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{kicks rock dejectedly} Still no protean avatars.
Edit: Nekkid milkshake brings all the inevitables to the yard
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I found one. It's from long ago, and I had thought cut was a demon, but nope.
I'd keep looking though, the order is a little skewed so Hell's Rebels and Hell's Vengeance aren't until the 8th page.
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Aranna's Stellaris gameplay. She named her civilization after Mass Effect....?The Systems Alliance had a bit of an energy crisis during expansion and stalled the humans till we could upgrade our reactors. We have uncovered no fewer than THREE Prothean data caches and encounter some space creatures as we begin exploring what lay beyond the Mass Relay...
President Shepard was excited to be able to travel such vast distances in such a short time and commissioned a second research ship. Also plans began in earnest to start the first human colony in Sirius! Who were these Prothean's and why leave the relays here for us to find? A mystery that MUST be solved!
Then we meet the enigmatic Rauthim a race of Religious Fanatic Insectoids. They have Mass Relays but haven't learned to use them, Instead they use a strange Warp Drive technology. As the Systems Alliance works hard to establish common ground with our new neighbors tragedy strikes. Raiders funded by Cerberus began attacking the Relay point near our new colony. WHY?! These human supremacists are well funded and have advanced ship armor, they make short work of the Allianace corvettes and wipe out a civilian construction fleet and a mining station before newer Alliance corvettes armed with coil guns and deflectors can corner them and chase them back to a secret Cerberus facility in Zehir. As I type this the siege of Zehir is begun. What secrets lay in the Cerberus computers? Can Cerberus repel the Alliance? We can only wait and see.
Hah! Cool. I thought she was just mentally re-fluffing her game-stuff on a Civ 5 game after Mass Effect things, as I pretty much had everything from her descriptions pegged as something else (that already has a name) from that game until you mentioned Stellaris. That's great!
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Pea Bear found the first cantaloupe of the year! So good!!
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So, we played L5R last Saturday.
We only had one combat, so I'm working off only a little bit of information but...it's freaking easy. Like "Savage Worlds" levels of easy. There's...almost no math!
It's a roll-and-keep system. Say you have 3 agility and 2 swords, you roll 5 (3+2) and keep the 3 highest dice (attributes are kept, skills are not). That's it! The only way your stats get better is you roll more dice or, if you REALLY boost stats, you keep more dice. It's all d10s, and they explode, and you just add up whatever result you get from the "kept" dice.
Character generation takes a little bit, and there's SO MUCH lore to read through if you have the time, but....good stuff! Especially for people into Asian settings.
Also, instead of alignments, you have three civil stats:
Honor (um, honor), Glory (fame), and Status (your "rank" in the beauraocracy - example, Emperor is 10, Clan Champion is about 8, Daimyo is like 6, basic samurai is 1, peasant is 0, gravedigger is like -5).
BUT - it's not an internal or absolute thing...it's based on how the society interprets you.
For example: If you kill a ton of bandits and nobody knows you did it, you don't get any Glory. If your group kills the bandits and you hog all the spotlight and say it was all your leadership, and nobody disagrees, you get a lot of Glory, and your party gets only a little. If everyone sees you dismount your horse to let a woman ride, you get some Honor points. Conversely, if you burn an orphanage down and nobody knows, your Honor doesn't go down at all.
I had a very good time and eagerly await this Saturday. My dual-tanto wielding Scorpion clan ninja talked a LOT of s~#~ to a master duelist samurai who could EASILY cut me in half in a dual, and I kind of want him to challenge me because...well I got this idea to fill a katana sheath with crushed glass and put a false handle on it...then when he challenges me, just pop the false top, throw the glass powder in his face to blind him, stab him with poisoned daggers, and laugh, laugh, laugh.
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New avatars! Green ones even!
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So many new avatars!!
More or less just in time for your birthday, too!
They know you so well, Captain :)
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As we pick up the story of the Systems Alliance we crushed the Cerberus cell and acquired point defense guns from their computers. Go Alliance!
However we were driven by an arms race with the Rauthim to create a fleet of light warships. If this was to end in a first contact war we didn't want to be on the losing side! As a side benefit our relay links south were cut off by aggressive space monsters and we needed to show them Humans need that space lane clear! Why can't they be friendly like the Cytaline Entity or those space Ameobas? And surprise! The Rauthim have grown to like us (not see us as a threat) and offered some trade. As relations improve our fleet punches through the space monsters and clears the way south.
