They are going with a metal screen. So no more scratches because the plate of metal keeps your lcd screen protected and safe from scratching. What do you mean you can't see through metal, geez you non-kryptonites always got something to whine about don't you.
Maybe they should use a glass display. What do you mean you don't fancy having a fragile piece of glass in your pocket.
Then again apple could have easily solved that. For that matter any maker of device with a screen. Supply a bundle of that stick on plastic so people can just put it on and tear it off when it gets too dirty. Works great but exactly why do I have to buy them from a 3rd party. Oh wait, yeah I should have know by the piece of rag, sorry, case you get with an iPod. A penny saved is a penny earned and apple earns a lot of pennies. Overcharging, underpaying and not giving a shit about the enviroment. Remind me again why they are considerd the good IT company?
Oh I don't mean the technology needed to implement it. I mean getting the public to actually use it without getting confused by high tech like the door button.
The dutch rail network has some lines wich split at a point so that the first half of the train goes in one direction and the last half in another. It is on a couple of lines, ALWAYS happens and is very clearly announded and printed on the signs. And each and every ride people get it wrong. Not every day, every single ride. Can you imagine the mess if a train is made up out of random parts going to random destinations?
Because of WoW's eight (count them EIGHT) characters per server per user account and no limit to the number of servers you can be on WoW has a far greater sense of your character merely being a toon or even just a nickname on irc. But on IRC everybody knows your IP wich makes you at least somewhat identifiable.
WoW suffers from the internet problem of complete anonymity. Be an asshole all you want, if you end up getting the ramifications for it then you just switch to an alt. Everytime there is a problem with the big servers the smaller ones get swamped by people just being annoying because, well, because they can.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
I am not saying that it is THE way to go but just that WoW's way of doing things is not without its negatives either.
Oh and about the so called casual user being able to get on just as good as the hardcore player. What a load of bullshit. The hardcore player will be able to grind the same instance over and over again, farming all the "phat" loots and kitting himself out of with all the best gear.This allows him to win in PvP easily wich again gives the player better gear.
Sorry, but WoW like every MMORPG rewards those who can/want to play the most hours. Oh and EVE fans. Think about this for a second. While getting new skills is not based on the amount of time logged in, nonetheless you HAVE to login every now and then to select a new skill to learn plus the game is heavily based on equipment wich is gotten by money wich is only earned while you are playing. So EVE just moved the focus from grinding XP to grinding money. Still the player that can afford to put in the most amount of time gets an advantage.
Perhaps this really can't be solved. After all it is part of live, train more in a sport/hobby and you will be better then someone who doesn't.
What instead perhaps MMORPG's should focus on is on making the whole game across the entire XP curve FUN. Yes that first quest and the last quest to be the same FUN! Idiotic perhaps but think about it. Was the first level of Doom, Half-Life a chore? Or were these games fun from the moment you entered the game, not just after you passed level X and gained weapon/skill Y?
If you want my opinion on why WoW is a success then it is simply because MMORPG's upto WoW just plained sucked donkey balls. WoW still sucks in many way but at least it stays away from the donkey's. Their main competitor SOE on the other sucks donkey balls but has its eye on the horses and wonders about elephants. WoW is a success not because it is that good but because it just ain't as bad as what came before.
For those who actually played Everquest 1/2 and WoW just compare the two. What really did WoW do different? What major innovations did it make? If you compare the design spec of EQ vs WoW instead of say EQ vs UO or EQ vs SWG or EQ vs Eve then I think you would be hardpressed to tell the difference. It is a bit like comparing Doom/Quake vs Unreal. Just what is the difference?
What it comes down too is that WoW is slightly better done. Graphics that work in style and performance (but still hardly perfect). Quests that focus less on (kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, rince and repeat until you are blue in the face). Quests that do not have as rare spawns as their objective (although WoW just like EQ1/2 suffers from the need item X to drop wich doesn't to complete, just less).
WoW is also less obsessive then EQ2 especially about crafting. Just que the items you want and sit back instead of forcing some extremely boring mini-"game" on you.
It is just multiple ones, they are short and they reset for the user after you. So you put to rest the cursed lover of a night elf and so did that guy before you and everyone else after you. Nonetheless it is a story and gives you a "motivation" for fighting your way to the ghost and killing it. No it ain't planescape torment but then is Oblivion that different? Be honest here.
The movie companies save the cost of the DVD production, the cost of the distribution and retail chain, the price of overstocking and understocking and you get the added cost of paying for the download. So what happens with the price? Well, it stays exactly the same offcourse.
By movie industry logic a mini-benz would cost the same as their flagship model. Lets hope the cost of distributing or making movies never reaches zero. The cost of a single copy would then be infinite plus taxes and explode the universe.
It is every single racing game versus grand prix legends. No racing game offers a real challenge because the AI is too weak.So either the game is obviously cheating by given the AI drivers superpowers OR you end up a lap ahead and the only danger of loosing is if the AI barrels into you.
In grand prix legends this was different. You will loose until you get very very good. But somehow not winning in an extremely hard race with AI drivers who seem to be driving with the same ruleset as you is a lot more satisfying.
Imagine a war game. Wouldn't it be a refreshing change if for once you played the loosing side. If you had to retreat because of the AI and not just because the script told you too? That Wing Commander mission where you loose your wingmate would have been a lot better if the AI had actually been capable of beating you, or even being a challenge. Instead you knock them done left and right and still loose because that is what the script says happens.
I rather loose in chess against kasparov then win against a retard.
Also I think you mistake good AI for unbeatable AI. With good AI you can made the AI beatable by being smarter. But if the AI is dumb it has to rely on its units being overpowered to make up for their weakness. Hence why 99% of console racing games always have you racing cars one or more levels above you. Because the AI wouldn't stand a chance if it had to drive the same car with the same rules as you.
I for one would welcome better AI. If it means the game is going to win more. Then well, I just need to improve as well. That is what I think they call a challenge.
spam on forums generally includes a link that people should then follow to the site where whatever is being sold is sold. It is trivial to include a javascript on such a forum being spammed that logs each click. You could therefore record who of your users actually responds to spam.
The real problem with spam after all is not the spammers but the people who respond to it, if nobody bought from spam then there would be no spam. Well at least much less of it. After all it is advertising and spammers are not selling say viagra but selling spam itself.
In any case with this log of users who actually click on spam links you could then A compile an overview of what kind of user actually is stupid enough to respond, B educate them or C ban them for being to stupid to live.
Considerring the offered budget in this ad for (30-100 dollars) I don't think the guy is operating with that big a margin already. If you can reduce the number of people who respond to these spams then perhaps simple economics makes the problem go away.
Sugar cubes wich you cannot grind up and use as regular sugar because it is forbidden. Neither can you use them after they have been on the shelve for two months because that is forbidden. You can't put them in your tea you are drinking out of an old jam jar because that is forbidden. You can't made your own tea blend because that is forbidden. You most certainly can't use them in class-room chem experiments like making it burn (example of catalysts), because, you guessed it that is forbidden. Horses will just have to chased down before riding instead of attracted by the lure of a sugarcube.
Who forbids it? Why the company that sold you the sugar cubes offcourse. Why do you have to obey them? Because DRM tells you too and if you do not you go to jail for longer then for rape or murder.
That is DRM. It is like trusted computing, wich really means, we don't trust you computing. DRM and Trusted computing are about the seller telling the buyer what he can do with the product. This is a totally new idea.
As said, nobody on the world would think of it to suggest that a sugar cube wich is clearly designed to be put into hot drinks cannot be used in any other way as the buyer sees fit. I can literally do anything with the sugar cubes I buy that I want with the only hindrance that the act may not be against the normal law. The seller has NOTHING whatsoever to say about it.
Yes I played a lot of MMORPG's and am currently playing WoW after resisting for a long time. I played most of SOE stable and plenty of others and was enjoying Everquest 2 when that to seemed to go NGE on me with the removal of the shard. I kicked the MMO habit for a few months but relapsed.
Upon starting to play WoW I really got the feeling I was in a watered down Everquest 2. Stylish, better running, fewer bugs and better structured but with far less features.
On of the things that I miss most is that in everquest 2 enemies to low level to you become passive. This prevents the train effect when you run through a low level area and every hostile critter chases you doing no damage but being a pain in the ass.
In fact it is this running that is different as well. WoW doesn't seem to want you to run away from a fight. Turn your back and get hit and your almost certain to be dazed, EQ2 on the other hand gives everyone a sprint option wich allows a quick getaway from too tough a fight.
