Honestly, based on what I've heard so far, I don't think either of them will do better than City of Heroes. The downfall for both of them will be making them for consoles. I'm sorry, but MMOs just do NOT lend themselves well to consoles at all. You're much too restricted on what type of combat and powers system you can use.
I don't see anything these new super-hero MMOs are planning that CoH doesn't already have, and has already polished.
Well, according to someone I was playing with in CoH, Champions Online is going with an entirely new powers system. For starters, there are no archetypes or classes. So you can pick and choose exactly what powers you want. However, there are "better" powers, and "lesser" powers, and you have to use the lesser powers... a LOT... to build up to use the better powers. He described it as a mad click-fest of clicking the lesser powers over 30 times, and several times a second to be able to use the better ones. (Yuck!) Also, it's first and foremost being developed for consoles, and you know what that means for the PC version. Granted, this is all just stuff I got second-hand from someone who said he's playing the beta, so take it as you like.
That said, CoH rocks. I dare you to find me ANY online game that lets you do the extreme stuff you can in CoH. (My stone tanker made my druid in WoW very jealous, back when I used to play him...) And yet they do a good job of keeping it all balanced.
Things can be simplified for a game without being repetitive.
Not in an MMO.
Thinking in terms of a tabletop RPG, there usually isn't a clear-cut correct choice, there's some give and take. You don't know exactly how a given creature is going to act so you can't fire off the same list of skills.
That's because in a tabletop RPG you have a DM who can create each new game uniquely. That quite frankly is simply not possible in an MMO - and most people wouldn't like it if it were. It would be a small niche game, like tabletop RPGs are. People like the familiar. People like knowing what x does, and that when encountering x, if you do z+y+f, you'll win the encounter. People don't like it if x did one thing yesterday, and does something different today. It's impossible to keep coming up with fresh content for people who play your game for (in some cases) an average of over 50 hours a week. Imagine trying to do that with a tabletop RPG as a DM. You'd never be able to keep up.
The only way you're going to get what you're asking for is if you have the money to hire a full development team to build your own personal game and keep changing things in it every day to keep it simple yet not repetitive. I have no idea exactly how much money you'd need to accomplish that, but I'd wager it's larger than your annual wage by several orders of magnitude.
Yes you won't notice a lag improvement at less than 5MS, nor should you. However, the other component that is often overlooked in this (and I used to as well, until a friend demonstrated the difference to me at a store after I tried to tell him he was wrong...) is the refresh rate. Any more, with most LCDs at a 5MS or less response time, it's the refresh rate that is now causing movement lag on the screen. It's much less noticeable on a small monitor though (and by "small" I'm including basically an screen that's small enough to be just a monitor and not a TV) than it is on a larger TV. But don't just take my word for it - go to your local big electronics store and see for yourself. Find a screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and one with a 60Hz refresh rate next to each other. Watch for scenes with movement in them. You'll quickly see the difference. The 120Hz looks smooth as silk, while the 60Hz looks painfully choppy in comparison. Of course, the problem is there's very few actual LCD monitors (if any) that offer a high enough refresh rate to deal with this issue.
Ok, but when I try to go to XXXXXXX.COM it doesn't say anything about parking tickets. It says they want to help me find Car Insurance, Chat, Work From Home, Cheap Flights and other stuff. What now?
I know this is slashdot and you're an anonymous coward, but even so this is a new low. If you had bothered using even 10 seconds of your "valuable" time reading any of his second paragraph, you would know that he already said the same thing.
This is like not even reading the whole title on slashdot, never mind the summary or TFA.
OMG, I couldn't believe how often Madden kept using those terms. I kept waiting for him to mention something about the player getting all the way through to the clitoris, but I guess he just didn't have enough cojones.
I said, you're guaranteed a bite on every cast. Previously, there were times where you would sit through the whole 30-second cast and get nothing at all. The change happened sometime during the early months of TBC if I remember right.
It's also trivially easy and fast to level it high enough to make sure you'll get a catch on every cast, but that's not what I meant, and it's not what I said.
The fishing timer is now 20 seconds, and you're guaranteed a bite on every cast. So average, more like 10-15 seconds per fish. It's still boring though, but that's less than half the average you were going with.
What you're talking about isn't really "speed" or "faster". The term you are looking for is "more powerful". The GHz is how many hertz per second the CPU runs at... or in other words, its speed. Newer CPUs get a lot more done per cycle than the first 2-3GHz CPUs. And because they get more things done per cycle, they get things done faster, but that's not the actual CPU speed.
OP is probably right - 3GHz is probably about the practical limit of what CPUs can run at for everyday use. Speeds higher than that so far seem to increase heat too much to be useful for most applications. Think of GHz like RPMs for a car engine. Most car engines run somewhere between 2000-6000 RPM at driving speed, however some get a whole lot more horsepower at the same RPMs and therefore make the car go faster... but the engine is still running at the same speed. There WAS a time though when they were getting more horsepower by increasing RPMs.
