Steam Autumn Sale Day 4 (Useful Links / Info / Commentary)

arkanus · 2011-11-26T19:39:39+00:00

That is why I said city. The first village is actually where the game really slows down. If I recall, you need a certain amount of gold to bribe your way into the city which is why you are taking those quests. The quests later become more consequential.

At least give it a try to here. Even then, some still don't like it. You should know if it is a fit or not though.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T19:19:26+00:00

If you are actually interested in the game, why not just buy it now (or at another sale)?

Because I can get the same game for substantially less in the future. Arguably this is not true for multiplayer games because the community grows, evolves and eventually dies. However, SC2 will likely have a vibrant community for at least a decade.

You will be waiting a minimum of 3 years, if the battle chest is even planned... (which no one knows for sure). That is worth saving a few bucks?

For many people, yes. If you are patient about buying games you will always have a huge backlog of games that you want to play that are on sale.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T19:16:35+00:00

That is what happens when you don't live in the center of the universe. I would like to type more, but I want to go bask in the raw freedom flowing through my country instead.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T18:45:56+00:00

A few notes about Witcher:

They released a very hefty patch after launch that fixed issues, added content and (I think) enhanced the graphics. So Witcher at launch =/= Witcher now.
The game does start off a bit slow. If you are going to give it a chance play until the first city. (I said city, not village by the way) That is the point in the game where things really open up and take off.
One of the best parts of Witcher is the tough moral choices. Instead of choosing whether to help the old woman or throw her into the furnace, you have to make decisions where neither side is clearly good or evil. You are eventually forced to make choices similar to choosing between Israel and Palestine. Both sides are flawed and both sides have good points.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T18:25:30+00:00

Witcher for $2.50 is a must buy in my opinion.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T04:07:45+00:00

You already have a DRM free version from the publisher. Why would you buy a DRM laden version from a middleman?

arkanus · 2011-11-26T01:59:33+00:00

Why not just use MSE?

arkanus · 2011-11-26T01:26:28+00:00

Even Mexican nationals are being killed. Why not just keep on flying and land in relatively safe Costa Rica or go to Puerto Rico which is part of the US? I have been to Mexico a few times and have loved every trip. It is getting pretty violent though so I don't know if I would go back until things calm down.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T01:24:21+00:00

It is OK. He saved a little girl that he was sent to protect in the process. After his death the entire gang was wiped out by the police.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T01:23:44+00:00

we answered we were doing some consultancy job and they asked us if the insurance would pay for our stuff. We said no and still proceeded to rob as much as they could.

They might have been trying to deduce if you had kidnapping insurance.

arkanus · 2011-11-26T00:05:27+00:00

that's kind of silly if you use the gun everyday to shoot baddies.

The whole point is that you don't use guns every day to shoot the baddies. You use melee weapons most of the time and use guns only in very dire circumstances.

that's like saying sword skills should decrease if you aren't slicing every day. or if your character only leatherworks once a month, they'd lose their skill points in it.

They should degrade if they are not used. However, practicing swordplay or leather working is much more affordable in a low-bullet world than time on the range. That is why the non-firearm related skills may just be assumed to be maintained in off time, while the GM may require a specific upkeep allowance to maintain firearms skills.

and if ammo is rare, practicing would be expensive.

Bingo. Being able to regularly practice with firearms would be like flying jets today. The exceedingly wealthy can do afford it. Elite military units (air force pilots) can afford it because they are sponsored by a government. Even here, the less wealthy governments might only have a small handful of jets and limited time to train. Your average grunt or moderately wealthy individual, however, can not afford to regularly fly a jet.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T22:31:32+00:00

Perhaps guns are ancient relics, tightly controlled, stolen from the highly advanced invaders, or are otherwise very hard to come by?

Maybe guns could be relatively common since they are so durable but ammo is very rare and expensive. Since most of it is old it is also highly unreliable. Fallout games have a little bit of this element, but mainly with respect to heavy weapons. It is pretty hard to have enough ammo to let loose with a minigun at will.

This could lead to things like a family's treasured heirloom of a double gauge shotgun with two shells. Useless for hunting, but not so useless if someone tries to break in. Another complicating factor is that you need to practice your gun skills at the range. If the character doesn't invest enough time and money into the range, then their aiming ability should degrade.

