Amentep

The thing I've found is that the flipper can, to some degree, determine the outcome of the flip (for awhile I had flipped coins enough that I knew based on the general speed of the flip I'd made and the height it got and what side it started on what side it'd land on). In that sense, I'm a bit dismayed that the study uses human flippers. Seems like a machine flipper would need to be used to make sure that all the variables in how the coin is flipped can be reduced so that you're actually looking at the flip itself and not how its flipped. I also wonder if the printing on the coin matters - does a high relief tend to favor landing down?

And yet you do believe that restarting a game from a load point when you die is somehow "better" than allowing the game to respawn you with an XP/Gold loss. EDIT: And that belief seems to hinge around "You die, you should reload."

Not ashamed at all. Because its a game. I mean if you're going to be all "I sleep on a bed of nails" hardcore, you should uninstall the game when your character dies, because your one portal into that world no longer exists. Anything else is LAME.

The problem is that this kind of design can lead a bad player into a death spiral that he is unable to escape. Constantly having to take the loot and xp loss because he lacks the required loot and xp. Which can also happen if you lose an NPC in the fight (because you get attacked again before you can raise the character/find a replacement and lose another).

I liked Deekin; he made me laugh. I generally speaking have no problem with the XP/Money loss either.

Or, in BG, when you lose a party member you can go back to the church and have them resurrected. Only to find out you don't have enough gold to pay for it. So you go out to try and play wack-a-monster to get the gold. And you get a random encounter with a horde of gnolls. And after killing them you now have enough money to resurrect your fallen comrade! Except now you've lost a second party member fighting the random gnolls and if you resurrect the first character you now have to fight monsters to to get enough money to resurrect the second...

That's really my point; hard is subjective so if its fun it'll at least give me something to latch onto (even if the combat doesn't really get "easier")

Personally, I want combat to be fun. Don't care about the difficulty per se; too hard or too easy though is probably going to down the fun factor.

Sounds like something I'd enjoy...then get a heart attack and die. So far it seems to be a case of getting hooked into the premise. People who have gotten hooked into it have been: on the edge of their seats shaking in their seats leaving because they're scared having trouble sleeping after seeing it People who've not gotten hooked have been: dissapointed Personally I liked it and thought it built suspense real well. I also knew nothing about it beyond the basic premise - I think not knowing where the film is going helps a whole lot.

Yeah but the three games are Fallout 3, 4, 5 according to the original comments. That would mean Beth would have to consider NV either 4 or 5 of their contract.

I saw Paranormal Activity. Really well done scary movie - it may be the only film I've ever been to where audience members left because they were too scared to watch anymore.

Maybe he's just happy to see her?

Flatterer

I'm not sure Red Queen was ever an "official" board related to Interplay or BIS, since I think it was Josh's personal board connected to his website. As I recall the original Interplay boards were threaded and I never posted there, but they had BG1, PST, Descent to Undermountan, Fallout 1 & 2 on it. And Gorth's link confirms it! The BIS forums seem to have went up around April 2001 (which seems to fit with my memory of it being around while I was playing Heart of Winter).

Well, the closest and easiest way of seeing a restriction in the "press" is to type **** or **** or **** on this very board and see what comes up. We have no such restrictions on any media channel in Sweden, for example. USA has lots of those, hypocrites as you are. To be fair to the US Press, that would only really be restrictive if communication was impossible without using ****, **** or ****.

To be fair, they'll probably show Barak Obama accepting the Nobel Peace prize on Finnish TV, as paid for by the Media Tax. So its not as off-topic as some of the other stuff in this thread!

Not realy, all they need to do is not to make it on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, and release it only for DS and PSP... Was the JA DS port a big seller? Because I'd imagine that would be the litmus test whether anyone thought a new DS game would be worth it.

Party systems in general are kind of silly. Like saying "I want to elect an entity to represent me in this other entity."

Dark Fantasy, as a genre, is supposed to be a combination of Fantasy genres and Horror genres. Dragon Age is described as "Dark Heroic Fantasy"; the lack of a comma between dark and heroic meaning that it is Dark "Heroic Fantasy" which I believe would be more described (to borrow a bit from L. Sprague De Camp) as a story of action or adventure in an imaginary world with magic (heroic fantasy) and the world itself is a grim and brutal one (dark). "We describe what we

I think there is always the "does what doesn't work for you outweigh what does" in subjective analysis of what you like. But any game should be evaluated for what it is rather than what it isn't, I think. Not liking Fallout 3 because it doesn't seem to fit the setting or continuity established in the first I can understand (although I can't see myself letting discontinuity trumping fun gameplay). Disliking Fallout 3 because of VATS, or level scaling or how the dialogue and quests works I don't get. Disliking Fallout 3 because its not isometric and turn-based like the previous entries I don't get, because IMO that's something it was never trying to be.

Well yeah, that's my point. There's an inherent understanding with the lower numbers that can't be fathomed with the larger numbers. But I think even if you knew all the numbers it'd still be difficult to see the whole thing. That's why most solutions to problems involve trying to solve some small part of it rather than approaching a total top-down perspective.

This begs the question: why make a sequel to a game that has a small hardcore group of fans, and change it to appeal to more people? Then why make a sequel in the first place? (Beth gets bonus points for making a sequel to their own game and disguising it as another.) Well I think there's two parts to this question. One is any game that has a hardcore group of fans probably has something that is probably appealing to gamers in general. So the question is, if a good game could be made to appeal to more people and still be a cool game, then why not try it? The other part is a bit more nebulous and its "what makes a game?". Is it the setting? Is it the mechanics? Is the it the graphics and gameplay elements? Is it a gestalt of all of its elements? Does changing one element change the game into something else entirely? Or does it just make the game different but still connected? What if you change 5 or 6 things? 10? I loved the SSI game Phantasie and for many years wished for a 4th sequel. But at no time did I expect the gameplay/graphics to remain totally unchanged had they done it!

I actually think this is true for a good number of people (if not everybody). I don't think humans on average do well with large numbers. Say you owe ₤1,000 you understand that amount. Saying your nation owes ₤1,379,987,321.02 is most likely to make people shrug, or afraid or outraged but not really understand what it actually means to have that kind of debt.

Personally, I'm not sure that any game is setting off on the right foot if its goal is to please fans. Make a cool game that looks good and plays better and hopefully the fans will come.

Going for the "exploded face" look from Oblivion?