Annatar11

[quote]don't try giving orders to the companions, they will switch targets[/quote] Mine do just fine when given an attack command until the target is dead.

Having had about 5-6 hours with the game, here's my take on it. It is "pretty", in the technical sense. The models are detailed, the textures are nice and sharp, and the combat animations are improved over the original. But, the environments are crappy. There's just no flavor. Even setting aside the fact that most of the time you're in the city with a similar color palette, the environments outside just aren't interesting to look at. The dialog system is definitely a ste

[quote]I thought I saw an Annatar11 on my team one match but I was afraid I was thinking of the wrong person D:[/quote] Nope, if you saw an Annatar11 then that's me :) [quote]Sadly, the current version is the release version according to the devs. (Or not, they've been throwing around lots of new info as time goes on. But this patch took forever and a day and release is in a couple weeks now.) Love-Hate game. A bad match can leave you cursing th

Some will undoubtedly be craptastic, but AFAIK they have a similar thing for City of Heroes and it's worked well. In any MMO the amount of content is limited. STO suffers especially because unlike traditional MMOs there aren't any "raids" where it takes months of repeated running to get your awesome gear set. There's just no way they can put out enough content by themselves, even though they've added a lot since launch. It's a win-win for everyone to release a mission maker. Lots of people lo

Raven, I agree with both #1 and #2 in the OP, but I'll add one more thing I didn't like: the combat control scheme. Having locked camera that follows your character, combined with the same one-click RMB to move and attack is bad. Accidentally right clicking on empty ground when a creature moves out of the way can cause your whole camera to spin around and then you have to figure out where the heck everyone went to try and go back to the fight. Also, the demo visuals did not impress me at all.

Steam Guard doesn't affect your ability to play games at all. It's only for authorizing one computer to make major account modifications. You can still log into your account on multiple computers and play games, but only 1 would be able to change passwords, email addy, payment info, etc. It's worth noting that Steam Guard uses a hardware solution provided by some of Intel's newer chips, so most people still won't have access to it for quite a while until they upgrade.

Guys, the engine for Sins started up in 2004. In order to make a 64-bit version, it would basically have to be re-done from scratch. It's not going to happen. Be realistic here.

Splitting MP from SP is an idea doomed to epic failure. How do you make it work? Okay, the person who only wants SP can buy the base game and not pay for MP. Great for him. What about the person who only wants MP? Will he have to buy the base game + MP, thus paying more for 2 game modes when he's only interested in playing one? Or if MP is a separate "module" game and doesn't require the purchase of SP, how can you ever hope to do fair pricing? SP generally takes the most money to develop (mo

I really think people should temper their expectations a bit. We would all like major engine redesigns to allow for scripting, multithreading, and 64-bit executable.. but an expansion is an expansion, resources are still limited and these are major changes for an already old engine. They are just extremely unlikely to happen. We already know from a teaser interview a long time ago that IC's next game is not Sins 2, which means this engine won't be in use, and by the time they do start on Sins

I also agree with Tridus. I don't understand why you insist that core features of the game don't work in MP. The vast majority of people who will be playing MP will be doing so co-operatively with their friends, not competitively. Elemental will never be a competitive MP game, it should not even be in consideration. In that light, it makes no sense to cut out quests or anything else for co-op MP. If you really want MP to "go in a different direction", do it on top of the base co-op ga

[quote who="lbgsloan" reply="28" id="2896178"]Successful 'free' to play games are usually designed in such a way that you can't really progress in the game without paying. They get people hooked by making things SEEM reasonable early on, but once you hit a certain point you have to choose between paying or insane grinding. People rationalize this by thinking it's no different than spending money on other games, forgetting the entire reason they started was because it was supposed

[quote] I gotta disagree with you on this one, Annatar. To me the prevalence of fire-arms in Empire makes it feel completely different than the rest of the series, including Shogun 2. True there is the "occasional" matchlock unit in Shogun 2 but they're no where near as common as in Empire. I've fought against a few in the demo but they're pretty restricted in availability. Even in the full game the only way to recruit matchlock units will be to convert your religion to one of the Eur

[quote] The OP was carefully researched, and the Social Security number info as well: “Part of the security problem lies with the method used to assign SSNs. The researchers note that only four digits of the nine digit SSN are random. The first three digits are called the Area Number (AN) and the next two are the Group Number (GN). ANs are allocated to specific states and GNs to specific birth years. Given the date of birth and place of birth, researchers need only

Honestly, this felt just like playing E:TW only with different units. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but what does the game have to make it stand out from the previous?

Except, you know, it tells you right in the FAQ what it needs it for: [quote] Do you have to be a U.S. citizen to participate? At the time of submission of the doodle, the student must be a U.S. citizen or a permanent U.S. legal resident (e.g., must be able to show proof of legal permanent residence, for example, a “green card”), be enrolled in a U.S. based school and be living in the U.S. He or she must also obtain

I'll have my Dragon Age 2 demo to play through while it's downloading, then ;)

[quote]I do want to comment on the 'old guard' though. The people doing that weren't the 'old guard'. The real old members were people from back in 2009 posting in giant idea threads about things like economic systems. The ones you're talking about were the fanboys, and they appeared closer to release.[/quote] This man speaketh true.

Gaming tried to integrate speech recognition as well somewhat recently. The game was Tom Clancy's EndWar. It was a strategy game similar to Ground Control or World in Conflict, and you were able to give verbal commands to your units. For example, you could assign units to a group, and then give commands to the group, such as "Group 1, secure Alpha" or "Group 1, attack 2" (enemy units showed up with hovering numbers over them). The speech recognition part of the game was solid and responsive.

Pretty much what Tridus said. You can complain about Steam as much as you like, but no other platform offers so many features in a free-to-use package. It's pretty much a no brainer for publishers to use it, especially since most of the DD services are hosting Steamworks games. The gain far outweighs the comparatively few people who refuse to use Steam on principle.

What they should do is have more higher tier light tanks so the poor Leopards don't get stuck as scouts in tier 8 matches and die whenever someone looks at them and sneezes in their general direction :)

The series is designed to be played in sequence. Your choices from ME1 will reflect in ME2 when you import your character,. If you skip ME1, it will assume you made certain choices, and you'll miss a lot of interesting stuff. So I recommend starting from the beginning :)

[quote] Ask an Xbox developer how many free updates they're allowed to put up. Or maybe a PS3 developer. You definitely don't want there to be only one choice in a given market. You always want an alternative to keep the other guy honest.[/quote] If you're putting out a game on the 360 or PS3 you are forced to agree to MS or Sony terms of doing so. This is because the 360 and PS3 are completely closed platforms, *not* Digital Download providers. Nothing gets put on tho

Also, top of the ladder != top :P For added fun, name a "build" that wins all the tournaments!

Adding my vote to Bad Company 2. ARMA 2 is a good game, but there's little interaction with the environment, and I think it's much slower than what you're looking for. On the other hand, in Bad Company 2 you can collapse buildings, blow out walls, level trees, all sorts of fun stuff.

I don't see how Xbox Live and Steam are related. It's true that you need to have Live Gold to play Multiplayer, however the vast majority of Steam's games do not use Valve matchmaking/servers, so that comparison really doesn't hold much water. And it's the only thing Steam has that's worth charging a monthly fee over, unless they slash their shop prices across the board and have membership to be able to buy (basically what warehouse stores like Sam's Club, Costco, etc do - dirt cheap stuff, b