The MS Trueskill system used in Halo 3 was concieved to create as fair a match as possible. On the surface the theory is very sound and the system is quite good. Unfortunately, it was ultimately broken my MS's oversights in marketing and misreading the intent of it's audience. The system is based on how "certain" it is of a persons rank. Losing games would make it more "certain" a person was that level. Meaning after a person starts breaking even in the W/L column, the system cements their rank there, and it takes long term streaks to change that value.
The problem came in when gamers realized they could start a new account and rank up faster because their "certainty" varibale would begin anew with each new account. Again, not a huge problem until you realize M$ gives out one month trials of XBL like an crack dealer giving out first time free sample. The system lets he good players quickly advance and let newer players play people that are a good match for them. But with free accounts being unlimited, everyone just starts over on a new account as soon as they reach their peak, flooding the low levels with grossly mismatched games.
What could have been a sound matching system was ruined by marketing.
One thing I think is missing from the discussion is what Bungie is doing to console gaming. There are a couple features in Halo 3 that used to be reserved for PC gamers. The ability to edit maps, take screeen captures, and save and review gameplay films is pretty huge in my opinion. Plus their integration with their website for these features is great. Early next year, they will launch their own version of "YouTube" where in game video is automatically uploaded to the user's channel and converted to usable video format.
Now that Bungie has done these features, and done them well, I know it raises the bar in terms of what I want out of a console shooter. I would hope that the ability to edit and share maps, screenshots, and flms becomes a trend in more games. It's great to be able to save and relive fun moments with friends without always running your games through the capture card.
It's hard to see how they wouldn't set trends seeing how Halo 3 still regularly rules the XBL unique user list, even with tons of other big name games on the market, and continue to rule the top of the original Xbox user charts with Halo 2.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
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Batman Discussion
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· Score: 1
Ledger comes across as pure scary at times. Since you haven't seen it, I won't say much more, but I will say Ledger did an amazing job. Right down to his speech, facial mannerisms, and erratic changes in demeanor, he sells crazy. So much so that, for me, Batman was actually a secondary character.
The joker came off so dark, violent, and twisted that it made me several times wonder how the movie 1: stayed PG-13 and 2: Was still a Batman movie.
I'd say just buy a console or two. A Wii/360 combo may keep you both happy. My wife is not a gamer but loves the Wii. Personally, I really don't like the Wii. It will not satisfy the hardcore gamer. The 360 has many good titles worth checking into, Halo, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Oblivion, and Orange Box, to name a few.
He could only access purchased items with a specific account
A lot of Xbox Live content is tied to specific accounts, the machine having a different serial and red rings have nothing to do with it. While it does effectively double the cost of having multiple Live accounts on the same box, it also lets you transfer your user and content to any box you are playing on. My guess is he hadn't tried accessing the content with another account before, otherwise he would have noticed it before the red rings.
While this story may be old, it was not a major election year when it ran, and all the e-voting problems still have not been fixed. So it is at least worth mentioning again, I think. Also, this story serves as a reminder that the most fearsome element of malicious "hacking" is not some geek with uber skills in a dark room, it's the information we willingly give out without realizing the danger.
Ok, I done trying to be constructive. I always was mostly a crowd follower, so here goes: Slashdot sucks and I hate them for posting this story.
I'm a registered Democrat, and find myself having trouble being excited about any candidate. The primary reason I am a Democrat is because I believe a strong public education system is vital to our future success. Personally, I really like a few things that have been done here in MN recently, like mandating online grades and showing parents how to get on and get a real-time report on how their kids are doing. I'd also like to see some progress on fossil fuel reduction. I think nuclear power would go a long way on that in the short term, yet both candidates avoid the topic out of fear from environmentalists.
I guess I'm left with Obama as my choice simply because he hasn't been a strong supporter of media censorship like Clinton has. But I am not terribly impressed with his experience and don't hear a lot of substance in his speeches, mostly abstract ideas like "change" and "moving forward".
