IndiraLightfoot

Hehe! Some of your opinions I don't agree with, but boy, are they fun to read!! Anameforobsidian: Hard counters indeed make combat fun occasionally PrimeJunta: Having replayed BG1 some year back, I almost agree now (I still loved it in my first playthrough way back). And Minsc should be executed by a firing squad! And these three points are great too!

Here are a few blasphemous opinions of mine concerning CRPGs that I've merrily listed here: -I prefer four characters in a party over six -I've come to appreciate 3D CRPGs as slightly more fun than isometric ones -The NWN2 trilogy is better than BG 1 and 2, and basically any other CRPG in history -A minimalist UI is my cup of tea, not chunky boards and cariyatid-ridden blocks -RTwP is better for CRPGs than turn-based (even if I voted turn-based for ToN) -I actually enjoy the occasional random encounter -Pixel hunting and searching areas can be good fun in a CRPG... -...and the same goes for grinding -Companions are great and all, but I love creating an entire party from scratch even more -Character creation and dabbling with builds is like a third of what makes a CRPG great -Uneven pacing and occasional baddies being out of one's league is often good news -I've never really liked them magic users: I prefer to sneak, backstab, shoot arrows or just bash -The music and the sound effects is not just atmosphere. It's game-breakingly important pillars in a game -Pre-buffing never was fun -Occasional countdowns in combat? Sure Now, good folks, what are your blasphemous passions?

They've passed £1M now! And it's still 14 h to go. They have introduced a new stretch goal: getting a high profile actor on board! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for Brian Blessed. For that we need £1.2m). They will reach almost $2M at this pace. Wow!

