Rostere

By bet: In the end it will be Walker, Rubio or Bush against Hillary.

What the game really needs is just slightly more clever and evil AI, plus more diverse creatures, it does not need to be completely-hard immunities, just almost-complete. Tanks should be able to hold the number of creatures they can engage. The rest should skirt by to attack squishies, if they can see any.

Here's a Youtube video explaining the first-past-the-post voting system. It's with cute animals so that forumites who don't find voting systems very interesting can manage to keep attention.

But wouldn't you rather vote for an ideology, a set of political opinions? Everything I hear from Finland - where it's easier to vote for persons than in Sweden - is that people are angry because of hapless celebrities getting voted in. Name recognition goes further than anything else and apparently the typical guy is much more likely to vote for a sports star whose political ideas they have no idea of than a productive party functionary. Yeah, but I think this is the same across most democracies. You should vote for the politics you believe in, not a person you think is a "bro". If everybody thought like you, you would have Jamie Oliver for prime minister. Okay, I have literally no idea which celebrities are popular in Britain, but you get the point. But it's only ever a problem if the parties fail to make compromises. Every coalition is based on a compromise which is agreed upon beforehand. If some party decides to leave the compromise, you either make a new compromise with some other party, or if that is not possible, then accordingly whatever you were trying to do does not have democratic support. It is simple as that really. A small party holding up legislation is the equivalent of 51% of the population being against the legislation. Ergo, it is democratic and everything works as intended. Yeah, I hear the current system has really helped the SNP. Since FPP makes no effort at representing a proportional view of what people want in government, SNP can win by a small margin in every Scottish district and thus get 100% of the representation from Scotland. Now, the fact that they can do this depends of course on how the districts are drawn. Which bring us to gerrymandering, and you're in the realm of "gamey" and arbitrary US voting systems.

OK, on to the interesting stuff. What do you guys think of the FPP voting method and its impact on election results and feelings towards the British democracy in general? Proportional voting methods tend to enable a plurality of parties (which makes it easier for everyone to vote for someone they agree with), compared to the current British situation which encourages two big parties - kind of similar to the US system for voting for Congress but not exactly as awful. I would for sure feel hopeless if my voting system was rigged towards a non-proportional voter representation. Even more so if both the leaders of the big parties were twats. Now even though the FPP system is rigged to enable strong governments it looks as if the only possible governments are either minority governments, unholy alliances or include the SNP. I guess the joke is on you, you get the worst of both worlds.

How is it that every thread or argument that starts with "plot hole" is always unmistakably about something utterly retarded?

Wrong order. Waidwen marched on the Dyrwood BEFORE souls began to disappear, presumably to stop Woedica's plot before it began. But it could also be that he marched on the Dyrwood to prohibit animancy - something no other gods except Woedica would bother to do. I believe Eothas sympathized with Woedica's goals but was not allied with her personally, and that he wanted to stop animancy, leaving no need for Thaos' plans. Magran disagreed with Eothas' meddling and helped kill Waidwen/Eothas. However, this ended up leaving the field free for Thaos. Naturally, Magran wanted to discourage humans from inventing the powers needed to kill gods, so she killed all the Godhammer engineers (except for Durance), and possibly sat in silence when Thaos started Waidwen's Legacy. Yep, not sure if they agree 100% with Iovara but they sympathize with her. Or Thaos has used Woedica=) I though Thaos was person who creted Gods. Yup.

Pretty much this. Although I would also contrast the story of PoE with Blade Runner. In Blade Runner, we are asked the question "if a synthetic being is sufficiently similar to a human, should it be treated exactly like a human?" (this theme is notably clearer in the book, though) while in PoE it is "if a synthetic being is sufficiently similar to a god, should it be treated exactly like a god?".

Yeah, I noticed this problem as well, incidentally also on a playthrough with an Aristocrat character.

There is already a codpiece item in the game, so a codpiece revolver is not that much of a stretch really .

When I first saw the arbalest reloading animation I realized how much I had missed that in the IE games. I know, it's a very shallow thing, but that's how I feel. Same for guns. There's actually a very visceral feeling opening up a battle with a volley of arquebus fire. During my first playthrough I also found several useful pistols, I haven't given blunderbusses a spin yet though.

I can see situational usefulness when you don't have other means of resurrection. My first complete playthrough was with two priests through most of the game, so I didn't really use Reviving Exhortation other than for testing the time I had Pallegina in my party.

You could also argue that the monk is Nietzschean.

wat

I guess your comment just kinda melted together in my head with your opinion on banning and ignoring all FPS "tards and their stupid games" on 'dex. It was hard to make of that part of your post as a neutral observation (or defending 'dex on a basis that it's not actually pretentious etc.), concidering the whole rant part about action games just before it too. It's both useful and fun to provoke people into replying with stupid stuff. When I write something like what you are referring to on the Codex (supposedly a forum for old-school RPGs) and somebody replies that "NOO FPS IS ACTUALY BETTER THAN RTWP" I can put them on my ignore list right then and there. If people say that PoE sucks, and that is because they think Arcanum and Torment are the only good games ever made, or because PoE will suck compared to AoD or SitS, I can respect that. But if someone is hating on PoE because they like **** games it's a waste of time reading what they have to say. I'm on the Codex to discuss quality games with refined gentlemen (yes, I think it's safe to safe there are no women on the Codex...). If people turn out to be coprophages who are on the Codex to discuss modding Skyrim, for the drama and just to feed the general atmosphere of hate, I'm not interested in interacting with them - it's a waste of time, simple as that. I'm on the Obsidian forums for other reasons as well and so I don't have any people on ignore list and not the same edgy persona. Hehe, I remember writing on the Bethesda forums in 2006 about how Oblivion was (and by extension Fallout 3 would be) banal, **** and boring. I wrote some truly legendary rants. It's a pity the pre-release forums have been deleted.

