Amentep

"The View Askew"

no it isn't, but it doesn't take every ounce of a writer's sweat, blood and tears either - see the above post. And if you have a team of writers.... A team of writers who may not all be writing characters. Again I'm not trying to make writing the romances more or less difficult than they are; honestly I'm not even sure it is the right discussion to have at this point anyhow. What makes you think that the majority of the 73k people don't want Romance. You have to gather statistics somewhere and the official forums are as good as place as any to get opinions of Romance, plus we know from the likes of BSN that Romance is a popular option in RPG so I don't think we need to ask the question " what makes you think people want Romance" when the evidence from the gaming community is clear. The sooner you accept some sort of Romance is a popular choice for gamers the happier person you will be Gfted1, you can't fight the inevitable storm. Don't be the reed in the path of the hurricane "the inevitable storm"? Look I'm all for romances but they've got to fit the design, NPCs and story. Not every game should have them as not every game is going to make sense with them.

Our methods are logically equivalent. [(4/6x - 3/6x) = (24/24x - 18/24x) = (1x - 3/4x) = (1/4x)] = [7*6 = 42 = 10.5*4]

To be fair, one of the complaints about romances in the past from those who aren't overly fond of them is that the NPC - if a romance is not pursued - loses reactivity; in essence for the character to be interesting the player must choose to romance them. The only way to 'fix' this problem is to make sure that the character is robust in dialogue and relationship with the PC regardless of the PC's feelings. Which means that we're talking about, in essence, creating two fully fleshed-out relationships for the PC-NPC (one that keeps the character interesting without a romance and one that gives a satisfactory romance storyline). That's not a trivial use of the writers time.

Was this from your years of fighting in the 'Nam as a Tunnel Rat? I suppose old habits die hard... No, I just didn't mind fighting in the tunnels.

Yes, but you'll be surprised by the number of people who will argue against that.

If you see the old Guy Fawkes masks and compare them with Lloyd's design its pretty clear the anonymous masks are based off of the V mask as opposed to the older Guy Fawkes masks for Bonfire night.

I liked fighting in tunnels.

I used to know how to do that, but I have'nt actually used any of the math I learned in school. Like ever. There was one time, when I needed to calculate the exact lengths and dimensions for the pipes for a turbo exhaust manifold to achieve maximum efficience that I could've used those kind of maths. Paid a jet engine engineer to make the calculations instead. >_>' I know what the calculations are and mean, but I could possibly never do something similar myself. As my boss said regardings mathematics, "that's why we have secretaries". I used to work as a secretary.

Anyone else feel like a stick insect who has just had the life and works of Albert Einstein explained to him? Yip Oh its not that bad. We're just trying to find the coordinates that the two linear equations intersect at. Not like trying to explain the "Monty Hall Problem". I've never been able to do either. I've only been able to do the maths.

Weren't women inferior in Qunari society or is that retconned too? IIRC there were enforced gender roles as the Qun placed men and women both into specific defined roles in life. From the perspective of the Qun as long as a person was in their role and fulfilled their role they had just as much usefulness as the next role in the Qun. A soldier like Sten wouldn't be seen as inferior to a woman weaving clothes in the Qun as both filled their societal functions. The inferiority would be seen by outsiders to the Qun who would feel that the individual determines their place in society rather than society determing the individuals place; however women weren't deemed less useful by the society (thus "inferior" or of less value) than men. Or something. EDIT: But IIRC it was the equality of the roles in the Qun that was pulling so many elves to it.

I enjoyed both, personally. They do different things, and I think they have success at most of the things they try to do (FO3 "end" notwithstanding).

My first thought was "of course not," but then I thought about what 2/3rd of my age was and it creeped me out. As I recall, the accepted formula for this kind of thing that the partner must be at least (your age)/2 + 7. So, solving for a 2/3 ratio, Ros must be at least 42 years old in order for this not to be creepy. (Wow, it's been a long time since I've done algebra. Somebody double-check me.) That said, "creepy" doesn't necessarily mean "morally wrong." If the proposed partner is of sufficient temporal, emotional, and intellectual maturity that he or she knows what he or she is getting into, it's not morally wrong in my book. 1/2x+ 7 = Y Y= 2/3x 1/2x +7 = 2/3x 3/4x + 10.5 = x 1/4 x = 10.5 x= 42; Y = 28 Checks out.

Yeah I found stealth to be unplayable to Oblivion (which is the type of character I played in Morrowind). So I played a heavy armor two-handed weapon guy. I loved beam weapons in the earlier Fallouts (when I could get them in 1-2, using Mothership Zeta to munchkin up in 3) but they were worthless in Fallout NV because they never damaged most anything (at least not early on, but even though this was said to be a bug, after the patches they seemed to never get over the DT of opponents). So I played a different type of character. I don't think that the inherent inability to play a specific type of character makes a game "bad" so much as it makes it badly designed / poorly implemented for that style of play. Oblivion was fine with a walking tank.

