What I find really interesting is that almost *every* feature now used on game controllers was first introduced by Nintendo. Their base design for the NES is still used today: D-pad on the left, buttons on the right, start/select in the middle. Then came the SNES adding shoulder buttons and two more buttons on the right in the diamond configuration - which is still pretty much exactly the configuration used by everyone but Nintendo.
So looking back I guess the Wii controller shouldn't be a surprise - it's exactly what Nintendo has been doing ever since the Famicom's inception: innovation in controller design.
Also interesting is that the Gamecube was their only system that didn't include anything really new on the controller (analog shoulder buttons was about it) and was also their least-successful system.
I'm right there with you. I love Red Orchestra as well. Every time I play a game like CS or DoD I have to wonder how on earth they can call their system "recoil"... and then I remember that they're trying to make it as newbie-friendly as possible. Ugh. I'll take the realism of RO any day thanks.
Have to agree with you on the maps too. Given that the specific layout of the map is part of the balance between sides, I think it would be fairly difficult to randomize the maps in it.
If chess players would disagree, then why was there complaints when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, because they had programmed every game that Kasparov had ever played into the machine. Really, do I even need to answer this?? Kasparov had played many computer games, thus the computer had a long history of Kasparov's playing patterns to look through. Gary meanwhile did not have a history of the computer's playing patterns since it had not played any games before.
However, I think it's a little bit of a fallacy to say that memorization of a map means that you are good at a game. Wrong. It's not a fallacy if memorization of a map is part of the game. In fact there's many games that require only the skill of memorization, including one called (surprise!) "Memory". Some people prefer being able to memorize a map in a FPS and gain an advantage from it. Some people prefer it not be an option. This does not necessarily mean one person's preferred game-play is better than the other's, but both definitely do require skill.
Just like saying that memorization of facts makes you intelligent. No. No, it's not the same thing at all. That's worse than the typical car analogies that run rampant here on/.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. When you so casually throw out "pure skill" what you really mean is pure twitch skill and reflex. Memorization is skill; planning out your strategy based on what you know will happen is also skill. I have a feeling quite a few accomplished Chess players would strongly disagree with your assertions.
Most of my favorite games don't have cinematics, but one of them had the best cinematics for the day, and I really liked them. I guess I even played the whole way through the game an extra time or two because of them (to get them back after a Windows reinstall). That was Red Alert 2.
I don't really get people who want death penalties. Most of the time want something like an XP loss, which really just requires grinding to get back. Hooray for pointless timesinks? He hints at it in his post. Death "penalties" (I hesitate to even call it "penalties" because there's certain things that should just naturally result from dieing...) matter a lot in PvP. If you have some consequences for dieing (instead of just a 5-minute corpse run) people are a lot more careful about being a griefing jackass. And a big battle where everyone can just res and come back for more in a matter of minutes really has no end; it just drags on until everyone's bored with it. There's a lot more to it than that, but that covers a few of the basics.
You're different. Item loss, eh? So what happens the first time I lose an uber +20 hammer of smiting because of a server lagspike? The only people who will tolerate that sort of nonsense are in the smallest niche of players. He did say something about player-created items. And if you'd go to the URL he posted, you'd soon see that Darkfall is going to be mostly about PvP with a full-loot system, so if you lose something... well, you can just go kill the guy who took it and get it back. If you're good enough. Also, all items (in this game) will eventually wear out and break beyond repair, so no one's going to get too attached to their gear. Think of it like an FPS on an MMO scale, not like "a game similar to WoW". In fact, according to the developers this game will be designed in such a way that a veteran player with good gear and all his in-game skills maxed could lose to 3 or 4 players fresh from character creation - if they're good enough. So while there will certainly be some gear better than other, their won't be "an uber +20 hammer of smiting".
