Astarae

1st) Show me where it says free. Stop erecting strawmen. How do you know what I need? you don't. Right now my raid has just me in it, and unless there are no lazy autodeaths, and no multi-person puzzels, then fine, but I don't think so. Don't get me wrong, but you really need to play the game. Takes 15 steels for 3-4, 4-5, 5-6, and 25 for 6-7, 7-8, 8-9, that's 75+45 and that adds up to 120. Obviously you can't support what you are saying through any refutation of facts or what is common among humans, so you just ignore it. Why not? What moral reason is there other than your personal glorification is there for you saying what other people should or should not be able to do? If the alternative paths were as good, then fine. They are not so your entire argument ends there. Why? Maybe it means being able to help others in a group rather than kicking people for not having aransu for BT, as that's today's qualifications. I don't care if it is a raid weap or not, as long as it is 2x whatever the raid weap is. Fine? You'd be fine with that -- cuz you could keep your raid weap and I'd get my alternative -- I mean the fact that they aren't equal wouldn't bother you right? And what does having an outfit as a reward have to do with being good at pvp? Nothing. Why not give them something for pvp? At the same time fix the 'no pvp' flag so those that don't wanna play don't have to. That's fair too, right?

Nope. Most people get their equipment needed to clear a final boss *before* that boss. Getting it after? What's the point? Do you stand around posing or just trolling in forums? Besides -- it costs 120 steels to upgrade a celestial weap and most of us didn't get 120 steels when we cleared the final boss. Not everyone is as privileged as you -- make sense? Interesting fact about the newer generations starting in and after the late baby boomers: unlike previous generations that generally helped society and others get ahead, the newer group actively works against others getting the same benefits -- for them, getting rewards is really only rewarding if others *don't*. Their satisfaction comes from knowing others won't get those rewards, vs. those who like helping society and others advance. See... and there it is -- as soon as others are able to get it for anything -- what they pay is ignored and the gear is considered worthless. No one is getting those items for "free" -- they pay for them. Or does the fact that you benefit from technology mean that it is worthless and you have stolen it (got it for free)? You didn't create the transistor, TV, cars, air-travel, any modern conveniences that you likely take for granted, but you are perfectly willing to live off of the advances made by others. Yet here, if some pioneer the way through to end bosses and become one of the first to do so, you are saying such things are worthless? Every group of people that comes after "the first" will have an easier time if only because the knowledge is out there. There's also a major influence in making such things more widely available and cheaper -- economies of scale. When you have 1000 people purchasing an outfit like custom bloodlust, whatever profit comes is 1000 times the same profit earned by "the first". Which is really more valuable? Each is valuable at the price point they were able to acquire the goods at. No one is getting it for free, and those who get it first don't lose the value they have already received -- but they can squander it and be bitter that they didn't make better use of it. Or they can see others making better use that got something more cheaply and pulling ahead of those who don't make good use of their early rewards. You make it sound like inflation "stops" at some point and that prices for goods don't keep going down. It is especially true in technology and virtual goods -- it doesn't cost anymore to sell the next 10,000 items more cheaply. The first item takes more work and effort because no one had done it before. But later on, it doesn't cost more work -- and those who can only buy things at lower price points can be served without developers being required to develop something new. It doesn't matter if the price of steels was 1000 times higher. Salt used to be high priced and used as money. Now -- it's cheap and is a commodity. That's they way life works. The problem is you not realizing how privileged you are and not realizing there are others out there that will want happiness as well. If your happiness depends on the misery of others, you are all but guaranteed to have a miserable life.

Currently some of the mats only drop from the last boss in the dungeon, making it difficult or very slow or near impossible to get things like the steel for upgrades. Also, sometimes it would really be helpful if account trading was available for many of those mats, since they are so rare. Thanks!

