Humanoid

It's something that can be painted either way, I could reel off the same Steam 'features' and label them an intrusive attempt to gain control over every aspect of your gaming life. Because that's what Steam is designed to do. Make Steam the default for everything and everyone. Now some people are perfectly fine with that, and that's there prerogative. But then people were fine with Microsoft's bundling tricks and other moves to ensure lock-in as well. The series of Kickstarter game developers misreading their backers' stance on choice of distribution is an easy illustration of the position Steam has wrangled themselves into, the de-facto default. Broken Sword 5 is the latest case, there's a fight just erupted over the decision to only ship Steam copies of the physical boxed games, which to a large extent rather defeats the purpose of a physical copy. But they're far from the first, and won't be the last to make that same misjudgement. Shadowrun, Banner Saga, Tex Murphy, Divinity - all have had issues with their launches related to assuming a universal desire for Steam (yes there are nuances in each case relating to contracts or unexpected technical hurdles, but the big picture adds up). This is the damage caused by Steam's ubiquity.

Maximising longevity is a reasonable enough position to take, but in general I feel for the most part it's not really something these type of comparatively minor decisions even meaningfully effect. There's two parts to determining longevity, being reliability and obsolescence. And my feeling these days, is that the former is mostly pot luck. If a part's going to fail, it's overwhelmingly likely to fail because of a manufacturing or design fault rather than any variance between specific models. I doubt even a comprehensive statistical analysis would show a different between models. Maybe a particularly poor choice of PSU would show; other than that it'd all just be statistical noise. As for obsolescence, I think the last time anyone had to even make a decision that genuinely made a difference in the lifespan of their systems was during the Q6600 vs E8x00 days. The choices made between the other components available in that day don't even register, it's not even a footnote. It's been six years now since Intel introduced the i5, and in doing so introduced the 'choice' of having hyperthreading for $100 or whatever. And in each of those years I've recommended against it, and I don't think there'd have been any genuine cause for regret for anyone who took that path. This is probably the first year since then where I think I can say it wouldn't be a waste of money, but it's hardly a recommendation either. It's still nowhere near the magnitude of that C2D vs C2Q decision. Further than that, even the graphics market is far more static these days than it was back then. Adding it all up, it really does feel that everything is a muchness, there are no decisions that would make a notable difference. The tech will hold up. Any reasonably built system today will. Now to wander off completely off-topic, I'll say this: I may hang around here a lot, but am actually pretty conservative on tech. Give me a $1000-1500 budget and I'm happy, put it up to $2000 and I'll spec something with some nicer bits and bobs. Put it up to $3000? $4000? I'll tell whoever to get the exact same $2000 thing and think instead of some other things that would make for a better experience today. All the SSD space to install all the games without even having to thing about it. A bigger, better screen. More of those bigger and better screens. The nicest chair you can find. Hell, spend that entire $1000 on a Herman Miller chair, it's a better investment than any PC component could hope to be. A nice big desk. Mahogany if you feel like it. Feel like a high-flying executive, or like Captain Kirk as you lean back and survey your domain. Furnish the entire room, all the comfort add-ons and all the storage that'd ever be needed. *That's* how I honestly feel about spending priorities. If you can still read the writing on a capacitor, it means you can theoretically go out and replace said capacitor. Whether it's worth doing so.... well I wouldn't.

I've always been the type to just buy a near-basic level board, so I'm not used to the world of high-end ones. So I'm coming at this from a position of relative ignorance, and am pretty much just using the Asus website's comparison tool only. I guess the chief consideration is how highly you rate the Wi-Fi adapter and the SATA Express support on the Deluxe. I'm not ready for SATA Express SSDs, in my view the state of SSDs today is still the same as it has been for the last few years, capacity is the only meaningful metric, performance is just simply not an issue with today's offerings, certainly not worth more than say a 10-20% price variance. More capacity over more performance every single time for mine. As for the wireless, it's superficially obvious perhaps, but here's the thing: despite it being "only" a 867Mbit adapter, it's still got an external antenna and therefore will outperform any other 867Mbit product. To get a product that's clearly superior to that, you will likely need to spend nearly an extra hundred dollars to get an AC1900 PCI-E adapter. On the other hand, you might be happy with the speed of a $15 Wireless-N adapter - since I'm also guessing you will need to buy a new ~$150 router if you go the AC option. So depending on how important the wireless requirement is, the it's either totally wasteful or good value. I'd just go with the lower total package price. I guess there's a bit of a wildcard with the sound chip on the respective boards. The respective sound specs for each is just a bunch of incomprehensible marketing jargon to me, but a review might be able to shed some light on which is actually better. Assuming, that is, you don't plan to use a sound card, an external DAC or even a full AV receiver. (I know this is missing the point, but personally I'd just buy a cheap 'C' version, reuse my Essence ST soundcard and not worry about wi-fi, but that's just my personal priorities.)

