IndiraLightfoot

Cubiq: Some of this is pure speculation, but it may go something like this: kite-kite-kite-sting-escape and the rinse and repeat, or perhaps: add summon-kite-kite-add summon-kite-kite, or if needs be, mix this two, and then you have what I clumsily referred to as "staggered kiting". HIPS, however, I really doubt will be in PE. It was a pretty OP and stupud feature in NWN1's D&D 3rd ed CRPG.

MReed: Nice attempt at an archer combat breakdown. However, a big caveat, which you don't include, is that any combat savvy archer will surely invest in close-combat skills too (even swap weapon sets, perhaps), and this makes kiting 1.01 even more interesting and viable in PE, I'm guessing, as some sort of staggered kiting.

Origins was, despite its blatant shortcomings and weird DLCs, a pretty fantastic game! And heh, Shale alone was a pretty unforgettable player companion! Now that was an interesting gender transition, if I ever saw one. And the background story and the ancient history behind all that was going on in those dwarven halls were pretty great, but the political parties facing off there were pretty annoying. Sometimes, faction squabbles actually bore me (that's almost a statement ripe for the heretic thread!). MC: I really do hope you are right about this being the smart and classy version.

Yea, the reviews were pretty grim, it seems. I began watching this playthrough video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxteKis4sPk It looks, feels and sounds very MMO-y, and it seems to fall short in graphics. Kingdoms of Amalur looks better IMHO (although that is slightly less gritty, of course). But the fighting in BbF looks sluggish and almost in slomo, which is pretty bizarre. And it seems to be made for controllers. A funny thing, though, the pc kicks the chests to get them to open. This is something I wouldn't buy.

Cubiq: I suspect that as well, but I just count on something similar to kiting, whatever that may be.

Let me just say that in the latest instalment of Tex Murphy: The Tesla Effect (Earth in year 2050), the jokes about NSA and where it got the world too abound! It's probably a more realistic prediction of the future than that in Almost Human.

I haven't played Alpha Protocol yet. Now, you've whet my appetite for yet another game, and by Obsidian no less! As for Tex, I genuinely try to pick the answers I reckon fit the Tex-version I'm navigating through all the absuridites, but it's pretty darn hard. And seeing that "Soup Nazi"-actor from Seinfeld certainly makes my Tex really shaky. I'm just waiting for a "No soup for you!" and then a "game over"-sign.

I have a feeling it will be possible, and one key may perhaps be to make it an archer build. Josh wrote about rangers and archery a while back, and mentioned something in the vein of "If you want to play an archer-type ranger without an animal companion, then just make an archer fighter". For some reason, that sounds promising, since then you can switch fly-paper-close combat tactics and kiting as needed.

That Horo deflects arrow with a 70 % success rate, and silk is very light weight. Add to that, the displacement bonus, and you have some pretty fantastic arrow protection going on horseback. Wow! You learn something new every day. Thank you, Karranthain!

I've played a few more hours, and I certainly take my time, typical of a nosy completionist like me! The entertainment factor is quite high, and the giggles are aplenty. Also, the dialogue system is something new for me (perhaps they are not new at all to previous instalments of Tex Murphy), and I really like it. You are presented with three response themes, and they are pretty weird mood-and-attitude pointers only. Then when you've picked your line, you say something reflecting that mood-and-attitude choice you just made. This makes the RPG aspect of the game much stronger, since this choice typically pops up when you first meet a person or when the stakes are high in the convo. I mean, we aren't that good at delivering well-balanced sentences free of insults and nervous jokes when the heat is on socially. It's also very fun to see what you happen to say. It's like "Oops! I went too far there." In this game, golf seems to be a full-contact sport! This book of dummies shouldn't be in people's homes at all. It shouldn't even be sold. Yet another example of the absurd humour in Tesla Effect. This is the kind of grill bar joint you wish you just had passed.

I see what you mean, Amentep. A case in point, I suppose, is The Perfume, where the protagonist, Grenouille, is pretty despicable throughout, but still he allows us to explore "bad aspects" within our selves. It's one of the scariest books I've read, btw, and the reason for that is perhaps because it made me, somehow, by proxy (?), get scared off the dark recesses in my own predisposition.

Brace yourselves, my friends! Here I am in all my tired glory in a Medieval restaurant with my daughter. This is all from a post on this very forum, in the Community Photo Sharing threads... http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63671-community-photo-sharing-thread/?p=1360817

Ahem - click on my profile and read this post of mine a few pages back... http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66172-female-gamers-having-a-hard-time-in-gaming-communites/?p=1447263

Humanoid: That sucks. Hope it ends well, at least, without too much damage done. Speaking of Tex Murphy - Tesla Effect, I gotta say, after 5-6 hours into it, that is a pretty darn good adventure game. A lot of value for money, and quite entertaining too. As I feel right now, of the KS games I've played so far, it's at the top of my all-category list: 1) Tex Murphy - Tesla Effect 2) Expedition: Conquistador 3) Shadow Run Returns (with Dragonfall, it would be #2) 4) Consortium

I've played for like three hours more now, and I am thoroughly enjoying myself! As far as adventure games go, this is pretty hard to beat. It's like one of the absolutely best Holodeck episodes on Star Trek, but longer and fully interactive, with plenty of dialogue chices and easter eggs, and all that for the same price as like two tickets to the cinema. Wow, just wow!! Well, it wouldn't be a detective story without a murder, wouldn't it? Let's say some puzzles pushes my memory to the max, though. As a personal thank you from me to Keyrock for his tip about it, here's a llama hotel straight out of Tex Murphy! Just one example of the badda-dish humour that at least I appreciate a lot in this kind of setting. Some stuff gets at least a little bit creepy... This straw baby was rocking to the tune of some Psycho movie, I kid you not.

