Keyrock

CDPR makes sweet looking trailers, we already knew this. They wear the Trailer Champions of the World belt. Other than that, nothing really to take away from the new trailer other than Eredin Bréacc Glas looks badass and there was a sweet looking flyover of city.

To do away with trash mobs. Entirely. They add absolutely nothing but tedium to a game. They are a necessary mechanic if killing enemies is a major means of gaining experience, but proper game design can eliminate that need entirely. Just say no to trash mobs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A

I can't bring myself to watch this. The "awards" are meaningless and the only thing that interests me at all is debut trailers, which I'll just watch on YouTube tomorrow or something. Award shows are the absolute worst. At best they're barely tolerable at worst they are flat out torturous. The VGAs VGX is horrible even by award show standards.

Happy Anniversary Obsidian! Your games have not been without flaws, but they have still generally been a cut above the rest. May Project Eternity be the rousing success that gives you the freedom and leverage of owning your own highly valuable IP that you deserve.

Anyone want to recommend some Dragon Age: Origins mods? I plan to run through the game again after I finish Drakensang 2, so I won't likely be playing it for at least a week or so. I've played the game several times, but I've generally stuck with vanilla. Now that Nexus Mod Manager works again, I'm looking to compile some mods in preparation for the playthrough. I'm not looking for mods that radically change the balance of the game or ones that will change all characters into sex bombs, though I do welcome subtle model or texture changes that still keep the same basic design of the characters. Anything that adds new content (as long as said content won't radically make my characters overpowered) or improves textures (character or otherwise) without radically changing the characters (except Sten, I'm not against radically changing him) is welcome.

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep that in mind for my next playthrough. The first playthrough of a game like this is always a feeling out process to find out what works for each character and what cool gear is out there. I kind of thought Fayris looked cool wielding a spear so I went with that, since I'm already invested in it, might as well stick with it. Plus, I figured the weapon made sense for her since, in theory, it lets her stay further away from enemies. In practice, it seems reach is essentially useless in the game, even though it does appear as a stat. I usually do barely any casting unless I really need to. When mowing through trash mobs there's really no need to do anything other than have everybody attack the same mob with basic melee. Hence why trash mobs is a long standing RPG tradition that really really needs to disappear. Developers, you've been making RPGs for some 30 plus years, can we just stop with the trash mobs? They accomplish nothing except to add tedium to games.

Now with new gear: It's not as nice looking as the amazon gear, but the chain allows me to use pauldrons and the leather boots let me use greaves, so overall I have much better protection. Cano got a padded jack and traded in his hood for a leather helm so that he can use pauldrons (though I haven't gotten him any yet). I also got a chain pants and a better weapon (a big ol' two-handed hammer) for Forgrimm, and upgraded Fayris' spear to a partisan. I still haven't found a better single-handed axe/mace/hammer than Forgrimm's Wyrmslayer that my main is using. I have about 150 gold left, so time to see if I can get Fayris and Cano better bows.

A Thorwalian wearing Amazon gear Both Cano and Fayris have been trained to be better with bows than melee, but I have them wield melee weapons most of the time when fighting trash mobs to preserve ammo. When I anticipate a significant battle then I switch them over to bows. That's Forgrimm's axe my character has at her side since I made her a sword axe & board fighter and switched Forgrimm over to two-handed axes. I have a ton of money after going through the Elven ruins so when I get back to Nadoret I'll see about getting a better weapon, if one is available. First and foremost, though, I need to get Cano some better armor.

I am in favor of TB, but if they had decided on RTwP, I would have been fine with it. The craziest part is people freaking out over combat in a game that's anything but focused on and defined by combat. inXile has stated repeatedly that the amount of combat will be sparse and most, if not all of it, will be avoidable. Of all the things that made Planescape: Torment the classic that it is, combat was the absolute least significant factor.

Achievements can be cool if they give you a goal outside of the regular gameplay to achieve. Something to strive for that you wouldn't normally get in a regular playthrough. What boggles my mind are the useless "achievements" that anyone playing the game will get. "Complete Chapter 1", or "Kill 100 Zombies" when it's a game where you'll face well over a 100 zombies no matter what you do, or "Upgrade A Weapon" in a loot driven game that's all about upgrading gear. Achievements like that are utterly useless. Achievements that require you to play a different way or go off the beaten path, those are cool.

