TheHarlequin

As a whole no issue with DLC. However EA (since EA owns bioware, and its the publisher, its really their call not biowares anymore) putting the NPC right there taunting you with a in-your-face ad is annoying and in my view poor taste. There are much more 'polite' ways to peddle their DLC ingame without it being 'ingame'. (like a loading screen) I find this sales man fairly immersion breaking to say the least. You see the ! think your going to get a quest and they pull a bait and switch on you...

Are there any recent rpg's (year 2000 -) that actually did this with little input from the user? I can't seem to recall. NWN2, FO3, BG2 for starters. Were any of them perfect? No but at least they gave it the college try to stay alive in a fight. I could spend my time telling pc1 to attack this guy, pc2 cast this spell here, pc3 go here and use your bow and so on. (For FO3 I had no control and the NPCs did a good job using stimpacks on their own as long as I give them some). Knowing they were all going to use their abilities as needed and at least try to use healing as needed. I don't think I am asking for a lot. Again I want to macromanage my party, not micro by some artifical system of poor design hidden by a 'tactical' label.

The 'default' AI should do more then just swing a sword or fire a bow. Using healing SHOULD be a no brainer and part of the default AI. Only if you change such in the tactics slots should it do otherwise. Clearly you are going to defend this design choice until you are blue in the face, even in the face of a superior stance as usual when in comes to the all knowing bioware. Typical. Lets agree then to disagree as I am not going to change your mind and neither am I.

I never said nor implied thats what I wanted. You are going from one extreem to the other. I want a happy middle ground. Use a damn heal pot on your own if you are badly hurt I shouldnt have to tell you too for gods sake!

No because having to use of those valuable slots to tell my PC to use a heal pot is really smart default AI. Otherwise will fight until s/he dies while a dozen heal pots sits in their backpack. Having to use a 'tactics' slot to use a class ability (like slam or shield bash) where it wont use it otherwise is a good system. And lets not get into you have far less slots then you have abilities so it again, forces you to hand hold. This forces far to much artifical hand holding its annoying. Sorry its poor design IMO.

Yes. its silly I have to buy tactical slots to tell my party to use their own abilities. What am I supposed to do burn all my skill point into that and not beable to make healing pots or pick locks? Skills points are few and far between not like you get one every level. If the default AI would just make them use their natural abilities on their own I wouldn't have a issue. Bioware seems to just give us dumb party AI but unlike other CRPG games labled it as a 'feature' of being 'tactical' and the sheep bought it. Sad really. Where as another CRPG the community would be howling bloody murder. I suppose all CRPGs just need to do that now. Give just mininum party AI, toss in a pause button and call it a 'tactical RPG'. Spending little time on party AI solved.

Sure but when your special moves, spells, etc outnumbers your tactical slots that pretty much forces you to hand hold your NPC. Unless you just want special abilities to go to waste during combat. Which generally means your cutting yourself off at the knee in normal or higher difficulty. what they should have done is just given every party member a dozen or 15 slots and done away with the slots based on a skill. Its silly and just forces you to micromanage everyone. A artificial time sink and tedious after a while.

Not quite. Pause, issue orders to everyone, 5 sec later rinse and repeat. over and over and over... Thats way to much micromanaging and no there is no auto pause. If there is I couldnt find it. Seems bioware took the cheap route out not giving the NPCs any decent AI and slapping the label 'its tactical' on it. 'Well its designed to have crappy AI so you have to hand hold all 4 characters so that makes it tactical' seems to be the logic in its defense. Sorry I don't buy it.

