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If you say so. I find that standing idly in the open gets me killed just as quickly as it did back in ME2, and unless I aim real good and land a headshot, the Claymore isn't a reliable one-shot-one-kill tool anymore -which is why, coupled with them doing away with the reload trick, I no longer use that- so I don't think the player has been significantly buffed other than by tweaking cooldown mechanics. The real balance changes have been applied to the MP portion of the game only, as far as I know. Balance? Bwah it's worse that ME2 there ( talking about Gold, you can solo Bronze and should have an easy time on Silver with pretty much every char ). Shots from nowhere, paper cover, powers and mods not working properly and gazillion health on the enemies, not to mention that from all the weapons most are completely useless. Well, Gold IS supposed to be hard to beat. I agree though that the bugs aren't cool. I've lost count of the times I've become locked out of the map after Charge bugged on me. Mobs can somehow still kill me, even though I'm floating a hundred meters above the ground, though. Mad skills. And don't get me started on connectivity problems. I must have roughly a 50/50 chance of d/c before matches end. Lost connection on wave 11? Sorry, you get nothing. That's not only bad netcode, it's poor design right there. Still, pretty fun for a while.

Yeah. What exactly is going to be the art director's role in a project that basically has all the art already done? Just for the new areas then? Bah, even I, the pussiest of **** gamers have no problem with those. Wasted resources, working as intended. True... Must be pretty cool to never fail a save. And no, that sort of thing is deffo not WAD. I guess all this longtime fan "support the bestest game evar" talk comes apart when you start discussing the actual game. Of course, I understand how zoom is way more important than silly, peripheral stuff like bugfixing. Ah, why do I bother.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/taliban-commander-turns-self-in-for-reward-on-wanted-poster/2012/04/17/gIQAbVjqNT_blog.html It's funny 'cause it's true.

^Yeah, peeps have found creative workarounds such as making Imprisonment work as a long-duration Maze spell and petrification a stun-like effect, but charm is still a problem. Especially if you are soloing.

If you say so. I find that standing idly in the open gets me killed just as quickly as it did back in ME2, and unless I aim real good and land a headshot, the Claymore isn't a reliable one-shot-one-kill tool anymore -which is why, coupled with them doing away with the reload trick, I no longer use that- so I don't think the player has been significantly buffed other than by tweaking cooldown mechanics. The real balance changes have been applied to the MP portion of the game only, as far as I know.

That's... disturbing. Seriously though. Since you are apparently following this quite closely, have they mentioned any changes to common hardcoded annoyances? I'm thinking stuff like <CHARNAME> petrification/imprisonment = game over, fully charmed party = game over, etc. That's the kind of thing that should be a piece of cake for pro developers to fix, but has been known to cause no end of grief to players.

ME3 Insanity is easier than ME2. I'm not sure why that is, but I died all the time in ME2 and in my current Insanity playthrough (2nd overall) I'm beating most encounters in the first try. And I'm definitely nowhere near those Vanguard pr0s posting crazy no-cover Collector ship vids at the Bioboards. My main beef with ME2 gameplay was that it felt... random. And quite clunky, for a shooter. Enemies routinely shooting with pinpoint accuracy through cover -or not hitting despite having a clear shot- always focusing on the player, regardless of everything else including their own safety, and squadmates reduced to little more than warp bomb helpers. All of that seems to have been, at the very least, disguised to be less noticeable in ME3, so the game is more fun to play. I'd still like to have a greater variety of enemy skills and more consistently interruptable insta-kill animations, but this was a step in the right direction, for sure. Shame it doesn't have a plot to go along with the improved gameplay.

I'd hold that judgment until we see this "extended cut" thing they are putting together... D:

Hurlie, don't you get it? Video Game relationships= Virtual Harem. No point in them having a life without being at your disposal 24/7 Funny, because while you can still **** them (provided you did back in 2), they aren't interested in joining Shep, for some reason. So it's not really the harem thing, but rather, how their "going on with their lives" is presented. It's nicely handled for most characters - Grunt, Zaeed, Jack, Thane- but some others just make no sense. I mean, Jacob? Suddenly Saving The Universe is no longer his thing and he'd much rather make babies. Can't blame him, but come on. It's especially bad if he was Shep's LI in ME2, I hear. There is no good reason why Miranda couldn't join the crew after doing her thing, either. "Admiral" Tali? Why am I not even given the chance to have her stay with the Migrant Fleet, you know, like ****ing admirals are supposed to? On the other hand, they did give us EDI cameltoe.

