Beriallord

You need look no further than Europe to see what is rising and it's not pretty. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/golden-dawn-rise-far-right-euro-201441483840429923.html Fascist groups like the Golden Dawn are going to start gaining in popularity the more dire the political/economic atmosphere in a country is. Ideologies like that thrive in those sorts of situations. Nazism rose up in Germany during hard economic times after the fall of the Weimar Republic. The same thing could happen anywhere, even the USA. Ideologies like those are too extreme for normal people during better economic times, but once things go downhill and you have a large population of youth who are unemployed, can't get jobs, and then people are going to look for someone to blame. And where there is blame, there is hate.

I don't like the idea of the USA transitioning into a service/consumer based economy. We used to generally make what we needed, and we used what we made. Once you start a globalized economy, its hard to undo it though. It could be done, but it would probably require 15-20 years to make the transition back. The USA would have to rebuilt its manufacturing industry. Import tariffs can be used to make products created in your own country more competitive than stuff that is imported. But that only works if we have the ability to fill the gaps with products made here. I think its more beneficial for countries that have a similar socio-economic level to trade with each other and compete. Any government should always put its own Nation's labor force first. Capitalism on a local/regional/national level = good Global Capitalism = bad.

Unlikely. Nintendo has maintained an anti-3rd party policy since the N64 era. And most people see the Wii-U as a flop, especially developers. Also, developers aren't even sure what sort of games are even gonna sell on the Wii-U. Its a totally different target audience than the PS4/Xbone. This explains why developers are uncertain about the Wii-U: Call of Duty: Ghosts (Wii-U) http://www.vgchartz.com/game/71505/call-of-duty-ghosts/ Only 150k copies. Xbone: http://www.vgchartz.com/game/72087/call-of-duty-ghosts/ 1.7m copies sold, and a lower install base than on Wii-U. If a main AAA game that sells well on other systems doesn't sell on the Wii-U then what the hell will? Nintendo 1st party games? That is awful disheartining to see the COD sales #s on Wii-U if you're a developer thinking about porting a game to Wii-U. Uncertainty is very high. You'll be asking questions like, "Will I even recover the cost to port the game?" And that is just sad. Lots of developers have gotten burned by releasing games on Wii-U. I don't know what makes people think a Fallout game would fair any better on Wii-U than COD: Ghosts did.

Bosses don't require "one hit roll" technique. That is only the safest possible way to play if you don't know the fight. You exploit the frame delays on their actions to get as many hits in as you can before backing away. And some of them have dead zones on their attacks that don't even require rolling or blocking to avoid at all. The best players will maximize the amount of hits they can get in, and pick apart every vulnerability the boss has. You shouldn't be asking "how do I avoid X attack" it should be about what is the most efficient way to avoid it. Stepping back or moving/circling around to avoid an attack is always the most efficient. Then rolling, then blocking. Knowing which attacks you can avoid by stepping back/circling without blocking or rolling is key here. You don't even have to figure this out yourself, you can just watch videos on youtube and see how some of the better players are fighting certain bosses.

This project looks good. As long as they try and stay true to the 15th century theme, I think it might set a new standard for open world games. People are tired of pointless fetch quests and repetitive tasks they reap little to no rewards.

I like the Vikings series on History Channel. Its the only newer series I've watched and liked in awhile.

Everyone seems to be fishing for information to use for advertising purposes. And then they can sell that data to people like google. I typically conduct my internet usage in a way that throws a wrench in them collecting any relevant or useful data with regards to me. I wouldn't go as far as saying its being used for evil purposes or anything, but it still doesn't sit well with me regardless. Someone using my internet habits as a way of targeting ads tailored accordingly isn't helping me in the slightest.

