WrathOfDeadguy

Vote added... connection reset ate the post I was going to make; I'll edit it back in later. The gist of it is that there will always be value in the purpose-driven organization that clans/squads provide, whether they are driven by competition or the simple desire to keep an old favorite game alive.

It's a funny thing... every time a gun debate thread pops up, it has interesting discourse for five or six pages then turns into crap. Everything in the past few pages has either been completely off-topic or in the vein of "OMG AK-47!"- which advances nothing but sensationalist headlines. Fully automatic weapons are irrelevant. I know of nowhere that such weapons are legally available to citizens without heaps of paperwork and more extensive background checks than you'd go through to become a police officer. Fully automatic weapons are used in crime... hardly ever, considering that the "other gun" category includes far more readily available semi-automatic, pump action, and other firearms. Here's a much more comprehensive assessment, assuming you've got the patience to look through all states and territories. The consistent trend is towards handguns, which are concealable. As an example, in 2009 (the 2010 ATF stats came up password protected; I was unable to obtain them) my home state of New Jersey saw ~3200 handguns of various types recovered from criminals, 748 semi-automatic or manual-action rifles, fewer than 600 shotguns, and a whopping 11 automatic weapons. Wow. These things sure are ravaging our streets. What about Maryland (including Baltimore)? More than 4300 handguns, nearly 1500 semi-auto/manual-action rifles, 1241 shotguns, and... 12 automatics. Gosh, what an epidemic of crime involving those scary machine guns! What about Washington, DC? 1356 combined handguns, 164 non-automatic rifles, 169 shotguns, and five whole automatics! Here's an important thing to note: DC is a single city while MD and NJ are whole states. That one city accounts for more guns recovered from criminals than one third of my state does, and we've got three of the most violent cities in the country up here. NJ is already pretty strict on guns; DC is positively Draconian... for all the good it's done them. I completely agree that if one can't stop criminals from having guns then it follows that the populace must be equally armed as a deterrent. Genies can't be stuffed back into their bottles. This particular genie was uncorked several thousand years ago in China and changed the face of the world several hundred times, toppling empires down through the ages every time somebody came up with a better way of launching things out of tubes. A bunch of lawyers and politicians looking to make a name for themselves by being 'tough on crime' aren't exactly going to intimidate a juggernaut of technological advancement that's been rolling since before their country had a name. Firearms won't go away until somebody invents an affordable, concealable death ray... and then there will be debates over those instead. Gun bans do, eventually, affect the number of guns available to criminals. However, guns do not make people commit crimes. Take away the guns and you still have the same crimes, committed with different tools but committed nonetheless. It's time for folks to stop pressing a failed experiment in civilian disarmament and move on to exploring other possibilities. By the way, to the pro gun folks... try not to pass on bad information. The whole bit about shotguns being unable to penetrate walls is utter bunk; anything that can penetrate a chest cavity or a skull is certainly capable of penetrating interior walls. For the antis who'll want to use that for ammunition (pun intended), less-lethal ammo is exactly that. A rubber slug is more or less a haymaker thrown by means of a gun instead of a fist. A person who wouldn't be put down with one punch likely won't be incapacitated by one less-lethal round of ammo either. Stopping power is not a function of impact energy, it is a function of tissue damage. Maybe your guy will be cowed by a few really nasty bruises. Maybe the only thing that'll make him give up is blood loss. I think I've said about all I can without going in circles; exit thread, stage right.

If the above phrase isn't corporate doublespeak for "personalized advertisements" then I'll eat my left shoe with a side order of fries. Remember that EA was the company that introduced in-game advertising to the mainstream with BF2142... I'd bet my bottom dollar that personalized advertising is the reason that provision is in their EULA. My answer to this' date=' as with any other grubby spyware, is simple: it will not be installed on my system. I'm sure that will irritate me if an EA game that I want on PC ever comes out again, but I do not pay money to be spied on. I'll buy the console version if I want it badly enough, but I did [i']not[/i] just build a new PC to install spyware on it.

