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I had a hilarious time this morning, actually the first that is this funny, and quite profitable!

I typically only hire the mercenaries (because they fight so well), and the courtesans because they easily distract the guards at least two times per group of 4.  Rarely do I hire the thieves, but that has now changed dramatically.

I hired a group of thieves and began walking at street level.  I thought I had encountered a glitch because the pick-pocket sound and $ kept ringing up as if I were pick-pocketing frantically (the money was racking up fast).  I must have racked up about $1000 before I realized that my thieves were behind me pick-pocketing everyone in sight, and the $ was being automatically added to my purse!

I just stood there for a while in a busy section of town laughing as I saw their antics while stealing $ from the citizens.  In fact, they even stole money from a beggar that had his hand out!  :laugh:

Another added benefit is that after a fight, the thieves will even loot the guards for everything they have.

Are you sure you hired thieves or did you hire ex-MS employees?

I haven't put together a good list of the things in AC:R that have made me laugh out loud and there have been quite a few.

One thing that stands out is an* NPC that appears regularly throughout Constantinople/Istanbul who has apparently been linked to a table and stool.  Every time I've encountered him he is standing beside the table with the seat of the stool flush across the front of his chest and the four legs pass through his body protruding well beyond his back.


*That's weird.  ????  Abbreviated it's "an NPC"  but if I don't abbreviate that it's "a non-player character".  I never noticed that before and had to bounce it back and forth a few times to figure out the correct way of saying it. 

Quote from: Art Blade on December 12, 2011, 12:23:03 PM
Are you sure you hired thieves or did you hire ex-MS employees?

Aren't you being a bit redundant?  ????

I was running along the Southern shoreline of Galata (the Northern section of the two parts of Constantinople) and as I was hopping over some crates and barrels I accidentally bumped a woman who in no uncertain terms told me "Don't F*** around!"    :-D

PZ, yes, you're perfectly right. Same thing, really  :-D

Mandru, re: an NPC or a non-player character.

As a non-native English speaking person I am an N-NESP, as you see. I could abbreviate that even more just by writing, "I M N N-NESP S U C."  :-D

Gives you pure N-R-G, doesn't it, mate  :-()

 :-D

 ??? That.. was one of the shortest posts you've composed. Ever.  :-D

Someone must have hacked into mandru's account and is pretending to be him.  ????

 :laugh:

I'd come up for a moment for a breather and wanted to dive back into Revelations.   :-X

funny comment, PZ  ^-^

 :laugh:

Laughter is indeed the best medicine!

No one could possibly want to pretend to be mandru when it comes to posting here. You know, the real mandru pops up on my radar as reading unread posts and a bit later replying to one of those. Ten minutes later he'd still be replying to the same post. Another ten minutes later he'd be gone invisible due to not doing anything the software detects. After another ten minutes he'd be back on the radar, now quoting someone (yet still replying to that very same post he was replying to half an hour ago). Later when I have finished re-reading through all recent and unread posts I take a look and mandru has gone invisible once more yet there is no new unread post so he'd presumably still be posting. Before I go to bed I take a last look at the forum and oh, surprise, all of a sudden, there is a new reply by mandru. I decide to leave it as is because I know it is going to exceed my time left for that day and the next day when I read it, it will be a post about as long as your arm  :-D NO ONE can possibly want to fake that  :laugh:

Quote from: Art Blade on December 13, 2011, 12:50:18 PM
... Ten minutes later he'd still be replying to the same post. Another ten minutes later he'd be gone invisible due to not doing anything the software detects. After another ten minutes he'd be back on the radar, now quoting someone (yet still replying to that very same post he was replying to half an hour ago). Later when I have finished re-reading through all recent and unread posts I take a look and mandru has gone invisible once more yet there is no new unread post so he'd presumably still be posting...

... and here I thought he just fell asleep at the keyboard...  ????   8-X

..and here I thought I'd spare him that part to make it look less awkward. But maybe it's the right time to describe that bit right here, right now. Actually he does fall asleep occasionally while posting. This is due to mind-constructs that are so complicated to build and even more complicated to prevent them from collapsing he gets lost in the process of upholding the.. the.. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... <and now the part when he wakes up by the noise level of his own snoring>
ROOOOooooooar...  ??? <smack.. smack..> What the.. Oh.. Where was I.. oh yes..

:laugh: ??? 8-X

:-()

 :laugh:

 :laugh:

I take my time composing many of my long posts.  It's not just the editing I do to get the wording the way I want it, I will wander off to go have a smoke or fix a snack but I never (well almost never and only when playing RuneScape ;) ) fall asleep at my computer.

