It says "BP Business Marketing" at the top and the art doesn't look like any Sims/SimCity game I've played. It's probably a background or screensaver or something. The art is probably supposed to show how everyone uses oil produced by BP in their daily lives or some other silly corporate message for the drones to make them feel important.
Most of your complaints are designers creating bad achievements rather than a problem with the system itself. Designers can fuck up and create bad weapons, levels, bosses, etc, too. It doesn't mean all first person shooters are bad; it just means THAT first person shooter is bad.
If you don't like hugging squirrels, don't fucking do it. You only miss out on 10 nerd points which you obviously don't care about. For 99.9% of WoW's achievements, you can completely ignore them and pretend they don't exist and it doesn't affect the game at all. The major exception in my mind being What a Long Strange Trip It's Been since it awards a slightly faster-than-normal mount, but even that's going away in the next expansion as you'll be able to train to have all your mounts fly at that speed.
Yes but Blizzard has stated you will not be able to unlock them in offline or "guest" mode. I don't really consider achievements to be part of "gameplay", and theoretically if you know what the challenge of the achievement is you can just perform that action anyway; you just can't brag to your friends about it later (unless you record it with fraps or something).
My point being: Yes there is an offline mode for single player, and no, you don't lose anything critical for gameplay if you're playing in this mode.
It is possible that the game may need to phone home to Battle.net at least once after installation similar to Steam games. That I'm not certain of.
The only missing "features" in offline mode will be unlocking achievements, saving your progress on the cloud, and sending in-game and cross-game messages while playing single player. Not one of those actually has any impact whatsoever on the game itself (presuming you don't mind copying save files to a portable storage device to continue your game progress on another machine, which is a practice nearly as old as gaming itself).
Reading just the subject of your post, I thought you were trying to change discussion to the movie Predators because there was nothing more to talk about in the field of autonomous killer robots.
Look, I trust my eyes, and they can definitely see a CLEAR distinction between 24 fps and 30 fps, and 30 fps and 60 fps, (and when I had a CRT and played Q3 in 640x480 so I could use 120 hz, 60 fps and 120 fps) in video games on my computer monitor.
I can also say that a lot of times at the theater action movies look choppy as FUCK to me (to the of distraction in some cases), even with the built-in motion blur (a choppy transition between two blurry pictures still looks choppy to me). And yes, I realize that sometimes it's the cinematographer purposefully slowing down the frame rate for some supposed dramatic effect, but all that usually accomplishes is pissing me off and keeping me from telling what's going on.
I don't know the methodology of measuring "what frame rate the human eye can see" in these experiments or what other mitigating factors might be coming into play in the real world on a computer monitor that might cause different results than these methodologies, but I know what I can see.
So do you think it's better for PepsiCo to post their information on their own site where it most likely will not be questioned and they can control the message rather than on a science blog where it will absolutely be questioned and challenged?
So what if it's in the interest of PepsiCo? That doesn't exclude it from being in the interests of anyone else. And as long as people made logical, well reasoned rebuttals, and as long as those rebuttals aren't censored, then all we have is an opportunity to gain from their posts, even if the gain is entirely in discrediting them publicly.
I'm not sure what happened here that was so bad. Isn't the whole point of science to judge people on the merits of their work? Why should it matter if they work for PepsiCo or not? Just look at the work and judge it on its own. If it's crap, say it's crap, and why it's crap. Don't just ignore them out-of-hand due to who their employer was. I can't even find the PepsiCo blog to read it to see what was so terrible about it, and everything I read just says "IT WAS FROM AN EVIL CORPORATION" which doesn't say shit about the content or the quality of its science.
If they were killing gypsies, jews, and midgets for their experiments, I might understand the negativity, but they make food products, not all of which are even unhealthy, and none of which are that bad when taken in moderation, like all indulgences.
Correct. The devs don't care that it breaks the karma bonus. The same way that they don't care that having a machine that completely cures all radiation for zero cost breaks the rads mechanic.
Nothing in the player's house exists in the game world. It's all a perk for the player, and the majority of it completely breaks various game mechanics that are supposed to be challenges that you overcome within the game.
You can argue that that's bad game design but you can't argue that it's bad plot, because those items don't exist in the plot.