On the other hand however I encountered far less of the "WTF HIT ME" feeling. If you are in say a level 14-18 area then WoW doesn't suddenly slap in a level 31 just for the heck of it. WoW does like EQ2 have elites but puts them out of harmway and they seem more reasonable. Several quests in EQ2 are incompletable because the elite you have to kill goes grey (and therefore drops no loot you need for the quest) before you are able to handle them.
The WoW gameplay just feels more streamlined. Wich is not bad since it misses such things as way to track questgivers. Put another way, in WoW the indicated level of quest is actually correct.
Yet WoW is inferior in other aspects. The two sides in EQ2 are clear enemies, not allies. Yet it is EQ2 that allows races to cross over to the other side, not WoW. There are fewer classes in WoW.
Another "lesser" aspect is quest items. No MMO gives you enough storage space and when a quest then has you lugging around 4 items it becomes a pain. In EQ2 they take up no space but WoW has them all in your backpack.
In short Everquest 2 made a lot of improvements to the genre wich WoW did not BUT somehow WoW managed to get this older version of the genre to work a whole lot better.
What impresses me the most is the total lack of EQ2 quests that go "kill ten bears then report back. Go kill then more bears then report back. Okay go kill ten more bears... etc etc" (Yes this is really how eq2 quests go). In the beginner area of wow there are about half a dozen enemies and 1 quest that deals with each! Amazing!
WoW also has far less of the rare spawns you need for a quest. Yes it has rare npc's but you don't need them. In EQ2 at one point I had half a dozen quests to kill several rare spawns in one area. A nights gameplay consisted of heading in and doing a quick check if they were "up" and cursing if you saw someone else had just killed them. In WoW you just go to the area, if someone just killed them you wait a few minutes and then take your turn.
One thing I do notice is how PvP influences WoW. I also played Guild Wars and both of them have all their spells/moves adjusted to be playable in PvP. Disabling effects just last much shorter in PvP games then in PvE games. This takes some getting used too. I think the earlier WoW lack of running away has something to do with this. In PvE running away is okay. In PvP an enemy player running away from a fight is annoying.
But what does this all mean for the future? Well, that for now what we are seeing is basically a game that is a refined version of EQ. Not a better game but a better done game. But it is still the same grinding timesink that you would not accept if it was sold as a single player game.
And yet it sells millions and makes a fortune. Can it be improved upon? Yes, make an MMORPG that is fun to the non-grinder. Were people do a quest for the fun of it, not the XP it gives. An MMORPG where it is the journey, not the arriving that matters.
Learning how to deal with computers is essential nowadays yet what most people learn is how to work with Windows. This is like learning how do drive a FIAT Pinto vs learning to drive a car. Granted in with cars the difference is minimal but still we get a driving license. Not a fiat pinto license.
I just seen to many windows kids loose it completly when they are put to work with a non-windows computer. Or even DOS. Or an older windows version. Or indeed any computer that is not a 100% copy of their home system.
Wich would you consider the best tech class. One that has a dozen different model and brands of say welders or a class that has just a dozen of 1 model by 1 supplier. I know wich class will produce the better welder.
I actually had a guy complain that our forklift's work differently then the one he was trained on and he couldn't work with it. The problem was that the button to choose direction was on the joystick NOT a handle underneath the steering wheel. Our small one has two seperate pedals for doing back and forth. Wich you need to know because if you don;t and you think you are slamming on the brake you can be in for a suprise. Not as much as the person walking behind the forklift but still.
I seen to many kids come into the workforce trained on standarized equipment and me having to spent then a lot of time retraining them to get used to workplaces were not only is the equipment different but often where every single piece of equipment is off a different model. I for one have rarely seen a company with more then 1 forklift of the same model.
Teach kids how to deal with computers, not how to work with OS X (no not the apple one) version Y, configuration Z. The latter group will have great scores but fail in the workplace.
This must just a giant communist trap made by the NSA to find and locate all those damn pinko's. Makes sense. I bet they got a back door coded in the software to phone home about what you do with it. Damn you opensource. Now if only we could get the code to make sure it does what it says. But that will never happen.
Well actually the issue of balance is the problem but PvP absolutly demands balance.
Balance is easy in enough in single player game, the superior intellect of the player vs the slightly more mighty forces of the computer who just don't have the AI to actually fully make use of this.
The realtime strategy genre shows this extremely well. Ever notice how in game like command and conquer the enemy always gets new units before you do? Even if you then switch side? The enemy gets units you would get one mission later if you played that side. But over all the balance in on your side because you are more intelligent and can outwit the computer. There is also usually a designed in flaw in the enemies defences. Anyway their is no real need for balance after all, the player should be capable of winning.
This already changes when you then add multiplayer. You now go to make sure that both sides have roughly the same capacity. You can hardly give side X more units then side Y like you do in single player mode. Neither can you hope that the vapid intelligence of one player will offset their better forces.
play a FPS online and you will ALWAYS get a discussion about wich is a noob weapon (any weapon you use to kill another player with). In the half-life mod "firearms" i have been accused of using a noob weapon with every single weapon in the game. Great mod if only they removed the chat from the game.
In MMORPG land the problem is even worse. At least in FPS or RTS games everyone is the same level. Both players in a RTS start out with the same amount of money. FPS assign the same base weapon to all players (btw anyone else every noticed that all the people who complain about unbalance in FPS games don't like the Unreal instagib option wich is the ultimate balancer?)
Since grouping seems to be a great evil in MMORPG's and should only be done when their is absolutly no other choice and then in great shame the designers need to make sure that each and every player can handle each and every quest. So healers and warriors, rogues and paladins all need to be able to tackle the same enemies in roughly the same time. Never mind the 'realism', healers can hold their own as well a warrior in a melee fight.
PvP makes this even worse. You now need to balance each and every class with every other class and you better make sure not to give one class just a tiny bit of an advantage over another. If you played WoW or Guild Wars vs a non-pvp game or a single player game you might have noticed how short stuff like daze and such lasts. That is because if classes that could stun could do it for a usefull period like say 30 seconds they would be far to powerfull in PvP. In a PvP fight a player is going to complain bitterly if they find themselves trapped/stunned the whole time.
If you want a MMORPG to be "more" then you need to make a game wich is about grouping. Where players compensate each other weaknesses and combine their strengths. But in current MMORPG land grouping has an negative meaning. Only noobs group. Read a site like allakhazam and every quest description will have players bragging about how they soloed quest X at level Y.
I sometimes comment in game when a "noob" is being ridiculed for asking for help with a quest that player X who is bragging about doing it solo is bragging he masturbated this weekend to a couple.
Surely MMORPG's are about doing it together? Well not for a lot of people.
Depending on my mood I tend to think that the problem is not with the game but just with human nature.
Rough stone is a nearly useless mined resource in WoW for a squirrel engineer. So I sell it for a few silver way way undercutting others and using the money to buy linen.
I also sell my squirrels for way to low prices. 10 silver, free if you bring me 2x the resources. That is hardly giving it away in my opinion but I got a rather nasty tell from a guy who charged two gold a piece for them.
This is not a fault of the game design, it can only be blamed on human g
Star Wars Galaxies had a "choice" armour vs non-armour. For one "class" the terra-kassi it was somewhat of an option to not wear armour. Wearing armour reduced damage but also reduced regeneration so it was a trade-off between taking all the damage but healing fast vs less damage but healing more slowly.
Oh and the choosing to look like every armoured player OR having the choice of some rather nice looking clothing. I also didn't spend ages on creating a pretty face to hide it behind a helmet thank you very much.
In all but the highest level content I would do fairly well with clothing, especially since it was tricked out clothing but still get reminded constantly that I should wear armour. No matter that I saved a bundle on armour costs (clothes did not take permanent damage from fights, armour did, meanign armour had to replaced every so often), I was a noob for not wearing armour. Oh and wookies sucked because they could not wear the best armour for a long time. Never mind that wookies had better unarmoured stats then everyone else.
Being unique is a pain. I would love a game wich simply allowed you to choose wich armour for instance to wear. Cloth/Leather/Mail/Plate or whatever, make them all viable options in their own rights.
You can compensate the armour rating of Plate with the agility of cloth for instance. The cloth player will usually not take hits but has to accept the occasional whopper of a critical while the plate player can just stand there and take it and hope that his clumsy swings eventually, connect.
