Spider

I'll add a vote to X-com. It really was a great game. It did lack in replayability a bit, but it took me long enough to beat that I'm not really complaining (36th attempt on classic/iron man did the trick).

Damn, missed one spec when making my original statement. I still don't think 8 different attacks total is that much to keep track of. Now, if you also have to watch procs and buffs, some classes can get a bit overwhelming. Carnage Marauder comes to mind, and from the looks of it, Balance Shadow is the same.

Outside of pvp, no class uses more than 7 attacks. At least not when you have all of them. The reason you get so many is because some are shared from the base class and some from the advanced class are more aligned with certain skill trees. As an operative healer, I have 5 healing abilities that I use with any frequency, + a sixth that is useless and a cleanse that is used rarely. As an arsenal mercenary, I have a basic rotation of four different attacks, with a fifth thrown in every now and then, a powerful aoe attack when required, and if desperate the basic attack. As an assassin tank, I use five attacks, with a fight thrown in with the target below 30%. There's also three defensive cooldowns to use and a couple of utility abilities. The point is just because I have 10+ attacks on each character, it doesn't mean they're optimal, or even good, for that particular build. More abilities does mean there's a higher learning curve to playing your class well, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

From everything I've read about Makeb before, I'm pretty sure this will not continue the class storylines. The new story mentioned is the planet story, nothing else, I think. It's going to be interesting to see what the new levels will bring though, in terms of class abilities and such. Also gear balance.

Yeah, operations are a strong departure from the rest of the game. You get a feeling for it in some of the flashpoints, but it goes further in the ops. Favorite fight right now is Operator IX, where you debug a huge computer in real time (and it's done by clever use of colors). very hectic and somewhat chaotic, but also very awesome.

The two are kinda different. Levelling is very much a solo activity (with the occasional exception), while end game is instead a social activity. I've never managed to make it to the end game in a mmo before, because I've always found leveling to be horrid in those games. in SWTOR it was ok, pretty fun even (true, I played with my wife the first time which adds a lot of fun). A large part of that was the increased story focus. Sure there are times when it felt grindy and tedious. It's a fairly relaxing way to enjoy the game, since you get to set your own pace. The endgame must be absolutely horrid if you don't have a guild or at least regular group of friends to play with. while it isn't exactly lacking anymore, as it did in the beginning, you're still going to run the same instances over and over again. While it is fun to run with unknown people every now and then, running with people you know is much, much better. So yeah, SWTOR is a bit conflicted in that way. Some like the solo aspect, some like the social one. I like both a fair bit, so for me the game did a lot of things right other mmos haven't.

The F2P really isn't as bad as some people are making it out to be. And the server numbers clearly indicate people are willing to play through it (most servers are close to full during peak, and planet population when leveling is very large). And considering how much of the items from the packs hit the GTN, an enormous amount of those packs are opened. So it certainly feels like the F2P initiative is working well for Bioware so far.

F2P don't get rested, but preferred and subscribers do. There are also a lot of xp boost consumables to buy in the cartel market, so you'll be able to even things out. I think a f2p:er who does all solo content including bonus missions should stay roughly on par level wise, but I'm not sure. When I play I tend to at least solo all heroic 2 (and I'm usually on level or one level above) I come upon, but that may not be feasible for less experienced players I suppose.

All quests in the game are ceompletely optional. You don't even have to run your class quest if you don't want to, but you'lll kinda gimp yourself due to not getting any companions. But you could level all the way to 50 from doing nothing but pvp (if that's your fancy). I've found that if you only do planetary quests and skip out on all the group content, you tend to be somewhat underleveled. But if you do heroics, pvp or flashpoints, it can just as easily turn out that you're overleveling planets instead. I've skipped entire planets (apart from class quest) a couple of times, especially on characters that do a decent amount of pvp when leveling. And I rarely need to do bonus series quests at all. So my point is, do the stuff you find fun. XP will usually sort itself out. I personally think the group content is the most fun you can have in the game (flashpoints especially, but heroics as well), so I tend to try and do that.