The console version, or at least the 360 version, seems much more stable. The worst bug I've run into was a Ram glitching through a door and nearly giving me a heart attack. I caused the game to freeze up once by driving a truck through a crowd of zombies that included two Suiciders, but I'm pretty sure that was just the system overloading from all the kaboom since that's happened with a few other games besides DI. On the whole, my biggest complaint is that the cutscenes always show all four playable characters even if you're going it alone. IMO the devs should have made the rest of the cast AI-controlled when in singleplayer. I've taken to handwaving it by saying that my character's schizo and seeing invisible friends. :P Wouldn't say it's better than L4D... the format is too different to compare the games. The only things they've got in common are that you can play them co-op and there "special" infected that have too much in common in some cases to be coincidental. L4D campaigns break down into neat, bite-sized chunks that you can easily hang onto a whole team all the way through; DI is a continuous experience and it is very difficult to maintain the same team with the same players through the entirety of a single chapter, let alone the whole game. You can't really fail a DI campaign, either; even if you party wipe you all just respawn with less money. L4D is all about gunplay; in DI you have to treat ammo like the crown jewels until the last third of the game... I rarely used guns except to deal with uninfected humans and to blow up propane tanks; against zombies melee weapons, explosives, and molotovs were almost always the best choices. I'd describe DI as a cross between Dead Rising and Borderlands.

hector530 said exactly what I was thinking. The Empire has fallen... the TES universe 200 years after Oblivion would be in the Dark Ages.

Point by point... here comes another wall of text, folks. Two questions here- first, if having a weapon makes one likely to shoot first and ask questions later, then why has the incidence of violent crime decreased in states which have loosened their gun laws? Surely if the presence of a weapon were temptation to act without forethought, assault and murder rates would increase when shall-issue permit or permitless carry laws are introduced... yet the opposite has proven to be the case. Second, what would you consider a reasonable reaction to a person having broken into your home? You have a right to be in your home; they do not. You have no way of knowing what their intentions are, and by entering your home unlawfully they have already demonstrated a willingness to violate the law. While there's a big difference between making off with a TV set and entering with intent to murder or rape, the lawful, rightful occupant does not and cannot know what that intruder's intentions are. I for one am not willing to risk my life on the assurance of a criminal that I won't be harmed if I give him what isn't his to take. He has already shown himself untrustworthy by violating the law. If he runs, I will not pursue him, but I most certainly will confront him and I will be armed when I do so... not because I desire to kill him, but because I wish to be ready should he desire to harm me. If a person cannot expect their home to be safe, then nowhere is on Earth and that is simply not an acceptable standard of living. Points of interest highlighted... You've claimed things as fact here, but unless there's some evidence you can provide your statements ring hollow. I'm not trying to be offensive, but you've said that as a visitor you were offered fully automatic weapons... the tone of your statement implies that you didn't have to look very hard, or that the illegal dealer approached you. I hope you'll understand my incredulity... it is simply a little hard to believe that someone with no existing underworld connections in that area would be offered access to weapons that are only ever rarely seen used in crimes. Knowing that Baltimore is a city that suffers an ongoing epidemic of gang violence, it seems reasonable that if such dealers existed they would likely be associated with a gang... and gangs aren't exactly known for trusting strangers. So I repeat... what, exactly, were the circumstances of this black market offer that was made to you? There is no evidence that UK gun control laws do anything to prevent crime. As of two years ago, you folks had the highest murder rate in Europe. Higher than Germany and France, both of which permit (with severe restriction) civilian gun ownership. You've just described having been attacked by an apparently insane burglar with a blunt object... did you defend yourself? If so, with what? How could you be so sure this man didn't mean to kill you? The cultural divide is becoming more and more apparent to me every day... I can't understand why an entire nation would tolerate not being permitted to defend themselves, under threat of arrest and possible prosecution (which is punishment in itself- it costs a great deal of money and time to defend a criminal case, even if the verdict ultimately clears the defendant). I think I'll just leave off there in the interest of folks being able to read it all in one sitting. ;)

