marelooke

Made it to level 43 with my Wizard, she is still in Act II and judging as I'm still trying to "help" Kulle I fear I'm not even halfway through yet. I liked Act I, but the outside areas of Act II, not so much... Elite difficulty seems a bit all over the place, there's a few that really really hurt while others topple over with my sneezing in their general direction. As far as drops are concerned, someone told me to just salvage everything, does that still stand or should I start selling stuff to make some extra gold?

Early Access is a mixed bag. You have some games that are quite playable and well into the process and some, as you described, that are as alpha as alpha gets with nary a thing to do in them. This is the reason why I mostly stay away from them. I've gotten 2 early access games so far: Grim Dawn and Might & Magic X: Legacy. Grim Dawn is a game I've been following for years and supported long before their Kickstarter because I was such a huge fan of Titan Quest, so I got the access even before Early Access because of my pledge and I knew the game was in a decent state because I'm a regular on the Grim Dawn forums and had been seeing the progress closely. Might & Magic X I admittedly took a chance on because I couldn't help myself because OMG A NEW M&M GAME! I lucked out with that one since the Early Access was a decent chunk of fully playable goodness and the game turned out to be awesome when finished. So my experiences have been positive, but I'm still generally not going to buy Early Access games because I know stuff like what you described is lurking out there. Heck, even some games I have access to because of my pledge, like Divinity: Original Sin, I have not played because I simply would rather wait for the finished product. Same here, I've generally shied away from Early Access. The games I got early access to due to kickstarter I generally have a quick look every now and then just to see how things are shaping up. For example the D:OS alpha is quite playable, but they break the savegames with each update, so yeah... Also the UI still needs a lot of work imho, I wish they'd take care of that sooner rather than later, I have the impression they underestimate the importance of a good UI (rather typical for game devs it would seem, lots of games with horrible UX) Planet Explorers also seems to be shaping up nicely, though their heavy use of OpenCL makes my laptop rather unhappy so more testing will have to wait until I have some time alone with my desktop. Also Warframe (F2P co-op shooter) is celebrating it's one year anniversary this week, any casual players might want to go grab the goodies before they're inaccessible.

Well slapping on a bunch of "different" endings is easier than actually providing many actually different ways to get to the ending(s). I hear Consortium did a really good job in that regard, I really ought to get around to playing that game...

Ohoh... I just finished Act I and noticed Act II was a desert and deserts tend to be kind of boring...is it really that bad? Anyway, made it to lvl33 and just when I was seriously starting to consider replacing my Legendary Leoric's Crown a new one dropped. Convenient I upped the difficulty from Hard to Expert (as high as I can go for now) but didn't really notice any difference... Butcher fight took a long time, but it wasn't exactly "hard" (hardest part was staying focused for all of it really). Some ranged enemies can really hurt though, there was this one elite in the Fields of Misery that managed to kill me two of the three times I encountered him (seems I can't manage to reliably dodge his thrown spears) I must say that I'm rather enjoying the flexibility the abilities/runes system gives.

The first FEAR was pretty awesome imho. The expansions were a pain to get working on Win7 though as they are standalone and were never patched while the main game was. Iirc the workaround was running the expansions as administrator, but I'm not entirely sure anymore. FEAR 2 and 3 went the way of the Dead Spaces. Nice shooters, but the atmosphere of the first game was gone. Me, I'm most likely going to play Diablo 3 this evening, I just finished Act I so I've still got a ways to go I imagine. Act II looks like a desert, I hope it's a nice desert as I'm generally not too fond of deserts in games...

