How were some of these things not in release after three years in early access?

This comment was edited on Nov 27, 2023, 16:59.

And another Baldur’s Gate 3 player added: “Inventory filters.”

Ummm, not only are there inventory filters, but you can search your inventory also.

I've found the inventory management in BG3 decent, but as others have mentioned and wished for, not being able to access inventories of dismissed companions before leaving camp is a pain. Before swapping party members, I try remember to dump their inventory into a chest, but then I need to keep some crappy armor around to give them if they have shared armor or they'll be in their underwear because they only use their camp cloths at night. I'm also worried that there might be a combat encounter one night and I've removed everyone's weapons and potions not actively in the party.

I'd like to see them borrow from Pathfinder's inventory system. Each individual character has separate inventory and encumbrance and there's a shared party inventory. Character's can only access their personal inventory during combat, but outside of combat you can use items from the party inventory.

My biggest complaint is the UI is just bad. If you have OCD, it will give you nightmares. The customizable panels are not necessary, and I go to all the trouble to organize it the way I like, only to have it fuck it up and move shit around on me if I change equipment. Just make a damn interface that stays consistent. I played Solasta last year, and while it may not have the best looking interface, it stood out to me as one of the cleanest, easiest ones to use in recent memory. Everything was grouped and organized, always where you expected it, and I never found myself having to hunt for something.

When it comes to coffee, I try not to make it a routine. I buy a different brand/blend/roast each time to mix things up. If you drink the same thing all the time, eventually you become numb to it. A few years ago my local grocery store stopped carrying whole bean coffee, so I started ordering from Amazon.

A couple of years ago I tried that Trade Coffee subscription. I got a different 2lb bag every time, freshly roasted right before they ship it. I signed up with one a promo codes, and it was only slightly more expensive than buying 2lb. bags from Amazon. I canceled it because the price kept creeping up and my grocery store carries whole bean coffee again. The selection of whole bean coffee is pretty slim though, and they're mixed in with ground coffee, so it can be a bit of a hunt to find. They generally always have the Starbuck's brand in whole bean, and bought it for the first time in a while last month. They had them on sale if you bought 3 or more bags, so I got three different blends and roasts. It's not bad coffee, but not the greatest. They all look and taste like dark roast to me, and I couldn't tell the difference when I finished one bag and started a different one.

I'm probably going to start alternating between ordering from Amazon and buying from the grocery store unless the grocery store starts to get more variety. When I ordered from Amazon, I would alternate between buying a coffee I knew I liked and something I hadn't tried yet. The one coffee that stands out and I went back to often was Kicking Horse's Three Sisters blend.

I still have my original box and disk. Where's the patch for the disk version?

ShakaUVM wrote on Nov 17, 2023, 19:34:
I can't believe people still use Chrome

I can't believe people ever used Chrome.

I find this guy extremely annoying, but often agreeing with him. I literally just went through something similar this past weekend. I have noticed that the quality of Netflix streams on Firefox have looked worse lately. I didn't know about the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D thing until I was watching a movie this past weekend and it looked like it was SD quality. I paused the movie to check my connection. I restarted the browser, PC, turned off extensions, everything I could think of, but the movie looked like ass. I did a search, found out the "shortcut" key above, and it's streaming in 540p. I did some more reading and found out that Netflix originals will stream in 720p on Firefox, but some movies will only stream at 540p. The only way to get HD on Netflix using a PC is to use the Windows store app or Microsoft Edge.

On Netflix's supported devices/browser page, it says Firefox is only supported at 720p. I don't know when this happened, but I do know I used to be able to get 1080p on Netflix. I don't know why Netflix is doing this when Amazon will do 1080p on Firefox.

Prez wrote on Nov 16, 2023, 11:34:
It would be easier to just opt out of Facebook.

You'd be surprised. I signed up way back when you had to have an .edu email address, but I never used it. Long story short, years later I tried to delete my account, but since I hadn't filled out my profile, it wouldn't let me delete my account because they couldn't verify I was the account holder until I provided them with more information about myself.

About two years later I logged back on and it finally let me delete my account. I guess some privacy laws or something went into effect, but once I submitted the request, I had to wait 3 months for them to delete it in case I changed my mind. Then I got a final email once the were ready to delete it with a link to delete it or undo it.

I also have this on disk still. I had fun with it, but I never finished it. I got side tracked from the main quest pretty much from the start. I remember got my hands on a nice car early, I think the driver/owner abandoned it or was killed by some fighting on the road. I was doing missions for shady people, running guns and stuff, then I remembered I was supposed to be looking for my daughter. I decided to start over and be more serious, but I never got around to it.

