Tigranes

As I said just above, some games have definitely not aged well. It would be ridiculous to deny that some new designs are better than old ones, or that every old game has aged well - that would be the just as logically bankrupt as all the "oh everyone who likes old games just have nostalgia" cliches. For myself, yeah, something like Bard's Tale, or doing my own mapping, etc does really get in the way. One good thing is it's really easy to play older games on a window and read a pdf manual or one of many online guides for controls or things like that, without spoiling.

I'm still waiting to see if it will actually be a proper D&D game. I think the video basically is deisnged to make you think BG/NWN & screams D&D at you, but this guy's observations are pertinent: The point isn't whether cooldowns are bad per se or anything. The point is, most of us are excited by this because we want a real D&D game. (And let's leave out the pointless OMFG POE SUX idiocy, because whether POE sux or rulz we'd still want an actual D&D game too.) Well, they're being coy about the details so far, but I'm not going to get my hopes up (or down) just yet.

The UI thing, by the way, I think is really overstated a lot of the time. Depending on which games and how far you go back there are definitely challenges - playing wireframe early Wizardry with graph paper on hand is a big deal. But I'd say most games made in the 90s at least are very playable after you invest half an hour to get used to it - just like, say, Gothic, and just like Europa Universalis or Baldur's Gate would be for a first-time player. I'm playing Ultima Underworld (1992) for the first time after putting it off for a long while, and it's actually pretty easy to pick up. Usually it's a matter of being different rather than worse, because keyboard shortcuts, etc. only became standardised in the industry around the turn of the century (so that 'E' is use in most FPS's, etc). Soon I was WXAD'ing around, picking things up with the mouse, swinging swords with right click, jumping with J, saving with Ctrl+S, and it really isn't a big deal. I mean, given how intensely annoying inventory management was in Witcher 1, or how you have to go through like 8 different full screens with zoom-ins to check out a couple of skills in Skyrim, you'd think that people are used to the fact that each game has its idiosyncrasies. It's not like today's games are VR-land. I think in many cases the UI complaint is (1) generalised so that some truly clumsy games represent all old games; (2) you might never really have got to give the games a chance.

I think we all agree about that. It just doesn't seem to be relevant for WL2 or Underworld Ascendant, at least given what we know.

Right, but five uses per day is five charges followed by a day long cooldown, is it not? At least from a distance there's not that much difference. Breath weapons useable every N rounds? Is that not also a cooldown? Cooldowns have been around from well before computer games. So why the dislike? It's just a balance mechanic. The alternative, I suppose, are either unreliable powers, powers with a backlash, powers that rely on a limited resource, or powers too weak to be unbalancing when used every round. No, you just made it sound similar by basically comparing apples and oranges from space with a telescope. Having one slot for Level 6 spells, having to choose which one to memorise, and then being able to cast it only once, is different from having a Super Spell that has a 5 minute cooldown - either there's still a chance I can cast it again in the same battle, or it is so ridiculously long a cooldown that I'm sometimes sitting there just waiting it to expire. Oh, and it also changes your tactics - in cooldowns, you might want to begin with your Super SPell for no other reason than to start its cooldown early, whereas its usage in use-per-day system would not introduce this weirdness. You're basically responding to a hypothetical Cooldown Hater - fair enough, there are many of them around. But my point is there are real differences between cooldown systems and use-per-day systems, never mind the similarities. And having played both of them, I know what I'd prefer in... a D&D game.

