majestic

For the record, I am not and will not be playing Starfield. From everything I have seen, heard and read, it is just another Bethesda game. A tedious, shallow, badly written sandbox(ish) game with very sub-par technical aspects to make your own fun in, except this time large parts of it were intentionally made boring to boot, as per the developers' own admission. Already played the same game well over two decades ago and found it wanting. Hard pass. Better? Imagine what I could say about it if I got to play it, but unless someone wants to buy me a copy I am not going to. I could do more useful things with the money, like setting it on fire or throwing it out the window.

There's a DLSS2 by PureDark mod that came out shortly after the game launched. By all accounts I have read so far it works better than FSR in the game (same if not better performance, much better visuals), so if you have the hardware for it, do yourself a favor and get it (it does not break achievements). The DLSS2 version is free, the DLSS3 one is not, but frame generation does not work properly anyway as it leads to very visible artifacts. There are DLSS mods that were not made by PureDark that include frame generation, but those require Reshade, which you may not want to install and coud potentially lead to issues with game patches. I have also seen video footage where rendering at the native resolution leads to better performance than using the FSR upscaling in the game. #justBethesdathings

I have to do my best to avoid watching the first episode. I don't think the live action series is going to run for ten thousand episodes, but who knows...

According to some modders they think the overall poor (CPU) performance of the game is because Bethesda messed up compiler optimizations. The go-to explanation for the relatively poor performance of the Ryzen CPUs seems to be the bandwidth limitation of AMD's Infinity Fabric. It was basic memory speed before, but recent testing showed that to not be the case, the game actually scales less well with increased DDR5 speeds than other titles. As for Intel's libraries that check for the vendor string and use slow execution paths for anything that is not an Intel CPU, well, they're not very likely to be used in desktop applications or games, but I would not put it past Bethesda either way, but I'd like to think AMD would at least do a cursory check when they spend a good bunch of money on a product.

It is because being a buzzkill and bringing people down is one of the few ways I can make my miserable existence more fun. The same reason I approach every competitive game I participate in with Conan in mind: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." Every now and then I re-read the Galactic Starfighter forum thread dedicated to whinging about me playing the game. It just never gets old, although it appeared to get shorter in the meantime as posts have disappeared for some reason or were deleted the amount of posts per page were increased. I thought you would have figured that out by now. I do have been around for a bit, yes?

So, AMD sponsors Starfield to make sure that the 7900 XTX can beat the RTX 4090 in something and to have a game everyone wants to play bundled with their cards, but forgets to make sure that the game runs well on their CPUs. Given Bethesda's track record of making terrible code, I guess the 7900 XTX edging out the RTX 4090 wasn't even intentional*. Not going to lie, seeing the 13600K punching out of the entire AMD CPU stack (including the 7950X, 7800X3D and 7950X3D) in Starfield is hilarious, and the 12600K coming within 10% of the 7950X3D is just bonkers - as is the general performance of the game in 1080p. 67 FPS on average on a 5800X3D/RTX 4090 combination? Yikes. If the game at least had something to show for it, but that's visually just... bad. Never mind those horrible plastic faces. Ugh. *More objectively that is probably a result of being specifically optimized for AMD cards while doing no optimization for any other GPUs, and less of a toggle that goes like if (!Radeon) frameLimit = 0.8;

*sniff* Ah, the smell of copium in the morning. Not that it is morning here, mind, but sure it morning somewhere.