I was out of some potion and went to buy it in F10. I did, but then found I couldn't take delivery! That's terrible -- if someone is buying something in the dungeon, it's likely they need it then. Can this be fixed or allowed, or will that automatically be allowed after the merge? Similarly, allowing F5 would also be a great help. If not in the dungeon, then at least in the lobby where the merchant is because many times you don't want to exit back to the outside world. Thanks.

Sometimes they forget, or sometimes they just hold you up until someone arrives, either way, if they choose to join, it should be assumed that they are "ready". It doesn't make sense for those joining not to be ready. They can still "unready" and leave if they want, that wouldn't change, only the starting state -- would start as ready. Thanks!

Simple mode doesn't work in the dungeon/Boss section of the training room. Please fix this, as it is needed: the only way to train against those bosses is to use the same buffs and methods you would use in the dungeon -- for many classes, that includes simple mode. With the new Talents section, one needs to be able to use simple mode as a test mode so the pressing of keys will be fairly constant. Then you can allocate points in talents or HM points and go into the HM test&training room and see what the difference it is. It doesn't work to do it manually -- too much variation and it doesn't work to do it in the dungeon, as the monsters are far more likely to fight back or knock you down creating more variation. It would be nice to turn on monster damage as an _option_ in the train&test room so we can see what damage we might receive in the dungeon. On simple mode activation, please let users assign a key to activate simple mode. Sometimes I want to toggle simple mode off and be able to use the right mouse button! For now, I've assigned CAPSLOCK as the toggle which is easier to access/user than shift-F3, but it is not a replacement and is less than ideal. Thanks!

It's not a quest, exactly -- or at least not in the same way. You can enter the initial room in one of a few ways, I usually take the door that's behind you when you are looking at the posting board where you read about pvp quests. Then you get teleported to the room where you see a portly guy and a lynn who you talk to to say what floor you want to go to. I suppose you could look at that as the start of the quest sequence. However its not really automatic, they've just hidden the taking/start of the quest into you telling the lynn what floor you want to goto. That's the point -- this game doesn't seem to have much in the way of auto-repeat quests. It has quests that start when you activate some "trigger", like talking to someone or killing someone or entering an area. But in all of those cases, it involves you taking some action. For a quest like gathering kills, in that area, the kills can go toward 1 or 2 quests at the same time -- one is the daily, and one is the repeatable, but AFAIK, all quests that you can repeat have to have some start and stop point so it can flag beginning and end. While it would be convenient to have the quest "renewed" automatically, that would effectively give you "loot" for simply walking through an area and killing enemies -- like automatically giving you something with every enemy killed. But the game already does something like that in that it gives you money and experience for enemies killed. AFAIK, that's the only quest that you don't have to enter or exit and that has no defined start/stop points, but that was sorta what I was getting at. All of the quests, as they are currently laid out and defined have to have some start and stop point and have to be for actually doing something (vs. rewarded for things you you have already done). So it would, at least, be inconsistent with other quests to automatically give rewards for kills where you haven't taken or activated or started some specific quest. Certainly they could make the UI more user-friendly, but as I mentioned above, that would be inconsistent with current design. The UI is sorta like the original design or layout of the keys on a typewriter or keyboard (the standard QWERTY arrangement). IBM went with that design because it WAS difficult and was deliberately designed to *DE*optimize typing speed. They tried several designs, but when they first designed it, it was done with not-very-reliable mechanical parts that could easily jam. They found that if they optimized things, people would type too fast and the keys would be more likely to jam. So it the original design (that we still used today) was done because it was a bad design that slowed people down. If the BnS UI was optimized, people could likely do alot of these time-consuming and tedious tasks in 2 or 3 times the speed -- but that would allow people to progress to fast, too easily. Thus the design is created to slow down progression and how fast you can go through the game. Unfortunately, such anti-player techniques usually influence a players overall perception of the product, negatively and reduce the 'fun' level and cause people to give up playing it more quickly. Thus the game's popularity falls off soon than it might otherwise. Game manufacturers can't disrespect users and not expect it to have some effect. Only in a constrained or limited market where players don't have other options can such techniques be used where the benefits might outweigh the deficits. Indeed, that could be a major flaw in the overall game strategy by a game manufacturer that started in area with a limited or constrained market -- if they introduce it into an area without the same constraints, they might find such decisions more heavily affect market share and player satisfaction. There, as I sorta hinted at -- that quest benefits by the fact that you are going in a loop, up the tower, then back down at end, then go by the lynn to specify which floor and you start again. That's why I said you get used to pressing 'j' right after finishing -- most people do, but I got chided for presuming that most people would be able to, so ya never know .

