Elerond

I think EA would probably be more hindrance than help for PoE, as it is decent way to get exposure, money and people to give their opinions about game for games that don't already have those, but as PoE already has enough? funding, it has already got decent amount of exposure and interest from press and players and it already has thousands people that will participate on its beta. So in my opinion EA would not bring enough additional money and/or player feedback to make it worthwhile thing Obsidian to do with PoE. Especially during time when EA gets so much mud poured on it, as people and developers haven't yet used to it and know what it actually should be.

I work as an usability specialist for larger software company, even though that my work should have little to do with politics, there has been government contracts for EU specific web-portals. But I liked civic classes in school and I try to keep myself updated on how our government and EU works, so most of my knowledge comes from reading it from internet , which means that my knowledge probably has large holes in it.

Actually, an increasing amount of EU legislation leaves the "2nd level" to the Commission. Proposals, such as the data protection regulation when I was working on it, are absolutely rife with these openings for the Commission to legislate, meaning thatneither the member-states nor the EP has any say in the final product. The activism of the EU Court is terrifying, not least in the legal uncertainty it creates. (See the test-achats case) Additionally, directives (minimum harmonization with national implementation) are becoming rarer, with old directives being systematically replaced with directly applicable regulations. In my understanding Lisbon Treaty (Article 290) removed comitology procedures and replaced them with more limited delegated acts (which gives for Commission rights to determine technical details that are seen as non-essential elements of the legislative act in limited scope, so that legislator can therefore concentrate on policy direction and objectives without entering into overly technical debates ) which both EP and Council can object if they see fit to do so. Although I don't have any first hand experience how things work in reality. Judicial activism is something that is hard to avoid in court systems, but at least it concentrate on invalidate legislation. Specifically about test-achats case, one could argue that by invalidating directive at question court in effect also created new legislation, but in other hand one could argue that if directive did go against Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as EDJ ruled, meaning that those legislation based on that directive shouldn't have existed in first place (of course in this case most of those legislations existed before said directive or adoption of said charter, which make things much more complicated), and therefore being quite excellent case for judicial activism.

Why you insist on spreading this sort of misinformation is beyond me. It's either irony or malice at play that you blame it on ignorance and "the population being morons", seeing how, as evidenced by the Ukraine thread, you either don't know how the EU siphons sovereignty off member states and towards the Union structures or are, rather dishonestly, downplaying it. But I'm the FSB shill. Again, member states are obligated to: relinquish control over monetary policy once switching to the Euro (handled at the Union level by ECB) acknowledge rulings and domestic ruling overturns by the ECJ and ECHR obey regulations and directives issued by the European Commission (secondary legislation, I'm sure you know what this is) fall in line with the common trading policy or face severe penalties If that all sounds familiar, it's because you already read and glossed over it in the other thread. The structures and organisms responsible for the above are eminently undemocratic and suffer from transparency and accountability deficits. The argument that the EU doesn't micromanage countries is deceitful because what it does is hand out high level objectives for countries to legislate towards, and then sets deadlines for said legislation, leaving only the wording and execution up to member states, while monitoring both and penalizing any deviation from the directives issued. It's not that people believe that some sort of EU nationality is in danger of supplanting whatever their passport currently reads—it's that they correctly surmise that the democratic process is being rendered increasingly irrelevant by the slow but sure transfer of power from their elected representatives to a supra-national organization they have no reason to trust and whose interests, motivations and inner workings are, at best, opaque. Euro is not EU's currency, although original idea of Euro was that it would become such, but currently it hasn't and it more like Independent monetary union, with close tides with EU. Even though all EU's member states are members of EMU, only those countries that have been participated in European Exchange Rate Mechanism II, which is voluntary, for at least two years can adopt Euro as their currency. States outside of EU also can adopt Euro as their currency if they fulfill certain criteria. Currently there are several countries and territories outside EU that use Euro as their currency. ECHR is Council of Europe's court that is institute that is independent from EU and nearly all European countries are it's members. Decisions of national courts can't be appealed to ECJ. ECJ works as institute that determines how EU law should be interpret, but final decision is on national courts. ECJ also works as arbiter between EU's institutions. European Commission don't have power to issue regulations or directives, it only has power to make proposals for legislation, that Council of the European Union and European Parliament has to accept, if proposal is accepted it is Commission job to see that all member states obey it. EU is first and foremost trade union, so it should not come as surprise to any country that joins it that there is trade agreements that they have to obey if they want to be part of the union.

