Haha, I’m in Tampa. We’ve been able to do a whole bunch of things since, I shit you not, May 5th.

Not to mention that even during the 2nd shutdown, a bunch of places which are ostensibly bars/clubs simply paid $500 to the state for a food license, set up some microwaves, and declared themselves restaurants for the…

Very true.

However, certain types of games necessitate certain types of storytelling, and MMOs are often caught in a bit of a quandry: to what extent is the player-character integral to the movement of the greater story (assuming there is on)?

Let’s take two examples on each end of the spectrum: World of Warcraft and…

I was talking with a friend of mine about this exact topic a few nights ago at our local bar, and they brought up the point about lifecasting and whatnot, but here was my counter.

They had been together for years and had two kids, both of which were past toddler age. You don’t get that far into a relationship,…

Same position you are (played EVE for awhile, but not with any consistency over the last 5-6 years), and I agree completely.

I made my billions of ISK trading and running missions in high-sec, and would occasionally take a sojourn down to null-sec just to do something different, and would join a corp here or there to…

It has elements of that, but it’s far more serious since outside of doing your own manufacturing, there wasn’t much reason why a high-sec player needed minerals such as Zydrite or Morphite, which only come from low and null-sec mining (or, much more inefficiently, refining modules that have those minerals).

Tritanium…

Maybe I should resub to Eve after a few years of being away from the game.

My two main characters have a rather large stockpile of unrefined gear from running thousands of missions, along with raw minerals, which all appear to become very valuable in the upcoming weeks.

Hell, even the unrefined modules should become…

FFXV’s problem is that they seemed to have wanted to tell a character-driven story inside of a plot-driven one.

All four of the main characters are, for the most part, passive. They do things not because they want to, because they’re duty bound. Even the few times they make decisions that appear to be of their own…

Not to unnecessarily defend IX (good game, not one of my favorites), but your synopsis is purposefully stilted because you’re mixing terms that exist in the real-world to convey a meaning about people, entities, ideas, and concept that don’t necessarily apply to the world of IX. You can do that with literally any…

I’ve always said that FFXII had great gameplay that, unfortunately, took away from the story, as I’d spend hours grinding and actually enjoying the battle system, and then would struggle to remember exactly what I was supposed to be doing in terms of the story.

As a writer and a fan of literature, I have to agree with you.

Honestly, I think it’s because many people have been raised in a world where, for a long time, the most common form of media have been TV shows and movies, so you have a populace who are used to taking in story and narrative and characters and plot in 30 min - 2 hour increments, with the expectation that stories have…

I think the issue with a lot of FF stories (even the ones I like) is that about halfway through, a lot of them need to add something to make the stakes a bit higher, and it often comes across as completely out of nowhere, especially if the game had been grounded in terms of tone beforehand.

Vaan and Penelo, in XII, was actually a bit of executive meddling from SE. They felt they needed cute, approachable characters for marketing purposes, and thus, Vaan and Penelo were born. It’s even lampshaded in the game by literally everyone else (namely Balthier, Basch, and Ashe), because they’re all jockeying for…

Even though I didn’t particularly like 13 (and liked 13-2 just a bit better, and never played Lightning’s Return), the one thing I’ll give the team is that they really did try to make a new and unique world that wouldn’t be seen as a retread of one or more of the previous titles.

I love 12, but they really did a poor job of explaining some of the more fantastical elements of the plot (such as the Occuria).

Also, wouldn’t the burden of proof be on the state to prove that Bloomberg (or whomever) paid off these debts specifically to get these former felons to register to vote? Bloomberg could simply say they were charitable donations, and I’m pretty sure that Bloomberg has enough lawyers on payroll that they combed through…

Exactly, and the PCIE 4.0 NVME market is just now releasing drives that are up to Sony’s standard, so you’re literally paying top-end prices because you need the latest gear.

PCIE 4.0 adoption is really low, for two reasons.

1. Only AMD chipsets (specifically B450/X470 and newer) have PCIE 4.0, Intel doesn’t have it yet, and won’t have it until mid-late next year. Further, even though Ryzen is gaining marketshare (I have a Ryzen system myself), Intel is still dominant with nearly 80% of the…

Ehh, PCIE 4.0 NVME drives still don’t have high adoption rates, even amongst PC gamers (like myself).

Yeah, I got the date wrong, but my overall point still stands concerning that while we lost 4 of those Senate elections (which were incumbents), it was overall a net loss of 2 seats.