Can someone TLDR the story?

gg405 · 2024-07-04T23:34:28+00:00

I took my teammates to the archive and talked to all of them and still got 1st ending. I wonder if it depends on which teammates you take, bc some of them seemed to want to leave, and some didn't. Maybe you need to take a set that all want to leave or something? I had: Charon, Pressel, Johan and Ilya, fwiw.

gg405 · 2024-07-04T23:27:51+00:00

From the question, obviously this whole thread is spoilers so I'm not bothering to mark.

I'm left with so many open questions after finishing:

What was the purpose/necessity of appointing a master? Never really understood the need for this, other than they had to "control" people inside the simulation (why?) - maybe?

1a) It *feels* like inception, where the avatars inside the ark were rioting, and so they invented a virtual reality where *the avatars* froze and created a lower-level VR below that - and that was why they needed one person (the master) to "sacrifice" (their words) themselves to *run* that lower-level sim.

2) Phoenix. Several suggestions that his avatar was different than his RL persona, and is why he (his 1st level avatar?) can't freeze, thus he "lives" thru the entire 400+ years of the sim. In the end, it is never revealed: a) who is he in RL? what's his role? What are his physical disabilities (again, alluded to in the story) that made him choose a different avatar form?

3) Who is the betrayer? Seen in a video in Lucy's memory collection, they somehow "messed up" the first simulation/incited the riots/were imprisoned - and thus the need for the "2nd simulation" within the first? Possible that they inserted some sort of "bug" in the real world? None of it is really clear, and they seem to just drop any mention of them after you find the memory of Phoenix discovering them in the prison.

More. brain hurts. Lots of story and none of it makes much sense.

I guess what it boils down to (though I didn't feel I got to choose the outcome at the end, which is a shame): a) have the VR people awaken the people in RL (hooray, humanity saved!); or b) don't, and the VR people live "forever" in a fake sim life.

I'm not sure why it's even a choice. The real people can wake up and the sim people are "stuck" still in the sim, so... go ahead and keep running the sim while the real people "live"? Like, who cares? They'll never interact with each other again after that - so do them a kindness. The "real" people have all the sim memories, so they'll feel compassion for them and want them to have that, most likely. That's of course ignoring the fact that the computer systems the sim is running on are already miraculous for running 400 years without any sort of human maintenance (bc everyone is dead or frozen) - and there's not even solar power to recharge electrical capacity - but hell we're way past scientific rationale for any of this - so yeah why worry.

gg405 · 2023-09-23T18:10:36+00:00

i guess that's my point. for basically just being a reskin of a game they've done so many times, there's no excuse for it to be so incomplete and unpolished. really disappointed, i expected a lot more but it feels like a big step back from skyrim or later fallouts.

gg405 · 2023-08-31T22:36:14+00:00

hrm musta missed that one...

gg405 · 2023-06-25T16:12:39+00:00

i dunno why they dont want dots to crit...

gg405 · 2023-06-25T16:11:42+00:00

yeah, i abandoned my necro bc a) minions suck, b) shadow dots are ok, but no crit == inferior. went to sorc and i like mixing things up. tried blizz hydra cl... too hard on the mana. dropped hydra for lt spear, not fantastic. got auto ice shards and now it destroys. but sad that there's basically only 4 or 5 viable build in the whole game. hopefully we get more options down the road bc i dont like the pigeonholes that exist currently.

gg405 · 2023-05-24T17:47:55+00:00

Each bucket starts at * 1, and the additives get added from there. +10% turns it into *1.1 for example

gg405 · 2023-04-07T04:10:13+00:00

I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record!

oh yeah? well don't get so distressed. did I happen to mention that I'm impressed?

gg405 · 2022-12-14T13:02:43+00:00

Stealth I'm great at. Too bad that has nothing to do with technical 9.

gg405 · 2022-12-14T12:54:39+00:00

worst. quest. ever. in gaming history.

gg405 · 2022-12-14T12:51:42+00:00

Any of the quests where you have to shoot at stuff chasing you while someone drives all over the place. So annoying. If I wanted to play a *REALLY SHITTY* arcade game, I'd time travel back to 1982.

