The 360 actually does accept keyboard input, but developers are only allowed to let users use it for text input. Works great for navigating the Guide (or whatever they call it now). Developers cannot allow users to use the keyboard for any gameplay operations.
I'm guessing it has to do with not letting developers "do whatever they want" and "require" a keyboard indirectly (by supporting both and having one be superior) and to maintain a consistent and simplified user experience. I believe that's their reasoning at least.
You're forgetting that this is Counter-Strike. Aiming has only a minimal effect on where your bullets will actually land. Except for the very first shot from the AK47, assuming you're crouched and not moving.
Also, SC2 now (as of about a week ago) has the "unlimited demo" client where you can play Terran in custom games on a limited map pool and the first couple single player missions.
You're trying to justify/rationalize your infringement. It's still infringement. WC2/SC1/Diablo are extremely rare exceptions with their (somewhat crippled) "spawn" install. Even in the mid to late 90's they were an exception, rather than the rule.
What makes you think his friends "own" SC1? It's pretty implicit that they all "have" SC1 to play on LAN specifically because it's so easy to pirate, not necessarily because they purchased it.
It's pretty obvious there was no "mass exodus" due to Real ID. They didn't start losing customers until after Cataclysm (which I believe is mostly either gameplay related due to changes in that expansion, or related to the extreme age of the game at this point) which was much later than the Real ID incident (long enough that you can't even chock it up to a ton of people paying 6 months at a time having their account finally expire at that time).
Because an always-on connection means they can keep cheaters off THEIR servers, not YOUR server. It means they can try to hide some critical data on the server side to make it much more difficult to cheat, or bot, or dupe, or whatever, and anyone attempting to crack it is at least reverse engineering it blind instead of having their own copy of the blue print handed to them right on the disc for the purposes of single player/offline/LAN mode.
This is not about the economy. If it was, they would do the same thing they did for diablo ii. Local games were not part of the economy. Battle.net games were. There's no reason they couldn't do the same thing for Diablo III. Unless their real purpose is preventing piracy.
Let's pretend for a second that we believe Blizzard really is "surprised" that people are upset about the always on requirement, and that they really did just do it out of the goodness of their hearts for only positive reasons.
Here's the end user experience for Diablo 2: I play single player by myself and kill Diablo on Normal, "beating" the game initially on my own, going at my own pace, finding out the story without getting it spoiled or being rushed through by someone who's already done it. Now I feel like I can go online with my friends and play on Battle.net. But! I can't use my wonderful amazon that I'm so proud of. I have to start over from scratch if I want to play on Blizzard's servers, or I have to play on "open battle.net" which is rife with hackers and cheaters, and doesn't offer things like the ladder. If I'm a really casual player, I might just not even bother with the whole online thing and play a different game, because of this huge hurdle of leveling up again, feeling like my time in single player was "wasted".
Not only that, but because this is now Diablo 3, and I was playing in "offline mode", I haven't earned any achievements for my battle.net 2.0 account or missed out on whatever other "bonus features" that require some sort of security enforcement to be recognized online that Blizzard decided to add to "enhance" the user experience.
My point being, there are legit gameplay and user experience reasons to require an always on connection. They might not be ones you're particularly interested in but they're still valid. And it's pretty obvious Blizzard has done the market research on this and seen how much of an impact, if any, it would really have on their user base. 11 million concurrent WoW subscribers (an "always online" game) and however many people played SC2 single player while connected to battle.net (not using its offline mode) plus however many people DID use the offline mode and how often those people had to "check in" every... I think 30 days to keep it in offline mode, plus whatever traditional polling and market research shit they do.
So improved user experience for most users, improved security to (hopefully) prevent cheating/duping/botting, and DRM to prevent piracy. Basically this is win/win/win for Blizzard.
Also:
Starcraft: Brood War is. I own Starcraft II, but not everyone coming does. They would all buy it if it allowed LAN play. As it is, we will be content playing Starcraft, Unreal Tournament Classic, and Terraria.
