Bartimaeus

The Browns just have so very little quality depth, and some of their starters are pretty questionable, too. I can see them winning maybe a few games in the beginning of their schedule, but it's hard to see them finishing the season well (relatively speaking) after injuries have piled up on their better players.

Hm, if they bring that to EU4, I might actually play it again...

Well, we're going off on a tangent here, but from my limited non-software engineer perspective (I only took some CS classes in uni), I'm not sure it's so simple. If the data is encrypted or otherwise protected in memory (i.e. the game doesn't simply read a byte that tells it how many of X you currently have), Cheat Engine would not be able to do anything. Code/memory injection-type attacks are a thing, and countermeasures exist. You'd have to reverse-engineer the protection first and then write a custom application to inject the desired values. Essentially, a second crack. Did they even bother cracking the Keep thing for DAI? And that wasn't even "encrypted" AFAIK. Realistically, I don't know how much effort it would take to hide/encrypt/protect the game from such fiddling, especially if the decision to implement the microtransactions was more a management meeting thing after the basic design had been laid out. edit: yes, to lock you out, the game would indeed have to dial home. The problem is, encryption in live memory becomes increasingly complicated (...and not really worth the effort) when you have tools like Cheat Engine provides at your disposal. So the real value you're looking for is encrypted, O.K., fine. Are modifications to that value encrypted as well? Is the game constantly switching around where it's reading the value from in your physical memory? For the game to realistically pose any true difficulty for Cheat Engine to be able to find a given value, it really has to do all three of these things: be unpredictably encrypted in the first place, unpredictably encrypt any changes to the value in question (for example, if the original encrypted value is....5000, but is encrypted to be some random value, the encryption then must encrypt, for example, a +100 change to not be detectable as a +100 change), and then furthermore, the game must have the value changing where it's located constantly. Why is the last one important? Because even if you do the first two, it is still remarkably easy for the player to deliberately and predictably cause a change in the value they're looking to edit (for example, for the most basic thing typically being money, selling or buying something repeatedly), which an experienced Cheat Engine user will be able to notice rather quickly if they know what they're doing...and in the Cheat Engine community, it only takes one person knowing what they're doing (and there are a relatively decent amount of these people around) and pinning down a path to the true value to create a table that everyone else, experienced user or random shmuck, can use with relative ease. And even then, if all of that is done, I'm sure there are probably other ways I'm not aware of/experienced in to figure out how to bypass the encryption. I am not in any way - not even close - a Cheat Engine expert and I've dealt with the first two things I've described with varying difficulty (it depends on a case by case scenario - sometimes it's pretty easy, sometimes very difficult) and have yet to see a real implementation of the third. A true calling home feature, on the other hand, is probably less performance-decreasing than that sort of live encryption would be (as so much would have to be encrypted and swapped to prevent easy vectors of attack from an experienced Cheat Engine user) and much easier to program...but on the other hand, it requires the player to always be online, because if it allows for an offline mode, then the player can always just use Cheat Engine in the offline mode before coming back online, because the call home will then have no real choice but to accept that what the client is saying is true.

I don't know, lock you out of the game for disassembling the code or whatever. If they are pulling this and their engineers aren't completely ineffectual, the savegames and even the way the game stores in memory how many of X you currently have, will be encrypted to prevent people from giving themselves billions of dollars worth of consumables with Cheat Engine. Between this news and the previous comments about further consolization, you guys have effectively killed my interest in this game, saving me at least 10€. Thanks, Obsidian Forums! Encryption of the save files doesn't really matter, the only thing that matters is if the game calls back to the servers to match the save games - aka, if the game is online-only. Otherwise, no matter the encryption, a memory editor like Cheat Engine will make, at the very least, basic cheating (money, quantity of items, health, etc.) ridiculously easy. It's not like a hex editor which is often times extraordinarily difficult to use depending upon the game - a memory editor reads the game's memory directly, and makes cheating a breeze.

Stein is like the crazy aunt version of Sanders...anti-GMO, anti-vaccines, anti-nuclear...and why? It really just comes across as pandering to her support base. I probably agreed with maybe - maybe - about 75% of Sanders' positions...with her, it's probably more like 70%, but the extra 5% lost is some crazy basic stuff that makes it hard to respect or support her.

They get nothing. Bosa, on the other hand, is relatively in the clear after that. He probably won't be selected as high...but probably still somewhere in the first round. Additionally, they're not allowed to re-select him. The lesson here? Don't treat the overall #3 pick like crap for months on end, and then try to make up at the last second after they've already decided you're not worth playing for anymore.

Based on announcements today, it seems extremely unlikely that Bosa will ever be a Charger.

When I think of a "cheap" PSU, I think of a decently reviewed bronze-rated ~500W PSU that will almost certainly last you 5+ years as long as you aren't pushing it to its full wattage, which, if you're using an Intel CPU and a single GPU setup, you never will. It's not like we're looking at Cougar or Kingwin or Raidmax garbage, which is probably what most casual buyers would look to when thinking of "cheap": these are still halfway decent units. They're not $20 off-brand pieces of junk.

Yeah, I'll be sure to do that with my

@Bokishi: I mean, without knowing the actual OEMs involved, neither a generic "Cooler Master" nor a generic "Corsair" are much of use in deciding what to do (since neither of these two make their own power supplies).

