Gorbles

Bit of a bump on this, but wanted to get my thoughts on Dishonoured down. I love the art style. The RPG elements are right up my street. I love selecting different weapons based on what I want to do. I love the talking heart and every other bit of arcane wizardry the game throws at you / against the rather polished mechanical elements of certain baddies. But I just can't get through it playing non-lethal. This is like Deus Ex (the remake) all over again. I quit that out of frustration too, because up to a point it doesn't matter about your intentions to be non-violent, the game kinda railroads you against that ideal both subtly and unsubtly. In Deus Ex it was giant rooms of bad guys on mission timers (and apparently boss fights, but I never got that far) and here it's the incredibly meagre amounts of non-lethal options you get (and sleep darts are in really short supply). I keep wanting to like it (much like Deus Ex tbh, you could probably swap the names around in this post for exactly the same effect), and keep trying it periodically. But I just can't keep with it. Blah.

Oh goodness, that would kill me. I only have two games for my (new!) Switch so far, and a Prime release would just, urgh. Also hi! I have a Switch! I don't have the online pass yet, just trying to space out luxury spending things (as the Switch ate up any disposable I did have, and then my PC keyboard died). No idea how the friend stuff works yet.

I am absolutely here for this kind of shade

Sorry, didn't mean to infer that. I'm just riding quite hard on the "gamers being assholes" thing because for as many fuckups as Blizzard have made, the surrounding noise and harassment makes it hard to even qualify by itself. If the reaction hadn't been massively magnified by said figures from the rubbish parts of the Web, I agree a lot more. It's frustrating. I don't want it to stop critique of Blizzard at the management level, but I also don't want to move past the whole fan reaction thing either.

I get you osmo, but I feel the need to point out that this has been latched onto by the Usual Harassment Types which kinda exacerbates the whole issue. There has been some quite public shaming of developers, and regardless of how badly-managed PR it is, I don't think we should be comfortable with the kind of (public and visible) culture that has emerged and been made to feel acceptable in recent years. Probably not saying anything you'd disagree with, just trying to break that binary. Blizzard (specifically, Acti-Blizzard) may in some way be culpable, but nothing excuses the reaction of certain parts of the "fanbase" nor how they've targeted anyone speaking up in defense of Blizzard since. It makes it impossible to have an actual conversation about PR gaffes, bad marketing, why nobody seemed to be aware that Blizzard literally made an actual blog post saying not to expect a huge deal at Blizzcon, and so on. Even a new angle on outsourcing work to foreign studios (there are both pros and cons here, especially in light of the recent RDR2 pieces). The problem is the fan reaction, because it's completely unnecessary, and also obscures any worthy criticism actually worth talking about. Blizzard are stuck on damage control, and all developers outside of Blizzard see is more of their own taking an absolutely ridiculous beating for something that isn't even in their (the developers') hands. ------------------------ Also, more happily, kinda excited about Reforged. Warforged. War3forged4fun. I greatly enjoyed WC3 when I was younger and it's only the dated engine that prevents that nowadays. I understand the reasons for keeping a lot of the technical choices intact (I vastly prefer squads in my RTS management these days), and it's mitigated by the news that (I think) they're upping the editor tools to match the new offerings, which means modders can go absolutely silly in terms of improvements and remakes. Really hoping to see an official or unofficial remake of The Founding of Durotar. Absolutely loved that campaign.

IT BEGINS.

Boomer Bile is good because 1. unlike Molotovs, it doesn't enrage the Tank. Handy especially on community servers who like being idiots with Tank spawning, but really underrated regardless. 2. it drops liberally from hazmat zombies, unlike explosives which are map-generated and / or in place of other useful items. 3. it doesn't damage you. Unlike molotovs and beepy grenade things.

I have no idea if there's a corresponding character pack, but there are related (melee) weapons I think, and it is scripted to handle various stages of the attack. Been a while though.

Baby permitting, absolutely. There's a hilarious Helm's Deep map knocking around the Workshop we should try at least once, too. So yeah, L4D2.

Frontier branching out, huh? That's the fascinating bit for me. ELITE must be doing well, which is Good™.

Welp. (http://blog.bioware.com/2017/08/19/mass-effect-andromeda/)

I've been sitting on what to think of the new MP changes for a while, and it looks like this patch has a noticeable change that might change expectations on it: http://blog.bioware.com/2017/07/31/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-1-10/ I would imagine this works for weapons as well? Bioware patch notes have a habit of being weirdly specific in a lot of ways but then leaving out some important detail. Certainly, that's how they should be doing it. Extra progression for people at the top, no change for people still grinding the lower ranks. Add to this the current rotation for weapon mods (Bronze to Gold), character cards (Silver to Platinum / UR) and similar items that you can buy with Mission Funds, and I think it's actually quite a good place for MP to be in. I'm just sad that all we're getting are these kinds of fixes.

You should try the (effectively) Monster Hunter DLC. There are a lot more trolls to try and take out.

Dunno how I missed this: http://blog.bioware.com/2017/07/04/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-1-09-notes/ http://blog.bioware.com/2017/07/04/mass-effect-andromeda-combat-balance-updates/ The Batarian is Rare, not Ultra! Woop woop. Lot of new gear and such in the Store; I need to sit down and evaluate the utlity of the ones I've already got, figure out what's power creep and / or what's redundant. Of note, there are some time-limited things in the Store right now, including an Apex Elite pack for a whopping 600,000 MP Credits (guarantees an Ultra-Rare, but expires in two days), but more interesting the Item Store lets you get a: Random Character (Ultra Rare) - 960 Mission Funds. Random Character (Uncommon) - 70 Mission Funds. Random Weapon Mod (Rare) - 120 Mission Funds. These all expire in 5 days (@Bjorn), so you might want to grab them while you can! They are also repeatable; I just bought an UR and there's still room for more. Gonna grab another, coupla weapon mods and then save my funds for other Items (I don't need Uncommon Characters).

There are two ways to approach this. One approach is to grab something like Unity and play around with the default project, figure out what you're comfortable with, replace some assets, etc. See what you can build without too much effort, work out what parts of the development process you're most comfortable with (scripting, 2D, 3D, physics, etc). This is the fun approach The other approach is simple (and necessary if you have a larger project in mind). Plan everything. Plan until you get bored of planning. Figure out how much of that you like as well. Work out what engine suits your needs ahead of time. Storyboard any plot elements you want to work in. Figure out what assets you need, and who can make them, etc. It might seem overwhelming but a lot of this is simply note-taking that you can do anywhere; on the move, at home, in the garden, etc. Downside is it's not as "fun"