Hassat Hunter

Just her and Scarlet actually. And Scarlet already says she doesn't care. So it's all down to... she wants it. And heck if I pay her more if none of my generals have even done anything, especially with her attitude. Well, probably only exclusion there. And yes, I did agree with her in that case. True. But oddly enough you can do with Henry and Edmund when they're off to send on stuff they don't like. Maybe that's also a bit factor why people have less trouble with them. The 'yes' answers are usually that THEY have to suck it up, not the player. Nope. And I probably wont. Here's hoping for RTS-free Dragon expansion/DLC to spice up the game...

You rather a fully done game scrapped than released later. Especially if you paid for it? *I don't understand*

Another Red Eclipser here... now you only need... 5 more XD Also Ops should never be done through the GF... Sadly, Fleet general chat is the main place. Also for everything you don't want to hear. Sadly, even after all this time in development, they never had the wisdom yet to seperate fleet generic chat and the ops-recruiment chat. I even made a suggestion for it to be server-wide, since that could allow people 55 just to go wherever they want, then teleport back if they have a group. Alas, general chat it is :/

From the gameplay trailer, game looks fun, seems they got the humour down atleast. Not quite sure if the QTE-abilities wont tire soon... Also, wouldn't worry too much about the "crappy quality", they said from the beginning Obsidian had a hard time 'making the game look as crap as the show', so it's just them making something fun of themselves, not some assault on them or Obsidian.

