Gromnir

is kinda startling to realize how few games we has purchased in the past couple years. mass effect 3 project eternity pledge torment: numenera pledge ... that is our game list for last couple years... until three weeks ago. vol's 24/7 butt-hurt hemorrhoid howl inspired us to buy bg2:ee. we also picked up a $9.99 bundle of all xcom games up to, but not including, the recent expansion. future games? am knowing some folks involved with wildstar, so we may give it a try. the new dragon age? probably. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

is not all that ironic. am recalling when a current obsidian developer blasted tim cain 'bout similar espoused tb d&d pretensions. the obstinate noted that d&d is a pnp rpg and a person gotta be pretty darn obtuse to ignore the fact that the a pnp gaming group is a far different experience than that of a lone person siting in front o' a computer screen playing a crpg. we voted tb, but all things being equal, we thinks rtwp is more accessible to a larger group o' potential purchasers. am suspecting that very few o' us who prefer tb woulda' done more than grouse a bit if torment were revealed to be a rtwp game. typical codexian rants proclaim how inferior infinity and aurora engine combat were to fallouts... go into rabid tirades 'bout how unplayable bg, ps:t, iwd, bg2, tob, nwn, iwd2, nwn2, & soz were... not to mention the d20 influenced kotor and kotor2. the real irony is the frothy madness that codexians attach to all those games they pirated or purchased and played for total hours equivalent to coursework needed for a freaking phd. the typical tb aficionado plays rtwp games, but there is a significant group o' folks who simple will not play tb.. at least that is what publishers has believed for decades. want irony? tim cain did more to retard the progress of tb gaming than any person we care to mention. That is irony. game industry is extreme reactive. diablo were successful. next Decade sees dozens o' diablo clones. 'course failure is also resulting in overreaction. ps:t failed commercially and it has taken more than 15 years to gets a "sequel" made. toee were supposed to be guaranteed money, with 2 subsequent games based on old-skool d&d modules being planned to follow toee. cain's flop reinforced the possibly misguided notion among publishers that nobody actual wanted top play a tb crpg, even when d&d crpgs were at their most popular. yeah, there were dozens o' things wrong with toee, but if you were a publisher investing millions o' dollars on high-risk games, why take the chance on another tb rpg? tim cain: slayer of turn-based gaming. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

names of peoples and games from genesis post that is unknown to Gromnir: Joel McHale and Geoff Keighley-- vaudeville duo? perhaps a hope and crosby kinda thing? Smosh-- sounds like a garage band Camilla Luddington-- am assuming from context that she is an english model. pictures as laura croft would be less entertaining than seeing what she looked like before teeth were fixed and sans the almost prerequisite b00b job. Vector Monkey-- another garage band? am gonna admit that vector monkey would be a kewl band name. am recalling a Berkeley band during the late 80s called Wood is Good-- funny name. Reggie Fils-Aime-- this name is vague familiar. somehow recollects to Gromnir the business side o' the industry. Rocco and Shawn- the new ren and stimpy? Destiny- from context am guessing it is a game, but it sounds like the name o' a hip-hop singer. Rooster Teeth-- see above regarding smosh and vector monkey. vector monkey is still choice #1 for our new ukalele, steel drum and kazoo band... or angry-red zit. PEWDIEPEW--NO DOUBT BEING ALLCAPS MAKES THIS PERSON/ORGANIZATION KEWLER BY AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE BEYOND OUR KEN. honorable mention: "Another awesome world premiere..." well, if it is awesome, how can we possibly miss it? "awesome" is one o' those strange words that actually has opposite impact from that which is intended. anything being described as awesome, regardless o' how impressive it actually is or is not, inexplicably wilts or shrivels by some amount proportional to awesomeness o' the description. implied or actual exclamation point(s) multiply the deleterious impact o' awesome. am feeling old.. but that is ok 'cause we is awesome... AWESOME! HA! Good Fun!

