IndiraLightfoot

Our top three guesses for your English dialect: 1. Australian 2. Welsh (UK) 3. Singaporean Surprisingly correct! I do not speak any kind of American dialect (but I can pretty easily slip into one, and most of those American accents, they offer a very comfy pronunciation. You can almost clinch your teeth while doing it.) Our top three guesses for your native (first) language: 1. English 2. Norwegian 3. Swedish Well, almost. You have to turn this upside down, and then insert German in the middle, and then it would be correct.

Inb4 Keyrock agrees with that, but Orcs on the other hand, or rodents...

BruceVC: No. It's not just you. Anyone having a field day with exclusively bounty-hunting specific categories digital NPCs marked as "Jew", "black", "gay", "Asian", "white", "white-collar worker", "programmer", "botanist", "poor", "CEO", etc, and then flaunting it as "Good riddance" is basically making a big, fat ad for some hate-speech message that makes that person tick - and indeed it can provide other people with bad judgment or ill intent a carte blance for doing the same, or much worse, go full on Breivik-postal about it.

No. I'd love to see it without any level scaling whatsoever, and preferably with no act gates either. In this regard, I much preferred BG1 to BG2 (since the former really captured that PnP D&D freedom that I love to see translated at least a bit in a CRPG format. I reckon BG2 was far too linear for my taste, and sometimes I feel nothing but disdain for cities as tiresome quest hubs as well. In BG1, the city, Baldur's Gate, was the finale. The rest was lots and lots of exciting countryside with ruins, mines and dungeons disguised as outhouses (well, often those landscapes were a bit too empty and content just stretched too thin, but still excitingly unknown and therefore something I could choose to explore in whatever order I preferred - and I am a compulsive explorer).

Well, it seems I've been smitten by a game that smacks me up all the time. How's that for a healthy relationship? After the super-duper nice kick of having beaten the Kharkov Pursuit scenario, I started playing my first comp stomp matches. I lost the first (on easy), but then I won three in a row. Next step: Start taking multiplayer matches a bit more seriously. I watched several of ImperialDane's excellent videos and "Lehrs" (as he jokingly misspells them, referring to the Panzer Lehr division, when he gives us mp noobs Unterrichten). I've been playing a dozen or so mp-matches before, but then always 3x3 or 4x4, just to get the odd undeserved victory in amongst my betters. Diving into the fray: I'm happy to report that I've played 17 consecutive matches (almost all German) in 1x1 and a few 2x2, and lost all of them. It's 0-17 to the COH2 community versus myself. And still, I really love this game! Having played ARPGs, some easy CRPG and a few story FPS and adventure games this spring, where difficulty is merely a veneer, I've now got use to real difficulty, as in other humans desperate to win! I have nothing at all against losing, as long as the game's fun, and I have the feeling I'm learning a bit for each attempt. When I started, my unit preservations was extremely bad, now it's just bad. I also know that I can keep up pretty well even against high-ranked played up until 7 minutes, then I have trouble with the transition into more mechanized assaults - and I'm also terrible at defending against tanks. The fastest player took me out in 14 minutes. The longest game 1x1 was 48 minutes, and in that case, the stats afterwards showed that it was pretty close. While I'm playing, I try out all sorts of different commanders and orders of unit building. When there are lots of things going on at the same time, or if the assault/barrage is too heavy, I panic a bit and do stupid things. I need to keep my cool a bit more. I still have no idea how you effectively defend VPs, and I suck at keeping my few tanks alive for very long. I know. It sounds horrible. Why don't I quit? Because it's a challenge and each game turns out differently. What more can you ask for? Hmm, an expansion... There's one coming up with two new factions in twenty days from now. Alright. GG, hf & gl!

Oh, it pretty much has: Neverwinter Nights 1 (and 2 to a certain extent)! You just had to pick the right persistent worlds with great DMs. No multiplayer experience on a computer has ever surpassed that to me.

Seeing that they are really aiming for consistency and authenticity when it comes to technology and languages, it would be quite weird if they let us down when it comes to geological consistency and authenticity, no? Trying to sell us the story of adra, a living molluscan substance with images of, and objects clearly inspired by, as different stuff as volcanic glass, sediment layers of limestone, and iron meteorites would be the same as having some in-game botanist guiding you around in her special secret garden, where she shows you fungi, algae and conifers, all the while claiming they are all the same thing: a dead, inanimate resin. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

That rock (if indeed yet another adra-candidate) in Sensuki's image in the tree inn is indeed layered in a way that's more consistent with the one under Mor's first spoiler. But it has red fluorescent patches all over it. Perhaps it has activated some organic feature? It says that adra is "a living shell-like substance". Still, those cases of volcanic glass and iron meteorite, such transformations would be stretching it hard (like that melting terminator-guy in Terminator 2). And it says "a substance", not several types/species.

