Poll time! Why do you like Fallout so much?

[Relayer71]

I chose Multiple Solutions because it was the most important one but really, Setting & Atmosphere and Combat factor in as well.

So does story to some extent - not the main story but all the little stories that make up the various quests and characters.

 

[AzraelCC]

I already made a thread searching for a purely non-combat RPG, and sure enough, mondblut was quick to label me a LARPer

But the replies there did make me realize something: while a purely non-combet RPG can be done, nobody has really tried to come up with non-combat mechanics as interesting in terms of decision making as that of combat mechanics. Sure, it would be an ideal world where RPGs can sustain roles like a detective, a politician or an explorer (All of which are non-combat oriented, but nevertheless interesting characters), but the fact is that combat provides the challenge and the gameplay in RPGs, CURRENTLY.

As for the choice of Fallout, it's all about the atmosphere. I'll say outright that Fallout has a better atmosphere than that of PS:T. I'm not talking about LARPing or immer-shun when I speak of atmosphere. The atmosphere is sustained not by melodramatic cutscenes or jeremy soule music or even bloom-based graphics. Fallout is a game where the gameplay elements mesh perfectly with the perceived story/conflict.

The simple fact that you start out in Fallout with a gun that has very few ammunition presents a world of scarcity--a consequence, of course, of nuclear war. The time limit is not a bad thing for me, since it establishes the urgency of your quest. The mechanic of the time limit creates the atmosphere, instead of the usual sugar coating role the atmosphere has on the core gameplay elements. And the fantastic ending, where your character changes, and therefore he cannot return home; that's both a wink and a nudge at the "level-up" centric RPG genre, as well as a philosophical question that should be familiar: "What can change the nature of a man?"

Arcanum doesn't have the same level of atmosphere that Fallout is able to achieve. Sure the mechanics reflect the tech versus magic theme, but it's discarded for the save the world crap as the game ends, only to be deconstructed in an incredulous way. It would have been nice if all those choices for your build would end up influencing the future of Arcanum: would it be a future of technology, or a return of magic?

 

[Jigawatt]

Serious answer:

I should add one thing that noone else has mentioned, and I sincerely hope that this has been taken into consideration for AoD - Character progression.

I figure noone has a lot to say about this because it is so well implemented that you barely even notice it. Every level I feel like something tangible has been gained that will help on my adventure. In a combat skill, it may mean that before where I didn't bother with aimed shots I can now aim at the head, or if I was at that stage already I can now aim at the eyes. On the non-combat side new locks become pickable, new dialogue options are available (or I just become more persuasive), quests get new solutions etc. This then leads me to...

Perks! About the most genius design idea in all of Fallout, perks provide my favourite type of C&C (the non-plot kind). It's apparent from level 3 (or if you read the manual) that you won't be able to attain any more than 10% of all perks, so careful selection is required. The consequences will have permanance and which choice you make will change depending on what type of character you are playing. Textbook implementation of C&C if ever I've seen one. And they serve a dual function, of giving you something awesome to look forward to every 3 levels, which appeals to that base instinct that keeps people playing Diablo/WoW et al.

Anyway, I could go on about Fallout 1&2 all day because I really like them that much, but I'll stop here. I hope I've given you something to consider VD. (But please don't rework and delay AoD again oh god)

 

[Fezzik]

It looks like the question people are answering in the poll is "why do you like Fallout?" So I did the same: multiple solutions. It makes the game interesting and finding a new way to do something is a great feeling, especially when you couldn't see it in a previous playthrough because of your stats.

And I like it better than Arcanum mostly because Arcanum has a very lame combat system and a large amount of poorly designed combat is forced on the player. It's an irritant and doesn't add anything I can see. I would probably prefer no combat in Arcanum over the combat that's present, although that would probably require a change in design overall. Basically in Fallout, you have a more modest boat but smooth sailing, and with Arcanum you have a fairly impressive ship on troubled seas.

 

[Shannow]

Misses the option:
Because it was an appetizer for the even better Fallout 2.

[Edit]: OK, now I bothered to read the whole first post and since it's VD I'll give him a few answers although my main point stands unchanged:

I'm mostly curious to know how people see RPGs. Would a pure non-combat RPG, for example, be a good idea?

Yes, if only for variety's sake. I wouldn't care for it, though. The same way I don't care for adventures or the choose your own adventure books.

