Did you actually read what I said? I don't give a rats ass about Steam. It's the fact Valve VERY underhandedly removed a much welcome feature from CS 1.6. It's one thing to be up front and honest, but to insert the change into the changelog TWO DAYS LATER in the dead of night. That's just lame.
My friends and I have already jumped ship to another FPS. Barring Valve doing the decent thing and putting the bot code WE tested back into CS, we won't be touching a Valve product ever again.
Valve are wankers for the way they've run the beta of Steam, shut it down before the final (leaving you unable to play since you have to be able to connect to the servers to even play locally), then stripping the VERY cool bots from CS 1.6 and sneaking that into their changelog two days after the entry was posted.
Valve have lost a good few sales between me and my friends with this as we're all EXTREMELY pissed off that the bots, which we loved playing against when there wasn't enough for a good all human game, have been removed without warning, most likely for the code WE tested to be used in Condition Zero.
I am REALLY fucking pissed at Valve. A group of friends and I have been playing the beta of Counterstrike 1.6 for weeks now on Steam. We were sad when the beta of Steam shut down, but knew it wouldn't be long until the final.
Well, firstly the final was a day late... BUT, the sneaky little shits sneaked into the September 9th changelog for CS TWO DAYS AFTER IT WAS POSTED that bots had been removed from CS 1.6.
My friend and I used bots a lot since we never knew when we could ALL get on the server at the same time, so bots killed time waiting for someone else to show.
The way I see it, the people at Valve had us unknowingly beta testing the Condition Zero bots, then stripped the code out, leveraging their new product by duping people into beta testing the code, getting used to the new bots, then screwing us.
Don't get me wrong, what they do is their choice, but it's the sneaky, underhanded way they did it by hiding it in the 09/09 changelog by adding it on 09/11.
Valve have lost me, and all my friends as customers over this as they've deceived us by acting like the bots were a permanent addition to CS. Instead we were unknowingly testing code for CZ which has now been removed.
You're gonna have to upgrade pretty soon though, since they'll be phasing out Win98 just like they did with Win95. That SUCKED since, as a gamer, I had to "upgrade" (if any Microsoft OS can be considered an upgrade) just to play games, when 95 was just fine for everything else I wanted.
MORE games should have random elements I think. I remember WAY back around 1991 or so when Lotus 3 came out on the Amiga, there was a random track generator that worked pretty well. I would LOVE to see a feature like that in a modern racing game. (Hell, even an easy to use track editor).
As for Diablo, essentially it's Nethack with flashy graphics and less character classes:) But that's not a bad thing. Nethack is a classic. It was the first roguelike I played, on my old 386/33 with a huge 120 meg hard drive:) The saves got pretty damn big if you made it all the way down.
There is no such thing as too much randomness in games as long as the code is sensible and works within well defined limits. (Which is of course how it'd be done. So you won't suddenly find it snowing in the dungeon for example:))
I say MORE RANDOM STUFF! Random tracks in racing games, random dungeons in RPG's... MORE MORE MORE!
I remember when I bought the Tim Burton remake of "Planet of the Apes" (I liked it, bite me) it said it was NUON ENHANCED. To which I thought "What the fuck is NUON?"
I looked into it and learnt two things.
1) Very few players were built with a NUON chip in them.
2) Only about 6 DVD's were released with features that took advantage of them.
It's a real shame as I'd love to know what the content on the DVD is that uses NUON. I'd at least like to see what I paid for, but ah well.
Hope you're right. Sony also have exclusive rights to the Formula One franchise until 2007 I believe. Not sure WHAT the means to the PC. Sure as hell not heard of any licensed games in development for the PC.
I LOVE Tony Hawk 2. I like to PLAY the game, nail tricks etc... I have no interest in skating around and collecting the letters to spell SKATE and that nonsense. If I did, I'd write the letters to spell SKATE down on little pieces of paper and scatter them about my house. The level design in Tony Hawk is awesome. The game design is fundamentally flawed in requiring so much effort just to open up the levels. In fact I would go so far as to say the game should carry a label saying "Don't buy this game unless you're prepared to invest hours upon hours unlocking the stuff we're hyping on the back." I LOVE THPS2, but due to the way the game is designed I would never buy another one, as that's just rewarding a developer for making retarded design decisions.
