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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/05/21 in all areas

  1. It's a 5-minute walk from my house to the Pub and it's a 45-minute walk from the Pub to my house. The difference is staggering.
    3 points
  2. Watched the first two episodes of Paranoia Agent. It is about an anthology series centering around a string of attacks that is causing paranoia, it is very dream like at points. If anyone is interested watching, it is on Funimation you need an account but it is free to view. Also watched the first episode of Sailor Moon. I have never felt so bubbly in watching someone say "Moon Prism Power!"
    3 points
  3. This isn't really funny, but I think the most ambitious crossover was still WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. In both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Supernatural case, they were ultimately dealing with in-house issues (Marvel and WB respectively). WFRR had to deal with (from memory) 5 different companies that didn't always like each other and their extensive rules for how their characters had to be portrayed to create a relatively comprehensive Toon Town (with some notable exceptions like Casper and Popeye) so that cartoon characters could seemingly exist in a human world. ... I know this isn't really a funny post, but this post made me think, which probably isn't a good idea.
    3 points
  4. I finished GreedFall, it took just over 50 hours. Very good RPG, easily Spiders' best effort to date. I'm sure most people here have already played the game, so I won't go into details. Suffice to say that if you've played any previous Spiders' titles then it's like that, just more open, more polished. It makes me excited to see what they develop in the future. I also finished Death Come True, it's an interactive movie where you wake up in a hotel room with amnesia, there's an unconscious and bound woman in the bathroom, and a news report on the television claims you are a wanted serial killer. The premise is simple enough at first, it's a choose your own adventure and when you die you wake up at the beginning retaining the knowledge from before and can make different choices, but then it makes a hard left turn and gets weird... then it gets really weird. It's from a new studio made up of devs that used to work at Spike Chunsoft, makers of the twisted and demented Zero Escape and Danganronpa games, so it's no surprise that the game gets really weird. It's a short game, you can finish it in a single session. I haven't gotten every one of the deaths yet, but I did get the true ending and I got one particularly twisted death that amuses me to no end. It's likely no one else here will ever play the game, I may be the only weirdo here that plays stuff like this, but on the off chance that you do play it, don't read or watch anything about it beforehand. Go in completely blind.
    3 points
  5. Starship SN15 just landed and did not explode.
    2 points
  6. It should be fine for sample size. IIRC 95% confidence with +/- 3% for a country size typical population requires only ~1000 people, so long as you're able to weight respondents properly. You can download the report if you want and have a look. Don't think they charge for it, but I haven't downloaded it myself to check. Certainly can't accuse the Alliance of Democracies of deliberately commissioning a survey to give the answers they wanted, they're an impeccably pro western lot founded by a former NATO secgen. Not really something that you can accuse Teh Grauniad of though: As an explanation for why the perceived threat of the US to democracy went up decently from last year that isn't exactly great, when the survey period started 3 months after Trump was voted out and a month after Biden was inaugurated. It would be more likely to be distrust of the thoroughly interventionist people surrounding Biden than that. (More realistically, and since by most of the other metric perception of the US improved, it may well be an out of confidence result, since for 95% confidence 1/20 responses will be 'wrong'. Still even if it is rogue it's still unlikely to be massively wrong, just outside the 3% or whatever)
    2 points
  7. Crashed into a giant pile of money.
    2 points
  8. I thought you said you were not a legal expert. You sound like a lawyer I know already LOL
    2 points
  9. Got to face time some family members living in Botswana. They typically visit our family in the summertime so it has been a while since we chatted. Their kids have grown so much since the last time I saw them and they are in high spirits. It is good to know that they are doing well.
    2 points
  10. Well he might not have been bullying, but apparently it was still enough for him to "apologize "for all the bad blood" he caused" - to quote the article. So I guess he just wasn't very good to work with.
