majestic

Uh, sure. That wasn't at all about Blizzard mishandling what could have been a decent response to class necessity in raid setups. Party only buffs weren't an issue way back during Wrath and that was before "bring the player, not the class" started. Bring the player, not the class substituted certain class based raiding slots for parsing based raiding slots. Or in other words, why bring a shaman if a mage can bloodlust as well, is more mobile and does more dps? Except for the cases where encounter design "fixed" that. Our hunter once had to flop out his undergeared rogue for Valiona & Theralion heroic. Cuz bringing the class to that encounter trivialized it (well technically it trivialized the added mechanic of the heroic difficulty level).

Careful with the flamethrowers lest you end up like Anthony Peter Coleman:

Meh. I'm getting a little envious. I have a ton of vacation credits that I can't use at the moment. I'd like a job where nobody would miss me for a week or two.

That would fuse Origin, the Windows store and Steam into one massive market behemoth over night. The prospect is as terrifying as it is hilarious. But Microsoft + EA + Valve = 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. HL3 confirmed!

Here's one for Ben, assuming he actually reads this thread. Eh well, something for everyone else: Have "fun".

As I said what I know of the Hero Engine and the way other games using it went (Faxion Online lasted three months) I'm pretty sure the problems run so deep that they are, essentially, unfixable. Not without what amounts to constructing a new engine anyway. Back when SWTOR was released and the game got a lot of flack for the engine IF (or someone from Simutronics, not sure) came out of the woodworks and claimed that BioWare licensed a very early version and insisted on finishing it in-house, blaming the poor performance on BioWare. Oh and yeah, we had a nice little "what could have been" in the dedicated SWTOR thread not too long ago. So much... wasted potential. Loved the raids though, every second of it. Asation and the Dread Palace rank among the most atmospheric experience I've had in MMOs. Mechanics and difficulty wise games like WoW were ahead, sure, but in terms of pure enjoyment and game world integration BioWare was just so much better than everyone else. You're also right of course, the first few months were difficult for players. Most quit, understandably. It certainly looked like EA forced an early launch to not miss the holiday season and to capitalize on WoW's somewhat dwindling subscriber base at the time (Cataclysm was a terrible addon). Also I once read an interview with some of game designers that worked on SWTOR where they thought they had two or three months before enough people reached maximum level and seriously participated in the endgame. Well reality ensured and players were 50 two or three days after launch. 's just another case of game developers not knowing how their own game plays.

Oh, BioWare can modify the engine, and they did, heavily so in certain parts. It's just a messed up pile of garbage that is essentially unfixable except by relplacing it - compounded by the fact that BioWare acquired it in a very early stage, but the current ones aren't that much better anyway, and IF who bought all the rights to the Hero Engine from Simutronics is in financial dire straits and has been for a while now. And actually BioWare has done an impressive job with it. It's just not noticable because hotfixing that requires some downtime is ridiculous in this day and age, especially when compared with Blizzard who can hotfix parts of WoW on the fly. Idea Fabrik, before their problems, offered the "HeroCloud" service where licensing the Hero Engine was relatively cheap for a cut of any future profit of the game - and hosted by IF, on their servers, maintained by their engineers. Patching something in the HeroCloud had a one week preparation requirement and always came with a downtime of at least 8 hours. And this was with the most current version of the engine, in 2015... with, uhm, 7 years after BioWare acquired the engine specifically because it was supposed to allow live game development (i.e. the option to change the game assets in real time while playing, which is why it makes for really good rapid prototyping, see TSO). Oh and IF promised DX11 (yes, 11) support for the Hero Engine years ago. As of mid-2017 it was still... on the roadmap. Go figure.

Now I have flashbacks of my reloading orgies in the Resident Evil games. "Oh, wait, I can do that using two less bullets." *reload* The fourth one was particularily bad. Finishing the game with 20+ Magnum bullets is a complete waste.