Quadro? Or no interest in TW3

Same here, the common argument on these forums seems to be "you don't need to force these changes in games to make a difference" I reject this as by including minorities and groups of people that have been traditionally discriminated against you help to change the perception *My* argument "against" explicitly including social issues is that they're very much linked to the time and place where they occur. For example: being gay is pretty much no big deal for the majority of the population here (I'm Belgian, our prime minister is gay. Seriously: pretty much nobody cared, it wasn't even mentioned in the news, I had to read on some international site that apparently he was the first homosexual country leader ever in the world. The fact that he was Orlesian, err, French speaking, now that was an issue worth writing about!). So any game about a squad of straight guys with one gay person in it is likely just not going to "click" here, just like a game that talks about the French-Dutch language issues in this country is likely not going to work too well abroad (while here it can be argued to be a much bigger issue than gay rights or gay perception). The other one is if you want your game to still be played in 10years the issue you might be advocating about now might have gone away entirely, or the perception changed radically making the story elements awkward or alien (one of the reasons old books are often really weird to read, our entire "cadre" has changed in such a way that we can't properly frame the things they're talking about anymore). Does that mean you shouldn't include lesbians, gypsies, gays and what-have-you in your games? Of course not, but making them into an explicit social commentary is risky and I'm not all that sure it's such a good thing to do. I mean, the gay romances in BioWare games, while oft mentioned are pretty well done in the sense that they're not bound to any local issues, the characters don't make a big deal out if it themselves. The fact that they're there is already promoting acceptance, I don't feel turning them into an explicit social commentary would help anything, rather the contrary. In the context of what Manveer Heir said how is this type social commentary risky or in any way a bad thing around changes to stereotypes in games and in the way that games become more inclusive of minority groups? I don't understand your objection to what he said ? As I said, social issues are location based (and time). What's an issue over there isn't necessarily an issue here and vice-versa. If you're releasing games internationally that's something to keep in mind but a lot of the stuff he goes on citing is directly USA specific (underrepresentation of Hispanics? Can't remember the last time I ran into a Dutch or a non-Poirot Belgian in a game, oh, or a non-Nazi German, for that matter). The end result is usually that we get some more insight in the social stuff that's broken in the USA (or Canada, I guess. And yes, I know there's developers/publishers outside the US, those are still a minority insofar the Western market is concerned though) but which is hardly relevant abroad (while obviously typical EU/African/otherplace problems aren't touched upon at all). Personally I would find the "gay soldier"-story to be seriously annoying as it was described earlier in the thread. People that get along work better together, well duh... Whether that one guy (or gal) is gay, asexual (now *those* are underrepresented), transsexual (ditto), bisexual, likes-the-sheep-sexual or stance-of-the-moon sexual is irrelevant. That particular case is just moralising and will seriously appear as such. If you're going to start playing to social issues (which are pretty much always *local* issues as even the same issue is not the *same* issue in another culture) you're going to run into problems very soon imho.

With the Diablo 3 promotion prior to the expansion release (and the enthusiasm of fellow forumites about the expansion) I finally bought the game (I know I am "seriously late to the Diablo 3 party, dude" as one of my WoW buddies put it). Having a blast playing a Wizard so far, made it to lvl30 in about 2 days. Started out on Normal got told to "ramp up the difficulty man, seriously", so that's what I did. Playing on Hard now, got a lucky Legendary weapon drop and now hard is starting to feel easy-ish so I'm considering going the final mile difficulty wise (no access to anything harder than whatever comes between Hard and Master until I either complete Act IV or hit lvl60) Dunno why but Diablo 3 is more engaging for me than Torchlight was (which I only play for an hour now and again until I get bored and go play something else), it definitely isn't nostalgia though, I never played enough Diablo to be worth mentioning and I didn't touch Diablo 2 at all.

Same here, the common argument on these forums seems to be "you don't need to force these changes in games to make a difference" I reject this as by including minorities and groups of people that have been traditionally discriminated against you help to change the perception *My* argument "against" explicitly including social issues is that they're very much linked to the time and place where they occur. For example: being gay is pretty much no big deal for the majority of the population here (I'm Belgian, our prime minister is gay. Seriously: pretty much nobody cared, it wasn't even mentioned in the news, I had to read on some international site that apparently he was the first homosexual country leader ever in the world. The fact that he was Orlesian, err, French speaking, now that was an issue worth writing about!). So any game about a squad of straight guys with one gay person in it is likely just not going to "click" here, just like a game that talks about the French-Dutch language issues in this country is likely not going to work too well abroad (while here it can be argued to be a much bigger issue than gay rights or gay perception). The other one is if you want your game to still be played in 10years the issue you might be advocating about now might have gone away entirely, or the perception changed radically making the story elements awkward or alien (one of the reasons old books are often really weird to read, our entire "cadre" has changed in such a way that we can't properly frame the things they're talking about anymore). Does that mean you shouldn't include lesbians, gypsies, gays and what-have-you in your games? Of course not, but making them into an explicit social commentary is risky and I'm not all that sure it's such a good thing to do. I mean, the gay romances in BioWare games, while oft mentioned are pretty well done in the sense that they're not bound to any local issues, the characters don't make a big deal out if it themselves. The fact that they're there is already promoting acceptance, I don't feel turning them into an explicit social commentary would help anything, rather the contrary.

