What if L.L. Bean where "taking the high road" by preventing their customers from being "accosted" with information such as L.L. Bean's use of sweatshop labor, discrimination against (fill in the blank), or sale of clothing that was dyed with alleged carcinogens?
You have a point there, but thats not the case in this situation. The argument L.L. Bean is trying to make is that Gator (I refuse to call it Gloria Corp) setup their pop-up program so that their competitor's advertisement would show up at their site.
Thats like saying, 'Welcome to L.L. Bean where you can fine products and clothes, but be sure to look at Gap's new shipment of jeans. Oh and J.C. Penney has a sale this week, you should take a look. Oh and since you're searching for shirts and ties, Nordstrom just announced a new line of this month check it out. Oh and enjoy your stay at L.L. Bean's website.'
The players always got to play the historical winner, such as Hannibal when he ripped Scipio and Sempronius (and their troops) a new one at the river Tribius IIRC. "greatest military minds of all time" my arse, although it may have been crippled so the contestants would have a chance...
Yeah that was pretty stupid, but when you consider this stuff is broadcast on TV...
"Here we see Mike commanding the Roman army as it begins to crush a Germanic tribe. And Mike just order his archers to run in... hes ordering his legions to attack each other... and where is he sending his phalanxes?"
Just because someone does something you don't like, since when did that make them more stupid (or less intelligent) than you?
In some cases its not a matter of liking what they do or not, its HOW they do it. We all know roughly 90% of all e-mail out there is spam. But some of the methods they use are completely idiotic. In order to bypass anti-spam systems they do things like spell out 'penis' like 'p.3.n~ 1-s'. For crying out loud, I know theres a sucker born every minute but does it have to be so obvious? If I'm gonna get baited by 200 spam e-mails a day, don't insult my intelligence with such stupid systems which serve only to clog up my e-mail account.
The controls were fine, the graphics were fine, the multiplayer was fine... but it was nothing new, nothing special.
By that logic, Counter-Strike is 'fine', the graphics fine, and the multiplayer is fine so its 'nothing new, nothing special.' Same with Half-Life, other than the storytelling it was nothing special. We've seenen it all before, the WASD keys+mouse setup was becoming standard, graphics were nothing groundbreaking, and the only improvement to multiplayer was an easy to use server finding system.
You could argue that the dominance of the Gameboy was due to one simple factor: every competitor screwed up by making systems that were over twice as large as the GB.
Um, yeah they were. The most notable of all, the Game Gear by (gasp) Sega, was roughly 1.5 times the size of the Gameboy and had less than half the battery life time, but blew away the Gameboy in terms of tech (color screen AND a larger memory cart!). Oh and 'just bumped with a larger palette'? Yeah, thanks for mentioning that it cut the number of batteries from 4 to 2 while maintaining the same battery time, increased the memory space, and believe me back then color on a handheld made a difference. The Gameboy Advance is insanely powerful to anyone who grew up during the NES days or earlier.
As for the PS1 being a fluke, the only other options at the time was the Saturn which developers hated or the outdated SNES and Genesis. First generation PS1 games had graphics that were insanely blocky or just video clips which took up half the disc due to bad compression.
And no the PS2 wasn't the first to the market. Go pick up a Dreamcast, they're not even $50 due to fools like you.
In reality, yes. In theory (or in a perfect world), no. At least in FFXI, parties don't need so many meat shields (which is what Warriors really are. HONEST! Their most used ability is the ability 'Provoke' which almost always (another topic) causes a monster to target him. This way the Warrior (having the most defense and HP) is hit instead of the weak little mages or the more damage focused monk or ability attacking focused thief.)
Naturally this leads to serious party forming issues.. Following the simple rule of 'supply and demand' Mages are generally rarely available, while Warriors are considered to be 'a dime a dozen.' Its not uncommon to see parties with 3 warriors and no white mages sometimes (I've been in a party with 3 warriors, 2 black mages, and a red mage...)
when the first two times were flukes. We all know from history that Nintendo screwed up with the N64 by going their old fashioned, outdated way with the old carts. Between the Playstation's huge memory capacity (FFVII on 3 650 MBs discs?) and the use of FMVs (again thanks to the memory capacity), Playstation was the only LOGICAL choice anyway you looked at it. Yeah, there was the Saturn but that was too late, too little.