Casual LAN copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. I've done it, too, but I'm not going to try and claim it as some kind of right. I was playing games I didn't pay for. If companies come up with effective DRM that prevents me from casually pirating their game at a LAN, then guess what? I'm not going to casually pirate their game at a LAN. And if it's a particularly good game, if I want to play it at a LAN with my friends, then I will buy it.
And those people won't buy Diablo 3, or will rely on some hack to play it. And they're an extreme minority. At some point you have to just cut the super edge cases off.
Uh, at the end the Lawgiver is clearly giving a speech to a mix of human and ape children and it's obviously supposed to be long after Caesar's death. Perhaps not 2000 years in the future but far enough that the ape-dominated future seems at least unlikely if not impossible.
Even in the original Planet of the Apes series of movies, the original timeline that led to the ape future was unaltered. Xera going back in time and Caesar initiating the revolt actually resulted in a different future where apes and humans lived together peacefully rather than the ape future that Taylor visited. This is established in Battle For the Planet of the Apes.
I recall reading an interview where they specifically said Skyrim was not based on Gamebryo. Although I supposed it could be like a Quake engine -> Source engine type of deal. Take a licensed engine as your base, and slowly replace every facet of it until you can claim it's your own.
No matter what you think, the people playing Farmville actually enjoy it. Even if they don't enjoy the "gameplay", they enjoy things like "community" and "competition" and "progression". They're having fun, or else they wouldn't play it. If something is done that makes Diablo 3 unfun, those people who find it unfun will quit. There's not even a monthly fee or guild or raid structure to make them feel invested, like WoW. They'll just straight up quit. Trust me.
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My plan of hiding in my house and doing nothing exciting or stressful ever is working out perfectly.
The 360 actually does accept keyboard input, but developers are only allowed to let users use it for text input. Works great for navigating the Guide (or whatever they call it now). Developers cannot allow users to use the keyboard for any gameplay operations.
I'm guessing it has to do with not letting developers "do whatever they want" and "require" a keyboard indirectly (by supporting both and having one be superior) and to maintain a consistent and simplified user experience. I believe that's their reasoning at least.
You're forgetting that this is Counter-Strike. Aiming has only a minimal effect on where your bullets will actually land. Except for the very first shot from the AK47, assuming you're crouched and not moving.
Ha, that's what I get for getting distracted and reading the waterbear article before clicking submit.
All glory to the waterbear!
To ensure their steady stream of tax revenue for road maintenance and other uses as people move to hybrid/electric cars.
No, it's copyright infringement according to the law. Your opinion or "perception" don't really enter into it.
Like the other poster said, that's all on Activision.
HL1 had more in common with a platformer than a survival horror game (at least after the first 15 minutes).
Also, SC2 now (as of about a week ago) has the "unlimited demo" client where you can play Terran in custom games on a limited map pool and the first couple single player missions.
You're trying to justify/rationalize your infringement. It's still infringement. WC2/SC1/Diablo are extremely rare exceptions with their (somewhat crippled) "spawn" install. Even in the mid to late 90's they were an exception, rather than the rule.
I think you're being naive.
What makes you think his friends "own" SC1? It's pretty implicit that they all "have" SC1 to play on LAN specifically because it's so easy to pirate, not necessarily because they purchased it.
It's pretty obvious there was no "mass exodus" due to Real ID. They didn't start losing customers until after Cataclysm (which I believe is mostly either gameplay related due to changes in that expansion, or related to the extreme age of the game at this point) which was much later than the Real ID incident (long enough that you can't even chock it up to a ton of people paying 6 months at a time having their account finally expire at that time).
Because an always-on connection means they can keep cheaters off THEIR servers, not YOUR server. It means they can try to hide some critical data on the server side to make it much more difficult to cheat, or bot, or dupe, or whatever, and anyone attempting to crack it is at least reverse engineering it blind instead of having their own copy of the blue print handed to them right on the disc for the purposes of single player/offline/LAN mode.