As I said, I have NO problem with unlockables such as extra characters etc... But locking out all but one area from the start is just wrong IMO and punishes those, not just mediocre, but also those who simply don't have the time to invest in completing the game something like 12 times.
I agree with you about FMV. I DESPISE FMV in games. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE a good game intro (Mechwarrior 3, Warcraft 3 and the like spring to mind, as well as the very amusing Dungeon Keeper) but I loathe FMV during games.
As for aiming for the common denominator, no, you misread my post. (Assuming you actually READ it rather than skim it.) I was advocating difficulty levels. Tony Hawk 2 was my example. I love the two player game, but I can't get anyone to play it with me as they find it too hard. (Which, to the non-hardcore gamer, it is.) If they'd put in difficulty levels so you could scale it, it could be set so it could be enjoyed amongst players of different skills.
MOST games I like don't have a story or anything. Sports games and the like.
As for GTA, I like to cheat. Not to give myself infinite health etc... But to get WEAPONS!:)
There's also a funny trainer you can get which, among other things, let's you (if you hammer the key) have it rain cars:) THAT makes for some fun screenshots:)
I have to disagree about Res Evil being a good game. I found it tedious and dull, but to each their own.
I agree with you. I like a challenge, sure. The first time I broke 75,000 points on the first level of Tony Hawk 2 was REALLY satisfying.
However, games are SUPPOSED to entertain, not frustrate. Games are often likened to movies when it comes to categorisation. Now, when a MOVIE frustrates, it gets bad reviews, people bitch. When a GAME frustrates because it's difficult, we get articles like this one from GamerDad saying we need more frustrating games.
It goes without saying a game needs multiple difficulty settings. But there is a difference between challenging and frustrating. For example, the amount of WORK you have to put in in the Tony Hawk series to get access to all the stuff you've paid for is retarded. I'm a heavy gamer, and I wound up using cheats. I mean for Gods sake, Tony Hawk 2 (the last one I actually cared about) you had to complete the game with something like 10 different skaters. Yes, that's right, you had to complete the game 10 TIMES to unlock everything. That's a reprehensible design decision.
Games are supposed to entertain. Some insanely addictive games (Bejewelled for example) don't ramp up the difficulty.
In short, you make some VERY good points. One thing I HATE is having to do stuff over and over again to unlock stuff I should have been able to access in the first place. I don't mind having extra characters unlockable, and videos etc... That doesn't bother me. What DOES REALLY piss me off is, again, like Tony Hawk, only having access to *ONE STINKING LEVEL* at game start. It's one thing to reward GOOD players with unlockables. It's another entirely to punish mediocre players by locking out 90% of the game they've paid for.
Starcraft is the same. The AI knows from the start the entire map layout AND where you are. Easily demonstrated by cheating to remove fog of war, and watching the AI IMMEDIATELY head in your direction.
Cheating AI is something I REALLY hate. It's just a kludge developers use to make the AI seem smarter than it is. Without the cheating, most game AI would be dumb as a brick.
Get cheats to unlock everything:) I have no idea how far in I am, but the missions bore me. I just like running round the city causing chaos:)
One of the coolest inventions in recent years with gaming difficulty is where is scales to the player. For example, the most recent Papyrus NASCAR sim has an option for AI that scales according to your skill. I've tested it a few times, and it works VERY well. Keeps the racing close. A BIG problem with racing games is when you're either way fast or way slow. Having scaleable AI difficulty is a great idea.
ALL games should have a difficulty option. I usually play games first on Easy. That way you can get through it pretty quick, get the story etc... Then, if the game was actually FUN, I'll try it on a harder difficulty.
Quake is a good example. Went through it on the lowest difficulty the first time. Then went through it on Nightmare difficulty. THAT was sweet:)
The people who have problems have posted on the boards. My experience, and theirs, of their official boards is they ignore them. There's one particular fault (can't remember what it is since it doesn't actually effect me) that has been reported by innumerable people, and Valve have ignored them.
I like Valve, don't get me wrong, and I think Steam is a really interesting idea, but they *HAVE* to start listening to people. As I said, it's a beta right now, but it's almost set for release. I fail to see what could change between now and release that would fix the problems my friends are having.
When Steam is released, my friends who can't run it are screwed for playing ANY multiplayer HalfLife title.
A group of friends and me play Counterstrike every weekend. A fair few people are having a lot of problems even getting Steam to work properly, let alone play anything.
