As someone who drank the 360 kool-aid (and more importantly, the live arcade kool-aid) I've been increasingly annoyed with the complete lack of new content. Last thing we got was Uno, around E3; there was a drought before then and a drought since then with all these games promised, but not delivered, delayed time and time again. (SF2 was supposed to hit around March, originally.)
One thing the 360 regulars have been asking for are real, solid release dates. After the debacle with the Prey demo being delayed with no word from HQ because as MajorNelson noted, "release dates are bad," since slips mean trouble... I'm surprised we're getting actual numbers. One a week is great pacing, too; you can plan which ones you want and when you can expect to pick them up. Assuming they stick to the schedule.
Hats off to MS here. They've fumbled around a lot, but now they've got a good plan in place and are communicating clearly. And about time.
Now, if we could only get some retail releases that aren't shootdrivballing games with 2stick+2trigger control schemes...
Yes, high rez textures need more storage. How much, exactly? An existing DVD already holds multiple gigs of data. Assuming you aren't stuffing dozens of FMV sequences on there in high def format, it'll be enough. And arguably, why would you NEED FMV anymore, if you're supposedly knee deep in TEH NEXT GEN which has TEH PHOTOREALISTIK graphics?
You also need the man hours of work to fill that disk, to make that content. What's the one complaint coming out aboute very 360 game? "Well, it's real pretty, but it's just another game." Sure, you can fill a Blu-Ray disk with hundreds of hours of a sprawling, open-ended game world filled with unique landscapes and subquests and hours and hours of dialogue... assuming you have the money and manpower and time to make a game like that. Realistically you're going to just be making "a game" and that game will fit on a DVD.
Innovation != Storage Space. We've had fun, innovative games well before this point that fit on old school 650mb CDs -- or even on tiny little flash memory carts. Yes, it may give folks more elbow room, but it doesn't innately make the games better than thus doesn't count as a deal maker any more than hi-def video does.
I'm not understanding this. These two new video formats do... what, exactly? Nothing, beyond showing higher quality digital video. Which is utterly useless unless you have an HD-TV, which is not exactly a universal standard.
When the PS2 hit, it revolutionized / popularized DVDs. Why? Because a DVD cost at worst $25 at the time, and that's a good cheap buy. Couple that with the value you get out of having a combo game system and DVD player (since DVD players were expensive to buy seperately) and that's a no brainer money saver.
But now, if you want to take advantage of Blu-Ray, you need a multi-thousand dollar television, and potentially more expensive movies. Which is NOT as much of a no-brainer as the PS2 was.
On top of all that, we're rapidly approaching the point where we've gone as high-def as we realistically NEED to go. For a lot of folks, standard DVD is "fine." The upgrade is too expensive and the reward too low when you've got a workable solution; this isn't like VHS tapes which could degrade over time, had blatantly inferior video quality, and interactive features. DVD has plenty going for it and all HD adds on top is more rez, which while nice, isn't important enough.
No. The video capability is not going to be what sells the PS3. It's a nice bonus but not as critical as the game library is at this point. (And given the 360's scrawny library, including unimpressive entries on the release chart, the PS3 has a good chance to sieze advantage...)
Agreed. Cutscenes exist to move the story along, to provide you with narrative when interactive elements aren't appropriate. Make them skippable so you can pass them the second time around, sure, but anybody who goes "GRR! CUTSCENE!" and mashes START to skip it in a strong, story-based game is missing half the point of the game.
Now. It your game is NOT strongly story based, and the cutscenes are poor quality, I can see skipping them. But they are not innately evil, and like any tool in the game designer toolbox, can be very powerful when used properly.
"PS2 and X-Box are just mindless corporate sequel factories, churning out iterations of the same tired titles over and over again. Nintendo is a bastion of originality and revolutionary gameplay! Now hurry up with my new Mario game, my new Zelda game, new Smash Brothers game, new Mario Party game, new F-Zero game, and new Mario-Sports games."
Nintendo flogs their franchises just as hard as Electronic Arts does. They may reinvent the concepts for whatever wacky new input method they come up with, but it's still fanboy demand for the various franchises, all over again. If Sony or MS were innovating their controllers, you can bet we'd see the same thing with Madden and Halo... the new hardware doesn't reduce that demand for the same old standards.
THAT is cutting through the next-gen BS. I'm sure the Revolution will have some innovative new concepts, but I'm really getting tired of the plumber, you know..?
The article's pretty content free, so lemme crosspost a comment I left on this guy's blog.
The problem with D&B is not DDR. It's the entire attitude that they will house NOTHING but 'casual games'. They're not appealing to arcade fans, they want people who come there to drink and eat, and MAYBE play some games... so, the games have to be playable with no instructions whatsoever. Anybody can drive a car or shoot a gun, so, those are the dominant forms.
Fighting games are more esoteric, since you need combinations of joystick moves and button presses to succeed; unless you read FAQs or are a fan from the console versions you won't do well in them. There is no longer a real fighting game subculture in this country, at least not one that goes to arcades.