Given that Republicans gave us George Bush for 8 years, it will be a long time before I look to them for an inspiring candidate.
Watching the Republican primary play out, I am thoroughly amazed the Republican party can remain intact. Since McCain has emerged as the front-runner, it seems like half the party is threatening to stay home. It was even worse when Huckabee won Iowa and was picking up steam. I don't understand how the party can survive with so many factions that hate each other.
The fiscal conservatives despise Huckabee, the social conservatives despise McCain, the previously unheard of libertarian wing has found Ron Paul, and is despised by everyone, and likewise hates everyone else, for the most part. Romney gets dinged by everyone for blowing in the wind like John Kerry 2004.
Each group in the GOP feels slighted by the other. Fiscal Conservatives have had to watch government and spending grow out of control the last 8 years. Pro-lifers only have one candidate left in the primaries and he is fading fast. While McCain has always been pro-life, he has not been pro-life enough for them. His willingness to compromise on judges is heresy to them. Romeny has only been pro-life as long as he has been running for president. The 'minutemen' wing of the party has gotten no real action on their pet issue over the last 8 years, and have no one to look forward to in 08.
Regardless of who the nominee is, they will not come out the primaries clean, and will not have a good chance come November. The GOP is due for a cleansing and rebirth to become a more coherent party.
Well, immediately, this sounds retarded. However, I can picture one benign reason for this.
We all saw what happened this month with Mass Effect. One idiot decides that it is equal to XXX porn without evver seeing it, and all sorts of people believe him and run with the story. Well, maybe they didn't believe him, but figured since he can be faulted for the mistake, they can run with it to scare people. I could see major "news" networks going nuts over a reading from some moron that wired his sensors wrong.
Is that any reason to excuse this law? No. Just saying I could see one possible reason. Since Journalists can't be trusted to fact check, an incorrect reading could cause a mass panic that would obviously be very problematic.
Agreed.
Our company has an extensiove engineering department, and has always used a lot of in house software. Unfortunately, you have two different peices of related software that really should be combined, but they were written in two different languages. That had gone on for years with software falling into disarray after the engineer that wrote it left. We now have brought it all together and have been standardizing it. We've been converting all client side apps to Visual Studios (flame all you want, I love the IDE). For server-side apps, we've been using PHP.
Standardizing on common tools where possible, even if not optimal, saves a lot of development and upkeep headaches. We standardized on what the most people know, which is a pretty obvious advantage when you have a lot of turnover. Not to mention code re-usability being a huge factor.
Cable news outlets have been long lost to the ratings drive and sensationalism. It makes them money. Now they are just racing to to see who can be the most despicable. I don't know the last time I saw an actual reporter, not just some hack pundit at a reporters desk. They're gone. They have no credibility or repsonsibility anymore.
For a while, there were (and still are) independent bloggers doing a very good job at quality reporting. The problem is, they had very small niches. Now that people and advertisers have been rushing to blogs, the bad journalism has followed. This story is a perfect example. Not only do you have bloggers making stuff up and pretending its news, you have the cable outlets using them as sources, knowing that if the story is false, they have someone to blame. Quality reporting has been drowned out in just about every form of media by sensationalists and ratings whores.
It isn't anybodys fault but our own. We don't require truth, so we shouldn't expect to get it. What will be do, bitch on slashdot, then forget about it 3 hours later? That's the problem with this mess. No one (well not nearly enough) cares enough to turn the channel, write a letter, or make an effort to stop it.
I'm not worried about the video game industry with these stories, But I am very, very sick of this same old mantra that gamers are a group of lazy perverts. It's about damned time the gaming industry stands up for it's customers, and the customers stand up for themselves.
Believe it or not, a great many people still believe what they hear on cable news networks (not just Fox, btw, but they do seem to lead the pack). Anything that can be done to expose them for the liars they are is great.
Journalism today is in a very sad state of affairs. I'm not sure what can be done to fix something this out of whack, but I have no doubt anyone speaking up and calling them on their bs is a good thing.
