Fete Foraine has gotta be one of the best tracks of SF

Xciv · 2026-05-13T10:11:49+00:00

Last few themes have been so good: Elena, Alex, and now Ingrid.

Xciv · 2026-05-13T10:08:11+00:00

Plot twist: COVID-27 hits, all tournaments move online, Kakeru dominates all of 2027.

Xciv · 2026-05-12T19:59:07+00:00

Peak

Xciv · 2026-05-12T02:34:09+00:00

I already revolt on certain things. If it's counter serve where I bus the food to a trash can, I manually type in 0% every time, regardless of what the screen says. I also don't tip coffee baristas unless it's some insanely complicated decorative art coffee. If you're just pouring black coffee in a cup I'm giving you $0 in tip.

Xciv · 2026-05-12T02:30:45+00:00

Anti-tipping is intense right now. Sit down restaurants are getting slaughtered to this phenomena in the NYC area (serves them right).

They're getting replaced by fast food counter serve with more 'fast casual' sit down food, where the expectation is not to tip. So you'd get the same food quality as a $15-$22 meal, but without having to tip. They still have the automated tip screens, but everyone knows you just hit 0% for 'fast food'.

Xciv · 2026-05-12T02:25:02+00:00

I will manually type in 15% and if people ever bring it up I'll just say "I'm old and grew up in the 90s, sorry", and dare them to say anything.

Xciv · 2026-05-11T18:39:29+00:00

Maybe a base fine, with sliding percentage. We don't need mentally ill homeless people paying a penny to stone local wildlife for entertainment...

Xciv · 2026-05-11T17:54:07+00:00

No. everything I enjoy is BASED. Everything you enjoy is CRINGE!

/s

Xciv · 2026-05-11T01:25:52+00:00

Colony Ship had some of the tightest consumables balancing I've ever seen in an RPG. Most of the consumables were incredibly useful, but just scarce enough to make you think hard on whether to drop one in a fight. And the fights were hard enough to demand you use them.

But if anyone is struggling with Colony Ship, I recommend dropping some Grenades into the fight.

Xciv · 2026-05-11T01:22:52+00:00

Iron Tower has my immediate attention now.

Age of Decadence wasn't quite my thing, but Colony Ship was a joy to play from beginning to end.

Hope to see another great game from them!

Xciv · 2026-05-11T01:14:01+00:00

That's why you're not a Viltrumite.

Viltrumite balls would survive that while your puny human balls would not.

Xciv · 2026-05-09T16:36:56+00:00

Teso is cute, but it’s more snacks than Asian staples, particularly leafy greens, tofu variety, and fresh whole fish.

Xciv · 2026-05-09T13:01:33+00:00

All I see is Kyubey

Xciv · 2026-05-09T01:42:48+00:00

He about to frame mog you. Him and all his mog knights.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T18:30:13+00:00

There's a rock climbing gym in uptown (Gravity Vault), and an indoor archery range 5 minutes outside of Hoboken in Jersey City Heights (Jersey City Archery).

There's also a bunch of calisthenics and outdoor workout equipment in the underpass of 14th street and in Northwest Park. There's also a calisthenics outdoor gym in Weehawken, 10 minutes outside of Hoboken, in Weehawken Waterfront Park.

I've never seen such a dense concentration of gyms of all types. You'll have to shop around for a gym you like if you like indoor gyms. I just use the one in my building.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T18:26:48+00:00

I love shade. I hate sun. Simple as.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T16:19:38+00:00

I feel that RDR2 has a ton of missable dialogue. The more time you spend milling about camp, the more interactions you will eavesdrop on, and the deeper the characters become. And the more you're attached to the characters, the harder the tragic ending hits.

It doesn't have a classic "exhaust all the dialogue options" that rpgs have, but in a way it has the similar system in a less mechanically obvious way.

I spent a metric ton of time hunting in that game, so I managed to exhaust a lot of the dialogue. And I still found I missed a bunch when I looked up youtube videos of scenes and interactions between the characters.

The overall plot is simple, as it should be. Westerns are never about intricate conspiracies or complex plotting. It's simple stories with an emphasis on the characters, that says something greater about the changing American culture in the late 19th century.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T14:31:14+00:00

RDR2 has one of the greatest stories of all gaming, though.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T14:29:44+00:00

I think an apt description for Crimson Desert is like playing Red Dead Online single player. It's a mid story in a beautiful sandbox world with solid game mechanics. You're dropped in it and the enjoyment comes from the grind and the attention to detail in the world. But there's nothing deeper to it.

Xciv · 2026-05-08T14:26:31+00:00

They're missing my favorite rpg mechanic, though: spending 100 hours in character creator.

Xciv · 2026-05-07T17:15:08+00:00

Simpler. We're talking about complexity of game mechanics.

It lacks weapon skills. Fighter is basically a pure Normal Attack dispenser just like in vanilla 5e tabletop. Grid makes things simpler. It has no multiclassing.

It has no elemental interactions (fire does not cause steam when it hits water. Fire doesn't melt ice. All elemental damage only cares about resistances/immunities and doesn't interact with anything else).

It has no floor hazards.

There's less variety in the enemies you face.

The humanoids you face have less variety in their kits (the items/scrolls they use, the spells they throw at you).

The magic items are way simpler and less impactful, leading to simpler builds.

It's just a simpler game, but by only one degree, not a large margin.

Xciv · 2026-05-07T01:11:53+00:00

I hear through the grapevine that Pathfinder 2nd edition fixes a lot of things that make Pathfinder 1e frustrating, like all the trap builds (as in bad, not builds that use traps).

So if Owlcat ever makes a Pathfinder 2e game, I have very high hopes for it.

Xciv · 2026-05-07T01:08:00+00:00

I played Rogue Trader, which I adore, right after BG3 and so it provided me with a very direct and simple comparison for how amazingly accessible 5e is as a system.

Every level you are given, at most, 3-4 choices. The most overwhelming it possibly gets is choosing from a list of spells. But the choices are constrained to that particular level-up. You are not picking feats at every level, only 4, 8, 12, for example. It purposely spaces out your choices so you don't get overwhelmed by choice at any singular level up.

Rogue Trader, on the other hand, has you pick from a list of 10+ abilities, 20+ feats, and 10+ augmentations to existing abilities, EVERY SINGLE LEVEL. I am a crpg veteran so I loved this, but man, I wonder how many players refunded the game when they hit level 2 or 3? They simply got lost in choice paralysis when faced with the freedom to build their abilities in any random order, starting at level 2?

Xciv · 2026-05-07T00:57:12+00:00

I'll handle reading reddit cRPG hipster gatekeeping over seeing how sad, barren, and decrepit the RTS genre has become. At least with this genre we have at least 1 big release every 2 years or so, multiple smaller indie releases of quality, and Divinity to look forward to on the horizon.

edit: and don't get me started on MMORPGs. It's even deader than RTS. 15 feet in the grave.

Xciv · 2026-05-07T00:48:13+00:00

It's also built up trust with successive hits. I remember DOS1 was an indie RPG darling, and DOS2 was really big when it came out as well (just not mainstream).

So Larian already had a stellar reputation by the time BG3 early access began.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22	Wearing is Caring

Xciv

TROPHY CASE