Once you realize that retaking the quest is accessible on the Quest letters page, its a matter of clicking on the "letter" icon in both cases -- the exact same icon in the exact same way. The only different is the location of one is usually on the right of your screen and the other is on another page. There is no message telling you that you need to press either button again -- nothing is documented, either way, unfortunately it adheres to the same "intuitive" (*cough*) interface that is used throughout. You either learn to use that interface, or you don't. Either way, its the same effort. As for your suggestions -- I'm not against them, but I would ask if you could give an example to something similar that is already in the game? I.e. an auto-renewed quest that pops up periodically. I can't think of any place I've seen that, and find it unlikely they'd implement such a dynamic just to make a players life easier -- there's a host of changes they could make to make the user interface "user friendly", but haven't. I just assumed that they made it more complicated because they don't want to make it easier for players to play the game "faster", as so much of the game is about requiring the player to engage in tedious, boring and repetitive moves and about eliminating the ability for the player to automate such tasks. It seems to be a 'feature' of what arcade-game devs thought (or think) players enjoy or tolerate with regard to mindless and brainless games where memorizing the exact when and where of specific moves is considered the highest ability in the game. As for whether or not you are capable of learning where something is in the current interface, you are right in that I cannot speak for you. Usually most players will find that after doing something "some number of times" or "multiple times", they will be able to learn the action and be able to repeat it without too much thought. Sorry, if I presumed that wouldn't be difficult for most, but one could have to deal with those who watch a video, once, and believe its possible to be an expert the mechanics of that dungeon. I find that rather difficult, so I can maybe relate to having things be difficult when others can do such things without a second thought.

I limited my assertion to discussion of "beginning characters" and said it is a design flaw in that context. You claiming that it is not a design flaw in some "other context" is irrelevant as it doesn't apply to the case being considered. If you want to make a point as to why this isn't a design flaw, for a beginning character, you need to NOT look at the big picture, and establish why this limitation is necessary for beginning characters. Otherwise, you are ceding the point. See "Red herring" in the logical fallacies paper mentioned above: "Introducing irrelevant facts or arguments to distract from the question at hand". It seems like you are grasping at straws in an attempt justify why your tangential and unrelated answer to the op is relevant. You are only making it more obvious that you aren't talking about what the op was talking about.

Has anyone else noticed that friends list they've created over the past months or years being EMPTY??? There's no way I can remember even half of those. Can these be restored? And why are so many listed as "online", only to have them be non-contactable or always be in a place where they can't receive messages? Even trying to add people to the list I find they go away if I exit and re-enter the game. Very unfun.

You realize it is the same effort for each. I.e. you click on the little document icon in your active quests display on the right side of the screen. Once you have closed the quest by getting the reward from clicking on the icon, you learn to hit 'j' immediately to bring up your journal and go to the "quest letters" section and look down under the "Call from the Realms" section to find Zavnar's quest, click on it's icon and spam 'f' until your journal closes. Sometimes you have to repeat the action as any interruption, like from an attack, will knock you out of the acceptance process.