Another category they utterly dump is classic games, things from the 80's and 90's. You'd think they'd at least throw in a Donkey Kong or such for nostalgia value, but the problem is that these games don't pay well, don't have a ton of 'continue?' style profit chances, and are costly to upkeep (unless you buy a re-released game like the Space Invaders Anniversary, or Ms.Pac-Man/Galaga combo).
The bottom line is money. They don't make enough money off anything that you can't play for 20 seconds with no prior training and then dump more credits into for another 20 seconds. It's a global problem on the arcade scene, and D&B, which is an arcade secondarily, will never be the answer.
It sounds like you may be a COH player, and if so, may I ask how well this works in practice? It seems like the perfect blend of gameplay for an MMO.
It works pretty well. Generally you never have to 'street hunt' to reach your next level; instanced quests are readily available and can be soloed or teamed. Nice thing is that the number of enemies and their strength balances against the size of your team, so you're rarely over or under whelmed once you go into that instance, even solo.
The disadvantage is that, as was suggested earlier, it makes the neighborhoods into a glorified 'game browser' where, once you have your travel powers (flight / speed / teleport / leaping) you're just moving from instance door to instance door and not bothering fighting the enemies outside unless forced to.
They're working on things you can do outside, though. Most neighborhoods have neighborhood-specific events and giant monsters to fight, which require impromptu teamups. There's also hidden exploration-based badges you can earn for poking around outside, some of which accumulate into combat bonuses.
Overall it's a good system, ideal for casual gamers and people tired of waiting in line to kill Garignak the Terrible and get his rare shoulderpad drops.
I think that taunts should lock other characters onto the tank for a specified amount of time.
Actually, in COH PVP, that's exactly what they do. Once taunted your targeting box is forced to the tank and can't be changed; you can only attack the tank.
Problem is, the tanks are designed to endure over a dozen guys attacking at once in PvE. In PVP... well, they can't be killed. The ONLY way to do is to break through their mez protection (assuming you CAN mez) and lock them down -- assuming they don't have the ultra-cheap potionlike inspiration that instantly breaks any mez on them.
But the flipside is that in COH, tankers can't really do much damage. High defense, low offense. So you can't kill a tank but a tank can't kill you in return, and two tanks fighting = stalemate. Again, PvE classes not making much sense in PvP.
End result? Nobody fights the tank. They just wait for the taunt to wear off. And the tank doesn't fight anybody... except those squishie support classes. All that matters are kills towards your team score so why bother hunting the tank or the scrapper? You can't kill them. But there are these nice juicy support classes around (think priests, bards, archers) who don't have enough damage output to take out a tank or a scrapper, while the tank has enough damage output to take THEM out...
Arena fights boil down to hunt the squishie, whose powers usually are designed for PvE, and again... it all breaks down.
I would be for different rules on PvP vs. PvE servers. I hate when the population cries about an ability because they can't figure out how to beat it, and a class gets taken out in PvE over it.
That's one good thing about City of Heroes. In theory, powers work differently when used against players than against enemies. Mezzers (controllers) get a damage boost when they have a target locked, Defender debuffs can't be resisted, damage dealers have a percentage of their damage output that's unresistable, etc. They've even made some changes to keep travel powers -- designed just for getting from zone to zone -- from being overpowered in both the arena and the game itself. (Their first solution, an accuracy debuff, was weak -- but now it just suppresses your "escape" speed for 3 seconds, with no accuracy penalty, which isn't all that bad.)...but I say "in theory" above, note. The key problem? Players don't act like AI driven enemies. They don't rush at you in a nicely clustered horde of 30 which can be area-of-effect blasted / mezzed. They don't stand near their buddies when you tag them with an AOE power that debuffs nearby enemies. And those travel powers, aie... sure, they're not as bad, but the game isn't designed to deal with your enemies having them.
Basically, any RPG with classes that are designed to leverage PvE situation is gonna have a very hard time designing for PvP. So, I agree on that point. Split-rulesets are a good start but the entire CONCEPT of, say, an AOE blaster or a chain mezzer or a tank just doesn't work in PVP.
Just like how the "emotion" engine was supposed to allow PS2 games to exhibit emotions in some vague and poorly explained way. Sony was trying to push early PS2 games to develop AI that would react emotionally to things (like drivers getting aggressive, and so on) to emphasize this point. In the end it was just marketing hype -- it's a game console, okay? Deal with it.
The closest you can get to claiming the PS2 had functions other than games was the DVD playback; and a lot of folks DID buy them for just that purpose, but it still primarily was a game console.
Throw in a Tivo-like system and an out of the box way of delivering eyetoy video emails and an integrated online network with consistent user logins and THEN you can start calling it an Entertainment Computer or whatever you decided on this week.
Remember, Live is now part of the system package, available to everyone for free.
I'm not sure about that. The profiling features are free, but is actual, honest to goodness online play free? They keep calling "online multiplayer" a gold feature. I've seen "weekend events" and things as silver. Does anybody have solid proof that the free/silver plan includes unlimited multiplayer?