Earth's magnetic field is ever changing and fluxuating by small amounts. Also, its not magic. In the past there has also been what they call magnetic pole reversals, that can greatly weaken the Earth's magnetic field for a time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal But I disagree with some of the others, and Earth being bombarded by higher amounts of solar radiation for a period of time during a magnetic pole reserval could absolutely impact the evolution of some species. This is what Earth's magnetic field looks like: Each of those lines can fluctuate and move somewhat. http://www.hpc-ch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Earth_Magnetic_Field-300x225.png What happens to Earth's magnetic field when it gets hammered by a solar flare: http://sci.esa.int/science-e-media/img/1f/i_screenimage_32799.jpg When the above happens, this happens in the sky: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/18/article-2509068-15D11765000005DC-724_634x387.jpg Why the Earth's magnetic field has something to do with evolution? Weaker magnetic field = more UV rays get to the Earth, and over time it can mutate DNA. One variable out of many that can cause evolution. But it with UV rays, it could be devolution instead. Evolution implies improvement, but that isn't guaranteed. http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/433983main_dna-mutation-226.jpg

You're forgetting about other variables like rock slides, or earthquakes that can take a whole side off a mountain in an instant. Also glacial erosion.

I'm open to the possibility that it might have been a little bit of both. Meaning most species on Earth are products entirely of evolution, but maybe something manipulated the DNA of one of our hominid ancestors that happened to have evolved normally up to that point. But even if that did happen, it would probably be impossible to prove.

I missed out on this game, and just picked it up last week. I think its a pretty solid game. The combat is definitely more fun than in TES games. I also think the crafting system is better in this game. Find equipment with diablo style mods on them and you can salvage some of the mods to use on new gear. The only real complaint I got is every single piece of set armor, or unique weapon is complete garbage compared to anything I can create with blacksmithing. It would at least be interesting if one of the sets would actually be better than the best I could smith up without even using the best parts. None of the sets are even better than a smithed set using "greater" tier parts. It sorta takes away from part of the fun of the item hunt if I know for an absolute fact that all of the set and unique items (unless they're accessories) are going to be shop food. I'm almost done with the main story, and this game has WAY less glitches than TES games. I've only ran into a few minor graphics glitches. I fell through the floor in one spot and glitched out, but all I had to do was walk forward, and it fixed itself and pushed me back up through the floor. I think the graphics are really bad even for a game 2 years old. I don't even think it runs 1080p. There is no settings for resolution. I swear it feels like 720p for as cloudy as the resolution is. The graphics are bordering WoW terrible. But graphics is just an afterthought for me and not a huge factor. The game is still fun. It would be better if it used somewhat modern graphics, DX11 and full HD resolution at the very minimum.

I tested a bunch of melee weapons in Dark Souls 2. Pretty much every weapon. And I found myself going back to the Defender Greatsword. If you got a faith build, and you lightning infuse it, its damage gets close to ultra greatsword range, but its got the same move set as a claymore. And the weapon also has a self buff when you 2h the weapon and press L2. It uses up some durability. Another thing that makes it a devastating weapon is that it does mostly lightning damage, and gets a huge boost from faith scaling. Its about 65/35 Lightning/Physical, which increases even more when buffed. To compare it with the lightning claymore and 50 faith, the lightning infused defender greatsword does about another 100 more damage than the claymore on average with the 1h R1. And the lightning claymore buffed with sunlight blade is only slightly stronger, by 15 damage over the un buffed lightning defender greatsword. Hitting people in PVP for 600-650 with a 1h R1 attack is pretty common, and killing them with a 3 hit combo. Having a weapon that does mostly lightning damage is good in PVP too, considering how high people can buff armor vs physical damage types. Its easy enough to get 1200+ slashing defense which can mitigate a 350-400 AR weapon down pretty good, but lightning will cut through them like hot butter. The moonlight greatsword is also a good weapon, but the R1 combo for the defender greatsword is faster. I there are 2 different movesets for "greatsword" types, one of them is claymore, and the other is pursuers greatsword/moonlight greatsword type. Not counting the MLGS special attacks, I'm talking about the general speed of the swings with the R1. The claymore type moveset is superior. The MLGS special attack isn't that great in PVP, and the Defender Greatsword has a really, really good R2 poke, which can follow up and do a 2 hit combo with R2, R2. It has really crazy tracking on it, and if someone is trying to crrcle around, if the spacing is right it WILL track and hit them.