The points of this post use two different types of logical fallacy on top of, not only not answering the question responded to, but appearing not to understand it in the first place. Neither type of logical fallacy is useful in answering nor successfully countering someones question. One can become more familiar with "Circulus in demonstrando" & "Argumentum ad antiquitatem" at http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html . The original poster seems to have run into a design flaw where changing factions, as a beginning character is limited to once/seven days -- something that makes no sense as a beginning character would not be able to exploit situations where flipping factions might give an advantage.

You read too much into your assertions: Should have said: Because the costumes you can get for them were primarily released only in those RNG costume boxes at that time. They didnt want to make them available in F10 or by other means as that would hurt trove sales. However keeping them off the market would heavily upset those who weren't able to get the outfit at that time -- and there are alot more of them than those who did, so if they are concerned about upsetting people who got the boxes at that time, they'd even be more concerned about those upset at no longer being able to get past items. ".... The only way they can fund the game in the future is by enticing new customers to buy those items. They are ripe assets waiting to be released that will cost the company zero in development. Many of those who got the costume then aren't even around anymore -- but for those that got it then and thinks it was some sort of exclusive license, remind them that they got to wear they items first. Why would you think market conditions in blade and soul would be different than real life. Some people may get exclusive outfits as prizes or expensive trove boxes. That's called "the bleeding edge" -- you pay extra for getting this first -- but in the real world you never expect that it won't be available later at a lower price to the masses. Such an expectation would be incredibly naive as it's now how the economy functions. A few get items on the leading edge, but they get to be heralds of the new fashion or new technology. But the only reason they goto to be first was to build a market among the masses -- the rest of us. Prizes and trove contents, like all new tech, are not meant to be put away in a closet and never used again. That would be financially irresponsible. You get multiple uses out of your assets -- first releasing them as rare items, but that's to build interest and demand among the rest of the audience. The point is to release all of those items to anyone who wants them and is willing to pay -- maybe in the first wave, a higher price, in the 2nd, a moderate price, and in subsequent waves, the item may go on sale to make sure everyone who wants a copy of the item or tech-toy is able to buy one. Thus you maximize income / development dollar spent in developing new items. Only by maximizing income for assets by successive releases so you obtain full value of your R&D investment.

Oh, but Showto, they can't do anything that makes sense, or there will be someone who will be upset at them, and we know from the poster above you that they won't do anything that will upset the prima donna's. *blech*. You can't keep people, here, from finding out about all the neat stuff other areas have. You don't think it is depressing to be shut out? I've already pointed out that there need to be ways to distribute stuff for the masses -- not just elites...and if elites get upset...they'll get over it. There's no way you are going to convince me that the only reason they compete is to be able to some pretty dress while excluding everyone else. That's just ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that being #1 is more important to them than what frilly dress they get as some exclusive prize. Even if the guys do have some cool outfit -- the women won't get it -- how many times have I seen a dapper top coat and hat that turns into a fluffy dress with non-descript hair style? Such a rip most of the time!!... Like Alice? outfit for women sucked -- but a woman could have looked way sexy in that top coat and hat, but no, they push women to marginal positions with marginal designs. Alice was a girl's story -- and you make it into a reward for boys. Cute. Just like most other games, women get 2nd class options. You want to give women the option to have the dress, fine... but also let them choose. I dunno how many people saw the movie "Flash Dance", but Jennifer Beal, wore a very hot top coat with sexy cuffs... She looked much better than they guy she was out with.