I'd be willing to swallow play only on weekends, personally; I unsubbed from XBL because I didn't feel like paying good money each month to hear 13 year olds call me gay over voice chat. But if it's FREE, I could put up with that, I suspect.
So... can you be evil? Can you mow down civilians?
Not yet. That's in City of Villains, which is due out later this year / early next year / dunno. It's practically ANOTHER MMORPG, rather than an expansion pack, since villains have their own areas, own missions, own power sets, etc.
I kinda doubt they'll let you wander into Atlas Park and start ganking 1st level heroes and civilian NPCs, though. They've said all along PVP will always be consentual; and Arena PVP definitely is.
There's a lot of contention over what Issue #4 has done to the game, good and bad. Lemme give a brief overview of the changes.
1. A PVP arena. It's really an amazing piece of work, a huge addition to the game. The question is, will you really want to play in it? Certain classes ("archetypes") have innate advantages due to higher offense and defensive mixes, while others suffer because they don't have enough of either. Odds are more balancing will take place as the days go on; they've come far from when the beta of the arena went up, but still have farther yet to go.
2. New costuming. The costuming system in COH is already top notch, and this adds more elements to it. Mostly it's asian-themed items but there are other generic items in too. Some have clipping issues which will need to be resolved, but it's not too shabby. It also introduces body physique / face sliders like in Star Wars Galaxies.
3. Power changes. The alien archetype they introduced got serious boosts, other powers got little boosts... but as with ANY MMORPG IN THE HISTORY OF TIME, some changes are going to be downward rather than upward. (You can't "buff everybody, nerf nobody" without ending up in a nuclear arms race.) So, if you hit COH forums you'll see OMG sky is falling type posts from folks who now have to change their play style. But... again, to be fair, some of the changes are really phenominally heavy handed. The devs have admitted that they're looking at alternate ways to get the effect they want without harsh penalties, and they're starting to analyze the archetypes one at a time to bring them into balance. It'll take time.
Like any MMO it's got plusses and minuses. Each issue releases new toys to play with and new changes to deal with. City of Heroes gets a big fat recommendation from me; even with the issues-with-its-issues, it's still a lot of fun and very good for casual gamers who want to try an MMO but don't want it to be a second job.
It's an MMORPG, like Everquest or World of Warcraft -- but with superheroes and more focus on casual gameplay (no loot, instanced missions instead of spawn camping, sidekick system so you can fight across levels, etc.)
It's a lot of fun, been playing it for a year. To play devil's advocate, because it's casual oriented, it's not as deep as other MMO's; more like Final Fight than Street Fighter, swapping action and simplicity for pacing and depth.
So let me get this straight -- we're going to get a d20 Modern cartoon package, and the D&D MMORPG is going to be based on Ebberon and promises a world of magic and science......and yet WotC rejects nearly complete modules Bioware was trying to sell for Neverwinter Nights because they aren't "traditional faerun" enough.
Body size -- As of the Issue #4 patch going in soon, you can re-scale torso, chest, shoulders, nose, eyes, head, etc, etc. It's a full control over body shape. You start with three bases, male, female and "huge"... but there are hundreds of "huge" style super heroes, not just hulk, so nothing innately about that screams Hulk.
Textures -- You can't give them specifically ripped purple shorts. There are no ripped shorts. You can give them some sort of purple pants or tights, but not the specific style. You can give them green skin. And since Hulk only has two identifying traits, green skin and purple shorts, that means you can KINDA make something similar -- in the same way you could with two crayons.
Powers -- The only power set that's close to a blatant ripoff is the claws. But the claws don't "emerge" from your flesh like Wolverine's, they're bolted to a metal object on the back of your hand. The animations are similar to Wolvy's, though, that's iffy. But the Regeneration power has a lot of green glows and auras Wolverine does not have. You can't make a costume that's perfectly matching Wolverine's, just a horribly cheap knockoff that, if you didn't have your glasses on, could be mistaken for him.
Basically, the only thing in the game that is really questionable are the claws and claw animations. If Cryptic reanimates those, then they're golden. None of the other power sets or costume pieces directly duplicates a known hero -- at least not a hero with unique powers. PLENTY of heroes have laser eyes, or shoot power from their hands, or burn things. You can't copyright that.
From the text of the article, it's not banning M-rated games sold to children. It's banning:
"games that show graphic pain or suffering, show violence that would be a crime in real life, have characters that commit violence without remorse and have sound or other effects meant to enhance the violence."
In other words they want to establish a SECOND standard outside of the ESRB/ISDA/USFDA/whatever ratings of T and M and so on. Under that banner, even some games that are rated E for everyone would count; don't the little mushrooms squeal when you violently stomp on them..?
If they were going to give the M rating some teeth, well, that I can get behind. But this is just pandering to the moralistic crusade mentality, trying to punish the industry.
Thankfully they aren't banning ADVERTISING mature games, like other state bills were trying to do. Once you cripple the ability to promote your new M-rated game, it doesn't matter if you can only sell it to appropriate people or not... the appropriate people won't hear about it. And no, word of mouth / the net is not enough. Banning ads from any source kids might see is not going to help your profits any.
