Gorth

Start of old Thread End of old Thread Previous discussion ended at: Had a bizarre urge to wave a light saber way back in October. Buddy is replaying so I figured I would finish the download. Neat that the female IA and Ciri have the same voice actress. Keyrock kept posting images from Mordheim - City of the Damned, so when I noticed it on sale for 40% I bought it today and is currently downloading it. I guess between us, we are the Lost and the Damned... Edit to add: Also grabbed a Bioshock trilogy pack for around 5-6 Pounds. Not sure what that is in Dollars, but it is dirt cheap.

Corporations always scare me when they become too big and influential. Nothing good for the non shareholders ever come of it. As for Microsoft, it's a question of control. It's no secret that they've been envious of Google for many years (hands up, who checks Bing before Google when using search engines?). That's why they want to get rid of your privacy as much as they can get away with (every metric they can wring out of you about your behaviour and what you do can be sold to the right buyers). Now they seem willing to sacrifice the sale of Windows in order to get people on a platform of no return. That Windows is destined to become "Software as Service" is something I haven't been able to find any reliable sources for. I would say no, you are not paranoid, alternatively, I'm equally paranoid. If it wasn't because the company I work for uses it on their work laptops, I wouldn't have it inside my walls at anytime.

You know you are getting old when you actually struggle to think of a game you are looking forward to...

I guess cheese includes everything from Gorgonzola to Blue Cheese (both of which i love on pizza)? Where is the love for olives? I love those French thingies, Nicoise or whatever they are called. Don't be fooled by their dark colour, got nothing to do with the crappy black olives. Otherwise ham/chicken and tomato based sauce (unless one of the above 2 cheeses present). PS: Anchovies are excellent together with hard boiled eggs instead of salt and pepper, but not on my pizza.

Had an interesting experience yesterday, eating scotch eggs for breakfast. I love to heat them in the microwave for a few minutes and then have it with some spicy sauce. Well, yesterday was a bit different... poking the thing with my fork, it exploded like a hand grenade, sending egg "shrapnel" in all directions. I probably sat for all of 5 seconds, staring at my now empty plate in stunned disbelief. The noise was quite impressive too, sounding like an exploding light bulb. Then i couldn't help burst out laughing at the absurdity of it, while slowly starting to gather some towels, water and soap. Today i still find "debris" from yesterday, clinging to the underside of cupboards, the ceiling, the far wall etc. Talk about surprising food

He is a demagogue and even though I can recognize his skill in industry and business acumen he also represents the worst aspects of Capitalism He is arrogant, dismissive. bombastic and has very little regard for the consequences of his words or views. ...and a history of bankruptcies where others are left to pick up the bills. Funnily enough, the costs of his business misadventures roughly matches his estimated personal fortune He reminds me a lot of Silvio Berlusconi. Except Berlusconi is the more successful business man. Edit to add: Funny thing about the British system, if a petition gets enough signatures, parliament is required by law to debate it: MPs to debate call to ban Donald Trump from UK

I would recommend trying a few. Even if it's a complete disaster (which does happen in pug groups, especially with too many new people in the group), it's still a fun experience and the older operations has quite a bit of story built in. It does require people to know their class though, as well as more than just the bare bones basics of their role. That being said, they have removed so many mechanics from the SM operations (they are still in the HM ops), that apart from ravagers and temple of sacrifice, it's more tank and spank mixed with the fundamental basics (i.e. don't stand in circles, push appropriate buttons etc.), none of which requires lightning fast reflexes (heck, I'm getting close to the half century mark)

Kotfe was a nice story. Problem (for me) is, it felt like a big QTE with very little player agency. Soloed a few H2 star fortresses before, during and after the companion nerf and reversal. Completed a few "6 packs" with friends, guildies or pugging. Probably wont bother getting an alliance specialist beyond my current highest ranking one which is rank 12 (Admiral Aygor on my Powertech) Simply too much repetitive grind. Did a few of the heroics. Just isn't fun when all the story parts have been removed and only the kill x enemies grind is left. Watching with mild amusement how people are flocking to the way too easy EV HM for the 220/224 gear (and fighting like hyenas, ninja looting, name calling etc. that comes with it), thinking yeah, way too go Bioware, not only no new operations but also making the current oldies completely pointless and obsolete by making top tier gear so easy to get. Mostly just pugging a few sm ops theses days, turning it into a sport getting 6 piece (216 gear) set bonuses for as many alts as possible.

