Darkpriest

I could write a long article on this topic, but basically loot boxes are a game of chance, without guarantee of valuable payout and with no return policy. It works on some principles as any game of chance, and could be considered quasi-gambling. The thing, that would regulate this practice would be applying a rule, that if it's not a pure game of chance, then I am eligible for a refund. I should also not get duplicates of items I already posses, so there is an incremental value on the purchase and a finite amount of money I can spend. If it is a pure game of chance, and I can get items with no value while paying real money, then that should fall into gambling rule. There is a difference in a free spin of a wheel or random loot in a game, if it's free. Heck, the loot randomness tied to game progression is not that bad in itself. All RPGs are based around that, however it's how they are integrated in the game play is the issue. bad implementation will result in a bad game and people will get frustrated / bored with it. Not sure how many people remember Diablo 3 and it's implementation of loot, which was later trade eligible by real money - it required a lot of changes to become a better game, including removal of real money marketplace. Again, lootboxes are not the problem on its own, the problem are lootboxes, which can be infinite money sink and guarantee nothing. If it can be purchased by real money, it's gambling. if it's pure in game part of in game progression earned purely by gameplay and ingame currency, then it's ok. Lootboxes will be fine as well, if they will inform the purchaser what are the chances for each item to appear, and that the purchased ones will guarantee that you won't get duplicates of what you own already. The money sink is still there, but it's finite and the total cost can be estimated.

Now I miss Qis and Oby...

I wonder what our friend Bruce would have to say on this topic: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-protest-murders-south-african-165353612.html

i HOPE, they will make the Multiplayer part work again and support it. It IS the best part of the game - to create large persistent worlds with tons of extra content and live DMs running the show. This is still the best non-esport MP game out there. better than any MMO As for the lootboxes, any game that has built in transactions should be using a credit card verification system and be adult only - period. there are limits to how far revenue predatory should be allowed. You want people to pay you extras, make sure those are the people that actually earn money.

I love it because this argument works for everyone. If you need it, everyone else needs it too, which leads to an obviously absurd conclusion. Per your logic, I guess I am a god. QED And you are absolutely right, you only need air to breathe, food and water, and a modicum of sunlight. Medicine and shelter circumstantially, without which you may die. Which is what I was getting at before. A need does not automatically engender a right, and a right does not always represent a need. I'm not exactly sure how you think this reinforces your point, however. Speaking of privilege, property is just one such. There is no natural law that says that you can deprive anyone else of anything on this Earth -- which is ultimately what the concept of property is about. Depriving everyone else but the proprietor. This deprivation is necessarily accepted in the context of the social contract, to which it is subject, and without which you own exactly as much as you can kill other people over. Sure, ultimately when the societies/laws fail, you get to the point where the man with a biggest stick gets the most. It happens during heavy civil unrest periods - rioting, looting, etc. The property rights and security that what you earn is secured by the social contract to be your privilege to manage as you please, is what boosted the overall development of civilization. Look at various parts in the history, and see which societies under what types of laws were developing the fastest and became the most successful in a given time. The social contract I accept, is that I pay the tax/levy/fee/whatever you name it, for the right to keep what I earn through my hard work, ideas and I bear the consequences of the risks I take with the wealth i collected. You can try tweak some things here and there in that social contract, but ultimately you care the most for things you own and care about - this is proven with results of various systems. Hell, you can even see this example on how people treat something that is public vs how they treat the same stuff if it is their own. I should not be discouraged by laws, which will aim to take more and more the more I work and the better results i get with my capital/wealth management. I already bear the risks of failure if I mismanage my resources - no one will return me my wasted time, energy, and majority of my wealth if i will fail, so why would same people be entitled to more portions of what I earn if I succeed? Flat tax rate is the most "fair" - and you can always help the low end of earnings by making a fixed amount of income being tax-free, so that way if you earn low income, you will have a decent size of that tax free, and if you earn a lot, you will still pay way more in nominal values and that tax-free portion will be less of benefit to you percentage wise. Just make sure to make it an easy tax, best if with 0 deductions, etc. If I will feel that you want to steal the fruits of my hard labor and the risks and time I've managed, then I will do what I can to meander around that and even change tax residency if needed.

I said you won the race, not that you were first to the "egg", also, I did not think that you were supporting caste system, once a drone always a drone, without freedom to chose what you want to do in life.