Yes there is a penalty for dieing. I have to run back to my body, which in some places is a long fscking way away. If I die before a mob dies, I don't get XP for it. In a fare number of quests if I die, the area respawns before I can get back to my body. If I kill the mob I was after, but get killed by adds, sometimes the mob I want despawns before I can get back (meaning I have to wait around and do it all over again.) If I resurrect at the graveyard I have 10 minutes of being an utter weakling. Maybe it's not harsh enough for you. That's fine, the game isn't for you. Go play DDO, I hear the penalty for dieing there is quite a bit harsher. Meaning the penalty for dieing in WoW is about 10 extra minutes of wasted time (if you figure in the time needed to farm the money for the repair bills). Yawn. That's so harsh, I'm just not sure I can bear it.
Every RPG ever has grind. You go on quests, typically to kill things/get things to get experience to gain levels to improve your skills to go on more quests. See, most of what's considered "RPGs" now isn't about RP at all. Every *real* RPG ever had no grind at all. "Grinding" by its very nature pretty much precludes RP entirely. RP = Role Play. That means you imagine yourself as another character, and try to think like that character and act like that character would in whatever situations you find yourself in. RPG = Role-Playing Game, or a game made for Role Play. RPG != "snorefest grind to hit lvl xxx". The concept of leveling was introduced by Dungeons and Dragons, and at the start was far and away not the purpose of the game. It was merely a convenient way to track your character's strength as you progressed through the story; the story was the important part and how well you did was based on how well you acted your character.
Which is, in itself, another form of grind. Only if you make it so. If your sole purpose for going out and killing xx number of "mob #305" is to get 5 more points in a skill then yes it would be grinding. The point here is that you should not need to do that to progress. Your skills should increase as fast as needed simply through playing the game however it best suits your fancy.
Wow is designed to appeal to a broad base of people. The game is well polished, and fun to play. Like almost all Blizzard games. I still play Starcraft from time to time, because it's still fun. And that's why WoW wins. At the end of the day, it's the game that the most people find the most fun. Yep. One of the things Blizzard really did right was make a game that was fun right from the first minute, and stays fun for quite a while. Unlike some MMOs which really don't get fun until level xx and require a couple dozen hours to get there. It's no wonder why these don't have as many subscribers - most people don't bother sticking around to find out if the game gets better later on.
As a side note I had to laugh when on of my friends berated me for not joining LOTR (despite the fact there is no Mac client, and I'm not running Windows on my home box) and he told me it was completely different. Um, no. You still go on quests to kill stuff, to get stuff, to get better skills, to go on quests, to kill stuff....etc. Quite true. LotRO is a WoW clone in most ways, with a little Guild Wars, EQ, and a few other games thrown in. Which is great if you're bored with WoW and want basically the same thing with a few new twists.
And besides, Tauren just look so cute and happy when they're jumping up and down! /moo
Because generally if you don't vote for one of the two main candidates, you may as well not vote at all. Unless of course you're just voting on principle. Ultimately elections on this scale are just popularity contests. Who would actually fill the role best has very little to do with it.
You can vote for whoever you want, it just won't matter because both of the two main candidates will always get more votes than any third-party candidate. So, most people vote for the lesser of two evils when they don't like either of the two main candidates.
Yes it would be nice to see this mold broken, but it's not likely to happen any time soon as the barrier of entry to national elections keeps getting higher and higher.
He most certainly is under US jurisdiction. We own the Australian government, which means we own Australia, which means we own your ass. Break our laws and we'll slam you in our prisons, because we can, and it makes us money to do so.
Welcome to the new world order, Bush (Sr., Jr.) and Clinton style.
Until Australia (and, for that matter, the UK) learns to stand up to the world's biggest bully (what to my immense shame is what my country, the United States, has become), they and their people will be under our jurisdiction, subject to our laws on their own soil, and with no protection from their own governments. Just like the soviet satellite states of the last century, we'll let you wave your own flags and call yourselves whatever you like, but fuck with us and our cash flow, and we'll slam you into our gulag.
