Here is a good one, if I pay for HBO on Digital Cable but I miss the Sopranos, then download it from bit torrent am I breaking the law? It's the same as using TiVo, or even a VCR. Of course comcast being the cable provider probably wouldn't like that. But how different is it from having a friend tape it for me?
Comcast outsources their news service to Giganews now, they don't have a NNTP server anymore AFAIK.
Giganews puts a nice cap on what you can D/L a month also.
But in a way it is, DDR is the type of game that is intimidating to new players. Sure, Teenagers don't mind getting on that thing and jumping around but don't you think that DDR by it's nature alienates the 20 - 30 something players? Or players with poor dexterity? While you might get embarassed playing street fighter for the first time, you can REALLY get embarassed playing DDR in front of a crowd for the first time. Not to mention the fact that a DDR machine probably costs at least double what a standard arcade machine costs.
I could make an argument that the stagnation of fighting games, along with the rise of DDR is what killed the popularity of the arcade scene. Sure there are a lot of kids watching each other play DDR. But are there as many people in the arcade as in 94 - 97 when Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were peaking?
If you don't like the way a joystick feels, you can tell whoever's working there and they will have the technical skill to replace it, have replacement parts handy and be more than happy to replace it for you. I can't count how many time I've been bored and gone into the arcade at a mall and put a couple quarters into Marvel vs. Capcom only to find out that I can't move backwards or use middle punch.
Fixing a button is easy, replacing a joystick is a bit of a pain in the ass. Plus you want to have the correct joystick for the game at hand, most players can tell a Namco stick from a Midway one. (Or at least it was that way when I was playing..). If you are at a small arcade they will usually replace a joystick if you ask nicely, the mall arcades often employ people who wouldn't even know how to change a joystick. They just give you your coins back, put the game out of order and tell whoever the tech is to fix it when he comes in that week.
Then again, maybe all the mall arcades actually just set the machines on the secret "uber" mode hoping to attract die hard fans looking for a challenge?:)
Usually what happens is the game comes in new, they put it on a middle setting, then ramp it up after it's been out for awhile and it's making money. Sometimes, they will forget to turn it down when the game becomes less popular or the game is moved to another location.
Other times the arcade worker (ie coin chaser) might just turn up the skill level to piss off a regular who comes in to play the game all the time.:)
Hmm, linked on the front page of slashdot and their cheezy counter says 15. Now I know no one really READS the articles posted on slashdot, but somehow I think that counter should be on more than 15.
People that make statements about GOTOs have never coded assembly in their life.
and if you have never really coded in assembler in some form YOU ARENT A REAL PROGRAMMER. THIS MEANS YOU SKRIPT KIDDI! drop the javascript book and back away from the keyboard!
GOTO's make spaghetti code. It is very hard to trace through, especially if the code is uncommented.
Ever tried to sift through someone's OOP program that is poorly documented and methods are badly named? It's just as bad. Ever seen a method that calls six others methods in different objects in it's body which are all overloaded 5 or 6 times? Bad/Sloppy programming spans all languages and isn't confined to a goto statement.
How about poorly named method signatures? For example
String getNumber(String x, int i, boolean q, vector a)
I've seen crap like this before from programmers.
Try maintaining code full of goto's. Good luck.
No it's not the best thing in the world to do, but if it's well documented it's not as bad as you make it out to be. I started out in basic when I was 7, and I work now as a Java programmer. I would gladly take well commented code with GOTO's over poorly done OOP code.
I still remember buying everquest the day it came out, and taking the box with the pornographic elphette home, doing the install, then trying to log on for the next two days unsuccessfully.
Oh yes, I can't wait to see what a clusterfuck Neverquest2's launch will be, but I'll watch from the sidelines this time.:)
Currently 1 GB of ram [sony.com] is being prescribed for most latancy issues. If SWG [amazon.com] is using a lesser engine and they are having problems than I could not imagine that Everquest 2 will run on anything less than that.
