SecretAsianMan

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Posts posted by SecretAsianMan

  1. Posted

    There's been a couple of updates lately that have added new weapons, enemies, and areas along with the usual rebalancing.  It feels a lot harder.  I haven't gotten to the Watcher since all this new stuff came out (although I have been sticking exclusively to the hardest path).  In general I feel like the weapons have gotten weaker and the upgrades fewer.  I should probably take a break lest I burn myself out before the game's final release.

  2. Posted

    @eot

    I was always bummed that the best Matrix characters were really only featured in the crappy Enter the Matrix game.  Niobe is shown some in the movies but the rest of her crew is great too.  Sparks has a few brief but memorable moments in the live action cutscenes from the game and Ghost is my absolute favorite Matrix related character.

     

    I also feel the same as you about Tarantino.

  3. Posted

    @Patrick R My issue with your version of the wish is I enjoy the experience of eating and would rather have infinite perfect food over not eating at all.  One could argue that not requiring food to live doesn't mean you couldn't still eat but my counter-argument to that would be that food would become even unhealthier than it currently is because it would then provide no nutritional value whatsoever and only serve to add mass to a body resulting in decreased overall health.  I'd rather have nutritionally perfect food so I can enjoy eating with no downsides.

     

    Having said that, the original wish presents a whole host of other questions.  At first I thought that Jake's creating poop from nothing scenario wouldn't be true since the food provides only the nutritional amount required to maintain perfect health so in theory the waste excrement would be minimal.  But then I started thinking about the rest of the food mass itself.  If I were to eat a whole pizza but only required an insignificant amount of nutrition at the moment, that means the rest of that pizza is waste and I would in fact be producing MORE poop than normal.  Given the ability to eat anything you want with no negative effects on your health and have it taste exactly as you want, I have to imagine humanity would consume an excessive amount of this perfect food and generate equally excessive amounts of poo.

     

    From another angle, this wish changes the very definition of food.  If what I wish for causes no harm to me from ingesting it, that means I could wish for a cup of mercury that tastes like root beer and drink it with no ill effects.  You could conceivably eat anything since none of it would cause you harm.  It also expands the murder possibilities beyond what was posited on the cast because I could wish for a nice, healthy cheesecake flavored dagger that again would cause me no harm if I ate it but would easily be inserted into a back and disappear minutes later.

     

    From a power generation standpoint, using current technology, it would mean that each power generation station would require several people who are near perpetual malnourishment to constantly wish for foods that would be high in fat content standing as close as possible to an incinerator to heat water into steam and power a turbine.  A healthy person would theoretically generate less efficient fuel since their fat requirements would be very low and subsequently their wished food would have less fat.  If we exploit the loophole above, then we could wish for some tasty coal or other combustible substance (assuming all the waste products such as CO2 would cease to exist twenty minutes later as they were part of the original food wish substance; this also assumes the energy created in the process remains but that's an entirely different can of worms).  Other possibilities include wishing for tons of water to power hydro processes or utilizing Jake's falling coconut scenario as a source of essentially perpetual motion.  It also scales down to wishing for gas (or some consumable form of fuel like cooking oil) for your car.

     

    I could go on but that'll do for now.

  4. Posted

    Agreeing with everyone else about family vacations.  As a (relatively new) parent I love my kid and want to spend time with her, but I'm not going to use her to jump to the front of the vacation line.  In the past I'd voluntarily work those days and take my vacation in the off season (something I still highly recommend if at all possible) but there have also been times where I've planned something far in advance and cancelling at the last minute in favor of someone else was not going to happen (short of a true emergency).  Your family is also family and you should be allowed time with them.

     

    On a personal front, I've started a diet and exercise plan.  It hasn't even been a week yet but I already feel better for the most part.  I'll still occasionally feel terrible but I suspect it's because of my rather abrupt change of diet.  My body seems to be trying to adjust to these green, leafy things I keep feeding it.  The stress thing is a work in progress.

  6. Posted

    Managing my work stress mostly amounts to trying not to worry about it too much while I'm here and not thinking about it when I'm home.  I talked with my supervisor about my condition and he was pretty understanding.  I told him that I might occasionally leave early or come in a bit late depending on how I'm feeling but I would do my best to get my work done in a timely manner and he said he'd do what he can to help me out.  Unfortunately he's going to be promoted to another position in a different department soon so there's not much he can do long term.  I know the person taking over for him and he's pretty laid back too but I'll have to have this discussion again with him.