If you're bored or simply crazy, here's my report on Dragon Commander I posted over at Larian's forums, now for all of you to read and respond on. Or get thrilled for the game... or ignore it because it's a massive wall of text. All those options. Of course, only one will gain +10 with me! Completed the game today with a 13-hour playtime on Normal difficulty, latest patch of course. Overall not too bad. It's more than the sum of it's (sometimes mediocre) components, sadly some rotten apples do tend to add a wrench to the whole system. I did have a lot of fun the first 7 hours, but afterwards, yeah. From Act II onwards I stopped doing RTS, and just the TBS and talking is a bit too little. For a full report; Politics and most generals... the good * The politics play, while simplistic, was a lot of fun. Talking about all their opinions, the fun the imps where, reading up again what they said after you voted. Definitely the best part of the game. Although the dwarves voice did get on my nerve, the others didn't. Although when furthering into the game, the quality of these decisions dwindled. I don't mean the topics, or the councillor's reply, but that in the endgame without question everyone that didn't put up the vote was against it. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of the whole fraction reputation when you can simply swap one -5 for 4 +5's. The only reason too why my reputation with the dwarves and undead dwindled, yet I still ended up with around 75% with them in the end. And I did even agree a few of those anti-all votes, based on my personal opinion. * The queen. I had the lizard one. It was fun changing her. But overall it felt really short with only a few conversations and no real conclusion. Once she changed clothes, I could visit her all the time instead of only when something was up, but it where just a few lines repeated. And when the 'He killed that rapist, I must hang him' I was so wanting to tell her "That wasn't how I raised you!" but no such option. And when I won the game, I didn't even get a game-over conversation with her like with all the other NPC's? What was up with that? * The generals. That is, Edmund, Henry and Scarlet. Although Henry spoke a bit too slow for my desire (I like the voice, but talking to him just takes so much longer than the other characters). Their decisions where often the most interesting, their personal progressions very nice. While the other characters stayed the same from start to finish, here, like with the queen, you could actually press your stamp on them. Which, from a C&C or RPG view, are the best decisions, not just some statistical bonusses and penalties and that's it. ** So yeah, the talking was definitely one of the strong points, less so having to click everyone in the bar till you get the 2 new stuff talkers (I don't want ! or ? pointers, and it's really easy to click out, but after 60 turns it's getting rather tedious). Also I wish when one VO-line was over it could automatically continue to the next line without using continue. Allows you to just sit back till the choice (or convo end), and avoids those akward animation weirdnesses when they go from the animation for that line, to completely neutral, back to the animated state for the next line. Just looks a little sloppy and amateuristic, which should have no place in the title. * I rather liked the TBS and auto-resolution with cards. Never used a single dragon card ingame though, but the others got their use. Except genocide, since I am still not sure of it's effects. Tried if twice, noticed nothing, decided to not bother with it then. While the AI can be quite stupid at times (4 loaded transports all in the single occupied slot of 5 juggernauts. That's rather stupid, you know), it overall can be quite the challenge to overcome the enemy, hold ground and take new ground. Well, except if launching an act with 100 cards and 1000 gold (act III, guilty, just wanted it to end then). The act II start was interesting with the enemy capital so near, but I really soon just blocked it's sea, and then it send suicidal transports once in a while giving me free kills, and ruining it's army. I've seen people complain of it's buildup, but yellow and green where harder since they didn't let their forces be killed off so easily. Also, balloons are really rather overpowered... in the end I only used them (great movement, seas wont block and extremely good attack power? Überunit on TBS alert!), then just ran melees to mop up the deserted areas. Although admittadly, that was late in the game. I've had my wins, my crazy losses, and overall it was also quite fun. Catherine on zerg-modus... the bad So, it's time for... the bad. * With a game only featuring 2 options for all choices (even outside the yes/no with your generals and queen) sometimes a lot of finesse in your choice has gone away. Now, since the introduction of the mass-effect wheel I haven't become a stranger to making a choice and then the game giving you a completely different line or standpoint you think the option would give, but it can still be rather annoying, especially if so many choices are part of the game, and the feeling just gets bigger and bigger the more these cases pop-up. The biggest offender of this is, of course, Catherine. Her personality is COMPLETELY hate-able. She insults you time and time again. While Egmund may be stuckup and racistic, he atleast has some finesse in his language, and when dealing with him, you can make him change his ways or hear he isn't as stuckup as he wants to make out. Not the same for Catherine. It's also a shame the makers have made all the generals one-issue. * Egmund is all about being less racist to other races. Fortunately Larian has formed this into some fun scenario's like the newspaper article and his hatred for equal opportunity for all meaning tax-raises for other races. He's a one-issue, but it's masked well, so it works. * Henry is all about loner vs. teamwork. Again a one-issue. Again though the devs managed to work it well into incounters that seem different, but aren't. And it's hard not to root for him when family's at stake. * Scarlet didn't really have a lot to tell me in my game, but her one-issue was gay. I don't know why her being lesbian was a big relevation, considering it was pretty obvious within 5 turns of the game. I don't really know how well this one-issue was handled since I didn't get her convo's very often. * But then... then comes Catherina. Her first topic is... she wants a raise. Since she hasn't done anything, she's insulted me constant, and I really disliked her already, obviously I denied HER the raise. Sadly the game decided for me that it wouldn't count for her, but for all woman. Not what I want. Throughout the game she then came with more proposels merely for HER own benefit. But if I rejected them it suddenly was applied to all womankind. If I berated Edmund, it wouldn't suddenly be on all lizards. And when talking about things like the orc-newspaper, it wasn't merely his own self-interest. Also, some of the ideas... FIRE half the military top, my war's