Bartimaeus

Well, yeah, she had a noted drug addiction most of her life. It was thought that she had been clean for a while, but it seems not. Perhaps related to her trying to get skinnier for the movie role...

Don't hold your breath: though it would obviously be beneficial for our democracy, from what I understand, it'd be tough to establish political gerrymandering (as opposed to something like racial gerrymandering, which was actually deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in NC recently) as being unconstitutional, and while the more liberal justices may use some...creative reasoning for calling it unconstitutional, it's pretty unlikely that the more conservative justices will. It's something that would have to be fixed in Congress...and given that both parties use it at least some degree, I think that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

man, that's horrific

Not sure how I noticed a lack of an SSD but not a lack of a GPU...

No solid state drive, or do you already have one?

SCS fixes that problem of targeting, actually. Enemies that are asleep aren't targeted unless they're the final one(s) left. Additionally, when a party member is instead *held*, they are just hacked to shreds immediately, because every attack on a held character is an autohit, so kill them while they're disabled, right?

My problem with PoE was mainly with its combat system, but I didn't much like the writing of the game, either. Flavor text is nice, but when you're trying to get your first bearings on a new setting in a new game system that you've never played with before, PoE's flavor text feels like it's on steroids. There's so much new information about such a variety of things...and you just don't have the foreknowledge in order to understand what any of it means to start with. BG1's approach seems deft and masterful by comparison: when choosing male vs. female, the game tells you that both options are equal; when you're choosing your race, it gives a little profile of each different race-type without getting too much into specifics; when you choose your class, arguably the most important thing, it gives you a basic idea how the class plays, etc. Finally, after character creation, it plays a little textscreen cutscene that outlines the premise of the game (i.e. a description of Candlekeep, your character, and your foster father, and what you're supposed to do to start with). It's pretty simple and to the point, and you learn about the rest of the game world through the things you do, and can you learn more lore about the game through reading books if you really want to, but it's obviously super optional. When I first started PoE, I already felt really lost - lore-wise, gameplay and mechanics-wise - by the first time I heard "Glanfathan" from the first character that talks to you in-game. With the heaping of special abilities, playing PoE is like if you were playing a sorcerer the first time you played BG - how the heck are you supposed to make wise decisions regarding your spell choices - which you can't ever take back after choosing them! - when you have no idea how the game works or how spells really work or what's useful and what isn't?

They were unmanageable in specific circumstances and for just a few encounters, yes, I'll admit that. You just mentioned why, actually: liches (and rakshasas) are immune to 5th level or lower spells, which means True Seeing doesn't work (IIRC)...although now that I think of it, I suppose the wizard variant (6th level) might. Ironically, SCS has a component to fix this issue (the "Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility" component), and it's coded in such a way to be compatible with SR...but it's disabled for installation if you have SR installed. How silly, right? As far as I know, the antimagic attacks are *supposed* to be able to pierce improved invisibility in SR (hence why that SCS component is disabled), but for some reason, they just aren't. I have to imagine the author of the mod just didn't implement it correctly, which is really a shame. Spell Immunity is also actually supposed to be disabled completely in SR, but I think you may be right that SCS still uses it anyways. As for Ruby Ray of Reversal, it's a 7th level spell, so that requires you to be level 14. I guess if you consider "back from the Underdark" to be "really late game", yeah. Isn't that kind of common sense? Liches are epic-leveled (in fact, a bit beyond that): it's not too crazy to expect you'd run into problems dealing with them before getting access to a 7th level spell. I've never done any of the things you've mentioned for dealing with encounters. I'm not much of a summonables person (I think there's a good reason the vanilla game has the strict 5 summons limit), I've never used a Protection from Undead or Protection from Magic scroll, I've never cheesed with the Mace of Disruption, etc. I had the two issues with Improved Invisibility and liches and have occasionally run into the issue of SCS illegally using Spell Immunity in contingencies/triggers - which shouldn't even exist in SR, and in fact, even not in SR, Spell Immunity is not normally usable in contingencies/triggers. I think I'll probably fix that for SCS myself so that never happens. Contingencies and spell triggers in SCS actually cast different spells upon reload, which can create the odd impression that a specific instance of a caster battle is virtually impossible, and then you reload and they cast a different combinations of protections that aren't nearly as bad and beat them. Your argument is valid even with that in mind, though: if you can't pierce improved invisibility (and you can't in the current version of SR), you're quite screwed anytime it occurs while fighting a lich or if they're protected by Spell Immunity. That's not fun to not be given a fighting chance when you should have one.

...On a side-note, I've never used a limited use/quantity item in an IE game (...or really, any game - it's a little bit of an OCD-ish thing), so I've never used potions or wands or anything - if a special ability ain't "(x) per day" (or similar), it might as well not exist to me.

The only reason I can imagine there being a situation where you *have* to wait for the spell duration to run out as a result of SCS + SR is because of Improved Invisibility. Spell Revisions, for some godforsaken reason, doesn't have antimagic attacks able to pierce improved invisibility...which, of course, is one of the first things that I fixed when I made my submod for SR (...yes I made one for SR as well as IR - since they're both game-sweeping revisions, I might as well fix some of the things they did wrong, right?). Otherwise, the highest level spell protection, Spell Trap, is piercable by Ruby Ray of Reversal, a 7th level mage spell. You shouldn't really be running into any Spell Traps before that outside of optional fights like liches, which you're really supposed to wait to do until later, and can do earlier than that really only at your own peril. If they cast multiple spell protections at once (Spell Trap, Spell Deflection, Spell Shield, etc.), then you can always use weaker spell protection breakers (like Secret Word - an absolute necessity when playing SCS + SR) to remove those weaker ones, too. Generally speaking, I like to have two mages (or a sorcerer + mage) in my party, so I really don't run into too many problems with all of this, personally...but if you don't like doing that, I can see why it might be a struggle.

