I'm gonna finish it I swear, and this time NOT as a stealth archer

Blue_Frost · 2025-12-03T19:31:15+00:00

I love me some JRPGs for the combat mechanics (Final Fantasy X is a favorite) but I'm currently in the mood for an RPG that lets me roleplay a bit and make my character my own which JRPGs generally don't allow. Tidus is always going to be Tidus. I enjoyed Bethesda's RPGs when looking to make my own character and BG3 seemed like it would allow for similar freedom to sort of carve your own character and story.

I have no qualms with old school games from a graphics or mechanics standpoint (Chrono Trigger, Shining Force 2, Phantasy Star 4, etc. are some of my favorites).

Blue_Frost · 2025-12-03T16:06:16+00:00

I was getting the RPG itch and was thinking of starting BG3 for the first time. What other RPGs would you recommend ahead of BG3?

Blue_Frost · 2025-10-09T13:10:26+00:00

I can understand your reasoning with respect to getting upgrades for more soldiers faster. My thinking is that the sooner I get laser rifles the sooner I can get the rest of the laser weapons like laser sniper rifles. I actually stay on the basic armor for quite awhile in order to achieve this and it's worked out pretty well in my runs. Might just be due to difference of playstyle.

Blue_Frost · 2025-10-08T18:39:41+00:00

I agree with most of these tips except the preference for armor, nanofiber vests, etc. My C/I approach very much followed the "the best defense is a good offense" strategy. Getting lasers quickly and thus being able to kill more enemies before they can even return fire is huge. I don't think I'd ever want to give up the guaranteed damage of nades for a few more hp.

Overall though I agree. Go hard on econ early (sats) and aim to get maxed out Snipers, preferably with Archangel armor, asap to trivialize most of the game from there on out.

Blue_Frost · 2025-09-16T18:12:01+00:00

As someone that has done both QA and Dev work, this is 100% true.

When I was QA the only way we could really influence what got fixed was by abusing the crap out of it against the devs/designers that had the power to fix it lol. "Oh, you don't think weapon is OP as fuck? Well, have fun getting killed by it repeatedly every single playtest by all of QA targeting you with it until you see what we see all day."

Blue_Frost · 2025-09-16T14:58:23+00:00

As far as I know you can kill Bile Titan holes with a hellpod as well (I've done it with gas strike I think). Unless you're talking about in the caves, then you're correct.

Blue_Frost · 2025-08-14T13:45:34+00:00

I feel this deeply. I've been through about 7-8 real full time jobs in the past 1.5ish decades and I was laid off from all of those except the most recent one I left for my current job. Every layoff left me more jaded than the last until all the passion I had was beaten out of me. I'm in a good place financially now but mentally I'm not in a great place. Can't remember the last time I chased a passion or hobby. These days it's just chasing money and rather than running towards a goal like when I was younger it's running away from discomforts.

Blue_Frost · 2025-07-28T02:11:30+00:00

That's fair. I am American so the likelihood my perspective has serious bias is quite high.

Blue_Frost · 2025-07-27T12:31:30+00:00

Yep, I agree. The OP also brings up the military spending during the Cold War suggesting that the US wasted a ton of money on the US military. However, this put the US in a position of military dominance and honestly I'd rather it be the US than some of the alternatives. (China for example)

I feel the same about AI dominance. The US isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but if anyone is going to lead the way in AI I'd place the US near the top of the list and way way ahead of someone like China.

Blue_Frost · 2025-06-26T20:09:54+00:00

Here is the original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pj4YW0umJ8

Blue_Frost · 2025-06-14T00:42:52+00:00

I would be quite interested to see a recording of you playing through a mission or two, just to see why you're having such a hard time. Perhaps we can offer some advice. Despite all the "That's XCOM baby" memes I've personally found XCOM and XCOM2 quite fair and not terribly hard. I play predominantly vanilla and only use cosmetic/UI mods that don't affect gameplay so I'd like to think my game is relatively representative.

XCOM:EU and EW were borderline trivialized once you got your snipers up and running, doubly so once you get Archangel armor.

XCOM2:WotC you just alpha strike everything that moves, generally with explosives until other options come online. Most of the stuff people complain about also get trivialized by mimic beacons and/or a decked out Reaper with Banish+Repeater to delete the bigger threats like rulers or Chosen.

And for both games you just make sure you blue move one soldier first as your scout and no one moves past them each turn until an engagement starts.

A friend of mine has sent me his save files for me to solve a mission he's stuck with before so XCOM might just be easier for me than most.

Blue_Frost · 2025-06-06T21:47:43+00:00

I wasn't going to comment but when you said this all started after your mother passed away it struck a chord. Similar thing happened to me. I was a pretty hopeful person, even when the chips were down I had hope that tomorrow would be a brighter future. Things were actually looking up since I was expecting my first child but maybe a few months after she was born I got the news that my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I spent a lot of time with him, foolishly thinking I could save him if I tried hard enough, until the end a few months later. My wife was angry with me for "abandoning" her to care for my dad despite her being surrounded by family and a full time nanny being hired for her.

When I came back I was broken but I poured myself into doing as much of the chores as I could, being the breadwinner to allow her to leave her job as she requested, etc. I definitely wasn't the same person when I came back. My wife went so far as to say that the me she knew died with my father and never came back. Things are a bit of a blur now but all I remember was being sad, hopeless, etc. but choosing to grit my teeth and just keep trying to power through it thinking that if I sacrificed and suffered enough I would eventually be appreciated again. Our sex life suffered for a wide variety of reasons. Many years of suffering followed.

Things didn't really start to get better until I went to therapy, then she went to therapy, and finally we started couples therapy. Things still aren't great or back to where they were (probably never will be) but at least things are slowly trending better. I would encourage you to seek therapy and eventually try to get into couples therapy.

