Alfonse

[quote]I'll never buy a console again--I just hope I can instill that value in my kids. [/quote] So what do they do about the kinds of games that don't exist on PCs?

[quote]Spending four million bucks pushing the boundaries on current capabilities to cut out 20% of your market is stupid.[/quote] From a buisness standpoint, perhaps. From an artistic standpoint, no. Id is a company of programmers. They are founded by and run by programmers. They think like programmers. And for programmers playing with hardware is one of the more interesting things to do in game development. And programmers like nothing more than interesting things to do.

[quote]Also, I have another very pragmatic reason, it allows me to fully refrain from piracy. While the price for a copy of Windows is reasonable, the price of all the software I need would be a few months of salary together. It is much more attractive to buy an OpenSuSE box and be done with it (and even that is optional) than to buy Windows, MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, Winrar, Nero burning ROM, Photoshop and so on.[/quote] First of all, nobody's making you pirate stuff. Second,

[quote]Yes, 16 or 24 is limited by geometry, how to set up bases in such a way that they can all affect the same space without violating the 4 per sector rule.[/quote] Put them at the edges and corners of sectors. While only 4 starbases can be in one sector at once, that doesn't mean that only 4 areas of influence can be in one sector at once.

[quote]What you described of DS9 is not something "new", it the same old thing, but with a different sugar coating. TNG tackled the same topic which is DS9 main topic, the darker setting.[/quote] Star Trek has lasted something like 700+ hours of Television. In that time, you're going to touch on a [i]lot[/i] of stuff. There's a big difference between touching on something and going in-depth. My point is this: "Star Trek" means something. Like any adaptation of a work,

[quote]A DS9/Voyager movie would've tanked horribly at the box office.[/quote] Did you notice the words [i]jump ahead[/i] in my post? As in, a move after those series with an entirely new crew of characters that they can do what they want with. [quote]It was completely that.[/quote] Again, did you actually read my post? Batman Begins was not a hijacking of the Batman setting in order to do whatever the writers wanted. They told a [i]Batman[/i] story, not a story i

[quote]The demise of Enterprise shows that 'authentic' ST doesn't have the wide appeal it once had.[/quote] Enterprise was not "authentic" in any way, shape or form. Enterprise failed because it had the worst writing possible. A TV show lives or dies on the basis of its writing. If the BSG reboot had Enterprises writers, it would have failed even more miserably. Fortunately for them and fans, BSG got [i]DS9's[/i] writers, which seems to have worked out pretty well so far.

They put time-travel in. Why, oh God, [i]WHY?![/i]

[quote]There are a LOT of gamers who are in the same situation and I would think you'd consider them and the possible lost sales when forming a policy like Impulse Only. It's a great idea if only we ALL had DSL or Cable.[/quote] Not speaking for SD obviously, but rural areas are... rural. As in not heavily populated. As in, not a lot of lost sales if those people aren't properly supported.

For your definition of "mainstream," yes. GalCiv should have production value. It should have polish. However, you confuse polish with "broad appeal," and that's just not right. Polish is something that every game deserves, from games made by a guy in his garage to games with $30 million budgets. Broad appeal is about making the game sufficiently simple that more people who might be interested in playing it will do so. The mechanics of, say, Civilization 1 are much simpler tha

[quote]You have still NOT provided an easy way for people without Intetnet access to patch their games.[/quote] Last time I checked, downloading [i]anything[/i] requires Internet access.