Ludomancer wrote on Nov 10, 2023, 19:00:
From my position I've not played such an overrated game in years. I gave up after a while in the first underdark adventure (figuring there are likely more than that). The entire presentation felt like I was watching a bunch of normal people roleplay the parts. I can totally understand how that might be absolutely perfect, because that's absolutely what D&D is, but I never felt transported to another world, I disliked most of my party, and the sexuality was absurdly front and center to the point of being annoying. Before I had reached the Druid settlement at the beginning, half my party expressed their interest in sleeping with me. It wasn't too much longer after that point that every single character was telling me I was the most amazing person they'd ever met, and all of them wanted to sleep with me. I don't like describing things as pathetic but it truly felt like it was. It pleases me so many people are enjoying the game, and giving life to a genre I grew up with, but I can not stand BG3 personally.
No offense to those loving it. I just thought I'd share my counter-experience.

If you don't like the story companions, just use the hirelings. No story, no romances, just meat shields.

There was a bug at release that made them attracted to you too easily. That was supposed to be fixed in the first patch I think. So far in my game, Lae'zel is the only character that has come on to me. She was pretty open and aggressive about it, but it was fitting for her character. I said I wasn't interested. She said something like it being my loss and I wouldn't get a second chance, and so far that's been the end of it. I don't know what set her off, it shows me right in the middle of her approval meter. Maybe those are broken, because I'm sitting roughly in the middle of all of them, not exactly in the middle, some are higher, some lower.

I'm not a fan of romance in RPGs, mostly because it seems unnecessary. I've never seen it done in a meaningful way either. It's usually do a side quest for them or do enough to get their "like" meter up, get laid, and then that's it, the game goes on like nothing happened. They usually don't even bother to give the characters any sexual preferences, which makes the whole thing even more meaningless.

Speaking of overrated games, Skyrim is one of the few games I can think of where there was "after romance" stuff. The romance was as shallow as the game. If you completed a quest, hired them (brides/grooms for sale?), and for some, literally giving them wood (seriously, chopping wood for them), and they'll marry you. But after that, you can adopt kids. If they're not adventuring with you, they move into you house and raise the kid(s), cook you meals, and you get a perk when you sleep in the bed with them. They even gave some of them a preference as to where you live, but couldn't be bothered to give them a preference in who they marry.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Nov 8, 2023, 12:33:
RGB is more like the cold cathode tubes that we used to install in the first cases with side windows. Yes, I was guilty of doing this.

The only thing RGB in my system is the Wraith Prism cooler and the Power Color Red Devil 6900XT, neither of which I can turn off or I would. RGB is beyond stupid.

I did two PC builds with windows (one with lighting) and that was enough. I've never used any RGB stuff on purpose. I go out of the way during building to make it all nice and clean, but after a few upgrades I get to the point where I give up and leave wires dangling. I keep them out of the way for air flow, but don't care enough to make it window presentable. I recently thought about doing a new build, but I couldn't find a case I liked. I don't want a window or lighting, and I don't want buttons and USB ports on the top.

The Half Elf wrote on Nov 8, 2023, 14:23:
As for controls... let's be blunt they are designed for a gamepad. Flying a Heli, vehicle while in air control (and things like ducking down and wheelies while on bikes) work great on a gamepad, but just don't translate well to the setup Rockstar has for KB/M. Been this way since GTA3 was released.

Rebind them to something better. I never use the default controls in any game. WASD is only good for shooters where all you do is move and shoot. Add more things and it becomes clunky. I did try controlling vehicles with a controller in GTA V and using KBM for on foot, but I gave up and just used KBM. You do get more fine controls for accelerate, brake, turning, and flying with analog controls of a controller, but I can't stand having to aim with a controller.

Verno wrote on Nov 8, 2023, 15:09:
The controls have always been a sticking point. I'm not slapping a key/button repeatedly to run anymore at my age Rockstar

They got rid of the tap to sprint after GTA: SA. Both GTA IV and V you tap shift once (don't know if that's default key) to toggle between walk and run, and holding shift sprints.

I won't be picking up GTA 6 unless they remove the Rockstar launcher and social club BS. I would occasionally feel like firing up GTA V and releasing steam by causing havoc, but every time I had to wait for a launcher update, then the Social Club update, then it would forget my login, so I'd have to open PasswordSafe to get it because it's a random generated 16-character password, then I'd have to prove I wasn't a robot by doing some CAPTCHA things. By then I wanted to get in my real car and go mow down some people. I also used to fire up GTA IV to vent steam too, but because it was on disk, all I had to do was insert the disk and play.

