Nepenthe

Oh, I'd forgotten that airplane photoshoot scene was on this season. Preordered the blu-ray. :D

Here's what wikipedia says: Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a form of external user acceptance testing. Versions of the software, known as beta versions, are released to a limited audience outside of the programming team. The software is released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or bugs. Sometimes, beta versions are made available to the open public to increase the feedback field to a maximal number of future users. Hmm, external user acceptance testing...

If it's green and not yellow, you're really ****ed. I'd go see a doc. Nah. It goes that colour when it's old. It's white when it's being made fresh. I'm on the mend now. Hmm, you're probably right. When I was having repeated sinusitises (sinusitia?), the doc gave me a rough outline which was white = good, yellow = bad, green = ****ed. I had that connected to the level of infection, but age could correlate with "bad" when it comes to sinuses, I guess.

That was a reaction to the myth that it only affects yourself. Very few people live in such complete isolation from the rest of their world, that their actions doesn't impact it. As for the sports injury strawman, I looked at a few numbers. In New Zealand the annual cost was $70 million in 2007 (Rugby being unsurprisingly the biggest culprit) and an example for Australia (2003) numbers lists $1.5 billion which is the gross figure, not adjusted for the cost to the tax payer and how much is covered by private health insurance for the specific purpose. Nor does it balance it against any cost saving by reduced expenses on cardiovascular conditions. In summary, "insignificant" in the big picture. How do you put a dollar value on the human cost? The "I am entitled to fun, the consequences and bill paying be damned" mentality smacks of lack of responsibility and accountability. C.f. Greece for the mentality applied on a nationwide scale.

If it's green and not yellow, you're really ****ed. I'd go see a doc.

Remembered that I shouldn't go to message boards when under work stress, and this: I'll go drink my glass of warm milk, now.

Sorry but that's backpedaling at its worst and a far cry from saying that they sold the game in beta to PC players. But uh, I'm a strawman, so I guess that noticing you're not making any sense is pointless, and I guess I'll stop discussing with you from now on since you waited for someone to come and rescue your poorly conceived arguments. I'm rereading my original post, and it's in perfect alignment with what I'm talking about, the perceptions of the fans and how CDProjekt manages them very well. The over-fixation on an expression I used ("betatesting") is what got this thing off-target along the way. English is my third language and I don't work in the programming industry - occasional lapses of vocabulary should be accepted. p.s. I might not make sense, but your approach is like 101 of poor argumentation techniques. False dichotomies, strawmanning and now ad hominem attacks. I am disappoint! Edit: for clarification, since this is a very common internet fallacy. "Strawmanning" is turning another person's argument into a caricature, so you can dismiss it easily. People aren't strawmen.

I think I've managed to find the point that I'm obviously not getting across at all (based on your post here and WUE's blatant strawman above). I'm NOT ****ING SAYING THEY ARE BAD! It's not a binary choice between God's Angels and, well, "bad". All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist! As an aside, huggles to Hell Kitty for getting the rest of it, even if I disagree with the binary example in this case, the theory is more or less what I'm (probably always) going on about

No.

Well, I have a great respect for independent thinking, even when it disagrees with mine.

You're right, there were significant changes between the different versions that were initially tested as "patches" for the versions released first. Oh, wait, no there weren't. But this isn't about Bioware, Eidos Montreal, or even the raw deal Obsidian (mostly) got in New Vegas feedback. Am I really this obtuse or is it really necessary to twist my point to these lengths to come up with a counter-argument? I'm hardly "blaming" CDProjekt for their actions, in fact I admire the brilliance (and audacity) of their project funding plan. I'm just surprised everybody eats it up with fistpumps and a merry grin on their face when gamers as a group tend to jump at conspiracy shadows given the slightest opportunity. Like the ones who would've burned them alive, in your words, for releasing first on the xbox. The Mako suffered from absolutely **** level design outside the crit path. I found it to be fundamentally a lot sounder than that idiotic platformer they replaced it with in ME2.

