City of Heroes was pretty easy to get into, run a couple missions, and then quit. More so than any other MMORPG (and I've played a bunch), this one seemed more geared to the casual player. Not to say that there weren't aspects or missions that required a big group of experienced players, just that there seemed to be a lot more that a single person or a quick pick-up group could accomplish.
Because they want Google to index them so people come to their site. In other words, they not only want to have their cake and eat it too, they want someone else to bring it to their doorstep and pay them for the privilege of delivering it.
Funny how people can scream and holler about the US involving themselves in the internal affairs of other countries and then pitch a hissy fit because we don't invade China.
The only difference is that liberals only get their panties in a knot when a country oppresses its own people. Except when it's Cuba, or the Soviet Union, or Afghanistan, or North Korea, or Iran. Organizing a world-wide economic attack on apartheid South Africa was ok, but sanctions against Iraq that included exceptions for civilian aid were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess.
So, we're mostly techies here. We know what it costs to do tech support, and I bet most of us have gotten good at blowing through the first tier by pretending to do the stupid stuff we'd already done before we called them. So, everyone make 10 calls to Sony, spend a half-hour drinking coffee and jerking around their tech people.
No, the guy that deals with the stuff the helpdesk guys can't handle. Or, in these cases, the stuff that PHBs have problems with because 'I'm too important to deal with helpdesk' so it has to *start* with someone senior even if it really is just a dead battery.
Maybe they'll go out and re-possess all the damn things and I won't have to support them anymore. 90% of the people with Blackberries are clueless micro-managing morons who are so insecure they get panic attacks if they are out of contact for 10 minutes. Why is it the most unreliable and pain-in-the-ass technologies have to end up in the hands of those least equipped to use it and the most likely to blame others for their own incompetence.
Sorry. Monday morning and already three helpdesk tickets on goddamn PDAs. Apparently, they need, like, batteries, or power, or something and won't work without it?
Allow me (for the first time) to bitch about the moderation. How the hell is a tired rant about Episodes I and 2 'informative'? Perhaps if the OP had said commented on the poor critical reception, or something, but for God's sake, is everyone here such a vulgarian that 'complete and utter crap' passes for thoughtful criticism? Besides that, the OP is making an observably false statement -- if people were 'sick and tired' based on previous experience, then Episode III wouldn't have out-grossed Episode II by a substantial margin.
You certainly shouldn't be modded down, because you make some valid points. Allow me to address them:
* The movie will have a built-in audience of a couple million, enough to start strong. Whether it has cross-over appeal is unknown, but then again, no one expected 'Star Wars' to do what it did. Once upon a time, early summer was where movies went to die because everyone was off on vacation.
* Fox's dumb decisions are legendary, but it's really one bad decision repeated over and over again. Fox has been trying to re-create the success of the X-Files, another niche show that had cross-over appeal and became mainstream enough to enter popular culture. Firefly did about as well as Harsh Realm, VR5, and any of the other 6-week and out shows tried on Friday nights.
* 'Serenity' currently stands at %63 on RottenTomatoes, which is not too shabby for a sci-fi flick. We'll see where it is once more of the mainstream press have reviewed it.
* For all that 'Firefly' got the shaft, 'Serenity' at least seems to be getting some loving from the studio. They moved it from late spring (where it would have gotten lost in the Episode III hype) to its current slot, which may not be ideal, but it's got much more of a chance to hold on for a few weeks and build an audience. Plus, at least around here, they've been advertising the hell out of it -- I saw a ton of commercials for it during football games over the weekend, and that's pretty prime advertising.
* Any more, the movie industry doesn't make its money during the summer run, it makes it on video sales. This is why 'Serenity' got the green light -- because the studio heads saw the hundreds of thousands of DVD sales of the series and said 'Hey, if that many people bought the DVDs of the show, they'll all go see it in the theatre at least once, *plus* they'll all buy the $25 DVD in six months.'
Cheating AIs are not always lame. It's when the cheating becomes obvious that it detracts from the gameplay. Sid himself has said on several occasions that (to paraphrase) its the end result that matters. If you can make the game more fun by letting the computer cheat a bit, then go for it.
The real advantage the computer has (IME) isn't the cheats, which you can generally learn to recognize and accomodate, its the infinite awareness and attention span. Games of Galciv, etc., especially during end-game in large galaxies, become exercises in repetition, scrolling through dozens of systems and hundreds of units each turn. This is something the computer is far more able to manage than I am.
