The book mentions it; the review does not. The sheer number of games he discusses means that this would turn into a Wikipedia article if I tried to list them all.
Someone in this overpass, somewhere, is bouncing a laser beam off Hiro's face. It's annoying. Without being too obvious about it, he changes his course slightly, wanders over to a point downwind of a trash fire that's burning in a steel drum. Now he's standing in the middle of a plume of diluted smoke that he can smell but can't quite see.
But the next time the laser darts into his face, it scatters off a million tiny, ashy particulates and reveals itself as a pure geometric line in space, pointing straight back to its source.
It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.
This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment -- which is very expensive -- he's been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.
It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him.
Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of the CIC before too long.
This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment - which is very expensive - he's been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.
There's a lot to be said for this, but I think the finger should be pointed past the video games and towards an overprotective and overly litigious society.
When I was growing up we had our Nintendos and Segas and Ataris and Intellivisions and Apple IIe computers, but we only played around with those for a few hours, and then we'd go outside and play baseball or football or street hockey, or merely ride our bikes around the neighborhood for a few more hours.
But nowadays it seems like everyone is scared to get up out of their chair. Are you going to ride a bike? Better wear a helmet, get some reflectors, ride with a friend, attach a siren, etc. Going to play street hockey? Better wear a helmet and a bunch of pads and secure the services of a lawyer so you can sue the first person who body checks you into a parked car. Going for a walk? Better rethink that - you might get abducted by a stranger. Gym class? Recess? Are you mad? You might fall and skin a knee.
We didn't take precautions when we played when I was growing up. And you know what? We survived. We did amazing crazy things. We played tackle football in the street. We threw rocks at each other. And no matter what we did we didn't wear helmets. And the worst that came from all of it is one of my friends got a broken arm once.
I think we need more Nietzsche and less nurture. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Because that which does not make me stronger is killing me.
I don't travel that much but every time I've done so in the past five years, it has taken a maximum of 15 minutes to get through security. On the contrary, the boarding and deboarding process always takes at least 20 minutes because people are shuffling in the aisles, taking their coats off/putting them on, stowing gigantic carry-ons, standing up after the plane lands and blocking the aisle before the doors are open...
I think the $500,000 should go to someone who speeds up the amount of time it takes to get on and off a plane. That's where the most time is wasted.
My issue with the new blaster/tank/dps/healer functions is that (at first blush) they don't appear to have anything to do with going into a dungeon or getting the loot or anything except combat functionality. And when you are encouraged to create characters based primarily on their function within combat (rather than other factors) that sets you up for a specific type of gameplay which, I think, is inherently contraindicative of the traditional D&D style dungeon romp. Once you're in a combat mindset, everything looks like a nail.
No longer will it be "Well I want to play an elf wizard." Now it'll be "Well we have a tank and a healer and a dps guy, so we need a blaster, so who wants to play the Warlock?"
You may as well just play Blood Bowl at that point.
I think that the division of "party roles" responds to the fact that every character should be useful in a fight. I think this is true in a game about fighting things all the time, which is what D&D has turned into, in part (I think) thanks to MMOs. Old school D&D wasn't about just fighting. Sure there were monsters to fight, but there were also dungeons to explore, traps to defuse, puzzles to solve, spells to discover, etc.
A decade and a half of computerized grinding has turned fantasy gaming into nothing more than a grindhouse. Monsters go in one end, treasure comes out the other. And yes, D&D always had that. But it also had a lot more. I think even old school Basic D&D had a good balance when it came to overall functionality and archetypal variety.
I shudder to think of what Lord of the Rings might look like if it were written today...
"Gandalf, nuke the orcs. Gimli, you tank. Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam all backstab. Aragorn, you heal the tank. Sorry Legolas, we don't need you. Maybe go roll up a Druid and get back to us."
I think they were quite different in the old days. Fighters were damage dealers AND damage soakers AND the presumed leaders. Clerics were healers AND secondary damage dealers/soakers AND they turned undead. Rogues had backstab but they did not run around doing the most "damage per second" out of everyone. They were sneaky and stealthy and pretty weak in a fight and were primarily used for disarming traps, opening doors, and being sneaky. Wizards had an entire repertoire of varied spells and were hardly blasters. Sure, there was always fireball and lightning bolt but one of the best spells you could take was not a damage-dealing spell, it was sleep, because it did really good crowd control.
But the MMO gave role-playing a back seat and made everything about combat, so everyone needed a combat role. What does your sneaky rogue do in combat? Well he's got backstab. Let's make him do the most DPS. Well we don't want undead to run away any more so let's make the cleric focus on healing so we can just kill the undead. Well who wants to hold monsters or charm people - let's just crank up the damage the wizard can do. In fact let's just make him a Warlock and he can shoot energy beams over and over again. Etc. And so it goes.
Cleric, Thief, Fighter and Magic-User inspired Healer, DPS, Tank and Blaster, but they are not synonymous.