The second time Sony shoulda gotten their asses handed to them, spanked, and then left outside in the cold nude. The PS2 was/is inferior hardware wise, came out a year after the Dreamcast, had AWFUL games for over 6 months (not counting PS1 games), had problems of systems breaking down, and who can forget the 'shortage' problem at launch day. The DVD sized discs were nice but most games barely use half of it, DVD playback was big but didn't make it a 'buy off eBay for $1000' item, and the design was slick but you didn't buy a video game system to look at it. Thanks to Sony's marketing, Sega was run out of the hardware industry and the PS2 is now an aging piece of equipment horribly outdated and unpowered yet still considered to the 'best.'
This time Sony's going for their third time with the PSP. Connectivity? I heard the same thing from Nintendo, yet all I hear is bitching from gamers about having to buy multiple systems to play a game. Ten year life-cycle? Last time I checked the SNES, NES, and Genesis aren't being supported any more despite being considered to be the best systems ever made. Watch movies on a handheld? Guess what, there have been portable DVD players on the market for nearly 5 years now yet theres little demand for them.
Sony may have the console market by its balls right now but this is Nintendo's turf, Nokia is preparing a second attack with their remade N-Gage, and Sony is trying to play a Microsoft-like card by going all out tech in this game. Nothing short of pulling a Microsoft and throwing money into a hole where you can't see the bottom, Sony can't win this.
But at the same time it would be a risk for Square/Enix compared to releasing it on a console made in Japan.
This isn't exactly an entirely accurate analogy but, a few years back Square (yes, just Square) released remakes for Final Fantasy 1-4 (1-3 NES and 4 SNES) on... the Wonderswan Color. Haven't heard of it? Well thats because it was made in Japan, it was for Japan, and it stayed in Japan. A flop? Considering a game for it was released just last November (a Dragon Ball game, but a game nonetheless), the words 'cult hit' probably describe it the best.
For a more accurate analogy (though still not on target), you could compare this sort of action with the time Square announced that its next game was going to be on a system by a company completely unknown in the gaming industry. The game was Final Fantasy VII, the system was the Playstation, the rest is history.
doesn't anyone else think this may up the security and tighten who they'll let in E3?
You mean not let local store managers with almost no interest in gaming attend? Madness!
*rant I once knew a (former) EBGames store manager my area who had to attend a company conference down in Las Vegas. It was all expenses paid plane ticket first class, 3 days hotel, food and transportation arranged. Instead he blew it all so he could bring his girlfriend down (this guy was so NOT a gamer...) there himself and ended up paying for all that. *endrant
As much as everyone would like to admit the fact that E3 is an INDUSTRY SHOW and as such should remain closed to the public, its hard to deny the public access to these sorts of goodies and then expect them to have a half-assed knowledge of 'whats hot, whats not' without reading 20 different magazines and websites. Other than the hardcore gamer, its hard to say with confidence that the public even knew about the Half-Life 2+Radeon deal a few months back.
Theres a video you can download on the Nintendo conference online. The quality is bad though (shaky cam) and the angle which the video was taken isn't that great (glare). Sorry I don't know how to make the link clickable, so you'll have to copy and paste.
We're getting a bunch of remakes a la Metal Gear Solid : The Twin Snakes?
Nice but necessary, not to mention unimpressive to almost 90% of all games who already own a copy of Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and will probably download Codename Gordon online for free.
Well first off, Pokemon ORIGINATED on the Gameboy so saying it they're all remakes is like saying every sports games series simply 'remakes' itself. That Metal Gear Solid 2 is just a 'remake' of MGS1 since they're both on the Playstation systems. Sony is just trying to cover their asses by releasing games with huge names on them. We've all seenen it before (Nintendo and Mario, Sega with Sonic). Can't say that I blaim them, but I will say I wish Sony would come up with their own ideas and stop relying on third-party developers (which have a tendancy to jump ship without warning.)