I don't think it primarily has anything to do with gamer cred - that's just a side effect. For example, film snobs will push you to watch old films all the time, but that wasn't the main reason or benefit for appreciating older films. Filmmakers, critics and scholars simply recognised that new films aren't necessarily better than older films, so it makes sense to go back both to appreciate and to learn. As a side effect, when they start talking with outsiders or newcomers, they will say, you have to watch some older classics to know your stuff. It should be the same with games, if we want a healthy appreciation of its history. So it's not really about making everyone do it just for cred. After all, there is a canon for film or literature, but that doesn't mean novel enthusiasts force each other to read Dostoyevsky before they will talk to each other. No, but it's important that it's there, and the experts have at least read some of it. Instead, in games, we have a situation where many (not all) journalists, publishers, developers, etc. will just talk about the newest thing, make apologies for talking about older games ('we know they're outdated' - what does 'outdated' even mean? it means nothing, except 'old = worse because it's old'). I'm sure I've repeated this a hundred times on this forum alone, but 'new' isn't 'better'. There's no such thing as some universal law that things get better over time - it's something Western civilisation only started really believing in the last couple hundred years. Hell, even in the less 'artsy', more hardware tech stuff you see this. The newest car isn't necessarily the best, and any car enthusiast will be able to tell you some cars which stood out and made their mark, or specific pieces of car tech which did better than some of their successors. Historians of science and technology will tell you that how specific things get chosen as the 'next best thing' isn't an obvious objective thing, as if real world techs come with "+3" labels on them - the VHS/Betamax, DVD/Blu-ray struggles are easy examples of how it's not guaranteed. So, it's ridiculous that we should just say "new is better is newer is best" - no, it's not some God-given rule. And that means if you are an avid gamer, or you want to make games, or you want to write about games for a living, it just makes common sense to check out games from any period.

Uses per day is quite very different from cooldowns... come on, I don't need to write a paragraph on that, right? I think this is only based on D&D 5E and not fully D&D? A bit confused on that.

Let's not waste money, #2. Is it so important for people to get the CDs early that you want Obsidian to spend somewhere between $5 and $10 per backer? Remember, that's not even "their money" that you're wasting that way, it's your money. I gave them, what, $160, well I don't want $10 of that to be wasted on extra shipping,k I want it to go towards the game and the devs. Also, the idea of merging 8000 threads about OMG MY BOX IS MISSING A CD

That is the best... and actually, it's all true!

Fantasy first person RPG is not a first person shooter...

Let me get this right. You're calling the other guy stupid for thinking that EA is not involved in this project, and then your narrative is that they're in it to get KS money, get a cease and desist letter from EA, then run off with the money? Heh. Alright, I guess you're the smart guy. It's the Underworld creator, making the Underworld game, with Richard Garriott's blessing. So if it matters to anybody whether it's an Ultima game, it's as close as it gets - without being an EA game. Sounds like the best solution. M&MX was an official in-house Ubisoft production, just low budget and with lots of fan involvement.

Thanks! I was in Belgrade couple months ago, could be an interesting reunion.

Not much in it. 1) They'll make an expansion pack as promised in KS. 2) They always said they want to make POE a series. When you make a game there are tons of ideas you wanted to put in, tons of ideas, and also things you know you can improve if you got another shot. So you put some things down on paper. You revisit, and possibly change, a lot of it later. 3) Nothing suggesting they will do a Kickstarter for POE2. Edit: I was wrong on 3), I think: "So we need to start talking about Eternity 2 so we can say we would like you to back us so we can do these things."

For Bioware's history, one suspects that picking Star Wars as the post-D&D IP had consequences nobody expected at the time. The KOTOR scale made sense in a lot of ways, and of course the "Evil = Meanie" thing was a feature in older games, Bio's and others'. But KOTOR really made it possible to explicitly code and show your character as light side / dark side, and integrate that into RPG mechanics that make you trade monetary gain for further help from the population, 'good' rewards vs 'evil' rewards, etc. The faction / karma system is the best I have ever seen morality systems in action and not on paper, the pinnacle being New Vegas.

I will be in Milwaukee soon. I know nothing about Milwaukee. Anything I should check out? Or eat?

Not everybody has the same lifestyle. I travel a lot, I hate carrying a lot around, I use shoulderbags, I don't own a laptop. My 10" & bluetooth keyboard is just fine for a lot of purposes. They always should have been a specific niche though, and I'm sure most people don't need one.

Being excited about killing a group of people makes you a despicable human being. This conversation is not welcome here.