Yeah, looks like I missed something, alright. I checked Giantbomb et al and Watamaniuk wasn't listed for ME3. But in the in-game credits, he does indeed appear as lead designer. I guess the in-game credits are the go-to source for this. I was also misled by the fact that Watamaniuk is known to be working on TOR... can't say since when, though. After reading on it a bit more, it seems he took over Christina Norman's duties after she left. I'm not sure what that means. My bad.

Makes sense, if you think about it. Good organizational and project management skills aren't something most people are born with, exactly. So maybe, just maybe, the project lead for ME3 was in over his head. It's odd, because while both ME and ME2 have a "lead designer", there is nobody credited as having that job for ME3. You can also see how the lead writers changed from ME to ME3 and, coincidentally, main plot quality has seen a very steady decline. The question is, will something be done about that? Does anyone at EA/BIO care? Are they even aware there is a problem? They did receive over 9000 perfect scores, after all... I think the narrative is... different. BG2 is a huge game, but the plot is thinner. The game is full of moments, but the plot was never meant to be as cohesive and intense as in ME, the designers' vision for which is, apparently, pretty much an interactive movie. In BG2 sub-plots and secondary characters are on the spotlight more often than the main plot -for which the game did draw criticism, what with Act 2- but it works because of how the game is presented. BG2 has way more meat plot- and gameplay-wise than any ME game, but the cracks are harder to notice because the main plot isn't being shoved down your throat continuously in the form of unskippable cutscenes.

Mmh, I refer to what I posted in the other thread, there were obviously some very talented writers (and designers) working on this game, yet there are some macro level issues throughout the game that actually snake into the "micro" towards the end of the game (basically Thessia onwards). Not sure if they worked on the game chronologically and just ran out of time, or if their resources were directed in the wrong places or simply if their project direction bit off more than they could chew. Some of the "support X or Y" moments are, oddly enough, better presented and played out than main plot knots. Ration medical supplies or try and help everyone? Militarize C-Sec or emphasize its policing functions? Is existence dependant on life support really "life"? Whoever said that this game feels as if it had been basically bolted together at the end of development hit the nail on the head. The difference in writing quality between different parts of the game is... gaping, to say the least. I wonder how much Karpyshyn's departure from Bioware has affected the quality of the end product, if at all. Oh well. Since I'm having more and more trouble enduring the plot and it's mostly the action segments that keep me engaged, maybe I should give MP a shot after all.

At this point, I'm going to recommend two things: 1.- re-read the thread and find the original post which originated the whole exchange. It was, in fact, parroting. 2.- go for a walk, work out, jack off, whatever gets the stress out of your system. Before you get an aneurysm. Or, you could, you know, keep trying to get under my skin. Good luck with that, though.

Not repeating PR talk as if he actually knew the details of what he's talking about would probably help. The crystal ball thing would probably get him equally accurate results. Or are ex-Bio's devs statements supposed to be free from scrutiny, now? Lol, whatever.

