Keyrock

Half a million is an awfully lofty goal for a game in a universe I've never heard of by a developer I've never heard of. I mean no disrespect, should have I heard of Sime~Gen?

On second thought, maybe I should leave the white as is and dye the currently pink flower parts black? Methinks that would be pretty snazzy.

Yay, I finally got the complete Sunite Garb fashion outfit: Now the only thing left to do is scoop up some black dye bottles (in about a week I'll have enough Zen) and dye all the white parts black. Black, green, and pink? It will be badass.

The thing that bothers me is that even when you are allowed to play a hated race, you generally really don't. Since we're on an Obsidian Entertainment forum I'll use NWN2 as an example. You can play as an orc or a tiefling, yet the game never treats you like an orc or a tiefling. You might as well be a human. I mean, the bulk of the game takes place in a predominantly human city. I should think that an orc or a tiefling (they're freakin' demons for goodness sake) would not be able to just stroll about a human city with no repercussions. I would expect to be cursed, spat upon, and, quite frankly, openly attacked, unless I took care to do some miraculous disguise work. I mean, Neeshka gets some discrimination, but even that is extremely limited. Some of the most fun I had was playing a hobgoblin character in a pnp D&D (AD&D 2nd ed) campaign years (decades) ago. A good bit of the fun was the DM coming up with complications to myself, and the rest of the party, for that matter, because of my race, and the creative approaches and sometimes drastic measures we had to take because of it. Obviously, when programming a video game, having people react to you very differently based on race (or gender) adds a whole other level of complexity to the game design, akin to a whole other group of factions with their own reputation system, so I understand why it's so rarely, if ever, implemented to any significant degree.

There were a lot of complaints about GWFs being underpowered, and at low level they are a bit, or at least they were when I was low lev, not horribly underpowered, mind you. At about lev 30 they become powerful. Weapon Master Strike makes such a big difference, it's great for taking on 3 or 4 enemies at once, which is exactly what GWFs should be doing, they're designed to fight groups of enemies. TRs can do damage to a single target faster, but can't do group damage nearly as fast. Only a CW can rival a GWF in group damage. CWs have higher spikes in damage, while GWFs can dish out a more steady flow of group damage. They're definitely not underpowered at level 60, I can say that for sure. I'm consistently either top dog or #2 in DPS when running dungeons with a group. They suck in PVP, they're just not built for that (CWs and TRs dominate PVP), but I don't give a **** about PVP.

Great W for the Sawx tonight. Just beating the Tigers is nice in itself, but beating Scherzer is a great bonus. Uehara was once again phenomenal in the 9th to save it. He's as dominant as any closer in the game right now. The guy is straight up unhittable at the moment. He's on a 22 game scoreless streak and has retired 21 straight batters. I'm really torn on what's happening to the Rays. On the one hand, the very thought of the Yankees making it into the postseason is borderline vomit inducing. On the other hand, the Rays are the team that scares me the most, outside of Detroit, in the AL, because their pitching staff can go straight up lights out.

Meh, no crpg in sight. No tactical squad based combat game either for that matter. RTS and shooters seems to be all that runs out of the munitorum factories these days I'm waiting to see what DoW3 will look like, assuming it gets made. I'll probably be in the minority, but I hope it's more like DoW2 and less like DoW1. I can't handle traditional RTS with base building, resource management, and large armies, but squad-based RTS, I can definitely get down with that.

Does this mean that we will just be given the stronghold at some point instead of actually having to do something to earn it? (Other than just following the main quest) It would be cool if there were several paths to acquiring the stronghold: * Sneak in, murder the inhabitants * Storm it, take it by force * Earn it through deeds of valor * Use trickery/deception/espionage to force its former occupants to leave Obviously, I just pulled those out of my behind just for sake of example.

Which is a shame since the dwarven starting stories were easily the most interesting in the game. In fact, the entire dwarven plot in DA:O is, to me, BY FAR the best thing in the entire series. It's really the only thing I found truly interesting and compelling.

Oh ye, of little faith.

One more question: Once I set up the prison, can I taunt and/or torture my prisoners? Please tell me I can torture my prisoners. I will take any elf I find, throw them in prison, then torture them. Good times.

Awesome update, the stronghold sounds amazing. One question regarding this: This suggests to me that all party members will earn experience individually, rather than all my companions always being the same level as my main character (or a level or two lower or higher because of race level adjustment) like in NWN2? Am I correct in my assumption? (I hope so, because I am all for this)

