LadyCrimson

Any arpg'rs try Wayfinder yet? I keep hearing it's not too bad, except the loot variation is a little lacking - more like Borderlands than Diablo, for example maybe. Looks like a mish mash of a lot of different games/styles. But I can't decide if it looks "simple" enough for my current gaming brain/if I'd like the mechanics I've seen in reviews/videos. Interesting that they were a MT/MMO thing, then publisher bailed on the dev's or something - note I do not not know any details - so dev's decided to turn into a SP/no-MT/offline (does have peer to peer coop) instead. Almost makes me want to buy to support "no MT/offline" gaming. Almost.

Feeling forced to join one of multiple factions (especially if sorta seeming "politically" story motivated) just to finish the plot is probably why I largely stopped playing certain types of rpg's. Mostly deep lore type rpg's. That type of "choice/consequence" doesn't really do it for me. imo there should always be a neutral/no faction option. Pfft. It was fine when it was something simple/two toned like "Choose Dark or Light" ala Might and Magic series where you'd just get a slightly different end spell set or something, but stuff like Morrowind just makes me go "le sigh."

If it's a fly, roach, ant, or those stupid little moths that like to eat all your flour/nuts/grains, and it's in the house, it dies. If it's a mosquito and it's anywhere near me, it dies. On the other hand, if I'm outside and I see a bee/fly/lizard/whatever got itself stuck in the pool, I'll fish it out and put it in the shade to give it a chance to recover (if it does). It's less that I mind killing an insect (vs. my convenience) and more that I don't like "suffering." Spiders I leave alone, except poisonous ones (around here that just mean black widows). Although I won't let them turn the house into a webbed mecca. Or if I'm in bed and a spider crawls across my pillow near my face, there's a decent chance I'll kill it without thinking. The funniest tale in this arena for me is still when I rescued/nursed a small butterfly back to health. When I went into the yard to release it, it left my hand and flew into the air, freeeee. Then 3 seconds later a bird came dive bombing out of a tree and ate it. I was aghast for 5 more seconds, then hubby and I howled with laughter. Such is life.

I think I once rushed through the end plot of New Vegas just to see the end title cards etc (then reloaded my "real" save) but other than that I ignored factions. Never did anything to officially join/align with Powder Gangers, pseudo Romans, the mech suit dudes, any of that. So faction considerations weren't a thing for me. I was the same way in Morrowind. Never finished the plot of that because I refused to join anything. Lone wolf forever!

Generally speaking if a newbie would follow roads or whatever, you'd run into deathclaws, go "nope" and go back. Although I think one might've been able, with some luck, to get through. It would take luck tho. Or maybe it was an exploit. I can't remember.

Had a great morning, life is good! Hop onto internet, check some news headlines etc. Economics, War, Politics, Hatred! Everyone's insane! Humanity is a terminal virus! ....oh yeah, that's why I stay off the internet more and more now. Imma gonna go kill some zombies and build some towers to feel better again, now. Hope everyone has a great morning/afternoon/evening!

@Gorth - I still listen to Big Country's first album The Crossing now and then. Although my favorite single is Chance. --------------------------------- Good interview, he plays the drums a bit between yaks. At 72, Copeland is still such a chaotic (personality) character and I love it. Watching him/the other two on stage back then as a young teen (Day on the Green, Oakland) was something. I wish I'd been able to see them (live) earlier but ah well. Considering I've rarely gone to live concerts, at least I got to once.

Unhinged, via Netflix Absolutely not recommended, even if you like dumb action/thriller flicks.

Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense. Because it's still an awesome concert/stage/performance piece. Of course, one has to like Talking Heads music. Which I do. Some of his dance moves, however, seem even more oddball/amusing today than it did back then.

This could be the last Clint Eastwood directed movie. Mostly because, I mean, well, he's 94 after all. It looks like it could be interesting, has great cast etc, but not sure how interested in this type of story I personally am. Still, I don't think there's an Eastwood directed film that I actively disliked, so I'm sure I'll see it before too many months/years pass.

One doesn't "need" seriously high res. and low compression textures to have a game look really good on a 4k screen. But while I may not be anywhere near at Bokishi's "level", I do find it annoying when a game claims to have some high texture dlc only to find they only gave it to, oh, say, road textures and vehicles, and all the rocks and walls and creatures still look like blurry blobs if you get anywhere close to them. To me an overall, very noticable texture quality inconsistency is far worse than simply not doing "hi-res" textures at all.

