alanschu

I don't believe this actually happens very often. Post release support is often busy enough fixing actual issues. Patching in content that has been removed from the game is a lot of work, and requires additional QA. How common is this actually? The point I was trying to make is that it seems to upset you that a developer makes available additional content for the game and then charges for it, while functionally this is no different than if the content was never released to you if you decide to not purchase the DLC. You stated in a post that the difference in other games is that the content remained cut. Optics IS important. I don't think Obsidian could dream of charging for the cut content of KOTOR 2, since it's apparent that the game had a lot of content cut and the quality of the game (particularly the ending) suffered a lot as a result. But if you had a choice, are you saying you wouldn't rather BioWare release finished versions of the content cut from the original KOTOR? The DLC for Sebastian isn't finished either, and it's not unlike other DLC content. So no, there is no "DLC before a Gold version." I'm not even entirely sure what that means. As for whether or not I don't quite follow. What changes are you referring to? Content for Dragon Age 2 has been locked down for some time. "Got it's own?" Split? I don't quite follow what you're trying to say. If I made it seem as though they were completely disjointed then I apologize. Though QA is a bit more "project general." It's more free flowing, and in actuality providing QA for DLC is actually easier to integrate if the game itself still has a lot of QA on it. QAing projects like Golems of Amgarrak or Lair of the Shadow Broker is more difficult because there's significantly less overlap, and it's much more problematic to pull additional eyes for verifying and reproducing issues. In fact, releasing a game with future DLC plans without Day One DLC is actually more risky, because you will be significantly less able to properly assess the DLC delivery system without actually having proper, finished content to run through it. Delivering DLC at a later date is futile if it turns out that your delivery system has huge issues (and DAO's had enough issues as it was) that you weren't able to properly find before release, and it is much more difficult to do anything about it because post-release programming support is more complicated (and has less resources) to integrate than pre-release support. Post-release support is also effectively more expensive. What do you mean by "100% separate?" Some people may see it as a nickel and dime scheme. Not everyone likes every move that gets made unfortunately.

I'm not sure I follow entirely. Shale wasn't entirely on the disk, there was content downloaded still. Shale was content that was originally cut and planned for no one to see it, ever. What I am saying is that without a DLC team to work on it, Shale wouldn't have been accessible to people at all. DLC is still relatively new (very new with respect to BioWare), so a lot of different ideas and whatnot are planned. We try some stuff that didn't work (the guy in party camp. As far as I know there's nothing like him in DA2), but in general the DLC was successful. We will be looking to get gamers that enjoy DLC the type of content that they want, but at the same time the primary source of revenue is still selling the actual game. Which means we still understand that getting people a product that they are satisfied with on its own is the highest priority. Fantastic DLC doesn't mean anything if 1/10th the people you hoped for buy the game. For the record I was disappointed that Sebastian was not a free DLC that you got for buying the game new. I thought that that was a great idea with Shale.

There's been a lot of discussion about stuff like this. With respect to stuff being "cut" from the game, I think some stuff needs to be made a bit clearer (at least from DAO's perspective). Shale is the only DLC that was made up of content that was in some way removed from the original plan for DAO. This was in large part due to a large part of the technical issues they were having with Shale at the time, and the decision basically came to cut Shale, because they would end up running into issues with making the deadline they had from the game. Stuff was cut. This happens in games all the time. With the DLC model, however, budget and manpower could be allocated to Shale. Given that there was already a lot of hooks in place, aspects of it were helped along and we felt it would be a good incentive for buying the game new. It also had an advantage of extra time because the inclusion of console systems shifted the release schedule back. But Hassat said something very weird. He seemed to prefer that cut content just remain cut, and not possibly sold later through DLC, even though his entire gaming experience would be unchanged by either situation. The shipped game is still the same. This I find somewhat strange. It is still content that is created specifically to accommodate the preorder, even if it just sits on the disc. The alternative would be to make the end user spend time downloading it, which is more of an inconvenience in my opinion. Especially since a lot of the time preorder bonuses are relatively simple things like bonus items and whatnot.

It's unfortunate that this has been the case in Sweden. As you seem annoyed with people making sweeping generalizations which you clearly are not a part of, it's important to look at the other side of the coin. In Canada, Super Mario 3 cost me $70 when it came out. Street Fighter II Turbo also cost me $70. Games for PC today typically cost me $50-$60 when they come out (tax not included in any of these prices). My general impression since I had access to software wholesalers through my Dad's work is that this has been the case throughout North America since 1990.