  7. Posted

    18 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

    This feels like an incredibly boring software endorsement, especially as I'm about to talk about a Microsoft product, but I've recently become a big fan of OneNote. I've never clicked with cloud-based note taking apps like Evernote previously, but for some reason I've really taken to this since I started using it as part of Office 365 at work. The full version is now 100% free even if you don't have Office.

     

    It's just a useful application for things I want to put down somewhere but can't think of where to put them. I really appreciate that the desktop client supports logging in from multiple Microsoft Exchange/Office/email accounts at the same time, so I can have access to my work and personal notebooks on the same computer in a way that's clearly differentiated. So I can save that recipe for dinner tonight to my personal notes that sync with my phone, in between clipping that useful work email to my work notebook, all with the same tool. It also makes for a pretty good bare-bones word processor.

     

    Will second this.  I've been using OneNote a lot at work too and it's a pretty handy tool for things that don't fit completely into Word or Excel.  I create new notebooks for each of the projects I'm working on and it really helps keep me organized given the amount of stuff I have going on.  One neat trick I've been using it for is to extract text from a screenshot.  If you take a screen clipping and send it to OneNote, you can right click on it and copy the text from the image and paste it somewhere else.  You can also make the text searchable and leave the image where it is.

  8. Posted

    I've finished both Arrow and Supergirl's latest seasons.  Lots of spoilers ahead if you haven't seen them yet.

     

    Arrow continues to be shitty Batman.  I found the Prometheus story to be really weak.  The motivation for Evelyn's betrayal of the team felt especially weak to me.  The whole team knows that Oliver is not above killing, but learning that he had a specific list of evil doers is what makes him wrong?  And the answer to that is by siding with a guy who is arguably worse in every way?  I don't buy it.  At the very least I'm hopeful all the island flashbacks will be done with now that the flashbacks have progressed to his getting off the island and it was blown up in the present.

     

    Of all the Arrowverse shows, Supergirl continues to be the best.  Not only some great, strong (in multiple senses of the word) female characters, but also prominent LGBT ones as well.  I like that Mon-el starts out as a the literal prince of the dude-bro planet but gets some sense knocked into him by Kara, in both the physical and figurative way.  I also like Kara's relationship with the Luthor family.  I legitimately hope that Lena doesn't go bad because the parallels to Superman/Lex are too obvious.  I also didn't realize how great a character Cat Grant was until she left and came back.  The last thing that stuck out to me was Hank Henshaw calling himself cyborg superman.  I know that's his comic book identity and was waiting for him to appear but having him say it out loud was far too hilarious.

  9. Posted

    I've been feeling like crap lately, to the point that last night I took a trip to the ER.  Turns out most of my problems are because I have extremely high blood pressure (somewhere around stage 1 and stage 2 hypertension).  I've done a piss poor job of taking care of myself, something I intend to fix immediately.  I think the other main contributing factor is work and life stress.  I'm doing what I can about work stress, but the main source of life stress for me is the ongoing state of Trump's America.  As much as I hate the idea of turning a blind eye to it, I think I have to stop paying a lot of attention because every time I do I get really worked up which in my current condition is potentially dangerous.

     

    In other words Trump being President is literally killing me.

     

    (I joke about all this as a coping mechanism, in reality I'm actually quite scared)

  10. Posted

    14 minutes ago, Cordeos said:

    Side note, could developers just not put fake multiplayer dialog in their videos? The fake relationships and canned lines in the Anthem video are pretty atrocious.

     

    Seconded.  I would prefer to hear some marketing talk to an awkward script.  Or better yet just let the game speak for itself.

  11. Posted

    10 minutes ago, Kyir said:

    More on the thread's general topic, how are people feeling Anthem? I'm having a really hard time trusting BioWare lately, even before ME:A, but it's also a different team and looks pretty? My cynicism is currently outweighing everything else, but I'd really like it to be good.

     

    Anthem looked pretty but nothing I saw made me interested in playing it.  Not that I'm dismissing it entirely but graphics are the last thing I usually care about in a game.

     

    I'm pretty sure I've crossed into old man territory because I haven't seen anything yet that makes me excited at all with the exception of some titles that were already known.