I have a gig of ram, a Geforce 4 video card, and a broadband connection and I still lag in SWG when I'm just running around out in the middle of nowhere with no one around me.
Having played at probably over 100 fighting game tournaments at 8 on the break and other arcades on the east coast during the peak of fighting game popularity (ie 1994 - 1997) I can tell you that all fighting game tournaments come down to a combination of skill, and exploiting an overpowering move or character. Players that refused to embrace a top-tier character never won tournaments and usually were the ones who bitched about cheese. Players that won tournaments could usually play with any character, but embraced the cheesy/exploitable strategies that went with the game. For example:
Mortal Kombat 2 - Most players used Jax (Ground pound was over powered) or Millena (Jump away and air throw sai all day).
Street Fighter Alpha 2 - Most players used Chun Li (insane damage on custom combos) or Ken (alpha counter with glitched range which made it too long)
X-Men vs Street Fighter - People would constantly fly off screen with storm and use her "float" move to stay off screen to charge their super meter then come down, use a super, and fly back off screen.
Killer Instinct - there were a number of infinate combos in KI, which I saw used in tournaments plenty of times.
All in all I see the same crap playing games online today. Go play any FPS and 80% of the players are running around with whichever weapon is overpowered, not to mention the ones that run maphacks, aimbots, etc. Log onto a MMORPG and who usually has the most money? The people who are duping, macroing, or just exploiting stuff in game. A good example is in Star Wars Galaxies, a Jedi who uses their powers in front of any other player is subjected to instant PvP. This means Macroing any of these powers to gain experence while you are AFK is suicide. So, what the Jedi's do is they go inside a large house with a balcony, climb to the top where no one can get them and AFK macro there. While using their powers inside the house would push them outside with a temporary enemy flag to everyone, for some reason on the balcony they are immune. So that is where they camp and level.
The point is, any game with 2 players that isn't co-op is going to have exploits/cheese and the players who exploit the cheese along with having skills in the first place are always on top of the heap.
or those of you that are not in the game but are considering it, your average mission payout for a solo mission is about 1200 or so credits. If a starship costs you half a million, it's going to take a LOT of mission running to get there, either that or grouping on the "adventure planets".
Hmm, maybe they will give you some kind of bo-bo/newbie ship to start with? Since they are saying space combat will be twich based, maybe it won't be so unfriendly to newbies with some x-wing/FPS skills. I'd rather take my chances against a star destroyer for some good XP as a newb than killing 10000 lizards on tatooine just so I get get CDEF certiification level 2.
So far, every MMO I've seen (and I've seen most of them) is just a glorified chat room. It's IRC plus fancy 3d graphics and sound. Sometimes there is also a progress quest [progressquest.com] included as well. No MMO that I've seen actually has skill based gameplay, which is what makes something no longer a chat room, but a GAME
I think the big explosion in MMORPG growth will be when we see FPS type combat properly combined with a RPG. Planetside and Neocron have tried but haven't gotten it right. Probably a mix between Jedi Knigtht and KOTOR would have done nicely.
Take my latest MMORPG that's a non-beta, Star Wars Galaxies. His recommendation is to provide the Space Expansion to be perfect. That's not the case, because if so then the original game where you're still going to spend a minimum of 40% of your time is STILL going to be screwed over. Too many people can become Jedi
Huh? It takes hours and hours and HOURS of tedious grinding now to become a Jedi. The problem that is keeping the people away from the game and turned the casual players off from SWG in the first few months is that it was too hard/impossible to become a Jedi at first. I realize this will change in publish 8 (or 9) to a quest based system. That alone might bring some people back. When they made SWG they said it would be 'fun' for the casual player, I can say with confidence that you can't play SWG for like 4 hours a week and enjoy it.
the Galactic Civil War is still overpopulated with Rebels
This is because it was too easy to run rebel delivery missions on tattoonie (where the n00bz go) so everyone joined the rebel faction, then once you are like 200 faction points up, who wants to have to try to change factions? This is exactly what happened to me. I realized I there were too many rebels, wanted to switch over but didn't feel like griding out the faction points for the other side.