What's more important to players: combat, which has been the main aspect of RPG for decades, or choices and multiple solutions, which are a relative newcomer to the genre?

Depends entirely on the game and the impementation. Personally for me it's combat. Since it (still/usually) takes up the biggest part of gameplay. Good written worlds, dialogue, C&C, etc only complement that but cannot make up for bad combat. (See Arcanum).

While I'm sure that most people like and appreciate multiple solutions, are they a fancy side meal between fights or anything more? Do they have what it takes to be the main course?

See above. For me personally I doubt it. If I want good fantasy stories I'll read a good fantasy book. C&C isn't that important to me. A world that makes sense, npcs that make sense, motives that makes sense and all that leading to C&C that make sense are more important than the mere existence of c&c just for C&C's sake. And in all newer games that threw C&c in my face at every opportunity it simply felt forced, not to mention a lot of it wasn't satisfying because it often didn't make sense, it was rarely possible to look for better solutions that the binary ones, which were presented.

2 cents

 

[1eyedking]

Those 2 cents Shannow...from what currency are they?

They're much more valuable than the dollar's, that's for sure :wink: .

 

[Liberal]

I hate Fallout, it's slow and outdated, except for Fallout 3 which I love.

 

[bhlaab]

It's not any one thing, it's that it pulls off the full package so well.

And yeah, while it would be weird for combat to not be an option in most quests (violence is a pretty easy solution to just about anything you can think of), I wouldn't mind a 100% combat-free RPG.
The thing with Arcanum, though, is that I'd prefer no combat at all to somewhat shitty combat.

 

[shihonage]

Fallout is a subject big enough to start a religion out of.

The dialogue and combat in Fallout are both affected by under-the-hood calculations directly derived from your character stats. This may seem like a given with any RPG, but Fallout went to depths I've not witnessed before it.

Most RPGs seem content to throw numbers at you, screenfuls of stats, which are very loosely, if at all, tied into underlying gameplay.

Fallout made me feel like the game was responding to ME. SPECIAL was a system affecting every nook and cranny of whats going on.

I often see people say "this and that game kept me up'til 3am and I didn't know what time it was !". This practically never happens to me. I've been jaded for 15 years, and I've already been jaded in 1997. Fallout, however, pulled it off. It made me realize that games are not just for kids.

 

[The Village Loon]

Setting and the atmosphere is what made the game for me. I do not fancy everything post apocalyptica, on the contrary most of the PA movies for example I've disliked. But Fallout really works with its art direction and soundtrack. It makes my imagination take over and really puts me in there.

Fallout 3, while doing it very differently, does the atmosphere partly right. But Fallout 3 breaks the suspension of disbelief so badly it feels like a haha-fun disneyland ride than the experience Fallout 1 gave me. I ended Fallout 3 with like 10k minigun ammo, 2,5k shotgun shells and whatnot. Every bloody vending machine has cola, every other bloody crate or box has ammo clips or stimpacks... FFS there is a factory that makes all kinds of ammo in Fallout 3.

And yes, Fallout 2 suffers from the disneyland effect. While not a bad game, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as Fallout 1.

Fallout 1 has really no weak links for me to think of. Art is great, music is great, combat is good, char system is great.. but the atmosphere is the crown. The illusion of the gameworld was the thing. And so voted.

 

[Longshanks]

Results of this poll are fail. Arcanum has more multiple solutions than Fallout - far more.

Why I like Fallout better than Arcanum (marginally)? It's not one game aspect. It's the totality and how it comes together. The restraint shown by developers, and hence the lack of filler content and over the top lulz. The awesome atmosphere and style. The simple but effective combat system, and encounters, that perfectly supports the rest of the game, not dominate it. The strength of the character system and how clearly it translates to the gameplay (Arc's char creation was awesome but lacks in this regard). The story which allows you to discover as much or as little as you like (prob similar to Arc but more effectively), and becomes more that of your chracter's journey than The Master It's a game that knows what it wants to be, and hits that mark better than any other I've played.

Judging the games just on roleplaying aspects - I'd consider both Arcanum and Fallout 2 to be superior. But as overall games, both are slightly bettered for some similar reasons (eg. too much content leading to some weak areas and the games overstaying their welcome).