  12. Posted

    I'm not a big fan of most DOT stuff in this game (bleed, poison, fire, etc).  Unless you stack a bunch of them it takes too long to produce a meaningful effect.  I'd much rather get closer and use my more powerful melee weapons to take them out quickly.  The only time I really use them is when the damage modifiers line up.

     

    9 hours ago, Kyir said:

    I had a very turret-centric build and couldn't get it to stay anywhere useful, so that was probably my problem. I'm sticking with my assessment of "hard" though.

     

    I'm down on turrets lately.  They die so quickly I often feel they don't do anything at all (except for the ceiling turret maybe, which is only useful in some areas).  I prefer items with more utility, like freeze/stun grenades.  I've been getting a lot of use out of the improved bear trap.

     

    I've been doing runs lately where I force myself to pick up every drop I see (with some exceptions).  It's a bit chaotic as my tactics have to change every few minutes but it's quite fun.

  13. Posted

    Ivy grenades work wonders against the Watcher.  I beat him the first time I got there using ivy grenades and the rapier.  Freezing items are also useful.  Just make sure you time it so he's stuck somewhere you can hit him.

  14. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Twig said:

    I don't care about optimal builds in the slightest, it just sucks when I find something I'm having fun with and am forced to throw it away because it's now too weak.

     

    It's good that they're trying to fix it. I'm skeptical, but hopeful.

     

    I do understand your position.  Sometimes I will pass up a weapon that does more damage but otherwise wrecks my combo even though I know it will be less effective in the coming level.

     

    The thing I think needs more tuning is projectile weapons, especially against bosses.  Any ranged weapon with limited ammo is almost useless against a boss since you don't get any of that ammo back until the fight is over.  From my understanding there is an item ability that gives you some of that ammo back on a hit, but I've never gotten it when it mattered so I can't speak to it firsthand.

  15. Posted

    A number of these complaints have been addressed in the current opt-in beta. 

     

    The rapier was reworked to have a smaller crit window (basically you can only get one critical hit in per roll and you have to be fairly quick).  The range on the electric whip was reduced some.

     

    Timed doors have more rewards, as do challenge portals, in the form of extra cells (10 I think, though I'm not sure if this scales with level).

     

    Weapons have more variety because of new effects (like poison clouds) and elemental synergy (like oil actually igniting and water spreading electricity/ice).  It's still a dice roll to have them line up but I feel like there's more overlap now and its easier to get a workable combo.

     

    A bunch of new weapons and skills were added as well.  My new favorite weapon is the impaler, a spear that does critical damage to enemies against a wall.  It's quite fun with the Spartan sandals (which I otherwise dislike).  Shields also got a big rework making them a far more viable option than they were before.  Turrets/traps were reworked to require you to be within a certain range for them to work (though you can still cheese the crap out of them).

     

    I can see why not having a static setup can be annoying to some people, but I really like it.  I know from past experience that I'm the kind of person who will always do the "optimal" strat given the chance which often leads me to get bored faster than I should.  Being forced to work with what's available forces me to experiment and adapt in a way that I normally wouldn't.  I'm also a big fan of improvisational tactics, something this game brings out quite a bit.

  16. Posted

    Netflix added the newest seasons of Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl (which actually surprised me quite a bit given how recently they aired).  I'm not going to annoy everyone and bombard this thread again every time I watch more.  I'll just wait until I finish a season then annoy everyone at the end.

     

    To that end, I watched Flash season 3.  All the big payoffs were ruined in advance by Youtube spoilers but I'm pretty sure I would have figured them out anyway.  A lot of my previous complaints from earlier seasons remain.  My new complaint is their rules regarding time travel.  There's almost more time travel in this show than Legends, and that show's set on a time travelling spaceship.  They're constantly contradicting themselves for the sake of drama.  I realize it's a comic book superhero show and things like logic are basically nonexistent but it bothers me that they keep saying "We can't do this" and then they go and do it.

  17. Posted

    Regarding refrigerator crisper drawers:

    The purpose of the drawer is to control humidity.  Some drawers come with an adjustable slider or vent to allow for high or low humidity, while non-adjustable drawers are usually for high humidity.  The majority of humidity comes from the fruit/vegetable itself (humidity being removed by the air conditioning process that keeps the fridge cool), so high humidity drawers are sealed to prevent this moisture from being lost.  The reason you want a high humidity drawer is to retain that moisture as some vegetables will lose moisture quickly and start to wilt.  A low humidity drawer is better suited for some fruits and vegetables that release ethylene as they ripen, which can make other ethylene sensitive produce ripen faster.

