Bjorn

FWIW, both adaptability and attunement raise Agility, which governs the number of I-frames you get while rolling. There are several breakpoints where you get an extra frame. The most important one is 105. Beyond 105, it takes a huge investment to get anymore I-frames. You can go with less, and there are some guides explaining where each breakpoint is so you're not wasting points with your build. Mages and clerics need less in adaptability, since they are picking up some free agility points from attunement. But attunement gives overall a lot less agility than adaptability.

I had run across depressurizer once and thought about trying it. So it makes it easier to get the job done? I would kill to be able to quickly sort what I own by co-op, since it's one of the most common searches I do.

I tried that for awhile, but I have abysmal internet speeds and big games can take a day or more to download and it kills the ability to do shit else on the Internet (and I never leave my computers running overnight). So I don't keep nearly as many things installed as I would like to.

Not exactly related to deals, but does anyone try to actually organize their Steam library with custom categories? I've made a couple of aborted attempts at it in the past, but I'm terrible at organization and categorization, so I've always given up. This time, instead of trying to organize everything, I'm just making "high priority" categories of games I want to play, games my wife wants to play and co-op games, so that there's always a dozen or so games in each category, and I don't have to sift/scroll through hundreds of games to remember what I might want to play.

Missed an article I meant to link, this critique of GB and others and how they go about considering GOTY contenders. It's a good summary of why having women on staff matters, but also calls out the additional shitty challenges that come with being a female staff writer (callouts to the kind of abuse that Danielle and Carolyn Petit have to suffer through just to do their job). I'm not saying that this happened at GB, but I can imagine a group of men talking about hiring a woman at a gaming outlet, and being uncomfortable with the kind of comments you'll get and moderation you might have to do at times simply because you hired a woman. Not that that alone would stop someone from making the hire, but it being another mental blow in favor of just hiring another dude like you.

Fuck, went link surfing through some stuff through that Critical Distance piece Reyturner linked. Porpentine is dropping her RPS column. Her goodbye is understandable, but infuriating. Samantha Allen's piece anticipating white male hires at BG is infuriating: Then there's Maddy Myers, which I can't even quote anything from, because it's all so personal and so interconnected. Just read it.

Patrick Klepak's mea culpa about their E3 coverage seems relevant. Some people at GB are obviously aware that they have an issue, and this was an opportunity to address that, a failed opportunity. I think they deserve some heat for that. When one of your people just two weeks ago writes a big essay about doing a shitty job about including women in your content, and then you have an opportunity to diversify your staff, you fucked up.

I wasn't really interested until I saw that box:

Are you sticking strictly solo, or dipping into co-op and PvP? I thought it was superior online play and mechanically in general, while being poorer in a few other areas.

Four of these people are never coming home alive:

One of the people I attempted to engage in conversation on FB tonight about this replied to me: Another person babbled on about limiting big government, and dodged a series of direct questions. Actually, he sounds like some liberal minded mid-westerners I know. I'm not going to say they are common, but there's an interesting breed developing in my age group and younger. Love their guns, super socially liberal, but also basically hate the government. Seems to be an odd combination of holding onto certain parts of the conservative ideas they heard about in childhood along with the liberal ideals they adopted in college.

Finished Capsule tonight, which was fantastic. I gushed about it over in the Episode 146 thread a couple of times, but I'm double posting here just to pimp it out some more, as it's worthy of some love and not everyone reads the episode threads. If you didn't listen to 146, it's a short survival game where the interface is a radar screen. You are in a capsule, in an unknown location, and must survive. Nothing else is explained, and you have to figure out all the rest of the mechanics and secrets yourself. It maybe takes a couple of hours with some failures mixed in (which will happen late in the game).

Yah! I finished Capsule after getting stuck on the next to last mission a bunch of times in a row. Somebody earlier mentioned that they felt the end took a lot of luck to get through. I believed the same thing, until a lucky streak on one run actually managed to teach me several things about the game that I had completely missed until then. Turns out there are several tricks that make those final two long stretches a lot more manageable. General tips: Go slow and methodical, ping everything, experiment. More specific tips:

I'm trying something new for me. I'm simply asking very neutral (I hope) questions asking them to explain their stance to me. This shouldn't feel so alien, as it's certainly something I've done in person before, but never tried the tact on Facebook. None of these "friends" are people I'm particularly close to, mostly old high school friends. I have actually gotten into some knockdown, dragout political fights on Facebook with some of my family, but that's different. We'll say the same things to each other in person (my Dad and I are not allowed to talk politics unless the rest of the family has an escape outlet, so no serious discussions in cars or restaurants). Facebook just lets us make a whole bunch of people uncomfortable all at once, instead of just the people in the same room with us. One of my aunts recently told me how much she enjoys fighting with me on Facebook, because no one in her regular life ever challengers her like that. Which was a weird compliment to get.

