Fez

I first installed Steam in 2010, but didn't start to seriously use it until 2014. I had been a console gamer mostly, with a handful of physical PC games plus WoW. But I didn't really have the money at the time to upgrade to the PS4/Xbox One era; and also I'd been a 360 guy and really didn't like the Xbox One (but didn't want to switch the the PS4 eco-system either). 

I think I may have gotten a couple free games in 2010/2011, but my first steam purchase was Fallout 2 for $4.99 in July 2012. I had 3 more purchases in the next 25 months. And then floodgates opened in August 2014, beginning with Divinity: Original Sin 1. 

I now have 5,404 hours (which is actually lower than I'd have guessed, but I guess I do still play a fair amount on PC outside of Steam) spread across 451 games, which is eerily similar to Wert's numbers.  

My top 15 most played are:

1. Pathfinder: WotR- 1,013 hours (I have a problem, I know)

2. Pathfinder: Kingmaker- 309 hours

3. Stellaris- 255 hours

4. Divinity: Original Sin 2- 232 hours

5. Secret World Legends- 205 hours

6. Europa Universalis IV- 187 hours

7. Civilization V- 182 hours

8. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children- 166 hours

9. Baldur's Gate 3- 149 hours

10. Elden Ring- 139 hours

11. The Witcher 3- 133 hours

12. Cyberpunk 2077- 129 hours

13. Mass Effect Legendary Edition- 115 hours

14. Hades- 112 hours

15. Pillars of Eternity- 93 hours

It's interesting to me how top-heavy the list is; and also just how big the COVID effect has been on my gaming habits. Most of these are games I've played in the past 3+ years. I think I am gaming more than before, but also gaming on more steam than before. I certainly use PC Gamepass still, but my days of using other launchers seem to basically be over now.

31 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Well one vote of confidence will be if they get Grey DeLisle back to voice a Malkavian  she was so good as Jeanette. Yeah I’m willing to wait for it to come out and let the reviews and user experiences help me decide whether to get it,rather than on day one.I just hope it comes out next year now. It’s been in development since 2015 ffs.Paradox has done a terrible job of managing this franchise. The original writer had said that he had done his work on the story and the firing came as a nasty surprise. 

Hardsuit Labs fired a lot of people in the lead-up to Paradox yanking the game away from them. There's still never been any clarity on exactly what was going down, but it seems like the state of the game must've been awful.

Whatever it was, considering how long The Chinese Room will have had the game by the time it comes out, and the fact that the plot appears to be entirely different, it seems likely that they basically scrapped everything and restarted from scratch. The optimistic take is that the game we get is fine and everything has been fine the past few years and the problems were isolated to Hardsuit Labs; with Paradox just being too hands off. But who knows?

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Unfortunately I read that the original writer for the first one has been fired and this studio has also undergone mass layoffs, so not looking very positive right now. Also the trailer only shows some fairly mundane combat and they’re apparently reworking the entire story from scratch where you’re an elder instead of a thin blood….which is just baffling. Sigh….this franchise could have soo much potential, VTMB was possibly the most atmospheric game I’ve ever played.

I believe the original studio of the new game, Hardsuit Labs, has undergone massive layoffs since the game was taken from them. But the new studio who put out this trailer, The Chinese Room, has had a huge hiring spree to staff up. (They did have their own mass layoffs back in 2017, but that was a separate issue that happened before they got the game).

Also, The Chinese Room has only done story-games before ("walking sims") so there's a good chance they put out a combat-driven trailer because they figured that's where the most skepticism would be.

And, yeah, at one point, while Hardsuit Labs still had the game, Brian Mitsoda was fired. He wasn't the only writer for the first game, but certainly was very important. Although, the fact that the first studio fired him and the replacement studio ignored all his work suggests that maybe there were fundamental problems with whatever he had come up with. Certainly, I remember a lot of fans being disappointed with the reveal of the thinblood plothook.

The development of this game has been incredibly snakebitten and there's every reason for skepticism. Still, I'm willing to wait and see what the new devs have done before writing it off entirely. 

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

What Fez was getting is that in PF1 while there is a bunch of broken stuff there is also like a bazillion different ways to get it. So there is lots of ways to get very strong builds and the toolbox is so big there is a lot of flexibility and creativity in how you throw it together. Ofc you can just go more vanilla and that works fine depending on the class. (It’s not like 5e doesn’t have sucky classes like Ranger or druid or monk either) 

Yeah, exactly. And also, because all of the broken things can be great fun there's no need to try to find the exact perfect, optimized build. I'm not even sure if there is one (though I assume it involves vivisectionist levels somehow).

