AGX-17

Value is subjective. People over-value their own posessions, and undervalue the posessions of others. Currency has value because people believe it has value. When people don't believe in its value, inflation or hyperinflation occur. The value of that currency is dictated by human emotion, not by markets or rational thought. Resource rich countries that should be vastly wealthy are impoverished and undeveloped because of human greed circumventng markets. Gold miners in west Africa sell the gold they mine at great personal risk and effort for far below the international market price. The market doesn't set the prices, the men who stand at the top of the market exploit them just like the oil industry exploits consumers. They're price makers, not price takers. They overprice their own posessions while demanding lower prices for the goods of others. It's irrational, just as most human behavior is (contrary to the fallacious dogma of neoclassical/Hayekian economics and its proponents.) Conservative/Chicago/Austrian school economists continue to cling to outdated, early 19th century theory (which has been thoroughly disproved by two centuries of scientific research into biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other sciences,) that humans are perfectly rational, emotionless calculators of economic efficiency and utility, but humans are living creatures dominated by emotion. "Markets" are an abstract construct of human society and react irrationally to news all the time. Financial and commodity markets frequently panic irrationally over news without waiting to hear the whole story, and most often it turns out to not be anything to panic over. Markets react the same to a paper tiger as a real tiger. I've said as much in another thread, just as I said this: Alfred Nobel never established a Nobel Prize for economics, for he believed (and rightly so,) that economics (at least at the time, I say this because more realistic, more scientifically sound schools of economic thought have emerged but the world of economics is still dominated by fallacious 19th century beliefs, thanks to the political conveniences it provides the ruling class,) was not a science, but a dogma. The "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences" which is now commonly mistaken for a true Nobel Prize was established by a Swedish bank in 1968.

Whoever necromanced this thread, thank you for giving me the opportunity to chide this sentence. "Platypus cactus or whatever" PHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh wow.

Yes I'll eat manflesh too. provided it died of natural causes and was prepared well In the frozen wastes, there is no shame in taking the strength of your fallen comrades.

And you never replied to my question about it, Repeat: Since you were scared of little critters or big critters or what have you mobbing you in a dark area but otherwise playing the same as you would in the light (with an accuracy penalty,) and I was not, and I was scared of fumbling around a pitch-black nightmare rust hospital with only a flashlight and a radio whose static increases the closer an unseen monster is to you. An isometric game can't have the atmosphere of a scary horror game unless you are cowardly and easily frightened (no offense.) No amount of writing can change the fact that it's not an immersive perspective. They can try to give it a scary atmosphere visually, or narratively it might say in the lower left hand corner that you're fumbling terrified in the dark by the sound of skittering skitterers, but you're still seeing a team of capable combatants with some vast array of tactics and skills at their disposal. And torches. And possibly light spells. From on high. There's no visceral fear when the player is a god-like observer above the action with the ability to command many characters with many effective combat capabilities and the power to stop time itself, as compared to fumbling in the dark only to run into an unkillable foe that can kill you with one swipe of his giant razor blade. When you run into an enemy who's stronger than you in an IE game my response is "oh, I need to find some quests or encounters to level up and find better loot before taking this guy on," or if it's some special enemy who requires a special weapon or item to defeat it's "I must need a special item to defeat this enemy," not "OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD TURN ON THE LIGHTS SOMEONE HELP OHMYGOD RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN IT'S COMING THIS WAY OHMYGOD" Especially when the player is used to being in combat, being successful in it and understanding the game rules. Scary is Silent Hill 1-3, Amnesia, etc. Scary is not Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. The perspective is fundamentally not immersive, it's detached. You can imagine yourself seeing through the eyes of your character, but then it's you doing all the work of scaring you, not the game or its perspective or its atmosphere. The fundamental truth is that cRPGs are not Survival Horror games, period. It's right there in the name. "Computer role-playing game." That is decidedly not "Survival Horror game."

You don't see the value in kicking your companions' asses and showing them once and for all who's strongest? Oops, doble poste.

