darthbator

The final encounter of this game is pretty brutal. By the time I hit the last room where all the nastiest shit is I'm in kinda poor shape.

Yeah I wanted to see if I could get a TL2 group going but the thread here seems dead and so does the steam group

Ahhh is that why there are a huge amount of enemies onscreen but 2-3 of them sill just move twice or move once and then just end their turn (or just end their turn). Do they ever tell you stuff like this? I remember the difficulty tool tips being stuff like (this is normal, this is harder, this is super hard).

The story is strangely inconsistent the entire time. You'll notice that different characters say "Vault Hunter" and others say "Vault Hunters". I honestly don't think it's important at all. BL is IMO ridiculous enough that I totally agree with me (I want to use just that part of your username, it makes me feel nice and crazy!). There's really not much of dramatic substance to ruin. The windows of time when it decides to employ serious drama are really quite short and are generally presented fairly surprisingly. I think they still function with 3 players over voice chat telling jokes. The "overall" structure of the larger plot is total shake and bake writing meant to hold their ridiculous elements together into some kind of cohesive overall goal. I think anything you might lose in immersion (which is IMO really nothing) is totally made up for by the fact that it feels like it really "fulfills" the game mechanics to have another player there. If there was ever a game in need of level gap neutralization this is it!

I believe light plasma rifles have a +aim bonus on them.

I think that is the longest podcast I have ever listened to. Who and where am I?

I just lost my first top level character. Thankfully it was a support that I didn't spec as I think I should have. Either way it still felt devastating. That entire mission was tense. Almost everyone emerged critically wounded. The feeling of managing your teams is really incredible in this game.

But now you have a whole basement of crack to smoke!

I think this is a really interesting topic. I don't think it's possible to take a stand on this at the moment on either side. I think that many developers feel a moral (personally righteous) obligation to not "use their powers for evil". We are at a time where game design in what I generally refer to as the "serotonin dump" era has become pretty highly refined. All you need to do is look at the fact that many emerging designs and mechanics are attempting to use games to convey an experience or emotion different from pure engrossment or empowered enjoyment. The old design tools are so refined people are looking to make entirely new ones to build entirely different kinds of things. I don't think it's that hard for skilled game designers to create systems that will drive a certain type of player to continually spend. I'm sure this has caused a lot of designers to reflect on that. However despite an individuals personal moral compass I don't think the strong sense of community required for true ethical decisions has really sprung up inside game development as a medium. Ethics demands the cohesion of a group to create social standards. As it stands now many game development decisions are driven by corporate ethics. The ethics of a publicly traded corporation demand that they leverage every resource at their disposal in order to continue exiting and maximize profits for their shareholders. As inhuman as it sounds in that particular case ethics demands that they push that type of design to it's earning limit. Who knows what kind of awful dissonance this must cause developers who's morals conflict with the ethical standard they're working under? Maybe this is one of the reasons that churn appears to remain at incredible rates in the game industry. I think it's sad that the proliferation of that particular kind of ethic has really outpaced emergence of a communal ethic of game developers. I do think that exists but a lot of factors subvert that particular group ethic. Subjugation to a different ethic to acquire funding. The hard realities of making money to stay in existence themselves. I think a lot of "what is good for games" can often run contrary to "what is good for the people making them". The answer to the latter is almost always higher profits. I have a few friends who have worked on "F2P" projects and I don't know anyone who seems to really like the model. Although in a time where there is so much product on the market competing for your dollar and you may only catch a limited player base no one can argue the business effectiveness of the model. I certainly don't have any answers, and I am very worried about the "race to the bottom" effect the free to play games are almost certainly going to have on the market over the long term. It hasn't really done damage at this point, but as more and more F2P games emerge it's hard to imagine a scenario where they don't end up seriously effecting the market and possibly the entire business of how games are made.

Does cold water damage you or just kill you outright? I remember taking damage from water that was not some kind of element type I just thought it was water...

I actually think it casts rays out of some probability cone once a roll concludes in a miss. I think that's why it just destroys totally random cover on misses. That mod looks really awesome. I haven't been able to get into the core game upk files. I wonder if he was able to find that in some XML somewhere... I'm sure I'll end up using that one when I start my next play through on classic.

