Spider
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They're just being faithful to the source material. Celerity is quite unbalanced in PnP as well (epsecially before revised edition was released).
I have no idea how it's like in Requiem though (which is not the same as revised).
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Why was it that Troika went down really? I only remeber hearing that their publisher, activision I think, withdrew all funding and all money from the sales of Bloodlines.
If here is truth to that, a major reason for us loyal Troika fans to dislike activision now.
I don't think Bloodlines sold enough copies to generate money from sales for Obsidian. Afaik industry standard is that developers only see those money once the initial investment for the publishers has been covered.
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There is truth in both. Bllodlines was finished way before it was released, and was on hold until HL2 came out. Troika also asked for extra funds so they could polish up the games bugs, which Activision refused to do. There was plenty of time to do this, but Activision already felt it put enough money into Bloodlines and didn't want to throw more money in. Which is fair for a publisher to do. As noted by Tim, Troika basically closed down 5 months (or something like that) before Bloodlines was released, as there was no funding. Troika made it official after Bloodlines was released, but there really wasn't a company for a while before release.
Ok. Although the alternative story that I heard makes little sense with that version. I haven't seen confirmation on either and as such they're both just speculation.
So the alternate story goes something like this: When WW decided to end the WoD completely, Activision kinda panicked. After all, who was going to want to buy a game in a setting that no longer exists. They were about to pull the plug completely, but Troika managed to change their mind. The only way to do that was by promising to get the game out quicker than what was originally planned. I'm not sure on the time frame here, but 3-6 months I suppose. This was told in an attempt to explain why the last part of the game isn't as fleshed out as the rest of it. And in that context it makes sense.
I've also heard the Source rumor and it's given support by the fact that Bloodlines was released very shortly after HL2 (a matter of days iirc). The problem is that the first rumor (in this post) makes more sense given the shape the game shipped in. The two aren't exactly[/b] mutually exclusive, but it kinda doesn't make sense to sit on a game for 3-6 months if the devs were supposed to have that time in the first place.
Unless it all comes down to dollars of course. So I guess it makes sense after all. How depressing...
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I think I had the sniper rifle when facing Bach. He was kinda pointless when I could shoot him just as good as he could shoot me.
The zombies showed damage for me. Something like 244 in big red letters.
If it's a melee attack I think they just explode though.
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Maybe that was it then. I'm not 100% sure. My Malkavian liked to hide far away with obfuscate and take sniper shots at people and did some wicked damage. Maybe it was just the zoom in part, I can't say for sure. I always made headshots.
I also think I used a sniper rifle I bouth from Mercurio, not the "Jamie Sue". It's possible that was patched in by the unofficial patch though, although it was only a slightly improved version of "JS".
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Activision for not letting Bloodlines out when it was done instead of having to wait til Half Life 2 is released.
Do you have confirmation of this? I have also heard this rumor, but I've also heard that development for Bloodlines was cut short when WW decided to end the WoD, thus the ending was kinda rushed.
The two may not be mutually exclusive of course (the gmae is finished and then sits with ACtivision for months) but that makes little sense to me.
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I never really found headshots to do more damage in that game though.
They do with the Sniper Rifle. Instakills everything but bosses afaik. Maybe not the sewer monsters, never tried it on those.
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Lets stay on topic here.
ANother thing is that a lot of new material that is superior to both ADnD 2e and 3.5e have been released thanks tothe D20 OGL. One such book is Arcana Evolved. It is a very well done book. Gabs, I think you would like it very much.
Because talking about 2e vs 3.5 e D&D has exactly WHAT to do with NWN shooting for 30 hours?
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Are there any bottleneck areas where characters lacking a certain level of skill will find it insanely hard to play through?
If you can't fight, I can imagine some parts of the game being insane. Other than that, there is no skill that is mandatory. There are some quests that require one skill or another, but none of them is needed to complete the game.
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I should reinstall and check it out, but I think I must have been a Toreador. I used the katana and fireaxe a lot, but I also had some great firearms skills. I did hack computers but I didn't use anything that showed me an aura.. that just sounded too New Age'ish to me
What skills you had doesn't really say anything about your clan though. Any clan can use any skills. Brujahs are as good as Toreadors with firearms unless Toreador use their Auspex discipline.
If you didn't see auras, you didn't use Auspex, which is the same power that would boost your Firearms and Hacking skill.