It was amusing to hear Bungie immediately say that Destiny 2 will only be 30FPS on Xbox One X. A supposedly competitive first person shooter...at 30FPS. Hm, okay, Bungie.

Oh yeah, and in regards to spellcasting failure: if you're playing the original BG2 (and/or BGT), then you can get that tweak (among a bunch of others) from the ToBEx mod, which is where Beamdog got it from (as is mentioned in the description).

For SCS pre-buffing, I think it totally depends on your playstyle. If you're the type that pre-buffs yourself, I think it's perfectly fair for enemies to similarly pre-buff. It might not always make perfect sense that they pre-buff, but generally speaking, it doesn't make perfect sense for you to do so, either, so fair's fair, right? If you're not the type to pre-buff (...or don't like playing or fighting casters to begin with), then yeah, you're going to probably get ruined if you enable it, and it's probably best to select the "only for enemies that are created in sight of the caster" (i.e. enemies who ambush you - there aren't a whole lot of these types of encounters, and it always makes sense that an ambushing force would be pre-buffed) option, or to not enable it at all.

There are things that I like about 2nd Edition, and things that, yes, 3rd Edition definitely does better. In regards to SCS and fighter vs. caster fights...I find that the mod makes the game most difficult when they combine the two. Smart usage of buffs, targeting, much better spell selection in general, potion-usage...all combine to make the game actually quite difficult at times. I would've also recommended Item Revisions and Spell Revisions if you had said what kind of mods you were looking for, although perhaps not Item Revisions at this time, because the author of the mod has left it in an admittedly somewhat rough state, which is why I created my own submod to fix some of its problems myself.

What, really? Do you know how much time baking and serving cookies can take? Definitely worth the investment.

I could be talking out of my butt here, but I also think MMOs were, initially, a genre that was difficult for kids and teenagers to get into - very complicated, and often required a monthly subscription. So generally speaking, the average age of a player was likely to be higher...as opposed to MMOs later, where it seems like players are nothing *but* children and teens (...or people who act more or less the same) with way too much time on their hands. World of Warcraft seemingly made the genre much, much more accessible than it previously had been...which, yes, means making it accessible to younger gamers, too. A double-edged knife, as it were. I'm sure Blizzard was happy with that. I kind of turned my back on MMOs a couple of years after World of Warcraft released, and I haven't really looked back since, so I don't really know how the communities are for them anymore outside of what people say. I imagine they're like most online gaming communities these days: toxic.

Huh, that's unexpected. What was their problem? There was just a general negativity toward healers. There were threads on the Guild Wars fan forums about how people who played healers were entitled and elitist for reasons that had little to do with reality, and there was a general dislike of the fact that it often took a very long time to find a healer when doing missions, because few people played them, because they were treated like rubbish when they did. The worst abuse I've ever experienced in an online game came from playing a healer in Guild Wars, and I love to play healers. I was never treated that badly in WoW, City of Heroes (not technically a healer but support that provides damage prevention), Star Wars TOR, or The Secret World. Guild Wars 2 might be better about that, but I haven't played it enough to say either way and the character I am playing right now is a necromancer. Meanwhile, in the original EverQuest, healers were treated like royalty, while DPS were at the bottom of the rungs...

Jon Stewart (2015): It is not okay to shoot people you disagree with.

I actually looked up more about CTS last night after you mentioned it, and it actually did sound a bit like it. Maybe they just didn't tell me that was what it was.

I could never really get into AoE1 because of how screwy the unit power progressions were. Units that you get in the first and second age are absolutely freaking useless the second you or other players get out of that age, and there's not really any room to upgrade them. AoE2's system was a little more simplified, but definitely better balanced and provides at least an argument for starting mass unit production early, whereas you'd only really want to do it to either rush/harass early or defend yourself in AoE1.

carpal tunnel syndrome? it's a very light operation that can even be done with just local anesthetics while you are awake... of course i don't know if that is a good idea in your case. and it does not heal itself, so waiting it out was pointless suffering on your part. It's actually not carpal tunnel syndrome. From what I understood the doctor say, something in there is just bent out of shape, and it's causing a sort of chain reaction of pain between bones and nerves (...or at least, this is what I was told after I had xrays on it). They're actually going to put me under to fix it, which seems a little excessive, but I guess it's better than being awake through it... They said that a local anesthetic would be too risky because they apparently need it to be absolutely still. And yes, it really was totally pointless suffering, as it clearly did not heal itself. On the plus side, I'm that much closer to being ambidextrous after forcing myself to be left-dominant for the past few years...

Reminds me of the silly "what're you thankful for" type-gatherings you'd do in the first couple of years of school, and maybe during Sunday school as well. They were kind of weird back then, but for kids, it makes a little sense to do it: supposed to encourage you to think about what you have and help you realize that you should have some appreciation for it. For grown men that are supposed to governing our country, on the other hand...and furthermore, to direct most of it towards Trump...

Um...that's a...novel idea, but I think I'll have to pass, based on the description.

Another E3, another year I realize the modern triple-A gaming industry is not really for me...Maybe the new Metro won't be as bad as Last Light, at least.