Bartimaeus

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There is actually a bit of a reason for this...or at least, there may be a bit of a reason that I learned from when this issue was being discussed in regards to the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions: ownership of the fixes. Unofficial mega-patches are typically the work of a bunch of different modders who have agreed to have their work featured in that mega-patch...but as the years go by, many of them disappear or change names and are otherwise uncontactable, making it difficult for Bethesda to incorporate their fixes without potentially running into ownership issues. While these modders may have given permission for their work to be featured in that particular mod, they probably didn't give the company itself explicit permission to use their work in an official and commercial capacity, and when unofficial patches like that involve perhaps dozens of contributors, or even more, fixing hundreds of different issues where credit to each individual modder may or may not be given, it's a sort of landmine that companies tend to want to avoid lest they be financially liable for unrightfully using another person's work. Instead, they'll probably just focus their manhours implementing their own fixes of some of the worst issues instead of trying to incorporate other people's work. This is, at least, how I understood the situation to be for the Enhanced Editions. BeamDog still got more done with the help of modders than most companies, though - or at least I think so - because they tried to reach out to the community and get as much collaboration, being a small company, as they could.

"You are more of a natural improviser than a careful planner." *then after on the same page* "You would rather improvise than spend time coming up with a detailed plan." Okay, personality test. Mediator.

I don't like cities in RPGs very much, actually. They always feel so...small, because, well, they have to be, because it's a computer game and it's difficult to simulate an actual city by any stretch of the imagination. Baldur's Gate, Athkatla, Sigil...there are so very few people actually in these "cities": if we assumed the number of people in them to be even relatively correctly represented by the number of people we actually see while playing, Baldur's Gate would have a thousand, maybe two at best, Athkatla probably somewhere around 5 thousand, and Sigil maybe a few thousand. It's just like when you're playing the fighter stronghold in BG2, and your steward tells you that Lord Roenall is launching an attack on your keep with his "army"...and then you get out there to defend your lands and he and his invading "army" is actually like just 10-15 dudes. I mean, the sense of scale is always so off, immersively-speaking. I try not to think about these things, because I know you really just have to use your imagination sometimes, but often times the games really press it into my face. On the other hand, games that try to simulate an even somewhat accurate amount of people in their setting almost always face the problem of there being very little content or depth to that setting, and especially so if a significant amount of time is wasted on trying to make an accurate city. Smaller, more detailed is definitely better...but for various reasons, including the sense of scale issue I mentioned above, cities are just not my favorite setting for an adventure, really.

What's up with CRPGs and silly "strongholds"? Personally, I don't feel as though they were very good in BG2, and I haven't seen them be much better ever since...

I used to play games of this type in Warcraft 3 custom games all the time back in the day. Dark Deeds, Werewolf, Happyville (this one sounds especially similar to how you described Tower of Salem). Nostalgia... (edit): "Happyville is a paranoia-oriented WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne custom map, set in the happy town of Happyville. This town is home to many happy people, but it is threatened by...the UN-happy! One or more players are randomly selected at the start of the game to be unhappy, but no one knows who they are. As you search the town, the unhappy will try to covertly kill the other players one at a time. The rest of the players must identify and kill the unhappy before Happyville becomes a ghost town." Fun times.

Ah, if only the world actually worked in such a wondrously ideal manner...

We should go back to the EverQuest (the original) days where raids took often literally half a day to properly setup and complete, never mind the time that went into planning them and making sure that everyone (60+ people!) can play on that specific day...and never mind the eventuality of somebody doing something stupid and causing everyone to wipe. Kids these days just don't have the proper appreciation for how easy it is now...

That, combined with obligations that prevented me from sleeping when I was actually finally capable of doing so.

The missed field goals were pretty funny, though. https://streamable.com/18cp

I haven't slept in about 40 hours. It's not pleasant, but ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do. It's at least not as bad as the time I was awake for 90 hours straight.

Civilization games drive me crazy for the amount of cool stuff they do...but also for how they frustratingly miss out on even bothering to try to simulate other strategy and historical elements that I've come to expect after playing other turn-based strategy games like Total War and Europa Universalis.

Personally, I've watched less because the primetime games have all sucked majorly.

Guy who uploaded that garbage ("Joey Salads") was pretty unequivocally just proven to be a complete fraud in these "social experiment" videos of his. *shrug* Important bits start at just about 2:35. Skip to there if you don't feel like sitting through the entire video. Dude is a racebaiter...and a bad one at that.

I'm surprised Packers weren't in the "didn't even try" category: our Color Rush uniforms are almost literally just our regular away jerseys...except with white pants. Woo.

I'm generally O.K. with the throwbacks - at least there's some history in them, and something older fans can appreciate...maybe. Color Rush should go straight into the garbage can, though.

Pretty easy to deduce that was a typo. And it is quite common to use that to refer to the card, not just the chip. Oh yeah, definitely...but even knowing that, I still had no idea what he meant. What was the GPU loose from? It's just a GPU, what's there for it to even be loose from? But now I understand that he meant it was loose from the tower and/or motherboard itself, which I now assume was sent in along with it, which I didn't catch in the initial post since I wasn't really expecting it, especially with as big of a deal as is being made up over it. Shoddy work, certainly...but hardly a huge deal,

No real surprises here: until Rodgers gets out of his funk, the Packers' offense will look bad, particularly when compounded with Mike McCarthy's supreme stubbornness regarding the game plan and playcalling and "execution". Packers had some easy shots to get back in the game, but they were either overthrown, underthrown, intercepted, or fumbled away. Get well soon, Rodgers - your team is depending on it.

Ah...I thought it was an acronym for some particular part of it, but you must mean...well, I'm not sure what you meant, since "GPU" just means "graphics processing unit", which is a pretty generic term for the overall unit, or perhaps the overall unit not including the fan/heatsink (i.e. the PCB). What exactly was loose on it?

What the heck is a "GOU"? I tried Googling it, but there were virtually no results.

Difficult to determine with no reference point. I would expect the GOG version to look either the same or better (since GOG sometimes packages mod "enhancements" with their older games) as the Steam version, though.

Possible...but not probable: see the Chiefs last year, who started off 1-5, then won 10 in a row.

Primetime games have been absolutely horrible garbagefests this year. Things looked so good after that first Panthers-Broncos game...been pretty horrible since then.

Came to a very late-night epiphany that perhaps, by the time I am old and grey, that I might be glad to be rid of the constantly overwhelming and soul-crushing feelings of anxiety and despair that I've associated with the prospect of death for the past 8 years or so, feelings that I will probably continue to experience for many more decades...unless I suddenly become overtly religious, which is unlikely, given that my efforts so far have utterly failed. That, or they stopped bothering themselves about it simply because they know it'll happen regardless...a lesson that I have repeatedly been failing to learn time and time again over the last decade. Truth be told, neither of these thoughts give me much relief.