Be warned- wall of text ahead. If you respond, please have the courtesy to read the whole thing thoroughly or not at all. The simple and sad fact is that the only person capable of responding to a threat immediately is oneself. Even in the very best of conditions, assuming one is even able to dial 911 in the first place, the police will take several minutes to respond to an emergency call. That is not fast enough to prevent homicide, assault, or any other violent crime. It is worth noting that police response is discretionary- even on emergency calls. Unless a police officer witnesses a crime in progress, they aren't obligated to respond at all. Even then the case law is iffy. The very fact that violent crime continues to happen in nations that have completely banned defensive use or ownership of guns (or in the UK's case, of knives as well)- testifies to the fact that the government is incapable at any level of providing basic civil defense. Since the law and the police cannot prevent crime, nor respond with sufficient haste to stop crime, who then does it fall to if not the criminal's intended victim... and what weapon is more effective for that purpose than a gun? Yes, a gun is a tool with a very specific and narrowly defined purpose. It is a weapon. It can be used to kill or wound; any recreational use is incidental to the design- but it is the notion that weapons have no place in society that is problematic, not the nature of the device. It is already illegal to commit murder; whether one does so with a gun or a bomb or a bare fist is irrelevant. Dead is dead. Wounded is wounded. The only possible way to stop violence as it occurs is to meet it with the threat of equal or greater violence- and if necessary, to carry out that threat; that is what weapons are for. So long as violent crime exists, so must weapons to deter and combat it. Less lethal weapons have their place, but are severely limited in capacity and their effects are by definition temporary. The best civilian Taser on the market can be fired twice and is then useless; it can be defeated by heavy clothing through which its contact darts may not penetrate. Pepper spray does not necessarily incapacitate even if delivered successfully. Knives, stunners, batons, and any other contact weapon requires that you make contact to use it- and require a great deal more training to use without risking equal injury in return. Knives in particular are no alternative; they are regarded by the law as lethal force if used... even if the blade itself is never used (for example, if you whack somebody with the hilt). Until somebody comes up with a Star Trek phaser that can dependably and repeatedly render a person unconscious for an extended period of time, there is no other weapon which equals the gun as a means of self defense. The argument against civilian firearm ownership usually comes backed by statistics on the numbers of deaths caused by the use of firearms... but never do they mention the statistics on how many times the presence of a firearm prevents a person from being killed. Does somebody get shot every time a cop draws their weapon? No? Then what on Earth makes anti-gunners think that criminals are any less likely to stop, submit, or run away when any other person points a gun their way? There is no deterrent that can match the immediacy of death, threatened or delivered. Crime is by definition selfish. Selfish people (generally) have a strong instinct for self-preservation. It follows that pointing a gun at a man whose intent is to harm you, whether you fire or not, will likely cause him to reconsider his position with some degree of urgency. If he does not reconsider, then the gun provides you with the means to put a stop to the threat immediately. "Gun crime" is a meaningless statistic unless the removal of guns also reduces the overall rate of violent crime by a percentage equal to the rate of criminal firearm use. That fantasy has yet to become reality anywhere it has been attempted. I own thirteen guns of various calibers and chamberings; nine of them are handguns and only two might be suited for 'sporting purposes.' I also