South was a surprise to... the um... (who programmed this game anyway?!)Empire to the south turned out to us Mass Relays like us... they liked us WAY too much I think as well. The slimy beings to the south were some manner of fanatical "lover of all aliens". We wished Captain Jennifer Lopez and Captain Mirina Sirtis the best of luck as we sent them into the slime empire to explore the Relays.
Expansion became the priority and we managed to snag a habitable world of the border of Slime Empire with a quickly deployed colony ship packed with the only people in the empire willing to live up close and personal to the Slimeoids; Our VI Robots.
That is when we hit our next crisis... we ran out of space to expand and ran out of the ability to manage more worlds. So we began experimenting with Sector Government in the Terminus Systems. Will the Systems Alliance get the hang of sector government in time to continue expanding? Or are we too late to the prize and doomed to a small size?
I'm in a bit of a jam.
I'd previously lost all of my progress on Last Story.
I want to play that game.
I don't want to have to rebuild my characters.
I don't want to play my game without having my character rebuilt.
It's not a simple matter of throwing a fit or tantrum or refusing to do something until I get my way - that's childish and dumb. No, what I'm going through is far more childish, dumb, and worse that that: I am finding it physically impossible to put the disc into the Wii because I have a mental-emotional block from doing so because I'd previously lost all my progress.
Nevermind that losing all my progress last time was an unlikely coincidence tied to the specific Wii that is dead and is, again, unlikely to happen to this one. That's what my rational mind knows.
My emotional mind, however, doesn't want to go through that again.
See, I'd worked hard on my characters. I'd gone through the side-quests. Even though it was sometimes boring, I'd gone through the grinding. Even when there was a decreasing return in investment (a mechanic specifically in place to disincentive grinding - something I didn't appreciate, incidentally, even as I understood and respected its reason for being there) I ground at a location until I generally couldn't gain anything from it anymore (or close enough to that for my purposes). I'd hung out at that back ally aiming the Wiimote at those little wind thingies and increasing my crossbow deadliness for hours.
But now: I have two children that can walk, one of which can talk and play the Wii himself, and vies for time on it; either way both vie for attention and seek time on the device or time from me.
Simply put: I can't grind.
If I can't grind... I can't enjoy the game - not like I used to. It's only been a couple of years, but that's a huge blow to my morale. A ridiculous one, sure. But I'm just unable to do it. I can't make myself.
That... sucks. I really enjoyed that game. Tropey as heck, sure. And, yes, sometimes switching the men's and women's clothing around looked better and more sensible (and sometimes... not-so-much). But it was fun.
I really want to play it.
I just don't know if I'll be able to again.
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I would love to inspire you to grind... but I never could stand grinding even when I had the time. It was just SO boring... That's why I still suck at PvP in my MMO even though I have been there for years. I am just unwilling to grind for long.
You could just dust it off and see how far you get without grinding?
I would love to inspire you to grind... but I never could stand grinding even when I had the time. It was just SO boring... That's why I still suck at PvP in my MMO even though I have been there for years. I am just unwilling to grind for long.
You could just dust it off and see how far you get without grinding?
The problem is: I can't. So far I've managed about a (grand total of a) half-hour of staring at me Wii disc-in-hand, ready to put it in, but a complete inability to make myself do so instead. On the other hand, I've cleaned up a bit of the living room and put several toys away, changed a diaper, and spent time on the forums - pretty mucn anything to avoid putting the daggum game into the daggum Wii. >:I
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I don't grind, my patience with video games are already razor thin, so any amount of having to get X amount of power to get past whatever is guaranteed to completely sap my enthusiasm.
But then again, I can probably count the video games I've completed in my lifetime on both hands.
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I've been there, Tacticslion, play when you're ready.
I've been there, Tacticslion, play when you're ready.
Frankly, I think it sounds like nearly the dumbest version of gamer PTSD possible.
"A highly contrived and unlikely scenario occurred once! In the extremely unlikely case it happens a second time, I just can't ever do it again... nope... not gettin' back in that saddle."
(Granted, I don't have the time to spend doing one of my favorite activities - grinding - which milky contributes. I like the feeling of being overpowered, and the ability to breeze through story parts; it's one of the reasons I tend to overlap so early on in games I play, I think, though, Pavlov doing its thing means that it's become its own kind of reward - and now, it seems, some sort of dreaded obligation, which sucks. Hm.)
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So now I have a song about "Pavlov's Pup" in my head, but it's been so long that's all I remember about it, is they mention "Pavlov's Pup"
Damn.
