Bartimaeus

Yuck. I have not actually played DE:HR (or Skyrim, for that matter ) - well, not for more than half an hour, anyways. I disliked the controls enough that I gave up almost immediately...and also because I wasn't much interested in the game to begin with. Nevertheless, I thought what I said was probably true of the game. "wut" happened to your quote of my post?

If you left out certain things, map markers for example, without changing anything else, the game would almost certainly be broken...because the designers assumed you would be using those "features" and didn't provide any other way of figuring out where your objective is without using them, (that's why, without completely revising journal entries to provide more hints, you can't just plain disable map markers in the last two Elder Scrolls games - you'd have no idea what you were supposed to be doing just from what NPCs say alone, and the vanilla journal entries are just as useless, if not worse). Too hard? Yes, because the game wasn't designed (sensibly) for it...which is what his complaint is derived from, if I'm not mistaken.

Bah. Freedom scum. (I actually never chose sides because I never really liked the idea of the mass murder of others purely for their idealogical tenants vs actual actions (like bandits), but that's just me. )

Automatically win? De facto or de jure? I play with all the victory types disabled because they all seemed ridiculous and artificial, so just let the game be what it is without silly automatic victories, so I'm not that sure of all of the victory conditions. Not that it matters, since I never get close to fulfilling any of the normal victory conditions because the game long before becomes broken and unfun before then.

Civilization V. I tried playing it a few months ago, but gave up after some hours because the AI is completely incapable of handling even other AI players, (and Barbarians - especially Barbarians who have a tendency to spawn right outside of their territory and steal and/or wreck their stuff while the AI sits around with its hands up its sleeves), and playing on difficulty settings higher than Prince just means they outright cheat...but still don't do much better, because they still have no bloody clue what they're doing with what they have, even if what they have is much better than what you do. An unarmed, adult man vs. a baby with pistol, basically. Sure, the baby has the greater means, but...it doesn't know what it's doing. I tried playing a few games these past few days again, but I disabled Barbarians and Ancient Ruins because they disproportionately gave a huge advantage to the player, (i.e. me), who actually knows how to (ab)use them properly. This actually allowed them to develop scientifically and culturally right along side me on Prince - two players even made it to the Classical Age before me, although not by much - but by the time I hit the Medieval Age, I was light years ahead of them, with my score about five times higher than the next highest. They don't know how to manage their cities at all, and tend to build up useless militaries that will not actually help them do much besides waste gold and production. It's good to have a few units, but they make a large amount and do nothing with them - not that they could do anything besides defend themselves, because they wouldn't have the infrastructure set up for taking over enemy lands, anyways...and if all one can do is defend yourself when everyone else is in the same position, what the heck is the point of having a military, anyways? I really like the underlying mechanics, but the game is just ridiculously and completely, utterly stupid. In my other games, pre-Barbarian/Ancient Ruins being disabled, I reached the Renaissance Age by about 500BC. This last time, I got there at about 300AD. I quit shortly after because by that point, I had made about 20 Wonders with no-one else making a single, the population of my capital city was a little over 30 with my other five cities all being around the 10-15 mark while the population of all the other players' capital cities' never exceeded 12, I was making several hundred gold per turn while nobody else was hardly making any, my culture and faith outputs were through the roof. The only two things that were comparable were my science output and my military - and since the AI is so stupid with its military units anyways and wouldn't have been able to take any of my cities anyways, especially considering I could outright buy new units every few turns if I really needed to, it hardly mattered. It'd probably be more fun multiplayer, but I think I'm just going to uninstall. RTS games these days...bah. (edit): Uh, not sure why I called it an RTS...because it's not...but it made me laugh when I reread it, so...

I kinda want to play, but I feel really uncomfortable playing a game like this multiplayer that I haven't played at least ONCE singleplayer. Hm...

