As for the kinds of quests you do while levelling, it's really only as mindless as you want to make it. If you only look at them as "okay, I just kill X number of Y and collect Z number of A, and do variations of that over and over again", of course you're going to see it as a mindless repetitive grind.
One other point to add to this would be: Show me a game that CAN'T be broken down into a series of stupid, pointless, dull steps. Computer games, at their core, involve clicking a button over and over. Heck, some of the best and most enjoyable games are the *simplest* ones.
Describe Tetris in a way that could POSSIBLY make it sound fun or addictive. Or The Sims (which isn't just pushing buttons...it's pushing buttons to duplicate mundane, normal, boring, real life.) Or Super Mario Bros (move....and jump. Sometimes onto something, sometimes into something. Whee....)
What games actually are, are puzzle-solving exercises. It's about finding the right way to stack blocks, or calculating the perfect time to jump onto a koopa, or the most efficient way to get your sim ready for work. In WoW, it's working out the best attack pattern to kill enemies with, and the best route to take to finish a quest quickly, and the best outfit you should be wearing to maximize your skill.
The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun.
You say this, and yet WoW is possibly the most successful game of all time. Only The Sims can definitely top WoW in sheer sales numbers on the PC, but WoW has over 10 million *active subscriber* (and an unknown number of sales) -- and subscribers are more meaningful (and valuable) than plain sales.
Recognize that you, your interests, and your arguments simply represent a minor fringe group and that, while your opinion is valid on a personal level, your comments hold no value in the wider world of gamers.
No one who dies in WoW is unfazed by it. Dying sucks. Even if you take away the repair bill, it sucks.
You have to run your spirit back to your body and even though this only takes 5 minutes in the worst of circumstances...it still sucks. If you're raiding and you wipe, then you have to wait for 25 people to run back to their bodies and rebuff and reorganize themselves for another boss attempt.
The time penalty is significant...you're playing a game, even a single minute of "unfun" is punishment. But even more significant than the time cost is the ego-cost. Dying means that you failed and it stings.
Blizzard correctly determined that they didn't need harsh death penalties in WoW. Dying is its own penalty.
(I also play Nethack, and permadeath is an important part of the game. In the first Aliens vs. Predator FPS for the PC, the limited saves per level were also an important part of the game, and I'm disappointed that they eliminated that for the sequel. But WoW does NOT need a more severe death penalty.)
Are you -crazy-? Paladins are probably the most powerful class in DnD! Oft ridiculed for being the choice of people wanting to play "easymode", both RP and combat-wise. Druids are by far the most powerful class.
And Clerics are far stronger than Paladins simply because they are full casters. Giving up a few points of BAB and some sub-par abilities to gain 9th-level spells? Yes, please.
The only thing that a Paladin might beat is a Fighter. And Fighters are *terrible*. Tome of Battle FTW!
I've surely just scratched the surface of the campaign, but I've reached level 9 and have been having a great time of it. My system is far from top-end (AMD 2100, Radeon x300) but I haven't noticed any performance issues and I haven't tweaked any settings.
I can echo the complaint about the camera - it can be a pain to juggle. In NWN, we complained that it was too restricted - in NWN2 it is no longer restricted, but requires a fair bit of shifting to catch everything. Perhaps a more static camera but a game that's designed around it is better?
I made the decision early on to leave the AI characters to themselves as much as possible, and I've been pretty happy overall. As noted in the summary above, they sometimes need babysitting when near traps in dungeons - but I tend to avoid this problem by having that wonderful tielfing rogue scout ahead while stealthed.
As an aside to the discussion of mechanics: I immediately loved the dwarven fighter when we met - he made me literally LOL. And yet, he pales before how fantastic the tiefling rogue is. She is by far the best character in the Baldur's Gate/NWN series. The druid - as in BG - is annoying and was promptly dumped for the aggressive sorceress. She's a bit annoying too, but I can't argue with her effectiveness.