     

    Regarding peeing Calvin:

    Bill Watterson (the creator of Cavin and Hobbes) was famous for never licensing his strip, so by default almost all merchandise of Calvin and Hobbes are bootlegs.  The peeing image is most likely ripping off the first panel of this strip

    calvinwaterballoon.jpg

  18. Posted

    6 hours ago, Kyir said:

    I've been playing a lot of this game. My only quibble so far is that some boss attack hitboxes don't really seem to make sense. I feel like I'm getting hit a lot where an animation will eventually be before it actually extends to that point.

     

    The shield enemies do something similar where if you're standing slightly behind them, their charge attack will still hit you.  This was fixed in the beta update, I'm sure other hitboxes are also on the list.

     

    I might make a second video when the beta gets a stable release.  I've already had it crash twice so I don't think I could get anything usable just yet.

  19. Posted

    There's an opt-in beta available now for the new update.  It adds several weapons, enemies, and some gameplay changes.  Some of the bigger things are elemental effects (like oil increasing fire damage and water increasing electric damage) and a change to shields (all shields will generate a brief force field when you take damage and you can reflect back some projectiles).  It's still a bit unstable so I'd suggest waiting for the next public release.

  21. Posted

    19 hours ago, Patrick R said:

    I hate the experience of reading things on Waypoint and trying to sluggishly scroll through the site, so it is a testament to how good this oral history of the Halo series is that I stuck through the whole thing. My verdict: Video Games Are Dumb and It's A Miracle Anything Exists.

     

    I couldn't read this post and not think that Waypoint is also the name for the online hub of the Halo series.

  22. Posted

    40 minutes ago, bau said:

    Do you find it worth rushing throu early levels to get to the timed doors? so far i've only found money behind them the few times i've made it to them.

     

    Twin daggers with phaser is such a fun combo to use!

     

    You can sometimes find blueprints behind timed doors so yes.  But once you find the blueprint, I don't think anything else appears besides gold so you don't have to keep farming the door in hopes of other loot.  At least not that I've seen and I've been in every timed door at least twice.  If you're doing a door run I suggest not even bothering to fight enemies unless absolutely necessary.  Although there is a ten minute door behind the first boss that requires some good luck to get enough upgrades and decent weapon/skill drops to take him out in time.

     

    The phaser pairs really well with the assassin's dagger too (does critical damage on a backstab which stacks with the phaser's damage boost).  There are so many good combos.  My personal favorite right now is the sadist's sword with the throwing knives.  The sadist's sword does critical damage on anything bleeding and the throwing knives are a projectile that causes bleeding.  It's so much fun to throw a knife into a guy then run up and smack him into oblivion.

  24. Posted

    10 hours ago, Roderick said:

    Good overview, SAM, nice to see you play it. It looks like something I'd enjoy! (Though I'm still worried that the environments won't be memorable/authored enough.

     

    Honestly, if the environments are your main concern I wouldn't worry.  While there's nothing I'd call outstanding, they're not static either and there's enough variety to be interesting.

     

    5 hours ago, bau said:

    I've been playing a bunch of hours this weekend, i really suck at it

      Reveal hidden contents

    i've managed to kill immortal one once.

    but it's still really fun to run through the first area and collect cells and maybe get a blueprint if im lucky.

    The weapons feels great and a good feel through and through

     

    Some tips

    Spoiler

     

    Ranged weapons are very useful, but be careful of your ammo.  Arrows and other projectiles stick in the enemies and only return to you once they're dead, so against a boss you have limited ammo.  For this reason, the infinite bow and arrow is quite good.  The electric whip also has range and infinite ammo.

     

    Weapons with critical damage are also good if you can avoid his strikes.  The assassin's blade and the rapier are especially good since you can crit from behind or after rolling.  Be careful of his red damage aura though.

     

    The turret and meat grinder can keep chipping away at his health if you can stay alive.  I recommend placing the meat grinder in a corner once he starts using his jumping attack, although you can always reposition it.  Other useful skills are flashbangs and freeze grenades.