have a permit to carry them which is recognized as valid in more than 30 states (since each state in the US may pass its own gun laws, not every state recognizes every other state's permit and a few don't issue or recognize any permits at all). I have never carried a gun anywhere I was not able to legally do so, I have always obeyed every law regarding the storage, transportation, and use of firearms, and I have jumped through my home state's onerous and capricious bureaucratic hurdles repeatedly in order to acquire my collection. I do not believe I should have to go through that much trouble to exercise the basic human right of self defense, nor to purchase and own things which I desire. I have already been examined with a higher degree of scrutiny than most law enforcement officers are subjected to, and they may carry in all 50 states with no restrictions. Undoubtedly the anti-gun folks will raise the question of need... to which I reply that need hasn't got a thing to do with it. Having 13 guns doesn't make me any more likely to do something stupid or criminal with them than wearing polo shirts would make me want to whack a ball around on horseback. I have no particular need for a great many things that I own. A case of dynamite would, if improperly stored and handled, potentially pose a danger to other people; dynamite decays and becomes volatile if neglected. A cannon or rocket launcher carries the potential for massive collateral damage with every shot fired and is thus not a reasonable means of self defense. In contrast I could leave a gun loaded all my life and it would do nothing but sit there until I put my finger on the trigger and squeezed. Guns are not inherently dangerous. They have a single axis of threat; they drive small amounts of lead very quickly into and through what lies along that axis, if and only if a human being causes them to discharge. Because a gun requires active and very specific human input to cause harm, the danger it poses is directly proportional to the intent of the wielder to do harm. Without a wielder, the gun is no more dangerous than a brick. With a wilder who intends to do harm, a brick is as dangerous as a gun. Should certain persons be prohibited from owning or using guns? Absolutely. Convicted felons and those unfortunate people who are ruled by a court of law to be mentally incompetent are such... and they are already prohibited. To prohibit civilian gun ownership in general is to issue a de facto statement that all citizens are guilty of the intent to commit criminal or negligent acts. It abolishes the essential liberty inherent in the presumption of innocence in favor of a culture of suspicion and paranoia. It would encourage fear that every person you meet- be they your neighbor, your mailman, your spouse- would kill you if only they had the means to do so (because surely a kitchen knife or a car offers no such means!). Guns do not and cannot make a person more inclined to do another person harm. If a person does not possess the will to murder, they will not murder with a gun any more than they would with their bare hands. A person inclined to do others harm will find a means of doing so regardless of the availability of guns. The pseudo-science behind assertions to the contrary argues that the ability to do a thing is directly linked to the desire to do a thing. You could turn your car onto the sidewalk and flatten a dozen pedestrians- but you wouldn't. If the ability to commit crime were even remotely linked to the desire to commit crime, civilization would collapse on itself as people murdered each other left and right with hammers, pencils, and stole everything not locked securely in a case behind the store counter. Human behavior simply does not work that way. Violence is not human nature, it is the exception to human nature- else civilization would not exist at all. Laws do not control people, they organize people, and there will always be those who refuse to submit to the rule of law. Guns- and all personal arms- are the means by which those few, violent exceptions may be effectively prevented from harming the sane, reasonable whole.