I am pretty sure they're different platforms, though. I agree with the end conclusion, however - there's not that much of a difference between the two, and they're both 'merely' fine. I wouldn't want to put either into a serious build would be my issue - even though you're right about the Seasonic unit being older (...I'm actually rather surprised it's still being sold at this point), I would feel more comfortable with it than either the Cooler Master or Corsair units. The Cooler Master unit has build problems while the Corsair unit has quality control issues - not deal-breakers in a vacuum, but I would be hesitant to put either of them into someone else's main PC. I'm happy I was able to get an FSP Aurum 500W for a mere $20 new off of Amazon (no rebates, either) back when I built my PC. Even with its mild age, it's pretty hard to beat that.

Heh. The biggest negative about that power supply is that it uses mixed capacitors, some of good quality, some of average, and some of low. Though the warranty is 5 years (2 years longer than the Seasonic), you ideally want it to actually last at least that, and those capacitors are a definite concern. I would pay the extra 5 Euros between the two for the Seasonic...but I'd probably consider other options first, depending on availability of other PSUs (the Rosewill Hive*, for example, would be an all around better option than the Cooler Master). *But this probably isn't available outside of the U.S., and if it was, the price probably isn't that much different from the Seasonic, so again...

It always feels good to be successful where others aren't...unless or until it's supposed to be a task handled by multiple people, and it ends up with you being the perpetual 'go-to' that everyone else uses as a crutch. This unfortunately seems to happen way too often in workplace environments.

Is there any way you can skip the 120€ copy of Windows 10? Aren't they still allowing free upgrades from Windows 7/8, or did they finally actually stop that? It's hard for me to recommend anything without seeing your specific store(s). If you can get an equivalent WD Blue HDD, or Hitachi, for the same price, you should probably do that. SSD is kind of a big deal for normal Windows usage...running Windows on an HDD kills that HDD much faster than if you were just using it for storage, and it's so, so much slower. If you can find even like a cheap (40€) 120GB option, I couldn't recommend it enough. The only thing that raises a flag (again, without being able to see where you're purchasing...) is the Seasonic PSU. Yes, Seasonic PSUs are nice...but they're overpriced for what they are, and you're paying extra for the brand (or so I presume). Besides that, I can't say much about the specific parts and their prices - everything seems compatible.

No, that doesn't sound viable at all.

Given that Human Revolution practically screamed "console game" when I played it on PC for like the two hours I bothered with it, I can't imagine how bad this new one is.

What was the mechanism for that, do you know?

Not really, friendly fire was implemented/ignored in RPGs according to whatever worked for that particular game since the inception of the genre. I'm more worried about Obsidian dropping 6 member parties and Josh Sawyer mentioning on several occasions that combat in Pillars of Eternity was confusing due to the party size, which quite frankly seems ridiculous to me. Honestly I thought it was a mess in PoE. There were so many abilities and spells scattered across so many characters that I gave up micromanaging early on. I'd prefer smaller parties. In D&D I don't remember having so many abilities for melee and ranged folks, meaning I could just micromanage the magic ones. That was certainly true for Baldur's Gate: for the low to mid levels, fighter-type characters had remarkably few abilities. In regards to party sizes, I've always played the BG series with only 5 characters, which I feel is the optimal amount in a number of ways...particularly seeing as most quest and all creature kill XP is split across your characters...so you gain XP 20% faster with only 5 party members...but then again, I also use a mod that reduces all quest and creature kill XP to only 50% of its original values, so I don't feel like I'm cheating by doing all of the optional side content that gives you oodles of XP and makes you overleveled. From what I could see, even in BG1 + TotsC, the game gives you roughly 1.5 million total XP over all the content (with maybe as much as 100-150K more than that that I am not counting), which split over 6 characters is 250k...or about 90k over the normal XP cap. Did Pillars of Eternity split XP on a number of characters basis? I can't recall.

That's a pretty embarrassing excuse for a "season pass". They're rarely worth it, but between that and the joke of the new Deus Ex's recently announced "season pass", it seems like they're getting even worse.

I don't really like the idea of calling inexperienced players - regardless of what it is being played - "nitwits", but that sort of thing holds true for many other competitive games where you directly face off with other players, too, including video games. In a first person shooter like Counterstrike, for example, experienced players will know that certain movement lanes during certain times of a round are just absolute murder holes, and will know that other experienced players will just almost always not use them during those specific times. An inexperienced player, on the other hand, may aggressively (foolishly, you might say) push through those murder hole areas, perhaps while having the benefit of their teammates making noise in other areas, and take experienced players by surprise while they happen to be looking elsewhere at that moment. Inexperienced players may also hide in or guard odd spots that an experienced player wouldn't think to check or counter, perhaps because the meta-game has overwhelmingly concluded that said spot is not really a spot to be in at all, and is a good recipe for getting killed with little ability to do much in return if you happen to be caught there at the wrong time by a player actually thinking you might be there...and so the experienced player assumes another experienced player would not use said spots, but aha, an inexperienced player may be able to take deadly advantage of that assumption. If chess had the sudden death nature of a video game like Counterstrike, maybe Kasparov would've lost that game. (e): I forgot this was the Elections/Politics topic.

Yeah, that's why it probably makes more sense to design a game around assuming friendly fire is either always on or always off, not either/or.

No, it's not an improvement...it's a "let's-just-side-step-the-issue" tactic at absolute best. I can sympathize with the developers, particularly for a smaller project/team like Pillars of Eternity/Tyranny, but it's certainly nothing to look forward to/admire in of itself.

Yeah, NBC's coverage was apparently absolutely atrocious. I wouldn't know, personally, since I never actually watched anything on TV - why sit around and listen to their idiot talking heads ramble for hours on end for so little action? I can just barely stomach them while watching football games - I surely cannot for the Olympics, which I care significantly less about, and which has even less meaningful action than the often-derided slow pace of football. So I just watched copyright-infringing clips that were posted on reddit instead.