marelooke

That's why I bought a mechanical keyboard, except these are nowhere near the standards that IBM used to have. These guys still make the original Model M (in the same factory) http://www.pckeyboard.com I use one at work and still use my 1993 IBM Model M at home. How well do those work to game on though (thinking Unreal Tournament and the likes)? I've been considering a mechanical keyboard for a while (though probably not a Model M because the noise those make would make me rather unpopular at work. I used to have a colleague who had one and had to ask him to stop typing while I was on the phone with him because I couldn't understand a word he said. Also I prefer keyboards without slanted keys, much better ergonomically, though still fairly rare, alas)

One of their problems is their approach to rogues isn't what most people associate with rogues. The classes are Warrior, Also Warrior, and Mage. Haven't looked closely at DA:I's classes yet but often I feel that there is: tanks, healers (luckily one can often get away without a dedicate healer role), ranged dps, melee dps, just like in MMOs. Whether said ranged dps is a mage or a warrior specialized in archery makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things as aside from "flavour" they often play pretty much the same in combat. On top of that they usually give every melee class insane distance closing abilities such that being melee (rather than ranged) becomes rather irrelevant (eg. DA2's rogue/thief/whateveritwascalled) since getting around the battlefield is so easy that zero thought is required about positioning and the like (it's why I swapped my mage for a rogue in DA2, sturdier, same amount of damage and didn't run into LoS issues due to being on the edge of the battlefield). I especially dislike specialized tank/healer roles (the addition of such to DA:O is one of the things I dislike most about that game, especially since you already have such a small party of which one will pretty much have to be a tank, iow Alistair or Shale (or the PC)). The idea of a "tank" that "taunts" enemies (always wondered how you'd taunt something undead, "Hey you, zombie dude! Yer mom!") but does about zero damage is a (mostly) MMO mechanic that's been bleeding through to single player games. It might've been an overly simplistic mechanic, but in that respect I preferred the IE games' "first come first get punched" attitude to encounters, especially combined with the enemies going for whoever hurt them the most, resulting in the player not being able to go bananas with their wizards unless they wanted to get more attention of $ENEMY than was healthy. EDIT: a quick look at the (horrendously slow loading) DA:I website tells me that the holy MMO trinity will be present again, just like in DA2.

Many people were wrong then Irenicus' Dungeon was a major part of the story. I can't blame them for wanting to skip it the umpteenth time through though (same as the entire Asylum/Underdark thing getting a bit old after the 7th time through) I'm OCD enough to always go through it, and then be annoyed by it, but I'm quite willing to accept that that is just me

I bought Dead Space 3 recently despite it being on Origin (due to it being on sale for a price I deemed acceptable ). Combat seems to be more clunky than I remember. I mean, I get hit way more often and Necromorphs in general seem to be faster and tougher than before, guess they want to force more use of stasis. There's also lots more of them on average. Seems they just went full out for a shooter feel (get jumped by loads of necromorphs all the time, spam health packs). The weapon upgrade system also seems more complex, I personally don't really care for it very much so so far it hinders me more than anything. Also I was aware Ellie got a makeover, but good lord, it's looks even worse ingame than on the screenshots I saw. Was that seriously really necessary? And then she runs around with cleavage that wouldn't be out of place at some award ceremony, seriously is Isaac the only one with enough brains to wear a space suit when visiting derelict spaceships?

Those statistics to me say more about how acceptable it is for a woman to go to the authorities about it (and be taken serious) than about the actual number of rape crimes that happen.

Character creation should, as has been pointed out before, come first, before any intro sequences. Personally I'd prefer BG2's solution of making a dedicated tutorial level, entirely separate from the game, over making the first area of the game into a tutorial. Imho this solves two common problems: * having to go through the darn tutorial each time you start a new game (= annoying) * having to use Google or restart the game if you missed something in the tutorial or took a long break and could use a refresher (happens to me pretty often)

