The PvP's still being tuned pretty heavily and will for a while because, as it stands, with CoV being new and CoH having hordes of top-level characters. Villains can try PvP right now, but usually you wind up just getting ganked because A) there are more heroes than villains PvPing, and B) the heroes are all of a much higher level. Give it a couple months or two, and you'll start to see some balancing out. Some people could speculate based on the hero vs. hero combat that was added in during the summer, but the deal is, PvP is now 5 unique archetypes vs. 5 more unique archetypes, with more powers thrown into the mix on the villains side. Any dymanic that may have been learned before is out the window.
As it stands, there really isn't a class X always beats class Y effect, though. The problem, though, is that it's still based on three things: A) a player's brains, B) the character's hitting power, and C) the character's survivability. Currently, scrappers and blappers (blasters built for melee combat, like a scrapper) seem to be the most effective classes when taken out of the group vs. group context. They certainly aren't unbeatable, it's just that if one gets the drop on you, they deal so much damage that you're not likely to survive, and if you do, the blappers have enough stuns/holds to either kill you or hold you while they run, and the scrappers can soak up a fair bit of damage.
That said, I can see how every class will eventually come into their own; at least as far as I can say that. The problem is that between the various power pools and primary and secondary abilities, one person playing archetype X may be completely unsuited for PvP, while another with a different build will absolutely rock....but there's definitely a component of player skill. But even that seems off; it's not your raw skill (as in, say, reaction time or dexterity) that matter so much as it is your ability to think ahead, use sound strategy, and work together as a team, as well as realistic expectations for your archetype. Someone who takes a controller into PvP expecting to be a killing machine is going to be upset no matter what, for instance.
I think the PvP will be pretty well-balanced, and you won't be seeing any of that class X > class Y crap if for no other reason than the fact that there are 500 permutations of significant skill variation within class X and class Y.
It feels like we've been on the cusp for many years now and the applications available for most common tasks are certainly competitive, but we still hover around a 5% market share by most accounts.
As someone who's not particularly adept with Linux, but has attempted to use it many times over the years, allow me to say that this may be part of the problem. Linux is absolutely nowhere near the cusp of acceptance for mainstream desktop usage, and for good reason:
For starters, drivers. Rarely, if ever, have I installed any flavor of Linux (starting with Slackware back in '99, having since used Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Knoppix and SUSE, not necessarily in that order) and had everything work. You need to futz with obscure config files to get something as simple the mouse wheel working, much less buttons 4 and 5. Video drivers are rarely up to snuff; as I've had ATi cards for the past few years, I've yet to even play Chromium BSU. Sound? Forget it. Basically, and I think this is the single biggest issue, virtually anything requiring a driver in Linux is a hassle. No one wants to spend hours pouring over forums and HOWTOs to install a bloody driver.
Then, there was the package dependancy hell, which has been somewhat resolved by package management systems. However, my experience with these systems has been that they're unbelievably unintuitive, and have an awful interface. Take Ubuntu's system, for example: it's 2005, yet its interface (at least when I last used it, maybe 7-8 months ago) looks like a circa-1990 BBS.
On top of it all, there's the hideously outdated UIs. There's little, if any, consistancy between apps in appearance, and most of the default themes I've seen in the various Linux distros still look like a clusterfuck of a Win98 box. They don't even match up to WinXP's level of consistancy and polish, much less OSX's.
Linux really does have the functionality to put it on par with Windows and even OSX in a lot of cases. The problem is that Linux is, by and large, an OS developed by hobbyists and developers for hobbyists and developers. Its level of polish is orders of magnitude off from Windows, and not even on the same plane of existance as OSX. It's just a hassle to install and configure, and not particularly nice to look at. Sure, it's less of a hassle now, but it's still just not good enough....and that's the thing: I want it to be good enough. I want it to be better. And for a while, I was even trying to migrate away from my Windows desktop. Then I got an iBook. Linux hasn't even been a consideration since.
At this point, I honestly don't see what point - other than being free of cost - that Linux on the desktop serves. Sure, more competition is always welcome, but Linux is already a phenomenal medium/heavy-duty OS - does it really even need to be on the desktop, too? And more importantly, without a serious overhaul by a group of artists and GUI designers, does it even have a chance? My guess would be, on both accounts, no.
Seriously, this has been known very well amongst the gaming PC builder crowd for a long time. Most of them, anyways; there's unfortunately still that level at which people know enough to put the PC together, but don't know enough to tell you what any of the numbers mean.
The difference between, say, Corsair Value Select memory, and Corsair 1337 Ultra X2000 - the memory equipped with LCDs, heat spreaders, and a spoiler with metal-flake yellow paint that add at least 10 horsepower - is going to be absolutely unnoticeable in the real world. Even benchmark scores will show little to no improvement.
Ricer RAM - you know, the PC equivalent of this crap - is for overclocking. If you're not planning on overclocking it, you're paying too damned much.
Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?
This is one of the worst analogies I've ever seen.
Let's say GM makes a car. You buy it. You drive into a high crime area and don't have your doors locked. You get car jacked 26 minutes later. Should GM be held liable? Of course not.
Microsoft could do a better job, unquestionably, but the car analogy doesn't hold up. When you connect a PC to the internet, it's deluged with attackers almost immediately. When you drive down the road, chances are, you're not going to get car jacked by anyone. Chances are you're never going to get car jacked in your entire life. Do you see the problem of scale at work here? Even ignorning the scale for a minute, if you buy a new car, and some guy comes along and take a baseball bat to the headlights, is that GM's fault? No! It's the guy who broke your headlights! He's the one who broke your property, he's the one that should be liable. So why is it Microsoft's fault when someone else breaks their product?
Because players, for the most part, do enjoy the game.