You want this to not be the case? Then elect and demand a government with some backbone that will tell the United States exactly where it can get off. I normally am not too fond of people bashing the US (most people do it merely because it's "the in thing" and really don't have a clue what they're talking about) but this is one time where I have to agree 100%. I wish I had some mod points for you because IMO your post is spot-on.
Only problem is, there's no "Microsoft" to push Linux.
No, this is not a troll/flame/MS bash. I'm just pointing out that there's no single large company that stands to make a large profit by having millions of Linux computers distributed to schools - which MS has certainly done with Windows/Office.
Sure, they might kill sometimes, but they won't get more kills than deaths, specially with all the good players around trying to get money from the system. I never seen a real noob do well playing against experts... Which is why I said you were "mostly right" except for that one small implication. Meaning I agreed with 99.9% of your post.;)
Even in UT or Quake, you can be a noob, get quad damage and somehow manage to kill a good player who had his back on you. Every game has a *bit* of luck involved, but the chances of a noob getting lucky every single round is astronomical. Here I have to disagree, quite strongly. I'm slightly above-average at UT, meaning I can join a public server and usually be at or near the top. If I were to go 1 vs 1 against the worst players on these servers, they would never get a single frag off me. Not one. But then someone else joins the server who totally blows me away. I can't kill him, even once. And then there's the next level of players who probably never join public servers, who could trounce this guy 30-0 every time. And at the very top you have players like Fatal1ty who'd blow that guy away 30-0 every time. The point is, you don't need any cheats/hacks/aimbots in Quake or UT to be invincible against the average player. Because there is absolutely no luck involved. All power-ups are timed, usually to the exact second. All gun and ammo spawns are timed to the precise second. Every shot does a precise amount of damage, and your shots always go exactly where you aim your weapon. (With one or two exceptions like the primary fire of the UT Flak Cannon.) And that's not even touching all the little things players can do in these games to gain an advantage. If you're an average player (let alone a noob) on the same server as a true expert in UT or Quake you'd be lucky to even hit the guy, let alone get a frag. And if somehow through some freak of nature (or more likely the expert getting a tad lazy) you would manage to hit him just once, you'd be dead before you could blink and two seconds later he'd be at the closest health/armor power-up replenishing whatever minute damage you just did.
The difference is, games like Quake and UT are a lot more like Chess, while Counterstrike is more like Poker.
All that aside though, I still agree with your premise in your initial post. I'm just nitpicking because this is something that always bugs me.
I think you're missing part of the lesson to be learned from the Wii. That being that innovation in gameplay (not necessarily just in designing a radical new controller to change/enhance gameplay) can be a much better investment than simply more power and nicer graphics. In other words, it's good if games look nicer, but games have already looked pretty good for a few years now and there's a point where better gameplay is just a lot more valuable than better graphics. Most of this burden generally falls on the game developers, but then Nintendo has always done fairly well at that too.
Um... I would actually say they're doing pretty good to be making a profit that quick. According to Wikipedia it took Amazon.com about 8 years to become profitable. And this [XBox] was just one branch of a much larger company; MS as a whole has still been quite profitable for their shareholders in the meantime.
And hasn't their X-Box Live been profitable from the start?
Does anybody really think Paul Bocuse and a burger joint are in the same league? I take issue with this. Are you implying that McDonalds is a "burger joint"? That's definitely an insult to burger joints all across the USA.
The US was self sufficient for 100 years, and should still be today. Keyword being "was". That was then, this is now. Now, our economy is completely interlaced with the global economy and that includes China. Start pulling on big strings like that and the whole thing will come down like a house of cards. It would make the Great Depression look like nothing.
Regardless of the terminology from harrassment to assault to rape, and regardless of how things transpired physically, someone felt powerless and irrevocably hurt, and someone else meant it that way. At what point is it morally justifiable to hold the perpetrator culpable to allow justice for the victim? If that were all it took for something to qualify as a crime, we should all be in prison.