The only micro-managing I remember doing in DA2 was picking particular party members. I probably also occasionally made them quaff a health potion, other than that I don't remember there being much reasons for touching them all that much. Yeah, I'm not sure why this is seen as a step forward other than making the game arbitrarily more "hardcore." Wasn't it Avellone or Sawyer who pointed out that drinking a health potion when your health is low is neither difficult nor tactically interesting? To me, this should go into the dustbin of RPG features, along with "pre-buffing." Whether regenerative or non-regenerative health are a good idea depends on how they're implemented. If it's more trouble to find somewhere to rest than to push through with less than maximum health then I feel it adds a tactical aspect, assuming the game is designed in such a way that going forward without maximum health is a viable option. I more often find myself think "meh, he'll survive until my other character can murder the hell out of his assailant(s)" when the health just regenerates after a battle. Otoh if that's not the case I'll be a lot more careful with positioning knowing that otherwise I'm stuck with a squishy character on low health for however long it takes until the next opportunity to heal up. I also find it slightly more enjoyable to come out of a battle severely bruised with the knowledge that carrying on is probably not a very good idea so I can return whence I came, heal up and go elsewhere rather than just getting wiped out. One could argue that this is possible with regenerative health as well but I feel that there a "close call" doesn't deter as much from trying to press onwards into territory above one's level anyway. That said, I dislike prebuffing, I'm not psychic

Ehm, nobody wondered where the skills are? Some kind of hotbar would be really nice, instead I see useless buttons for stuff like settings, the journal et all. Quite a lot of people will never use these once they learn the shortcuts and being able to free up that screen space for more useful stuff would be really nice. As would a way to do most things with shortcuts of course, in BG2 I could do pretty much everything (including casting spells) using only shortcuts, freeing up the mouse to be used solely for environment interaction, which was really nice (and one of the reasons the PS:T UI is one of the worst ever, sorry, it sucks). Another more recent game with a rather good UI was Dragon Age: Origins btw.

Woohooo! Just be advised, one of their beta testers was **** enough to leak their beta and forced them to release the mod before they intended, so don't expect it to be in perfect state. I have been waiting for this mod for years, and nicely put I hope the leaker gets cancer in his willie. There was even talks of some sort of deal with them and GSC, but that apparently went down the drain as a result of the leak. Some people really have no sense of honor.

I'm currently playing Demonicon, mopped up the first two bosses. There seem to only be a few spots where you can make a choice that has any impact and other than those binary choices the game appears pretty railroaded which is rather annoying as the decisions made by the characters (PC icluded) are often rather nonsensical (putting it mildly) Had to drop my new FEAR playthrough due to my laptop not being able to handle it (Intel graphics card... ), it will have to wait until I have more reliable access to my (ageing, but still with a much better graphics card than the laptop) desktop. Tried to get my girlfriend into Jade Empire, but all the talking at the start ended up being way too much (and watching her play it made me realize how much bloody talking there is early on)

I don't see how this is not relevant (though the respective merits of the services are, of course, not relevant to the subject at hand). EA is trying to force people towards Origin, it's that simple. Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 3 are not available through Steam either (or any other means besides Origin, afaik. Even the disc version of ME3 *requires* Origin, which really pissed me off btw). I find this trend of (single player*) games being tied to some digital platform disturbing, even more so if they're tied to a very specific digital platform (fwiw, Skyrim being tied to Steam *really* pissed me off as well, especially since I bought the disc version just to avoid Steam) * Yes, yes, I'm aware of ME3's multiplayer and it is my personal opinion that they ought to have used the money they wasted on that crap on creating a decent single player experience instead. Shame poor you, don't you get Steam or Origin in your country? Is that why you don't like them? I'll make videos of me playing DA:I and I'll share them with you, that will be almost as much fun as you playing the game itself Getting trolled for stating facts, not something I'd expected from you, Bruce You ruined my faith in humanity, now I'll go back to my corner and cry

I don't see how this is not relevant (though the respective merits of the services are, of course, not relevant to the subject at hand). EA is trying to force people towards Origin, it's that simple. Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 3 are not available through Steam either (or any other means besides Origin, afaik. Even the disc version of ME3 *requires* Origin, which really pissed me off btw). I find this trend of (single player*) games being tied to some digital platform disturbing, even more so if they're tied to a very specific digital platform (fwiw, Skyrim being tied to Steam *really* pissed me off as well, especially since I bought the disc version just to avoid Steam) * Yes, yes, I'm aware of ME3's multiplayer and it is my personal opinion that they ought to have used the money they wasted on that crap on creating a decent single player experience instead.

You're eating at a restaurant, the staff gets a few order mixed up making so a few expensive meals go to wrong people and they have begun to eat them. Then they take the food from away from everyone and start the meals again. Bet that will go over well with the customers, the management and their pockets. The players; even those that exploited the bug, might not feel that they are at fault. After all they weren't using a cheat engine, they were exploiting a failure in the product, so the onus lies with the maker. Especially if the maker was aware of the mixup before the food actually got served to the customers.