Even if all you do is send and receive a few small text emails, there's still the benefit of having your internet always on and always ready, without tying up the phone line. You don't have to wait for it to dial, you don't have to mess with call-waiting, you don't have to worry about someone not being able to call if you didn't put it on call-waiting or forwarding this time... and you don't have to pay for the phone service. No matter how you slice it, if you use dialup you're either going to tie up the phone line so someone can't call you, or you're paying extra for a service to avoid that. Either you're paying for a landline + cellphone, two landlines, landline + call-forwarding or call-waiting, etc. If you can get broadband in your area for $15, it really is as cheap as dialup or cheaper now, which means there is zero reason not to switch, even if there's no real need.
But most people don't just send and receive text emails. Not even grandma who never browses the web. They still want to see pictures of the grandkids, and send a picture of the bluebird that just built its nest in the birdhouse today.
I didn't say that. I implied that those benefits are not "obviously quantifiable and immediately apparent". Which they're not. Most of the benefits of believing in God don't become apparent until you die. And the ones that happen before that are pretty damn hard to quantify at times.
With broadband internet, it's easy. Pages now load in 2-5 seconds instead of 20-50. Pictures now send in 5-30 seconds instead of 30-300. You can use the internet while you're using your old-school phone, without paying for an extra phone line. Etc, etc.
I do Not agree we should label those who don't want the services as "stupid" or "Luddies" or other childish words.
I agree, "stupid" is not a good label. Luddite fits fairly well though. But neither of those labels is childish.
Nor should we use the force of government (read: suck money from their wallets) to MAKE them adopt these services. Services should always be optional, not mandatory.
I have a damn Comcast box ruining my front yard, and I don't even have cable! It would have been nice if the politicians had ASKED me if it's okay to put the box there, instead of just plopping it in my yard one day. When I said, "I did not ask for a box, you did not ask my permission, and I'm going to remove it," they threatened to arrest me!!!
I'm fairly certain that's not why government exists, to ruin private property with ugly gray boxes and threaten the citizens.
See there's these things called "convenience services" nowadays. You may have heard of them? The list includes things like Electricity, Telephones, Running Water, Public Highways, Broadband Internet, etc. Probably a good 99% of the world's population could survive without them... but see, we have them because they're available, and they're convenient. And most of us, once we try these conveniences, would rather have them than not.
He's knows of the internet, and chooses not to use it.
Thank you for explaining to us why your anecdote is completely irrelevant. This article is about people using dial-up who think they don't want faster broadband.
In many many areas you can get broadband for $30/mo now, in big cities it's often as low as $15 a month. And you'd also be surprised how many of those are paying for a second phone line for their dialup, which is more than $20 right there.
Well-deserved mod up. I have seen this exact same situation many times over, and each time the only reason they didn't think they wanted the broadband was exactly how parent here describes it.
The worst of it is, in many cases the price difference between their dialup and available broadband is so negligible, it's almost a crime to not upgrade.
New consoles by 2012? Maybe. But I doubt it. We're in the middle of a recession with layoffs happening in lots of places, and let's face it - the current gen of consoles is really pushing the limits of what can be done on HD TV. Anything beyond this is going to be staring the law of diminishing returns hard in the face... and I get the feeling that a lot of people won't think it's worthwhile to upgrade that soon, especially to a system that doesn't offer that much more.
Since you're mostly just looking at startup entries, that doesn't really matter. Once you've got some experience under your belt, you'll start to quickly recognize which programs should be loading at startup, and which should not, as well as which are *essential* to run at startup. (Practically none.) If it really is masquerading as a legitimate program that really does need to run at startup (and I honestly can't think of even one program that meets that criteria) then you've got a severe enough infection you probably won't be able to get rid of it without a format and reinstall anyway. In reality though, I'm fairly certain there's not a single thing that shows up in Hijackthis that is absolutely essential to load windows. You could safely 'fix' each and every item in there without harming the system. Sure, you might have a peripheral or two that don't work, but that's as simple as reinstalling the driver software later.
Well, maybe I'm way off but to me it came across mostly like this:
"We're doing this mainly so we can put a little checkmark in the box for 'includes MP3 download service'. We don't really care if it's profitable or not, or how well people like it, or even really whether they use it or not. It's one more thing we can add to the list of features, and that's all we really care about."
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, based on what I've heard so far, I don't think either of them will do better than City of Heroes. The downfall for both of them will be making them for consoles. I'm sorry, but MMOs just do NOT lend themselves well to consoles at all. You're much too restricted on what type of combat and powers system you can use.
