Lemme try to rephrase this. Looking at gamespy stats (inaccurate, but as a baseline) out of the games that have more than 1,000 players online far less than half came out last year, and just about half came out in the last two years. Both numbers are in the single digits.
Now compare that to all the titles that came out in the last couple of years with online play. If not declining, it's massively saturated and is clearly difficult for new games to carve out a niche. Need a sample? Just got XIII. Virtually no online PC servers. The PS2 version? Already forming clans. Need another? Freelancer. Want more? Go start hunting down recent reviews, which have actually started to downgrade ratings of titles because the online play is hindered by lack of players.
And compare that to consoles, where new online titles stand a better chance of gaining audience, online, there is more diversity (FPS games have to make up something of 95% of the online PC crowd and there's about 0% online sports activity), and usually less cheating and security concerns.
PC Online gaming seems to be dying. It's easier and easier to get a new game these days that have multi abilities and no real servers to connect to. If it's not Counter-Strike or some blockbuster everyone else has, your chances of finding a decent online game goes down significantly.
One of the best online experiences I had was playing PSO on the Dreamcast. Friendly people for the most part (until, I guess, cheating sunk in) and you could always find a group to play with.
$70/year is a bit steep, but so is $70/month to setup a server.
"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands."
What an interesting combination. (Alleged) molestation of a child, investment fraud, and free speech.
Asanine statements like that is why if we start banning anything, it should be self made pundits. Worse than child molestation? Does this guy know any victims? Knows what can happen to someone after something like that?
"FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it."
BULL. It's called PARENTING, you moron. If I was 12 and my mom had seen me playing a game like GTA, my Playstation would be on the street the next day.
"By what preposterous reasoning can one argue that once someone turns 17 years of age it magically becomes OK to glorify mass murder?"
I dunno. I guess the same reasoning we use to send 18 year olds off to a desert to kill people.
Offtopic? Shameless self-promotion I'll agree with, but I don't see how posting about a mod that does something no other mod (or FPS game) does is offtopic for a discussion on original gaming.
I've made a UT2003 mod called Riftwar, which one 1st place in phase one of Epic's contest for Best Gametype.
The latest version, which was entered into phase two of the contest, does something different from most FPS mods. The game itself is tracking the state of a war between three armies (Humans, Undead and Aliens) over the course of the maps/games that are played. You can see the state of the war, which consists of trying to win the capitol maps of three worlds, at a web site, for instance:
Sadly, with a waning UT2003 online crowd it's hard to find more than a couple of people on the server and the mod is really designed for teams to be beating the server, trying to win back worlds from each other. Still, if you want something a bit different:
...even if it was legit, it seems like it would pertain to GTA and GTA2, Rockstar could easily claim (I'd think) that the 3D makeover divorces it from any code this guy handed his interviewer. And GTA3's success was certainly not built on top of those two games, which were moderate sellers at best.
Yeah, I can't disagree with the regression - in one part because I stopped playing years ago and in another because I saw it as inevitable. Every beta release seemed to be getting closer and closer to fan service with Valve just adding to the trend.
But if there are no new players joining and it's only old guard players now - there's a -lot- of them, to the point where CS's popularity is I think prohibitive to the formation of new, smaller communities around online titles that have subtle goodness abounds. Or even similar titles that are leaps above CS in terms of graphics and gameplay (there's at least two mods for UT2003 that are Counter-Clones which could probably make this case).
So while it's regressing in terms of quality, there doesn't seem much impedence in it's online girth - or if there is, it appears negligible and slow.
Yeah, but Lineage is largely Korean, whereas EQ has dominance in other markets. Globally EQ may not be king, but in North American and Euro markets there's a case where this argument makes sense.
But I think it's more prevalent with say, Counter-Strike than even EQ. CS has fallen far behind on many fronts in terms of design and technology, but it's far and away the most popular online game.
One big reason? You can always find a game for it. There's so many servers, it's easily the cheapest and easiest way to play an online PC FPS right now. It's surviving in part because of it's own weight.
Well naturally, but don't think you're doing the industry any favors. Waiting for the bargain bin of a title is virtually like not buying it at all for the market. All you do is help EB recoup some losses.
Not that I'm slamming it, I've bought plenty of old games.
At the same time, there's all this outrage that DX:IW was "restricted" by it's XBox version, and yet I bet most people bought the original Deus Ex for about $10 as well.
OK, performance problems suck. They always do. There's no denying it. But people are acting like this is the first PC demo in the history of man to have bizarre performance issues with unknown configs. They (and by they I mean everyone, including such pundits as Penny-Arcade) jump to the conclusion that it just must be a problem with game itself, it can't be fixed, Ion Storm sucks, blah blah blah.
