Ashtear

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Getting it done with the power of friendship since 1991.

🔥💨💧💎 🌒🌕🌘 ✨

Some suggested Lemmy communities:

!patientgamers

!jrpg

!letstalkaboutgames

Discord for Japanese-style role-playing game (JRPG) discussion: discord.gg/vHXCjzf2ex

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Ashtear,

Separating out the concentration spells is a great idea, thanks. It took me an embarrassingly long time to not forget I had one rolling while I cast another.

Ashtear,

No in-game significance in the original games, although with the number of changes, some dates could move around.

Ashtear,

I’m still pretty bummed out about not having FeMC, so I’m not currently planning on picking this up. Especially at that price point.

That said, we now know Eiha and Kouha are in the game and it looks like Shuffle Time is gone, so I think it’s safe to expect some major gameplay changes. Between that and the new scenes, maybe this will be better than it looked at first impression.

Ashtear,

I had a $200 gift card to Google Play that came with a Samsung TV. I redeemed the card and wasn’t spending the balance very quickly. Next time I checked, the balance was gone. I contacted Google support and they tried to tell me there was never any credit on the account to begin with. They tried to get me to contact Samsung. I asked them why Samsung would have information on my Google Play balance after putting a Google Play-branded giftcard on my Google Play account (never got an answer to that). After multiple escalations, they finally told the balance was either zeroed for inactivity or expired (it had been a year-ish). I received no warnings, no notices in change of terms (this info wasn’t on the gift card), nothing. All the credit was just gone one day.

I requested clarification/explanation (including a copy of their gift card expiration policy) but they simply stopped responding to emails. The whole process took over a month.

Ashtear,

She’s the biggest kid. It’s adorable.

Has some strong performances in scenes later, too.

Ashtear,

I failed the notorious late-game Shivers check twice. Though I do sometimes wonder if I should have just savescummed it the second time, if I had, I never would have found one of the most memorable parts of the game for me (the phone call).

Ashtear,

Failure had a massive impact on my story. I wasn’t planning on going for an evil run, but I couldn’t stop someone from doing something very bad and it changed everything, from characters, to main story, to even gameplay since a character’s kit changed. People died, and probably the personality of the character changed, too (I’ll find that out next run).

I hated it in the moment, but I’m glad I did it because it’s made the run so memorable.

I’ve still been loading when dumb gameplay happens, like how Tav just walked into a room to cast a spell I thought she had range on, or I forget to bring the rest of the party into combat after I broke a party member off to ambush.

As for who did the thing, it was a late Act 2 spoiler:It was Shadowheart, in that moment

Ashtear,

lemmyverse.net might be a better alternative for now, with the explanation that it all goes to the same conversation.

Yes, that’s not always 100% true, but new users can learn about the nuances of defederation and other blocking after they get their feet wet.

Ashtear,

I did the same–with links to Reddit alternatives–back in early July when it became clear Reddit admin was going full autocratic on the situation. I didn’t delete my content and I still don’t plan to, as the discussions (and especially the Q&A) on Reddit are a public good that is a net positive for the Internet, and even the ugly acts of site leadership don’t change that. I encourage anyone that still has a Reddit account to pin a similar message.

This post also reminded me that I’d recommended Squabbles when I first made the post, so I had to run over there and edit that out. Oof. 😬

Relay for Reddit API Subscription Fees (www.reddit.com)

One of the remaining 3rd party Reddit apps (Relay) has begun discussing what it would be charging for subscription fees. Imo, they actually seem somewhat reasonable. The weird thing is that every upvote or downvote is an API call so you can rack up a huge number of API calls from voting....

Ashtear,

That does seem reasonable.

Makes me curious, did Reddit finally budge on the pricing or did this dev figure out a way to optimize calls? Latter seems unlikely given each vote is a call.

Ashtear,

Really? This must have been a recent change, because it was a permanent curse for me (removed with a cleric spell).

Ashtear,

First off, I want to say that it’s open and thoughtful (and properly formatted!) communication like this that makes me feel comfortable here. In my current, early experience with Lemmy instances, there are vanishingly few operators that know how to be the adults in the room, much less come across as professional.

Being self-aware enough to know that resources limit the scope of what lemm.ee admins can do is key, and I absolutely agree with the approach of asking users to take on personal responsibility in curating their feeds. That said, I appreciate you taking the time to engage with leadership at hexbear.

Personally, I have only rarely come across questionable content from hexbear users. Since I’m not a fan of statist ideologies, I’m sure there is content from the instance I wouldn’t like. However, a drastic step like defederating hexbear hadn’t occurred to me until the recent frustrations from users here started boiling over. I still don’t think it’s even close to a necessary step.

I do agree that enabling propaganda–of any kind, not just from the Kremlin–is something to be wary of. I also expect clear evidence to be presented before any major action is taken. Too often, online discourse today descends into baseless accusations of being bad faith actors when conflict arises. Early adopters of lemm.ee are likely to be its future leaders, and I hope those reading understand how chilling it is to open conversation when such behavior is prevalent. I invite the users here to join me in assuming good faith and keeping personal anxieties in check.

Ashtear,

I’ll be waiting for reviews for this one before I jump into it personally, but either way I’m still glad that an independent studio is getting this much run for their game.

It’s also releasing at a very good time, with a fairly light release schedule for the genre the rest of the year now that Eiyuden (and probably Suikoden) are pushed back to next year. There are quite a few remakes/remasters on the schedule anyway, not a lot of new stuff like this.