If a RPG has a "X is the best" then it is a flawed game in my opinion. Offcourse we still got to remember the UO is near death while WoW is setting records.
Templating is I think the problem. When thousands of players play your game they are going to try to find the most optimal template for their characters to do their stuff. That is natural. It is just human nature even if the end result of it is a less intresting game.
But why don't the game makers then not adjust their game to upset the most favoured templates?
Naff hunting was a grinding path in Star Wars Galaxies. They happened to be a critter on a planet that was just right to level up on.
SWG had missions you took to then go out on a mission (max of 2 per player) to then go to location X and kill all the critters and their lair. Naff's had all the right stats. The missions could be gotten with a small group, they paid decently, were not too hard to kill, didn't have nasty attacks like disease or poison, their meat and hide were not useless, they were in a relativly safe area that was easy to reach. Most important they were not aggresive and this meant they would not always kill you if knocked out (SWG required NPC's and players to actually kill a player after he lost all his health and most times naff's didn't)
So you hunted naffs, oh, rancors paid more but were a bitch to group for and getting jumped by the occosinal night sister was a bitch and when you mistook a normal rancor for an enraged one and got yourself poisoned you had to go all the way back to the naff planet anyway to get cured.
SWG dev team could have easily fixed this however. Just announce that due to overhunting naff's are now a diseased species and aggresive, a logical, sensible result off overhunting and one that would instantly force all players to adapt their strategy.
SWG already did something like this by changing the loot you got from critters a bit. Meat/hide/bones changed their stats every now and then so wich critter dropped the best would change over time. The poor ducks of naboo really had it hard on my server when they started dropping some of the best meat in the history of the game. In one week I gained all the money I ever need until the game went CU/NGE and I left.
Same with skills. I am thinking of the "schools" mentioned in the movie "The Princess Bride". Surely if a particular school of combat becomes extremely popular and successfull then a rival school will come into existence designed to counter it? If X% of players choose a particular set off skills simply introduce a new skill combo for the NPC's that counters it.
The problem with SWG for me wasn't that I could just write a macro to handle fights. The problem was that I needed just one macro for all the enemies in the whole game over the whole time I played it.
The current MMORPG crop has just a static universe were you can find out the combo early on and then just keep using it time and time again.
WoW is a nice enough game but I recently player a rogue on a bad drop mission. Tower of Althasomething needing a glowing gem. Had to kill casters (warlocks) for it. These are ranged mages with a pet who are strong on damage but weak on armour. The tactic is just to fucking boring. Stealth approach the caster, sap him (disables them), attack and kill their pet, wait for your energy to fill up and kill the caster making sure to cripple them to stop them running away.
Easy as pie. The "game" was figuring this combo out but once you done that you can reuse it for every single caster NPC you encounter with a rogue.
With a hunter? Set pet on caster, kill caster making sure not to attract the pet with your multi-shot (area of effect spell) so the casters pet would attack your pet, then once the pet is down kill the caster's pet. Easy as pie.
But the game devs should "see" this tactic and then adjust the game to counter it. Group the NPC's closer perhaps. Give the casters a new pet that can dispell the sap effect on their masters. Make the casters set their own pet on the hunter.
But the problem is offcourse that the class/level system is just a shitload easier to implement. With a skill system
After all water (for us lucky enough to be born in the "west") is in infinite supply at a neglicible cost. I can tap as much of it as I want for a nominal monthly fee so why does Spa exist?
Taste is one, in holland it depends greatly on were you live but in for instance amsterdam the water is "hard" and it tastes like drinking chalk. Bottled water just tastes clearer. Yes I can really taste the difference but lets face it, you pay through the nose for it.
Bottled water is a market where a far more costly product that is less convenient to get still manages to sell to compete with a 100% legal product that is far cheaper, is already bought by the customer anyway, and a lot more convenient.
So how come content has such problems competing? Well first lets look at price, for all the price difference between say Spa and tap water drinking only spa isn't going to break the bank. A bottle a day costs 50 euro cents (at AH) so times 30 that comes to 15 euro per person in your household. Not exactly shocking.
Yet if I had to pay for all the content I download I would have face a price far greater. Even quit moderate behaviour will give you bill off a few hundred euro's. Especially if you download weird foreign stuff that costs a fortune to import.
We mass consume content but the price for it is too fucking high. Imagine if somehow we lived in a world were tap water did not exist and we all had gotten used to shower with perrier water and then someone came along and introduced tapwater.
Content is too expensive at the moment. Just how come that when we went from VHS to DVD and the industry saw a HUGE price reduction in manufacturing costs, transportation costs, localisation costs, shipping costs and stocking costs prices went UP? In a normal world DVD's should costs less. They do not. They should also be easier to use, yet many are a bitch to skip the first part. Unskippable ads anyone? More money for a less convenient product.
Spa tastes better then tap water but a DVD is inferior in every single way to a DIVX rip of it and a shit load more expensive. That is the fundemental problem. It ain't to hard selling stuff that is vastly more expensive provided you got at least one advantage over your cheapo competitor. I can sell you a can of coke for 3.50 euros just by making sure that it is the only drink around (well unless you carry a can with you the whole day and don't mind it being warm) say a amusement park.
DRM is like say a movie theather that doesn't allow food to be brought in and then sells you food for insane prices. Lucky for the theather owners is that there is a social stigma against bringing in a shopping bag of food on your date so we fork out the money. There is no social stigma against breaking DRM so we don't.
Pricing your product is always a difficult thing to get right and the content industry has failed miserably. They are like the supermarket that has slowly raised it prices in line with inflation and a little extra to pay for all those extra's because the market is booming and then the market ain't anymore and customers are staying away and going to the cheap no-nonsense place that saves them a few euro's each and every day.
The content industy has had decades where they could just set any price because they were the only game in town. Like the amusement park refreshment stand they could just ask any price and you either paid or went thirsty or put up with a far inferior product.
But then the internet came along and ruined it all. The internet is to the content industry what ppipeless fresh clear tap water would be to the amusement park industry. If you could just carry a small tap with you and get fresh cheap water anywhere for a nominal monthly fee wich you are paying already anyway would you still shill out 3.50 euro's for a cup of soda?
And the problems for the content industry versus the internet "pirates" are far far greater. What about rare content? The dutch "free record shop" owner (a music store) wanted to introduce a syste
Oh, you don't use the original keyboard that was part of the design (talking about the early iMac's here) and now are complaining that your NON standard part doesn't fit with the design?
This is a bit like complaining that your own car stereo doesn't fit the color scheme of your car. Not really the car makers fault now is it?
I also strongly suspect you never had a customer support role. If you gave the customer 1 cable, color coded, with labels and instructions and signs and a guide dog they would still get it wrong.
Badge based internet access, hold your badge barcode underneath the scanner and the PC will give internet access. You get people that ask how to turn the thing on. Okay, so the screensaver and posters with instructions are not visible enough. You got people that don't get that the scanner of their neighbour won't work for their PC, who don't hold the barcode part of the badge in the light, who lost their badge despite the fact that this is a high security event with armed security and airport style checkins (including x-ray machines and sniffer dogs, oh and this despite the fact that I walked in with no check at all but hey, I am not a terrorist)
It don't matter how simple you make something, the user will screw it up.
Take this nutcase who uses a keyboard without a USB hub integrated so now he has to reach all the way to the back of his computer to plug new USB devices in. that is the kind of nutcases techsupport has to deal with. Amazing no?
I was in the beta and played it. Now I am not that good a player so it might be me but for the most part it was an extremely simplistic RPG with passable graphics and some astroucious mission design.
The simple problem? Health. As you no doubt know not all classes are equal in D&D especially at the first few levels. D&D makes up for the weakness of some classes in combat by being by nature a multiplayer game. The warrior, the mage and the healer, one player to take the hits, one player to do the damage and one player to rule^H^H^H^Hheal them all.
CRPG's typically are one-player affairs, so they have to adjust themselves to allow this single player to survive even if they have choosen a class that isn't survivable. One way is too be liberal with health potions. Just keep chucking them back and hope that eventually your pathetic rogue will actually kill the enemy.
So what does DDO do? Put all the health potion vendors BEYOND the beginner area. This lead to a lot of players choosing the lesser combat/healing classes getting stuck. If you used the 2/3 potions you got at the start to early you just couldn't survive later dungeons.
No you couldn't group with a healer or tank either, a D&D MMORPG game with NO early grouping. Says it all really.