But some classes get healing on top of the gems. I'm not sure gunners need that, but the do need better mobility and ability to break holds. Almost any character gets in a hold on a gunner and they are likely dead. But a gunner trying BS on someone -- they can just move to the side. Both bosses and players can jump 50ft (15m). This makes gunners a melay class -- and they need better defense: MUCH faster CD's, After you've shot of any of a gunner's main weaps, you are looking at a minute CD, more than enough time for almost any class to take them out. In 1 direction which is easily avoided. That's just stupid. Gunners in BnS, the story and the anime can use areal shooting. You don't see the gunners jump once then wait 20 seconds before jumping again. That would just be stupid. But that's sorta the point -- there is a deep dislike for gunners in the martial arts. Guns ended martial arts domination of the East. And about 80% of the time in a lower level group, the gunner has to be the tank because they pull aggro. Problem is that no matter how I spec, they are still slow. Some claim they can tank any of the dungeons with a gunner, and if you don't know how, you don't really know how to play gunner. That said. They need healing powers just as much as any of the normal tank classes if only because they WILL pull aggro much of the time; certainly not all the time with a strong tank, but about 30% of the time in a F8/pug group its common enough to regard them as a tank class only because it happens...not that they necessarily want it. Then why do FM's and Warlocks regularly out-DPS me by the end of any battle and fairly often even on bursts. If they have the ping, my DPS is worthless. Lately with all the performance problems BnS is showing, gunners get hit disproportionately hard. Go take a look at my longgui pics -- I'm shooting, but it doesn't even register on a loaded server -- instead I get kicked at the end for not getting in any shots. But clearly, I am. Warlock, Warden, FM, KFM -- all of them outDPS a gunner of the same level except in the 1st few seconds. After that -- remember they are the nerfed class -- devs had to add AC, to entice groups to invite them, because the burst is worthless on bosses with high hits and battles that go on for a while. Funny, I got what he was saying. Maybe you should try playing a GS main. His background info is his experience. What's your Background in knowing about gunners, now with all the nerfs and perf problems? His complaints are his experience. He doesn't have to be an expert writer to relate that. Anyone who know has been on the internet for any length of time knows that complaining about someone's writing and spelling style is what people do when they can't argue their points. Give up. You are attacking his writing and how he is saying it. You aren't limiting yourself to debate on his opinions. You can't argue his experience, because it's what he is experiencing. Just because you don't have the same experience is no reasons to go off on his communication style.

Have either of you tried the alternate size of bits? Like if you tried 64bit, try 32-bit. There are some error messages that don't display in 64bit that 32bit will. There are various random programs that their builtin malware xigncode doesn't want to run with because such programs are often used by malware researchers that can show how xigncode is malware. The 32bit program seems to now be better about telling which thing it is by putting up a "this looks suspicious....". They claim that you can contact them if you need the item, but they lie (they don't answer). However if you mail the xigncode log to them support@wellbia.com, they used to tell you what the offensive program was (they hide the name of it in the log so you have to send the log to them to find out what they didn't like). In my own experience, its usually something used for software development/debugging... FWIW -- I was locked out of BnS for 2.5 months -- I didn't get to the PIN page --- only the initial password page. Eventually the problem disappeared due to installation of some 3rd party font-program (it was random). Good luck....

I maybe mentally inserting a decimal point to use to get back to $$, adding a 1.25 or 2.5x factor for NC or gold prices.

qqq1, having only played on a gunner for 1.5 years, I agree. While people like to say it is all you not knowing rotation -- that's bull -- since knowing rotation doesn't change the fact that you only get hooks ever 12s now (vs. 6 in the past), and that your only shield takes forever to recharge, and even an iframe skill is nerfed more on gunner than any other -- including other ranged classes. I play a FM -- another range class as well, and they get knocked down less, have more speed in battle, and have lower cooldown times than a gunner, yet they both shoot at the same range. The gunner is made lowest on the excuse that it has a big burst. That's nice on a boss -- but that sure makes zero diff in PvP -- they can just jump out of the way and the gunner can't shift -- because their bullet storm relies on concentrated fire which can only be maintained on 1 stationary target. In movement, recovery from knockdown/knockback, in all senses, my gunner is slower than the same character. Where you really notice the difference is in circling the boss or target -- the gunner has to stop&stand still for a short time to shoot. When you are doing bullet storm, you can't move when shooting. That's not true for FM, nor do I see any other class frozen for 2 seconds while others can pin, knock down, or just move out of the way. I'm pretty sure I'll never do well in pvp, but for the gunner to be so nerfed in pve as well is obvious personal bias against gunners who in real life, leveled the playing field vs. martial artists, because in real life, you don't see targets dodging bullets that can travel faster than the speed of sound, let alone a stream of them. If there was a shred of reality in this game, the gunner would be able to lay waste to all of the characters -- except on surprise. Even that would likely be in the gunners favor in real life, as they take aim with a sniper rifle from impossible distances away. If they had the same dodge and recovery skills of other classes, even that would not be fatal, but the bias by those who love the mythical powers of martial artists is strong, thus you see it here. Watch closely if they introduce archers, who are more limited than gunners in speed of shooting, and distance from target and see if they don't give them some specs exceeding gunners, whereas in real life -- against a gun with a silencer, they would have none.