Here's the huge patchlog. Finally, my ranger can use her bow to her heart's content, it seems! And three new dungeons, one of which is especially for us that bought the Digital Deluxe version. Others will have to wait a bit. Three new dungeons (including the Community Dungeon you created: we have 2 special guests on our Credits now!). We will give you more information about them within the next days but to give you a small insight: two of them will be available for everybody & the last one is exclusively for deluxe buyers! Improved performance & clearer texture quality setting (you can expect some improvement on open world but we will continue to work on this point along next patches too) Reduction of save corruption risks (we are still working on it, however we recommend you to delete existing ones and disable Uplay Saves Sync if you experienced this issue) 16/10 resolution is now officially supported by the game Fixed modding kit for the final version of the game Spirit Beacon bug is now fixed; invisible enemy won’t haunt you anymore! (You can no longer use it in dungeon or with close enemies) Numerous additional bug fixes & balancing (many of them reported by the community) Etc. We are aware we still have improvements to achieve and we deeply apologize to all of you. We are doing our best to understand, reproduce and find solutions. Please have a look on where we are standing today regarding the following topics: Performance improvement & heat issues: Of course we will continue improving the game performance and still have some challenges ahead in this point. However, with this new patch, you should be able to better tweak the game and have a real positive impact on your game performance. For instance, we strongly recommend you to reduce the shadow distance & shadow qualities that are the main too “greedy” options. Don’t forget to reducing the globalgame quality, we know the game can be “heavy”. For those who can’t access Act 2, we are still trying to identify all possible cases. However, thanks to some important fixes, this should be fixed for most of you. Still, we will need your feedback to confirm this and explorealternative solutions. If you still have difficulties connecting to Uplay or recovering your Uplay rewards, we will need your rendezvouslog & saves to check this. http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/833976-Saves-corruption-issue Concerning bugged quests, we should have fixed most of them, however we continue our tests and improvements. We recommend you to load your existing saves after the update, create a new save, and then load it in order to apply all patch modifications. If this doesn’t solve the issue, please share your saves with us on the forum. Again, we understand your frustration and we really want to fix all those issues as soon as possible and the best way we can imagine. Our team will continue support and we will let you know as soon as a further patch is planned. Thanks again for your support, your MMX dev team 4.6. 1.4 version release note. o New Content: • 3 new dungeons: • Exclusive Dream Dungeon • Community Dungeon • Limbo Dungeon o Changes • 16:10 resolutions are now available with UI accordingly updated. • Hint for texture details option is added in game (it still only configurable in the main menu) • Asian language fonts are now only loaded if needed (memory improvement) • Reduced the amount of path-finding calculations per monster each turn (caused performance issues on certain places in the world map) o Balancing changes • Added Dark Nova to Faceless (Core and Elite) • Split monster ability "Battle Spirit" into three different variations: for Militia Captain, Black Guard Captain and Naga Warlord • Increased 2-Handed Weapon Damage and Crit Chance • Increased Ranged Weapon Damage and Crit Chance • Increased 2-Handed Magical Focus Damage • Reduced Magical Focus Crit Damage Increase • Reduced Magical Focus Damage Increase (Grand Master Bonus) o Bug fixes • Issues reported by the community • Quest UI bug when you click the "Show finished quest" option, the page number text "Page x/x" will glitch. • The 'Dual Wield' skill does not provide a number on Attack Value increase on the off-hand weapon. • Alesia - Healer doesn't refill Mana, only Health. • Radiant Weapon spell incorrect behavior, enemies still block attacks. • Paladin Promotion quest - You can obtain another copy of the 2nd Stone Disc fragment if you discuss again with the Blackfang Smuggler. • In “The Slums” area in Karthal City, a barrel containing a spider teleports in a different location of the map. • Bow and Crossbow Grandmaster Trainers have an incorrect conversation string when asking for training after completing their quests. They consider that you’re already a Bow or Crossbow Grandmaster. • Acid Splash spell incorrect behavior (decreases the armor rating by 50% and removes 50% of melee block attempts). • Mispell of "Consumed" with Elixir of Potency = conusmed (loc issue) • Typo in the description for the different masteries of the Medium Armor skill. • The letter related to the siege of the castle in the Aegyn Peninsula does not disappear after finishing act 1. • Bug in the Bestiary entry bug, Minotaur's skill Crush description says '404 MONSTER_ABILITY_CRUSH_INFO' • Romuald Hireling (Negotiator)- Incorrect behavior when buying a mana potion, price is “86” but “100” is removed from purse. • After completing Naga Tea quest, it is possible to receive duplicate copies of the various teas from the original people. • The "Doctor" Hireling ability can be used in battles without costing a turn. This makes status changes too easy to dispell. • 'Hour of Power' buff tooltip you can obtain by praying at shrines says you get a bonus of 10, which only provides 4. • Dodge Expert incorrect training cost at Seahaven. o General bug fixes • The defender cannot finish the promotion quest if the player kills the Davros and free the Dwarves before getting the promotion quest. • Lore books in Lore page cannot be fully displayed if unchecking "Show all books". • The SFX of Manco's spell - Chain Lightning is incomplete, in Cave_3. • Lev cannot send the party from “Elemental Forge 4” back to “The Castle Portmeyron”. • The tooltip of Cyclops' magic power contains debug info. • The party can get tokens “Tea” again, even the quest is already completed. • The hireling Alesia can only restore HP and inconsistent with the description in the tooltip. • The token “Hidden Scrolls” should not display as usable token in map “Karthal_Sewers”. • The objective stating "Find Kirk" of quest "Lost Lambs" shows improperly under a certain circumstance. • One word in the Lore Book "A Tour of the Free Cities" is incorrect. • The token "Flute" won't disappear after playing right notes with it in front of the crystal in Sudgerd. • The last dialog with Blind Shaman always shown as "You are not chosen" even if player has already completed the quest "Warmonger Promotion". • The Heame still talks about same sentence, even after finished the quest "Haart has its reason". • The page footer will be corrupted after checking the "Show finished quests" in quest book. • The Magic Power data of Moonsilk Spider in Bestiary is not complete. • The SFX of spell “Fire Blast” displayed improperly when turning camera. • The ongoing quest Jassad’s Bestiary needs one more tip to notice players that Bosses and Elites are not counted. • The second step of “Darkness in the lighthouse” cannot be updated. • Player can bring Falagar to city Karthal without blocking. • The collision of the shadow dragons is improper in Tomb_of_Thusend_Terrors_4. • The action “Harpoon” still affects enemies, even it is blocked or missed. • The quest: Partners in crime (3/4) updated incorrectly when the party goes to the Skull_Rock and get the Blackfang’s Chest first. • The battle music keeps playing instead of reverting to normal with high probability. • Entire dungeon will be reset if the party teleported by casting the spell Spirit Beacon then revisit the dungeon. • The players get the two slides for completing ‘Haart has its reasons’ with telling the truth mostly to Heame. • The close button doesn’t work when answering Lord Kilburn’s questions. • There is no prompt in option, when the party doesn't have enough money to identify items in store. • Monster (Elite) Naga Warlord still can trigger the ability Sweeping Attack when it casts spell Battle Spirit. • The UI of the door to the Vigil_3 in Vigil_2 (1,14) should be a downstair icon. • The text of the potion: Elixir of Potency is improper. • The actual effect when Facehugger triggered the ability Mana Leech or cast spell Chain Lightning is improper. • The token will always display on the right-bottom corner even nobody in the party can use it. • The side quest: Pirate Truce cannot be finished if the player enters The Crag before getting this quest, and reenters it. • The paladin promotion quest token can be sold again after this quest has been done. • The damage from monster dealt by the ability "Overwhelming Assault" will delay for a second. • The effect of any entrance will vanish after saving and loading game when standing in front of it. • Normal save will change into Auto-save after inputting certain name. • The fight music won't stop after killing enemies in maps Cave_2, Pao_Kai_Nest_1 and Karthal_UnderSiege. • Potion or scroll doesn’t be discounted after buying it with hireling “Romuald”. • The Boss who has a dialog will perform an extra action when the dialog was triggered. • The corpse of Pao Kai is floating in the air. • The description of “Terror” is “Lasts 0 turns”. • Identify items from the hireling Karim still charges fees. • The aggro flag turns red after the first action of the monsters. • The locked chest cannot be looted for the second time. • The stackable items cannot be sold when there's only one in the Inventory . • The SFX of spell “Fire Shield” can be triggered by retaliation from enemies. • Cost in game is always the same. • The SFX of Manco's spell - Regeneration presents only on the weapon, in Cave_3. • The message of Rest within Owl Cave still showes after promotion is finished. • The monster who has ability Pain reflection cannot reflect the melee damage caused by Magic Focus. • The sound-fx of solving the secret will replay after the party back to Den_of_Thief_1 from DoT_2. o Dev Tools update • Code update so that with the new version created mods are compatible with the game again o New assets added • City assets updated with buildings from Seahaven, Karthal and The Crag. • Faceless dungeon set • Karthal Palace dungeon set o Usability improvements implemented • Default configurations for a faster placement of monster, doors, secrets and other interactive objects • Automatic updates is no longer overriding all previous settings • Terrain type definitions added • Zone specific lighting • General visibility improvements