Someone else dealt with the laser pistol comment, I'll address the interstellar distance issue: From all indication, it was more or less a one time thing, not a daily affair. While this wasn't explicitly clear in the show, the movie makes it certain that the story is happening in a single very large and very populated (with planets and moons) solar system which has been heavily terraformed.
It's why Tiger Woods is such an exception in being a black golf player
Quite an exception, I suppose, since he's not. Wikipedia:
His father, Earl Woods, is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, of mixed African American, Caucasian, and Native American ancestry. Woods' mother Kultida Woods is originally from Thailand, and has mixed Thai and Chinese ancestry. It should be noted that Woods is only one quarter African American, and has said that he does not regard it as his primary identity.
Wow - I used to work at Science North (5 years!) and day after day of bantering with coworkers finally caused me to break down and buy a Mac. I loved it!
Years later, when upgrade time came, I grudgingly moved back to Windows because I wanted to be a programmer and wanted a larger audience. Of course, 99% of my work time is spent programming web apps on Linux now. Funny how things change.
My sister's going away to college in Montreal next year to study photography. I'll be happily buying her a Powerbook and teaching her Photoshop.
I think it was only a matter of time before this happened - so well done! Now all I'm waiting for is someone to sell pre-configured Mini-ITX systems running this. (Yes, I'm that lazy.)
Funny, I've lived in Canada my whole life and I don't think I've ever heard someone say "hoser" in conversation. Maybe it's an east coast/west coast thing?
The "aboot" thing is an exagerated form of a mostly (to my ears) east coast accent. No one in Canada actually says "aboot", despite American meme. There's a great writeup about Eh at Wikipedia. The stereotypical use of "eh" prevalent in humour is more common in rural settings, but we all proudly say the interjection.
One thing to consider, however, is how many of those pirated copies represent lost sales.
Exactly. I was being cynical in my remark, but I had considered the lost sales argument. Ultimately, however, I believe that a statistically insignicant number of sales will be "lost" due to this.
If your guess of 1/4 was correct, this would be devastating to the industry, and I don't think it to be a likely number for the PC industry let alone for the PS2 where - correct me if I'm wrong - you'd need special hardware to burn a disk, plus a modded console.
I know a few dozen people with consoles and only one that has a mod chip, and that's just for imports (okay, pirated imports, but still - he pays for the domestic stuff).
However, it is already clear [...] piracy is becoming an increasingly common and serious problem for both gamers and the games industry.
I have never condemmned piracy, but "a problem for gamers" - what kind of tripe is this?
Actually, I see their point. The game publishers try to combat piracy with more draconian copy protection. This *is* a problem for gamers. The gamers who legitimately paid for their game. Not for those who download a cracked version.
I run a popular non-techie site (memegen.net) which is peaking at 900,000 hits a day this month. My visitors are closely associated with the blogging communities, and I get a lot of @aol.com email. Here are my stats for September:
MS Internet Explorer 88.5 % Mozilla (and co.) 5.7 % Netscape 2.1 % Unknown 1.4 % Safari 1.3 % Opera 0.5 %
This is a definite trend - IE was at 95% a few months ago and has been dropping every month.
(Take a look at the verbose version of the code for an easier read.)
The buildings are actually just one big isosurface. This is a surface in 3D space that is described by a function, similar to describing a line on a 2D graph. For example (warning, I'm been out of school for a while!), the formula y=x would describe a straight line at a 45 deg angle, whereas y=x^2 describes a parabolic curve. You can make the formula more complex and make us of functions (like sin(), cos(), max(), etc...) to end up with some really funky lines that wobble all over.
The authors of "City" and "The Agate Face" both use isosurfaces effectively.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the kinds of quests you do while levelling, it's really only as mindless as you want to make it. If you only look at them as "okay, I just kill X number of Y and collect Z number of A, and do variations of that over and over again", of course you're going to see it as a mindless repetitive grind.
One other point to add to this would be: Show me a game that CAN'T be broken down into a series of stupid, pointless, dull steps. Computer games, at their core, involve clicking a button over and over. Heck, some of the best and most enjoyable games are the *simplest* ones.