Hmm, "Bro Ex". I'll keep an eye on it, I basically buy no shooters, so being generic isn't really a problem to me.

Interesting choice of examples. I consider the blowback from both Deus Ex boss fights and the Mako to be more a case of Internet Bandwagon Jumping syndrome (IBJ), which just runs in two directions; in the case of the (t)witcher 2, the IBJ absolves it of all sins. Or, neither the Mako nor the DX Boss Fights were anywhere near the level of "bad" the IBJ has claimed them to be. Of course, neither Eidos Montreal nor Bioware continued the development of the game for another platform, removing the "tests" you mentioned. Edit: I think you guys are getting too hung up on "Beta" as in broken, and not the way I mean it, a prototype for the console version. A prototype tested, and then improved on, based on the feedback from PC players.

That's a weird way to look at it, basically, the bigger a patch is, the more broken is the game before it? I'm starting to understand why Bethesda doesn't actually release patch notes. I'd say that's a very common way of looking at it instead of being "weird", but wasn't really my point. I won't go through the criticisms leveled at the game, the comments that how a lot of the failings (relative and minor as they may be) were blatantly obvious (like lack of tutorial), apparently repeated iteration of combat subsystems and rolling these into the test ^H^H^H^H PC version etc. Of course, New Vegas saw a lot of tweaks for an SP game, as well, and there was no (more or less) obvious link to a new release to be made.

Learning cricket by watching the T20 champion's league...

Nope, I did the latter and still got the achievement. Foxiest of Hounds is just not tripping alarms, stuff like failing hacks, shooting cameras, triggering cameras and enemies hitting the panel to trigger the alarm. That's it. Also I think the prologue does count, I avoided killing people in it either way. I'm pretty sure the guide is wrong on that count as well, then. I can't comment on that, since I had an alarm go off at TYM so definitely failed that 'chievo without any odd stuff, like I had with the pacifist.

You gotta give it CDProjekt's PR management, though. Anyone else would've been torn to shreds for betatesting the xbox version with their PC customers, yet they have most people fawning over their "brilliant support".

I don't care about "book "canon"", if the interference within the game is minimal. Karpyshyn already buggered the Mass Effect continuity in the novel in a way that Bio won't do in-game. If they have the decency to keep the stupid retconning out of the game, I'll be happy.

Prologue counts against pacifist achievement. Tranq. shot to head will on occasion kill as well. Yeah, I ensured my prologue was all non-lethal and sneakyness. And I had to keep reloading the "save the pilot from death" because things like the mech exploding kept killing off guys I'd ko'd in one way or another. So to get to the end and suddenly find that somewhere along the line... Ah well. IIRC the guide says that the prologue doesn't count, but there seems to be some confusion about that. That particular achivement doesn't seem to be working too well. Also, apparently to get the foxiest of hounds IMO, those are well worth getting if you missed out on the first time.

Agreed. Have mostly found them to be "miss", but then again I'm a fan of the stompier stuff.

I approve of this post, especially of Howlin Wolf, whose voice is distilled testosterone. And booze and cigarettes, I'd wager. Spending some time wondering what to reward myself with when this is done. Leaning towards Auchentoshan at the moment.

Ever asked why Kotor 2 isn't on Steam, while Kotor 1 is? LA/EA/BIO don't wanna have Obsidian in the picture. They want them to be non-existant. Like they never made the game. This is nothing personal of course, just game business as usual. Yeah, I can imagine them wishing it away, but I don't think it's related so much to Obsidian as to the game's overall quality (which, well, at least LA deserves a big chunk of "credit" for). Also re: Karpyshyn's writing, I think he's been getting progressively worse over the last couple of years. ME: Deception was a really poor showing on all counts. As for the 2nd hand information. If it's true, it sucks, but most of the time these things aren't. Edit: I just remembered he was behind that butchery Throne of Bhaal. Yeah, it's a miracle I managed to read the first two ME novels, I guess.

LOL I misread this as him covering you in chocolate peanuts.