Zoraptor

Trump's point breaks down a bit when you realize the State only owns about 2% of the forested areas, while the Federal Government owns 30+ percent. Plus grasslands are a big part of the problem, which is a different issue altogether.The idea that is just mismanagement is a gross simplification, but hey, Trump gets a lot of political points by blaming California for stuff. Did Bush Jr. blame Louisiana when they flooded during Katrina? I mean, I remember Kanye getting upset about something. Yeah, I don't think Trump's 'point' is very strong and isn't mostly taking shots at a state that didn't vote for him, just that it isn't as wholly unreasonable as most have made out. I'd also imagine that the fire management at state level wasn't any better when, say, Arnie was Governor. I presume California is responsible for allowing building in particularly fire prone areas, though, albeit that sort of thing seems to happen everywhere. IIRC while Louisiana didn't get criticism over Katrina they did criticise the Democrat run New Orleans city administration quite a lot.

Happens all the time in Australia, which has a similar climate to Ca. Personally I'd stake money that it happens elsewhere in the US as well, and probably about as frequently on a like to like basis, but there are a lot less people living in those places. Trump may have a bit of a point about fire management- fires in Australia and California are 100% natural and 100% inevitable even if some are started deliberately; the problem is people having houses in the fire prone areas and, historically at least, governments trying to stop all fires. The biggest fire preventer in a an area is to have had a recent fire as that clears underbrush and the like, but controlled burns tend to be unpopular due to smoke and you get in trouble if the wind changes direction and strength and the fire jumps a break.

All right, that's crappy and worthy of attention, I do apologize. I'm not entirely sure how is it in any way relevant to GG, then again, GG was apparently about absolutely everything, yet 99% of it was completely irrelevant and ignorable BS, thus the reaction. To reiterate: GamerSgate (GG)= storefront established in 2007(?) mostly for selling Paradox games and originally owned by Johan A, Fred Wester etc Gamergate (also GG)= term coined by Adam Baldwin referring to the clash between people wanting ethics in games journalism/ return all culture to the stone age vs brave progressive free thinkers/ hypocritical corporate culture warriors I'm pretty sure GG the store tried to get people to use a different term at various times as they- unsurprisingly- ended up being targeted by people who couldn't tell the difference. Potentially the worst ethical part of the Paradox CK2 GG fiasco apart from Paradox persistently lying to customers was that they sold Gamersgate before going steam exclusive, potentially shafting whoever bought it. It's also the primary reason I still loathe Steam and don't trust them so far as I could throw GabeN; as Paradox was going to do their own client- parts of which ended up in the GG CK2 version- but were told if they did they'd be kicked from steam as EA was.

Steamworks integration is actually free when sold on other stores. That's one of the big features of Steam. Valve only takes a cut from sales through Steam. The limitation is you can't give Steam customers a worse deal. That's not the only limitation. You also have to sell via Steam, use their client, not offer exclusive dlc on your own store etc. Allowing people to sell steam keys via their own store is classic loss leader behaviour- it costs a minimal amount but ties that company's customers and thus that company to Steam which is worth a lot more. Look at the reaction over this sale for evidence, a lot of people seem to be far more Steam's customers than they are OEI's. Steamworks is classic Facebook Piggies eating food in their trough thinking how wonderful it is that it's all free; it's not free it's just monetised in a non direct way. And, since we've talked consoles as well, steam's 30% cut on sales at their store is far larger than console licensing fee for selling on console. Pretty inarguable that Steam does more to deserve that extra, indeed Steam Machines shows how much effort they put into the thing that costs a console money- designing said own console- but selling overpriced peripherals is fine. I'd also point out that Steam is not an 'open' platform in contrast to Google Play or Apple Store- Steam is about exactly as open/ closed as those stores are. Windows is the open platform as compared to iOS (pretty much entirely) and Android (mostly, I do have an Android phone but no Google Account). And I'd also feel compelled to point out again that 'xbox exclusive' frequently means 'xbox exclusive on consoles but coming to PC as well' to MS I'd be extremely reticent about using Windows Store though. I have no problem using uPlay or Origin, but Ubi and EA are not also running the operating system.