The whole Rebel/Imperial faction thing in SWG was borked from the start. If you need it to PvP, then you should be able to automatically turn it on if you want. Who the hell wants to spend 5 hours doing delievery missons just for the option to PvP?
PvP is completely screwed up
Agreed, but it's obvious the SWG development community never cared about PvPers and view them as a plague. It's a shame because the whole point of the storyline is the Civil war, and there is no war going on (at least not when I played).
Being someone who cancelled in the first few months, the idea of space expantion and having a force sensative character from the start might make me take interest again.
Every ticket would have a Texan, Californian, or New Yorker on the ticket. Politicians from the aforementioned states would be completely ignored. And before anyone nitpicks this one, historically candidates very rarely lose their home state.
If this were true, candidates would be doing that now. You don't think that Republican's would just throw together a NY/California President/VP ticket then?
. The Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Idaho, Rhode Island, Maine, D.C., Alaska and Delaware would never see a candidate campaign in their state. They would be completely irrelevant. Carrying Virginia would completely invalidate losses in all of those states.
Sorry I took these out of order. But a candidate wouldn't really "carry" all the people in Virginia no matter how often he were to visit.
I think that Electoral College should be reformed or throw out all together. As you mention, It seems like it was originally a consession to the smaller states. It is unfair that the smaller states get 3 electoral votes no matter what. This throws off how much weight an individuals vote actually has to an electoral vote.
I like everything about this plan, the only problem is if a recount or run-off is needed it will be hard to do. I suppose they could do a recount only in a disputed state if something like that should be needed. Another plan that could make sense is changing the electoral college so a state can split their votes according to how the states population voted. Maine and Nebraska already have a system like this in place. I also think that if the electoral college is kept, the amount of electoral votes should be determained by actual voter turnout, not total population. Any change to the electoral college should be made with the provision that presidential canidates must visit every state, to avoid the small states from losing out to the bigger ones when it comes to the canidates time.
Some oddities I found about the electoral college....
Voter turnout is different than the actual population of the states which determains the amount of votes in the electoral college, for example in the 2000 election.
2,438,685 people voted in Minnesota, which has 10 electoral votes and an population of 4,919,479
2,359,892 people voted in Missouri which has 11 electoral votes and an population 5,595,211.
So 2,438,685 people in effect counted for 10 votes, while 2,359,892 counted for 11! Clearly this doesn't work out the way it should.
the ratio of electoral voters to population is thrown off in other states also because of the "3 vote minimum" rule. For example
Kentucky has a population of 4, 041, 769 and has 8 electoral votes
Maine has a population of 1,274,923 and has 4 electoral votes
Although Kentucky has about three times Maine's population they only have double the electoral votes...
I think the electoral college either needs to be reformed, or replaced with a direct election
In no uncertain fashion he told Lucas, "I am not saying this shit", and just winged some of these lines.
Ford is actually good at winging lines and improv. In Indiana Jones he came up with the great ending to what would have been another boring swordfight scene..
One scene in particular has become a small legend for film geeks: The Swordfight Scene. In the scene, Indy is facing off against a clearly talented swordsman in an Indian market place. After the swordsman tosses of some incredible moves, challenging Indy to a fight, Jones pulls out his gun and shoots the man. What's "legendary" about this scene is not the witty way in which it ends, but for the fact that it was not the original ending. In the script, Dr. Jones does take on the swordsman, having an extended, bravura fight scene that ends with Indy as the winner. However, on the day the scene was shot, Ford had severe diahrhea- a result of eating some locale cuisine while on location- and he begged not to have to film the elaborate fight scene. He suggested to Spielberg that Indy simply take out his gun and "shoot the bastard", and the rest is film history (to use a ridiculous cliche).
I agree, but if you had the money and not a lot of time but enjoyed playing these types of games...it might be worth it to buy the char instead of spending all that time building him up.