Holy Moly, that's a lot of cats, do you have to build a city to house all of them? ....oh, it's a currency.

^ I'm not into such games, but from everything I've seen/heard re: Concord, it just didn't offer anything interesting enough to move players from other games to that one. There are only so many games a single person can dedicate themselves to, and MP games that need constant regular players --- just can't expect many dozens of them to all be hugely populated. I guess the dev/publisher hope is always that yours will be the next big thing, but perhaps there isn't going to be a next big thing again for a while. I mean, even outside of online games, you have the same situation with other genres. City builders, survival, open world rpg etc - how many of those do we all need per year. Why should I play this or that when I can just keep playing 7 Days to Die. It's getting so most of these games kinda look exactly the same on the surface. I love my smaller dev/indie games, but even that is horribly oversaturated these days. And worse, many of them look more and more like pure asset flips/all the same art/3d model with almost no innovation/uniqueness. Sure many may still be "ok" or at least pass the time but...it gets tiresome trying to navigate it all. Consumer burnout cycles. Concord maybe just hit a bad timing.

First reaction: "wtf" Second reaction: "If this isn't in the actual released game (Dollman dancing, at least) I will be disappointed." I think it was clipped out of a Playstation Presents Japan stream. Where they also showed behind scenes mocap/live performers etc. (starting around 1:02)

To answer: hubby has just used the PT that Kaiser gave him. Which mostly meant some visits, some advice, some exercises to do and then they send you off with "that's about all we can do/say." He hasn't shopped for others. Edit: I am not sure at what point more PT would not be insurance covered. Hubby does his stretches/positions/ball exercises, sometimes a bit of the elliptical, always a couple short swims a day, walks, lies down for 20 minutes a few times a day, etc. He tried the gravity table but has been told recently maybe he should avoid it. Y'know, conflicting opinions from different docs or "experts." >.> He's not a big believer in chiropractors (there's a history from a period in his 20's) but since pain relievers/steroids do not work, he's kinda desperate I suppose. Just one of those "maybe it won't do anything but no harm giving it try for a while" things when "real" doctors tell you there's no hope. The first chiro. he went to basically told him they couldn't do anything more. Which is why he found a new one. They said they help others with similar conditions and might be able to help (with pain) but like I said, after more than a month (3 visits a week) nothing. Basically, imo, hubby would need magical surgery to replace the spinal discs. You can't pain-relieve the constant rubbing of bone on bone when those discs are essentially gone. I've read that disc replacing is currently kind of possible, but not really FDA approved or something, and/or has come under fire recently, and there is conflicting information whether it even really helps people in his degenerative spinal arthritis level. Anyway ... I get where hubby's at right now, and everyone's gotta do what they gotta do if it makes them feel better in some way, especially mental health. But it's still occasionally frustrating. Also, it's not cheap.

Since CBS put the pilot episode on YouTube (free/anyone can view), I watched "Matlock." The show itself feels like a semi-generic lawyer/courtroom procedural, with a main character serial-motivation/mystery arc, but Kathy Bates is the bees knees. I would watch the show just to watch her performance. She is awesome - both humor and drama - and I'm so glad she decided to do this show before her retirement (so she says). She's like 10 planes of existence above every other actor in the show, imo. I showed hubby, he watched it, and he came in later to say basically that ("Kathy Bates is killin' it"). Now the question is can it hold quality through the supposed 18 ordered episodes. I hope so. If she's truly retiring after this, hope it's a great swan song for her.

Since 4090 and 4080 were 1600 and 1200 at launch (I think), I'd guess $1999 and $1499 this time. Yeah...can't even give the 5080 20gb vram. I suppose they'll give that to the 5080ti or 5080ti super or whatever they're planning on squeezing inbetween as usual. That's what I mean by gimping everything but the xx90's, but not making the xx90's twice the price. Thus driving people to buy the xx90 "for a little more." I figure at some point Nvidia will only put out xx90's for $4k for the elites and everyone else will buy mid tier Intel or AMD for $800-$1200. Pfft.

We watched Trap via Prime rental. Josh Hartnett was great, I liked his performance re: constant expression changes. There is no M. Night twist ending, although one aspect is something one might not predict. But it's not a twist. The movie overall lacks any real sense of suspense/thrill re: the "trap" situation. And the second half of the film becomes more of standard crime-thriller sort. I was vaguely reminded - pacing/story-beat wise - of the old film Red Eye, except Red Eye had Cillian Murphy and was a lot better.