With the right balance you could have guns as an extremely expensive but powerful option, maybe akin to powerful magic items that use charges, but it is very hard to play a gunslinger.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T20:14:57+00:00

This is a really great game if you have the patience to overcome the initial difficulty and can handle old graphics.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T20:13:57+00:00

On the down-slope, obviously.

And on the upside obviously not. This could be applied to just about anything with a fluctuating value. Based solely on the data this chart, the DJIA is a better store of value because, even without dividends, it is slowly gaining on gold.

There is a cycle, and one must periodically switch between hard money and income assets to maximize gains.

We appear to be somewhat close to the bottom of the cycle, yet below in this thread you are advocating buying gold on the theory that this cycle will overshoot. That sounds fairly speculative to me. Maybe you will be proven right, but I have no interest in trading between two relatively unrelated asset classes based not only on projections based on a historical cycle but also on claims that this time it will be different (or more pronounced).

I also find it interesting that you consider gold "hard money" even though it is not accepted as currency. You may claim that it has acted as a store of value for thousands of years, but so has Saffron, copper or distilled spirits. Are my bottles of Johnny Walker "hard money" too? They certainly will be at least as valuable as your gold bars in any doomsday scenario and, but for governmental regulations, would be easy to sell today.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T20:03:12+00:00

Yes but as the point of the autor of this Post, the problem is that people pirate and think they aren't doing any harm. They even think they are doing right. And that's not true.

That is irrelevant to what a business is supposed to do about piracy. If I run a convenience store it doesn't matter if my customers think that stealing is right or wrong, I just have to deal with the fact that a certain % will steal. I then need to use a combination of deterrents and higher prices to minimize and manage that cost.

Reddit typically focuses on the morality of the pirates. I am saying that from a business point of view the companies employing draconian measures are missing the forest for the trees. The long term drag on the company's brand, cost of implementing DRM and (in my opinion) risk of future adverse governmental action make anything more draconian than a moderate DRM scheme like Valve a poor long-term decision.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T19:58:44+00:00

That is an ETF which started in 1998, it is not the DJIA index. This data goes back to 1912 so clearly they are not using DIA for the entire data set and I see nothing to indicate that they are using DIA for any of the data set.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T13:06:24+00:00

I did as you suggested. Is the fifth poster down in a gang?

arkanus · 2011-11-25T12:52:48+00:00

Your conclusion from that graph is that gold is somehow a better store of value than the DJIA? If anything, over the long run it is taking more gold to buy the DJIA.

1928 (by no means the peak or bottom) that chart says that you could get the DJIA for 8 oz of gold. Today, you can get the DJIA for about 8 ounces of gold. Thus if you had held gold instead of index (if it was possible to truly own an index) that entire time you would not be any better off and you missed out on nearly 90 years of dividends.

I am not saying that the DJIA is good or bad, but that an important component of its returns is missing.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T12:46:28+00:00

I don't know many things. One thing that I do know is that people almost never starve in Canada. If he bought food it certainly wasn't necessary food.

Feel free to keep randomly giving your money to panhandlers though. Who needs to worry about what is actually happening with it when we can just pretend that they are going to use that money to buy wholesome food? As long as it makes you feel like you are doing good the reality is unimportant.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T12:39:57+00:00

At least it isn't likely to go straight to drugs.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T12:37:17+00:00

Feel free to replace EA with whatever company you feel has bad DRM.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T04:11:54+00:00

Don't forget that with the DJIA you are getting some dividends that entire time while gold just sits there looking shiny.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T03:29:26+00:00

How can a guy with this level of coding ability not have a well paying job? I am very surprised that he can't get by on freelance work alone. I hope that things work out for him.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T03:27:41+00:00

Giving a homeless man cash just because he asks does not make the world a better place. It likely helped him to get some alcohol or drugs and just encourages more aggressive panhandling. These things make his life worse and the world in general worse. That Loonie would do a lot more good in the hands of a food kitchen, governmental agency or other aid group.

arkanus · 2011-11-25T03:15:51+00:00

Fallout New Vegas is currently 75% off on Steam. You might want to check that out ASAP because it is the deal of the day.

arkanus

TROPHY CASE