Bay 12 Games Forum

I actually really like Traveller, especially Mongoose Traveller although Classic Traveller is close enough I wouldn't mind playing it either.

I love the setting and the openness of the Traveller Universe and rulesystem. You can do practically anything. Wanna play Star Trek? We have rules for that. Want to play Starship Troopers? We have rules for that. Want to play Firefly/Serenity? We have rules for that. Want to play Conan the Barbarian? We have rules for that.

I would say there's a lot of things it can do non-perfectly, but it can still do them. It's best at sci-fi stuff, but there are rules or ways to bend them for almost any time period and almost any setting.

I'll also say I dislike D&D in almost any form. I've tried playing them all at some point or another and while I could go into detail about the things I hate, I'll just say that the rules they put into place for things often don't make sense. Armor class being the most glaring. But the skills are also often either too generalized (Diplomacy) or too specific (Jump).

I finally got LoL working again after nearly 2 weeks of "Login Error" BS.

I love Soraka so much...

I don't so much love the people who complain when I can't make everyone invincible all the time, or the people who decide to tower dive at low level, assuming I can take care of them and then complain when I just stood around (IE: Didn't charge into death with them.)

Still, it's fun and when you save someone from certain death, it's a good feeling, even if it's not entirely reflected in your score.

It appears to be multiplayer only, which I have no interest in. If they let you play the single player, I could, indeed, get all the enjoyment I'd ever get out of the game.

Quote from: Fishbreath on May 30, 2011, 11:40:28 am

Ping is round-trip time.

There's actually no set definition regarding that.
I suppose pingtest.net does use RTT in this instance, but...

When you ping something, you send out a ping and wait for a pong. So you are in fact, measuring how long it takes for your ping to get somewhere and then also the time it takes for the pong to return.

Something I've noticed is that the American police are growing increasingly estranged from the populace. Both police and civilians have a strong "us vs them" mentality. There seems to be a sense among both of them that the other party is out to get them.
There also seems to be a sense that this is the natural way of things, although I could be wrong here.

With a few exceptions, this is how I've always felt with the local police around here. I've never had a pleasant run-in with the police except for a couple of occasions when they came to my elementary school and did an anti-drug thing, in that case it was obviously PR and obviously trying to make themselves seem nice around the kids.

Even the few times I've needed their help with something, I came away feeling like I had done something wrong (even though I hadn't, other than simply asked them to do their jobs.) I'm not saying they're all like this, I have known a few that are nice, at least once you get to know them, but outside of a personal relationship with them, like I said, nothing but bad feelings.

On my visit to Europe though, things were completely different. Now, I wasn't there long enough, nor had enough contact with the police over there to make a informed opinion, but the couple of times i had to deal with them, and then adding in the security at their airports, I never felt scared, or worried or even bothered by their presence. They were there doing their jobs, and part of me even felt a slight relief at it. There was a bit of annoyance at the traffic laws (especially the speeding cameras in some areas) but I never felt like the police there were a threat or bullies. Forgive me if my opinion is completely off, but it was just something I noticed. I also noticed this, although to a lesser extent in Mexico, and the police there carried SMGs on their hips. Somehow their demeanor didn't make that seem like anything to be worried about though. Somehow that submachine gun worried me less than the tazers our police carry. Silly, maybe, stupid, quite possibly, but that's just how I felt, and for me, the feeling I get from having those sorts of officials around is one of the more important things to me. I'd much rather feel reassurance than fear and paranoia. But again, maybe I was just too ignorant about those areas, and too knowledgable about my own to feel the right emotions in the places I wasn't familiar with.

I think Notch just bought a ton of crack with all the money he made several months ago and only in the past few weeks he woke up form the resulting coma and started to program again. ez was the one who was posting on the blog the whole time. He still retains the wide-awake productivity of the crack alongside the terrible side-effects. Every waking hour is programming and fixing bugs now.

He makes more bugs just so he can fix them so he doesn't have to go to sleep. Sleep brings the nightmares. Sleep brings the fear.

I've gotten a lot of fun out of Farcry 2, despite what people say. It really is nothing but traipsing around Africa shooting people, searching for diamonds, and occasionally progressing a simplistic story, but it does most of it pretty well. I love the buddy system mechanic (Probably not as good as it sounds, it's really just your "extra life." If you get knocked down, your buddy will come up and drag you a couple dozen yards away, let you heal a bit and stick a pistol into your hand. They'll stick around for a while and give some covering fire as well, but you only get this once, until you meet up with them in the safe house again. If you die again, without readying your buddy first, it's game over, back to the last save point.), I think the vehicles, while not great, are at least decent. The drives are a bit much, and you should take advantage of the bus system(fast travel between center and 4 corners of map) as much as possible. If you go through the game playing it only one way, it WILL get repetitive, but if you change your strategy around and try to take advantage of all of the weapons you can get, you'll find there's plenty of ways to do the same mission. One day you may snipe them, the other day you may charge in with a double barrelled shotgun. Maybe an rpg some other time, or just drive on in and slip into the mounted gun to mow the enemy down. Perhaps sneak in with a silenced pistol, charge through with your machete, or hell, just stand back and mortar the whole area. Perhaps one time you'll take the land route by car, or hike up a mountain to get a better angle, maybe the next you'll come in by boat on the river, or swim up to the shore under the water taking the dock guards by surprise.

Again, I'm not saying it's for everyone, but there is definitely potential there if you play it right. You do a lot of the same things over and over again, sometimes even in the same places as you've done them before. There is a lot of world to explore though, a lot of missions to do, especially sidequests, and plenty of diamond stashes to search out.

Personally, I don't play it with the mindset of "I'm going to just play through this game." It's my game that I just have on the side, whenever I want to just mindlessly(Or carefully, if I"m feeling sneaky) drive around and shoot. I really don't even try to keep up with the storyline all that much, what of it there is, all I know is where I can generally find missions if I want them. For me, it's also one of the few games I've played that have made me feel like I'm in a slightly cheesy 80s-90s action movie. I for one, enjoy that feeling.

Which flies in the face of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and generally accepted international norms.

Since when has that mattered?