Not true -- they aren't rotating old stuff out. Many of the same outfits have been there continuously for over a year and a half. As for themed outfits -- some *may* return, but that's far from a certainty (from someone whose been keeping track of what's available for well over a year).

The older troves are where you pay 1 coin to unlock 6-7 slots at a time that you need to process before moving on. This one, your coins pay for the slots (0.45 Ncoins or 42.99/100 -- prices approximate), but opening them is free. Once you open them, you are charged money to pick one of them. If you don't want any of them, you can go on, but you aren't charged for boxes where you take no items -- at least I never was. I don't recall anyone saying they were 'cheap', just that they might be cheaper than other higher alternatives. Are HM coins really worth 1/100 of NC coins? Since keys are 0.49 NC coins each.

FWIW -- I am not getting any "freezes" as I would call them -- not like when I had some ... I think reflex guide turned on -- that resulted in hard freezes of the game for more than 60 seconds at times -- but not the machine. Turning that off eliminated the long freezes, but the symptom above remains. I can go in smaller groups (6 people) and it isn't as severe as above -- but the above is what happens with 12 people in "party" going up against enemies -- happens in raids in BT & VT as well -- so basically its affecting my ability to do raids, AT ALL. In addition to being kicked from the party because of this, I also was kicked from a clan for "showing low-damage for my equipment", vs. in a smaller group of 4-5, of bursting a bit over 2m, and ending up @ 800k-1m on bosses where I can shoot continuously (vs. bosses that keep you knocked down). Like you, I'm also seeing the small freezes (sound drops) when I move cursor over an item and it has to go look it up again. Unfortunately, the game isn't using spare memory to cache things in memory. If it did, that problem would go away in large part. It seems like more and more, for games that are optimized for small clients like consoles, and worse, portable clients, the versions running on larger clients are performing worse and worse. It is no wonder the market for small clients goes up when games are optimized to perform poorly on larger platforms. I've specifically optimized my PC to be able to run multiple games and or multi-media tasks at the same time. Before *this* client (mostly because of its instability and hanging of my machine), I could run as many as 2 or 3 different games at the same time (only 1 "active" on the screen -- others minimized) and watch a 1080p video coming off my local network. When this game is running, I can't really run anything else because of the strong likely hood of it crashing (hanging) the machine. If I only use it for this game, I can stay up for over 24 hours str8, maybe topping 30 hours. Up-times without running this game at all can be measured in weeks. NOTE: this poor uptime (and the above poor performance in groups) has been since the ascension-patch in march. It's this lack of performance that prompted me to ask about getting alternate methods of getting the top-tier items or outfits like the blood-sports outfit being offered in the dragon-trader store. I know we aren't playing on a level playing field when I'm, 80% of the time, the last person in the group to get into a dungeon, or make it through a transition screen -- and that has nothing to do with load that I know of. I looked at a few other online games -- one had servers in the west, central and eastern areas. On the western server I was in the 20's for server ping. Too bad the game sucked so badly. I too, am more than a little bit concerned about the effects of the merger. Maybe it will kill off performance for another people that they'll do something about it. I remember the first time on one of the patches how the performance went down -- and I wondered if they'd compiled the game as a debug version because of bugs. Who knows, maybe they turn off optimization and keep debugging on all the time now? Certainly when it comes to getting items -- some of us are operating at a huge disadvantage and want to see alternative ways to get outfits. I'm not suggesting changing competition, but even getting a client that doesn't have XIGNCODE and excluding me from rankings would be a great start -- but why I'm getting slammed with downloaded info so bad that my updates can't get up to the server -- on a bidirectional line, is beyond me, though some of the people who brag about their response time are in the dallas area on 1g/1g fiber, compared to me living 45 minutes from silicon valley on 33m-down/8.5m-up. On any of Comcraptic's offerings, 10mb-up (which is what I, "technically" have) is the highest up-speed offered (with up to 100m down). *bleh*.