Ashtear,

Consumables I would suggest using aggressively, especially any that use a main action. They don’t really scale, and if you don’t use the ones you find early on, eventually you’ll get to a point where they won’t be better than your cantrips/low level spells/basic attacks.

Ashtear,

Some stuff from my “I wish I knew/I did earlier” list:

  • Bind frequently used actions on your Custom bar. You can hit the key for these no matter which of your bars are currently displayed. It will speed up your combat quite a bit. Universal actions like Jump and Hide can all be rebound too.
  • Weapon skills or spells granted by gear will fall off the Custom bar entirely if you get disarmed or unequip them (not just grey out). Or other stuff will if you respec.
  • The “Shrouded” attribute in gear simply refers the light level of the spot your character (or target) is standing in, not stealth or invis or anything complicated.
  • Ritual spells don’t use any resources when cast out of combat.
  • There are a maximum of four Inspiration points, any you get beyond that will be wasted. Use them if you get them.
  • You’ll be able to respec your avatar and your companions pretty early on, so don’t be afraid to swap out of something that’s not working out due to bugs. I finally settled on the Thief sub-class with Astarion because Mage Hand wasn’t working correctly in Arcane Trickster and because I was rarely able to use Ambush or Alacrity in the Assassin kit due to some jank in how combat starts.
  • Some feats/item enchantments (like the Lucky feat and gear with procs on attacks) aren’t working correctly, so keep an eye out for that. Feats can also be changed with respecs.
  • Unless you’re committed to it for roleplaying reasons, respec Shadowheart out of the Trickery Domain, as it’s pretty bad. You might be able to come up with a clever use for Blessing of the Trickster since it’s a free, long-term Concentration spell.
Ashtear,

What’s particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren’t using state-of-the-art graphics.

Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn’t mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.

Ashtear,

Heh, yes, I still have fond memories of the late 16-bit generation and early fifth-gen games that didn’t get on board the 3D bandwagon. Sprite-based games started to look mighty sexy until everyone decided that untextured polygons were the way to go for a while. 😑

Ashtear,

This thread’s on Baldur’s Gate 3, that’s one of them. I should have specified the other of the two most highly-rated games this year; it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both games are more or less running last-gen graphics tech and are ahead of the pack on review scores. Zelda looks good for a Switch game, though.

You could probably ask a dozen gaming enthusiasts and get a dozen different answers on why this year has been exceptional. I’d say it’s because we have a lot of big releases from venerable franchises arriving all in the same year (Baldur’s Gate is one, plus Diablo, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Street Fighter). There are hits from new IPs like Cassette Beasts, Dave the Diver, Hi-Fi Rush, and maybe Starfield in a few weeks if it’s not a disaster.

It’s a nice mix of old and new worlds and plenty of surprises. On top of all that, it’s only August. I think there’s a sense that the industry is starting to leave the pandemic behind, too.

Ashtear,

Since we’re dealing with very small niches still, I also recommend participating in genre communities. I’m not really seeing an active one for RPGs but something like Dragon Age would get some run on !pcgaming and !pcgaming (with the usual caveat that kbin currently isn’t always great about getting all their content out to federated instances).

Grow the genre/archetype communities enough and eventually they will naturally break out into individual property niches for sure.

Ashtear,

The ol’ DOS Barrelmancy is still good for groups. I’m also a big fan of the Arrow of Many Targets, but I haven’t found a lot of them. Can get some explosive results against groups of low HP targets when paired with the Cull the Weak power.

Concentrated Blast is guaranteed to hit, and there are free junk spells you can set it up with before combat. It does very good damage at low level, and it only needs one tadpole to unlock.

This might be a bug, but Blessed Healer in the Cleric’s Life Domain is triggering per target on group healing spells. Right now my cleric is healing herself for 20+ with Mass Healing Word and applying two turns of Bless to everyone (Concentration free!) from The Whispering Promise ring, all on a single bonus action.

Ashtear,

Still playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I really enjoyed Divinity: Original Sin 2 and I’m quite happy that this is an improvement in virtually all respects (the soundtrack being the only letdown so far). I’m especially happy that my biggest problem with D:OS2–the insanely tight level curve–is mostly gone here. It’s still a bit tight in Act 1, but I just started Act 3 and I’ve skipped a entire zone and a half now without being underleveled. I cannot overstate how important it is for roleplaying to not be required to comb the map or do nonsense like getting XP for persuasion successes and then turning around and killing to squeeze out every last point.

There are some negatives here, especially with bugs. Biggest one is Lae’zel simply vanishing from my camp. I found her wandering around a zone later but she wouldn’t join the party even with the dialogue indicating she was. Pretty sure she’s permanently gone now. A bunch of random skills and gear are either outright broken or are inconsistent. Fortunately there are workarounds for that part, but I’m honestly a little surprised to see a game lacking polish like this score as highly as it has in reviews.

I’ve finally moved on with the main story, with the plot progression essentially pausing for 50 hours while I poked around. What’s standing out to me now is that this game is a prime example of “great script writing, mediocre story writing.” The core narrative does hit on some of my personal favorite tropes, like shifting pantheons and otherwise huge stakes, but this story desperately needed more from the antagonists early on. There’s no reason one of them couldn’t have shown up in person to harass the party in Act 1. Merely dealing with underlings of varying narrative quality feels limp. That said, so many of the dialogues are absolutely fantastic, right up there with the best of Bioware’s work that the game is emulating. Better yet, they are paired with engrossing motion capture and impeccable voice acting. Still a shame not to be hearing Alix Wilton Regan in a Larian game, though.

Ashtear,

See also: Pokémon.

I’ve always been bothered by the lack of competition (and anti-competitive behavior) in the football space.

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