To each their own, but between the fun of the Borderlands series and them saving the Homeworld franchise from oblivion (and now Bulletstorm!), I’m willing to forgive Gearbox just about anything right now.

Brain&Brain, what is brain?

Hey, I liked Lightning.

The objective of a skill-based matchmaking system is to match players of similar skill. The closer they are in skill level, the better.

You’re absolutely right: a perfectly balanced matchmaking system would be trying to get everyone to a 50% win rate. Obviously, so system is that perfect, but that’s the ideal.

I mentioned elsewhere several games, both console and PC, that let you import characters from one to the next entry in the series.

Did I say anywhere that I wanted them to be stuck with the limitations of their first entry? Did I say I wanted the systems and world to be the same? Did I say I don’t want them to push the envelope?

I’ll give you Adventure, (aside from the ED levels. And the Big levels), but Adventure 2? More awful shooting, since Tails was doing it too, the Knuckles/Rouge levels that managed to ruin the thing that actually made Adventure’s Knuckles levels fun, friggin’ SHADOW... No thanks.

That sounds like Sword Logic. Give me the gentler dream of a peaceful kingdom ringed by spears.

Commenting on old articles is cool, right?

Baldur’s Gate -> Baldur’s Gate 2 springs immediately to mind. Maybe Icewind Dale to IWD 2? It’s been a long time since I played IWD 2, so I don’t remember. A lot of PC RPG series used to do this back in the day.

Maybe YOUR character was bland, but my Titan looks totally bitchin’.

For what it’s worth, I’d happily sacrifice (working) versions of my Y1 and 2 gear for a transmog/wardrobe/glamour system and the ability to use those items’ appearances. That’s 50% of my weapon choice and 100% of my armor choice rationale anyway.

I think I still would be. Not to get too hung up on marketing speech, but the whole build your legend, ten-year plan thing is one of the things that really hooked me. I’d much rather see something more akin to a traditional MMO expansion: if there’s a new class, I can try it. Maybe I like it better than my first-gen…

New subclasses? Definitely I’d want my old character. Totally new classes? Maybe.

I understand that Bungie doesn’t want to be hobbled by old decisions, particularly ones made under the restrictions of a much older and less powerful platform, and can totally accept that they may not want to be supporting Gjallerhorn and Twilight Garrison in their designs for another eight years, but if characters,…

Seems to me Sonic Adventure is the first time I can remember him being called Eggman in an American release, and, coincidentally or not, it’s been a nearly uninterrupted decline since. Maybe SOA had the right idea.

Hot take: Sonic started going downhill when Robotnik became Eggman.

Yeah, all that’s there if you care to dig. My point was just that the main throughline of the expansion (not touching the raid, as I haven’t run it yet) is straightforward and fairly coherent.

I thought RoI’s story was pretty straightforward. Iron Lords learn about a cache of Golden Age tech and head out to find it, Rasputin doesn’t think they can be trusted, so it activates defenses to keep them out. All but one of the Lords is killed, and he seals the area and keeps it a secret.