JonCole

Does anyone have a really hard time affording upgrades in terms of components (not glimmer)? I feel like I'm always out of weapon parts. Yesterday I farmed a story mission checkpoint for a good hour or so just to get them, since I was getting hardly any weapon drops organically.

Yeah, it works. But standing water on the other hand just doesn't work in Florida, so I have to slum it and buy like three bunches of green onions every time I go to the store.

I super like Matt Lees -

I got the forest green one as a drop and I actually like it. I imagine shaders will be less compelling if I have a full armor set.

PSN has a pretty good weekly sale going on Capcom and Square Enix stuff - http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/09/16/playstation-store-update-360/

I sometimes leave Crucible matches that I'm losing, but I've only done so when the matchmaking doesn't fully populate a team. I started a match yesterday with four people on my time and six on the other in Control. There's basically no way to win that and when I actually looked at the roster after losing all three points at once I quit. I finally hit level 21 on Rares, I'm just saving up for faction legendaries. I already have 30-something Crucible marks and I'm rank 1 in Dead Orbit, by the time I hit rank 2 I should be able to afford at least two pieces of armor that will probably increase my level significantly.

I kinda made this topic and put it in quotes because I thought that the actual argument as it currently stands about ethics and journalistic integrity is bunk. I basically stopped reading the thread with regularity at some point because some people seemed to take the threads existence as license that GG has any point whatsoever.

Re: ANTVGM64 I was starting to write a response but Denial and Merus kinda hit most of my major points. I agree with Denial in that it's a smokescreen to think that these games are "created" by one or two individuals. There are so many actors that influence the story that's being told whether it's the animators who portray how a character moves and acts visually or the publisher who bankrolls the thing and would not surrender 100% of the creative control because nobody with money does that. As Merus said, this isn't about your grandma glaring at you. I feel like a lot of the pushback on feminist issues has been rooted in this thought that feminists are trying to punish misogynists with humiliation and guilt. The thing is, almost every person has been raised in a culture of patriarchy. Nobody is glaring at anybody because every person "deserves a glare", so to speak. We've all consumed things that have some element of sexism rooted from patriarchy and will continue to do so probably forever. We should all be a little bit guilty and possibly a little more choosy in our buying decisions. I'm personally a little more likely to buy the next Saints Row game than the next GTA, because if Volition is trying to change and 2K is staying largely the same because of "authorial vision" or something I'll probably want to support Volition more. Small things - who is holding up Lara Croft (2013) as a feminist icon? I seriously haven't seen that view represented by almost any feminists in gaming that I follow. Most people agree that while the character might be written in a strong way, the ways that she's treated mechanically (mess up a QTE -> brutal death) discount the impact of those writing decisions. I also think it's worth noting that the only female characters you held up as good ones were a drug addict, a hooker, and a lady with a bomb in her uterus. I know you were trying to prove a point, but the simple truth is that if the only notable female characters with any depth can be described in that fashion those games are not progressive. I don't think that "pick up a random NPC girl and take her to play a minigame" is a particularly compelling argument in favor of GTA. The primary featured female in Hideo Kojima's next MGS game is a woman wearing torn tights, a bikini top, and gloves who literally cannot talk and has jiggly boobs - I mean... c'mon.

First two clears of the raid - 10 hours and 12 hours 1.6k and 1.8k total deaths. GOD.

I have a sniper rifle with a low-range scope that I use for PvP when a Fusion Rifle isn't appropriate. But I'm usually using the Fusion Rifle. I feel like the shotgun is pretty bad in this game. Nearly useless in the PvE, slightly more useful in PvP but only really if you're not comfortable with the Fusion Rifle. Well, it's a bit of a challenge in PvP because auto rifles are so easy to just mash down and hip-fire whereas you need a little more finesse to use the pulse rifle. The key is aiming right below the chin so that multiple rounds hit the head in a single volley, then it's basically a headshot machine. It is also competent at a distance, which I really feel the auto rifle is not great at. Plus, I pretty much only use pulse rifles that have something in their description about being really small (kind of has a P90 SMG design) because most of the sights for those types of pulse rifles are short range. The pulse rifles with scopes are really bad.

I use this website/app for price history if I really have no context for pricing on a particular game - http://www.steamprices.com/uk/app/203770/crusader-kings-ii That said, if its really the only game you want I'd just say go for it. That's a pretty fair sale price, if not the lowest it's ever been.

