Mr. Magniloquent

. Posted in error. Mods, please delete.

I just finished Trine 3. I don't see what the complaints were about. The puzzles weren't as great as previous games, but was still a thoroughly enjoyable game. Perhaps I was just entranced by the most magnificent graphics and art work of any game ever. Frozenbyte has superb art direction. If they could make an open world adventure/rpg with the same aesthetic, I'd probably freak over anticipation. I especially enjoyed the look of the portion of the game where you get trapped within a book. Frozenbyte understands fantasy and adventure.

There is nothing isolationist about peaceful trade and travel. Nothing. Get it right. Sorry for the intrusion. You may all now resume squabbling over which leg of The State gets to stand on your neck.

You fail to understand the root, because you do not understand what money is. Money is a technology which facilitates trade by acting as an abstraction for tangible wealth and labor. To do this, the money needs to be firmly cemented in reality--because goods and labor are both real. Gold and silver have been the best medium for this for many reasons. See The Regression Theorem for more. The problem today, and for the last century is that money has been destroyed. It is no longer money--a store of value, it's a debt based currency. Fiat. By command. When the link between money and tangible reality (scarcity) is broken or corrupted, it becomes a "something for nothing" scheme. Think Wiemar Germany. You create something of value, I trade you paper...or today, ephemeral electronic bits at zero cost for your very real good/service. This has destroyed pricing, capital accumulation, and investment. Those most closely connected to the spigot enjoy at scenario where "Heads they win, Tails you lose" by buying assets (which nominally appreciate) before the currency is debased. This is the principle reason why the wealth divides have increased so significantly. It's also the reason why the world economy has ground to a halt. Prices are massively distorted, and capital is not self-preserving in this environment. It forces people into assets, creating bubbles and malinvestment writ large. Your guaranteed income doesn't solve this problem. It actually exacerbates it. Not only that, but it creates perverse incentive and requires even more State interference to function. To work, an economy would effectively have to formally and fully Sovietize, where this guaranteed income stipend would function as a system of rationing. There are alot more reasons. Every economy in the entire world is onerous burdened by extraordinary (cascading) levels of taxation and regulatory burden. Outside of black markets, there is not a single free or capitalist economy in the entire world. That's a huge part of the equation, but money is at the root. The use of robotics is only a symptom, because human capital has been out-priced by these market distortions. I could elaborate for a very long time on each of these, but it's money. Money is broken. That's the root.

I probably won't buy this. PoE was a disappointment to me. Unless they radically change the class/talent/spell system, I'm likely to stay away. It looks like this game might have a strong PS:T influence, which is encouraging--but Obsidian no longer has the benefit of the doubt for me. As an anecdote, the trailer gave me strong Conan The Barbarian vibes. I'm not entirely sure why.

Wow. That price is insulting. Breathing thin air from standing upon the shoulders of giants has addled Beamdog if they think this is value.

@BruceVC To put your own figures in perspective, that percentage would mean that any primary school sized group of immigrants would have 1 to 2 rapists amidst them. Does that seem like a small percentage to you?

I did a caster build, and I believe I killed him in maybe 4-5 shots with Soul Arrow or Soul Ray? I can't remember which. He was basically dead by the time he reached me, one tumble, one more shot. Gone. My friend was outraged, because his tank always got stomped. The final boss did give me some grief though, while being quite easy for my friend.

The Persians are about as evil as any Western state, their reach is just not as great. I'd rather deal with them than The House of Saud, that's for sure. Also, the Iranian government is about as representative of the people living there as the US Government is of its captives. That we can now begin moving past the farce that was the nuclear charade is all the better.

I immediately wrote off the new Homeworld when it didn't take place in the void of space. Having looked at it since though, the game appears to have a great deal more in common with Ground Control than its namesake, but that's not a complaint. I loved both series. I may give this one a chance.

Yeah, unfortunately the artists and programmers don't digitally end up with food on the table when people digitally duplicates their work. You bringing up crowd funding is ridiculous. You don't want to pay for a digital product because it can be duplicated for free, but you want to pay someone to create a digital product with little guarantee that it will be completed? Okey Dokey. The publisher model may stifle creativity, inflate costs and create a general mess, but it gives both the developers and consumers security in an open market. It may change as we move to a more digital age with crowd funding and other factors, but it most likely is not going away. You don't weep for the Monks who no longer charge small fortunes for hand written books. The printing press crashed the price of publications, and the world has been far better off for it. I haven't pirated a game in ages, but that doesn't change the facts. Copyright laws are legislated scarcity. It's the prohibition of perfectly replicating something with the same degree of tangibility as a memory or concept. If we could so easily replicate any other form of good, the world would be collectively rejoicing. Copyright laws are a fraud to keep you paying.

Last part is too much? How? Anyhow, I stand by my assertion - video games are a luxury item and you don't have to spend any money on them at all. I won't assert that there cannot be positive benefits of piracy, but any use of cost of legal game vs "quality" or "household income" is a rationalization because at the end of the day no one has to have a video game. Intellectual Property laws are a farce. If, with the click of a button and a few electrons, I could duplicate any worldly good in minutes--I would be hailed as the savior of humanity. Vehicles, homes, medical supplies, click-click-click. See: Cornucopia. Every "pirated" game is not in fact stolen. Each copy is perfectly replicated. The quantity of games in existence increases. The whole fact that any digital good is no more material than memories within my skull. It would not be desirable to try and incarcerate every person who acquired an idea without having first purchased it. That's absurd. If anyone needs that explained, I will do so in a very belittling fashion suitable to the stupidity of needing to ask such a question. That copyright laws are needed to incentive development and production is an outright falsehood. Copyright laws are an attempt to create an artificial scarcity and are an impediment to mankind's development. The ease of crowd-funding is now making this argument entirely disprovable, and we should all rejoice. Artistic diversions are important, but entirely superfluous to survival. Finally these things can cease be profit motivated abominations like EA and go back to being people whose creation stems from passion. The printing press revolutionized the world because it dramatically lowered the cost of print. Digitization has now reduced the cost of many goods to essentially zero. This is a good thing.

