Anomander

I normally hate turning to Youtube when there’s a text resource available, but I’ve definitely found there are some situations where explaining a trick or a location in text is massively harder than just watching someone do it in a video.

Not easily - I think that notebook is living at my mum’s house, from rather a while ago before I moved out.

I absolutely can when I am next there and manage to dig it up - I’ll try and remember to ping you once that happens.

At one point in time I illustrated my own version, I think I made it to like 20 plates out of 26 or so.

I had to stop working on the project while ‘out’ at like work or cafes, because people would snoop over my shoulder and then assume that I’m a fucking psycho. When I started the project, I had assumed that it was a relatively common and well-known little picturebook. Turns out no.

My biggest complaint is that we can’t just let a more appropriate character take over a conversation. One of my clumsy, dim-witted brawler friends runs ahead by one pixel triggering a cutscene, and I can’t jump in mid-conversation to smooth things over with my bardic talent. This is our most common reason for loading a previous save.

Yeah, we were running into this in my game with my buddy; I’m definitely the dumbass running ahead because I’ve got stealth and dex for scouting, but invisible cutscene/conversation triggers keep catching us and my dunce of a character gets stuck talking to the punters. It’s kind of frustrating that the game encourages players to specialize in that way, but then makes it rather hard to take full advantage of that specialization if you don’t set up the encounter absolutely perfectly.

The other one where that happens is that when a combat encounter ends with dialogue - first Auntie Ethel fight, say - the game picks the character who had the last turn as who Auntie is talking to when the conversation starts. In that case, it’s almost always the party member doing big damage that pushed her past the damage threshold, and they’re generally not built for talking to people.

Those get even more frustrating because there’s an interface option to swap who’s talking, but it doesn’t seem to actually work in the majority of important conversations. It’s only when talking to filler characters that I can hot-swap who’s talking. I’d also love if, in addition to that button working more consistently - it’d tell you if someone in the party has ‘unique’ dialogue options for that moment. I think that having the whole party participate in conversations is chaotic and hard to implement in multiplayer - but a better capture of how those same interactions ‘would’ play out in a D&D game.

Second biggest complaint is the number of things that you can mis-click to destroy your character’s reputation. I’d love to be able to opt-in to an “are you sure” dialog when you accidentally click a random item on the floor while moving around.

It’s very frustrating to get a whole faction pissed at you due to misclicking some ‘owned’ container or accidentally dragging a barrel. Gith creche was a nightmare for that, because every room and hallway is decorated with owned containers. Some measure to make it harder to accidentally loot someone’s mold cheese while they’re standing right in front of you would be really valuable.

I’m always so torn on him; he makes interesting videos about compelling topics that are reasonably well researched … but as nitpicky as it is, I cannot deal with his accent for very long. I’m completely willing to believe it’s actually genuine, but it sounds like an American doing a bad impression of a posh British lordling.

And why on earth would he admit it later??

Effective journalism. Someone asked him the right question in the right way, and he wound up volunteering something he might not have otherwise chosen to say.

That said, I think some of this is just reasonable openness and accountability. Given the game was effectively a full year ago and the issues with VAR from that game are still a somewhat spicy topic, it’s obviously something he’s been questioned on rather a lot - and given that PGMOL also released a statement, and he mentions that he spoke to on-field ref after the game … it seems like he’s already owned that mistake professionally and personally, so making the same acknowledgement of error publicly isn’t that huge a step beyond that.

It was definitely a mistake that the fans deserved an accounting of, considering it’s the exact sort of problem that VAR exists to address - and that it should have been a call, of some sort at least, was absolutely undebatable to anyone who’d seen it.

my family can euthanize me even if I object?

No.

There’s no law that allows killing of the unwilling; even a living will addressing assisted suicide or euthanization due to incapability assumes that you would still consent at the later date, but lack either physical or intellectual ability to communicate that. If you can clearly communicate that you’ve changed your mind, they have to respect that, even if that changed mind has reduced capability due to dementia.

Your best hope would be to go with assisted suicide while you still have enough faculties to make the decision and execute on your portions of the act.

Just 2 of those would be fine, maybe 3, but 4 really pushes it.

Yeah. Like, I get that having a little harem of named followers all lusting after the MC slightly is … the sort of RP fantasy that some people want. I appreciate that Larian put that option in the game - and the ol’ “horny bard” trope absolutely comes from very real players wanting to be sexually attractive and competent in their escapist fantasy game. I get that. It’s just not my vibe.

As someone who doesn’t play games for romantic fantasy fulfillment - my biggest gripe with BG3 is that it feels like characters I like hanging out with have no concept of “we are friends” without suggesting romance is a logical next step, and are at incel levels of checking if maybe I’ve reconsidered and we can bang now?