I know Steam is beta, but it's damn near complete and released (expected to coincide with the HL2 release). For those friends who want to join our Counterstrike game, they're going to be screwed if Valve don't fix some of the fundamental problems with the service.
I just feel sorry for the GC owners. They seem to be getting gipped lately. I saw further down the games page here on the dot that Eidos is quitting releasing for the GC.
NO MORE TOMB RAIDER FOR YOU GC TYPES! I'm sure you're all heartbroken:)
I find it interesting that the GC is, essentially, getting a 6-7 year old PS1 title, and that's somehow cutting edge gaming news.
Really, it's no different then when Hasbro went through a spate of "upgrading" a bunch of old arcade titles like Pacman.
I actually feel sorry for GC owners on this. I mean PS2 got MGS2. XB and PC got MGS2: Substance (which was the original game with a TON of other stuff added. Sadly, you can only get it legally on DVD for the PC)... And then Gamecube gets a remake of MGS.
Doesn't seem right... I'm a Playstation fan, but I'm not a console evangelist.
I did originally cite that episode in my post, but forgot the actual dialog so changed it:)
Thanks for filling the void!
It's the same damn thing! These people who sign the amnesty form, can we expect strip searches and armed police to stop you on the street and say "HALT! Show me your papers and your iPod!"
Anyone who falls for this and does it... If they don't wind up busted I'll be amazed. This is asking people to turn themselves in, under the guise of amnesty. I mean this isn't a government agency here, entrapment is perfectly legal.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you actually read what I said? I don't give a rats ass about Steam. It's the fact Valve VERY underhandedly removed a much welcome feature from CS 1.6. It's one thing to be up front and honest, but to insert the change into the changelog TWO DAYS LATER in the dead of night. That's just lame.
My friends and I have already jumped ship to another FPS. Barring Valve doing the decent thing and putting the bot code WE tested back into CS, we won't be touching a Valve product ever again.
Cynicism it would seem.
I am proud to be the victim of your social experiment:)
Valve are wankers for the way they've run the beta of Steam, shut it down before the final (leaving you unable to play since you have to be able to connect to the servers to even play locally), then stripping the VERY cool bots from CS 1.6 and sneaking that into their changelog two days after the entry was posted.
Valve have lost a good few sales between me and my friends with this as we're all EXTREMELY pissed off that the bots, which we loved playing against when there wasn't enough for a good all human game, have been removed without warning, most likely for the code WE tested to be used in Condition Zero.
No sale Valve. You screwed and deceived us.
I am REALLY fucking pissed at Valve. A group of friends and I have been playing the beta of Counterstrike 1.6 for weeks now on Steam. We were sad when the beta of Steam shut down, but knew it wouldn't be long until the final.
Well, firstly the final was a day late... BUT, the sneaky little shits sneaked into the September 9th changelog for CS TWO DAYS AFTER IT WAS POSTED that bots had been removed from CS 1.6.
My friend and I used bots a lot since we never knew when we could ALL get on the server at the same time, so bots killed time waiting for someone else to show.
The way I see it, the people at Valve had us unknowingly beta testing the Condition Zero bots, then stripped the code out, leveraging their new product by duping people into beta testing the code, getting used to the new bots, then screwing us.
Don't get me wrong, what they do is their choice, but it's the sneaky, underhanded way they did it by hiding it in the 09/09 changelog by adding it on 09/11.
Valve have lost me, and all my friends as customers over this as they've deceived us by acting like the bots were a permanent addition to CS. Instead we were unknowingly testing code for CZ which has now been removed.
Now this is the standard Slashdot troll... *insert name* was found dead today. I dismissed it last night thinking it couldn't possibly be true.
Check the news today and get the double whammy of Ritter and Cash...
You're gonna have to upgrade pretty soon though, since they'll be phasing out Win98 just like they did with Win95. That SUCKED since, as a gamer, I had to "upgrade" (if any Microsoft OS can be considered an upgrade) just to play games, when 95 was just fine for everything else I wanted.
Only if you're a crappy parent.
I've been a parent for two years now and feel younger than I did before!
As for aging 20 years in 6 weeks, I got that beat.
You will need:
1) Six packets of cigarettes.
2) A large bottle of tequila.
3) An unventilated room.
Start smoking the ciggies, then drink the tequila. When (if?) you wake up next day, you'll feel like you've aged 50 years.
