Zoraptor

That's what they may want you to think, but quite a different story is told if you examine the facts... Look at MOTB- Myrkul is clearly a stand in for Capitalist Conformity, cursing Akachi for daring to oppose his free market laissez-faire theology where you have freedom, but only in the choice of which Invisible Hand of the Pantheon to worship; consume their divine product- or as an allusion to Pink Floyd's seminal anti capitalist epic become "just another brick in the wall", literally. You really think it's coincidence that the curse involves you consuming souls, forcing you to consume more in a never ending cycle where more and more consumption is needed just to stand still? And that the only sensible strategy is to battle your foul, capitalistic impulses? You even get to put that foul avatar of capitalism, Myrkul, to rest, if you want, or show him the logical end point of his appalling ideology- hardly the act of a tame American Imperialist Capitalist Running Dog company, quite the reverse in fact. Of course, you can go the other way and embrace 'capitalism', consuming more and more, but what do you get in the end? A few meaningless baubles to give you the illusion of benefit, and an ally of extreme unreliability and danger. That's not all though: Alpha Protocol has you battling the forces of capitalism overtly. Halbech; Halliburton-Bechtel. Coincidence? I think not. KOTOR 2... well, you get the picture. Clearly Obsidian is bravely battling the system from the inside. Seriously, they just had a Kickstarter, which works on a communal funding model. That's hardly the act of a "American Capitalist company .. spreading the lies of American Imperialism", now is it? I rest my case.

Ah, forums. In six months time it will be "it's not like South Park brought in any useful new members", it's inevitable. There's no compelling reason why you couldn't have a Cell on a dongle. You'd need a fast external bus to run it through and a decent power supply- equivalent to having an external PCI-E slot on a computer, which isn't done* but there's no particular reason you couldn't do it. Problem is that when you say dongle people think USB stick type thing rather than the plug in self contained board it would probably be. *well, my dad bought a new Sony ultra light notebook recently. It has a decent GPU- in its docking station.

To be honest, I cannot be bothered to be detailed, sorry, as that requires digging through 3 year old links and the like- though I did do some detailed rebuttal at the time I may be able to dig up. The main problem wrt to the effects of drm was that he was very fond of using absolute figures without context. For example, using the figures he supplies, Fallout 3 which was effectively DRM free was torrented only as much over the first month as Crysis: Warhead, a game which sold far fewer copies. Similar with Farcry2, both games got torrented similar amounts despite Farcry 2 having the activation DRM, selling less than F3 but otherwise being very similar (in terms of being multiplatform sequels to a PC game, similar release dates etc). Far from suggesting that DRM is effective those figures suggest it is, at best, a neutral proposition. And if DRM is either neutral or an actual negative then what exactly is the point?

It was far more 'clunky', for want of a better word, but I found it far better mechanically and ultimately far more interesting in gameplay. Its stronger points relative to CK2 and my problems with it were that having a bad leader or a child king gave you very real, and realistic, problems as your martial skill directly effected how many soldiers you could raise, even a large empire with a bad leader could be vulnerable to a small realm with a top class military leader; there was a friends/ enemies mechanic that allowed for both more organic expansion (no artificial 'fabricate claims' as in CK2, but claims against your enemies cost less prestige to get, plus you could get claims through tournament events and the like) and a better feeling of the characters being people with personalities rather than just semi random collections of traits; and the bad boy system worked well both in limiting the 'tyranny' of the ruler- you could strip traitors of titles which gave bb but so long as you gave the titles away (which lowered bb) your loyalists would not get upset- and to curb stampeding. You'd also get buildings and the like burned down if sieged, captured provinces could be looted which trashed them for years and wars cost huge amounts of money (with debt potentially forcing you to sell more buildings) so there was far more scope for a Byzantine style Decline than in CK2 where provinces, in effect, only get better with time. CK1 was not perfect by any means, its UI is difficult, it has a learning curve like a toddler in a diving pool and it still has some occasional nasty bugs, but is one of my favourites despite its flaws. CK2 has tons of stuff that should be better but ultimately feels rather like Excel: The Game with a nice interface.

Good thing this reached 9 pages before I noticed it or it would have been hulk smash, as I absolutely loathe that infernal tweakguides garbage article*. As it stands there will be a drm free copy and I for one would not have contributed to the KS if there hadn't been, and I'll simply state that I refuse to get OUTRAEGED!!1!! at pirates because it's the most pointless exercise imaginable. *Full of half truths, stats that prove the reverse of what it claims and the like. He proves that relative piracy rates are higher with activation DRM and it's obvious he never read the actual conditions for the Starforce Challenge- sadly star force no longer has them up and archive.org doesn't seem to have them, but it involved paying your own way to Moscow to reproduce the error on their picked hardware plus more and was absolutely and obviously set up specifically to be fundamentally unwinnable. Even the updates are dishonest, saying that TWitcher 2 was DRM free when the pirated version- as stated by CDPR themselves- was the SecuROMed retail version rather than the DRM free GOG one. Half truths, selective facts, strawmen and every other cheap rhetorical trick in the book.