Describe Tetris in a way that could POSSIBLY make it sound fun or addictive. Or The Sims (which isn't just pushing buttons...it's pushing buttons to duplicate mundane, normal, boring, real life.) Or Super Mario Bros (move....and jump. Sometimes onto something, sometimes into something. Whee....)
What games actually are, are puzzle-solving exercises. It's about finding the right way to stack blocks, or calculating the perfect time to jump onto a koopa, or the most efficient way to get your sim ready for work. In WoW, it's working out the best attack pattern to kill enemies with, and the best route to take to finish a quest quickly, and the best outfit you should be wearing to maximize your skill.
The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun.
You say this, and yet WoW is possibly the most successful game of all time. Only The Sims can definitely top WoW in sheer sales numbers on the PC, but WoW has over 10 million *active subscriber* (and an unknown number of sales) -- and subscribers are more meaningful (and valuable) than plain sales.
It is by *far* the most successful MMO ever:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
Clearly, a lot of people find it to be quite fun.
Recognize that you, your interests, and your arguments simply represent a minor fringe group and that, while your opinion is valid on a personal level, your comments hold no value in the wider world of gamers.
It's the lack of consequence.
No one who dies in WoW is unfazed by it. Dying sucks. Even if you take away the repair bill, it sucks.
You have to run your spirit back to your body and even though this only takes 5 minutes in the worst of circumstances...it still sucks. If you're raiding and you wipe, then you have to wait for 25 people to run back to their bodies and rebuff and reorganize themselves for another boss attempt.
The time penalty is significant...you're playing a game, even a single minute of "unfun" is punishment. But even more significant than the time cost is the ego-cost. Dying means that you failed and it stings.
Blizzard correctly determined that they didn't need harsh death penalties in WoW. Dying is its own penalty.
(I also play Nethack, and permadeath is an important part of the game. In the first Aliens vs. Predator FPS for the PC, the limited saves per level were also an important part of the game, and I'm disappointed that they eliminated that for the sequel. But WoW does NOT need a more severe death penalty.)
I am a druid. I have special abilities that are more powerful than your entire class!
And Clerics are far stronger than Paladins simply because they are full casters. Giving up a few points of BAB and some sub-par abilities to gain 9th-level spells? Yes, please.
The only thing that a Paladin might beat is a Fighter. And Fighters are *terrible*. Tome of Battle FTW!
Posted by Zonk on Monday December 11, @02:14PM
I've surely just scratched the surface of the campaign, but I've reached level 9 and have been having a great time of it. My system is far from top-end (AMD 2100, Radeon x300) but I haven't noticed any performance issues and I haven't tweaked any settings.
I can echo the complaint about the camera - it can be a pain to juggle. In NWN, we complained that it was too restricted - in NWN2 it is no longer restricted, but requires a fair bit of shifting to catch everything. Perhaps a more static camera but a game that's designed around it is better?
I made the decision early on to leave the AI characters to themselves as much as possible, and I've been pretty happy overall. As noted in the summary above, they sometimes need babysitting when near traps in dungeons - but I tend to avoid this problem by having that wonderful tielfing rogue scout ahead while stealthed.
As an aside to the discussion of mechanics: I immediately loved the dwarven fighter when we met - he made me literally LOL. And yet, he pales before how fantastic the tiefling rogue is. She is by far the best character in the Baldur's Gate/NWN series. The druid - as in BG - is annoying and was promptly dumped for the aggressive sorceress. She's a bit annoying too, but I can't argue with her effectiveness.
Someone else dealt with the laser pistol comment, I'll address the interstellar distance issue: From all indication, it was more or less a one time thing, not a daily affair. While this wasn't explicitly clear in the show, the movie makes it certain that the story is happening in a single very large and very populated (with planets and moons) solar system which has been heavily terraformed.
Quite an exception, I suppose, since he's not. Wikipedia:
As a warlock, I intend to do much, much more.
Man, slashdot isn't what it use to be.
;)
It never was.
The only thing the house gets in poker is table fees or tournament fees.
