majestic

If I end up playing I'll be finishing the stories I haven't played yet (and check out everything after SoR) and shooting down raging boons in GSF. After my brief stint with WoW's Legion expansion a while back I think I'm done with regular MMOs. In a more permanent fashion. Talking about the game made me feel a twinge of nostalgia but the actual thought of playing again is kind of revolting. Thanks, guild drama. Meh.

I'm pretty sure our Sin ran with two alacrity enhancements even back in 2.x. Man, I'm close to installing the game again.

DPS was our raid's weak point, as such we always had to get creative to meet the more stringent damage checks. These were little things like healing through normally unnecessary damage from adds so that DDs don't have to target switch immediately to standing in some of the fires on purpose (or not running far enough with Mini-Kephess' jumps during Brontes on them), DDs not cleansing themselves on Nefra and my favorite one, our team setup during Operator IX which had us solo healing through the yellow and orange phases because otherwise these cores wouldn't go down properly. Sometimes one of us would run with a hybrid damage spec to get bosses down, like Draxus initially. Two of our ranged DPS had issues with keeping their damage up while target switching, so that boss was much more of an issue that it should have been. The most epic moment was during our Brontes attempts where our Mara learned to respec in five seconds in order to get some more burst damage going on the droid phase. It wasn't all bad though, at least we were busy during the fights. Oh, and we spent the entirety of our runs undergeared because as healing "wasn't an issue" all the loot would go to DPS and Tanks first.

That one came out quite recently and was a dumpster fire.

I played an Operative healer from launch to Shadows of Revan. After the first server merges I've been involved in every nightmare and nightmare speedrun first clear on our server (missed our first Styrak kill though). Shortly after SoR was released major guild drama pushed me into reducing my time with the game first and into quitting after scoring a major contract at work. I stopped wanting to babysit colleagues, customers AND the guys* in the game. It was fun for a while, and being one of a handful of people with the fancy titles and mounts that came with being able to clear nightmare operations at the time sure felt good, but being in a guild where everyone hates each other's guts that is only glued together by success is taxing. Especially once you hit a bump in the road like we did at the end of Rise. We used to run a Twin-Sin setup during 1.x and switched to Sin/Jug for 2.x. Never felt the need for a PT tank, but I stopped following the game after BioWare did a Blizzard and cut the talent trees in favor of "meaningful" choices, obviously I have no idea what the meta is right now, but a Sin's ability to cancel game mechanics through cooldowns is so powerful that I doubt anyone can possibly justify not taking at least one if they're serious** about raiding. *At the risk of sounding full of myself, the other healer we had (one of the best players I've ever had the genuine pleasure of playing with) and I pretty much carried our DPS by healing through a lot of mechanics and doing non-trivial dps ourselves while healing. **Serious meaning making optimal choices, obviously, not GhostCrawler's ridiculous notion that Shaman healers sucking during Cataclysm is all right because most guilds don't go for progress and they're good enough to have fun with. Sure dude, but if the top guilds don't take them because they're so inferior that there's no justification for including them even in farm raids - and we're talking about the best players of the game here - why would a group of people who aren't nearly as skilled or dedicated would want to make their life even harder than it already is?

I liked both Alien and Aliens. However after repeatedly seeing both Alien, for me, lost the tension that made it great while Aliens is still a fun action movie at the end of the day. It's a lot like Terminator and Terminator two in that regard - also similar insofar as any sequels after the first are better not talked about. I'm torn between telling you that it's better this way or egging you to check them out purely to admire the train wrecks they are.

Not sure if I should be envious or consoling here. So what are you playing?

Heh. My parents brought me two toy drones in a Star Wars design today. They figured I'd like them and when they told me about it I was looking forward to buzzing around a bit. They also got theam really cheap on a sale so I didn't expect much. Certainly not the two wax sealed limited edition drones I have now and can't play with because who opens limited editions. Seriously. Time to go out and grab some more for the actual fun part.

I guess now he's really 213374 us...

Well that one's clocking in at 45 minutes, not sure that's much better in terms of length. However I think that Hurlshot hasn't watched a Mr. Plinkett review yet if he thinks it's wasting an hour on a two hour movie. They tend to have a similar effect like Summoning Salt's speedrun videos or Joseph Anderson's 3 hour game critiques. From a disbelieving "I'm sure not going to watch a three hour breakdown of why Super Mario Odysee wasn't as good as other Mario games" to watching the first ten minutes to ending up watching a 20 minute documentary about a single Mario Bros. stage: Heh.