Normal mapping has been pretty important for improving 3D worlds, though, if you compare the distinctly 'square blocks on square blocks' look of early 2000's efforts to later ones. Best example is if you look at, say, a cobbled road. I'd agree that bloom, SSAO, and many others have been poorly used and hardly make much of a difference to make things 'realistic'. Indeed, good animation remains the most consistently underinvested aspect of games (mainly due to the workload, I think, at least for some periods) - you have some super early 3D games with some incredible animations, even if the pixels are the size of your face, and they certainly feel more 'real' than some of the stunted zombie disco you see in recent AAA games.

Perhaps van Gogh would have preferred CGI if he had access to it, and the Greeks would not have bothered with their vases and sculptures. Doesn't matter if it was that way by choice - doesn't matter which one's older or newer, either. The only thing that matters is how it looks. Old or new, if you have a good art direction and you apply it consistently, and you make the most of out whatever tech you happen to be using - then you have something that looks very nice. Of course, you can still identify certain styles - which are often a combination of technology used and the artistic touches - and say how you prefer them. There's something about sprite animations and modelling that gives them a certain solidity and visceral pleasure which many 3D models conspicuously lack, for example.

Americans tend to overstate / overestimate storm damage, which one supposes is better than the other extreme. Partly because the same 5 inches of snow has a different effect on a rural/suburban home that needs to drive the kid to school from someone like me in the middle of the city. Nothing going on in Philly but we're the southern end of the effected zone.

Bruce, your logic makes big jumps in little gaps between statements. Actually, that's what we all do, because that's how our language works: one sentence flows from another, and the chasms between them become forgotten. For instance: (1) Do you believe that being more critical after the war, and being less critical during the war, is a reflection on how we are unfairly over-critical afterwards, or how we are dangerously under-critical during? You obviously imply the former. Why? No reason is given. (2) You trust the CIA intends to keep USA safe. As I said, so do I. You admit certain techniques were used. As do I. Then you say the West was angry and scared. So? Why is that a relevant or sufficient justification? No reason is given. (3) I agree that "all criticism of non-Western horrors is silly, the West is just as bad" is a pointless and dangerous line of argument. But then you immediately go on to say that Der Spiegel should decline to report in critical terms about CIA interrogations, and instead go for the 'real horrors' of ISIS. So you again make huge leaps with no reason given: You cannot say criticising the torture is wrong, because that means you'd be saying "criticism of Western horrors is silly, the non-West is even worse" - making you the same as those you criticise. You say 'real and actual horrors' as if putting people in boxes is not a 'real and actual horror'. So are you now saying there's some kind of metric here? Certainly, by many (Western) standards, the West is much less of a 'bad guy' than ISIS. So are you now saying journalism should protect the West and criticise the 'bad guys'? Why? The West already has its politicians, military, etc. to do that. Historically, we wanted journalism so we could see if the West was sometimes doing bad guy things, and to make sure it doesn't turn into a bad guy. I agree that this article in particular is imprudent in several ways, and that just sitting here criticising the US all day long is counterproductive. However, you have not justified in any way why, more broadly, this kind of criticism should not take place, or should be taken less seriously, or that they should be displaced in favour of ISIS coverage (which we alreayd have a lot of), etc, etc. You like to ask others, in very thinly veiled rhetorical questions, whether they are perhaps aware of their own biases and blind spots. To be consistent, then, you should also ask yourself: what is happening when your arguments rely on "who is the real bad guy", "who is more of a bad guy", "they tortured but they were angry and scared"?