The office chair at my computer desk has had the arms and back removed to force me to sit up straight and to eliminate some scapular pain I was experiencing from my tendency to rest too much of my weight on my elbows.  It wouldn't be my snoring that wakes me up (I've learned to sleep through that though the roar was appropriate) it would be the sudden jolt of my largish frame bouncing off the floor.   ^-^

 :laugh:

That reminded me of the time I fell asleep at my computer and woke up with my head on the keyboard, which was making a continuous "dididididididididididi" sound while it busied itself impressing a key pattern into my forehead. I saw myself in a mirror shortly thereafter and I looked like I'd been smacked in the face with a waffle iron :-()

 :-X :laugh:

Fragger, brilliant :laugh:

and mandru, in my book this topic's descriptive highlight so far is your largish frame bouncing off the floor  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 :laugh:

It hasn't happened yet but the thought of it makes me shut off the computer and go to bed when it's time.  (:)

Wise man :-D

That reminds me of a real life incident. I was at my ex-girlfriend's place watching a vid when I heard someone moving furniture in the house, had to be below us because her apartment was already an attic flat. And it was kind of late so I started to get a little angry. The noise faded away and I was focussing on the film again when shortly thereafter the bloody noise surprised me again and this time it sounded as if someone had knocked over something big and while I was wondering whether or not to get really angry it happened again so that really infuriated me and I hollered with a vengeance, "what type of arsehole fucking moves furniture at this time of the night?!"  >:(( And then I could have sworn I heard my name. Well, must have been a hallucination and since the rumble had stopped I relaxed and leaned back to continue watching the film when again I heard my name, clearly this time, a female voice, if faint, ...  ??? Where was my girlfriend by the way..? There, my name again.. I went down the hallway and guess what, she was laying curled-up on the floor, halfway in the bathroom, halfway outside, whimpering.

Turned out that she fainted in the bathroom, knocked herself out by falling and knocking her head on the washbasin and ripping down everything in her wake. That was the first time I thought someone moved furniture. Then she had come round, called me, got up and fainted again. Same procedure, only this time on the other side of the washbasin. That's when I got angry calling her names (not knowing it was her, then) and when I told her I did that and what I thought had been going on she and I both started to laugh so hard we had to be careful not to faint  :-() That incident (she fainting and dropping down) was the reason I decided to become a -- meanwhile even appointed -- first aider.

Another graphics glitch that I've encountered a few times now is with the Romany men who are usually juggling fiery torches.  There is one that I have come across who is always in the the same spot holding the typical three lit torches but in his case he is standing with his hands at his sides a torch each hand and the third torch merrily burning away is stabbed into his bare chest where it's exposed by the gap in his vest.

I had a job like that always giving me heart burn.   ;)

 :-D

Part of the humor of for me of the burning stake in the juggler's chest is the presence of Vlad the Impaler's presence in the back story.

One of the scripted announcements from heralds who are obviously bored with having to repeat it over and over in the Arcadius section of the map touches on it.

"Addressing inquiries from pilgrims traveling from Transylvania about the head of Vlad the Impaler.
Yes, we have it.
No, you can't see it.
No, he's not coming back to invade you again.
It's been thirty years.  Please stop pestering us about this!"

While not a funny ha ha (it's more a funny "odd") something that I have been wondering about is the strong resemblance of Altair's adult son as seen in the disc memories and Subject 16 who shows up from time to time on animus island .

The theory behind how the animus functions allowing key individuals to be scanned for genetic memory and then regressed into reliving those accounts is foundational to the game.  If you look at the physical appearance of Altair, Ezio and Desmond there are significant features (genetic and situational including the same scar across their mouths) that are present in all three of those three men across history.

I am curious as to whether it was UBI's intent to have one of Subject 16's ancestors with whom he has a strong link show up close to the all important Altair and Ezio characters that both Templars and Assassins were searching for but without the fine tuned generational resonance Desmond demonstrated to be able to access both of those ancestors' memories.  If that was their intent poor Subject 16 was left high and dry in a "close but no cookie" situation.

It also occurs to me that the Masayf keys that Ezio seeks out through Revelations are actually highly portable and almost infinitely advanced versions of the much cruder animus machines that Desmond and Subject 16 were subjected to.  As Ezio closely examines each of the keys (which are actually items of technology from the  first civilization) a recording of a significant portion of Altair's life ingrained upon the disc is revealed to Ezio in the same fashion the animus allows Desmond to see/be the past.

Only the first civilizations' technology doesn't include all the nasty side effects of the animus.   8)

There's some interesting material for speculation to be found here.   :)

Excellent observations, and they certainly have merit.  The logic is certainly sound.  :-X

Here's a funny one, and profitable (I just love open world games)

The heralds bad mouth you all the time, even for what they perceive as outrageous activity such as renovating buildings.  Personally, I think that face lifting the ghetto is a good thing, but evidently the heralds want to keep the public down trodden (sounds like a politician).