I'm not sure if there's ever been a game with a larger disconnect between the time that could and should pass on your adventures and the time that actually does, because time is basically "frozen" on the same day until you go and rest. If you hike from the Nautiloid to the old temple where you meet Withers, then move on to the Grove, explore that, talk to the people, maybe even clear out parts of the Blighted Village - well, that's like a couple of hours of real life cRPG time, but in terms of any regular PnP campaign that would be several sessions, easily, and quite a lot of time for the characters. That's just all not very well designed, at least not for me and my preferences. Act 1 is basically the sum total of all Baldur's Gate wilderness areas stitched together, forming one giant map, with the really big holes of nothing removed. It is a super dense blob of things to do you're thrown in with no sense of time progression at all (mostly because there really is none, aside from the game's internal round counter and a pseudo-advancement of time when you go to camp and come back without resting) and arguably worse, no clear sense of direction. Baldur's Gate at least was nice enough to provide you with a destination and a trail to pick up that would not prove to be overly problematic to your party. You could vector away from that, of course, and run into your fair share of maps you should not be in and find yourself fighting Ankhegs or getting wiped out by Basilisks with your trusty level one group (although those Basilisks make for really good experience even with very low level characters once you know what you're doing) but if you follow Baldur's Gate 3's meager pointers the game - quite literally and in a break of immersion - tells you that your party is in for a really bad time if you move on or you end up potentially facing a hike in encounter difficulty that puts the Owlfinder games to shame while trying to solve the Druid Grove's problems. All things you should logically prioritize because the game drives home how much of a priority they are. Instead you have to go on side adventures to reach a good enough level. Well, have to, there are ways around everything, as always, but as far as the "intended" way to play the game goes, I have no idea how it got all those glowing reviews. Yes, going to the Friendly Arm Inn and then to Nashkell without spending some time poking around in Beregost would net you two pretty annoying battles with assassins in Baldur's Gate that could potentially be devastating, but they're nothing compared to the killer sheep in Larian's game. Then again, I don't know how glowing reviews come to be for a lot of games, TV shows and movies, so clearly it is not just the Baldur's Gate 3's problem.

I can recommend Love Live!, that was a fantastic experience with great music!

I was thinking of something else with the extra attack stacking (watched way too many videos recently, I guess), but that doesn't change the idea that Astarion is better off as an Assassin/Gloomstalker. 8/17/14/10/16/8, Ranger(6), Rogue(4), Fighter(2) or 5/5/2 for an extra sneak die, doesn't really matter. You can start with Ranger or Rogue depending on your preferences, going Ranger(5) first gets you the extra attack, then add Rogue until Assassin. Dual wield hand crossbows. Get Hunter's Mark and Sharpshooter (+10 damage on attacks). Gloomstalkers get the WIS bonus to initiative on attacks from stealth and can hide as a bonus action (well, like Rogues) and deal bonus damage too. Assassin makes sure all surprise round attacks are critical hits, and you reset your actions once the first actual round of combat begins. You basically end encounters on your opening burst. Sprinkle with extra Fighter levels for action surge. Gameplay is pretty much about picking a nice vantage point and shift+del enemies. Takes level 8 to really take off. Note that you can technically use any ranged or melee weapon, hand-crossbows are just a nice way to get another attack to use with Sharpshooter. You can also make that work with less critting but more consistent regular damage by going Thief. Thief's, uhm, extra bonus action extends to shooting an off-hand hand-crossbow a second time. Stats aren't set in stone either if you don't like the 8s, but we're talking about respeccing Astarion in the face of a Bard party leader, so who needs CHA on Astarion.

He's begging you to just turn him into an Assassin/Gloomstalker multiclass and abuse the extra attack stacking. Unless that has been fixed with the recent patch, did not get to play recently.

Maybe, but the 7900 GRE isn't performing so great compared to other 80 CU RDNA2 GPUs either, although the GRE has severely limited clock speeds and makes for a poor 1:1 comparison too. Agree that the 7700 XT is nothing but an upsell for the 7800 XT. Anyway, not expecting too much from the 7800 XT. Certainly nothing that will make nVidia cut prices, although there are rumors that the 7700 XT already caused nVidia to authorize RTX 4060 Ti price cuts. But, just rumors. Could also be just a side effect of nobody wanting that card. At least, I hope nobody bought 4060 TIs.

Tech-YT-Space is all up in arms over how awesome the RX 7800 XT is going to be for it's launch MSRP of 500$. Maybe it's just my bias, but I'm not seeing it. The 7800 XT has 14% less compute units than the almost equally priced RX 6800 XT, and the general uplift in 1:1 CU configurations of RDNA3 is pretty bad when you compare the 7600 to the 6650 XT. So, basically, that leaves the 7800 XT in the same performance ballpark as the RTX 3080, the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 4070. Removing our VAT, street pricing for the RTX 4070 is roughly at 500€, and at 450€ for the RX 6800 XT. Factoring in € to $ conversion rates that makes the 7800 XT look like even worse of a deal. Never mind street pricing in the US having RX 6950s showing up at 550$ here and there. Not seeing anything to get excited about.

