alanschu

Right.

I didn't actually catch much of the E3 marketing. What was so bad about it? The only thing I saw was the dragon fight.

This thread makes me wonder what happened to this board.

A lot of the people that champion Stardock's model felt it prudent to remind Stardock (over and over in some cases) of this goal when they decided to alter it with the patching mechanism. As far as patching the game without Impulse, I do know that it is significantly more difficult. I am unaware of any files that are available to download, though obviously don't really care to look since Impulse's method of delivery is fine for me.

*raises hand* Now you know one more. As long as I don't have any problems I don't really care too much whether the game is patched, mostly because for 95% of games I have no interest in the multiplayer aspect of them so I don't have to worry about being up to date with the latest version of the game. I feel as though the most recent patch was a fantastic change to the game personally (I started playing it again haha). But fair enough, if you don't care, then have at it. I like a lot of the balance changes they made though, and it's made both single player and multiplayer games more fun for me.

I've seen enough from it to come to this conclusion. Fair enough. Before I started playing it I really knew nothing about the universe (since I had decided I was likely going to pick up the game, combined with the ridiculously long development time, I haven't been following it in the press at all), so it's pulled me in and I enjoy many unique aspects of the setting. The first thing I noticed about the game was that combat was pretty difficult. Until I had reacquainted myself with challenging combat, and worked out party composition and player/NPC progression it was not at all uncommon for me to die. I'm a lot more careful now, combined with a higher level and have returned mental mode of full party control to manage fights (especially some tougher ones) I am dying a bit less. And this is just on the default difficulty level too. I can see some people making some comparisons to Baldur's Gate, because it's probably the most difficult combat I've experienced in an RPG since probably Baldur's Gate (or maybe a different IE game like PS:T or IWD). There are still several fights though where if I expect to just get through them with auto attack and no thought (which I could do in a game like KOTOR), then I am dreaming. The challenge has been refreshing though. Of course I could be finding it difficult because recent RPGs have made me soft

I honestly think it's in vogue to hate on Bioware because they are a big company...arguably the biggest Western style RPG maker in the world from what I can tell. For the record I did not pick up Sonic Chronicles because, even though it was made by Bioware, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be the game experience I was hoping for.

Just pointing out the obvious, that's all. Yet drew the most absurd and ridiculous conclusion ever....and it wasn't even a correct one as Calax pointed out. Maybe it wasn't as obvious as you thought? My comparisons of the game to KOTOR have little to do with your piss ant opinion of either game and were firmly established the moment I played Mass Effect (actually I had heard the comparisons long before I played the game). It has nothing to do with your opinion that the games differ significantly. It's quite clear our opinions of both games differ significantly, and looking on starting **** by commenting on side quests (which are just a part of the game, not the entire game, just figured I'd point out the obvious in that regard) isn't going to make you look any more credible. But hey, your only rebuttal for disputing my perceived similarities of the game was a weak point like that, so cheers mate.

Though you haven't really experienced the setting of Dragon Age yet.

under 1% of all programmers know parallel programming... i do not believe that any of them are working for EA What? My entire graduating class understands the basics of parallel programming. It's different to understand it and make a proper clean parallel code, which 100% uses all the cores and processors available... Talk about stating the obvious. Given the enormous market saturation of single processor systems that still exist, no developer is going to be able to design their code in such a way. Numbers like 100% sure are awesome in theory. Another unfortunate fact is that we can't even be certain of the number of cores in our multicore processors, which will continue to complicate the issue. However, for many software developers, increase core utilization will improve significantly as operating systems provide better interfaces for code to utilize an indefinite number of cores. Provide the support via system calls, operating systems, and compilers, and the transition get smoothed out significantly. Currently though, game systems like the XBOX 360 have an advantage, in that the hardware is a particular specification. It is a lot easier to make use of multiple cores with your application when you know exactly how many cores you have to work with. Though I feel that given the research done by large companies like Intel, and Universities etc., the focus is going to come on the backend operating system scale. At the University of Alberta a system was designed the would automatically utilize CPU resources over a network based on CPU demands. Create an interface with a system like that and suddenly taking some elementary programming ideas such as forking and threads, have the system it's installed on worry about the distributed processing, and suddenly multicore programming is not all that different from single core programming. Why on Earth would I say that a chip manufacturer would not have a clue about it? They're also trying to promote their services because they're a business. But hey, you made a claim and then supported it with a link. For that you get a cookie!

I don't know many people that are content not patching their games to the latest version though. Could just be me. But if you need Impulse to patch it, you effectively need Impulse to play the game, as the reason why impulse was made necessary was to validate CD-Keys. I know there was a huge uproar about it on Stardock's forums about it. Thinking about it now reminds me a lot of the people that bitched up a storm when Gary's Mod went retail for HL2. There were people bitching and moaning that it wasn't fair, it'd be bad, and so on. On numerous occasions I highlighted that the previous versions of Gary's mod would still be available for free, but that wasn't good enough. I said that it'd be equivalent to Gary just stopping work on his mod then, but it was still about how it was unfair, about how Gary's taking advantage of all those that supported him, and how he'd be nowhere without the people that loved to use his stuff blahblahblah. It really cemented to me just how greedy people are. People really do seem to feel a sense of entitlement, and they bitch and moan when they can't get stuff for free.