One solution is to bribe them (funny how a little pocket change will cause them to completely change their tune).  They demand 100A to reduce your notoriety by 25%.  At first I paid them even though it felt wrong - here I am, the good Samaritan, wanting nothing more than to increase the property value of their neighborhood, and they were bad mouthing me, then charging me to clear my record.  I would pay them and then move off grumbling all the way.

My current solution: pay the herald the 100A, watch my record being cleared, and then beat him up, looting back my 100A  :-()\

I've tried this before the bribe (he evidently is so poor he has zero A), but as soon as the money is in his pocket, I can do the mugging routine, all to the outrage of the  crowd.

My rationale: if this corrupt politician is going to bad mouth my reputation while I improve their neighborhood, and then extort money to restore my reputation, I might as well give him a public thrashing.

Now I leave the encounter vindicated.  :-()

Funny that you would mention hassling heralds.   ^-^

I had a situation where I had just paid a herald to reduce my notoriety and as I stepped away from his platform a stalker charged straight up to me face on which is unusual in itself because they usually come at you from behind.  Ezio shoved him away so that he fell on his back and lay there stunned for a moment and me not wanting to let the insult go unchallenged (not to mention the cash you get for looting a dead stalker) I hit my right mouse button for high profile, the #2 to quick select hidden blades and executed him on the spot.

Panic ensued.

Nearby guards rushed in crashing through the citizens gathered to listen to the herald scattering them and I dealt with them the outcome being one dead stalker, four dead guards and the herald and crowd all dispersed.  Then I notice floating about six inches off the ground was the little red pouch of money with which I had just bribed the herald. :o

It didn't occur to me at that time to try to pick it up as if I were looting a chest or body but now that I've had time to think it over it's on my list of things to watch for.  :-D

I haven't seen that one before - will certainly be on the lookout - I just love the unexpected nuggets that appear in the game.  :-X

I played a couple more hours of this last week and had an LOL moment after poisoning a guard for no reason - he started going mad and swinging his mace like normal when an unfortunate civilian walking past got walloped and it sent him flying.  I think what made it visually more funny is that a wall blocked my field of vision in the direction the civi flew so I just saw his legs get kicked out from under him and saw his surprised face last as he flew out of view.

Some of those civilians are just a bit too unobservant, and deserve what they get  >:D

One of the UBI achievements is having a poisoned guard kill a certain number of civilians as they are thrashing around.  On my first time through the game I'd managed to meet that requirement but missed it when it happened so I didn't get to see how I had actually managed to do it.   ????

I suspect hitting a guard in a busy location with a poison dart (before buying the fast poison upgrade) and the splashing a pyrite bomb on him so the crowd mob him to get at the gold they think has been thrown on the ground would make that challenge pretty easy.   >:D

 :laugh: :-X good one!

The first destination on the tunnel system Fatih Camii  Mosque sits right on the border with one of the Templar dens my business was with the guards at the mosque but some of the Templar guards nearby spotted me and started hassling me so I was intermittently hassling them back when I received the "Find and kill the Templar Leader" message even though that wasn't my objective right at that moment.

I really didn't want to start the process of training a Assassin leader right at that time so I figured the coward commander would make his escape and reset the lair for amnother time when I was actually ready to address it properly.

So I ignored it and continued on my project of placing a trip wire bomb loaded with shrapnel a few feet from and right square in front of the group of posted guards on that side of the mosque.  I was trying to see if setting up the bomb would pull them away from their post and into it.  The reaction I received was quite different from what I'd expected.

As I was planting the bomb one of the guards yelled at me "What are you?  Stupid?  We can see what you are doing!"  and the other three guards started laughing.   :-[

So I put an arrow into one of them to kick them over into attack mode.  Instead of charging directly at me the remaining guards carefully selected a path skirting around the trip wire bomb and then came after me but the next thing I knew several Templar guards detecting the activity jumped into the fray and whole thing turned into a game of capture the flag with me being the flag.  The two groups were fighting each other and me leaving me to fight with everyone.

I was finishing the mop up for the three way mob scene and a message came across the top of the screen.  "The Templar commander has died. Light the signal fire."   :knockout

The only thing that I can figure out is that he tripped and fell off a roof braking his fool neck because I didn't do it and was nowhere near enough to him to make him panic and drive him to that.  So I'd inherited a new den by default.  After cleaning up all the other Templar guards I could find on site (specifically seeking out Almogavars) I synced the viewpoint and lit the fire to let my assassins know we'd acquired new digs.  ::)

Man, that is a funny one!  I've certainly not experienced anything like that conversation about the trip wire.  Now I want to set one in front of guards just to gauge their response.