    2 points
  11. It's way too expensive with 2 Mortification for my taste. Escape is the better alternative imo. I need Mortification for other stuff. If you pick Riposte and consider the increasing returns of high deflection (and also keep in mind that Tuotilo's Palm gets +1 deflection/+1 reflex per wound) it's a crime not to use it imo. With Adept Evasion and Tuotilo's Palm + Weapon and Shield Style you will get missed by almost all reflex based AoE spells. ANd of course overcoming your deflection will be very hard. At the same time Tuotilo's Palm's damage is not that important if you apply stuff like Toxic Strike or Ring the Bell or use Forbidden Fist (which is a primary attack anyway). Imo the greatly increased defenses are totally worth the bit of dmg los. Also a bash from Tuoltilo's Palm (or any offhand weapon for that matter) that Triggers Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming will proc attacks with the main hand weapon anyway - so in case of Swift FLurry/HBD chains it doesn't even matter what you are wearing in the offhand. And Tuotilo's Palm not only has Precision Striker (+5 ACC) but also the modal which gives you +15 ACC for your next attack - should enemies miss you (which they will). Also a shield means +1 engagement. With Persistent Distraction you will have 2. Nice to have with Parting Sorrow imo. Especially if you want to use Ryngrim's RV. Absolutely worth it in my experience. One of the few cases where I actually use Tuotilo's Palm. If one uses Shattered Pillar then Whispers of the Endless Paths is also great. Offensive Parry generates wounds for the Shattered Pillar. Riposte won't but it procs the cone attack which isn't bad either. And of course the cone AoE with Turning Wheel is quite big which makes stuff like Efficient Anguish lots of fun. With Morning Star + Envenomed Strikes + Stunning Surge you can lower enemies' fortitude by 45 points and then use Efficient Anguish (targets fortitude). This procs Swift FLurry/HBD quite often then. Also the Willbreaker has the enchantment "Make them Flinch" (25% miss to graze) which - combined with Gauntlets of Greater Reliability (also 25% miss to graze) is very good against enemies with very high deflection (in order to easily apply Body Blows even if you otherwise would miss all the time). Miss to graze is such in undervalued conversion imo.
    2 points
  12. A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.” The woman below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.” “You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist. “I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?” “Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.” The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.” “I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?” “Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault!” ---- An oldie but still true.
    2 points
  13. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/posts/3180554 Dinosaurs have arrived.
    2 points
  14. I was abducted by Cthulhu cultists that were mimes... They did unspeakable things.
    2 points
  15. Mediocre MIG, mediocre CON, above average DEX, PER, INT and RES. If Forbidden Fist: max RES. From the top of my head (not in that order, didn't count if too many): Fist (and a non-crush weapon as backup, for example a sabre) + Tuotilo's Palm (Balanced Shield + Precision Striker), Weapon & Shield Style, Two Weapon Style, Escape, Dirty Fighting, Riposte, Arterial Strike, Ring the Bell, Toxic Strike, Adept Evasion, Persistent Distraction, Deep Wounds, Deathblows, Turning Wheel, Lightning Strikes or Swift Flurry, Efficient Anguish, Thunderous Blows, Enervating Blows, Parting Sorrow, Heartbeat Drumming. If Forbidden Fist also Crucible of Suffering and Clarity of Agony. My preferred armors would be Casita Samelia's Legacy with max Intimidation or Nomad's Brigandine. If nobody else desperately wants them then also Cloak of Greater Deflection and Bracers of Greater Deflection. If Forbidden Fist then Stand of Favor and Cabalist's Gambeson and all the RES gear you can find (including the Evee pet dog and food with -x% to hostile effects duration). I think Forbidden Fist/Trickster fits quite nicely because Forbidden Fist wants high RES to make his curse as short as possible - and deflection bonuses have increasing returns: the more the better - so the high RES is great in combination with Mirrored Images and additional deflection stuff. MIG can be at 10 anyway. Trickster gets plenty of damage bonuses. IN case of Forbidden Fist it also holds the self damage at bay. Forbidden Fist is not that easy to play in the early game because you will have slower wound generation as with a normal monk or Shattered Pillar. But it's very rewarding after some levels imo. The Forbidden Fist ability is very strong. Enfeebled prolongs all hostile effects on the enemy by 50% and prvents healing completely, +10 INT from Turning Wheel adds 50% more duration. So stuff like Ring the Bell or Toxic Strike (good raw dmg DoTs) last for a very, very long time. You can "escape" to an enemy, punch him with Forbidden Fist + Ring the Bell (or Toxic Strike), zip to the next, do Forbidden Fist + Stunning Surge (very long stun), zip to the next and so on. It can be mad fun. And you won't have to bother about getting damaged too much because you will be sturdy and tanky enough. Also off-tanking is no problem.