As for the old NES and SNES ports, thats mostly because Nintendo got tired of having to battle piracy over ROMs. We've all heard the argument before 'well if Nintendo doesn't want me to pirate a copy of Metroid for the NES, they should just re-release it or something'. Which, recently, they did.
copy Bungie by waiting until they can GIVE US A CONCRETE RELEASE DATE. As much as I'd like to believe Half-Life 2 was delayed by the hack incident, I really find it hard to believe that they had to wait months to tell us that the game was delayed let alone delayed because they were hacked. As for Halo 2...
So many new screenshots in one day!? Watch out world! Bungie finally turned on the hype-o generator!
I say, good for them! Keep up the good work. But ask much as I say that, I can't accept it as anything more than a 'fan adaptation.'
As good as the graphics as, as accurately copied the text will probably be (four words : Chrno does not talk.), and as much as I will end up playing it (its free), the game won't be able to satisfy fans of the original game. Why? We all know pretty much whats gonna be in it. Theres no Akira Toriyama (the original character designer) working on it. And theres that lack of 2D in there to make us wonder 'what does Chrno really look like? Is Lucca cute behind those glasses? Doesn't Ayla get cold when you're in the Dark Ages?' (For those who don't remember, in the Dark Ages the world was covered in snow except for the *spoiler* which gets destroyed.)
Except for the fact that nearly 70+% of all high levelers are Japanese players and they don't seem to like American players... (the highest non-Japanese player I've seenen was around level 50, the cap is 75.)
And as it stands, dying in FFXI is too strict to have a free flowing PvP system. As it stands dying takes away 5-10% of the amount of experience you need to gain the next level (get Raise casted on you decreases that amount) so at first dying doesn't mean much (for the first 3 levels this rule actually doesn't apply so newbies can die all they want in the beginning.) Doesn't sound like much when you only need 2000 exp to gain a level (level 10), but when you need 5700 exp (level 29) to gain a level losing 570 exp begins to hurt. To add insult to injury, yes you can LEVEL DOWN and the game lets you know it with a farting like noise and having the words 'Level Down...' appear over your body so everyone can see it.
Oh and the Heal potions? Those are pretty much useless. Get a White Mage in the party and you won't need potions. Course healers being wimps in this game, they're very rare (White Mages consist of about 5-10% on my server.. sucks really.)
The wealth distribution is not just unequal, it is incredibly unequal... Raph says it is similar to the distribution of wealth in (real-life) economies, which it is, but even the worst robber-baron economies were not this bad.
True but in a player run economy, most things that PLAYERS sell at generally the premium stuff. Whereas the stuff sold by NPCs are the more generic, bland stuff.
For example in FFXI (which I play in now), theres two primary classifications of equipment. Starting/Basic equipment and Premium equipment. The first group is basic, your cheap basicly RAGS equipment and whatever gets tossed your way (its actually not uncommon to see level 20+ players running around in level 9 equipment sometimes).
The second class is where the article at hand seems to have the biggest beef. We all know the basics of a player run economy, players craft certain items that are sold NOWHERE ELSE and sell them to other players. However the problem with this is, it comes down to the age old rule of 'supply and demand.' MOST players DEMAND to have that badass +1 Sword to go along with their +1 Armor, +1 Rings, and +1 Helm. However theres only a FEW number of people who can SUPPLY these items (visit the Auction House in FFXI, any server, and more than 50% of the items listed there won't have that item up for bid). So what happens (after raising the price to cover expenses)? You raise the price some more!
That +1 leather armor which ANYONE can make for 500 gil? That only costs 300 gil to make. But that special, job specific, quest only, high fame only, high level only armor? 300,000+ gil. The legendary fishing pole which LITERALLY takes MONTHS to obtain? (You have to hand in 10,000 of a certain type of fish and they sell for 300 EACH at the Auction House. You do the math.) Well, lets just say the only listings of them being sold (on my server at least) were from the owners, to themselves.. for 3 MILLION GIL. (I've heard of listings going as high 8 million on other servers.)
In real life, robber-barons (most notably) with oil. In MMO games they deal with the 'phat l3wt'. But they never dealt with things such as food, clothes, and shelter.