No offense, but you've got to be kidding. Anyone with a Blueblood blade and high luck could run around one-hitting half the other PvPers. Demon's Souls was just as imbalanced in PvP. Demon's Souls always had WAY less lag. The only problem in Demon's Souls was everything did too much damage in PVP, and there were too many ways of stacking damage buffs. Damage boost for pure black character tendency, then another damage boost from foe's ring. And then ring of magical sharpness, Monk's head, and Kris Blade for spell damage. Combine that with a low HP in hollow form and oneshots are pretty common. Any PVP viable build used second chance which prevented you from being oneshotted. Warding worked for physical damage, but didn't do anything vs fire or magic damage. Blueblood sword wasn't a weapon that typically oneshotted people that had a decent amount in VIT. Dragon Bone Smasher with curse weapon on it could oneshot, as could a Meat Clever. Or my favorite weapon the Fatal Estoc +5, which did about 1200 damage in a backstab even with the base stats to use the weapon. Its an exceptional weapon for level 60-80 griefer. I trusted the hit boxes a whole lot better in Demon's Souls than in Dark Souls 2. When I saw someone swing at me in Demon's Souls and I'd trust what I see on my screen when it looks like they're going to whiff, and I took advantage of that opportunity to land a backstab. In Dark Souls 2 you can't even trust what you see on the screen even if it looks like the guy is gonna whiff by a large margin.

Sounds like someone just had a bad PvP experience. Spells are better in DS2, to the point where they provide enough consistency that speedrunners can use them. But I think much of the frustration comes from people not being familiar with how to deal with spell casters since they were rare in DS1 and almost nobody used magic in pvp. In this game all you need is a Rebel's Greatshield to deal with casters if you're melee. I infused mine with dark for 100% dark, and about 90% to the other elements. But that doesn't take away from the fact they simply do too much damage. And the quickest speed run I believe was a guy who used power stance clubs. 1h 45m or so.

Spells are what is OP is hell now, even to a greater extent than they were in Dark Souls. The cast times for spells can be a whole lot quicker in this game, and they're also harder to avoid do to the improved tracking. All the backstab fisherman that played Dark Souls 1, have probably made hexers in Dark Souls II to oneshot people with. If great resonant soul doesn't oneshot you, it will definitely 2 shot you even with 2500 HP. Its not impossible to avoid it, but a spell that fast that can do 1500+ damage is pretty ridiculous. We're talking a spell with the speed of soul arrow that hits like a bus. That is basically = to a backstab with a very powerful weapon. WOTG in this game also does a ridiculous amount of damage. Someone oneshotted me with it in PVP, and I had 2100ish HP. It looked like they were getting ready to use great heal or something and I went in to attack to try and knock them out of it and it took all 2100 HP away. Also hexers got climax too which is just a stronger version of great resonant soul, but it uses all the souls you're carrying. Its not really that viable to use that often, but it hits for 2500+, or a guaranteed oneshot in PVP with a clean hit. Will even do about 1500 damage past a shield that only has about 50% dark block. Sunlight spear can also 1hko if they got around 1600 HP, its a little stronger than great resonant soul, just a bit slower cast, and harder to land. And soul geyser, if you can actually hit someone with it is also a oneshot. Never follow a sorcerer into a narrow corridor/bridge, because that is the perfect place to cast soul geyser, and you won't roll through all the shots. Don't give them the spacing to get that off in that situation. Way too many spells can 1hko in this game!! And for PVE, Soul Geyser is really OP, you can oneshot lots of bosses with it. The spell is basically a shotgun of soul spears, and if all hit the same target you're looking at 3500+ damage easily. And you also got lightning spears which are the best spells for sniping targets with. You can use binoculars in this game to manually aim spells, no crosshairs but the middle of the screen is where the spells will aim at. There are a lot of very dangerous ambushes you can eliminate by looking around and sniping mobs off ledges that are going to jump down on you after you get to a certain point.

I don't troll, I give my opinion, and I am a disappointed with this game. I was expecting something better than this. They took one step forward with Dark Souls, but then took 2 steps back with Dark Souls II. The backstab mechanic wasn't the problem, it was server lag. And the lag worked in your favor as well. In a laggy game you can cream someone with dark bead or pursuers and get a oneshot kill on them. Mobs disappearing and PVP and coop being based on "soul history" is a fact at this point. For being a new game, getting invaded is almost non-existent. I've only been invaded once randomly, all other invasions I got were in the bell tower. They've essentially killed invasions. The soul memory combined with limited invasion items ruined the replayability of the game for a lot of people. I don't replay souls games to keep doing the story over and over again. Its boring after about the 2nd or 3rd time.