> I don't believe you. And, since you are making stuff up now, I cna't take your posts seriously anymore. So you are saying in BG I couldnt touch my party far less then DA NPCs and for the most part took care of themselves pretty decently? That is my recollection of BG2. Did I never pause? Of course not. A couple times in a battle sure. But I never had to hand hold my ENTIRE party for EVERY turn. Some 'hey aerie shoot a fireball now here or a vik drink this potion now' but for 75% of the combat I could let the NPC AI run the charactors while I mainly used my main PC in real time. Again only pausing here and there as I needed when the needs were greater then the NPC AI allowed for a specific situation. Again I macromanaged not micromanaged every turn and touched every char which after awhile is tedius. "I'd love to hear where/who Ron Moore 'ripped off' klingons from? Please post specifics." >No. YOU be speciifc. *snip incoheriant ramblings* You made the implications/accusations Moore ripped the klingons off from somewhere, I asked you to simply make your case for said statement. Clearly you can't as you just try to drown out the signal with a bunch of misdirectional noise. So of those speaking out of their arse in this thread it's not me. Take care.

I'd love to hear where/who Ron Moore 'ripped off' klingons from? Please post specifics. And in BG2 I didn't have to micromanage my party as I do in DA I could macromanage it and be fine.

> L0LZ If anything, klingons are the rip off. You really should know your facts before you go into your default 'bioware can do no wrong' mode. You really sound totally ignorant when you say something like this. Call me timeline challenged but... I am pretty sure when Ron Moore wrote in depth how the klingon society works for ST:TNG in the early 90s that predates DA by almost 20 years. Just saying. Read the ST lore of klingons then read the DA dwarfs... pretty much a carbon copy minus the race hight and starships. You are missing the point (as usuall with your self imposed tunnel vision of ones comments). Some of us either want MORE tactic slots so you DON'T have to micromanage every 5 sec every PC or make the NPC AI worth a damn and at least use their special abilities on their own. Bioware in effect, by design, FORCES players to micromanage. Thats the issue and point of contention. Some of us use want to macro manage the party, not micro.

> Think about it - in so many games over the past 10 years grinding and speed-bump combat encounters have been screensavers. You could go and make a cup of tea, chat with the postman, answer the phone. Come back and your party is standing there surrounded by corpses. My issue is I simply want the NPCs to use their abilities without me telling them to. The limited number of tactic slots make it pretty much required to hand touch every party mamber a dozen times each per fight. Thats just a artifical time sink IMO. I want to control my main guy and be jump a FEW times to the othesr to do something. But this isn't 'tactical' its hand holding and its just annoying. Again if this is what they wanted then make it turn based. I see no reason to make it real time if they designed it where on normal difficulty or harder you need to pause about that much anyways as a turned based game like FO 1&2. > Now those same encounters in DA are difficult and the learning curve for atrophied combatants (i.e. most of us) is steep. DA combat hinges on (1) having a melee meatshield, with stacks of armour, to draw the majority of the bad guys (hell there are even skills that allow you to play duty target for the rest of your party), (2) another melee dude to dish out more punishment, a spellcaster for riot control / healing and either (a) another tank or (b) another healer or

Now the children had their... 'say'.. any adults care to engage in a fruitful disucssion?