Who knows, some of these joke predictions may come true. I donno if anyone here listens to the webcast 'GamingNoise' but last year a few weeks before E3 they decided to make predictions regarding the next E3..
By rolling a dice.
One of the predictions was that all three consoles would announce a price-cut during E3. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tactical RPGs, or simply turn-based strategy games, aren't exactly mainstream with people either complaining about its difficulty (Fire Emblem), its complexity (FF Tactics), or its shallow gameplay and/or storyline (FF Tactics Advance). (Along with simply poor games such as Onimusha Tactics and lackluster sales of games such as Korsen Pocket and Moonbase Commander though these last two are admittedly not RPGs.)
The companies that pay BIG money to show at E3 do not gain anything by having randoms off the street showing up. So they try to stop those people from coming.
And so the problem with major companies dominating the industry ordering what type of standards should be imposed, rears its head again.
If some "adventuresome gamer" spends 30 minutes playing the new indie game that you are looking for, that is 30 minutes that the Best Buy or EBGames or GameSpot representative can't be playing the game, and putting in orders for millions of copies of the game to be displayed on endcaps to sell well, or for the reviews to be written on mass-market sites to build up demand.
Um, you DO know that reviewing sites such as GameSpot get (media) exclusive preview copies of games right? Try reading game previews more often. You'll freqently run into words like: 'this is a near final version' or 'this copy gives a fairly good view of what the final game will be like' or 'this is actually the final build of the game before the "gold" copy went out to be copied and distributed.' Major companies like Best Buy, EBGames, and Gamespot get special copies Joe Average will never touch without having to break a Terms of Agreement contract or stealing one. That leaked beta version of Doom 3? I'd bet money over the idea that it was a special beta just for ATI for demonstrative purposes.
The problem with getting into E3 is you have to either be in the media or be in the gaming industry itself (in which case your company would probably send you anyway).
-rant- Alllll the news you get will pretty much be focused on 'the big names'. You won't have any Mike Medium's Game Review Webpage reports of E3. You won't have adventureous gamers who spend the whole weekend looking at the indie games and shunning games like MGS3, Doom 3, HL2, and Halo 2. The end result is a lotta money being wasted on flashy events news sites won't report on. A public which has to read/search 4 different sources to find all the screenshots released on a certain game. And a hardcore community is left sitting on the sidelines groaning over the fact that they still can't go. -endrant-
it's kind of sad that the largest software company on Earth can't see far enough past their bottom line to make such a move
I always thought it was the duty of the company in which I am investing money in would act in the best interest of making money (for me). I have no illusions over the idea of a company like Microsoft deciding to sacrifice the few for the many.
When being moralistic becomes profitable, then Microsoft would do so. Until then, leave it to the government with their ability to have EVERYONE pitch into these costs with their all powerful taxes and IRS division.
True, but don't forget the GBA had an insanely huge back library as well as the dominating influence of the Gameboy before it. Rewind the settings and think back to the days of the first Gameboy (before Gameboy Color and Pocket). What did you play? Side-scrollers like Mario, Contra, Megaman, and of course Tetris. Sure there was Zelda, Final Fantasy Adventure and Legend (neither of which had any relation to the true Final Fantasy series), and the whole plethora of copy-cat games. Almost no memory meaning very shallow storylines and gameplay and poor graphics means one or two bad pixels could literally make or break your character. RPGs on the handheld? >whiny 7 year old voice/whiny 7 year old voiceFast forward to today, the Gameboy Advance is now nearly on par with the SNES with the future holding the possibility of discs being the next form of storage. If you dumped the ROMs of some GBA games today, they'd be over 10 times some Gameboy games. We've come a LONG way since the Gameboy's early games.
It doesn't matter if only a very small minority of gullible users get infected. In the scheme of things, it doesn't cost the worldwide community that much.
100 attacks each hitting 1000 computers does as much damage as 10 attacks each hitting 10,000 computers. True, small isolated incidents regarding virus attacks are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but its not like Microsoft can leave it alone.