Oh, nice. That means I'm buying SteamWorld Dig on the Switch as soon as possible. Started Darkest Dungeon on the PC after getting it on GOG though. Okay so I'm 10 hours into my campaign and I figured out what the classes do, how the mechanics work and a bunch of my heroes died due to bad RNG (currently the game is really fond of making me eat three times on short missions, geez), and a bunch more due to bad decisions. I mean what could possibly go wrong exploring that last room even after finishing the quest? I just wish the upgrades weren't that expensive. Even with extinguished lights and on high risk missions the rewards appear a bit paltry compared to the costs. =/

A nice e-mail reminded me that I forgot to pay my motor club membership fee. Somehow slipped my mind. Must be getting old. *sigh*

There's also often some cutting involved. I remember discussions with fellow posters way back about Sailor Moon and I was a bit surprised in just how much content disappeared in the english dub (e.g. the first season finale going from a two-parter to a single episode where nothing much makes sense).

On one hand, realistically I'm with KP on the issue. We'll never see a GRRM written end to his series. The best we'll get is someone else finishing it for him (imagine for a moment the utter horror of Elio and Linda being allowed to do that). On the other hand, buried beneath the cynic lies the hopeful guy who started reading the series two decades ago. The one who actually hopes against all reason that HBO pushed the final season back to not come into conflict with the book release schedule. Oh, wait. He's submerging again... and gone. I'm not buying the book even if it does come out. FU, George.

q3dm17, when picked by utter b00ns. Ah, whole nights of joy.

Regarding controllers I'm the odd one out. I hated every PS controller so far, no matter which one, and I also didn't like the Duke - even though I have really big hands (I also use a small mouse for all my gaming needs, currently a Logitech LS1). The Switch Joy Cons are okay as long as I don't use the clip-on controller pad. The Nintendo Pro controller is pretty good, the XBox S-controllers are also nice except for the terrible D-pad. What I really liked so far is the nVidia Shield controller, except for the start button placement. If I could freely choose I'd play everything on my GameCube controller. *sigh*

Seconded...

Grabbed Steamworld Heist as per recommendation here. Enjoying it so far.

Seconded... Black & White, Diablo 3 prior to Reaper of Souls, WoW: Cataclysm, all of the StarCraft 2 campaigns and Hellgate: London aaaaand... Halo. Or make that Bungie shooters in general, I've tried the free Destiny 2 trial recently, reached level 2 and quit. For good. There's something about their games that just isn't for me.

The comments on Breitbart are hilarious. Like what comments? He didn't just fly too close to the sun here, he dove straight into it, total self immolation. https://www.axios.com/behind-the-scenes-of-bannons-exit-1515533804-334c36b1-5af4-4ba8-a7ae-e63786a552b4.html Just tried finding the more hilarious ones at the article, but many of them have gone. A large bunch of comments is apparently sympathetic to Bannon while earlier today everyone was screaming to lynch him for being the second coming of Judas, Betrayer of Trump, Great Prophet of MAGA.

The comments on Breitbart are hilarious.

Oh, yes... a couple of games managed to make me all teary, e.g.: Planescape: Torment made me misty eyed - Sending your companions back to Sigil, particularily Fall-From-Grace. There's only one though that made me bawl my eyes out (repeatedly, even after knowing the almost inevitable outcome of the story) and that was Kana – Imōto (Little Sister). Googling too much might be NSFW considering it is, in the end, an eroge visual novel, albeit one that uses the sex scenes for storytelling purposes instead of being gratuitous and masturbatory or the end-game goal itself. Oh and there is a censored, sexless PSP version for everyone grossed out by the, uhm, theme of the game. For those who like visual novels but not eroge...

Also, Metal meets 8-bit:

GTA, together with Worms and Mario Kart, gave me the most fun I ever had in multiplayer. In the literal laughing out loud sense of the word.

That depends solely on his /played. I have played WoW and SWTOR with alternating subscriptions (roughly the same price) for a combined playing time of well over 10.000 hours - at a rate that's around 0.1 to 0.2€ per hour played. Out of all the games I paid for myself only Path of Exile has a better ratio - and that's one of the few F2P game with a fair business model.

Started playing Steamworld Dig 2 and Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch. Shelved Cuphead for the time being after finishing it - I'll be back to finish it on expert and S-Rank the remaining bosses but I'm a bit burnt out right now. edit: Can't type any more. Meh.