The weak character building aspect of 5e is the one big complaint I have about BG3. Some of the best fun I had in the Owlcat pathfinder games was simply figuring out what I wanted to do on the level-up screens. 

5 hours ago, Arakasi said:

That’s been a problem with all forms of D&D. Give someone a hammer and everything looks like a nail. There have been attempts to push more versatility in options but they consistently fail to players desires to optimize the one best thing.

It's just too easy to optimize in 5e though. I don't seek out perfect optimization in Pathfinder 1e because there's no need and because there's so many ways to do it. But in 5e, it's so obvious usually.

2 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Expectation: I'm a mighty sorcerer and I will kill everyone with spells!

Reality: I cast twinned haste on Karlach and Lae'zel. Everyone is dead at the end turn.

This is how my sorcerer playtrough is going after getting level 3 spells.

 

Lol, that's been my actual tabletop experience as a sorcerer too.

I got back in my new playthrough to where I was in Act II at the last light inn. And, despite 2 patches (one of which seemed to claim to fix this), I'm having the exact same issue as before: In the initial conversation with Jaheria I pass a DC 21 CHA check to hide the existence of the artifact; but then in the follow-up conversation she talks all about how the artifact will protect.

I don't usually get this hung up on relatively small stuff, but this completely breaks my immersion in the game and really puts me off playing any further. If my dialog choices are ignored this easily, what's the point of any of it?

2 hours ago, Raja said:

76 was rightfully panned by a lot of critics given the dubious market practices by Bethesda and also the terrible state the game was released in; approaching the next release with skepticism makes perfect sense to me and there's no 'bias' in that.

Though I guess I understand Bethesda staff being miffed about Skill Up coming out with that review - but I think the proof is really in Bethesda's response to Eurogame - as soon as Eurogamer made it public that

1. They did not receive review codes

2.  That is unprecedented for Eurogamer and hasn't happened to them in a long time and how that's bad for transparency & reviewing of games

Once that article was made public, Bethesda released a review code in 2 hours for Eurogamer, which tells me it's just not great behaviour from bethesda and once the optics didn't look great they decided to release the code to them immediately

( It's also not just these two, there are quite a few other outlets that haven't received codes)

Fallout 76 is hot garbage, especially in it's release state. But "skepticism" is not the same "actively hostile" when thinking about a potential future game.

15 minutes ago, Raja said:

It's not just Eurogamer, but other UK/ EU outlets too.

Re: Skill Up - you're going to have to find the exact quote for me because I haven't read/ seen that. Skill Up's 76 reviews were good in that they correctly criticized several of Bethesda's marketing practices & the mess that that game was. I don't think there was anything 'biased' in those reviews at least. Those reviews were exactly what critics should be doing.

I'm not sure about the specific quote you're talking about there, but happy to read it if you can provide it.

starts at just after the 23:52 mark.

The exact line is:

"I've gone from being giddy with excitement for Elder Scrolls 6 to being actively hostile."

Any reviewer saying they have predetermined thoughts about a future game should be rightfully blacklisted.

12 hours ago, Raja said:

Bethesda not giving review codes to some big EU/ UK outlets such as Eurogamer is a bit meh. Same with Skill Up

The Eurogamer one is definitely suspect. Seems like Bethesda didn't give review codes to any reviewer owned by ReedPop, which is a division/subsidiary of RELX; a large UK conglomerate. Which feels like the result of some sort of weird corporate bad blood between them and Microsoft itself. But Eurogamer is big enough in the gaming space that as soon as they publicly complained someone high enough up at Bethesda/Xbox made sure to get them a code quickly.

The Skill Up one makes sense though. After Fallout 76 released, he said he was going to be "hostile" to the next Bethesda release. If a reviewer has publicly said they'll be biased against you it makes sense to blacklist them from review codes.

5 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

You mean cake right? 

Nah, he mean Coca-Cola.

It's not actually as exciting as it sounds though. I had hoped it was basically a Chinese soup dumpling filled with Coke and deep fried, but it's not. Basically you just mix coca-cola into your batter instead of milk, make donut balls, and deep fry them. In some recipes, you reduce the coke down to it's syrup and use it as the butter instead. And either way, after the deep frying is done you top the donut balls with coke syrup.