Think of a movie you really like, overall, but that has a really lame scene or two. Now, you'd rather those scenes not be there, and wish they could be taken out, but does that mean the entire movie is bad? Of course not. It's the same deal with MMOs; they provide hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay. But the scale of the games is huge, and when a quest comes along that sucks, it's not conceptually different than that bad scene in a movie, it just lasts a lot longer. But the secondary market lets me bypass it entirely.
Just think -- if you could pay someone to remove Jar Jar Binks from every instance of the new Star Wars trilogy, wouldn't you?;)
A common theme in MMORPGs is that you have to work for what you want. Many pieces of equipment, abilities, spells, titles, and other objects not only advance your character in-game, but also function as a sort of status symbol. Take EQ2 for example; if you see someone with flashy armor and a weapon that has a unique model and particle effect, that character's probably of a very high level. Same deal with horses, except in that case, a low-level twink (someone with a wealthy, high-level character that puchased equipment for his low-level character) can have one, too.
The problem is, you get this sort of 4-tier market developing in-game. At any given point, there's equipment that's below average - which no one wants, average equipment - which is usually bland and a bit on the expensive side, but attainable, and twink equipment - usually slightly better than the average equipment, but ridiculously overpriced. The only people who can afford that equipment are either twinks, or someone who's buying their cash off eBay. The final category is quested equipment, which is usually even better than the twink gear at any given level, but takes much more time and effort to get....and given the 3 markets of player-sellable good (below average, average, and twink), well... the twink market has by far the highest margin of profit, so it's practically oversaturated. The other two? Not so much.
So your problem, as a player, is that if you're new(er) to the game, and you want some flashy or high-end equipment, there's a good chance that it's not accessible, or will require significant time and patience to get via a quest model. Quite frankly, a lot of us don't have the time.
So, in my case, I've purchased money in-game before (in both City of Heroes and WoW, during the brief time I've played it). Sometimes, the developers skew too far towards their "work for it" ideal and forget that it's a game that's supposed to be enjoyable. So if you want equipment X, and the only way to get it is either via outlay of cash you couldn't possibly have at the level that gear is designed for, or to spend hours upon hours doing mostly unenjoyable questing for it, does it make sense to buy it? Depends. How much is it?
I make about $25/hour. Now, if I really want equipment X, and it's on eBay for $50, what makes more sense? Spend 6 hours farming/questing for it, or put another two hours in at the office and call it even?
Now, obviously, you can't do this with everything unless you've got a huge chunk of disposable income. But in some cases? It's a lot more convenient for a player to stick to his real-life profession and use the advantages it affords to help him catch up in game....now, the question as to whether or not this constitutes good game design is a whole different issue. But the point is, sometimes, because of the current MMORPG design paradigm, it just makes economic and entratainment sense to buy it off eBay.
I picked up a 20GB 4th-gen iPod last December. I love it, I use it every day, but despite how beautiful the thing was out of the box, I'm convinced it's one of the most poorly-designed (physically; the software is great) gadgets I've ever owned. The front is covered in that crappy transluscent plastic that seems to get scratched just by being near other objects, whether that would be a piece of paper, a key, or even the damned thing's own headphones. The back; the metallic surface (chrome?) is good for absolutely nothing but collecting fingerprints. Even if you do manage to get it clean, the second you pick it up, it's messy again.
Maybe these problems are more debilitating for the Nano; I don't know, I haven't held one in my own hands, yet. But based on my experience with the iPod, I can't say it comes as any suprise at all that Apple's used the same shitty, scratch-prone plastic on the nano. What good is having such a cool-looking device if it's covered with scratches even when well taken-care of. Hell, my iPod scratches just moving it in and out of that (hideously overpriced) nylon armband I bought to use while I'm running!
It's a shame the guys designing the iPod's case aren't as considerate as the guys working on the software. I mean, bloody hell, what's wrong with the relatively scratch-resistant, metallic body of the Mini? Why is it that getting a scratch-resistant coating on my sunglasses costs an extra $10 and allows them to take tons and tons of abuse (like keying them) without a scratch, while Apple can't seem to figure out how to keep the iPod from looking like shit after a couple days of normal use?
It's because FFXI is an evil, twisted, abortion of a game that's tanked miserably in the US.
FFXI requires a degree of sadism and time investment (it can literally take hours just to find a group, and this isn't rare) that seems high even in comparison to Lineage 2. The economy has been utterly devastated by farmers, and encounters (and therefore groups, which are absolutely necessary - you can't even blow your nose in FFXI without a white mage to help you) are so demanding that you often won't be admitted into a group unless you have the absolute best equipment available. Which means either, A) competing with professional farmers, B), farming for gold for days to buy the most trivial equipment, or C) shelling out to the farmers on eBay.
FFXI isn't covered because it's not a game, it's punishment in digital form; it's a damned job with no benefits and no pay. It's a game so slow, boring, repetetive, and frustrating that even old-time EverQuest players say "whoa, that's too much." "Playing" FFXI is like choing on tinfoil while a donkey kicks you in the nuts and a midget in a bondage outfit sodomizes you with a red-hot, spiked dildo.
The chieg gripe with Wind Waker wasn't the cell-shaded graphics. I think many people, even those that decried the game, would enjoy them under different circumstances. For instance, I hated Wind Waker's visual stylings, but I think World of Warcraft is one of the most beautiful games ever made (visually).
The problem was that Wind Waker failed in suspension of belief. Here was link, rendered in a cartoonish style, with every visual cue reminding you of your 6 year-old cousin/brother/nephew. He hung out with a kid that had huge boogers hanging out of his nose, for crying out loud!
