majestic

I fail to see the distinction between shopping systems in sandbox and regular RPGs, unless we're talking multiplayer sandboxes, in which a self-regulating economy is a good thing and a necessity. But we are talking single player games here.

Really Bruce, you defeat your own agrument by saying The Witcher 3 is your favorite game next to Baldur's Gate 2: The Monty Haul where every rural village merchant has unlimited gold, almost always buys literally everything you have in your bags (except for items with no sell value) and you find loot that makes the game a snap right out of the first dungeon. What risk and reward mechanics? BG2 becomes only challenging only if you make it, either through modifications or arbitrary restrictions you put on yourself. It has all the rewards, but none of the risks. Beyond the initial learning phase where you are dumbfounded by the game rules, but for me that happened in the early 90ies for 2nd edition AD&D, so I can't comment how that would be for someone whose first contact with the ruleset was BG2 (or BG1, as it were). Breaking the system and making the games easy is half the fun. I love it when a build comes together. Granted, that's probably more true for ARPGs, finding something that works with the new season, patch or expansion. I don't mind broken mechanics or unbalance in games to be honest, it was my biggest beef with the ongoing support for both Pillars of Eternity and Deadfire. It's a single player game, just leave the "balancing" at home. As long as none of the classes are so broken that you can't win the game playing it then leave it alone. It's the checklists that cause the OCD to kick off though. If the game had no checklists and you would simply find out about interesting things by randomly wandering into the area or actually reading the notice board descriptions instead of just wildly clicking on them to get a waypoint it wouldn't be so bad. I had a lot of time in Morrowind as well, a game that lets you unabashedly break it. By the time I started the main quest in Morrowind my character was literally invulnerable. It's not like the gameplay was hurt much by it. I never finished the main quest in Morrowind, but not because it was "lel 2 ez" after becoming invulnerable, but because Bethesda's writing is... on the exact opposite side of their ability to create fun worlds to explore. So I just read what happens, was glad I didn't bother and that was that. Crafting I don't care much for in single player games, and more often than not it's either completely pointless or too good to skip. Multiplayer games of course have the advantage of being able to trade with other players, and if it nicely fits into the game world and requires player collaboration then all the better, i.e. I thought EQ2's original crafting system was fantastic. Not for me, I'd just rather simply buy the finished products, but if someone wanted they could really just roleplay (and level) as carpenter. On the other hand, the crafting system in EQ2 also was designed so that a few bad dice rolls could destroy your very valuable components. Or kill your character just in case your forge explodes in your face. That said I fully realize that my inability to let checkboxes lie unticked is my problem, not the game's. At least, and that has The Witcher 3 going for it, it doesn't look like the game's narrative focus was diluted by being placed in an open world. At the expense of making the open world feel tacked on to what could have been a chapter based game like TW or TW2. If this were a chapter based game you could have Velen first, on a much smaller map, then go to Novigrad and finally to Skellige with an introductory chapter and an epilogue later. You'd then be able to follow Ciri on her way, and not just look for her everywhere your whim takes you, and you wouldn't need to untangle a web of interlocked main quests and wonder why a level 6 main quest sends to into a level 10 main quest area until you realize finishing the level 6 quest actually locks you out of level 14 content. I mean, what in the what now? How did that mess happen unless making the game open world came later in the development cycle?

Well, as they sing, even old jokes deserve songs: That thumbnail hat me immediately with the Sailor Soldiers but really, who exactly do they make these videos for? I wonder if any of the dancers knew why they were wearing skimpy sailor costumes of if they assumed they were just there for the eye candy candy in a song about an old and infantile joke. Sailor Moon is probably older than the girls in the video (on that note, can't believe that was almost thirty years ago, time really does fly). The amount of overlap between metal fans who appreciate Nanowar's parodies and people who have seen the anime or read the manga can't be that large, can it? Also, nitpick in the spoiler:

I'm alternating between The Witcher 3 and sucking at Enter the Gungeon. Enter the Gungeon kicks my behind in ways no other bullet hell game has so far. It's slower paced than other games of its kind that I played (e.g. Starward Rogue) but something makes it way harder for me. Might be the perspective, I keep running into bullets and yelling "no way that was a hit" at my screen and I get regularily hit by projectiles that I could swear would be absorbed by a wall or an obstacle when they pass right through (or rather, along the outer edges of the obstacles). And sometimes they pass right along the edge and being arcing afterwards. It just breaks my head. Or my eyes, not sure. The Witcher 3 on the other hand... I put off playing this game for a long time because I was afraid I wouldn't enjoy it. And lo and behold, I don't. Which is not the fault of the game, it looks good, it plays well enough (especially when compared to the first and second games) and whenever a main quest is up the writing and quest structure are top notch. But that feels like it's 5% of the game. The remaining 95% is ticking off open world checklists and running around BEAUSE LOOK AT THE WORLD WE DESIGNED DOESN'T IT LOOK AWESOME oh and here's a level 25 chimera in the middle of a level 5 area, haha, thought you could complete the checklists all at once without backtracking? Silly Witcher! Hey I found cool crafting schematics. *craft craft craft* Oh look over there, an item in a tree stump. Oh wow that's better equipment, thanks random loot generation system! I also really don't like it when games have merchants that don't buy all your loot or when they have limited amounts of gold available. Game does both, obviously. Oh, I get that having limited gold on merchants is a way to limit the overall amount of money available in a game and could be interesting for "balance" reasons (never seen that work though) but why can't I just sell my loot haul to anyone? Because realism in a game where your horse can teleport on a whistle, just NOT when you're on it? Riiiiiiiiiiight... Really wish the game was more structured like the first one. But that's just me not liking open world games. Which exacerbates the little things that annoy me. Like having to visit a sign post to fast travel. Why, just why? So you can't teleport out of combat? There's already a check in the game for when you can't save, just use that for fast travelling. Or openening the map. Ugh. Please. Oh I know I could just follow the main quest, but these games have a habit of having side content loop into the main story, so that's not really an option, right? I mean even if I would be able to come across a checklist and NOT tick it off completely. Silly brain.

Turns out he was out of Nutella ice cream. So sad. But instead he had yoghurt with honey and sweet milk, which I promptly tried and found just a little too sweet for my liking, but overall still pretty good. I'm used to the place not having all the ice cream he makes all the time. He's only making ice cream with the fresh fruits he can get. And mango. So while he has mango flavored ice cream all the time because there's no way to get fresh mangos here things like strawberry, peach, blueberry and various melon flavored ice creams are only available during certain times through spring and summer. I admire the guy for his dedicatio to quality, really. Strawberry ice cream is such a staple that most places keep making batches of it even with imported or bland tasting greenhouse grown strawberries. Or worse, with artifical strawberry flavor. Ugh. Now he certainly didn't run out of "fresh" nutella which in the end can only mean he didn't make a new batch because he's going to close down for winter soon. I had hoped he'd keep open a little longer because of the lost time during the lockdown but apparently not. Ah well, can't have everything, right?

We have a small Italian ice cream and coffee joint right around the corner and he always has nutella ice cream. Mmmmm... I think I'll get some tomorrow.

He liked to go on Twitter or the KKKodex and post unprofessional, angry and possibly drunken rants about former colleagues and co-owners long before he was (wrongfully) accused of sexual misconduct. So, no, it's not just any one thing. He worked hard on that reputation. This is not a judgement on what he said, lest I bring the rabid MCA cultists down on me. He could have been right and Feargus really is a Saturday morning villain who almost sank Obsidian so he can high five around the office for having told off Microsoft (although in that case, how come Feargus is still CEO at Obsidian now that it belongs to Microsoft?). It's just completely unprofessional to rant about it on the KKKodex while boasting about his filled-to-the-brim war chest. So, guess it's time to change the topic because otherwise posts will begin to disappear and threads will be locked. 's a bit of a touchy subject 'ere, 'n all.

Oy, tell me about it. The last time I upgraded my graphics card I ended up having to bend the frame of my case a bit. Quite nothing like having to apply force near or on the most expensive parts in your computer.

Every now and then YouTube recommends me older things. Sometimes I realize that I missed a few things. Like this: Watched the other episodes but not that one. Had me rolling on the floor for a while. I should probably consider subscribing to more channels.

The common excuse given is that publishers fear that if the digital storefronts were cheaper than regular retailers the retailers will buy less boxes (or negotiate to pay less) and they'd lose out on the business, or they fear that the retailers would cut them out entirely and take their business elsewere. You know, just as if trading with digital goods is the same as trading real goods. It's the 21st century, you'd think corporate suits would eventually wisen up to the new reality of distribution, but no. A download is sale lost folks. In more than one way.

