Elerond

I am curios why did you think so as it was first announced in Sony's 2014 E3 conference and it was said that it will come to PS4 which is only platform today which it is announced for, although they have said that it will be Sony's console exclusive and timed exclusive, which is why people think that it is also coming on PC in some point of time.

I would guess that biggest problem has been that Fumito Ueda (game's director and designer) ending his full time employment with Sony and Team ICO, although his contract with Sony seem to demand that he will finish Last Guardian, before he can fully stop working for them. I would put game in category that it is actually coming when its actually released, because it can easily suffer similar fate as Silent Hill, although Sony seems to be more keen to release game even if it isn't actually in such condition that it should be released.

I would guess that they can meet goal in next couple hours if people that crashed KS during show comeback, but of course it could be that they weren't actually interested to back the game but were just curious.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3 Well I wasted money contributed on Dreamfall Chapters so it would be criminal not to help Suzuki-sama. Wow...it went up $470,000 in the time it took me to read through the pitch. That's pretty darn impressive. When you announce kickstarter front of over million people that isn't that impressive. There has been faster kickstarter that didn't got similar boost of visibility

I take class balance as example because that is the one aspect that which PoE focused most in balance. In classless systems there is no class balance because there is no classes, so they don't work as good examples when you compare how they are balanced to PoE or any class based RPG. But in classless systems you also find lots of balancing mechanics that try to prevent game become boring, of course lots of systems have failings on this part in their mechanics. For example couple of my favorite RPGs are RuneQuest and Rolemaster which both use classless systems that allows characters to learn everything and become even more powerful than gods if GM don't restrict players with mechanics put in the rules. But as those games has those things in their rules that GM can use to slow down character progression, which allows even years long campaigns where player characters don't become so powerful that it makes playing dull or even need for more and more and more epic adventures. So you only need to look rules and think and you probably find out what kind balancing mechanics game's designers have put in there, of course some games are better than others in this aspect, but that don't mean that their designers didn't think how game mechanics are in balance with each other at least to some extent. P.S. I would not accuse one of strawmanning when you in same post give false representation of that one's argument yourself

I don't think a lot of people realize... RPG mechanics are a spider web and that making a change anywhere on that web causes all of the other parts of the web to change position slightly. Changing a class's armor value can cause healers to become OP, or UP. Change a group buff and suddenly and entire class of monsters are too weak to be considered threatening. I'm not a game dev, but I suspect creating balance is one of the hardest parts of your job and involves lots of spreadsheets. That's why it's a good idea to use an existing ruleset, rather than try to create one from scratch. But the thing about "balance" is it a much more recent concept than the RPG. It didn't really become a big deal until the 90s. RPGs had got along perfectly well without it for 20 years. Balance has been there from beginning of RPGs. People just don't understand what it actually means. As someone who has been playing RPGs since 1979, I can tell you that simply isn't true. This is what I played: AD&D 1st edition: no class balance, no attempt at class balance. Traveller: RNG character generation could give you a 22 year old Scout with Pilot-1, or a 48 year olds space marine with Plasma Weapons-5, Demolitions-3, Leadership-3 and Vac Suit-1. FASA Star Trek: Similar to Traveller, RNG character generation took you through your previous career, giving you a character ranging from super-spock to redshirt. Golden Heroes: RNG character generation could give you Superman or Hawkeye. Balance WASN'T EVEN MENTIONED in the 80s. It started to be discussed in the 90s, but it didn't become an all powerful god until MMOs became popular. I have played RPGs from beginning (EDIT: Or at least near beginning) and I know for certain that balance has been part of them from beginning, it is just that people don't know what it actually means, which seems to be the case with you. Sure. If you define "balance" as the person who brings the beers and pizza, it has been there since the beginning... Game balance, class balance, over powered classes, skill, abilities, weapons, etc. are term that are used from beginning. And every class based rpg has class balance designed in them, because classes always have roles that they are meant to fulfill, things which they are strong and things that they are weak. It was just that in those first rpgs designers sometimes intentionally but often unintentionally make some classes much better than other, which was sometimes problematic especially when they started to make crpgs from those systems, as it made designing games difficult, which lead to design practices that focus on more evenly balanced class balance, because it makes life of level and system designers easier. This focusing on making class balance more even seems to be what people these days call "balance", which is in my opinion misleading, because it gives picture that designers didn't try to balance classes in past, which is untrue, but in P&P rpgs even class balance isn't that important because there is dungeon master whose job is to make game entertaining and challenging to all the players. But in CRPGs there is no DM, which means level and system designers need before hand make game such that it is entertaining, challenging and passable to all the class options that they give player, because otherwise they just do poor job. But anyway "balance" has been there from beginning, even if greater focus on making it even maybe more recent addition to design principals.