Story: I feel the world is interesting (though some aspects don't suit my taste but thats more preference then a ill against the writers) and clearly a lot of love went into the Dragon Age setting on the writting side of things. A lot of background was thought out in the end. However, In some cases too well thought out as seems forced to make it differenct for the sake of breaking fantasy tradition for just that fact. As a whole I commend the writting team and they deserve kudos. I find all the mini-origin stories quite interesting and well thought out even if predictible. On a related note, I know David Gadier loves his foreshadowing in his writting but he really needs to use another writting hook to tell his stories. He had the same issue with BG2 in fact. But these are minor quips, again as awhole a well written CRPG. Certainly writting and background wise this will be the CRPG others going forward will be measured over the next few years. I also will admit I am tossing my pride under the buss here. When I first heard of DA I thought it was going to be a fluff, candy coated story and setting and stated so in forums. I certainly stand corrected and eat my words on that level. Score: 8/10 Sound: The music is top notch, reminds me of a mix of Battlestar Galactica (reimaged series) and LotR series of movies, which isn't a bad goal to have at all. The sound FX about the same level of quality as well as the voice acting. All very well done and directed, all those involved deserve a pat on the back. Score: 9/10 Grahpics/FX: The graphics is a mixed bag. On the one hand the avatar models and textures are top quality and animations are very, very smooth. The faces look almost photo realisic on max settings. The options to customize your PC's face are Sims 3 quality of tools. Very robust and offer many options and choices. You can make your PC look pretty much how ever you'd like. But then you get the the enviroment, even on max setting many of the textures of rocks, fences, grass and other parts of the envoriment look pixilated, blurry and low res. Or as if the texture was streched over a object far to large for it to handle. This really distracts from the other gorgeous aspects of the game. The FX effects and charactor models for example. Sadly the enviromental textures really hurts the overall score. If this was a score if just the PC/NPC models it would be much higher. But as a whole it simply looks like a Divinci statue on display in a back alleyway somewhere. As the texture problem simply sticks out like a sore thumb everytime one shows up. Score 6.5/10 Combat: Out of all the things I thought I would gripe about the most this wasn't it. Frankly I am shocked to be honest. Playing on normal the battles start to get silly the deeper you get into the game. 2:1 and 3:1 odds seem to be the way the devs decided to handle the difficulty. Who needs smart AI when every other battle is just a small army to fight though. And to stay alive it a fustrating exersize in micro managing you party. The devs said they wanted a 'tactical' aspect to combat and thats fine. I don't mind that, but the amount you have to pause and issue ordered they should have just made thus turn based, as most folks will have to pause it about that frequently anyways, every combat turn. All party members AI has limited slots of what to do which you can edit. For example, If situation x happens then do action y. Starting out most characters only have 3 or 4 to start. You get more by either burning skill points into tactics or get some by default as you get to certain levels. But after you tell a NPC to drink a health pot, and use its 2 special abilities on the nearest enemy NPC you have really no slots to so anything really interesting. The NPCs unless you program it don't seem to use their special abilities without beingprogrammed to do so by you. So in effect if you run out of slots and have more special abilities you in effect have to keep jumping from character to character and micro managing everyone in the tough battles (which are about 50% of them). While on paper it sounds good they seem to take this concept way to far. I agree I don't want just a point and click fight but neither did I sign up for a nearly turned based style of play forced in real time either. If you are going down that road then use a Fallout2 type of action points in combat. At least then I can manage everyone, in turn, comfortably. Its as if the combat system does not know what it wants to be, either a turn based system or a real time system. They seemed however to shoe horn both in and they do not play well together in my view. Either let me play real time where I dont have to micro manage every 4 party member 20 times each per battle or make it real turn based. While when its 1:1 and I can macro manage, not micro due to the crippled AI, its a very fun game. But the 2:1 and 3:1 groups you encounter frequently simply take the fun out of for me. Note I do not mind some level of micro managing but the levels you have to do with this game is simply a time waster and seemly designed to up your playtime vs. real content. Score: 5/10 My thoughts, feedback welcome.

Samhain (pronounced /ˈsɑːwɪn/, /ˈsaʊ.ɪn/, or /ˈsaʊn/ in English; from Irish samhain [ˈsˠaunʲ], cf. Scottish Gaelic samhainn [ˈsavɯɲ], Old Irish samain [ˈsaṽɨnʲ] "summer's end", from sam "summer" and fuin "end") is a festival held at the end of the harvest season in Gaelic and Brythonic cultures. Principally a harvest festival, it also has aspects of a festival of the dead. It had its roots in ancient Celtic polytheism, and continued to be celebrated through medieval times, and is seen as contributing to the modern celebration of Halloween. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year. The term "Samhain" derives from the name of a month in the ancient Celtic calendar, in particular the first three nights of this month, with the festival marking the end of the summer season and the end of the harvest. Samhain was also called the F

Because MW4 is going to be given away for free very soon via download? Prob a good reason why it isn't on steam...

Because 2 giant fed-ex quests duct taped together makes such a gripping story/plot/game. Thats all nwn1 was and even bioware grew a pair a few years later and admitted the story fell quite short. You are the only one who liked nwn1 over the nwn2 story V. Of course what do I expect from a bioware fanboy whose games can do no wrong.

