Everything posted by Elerond
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Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much
I strongly disagree, because kiting is silly tactic that works only because AI programming is poor. Which of course don't mean that players should not use it in their tactics repertory if it works in the game, but if it works it is mostly because developers didn't do perfect job. Well, you are wrong then. Kiting does not work because AI is bad. Kiting works because it is a good tactic. What AI fails at is to respond to it. In fact, I would ENCOURAGE kiting by adding special talents and skills (tumble). By default, Kiting should have penalties i.e. moving and hitting gives you a penalty to attack roll etc. , Kitting is good tactic only because of how AI works and how games rule restrict things, which in my opinion make it silly tactic and often too effective tactic. I would just make kitting awkward to use (by adding more enemies in encounters, making them faster and lowering speed, damage and accuracy of moving ranged characters) and not offer any or few special talents or skills to make it less awkward.
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Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much
I strongly disagree, because kiting is silly tactic that works only because AI programming is poor. Which of course don't mean that players should not use it in their tactics repertory if it works in the game, but if it works it is mostly because developers didn't do perfect job. The thing that's called "kiting" in (not only) IE games is one of the core elements of playing RTS games. It is a fact that IE games combat felt pretty similar to RTS games, one of the main reasons is the possibility to kite (and the general feel of moving units around during combat). Kiting isn't wrong, it is a logitimate tactic. As Shrek mentioned, it is the goal of AI to be potent enough to respond to kiting so it's harder to kite properly. If you dislike kiting, it means you dislike one of the core elements that constituted the feel of combat in IE games. Kitting may be core element of rts games (I disagree with this notion, but there is no reason to debate this in this thread), because of silly artificial rule sets that they use and how AI works when its kitted in those games. Kitting is wrong because it is silly tactic that usually works because of artificial constraints and how AI works in said games. Who said I dislike kiting, I said that it is silly tactic, which as itself is reason to disagree with notion that there is nothing wrong in kitting. And I think that kitting should not work as effectively as it works in IE games. Also I would say that I am absolute fine if rts game or IE style game (for example PoE) uses artificial constraints to block people using kitting and forcing them to use different tactics.
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Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much
I strongly disagree, because kiting is silly tactic that works only because AI programming is poor. Which of course don't mean that players should not use it in their tactics repertory if it works in the game, but if it works it is mostly because developers didn't do perfect job. You don't have a clue what you are talking about. Kiting has been in many many games over the years and it is considered one of the more interesting things. In Starcraft 2 zerg banelings owned groups of marines until one of the players started kiting with marines very well. It wasn't stupid, it made the game much more interesting. OK, this was a MP example but still kiting is not stupid. Also it is not needed, even in RTS games kiting is considered an advanced tactic and it is not needed to beat the novice or newbie enemy (it certainly is not needed to beat singleplayer campaigns). Also in BG games, not everyone kites and certainly people don't kite effectively. Kiting is only needed for special plays (all team squishy) and it is good that it exists as it empowers different plays and increases replayability. Kitting is tactic that is possible because of artificial limits of the game. Kitting is not advance tactic (this is of course my opinion) but quite simple one, it don't demand any great tactical skill to understand why it works or even to realize that one could use it and when to use it. It mainly works in many rts and rpg games, because of different unit moving speeds and how AI moves auto targeting units (it is AI that moves characters in games like BG and most rts, where player only tells where AI should move the characters, etc.). Kitting is silly tactic (this is of course my opinion) and it usually works because of how AI is programmed to work in the games. But as I said this isn't reason not to use it if it works in the game. And in BG kitting is not most efficient tactics for all the party compositions, which is why not everybody at least not in every encounter use it at least as their main tactic. PS. I don't really know where you draw your conclusions of things in your first paragraph, especially when silliness/stupidness ever has stopped something to be interesting?
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Will I be able to download the game with Steam if I am a backer?
Answer to your question is yes. People will be able to redeem their copies of the game at least from Steam or GOG.com there may be some other services like GamersGate (as it has strong ties with Paradox)
- Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much
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How Should Obsidian Market Pillars of Eternity
Elerond replied to Grape_You_In_The_Mouth's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)Regardless on what price game will be sold when it is finished and distributed in stores, the main advantage that KS backers get from being backer is to get game made in first place, as otherwise it wouldn't have been made. Of course cheaper price and earlier access could have given additional enticement to back for somebodies, but I would say for most of the backers those play quite small if any part in their decision to become backers. And I am quite sure that people will pay much less, for example, than me (about $400) when game finally comes out.
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How Should Obsidian Market Pillars of Eternity
Elerond replied to Grape_You_In_The_Mouth's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)Not the profit, the sales. If it sells much, we'll have more games, sure. The profit of this game is guaranteed because no money is spent by Obsidian in it. There is couple factors that you should take account: Kickstarter pays development of the game, but not it's marketing and support, which are things that Paradox has to take account when they set price for the game Obsidian has promised to make expansion for the game with profits that they get from selling it, so they actually produce at least decent amount of money. Game's development has extended over the point of the time when Obsidian estimated that they run out KS funds, so they probably need to use some of their own money (or pre-sale money) to finish the game. Also Obsidian has hopes that they can develop Pillars of Eternity their own inner product that can be self reliant so that they don't need to go to publishers or crowd funding to pay next installments that they make in the series. Paradox also plans to get retailers to sell physical copies of the game, which usually means that they can't sell digital copies in too low prices.