Agreed fully. We already know we have one probably inhabitable world (Mars) in this solar system other than our own, possibly two more (Titan and Europa, the latter of which definitely has liquid water beneath a crust of ice). We know that our sun has a projected lifespan of several billion more years before its later stages threaten life on Earth or any other potentially habitable body. We can put human beings on another world in our own solar system and retain the ability to communicate with any colonies we establish within our solar system. We cannot yet put human beings on a planet in another solar system- indeed, despite the knowledge that there are planets in other solar systems that lie within their stars' habitable zones, we don't even know if those bodies can be landed on at all. Again, we know we can land on Mars. We've been doing it since the Viking probes with every conceivable landing system from braking rockets to parachutes to airbag cocoons- and often a combination of those methods. Other solar systems can wait until we have further developed our own. The chances of an event colossal enough to disrupt our solar system's habitability are substantially lower than those of our planet suffering partial or total devastation. We know that Earth has been struck numerous times by objects large enough to cause mass extinctions. We know that such impacts still occur in our solar system. That knowledge presents us with a credible and immediate threat to our existence, yet we devote few resources and even less media attention to dealing with that threat. Once we have secured our long-term survival at a planetary level of redundancy, then we will be in a better position to conduct the research necessary to make extrasolar missions feasible.

Tossing space exploration into private hands is unfortunately not yet a viable solution. Corporate entities have drive, but no ambition- they will not sink billions of dollars into missions to other planets unless they are certain there will be a return on the investment. What they will do is what they are doing- which is to say, they'll come up with dozens of ways to boost human beings up and bring them back down. Remember, it's only been in the past decade that private spaceflight happened at all. No private manned spacecraft has reached orbit yet. Not one. It has been fifty years since Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth. The sad fact is that space exploration, if entrusted solely to the private sector, will proceed at a snail's pace; we'd be lucky to see another moon shot within the century. Tickets are already selling even though the flights aren't happening yet. That is the sole and exclusive reason why anybody is pumping money into the development of private sector spacecraft- they're already being paid for what those spacecraft are going to do. Here's how I see the evolution of private spaceflight happening: First step (in progress): Development of the 'amusement park ride' model. Tickets sold for suborbital flights with no motive other than the experience of being in space. Second step: Use of suborbital craft for long-distance passenger flights. Spacecraft take over the niche previously filled by the defunct Concorde, but are still not affordable. Third step: Reliable, re-useable orbital spacecraft developed and employed as a satellite launcher, primarily serving telecommunications companies. Fifth step: 'Space hotel' model. A space station is established as a destination for wealthy tourists. Different from the handful of 'tourist' flights already made in that this space station would exist exclusively for this purpose. Sixth step: Robotic presence established on the moon to explore mining opportunities. Seventh step: Human presence established on moon, largely to oversee robotic operations and maintain equipment on site. ...and that's about as far as I see it going in the foreseeable future. Corporations are cautious by nature- their collective survival instinct is much stronger than any given individual's. Governments, on the other hand, are always looking for ways to define themselves. Politicians love to create legacies, even if they bankrupt their nations doing so. That, IMO, is why space exploration funded by a government will tend to aim higher than any private endeavor... a flag planted somewhere nobody else has ever been is a powerful symbol. The US is still cashing in on the political capital gained during the Apollo program; we're the only nation that has ever sent people to another world. Trouble is, we pretty much called it a day when we saw that nobody else was trying to catch up. We'll get another manned ship up and running, but I'm not holding my breath for it to be aimed much farther than a few hundred to a few thousand miles up. Russia is barely scraping by; it's frankly amazing that they still have a space program... though at least their ships are new (despite being a very old design, since Soyuz capsules are single-use every launch is in a new ship). China, despite being an up-and-coming economic powerhouse in no danger of running out of funds, seems to be satisfied with the few orbital flights it's sent up. No other nations have even tried, and the private sector isn't exactly using "The Man Who Sold the Moon" as inspiration. Forget about out and back... what needs to happen is a one way mission. If we go to Mars, then we ship the crew off with everything they need to establish and maintain a base until they can be resupplied from Earth. The spacecraft design could be streamlined because it would not need to return- it would need reaction mass only for the trip out, which would allow enough payload space for provisions to last several years. Anybody who goes there, stays there- with the goal of increasing the size of the colony until it becomes self-sustaining. If the first flights aren't ongoing missions, then there will be a temptation to abandon the project... just as the moon was abandoned. When humans go to Mars, there should be no humans coming back from Mars until there are humans being born and raised on Mars. Likewise the moon- when we go back to the moon, we need to do it with the stated goal of establishing a permanent base from the very first landing onward. To set our sights any lower would accomplish nothing.