There is ONE robot that can create water, as a PERK for the player. It seemed pretty obvious to me that in the "game world" that robot didn't really exist.
Complaining about that is like complaining about how time stops when you activate VATS, or how you're able to lug around 400 lbs worth of equipment in your magical invisible bag, or how you can carry an infinite amount of ammo because it all has 0 weight, even the watermelon-sized mini-nukes. It's a gameplay mechanic, not a plot device.
5. People stop posting legitimate, intelligent useful feedback because they value their personal privacy more than a video game. 6. Without the constructive feedback, issues without the game go unnoticed or unreported for longer periods of time. 7. These issues compound and add up making the game less fun, but it becomes more difficult to quantify why the game is less fun without this feedback. 8. Subscriptions slowly drop off and the game trickles away and dies. 9. Long term loss of profit for short term, nearsighted gain.
I have this "problem" in online forums where I'll write a huge long post, reread it, decide it's crap, and delete it and not post anything.
Sometimes your opinion just isn't worth sharing. And when you don't take your time and think about what you're writing/typing, you may not realize how idiotic you sound until it's too late.
Note: For me this doesn't really apply to slashdot. On slashdot I just post whatever comes to mind. If it sounds really stupid to me I just click "post anonymously".
It's not a racist term, it's an accurate term. China is one of the few countries with the right mix of technology and a large poor labor force that can actually make gold farming profitable. At least without using bots. Even when your entire inventory is from stealing accounts, you need warm bodies to process (that is, remove everything of value from the characters on) those accounts and then transfer the gold to the buyers.
And the pejorative modifies "gold farmer" not "Chinese".
Slashdot Mirror
It says "BP Business Marketing" at the top and the art doesn't look like any Sims/SimCity game I've played. It's probably a background or screensaver or something. The art is probably supposed to show how everyone uses oil produced by BP in their daily lives or some other silly corporate message for the drones to make them feel important.
Most of your complaints are designers creating bad achievements rather than a problem with the system itself. Designers can fuck up and create bad weapons, levels, bosses, etc, too. It doesn't mean all first person shooters are bad; it just means THAT first person shooter is bad.
If you don't like hugging squirrels, don't fucking do it. You only miss out on 10 nerd points which you obviously don't care about. For 99.9% of WoW's achievements, you can completely ignore them and pretend they don't exist and it doesn't affect the game at all. The major exception in my mind being What a Long Strange Trip It's Been since it awards a slightly faster-than-normal mount, but even that's going away in the next expansion as you'll be able to train to have all your mounts fly at that speed.
Yes but Blizzard has stated you will not be able to unlock them in offline or "guest" mode. I don't really consider achievements to be part of "gameplay", and theoretically if you know what the challenge of the achievement is you can just perform that action anyway; you just can't brag to your friends about it later (unless you record it with fraps or something).
My point being: Yes there is an offline mode for single player, and no, you don't lose anything critical for gameplay if you're playing in this mode.
It is possible that the game may need to phone home to Battle.net at least once after installation similar to Steam games. That I'm not certain of.
The only missing "features" in offline mode will be unlocking achievements, saving your progress on the cloud, and sending in-game and cross-game messages while playing single player. Not one of those actually has any impact whatsoever on the game itself (presuming you don't mind copying save files to a portable storage device to continue your game progress on another machine, which is a practice nearly as old as gaming itself).
Even WC1 had pre-rendered cut scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsBUAnb_NL8
Reading just the subject of your post, I thought you were trying to change discussion to the movie Predators because there was nothing more to talk about in the field of autonomous killer robots.
Look, I trust my eyes, and they can definitely see a CLEAR distinction between 24 fps and 30 fps, and 30 fps and 60 fps, (and when I had a CRT and played Q3 in 640x480 so I could use 120 hz, 60 fps and 120 fps) in video games on my computer monitor.
I can also say that a lot of times at the theater action movies look choppy as FUCK to me (to the of distraction in some cases), even with the built-in motion blur (a choppy transition between two blurry pictures still looks choppy to me). And yes, I realize that sometimes it's the cinematographer purposefully slowing down the frame rate for some supposed dramatic effect, but all that usually accomplishes is pissing me off and keeping me from telling what's going on.