I was in the late beta and for this design decision to be implemented still tells me everytbing about the game I need to know. Neither am I alone. DDO commercial success is severely lacking. There is a reason WoW sells so well. Not because it is so good or so original, in many ways it is just a cheap Everquest 2 clone but with a shit load of style and class added. WoW is if you like an iPod, not a better music player, not a more capable one but one that looks good and just fucking works.
DDO is not. Play it, but be sure you know you are playing a D&D game designed by people who forbid low levels to group. A MMORPG, with no grouping.
A MMORPG where I had more cash at level 3 then at level 30 in WoW but nothing to spend it on.
Oh and the warforged are a created race that is very very ugly so I didn't play one since I only play pretty girls. Basically they are a strong warrior race that is healed by mages instead of priests.
But no, an old D&D fan probably won't like DDO. It just ain't anything like it. Neverwinter Nights might be more up your ally. D&D Pen&Paper is to me all about the dungeon master who is a human and who can improvise on the spot. No good dungeon master is going to allow the party to be wiped out in the first dungeon or force all the players to play the first few levels all alone.
A human dungeon master is like a writer, he puts the actors of his play in constant peril but also makes sure the cavalery arrives just in the nick of time. A great dungeon master makes you feel like you escaped by the skin of your nose but not actually get killed. That is the difference between computer and human controlled RPG's. Humans care.
Yeah yeah, fable. I played it Peter and it wasn't good. Oh it worked and all and wasn't too bugged and nowadays I suppose that accounts for something but in the end what you produced was a rather mediocre RPG light with a confused style (was it comedy or drama?) and a lot of stuff tacked on that never played out the way it was supposed too.
The fighing especially was a horror. Every single weapon handled exactly the same making no difference except for the stats.
So talk all about how fighting in games is going to be in the future but when your own game is a throwback to the 1980 were the only difference between types of blades is their stats then don't expect me too be too impressed.
Yes better fighting would be much appreciated but don't talk about it, do it. He already talked enough about what Fable was going to be like. Why are we still listening to him doing it all over again with Fable 2?
It ain't the first time. Remember Dungeon Keeper? Remember Black & White. Both games wich in their first incarnation were more hype then delivery. Both times admitted by the guy and both times the press drooled all over it and then the sequel only barely admitting that their drooling over the original was a bit too much. I for one am not going to be fooled anymore.
The gaming press just can't be relied upon to be objective when it comes to this guy. With 3 games so far that completly failed to live up to the hype why is this guy still hailed as some kind of gamer god?
Those damn schoolyard pirates are putting the hardworking executives of the music industry out of their much deserved billion dollar salaries and forcing them to live on a mere handfull of millions like paupers.
You, sir, are the enemy of every true businessman by trying to draw attention to the rights of people who should have no other rights, nay duties, then to hand over their money to those who deserve it.
Your entire argument is exactly what the content industry doesn't want to get out. ALL copying period is illegal. That is why in many countries now you pay money to the content industry for blank media even if you fill it with your own content.
I still hope that a really good honest laywer will one day make a case about this and get the politicians involved convicted for fraud.
under dutch law at least to proof you own something you need to keep the receipt around. Nobody does this offcourse and worse in many shops they do not even give you a receipt (strictly speaking illegal as hell) so in daily practice it is a case of the police having to have some kind of proof/suspiscion that you are not the legitimate owner. Such as an accusation from somebody else that they are in fact the legit owner.
Even better, the sale only "counts" as legit if you paid a reasonable price for it in case of you buying it from a thief. This could be intresting in the case of allofmp3.com. It means if I buy a 100 euro item for 10 and somebody else then claims it was stolen from them my receipt don't matter shit. I loose the item because I had no reasonable expectation the sale was legit. It could in theory be used to sue allofmp3 buyers who could have known that the sale was too good to be true. In this case your receipt could even be the proof of your crime.
In practice unless malice is very clear the police just take away the item in question and do not charge for being involved in fencing.
But anyway this is pure speculation by a non-lawyer.
But yes it is a very real problem yet it nothing new. Consider how do you proof the loss of possesion. Say in case of theft or a fire. "Yes your honor, that empty spot on the wall used to be where my undiscovered Rembrandt used to hang. Please tell the insurance company to cough up the millions, in small bills please."
In a fire how do you proof that the charred remains of your CD-collection are in fact all rare special editions and not jumble sales 5 for a dollar from your local supermarket grab bin? Keep receipts and keep photographic evidence. The police love it if in case of a theft you can hand over a stack off photographs off your possesions. It makes their work so much easier. Not the capturing of criminals but the damned sorting out who the fuck all the stolen stuff belonged too. Dutch police recently had a funny case because of it. Couple of kids stole peoples door mats. Harmless enough except that they were caught and the doormats confiscated to be returned to their rightfull owners according to the law. Except offcourse nobody is going to bother about a doormat so the police is now stuck with them for the legal term they got to keep such items. So please won't you come by and pick up a doormat. PLEASE! Evidence? Just point to the one you like.
All theory aside yes it is a real problem of how to proof that you own what you own. You should always keep receipts and in case of gifts note who they are from so you can get the receipt from them. Nobody is going to do that and in daily live we just deal with this and accept "normal" claims as most likely to be true. So that break in could loose you a TV and a VCR and a gaming console but NOT a TV and a Plasma and a project and a VCR and a DVR and every gaming console ever launched unless you hand over some proof.
But does the music industry even care about proof? Since they seem to be against media-shifting (copying music from CD to MP3 for example) in general and have a weird view on ownership anyway I am not sure a receipt of you having owned the LP is enough to defend you against downloading the MP3 version of the LP from somebody else. More important it is no defence for the person who is uploading that music to you (for now most of the cases are against uploaders, not downloaders).
For now all you got to hope is that things like RIAA lawsuits happen to other people. Most stuff does. Don't worry be happy and try not to think that to other people, you are other people.
Nobody would design a pallet system wich only works with mercedes trucks. The same that nobody would design a gas station that could only refuel Ford cars.
And trucks can be very different. To support more then one model (let alone brand) you need more parts. Your mechanics need to know the machines. Drivers will need to get used to different handling.
The fact is that in IT we have allowed that program A only runs on OS Y. In the real world this would not be that acceptable. Not that it doesn't happen offcourse. But it usually leads to trouble.
If you allow lockin then you are locked in. If you are one hundred percent depend on one supplier then they own your ass.
Photoshop is the least of the problems. There are alternatives and its formats can be exported. MS Office is the ultimate lockin. It is almost impossible to get your data out of it again and it only runs on the one OS (Office on mac is hardly something I would bet a company on).
This is similar to having all your logistics tied to one unique pallet system that can only work on one brand of trucks wich can only accept one brand of gas.
It is simply a dangerous tactic.
I am not denying the photoshop problem. No gimp is not an acceptable replacement to many BUT just because the problem for now can't be remedied doesn't mean that we can ignore it.
For that matter if Photoshop itself is that essential perhaps that is a risk as well.
Is it any better to have your business controlled by Adobe then by Microsoft (or for that matter Apple, IBM, Red Hat, Sun, whoever)?
This is a civil case not a criminal case but shouldn't any case were somebody is accused of something allow the accused the opportunity to defend themselves? Since this guy is dead that would be rather hard.
Either I am missing something, perhaps the trial already took place and this is about the penalty, or maybe civil cases are different.
If you can really sue dead people then say black americans could sue the family of slavers. It sounds like opening a hornet nest.
So how comes a dead guy is being sued or the childeren of an alleged offender? What makes this possible?
If you deal with large scale transportation you will have heard this tale:
Transport company X has a fleet of brand Y trucks. It is time to replace a portion of them. So they buy a handfull of brand Z trucks, park them at the entrance then invite the sales rep for brand Y to come by for a talk. "Well we have been thinking of upgrading our fleet of trucks. We are looking for offers, by the way have you seen those new Z trucks? Nice aren't they? So what kinda of deal can we expect from you?"
Then ask them wich OS they buy and how they deal with their OS seller. Watch them be confused.
It is sensible business. If you are a fleet manager and you would come to your boss saying, "Hi boss, I completely standarized on brand Y trucks, our repair shops can repair nothing else, our drivers can drive nothing else, our loading stations can accept nothing else, we are now one hundred procent at their mercy of brand Y. Oh hi Mr Sales rep from Brand Y, why are you grinning like that?"
Such a fleet manager would be fired in an instant.
In IT, that is what has been taking place for the last decade. The same trucking companies that do everything to get their trucks with the cheapest discount hand over their IT to companies selling just one solution and totally tie their entire company to just one supplier.