All it has to do is lock EA out of a market, and that's what Take Two has done. Without EA as a competitor they have an area of exclusivity, of sorts... they have to compete with first party offerings, but since when has Sony or Nintendo cared that much about baseball? Microsoft is keen due to buying the High Heat franchise, but that's it.
The "we owns your character" clause is standard in any online game that allows character creation, and there's a good reason for it.
If you own full rights to your character, you could turn around and sue COH for publishing screenshots which have your guy somewhere in the background -- and in turn they could sue you for publishing a comic book where your character appears, because you tangle up their IP (elements of their costume creator, like specific logos and clothing designs) into your own.
Basically, to avoid a grey area snafu of legal mania, they just say outright you're giving them rights to the characters you create. If they then exploited that by publishing their OWN comics using your characters, it'd be shady and evil yet legal, but thakfully they're not doing that. The legalese is intended to prevent potential conflicts.
X-Play: the only thing worth watching on G4.
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G4 Drops TechTV Name
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· Score: 3, Informative
I used to watch Judgment Day for my video game reviews (beats forking money over to gamespot...) until I realized how boring and biased it can be. X-Play makes the whole "self-effacing sarcastic gamer culture game reviews" gimmick work without being as stupid as the other shows on G4 where the cast and writers clearly don't understand games.
What I'm wondering now is: When G4 folds and dies (which WILL happen, and this announcement only speeds the process) will X-Play be able to pack up and move to another channel, like Spike? Or are they directly funded by the channel rather than simply a company contracted to produce a show?
Okay. When the games are already highly cinematic and have Tom Clancy behind the scenes and are centered on a single well established character like Sam Fisher... WHY would you monkey with that and invent some new "dynamic, original" character for your lead?...then again, we've all been wondering what was so freaking hard about demons from hell and marines in DOOM. Maybe Hollywood has severe head trauma and can't see the obvious, already established demographic-pleasing elements that are being given to them on a silver platter.
The main thing the Bioware Store is allowing for is ongoing support of NWN -- more patches, more free monsters, additional tilesets and skyboxes and placeables and so on and so forth. Free, patched right into NWN to keep from fragmenting the community.
All this content creation work is done by the NWN Live Team. And they need money to do it, because Bioware TRIED doing it entirely for free and eventually realized it was a money/time sink. Although Rob Bartel's "Witch's Wake" module was pretty damn cool, they couldn't justify putting one of their best designers on a multi-month project that'd yeild no money (aside from the odd chance someone might pick up a new copy of NWN just to play it, which is low.
Hence, the store. Modules bought at the store directly fund the Live Team's efforts at producing more free content for the community, extending NWN's support well beyond what most companies would be capable of doing. (NWN's 2+ years old. How many companies constantly pump out content for games that old which aren't MMORPGs?)
If you want to support NWN in general, buy a mod. Yes, the digital protection isn't perfect (but better than most) and you might whine about short module length, but it also counts as a donation towards what you really want, which is lifeblood for NWN.
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
Agreed. There are a lot of modern games that are eschewing multiplayer coop for exactly this reason -- the sheer complexity of trying to pull off all the scripted bells and whistles gamers have come to expect doesn't jive with the ability to add another character, another POV into the mix.
Bioware nixed coop from Hordes of the Underdark for just this reason; it wouldn't make sense from a story perspective, due to the cutscenes and how NPCs talk and interact with the character. Even in the game mods I design, I find coop often means "The main character all the NPCs form relationships with and make pacts with and such... and a bunch of guys who are along for the ride to help with the monster killing." Because anything more than that requires a LOT of special case scenario code for the NPCs alone, much less the puzzles.
Since there isn't really a screaming vast majority for a coop game, it's probably not going to happen unless the game was designed for that experience from the ground up, or has a game formula that works well with it (simple action games with no major scripted events).
Back when I was 13, I was laid up in the hospital for about a month to have a pair of surgeries involving grafting a metal rod to my spine to keep it from going crooked.
If not for the fact that Nintendo's Gameboy came out in stores a month beforehand and I had one, I would've gone completely nuts. Video games are a very good distraction for children who are suffering and need release, need a break from having little to do but twiddle thumbs, watch reruns on daytime television and hope the pain will subside soon once the meds kick in.
Support Child's Play. It's not feeding the hungry, but it's bringing solace to people in dire need of it, and that's good too.
Actually, most "looping" sounds in the game now fade out after a few seconds. I've got a force field defender and the whale-mating-song shrill cry of the sounds fades after activating the power.
But when I say voice in a game, I don't mean PLAYER TRIGGERABLE voice. That can be used as a tool for griefing people. (See also CoH's boomboxes.) I mean NPCs... monsters, trainers, whatever. The world reacting to you audibly as well as visually.
CoH is bottom barrel, audiowise. Production loop library music which only triggers when you cross a neighborhood line, repetitive and irritating sound effects, and NOTHING else. If EQ2 is making strides towards taking audio seriously and not as a sad afterthought, more power to them.