Ron Paul conspiracist? I think not. Just saying it was quite obviously a mistake that he had ZERO, when people interviewed said they voted for him. Considering a satanic communist burning an American flag would likely manage to get at very least one vote, I'd assume zero was a mistake. Like I said, I don't care how or why, something went wrong. The system cannot be trusted to be accurate.
That's the very clear example. People know they voted for Paul, result says zero. What, the second time they ran the query, it came up with a different result? Bullshit. Something went wrong. I'd don't know or even care if it was intentional or not. If it can't even handle a primary, and has such an obvious and glaring error, we should not be using such a system. Especially if there is no way to verify the results.
I did love Mass Effect. But it had a few really weak points that would keep me from considering it GOTY material.
Unreal 3 engine has some serious trouble rendering detail quickly. Mass Effect will change scene so quickly that some never do completely render.
Uncharted plants were all extremely similar. They were still fun, but similar enough where they could have simply been randomized and made basically limitless.
As you mentioned, there are glitches. You character can become stuck in the geometry and force a reload. Thankfully, this is rare.
Turret on the Make is pretty weird, it can't aim when the vehicle is at an angle.
The story was fantastic, the voice acting was superb, and leveling system and weapons upgrades are solid. It really was a very good game.
The addition of a map editor to a console game was a big step. Theater is impressive as well. Both are really efficient with their file size. The campaign was just as solid as ever, being somewhat short didn't bother me, since the campaign is basically just a quick into to the new weapons and controls before you dive into MP. Since I'm still on nightly after already playing 1100+ games, I have to give it my GOTY vote.
The overhead is. Artists themselves shouldn't worry, as long as touring isn't a problem. I know myself and 50,000 other people will pay upwards of $70 in less than an hour of opening to see Tool come to town. For all those that leech off the artists and don't do anything but make it harder to distribute and enjoy music, yeah, they're pretty F'd. Good riddance.
Just let me die on Mars without mutilating me with a robot. The damn thing wouldn't even know if I was knocked out or not. Just give me a good supply of morphine in the event of an emergency, I'll make sure I go peacefully. This sounds like doing surgery with a milling machine. When we have human level AI, maybe. A "blind knife", no way.
In the event that I was to die on Mars, I'd request that you leave me there. My corpse would be smiling and flipping you all off from across the solar system.
I think at this point Sony has confirmed that games were never part of their PS3 business strategy. Why would people want games anyway? They have a PS3, the most powerful machine in the world, why would they need anything else? People should just be happy Sony lets them buy it!
A good point. At least here you have to say something like "It's for the children" or "The terrorists will win if we don't" before we pass a law that would allow this. Otherwise no one would think it was a good idea.
In America, the government just does things like this, hoping it stays a secret. If it is found out, you smear anyone who is upset as anti-American. If there are hearings on it, you get amnesia and claim executive priveledge. Eventaully, a congressman will have sex with something, or somewhere, he isn't supposed to, and everyone forgets.
I respectfully disagree. Several games that do not relinquish control, but restrict actions, during a "cut scene" are annoying. For instance Gears of War while you are on the radio. All it does is make you walk really slow. I found that slow walk terribly annoying for some reason. In Half Life, they stand in front of the doorway until they are done talking, also pretty annoying if you had already heard it or didn't care to hear it the first time. For me, I'd rather not have control instead of still being in control of a useless character.
I don't know why, but I'm still in control, I'm still in an action mindset and I'm more likely to miss the parts of the story the game wanted to get to me.
Cut scenes are just like anything else in gaming, they might suck, they might be good. It's all a matter of taste. Take FF for example. Every FF game will have pretty much a feature length movie built into it. Now if you don't have the slightest care why you are fighting strange looking birds or large rocks, you probably hate the cutscenes. But if you want to have any idea what is going on in the strange plots, the cut scenes are a must.
Plus most of us can't sit on the edge of our seats for hours on end. The cut scenes are good for a bit of relaxation and setting up the mindframe for your next objective. Now if the scenes don't drive a good story, and don't prepare you for what is going to happen next, yes, they do suck. But that isn't because it is a cutscene, it's because it's a shitty game.
