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Varana
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Posts posted by Varana
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Correct.
You have to listen, and the courts have to decide whether his claims are valid or not.
Human rights are universal and unalienable. That's the whole idea: There are no institutions or people who can withdraw these rights. You have those rights simply by having been born as a human being.
That hasn't anything to do with being "pussies". On the contrary. Just killing people you don't want to deal with anymore, is the easy way out. It may be hard sometimes to acknowledge the universality of human rights, but it is one of the most important advancements of human civilisation, and it would be weakness to endanger or remove that progress for one sad individual and bad feelings.
Norway's reaction to the attack has been spectacular so far, and I'm sure will continue to be so.
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Umm, if we actually look at videogames that get called RPGs, combat is far and wide the most important thing in almost all of them; the games where it's not are rare exceptions. Combat is what you're doing most of the time, combat is what most of your character's stats and abilities refer to, combat is what wins you the game in the end. Early RPGs aren't much except combat, with a little bit of dialogue thrown in to provide a semblance of context for why you're killing stuff.Combat is just way too important in this game to consider PoE a full-fledged RPG. So the comparison to SC2 is not that far-fetched.
Your points on UI and polishing are still very valid, esp. because PoE's combat is quite similar to that of RTS games. But in a videogame context, PoE doesn't have "too much combat" to be an RPG.
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I find the argument "they split it, so it's DLC, and DLC is BAD!!!" quite odd. As long as it's the same content, why does it matter whether it comes in chunks or in a big package?
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You do.... and, do I dream too much, perspective.
As waenc said, the maps aren't really three-dimensional. What you're seeing, is basically an optical illusion looking as if it were 3D.
This video from the Kickstarter shows an example of a PoE area rotated around: It's a 2D image skewed in a way to look "real" from exactly one camera perspective. Changing perspective is simply not possible with the technology used by PoE.
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We should just build us some troll constructs. :D
(As an aside, anyone noticed that with the expansion, we'll get an artificial Devil to complement the artificial gods?
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And if they're made well, even the Tolkienesque fantasy names once were of this type, but due to language changes, being in foreign languages, or incorporating personal names, are unrecognisable at first sight.
Sure, that would never happen in the real world...by the way, I have always hated Baldur's Gate (D&Ds???) custom of mixing Tolkien-style fantasy names with Fantasy Class B English Names. Sword Coast, Candlekeep, Trademeet etc. sound super retarded for me, I cannot imagine places being called like that in real world. Just smashing two random words against each other and done. This is a part of 'classic roleplays' I could never accept because it was a bit immersion breaking for me. PoE's naming, with cities like Defiance Bay, somehow feels more serious and making sense for me. I don't know, maybe that's just me.
Now I'm just off to visit my parents, who live in Blackpool. On the way I will stop in and visit my aunt, who live in Thornton, near Southport. I hope the traffic round Guildford isn't too bad...
I used to live in a city called something like "Stony Creek". But because the name is of Slavic origin in Germany, most people don't understand its root in the first place, and then it went through several changes over the centuries. And the result is a "fantasy" place name which is another of the "retarded" ones, just mangled by time.
For the most part, all place names have origins like that. If your fantasy names are well done, they could, theoretically, be traced back to their rather mundane origins. (And we can safely assume that that is the case with Tolkien's names, even in those cases where he doesn' t tell us outright - Nargothrond sounds fancy, but essentially only means Narog-Fortress.)
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Well, there surely will be Patch 2.0, which comes with the expansion.
Then, probably, patch 2.01, fixing bugs in 2.0.
Then I'd guess 2.5, for the second half of the expansion,
and 2.51 for fixing bugs in it.
Plus an unspecified amount of patches in between.
(Numbering scheme may not coincide with reality.
)Really, ongoing support is a good thing. In the second best of all worlds, we still would be seeing patches for games from the 90s.
If you've got the time, just start playing.
If you've got no time now, or if you know for certain, even without playing, that you absolutely cannot live without stealth and accuracy indicators, wait till 2.0.
Don't wait much longer, though.
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Where exactly in the ruins are you?
Also, you might want to use one of the board sections below where spoilers are permitted (Stories, I think).
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There is a War on Terror.
There isn't one on Hate.
Someone seems to think there's a difference.
