See "Nevada Corporation" or "Delaware Corporation".
There's nothing illegal about what Microsoft is doing. They're simply incorporating in a state that gives them the best tax breaks. This is part of their accounting department's JOB. Thousands of corporations, from behemoths like Microsoft, down to little one-man shops incorporate in Nevada and Delaware.
Why?
It's cheap, the state keeps their hands off your income, and the state makes up the monetary difference in quantity.
Qualifying this as "Microsoft's Cheat" is just someone running off at the mouth, talking about something they don't understand properly.
Note: There IS a flip side to this. Because it is known to be cheap to incorporate in certain states, corporations from those states tend to have tougher times pulling lines of credit in their early years, until they have a proven track record.
This bias really doesn't affect Microsoft. They're huge, rich, have been around over three decades now, and are essentially a household name (God help us).
1: It's my opinion. Nothing more. 1.1: Depth of field turns everything beyond about 5 feet in front of you into a blurry mess. I'm sure I could bind something to grab an enemy target but..
2: Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta. That was enough for me to decide not to give Cryptic my money. Global nerf bait and switch after the fact is not a reassurance, but merely one more reason to avoid the game for now.
3: I'm sorry, mashing buttons till something falls down isn't "action oriented". It's button mashing. Nothing more. That's like labeling a wild burst with a machine gun "precision fire".
4: The others weren't arguments. They're opinions. 4: And if I don't want to rebuild an existing character? What do those alt builds get me then? 8/16 vs 132/396? Contest? What contest?
5: I know they are working on it. It's the bugbear of all MMO games. No publisher is EVER going to produce enough content to stay ahead of their voracious player base. However, the game's problem came about because of a badly executed confluence of content planning and badly timed nerfs.
6: Someone who knows what "ethics" are without having to search Wikipedia for it.
7: They've made their business model with CO unambiguously clear.
8: I'll just say your experience is vastly different and leave it at that.
1: Fugly. However, I'm prepared to put up with fugly if the gameplay is there. 1.1: Fugly in a way that interferes with gameplay. This I'm NOT of a mind to ignore. Ever.
Essentially, two of the major graphical advances being touted with CO (over CoH) were:
A: Cell Shading B: Depth of Field
Guess what two of the most frequently turned off effects are.
A: The Cell Shading outline (makes the game somewhat less fugly). B: Depth of Field (it interferes with targeting almost anything beyond melee range).
Pardon me but WHOOPS! The two "big" features (graphically) and people are turning them OFF to play in an acceptable manner?
2: Teaming is pointless to the extent that you could say it's discouraged.
Basically, unless you gimp yourself in-game, EVERYONE is a "tankmage". The game doesn't really scale the difficulty of missions to properly account for a team. There's no real in-game benefit to it. You don't make more "money" and don't get more XP than running the same thing solo (due to having larger pools of enemies).
3: It's a console button-masher. Sure, their XBox port got delayed more or less indefinitely, but the console fingerprints are all over this. Sorry, but I haven't been into button mashers for years (due to CTS). Even though you can auto your endurance-builder attack, it's still annoying.
4: Wow, eight whole alt slots (16 if you bought the lifetime sub). Sure, to someone fresh from another MMO where you get ONE character per account, this may seem generous. But, even Cryptic admits that, having studied CoH extensively, most players there had an average of SIXTEEN alts. Comparatively, CoH gives you a starting allotment of 12 characters PER SERVER. There are 11 US servers (plus the Test machine).
11x12=132
Moreover, you gain character slots as veteran rewards (keeping a continuous subscription), and can purchase more as well. This gives you up to 36 alts per server.
11x36=396
This essentially allows you to try any and all crazy builds in the game. Without risk of having to bump a well built character elsewhere to make room for it.
Moreover, for several issues now, CoH has had dual-builds. In other words, your toon can have a build designed for one thing, then swap out to another build with a different set of power choices and enhancement slotting.
5: Play is completely repetitive. You run through it once and you're pretty much done with the game. Yes, it's going to take time to fill more content, but even CoH had pathing for various origins so that it was nearly impossible to have a single character who had run EVERY mission/mission arc in the game.