Having just watched season 2 of House Cards, your question seems very real and relevant to me, Keyrock.

Thank you! And that is a welcome change. I enjoy playing as both sides, but the Germans so far have been more varied and fun on the micro-managing level. Sometimes, playing the Soviets in COH2 feels like spamming conscripts till they take a beating, press Retreat, then remix them into new full units, and out into the fray again they go!

Well , finally I have gotten back to this wonderful game, and a lot has happened since its release. It just got a patch where it leaves the old P2P multiplayer model for dedicated battle servers. I tried one 4on4 match today, and it works much better than before. No more "Snotwad is lagging"-messages! Yay! And huge amounts of balancing have occurred. I barely recognized anymore what was good, half-decent or bad anymore, which is great in itself. We actually pulled off a victory, despite me being the fifth wheel or rather no wheel at all. I captured two points and held one for two thirds of the game. The other three had captured points 8-9 times, and their kill stats were almost ten times higher than mine. I sneaked around. I built bunkers, and I hid in buildings and behind cover. At least my point drew a lot of enemy attention, and I just kept repairing bunkers and mortar half-tracks, so in essence sending hellish rain over the enemy without moving much at all. As for the game in general, I never really got into it the first time round, since it's so deep and complex, so I am extremely rusty and just plainly suck at it, especially MP. I just learnt about more hotkeys today, and tricks how to exit a burning building without going through the burning wall (in essence, D and left click where you want to put your fleeing unit). The first thing I'm doing to get up to speed is to try my hand at the neat theatre of war-scenarios: Operation Barbarossa has been quite okay and varied (I love those "sneak behind enemy lines and take out officers"-operations, but Southern Fronts single missions have been the best ones so far. It was Monte who got me into this game in the first place, and he was right about the campaign and single player as a whole being one big tutorial for taking on human opponents later on. That's a pretty hefty tutorial, though. I've like 50 hours on the clock already, and I'm still pretty daft at it. What kind of punishing RTS game is this? I meant that in a good way!

After I began island hopping on Ultima IX, I just gave up on it and uninstalled, and I have never looked back since. As for TitanQuest, it's almost the opposite. I just refuse to uninstall that game from my Steam library. I bought it like three years (I was late getting it. I had NWN2 on my plate big time back then). And still, even now I get back to TQ, now and then, and I have a character now that feels just right and skittles onwards at my pace (I have perhaps 40 hours on the clock on that character). TitanQuest do feel atmospheric enough for an ARPG, I reckon, which is like six years old at that. I love Greek mythology, the Mediterranean and Antiquity in general, so to me, it has soul. And the loot is interesting and varied, and so are the mini-bosses and bosses. I think the fighting is a bit stiff at times, but Path of Exile's (several years later) was not much better in that regard.

