That you received +5 Insightful for your post is staggering.
My favority scenario (although rather unrealistic) is people marching into gas chambers while watched over by the Eco-Troops.
This is your favorite? Seriously? How very insightful that you are able to pick your favorite way for billions of people to die!
I find it intriguing that you think these potential futures are 'choices'. As if the collective of Humanity is actually going to do anything without being forced to do it! Name one thing Humanity has done as a whole that was a 'choice'.
It's as if you think that we had a choice going from your purported 200million limit to where the population is today. What, was everyone going to just up and stop fucking? I don't think so.
BTW, you are dangerously out of touch if you think the world cannot support more than 200 million people.
Short answer: If Google can do it, then why can't you?
But about the Subject... There was a discussion about "moral" vs. "ethical". Here is a case that might help answer the question of "what is the difference"?
Adding an easter egg to your product, one that doesn't add value to the product, could be spending company resources, and getting paid, to do something that was never your job. So, it's not ethical.
But to say it's not moral? I don't think anyone would go that far.
"But obviously the money is in selling a swimmer a $10,000 swimsuit so they can shave.02 seconds off their swim time in the hopes of beating Michael Phelps in the next olympics."
So let me get this straight... As an MMO operator you only do the 'really fun things' once you are going out of business?
Because, I guess it wouldn't make sense to have been doing those from day one. You know, to stay in business?
Seriously, I played TR. I enjoyed it immensely during the first half of the game. Then it got incredibly repetitive and boring. The crafting and economy were simply not good enough. End-game activities were not good enough. In today's world, those are two make-it or break-it pieces, which TR did not have.
Brilliantly conceived, poorly executed. Same ol' story.
I'm tired of people saying the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend is some kind of socialist program. This money is not being forcibly taken from the rich and given to the poor. There is absolutely NO social aspect to it. If the city you live in were to find a thousand tons of pure gold beneath it, and then decided to share it equally among all currently recognized citizens, would you call that socialist?
I would caution you that there is a difference between abuse and plain incompetence. Of which I would say this "politics = news" fiasco falls into the latter category with regards to Slashdot's current editors.
"Otherwise every "me too" on a subject you agreed with, or "fuck you" on one you didn't would be modded up."
I see your point. I just disagree that it would happen like that. If I get moderator points, which I do regularly, and I click on a story to find a post has +34 Insightful, then I am most likely not going to moderate it up further. As a good moderator I will go looking further into the posts for other insightful posts and moderate those.
What I am saying is the situation would be more dynamic than the "everyone sticks on one post like glue" that you seem to think would happen. Slashdotters are more inquisitive and intelligent than herd animals.
And here is a good example of how Slashdot's moderation system is ineffective.
We have multiple +5 Insightful posts on this thread. Some of them tell this person that what he is doing is wrong, and then there's this one which goes the other direction completely. Yet both are treated equally as +5 Insightful.
Had Slashdot's system allowed scores above 5 then it would be more like a dynamic poll (and be more representative of what the populace thinks about the issue) than this hard-capped false ceiling that we have now.
As far as Karma (a useless stat anyway imho) you could still cap how much one can gain on a single post, but allow the score of the post to be unlimited.
Seriously, coding this in would take, what, ten seconds?
I don't recall anyone forcing you to drive in this country, nor anyone forcing you to live in a country where driving is so common. Unforunately for those people who were killed in 9/11 they had no choice in the matter. They couldn't wake up that day and say to themselves "well, today I don't think I want to get killed by terrorists." So every time you get behind the wheel I hope you realize it is your choice to take the risks involved and I hope from now on you stop being so dense that it becomes offensive to people like myself -- people who actually recognize and can appreciate the difference between driving accidents and terrorism.
I shouldn't need to point out the obvious, but apparently you can't see it, so I will.
You said I was either a willing accomplice to the 'fraud' or that I am a bumbling idiot.
I stated that Six Sigma was probably not needed. That rules out the accomplice piece. If I was, I wouldn't have said that in the first place.
Which leaves bumbling idiot.
You took that title as soon as you figured me for a "Six Sigma drone" when in fact that is not what I get paid to do at all. I do have Six Sigma experience, but that doesn't make me a drone. I am highly skeptical of Six Sigma's application to *anything*.
Sounds like you've had some bad experiences with poor application of an industry-accepted improvement methodology. Also, sounds like you are a horrible person to work with, but that is here nor there.