am doubting that is true. what has been obsidian's best games? we has heard various/numerous obsidian folks complain 'bout infinity engine, d&d and star wars, but they soldiered through admirably for many o' those titles. compare to alpha protocol. can list dozens or hundreds of developers and artists that has worked grudgingly on projects. wanna gets a history lesson o' actors, architects, writers, painters and sculptors that were working on projects that they disliked? am even recalling a few athletes who hated their sport, or got to the point they hated their sport, just before they achieved some noteworthy pinnacle. heck, some o' our best work has been for clients we loathed and causes we were indifferent to. am suspecting that game development is no different than any other endeavour. professionals usually sac-up and get the job done, regardless o' their personal feelings. sure, is more than a few candy-arsed milksops who can't do their best work unless they "feel" something for the project, but we suspect they is few and far between in a commercial driven industry such as game development. in this case the developer already has a tb engine with which they is comfortable. am recalling that at least one obsidian developer claimed that the reason torn failed is 'cause the engine they licensed did not work as advertised. get six months away from original projected release date only to realize that your engine purchase were a blunder? use a licensed engine would appear to be having perils. Gromnir is not tech savvy enough to guesstimate how pragmatic it is to try and make wasteland 2 engine into a rtwp, but it sounds like that weren't a viable option. start from scratch and makes a new engine? well now, nothing wrong with that... save for the considerable time and expense needed to realize. for the torment developers to be choosing rtwp woulda' been a bit of a surprise, regardless o' the vote. HA! Good Fun!

I'm having a chronic Civ restart cycle. Start a game of Civ5; play for about 20 turns; decide that this isn't setting up as precisely the flavor of Civ game I feel like playing; go back to the main menu and change something miniscule in the settings; repeat until bedtime. am having just that issue with the new xcom game. am thoroughly enjoying the combat, but the "strategy" aspects has resulted in us virtual restarting the games a half dozen times. got 7 missions deep and realized that our soldier roster gots six heavies and only 1 assault, 1 sniper and 1 support. *grumble* have had similar issues with satellite production and being too slow on alien containment and resource management and whatever. am a big fan o' squad-based tactical combat with rpg elements, but the strategy features never fail to push our ocd button. HA! Good Fun!

bad tb combat can makes a game... painful. for those folks who don't like tb combat, we can understand their ire. tell peoples that torment tb will be different is not gonna help. also, for people who don't like combat at all, rtwp set at minimum difficulty is a viable alternative. am recalling that we were a bit shocked to discover just how many folks played through ps:t and the bgs with minimum combat difficulty. combats were an unavoidable annoyance for more than a handful. that annoyance gets multiplied by a factor o' 10 (at least) if you makes tb. our vote were for tb 'cause we like squad-based tactical combat, but am not surprised that some folks is a little peeved by this design choice. HA! Good Fun!

You should really shell out for the expansion as well Grom, it makes it a much better game and all the extra maps mean that the random missions don't become so repetitive towards the end. we read reviews that claimed the expansion kinda screwed with game balance-- made some stuff far too ez. dunno. will play some significant portion w/o expansion before deciding to invest another $30. am not hard-up for the cash, but is the principle o' the matter. btw, we did a handful o' missions before we discovered that when rookies get promoted, their role assignment is complete random. somehow we ended up with every newbie being a heavy. gotta freaking save right before end o' mission if we wanna have some control over assignments... screwy design choice. HA! Good Fun!

was gonna get xcom: enemy unknown for $9.99... then we saw that there is an amazon deal that offers a bunch o' previous xcom games, xcom: enemy unkown and dlc for the same $9.99. http://www.amazon.com/XCOM-Collection-Online-Game-Code/dp/B00ECHYTKY/ref=pd_ys_sf_s_468642_b2_11_p?ie=UTF8&refRID=1FF9J8S0A0SAP65D3TYA seems like a deal. HA! Good Fun!

if it makes you feel better, consider our observation nothing more than an axiomatic statement. " It is illogical, dumb, ignorant, and not created in reality." irony HA! Good Fun!

hostess foods went out of business and twinkie production stopped. there were a host o' clones that appeared following hostess bankruptcy. am suspecting that some clones coulda' been superior. build a better twinkie? why not? heck, you not even needs make better, right? "a rose by any other name"? nevertheless, how much were the name recognition o' "twinkie," "hostess," and other hostess products worth? go ahead and check. looks up and see how much name value gots. underestimate value o' brand recognition would be foolish in the extreme. HA! Good Fun!

There was a BG3-as-continuation story suggestion from George Ziets which sounded pretty cool. am gonna disagree. sounds absolutely horrible. empathy issues aside, one needs keep in mind that the proposed story is for a game... a D&D game. story is necessarily hamstrung by stoopid d&d canon and by d&d mechanics. as bad as high level abilities were in tob, am shuddering to consider god level abilities in george's bg3, and any such story needs embrace such nonsense. as much as a decent story o' fledgling divinity might (*snort*) be possible, am thinking that a d&d game story for such fare sounds even more horrible than a south park crpg. seriously. HA! Good Fun!