Link is supposed to be a champion; a hero that rises up and smashes Gannon to rescue the princess and save the world. It's supposed to be epic, but Wind Waker had all the visual styling and epic urgency of the sort of formulaic cartoons you watched on Saturday morning as a young kid that involved some 11 year-old superhero saving the world. It was fine when you were a kid, but now when you're older (and I would guess most of the LoZ fanbase is in their 20s and 30s), it seems laughable. The same principle allies to Wind Waker.
In short, the visual style of Wind Waker - not just the cell shading, but the game's presentation as a whole - was just jarring with the ideals most people had for the series.
Wind Waker had good gameplay. It had a unique and creative visual style. It had top-tier presentation. The problem was that the way Nintendo just sort of haphazardly mashed them all together trampled all over peoples' expectations for the game.
They took the original Dungeon Siege, absolutely ruined the pathing and AI, neutered the spell system, added an extremely shallow and uninteresting skill tree, and a handful of special attacks that can be triggered when you've dealt enough damage. Of course, the graphics have been dolled up. The game looks good; the environments are positively lush, and Jeremy Soule (Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege) did the soundtrack, but it's probably the most bland and forgettable score he's ever done.
DS2 focuses more on story than its predecessor, but has the usual array of predictable plot twists and subpar voice acting, all implimented by dialogue boxes, similar to Neverwinter Nights.
The crippling multiplayer problem that prevents just about anyone with a firewall (regardless of port forwarding) from playing online that was around in the original still exists, and although multiplayer has been improved, it's still impossibly shallow.
DS2 would be great... if it was an expansion pack. It's entirely unworthy of being a standalone game though. For Dungeon Crawler fans, I'd recommend picking it up, but only after it hits the $15 dollar bin.
The point it raises - 'Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt.
Really? I thought XP was fairly useful, if only an incremental upgrade to 2k.
Meanwhile, Vista is panning out to be nothing but XP with alpha transparency and a lot more DRM. As a network admin, I see no reason at all to upgrade. As a gamer, I see no reason at all to upgrade; Avalon/WGF are being ported to XP. As a user, there's incentive not to upgrade, because it costs more, it's more of a hassle, and it doesn't allow me to do anything I can't do on XP, already.
"The end result is that when Windows Vista ships (and Apple's next OS), most people won't be able to watch protected HD content on their computers."
So, we'll just have to settle for unprotected HD content, then?
Isn't this just another instance of the entertainment industry not getting it? They're sabotaging their own business. How many people do they expect to be interested in downloading HD content? Probably not that many. Now, how many of those people do they expect to go and shell out an obscene amount of money for a new HDCP-compliant monitor that offers no additional benefit to the end user?
Essentially, what they're doing here is presenting consumers with a rather lopsided decision: spend more money on a monitor just to have the privelage of spending more money to view paid-for HD content that may or may not actually materialize, or don't spend any extra money and continue to download what you want off of BitTorrent/eMule/usenet.
How many people are going to actually know what "Vista" means, anyway? I'd put 20 on people thinking that the newest incarnation of Windows is some spanish distribution.
Well, I know what Vista stands for:
Viruses Instability Spyware Trojans Adware
Quite frankly, I'm amazed they didn't find a way to work DRM in there.;)
I've actually been in the market for a Bluetooth trackball as well. Most of my home PC's peripherals are Bluetooth; my mouse, my keyboard, my printer... unfortunately, while I'd like to switch back to a trackball (I used to use a Cordless Trackman Optical for years), I've run into the exact same problem: apparently, they don't exist.
I've resigned myself to the fact that it's just not going to happen. Thankfully, wireless USB (as in the new standard, not an RF receiver that plugs into a USB port) products should be hitting the shelves this fall, from what I understand.
Here's to hoping Logitech jumps on board with the wireless USB and makes a Trackman variant that doesn't have that obnoxious receiver.
I think consoles will kill off PC gaming, sooner or later. They've already gone and started stepping on the PC's toes, now that they're coming with hard drives and online gameplay.
But stop and think about it critically...
The only advantages the PC really has aren't inherent to the PC itself - they're higher-resolution displays, input devices, and moddable games.
But HDTV is catching on, and 1280p-capable displays put all but the most hideously expensive PC monitors to shame. And mice/keyboards? Really, does anyone honestly think they'd be anything but trivial to impliment on the consoles? There already are a handful of them.
I don't think the Xbox 360/PS3/Revolution are really going to make any headway into the PC gaming market, but the next generation? I think it may be the last nail in the PC's coffin. Or rather, I think consoles, at that point, will be practically identical to PCs in gaming capability, while still retaining the "it just works" edge consoles currently have, and a vastly superior price point.
Even if the next next-gen consoles weigh in at $500, who in their right mind would want to shell out $1500+ for a high-perfomance gaming rig when they exact experience can be duplicated on a console, without the headache of drivers, bugs, and patches, for $1000+ less?
So, I don't think consoles are going to "kill" PC gaming, per se, but once we start seeing a prevalence of hi-def displays in peoples' homes, and games that take advantage of them, well... that's the real backbone of what makes PCs "superior" gaming systems, now. Without that, they're nothing but overpriced and buggy, in comparison....and keep in mind, this is coming from an ardent PC gamer that just built a brand new top-of-the-line rig. I love PC gaming, but I'm really sick of the cost and hassle. Once a console can duplicate the good parts of the experience, I'll be more than happy to tell ATi and nVidia just where they can stick those $500 video cards I keep buying to get my fix.
I don't think that the assumption that consoles will soon kill off PC gaming is all that far fetched. Why?
(And keep in mind, I'm a very staunch PC gamer that's had and subsequently traded in all 3 current consoles because I find their games to be so shallow and short-lived).
The PC really has two advantages over consoles, and neither is specific to the PC itself: the control scheme (I love gamepads and all, but they simply can't compete with the level of precision and complexity a keyboard and mouse offer in many situations), and display technology.
