Techwright

There ought to be a badge for that.

I've both polar lights and Banished Pantheon. I'm not a numbers guy, but I get the impression polar lights aren't quite as sturdy, however, it is ridiculously easier to see around them, especially in crowded spaces. Just depends on what you need at the time, I guess.

Grabbed Gedonia in a July 4 Steam sale and have been playing it this week. It really does feel like a "classic open world RPG" like it's Steam subtitle says. Nostalgia feeling for games I played 20 to 30 years back. It's considered Early Access, and it's definitely got its fair share of bugs, but I just make certain I do quick saves more often, just in case, and I'm good to go. I find them very forgivable, especially when I learned that nearly everything in the game was created by one man, and he's been doing a pretty good job of responding to players on social media in addition to building this virtual world. (Voice acting includes others, though it sounds like he recruited his neighbors instead of professions.) Those are the negatives. I found the game very enjoyable otherwise, and I'm marveling in how intricate this one-man project is. There's hidden things to find stuffed all over (and under!) the map. I've not seen anything truly original in the game, but it looks like he's put together all his favorite bits from other RPGs and it works. I was playing a puzzle dungeon tonight utilizing my NPC sidekicks and it definitely felt both challenging and old-school dungeon-y.

There enough variance there that I think we can let it go...this time. 🤣 Nicely done!

No statistic for it, but yes, I've been seeing it more often this year than in the past. Not sure why. Still, that's probably 1 out of ever 25 pug teams or so, and that includes pug teams where people are swapping out between missions, like the Tina McIntyre arc. Some of those go through enough changes to count for 4 pug teams. I agree on where tankers want opponents placed. I don't run my tanks often but when I do, I want group hugs for maximum slaughter arrests.

Should have asked Daisy Ridley instead.

You never know, those may have been cosplayers heading to Comi-gon just waiting in the hall until their buddy pulls the van around to the front from the garage. Remarkable costumes. How did they get those feet right?

If I may, adding this line is why there are sidetracks to this thread. I suggest we focus exclusively on what you desire: the removal of stuckage in hopes of at least somewhat better KB PR. 1. How common is this problem in your experience? Like some others mention, I do see it, but very rarely, and even more rarely is there a case where we have to either call for a GM or reboot the mission. YMMV, so let us know what statistics you've collected. 2. Assuming you have AOE damaging powers on the team, does it ever have a case where the wielders of such powers cannot deal with the issue? 3. Have you and your team ever pulled back far enough that the stuck character feels obligated to follow? I actually had that happen two nights ago running a DFB. We pulled back, and the character dislodged to come after us. But that is a tactic I've used more than a few times over the many years. As to playing KB, I do have characters with KB, including my main for years, a energy/energy blaster, though I personally choose to run them in teams with the KB-to-KD conversions. I make friends that way. I've only recently realized how to setup a second profile, and I'm building one for solo play where KB will have free reign. As to the use of KB in a group, which I did for quite a while before I learned of the converters, it is an unwritten rule-of-thumb that if you play KB in a group, you learn to play your character better, and line up the shots to aid control, rather than removing it. To that end I took hover and flight and zip around the battlefield. Single Target shots are aimed to throw the NPC into a near wall or obstacle, not just willy-nilly. AOE and cone are used at the edge of the fight and are aimed to knock opponents towards the melee fighters, rather than running up next to the tank and blasting away. I do admit however, that the one thing that's always baffled me is a tank gathering everyone up then using an AOE with KB. I'm not sure what benefit that brings to anyone.

I rather enjoy Numina TF. Sorry you do not. I see it as a timing challenge to see how fast we can clear the goals. I've never had a team with people sitting at the end waiting. It is easy to tell. I watch the team locations to make sure Terra Volta is covered, or that I'm not person #4 in Talos, for examples. It also means I know where everyone is. I've never had it happen, but I'd call out anyone that was parking in Eden, or even Founder's Falls. Bad TFs to me are those whose missions are highly repetitious (by this I mean the exact same cave layout and exact same goals) and feel like the creators took the lazy design route. I also consider bad design anything that take over 2 hours on average, which is why I so very rarely run Dr. Q TF. To be fair, though, these were created back when it was considered standard to turn your home life over each night to a raid party for 5 hours.

Hmm... the old "change the timeline up routine" was done with mixed results by New Line (and probably Peter Jackson) by moving Azog 400 or so years down the timeline in order to put a specific face in charge of the orcs (this despite a goblin king, but then New Line's version makes something of a distinction between orcs and goblins when Tolkien implied they were two words for the same creatures.) Frankly, I would have preferred the long timeline telling of the story. If anything it would have given the viewers an elf's view of time and events: watching their human allies grow old and fade so swiftly compared to their own lives. As to speculation, you make a good point, and you might just have named what really is happening. Celeborn can sound similar to Celebrimbor, and since, lorewise, these two do exist at the same time, it might be that someone jumped to conclusions and thought Celebrimbor's death is a reference to Galadriel's husband.

I'd not heard of this series. I did a quick read up and it sounds like "Goonies In Space"? Hmm...not seeing it as a big interesting point in Star Wars. I'll tell you what would have interested me: if "Skeleton Crew" had been a series about Hondo Onaka and his merry band of pirates trying to survive extinction during the early Empire years. Then again, we don't know what character Jude Law is playing. He might very well be playing an old Hondo who has lost his crew and falls in as something of a guide (or perhaps whimsical Fagan) to a small band of lost kids.