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The Beginning of the End of ISIS?
They are just idiotic teenagers that can't see reality, but way to get excitement in their lives and rebel against authority that they don't like, usually for some petty reason. Similar idiocy born from naivety has always existed in people usually in teenagers. If those people would need brainwashing or some other effort to get them do idiotic things we would have much less problems in this world.
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The Funny Things Thread
Real story what happened in Jaws
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My thoughts on the progress of the Beta since August.
You have understood it wrong they aren't called Elder lions (or wolves) because they are old but because they are older less domesticated race/species of lions/wolves who grow larger, tougher and are less afraid of people. I would say it is sadder still see that those cultists use those giant beetles as their front door guards.
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My Perspective on Pillars of Eternity
In BG new commands were usually needed every 6 seconds if you were a spell caster and any non-caster usually fought same enemy until that one dies which didn't happen for few rounds (6 second = 1 round) unless they were trash mobs where you didn't even need to pause at all. So you paused at worst about every 6 seconds and at best until anyone on enemy team died. Casual players didn't bother much with effective use of spellcasting and just paused to give troops new targets after current ones died so they paused even less often. In PoE everything is faster and deadlier and as such asks for pausing much much more often. Also from what I understand, PoE will not support AI scripts for your characters like IE games did. But isn't there a "slow mode"? Yes there is. I would say after playing couple times latest patch on hard using 'fast' mode in all the combats, that combat speed isn't problem or times you need to pause the game, but how difficult it at times to interpret what happens on the screen. Especially in spider caves it is often hard to tell who is hitting who. Also path finding in latest patch is bad especially how game interprets where characters can move. I found myself often in situation where enemies form lines to come get slaughtered big spiders especially seem to have hard time to move in the fight. But anyway my point is that it is not speed of combat that makes thing feel bad at least mainly but other factors that make combat hard to read and feeling quite clumsy.
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Time travelers from the 90s suggestions and concerns
I would guess that only copy protection systems that game will have are its product keys and limits that store where you buy it puts for it's copies of games.
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Suggestions-questions from nearest tavern
1. You probably need to wait for expansion or PoE2 to get those, as Obsidian runs out of resources (time and money) to make such additions to PoE. 2. Game has lot of choices that fit in those broad categories, but it don't have general judgement system that will judge your choices. Although game has reputation system that tracks how people perceive your character, but that tracking don't follow good-neutral-evil categories. 3. Deities probably should have some effect in priest spell repertories, but for reason mentioned in first point that probably don't happen in PoE. 4. Global teleport spell are fun but they have also bad habit making event scripting more difficult and leave game breaking holes in them, and PoE uses BG/BG2 style map which reduces impact of global teleportation some what. 5. Characters with survival skill should be able to track in certain points in the game, although hard to say how significant such feat is. Rangers and druids get bonus to their survival skill. 6. You probably will not see any 7. There is ability to use character's special abilities in some conversations, but I don't know if there will be any character that you can talk if you use some sort charming or domination spell to them before conversation. 8. This probably would need new system in place to actually work which probably means that it is in this point of the scope of the game. 9. You gain reputation in conversation depending on what options you choose, but I don't think that there will be money sinks which give you unlimited amount of reputation like in BG.
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Where can we get our hands on a physical collectors edition?
Paradox has distribution rights and they can probably distribute game as they see best. And for why Obsidian give/sold them to Paradox, dealing with stores (retail or digital) takes man power, because you need someone that can keep up how many keys/copies they have given to any given store and how much money they have got from those and somebody who can check keys that don't work, who can give support for customers who have problems, some one that has time and ability deal with localized issues and so on. So even if Paradox don't sell physical copies deal has saved lot of hassle from Obsidian especially when you count in that Paradox will deal with physical rewards that Obsidian promised for some of their backers. But usually Paradox sells physical copies of games in their catalog, but I would guess that if they produce physical collector editions or similarly packaged copies to be sold in stores then number of those copies will be quite low and number of stores that will sell them limited, as usually over $100 version don't sell that well especially when we speak products that aren't so well known as those that have much larger marketing budget, which mean that stores don't buy much of them in advance and producing small quantities of physical product will rise price that Paradox needs to pay for them.
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My Perspective on Pillars of Eternity
It is quite late for that, as backgrounds are prerendered and hand finished, changing camera angle in this point of time would mean that they would need to render all the maps again and redo finishing touches. I would guess that concerns about camera angle should have been expressed when we saw first demos how game will look.
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I'm finding it pretty hard to know what I should be doing...
