I personally don't think this article is very fair in some cases, the author is clearly in favor of some genres more than others. By example, one of the reasons he bashs "Hunter: The Reckoning" is because he finds the game system too emo. What does that have anything to do with the quality of the movie? I haven't played the game at all so I'm not saying it's any good, but I find prejudice quite silly in "suckage" prediction.
Also, I'd appreciate if the poster of future articles can indicate if it's from a blog, so I can avoid reading this kind of subjective crap.
Judge: You are charged for the crime of attempted genocide of humanity for launching 10 missles with nuclear war head to every city in the world (including your own) during your final turn of civilisation. How do you plea?
So, the greatest benefit to an open skill system is enhanced freedom. I might argue precisely the converse. An open skill system means players will create templates (which are fundamentally the same as classes, only player-created). The problem with player-created templates is that players have the freedom to create them without the all-balancing eye of developers. This means that certain templates will reign supreme. The flavor of the month.
Errr... did you RTA before you comment? If you have, then you'd know his answer to that argument you just repeated.
Basically, in a skill based game, even if people are too boring to have their own set of skills and have to resort to mindlessly following templates, they're still free to choose otherwise, unlike class based games. Hell I had a super stealthy, magic using, butt kicking, grand master tailor/scribe Lady (who could inscribe all her garments/books with "Lady [insert name here]" years before the stupid fame for tailoring patch got in) in one of my accounts when I was playing UO. I'd like to see that in a class based crap.
I wish they had done some demos on games with independent view point, such as the upcomming Armed Assault, Lock On and other flight sims. I'm really interested to see if it'll work better than TrackIR.
From the Quake 2 demo, it's really not giving any advantages because your moves with the gun and the body. In Armed Assaunt (or Operation Flashpoint for that matter) where environment awareness is much more important (and *gasps* you head is not attached to the gun!), being able to look around means you have a much greater field of view and able to spot more enemies, check on your team mates to stay in formation, and maybe avoiding the helicopter collisions that we so often have.
"In other games the best gear, best armor or whatever cannot be resold and typically also cannot be bought (WoW, UO, etc)."
Can you please let me know where did you get the information about UO's best gears can not be resold or bought and why?
Last time I played UO, any item can be transfered between players in different ways (including dropping on the floor accidentally) and basically anyone can use anything (given that the character's attribute permits). But that was a couple of years ago, things might have changed.
One of my friend borrowed my Monkey Island 3 CD and played it through with his girlfriend. They seemed to enjoy the experience a lot. Another good game is Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines, the guy can do all the fighting and the girl can do all the talking.
I'm not sure how many Chinese have you been talking to or where they come from, but in my experience, the Chinese from at least the northern provinces (north of Yang Zi river, within China or overseas) tend to see it rather differently. To me, the impressions is more like: Taiwan is another province of China, it'll be back to China sooner or later. Surprisingly enough, I find the same thing to be true for some of the Taiwanese I know too.
I think you underestimate how much patriotism the Chinese, especially the Han Chinese has.
P.S The reason I can't include southern provinces is because I can't understand some of their dialect, therefore have much less conversations with them.
I've heard people telling me the death of UO when:
EQ was released
AC was released
Diablo 2 was released
Lord British left EA
UO:Renaissance was released
NWN was released
UO:LBR was released
AO was released
Shadowbane was released
SW:G was released...
Yet it's still here.
I agree fully that UO is shit at the moment. But the fact is, the shitty parts are good for getting newer players into the game, even though it destroy the game play in the long term. Because makeing a better game is not the goal, getting more money by attracting newbies is. I mean, who cares if they leave after a few months? They'll just add some more crap (like Samurai Empire) and more will come.
Just to be fair, the dev team has done some (not much) good things too. Such as customizable houses, new craftables and I didn't mind GGS (guaranteed gaining system) during my 2 weeks of return to Britannia program.
Why bother predicting UO's demise when even Meridian 59 is still alive? To me, the spirit of UO has died with the release of UO:R, but hay, a living dead is still 'living'. It's simply gonna be here no matter how rotten it becomes.
First of all, I'm not considered crazy by people around me(at least they haven't told me so or called the mental hospital).
A few years back when I was about 22-23, I had the expereince of seeing crossairs on people's head after playing too much Half Life and RtCW. When I was bored in a meeting, all I could think of is if I launch a grenade, how would it bounce from wall to wall like in Quake3. And sometimes I just do strafe turns at street corners. I mean really, games were conditioning me to see the world differently, react differently.