 

[janjetina]

Continues from this thread. Basically, the question is what is THE MAIN reason why you prefer Fallout to Arcanum (or like Fallout a lot in general)?

For me, they are two different questions with two different answers.
I like Fallout for all the reasons you mentioned in the poll, and isolating a single reason is impossible. If any of the elements mentioned in the poll was worse, it wouldn't be the same game.

Fallout's post-apocalyptic wasteland setting is interesting by its own merit, and it was implemented very well. Visuals, sounds, plot themes, characters and locations blend perfectly, creating a highly cohesive, logical and atmospheric world. Only the best games pull this off. The way that the story of Fallout is being told (or rather, more shown that told) fits the setting perfectly (so I think of Fallout's story as an integral part of a setting, rather than something independent). Slowly piecing together the puzzle of the supermutant threat, gaining an insight in the period immediately preceding the war and the FEV experiments by finding and reading the holodisks in the Glow was an unforgettable.

I liked combat in Fallout as well. Plenty of firearms to choose from, aimed shot, turn based combat, unique and flavorful opponents and short encounters that never deteriorated into grind (which almost every RPG is guilty of). The way that the character build and progression infuenced combat was almost perfect. There was a clear sense of progressing, becoming more experienced and adept in combat. What is there not to like?

Concerning character build and progression, the way that character skills and stats were tied in dialogue and exploration (though the exploration aspect was lacking in quantity - more use for non-combat skills would have been more than welcome) was revolutionary and is now a model that I think every RPG should follow, but, unfortunately, more often than not they don't.

Multiple choices with different outcomes are what make a game an unique experience. Being pressed for making a high impact decision, especially with incomplete information (and even better, with the amount of information depending on previous exploration and choices that were involved, with everything tied into character stats) and witnessing the consequences of your decisions unfold immensely enriches gameplay experience, and is an imperative for replayability (which separates great games from good games) and Fallout did it well.

As for another question, why I prefer Fallout over Arcanum (though I consider them both at least top 5 RPGs), the answer doesn't lie in the strength of Fallout, but in the weakness of Arcanum. In their strong aspects the games are comparable (Arcanum is stronger in C&C, Fallout's setting is a little better), but Fallout's combat easily beats Arcanum's combat.
Probably the worst aspect of Arcanum, tied to combat, is the experience system. Experience on hit clearly favors certain character builds over others (mage over technologist, combat oriented over diplomatic build) and encourages grind. Combat was boring, most encounters were bland, and when you add bad combat system, boring encounters, the system that encourages grind and long combat heavy dungeons like BMC mines, you get a game that can be (and was) salvaged only by brilliance in other aspects. But, that brilliance wasn't enough to top Fallout.

I'm mostly curious to know how people see RPGs. Would a pure non-combat RPG, for example, be a good idea? What's more important to players: combat, which has been the main aspect of RPG for decades, or choices and multiple solutions, which are a relative newcomer to the genre? While I'm sure that most people like and appreciate multiple solutions, are they a fancy side meal between fights or anything more? Do they have what it takes to be the main course?

Your detailed opinion would be appreciated.

If we disregard terminology and blur the genre borders (which are, in my opinion, secondary to the distinction between good games and bad games), you might as well ask a question whether an adventure game would (potentially) be better with stats that influence your actions and multiple paths and solutions. Adventure games are good as they are, but adding this would only make them better if done right.

RPGs are about conflict. However, not all conflict is resolved by using physical force. A non-(physically) violent RPG needs to set up the scene for other kinds of conflict, like political conflict, industrial espionage, etc. In order for this to work, the choices need to be strong enough to make the player think carefully and weigh his decisions. However, this would not be enough. Such a game would need to have a well written story with multiple arcs, an intriguing setting and a well developed exploration aspect. A good stat and skill system that influences gameplay and gives the player a good sense of progression would have to be under the hood, of course.

An argument in a favor of such a game would be that no mainstream RPG managed to implement combat well since TOEE. For example, Bloodlines would certainly be a better game without combat.

Would such a game be a RPG? I don't care, as long as it is good.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

 

[Kz3r0]

I voted multiple solutions but it is also one of the things that makes Arcanum a superior game. Anyway I like Fallout because it combines the four aspects pretty well, and the combat isn't too annoying and omnipresent.