Well, HDTV is rapidly becoming more commonplace. 1080p displays put more pixels on the screen than all but the highest-end PC monitors. And really, how difficult would it be to make a mouse, trackball, keyboard, or some sort of high-precision gamepad controller?
To compete with console gaming, PCs need to eliminate the hassle (and especially the "release it broken and patch it later" mindset so many distributors have), eliminate the bugs and compatibility issues, and simplify installation. Quite a lofty goal, to be honest.
What do consoles need to match the PC? A hard drive? Already happening. Better displays? Already happening. Better conrol mechanisms? Trivial. Throw in a Knoppix-like disk-bootable set of utilities with an office suite, web browser, etc, and what's the PC got left?
I think in terms of gaming nirvana, the console's beginning to step on the PC's toes. The next generation of them (the one after the PS3/360/Revolution) may very well have me, a long-time PC gamer that can't stand consoles, scratching my head, asking myself "...why do I want to spend $500 on this GeForce 8900 again?"
I have a Dell 2405FPW; it's a 24 inch widescreen LCD that also doubles as a very nice HDTV. Being that it's a lot nicer than the 7 year-old, 21 inch GE piece of garbage TV I've got sitting out in my living room, I typically use my PC for movies and whatnot. When I do that, I find lying on my bed to be a lot more comfortable, and my wireless mouse and keyboard come across the room with me.
What's more, I plan on getting a 40 inch 1080p-capable DLP in the next year or so, which I can use in an entertainment center as well as a PC monitor. Needless to say, I'll be sitting back on the couch a ways away from it. Wireless works well here, too.
Even in a normal workstation, it's nice just not having cords running across your desk, or fewer things contributing to the rat's nest of cabling behind my PC.
My old PC? It had cables for speakers, the mouse, the keyboard, network, power, monitor, my printer, and my iPod.
My new PC? I switched to a wireless LAN, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, and bluetooth printer. I have half as many cables sitting around now; I love it.
Not to say wireless is for everyone, but it's certainly useful for a lot of us. And for what it's worth, I get about 9 months out of a set of AA batteries in my bluetooth keyboard, and about 4 months out of a set of AA batteries in my bluetooth mouse.
My only gripe with wireless is that they're still making all this RF crap with charging stations that need to be plugged in. It doesn't reduce the cable clutter, it just relocates it, and the battery life on rechargable devices is much, much worse than devices that run on normal batteries. Case in point: I used a Logitech MX700 for about 6 months. That thing was lucky to get 2 days of heavy use out of it on a full charge. My bluetooth mouse that's non-rechargable (Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer) will run for months with routine heavy use (I'm a gamer).
Re:On-demand is the future, today.
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Television Reloaded
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Believe it or not, Comcast already does this.
They have this on-demand feature built into their digital cable boxes. The selection's a little lacking, but in effect, you can play any TV show or movie they have any time you want, it just costs a few bucks. They even have a fair amount of free content (no doubt to get people using the service), and the selection's not too bad. It seems most HBO shows are on it, and a lot of major cable networks seem to be on board; Discovery, Comedy Central, the History Channel, and quite a few others.
I'm no big fan of Comcast, but I've got to say, they really nailed this one.
I signed up with Cingular recently after some issues with Verizon and Sprint. They were offering a free MobiTV (or something like that) demo for 10 days with no charge, so I figured why not?
That wasn't TV.
What I got was a grainy slideshow that updated once every 5 seconds or so with terribly low-quality audio, all played through an application with no volume control (with a very loud default volume) and a terrible interface....and this was with EDGE on a Motorola V3 Razr.
The mobile TV thing seems like it could be marginally useful, once in a while. Like if I have 20 minutes to kill, waiting in a doctor's office or something, I wouldn't mind downloading an Episode of Family Guy or something.
What I worry about are pricing structures. I already got screwed by Cingular with $80 worth of mobile IM charges because, for some stupid reason, mobile IM is considered text messaging and not internet usage (which I was paying $25/month for unlimited data transfer for). I've already noticed I've been billed for data transfer for using their Media Mall, which is nothing but a phone-friendly store for Cingular to sell ringtones, games, wallpapers, etc. I mean, I downloaded Chessmaster, and paid $5 for it, and then they charged me for the privelage of using their godawful web interface just so I could buy their game, too. It'd be like Blockbuster Video charging cover at the door....anyways, my point being, with mobile TV, they'll probably bill you for a monthly service, as well as a per-view premium for certain shows, and charge you for the data transfer it took to get it in the first place. The pricing scheme's almost assuredly going to suck. That's just what cell phone companies do - all of them.
Did it ever occur to you that you may be a bit biased by reminiscing over those old games?
Bard's Tale, for instance, had no story to speak of, no character development, and a maddeningly boring, repetetive style of gameplay. Sure, it was good for its day, but compared to games nowadays? It has almost nothing of worth.
Another issue isn't so much instant gratification, but simply that many of us don't want to have to work at a game to have fun. If I want to work, I have school, and a job that at least pays me money for working. When I'm gaming, I just want to have a good time, and I want a good time while I'm playing the game, not a half-hearted laugh 3 years later when I think to myself "damn, remember when I busted that controller because FFXI pissed me off so much? Wow, wasn't that funny..."
Additionally, how has the internet destroyed puzzle games? I mean, really... so walkthroughs are out there. Saying their mere presence destroys the genre is like saying all sci fi movies are ruined because, somewhere, you can probably download a script for the movie before it's released. It's not like people are accidentally stumbling over FAQs and walkthroughs; they use them because they want to.
Besides, if you want a slow pace and a game that makes you feel like you have to suffer through and work to get anything done, take a look at any of the Japanese-made MMOGs, like Final Fantasy XI and Lineage 2. Many of those games elevate slow and masochistic to a level Bard's Tale developers never even dreamed possible. FFXI in particular, has pacing best described as glacial.