Point of order: nuclear fusion research is not a "popular theory." Fusion has been achieved by several different methods, by several different laboratories. The problem with fusion lies in getting enough more energy out of a fusion reaction than it takes to induce the reaction so as to make it a viable source of power. Currently the only method we have of achieving that kind of output to input ratio is to build a thermonuclear bomb- which has been discussed as a method of spacecraft propulsion, believe it or not. IMO, too much focus is placed on scientific discovery as the sole and exclusive reason for space exploration. As far back as historical records exist (and back to the dawn of our species in the archaeological record), humanity has been a species of explorers. Everywhere we have gone, we have developed new cultures- new modes of speech dress and even of thought itself- that have driven our social evolution. As we fill out and populate every nook and cranny on our home planet, then connect ourselves with near-instant telecommunication networks, we will ultimately stagnate. Our culture will homogenize and we will achieve a single, unified identity... unless we induce change by going to new places, living in them and developing new cultures, we will not continue to evolve and grow as a species. We will ultimately meet our end in some cosmic cataclysm, or in a disaster of our own making, having never set foot beyond our doorstep. We've had the proven ability to get a spacecraft to Mars and land it safely since the 1970s. We've had the ability to build modular spacecraft and assemble them in orbit since the Gemini flights of the 1960s. We know how to simulate gravity on long voyages in space, even though we've never put that knowledge into practice. Today's PDAs have enough processor power to make any necessary computations for an interplanetary mission. Our problems here on Earth are worthy of attention, but most of them are ultimately transient. Economic crises pass. Nations rise and fall. The one purpose which ought to motivate all of humanity as a unified whole is to ensure the long-term advancement and, ultimately, the long-term survival of our species. The only way to achieve those ends is to undertake missions in and through space, and to establish permanent colonies on other planets. To ignore that truth is to commit mass suicide, be it two thousand or two million or two billion years from now. Our extinction is certain without sustainable off-Earth colonies. Since we have the knowledge and the technology to put humans on other worlds, and such colonies do not presently exist, it stands to reason that our first priority ought to be getting up off our collective asses and creating them. Any step that leads away from space is a step in the wrong direction. We should have had a next-generation reusable spacecraft twenty years ago so that we wouldn't have needed to abandon manned spaceflight when the Shuttles got too old to use safely.

I don't believe they are skill-dependent... when you run up to them and activate them they shut off just like ordinary mines do rather than popping up an action menu. Explosives skill only determines how close you can get to mines before you trigger them; you can disarm mines even with no points in the skill at all. You should just be able to run up and switch the proximity alarms off without any trouble.

Is it too late to vote for Tribes 2 or BF:1942 because they were both genuinely great games with awesome communities, excellent developer support, a high level of polish, and lots of amazing mods? Honestly, CA shooters have taken a nosedive since those days... Really, you're comparing apples to oranges setting Battlefield against CoD. CoD is a straight-up shooter... with a dose of instakill realism, yes, but generic. Battlefield is a combined arms game- Land, Air, and Sea where applicable... though since BF2 it's been pretty much Land, Air, Douchebaggery. You may use the same controls to aim and fire in both games, but they aren't in the same category- you could buy both and have completely different experiences with each. Unfortunately, there isn't any combined-arms competition worthy of note for BF3 (with Tribes: Ascend going to a micro-transaction model that'll kill it dead at release). It'd be nice if there was, because EA has done a really crappy job of it, but there isn't. That poor genre seems to have come and gone with the early to mid '00s- more's the pity. However, if you're considering the latest incarnation of CoD you might as well start looking at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive... they're much more comparable. Since Valve has a better reputation for consistent quality, their offering will likely be superior even if you'll wait longer for it. Perhaps a year or so, even. Heh. Yup, the golden age of shooters has come and gone. Here's to the resurgence of another genre as the King of the Heap. :thumbsup:

I don't mind minigames so much, but truth be told when they're applied on top of skills (where your skill rank, IMO, should determine your chance of success as with lockpicking etc) they just get in the way. Once I had the Skeleton Key in Oblivion all I ever did was punch the auto-attempt button until it opened... whenever I had a sufficient number of lockpicks before I acquired it I did the same thing and just never sank any points into lockpick because the minigame made the skill worthless. Basically, I don't consider the minigames a major impediment to gameplay, but they do little to add to immersion and I tend to start bypassing them as soon as I am able to do so.

A few more grades of fur/hide would be nice. Draped furs as a barbarian-style armor and cleaned/tailored furs as slightly more upscale but still low-level kit? Furs combined with chainmail? Anything with fur in it, really... it's gonna be cold up there! Agreed on the armor slots though. Mix'n'match is the way to go... creates a more varied game world, too, since even if they're wearing bits and pieces of the same outfits every other NPC won't necessarily be wearing exactly the same clothes. Just saying.

As long as there's a simple ponytail (preferably with hair physics), I'll be plenty happy as that's all I ever use.

