Spider
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Posts posted by Spider
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Snipers can become good enough at stealth to be able to sneak up close, at least in S3. From what I remember from S2 though, skills grow so slowly that if it's not something you're specialized in from the start you may as well not bother (and when it comes to medic and tech not even then).
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So, in a proper Vampire game there would never be a werewolf showing up like one did in Bloodlines then?
Werewolves could definitely show up in a Vampire campaign, they do exist in the same world. And they can potentially make for good adversaries. What I mean with cross-campaign was playing a vampire and a werewolf (or a mage) in the same group. It can be done and it can be great fun, but the rules aren't balanced for this.
Although fitting a werewolf into a vampire chronicle is probably easier than the other way around, since not all werewolves are fighting machines. A vampire in a standard werewolf chronicle would have it a lot tougher.
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The werewolves aren't overpowered in the old WoD. They can, however, be made into combat machines. So yeah, in man-to-man combat, Werewolves would beat anyother playable creature in the WoD (except possibly mages who could be grossly overpowered).
But werewolves also fight tougher enemies than vampires do and they fight a lot more. Werewolf is a much more combat oriented game at the core, they're fighting to prevent the Apocalypse, while Vampire is a game of political intrigue and dealing with being a monster.
(in the old WoD anyway, the focus has shifted in the new version)
This is why crossing campaigns in the old WoD could be such a pain. The focus on the games were so different and the power levels kinda skewed. Then again, they were never really intended to be played together in the first case, people just did anyway.
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Copy Protection aren't there to prevent Piracy. They're there to delay it. Most of a games sales are made within the first few weeks and if a cracked copy doesn't turn up until after that, then it's considered a huge win for the publisher.
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I am actually starting to see the rationale behind this. To me it seems like their goal is to have the game fully voice acted, including the PC, and from that perspective it actually makes sense.
I know I don't want to listen to my character say something I already know it's going to say (as if I had already read the dialogue options). As for actual implementation, there's no way of sayin it'll be good or bad until I can actually play the game (which is something may never do since I won't get a 360 anytime soon).
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That or you're a Gangrel. Gangrels are the only vampys that really take down Werewolves in WoD. That's what Warform+aggdamage is for.
Warform... Isn't that something like level 6 or 7 in protean? So that'd make the gangrel a generation 7 or so vampire. That kind of takes away the "of equal or higher" experience part for the werewolf though.
Whithout silver it'd still be a hard fight (although if we have a werewolf of similar power, silver probably won't do much good either).
As for the flamethrower again (not directed at Fenghuang). If we want to get technical here, from a WoD rules perspective it would be pretty much useless against a Werewolf. I don't have the WtA books so I don't remember if fire deals agg to werewolves, but let's say it does. It still doesn't deal very much damage and werewolves can soak aggravated damage unless it's silver. So all the flamethrower would have done is piss the wolf off while his claws (which a vampire without fortitude can't soak) would tear you to pieces.
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I did some checking and it's possible that in addition to Securom, AoW:HT uses a hidden copy protection called Tages. Tages adds a lot of ingame checks to keep checking if the copy is legit, so even if Securom says the game is ok at startup, Tages will keep checking.
This copy protection has been known to cause games to malfunction a lot though. Darkstar One uses it and that game was rendered virtually unplayable for a lot of people with legit copies.
(the way Tages work is by modifying in-game stuff, the game will likely still run, but it'll be so heavily modified it may as well not, like equipment costing one million a piece instead of a few thousand in DSOne)
In the case of Darkstar One, Ascaron released a patch within five days of the UK release to take care of that problem.
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As for the word count, I think it's actually lines of text in the game. There's market research done by suits that indicate that people don't like to read text in video games.
And they're probably right. I know several people who are totally put off with games that have too many words. I have, for example, a friend who thought the IWD games were much better than Torment due to there being too much text in the latter. He's a huge fan of Planescape, liked the game mechanics (hence liking IWD better) and did think the text in Torment was good (Dionarra's soulstone for instance) but just didn't want to spend as much time reading when playing a game.
Although when it comes to modern video games, word count could very well apply to the numbers of lines spoken as well. Voice actors aren't free after all. But Bioware is likely in a position where they can have as many words they damn well please in their games, they've been succesful enough in the past.