As a Six Sigma, and LEAN, Green Belt I would probably say that making a good MMORPG is more of an art than a science. Six Sigma is purely scientific. You could develop and operate an MMORPG and be within the threshold of Six Sigma for all possible technical factors and yet the game could be absolutely horrible. This is because Six Sigma is poor at measuring the key factor of an MMORPG: fun.
You could use Six Sigma to support business functions and to identify problematic areas in places like project flow, server uptime, and programming, but in the end it's only really just support for the artistic vision that is the real backbone of the MMORPG.
And let's face it, plenty of MMORPGs are successful without needing Six Sigma uptime or coding defect rates, etc.
Face it, the stock market is gambling. You are gambling with your money, betting that the multitude of variables that could come together to clusterfuck your investments don't do that and you get some kind of marginal gain.
Yet hundreds of millions of games have been bought and loved, despite having no interface modifications.
What if the same game is released on PC and console, and they coexist on the same servers? I've no idea if this is in the future, but imagine this: What happens if the mods the PC users are using provide obvious benefit (note: they do), and the players are more capable in things like raiding (note: they are)? Who would want to play it on a console, and beyond that, wouldn't this cause segregation? "Oh that guy is on PS3, we can't bring him because he doesn't know how much threat he is pulling on the Boss, he'll pull aggro often, and wipe us."
Look, I said it was a *hurdle*, not an impenetrable barrier. It would only really apply in an uneven situation like cross-platform, which might not even happen anyway.
Those designed for PC fanboys, yes. There's no reason an MMO can't be made shorter and more fun, so they can be played by people who don't shit in socks. Again, no offence.
MMOG, sure. MMORPG, not really. I mean, sure you can spend a half hour playing an MMORPG. But you aren't going to get to the max level of any current MMORPG in anything less than several weeks at that rate, and you will always be behind the curve from the beginning. If you can still enjoy it, more power to you, but most people who play MMORPGs do not enjoy being way behind everyone else, so if they don't have the time they simply don't play. Why should console MMORPGs be different?
I'll grant I'm taking a PC perspective, but why does the machine make any difference? Hardware is irrelevant. A PS3 is practically a PC anyway -- the only difference is how much more locked down a PS3 is than a PC, and that's exactly the reason for the hurdles I brought up in the first place.
"None of those are really hurdles. Mods are not necessary for a game with a well-designed interface; they're a PC fetish, console gamers don't want them. Alt-tabbing to a cheat site is hardly something that's necessary or desireable. And I don't see why a console would suffer FPS-drop more than the typical PC."
Easy of you to say, but not true. Even games with a well-designed interface will be more popular if they allow players to modify the interface to their own wild abandon. Not only does that mean moving interface elements around, but also creating new elements like DPS meters, healing meters, threat meters, mob kill history and loot drops, calendars, class-specific skill helper tools, mapping tools, instance/dungeon strategy tools, etc.
You really think all of that will just be included when a game ships? No game in history has included all of that. Today, World of Warcraft has it all, and from the modding community.
Who said anything about a cheat site? You do realize that MMOs are extremely in depth and often a quest chain or an activity in game is highly complicated. These aren't cheat sites, they are a collection of information that saves you hours and hours of time over the course of your play of the game. Example: Thottbot, Allakhazam, WoWWiki, etc
A console, while presumably powerful in the graphics department, is not as powerful as my PC. Granted, my PC is not typical. I guess this means I can expect a lower level of graphics in a console based MMO than I am used to on my PC.
MMORPGs are a huge time sink. It's not practical to play many of them at the same time because you will get nowhere in any of them. Most people focus on one or two, but not much more. Because of this I am more likely to just keep playing my computer MMO because of all the things I just said above.
"How do you mod an MMO? The clients are not made to be user-modifiable, for obvious reasons."
Mostly through interface customization. It's huge in all of the big MMOs like WoW. It's not all interface customization, though. Check out Curse Gaming's WoW mod site if you want a better idea.
"You can't have a computer? The wiki-sites will still be there, you'll just need another box to access them."
It sounds lazy, but I don't want to have to get up walk 40 ft and bring the computer out of hibernation or screen saver just to do a quick check on something.
"Every console in general use today supports the standard USB keyboard. That's how I chat when I play FFXI on my PS2."
As long as the MMO makers for Sony realize this, all is well.