To be fair to Trump that's wrong. While he sure wouldn't have an issue being instated as Tangerine I, Glorious Orange of the States by some of his PROUD fascist followers that's mostly because it would stroke his ego, not because he's actually interested in the ideology or even a fascist himself. He himself is just Trump.

Majesty sure sounds like a great game.

I don't. Let me quote myself: It just caused a mild chuckle to see you being annoyed by what you perceived as a fascist statement by a German representative of the European Parliament in response to an interim report of a Spanish Member of the European Parliament on the rule of law in Poland after you happily cheer any fascists in the US just as long as they are against leftards. The report also seems to vehemently disagree with your statement that the reforms were adapted or rescinded enough: However you're not entirely wrong by calling these rules mere "guidelines" of a sort. People complain about the cucumber law of the European Union, but that there has been no solution for the Copenhagen dilemma is far more problematic. For those who are reading and interested, the Copenhagen dilemma is the issue that while there are set criteria for EU membership applicants they need to conform to before being allowed to join they immediately go away and can no longer be applied to member nations after their accession. In other words, while a proto-dicatorship like Turkey or an actual one like Belarus would never be allowed to join the EU the EU can't really do anything if an existing member nation would become one. Or arguably has become/is at the brink of becoming a proto-dictatorship in Hungary's case. Nothing except triggering Article 7. Which obversably amounts to nothing.

Specifics? Well, why not. The ECJ has judged Poland's judiciary reforms (or parts thereof) to be in violation of Article 19, Treaty of the European Union on two separate occasions. To be even more specific: Judgment of the Court of Justice of 24 June 2019, Commission v Poland, C-619/18, ECLI:EU:C:2019:531; judgment of the Court of Justice of 5 November 2019, Commission v Poland, C-192/18, ECLI:EU:C:2019:924. But yes, we're all very well aware of how PiS thinks that these are just guidelines and the EU should not concern themselves with them. That was their official explanatory statement, wasn't it? In particular for ignoring certain ECJ rulings. But never mind. I'll be out now, I think I've had my fair share of interaction in this thread for the time being. Not sure how or why I let myself get suckered into this every now and then.

Heh. Mr. Law and Order gets all "Fourth Reich incoming" when the one of the vice presidents of the European Parliament is talking about potentially cutting the subsidies of member nations that do not abide by the rules and regulations set forth and required by membership in the European Union. So what's our take on Trump trying to slash federal funding for cities or states governed by the Democrats? All fine, yeah? Or fascist? edit: This is not an endorsement of the terminology used ("aushungern") nor an endorsement of any sanctions against member nations. That's an entirely different topic, and a really tricky one. Personally I'd rather not slash subsidies because that just hurts the general population, misses the mark and allows for politicians to use such sanctions to double down on an already entrenched us vs. them divide. Proof in the quote, and all that.

I avoid the coffee language like the plague and it's worked out well so far, but since you have no prior experience you most likely won't find the verbosity of Java offensive. That might come later. Feels like you need then times the lines of code to get something done in Java than you would need in anything else. Except COBOL. Good if you're paid by LOC though. On the other hand, avoid getting paid by LOC at any cost just as well. That's such a ridiculous measurement of coding productivity. No but in all seriousness, Java is a decent and safe choice assuming you like it and want to work in that field. It's been high in demand for a while now. If you want some buzzword side to go along with Java you coud look at R, that's the new hot shice apparently. Those come and go. All the time. The classics however have endured so far. They probably will for some while yet.

Oh, well... you know. Most people who have a driving license also have no idea how to driver properly, so why are you surprised exactly?

Oh, you did? What did you learn. Or ar planning to learn?

Maybe... most software engineers are terrible at their job. So there's a lot of potential overlap between software engineers and people on the internet. The correlation certainly is there, keep digging to see if there's some causality behind it. Want to hear the funniest support call I ever got? I swear 'tis true. Phone rings, I pick up and the guy says: "Every time I delete an e-mail it's gone afterwards, why, is this normal?" I had no idea what to reply without making this even more awkward than it was, so I said I'd call the Exchange administrator and ask. Hung up, laugned a couple of minutes, then called back and told him that this indeed is the intended behaviour of the delete function in Outlook. What he was really asking about was why the deleted items folder is purged every other day because his private mail client at home doesn't do that, so he got used to "archiving" mails by deleting them. It still requires being completely oblivious to the meaning of the word delete but it's not the dumbest question I've ever had. Just the funniest. The dumbest question so far was when someone called and asked why he's still missing exported orders from a client. He "told" the system to export the orders from "today" three days ago by setting a future date in the "export orders created on" date range, so they should have been in the export three days ago, right? RIGHT? Whoever said there are no dumb questions, only dumb answers needs to spend a year in first level support. Join the dark, cynical side, get cookies... or watch your mind break. Your choice. What's the topic of this thread again? Uhm... yeah. Game news. Eh... *runs*