The game continues to surprise, and impress.  :-X

mandru, that guard's response to what you were doing was a pretty neat bit of AI :-X

Remember the Rock Merc from FC2? Here's the Rooftop Sentinel from AC:R


As he moved sideways he also got back up on top of the roof and it was a pretty weird scene to see him hovering upwards till finally all his body could be seen!  ????

 :laugh: good one!

 :laugh:

Makes me think of a line from the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song, Hey Tonight: "Gonna get into the rafters..."

I may have inadvertently discovered what may be one of the most devastating hidden weapons in AC:R.

The two main type of types of patrol squads I encounter in AC:R as I'm working the streets of Byzantium are a variant of either one or two Janissaries as part of a group of four.

Usually the safest way to ambush either of these configurations (one or two Janissaries (and I try to avoid openly charging in and overpowering groups of four Janissaries :-() )) is to slip up behind them and quietly use the hidden blades to drop them two at a time.  So the hidden blade rates supreme in usefulness when ambushing a group stealthily from behind or in an air strike with a quick second strike before the rest of the group can respond but if you bungle your first approach and the remainder of the group become aware of you there are better weapons to effect a clean up.

I was roving around on a 100% sync completed game that I've kept on file for times I want to simply thrash around, explore, maybe replay missions with the enabled cheats without feeling I have to focus on storyline.  Along one of the coastlines I was bumping fishermen and knocking them into the water to drown them without the threat of desynchronization for killing citizens messages and one of them dropped their fishing pole on the pier.  Always experimenting I found I could pick it up and not only in that one spot as I was able to duplicate the acquisition of a fishing pole in various location along the waterfront.

While holding a newly obtained pole I was pounced by a group of remnant Templars that the game will sometimes toss in to mix things up (near the Herald on the South Galata waterfront towards the Eastern end) and they were quickly joined by a 2 Janissary patrol squad which gave me a nice selection of targets.  I was surprised by how effective the fishing pole turned out to be.  :o

I came out of that scuffle without a scratch but admittedly the other two opposing sides do tend to focus more on one another.  So I set out hunting patrol squads to further test this out.  I straight out (face on as they approached) single hit slapped a Janissary from the group into oblivion but that is to be expected even with bare hands.  What really surprised me was that I was then able to chain kill the second Janissary of the squad with one whack! I'm never able to chain kill Janissaries!  >:D

Usually openly assaulting a squad will leave me with a few chunks out of my health which I recover by healing before looting the bodies but I was able to attack five squads each with the two Janissary configuration before I received any damage at all.  Only one time out of the five was I able to recreate chain killing the 2nd Janissary so that doesn't always w@&k but still the fact that the chance is in the background is a real plus for me.   :-X

The fishing pole handles as a mace giving the pronounced "Clunk" against armor but seems to have the speed of the fastest dagger and I've no real scale to judge the amount of damage delivered.  It seems that three solid hits are enough to finish a Janissary but chance of hitting through his defense is slightly lacking.  The special move animations also appear to be drawn from the mace repertoire.

Enough of this, I'm going fishing!  :)

 :laugh: ... a fishing pole!  how marvelous!  I'm now in ACR after working through AC2 and ACB - I must say that the complete play through lends itself well to experiencing the continuity from one game to the next.  The beauty is that the Sophia missions bring in aspects of AC1 to make the entire story complete.

I must go fishing the next time I visit Constantinople.  :-()

Once you've completed the mercenary guild's requirements the mercs will run interference for you against the beggar women but I discovered there's a deeper level of animosity that the mercs feel towards beggars than I'd previously realized.

I'd killed a group of guards too close to a group of mercs hoping to be hired and when I went to loot one of the guards I discovered I'd inherited a happy little band of cut throats.

During the course of their being my unwanted shadow I was setting up to use my hidden blades on a group of four guards as they were passing another pair of guards who were standing sentry duty. My though was to start a fight then step back a safe distance and let the guards knock off a few of the mercs but as I made my initial strike three of the beggars jumped between me and my target resulting in two dead beggar ladies, six angry guards and my squad of four mercs chasing the remaining beggar down the street.  ???

The mercs didn't show back up until after I'd done all the dirty w@&k.  :D

But here's where things got weird. two of the mercs moved to stand over the two dead beggars pushing and shoving each other while yelling things like "Keep your filthy hands off my a$$!"   :laugh:

Even though the beggars were dead the mercs were still trying to drive them away only because they were squeezed in so close it looked like they were arguing among themselves and even when I moved the dead beggars off the ground and to the top of a nearby covered well head the mercs went right along with them clambering up and resuming the pushing and shoving like a bad Martin and Lewis skit.  :-D

 :laugh: :-X

This series is awfully close to FC2 when it comes to open world surprises

 :laugh: That's funny just to read about :-X