Insanity but when it comes to IT common business rules do seem to apply.
In holland the goverment tries to keep monopolies from happening. Market forces can after all only work if there is more then one player right?
So we get silly stuff like the attempt to run more then one company on the dutch rail system (crowded in a crowded country) or Shell being stopped from owning more highway gas stations. Or even sillier stuff like privatizing stuff like gas and elec even medical insurance. All meant to drive down price and all the price does is skyrocket up.
And what is done about the ultimate monopoly? Shit all. Forget Shell owning 80% of dutch highway gas stations. Try MS owning 9*% of all the worlds desktops.
Face it. IT doesn't follow normal rules. No you would not accept a new EULA (or any EULA at all) when your car company recalls your car to have your brakes fixed. In IT MS owns your ass and they can do whatever they want.
But it easy to buy another brand of truck. For proof, just look at your big local trucking company, they almost always got a handfull of trucks of another manufacturer. Keeps your supplier on its toes and the costs are trivial. Now try doing the same with computers. Oh it used to be done. Only a very BAD IT manager would not make sure that his IBM datacenter did not have a couple of Sun machines installed in plain sight. But when it comes to desktops we have come to accept lock-in (says a linux user and someone who refuses to answer personal ads that accept only.doc cv's) and we all can see the result.
Accept lock-in and get locked in. Yet the old trick does work. Look at munich. MS sales rep fell all over himself when he came into his clients office and saw the linux trucks parked outside. In fact MS wherever there is a rumor that a linux truck is even passing MS sends its sales reps with freebies and special deals. And still, the majority of sales meetings with MS go like this. "Ah thank you for your replying to my outlook email, can we shedule a meeting in outlook, I will get your details from access, to meet up and discuss us buying 100 more licenses, I will send you the details in a Word document, btw what kind of pricecut can we look forward too?"
You can hardly blame MS for it can you? Not their fault that everyone has their head up their ass when it comes to IT.
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Maybe they should use a glass display. What do you mean you don't fancy having a fragile piece of glass in your pocket.
Then again apple could have easily solved that. For that matter any maker of device with a screen. Supply a bundle of that stick on plastic so people can just put it on and tear it off when it gets too dirty. Works great but exactly why do I have to buy them from a 3rd party. Oh wait, yeah I should have know by the piece of rag, sorry, case you get with an iPod. A penny saved is a penny earned and apple earns a lot of pennies. Overcharging, underpaying and not giving a shit about the enviroment. Remind me again why they are considerd the good IT company?
The dutch rail network has some lines wich split at a point so that the first half of the train goes in one direction and the last half in another. It is on a couple of lines, ALWAYS happens and is very clearly announded and printed on the signs. And each and every ride people get it wrong. Not every day, every single ride. Can you imagine the mess if a train is made up out of random parts going to random destinations?
WoW suffers from the internet problem of complete anonymity. Be an asshole all you want, if you end up getting the ramifications for it then you just switch to an alt. Everytime there is a problem with the big servers the smaller ones get swamped by people just being annoying because, well, because they can.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
I am not saying that it is THE way to go but just that WoW's way of doing things is not without its negatives either.
Oh and about the so called casual user being able to get on just as good as the hardcore player. What a load of bullshit. The hardcore player will be able to grind the same instance over and over again, farming all the "phat" loots and kitting himself out of with all the best gear.This allows him to win in PvP easily wich again gives the player better gear.
Sorry, but WoW like every MMORPG rewards those who can/want to play the most hours. Oh and EVE fans. Think about this for a second. While getting new skills is not based on the amount of time logged in, nonetheless you HAVE to login every now and then to select a new skill to learn plus the game is heavily based on equipment wich is gotten by money wich is only earned while you are playing. So EVE just moved the focus from grinding XP to grinding money. Still the player that can afford to put in the most amount of time gets an advantage.
Perhaps this really can't be solved. After all it is part of live, train more in a sport/hobby and you will be better then someone who doesn't.
What instead perhaps MMORPG's should focus on is on making the whole game across the entire XP curve FUN. Yes that first quest and the last quest to be the same FUN! Idiotic perhaps but think about it. Was the first level of Doom, Half-Life a chore? Or were these games fun from the moment you entered the game, not just after you passed level X and gained weapon/skill Y?
If you want my opinion on why WoW is a success then it is simply because MMORPG's upto WoW just plained sucked donkey balls. WoW still sucks in many way but at least it stays away from the donkey's. Their main competitor SOE on the other sucks donkey balls but has its eye on the horses and wonders about elephants. WoW is a success not because it is that good but because it just ain't as bad as what came before.
For those who actually played Everquest 1/2 and WoW just compare the two. What really did WoW do different? What major innovations did it make? If you compare the design spec of EQ vs WoW instead of say EQ vs UO or EQ vs SWG or EQ vs Eve then I think you would be hardpressed to tell the difference. It is a bit like comparing Doom/Quake vs Unreal. Just what is the difference?
What it comes down too is that WoW is slightly better done. Graphics that work in style and performance (but still hardly perfect). Quests that focus less on (kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, kill 10 bears, go back, rince and repeat until you are blue in the face). Quests that do not have as rare spawns as their objective (although WoW just like EQ1/2 suffers from the need item X to drop wich doesn't to complete, just less).
WoW is also less obsessive then EQ2 especially about crafting. Just que the items you want and sit back instead of forcing some extremely boring mini-"game" on you.
WoW ain't a better game t
It is just multiple ones, they are short and they reset for the user after you. So you put to rest the cursed lover of a night elf and so did that guy before you and everyone else after you. Nonetheless it is a story and gives you a "motivation" for fighting your way to the ghost and killing it. No it ain't planescape torment but then is Oblivion that different? Be honest here.
By movie industry logic a mini-benz would cost the same as their flagship model. Lets hope the cost of distributing or making movies never reaches zero. The cost of a single copy would then be infinite plus taxes and explode the universe.
In grand prix legends this was different. You will loose until you get very very good. But somehow not winning in an extremely hard race with AI drivers who seem to be driving with the same ruleset as you is a lot more satisfying.
Imagine a war game. Wouldn't it be a refreshing change if for once you played the loosing side. If you had to retreat because of the AI and not just because the script told you too? That Wing Commander mission where you loose your wingmate would have been a lot better if the AI had actually been capable of beating you, or even being a challenge. Instead you knock them done left and right and still loose because that is what the script says happens.
I rather loose in chess against kasparov then win against a retard.
Also I think you mistake good AI for unbeatable AI. With good AI you can made the AI beatable by being smarter. But if the AI is dumb it has to rely on its units being overpowered to make up for their weakness. Hence why 99% of console racing games always have you racing cars one or more levels above you. Because the AI wouldn't stand a chance if it had to drive the same car with the same rules as you.
I for one would welcome better AI. If it means the game is going to win more. Then well, I just need to improve as well. That is what I think they call a challenge.
The real problem with spam after all is not the spammers but the people who respond to it, if nobody bought from spam then there would be no spam. Well at least much less of it. After all it is advertising and spammers are not selling say viagra but selling spam itself.
In any case with this log of users who actually click on spam links you could then A compile an overview of what kind of user actually is stupid enough to respond, B educate them or C ban them for being to stupid to live.
Considerring the offered budget in this ad for (30-100 dollars) I don't think the guy is operating with that big a margin already. If you can reduce the number of people who respond to these spams then perhaps simple economics makes the problem go away.
Who forbids it? Why the company that sold you the sugar cubes offcourse. Why do you have to obey them? Because DRM tells you too and if you do not you go to jail for longer then for rape or murder.
That is DRM. It is like trusted computing, wich really means, we don't trust you computing. DRM and Trusted computing are about the seller telling the buyer what he can do with the product. This is a totally new idea.
As said, nobody on the world would think of it to suggest that a sugar cube wich is clearly designed to be put into hot drinks cannot be used in any other way as the buyer sees fit. I can literally do anything with the sugar cubes I buy that I want with the only hindrance that the act may not be against the normal law. The seller has NOTHING whatsoever to say about it.
The sound of MS X-box division is that of money going down a drain.
Upon starting to play WoW I really got the feeling I was in a watered down Everquest 2. Stylish, better running, fewer bugs and better structured but with far less features.
On of the things that I miss most is that in everquest 2 enemies to low level to you become passive. This prevents the train effect when you run through a low level area and every hostile critter chases you doing no damage but being a pain in the ass.
