AwesomeOcelot

Not against romance but Bioware style romance is a cancer upon RPGs, and the reason why it's so frowned upon is because Bioware fans are always the ones that post threads about it. "Romance" is really flattering it. If romance is in Pillars these are the rules: there can't be a character for every preference, you can't just bribe or flatter someone to gain points to gain a sex scene, it has to make sense in the context of story, it can't be a la carte style where you can romance almost every character in your party, the writers have to want to do it in the same way Chris Avellone wanted to write Grieving Mother's backstory. Basically romance as a system is definitely not good.

Due to a Unity bug I could only use 60hz, and I literally always had 60fps, never dropped on a GTX 970, so if you're having frame drops on a 980 Ti you have a problem that's not the game, most likely drivers or software. The only performance issue I had was loading/saving, awfully slow on a SSD, same issue I had with NWN 2.

How is it going to work? God induced amnesia or alzheimer's? Why not just start with a new character?

Multi-Class = more than one class Sub-class = specialization within a class

You would think game devs would use newer engines, but they usually just extend old ones. There's so many games that are Unreal "2.5" and "3.5" that are heavily modified, to the point they might even have virtual feature parity with the newer engines. Minimum specs were too low for PoE, I hope they're more reasonable for PoE 2, so they don't have to cut things down like the random encounters at the stronghold. Most importantly I hope with the new streaming feature the perplexing saving and loading performance issues are gone, because with 16GB of RAM, a SSD, a 6 core Intel CPU, it shouldn't be that painful.

You're investing in securities related to the revenue generated by game sales. It's estimated that to break even with a $1K investment the game needs to sell 600K. After 1.13% return the rate of dividend is less i.e after you get back $1130 you get less per unit sold.

They've already funded the base game, basically we've just started from the point of stretch goals. It's 8.8k backers vs 16.6k, $524K vs $705k (pledge average must be pretty high). Is that considerably slower? In terms of backers yes, in terms of total pledge, not really. Fig is a factor, Kickstarter has a larger userbase, and some misguided detractors, but that's offset with the benefits of Fig. Obviously people aren't going to feel the need to pledge to a game that's already funded, and a company that's in a better state. I don't prioritize these types of projects, I understand it's a factor in people's decision to back. With all things considered the campaign is going really well, better than I expected.

Main quest line plot is super weak in that it's lacking in content, overall the game is lacking in story content. Backstory (half the main quest story content is psychically witnessing backstory) and lore are super rich. Considering the games it's trying to emulate, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, it's not that surprising. I don't think it's meant to be a story centric game, it's meant to be combat focused. The expansions are a step in the right direction.

When I wrote Thaos was pro-religion it was in the sense that he felt that a society without religion would not function, that people would not behave morally at all, and that there would be utter chaos. That he created and enforced one religion is a separate point, he felt he could improve upon the religions that already existed by creating his own, most important to him was stopping religious conflict, hence only having the one religion.

Category errors everywhere. Any reasonable and advanced morality is not a list of good and evil things, even some religions realise this, not necessarily the most popular ones.Unless your books are about sociobiology I suggest looking in the relevant fields. Science can't give you oughts, but it can tell you how our morality evolved, and the functions of a society. A society with rampant slavery and paedophilia? Science can't determine that's an unhealthy society like it can determine that someone with fever is sick? Science can't actually determine what should be considered "healthy" either, the parameters come from outside science, like morality. Weapons aren't good or evil, that science can create them is completely irrelevant. Science is the pursuit of knowledge, it's one thing to say that science can't give you goals, but it's fantastically wrong to say it can play no role. Also just because terms are complex and nebulous right now like "a good life" and "well being" doesn't mean they're unattainable to science, just as we have a happiness index, definitions can be produced now or in the future, constantly improved upon. I'd really like to see you argue that similar nations, one recently implementing racial based slavery is going to have no effect on the happiness index. You may say happiness is completely subjective, but that doesn't take it outside the purview of science, it's not more subjective than pain, and that's studied in science, it's just hard.

Morality is subjective, a deity most of the time and for the majority of religious people is objective (and more importantly a subjective deity is not what I was referring to or what most people mean by it, and deities are only ever subjective when defending irrational beliefs). When you accept the fact that morality has evolved, biologically, intellectually, culturally and is not some kind of outside force not only can morality be measured through science, but science can give answers to evil/wrong. Even a universal feature of humanity can be unreasonable, it's completely independent as our brains evolved and have features that make the majority likely to be unreasonable some of the time and in predictable ways. Universality doesn't suggest adaptation, only that it's connected to an adaptation, and in this case we know what that is, the human ability to project intent onto things is useful, more universal than religiosity, and not only used for deities or any supernatural agent. Combine that with paranoia, another adaptation, and you get spirits and gods.

