Blarghagh

Was I being inflammatory? Either way, other mods own the deadfire boards, I'm more active on other boards. Anyway, though I paraphrased your jackpot phrase I wasn't specically adressing you rather the idea that gamer girls are one in a million. And I acknowledged I'm a statistical outlier, but one female gamer in an entire social circle at this point strikes me as the opposite outlier. (I'm 29, for the record). As for not getting matched in Destiny, I have my own theories about that. I wrote a long explanation but my phone ate it, but the gist of my experience is a majority of lady gamers don't use matchmaking. I have more examples, but my fiancee has two Overwatch accounts and the one she uses for random pugs has a male handle, and I spent 4+ years in a WoW guild that had a female majority and they rarely grouped outside the guild, and never used random matchmaking. I make no conclusions why, but pretty much none of the gamer ladies I know play with randos or participate in open game communities like this board. Don't be. I also suffer from crippling anxiety and depression and being a mediocre freelance 3D animator pays ****.

I love the more exotic setting after the fairly standard medieval Dyrwood.

To be fair though, I would like to address claims that women don't play video games (side note: anecdotal experience =/= gatekeeping) - where the **** does this idea come from? Let me explain my scepticism: - I'm writing this while my fiancee is playing Overwatch right next to me - Two of her best friends have their own streaming channels on Twitch and so does my sister-in-law - At least three of my female friends are much more hardcore gamers than me and one of those is a game dev who worked on Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn - I grew up watching my mother, who is now 60, play Diablo, Command and Conquer and Age of Empires and she can STILL kick my ass While I'm totally willing to admit I might be an exception and in a unique position as a freelance animator who often works on games, and my experience is just as anecdotal, but a claim like saying finding a gamer girl is hitting a jackpot when I've literally been surrounded by them all my life sounds to me like the claim of a guy who just isn't paying attention?

Edit: Nevermind, I'm butting out of this hornets nest.

Indeed, the fact that during the publicity lead-up to Dragons Age 2 Bioware felt the need to coin this term, which must be different otherwise the term "bisexual" would have sufficed. I love faerunner's interpretation, but they opened the door to this criticism and characters being examined through this lens by saying this is something they do. Which begs the question with every character they release that isn't clearly defined by their romantic history: is this character a private person who is bisexual (as per faerunner) or is this character binary-gendered and flips a switch depending on the player character - which feels rather exploitative. Once the cat was out of the bag, it's hard to take it seriously as something true to a character.

+1 on this.

Luna Lovegood.

Valygar?

Man I wish PoE 1 had a priest sidekick. Adventurers feel fake and dull but that leaves me with maining a priest or dealing with Durance again.

But dragons aren't real. Yes, which is why I specified comparatively realistic, not baseline realistic. Twice. How many fantasy settings have just dumped some old school brontosaurs in your lap without a second thought? To compare, how many have you trekking through an exotic jungle and then you run into this jerk? https://www.newdinosaurs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/155_therizinosaurus_damir.jpg

Since PoE prides itself on realism comparatively, if it were to have dinosaurs at some point they should be comparatively realistic too. Not lumbering, lizardly monsters or even the somewhat more mobile Jurassic Park creatures. Feathered dromeasaurs, pot-bellied therizinosaurs, colorful and quilled ceratopsians. Exotic animals, not monsters.

I'm with Gromnir. Dinosaurs or bust.

He gained that weight for a movie. Lost it after. Don't presume your puny human weaknesses apply to Neo.

Nobody knows for sure. Raedric believed they were related to Berath, but then, he also believed "undesirables" caused soulless births. They could be related to either, as both have aspects of death in their portfolio. Honestly, I enjoy the fact that some of these things remain unexplained/uncertain. I, for one, still haven't a clue how Raedric got ressurected.