The kind of people that rage over things like this by and large tend not to be rational people. It is in their nature to react in an irrational manner and make statements based on figments of their imagination.

Sure, why not? I'm not here to judge. If you're into necrophilia, that's your prerogative. Here's some lich cleavage for you:

Not yet. I'm hoping for full blooded Orcs as a playable race at some point. I mean, they already have the assets, from the Orc enemies, so it would be just as simple as when they added yet another Elf race, which was exactly the same as the existing Elf races. I'd also like an Illithid or Beholder companion. That would be pretty sweet.

Still mostly Drakensang: The River of Time with some Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse. I'm in no rush to get through Broken Sword as the second half won't be here for at least a month.

Its funny that you noticed that but I felt the same thing, its a bad design. And its not like you wait in anticipation for each page as the topic isn't important enough so it becomes almost laborious It's not bad design, it's shameless click farming. Supposedly clicks is some kind of electronic currency that can somehow be converted to dollars, or so I have been told.

Lucky for me I don't have that problem. I have my GWF for adventuring and my other character does nothing but stand in Protector Enclave invoking his deity and doing leadership jobs to make AD (he's still wearing level 7 and 8 gear ). Once I earn enough Zen to buy another character slot (I'm about halfway there), I'll make a hunter just to try the class out, but eventually that character will become just a worker to get me more AD. I do like the free weapon transmutes they introduce with events once in a while. I chanced my weapon again after the last event so now it looks like a MASSIVE mallet. It's pretty sweet looking.

Yeah, the new enchanting system is more convoluted than anything else. The one positive is that it allows you to upgrade enchantments that are already slotted, but they could have just tweaked the existing system to do that. Really it just seems like it's more complex for the same of being more complex, which is just plain stupid. Whatever, I'm already at 12.9k and decked out in rank 7s. Once you reach really high levels in a modifier you get diminishing returns for increasing it. For example, I have a 36.1% critical chance (not too shabby for a fighter). Were I to upgrade all my rank 7 azure enchantments to rank 8, I'm not sure it would even rise to be as high as 37%.

FF IV is FF IV in Japan, there was no FF IV outside of Japan originally. FF II and FF III were originally only released in Japan. FF IV was released outside of Japan as FF II to "avoid confusion". FF V was then also initially only released in Japan. FF VI became FF III outside of Japan, again to "avoid confusion". By the time FF VII was released this thing called the internet started becoming widespread and it became clear that some people outside of Japan were aware of the games that had not been released outside of Japan and that Square had actually created a heck of a lot more confusion by trying to avoid confusion and renumbering the games, thus FF VII was simply released as FF VII everywhere (like they should have done with the earlier games to begin with). Eventually the games not released outside of Japan were released everywhere and the original Japanese and correct numbering was used turning western FF II back into FF IV and western FF III back into FF VI, like it should have been in the first place. The correct numbering system has been used ever since, it's the numbering system I use and the one I assume everybody else is using. Phew, I hope that made some sense.

Ewoks. Yes I knew who you were referring to with the teddy bears from Star Wars. I was asking who fits the Ewoks in the analogy (since the Empire was us) Although in retrospect I didn't recognize that I had actually quoted "Mass Defect." Shame on me I slipped that one past you, did I?

Yep, it was the last one to finally make it state side. It was released for the DS sometime in the mid 00s.

It was pretty polarizing when it came out because it was pretty different from earlier FF titles. I personally have it as my 4th favorite entry in the series. VI > V > VII > VIII > IV > IX > X > III

What's this I spy on Steam? Final Fantasy VIII? Highly underrated game, one of the last great Final Fantasies, IMHO. If Uncle GabeN shoots me a discount in the near future, I'll likely bite.

I can be a teddy bear. I like hugs and I'm (unfortunately) growing soft around the middle. Hugs for everybody!

Since we're on the subject of incompetent military commanders I have to mention this fellow: Darius III (~380-330 BC) Not only did he underestimate and originally ignore Alexander the Great, to the point that he didn't even bother to show up to the Battle of Granicus, he was then soundly defeated again and again by Alexander while generally commanding far larger (2 or 3 to 1 in some cases) and more powerful forces. The cherry on top was him repeatedly deserting his armies and peoples and fleeing.