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As someone who drank the 360 kool-aid (and more importantly, the live arcade kool-aid) I've been increasingly annoyed with the complete lack of new content. Last thing we got was Uno, around E3; there was a drought before then and a drought since then with all these games promised, but not delivered, delayed time and time again. (SF2 was supposed to hit around March, originally.)
One thing the 360 regulars have been asking for are real, solid release dates. After the debacle with the Prey demo being delayed with no word from HQ because as MajorNelson noted, "release dates are bad," since slips mean trouble... I'm surprised we're getting actual numbers. One a week is great pacing, too; you can plan which ones you want and when you can expect to pick them up. Assuming they stick to the schedule.
Hats off to MS here. They've fumbled around a lot, but now they've got a good plan in place and are communicating clearly. And about time.
Now, if we could only get some retail releases that aren't shootdrivballing games with 2stick+2trigger control schemes...
I don't buy the storage arguement, either.
Yes, high rez textures need more storage. How much, exactly? An existing DVD already holds multiple gigs of data. Assuming you aren't stuffing dozens of FMV sequences on there in high def format, it'll be enough. And arguably, why would you NEED FMV anymore, if you're supposedly knee deep in TEH NEXT GEN which has TEH PHOTOREALISTIK graphics?
You also need the man hours of work to fill that disk, to make that content. What's the one complaint coming out aboute very 360 game? "Well, it's real pretty, but it's just another game." Sure, you can fill a Blu-Ray disk with hundreds of hours of a sprawling, open-ended game world filled with unique landscapes and subquests and hours and hours of dialogue... assuming you have the money and manpower and time to make a game like that. Realistically you're going to just be making "a game" and that game will fit on a DVD.
Innovation != Storage Space. We've had fun, innovative games well before this point that fit on old school 650mb CDs -- or even on tiny little flash memory carts. Yes, it may give folks more elbow room, but it doesn't innately make the games better than thus doesn't count as a deal maker any more than hi-def video does.
I'm not understanding this. These two new video formats do... what, exactly? Nothing, beyond showing higher quality digital video. Which is utterly useless unless you have an HD-TV, which is not exactly a universal standard.
When the PS2 hit, it revolutionized / popularized DVDs. Why? Because a DVD cost at worst $25 at the time, and that's a good cheap buy. Couple that with the value you get out of having a combo game system and DVD player (since DVD players were expensive to buy seperately) and that's a no brainer money saver.
But now, if you want to take advantage of Blu-Ray, you need a multi-thousand dollar television, and potentially more expensive movies. Which is NOT as much of a no-brainer as the PS2 was.
On top of all that, we're rapidly approaching the point where we've gone as high-def as we realistically NEED to go. For a lot of folks, standard DVD is "fine." The upgrade is too expensive and the reward too low when you've got a workable solution; this isn't like VHS tapes which could degrade over time, had blatantly inferior video quality, and interactive features. DVD has plenty going for it and all HD adds on top is more rez, which while nice, isn't important enough.
No. The video capability is not going to be what sells the PS3. It's a nice bonus but not as critical as the game library is at this point. (And given the 360's scrawny library, including unimpressive entries on the release chart, the PS3 has a good chance to sieze advantage...)
Agreed. Cutscenes exist to move the story along, to provide you with narrative when interactive elements aren't appropriate. Make them skippable so you can pass them the second time around, sure, but anybody who goes "GRR! CUTSCENE!" and mashes START to skip it in a strong, story-based game is missing half the point of the game.
Now. It your game is NOT strongly story based, and the cutscenes are poor quality, I can see skipping them. But they are not innately evil, and like any tool in the game designer toolbox, can be very powerful when used properly.
Tell me if you've heard this before:
"PS2 and X-Box are just mindless corporate sequel factories, churning out iterations of the same tired titles over and over again. Nintendo is a bastion of originality and revolutionary gameplay! Now hurry up with my new Mario game, my new Zelda game, new Smash Brothers game, new Mario Party game, new F-Zero game, and new Mario-Sports games."
Nintendo flogs their franchises just as hard as Electronic Arts does. They may reinvent the concepts for whatever wacky new input method they come up with, but it's still fanboy demand for the various franchises, all over again. If Sony or MS were innovating their controllers, you can bet we'd see the same thing with Madden and Halo... the new hardware doesn't reduce that demand for the same old standards.
THAT is cutting through the next-gen BS. I'm sure the Revolution will have some innovative new concepts, but I'm really getting tired of the plumber, you know..?
The article's pretty content free, so lemme crosspost a comment I left on this guy's blog.
The problem with D&B is not DDR. It's the entire attitude that they will house NOTHING but 'casual games'. They're not appealing to arcade fans, they want people who come there to drink and eat, and MAYBE play some games... so, the games have to be playable with no instructions whatsoever. Anybody can drive a car or shoot a gun, so, those are the dominant forms.
Fighting games are more esoteric, since you need combinations of joystick moves and button presses to succeed; unless you read FAQs or are a fan from the console versions you won't do well in them. There is no longer a real fighting game subculture in this country, at least not one that goes to arcades.
