LadyCrimson

Does that actually work. I used to have a 2nd landline for stuff like this, which no phone was connected to. My Steam account is still attached to it, even tho it doesn't exist anymore. I'm not one of those old skool privacy nerds. Privacy was always an illusion, even when before the internet. You were just as careful as one could reasonably be. But darnit, my old fart principles say mobile phone requirements for everything under the sun have gone haywire and I won't play that game. I know I'm a mega minority tho, lol. Pretty soon you'll need it just to register to a forum like this one.

No, it's not the phone. No one asks for just a phone number anymore, that's probably worth nothing now. It's the mobile phone. If you recall, I didn't even have one until 2-3 years ago. The one I have is barely touched, it gets nothing but spam (mostly from Kaiser, man they are spammy), and because of that, unless I know hubby may want to call, the volume is always off so I wouldn't hear it anyway. I've gone this long without relying on/giving out a "mobile phone" to anyone re: "shopping"/goods and I'm sticking with that until I die. Also, they aren't a bank or a hospital. There is zero need for them to require a phone number to deliver some canned goods and soup stock, and that pathetic excuse they gave as the reason is, well, pathetic. I checked regular Amazon Prime, and at least for the moment, there is still no such requirement for "mobile phone" if I try to order something from there. Probably won't be long tho.

Tried to order Amazon Fresh. They now keep tossing up a page before checkout re: "give us mobile number so driver can text you if a substitution needs to be made." I tried checking "don't substitute" on all items. Still wants it, can't get past that requirement page. FU. So long, Amazon Fresh. Back to hoofing it to the store.

MAX, previously known as HBO/Max, had a bunch of the more recent seasons of Chopped, a cooking competition show. I used to like that, even if I skipped half the bits to watch only the bits I enjoyed. So it's now become my "while I cook/eat" tablet-background show. I typically dislike or find game shows dull but there's something weirdly interesting re: the "here's some random weird mix of ingredients, make something in 30 minutes" format. I'd like a show where they did that but with less of the manufactured competition factor.

Ghostwire Tokyo - --Installed. Oh it has Ansel! Wait and its own photomode on top. which does not play well with Ansel/Ansel doesn't seem to work quite properly. Ok, their more limited photomode it is. --Performance - get rid of all the blur: turn off chromatic aberration, DoF, sharpened my TV a little. On my rig I seem to manage what I might call default/High 4k with reflection-ray tracing on medium (kept the RT shadows off) and DLSS at Quality while maintaining 60fps. Still looks good, and with the tight mega-city/often rainy environment, all the reflections do add some atmosphere. If no RT/no DLSS, hovers close to 60. --Tutorial phase: on rails, invisible walls and "don't go into the fog!" until you do initial tasks. --magic finger casting combat, using a controller, while simple aim and shoot spell, feels weird. Like latency or something about button mashing timing I'm unclear on. ---visuals: so far looks nice, not cutting edge but atmospheric and nice, but most of the attention is in the city details. Rendered cutscenes, human chr. faces can often look comically bad. ---I like the Japanese VA for the whatever it is giving your chr. powers (like a ghost possession?) Tutorial phase is far as I got. Mostly I'm in it for the city (and eventually, rooftop?) wandering and photomode. I heard the "true open wandering" is semi-limited until you finish story or something.

Still NMS, just less frequently now. Started doing the freighter fleet expeditions just to get all frigates to "S" class. They seem to level up fast, won't take too many rounds of missions. I'm at 500,000 LY away from center of galaxy. Slowed down on that, would rather wander planets. OH OH OH just now looked and Ghostwire Tokyo is finally on sale again, for $20. Time to buy!

I guess I have to decide semi-soon if I'm going to try to keep my YT account or let them one day delete it. Technically they can do so if you don't log in for two years, although it's always possible they wouldn't get around to it 'cause you're too small fry for them to notice. I have a secondary account that I haven't touched in like 13 years and I just checked - it seems to still technically exist. Edit: did I say already that the doc's think the steroid injections would do nothing for hubby? That local anesthetic shot didn't help him thus....may have to get a smoother ride car if he still has to do long drives twice a month. Either that or move back to the Bay Area next year and rent this one out instead etc. Or something. Just don't know what'll happen. I most certainly don't want to move again but oh well.