Thanks for the info. While my player doesn't do NUON, I'm at least curious to see what NUON can actually do.
MORE games should have random elements I think. I remember WAY back around 1991 or so when Lotus 3 came out on the Amiga, there was a random track generator that worked pretty well. I would LOVE to see a feature like that in a modern racing game. (Hell, even an easy to use track editor).
As for Diablo, essentially it's Nethack with flashy graphics and less character classes:) But that's not a bad thing. Nethack is a classic. It was the first roguelike I played, on my old 386/33 with a huge 120 meg hard drive:) The saves got pretty damn big if you made it all the way down.
There is no such thing as too much randomness in games as long as the code is sensible and works within well defined limits. (Which is of course how it'd be done. So you won't suddenly find it snowing in the dungeon for example:))
I say MORE RANDOM STUFF! Random tracks in racing games, random dungeons in RPG's... MORE MORE MORE!
Nice to see NUON getting used.
I remember when I bought the Tim Burton remake of "Planet of the Apes" (I liked it, bite me) it said it was NUON ENHANCED. To which I thought "What the fuck is NUON?"
I looked into it and learnt two things.
1) Very few players were built with a NUON chip in them.
2) Only about 6 DVD's were released with features that took advantage of them.
It's a real shame as I'd love to know what the content on the DVD is that uses NUON. I'd at least like to see what I paid for, but ah well.
Hope you're right. Sony also have exclusive rights to the Formula One franchise until 2007 I believe. Not sure WHAT the means to the PC. Sure as hell not heard of any licensed games in development for the PC.
Rabid dog fever...
I LOVE Tony Hawk 2. I like to PLAY the game, nail tricks etc... I have no interest in skating around and collecting the letters to spell SKATE and that nonsense. If I did, I'd write the letters to spell SKATE down on little pieces of paper and scatter them about my house. The level design in Tony Hawk is awesome. The game design is fundamentally flawed in requiring so much effort just to open up the levels. In fact I would go so far as to say the game should carry a label saying "Don't buy this game unless you're prepared to invest hours upon hours unlocking the stuff we're hyping on the back." I LOVE THPS2, but due to the way the game is designed I would never buy another one, as that's just rewarding a developer for making retarded design decisions.
As I said, I have NO problem with unlockables such as extra characters etc... But locking out all but one area from the start is just wrong IMO and punishes those, not just mediocre, but also those who simply don't have the time to invest in completing the game something like 12 times.
I agree with you about FMV. I DESPISE FMV in games. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE a good game intro (Mechwarrior 3, Warcraft 3 and the like spring to mind, as well as the very amusing Dungeon Keeper) but I loathe FMV during games.
As for aiming for the common denominator, no, you misread my post. (Assuming you actually READ it rather than skim it.) I was advocating difficulty levels. Tony Hawk 2 was my example. I love the two player game, but I can't get anyone to play it with me as they find it too hard. (Which, to the non-hardcore gamer, it is.) If they'd put in difficulty levels so you could scale it, it could be set so it could be enjoyed amongst players of different skills.
MOST games I like don't have a story or anything. Sports games and the like.
As for GTA, I like to cheat. Not to give myself infinite health etc... But to get WEAPONS!:)
There's also a funny trainer you can get which, among other things, let's you (if you hammer the key) have it rain cars:) THAT makes for some fun screenshots:)
I have to disagree about Res Evil being a good game. I found it tedious and dull, but to each their own.
I agree with you. I like a challenge, sure. The first time I broke 75,000 points on the first level of Tony Hawk 2 was REALLY satisfying.
However, games are SUPPOSED to entertain, not frustrate. Games are often likened to movies when it comes to categorisation. Now, when a MOVIE frustrates, it gets bad reviews, people bitch. When a GAME frustrates because it's difficult, we get articles like this one from GamerDad saying we need more frustrating games.
It goes without saying a game needs multiple difficulty settings. But there is a difference between challenging and frustrating. For example, the amount of WORK you have to put in in the Tony Hawk series to get access to all the stuff you've paid for is retarded. I'm a heavy gamer, and I wound up using cheats. I mean for Gods sake, Tony Hawk 2 (the last one I actually cared about) you had to complete the game with something like 10 different skaters. Yes, that's right, you had to complete the game 10 TIMES to unlock everything. That's a reprehensible design decision.