It's only mode where combat are slowed down so that players has easier time to control their characters if they don't want to relay on pause and command queues so much. But then what will happens when somebody speaks while in slow motion combat? Slowmo animations run the risk of being a tad ridiculous too, don't they? But well, it should be easy to implement, and if it pleases some players, good for them. Diversity is good when it does not spread development resources thin. I don't think that they will slow sounds, music or voices down in slow mode. There is always risk that when you make animation run slower or faster that it don't look as smooth as it intended speed, but I don't think that such is issue for those people that want use slow mode.

That is true, but mostly for games that are presented publicly. Closed door presentations are for those games that aren't polished in state that they could be presented for public. And as Obsidian has already presented PoE for members of press in their offices, which means that they already have version of PoE that they feel is good enough to be used as part of their explanation how game will work when it's released even if it don't have stability and look of final version yet.

It's only mode where combat are slowed down so that players has easier time to control their characters if they don't want to relay on pause and command queues so much.

Reading all the comments from people who live in the EU has made me realize something, or rather has made me think of the biggest challenge facing the continued longevity of the EU When I asked questions what people didn't like about EU there are several common themes that are relevant like immigration and a distant central government that people don't relate to But what about the issue of identity? I don't think the EU countries share a true common identity and that's understandable. For example the French are the French and have there own history. They may have great fondness for the Norwegians but do they really share an identity? The EU is an attempt to force a common framework between countries that for thousands of years have been proudly independent through there history, culture and language. No wonder there is this rise of nationalism with "far right " parties gaining votes through slogans like " we represent the true identity of country x" Its actually been relatively easy for "far right" parties to gain support not just because the EU parliament sits in Brussels but the fact that end of the day I think most people prefer being part of there own country and culture rather than being part of some nebulous " EU common brotherhood". You then add economic and social issues to the EU mix and you have serious disillusionment with the EU structures I am not suggesting the EU countries don't like each other or xenophobia is systemic. I am saying you can't force countries to form a union with the objective of economic prosperity without looking at the important issue of cultural identity and how that will be effect the perception of the success of the union as time goes on Look at the USA, each state is almost like a separate country. But the USA works because despite some of the differences between the states almost all US citizens are united by one common thread. They are all American in identity. And that's what the EU lacks? I have traveled all over EU (+ Switzerland) during this month and I found out that lots of people had common European identity and they didn't treat me as stranger even then when we didn't had any common language, where I saw people outside of Europe get much colder treatment. So there is such thing as European identity, but it is not as strong as identity that people feel towards their own country, which is probably one main reasons why people object EU's development towards federation instead of union of independent countries. And I know that lots of EU opposition comes from our politicians that uses EU as explanation for many laws that have lots of opposition, even though truth is usually that those laws would have been made even without EU and EU's directives (which our politicians themselves were part of creating in first place) would have allowed versions that would have been much more liking of those people that opposite them. So I would say that for most people it is not union of independent European nations that they opposite, but idea/fear that there is some alien entity that can overrule their country's decisions, which is the thing that most anti EU populist parties use in their campaigns and is therefore probably the thing that those parties actually don't want get rid of, as it would mean decrease of their popularity. So I would say best thing for EU would be make its process better known and much more transparent, for example by broadcasting European Parliament's, Council of the European Union's and European Commission's sessions in TV and internet, and by advocating media outlets to reporting more about their decisions making. Because in my opinion biggest threat for EU is that people don't know how it works and mental image about cabinet decisions that are done behind closed doors.

