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PS3 Has No Achievements, Replaceable Controllers
So, there is bad news and good news. The bad news is, despite the popularity of the Gamerscore and Achivements on Xbox Live, the PS3 won't offer that. Despite earlier rumours on the subject, developers will have to pick and choose if they want to have a system like that. Sony says first party titles will offer 'entitlements' ... but none of the launch titles will have it. There is good news for PS3 fans, though, as Sony says it will replace controllers if the batteries wear out. The lithium batteries the company is shipping the controllers with should last 'for many years'.
There's no vibration in pads. Because of new batteries. They're better - when you get hit - they explode!
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
If we're lucky, Sony will put some of those non-exploding batteries into the controllers. Who knows, it could be a selling point for them.
Thats one of the 3 things that I found a huge turnoff of Xbox Live. THe big epeen war over who has achievments. The other two are the voice chat (I want to chat with my guild, and only with my guild, not with random 12 year olds. I leave that to members of Congress and Micheal Jackson. Luckily, there's always outside teamspeak servers, and my TV is by my computer) and the fact it was for pay (pay extra for something that should be a feature of the game? No. Just no. I'll pay for a dedicated server if I get to set the rules, but no way in hell I'll pay for the ability to play MP at all).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Some part of human nature demands that we know where we stand against, well, everyone else. We're built to be competitive; that's a part of our survival instinct. Not having a system-wide ranking system (or at least an achievement system, as the GamerScore could more accurately be called) I think will hurt the overall popularity of their Live counterpart and will leave the users with a segmented ranking system, just like the last generation, Live on the original Xbox, provided. That's not exactly a leg up on the competition. Also, 12-year-olds everywhere won't have a number (read: ePenis) to brag about.
If all my base are belong to you and I attempt to retrieve my base, does that mean I'm freebasing?
Sure, they'll provide a service to replace your batteries or whatever.. but you'll probably be able to get a new controller on eBay for less than they're going to charge you for a replacement.
That's great! I always wanted to wait four to six weeks to be able to play with my game console.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you read the article, the PS3 will have achievements on a per-game basis - just not with launch games, and no overall gamerscore.
Although I as a gamer would like to see achievements in every game as I think that's a great feature of Live, I never did get the point of an overall gamerscore which as the article notes is a really meaningless number. You only care really about how you are doing in relation to other people in the same game.
So for this inaccurate and oddly worded title, I say award this story the coveted "zonked" tag.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Forget playing the game....the vibrating controllers were nice....now if they were just washable...
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
Anyone notice how few people bother to read or comment in Slashdot gaming stories anymore? Not that Slashdot ever was anyone's first choice for console gaming news, but it still used to have large and good gaming discussions.
Zonk has pretty much put an end to that. Slashdot needs something better than the gaming equivalent of Ted Kaczynski.
I'm not a teenage girl, and I killed the battery in my Motorola V300 after less than a year. Mind you, it's almost the same thing as a RAZR, except bigger. AFAIK the internals are highly similar. I almost got a razr, but I got a V555 instead when I found out the razr has shitty reception.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They'll replace the batteries if they wear out? Given Sony's recent reputation with batteries (Apple recall, Dell recall, et al), I'll wait to hear what their replacement policy is on exploding batteries...
Hmm... giving publishers the "flexibility" to create their own achievements systems, which none of the launch titles will feature.
In other words, it's all up to the developers what they want to do, because Sony isn't going to provide any help. The nice thing about 360 achievements is that you can figure out your trigger conditions, call an API once, and be done. Anyone can add achievements to their game with relatively little effort (a huge improvement from Xbox 1).
On the other end, you have the completely open ended system. You decide the trigger conditions, as usual. You implement their storage. You implement their display. You manage any sort of in-game rewards for these. You add more screens and menu options to your flow. You debug. Not Easy. And even then, other players won't be able to see it.
I can't imagine most game developers seeing the tradeoff and deciding that it is worth it. They'll just keep whatever in-game rewards system they have deemed useful over the years.
Microsoft really learned one thing from the Xbox 1... and that is if you want something from the developer, you have to make it really, really simple to do. Or else it isn't worth their development dollars to do it. MS gets this now. We'll see about Sony.
The ______ Agenda
Good news would be if batteries were replaceable, which is hardly an unusual feature.
Li-Po batteries
I don't know about you, but I don't want my controller going nuclear when the batteries explode. Granted, I don't want them to explode at all...
"Max" (yes, they gave it a name) is Sony's condescending, annoying and buggy voice menu system.
If you yell "agent" at it long enough, it should route you through.
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No, it's a stupid move for several reasons.
First of all, you have to admit that your preferred playstyle, is rather rare. The reason why there are rankings in almost every online game is because many gamers are competitive by nature. So it's a silly business decision to ignore the competitive majority. Sony has already acknowledged that they want to have some sort of achievement system, although tweaked so its a bit different (at least per game instead of system-wide). I imagine the main reason why the PS3 launch games don't have Entitlements (Sony's name for achievements), though, is because there just wasn't enough time to add them in.
Secondly, achievements are something that's easily just ignored. I equate it to the rumble feature. Some people don't like it, so they can just turn them off. With the 360 achievements, you can either ignore them, or just never get a gamertag, or don't sign into Xbox Live. The gamerscore is nothing more than just points to "show off". It has no impact on affecting game play (which is something that some people actually want to see). So you can safely play your same game and not give the achievements any consideration. But you should consider the fact that there are a lot of those who DO like said feature (perhaps a bit too passionately).
Personally, I can relate a bit to your situation. I often don't like playing online games, simply because I'm not as good as a lot the kids online, who have far more time than I do to practice any given game. Even though I don't play multiplayer, I still have to acknowledge that it's a play mode that a lot of people do enjoy, so it'd be silly for me to declare, "I don't like multiplayer, so it's a stupid idea for X company to put it in their game", especially since it's something I can just ignore. Yet, I like the gamer score system since that gives me a way to fuel my competitive nature just a little bit, merely by playing a game the same way I mostly would have played it. I don't compare my gamer score to the kids online, who again, have far more time than I do. Instead, I compare it with my friends and co-workers, who are primarily in the same situation I am, so our scores are actually competitive.
-- jchenx
Not supporting achievements, is not FUD. It's a real feature that a lot of people (myself included) were hoping to see, especially since Sony themselves talked about it some time ago.
Have we come full circle? I admit that some of the articles Zonk posts can be rather FUD-ish for Sony, especially when they're just rumors, or just dupes of the same bad news from Sony. But it's gotten back to the point where everything that Zonk posts is already assumed that it's just anti-Sony FUD, when it's not the case. Believe it or not, bad Sony news does still exist, and it's not just "anti-Sony hype".
-- jchenx