I don't know the methodology of measuring "what frame rate the human eye can see" in these experiments or what other mitigating factors might be coming into play in the real world on a computer monitor that might cause different results than these methodologies, but I know what I can see.
You can still buy the Pepsi Throwback in some stores in my area (but not the Mt. Dew). I definitely buy it instead of HFCS soda when I can find it.
So do you think it's better for PepsiCo to post their information on their own site where it most likely will not be questioned and they can control the message rather than on a science blog where it will absolutely be questioned and challenged?
So what if it's in the interest of PepsiCo? That doesn't exclude it from being in the interests of anyone else. And as long as people made logical, well reasoned rebuttals, and as long as those rebuttals aren't censored, then all we have is an opportunity to gain from their posts, even if the gain is entirely in discrediting them publicly.
Then their posts should have stood on their own merit (or lack thereof, whatever the case may be).
I'm not sure what happened here that was so bad. Isn't the whole point of science to judge people on the merits of their work? Why should it matter if they work for PepsiCo or not? Just look at the work and judge it on its own. If it's crap, say it's crap, and why it's crap. Don't just ignore them out-of-hand due to who their employer was. I can't even find the PepsiCo blog to read it to see what was so terrible about it, and everything I read just says "IT WAS FROM AN EVIL CORPORATION" which doesn't say shit about the content or the quality of its science.
If they were killing gypsies, jews, and midgets for their experiments, I might understand the negativity, but they make food products, not all of which are even unhealthy, and none of which are that bad when taken in moderation, like all indulgences.
Oh yeah, and the addiction curing machine.
Correct. The devs don't care that it breaks the karma bonus. The same way that they don't care that having a machine that completely cures all radiation for zero cost breaks the rads mechanic.
Nothing in the player's house exists in the game world. It's all a perk for the player, and the majority of it completely breaks various game mechanics that are supposed to be challenges that you overcome within the game.
You can argue that that's bad game design but you can't argue that it's bad plot, because those items don't exist in the plot.
There is ONE robot that can create water, as a PERK for the player. It seemed pretty obvious to me that in the "game world" that robot didn't really exist.
Complaining about that is like complaining about how time stops when you activate VATS, or how you're able to lug around 400 lbs worth of equipment in your magical invisible bag, or how you can carry an infinite amount of ammo because it all has 0 weight, even the watermelon-sized mini-nukes. It's a gameplay mechanic, not a plot device.
It exists, it's just hard to find. Blizzard thinks this will make it easier to find. The reality is it will simply disappear completely.
Blizzard doesn't actually check the name on the account vs. the name on the credit card, anyway.
5. People stop posting legitimate, intelligent useful feedback because they value their personal privacy more than a video game.
6. Without the constructive feedback, issues without the game go unnoticed or unreported for longer periods of time.
7. These issues compound and add up making the game less fun, but it becomes more difficult to quantify why the game is less fun without this feedback.
8. Subscriptions slowly drop off and the game trickles away and dies.
9. Long term loss of profit for short term, nearsighted gain.
I can't get the page to load. Their servers must be pretty weak if they can be slashdotted by an idle story with 11 comments (as of this writing).
People have been yelling "fascist" at whoever they disagree with politically since at least the 1960's.
I have this "problem" in online forums where I'll write a huge long post, reread it, decide it's crap, and delete it and not post anything.
Sometimes your opinion just isn't worth sharing. And when you don't take your time and think about what you're writing/typing, you may not realize how idiotic you sound until it's too late.
Note: For me this doesn't really apply to slashdot. On slashdot I just post whatever comes to mind. If it sounds really stupid to me I just click "post anonymously".
Well, all I can say is that I disagree.
It's not a racist term, it's an accurate term. China is one of the few countries with the right mix of technology and a large poor labor force that can actually make gold farming profitable. At least without using bots. Even when your entire inventory is from stealing accounts, you need warm bodies to process (that is, remove everything of value from the characters on) those accounts and then transfer the gold to the buyers.
And the pejorative modifies "gold farmer" not "Chinese".
How are 10, 5, 3, and 2 not "usable" numbers? Or even 3.5 and 2.8 for that matter (my car's estimated city and highway consumption, respectively).