There's a bit more I think, because each companion also have a unique skill tree (a lot of the times having some similarities to the specialization trees, but with some differences usually: Isabela's is similar to the duelist one, for instance). We did try to go with some flavor for the characters too, so not all skill trees are available for all different NPC versions of a class. I think this helps with some silliness that would allow people to make Wynne a blood mage in the first game. Some won't like this, but I think it also helps with making unique combinations of abilities between the characters. The PC has the most variability because he/she can decide to try out different weapon styles. The default version in the game is that face without the smear haha. There were a lot of people at work that felt the same way, and I think that the blood is mostly just to make the character identifiable to help with marketing. One of the more common criticisms of DAO was a very bland and generic art style through and through, so I think it was mostly just to help with the branding of the game (since we still try to appeal to new gamers and not just DAO veterans). As usual people will have different tastes. I haven't had a chance to vary too much as I have only had a few chances to just "sit down and play the game" without focusing my time on specific systems. The one that I have had a chance to try out different styles is sword and board vs two-handed warriors, and I enjoy both. I find the sword and boarders have a bit more offensive play (and some really cool contextual animations and attacks) than they may have had in DAO, often incorporating their shield into their attacks. I'm off to a motorcycle show right now with my Dad, but I'll finish reading up through the thread when I get back. If people have any questions I will try to answer them as best I can.

I play World of Warcraft either solo, or with real-life friends. There was a time when I joined a smaller guild to do some raiding, but that's it. I even play on a PvP server, but my experiences with Cataclysm have been pretty fun and I think it demonstrates that an MMO with a narrative can actually be done. The only thing about WoW is it already had an install base which helped it along. It's possible that out Cataclysm been the "original" WoW it wouldn't be as successful, but I know I greatly prefer Cataclysm. So much that when I hit Outlands it's like hitting a wall because it's "old school" style. I have probably sunk in about 10-15 hours into Cataclysm. I don't even know if I have even looked at General chat during that time. Trade chat is in its own tab and I never look at it either. I fail to understand how some people find it so difficult to not be bothered by other people running around in the game. When grouping with strangers your mileage will always vary. However, you've taken the worst case scenario and presented it as though it is common place. Even as a soloer in WoW, I have had plenty of groups that have been fine. Easily the majority of them. The problem is completely avoided since a lot of my grouping is done with friends. Even then, I did a random dungeon in Throne of Tides, stated right away that I hadn't run any dungeons in Cata yet, and people told me how to get through each of the fights. The main story parts are typically held within personal instances, of which the only other people present are those that you have given permission to. Each class has their own story and there I don't know how we're going to deal with such things as I'm based in Edmonton, not Austin. On a personal level I've never really had an issue with Real Money Trading in games since, as far as I'm concerned, the only person you cheat by doing so is yourself (not to mention the huge security risks). How prevalent is cheating in other MMO games? The only public ones I have played are WoW and Eve. While the best written content IMO are the class specific stories, there have been some side quests that are very, very well written, complete with different ways to resolve them. They were very fun with a friend too (though I don't know what it'd be like playing with a stranger. Your mileage may vary for that sort of stuff like always). So far I find the game a blast to play with friends. Maybe due to the nature of how the game is presented, those seeking to play for the story won't see much benefit grouping with strangers. But I have 5 close friends that are all stoked to play the game (not counting friends from BioWare directly) and I do think that the multiplayer questing can be a lot of fun with friends. My favorite planet so far is Taris as I liked a lot of the nods back to the first KOTOR.

It is pretty much what has been done. Higher level enemies have increased armor penetration. It just isn't managed with an "armor penetration" stat specifically. The problem with your solution is it makes armor values for rogues and mages irrelevant because we need to crank the armor penetration up so high to combat warriors that armor for other classes are just clothes that possibly hold stat buffs on them. In our case, armor for rogues and mages will still provide some form of damage mitigation, and that a piece of armor with a higher armor value will also result in some increase in mitigation, whereas in your solution that is possibly not the case.