For every kiddie script or virus variant out there, theres a hundred Joe Average users screaming at their computers. For every hundred screaming Joe Average users, theres 10 system admins having to go around and remove the virus, update their computers, and then give a lecture on how to prevent from something like this happening again (not that Joe Average will listen). For every 10 system admins running around needing to solve every virus problem, theres one programmer out there who has to come up with a program that bypasses the virus, seeks out the virus, and eliminates the virus. That and they have to figure out how it works, how it spreads, how can they get rid of it, if theres any clues as to who made it, etc.
So like you said, yeah in the scheme of things one or two attacks doesn't cost the worldwide community much. Except for the fact that one or two of these types of incidents seem to happen everyday. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to download anti-virus protection for my parent's computer, install it, update it, run it regularly, then debate on whether its worth paying $200 for an official CD-key, scream at the fact that the computer slows to a halt due to new anti-piracy software methods, call up the company and complain, and then come back to Slashdot to post a 'Askslashdot' topic regarding the sheer amount of frustration of dealing with anti-virus programs as the 'system admin' of my house.
There will be a number of strict safety measures and chat room moderators in place when the service launches this summer.
You do realize that ISPs, closed server MMORPGs, and and other public online communities have been parading that same type of warning in their Terms of Agreements right? Yahoo Groups does it (they'll actually close a group no warning if some idiot posts pr0n in it and the group isn't designated as adult), MSN Groups does it (again see Yahoo Groups), Geocities does it (to an extent), Final Fantasy XI does it (a GM will mute, temporarily boot you and/or temporarily/permantly ban you from the game), Slashdot does it (but thanks to the sheer amount of 'moderators' its kept down). NONE of which have been entirely successful (people are still arrogant and immature enough to post links to goatse).
In otherwords, without limiting themselves to about... 500-2000 people, its not going to work.
"SCEE is eager to point out that that it has been working very closely with several children's charities in order to ensure that EyeToy: Chat is safe for even the youngest PS2 fans to enjoy."
That is until the public gets ahold of it and begins televising pr0n shows online to anyone careless enough to call them. It'll be the ultimate prank call....
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point there, but thats not the case in this situation. The argument L.L. Bean is trying to make is that Gator (I refuse to call it Gloria Corp) setup their pop-up program so that their competitor's advertisement would show up at their site.
Thats like saying, 'Welcome to L.L. Bean where you can fine products and clothes, but be sure to look at Gap's new shipment of jeans. Oh and J.C. Penney has a sale this week, you should take a look. Oh and since you're searching for shirts and ties, Nordstrom just announced a new line of this month check it out. Oh and enjoy your stay at L.L. Bean's website.'
Yeah that was pretty stupid, but when you consider this stuff is broadcast on TV...
"Here we see Mike commanding the Roman army as it begins to crush a Germanic tribe. And Mike just order his archers to run in... hes ordering his legions to attack each other... and where is he sending his phalanxes?"
In some cases its not a matter of liking what they do or not, its HOW they do it. We all know roughly 90% of all e-mail out there is spam. But some of the methods they use are completely idiotic. In order to bypass anti-spam systems they do things like spell out 'penis' like 'p.3.n~ 1-s'. For crying out loud, I know theres a sucker born every minute but does it have to be so obvious? If I'm gonna get baited by 200 spam e-mails a day, don't insult my intelligence with such stupid systems which serve only to clog up my e-mail account.
By that logic, Counter-Strike is 'fine', the graphics fine, and the multiplayer is fine so its 'nothing new, nothing special.' Same with Half-Life, other than the storytelling it was nothing special. We've seenen it all before, the WASD keys+mouse setup was becoming standard, graphics were nothing groundbreaking, and the only improvement to multiplayer was an easy to use server finding system.
Um, yeah they were. The most notable of all, the Game Gear by (gasp) Sega, was roughly 1.5 times the size of the Gameboy and had less than half the battery life time, but blew away the Gameboy in terms of tech (color screen AND a larger memory cart!). Oh and 'just bumped with a larger palette'? Yeah, thanks for mentioning that it cut the number of batteries from 4 to 2 while maintaining the same battery time, increased the memory space, and believe me back then color on a handheld made a difference. The Gameboy Advance is insanely powerful to anyone who grew up during the NES days or earlier.