I would probably add Knights of the Old Republic 2 to the list today. Best music in an Obsidian game ever.

He made some good late 80's rock too when part of Tin Machine... RIP David Bowie http://youtu.be/ivRtxulMics and a decent live performer too (not the best example, better videos out there)... http://youtu.be/KGRIwlxLgc0

To be fair, the food in German supermarkets and grocery stores is atrocious...

Yeah, Sand/Killian/Visceris/6foot invisible rabbit etc. rip. We miss you. Haven't seen taks in ages too. Hope Colorado is till on the US map

I do. You're right. What looks good on the training dummy doesn't work in "real life". For a long time, progression raiders dropped all melee classes except powertech/vanguard dps (for the hydraulic overrides and sonic rebounder spam). Assassins, Operatives and Maras (plus their pub side counter part) simply didn't stand a chance in the piss poor encounter designs in the SoR operations. Everything was specifically designed to keep melee players away. Mostly of the type involving templates with aoe damage centered on bosses. Sword Squadron, Underlurker (the lurkerlings does more damage to anyone closer than 10m to them) etc. Good luck trying to survive on a melee class. It became a challenge all on its own trying to carry 2 melee characters at one point. Bioware and their metrics... when their data analysis showed the majority of players preferred their companions with no pants, they wrote a script to streamline the process for players (j/k) Part of Biowares new grind campaign. Now you can do mindless crate grinding for alliance influence, mindless gift grinding for companions and mindless grinding of old heroics (to make suure your really feel the grind, they removed all the story parts and left just the grind parts) for credits and crystals (and crates). Having a main stat was too confusing for new players. So it got stream lined away. Same thing with critical and surge stats. You can now play the game from origin world to end of makeb just spamming basic attacks and not worrying about any gear, roles or game mechanics (and it *shows* in the group finder). They have put a lot of effort into removing those vendor. After first removing them from fleet, it looks like they are now going through planets and removing moddable gear there too. You are of course welcome to spend the cartel coins buying a few packs from the cartel market and hope you get some nice moddable gear there. To be fair though, with the new appearance designer, you really only need moddable weapons until you get the level 65 gear from the supplies section on fleet. Appearance designer alters your appearance regardless what gear you are actually wearing. Blue and green gear can be bought and replaced for their stats while your looks stays consistent with the "skin" you slapped on top of yourself. As for experience points, the "tactical" flashpoints gives so many, that if you can stomach that Chinese torture, you usually get enough xp for at least 1, sometimes 2 entire levels during a single flashpoint run.

While watching the movie, I just kept thinking of Harry Potter villains whenever he was on screen ...and 'Snoke'? Seriously, SNOKE??? Nothing Harry and Hermione can't fix with a wand. Yes, those two characters were a complete failure in my book, not enough to ruin the overall enjoyment of the movie though. It was fun watching Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher again.

For the first time in living memory, I've seen 2 movies from start to end. First I went to the cinema and saw Star Wars VII and then my brother gave me a voucher for one of those streaming movie services that danish cable providers offers, so i could see 'Minions'. I loved those little yellow buggers, their antics, pseudo language and the humour.

New York cantina tour October 2014 Summary from Dulfys site (you would need to find some video of the Q&A to get the exact conversation now, if such exists) (because of the excessively long time between Dread Fortress/Palace and Ravagers/Temple of Sacrifice) "Why so long between Operations? Looking ahead at the project plan they knew this was going to be a problem. However they only had two options that they could realistically go with. The first was to release an operation before the expansion, but have it quickly become obsolete come 3.0, and only have one operation available with 3.0. Or they could wait and have two for 3.0 but have a really long time without anything. It was really crappy and high end PVErs got “f*****”. It is something that they don’t want to ever do again (have that much time between operations)." So the goal was never get anywhere near 12 months between operations again. That was 14 months ago the last pair was released now and unlikely to be anything released the next 6 months for end game content. Edit to add: You could argue that a statement of intent is not the same as a promise. Doesn't change the fact that old players are royally screwed once you have played 2-3 alts through the KotFE story line (unless you are a die hard pvp'er, in which case you have been royally screwed for the last 2 years)

Sounds plausible. Found the first game so bad I threw the towel in the ring before finishing it. Trust those sneaky aliens to not go home and give it a rest in a gentlemanly manner.