I wouldn't do it even then. Because no matter how much authorization in writing you have to back you up that you broke the law "only under duress" what it still boils down to is that you broke the law. Having it in writing that your employer ordered you to break the law will be a lot more valuable if you don't actually do it. At that point the worst that could happen is you would lose your job and (possibly, but unlikely) have your career ruined. Seems like a much better option than what could happen in the long-term if you went ahead and did it, and the shit ever hit the fan later. If you go ahead and do it and the shit does hit the fan later, it's all going to depend on who can afford the best lawyers - no matter how much documentation you have. After all, it's you who ultimately broke the law not your employer.
The problem being that they don't get an advance copy, meaning that they can't release the review before the game (for all those people wondering if they should pick it up on release day. By the time you buy it, play it, and write the review no one really cares about that game anymore because they've already bought it based on and article written by a shill. Doh! I *knew* there was something I was missing. Thanks for pointing that out.
Better yet... Pirate the game pre-release (I'm sure some other publication leaked their beta copy)... then you can REALLY stick it to em! Sounds like a GREAT thing for an A-list publication to do!:D
The video game industry has suffered from this for ages. No matter how crappy or buggy the game, it would get good reviews from the rags and web sites. The reason for this is that the gaming companies would threaten to pull advance copies of their next game if any game got a bad review. Since not being to review games would effectively shut down the site/rag, they piped down and played along. It's been going on with the auto makers for decades. Seriously pan one of the new line up, and see what you get to write about next year. The beauty products industry has also long operated along these lines. Write something less than glowing about their new shade of lipstick and see if you ever get another sample. The fashion industry is another example. Or alternatively if your publication is actually worth more than a pile of dirt you might actually buy the next product from the "offended" vendor and still review it... and then expose them for the asswipe they are.
As an admin of a public CS:S server I have to say I think this is a terrible idea. We already see too many problems such as "team-stacking" because of so many players who care too much about their k/d ratio. Imagine if actual money was on the line. Every current issue the game has would effectively be exacerbated on orders of magnitude. The huge majority of CS players just aren't mature enough for something like this.
I think you're mostly right except for your implication that CS is based 100% on skill like Quake and UT are. It is not. IMO this is why it has been so popular for so long. Any noob can hop in a large server full of people and have a chance at killing anyone else, even the very best players. (Assuming friendly fire is turned on of course.:P )
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What I find really interesting is that almost *every* feature now used on game controllers was first introduced by Nintendo. Their base design for the NES is still used today: D-pad on the left, buttons on the right, start/select in the middle. Then came the SNES adding shoulder buttons and two more buttons on the right in the diamond configuration - which is still pretty much exactly the configuration used by everyone but Nintendo.
So looking back I guess the Wii controller shouldn't be a surprise - it's exactly what Nintendo has been doing ever since the Famicom's inception: innovation in controller design.
Also interesting is that the Gamecube was their only system that didn't include anything really new on the controller (analog shoulder buttons was about it) and was also their least-successful system.
I'm right there with you. I love Red Orchestra as well. Every time I play a game like CS or DoD I have to wonder how on earth they can call their system "recoil"... and then I remember that they're trying to make it as newbie-friendly as possible. Ugh. I'll take the realism of RO any day thanks.
Have to agree with you on the maps too. Given that the specific layout of the map is part of the balance between sides, I think it would be fairly difficult to randomize the maps in it.
Correction: Deep Blue had played Chess games before, Kasparov simply was not allowed to review them.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. When you so casually throw out "pure skill" what you really mean is pure twitch skill and reflex. Memorization is skill; planning out your strategy based on what you know will happen is also skill. I have a feeling quite a few accomplished Chess players would strongly disagree with your assertions.
Most of my favorite games don't have cinematics, but one of them had the best cinematics for the day, and I really liked them. I guess I even played the whole way through the game an extra time or two because of them (to get them back after a Windows reinstall). That was Red Alert 2.