Yes that would be reasonable, but the internet and people in general are not very reasonable or are they? :D Metacritic hate is something very real and as Majestic said, it can be heavily gamed. Employees from game studios have been caught pushing their games with 10 raitings and users giving out 0 reviews is nothing new (with their "review" consisting of a few words like "this is crap") From a consumer viewpoint, this is pointless. Even they guys runing metacritic said that it should be not taken so seriously. Sadly some studios/publishers think this is the holy grail, going as far as tying contracts and bonus payouts to metacritic raitings. Thats silly. My point is, that there are better sources for reviews these days. I personally prefer to watch a WTF is from Totalbiscuit on a game i might be interested in. That gives me gameplay, an insight to mechanics and a bit info on the technical side. To me, this is way more informative than a metacritic score, or for that matter any scores, considering a 5 out of 10 might still be enjoyable for me even if it´s not for the critic. They give 0 because they hate the game, and they comment "this is crap" because there is nothing more to say, have no words anymore. Which is why they do it sometimes months before release of the game, with out any actual mean to play any version of the game at that point. Games that usually get most user votes get them because of some controversy that don't actually have anything to do with how good or bad game is, but anyway causes uproar within gamers. Like for example PoE got taste of this with their limerick controversy. Because of this those user scores and reviews are mostly useless because one can't know what actually drove people give good or bad scores and one don't even have any knowledge of what kind games those who write reviews generally like, so if one uses them as tool to select games they buy, then one has very high change to buy game that will disappoint them.

My purpose wasn't to belittle that man spoken in this topic may have faced, but to point out that such singular instance of injustice against single man isn't any way prove that men don't have privilege in many cases over women in our societies. For example I haven't seen even single post that is doubtful towards that man's version of story even though we haven't seen any proof about his story even those text messages that he speaks about and that university's investigation found him to be guilty. Where nearly every case where women accuses man of raping her you can find lots of comments that put question her story and how we should not accuse man of any wrong doing before he is judged by court. So again I would say we should probably not draw generalizations from single case of injustice, even if that injustice hits closer to home that lots of other cases of injustice.

It was point out that getting accused of rape/sexual misconduct after been raped is not even nearly worst thing that can happen and regularly happen women around world and it is actually privilege of citizens richer countries and males to only need to lament such injustice. Privilege is such evil thing that is actually impossible to fully understood what all it gives us.

Yep "gold". First gets raped then branded a rapist. It must be that male privilege we keep hearing about. Double funny. I wouldn't say that he get branded as rapist as there is no official record with his name that says that he was expelled because of rape and people don't actually know his name. But he his ordeal is much lesser than for example Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow's who was 13 year old girl that was stoned to death because she was raped by three men and therefore was guilty of adultery, which has in her country death penalty for women. Said incident caused that women in Somalia don't report rapes to current regime, because they fear that they are punished much more severely than those who rape them. I would not personally start drawing generalizations from singular cases.

I would say that Snowden did service for NSA, CIA and GCHQ, by showing clear weaknesses in their ways to operate, ways their operations were ineffective, but same time cause public distrust, by exposing only data that those agencies know was leaked, how they were depended only one or couple ways to get information from certain targets and showing where their weaknesses were. Of course needing to close active operations is inconvenience, but it also makes them actually better their operations and procedures and information handling in future, as there was clearly problems in those in all said organizations as Snowden was able to stole that much information in first place in format that Russia and China were able to crack in couple years.

Heart Harvest is better, as you can make it latter on also be exceptional addition to its other bonuses

But in this case, the guy never dated his accuser. In fact, it seems that she initiated oral sex on him while he was blackout drunk. What preventive measures could he have taken to stop from having his girlfriend's roommate performing oral sex while he was passed out and accusing him of rape two years later? We could give him same helpful tips that we give women, don't drink too much, don't go in parties alone, don't dress up too sexy, don't be friends with members of opposite sex, don't be out in late, etc.. But we should know by now those tips are bull****. I'm being serious, what preventive measures can one take to prevent a situation like this? There really aren't effective preventive measures. Best what one can do is to control drinking so that one don't suffer from memory losses and maybe have friends around to witness original encounter and prevent you going/making out/etc. with people that you aren't in intimate relationship when you have had too much to drink. But even such measures are such that they are easier to say than actually follow.

Boston Globe has article about this case, in my opinion it gives bit better picture about big picture around the case, than article in OP. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/05/29/amherst/4t6JtKmaz7vlYSrQk5NDyJ/story.html

But in this case, the guy never dated his accuser. In fact, it seems that she initiated oral sex on him while he was blackout drunk. What preventive measures could he have taken to stop from having his girlfriend's roommate performing oral sex while he was passed out and accusing him of rape two years later? We could give him same helpful tips that we give women, don't drink too much, don't go in parties alone, don't dress up too sexy, don't be friends with members of opposite sex, don't be out in late, etc..