Alan Wake 2 - the latest game to make everyone cry about official "next ten" system requirements. eg, more of that notion that some dev's decided to take any extra powah to stuff games with more unnecessary (and more diminished returns) effects or whatever and relying on DLSS/FSR to get 30-60fps on even 2 generation old rigs. Unrelated: I put the first three Tombraiders remastered in my wishlist but I have no idea what to think/expect. It might be nice to have slightly updated version of those - their screenshots on Steam's page don't look overdone - but depends on how much they alter, if anything.

...let's see. My "starting" solar system was around 650k LY. I've made it this far. ...at approx. 1900LY a jump, I still have around 290 jumps left. I do 10-15 jumps per day before I get bored staring at those long warp load screens and explore a single planet for a while instead. So I might reach the center in 24 more real-life days. Altho, I've been assuming that number is for "center of". I suppose it might be a total diameter instead, which would halve the time. No clue. I don't even want to stay at the Center, I hear it's "already discovered by," MP-ppl crowded. I just want to get there once, then I'll teleport back to my totally empty/undiscovered middle-areas. ...there are apparently 250ish different Galaxies. I think I shall confine myself/remain in this "starter" Euclid one. I can't imagine I would ever land on all planets in just this single galaxy. What in the world would I do with 250 (pretty much all the same)? >.> Maybe I can discover all the rest of Euclid and annoy new players with 75% of planets (not in Center) being discovered by "me." ...Yesterday I hit two planets in one system that had robotic animals I'd never seen before. Kinda like exotic, funny-hyper, robotic dogs. I of course adopted one of each type.

No Man's Sky has filled my chill-game-vibe needs for a while. But I'm still waiting for news on Avowed. Hopefully I won't need a 4090 to just try it.

Things I do in NMS: (not all in one day...) ----spend a couple hours mining out all the stalagmites in dark caves for a few stacks of copper because I find it peaceful. There are automated base-ways to get resources dribbled to you to reduce such "grind," but to me, that's no fun. ---spend a few hours cleaning up/deleting etc. all my small planet bases, descriptive naming ones I want to keep, etc. With bajillions of planets/systems, gotta be mindful of the base and object limitations. ---spend two hours standing in/reloading a space station hoping that cute Shuttle ship it spawned, would finally fly in, as an S class version. It didn't. I finally had to upgrade an A to S manually. ---spend an hour agonizing over what ships to keep/delete in collection. Chicken Nugget is still my #1/main ship tho. Only one I've maxed out. ---spend three hours wandering planet surfaces farming base deco-glitch formations and just admiring views ---spend a few hours max warp-distance jumping from solar system to solar system trying to get closer to the center of the Galaxy. Only 610k light years to go. It would go faster if I wasn't so easily distracted by exploring a planet now and then.

I found this tiny creature pet. It was so cute/hilarious, not so much in looks but in the miniature keystone-cop running to keep up with me. I loved it. Then I forgot about it for a little while. Finally summoned/pulled it out again and...apparently it grew up. Which is cool, but it's not cute/funny anymore. The game itself tells you straight up. Still, hey, don't tell me what I can/can't do. Only about 18,446,744,073,709,551,423 to go! I got this! Bubble planets are cool to wander around in. It's such a "zen" game, if you want it to be.

I got a new Star Destroyer Freighter on my main save. Seemingly you must have space combat active (maybe also on Standard, not Minimal) so every 5 system warps or so you get a rescue-freighter when you drop out of warp, which is when these bigger ones may show up. I lucked out and got the biggest version of this Capital style after four reloads/retries, but once again it's only an A-class, not S, but since I suck at the ship combat, I'll take it. Mostly more starting cargo space so less work to max that out (33 vs. 19 starting, in my case) + looks, altho stats/combat abilities do go up a little too. I wish you weren't limited to only having one/your previous goes poof (can't collect them). I suppose you could try to get a different style in multiple saves. Anyhoo, I can now go back to ignoring space combat on this save.