I can't say too much about Manhunt or about this police case because I'm not the killer, but since I've watched a 16 years old playing Manunt, I can see the impact of it on some people's mind. I believe people can be conditioned to behave in a bad way without them knowing, in the case of Doom, Half Life etc, you are fighting demons, aliens, other people who want to kill you. It's not a good reason to kill, but at least it's something I can say, ok if I'm in that kind of situation, I'll probably do so as well. But the subject of Manhunt is just plain sick. The player is there to kill people because it gives the avatar plesure, it gives the camera man plesure, the camera man tells the player how good the player feels for killing, in turn, it gives the player plesure. The repeated encouragement (kinda like a subliminal message) gives the player the impression that killing people is the most amazing thing.
Now that I'm older, I can control my mind better, but as someone who play way too much games, I have to say that reality can still be blurry to me sometimes. And I've seen the bizzard effect of some games on kids. They are more aggresive, simple minded sometimes down right unreasonable.
To me, games like hitman, gta, carmaggedon are still within a thine red line that shouldn't be crossed, they're talking about bad guys with purpose. But Manhunt has just stepped over the line into stupidity.
If it's a MMOG about pirates you want, Puzzle Pirates must be one of the most addictive, challenging and fun MMOG there is.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
I wonder if the kind of training which games like American army offers actually works. By example, I'm not too bad in operation flashpoint, I can shoot quite well and survived some pretty chaotic battles. (I also played American army, but that's just for shooting drill sargents for fun.) But I still can't aim or run better playing paintball.
And this is the point, the more time kids spend infront of the computer, the fatter and lazyer their ass will become. And as far as I know, mouse movement speed and precision are not critical for handling an M16. Not to mention the effect of long hours of gamming will bring to the player's eyes. I mean, would you like your l337 sniper unable to see more than 3 meters without his glasses?
I konw it's good for training navigation and stuffs like that, but isn't it better to just send people to a huge shopping mall?
After playing Counter-Strike and the like for years, now I can detect and kill about 5 times more cockroachs crawling in my room than before.... That, or there are actually 5 times more roaches in my room.
The author's argument was that MMORPG doesn't require skill. I've got a story to tell him...
Here's the story of one of my experences in UO (Pre-UO:Resistance), all the actions took place in about 1 minute:
I was traveling from Britain to Cove on my horse. Suddenly 2 hidden red character (murders) jumpped in front of me, one paralyzed me with a spell, the other one start casting a explosion, energy bolt combo on me. At the same time, I started bandaging before I got any injury, blew up a trapped pouch to get me out of paralyze and drink greater heal potion at the same time in order to not die from the spell combo and the other bad guys halberd that's aiming at my head.
Seeing I've freed myself, one guy start casting stone wall and the other guy tried to paralyze me again. I ran behind a tower so their spells won't reach me, and I hid myself using my hiding skill. One of them start casting reveal and the other one threw a purple potion (bomb) at the place where I was hidden. Just as the spell is about to finish casting and the bomb almost exploded, I armed myself with a deadly poisoned dagger and took off.
The bone heads followed me and took the full blast of the bomb, I turned around and poked one guy with my dagger. I disarmed the dagger and casted greater heal, without applying it to me, I armed the dagger again, the other guy hit me with his halberd and I wacked him with my dagger and applyed heal so I'm at full health.
At this time, they're both scared (because of the deadly poison's fast effect)and start running and tried to cure the poison. Of course I won't let them do this so I chased one of them until he's poisoned to death. (the other guy ran off leving his friend to die)
Well, as you might be able to imagine, I had a lot of decision to make, and so did the bandits. I had to react fast enough to counter them. I had to know what to do and when to do it in order to have an edge.
By the way, my character's skill wasn't at the top at all, that wasn't even my pvp character but my newly created thief. It's not the character's skill that won me the fight, but my own.
I've had this kind of fights almost every day, most required much more skill than this one. So don't tell me MMORPG doesn't require skill or dexterity of the player.:P
Hmm... ever thought about using smoke grenade or flashbang? Go for an alternate route? Crouch and peek before going out of a building? I never could understand somepeople keep poping their heads out when they know snipers are gonna be there. It's not about the skill, it's about (simulated) battlefield experence and map knowlige.
