kanisatha

Very interesting. A few days ago I did the Wintersun area. The quests and battles and stuff in the area were all enjoyable. But afterwards, what really was the most fun of all for me, and on which I spent glorious hours and hours, was leveling up my twelve characters and five animal companions through two level-gains, redoing the spells for the characters who memorize, and (re)distributing all the nice new equipment I had gained from the area. This is what really makes playing RPGs the most fun for me. I guess that makes me a wierd outlier, which seems to be the case in so many areas of life for me these days.

It's interesting how we all have so very different takes on these issues. For me, in any party-based RPG, I can't wait to expand my party, and am really unhappy in the early stages of the game when I don't (yet) have my full party.

This is exactly how I'm playing the game as well. I'm having a lot of fun playing this way, including even the crusade mode of the game. My only issue so far is how alignment is handled, where because I keep picking "good" dialogue choices my alignment keeps moving towards neutral good, which is problematic for my paladin level. But I'm still in Act 3, and I expect things are going to get a lot dicier when I get into Act 4.

Glad I dropped it from my wishlist.

Hey @Sarex, what's your take on the claims that current anti-government protests in Serbia are being orchestrated by FSB and Wagner operatives inside Serbia, and that Serbia (and Moldova) are the next fronts between Russia and the West? I'm very curious about the general public views on this story inside Serbia.

https://gamerant.com/avowed-release-date-2024/ Latest on a possible release timeline. Also, it would appear to negate pessimism that the game is "dead."

I'm curious to hear more of your experiences with this game. As a RTwP game I *should* love it. But from all I can tell it is almost entirely a hack and slash combat game with precious little else, and that I don't care for. But maybe I'm wrong.

Well, the vast majority of tanks now left in the RU army are T-72s, with a hefty number of T-64s as well, so Leopard 1 and Challenger 1 tanks will be more than a match for them.

LOL. Thanks for the list. A news reporter wants to interview me about this story, so now I have suspects to lay out for them.

Given the overall availability of trained military manpower for Ukraine, losses of that extent would have collapsed their frontlines and have made it impossible for them to defend territory across such a large landmass with such a long border with the enemy.

If this were true Ukraine would've fallen by now.

@Mamoulian War, seriously, how do you find the time? Do you, like, have a spouse who takes care of everything in life for you? I am lucky if I can get through a couple of games in a year, three tops.

Not so surprising since Russia has seen their VDV forces as their most competent mainline forces, and as such have thrown them into every single battle. I would even expect that now they are completely depleted.

Beautiful! Complete cave from WotC.

Yes! This is exactly what I learned to do as well! The AI does a pretty decent job handling ranged characters, be they bows or spellcasting, but rather poorly with melee characters. I've done okay with my character being a duel-wielder too.

Welcome back, @BruceVC

I got through one run of DA:I and I enjoyed it. The repetitious meaningless combat was definitely a pain, and why I doubt I'll ever replay it, but the parts of the game outside of combat including the story I liked quite a bit.

Back to talking about the big picture ramifications of the war and Russia's and the world's future directions, here's a link to a think-tank site where there are several very interesting articles: https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/series/ukraine-shifting-world-order One of the early pieces by Angela Stent about Putin's worldview is particularly interesting to me.

Biden has also caved and will now be sending Abrams to Ukraine. And apparently the US and NATO have now also agreed with Ukraine that in any spring offensive by Ukraine in the south it would be okay for Ukraine to go after Crimea, which until now had been a red line even for the West. And all the weapons being supplied are apparently to make it possible for Ukraine to shift to NATO operational strategy and tactics vis-a-vis high-intensity combined arms operations.

Unfortunately, at least until Turkey's elections later this year, Finland and Swededn will be blocked from joining NATO by Erdogan. He is trailing in the polls and will fully use "being tough" and standing firm" against Sweden and NATO as a way to prop up his support among certain voting blocs.

Looks like the Russians are very desperately trying to go on offense right now across the whole frontline to take as much territory as they can before all the new Western equipment shifts the battlefield in Ukraine's favor. Yeah at that recent summit on aid for Ukraine, more than 50 countries peldged to send military aid. So that is definitely more than just Western countries. The US is even pressuring Central and South American countries to send lethal aid.

Haha, yes a US congressman literally said this to Biden, suggesting we send one Abrams to Ukraine so that Scholz won't have that excuse anymore.

Yeah the backlash against Germany has been quite severe. Let's see if Scholz continues to feel it is worth it. The US side has explained this, saying they don't have any opposition per se to giving Abrams but that training and maintenance support for Abrams would be too complex for Ukraine. German Leopards are much easier for Ukraine to absorb and handle.

Looking forward to the return of Magnum P.I. My #1 show on TV these days and the only show I'm excited about watching.

Yup. I'm still angry about this one too.