Gromnir

ad&d is horrible. only thing worse in d&d rules history were the original white box... although white box had the advantage of being less complete. all ad&d were was the accumulated tournament and house rules that developed for d&d, but vomited out into book form and labeled "official." harsh? not harsh enough. most common pnp groups we sees nowadays is-- pathfinder d&d 3.5 d&d 4th d&d pre-d20 always amuses us when we see "old skool" d&d gaming sessions being run. the nostalgia of ad&d eludes us, and Gromnir actually played d&d and ad&d before they were the subject o' rosy-hued retrospection. HA! Good Fun! ps d&d next looks like a return to 3.5. hopefully next don't make the same mistakes with prestige classes that 3.5 did.

not as good as arcanum? not as good a movie as Howard the Duck? not as good a car as the amc pacer? not as good a bridge as the 1940 tacoma narrows? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw no doubt all the aforementioned impressed folks when they were ideas on paper, but they failed miserable at the execution part o' development. likewise, arcanum were most engaging and compelling Before we played it. a game that can't measure up to arcanum? doomed. HA! Good Fun!

RPGcodex has plenty of great things to say about it! that would be a first. is never really a point in reading codex feedback as you know ahead o' time what the feedback will be based on who developed a game. poseurs at codex spend considerable wasted effort defending their chosen developers such that they becomes emotionally invested. is one o' the unfortunate drawbacks o' aggressive debate. HA! Good Fun!

mature themes: all of you who complained about how [insert developer here] relied on tired, trite and/or juvenile content in [insert AAA game here] will prefer Pillows of Eternity. *shrug* is similar puffery as "dark & gritty," "epic," and "new and improved." developer says, "mature themes" w/o giving context is meaningless... which should come as no surprise seeing as how chrisA mentioned in a recent interview that a PR firm put together the pitch video being addressed. Pillory of Infamy-- now with 20% more cleaning power! HA! Good Fun!

hand-placed loot is Less likely to result in wacky bad/good results. somebody brought up iwd as a model for random, yes? sadly, iwd represents one o' the biggest issues we got with random-- developer fail. josh actually threw feargus under the bus in regards to the iwd loot tables. odd as it sounds, josh admitted that feargus were one o' the contributors to the loot tables, and it were feargus who went all monty haul with great swords that did electrical damage and had a 25% chance to stun on every hit... just as an example. iwd were a relative linear dungeon crawl, and while it were fair-sized, it weren't considered a particular large game. nevertheless, the loot tables for iwd were large. am not envious o' the developer who gets stuck with creating such loot tables as it is gonna be an extreme dull job. is unlikely any single developer gots time or mental fortitude to develop interesting back-stories for every minor drop in the game. so we gets not only dull loot, but, 'cause developer is being conscious o' incrementally improving the loots, we inevitable get over-powered loot. the black isle/obsidian loot tables has always out-paced the game difficulty. kotor2 had similar randomness as iwd, and the only reason the insane power o' the drops were less noteworthy is 'cause the crafting system were even more busted... players could make uber gear by midpoint of the game. hand-placed loot helps save the developers from themselves. is much easier to make five unique and balanced items than it is to try and make twenty such items. help the developers help themselves and request hand-placed. HA! Good Fun!

religious ambitious ambitious = a$$hole, no? am recalling a time when one didn't feel the need to apologize for being ambitious... or religious. nowadays, those folks who is demonstrably religious is perceived as being one step removed from Ignorant-Bomb-Toting-Fanatic. congratulations ok, is probable just Gromnir, but if we open a piece o' mail and see the word "congratulations," we typical immediate throw in the round file next to our desk. congratulations, you may have just won... congratulations, your good credit... congratulations, you are over forty and have a pulse... am trying to recall the last time we gots a written congrats that weren't accompanied by evil. HA! Good Fun!

packed for our trip to hawaii. gonna stay on kauai for all ten days this time. aloha HA! Good Fun!

and here we thought this were gonna be a tribute/memorial to john lennon that were posted in wrong forum. ... mighta' squeezed out a tear or bit a bad poetry for lennon. HA! Good Fun!

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!