Honestly, I've found Blackberries to be far more support intensive than any of the Palm-based stuff. Plus, 99% of the people that have Blackberries are micro-managing assholes that can't remember the simplist tasks and somehow expect them to survive a drop into the toilet.
Re:The question that's on all of our minds:
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It's a question of unit scale. One tank icon = 1 tank, but 1 spearmen icon = 1000 spearmen.
Spearmen 1-472 are used to immobilize the tank by mucking up the treads.
Spearmen 473-678 render the tank weaponless by wedging their arms in the barrel \ until it misfires.
Spearmen 679-947 die of starvation waiting for the crew to run out of MREs.
Spearmen 948 declare victory and move on to the next tank.
New genre
on
Ask Sid Meier
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It seems as if the mass market has become rather stagnant for several years. The last 'big new thing' was MMORPGs, and they've become fairly mature and standardized. Civ (although not the first 4X game) certainly sparked an entire class of games, Doom kickstarted first-person shooters and multiplayer. RTS games are still doing well, but classic adventure and turn-based have been somewhat in decline, as have RPGs. What do you see becoming the next genre in computer games?
Actually, companies have to be pretty diligent. Xerox people used to get their knickers in a twist when someone used 'xerox' as a verb, and thier sales and technical people were required to correct you -- you weren't xeroxing something, you were photocopying it. See also: Band-Aid brand adhesive strips, which is awkward but necessary as band-aid became common vernacular for any type of bandage.
It's not necessarily cut and dried with Linux. It has become so widespread in so many flavors, distributions, functions and systems, that it really has taken on some generic qualities. Technically minded folks understand the difference between the kernel and the rest, but most, if not all, of the companies selling services and products for Linux do not make that distinction.
There is a big difference between getting there and staying there. The original race to the moon, while a spectacular achievement, was not intended to result in a routinely repeatable capability. Quick, cheap, right -- pick one.
True, but (so far as I know -- I don't work with Macs much) there aren't multiple flavors of Mac OS X (aside from server). Plus, Apple doesn't have the wide-spread corporate presence that makes enterprise upgrades such a pain. And besides, we all know that anyone with a Mac is just a sucker with more money than they know what to with that will buy anything Steve tells them to:)
Smaller, more frequent upgrades will cost more to publish, will increase their support costs, and won't result in increased sales/upgrades. Most home users upgrade automatically when they buy a new PC, most corporate users upgrade en masse when there is good reason to do so. Trying to shorten the upgrade cycle in the corporate environment will backfire. Smart IT managers will still only upgrade when there is a compelling reason to do so, and now they might have the opportunity to cherry-pick smaller upgrades that would theoretically be less expensive.
Microsoft almost got it right with XP, but then they got greedy/stupid at the last minute and fragmented the product line (first Pro v Home, then Media). The 31 flavors of Vista is bad enough, but to compound that with multiple, more frequent upgrades will be even worse.
I've had both. When my iPod broke, I bought the iRiver because it was cheaper, worked better for me the way I tend to move music around, played.ogg, had an FM tuner, a remote control so I could leave it in my inside jacket pocket when it was cold and rainy, and, oh yeah, it was cheaper. I've found the controls to be a wash, and I have zero interest in creating a playlist on the fly. I either use it in random shuffle mode, I listen to a specific album straight through, or I hunt and peck my way through picking the next song when the current one is about to finish.
So, there you have feedback from someone who has used both, and preferred the iRiver. Although I must confess the nano looks sweet, I prefer being able to have 90% of my music in one device and not have to copy stuff back and forth. Give me a nano with 16GB and I'm so there.
That's nice for you, but there are those of us that like to listen to the radio, whether its sports shows or whatever. Plus, the gym turns down the volume on the TV sets and simulcasts the audio on short-range radio so those that want to watch the news while they work out can do so without disturbing others. An FM tuner is a requirement for a lot of people I know.
I took option B -- switching to a job where I didn't have to hire people. On other words, I exchanged one set of frustrations with another, but at least now when I refer to one of my co-workers as a flaming moron, I can do so with a clean conscience knowing I wasn't the one that hired him:)
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City of Heroes was pretty easy to get into, run a couple missions, and then quit. More so than any other MMORPG (and I've played a bunch), this one seemed more geared to the casual player. Not to say that there weren't aspects or missions that required a big group of experienced players, just that there seemed to be a lot more that a single person or a quick pick-up group could accomplish.
