LadyCrimson

I remember in WoW there were toons standing around for people who bought certain packages of the game...if you had such you'd click on him and get your special pet etc., & if you didn't have the code the 'toon would tell you to go away or whatever. For me a sales 'toon wouldn't be any more immersion breaking than that. Oh and I completely agree with this (goes along w/my signature, heh):

I agree....Rush is no McKay. McKay was the one thing on Atlantis I liked, the arrogant, cowardly, hyperactive, genius arsehat.

You could do that thing where you wear nothing but an apron and you show up in the doorway with a hot plate and a cold beverage. But then you find out he already did the deed 5 minutes prior, alone....and then the night is ruined. :'( I'm not sure whether to or

Since I don't have the game, I can't say whether I'd truly mind the sales presentation or not. However from the 1st post my impression is (so far) that it's just the 1 guy standing around somewhere? If that's so, it wouldn't bother be because once I'd clicked on him once, I'd never click on him again. I guess I don't get that immersed in game environment that an advertising 'toon standing in some town/area would bug me....like anyone, I don't like commercials interrupting the smooth flow of a TV show, but it's not like the game is involuntarily stopping all available action in the middle of combat or questing to show you a cut-scene commercial in-game, correct? (which would bother me) (edit) Since games aren't like 2 hour movies where I see/play the whole thing at one time, that kind of immersion doesn't apply for me.

Hence why I can't stop thinking of him as Engineer Scott. Scotty: ... captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want. Scotty: ...You didn't tell him how long it would REALLY take, did you? Geordi La Forge: Of course I did. Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

Played Borderlands, hit lvl 30, think I'm close to end of game. Baked some white chocolate chip pan cookies (too lazy to do drops on a cookie sheet...) and am now about to make some burgers for dinner. After that...probably more Borderlands. Hubby's been sequestered away in his warm office studying and geeking...let's see if some food & cookies will draw him out a while.

I'm curious what state this is in, as well. I've never been asked for ID for a video game, in Gamestop or otherwise. I don't know if it's "fishy" but it's definitely odd to me...different state laws or something? Edit: like a policy of "if you look under 40 we'll ID" taken too seriously?

Someone else I think mentioned the signing up for social website or something in order to download...and now these MS points. I don't even know what MS points are, or how one would get them. Nor do I care. My impression is the MS points stuff is at optional, right?...you can just purchase the DLC w/cash instead if you want? If that's the case, it wouldn't bother me. But if you are going to have DLC, even the piecemeal kind, it should always either be available directly from the game install and from the official game site. The whole tying things into other services these days drives me nuts.

I don't mind if they want to periodically make new playable areas/quests (even if they're not true expansion-pack huge) and make them DLC for another $10 etc but anything resembling "buy a new suit of armor" or "get more stash space" for a few bucks...picayune, piecemeal type stuff...would irritate the heck out of me. Sure it's business & I don't have to purchase them - and I wouldn't - so I don't find it colossally offensive - but I'd still find it annoying. It doesn't, however, make me care about not purchasing the original game...if the game is fun/feels complete as purchased, of course. I think it would be enough of a purchasing power statement to just ignore the DLC, if you don't like the idea of DLC. If not enough people buy those, they'd get the message that people don't like that aspect, rather than they don't like the game entire.

I agree about the Earth nanny thing. It'd be slightly more interesting if they were completely on their own. I mean, maybe after the first season, you could find some reason/way for them to occasionally communicate with Earth, but the stones stuff doesn't jibe. I find Chloe's chr. irritating. Such a whiner, at least so far. The episode overall was poor but I still found it amusing. Unintentional bad comedy, like I said.

It seems to be something shows are doing now and I don't know why. I noticed it with the later seasons of CSI and now Sanctuary. Assuming I understand the reference of split-screens in TV series correctly....I'm guessing we can largely blame "24" for it becoming a common trend.

Tonight's episode entertained me, but mostly because of the unplanned, momentary bouncing back and forth of traded consciousness some of them were doing. That was hilarious.

Didn't watch all games entire, but it was certainly an interesting and often close series. 5 months until April is a long time when you don't like hockey or football...

I bought a purple Slow healing shield early in the game from a vendor (sold EVERYTHING to afford it at that point, too, hahah). But that's the only one I've ever seen. Guess they're very rare. @entrerix @Majek I think people who reach lvl 50 in very short span of time are either playing MP w/at least some people who are higher lvl to speed things up or there's some other MP type of trick. I can't see reaching lvl 50 in 20 hours solo, that's for sure. I'm guesstimating but I'm probably around 25-30hrs for story/quest progression, but 40hrs total gametime. That's w/my main + 3 other lowbees. For 1st run thru I do all side quests even if grey. Repeat some areas for loot, too. But mostly, I spend inordinate amounts of time spacing out in front of vending machines like an idiot, comparing (& testing) weapons & working on certain achievements. I can definitely see that the classes don't feel quite different enough to make that super interesting...so I might stop a while when my hunter reaches lvl 50.

