Bartimaeus

No, it was just on my mind because I'd just talked to them about it yesterday. And I utterly despise how everything about the show looks, but I am trying very hard not to hate the show for it going into it. If it was a longer show, I would have ruled it out already because I would not be able to stick with a show that looks the way Madoka does, but I can try to tolerate it for a very short show, particularly if the art style is deliberately clashing with the style of show that it actually is. Yeah, I despise achievements, and I wish I could disable achievements for all my games on Steam. I make do with getting indie games, which is 99% of what I ever play on PC anymore, from GOG where I can instead, . Artificial stat and milestone tracking immediately demotivates and annoys me - let me play how I want, thank you very much. Years later, they ended up introducing infinite respeccing in D2, and my relief was immense: no need to always be perfectly min-maxing everything all the time anymore.

I'm the opposite: I only look stuff up online after I've played through it. I'm also an extremely exhaustive searcher/explorer/interacter, so I usually end up finding/experiencing most things organically anyways. The only exception is when I'm at my absolute wit's end with something after trying just about everything I can think of, . Interesting how different people can approach games... I get what they were trying to do with BotW and having breakable weapons, encouraging you to handle problems in different and novel (to the player) ways, and it's really not the worst idea, but it certainly needed some refinement - or at least some improvement after some point through the game. When I get the top Lynel sword, I...stick it in my inventory and literally never use it unless I happen to find another because I like keeping it as a sort of trophy and don't want to damage it. Don't think that was how Nintendo intended me to treat rare weapons, but it's what ended up happening, . Kind of similar mindset, except I don't have any "I have to do it myself" limitation like you do - I'm more looking simply at "potential of what's possible". For example, taking the previous BotW example with Korok Seeds: I could memory edit the amount of Korok Seeds I have to 99999 or whatever - it would take literally like 60 seconds to do that, and I'd have all of the gameplay benefits of them and...literally nobody in the entire universe but me would care. But...there's a limit of...what was it, 900? So okay, I'm OCD, and so naturally it has to be the correct game maximum of 900, right? Wrong. Because if you just set it to 900, well, you can still collect other Korok Seeds out in the game world - every single one has a specific location, there's a finite amount, there's supposed to be exactly 900. If I just set my Korok Seeds to 900, therein lies the possibility to collect more than 900, because I could just go out and actually find another and get the 901th, so I cannot do that. If it was an infinitely renewable resource like rupees or other collectables, that'd be different. Someone else was just as OCD as I was, though, and made a save game editor where it would correctly set the unique flag for every single last Korok seed, and so, when I set it to 900 through that save game editor, every Korok is correctly marked as complete, and there is no possibility of ever obtaining more than 900. It's exactly as if I had actually collected every single one myself. This...I can do, and I will happily do for such an absurdly tedious and completionist task. Generally speaking, the only self-imposed limitations I generally place upon myself is to not exploit/cheat genuine challenges/tests of skill. I would never, ever play Baldur's Gate and abuse the "talk to character then attack them while they're in the frozen talk state" exploit to beat a difficult enemy, for example. I also wouldn't ever use anything like CTRL+Y, of course (...especially because CTRL+Y doesn't give you credit for the kill, giving you no experience experience nor entering your characters' kill statistics). CTRL+J or CLUAConsole:MoveToArea() or ExploreArea(), on the other hand... However, the SL1 run is one of my favorite limitations - I would've probably done it even if it hadn't been a thing in the community already. Why? You don't have to make any choices. I'm such a ridiculous min-maxer in games...when it comes to permanent stat changes. So in Souls games, I have to figure out all of the exact numbers of every stat I eventually want to have, and then stop exactly there - I'll never go any further, because if you keep going...well, where does it end? Am I really going to go all the way up to level 700 or whatever the max level is? Of course not...plus, that's terrible for the PVP mechanics if you're into that - I can't gank anyone at max level! So I figure out exact the numbers where I want my character to stop, usually either at level 100 or level 120 because that's around where the level meta used to be, and I have each stat planned out exactly. Except when I do a SL1 character, I don't need to do any planning or decision-making at all and can just play the game, and in fact, because I never level it up and just gain massive experience over the course of the game, after completing everything but the final boss, I can make a backup of the character and have it serve as a template to make *any* kind of character that I want. And the great thing about specifically Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 is that the games are balanced in such a way that SL1 characters are perfectly competent in terms of damage output - you just can't get hit. Well, I don't plan on doing that anyways, so no problem - bonus points that I don't have to make any decisions and can just play the game. I ended up completing both of those games on NG7 (the max) with SL1 characters. So SL1 is one of my favorite ever self-imposed challenge, because only not does it actually work and still have the game play well with just some additional but still fun challenge, but it also creates a perfectly pure character free from any limitations of choices you might have made...and with the character file backed up, you're then free to make those choices for specific character builds you want to try, . But...yes, it's not for everyone. Still planning on watching Madoka Magica, but it might be longer than I expected - I persuaded my show-watching partner to watch it with me, so it'll have to wait until after we're done with Speed Racer at the very least (which shouldn't take long, given how few episodes we have left), and who knows, there might be other confounding factors that delay it, but it's gonna happen sooner or later.