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The PvP's still being tuned pretty heavily and will for a while because, as it stands, with CoV being new and CoH having hordes of top-level characters. Villains can try PvP right now, but usually you wind up just getting ganked because A) there are more heroes than villains PvPing, and B) the heroes are all of a much higher level. Give it a couple months or two, and you'll start to see some balancing out. Some people could speculate based on the hero vs. hero combat that was added in during the summer, but the deal is, PvP is now 5 unique archetypes vs. 5 more unique archetypes, with more powers thrown into the mix on the villains side. Any dymanic that may have been learned before is out the window.
...but there's definitely a component of player skill. But even that seems off; it's not your raw skill (as in, say, reaction time or dexterity) that matter so much as it is your ability to think ahead, use sound strategy, and work together as a team, as well as realistic expectations for your archetype. Someone who takes a controller into PvP expecting to be a killing machine is going to be upset no matter what, for instance.
As it stands, there really isn't a class X always beats class Y effect, though. The problem, though, is that it's still based on three things: A) a player's brains, B) the character's hitting power, and C) the character's survivability. Currently, scrappers and blappers (blasters built for melee combat, like a scrapper) seem to be the most effective classes when taken out of the group vs. group context. They certainly aren't unbeatable, it's just that if one gets the drop on you, they deal so much damage that you're not likely to survive, and if you do, the blappers have enough stuns/holds to either kill you or hold you while they run, and the scrappers can soak up a fair bit of damage.
That said, I can see how every class will eventually come into their own; at least as far as I can say that. The problem is that between the various power pools and primary and secondary abilities, one person playing archetype X may be completely unsuited for PvP, while another with a different build will absolutely rock.
I think the PvP will be pretty well-balanced, and you won't be seeing any of that class X > class Y crap if for no other reason than the fact that there are 500 permutations of significant skill variation within class X and class Y.
As someone who's not particularly adept with Linux, but has attempted to use it many times over the years, allow me to say that this may be part of the problem. Linux is absolutely nowhere near the cusp of acceptance for mainstream desktop usage, and for good reason:
For starters, drivers. Rarely, if ever, have I installed any flavor of Linux (starting with Slackware back in '99, having since used Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Knoppix and SUSE, not necessarily in that order) and had everything work. You need to futz with obscure config files to get something as simple the mouse wheel working, much less buttons 4 and 5. Video drivers are rarely up to snuff; as I've had ATi cards for the past few years, I've yet to even play Chromium BSU. Sound? Forget it. Basically, and I think this is the single biggest issue, virtually anything requiring a driver in Linux is a hassle. No one wants to spend hours pouring over forums and HOWTOs to install a bloody driver.
Then, there was the package dependancy hell, which has been somewhat resolved by package management systems. However, my experience with these systems has been that they're unbelievably unintuitive, and have an awful interface. Take Ubuntu's system, for example: it's 2005, yet its interface (at least when I last used it, maybe 7-8 months ago) looks like a circa-1990 BBS.
On top of it all, there's the hideously outdated UIs. There's little, if any, consistancy between apps in appearance, and most of the default themes I've seen in the various Linux distros still look like a clusterfuck of a Win98 box. They don't even match up to WinXP's level of consistancy and polish, much less OSX's.
Linux really does have the functionality to put it on par with Windows and even OSX in a lot of cases. The problem is that Linux is, by and large, an OS developed by hobbyists and developers for hobbyists and developers. Its level of polish is orders of magnitude off from Windows, and not even on the same plane of existance as OSX. It's just a hassle to install and configure, and not particularly nice to look at. Sure, it's less of a hassle now, but it's still just not good enough.
At this point, I honestly don't see what point - other than being free of cost - that Linux on the desktop serves. Sure, more competition is always welcome, but Linux is already a phenomenal medium/heavy-duty OS - does it really even need to be on the desktop, too? And more importantly, without a serious overhaul by a group of artists and GUI designers, does it even have a chance? My guess would be, on both accounts, no.
Seriously, this has been known very well amongst the gaming PC builder crowd for a long time. Most of them, anyways; there's unfortunately still that level at which people know enough to put the PC together, but don't know enough to tell you what any of the numbers mean.
The difference between, say, Corsair Value Select memory, and Corsair 1337 Ultra X2000 - the memory equipped with LCDs, heat spreaders, and a spoiler with metal-flake yellow paint that add at least 10 horsepower - is going to be absolutely unnoticeable in the real world. Even benchmark scores will show little to no improvement.
Ricer RAM - you know, the PC equivalent of this crap - is for overclocking. If you're not planning on overclocking it, you're paying too damned much.
This is one of the worst analogies I've ever seen.
Let's say GM makes a car. You buy it. You drive into a high crime area and don't have your doors locked. You get car jacked 26 minutes later. Should GM be held liable? Of course not.
Microsoft could do a better job, unquestionably, but the car analogy doesn't hold up. When you connect a PC to the internet, it's deluged with attackers almost immediately. When you drive down the road, chances are, you're not going to get car jacked by anyone. Chances are you're never going to get car jacked in your entire life. Do you see the problem of scale at work here? Even ignorning the scale for a minute, if you buy a new car, and some guy comes along and take a baseball bat to the headlights, is that GM's fault? No! It's the guy who broke your headlights! He's the one who broke your property, he's the one that should be liable. So why is it Microsoft's fault when someone else breaks their product?
Because players, for the most part, do enjoy the game.
