Keyrock

On the plus side, if they do go with the same ending with 36 different color explosions, they'll likely get a bunch of cupcakes mailed to them with different color frosting. It will also be a challenge to the both the developers and the cupcake bakers to find that many different hues of explosions/frosting that you could still tell apart easily.

I agree. I first took out the dangerous cave Cyclops with a level 15 party, and it was pretty hard (for my party, at least). Then one or two levels later I met two in a certain warfare challenge, and they seemed much harder. I meant the named (I forget his name, starts with a "D") cyclops for the shield guard promotion in the cave near the broken down caravan in the mountain range. I found him to be easier to kill than the regular cyclopses (cyclopi) simply called "Cyclops". I'm certainly not changing any values on my first playthrough, with the exception of things that are obviously broken (spear not getting crit bonus from two-handed master). I want my first playthrough to be "vanilla". Not even my mages tend to stay stunned 5 turns, they usually break out of it within 2 or 3 turns. My Shield Guard is virtually unstunnable. When he gets stunned he breaks out of it immediately 95% of the time so that by the time my turn rolls around he's already back to normal. Edit: Oh yeah, and I found the spear relic. It's in a dangerous cave on the Menthil Coast with a shaman dude inside it (his name starts with "M") In a future playthrough I'll definitely have to play a much more unorthodox and "suboptimal" party, because Warrior difficulty has gotten too easy. I mean, it's not exactly a cakewalk, but it's not that challenging either. I think I assembled my party too well (/pats self on back) and I wasn't particularly trying to min-max. If with an unorthodox/unbalanced party I still get to a point where it's not that challenging, then I'll think about messing around with the config files to create a "Nightmare Difficulty".

Woot! Promoted my Shaman to Bloodcaller. He's almost never going to need to drink a mana potion again.

I've actually played the vast majority of those titles.

The boss cyclops was such a chump. I think he only managed to hit any of my characters once and Celestial Armor just laughed at that. I hit him up with poison cloud, acid splash, shatter, and agony, then just ripped him to shreds. At one point late in the fight he stone skinned himself. I must laughed at him as I purged the effect off him. Purge is such a great spell.

Supposedly The Witcher 3 will have 36 different endings, though just how different each of those endings is remains to be seen. It would be pretty hilarious if it was just essentially the same ending with 36 different color explosions.

I got my Shield Guard promotion. Cyclopses (Cyclopi?) are laughably easy at level 24. I pretty much crushed them beneath my boot. Is it just me, or is the boss Cyclops actually easier than the regular ones? He barely put a scratch on me.

Man, that Heat/Clips game last night was freakin' awesome. That was really entertaining.

Ubisoft's utterly gorgeous metroidvania-ish, JRPG-ish Child of Light has a release date (April 30th) and a price ($15), and a release trailer: It's coming to a smorgasbord of platforms too.

Here is an update on that dystopian steampunk golf game in the sky you've always wanted: This one is definitely on my radar.

That's been the biggest kick to the crotch I've gotten in a long time. Bigger than the kick to the crotch I got from Torture Porn Raider. (Torture Porn Raider is actually a pretty good game, it's just absolutely not the game I wanted to play or it to be. X: Rebirth is just a really really really bad game.) On a positive note, I'm really itching to play Shadowrun Dragonfall.

The Iorveth path is my "canon" path. It has a more fun Act 2 also. Edit: My "canon" path: TW1: Scoiatel, Adda lives TW2: Iorveth, spare Aryan LaValette, spare Saskia, spare Letho. I'm probably being far too lenient sparing all these people.

