Does the name Leoreth have any meaning or significance?
It's the name of one of the characters of a novel I was planning in school. I first used it for my first WoW character so it became my standard account name for a while.
Do you think Europe has an immigration problem? Why or why not?
I don't want to talk about politics too much here, but mostly I think that immigrants have a Europe problem.
Foods and movies you like? Favorite historical time period? Best form of government?
I find it hard to think of specific foods I like. But in general I prefer Mediterranean cuisine.
Historical time period? I tend to dislike over-covered eras, which basically means the 20th century, the Napoleonic era and the Roman Empire. My answer is probably the Middle Ages, maybe followed by the post Congress of Vienna era.
Form of government? You could squabble a lot about how the best democratic system should look like. In debates of whether parliamentary or presidential systems are preferable I usually fall on the former side. I'm in favor of a living constitution to use American terminology. I think monarchic heads of state are stupid but not really worth the trouble of getting rid of them.
You should hit up Hippo or I then. Maybe civ_king but he doesn't seem to be active around here anymore. We could show you around.
That's a nice offer, but I'll be traveling with some of my German colleagues so we'll spend most of our non-work related time together I think.
I'm a major foodie so I would recommend:
Sushiritto @ 59 New Montgomery St.
Found in the Financial District.
They sell sushi rolls in the style of burritos that are pretty good.
There's another site somewhere a couple blocks away but I don't know that location by heart.
Ike's @ 3489 16th St.
In the Castro. Some of the best sandwiches on the planet,
with an amazingly diverse list of things you can stuff into your sandwich.
You haven't had a sandwich until you've stuffed jalapeno poppers or onion rings in them.
Farmerbrown @ 25 Mason St.
This one's actually a sit down restaurant that does soul food/Louisiana cuisine.
It's in a bad neighborhood (The Tenderloin) so I wouldn't recommend heading there at night, but they've got some amazing food.
That sounds amazing, I'll make sure to remember these.
F2P has been very prevalent among MMOs, MOBAs & smartphone/tablet games for awhile, as they follow the loss-leader marketing strategy.
However, microtransactions are beginning to appear in $60 premium games.
The latest Forza was blasted for being a $60 game, but the cars could be instantly unlocked by paying obscene prices, some cars costing more than the game itself.
While you could earn the cars in the in-game economy, it required too much grinding to be considered human, and the game came under fire for this.
As for DLC, I generally like DLC so long as it doesn't upset the balance of the game or basically forces you to play around its paradigm.
For instance, Nintendo's forays into DLC have been atrocious.
With Fire Emblem: Awakening, the latest in their fantasy turn-based SRPG series, you basically need DLC in order to grind in order to survive Lunatic or Lunatic+ difficulty.
Without it, you need to reset a stage to cook favorable conditions for a long time in order to even think about clearing a stage.
There is certainly good DLC though like some of the early DLC for Borderlands 1 & the expansions for Valkyria Chronicles and etc.
DLC and microtranscations are two different things though.
DLC is in the vein of expansions and bonus content. Microtransactions are little "cheats" or help like power refreshing or instant unlocks and sometimes additional resources.
I thought microtransaction only referred to the price of paid content?
As soon as they are required to experience the whole game, I don't think it should be acceptable, and the developers deserve the bad rep. Otherwise, everyone has to decide on their own whether they want to play a game where the competitive balance can be changed by people willing to pay more money than you are. I certainly wouldn't enjoy such a game and would be upset if this principle was introduced in games I'm playing.
I would put my full support behind this.
After all, Paradox shouldn't have a complete monopoly on the genre!
Given the state of the genre, I'm happy that Paradox exists at all!
and watch the The Room, the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Revel in how well you know how English and human interaction works in comparison to Tommy Wiseau. The movie is from San Francisco. One of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
Yeah, I've never gotten around to watching it yet. By the way, as a movie conoisseur with a thing for bad movies, do you know Red Letter Media?
You could develop a board game as a "kickstarter" for seeing how you like marketing games and from there see if you can go into making video games.