I agree, I guess it all depends how much money you make. To me, I'd spend a days salary, maybe a few days on an account if it were super uber. I couldn't justify dropping a whole paycheck or more though. Especially since MMO character classes seem to get hit with the nerf bat often.
After reading this article I took a troll over to Ebay to check out what was up for auction. It appears someone is selling a SWG Jedi account for $2450 (current bid).
Now THAT is too much to pay for an account. While I could justify dropping like 100-200 dollars to buy something in a virtual world so I wouldn't have to grind, I couldn't see myself paying the price of a top of the line new computer for one.
It's not even a Jedi account, it's a Jedi Apprentice!
Think CounterStrike i just logon to a server buy a Desert Eagle and HS 2 or 3 of your teamates that have been winning for awhile and have full armor and mp5's. Unlikely? yes. has it happend? yes. Same situation in EverQuest I log on with my level 3 warrior you send your level 8 necro pet after me and start casting dot's... Their is no way i'm going to win this battle. And thats not very fun. The idea is cool but implementation is a MF'er
Point well taken I would submit to you that MMORPG's need some type of skill based combat, even if it's as basic as picking where to attack and guard to give newbies a chance against higher ranked players. Also a few low level characters could team up to take out a high level one.
While you are right, implementation is a Mother Fucker when it comes to MMORPG's and combat, I'd like to see someone take a new approach.
If a player was considered to be 'the bad guy' or 'the villian' then his goal would be, presumably, to 'destroy the world' or 'take over the world'. So what would happen if a clan/guild of 'bad guys' actually went out and succeed in that? The servers go down and never come up again, game over?
The struggle for control of a virtual world would be never ending. Even if one clan managed to rise to power and control the world in some way, you don't think there would be rival clans and people looking to knock them down? Infighting within the controling clan about who controls what? The game wouldn't end if one clan managed to take over the whole world, it would just be starting.
And in which case, being a bad guy would cease to be fun since you could never fully role play as 'the bad guy'.
Why not? When does slaughtering innocent people, trying to keep control of a world and ruling with an iron fist get boring?
Same with PVP systems. Whats to prevent PKers from camping newbie areas and smacking newbie down left and right? Sure it sounds fun to you with you level 50+ uber decked out wizard, but for the level 3 wooden sword equiped newbie its not
.
This is a problem with how PvP systems are implemented in current games. Get rid of the newbie areas and don't allow players to see each others level and this problem takes care of itself. Why you ask? Because sure the level 50 wizards can roam around aimlessly trying to kill level 3 newbies with wooden swords but what happens when they run into my level 60 warrior who is carrying a wooden sword to fool them? At least then there is some risk/reward involved for the wizards. When MMO's try to implement things like "newbie" areas they are causing more trouble than the original problem to appease the whiners.
After seeing 6 people get killed at least 3 times each, and getting killed 4 times myself, I quit, I uninstalled, I unsubscribed, and I never looked back since.
Sorry to hear you had so much trouble. Did you ever think of grabbing all of the newbies you could and making a run for it together? Or even jumping the guys if there were enough of you? I guess that is too much work though, right?
You want PVP in a game? Go figure out a way to implement it into a game without fucking newbies in the ass.
In any skill based game, when you are new you are going to die/lose. You have to deal with that fact and play to get better. There are no exceptions.
Otherwise quit complaining and go play Morrowind if you wanna be an uber-god character and smack around some helpless NPCs.
Is morrowind a MMORPG? did I miss something? How about if you want a game you can be good at right away you go play paper/rock/scissors, ok?
Why would they? PvP isn't desired by the majority of people. Even the ones who do desire it don't like to lose most of the time. In a total PvP game, half of the players per combat will lose. People don't play [and pay] to lose most of the time.