I second that, Bruce. Aluminiumtrioxid is right. Plus, I have seen the first movie and I was appalled by its low quality and its nonsense about group dynamics and the drive behind sexual attraction. I'd even prefer most Harlequin novels over this. Here are more links to articles written by PhDs on the subject: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychologist-the-movies/201111/relationship-violence-in-twilight http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2011/11/10/a-cold-embrace-twilight-and-relationship-violence.html

Perhaps it's a SANitation check.

Well, inspired by a tip by Keyrock, I pre-ordered this adventure game, and I've just begun snooping around. I loved watching Kojak, Baretta and Columbo in the 70s, so getting to be a future PI in the year 2050 is a dream come true! And as I'm playing Shadowrun atm, this is like a feature film of that setting. It's very pretty, with nice acting and fun writing so far. You can click and interact with a lot of things: I haven't played any Tex Murphy-games before, so it's a pleasant surprise.

Mor: Exactly! That's what I wish for as well, and as for those ethereal creatures like ghosts, it's just me wishing to see some true clever behaviour from some of them phantoms, instead of glowing and howling so that we get to detect them miles away.

The NWN2 forums had a slightly higher percentage of female players than what we see here (at least in the open, as it were), and those forums were rather more civil, quite frankly. The trend is degeneration in that department, just like in our societies overall, world-wide even. There were also a few female moderators and also a few female modders (which, among other things - dare I say it - tried their hands at pretty impressive romance mods of NWN2 vanilla and MotB). And when Storm of Zehir came out, we had one of Obsidian's female writers frequent our boards at times. In the '80s and early '90s, I participated in a few PnP-gamecons over weekends, and there female participants constituted about 5-10% of all the players. However, male players tend to be more bogged down with mechanics and rules and world lore. Why I don't know, but it could explain why these forums have so few female players. They prefer not to squabble over game minutiae. Instead, they just want to get on with the role-playing.

Back when people thought I was a girl on the BIS boards (something about the avatars or some such) I got hit on by unsuspecting male forumites in PM. Heh! This happened to me too, on three occasions, in Obsidian's NWN2-forums within the Bioware forums (it was natural to keep them there after NWN1). One of the PMs was from a moderator, no less. It's not easy to be something of a gender-bender on gaming forums, if your alt-name and/or avatar suggest anything remotely female. I just replied politely and flashed a bit of true colours. All's well that ends well!

To me, it's very important that men, women, whatever gender, whatever social grouping, all engage in activities together. If there are elements behaving like jerks against individuals or groups based on their social identity they should be reprimanded by the system that upholds the social order of things. The solution is not separate pens for separate groups. I don't like stereotypic herding of that kind.

Nonek, I did what you asked for! I started a new thread on this topic.

Nonek requested a special topic for this important issue, sparked by a discussion about a female only group in Star Citizen and something of a forum scandal over there, as it were. The game dev Ben Lesnick wrote this recently on this very issue: "On the greater subject of women in the Star Citizen universe, the answer is that yes we should go out of our way to create a safe space for them. Women online, and especially women in gaming, have it very, very tough in ways that men absolutely do not understand. This isn’t an argument for the community to have, it’s a fact. Our moderators (and game designers and programmers and everyone else involved in Star Citizen) should do everything possible to create a safe environment, not encourage typical internet knife-fighting in this regard. Men don’t have to deal with this sort of thing, and it’s so systemic. For years I was part of a community that simply didn't have women. At first I thought it was because space sims didn’t appeal to women… but I came to understand it was because of how immature the average forum user was towards them. It broke my heart hearing from women who loved fighting aliens but who had to pretend to be men in order to even talk to anyone about it, lest their PM inboxes fill up with come-ons and their social networking get invaded with awful dudes. Let me give you an example from right here at the RSI forums that will maybe resonate: a few days ago our lead moderator’s girlfriend posted a ‘welcome’ thread and he replied welcoming her to the forums. Another user then responded with a picture of the two of them together (as on ‘but you guys know each other!’) My immediate reaction was that was pretty funny that William got shown up. Later that night, though, I realized: that picture was discovered in the first place because someone saw a female username posting about Star Citizen and had to Google it for pictures. And that sucks. Obviously I don’t know how to fix any of that, but I’d love to start talking about it here instead of pretending it isn’t a problem." I agree with most of what he's summarizing here. The situation for female gamers on forums can be pretty horrible at times. However, I didn't agree with BruceVC that the solution is to make female only groups, neither in-game nor in forums, as I find that counterproductive and harmful in the long run to a more open and liberal society that I'd love to see more or more enhanced as time goes by.