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Speaking of completionism:
I completed all of Nox! I am now done with Warrior, Conjurer, and Wizard routes; in that order! It's weird: in some ways, the wizard route is the "best" ending... but the conjurer route (and ending) is clearly given the most attention (and the route is the best and most satisfying, with the ending being the most ambiguous). Nox was an extremely ambitious and incredibly clever game. Brilliant, difficult, linear and explorative at the same time - very carefully and cleverly designed. Definitely from an older design philosophy and older hardware limitations, but they made those limitations work hard.
Also: we finished Wind Waker!
What a daggum awesome game! Again! It's funny; I just kind of forgot how good it really was. The story, the gameplay, the experience: so good! And as a direct result of all of it, my Eldest has decided he desperately needs both Taekwondo and violin in his life. And so it is. And so it is.
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I'm not sure it's a video game thing...
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Probably something a lot of kids do. I trained in martial arts and a musical instrument too. For me a variety of forms including Tae Kwon Do and the Cornet instead of the violin, because my mom said "violin is too complicated dear, stick with something simple." Parents can really be dumb sometimes.
To be clear, it's personal combat and music from Wind Waker: if there was a "Sword and Board" school (with an emphasis on sailing) he'd have likely chosen that one in a heartbeat. The violin, however, an explicitly the violin in an orchestral setting is a specific thing in the Wind Waker game (admittedly, it's an extreeeeemely small "orechestra: from what Incan tell, it consists of a harp an a violin and a maestro), and his cousins (my nieces) play the harp already, and he's been enjoying that (and his cousin/called "uncle" for age reasons) taught him the piano/keyboard (it enraptured him) but the idea of playing a violin "just like in the Wind Waker game" (his words) simply enthralled his being.
That said, the massive inflatable Taekwondo statue guy was so impressive he stood still for a full two minutes staring at it, enraptured. More importantly, two classes in, and he has blossomed. He stands still for full minutes at s time, almost listening - new records! He actually work sat following directions for multiple cycles before spiraling into his own world instead of, like, twice! It's pretty amazing, really. He really responds to the masters as if they are the wise old master Orca (even though they look absolutely nothing like that guy or act nothing like him): I think the Boeing thing realm had that big an impact on him from the game to the Taekwondo that it reinforces that idea of respect for his master. It's neat.
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Video games shouldn't require grinding to be good. One reason Chrono Trigger was so amazing was as long as you didn't run away from minions, you could win any boss fight without grinding.
Grinding is artificial hour investment inflation companies use so they can make claims that it will keep you entertained for X hours. I hate that crap.
Reason #1 I absolutely disdain MMOs above all other reasons (including lack of character story, ultimate lack of contribution to the world plot, paying monthly for a game I already bought, and toxic players) is they're 99% grinding in the form of camping, instances and other meaningless repetition.
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Probably something a lot of kids do. I trained in martial arts and a musical instrument too. For me a variety of forms including Tae Kwon Do and the Cornet instead of the violin, because my mom said "violin is too complicated dear, stick with something simple." Parents can really be dumb sometimes.
What we told Pea Bear is, if you can play the Violin, you can play anything.
And it's true, she's already picked up the basics of Guitar and Piano. :-)
Video games shouldn't require grinding to be good. One reason Chrono Trigger was so amazing was as long as you didn't run away from minions, you could win any boss fight without grinding.
Grinding is artificial hour investment inflation companies use so they can make claims that it will keep you entertained for X hours. I hate that crap.
Reason #1 I absolutely disdain MMOs above all other reasons (including lack of character story, ultimate lack of contribution to the world plot, paying monthly for a game I already bought, and toxic players) is they're 99% grinding in the form of camping, instances and other meaningless repetition.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Last Story, in fact, permits grinding, but does so with the expectation of quest completion and strictly limits it: each time you use a place to "summon a battle" (something you do voluntarily) you get less XP and other rewards than the last time: each time is less worth it than the last. It's normally a processes I enjoy.
It's also why I tend to turtle in strategy games: it's a kind of grinding in which I build up as many resources as I can before plowing through the opposition (if that's a thing that I'm planning on doing) or I become effectively in-assailable (if that's the goal - either literally or just with a cost so high as to make it impractical). This is one of those cases that I just... can't, it seems. Oh well. :/
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Poor turtles you need both luck and allies to win as a turtle.
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Ye newe sworde is here!
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Argh, be they cutlasses matey
Poor turtles you need both luck and allies to win as a turtle.
Well - allies, at least.
Ninjitsu helps, though. :D
EDIT: depends on the game, though!
Admission: The Katya-Barry Cyborg battle was actually pretty cool until right before the end.
