LadyCrimson

Is the right to use the IP the same as the right to use the engine (Beth's). Dunno how they worked it out. I don't know how much MS is/feels re: mega-user access re: modding. Especially MS-Store. I picture it being fairly limited plus maybe Steam workshop integration. Maybe they'll go for it tho. As to FNV popularity - well, yes, but that was the Obsidian from 15+ years ago and pre-MS. I'm sure some faith re: Obsidian remains (or at least the hope) but at this point the "it's not the same Obsidian" negativity outlook is also fairly widespread. Could end up a neutral wash re: any hype or early sales.

I think if I was Obsidian, my umbrella fear would be that this changing of things around by MS is their hail mary. eg, they (mostly, kind of) survived this round of MS cuts/restructuring etc, but if this new Fallout game they're being told to make (while canceling the others on top) doesn't hit big, Obs is gone (from MS anyway). I'm not sure if a new Obs-Fallout is going to be the actual marketing/sales success win-button re: the numbers that MS probably envisions/wants. I mean, I'd assume MS wants better than Avowed or Grounded sales and sees this path as the potential avenue for it. As others said, much probably also hinges on how much MS dictate/interfere with an Obs-vision. More big studio slop feeling or more old-school Obs-unique take etc.

Mirror in the Bathroom was great, but the only album of their I bought back then was the one that had this one it. I liked it a lot (the album) And of course, because.

^ It's a heartache, nothing but a heartache.

Hm. Obs doing another Fallout. Well, it's interesting news, if it turns out to be valid/happen. Not sure how interested I am in a possible Fallout: the Avowing (haha). I guess I'm a little dubious whether it would actually feel like a Fallout game - and I don't just mean re: Obs, but, y'know, changing times, what constitutes a "RPG" these days in style/structure/substance development (that I often don't like a lot), all of that. We shall see - could be a fantastic RPG, or more "eh." :D But never know - hopefully it'll be best sliced bread with the creamiest butter and a dab of fave jam! Oh and yeah - if it's fairly and easily moddable (doesn't have to be Creation-mod level) that would help. If it's not, my interest would be low.

I appear to have a webhost problem. The same one I've used for a couple decades more or less. It's complicated. I'm not sure if the hostservice was sold, or if the support email addy I have is still valid, or the owner died and it took forever for them to start shutting things down/notice I even exist, etc. Last contact I had with him was years ago, really. I think I also forgot to ever tell him my email changed when we moved, so my fault there. Anyway, it's all broken in weird ways. So I made a proton email and also tried sending msg from there. No reply at all yet (if it's even going through). Thus I am converting my email stuff to proton addy's (I got a package for 15 of them). Which I only need for online registrations, since I still refuse to give mobile #'s. Not that I really care much by now (I think I can live without image hosting for a while/forever), but PITA, no clue what's going on.

Since he discovered Borderlands 4 will run on his old PC, hubby bought his own copy and I disbanded the Family Group. Neither of us have really played it tho. We both did the tutorial and then I did the first couple quests, where they teach you another new ability (short gliding to reach areas too far for a jump) and how you'll find "safe haven" spots (teleporter, machines, kind of a mini-base in a way). They changed it so ammo/backpack upgrades aren't purchased with general cash anymore, now you get "points" as mission rewards (dunno if there are farmable items for it) and spend those. Nothing about these short early ventures inspires me to play long sessions. I could see myself doing one or two missions at a time, but that's about it. Could feel more "Borderlands-like" at some mid-point tho, who knows. But the backpack/gear/other menu UI still sucks/feels annoying to deal with, which is part of the "I think I'll stop here" sensation.