Krapalicious wrote on Nov 8, 2023, 11:54:
Never really liked Rockstar games tbh.
The control schemes in their games are trash and that's a deal breaker for me.
The only Rockstar game I played and finished was Red Dead Redemption 1 on Xbox 360.

I generally don't like 3rd person games because I don't like the 3rd person view and typically find the controls bad, and this was true with GTA III and Vice City. I never got far into either of those. Starting with GTA San Andreas, they finally managed to make a 3rd person game I could play, and made it better with GTA IV.

Hanneth wrote on Nov 8, 2023, 13:37:
Also I have never finished GTA IV, or V single player because it was impossible for me. I had to restart GTA4 twice because of progress stopping bugs. The last play through I just gave up after just getting past the point I had gotten the bug the previous times. GTA5 I got really close to the end on my 3rd play through, but after completing one of the main last missions, the next mission would not trigger. I didn't feel like trying to play through it a 4th time.

I lost count of how many times I played and finished GTA IV. I never ran into any bugs that prevented me from finishing, I don't remember any major bugs come to think of it. The only issue I had was at release, key rebinding was a mess. They eventually fixed most of it with a patch, however some things never got fixed like the right mouse button would still hang up your phone even if you rebound it.

I've only played through GTA V once, which I also didn't encounter any bugs preventing me from completing it.

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 6, 2023, 12:23:
So, I assume this happens on a predicable cycle of some kind. It would have been nice if they had said when the last time this happened was and when it will happen again (post 2032)...

Yes it's predictable. Saturn's orbit is about 29.5 years, and this will happen twice during Saturn's orbit when the rings line up facing the earth like that. So it happens basically every 15 years.

Hump wrote on Nov 3, 2023, 16:21:
I bought this game and played all of 20 minutes. Never picked it up again.

Out of the whole series I enjoyed Blood Dragon more than any of the other titles and it was mainly a side project done by a few of the employees.

I can't see the series continuing unless they can come up with something out of the box.

*Opinion served*

I finally got around to playing Blood Dragon last month. I bought a FC3 + Blood Dragon bundle Uplay key from Amazon years ago. I played FC3, and when I finished it I was burned out on "Far Cry." So Blood Dragon just sat there, still installed all this time. I laughed so hard when the guy said "I better not have to climb any fucking towers."

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 3, 2023, 15:19:
I apparently overlooked the original. How did it compare to "The Witness"?

They're pretty different, but I think if you enjoy one you'll enjoy the other. I found the Talos Principle's puzzles more intuitive. I could always see what I needed to do, I had to figure out how to do it with what I had. Some of The Witness' puzzles were more about figuring out what the "rules" are before you could solve the puzzles. There was one set of puzzles in The Witness (the ones at the dock) that I could solve, but I didn't understand what I was doing. It's like my subconscious figured it out and I was able to solve the puzzles, but you asked me to explain what to do, I couldn't do it. By the time I finally understood what the "rule" was, I had almost finished that section.

McMil wrote on Nov 3, 2023, 19:59:
If you played Doom 2 deathmatch over a 14.4k modem with zero lag, then I can relate to you. our round of bouts usually included Timinatr, Judas21, Judas23, some vort etc. Sometimes some MementoMori co-op
It was ultra awesome.

I met most of my best friends thanks to playing the Doom demo over a 14.4k modem. We had a local BBS, and when you signed out, you could leave a sign out message for others to see. I left a message saying call me if you want to play Doom and left my phone number. That message led to playing Doom with a few people regularly, then later LAN parties playing Quake. I still keep in touch with a few people from then and we still play coop games.

DanteUK wrote on Nov 2, 2023, 13:00:
got popups for a few days, then it just stopped playing videos at all until I disable my adblocker.
So now I'm forced to endure some crappy loud advert for some product I've no interest in so a corporation can make money from content someone else has created for them. Seriously thinking of just giving up on YT.

I still haven't seen an ad or popup with Firefox and uBlock Origin yet.

It's funny that the YouTube algorithm has been promoting this video a lot recently: The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead

A Colorado judge chided a welding company that tried to pay off a $23,500 settlement with a subcontractor by sending the money in loose coins that weighed 3 tons (2.7 metric tonnes).

How much does it cost to ship 3 tons?