When you say things like " very highly trained in the psychological methods of extracting information and getting people to become cooperative", I mean, that's like saying "yes but it sounded like he was very well trained at whatever you need to be trained in, you know". What exactly are the qualifications for torture, and do you get one by being a psychologist, or by being a certain type of psychologist? It's hard to say whether you could label psychologists like Mitchell 'amateurs' who shouldn't have any say, or 'expert consultants'. But I know what people learn in psychology PhDs. His dissertation had nothing to do with learned helplessness or interrogation situations, etc. He did work for the military, which included some scenario training re. interrogations. Whether that means it's reasonable that he comes up with this new Total Torture setup and it gets approved, you'll have to decide. Some interesting points raised, but would it be possible for you to not use the word " torture". Usage of that word immediately sets an uncomfortable precedent when we talk about the advanced interrogation techniques that were used. And as the article mentions the CIA still maintains that very pertinent information was gained through these techniques You read the article in the Spiegel and juxtaposed to that are the Japanese hostages about to be beheaded and yet the CIA have somehow become the " bad guys " in this narrative, food for thought perhaps about how we sometimes pass judgement about institutions tasked to protect us? You think 'advanced interrogation techniques' are a neutral term and 'torture' is a biased one? You don't think the choice of AIT is equally a choice to constantly imply to people that it is not torture? You are free to continue to refer to it as AIT, just as I may refer to it as torture - the word that most people would use if confronted with such a scene without other context. I do not think a conversation about who is 'more' biased or not is productive; we should be able to discuss this knowing that both of us can be biased in various ways. 'Very pertinent information was gathered through techniques' is one of those claims that become particularly meaningless in the current set of wars. Notwithstanding the guy they interviewed for this article, you would have to have data about what kind of information was gathered from suspects throughout a given period; which was gathered through torture, which was not; a judgment on whether torture-gathered data could not have been gained any other way; how valuable that information was; etc. Now, I know you do not have access to sufficient information to make a judgment about whether these techniques produced 'very pertinent information' at a sufficient rate to make this 'worth it' by whatever metric. I know this because most of us do not have access to that information. This is exactly the same as the Snowden problem: quote Dianne Feinstein, "I wish we could tell you all the good this program has done, if only that wasn't classified." (paraphrased) In fact, it is so classified (and voluminous) that even the FISA Court, the court charged with judging the legitimacy of at least some of these activities, has confessed that it has to go by the word of the NSA sometimes. It is the same here. You have to go by the word of the CIA. So, do you trust the CIA to assess its own torture or AIT and then tell you 'it was / was not worth it, now move on'? I would have reasonable expectation that the CIA is probably competent most of the time; that most of its personnel are highly patriotic to the United States; and so on and so forth. I would not have the expectation that the CIA can be trusted to assess the morality of its own operations without any proper external audit. Why? Not because it's the CIA in particular, but because independent, external audit is one of the few things that - despite its problems - works to stop institutions from living in their own bubble and getting carried away with things. It is also, I should mention, a founding principle in how American government is designed. You can't just not trust anybody and assume the worst in everybody, because then your own ability to say you know anything or do anything becomes critically undermined. That's what we call the tin foil man who raves in the street; he might be the wisest of us all, but he certainly doesn't have much of a life. Fine. But you have to have certain standards about what you decide to trust, and also occasionally question those standards. So what standards leads you to trust that the CIA was doing something right with torture? You don't seem to need the pertinent data in front of you, or a proper independent audit.

When you say things like " very highly trained in the psychological methods of extracting information and getting people to become cooperative", I mean, that's like saying "yes but it sounded like he was very well trained at whatever you need to be trained in, you know". What exactly are the qualifications for torture, and do you get one by being a psychologist, or by being a certain type of psychologist? It's hard to say whether you could label psychologists like Mitchell 'amateurs' who shouldn't have any say, or 'expert consultants'. But I know what people learn in psychology PhDs. His dissertation had nothing to do with learned helplessness or interrogation situations, etc. He did work for the military, which included some scenario training re. interrogations. Whether that means it's reasonable that he comes up with this new Total Torture setup and it gets approved, you'll have to decide.