Which of the classes did you try for? Jedi Knight. I might give it some more time, see if the fabled 'story' is as good as people say. The UI is pretty terrible.

The differences between the books and the series are more dramatic in the second season, Riverrun, Brynden & Edmure Tully and Meera & Jojen Reed being rather glaring omissions. I hope they don't keep that trend going as the series continues. I realize they sacrificed faithfulness to the book in Arya's story to make Tywin Lannister an actual character rather than just this looming shadow, but it's surprising for HBO to be going to lengths to tone things down and soften them up, considering how Arya deals with Harrenhal in the book, which was more interesting in her development as a character. What a friend and I have been wondering is: Well, they're going to have to shoehorn them in somewhere. It's strange that the Brotherhood without Banners hasn't been mentioned considering they're practically a late night ghost story for Lannister troops. There's zero chance of being excluded from the series. We already know that Meera and Jojen will finally be appearing in season 3 (they'll probably just be waiting in Bran and co.'s path and Jojen will be all cryptic and say "I knew you'd come here, we've been waiting," etc.) so maybe they'll make up for last season's omissions somehow since they're getting another extension in number of episodes.

Well Rangers would be the "label" of a character with the above skill sets. I see them as a Jack of all trades but master of none, as in a versatile member of a party. They can heal, but not as good as a Cleric or Druid. They are great in archery, but less so than an Archer. I see them as forest guardians. They gain bonuses in the outdoors such as faster speed, stealth, tracking, laying traps, finding herbs, fletching, etc. Another would be bow range. In towns, and underground they would have some penalties, such as lowered bow range. A pet, like a Druid or Beast-master, would stand them apart. Not as a meat shield but a companion. Could be similar to a mage's familiar. If the pet dies, the Ranger would certainly suffer in the form of penalties. There is no Archer class in P:E. Ranger is almost certainly going to be the most archery-centric class.

Like I said in the torch thread, there's nothing scary about an isometric RTW/P cRPG. You could put as many Anglerfish faces and Cthulu pictures in and you're not going to scare me. The reason real survival horror games work is because the player is ineffectual or helpless. That's why Resident Evil 6 is not survival horror or scary, it's just a cover shooter with ugly monsters.

There is no game over in Borderlands, when you die you instantly respawn at the last checkpoint, all progress intact, though enemies may respawn if you're far enough away from the location you died. Also it's intended as a co-op game despite the fact that the narrative is presented as single player, and your teammates can revive you from fight for your life , it takes some time holding down the activate key, thereby taking them temporarily out of the fight as well unless they're playing Maya an use Res for instant long-range revivals. Anyway, this is yet another bizarre, logic-devoid idea. What you're asking is that the devs make every "game over" scenario end with "not game over but a speech or charisma check." This is not going to happen and it's a nonsense idea. Why is every single bandit, wolf, monster, eldritch abomination and assassin who comes after you going to capture you like a James Bond villain and give you ample opportunity to escape? Why should they make an entire bandit lair, wolf den, hostile adventurers' stronghold and so on for every single combat encounter in the game for you to chat or sneak your way out of? That's narratively ludicrous. You're just asking for a game with no possibility of failure.

I haven't particularly cared for any of the character design art save the original dwarf ranger character illustration and the later illustration of the revealed companion characters. Not that it matters since they're all going to be little isometric blobs anyway. Better than Borderlands/2's concept art, at least. I'll give them that much.

I tried Star Wars: The Old Republic today (free, of course,) can't say I was impressed. More like I was irritated that they didn't just make a KOTOR3.

It's the only one that actually allows for any form of roleplaying, as it gives players the option of killing the whole lot of them, for justice, for revenge, or just for fun, y'know, whatevs. It doesn't even matter that it denies you access to the master alchemy and light armor trainers, since alchemy and smithing (thus giving access to light armor that reaches the DR cap,) are the easiest skills to grind. But the fact that it's unique in that way is telling about Bethesda's quest design principles and their idea of an RPG.

