Reyturner

A development subforum up there along with the multiplayer networking and strategy space would be cool.

If you're not artistically inclined, the only thing worth going to school for is CS. The odds of the skills you learn getting a computer science degree subsequently paying off the debts you'll incur getting a computer science degree can't be beat. This is especially valuable if you want to get hired at a major studio; self taught programmers with no previous professional experience have a bad reputation. Ironically, people with game design degrees have similarly bad reputations. This isn't to say that there are NO good game design courses out there, but unless you get some demonstrable hard skills under your belt (something game schools are woefully bad at providing) or you happen to be attached to an amazing project, you might find yourself in a tough spot once your graduate. The best thing about going to a games school is being surrounded by like-minded people, but, there are TONS of places to get similar support. Two threads over for example. Write about games. Make games. Go to events with other people to make and write about games. Hard skills are 90% of what gets you ahead, but who you know is the other 90%.

Regarding "Super Threaders":

One of my favorite things about Dark Souls is how the world feels like a real(ish) place with a history that has transformed into a mythology. You get the sense that the old stories could be just the interpretation of crazy events by simpler people (or good PR). Nothing is as grand as what you envision the city of the gods should be. That is

the discussion of A Link Between World's item renting system made me think of the Dark Souls. DaS also has an intended path but allows you to poke pretty deeply into later content, typically putting several cash or meat barriers in front of you long before you encounter a locked door. It's also quite punitive when your sequence breaking goes wrong. I'm certainly not the first to make the Zelda / Dark Souls connection but this makes me wonder if someone has at Nintendo.

Happy Annual Something Interesting Happened in EVE Day! See y'all next year

Horse bag overfloweth (day 3 is up).

Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask. hee hee

Bit.Trip Runner 2. Not really relaxing per se but it puts me into a nice sort of flow state of mind.

Happy Horse Bag Day

does that still happen if you

I don't think there are mechanics that need to be retired so much as there is a need for someone to act as an editor for a lot of big games. None of the mechanics mentioned can't be used well in a game. A lot of the "bad" mechanics mentioned above make their way into AAA games because of obligation. Others are left in when they don't work because nobody has the clout (or the guts) too can potentially hundreds of hours of other people's work, especially when they only did that work because the designers told them to do it in the first place. The sunken costs fallacy is only a fallacy if the success of a project (or at least the project leads) is not judged by how closely the development cycle matched a plan laid out months or years earlier (in the eyes of the money people anyways). Besides, the contest for biggest cliche in successful games is a toss up between "the game wasn't fun until a week before it shipped" and "we had no idea if anyone would even like it". It's often impossible to see the whole elephant for what it is until the last moment and it is rare to work under someone you can trust to have the freedom and vision to make hard, expensive calls correctly. 99% of cuts are budgetary, not editorial.

Regarding cynicism: working on a big game involves dealing with a level of momentum that even other game designers, used to working on smaller projects, can fail to appreciate. A feature like the dynamic relationships is ambitious and will certainly be cool if it works. But, this game doesn't look like the kind of title that will be afforded the time to perfect the system, and from the amount of VO and animation demonstrated in the demo, it will be MASSIVELY expensive to produce the amount of content the system will need, which will all need to be planned well in advance. To mitigate the risk, the lines will need to be generic, the relationships need to be catch-all and the animations will need to be reused. I'll bet the "hopeless assassination attempt by a small orc that results in the targeted big orc mushing his attacker" sequence is used in every instance of that scenario, probably multiple times in a single play-through, never mind repeated play-throughs. None of this is ever done it bad faith, its just the realities facing these kinds of projects; it is always better to deliver a mediocre product on time and on budget, especially when it is already tied into a recognizable brand and can easily be marketed as being similar to other popular titles (Batman and Assassin's Creed in this case). The dynamic relationships being bad won't hurt this game, even if critics and snobs like us complain about "missed opportunities" or ruminate how much better it would have been excised entirely. Since it was probably the feature that got the game green-lit in the first place, it will appear in the final product, even if the people making it run into serious issues getting it done well. Now, this is all coming from my experience in the industry, as well has having paid attention to games for the last 15+ years. I could be TOTALLY wrong. I am almost certainly totally wrong on several points above in relation to this product. But, I think skepticism is well warranted.

The Greatsword of Artorias (cursed) is a great "first character you've ever played" weapon as it rewards you for having already ruined your character by requiring 24 Str, 18 Dex, 18 Wis and 18 Int (with C scaling in each). Yes, that is the weapon I'm using right now thanksverymuch.

How many Irishmen does it take to change a light-bulb?

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks "why the face?" to which the horse replies "The doctor just told us that my wife has inoperable cancer. She has six weeks to live."

Sif limping around in the end was the worst :*(

On the topic of pro tips for beginners, a friend and I wrote a short lived Dota blog a while ago and he wrote some pretty good posts (and I wrote some bullshit, oh god, look away). He did a short video about lane control that would probably help a lot new players.

Only Blighttown is actually bad IMHO, and only because of the crazy performance hits you take when you try to move around.

My aggravation from people dumping their spaghetti after 15 minutes in HoN has made me grumpy, and I'm not for stomps or griefing. I just can't envision a surrender system that only eliminates the bad without hurting the late game or snuffing the already faint flame of the out of nowhere come back (the highest high IMHO). I'll chalk it up to a lack of imagination. I surrender the argument (no hats for me).

Or you could push. Or you could rosh. Or you could gank. Or you could backdoor them. Sell all your stuff and get rapiers. Do something. If the other team is passive, go punish them for it.

But wasn't she also like "eff that in the bee" and then headed out pretending to be a sword dude.There's a pretty clear trend of aegiphobia throughout Tolkien's work.

Battle Points are totally meaningless (or should be, hiding game modes behind them is the worst, just use games played) and should be a reward for playing. I'd also like to see consequences for bad conduct like fountain fishing (which is basically just an unseemly end zone dance), but that could be solved in other ways. I honestly think approving of players quitting, let alone rewarding them with battle points, is bad for the game Valve is making (i.e. the hardest cored LoMa). Dota 2 is a game with high highs and equally low lows and I don't think you can have one without the other.

Make it 45 minutes (give those late game carries a chance) and no hats for the losing team and you've got a deal.

Fountain fishing sucks but solving the problem with a surrender mechanic is swatting flies with a-bombs.