It's for precisely conversations like this that the term 'lean' was invented. MN isn't a swing state in that it doesn't regularly vote for one party and then the other. But any state that gets even with 5% in a presidential election, much less 2%, certainly isn't a safe state either. Minnesota leans Democratic for sure, and Democrats have an extremely high floor that makes it very hard for Republicans to get to a win. But it's not a sure thing like Hawaii or Vermont.

Also, Amy Klobuchar regularly demolishes her senate races; but other Democrats aren't so dominant. Mondale straight up lost in 2002 (though that was a weird circumstance; Franken won by only a few hundred votes in 2008; Franken did have a good re-election in 2014 and Smith had a good special election in 2018; but then Smith only won by 5% in 2020- again, not safe.

3 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I'm suffering from my usual restartitis. That usually happens when I'm still discovering new mechanics in a game.

Nothing new I never reached the endgame in Pillars of Eternity despite playing the game for more than a hundred hours and my Baldur's Gate 1+2 replays usually end before Throne of Bhaal.

I have been thinking about a future evil playthrough. I guess the standard approach is to play The Dark Urge when you play evil.  I find the idea of playing as an evil Karlach amusing though that will probably lock me out of romances.

The dark urge can be played as either evil (giving in to the urge) or good (resisting the urge). And I think both are way more interesting than a baseline custom character. There are two evil things that you have no choice about in the game (and one you actually can avoid if you have 'speak with animals' up), but besides them you can resist the urge the entire time. And since you aren't in control of yourself for those two evil things, and have dialog options to express deep remorse over them, arguably you are still 'good' despite doing them.

I like the idea I saw of manually rolling a d20 when dark urge options come up, with a DC of whatever you feel is appropriate, to decide if you resist or give in. That basically lets you play a third way, of being a dark urge who doesn't want to give in but doesn't have enough self-control to always resist.

46 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

It does sound incredible tedious but I found the idea behind it really amusing.

I googled it because I just found that weapon for the first time(restarted for the 3rd time...).

It also sounds like an unintended interaction that'll probably eventually get nerfed. It reminds me of a similar tedious interaction in Wrath of the Righteous. Pathfinder 1e has the spell 'cave fangs' which lasts 10 minutes/level; and as a free action (which you have an unliminted number of per turn) you can burn 10 minutes of it to do 3d8 damage (or half of that on a saving throw). So it's a decently powerful spell, which if you cast at level 20 could do 60d8 damage. Which seems high, but is kinda nothing compared to what level 20 casters can do in that system. Anyway, in Wrath you could get get a mythic feat that lets spells that last over 5 minutes actually last 24 hours instead. Which was intended mostly as a QoL feature to cut down on how often you needed to cast buff spells. But it also applied to cave fangs since it was a spell with a duration of over 5 minutes. You could get the spell by level 5 and have the feat by level 9. Meaning at level 9 you could do 432d8 damage. As soon Owlcat had dealt with the game breaking bugs they nerfed the feat to not apply to cave fangs.

Anyway, back to BG3, I'm noticing a lot of new gameplay bugs since patch 1. Stuff poison clouds no longer being visible but still causing damage, more dialog lines where the audio bugs out and it's silent, etc. All rather frustrating really. 

15 hours ago, Maithanet said:

2012 and 2020 were pretty similar in terms of the popular vote (d+4).  Texas went from r+16 in 2012 to r+5.5 in that time.  At that rate of change, it would be basically tied in 2024.  Now, I'm well aware that will be a hard lift, those final five points will be very hard.  But if we're talking about a great night for Dems, it is definitely possible.

That's true, but at the same time Democratic vote shore in the Rio Grande valley (and I suspect other Hispanic areas in the state too, but I don't know the numbers for sure) has been in decline. A Republican winning TX-15 in 2022 should be a massive alarm bell about trends in the state. Demographic change has helped make the state closer, but I don't think it flips until Dallas-Forth Worth is like Atlanta (it's getting closer, but isn't there yet).

48 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Hence my objection to primaries.  Particularly, the Republican Party Primaries where (in the Presidential context) they are winner take all allowing a plurality candidate (like Trump) to pull away early and where a big field with one slightly more popular candidate favors that slightly more popular candidate and allows that slightly more popular candidate to build a big lead early.  

