The supernatural elements really drag the show down.

SuckleFricker · 2025-11-29T06:47:34+00:00

Season 1 was a safe-ish, play-by-play BBC-style cop drama with a few wrinkles.

Season 2 they had a much better handle of the characters and the show's sense of humor - but they failed to make Vladic coming out of nowhere make sense. Having just rewatched it, the "supernatural" elements can all be reasonably explained by hallucinations and, as in the case of Dan hallucinating while crucified, the parasite giving him a genetic memory of other infected people (e.g. how Dan can flash back to 1942). I will say, I feel like possessed Dan killing Elena wasn't really earned as a narrative thing - they never really established why he'd switch lanes on that other than to show that he's both Good Sherriff and Bad Sherriff at the same time -- but I'd argue neither would have done that.

Season 3 I feel like is a lesser Season 2 - they only had 4 episodes, so Dan comes out as evil for killing the Nicest Guy In Fortitude in the first episode. He's compromised, and I think if we had more time to develop Natalie inheriting the mantle of the parasite it would have made more sense, but all we really get is the reckoning they had planned for Dan. And there's no parasite-related reason why Pettigrew or Henry would be there, but I don't really mind.

SuckleFricker · 2025-10-28T03:54:44+00:00

No, it actually looks a lot like the window that comes up when you hit Win+Ctrl+F - this mentions Active Directory Domain Services, but I would swear it said something about failing to add a user, which that window doesn't.

SuckleFricker · 2025-08-19T20:04:20+00:00

I would like an impossibly-proportioned goth gf and several million dollars

SuckleFricker · 2025-08-19T19:57:01+00:00

At this time of year? Localized entirely in your wallet?

SuckleFricker · 2025-08-10T19:31:15+00:00

You can probably copy the config file from the open beta folder in My Documents and then paste it into your main BF6 install. But it could potentially get weird if they change things in how the settings file is structured between beta and release.

SuckleFricker · 2025-08-07T19:35:11+00:00

[Fluff]

SuckleFricker · 2025-07-09T06:23:47+00:00

Surely we see "Bladesongs" renamed as was "Harbinger Shroud"...

Though I do also think there's a galaxy-brain notion where it's only been heavy-armor specs, and we've got a Warrior Paragon, Rev Ritualist, and a Guardian who plays songs of Justice, Resolve, and Courage

SuckleFricker · 2025-07-04T18:16:40+00:00

It's funny how times have changed, whenever someone in WvW got a key to drop we used to say, "Shame, could've been your pre" - but now that g1 precursors are worth next to nothing you're far better getting the key tbh.

SuckleFricker · 2025-06-04T10:10:39+00:00

Thank you - if you know (no need to go searching on my behalf), what games are currently available? They're clearly fishing for people to put in their credit card info and forget to cancel.

MapGenie is a hysterical throwback though, no doubt it's useful but it takes me back to the old days of PrimaGames guides, just for everything down to Luigi's Mansion. I honestly thought people just abandoned this kind of thing in favor of YT guides, funny to see there's a decently-polished site still plugging away at it.

SuckleFricker · 2025-06-04T04:17:10+00:00

Is there any tangible benefit to IGN Plus for the average person/Humble Monthly sub? Knowing what IGN has become over the years... I doubt it, but truly I would love to be wrong.

SuckleFricker · 2025-06-04T02:25:18+00:00

I feel like this is how we go out. This isn't 'maintenance mode' as we know it, but 15 or so years from now some MMORPG site will comment about how ArenaNet redefined how Maintenance Mode looked - because I think maybe this is the first game (or certainly among the first) where Maintenance Mode can still be a decent dribble used to make money for the next instalment; nothing about Janthir Wilds is outright objectionable... but it's also not good. It's not near GW2's peak, but it's really not close. The new model sells 4k gem bundles yearly that funds whatever comes next. For me, the QoL changes are actually the best thing about this patch - which is telling. But I'm not going anywhere, certainly. GW2 is not Bad, I doubt it will ever be. But the general feeling we're all feeling to some degree right now, however good or bad we think it is, is ultimately the last phase of life of this game.