I believe there was a post by Peter Thomas that indicated that the decision to do armor this way was to prevent a need for enemies to do a ridiculously high amount of damage. In DAO, the only way to consistently damage a late game character fully decked out in armor was to increase the damage by a lot by late game monsters. What this meant was that creatures that do NOT have a ton of armor (rogues and mages) were exceptionally vulnerable to taking huge hits and getting one shotted. In DA2, higher level foes have less % of their damage absorbed, but it doesn't impact rogues and mages quite as extensively. If something does 100 Damage, the warrior could go from taking 30 damage to 40, while the rogues and mages could go from taking 65 to 70. (Hypothetical numbers). Rogues and Mages are still more vulnerable, and with some updated gear all classes will return to their previous mitigation levels. Note that the same effect applies to other values like attack (chance to hit) and defense (chance to receive only a glancing hit/miss). Though these values are more based on attributes instead of gear.

The way the armor works in DA2 is that a higher level hostile will be able to better penetrate an identical armor value than a lower level character. So if you have 100 armor rating and it absorbs 20% damage against a level 1 creature, it may only absorb 15% damage against a level 2 creature. We have a GUI that reflects this change on the attributes and equipment screens. However, if you bump into a level 1 creature, even though the GUI now says "15% reduction" because you've reached level 2, the level 1 creature will still see 20% of its damage reduced. So leveling up doesn't reduce the effectiveness of your armor. A level 4 creature will always have X% damage reduced against Y armor, regardless of the player level. Warriors do not need to be strictly a tank class in DA2. Two-handed weapons can be quite powerful, especially if used in conjunction with other abilities (from both the warrior and the other party members in group). As for "mage = teh suck," I almost universally find the opposite to be true. With the exception of low levels, mid to high level mages invariably ruled combat since they could possess the ability to instantly kill a target. Especially dating back to 20 years ago where the only improvements warriors would see is a reduction in THAC0 while mages got increasingly powerful abilities.

I'd say one of the coolest experiences I have had in gaming the past few years is when I constructed my lightsaber on Tython as a Jedi Knight. Everything about it just gave me goosebumps. You don't need to take part in PvP if you do not want to. We're really pushing the story. According to discussion on Gamebreaker.tv, the consensus after many journalists played the game for 6 hours is that TOR is looking to put the RPG back into MMORPG. The personal stories are still set up, and personal. You're the one that makes the decisions and decides how to proceed through the story. It's not any different than the idea that there are other people out there that played KOTOR 1 and 2. It's entirely possible to experience your own personal story with minimal interaction with other players, and really the only place you'd see them would be as you moved to different story points. Once you get to the actual content parts, the game is set up to allow you to experience the game at your pace without interruption from other players. I'd give us a little more credit than that. As for rendering your whole gaming experience meaningless, I disagree. Nothing takes away from the fact that you played and enjoyed KOTOR 1 and 2.

It's more that it'd take time to implement and test at this stage (rather than having it accounted for earlier), and to implement this from nothing means not spending time on other stuff (from both a QA and programming perspective). It's not as simple as just adding in a toggle in the options menu, and with us already being in various stages of content lockdown the resistance on changing something like this becomes accented.

I agree. It appears to be present on the PC version now too

Oh... on a personal level I don't recall ever buying a DLC either (though I have gotten the odd preorder because it ended up coming with some DLC I thought would be neat).