Sounds like it was leaked. That's not the fault of DRM. Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the most successful recent PC games, in terms of both copies sold and reviews. It has no DRM. If I am not mistaken, Sins of a Solar Empire requires players to log in and validate their copy of game using their Impulse software to download patches for the game. It wasn't always this way but I believe was added for one of the big patches. EDIT: And as I upgrade my Impulse Client, it tells me I need IE7 for it to run properly.

I lost my Steam account password too. I contacted them about it and they gave it to me. http://supportwiki.steampowered.com/wiki/R...a_Lost_Password

He is the marketing/PR guy. He's just doing his job

Well said. But you know me I don't pull punches

I'm just saying I have heard many English actors and whatnot, but I don't consider myself qualified to assess whether or not an accent is a legitimate English accent or not. Like pretty much all places, I imagine there are variations based on region. Heck, the Scottish and Irish sound distinctly different from the standard English accent. Though the actress is Australian.

That's fair. I won't dispute that her flirty/seducing part sounded bizarre.

I find this funny. So if the voice actor is actually English with an actual accent due to where she was raised, you find it sad that it doesn't meet your expectations of an English accent? Well yeah, if the voice sounds like a bad impression of an english accent it still sounds like that regardless of whether it actually is or not. If she is english, then it means she's bad at acting naturally. Or what you think is an English accent is too narrow?

Yes, well, the Citadel and the UCW were the only ones where you could do any exploration and side quests, so not really like KOTOR. If you're going to be a ****ing baiting/trolling moron about it, you're about to get in way over your head.

That's just it though, under no circumstances IMO should it be possible to "screw up" a build of a character.

I hope listing lazily to the left is one of the maneuvers we can use.

I only play PC games. Concerns over the ability to save anywhere are irrelevant if the game is good. And you are wrong. As Dagon put it, when "you're constantly repeating stuff you already did successfully before failing something else" the frustration will be inevitable. And if a game manages to frustrate you, it is quite clear that it has failed. Look, RPGs (at least western ones) HAVE to have save anywhere. You mentioned FF7, but that's a JRPG. JRPGs are fundamentally different from western RPGs in both gameplay mechanics and storyline. AP is not trying to be the next JRPG as far as I know. You also have some western RPGs with checkpoint saves. Those are all games that have failed miserably. A prime example is Fable. I am sorry to say but Fable is one of the worst RPGs ever made, all thanks to it's checkpoint based save system. Developers might have the best intentions while developing the game, but lack of a save anywhere will most certainly reduce the gameplay to a childish experience. Nothing of what you said in any way discounts what I said. If a game is good and the gameplay also of high quality, replaying parts of a game will not be a chore. If the game is poor and gameplay if medicore quality, then yes replaying content will become frustrating. Even in games where I can save anywhere I often find myself replaying content because it's not like I save the game every available tick of the CPU clock. Given the gameplay videos of Alpha Protocol and how frequently checkpoints occur and games are saved, I'd say the AP actually saves more frequently than I do when given the opportunity to save anywhere. However, your insistence on referring to the gameplay experience as "childish" in an attempt to validate your position as being more mature (and hence appealing) is hilarious. Fable is one of the worst RPGs ever made because it's quite frankly a poor game that was hyped to have features that ended up not making the cut and a host of other problems. Stating that it is bad entirely because of the checkpoint save system is quite frankly, absurd. How frequently I can save the game in Planescape: Torment has very little bearing on me considering it to be probably the best roleplaying game of all time. Continuing to redefine what it means to be an RPG, so that the games you like fit nicely into the category, doesn't work with me. Nor does italicizing your ridiculous assertions of what made Fable a poor game. If anyone is being childish here, it's you. Perhaps you play too many RPGs with checkpoint only save mechanisms?

Haha touche. I didn't actually make that connection. Silly me. Though the circumstances of it are different, given that the Blight doesn't seem to completely eradicate all existence like the Reapers did.

I find this funny. So if the voice actor is actually English with an actual accent due to where she was raised, you find it sad that it doesn't meet your expectations of an English accent? It'd kind of be like someone saying that my Canadian accent sounds fake, despite the fact that I am, you know...Canadian. And yes, I have had people say they're surprised because my accent doesn't sound like other "Canadian" accents they've heard. (FTR I have no idea who did the voice acting for Morrigan).

Morrigan's voice is fine IMO, and fits her character pretty well. The complete lack of context makes that video seem particularly cheesy (though her lines specifically at that point are quite cheesy regardless).