MDK II. Very good soundtrack. Mostly drum & bass techno, but a great deal of wonderful ambient and scifi tunes as well.

Um.....GRIM FANDANGO #1. I'm stunned that one hasn't been mentioned yet. Arcanum is also excellent--probably #2. As mentioned by others, all of the IE games had pretty good music too. Crypt of the Necrodancer is pretty great, I've been listening to that lately--but that feels like cheating.

I've been playing Chaos Reborn. It's a worthy update to one of my favorite favorite classic games. I'd like to see it expanded a bit in all categories with more spells, creatures, environments, music, but it's still an awesome game. It's frequently described as equal parts wizard chess and poker, which is apt.

I tried the free demo. I played maybe...3 hours. I'm a big fan of 5th edition, and I just couldn't get into the cooldown/skill tree mechanic they did. It just felt so very bland.

I doubt I will buy PoE 2 outside of a sale nd major recommendations. I have yet to finish PoE. I was on my way to Twin Elms and decided to clear the rest of Old Nua. Then I just....meh. I had already gotten to the point of "meh" well before that. My biggest gripe with PoE was the class system. If they went classes and unrestrained magic, I would probably have been a lot happier. Overall, it's not that I didn't like PoE so much as it left me with no reason to want more of it.

You just described my dream game, pretty much. Take ToEEs combat, Arcanum's setting and tone, Arcanum's open class system with magic vs tech theme, slam them together, say good bye to real life. w0rd. I did prefer PS:T plot and narrative to Arcanum's though. Thus far, Divinity: Original Sin has taken up the torch. If they could improve their writing and perhaps strike a dramatic rather than farcical tone, they will be king of the hill. That being said, I did enjoy D:OS for what it was--pure fun!

Planescape: Torment is a wonderful game. I don't know if it takes my top stop for RPG, but it is a contender. You will only be able to play it properly once though, so take your time and savor the details when you do. There were moments were reading struck me emotionally--the writing is that good. I ended up playing as a Chaotic Evil, though that wasn't my intention. That's one of the many ways in which the game is a gem. I did a fair amount of grinding early on, which made the combat go quickly later. I don't feel that it was as bad as the reputation merits, but it wasn't dreadful. The worst part about combat was the spell casting animations that I could not skip. Wisdom > Intelligence > Charisma > Else. Don't bother playing as a warrior or rogue. Also, play it in as many extended sessions as possible. It's not a game that can be enjoyed if you pick it up casually over the course of weeks or months. There is a lot of investigating and plot to keep up with. Maintaining immersion is also crucial to the experience.

I think you might like the original Deadlands RPG. It contains many of the qualities you are seeking. I think it's an excellent system. Essentially, all of your skills have a die value assigned, where the number of faces represents the magnitude of your ability and the sum of dice rolled represents the reliability/experience of the ability. Take a Streetwise value of 3d8. You will roll a 1d8 die three times, taking the highest value. If any of those die were to roll the maximum value of 8, then you could retain that value, roll 3d8 again, and add the highest value once more. This can continue indefinitely. A player with say, 5d6 Streetwise has a very reliable and practiced talent that will statistically roll to its upper potential often and almost never roll poorly. However, a 2d10 Streetwise has the potential to do great things, but a lot less reliably. Catastrophic failure is also more of a threat. These two aspects are purchased independently via "Fate Points" which can be acquired in various manners. Of very important note, if I remember correctly, is that HP never changes. Defense can improve, but HP always remains the same. This makes for an interesting mechanic where no matter how powerful, everything can potentially be slain by anything. It's a kind of natural bounded accuracy that gets overlooked all of the time. I have no idea why CRPGs do not use more Deadlands inspired systems.

QFT. Exactly my thoughts as I watched the trailer.

We live in an era of "free love" that puts the 1960s hippies to shame. It does not take much to get a woman to have sex these days. There are even applications for that now. One would think that would do something to diminish the demand for sexbots.

You asked me an the other person why we were anti-western. I corrected your assumption being that I'm not anti-western, but in opposition to the institution of compulsory governance, known as The State. I'm not sure what there is to explain.

I'm not anti-west, I'm anti-State. At this particularly moment in history, and that which is most relevant to my life directly, certain western States presently reign as the greatest menace to my own life and the broader world. Had I lived at a different point in history, or even geographically in the present, the particular governments highest on my animosity list would likely be different. The "Social Contract" is a farce and a myth. The State is an abomination which by definition exists through monopolizing the crimes it allegedly was spawned to eradicate. Whether it be the USSA, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, Lybia, Russia, China, etc., I have no love for their respective governments. This is not to say I loathe the captive populations in those countries. Quite the contrary, I am very well traveled and revel in cultural exchange.

lol, very true. The internet has allowed douchebags to be more open than ever before! I blame the internet, not fat people;) Meh. While I don't go out of my way to insult others, I feel no pity for people who suffer at their own hand. I do begin to take exceptions when someone wants to disturb my peace by being lout and proud about their deficiency though. There is alot of that going on around the world today. Nobel Prizes for warmongers, sainthood for gender confusion, victimization for bad lifestyle choices...the list goes on. It's very easy to become irritated by all of that. This video is just a reaction to it and no more original than most of the other opinions you'll find online.