The foursome of the Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster as roles within a party
As opposed to the foursome of Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard thats been standard since the seventies? Yes, as opposed to. Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard obviously inspired Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster, but MMOs have twisted the roles away from the original classes. To whit: Rogues are now the de Facto DPS class. In olden days, Rogues had backstab, sure, but they were never the primary damage dealers. They were stealthy pickpocketing thieves.
4e? Rogues are now the primary DPS class.
Wizards Presents: Races and Classes (a 4e preview), makes it explicit.
"These are new specific "jobs" in an adventuring party that they designed for. They are defender, striker, controller, and leader. The defender is a typical MMORPG tank, with high defenses and abilities to cause foes to focus on him. The striker is a one-on-one damage dealer. The controller is oddly named - this covers damaging or affecting multiple targets (like with a Fireball). The leader heals, aids, and buffs."
If 4e was returning to roots, they'd have four classes and that's it. Instead, they're giving us four roles that are MMO-inspired and layering lots more than four classes atop those roles. That's not anything like D&D used to be.
To a certain extent, it sounds as if D&D4e is mimicking a lot of the standards that World of Warcraft and other MMOs have laid down. To whit: The foursome of the Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster as roles within a party, Feat Trees, etc. Are you consciously and intentionally making D&D4e more like online MMOs to try and recapture some of that lost audience?
The reason everyone plays WOW and not COH/COV is critical mass. People play WOW because people play WOW. I stopped playing COV because no one else was playing and it was impossible to find anyone to group with.
From the article: "There's no multiplayer and the storyline doesn't lend itself to simply dropping in additional "levels.""
It doesn't? Rapture is an entire underwater city. Certainly it would be an easy matter to let the bathysphere go to additional locations, each with a self-contained storyline.
One might as well say that the Diablo II storyline didn't lend itself to simply dropping in additional "levels"... until Act 5 got added.
Slashdot Mirror
The book mentions it; the review does not. The sheer number of games he discusses means that this would turn into a Wikipedia article if I tried to list them all.
In fact, Barton makes this comparison explicit in his discussion of Diablo, referring to it as "a Roguelike for the '90s."
Nethack gets a few sentences on page 36, alongside other Roguelikes such as Hack, Larn, Moria, Ancient Domains of Mystery, and Angband.
Perhaps they were merely taking inspiration from the choppy Jump Cut camera work prevalent in the Ask a Ninja podcast.
Were they MacBook Airs? Perhaps they're stuck inside some manila envelopes.
EAT ANALGESIC
I wrote my ten word summary with you in mind.
How convenient. I suppose now you are mysteriously missing five million posts that can't ever be recovered due to this "upgrade"?
Someone in this overpass, somewhere, is bouncing a laser beam off Hiro's face. It's annoying. Without being too obvious about it, he changes his course slightly, wanders over to a point downwind of a trash fire that's burning in a steel drum. Now he's standing in the middle of a plume of diluted smoke that he can smell but can't quite see.
But the next time the laser darts into his face, it scatters off a million tiny, ashy particulates and reveals itself as a pure geometric line in space, pointing straight back to its source.
It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.
This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment -- which is very expensive -- he's been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.
It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case
he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts
walking toward him.
Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence
Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their
bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back,
on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording
everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups
are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator
pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once
above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they
embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the
attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in
the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering
quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that
some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license
number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case
one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC
database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual
gargoyles get kicked out of the CIC before too long.
This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of
his equipment - which is very expensive - he's been at it for a while. So he
must be pretty good.
D&D --> Diku/CircleMUD --> Everquest --> World of Warcraft --> D&D
Atari Stunt Cycle was my first gaming experience.
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/stuntcycle.html
It came out in 1977. It was a single-game console where you jumped a motorcycle over some buses. Over and over. And over.
As I said on this site:
There's a lot to be said for this, but I think the finger should be pointed past the video games and towards an overprotective and overly litigious society.
When I was growing up we had our Nintendos and Segas and Ataris and Intellivisions and Apple IIe computers, but we only played around with those for a few hours, and then we'd go outside and play baseball or football or street hockey, or merely ride our bikes around the neighborhood for a few more hours.
But nowadays it seems like everyone is scared to get up out of their chair. Are you going to ride a bike? Better wear a helmet, get some reflectors, ride with a friend, attach a siren, etc. Going to play street hockey? Better wear a helmet and a bunch of pads and secure the services of a lawyer so you can sue the first person who body checks you into a parked car. Going for a walk? Better rethink that - you might get abducted by a stranger. Gym class? Recess? Are you mad? You might fall and skin a knee.
We didn't take precautions when we played when I was growing up. And you know what? We survived. We did amazing crazy things. We played tackle football in the street. We threw rocks at each other. And no matter what we did we didn't wear helmets. And the worst that came from all of it is one of my friends got a broken arm once.
I think we need more Nietzsche and less nurture. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Because that which does not make me stronger is killing me.