And yeah, I can understand that Fallout can be so easy to repaly when a typical playthrough mostly takes a big week-end, or at least a week if you are busy doing other things. Arcanum is much more longer; simply doing Tarant takes a lot of time.

Same as me.
By the way I think that in RPGs combat must fit the game, not the other way around, for that there are HnS and Dungeon Crawlers.

 

[mondblut]

Fallout most certainly has far better combat mechanics than Arcanum. I don't care about postapoc, and last time I checked they were roughly even on multiple solutions. And story, what's that?

Also, you conveniently forgot about the most important RPG aspect - game mechanics. While I was never fond of Fallout's simplistic ruleset with a bunch of useless shit skills instead of proper weapon groups or legitimate cheats called "perks", Arcanum's system is broken beyond repair. Reason: joint bonus pool. That "you've got ONE point and you can spend it on a stat, OR on a skill, OR on a spell, take your pick" crap. First, it leads to absurd situations where a stupid mage knows more spells than an intelligent one (having spent his points on spells rather than int) and a clumsy craftsmen has better skills than an agile one. Second, even in a proper (separated) system achieving a faintest trace of cost/usefulness balance among a variety of skills, or spells, or stats, is nigh impossible, and dump attributes are either officially recognized as such by being made dirt cheap, or are ignored by all but masochists, pathological LARPers and the let's-squeeze-out-some-lulz-at-my-tenth-playthrough crowd. But when you have to cross-balance between skills, spells and stats, all with the same base cost, the outcome can't be anything but FUBAR. Common perception of Arcanum as one of the most broken and unbalanced games showcases that.

are they a fancy side meal between fights?

Yes.

 

[hakuroshi]

Well, I don't like fallout as much as it deserves and even prefere 2 to 1. But what made Fallout (both actually) really enjoyable for me is an option 4. I don't much in post-apoc (even greatly done). Combat was nice, but I see combat as a kind of medium to story-progressing - it's a method to remove obstacles in the way. I still liked combat in fallout, probably more then in any other rpgs I've played, but I was more excited when able to avoid it altogether. Story in both fallouts was nothing special, except stories behind locations and people but that's probably in the setting area.
So multiply solutions is my choice. It's actually the reason for my preference of FO2 to FO1 as it's the only part it has improved over it's predecessor. Combat remained the same, setting and story were significantly worse.
Same for Arcanum. I've enjoyed it despite all flaws because it has a lot of ways to solve things.

As for non-cobmat rpgs, I don't think it's really a good idea to remove combat altogether. There should be almost always a way to do things without bloodshed but there should be an options to force you way through if player chooses so. Unless settings and story specifically created to non-cobbat gameplay it would look strange.

 

[Derper]

Fallout has the entire package, and is, as mentioned above, praised for having no flaws. My main concern, when comparing to the other top dogs, is the lacking scope. There simply isn't enough to do, and having the size of F2 would have made it my no. 1 of all time. Arcanum and F2 are more ambitious and offer a lot more content, although the quality is slightly decreased (as a result?).

The greatest single force of Fallout, apart from not having any glaring faults, is the atmosphere which is simply superb. Intro-vid, setting, music, graphics, interface, mission briefing, seeing natural daylight for the first time -> Just awesomesauce!

 

[Imbecile]

Thus, the MAIN REASON is that Fallout does all of them right enough. Most others RPGs fail miserably at one or the other; a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

I agree. To be honest I find this true of most games. Doing everything, including the small things, really well makes for a classic game, though I guess the popularity of PST might be a counterargument to this.

Edit: also, I didn't find Fallout's combat that great, but it was OK I s'pose, and fairly fun.

 

[Joghurt]

I chose multiple solutions, because that's pretty much what RPG are about for me, but it was really hard to choose. The setting was awesome, I remember still the first time I got to play fallout in the beginning of 1998. The whole 50ies style future with all the little details was...fantastic. Well the story wasn't perfect, but it was 100 times better then most RPG where you had to save the whole god damned world. Yes you had to do it in fallout too, but you found out about it only in the second part of the game. And the combat was great too with all those really cool death animations...and it was hard. I still remember how I planned and tried gazillions of strategies to take down raiders and rescue Tandi, because I couldn't do it in a diplomatic way because of my characters stupidity.

 

[Darth Roxor]

As for 'why do you like Fallout so much', I guess I'll add another brick of 'the whole package is good'.