Via Netflix: shorter kdrama series ---Teach You a Lesson Was expecting a "task force fights school bully issues". Which is what I got, but most of the episodic episodes end with much pontificating about morality, social responsibility re: the episode issue. Fight scenes were not frequent but still entertaining in an anime way. Show deals not just with teen bully vs. teen but affects on teachers, social media, aggressive parents, etc. Odd mix of OTP plea sincere with OTP action/action-comedy. ---Agent Kim Reactivated So Ji Sub vehicle, so I must watch. I guess it's in the Taken genre (father with past/skills, daughter in danger, but a lot more chr. past-multi-military-chasing and side antagonist subplots). 1s episode a lot of setup, then the OTP violence/action starts. Nothing unique, but So Ji Sub always makes such worth a watch. Although, since Mercy For None wasn't too long ago, it's maybe slightly too similar a role. I miss him in drama, or comedy. EDIT: there is some comedy in this one - main chr. has help (vs. solo) and one of them is on the comedy side. Series not fully released yet, so far each episode gets a bit better.

Finally got an appointment/surgery day for hubby, end of month.

That's sorta true of everything retail/entertainment, not just games. I do mostly agree with it, mind - I mean, public likes to save money and get a good deal and hates when prices go up even one mircon ever, vs big companies wanting constant upswing profits (consistent profits not good enough, must go up/expand). And ofc there's the over-spending/inflated budgets of the "big ones." In terms of entitlement specifically, one of my views is that the dev's (or publisher pressure and so on, I really don't know which) has fed too long into the demands vs. sticking to their guns/visions, hoping for more success if they did (understandable) which also contributes to the vanilla feeling of so many releases. With lightning speed social media pressure, the internet in general, Steam/other/instant updates and especially crowd-funding/early access, many games feel like they're made by public committee, which imo is one reason for mass feeling of entitlement. Like giving in to children's demands for candy or toys 24/7 - of course they're going to throw a tantrum if one suddenly stops/they don't get what they want, as well as apply the entitlement even outside of stuff like early access. LATE EDIT: the internet is also (probably, maybe) one of the big reasons why, for at least the near or chronically online, more and more can't seem to just shrug and go "oh well, didn't like that thing/didn't work out, on to the next thing" - instead it festers/constant reminders and turns to some kind of moral outrage. I'm sure I've at least semi-fallen into that state, briefly, a few times, myself. The conflict between PC/game consumer/business is especially bad right now ofc, with a lot of economic factors (hardware, general economy/inflation)

I pretty much agree with him (he's talking about larger big-name publishers/devs). Quarterly report pleasing shareholders models, Covid period breeding more inflated expectations, short sighted decisions. Consumers having gazillions of games and backlogs to choose from vs. spending new/full-price. Consumers being fed up with various things (mass current loss of consumer trust), leading to much more "I'll wait for a year, when it's fixed/done and on sale" which cycles into not getting pleasing quarterly reports for new releases, and so on.

BL4 - surprisingly it runs mostly ok with a lot of lowered settings. So 4k-DLSS ultra performance, some high, some medium, some low (or off if it lets me, doesn't always). Very clearly CPU bound (cpu 70-90%, GPU - 25%) or something, but stable 60, temps fine, VRAM fine, and clarity still looks decent re: BL funky graphic style. The increased/double jump is fun. The inventory UI/graphics suck (too many things look the same while looking for specific items). There's a new infinite heal item you equip that has a cooldown timer - which I suppose is nice, except I think because of that they also increased enemy hit damage and movement speeds. Even more interesting, decided to create a Family Share for 1st time ever, so hubby could see if it would run on his desktop. He wasn't expecting it to - but it does. Even starting at 4k, with no DLSS (some kind of Temporal+generic scaling?) all low etc, 30-45fps but didn't notice any bad stutter/terribad frame-pacing. He could lock it at 30 and play (he's not that picky). He's using a Xeon W-2133 and gtx 1660. Could be some busy areas that would still be fps-tankers tho. No real LAN in BL4 however (so Family Share wouldn't work to co-op, can't both play at same time if Online mode). With all the jumping and grappling now tho, early on feels less like BL and more like a jumping/platform gameplay. Hubby has the week off so I guess I'm not refunding/we'll see if we like it more after 10 hrs (vs. 2-3).

