Gorth

It's "old" history now (a few days ago), but I grabbed Dead Island Riptide at 75% off. I quite liked the original, even if not actually completing it. Makes for a nice diversion every now and then booting it up and continuing the game, because I don't feel some compelling need to play it for hours on end. Just make a bit of progress.

Yeah, too much "overdosing" on space missions kills the interest in it. Sort of a nice time filler though, if you just want to wait 5-10 minutes for a companion to finish their 2 hour crafting mission so you can send them out the door again for another hour or two. At lower levels, the xp is a nice boost (and part of the reason my toons were significantly over levelled for their story missions). Now, it's mostly a challenge thing, doing the weekly for the heroic space missions (on the now two toons who qualifies for it). Yeah, two. It happened eventually and my commando turned 50. At least this guy hadn't turned 50 before being halfway through Belsavis. Spend the weekend playing a number of flashpoints with various toons in various level brackets, from Hammer Station to the Foundry. Sadly, didn't get my commando through a FP. Damn timezones, when it gets early evening here, most US west coast dwellers have gone to bed Ah well, next weekend, I think I'll start with that guy in the GF queue. My main guy again got distracted yet again, never seeming to continue his story on Voss... back when hunting world bosses on Belsavis and Section X, I must have run across a guy that gave me a quest to collect HK parts. So, went to Theoretika and solved that one, although I only found 6 out of 7 of the bonus crew logs. I think I might have to look at a walkthrough and see which one I missed. Thought I was very thorough, but apparently not. Went to Tattooine and wasted more than an hour in Outlaws Den searching for the merchant. Turned out he wasn't marked as a merchant, but was standing *next* to one that was marked as merchant. Thought it was hilarious though, checking his stock, being typical Jawa he sold mostly overpriced "grey" junk and then the junk part of course that I really wanted. Looks like I have to go back to Outlaws Den and spend a lot of time digging. Seriously, WTF Bioware? Why the constant insistence of putting quest stuff inside that hole, needing to jump through hoops afterwards to get rid of the &^%$# PVP flag Other than that, Theoretika was actually quite nicely done. Gave a bit of a "Dead Space" vibe

I'll need to watch the video when I get home from work. In my world, there is no such thing as gratitude. The bonuses are nice though Might have a more intelligent contribution once I've watched it (and any linked to material).

Mate, you are 10 years late Ok, so that wasn't quite what you meant. You are still 10 years late though, as outsourcing to cheap labour countries has been common practice for way more than a decade. Problem is, it's not going to be *you* sitting in Sweden doing work elsewhere, it's going to be somebody else doing *your* work in Sweden at salaries you could never match. I think it's funny (in a very sad way) that large companies think of cost cutting = less employees and then they all reduce their workforce, just to whinge about nobody buys their stuff. Hello? You just put low and middle income out of work, how are they supposed to buy your goods? I've worked in companies that have occasionally "tested the waters" with outsourcing of non-critical stuff and it the results have been unanimously been disastrous. The old adage of you get what you pay for certainly holds water in my own anecdotal experiences. Much better results from importing skilled workforce to your geographical location, then "upskill" them further and then they can carry their own weight. Just my own experiences with the subject over the last 20 years, your mileage may vary.

Some things it's better not to know

I think the last Molyneux game I bought and played was Populous on the Amiga, late 80'es/early 90'es. Great game. Never really associated his name with until many years later though. There always seemed to be a bit of controversy around the guy (and what's his name, the other fella, Derek Smart or some such, doing a game called Battlecruiser).

Speaking of patching... what the heck are they doing to space missions??? At least they removed the big floating rock they had added to one of the beginner missions, but seriously, so much was broken after the last patch and not a squeak in the patch notes about even intending to update anything. Latest hotfix fixed the most critical issues, but health bar is still missing under all boss ship, shield generatos and priority targets and yellow circles are now persistent around targets, even if not priority trargets anymore (in the past, they would change from yellow to faint red if you had completed the mission/bonus that required those targets). More to Gorth's wishlish for future updates: A remove skill button (after getting a bit more experience with crafting, I realize that the vast majority of (crafting) skills are something I wont need and makes the list take forever to expand/scroll though. Not to mention Synthweaving and Armourmech shouldn't have the ability to learn schematics for the "other" side. Got some surprises int he beginning crafting nice looking (in the preview) armour, emailing it to the alts, putting it on... and it looked completely different! Yes, I would like my lightside guy to unlearn darkside skills and the other way around. Don't get me started on Artifice and the laughable number of implausible combinations of enhancement mods Just an observation, may or may not be the case, but do they every now and then sneak in little embellishments that don't figure in patch notes? I could have sworn that when I started playing, the Nexus Cantina (on Dromund Kaas) didn't have a little street cafe with people sitting in front of it. Edit to add: My commando is still stuck halfway through level 49. I think the up and coming weekend is going to be dedicated to play a few flashpoints. Might have to queue specifically (commendations be damned) for Battle for Ilum, as my Powertech missed out on that one when he could still queue for normal mode flashpoints.