Again this is a falsehood brought on by the whiners that now populate MMO's. People don't pay to lose? Tell that to all of the people who have dropped money playing any 2 player arcade game. Tell that to half of the counterstrike, ut2k4, Q3 fans. The majority of gamers will play to lose if they know it will make them better in the long run. Just because the MMO's are filled with PvE whining children who bitch about anything doesn't mean the whole gaming community is full of them.
The wild success of games like The Sims which lack PvP seems to strongly indicate that while a vocal minority of hard-core gamers demand PvP
I wouldn't say that the sims online is a wild success. EA was shooting for a userbase of 200,000 the most I ever read them having was around 80,000 and they are down to 50,000 now. I would also say that MMO's aren't bringing in new users at all. That is because the players that want PvP (Probably the majority) are playing other games. Most games are based on player vs player interactions, not player versus environment or co-op.
You've got it backwards, in the gaming world the people that want PvP are the silent majority. Just look at the majority of online games. The vocal minorty has their way now (the socializers and PvE'ers) because they are just more likely to speak their mind because that is what they do.
Now plenty of people say "OH IF YOU WANT PVP JUST PLAY COUNTERSTRIKE OR DIABLO" but what makes you think people don't want PvP in a RPG setting? The MMO market is closing out a huge demographic of players.
Another MMO game that is crying for PvP (super hero's vs Villans) that doesn't include it. Can someone please do something different than the PvE (player vs enviornment) friendly co-op mode all of these games are coming out in? Some of us want MMORPGs where combat against humans is allowed and maybe even (akk) encouraged.
I didn't buy (and have never bought) a computer with linux in mind. I guess I should resort to that at some point. I'll definatly try the cheat code you gave me. (knoppix alsa). I know what you mean about the free tech support stuff. It's enough of a pain in the ass just cleaning out the spyware, malware on my own machine never mind my friends/family who are constantly leaching my help.
I just might sack up and delete my windows partition and switch to fully to linux.
Re:Just as soon as Linux works with my sound card.
on
2004: Year of the Penguin?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think this is flame bait or something. I mean this sounds impossible. I have never had a Linux Distro not pick up a sound card, except for Gentoo which is for system admins. I have used Mandrake, SuSE and Red hat.
Well, I've had three different ones NOT pick up a soundcard. That doesn't make my post "flamebait". Did you ever think that just because it worked for you running on your hardware that it might not work for someone else on different hardware? Is this your line of thought - "It must be flamebait because it says something non-flattering about a product I like"?
Mod's really need to learn that "flambait" and "troll" aren't the same as "Disagree with" or "don't want to hear about".
Why would I make something like that up? Do you think I find joy in the fact that my soundcards are bastard children that linux ignores? Do you think I get off on linux not being compatable with my hardware so Bill Gates can fuck me up the ass while Steve Ballmer sodomizes my mother for another year or two? (I don't).
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a good one, if I pay for HBO on Digital Cable but I miss the Sopranos, then download it from bit torrent am I breaking the law? It's the same as using TiVo, or even a VCR. Of course comcast being the cable provider probably wouldn't like that. But how different is it from having a friend tape it for me?
Comcast outsources their news service to Giganews now, they don't have a NNTP server anymore AFAIK. Giganews puts a nice cap on what you can D/L a month also.
I'm not saying DDR is at fault-- far from it.
:)
:)
But in a way it is, DDR is the type of game that is intimidating to new players. Sure, Teenagers don't mind getting on that thing and jumping around but don't you think that DDR by it's nature alienates the 20 - 30 something players? Or players with poor dexterity? While you might get embarassed playing street fighter for the first time, you can REALLY get embarassed playing DDR in front of a crowd for the first time. Not to mention the fact that a DDR machine probably costs at least double what a standard arcade machine costs.
I could make an argument that the stagnation of fighting games, along with the rise of DDR is what killed the popularity of the arcade scene. Sure there are a lot of kids watching each other play DDR. But are there as many people in the arcade as in 94 - 97 when Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were peaking?