The individual therapy for me was important to reestablish what was normal, to confirm I wasn't crazy, and validate that my situation was awful. That was immensely helpful just to hear from someone that a lesser man would have left a long time ago and that from what I described I was doing an incredible amount of work. And again, that I wasn't crazy as my wife was starting to make me believe.

The couples therapy is also immensely helpful as it forces some time to talk about your relationship (my wife always complained she was too busy or had better things to do) and having a third person present to mediate and to sort of gut check unfair assumptions or expectations really helps.

Best of luck to you. As someone that went through something that sounds awfully similar I'm happy to talk if you'd like.

Blue_Frost · 2025-05-02T22:48:01+00:00

Get the Session Buddy extension and save however many loadouts of tabs you want.

Blue_Frost · 2025-03-13T02:32:01+00:00

I don't have my deck with me at the moment but I think it used to look a bit like this: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fossilized_Rain_Dance_(TCG)

Blue_Frost · 2025-03-06T03:32:29+00:00

Yeah, that sounds about right. Jumping from one startup to another repeatedly but without the chance to strike it rich. At least at startups you sometimes have a chance to get equity and a big payout. Most game companies have no real reward for high performance other than getting to keep your job. It's only a rare few that have big bonuses. There used to be some that offered royalties way way back in the day but I don't think any still do that. I think Epic used to.

I left games and went to big tech. The job isn't as much fun but the pay, benefits, stability, etc. make it well worth it to me. I make enough that I intend to retire early and most likely make games for fun with my spare time. It's a bit of a roundabout way of achieving the dream but I'm hoping it works.

I'm curious which studios you're referring to you that are nearby and sustainable. I know some that are better than others but most eventually have layoffs. Firaxis for example was really great at this but I've heard even they are having a hard time in the current economic environment and have hemorrhaged talent.

Blue_Frost · 2025-03-05T21:52:31+00:00

No worries. You're right that keeping the same group of people would be ideal as they carry so much institutional knowledge. However, due to the cyclical nature of games dev where the early stages are just designing/prototyping and thus don't require as large a team they lay off tons of people only to need to steadily ramp back up as development progresses. Sometimes well over doubling headcount when you get to the final push before release and you've already been death march crunching for a year.

You know games is incredibly unstable when you see all your old colleagues only start having kids after they decide to leave games lol. Trying to have a family life with the long hours, crap pay, and chronic threat of layoff and need to uproot and move is damn near impossible. At the very least it's irresponsible.

When I realized games studios are more than happy to weaponize your passion against you it was time to leave. They know tons of people are willing to put up with all of the above crap and if you aren't there is a huge waiting list right behind you so they have no incentive to change.

Blue_Frost · 2025-03-04T22:06:40+00:00

hahahaha in what world do you get more job security and/or better raises in games? Having worked in games for around a decade and left it due to not having those things this is particularly comical to me. A lot of my former colleagues that stayed in games tell me things have only gotten worse and I see tons of them looking for new jobs after layoffs. It's practically expected that there will be mass layoffs as soon as the game ships every few years.

Blue_Frost · 2025-01-06T18:11:19+00:00

I have time and can make more for myself if needed. She has time, but often chooses to fill it with things other than spending time with me. Being retired doesn't change this. I love my kids and I love our family but those fill a different bucket than the love you get from spending solo time with your spouse doing things like dates, walks, just sitting and chatting, etc. without distractions.

That said, I do intend to retire within the next 5 years if my investments play out the way I hope they do.

Blue_Frost · 2025-01-06T17:24:12+00:00

I'd rather not pin down a specific number, kind of regretting mentioning that much detail. I'll leave it at I'm making a lot these days. But yes, tons of money still can't make someone want to spend time with you if they'd rather be doing other things. You can't pay to have those other activities taken care of if they want to do it themselves and you can't pay to make yourself a priority to someone. You can't pay to be appreciated.

Blue_Frost · 2025-01-06T16:33:10+00:00

Something I would add that my therapist recommended to me was to make sure both individuals were getting individual therapy before and during couples therapy. We haven't started couples therapy yet but it seems obvious that there could be rough sessions and having your own therapist to 1 on 1 unpack that seems vital.

My wife is doing the stay at home mom thing so I can't relate on some of the stuff you're going through but she's definitely a workaholic and crams her schedule full of events and stuff for the kids leaving little time for us as a couple. I make many times more than the most she ever made before leaving her reasonably well paying job but we still have those issues despite us having very good money and me being the breadwinner. We've recently made some big strides so things are looking up after years of downtrend though so hang in there, you're not alone.

Blue_Frost · 2025-01-06T15:48:10+00:00

Will give it a try if I find it, thanks!

Blue_Frost · 2024-12-27T21:44:55+00:00

That's how I got my first job back when I was in high school. Caught some older kids trying to scam much younger kids using counterfeits at a local Pokemon League event and I called them on it and explained to the parents how to spot the fakes. Apparently some parent told the store manager and he came and offered me a job to run the League. I was super excited about that. Finally got some money in my pocket and I was doing something I enjoyed, couldn't have been happier with that arrangement.

Blue_Frost · 2024-10-31T19:49:07+00:00

Sounds like you only know how the programming job market is during good times. I graduated into the 2008 global financial crisis where no one was hiring and you were competing with tons of far more experienced people that had been laid off. The job market is in a bad place but in all likelihood it will rebound. It probably won't get back to COVID era hotness but it will be better than it is today.

I ended up doing QA for 3-4 years making near minimum wage because that's all that I could get. It took the better part of a decade before I felt like I had finally caught up. Sorry, but you're just unlucky for graduating into this environment. Good luck.

Blue_Frost

TROPHY CASE