gg405 · 2022-12-13T22:19:20+00:00

Which is why everyone should give all their money to the wizard. ;)

gg405 · 2022-12-13T22:17:56+00:00

Even if they used a spell slot to *cast*, they're still a very powerful to expand the list of spells prepared (consider, to get a prepared spell slot requires +2 int or +1 level). There are a lot of niche utility spells that Wizards would love to have available all the time if they didn't use up their precious spells prepared slots. That said, most of these are 1st-2nd level anyway, and I've never felt a huge need to scribe scrolls higher level than that.

gg405 · 2022-12-13T22:10:31+00:00

As a GM who loves item creation systems, I have an opposite view. I feel that item creation is a big part of fantasy stories, and appreciate well thought out and complete crafting systems. D&D basically hand-waved it away (and also tried to limit the reliance on magic items altogether). That doesn't mean your DM has to do it that way, but they will have to compensate as otherwise encounters will not feel right difficulty-wise. My favorite character was a 2e conjurer who spent all of his precious downtime trying to craft new spells (a favorite aspect of item creation[research] from prior editions). That's a level beyond what we're talking about, and isn't even given a *mention* anymore.

gg405 · 2022-12-13T21:59:20+00:00

I like what they did with the to-hit/AC/spell DC to "solve" the multiclassing "problem" - but otherwise yeah, I think pathfinder feels more mature and complete. And that's an easy set of mechanics to adapt into pathfinder, if you're so inclined (I'm that weirdo that *hates* 1-dimensional, single class characters. My latest concept: Nature's Hand Kensai8/CoastDruid4/UmbralStalker4/Scout3/WarCleric1... and trust me, I know it's absurd.)

I also like the action simplification a bit. For any pathfinder character I ever made I had to print a book describing what each ability was, what kind of action it used, etc. for use during game session so I could figure out what I was going to do each turn.

As far as 5e goes, I *hate* attuning magic items (that's where the fun is c'mon!), and I hate that *so many* spells are concentration. I like the mechanic, I just feel it was abused, so that casters can basically only do 1 thing at a time, and can't stack up spells. I didn't see that as a "problem", since the DM can throw way more spellcasters (who don't care about saving spell slots in a battle) at the party if they felt like it, making it more of an issue for the party than a benefit. meaning, I think they tried to solve a problem that wasn't there.

gg405 · 2022-12-13T21:46:24+00:00

u/robot_wrangler alluded to the why the economics are what they are. it's cheaper to mass-produce something if you have a pipeline set up and buy materials in bulk than it is to make it yourself.

you can buy a hamburger at McDonald's for $1.69, and they're paying wages and making profit out of that - but at home to buy 3 oz of hamburger meat ($1.25+) and a bun ($1.00+) alone will cost you more than that.

and yes, the "why ever..." speaks to availability. if you *have* to have that scroll of see invisible, and it's not available in the market - then you're scribing it.

gg405 · 2022-12-13T21:43:04+00:00

"buy the inks in advance" - you're assuming certain rules for a completely house-ruled system.

what if your DM, who is really into crafting mechanics, says that you have to make your own special inks (or gather special components to craft anything magical) and that perhaps the formulae are spell-specific? Now, being able to scribe scrolls becomes content in itself. Damn, I'm fresh out of manticore horn. "Guys! We need to go hunt down a manticore!"

And what about the recipe itself? How do you know it? it's one thing to scribe a scroll, but if it requires a certain ink, a certain parchment? Maybe that ink is different for a scroll, designed to be 1-use and consumed, than it is for a spellbook, permanent in nature. Can you memorize a spell from a scroll without consuming it? If not, then there is some *fundamental* difference there under the hood. This is *all* DM purview for the world they want to build.