But that would also come with a whole lot of responsibility. Hobby modding allows me to disappear for a month whenever my private life demands which is pretty nice.
Also, board games are an entirely different beast in terms of game design.
Yeah, that is Northern, though there are some in other parts of the state that would like to tell you otherwise.
I suppose Mountain View in your case means Shoreline? I would suggest trying to stay away from buying anything in that area (especially Palo Alto and Los Altos) if you want to be walking away from there with any money left. Of course, with the right companies everything will be provided for you.
As I say, if our current weather pattern doesn't change by then you could have some interesting experiences with water conservation. The state is famous for suggesting interesting things to combat drought.
Yeah, most of the living expenses will be provided by my employer. I definitely don't plan on spending too much over there (the weak Dollar helps a bit, though).
If DoC was a separate game, what would you change?
I would probably put more thought into dynamic mechanics for everything that is scripted in RFC, like spawns or what a core is.
I would change most of the base economic mechanics, to make city management more intricate, like modeling social classes. I would also make close city placement more viable compared to spread out empires, maybe even by cutting off technological progress from empire size entirely. I also like the idea of how cottages work in Civ4 (they get more profitable the longer you work them, provided it's not interrupted by wars and such) and would like to apply the concept to other aspects of the game too, for instance cities (tying in with the already mentioned social classes) or civics (civics getting stronger when used for a longer period to represent civic traditions).
I would probably introduce two new "currencies" compared to Civ4 to reflect political and religious development. The former being used to buy and "level up" civics (for which I'd probably get rid of a rigid column system and instead just use co-dependencies and mutually exclusive civics), the latter to customize your religion in case you have founded one (similar to Civ5). I'll try to make sure that culture is more important than just a tool for border expansion and one optional boring victory, and would probably tie it in with the improvement of the power of cities over time.
Oh and a larger world map of course.
Is there anything you would like to implement in DOC but you can't due to limitations of the CIV IV mechanics?
See above.
I guess most of those would theoretically be possible in a Civ4 mod, but you also have to ask yourself when a game ceases to be a Civ4 game, and that kind of basic mechanics is definitely something I wouldn't want to lose there.
Might be a bit OOT:
Since you are German, and most probably went through German education system;
I would like to ask.
I am about to attend a German Studienkolleg (Pre-University for Foreigners about to study in Germany) here in Indonesia and if things went well I will go to study abroad in Germany by 2015, most likely in Hanover.
So,
-What is your opinion on the German education system?
(German education system is praised like some kind of God here)
That's very funny, because the general opinion in the German public is that our education system is horrible and in dire need of reform.
The most important thing to know about it is probably that it is very heterogenous, because education is one of the few important political fields in our federative system that is reserved to the states. Which means it's hard to give a general answer.
Especially in secondary education there is quite the controversy whether the traditional system of having three separate tiers of secondary schools based on aptitude should be abolished and replaced with one school form for all. Different states have found different solutions to the conflict.
As far as higher education is concerned (which is probably more relevant to you), I would say that German universities are generally solid. Almost all universities are public, which means that you don't have the type of expensive elite university you know from the US or UK, but on the flip side you'd be alright even with smaller universities. Unfortunately I don't know anyone studying in Hanover so I can't tell you anything about this university in particular.
-Would the situation of the current European Economic Crisis mess things up
(For me as a middle-class foreigner studying in a country with far higher rate of currency. (Because Rupiah is just horrible))
Which economic crisis? We're talking about Germany here.
I don't know your financial situation and how much support you receive in terms of scholarships and so on. What I do know is that Hanover's state of Lower Saxony has just abolished university tuition so you will only have to cover living expenses. You might also qualify for student support in Germany but I'm not sure how that works.
I'd say the greatest obstacle is the language. Don't expect people outside of your university environment to be fluent in English, especially people 40+. You might even come across some chauvinism if you're still struggling with German (although there are just as many patient people willing to help you out). But don't let that discourage you, you'll get better once you're here.