Another category they utterly dump is classic games, things from the 80's and 90's. You'd think they'd at least throw in a Donkey Kong or such for nostalgia value, but the problem is that these games don't pay well, don't have a ton of 'continue?' style profit chances, and are costly to upkeep (unless you buy a re-released game like the Space Invaders Anniversary, or Ms.Pac-Man/Galaga combo).
The bottom line is money. They don't make enough money off anything that you can't play for 20 seconds with no prior training and then dump more credits into for another 20 seconds. It's a global problem on the arcade scene, and D&B, which is an arcade secondarily, will never be the answer.
It sounds like you may be a COH player, and if so, may I ask how well this works in practice? It seems like the perfect blend of gameplay for an MMO.
It works pretty well. Generally you never have to 'street hunt' to reach your next level; instanced quests are readily available and can be soloed or teamed. Nice thing is that the number of enemies and their strength balances against the size of your team, so you're rarely over or under whelmed once you go into that instance, even solo.
The disadvantage is that, as was suggested earlier, it makes the neighborhoods into a glorified 'game browser' where, once you have your travel powers (flight / speed / teleport / leaping) you're just moving from instance door to instance door and not bothering fighting the enemies outside unless forced to.
They're working on things you can do outside, though. Most neighborhoods have neighborhood-specific events and giant monsters to fight, which require impromptu teamups. There's also hidden exploration-based badges you can earn for poking around outside, some of which accumulate into combat bonuses.
Overall it's a good system, ideal for casual gamers and people tired of waiting in line to kill Garignak the Terrible and get his rare shoulderpad drops.
I think that taunts should lock other characters onto the tank for a specified amount of time.
Actually, in COH PVP, that's exactly what they do. Once taunted your targeting box is forced to the tank and can't be changed; you can only attack the tank.
Problem is, the tanks are designed to endure over a dozen guys attacking at once in PvE. In PVP... well, they can't be killed. The ONLY way to do is to break through their mez protection (assuming you CAN mez) and lock them down -- assuming they don't have the ultra-cheap potionlike inspiration that instantly breaks any mez on them.
But the flipside is that in COH, tankers can't really do much damage. High defense, low offense. So you can't kill a tank but a tank can't kill you in return, and two tanks fighting = stalemate. Again, PvE classes not making much sense in PvP.
End result? Nobody fights the tank. They just wait for the taunt to wear off. And the tank doesn't fight anybody... except those squishie support classes. All that matters are kills towards your team score so why bother hunting the tank or the scrapper? You can't kill them. But there are these nice juicy support classes around (think priests, bards, archers) who don't have enough damage output to take out a tank or a scrapper, while the tank has enough damage output to take THEM out...
Arena fights boil down to hunt the squishie, whose powers usually are designed for PvE, and again... it all breaks down.
I would be for different rules on PvP vs. PvE servers. I hate when the population cries about an ability because they can't figure out how to beat it, and a class gets taken out in PvE over it.
...but I say "in theory" above, note. The key problem? Players don't act like AI driven enemies. They don't rush at you in a nicely clustered horde of 30 which can be area-of-effect blasted / mezzed. They don't stand near their buddies when you tag them with an AOE power that debuffs nearby enemies. And those travel powers, aie... sure, they're not as bad, but the game isn't designed to deal with your enemies having them.
That's one good thing about City of Heroes. In theory, powers work differently when used against players than against enemies. Mezzers (controllers) get a damage boost when they have a target locked, Defender debuffs can't be resisted, damage dealers have a percentage of their damage output that's unresistable, etc. They've even made some changes to keep travel powers -- designed just for getting from zone to zone -- from being overpowered in both the arena and the game itself. (Their first solution, an accuracy debuff, was weak -- but now it just suppresses your "escape" speed for 3 seconds, with no accuracy penalty, which isn't all that bad.)
Basically, any RPG with classes that are designed to leverage PvE situation is gonna have a very hard time designing for PvP. So, I agree on that point. Split-rulesets are a good start but the entire CONCEPT of, say, an AOE blaster or a chain mezzer or a tank just doesn't work in PVP.
Just like how the "emotion" engine was supposed to allow PS2 games to exhibit emotions in some vague and poorly explained way. Sony was trying to push early PS2 games to develop AI that would react emotionally to things (like drivers getting aggressive, and so on) to emphasize this point. In the end it was just marketing hype -- it's a game console, okay? Deal with it.
The closest you can get to claiming the PS2 had functions other than games was the DVD playback; and a lot of folks DID buy them for just that purpose, but it still primarily was a game console.
Throw in a Tivo-like system and an out of the box way of delivering eyetoy video emails and an integrated online network with consistent user logins and THEN you can start calling it an Entertainment Computer or whatever you decided on this week.
Remember, Live is now part of the system package, available to everyone for free.
I'm not sure about that. The profiling features are free, but is actual, honest to goodness online play free? They keep calling "online multiplayer" a gold feature. I've seen "weekend events" and things as silver. Does anybody have solid proof that the free/silver plan includes unlimited multiplayer?