If you don't like the way a joystick feels, you can tell whoever's working there and they will have the technical skill to replace it, have replacement parts handy and be more than happy to replace it for you. I can't count how many time I've been bored and gone into the arcade at a mall and put a couple quarters into Marvel vs. Capcom only to find out that I can't move backwards or use middle punch.
Fixing a button is easy, replacing a joystick is a bit of a pain in the ass. Plus you want to have the correct joystick for the game at hand, most players can tell a Namco stick from a Midway one. (Or at least it was that way when I was playing..). If you are at a small arcade they will usually replace a joystick if you ask nicely, the mall arcades often employ people who wouldn't even know how to change a joystick. They just give you your coins back, put the game out of order and tell whoever the tech is to fix it when he comes in that week.
Then again, maybe all the mall arcades actually just set the machines on the secret "uber" mode hoping to attract die hard fans looking for a challenge?
Usually what happens is the game comes in new, they put it on a middle setting, then ramp it up after it's been out for awhile and it's making money. Sometimes, they will forget to turn it down when the game becomes less popular or the game is moved to another location.
Other times the arcade worker (ie coin chaser) might just turn up the skill level to piss off a regular who comes in to play the game all the time.
Hmm, linked on the front page of slashdot and their cheezy counter says 15. Now I know no one really READS the articles posted on slashdot, but somehow I think that counter should be on more than 15.
People that make statements about GOTOs have never coded assembly in their life.
and if you have never really coded in assembler in some form YOU ARENT A REAL PROGRAMMER. THIS MEANS YOU SKRIPT KIDDI! drop the javascript book and back away from the keyboard!
GOTO's make spaghetti code. It is very hard to trace through, especially if the code is uncommented.
Ever tried to sift through someone's OOP program that is poorly documented and methods are badly named? It's just as bad. Ever seen a method that calls six others methods in different objects in it's body which are all overloaded 5 or 6 times? Bad/Sloppy programming spans all languages and isn't confined to a goto statement.
How about poorly named method signatures? For example
String getNumber(String x, int i, boolean q, vector a)
I've seen crap like this before from programmers.
Try maintaining code full of goto's. Good luck.
No it's not the best thing in the world to do, but if it's well documented it's not as bad as you make it out to be. I started out in basic when I was 7, and I work now as a Java programmer. I would gladly take well commented code with GOTO's over poorly done OOP code.
I still remember buying everquest the day it came out, and taking the box with the pornographic elphette home, doing the install, then trying to log on for the next two days unsuccessfully.
:)
Oh yes, I can't wait to see what a clusterfuck Neverquest2's launch will be, but I'll watch from the sidelines this time.
Currently 1 GB of ram [sony.com] is being prescribed for most latancy issues. If SWG [amazon.com] is using a lesser engine and they are having problems than I could not imagine that Everquest 2 will run on anything less than that.
I have a gig of ram, a Geforce 4 video card, and a broadband connection and I still lag in SWG when I'm just running around out in the middle of nowhere with no one around me.
Having played at probably over 100 fighting game tournaments at 8 on the break and other arcades on the east coast during the peak of fighting game popularity (ie 1994 - 1997) I can tell you that all fighting game tournaments come down to a combination of skill, and exploiting an overpowering move or character. Players that refused to embrace a top-tier character never won tournaments and usually were the ones who bitched about cheese. Players that won tournaments could usually play with any character, but embraced the cheesy/exploitable strategies that went with the game. For example:
Mortal Kombat 2 - Most players used Jax (Ground pound was over powered) or Millena (Jump away and air throw sai all day).
Street Fighter Alpha 2 - Most players used Chun Li (insane damage on custom combos) or Ken (alpha counter with glitched range which made it too long)
X-Men vs Street Fighter - People would constantly fly off screen with storm and use her "float" move to stay off screen to charge their super meter then come down, use a super, and fly back off screen.
Killer Instinct - there were a number of infinate combos in KI, which I saw used in tournaments plenty of times.
