Johnny

Are you sure about that? Because I remember that being one of the things Bethesda highlighted pretty hard in the running up to the release, that you could no longer screw yourself over by leveling non-combat skills because the enemies only scale with combat abilities.

@ Dean and Ethan: What are you talking about? Last I checked, enemies don't scale from non-combat abilities in Skyrim. @ Saturnine: I honestly don't remember. I know it wasn't the highest possible setting because I cranked it up to that when I started my Khajiit later. I think it was somewhere in-between normal and max.

This seems rather hilarious coming from someone working for a videogames publisher and developer. Are not a significant portion of those who buys games students? You may care, but acting like every cent of tax money spent on something is your money is ridiculous. How many people pay taxes in Brittain? It is entirely fine if some tax money goes to things you aren't in support of. God knows, it'd be a disaster if the people who don't care about libraries got to decide that we can't have public libraries anymore.

A man dressed as a bat don't have friends.

I'm an unemployed person and I'm perfectly fine with it in theory.

Saturnine: yep, my character had an insane amount of magicka regen, yet even at 100 destruction, as I started to level up my other abilities and monsters got stronger, it eventually got to the point where I would completely deplete my magicka bar firing spells at an enemy, and him still not being dead at the end. Then they hit me with an axe. I stopped playing on my mage because combat became an exercise in running backwards in circles waiting for my magicka to recharge. Felt like I was back in Oblivion. Oh god, fucking Oblivion. Funnily enough, dragons are really easy as a mage. They are so large you can't miss and they don't move around when attacking. You just infinitely stagger them until they fall down and bleed to death.

Legally, perhaps. I wouldn't know. Morally, from my perspective, it depends. If the information isn't being misrepresented (as it seems Cait believes it is), then I'd agree it's her responsibility. I didn't say it was unpaid work. It is unpaid apart from what she was already receiving. It is also, crucially, below minimum wage (based on my limited knowledge of Brittain,) which I find disgraceful. I am aware that work experience is about more than learning new skills. I assume that Cait is aware of this as well and takes that into account when she says she's already got experience in retail. This, however, is a fair point. That something is fun does not disqualify it from being valid work placement. If the work placement she has arranged is something she finds fun, then all the more power to her, I say! Maybe there is an argument to be made that what she calls work placement really doesn't give her any relevant experience. I don't know. In any case, I think it should be valued on the value of the experience, not discredited because it's something she finds fun. Whether she invented the excuse later or not, I can not say. While the Guardian article does not mention it, I can not see that on it's own as proof that it was invented out of thin air. Additionally, I can't help but roll my eyes at the "my tax moneys!!" appeal. You sound like a stereotype of an American hillbilly. The guardian article you linked above mentions that she's not the only one who feels misinformed about this. To me, that speaks that there is likely a problem with how the information is presented to the jobseekers. Yes, it is in the end up to the individual to make sure they know what's up, but that doesn't make it any less of a trap. And it still sounds like one to me. Perhaps I would have been aware. I can not say. I will however say that at least here in Sweden, trying to find a job is for many a highly confusing affair where sorting out the irrelevant and false information from the useful parts is far from an exact science. I do not see it as impossible that many actually quite smart people would be mislead, whether it's on purpose or by a flaw in the system.

I'm pretty sure Nokia is supposed to be pretty close to knock with a silent k. That's at least how they pronounce it in the commercials in Scandinavia and how everyone here says it.

If you agree that the system needs tweaking, why then are you so angry towards Cait for her article in which she explains what her frustrations with it are? As far as I can tell, you have two main reasons for disliking her article: The first is what you believe is her reason for not wanting to work at poundland for free. I quote you: If I'm reading you correctly, you seem to be implying that the reason she is pissed off is solely down to where she was forced to work. I strongly disagree. Reading her article, I got the sense that her reasons were multiple. First, she cites that she went to the open day under the impression that she had a chance to undergo a week's optional training from an unknown company. She later found out that the training was in reality unpaid (apart from the jobseeker's allowance she was already receiving) work that could last up to six weeks, doing tasks she already had experience in. She was also told that if she declined, she could have her jobseeker's allowance taken away from here. She also mentions that she had already organized a work experience placement for herself. She was not sitting on her ass doing nothing. If I were to put myself in her shoes at this point, I would have felt conned. Tricked to walk into a trap where she had to do up to six weeks of work for no additional benefits. Yes, it is probably reasonable to assume that if she would have been given the opportunity to work for free at a museum she would jump on it in the interest of gaining experience doing tasks she had not done before and, even better, tasks related to the career she wants to pursue. That does not make it her sole reason for being angry. Your second reason seems to be that you think she's lying about applying for jobs outside of her favored career path and that she in reality sees all those other paths as being beneath her. I find this a ridiculous accusation to make. Just because you found job swiftly that does not mean that everyone who tries to find work does so easily. Furthermore, as someone who has been in the cross-hair of your accusations regarding honesty before, to me it just seems like a crutch you fall back on whenever you need a cheap reason to spit venom. I find it disgusting, if not surprising, that you choose to do so in this case as well. Yes, I must concede that it's possible that she's inventing parts of her story. I can not prove that she does not, but neither have you proved that she does. So let's drop the venomous accusations at least until we have something solid to base them on.

Film reviews are useless to the end consumer? I read quite a bit of film critics and usually their reviews are useful in figuring out if the film is something for me, while still remaining interesting with their criticism.

Funnily enough, destruction sucks on higher levels for the player, because the players doesn't have infinite magicka and thus runs out of it before things die. Unless you spend half your time making magicka potions and drinking them constantly in battle.

@ peter and ethan: I can't hold this against you. It is sometimes hard to argue for piracy being OK in this thread without sounding like an extremist about it. This misunderstanding is not entirely unexpected (although still disappointing.)

If you think I pirate the vast majority of my games, peteer, you're making a lot of false assumptions. I buy most of my games via steam sales. I pirate those I can't afford.

Dean, that's one of the lead community managers' twitter accounts they are quoting, and they've been hiring folks for this for ages. I'd say it's legit.

I'm sorry, but what? That nobody ever laughs at my jokes is obviously not true. I may not be the best jokester ever, but I had several people laugh at the very joke I made on the previous page. Furthermore, I've been pretty open about me being a pirate, and my reasons for being such. And seriously, the Witcher 2 thing? Take that stick out of your ass. No, I do not like to support companies that do what CDPR is doing. I don't see why that is relevant to anything but that very discussion. Why are you bringing it up again?

I'm glad we're civil enough so that we tell people to shut up every time they make a joke we don't laugh at.

It has come to my attention that some people may have not understood that my statement about pirating games in order to change the name of them on steam was what we call a joke. To clarify: it was a joke. An act of ridiculous self-parody. Not meant to be taken seriously.

Is this the smartphone thread? I have a confession to make: I pirate games in order to be able to change the shortcut name on steam to something funny.

You need an excuse for that? *exterminates the whiterun guard* I kinda wish the houses would actually burn down if you threw fire at them.

Nitronic Rush and Stealth Bastard are excellent. Flipping Good Time was really disappointingly easy.

No, console and PC is on separate game servers.

I have nothing to share because I hardly cook. Just popping in to say keep it coming, I want to cook more, and this stuff helps! =)