I'd just like to point out that Anders' sexual orientation has nothing to do with my hate for him. Him being a whiny self-centered, self-pitying (I don't think that's a word) idiot otoh, has. I mean, even Fenris , the self-proclaimed anti-mage zealot, was more open minded than Anders (you can actually get him to fight at your side *with* the mages). I'll admit I didn't feel even a twinge of guilt running Anders through in DA2 and unless he actually grows at least a single brain cell I'll gladly do the same in DA:I. But now I'm eagerly anticipating being able to finish him off once and for all in DA:I (or make him the villain in some game, that would be a nice plot-twist )

As long as an Anders appearance isn't confirmed there is hope.

Thanks to the entusiasm of you guys I finally bought this game I'm a pretty awesome lvl2 wizard already! ( yeah, my time for games has been rather limited lately )

I bought it in a sale the other day (the version with enhanced graphics), so I intend to rectify that problem, now please don't hit me!

Looked at it, saw it was a mobile port, didn't bother looking further. Though I must say it is interesting that steam apparently banned the "mobile port" tag from their new user based tagging service. Wouldn't want people to make informed decisions I guess...

That's not entirely correct. Both Linux and FreeBSD are based on Unix, different flavors of Unix (Linux was based on MINIX, while FreeBSD was, as the name implies, based on Berkeley Software Distribution). Through POSIX compliance, which, to the best of my knowledge, both Linux and *BSD still strive for, there are a lot of similarities between the systems. That's still not 100% correct Linux was developed separate from other projects to be a UNIX-like kernel and wasn't based on Minix at all (Minix' license wouldn't allow it and Tanenbaum refused to change it). The BSDs are all based directly or indirectly on 386BSD which was based on the original BSD. The other part of what is commonly referred to as just "Linux" is "GNU"* which was developed by the Free Software Foundation to be a free (as in freedom) alternative to UNIX (iow be POSIX compliant and all that goodness). However, they lacked a kernel (well, they had one but it wasn't ready), which is where Linux came in: GNU + Linux = complete operating system. *just to be politically correct: I'm ignoring embedded use here (eg: Android) as it's perfectly possible to use GNU without Linux and Linux without GNU, though those are specialized uses and not really relevant to the discussion. Apparently NextStep (which forms the core of OS X) used bits of both NetBSD and FreeBSD while the OS X userland borrows mostly from FreeBSD.