heart to employ females, untrained, fresh, new. Does that make sense to you? Are you a general, does that make sense to you? Hire them, yeah, but suddenly from nowhere take toppositions. I wonder how many real companies would fire male CEO's just to hire untrained, unknown new females ones just for some quota. I rejected more for the fire part, but no, I was a chauvenist. Thinking about it, how did her AND scarlet even get General if woman where completely banned from the military? I think that's why I and a lot more people with me hate her. Not because she's a feminist, but because the options are written so bad, that she is like womankind herself. * The RTS. Much has been said about the RTS, but I think it's fairly clear that more people dislike it than like it. As stated I dropped it in Act II. A shame, since the Dragon gameplay was really fun (as Divinity II also showed us), sadly it was only packed in that RTS, rather than anywhere else. Maybe also made my game less fun midway in, no Dragon. But I couldn't take doing the RTS. I wouldn't know how to fix that, but I do know some ways that I hated the RTS that I will expain here; ** Using charged abilities can become very problematic. You usually control a variety of units, and then you can't use any. Clicking individual units or unit groups in the heat of combat can be difficult, so eventually I stopped caring about them completely. Allowing those abilites to be on the Hotbar even if more types are selected, and when used only the unit in that group which can do use that ability would eleviate much of these control and micro-managent issues. Only problem might be the slots. Does it have a scroll-bar possibility? * Resorting to cheese. There are really only 2 situations. Either the enemy lets you roll over him, or they amass a huge force for you to deal with. At which point is basically becomes kill/dragon until the population is up, mop up, the end. That's the main winning strategy. And it sucks. It's usually not even intentional, but populations run out very fast, that you can be in that fase 4 minutes in a match, and it's pretty much a given by the time you capture the first settlement on the opponent. Turtling the AI is so overpowered. Perhaps my lamest win was when my base was crushed, I just had a transport and 5 troopers on an island the AI apparently couldn't get to... and 12 juggernauts. Just killed everything from the sea, and while it was 95%-5% just killing enemies with them big-ranged juggernauts made me win the game. 12 minute total gameplay. * Because the RTS is so meh, I really hoped the Dragon could turn up in other ways, alas, it's stuck to that. If only there where instances like the Divinity 2 expansion ending, where you could be a dragon, but not needing RTS segments. It would re-add the very entertaining Dragon gameplay to the lot of us simply hating the RTS. And it would actually require us to get Dragon skills, rather than just upgrading our troops for research points, leaving the AI far behind in that regards, and then TBS becoming easy cause you line your 3-star troops to 1- or 0-stars. Larian did it REALLY well in FoV (even though some disagreed), so it's a shame such kind of dragon-play is not in THE Dragon title. * As stated before, the AI (on TBS) sometimes could be a little odd, sacrificing many of it's troops in vain. It also seems very fond of transports, it usually produces loads, then simply uses them to shuttle troops between 2 countries, sometimes even the same type. Or use them to transport 1 trooper into your heavily defended fortification. I think transports are the biggest worry of TBS AI. I also saw someone mention round robin instead of player-always-first, and that could indeed definitely add some spice to the campaign, requiring the player to defend much better, and perhaps have some unexpected offsets to deal with, adding to the tactical gameplay required compared to the mopup (on normal) it sometimes is now. Conclusion: * I really liked the political, sadly in the endgame the 1 vs 4 mentality ruins a vital part of the game, fraction standings. Also, it's when truly crazy ideas arise, which are so easily rejected (and then you get the other fractions +) based on their out-of-worldiness, it degrades the system. Hopefully more 3vs2 will get added to splinter these up to become less likely to happen. * The TBS was also a lot of fun. It can be tricky at times, but the AI slips up quite a few times giving you a lot of breathing room. It doesn't really help that your ending cards/money on Act I and II make such a big difference, that it could potentially stop your game deadtrack if you end too soon. Or get too much if you stretch it too long, wheter intentional, or you need to amass a fleet for an assault. Also, I got way too much research points, allowing me easily to max everything mid-act II. Not much choice if the choice is everything. Lowering this amount could be a welcome addition. Overall it seems this fase simply needs some balance tweaking in the numbers and AI-fixes. Which means it's in pretty good shape. * The RTS? The less said about that the better. That I gave up on it completely doing only 8 matches should speak for itself. It also makes me pretty unqualified to specifically point at it's weakpoints, besides that TBS is more fun, less frustating, and a LOT faster. It doesn't have a dragon though, I miss my dragon. * The game desperately needs Dragon modues outside of the RTS part of the game. Seriously. Get some DLC on this ASAP! :horsey: THE BUGS: * Revenue Increase lvl 2 cards claim a 2 turn duration, while lvl 3 cards only do 1 turn. Of course, the 2 turn doesn't even work (it's only 1 turn) too. * Some political decisions reset statistics rather than ammending them, sadly I never really paid that much attention to it, but I do know some +gold or -gold got removed, and the one I do recall: ** Imp allowed to use ratmilk lowers population by 10%. Banning smoke sticks increases population by 1%. Final tally, +1%... :think: * Very often the enemy will load people onto a transport and then not move it, or move it and not unload. This makes for easy kills when arriving, since the cargo can't join the fight, and still get destroyed. Like I said, didn't paid that much attention, hence the short list. ***** Here's some Steam Achievements I think I should have gotten, but didn't, based on the title and description (do mention if I am wrong); Summary Justice; Asked my lizard wife to save the elves with rangers rather than release the dictator, achievement still locked. Hop To It!; Edmund's dismissal of the word hop still remembered by me, but the achievement is still locked. Dragon Knight; I got every research in Act III, imp and Maxos, and research points went to waste, but the achievement is still locked. *** and based merely on icons from Steam; Requiescat In Pace; Has no digging icon. I dissallowed digging on elven graves. Still locked. Duuuuu-uuude!; Public health-care, still locked. To the 2 people who read it all, thanks for reading this long post. Hopefully it's some use to Larian, or other readers.