As for the PS1 being a fluke, the only other options at the time was the Saturn which developers hated or the outdated SNES and Genesis. First generation PS1 games had graphics that were insanely blocky or just video clips which took up half the disc due to bad compression.
And no the PS2 wasn't the first to the market. Go pick up a Dreamcast, they're not even $50 due to fools like you.
Naturally this leads to serious party forming issues.. Following the simple rule of 'supply and demand' Mages are generally rarely available, while Warriors are considered to be 'a dime a dozen.' Its not uncommon to see parties with 3 warriors and no white mages sometimes (I've been in a party with 3 warriors, 2 black mages, and a red mage...)
The second time Sony shoulda gotten their asses handed to them, spanked, and then left outside in the cold nude. The PS2 was/is inferior hardware wise, came out a year after the Dreamcast, had AWFUL games for over 6 months (not counting PS1 games), had problems of systems breaking down, and who can forget the 'shortage' problem at launch day. The DVD sized discs were nice but most games barely use half of it, DVD playback was big but didn't make it a 'buy off eBay for $1000' item, and the design was slick but you didn't buy a video game system to look at it. Thanks to Sony's marketing, Sega was run out of the hardware industry and the PS2 is now an aging piece of equipment horribly outdated and unpowered yet still considered to the 'best.'
This time Sony's going for their third time with the PSP. Connectivity? I heard the same thing from Nintendo, yet all I hear is bitching from gamers about having to buy multiple systems to play a game. Ten year life-cycle? Last time I checked the SNES, NES, and Genesis aren't being supported any more despite being considered to be the best systems ever made. Watch movies on a handheld? Guess what, there have been portable DVD players on the market for nearly 5 years now yet theres little demand for them.
Sony may have the console market by its balls right now but this is Nintendo's turf, Nokia is preparing a second attack with their remade N-Gage, and Sony is trying to play a Microsoft-like card by going all out tech in this game. Nothing short of pulling a Microsoft and throwing money into a hole where you can't see the bottom, Sony can't win this.
This isn't exactly an entirely accurate analogy but, a few years back Square (yes, just Square) released remakes for Final Fantasy 1-4 (1-3 NES and 4 SNES) on... the Wonderswan Color. Haven't heard of it? Well thats because it was made in Japan, it was for Japan, and it stayed in Japan. A flop? Considering a game for it was released just last November (a Dragon Ball game, but a game nonetheless), the words 'cult hit' probably describe it the best.
For a more accurate analogy (though still not on target), you could compare this sort of action with the time Square announced that its next game was going to be on a system by a company completely unknown in the gaming industry. The game was Final Fantasy VII, the system was the Playstation, the rest is history.
You mean not let local store managers with almost no interest in gaming attend? Madness!
*rant I once knew a (former) EBGames store manager my area who had to attend a company conference down in Las Vegas. It was all expenses paid plane ticket first class, 3 days hotel, food and transportation arranged. Instead he blew it all so he could bring his girlfriend down (this guy was so NOT a gamer...) there himself and ended up paying for all that. *endrant
As much as everyone would like to admit the fact that E3 is an INDUSTRY SHOW and as such should remain closed to the public, its hard to deny the public access to these sorts of goodies and then expect them to have a half-assed knowledge of 'whats hot, whats not' without reading 20 different magazines and websites. Other than the hardcore gamer, its hard to say with confidence that the public even knew about the Half-Life 2+Radeon deal a few months back.
http://www.eurogamer.net/file_service_files.php
Nice but necessary, not to mention unimpressive to almost 90% of all games who already own a copy of Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and will probably download Codename Gordon online for free.
As for the old NES and SNES ports, thats mostly because Nintendo got tired of having to battle piracy over ROMs. We've all heard the argument before 'well if Nintendo doesn't want me to pirate a copy of Metroid for the NES, they should just re-release it or something'. Which, recently, they did.
So many new screenshots in one day!? Watch out world! Bungie finally turned on the hype-o generator!