At least the Democratic Party has “superdelegates” baked in to the process that creates the potential to disarm a dangerous populist candidate at the convention (I’m still curious to see how that would work and how the voting public would react).  

I’m suggesting, speculating, that  “open” primaries where everyone in a given State or SMD has the ability to participate in all primaries being run might result in less radical candidates being selected in primaries.  South Carolina does have “open” primaries.  Anyone can vote in either primary, but not in both.  

The issue around "winner take all" Republican primaries is separate from whether they're open or closed.

And as for getting less radical candidates, generally speaking the issue isn't the primary structure; it's how radically gerrymandered the districts are. There's a reason why it's GOP Representatives are so much crazier than the GOP Senators, and why GOP state legislators are overall worse than the Governors.

Granted, all of them are quite bad compared to a baseline. But that's a function of the whole party getting more and more nuts. But changing the primary structures doesn't really help that. Most people vote in the primaries of the party they identify with, even if there's more value voting in the other one. Alabama has open primaries for instance. And theoretically every Democrat should be voting in the Republican primaries for which candidate is least worst, since that's the only opportunity that exists to influence politics in the state. But they don't. Most either don't vote at all, or vote in the Democratic primaries for whoever the sacrificial lambs are for the election.

18 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I agree with most of your post, but I would put Biden's best case (but still realistic) a bit higher than that.  Texas is definitely flippable if we're talking about a great night for Dems.  It is moving left pretty fast, and if (as some of election twitter insists is the case) Latino voters generally prefer incumbents over challengers, that could make a huge difference.  If Biden does 5% better with Latinos than 2020, he's basically won Texas. 

To me, flipping Texas in 2028 is a great night. Flipping it in 2024 seems unrealistically optimistic. Especially since Democratic performance among Latinos is generally getting worse, not better. Growth in the Latino population is still helpful, since it is more Democratic than not. But the state flips when the suburbs get blue enough, and they aren't there yet.

If we're looking for any states to flip blue beyond North Carolina (which remains the most likely despite it continually not happening except in 2008), I think it's a small, idiosyncratic state that is already open to electing Democrats statewide. Like Kansas or Alaska, pulling off a 2008 Indiana kind of thing.

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

Something I have been wondering about for a few weeks now...

The Buildup -

1 - Republican candidates...underperformed...during the midterms. We came within a hair's breadth of a couple of surprise upsets - like a certain congressperson from Colorado. 

2 - Since the midterms, republican behavior has not improved. Indeed, it has arguably gotten worse, alienating more of the populace. Case in point, republicans lost a ballot measure lately. Every time abortion comes up for a 'peoples vote,' they lose - but republican politicians seem incapable of learning from this.

3 - A number of republican redistricting schemes have been ruled against or face severe legal challenges. If these changes actually get implemented, then republicans are in a bad spot.

4 - Been seeing more and more references in various political articles about severe campaign money issues in multiple states. Seems the usual big pocket donors are unhappy with the radical fruit-loop candidates or are otherwise less than thrilled.

The Possibility -

Taken together, the above points seem to offer the possibility of a democratic party blowout in the 2024 elections. Not just a simple D majority, but the coveted 60 vote majority in the senate and whatever it takes in the house. I don't see this as likely, but it *might* be possible.

And the Question -

Assume the political stars align, Biden wins, and the democratic party gets the 60 vote senate majority and whatever is required in the house. Now, granted, there WILL be the 'Manchin' faction to deal with, but allowing for that, what is realistically possible here? Some version of Medicaid For All? An abortion rights law? Build Back Better mark 2?

There's not going to be that kind of senate majority, no matter what. In the wildest fantasies of Democratic strategists, they end up with 53-47 senate majority. And that only happens if they defend every incumbent who's up successfully, and somehow flip Texas and Florida. To get to 60, they'd have to win 7 out of Utah, Nebraska (2 races), Wyoming, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi. It's just not happening. Not a chance

The politically stars aligning for 2024, means Biden winning the electoral college 318-220, a continued 51-49 senate majority, and re-taking the House with probably a 230ish to 205ish majority. And also flipping the Arizona state legislature while successfully defending all the legislatures they currently hold. And, maybe filpping Wisconsin's legislature if the gerrymander lawsuit is successful and there's new maps in place.