If you get too caught up with how many different things you "have" to do to 100% the game, then it is indeed miserable. I found about two hundred of them while completing the game, contemplated actually properly finding them all after having done most everything else I wanted to do, said "screw this", and then used a save game editor that gives you each and very single one (while also properly setting the collected flags for each Korok, as if you had actually collected each one). Don't feel even a little bit bad about it either, . But...you're the type of person that *has* to watch every second of a TV show you're watching, even if it's pointless or unenjoyable to you; I'm the type of person where so long as I *have* every second of that TV show, then I don't actually need to watch it - simply properly having it all is good enough for me. So I'm betting that you would feel the need to collect every single Korok Seed manually, right? And yeah, there are definitely a few obtuse points in Zelda II - there's that one dude you need to find in a completely unmarked, random section of the overworld forest in order to progress, and I always forget that he exists, . Glad I took the extra effort to be vague, since I wasn't sure what, if anything, you actually know about the movie. Literally the only thing I knew about the movie before watching it was having seen the main official poster for it, which was so intriguing that I had no choice but to try it out immediately. I still love OoT, but YMMV, . I actually own a Wii U and ended up dumping my console, then played BotW on my PC. For the most part, a much better experience than playing it on the actual console, especially since there are patches/hacks you can enable to reduce some annoyances as well as even make the game look and run better. 60 FPS patch? Don't mind if I do! Want to move faster? I'll just temporarily set the game speed to to 2x or 3x. Don't feel like chopping down a thousand trees for some random sidequest? Think I'll just set my collected wood to a thousand, thanks. I get absolutely no sense of accomplishment or enjoyment out of utterly skill-less repetitions, so I don't really bother anymore whenever I can. Some people call it cheating, I call it not wasting the precious time I have being alive doing completely pointless and unfun parts of games that are supposed to be fun. I'll get my sense of accomplishment from tasks that actually require some skill, like playing and beating Dark Souls at soul level 1...and not from freaking chopping down trees for a few hours.

@majestic

I'm always intrigued by attractive concept art, and then the song immediately is on the attack. Not cool!

Okay, to be fair, this one happened in the original show every once in a while too, and it was hilarious every time. That, and Usagi turning into a 1930s toon skeleton.

You should've seen some of the noodley-armed alien replicant shapeshifter screenshots we found like 30 or 40 pages of this thread back. They were freaky. And yeah, SU could irritate sometimes because of some of its problems (and all the development issues surely didn't help...6 month hiatuses in the middle of seasons, yaaay), but a pretty remarkable show overall even with its sticklier points. @ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP @majestic

PFF has liked Green Bay's drafts under our new-ish GM, but I kind of figured they wouldn't this time around because while we didn't have any *insane* reaches by way of consensus, all of our major picks were at least mild head-scratchers in terms of "value". They all but gave us a D, and I kind of wish they had - if you're going to say all our picks were bad, then your grade should reflect that, you spineless, fence-walking worms, . In 2018, they said the Packers "won" the draft because we traded down in the first round to get an extra first round pick from the Saints the next year (who turned out to be safety Savage, who has been quite good so far), picked a "good" CB with our first round pick (All-Pro Alexander) but then also took their absolute top CB that had "fallen", Josh Jackson, with our second round pick...who, again, has done absolutely nothing his entire career. He hasn't even been injured, he just has screwed up every single chance we've given him to play, and so he basically never plays.