As good as the graphics as, as accurately copied the text will probably be (four words : Chrno does not talk.), and as much as I will end up playing it (its free), the game won't be able to satisfy fans of the original game. Why? We all know pretty much whats gonna be in it. Theres no Akira Toriyama (the original character designer) working on it. And theres that lack of 2D in there to make us wonder 'what does Chrno really look like? Is Lucca cute behind those glasses? Doesn't Ayla get cold when you're in the Dark Ages?' (For those who don't remember, in the Dark Ages the world was covered in snow except for the *spoiler* which gets destroyed.)
And as it stands, dying in FFXI is too strict to have a free flowing PvP system. As it stands dying takes away 5-10% of the amount of experience you need to gain the next level (get Raise casted on you decreases that amount) so at first dying doesn't mean much (for the first 3 levels this rule actually doesn't apply so newbies can die all they want in the beginning.) Doesn't sound like much when you only need 2000 exp to gain a level (level 10), but when you need 5700 exp (level 29) to gain a level losing 570 exp begins to hurt. To add insult to injury, yes you can LEVEL DOWN and the game lets you know it with a farting like noise and having the words 'Level Down...' appear over your body so everyone can see it.
Oh and the Heal potions? Those are pretty much useless. Get a White Mage in the party and you won't need potions. Course healers being wimps in this game, they're very rare (White Mages consist of about 5-10% on my server.. sucks really.)
True but in a player run economy, most things that PLAYERS sell at generally the premium stuff. Whereas the stuff sold by NPCs are the more generic, bland stuff.
For example in FFXI (which I play in now), theres two primary classifications of equipment. Starting/Basic equipment and Premium equipment. The first group is basic, your cheap basicly RAGS equipment and whatever gets tossed your way (its actually not uncommon to see level 20+ players running around in level 9 equipment sometimes).
The second class is where the article at hand seems to have the biggest beef. We all know the basics of a player run economy, players craft certain items that are sold NOWHERE ELSE and sell them to other players. However the problem with this is, it comes down to the age old rule of 'supply and demand.' MOST players DEMAND to have that badass +1 Sword to go along with their +1 Armor, +1 Rings, and +1 Helm. However theres only a FEW number of people who can SUPPLY these items (visit the Auction House in FFXI, any server, and more than 50% of the items listed there won't have that item up for bid). So what happens (after raising the price to cover expenses)? You raise the price some more!
That +1 leather armor which ANYONE can make for 500 gil? That only costs 300 gil to make. But that special, job specific, quest only, high fame only, high level only armor? 300,000+ gil. The legendary fishing pole which LITERALLY takes MONTHS to obtain? (You have to hand in 10,000 of a certain type of fish and they sell for 300 EACH at the Auction House. You do the math.) Well, lets just say the only listings of them being sold (on my server at least) were from the owners, to themselves.. for 3 MILLION GIL. (I've heard of listings going as high 8 million on other servers.)
In real life, robber-barons (most notably) with oil. In MMO games they deal with the 'phat l3wt'. But they never dealt with things such as food, clothes, and shelter.
By rolling a dice.
One of the predictions was that all three consoles would announce a price-cut during E3. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tactical RPGs, or simply turn-based strategy games, aren't exactly mainstream with people either complaining about its difficulty (Fire Emblem), its complexity (FF Tactics), or its shallow gameplay and/or storyline (FF Tactics Advance). (Along with simply poor games such as Onimusha Tactics and lackluster sales of games such as Korsen Pocket and Moonbase Commander though these last two are admittedly not RPGs.)
And so the problem with major companies dominating the industry ordering what type of standards should be imposed, rears its head again.
If some "adventuresome gamer" spends 30 minutes playing the new indie game that you are looking for, that is 30 minutes that the Best Buy or EBGames or GameSpot representative can't be playing the game, and putting in orders for millions of copies of the game to be displayed on endcaps to sell well, or for the reviews to be written on mass-market sites to build up demand.