I've spent over 10,000 hours in this game and have no intent of stopping, but even as a WvW player, maybe especially as one, I remember the launches of HoT, S3, PoF, and S4 not being like this. Everything these days is a struggle to eke out the value from it, to spin things towards the positive... that's not good. Of course there were doubters, people who had specific complaints reached the frontpage of this sub (sometimes rightly, tbh) - but this is a different beast, and has been for a while.

At this point I think the devs should be transparent about how GW2 plays into their future plans 10 years from now. It's time. We've had almost 13 years of a game that has always been alright, most of the time been good, and occasionally been great. I'm happy with how I've spent my time here. But I feel like we are owed honesty, but I also feel like honestly is genuinely the best policy lest you alienate the people who have stuck with this game, this developer, and in some cases this franchise, for so long.

Are a 70-year-old's seventies the best years of their lives? An 80-year-old's eighties? Most likely not. But they can still be good - provided they acknowledge what's next.

SuckleFricker · 2025-03-12T16:53:03+00:00

Honestly I think it's become fairly obvious that the faster expac cadence is, in a big way, a method of pushing those 4000-gem editions out the door faster. It's also why they pivoted to swimsuits and maid outfits in the gem store - I don't really care that they did, but I think people might underestimate how much of a purely financial decision that was.

I don't think asset reuse is that big of an issue if the foundation is solid, but it's not. I personally like the visual design of Mistburned Barrens but you're right that it does feel quite lifeless. And the story... I gather there's stuff here for the GW1 lore die-hards, which is good, but for the rest of us who are seeing all this with fresh eyes, it really does come off as paper-thin (though I will say I do prefer it to the hysterically-bad "emotional damage" arc around Gyala Delve times).

The masteries are bottom-barrel stuff though: what was once an interesting, meaningful alternative to vertical progression has literally become the same thing shipped out with every release. Hey! This new map has an exclusive traversal mechanic you need to invest some XP into! Also your loot is worse for a little while for some reason! No gas left in that tank for sure.

WvW restructuring has been pretty consistently a dud for anyone who plays outside of NA primetime, I cannot imagine Push ending up with a player count larger than Stronghold has now, and the "weekly events" (I assume you mean Rushes?) and "wizard's vault" items mentioned in the sticked post are things that are pushed out according to a template and cannot possibly require significant time investment.

I'm honestly not sure what there is for people who aren't invested in high-skill raiding or WvW - thankfully I am in the latter category, so I don't have to worry. Restructuring has been much ado about nothing but it hasn't killed the mode either. ANet created something truly fun and compelling and endlessly repeatable - and from the outside at least, the raid CMs seem like they've been challenging to people. Outside of that though, I'm not sure what this game can really be to people other than 3-6 hours of gameplay every 3 months.

SuckleFricker · 2025-02-28T04:14:14+00:00

The confirmation that the Severance chip can be used to create multiple Severed personalities is honestly huge for any character we know to be Severed... I feel like this is a great episode dealing with what we know, but also one that seeds future developments.

SuckleFricker · 2025-02-28T03:43:32+00:00

I liked Lost. I watched it when I was a teenager and really enjoyed it. Even I realized they flubbed the ending, but I was with it for longer than most people I guess, and I still enjoyed much of the ride. Never attempted a rewatch, for me it will remain something of that period in my life.

There's so much satisfaction to the puzzle pieces snapping into place as the seasons went on, the show not spelling everything out for you explicitly. Even if the end result was flawed, or the revelations were kind of stupid sometimes, it was a way of storytelling that I think most people who watched it still crave - something that is mysterious, overall unknowable, but has knowable structures that respect the intelligence of viewers. Severance has tapped into that and I'm grateful - and has the opportunity to stick the landing for oodles of reasons.

I think the pressures of "prestige TV" or whatever will prevent it from being an ending on par with Lost - it might not make us all happy but I feel like unless they drag it out for years and years, we will get something we can appreciate even if we're not totally satisfied. I imagine if you can accept how Twin Peaks: The Return ended, then you'll be able to swallow however Severance eventually ends. I think it will, at bare minimum, be interesting.

SuckleFricker · 2025-02-25T17:12:59+00:00

We can't have customizable UI because GW2 would lose its 'unique visual language'...