Not at all since results are resuilts and my own experience is similar: I get 600-700Mbit across about 10m, through two walls. This is with a TP-Link Archer D4 router (AC1750) and an ASUS PCE-AC68 PCI-E wireless card (AC1900) in my HTPC, which has an external 3-antennae dongle. Both devices are capable of the maximum specification of Wireless-AC, so there's no restriction in that regard. USB or purely internal solutions fare significantly worse though, my laptop has an Intel wireless AC adapter rated at 867Mbit. And as far as I know, no vendor has released a USB wi-fi adapter that is specced above 867Mbit. At the same distance as the HTPC, the laptop will only do about 200Mbit. Not surprising given it's just a little internal thing. Hell, held directly next to the router it still didn't help much - I forget what I got but it was probably 300-400Mbit.

That article is not only lacking the spec, but it's also flat out wrong in stating that their router can even theoretically do 1.75Gbit. For slightly questionable reasons, wireless ratings for dual-band AC products state the sum of both the maximum theoretical speed on the AC band (5Ghz) and the legacy N band (2.4GHz). But the thing is, you can't actually use both connections to the same client at the same time. An AC1900 product means that it can connect at 1.3Gbit using the AC standard, and at 600Mbit using the N standard. An AC1750, which is what I have, and is what they would have, connects at up to 1.3Gbit in AC mode, but only 450Mbit in N. Both these products, plus AC1600 and AC1450 would all allow the maximum potential of Wireless AC, with varying speed support for older devices that you might own. Implying that any of these implementations has any maximum speed advantage is flat out deceptive. So yeah, it's a stupid convention, because you have to infer both numbers that make up that total. And it gets even murkier once you drop under AC1450. What is AC1200? It's 867Mbit AC + 300Mbit N, which means it's technically overstating its capabilities. But the point is you know this only because it's the closest combination between the common implementations of AC (1300, 867, 433) and N (150, 300, 450, 600) to 1200. EDIT: It's even worse if you think about AC1300. D-Link sell such a product. What is it? Is it a pure single-band router that only does 1.3Gbit wireless AC and no support for legacy N devices? Hah, nope, it's 867Mbit AC + 450Mbit N, rounded down. Because having AC1300 be 1300Mbit and creating an AC1317 for this other product would be too sensible I guess.

Bit dodgy how they don't actually publish the rating of the wireless module, only that it's wireless-ac. There are multiple possible speed ratings for it, the maximum being 1.3Gbps. Anandtech's review has it listed as a 867Mbps module.

Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again? (And yes, melee is god-king in that engine)

Yeah I got my money's worth from Rogue Legacy but wouldn't 'recommend' it as such. In the end I think I played it a few hours too many because of the MMO grinding thing (oh look I can upgrade this 15/25 bonus to a 16/25!), and in hindsight I do rate it a bit lower because of that pointless granularity. I was not overly keen on how it felt kinaesthetically either, the sense of motion and momentum didn't feel very solid at all compared to a "AAA" platformer like Mario or Rayman. Bruce, I'm talking about media in general, but have never played any of the Far Cry games (and never intend to). But the aim is finding that sweet spot between not-even-close and genuine that's the most amusing, an almost sort of uncanny valley for voices. But then again, that is a real thing for people like Nicole Kidman, whose voice is pretty much the definition of that nowadays (and many would say her face as well ). Aaaanyway, tried out Unrest for an hour or so today. Mainly just soaking up the background information presented and not making any really notably "rocking the boat" type choices. In hindsight perhaps I should have tried to mix it up a little (playing Ironman mode of course), but I guess it's natural to try to play the first playthrough in the most common "what would an ancient Indian person do in this situation?" kind of direction. It's meant to be a short game that you play through multiple times so I wouldn't say I'm losing out in that regard. I will say however that it's probably the least powerful an RPG has ever made me feel, the polar opposite of the typical power fantasy. Forget being beaten up by rats, this game illustrates what it is to be genuinely powerless, in a wholly earnest manner. A caveat to all that is that I've been hanging around the Twenty Sided and Chocolate Hammer communities where the main writer of the game is active for a few years now as an active member, so I can't really give an unbiased critique - backing the game in the first place to the extent that I did was initially done as a favour and as appreciation for his previous content as much as anything.