    2 points
  16. Got tired of sitting hunched over my work laptop, getting a sore back and neck from starting *down* at the monitor all the time, so relegating my current PC monitor to become external monitor for my laptop (and one of the spare DAS mechanical keyboards I have) so I can sit in a proper work position at home. Bought a new Philips 28in 4K IPS FreeSync Speaker Monitor (288E2A) No idea if it's good or bad, but my "budget" for impulse monitor purchases was around 400 Aussie dollars
    2 points
  17. Soul Blades - like all Ciphers, can cast Borrowed Instincts which raises all defenses by 20. It stacks with Monk's Crucible of Suffering btw. So defensively it's good. The combo lacks healing but as long as you're with a party that can be solved. Instead of a normal Monk you could also try out the Shattered Pillar. It generates wounds via auto-attacks. So you can punch which not only raises wounds but also focus - and then release it via Soul Annihilation. SInce you are using mods I would recommend the Community Patch then. It not only has unique icons for all passives (which makes it easier to distinguish them) but also a lot of sensible balance fixes - among them the un-nerf of the Shattered Pillar's max wound count from 5 back to 10. Or maybe I can interest you in a Trickster/Monk. It has enormous offensive potential but also good defensive capabilites due to Mirrored Images. And Escape (Rogue ability) is a very cheap way to zip around on the battlefield. Also Monk's Turning Wheel (+10 INT) works well with stuff like Toxic Strike, Ring the Bell and Arterial Strike. Paladin/Soulblade can be a good mix of offense and defense. Ascetic: never tried as melee guy but more as caster (with Helwalker). Devoted/Soulblade will work and is quite uncomplicated but is a bit boring for my personal taste.
    2 points
  18. Great Pretender: London Snow. After Hollywood movie mobsters and a pair of exiled princes from a middle eastern country the season finishes with the most vile mark left, an art critic. The series manages to be funny (to me at least), with the in-between steps being unpredictable but the endgame being pretty clear. I'd recommend it if you're looking for something short that doesn't require too much investment but is still fun. I think Ocarina of Time was one of the first games I played. It probably has aged terribly, but I loved it back in the day. Zelda games I haven't played are Skyward Sword, stuff from before Link's Awakening (which I think just got a switch remake), and for the most part BotW since I always end up stopping right a bit after the intro area. I haven't played the Switch besides playing Smash Bros with my fiance, maybe I should try to finish that game.
    2 points
  19. how can you not love that guy (even if you dont like steam or valve)
    2 points
  20. One nice auto attack build I used involves Saint Omaku's Mercy/Veilpiercer. These weapons have an upgrade that gives you a 50% chance to ignore recovery when you crit. You can stack +crit effects and accuracy to get a very high crit rate. With ranger's driving flight you'll basically attack twice, so you will have a very high chance to get to ignore recovery. I like multiclassing with devoted for this (intuitive adds hit to crit and devoted increases crit damage). Its not unreasonable to have >75% chance to crit, which would mean that you have a 60% chance to ignore recovery entirely, and at 100% chance to crit you'd ignore recovery 75% of the time. Against larger groups of enemies you can also switch to frostseeker. It doesnt require a lot of active ability usage, although you probably want to mark at the start and accurate wounding shot would be preferred over auto-attacking. But these things are optional.
    2 points
  21. You forget what forum you're on.
    2 points
  22. Some simple, but necessary things like: - a hook and line for retrieving weed and grass stems back to shore when you just didn't quite make that fancy jumping maneuver or you forgot that weed stems bounce like rubber balls when they sail down the zip line and land on a very flat, spacious rock, but still manage to land in the pond anyway. (Even evading the two story towered wall that was built as an all-purpose catcher mitt near the edge. Sigh.) -a couch.....a plump, purple couch to match the chair with the glorious option of being able to actually sit on it and enjoy some down time. -capes.....all types, all colors. Raid the backyard in style -more furniture to fill your spacious home and decorate your walls. -a candle to be placed on the clover table: dining by candlelight.....a must. (Bee's wax anyone?) -a sling-shot.....not for killing, but to warn off little critters, and distract larger ones. -pets.....if they play in you backyard and won't leave, then name them, feed they.....and they become non-aggressive friends. I'm sure other players and fans have their list as well. Feel free to join your ideas here. And .....have fun.
    1 point
  23. Beacon doesn't remove TDC. It's just so that if you have both applied the Beacon's dmg bonus doesn't get listed in the combat log, only TDC. I guess it gets suppressed. Or it was some glitch when I tried last time, no idea.