Finished Dragon Commander. Started to get a bit of a drag at the end, which made me happy my 1000+ gold and 100+ cards allowed me to blitzkrieg Act III. 5 turns, it was over. Now what other game in my huge backlog to play. Oh, and right, I was supposed to make that homework too

The final battle... overkill used

Don't know. I am cozy with the elves, but the ideas also come from other parties no-one agrees with. I was 20% with Dwarves and undead, and because of those 7 last totally one-sided choices I am now 60%/50%, with the rest around 90%...

Hmmm, I do miss Isometric RTS too... Red Alert, Age of Empires. Modern RTS suck, and you have to fight the camera more than your enemies :/

So... encounters should be methetically handplaced for optimal performance, nothing else... and then they can randomly walk around the map ignoring this placement... Buuuuuut randomness is bad! I hope you see your own contridictionary there. Apparently seeding 10 bandits with a preset layout and let them randomly go about the map; Good. Seeding the same 10 bandits with randomnised gear, randomly going about the map; The balance is gone! ??? I know for a fact that people will do that, just open a Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment walkthrough. However if instead of always that one ring, they have one of three possible rings they could drop, that predictability factor isn't present. Having a Ring of Fire instead of Protection +1 suddenly might require you to change your tactics a bit, learn and thus play the game better, and is perfect for replays. I still don't see how that's all so very horrible as you make it out to be... :/ Maybe in that very sentence itself the answer resides. Maybe.

$4 million disagrees with the OP...

Playing Dragon Commander reminds me how often games can give you a 'choice', then completely take the wrong conclusions of your choice, and roll with that. Especially in the Catherine plot. "Raise me, bastard" "**** You" "You womanhater" "Eh... I don't hate woman, just you." "You should totally fire half your generals and replace them with female generals. Combat-experience lacking, fresh newbie generals." "Yeeeah, no. Don't you see we are in combat here. Firing half my squad seems like a rather bad thing to do." "Woman hater, chauvenist!" "No, I don't object to the woman part, just the 'fire half your army' part. But that had no reply option." "I hate you forever, woman hater." "Okay, totally unreasonable suggestion maker who then wraps my rejections to foolishness as a plot against woman." Seriously, I often wonder 'what the hell' talking to her. Also the political decisions have severly decreased in quality. In the past some agreed, some were against... made sense. For the past 7 or so suggestions however it has been 1 offers, ALL the others are against. Which makes it rather easy to get their influence by simply rejecting the single person. Since they mostly suggest stupid stuff anyway. What's the point of the fractions system if you influence it to desire half-game...