The powers the two have are this:
Brujah: Potence - Increased strength (in this game higher melee and brawl damage); Celerity - Super speed; Presence - Charm (making people less inclined to hit you, thus making giving them penalties to their attack roles, some more abilities as well I think)
Toreador: Auspex - Increased senses (boosts Perception and Wits and lets you see through walls); Celerity; Presence
So the only real identifier would be if you had a power that boosted your senses or your strength?
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Because being able to lob 2 spells the same round is useless if there are no rounds. But I suppose they could make it into some kind of turbo feature that enabled you to pop off a second spell right after the first instead of having to wait a second.
How is it that NWNs combat system works again? It has some kind of pseudo round/phase thingie doesnt it?
IIRC, NWN has the turns, it's just tha all involved in a fight act out their turn simultaneously. So if swing at your enemy (and only have one attack) you have to wait until the next turn before you can swing again. At least it works like this in the IE games.
As for quicken allowing you to cast two spells in one round, does it really work like that in D&D (and I really have no idea here)? I thought you only got one action during each turn regardless?
(if you have more than one attack, all attacks combined still count as a single action I guess)
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And by the way, I read that this is Smallville's last season.
Don't believe everything you read. No official announcement has been made yet and thus anything can happen. I'm not saying there WILL be an additional season, but given how the ratings are shaping up I'm pretty sure the WB execs are at least considering it.
Compare this with Charmed last season. Everyone knew that last season was going to be the last, especially when the last episode of the season was revealed to be named "Something wicca this way goes" (in contrast to the pilot which was called "Something wicca this way comes"). And still it got renewed when announcements were made in may.
Yes, I know too much about this stuff.
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I've beaten him to a pulp with my fists.
Go Brujah!
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jorian, most of those answers were attempts to be funny. Except the one where I said I was using reason.
As for the concept of restrictions I can see where they're coming from. Some races just don't naturally have some professions. If you come up with a character that should be of a class then talk to your GM about it and if it's a cool character concept, just ignore the rules.
Of course there can be an elf barbarian if something has happened in his background. But the elven society does not have barbarians.
As for gnomes not being an abomination on nature. I've said it before in this thread, all races that are shorter than my leg should be abolished. All of them. That is also why halflings can't be paladins, no one would take them seriously.
As for Drizzt... No, I'm not even going to touch that one. Let's just say I'm not a fan of him or his race and leave it at that.
(quite honestly I'm not a huge fan of FR or even D&D, although there are some settings I appreciate).
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Smallville isn't top in its time slot by any means or the WB's top rated show. The move to thursday has benefited the ratings... but since thursday night is higly competitive its hard to say whther smallville will survive.
Although i guess they would have said something already in cancellation were due. Storywise its difficult to see beyond the 6th season.
Smallville has no chance to be the top show in it's timeslot. The WB and UPN reach far less households than the big four, so their numbers are always going to be significantly less.
As for it's rating compared to other WB shows, as far as I can tell it places third, only beaten by Gilmore Girls and 7th Heaven with roughly the same numbers as Supernatural.
Smallville's ratings are considered a success given it's timeslot, so a renewal is definitely not impossible. I'm not saying it will be renewed, but there are definitely other shows in more danger of cancellation. Usually the network don't announce these things until May, so no one will know for sure in a while.
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Why could a dwarf never find inner peace? (monk)
They're to obsessed with drinking and gold. Especially gold. Monks are supposed to live in poverty are they not? No dwarf could ever do that willingly.
Why could an elf never rage couse the death of his family? (barbarian)
Damn, I can actually justify this one with reason. Barbarian is more than just raging, it's about the culture you were raised in. The elven society is simply too advanced. Elves could still become warriors ruled by anger, but afaik they can still become berserkers can't they? (we are talkin 2E here right?, the multi-classing part below indicates that)
Why could never a halfling, Paladin of Alvoreen (
)fight the dark fiends of Hell?Because they're halfling's. You can't fight pit fiends if you can't reach above their knees. And no, climbing up on their backs doesn't count.
Why could the half-orc, ELF, or gnome never feel the natures call? (druid)Two of them because they are abominations and nature doesn't want them. The Elf probably has better things to do.
Why could no tiefling resist the blood, and become a priest of Good?
Yeah, I'm stumped on this one.
...no drow ranger? (you know, that is too just possible after Drizzt, not before it)Because Drizzt is an abomination and everything that reminds people of him must be erased from every part of the universe. The sooner he is forgotten, the better.
WHY in Gods name could a human never multiclass?Because humans are idiots that can't keep their minds on two things at once. At least not until they've had sufficient training in both fields. On the other hand, in the long run dual-classing is much more powerful anyway.