Don't worry Bruce, there's no indication at all that politicians will ever come for you (you as in bankers, scourge of the earth ever since the Iron Curtain fell). If that happens it'll be torches and pitchforks from a mob.

I'd love to no longer be my own 1st, 2nd and 3rd level support but in this case we were chasing intermittent slowdowns that happened for no immediately apparent reasons after a major release change. DB load and query execution time was fine, the application servers were bored, memory usage was fine. Then we went on to measure round trips between clients and servers, code execution time. Everything said "this is fine" but it wasn't. Found out what was going on by stumbling upon a seemingly unrelated but no less hilarious issue of some code working most of the time and failing some of the time, but absolutely never when debugged. A classic Heisenbug. Turns out that the login system was the cause. Too many logins and the application server is stuck being busy logging people in an puts everything else on hold. That was no real problem for local logins, but web users had a nice little page available that would log in directly in a loop through selected records, with potentially disastrous results if the users caused a larger amount of records to be collected. Which they did. Still do. Heh. Damn thing.

Wait, what in the what now? Time's Arrow wasn't a bad episode by a long shot.

Best part of the chicken on grilled chicken. Not sure about fried chicken skin though. Yeah, that doesn't sound too appealing.

Come on, it's not that bad. Nothing beats the thrill of having an encroaching deadline, way too much left to do, crunch to get it done somehow, then work 72 hours straight right before release day, have somthing break at 3 past midnight, barely fix it in time and then have to deal with people complaining your ear off. Crunch makes you dead inside. It breaks your memory. It breaks your recollection of events. Everything becomes a blur, one day blending into the other, endless pressure, endless demands, seemingly endless work days with absolutely no end in sight, and once the project is done and released you'll end up having an inderterminate time of support duty because heaven knows, no matter how much testing you do, no matter how much you think something's working or safe or easy to use, the users find some way to break it. Sometimes, just sometimes you get stuck on an issue that seems completely impossible to resolve because you don't even have the slightest idea what's wrong. And it goes on, and on, and on. And you have people calling. Every day. Complaining. Every day. And then the next day someone new calls and says: "Hey, I just wanted to ask, is this ever going to work properly or do we have to get used to the miserable performance of the program?" At that point you finally realize why people commit suicide or run amok. Or do both.

Potentially. When you play PnP with dice rolling you often end up with sub-standard stat spreads. Sometimes the results are hilarious. One of the players of our old regular group once rolled an INT 5 barbarian who was barely capable to articulate himself. That was a fun game, but the DM canned the entire campaign after just two sessions. Not because of the barbarian but... eh. Turns out his planned storyline did not play well with a group of players using the attack on their home village to plunder everything and try to run away instead of fighting the attackers off. The stats of the BG1 NPCs would have been fine if they had just given everyone else rulebook based stats just as well. But no, monsters and enemies have highly optimized, sometimes perfect stats. Sure you wouldn't make a fighter with 9 CON even with a bad roll or a cleric that wouldn't be able to cast more than low level spells intentionally in PnP... guess Bioware figured out that WIS was a mostly useless stat even for clerics even before Gromnir came up with his character to complain about wisdom not doing anything. Heh. I seem to recall an interview where MCA stated that he read much - if not all - of the Star Wars EU in preparation for writing for KotOR 2. And yes, he couldn't deny it even if he tried. Kreia wasn't just based on Vergere, her philosophy and ideas regarding pratical skills and how the Jedi are limited by relying on the force too much comes directly from Mara Jade in the NJO books. As far as annoying NPCs go I seem to have really high tolerance. I don't mind Carth, Kaidan or Alistair. Or even Annoymen. The only NPC that ever really bothered me was Aerie, and to be honest that had more to do with the incredibly terrible timing of her whining-triggers in my first Baldur's Gate 2 playthrough than being straight out annoyed by her whining all the time.