LadyCrimson

That happened to me occasionally in BL2 as well. On the other hand, at least a decent weapon can last some levels and still be "ok". From what I'm reading it sounds like the drop nerfs were largely for the Mayhem 3 option, which you can't choose until after you beat the main game. So...regular 1st story run may be set up where nothing too exciting drops without awesome luck and it's the "end-game" and these other play modes where you'll get a lot more. I mean, in BL2 the Legendaries were either very rare to drop or you had to farm a single specific guy 20-100 times to get a specific one (farming the Hellfire in BL2 was soooo annoying). Even purples were fairly rare without red chests. The only common/story enemy that had a decent chance to drop certain multiple orange/purple frequently was the dragon-like endgame boss (BL2).

BL3 - let the balance adjustments nerfing begin! ... they've done some hotfixes re: some damage values (elemental and maybe some other weapons things) as well as lowering spawn chance percentage of the Loot enemies (kind of like the treasure guys in Diablo3...) ... and something about reducing high quality drop rates in some cases? Plus maybe a bit of XP reduction? Apparently tons of people are max level etc. and practically have all the Legendaries and high Guardian Ranks already from farming certain stuff. Shocker. It's why a months-wait isn't a bad thing. Why get used to the way things work in a loot game when it's going to change a lot anyway. Pffft. Well, I don't mean that they're impossible solo or something. Just that it requires a bit more purposeful grinding (like repeating clearing of some areas twice) than before to make sure you're of level to the big-bosses. I hear there's also one or two platforming jumping type situations that are super irritating/expect to die trying a lot or something too. Don't think they were main story related tho. Yeah, I'm the same with the Action skills. Pet-guy can go invisible/shoot while invisible etc. which is very useful but I constantly forget to use it.

Mortal Engines -- y'know, the first 1/4 of the movie wasn't half bad. Nice/interesting visuals, seemed like it might have some interesting lore re: those cities on wheels etc. But it then became so hugely and obviously derivative of 1000 other movies (including "Star Wars", especially its end-game or any dogfight scene SW was in turn inspired by) that I FFWD'd through most of the supposedly exciting climactic battle, bored out of my mind by then. And that undead cyborg chr. could have been excised completely in favor of better/more plot details or more focus on that non-mobile city behind the shield wall - like, were we supposed to care about them with zero focus on them? Ah well, visually it was still sometimes fun. I remember Jihae (the female rebel leader chr) from that Nat. Geo. Mars series I watched a few episodes of. She has screen charisma, it'd be cool to see her in a larger and more useful film role.

I suspect that's because more and more BL series is devoted to MP design. Thus for 4 players an enemy that's a bit higher level than expected may be manageable. In BL1 and 2 I could usually do bosses 2-3 levels higher solo (4 was tough even with hubby along) but I hear some bosses are also tougher now. Have you been doing all the sides or mostly just the main questline? There's not as many tho. I can't figure out if the scaling in the game is the same as previous, do you have an opinion on that? General enemies including badasses seem to have a range but don't always spawn as the highest possible vs. your chr. lvl.

(a bit long, sorry) I forgot how much hubby liked Borderlands. 6+ months was feeling too long for him ... since spare cash is not in short supply these days, I took my unused PS4-Slim, reset/wiped it, he made a ps4 account (which he would not have done for any other game in existence, I bet) and bought the game with it. We can check it out some and he can scratch his itch. I think he wanted me to get it too so we could co-op but plenty of cash or not, I'm not buying a 2nd copy AND two PSN+ subs (we dislike split-screen). Anyway, I've watched hubby play the Siren class (she's a Siren, that's about it) and the mech-suit wearing class. I've played the pet-class guy and the Irish device-using guy. They're all around level 7-8. Here's my (numerous) observations: ---World areas may feel bigger but a lot of that is even more empty space, with edge to edge exploration still largely rewarded with skag piles and nothing much else. It feels a bit more cut-and-paste feeling and less visually charming for some reason. Can't put a finger on it really, just feels that way. ---Being able to fast travel to a FT station from anywhere is nice. Park a car close to where you are, FT back to the town/station, then FT back to car. Mostly solves the "not enough space" syndrome, especially in solo play. ---None of the new classes interest me much. You'll find a lot of the skills from the other games in altered/improved forms scattered across the new 4 Vault Hunters. It's not that the chrs are bad, but it's become generic feeling, these BL skill trees. Ho-hum. The pet-dude is at least fun if you like chrs. with combat pets. ---The humor is not as amusing to me personally. Falls flat most of the time. That BL2 main writer that went off to write for Hulu is missed. ---Blues and purples fall like rain and show up in vending machines with fair frequency (unlike in BL2,). BL2 was originally far too stingy in this regard (I hear it greatly improved with that late-late stage edition/update), but in BL3 it feels overly generous. ---Shootin' and lootin' is fun for an hour or two at a time, but overall the game feels less interesting so far. Not getting that one more level sensation/obsession. But to be fair, it took me a while to really get into BL2 as well, and in BL2 I didn't enjoy the low-levels/early areas as much either. I don't know how I feel about the game yet. Or how far I'll go (I want to *finish* the game on PC). Maybe peek into the first planet.