;)
Think of a movie you really like, overall, but that has a really lame scene or two. Now, you'd rather those scenes not be there, and wish they could be taken out, but does that mean the entire movie is bad? Of course not. It's the same deal with MMOs; they provide hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay. But the scale of the games is huge, and when a quest comes along that sucks, it's not conceptually different than that bad scene in a movie, it just lasts a lot longer. But the secondary market lets me bypass it entirely.
Just think -- if you could pay someone to remove Jar Jar Binks from every instance of the new Star Wars trilogy, wouldn't you?
A common theme in MMORPGs is that you have to work for what you want. Many pieces of equipment, abilities, spells, titles, and other objects not only advance your character in-game, but also function as a sort of status symbol. Take EQ2 for example; if you see someone with flashy armor and a weapon that has a unique model and particle effect, that character's probably of a very high level. Same deal with horses, except in that case, a low-level twink (someone with a wealthy, high-level character that puchased equipment for his low-level character) can have one, too.
...and given the 3 markets of player-sellable good (below average, average, and twink), well... the twink market has by far the highest margin of profit, so it's practically oversaturated. The other two? Not so much.
...now, the question as to whether or not this constitutes good game design is a whole different issue. But the point is, sometimes, because of the current MMORPG design paradigm, it just makes economic and entratainment sense to buy it off eBay.
The problem is, you get this sort of 4-tier market developing in-game. At any given point, there's equipment that's below average - which no one wants, average equipment - which is usually bland and a bit on the expensive side, but attainable, and twink equipment - usually slightly better than the average equipment, but ridiculously overpriced. The only people who can afford that equipment are either twinks, or someone who's buying their cash off eBay. The final category is quested equipment, which is usually even better than the twink gear at any given level, but takes much more time and effort to get.
So your problem, as a player, is that if you're new(er) to the game, and you want some flashy or high-end equipment, there's a good chance that it's not accessible, or will require significant time and patience to get via a quest model. Quite frankly, a lot of us don't have the time.
So, in my case, I've purchased money in-game before (in both City of Heroes and WoW, during the brief time I've played it). Sometimes, the developers skew too far towards their "work for it" ideal and forget that it's a game that's supposed to be enjoyable. So if you want equipment X, and the only way to get it is either via outlay of cash you couldn't possibly have at the level that gear is designed for, or to spend hours upon hours doing mostly unenjoyable questing for it, does it make sense to buy it? Depends. How much is it?
I make about $25/hour. Now, if I really want equipment X, and it's on eBay for $50, what makes more sense? Spend 6 hours farming/questing for it, or put another two hours in at the office and call it even?
Now, obviously, you can't do this with everything unless you've got a huge chunk of disposable income. But in some cases? It's a lot more convenient for a player to stick to his real-life profession and use the advantages it affords to help him catch up in game.
I picked up a 20GB 4th-gen iPod last December. I love it, I use it every day, but despite how beautiful the thing was out of the box, I'm convinced it's one of the most poorly-designed (physically; the software is great) gadgets I've ever owned. The front is covered in that crappy transluscent plastic that seems to get scratched just by being near other objects, whether that would be a piece of paper, a key, or even the damned thing's own headphones. The back; the metallic surface (chrome?) is good for absolutely nothing but collecting fingerprints. Even if you do manage to get it clean, the second you pick it up, it's messy again.
Maybe these problems are more debilitating for the Nano; I don't know, I haven't held one in my own hands, yet. But based on my experience with the iPod, I can't say it comes as any suprise at all that Apple's used the same shitty, scratch-prone plastic on the nano. What good is having such a cool-looking device if it's covered with scratches even when well taken-care of. Hell, my iPod scratches just moving it in and out of that (hideously overpriced) nylon armband I bought to use while I'm running!
It's a shame the guys designing the iPod's case aren't as considerate as the guys working on the software. I mean, bloody hell, what's wrong with the relatively scratch-resistant, metallic body of the Mini? Why is it that getting a scratch-resistant coating on my sunglasses costs an extra $10 and allows them to take tons and tons of abuse (like keying them) without a scratch, while Apple can't seem to figure out how to keep the iPod from looking like shit after a couple days of normal use?
It's because FFXI is an evil, twisted, abortion of a game that's tanked miserably in the US.
FFXI requires a degree of sadism and time investment (it can literally take hours just to find a group, and this isn't rare) that seems high even in comparison to Lineage 2. The economy has been utterly devastated by farmers, and encounters (and therefore groups, which are absolutely necessary - you can't even blow your nose in FFXI without a white mage to help you) are so demanding that you often won't be admitted into a group unless you have the absolute best equipment available. Which means either, A) competing with professional farmers, B), farming for gold for days to buy the most trivial equipment, or C) shelling out to the farmers on eBay.
FFXI isn't covered because it's not a game, it's punishment in digital form; it's a damned job with no benefits and no pay. It's a game so slow, boring, repetetive, and frustrating that even old-time EverQuest players say "whoa, that's too much." "Playing" FFXI is like choing on tinfoil while a donkey kicks you in the nuts and a midget in a bondage outfit sodomizes you with a red-hot, spiked dildo.
The chieg gripe with Wind Waker wasn't the cell-shaded graphics. I think many people, even those that decried the game, would enjoy them under different circumstances. For instance, I hated Wind Waker's visual stylings, but I think World of Warcraft is one of the most beautiful games ever made (visually).
The problem was that Wind Waker failed in suspension of belief. Here was link, rendered in a cartoonish style, with every visual cue reminding you of your 6 year-old cousin/brother/nephew. He hung out with a kid that had huge boogers hanging out of his nose, for crying out loud!
Link is supposed to be a champion; a hero that rises up and smashes Gannon to rescue the princess and save the world. It's supposed to be epic, but Wind Waker had all the visual styling and epic urgency of the sort of formulaic cartoons you watched on Saturday morning as a young kid that involved some 11 year-old superhero saving the world. It was fine when you were a kid, but now when you're older (and I would guess most of the LoZ fanbase is in their 20s and 30s), it seems laughable. The same principle allies to Wind Waker.