They turned it into "casual souls". I'm seriously disappointed with the game. I've already beaten it on PS3, and I'm considering trading the game in already. This game is NOT harder. Its considerably easier than Demons Souls and Dark Souls 1. No boss in the game took me more than 3 attempts, and I beat the vast majority of them my first try. I'll explain why its easier: They raised the equip burden % to mid roll to 70% burden. This means its quite easy to use a greatsword + great shield + heavy armor and still have rolling capabilities. I did exactly that. Also they give you 4 ring slots now. Ring choices used to be a hard decision, now its far less difficult. Also there is a ring of life protection in this game, it does what the ring of sacrifice does, but you can repair it for 3000 souls. Let me explain how much 3000 souls matters toward mid game. Its basically nothing. If you die, you won't lose any souls and you'll keep human form, then all you gotta do is spend 3000 souls to repair it. You not only won't have to worry about ever losing another blood stain, but you'll always have full HP too because you'll keep human form. And with 4 ring slots, there is always room for a ring of life protection..... Also spawns are removed from the game after you kill them about 15x. This means someone could methodically clear the entire map out of enemies just farming for drops a few spawns at a time. Eventually they have a map completely devoid of all threats. Part of the struggle in Souls games was having to fight your way back to your blood stain, and now you can just farm till they all disappear. If anything this rewards farming even more if you're looking to simply make the game easier. Also you'll gain plenty of soul levels in this game. By the end of the game you should be around 130-150 range somewhere. And this is with maps largely intact with enemies. Its a waste of time to farm enemies for souls considering you can use an item and make the last boss respawn and farm him for a ton of souls, and he is pretty easy too. They dumbed down PVP to make the game more appealing to casuals. They did this by implementing "soul history" - basically PVP and coop aren't based on Soul level anymore, but the gross amount of souls you've obtained in the game. Doesn't matter if you spent them, or lost them. All just to save someone's butt from being hurt by a min-maxed invader. There was already a fail safe method of preventing that - play offline. Also there are items in the game that mitigate backstab damage. So now people can get greedy mashing R1 without serious repercussions. More appealing to the casuals. PVP is rather dull and bland now. Backstabs were a way of dispatching really terrible players quickly. I guess the good news is if you sucked at PVP in Dark Souls, you might find things a little better in DS2 because they included so many crutches for casuals to use. There are no permanent invasion items now either. Anyone remember the red eye orb? Doesn't exist in DS2. You have to farm cracked red eye orbs now. So they basically nerfed random invasions. That was one of the most fun aspects in the previous games was randomly invading, and now they make you jump through extra hoops and limit items required to do what I had fun doing in other games. I'm not interested in joining a covenant just to invade one zone, I enjoy moving around. All in all, they gave us a game that is less hardcore than the previous games.

The delay could have something to do with them optimizing the game for consoles, and isn't PC related at all. Maybe they're having issues with the SDK for the Xbone? MS recently released a new improved SDK.

Katana's are completely ineffective against chainmail or platemail armor. They don't deliver enough of an impact to inflict a debilitating wound through chainmail, and can't crush or pierce platemail. Besides, a katana is designed to be a slashing weapon, not a piercing one. Samurai's armor from what I gathered was made of a combination of materials, some wood, bamboo, leather, bone, and resins. Or some combination of those; basically whatever they could find. A katana was sharp enough to cut through light armor in certain areas, certainly legs & arms. A claymore was designed to pierce armor. It had enough weight to it to penetrate chain mail, and even some thinner platemail armor. Just an example of a sword that is more effective than a katana.