6: Deceptive recruiting and marketing. Needless to say, a certain company tried to utilize a former partner's/competitor's community forums to recruit people for their games. This left something of a bad taste in the mouth of some.
Also, less than a week (one day) post launch, there was a massive nerf of powers, XP earnings, etc. Now it's possible to RUN OUT OF NEW CONTENT IN YOUR RANGE to level on. This means you have to repeat things and grind to make up the deficit.
There was another row over their offering of lifetime and six-month deals to bring people in the door. They said nothing about limited quantities, and only placed a time limit on when these packages would cease being offered. Then, almost two weeks to the deadline, they announced that they were "out of lifetime subscriptions".
???
I can see the marketing angle of this. They want to make sure they don't sell too many of them and hurt future profitability. However, they should have been up-front about the fact that they were offering limited quantities.
7: Not-so-micro transactions. This, in and of itself isn't inherently evil. CoH does it for boosters and expansions. My gripe is simply how miserly the initial offering of CO was compared to what you're going to be expected to buy later on.
Okay, I got my first computer, with keyboard, about 1980. I didn't take a typing class for another 7 years. And the only reason I took it was it was the prerequisite for the few computer classes of the day my high school actually offered. And it was one of the few classes I came close to failing in.
Why? Because you do NOT use a computer with word processing software the same way you do a typewriter. The only things they have in common are:
A: You sit in front of both machines. B: They both have QWERTY keyboards C: The end result of both is a page of text.
Typewriting places emphasis on correct typing form. You look at your sample document and don't look at what you're actually typing until the end. Even on a nice electric typewriter with correction functions.
Word processing is different. You're encouraged to do in-line correction and look at what you're typing every now and again to make sure you haven't screwed up badly, necessitating the retyping of half the page or more.
This behavior was so firmly ingrained in me by this time that I nearly failed the class because of it. Why? Every time I'd look over, even if I didn't begin correcting anything, and went right back to typing, the teacher would take a full letter grade off my paper. So I'd turn in near-perfectly typed pages and get a failing grade.
Needless to say, very long, very LOUD discussions with the high school administration ensued over just this subject. I was allowed to bypass the second half of the class, and the next year the typing prereq was dropped. It still did a number on my GPA though.
While it's all nice and touchy-feely to allow ANYONE to edit, therein lies the problem. ANYONE can edit. Meaning jackasses, as well as well-meaning people. And worse, even with the well-meaning people, bias creeps in.
That Wikipedia was eventually going to have a "trusted group" assume moderation of changes over even a portion of the entries was a foregone conclusion.
Sorry, but EVE has been one of those train-wreck scenarios from the get-go (why I've avoided it). Everyone, including the devs, have been participating in the whole RMT/botting/etc debacle.
What's really happened here is that the developers of EVE have cornered the market for RMT in their game in a way only they could.
For anyone still playing the game. Other than having lost the money-holders in your cartel (and being out millions or billions of ISK), there's nothing to see here. Business as usual.
The only thing that has me worried...well, not worried, but apprehensive is that it sounds like they're going to allow the purchase of actual, game-changing items.
If that's ACTUALLY the case, then you DO have something to worry about other than the lousy play mechanics in the game.
Killing an opponent in this way gives zero benefit to the "winner". They don't get a kill credit. They don't get any "loot", and it doesn't help his "side" advance the zone's objective.
No, the drones at both bases are meant to prevent people from the opposing side from spawn-killing people inside the opposing bases.
Doing so does not accrue kill credits to the person doing it, or the side upon which he's playing. It merely creates debt and wasted time for the other player.
With a bit of extra accuracy and lots of range, anyone could do it. It doesn't make for a very productive or enjoyable gaming session.
There's a reason now why certain changes in the PVP system make this tactic less effective now.
Yes, actually, he was doing things that were "technically" allowed.
HOWEVER, if you read his blog about why he left CoH/CoV in November of last year, he cited "upcoming changes" made by the developers.
Also, when this person came up against someone built to withstand or outright negate his strategy, he'd leave the zone.
Moreover, he trash-talked the whole while, saying a lot more than merely "heroes win".