Let's pretend for a second that we believe Blizzard really is "surprised" that people are upset about the always on requirement, and that they really did just do it out of the goodness of their hearts for only positive reasons.
Here's the end user experience for Diablo 2: I play single player by myself and kill Diablo on Normal, "beating" the game initially on my own, going at my own pace, finding out the story without getting it spoiled or being rushed through by someone who's already done it. Now I feel like I can go online with my friends and play on Battle.net. But! I can't use my wonderful amazon that I'm so proud of. I have to start over from scratch if I want to play on Blizzard's servers, or I have to play on "open battle.net" which is rife with hackers and cheaters, and doesn't offer things like the ladder. If I'm a really casual player, I might just not even bother with the whole online thing and play a different game, because of this huge hurdle of leveling up again, feeling like my time in single player was "wasted".
Not only that, but because this is now Diablo 3, and I was playing in "offline mode", I haven't earned any achievements for my battle.net 2.0 account or missed out on whatever other "bonus features" that require some sort of security enforcement to be recognized online that Blizzard decided to add to "enhance" the user experience.
My point being, there are legit gameplay and user experience reasons to require an always on connection. They might not be ones you're particularly interested in but they're still valid. And it's pretty obvious Blizzard has done the market research on this and seen how much of an impact, if any, it would really have on their user base. 11 million concurrent WoW subscribers (an "always online" game) and however many people played SC2 single player while connected to battle.net (not using its offline mode) plus however many people DID use the offline mode and how often those people had to "check in" every... I think 30 days to keep it in offline mode, plus whatever traditional polling and market research shit they do.
So improved user experience for most users, improved security to (hopefully) prevent cheating/duping/botting, and DRM to prevent piracy. Basically this is win/win/win for Blizzard.
Also:
Casual LAN copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. I've done it, too, but I'm not going to try and claim it as some kind of right. I was playing games I didn't pay for. If companies come up with effective DRM that prevents me from casually pirating their game at a LAN, then guess what? I'm not going to casually pirate their game at a LAN. And if it's a particularly good game, if I want to play it at a LAN with my friends, then I will buy it.
Most Valve employees are the type of people who would do this on their own time for free if the company went under.
And those people won't buy Diablo 3, or will rely on some hack to play it. And they're an extreme minority. At some point you have to just cut the super edge cases off.
Uh, at the end the Lawgiver is clearly giving a speech to a mix of human and ape children and it's obviously supposed to be long after Caesar's death. Perhaps not 2000 years in the future but far enough that the ape-dominated future seems at least unlikely if not impossible.
Even in the original Planet of the Apes series of movies, the original timeline that led to the ape future was unaltered. Xera going back in time and Caesar initiating the revolt actually resulted in a different future where apes and humans lived together peacefully rather than the ape future that Taylor visited. This is established in Battle For the Planet of the Apes.
Ok so you don't like Elder Scrolls games. You've had 4 previous versions to figure this out ahead of time.
Which was exactly the AC's point. Which is why you should have been modded up rather than down, IMO.
I recall reading an interview where they specifically said Skyrim was not based on Gamebryo. Although I supposed it could be like a Quake engine -> Source engine type of deal. Take a licensed engine as your base, and slowly replace every facet of it until you can claim it's your own.
Everyone who calls Portal/Portal 2 a first person shooter is an idiot. There, I said it.
No matter what you think, the people playing Farmville actually enjoy it. Even if they don't enjoy the "gameplay", they enjoy things like "community" and "competition" and "progression". They're having fun, or else they wouldn't play it. If something is done that makes Diablo 3 unfun, those people who find it unfun will quit. There's not even a monthly fee or guild or raid structure to make them feel invested, like WoW. They'll just straight up quit. Trust me.