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Enoch

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  1. Enoch
    The only U.S. state that explicitly based its legal system on the continental model is Louisiana. Apart from the core principles of separation of powers and a written constitution, the growth of statutory law in the U.S. wasn't an outright rejection of the English model or an adoption of the continental one, it was a slow evolution over time. Legislatures decided bit-by-bit that they didn't like how the common-law courts were handling things, and instead wrote statutes that they thought better reflected how the people wanted their state/nation to be governed. Eventually, it made sense for all these statutes to be tied together into a unified code on a particular subject. But courts still make rulings based on common-law precedents-- a fair amount of American contract law and property law, for example, still rests on principles that were first litigated in English courts.
  2. Enoch
    Just so it's all in the same place, Josh made a relevant comment on stat minimums in one of the response-to-gameplay-video threads: No real rationale, actually. They've just been set to those values for a while. I'll ask Roby to set the minimums lower for the backer beta. So it looks like we'll get a chance to playtest more-extremely-min-max'ed characters in the beta.
  3. Enoch
    It's been a while, but as I recall, Bloodlines was not an especially loot-heavy game. With only 1 character and with limited equipable slots, your progression was much more ability-dependant than it was equipment-dependant. I remember the best stuff being mostly available from merchants.
  4. Enoch
  5. Enoch
    The precise appearance of anthropomorphised embodiments of the concept of Death seems to me to be a culturally determined thing. I don't know if you can say much about what it "should" or "shouldn't" look like without a pretty strong background in the surrounding culture.
  6. Enoch
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk
  7. Enoch
    25 minutes?! Cool, but I guess this is going to have to wait until I get home from work. (And put the baby to sleep!)
  8. Enoch
    Twitter and beat reporter blogs have made following a team through the offseason rather exhausting. You hear about it every time a player gets up limping or goes to the sidelines, and wait with baited breath until the coach's press conference to see how quickly you should be giving up hope for the season. I'd kinda prefer the moment-to-moment stress of being a sports fan be confined to when actual games are being played.
  9. Enoch
    Makes for a release much more contemporaneous with Pillars of Eternity, for those planning on playing both. Given the likely relative marketing budgets, that is probably less than ideal for Obsidian.
  10. Enoch
    Tree Planted in Memory of George Harrison Killed by Beetles
  11. Enoch
    Yeah, given the increasing marginal cost of investing in abilities, it seems that a 1-point investment in a school is a rather efficient way to use a scarce resource. I've noticed that you can "forget" spells from your slots-- is it possible to fill those spots with higher-minimum-character-level spells later on? I get that the "do X damage" type effects would be less effective, but do things like high level summons also scale to ability-point investment? Glass Cannon seems to be a slam-dunk for any non-tanky character, no? Or would a party with 3 Glass Cannons, plus 1 warrior and a few summons be too squishy?
  12. Enoch
    My group is now level 5, and I'm trying to decide a direction to go with my wizardy-type character. I started him as a Witch, but I was slow to grasp how the skillpoint level-up worked. I initially thought there was a level threshold that was preventing me from adding a 2nd point to any of his skills. By the time I figured out that it cost 2 skillpoints to increase a skill to level 2, I had already raised a lot of skills to level 1 (every spell school but Fire). I now have 2 skillpoints "saved" and have to decide where to put them. And this includes some consideration w/r/t whether I'm planning to keep Jahan around, long-term.
  13. Enoch
    Go West. (Not the beach, but west out the gate near the mortician's house). Because you level up very quickly in early game, just doing a couple of quests in a slightly easier area suddenly makes a big difference in your being able to deal with those things. This is not the case in the next area (Silverglen), where you can do things in almost any order. Indeed. Amazing how much of a difference fighting 3rd-level opponents makes versus fighting 7th-level opponents. It was pretty much a coin-flip to me in deciding whether to circle the city clockwise or counter-clockwise. By choosing the "wrong" direction, I found myself using environmental hazards to win a battle that I was otherwise not ready to face. That's fantastic. It might well be the most memorable experience I end up having in this game.
  14. Enoch
    I've now hit the "mostly done with Cyseal proper, but haven't yet found a place to go where I don't get my *** handed to me" stage of the game. Orcs on the beach to the SW stomped me, so I marked that with a "go back later." Then I went out the North gate, defeated some zombies, and started circling the city, clockwise, hugging the wall and later the cliffs. Ended up in a "withered garden" with a number of entertaining traps and some nice loot. (My first orange-tinted item!) The 3 Skeleton fighters there were, again, too much for me (I think I was level 4 by then, but only barely), but I successfully lured them into the room full of fireball traps, which took out 2 out of the 3. I teleported the 3rd onto an explosive mine. Whee! I left there, rather than try my hand at what looked like a boss battle up the stairs. Took several reloads and one resurrection scroll, but I then dealt with some wolves and a friendly talking dog north of there. The dog ran off, afterwards, though, and I'm not sure what to make of that. Went back to town instead of chasing him. I suppose I'll try the northwesterly area next.
  15. Enoch
    That's pretty much the whole appeal of the game.Unrestricted looting in Cyseal and figuring out crafting recipes with adventure game logic. Don't rush those things as there really isn't much to the game afterwards. I was just trying to figure out if there was a "mix these things" button in the interface that I couldn't find. I was trying to right-click -> Use when I should've apparently just been dragging and dropping.