    1 point
  24. If you get too caught up with how many different things you "have" to do to 100% the game, then it is indeed miserable. I found about two hundred of them while completing the game, contemplated actually properly finding them all after having done most everything else I wanted to do, said "screw this", and then used a save game editor that gives you each and very single one (while also properly setting the collected flags for each Korok, as if you had actually collected each one). Don't feel even a little bit bad about it either, . But...you're the type of person that *has* to watch every second of a TV show you're watching, even if it's pointless or unenjoyable to you; I'm the type of person where so long as I *have* every second of that TV show, then I don't actually need to watch it - simply properly having it all is good enough for me. So I'm betting that you would feel the need to collect every single Korok Seed manually, right? And yeah, there are definitely a few obtuse points in Zelda II - there's that one dude you need to find in a completely unmarked, random section of the overworld forest in order to progress, and I always forget that he exists, . Glad I took the extra effort to be vague, since I wasn't sure what, if anything, you actually know about the movie. Literally the only thing I knew about the movie before watching it was having seen the main official poster for it, which was so intriguing that I had no choice but to try it out immediately. I still love OoT, but YMMV, . I actually own a Wii U and ended up dumping my console, then played BotW on my PC. For the most part, a much better experience than playing it on the actual console, especially since there are patches/hacks you can enable to reduce some annoyances as well as even make the game look and run better. 60 FPS patch? Don't mind if I do! Want to move faster? I'll just temporarily set the game speed to to 2x or 3x. Don't feel like chopping down a thousand trees for some random sidequest? Think I'll just set my collected wood to a thousand, thanks. I get absolutely no sense of accomplishment or enjoyment out of utterly skill-less repetitions, so I don't really bother anymore whenever I can. Some people call it cheating, I call it not wasting the precious time I have being alive doing completely pointless and unfun parts of games that are supposed to be fun. I'll get my sense of accomplishment from tasks that actually require some skill, like playing and beating Dark Souls at soul level 1...and not from freaking chopping down trees for a few hours.
    1 point
  25. I should have double checked before posting, I just tested and it does break Brilliant Departure. It doesn't completely invalidate the strategy above (Brilliant Departure can get a long duration especially with WoD), but it limits quite a bit. Thanks for pointing it out!
    1 point
  26. I have one comment/question to the above. Doesn't Blood Sacrifice break Brilliant Departure? (I don't know it). I know that it does break Shadowing Beyond.
    1 point
  27. Well, look at that. Kozue's team gets four new players because of a school merger. She manages to win three over, one, named Yuri Izumi leaves. She goes to visit her at home to try and convince her to stick with the team where she talks a bit to Yuri's stepmother. The girl shows up and is not only rude to Kozue but also to her stepmother and... yeah, you guessed it. Kozue slaps her silly for disrespecting her mother and lectures her about behaviour and how it doesn't matter if she's her real mother or not, she is her mother and damn straight needs to be respected. We're in 60ies Japan here, dammit, respect your elders and follow their every word, or else. Yuri all but throws her out (well, she's just rude). Kozue then sees her walking around with Tsutomu. Actually, Yuri is really spending a LOT of time with him, leading to some jealousy, drama and some yelling where Tsutomu really has no idea what's gotten into Kozue. Some things really are timeless. The slapping... not so much.
    1 point
  28. How did I miss this? Malc confirmed as Keyrock alt.
    1 point
  29. If you want to Congress critters to get along better they should start doing some group activities. Like paintball or fishing trips or stuff like that. You know, team builders. Personally I think all of their animosity in public posturing is just for show. It’s like professional wrestlers saying what they’re going to do to each other in the ring and then they go have a beer after they rehearse
    1 point
  30. hey hey i have actually been thinking a lot about a fey build recently. (i even put one together in pathfinder 2end) personally, i've settled on an enchanter/ancient. in hindsight i think i should've been an evoker to retain access to illusion magic, but several things worked against that at the time: being an evoker itself didn't feel "fey" enough illusion wizard magic in deadfire is a lot more about "scaring the pants off of people" than D&D-esque style "create tricks, deceive" and the wizard lacked the the charm/dominate angles that really make it fey-like that a cipher has, so i didn't feel *as* compelled to go with illusion magic (though here and there while actually playing it i wish i had access to mirror image, miasma, and eventually invisibility) losing access to essential phantom, which i wanted to have as a mid-late game niche option and felt very fey-like self-synergy opportunity with enchantment school in being able to be temporarily immune to all my own hobbling druid spells (and not losing my deleterious alacrity of motion buff) in the end i thought keeping access to enchantment was preferable over illusion, since you get stuff like arkemyr's capricious hex, call to slumber--both of which are fey-like-- and great overall utility. i picked enchantment over e.g. conjuration becuse i wanted to retain access to evoker magic for its late game utility and interrupts. i didn't pick blood mage because i wanted to be able to empower spells with venombloom. i picked wizard over a cipher (which i briefly considered) because being a wizard frees you up from having to use up a lot of ability points just picking up spells - past tier 3 i don't pick up a single wizard spell until wall of draining at level 19. the rest goes into druid spells and multiclass passives. it requires quite a bit of micromanagement to juggle grimoires, but it's pretty great overall. i also did a psion/lifegiver along time ago, so i'm not against the idea of cipher/druid multiclass working, but the decision i went with this way just gave me a lot more options with my ability points. so far i have a lot of fun with it. there's a fire subtheme, so i have ring of focused flame. most of the time i summon the mushrooms to help me fight, but when the situation calls for it, i create firebrand and then summon essential phantom. or in some other cases, cat form and then summon essential phantom (you get a phantom with cat laws). i did discover a really unfortunate bug: if you switch grimoires while spiritshifted, you lose all the spells from grimoires, and can't get them back until you turn off spiritshift and switch grimoires again.
