Keyrock

I'm a bit out of the loop here. Why was there a hate thread for The Cynical Brit? What did Mr. Biscuit do to raise people's ire?

I've found 2 manglers so far. I haven't fired either one yet.

The most disappointing thing about the Niners' woes has been how quiet and calm (relatively speaking) Harbaugh has been. If the Niners are going to lose then at least give me the pleasure of watching Harbaugh having a conniption fit.

Man, so everybody was worried about the Niners defense heading into the season, on account of them missing everybody, but their offense has been a real cause for concern. In particular, second half offense. The Niners have played 6 second half quarters so far this year. They have scored a grand total of zero touchdowns in those 6 quarters. In happier news, I did enjoy that comeback by the Cowboys/meltdown by the Rams. The Boys had about as awful a quarter and a half as is physically possible. After that, they got their **** together and the Rams decided they were going to outcowboy the Cowboys.

It's not an expansion, it's a new game. I want to hope for the best, but when I read "PC only online game" my mind immediately goes to a dark place that says oh dear lord, will it be YAMMO (Yet Another MMO) or YAMOBA (Yet Another MOBA)?

I wound up leaving Rose behind at the Ag Center after I finished up there. I suppose I could always go back and get her to rejoin my group. It just didn't seem right to take her along. She's a scientist, not a warrior, her time is better served at the Ag Center. Plus, she loses control once in a while. Very rarely, because of my leadership skill, but it happens (one more point in leadership and I think the chance would be down to 0% for her, it's already down to 0% for Angela). I'd probably be better off bringing her along, but I'm leaving her for RP reasons. I'm off to Highpool now, though I have 1 stop along the way:

I think it's pretty clear at this point that Tim Schafer and Double Fine, while wonderfully creative people, are woefully lacking in the management department. I don't think there was any malice or purposeful deception in both cases (Broken Age, DF9), or any of their previous games, it's just that this is a company that is terrible at planning for setbacks and managing resources. Unfortunately, game development is a business, a business that requires careful planning, contingency plans, and making sacrifices to your vision to keep the project manageable. That last part is where I think Tim Schafer has the biggest problem. He can't help himself. He can't stop himself from going overboard and there seems to be no one in the company that can stand up to him and stop him from himself. His intent might be benign, to make a bigger, better game, but you have to make tough choices in development to stay within a budget and on schedule. I hate to say it, but it might ultimately be better if he wasn't the head honcho at the company, if there was someone with the balls and the authority to keep him in check. In random video game lack of news, TGS came and went and nothing about Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem. So now the entire cons season has passed an we got nothing about the game except a simple "it's still being made and on schedule" from Nintendo at E3 when pressed for information. I am now officially in panic mode. Oh god, this is going to be Atlus and Nintendo's The Last Guardian, isn't it? Every year they're going to just tell us "it's still being worked on". 5 years from now it will "still be worked on" for the Nintendo UWIWUWIEUWIEUUU (the Wii U successor), isn't it?

It doesn't on Ranger difficulty.

So Man, this is great.

This will in no way shape or form hinder me in purchasing Costume Quest 2, because moar Costume Quest!

I used to min max characters all the time in RPGs when I was younger, and there's certainly nothing wrong with doing that, I used to enjoy doing that a lot. For whatever reason, at some point some years ago, I started to really dislike doing that. These days, I specifically stay away from wikis and guides when making my party. I get my rocks off these days by playing flawed, weird, and/or unorthodox concept parties. I won't generally do this on a first playthrough (this assumes it's a game I like enough and that's deep enough to warrant multiple playthroughs), for my first time through I generally do what seems like a sensible balanced party without fussing over how I could have maximized every character to maximum efficiency. I run through the game with the sensible party as I get my feet under me and learn the quirks of the game. Then when I do another playthrough in the future, I pick a concept (e.g. no magic whatsoever, no melee characters, all mages, all non-combat focused characters, a team full of dumb as rocks characters, etc) and make my party according to that concept.

Damn, that first boss fight was pretty rough my first try at it, and my second try at it (for completely different reasons). In other news, it's 3:30 in the AM here now. I should probably stop playing and go to sleep now.

In the interest of equality: You're welcome.