I was previously unaware of that thread, and my apologies if this re-enflames certain feelings on the topic. I certainly don't want contention at that level. That Christopher Tolkien hated the movies, I was well-aware. (I found his anger a bit comical. After all, how could a proper version of the books be done in 9 hours only? Add to that, the first movie alone was responsible for generating 20 million plus of new trilogy book sales. That's gratitude for ya.) Personally, I found the changes in the LotR trilogy felt more of necessity to squeeze an 18 hour movie-thon into a 9 hour movie-thon. Some of the material thematically remained the same (such as the hobbits getting attacked by a living tree, not in the Old Forest as in the book which would have necessitated Tom Bombadil's intervention, but in Fangorn Forest with Treebeard as the stand-in for Tom.) The problem I had with The Hobbit trilogy was that material was being created whole-cloth for the purpose of stretching out a perfect story (and canon appendices) to fill 3 movies, when 2 would have sufficed. Literally the opposite of the LotR trilogy. The canon parts of The Hobbit trilogy were amazing. The filler parts were notably inferior, and not appreciated (IMHO). What I've been hearing, from admittedly my one source, sounds like they're going a step beyond The Hobbit trilogy. More like 1 part canon and 3 parts "whatever I think is cool regardless of how it breaks canon".

Outer Wilds (not to be confused with The Outer Worlds) is on sale on Steam, and I'm considering acquiring it. If you've played it before, can you spoiler-free comment on it, and especially what you feel its replay-ability might be (or not be)?

Amazon's Middle Earth series: I'm hearing from one of my geeky coworkers that this Second Age series has revealed it made substantial changes to the lore of Tolkien. For example, Galadriel's husband Celeborn is dead, and Galadriel herself is a warrior rather than one of the most powerful wielders of magic. Celeborn is a strong secondary character in the Third Age events of Lord of the Rings, and Galadriel learned her arts from the Valar even before the First Age. The list of changed mentioned to me was quite long, and for a Tolkien fan, more than a little disheartening. It makes the New Line changes to The Hobbit look good quite frankly. I had been under the impression that the series would hold to all lore and only craft new bits where there was no lore. My coworker says they'd hired a Tolkien expert to guide them, but when he did his job and kept saying "no, not that way", they fired him and replaced him with someone who'd say "yes". All this comes to me from one source, though, so I realize it could be incorrect. I'm interested to hear if others have learned of these changes, and if so, are they really this drastic? What was told to me sounds like a rip-off of Tolkien rather than a lore-respecting homage.

I better never see that placed down on a Scrabble board. (Google wondered if possibly the search was for "fork emulators".) 🤣

I ran into Nuclear Solution on Excelsior, a creation of global handle Blaquefire, and liked it so much I suggested Blaquefire post it to this thread. They're not a forumite, but asked if I'd take a screenshot and post it on their behalf. I was in a rush as my DFB was about to start, so my screenshot is not the best, unfortunately. It doesn't capture the motion of the radiation energy, for example, but I hope you get the picture anyway. Look for them in the game. It's an impressive look that had me backing up to observe, and that doesn't happen often.

I can see that. If I remember correctly from my armchair readings, if one has a line of dialog, they have to be registered with the actors' guild or some such, which involves a fee. I don't remember where the tale came from, but I recall a movie where some famous person had a cameo appearance, originally not saying anything, and when it was decided they should say a line or two, the director paid the fee to register them so all would be on the up-and-up.

Okay, that's some weird writing. Treaties are made with countries, not cities. But I thank you for bringing the text to light. It sounds like words now hold the good back, no matter how many sovereignty-violating incursions happen.

Yes, sadly the auction house likely won't be an option, but I like the P2W idea. I would add to your list to say I'd like a vendor for team and dual inspirations, like Luna in Ouroboros.

An excellent point. Probably not insurmountable, I'm guessing, but it likely would be the major part of the restructuring process.

I was just having a chat with a former player from early in the original game and we were discussing the auction system in the game, and later the storage in bases. He made an interesting comment. As I understand things, and please correct me if I'm wrong, within the auction system, certain materials of a same class are pooled together and the bidding covers everything in a given pool. So if I submit 10 of item A into the AH asking 1000 INF, the AH doesn't see item A, it negates the identity of the item and only sees 10 units in the pool. You might come along and bid 1000 INF for item B, but because they are the same pool the AH interprets the exiting 10 items as what you desired, and you are awarded 10 of item B. Do I have that correct? All that to get to the friend's comment: Could that pool system be applied to the storage racks for materials in supergroup bases? Rather than wasting space with 10 of this and 5 of that, if they are of the same pool as in the AH, they are stored as pool items and then withdrawn as what we want. The value remains the same. I wouldn't pull out a yellow if I put a white in and so forth. Note that I'm refering to materials, not finished product like IOs.

Finally got the chance to see it. It's got the Sam Raimi stamp all over it, right down to you-know-who in a goofy fun cameo. (Well, at least he wasn't selling chainsaws.) Thoughts with notable spoilers:

Sounds a bit like the old Tabula Rasa crafting system which let you take a grey vendor trash item and color by color increase its rarity turning it into an orange, eventually and potentially, but with ever increasing chance of catastrophic failure for each level and with greater cost in resources. Oh, and you could also craft bonuses features onto it. I've not played BDO, but I actually enjoyed the TR system, though I rarely tried for purple or orange.