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I would have watched Global Frequency, but they decided that they should only have one quality show at a time I spose.
The Pilot was so... awesome. That they didn't get to make the series is a real tragedy.
That this would be the last season for 7th Heaven has been known for a while. Rumor is that there will be some sort of spin-off to take it's place.
Edit: About Smallville, this season has been a ratings success, so it's quite likely there will be another season.
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All is written in light spirit of course.
If I write anything serious, my posts tend to be much, much, MUCH longer.
:cool:
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You basically have three options:
1. Suck it up
2. Get new friends
3. Whine until you get what you want (which, if you're unlucky may force you to chose option 2).
Welcome to the rock and the hard place.
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I don't think the Flamethrower uses the Firearms skill at all. It just kills people, especially Vampires. The Tzimisce never had a chance.
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In his ramblings, Hades actually has a point. A sequel needs to be a sequel more than in name only. A game that builds upon an existing franchise and tries to cater to that games fanbase needs to give the fans what they want. If too many things change, those fans won't want the game while other people may get turned off because they didn't like the original. I only need to point as far as FO:BOS to illustrate my point.
By the way, when I write established fan base, I'm not talking about the true fanatics at places like NMA (no slight to them, I've been a member at NMA at times), but at people who played the first two games and still have fond memories of them.
Exactly how much can be changed without alienating said fan base is hard to know though as it varies from person to person. Some will stay away if there is no turn-based combat, some will if the game plays out in first person. Some will if the dialogue system is the same as in Morrowind and some if SPECIAL isn't used. Some will refuse to buy it if Deathclaws are hairy.
Maybe Bethesda can pull of turning the game into "Oblivion with guns" and still sell it to their own established fan base, the people who loved Morrowind and probably will love Oblivion as well. But if those are the people they intend to make the game for, the name Fallout is kinda meaningless. I'm not saying that people who like Morrowind don't like Fallout, but if they're buying the game because they like the Bethesda style, then the game might as well have been called Morrowout or whatever. The point is, that if that's the case the money spent to acquire the liscense were pretty much wasted.
So Bethesda is probably going to try and cater to both fanbases. So where is the cut-off point? How much can they change or keep and still keep a majority of both groups happy? I have no idea, but I hope they do.
Very little information has been released so far, but I hope it will turn out to be a great game. I'm afraid it's going to be a lot like Morrowind (which I cannot stand). I can live with a lot of changes, but I still feel there have to be enough left of the originals for it to feel like a sequel and not an entirely different franchise.
The things I want and that can be deal-breakers for me are actual branching dialogue, both what my character is saying and what the NPCs are saying; the SPECIAL rule set; the feel and athmosphere of the original setting (and not that of FO: Tactics or, worse, FO: BOS) and combat that makes use of my characters skills and not my own. Maybe I can even live with a combat model similar to the one in Vampire: Bloodlines, but I'm hesitant.
Regardless, I am willing to give Bethesda the benefit of a doubt until more information about the game surfaces. As of yet we have no idea what they're actually planning and can only speculate.
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I hate halflings, that's one thing that Gygax should have left to Middle Earth.
I'll go one step further though. Any race that is shorter than my leg should be banished from all fantasy settings. With a possible exception for the really tiny races like pixies and such.
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I wouldn't really say that Dawn of War had a good story though. It was kinda mediocre, although I like the setting.
The NWN story is about the same as the one in DoW on more levels than one. It does drag out a lot more though.
I think IWD2 has a better story than either though.
This is only for the NWN original campaign. The expansions (especially HotU) is a different beast altogether.
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A system like D&D isn't so good for that because who want to make 50 rolls on each attack. But in a system built for the computer the CPU has no problem making multiple checks. FO is one of the few games I've played that takes advantage of that.
Actually, it's still only two rolls, one to hit and one to damage. The rest is just math. Your point is still valid though because doing percentages when playing a normal RPG would slow it down a lot. Though I have played PnP RPGS that use more complex models than Fallout does.
Back to the AC thing. I have absolutely nothing against having a system with one AC component and one bullet stopping component. I really don't see the need for both DT and DR though. They basically do the same thing so one of them should be able to cover both. But that's an idea I'm not married to, so I don't care all that much. Although I do prefer one number to keep track of, it makes it easier to compare different armor types.
)fight the dark fiends of Hell?
Bloodlines
in Computer and Console
Posted
I actually had pretty good loading times (on this computer). All I can say is that I love my Raptor.
Although when on a computer that had problems with loading times, it was Downtown and not Santa Monica that was the biggest problem.