It's not fair to call snipers cheaters, just because you don't have the skill to overcome them. Cheating means that they have distict advantage that you can NEVER have without altering the game. Which is not true in the case of snipers in CS since if you save up the money, eventually you'll be able to get a sniper rifle as well.
The cheat that exist in CS are aim bots and wall hack. With aimbot, I've seen people get triple headshots with an MP5 or even AK so why blame solely on Snipers?
Where did you hear that the chinese treat women like shit?
As far as I know (I'm a Chinese who live in Australia), chinese women have equal right as chinese men, and are able to hold important jobs in any area. They are able to get higher education just like any man can.
So really, can you please show me your source of information, or do you just imagine us all being cat eating monsters?
Slashdot Mirror
Since Burger King is called Hungry Jack's in Australia, I wonder if the Aussi version of this game will have a different name/logo/artwork.
It could've very well been a "clever" name for a serious article. :P You see stuffs like on news papers and gamming sites.
Also, I'd appreciate if the poster of future articles can indicate if it's from a blog, so I can avoid reading this kind of subjective crap.
1: Games I have
0: Games I don't have
You can name it "The top 100 best-selling games of the Millenium"!
Judge: You are charged for the crime of attempted genocide of humanity for launching 10 missles with nuclear war head to every city in the world (including your own) during your final turn of civilisation. How do you plea?
Errr... did you RTA before you comment? If you have, then you'd know his answer to that argument you just repeated.
Basically, in a skill based game, even if people are too boring to have their own set of skills and have to resort to mindlessly following templates, they're still free to choose otherwise, unlike class based games. Hell I had a super stealthy, magic using, butt kicking, grand master tailor/scribe Lady (who could inscribe all her garments/books with "Lady [insert name here]" years before the stupid fame for tailoring patch got in) in one of my accounts when I was playing UO. I'd like to see that in a class based crap.
From the Quake 2 demo, it's really not giving any advantages because your moves with the gun and the body. In Armed Assaunt (or Operation Flashpoint for that matter) where environment awareness is much more important (and *gasps* you head is not attached to the gun!), being able to look around means you have a much greater field of view and able to spot more enemies, check on your team mates to stay in formation, and maybe avoiding the helicopter collisions that we so often have.
Last time I played UO, any item can be transfered between players in different ways (including dropping on the floor accidentally) and basically anyone can use anything (given that the character's attribute permits). But that was a couple of years ago, things might have changed.
One of my friend borrowed my Monkey Island 3 CD and played it through with his girlfriend. They seemed to enjoy the experience a lot. Another good game is Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines, the guy can do all the fighting and the girl can do all the talking.
And just where did you get that 1 in 10,000 figure?
I think you underestimate how much patriotism the Chinese, especially the Han Chinese has.
P.S The reason I can't include southern provinces is because I can't understand some of their dialect, therefore have much less conversations with them.
The fact that people have different opinions and an MMORPG is composed of people, means that there is no such thing as a perfect MMORPG.
I've heard people telling me the death of UO when: EQ was released AC was released Diablo 2 was released Lord British left EA UO:Renaissance was released NWN was released UO:LBR was released AO was released Shadowbane was released SW:G was released ...
Yet it's still here.
I agree fully that UO is shit at the moment. But the fact is, the shitty parts are good for getting newer players into the game, even though it destroy the game play in the long term. Because makeing a better game is not the goal, getting more money by attracting newbies is. I mean, who cares if they leave after a few months? They'll just add some more crap (like Samurai Empire) and more will come.
Just to be fair, the dev team has done some (not much) good things too. Such as customizable houses, new craftables and I didn't mind GGS (guaranteed gaining system) during my 2 weeks of return to Britannia program.
Why bother predicting UO's demise when even Meridian 59 is still alive? To me, the spirit of UO has died with the release of UO:R, but hay, a living dead is still 'living'. It's simply gonna be here no matter how rotten it becomes.
A few years back when I was about 22-23, I had the expereince of seeing crossairs on people's head after playing too much Half Life and RtCW. When I was bored in a meeting, all I could think of is if I launch a grenade, how would it bounce from wall to wall like in Quake3. And sometimes I just do strafe turns at street corners. I mean really, games were conditioning me to see the world differently, react differently.