That's one reason why I really like Obsidian. When they made NWN2, they managed to make three different games: One classic D&D CRPG with their vanilla OC, then MotB. a rather exotic setting and a story masterpiece rolled into one, resting confidently on the shoulders of Planescape: Torment, and finally, topping it all off with SoZ, partly set in steamy jungles, complete with dinosaurs (something we fans asked for, and they delivered, which was great all by itself), and with a fab overland map, which was pretty revolutionary at the time, and a stronghold that was a bit of a economic RPG sim. Well, you get the picture: sweet diversity and great quality. Sure, there were bugs and a few dips, but overall, that trilogy tops everything for me, I reckon, in the world of CRPGs. Sorry, BG1 and BG2!

And what if Monte Carlo is sincere in his what ifs here? Then, I reckon he's fair dinkum!

I finally "finished" the game, having played over 70 hours!! Yay!! The ending after the ending was a very nice touch. I thoroughly enjoyed most of it! However, a larger inventory, and something to with like half a million gold would be nice! I have a few minor things to do in the game left, though. So, I will keep on playing, but probably after they have patched the game with three new dungeons.

It's about time. I had my first CTD yesterday. I was going from the mountain range to the peninsula via that teleporter near the castle, and then I got light purple diamonds lying in an arched patch. going roughly from the east to the west, over the bridge into that Shadow Dragon den. As I approached it (I thought it was some game feature, silly me), it all just blinked and crashed. Interestingly, my bug using a permanent +5 mana potion in the heat of battle resulting in a permanent Mana 1 is not included on that list. I should have reported it.

A game of dreams! Not just a fantasy 4x-game like Fallen Enchantress, but a true RPG with a Civ Light on top in a clever and entertaining way! Gimme now!!

Or perhaps it is an anagram, after all? Heard of the classic game Zork? It could be Zorke, or even some modern-day eZork.

I do. I've watched three episodes so far, and the first was gripping as hell. "Did you think I'd forgotten you?"-mirror monologue scared the Bejebus out of me!

Most of the replies are perhaps still not the truly bad RPGs. Why? Because the really bad ones you let go off pretty fast when you play them and never return, like Lady Crimson did for Ultima IX (I did the same, btw). I did that with Witcher 2, pretty recently. Even worse, the really big disappointments aren't even played at all (in my case, DA2). I urge you to reconsider and think of RPGs that you simply could not stand. Might & Magic 9, at least I played quite a bit of it. And Legends of Dawn, the first hour felt almost fine, then disaster struck. One I even did finish, out of completion OCD, and still it may be the worst ever: Daggerdale, with D&D and all (that's why I bought it straight away).

Heh! That boy needs to hone is rhyming skills. When he gets his boner, he becomes a groaner. Easy as a Sunday morning.

Now, there's a classic British understatement, if I ever saw one! How's it going, really? The images on the telly have shown horrendous flooding of a thousand homes. NKKK: Watch Stephen Fry's Planet Word episode 2. Here's a clip from it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kss1d

BruceVC: It's very nice of you to wish us all Happy Valentines, and, on these forums, very fitting too. You have very consistently and valiantly fought for love, romance and general kindness and decency in all forms, not just in games, and you haven't even faltered under the immense pressure of those treating romance in games like it was the Black Plague. All the love in the world back at ya, Bruce, and may that date blossom into bliss!! . . ............... . . . . . . ... . . . . .......... . . ........... .......