"Lords of Midnight" being absent from this list automatically disqualifies the author from having any credibility Ultima IV was also conspicuously absent Otherwise, most of my favourites seemed to be on the list. Well, those games I've spent 200+ hours on anyway. Of course the list also had games which I barely touched and tossed aside again.

Yeah, the bugs seems to multiply in the dark corners of the universe. When I started playing (don't remember when exactly, it was shortly before planet specific commendations got replaced by generic planetary commendations), I was impressed by how stable the game seemed. For all the quests and missions across the classes, it seemed to work flawlessly (the odd failing to trigger proc or relic double proc oddities not withstanding). Fast forward a few years and you wonder if your game client launches today Some really bizarre bugs like offhand not being visible when inspecting players, or the pvp bug that meant bolster gave you a nice boost in warzones if you had good star ship gear equipped for your star ship, exploits that gets to linger for months without being squashed as a priority... I don't know if they were, but it sure felt like the game ran a very long time on skeleton staff. I've bemoaned it before, but it also felt like combat mechanics and encounter designs took a nosedive after Dread Fortress/Dread Palace launched. Pretty much leaving all melee classes out in the cold except for some ridiculously overpowered assassins/shadows in warzones. Makes you truly wonder if those combat design guys every played their own game and their own operations/flash points. It's rather obvious that they are struggling with something for end game players to do, coming up with very, very obvious attempts to entice people to stay subscribed between chapter releases in the expansion. Grinding heroics Is *not* fun. Especially after they removed all story content from the heroics and just left the mind numbing grind (I've heard that if you go to the planets and look up the quest givers, you can still get at least some of the story parts of that part of the game). Star Fortresses with way too little to differentiate them. Done 6 on a character? Never more for that character. Swearing on his mothers honour (some Bioware employee) that there would not be that long between operations again, first thing they did was the break it. The current loot system is also not going to encourage new players to play the old operations, it has always been a piss poor idea that 2/3 of the ops group gets rewarded for their time and effort and the last 1/3 gets left with barely enough credits to cover their repair bills. No, pointless pet #145 is *not* going to entice existing players to stay subbed.

Does "hive minds" count? Or gestalt principles? A single ant is not necessarily very bright, but their "collective" memory and problem solving skills can be astounding. Edit: Unlike humans, which seems to become dumber and stupider, the larger the mob.

Duh, you are right. Time for my IQ gene-therapy. I got it mixed up with the Central Intelligence Agency bit. Good thing annual leave is just around the corner. My poor grey matter is doing overtime

In the US, they leave the thinking to the government... they even have a Federal Bureau of Intelligence

I didn't bother with the proxy stuff, the deal was still a good deal. You effectively get the cartel coins for free if you were going to add 60 days of sub to your account anyway. Since I was logged into origin (which happens once in a blue moon), I also grabbed a copy of Dragon Age Inquisition Game of the Year bundle at 50% off. Not sure if I'm ever going to play it, but I guess 50% is probably as far as EA is willing to discount for relatively new titles.

Saying it was better than the prequels isn't spoiling anything... it's like saying the sun rises tomorrow

I guess we all got different interpretations from his "answer". Probably projecting a bit of ourselves into our interpretations. I read it as not being happy with "creativity by committee". Not really related to the answer other than in a tangential way, I still haven't finished PoE and one of the things that keeps holding me back is, it almost feels "over produced". Like a boy band that has been through the 27th pass in the hands of the producer, making it good craftsmanship but devoid of the madness, bold ideas, risk taking and spontaneity that appeals to me.