I don't see anything these new super-hero MMOs are planning that CoH doesn't already have, and has already polished.
Well, according to someone I was playing with in CoH, Champions Online is going with an entirely new powers system. For starters, there are no archetypes or classes. So you can pick and choose exactly what powers you want. However, there are "better" powers, and "lesser" powers, and you have to use the lesser powers... a LOT... to build up to use the better powers. He described it as a mad click-fest of clicking the lesser powers over 30 times, and several times a second to be able to use the better ones. (Yuck!) Also, it's first and foremost being developed for consoles, and you know what that means for the PC version. Granted, this is all just stuff I got second-hand from someone who said he's playing the beta, so take it as you like.
That said, CoH rocks. I dare you to find me ANY online game that lets you do the extreme stuff you can in CoH. (My stone tanker made my druid in WoW very jealous, back when I used to play him...) And yet they do a good job of keeping it all balanced.
Things can be simplified for a game without being repetitive.
Not in an MMO.
Thinking in terms of a tabletop RPG, there usually isn't a clear-cut correct choice, there's some give and take. You don't know exactly how a given creature is going to act so you can't fire off the same list of skills.
That's because in a tabletop RPG you have a DM who can create each new game uniquely. That quite frankly is simply not possible in an MMO - and most people wouldn't like it if it were. It would be a small niche game, like tabletop RPGs are. People like the familiar. People like knowing what x does, and that when encountering x, if you do z+y+f, you'll win the encounter. People don't like it if x did one thing yesterday, and does something different today. It's impossible to keep coming up with fresh content for people who play your game for (in some cases) an average of over 50 hours a week. Imagine trying to do that with a tabletop RPG as a DM. You'd never be able to keep up.
The only way you're going to get what you're asking for is if you have the money to hire a full development team to build your own personal game and keep changing things in it every day to keep it simple yet not repetitive. I have no idea exactly how much money you'd need to accomplish that, but I'd wager it's larger than your annual wage by several orders of magnitude.
Yes you won't notice a lag improvement at less than 5MS, nor should you. However, the other component that is often overlooked in this (and I used to as well, until a friend demonstrated the difference to me at a store after I tried to tell him he was wrong...) is the refresh rate. Any more, with most LCDs at a 5MS or less response time, it's the refresh rate that is now causing movement lag on the screen. It's much less noticeable on a small monitor though (and by "small" I'm including basically an screen that's small enough to be just a monitor and not a TV) than it is on a larger TV. But don't just take my word for it - go to your local big electronics store and see for yourself. Find a screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and one with a 60Hz refresh rate next to each other. Watch for scenes with movement in them. You'll quickly see the difference. The 120Hz looks smooth as silk, while the 60Hz looks painfully choppy in comparison. Of course, the problem is there's very few actual LCD monitors (if any) that offer a high enough refresh rate to deal with this issue.
Ok, but when I try to go to XXXXXXX.COM it doesn't say anything about parking tickets. It says they want to help me find Car Insurance, Chat, Work From Home, Cheap Flights and other stuff. What now?
I know this is slashdot and you're an anonymous coward, but even so this is a new low. If you had bothered using even 10 seconds of your "valuable" time reading any of his second paragraph, you would know that he already said the same thing.
This is like not even reading the whole title on slashdot, never mind the summary or TFA.
We actually have a good story on Idle. Well, I guess there's a first time for everything.
OMG, I couldn't believe how often Madden kept using those terms. I kept waiting for him to mention something about the player getting all the way through to the clitoris, but I guess he just didn't have enough cojones.
I said, you're guaranteed a bite on every cast. Previously, there were times where you would sit through the whole 30-second cast and get nothing at all. The change happened sometime during the early months of TBC if I remember right.
It's also trivially easy and fast to level it high enough to make sure you'll get a catch on every cast, but that's not what I meant, and it's not what I said.
Your fishing example is outdated.
The fishing timer is now 20 seconds, and you're guaranteed a bite on every cast. So average, more like 10-15 seconds per fish. It's still boring though, but that's less than half the average you were going with.
Yes, I realized the error as soon as I posted. Thanks to no edit button and a 5-minute wait between posts, I didn't get it 'corrected'.
What you're talking about isn't really "speed" or "faster". The term you are looking for is "more powerful". The GHz is how many hertz per second the CPU runs at... or in other words, its speed. Newer CPUs get a lot more done per cycle than the first 2-3GHz CPUs. And because they get more things done per cycle, they get things done faster, but that's not the actual CPU speed.
OP is probably right - 3GHz is probably about the practical limit of what CPUs can run at for everyday use. Speeds higher than that so far seem to increase heat too much to be useful for most applications. Think of GHz like RPMs for a car engine. Most car engines run somewhere between 2000-6000 RPM at driving speed, however some get a whole lot more horsepower at the same RPMs and therefore make the car go faster... but the engine is still running at the same speed. There WAS a time though when they were getting more horsepower by increasing RPMs.