I can almost hear the despair in his voice...

Arcanum II?

Depending on how many ingame credits you have and the availability, you can sometimes find those kinds of unlocks on the GTN.

Note that if you have too many active quests, that one might not actually be visible on-screen. Happened to me on my very first henchman. Second time, I had removed a number of quests (grinding some space missions of all things for the fleet commendations) and suddenly it was visible with the little white 'freeze' icon. It's greyed out and unusable when the target has more than 10% health, but once it drops down to or below, it changes colour and becomes selectable. Just make sure henchman is also your active target (and not companion or henchman goon or something else). Once discovered, it saved my butt in a few fights that was getting too close to comfort. Sort of an insta-win button when cutting it close. I also had it happen a few times that I took the henchman down with it and the adds or DoT effects killed me after taking him down. Doesn't matter, still counts as a win.

I think in the beginning, it was because it was "new". Then I wanted the heavy armour and needed the reputation. Then it just became an OCD thing... Yes, I know the achievement is across the legacy What I meant was, the first week it came around, my main guy could go to all planets involved (except Ord Mantel for obvious reasons, being an 'imp'). Not all hench men spawn on capital worlds which were the easily accessible ones for low level characters. Alderaan and Voss was off limits for most of my characters, so he did the travelling the conventional way and the rest did the "grind". In the end, I just wanted enough contracts to not having to do henchmens at all next time it comes around then see if I can't do more of the kingpins instead.

My main guy went for the achievement. In the meantime, I had a large roster (15 in fact) of toons that is level 15 or higher (way back, I experimented a bit to see which advanced class I would stick with for a while). Half of them also have ships. Parking them all on the fleet, they grab an assignment, priority transport capital world, talk, interrogate 4 (originally 5) shady characters, talk again, kill kingpin, quick travel back to have final chat and priority transport back to fleet. Depending on luck with shady characters it takes 10-20 minutes. Doing one or two in the morning before going to work (while listening to news), one while waiting for dinner in the oven in the late evening and a few before going to bed. You can make 5 contracts in a day easily (twice as many on weekends if you spend a bit on time rotating between more toons) Edit: Not to mention a good source of xp and credits for low level toons in the 15-19 range)

Spot on Different people experience a game in different ways. Sounds, visuals etc. all contribute. For me, key parts are a story that is at least interesting enough in the beginning to get me hooked and an internally consistent world. An example of the latter could be one of the games I rant/rave about, the original Tomb Raider. Nice sound scape. Functional visual representation of the world (anyone who gets a kick out of looking a triangular polygon boobs needs a serious head examination) and most importantly, once you understand the world mechanics, you can "exist" in there. If there is a surface, you can walk, run and jump on it. If there is water, you can swim and/or dive in it. If you leave the safety of the surface, you'll fall etc. Really very simple things, but after playing a bit and getting familiar with it, you feel like you are "there" when you begin to think about how you get from point A to B inside the game, thinking in game mechanics. Same thing goes for old 8 bit shooters. Galaxians, Invaders etc. to complex games like recent CRPG's. If it makes you think in "in-game" mechanics rather than a magic sequence of button pushes, the game (designer) "wins". Edit: Not sure if the above makes any sense, but it's halfway through the day and I've had 12 cups of coffee already.