[quote]but since government seems to need to stick it's nose in everything, I guess we need to duke it out![/quote] There's no "duking it out;" you [i]lost[/i]. You lost the moment you stated your position. So long as equal protection is a virtue that this country holds dear, your limited definition of marriage is as much against that equal protection as Jim Crow laws were. You either believe in an America where laws should be applied equally or you don't. It's that simple. An

[quote]In order to provide a stable foundation for communication within our society and through the ages regarding fundamental components, it is imperative that societies consider carefully any changes in definition to core societal concepts as change in meaning may change their essence and thereby destroy the uniqueness indicated by their name.[/quote] This is the foundation of your argument, the assumption by which your "logic" stands or falls. So let's attack it. This prece

[quote]thats how outdated it is.[/quote] So? I don't see Little Big Planet on PCs. Nor do I see Gran Turismo. Or any of the other PS3 exclusives. The technology that runs a game is about the most meaningless part of the game. Quake 3 may have run on better technology than an N64, but that didn't make it better than Super Mario 64.

[quote]I have no idea what's going on here[/quote] The OP is making fun of the ridiculous "Obama is a socialist/Marxist/communist" nonsense that started up in recent weeks. He's saying that, because Obama won, he'll buy games, but they will be "redistributed" to "less-fortunate" gamers.

[quote] I think the addition of an option at game start to disable tactical battles (permanent for a session) would solve that.[/quote] If battles are going to actually be tactical, then that means that there is an entire layer of gameplay involved there. Setting up your units, attacking the right units at the right time, etc. Which should mean that the rest of the gameplay is balanced to expect tactical battles to be there. Players have a certain degree of mindfulness that th

[quote]the graphics look like some kids game for the Wii or gameboy.[/quote] Oh, I absolutely love this kind of immature response. "Oh, it's not photorealistic, it looks like a cartoon, so it's a kid's game!" Just ignore these people. Keep doing what you're doing.

Day 1 concerns: 1: The UI. It seems, well, too polished for this stage of development. One of the most crucial aspects of any UI is that it is made for the player. And until the gameplay is really nailed down, I'd be somewhat concerned to see a polished UI. It suggests that the UI was built while the gameplay was being worked on, which allows for another GC2-like UI: an interface that is not well-designed for playing the game as it was made, rather than as the designers thought they w

For those who keep asking "where is death magic", consider this. When MoM came out, you might have noticed that there was another, much bigger game out at the time. One that used a suspiciously similar set of 5 "elements", that suspiciously used the same 5 colors and basic concepts. That game, of course, is Magic: the Gathering. Indeed, when I first saw MoM, I thought it was some kind of poor-rippoff of M:tG. I mean, "Master of Magic", "Magic: the Gathering"? The names do have

[quote]this is against the laws as far as I know[/quote] It might disqualify you from the MetaVerse, but I don't know what law it is breaking.

To me, the UI must first, last, and always, serve the needs of the gameplay. The player must have accurate information. It's one of the things I hate about the Call of Duty games. They don't have a health bar; instead, they have some nonsense "red area" encroach on the screen when you're starting to die. That's great, but [i]how much damage can I take before I die?[/i] Having an accurate assessment of critical information is the first priority of the UI. How you provide that is up to

[quote]the devs are too busy working on it to do journals.[/quote] I think the point he is making is that part of "working on it" should [i]be[/i] doing journals.

[quote]you can totally abuse the diplomacy system[/quote] I would point out that the diplomacy system exists for the [i]sole purpose[/i] of being abused. That is, it was designed that way. The diplomacy value makes no sense without the AI capitulating to a high diplomacy factor.

[quote]This 2.0 update should give us a totally revamped espionage system that should be as strong as military victory. Because lets face it, you win this game by military. Espionage system should be at least up there? Folks, espionage it's what is going to save this game ![/quote] You're probably setting yourself up for disappointment there. At no time have the developers suggested or intimated that espionage will become a method for directly winning the game. Espionage will likely b

[quote]StarCraft only has one thing about it that kept it popular, it's storyline, because all it's other good aspects became common place not too long after, or they became unrealistic in the mind's of gamers[/quote] You really believe that millions of Koreans play StarCraft [i]daily[/i] because of its storyline? You believe that the massive eSports community around the game exists because of its storyline? I mean, seriously now. I get that you don't like the game. But you co