In fact it is this running that is different as well. WoW doesn't seem to want you to run away from a fight. Turn your back and get hit and your almost certain to be dazed, EQ2 on the other hand gives everyone a sprint option wich allows a quick getaway from too tough a fight.
On the other hand however I encountered far less of the "WTF HIT ME" feeling. If you are in say a level 14-18 area then WoW doesn't suddenly slap in a level 31 just for the heck of it. WoW does like EQ2 have elites but puts them out of harmway and they seem more reasonable. Several quests in EQ2 are incompletable because the elite you have to kill goes grey (and therefore drops no loot you need for the quest) before you are able to handle them.
The WoW gameplay just feels more streamlined. Wich is not bad since it misses such things as way to track questgivers. Put another way, in WoW the indicated level of quest is actually correct.
Yet WoW is inferior in other aspects. The two sides in EQ2 are clear enemies, not allies. Yet it is EQ2 that allows races to cross over to the other side, not WoW. There are fewer classes in WoW.
Another "lesser" aspect is quest items. No MMO gives you enough storage space and when a quest then has you lugging around 4 items it becomes a pain. In EQ2 they take up no space but WoW has them all in your backpack.
In short Everquest 2 made a lot of improvements to the genre wich WoW did not BUT somehow WoW managed to get this older version of the genre to work a whole lot better.
What impresses me the most is the total lack of EQ2 quests that go "kill ten bears then report back. Go kill then more bears then report back. Okay go kill ten more bears... etc etc" (Yes this is really how eq2 quests go). In the beginner area of wow there are about half a dozen enemies and 1 quest that deals with each! Amazing!
WoW also has far less of the rare spawns you need for a quest. Yes it has rare npc's but you don't need them. In EQ2 at one point I had half a dozen quests to kill several rare spawns in one area. A nights gameplay consisted of heading in and doing a quick check if they were "up" and cursing if you saw someone else had just killed them. In WoW you just go to the area, if someone just killed them you wait a few minutes and then take your turn.
One thing I do notice is how PvP influences WoW. I also played Guild Wars and both of them have all their spells/moves adjusted to be playable in PvP. Disabling effects just last much shorter in PvP games then in PvE games. This takes some getting used too. I think the earlier WoW lack of running away has something to do with this. In PvE running away is okay. In PvP an enemy player running away from a fight is annoying.
But what does this all mean for the future? Well, that for now what we are seeing is basically a game that is a refined version of EQ. Not a better game but a better done game. But it is still the same grinding timesink that you would not accept if it was sold as a single player game.
And yet it sells millions and makes a fortune. Can it be improved upon? Yes, make an MMORPG that is fun to the non-grinder. Were people do a quest for the fun of it, not the XP it gives. An MMORPG where it is the journey, not the arriving that matters.
Will it be done? I have no idea. As any
I just seen to many windows kids loose it completly when they are put to work with a non-windows computer. Or even DOS. Or an older windows version. Or indeed any computer that is not a 100% copy of their home system.
Wich would you consider the best tech class. One that has a dozen different model and brands of say welders or a class that has just a dozen of 1 model by 1 supplier. I know wich class will produce the better welder.
I actually had a guy complain that our forklift's work differently then the one he was trained on and he couldn't work with it. The problem was that the button to choose direction was on the joystick NOT a handle underneath the steering wheel. Our small one has two seperate pedals for doing back and forth. Wich you need to know because if you don;t and you think you are slamming on the brake you can be in for a suprise. Not as much as the person walking behind the forklift but still.
I seen to many kids come into the workforce trained on standarized equipment and me having to spent then a lot of time retraining them to get used to workplaces were not only is the equipment different but often where every single piece of equipment is off a different model. I for one have rarely seen a company with more then 1 forklift of the same model.
Teach kids how to deal with computers, not how to work with OS X (no not the apple one) version Y, configuration Z. The latter group will have great scores but fail in the workplace.
This must just a giant communist trap made by the NSA to find and locate all those damn pinko's. Makes sense. I bet they got a back door coded in the software to phone home about what you do with it. Damn you opensource. Now if only we could get the code to make sure it does what it says. But that will never happen.
Balance is easy in enough in single player game, the superior intellect of the player vs the slightly more mighty forces of the computer who just don't have the AI to actually fully make use of this.
The realtime strategy genre shows this extremely well. Ever notice how in game like command and conquer the enemy always gets new units before you do? Even if you then switch side? The enemy gets units you would get one mission later if you played that side. But over all the balance in on your side because you are more intelligent and can outwit the computer. There is also usually a designed in flaw in the enemies defences. Anyway their is no real need for balance after all, the player should be capable of winning.
This already changes when you then add multiplayer. You now go to make sure that both sides have roughly the same capacity. You can hardly give side X more units then side Y like you do in single player mode. Neither can you hope that the vapid intelligence of one player will offset their better forces.
play a FPS online and you will ALWAYS get a discussion about wich is a noob weapon (any weapon you use to kill another player with). In the half-life mod "firearms" i have been accused of using a noob weapon with every single weapon in the game. Great mod if only they removed the chat from the game.
In MMORPG land the problem is even worse. At least in FPS or RTS games everyone is the same level. Both players in a RTS start out with the same amount of money. FPS assign the same base weapon to all players (btw anyone else every noticed that all the people who complain about unbalance in FPS games don't like the Unreal instagib option wich is the ultimate balancer?)
Since grouping seems to be a great evil in MMORPG's and should only be done when their is absolutly no other choice and then in great shame the designers need to make sure that each and every player can handle each and every quest. So healers and warriors, rogues and paladins all need to be able to tackle the same enemies in roughly the same time. Never mind the 'realism', healers can hold their own as well a warrior in a melee fight.
PvP makes this even worse. You now need to balance each and every class with every other class and you better make sure not to give one class just a tiny bit of an advantage over another. If you played WoW or Guild Wars vs a non-pvp game or a single player game you might have noticed how short stuff like daze and such lasts. That is because if classes that could stun could do it for a usefull period like say 30 seconds they would be far to powerfull in PvP. In a PvP fight a player is going to complain bitterly if they find themselves trapped/stunned the whole time.
If you want a MMORPG to be "more" then you need to make a game wich is about grouping. Where players compensate each other weaknesses and combine their strengths. But in current MMORPG land grouping has an negative meaning. Only noobs group. Read a site like allakhazam and every quest description will have players bragging about how they soloed quest X at level Y.
I sometimes comment in game when a "noob" is being ridiculed for asking for help with a quest that player X who is bragging about doing it solo is bragging he masturbated this weekend to a couple.
Surely MMORPG's are about doing it together? Well not for a lot of people.
Depending on my mood I tend to think that the problem is not with the game but just with human nature.
Rough stone is a nearly useless mined resource in WoW for a squirrel engineer. So I sell it for a few silver way way undercutting others and using the money to buy linen.
I also sell my squirrels for way to low prices. 10 silver, free if you bring me 2x the resources. That is hardly giving it away in my opinion but I got a rather nasty tell from a guy who charged two gold a piece for them.
This is not a fault of the game design, it can only be blamed on human g
Oh and the choosing to look like every armoured player OR having the choice of some rather nice looking clothing. I also didn't spend ages on creating a pretty face to hide it behind a helmet thank you very much.
In all but the highest level content I would do fairly well with clothing, especially since it was tricked out clothing but still get reminded constantly that I should wear armour. No matter that I saved a bundle on armour costs (clothes did not take permanent damage from fights, armour did, meanign armour had to replaced every so often), I was a noob for not wearing armour. Oh and wookies sucked because they could not wear the best armour for a long time. Never mind that wookies had better unarmoured stats then everyone else.
Being unique is a pain. I would love a game wich simply allowed you to choose wich armour for instance to wear. Cloth/Leather/Mail/Plate or whatever, make them all viable options in their own rights.
You can compensate the armour rating of Plate with the agility of cloth for instance. The cloth player will usually not take hits but has to accept the occasional whopper of a critical while the plate player can just stand there and take it and hope that his clumsy swings eventually, connect.
If a RPG has a "X is the best" then it is a flawed game in my opinion. Offcourse we still got to remember the UO is near death while WoW is setting records.
But why don't the game makers then not adjust their game to upset the most favoured templates?
Naff hunting was a grinding path in Star Wars Galaxies. They happened to be a critter on a planet that was just right to level up on.