And by that, you mean the house definitely wins every time.
Actually, I'd pickup Nintendaquarium pretty quickly I'd bet. I love the El-Fish type of games.
Come to think of it, if cats and dogs could interact wirelessly, I might pick up Nintendacats and a second DS for my girlfriend.
Awesome ideas! You should submit something to Nintendo.
electric blue DSes
Sonofabitch. That's what I get for being an early adopter.
Although, maybe me girlfriend would want one, especially if Nintendogs has any multiplayer.
Wow - I used to work at Science North (5 years!) and day after day of bantering with coworkers finally caused me to break down and buy a Mac. I loved it!
Years later, when upgrade time came, I grudgingly moved back to Windows because I wanted to be a programmer and wanted a larger audience. Of course, 99% of my work time is spent programming web apps on Linux now. Funny how things change.
My sister's going away to college in Montreal next year to study photography. I'll be happily buying her a Powerbook and teaching her Photoshop.
I think it was only a matter of time before this happened - so well done! Now all I'm waiting for is someone to sell pre-configured Mini-ITX systems running this. (Yes, I'm that lazy.)
Funny, I've lived in Canada my whole life and I don't think I've ever heard someone say "hoser" in conversation. Maybe it's an east coast/west coast thing?
The "aboot" thing is an exagerated form of a mostly (to my ears) east coast accent. No one in Canada actually says "aboot", despite American meme. There's a great writeup about Eh at Wikipedia. The stereotypical use of "eh" prevalent in humour is more common in rural settings, but we all proudly say the interjection.
One thing to consider, however, is how many of those pirated copies represent lost sales.
Exactly. I was being cynical in my remark, but I had considered the lost sales argument. Ultimately, however, I believe that a statistically insignicant number of sales will be "lost" due to this.
If your guess of 1/4 was correct, this would be devastating to the industry, and I don't think it to be a likely number for the PC industry let alone for the PS2 where - correct me if I'm wrong - you'd need special hardware to burn a disk, plus a modded console.
I know a few dozen people with consoles and only one that has a mod chip, and that's just for imports (okay, pirated imports, but still - he pays for the domestic stuff).
However, it is already clear [...] piracy is becoming an increasingly common and serious problem for both gamers and the games industry.
I have never condemmned piracy, but "a problem for gamers" - what kind of tripe is this?
Actually, I see their point. The game publishers try to combat piracy with more draconian copy protection. This *is* a problem for gamers. The gamers who legitimately paid for their game. Not for those who download a cracked version.
The previous version of Cedega partially supported Far Cry through OpenGL. This new version fully supports the DirectX version.
I run a popular non-techie site (memegen.net) which is peaking at 900,000 hits a day this month. My visitors are closely associated with the blogging communities, and I get a lot of @aol.com email. Here are my stats for September:
MS Internet Explorer 88.5 %
Mozilla (and co.) 5.7 %
Netscape 2.1 %
Unknown 1.4 %
Safari 1.3 %
Opera 0.5 %
This is a definite trend - IE was at 95% a few months ago and has been dropping every month.
Please, gawd, someone post a .torrent.
WineX is supposed to run WoW perfectly,thankfully.
Anyone else think of this Penny Arcade strip?
FTFA?
Care to expand that acronym, please?
His last applicant of the morning was a plant!
My first thought: Deciduous or Coniferous?
The "applicant" was an attractive 24 year old redhead
My second though: what the *hell* are you talk...oh, a "plant".
(Take a look at the verbose version of the code for an easier read.)
The buildings are actually just one big isosurface. This is a surface in 3D space that is described by a function, similar to describing a line on a 2D graph. For example (warning, I'm been out of school for a while!), the formula y=x would describe a straight line at a 45 deg angle, whereas y=x^2 describes a parabolic curve. You can make the formula more complex and make us of functions (like sin(), cos(), max(), etc...) to end up with some really funky lines that wobble all over.
The authors of "City" and "The Agate Face" both use isosurfaces effectively.
I cannot.