I have two games in my HD at the moment. TWO. One of them is BG2-BGT. So it's not really a matter of "liking" the game, but rather a matter of being kinda fed up with fake advertising. Boo was making claims regarding how awesome this is going to be but, it turns out it's basically copy-paste work from the devs' Twitters - nothing but puffery, nothing concrete, as I said. It's funny too, because he's one of the most jaded posters here, ever, with his perpetual "everything since BG2 is crap yadda yadda" routine. Not so funny being on the receiving end, I guess. Maybe you do purchase games out of some high moral principle... I don't. I shell out the dough when I have a fairly good idea of what exactly I'm getting and am sure I'm not being played for a fool - in short, when I think I'm getting my money's worth. Yeah, yeah. I'm a "tight-assed", evil consumerist, etc. Deal with it. Sure, supplying grief is my specialty, I'm sure you agree. So how about a little consistency? I know it's too much to ask that if good ol' Imoen got chunked by some mean hobgoblin back in the Cloakwood, she shouldn't miraculously appear in Chateau Irenicus, but what about Jaheira and Minsc? I'd also like BG2-style dialogue and banter for BG1 characters, and maybe the possibility to take them along for the ride in BG2, too. What about a bit more support for evil parties in BG1? It kinda breaks the game that an army of those Flaming Fist clowns keeps teleporting in my face even before I'm done with the last bunch just because I killed some NPC that had had his class set to "innocent" deep in some woods where nobody could possibly have known it was me. So either they end up killing me or I break the game due to the XP I get from killing them right back and selling the loot. Remove that Malchor Harpell wanker. No, really. And by "remove", I mean "disintegrate", Irenicus-style. WeiDU support. Avatars from the other IE games, especially for planar creatures. There's a mod that does this, but it's a chore to install. Oh ****, I could go on all day, and none of those are really unreasonable or unfeasible. That's the kind of thing I'd be willing to pay for.

We tried running a V:tM campaign over IRC, which Ender graciously offered to GM. We used IRC because it was cheap, unobtrusive and offered inbuilt die support in the form of bots. Only lasted for a few sessions mostly due to trouble getting people from different timezones to agree on (relatively) reasonable schedules, and Ender ended up burning out. It was pretty damn awesome, while it lasted. The thread with the session transcripts should be around here somewhere. If you can get over the organizational problems, you'll be on for some nice roleplaying with peeps here.

Sweet, a direct Alpha Protocol reference. A pity they ultimately decided to adopt the exact opposite design philosophy and, you know, make major decisions not count for ****. I lol'd

Thematically it makes sense that taking decision making code from individualistic AI like Sovereign or Harbinger and adding it to collectivist AI like geth would convert them to an individual model. Practically too it's perfectly believable that adding code from an individualistic AI (reaper) to a collectivist AI (geth) would have that effect. I feel more inclined to believe it's the Enhanced Emotional Impact than a code injection thing as, from what we know about them from what Legion says, Reapers are in fact closer to the geth AI architecture than, say, EDI's. Frankly, I wasn't impressed by Bio's blatant attempt to ingratiate Legion to players even more by making it an individual in the traditional sense, thus undermining the defining trait of geth sentience. "Anthropocentric bag of ****", to quote an actually interesting character. It's funny because Bio writers seem to go from doubting their work enough to revise it to conform to trite conventionalism, to huge ego demonstrations, as illustrated by the way the endings were devised -if rumors are to be believed- and how the fiasco is subsequently being handled. edit: oh yay censorship.

Nice dodge bud, but no. I'm not doing the legwork for you (much less on Twitter. Ugh!). I was simply curious whether you really knew any actual details about the new build beyond "ZOMG mousewheel zoom!" or just buying into the hype. Shame it's the latter.

Yeah, that's puffery, so I expect that kind of talk to appear in the devs' Twitter and ****. But, since you are apparently paraphrasing, maybe you can explain in detail what "a complete graphical overhaul" exactly means, considering that "the details of which aren't all clear at the moment". And while you're at it, maybe elaborate on what that "plenty of new content" actually is...

I sank an absurd amount of hours into DDO - don't know whether I should be excited or worried.

At least those didn't force you to endure endless unskippable cutscenes. D:

From the DLC press release, this is more or less what we should expect as far as "clarification" goes: I kind of admire that they are sticking to their guns, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the ending(s) are nonsensical, feel forced, don't work with the overall tone of the series, and pretty much fall short of being adequate for a RPG. Good thing it's just the last 5 minutes.

You only get banned if your SP mods also affect MP, apparently, which is understandable. Just keep a backup coalesced.bin for MP play and you should be fine. Code-injecting stuff such as Texmod is probably much harder for the Origin anti cheat system to pick up, and I'm guessing it could be used for wallhacks, etc. But I still don't understand what is the point of cheating in co-op.

I was afraid of that. Doesn't matter that they are limited to two weapons - for all I care, they can go with just one. A very, very light one. Overload spam is all I really need from them. Two? Nova and what else?