They had me at Razah! Immediately rolled a Revenant, and will be playing it alongside my new Warrior while I figure out which I like more.

Really excited for the livestream to see more Conduit.

Can’t wait for the livestream to learn more about Paragon. I might be Warrioring through the new expansion…

Having Skritt buddies is tempting me to add Thief to my roster too!

The blog post elaborates on the spec icon at least, the big theme is gambling. Your Skritt pals will steal two random artifacts for you to pick from, and your new utility skill class can be recast while on cooldown, but with a risk of penalties to you.

I do think it’s funny that Thief is getting this, while Mesmer is getting bard troubador, given Mesmer has “chaos sorcery”… which is not wild magic, but space, time, mind and sense magic.

the most important thing was revealed though: I’m gonna get to take some fantastic screenshots of my Sylvari playing a lute.

Think this time was just right place, right time. A lot of retention mechanics are online now, like Wizard’s Vault, and also having a cosmetic set that interested me to keep playing for a while (Astral Ward). Rerelease of LWS1 helped me feel connected to the story as opposed to having no idea who the new Destiny’s Edge 2 crew was.

The sad thing is, after I bounced some time during the very first release of LWS1, I spent the following period constantly thinking “man, I wish this game was more like GW2”. But I’m back now for good, and loving it!

Good stuff. From the site (https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/from-the-wilds-to-whats-next/):

With our next expansion, we’re taking the next step. Elite specializations are making a return, this time designed to work together with the flexible build crafting system we’ve been refining over the past few years. However, these new specializations won’t come with dedicated weapons. Instead, each one introduces unique profession mechanics, a new trait line, utility skills, an elite skill, a healing skill, and distinct playstyles without locking you into a specific weapon or equipment loadout.

yeah, I think the problem was having a rotation of randoms, so lots of time waiting; although clear times were pretty consistent overall. also a lot of time spent doing quests. the post-dungeon voyage for handins always nuked the exp/h rate.

I finished up at 303 hours to 60, which was an extremely long journey. I think questing you can do it in 75-80h if you’re really efficient.

I think I read arms is basically an abandoned spec and you’re not really meant to run it? Like not even in PVP, they just dropped support for balancing it.

Big thing: improvements for alts, like the Warband system of account-wide reps like on retail. Looking at the potential for multiple Argent Dawn or Furbolg grinds on non-raiding alts like… maybe I don’t really need the profession recipes or dungeon sets.

you have to consider the cost in terms of real wages though, inflation only makes production costs higher for producers, for customers money is worth about as much as it has been since the 70’s; though this changes from income quantile to income quantile, and from market to market.

the price increases only reflects confidence Nintendo has in their DRM.

Eeeeeverything! I’ve been getting into VF5 (Aoi), Guilty Gear (primarily Dizzy and Potemkin). I also used to play a lot of Smash Ultimate (Robin, Zelda, Mii Brawler). I’m also into retro fighters too: Smash Remix, Fighters Megamix, Asuka 120% LimitOver. Been interested in Mace and Dual Heroes too.

Hello everyone! First time posting here, does anyone know any fighting game groups around Brisbane?

Happened twice, both to my #1 games. Tried Chrono Trigger as a kid and didn’t like it, then came back and played it as a young adult and was like… damn… this is an actual treasure.

In 2015 I tried FFXI due to the XIV crossover event, and I could not get past the eccentric and clunky UI and the pacing of the combat. I tried again a couple of years later and committed to finishing all the stories. It became my new #1 and I think genuinely one of the best games ever made, in terms of revealing and pushing the artistic potential of online games, and games in general. Actual masterpiece and a massive innovation, and unlike Chrono Trigger I think the lessons are going to be a lot harder to learn and replicate.

I think the mind control device is speaking to values people actually hold and then doing something completely different, kind of like mainstream political parties here in Australia. There’s an imaginary honest, oldschool merchant Valve that lives in people’s heads, and there’s the actually practicing Valve the megacorp.

Or, more broadly, just the incredible power of cultivated charisma and rhetorical prowess and a cult of personality. The fervour with which people take any impersonal criticism of a business as a personal attack on a close friend, family member, or community is evidence of that.

See also a certain Square-Enix director spouting conservative, transphobic rhetoric and somehow being hailed as an ally, minus a small amount of people who saw through the smoke and mirrors act.

I swear there’s a cohort of people that could have gotten into politics but decided the games and tech industries would make them more money.

I bought one timed exclusive on Epic (Stranger of Paradise), it left the entire redundant download behind without moving it and devoured 220 GB of my SSD in the process, and I decided I never wanted to use the Epic store again.

I’d love to move to GOG, but then I’d have to go through Lutris, which is currently in the process of crashing constantly for reasons the devs don’t fully understand, so RIP to that I guess.

this is the entire cycle that keeps undergrad computer science going

I get the feeling that “Techdirt” may be a bit biased.

nano for editing config files, emacs if I’m writing code… kwrite or joplin if I need a scratch pad or to share notes between devices respectively

If you start working towards it, I believe a Living Ship can be obtained in a week at the fastest. They’re not great for S-rank ships, but they do have massive inventories and are very cheap to run. Meanwhile, if you save up, grab the first Exotic you like, since they’re essentially the baseline “high average” you measure every other ship against. Interceptors can be acquired for “free” by locating one and doing a short fetch quest.

Also, once you’re deep into the game and can afford to class-up a ship, finding any C-class ship and upclassing it makes it the best ship, so hang on to anything you like the look of. Credits also become trivial once you can make agricultural operations and break open depots, which opens up the process of buying and scrapping Vy’keen fighters for nanites and inventory expansions.

Mechanical spoilers for ideas on saving up for your first Exotic:

Probably what people would call an “MMO-lite”. Everything is instanced for 1-4-32 players depending on the activity. There are dungeon crawls you can do for really useful loot that do facilitate multiplayer, and the Expeditions and probably civilised space tend to be really populated. I can’t speak for Euclid because I’m off in Budullangr.