I can't say too much about Manhunt or about this police case because I'm not the killer, but since I've watched a 16 years old playing Manunt, I can see the impact of it on some people's mind. I believe people can be conditioned to behave in a bad way without them knowing, in the case of Doom, Half Life etc, you are fighting demons, aliens, other people who want to kill you. It's not a good reason to kill, but at least it's something I can say, ok if I'm in that kind of situation, I'll probably do so as well. But the subject of Manhunt is just plain sick. The player is there to kill people because it gives the avatar plesure, it gives the camera man plesure, the camera man tells the player how good the player feels for killing, in turn, it gives the player plesure. The repeated encouragement (kinda like a subliminal message) gives the player the impression that killing people is the most amazing thing.
Now that I'm older, I can control my mind better, but as someone who play way too much games, I have to say that reality can still be blurry to me sometimes. And I've seen the bizzard effect of some games on kids. They are more aggresive, simple minded sometimes down right unreasonable. To me, games like hitman, gta, carmaggedon are still within a thine red line that shouldn't be crossed, they're talking about bad guys with purpose. But Manhunt has just stepped over the line into stupidity.
Nightmare level: 24 hours = oh fuck it's boring!
Hell level: 48 hours = I really, REALLY should get a life!
After Hell level: create another character and start from Normal again...
If it's a MMOG about pirates you want, Puzzle Pirates must be one of the most addictive, challenging and fun MMOG there is. http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
And this is the point, the more time kids spend infront of the computer, the fatter and lazyer their ass will become. And as far as I know, mouse movement speed and precision are not critical for handling an M16. Not to mention the effect of long hours of gamming will bring to the player's eyes. I mean, would you like your l337 sniper unable to see more than 3 meters without his glasses?
I konw it's good for training navigation and stuffs like that, but isn't it better to just send people to a huge shopping mall?
After playing Counter-Strike and the like for years, now I can detect and kill about 5 times more cockroachs crawling in my room than before.... That, or there are actually 5 times more roaches in my room.
Here's the story of one of my experences in UO (Pre-UO:Resistance), all the actions took place in about 1 minute:
I was traveling from Britain to Cove on my horse. Suddenly 2 hidden red character (murders) jumpped in front of me, one paralyzed me with a spell, the other one start casting a explosion, energy bolt combo on me. At the same time, I started bandaging before I got any injury, blew up a trapped pouch to get me out of paralyze and drink greater heal potion at the same time in order to not die from the spell combo and the other bad guys halberd that's aiming at my head.
Seeing I've freed myself, one guy start casting stone wall and the other guy tried to paralyze me again. I ran behind a tower so their spells won't reach me, and I hid myself using my hiding skill. One of them start casting reveal and the other one threw a purple potion (bomb) at the place where I was hidden. Just as the spell is about to finish casting and the bomb almost exploded, I armed myself with a deadly poisoned dagger and took off.
The bone heads followed me and took the full blast of the bomb, I turned around and poked one guy with my dagger. I disarmed the dagger and casted greater heal, without applying it to me, I armed the dagger again, the other guy hit me with his halberd and I wacked him with my dagger and applyed heal so I'm at full health.
At this time, they're both scared (because of the deadly poison's fast effect)and start running and tried to cure the poison. Of course I won't let them do this so I chased one of them until he's poisoned to death. (the other guy ran off leving his friend to die)
Well, as you might be able to imagine, I had a lot of decision to make, and so did the bandits. I had to react fast enough to counter them. I had to know what to do and when to do it in order to have an edge.
By the way, my character's skill wasn't at the top at all, that wasn't even my pvp character but my newly created thief. It's not the character's skill that won me the fight, but my own.
I've had this kind of fights almost every day, most required much more skill than this one. So don't tell me MMORPG doesn't require skill or dexterity of the player. :P
Hmm... ever thought about using smoke grenade or flashbang? Go for an alternate route? Crouch and peek before going out of a building? I never could understand somepeople keep poping their heads out when they know snipers are gonna be there. It's not about the skill, it's about (simulated) battlefield experence and map knowlige. It's not fair to call snipers cheaters, just because you don't have the skill to overcome them. Cheating means that they have distict advantage that you can NEVER have without altering the game. Which is not true in the case of snipers in CS since if you save up the money, eventually you'll be able to get a sniper rifle as well. The cheat that exist in CS are aim bots and wall hack. With aimbot, I've seen people get triple headshots with an MP5 or even AK so why blame solely on Snipers?
Where did you hear that the chinese treat women like shit? As far as I know (I'm a Chinese who live in Australia), chinese women have equal right as chinese men, and are able to hold important jobs in any area. They are able to get higher education just like any man can. So really, can you please show me your source of information, or do you just imagine us all being cat eating monsters?