Rofl. Perhaps you two should relax. I couldnt care less which OS anyone uses, or their skill level, or what market share Linux enjoys. I though we were having a simple conversation on why a user would choose Windows over Linux to game on and it is my opinion that ease of use is that reason. Nothing more, nothing less. Coming off as aggressive tools is bad form. I work in the software industry, and I use to work for Microsoft, and its funny how certain Linux and Unix fans are almost militant around there support for any platform outside of Windows. They seem to overlook the fact that for the majority of people the thought of installing Linux is a lot of hard work and they will battle to get decent support, warranties and some of there games and gaming hardware isn't even supported on Linux. Its fine if you personally know Linux and can effectively do your own troubleshooting but this isn't the case for most people The main difference between Linux or Windows for customers is the ease of interoperability and Windows wins that easily. This shouldn't even be a point of contention. I am not suggesting that some people on these forums don't prefer Linux, I believe that. But if I was developer and I had a limited budget I would have to be seriously convinced to create a game that also supports Linux because it makes more financial sense to create games for the Windows market, I also don't see any gaming benefit from a Linux game around factors like graphic settings and the required hardware Since you imply in your post that most of that also goes for non-gamers I'm sorry to say that that information is out of date as far as installation goes. Assuming you don't have weird hardware (and which "normal" end user has UltraSPARCs lying around?) GNU/Linux is generally *much* easier to install than Windows. The advantage Windows has in this arena is *only* the fact that it comes preinstalled on pretty much every preconfigured PC you could buy, which is a problem in and of itself. How to install Linux: insert CD/DVD: click next next next. Done. How to install Windows: insert CD/DVD: click next next next. Hunt down and install drivers, reboot 700 times. Install antivirus software. Find and install essential software (eg. Office suites etc, software to watch DVDs, burn CDs/DVDs etc etc) Note that if you end up with unsupported hardware you're just as much out of luck on Windows as on Linux (great fun if you have an unsupported network card). Actually, chances are bigger your hardware will work on Linux due to the shorter release cycle, so drivers for new hardware get added much much faster than to a base Windows installation. As far as support is concerned, I have no idea. But afaik you shouldn't look to MS for support as end-user (I don't know of anyone who has ever tried to get support from MS directly so it might be possible). I'd say that corporate support is irrelevant for end-users and that "some dude they know that knows" is usually how support is obtained. Now, when it comes to gaming peripherals you could absolutely be right, I have no idea how well controllers work on Linux (I know they *do* work though as I was involved in the Linux Gametome when it still existed and some people's games used them). Since most controllers/joysticks etc are just USB devices I assume adding support wouldn't be hard. Stranger devices (throttles, motion sensors etc) are probably barely supported as of now, then again, once there's a use-case for them they'd be supported pretty quickly in my experience. The one thing I will give you though that the faster development cycle of libraries on GNU/Linux system could well cause trouble for development teams unprepared for it. I've seen this with proprietary tools that hard link against specific glibc versions, breaking the entire application once the ABI changes. Dealing with this is going to be, I think, the biggest challenge. The advantage of playing on Linux is performance. I remember back in the day when UT was first available on Linux (it was very easy to install btw) and performance was just *a lot* better than on the same machine running Windows. I think much of the performance benefit *NIX systems have here comes from the file system. NTFS is *slow*. There's also less "bloat" running in the background in the system (though currently there's quite a movement to add more and more bloat to Linux, so that advantage seems to be fading, but I digress) As for disadvantages: well, most GFX driver companies tend to spend more time optimizing their Windows drivers, so if the bottleneck is GFX performance Windows will probably score better, if it's IO or CPU your game might well run better on GNU/Linux. Now all of that said, the convenience of installing games on Windows is currently still much greater (I don't run Ubuntu, so getting Steam to work is still painful for now*) something that will most likely change since both Valve as well as GOG have set their eyes on supporting Linux. *of course, if there ever is support for enough games that I want to play I might very well replace said Windows partition with an Ubuntu one, just for gaming.

Might as well join in: Shattered Steel: 0 MDK 2: 0 Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: 0 Baldur's Gate: 1 Tales of the Sword Coast: 0 (I really ought to fix that) Baldur's Gate 2: 6 or so (Wizard is the only true path, none of my other class playthroughs got very far) Throne of Bhaal: 1.5 Neverwinter Nights: 0.5 (gave up after Luskan) Shadows of Undrentide: 0 Hordes of the Underdark: 0 Knights of the Old Republic: 2 (light and dark side) The Old Republic: 1 (Sith Inquisitor, started a few other characters but the generic quests got old fast) Jade Empire: 2 or 3 Mass Effect: 4 (one for each romance and one romance-less, plus my very first playthrough) Mass Effect 2: 6 Mass Effect 3: 1 (started a second, didn't get very far) Mass Effect Galaxy: 0 (don't own any Apple devices and no plans on changing that) Dragon Age Origins: 1.75 (finished once as mage, nearly finished it as warrior, started a few other playthroughs and I played most of the origins) Dragon Age Origins: Awakening: 0.75 (got blocked from finishing by game breaking bug, haven't gotten back to it since it got patched) Dragon Age 2: 1.25 (started as mage, found mage to be annoying/boring to play, restarted as rogue, finished as rogue siding with Mages, started as warrior to side with Templars but got bored before I got very far)

You can completely ignore the microtransaction aspect. It's a good game, overall. But how's the atmosphere? I thought DS2 was a nice shooter with horror elements, but it didn't scare me anywhere near the amount the first game did (except that bit where ). I think the more streamlined combat contributed to that (in DS you sort of had this feeling you were in a heavy suit, so getting jumped from behind was baaaaaaad as you couldn't just spin around UT-style), but maybe knowing (roughly) what was going on also sort of dampened the scare factor.