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First: No they didn't prove anything of the sort. They did however make some odd claims.Yes, I know, Tennisgolfboll is proving the bible wrong, but I can't let that pass: No, no one with a little bit of knowledge about the subject believed that the earth was flat, a thousand years ago.
In that first part, I was referring to TGB's claim that the bible was right because there are no trolls. Sorry, might've been a bit obscure. #explainingthejoke
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That debate about what would happen if knowledge about the gods' origin were to spread, is exactly what PoE aims at. Would the world fall into chaos? The Engwithans seemed to believe so. Would the world be a better place without subservience to the gods? Iovara thought that. Or should people believe in things regardless of whether the gods are worth praying to or not? That's Edér's path.
PoE doesn't answer this question, and I'd say they particularly tried to avoid presenting one option as preferable.
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Very good point.So that's what makes the whole Iovara's rebellion kinda moot - people don't serve the gods for free, they serve for pay and they receive it. Whether the gods are artificial or not doesn't come strongly into this equation.
[*switch to reconsidering mode]
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b) ... in fact people are not happy about sanctions and don´t believe the **** they get fed too. The backlash, pressure on big outlets and viewer drops of this anti-russian crap is telling
And don´t even try to point out American and German "friendship" now, because even the germans know they are still effectly occupied.
As a German, I would seriously prefer you to stop spewing nonsense about what Germans think and know. Thanks.
Not going to bother with the rest here. oby can be proud of you.
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Germany isn't "central" european to me. When I hear "central european", I'm thinking the balkans, Romania... Bulgaria...
May I ask where you're from? I feel that that's an interesting notion of Central Europe.
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Even if the voice actor did an Inuit accent, I seriously doubt that more than a tiny percentage of people would recognise it as such. It also wouldn't evoke any specifically north-pole-y feeling, if no one knew what it was. They could have used someone with a Maya or Ethiopian accent, and very few people would know the difference to Inuit.
It wouldn't matter what specific accent it is, only that it's distinct from any of the well-known ones. -
The problem of the faith in this game is that is approached from an entirely wrong angle. First, whenever there were any sorts of theological questions in the game, I couldn't have shaked off a feeling that it's a western, post-christian worldview that's getting discussed here. Like, you know, the gods are supposed to be omniscient & omnipresent but they're not, what a bogus. However, that really shouldn't be the case - we're talking about a pagan pantheon here which also should be at least somewhat oriental in nature. Because reincarnation is a fact and, well, it's the easter religion & philosophy that tried to deal with this for, like, ages. And, like, Buddha has been a human - nobody really minds it. Of course, he's not really a god from a western point of view but, well, there are very little logical reasons that said point of view should actually get applied here. The setting just doesn't give any reasons for something like that to get birthed.
I don't think that that's an issue with the game.
PoE presents a polytheistic pantheon where gods are not omniscient and omnipotent by necessity. That is basically common knowledge - they blew up one of the them, after all.
The core of Iovara's heresy and the Watcher's discovery is not that the gods aren't gods in the Western monotheistic sense of the word. It is what manageri said earlier: That the gods are just ... things. That they cannot lay claim to any moral or ethical superiority. That there is no reason why people should follow one of them instead of some random guy saying stuff.
That the gods have any authority on morality, goodness, and what is right or wrong, is itself not a necessity. In various religions, god-like beings really are just that: Higher powers, some of which are good, some evil, and mostly they're just there. In PoE, however, the gods more or less were created with that purpose in mind: To lead their believers according to their domain.
Even after what the Watcher discovered, the gods aren't going to disappear in a large cloud of dust. They're still there, they're as real and powerful as ever. The Watcher has a chance to spread the knowledge that the gods are not moral guides. And if he/she doesn't, after a while, animancy research will probably find out about their creation without the Watcher, now that Thaos doesn't meddle any more. The paradigm challenged by the Watcher is not that gods exist or have power, but that they're more than just powerful beings like any other dragon, that what they say and stand for is worth following because they say so.
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Yes, I know, Tennisgolfboll is proving the bible wrong, but I can't let that pass: No, no one with a little bit of knowledge about the subject believed that the earth was flat, a thousand years ago.
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The check for the Rauatai background is misspelt as "Ruatai" in the files; there are 5 instances in companion_cv_kana.conversation, and one in companion_cv_kana_rest.conversation. I didn't check the non-Kana-related files.