As for 'why do you prefer Fallout to Arcanum', I guess combat is the most obvious answer.

 

[Lockkaliber]

A world that makes sense, npcs that make sense, motives that makes sense and all that leading to C&C that make sense are more important than the mere existence of c&c just for C&C's sake. And in all newer games that threw C&c in my face at every opportunity it simply felt forced, not to mention a lot of it wasn't satisfying because it often didn't make sense, it was rarely possible to look for better solutions that the binary ones, which were presented.

Fucking spot on.

 

[JarlFrank]

Continues from this thread. Basically, the question is what is THE MAIN reason why you prefer Fallout to Arcanum (or like Fallout a lot in general)?

I prefer Arcanum over Fallout a lot, because Arcanum has the better setting (I just love the Victorian era) and more C&C, and I played it first. Played Fallout 2 first, and Fallout 1 only fairly recently (this year, even) so my opinion should be quite fresh and not nostalgia-cloudes.

I'm mostly curious to know how people see RPGs. Would a pure non-combat RPG, for example, be a good idea? What's more important to players: combat, which has been the main aspect of RPG for decades, or choices and multiple solutions, which are a relative newcomer to the genre? While I'm sure that most people like and appreciate multiple solutions, are they a fancy side meal between fights or anything more? Do they have what it takes to be the main course?

Your detailed opinion would be appreciated.

Alright. You want details, you get them. First off, Fallout is far from being my favourite game, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. At first, I hesitated - there's a reason I played Fallout 2 shortly after joining the Codex but tried Fallout 1 only this year. The time limit. I hate time limits that give you a game over if you fail to finish the main quest in a certain time. But then I was bored, had nothing to do and decided to give it a shot.

Now, the beginning, it was nothing special. Fight some rats, get out of the cave, go to Shady Sands, do some simple quests... then I went to Vault 15 (I think it was 15, the one to the East) and noticed that I need a rope. I liked that. It has a bit of adventure game flair to use items that are useless in most other RPGs. Then I went on down south to Junktown and that's where it began being awesome.

Basically, you have the quest to find a water chip. You don't know where to look for it, though, so you have to research by yourself. And while you look for it, you find cities that all have their little problems that you can solve. And you get multiple choices. Kilian or Gizmo in junktown, in the Hub there was that gangster guy (don't remember it fully) etc etc. The sidequests were fun, too, and the atmosphere really caught me.

The atmosphere was great and pulled me in better than Fallout 2, because it was more coherent and less lulzy. The characters were believable and didn't give you a second and a third chance when you pissed them off. Tell them to go fuck theirselves and you can't get their quest, which is logical and fits to a gritty post-apoc world. A nice change from the usual "Okay I'll give you another chance here's my quest even though you insulted me previously".

My favourite part was at the... what was it? The Boneyard I think it was called. You had the Regulators who protected the people there for money, and the gang led by some bitch. But then you found out that the Regulators were actually the bad guys and the gang were the good ones. And again, you could pick your side. I loved how in every town, there were sides to pick. Then I went to Necropolis to take the water chip (again, multiple ways to get it: steal it or repair the machine there).

What I also liked was that you could be captured by the super mutants and brought to their base, where you'd get your equipment taken away from you and interrogated by the Lieutenant. That was a great part, especially since it was almost impossible to get out of that one alive.

Now, the Glow, which is generally seen as a great part, wasn't that amazing to me. Nice atmosphere and I liked the supercomputer inside, but nothing special. What I did like about it, however, was that the only way to get into the Brotherhood of Steel was to do a difficult quest that would likely get you killed (first time I got to the glow I didn't take any RAD-X), and the BoS itself offered some nice content too.

So generally, I liked Fallout because of the consistently good atmosphere, the many choices you get to make during the game and generally good design. It was a short game, yes, but that's not a bad thing since there are no bad things about it. Everything is well-designed, coherent and fun. While I'm not a fanboy of Fallout, I could see how it was revolutionary for its time and why it has so many fans. While most choices consist of picking one of two sides, all of them are well-executed and the game never becomes boring.

Conclusion: I liked it because it had good design throughout and no part was truly bad/boring to go through.

 

[Black]

Oh look, I can't choose both atmosphere & setting (and I don't dig everything post-apo, I dig good post-apo) and multiple solutions.