I doubt firaxis will surface that info on the combat screen or change the UI. There was a lot of talk before release about releasing mod tools, I'm not really sure where that all stands right now. I tried to poke around a little and I don't think anyone without seriously deep knowledge of unreal will be able to do anything with this. I believe they are using an altered version of the UDK because I am unable to open any of the UPK files in the install. I really am hoping for PC mod tools. I think the modding community could pretty quickly correct the issues with the PC UI (as well as adding free aim for all weapons back in. The one thing that seems to be universally requested).

I feel like as more eyes hit the game and they get more feedback and data (and mod tools inevitably drop) we'll see some UI improvements. I really feel like the fault is the game not providing you with adequate information about what's actually going on in the battlefield. I actually feel like the combat system and game itself are excellent it could just be a lot more informative about what it's actually doing.

Ugh the cover system is really confusing. The F1 menu does not appear to take into consideration defensive bonuses granted by armor? I gave some ghost armor to one of my squad members (med armor +6 HP +10 Def). Put him into cover and checked his def values. 20 in half cover 40 in full..... The longer I play the more I wish they had built more visual cue's into interface. There should really be something to give some manner of indication of LoS. Lots of times I am kinda guessing where my character can and can't see. It gets especially dicey since characters can sometimes seem to see round corners and be able to shoot right through walls that look like they have no LoS to.

How much defensive bonus is conferred? Thusfar I have only gotten one item that confers me any defensive bonus at all. I'm having a difficult time weighing defense bonuses versus additional HP bonuses. (I have yet to build power armor that confers any manner of defense bonus).

I believe that square is there to highlight the delivery area for rescue targets. There is a menu option mid mission that says abandon mission but I have yet to actually hit that. I don't think corners block fire at all I just think the accuracy debuff from full cover is much greater and generally discourages the AI from shooting at players in it. I think the only thing that determines what you can hit at is LoS. I wish there was a compendium in game or something that outlined the hard fast laws of cover. Or some kinda training academy in the game. When the game can be so unforgiving I feel like it should really enable me to understand all the fine details of it's mechanics. I believe any cover is potentially destroyed (full of half) on misses. I can't really figure out how it decides what to destroy either. It may actually just be casting out into the environment and breaking whatever it hits in a really stimulative way after it does all the emulative random number rolls to determine the miss.

I'm going to tattoo the trailer onto my leg

It's ultra disturbing when you think of the amount of edible consumables retrieved from this particular "pouch" in many games. Yeah I heal myself by eating herbs from my butt. EDIT: Borderlands 2 also represents all your gear on your character. I really enjoyed that even stuff like class and grenade mods are visible on the character model.

I've loved in XCOM how everything is shown on the individual units. It really enhances that kind of "80's gi joe figure" feeling of the models. "Look at all the stuff from the accessory packs guys!!"

I've come to think of it as "landmines" of enemies. I am maneuvering through this minefield of aliens and I'm trying to tactically manage when I set off individual packs. I've noticed that sometimes enemies will surface in fogged areas of the map. I don't see them moving around or anything they're all just standing there in a group. I'm not sure why I am seeing them like that or if it's a bug. There are some missions where the spontaneous arrival of a bunch of aliens has totally decimated my squad. I feel like the packs of enemies might be moving around the map in the fog of war but I think they're doing it basically as a singular object occupying a map tile (or maybe a 2x2 cluster || 4x4 cluster). It seems like they only separate into individual units once they hit your FoV and play that little cinematic and then make their initial movements. That might actually be why that's happening, it could be "unpacking" the enemy units from that single object.

I have a feeling that we'll look back on the initial infinite trailer and have similar thoughts (how it manages to highlight the things that make the final product work). At least I hope that's true.

I dug pretty deeply into freelancer as well but I never stopped yearning for flight controls. I've never come across a crowd that was particularly warm to freelancer. I seem to like it more then most people and I'm not exactly a rabid fan.

I can't recall if this was posted earlier but I saw this on RPS the other day. http://www.rockpaper...ld/#more-126882 I gotta admit the world they're crafting sounds really interesting. Unfortunately I can't get all that excited about that "classic PCRPG" perspective.

I lived in SF back in 02. It's a really awesome city, but expensive as all hell and with a HYPER competitive job market. I'm from LA and currently reside there again. I love Los Angeles but the sprawl is almost unbearable. The city is actually doing a surprisingly good job extending our anemic public transit system it's just taking a long time. I think we're still 4-5 years out from largely functional public transportation through most of proper Los Angeles. Even at that point it's still bound to be a pain as getting off a train exposes you to another large section of sprawl that will likely require a buss. Driving in near constant traffic is a depressing reality for almost all LA denizens.