Obsidian will show PoE in Paradox's booth behind closed doors for press as part of Paradox's marketing campaign for the game. So it's not like Obsidian pays to be in E3, but opportunity that is available because as Paradox goes in E3 anyway, to show their other games, so it would be waste money not to use this opportunity to market PoE as us backers aren't only ones whom they want to sell this game, which is why they need to start show game for gaming journalists and Paradox's retail partners so that they can get them start to writing articles and add game on their Holiday catalogs.

You mean young people in Finland are taught how elections really work in school? I'm genuinely impressed. Do you also get basic legal and fiscal education? And, by the way, there is no popular legislative initiative at the EU level, or EU-wide referenda. So no participating, at all. Yes we have nationwide curriculum that includes civics (In Finnish Yhteiskuntaoppi) classes that needs to give information how our elections work, what every governmental institutions do and how they work with each other, these same classes also include basics legal and fiscal education.

Gorgon do you feel guilty that most of the international news channels are positioning Denmark as being one of the EU countries where the far right has gained immense popularity? Do you think you personally could have done more to counter this rise of the right in your country? Populist parties that use people's fears and nostalgia as their driving force often gain popularity during low economical times and global crises, because isolation politic that those parties usually offer seems to many a good solution to lessen impact from those crisis. Of course such isolation most often would bite back much heavier consequences in long run, but many people don't want look far in future, if their short term outlook is grim. And in European Parliament elections populist parties have even higher chance to get lots of seats as many people feel that European Parliament is strange institute that don't have impact on them and they see these elections as waste of time that works only as survey to see what parties are popular, which means that people that aren't unhappy on current system will more likely not to go to cast their vote than those that feel that current government has done poor job. So overall popularity of populist parties in country is with high chance much lower than what their seat numbers in EP indicates, and their impact in EU's politics probably will be quite meaningless, as EPP and S&D have still over 50% of seats and populist parties have often hard time to do cooperation as their agendas are in most matters against each other, because of their politics that look only in their own self-interest. Dismantling EU and Euro and anti-immigration (and even this will cause discord because many of those parties count most people from other EU countries to belong in those immigrants that they don't want in their country and which opinions and needs they don't want to consider in their politics) are often only real common ground that those parties currently can find, which don't carry very far. These elections give good remainder why it is quite good thing that EU is so bureaucratic institution which make changing it difficult and slow process, as it less vulnerable towards short sighted politics that raise temporal issues, at least it looks like that this is the case, of course EU is still young union, which make it harder to predict how it's systems will work in long run.

You mean that he wants to become his party's, that is currently ruling party in Finland, leader which would make him as prime minister of of Finland, which would mean that he would get seat in Council of the European Union, which is higher in food chain than European Parliament and then he can choose about any person that he sees a fit from his party to take his place in Parliament, which one could say would mean that he would then have seat both in Council and Parliament and as prime minister he has much easier time to ensure that Finnish government is on same page as he. So I would not say that he don't represent those people that voted him, but that he will maybe represent them too much.

Unsealed vote ballots and transparent boxes rises people's threshold to vote unpopular views especially when vote officials consist only of people that opposite that view. Under 50% participation in vote means that it has high change not to represent real consensus of people, which means that one can say that it is not democratic vote. And reasons for low participation should be investigated and rectified. In my opinion European Parliament elections are quite badly run elections as most people don't actually know what European Parliament does and how it's actions effect them, and candidates, local parties and press have done very bad job in informing people how European Parliament works and how people that they vote in parliament actually join in bigger Euro parties instead of working as regional groups. One main reason that I see why people don't vote in EP elections is that they are so new that most people that have right to vote haven't been taught in school how system works same way as they are taught how their country's own elections work. And this is not helped by anti EU parties that uses that lack of knowledge to further their own agenda. Democracy don't work well if people don't know how they can participate in legislation process or if that participation is made difficult or if representing opinions against current regime/people that held election make people feel unsafe or those opinions aren't even accepted in first place. So soldiers in Egypt's polling stations are very bad if those soldiers consist only members of current regime of Egypt and if they are there only to protect people from attacks of extremes it also means that situation in Egypt isn't best for elections as people need to fear that they can become target of violence only because they decided to go vote so that they can participate in their country's legislation process. EDIT: I admit that there has been hypocritical views and statements about votes in Ukraine, but they are quite small in scale when compared to how you decided to represent things in your post.

