Leferd

Don't let the score of that game fool you. The Turks kicked our butts in the first half. They were patient, ran their offense and pounded the boards outrebounding the US by a 2-1 margin in the first half. Their zone forced the US to take contested 3s (going 1 for 9 in the first half). Faried, Davis, Drummond and Irving are carrying the US right now. Curry can't buy a shot atm and with the exception of Irving our guard play has been mediocre (and that's being nice). I wish the US had added Lillard (and possibly Korver or Parsons) and dropped Plumlee (and possibly deRozan) I saw the game too. Turkey outplayed USA in the first half and were up by 5 at the half. That's hardly kicking butt. Far from it. Shots weren't falling and offensively they were rushing with some heroball. Once they settled down and played inside out with the bigs and got out in transition, USA was fine. Curry even got his rhythm back and made three triples. Give all the credit to Turkey, but they wouldn't have been able to keep up for the full 40. Hell, they recovered enough that the game became a blow out anyway.

Young International players I'm interested in keeping tabs on: Dario Saric and Mario Hezonja - Croatia The Brothers Antetokounmpo - Greece Donatus Motiejunas (sp?) and Jonas Valanciunas - Lithuania These guys all have NBA star potential (except for the Greek Freak's older brother) and I'd like to see them I situations where they have to carry their teams, especially Motiejunas. The 2 Croats in particular won't be playing in the NBA next season but they have the most upside of the group.

USA trounced Finland by 59pts including a shut out 2nd quarter in which the Finns only managed 2 free throws. For game 2, The Turks were actually up by 5 over USA at halftime before the Americans got their pride going and went on to blow out Turkey. To be fair, the Turks did as well as they possibly could, but not for two whole halves, and they managed to not get into garbage time until well into the 4th. USA doesn't really run any semblance of an offense - just jumpers, post ups, and pick n rolls - relying on superior basketball skills and athleticism. Their defense though is super aggressive and tenacious (except for James Harden -he doesn't even pretend to try), pressuring opposing trams into committing turnovers and quick shots, thereby accelerating the overall pace of the game. For the most part, USA is playing their B team talent - which is still more than enough to cruise through the tourney, atleast until the knockout stage.

Good opportunity to scout out some international talent. Really impressed by Dario Saric of Croatia. Inevitable Toni Kucoc comparisons.

he did not need to work very hard to find, "bizarre, explicit and controversial comments." in fact, we bet it would be impossible to enter a da:i forum other than news and announcements and perhaps multiplayer, and find a single page w/o at least one thread containing, "bizarre, explicit and controversial comments." a comment from a bsn poster reacting to the video that is honest 'bout the degree o' bsn bizaro http://forum.bioware.com/topic/512557-dragon-age-inquisition-bsn-in-a-nutshell/?p=17218164 HA! Good Fun! http://forum.bioware.com/topic/473296-this-is-absolutely-unacceptable/?p=15069600 I'm assuming this isn't you. Someone else actually took your handle in the new Bio forums? Haha I can only imagine the bewilderment when Gaider, Priestly, Woo, or some such sees one of these posts.

If only they could include the IWD2 portraits. Speaking of which, Obsidian bought the rights to IWD's art assets. How does this work? Or does Beamdog have the inherent right to use the original assets when they licensed it from the rightsholders? (Would it be Atari? Hasbro??)

Hmm. Interesting that they went with the IWD route instead of PS:T.

Pathfinding will not be fixed in one fell swoop. They'll tweak and iterate all the way through release.

The Ukraine is strong.

That's why I'm hoping for a Holy Hand Grenade super weapon to kill those pesky wabbits.

Run Away! Run Away!

Or else, the Doctors can continue to Scrooge McDuck it up in their Moneybin from the major $$$ they got from selling off (out?) to Elevation Partners and EA... ...and avoid all the grief that goes with running a startup independent video game company.

I played for a bit on release as an Inquisitor, Jedi Knight, and Imperial Agent. Stopped with each at various points through the mid thirties or twenties. Main reason I stopped is that the game is just boring -Repetitive level grinding, ho-hom storytelling, and uncompelling gameplay.

Pistol, sabre, and plumed hat. This and the single shot mechanic will work for me.

yeah, am suspecting that backer beta maybe has some impact on implementation o' those missing talents the developers has mentioned-- as long as most talents represent simple numerical modifiers of existing abilities and skills. given aggressiveness o' release, is hard to imagine the adding o' talents that would require any sorta animations or complex implementations. am also doubtful that most (not all) o' our board feedback regarding bugs is particular useful as we would tend to agree with you that QA must needs be a couple iterations ahead o' what we is seeing. HA! Good Fun! Agreed. The QA teams (in-house and with Paradox) will have caught a high percentage (though not all) of the actual bugs -and they will catch even more so when including those that are not reported from the BB. But I'm suspecting that Obsidian is essentially using the BB as glorified focus group testing. They'll implement tweaks here and there based on useful feedback and add talents accordingly but don't expect wholesale changes. The BB can also help catch those pesky hard crashes that are a result of unoptimized or incompatible hardware/drivers that are nearly impossible to reproduce in an enclosed test environment.

Yeah. The video is in three different threads. Seems to me that we should keep this one specific to Eternity. Will definitely have to gauge where they are after the next BB build. I'm assuming though that the dedicated QA teams are working on the full game that is one or two builds ahead of the BB.

The Kung Fu RPG concept would have been hilarious. Hope the Doctors get back in the business. I'm assuming they may have signed a timed non-compete clause as part of their severance package with EA. Zombies and Cowboys? I'm in!

Hahaha. Matt was trying to get hints for the next Kickstarter and was suggesting whether it was going to be MCA's project. Instead, Feargus may have misunderstood and kept on talking about PoE and of Fenstermaker and Sawyer.

I'd take a matchlock over a bow any day. As would most armies. Even Nobunaga's.

Thank you.

Darren is saying that it won't be tonight, but most likely next Wednesday.

I stand corrected.

Divinity was only partially crowd funded. Their overall budget is similar to Eternity's.

Where did you hear this? See, that's what we're talking about in terms of their communication needing work. QA has been very active in giving feedback on the bug report forums and have updated their known issues list.

I think you may be confusing Ziets with Brian Mitsoda. Mitsoda was the designer on VtM:B. VtM:B was good and it had Quest based XP. Combat was terrible though. Mitsoda's Haunted Hotel was singularly my favorite video game level of all time. Freaked the hell out of me. So major props for that.