Some theists are going to be upset because a) it doesn't just have the premise of a supernatural creator (because they don't believe they have to prove their superstitions), b) it has got a clear message about not needing religion to be moral and to have order, as that's Thaos's position but it's apparent that despite having won the world is no better off with plenty of chaos and misery, and c) they *shock* *horror* have a sympathetic atheist character and an antagonist who is a pro-religion atheist in the main quest line (never mind they have religious companions, the option for religious PC, and sympathetic religious characters). Lets be clear, PoE is not what pro-atheism looks like, it's just that theists are so used to their bubble where they are catered to and their view is just assumed. It's arrogance to sincerely look for evidence for a hypothesis and reject it when you have exhausted all avenues but definitely not arrogance to believe in things without any evidence that also go against reason and our experience.

There's a lot of things I don't like about the IE games that Obsidian is obliged to keep, but it has changed and improved upon the IE games, so there's hope. Some issues I'd like solved: 1) Loading times are ridiculous on a SSD and i7 5820K, too many loading screens in general. Last game that was this frustrating was NWN 2. 2) The status of the party could be way better, the current action status seems to be delayed, I'd really like hold position and queuing of actions. 3) Having so much combat only party AoE buffing I don't really understand. I'd prefer the old style or modal party buffs. Some buffs make sense as AoE but a lot of them don't. 4) Stealth is underpowered and traps aren't worth the time invested, which is a shame. 5) There has to be a better solution to item stats stacking. Some games go with item type only have certain stats which is an imperfect solution, but it's better than the current one. 6) Too many talents, some of them don't do enough, which seems to be a problem with the entire RTwP genre, inherited from DnD. 7) Wilderness is a bit small, and sometimes a little crowded, especially the expansions. 8 ) Mid-game expansion, please no. 9) Companion content, I liked most of the companions but felt their content was minimal and quests were really lacking. 10) Not enough side-quests, content not rewarding enough outside of combat. Expansions were a bit better in this regard. 11) Not enough scripted interactions! More varied and awesome. 12) Companion comments at the stronghold bordering on "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter", but one off comments were really cool. 13) Stronghold missions and events not really worth it, it gives you stuff, but it's not fun gameplay or story-wise. 14) Stun/lock effects being overpowered and too necessary. 15) Audio stutters, goes really loud (especially first lines), or an effect plays when it shouldn't e.g. a crowd noise without a crowd. 16) AoE effect stacking making it impossible to see what's going on, literally multiple characters invisible, didn't happen a lot but it did make encounters interesting. For PoE 2 I'd like more questing, companion, and story content focus which is probably too much to ask if the series adheres to emulating Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I'd really like to see my actions make an effect on the world and some things to just change as time progresses. I didn't really like Twin Elms and the last third of the game as much as the earlier parts and expansions, partly because of the culture but also I don't think as much time was spent on it outside of the main quest. I'm not the best at these types of games, in my experience I felt the difficulty had way too many swings, paralysis scrolls and spamming summon items made it possible but that didn't make it fun. If I'm playing the way I want to play, that isn't too unrealistic, I'm ripping through content or getting wiped with one-shot large AoE and there's no in-between.

The NT version is actually the kernel build. 2K = 5, XP = 5.1, Vista = 6, 7 = 6.1, 8 = 6.2, 8.1 = 6.3, 10 = 6.4*. XP brought better application compatibility, networking (QoS, Firewall, uPnP), remote desktop, better prefetch, security features, and UI effects. Vista brought Aero, network group features, WDDM 1, DXVA, DirectX 11, UAC, and a new driver model. A bigger kernel change allows for the underlying systems to be dramatically changed but massive features can be introduced without a large kernel change, such as SSD support on 7, Metro on 8, DX12, UWP, and WDDM 2 on 10. Other changes that aren't features can have a large effect, each version since 7 has improved performance noticeably. 7 had many quality of life updates for instance, small tweaks to UAC, performance, and UI that had large effects, so despite being the second smallest update (8 to 8.1 being the smallest) it's also one of the most lauded and important Windows versions. People don't actually want large system updates, 2K and Vista were large system updates, that were necessary, but they're also the least successful. Mostly because they need to mature, they need driver support, application developers need time to get to grips with new APIs. Microsoft actually knew this back when 2K was developed to replace 98 and NT 4 but they decided to delay changing over the MSDOS line and released 98SE instead, giving home consumers XP when driver and application support had settled, and much better application compatibility for software designed for 95/98. *during dev, they switched to a new version naming system starting with 10

