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limith

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About limith

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  1. Storing save-games (or INI files or any other user-specific data, for that matter) in the application directory itself is a bad idea. It makes the application directory more messy, makes it more difficult to re-install the application, makes it more difficult to migrate the user-specific data to another PC or to make a backup of it, makes it impossible to use the same application installation from different user accounts without affecting each other, makes it impossible to maintain a proper filesystem security scheme, ... It's the old-fashioned Windows way of doing things - Mac and Linux have moved away from this long ago, and Windows is now also slowly following (since Windows 7). I think PE should follow the official Linux way of organizing application-related files, in order to keep things clean, neatly separated, and secure: The application is installed into a directory on the system drive (like "C:\Programs\<application>") to which only the Administrator has write access, but every user has read access. The installed files are never modified in any way when the application is used - the only scenario in which they change is if the Administrator installs a patch or new version or uninstalls it altogether. When the application is run from a user account from which it hasn't been run before, it automatically creates a set configuration files and a save-game folder, mod folder, etc., inside a directory to which this user account has exclusive read and write access (like "C:\Users\<username>\Application Data"). From then on it uses those files whenever it is run from this user account. In fact, under Linux those user-specific application files are further separated into two directories: One for machine-specific settings, like INI files that specify the screen resolution, sound volume, ... - i.e. things which you will probably set to a different value for each PC/laptop/tablet on which you install the application. One for all machine-independent data, like save-games, installed mods, INI files that specify game difficulty options, ... - i.e. things which you may want to sync between your PC and your laptop/tablet, so that you can continue playing on the train where you left off at home. The advantages should be apparent. Hiding savegames in obscure locations which require changing folder options to show hidden files and going to C:/Users/<USER NAME>/AppData/ and then looking between Local/Romaing/LocalLow or a variety of other locations is bad and not an advantage at all. Keeping save games in the installation itself should be an option in the installation (Wesnoth and Recettear have this for example). What you described isn't the "Linux way" of doing things, its the way of old fashioned annoying Windows games. A MINORITY of windows games support dual-booting/running the exe in any remotely portable way. Supporting Dual Booting is also good for portable gameplay, for example if PE was installed to an external harddrive, one could pull it off and play it on a variety of different computers (assuming same OS ofc). Quite a few programs that run or are distributed on Linux in fact do not have mandatory installers at all and are simple archives. I don't understand what you mean by what's the point. There would still be an installer to unpack the game, all I am saying is to make it so that the game (the executable) once installed doesn't require me to re-install it on another OS just so the game installation is put into the registry. It's not insanely hard to put an .ini for pathing.
  2. I like how some indie games are dual/triple/etc boot friendly and store save games in the installation location and do not require a re-installation from the separate booting OS in order to play. If it is possible, I would like PE to be able to run without having to re-run the entire installer which adds stuff to the registry so the .exe doesn't throw some error about the game not being installed.
  3. As a player and a member of an indie development group (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?554-Darkest-Hour), I disagree with the OP regarding DRM, but I agree with the OP regarding what the community needs to view piracy as. I personally think DRM is a waste of time and effort, and any custom DRM used by Obsidian will not only cost money (servers for activation, support, etc), but also be a hurdle for people who hate DRM. It will also be cracked on day 1 or very soon. Serial codes and things like that are acceptable and relatively cheap ways of having DRM, but those are probably the easiest to crack, and in the case of DA:O (where people got invalid serial codes with their game), can cause a nuisance for players. I do miss the days when you could just pop in a disk and install, and I think DRM is one thing that hurts the PC industry. Yes, there are lost sales due to piracy, and it isn't good, but you have to weigh the costs of running DRM vs the benefits, and I don't think it works out since people with low Marginal Willingness to Pay will still refuse to pay, while people with high Marginal Willingness to Pay will pay at launch. People will low MWTP will likely pay for the game once it goes on sale, which is similar to price discrimination. Better alternatives would be to emphasize rewarding people who do pay. Make tech support exclusive for registered players. Offer beta patches early to registered players (and the community would need to get together and avoid releasing those), or other rewards. Make it so that while pirates will inevitably have access to the game, they will have access to an inferior game, instead of making so that the legitimate purchaser has an worse experience (Digital Download edition of Mideval 2: Total War from Gamersgate requring a DVD to play, or just requring stupid things like that in general) !