Well they're releasing The Sims 4 in September. Obviously October is primetime for the first Sims 4 expansion, so they couldn't possibly go head to head with that.

As an Australian, I love fake Australian accents in media.

If it was me, it was probably ridiculing you for being a Star Wars fan as opposed to any scientific analysis anyway.

Yes, you can, but higher level spells have scaling AP cost (e.g. it might cost 8ap at 1 point skill, but only 6ap at 3 points), so casting them with low skill may be problematic for combat skills if they end up costing more AP than you get per turn. Like how wielding weapons that are higher level than your melee characters costs them extra AP to swing, this is the counterbalance to novice fire mages or whatever casting high level fire spells. And yes, apparently glass cannon is amazing for anyone, including tanky characters, because the AP gain means all the points you'd normally be putting into speed can go into constitution instead to offset the penalty, resulting in a net gain. That said, since I read that, I've made a point of it to not take the perk, I'd rather not break the difficulty curve too much. (Heard leech and maybe zombie are similarly gamebreaking)

It's interesting because the history of Japanese filmmaking seems to me quite the opposite. There's a quote from iconic director Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story): "Watching Fantasia I understood we could never win the war. "These people seem to like complications", I thought to myself." Granted he passed more than 50 years ago now and I'm not familiar with contemporary Japanese film, so perhaps it's gone the same way as their games.

At least at later levels (actually, pretty much your next level or the one after) you'll get two points per level, and later even more. So it would have eventually telegraphed how it works I guess. But it's no bad thing to raise all the skills to level 1 to unlock them, three spell slots each is generally enough to get the utility spells and other things you'd want to use often. I mean when you need to make some rain, it doesn't really matter if you do it on your mage with 1 point in Water Magic or the one maxed out on it. For my notes as much as anything else, a reference as to what you get pointwise for each level. EDIT: As for the rogue thing, I'm not so concerned about combat effectiveness because it is fun to use, and the balance at normal is loose enough as for that to not be an issue. But the actual thiefly parts of being a rogue aren't so hot and never feel satisfying (as in "awesome, I've just pulled off a very clever alternative solution"), but that's more a failure of gameworld design than of class design.

I think there's an extraneous step listed there.

It's okay if there's also a Very Easy difficulty.

Have to say I read it as creased butte.

I'd rob a bank to prevent an(other) Obsidian Star Wars game.

Haven't used a crossbow, no idea. Finding in the early game bows drop at about a 10:1 ratio to crossbows, and they both use DEX as a prerequisite, so it appears for now that crossbows are an expensive novelty at best. It's kind of ridiculous really that all one-handed melee weapons are one skill, all two-handed weapons are one skill, but bows and crossbows are separate skills. At least change the primary stat on crossbows so it'd be a viable secondary weapon for pure fighter classes (bonus for realism too). But yeah, I wasn't aware the cost of restealthing was down to 1ap at higher levels (though I would have imagined it'd have to do with high scoundrel skill and not high sneaking skill?). At that point, yes, it's worth it for damage. That said though, the comparison is 4x damage from stealth vs 2x damage from regular backstab from positioning, surely. So even then it's still 3ap for 4x damage vs 2ap for 2x damage, objectively better certainly, but not quite so good as you put it. EDIT: Oh, I'm probably confusing regular restealth with the special ability to do so. Not sure how much it's costing me at the moment since I rarely have the opportunity to use it, big fights being the line-of-sight messes that they are.

Yeah, I don't plan on raising Madora's dex, but she does still carry a low level bow with maybe 6 or 7 dex requirement - which even then is only achieved through gear and no actual investment. Damage and accuracy is terrible compared to the thief's bow, but having it be a fire bow is handy if only to ignite explosions. I'm still dubious of the value of restealthing, since with all that considered, the only real possible advantage is being hidden during enemy movement (which with all the AoE ground effects going on will be far from guaranteed). And yes, I assume Guerilla and Backstab are meant to stack, but even then it's not worthwhile. A 6ap (4ap to restealth, 2ap to perform the actual attack) investment for a 4x damage attack is literally the same damage as just backstabbing twice for 2ap each time. P.S. My bow attacks cost 4ap. Are higher level weapons more ap to use?