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Is it only me, or is the option to only manually update gone from Steam?
I can only set the game to auto-update; update when launching the game; and auto-update with priority.
If such a major change is introduced, I'd like to wait a bit and see how it plays out. And probably complete my current run-through. Or at least get a respec option.
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But look what happened once he took office. From that point, opinion of US policy steadily declined and in the ME it has actually dropped below Bush's level.
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Iraq - Maliki and the US and Iraqi commanders all agreed that the Iraqi army was undertrained (it was basically being rebuilt from scratch) and needed a US backstop. Subsequent events with ISIS confirmed that analysis. The Iraqi army crumpling like origami in a hurricane when ISIS made it's initial push is ample proof. Obama's blind insistence on withdrawing US troops and his lack of effort in negotiating a SOFA extension despite the Iraqi government's repeated requests for a sizeable stay behind force was a mistake. I realize that Obama would have taken considerable heat here and abroad over a decision to extend a US troop presence but sometimes the right decision isn't necessarily the popular one.
Yes, Obama's election fuelled absurdly high hopes which have been disappointed quite systematically. Granted, Obama had to fight with a highly polarised Congress, but even without that his actions would never have been able to meet the expectations. But it hasn't been a failure all along.
It's hard to say how a McCain administration would have played out. (When he ran, I quite liked him. My opinion of him has deteriorated quite substantially since then - not really sure what happened.)
On Iraq: It's not only the Iraqi army. That's what I meant by nation-building: Maliki's government was quite successful in undermining any attempt at reconciliation, the integration of the various religious and ethnic groups, and generally unifying the country. ISIS' success in taking over large parts of Northern Iraq was not only due to the Iraqi army being hopelessly inadequate, and the army's ineffectiveness was not only due to being undertrained. The Iraqi government also failed to support those Sunni groups willing to cooperate, and in fact alienated them to a point where their resistance to ISIS basically was non-existent, not to mention those groups in opposition to the government anyway. (Plus, astonishing amounts of corruption.) Keeping a strong(er) US presence in Iraq might have lessened ISIS' success a bit (the price being that it would be American troops fighting them), but it would not have made the Iraqi army into an effective force without also taking responsibility on the political level.
So yes - withdrawing was probably not the best course of action. It would have been battling the symptoms, though.
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This bug is universal, has been in the game from the start, and it doesn't have any detrimental effect as long as you're having the money on pay day.
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Though for all we know, even in internal inquiries there hasn't been much evidence of specific prevented incidents.
Those things that Snowden revealed, are out in the open now. Why not show what the results have been?
So in the end, we have a massively overblown surveillance program costing billions of dollars, and infringing on the liberties and privacy of everyone in America (and abroad) - on the off chance that it might possibly do something. That's nonsense.
Complaining about government overreach seems to be quite en vogue in America, in the moment - even in areas where one might think that a bit of regulation and oversight would probably be for the better. On the other hand, in the case of mass surveillance, many people don't seem to have a particular problem with allowing the government to know basically everything. I find that perplexing.
The US is built on freedom and civil liberties, at least in theory. I'm not convinced that defending those is unpatriotic. Just the opposite, actually.
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To be fair, Obama could probably have seriously improved the international image of the US just by doing nothing. After the abysmal international relationships disaster that was the years of Bush II, doing better wasn't really that hard.
Out of kgambit's list - Libya was not Obama alone. In fact, it was a joint effort of several NATO allies who then didn't have the capabilities to do it without the US. That particular Benghazi incident is, tragic as it was, something very few people outside the US care about. A lot of people died in Libya during that time. Pressuring Israel to abandon its settlement policy is almost universally seen as positive - not to give up support for Israel, but specifically its settlement program.
People usually remember who got the US into Iraq in the first place, and did a rather terrible job at nation-building there. Seeing continued military occupation as the solution, is a quite American point of view that isn't necessarily shared elsewhere. Also, the surveillance program: While not shutting it down has been widely criticised, its establishment wasn't really Obama's fault.
As Calax said, trying to pass some form of universal healthcare is considered a sign of reason and responsibility in politics, outside of the US. Promising to close Guantánamo was a major bonus, initially - and that he didn't get to do it, symptomatic for his presidency. And so on.