Games are supposed to entertain. Some insanely addictive games (Bejewelled for example) don't ramp up the difficulty.
In short, you make some VERY good points. One thing I HATE is having to do stuff over and over again to unlock stuff I should have been able to access in the first place. I don't mind having extra characters unlockable, and videos etc... That doesn't bother me. What DOES REALLY piss me off is, again, like Tony Hawk, only having access to *ONE STINKING LEVEL* at game start. It's one thing to reward GOOD players with unlockables. It's another entirely to punish mediocre players by locking out 90% of the game they've paid for.
Starcraft is the same. The AI knows from the start the entire map layout AND where you are. Easily demonstrated by cheating to remove fog of war, and watching the AI IMMEDIATELY head in your direction.
Cheating AI is something I REALLY hate. It's just a kludge developers use to make the AI seem smarter than it is. Without the cheating, most game AI would be dumb as a brick.
Get cheats to unlock everything:) I have no idea how far in I am, but the missions bore me. I just like running round the city causing chaos:)
One of the coolest inventions in recent years with gaming difficulty is where is scales to the player. For example, the most recent Papyrus NASCAR sim has an option for AI that scales according to your skill. I've tested it a few times, and it works VERY well. Keeps the racing close. A BIG problem with racing games is when you're either way fast or way slow. Having scaleable AI difficulty is a great idea.
ALL games should have a difficulty option. I usually play games first on Easy. That way you can get through it pretty quick, get the story etc... Then, if the game was actually FUN, I'll try it on a harder difficulty.
Quake is a good example. Went through it on the lowest difficulty the first time. Then went through it on Nightmare difficulty. THAT was sweet:)
The people who have problems have posted on the boards. My experience, and theirs, of their official boards is they ignore them. There's one particular fault (can't remember what it is since it doesn't actually effect me) that has been reported by innumerable people, and Valve have ignored them.
I like Valve, don't get me wrong, and I think Steam is a really interesting idea, but they *HAVE* to start listening to people. As I said, it's a beta right now, but it's almost set for release. I fail to see what could change between now and release that would fix the problems my friends are having.
When Steam is released, my friends who can't run it are screwed for playing ANY multiplayer HalfLife title.
A group of friends and me play Counterstrike every weekend. A fair few people are having a lot of problems even getting Steam to work properly, let alone play anything.
I know Steam is beta, but it's damn near complete and released (expected to coincide with the HL2 release). For those friends who want to join our Counterstrike game, they're going to be screwed if Valve don't fix some of the fundamental problems with the service.
I just feel sorry for the GC owners. They seem to be getting gipped lately. I saw further down the games page here on the dot that Eidos is quitting releasing for the GC.
NO MORE TOMB RAIDER FOR YOU GC TYPES! I'm sure you're all heartbroken:)
From my cursory examination, VB.net LOOKS a lot cleaner.
As for bloat, only a developer could tell you that.
I find it interesting that the GC is, essentially, getting a 6-7 year old PS1 title, and that's somehow cutting edge gaming news.
Really, it's no different then when Hasbro went through a spate of "upgrading" a bunch of old arcade titles like Pacman.
I actually feel sorry for GC owners on this. I mean PS2 got MGS2. XB and PC got MGS2: Substance (which was the original game with a TON of other stuff added. Sadly, you can only get it legally on DVD for the PC)... And then Gamecube gets a remake of MGS.
Doesn't seem right... I'm a Playstation fan, but I'm not a console evangelist.
I can see the point you're trying to make, and it's a good one.
VB.net is really only VB in name these days. The code is vastly different.
I did originally cite that episode in my post, but forgot the actual dialog so changed it:)
Thanks for filling the void!
It's the same damn thing! These people who sign the amnesty form, can we expect strip searches and armed police to stop you on the street and say "HALT! Show me your papers and your iPod!"
Anyone who falls for this and does it... If they don't wind up busted I'll be amazed. This is asking people to turn themselves in, under the guise of amnesty. I mean this isn't a government agency here, entrapment is perfectly legal.
Sure... "Amnesty"... Photo ID...
This is a like those stings where wanted criminals "win a prize" and when they go to collect it, get arrested.
They need to drop CD's a LOT further in price before anyone I know will buy them again.
As soon as I read the story I thought "I smell cease and desist..." I mean HASBRO have spanked sites on the net before for FAR less than this.