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Monte Carlo

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Everything posted by Monte Carlo

  1. Monte Carlo
    ^ It's not the class titles. Couldn't give a hoot. It's the apparent lack of flexibility within the classes and the rigid archetypes they represent. What if you want a ranged rogue or a melee ranger? I imagine you could come up with a boatload of cool melee abilities for a character fighting in tandem with a tame beast. I just think they are trying to be too clever, too obsessed with balance and clouded by logic. Ironic but true. Flaws and idiosyncrasies in gaming systems are all part of their charm. Most gamers are smart enough to realise what each class is broadly for before going against the grain, and most IE / old-skool fans don't want or need their hands holding. Whacky playable races, strange languages and cool settings are all very well, but if I can't build a character that feels like it's mine because I made a decision that bends the archetype then I'm not playing my character. I'm playing Sawyer's idea of a good character.
  2. Monte Carlo
    FANBOIS OR BUST!
  3. Monte Carlo
  4. Monte Carlo
    It's not a bug, it's a feature.
  5. Monte Carlo
    4E is regularly panned for being too much like a videogame and not enough like tabletop, which I sort of agree with(I prefer Pathfinder myself). That said, the parts that PoE is using from 4E are the things that would work best with a videogame(as the honorable Tamerlane has said) and most players hate new editions released directly after their preferred edition of D&D. Not quite. I learnt on OD&D and 1st Edition and vanilla 3E is IMO the best iteration of the ruleset, before it got killed by splat-books. The Rogue idea isn't my cup of tea, as others have said the word 'Rogue' isn't evocative of 'Brute Fighter' but that's just me. The whole point of a rogue in my mind is a flexible class that allows you to use skills to forge the type of rogue you want to play (swashbuckling dandy through to traps / MacGuyver dude / Ninja stealth monkey) not the DPS tank Sawyer wants you to play. I do like the special move that allows you to swap places with an enemy... if the tactical engine works right that could be fun. Video killed the tabletop game and all that. The Ranger looks interesting, but as others have said archer-with-pet is slightly MMO and again the class concept is fixed. Where did my tank-ranger go? My stealth-ranger? As the other guy said, my lost-a-pet-now-I-use-a-musket ranger. People like messing around with classes and going against the grain. Where is the scope for that here? Again we are playing the class Sawyer wants us to play, the archetypes look too rigid. If I'm being unfair am happy to be corrected but I'm not seeing a load of class flexibility here. My favourite classes, melee fighters, are now mob-crushers. FWIW I am implacably hostile to 4E and MMO type systems. I didn't back a game based on the original infinity engine series to play one. Please dissuade me otherwise.
  6. Monte Carlo
    * tries to think up cooler job description than 'Dungeon Designer' * * fails *
  7. Monte Carlo
    Sawyer-On says...
  8. Monte Carlo
    Year Zero - The Gods couldn't find a publisher so asked the Folks Below The Line (a rabid and vicious sub-species of hellish neo-plankton) for some money. This was to build Ye Promised Realm of Olde or YPRoO. Year 10 - Having found some money the Gods started the 'Turn-Based War' closely followed by 'The Cataclysm of Romance.' These epoch-defining events more or less settled history for the next aeon or so (notwithstanding the occasional eruption, such as the 'Item Degradation Harrowing'). Occasionally a fell race of demonic beings called The Codexians were summoned, and verily the rest of us cowered and trembled in our mud-huts until they were gone. Year 20 - The outer reaches of vestigial empires were inhabited, mainly be trolls, white-knights and promancers with a heroic smattering of resistance grognards. These initial cultural skirmishes still define the character of the realms. Some of the Folks Below the Line were richer than others and were dedecked in gold. These hellish neo-plankton ascended into a gilded creator race. Year 30 - The Eye of Sawyer-On was spotted atop a mountain in the Lingustic Mountains, where folks discussed Quest-based XP in a mixture of Welsh and Aramaic. And the Grognards did wail and gnash their (false) teeth. Year 40 - The Chainmail Bikini insurgency was fought and won by the White Knights. Year 50 - The Gods were now confident enough to reveal that YPRoO was in fact going to be more like the Eye of Sawyer-On's homebrew campaign he dreamt up as a homage to some old computer game he played as a ten-year-old Godling. This rupture in the uneasy fabric of the Realms's sanity led to new skirmishing betwixt factions. NOW - While the plankton await a beta, the biggest concerns appear to be (a) YPRoO might be too big and (b) can I get an XXXXL tee-shirt. Who knows what the future holds?
  9. Monte Carlo
    Am taking my wife for dinner somewhere. Haven't decided yet, although I rather fancy Indian food.
  10. Monte Carlo
    ^ Yeah, I don't think my friend's view is particularly controversial.