Shifted this from the goty thread, as I have been playing CK2 recently having got up to date with the expansions and it isn't really on topic there. I don't actually dislike it though I will sound like I do; I'm mainly disappointed with its wasted potential. Main problems are: 1) The larger country wins pretty close to every single war fought, and the larger army wins close to every battle fought 2) There's no real bonus to having exceptional characters, because above a certain realm size everyone has exceptional characters. That is also at least partly why (1) happens, since you can practically guarantee 3 very good to excellent military leaders for any sizeable realm so there cannot be a Crecy/ Poitiers/ Agincourt. 3) (1) and (2) ensure that the strong almost always get stronger resulting in blob/ stampede syndrome 4) There's a lot of cosmetic variation, but almost no practical variation. Simply put, it gets boring. 5) There's a whole lot of- completely unnecessary- ahistoricity. You cannot execute (landed) traitors without loyalists getting the hump, you cannot execute/ imprison people who murdered your own relatives and were caught doing it without people hating you. 5a) You can wage war after war, fight civil wars etc for centuries and neither go into debt nor have any long term effect on your lands. 5b) Castles take too long to siege relative to levy recharge rates, and there's no 'surrender' mechanic (as would generally happen historically) so an enemy can be back to almost full strength in the time it takes to siege a province. There are assaults, but good luck with that if the garrison is 2k+ and you've less than 10x their numbers. 5c) Hilarious usage of allies to win wars- 16,000 Byzant cataphracts turning up to smack some random Sami count having sailed all the way around Europe to get there, all to gain a single province for their cousin, who isn't even in their realm. For a defensive war, maybe, but for an aggressive one and with the (ahistorical) stability of the Fatimids and Seljuks? It's a game with almost limitless potential but overall it's a garish capering jester and I've lost my patience for hey nonny nonnys and n'uncles- while Paradox seems more interested in sewing sequins onto the motley than doing anything else. (CK2+ is a large improvement over vanilla, and the GOT mod has even more potential than CK2 itself)

So far as I can remember* I've only played two 2012 games, neither of which I'd rate as a GOTY unless it was mandatory to give the award. While I liked ME3 overall it was too up and down to qualify and I'm slowly giving up hope that CK2 might be expanded into a game that fulfils its enormous promise. *I have almost certainly played other 2012 games but I can hardly have a GOTY I need to be reminded of having played.

They conquered Manchuria though. It was the Soviets that kicked them out of Manchuria again in the second largest military operation in WWII (only Barbarossa was larger in scope and resources). Yep, though Manchuria was and still is the least populated area of eastern China they also held a lot of the coastline as well, but they never came close to holding everything- maybe a quarter, roughly. In any case Japan/ China isn't a good model for anything modern as neither army was 'modern' in the sense that Germany was at the start or the main allies were at the end of WW2.

Using figures from the 6 day war is... not great, as that was a surprise attack by Israel. Comparative death tolls for the US and Japan for Dec7-13 1941 would show pretty much exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason, as would the figures for Barbarossa. A better comparison would be the Yom Kippur war where the Egyptian performance really rattled the Israelis, and Egypt's army is far better now than it was then. Pointless anyway. Israel words are backed by nuclear weapons, and that's all that is required 95% of the time. And Volo, Japan never conquered China, not even close.

It shouldn't be that bad persistently, first time it is run it has to do some engine housekeeping (building the "pathfinding", essentially) which takes extra time and can make it look like it's stuck, but that should be only for the first time. It'll never be fast loading though, it's just not how the engine is constructed.

It's almost certainly not a steam key, but a paradox key. You need it (if desired, optional) for paradox forum registration as it gives access to restricted forums like tech support, and to use the metaserver for multiplayer. I bought my CK II on steam... got a steam key and redeemed it on my steam client. It has been working so far I don't use steam of course- as it's an affront to all that is good in the world and a vile carbuncle on the otherwise baby smooth bottom of PC gaming- but a key which it doesn't want prior to installation/ running will likely be used for the metaserver/ paradox forums. If it were the steam code itself then she wouldn't even be able to install/ run it without having inputted it prior, as you did. My properly DRM free copy bought from the rich, verdant, oppression free fields of GG came with a key, for example, which I've never had to use; sadly in large part because I found CK2 extremely disappointing overall (actually one of the most disappointing games I've ever played) and a pale shadow of the gleeful anarchism of the original game.