It would be absolutely impossible if humans were the only intelligent life in the universe. Sure, we're rare, probably 1 in a few billion planets has intelligent life on it, but based on the size of the universe those odds are still a frequent occurrence. We might not even be the top lifeforms in this galaxy, because there is over 100 billion stars in just this galaxy. I do think species that advanced to our level or even considerably higher level of technology are very, very few, but they're definitely out there. SETI is trying to detect communications on radio frequencies from other life, which I means they're looking for civilizations out there of a similar technology to ours, give or take 100 years. One has to assume a civlization a few hundred years less advanced, and a few hundred years more advanced would not be using radio frequencies to communicate. Someone of lower tech for obvious reasons, and someone a few hundred years more advanced likely figured out a better/faster way. SETI is never going to find anything on the radio frequency. The odds are simply too low, they'd be looking for a lone grain of sand in all the world's beaches. I think we've already been visited in the past. It makes sense, because planets like Earth (assuming) are exceptionally rare. And for the abundance of life and resources here, another civilization would be interested in the planet enough to at least stop and take a look before they moved onto another destination. There are plenty of remote regions on Earth they could make a base and never have contact with humans, like near the poles, and in the deepest oceans. I think the US government, and other world governments already know the answer to that question. There is also the possibility that any "visitors" might actually be us from a few million years in the future. They've since evolved into something that is "humanoid", bodies possibly more suited for space travel.

There isn't a single compelling reason to buy the Xbone over the PS4. To shed some light on why, lets take a look at compelling reasons to buy the previous Xbox systems: Original X box - Superior specs to the PS2, and at the time they had some nice exclusives like Halo. X360 - Cheaper than PS3, and it also ran a lot of the multiplatform games better. Basically the argument to buy the PS4 over the Xbone, is the same argument that one could have made to buy the 360 over the PS3. Except to an even higher degree. Because the PS4 is a bit more powerful (closer to PS2 compared to X box). Most reasonable people who are non-fanboys are going to see things this way.

I think some of these conspiracy theories might be legit, but most are certainly heaps of BS. But its incredibly difficult if not impossible to know if they're legit. We do know that governments keep secrets, and occasionally there will be whistle blowers. And they do quite a good job of discrediting whistle blowers. I think its reasonably likely the US, and other governments knows the answer to the question of "are we alone in the universe". Because there is a motive for wanting to keep such a thing secret. It would be complete disaster for world religion, and the cultural consequences couldn't be reversed. There have also been numerous whistle blowers that have came forward, just to be discredited. Some of them high ranking military officers. I also find it odd that in the beginning, the government was sorta forthcoming about information, to then decide at one point in time to deny it entirely. And I find that to be suspicious, which gives me more of a reason to suspect that they're hiding something. I also believe they found microbial life on Mars, as well as ancient fossils of some more complex organisms, and NASA is keeping a lid on it, and discrediting information that does leak out. I've head that Mars may have had water oceans as early as 60-100m years ago, instead of the billions of years ago that was previously suspected. This would make it more likely that more complex organisms would have evolved.

There are greater repercussions than simple economic disadvantages that could come out of this, like making a war with Russia. I think its pretty safe to say that options for war are already off the table. If the US pushes any sort of economic sanctions, or freezing of assets, then the Russians will cut off the pipelines leading to Europe, and turn around and sell it to the Chinese instead. This would put a squeeze on oil prices, and they'll skyrocket, which Russia happens to be a major exporter of. Whatever billions in assets get frozen, they'll easily make that back from the rising oil prices. The Russians win in any scenario except for all out war, in which everyone loses. Its checkmate already and the Russians have already won the geopolitical game. The US, NATO, and the UN isn't gonna do anything but talk. And by the way, if you wanna invest in oil futures, now is the time to buy. Prices are only going north the longer this conflict escalates.

My SSD lasted me roughly 2 1/2 years. Its an Adata 64GB. I used it exclusively as a caching device on a Z68 board. I believe using an SSD as a main drive would be much harder on it. Had a BSOD come up one day, and I researched the error, and it was attributed to caching. Disabled acceleration and it never happened again. They're known for not lasting as long as HDDs. So before you buy an SSD, know that they're going to fail on you quicker. Although they are going to get better as time goes on. The SSD I had was when the technology was still sorta new to consumers.

Most people know the PS4 has a better GPU & Ram, but most don't know the PS4's CPU is also more powerful. Not by a considerable margin though. http://www.cinemablend.com/games/PS4-CPU-More-Powerful-Than-Xbox-One-CPU-According-Benchmark-Test-61203.html http://www.cinemablend.com/images/sections/61201/_1387750462.jpg