Um, you DO know that reviewing sites such as GameSpot get (media) exclusive preview copies of games right? Try reading game previews more often. You'll freqently run into words like: 'this is a near final version' or 'this copy gives a fairly good view of what the final game will be like' or 'this is actually the final build of the game before the "gold" copy went out to be copied and distributed.' Major companies like Best Buy, EBGames, and Gamespot get special copies Joe Average will never touch without having to break a Terms of Agreement contract or stealing one. That leaked beta version of Doom 3? I'd bet money over the idea that it was a special beta just for ATI for demonstrative purposes.
-rant- Alllll the news you get will pretty much be focused on 'the big names'. You won't have any Mike Medium's Game Review Webpage reports of E3. You won't have adventureous gamers who spend the whole weekend looking at the indie games and shunning games like MGS3, Doom 3, HL2, and Halo 2. The end result is a lotta money being wasted on flashy events news sites won't report on. A public which has to read/search 4 different sources to find all the screenshots released on a certain game. And a hardcore community is left sitting on the sidelines groaning over the fact that they still can't go. -endrant-
I always thought it was the duty of the company in which I am investing money in would act in the best interest of making money (for me). I have no illusions over the idea of a company like Microsoft deciding to sacrifice the few for the many.
When being moralistic becomes profitable, then Microsoft would do so. Until then, leave it to the government with their ability to have EVERYONE pitch into these costs with their all powerful taxes and IRS division.
True, but don't forget the GBA had an insanely huge back library as well as the dominating influence of the Gameboy before it. Rewind the settings and think back to the days of the first Gameboy (before Gameboy Color and Pocket). What did you play? Side-scrollers like Mario, Contra, Megaman, and of course Tetris. Sure there was Zelda, Final Fantasy Adventure and Legend (neither of which had any relation to the true Final Fantasy series), and the whole plethora of copy-cat games. Almost no memory meaning very shallow storylines and gameplay and poor graphics means one or two bad pixels could literally make or break your character. RPGs on the handheld? >whiny 7 year old voice/whiny 7 year old voiceFast forward to today, the Gameboy Advance is now nearly on par with the SNES with the future holding the possibility of discs being the next form of storage. If you dumped the ROMs of some GBA games today, they'd be over 10 times some Gameboy games. We've come a LONG way since the Gameboy's early games.
100 attacks each hitting 1000 computers does as much damage as 10 attacks each hitting 10,000 computers. True, small isolated incidents regarding virus attacks are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but its not like Microsoft can leave it alone.
For every kiddie script or virus variant out there, theres a hundred Joe Average users screaming at their computers. For every hundred screaming Joe Average users, theres 10 system admins having to go around and remove the virus, update their computers, and then give a lecture on how to prevent from something like this happening again (not that Joe Average will listen). For every 10 system admins running around needing to solve every virus problem, theres one programmer out there who has to come up with a program that bypasses the virus, seeks out the virus, and eliminates the virus. That and they have to figure out how it works, how it spreads, how can they get rid of it, if theres any clues as to who made it, etc.
So like you said, yeah in the scheme of things one or two attacks doesn't cost the worldwide community much. Except for the fact that one or two of these types of incidents seem to happen everyday. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to download anti-virus protection for my parent's computer, install it, update it, run it regularly, then debate on whether its worth paying $200 for an official CD-key, scream at the fact that the computer slows to a halt due to new anti-piracy software methods, call up the company and complain, and then come back to Slashdot to post a 'Askslashdot' topic regarding the sheer amount of frustration of dealing with anti-virus programs as the 'system admin' of my house.
You do realize that ISPs, closed server MMORPGs, and and other public online communities have been parading that same type of warning in their Terms of Agreements right? Yahoo Groups does it (they'll actually close a group no warning if some idiot posts pr0n in it and the group isn't designated as adult), MSN Groups does it (again see Yahoo Groups), Geocities does it (to an extent), Final Fantasy XI does it (a GM will mute, temporarily boot you and/or temporarily/permantly ban you from the game), Slashdot does it (but thanks to the sheer amount of 'moderators' its kept down). NONE of which have been entirely successful (people are still arrogant and immature enough to post links to goatse).
In otherwords, without limiting themselves to about... 500-2000 people, its not going to work.
That is until the public gets ahold of it and begins televising pr0n shows online to anyone careless enough to call them. It'll be the ultimate prank call....