This was Issue 13, which included a MASSIVE PVP revamp. After the revamp, strategies like his became MUCH less workable.
Also, he was focusing on one mechanic "killing other players", and ignoring others. Such as advancement of character level, the reward system, or the fact that incurring debt on a non-maxed character who dies is essentially robbing them of time played.
It was players like this that made PVP in CoH/CoV so unpopular in the first place.
Wiki: Consensus in the English language is defined firstly as unanimous or general agreement; and secondly group solidarity of belief or sentiment. Webster's: general agreement : unanimity b: the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned
A: No PSU fan (leading to thermal warping of internal components) B: Limited Apple II Compatibility (Limited Compatibility) C: No way to format disks D: EM Pulse Erases tapes (unreliable media) E: Printer required F: Lousy Keyboard (#6 and #8) G: Non-detachable AC adapter H: Ridiculous external expansion options (10, 13, and technically 14) I: No user expandability J: Slow BASIC K: Unreliable disk drives
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft DOES pay their taxes the way other corporations do.
Other corporations besides Microsoft incorporate in other states (Nevada and Delaware specifically) as well.
See "Nevada Corporation" or "Delaware Corporation".
There's nothing illegal about what Microsoft is doing. They're simply incorporating in a state that gives them the best tax breaks.
This is part of their accounting department's JOB.
Thousands of corporations, from behemoths like Microsoft, down to little one-man shops incorporate in Nevada and Delaware.
Why?
It's cheap, the state keeps their hands off your income, and the state makes up the monetary difference in quantity.
Qualifying this as "Microsoft's Cheat" is just someone running off at the mouth, talking about something they don't understand properly.
Note: There IS a flip side to this. Because it is known to be cheap to incorporate in certain states, corporations from those states tend to have tougher times pulling lines of credit in their early years, until they have a proven track record.
This bias really doesn't affect Microsoft. They're huge, rich, have been around over three decades now, and are essentially a household name (God help us).
1: It's my opinion. Nothing more.
1.1: Depth of field turns everything beyond about 5 feet in front of you into a blurry mess. I'm sure I could bind something to grab an enemy target but..
2: Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta. That was enough for me to decide not to give Cryptic my money. Global nerf bait and switch after the fact is not a reassurance, but merely one more reason to avoid the game for now.
3: I'm sorry, mashing buttons till something falls down isn't "action oriented". It's button mashing. Nothing more. That's like labeling a wild burst with a machine gun "precision fire".
4: The others weren't arguments. They're opinions.
4: And if I don't want to rebuild an existing character? What do those alt builds get me then? 8/16 vs 132/396? Contest? What contest?
5: I know they are working on it. It's the bugbear of all MMO games. No publisher is EVER going to produce enough content to stay ahead of their voracious player base. However, the game's problem came about because of a badly executed confluence of content planning and badly timed nerfs.
6: Someone who knows what "ethics" are without having to search Wikipedia for it.
7: They've made their business model with CO unambiguously clear.
8: I'll just say your experience is vastly different and leave it at that.
1: Fugly. However, I'm prepared to put up with fugly if the gameplay is there.
1.1: Fugly in a way that interferes with gameplay. This I'm NOT of a mind to ignore. Ever.
Essentially, two of the major graphical advances being touted with CO (over CoH) were:
A: Cell Shading
B: Depth of Field
Guess what two of the most frequently turned off effects are.
A: The Cell Shading outline (makes the game somewhat less fugly).
B: Depth of Field (it interferes with targeting almost anything beyond melee range).
Pardon me but WHOOPS! The two "big" features (graphically) and people are turning them OFF to play in an acceptable manner?
2: Teaming is pointless to the extent that you could say it's discouraged.
Basically, unless you gimp yourself in-game, EVERYONE is a "tankmage". The game doesn't really scale the difficulty of missions to properly account for a team. There's no real in-game benefit to it. You don't make more "money" and don't get more XP than running the same thing solo (due to having larger pools of enemies).
3: It's a console button-masher. Sure, their XBox port got delayed more or less indefinitely, but the console fingerprints are all over this. Sorry, but I haven't been into button mashers for years (due to CTS). Even though you can auto your endurance-builder attack, it's still annoying.