  4. The board games in Assassin's Creed 3 are acceptable minigames. The naval battles are an acceptable "side game" that still gets boring after a while if they didn't add the full sync conditions that are very hard to do. Lockpicking or other mandatory annoyances are not. However, minigames in AC3 are a waste of development resources for something like PE unless a dev has free time they are killing and it doesn't affect game development. Just my 2 cents.
  5. It's a single player game. Make no-reloads for ironman mode. But that aside, I don't support hurdles to reloading.
  6. I don't have that much experience with old RPG's, but here are some: Dragon Age: Origins Haven't used the crafting system (there is one via some mod I have, I don't remember, it's called enchanting I think), mostly since either my characters use a mod item (it's an item/armor set) or new and better loot is sufficient for me. Kingdoms of Amalur Wanted to use the blacksmithing system, only to be dissapointed that NOTHING I could make after disassembling EVERY excess item I got in a campaign into components (and getting all flawless components from the DLC diplomacy trade mission) would beat a random item drop/unique weapon. Utterly useless. Also crafting and trying to sort through which component is actually useful vs junk components takes way too much time and effort. KOTOR (playing it free online as a pure "single player" game instead of the MMO they are trying to sell) Don't use it. Waste of time getting components, and I keep finding better gear after every mission everyway. Also annoying how components take up inventory space and aren't explicitly marked as separate from the hundreds of "This item has no use, sell me" drops. Recettear (http://www.carpefulgur.com/recettear/) You craft most good things and can also find them. Crafting is fairly useful to get better gear, although the need for such gear is dubious (mostly just getting enough health items seems to be the key for me, I never have enough food). Collecting things takes too much grinding though, and a lack of in-game reference for where to grind (+ the very RNG) makes looking up a wiki mandatory. Fire Emblem(s) You can spend money on improving gear which is useful I guess although I didn't exactly use it until relatively late since items break way too easily in the game. I did play around with it since I abused the gladitorial/arena system by purposely not finishing levels and cycling characters in and out to farm them to level 20 (turn 500 on some levels+). Kamidori (Not Safe For Work) Yes, I know it's a Ero-game. It's also a TBS RPG with (via the unofficial english patch) a superb (imo) crafting mechanism and (could be improved somewhat in integrating the information when viewing items instead of making it be a separte menu but still okay) in game reference that is much better than the other RPG's above. While you do get good item drops, they don't appear until late game, and many times you do want to craft additional weapons anyway which may be situational beneficial (due to affinities) as raw stats are not necessarily the best (not to mention custom crafted items are often better than the rare drops, rare drops are good mind you, just that custom ones are even better). Late game the crafting list becomes a bit hard to manage (since some earlier tier items become essentially trash), and the non-weapon furniture stuff is kind of...pointless since every drop late game is better than what you can create. Still, it remains useable due to good grouping of similar items in one spot. So, to sum up, crafting has usually proven to be a big waste of time in most RPG's I've played, unless crafting is an integral part of the game (Recettear, Kamidori), so I don't have much hope for it in PE unless they take the time to integrate it into the rest of the game well. Simply put, I need to have a reason to craft an item instead of knowing that I will get a purely better drop the next dungeon via loot anyway. Also, transferrable stats could be useful (similar to Fire Emblem improving items) if I like an armor set but want to upgrade. Staring at all those unique armor sets in Amalur I never use since they are non-optimal. Things I would like: -In game reference of drops (toggleable in settings revealed as you find them/ all the time), locations (toggelable in settings revealed as you find them/all the time), and uses (toggelable in settings revealed as you make/all the time) instead of forcing me to go to wikia to look up where everything is. -Actually useful things to create. Perhaps with unique abilities that help turn the tide in combat. -Separate from regular items in inventory -Organize components well, into tiers or something (maybe even a filterable list!) I don't want a long list that's mostly unorganized (a la Amalur or DA:O) -Improve armor/weapon/etc system so my armor sets don't become useless. On a side note: the list reminds me how useless shops are in Amalur, DA:O, and KOTOR since everything is overpriced on buying and I make do perfectly with the drops I find anyway. It's sort of an immersion breaker since it makes me wonder how DO the merchants make a living, and also makes me wonder how come my enemies have so many high gear armor/weapon when they are so expensive...the enemy army must be bankrupting someone based on the prices in the shops.