Flat taxes are good, you can give the base tax free income amount (say 6k USD a year) and anything above that you pay the tax on. No exemptions, no special rules. you earn = you pay. simple taxes would make however a lot of administration useless... you could literally take a simple AI do the job of thousands of people in administration, when it comes to calculating tax paid vs the amount on the filled form, vs the amount of assets registered and services purchased (you could easily put that in the systems, however for now there is this issue with how to protect effectively your tax ID number, so it it's not being discussed much) - this way the machine could track your net worth, earnings and paid taxes. Much harder to do tax evasions, right? A person earning 100k paying 15% is already paying more nominally than a person earning 30k and if that person is earning that much money, that means that the person knows how to use money and time more efficiently, thus is more productive with each extra dollar spent that they get extra. Any tax on inheritance of 1st level family bond, should be removed. Tax on inheritance to far family (i.e. other then parent-parent, parent-kids, siblings) should be applicable as a part of extra income, HOWEVER, it needs to be taken into account, not only the assets you get, but also how much these assets cost in upkeep, and how liquid they are. If a guy working in McD suddenly gets 2mil USD. he will have no means to pay huge tax on inheritance if he will get a bunch of fixed assets that cost 100k in upkeep and some stocks. If you will force him to pay some huge tax, he will effectively have to get rid of the assets and I do not believe that's a point of inheritance. It should be able to help you move forward, not punish you and create headache... As for the need, etc. If you are not a god, you have no right to tell someone who needs how much. Otherwise I can tell you that to live you only need to breathe and find your own food and water from publicly available places, like a nearest forest/jungle. Everything else was invented by someone - even medicine is not your right. it's a privilege for which you have to pay the amount set up by the inventor and producer. We are living in a reality, where competition is embedded in its functioning. There are limited number of resources, so various entities compete for them. It might be a shocker for you, but you live because you won a race to your mommys inside from among millions of losers... You can start thinking about socializm, once you will have perpetum mobile in terms of energy management and you will be able to synthesize any matter from pure energy. Tip. It ain't gonna happen anytime soon...

Late to the fun, but an inheritance of 1mil is nothing spectacular... I mean, average middle class family has that much of net worth... couple cars, 3-4 bedroom (parents and 2-3 kids) house made of decent materials instead of wicker and cheapest wood, with some garden - some savings and other assets Now obviously if you'd like to split between each kid, that might not exceed 1mil per head, but still, it might not be that uncommon. A ****ty shack in Vancouver in Canada costs 500k.

Could anyone knowing Deutsch tell the details on it: https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article170210421/Der-Feind-in-unseren-Reihen.html the only English based text i've found while googling is on Breitbart - perhaps someone have found something on this on more "reknown" media outlets? http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/11/02/berlin-police-instructor-muslim-recruits-enemy-ranks/ I wonder if there is anything being reported/done around this currently

Let me summarize this way: 1. My company made a profit which I must pay tax. 2. I pay myself from that money and I need to pay tax + healthcare + social. 3. When I buy something from the money left I need to pay VAT (value added tax) on everything I buy. 4. Some underage schmuck who lives with his parents tells me I don't pay enough. You forgot about indirect taxes such as excise in fuel, or various other charges hidden in cost price of products you buy and services you pay for. Not sure how exactly this thing is calculated ("Liberty from tax day") but it shows that on average Polish citizen pays in tax charges over 50% of their total income (the day was on June 9th in 2017) in US it is something like end of April so not that bad in comparison, around 32% Important note, that it shows average so middle class people (who for some reason are treated as rich bastards) get taxed at least 10% more and the middle class is still considered to earn barely above US minimum wages - like 22k USD a year.) A person straight out of college can earn 38k quid a year in London and is considered as rather poor.

It's sad, isn't it? but i guess it's the same as rape is nothing special to make a note of for Bruce, they got used to it being a part of daily life.

Hah, it looks like people accepted that terrorist attacks are mundane daily occurrence - no one on the forum made any comment on this yet? https://www.yahoo.com/gma/york-city-officers-responding-reports-shots-fired-lower-194603578--abc-news-topstories.html

Yup, everyone interested in how games are being made should read the book. Crunching is a wide spread problem in the industry unfortunately Crunching isn't the issue; poorly managed projects due to upper management ****ing up and having the workers fixing up their mistakes so they can write themselves a big fat bonus, is the problem. I firmly believe in letting things break and become the worst, that seems the only way to get upper management to get with project. Yeah, they want that big fat bonus, because they worked their way up there for years of various sacrifices and hard work - now someone puts a certain financial goal for them so they can get paid a good amount of money and keep their job, that someone is perhaps a friend of yours who has ownership on the stock market or funds allocated in investment fund, that is working for his retirement plan. They want a certain level of return from the invested money and that means they will pressure management of companies in which they hold cash, to push towards better returns. I can count on a single hand companies that decided to come up with explanations that they will be running lower return in short term, for better gains in the long term... Longe term does not exist in a volatile market - so things get pushed on the board to have certain levels of growth and profitability, that gets pushed on middle management, who have to cope with various expense cuts and reallocation of work force and that pressure in the end gets pushed back to the line employee doing the daily job for the company projects. We as customers want higher return on our financial investments, want prices to stay stable and quality to increase, but at the same time we put the pressure on higher salaries. That gets improved by either automation of some jobs (some people lose jobs), relocation of the jobs to cheaper locations (another batch of people loses their jobs), or by squeezing the project time - then we are unhappy as it takes away from our personal time. Of course these are not the only effects, but the most visible ones.

decent vid.