Balders Gate, actually, followed closely by Baulders Gate. However, the one people had the most fun with was Thrown of Ball. Seriously.

It would be so easy. Just hire Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz and say "Make a Picard show", then watch the inevitable awesome that's going to happen. Anyhoo, if they really fired Kurtzman then good on them. He's become the Brett Ratnor of Star Trek.

I can save you some time, the game eventually devolves into grinding whatever Greater Rift level you're stuck at until you either gain enough paragon points or the stars align to give you a perfect loot drop to eke out that final smidgeon of more damage to finish it in time - only to get stuck on the next GR level until the very same thing happens. Not saying that it isn't entertainung for a while. It's just... Eh, it got older a lot faster than D2 did for me.

Haven't played D3 in a long time but in the past one got set items for the season journey at some point. And then we're talking about ridiculous things like a 1600% damage buff to abilities.

A perfect match then. Imagine selling the levels of a shooter as DLC. Daikatana would have raked in billions. Billions!

Jadzia and Bareil died on Worf and Kira respectively. On the other hand Rom and Leeta, Ezri and Julian and BLT with Not!Locarno did fine (as much as fine goes with B'elanna and Tom). Kira, Odo, Sisko and Yates were special cases that could be seen either way. Not sure where to put everything else that happened, e.g. that Picard/Vash fling, Data's one episode girlfriend Jenna, Wesley and Robin and whatever Geordi had with Christy Henshaw, or aborted/never resolved romance arcs (like Picard and Beverly, Deanna and Worf, Harry Kim and Seven, Janeway and Chakotay). Oh, damn. I forgot Kes out-evolving Neelix. Woops. That tilts the balance a bit. Ah crud.

The "new" guy also debates with Gromnir, then tells him he must be fun at parties. Actual new guys annoyed by Gromnir wonder what the hell is going on with his posting style.

Someone went and spelled mystery wrong. I'm pretty sure it was spelled correctly before, now it's wrong. Clippy, was that you?

There's some real money to be made these days if he's good enough. Or bad enough to be entertaining. I have no idea how all these Let's Play people can make a living off YouTube or streamers can rake in loads of cash with a skill level like that. Kind of makes me jealous to have been born 15 to 20 years too early.

Pathfinder pretty much is 3rd Edition D&D with slightly different names and teamwork feats that may or may not work properly in the game. It's really best to look up decent feat combinations and if they even work as stated (much less work as intended), especially if you want to use the game's pre-built NPCs, since they're all average at the very best, outright terrible in some cases. Getting some value out of Valerie takes serious effort. Oh, and do yourself a favor and bring an alchemist along. Unless things were patched in the newer versions their bombs are ranged touch attacks that aren't affected by spell resistance. Those big scary monsters that show up every now and then that your normal characters can only hit when the stars align? Heh. Throw, boom, win. They even come with switchable damage types in case something's immune to your regular booms. Oh and sneak attacks are so easy to do that you can give anyone who ever attacks in melee a level (or two, or three) of Vivisectionist Alchemist or Rogue to take advantage of it. Those juicy level 20 capstone talents that look awesome? Yeah, most of them... pale compared to extra d6 or d8 on every attack.

I can see tiered pricing. 4.99 for a B-List celebrity, 9.99 for an A-List one and 14.99 for William Gibson. Or lootboxes and with every box you have a 20% chance to win Tim Schafer but he'll ask you for more money on Kickstarter GOG.com halfway through the game. Could also have an Ion Storm revival pack, complete with a licensed model of JC Denton, Warren Spector and a 5% chance of getting to be Romero's bitch.

Mmmm. Celebrity DLC packs.

With a public holiday today this was a weekend full of indulgence. Or, in other words, unhealthy food for the win: Well and some take-out ribs from out local Italian place. Might sound weird, but they make them like pizza by throwing the ribs into the oven and burn them to a cinder. Well, kind of. 300+ degrees for a few minutes make them blackend on the outside and super juicy inside. Then they get a bit of sauce on top (a hot one in this case). Compared to the usual way of doing them with extended low temperature they stay a good deal chewier, and obviously there's no smoky flavor but it's full of pure Maillard bliss. Honestly, biting into these is as close to a tastegasm as you can come.

Went for a walk last week, saw a couple of swans crossing a river. Except one of them's a dog.