Most people want a "cool game" but I wouldn't be surprised if there's no majority (i.e. 50%+1) consensus on what is essential for a cool game. I'm sure many of the people that "just want a cool game" are perfectly okay with many of the things that the various minorities want, because ultimately it doesn't affect them. In my opinion, the only legitimate reason to be upset at someone asking or suggesting something like this is if you think that it'll ultimately deliver a less than satisfactory experience. To me, this means that you're either upset at the specific content request, or at the perceived opportunity cost of implementing the request (i.e. it'll take away from something else you consider more important). The problem I have with the defense of "people just want a cool game" is that, if that's the case, then really should it not matter at all with respect to whether or not you can play as a female player character, or what have you? Or would the inclusion be something that makes the setting unsatisfying for you? If so, what exactly does that say? In the world of RPGs there's definitely that group of people that want the "edgy and mature" topics with things like rape and all those dark things to make the world more vicious and seem more real. These threads inevitably popped up on DAI forums, and I responded with an idea of "Okay, how about the notion that the player character gets captured at one point, and if the player is male he gets raped by the homosexual jailer." The response was that that would just be a clear attempt at being subversive and would be frankly, lame. So to that poster, it wasn't just the inclusion of rape he wanted, it was an inclusion of rape of a specific nature (i.e. of a woman). Whatever his reasons are for doing that, I do find it an interesting point that for that person, having a woman get raped would be perfectly acceptable while having a man get raped would be out of the question. There's no real definition of what it means to "have a cool game" and for some people, adding something like this is just something that makes the game that much cooler. My problem isn't with people making suggestions and questioning aspects of a crowdfunded game, as long as the suggestions are done in a constructive, non-pushy manner. My problem is with people that feel their pledge gives them a right to dictate the direction of a project, make demands, and kick and scream because something isn't exactly to their liking, and threaten to remove their pledge or whatever else (if you want to remove your pledge, just do it, no need to make a spectacle of it). I also have a problem with the people that get too aggressive and extreme with their backlash against those types of people, that's not helping anybody. The moderate majority, providing polite, reasonable, and constructive criticism are fine, in fact they're contributing to a healthy somewhat open development process. It's the people on the extreme ends that **** everything up, as they generally do in all manner of things.

Snare is so awesome. I don't get to use it that often because you need at least 2 squares between yourself and the enemy to make it work, but when I do get a chance it makes me smile. My favorite thing to do in those situations is to drop a snare, back up a square, have my Shaman drop a Poison Cloud over the square with the snare on it just before the enemies get there, then the next turn the enemies move into the square, get poisoned, take earth damage, the snare goes off, does usually about 180 damage to the poor saps, and reduces their number of attacks by one. Good times. I wonder if I can get harpoon and snare to work together. Drop a snare on the ground then harpoon a mage into it (as a bonus, a mage would likely take more damage from the snare because less armor). The only problem with that is that the round spent dropping the snare at my feet might be better spent moving a square over, around the corner of something to get out of the line of fire. If I had 2 Marauders then I could do it all in one round. Maybe this is something to consider if I wind up making an all orc party. Or I could do 2 snares at the same time. Good gravy, that would be awesome.

To be honest, she's that great at being a dragon either.

This is one really worrying aspect of crowdsourcing. The vast majority of the people pledging just want a cool game and are fine with the developer following their vision as they see fit, and may offer constructive criticism, but in a non-pushy manner and with the complete understanding that the developer likely knows better how to make a game. Unfortunately, you get the small loud minority (the loud minority ruins so mauch goodness in the world) of people that feel their $20 pledge means they can hijack the direction of the game. Then you get the unreasonable and misguided backlash to the loud minority, and then this happens. *sigh*

This is a form of athlete exposure I can definitely get behind.

I actually hate imports. The idea that I need to keep my saves is burdensome to me. I hate that to see content in Mass effect 2 or Dragon Age 2, I need to do replays of the original games in ways I'm not really interested in. But you don't need to do replays or keep your saves. The internet will provide you with savegames with every conceivable combination of important choices.

I don't think that shows up when you mouse over weapons. I think you have to swap the weapon and change to the combat tab to look up the crit chance with each weapon. Cleared out The Supreme Temple of Meow. The boss battle with Kilrath took me 2 tries. He hits really hard with melee and does a AoE lightning attack, so make sure you can cast air ward or visit an air ward shrine before you face him. Beyond that, it's a battle where you're constantly healing yourself and protecting yourself. He generally takes down Celestial Armor down in one round, unless you happen to dodge or block, so I found myself casting that almost every round. He's immune to poison and mind attacks, so the best I could do was acid spray him, shatter his armor, and just whittle away at his health. You get a bunch of coin (my party has more money than I know what to do with at this point) as well as some magic items. No relics and nothing too spectacular. It's worth it for the experience you pick up along the way mostly.

I took today off too due to receiving another 5-6" of snow. My wife had training and had no choice but to drive to work...so far shes been on the road for 2h49m and still isn't there. That sucks. I hope she makes it there and back safely. So now you have the rest of the day to gambol about in? Snow angels? Snowball fight? Build cute little snow-rats next to a round of snow-cheese, on the patio? Right now there's sleet and freezing rain coming down, but once it stops, the snow rat and cheese idea sounds good.

But without F2P elements how will they gouge their customers?

I generally turn to Evil Genius for my DK-esque fill these days.

I took advantage of the snow day and did my taxes. One less thing to worry about, plus I get (a meager) sum of money back from Uncle Sam.

Holy cow! Who did Feargus have to sacrifice to Yves Guillemot to be able to escape the clutches of UPlay?

One thing I won't be doing today is going to work. Connecticut is getting pounded by snow and sleet right now. Probably a good day to do my taxes.