What matters is the decision as to whether or not such variability in setting up the rules is considered to be a part of the package you are wanting to deliver. The thing about Silent Storm was that they felt the strength of their game was in the tactical combat system, and felt that allowing the user to manipulate the rules for this system was enough value added for the time required to implement to do so. I'm not stuck on "tactical combat." I'm just using the example that you provided. I can understand what you're saying, but I think you're trivializing the work required component. If user variable is always better than fixed set, how come it is so rare? I have seen a lot of people state how easy it is to implement a lot of options (it's just a checkbox) and so forth. How come gaming companies everywhere continue to overlook what many fans assure is a simple amount of work for a significant benefit to the end user (complete with pseudocode solutions that get posted on the BioWare's boards). Fire and forget for a feature is a good way to have those parts of your program cause game ending blocking issues for end users that use them because they were never properly reviewed or QA'd. No one at BioWare likes sending out show-stopping issues into the wild, and as I am in QA, I do feel a degree of responsibility when a user's game experience is severely compromised (or worse, outright blocked) because of something we didn't account for. It's already a situation where we have to make decisions on where we focus our efforts because we can't examine every aspect of the game with the same level of coverage throughout. This is a hard distinction to make I think, because I am a part of the old BG/BG2/NWN crowd, and in some ways consider DAO and ME to superior to the old games. In short, I think that most of BioWare's games have been very well done. All the ones I have played (never played JE, SS, or Sonic) have given me many hours of enjoyment. It's probably not that easy to make a separation between BG fans that feel "taken advantage of" and those that still enjoy games like DA and ME for what they are. Those that enjoyed BG for its open world exploration are certainly not finding as much in BioWare's latest games (heck, since BG2 even). Those that preferred the combat system have definitely been left wanting more since BG2. Those that enjoy the story and the characters will probably make up more of the people that enjoy the more recent games. Not all, mind you, because a lot of what people like about the stories and characters is very personal. I enjoyed BG, but BioWare had me hooked with BG2 as I loved the stories and characters in that game. Since then there have been some ups and down, though I think they've become too formulaic in their writing with their recent releases. I actually don't know a whole lot of the actual story for DA2, but there have been some pleasant surprises and seeing some of the subtle nuances that exist in the conversation trees is almost bittersweet because I wonder how many people will actually notice it. At least there isn't some ancient evil At least that I know of EDIT: Actually I think your hypotheticals help to obfuscate the issue rather than help it make sense. For example, you may not care for the party aspect and the characters that make up them up and their personal stories, but the fact is that those aspects have been a part of BioWare's games since the first Baldur's Gate. It is not as if BioWare now makes suddenly completely different games.

Unfortunately I am not privy to discuss specific sales numbers (dollars or "units"), but DLC for Dragon Age completely blew away our expectations for how popular it would be.

You misunderstood. My example with the Silent Storm Sentinels wasn't about tactical depth of that game (it certainly have that) but the fact that Nivel took a leap of faith and put some trust into more experienced players. Actually Baldur's Gate series (or any AD&D infinity engine game) could have used the similar difficulty sliders rather then offering (only) fixed set of difficulty levels. I was more pointing out that the game's focus existed for having tactical gameplay. I wouldn't say that Nival took "a leap of faith," they just made a game with a different focus. I would be surprised if they did a fire and forget and added those with only a minimal amount of assessment that the systems worked through the permutations and at more than just the surface. With the game's focus on combat, my guess is that the idea for allowing flexibility for how the combat played probably game earlier than the 11th hour. It's also a game targeting a different audience.

To be fair, I find most games consider combat balance to be not so much "is it fair for both/all sides" but rather, is it set up in such a way that it is enjoyable for our players. I love a game like Jagged Alliance 2 and Silent Storm, but they are also very different beasts from pretty much every BioWare game from a tactical combat point of view. Even Baldur's Gate pales in comparison if you want to compare its combat system to Jagged Alliance 2 (Baldur's Gate strength lies elsewhere). When we "balance" the game combat for a game like DAO, we do have high level goals very much like the one that you describe, where Casual is something that should be completable with the user simply doing auto attacks, with normal requiring the active use of player abilities and occasional use of party members (on the console version anyway), and so forth. I am not involved with the content playtesting decisions so I don't know what our balance metrics are like, but our goal with balancing is to make the combat fun for our game players. We aren't able to please everyone unfortunately. Not every game is going to be loved by everyone though. A game like Silent Storm, in my opinion, exists purely for the combat. I will say that if you're hoping for anything resembling a tactical experience like Silent Storm, you will be disappointed with DA2 and pretty much every BioWare game that has existed, before or after. Note that I am also of the mind that much of Baldur's Gate's tactical combat isn't a great example of tactical combat either. A lot of what I like about BioWare games is also the story, character interactions, and so forth. They seem to do a good job of having a good synergy that makes me think the game is a lot of fun, even if not each individual aspect is exceptional. The game difficulty can be changed at any time. I agree which is why I don't think friendly fire is essential to a good tactical game. Based on the first few hours of gameplay, however, there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of AOEs in DA2 and flipping FF on/off will make several encounters play out differently.

Last I heard FF exists on at least Nightmare. I'll confirm on Monday.

I don't know the full details of the ME3 project, but I believe Montreal is helping out the Edmonton studio.