I didn't buy Avowed/Outer Worlds 2 because I never played much of Outerworlds 1 so I figured I'd end up doing the same with those. They all kinda looked the same to me. Not games I'd spend a lot of time with. I don't need games to last forever ala live service (UGH) but I do want it to be something I'll like enough to have tons of replay factor. EDIT: and that's my issue with a lot of "modern" gaming - either they're online/live etc or more and more world/quest etc design aren't very conducive to wanting to replay. The masses apparently want to be able to play their one save forever and ever so the new norm is constant "new content." Kotor2/FO:NV and at least initially, POE1 were mainly the games I liked re: Obsidian. For some reason I did kinda like Dungeon Siege 3 (but once and done, mostly), but I was less jaded back then. ;p They didn't have the luck or game design appeal or whatever else (I guess) of Larian/maybe some others, so not surprising they switched tactics. And ofc now with MS, more general audience appeal notions. I'm glad it seems to so far be working out for them, even if I'm not overly interested in their titles.

For some reason BL4's sale price went down further, to $35ish. So I bought it simply to see how it runs on my desktop/maybe refund. I'm expecting - not terribly well. CPU might be a bottleneck at anything below 4k, too. Unsure. But mostly I came here to express annoyance at (DL) size bloat of some AA/AAA games these days. BL4 is 105GB and even with avg. 75MB speed still gonna be 25-30 minutes. Crimson Desert was over 100GB too. It's becoming more normalized vs. occasional outlier. Even with my fidelity nitpicks at times, I'd rather less micropixel texture, tbh, vs. all this space. I remember being "amazed" that FO:NV was 10gb. In terms of being a gamer, I'm definitely starting to fall into the "ancient retired Warrior/King". It's all too ridiculous. EDIT: also, can Steam at least increase the refund window to 2.5 hours? Games that may have you and your older rig sitting for 10+ minutes compiling shaders etc eats up that time before you can judge anything beyond "does it start when you click Play."

Yeah, Grounded (Grounded 2 slightly less, maybe) seems pretty popular - just a different audience vs. what Obs was originally known for. I often see it mentioned/listed with other popular survival/craft/build/co-op games now, when ppl list such on Steam fora. It's in my current wheelhouse of game genre likes, but I still haven't tried it myself. The setting and youthful chr focus doesn't appeal to me I guess. I mean, I didn't even really like those Honey I shrunk the kids movies. Maybe one day.

I checked just now via my tablet and haven't seen the botcheck-screen yet, vs. constant every click like before.

---Scritchy Scratchy. It was $5.60 and looked like it might be stoopid fun for a few hours. Then ofc, I never fired it up. So I now have a game backlog of --- two. I blame Markiplier. ---Borderlands 4 has gone on sale a couple times now, where it's maybe $40-$45 or something. Each time I ponder for 10 seconds then say "nope, not cheap enough yet." Maybe one day it'll be $24.99. That might be low enough. ---7 Days to Die 3.0 went stable. So I'm still messing with it a bit. It's definitely the version I'd use if I really want zombies on because difficulty is so customizable without 400 .xml edits. But on the other hand, it feels a tad less flexible re: such simple, direct .xml file editing. They changed stuff, hardcoded more stuff etc. I still think I like 1.0/b333 (or even A20/A21) better for that. Also, the new "random better stats" on gear is nice. So you might find an early lvl2 Stone Axe or lvl1 Pistol with more damage or more range or less stamina used than a normal version of it. Makes loot hunting initially a tad more interesting.

I watched some of LH when I was youngish then later rewatched some in daily syndication. Somewhere after Lara/Almonzo plotlines - and yeah, when they all moved to "big towns" - I lost interest, although I do recall some episodes of the two seasons after that. My memory (articles read) is that the blow up the town thing was one of the "made for TV movies" they did after the final episodic season, as codas/popular demand or whatever, some time later. I think there were three such "movies." I don't think I saw any of them.

It's not up to par with my old desktop (gaming performance wise) nor, I think, with PS5 pro etc. Also, base has a itty bitty storage space. Not even 1TB. I think the 2TB version was something like $1200+. I figure you all know the tech Youtubers re: stats and benchmarks. This isn't surprising really, in today's climate. But it does make me sad re: the potential future of the thing - eg, I'd expect lowish sales after initial fan/hopeful purchase wave. Thus I wonder if Valve will give up/not make new versions etc. I wasn't looking at it to replace a desktop or uber power gaming - I was looking at it as a way to console-like play/access already purchased Steam Library and some future releases without having to build a $$$$ whole new desktop, since my desktop can still do any desktopping just fine. Thus it's the Steam Library access that made Steam Machine as a "console-like" potentially interesting. I'm sure there will be a wave of people making videos showing how for $1000-$1200 they could build a PC far better, heh.