Slashdot Mirror
The MS Trueskill system used in Halo 3 was concieved to create as fair a match as possible. On the surface the theory is very sound and the system is quite good. Unfortunately, it was ultimately broken my MS's oversights in marketing and misreading the intent of it's audience. The system is based on how "certain" it is of a persons rank. Losing games would make it more "certain" a person was that level. Meaning after a person starts breaking even in the W/L column, the system cements their rank there, and it takes long term streaks to change that value. The problem came in when gamers realized they could start a new account and rank up faster because their "certainty" varibale would begin anew with each new account. Again, not a huge problem until you realize M$ gives out one month trials of XBL like an crack dealer giving out first time free sample. The system lets he good players quickly advance and let newer players play people that are a good match for them. But with free accounts being unlimited, everyone just starts over on a new account as soon as they reach their peak, flooding the low levels with grossly mismatched games. What could have been a sound matching system was ruined by marketing.
One thing I think is missing from the discussion is what Bungie is doing to console gaming. There are a couple features in Halo 3 that used to be reserved for PC gamers. The ability to edit maps, take screeen captures, and save and review gameplay films is pretty huge in my opinion. Plus their integration with their website for these features is great. Early next year, they will launch their own version of "YouTube" where in game video is automatically uploaded to the user's channel and converted to usable video format.
Now that Bungie has done these features, and done them well, I know it raises the bar in terms of what I want out of a console shooter. I would hope that the ability to edit and share maps, screenshots, and flms becomes a trend in more games. It's great to be able to save and relive fun moments with friends without always running your games through the capture card.
It's hard to see how they wouldn't set trends seeing how Halo 3 still regularly rules the XBL unique user list, even with tons of other big name games on the market, and continue to rule the top of the original Xbox user charts with Halo 2.
Ledger comes across as pure scary at times. Since you haven't seen it, I won't say much more, but I will say Ledger did an amazing job. Right down to his speech, facial mannerisms, and erratic changes in demeanor, he sells crazy. So much so that, for me, Batman was actually a secondary character.
The joker came off so dark, violent, and twisted that it made me several times wonder how the movie 1: stayed PG-13 and 2: Was still a Batman movie.
I'd have to say Ledger is the better Joker.
I'd say just buy a console or two. A Wii/360 combo may keep you both happy. My wife is not a gamer but loves the Wii. Personally, I really don't like the Wii. It will not satisfy the hardcore gamer. The 360 has many good titles worth checking into, Halo, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Oblivion, and Orange Box, to name a few.
He could only access purchased items with a specific account
A lot of Xbox Live content is tied to specific accounts, the machine having a different serial and red rings have nothing to do with it. While it does effectively double the cost of having multiple Live accounts on the same box, it also lets you transfer your user and content to any box you are playing on. My guess is he hadn't tried accessing the content with another account before, otherwise he would have noticed it before the red rings.
While this story may be old, it was not a major election year when it ran, and all the e-voting problems still have not been fixed. So it is at least worth mentioning again, I think. Also, this story serves as a reminder that the most fearsome element of malicious "hacking" is not some geek with uber skills in a dark room, it's the information we willingly give out without realizing the danger.
Ok, I done trying to be constructive. I always was mostly a crowd follower, so here goes: Slashdot sucks and I hate them for posting this story.
I'm a registered Democrat, and find myself having trouble being excited about any candidate. The primary reason I am a Democrat is because I believe a strong public education system is vital to our future success. Personally, I really like a few things that have been done here in MN recently, like mandating online grades and showing parents how to get on and get a real-time report on how their kids are doing. I'd also like to see some progress on fossil fuel reduction. I think nuclear power would go a long way on that in the short term, yet both candidates avoid the topic out of fear from environmentalists.
I guess I'm left with Obama as my choice simply because he hasn't been a strong supporter of media censorship like Clinton has. But I am not terribly impressed with his experience and don't hear a lot of substance in his speeches, mostly abstract ideas like "change" and "moving forward".