Dragon Commander's RTS can become pretty ridicilous... Another pearl of a "heroic" victory. I did get swarmed this time, my entire base destroyed. Bar 12 cruisers, and about 5 troopers on a distant island too remote for the AI apparently. Basically it was 98% them, 2% me. But the AI can't really handle ship combat well... so I could use my 12 cruisers to murder all opponents, until they surrendered... and I won. Seriously... this win is even lamer than the last I mentioned 0_o

The boring subjects of course... otherwise it would be too good. Like management... Going to play some Dragon Commander before having to work tomorrow... clicked 'continue', suddenly was turns back from what I recalled. Panic! Fortunately just turned out it was due to daylight saving time, loading the game with the latest timestamp, which was later than my actually latests save from the hour rollback. Phfew. Well, off for a few turns while I should be sleeping XD

Except it still be quality. And they can add quality AND quantity. With a difficulty system that modifies NPC's based on difficulty, don't you think a system which can add some randomnification helps with that? Also the encounters would still be handplaced. Just the equipment can be varried, based on a limited number of factors. Which indeed, yes, would make the game less predictable. Which would add a layer of strategy rather than mere anticipation and response. Requires the gamer to play better. How's that a bad thing? It's also not based on 'hard to do', rather 'time consuming to do'. And we all know that lessening timeconsuming things does help developers. Heck, most tools are written just to make the developers time spend as efficient as possible. You assume that they set ALL that for ALL their encounters. If so, that's pretty naieve. Most enemies already will have a basic layout, and most of those will keep that, unchanged. If they want a different, they could make the changes. If they want many different, just another default enemy layout to be placed. If instead of that, the 2 default layouts are instead 1 layout, but it's randomly chosen between the 2 which is used... do tell me what the negative impact on the game that would be from your viewpoint? Look at KOTOR2 for example. They have all these systems like "Lightside/Darkside", but near-none of them are actually set. Specific profencies? Screw that, profency: all. Class? Usually not properly set either (And sometimes leading to hilariously wrong stuff, like Jedi droids). Level? Not set. That developers have the time to manually outfit all encounters to the effect desired, is a fairy tale sadly enough.

Tracer's Tong mission always was integrated into the game... ??? Aaaanyway, having a lot of homework, so very limited gaming for me

There's a similar trick in the Alderaan palace... not sure if you got that one. For me, YouTube was my friend for all XD. Still have to do the 2 Makeb ones though...

Just pointing out another of the positive sides. Also, just randomnising does save a developer from manually outfitting the entire map. Just give them their loot roster, there we go. They could make more encounters just by having to spend less time on most of them.

Didn't I mention that? I thought I did. If not; The lizard princess. I guess I like the Avatarish look most, and her personality seems the least annoying (somehow 0_o).

Spoilers? Don't watch (yet)! It's odd that you can zoom in though. I would never see a good reason to do so too. Also, while listing annoyances, I remember another, when zooming out I get clouds blocking my vision. The point of zooming was to get overview! And then that prevents it :/

Well, I like my enemies well fed xD But yeah, attrition it is... oops. Pretty sure they were still white the first turn, hence my confusion. Or maybe I just imagined things. Or maybe it was a genuine bug. *reads back* Yeah, you did. Didn't remember all said in there though when playing. Just the money and research stuff. Oops. Worse was that since I thought I started with one transport, I blew 16 gold just for 2 more, while I could have gotten those and spend them on adding to my warforce. Oh well... Some of them talk rather annoyingly slow. And I would have much preffered if you didn't have to press 'continue' all the time and the convo would simply end or move on once the VO is done, unless you have to make a choice. Just a minor nitpick though, although one getting on my nerves. I seem to get along best with Lizards and Elves, Dwarves and especially Undead really start to hate me. Choices made so far; * No to drawing people to service (can't quite recall the term atm, drafting?). * Yes to government health care. * No to putting outsiders outside the border (something becoming stranger and stranger here in Holland though ). * Yes to taxing the church. * Yes to gay mariage. I do hope these are somewhat randomnised and not just a fixed order. Would be annoying if in a replay they pass in the exact same order again. But it's too early to think of that now, I barely started Act II!

That would be something I would be interested in. Does the voucher also work for the version with expansion, or just the base game?