Even if all you do is send and receive a few small text emails, there's still the benefit of having your internet always on and always ready, without tying up the phone line. You don't have to wait for it to dial, you don't have to mess with call-waiting, you don't have to worry about someone not being able to call if you didn't put it on call-waiting or forwarding this time... and you don't have to pay for the phone service. No matter how you slice it, if you use dialup you're either going to tie up the phone line so someone can't call you, or you're paying extra for a service to avoid that. Either you're paying for a landline + cellphone, two landlines, landline + call-forwarding or call-waiting, etc. If you can get broadband in your area for $15, it really is as cheap as dialup or cheaper now, which means there is zero reason not to switch, even if there's no real need.
But most people don't just send and receive text emails. Not even grandma who never browses the web. They still want to see pictures of the grandkids, and send a picture of the bluebird that just built its nest in the birdhouse today.
I didn't say that. I implied that those benefits are not "obviously quantifiable and immediately apparent". Which they're not. Most of the benefits of believing in God don't become apparent until you die. And the ones that happen before that are pretty damn hard to quantify at times.
With broadband internet, it's easy. Pages now load in 2-5 seconds instead of 20-50. Pictures now send in 5-30 seconds instead of 30-300. You can use the internet while you're using your old-school phone, without paying for an extra phone line. Etc, etc.
I do Not agree we should label those who don't want the services as "stupid" or "Luddies" or other childish words.
I agree, "stupid" is not a good label. Luddite fits fairly well though. But neither of those labels is childish.
Nor should we use the force of government (read: suck money from their wallets) to MAKE them adopt these services. Services should always be optional, not mandatory.
I have a damn Comcast box ruining my front yard, and I don't even have cable! It would have been nice if the politicians had ASKED me if it's okay to put the box there, instead of just plopping it in my yard one day. When I said, "I did not ask for a box, you did not ask my permission, and I'm going to remove it," they threatened to arrest me!!!
I'm fairly certain that's not why government exists, to ruin private property with ugly gray boxes and threaten the citizens.
Agreed.
See there's these things called "convenience services" nowadays. You may have heard of them? The list includes things like Electricity, Telephones, Running Water, Public Highways, Broadband Internet, etc. Probably a good 99% of the world's population could survive without them... but see, we have them because they're available, and they're convenient. And most of us, once we try these conveniences, would rather have them than not.
And why did the mods label my post "troll"? Just because I hold a minority view? Huh. Talk about tyranny of the democracy (majority).
Because you're trolling. And you know it.
Broadband has obvious, quantifiable benefits that are apparent basically as soon as you have it.
He's knows of the internet, and chooses not to use it.
Thank you for explaining to us why your anecdote is completely irrelevant. This article is about people using dial-up who think they don't want faster broadband.
In many many areas you can get broadband for $30/mo now, in big cities it's often as low as $15 a month. And you'd also be surprised how many of those are paying for a second phone line for their dialup, which is more than $20 right there.
Well-deserved mod up. I have seen this exact same situation many times over, and each time the only reason they didn't think they wanted the broadband was exactly how parent here describes it.
The worst of it is, in many cases the price difference between their dialup and available broadband is so negligible, it's almost a crime to not upgrade.
New consoles by 2012? Maybe. But I doubt it. We're in the middle of a recession with layoffs happening in lots of places, and let's face it - the current gen of consoles is really pushing the limits of what can be done on HD TV. Anything beyond this is going to be staring the law of diminishing returns hard in the face... and I get the feeling that a lot of people won't think it's worthwhile to upgrade that soon, especially to a system that doesn't offer that much more.
Since you're mostly just looking at startup entries, that doesn't really matter. Once you've got some experience under your belt, you'll start to quickly recognize which programs should be loading at startup, and which should not, as well as which are *essential* to run at startup. (Practically none.) If it really is masquerading as a legitimate program that really does need to run at startup (and I honestly can't think of even one program that meets that criteria) then you've got a severe enough infection you probably won't be able to get rid of it without a format and reinstall anyway. In reality though, I'm fairly certain there's not a single thing that shows up in Hijackthis that is absolutely essential to load windows. You could safely 'fix' each and every item in there without harming the system. Sure, you might have a peripheral or two that don't work, but that's as simple as reinstalling the driver software later.
He has a Zune, and he's not afraid to use it!
Well, maybe I'm way off but to me it came across mostly like this:
"We're doing this mainly so we can put a little checkmark in the box for 'includes MP3 download service'. We don't really care if it's profitable or not, or how well people like it, or even really whether they use it or not. It's one more thing we can add to the list of features, and that's all we really care about."