That's an extraordinarily good night. And all it does is ensure another 4 years of status quo instead of things going to utter shit. Also, it ensures the federal judiciary continues to slowly get unfucked a little more; and maybe we get really lucky and Thomas dies so the supreme court gets a little better too.

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

This patch addresses the logic flow of the ending better, apparently, so some of the Kotor 2-esque "WTF is going on now?" logic breaks in the ending should be fixed.

But only some. It sounds like there's still a certain trigger that incorrectly blocks your final scene with whoever your love interest is.

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

ok so it's mostly just fixes and balance changes. That's fair. Any idea when they might do a patch with new features (hint hint changing my characters visuals after I've created them)

IIRC, they are planning to get Patch 2 out before the PS5 launch on Sept 6. Although so far the only thing they've said is that it'll have performance fixes. TBH, I wouldn't expect much else considering the short time frame left. Though maybe there's a few other, bigger things that just weren't ready in time for Patch 1.

There's been no announcement yet of what the roadmap post PS5 launch looks like. Personally, I wouldn't expect much in the way of new features until a definitive edition (which hasn't been announced, but seems likely based on their past 2 games), probably about a year from now. That's probably when any changes to the structure of Act 3 would be implemented as well.

It seems like this patch does address my biggest concerns, about logic flows of key conversations. So I will continue playing. Although I think I'll start over to ensure a cleaner playthrough.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm not convinced he'll show up to the general debates either. There's zero upside for him debating at all given how clueless he sounds most of the time these days and how he's walking punching bag. 

The upside is that he (and importantly, many of his advisors) think that Biden can barely string a sentence together and that the debates will be a knock out to clinch victory. 

30 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

My take is that conservative innate racial hatred and loathing of women disqualifies at least three of the candidates at the debate.

The other thing I am wondering more and more about is this:

'Will Trump participate in *ANY* debates?'

Yes, Trump is loud and bellicose, but he seems even more unfocused than before, continually going off on tangents and rants. Then there is the way he walked out of at least two interviews not that long ago because he couldn't handle even softball questions. True, this incoherence and hostility wouldn't phase most Trump voters - but he can't afford to lose any.

Not in the primary, unless it someone does become 1-on-1 and is losing.

But I think he'll absolutely debate Biden in the general. He, along with most Republicans, have bought their own bullshit that Biden is totally senile and he thinks he'd destroy him in a debate. Despite that also being what he/they thought in 2020 and proven wrong.

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I don't think Scott has much of a chance. Maybe I'm too biased because I've been saying this for years, but Haley is the biggest threat if she can clear out the field and make it a head to head challenge. She was the most dynamic person on the stage last night. 

That said, Idk how anyone could vote for any of these clowns. Murika is the land of stupidity though so nothing should shock us at this point. 

Scott is enough of an empty vessel that lots of different GOPers can project whatever they want on him; it's why he has the highest favorables of any of them (including Trump) among primary voters. But so far, he hasn't translated that into a ton of support; partially because one of the bigger natural support groups for him, evangelicals, are being split with Pence (and Trump of course).

I think Haley would be their strongest general election candidate, but I don't think she'd do great even 1-on-1 with Trump. Being both a woman and POC I think is too big a hurdle for those voters.

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not if there are still this many contenders. If it got down to one or two things could get interesting, but as of now this is going to be 2016 2.0.

Even two is probably too much. But in a one-on-one race, I could see a couple of the candidates being able to beat Trump; Tim Scott still being the strongest of them I think. But it won't be a one-on-one race until far too late. Too many of them are running for reasons other than trying to actually win, and so have no incentive to drop out.

17 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

If it was inexplicably dumb of Prigozhin, do you suppose he faked his death? Was it confirmed that he was on the plane?

He does have a second plane that was in the air at the same time. I suppose it is possible that he was on that plane. But it seems pretty likely he's dead.

What an unbelievably stupid man. He inexplicably folded during his one shot at victory and then seemed to think he'd actually be safe to just roam Russia?!

After looking at a few more trailers, I'm thinking maybe Armored Core VI actually isn't a game for me. That kind of impersonal (I haven't seen a single human character model or artwork) mission-structure game gets boring for me way too quickly; like the Ace Combat games.

But I do want something new to play while waiting for Starfield and patches for BG3. Maybe this would be a good time to get Shadow Gambit actually, or one of the other small games I mentioned before.