Guess what. Runs fine on lots of boxes. Full res here, no probs. It's quite likely something to be ironed out in the near future.
Then everyone jumps on the interface, once again acting like it's some cardinal sin to have to figure out how to move an item from one slot to the other. Yes, I think it could be friendlier. No, I don't think the 10 minutes out of my life it took me to get the hang of it was worth any form of forum flaming.
Unified ammo. Yes, it's a dumb idea. I also think anyone who thinks it will completely ruin a game like Deus Ex 2 never really appreciated the first.
No locational damage. Sure I'd like to see something in SOF2, but having "run at every enemy and get headshots" removed from option list is also not the worst thing to happen to any game.
After that it degenerates into such whininess as "the levels are too dark."
Yes, it's regrettable that Ion Storm released a demo with tech problems and some really bad ini files. Yeah, that sucks. It's worse, though, to see much of the PC gaming community jump on the bandwagon over it rather than giving it a chance. The demo didn't even really grab me until I tried it for the second time, but by the fourth time I played it I was pretty sold on the game.
But hey, what Spector PC game actually sold well when it first came out anyway?
We will agree that video games can have a harmful effect on kids when you agree that parents who raise thoughtless murdering psychopaths are jackasses. Deal? Good. Oh, and instead of $260 million dollars - you get nothing. Good? Good.
Like, 5 years ago when it was supposed to be this killer, massive, online, third person vehicular/team based game.
And maybe 3 years ago, I would have settled for a similarly themed, but smaller conceptualized FPS.
Perhaps last year I would have settled for inexpensive but well done port for internet play.
Now? Why? Why would I put money down for this with games like Enemy Territory for free? BF1942 doing more vehicles and bigger scale? UT2004 just around the corner? Why spend money on yesterday's game?
I will buy Halo. When the XBox hits below $100, I'll probably pick out of the resale shelf of EB Games.
At one time, Bungie was set to be one of the most innovative game companies around. One load of Microsoft cash, and they're old news.
Well, for one thing - the Unreal Wiki is huge and probably provides more documentation for modding Unreal than any other engine. It's more dedicated than frustrated modders.
And, there's a fervent community of modders willing to help around a lot of different forums.
And of course, there's the 3DBuzz tutorials and classes.
Not saying that more documentation wouldn't be good, but the Unreal Engine has a lot of grass roots documentation and help to get people started.
I doubt the "better" service you'd get is worth the extra money. They'll probably still treat you like crap, just do it a little faster and more efficiently.
Couldn't sleep last night, got started on the Savage demo. It annoyed me at first, it didn't like the screen resolution I had chosen and needed to be beaten to play at first. My first couple of games I was pretty horribly confused and mostly just seemed to be respawning. The game doesn't feel much like an FPS to be honest, it actually kinda feels like you are playing one of those animated figures from an RTS game. For people who are expecting Quake slammed into Warcraft, you'll be a bit disappointed, the graphics and physics aren't terribly up to par for modern FPS games.
But then again, if you wanted to play a modern FPS game - you would be already. The novelty here of being part of a large scale battle that slowly evolves with new buildings, units and techs is pretty invigorating and fun. Once Savage becomes familiar, it becomes very entertaining. The graphics might not be mind blowing, but they do keep the lag down to a serviceable (although sometimes not very fluid) level. I would definately be interested to see what the game is like with all it's features and commanders who have actually played for more than an afternoon. Try this one for a couple hours, there's a decent chance you won't walk away disappointed.
I did. It sounded neat. It looked neat. It seemed like it was going be a lot of neat toys in one little package.
Instead, it's a covert plot to make gamers look like jackasses if they dare use this as a phone in public places or teach them there's better ways to spend $30 on a flimsy little memory card you're more likely to lose than figure out how to insert it in.
Jesus, this isn't Nokia - I think my dad might be behind this.
"What this amounts to is having the customer pay for the development of the new content twice: once while it's being developed, and again when it's ready for prime time. Huh?"
And then there is the SOE model - pay before it's ready for prime time, and then pay while it's being developed. Genius!
Slashdot Mirror
Lemme try to rephrase this. Looking at gamespy stats (inaccurate, but as a baseline) out of the games that have more than 1,000 players online far less than half came out last year, and just about half came out in the last two years. Both numbers are in the single digits.
Now compare that to all the titles that came out in the last couple of years with online play. If not declining, it's massively saturated and is clearly difficult for new games to carve out a niche. Need a sample? Just got XIII. Virtually no online PC servers. The PS2 version? Already forming clans. Need another? Freelancer. Want more? Go start hunting down recent reviews, which have actually started to downgrade ratings of titles because the online play is hindered by lack of players.