Emotional turmoil? There's no turmoil there, she's perfectly happy! Can't you see how happy she is? ...What, that? That's just her face - don't be so judgemental! Meanwhile...

I'm sorry, I don't talk to people who fail to LOUDLY recognize the objective superiority and awesome power of Yellow Pearl!

Uh...Jordan Love, the guy that the Packers drafted in the first round last year that set off all of this? From videos we saw of him in camp last year, he couldn't even hit a net the was standing still from like 20 feet away, so I don't even know what Rodgers is worried about! Presumably, it's more to do with what drafting a first round QB signifies than the actual kid himself. Uh...that's totally going to happen. For sure. Definitely. Okay, here's the thing: if that's actually what he's demanding, then that's patently absurd, . The media has so frequently gotten Rodgers wrong in years past that I'm still holding out hope that they've gotten much of this wrong even if there is some kind of schism between Rodgers and the front office, but...you know, it'd be a lot easier to have hope if he just came out and said "I still want to be the Packers QB, all of this has gotten completely blown out of proportion and most likely we're going to work this out".

Speaking of people living vicariously through their teams...who the HELL cares about the draft guys, I'M IN A FULL-BLOWN FOOTBALL-EXISTENTIAL CRISIS HERE: is Rodgers going to my QB or NOT? literally nothing else matters

@ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP Glad you liked The Movie! Massive plot holes/inconsistencies, endless singing, repeated character beats, and a kinda TV movie formulaic plot got on my nerves when I first watched it, but I liked it a lot more for what it was on a second watch and forgave some of its flaws and realized that it did some neat twists on even some of the repetitions. Plus, I mean, Pearl's in it, so... By the way, have I ever told you guys that the only thing better than Pearl in SU is...

I'd be pretty loathe to throw away a 30 G tube of the stuff that I've only used probably 6-7 times, so I'd hope it's fine, .

The advice I read online seems to generally be "if it doesn't seem noticeably wrong when you try to apply it, like being runny or too solid or flaky, then it's fine - make sure you seal it and don't store it in the sunlight", .

I have a big tube of Prolimatech PK-3 I've had for a few years. Not quite as good as the Kyronaut, but close enough: Did I mess up the mounting? To be determined...

Hmm...maybe! I'll be adding a couple of additional fans I purchased recently to the case, maybe I'll try re-mounting it then, because it is definitely thermally limited from what I tested.

IIRC, it does make a little difference, but not enough to discount the gap between our numbers. Mine maxes out at just ever so slightly below 14000, and I have a danged good quality air cooler too - just not enough for the 5800X, sadly. Thanks for the test - shows how much these chips really need their cooling to not throttle. I had a buddy that was using an old Hyper 212 Evo to cool his, and I could hardly believe anybody would still have one of those in this day and age, much less try to cool a 5800X with it...he was getting more like 11500-12000 with his. Yikes.

Attack Number One sounds pretty brutal. However, one thing I don't think you covered in your post was whether you ENJOYED the two episodes you just watched. Was it any good? Surprisingly, there are decent quality blurays of this (well, at least it's an actual bluray-quality transfer - i.e. not terrible upscales a la the Sailor Moon blurays).

If you run Cinebench R23 on multicore (only takes a minute or two), what score do you get after a couple of runs? Presuming you haven't overclocked or anything and are still just running stock everything - want to see how badly yours beats mine when you presumably won't have yours throttling like mine is because I'm on an air cooler. https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/download-maxon-cinebench-r23,1.html

At this point in my life, I would basically never completely take apart an already finished build if I don't have to. It's way too much hassle and pain to dissemble a PC - would rather just pay for another chassis than to try to rip a motherboard out of one just to put another back in, . Looks like you got some expensive RAM there - 3600 CL14, wowie! I kind of regret getting a 5800X and not waiting for a 5900X. I'm not one for liquid coolers, but the 5800Xs basically need one to really work at their full potential due to the entire CPU being on one chiplet and producing a ridiculous amount of concentrated heat - the 5900X cools better and is more power efficient even with it having 4 more cores due to being on two chiplets, . Still a great CPU, but can't help but feel like I made the wrong decision, which isn't a feeling I've really ever had before (and certainly do not like) when building a PC.

Y'all really need to step your baby burning game up.