It's almost certainly not a steam key, but a paradox key. You need it (if desired, optional) for paradox forum registration as it gives access to restricted forums like tech support, and to use the metaserver for multiplayer. All Paradox games take ages to load- there are thousands of files loaded at startup and to help with modding most are in plain text or can be altered. For something like EU3 you can also end up with 70MB+ plain text save game files that take ages to load towards the end of the game.

Yes, but one of them has an uninterrupted history from, effectively, Baibars in 1260 to the present day while the other's possession terminated either 2500 or 2000 years ago, depending on how you measure it. That's not like Joseph Bloggstein turning up in Frankfurt in 1946 expecting to get his old property back having fled it in 1933, that's Joseph Bloggstein's great great (x100) grandson turning up and expecting his property back. Under those rules Italy has a legitimate claim to western Europe and the Mediterranean littoral, and I'd rather like north Germany, England, Denmark, Palestine, Switzerland, Italy and southern France back. Nope, Balfour Declaration was 1917, during WW1 and was, as with their (contradictory, who'd a guessed) promises to the arab side, a ploy to get support vs the Ottomans and never intended to be fulfilled, hence British Mandate Palestine, not Israel in 1918. Anyone with any sense does blame the British, and the French, for being- frankly- dishonest colonialist scum who managed the difficult task of asterisking the region up even more than it was with their arbitrary line drawing, contradictory promises, flagrant outright lying and mealy mouthed White Man's Burden justifications for said self interested carve up and associated brutal repression and reliance on even more brutal proxy rulers. After all, it wasn't Saddam Hussein who first gassed Iraq's marsh arabs, it was the British as suggested by... Winston S Churchill, national hero.

Yep. Else, it will be welcome to our new Ethiopian overlords. Which will be fine actually, because in those circumstances we'll all be Ethiopians. "We were there x years ago" is a poor justification because if it's valid then it's a valid justification for pretty much everything. All Euros out of the americas etc etc. Even if it could be a proper argument in some cases it isn't a proper argument in this case. Israel took Solomonic Israel from the Canaanites by a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, so logically we should have a look for some extant Canaanites and give the land back to them.

Well, it's not well explained. It can be finniky and sticky. It's hard to get out of combo's once you've started them and can't break your attack to dodge. Not to mention the fact that they have clunky controls for magic, and it's habit of giving you abilities that you don't understand how to use (catching knives on your sword). I kind of presumed Nightshape was asking primarily about the UI (since layout and design was mentioned) rather than the combat? I do agree on the giving abilities you don't know how to use thing though. Last replay I forgot how to level up (!) and (iirc) neither the manual nor the help text mentioned opening the relevant screen while meditating, only opening the relevant screen itself. Didn't take me long to work it out, of course. May have changed with the new version/ tutorial stuff though which is far too big for me to download.

As above, it's true for "little p" poverty where actual food supply is not a problem, but food quality is. Gaza has a bit of a perfect storm in that it gets (cheap, low quality) food aid, it's very densely populated and since those areas there which aren't densely populated are also areas you tend to get shot at if you go then there's little opportunity for exercise. Genuine, "capital P" Poverty where there is difficulty even getting the bare necessities of life is not correlated with obesity though, of course.

I liked Twitcher2 a lot and replayed it recently, but there sure are a lot of things wrong with it as well. Combat was obviously aiming for something like Batman: AA but ended up more like Gothic- certainly not a bad system once you know its quirks, but potentially a real pain while you're learning. QTEs were annoying, not so much the fistfights which were trivial, but the first time going through the Kayran and getting killed after all that annoying tentacle dodging just because you missed a "Press space Bar Now!!!!" prompt was extraordinarily annoying. And there were difficulty spikes reminiscent of Vlad Tepes on a bad day (see Kayran, first fight v antagonist, draug) even once you'd learnt the combat. The alchemy system (meditate to drink part) was good in theory but ended up being unnecessarily restrictive, partly due to the rather stilted UI which was designed more to look pretty than be functional, there was a rather big potential retcon right at the start, the whole engine and approach had changed from the first game etc etc. I liked it a lot overall, but it's certainly not a title where I shake my head when people don't like it.

