Tigranes

Oh, were there? OK... so my fault I missed those.

Man, I like TW2 combat. To me, really crap RPG combat is KOTOR 1&2. It's not great, of course, but... maybe I have low standards. I think most of the problems it has is a balance/tweak issue. i.e. Quen is way too overwpoered, and using Quen a lot makes the combat a lot duller; blocking needs to use less vigor and the counterattack needs to be more effective; the combat really should have integrated more environmental factors to take advantage of its positioning bonuses.

Yeah, the kind of stupid thing about the situation is that investors & suits decide metacritic is a simple and easy way to decide how well liked the game is; then they go ahead and use that as a golden perfect marker for royalties, contracts, etc; and because of that, metacritic suddenly becomes more important; then we start using it as an authoritative source; then it all goes in circles again. Metacritic is an aggregate of (a) video game reviews from sometimes subjective, sometimes corrupt, sometimes simply wrong journos & (b) a bunch of random people (plus game developers in disguise) fighting about how game is awesome/crap. Woo.

"Why didn't the demo include the dungeons that exist in the full game?" "Because the game is extremely linear." It's like interviewing a politician! I agree it was stupid to do that in the demo then not have any indicators that has happened - you'd never know stuff was cut when you play. Seems like so many demos are plagued by silly marketing decisions like these.

We don't know how the control scheme they described worked in practice - maybe that had its own problems. But I agree, it's disappointing that the PC controls are not up to what they appeared to promise. Just being able to remap keys would solve so many problems - if not through game options, at least through the .ini files. edit: Various PC Controls threads merged since nobody wants to check 50,000 identical threads. All the posts should make sense...

Moved. I thought the design of the manor was pretty stupid as well, but not because of the caves, etc - because the enemy placement made it seem like a random place on fire, not a place where people just got ambushed and killed. Thought it gets much better after that, though not enough - devs have said that numerous adjacent areas & sidequests were cut out of the demo part.

I don't know how many people realised you can go deeper into the chapterhouse, look around the library, and also fight the spiders - and you clearly see a (a) inactive causeway and (b) path into another area that is blocked off for now.

Loot is randomised. Therefore, there are literally thousands of loot that can drop. You're expecting every single one of them to look different?? All unique loot looks different; the randomised loot is also divided into tiers, and each tier looks different. Unless you expected the game to ship with 100 different shield textures...

Hilarious thing is, I think the controller has a better control scheme, but I just can't get comfortable with it. I keep wanting to go back to the PC controls, because I've gotten used to them after half an hour.

Just tested out with Anjali on hardcore and the regular Lescanzi swordsmen. The very first ones you see in the house, when you are Level 4, have 50-54HP; after you level up reaching the chapterhouse, they appear to have 80-100hp. Didn't see if they were doing any more damage. So there is a change, though it could be automatic level scaling or just manual encounter design. If it is level scaling, it really depends on how nonlinear the full game is. e.g. in the demo it doesn't matter because everyone will be level 5 at the same point, but in the full game, we know that there are additional areas and quests near Raven's Rill - so for example, can you do other quests and come back to fight Vera the witch, or will she be level scaled? As long as encounters in a given hub/area are set at an appropriate range it shouldn't be noticeable.

OK, I'm going to go test this out.

Huh, interesting. I assume you've tried this in the demo yourself? It won't bother me when I co-op with friends & forumers, but that sounds annoying if you, well, play with strangers/morons.

Single player companions work differently; you get full control. In co-op, you don't have to discover characters in the story, you can pick all 4 from the start; and, of course, the host can't fiddle with soemone elose's inventory.

Well, if you start a new game, you'll be level 1, so you won't have any points. I suppose if you keep dropping into random people's games and pick characters that were never played with, you'd have to level them up.

Ah, OK. Well the 9 skills are all the 'active' abilities there are, as far as we know - and of course, all 9 of them have a power-up version when you use the power sphere (shift, i think, in PC), which changes what they do - and then all 9 of those abilitiies can be further modified with the proficiencies, to make them have a combination of different effects. This is expected for single player, though, these days. Wonder if that's the case for co-op - I hope not, though the characters won't be that different level-wise anyway.

How? Did you edit the game files somehow? And no, characters stay in their own campaign so you can't grind the same guy 50 times. It seems like there will be some areas wher eenemies respawn, though.

Maybe.... some people never preordered? Who knows, they're internet polls.

You cast your abilities exactly where your mouse cursor is pointing at, so you can definitely hit a faraway target with precision. We don't know if controls can be remapped in the full game, I hope so.

Sorry, I was being genuine though. Perhaps they could have had one of those RTS-style mini floating health bars you can toggle on and off. Even if most of the time it'll be a huge mess. Another option might have been to have a Bestiary in the journal where you can go to see information about enemy health, resistance, etc.

The guy never explained how he can tell that DS3 has level scaling. We've never heard a single thing about this from the devs, and from your own experiences with the demo, you will know yourself - how can anybody tell if there is level scaling in the demo anyway? You barely level up three times and fight a dozen mobs, most of which you're bashing too fast to tell how much HP they have. I certainly don't remember a Lescanzi gunman miraculously gaining double hitpoints within an hour.

Are you saying you'd like to see their exact hit points? How useful is that in a game as fast paced as DS3, though? You're hitting things 3 times a second with damage numbers flying left and right like confetti. Knowing he has 15 hp or 36 hp isn't going to matter in a real time ARPG like it does in a TB game - all you need to know is green (full), mango (medium), red (one or two hits and he's dead). Maybe people end up playing it at a slower pace on lower difficulties? Interesting.

It seems like you don't even ahve to learn all 9 powers if you don't want to, though you definitely can.

The colour of the circle thing beneath each enemy tells you how damaged they are. This is explained in the in-game tutorial.

Can't believe you fell for it C2B, he's having you for a laugh. Edit: And whatever and whoever the source is we don't care, please don't post magazine scans. Those people also have to earn a living, you know.

I agree, it's silly to accuse people of being disingenious just becuase they think the game is poor. Equally, I think it's silly that people that did like the game are painted as fanboys that are either brainwashed or lying. Whether you loved or hated the game, I think it's worth remembering that what you think makes a good game and how you experience a game is just that, you. That said, I don't think this kind of "hey look, see, this is proof I am right and the game will fail and you are wrong" stuff helps either the discussion or the argument. I can get you truckloads of negative, angry threads for any game under the sun. If the game is really destined to bomb or kick arse, we will see from sales numbers, reviews and word of mouth in a couple of weeks as the game is released. Before that, we can discuss our varying experiences with the demo. What really is the pointi n scrounging for scraps of data just to say "I are right"?