Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[VirusOnline]

So today I found out that my water heater is now leaking water. How did I find this out? 4 am I hear a 'fssssh' sound and smell chlorine while getting ready for work, and wasn't sure what it was. Come back from work today and there's a large puddle of water in my garage and outside on the driveway.

Joy.

oof that sucks
this and maintenance are the main reasons I'm too afraid to invest in a house

Plus, Man Shep can't romance Garrus.

i believe this is untrue ;d

[Kolsykol]

Bought and played Cyberpunk 2077 after the 1.5 patch, I refunded it at launch because of how bad the performance was.
Game ran great with some exceptions, sometimes it felt like I had managed to go too fast and the game had to try and catch up and load everything in which slowed the game down a lot but it was very rare and seem'd random.

It's obviously a very flawed game and I think they really shot themselves in their own feet with a lot of the marketing, it's more like a Far Cry game than it is a RPG really.
I rly wish it was a silent protagonist with more fleshed out dialogue and choices, I didn't like the voice acting of Female V at all she sounded very fake and like she was '' a.c.t.i.n.g '' and trying too hard to sound '' badass ''.
The game kinda really wants to force you into some super black and white '' capitalism bad '' mentality too, V and the writing kinda feels like an edgy self-proclaimed economics expert teenager on Twitter sometimes.

Overall tho I really liked the game and think it's in a good state now and worth playing.
I typically really dislike open world games but like with Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077 actually made me want to be in and explore the world.
I even never used the fast travel option in Cyberpunk 2077 outside of once or twice because I wanted to recustomize my character or something.
But even when it was a side-quest and it was on the other side of the map I still traveled manually because the city is just so fun to travel in and it has great atmosphere it really feels like a real city they've done an absolutely incredible job with it.
It never felt to me like it had repeated assets and was copying things it felt like every inch of it was hand-crafted with a lot of love.
Even now I still hop in sometimes just to travel around it for fun.

The characters were really good too didn't think I'd like Judy at all but she ended up being my favorite character, and the romance sub-plot was genuinely really great.
Normally I think romance sub-plots in games are a bit cringey and there was some of that in the game too some of the sex scenes were just downright funny in a bad way.
But the Judy romance was perhaps one of my favorites if not my favorite in a game.

I rly hope they don't abandon the game, it's in a good state now and I'd like to see them actually expand on the open world and add some more activities.
Maybe expand on the bounty hunting, just driving around hunting marks down is a lot of fun.
The guns could also use more variety and the game could do with less locked doors.
As pretty as the city is, it's still pretty empty.
Kinda sucks that mods seem to be really hard to make for the game too, the mods I've seen all replace stuff ingame instead of add stuff it's basically just all swapping out models it's no Skyrim for sure.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Kinda sucks that mods seem to be really hard to make for the game too, the mods I've seen all replace stuff ingame instead of add stuff it's basically just all swapping out models it's no Skyrim for sure.

Cyberpunk was a half-finished game, Skyrim was a finished half-game.

[Cincierta]

oof that sucks
this and maintenance are the main reasons I'm too afraid to invest in a house

Considering the water heater was about 13 years old, I kinda realized it was pretty close to giving up the ghost. I'm surprised it lasted this long.

[Kolsykol]

Cyberpunk was a half-finished game, Skyrim was a finished half-game.

Morrowind > Skyrim, and I also enjoyed Oblivion a lot more than Skyrim too.

I wish ESO was a prettier game and had better class identity, the classes all basically have the identical builds ( I don't like melee swapping to a bow either ).
The ES franchise has a great world and world-building but it has always looked a bit too derpy for me.
The skins they sell in the ESO store are just downright sad.

But I gotta commend them for the open world sandbox they've created it's really good.
I played a Nightblade and sorta RP:ed as a thief it was pretty cool that you could actually do that and sneak around stealing stuff out in the world basically as a profession.
Funnily enough ESO is just a better Elder Scrolls singleplayer game even than Skyrim.

Don'tcha just hate it when in the off topic thread people still discuss the game? Anyway speaking of games I have been taking a break from playing this game and redownloaded starwars knights of the old republic I haven't played in a long time since launch and it has instance housing. The nice thing about getting ready to retire is having more time for games or travel so many things I want to do.

Do you mean your ship?
Or did they actually add housing for real?

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Morrowind > Skyrim, and I also enjoyed Oblivion a lot more than Skyrim too.

Honestly, same. Morrowind was probably my favorite game in middle school, I played it every single day after school and homework. Had a house full of various odds and ends I picked up or niceties (I was, and will ever be, a giant pack-rat in video games), still had tons of Vvardenfell to explore, was halfway through the main story and hadn't even touched my expacs yet..

