Amentep

Really? Wow I guess that shows how much I used per day abilities in the IE games. My point was that if cooldowns allow the mimicking of the effect of rest spamming; if some resting is still in for rest-restored powers is there a need to have the ability to rest spam (because the problem seems to keep cropping up - unless I'm misunderstanding - is that they're looking at a system where the player is not allowed to rest wherever they want as many times as they want). Right, I agree with you that gamers will find ways to game the system, regardless of the system. It doesn't matter if its D&D or Dragon Age or Monopoly. I just don't agree that because of that fact there's no need to think about the systems you're creating and whether there are ways to not encourage unintended consequences or behaviors - particularly since they're building this from the ground up and can consider whether having the player press a button or wait or reload saves is fun. Right now with cooldowns they run the risk of encouraging wait spamming; my understanding is that they're trying to address that by balancing per-encounter and at will powers to keep spell-classes useful each battle and putting less emphasis on waiting to be at full power every encounter. Will it work? Dunno. But I'm not necessarily adverse to them trying (I'll confess the inventory stuff I have a harder time wrapping my head around but am still willing to give the benefit of doubt until we see how it works in the game).

I'm not saying its not understandable a game could go over budget. I just don't think that they woke up on July 2 and realized they were over budget. Which means they intentionally held discussing it in public so it wouldn't impact their other kickstarter, Massive Chalice, despite the fact that backers of that project might have been very interested in knowing that Broken Age was having problems before backing Massive Chalice.

Heh, when I first read this, I didn't suss PITA as an acronym, I thought gfted was making a weird reference to pita bread.

Assuming a day/night cycle, how about.... the passage of time itself, and whatever in game consequences/effects come along with it, including healing. And/or the fatigue system if PE ends up having one. Did the day-night cycle in the old IE's ever matter much? I honestly don't remember. The fatigue system in the IE games wasn't my favorite aspect (I loved having my party travel to a location and arrive fatigued because they're apparently too stupid to camp - even better when you entered a random combat fatigued. Sure you could stop off at a city on the way (IF you've unlocked it) but even then there were some locations that IIRC in BGII were always a day away). Regarding healing, since they seem to be looking at a two part system (health-stamina), I think resting strategically will be important, but it won't necessarily be important after every battle (and particularly it won't be necessary after every battle if you want to keep you mage useful - the incentive for rest spamming in IE games).

Scamstarter at its best. How can it be a scam if they're producing more than we paid for? Maybe I'm overly suspicious but... I find it pretty darn interesting that Double Fine posted this Kickstarter update AFTER Massive Chalice's Kickstarter ended.

Resting also replenishes per-day abilities. Right, but did people rest spam 3 times in a row (to advance 24 hours) so they could recoup their Turn Undeads or Lay on Hands? My experience with the IE games was the games incentivized rest spamming because your mage became less effective after every fight. Most of the other abilities were free to use or easily mimicked by scrolls or potions so I never felt the game encouraged rest spamming (multiple times!) to recoup those (but I could be wrong).

I'm not aware that Obsidian is eliminating the resting mechanic outright - aren't they only limiting where you can rest as a way of addressing resting after every encounter? That said, is there any real difference between a Level X Mage having 6 fireballs memorized and the player rests after every fight so they can always fling fireballs and a Level X Mage who, based on cooldown mechanics, can throw 6 fireballs every fight? The Mage still does the same thing, so what benefit is had by having the player press the "rest" button?

Can't say I ever used a lot of the exploits that other people did in BG2 (when I wanted to do a trivial dance through the game, I just gifted myself stuff via the console). That said I'm not sure that its possible to create a game completely devoid of exploitable elements. I'm not sure that means the developers shouldn't try to create something without obvious flaws, though.

I can't imagine Snow Beast (2011) can top 1977's Snowbeast - Bo Svenson, Clint Walker and Yvette Mimieux vs a killer sasquatch-esque monster at a ski resort in a TV movie written by Joseph Stefano (Psycho, The Outer Limits).

They really needed to think through Open Palm and Closed Fist a bit more. I felt like that its an interesting concept poorly executed through the game (realistically there should be good/evil/neutral open palm and closed fist options - in short the intent behind the application of the philosophy). I think for me the combat system should be branched out a bit more; I didn't like the "rock-paper-scissors" effect they used which pretty much led to all characters having one martial style, one magic style, one support style and one weapon style. Transformation magic was also very useless. Ideally I'd like them to create it so a character could be viable concentrating on unarmed combat, armed combat, magic combat and transformations.

Given that they've said in the past that they're checking the systems they create in the game to make sure they're "fun", isn't this a non-issue? Second, as JE mentioned in this thread, they're not "check-mating bad player behavior" they're trying to address what I'd call broken systems. "Degenerate Gameplay" is not about the player, its about the unintended consequences of systems.

My expectations going in were - isometric (or similar) real time with pause fantasy setting party based Made by people at Obsidian Ent. So far, that's kinda how its looking to me, so I'd say its a success. They don't have the D&D license, they don't have the infinity engine; it was (to my mind at least) never going to be a 1 to 1 translation anyhow. EDIT: I also have to say, realistically, you can have a game that is both Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. The entire ideas behind them are opposed to one another. Baldur's Gate kinda lies between them; I wonder if that's why everyone seems to think this should be Baldur's Gate III (without the name because, lawsuit).