Kind of meant to reply to this earlier, but wanted to wait until I'd finished MOTB. It's actually quite a difficult question to answer, I still don't really know why I don't like Arcanum for example, it has theoretically everything I should like but... And I'd have to work out why I theoretically like strong storylines and good atmosphere/ world building but like roguelikes and old school low story stuff as well as stuff like, well, MOTB. I guess that if I had to I would say that I tend to like 3 things above all else in games- good mechanics/ gameplay, good atmosphere and a good story line- and that in general most other genres have two out of three of those, but not all three. Something like SMAC or Civ from the strategy side has good mechanics for example, but tend to lack in at least atmosphere (and storyline, though SMAC is about as good at that as it's possible for a strategy title to be). From the fps side, something like STALKER is good on the gameplay side and has excellent atmosphere but... you wouldn't really play it for the storyline. RPGs are about the only genre in which you often get all three things together. So something like BG2 is, at least in theory, just about my perfect game. In reality though I actually like Fallout 2, MOTB and PST at least better than BG2 despite them being objectively weaker than BG2 in what should be the most important area for a game, namely gameplay itself. OTOH Arcanum has good atmosphere and a good story, and gameplay which is, well, not worse than some other games I enjoy yet overall I don't like it much at all. Ultimately it comes down to the rather nebulous and unquantifiable sense of 'immersion' as perhaps the most important factor, the feeling that it's you getting punked by the controller in X16, you getting taunted by SHODAN or you talking The Master to death. But that is not in itself specific to RPGs.

Notorious B.A.D? Sic transit gloria mundi, eh Mr Smalls.

I was talking specifically about the recent, well publicised, incident, as was Farbautisonn from his description. But no, Hamas certainly ain't any shining light for justice and due process and are pretty typical in that regard for an organisation of their type. It's simply that they are within their rights- as historically with most countries- to execute collaborators/ agents provacateur/ spies in times of war without due process.

Hmm. Wrong (Fatah has killed off/ suppressed most of the antagonist factions in WB, much as Hamas has in the GS); yes, but irrelevant as all it does is give Israel far larger buffer strips around palestinian areas; it has far worse access to weapons as Israel controls all the border to a significant depth as opposed to Egypt controlling some of the GS's border; and no, the WB has ~600k people, the GS has 1.2 million and is the most densely populated region on earth. Not a great start there. It's not in Hamas's best interests to spend their time fighting their 'friends', much as it wasn't worth Israel's time fighting the Phalangists and SLA despite them merrily torturing and murdering their way through southern Lebanon for 20 years, or it wasn't worth it for the US to rein in the rightist paramilitaries in Latin America. That's realpolitik for you, and if you're going to criticise one you gotta criticise the other as well. As for the rest, governments gonna govern. Executing agents of a foreign power in times of war is not illegal- I can provide a list as long as your arm of Western examples, should you wish to push the point- and if it weren't Hamas those levies would be called... taxes, levies and the like, without the quote marks. No. Not to the act itself, but to any moral plusage to be gained from it. Israel has an absolute obligation under international law to provide the means of life to its occupied territories, and under international law that is what Gaza is. Failure to do so would be a Crime Against Humanity and is the sort of thing even the US would probably not be able to insulate Israel from. It's also used as a further cudgel to bludgeon and control with as they can, and do, turn stuff off on a whim. Run down the whole area with your blockade, refuse to allow in basic constriction materials or for the palestinians to get money or construct stuff themselves, then claim credit for alleviating the suffering you yourself caused. A great strategy to convince the ignorant, not so much the well informed. Apartheid or Bantustaning are far more accurate accusations. There are massive issues on the WB too, but that is ratcheted down because the Palestinians are far less there population wise and they are corralled into regions surrounded on all sides and in depth by checkpoints, settler only roads, settlements themselves, a 30' wall, and the like.

Yet Steam is often about the only place to have the localised prices- albeit some other places like Impulse/ Gamestop will simply refuse to sell some games at all to certain regions. If steam really wanted to avoid it they almost certainly have the clout to, but it does benefit them, so they won't push it. I'm not in Australia (in NZ, but we tend to get lumped in with them) so I cannot speak directly for Aus, but in the vast majority of cases it is perfectly possible to avoid the localised prices by avoiding steam and using either another DD or a remailer, let alone a key reseller. But a lot of people simply won't do so. That ain't intended to exonerate the publishers though, given that Namco went to court to force regionalisation on TWitcher 2. Of course, I could still buy a non regionalised copy from Gamersgate, even then...

Ignorance and herd mentality, largely. Lots of people think that steam is- literally- the only place to buy from DD and others don't want to make accounts at multiple places or are compulsive about steam achievements or whatever. It's also one of those things where some people get really upset if anyone blames steam for it as "it's the publisher's fault!" only, despite other DD outlets often not having the same differential. Truth is that the situation benefits everyone but the consumer as retail remains relevant, sort of, and both steam and the publishers get more money. Thus, price gouging.

So far as I am aware the only way to get it at the moment is as part of the NWN bundle (which I think only Gamersgate has). That is of course a bundle rather than a separate download though, and is currently rather expensive considering it has been in the $6 range before. You can get GG to send you email alerts on price drops and the like, since they are having a Thanksgiving sale- despite being Swedish- that supposedly extends right to christmas it may well be part of that at some point.

Your government hates you. It's price gouging, pure and simple. Nothing to do with their (or our) government.