I understand you can judge something to be old school by the age of the genre, but I don't understand why you would lay judgement on people's taste because they liked a game in another genre that worked instead of something like a broken, bugged and not even really old-school (it's third person action with some abilities) KOTOR2, for example. This entire discussion about what is old-school or not was a factual discussion about whether the Codex was old-school or not. Not my tastes (which are subjective and not as interesting to discuss). See my first post and pay attention in the future. The Codex is often portrayed as being "elitist" or "old-school" when in reality it's not significantly more so than for example this forum. Specifically this review looks like something you would see on IGN. It certainly does not have any of the pretentiousness that people often accuse the Codex of. See also all the other stuff I mention in my first post in the thread. The genre of KotOR 2 fits in theory into what I like although it is not the best example of it, so that's it. It's absolutely not an ARPG. Whether it's "bugged" or not matters little. Especially not since there are community patches to address those issues.

So there can't be an oldschool FPS? Relative to other FPSs, of course. The history of RPGs go back to tactical miniature games in the 70s. The first CRPGs, also from the seventies were top-down and similar to roguelikes, although Rogue itself was of course from 1980. Other, slightly later games starting with Oubliette were FPP blobbers, which despite their FPP have nothing to do with the FPS genre beyond the perspective of the game. Although I do appreciate these subgenres of CRPGs, the type of CRPG I prefer is the one with top-down view and tactical combat, where you control several characters. This genre appeared in the 1980s. Now first person shooters were popularized in 1992 by Wolfenstein 3D, the same year Ultima Underworld was released, which probably can be said to be the first true 3D FPP RPG that is more of an ARPG than a blobber. This branch would continuously diverge from the RPG genre until we got Fallout 3 in 2008, where gameplay is about as reliant on twitch reflexes as any shooter. I prefer in general RPGs with top-down tactical view over first-person action RPGs. This genre is de facto older than the FPS genre, which is why it better deserves the label "old-school".

Fighters are not the worst class in the game Their extreme hardiness comes very much in handy when facing tough foes. You seem to have completely missed which Wizard spells are worthwhile. Hint: Slicken and other status effect-inflicting spells.

It ain't no Watcher's Keep, that's for sure. Ha ha. Very funny.

Based on...? But let me add one more guess: Sequel set 50 years after the events of PoE in Steampunk-inspired Vailian Republics. Sold on Kickstarter as being somewhat of a spiritual sequel to Arcanum.

Older Obsidian games are in no way more "oldschool" than F:NV, only thing carrying them being their characters and stories. The titles I mentioned are definitely more old-school as in not aping a popular modern genre of the lowest common denominator (FPSs) as much as Fallout 3/ New Vegas does.

My bets for PoE 2: Prequel set during the time of St. Waidwen Prequel set during the time Woedica was burned by Magran Prequel set during Engwithan times, maybe immediately before or after the creation of the gods

The best argument against interpreting PoE through a Buddhist lens is that Buddhism has a very clear answer to what is the meaning of life - to end the personal cycle of reincarnation. That said, PoE has been very in-your-face about being inspired by Buddhism, especially seeing how their original logo had a wheel in the background. The PoE universe incorporates reincarnation (which is far from unique to Buddhism) but the main point of the game is that the characters are very unsure of the big answers. So metaphysically speaking they are living in is similar to ours. The attitude you can adopt towards the world range from optimistic existentialism ("It is for every individual to create his/her own meaning of life" - as formulated by Sartre, Kierkegaard and others) to Buddhism ("Only in ending the cycle can there be true peace") to some sort of pessimistic existentialism which I guess is meant to represent organized religion ("We can't allow people to ask themselves existential questions or there will be hell") where you are supposed to dodge the existential questions to keep order. A fourth path is hinted at ("What if the questions are more important than the answers") but the formulation is a bit lacking in the game, so I'll avoid to comment on that. Thaos is essentially a Buddha/Jesus/Mohammed/Moses figure who not only invented a religious creed to unite and pacify people, but also physically created the gods. Who turn out to be more unruly than he thought. First Eothas opts to incarnate as a physical being, establishing a totalitarian state (Readceras), trying to foil Thaos'/Woedica's plan of stealing the souls of the unborn to bolster her power and forever keep humanity in the dark about the secrets of animancy. Eothas is presumed killed with Magran's assistance, but eventually Magran and the other gods (except possibly Skaen who argues Woedica's case in the end...) agree to help the PC against Thaos/Woedica. IMO St. Waidwen also mirrors how in the 19th century onwards totalitarian ideologies has taken the place of organized religion. I'm looking forward to a prequel/expansion where St. Waidwen is contrasted to Vladimir Lenin and Adolph Hitler.