And compare that to consoles, where new online titles stand a better chance of gaining audience, online, there is more diversity (FPS games have to make up something of 95% of the online PC crowd and there's about 0% online sports activity), and usually less cheating and security concerns.
PC Online gaming seems to be dying. It's easier and easier to get a new game these days that have multi abilities and no real servers to connect to. If it's not Counter-Strike or some blockbuster everyone else has, your chances of finding a decent online game goes down significantly.
One of the best online experiences I had was playing PSO on the Dreamcast. Friendly people for the most part (until, I guess, cheating sunk in) and you could always find a group to play with.
$70/year is a bit steep, but so is $70/month to setup a server.
...to people too lazy to think for themselves.
"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands."
What an interesting combination. (Alleged) molestation of a child, investment fraud, and free speech.
Asanine statements like that is why if we start banning anything, it should be self made pundits. Worse than child molestation? Does this guy know any victims? Knows what can happen to someone after something like that?
"FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it."
BULL. It's called PARENTING, you moron. If I was 12 and my mom had seen me playing a game like GTA, my Playstation would be on the street the next day.
"By what preposterous reasoning can one argue that once someone turns 17 years of age it magically becomes OK to glorify mass murder?"
I dunno. I guess the same reasoning we use to send 18 year olds off to a desert to kill people.
Offtopic? Shameless self-promotion I'll agree with, but I don't see how posting about a mod that does something no other mod (or FPS game) does is offtopic for a discussion on original gaming.
I've made a UT2003 mod called Riftwar, which one 1st place in phase one of Epic's contest for Best Gametype.
The latest version, which was entered into phase two of the contest, does something different from most FPS mods. The game itself is tracking the state of a war between three armies (Humans, Undead and Aliens) over the course of the maps/games that are played. You can see the state of the war, which consists of trying to win the capitol maps of three worlds, at a web site, for instance:
http://inkless.com/edfcentral/
Sadly, with a waning UT2003 online crowd it's hard to find more than a couple of people on the server and the mod is really designed for teams to be beating the server, trying to win back worlds from each other. Still, if you want something a bit different:
http://inkless.com/riftwar/
...even if it was legit, it seems like it would pertain to GTA and GTA2, Rockstar could easily claim (I'd think) that the 3D makeover divorces it from any code this guy handed his interviewer. And GTA3's success was certainly not built on top of those two games, which were moderate sellers at best.
Yeah, I can't disagree with the regression - in one part because I stopped playing years ago and in another because I saw it as inevitable. Every beta release seemed to be getting closer and closer to fan service with Valve just adding to the trend.
But if there are no new players joining and it's only old guard players now - there's a -lot- of them, to the point where CS's popularity is I think prohibitive to the formation of new, smaller communities around online titles that have subtle goodness abounds. Or even similar titles that are leaps above CS in terms of graphics and gameplay (there's at least two mods for UT2003 that are Counter-Clones which could probably make this case).
So while it's regressing in terms of quality, there doesn't seem much impedence in it's online girth - or if there is, it appears negligible and slow.
Yeah, but Lineage is largely Korean, whereas EQ has dominance in other markets. Globally EQ may not be king, but in North American and Euro markets there's a case where this argument makes sense.
But I think it's more prevalent with say, Counter-Strike than even EQ. CS has fallen far behind on many fronts in terms of design and technology, but it's far and away the most popular online game.
One big reason? You can always find a game for it. There's so many servers, it's easily the cheapest and easiest way to play an online PC FPS right now. It's surviving in part because of it's own weight.
Well naturally, but don't think you're doing the industry any favors. Waiting for the bargain bin of a title is virtually like not buying it at all for the market. All you do is help EB recoup some losses.
Not that I'm slamming it, I've bought plenty of old games.
At the same time, there's all this outrage that DX:IW was "restricted" by it's XBox version, and yet I bet most people bought the original Deus Ex for about $10 as well.
Like a game? Great, vote with your wallet.
OK, performance problems suck. They always do. There's no denying it. But people are acting like this is the first PC demo in the history of man to have bizarre performance issues with unknown configs. They (and by they I mean everyone, including such pundits as Penny-Arcade) jump to the conclusion that it just must be a problem with game itself, it can't be fixed, Ion Storm sucks, blah blah blah.
Guess what. Runs fine on lots of boxes. Full res here, no probs. It's quite likely something to be ironed out in the near future.
Then everyone jumps on the interface, once again acting like it's some cardinal sin to have to figure out how to move an item from one slot to the other. Yes, I think it could be friendlier. No, I don't think the 10 minutes out of my life it took me to get the hang of it was worth any form of forum flaming.