Why? Do you want her turning into a lesbian and then sleeping with your daughter?
Because they want Google to index them so people come to their site. In other words, they not only want to have their cake and eat it too, they want someone else to bring it to their doorstep and pay them for the privilege of delivering it.
Funny how people can scream and holler about the US involving themselves in the internal affairs of other countries and then pitch a hissy fit because we don't invade China.
The only difference is that liberals only get their panties in a knot when a country oppresses its own people. Except when it's Cuba, or the Soviet Union, or Afghanistan, or North Korea, or Iran. Organizing a world-wide economic attack on apartheid South Africa was ok, but sanctions against Iraq that included exceptions for civilian aid were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess.
So, we're mostly techies here. We know what it costs to do tech support, and I bet most of us have gotten good at blowing through the first tier by pretending to do the stupid stuff we'd already done before we called them. So, everyone make 10 calls to Sony, spend a half-hour drinking coffee and jerking around their tech people.
You don't need a CAL for Terminal Server for Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional.
No, the guy that deals with the stuff the helpdesk guys can't handle. Or, in these cases, the stuff that PHBs have problems with because 'I'm too important to deal with helpdesk' so it has to *start* with someone senior even if it really is just a dead battery.
Maybe they'll go out and re-possess all the damn things and I won't have to support them anymore. 90% of the people with Blackberries are clueless micro-managing morons who are so insecure they get panic attacks if they are out of contact for 10 minutes. Why is it the most unreliable and pain-in-the-ass technologies have to end up in the hands of those least equipped to use it and the most likely to blame others for their own incompetence.
Sorry. Monday morning and already three helpdesk tickets on goddamn PDAs. Apparently, they need, like, batteries, or power, or something and won't work without it?
Allow me (for the first time) to bitch about the moderation. How the hell is a tired rant about Episodes I and 2 'informative'? Perhaps if the OP had said commented on the poor critical reception, or something, but for God's sake, is everyone here such a vulgarian that 'complete and utter crap' passes for thoughtful criticism? Besides that, the OP is making an observably false statement -- if people were 'sick and tired' based on previous experience, then Episode III wouldn't have out-grossed Episode II by a substantial margin.
You certainly shouldn't be modded down, because you make some valid points. Allow me to address them:
* The movie will have a built-in audience of a couple million, enough to start strong. Whether it has cross-over appeal is unknown, but then again, no one expected 'Star Wars' to do what it did. Once upon a time, early summer was where movies went to die because everyone was off on vacation.
* Fox's dumb decisions are legendary, but it's really one bad decision repeated over and over again. Fox has been trying to re-create the success of the X-Files, another niche show that had cross-over appeal and became mainstream enough to enter popular culture. Firefly did about as well as Harsh Realm, VR5, and any of the other 6-week and out shows tried on Friday nights.
* 'Serenity' currently stands at %63 on RottenTomatoes, which is not too shabby for a sci-fi flick. We'll see where it is once more of the mainstream press have reviewed it.
* For all that 'Firefly' got the shaft, 'Serenity' at least seems to be getting some loving from the studio. They moved it from late spring (where it would have gotten lost in the Episode III hype) to its current slot, which may not be ideal, but it's got much more of a chance to hold on for a few weeks and build an audience. Plus, at least around here, they've been advertising the hell out of it -- I saw a ton of commercials for it during football games over the weekend, and that's pretty prime advertising.
* Any more, the movie industry doesn't make its money during the summer run, it makes it on video sales. This is why 'Serenity' got the green light -- because the studio heads saw the hundreds of thousands of DVD sales of the series and said 'Hey, if that many people bought the DVDs of the show, they'll all go see it in the theatre at least once, *plus* they'll all buy the $25 DVD in six months.'
Cheating AIs are not always lame. It's when the cheating becomes obvious that it detracts from the gameplay. Sid himself has said on several occasions that (to paraphrase) its the end result that matters. If you can make the game more fun by letting the computer cheat a bit, then go for it.
The real advantage the computer has (IME) isn't the cheats, which you can generally learn to recognize and accomodate, its the infinite awareness and attention span. Games of Galciv, etc., especially during end-game in large galaxies, become exercises in repetition, scrolling through dozens of systems and hundreds of units each turn. This is something the computer is far more able to manage than I am.