So in short, what Mortal Empires is:

Nah, they'd have to Pay me to play such a boring stuff...

Well the Game 2 itself is fine, but 4 races only, so you will feel a bit "meh" if you had all the DLCs for game 1 - however the Mortal Empires campaign (merged game 1 and 2) looks to be shaping up well. You won;t have to pay for blood twice The races of the game 2 are cool, some new mechanics added and there is also a narrative part if you want to follow it - the great vortex - It's good to be done once, cause there is some plot twist, which won;t have the same effect once you go 2nd+ time Regional occupation has been changed, instead of no go zones, there are zones with different terrain types/habitability, and as such certain races have preferences to a list of therrains, and dislike or even hate some others, the dislike/hate types give a number penalites if you decide to hold them, but it is your choice and you can hold them if you want. There is a load more of unique buildings and some changes were made to garrisons Overall it is a better game 1 with 4 different starting races, better mechanics, graphics, maps and much larger playground. Mortal Empires expand upon that even further, but that still needs at least one major patch and later some smaller gameplay patches DLCs will most likely be: Tomb Kings Some Lord/unit packs for all 4 core races - people expect Dark Elves vs High Eelves pack and Skaven vs Lizardmen pack some minor factions (perhaps even made from scratch Araby / Vampire Coast / Southern Realms colonists) all the DLCs for game 2 will also get added to the Mortal Empires campaign with some delay.

They still need to work some more on the Mortal Empires... they did not apply changes from the last patch to TW:WH 1, so no Norsca and no Free RORs added for 30y anniversary. The goals on the campaign map also seem not much changed for Old factions, so really little incentive to explore the map further unless you got for World domination play. I'm sure things will change going forward, once the Norsca patch will hit the game and new DLCs will be added to game 2, but for now, it still feels a bit of placeholdery.

In what world are you living? I can safely say that majority of companies have cool and nice policies, but they get ignored when it comes to things, like deadlines and making the budget... Shareholders don't care as long as it's not illegal and money keeps flowing. It's not unique to gaming industry... it's just the entertainment industry attracts more "snowflakes", because they think with their hearts instead of minds when thinking about their job choices. There are some cool companies, that are loaded with money and they can afford some luxury for their employees. lets say "google", but those are exceptions. If you can find a company, which is co=managed by an owner with vision and this company is doing great financially - there you might get some comfy conditions, but companies, which are listed public companies, or got multiple parties interested in the profit, then the HR policies can affect only the general attitude of managers to employees, like they won;t be calling you ****, and take other mobbing and discrimination actions. Everything has its cost, why do you think I was telling you for some years on this forum, that CD Projekt can do to their customers what they do? They get comparatively cheap labor and cost side, while they can price you at the same premium price as other game producers. Their success, if can manage with this brief PR blunder, will lead other game producers to look to places like Eastern Europe, where there is plenty of cheap talent, that can do the same if not better job than people in High cost countries at 1/4 to 1/8 of the cost. (depending on complexity of task and required skillset)

I've watched some meme thread for Warhammer Total War, and this cracked me up:

I wish i didn't have 4y gaming laptop - got some other priorities than tossing 2k USD for a good rig - otherwise i'd gladly join in either co-op or head to head campaign so far at turn 120, doing 4th ritual, having whole ulthuan + southern lustria and turtle islands + allianca with the only other HE faction - colonists from the fortress south of southlands now preparing for defense of ulthuan and then maybe strike at Naggarond - or just holding seas until my last ritual

I agree 100% about when one falls, another will rise. I have no doubt that if Nintendo and Sony died off that another console company would rise as well. However, we have a safety net now that didn't exist 10 years ago and that is "crowd funding". If Bioware went bankrupt or close to it, they'd just do a fundraiser and go that way. No worries. No they won't - they are owned by EA and if they go in the red, they will be just renamed to EA something something and assimilated into the borg- I mean EA corp fully

I like the choice of the art for intros: Did I say I want RPG by Obsidian covering this license/setting?

Some really nice art assets: This is just getting me crave more for Obsidian made RPG on this license... I mean c'mon - TB/RTT game can evoke such a climate, imagine if you'd have storyline and characters to back that up... HINT to Obs.: Get your hands on this license!