Honestly, I think most people's views are a bit more nuanced than "Obsidian rockorz!" and "BioWare sucksorz!" IMHO: The difference between Obsidian and BioWare games is that the latter lack the soul of the former (while they also lack the huge amount of bugs Obsidian generally manages to generate) There's reasons why NWN2 > NWN1 and KotOR2 > KotOR1 and I'm pretty sure it's not just because it's big bad evil BioWare vs goody-two-shoes Obsidian. Of course both NWN2 and KotOR2 were buggy as hell on release (both also had rushed endings), par for the course for Obsidian (though I do hope they won't have this problem s much with PoE now that they get to set their own deadline), but even with all their defects I consider them superior to the BioWare predecessors (and I picked these two games because they provide a ground for direct comparison between the two companies) Now the "problems" with BioWare's later games are generally attributed to EA because "stuff" started happening after the acquisition. ME2's success formula got copied over DA:O's formula resulting in Dragon Effect. Simply because Mass Effect sold a lot better than Dragon Age (iow seems like a valid move from a financial perspective, if you forget that the target audiences for both games were rather different which was BioWare's stated reasoning for having the two franchises, if you recall). Then some of the bad stuff from DA2 got copied back over to ME3 (eg. the combat in ME3 is worse than 1 and 2 and more akin to DA2's, including parachuting in reinforcements, though it is less obvious in most of ME3 than it is in DA2) So yeah, with EA at the wheel BioWare has obviously moved to conquering a more mainstream market by streamlining their content and making everything more console friendly (imho the second reason why DA2 is Dragon Effect, is the mechanics from DA:O translated rather badly to consoles). I think it's understandable that there is some bitterness about BioWare becoming yet another EA "same-game-new-year factory" chasing whatever is suspected to sell best compared to following some clear artistic vision or experimenting with new ideas. I've long since given up on "old BioWare" (pardon the nostalgia) and I'm taking the games as they come and judging them for what they are, but I'm not expecting BioWare to do anything to "revolutionize" the genre as taking risks is not something that is, or ever has been, on EA's agenda (just look at TOR, it's basically World of Warcraft with BioWare storytelling). The one thing that does bother me with "modern" BioWare is their PR, they like to spin things to their advantage the same way you'd expect from any generic soulless company (iow, sometimes it's borderline lying). For that, I resent them (as I got caught by it with DA2). Now I just ignore all their PR and get my information from secondary sources (iow, I now treat them the same as any generic game developer), so it's at least already gone through a bull**** filter (thanks for that btw guys and gals) EDIT: typos

Yeah, I measure all the games I play to the same standard, instead of applying a different set based on what studio a game was made by. In fact, that probably IS a result of me being a lawyer. I hold sequels to the standards set by their predecessor(s), and DA2 doesn't hold up. It's a reasonably pretty hack & slasher with boring combat and a shoddy story and even though I wanted to see the other one of the two endings I abandoned my second playthrough very early on. If I had to score it I'd probably give it 65/100(*), if I had to score it compared to DA:O I might give it 20/100 and I sort of wish reviewers would also make that distinction as being a sequel there's certain expectations that are set. Big departures from core mechanics are usually a bad idea and just ripping out tactical combat when that was one of the main features of the predecessor is not going to go over well (among other things). The way BioWare handled the entire thing made my respect for them plummet into negatives, but that's not relevant to my opinion on the game (although it is very relevant to the likelihood I will pre-order any of their games again). Another recent example would be Tomb Raider (the new one), it's a good game and I enjoyed it, but if I had to score it as a Tomb Raider game it'd fail miserably, unfortunately the reviews only take the former into account which imho gives a very skewed view on the game. * the scores I've used here aren't really well thought out, it's very possible that if I'd bother to write an actual review and work out a proper scoring system they'd be rather different. On topic: I had some good fun being a dictator in Tropico 3. Though I never managed to get a decent education system going. Oh well, at least my coffers were full and the uneducated were easy to push around