there were a mod for bg2 that never actually were completed: icewind gate... or somesuch. a bg3 with a modified version 'o the infinity engine from icewind dale 2 would be something we would pay for if beamdog made. btw, we played bg2:ee last night for 'bout 5 hours. that, in and of itself, is a good sign, no? the only part o' the game we has played were the arena portion, 'cause am not looking forward to spending an hour to get out o' the starting dungeon. will now offer our initial impressions. negatives: right off the bat we got a ctd as soon as we attempted to talk with a faerunish norseman. *grumble* nevertheless, we restarted and have had no similar issues. am also having some infrequent and minor audio issues, but perhaps we needs check drivers before we blame beamdog for the near imperceptible annoyance. also, with the arrival o' d20 for d&d, the appeal o' bg2 has been somewhat diminished for Gromnir. ad&d rules is a stoopid and nonsensical goulash of house-rules and tournament rules that gots poured into the original framework of the d&d white box edition. we always has a hard time overcoming our dislike o' ad&d whenever we return to play bg2. however, we can't blame beamdog for our disappointment with the ad&d mechanics. positives: for an arena adventure, there is a surprising amount o' character development and dialog. we chuckled more than a few times. " to the pain." *snicker* am reminded of josh sawyer's blanket derision o' humor in the bg games, but he can be a bit o' a goober 'bout such stuff. as the black pits is arena fighting, we weren't expecting much story or quest development, but we has been surprised in a good way by beamdog's efforts. am having ~5 quests at present beyond the actual arena fighting. as we haven't gotten deep into those quests, we can't say how significant or well-crafted they is. a high % of the dialogues has voice over. in our opinion, we would much rather have no vo than bad vo. few games is made superior by their vo efforts... kotor being a noteworthy exception. as we said, we don't genuine give much attention to vo, but the quality of the black pits vo is such that we will count it as a positive. 'course the aforementioned stuff is largely inconsequential if the combat sux. has an arena adventure with bad arena combat and it won't matter if production values were positive, yes? ... am not gonna compare black pits combat encounters to the mods available for making core bg2 combat more sophisticated. am knowing how much some folks like the home-brewed combat mods-- every bg2 uber nerdling seems to have a favorite synthesis of mods. *shrug* we will observe that the combat encounters in black pits has been challenging and sophisticated. we has actual died a few times. enemy ai has been impressive, and our difficulty with the battles is not 'cause the developers broke the rules or surprised us with an unexpected enemy. before each battle we can see who is in the metaphorical on-deck circle. this allows us to buy potions and prepare spells intelligently. gold management is an added strategic consideration as at least in the early rounds, we never seems to have 'nuff gold to buy the gear we would wish. battles thus far has been at least on par with the best offerings from bioware or obsidian when they had their chance to craft combat encounters with the infinity engine. there is a pander-to-crowd mechanic that somewhat eludes us at this point... can't tell if it follows "rules" or is a wildcard thing. overall, we is happy with the black pits. will add more impressions (mostly spoiler-free) as we continue during those hours we has available to us over the thanksgiving holiday. HA! Good Fun!

... am knowing what we said 'bout vol not always being wrong, but he frequent is. even when we agree with vol conclusions, we typical disagree that any sane person could conclude as vol does once he explains How he reached his conclusion. soooooo, what Gromnir is saying is that we is now intrigued enough to purchase bg2: ee. am not curious enough to purchase bg:ee as we were never a genuine fan o' that game. to us, bg2 was bg:ee. vol's nerd-rage over beamdog has earned them a new customer. am gonna download and at least play the arena stuff to get a feel for beamdog enhancements. our feedback will be forthcoming. perhaps bg2:ee will be crap, but with the way vol reasoning works, am guessing that "a BG3 made by these guys will likely be gold." HA! Good Fun!

to be wrong 100% requires genius equal and opposite to being correct 100% of the time. a person could makes an inestimable fortune following vol around and choosing opposite from you if vol were indeed infallibly wrong. sadly for us all, vol is nothing more than a garden-variety kook with the reasoning skills o' a burlap sack full of rabid rats... if the rats were on pcp... and the drug-addled and rabid rats were scientologists. am not having an axe to grind on this issue. if beamdog is making bg2 more accessible to folks and charging a premium for that accessibility, we applaud their chutzpah. heck, we pay a nice portugese woman ~$50 per week to do some basic cleaning at our house... 'cause we is too lazy to do such stuff our self. truth-to-tell, we consider her services a bargain. would be more than a little hypocritical o' us if we criticized peoples for their beamdog purchases. that being said, while we can't be bothered to clean up after our self 'cause we is "too busy," we will spend literal hours modding our original release collector's edition bg2 dvds to get the game approximately into same condition as the beamdog release. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