So I have some friends who are celebrating the SCOTUS decision about this on my Facebook feed. Normally I never defriend anyone on Facebook, but this one is bugging me. How do you all handle stuff like this on Facebook? Do you defriend, filter, challenge people?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our Citizen Kane Forrest Gump of gaming: Run Forrest, Run

Oh yeah, I absolutely think they are hypocrites about this, but I would have rather have seen the media coverage nail that, rather than the somewhat ambiguous way that a lot of outlets have covered it. I wasn't criticizing you or anything, I was just further explaining why I felt it would generate a better discussion here and why it was more of a feminist issue. Sorry for any confusion! Ginsberg's dissent is pretty incredible in nailing her fellow justices on those questions. Here's a fascinating case from around '90 about whether or not religious belief would allow for the illegal use of peyote by worshippers of Native American religions. Justice Scalia's rational in it seems completely in opposition to his voting in favor of Hobby Lobby. Bold emphasis added by me. That was written 24 years ago, but you could imagine how it easily could have been part of this decision if it had gone the other way. Justices can of course change their opinions over time, but it's a staggering reversal of opinion nonetheless. The Hobby Lobby case does not appear to meet the criteria that Scalia outlined for this kind of case in an earlier ruling.

That's terrifying, it's like he's actually an alien. Well done!

Yeah, this is the opposite of narrow, as it establishes legal precedence that corporations are allowed to have religious views and qualify for religious exemptions from laws. Which is insane. Corporations are people. Corporations have first amendment speech rights. And now corporations have religious rights. I fully disagree with the ruling and with HL's logic, but I also think the media has done a really shitty job of covering this case. HL never opposed contraception in general. They opposed 4 of the 20 mandated options under the ACA because those four are too close to being an abortion (which is also bullshit, as abortion is a constitutionally protected choice, but whatever). Ultimately this is yet another move in this Court's erosion of abortion rights, along with being an expansion of corporate rights. This court has steadily moved towards undermining Roe v. Wade and other reproductive rights laws, without directly challenging the RvW yet. I doubt they even directly ever challenge RvW, as the massive shit storm re-addressing abortion would cause would be huge. But, what they can do is chip away at rights one little case at a time, while affirming conservative states moves towards restricting abortion as much as possible. I don't disagree with you, I just figured it would get a better, deeper discussion here than in the random thought thread. It is, sadly though, a truth that women are far more likely to deal with employer and medical bullshit regarding their gender and healthcare than a man ever will.

Final purchase made, went ahead and grabbed Metro:LL since I had a couple of bucks in cards left over from this weekends purchases. So that put me at 10 games for $49.75 after accounting for card sales. And I've still got a couple of games I need to install to get their cards, so I'll have a buck or so in my Steam wallet once I get around to that. Spent a bit more than I originally intended, but unlike previous sales, I pretty much figure all of these are games I am going to play and none are just "Oh, it's cheap and maybe I'll get around to it someday" purchases.

Jon, you might copy that over into the Feminist thread. It's an interesting topic, and while health care and birth control matter for everyone, this is predominantly a fight that feminists end up taking on.

I played through one scenario of One Way Heroics, and I think that's all I need to play. It's a roguelike, procedurally generated classic JRPG. I had hoped it would deliver an experience similar to Half-Minute Hero, which condensed a bunch of the good stuff about JRPGs into bite sized scenarios. One paper, OWH ought to do that as well, but in practice, it just wasn't very fun or engaging.

Mass Effect is, in many ways, built on maintaining certain illusions, mostly all built on the idea that your actions and choices matter (by making cut-scenes somewhat interactive, by giving you a billion choices, etc). If those illusions hold up for you, it's an incredible experience. If the illusion breaks, you kind of see it for what it is. It's like spotting the secret behind a magic trick.

Ha, yes, fixed your spoiler.

Source, which has an extra creepy picture of a man stalking a shampoo model.