The problem I've always had with Stalker shooting mechanics is that it's too RPGish in the way it handles damage - guns simply do too little damage...to both yourself, and to enemies - and this isn't even mentioning the % of bullets having no effect difficulty modifier that I've mentioned before. The shooting is so, so much better when the damage values are upped to a more "realistic" level, where the difference between a Novice outfit and an Exoskeleton is that you can only take two or three shots at best in a Novice outfit - even from a Makarov - and maybe half a dozen in an Exoskeleton. When I play Shadow of Chernobyl, I like using Stalker Complete's "Realistic Weapons" minimod, even though I don't use Stalker Complete itself, (but rather ZRP, [Zone Reclamation Project], the mod that Complete was mostly founded on and stole a huge amount of work from).

I'm almost certain you should be fine. (edit): Decided to make sure: wiki said you should be good if you reloaded.

I am aware of their (previous) status as an autonomous republic, and their previous ownership by Russia before that - both conditions, I think, are disregardable when concerning the annexation of another country's territory. Neat video, by the way. Doesn't prove anything of the sort, but it certainly seems that they had been planning, whether wholly as a deliberate scheme or as a contingency, for this sort of outcome. Politics...

I don't think that's what he said...I think was saying that Russia is only doing what the U.S. did...maybe more directly, but nevertheless. There's no *proof* (that I know of) of U.S. involvement, mind you, but as hegemon, we seem to always be assumed to be involved when things go favorably for us...and there's history to suggest that it's certainly possible. @Drowsy Emperor: hypocrisy in regards to politics does not really concern me - perhaps because all politicians, and the things derived from them (governments), all seem to be hypocritical no matter what way you look at it, but maybe that's just me. It also doesn't help that things seem to be much more "apparent" as to who's "wrong" in the Ukraine situation - i.e. the people actually conducting an invasion. People just root for the side they're on, no matter the reasons, (although that side might not always be what one would expect).

I used to have acid reflux a lot until I realized what I had was actually the opposite of acid reflux, (too little acidic content), which results in a similar problem. Ergo, Tums and such did naught to help it - and in fact only worsened and prolonged the issue. Now I almost never get it, knowing the proper way to deal with it, (that is, eat a lot of acidic foods!), haha. Last time I had it so much that it was painful, which was a few months ago, I ate a grapefruit, and it cleared up right away.

But totally plausible as to how a player would react if that situation had presented itself in-game. In a way I'm impressed. People would want to try and romance Bodhi? What part decaying, undead vampire lord of a guild of vampire murderers who are abducting normal people and turning them into vampires says fun times to you? Silly promancers...

...my lord...that is a lot worse sounding than I expected.

It also has negative connotations that suggest it's not a good thing, regardless...

I was under the impression you lost your Bhaalspawn powers because you lost your Bhaal-tainted soul...you get them back at the beginning of Throne of Bhaal, if I'm not mistaken.

...orrr you could just replace the heatsink-fan. lol

For me, it's not so much a matter of "realism" as taste. ...But then again, while I like other implementations better, it doesn't bother me THAT much. So maybe I'm not the best example.

I've...honestly never had that much of a problem with pathfinding in IE games. I'm not sure if that's because I always set the pathfinding computation level to maximum, (which it's not, at least in some of the IE games, by default), or if it's because I semi-consciously account for and work around it.

I didn't mind Grobnar. In between Elanee and Sandra and co.? Ha, he was one of the lesser offenders.

I don't quite understand. Why would they be stating that you love Minecraft? Why's it offensive? Just seems random and weird from the context you've given.

I haven't talked it over with anyone yet, but I don't think we will be putting any copy protection on the physical copies. If we do anything, it will probably be on the level of a CD key, but there is probably no reason we would even want to do that. Once we come to a final answer on that topic, I will fill you guys in. Wouldn't a CD key be useful for, e.g., registering with Steam if you want to, though? (I'm not necessarily sure that that could actually be done, but it's a thought, nonetheless.)

Hope you'll like Spec Ops more than I did...

Some of the first few games I ever played were Baldur's Gate, Age of Empires, Diablo, Quake III, and Counter-Strike - games that all defined their genres to some degree for a time. Suffice to say, I agree with everything you said.