The main reason people left was the lackluster endgame content. From that perspective the game has improved a lot and there are now a fair amount of things to do. The main problem with end game right now (according to my guildies) is that there are few things to do outside of raid nights. Basically they want more stuff to do while not running ops and flashpoints. Including something like pazaak I think would go a long way to keep more people interested longer.

Small update, but a new warzone's beena long time coming I suppose. I'm on the Red Eclipse by the way, mostly imperial side.

Turn based, emulating the board game.

So in other words, they implemented a sort of level scaling?

Either way, I have to applaud you for being so civil about it. It's been an interesting discussion to follow, and discussions relating to piracy usually get out of hand with name calling. This one didn't and it's been a nice change.

re walkspeed: In BG2 (and thus also BG1 running tutu) there was a setting for frames per second. If you cranked that up to 60, it'd have a dramatic effect on movement speeds in the game (and other things like spell animations, which weren't necessarily a good thing). From what I've read, that option is gone in EE, instead it's locked at 30 FPS. Which is why it feels slower than BG2 to many I suppose.

KaineParker, yeah I think that pretty much sums up their target audience. Have no experience hands on with this version, though.

All impression's I've gotten is pretty much the former. At least it feels like they're banking on a fair share of nostalgia sales (to the degree they even mentioned the prospect of making BG3 if the games sell well).

I agree with what Alan said 100%. Well apart from liking the Crusader video (because I never played the game). He is one of the most level headed person on this forum and calling him petty and disrespectful is just odd to me. That being said, the new cinematics certainly aren't better than the old ones so the change was probably uneeded. I would still want a skip option on a fresh install though, since I've seen them way to many times as is. It's not out on tablets yet, is it? I think it got refuted by the app store and needs to resubmit (after bugfixing).

Considering those cinematics (in the original) are unskipable on a fresh install, and hold no value what so ever in terms of progressing the story of the game (though it can be argued they help establish a tone, even though I personally don't get that from them), I'd much rather have a game that didn't include them at all over a game that force me to watch them again. So in my eyes, a clear improvement.

Which is why, in my original post, I said this goes for new games. And that Steam obviously has lower price points when we factor in sales. There are always exceptions of course, but all games I've been interested in buying on release have always cost more for me on Steam than a lot of other places (and importing physical copies from Amazon or play.com has typically been the most cost efficient).

Fair enough, I actually don't know what a new game at a place like Game (if they're still around) would cost in Sweden either, but I am pretty sure that larger outlets like MediaMarkt or Elgiganten are cheaper than steam, or mail order giants (in Sweden at least) like Webhallen or CDON. And taxes have nothing to do with it, the VAT in Sweden on games is 25%, so I doubt you'll get it any higher anywhere else. But my main point was that it's very easy to get a hold of physical copies cheaper than steam. Pretty much every game sells for less from Amazon.co.uk, which includes free shipping (if the game costs more than £25, which new one typically does). For isntance, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 costs €60 on Steam while you can buy a physical copy for €43 on Amazon. For comparison, Swedish store Webhallen (that has physical stores in some cities as well as mail order) sell it for €52. All those prices are including any taxes. So yeah, Steam is definitely the most expensive option, but also the most convenient.

For most of the new games, GMG re-sell steam keys anyway, so they get those keys wholesale somehow, then just resell them. You said Steam is undercutting physical stores in Europe, but I got to say that confuses me, because in my experience buying a digital copy from Steam is always the most expensive version of any given game. Swedish stores tend to be somewhat cheaper, but usually buying a physical copy from Amazon (with free shipping) is the cheapest option. If GMG carries the title and you get your hands on a discount code (which is easy enough to do), buying the steam version from there has become a real alternative though. But still, Steam itself has never been the cheapest option for me. This is for new games by the way, Steam sales are another story entirely.

The concepts of the ME2 ending were fine. The suicide mission, and showing the true intentions if TIM. But the overgrown terminator? That brought it all down a lot for me.

I have a Fortress 2 and it's amazing. Had it several years and would still recommend it to anyone. Except Gorth, because while you can do liquid cooling in it, it's not really optimized for it. Best Chassi for ligquid cooling afaik is still Corsair Obsidian 800, but maybe not even that one is large enough for you Gorth.

And youtube has a non-flash solution for those who don't have it.