In short, the visual style of Wind Waker - not just the cell shading, but the game's presentation as a whole - was just jarring with the ideals most people had for the series.
Wind Waker had good gameplay. It had a unique and creative visual style. It had top-tier presentation. The problem was that the way Nintendo just sort of haphazardly mashed them all together trampled all over peoples' expectations for the game.
They took the original Dungeon Siege, absolutely ruined the pathing and AI, neutered the spell system, added an extremely shallow and uninteresting skill tree, and a handful of special attacks that can be triggered when you've dealt enough damage. Of course, the graphics have been dolled up. The game looks good; the environments are positively lush, and Jeremy Soule (Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege) did the soundtrack, but it's probably the most bland and forgettable score he's ever done.
DS2 focuses more on story than its predecessor, but has the usual array of predictable plot twists and subpar voice acting, all implimented by dialogue boxes, similar to Neverwinter Nights.
The crippling multiplayer problem that prevents just about anyone with a firewall (regardless of port forwarding) from playing online that was around in the original still exists, and although multiplayer has been improved, it's still impossibly shallow.
DS2 would be great... if it was an expansion pack. It's entirely unworthy of being a standalone game though. For Dungeon Crawler fans, I'd recommend picking it up, but only after it hits the $15 dollar bin.
Really? I thought XP was fairly useful, if only an incremental upgrade to 2k.
Meanwhile, Vista is panning out to be nothing but XP with alpha transparency and a lot more DRM. As a network admin, I see no reason at all to upgrade. As a gamer, I see no reason at all to upgrade; Avalon/WGF are being ported to XP. As a user, there's incentive not to upgrade, because it costs more, it's more of a hassle, and it doesn't allow me to do anything I can't do on XP, already.
So, we'll just have to settle for unprotected HD content, then?
Isn't this just another instance of the entertainment industry not getting it? They're sabotaging their own business. How many people do they expect to be interested in downloading HD content? Probably not that many. Now, how many of those people do they expect to go and shell out an obscene amount of money for a new HDCP-compliant monitor that offers no additional benefit to the end user?
Essentially, what they're doing here is presenting consumers with a rather lopsided decision: spend more money on a monitor just to have the privelage of spending more money to view paid-for HD content that may or may not actually materialize, or don't spend any extra money and continue to download what you want off of BitTorrent/eMule/usenet.
Tough call, eh?
No doubt that WoW is the largest MMO here in the states, but the largest overall? Not by a longshot.
Well, I know what Vista stands for:
Viruses
Instability
Spyware
Trojans
Adware
Quite frankly, I'm amazed they didn't find a way to work DRM in there.
I've seen Win98 boxes more attractive than that.
Here ya go, troll - a free meal on me.
Or do Firefox, Explorer, and the Windows image viewer not count as real apps?
In all fairness, WinXP can look pretty good, if you put some work into it.
I've actually been in the market for a Bluetooth trackball as well. Most of my home PC's peripherals are Bluetooth; my mouse, my keyboard, my printer... unfortunately, while I'd like to switch back to a trackball (I used to use a Cordless Trackman Optical for years), I've run into the exact same problem: apparently, they don't exist.
I've resigned myself to the fact that it's just not going to happen. Thankfully, wireless USB (as in the new standard, not an RF receiver that plugs into a USB port) products should be hitting the shelves this fall, from what I understand.
Here's to hoping Logitech jumps on board with the wireless USB and makes a Trackman variant that doesn't have that obnoxious receiver.
I think consoles will kill off PC gaming, sooner or later. They've already gone and started stepping on the PC's toes, now that they're coming with hard drives and online gameplay.
...and keep in mind, this is coming from an ardent PC gamer that just built a brand new top-of-the-line rig. I love PC gaming, but I'm really sick of the cost and hassle. Once a console can duplicate the good parts of the experience, I'll be more than happy to tell ATi and nVidia just where they can stick those $500 video cards I keep buying to get my fix.
But stop and think about it critically...
The only advantages the PC really has aren't inherent to the PC itself - they're higher-resolution displays, input devices, and moddable games.
But HDTV is catching on, and 1280p-capable displays put all but the most hideously expensive PC monitors to shame. And mice/keyboards? Really, does anyone honestly think they'd be anything but trivial to impliment on the consoles? There already are a handful of them.
I don't think the Xbox 360/PS3/Revolution are really going to make any headway into the PC gaming market, but the next generation? I think it may be the last nail in the PC's coffin. Or rather, I think consoles, at that point, will be practically identical to PCs in gaming capability, while still retaining the "it just works" edge consoles currently have, and a vastly superior price point.
Even if the next next-gen consoles weigh in at $500, who in their right mind would want to shell out $1500+ for a high-perfomance gaming rig when they exact experience can be duplicated on a console, without the headache of drivers, bugs, and patches, for $1000+ less?
So, I don't think consoles are going to "kill" PC gaming, per se, but once we start seeing a prevalence of hi-def displays in peoples' homes, and games that take advantage of them, well... that's the real backbone of what makes PCs "superior" gaming systems, now. Without that, they're nothing but overpriced and buggy, in comparison.
I don't think that the assumption that consoles will soon kill off PC gaming is all that far fetched. Why?
(And keep in mind, I'm a very staunch PC gamer that's had and subsequently traded in all 3 current consoles because I find their games to be so shallow and short-lived).
The PC really has two advantages over consoles, and neither is specific to the PC itself: the control scheme (I love gamepads and all, but they simply can't compete with the level of precision and complexity a keyboard and mouse offer in many situations), and display technology.