  16. Enoch
    So, playing most of the week in 1-hour nightly increments, I think I've gotten all I can out of wandering through Cyseal. Probably wasn't wise of them to put so much uninterrupted looking-in-boxes and talking-to-folks content so early in the game. The writing is okay-ish, but all the barrel-searching gets tedious. They should've dropped a fight or two in there for variety's sake. Dumb questions: I have loads of crafting crap, and no clue how to use it. I'd like to try crushing stuff with my mortar and pestle, or hitting things with a hammer, but it won't let me use them on the inventory screen. I did find and anvil and such in town, and I think I figured out how to use them (at least enough to get an "insufficient Blacksmithing skill" message), but the recipes I'm finding seem to indicate that I can make things with just the stuff I'm carrying around. I've gathered the two henchmen in town, but I understand that there is a way to get more custom hirelings. Does that open up later, or am I missing something?
  17. Enoch
    I think most party combinations can work, but you're pretty light on folks who can do serious damage. The best melee damage-dealers have GM in a weapon skill, and GM in either Dual-wield or Two-handed. (If the Hunter class can GM or Master two-handed, I'd put points there before I would Bow or Dodge.) The best magical damage-dealers GM either Fire or Air, plus Magical Focus (although, for the most part, melee damage is more efficient). It'll be a very durable party, with the best damage sink (Defender) and the best damage-mitigation caster (Druid), but expect some fights to last a long time. I'll add that the benefit from GM'ing a skill is disproportionally large. A character with 3 GM skills is usually measurably more effective than one with 2 GM skills and Expert level in 3 others. (With a possible exception of utility casters, where access to particular spells like Burning Determination (fire), Purge (dark), and Identify (primordial) are sufficient to justify expert-level investment all on their own.)
  18. Enoch
    As somebody who is just exploring Cyseal for the first time, I could really do without the RPG ritual of looking inside every barrel, box, and woodpile to find inventory-filler. It'd be a lot more fun if all that was closed off and the minor loot provided in more sensible ways. Then I could focus on exploration and talking to the important NPCs (read: chickens). (Also, I really should've saved before trying my hand at grave-robbing.)
  19. Enoch
    Infuriating? Really? They have the exact same meaning in all instances. I always thought it was more of a country/regional difference (though most technical writing I've seen goes with dialog). Regardless, I've seen it both ways with many dictionaries using log instead of logue as an acceptable, and often American, alternate spelling. Like how we drop the U in a lot words that end in our (honour, valour, armour, colour) or switch theatre into theater, drop the double L in travel(l)ed and cancel(l)ed, and change some S's to Z's like criticize and patronize But I'm no English major or even that good with even the most basic English so please feel free to disregard or correct me The way I've always understood it is that "dialogue" is a conversation between two human beings, while "dialog" is something that pops up in a GUI to inform the user about system status.
  20. Enoch
    It's probably best not to plan on GM'ing more than 3 skills per character. You might get 4 skills there there around the very end and/or DLC content, but by then it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. My casters are pretty close to the endgame, and the Archmage has GM'ed Air, Dark, and Magical Focus, with Expert-level investment in Prime and a toe dipped into Water & Earth, while the Runepriest had GM Earth, Light, and Fire, plus some support-skill investment (armor proficiency; the spell-point boosting skill) I think hybrids are viable, but they're best when built as a roughly 80-20 Might-Magic split. E.g., get one spell school to Expert or Master for backup healing or to provide a utility spell the rest of the party lacks. The exception might be the Crusader, who works best as a Light magic caster who happens to wear heavy armor and who can be a okay-ish melee character when not healing/buffing. I jumped right into the higher difficulty, so I don't really know whether the lower one makes the game feel less grindy. It's a grindy game by any standard, but it was fairly rare that I found it tedious.
  21. Enoch
    I hear you regarding the melodrama, but it'd be pretty tough to get more "contrived" than the main plots to Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic were.
  22. Enoch
    One other addendum (post-edit-deadline on the above): This game's consistent use of the term "dialog" to mean "dialogue" is infuriating.
  23. Enoch
    I never did understand the problem with the dialogue wheel. Do I want to pick from three-five lines of dialogue that may/may not represent what my character would actually say if I was doing a P&P RPG or do I want to pick from three-five "mood" stances that may/may not represent what my character would actually say if I was doing a P&P RPG? A bit "Six of one, half a dozen of the other" innit? I mostly agree, but I do like how a full-text listing can give you more than 3 or 4 options when appropriate.
  24. Enoch
    Okay, I bought this yesterday. Spent an hour or so mucking about with character creation, and settled on a Witch (with air magic instead of the default point in a saving throw category) and a Rogue (with the backstabby stuff subbed out bow skills). Hopefully I'll be able to find a meatshield hireling or two for them before my spider gets too overmatched. Anyhow, I played the tutorial dungeon and the orc encounter outside the town before calling it a night. It was getting late, and I wanted to make my level-up decisions without being pressed for time. UI headaches: Is there a way to just remove the chat window? Rather annoying how it keeps popping up even when I'm playing single-player. Also, is the camera-pan speed adjustable at all? It's manageable if I use WASD, but mousing to the edge of the screen causes my view to practically leap to the edge of the map. Can you pause the game outside of combat? I chased a rat halfway across the dungeon before I was able to successfully click on it for a conversation. (In hindsight, I suppse I should've zoomed in a bit.) Edit: Need I mention how difficult it was to resist giving both my characters giant platinum-blonde afros?
  25. Enoch
    Nah, Neeshka, Khelgar, Sand, and Qara would have survived. I liked those four. In Dragon Age: Origins I would have murdered everyone except Wynne and Shale. Wynne was cool, and Shale... I'm not sure how I would even go about murdering Shale. Dude is made of rock. In DA2 everyone but Varric would get murdered. Is it weird that I'm most offended you would've killed the dog? (Also, Qara gets to live?!)
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