Which also makes the fact that a lot of companion conversations feel like a minefield of “oops actually romance” dialogue options even more frustrating. I’m having a blast RPing an older dude who had a nice settled life prior to the Leech and just wants to get back home and put his feet up, but I’ve chosen a few response options I thought were just snarky or jokes and … oh wait, we’re being romantic now. Goddamn it, F8.

Also, on the subject of this song being “breakout/viral” - how hard is it to manipulate streaming numbers?

It’s seemed like the numbers there are 'semi-'manipulated in the way that Kpop can be - hugely inflated by deliberate rewatching and multi-platform streaming, but by individuals who genuinely want the song to do well, rather than bots or purchased fake stats.

It’s really seemed like ‘the right’ sees Oliver Anthony as “their guy” and rallied behind him and his song in order to push it up the charts as an imagined way of ‘owning the libs’ - and I think OA’s industry backing worked hard to seed that narrative among those circles in order to elicit that sort of boosterism from them.

Oh yeah, for sure. The spectacle and near-‘festival’ atmosphere around the capture, trial, and execution of notable criminals of the era absolutely lionized the criminal in many cases.

There was also some amount of ghoulish fascination with particularly macabre crimes and criminals as well, but The State was already very close to being the bad guy for the average bloke in that era, so criminals whose acts were relatable, daring, or ‘noble’ somehow also were turned into backalley heroes via the spectacle of their trial and execution.

There’s the necessary info, thank you! - I’ve heard horror stories about hosting exit nodes, and was immediately spooked this would result in the same issues.

I really enjoyed some darker content in terms of establishing that humans aren’t always the good, wise, enlightened people of the galaxy, consistently The Good Guys in nearly every encounter.

But shifting to that “oh there’s a dark side to all the optimism” as the consistent ongoing tone for the show rings wrong as much as the always good guys tone did with older trek.

Little guy is damn near a sphere.

No it’s still against the rules. Ref will just happen to not notice it, though. Which is definitely unrelated and totally coincidental.

Yeah, I had to un-quit Whatsapp when my siblings-in-law moved to Argentina - because Whatsapp is the main communication platform for a lot of Argentina and that’s where all the various family chats moved to once the in-laws no longer had local phone numbers or reliable SMS service.

For a more values-based interpretation - players have to keep the ball ‘in play’ in a way that the other team can interact with, without posing a danger to the player(s) on your team.

As in this case the play is either unstoppable, or requires the other team to somehow extract the ball from between two players’ chests, it’s a fun theoretical loophole - but is not a fun or safe way of playing football if it became a commonplace strategy. In most cases, this would be seen as daring dangerous play - either the other team needs to kick it free, or jostle the players until they drop the ball, both of which are taking pretty significant risks of injury.

The person you’re responding to is basically making the, “steal a loaf of bread to feed your family” argument. It’s complicated by the fact that loaf of bread was already reserved for saving others,

That’s a spurious argument here, though. This is like not buying groceries for two months, having the cash to buy groceries, then stealing a loaf of bread to feed the family.

These people shouldn’t be there, they’re on evacuation order, and they have safe routes to leave. Not one of their lives is in danger that they haven’t chosen. But they did choose - to put their property ahead of their own lives, and in stealing fire equipment they’re putting their own property ahead of the lives of fire response teams and ahead of all the other properties in the same area. They’re willing to have the whole neighborhood burn around them, to cut off safe evacuation routes, all to try and save their own home.

but it’s stupid to act like they’re a deranged person without a point.

They’re engaging in sophistry and misrepresenting the situation to try and make hindering firefighting efforts into something personally justifiable. It isn’t.

Could kind of see how someone facing down an impending roaring wildfire, then stealing from the same people they want help from, might be counterproductive. The people telling them not to steal fire equipment are there. They’re the ones fighting the fire.

No private resident needs that equipment “to save their own life”. They’re on evacuation order, there are safe routes out, they should not be there, and they chose to stay in order to protect their property. The bridge that sprinklers are getting stolen from, for instance, is protected so there will be a safe passage out of the area consistently even if the fire shifts in that direction.

This is about wealth - not health. Stealing that equipment is choosing to fuck over the entire region and everyone else who needs fire protection, just to better preserve their own home, is selfish and stupid.

What it “ACTUAL” says is “no disrespect” not “no unintended disrespect beyond the disrespect you deserve” - the intended use case is clarifying statements that are ambiguous or could read as disrespect, but are intended respectfully.

I do not agree that it’s “intended” as a window-dressing disclaimer for open disrespect. Even if you personally feel that the target deserves no respect - just have the balls to disrespect them openly and without dancing about the matter.

It’s “proper” usage is preface for a statement whose interpretation is ambiguous or easily misunderstood as disrespect, not as a “you’re not allowed to be offended” preface for statements intended to be disrespectful.

What I was saying is that the latter use case is overwhelmingly the more common one.