Not my experience. He quite quickly came around with transports and those spiderthingies who do shoot airborne. Nothing hit-and-run didn't fix, the AA-turrets are worse. Anyway, second RTS battle was a joke, blizkrieged the enemy in 7 minutes. Took so long since I paused, otherwise it probably would be 2 minutes. So easy. Third RTS battle again was nuttricion. U shape, bases on both sides, middle point the interesting thing. Enemy did try to drop some enemies on my shores, but those were easily slaughtered. Wiped up the middle, he surrendered. And that were the 3 RTS-battles of Act I. Did the rest on auto-resolve, much better. Started Act II and already lost quite a few units in the first turn! Figured those ships on the water, since in neutral, where to be captured. Instead shot down my transport holding 5 troopers. ****. Also 2 other transports where apparently on the map (didn't see them), and retreating one got ripped apart. Next round I landed somewhere, only to learn they had no load. So it's the long way back to my country again to fill it. Great start there...

Well, played 2 turns of Dragon Commander, had my first very anti-Heroic battle, so time for a quick-first impression. I suck at RTS. I suppose the X-com talk about 'classic' pushed me into 'normal' without me having the skill for it. Sure, the game gave me 20% chance to win my first battle, and I actually won, but the way I did... let's say anti-heroic does cover it pretty well . So I got dropped off with my troops. Being of the Age of Empires and Red Alert RTS generation and not liking much of the recent stuff I just build a few troops hoping to explore a bit. Meanwhile my enemy churned out troops like it was Supreme Commander, and it took about a minute or 2 before the map turned red. My meager troops got crushed trying to take a third base. From then on continues small assaults on me where happening. How did I win? Since it kept sending small attachments of troops to me, I could easily kill them with my Dragon, then heal up. In the meanwhile I amassed an army at my gates, waiting for enemies that surpassed my dragon. After a small while the population pool was depleted, and the nutricion battle started. Since the enemy still only send a few troops, I could easily kill thousands of opponents with my dragon. Eventually his units ran out, and I murdered his entire base. As said, super anti-climactic, or even well played, just turtling and then going in for the kill. But I kinda have a feel more battles will end up like that. And that's, not exactly fun. Reminds me why I hate modern RTS again. Oh well, being a Dragon is fun (much more than the RTS), as is the talking and making decisions and stuff, so let's see what continuing brings me...

@ forgotten; Not really, you just wont get all. Would it harm if you go long sword +1, not find 2 or 3 in loot, and only +4. Probably not, since you got a team, and alternative ways to get that +2 or +3 some other way. It was never my intention that all items ACTUALLY drop, if so, there's no point randomnising drops between a few various alternatives. @ Valorian/Sabotin; Imagine a random encounter, between travelling, having to fight 10 bandits. It's intended to get this event a few times. Now with your system they need to manually set up like 5 different variations, or risk all 5 of these to be equal. Even without replaying, that can be stale. With some randomness to opponents, all 5 of those, even in one playthrough, require to let the player act on the equipment of the opponents rather than the fifth time knowing it all very well. There you go, developers only need to make 1 setup, not 5 different ones, and they can use that dev-time setting up other encounters. Another would be you get a boss-fight with a bandit leader. You need to play differently if he spawns with a mace and heavy armor than if he does with sword and medium armor. Do tell me how that not adds replayability, or rapid strategical thinking of the player? Just re-using the same strategy might not help next time, only due to a slight randomnisation. I would say that would be pretty awesome, and a good way to make players have to play more stragetical and pay attention for a minor amount of developerstime, compared to the alternatives. Also, somehow you guys (from Sabotin's example) seem to think swordsmen end up with bows. That's obviously NOT going to happen. If you setup 10 ranged opponents, the randomness would not stuff them with swords, but rather slings, or (short/long)bows, or crossbows. A pikemen wont get a sword either, but randomly go between pike, pole, lance or similar weapon. Melee would go sword, axe, hammer. As thus, the example as stated would simply be false.