4: Wow, eight whole alt slots (16 if you bought the lifetime sub). Sure, to someone fresh from another MMO where you get ONE character per account, this may seem generous. But, even Cryptic admits that, having studied CoH extensively, most players there had an average of SIXTEEN alts. Comparatively, CoH gives you a starting allotment of 12 characters PER SERVER. There are 11 US servers (plus the Test machine).
11x12=132
Moreover, you gain character slots as veteran rewards (keeping a continuous subscription), and can purchase more as well. This gives you up to 36 alts per server.
11x36=396
This essentially allows you to try any and all crazy builds in the game. Without risk of having to bump a well built character elsewhere to make room for it.
Moreover, for several issues now, CoH has had dual-builds. In other words, your toon can have a build designed for one thing, then swap out to another build with a different set of power choices and enhancement slotting.
5: Play is completely repetitive. You run through it once and you're pretty much done with the game. Yes, it's going to take time to fill more content, but even CoH had pathing for various origins so that it was nearly impossible to have a single character who had run EVERY mission/mission arc in the game.
6: Deceptive recruiting and marketing.
Needless to say, a certain company tried to utilize a former partner's/competitor's community forums to recruit people for their games. This left something of a bad taste in the mouth of some.
Also, less than a week (one day) post launch, there was a massive nerf of powers, XP earnings, etc. Now it's possible to RUN OUT OF NEW CONTENT IN YOUR RANGE to level on. This means you have to repeat things and grind to make up the deficit.
There was another row over their offering of lifetime and six-month deals to bring people in the door. They said nothing about limited quantities, and only placed a time limit on when these packages would cease being offered. Then, almost two weeks to the deadline, they announced that they were "out of lifetime subscriptions".
???
I can see the marketing angle of this. They want to make sure they don't sell too many of them and hurt future profitability. However, they should have been up-front about the fact that they were offering limited quantities.
7: Not-so-micro transactions. This, in and of itself isn't inherently evil. CoH does it for boosters and expansions. My gripe is simply how miserly the initial offering of CO was compared to what you're going to be expected to buy later on.
8: Customer-hostile support. Started way back i
Not Microsoft's!
I'll stick with Open Office TYVM!
Except when they don't want it to.
Shiver in your cave!
I know! Let's come up with a way to break digital content, simply because it's digital! Not because it's a technical flaw!
Why? For social reasons!
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
HEADDESK
Okay, I got my first computer, with keyboard, about 1980.
I didn't take a typing class for another 7 years. And the only reason I took it was it was the prerequisite for the few computer classes of the day my high school actually offered.
And it was one of the few classes I came close to failing in.
Why? Because you do NOT use a computer with word processing software the same way you do a typewriter. The only things they have in common are:
A: You sit in front of both machines.
B: They both have QWERTY keyboards
C: The end result of both is a page of text.
Typewriting places emphasis on correct typing form. You look at your sample document and don't look at what you're actually typing until the end. Even on a nice electric typewriter with correction functions.
Word processing is different. You're encouraged to do in-line correction and look at what you're typing every now and again to make sure you haven't screwed up badly, necessitating the retyping of half the page or more.
This behavior was so firmly ingrained in me by this time that I nearly failed the class because of it. Why? Every time I'd look over, even if I didn't begin correcting anything, and went right back to typing, the teacher would take a full letter grade off my paper. So I'd turn in near-perfectly typed pages and get a failing grade.
Needless to say, very long, very LOUD discussions with the high school administration ensued over just this subject.
I was allowed to bypass the second half of the class, and the next year the typing prereq was dropped.
It still did a number on my GPA though.
That pretty much sums up the "rationale" behind this "argument".
That...is the sound of inevitability...
While it's all nice and touchy-feely to allow ANYONE to edit, therein lies the problem.
ANYONE can edit. Meaning jackasses, as well as well-meaning people. And worse, even with the well-meaning people, bias creeps in.
That Wikipedia was eventually going to have a "trusted group" assume moderation of changes over even a portion of the entries was a foregone conclusion.