Since Paramount put up the first episode on YT for free viewing, I watched the new Fraiser premiere. It was cool to see Kelsey Grammer in the role again, and he slid into it like a comfy old glove. But I laughed not once, although I probably smiled several times. The new chrs - well, let's say they didn't engage me. I'd have serious doubts whether it'll stick around for more than one season but who knows. The best thing about the first episode was the dedication to John Mahoney.

My main save in No Man's Sky, I think is close to the end of the story questline. Which became maybe 5% more interesting as the end nears, but it's still very "arrgh." But some oddball graphic glitches are starting to occur once in a while, like falling through map/wall cracks, UI white washing away. The game has only CTD once, no other performance issues so far, no clue why it's happening. Maybe I need to clear a game cache, too much info after so many hours. Anyway I started a new chr again (3rd one). I skipped the tutorial this time, and at least the settings I used = that Anomaly station was freely available regardless. Thus, I am free of the tutorial shackle re: restarts. This save is going to ignore all the story, base, settlement etc. quests like the plague and only focus on galaxy and planet exploration. I find what I find when I find it, upgrade whatever when I feel like it, avoid all npc's. I enjoy NMS much much more that way. I still see, on planets, stuff I've never seen before. Not to mention learning game stuff I didn't know before, still. That's the best thing.

If Melt was the black and white melting face cover, yes, that one. I haven't listened to it in a long time tbh. Which is true of most of the stuff I bought on vinyl/cassette tape and never bought CD/digital versions of later. Heh.

^ I played Gabriel's "So", so many times. My fav album of his is still the self-titled one tho. --------- I still casual-dance like this. Plus the song is tops, of course. Every time I get a bit worn out by the current music styles I go back to this stuff. Thanks, parents.

Ok, I've put in about 200 hrs of No Man's Sky now, although I still have not finished the story line although I have progressed it farther. The TLDR would be: The game as it currently is in 2023, is a fun sandbox, but gameplay value - especially if not on a sale - is going to mostly appeal to a certain type of player. Even if you are the type of player it would appeal to, over a lengthy interval it might start to feel a bit shallow vs. some other more concise/specialized sandboxy games. Overall for sandbox genre I'd give NMS something like ... 6.5/10. Maybe 7/10 at most. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying the game quite a lot, and it's great for mindless chill, exploring, self-goals/long semi-mindless mental distraction. The level of freedom is great. But outside of freedom to explore/look at quintrillions of procedural generated planets, everything else - bases, pets, settlements/fleets, all of that, feel more at an afterthought level. Probably a consequence of trying to please those who wanted more than system/planet exploration, but still make everything in the game not required. ------------------------------- Re: Questing ---The quest side of the game for me is maybe a 3/10 at best. The quests are extremely repetitive - not surprising or anything - and generally consist of perform scans on planet or check galaxy map for markers, go to a new system, land on a planet, find/click something, repeat endlessly, pattern. All the main and larger side quests I've done still feel like tutorials, with rewards mostly being access to new structure/crafting blueprints or maybe some tech mods and maybe making you build/use the new thing as part of the quest. So if you've already bought/upgraded a lot on your own, they are an especially pointless/annoying grind. ---being someone not hugely into strong narrative arc games, I'm often fairly tolerant of shallow quest systems as long as they're short/quick. My tolerance for the ones in NMS is really low. One or two of them, so far, have made me want to turn the game off for the session, in annoyance/boredom. They are more dull - and at times, RNG-irritating - than killing 30 rats in the basement. Just me tho. ---if one is the type who wants to finish the story, I would recommend brand new players to follow it almost exclusively. Save the sandbox or side lore hunting, if you like the game enough, for after. At least then they wouldn't feel as pointless as putting them off until later. ---there are a lot of nitpicky UI, controls, npc menu, inventory menu complaints I could make but eh.