I didn't like Sad Panda Skydiving. But once you "get" what the best way to make money is, it became trivial. I thought Insurance Fraud was easy once I got unlimited sprint - I just kept sprinting from hot spot locations in the oncoming lane to insure I got hit A LOT. Mayhem was easy once I got unlimited ammo on the rocket launcher (but unlimited grenades also worked). The snatches that involved running down cars and the helicopter missions were probably the hardest for me (I have trouble driving the helicopters).

I was more thinking of dirty fighting. Of course everyone can throw dirt in an opponents eyes. Maybe he pokes the opponent in the eye. Maybe he bites his ear, lol. Moves that will surprise your opponent. Realistically though, since the thing you don't want to do in mortal combat is to prolong a fight, wouldn't everyone want to fight dirty and end the fight as quickly as they could? I understand that rogues typically have gotten combat bonuses flanking and backstabbing and other melee things that don't really make sense (a fighter with a sword stabbing a back is going to be just as stabby as a rogue, really) and I love the idea of being able to blind, hamstring (slow), disarm, etc. but I'm not sure I see it as being important to be class specific (beyond, maybe, some classes being more likely to succeed because their stats tend to favor certain moves?)

Regarding World War Z...

Yeah, it's pretty sad when I have to go through these measures just to play a game I bought. But hey, on the bright side, at least this stonewalled the pirates dead in their tracks. Oh wait, no it didn't, it didn't have any effect whatsoever. I guess the silver lining of being forced to use a crack is that I don't even have to turn on Steam to play the game now. Anyway, Playing Jade Empire and loving the **** out of it. I even enjoy the little shmup mini-games. I want a sequel to JE so bad. I'm still in the very early stages, just started chapter 2. I'm looking forward to getting my axes so I can start cleaving chumps up with style. For now I just slice them up with my claws, Enter the Dragon style. I'm pretty much going full on closed fist so I get to be a massive a-hole to everyone. Good times. One thing really jarring about the game is how much crappier the movies look than the rest of the game. I know it's a product of the game getting HD-ified from the original XBox version, while the movies stayed the same, but it's so insanely noticeable that it basically slaps me across the face every time another movie comes up. I really enjoyed Jade Empire. Would love a sequel to it. Doubt it'll happen, though.

I'll never understand the need for mechanics that say "this class can bend down, scoop up dirt and throw it in the eyes of others, but this other class cannot". What is class specific about tossing dirt into somebody's eyes?

Was the "tree rapist" still there? There was.. an encounter with some hedges and spindly bracken, and a weird doppelganger kind of instance. But not exactly the "tree rapist". The tree root does the same thing in the remake as it did in the original in the version I saw. I thought the re-make was good until the end, at which point IMO it falls apart entirely. That Dr. Hill scene was a bit much, although so much of that film was out there I guess it shouldn't have been that surprising in context...

Rosbjerg - WWZ the novel - afaik - is world spanning and covers several months/years of time and loads of people. Sure they could have ripped it all apart and settled on a singular family but it'd have left as much to the side unfilmed as the current film does, as I understand it (I've never read WWZ, so my knowledge of it is entirely secondhand).

I simply cannot grasp (well of course I can, but for dramatic effect let's assume not) why Max Brooks would agree to this adaptation.. It took all that was great about the book, the slow pace the what-if, the suspense and turned it into a ****fest of fast zombies and tsunami death.. A pox! on the imbecile who thought this wise! (watching Henry V, can't help myself) Might not have had any control once it was licensed. But there's no way the slow pace would translate to a film (would have to have been a series of some kind).

Well if its WWZ you're talking about the main character work for the UN.

"I'll pull out those potions we through in the Deep Stash before we go through this door" *checks expiration date* "FUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" I think the better way to deal with potion hording is to give a reason for them to be used, which means that they have to have more utility than their cost to replinish. The thing is that usually (like many resources) they're more necessary at lower levels (when you don't have the money to buy) than at higher levels. Now IIRC (and I may not) isn't the idea that only potions, healing spells and maybe inn rest can heal Health while stamina recovers over time. Stamina increases greatly as you advance, health not so much. If so, then the mechanics seem to already be addressing potion hording by making them darn important to the user. (Besides, the more exciting way to deal with this is after a certain date they expire, after that there's a curve on their increasingly likelihood to explode catastrophically in your pack, eventually making them useful again as thrown grenades about as stable as nitro).

Leon campaign. Too much pining over Ada. Chris campaign. Too much obsession with Ada. Jake campaign. Oh look Ada again. Ada campaign. Agent Hunt was fun though. I liked RE6, but really didn't have any expectations for it either. The only campaign I really didn't like was Chris' which just seemed to be a run and gun story. I like the fact you couldn't destroy the uber-monster easily in Jake's campaign. That and the outbreak stuff of Leon's campaign felt very RE-y to me. Right now I'm playing Skyrim again.

I only get Thursday off because we're in the middle of testing some stuff this week and I might need to actually be on hand Friday. Bummer.

I missed Three The Hard Way on TV recently. Too bad, I wanted to see it but that station never seems to show movies at a time I can see them. I want to see Death Dimension too.