Yeah, the tool tips say that str scales melee damage and dex scales ranged damage. I only tested strength and melee weapons rather than ranged and dex but if damage does scale with strength it was very, very slight and far less than the improvement from combos or an improved weapon's raw damage increase. I'm about 99% sure someone else tested the same thing at the Codex and came up with it not having any effect either. I preordered so it may have been a bug that has since been fixed, but if so it doesn't seem to be in the fix log.

Speaking of Trudeau, he's more or less directly confirmed that the tape of Khashoggi's murder is real. I'm also having a laugh at the BBC's current series on 'fake news' where they seem to have changed the definition to exclude western disinformation by claiming it has to be about sowing confusion via hoaxes and conspiracies; not just outright lying about things so you get to bomb or invade Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia etc etc with minimum complaints. Then they go and talk about Indian Child Abduction videos which are 100% fake news, but not according to their own definition- they're classic mass hysteria rather than designed to sow confusion. /ignore 'ignore' is for snowflake millennials 'plonk' remains the true classic used by the discerning internet connoisseur.

IIRC weapon damage doesn't scale with stats in Elex, so there is that. It's one of the reasons I tend to advocate a jack-of-trades approach in it that I'd never do for say Gothic 2. I'm not 100% sure of that, but if it does scale it's minor.

They were a success story at the point they went independent again and they did go from a studio with promise but limited sales to being synonymous with Halo. As such they were also a very successful acquisition for MS as well. Guess the lesson really is that we should be glad that OEI hasn't been sold to the black hole of creativity that is Activision instead.

The deals take place at night, and there's only one person who isn't accounted for at night?

It looks good, but running around collecting dozens of enemies then wiping them out with Black Hole is just so much more effective- and funny. I didn't really like any of the ranged weapons in Elex except the flame thrower and grenades if they count. That's another difference with other PB games where by and large ranged weapons were great even if you didn't specialise in them as few enemies had a ranged attack and you could almost always get in a sniping position which they couldn't retaliate at. Must admit, all the Elex talk is giving me an urge to replay it.

? Bungie was bought by MS as a fairly minor entity, but bought themselves out (ie went independent again) later after the success of the Halos.

Yeah, I'd expect everything to be on xbox and PC (Windows Store time limited exclusivity, then at least steam) with no massive alterations to the games and style. I'd suspect that MS wants things more in the FONV vein from Obsidian than in the PoE vein, and maybe DivOS type games from InXile, which aren't massive departures.

I can understand timed fuses being default- they are in real life after all where you have more... permanent consequences for dropping or otherwise prematurely contacting an armed contact grenade- but yeah, contact grenades are just so much more useful in almost all games.

**** off. It's like 2000 all over again. For MS 'xbox exclusive' just refers to consoles, they've had xbox exclusives on PC before. May mean Windows Store exclusivity or timed exclusivity but I doubt that to be honest. For OEI and InXile there's not much point making either console exclusive just for the sake of it. May well mean no more Obsidian games for me given the attitude MS has to GOG and DRM free in general, but then I wasn't really expecting Outer Worlds at least to be anywhere other than Steam anyway and that's the only 'known' project.

Not enthusiastic. Yeoh's fine, but the writing for both versions of Georgiou was pretty average while the emperor version had hugely contrived plotting. I'd way prefer a Captain Malfoy series. Or just go full meta and get Tom Felton. Isn't that like 4 different Trek series either in production or under consideration now? Guess STD must have driven a lot of CBS subscriptions.

Deadfire and Tyranny I think both have an audience which is a... difficult one, in a world where blockbuster first weeks sales mean a lot. PoE/ Tyranny and games of their type require a decent amount of patience and attention to play, and the audience for that sort of game tends to themselves be more patient. PoE1 had a lot of hype around it as a kickstarter and a new beginning etc, the latter two nowhere near as much. And since the audience is more patient I'd readily believe that much of that audience is willing to either wait for a sale and especially wait until they will actually have the time to play the game before buying it. But also, to be honest, I found PoE1 to be turgid. Not that bad, also not that good, but just unnecessarily bloated in just about every respect and in the end a bit of a chore (albeit WM was consistently better). PoE2 on the other hand I genuinely liked, but if I went solely by the PoE experience I would not have bought the second game.