Dear ElerondI am playing this on PC and I didn't quite understand how to pass the second part. For spinning counterwise fast, do you mean I should press A several times? Or what? I am so frustrated about this and other websites didn't help me either. Can you please help? Those instructions were for Xbox 360 version, they probably work also for PC if you use Xbox 360 controller or some other pad that are similar. With keyboard you need in my understanding make indicator cursor move several times between most left and most right, as fast as you can.

I found both b00b plates and scales to be poor way to make male and female characters have different visual look. I am not against b00b plates if they have boob swell for both male and female users, but I think they should not be among best armors in game if game also has more functional designs. But I find inclusion of b00b scale to be unnecessary and ridiculous looking way to make male and female characters look different and it also causes me to lose some of my suspension of disbelief. I was quite vocal in my opposition of b00b armors during kickstarter campaign and some months after it and I was quite happy when Obsidian showed their armor designs concepts for PoE and I was some what disappointed when they showed their in engine design for female scale armor, but I found myself in point where I didn't want use any more energy to write about issue, as I am quite sure that developers know that backers have people that think like me and they still felt that breast bulge was best way to differentiate male and female characters. I have some solice from that fact that in engine design looks such that it is hardly noticeable from isometric view, which don't really make it any less disappointing decision.

It often seems that people misunderstand how Kickstarter is designed to work, by both backers and project creators. As Kickstarter isn't meant to be pre-order platform, but funding platform where people can fund projects and they are compensated with rewards that project creator offers. Kickstarter model works fine in pre-ordering when project seeks only funding for mass production of completed product, but problems with model start to become surface when project seeks funding to develop product and offer that product as reward, because then backers don't know exactly what they are pre-ordering or even if product will be completed in first place. It is this uncertainty that make (some) people become invested on development on product, as they have paid for idea of product and they want to be sure that product will coincide with that idea in degree that they find to be acceptable. And when project creators promise that they will let backers have influence in development people become even more invested on product, which of course leads that people start to feel that they should have right to demand things from project creators. To answer OP question: I would say developers have as much obligation towards their backers as they have promised in their rewards, so if developer offers as reward a game which development backers have direct influence then I see they are in obligation to deliver such. But if developers only offer as reward a game that is their vision of retrogame then developers are only obliged to deliver that game, although they are free to make modifications in their vision if they find out during development that some their ideas don't work or some other ideas would be better. This of course becomes more complicated if developers promise specific mechanic/features/etc. to be in the game, as dropping such during development becomes much more questionable thing to do, which why is see that developers should have superb reason to dropping that, as they have used it to get at least some of their funding for the game.

I think that would cause more disadvantage for player than exploit as your party don't get back their per fight abilities, which I think are in most cases more important than those per day buffs that last until end of encounter or so long that they matter if you use them before encounter.

Minor Arcane Reflection is moderate protection spell. It protects wizard by giving him or her chance to reflect low level spells (up to level 3 targeted spells and total 10 spell levels worth of spells if wizard success in will attack towards casters will, failed reflection attempts count towards spell level total) back to their casters. It don't make anything that enemy can use against wizard useless, so it don't fulfill any definition of hard counter that I know.

Idea behind ragdoll physics is to make on the fly dynamic character rig animations that can be controlled with mathematical variations that usually represent different forces in the game. Ragdoll physics is easier and cheaper way to produce large variety of animations for character in game when they move because of for impact, gravitation or some other forces. Downside of rag doll physics is that they demand more processing power from computer that runs the game, although these days computer usually have quite lot processing power to spent, which make it usually not a issue. One can make ragdoll physics in Unity by using its Rigidbody component (which can be used to all rigid body animation not only to ragdoll animations), but I can't say anything what quality animations it produces. As making animations, produced by physic engine, to look good is usually reason why people pay high prices, that middleware developers ask for their products. Using ragdoll physics in PoE maybe bit trickier than in pure 3D game, as backgrounds is flat 2D plane, but as they are already solved this issue in their water and lighting effects by storing height information from original 3D models that they use to render backgrounds, one could thing that they could use same information to make ragdoll animations work with the backgrounds.