    1 point
  31. Glad you asked that question Boeroer. I quickly loaded up Deadfire and tried this and indeed: you can stack both charms on one enemy (if the second charmer is confused) and give that charmed enemy the body inspirations as well as the bonus damage. Cheers! Edit: Confusion is cool. For example it also allows a paladin to cast exhortations on charmed enemies (which would otherwise be impossible). Buffing up your charmed guys like there's no tomorrow, yeah!
    1 point
  32. Are you aware that the Debonaire must land the hit in order to get the crit conversion? Graze/miss will not convert to crit I believe. I've definitely gotten hit to crit conversion in the combat log with [Debonaire] listed as the cause.
    1 point
  33. Okay, to be fair, this one happened in the original show every once in a while too, and it was hilarious every time. That, and Usagi turning into a 1930s toon skeleton.
    1 point
  34. Outer Wilds, aka. the best game in recent memory that I really should complete one of these days, is getting a DLC! Allegedly.
    1 point
  35. Yep. Albeit there are a lot of GOTY awards given out, so there are a lot more than one GOTY each Y. It was, by some. GOTY awards are very rarely popularity contests among people who play the games, generally they're popularity contests among those who review games, at the entity giving the awards. And there is often a large disconnect between what reviewers think and what gamers think. It also has to be said that (1) all too often game reviewers wish they were doing anything other than something as mundane, trivial and outright boring as reviewing games and (2) because of that reviewers are often desperate for games to be in some way Significant. Stuff with any semblance of that tends to get big ups, and treated as if it's the narrative and philosophical equivalent of Breaking Bad, even when it's closer to GoT S8 in both regards. Are they fringe opinions- or at least, are they fringe opinions more than those of reviewers are? Reviewers certainly have a bigger soap box to shout from, but that doesn't mean their opinion is right. Personally I have little to no doubt for a game like TLOU2 that the vast majority of people played it and either enjoyed it, or didn't, but they also never really thought about it much at all, never ventured an opinion anywhere public about it, and have now more or less forgotten it. Because to most people games are entirely disposable entertainment and they spend as much time thinking about it as I have for Paul Blart: Mall Cop*. As such the most common opinion is probably some form of indifference with those who care strongly about it either way being fringe. But, of course, you're a lot more likely to venture said opinion if you care about something than if you don't. Criticism is just human nature. *which I rather enjoyed but have spent approximately 15 seconds thinking about since it ended, almost all of them now.
    1 point
  36. You should've seen some of the noodley-armed alien replicant shapeshifter screenshots we found like 30 or 40 pages of this thread back. They were freaky. And yeah, SU could irritate sometimes because of some of its problems (and all the development issues surely didn't help...6 month hiatuses in the middle of seasons, yaaay), but a pretty remarkable show overall even with its sticklier points. @ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP @majestic
    1 point
  37. IMHO, that award was unjustified, Ghost of Tsushima was better game in every single aspect. To me it seems, that the jury was afraid of what would Twitter/SONY say, or they just wanted to show the message to “gamers”, who criticized it... It’s similar to Oscars and DiCaprio’s The Revenant. Everybody was expecting him to win, so the jury passed it. Even though there were better movies, and from all his nominations, this one of his weakest movie...
    1 point
  38. Yes, I'd say that Bioshock is the case study because it gets most things right- and because the problem with its meta narrative is one of fundamentals rather than a design choice. You simply can't have a strong narrative and not also have linear goal setting where you follow instructions. The problem with forcing people to do something in a game, as part of a moral message, is ultimately that it isn't the player doing it if there's no alternative, it's the game designer. As such, doing something like nerve stapling completely anonymous, personality less and abstracted drones in Alpha Centauri is more of a moral dilemma because it's an actual choice. Even something as otherwise cliché and banal as CoD gets that right at times, since you don't have to, for example, actually shoot anyone in No Russian. Can't stop it either, but that again is the problem with linear plotting.
    1 point
  39. Nudist beaches* are cool. No one cared about what clothes, style, hair, anything, say about someone. You just waved and kept on walkin' down the sand. Outside of weather or environment protection, clothes are a pure social construct anyway. *...waits for Keyrock to make another hipster comment
    1 point
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