alanschu

Speechcraft is a pointless skill. Level 25 Illusion allows you to make a +100 point charm spell on a 5 second timer. Disposition is automatically 100 when you use it. The game wasn't balanced. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Maybe Illusion is just overpowered!

Hmmmm. That is VERY surprising. Most people still have those annoying things like lives and responsibilities that get in the way of doing stuff for free. Too bad it's hard to verify without some sort of official source.

That link doesn't seem to be commenting on the latest Bloodlines patch being made for free.

I thought Atton's conversion, especially as darkside, was the best conversion out of all the people you can make a jedi.

You think either Carth or Atton is the most popular Star Wars character?

Well, raising your speechcraft will let you raise your personality, which as far as I can tell, gives you a higher threshold for the rating of someone. Much of the dialogue options are related to how well a person's disposition to you is. I'm noticing that now with my recent playthrough as I didn't make speechcraft a class skill (mostly because I recognize how pointless it is, and how easy it was to level up).

I believe they had already significantly downsized. IIRC they officially closed up shop once the patch came out.

I'm not making any suppositions about the reasons behind them "sitting" on the game. Just the fact that it's possible that there was little to no actual work being done on the project. As for having "nothing to do," I'm not so convinced, given the game wasn't released in pristine condition. I never implied that they actively decided to stop working on it, despite being able to work on it.

Well, Mercantile is still "useful." It just levels up so slow that it essentially has no point.

I wouldn't have picked you to be the type to have FEAR.

Hahaha. Whatever, keeps you busy I guess. In both Windows 98 and Windows XP, I was slow to make the transition myself. I used Windows 95 at least until Windows 98 SE came out (since i never used non second edition win98). And I know I had Windows 98 SE still installed when I moved into the city just over 3 years ago, so that'd put me into 2003. Once I started having issues with Win98 not really being supported, whether it be via drivers or applications, is when I made the transition.

That's the one.

Germany didn't lose because of a second front in WWI. They lost because they didn't have enough people to be soldiers, as it was a war of attrition. (Not to mention that yet again, the RN reigned supreme). I'd wager that Germany was doomed from the beginning, and if Russia hadn't even been involved, they'd still have lost the war. The Russians gave a laughable challenge as the Germans smacked them around. They were out of the war for over a year before Germany surrendered. But it's tough to match up with the manpower of France, UK, Canada, and eventually the US. This realization is what resulted in the doctrinal shift to blitzkrieg that the Germans employed in WW2. They needed to win decisively otherwise they'd lose. Which ultimately happened again on the Eastern Front in WW2. As for your statement, I still disagree. I find I would study about the history, and as a result of my studies of history, I'd look into geography. People can learn a lot about the history of World War 2, without knowing precisely where any of the countries are. But once you start hearing about the encirclment of the Maginot Line and the initial U-Boat campaign in the North Sea, if you're interested you'll look that stuff up. The history of Brunei is rather inconsequential in the world of international history. But if I wanted to look up the history of it, I'd probably be more interested in learning about it's geographical location. Not knowing the geographical location of Botswana prior to this thread, does not hinder me learning about Botswana. I'll learn about it in the context of geography as I learn about the country itself. I'm not going to commit all the countries in the world (and in particularly their geographical locations) to memory, as it doesn't serve any purpose. If there's a situation that arises (such as the war in Afghanistan), I can learn about the details of Afghanistan's geographical qualities when I study it. Prior to the war I had a vague idea where it was, but that certainly hasn't stopped me from learning about it now. I agree with the concept that learning about the history is going to be hard if you actively decided to not learn about the geography. But if someone had virtually no knowledge of Africa's geography and became interested in the crisis of Rwanda in 1994, then they'll probably look into the geography (among other things). Have you been keeping up with the latest historical dealings in Federated States of Micronesia? Better yet, had you actually heard of the country before I mentioned it just now?

They can also provide a fun little aside. I remember playing the demo of some game on Steam that used the Half-Life engine. Shadowgrounds or something, I can't remember. It was a fun little game. Ultimately not worth buying, but the demo took up an hour or so of my time

This doesn't surprise me at all. It was possible to get Windows 98 SE for a long time after XP came out (which is funny, because they continued support for 98 SE, rather than ME).

I laughed when Ion Storm released the second demo of Deus Ex. It was just such a foreign concept. Far Cry's demo made me realise that I needed a new video card, as the Radeon 9500 I had was probably literally running at 0.3 FPS, with hideous graphical artifacting. It was quite clear that the card was not supported ^_^ As for demos affecting purchasing decisions, I'd say I have probably played demos of well over half of the games that I have bought. And there certainly have been some games that I wouldn't have bought had it not been for the demo. I routinely download demos, just to try out new games that may have slipped under the radar as well.

Where did you dig up those numbers Llyranor?

I'm just saying that my EB Games, which has been sufficiently consolized, still stocks it. So does the local Future Shop (which I think is just Canadian). It's really not that hard to find if you just go out and look for it. I can't imagine it just being stocked in Edmonton Canada.

If Troika had to start laying people off due to financial reasons, it's entirely possible that the game essentially had a skeleton staff on it, at which point they aren't doing anything more than just sitting on the game. Given they were able to conveniently release the game the second Half-Life 2 was released (literally the same day), I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sitting around.

Then you're unlucky. Both the EB Games I have visited in the past month have had the Starcraft battlechest. Try here by punching in your zip code to see if any local stores have it. As for Walmart being second rate, who gives a ****. If it has they game you're looking for, then go buy it.

It doesn't cut the game short at all. The amount of content you experience is still the same. It just doesn't get all consumed at the same time. I played the demo for NWN, and it brought me to the end of the tutorial with the Waterdavian creatures being kidnapped. Hardly a significant chunk of the game. Deus Ex's demo completely 100% sold me on the game. People were so clamouring for more that they released an expansion (the second mission) to the demo. I probably played that demo about 40 or 50 times. And in the end, it probably amounted to around 2% of the final game. But I still didn't experience anything less. And it also discounts the fact that games like Fallout have unique demos, that have nothing to do with the story of the game. Naturally they don't come with the whole game, because developers aren't really keen on giving all their hard work away for nothing.

So you can remember a time when teams didn't need many people? I don't think anyone disputes this. Is it the same situation for handheld games? This sounds like it was directed at Sawyer, which is odd, because I'm not really sure how talking about dev team sizes is really a justified opinion. If you don't know what the sizes are, then it's just a guess. And based on Sawyer's response, Kaftan's guess was a poor one. The only thing up for an opinion is the comment about how Bioware can keep working on "real games," which given that Kaftan's insistence on such comments is starting to reach Hades proportions, I can understand the eye roll. But as for the comment about dev team sizes, I don't think it was an opinion. Just a guess. EDIT: In hindsight, the thing I liked about the romances in BG2 was because it was something different. To be honest I find them rather artificial and that they evolve way too quickly. I didn't find the romances of KOTOR particularly interesting, but I actually appreciated the fact that it was relatively mild in its scope, rather than going around doing the horizontal mambo numerous times.

Yeah why have a demo? It would cut the game short. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Why would it do that? Demos provide people an opportunity to get a 1st hand experience with how the game plays and runs on their system.

I'm still curious if it is important to know where Armenia is off the top of your head. Or heck, even Afghanistan. Considering people criticize Bush about it (which is sort of how this part of the discussion got started), I'm quite surprised. I doubt many political leaders in the world could accurately list the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan. I highly doubt George W. Bush was completely clueless as to where Afghanistan was.

I remember that. Takes you right to the end of the tutorial area.