Tennmuerti

Not only do I run a small business, but it's a business in the sphere of saving people money. Granted it's not in the US but rather in EU.

Like others have said, it's not worth it, not the time nor the effort, for the miniscule amounts you would save if any for the attempted write off, if anything you will end up in the red time/money wise attempting to do it.

There are plenty of loopholes in tax laws everywhere, the question is not whether they exist, but whether they are economically viable for the size of your business vs. the savings possible, while also remaining legal on paper if/when somebody decides to check.

The reason there are so many streamers/youtubers that don't have much of an audience is very very simple, it's an easy and very tempting business to get into and start doing, and very very hard to actually break out and make anything sizable and long term out of; ratio wise compared to the numbers attempting it; so the vast majority of those attempting it remain at a minimal level and eventually fail/die off, but there will always be a mass of those attempting to get started regardless. It is essentially the struggling actor/actress Holywood syndrome of this digital generation.

@rorie: Yes it's still happening. I've tried a private window and it's the same. In Firefox.

In Chrome the reply button is now there.

I haven't seen the reply button in chat for months, if not a year at this point.
(on firefox)

Hopefully Larian can overcome their constant jovial and tongue outside the cheek style of writing for this one game, considering it's what they have been used to writing around in all their previous output for the good last decade. The tone of BG games is very much different to what Larian are used to doing in the past. And it's one of the two main things that have consistently brought down their games for me, as it robs all the more serious events and story beats they then try to do of their bite. When the whole rest of the game is just playing with its own britches strings 24/7, it's hard to build any gravitas.

And also hopefully the significant structure and breadth of variety in the nitty gritty of D&D rule set will also substitute one of their other core failings in my eyes, where they make a good base for a system but it tapers out quickly and becomes very bland in the end with not a lot of skill variety as OS1&2 progressed. If they have the D&D well to draw upon it might give them the much needed creative crutch in their abilities and systems tail end.

Obsidian was obviously the much better suited company, considering Pillars 1&2 are basically the spiritual successors to BG in all but setting. But well Microsoft ^.^and business dictated otherwise I guess.

And my second choice would be Owlcat, considering Pathfinder:Kingmaker is basically D&D3.5, but well, they're with Pathfinder atm.

They are not going to go away entirely, they will simply be faster for a few years.

Before the developers will once again use that newfound capacity to either perform more intensive loads or simply care less about the load time optimization, inflating the load times once again. This has happened with every tech improvement, the increased capacity/capability will simply be filled/used up in due time. Already this current generation has seen massively increased load times across the board as games need to load more and more information, even on PC with an SSD where we have enjoyed fast load times for a while now this increase can be felt too, in several games's cases the SSD is simply used to mitigate these ballooned loads to acceptable levels. (Nevermind edge cases like Anthem where the devs completely failed to do any load optimization even for those using an SSD.)

That said having faster load times for a while is still a massive quality of life "game changer", that has and will impact your enjoyment of any given game. And it's a very welcome and not an insignificant thing Sony is doing. If Microsoft will follow suit (and there is no reason they wont) then the new loading speed standards across the board will make life better for everyone. I am especially more excited about the ability to stream in new parts of the levels faster opening up more wiggle room to work with for the devs.

@ares42: Are you referring to skipping the animations for AI turns? Or is it something else, i'm interested.

There is an ongoing discussion in regards to this topic in the game's subforum:

https://www.giantbomb.com/sekiro-shadows-die-twice/3030-68907/forums/do-you-think-sekiro-should-have-a-difficulty-optio-1864136/

Just finished the extra boss required for Purification ending Owl(Father) on the NG+ demon bell+no charm run. Bruuuuuh!

That was a fight I was still not ready for, even after one/two shotting like half the other bosses on this second time around. Blocking is obviously just not an option (even more so then it was for the rest of the playthrough) as it is essentially just a net loss every time due to massive chip damage and your posture getting broken like crazy. So it's perfect parry or go home because 9 out of 10 of the moves/combos one shotted me with 10/10 prayer necklaces. And this version has the mechanic of recovering posture fast before his health is lowered (unlike the regular version), so basically a Mikiri counter might as well = 1-2 normal hits until that happens. Plus his ability to switch up moves mid combo on you. Final attempt I took out every possible consumable for extra health bars and revives because every little single mistake is so expensive. It was like the game saying for the final time, oh you think you're hot shit? Here: get good, but for real real this time. And I still half assed it over the finish line.

I really feel like the "no charm" option is there specifically for those who though they've learned everything and Sekiro is now easy, and is basically the intended way to challenge yourself once again; as it is kind of the proper difficulty increase instead of just the NG+ being it; and a much more interesting way of re framing the game at that. I've had way more fun and engagement with it being done this way compared to the blandness of the previous Darksouls games NG+ modes.

So what are all the ways to make NG+ harder?

I know of two: bell demon and the Kuro's charm. Any more?

I'm probably only going to do one more run, that being on NG+ for a while and wanted to get the most out of it.

I am all on board, it's been a long time since BL2.