Gross receipts ought to include the distributors' cuts though- for example the box office gross of a movie is gross receipts from movie theatres, not the studio's gross revenue, and GTAV or RDR2 selling x billion $ on release is gross receipts from xbox Live/ PSN, EB, Walmart etc rather than revenue to Rockstar/ 2k as well. Having a quick look at the SEC filings and publisher/ distributor fees are definitely removed from the figure that the investors see, to whit: So multiplying it by .7 is giving the distributor two cuts as the reported figures are minus fees (what I would call nett revenue, rather than gross). I certainly should use the same nomenclature as the filing in future to prevent confusion, I suspect there's a bit of a definition difference between NZ and the US there.

Catapults? Those are trebuchets, a precision weapon using cantilevers and mechanical advantage not some useless catapult with their rubbish potential energy conversions. Catapults couldn't propel a 90kg man over a distance of 300m, for that you need a properly engineered siege weapon.

Finally saw the full season of Star Trek Discovery. I liked it overall and it might be my favourite first season of a Trek show though that's not saying much. The big negatives were anything to do with the mycelial network and the plotting of the war vs the Klingons being rather weird and contrived towards the end in particular and elements of the plotting being weird/ contrived throughout- budget was somewhat to blame in places no doubt, but you do have to work with the budget you have. The acting and casting was fine (especially Lorca and Sarek, and I'd give Tilly's actor a mention for making her mostly endearing when she could easily have been annoying), the progressive/ political stuff fits Trek's philosophy fine so is less out of place than when it's shoehorned and the vast majority of the episodes held my interest. The last two eps were a fair bit of a let down though, and I found the last segments of ep15 extraordinarily cringey. I did particularly like the way that they used one seemingly obvious and ham fisted reveal to run interference on the second, far more interesting reveal as well.

IIRC some of the people who won't talk to you after are quest givers so it is possible to miss out on a few quests by picking a faction early, but that is the only real disadvantage to choosing early. The main advantage to joining a faction is that you get their advanced quests and some free gear as well as access to faction specific gear and skills. And yeah, for the clerics in particular that's a massive increase in power. One of their powers is pretty close to enabling cheat mode after the hard start. Might be a bit late but it's probably worth saying that in Elex unlike most games of its type and just about every prior PB game being a bit of of a Jack Of All Trades at the beginning is rewarded instead of punished in the long term.

It will be paid out on nett revenue- ie revenue after relevant deductions- not the gross revenue. If that weren't the case I would be extraordinarily surprised and question whether OEI had got decent, or any, accounting and legal advice. It will be set up to minimise payments to investors, that's just the reality of being a company rather than a charity and the investment only being shares in a product rather than shares in a company. Exactly how that nett revenue is counted and what can be deducted about it will depend on the exact definitions and terms used, but I'd bet pretty much everything I own that the 4.5 million is after they've deducted every single expense and cost they can. Fig is a pretty bad investment for sure, though I do believe that OEI did genuinely think they would get those numbers and it would be successful, as they put a decent amount of extra money in themselves.

Revenue ought to be calculated after the vendor's cut though*, not before, ie on nett revenue after Steam/ GOG's 30% is removed rather than the gross sales revenue. By my calculation that gives ~161k sales if price average is $40. That's also far more consistent with the steam achievements leaks data. Not wholly so of course, but then $40 per sale is high and any cut/ costs of the publisher etc would count against OEI revenue as well. Potentially even things like ongoing support costs could count against revenue as well depending on how the investor agreement is written. *Steam/ GOG don't give OEI their gross sales throughput and then send a bill to get their 30% back from OEI; they pay OEI 70% of gross sales and keep their 30%. That 70% is Obsidian's revenue, not the full sale amount.

I drove behind a car with a swastika on today. Always nice to see the Jain community representing. IIRC nobody is quite sure what the original/ ancient Roman Salute looked like since the Romans never described it- but it was probably open rather than closed fist due to the threatening connotations of the closed fist.

WH40K and Starcraft are both dumb, and their fans are very silly people. Ah, yes, one of the few occasions when the movie is just so so much superior to the book.

Got any companions available? YThey won't beat a chimera by themselves but they'll help a lot with the lower tier enemies. Otherwise you can find (or brew, though I suspect you won't have the skills for that yet) Elex potions to give you some extra points to spend on stats. If you haven't found the domed city yet there are a lot of non combat quests there as well.