The MMO I enjoyed best was EverQuest 2, which I stopped playing because they kept streamlining it (read: WoW-ifying) (well I also had a lot of fun in World of Warcraft during The Burning Crusade, but after that expansion things kinda went downhill faster and faster) EverQuest 2 had a nice skill system that left room for "fun skills" on top of all the must haves for an "optimal build" (and unlike in most MMOs what was "optimal" was often debatable), it had a huge world to explore with lots of old, dusty and forgotten corners you could re-discover and some dungeons that actually required puzzling to get through (loved the haunted mansion). They also had a nice system that allowed high level players to help out newer players while still getting experience out of it but without leaving them with all their high-level power, it even worked reasonably well. Being able to use whatever gear you wanted as "appearance gear" was pretty darn cool as well and often a reason to go on some epic quest to obtain a certain good looking item. Of course, having your own house that you could decorate and stuff with trophies of victories past was also a very nice touch. And you can play as a Fae (or an Evil Fae, can't remember their name though). C'mon! The negatives for me were a very crappy game engine and total disinterest from SOE to actually maintain the game (read: buggy resource hog, compared to say, WoW) and the inability of paying subscribers to play in the F2P servers with access to everything the sub entitled us to (that killed it for me, since my friend didn't want to sub and I didn't want to ditch my guildies. The GMs being rude and unhelpful about it didn't help any either). The raids also sort of sucked since it was pretty much impossible to get the timing right on a lot of bosses without third party (paid) tools or lots of trial and error. That said, as a mmoRPG it's still the best I've played and I've actually considered resubscribing now that it's supposedly out of the hands of SOE. I fear it will get killed by whatever new EQ game they're working on though, which will most likely be just another generic WoW clone with a few "oh wow" features they'll use as an excuse to claim "it's different" (Rift and TOR say "hi!") I'm also a sort of EVE player, as in, I still have a sub running and occasionally do stuff but to actually really enjoy EVE takes quite a lot of time imho, time I currently do not have. But flying around and enjoying the sights doesn't get old.

This. The BG2 romances worked because they didn't end once you did the deed, they continued and had a lasting effect on your relationship with that person. Sex shouldn't be the goal of the relationship, it should just be a side effect. They also at least felt as if they occurred over a much longer period of time your party spent together, which imho felt a lot more natural and I wouldn't even be surprised that if you went through the game really fast it was possible to outpace the romance code since iirc romance events were at least partly on a timer so they didn't just occur at fixed points in the narrative. With AAA games seemingly becoming shorter and shorter (I wrote down how long I took to finish each Mass Effect game the first time through, iirc it was something like 60,40,30 hours for 1, 2 and 3 respectively, and I'm a completionist.) relationships feel more and more unnaturally rushed, especially since they don't occur on a timer but at fixed points in the narrative, so if you somehow have a few "major stops" in a row you get a lot of character exposition in a short period, if you then go a-side-questing nearly nothing companion-character-development related happens anymore. Anyway, let me return to the campfire/ship and hear what my compatriots have to say, because they're damn mutes when we're at the pub. (which is another problem imho, interaction in the BG games was random, so while the dialogues were mostly the same between playthroughs, if, when and where they would occur could vary greatly, sometimes leading to really weird and hilarious scenes* or conversations happening at rather odd moments, like right before you get ambushed or some romance dialogue triggering on a graveyard) But maybe I'm just looking through the rose-coloured goggles of memories of fun times past. * (minor) BG2 spoilers:

Only if you bought them through GFWL, if you got them on disc you didn't need GFWL for anything.

Interesting (imho) interview with Swen Vincke (also linked from the latest KS update, so you might have seen it already) about the role of user feedback in Divinity: Original Sin's development, some history about Larian (which most here probably already know) and a little bit about their (possible) plans for the future (apparently he's not exactly opposed to making a non-fantasy RPG, huzzah!): http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/05/larian-on-near-closure-divinitys-future-gender-parity/

The level I'm talking about is the Kshatriya level from the Factions DLC, it's the only DLC level I'd really recommend (the rest is imho rather average) Also, looks like Survarium is a MMO, bummer. Still keeping an eye on it since, well, seems to be the closest to Stalker 2 we'll ever get