  7. I prefer to have the stats on hand over flavor text if they are short on time, although flavor text is still a plus. Second the DA:O thing about useless tooltips. There's a decent mod out there that fixes most of it. I was surprised to find just how little the recommended stats for certain classes were actually used in skills (the tooltips say that cunning is used for skills...yea...like...2 skills on my rougue, that's it. Everything else was flat something or other).
  8. While lock-picking mini-games are fun for some, I personally dislike then after the first few tries as I find them an (for me) annoying unnecessary waste of time. They can also be a balance breaker (ex. me being able to do Very Hard locks in Amalur requring only 1 pick manually at level 1 regardless of difficulty with enough patience and never losing anything without anything invested in lockpicking, while auto-pick requires I level up the lockpicking skill to not lose picks). Another thing that irks me about games with lockpicking is that my character (or party character) doesn't automatically get better at lockpicking even after who knows how many locks I have picked, unless I specifically invest skill points (or something similar) in lockpicking. You'd think that past experience would make my character be a better rogue... Lastly, on a side note, I really like and dislike lockpicking in Assassin's Creed 3. Like since it (to me) seems to be more creative/original than the Skyrim/Amalur method, dislike since it's not really optimized for the mouse as it is for a controller's stick which is easier to only go up/down or left/right while the slightest twitch on my mouse seems to make it fail. If I had to do something like that for many chests (which thankfully there isn't in the game) in an RPG though, I would be very unhappy and look for a mod to remove the mechanic altogether. TL;DR: If there is a lock-picking minigame, it needs to be non-frustrating on a keyboard+mouse. What is your opinion on lock picking minigames? (I did a search, and nothing on the first page seemed to match this, sorry if this was discussed before)
  9. Regarding the Blu-rays, did you take into consideration archiving? KGB Archiver supposedly is very good at getting files to their minimum size.
  10. http://en.wikipedia....ki/KGB_Archiver Solution for Blu-Ray disks. Many games nowadays in download are over 20 GB in size. Total War series for example.
  11. Graphics can be modded...look at JB3 Mod for DA:O. I would like to have realistic models though, ear placement on DA:O models is incorrect, I can set it to smallest and lowest position and it still doesn't reach the same height as the bottom of the nose.
  12. i expect 1 delay, or barring that, some features to be cut and then released in a free patch. Estimating time is hard in the game industry, and the software industry.
  13. I wouldn't mind a random quest generator system similar to the Assasination quests in Assasin's Creed. Just something to do in end game. I don't want main quests to be repeatable though, and I dislike repeatable task quests since they stay in my quest log. I reallly want random quests though (put in a separate part of the quest log or given a different minimap icon would also be good if they are possible before major story quests or side quests are completed)
  14. That's the thing, why do you have to start with the same equipment? What with the souls and all, there could be an element of minor "story" and/or lore which is only unlockable or revealed on the second playthrough (cryptic questions that you couldn't answer on your first playthrough). The equipment you crafted and named yourself now drops in your second playthrough (late-game). I would like to see a New Game+ which is a fresh New Game from the very beginning (with level 1) where you don't have all the gear and loot from your previous game, but perhaps you get a slightly quicker start (as an option) to start at level 2 or perhaps even level 3 (outrageous!). Perhaps there could be a secret dungeon that didn't exist, but in this parallel universe (2nd Playthrough/New Game+) it exists. I wouldn't mind such an option for NG+, but then, why not simply spend that time and effort on making the base game that much better? A NG+ option as you described it could, potentially, make for a great addition in an expansion pack, or major content patch. It'd be a fairly cheap way of somewhat refreshing the experience of playing through the original game, and it'd give you a reason to play the game from the start before getting to the expansion content (assuming expansion content is available at the end of the game). I still can't help thinking that their limited time would be better spent working on quests & dungeons available in the base game, making that reason enough to start again from the beginning to explore new avenues. Because it gives you an additional reason to play the main game over again with different choices, and you can have harder enemies at earlier plot times for those unlocked side quests in a NG+ which may not be realistically possible on a first run through without tons of grinding (which I dislike). NG+ could be used to, say, import your non-combat abilities to allow you to better explore earlier areas as well (in the Kickstarter update they said for example you could learn the true name of an enemy or something) or find other secrets that aren't unlockable in the first run through. Replayability is something I look for in RPGs.
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