Given that Republicans gave us George Bush for 8 years, it will be a long time before I look to them for an inspiring candidate.
Watching the Republican primary play out, I am thoroughly amazed the Republican party can remain intact. Since McCain has emerged as the front-runner, it seems like half the party is threatening to stay home. It was even worse when Huckabee won Iowa and was picking up steam. I don't understand how the party can survive with so many factions that hate each other.
The fiscal conservatives despise Huckabee, the social conservatives despise McCain, the previously unheard of libertarian wing has found Ron Paul, and is despised by everyone, and likewise hates everyone else, for the most part. Romney gets dinged by everyone for blowing in the wind like John Kerry 2004.
Each group in the GOP feels slighted by the other. Fiscal Conservatives have had to watch government and spending grow out of control the last 8 years. Pro-lifers only have one candidate left in the primaries and he is fading fast. While McCain has always been pro-life, he has not been pro-life enough for them. His willingness to compromise on judges is heresy to them. Romeny has only been pro-life as long as he has been running for president. The 'minutemen' wing of the party has gotten no real action on their pet issue over the last 8 years, and have no one to look forward to in 08.
Regardless of who the nominee is, they will not come out the primaries clean, and will not have a good chance come November. The GOP is due for a cleansing and rebirth to become a more coherent party.
Office productivity throughout the Middle East has risen sharply.
Well, immediately, this sounds retarded. However, I can picture one benign reason for this.
We all saw what happened this month with Mass Effect. One idiot decides that it is equal to XXX porn without evver seeing it, and all sorts of people believe him and run with the story. Well, maybe they didn't believe him, but figured since he can be faulted for the mistake, they can run with it to scare people. I could see major "news" networks going nuts over a reading from some moron that wired his sensors wrong.
Is that any reason to excuse this law? No. Just saying I could see one possible reason. Since Journalists can't be trusted to fact check, an incorrect reading could cause a mass panic that would obviously be very problematic.
Agreed. Our company has an extensiove engineering department, and has always used a lot of in house software. Unfortunately, you have two different peices of related software that really should be combined, but they were written in two different languages. That had gone on for years with software falling into disarray after the engineer that wrote it left. We now have brought it all together and have been standardizing it. We've been converting all client side apps to Visual Studios (flame all you want, I love the IDE). For server-side apps, we've been using PHP. Standardizing on common tools where possible, even if not optimal, saves a lot of development and upkeep headaches. We standardized on what the most people know, which is a pretty obvious advantage when you have a lot of turnover. Not to mention code re-usability being a huge factor.
Cable news outlets have been long lost to the ratings drive and sensationalism. It makes them money. Now they are just racing to to see who can be the most despicable. I don't know the last time I saw an actual reporter, not just some hack pundit at a reporters desk. They're gone. They have no credibility or repsonsibility anymore.
For a while, there were (and still are) independent bloggers doing a very good job at quality reporting. The problem is, they had very small niches. Now that people and advertisers have been rushing to blogs, the bad journalism has followed. This story is a perfect example. Not only do you have bloggers making stuff up and pretending its news, you have the cable outlets using them as sources, knowing that if the story is false, they have someone to blame. Quality reporting has been drowned out in just about every form of media by sensationalists and ratings whores.
It isn't anybodys fault but our own. We don't require truth, so we shouldn't expect to get it. What will be do, bitch on slashdot, then forget about it 3 hours later? That's the problem with this mess. No one (well not nearly enough) cares enough to turn the channel, write a letter, or make an effort to stop it.
I'm not worried about the video game industry with these stories, But I am very, very sick of this same old mantra that gamers are a group of lazy perverts. It's about damned time the gaming industry stands up for it's customers, and the customers stand up for themselves. Believe it or not, a great many people still believe what they hear on cable news networks (not just Fox, btw, but they do seem to lead the pack). Anything that can be done to expose them for the liars they are is great. Journalism today is in a very sad state of affairs. I'm not sure what can be done to fix something this out of whack, but I have no doubt anyone speaking up and calling them on their bs is a good thing.