"FFXI already does this on a PS2. Although there is some drop in FPS, it's not unmanageable and people do successfully play such battles on PS2s. Presumably present-generation consoles would do better."
While today's consoles would play yesterday's games much faster, unfortunately that is not the case with new games. Take Oblivion as an easy example: The developers pushed the console to the limit, to the point that at the final battle of the game things were moving along at about 3-5fps for me. It really ruined the last part of the game for me.
- Alt-tab to a helpful wiki-based site for game help? Can it be done on consoles?
- Game forums, still computer based? I guess that's ok...
- I assume communication will be done via voice? I shudder at the thought of hearing 11 year old immature idiots on the/trade channels. Keyboards and text chat had better be an option or I/quit.
- Can the consoles handle 50 people in the same scene at once all casting spells and generally being insane fucks? If not, give up until they can, because I don't want to see my FPS drop right when I get into the thick of things.
- My PS3 controller has ten buttons. That should be plenty to create a deep control scheme, if done right. That's the hurdle here: doing it right.
if they address this stuff I think it could be pretty sweet to be able to sit on my comfortable couch and play a MMO on my PS3. (yea yea I know, I can play an mmo on my big screen right now by using a computer anyway, but shush, we're not talking to you computer owning types here;P)
Assuming you are talking about the Russian ICBM rocket and not the motorcycle or some other vague thing, then you must be comparing it to the SpaceX effort and claiming some kind of debate victory with a single word.
Congrats on failing to address reusability in the overall cost, which will arguably make the SpaceX effort more effective in the long run. No, the proof isn't there yet, but then it isn't there yet to prove that Dnepr is better either. So...
I believe, in your own words, you should 'learn some fucking maths'. No, wait that's wrong. The maths are there yet. What you need to do is learn to STFU.
Slashdot Mirror
That you received +5 Insightful for your post is staggering.
This is your favorite? Seriously? How very insightful that you are able to pick your favorite way for billions of people to die!
I find it intriguing that you think these potential futures are 'choices'. As if the collective of Humanity is actually going to do anything without being forced to do it! Name one thing Humanity has done as a whole that was a 'choice'.
It's as if you think that we had a choice going from your purported 200million limit to where the population is today. What, was everyone going to just up and stop fucking? I don't think so.
BTW, you are dangerously out of touch if you think the world cannot support more than 200 million people.
The funny in your post is the word 'most'.
No, pot smokers who speed lead us off the road right into a tree ;p
Short answer: If Google can do it, then why can't you?
But about the Subject... There was a discussion about "moral" vs. "ethical". Here is a case that might help answer the question of "what is the difference"?
Adding an easter egg to your product, one that doesn't add value to the product, could be spending company resources, and getting paid, to do something that was never your job. So, it's not ethical.
But to say it's not moral? I don't think anyone would go that far.
"But obviously the money is in selling a swimmer a $10,000 swimsuit so they can shave .02 seconds off their swim time in the hopes of beating Michael Phelps in the next olympics."
Except that Phelps will have it too.
Confused about the misinterpretation of sarcasm on the internet? Ouch.
Though I will admit, if anyone knows what sarcasm is, it's a Slashdotter.
So let me get this straight... As an MMO operator you only do the 'really fun things' once you are going out of business?
Because, I guess it wouldn't make sense to have been doing those from day one. You know, to stay in business?
Seriously, I played TR. I enjoyed it immensely during the first half of the game. Then it got incredibly repetitive and boring. The crafting and economy were simply not good enough. End-game activities were not good enough. In today's world, those are two make-it or break-it pieces, which TR did not have.
Brilliantly conceived, poorly executed. Same ol' story.
I'm tired of people saying the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend is some kind of socialist program. This money is not being forcibly taken from the rich and given to the poor. There is absolutely NO social aspect to it. If the city you live in were to find a thousand tons of pure gold beneath it, and then decided to share it equally among all currently recognized citizens, would you call that socialist?
I would caution you that there is a difference between abuse and plain incompetence. Of which I would say this "politics = news" fiasco falls into the latter category with regards to Slashdot's current editors.
Because someone's past is always indicative of their future........
And because current platforms are always what the elected candidate ends up actually following......
I believe the old Slashdot saying applies here, slightly modified.
Welcome to America. You must be new here.
Uhm, what? McCain is the one who in debates and rallies say "I know how to solve the economic problems, my friends".
And you want to talk about ideologies? How about Palin and her "task from God" that is our war on terror?