....it was 2am and I finally noticed what was on the rear end of my small pet. My "poetry" skills are poor at this hour. :p Also ... those eggs hatched. Sorry for sucky pic but they're like the size of pinheads. Couldn't even tell if they were alive at first. I was wrong and I guess they're ladybug larvae. Which is fine. I'll stick them back outside and they can try to compete with the ants for aphids. I'm not sure I feel like raising ladybugs at the moment.

Yeah...I'll be slightly constantly tempted to buy it there so I could at least check it out, but then I'd still need to buy it again (twice) on Steam so hubby and I could play, so ... nah. I better not.

The video/concept reminds me a tad of that opening of Up. I tried to find a YT vid with English subs but failed. Only web lyrics I found were very broken English. So I copied the lyric subs from Netflix. I can't vouch for their total translation accuracy but they get the point across. (the concert+video skits film "Mayday Life" is on Netflix, this is the closing song). I think I like this Taiwan band, apparently been around many years (early 90's?) so they're now all mid to late 40's, still performing/touring. Sorta garage/rock/pop ballad mixture genres. Edit: those lyrics are long, added a spoiler tag.

I would mostly be curious about performance of the game. I've seen videos of 1080ti's at Ultra/1440 going 75fps and also 2080ti's at Ultra/4k going 50ish average. Probably varies some depending on other rig stats and impact of recording software, ofc. Not that I need Ultra settings with any game (Ultra is just for screenshots, as they say), especially with BL's graphic style. But considering BL2 was fairly undemanding even on my ancient old rig, I wonder what they've done/added to make it so demanding now. Also, I heard DX12 can cause crashing issues for some. I think I'll be glad to wait the 6 months or year or whatever it is so I'll get a patched game with all or most dlc already out. Edit: andddd....75GB install? Come on people/devs, do we really need so much that AAA games have to become this ginormous? In a couple years people will say FFXV's install size is tiny.

You know what I'm not playing? Borderlands 3.

Most of my game time is still taken up with the mobile Idle Miner Tycoon tablet game. 30-60min. or so a day upgrading oodles of mines to increase "money" and bonuses per second, so next time I open the game I can upgrade even more! Mindless busywork when I wake up and my brain is barely functioning. Also, still the digital jigsaw puzzles - another hour or so a day. I'm sick of ANY landscapes (sky, mountains, skylines, rivers, trees=puzzle-boring) and thus have become obsessed with UHD quality/pro pictures of food to turn into jigsaws. It's so nice you can find hundreds of such on the web now, I'll never run out. Food pics best pics for jigsaws! Other than that, not much. Occasionally 15-30 minutes going through that visual novel Psychedelia Of the Ashen Hawk (the one with the funny-bad chr. expressions, sigh). I should really trek through more of Eastshade and DQ:Builders 2 but just haven't been feeling that type of gaming urge too often this summer.

Forgot to mention that we did watch "The Mule." Not one of Eastwood's better directorial films. I was very slightly disappointed. It's not bad, and had some funny moments, just not quite up to his past efforts, especially the family-drama bits. Overall doesn't make as much of impact as his others. It did make me read up on the actual old man the film is based on/inspired by. The film condenses the time frame somewhat, from the real case, I think.

post 2 (different topic ) C-pillar ended up dying. It was getting big too. I gave him/he ate one small leaf of store-bought parsley, thinking if it didn't mind that I'd have to feed him less dill. I rinsed the parsley off but maybe it had pesticides. Oh well, whatever the reason, it was cute while it lasted. Hubby thinks I'm weird for getting "sad" over such a thing but a couple days later he found a new baby one and handed it over. It was really tiny. So I'm trying again. No store-bought parsley this time. It's already gotten much bigger. And if it doesn't survive all the way, then this morning I noticed ... Put those eggs in a jar, maybe I can raise a whole plethora of swallowtail babies! Also, the katydids are another insect that have been enjoying the garden. Aphids and ant "farmers" seem to love dill and the long green bean plants so anything that likes to eat those as part of their diet are also running all over the place (ladybugs/larva). Jumping spiders abound here and there too. I spend an hour or two each day just sorta watching it all. Makes me feel like that kid with the insect jars in her windowsill again.

Pickles experiment much more successful than those jalapenos. Hubby thought he put too much garlic in them but I was all "no no, tastes good." Alas, he says he'll put a clove less garlic in next time. He likes more actual dill flavor (del monte), I like more garlic/spices flavors (claussen/delis). The 2 plants produce loads - he already took a jar of cukes to his client's office for ppl to take (as well as boxes of tomatoes). People there snap up anything that's left in the break/kitchen area in seconds, lol

Ooohhh, Amazon had these in a 20-pack and not in the styrofoam "bowl" form (the noodles are thinner/different in the bowl). I'm ready for winter.