Ron Paul conspiracist? I think not. Just saying it was quite obviously a mistake that he had ZERO, when people interviewed said they voted for him. Considering a satanic communist burning an American flag would likely manage to get at very least one vote, I'd assume zero was a mistake. Like I said, I don't care how or why, something went wrong. The system cannot be trusted to be accurate.
That's the very clear example. People know they voted for Paul, result says zero. What, the second time they ran the query, it came up with a different result? Bullshit. Something went wrong. I'd don't know or even care if it was intentional or not. If it can't even handle a primary, and has such an obvious and glaring error, we should not be using such a system. Especially if there is no way to verify the results.
I did love Mass Effect. But it had a few really weak points that would keep me from considering it GOTY material.
The story was fantastic, the voice acting was superb, and leveling system and weapons upgrades are solid. It really was a very good game.
The addition of a map editor to a console game was a big step. Theater is impressive as well. Both are really efficient with their file size. The campaign was just as solid as ever, being somewhat short didn't bother me, since the campaign is basically just a quick into to the new weapons and controls before you dive into MP. Since I'm still on nightly after already playing 1100+ games, I have to give it my GOTY vote.
The overhead is. Artists themselves shouldn't worry, as long as touring isn't a problem. I know myself and 50,000 other people will pay upwards of $70 in less than an hour of opening to see Tool come to town. For all those that leech off the artists and don't do anything but make it harder to distribute and enjoy music, yeah, they're pretty F'd. Good riddance.
Ah come on mods, that was pretty funny. Yeah, a bit of a sick path the thread is taking here, but funny.
Just let me die on Mars without mutilating me with a robot. The damn thing wouldn't even know if I was knocked out or not. Just give me a good supply of morphine in the event of an emergency, I'll make sure I go peacefully. This sounds like doing surgery with a milling machine. When we have human level AI, maybe. A "blind knife", no way.
In the event that I was to die on Mars, I'd request that you leave me there. My corpse would be smiling and flipping you all off from across the solar system.
Games?
I think at this point Sony has confirmed that games were never part of their PS3 business strategy. Why would people want games anyway? They have a PS3, the most powerful machine in the world, why would they need anything else? People should just be happy Sony lets them buy it!
A good point. At least here you have to say something like "It's for the children" or "The terrorists will win if we don't" before we pass a law that would allow this. Otherwise no one would think it was a good idea.
In America, the government just does things like this, hoping it stays a secret. If it is found out, you smear anyone who is upset as anti-American. If there are hearings on it, you get amnesia and claim executive priveledge. Eventaully, a congressman will have sex with something, or somewhere, he isn't supposed to, and everyone forgets.
Really, it's a wonderful system we have here.
I respectfully disagree. Several games that do not relinquish control, but restrict actions, during a "cut scene" are annoying. For instance Gears of War while you are on the radio. All it does is make you walk really slow. I found that slow walk terribly annoying for some reason. In Half Life, they stand in front of the doorway until they are done talking, also pretty annoying if you had already heard it or didn't care to hear it the first time. For me, I'd rather not have control instead of still being in control of a useless character.
I don't know why, but I'm still in control, I'm still in an action mindset and I'm more likely to miss the parts of the story the game wanted to get to me.
Cut scenes are just like anything else in gaming, they might suck, they might be good. It's all a matter of taste. Take FF for example. Every FF game will have pretty much a feature length movie built into it. Now if you don't have the slightest care why you are fighting strange looking birds or large rocks, you probably hate the cutscenes. But if you want to have any idea what is going on in the strange plots, the cut scenes are a must.
Plus most of us can't sit on the edge of our seats for hours on end. The cut scenes are good for a bit of relaxation and setting up the mindframe for your next objective. Now if the scenes don't drive a good story, and don't prepare you for what is going to happen next, yes, they do suck. But that isn't because it is a cutscene, it's because it's a shitty game.