SWG had missions you took to then go out on a mission (max of 2 per player) to then go to location X and kill all the critters and their lair. Naff's had all the right stats. The missions could be gotten with a small group, they paid decently, were not too hard to kill, didn't have nasty attacks like disease or poison, their meat and hide were not useless, they were in a relativly safe area that was easy to reach. Most important they were not aggresive and this meant they would not always kill you if knocked out (SWG required NPC's and players to actually kill a player after he lost all his health and most times naff's didn't)
So you hunted naffs, oh, rancors paid more but were a bitch to group for and getting jumped by the occosinal night sister was a bitch and when you mistook a normal rancor for an enraged one and got yourself poisoned you had to go all the way back to the naff planet anyway to get cured.
SWG dev team could have easily fixed this however. Just announce that due to overhunting naff's are now a diseased species and aggresive, a logical, sensible result off overhunting and one that would instantly force all players to adapt their strategy.
SWG already did something like this by changing the loot you got from critters a bit. Meat/hide/bones changed their stats every now and then so wich critter dropped the best would change over time. The poor ducks of naboo really had it hard on my server when they started dropping some of the best meat in the history of the game. In one week I gained all the money I ever need until the game went CU/NGE and I left.
Same with skills. I am thinking of the "schools" mentioned in the movie "The Princess Bride". Surely if a particular school of combat becomes extremely popular and successfull then a rival school will come into existence designed to counter it? If X% of players choose a particular set off skills simply introduce a new skill combo for the NPC's that counters it.
The problem with SWG for me wasn't that I could just write a macro to handle fights. The problem was that I needed just one macro for all the enemies in the whole game over the whole time I played it.
The current MMORPG crop has just a static universe were you can find out the combo early on and then just keep using it time and time again.
WoW is a nice enough game but I recently player a rogue on a bad drop mission. Tower of Althasomething needing a glowing gem. Had to kill casters (warlocks) for it. These are ranged mages with a pet who are strong on damage but weak on armour. The tactic is just to fucking boring. Stealth approach the caster, sap him (disables them), attack and kill their pet, wait for your energy to fill up and kill the caster making sure to cripple them to stop them running away.
Easy as pie. The "game" was figuring this combo out but once you done that you can reuse it for every single caster NPC you encounter with a rogue.
With a hunter? Set pet on caster, kill caster making sure not to attract the pet with your multi-shot (area of effect spell) so the casters pet would attack your pet, then once the pet is down kill the caster's pet. Easy as pie.
But the game devs should "see" this tactic and then adjust the game to counter it. Group the NPC's closer perhaps. Give the casters a new pet that can dispell the sap effect on their masters. Make the casters set their own pet on the hunter.
But the problem is offcourse that the class/level system is just a shitload easier to implement. With a skill system
Taste is one, in holland it depends greatly on were you live but in for instance amsterdam the water is "hard" and it tastes like drinking chalk. Bottled water just tastes clearer. Yes I can really taste the difference but lets face it, you pay through the nose for it.
Bottled water is a market where a far more costly product that is less convenient to get still manages to sell to compete with a 100% legal product that is far cheaper, is already bought by the customer anyway, and a lot more convenient.
So how come content has such problems competing? Well first lets look at price, for all the price difference between say Spa and tap water drinking only spa isn't going to break the bank. A bottle a day costs 50 euro cents (at AH) so times 30 that comes to 15 euro per person in your household. Not exactly shocking.
Yet if I had to pay for all the content I download I would have face a price far greater. Even quit moderate behaviour will give you bill off a few hundred euro's. Especially if you download weird foreign stuff that costs a fortune to import.
We mass consume content but the price for it is too fucking high. Imagine if somehow we lived in a world were tap water did not exist and we all had gotten used to shower with perrier water and then someone came along and introduced tapwater.
Content is too expensive at the moment. Just how come that when we went from VHS to DVD and the industry saw a HUGE price reduction in manufacturing costs, transportation costs, localisation costs, shipping costs and stocking costs prices went UP? In a normal world DVD's should costs less. They do not. They should also be easier to use, yet many are a bitch to skip the first part. Unskippable ads anyone? More money for a less convenient product.
Spa tastes better then tap water but a DVD is inferior in every single way to a DIVX rip of it and a shit load more expensive. That is the fundemental problem. It ain't to hard selling stuff that is vastly more expensive provided you got at least one advantage over your cheapo competitor. I can sell you a can of coke for 3.50 euros just by making sure that it is the only drink around (well unless you carry a can with you the whole day and don't mind it being warm) say a amusement park.
DRM is like say a movie theather that doesn't allow food to be brought in and then sells you food for insane prices. Lucky for the theather owners is that there is a social stigma against bringing in a shopping bag of food on your date so we fork out the money. There is no social stigma against breaking DRM so we don't.
Pricing your product is always a difficult thing to get right and the content industry has failed miserably. They are like the supermarket that has slowly raised it prices in line with inflation and a little extra to pay for all those extra's because the market is booming and then the market ain't anymore and customers are staying away and going to the cheap no-nonsense place that saves them a few euro's each and every day.
The content industy has had decades where they could just set any price because they were the only game in town. Like the amusement park refreshment stand they could just ask any price and you either paid or went thirsty or put up with a far inferior product.
But then the internet came along and ruined it all. The internet is to the content industry what ppipeless fresh clear tap water would be to the amusement park industry. If you could just carry a small tap with you and get fresh cheap water anywhere for a nominal monthly fee wich you are paying already anyway would you still shill out 3.50 euro's for a cup of soda?
And the problems for the content industry versus the internet "pirates" are far far greater. What about rare content? The dutch "free record shop" owner (a music store) wanted to introduce a syste
This is a bit like complaining that your own car stereo doesn't fit the color scheme of your car. Not really the car makers fault now is it?
I also strongly suspect you never had a customer support role. If you gave the customer 1 cable, color coded, with labels and instructions and signs and a guide dog they would still get it wrong.
Badge based internet access, hold your badge barcode underneath the scanner and the PC will give internet access. You get people that ask how to turn the thing on. Okay, so the screensaver and posters with instructions are not visible enough. You got people that don't get that the scanner of their neighbour won't work for their PC, who don't hold the barcode part of the badge in the light, who lost their badge despite the fact that this is a high security event with armed security and airport style checkins (including x-ray machines and sniffer dogs, oh and this despite the fact that I walked in with no check at all but hey, I am not a terrorist)
It don't matter how simple you make something, the user will screw it up.
Take this nutcase who uses a keyboard without a USB hub integrated so now he has to reach all the way to the back of his computer to plug new USB devices in. that is the kind of nutcases techsupport has to deal with. Amazing no?
The simple problem? Health. As you no doubt know not all classes are equal in D&D especially at the first few levels. D&D makes up for the weakness of some classes in combat by being by nature a multiplayer game. The warrior, the mage and the healer, one player to take the hits, one player to do the damage and one player to rule^H^H^H^Hheal them all.
CRPG's typically are one-player affairs, so they have to adjust themselves to allow this single player to survive even if they have choosen a class that isn't survivable. One way is too be liberal with health potions. Just keep chucking them back and hope that eventually your pathetic rogue will actually kill the enemy.
So what does DDO do? Put all the health potion vendors BEYOND the beginner area. This lead to a lot of players choosing the lesser combat/healing classes getting stuck. If you used the 2/3 potions you got at the start to early you just couldn't survive later dungeons.
No you couldn't group with a healer or tank either, a D&D MMORPG game with NO early grouping. Says it all really.
I was in the late beta and for this design decision to be implemented still tells me everytbing about the game I need to know. Neither am I alone. DDO commercial success is severely lacking. There is a reason WoW sells so well. Not because it is so good or so original, in many ways it is just a cheap Everquest 2 clone but with a shit load of style and class added. WoW is if you like an iPod, not a better music player, not a more capable one but one that looks good and just fucking works.
DDO is not. Play it, but be sure you know you are playing a D&D game designed by people who forbid low levels to group. A MMORPG, with no grouping.
A MMORPG where I had more cash at level 3 then at level 30 in WoW but nothing to spend it on.
Oh and the warforged are a created race that is very very ugly so I didn't play one since I only play pretty girls. Basically they are a strong warrior race that is healed by mages instead of priests.
But no, an old D&D fan probably won't like DDO. It just ain't anything like it. Neverwinter Nights might be more up your ally. D&D Pen&Paper is to me all about the dungeon master who is a human and who can improvise on the spot. No good dungeon master is going to allow the party to be wiped out in the first dungeon or force all the players to play the first few levels all alone.