Gaider's comments are specifically stated as suppositions on his part (though he is acting as an official voice for the company so I don't begrudge people having their concerns), though I don't know if I would agree with his take. I will say that it's not something that can be easily added at this point in the project. The hooks for that particular functionality aren't currently implemented in the GUI at this time, and while it wouldn't necessarily be a difficult task, it will take time and at this point, decisions have to be made on where we spend our time. The likelihood of adding this feature is low because adding this means spending less time on something else. At this point, a large amount of our time is spent working on polish and bug fixing, and there are still some aspects of the GUI that still need to be implemented. Priority for GUI programming is going to go to that stuff. For those that want friendly fire at different difficulty levels, that sucks but it's the way it is Note that the game decision to not have friendly fire means that we are working on balance based around this. My early impressions of the game (having just started playing the actual content side this past week - the first time playing the game 'legit' in several months for myself), I am having a fun time. Prefacing this that I was able to enjoy the combat of the Baldur's Gate games, as well as games like KOTOR, I enjoy the combat in DA2. I typically find myself pausing the action a fair bit, though playing primarily my own character for "random" encounters with the occasional switch to party members when I would like finer control over the action. Note that I have only scratched the surface of Act 1 though, and the closest thing I have come to a boss fight is the end of the prologue, so I wouldn't say I have come across any situations yet where I expected that a fight SHOULD be very challenging. Difficulty is still in flux though as one day to the next balance changes make combats easier/harder than the previous day, so it is hard to say. One of the aspects I enjoy a lot about combat in the early going are the class combos. That is, one class can put effects/debuffs on targets that other classes have abilities that take advantage of. Similar to DAO where Cone of Cold would freeze someone, and a 2H Warrior using Mighty Blow would get the guaranteed critical causing the target to shatter. I'm also eager to get deeper into the ability skill trees as I think there are some really cool sounding abilities (my legit playthrough is as a rogue), and I like what they have done with the followers and their abilities (some unique abilities, and some of it just cosmetic but "neat." If you look in the video, Rogue Hawke delivers his Miasmic Flask differently than Varric does). On a personal level, as someone that is a part of QA (regular full time staff now too) I would not be comfortable with simply enabling a toggle button at this stage and just letting people have at it. I can understand how people who really want FF on lower difficulty levels will feel disappointed and would rather have this than nothing, but not all encounters are created equally and I wouldn't want to sign off on a feature without proper manhours spent on ensuring its validity and enjoyment. I think it would, at this point, look bad to have inconsistent difficulty issues where much of the game is at an appropriate difficulty level, but suddenly having the occasional encounter (especially a crit path encounter) that is uncharacteristically difficult because of the FF situation. This isn't a situation where I think it's as easy as telling that player to simply turn off FF for that fight if they've been playing at the same difficulty and FF setting for the first 15 hours of the game and enjoying the level of difficulty presented by the encounters thus far. Thus, I would be exceptionally hesitant about sending something out that didn't have adequate QA hours run over it. At this stage we just wouldn't have the time, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone that complains because of inconsistent difficulty. I think it would seem tacked on and not properly fleshed out, because realistically it would be. I wish that we could spend more time playtesting the game in difficulty levels such as Nightmare as is, but time allocations are made based upon where I believe many people will attempt to play the game. This makes a FF toggle at this time a catch-22, because if enough people really wanted it then I feel we'd need to spend more QA time on it (which we don't have a lot of at this point), but at the same time if only a small portion of the gaming audience would really enable it at lower difficulty levels, then the very valuable programming time to set up the hooks for enabling this at this time would probably be better used elsewhere. I am only playing on normal difficulty though (on a personal level I don't necessarily care for combat being "difficult" or "challenging" for the sake of it. I like combat to be fun so I rarely feel a need to crank up difficulty levels in games). As a result I don't have any experience with how friendly fire is or how difficult the game is on Nightmare. If people are interested I can spend a day or two playing around on Nightmare and post my feedback for it. Another note about commentary regarding the playthroughs. While Hawke may have been close to death during the "actiony" elements, I'd still say that the player was going to win that encounter, even if Hawke had been incapacitated. I can understand your frustration, but I disagree with this statement. I have played my share of instances and raids in a game like WoW where teams have to strictly adhere to tactics to successfully complete the encounter, and that game does not have Friendly Fire. I think it is possible to have a game that requires thought throughout combat that doesn't need to rely on Friendly Fire being enabled in order to achieve said thought. By the same token, I found the combat in Baldur's Gate 2 to be pretty formulaic in my experience as well. Just my 2 cents. Anyways, sorry for the wall of text.