Not only that, but you can get 2.5"->3.5" conversion brackets to permanently mount the laptop drive in your desktop, if you'd rather not waste the drive after getting the data off it. It won't measure up to the best desktop drives, but it'll run a lot cooler because of increased airflow and direct contact to the metal hard drive bay so it might perform better in the tower than it did in the portable. As long as it still runs, it's just extra storage.

My take on communication in debate is that if your premises are reasonable and your logic is sound, then you've made your case as well as if you'd linked half a dozen studies saying the same thing. I'm willing to listen to anybody on anything as long as they can get from "if" to "then" without resorting to baseless ad hominem or tripping over their own logical heels (ie the "violent people play videogames therefore videogames make people violent" line that we see so often). There is a common misconception, one which troubles me greatly, that "credentialed" and "credible" are synonyms. Folks will take anything as gospel as long as the author has a doctorate, no matter what kind, even if they don't know what field said author studied (ie a man with a PhD in Astrophysics presenting an argument about climate change). It is also greatly troubling when I see a perfectly sound and reasonable argument dismissed out of hand because the person presenting it didn't have credentials. In neither case is independent confirmation of the author's claims sought, and I believe that unfortunate failure to do follow-up research results in an awful lot of good ideas being ignored and an awful lot of bad ideas turned into law and public policy. Communication breaks down when context and content are ignored.

You know what? I said I wasn't going to, but I changed my vote to Yes. Rest of post deleted by user... having a crappy day and it'd only have incited a flame war.

Agreed. I've come to consider delays to be a good thing, at least for A-list titles that are guaranteed not to turn into vaporware. The longer it stays in development, the longer they've got to hammer out bugs that might hurt the game post-release. Besides, it's not as if there aren't plenty of games to play in the meantime. Release dates are not deadlines, nor should they be. Quality cannot be rushed.

No vote... as long as the undies don't look horrid, it's all good. It would look really, really odd for folks to be tooling around in boxers and undershirts in a fantasy setting. IMO something minimalist but not ridiculous works just fine. Comparing the setting of TES to real-world norms in the medieval period isn't necessarily accurate, either; the degree of modesty offered by underwear is deeply connected with cultural norms, and the TES setting a a lot more *ahem* permissive than Earth of the same tech level. There's no more reason to show everyone in bloomers than there is to have them all wearing thongs. Which is all a long-winded way of saying I'm perfectly happy with some manner of loincloth or bikini, for men and women. IMO the argument against nudity from the standpoint of "kids might inadvertently see it" is rather silly. It isn't the developer's job to keep your little'uns from seeing things you don't want them seeing. Ignoring the whole argument that seeing nudity somehow damages kids (which I disagree with, having been raised around nudity myself), it doesn't make sense to impose restrictions on the majority of the game's target audience based on the old "we must protect the children" line of thinking. Most of the people who will buy and play this game, statistically, are single adults in their late teens to mid twenties... and most folks who fit that description don't have kids running around. No offense or anything, but using kids as a justification for censorship in games only serves to reinforce the idiotic popular notion that all games are somehow for kids. I consider a "enable/disable underwear" button in the options menu to be an entirely reasonable and appropriate solution to the nudity conundrum.

Anybody remember the Sega Dreamcast controllers? With the mini-games that you could play on the memory cards, each of which had its own screen and controls? Which plugged into the system controller so that the mini-screen became part of the controller? Gawd what a weird setup that was. For the record I would just like to note that touchpad (though not touchscreen) controllers have been around since the NES, and motion controllers have been around at least since the N64. The aforementioned NES controller had a primitive but functional touchpad in place of the D-pad; it was one of my favorites because the sensors reacted faster than the buttons did, making the controls more responsive. The tilt pak for N64 was pretty cool too- it was a controller pack (plugged into the memory card/rumble pack slot) that transmitted to a little fob you plugged in between the controller and the console; when enabled the device essentially replaced the analog stick. Worked pretty well too. So yeah, I guess Nintendo has always been the go-to system for screwy new controller ideas. It's just that Nintendo is developing the screwy new ideas in-house now; both of the above were third-party devices.