A human dungeon master is like a writer, he puts the actors of his play in constant peril but also makes sure the cavalery arrives just in the nick of time. A great dungeon master makes you feel like you escaped by the skin of your nose but not actually get killed. That is the difference between computer and human controlled RPG's. Humans care.
Just take any ordinaly speech syntasyser and remove the ethical constraints with some hacking and you too will have your very own shodan.
The fighing especially was a horror. Every single weapon handled exactly the same making no difference except for the stats.
So talk all about how fighting in games is going to be in the future but when your own game is a throwback to the 1980 were the only difference between types of blades is their stats then don't expect me too be too impressed.
Yes better fighting would be much appreciated but don't talk about it, do it. He already talked enough about what Fable was going to be like. Why are we still listening to him doing it all over again with Fable 2?
It ain't the first time. Remember Dungeon Keeper? Remember Black & White. Both games wich in their first incarnation were more hype then delivery. Both times admitted by the guy and both times the press drooled all over it and then the sequel only barely admitting that their drooling over the original was a bit too much. I for one am not going to be fooled anymore.
The gaming press just can't be relied upon to be objective when it comes to this guy. With 3 games so far that completly failed to live up to the hype why is this guy still hailed as some kind of gamer god?
You, sir, are the enemy of every true businessman by trying to draw attention to the rights of people who should have no other rights, nay duties, then to hand over their money to those who deserve it.
Your entire argument is exactly what the content industry doesn't want to get out. ALL copying period is illegal. That is why in many countries now you pay money to the content industry for blank media even if you fill it with your own content.
I still hope that a really good honest laywer will one day make a case about this and get the politicians involved convicted for fraud.
Even better, the sale only "counts" as legit if you paid a reasonable price for it in case of you buying it from a thief. This could be intresting in the case of allofmp3.com. It means if I buy a 100 euro item for 10 and somebody else then claims it was stolen from them my receipt don't matter shit. I loose the item because I had no reasonable expectation the sale was legit. It could in theory be used to sue allofmp3 buyers who could have known that the sale was too good to be true. In this case your receipt could even be the proof of your crime.
In practice unless malice is very clear the police just take away the item in question and do not charge for being involved in fencing.
But anyway this is pure speculation by a non-lawyer.
But yes it is a very real problem yet it nothing new. Consider how do you proof the loss of possesion. Say in case of theft or a fire. "Yes your honor, that empty spot on the wall used to be where my undiscovered Rembrandt used to hang. Please tell the insurance company to cough up the millions, in small bills please."
In a fire how do you proof that the charred remains of your CD-collection are in fact all rare special editions and not jumble sales 5 for a dollar from your local supermarket grab bin? Keep receipts and keep photographic evidence. The police love it if in case of a theft you can hand over a stack off photographs off your possesions. It makes their work so much easier. Not the capturing of criminals but the damned sorting out who the fuck all the stolen stuff belonged too. Dutch police recently had a funny case because of it. Couple of kids stole peoples door mats. Harmless enough except that they were caught and the doormats confiscated to be returned to their rightfull owners according to the law. Except offcourse nobody is going to bother about a doormat so the police is now stuck with them for the legal term they got to keep such items. So please won't you come by and pick up a doormat. PLEASE! Evidence? Just point to the one you like.
All theory aside yes it is a real problem of how to proof that you own what you own. You should always keep receipts and in case of gifts note who they are from so you can get the receipt from them. Nobody is going to do that and in daily live we just deal with this and accept "normal" claims as most likely to be true. So that break in could loose you a TV and a VCR and a gaming console but NOT a TV and a Plasma and a project and a VCR and a DVR and every gaming console ever launched unless you hand over some proof.
But does the music industry even care about proof? Since they seem to be against media-shifting (copying music from CD to MP3 for example) in general and have a weird view on ownership anyway I am not sure a receipt of you having owned the LP is enough to defend you against downloading the MP3 version of the LP from somebody else. More important it is no defence for the person who is uploading that music to you (for now most of the cases are against uploaders, not downloaders).
For now all you got to hope is that things like RIAA lawsuits happen to other people. Most stuff does. Don't worry be happy and try not to think that to other people, you are other people.
And trucks can be very different. To support more then one model (let alone brand) you need more parts. Your mechanics need to know the machines. Drivers will need to get used to different handling.
The fact is that in IT we have allowed that program A only runs on OS Y. In the real world this would not be that acceptable. Not that it doesn't happen offcourse. But it usually leads to trouble.
If you allow lockin then you are locked in. If you are one hundred percent depend on one supplier then they own your ass.
Photoshop is the least of the problems. There are alternatives and its formats can be exported. MS Office is the ultimate lockin. It is almost impossible to get your data out of it again and it only runs on the one OS (Office on mac is hardly something I would bet a company on).
This is similar to having all your logistics tied to one unique pallet system that can only work on one brand of trucks wich can only accept one brand of gas.
It is simply a dangerous tactic.
I am not denying the photoshop problem. No gimp is not an acceptable replacement to many BUT just because the problem for now can't be remedied doesn't mean that we can ignore it.
For that matter if Photoshop itself is that essential perhaps that is a risk as well.
Is it any better to have your business controlled by Adobe then by Microsoft (or for that matter Apple, IBM, Red Hat, Sun, whoever)?
Either I am missing something, perhaps the trial already took place and this is about the penalty, or maybe civil cases are different.
If you can really sue dead people then say black americans could sue the family of slavers. It sounds like opening a hornet nest.
So how comes a dead guy is being sued or the childeren of an alleged offender? What makes this possible?
Transport company X has a fleet of brand Y trucks. It is time to replace a portion of them. So they buy a handfull of brand Z trucks, park them at the entrance then invite the sales rep for brand Y to come by for a talk. "Well we have been thinking of upgrading our fleet of trucks. We are looking for offers, by the way have you seen those new Z trucks? Nice aren't they? So what kinda of deal can we expect from you?"
Then ask them wich OS they buy and how they deal with their OS seller. Watch them be confused.
It is sensible business. If you are a fleet manager and you would come to your boss saying, "Hi boss, I completely standarized on brand Y trucks, our repair shops can repair nothing else, our drivers can drive nothing else, our loading stations can accept nothing else, we are now one hundred procent at their mercy of brand Y. Oh hi Mr Sales rep from Brand Y, why are you grinning like that?"
Such a fleet manager would be fired in an instant.
In IT, that is what has been taking place for the last decade. The same trucking companies that do everything to get their trucks with the cheapest discount hand over their IT to companies selling just one solution and totally tie their entire company to just one supplier.
Insanity but when it comes to IT common business rules do seem to apply.
In holland the goverment tries to keep monopolies from happening. Market forces can after all only work if there is more then one player right?
So we get silly stuff like the attempt to run more then one company on the dutch rail system (crowded in a crowded country) or Shell being stopped from owning more highway gas stations. Or even sillier stuff like privatizing stuff like gas and elec even medical insurance. All meant to drive down price and all the price does is skyrocket up.
And what is done about the ultimate monopoly? Shit all. Forget Shell owning 80% of dutch highway gas stations. Try MS owning 9*% of all the worlds desktops.
Face it. IT doesn't follow normal rules. No you would not accept a new EULA (or any EULA at all) when your car company recalls your car to have your brakes fixed. In IT MS owns your ass and they can do whatever they want.
But it easy to buy another brand of truck. For proof, just look at your big local trucking company, they almost always got a handfull of trucks of another manufacturer. Keeps your supplier on its toes and the costs are trivial. Now try doing the same with computers. Oh it used to be done. Only a very BAD IT manager would not make sure that his IBM datacenter did not have a couple of Sun machines installed in plain sight. But when it comes to desktops we have come to accept lock-in (says a linux user and someone who refuses to answer personal ads that accept only .doc cv's) and we all can see the result.
Accept lock-in and get locked in. Yet the old trick does work. Look at munich. MS sales rep fell all over himself when he came into his clients office and saw the linux trucks parked outside. In fact MS wherever there is a rumor that a linux truck is even passing MS sends its sales reps with freebies and special deals. And still, the majority of sales meetings with MS go like this. "Ah thank you for your replying to my outlook email, can we shedule a meeting in outlook, I will get your details from access, to meet up and discuss us buying 100 more licenses, I will send you the details in a Word document, btw what kind of pricecut can we look forward too?"
You can hardly blame MS for it can you? Not their fault that everyone has their head up their ass when it comes to IT.