Uh huh. Nice translation, my friend.
"Otherwise every "me too" on a subject you agreed with, or "fuck you" on one you didn't would be modded up."
I see your point. I just disagree that it would happen like that. If I get moderator points, which I do regularly, and I click on a story to find a post has +34 Insightful, then I am most likely not going to moderate it up further. As a good moderator I will go looking further into the posts for other insightful posts and moderate those.
What I am saying is the situation would be more dynamic than the "everyone sticks on one post like glue" that you seem to think would happen. Slashdotters are more inquisitive and intelligent than herd animals.
And here is a good example of how Slashdot's moderation system is ineffective.
We have multiple +5 Insightful posts on this thread. Some of them tell this person that what he is doing is wrong, and then there's this one which goes the other direction completely. Yet both are treated equally as +5 Insightful.
Had Slashdot's system allowed scores above 5 then it would be more like a dynamic poll (and be more representative of what the populace thinks about the issue) than this hard-capped false ceiling that we have now.
As far as Karma (a useless stat anyway imho) you could still cap how much one can gain on a single post, but allow the score of the post to be unlimited.
Seriously, coding this in would take, what, ten seconds?
I don't recall anyone forcing you to drive in this country, nor anyone forcing you to live in a country where driving is so common. Unforunately for those people who were killed in 9/11 they had no choice in the matter. They couldn't wake up that day and say to themselves "well, today I don't think I want to get killed by terrorists." So every time you get behind the wheel I hope you realize it is your choice to take the risks involved and I hope from now on you stop being so dense that it becomes offensive to people like myself -- people who actually recognize and can appreciate the difference between driving accidents and terrorism.
Are we done here?
I find your sig to be offensively dense and disrespectful.
I shouldn't need to point out the obvious, but apparently you can't see it, so I will.
You said I was either a willing accomplice to the 'fraud' or that I am a bumbling idiot.
I stated that Six Sigma was probably not needed. That rules out the accomplice piece. If I was, I wouldn't have said that in the first place.
Which leaves bumbling idiot.
You took that title as soon as you figured me for a "Six Sigma drone" when in fact that is not what I get paid to do at all. I do have Six Sigma experience, but that doesn't make me a drone. I am highly skeptical of Six Sigma's application to *anything*.
Sounds like you've had some bad experiences with poor application of an industry-accepted improvement methodology. Also, sounds like you are a horrible person to work with, but that is here nor there.
And worse, you're just another AC.
Hey now, I didn't say it would be useless. Let me rephrase it:
Six Sigma could provide support to optimize the operations, but it would not guarantee success of the MMORPG.
Six Sigma was designed, and works best, in a manufacturing environment. I would suggest looking at LEAN instead, personally.
As a Six Sigma, and LEAN, Green Belt I would probably say that making a good MMORPG is more of an art than a science. Six Sigma is purely scientific. You could develop and operate an MMORPG and be within the threshold of Six Sigma for all possible technical factors and yet the game could be absolutely horrible. This is because Six Sigma is poor at measuring the key factor of an MMORPG: fun.
You could use Six Sigma to support business functions and to identify problematic areas in places like project flow, server uptime, and programming, but in the end it's only really just support for the artistic vision that is the real backbone of the MMORPG.
And let's face it, plenty of MMORPGs are successful without needing Six Sigma uptime or coding defect rates, etc.
While it's true that those things also have inherent risk I think it's probably true that the stock market itself is riskier than any of those.
Face it, the stock market is gambling. You are gambling with your money, betting that the multitude of variables that could come together to clusterfuck your investments don't do that and you get some kind of marginal gain.
Caveat emptor, future stock buyer, caveat emptor.
What if the same game is released on PC and console, and they coexist on the same servers? I've no idea if this is in the future, but imagine this: What happens if the mods the PC users are using provide obvious benefit (note: they do), and the players are more capable in things like raiding (note: they are)? Who would want to play it on a console, and beyond that, wouldn't this cause segregation? "Oh that guy is on PS3, we can't bring him because he doesn't know how much threat he is pulling on the Boss, he'll pull aggro often, and wipe us."
Look, I said it was a *hurdle*, not an impenetrable barrier. It would only really apply in an uneven situation like cross-platform, which might not even happen anyway.