Yeah, I even had trouble on one of the Moon strikes because the other two guys kept getting caught out and dying despite both being lv 20+. They just... weren't all that great and let themselves keep get targeted by the big thing without finding cover. I use a pulse rifle in PVE and alternate between a pulse rifle and auto rifle in PVP depending on what kind of stuff the alternate team is using.

I'll be surprised if there aren't updated reviews (from sites that do that) as more endgame content is explored. There's actually a surprising amount there, not to mention I've still been finding stuff in the 1-19 content that I didn't see in my regular playthrough.

The Ascendant Energy is also used for upgrades, I think for exotics or legendaries.

I think it'd actually make a far more interesting television series than movie, but yeah it definitely deserves something more adherent to the original work. I have to imagine that this movie has kinda made it so that it won't be adapted again any time soon, if ever. And that's the biggest disappointment of the whole thing, really.

Yeah... it's kind of a shame that the movie is even associated with the book, because their similarities are so minimal. My recollection of the book isn't so hot, but from all that I remember even the way that the zombies work isn't the same. Granted, I actually think the way the zombies work in the movie is good, I just think that there are two different philosophies going on entirely and it's odd that they're connected at all.

I just got finished watching World War Z... and I actually found it pretty good! I don't have a whole lot to say about it, I guess that the hype curve involved with production hell and deflated initial opinions left me in a good place to just enjoy it for what it was. It's kind of amazing that a coherent movie actually came out of switching writers several times and having Damon Lindelof's company finish it up.

My wife sent me this email -

A couple weeks ago I heard of the "none pizza left beef" meme and it now just sporadically pops in my head and I start uncontrollably laughing. Now is one of those times.

Yeah, from what I can tell you could sufficiently rank in one faction, then switch to another and another and eventually have access to all of the faction equipment. It'd just cost a lot of glimmer. I noticed the same thing with the PVP types and Faction logos but haven't seen any tangible connection between the factions and those modes. I wonder if you get a reputation bonus if you're part of a faction and play that particular faction's PVP mode. I'll run a brief experiment if I have time later.

"Picking" a faction is simply a matter of hitting level 20 and buying the class item from a particular faction vendor. When you equip the class item, it diverts all reputation that you'd get from doing Patrol missions, Vanguard bounties, and Crucible matches toward that Faction. From what I can tell, the only purpose of accruing reputation for that faction is to buy the particular items offered by that Faction's vendor at a certain rank. All of the items that can be found in the environment like Spinmetal, Helium things, that shiny spirit stuff from Venus, etc can be traded for Vanguard faction at the Vanguard Quartermaster in the Tower. Additionally, I believe the items are used to upgrade level 20 legendary/exotic weapons and armor.

Strange coins are a random drop in Strikes and Crucible matches. They're the Darkness equivalent of the Mote of Light, which can be traded to the Speaker. I don't think they drop in any other contexts than those, but I could be mistaken. I have three coins that I got through doing Crucible.

One common farming strategy I've been reading about is running a high level story mission up until you have to fight a major or ultra enemy unit (with a yellow HP bar), killing it, and then killing yourself so that you respawn and fight it again. Also, make sure it's not a mission where the very last objective is killing it, or else it won't work. People use this to farm Hive majors for that bounty with the second to last mission on Earth where your ghost is scanning a computer and you have to defend a room through several waves of Hive until he's done scanning. I think it takes place at Dock 13 or whatever it's called. You basically just wait until the penultimate wave, kill the yellow dude and then jump off the edge at the far end of the dock. It obviously wouldn't be great for farming high-level loot, but hopefully you get the idea.

False equivalence is tricky, but as SAM mentioned re: logic I see people drawing equivalence seemingly more out of convenience than arriving at it due to subjectivity. Like, "do I need another bullet point to support my argument? sure do, let's make something equivalent!" Common thing I've been reading - Any given person is as trustworthy as another until evidence suggests otherwise. This is logical. Anita lied (read: misrepresented) in her portrayal of how prostitutes are treated in Hitman. Anita's trustworthiness score has decreased below the default trustworthiness rating. Anita claims that she was harassed, zero-follower egg-avatar Twitter guy says that she wasn't. Since Anita's trust score is -1 and Twitter guy's is 0, I should therefore trust Twitter guy more than her.

Weird! I have actually bought a couple through the span of my gametime from the Gunsmith, because I like them so much. The green ones are okay, don't compare well to blue ones but will do the job when I want to use them.