 

[Fyz]

Continues from this thread. Basically, the question is what is THE MAIN reason why you prefer Fallout to Arcanum (or like Fallout a lot in general)?

The main reason why I prefer Fallout to Arcanum is its combat. Arcanum's combat is plain bad. It's design, the encounters, the loot, and even the UI. Not to mention the animations. The combat is the only reason I've never replayed the game.

I'm mostly curious to know how people see RPGs. Would a pure non-combat RPG, for example, be a good idea?

Sounds pretty much OK to me. Although I find character progression hard to picture. I guess it would bother me a bit, that the player's non combat skills show a huge development in the relatively short time the story takes place in.
Of course this doesn't makes sense with combat skills either, and it's been like this since the dawn of CRPGs. However I think, that combat in RPGs distracts the player from these inconsistencies.
Still, gameplay can be excelent despite of this, plus it may only bother some people.

What's more important to players: combat, which has been the main aspect of RPG for decades, or choices and multiple solutions, which are a relative newcomer to the genre? While I'm sure that most people like and appreciate multiple solutions, are they a fancy side meal between fights or anything more? Do they have what it takes to be the main course?

Your detailed opinion would be appreciated.

I think that the quality is the most important.
I'll go through some aspects depending on how filler combat was handled.

Ill start with games where I've found filler combat to be OK,games like old-school crawlers (like MM) and some JRPGs (FF, Persona+just started some older SMT games), not to mention the IWD games. Without doubt their combat gets old after a while. Still, it doesn't bother me too much, because if an encounter gets trivial, you can end it pretty quickly, by spamming attack, using mob weaknesses or by simply running past the mobs, or grouping them and using area of effect spells. Also the interiors, the dungeon design, the art direction distract me from the dullness of the combat. Controlling many player classes also helps a lot to avoid the dullness caused by trash encounters.
Some games even include some C&C flavour. (guess I could add BG here).

In some C&C based games, like the Witcher or Arcanum (keep in mind, that I've played Arcanum like 5 years ago), you were limited by the playstile you built your character for from the start. Additionaly their dungeon design was repetitive, or the renderings were plain ugly plus you couldn't even avoid many encounters.
These games could've been much better without their trash mob encounters. Still the reason behind adding it is clear - creating combat encounters is a cheap way to increase the gametime. Still if you don't know, how to do it right, the game will be worse. Especially, if it takes a large part of the gametime.

Then you have like one (two) game(s) which hid filler combat, by adding a life to every NPC, by making the world seem real, by making the dungeons real places, by making the enemies you fought not just a random trash mob, but a NPC with a role. Still, it had some 'dungeons' with filler combat, like Necropolis sewers, rat caves, toxic caves, raider caves and whatever but these only took a minor part of your gameplay.
Unlike in games like Witcher, NWN, etc, where the filler combat is not only crap, but takes the 90% percent of your gametime. And the remaining 10% might be just as bad.

In short, I don't care about the C&C/combat ratio. Just make that aspect fun, entertaining. Let the player see the love, care and work of the designers behind each aspect. Don't add combat for the sake of making the gameplay longer. Also don't add C&C just for the sake of it.
Having said all this, I'd really love to see a RPG without combat, only based on non combat skills and C&C.

 

[circ]

I like Fallout because.. Well, it could be improved upon, but as a post apoc RPG it doesn't really have an equal. Unfortunately, because post apoc is such a nice setting for an RPG.

I like the attention to detail. Graphics that still look good today. 'Music' is still excellent. Your groupmates are and stay pretty much fuckups, unlike supermen in most RPG's. The locations are very varied and interesting. A lot of quests have varied solutions. From talking to brute force, to sometimes a third alternative. Also, you can play as a retard and get a different experience. Sex affects some things also, this is not true for a lot of RPG's. You can reach the ending in various ways, and you can fuck up in several ways. Can you fuck up in a BioWare game? Short of dying to a random mob, nob really.

The humor is overdone though, and breaks the post apoc atmosphere, but whatever. Also, the plot does get murky and with all the little sidequests everywhere, you do find yourself losing interest.

 

[Quilty]

I'll kill your family.

Get your ass over to the original thread and apply your /thread skills to it until it dies. I keep telling you people, it shouldn't exist, it pits brother against brother, goddammit!