My At Wills are Sure Strike, for fighting single enemies, and Weapon Master's Strike, which is awesome against groups. Wicked Strike is just too slow and Reaping Strike takes too long to build up, I find Weapon Master's Strike to be superior to both of those. My Encounters are all generally single enemy strikes. This wasn't by design, the group Encounters just didn't fit my build. Indomitable Battle Strike is the single most damaging Encounter available, it does massive damage, and if you kill the target with it it marks other targets and earns you extra action points, which is always a plus. Restoring Strike heals you, quite a bit too, for that reason alone I always have it active. Flourish does a bunch of damage to a single target. More importantly, it stuns and interrupts. My Dailies are Slam and Crescendo. Slam is my bread and butter. It's a HUGE AoE that does continuous damage, plus slows enemies down making them easier targets for others. Crescendo I use when there's just one enemy left, usually a boss or champion type. It does ungodly amounts of damage and knocks enemies prone. Bosses tend to be immune to stuns and prone, but it's still worth it for the damage. My Features are Weapon Master, for increased critical chance and Steel Blitz which occasionally gives me extra attacks when fighting multiple enemies (it happens quite often actually). I used to have Steel Defense, which makes you temporarily immune to damage when using a Daily, instead of Steel Blitz. Steel Defense is great, but it made the bonus power from my titan set, temporary increased damage resistance when using a Daily, useless. Having the extra damage resistance the Titan Set granted me allowed me to drop the extra defense gained from Steel Defense in favor of the extra attacks I gain with Steel Blitz. I do lose some defense, but it's not as big a loss and worth it for the extra damage from the extra attacks. My feats are all based around increasing my critical chance and severity, increasing the damage I do, increasing action point and determination gain, and enhancing Weapon Master Strike (my bread & butter At Will) and Slam (my bread and butter Daily). I went down the Destroyer path because it increases how quickly I gain determination. All my equipment is geared toward critical strike and lifesteal. Lifesteal to heal myself and keep myself alive (the Acolyte of Kelemvor further increases my lifesteal) and critical strike for obvious reasons. As a half-orc I also get bonus critical severity, which is definitely a plus, so when I do critical, which happens quite often, I do massive damage, which in turn heals me more via lifesteal. Flourish and Unstoppable are the two most important tools at my disposal. Unstoppable, as the name suggests, makes me immune to stuns or knockdowns. It also gives me a temporary health boost and greatly increases my attack rate. I do less damage per strike, but with far greater amount of strikes, the DPS definitely increases overall when Unstoppable. Flourish I use to interrupt enemies' big attacks, particularly ones that stun or knockdown. Once you've fought enemies enough you learn their patterns and can tell when they are about to use a special attack. I try to have Unstoppable or flourish handy for those situations so I can either interrupt their special or at least not get stunned or knocked down by it by using Unstoppable.

I miss the Jade Empire mechanic where your character smiled for open fist and made a grrrrr face for closed fist responses. Much better than color coding.

I'd say the likelihood is high. In fact, I think it will break 3 million, though I doubt it will get into PE and TToN territory. On big factor in its favor is that they will almost certainly get tons of coverage from every gaming news outlet, even more than Obsidian and InXile got, because Inafune.

Sure, I'll take some screenshots of my build and post them here when I get home. Soloing is a piece of cake pretty much no matter how you build your character, so my build is focused on working in a party. Luckily, the stuff that works for party play works just as well for soloing for a GWF (whereas a party focused CW build may not work so well for soloing and vice versa). You have to understand what your role in a party is. The GWF's role is to dish out steady damage to multiple enemies. There are ways to build the GWF to be more defense minded, but that's not the GWF's role, that's what the GF is for. My build is mostly focused on damage, I rely on lifesteal, my Acolyte of Kelemvor, and (in a party) the cleric to keep me alive. Again, I'll go more in depth and post pics when I get home.

Ah, the Bababooey first pitch. Classic. Sawx got blanked last night but lost no ground since the Rays have gone into all out tailspin mode. 5 1/2 games at this point in the season is a fairly secure lead, but the 3 game set at The Trop still looms on the horizon, so nothing is set in stone.

Jools Watsham from Renegade Kid reached out to Inafune to bring Mighty No. 9 to 3DS http://www.destructoid.com/renegade-kid-offers-to-help-bring-mighty-no-9-to-3ds-261185.phtml As a very happy owner of Big N's portable all I can say is:

Better to compare with best RPG out that year. Fixed that for ya Fixed it for both of you.

Well, he does fly in standard superhero flying pose with his fists stretched out before him, so he might well punch through it as he stretches out into flying pose.

I'm curious how Capcom will handle this. The way I see it, there are 3 choices: 1) Lawyer up 2) Do nothing 3) Give Inafune their blessing Just for fun, I BioWare-ified it:

For me that's a plus, rather than a minus. I can still drive if I really want to, but in the past in SR3, SR2, or GTA <insert number or subtitle> there were times when driving to the mission location just got tedious and time consuming. Now I can get wherever in all of 15 or 20 seconds. Problem solved. To each their own, I guess. For me it's more like "why bother putting in cars in the first place?" The only point to them after getting the super sprint and jump is that you have to drive in those car thef- I mean, virus acquisition diversions. The only real value they have is comedic in the way they fly straight up into the air and disappear when you run past them with fully upgraded super sprint. If they didn't have cars there would be a contingent of people crying "waaa waaa waaa, there are no cars to drive". Well, they're there. Are they obsolete? Yes, but they're there in case someone wants to drive them. Besides, they're fun to toss around with telekinesis.

For me that's a plus, rather than a minus. I can still drive if I really want to, but in the past in SR3, SR2, or GTA <insert number or subtitle> there were times when driving to the mission location just got tedious and time consuming. Now I can get wherever in all of 15 or 20 seconds. Problem solved. To each their own, I guess.

I personally liked this better than SR3, they're both great games, though. I thoroughly enjoyed all the telekinesis-based activities, I thought they were a great addition. Plus, getting some old-school Shaundi put a smile on my face.