The differences between the books and the series are more dramatic in the second season, Riverrun, Brynden & Edmure Tully and Meera & Jojen Reed being rather glaring omissions. I hope they don't keep that trend going as the series continues. I realize they sacrificed faithfulness to the book in Arya's story to make Tywin Lannister an actual character rather than just this looming shadow, but it's surprising for HBO to be going to lengths to tone things down and soften them up, considering how Arya deals with Harrenhal in the book, which was more interesting in her development as a character.

There is no mistake. There is no deliberation or calculation. There is simply nothingness. An empty mind, a pure being. Devoid of thought, his actions are determined by the forces of the universe, just as a leaf has no mind but to go where the wind carries it. He gives us two choices, congratulates the "right" and chides the "wrong," but they are not his words, for he has none. They are the wind in the trees, the waves lapping upon the shore, the things that give us pause to think. To think that perhaps there is another way. That is his gift to us. We look with our eyes and see two choices, but we look with our minds and see any number of choices we please. The road ahead is dark, untrodden, but there is only one true direction: forward. The die has been cast, the trap has been set, and we have no choice but to see this through to the end. We press ever onward, into the darkness, never faltering in our cause. If you fall, you will not fall in vain. We alone will mark the path for those that come after, each of us becoming a beacon to show the way, that someday, those who follow in our footsteps might reach the end of this harrowing path. And they will thank us for guiding their way, and thank Malekith for challenging us to find this new way. For his is the hardest lot of us all, to abandon all thought and reason, and to become empty of mind and spirit, a pure vessel for the cosmos to show us the true path is not that which is known, but that which is unknown. Godspeed comrades, your sacrifices will not be forgotten.

There's hardly any thievery involved, the writing is terrible, the story is terrible (it even contradicts established lore that the TG is hated and cursed by Nocturnal in Oblivion, not to mention NPCs selling your character's soul to her and your only dialogue option is to agree or exit the dialogue and not finish the questline,) the characters are terrible, and there is no roleplaying involved. Bethesda's idea of RPing is a binary choice between doing the quest/line and not doing it. Of course, the concept of a thieves' guild is fundamentally stupid to begin with.

Eternal Eternity: Forever Infinityscape Worked poorly for "Shaker"... Pretty cheap dude, don't kick people while they are down. This is AMERICA (deep, throaty, GTAVC/SA gun shop voice,) if their idea failed in the marketplace of ideas, then it wasn't a very good idea.

That's exactly what cannot possibly work or fit in P:E given its perspective, control scheme and multiple characters. You have missed the point, entirely, it seems.

He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.

I thought Varric could turn on you during that quest it's just that it's not easy to get a low approval rating with him? I dunno, I never bothered to look into it, the mechanics of DA2 were never interesting enough to try to dig into for me.

For any fellow Borderlands 2 players out there, Gearbox is raining SHiFT golden key codes on facebook in twitter celebrating their sweep of spike's VGAs.

Just tried Planetside 2, mediocrity is too strong a word. Downloading SW:TOR because it's F2P now, but i'll probably go back to Super Robot Wars OGs 2nd pretty quick.

http://www.metacriti...n-2/the-bouncer http://www.metacriti...-the-2nd-runner That's why. Actually it's because aside from being better games (the HD ZOE collection is more about Anubis/The 2nd Runner than the original game,) ZOE has both a sizable fanbase and Hideo Kojima wants to do a 3rd game in the series, whereas The Bouncer has no fanbase and Square-Enix has no desire to make a sequel to it. ...Morrowind isn't an island, it's a province; Vvardenfell is the island portion of Morrowind. And it's just Solstheim in this DLC, not any of Morrowind (Solstheim is not part of any province.)

Yeah, still can't believe this game is getting GOTY awards and nominations. To G4's audience's credit (I had thought them mere fratboy COD knuckleheads, but it seems I've been proven wrong,) ME3 didn't make it very far in their voting tournament.