Just re-appropriating this as my own little blog thread... My Commando is now level 49 and having learned some lessons from my Bounty Hunter, I'm in no rush grinding the last two space missions. While I would love to have the fleet commendations for the later ship upgrades, they are also accompanied by a trillion experience points (rough estimate). Who knows, he might actually get to play some of the later flash points before hitting 55 (and making the normal ones unavailable through group finder). Tip to not level up: Stay away from GSI dailies, they give obscene amounts of XP too. Treasure hunting with the binoculars (my bounty hunter) is a nice diversion on odd occasions though, although it gets old quickly if overdoing it. Got a lot of speeder parts for that guy (something called Exploiter and Pleasure something speeders) Read some patch notes about those parts (except one) becoming unbound in a later update, which means my toons can pool their resources presumably. One thing I found that helps my crafting factory is the underworld trading mission "Secret Recipe" is a great source of Beryllius. Got two ship droids with critical modifiers in Underworld Trading and they regularly score critical hits giving an addition 3 of the good stuff. I use it to make the grade 66 purple mods for my main toons and just for good measure the assembly lines are now producing the same stuff although only in "prototype" quality for companions. Really need to get my Artifice guy up to speed though, need those Enhancement mods (the number of variants of those seems to explode exponentially when reaching higher level mods though). Edit to add: Regarding the bounty hunter event, I made a mistake and assigned Ord Mantell kingpin to two different toons. Forgot one had already traded in the contract for the quest. Bummer. Still only actually brough down two kingpins, as finding people your level, your timezone and your place all at once is a royal pain in the rear anatomy. Brought down the Hutta and Tattooine kingpins. Got the contract for the Nar shaddaa one (and two Ord Mantells). Still got a stockpile of 45+ henchmen contracts to purchase kingpin contracts for. Just not sure which characters would have the best chances of eventually bringing down their specific targets.

That sounds familiar... pop quiz time, which Obsidian guy started out as "the web guy" and made a career in the games industry?

The recruiting process requires an open minded HR department. In the end, there can only be one

Ok guys, I think that is about enough of that... or I'll have to find the proverbial straight-jackets. I'm not going to close the thread, because the original question about availability is a valid one, but I do ask that people put a lid on the insults. Preferably voluntarily.

This years Ig Nobel Awards Not going to cut and paste all the paragraphs and entries, but there are some quite amusing ones amongst them.

I bought VMBL on a 25% off. Not an earth shattering discount, but I figured a download backup for my increasingly old and scratched optical media wouldn't be a bad idea. Since I could spend $15 on something I already had, I figured I could also spend $15 on something I'm likely never going to play and got Tomb Raider for the same price (at 75% off). You never know if you are going to change your mind in some distant future.

Ok, I think I might just hang on to them then. It's not like there is an expiry date on them. I shipped out all the non-bound stuff to "younger" toons. My trooper is now level 48, heading for 49 (and really need to gets his gear upgraded before going into a flashpoint again). Finished chapter 2 for the guy. Seems like there is a pattern there, get the 5th companion and lose one of the old ones. Then go do something before you can get old companion back. Fortunately for both my bounty hunter and my trooper, it wasn't anyone I missed particularly much (Torian being a bit redundant for a BH) and Aric guarding the ship for most of the journey of my trooper so far. I liked him in the beginning, but once Tanno Vik is by far my favourite trooper companion. Let's see what the 5th and final guy brings to the table.

A cute little three-pack. I think evolution hates hedgehog mothers. Just imagine giving birth to those...

Looks like I might have a use for my complimentary xp boosts for my level 55 guy after all. He may not get any xp, but he still contributes "xp" to the legacy. Might as well use them then, as I'm not holding my breath for any imminent expansions that raises the level cap. My Commando is now level 47 and getting busy leveling up to 50 (just for kicks, so I can complete the various republic space missions, need photon torpedoes for that).

Sounds like Twilight in 50 shades of grey...

Really? How come? It's not as good as the original, but still about bazillion times better than legends which was boring as hell badly made shooter. Haven't still tried underworld even though I have owned it for years. Not going to touch the new QTE Raider unless I get it for free, maybe not even then. Anniversary did streamline pretty badly my favourite level of TR (Tomb of Tihocan), but I thought the game otherwise was fun and atmospheric. I was the opposite. I found it completely lacked in atmosphere. Large levels meant to be explored were reduced to corridors and badly implemented combat was implemented for combat sakes and contrived boss battles added for boss battles sake (to ensure that it was completely cliche and formulaic), not because it made any sense. I think I mostly resent it because the original was an exploration game and anniversary a mediocre corridor shooter with tiny, cramped levels (and don't get me started on QTE's, at least the original had some nice FMV's for it's time, even if they look naive by 2013 standards). Never made it to the "Atlantis" levels, uninstalled it in disgust 2/3 of the way through and completed a game of the original instead. Just *so* much more fun, low polygon gfx included.