Bartimaeus

Why equate that with autism? Autism is a pretty wide spectrum of stuff...seems kinda silly to generalize like that when it really just boils down to idiots being idiots.

I recently just saw a sale for new Hitachi Ultrastar 2TBs for $45 per. It was an intriguing deal, one that I nearly jumped on, but the seller was not an authorized reseller and therefore the drives didn't get the full warranty, or I definitely would have. I'm not really in the market for an HDD, even one that cheap, and I didn't want it to just sit around collecting dust, try to use it a few years from now and then have it die on me real quick like HDDs have a tendency to do these days with zero warranty to help... Amazingly, my Seagate 1TB has shown remarkable endurance over the past six years since I got it. 5.2 years of up-time (thanks SMART data), still working like a champ. Guess I got lucky - still make backups semi-frequently, though.

Who's the bigger nitwit, Trump Bruce or (we) the people who keep engaging with and/or insulting him?

But my world is already rock! I think Presidential Candidate Asteroid is merely attempting to take credit for the hard work of their predecessors. Sadly, I just don't think I can vote for such a patently dishonest candidate... but the alternatives are actual politicians so what the heck

Original article title: Lynch to Remove Herself From Decision Over Clinton Emails, Official Says New title: Lynch to Accept F.B.I. Recommendations in Clinton Email Inquiry http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/loretta-lynch-hillary-clinton-email-server.html?_r=1 "Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced on Friday that she would accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case." That's an interesting development.

I would say that this sounds like two (or three) separate issues, really. When I'm playing a sorcerer in Baldur's Gate, every level-up is a game-changer to some degree, every level up makes at least a moderate impact on how I play the class (not every level-up will be perfectly equal, of course, for complex reasons, but...). I would say that that feels like good game design - as Wrath of Dagon said, it gives a very solid and satisfying sense of progression, it makes me feel like every level-up is valuable. Again, some level-ups will be better than others - depending on spell choice (and what's available for choosing) and what new amounts of memorizations I will get for each spell level and the such - but yeah. I agree with most of the rest of what you said, though...I would just hesitate to call "game-changers [...] dumb" in a blanket statement. It depends.

It is the appropriate (and pretty commonly used) word for it in English, too.

This is the basic and essential problem that I have with the game. The combat is a slog, and it's in virtually every battle you enter, and there are way too many battles, and leveling up doesn't help alleviate the issue. In the IE games at the low to mid-levels, if you were just a couple of levels higher than your enemies, you'd rip the vast majority of those enemies to shreds near every time, with only a few handful of encounters throughout the game where you wouldn't. This, in itself (and in my opinion), is a crappy system - battles that are too easy feel like a waste of time, and feel like something you should be able to skip over after a while. Enemies shouldn't be pointlessly throwing themselves against you if they know they're going to get destroyed in just a few seconds, but they do, and they do it over the entire course of the game(s) at way too high a frequency. It gets old after a while. So what does PoE do to solve this issue? Through a variety of mechanic and system changes compared to the IE games (including not having levels mean near as much as they did in the IE games, not having a powerful spell system that allows you to mass disable/buff/damage trash mobs, making what would probably normally be considered "trash fights" many times more difficult than they would've been in the IE games, etc.), Obsidian made every freaking battle a gigantic pain in the butt to sit through...but didn't nearly enough reduce the amount of fights you have to endure through. I get it, you don't want so many trash mobs littered throughout the game that the player just immediately runs over - it makes sense, I don't really want trash mobs, either. But the thing is, if you're gonna make combat that much more of a chore to sit through, if you're gonna make every combat encounter that big of a pain in my butt, ya' also have to reduce the amount of fights there are...by like, a lot. Like, if you're giving combat that much gravitas, don't make it the main gameplay mechanic that your players are engaging with a solid 80-85% of the time they're playing the game (not accounting for just simply walking around in between locations). The combat system would be much more palatable if there were significantly less of it. I also imagine the game would then be significantly shorter, too.

Yeah, unfortunately, there's more than just HoonDing who think PoE is a giant steaming pile of pure unfun.

What do youmean- the thematic style? The lack of anything at all to look forward. The sale is here, and what you see on the first day is the same exact thing you'll see on the last day. No activities of any sort, either. All in all, it's just a miserable experience compared to the earlier years of these 'famed' Steam Sales.

I still hate this newer format of Steam Sale...

ok

BBC News says Brexit has won.

ITV News says Brexit has won.

According to Bloomberg, "Bookmaker odds of British Exit [have] advanced to around 90%".

Based on the results so far, with most of Northern Ireland and most of Scotland having been counted while the rest of England is still being counted (and England moderately favoring "leave"), and with the results already favoring leave by some, it looks like leave will be winning. (e): ITV News (whatever that is) predicts 85% chance of Brexit winning. (e): Sky News estimates 70-80% of Brexit winning.

"Leave" is pulling ahead...

switched back to remain now guess this isn't determined after 1% of results being in like most u.s. elections

I never play "real"* open world games, like, ever, so the new Zelda is very intriguing to me... *Real meaning like Skyrim or Fallout, not like Stalker or Baldur's Gate semi-open world.

All packed and organized for moving. My feet, my back, my arms getting everything into my garage ready to load up into the moving truck... More fun to follow over the next few days.

Pretty much my post is what happens when you don't proof read what you wrote. There was a missing "not" in one of the sentences. I'll leave it as an exercise for the viewers at home to work out where it should have gone. Its déjà vu all over again. Then again, and the be not fair, time has improved the argument. fixd

You know, I don't think it really has. Previously, Bruce accepted the points you just went over (again) and admitted that his line of thinking wasn't that great. Now, he's back to his original position and refusing those same points that originally made him change his mind. I really don't think this is better.

Am I having deja vu? Didn't we already have this discussion with (mostly) the same people on the same issue over these same exact points?

Darn.