Yeah, formations would be nice. I should probably pop on over to the inXile forums and request that, if someone hasn't already, or add my voice to the existing request for that feature. Maybe it's something they could add in a patch? With formations, you could set your Rangers up in such a fashion that even if you do get caught by surprise and wander into a fight without having carefully placed all your Rangers and devised a plan, you at least wouldn't be caught in as horrible a tactical mess as having all your party members smooshed together in a random blob.

You get a gold star and bonus points for the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer reference (which is the origin of my handle).

I've found pre-combat planning and positioning to be very important in this game. If you just wander into combat all bunched up in a group you can easily wind up in a really tough situation, for example a shotgun wielding character stuck behind other characters unable to fire at the enemies without hitting her teammates (I speak from experience on that one). If at all possible, turn off group control and move each individual character into a good position before entering combat. How you begin combat can make the difference between an almost impossible situation and a manageable one. I'm really liking the leadership skill, I've been regularly pumping that one up on my giant Native American lady boss. I also gave her high charisma so that the effect radius is nice and large, allowing me to scatter my group and still have everyone get the bonus from the skill.

I'm loving the heck out of this game. I'm going through it super duper slow. Steam reports 5 hours played, keep in mind well over an hour of that was me making my characters. I've gone through the Radio Tower, I went to the Mysterious Shrine, and I just arrived at the Agricultural Center. I love how ruthlessly unforgiving this game is. Oh, what's that, you don't have the necessary skill? You didn't pay careful attention and just clicked on something without thinking it through? Well too bad, you're dead. Good times.

Man that collector's box looks great.

Pistols at dawn, unless you prefer a different dueling weapon. Your choice.

Which is why I'm so glad I avoided the game until full release.

Here's a quick pro-tip. This has surely been discovered by others, but I'll put it out here anyway in case it saves even one person some aggravation: There is an option to take a snapshot of your character model to use as your portrait, since there are not nearly enough stock portraits to closely match up with character models. If you make your character model tall and then take a snapshot then there will be a white bar at the top, where the graphics on the model cut off. A very simple workaround is to make your character model shorter temporarily, take the snapshot, then you can make the character model whatever size you want.

Meet Keyrock's Ranger Crew: The Leader - Tallulah The Sniper and Tech - Rayyan The Medic - Makiko The Meathead - Grimey

I've spent almost an hour in character creation and will likely spend almost another hour. So far I have made 2 characters, complete with bio. I'm a bit obsessive like that. It will be all the more painful when I get brutally slaughtered early on in the game since I'll be playing on Ranger difficulty (because, bring it the **** on) right off the bat.

Off-screen Bravely Second gameplay I wants it. I wants it!

A large problem with this whole thing, as with so many issues, is that the moderate and open minded people tend to get drowned out by the zealots on both sides. The zealots are not only the ones who yell the loudest, they get further amplified because they are the ones the media focuses on because loud obnoxious people are the ones that sell newspapers garner viewers get clicks. It's the same reason why extremely uninhibited and/or opinionated people are the ones specifically chosen for reality shows, because these are the types of people that are likely to get into controversial situations that create a buzz. So you have moderate, open minded people on both sides that not only get ignored by the mainstream, they also immediately get demonized by the zealots on the opposing side as soon as they make a statement, no matter how well thought out, rational, or even offering compromise, that conflicts with their strict ideology as either misogynists or fascists, depending on which side of the fence they happen to be on. So, according to mainstream media, everyone is either a disgusting misogynist misanthrope that wants to kick all the vaginas out of their boys' club or a power hungry harpy seeking to force feed everyone their own totalitarian ideology. While both those extremes do, sadly, exist, along with people attaching themselves to either side with no intention other than to gain some spotlight and make a profit off this, there are also tons of people out there being more rational about this and saying "We just want to see more diverse games out there so that there are more gaming experiences out there that cater to things other than just stereotypical male power trip fantasies" and "We're fine with there being games for all audiences, we just don't want the typical male power trip fantasies to become abolished or shamed out of existence because we frankly enjoy that sort of thing from time to time and there's really nothing wrong with that." Sadly, the voices of the moderates tend to get drowned out.