I will be 56 soon. Meaning hubby will be 59 next year. I suppose I might look "50ish" to most people these days. But at least I still have almost zero wrinkles. No anti-wrinkle creams needed here. So there. The other day: Hubby: "It's going to suck if/when one of us wakes up to find the other dead in bed/couch/floor." Me: " ...... um,. yes?" (not sure what you say to that, heh) Hubby's the far less pessimist/cynic in the relationship but his back is still getting him down/he kind of refuses to accept the situation in a way, yet. He's trying chiropractor again for pain management but I don't think it's doing a thing.

^ I should note that the whole reason I went to higher end gpu's was because of longevity re: higher game settings. If you buy high end nvidia it's typical that a couple generation series later, the "lower end" ends up being kinda like what used to be higher end 2-3 gens ago. But I really don't want to give nvida 2k+ for a stupid gpu. $1400 for the 2080ti 5 years ago was bad enough, even tho I've liked that gpu/it's served me very well (I've only played 4k since I bought it). tripleEdit: it's not at all about affordability for me. It's consumer principle at this point + less gaming interest. I just want to play on a giant 4k screen. >.>

^ Guys, I'm not interested in 99% of "AAA" (or "AAAA", or probably even most "AA") games. I'm also not interested in anything above 60fps. Or ray tracing. Or most of the other graphic bells and whistles touted as must have features these days when it comes to game high/ultra "presets" that get tested by all the youtube channels. Turn all that stuff off and my rig is likely to still get 50-60fps/4k in many of them. Some of them I do need DLSS/quality on that to not dip below 50 tho. YT guru benchmarks on games are nice and all, but they aren't for people who tweak their settings to death. The only two "AAA" games that I might be interested in at the moment that I'm guessing would require an upgrade (to stay at least close to 4k/60 with at least high textures and draw distances) would be Death Stranding 2 and Borderlands 4. And that's maybe. At any rate, thing is even smaller dev's games are getting more demanding/less optimized - or at least, feels like they give you less control over what options you can tweak in menus, because apparently giving users built-in options is hard or too much work or something. Edit: the 4070ti seemed like it would be an overall jump in fps vs. my card - not a huge leap, but more - which would likely be good enough. 12GB video ram is also definitely still "enough" if you're not going for RT/all ultra etc - most games I play/have tried in the past couple years (mostly smaller devs) don't even use up the 11 in the 2080ti. I think that Res. Evil 4 remake would take up more if you upped a couple specificsettings a lot but that was about it. Although yes, if I'm patient enough to wait and see what the 5070 or something is like, that could end up being better. The main "fear" is if you wait too long then the 4070series is largely gone/unavailable and now you're stuck with the 50xx at possibly even more inflated pricing.

No comments re: AMD's decision to exit the high-end gpu market? Does nvidia have a total monopoly re: super high end now? I don't know if I'd want to spend the likely near/over 2k for a 5090 even if it lasted me 8+ years. Maybe I should just get a 4070ti and be done with it. That might last me 5+ more (4k) years w/my gaming habits and I'd save $1k or more. Pffft. I might not even have to cpu upgrade yet ... although I suspect my current mobo might not work....or the case.....and ofc it'd bottleneck a little even at 4k I'm sure, but still. Sigh. I feel like the consumer gaming rig business is really in bad place, from a consumer perspective. Edit: not just the high end prices but there's the intel chip stuff, and power consumption/energy and ... just feels kinda doom and gloomy I guess.

Spot the zombie. Non-zombie animals don't like zombies. You'll see them duking it out here and there. When in stealth/crouched, you get to see where zombies spawn in to prep for dropping down on your head. Stealth foils that. Hah. Funny clipping. They spawned that way (they are "alive"/would stand up if I'm detected - but looks like the bricks fell on their heads.

Officer Black Belt - a "netflix" S. Korea film I guess? Crime/action. I saw "starring Kim Woo Bin" so I clicked. He was fun/great but like his other recent stuff since he's come back from his nasopharyngeal cancer, it was nothing special. Not enough mentor/student bromance either. I'm not sure what it is, but outside of Train to Busan and The Man From Nowhere, most S. Korean films for me end up being just neutral. To the point I rarely even try anymore. Something about their story beat timings or editing perhaps often feels sporadic/erratic and ruins the flow/connection, for me. They tend to do better with series, any genre, even if they're short series. Although i still haven't watched Parasite. Still waiting for 2nd season of Hellbound. Hoping it will be decent.