  11. Monte Carlo
    ^ Yeah sry Wals was in a 2 v 2 and getting my arse handed to me. Couldn't really reply.
  12. Monte Carlo
    I sort of second this. On the one hand, seeing Blake Lively getting boned never gets old. Neither does watching gnarly Afghan veterans ambushing Mexican drug dealers. John Travolta is also rather good as a corrupt DEA agent. But there's something... meh about parts of it. Del Toro and the lovely Salma Hayek feel like they are both going through the motions and the narrative (through Lively's character's voice) is twee. However, as Bruce says, it's a good movie overall and definitely worth a look-in if you like glossy-but-dirty crime thrillers.
  13. Monte Carlo
    I have a friend who is now a bit of a prepper, but who in a former life was a sniper. We often have spotterish discussions about 5.56 versus 7.62. His view is simple - 5.56 was adopted because of weapons procurement politics around NATO and the M-16 in the 1970s. OK, you carry more, lighter ammo and it supports automatic weapons better vis a vis recoil... but they're too damned fast and not designed for longer ranges. It zips through bodies and bounces of level 2/3 body armour. Back in the day of 3 Shock Army swarming over the Fulda Gap this was viewed as no biggie: a wounded soldier is more of a burden than a dead one to the enemy logistics train... but nowadays your average Muj doesn't have a logisitics train and isn't that bothered about his wounded either. Recent experience in hot sandy places suggests you need a dedicated marksman rifle capability at squad level (which is why the venerable M14 is back in fashion), mainly because it delivers a big 'ol 7.62 man-killing round at the best part of a mile. Everyone was impressed with Muj marksmen armed with ageing Dragunov / SVR class rifles. Lastly, my friend The Sniper believes the most viable calibre for modern military firearms, which is often mooted, sits at the 7mm mark. This is the best trade-off of killing power, weight and recoil in his (rather credible) opinion.
  14. Monte Carlo
    ^ Lephys... Special Power: Mastery of Passive / Aggressive posting.
  15. Monte Carlo
    Sometimes, the simpler and cleverer you try to be, the more complex stuff ends up.
  16. Monte Carlo
    Hey, now... All Josh said is that they're looking into it as a possibility. It does make sense, as a possibility, from a purely balancing standpoint. If you DIDN'T have high INT, given AoE spell would've only hit a 5-meter-diameter area, for example, but now, just 'cause you have power, it'll hit a 10-meter-diameter area. Thus, purely because of the increase in size, you're more prone to hit friendlies. Thus, the problem being addressed is specifically with INT bonus increasing the threat of your spells to friendlies. Josh doesn't just arbitrarily think something's an awesome idea and carve it into stone. Even the stuff he LIKES a lot, he still tests to make sure it's actually a good idea in practice, and not just functional in theory. Sure, tell him why you think it's a bad idea, but I don't think there's any need to go accusing him of pretending this is somehow a shining beacon of game design salvation. Is anything you post not copper-bottomed fanboy-ism?
  17. Monte Carlo
    Too skinny for this call-sign. I know I'm going to get flak, but I've always had a thing for Katy Perry (not the music, of course).
  18. Monte Carlo
    +1 Sawyer has gone and answered a question no-one asked with this one.
  19. Monte Carlo
    Hey that game has heaving cleavages so I'm backing it.
  20. Monte Carlo
    ^ This. Sorry guys, but this is sort of game-as-anally-retentive / OCD-stress-toy.
  21. Monte Carlo
    Completionists gonna.... complete. I know I'll re-play a good game several times so I don't have that "gotta do everything" mentality on the first playthrough anyhow.
  22. Monte Carlo
    It looks like a tea-stained Tolkein ripoff. I want colour.
  23. Monte Carlo
    As much as I love BG2, even the design team acknowledge that the quest splurge in the first part of the game jarred against the more linear second half. I'm inclined to agree, but that's maybe with the benefit of hindsight (even though a writer wouldn't get away with it --- your editor would spot the problem and give you a re-write). I still love BG2 and everything about it. That's what true love is - seeing the errors as triumphs.
  24. Monte Carlo
    Why? I love them, especially deep-fried.
  25. Monte Carlo
    ^ Long term plan? Ha ha ha. Western electoral cycles don't allow for them. Assad can't stay in power. As long as he does, the worse the insurgency will become and the FSA elements not in thrall to Jihadists will be marginalised. Can you imagine the UN putting boots on the ground for any reason, let alone one keeping Assad in power? No, neither can I. The region is screwed. If it wasn't for the ISIS plan to destablilise Lebanon and Turkey in order to collapse Israel we could just leave the place to rot. But we can't. The whole region ain't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier. Or was it Fusilier? There is no happy ending here.
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