stupid spot) Mob Stance (even faster attacks and cleaves on kill - with the help of some engagement slots, see Hold the Line, shield and some other gear) Armored Grace (obviously) heal-on-kill pet (the damage output is good, that leads to kills which leads to cleaves which lead to more damage and kills which leads to a lot of healing procs for you) Entonia Signet Ring (getting engaged by enemies raises your defenses, perfect) Riposte (lots of missed melee attacks against you due to high deflection even when flanked - can trigger cleaves, too) Deep Wounds (nice in combo with Riposte and Cleave imo) Persistent Distraction (unlocking Deathblows on every engaged enemy automatically, also reducing their accuracy) Adept Evasion (in combo with a large shield modal AoE spells don't bother me anymore) Refreshing Defense (of course this works very well with such a setup) Unbending (if he punishment is too much you can still keep going easily) Fighting Spirit + On the Edge (increase dmg output even more before eventually getting healed) Slippery Mind (won't remove real flanking but will take away all PER/INT/RES afflictions once you are On the Edge - it's super useful imo) Pernicious Cloud (it's friendly fire so normally I wouldn't ever use it - but since you're surrounded by foes anyway...) Into the Fray (nice to pull some enemies near so they can flank you instead of bothering your allies) and so on. It worked out really well - while the tankyness was good enough to be the main tank of the party, the damage output was still very impressive. No comparison to the Edér Swashbuckling tankyness I'm more used to - in terms of the offense I mean. The increased Sneak Attack damage (+50%) combined with the short recovery, Ripostes and Cleaves leads to great dps while occupying a lot of enemies - even though it's "only" weapon & large shield and no dual wielding or two handed stuff. There wasn't even the need for the Rogue's strikes abilities. All in all I think this was much easier to play and less fuss than what is usually done with Streetfighters to make them unlock their passive "easily". I find all that blunderbuss firing and switching in order to milk that Heating Up passive turns into tedium quickly. But maybe that's just me. I used a Streetfighter/Devoted with the Galdiator Sword + Bronlar's Phalanx by the way for some Roman Gladiator vibes (also I wanted to stack the +1 PEN of the sword with the +2 from the Devoted and never bother to switch weapon sets - Iazy ;)). But I think the Fighter subclass doesn't matter that much. With a Black Jacket you can be more versatile (and even switch from weapon & shield to a more offensive setup if the situation is right or directly turn off the large shield modal), with an Unbroken you get more AR (but worse Reflex - but that's already very high due to the large shield) and better disengagment attacks, the Devoted grants more dmg with your one chosen weapon because of the PEN and slightly incrased crit dmg... but that's all not really crucial for this direct "getting flanked" approach I think.

Nope, they are not. Mortars' AoE is the standard attack and transports all attack effects - such as blind from Blinding Strike, stun from Stunning Surge etc. Even damage over time like from Arterial Strike or Gouging Strike. Only exception: wouding shot (Ranger) does only work for the initial target for some odd reason. Frostseekers crit AoE is a secondary crit which doesn't do that. The effects of a special attack will only apply to the initial target. It has higher base dmg though iirc. I don't remember if their base AoE sizes are similar or not. However, Frostseeker has a much higher range than mortars/bluderbusses. As mortar/bluderbuss user you have to be prepared to get attacked by melee guys every now and then. But some classes have very helpful mobility abilites like Escape, Evasive Roll etc. By the way: a Fighter can use Clear Out with mortars in the main hand if he also wears a melee weapon the the offhand. The result is quite hilarious since it's an AoE*AoE attack then (every AoE hit of Clear Out triggers an AoE attack of the mortar). If you have a Ranger/Fighter with Fire in the Hole you can trigger [AoEClear Out * (AoEFitH + AoEChain Shot + AoEDriving Flight)] hits rolls - which is bonkers.