Because generally if you don't vote for one of the two main candidates, you may as well not vote at all. Unless of course you're just voting on principle. Ultimately elections on this scale are just popularity contests. Who would actually fill the role best has very little to do with it.
You can vote for whoever you want, it just won't matter because both of the two main candidates will always get more votes than any third-party candidate. So, most people vote for the lesser of two evils when they don't like either of the two main candidates.
Yes it would be nice to see this mold broken, but it's not likely to happen any time soon as the barrier of entry to national elections keeps getting higher and higher.
Welcome to the new world order, Bush (Sr., Jr.) and Clinton style.
Until Australia (and, for that matter, the UK) learns to stand up to the world's biggest bully (what to my immense shame is what my country, the United States, has become), they and their people will be under our jurisdiction, subject to our laws on their own soil, and with no protection from their own governments. Just like the soviet satellite states of the last century, we'll let you wave your own flags and call yourselves whatever you like, but fuck with us and our cash flow, and we'll slam you into our gulag.
You want this to not be the case? Then elect and demand a government with some backbone that will tell the United States exactly where it can get off. I normally am not too fond of people bashing the US (most people do it merely because it's "the in thing" and really don't have a clue what they're talking about) but this is one time where I have to agree 100%. I wish I had some mod points for you because IMO your post is spot-on.
Only problem is, there's no "Microsoft" to push Linux.
No, this is not a troll/flame/MS bash. I'm just pointing out that there's no single large company that stands to make a large profit by having millions of Linux computers distributed to schools - which MS has certainly done with Windows/Office.
The difference is, games like Quake and UT are a lot more like Chess, while Counterstrike is more like Poker.
All that aside though, I still agree with your premise in your initial post. I'm just nitpicking because this is something that always bugs me.
I think you're missing part of the lesson to be learned from the Wii. That being that innovation in gameplay (not necessarily just in designing a radical new controller to change/enhance gameplay) can be a much better investment than simply more power and nicer graphics. In other words, it's good if games look nicer, but games have already looked pretty good for a few years now and there's a point where better gameplay is just a lot more valuable than better graphics. Most of this burden generally falls on the game developers, but then Nintendo has always done fairly well at that too.
Um... I would actually say they're doing pretty good to be making a profit that quick. According to Wikipedia it took Amazon.com about 8 years to become profitable. And this [XBox] was just one branch of a much larger company; MS as a whole has still been quite profitable for their shareholders in the meantime.
And hasn't their X-Box Live been profitable from the start?
I wouldn't do it even then. Because no matter how much authorization in writing you have to back you up that you broke the law "only under duress" what it still boils down to is that you broke the law. Having it in writing that your employer ordered you to break the law will be a lot more valuable if you don't actually do it. At that point the worst that could happen is you would lose your job and (possibly, but unlikely) have your career ruined. Seems like a much better option than what could happen in the long-term if you went ahead and did it, and the shit ever hit the fan later. If you go ahead and do it and the shit does hit the fan later, it's all going to depend on who can afford the best lawyers - no matter how much documentation you have. After all, it's you who ultimately broke the law not your employer.
Obviously IANAL and this is just my two cents.
No.
No, I'm pretty sure he meant reaming.
Yeah I'm pretty sure you're right. I counted ALL my fingers several times and I still do not come up with MANY.
Well... 8 doesn't seem like all that many to me anyway.
As an admin of a public CS:S server I have to say I think this is a terrible idea. We already see too many problems such as "team-stacking" because of so many players who care too much about their k/d ratio. Imagine if actual money was on the line. Every current issue the game has would effectively be exacerbated on orders of magnitude. The huge majority of CS players just aren't mature enough for something like this.
I think you're mostly right except for your implication that CS is based 100% on skill like Quake and UT are. It is not. IMO this is why it has been so popular for so long. Any noob can hop in a large server full of people and have a chance at killing anyone else, even the very best players. (Assuming friendly fire is turned on of course. :P )