wouldn't that conversely mean that if rtwp were chosen as the mechanic o' choice, then the developers don't care about the 49% who paid 2 mil to "make it happen," or some such? if choosing one way or other is developer indifference, then no matter what you got some significant % o' game purchasers who is getting scammed, yes? am not wanting to play the game, see the movie, or read the book that is the result o' patron democracy. if you give folks everything that they want, you will be hated. result will be a mess AND boring. gotta surprise folks and give them different and/or better than what they desire. *chuckle* am recalling when iwd2 were in development. josh reveals some possible kit ideas... this were when iwd2 were still a 2nd edition game. the feedback josh got were what one might expect-- people wanted Superfantabulous God-Killer kits. josh's kits were too boring and weak. so, as a joke, josh comes up with revised kit suggestions. revised kits were over-the-top, game-breaking munchkin fare... but the majority o' posters didn't get the joke. boardies Loved the new kit suggestions. hilarious. regardless, this thing is nothing more than a poll. if it were a vote, then there would needs be some kinda tiered vote weight given to those who contributed more money, yes? it would be rather unjust if bob, who contributed $10,000, got same input as those piddly $20 contributors. such a vote would be very complicated and might complete alter the poll numbers currently being seen. heck, does this poll even have numbers for a legit quorum at this point? there were somewhere 'round 75k backers, yes? we sees 'bout 9k votes... and each person got 3 votes, yes? current poll gap is a whopping 37 votes btw. HA! Good Fun!

such stuff is a jackarse test. vote "i don't care" and then explain how it is stoopid for people to care 'bout such n' such feature... jackarsery. 'cause REAL role-players don't care 'bout combat mechanics? some clowns ain't satisfied with being indifferent. nope, they wanna make sure you recognize how childish it is for you to care. *shrug* am getting if issue in question were something optional-- let developers know that wasting time and resources on piffle or puffery is unnecessary. however, is not possible to genuine argue that combat mechanics of a crpg that will include significant combat is an incidental or negligible feature. nope, is no good reason for going through effort to login and then try and convince others that you don't care regardless of your login... and 3 paragraph rant 'bout how much you don't care. is a litmus test for jackarses. HA! Good Fun! And so he rants about people ranting... we could post vacuous and inane one-liners, but that job seems to be taken. HA! Good Fun!

such stuff is a jackarse test. vote "i don't care" and then explain how it is stoopid for people to care 'bout such n' such feature... jackarsery. 'cause REAL role-players don't care 'bout combat mechanics? some clowns ain't satisfied with being indifferent. nope, they wanna make sure you recognize how childish it is for you to care. *shrug* am getting if issue in question were something optional-- let developers know that wasting time and resources on piffle or puffery is unnecessary. however, is not possible to genuine argue that combat mechanics of a crpg that will include significant combat is an incidental or negligible feature. nope, is no good reason for going through effort to login and then try and convince others that you don't care regardless of your login... and 3 paragraph rant 'bout how much you don't care. is a litmus test for jackarses. HA! Good Fun!

as we said, we don't know "why" folks say such stuff. sure, dps merc commando is serious glass cannons w/o the advantages o' gunslinger/sniper defense, but competent commando Heals does well enough in ranked pvp. am agreeing that the Belief that commando heals is ez targets is widespread, but their self heals is excellent and they don't seem to go down any easier than other classes. admittedly, inexperienced commando heals on an uncoordinated team is gonna be at a greater disadvantage than a marginal sage or scoundrel in the same situation as the commando not have the desperation abilities such as force speed, stealth or force barrier. is not the what, but the why we questioned. HA! Good Fun!

during first server merger, we lost 'bout half our pub-side toon names. one o' the drawbacks o' playing so much pvp back then with a group that literal never lost in ranked pvp were that we managed to makes some imp guilds kinda unhappy. so first merger results in all our pub-side pvp toon names being taken by time we log on to jump through the merger hoops. the imps who cloned our names thought this were very funny. unfortunately, the imp pranksters is clear all subscribers 'cause none o' our old names were available yesterday. also, the 1 kinda heals we don't play is merc/commando. level 55 heals we current gots on jedi covenant is as follows: 1 sorc, 1 sage, 1 scoundrel. we does have a merc and a commando, but they is both dps... though we has genuine considered making the merc a heals for no other reason than that we thinks the jawa tank is the bestest companion available-- not necessarily most efficacious companion, but best. commando healers has had a reputation for being sucky for a long time... and we don't particular know why that is the case. am knowing any number o' commando and merc heals that do very well in pvp and pve, so am s'posing that whatever numerical disadvantages they suffer from is small enough that experience reduces the impact o' their handicaps to near nil. HA! Good Fun! ps we tried to use blizz as a comp for our powertech dps and sadly we cannot solo many o' the level 55 heroics that is seeming easy with mako. *sigh*