I enjoyed having some discussions about immigration with him All in all was a poster I enjoyed interacting with.

As an Edmontonian I consider this statement to be absurd (and borderline baiting). I'd prefer it if we kept the potshots over where people live out of the equation, as I'm sure you're not a fan of people telling you that where you live is a "pretty bad" place to live.

Most of it seemed unrelated to piracy - such as their testing problems, or him getting disheartened alot. I'd be glad if someone said they thought my game was crap but played 30 hours of it, at least they've seen everything it had to offer at that playtime and can form their opinion on it. That way it's useful as feedback. My post was directly motivated by piracy. I will happily and emphatically help someone with issues in the game, and accept criticism from them, if they bought the game. When I learn that I just spent the past day helping someone that was having severe issues with the game didn't actually buy the game, I get frustrated because I would have rather helped someone that was financially invested in the game. The piracy is what disheartens me. If someone buys the game, plays 30 hours of it, and tells me it sucks, I pay attention and accept it as useful feedback. If someone pirates the game, plays 30 hours of it, and tells me it sucks, I'm disinclined to bother with his feedback because he's demonstrated he is not one of my customers. The other aspect of my post was financial, which is affected by piracy as well. No one here feels that one pirated copy of the game = one lost sale (even though a lot of people seem to think that's what the industry feels), but I think it's naive to believe that a lot of pirates (especially in the West) pirate simply because they aren't interested at all in buying the game. I do think that if by some magic all piracy were to suddenly become impossible, sales would increase, especially for the PC game industry. In other words, I consider piracy to be a net negative for the health of the industry. I am a PC gamer and while I don't think PC gaming is dying, I do think it's compromised by piracy. I'm not at all surprised that the industry has really moved towards the consoles, which is unfortunate for myself as a PC gamer. As for whether or not you'd be glad, I thought I was pretty explicit when I mentioned that the circumstances involved somebody that pirated the game. I am skeptical that you'd be glad if someone took services you rendered, failed to remunerate you for them, and then decided to tell you that you did a crap job and should work at improving their experience. In simple lay terms the executable is modified to not be dependent on the various copy protection hooks that would otherwise fail to properly execute if not passed.

As a game dev, it is exceptionally disheartening to read and hear about people that decide that the game experience they just had was not worth their money, even though it was worth their time to sink 30+ hours into it. It is also very aggravating to see many of these same people bitch and moan because the free game they played wasn't up to the standards that they expect. I don't understand how some of the people can get so irate over something that literally cost them no money aside from internet bandwidth. But they sure do. We understand the reality of the situation, and I am active in suggestion less severe DRM methods because I don't believe they are worth the investment, but I don't know anyone at work that enjoys seeing a game we made topping the charts at a torrent site. I recently became a regular full time employee (no longer contract) at BioWare so I effectively received the "Golden Ticket" for people that start out as Term Testers, but it still sucks having to find replacements for quality terms because we're not able to offer them full employment for financial reasons. I was very close to not becoming a full time employee despite middle management trying to find a way to fit me in, until special circumstances occurred and an opening was made available. Couple this with irate people that seem to think I don't actually do any work (When DAO was released my job for two weeks was to patrol the tech support boards to find and report common issues, while providing work arounds and solutions for people having issues - I lost count at how many times it was "obvious" that BioWare didn't spend much time QAing the game...), and sometimes I just shake my head. Though the worst is when I realize I've just spent time tech supporting someone that has pirated the game. Rage! Fortunately I like the people I work with, and I'm excited to see DA2 finally come together and I hope that people enjoy it. There's still a fair bit of work to do so hopefully we can keep up the velocity. Cheers.

First you'd have to decide what are you discussing here. I simply fail to understand what "xian" is, and whether there is a specific church you attempt to condemn or simply declare any form of organized religion evil. Substitution "X" for Christ is not all that uncommon actually. It's actually where Xmas came from too. Am I the only one overwhelmed by the irony here? No. Though I'll admit that I'm at the point where I don't know if Harelquin is just trolling, or too daft to realize that his entire modus operandi is to post with arrogance, self importance, and snide comments. This attitude goes back to while he posted as Rhomal.