Oh yea...what kind of shield do you prefer? I was using the healing ones but I found a 550ish high fire resistance one and w/the hunters heal-after-a-kill skill it's been great. Between that and the revolver changed my gameplay tactics a bit...it's great fun to charge up close, fire in a bandits face and watch them dissolve.

Sniper rifle is always 1st choice when I can do distance. I don't find a faster RoF to be bad, since I'm not the best aimer anyway. More important is how fast it reloads, which isn't always obvious until you actually try it. The weapons stats on descriptions seem lackluster...sometimes you can't tell how fast/good one will be until you actually use it. Shotguns w/low to middling accuracy & revolvers, for most fast things that like to rush you. Often 1-shot kill anything up close even w/out criticals, as well as seemingly whittle boss lifebars down tons faster than most, so I think of them as 'panic weapons.' I used smg's/auto rifles/repeater pistols a lot at first and carry them for back up, but since up close it's hard to miss anyway, I'd rather use the extreme 1-2 shot kill dmg. than lots of little burst dmg. Further I go the less I prefer just 1 weapon & use what's best for situation so I don't run out of any 1 type of bullets too fast. High elemental chance seems awesome for mid-range to close up, been getting into that a lot now. Here's my current four and the SMG I use if I plain run out of the other bullets, heh.

J.E., were you playing on Very Hard? But still, sounds like Torchlight has the late-game unbalance issues the original Diablo1 had. Er...at least that the overpowered Diablo1 sorcerer had. Loot based games often have that problem tho...maybe Torchlight needs something like a Zod rune that hardly ever drops, a reason to keep searching, heh. The enchanting feature is too overpowered, if you use it, making dungeon-found items even more extraneous. I'm really surprised they left that aspect in there. I remember in Fate I had all these items with so many enchantments you couldn't see them all on the item list anymore. They should've made it so you could only enchant any single item a few times. I still think it's worth the $20 tho.

--I guess instead of boss runs, one finds the best-chance chests and does chest-runs? --I love the humorous achievements titles.I want to become the Skagpocalypse, only 1200 or so to go. --Got my 3rd orange item last night. The 1st two weren't great, but the 3rd is awesome for my level. A 200+ dmg caustic-x4 revolver that messily 1-shots a lot of critters. It's now my close-combat weapon. --my playthrough w/hunter seems disproportionately obsessed with revolvers, and I noticed there doesn't seem to be a revolver skill stat like for other weapons. Interesting?

Found some of them already I think. Do you know what the level 'cap' is for items in chests & area? That is, y'know how Diablo areas could only drop certain ilvls of items and that's it, that sort of thing? Or can almost any big chest randomly pop out something really high, based on what chr lvl you are when you open it? Edit:Based on my tiny experience, it doesn't seem entirely random, in that chests in certain areas seem to have better odds of spawning a good item, but I wonder if chr lvl affects anything. One of the ones near Skagzilla popped out my first orange item. :D

Heheh....had a few things like that happen early on too. Fun stuff. Skagzilla for me was the easiest mini-boss for me to do. No cheap/sniper oriented methods there...didn't take much ammo, but I had a beefy shotgun. The next boss was harder/had my usual troubles but I'm now in the trash-town of New Haven. Pew, smelly.

In that case...unless you're a serious graphics 'ho, my answer remains the same...about a few years. And if you don't care whether you can run at max-everything settings, or aren't playing games much or are broke, even longer. But yes, 10 years would be pushing it. Maybe 4-5 at most. heheh

LMAO...corny silliness, at least when taken out of context. *chortle* ...but other than that, this game looks like it has potential & I haven't played a 'deeper' RPG in a long time, maybe I'd like them again. Thanks for all the thoughts on the game so far....I may pick it up when done w/Borderlands. It's nice to have a PC that can play new games again.

I've felt the same way for a long time now. I don't buy many games per year anymore. When I do, I try to give them at least several hours of my time to see if I'll get sucked in...but usually not so much. Lots of games on my shelf practically untouched. Torchlight is fun & simple, but I can see how it's not mentally obsessive, if that makes sense. I found Fate the same way. Enjoyable monster hacking fluff for a while, but not something to be replayed repeatedly. Too many years, too many of the same types of games. The first few hours of Borderlands I was ho-hum up in the air about it...but it grabbed me at some point. It'll probably get dull before I get thru the entire game w/all 4 chrs...but good enough.

Well like entrerix said, you can play Borderlands how you want so it works for most player skill levels. If you want to tackle all the hard guys when the quests are orange, you're free to do so. Or not. I've been starting all the main quests a level or so higher than the quest stated level, when they're still 'green,' then often killing the actual boss+quest reward puts it over the top. So the timing for me has worked out well. Getting there is still a moderate challenge and I always try the boss the regular way first. It's hard to learn FPS boss fights in 10 second frantic encounters and I don't consider dying 50 times a very fun way to learn - which I've done before in other pure FPS I've done. Meh...

Personally I like getting better at a game than the character outgrowing the challenge. Unless we're talking I want to be the guy hard. Borderlands lets people like me become more skilled/better, tho, w/out having to become so frustrated we toss the game in the garbage first before we reach that point.