I cleaned up my large base. It's 99% for looks/fun of building ... the npc pilots still visit. You can go multi-story with the room modules but the auto-mount a ladder when you get close to them mechanic drives me nuts - and you must put those ladders in the center of the claustrophobic rooms - so I don't do that and instead "game the system" to spread a base over more territory then initially allowed. I have a few pets but I forget about them since they're auto-put away every time you get in/out of your ship. Plus per usual, they're just deco or the silly riding. Or you can try to breed new ones re:colors/size/shape I think. Some are cute tho. The brown one on the right tries to track/find POI's for me but isn't very good at it. Not all worlds are grassy biospheres. There's a non-organic lifeform in the below pic - in the game it's obvious because it's rolling around like a boulder. Pretty cool. This planet matched my ship pretty well I thought.

I may have finally found the "forever home" Paradise planet! All I need now is to make a bit of a base. Maybe I'll let this one be the one where I hire an Overseer, so I'll make it a bit bigger. ....maybe I went a little overboard, and not in the best way. I'll clean it up later. The funny thing is while I kept trying to place all those landing platforms (I had a temp-display-ships for screenshot idea - sadly 9 platforms is max per base), the random-encounter npc pilot/traders kept landing on them! That red ship below isn't mine, get off my stuff! So I then had to wait for them to fly off before I could move pieces again...I had no idea they'd use player-made platforms. Guess you need more than one, lol

Apparently there's a hard limit of something like 450ish "claimed bases" you can create in NMS - the base list won't show/activate the base-computers after that. If you delete some, then go back to that base computer you can active them, but... .....noooooo, my plans for multiple universe/all solar systems conquest are thwarted! ....just kidding. I have no desire to make 13 quintillion bases or whatever. I have been trying to fly toward the center of the current Universe, although from all I've read, moving Galaxies doesn't seem particularly worthwhile/not a reason. Still, I wanna manually (vs. being warped there via quest or something) reach the Center just once.

I was told if I did hire max frigates, all those msg's etc. would stop. So I did. Turns out max is 30. I now have a fleet. Plus once again I was delighted that I could "board" every single frigate, walk all over on the outsides, look inside. There isn't much point to it but virtual tourism (if they come back damaged from an expedition, there *is* a go-there and click stuff to repair them element) but it's impressive/fun and grand tourism. I've decided this game is an amusement park, with sandbox elements.

So, I got that freighter, deco'd it a bit, then left, fully intending to ignore it. But now every time I warp anywhere and fleets pop into the system, I'm bombarded with "hey don't you want to hire my frigate" messages if I get anywhere near them. Which I could ignore, but it's annoying. There's a whole mini-game re: freighters/fleets/expeditions (expeditions mostly make you items/money passively), which I'm not ready/willing for. Should I copy back/reload the save folder just before I bought it? Hmm...maybe if I just delete that command room module? Or hire max frigates no matter the type and maybe they'll shut up then and leave me in peace? Haha. Game dilemmas!

NMS Sky - along with not really needing complex bases for functionality (not yet anyway), another reason it doesn't appeal to my personal obsessive nature is ... I've become so used to 7 Day's structural integrity building rule concepts that the whole modular room building stuff just isn't very engaging even if you can make kewl things visually. I suppose it's a little bit like FO4 style. I've been wanting to put mini-bases above ground now, because if you don't, eventually you may find rocks/bushes growing in the middle of it as stuff like that respawns close to, but not exactly, the same spots. There are pole foundation pieces, but I can't figure out how to place them at height, they always start at ground level if you try to place one first. But I was able to place the "square room" module ... in mid-air. Just floating in space. Then the foundation would "snap" underneath it and spawn legs. Ok then.

"There are many like it, but this one is mine." ...finding a system that had the right fleets pop, and then the reload-grind to get the specific freighter to be actually offered, plus as over a B class was long. I got impatient re: an "S" class and settled on an "A" class. ...there are some much more unique/kewl freighters in the game I think, but I would guess they are hard to find/get. ...looks like you can build a huge modular-room base on the thing (red-lined squares in pic below are player-placed). To the point it would get annoying to run around in. But I hear getting the freighter modules/currency to unlock more/all the modular rooms/thingies for it are a serious PITA. I probably won't bother. In fact, I probably won't use it, since I'm not interested in quests/combat etc, altho who knows. But I had to have the ST/SW combo one. And now I know what they're like.