simply not showing AI turns to player would avert this tragedy so, fight the dragon, but dragon just kinda strobes? a moment ago dragon was relative 30 metres away. next moment it is in midst of party and Gromnir clothes is smoking and the heals is dead? doesn't seem satisfactory at all. in addition, the Attack of Opportunity has become a bit o a staple in pnp combats. without seeing ai moves it would often be more than a bit perplexing figuring out who (friends AND foes) already utilized aoo, why they is prone, and how various damage occurred. you could put all such stuff in a text combat log, but ultimately you not save much time as player would needs to go back and review that log. for large battles such a review would be as "soul-numbing" as would be watching the "action" take place. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

primary school is occurring after pre-school and up to middle-school... or possible high school. secondary school is middle-school and high school... or maybe high school alone. our secondary education were so long ago that am not recalling what were the line o' demarcation. post-secondary is education After high school--is University or college education. 7 years o' college education for women and 8 for men would be equal parts impressive and disturbing. so many folks in population not contributing anything useful to the economy til they hits mid 20s? bus or subway rides would become interminable as average joes would be soberly discussing the merits o' proust or debating why the field o' physics hasn't had a major advancement since the development o' quantum mechanics. to gets assistant night manager job at local motel would no doubt be requiring an mba from applicants just to be considered. on the positive side, am also suspecting that reality TV would disappear completely. so, call it a wash. HA! Good Fun!

numenera's effort/edge is very much a turn-based mechanic. am having some difficulty imaging numenera pnp combat in a real-time-with-pause crpg. 'course the developers of tides could abandon effort/edge but that would be making us wonder why numenera were chosen in the first place. that being said, while Gromnir is not immediate seeing an elegant method o' implementing numenera combat via pause+real-time, it is possible/likely that a more clever or knowledgeable person out there has a solution. as for the frequent "soul-numbing" that accompanies even the bestest turn-based crpg implementation... *shrug* am thinking that for all its flaws, toee implementation o' turn-based were excellent... if you could get toee to work, and if you were willing to endure horrible non-combats aspects o' the game. is noteworthy that more than a few toee battles involved numerous antagonists. 50 spiders at once? no, but then again, we can easily imagine such a battle in a tb environment that would move quick enough for us: has spiders (or 5-10 spiders) take their "turn" simultaneous. problem solved. even so, there is an aspect o' tedium that accompanies even the best turn-based combat. after bugbear mob encounter #10, bugbear encounters #11, #12, #13 is nothing but an interminable seeming chore. turn-based magnifies boredom resulting from seeming filler encounters. however, such boredom is the result o' bad design as 'posed to an inherent flaw in turn-based combat. HA! Good Fun!

... if average post-secondary education years were 7, your typical pair o' nike shoes would cost ~$400 'cause the women working in sweatshops in thailand and indonesia would be having masters and doctorate degrees. 'course the shoes would be made less well, but you gotta pay for all that snooty self-importance that comes with advanced degrees, no? HA! Good Fun! Mr. Gromnir esq. BS BFA MFA JD

I tend to follow that eating etiquette as well. For example don't go to good seafood restaurant and expect killer spare ribs. Wouldn't the correct analogy to Guard Dog's situation with a seafood restaurant be "If you ever go into a seafood take out joint and there are no seafood working there, just turn around and leave"? A spare rib analogy would be "Don't go into a BBQ Rib joint if there are no pigs there". That only makes sense if the Chinese take-out food you want is made of Asian people. went to school in the bay area-- 3 years undergrad and 3 years law school. it may sound strange, but we avoided chinatown when ordering chinese food. is advice offered us by an asian girlfriend we dated for a couple years. most o' chinatown restaurants in san francisco is tourist trap or just plain bad. ... 'course, in the spirit o' full disclosure, we had neither the time or inclination to cross the bay bridge. heck, we rare made it further west than shattuck ave. HA! Good Fun!

we got so many toons that very few is better than 69s. oricon is relative ez with 69s... even w/o augments. am suspecting that 61s and 58s will result in 3 battles being a smidge tough. HA! Good Fun! edit: "Got a bit annoyed with the Corrupted Bothrium Beast..." that one annoyed our heals toons. is not as if Gromnir's comps is great at timely interrupts. makes more o' a pain as we rare use tanks companions. gotta heal, interrupt the beastie and attack the tentacle when it appears.