I'd agree with your RPG list except FO3 and nwn2. FO3 Fantastic game. As NWN2 just 'playable'? Compared to nwn1 the story was leaps and bounds better plus the eyes candy was x10 better as well. All in all a much better game and far from just 'playable'.

Well if they used some total fictitious groups you'd be all moaning how its supposed to be a parallel world to our own but can't make any associations with them. Bottom line its supposed to me a darker mirror to our own (WoD anyone?) thus makes sense to use existing places, groups and people either present or from the past.

Some thoughts... Funcom has a bad record of quality MMO releases. AoC is JUST now getting to what was expected on release over a year ago. And I heard Anarchy Online took about as long as well to get to a full content, stable, playable condition. So while I love the concept I certainly wouldn't jump in head first without looking. I'd deff wait a month or two after release and see what kind of feedback it gets. Speaking of content... this seems like a very poorly veiled rip off of the Witchcraft RPG setting.. and I mean poorly veiled. Which in of itself is a great and interesting setting/game but just seems to me they robbed the concept of that RPG blind with this MMORPG.

Thanks glad to be back!

WoD MMORPG has been confirmed, being developed in GA White Wolf office. See front page for details.

Yes we are back! My apologize for the past 3 or 4 weeks of downtime. The new place I moved to was wireless based and I was working on getting a wired connection for the server. However the building manager got axed for skimming the rent from the landlord. I finally got access to the cable modem in the office after his ouster and setup the server there. At least that gets us online. Again my apologizes, FYI end of the month I will be moving into a condo and have full access to the cable modem in the new place so this shouldn't be a issue again. Please do help spread the word we are back!

The mocking children who are incapable of taking anything seriously aside... Sadly there is no hard and firm meaning to people, places, events and things in a dream. (pick up 3 dream books and odds are you will get 3 different interpretations from the same thing) the reason being most things in a dream are not drawn from the collective consciousness but your own sub-consciousness. Thus meaning its not a universal archetypes most times but each thing in a dream as a personal definition for that person. With that said dream books are not useless but a good GENERAL guide book to open you mind to possible meanings. However simply keep in mind as I said above these books should not be taken black and white but shades of gray meaning wise. With that said, a more useful book for you IMO would be a book at teaching you skills at lucid dreaming (taking control of your dream, as if you were a avatar in a video game). This way you can interact with your sub-conscious and prob get more info. Also you tend to recall details better after you wake up and that can really be the difference between understanding and not understanding what your sub-conscious is trying to tell your consciousness. GENERALLY speaking from what you said I'll save you the time reading any dream books (though it still won't hurt you to skim a few and I still suggest it) your sub-conscious seems to be trying to relay to you about feeling out of control and trapped about something. Also the bus may represent a figure of power or authority in your life and the feeling they are driving your life or a aspect of your life and you feel powerless about it. Please note I am a tarot guy not a dream expert however after reading your post that was my initial impression. Hope this is helpful.

Of course celebrities add meaning to people's lives. Whether its Jim Morrison or JFK or MLK or John Lennon or whoever. It's just too bad for your argument that no one in this thread has claimed that celebrities are MORE important than your family friends or anyone else. Do I thnk that some people become overly-attached to and fascinated by celebrities? SUre. But that is a lot more extreme than simply acknowledging that someone you never met still had an impact on your life and you feel something whe they die. The divide between folks like MLK and JFK vs jackson and bill mayes is the size of the grand canyon. PLEASE don't tell me the impact those 2 groups had on society is one and the same. If you do I feel sorry for your life as its influenced by washed up celebs and late night pitch men which is sad in of itself. There is NO contest between the two sorry and I find it not only laughable but insulting you would drag folks like MLK and JFK into this conversation. And for the record I don't let celebs have that much impact on my life. When they die I shrug and move on unless I knew them personally or at least meet them in person. I don't see how someone having a hit song can have a impact in your life to the degree it bothers you. Unless your life is very void of meaning you need to reach out and grasp anything you can.