Honestly, haven't felt that much 'magic' and desire to just aimlessly wander and explore in an open world game for a long time, up until Elden Ring came out. Don't know what it is about Skyrim, but I just could never get into it like I did Morrowind (and Oblivion, albeit to a lesser extent). I don't think I've ever even managed to maintain interest in Skyrim long enough to get to High Hrothgar, let alone do much else.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Did my first custom paint job on a Gundam. A little messy, but for my first time, I think it came out pretty good.

Base kit is a High-grade Gundam Vidar. (I don't have an unmodified copy handy, hence the bigger Full Mechanics Vidar for comparison.) Since the inspiration for it was red mage job gear, I'm dubbing it the Gundam Vidar Crimson Duelist.

[Kolsykol]

I know it's silly, but I can't help but to get a bit irritated and feel like I am losing my mind when people say stuff like '' the new Batman movie is more grounded and realistic ''.
And then they get mad at you for bringing up how Batman is just casually walking through a corridor ( it's in the trailer, not a spoiler ) while getting shot at by assault rifles as well as gets shot at close-range and he's just fine.
Even if his entire body is bulletproof and bullets has no effect at all which is beyond ridiculous, his mouth is totally unprotected and the only non-black spot drawing attention to itself.
It's a bit hard to believe no one would aim there, just because you're scared doesn't mean your brain stops functioning completely and even just a stray bullet and blindfire would still end up hitting sooner or later.
I dunno why people can't just admit how idiotic it is and have to pull a bunch of mental gymnastics to try and justify it, normally I don't care but when the '' realism '' thing gets brought up then you've actually gotta use your brain a bit more.

It's kinda bizarre too that he doesn't use stealth, I don't think that the Nolan movies were very '' grounded and realistic '' either but I think they gave off the vibe to a somewhat decent extent at least.
The main issue really was that the choreography wasn't that great.
But at least Batman in those movies used stealth and didn't have magic armor that turned him into Superman.
It kinda just erases a lot of the tension too when he's bullet proof, in the other movies even knives were a threat to him.
Imo it would've been cooler and more engaging if he actually did move fast and try to avoid it.

I dunno tho I always feel like people just say '' grounded and realistic '' because something is dark and gritty.
It means what it means, and that's not what it means.
If anything in most movies and games they intentionally make things darker and grittier than it is/ was irl.
It becomes especially absurd when people will then act like all realism is thrown out the window because a female Mandalorian in The Mandalorian needs space for her chest on her chestplate.
I feel like I am going insane when I see people talk about this stuff.

But yeah, hmm...
Rant I guess but it has been on my mind for a long time and it kinda does upset me a little when people are so extremely nitpicky about certain things but then are totally fine with a dude taking 100 bullets.
Like at least be a tad bit honest and self-aware about it and stop pretending to genuinely care about realism etc lol.
It often feels like people claim it is because they think therefore it's '' better ''.

On a FFXIV note, I found this underrated channel cooking FFXIV food based on ingame recipes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXO2q4tCPOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmRdI60Yyo
Kinda sad she stopped making videos, I had never heard of bacon bread before tho and now I want to try it.

Honestly, same. Morrowind was probably my favorite game in middle school, I played it every single day after school and homework. Had a house full of various odds and ends I picked up or niceties (I was, and will ever be, a giant pack-rat in video games), still had tons of Vvardenfell to explore, was halfway through the main story and hadn't even touched my expacs yet..

Honestly, haven't felt that much 'magic' and desire to just aimlessly wander and explore in an open world game for a long time, up until Elden Ring came out. Don't know what it is about Skyrim, but I just could never get into it like I did Morrowind (and Oblivion, albeit to a lesser extent). I don't think I've ever even managed to maintain interest in Skyrim long enough to get to High Hrothgar, let alone do much else.

Yeah there is a project called '' Skywind '' where they're remaking Morrowind.
I dunno how to explain it honestly but I just found and still find the world in Morrowind to be way more interesting.

[Larirawiel]

Nooo! They can not deliver the Endwalker Soundtrack until mid March. And it can be delayed further. But i got a 5€ voucher for this.


Cheers

[Cincierta]

Well, about the water heater I spoke of yesterday? Turns out all the glass inside the tank shattered, and I had to get a full replacement.

Total came to about $2400 for a professional tank quality instead of builder quality tank, a 10-year warranty, and installed in an hour. The cheaper option would've had me waiting on laundry and showers for a week.