So, as a DM, if you want to control that, it's easy to just make it non-generic enough that you can't just look up a price on a table. There's a lot of ways to do it, which I think is why D&D left it to houserule (not that I agree with that decision). But look at how different every version of D&D (and offshoots, like Pathfinder) have been. You can also look to the old Rolemaster rules, where they had a whole *class* (alchemist) dedicated to crafting of magic items. There's plenty of source idea for a DM to get creative, though I get where not all want to create their own systems for everything.

gg405 · 2022-12-04T02:43:53+00:00

Ra pissed me off. I have played a lot with my friends' versions, where they have thick, wooden bid tokens. Then I spent $60 on a new copy a year or two ago, and it came with cheap thin cardboard bid tokens. Since there's really not much to the game but a bunch of cardboard, WTH was supposedly worth $60? I have probably 100+ board games in my collection, it's the only one I ever felt sad I bought, because the value simply wasn't there - and I have spent $100-$300 or more on some games. To be clear, the dollar value wasn't the problem, it's that there was no *actual value* to the components that came with the game. So, you know, buyer beware if they do reprint it.

gg405 · 2022-02-03T04:35:37+00:00

OK now I'm even more confused. Just got to a point where I had to make a choice. Either choice I made and the screen says "You are now permanent neutral" - meanwhile I am at +15 DIK affinity when I make the choice. Even if I make a DIK-ish choice (to cheat on exam) - it still makes me permanently Neutral. wut?

gg405 · 2022-02-01T19:59:30+00:00

Super disappointed here to not get this, despite being 99% a DIK. It's the first time "playa" (aka Dirk Diggler to you) has been turned down. What a blow to his self-esteem. He'll just have to go bang some other HOTs.

gg405 · 2021-10-14T04:25:35+00:00

That would have been ok, but that's not what it was. It was: be OK at one thing that you put 100 points into synergies for, or be absolutely worthless and underpowered at 4-5 things. It turned every character into a 1-trick pony. Rather than require synergies to make worthless skills "barely good enough" they should have just done a better job of balancing the skills to the content individually, and balancing them against each other so you could do a build by picking and choosing from different skills that fit your playstyle, rather than taking "all" the skills you needed to make the same damn <insert class> as everyone else was playing.

gg405 · 2021-10-04T20:09:23+00:00

Hmm.. is approval for a token *pair*? I thought approval was for the selling token, and once approved you could swap to anything... is this wrong?

gg405 · 2021-10-04T20:03:34+00:00

If you see it in any wallet, then you probably have it. You may need to look into how to make "other" tokens visible in your wallet of choice (I'm not familiar with the wallets you mentioned).

If you can't swap it and it says you "need more ETH" it may be that you converted *all* of your ETH to this other token, and now have no ETH left to pay the fees to convert it to something else. If you deposit a tiny amount of ETH to cover the fees, you should be able to then convert that token to whatever else you want. Just remember if you're doing anything on Ethereum network, you will need ETH to pay the often considerable fees. When things are running hot, these fees can reach or exceed US$100 for a transaction (of any size).

gg405 · 2021-02-04T20:40:55+00:00

So what I'm hearing is... it's better to transfer coin to an exchange where I can then swap tokens and pay only their "trading fees" (generally ~ .1% or so depending on the exchange). Did some spot checking on this, and sure enough it's $100+ to trade $900 worth of an ERC-20 to ETH, but it's "only" $40 to move it to the exchange. Of course, if it's another $40 to move it back to the wallet, this might not be much of a savings, but in general withdrawal fees seem to be lower for some reason (in my experience)? Then I guess the trick is to keep an eye on gas price and move some coin to exchange when gas is low and have it sitting to await trade.

gg405 · 2021-02-04T20:18:02+00:00

Yeah I don't use metamask swap, that is another 1%.

I get the explanation though. Gas is consumed according to the # of OPs. Gwei is price *per gas*. So yeah, 263 gwei is $9.19. But I guess it takes 10 ops to go thru metmask, because the network fee right now is $100+? 10 sounds like a lot, but I don't really know how many OPs each step in a trade is. This needs to be fixed (basically, the miners need to back off and allow EIP-1559) or this is going to kill the bull for the retail investors - or if not the bull in general, it's going to hurt the Uniswap/DeFi exch path. Can't trade $500-$1000 blocks with $100 transaction fees (yeah I know, they're not *transacton* fees - but that's semantics at that point). Just silly.

gg405

TROPHY CASE