Unified ammo. Yes, it's a dumb idea. I also think anyone who thinks it will completely ruin a game like Deus Ex 2 never really appreciated the first.
No locational damage. Sure I'd like to see something in SOF2, but having "run at every enemy and get headshots" removed from option list is also not the worst thing to happen to any game.
After that it degenerates into such whininess as "the levels are too dark."
Yes, it's regrettable that Ion Storm released a demo with tech problems and some really bad ini files. Yeah, that sucks. It's worse, though, to see much of the PC gaming community jump on the bandwagon over it rather than giving it a chance. The demo didn't even really grab me until I tried it for the second time, but by the fourth time I played it I was pretty sold on the game.
But hey, what Spector PC game actually sold well when it first came out anyway?
" Halo outshines pretty much every other game Bungie ever made"
Most people who are familiar with the Marathon series would argue that notion heavily (and probably accurately)
Most botched launch of a product ever.
"MOD" isn't an acronym. Mod, modder, mini mod, small mod. Whoever started this trend needs to be beaten with some rods of sugar cane.
Come on, let's stop the madness while we still can.
Dear Jack Thompson,
We will agree that video games can have a harmful effect on kids when you agree that parents who raise thoughtless murdering psychopaths are jackasses. Deal? Good. Oh, and instead of $260 million dollars - you get nothing. Good? Good.
Signed,
Some gamers.
-
Cathode Tan
Like, 5 years ago when it was supposed to be this killer, massive, online, third person vehicular/team based game.
And maybe 3 years ago, I would have settled for a similarly themed, but smaller conceptualized FPS.
Perhaps last year I would have settled for inexpensive but well done port for internet play.
Now? Why? Why would I put money down for this with games like Enemy Territory for free? BF1942 doing more vehicles and bigger scale? UT2004 just around the corner? Why spend money on yesterday's game?
I will buy Halo. When the XBox hits below $100, I'll probably pick out of the resale shelf of EB Games.
At one time, Bungie was set to be one of the most innovative game companies around. One load of Microsoft cash, and they're old news.
Sony Online Entertainment.
Well, for one thing - the Unreal Wiki is huge and probably provides more documentation for modding Unreal than any other engine. It's more dedicated than frustrated modders.
And, there's a fervent community of modders willing to help around a lot of different forums.
And of course, there's the 3DBuzz tutorials and classes.
Not saying that more documentation wouldn't be good, but the Unreal Engine has a lot of grass roots documentation and help to get people started.
Hyperspace Delivery Boy Blitz?
That's not policy, it's just practice for the devs. PlanetSide also suffered from that before I bailed on it.
I doubt the "better" service you'd get is worth the extra money. They'll probably still treat you like crap, just do it a little faster and more efficiently.
Dude, that's not a conspiracy, that's SOE policy. If you ask them enough, they'll probably point you to the FAQ that says so.
They did the exact same kind of thing with PlanetSide when I was playing.
*snip*
Couldn't sleep last night, got started on the Savage demo. It annoyed me at first, it didn't like the screen resolution I had chosen and needed to be beaten to play at first. My first couple of games I was pretty horribly confused and mostly just seemed to be respawning. The game doesn't feel much like an FPS to be honest, it actually kinda feels like you are playing one of those animated figures from an RTS game. For people who are expecting Quake slammed into Warcraft, you'll be a bit disappointed, the graphics and physics aren't terribly up to par for modern FPS games.
But then again, if you wanted to play a modern FPS game - you would be already. The novelty here of being part of a large scale battle that slowly evolves with new buildings, units and techs is pretty invigorating and fun. Once Savage becomes familiar, it becomes very entertaining. The graphics might not be mind blowing, but they do keep the lag down to a serviceable (although sometimes not very fluid) level. I would definately be interested to see what the game is like with all it's features and commanders who have actually played for more than an afternoon. Try this one for a couple hours, there's a decent chance you won't walk away disappointed.
( cathodetan.com )
I did. It sounded neat. It looked neat. It seemed like it was going be a lot of neat toys in one little package.
Instead, it's a covert plot to make gamers look like jackasses if they dare use this as a phone in public places or teach them there's better ways to spend $30 on a flimsy little memory card you're more likely to lose than figure out how to insert it in.
Jesus, this isn't Nokia - I think my dad might be behind this.
"What this amounts to is having the customer pay for the development of the new content twice: once while it's being developed, and again when it's ready for prime time. Huh?"
And then there is the SOE model - pay before it's ready for prime time, and then pay while it's being developed. Genius!