Doesn't matter about names as much as performances, Bethesda has a pattern of not using acting talent well. New Vegas is just full of talent that gave great performances. Big name actors aren't necessarily the best voice actors (or actors in general), some of the best don't really do other types of acting and most of the best have done a lot of voice acting throughout their careers. No one knows who John Doman is, but he was great as Caesar, and he was Rawls in The Wire, the best TV show ever made. New Vegas has one of the best casts in video games, Fallout 3 does not.

I switched to mechanical keyboards, they're more accurate for two reasons: you can more quickly press the keys, and you know when you've pressed a key. They're a bit louder, even the "quiet" branded ones. If you type a lot or game you need a mechanical keyboard.

I like the WoD, but it's only a small part of why VtM: Bloodlines is my joint favourite game. Obsidian could make a really good game with the setting, but right now they couldn't make a game like Bloodlines, for a start they'd need Brian Mitsoda as a lead designer, but there's a lot that went into that game, many different talents. Some of the best characters in Bloodlines already existed in WoD, so there's hope for whatever Paradox do with it. I'd like for Obsidian to do a WoD RPG, but it's not in relation to Bloodlines.

I interpreted that as Nvidia benefits little from DX12, because they have reached their potential in DX11. Do you know what a strawman is?

If a game is designed around Mantle for years, being ported to another API doesn't suddenly negate that. In a Benchmark by the same company, Oxide, with a demo of the same engine Ashes uses, Nitrous, the GTX 980 had double the fps average in DX12 vs DX11, it also performed much better than AMD's highest single GPU offering. So the argument that DX12 does nothing for Maxwell 2 cards doesn't hold much water. The dev saying that they've been communicating more with Nvidia and committed more code for Nvidia, so it could be said they've biased towards Nvidia, tells you everything you need to know the dev because they know this is highly misleading. If they've designed the engine around AMD hardware for years, of course they're going to have to patch workarounds on top to support Nvidia cards. They've also got the policy that any fix submitted by GPU makers can't be detrimental to another product, but that didn't count when they were partnered with AMD designing the game around only GCN and Mantle. In regards to DX12 and Vulkan, there's many features that Nvidia GPUs can take advantage of, it's not true that there will be no performance increase for Nvidia with the new APIs, the gains for AMD DX12 vs DX11 will be greater in proportion, but not much difference in regards to DX12 vs Mantle.

It's down to context switching, which AMD does better. Nvidia uses async in Gameworks for improved performance for VR, Nvidia's implementation of async does not degrade performance. Ashes has been designed around AMD hardware from the start, it's designed for Mantle which is only GCN. I don't think this is a smart play from AMD. Other developers can do the same thing for Nvidia cards, using Gameworks and an unoptimized alt path for AMD/Intel.

This is a game designed around Mantle, Oxide games are partnered with AMD. Same company that created the Star Swarm benchmark, where Nvidia did better, eventually. Nvidia are playing catch up, don't expect these results to be the same with other DX12 games or even this game on launch. A big deal is being made because it's the first DX12 game benchmarked. Although, if you look at the confirmed DX12 games coming up, there all AMD partners. We could have months of games being released that run better on AMD. What I think will be interesting is benchmarks of a FPS/RPG like Deus Ex, whether the gap between DX11 and 12 DX on i7s will be significant.

Win/Mac/*Nix have been reading metadata for over 10 years IIRC, no need for additional software.

None of those allowed in-game chat though as far as I remember, which is the feature I used Xfire for. Gamespy Arcade had it in 2001 when they bought roger wilco (which was owned by Mplayer another game platform with in-game voice), for VoIP there was also Vent and Team Speak.

Before Xfire there was Gamespy Arcade and Microsoft Gaming Zone, before them there was Gamespy 3D (superseded by All Seeing Eye).

In Firefox there's also the Web Developer and Firebug addons. In other browsers there's the developer console. Greasemonkey is the most popular and one of the oldest methods of userscripts for the web, it has the biggest library of userscripts, and was probably what people were using.