Defender ability gives fighters ability to engage multiple opponents, but same time it raises amount of glance hits they do, so they can slower enemy characters attack towards you more vulnerable, but same time weaken fighters combat proficiency. So if fighter fights against single enemy then using defender ability will hinder him as well if he fights against multiple higher level enemies. Engagement works in at least in three different ways to slower characters, first is that character's movement action is canceled (except when character has special abilities like barbarians than give them ability to ignore movement cancels [Wild Rush]) when character moves on engagement zone or suffers disengagement attack and second is disengagement attack (except when character has special abilities that give character ability move out from engagement zone without provoking disengagement attack, like rogues have [escaper]), which is regular attack with higher chance to do more damage, and non-engaged characters can do flank attacks against engaged characters. Character don't have engagement zone if s/he has paralyzed, knocked down or some other status effect that prevent him or her maintaining threat. Character can't engage new characters if has engaged with maximum number of enemies that s/he can engage (which is every other class than fighter one), which means that those character that s/he can't engage can run freely past her/him or do flank attacks against him/her. And there will be enemies with their special engagement and disengagement bonuses.

I remember still with abhorrence X-Files game which Finnish translation made game just as hilarious mess, because it had such nice translations like light was translated as kevyt (something with little weight), even though context where it was used was to describe light coming from flashlight.

So the faintest hint of having a sex drive and wanting a serious relationship gives you a "serious predatory vibe"? Heh, okay dude. No, knowing what kind men and how many men woman has had sex, knowing woman's texting habits, etc. things make text sound predatory. Impression that I get from narrator of these and many other similar fantasies are that serious relationship means sexual relationship instead of emotional, which is made stronger by narrator claim that know girls in their twenties are interested about him with implication that they are willing to have sex with narrator. Which gives me impression that narrator has very different opinion than me that what consist as serious relationship.

When you compare crime statistics from two different countries you should also take account how those countries document their crimes and if there is lack interest from official to write crimes down. Sweden for example has high number rapes in it statistic because they mark every reported rape as crime in their statistic, where many countries crimes are counted by number of charges raised, which can mean that rapes aren't documented if there is nobody charged for it and that serial rapist that has raped several women or rapists that have raped same woman several time is only one mark in statistics. And then there is always that fact that in many countries women don't report that they have been raped because they fear social stigma that it brings.

I always think first that nice guy fantasies, where writer makes nice guy sound like entitled whiner that gives serious predatory vibe than anything else, are ironic mockeries about nice guy cliché, but every time I found out that writer is absolute serious with his (and writer always seems to be male) writing. But however it isn't fantasies themselves that make me always question wiseness of humanity, but comment sector which is always full of comments of support, misogyny, "way to tell those bitches that you should not mess with us (meaning self declared "nice guys™" )" or something similar.

In games that have PC that levels up, using level scaling on critical path is somewhat necessary to keep game challenging, because main plot can easily become too easy if player can out level foes on it by doing side quests and in of game beginning it somewhat necessary that enemies in critical path are in lower level than what they are in end of the game, but outside of critical path use of level scaling becomes much less necessary thing. Although even if you use level scaling outside of critical path it don't mean that it there can't be challenging encounters that you need to come back later on. For example there could be a dragon that has level scaling from 15-20 level depending on what level player's party is, more closely when player's party is on levels 1-2 dragon is on level 15, when party is on levels 3-4 dragon is on level 16 and so on, but in all probability player's party has to be at least on level 7 to have chance against the dragon, but even if player maxes his or her party's level dragon will still be deadly challenge. So level scaling don't mean necessary that there isn't such challenges where player finds him/herself overpowered by the foe. Therefore it is for me quite same if there will or will not be level scaling in PoE, as long as game's encounters are challenging (and rewarding) enough through the game to be interesting.