My problem with the Legion really lies with Vulpes Inculta. If you challenge him on their actions in Nipton, he specifically says you should try to attack him if you disagree. Then you attack him per his request and the rest of Ceasar's gang is all "oh noes, you attacked our dood, we gots to defend him" despite the fact that he pretty much asked me to shoot him in the face repeatedly. Of course, I just meant FONV showed that do everything approach does not mean the game is going to be automatically shallow, like you made it sound. I'd argue you can't do everything; there's a lot of choices about siding with groups that cuts those groups out of the narrative for you easily Its relatively easy to get on the Powder Gangers and the Legion against you early on, for example. Or to choose to side for/against the New Vegas computer guy and really change things up permanantly. Compare that to Skyrim where you can join most of the factions without penalty (I think the only one that "counts" is the imperial / stormcloaks one and the Blades/Greybeards) even when it wouldn't make sense (Why would the Imperials allow in the person who killed the Emperor's cousin at the wedding if you do the Dark Brotherhood quest and get caught?) or how the game railroads you into other choices (Why can't you NOT join the Mages Guild or the Greybeards and still advance the central quest?)

I'd consider Obsidian's FONV to be an Obsidian game and not a Bethesda game. Obs' FONV had strong narrative and a good bit of reactivity to doing various things. That said, I wish there had been a better representation of Caesar's Legion but that's neither here nor there.

I tend to expect the type of open world Bethesda does to be shallow - its the trade off for their "do everything" approach to the game, IMO.

"Iron Bull" Nice, I have always felt that Bioware could develop there relationship arcs in different ways. The concept of RPG porn in there games is intriguing? Sounds like a Jade Empire name (where the Black Whirlwind's brother was named Raging Ox).

Yaaaaaaay, at last someone who likes Oblivion !! Amentep have I ever mentioned I think you have good taste in games To be honest, I don't really see a lot of difference in Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Gameplay wise they all do similar things; story too. Graphics are the only big differences and implementation of the character system (which ultimately are variations on a theme). I keep meaning to go back to Oblivion at some point; I didn't hate it so much as I just really disliked the Oblivion map after repeated trips.

I ran into her at a convention. Literally, she was pulling a little bag on rollers and it got hung in a door and I didn't react to her stopping in time and *bam* ran right into her. Weirdly a similar thing happened a year or two earlier with Aria Giovanni, but in this case I was the one who came to a sudden stop (because someone fell in front of me) and she ran into my back...

I stopped playing Oblivion the third or fourth (or maybe second?) time I had to go through an Oblivion gate and run around the Oblivion map. Otherwise I didn't mind it that much.

My point was to say if both films are losing money why are the indies seen as "worse" to lose money? Even still, lets say that the blockbuster does $50 million and is number one on a slow week. That's (by the above scenario) 5 million tickets. That's 45 million pirated views under the 90% scenario described and $450 million in lost revenue. The thing about availability is that it holds through in piracy. Do you think, honestly, that a film that barely squeaked into 2 theaters is even going to be made available to pirate, and if it is who would know about it to download it. The stuff that gets pirated are the big budget blockbusters and the Oscar bait art films that have buzz. Could there be an audience to pirate a film like, say, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X that only showed a handful of festivals? Amentep, I believe we're both trying to say that it doesn't matter if a lot of top ten movies get pirated. Or that even a greater proportion. Your mistake - and its very understandable - is in assuming that it is the percentage return on investment which matters. But it isn't, by itself. Any investment proposal is tailored around the return, the risk on the return, and the scale of the return. Blockbusters get pirated, they even fail outright if they don't catch the pubic imagination just right. So the risks are high. But the rtruns are huge, and they are in an order of magnitude which suits big investors. So, if I am making an indie movie I have to pitch a return which won't allow an investor to put all their money with me, won't return a monetary 'win' on a scale I can recognise, and can still get pirated out of existence when people are too lazy to find local showings or buy the DVD. Most indie film makers I've met aren't even in indie films to make money. They are only in them as part of the lifecycle on the way to making big budget Hollywood films. The thing is, the loss of returns is rather important; several recent films actually made money but didn't make ENOUGH money to cover the other losses. As it was put, the studioes don't want to invest 50 mil to make 100 mil, they want to invest 50 mil to make 300 mil. And that's just crazy; but if you think about it, they think like this because they have to balance to cost of all the 50 mil films that made 50 mil or less. As to what I've seen, I saw THE CONJURING a nice classic haunted house/demon monster story. James Wan has turned out to be a pretty good creepy horror film director.

Because that was an area that much effort went into in DA2. Well they reused a handful of really small maps for DA2. DAI now uses one really big map for everything. And people thought Bio didn't learn anything from DA2 ... (I kid, I liked DA2 reused maps and all).

I like Prometheus in an entertainment way. It doesn't logically hold together that well, though. So being a satisfying sci-fi film isn't really in its DNA. That said the rolling ship crushing thing was stupid, as was the "we can't find our way out" bit. Which to me is the frustrating thing, I think they could have made a really great film and didn't, and that's always a let down. Still was entertained by it.

I should be clear I made those abilities up on the spot - I have no clue what they're doing with the actual abilities, just that was the kind of thing I thought they were talking about. As far as accuracy, I guess it depends on how they implement it. I suppose accuracy could be used to overcome DT(? - as a sign of precise hits to the weak areas of the armor) instead of hit/miss (since you reminded me they seem to have a different hit/miss ratio planned).