Honestly, I've found Blackberries to be far more support intensive than any of the Palm-based stuff. Plus, 99% of the people that have Blackberries are micro-managing assholes that can't remember the simplist tasks and somehow expect them to survive a drop into the toilet.
It's a question of unit scale. One tank icon = 1 tank, but 1 spearmen icon = 1000 spearmen. Spearmen 1-472 are used to immobilize the tank by mucking up the treads. Spearmen 473-678 render the tank weaponless by wedging their arms in the barrel \ until it misfires. Spearmen 679-947 die of starvation waiting for the crew to run out of MREs. Spearmen 948 declare victory and move on to the next tank.
It seems as if the mass market has become rather stagnant for several years. The last 'big new thing' was MMORPGs, and they've become fairly mature and standardized. Civ (although not the first 4X game) certainly sparked an entire class of games, Doom kickstarted first-person shooters and multiplayer. RTS games are still doing well, but classic adventure and turn-based have been somewhat in decline, as have RPGs. What do you see becoming the next genre in computer games?
Actually, companies have to be pretty diligent. Xerox people used to get their knickers in a twist when someone used 'xerox' as a verb, and thier sales and technical people were required to correct you -- you weren't xeroxing something, you were photocopying it. See also: Band-Aid brand adhesive strips, which is awkward but necessary as band-aid became common vernacular for any type of bandage.
It's not necessarily cut and dried with Linux. It has become so widespread in so many flavors, distributions, functions and systems, that it really has taken on some generic qualities. Technically minded folks understand the difference between the kernel and the rest, but most, if not all, of the companies selling services and products for Linux do not make that distinction.
If it just goes 'click', you've got a problem...
Wordperfect had it 10 years ago. They called it 'WYSBYGI" - What You See Before You Get It'. And yes, it was a nice feature.
It's a deterrent in that if he gets caught, he's in violation of the court order which could get his ass thrown back in jail.
There is a big difference between getting there and staying there. The original race to the moon, while a spectacular achievement, was not intended to result in a routinely repeatable capability. Quick, cheap, right -- pick one.
True, but (so far as I know -- I don't work with Macs much) there aren't multiple flavors of Mac OS X (aside from server). Plus, Apple doesn't have the wide-spread corporate presence that makes enterprise upgrades such a pain. And besides, we all know that anyone with a Mac is just a sucker with more money than they know what to with that will buy anything Steve tells them to :)
Smaller, more frequent upgrades will cost more to publish, will increase their support costs, and won't result in increased sales/upgrades. Most home users upgrade automatically when they buy a new PC, most corporate users upgrade en masse when there is good reason to do so. Trying to shorten the upgrade cycle in the corporate environment will backfire. Smart IT managers will still only upgrade when there is a compelling reason to do so, and now they might have the opportunity to cherry-pick smaller upgrades that would theoretically be less expensive.
Microsoft almost got it right with XP, but then they got greedy/stupid at the last minute and fragmented the product line (first Pro v Home, then Media). The 31 flavors of Vista is bad enough, but to compound that with multiple, more frequent upgrades will be even worse.
I've had both. When my iPod broke, I bought the iRiver because it was cheaper, worked better for me the way I tend to move music around, played .ogg, had an FM tuner, a remote control so I could leave it in my inside jacket pocket when it was cold and rainy, and, oh yeah, it was cheaper. I've found the controls to be a wash, and I have zero interest in creating a playlist on the fly. I either use it in random shuffle mode, I listen to a specific album straight through, or I hunt and peck my way through picking the next song when the current one is about to finish.
So, there you have feedback from someone who has used both, and preferred the iRiver. Although I must confess the nano looks sweet, I prefer being able to have 90% of my music in one device and not have to copy stuff back and forth. Give me a nano with 16GB and I'm so there.
That's nice for you, but there are those of us that like to listen to the radio, whether its sports shows or whatever. Plus, the gym turns down the volume on the TV sets and simulcasts the audio on short-range radio so those that want to watch the news while they work out can do so without disturbing others. An FM tuner is a requirement for a lot of people I know.
Caffeinated bacon? You, sir, are a genius.
I took option B -- switching to a job where I didn't have to hire people. On other words, I exchanged one set of frustrations with another, but at least now when I refer to one of my co-workers as a flaming moron, I can do so with a clean conscience knowing I wasn't the one that hired him :)