I carry a bow with anyone otherwise incapable of doing ranged damage, it's surely an RPG tradition to do so. Wish there was a quick switch function though, the 2ap cost is fair enough but I'd rather not have to hunt for my weapons in the inventory screen every time. With lockpicking the issue is just as much that the locks you can pick almost always have conveniently findable keys - heck that might have been some useful synergy there with pickpocket, but nope. Sneaking again is a matter not necessarily of the stealth in the first place, since, after all, it's required to enable certain abilities. Not sensing all that much of a tangible benefit in putting much in the way of points into it though, since if an NPC isn't looking in your direction, it hardly matters whether you're a master sneak or not. I question the utility of restealthing in combat too, because since an attack costs 2ap, the ability would need to cost 1ap (or zero) to give any advantage - otherwise just attack again which is functionally the same as double damage. So I'm still not seeing the benefit of it in combat outside performing openers, and frankly opening with a spell would probably be just as advantageous, if not moreso. EDIT: Further, the ranged sneak attack would not need any points investment either, so really, all the points really do is be useful for trying to get the opener with a thief, which is of questionable tactical value, and precious little else.

That, and it typically only takes 2ap to walk back around to their behinds again anyway, which is still three attacks at my level (8ap/turn), all criticals. It's not uncompetitive at the moment, but that's probably only because I'm finding Madora only has the AP to perform one attack a turn on average. Once she gets the second attack, it'll be no contest again. But yeah, both a knockdown and a stun on demand is pretty good, even if the cooldown is such that it's only one use of each per fight.

Not quite got a grip on how XP works with the companions, I think they start at level 3 and some minimum about of XP, such that they'll always be ahead of you if you happen to recruit them while you're at level two (i.e. at the earliest possible opportunity). Unless you lose XP due to death, which is a bit of a bugbear of mine. "Realistic" maybe, but just annoying and encourages reloads if you ever lose anyone even for one enemy (again, exacerbated by the fact that kill XP absolutely dwarfs any other method of XP gain). Actually I didn't reload for deaths a few times, and so am in a bit of a curious position where one companion is lower XP than my player characters, and one is higher. Not as annoying as XP juggling with Might and Magic 10, but still. Anyway, played pretty much the whole day solid. Don't think I've done that for a while, probably since back when XCOM was fresh. And despite all that it doesn't feel like I got all that much further - guessing two-thirds into the first act. That said, I'm going to have a bit of a whinge about my thief. It was mentioned earlier in this thread that the Scoundrel abilities were added late in development, but really, that's probably the least problematic aspect of the thief design (well, sprinting is less useful than you'd imagine but other than that). First and foremost amongst the problems are the dirty deeds skills - all three of them. 1) Lockpicking is typically devised as a shortcut, a convenience, a potential aid to sequence breaking. But not so in this game. Anything that's worth lockpicking isn't likely lockpickable at a reasonable skill level ("this lock is too difficult for your skill level" when frankly given skill point progression, I reckon 3 points at level 6 is more than the average investment), and to add insult to injury, it consumes your expensive lockpick regardless of success. Lockpicking, the more expensive and less convenient solution to your problems. (As an aside, disarm trap suffers from the same problems of cost and convenience, but at least isn't bound to any skill or class) 2) Pickpocketing is oddly limited as to only be permitted to be used to a certain limit with each NPC. Which is to say, generally you can only ever pickpocket a given person once. To be fair I've barely used the skill though, as early on I found anything worth stealing was "too valuable to steal at this skill level". I doubt further investment will be worth it. 3) Sneaking, due to the large encounter design, is rarely of meaningful utility when setting up for combat. With a lot of work, you might get a moderate damage sneak attack in... then be left flapping in the wind against a half dozen heavy-hitting melee opponents. Outside of combat - well you can sneak well enough with zero points investment for the purposes of sneak-lockpicking, pickpocketing, and other mundane tasks. All this then, to be honest, leaves little in the way of utility for the thief. Backstabs are fun if a little fiddly, yes, but then they don't actually have anything to do with thieves in this game: you'd be better served making a backstabbing fighter. Maybe with a point in marksman for the really dangerous meatgrinder melee fights and the added utility of using the leaping retreat skill to jump to enemies instead. All in all it's more than a little bit sad for me because the thief is always my class or build of choice in any RPG.

If you're still looking, $30 at Gaming Dragons. Never bought from them myself though.

Depends whether your issue is finding "appropriate" level enemies, or being beaten up by them. If level difference is an issue, you'll find that while there's enough XP to stay on the right curve, it's not generous with XP as such, at least in the beginning: you're expected to take advantage of all the available XP. There's My own issue was more that being someone who doesn't like gear, consumable and skillbook management, I kept finding I was at a disadvantage against equal-level enemies. Ultimately I found I had to shop around (funded by a burglary spree) to get my gear to a reasonable level and buy appropriate spellbooks rather than the piddly few I started with. That, or turn down the difficulty I guess. Also helped to reasonably distribute the potions and scrolls instead of having one designated mule carry them all....