I don't travel that much but every time I've done so in the past five years, it has taken a maximum of 15 minutes to get through security. On the contrary, the boarding and deboarding process always takes at least 20 minutes because people are shuffling in the aisles, taking their coats off/putting them on, stowing gigantic carry-ons, standing up after the plane lands and blocking the aisle before the doors are open...
I think the $500,000 should go to someone who speeds up the amount of time it takes to get on and off a plane. That's where the most time is wasted.
That is its roots.
My issue with the new blaster/tank/dps/healer functions is that (at first blush) they don't appear to have anything to do with going into a dungeon or getting the loot or anything except combat functionality. And when you are encouraged to create characters based primarily on their function within combat (rather than other factors) that sets you up for a specific type of gameplay which, I think, is inherently contraindicative of the traditional D&D style dungeon romp. Once you're in a combat mindset, everything looks like a nail.
No longer will it be "Well I want to play an elf wizard." Now it'll be "Well we have a tank and a healer and a dps guy, so we need a blaster, so who wants to play the Warlock?"
You may as well just play Blood Bowl at that point.
A decade and a half of computerized grinding has turned fantasy gaming into nothing more than a grindhouse. Monsters go in one end, treasure comes out the other. And yes, D&D always had that. But it also had a lot more. I think even old school Basic D&D had a good balance when it came to overall functionality and archetypal variety.
I shudder to think of what Lord of the Rings might look like if it were written today...
"Gandalf, nuke the orcs. Gimli, you tank. Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam all backstab. Aragorn, you heal the tank. Sorry Legolas, we don't need you. Maybe go roll up a Druid and get back to us."
I think they were quite different in the old days. Fighters were damage dealers AND damage soakers AND the presumed leaders. Clerics were healers AND secondary damage dealers/soakers AND they turned undead. Rogues had backstab but they did not run around doing the most "damage per second" out of everyone. They were sneaky and stealthy and pretty weak in a fight and were primarily used for disarming traps, opening doors, and being sneaky. Wizards had an entire repertoire of varied spells and were hardly blasters. Sure, there was always fireball and lightning bolt but one of the best spells you could take was not a damage-dealing spell, it was sleep, because it did really good crowd control.
But the MMO gave role-playing a back seat and made everything about combat, so everyone needed a combat role. What does your sneaky rogue do in combat? Well he's got backstab. Let's make him do the most DPS. Well we don't want undead to run away any more so let's make the cleric focus on healing so we can just kill the undead. Well who wants to hold monsters or charm people - let's just crank up the damage the wizard can do. In fact let's just make him a Warlock and he can shoot energy beams over and over again. Etc. And so it goes.
Cleric, Thief, Fighter and Magic-User inspired Healer, DPS, Tank and Blaster, but they are not synonymous.
As opposed to the foursome of Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard thats been standard since the seventies? Yes, as opposed to. Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard obviously inspired Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster, but MMOs have twisted the roles away from the original classes. To whit: Rogues are now the de Facto DPS class. In olden days, Rogues had backstab, sure, but they were never the primary damage dealers. They were stealthy pickpocketing thieves.
4e? Rogues are now the primary DPS class.
Wizards Presents: Races and Classes (a 4e preview), makes it explicit.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13546.phtml
To quote the author of that review:
"These are new specific "jobs" in an adventuring party that they designed for. They are defender, striker, controller, and leader. The defender is a typical MMORPG tank, with high defenses and abilities to cause foes to focus on him. The striker is a one-on-one damage dealer. The controller is oddly named - this covers damaging or affecting multiple targets (like with a Fireball). The leader heals, aids, and buffs."
If 4e was returning to roots, they'd have four classes and that's it. Instead, they're giving us four roles that are MMO-inspired and layering lots more than four classes atop those roles. That's not anything like D&D used to be.
You owe me a Coke.
To a certain extent, it sounds as if D&D4e is mimicking a lot of the standards that World of Warcraft and other MMOs have laid down. To whit: The foursome of the Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster as roles within a party, Feat Trees, etc. Are you consciously and intentionally making D&D4e more like online MMOs to try and recapture some of that lost audience?
A report issued by the Secretary of State's office details myriad problems...
All better.
The recipe itself is fine.
1 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.
1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting.
3/4 cup vegetable oil.
4 large eggs.
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
3/4 cups butter or margarine.
1&2/3 cups granulated sugar.
2 cups all purpose flour.
Everything else is "garnishes". You can leave those off.
The reason everyone plays WOW and not COH/COV is critical mass. People play WOW because people play WOW. I stopped playing COV because no one else was playing and it was impossible to find anyone to group with.
From the article: "There's no multiplayer and the storyline doesn't lend itself to simply dropping in additional "levels.""
It doesn't? Rapture is an entire underwater city. Certainly it would be an easy matter to let the bathysphere go to additional locations, each with a self-contained storyline.
One might as well say that the Diablo II storyline didn't lend itself to simply dropping in additional "levels"... until Act 5 got added.
Is that Gordon Freeman ruined it.