If you are player that likes more story side of rpg I would recommend to speak to people and look things so that you can get to know lore and some of the character's If you like combat I would recommend to leave starting map soon as possible and go one of the other maps and hunt down local wild life and maybe find your way to one of the dungeons If you like exploration then you probably should make yourself familiar with stealth and searching mechanic of the game and start to find hidden things from the maps. Mix and stir this aspects so that you find balance that corresponds with you preferences. If you find all three aspects to be dull in beta then I would recommend to wait final release, so that beta will don't eat your willingness to play it.
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American Riots, Michael Brown....is it justified ?
In Finland public spending in our school system and culture is 6.6 billion euros (8.1 billion dollars), which includes schooling for everyone from kindergartens to universities and public support for arts, sports and research, if we multiply it with proportional population difference between Finland and USA (about 60) we get about 490 billion dollars, which is less than what they say USA uses to public elementary and secondary schools. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 So I would guess that it is not just government aid in higher education that makes things more expensive.
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Journalism and sexism in the games industry
Absolutely deplorable. I honestly have no words. Taking money from disabled people... Jesus ****ing Christ. Charity organization not participating in some event because of reason that people didn't found acceptable seems to be good reason to DDOS said charity organization and remove their home page, I am quite sure that this absolute ensures that disabled people now get their money... https://twitter.com/AbleGamers/with_replies https://twitter.com/EbolaChan_/status/541669859931992064 It maybe as they say, but tweet that links site ping without time stamps about 10 minutes after report that server is back up, don't work as actual evidence of anything else than that server has been up at least in some point of time. So in this I trust bit more organization that has run over 10 years and has won several awards from reputable sources and has official charity status over anonymous twitter account. But only evidence to any direction is that all 27 domains in server in IP address 69.167.140.175 which host most AbbleGamer's domains return blank page.
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Journalism and sexism in the games industry
Absolutely deplorable. I honestly have no words. Taking money from disabled people... Jesus ****ing Christ. Charity organization not participating in some event because of reason that people didn't found acceptable seems to be good reason to DDOS said charity organization and remove their home page, I am quite sure that this absolute ensures that disabled people now get their money... https://twitter.com/AbleGamers/with_replies
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American Riots, Michael Brown....is it justified ?
Higher general education level benefits everybody, as it ensures that people know what they are doing in their jobs, and it also make it easier to ensure that people get that education which they want making them more productive members of society. This is reason why education for example in is payed from taxes from kindergarten to doctorate level in universities and addition to pay education state also gives student allowance that ensures that people can study without need to worry how they can pay their rent and food when they study (some of this allowance is paid in form of cheap loans). This system makes Finnish education system equal opportunity system to anybody from any economical and social background. I don't say that Finnish education system is necessary better than education systems in USA, but I would not change it even though I now pay it from my taxes, but I got my University education to paid by state and I am from economical and social background that it is high probably that I wouldn't had afforded similar level schooling if I had lived in USA for example. But anyway point is that education of citizens is first and foremost for common-good of the country so it should be paid from common funds, as that ensures that country has better ability to compete in markets and develop to better place to live. For same reason I support publicly funded universal health care systems, because it has higher probability to ensure healthy public from bottom to top which means that society as general has higher change to be more productive as whole. Although I must admit that my view to this things is heavily biased as I have lived my whole life in country which has publicly funded education and universal healthcare and I have benefit form both greatly.
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American Riots, Michael Brown....is it justified ?
In Finland there has been 110 police officers that have died in line of duty in last 97 years, which includes our civil war and World War II, in years after the wars there has been 21 officers that have died in line of duty. So it is quite hard to perceive situation and culture where cops in USA live from my point of view, because over hundred officer dying in line of duty every year is lot even for 60 times larger country.
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Journalism and sexism in the games industry
So Target is banned themselves to selling game in Australia? Do I ban myself from buying the game if I decide not buy it?
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Journalism and sexism in the games industry
"Target has chosen to ban the game. It's a ban." How Target banned a game? Are people forbidden to bring copy with them when they go there or do Target have some public listing site/place where people can't anymore list their copies to be sold or do this ban manifest in some other form that I didn't mentioned? Removing product from their catalog is not banning at least any sense of word ban that I know, so I don't count that to be an act of banning.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
Yeah. It's a Korean MMO called Black Desert, most likely it will never see the light of day out west. Boo It has publisher in EU and NA and they are working to produce English client for the game http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/24/black-deserts-na-and-eu-publisher-is-daum/ http://2p.com/3235374_1/Pearl-Abyss-Is-Working-on-Black-Deserts-English-Client-by-Nichole.htm
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Journalism and sexism in the games industry
The link really undermines the neutrality of the article. They are right in saying that Target has a say in what they sell on their stores just like the consumer can go elsewhere where the game is sold. The article has its leftist leaning but for the most part it makes its point well, inadvertently offers some suggestions (some which have already been put into action) and remains unoffensive. Which is a bit bothering because it leaves me without someone to blame as well. I somehow wonder if they would've written a similar article if Gone Home was banned because of homosexual material. But before Target or any other similar market chain could remove Gone Home from their stores they would need first take it on their catalogs, which they don't do because they feel that it is niche product that don't sell for their customers, which for some reason don't cause uproar and people claiming that they are banning or censuring it.