I'd be willing to swallow play only on weekends, personally; I unsubbed from XBL because I didn't feel like paying good money each month to hear 13 year olds call me gay over voice chat. But if it's FREE, I could put up with that, I suspect.
So... can you be evil? Can you mow down civilians?
Not yet. That's in City of Villains, which is due out later this year / early next year / dunno. It's practically ANOTHER MMORPG, rather than an expansion pack, since villains have their own areas, own missions, own power sets, etc.
I kinda doubt they'll let you wander into Atlas Park and start ganking 1st level heroes and civilian NPCs, though. They've said all along PVP will always be consentual; and Arena PVP definitely is.
There's a lot of contention over what Issue #4 has done to the game, good and bad. Lemme give a brief overview of the changes.
1. A PVP arena. It's really an amazing piece of work, a huge addition to the game. The question is, will you really want to play in it? Certain classes ("archetypes") have innate advantages due to higher offense and defensive mixes, while others suffer because they don't have enough of either. Odds are more balancing will take place as the days go on; they've come far from when the beta of the arena went up, but still have farther yet to go.
2. New costuming. The costuming system in COH is already top notch, and this adds more elements to it. Mostly it's asian-themed items but there are other generic items in too. Some have clipping issues which will need to be resolved, but it's not too shabby. It also introduces body physique / face sliders like in Star Wars Galaxies.
3. Power changes. The alien archetype they introduced got serious boosts, other powers got little boosts... but as with ANY MMORPG IN THE HISTORY OF TIME, some changes are going to be downward rather than upward. (You can't "buff everybody, nerf nobody" without ending up in a nuclear arms race.) So, if you hit COH forums you'll see OMG sky is falling type posts from folks who now have to change their play style. But... again, to be fair, some of the changes are really phenominally heavy handed. The devs have admitted that they're looking at alternate ways to get the effect they want without harsh penalties, and they're starting to analyze the archetypes one at a time to bring them into balance. It'll take time.
Like any MMO it's got plusses and minuses. Each issue releases new toys to play with and new changes to deal with. City of Heroes gets a big fat recommendation from me; even with the issues-with-its-issues, it's still a lot of fun and very good for casual gamers who want to try an MMO but don't want it to be a second job.
It's an MMORPG, like Everquest or World of Warcraft -- but with superheroes and more focus on casual gameplay (no loot, instanced missions instead of spawn camping, sidekick system so you can fight across levels, etc.)
It's a lot of fun, been playing it for a year. To play devil's advocate, because it's casual oriented, it's not as deep as other MMO's; more like Final Fight than Street Fighter, swapping action and simplicity for pacing and depth.
So let me get this straight -- we're going to get a d20 Modern cartoon package, and the D&D MMORPG is going to be based on Ebberon and promises a world of magic and science... ...and yet WotC rejects nearly complete modules Bioware was trying to sell for Neverwinter Nights because they aren't "traditional faerun" enough.
Go figure. Wish they'd make up their minds.
I can help here.
Body size -- As of the Issue #4 patch going in soon, you can re-scale torso, chest, shoulders, nose, eyes, head, etc, etc. It's a full control over body shape. You start with three bases, male, female and "huge"... but there are hundreds of "huge" style super heroes, not just hulk, so nothing innately about that screams Hulk.
Textures -- You can't give them specifically ripped purple shorts. There are no ripped shorts. You can give them some sort of purple pants or tights, but not the specific style. You can give them green skin. And since Hulk only has two identifying traits, green skin and purple shorts, that means you can KINDA make something similar -- in the same way you could with two crayons.
Powers -- The only power set that's close to a blatant ripoff is the claws. But the claws don't "emerge" from your flesh like Wolverine's, they're bolted to a metal object on the back of your hand. The animations are similar to Wolvy's, though, that's iffy. But the Regeneration power has a lot of green glows and auras Wolverine does not have. You can't make a costume that's perfectly matching Wolverine's, just a horribly cheap knockoff that, if you didn't have your glasses on, could be mistaken for him.
Basically, the only thing in the game that is really questionable are the claws and claw animations. If Cryptic reanimates those, then they're golden. None of the other power sets or costume pieces directly duplicates a known hero -- at least not a hero with unique powers. PLENTY of heroes have laser eyes, or shoot power from their hands, or burn things. You can't copyright that.
From the text of the article, it's not banning M-rated games sold to children. It's banning:
"games that show graphic pain or suffering, show violence that would be a crime in real life, have characters that commit violence without remorse and have sound or other effects meant to enhance the violence."
In other words they want to establish a SECOND standard outside of the ESRB/ISDA/USFDA/whatever ratings of T and M and so on. Under that banner, even some games that are rated E for everyone would count; don't the little mushrooms squeal when you violently stomp on them..?
If they were going to give the M rating some teeth, well, that I can get behind. But this is just pandering to the moralistic crusade mentality, trying to punish the industry.
Thankfully they aren't banning ADVERTISING mature games, like other state bills were trying to do. Once you cripple the ability to promote your new M-rated game, it doesn't matter if you can only sell it to appropriate people or not... the appropriate people won't hear about it. And no, word of mouth / the net is not enough. Banning ads from any source kids might see is not going to help your profits any.