I think you're reading too much into it There are always crazies, I mean, the author of that article writes romance novels and young adult fantasy Perhaps I am. But when someone looks down their nose and tells people "don't read this book" especially over such a specious and anti-intellectual concept as political correctness it puts my back up. I dunno, that's not what I read. It sounded to me like an op-ed piece. I mean, she's not saying "remove these perfectly fine books to fill a quota of diversity", she's saying "I hate these **** books, I like these books better and they get bonus points in my book for diversity". She's a bit preachy about it, but it's pretty much just opinion. I mean, I guess having an opinion and expressing it is political? But calling something this simple "the leftist cancer that destroys culture" is a bit harsh? Plus, you know, of the ones I read the ones she mentioned are pretty **** I think.

Maneha and Iselmyr were both into Pallegina. I don't know about any male companions being gay, but I felt like Edér had a bit of a crush on Iselmyr, which is a very non-standard pairing to say the least. That is what I want, really. I don't care if a character is gay, straight, bisexual obsessively sexually oppressive against Xuarips, whatever as long as they are that way because it fits the character, not because the players need some fanservice. If you want feel-good minigames and pandering, go play a BioWare game - and if that's what you want, then it's not really an issue of representation either, is it? That's just "I want to get my jollies off too", and since hopefully that's not the point of PoE relationships there shouldn't be any issues. Representation is a bit weird in PoE anyway - I think PoE has a lot more representation of pretty much everything, even if you don't immediately notice. In a lot of video games or media, it's easy it is to assume someone who doesn't state they're gay is straight. I felt PoE did a good job establishing this isn't true, even if not neccesarily every character wants to bone everyone else. Even if you ignore the many non-standard couples you can run into, PoE still tries to deal with it. I really like how PoE sortof got into themes of gender without getting overtly political. I mean, look at Pallegina's legal gender status and the idea of female souls Awakening into male bodies, or one of the villains murdering his wife for being "defective" after an effectively stillborn child, etc. are all storylines with parts and statements that you could take with you regarding the stigmas of infertility and womanhood, transgendered people, etc. but they're also stories that fit elegantly in this fantasy universe that has magic and shapeshifting monsters and tangible souls. I feel like those are much more elegant fantasy stories about gender roles and representation than, say, forcing a transgender woman into a game where you find a belt of gender changing within the first act (lookin' at you Beamdog). The only downside is that the extreme left is too stupid to notice and they'll bitch and whine regardless (**** you tumblr), but that balances out with the fact that... the extreme right is too dumb to notice too and they won't (**** you 4chan).

Yes, exactly. I think one of the reasons those moments were so disliked at the time is because for the entire first game and the start of the second game, any companion you don't bring with you is a waste of resources to gear up and customize and there wasn't really anything indicating that this was going to change. So most people on their first playthrough were punished pretty hard for for that. If you've put any effort into your companions at all, suddenly it's just awesome that your team is getting **** done to help you out. If they're going to split the party up in places, they should establish this early on.

Hm. One the one hand, I agree, I thought Pillars could have used a few more freaks. On the other hand, the characters from BG1 you mentioned are one note comic relief?

I loved it in KotOR2... on subsequent playthroughs. First playthrough and it being a sequel to the original made me expect that all companions are useless anyway so I didn't bother gearing anyone I wasn't using. Boy did I pay for that.

I can't recall. Did we hear what Xoti's race is?

I was going to consider your valentine to me to be that today has two threads in WoT not about politics but then I made the mistake of reading this one.

Story-wise your character must be fun at parties. In my run Zahua gets to swim in a blood pool, though Some crazy homeless guy started ranting to me about seeing me on fire, so I put him out of his misery. Weirdly, the lady who is the keep at Caed Nua said he was still there, driving travelers away from my property. I'm scared!

Honestly most of the basic fixpacks, restoration mods and tactics stuff I like have been moved over to EE at this point and that's all I need anyway. Most mods that add something are pretty bad, IMO. I've yet to see a companion mod or something that was any good. EE works fine now, and if you don't like their new additions, well, there's about a million mods to remove them. I got what I need.

Yeah, this confuses me. Okay, you've got more choices to make but they're less meaningful. Redundancies are safety nets to protect you from your own screwups. This threads got a weird tendency sometimes of asking for more protection because they're not 'casuals'. I like complexity in my games, but I do want it to be meaningful complexity, not just for the sake of it.

Well that's what the refund is for.