I don't know that anybody expected TESO to be bug free and now we have evidence why: Bethesda are hacks. This is a very interesting article and has serious future consequences if not addressed I have solution. You wipe every item and all currency from every player, you leave each player with a few basic items and 100 coin. This applies to every player, no exceptions. This may sound draconian as the obvious argument is " why should a player who hasn't exploited the system be punished ". But to be honest you can gain the items again. The reality is I don't know now how they are going to fix this imbalance. Its much harder to address then people may think And if they just leave it then it will start utterly destroying the game economy as time goes on, so rather do something now that may sounds drastic but will fix the problem And do this every time something like this happens? Because, trust me, this is the first, but it won't be the last time (and no, not because it's Zenimax, but because MMOs are complex software, even EVE has had it's fair share of similar issues and they take their in-game economy *very* seriously). If you can't detect it after it's happened you're stuck with it imho and you need to find a more creative way to deal with it. And Zenimax should probably do some serious auditing as to why such a game-breaking bug that was apparently *known* made it into production. Wouldn't be surprised if heads are gonna roll on this one (whether it's the right heads that will roll is another matter entirely). If they do go ahead and roll back *all* accounts (which I think would be a big mistake) they should at the very least compensate all players with a free extension of their subscription for their (Zenimax') ****up.

That sounds about right Aaaaaaaaaaah, my eyes, it burns! What a fugly layout is that? (not that I'm too bothered, but does this mean all the DA:O achievements, screenshots and stuff are going away as well?) I don't think I've visited, much less posted to the BioWare forums since around the DA2 release and this ugly white sterile corporate layout and attitude certainly aren't going to draw me back... The assimilation now seems complete, every bit of old BioWare has been stamped out. Let's hold a minute's silence for our fallen comrade.

Pac-Man, or: how relativly simple individual behaviours when perfectly combined create a great overall impression and near infinite replayability. I found this talk about Pac-Man's mechanics to be really really interesting: http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

NOTE: *minor* spoilers. TBH I thought the story started out very strong but really took a nosedive in the second half of the game. I get that Lara is supposed to be inexperienced, but apparently that equals "stupid" (it also doesn't hinder her from turning into "the terminator" halfway through the game); I facepalmed (hard) irl when she actually shouted at someone dragging a kidnapped person around. I mean, really? Ok sure, in my experience I keep my cool better than most, so maybe I can't properly relate, but I'd certainly expect that very quality in someone who's supposed to be a "leader" and a "survivor". That was the most prominent example, there were a few other things that bugged me (like her hiding things from the rest of the group for no good reason resulting in more trouble down the line). Personally I also thought the ending was pretty weak and no real reason was given why she'd continue digging through tombs after such a harrowing experience. Most sane people with that much money would stay the hell away from trouble after that. I mean she lost how many friends on that adventure? In other news, I started playing FEAR again. Damn those newfangled shooters with their aim help and other crap have made my aiming skills weak...

It was bizarre how the game completely ignored the wound from the beginning. Wolverine regeneration ftw Yes, the focus is way too much on graphic killing for my tastes. In the new Tomb Raider everything wants to kill you and you need to kill everything else, either because its an obstacle or for xp and salvage. Well they had to replace all the puzzling by something... Guess they went with combat. While I never actually finished a Tomb Raider (I think I quit the first one after Palace Midas). I always thought the level wide puzzling was a defining characteristic so I'm somewhat sad the puzzles have been relegated to very small and very optional puzzle rooms. If I get in a Stalker mood I tend to fire up SoC and not CoP (and certainly not CS...) I guess I just like the premise and atmosphere better in SoC. If it were possible to run SoC in CoP's engine I'd be all over that...

I'm not surprised it got cancelled. As an EVE player (well, mostly a skillqueue knight lately) it was fairly obvious that WoD was on the backburner. Maybe they'll come back to it later but what I'd really like is a proper (spiritual) successor to Bloodlines.