Well, HDTV is rapidly becoming more commonplace. 1080p displays put more pixels on the screen than all but the highest-end PC monitors. And really, how difficult would it be to make a mouse, trackball, keyboard, or some sort of high-precision gamepad controller?
To compete with console gaming, PCs need to eliminate the hassle (and especially the "release it broken and patch it later" mindset so many distributors have), eliminate the bugs and compatibility issues, and simplify installation. Quite a lofty goal, to be honest.
What do consoles need to match the PC? A hard drive? Already happening. Better displays? Already happening. Better conrol mechanisms? Trivial. Throw in a Knoppix-like disk-bootable set of utilities with an office suite, web browser, etc, and what's the PC got left?
I think in terms of gaming nirvana, the console's beginning to step on the PC's toes. The next generation of them (the one after the PS3/360/Revolution) may very well have me, a long-time PC gamer that can't stand consoles, scratching my head, asking myself "...why do I want to spend $500 on this GeForce 8900 again?"
I have a Dell 2405FPW; it's a 24 inch widescreen LCD that also doubles as a very nice HDTV. Being that it's a lot nicer than the 7 year-old, 21 inch GE piece of garbage TV I've got sitting out in my living room, I typically use my PC for movies and whatnot. When I do that, I find lying on my bed to be a lot more comfortable, and my wireless mouse and keyboard come across the room with me.
What's more, I plan on getting a 40 inch 1080p-capable DLP in the next year or so, which I can use in an entertainment center as well as a PC monitor. Needless to say, I'll be sitting back on the couch a ways away from it. Wireless works well here, too.
Even in a normal workstation, it's nice just not having cords running across your desk, or fewer things contributing to the rat's nest of cabling behind my PC.
My old PC? It had cables for speakers, the mouse, the keyboard, network, power, monitor, my printer, and my iPod.
My new PC? I switched to a wireless LAN, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, and bluetooth printer. I have half as many cables sitting around now; I love it.
Not to say wireless is for everyone, but it's certainly useful for a lot of us. And for what it's worth, I get about 9 months out of a set of AA batteries in my bluetooth keyboard, and about 4 months out of a set of AA batteries in my bluetooth mouse.
My only gripe with wireless is that they're still making all this RF crap with charging stations that need to be plugged in. It doesn't reduce the cable clutter, it just relocates it, and the battery life on rechargable devices is much, much worse than devices that run on normal batteries. Case in point: I used a Logitech MX700 for about 6 months. That thing was lucky to get 2 days of heavy use out of it on a full charge. My bluetooth mouse that's non-rechargable (Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer) will run for months with routine heavy use (I'm a gamer).
Believe it or not, Comcast already does this.
They have this on-demand feature built into their digital cable boxes. The selection's a little lacking, but in effect, you can play any TV show or movie they have any time you want, it just costs a few bucks. They even have a fair amount of free content (no doubt to get people using the service), and the selection's not too bad. It seems most HBO shows are on it, and a lot of major cable networks seem to be on board; Discovery, Comedy Central, the History Channel, and quite a few others.
I'm no big fan of Comcast, but I've got to say, they really nailed this one.
I signed up with Cingular recently after some issues with Verizon and Sprint. They were offering a free MobiTV (or something like that) demo for 10 days with no charge, so I figured why not?
...and this was with EDGE on a Motorola V3 Razr.
...anyways, my point being, with mobile TV, they'll probably bill you for a monthly service, as well as a per-view premium for certain shows, and charge you for the data transfer it took to get it in the first place. The pricing scheme's almost assuredly going to suck. That's just what cell phone companies do - all of them.
That wasn't TV.
What I got was a grainy slideshow that updated once every 5 seconds or so with terribly low-quality audio, all played through an application with no volume control (with a very loud default volume) and a terrible interface.
The mobile TV thing seems like it could be marginally useful, once in a while. Like if I have 20 minutes to kill, waiting in a doctor's office or something, I wouldn't mind downloading an Episode of Family Guy or something.
What I worry about are pricing structures. I already got screwed by Cingular with $80 worth of mobile IM charges because, for some stupid reason, mobile IM is considered text messaging and not internet usage (which I was paying $25/month for unlimited data transfer for). I've already noticed I've been billed for data transfer for using their Media Mall, which is nothing but a phone-friendly store for Cingular to sell ringtones, games, wallpapers, etc. I mean, I downloaded Chessmaster, and paid $5 for it, and then they charged me for the privelage of using their godawful web interface just so I could buy their game, too. It'd be like Blockbuster Video charging cover at the door.
Did it ever occur to you that you may be a bit biased by reminiscing over those old games?
Bard's Tale, for instance, had no story to speak of, no character development, and a maddeningly boring, repetetive style of gameplay. Sure, it was good for its day, but compared to games nowadays? It has almost nothing of worth.
Another issue isn't so much instant gratification, but simply that many of us don't want to have to work at a game to have fun. If I want to work, I have school, and a job that at least pays me money for working. When I'm gaming, I just want to have a good time, and I want a good time while I'm playing the game, not a half-hearted laugh 3 years later when I think to myself "damn, remember when I busted that controller because FFXI pissed me off so much? Wow, wasn't that funny..."
Additionally, how has the internet destroyed puzzle games? I mean, really... so walkthroughs are out there. Saying their mere presence destroys the genre is like saying all sci fi movies are ruined because, somewhere, you can probably download a script for the movie before it's released. It's not like people are accidentally stumbling over FAQs and walkthroughs; they use them because they want to.
Besides, if you want a slow pace and a game that makes you feel like you have to suffer through and work to get anything done, take a look at any of the Japanese-made MMOGs, like Final Fantasy XI and Lineage 2. Many of those games elevate slow and masochistic to a level Bard's Tale developers never even dreamed possible. FFXI in particular, has pacing best described as glacial.