In longgui-6 yesterday, I took screen shot of the problem I have -- the more people in a group, the worse performance gets -- and it isn't graphix power -- it's pure ping. The following shows screenshots about 5-6 seconds apart in battle: first shows 3 FPS and ping at 256ms 2nd shows 2 FPS and ping at 339ms last showed 1 FPS and ping at 453ms... Notice in each, damage numbers on the right at least 3 hits per image. But notice the DPS on the counters at the left -- mine was staying at 0. After last pic, I died...I got back before he died, but as soon as he died, the leader kicked me from group to keep me from getting treasure...Nice considering he started barely above me in DPS: How is this possible?? If this isn't indicative of a bug or a problem, I'm not sure what is.

My own experience -- no where near as rewarding as last trove. Last trove was most rewarding of any I've been in, which had the bad effect of encouraging me to spend more. And some rare items seemed to be higher priced in this 'trove' compared to previous ones. However, 'mats', were still often around 1/3 or lower the price of the same on market, so it could be used as a source of mats for less money, though .. mats might still have been cheaper before. On additional benefit in this trove. The mid-range boxes are alot more common (obvious bell curve in distribution) -- and the advantage of that is that if you find a material you need, you might be able to hit max on the buy window and get multiples of the same item for the same price. It helps to do a sort on your window before you start going through them that puts more expensive items closer to top & left. A few of those I just threw out, too much for too little, and so far, 0 good accessories. This trove was alot easier to walk away from.

Problem in the regular dungeons are knock-backs/knockdowns. As a distance fighter, I usually have a training dummy stand as tank and I can focus on maximum damage. I don't really know of any dungeon bosses that will be so kind as to not get upset when I wail into them and at least return the favor with a knockdown or such -- even if it isn't that damaging. Some of the worst DPS scores are on lower monsters that have mechanics that knock you down and you can't block (gunner's blocks/shields are worthless -- too long a cool down). I mean a real gunner wouldn't stand in melee attack range (where the monster can be on top of you in 1 jump or pull). In games where one can do distance - like with a bow, in oblivion for example, I can stand near 300 yds. away when I get to master level -- though even in stock oblivion, they nerfed stock archers by disallowing critical shots -- right -- like you can't hit them through the heart or head! And while you get double criticals for a sneak attack from behind with a bladed weapon, an arrow to the back of the head wouldn't have same effect? Fortunately, there, one can use extensions that restore those things. Otherwise archery is near worthless, because they'd run over to you and you'd still have to fight some other way (melee or spell) -- it would almost be a worthless as being a type of "distance fighter"[sic] in BnS where distance = 1 jump and Boss is on you.

You can disable the boast window in options and -- not a great way to do it, but you can disable your character sounding like a western idiot hick "ye haaawwwwwww" , by dequipping the weapon. Also, I'd hate to have one of those lynn's that makes the weeeeeeahh sound -- I'd probably have to kill off my character if I sounded that bad. (*someone who actually paid for a character-change-voucher to change their voice* because one of my yun's grunted too much...very out of character).