I dunno, I thought the good pacing of scary moments added a lot to the atmosphere. Actually being able to go around in a situation you know is totally messed up for quite some time without anything extraordinary happening builds up a lot of "Omg omg, it's been too long since **** went down"-pressure for me (Dead Space 1 also managed this fairly well). Most games just go overboard with rubbing it in your face (Dead Space 2 and FEAR2 both fail in my book in this respect, so don't get your hopes up too much about FEAR2, I'd say. The first one is the best one, by miles) I'm not sure how much you learn about Alma in the first one, I thought it was quite a bit if you were as OCD as me about finding all the telephones in the office buildings, and, of course, the mystery obviously also adds to the atmosphere... (btw, did you play the DLC? They're worth it imho, just keep in mind that most things that happen in the DLC get retconned in FEAR2) Personally still going strong in Diablo 3, added Adria to my list of bosses my Wizard took down on Torment 1 difficulty (so far Belial and Urzael were the hardest two by far, haven't tried Malthael yet though, putting that off for later, much later)

Thanks to Indira's extensive report a bit earlier in the thread I realized my Wizard was kind of ready for T1 (~500k damage, 2.2m toughness, ~380 resist all) so I started off easy (*wink* *wink*) by trying to kill Urzael. Ouch. But I managed it after a whole bunch of deaths (that fight has made me seriously wish I could zoom out further) So far I managed to kill Urzael (hard), The Skeleton King (easy), The Siegebreaker Assault Beast (easy) and Belial (hard) on T1, not sure if there's an enrage timer, but if so I was probably skirting it on Belial as he started one shotting me with his swirly pool spam move, took me quite a bit of swearing to get him to eat dust. I must say the difficulty on T1 is seriously spiky. Usually I mow through packs quite easily, but then I run into some really annoying combinations that just rip me to shreds as if I were made of paper. One of the most annoying combinations I had yesterday was Thunderstorm + Jailer + Frozen + Teleporter. Blink and Wormhole weren't enough to be able to dodge enough of their stuns (had a similar pack but with that arcane AOE orb instead of Teleporter which was even better fun, especially in confined space ). As for Crusaders, they now have a 15% reduction to all damage taken since the last patch, my (low level) crusader certainly started feeling a lot more sturdy all of a sudden.

That looks *a lot* like the one from EVE Online, they aren't using that one perchance? And yes, for a game in which you pretty much never see your character EVE has a stupidly advanced character creation tool. Also I am not too big a fan of these overly detailed character creators, especially when I cannot easily (and for free) go back to my character and change my choices later. I pretty much never end up with a character I'm totally happy with and I very often end up with really weird colours (since nobody ever bothers adding tooltips to color picker presets). Bethesda games are especially bad in this regard as they tend to prefer really messed up lighting conditions for their character creation tools (Fallout 3's one caused lots of trouble for people with "normal" colour vision, let alone those with a visual handicap)

It's certainly the game with most Appeal I ever played. For some reason Belgians seem to make very good games, must be the oppressive boredom. Funnily enough I knew the date of the kickstarter about a week ago but forgot about it. I'd prefer a sequel straight off the bat but I will be contributing towards the HD anyway since they've said it will be DRM free and Outcast is one of my favourite games, of all time! Funnily enough I had to resort to WikiPedia to find an actual claim that they are a Belgian studio, a claim which appears rather arguable as their HQ is in France according to their website... No idea what "oppressive boredom" is supposed to mean, so can't comment on it. Would be interested to hear why you think we'd be bored though. EDIT: just noticed the KS page says Namur, Belgium. Guess they haven't figured it out themselves yet.

Took the advice of you all and grinded my way to 70 before fighting Malthael So I ended up being Paragon Level 8 by the time I faced Malthael: I must say that Malthael was a pretty ridiculous jump in difficulty compared to everything that came before (well to be fair there were some elite packs with totally ridiculous ability combinations too), I ended up dialing it back to normal because constantly getting one-shot on expert got old pretty fast. Now that I have some better gear and have seen how the fight goes I'll probably try it on whatever difficulty I happen to play at at the time.

Nice one Indira! You certainly level faster than I do Finally made it past Adria: Picked up one of those big-ass swords which makes my wizard look pretty ridiculous: Just entered Pandemonium, Malthael should be close now. and judging by my leveling so far I guess I'll be about lvl66 when I face him. Maybe I should just farm a bit until I hit 70...hmm, conundrum... One thing I noticed is that some of the maps in RoS are really big, Act III style big, being the completionist that I am this has been a bit annoying (I'll just clear this one map and then I'll stop... )