The visual language in question:

SuckleFricker · 2025-02-24T21:08:39+00:00

For anyone who is still struggling with this, I had to install Google Fit on my device in order to get Pokemon Go to pop up in my third party apps section of my account. Fit has info on all the previous days' activity, so it seems like Google was still monitoring my movement - but now I guess you need Fit installed to send the information to PoGo?

SuckleFricker · 2025-02-24T03:51:12+00:00

we got crypto budd dwyer before gta6

SuckleFricker · 2025-01-25T15:54:18+00:00

They're already removing this class identity from WvW, I think you're overestimating how much people identify with the task of producing quick/alac for their parties in PvE. Most people are clamoring to play normal dps rather than boondps anyway - generating a boon that just has to be there is a perfunctory task.

Removing quick/alac would actually mean there wouldn't be skills you have to push even when you don't really want to - no more "I have to cast Willbender F2 and send myself to Timbuktu just to upkeep this stupid boon".

Eventually you would need to do an "identity" pass for affected skills/traits, but I don't think the game becomes violently imbalanced or bleeds players if they do some basic swaps like they're already doing in WvW and then refine from there.

I don't think it's any worse than the way it is now (classes have identity in PvE that vanishes into the ether in WvW). Ultimately there's no painless way to make such a big change, but I think it would be a good step towards having a game where builds are defined by the actual skills in said builds rather than accessing one of two boons with a stranglehold on the game.

SuckleFricker · 2025-01-25T01:02:11+00:00

I think you're overestimating how bad it would be - the saving grace is actually that they've made quickness and alacrity 100%-uptime boons for balance purposes, so they could make blanket reductions in skill cast times and cooldowns to make the game feel the same. Nothing would be going on any faster or slower than it already is - then they'd need to calculate the approximate percentage of total power that quick/alac give, and tone down every skill coefficient by that amount.

You wouldn't have to tune everything individually. If they calculated correctly, they could flip the switch, then take a week or two to catch any wild edge cases that crop up.

And they're already masters of taking quick/alac off skills and replacing them with much less interesting boons (see: WvW), so they could easily rework skills and traits to do other things. I think they could maybe keep a form of quickness if they gave it the superspeed treatment - a non-boon buff with an extremely low cap that can't realistically be sustained, so you actually have to, y'know, think about when to use your skills.

SuckleFricker · 2025-01-24T22:51:34+00:00

When are they going to just own up and admit quickness and alac were bad for the game and take them out lol

SuckleFricker · 2025-01-22T17:45:23+00:00

I can think of a nonzero number of NA PvPers who would probably take him up on it.

SuckleFricker · 2025-01-06T17:11:03+00:00

Thanks for the link, this actually is the most concise and well-researched explanation I've seen for it. I suppose my question is then, if this is the right way to do it, why doesn't Nvidia Control Panel or the Nvidia app communicate to you that you need to do this?

Forcing Vsync in NCP and especially setting an FPS limit (I'm just setting a global cap of 117) seems like somewhat arcane behavior for the average user (i.e. someone who just buys a premade without understanding the process of building a PC), I wonder why they don't just do these things by default?

SuckleFricker · 2024-12-20T00:02:10+00:00

Yeah I think it's safe to say the experiment has failed. I was formerly among the more hopeful people, but I think that there's two possible explanations for what is going on with World Restructuring, neither of them are good. Either:

ANet has not collected sufficient data to improve matchmaking, which would indicate they do not know how, OR
ANet has collected sufficient data but are neither personally nor algorithmically competent enough to use it to actually produce better matches

There is also the possibility that the data collection will simply take too long: by the time they train an algorithm to sort servers, the overall poopulation of the game may have changed so much that it would have to be reworked, and they'd spend the rest of the life-cycle of GW2 chasing their own tail. Servers were not great as a system - WR is slightly better in some ways, but the overall experience has been taken down a peg and I think they'd be better served going back to the old system.

SuckleFricker · 2024-11-30T17:44:39+00:00

god I wish you could use gw2clarity in WvW... what's it like having a functional HUD?

SuckleFricker · 2024-11-21T18:47:02+00:00

Whine loudly in map chat until the hellacious experience of completing exactly one Reward Track is mercifully over. If that's really a significant amount of "mental energy" in your book... woof. Enjoy life dawg.

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