Technically I have phones (hand me downs, didn't buy them) which I just use as home wi-fi mini-tablets (along with the actual tablet). I just have no phone service subs. Total waste of money for me, I have utterly no need for a mobile phone #/service. I rarely go anywhere for more than an hour and when I do I have no desire to be call-able or text-able. Even paying just for talk-minutes, I'd never use them. The few family and friends can email or call the landline. Pffft.

Apparently you can't buy a Sleep Number bed (from a walk-in store) without giving them your mobile phone number (which means I alone couldn't buy one since I have no mobile #). And they were really insistent on connecting to your phone and this app for delivery messages. Claimed it would shorten doorstep delivery time or something. But not the delivery date, which ended up being 3 weeks from day of purchase. >.> The only reason hubby wanted one is because they have that 100 day period where you can return it for full refund if you hate it. I guess the way the world is going, if hubby dies before I do, I'll have to get my own mobile #. So hubby, don't die before me. Thanks.

Ah. I thought they'd just done a really good job at recreating that stiff face movement of those elf-like people (sorry, forget the race name). Ha. Wouldn't surprise me if they at least did some CGI post-work enhancement, on either the puppets or just to create uber-perfect lighting. There is often just that kind of ... over-polished look. Not that it matters either way. I like the quote in the article re: CGI Yoda and his movement. Too true, and not just on Yoda.

Tried watching the first episode of the Netflix Dark Crystal. I barely remember the movie, tbh, except for the muppet factor and I recall liking it at the time. I'm assuming it's all CGI now, no puppets? It feels odd to me that they sorta kept the awkwardness of the puppet walking and face movement - it's not a bad thing, just took me a bit to get used to I guess. Visuals are quite nice overall. I may give it a longer shot if my attention span can keep up with it. I could've done without the one Crystal keeper and her constant goopy nose problem tho.

When I buy a visual novel and initially think it's promising. Seems possibly intriguing (serial killers, clan feuds, witch legends), user reviews said any romance is very low-key/subtle (what I want). But then I noticed something ... I'm not sure I can take things like plot/dialogue seriously when everyone keeps making this open-mouthed face for surprise/shock. (lower r-corner - you can turn off protag. portraitI think, but it also shows up on main story window chrs. just as often so no escaping it) I mean I'll keep going but it's kind of ruining my "immersion" because I keep laughing.

Still binging The King's Avatar. It's (I think?) 40 episodes and Netflix puts up 10 each Friday. After the first 15 or so I started ffwd-ing through 70% of the live-human/dialogue sections and mostly watch the game/competition/training scenes. Eng. subtitles on Netflix are pretty terrible, which doesn't help (usually they're at least adequate, but this show it's rather bad). Although there is one character that's hilarious (to me) every time he's playing the game, since he's one of those really fast talkers. I guess he'd either irritate or make one laugh - I'm the latter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbOcvOZae5c I think there's an anime version too, I'll have to check that out. At any rate, for some reason I'm still having great fun watching the "game" sequences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WwP6OaynQM Edit: bah, forum isn't showing the video links embedded in-post again. So flaky for me. Whatever. They're both 2 minutes or less.

First time in a few months I turned the game on. I was bored and noticed someone made matching beachwear for them. You need tans, to the beach with you! Ignis: "I'm quite sure this is not swimwear." Me: "No no, it's the latest beach fashion from, uh, somewhere. Just put it on."

My caterpillar has stopped eating and just sits there. Maybe it's time to turn into a butterfly, but it's taking its sweet time doing the chrysalis part. I gently prodded it onto a stick vs. just on the plastic container floor unsure if it'd prefer that. It's remained there all evening. We shall see. If it hatches into a butterfly, where am I going to release it. Last time I tried to release a hatched moth into the backyard, 2 seconds later a bird swooped in and ate it. Been feeling kind of drumpy. Close-ish to my birthday - maybe it's just that. Feeling "old" and useless again. I need more soapy K-drama binging.

It kind of feels like some of the writers don't know what to do with the 8-10 episode format. Either they don't have enough story and end up with too much filler or they go plot-overboard and too much ends up on the cutting floor. Wu has a couple spots where it literally seemed to me that a fight scene or two was cut out (at least it would've made a lot more sense if there had been even partial fight scenes in those instances) as well as the chrs. that have to be there (there had to be 5 Wu's and 5 good guys) but are given no time to make impression.

Tried to watch Aquaman during the weekend. I got about half an hour in then turned it off. It's what you'd expect from such a film now but nothing you haven't seen already re: superhero origin stories and my eyes started to roll too often. The whole time I kept thinking this Aquaman sure looks like he could be a long lost sibling to Thor. I was also distracted the whole time with contemplating how much work it must be to CGI in all that underwater flowing hair. :P