My experience is that people sometimes imagine how mods think and act as if they were the police, the schoolteachers, the janitors, and so on - all jobs which are, in fact, a lot more serious and rules-bound than ours (and for good reason). As if we sit here calculating "unrest is high, get the sheep in line" or "more than 16% of the posts are now racist, go in". I mean, why would anyone be a mod if you had to do that? We're here because we enjoy the forums, and we want to help make sure the atmosphere doesn't become really vicious, flamey, whatever. Luckily, this also is compatible with what Obsidian wants. They also like a relatively easy-going forum where we don't ruleslawyer people - we ban people about as often as oby admits America isn't the worst place on Earth. But they do, understandably, want it to be a place where many different kind of fans can come and be comfortable in. Which means it's never going to be quite as chummy, or as unregulated, as some people want it. When people defer to imaginations of the police or the law to try and figure out what we're doing, they also seem to think we ruleslawyer everything, and that there are rigid, mechanical rules that you can figure out for whatever purpose. So people say 'where's the line' or 'this isn't consistent' - but they mean it very very rigidly. We'd have to delete every thread featuring female skin. Or never delete it, even when people start calling Obsidian Boobsidian and you have to scroll past 80 pictures of Pamela Anderson to get anywhere. That doesn't mean we have no rules. We've got rules, and you can read them. And you can always PM us about individual decisions, and we give considered replies. I'm just saying, if you want to 'figure out' how we do things, then 'as easy going as possible without making things toxic or embarrassing for the company' might be a good guideline. I think, on that basis, it's fairly easy to arrive at more reasonable guesses about why we close certain threads, and why we always try to give things a chance. You also don't have to worry about stepping out of line by accident, because if that happens, we tell you quite a few times. Anyway, the time for this thread seems up as well, because HoonDing posted a bad picture and we will now have to kill him debating moderation policy for pages and pages generally leads to squabbling about every detail. We'll always try to be straightforward, but it might help to understand: our ultimate priorities are never rules or censures. We want a lot of things you want to say and post to be OK, but we want other people on this forum - who might have different views from you - to also be comfortable.

What should we be doing differently? Try tax resistance. Chomsky has spoken about this and organized it in the past. It's simple, really. The state simply cannot function without money from our taxes and it's a perfectly legitimate* way for people to force policy change when policy is both morally repugnant and illegal. That however puts us personally at risk (fines, incarceration) so we are naturally less inclined to do it. So... we'll stick to nodding sagely over our lattes and self-righteously wag our fingers at Russia, Iran, "terrorists", etc. I was thinking of adding "until some disenfranchised naturalized Muslim puts a bullet in our brain", but that's not likely to happen, so I'll close the sentence with "until we choke on a butter croissant and die". As for convincing... how is that Chomsky's job? He just talks about stuff. It's your civic duty to remain informed and form your own opinions. There is plenty of information about cold hard facts out there, you don't need Chomsky for that. As an aside, I'd appreciate if you guys didn't do Bruce's work for him. It's much more entertaining to see him come up with ever more ridiculous applications of his double standards to justify the atrocity of the day than just see him get behind something someone else said. *of course, only if you succeed. If you don't, it was never legitimate and you are a seditious rebel, an anarchist, an anti-social element or what have you. Sure, there are paths like tax resistance, and even standard old protests can sometimes approach actionability when it gets ferocious enough. In other words, you have to put your body and your life on the line to some extent, or at least your own personal security as afforded by the state. I have to admit that I personally do not feel able to do this - not for this issue, perhaps not for any issue. That might well mean that if I was a German in 1939 I would have gone along with the Nazi regime as well, instead of risking death by, say, helping Jews. I'm well aware that doing something meaningful in such a level might well take lot more courage than I have. My point about Chomsky is, his job is to talk about stuff, not to lead a revolution. Well, what is he doing by talking about this in this way? For people like me who are already aware of Western actions that he mentions, he doesn't give me new information, nor does he give me concrete steps to take, nor does he inspire me. For people who refuse to admit that the West is also guilty, he just comes off as a typical Leftist conspiracy tin foiler in his rhetoric. He isn't going to persuade someone who thinks Muslims are de facto dangerous. The problem isn't that his job is only to talk. (That's my job, too.) The problem is how can he talk effectively.