"Exclusive Class Update The campaign is only days old, but we have been fortunate already to have many supporters and some passionate debates in the comments and via messages. We welcome your thoughts, and read them all. One major point of discussion has been about the exclusive class that is offered in the ADVENTURER tiers and higher. We definitely misjudged the way that this exclusive class would be received. That was our mistake and we own it. The class was conceived as a cool variant on an existing archetype and something that backers could have a voice in selecting. We hope you understand that it was imagined in the purest spirit of fun and reflects our deep desire to bring value at every tier and involve the community. It's clear now that the exclusive nature of the class is perceived negatively by some. If we could rewind three days, we would eliminate the exclusive class and put another equally valuable but less divisive reward into the ADVENTURER tier. We have debated the options for hours at a time, pretty much nonstop since it came to our attention. We explored changes, alterations, timed exclusives, add-ons, and every possible combination thereof. We considered and championed new and different approaches to achieving some form of resolution. It was exhausting, but critical that we do so: our growing community had voiced a concern, and we take that very seriously. As many of you may also know, once a Kickstarter campaign launches, you cannot edit the reward tiers. This makes sense - you don't want to change what people get, after they have pledged money to get them. The way we see it, we've entered into a contract with our backers at every tier; changing ANY reward terms is in very poor taste, and arguably unethical. Just as we couldn’t possibly remove Early Access from the WANDERER tier, we have a firm responsibility to honor what the ADVENTURER and higher backers (approximately 1200 people so far and growing) have pledged for. It is for this reason that we have concluded that we cannot adjust the tiers. We believe any adjustment or compromise at this point would undermine our obligations and trustworthiness. It's better that we own up to the mistake and vow never to repeat it, than it is to compromise what we have offered – and sold - to our backers. We spent an incredible amount of effort before the campaign crafting interesting rewards, and the exclusive class was the only in-game exclusive item we dabbled in. This is just the one area where we erred. It doesn't reflect an overall philosophy or trend of any kind. We ask for your support in this, no matter what tier you have pledged at. We also respect and understand that some of you might not agree. We would encourage you to look at the larger balance of everything we are doing and the true passion that we have poured into Darkest Dungeon. We hope that you can remain excited about all of the other cool rewards we are offering, and of course...the GAME! Thanks to your support, in-game content for ALL players is growing by leaps and bounds with every stretch goal we cross!" I really appreciate their taking the time to sum up their feelings about this and taking on the responsibility for anything they felt went wrong. My confidence in them after this is certainly enhanced by leaps and bounds!

I think you're onto something there. Here's an example from Sweden, and how their law-abiding bureaucracy can go too far (I apologize in advance, for the subject is a sensitive one): Recall the huge tsunami disaster on Boxer Day 2004? Plenty of westerners were on holiday in Thailand then, and as you well know, thousands of them died in the waves of the tsunami. Immediately the phones started ringing in the Swedish foreign office, victims and their relatives phoning for help and rescue. But nope. In Sweden, a holiday is a holiday, so the emergency stand-by was celebrating X-mas. Of course, after hours upon hours, which then turned into two days, Sweden managed to send some Hercules plane to begin SAR operations. However, in Italy, the same kind of phone calls to their correspondent emergency authorities led to a response within the hour. That country had a plane in the air faster than any other Western country. Weirdly enough, many countries pew-pews over Italy's awful postal service, but when a disaster strikes, they excelled. I really dread what would happen if Sweden gets in the middle of a big mess, like a sudden war or a large-scale calamity.

Fixed that for you.

A portrait of the Master of Laketown in Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, played by Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is a very clever man, and often merrily polite. Here he's showing restraint of the highest kind. When that official starts referring to the first angel falling from the sky (think Diablo 3), you can see Stephen cringe, but he handles this gallantly. Speaking of games and Stephen Fry, I just love his VO in Little Big Planet. Many kids will have fond memories of him all over the world, and that's all for the greater good.

It is a pretty strong ability, especially when guards can't look up. Heh, the last level where I decided to screw stealth and just kill everyone was funny, I think there was a pile of 14 bodies at one point, guards just ran to the corpse and looked around - drop, kill, blink back up, repeat. They can't look up very well. They do, graphically, but that's no further than the cone of light that gets visible by certain witchcraft. Here's how it all works: NPCs have bolts around their heads appearing when they begin to sense your presence, and there are four levels of detection. Level 1- One white bolt will appear on either side of the NPC – The NPC has caught a glimpse of your character or heard a non-threatening sound. The NPC will not actively search. The NPC will return to patrolling or idle after a few seconds without further alerts. Level 2 - Two bolts will appear on either side of the NPC – The NPC has seen your character or heard a threatening sound. The NPC will actively search for a several seconds and up to a minute. The NPC will return to level 1 after a about a minute or two without further alerts. Level 3 – Three bolts will appear on either side of the NPC, and they have not turned red. In this case, the NPC is very close to finding or being aware of your character’s presence. The NPC will actively search, up to several minutes. The NPC will return to level 2 after about a minute without further alerts. Level 4 – Three bolts will appear on either side of the NPC, and they turned red - The NPC has spotted your character and is actively engaging him. The NPC will enter into combat and actively chase / attack. This level will count as an official sighting of your character and will count against stealth-based achievements/trophies (i.e. Ghost, Specter). If the NPC loses sight of your character, they will search for several seconds. The NPC will return to level 2 after a few minutes without further alerts.