MMOG, sure. MMORPG, not really. I mean, sure you can spend a half hour playing an MMORPG. But you aren't going to get to the max level of any current MMORPG in anything less than several weeks at that rate, and you will always be behind the curve from the beginning. If you can still enjoy it, more power to you, but most people who play MMORPGs do not enjoy being way behind everyone else, so if they don't have the time they simply don't play. Why should console MMORPGs be different?
I'll grant I'm taking a PC perspective, but why does the machine make any difference? Hardware is irrelevant. A PS3 is practically a PC anyway -- the only difference is how much more locked down a PS3 is than a PC, and that's exactly the reason for the hurdles I brought up in the first place.
"None of those are really hurdles. Mods are not necessary for a game with a well-designed interface; they're a PC fetish, console gamers don't want them. Alt-tabbing to a cheat site is hardly something that's necessary or desireable. And I don't see why a console would suffer FPS-drop more than the typical PC."
Easy of you to say, but not true. Even games with a well-designed interface will be more popular if they allow players to modify the interface to their own wild abandon. Not only does that mean moving interface elements around, but also creating new elements like DPS meters, healing meters, threat meters, mob kill history and loot drops, calendars, class-specific skill helper tools, mapping tools, instance/dungeon strategy tools, etc.
You really think all of that will just be included when a game ships? No game in history has included all of that. Today, World of Warcraft has it all, and from the modding community.
Who said anything about a cheat site? You do realize that MMOs are extremely in depth and often a quest chain or an activity in game is highly complicated. These aren't cheat sites, they are a collection of information that saves you hours and hours of time over the course of your play of the game. Example: Thottbot, Allakhazam, WoWWiki, etc
A console, while presumably powerful in the graphics department, is not as powerful as my PC. Granted, my PC is not typical. I guess this means I can expect a lower level of graphics in a console based MMO than I am used to on my PC.
MMORPGs are a huge time sink. It's not practical to play many of them at the same time because you will get nowhere in any of them. Most people focus on one or two, but not much more. Because of this I am more likely to just keep playing my computer MMO because of all the things I just said above.
"How do you mod an MMO? The clients are not made to be user-modifiable, for obvious reasons."
Mostly through interface customization. It's huge in all of the big MMOs like WoW. It's not all interface customization, though. Check out Curse Gaming's WoW mod site if you want a better idea.
"You can't have a computer? The wiki-sites will still be there, you'll just need another box to access them."
It sounds lazy, but I don't want to have to get up walk 40 ft and bring the computer out of hibernation or screen saver just to do a quick check on something.
"Every console in general use today supports the standard USB keyboard. That's how I chat when I play FFXI on my PS2."
As long as the MMO makers for Sony realize this, all is well.
"FFXI already does this on a PS2. Although there is some drop in FPS, it's not unmanageable and people do successfully play such battles on PS2s. Presumably present-generation consoles would do better."
While today's consoles would play yesterday's games much faster, unfortunately that is not the case with new games. Take Oblivion as an easy example: The developers pushed the console to the limit, to the point that at the final battle of the game things were moving along at about 3-5fps for me. It really ruined the last part of the game for me.
- Modding community ... can they exist w/consoles?
- Alt-tab to a helpful wiki-based site for game
help? Can it be done on consoles?
- Game forums, still computer based? I guess that's ok...
- I assume communication will be done via voice? I shudder at the thought of hearing 11 year old immature idiots on the /trade channels. Keyboards and text chat had better be an option or I /quit.
- Can the consoles handle 50 people in the same scene at once all casting spells and generally being insane fucks? If not, give up until they can, because I don't want to see my FPS drop right when I get into the thick of things.
- My PS3 controller has ten buttons. That should be plenty to create a deep control scheme, if done right. That's the hurdle here: doing it right.
if they address this stuff I think it could be pretty sweet to be able to sit on my comfortable couch and play a MMO on my PS3. (yea yea I know, I can play an mmo on my big screen right now by using a computer anyway, but shush, we're not talking to you computer owning types here ;P)
Assuming you are talking about the Russian ICBM rocket and not the motorcycle or some other vague thing, then you must be comparing it to the SpaceX effort and claiming some kind of debate victory with a single word.
Congrats on failing to address reusability in the overall cost, which will arguably make the SpaceX effort more effective in the long run. No, the proof isn't there yet, but then it isn't there yet to prove that Dnepr is better either. So...
I believe, in your own words, you should 'learn some fucking maths'. No, wait that's wrong. The maths are there yet. What you need to do is learn to STFU.