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It still a pretty much a killing machine but those who have the stronger weapons, such as the uber machine guns and flamethrowers, can kill it in a sustained fight. Now the ammo usage will most probably make this not a cost effective option but nonetheless the option is there.
I think this would cheapen the weerewolf too much. Machine guns and flamethrowers shouldn't cut it against werewolves. They're tougher than that. Bring silver or stay at home.
(or at least some sort of magical weaponry)
As for what weaponry is available, I'm pretty sure you can have the flamethrower by that time. Still shouldn't be enough imo.
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The extras are nice and all, but it feels a bit odd buying the old Civ games. With Civ IV around there is no way I'd want to go back and play the othres, not even for nostalgia reasons, which means I'd be paying $20 for the extras alone. I think Warlords should have been included in this, then it could possibly have been a worthwile purchase, if I didn't already own both game and expansion.
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Actually, after a fashion BG2 uses the gimmick-to-kill boss. And I'm not talking about Kangaxx.
At Spellhold when you're going up against Irenicus, try just rushing into the room where he is. It's instant game over. You need to enlist aid from the psychopaths. How's that for a gimmick?
Not to mention that it's inconsistent with itself, given how easy Irenicus is to defeat when you face him in the end game, I could clearly have defeated him at Spellhold if that's all he got.
*shrugs*
It's fairly common in games overall.
As for the Flamethrower comment, that would only have made the Werewolf pissed. Fire may do agg (I'm not even sure it does) against them, but they can still soak it so it'd amount to bruises at best. Unless you're packing silver it is a logical assumption that fighting a werewolf is an exercise in futility.
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I don't see the inconsistency either, I really don't. As has been pointed out, the game established werewolves as practically unbeatable in close combat. So from all the information we've been given in the game, it's very consistent.
Sure, you have beaten some tough people before then, but none that are as tough as a werewolf can be.
Besides, that's the way it's supposed to work in the WoD. No vampire can go toe to toe against a werewolf of equal or greater experience. The werewolves are just superior fighters.
(at least not if we're talking about a combat oriented werewolf, which this clearly was)
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You can also get that ending if you're siding with the Anarchs. Anytime you're present when the coffin is opened that's what happens.
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Should I trust the engine or the movie?
How about a little of both? The gameplay is fun (although somewhat simplified) but the writing is a bit meh.
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It would also mean that if I wanted to upgrade my GPU I'd need to upgrade the CPU as well. And CPUs do not need to be upgraded as frequently as the GPU does.
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The problem with integrated solutions in regards to gaming is that gamers usually want to upgrade a few components well before the motherboard needs to be replaced. So I doubt the hardcore gamers will see it as viable.
That is unless the rate at which new hardware gets released is significantly lowered, although I don't see that happening anytime soon. Mostly because that would cut into the profit margins of Nvidia and ATI.
At least that's how I see things. Personally I prefer the modular approach, if something breaks down, I'd rather not have to replace everything. Although when I recently helped upgrade my mother's computer, I went with an integrated solution, but she has no demands whatsoever on performance so it hardly relates to gamers.
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I think it's great fun still. I've completed it twice on normal (one solo and one with a friend on LAN) and I'm still playing on Epic as well as creating new characters to try out new things.
The thing that the game does absolutely best is the character development. Since you get to chose two skill masteries, there are a lot of options in how to create your character.
The only bad thing about the game is that it uses predefined maps rather than random ones. While it allows for really gorgeous terrain, it may lessen replayability a bit. When you're running through the same map for the tenth time it could be a bit much. Although the gameplay and character development are still fun enough to make up for it.
(oh yeah, some people have been complaining about the lack of something that resembles battle.net and a ladder system. personally I never cared much for anything like that, but it's still not in the game)
So yeah, if you like hack & slash, this is a great game.
There are also a few independent mods worth checking out. Most importantly one called TQVault. It allows you to share equipment between your characters and provides a place to store stuff you don't want to be lugging along (such as set items). Something like this should have been in the original game I think and the devs have said they're working on it.
They are still fairly active at the games forum and seem to listen to the players, which is always a plus.
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The security guards were all working for "bad companies" were they not? So it's probably safe to assume they were hardly nice people. Even so, it IS the World of Darkness and bad things happen to people. Sometime you have to get your hands dirty, it's all part of the setting.