It's been enough years I suppose it's "ok" (heh) to remake it, but the trailer gives off such a generic "Netflix series" vibe I'm not sure I could watch it. And those "sun" bonnets the girls are wearing - LOL. Michael Landon's feel-good/schmaltz style might not fit today, but he was good at it, both creation and the acting. I don't know who's playing Pa in this one, but trailer wise he has no screen charisma at all.

I get that all the time, minus the region change. Just delete YT cookies. Every time I close/open my desktop browser, YT's home page is black/no thumbnails and tells me to search/watch so they can figure out what I like. >.> Based on my tablets "cookies remain" action, while YT's "personalized" algorithm has always been poo, the last 4-6 months it's been even more poo - like they changed how it works recently perhaps (not surprising ofc).

Postscript: --if I delete Obsidian cookie, on my desktop, MS wants to do the bot check the first few clickity clicks while not logged-in, but then seems to stop doing it for a while. Haven't checked if it starts up again hours later ala whatever is considered a session (without deleting cookie again first, obviously) ---since I did get it while logged in, a couple times, maybe it's just a little glitchy. --it's the tablet that gets the bot-check every single click. Haven't checked my phone (which has more updated apps/chrome on it). I'm going to assume it's because I generally have "allow javascript" OFF on mobile devices (I only allow js once in a great while). I think I made an exception rule for this site but dunno if it really executes that properly.

^ I'd guess a lot of people are still on rotating IP's vs. static. Don't know how prevalent that is now, but it used to be common. We're always on a static IP because we demand/pay a tad extra for multiple static IP's, but a lot of "packages" don't work that way. Although I agree once per session should be enough. Anyway, I get that the bot traffic can slow/clog down site speed, if you're getting tons of them all loading every page constantly. But yeah - I got the message while logged in once when clicking a thread and once when editing a post. On my tablet where I only lurk/never log-in, it's pretty much every single time I click a thread, a sub-forum, anything. Click, checkmsg, read, click, checkmsg. On the bright side, apparently I'm definitely not a bot. Phew.

Hubby's company's restructuring has begun. Some forced upper management retirements. Unclear if they're going to do that with hubby - he's not management. But yeah - whether hubby wants to stay if those he's worked with for 3 decades are gone is unknown. I've wanted hubby to retire for a while - maybe it'll finally be soon (TM). I've been wondering if a big inflatable camping tent, no poles setup required (they're a thing for while now I guess) could = potential 2-3 day trips hubby could handle. Inflatable mattresses (not ground "pads"), parks 40-60 minute drives away. Course, we could also rent an isolated cabin at a lake. But there's the consideration that most such places aren't usually made with physically limited in mind, in terms of activities. Especially for anyone who doesn't like other people/crowds (fairs, concerts, town events, shopping, no). If all we were going to do is stare at a body of water on a porch eating a complimentary croissant, may as well stay at home and stare at our pool. Just me tho. :P Maybe I can set up a mini backyard theater system. Watch movies in the backyard under the stars. Even cooler if one could watch while sitting in a pool floatie. But then the neighbors would all want to come over.

7 Days to Die, 3.0 experimental - wait, wait - there's a No Experience option. I tested it - zero XP for doing anything. I've lowered XP gain before for gamestage difficulty reasons, but never thought about a "level 1 forever". Oh oh oh, this has possibilities. --the only power progression would be found or crafted higher lvl gear and mods you can use in that gear --the entire skill/perk tree is useless (less meaningful than one might think, but it does make a difference --could also lower gamestage/other to make found loot rarer, and limit or remove Traders, weaken zombie spawns etc to taste. Maybe wandering nomad survivor style vs. looter shooter/tower defense would feel a lot more fun again. Gonna try it.