Is it stupid? Yep. It isn't the first time they've done something like this, though... it isn't even the first time in this franchise. When BF2's expansion came out, there were several powerful weapons and items that were exclusive to people who had the expansion, which could be used in base game servers to the detriment of everyone else playing. It's been a while since I dumped that game, so I don't remember all of it, but flashbangs were one of the items. I can't say I was ever that excited about BF3... after the craptastic QA support for BF2 that left the no-damage jumping exploit in the game for over a year I kinda lost faith in the schmucks and their ability to produce worthwhile games. Nothing ruins a game like seeing a server full of people bunny-hopping because it makes them immune to all damage from any source as long as they're airborne. The outrage is several years too late to make a difference. EA/DICE have already figured out that they can get away with it, and I wouldn't be even a little surprised if the game released as buggy and unbalanced as its predecessor on top of the blatant favoritism.

Consoles aren't stifling PC gaming, copy protection is. DRM has destroyed the PC game resale market, so game stores carry few PC games. People buy fewer PC games, even from online stores, because they know they can't trade them in when they're done playing. Consoles do not have that problem; they have simply risen in popularity to fill a gap created by the systematic attack on PC gaming. If PC copy protection systems were dialed back to where they were in the late 90s and early 00s, the gaming market would stabilize again. The same thing would likely happen if console makers introduced DRM that prevented the resale of console games (which has been discussed, most notably by Sony)- though obviously that is something gamers should loudly resist. The expense of building a gaming PC is not and never has been a cause of decline in the market for PC games. Gaming PCs have always been expensive; if anything they are less expensive now than they were ten years ago. Upper-tier graphics hardware in particular has fallen in price despite inflation- I clearly remember a time when you'd pay $200 to $300 for the same capability that you'd pay $150 for today. Bleeding edge equipment remains very expensive, but nothing ever really requires bleeding edge hardware. The tower I'm building now will wind up with a 2.8gHz quad core processor, 8 gigs of RAM, a 1 gig graphics board, and enough hard drive space to hold every game I've ever owned... and my build cost is not likely to be much over $1000. Again, not bleeding edge, but certainly capable of running anything released this year or next... and when I do need to upgrade, the graphics card will likely be the only thing that needs to be upgraded. The system itself will likely be viable without any further upgrades, barring any sudden leap forward in technology, for the next half a decade or more. Yes, consoles are cheaper. They're more user-friendly. But they're also less versatile, not at all customizable or upgradeable, and tend to lag far behind PCs in performance. You can't mod games on consoles, at least not without violating the terms of service agreement. There will always be a market for gaming PCs and for PC games to run on them... the market is just in a slump right now thanks to the industry's ongoing mania for DRM.

Honestly I'm beginning to see very clearly why some folks want the Debates section shut down. This is... what, the fourth or fifth blatant lets-bash-America thread in the past few months? The last one hasn't even left the front page yet- and it's always the same stuff- America murders civilians! America wants to conquer the world! America eats babies and kicks puppies! Here's a neat little media trick to ponder: - The first reporters on the ground will get their information from a civilian source, since the military will restrict access and not issue statements until it is sure an ongoing operation will not be compromised. - It is difficult to be objective when bombs are going off in your neighborhood. It is even moreso when someone you know has become collateral damage. - Hence, reports to the media via civilian sources will overestimate casualties. Those figures will likely not be corrected if the country the war takes place in has poor record keeping or a non-functional government. - The word "casualties" refers to wounded, missing, killed, and homeless. - The usage of the word in the media implies that everyone who is a "casualty" is dead. Hence silly statements like "the US has killed hundreds of thousands/millions of civilians!" Well, no, we haven't. Certainly hundreds of thousands have been displaced, tens of thousands have been wounded, and entirely too many have been killed, with many thousands still unaccounted for. But those people are not all dead. They're not even all wounded. And it gets very tiring to keep hearing about all the wanton slaughter when this is one of the least bloody wars in all of human history. C'mon folks, you have the internet... surely you can do a bit of research before parroting sensationalist garbage?

Good news in my estimation. Release it when it's done, not when it's scheduled.