Of course, Obama did things which didn't go over well in some parts of the world, and probably made some large errors along the way. As has virtually every American president (or other world leader), and this return to what's usual after Bush II has improved America's international image quite a bit (though it certainly hasn't recovered completely).
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Characterising PoE as "grimdark" is quite overblown, I think. Yes, it starts out with a tree of hanging people, but it doesn't keep that level up in any way. It does have a lot of darker stuff in it, but nowhere near the level of GoT or other books where everyone gets killed and then raped twice just because the author had a bad day. PoE has its Wichts (which is actually really disturbing, as is the whole Hollowborn business -
just take that animancer with the chest in the Sanitarium
) and its Purges, but they're there because story.
That is, IMHO, the main difference: The dark aspects of PoE are mostly part of the story. They're a temporary low point for you to overcome, and in the end, you do. You restore order to the world. The dark elements aren't there for background reasons to illustrate how the world works, they're there to give the heroes some level of involvement. And after they did their hero stuff, everything gets back to normal. Many of the ending slides have a (more or less) upbeat message. Not all of them, and it doesn't get to LOTR levels, but in tendency.
And the game promises you that. You suspect, and the longer you play, know, that your journey has something to do with the Hollowborn thing. It's not grimdark in general, it's dark at the moment, and one of the game's themes is to end this situation.
They usually try to paint a more grey-in-grey picture, and have more subdues tones than outright triumph in the end, that's true. But it's nowhere near as sh*tty in this world as the Hanging Tree promises.
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That Polygon article has a point - insofar as it talks about the a**hole-y reactions to Rust.
For the rest, The Witcher 3 is actually a very strange target. Race relations, minorities, prejudice and power play a huge part in the Witcher world, they're central to several main plots and permeate the whole setting.
It's just that it isn't white vs black. It's humans vs elves and dwarves.
It's not that the game doesn't care, or doesn't include minorities. It doesn't include a specific brand of minorities.
As the article mentions, Witcher 1 had an important character with mildly Middle-Eastern connotations, Azar Javed. (Incidentally, he was the baddie. I hereby reserve all rights to the respective outrage.) It didn't include (the fantasy equivalent of) Asian characters, or African ones, or Inuit.
Accordingly, Witcher 3 does have minorities. It's not minorities by skin colour, that's all.
And from a (Central/Eastern) European view point, that's actually quite reasonable. "Racism" (how it's used in this discussion) is not solely an issue of skin colour. Discrimination happens for all kinds of reasons, and skin colour is only one of those. By placing the issue in the fantasy realm, The Witcher avoids representing only one aspect of the problem, and puts it on a more general level.
Oh, and the part quoted above does move into dangerous territory. It may be only part of the article, but it's a central one, because most of its Witcher discussion comes from that.
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It's not negative reviews per se.
It's that excessive ranting and hyperbole weakens the argument.
If you have something to say, do it in a reasonable way. There's no need to throw insults around or descend into "really, this is the worst thing EVVAH!!!" No, it's not, obviously, and why should I take anything you say seriously after that?
Just letting off steam, is quite valid. We all need it from time to time. But I wouldn't expect people to call that a reasonable contribution.
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"Reasonable", to be honest, was not the word that came immediately to mind for the earlier rant. :D
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As "Have I Got News For You" put it: Blatter's re-election couldn't be called off, the votes had already been paid for. :D
While it's certainly good news, the thing is that those who are going to vote on the next FIFA president, on things like accountability, term and age restrictions, and everything else in FIFA, are exactly the same people who re-elected Blatter because they profited from his system, and who often are proponents of similarly corrupt organisations at the national levels (and that includes UEFA associations, as well). Change won't come easily; we can see this with other sports organisations like the IOC (probably slowly getting better) or the cycling federation (let us have a moment of silence for what was once a sport...) I can't say much about American sports.
We'll see.
As for the next World Championships, Russia is probably too soon to be called off, now. Also, playing football in Russia isn't an inherently bad idea. Qatar, on the other hand...
Romance Packs DLC
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Wizardry 7/8 - spacefaring rhinos with muskets!
Might&Magic 6 - shooting djinnies with blasters inside an Egyptian pyramid that is also a spaceship!
:D
A combination of classical fantasy with space opera still needs a special kind of setting, though. Romance, on the other hand, is one of the most basic preoccupations of living things.