All it has to do is lock EA out of a market, and that's what Take Two has done. Without EA as a competitor they have an area of exclusivity, of sorts... they have to compete with first party offerings, but since when has Sony or Nintendo cared that much about baseball? Microsoft is keen due to buying the High Heat franchise, but that's it.
The "we owns your character" clause is standard in any online game that allows character creation, and there's a good reason for it.
If you own full rights to your character, you could turn around and sue COH for publishing screenshots which have your guy somewhere in the background -- and in turn they could sue you for publishing a comic book where your character appears, because you tangle up their IP (elements of their costume creator, like specific logos and clothing designs) into your own.
Basically, to avoid a grey area snafu of legal mania, they just say outright you're giving them rights to the characters you create. If they then exploited that by publishing their OWN comics using your characters, it'd be shady and evil yet legal, but thakfully they're not doing that. The legalese is intended to prevent potential conflicts.
I used to watch Judgment Day for my video game reviews (beats forking money over to gamespot...) until I realized how boring and biased it can be. X-Play makes the whole "self-effacing sarcastic gamer culture game reviews" gimmick work without being as stupid as the other shows on G4 where the cast and writers clearly don't understand games.
What I'm wondering now is: When G4 folds and dies (which WILL happen, and this announcement only speeds the process) will X-Play be able to pack up and move to another channel, like Spike? Or are they directly funded by the channel rather than simply a company contracted to produce a show?
...with a "dynamic, original" character.
...then again, we've all been wondering what was so freaking hard about demons from hell and marines in DOOM. Maybe Hollywood has severe head trauma and can't see the obvious, already established demographic-pleasing elements that are being given to them on a silver platter.
Okay. When the games are already highly cinematic and have Tom Clancy behind the scenes and are centered on a single well established character like Sam Fisher... WHY would you monkey with that and invent some new "dynamic, original" character for your lead?
The main thing the Bioware Store is allowing for is ongoing support of NWN -- more patches, more free monsters, additional tilesets and skyboxes and placeables and so on and so forth. Free, patched right into NWN to keep from fragmenting the community.
All this content creation work is done by the NWN Live Team. And they need money to do it, because Bioware TRIED doing it entirely for free and eventually realized it was a money/time sink. Although Rob Bartel's "Witch's Wake" module was pretty damn cool, they couldn't justify putting one of their best designers on a multi-month project that'd yeild no money (aside from the odd chance someone might pick up a new copy of NWN just to play it, which is low.
Hence, the store. Modules bought at the store directly fund the Live Team's efforts at producing more free content for the community, extending NWN's support well beyond what most companies would be capable of doing. (NWN's 2+ years old. How many companies constantly pump out content for games that old which aren't MMORPGs?)
If you want to support NWN in general, buy a mod. Yes, the digital protection isn't perfect (but better than most) and you might whine about short module length, but it also counts as a donation towards what you really want, which is lifeblood for NWN.
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
Agreed. There are a lot of modern games that are eschewing multiplayer coop for exactly this reason -- the sheer complexity of trying to pull off all the scripted bells and whistles gamers have come to expect doesn't jive with the ability to add another character, another POV into the mix.
Bioware nixed coop from Hordes of the Underdark for just this reason; it wouldn't make sense from a story perspective, due to the cutscenes and how NPCs talk and interact with the character. Even in the game mods I design, I find coop often means "The main character all the NPCs form relationships with and make pacts with and such... and a bunch of guys who are along for the ride to help with the monster killing." Because anything more than that requires a LOT of special case scenario code for the NPCs alone, much less the puzzles.
Since there isn't really a screaming vast majority for a coop game, it's probably not going to happen unless the game was designed for that experience from the ground up, or has a game formula that works well with it (simple action games with no major scripted events).
Back when I was 13, I was laid up in the hospital for about a month to have a pair of surgeries involving grafting a metal rod to my spine to keep it from going crooked.
If not for the fact that Nintendo's Gameboy came out in stores a month beforehand and I had one, I would've gone completely nuts. Video games are a very good distraction for children who are suffering and need release, need a break from having little to do but twiddle thumbs, watch reruns on daytime television and hope the pain will subside soon once the meds kick in.
Support Child's Play. It's not feeding the hungry, but it's bringing solace to people in dire need of it, and that's good too.
Actually, most "looping" sounds in the game now fade out after a few seconds. I've got a force field defender and the whale-mating-song shrill cry of the sounds fades after activating the power.
But when I say voice in a game, I don't mean PLAYER TRIGGERABLE voice. That can be used as a tool for griefing people. (See also CoH's boomboxes.) I mean NPCs... monsters, trainers, whatever. The world reacting to you audibly as well as visually.
CoH is bottom barrel, audiowise. Production loop library music which only triggers when you cross a neighborhood line, repetitive and irritating sound effects, and NOTHING else. If EQ2 is making strides towards taking audio seriously and not as a sad afterthought, more power to them.