I don't think a lot of people realize... RPG mechanics are a spider web and that making a change anywhere on that web causes all of the other parts of the web to change position slightly. Changing a class's armor value can cause healers to become OP, or UP. Change a group buff and suddenly and entire class of monsters are too weak to be considered threatening. I'm not a game dev, but I suspect creating balance is one of the hardest parts of your job and involves lots of spreadsheets. That's why it's a good idea to use an existing ruleset, rather than try to create one from scratch. But the thing about "balance" is it a much more recent concept than the RPG. It didn't really become a big deal until the 90s. RPGs had got along perfectly well without it for 20 years. Balance has been there from beginning of RPGs. People just don't understand what it actually means. As someone who has been playing RPGs since 1979, I can tell you that simply isn't true. This is what I played: AD&D 1st edition: no class balance, no attempt at class balance. Traveller: RNG character generation could give you a 22 year old Scout with Pilot-1, or a 48 year olds space marine with Plasma Weapons-5, Demolitions-3, Leadership-3 and Vac Suit-1. FASA Star Trek: Similar to Traveller, RNG character generation took you through your previous career, giving you a character ranging from super-spock to redshirt. Golden Heroes: RNG character generation could give you Superman or Hawkeye. Balance WASN'T EVEN MENTIONED in the 80s. It started to be discussed in the 90s, but it didn't become an all powerful god until MMOs became popular. I have played RPGs from beginning (EDIT: Or at least near beginning) and I know for certain that balance has been part of them from beginning, it is just that people don't know what it actually means, which seems to be the case with you.

I don't think a lot of people realize... RPG mechanics are a spider web and that making a change anywhere on that web causes all of the other parts of the web to change position slightly. Changing a class's armor value can cause healers to become OP, or UP. Change a group buff and suddenly and entire class of monsters are too weak to be considered threatening. I'm not a game dev, but I suspect creating balance is one of the hardest parts of your job and involves lots of spreadsheets. That's why it's a good idea to use an existing ruleset, rather than try to create one from scratch. But the thing about "balance" is it a much more recent concept than the RPG. It didn't really become a big deal until the 90s. RPGs had got along perfectly well without it for 20 years. Balance has been there from beginning of RPGs. People just don't understand what it actually means.

As they mentioned that Paizo don't publish the card game, I had to wonder if Paizo plans to publish that CRPG that they hint about or do they hope that Obsidian finds somebody else to publish it and they work only in role of the license holder.

Things behind those markers in Skellige's seas where probably most disappointing thing for me in the game. They just killed my spirit to explore Skellige in same enthusiasm as I did on other areas, they felt like they run out ideas in things that player could find by exploring the map.

Interesting to know that game is not published by Paizo.

If he wanted to distance himself from that one must ponder why he gave most interviews and kept most of the presentations during its development. I would personally would guess that he was so little in documentary because he was constantly in conferences presenting the game and worked several projects at same time, like for example Wasteland 2, FTL, Torment Tides of Numenera, Accursed, several novelettes in different projects, acting in webseries/short films, etc.. There is just limit how much one man can do.

I would guess that you need to ask that question from Paizo, who is the publisher. And as publisher and ip owner they are the one who decides marketing strategy for the game and what information about it can be published and when.

When is was in University I got called sexist by my female work partner because, I made assumption that majority of users of software that is aimed to used car sellers to check national average prices for cars with certain qualifications would be used mainly by men, assumption that I based on fact that at that moment over 95% of Finland's used car sellers were men. But her rationality for calling me sexist was that even though situation maybe as it is, ration of women that become used car sellers was on rise and that number of women in schools that teaches people on other jobs where said software could find user base (like car repair shops, insurance companies, etc.) was also in rise and pure assumption that because number of women using software in question is significantly lower than number of men, don't mean that we should not take those women user voice on our study. I haven't even to this day decided if my assumptions were influenced by sexism in my world views at the time or was they really justified only by facts that I had on my hand at the time. But anyway that incident cause some tension between us and rest of our group. EDIT: In this days I think people use political correctness as similar attack which is difficult to defend against. As often when you speak or at least try to speak for the minorities you get accused being politically correct and it is quite difficult to form defense against such accusation that don't sound lame. In my youth political correctness meant speaking for minorities only to get more support for your actual political goals and not really actually care about said minorities, but these days it seems to mean any act that tries to shame/call out those who person feels to be acting impolite (usually towards minority group, but not even that is always required).