TANSTAAFL.
Sorry, but EVE has been one of those train-wreck scenarios from the get-go (why I've avoided it). Everyone, including the devs, have been participating in the whole RMT/botting/etc debacle.
What's really happened here is that the developers of EVE have cornered the market for RMT in their game in a way only they could.
For anyone still playing the game. Other than having lost the money-holders in your cartel (and being out millions or billions of ISK), there's nothing to see here. Business as usual.
I know what you're talking about. However, for a report formatted the way this one is, likely not a good idea.
Okay, running my monitor at 1600x1200 right now.
Each of the pages loads in and requires roughly a half-page scroll.
That's a decent chunk of data per-page.
Moreover, the pages load quickly.
Stuffing it all into 1-6 pages would do nothing more than insure that when they got slashdotted, they'd drown their server faster.
Seriously, this isn't necessarily some huge, game-breaking thing.
Their previous product, City of Heroes, has been doing this for over a year now with Super Boosters.
What these boosters deliver are a few extra costume options, some extra emotes and what is usually a neat, but relatively useless power.
The first, though not officially a "super booster" was the Wedding Pack
SuperBooster I: Cyborg
SuperBooster II: Magic
SuperBooster III: Superscience
The only thing that has me worried...well, not worried, but apprehensive is that it sounds like they're going to allow the purchase of actual, game-changing items.
If that's ACTUALLY the case, then you DO have something to worry about other than the lousy play mechanics in the game.
This is simply the RIAA trying to kill/win the argument by declaring it a dead issue.
See: "Hold hands over ears and scream LALALALALALALALALALALALA."
Killing an opponent in this way gives zero benefit to the "winner". They don't get a kill credit. They don't get any "loot", and it doesn't help his "side" advance the zone's objective.
No, the drones at both bases are meant to prevent people from the opposing side from spawn-killing people inside the opposing bases.
Doing so does not accrue kill credits to the person doing it, or the side upon which he's playing. It merely creates debt and wasted time for the other player.
With a bit of extra accuracy and lots of range, anyone could do it. It doesn't make for a very productive or enjoyable gaming session.
There's a reason now why certain changes in the PVP system make this tactic less effective now.
No. He wasn't fighting villains. He was abusing a game mechanic to have NPC's meant to stop base griefing do his killing for him.
Yes, actually, he was doing things that were "technically" allowed.
HOWEVER, if you read his blog about why he left CoH/CoV in November of last year, he cited "upcoming changes" made by the developers.
Also, when this person came up against someone built to withstand or outright negate his strategy, he'd leave the zone.
Moreover, he trash-talked the whole while, saying a lot more than merely "heroes win".
This was Issue 13, which included a MASSIVE PVP revamp. After the revamp, strategies like his became MUCH less workable.
Also, he was focusing on one mechanic "killing other players", and ignoring others. Such as advancement of character level, the reward system, or the fact that incurring debt on a non-maxed character who dies is essentially robbing them of time played.
It was players like this that made PVP in CoH/CoV so unpopular in the first place.
SCHEME skeem
an underhand plot; intrigue
Wiki: Consensus in the English language is defined firstly as unanimous or general agreement; and secondly group solidarity of belief or sentiment.
Webster's: general agreement : unanimity b: the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned
If someone is disagreeing, it is NOT consensus.
Oh yeah. You're allowed to tether.
After buying a separate $80/month data plan for it.
A: No PSU fan (leading to thermal warping of internal components)
B: Limited Apple II Compatibility (Limited Compatibility)
C: No way to format disks
D: EM Pulse Erases tapes (unreliable media)
E: Printer required
F: Lousy Keyboard (#6 and #8)
G: Non-detachable AC adapter
H: Ridiculous external expansion options (10, 13, and technically 14)
I: No user expandability
J: Slow BASIC
K: Unreliable disk drives
Caroline! You have a flabby little girly supernova!
Yah! That's so weak!
Sorry, it just the duality of being the first to find something being classified as sub-par is funny in a schadenfreude-kinda way.
Still, I think it's great someone this young was able to participate and actually was able to contribute something like this to science.