That's the thing I don't like about Archer - I'm invested into the character stories, but I don't like how they're resolved. I want them to be handled differently. Very clever and insightful reference at the end (to The Graduate's* ending scene), though.
*
Here's the thing: the people in Archer have, several times, proven willing to change and become better people several times in certain circumstances. In those cases, other things conspire against them to prevent that from occurring. Sterling would have succeeded, if it weren't for Barry - of course, Barry had blamed him for his state... yet, Barry's personal issues with Sterling had only come up because of how he'd treated Sterling's people in the first place: effectively, it was Barry's group's fault, with blame misplaced onto Archer, that brought the whole negative thing about.
Yes, Archer was terrible to Barry and did terrible things - I am not excusing his behavior... but Barry is blaming the wrong thing. Barry is blaming Archer exclusively, compared to his fiance, his boss, his former company, and so on: he's simply projecting.
And this is the problem: every person is not just flawed: they're obsessively so. Their obsessive flaw creates an issue, but not for themselves... for someone else, and hurts another person. And I don't like that. But I do like how they like how they help people - and that's just enough to keep me watching.
EDIT: to set aside an asterisk for clarity
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Don't worry, there's more with Katya and Barry. :-)
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Cause that's how you get ants! Barry! You a*@$+#&!
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I'm proud of astronaut Archer. Well, for a minute or two. Similarly, his mother.
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On to season four then, a great season!
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Who's your favorite person on Archer so far.
Who's your favorite person on Archer so far.
Originally? It was Cyrril, right up until his "addiction"-thing.
Katya before the return of Barry (though Indonsuspect something fishy going on with that).
Now?
Uh... um... er... uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh... Lana? I guess? Maybe?
It... it isn't really clear. I don't particularly "like" most of them. I kind of follow them due to some sort of compulsive loyalty - kind like Jack from Fables. I followed that thing to the end because of loyalty, but... it wasn't always comfortable. (I greatly preferred his son. That dude was awesome.)
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KRIEGER!
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Definitely Krieger, maybe in a tie with Cheryl and Pam, with Rudy and Charles my favorite side characters.
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I like Milton.
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Happy my wife's birthday to you all!
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I have arrived at the convention. Indeed, a happy tacticslioness day to all.
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We are safely returned from the Sequoias, having done far less than we could have, but much father-son bonding and hilarity.
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I have arrived at the convention. Indeed, a happy tacticslioness day to all.
Is anyone cosplaying Red Sonja?
EDIT: At the convention. Not at Mrs Tacticslion's birthday celebrations.
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Happy my wife's birthday to you all!
Happy birthday to Lady Firedove!
I have arrived at the convention. Indeed, a happy tacticslioness day to all.Is anyone cosplaying Red Sonja?
EDIT: At the convention. Not at Mrs Tacticslion's birthday celebrations.
You know, I'm not even sure if my wife knows who she is?
I know my wife is at least aware of Conan and his adventures, but was never exactly a fan (she isn't into the overly machismo/manly/gore/violence/murder/death type stuff*... I wonder why...). She might be aware - we might have mentioned her before as a cheesy eighties movie that I've seen but she hasn't.
(Aside: One of the interesting differences is that, though I grew up mostly in Lithuania, when I was in the United States, I had cable: she never did. She lived in Miami; I never lived in a U.S. city larger than my birth town of Louisville... and we moved from there when I was five. Thus I had access to "normal" things she never did... and she had access to "normal" things I never did. We both had exceedingly different multicultural experiences that we were steeped in throughout much of our lives. Anyway, the point of all of this is that I had no idea who the Spice Girls were until she made a casual reference and, though she may have loved TMNT and Star Wars before I ever met her, she was only vaguely aware of Consn the Barbarian at best and it's dubious whether or not she knows of the existence of Red Sonia now; but maybe, since we might have laughed about it that one time).
*
And more to the real point: she thanks you all for the birthday wishes!! She'd do so herself, but she has to rush out the door to get to work on time (also get our eldest to school and get fuel). Thank you!
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Damn, I just favorite'd it, I forgot to wish happy birthday, now I feel like an a%#$~!&.
Happy birthday to lady Firedove!
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Happy birthday Lady Firedove.
We know what you guys meant! You're good~! :D
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Happy Birthday Lady Firedove!
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FIRST SALE OF THE CON! TERRIFICON IS OFFICIALLY UNDER WAY!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LADY FIREDOVE!
ACROSS THE ROOM (mere feet away) FROM JASON MEWES AND RENE ABUJENOUS (sp)!!!
MAY WHEDON KNOW ONLY FEAR!