Heh! I recognize that guy from the Larian forums. I love that he only follows Divinity: Original Sin because of his no-tech-junk-in-my-fantasy-world reason, and still, in literally the same world and universe, this went on!

Mor, that's my point too, although I go into geological/lithic details as to why they are not the same (see earlier posts of mine in this thread). Basically, the one in your first spoiler is layered/sedimented limestone, organical, and thus possibly molluscan in nature. And under your second spoiler, image 1 and 3 are consistent with iron meteorites with thumbprinting, while the image in the middle and PE's background logo here are consistent with volcanic glass and similar stuff - well, Obsidian, for instance. The first would fit with the concept of adra, the two latter ones not.

Ideally, I agree with you. But there are a few symbols that are simple too charged to just do a laissez faire on it all.

The ministers as clowns-bit is certainly acceptable. The crux is the voters in the bottom right corner. Not only are they being called "poephols" ("a-s-s-h-o-l-e-s" in Afrikaans). They are clearly black, and then with that clown face paint - they come across as black-face cartoons, which don't go down well at all, given those kinds of cartoons place in history). All in all, I think the cartoonist took it too far, and it certainly borders on racism, However, a sincere apology should be enough. A crowd with torches and pitchforks calling for the sacking of the editor and the cartoonist is just over the top, methinks.

A nice 2D drawing would be great for a loading screen along the lines of the event pop-ups Obsidian have shown us. But I'd like to see that idea taken to the next level: Loading Screen Plus! The game keeps track of the area you are leaving and your destination area, and then it gives us a drawing splat with cultural info on places and events in-between those areas: some obscure village, a bizarre rumour, a minor natural disaster, animals stampeding, a weird ritual obfuscating your passage, a strange recollection, a flashback, whatever - but it all fits the order of areas loaded.

Zed: Good news! Obsidian has explicitly stated that their beta won't spoil the story!

A great sum-up, PJ, and it really is how I feel about it all too. I also backed T:ToN quite heftily, just because it's such a fresh, exciting and mind-blowingly varied and different setting - full of cultural, moral and philosophical challenges (at least that was the vibe I got -plus most of the writers and devs are those behind MotB, which I absolutely adore). But with this summary, you certainly show that Obsidian and Josh & Co are right on the ball, and on the money, it seems. I can't wait to see how great Eora and its cultures really are, and how changing it is! A huge thanks from me too, Obsidian!

As for losing luggage, the obvious and the most beneficial and lucrative reaction is... *drumroll*

1. Run out and make a scene, all the while beaming with fake glee. 2. Give up, coil up into a foetal position and suck your thumb. 3. Carry on as normal, coz life's like that always.

Five years ago, I didn't know what Steam was. Now it's almost an integral part of me. It's most effective at creeping into to your home systems and your mind and just make itself at home there. I'm not surprised one bit if I have steam projected onto my shower glass wall doors the year 2015, complete with a crash to desktop splash using the killer-behind-the-shower-curtain-with-a-knife-shadow graphics from the movie Psycho.

Heh! I'm exactly the opposite. I've never picked a custom portrait, ever! I'm too lazy, I guess, and I also love to stick with the game's internal aesthetics as much as I can. I mean having a RL photo or a doodle for a face doesn't really do it for me.

Nine out of ten games I play have this problem to some extent. I suppose it's a real headache in most area-making engines and platforms. Equally often, the characters and critters feet seem to have sunk through the ground, though.

It could be the walk mesh. In NWN2, it was always tough to bake the area so that it didn't look like characters and baddies were hovering an inch above the ground. I guess it's even more complicated turning a 2D area into a 3D one and have a walkmesh of some kind?

Not to discredit any artists here - coz they do a fantastic job - but nope. They are not the same, at least not from a geological standpoint: And as a matter of fact, this "obsidian" looks to have been knapped, that is, people have used tools to knap off flakes and (via pressure) blades from them.

Gumbercules: Nice digging! You are right, those in Update 65 look nothing like the ones we saw now or more recently. The weathering and the patina wouldn't make much more difference. The old version of adra looks like eroded limestone formations or rather fossilized kitchenmiddens or something. The ones in the logo are something different yet again. They look more like volcanic glass - and guess what! That would be Obsidian, for instance.

Stun: That would be legendary enough! That could very well be.

Gumbercules: "a living shell-like substance called adra", that was PE wiki says, and temples were built out of it. However, clearly this temple in the screenie is not. Perhaps "adra" is mistaken for all of this in certain cultures in the world of PE - but scientifically, they are indeed meteorites? EDIT: Gumbercules is absolutely right, though. I just found this: "Adra – is a grown, abalone shell-like material, often used to bind souls and magical energy into items. Engwithans used it both as structural elements and for binding purposes in their architecture. Often they would build things like traditional stone arches and grow adra in-between, using it like slow-growing mortar. As their buildings fall apart, it results in impossible-looking/gravity-defying ruins." However, the artists have taken lots of inspiration from how thumbprinted iron meteorites look, if that's the case!