That should be game design 101 since the mid 90ies, but it keeps creeping back into games: if any given game system is just there to gobble up inventory space and removing the player hassle results in it no longer being considered worthwhile, it is probably not worthwhile to begin with and should be removed. That includes needing food or drink outside of survival games where it is a core mechanic (this one in particular was replaced by a much better well rested or food bonus mechanic a long, long time ago), vendors having limited gold and currency having weight, all of which this game does for no reason. Quoted for truth. That is just one giant wall of text, only in spoken form. It is somewhat impressive how much he can talk without pausing, but it is just one stream of words with such a lack of inflection and (stress) pitch that it might well be read by some text-to-speech engine. Yikes.

It's really too bad Ylvis will be forever known as the guys with that silly fox song (to the broader public, that is - their elevator pranks are pretty funny). Ah, well.

Probably for the same reason they can't do decent camera angles or make exploration be anything but a pain in the ass, or have a loot highlight key that only highlights half the loot. The first one is pretyt subjective, the other really is an issue, and yes, run down clothes in a freaking wardrobe is loot.

Just download The Force Engine for Dark Forces. It's free and doesn't look any worse than that "remaster"...

You can avoid that battle as a bard.

The game just randomly decided to reset back to default. I started the game as usual, got greeted by the EULA, went through gamma correction and had to rebind my keys. I hope it doesn't do that again, otherwise I might have to go Dark Urge on it. Lae'zel already told me she'll get what is hers at a time of her choosing. I can already see Bruno fawning over her.

Well, my murderhobo (aptly called Murderhobo) drow bard is working his way through the first part of the game, lying, cheating, intimidating and being generally obnoxious. Stepped on a squirrel, killed a wounded bird, a lame woman and caused a venomous viper to bite a child. All with that stupid grin on the face the game does. I didn't bite Gale's hand off though. Companions are useful. Lae'zel loves me, but Shadowheart can't stand me. Some cleric of Shar she is. Pfeh. Not going to lie, kind of looking forward to the acts you guys keep complaining about. Being smaller in scope and having less to do and less to explore is certainly not going to hurt my enjoyment of the game. Far from it.

The narrative in season two is a bit of a mess, but it is made up by Michael Sheen's and David Tennant's shenanigans. I just read that the season is supposed to lay the groundwork for an actual sequel to the story that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman laid out in '89 before the book was published, so I suppose that explains a few things - the episodes are just there to explain how the characters ended up being where they are in a third season that might never get made. Ending spoilers:

People have an awful lot of problems with our four cases, never mind your six. On the other hand, you cheats have no articles, so at least there's that. In the past, whenever I heard that other languages have many more cases, like Japanese (nine) or Finnish (fifteen, if I can recall correctly), I was horrified. That was before I knew that not all languages use complex inflection rules that expand to attached ajectives and articles to indicate case, number and gender. Japanese is particularily easy (warning, bad pun ahead) as you just attach a particle to the noun and be done with it. It becomes merely a matter of knowing when to use which particle. Which can be a little tricky at times. Japanese's equivalent of the ablative case can be used to describe moving away from a certain point time, or a place, or the origin of a transfer. While you could use the case to describe that a professor gave a lecture, or that a shop opens from 10:00 or that a ship has left the harbour, you cannot use it to say that you left university in the sense of exmatriculating. The ablative, while indicating movement out of a room, only works with physically existing spaces. The particle needed to indicate movement out of metaphorical rooms can also be used to relay the information that someone left a real room. Just as long as that someone is a person. Still beats declension by a mile.

I wonder if @Gorth is allergic to pineapple too.

Shouldn't that be nema problema?

Watched the second season of Good Omens. Certainly hope they'll get to make the third season, because if not that is going to be the worst ending to a series since Eli was left all alone on the Destiny.