Still, I'm curious as to where you were forced to kill a security guard? The only place I can remember is at that chinese corporation and after what took place there, I have a hard time feeling sorry for anyone. (deliberately writing it vague to avoid spoilers).
And yeah, they took a jab at BIS (which is indeed Black Isle Studios). It's kinda hidden though, so most people probably missed it. I know I did, although I've seen screenshots of it.
In the hotel in Downtown there is a stage and on that stage there is a microphone. On the microphone stand (I think, or at least close to it) there are some scribbles, among those "BIS sucks" or something like that. Not really a big deal, although it did feel kinda childish.
I suppose the Troika people were tired of the comparisons, and I guess the Troika founders didn't exactly leave BIS on good terms, although that is mostly speculation on my part.
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I've played the game three times, two of them not a single cop was killed. A few security guards maybe, but not a single cop. Where was this?
As for sex, not once have any of my characters actually had sex. So actual sex wasn't exactly forced down anyones throat. I think there are two characters you can sleep with, but I could be wrong. However, I do agree that the game went a little over the top with strippers and porn. I am aware that the World of Darkness is a caricature of our own world where everything is pushed to the extreme, but at some times it felt like the game was designed by teenage boys who haven't ever had sex at all.
Although that was on fairly rare occasions and wasn't enough to stop me from absolutely loving the game.
On an endnote, the political commentary actually bothers me much less than the cheap shot they were taking at BIS. But I'm not an american and let's just say I'm not a huge fan of the current administration (without inviting discussion about it), so I guess I'm a bit biased.
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The load times were awful too[/QUOTe]
While I do think Bloodlines ran on fairly unoptimized code, the load times actually weren't so bad if you have 1gb of memory and a good hard drive. When installed on my raptor, I didn't have any problems with the load times at all (although when I had it on my laptop, they were nightmarish, but that was only to be expected).
[quoet]Also, fictional violence is all fun and good, but I was really getting tired of the anti-Bush jabs.
Now, it's been a while so my memory may be a bit flawed here, but I never felt the sequence you're talking about was directed specifically at Bush. It was more directed towards the position of the president. And as such it made perfect sense to me, the most powerful man in the world (or so they say at least) is a fairly likely candidate to be the head vampire. It was simply something the guy you talked with would accept given the state he was in. It would have made just as much sense regardless of who was president.
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My guess is graphics card or motherboard. The graphics card on my stationary computer died and it behaved exactly like that (including acting strange for some time).
I agree with LostStraw's suggestion, have it checked out by a repair shop. It can probably be repaired, although the question if it's worth what it'll cost.
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I can't imagine there would be any problems with XP. I've been playing the original releases on XP for years now and it's never been a problem.
As for the BG releases I think it's one DVD for BG1 and one for BG2. Not sure if the two are sold together or separately.
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Think of it as a S2 light, but with supernatural stuff instead of sci fi. Nowhere near as good as S2 or S3, but a decent enough diversion.
Can't compare to H&S since I haven't played it.
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Requiem is D20 vampire <_<
Maybe not litterally... but they're definately trying to go the same route WotC did.
Major disappointment.
Though it's always possible they'll redeem themselves in my eyes with Changeling.
How is it D20 Vampire? Because they have one rule-book that all the settings use as a base? That, to me, is a vast improvement. Doing any sort of cross-setting campaign was a nightmare with the old rules.
I think the new rules are a big improvement over the old ones. At first glance I didn't but after having played with them a bit, I've come around to them. The only thing I think is a bit worse is the removal of the freebie point system at character creation, but it's fairly minor (mostly it's annoying when 7 points in backgrounds aren't enough for the history you want your character to have).
On another note, the new setting is still called World of Darkness. It's just a new WoD, the other one ended. And afaik it was the old one WW no longer wanted to support, which is what caused problems for Bloodlines (Activision wanted to axe it, but Troika convinced them to let them finish it but with a shorter deadline, something like that).
Question about Silent Storm Gameplay
in Computer and Console
Posted
Did you play the patched version of S2? If memory serves, the patch nerfed skill progression. Maybe there's been a later patch that fixed that again though.
When I played S2, my mechanic progressed so slowly (even though I tried having him do stuff) that in the later parts of the game he wasn't able to do anything at all. No locks were ever picked, no traps disarmed and so on. And the medic was just as bad, although it could still heal some, just not use the higher level stuff.