All in all I see the same crap playing games online today. Go play any FPS and 80% of the players are running around with whichever weapon is overpowered, not to mention the ones that run maphacks, aimbots, etc. Log onto a MMORPG and who usually has the most money? The people who are duping, macroing, or just exploiting stuff in game. A good example is in Star Wars Galaxies, a Jedi who uses their powers in front of any other player is subjected to instant PvP. This means Macroing any of these powers to gain experence while you are AFK is suicide. So, what the Jedi's do is they go inside a large house with a balcony, climb to the top where no one can get them and AFK macro there. While using their powers inside the house would push them outside with a temporary enemy flag to everyone, for some reason on the balcony they are immune. So that is where they camp and level.
The point is, any game with 2 players that isn't co-op is going to have exploits/cheese and the players who exploit the cheese along with having skills in the first place are always on top of the heap.
or those of you that are not in the game but are considering it, your average mission payout for a solo mission is about 1200 or so credits. If a starship costs you half a million, it's going to take a LOT of mission running to get there, either that or grouping on the "adventure planets".
Hmm, maybe they will give you some kind of bo-bo/newbie ship to start with? Since they are saying space combat will be twich based, maybe it won't be so unfriendly to newbies with some x-wing/FPS skills. I'd rather take my chances against a star destroyer for some good XP as a newb than killing 10000 lizards on tatooine just so I get get CDEF certiification level 2.
yeah and they will all be on EBAY for like 1000 dollars a piece
So far, every MMO I've seen (and I've seen most of them) is just a glorified chat room. It's IRC plus fancy 3d graphics and sound. Sometimes there is also a progress quest [progressquest.com] included as well. No MMO that I've seen actually has skill based gameplay, which is what makes something no longer a chat room, but a GAME
I think the big explosion in MMORPG growth will be when we see FPS type combat properly combined with a RPG. Planetside and Neocron have tried but haven't gotten it right. Probably a mix between Jedi Knigtht and KOTOR would have done nicely.
Take my latest MMORPG that's a non-beta, Star Wars Galaxies. His recommendation is to provide the Space Expansion to be perfect. That's not the case, because if so then the original game where you're still going to spend a minimum of 40% of your time is STILL going to be screwed over. Too many people can become Jedi
Huh? It takes hours and hours and HOURS of tedious grinding now to become a Jedi. The problem that is keeping the people away from the game and turned the casual players off from SWG in the first few months is that it was too hard/impossible to become a Jedi at first. I realize this will change in publish 8 (or 9) to a quest based system. That alone might bring some people back. When they made SWG they said it would be 'fun' for the casual player, I can say with confidence that you can't play SWG for like 4 hours a week and enjoy it.
the Galactic Civil War is still overpopulated with Rebels
This is because it was too easy to run rebel delivery missions on tattoonie (where the n00bz go) so everyone joined the rebel faction, then once you are like 200 faction points up, who wants to have to try to change factions? This is exactly what happened to me. I realized I there were too many rebels, wanted to switch over but didn't feel like griding out the faction points for the other side.
The whole Rebel/Imperial faction thing in SWG was borked from the start. If you need it to PvP, then you should be able to automatically turn it on if you want. Who the hell wants to spend 5 hours doing delievery missons just for the option to PvP?
PvP is completely screwed up
Agreed, but it's obvious the SWG development community never cared about PvPers and view them as a plague. It's a shame because the whole point of the storyline is the Civil war, and there is no war going on (at least not when I played).
Being someone who cancelled in the first few months, the idea of space expantion and having a force sensative character from the start might make me take interest again.
Every ticket would have a Texan, Californian, or New Yorker on the ticket. Politicians from the aforementioned states would be completely ignored. And before anyone nitpicks this one, historically candidates very rarely lose their home state.
If this were true, candidates would be doing that now. You don't think that Republican's would just throw together a NY/California President/VP ticket then?
. The Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Idaho, Rhode Island, Maine, D.C., Alaska and Delaware would never see a candidate campaign in their state. They would be completely irrelevant. Carrying Virginia would completely invalidate losses in all of those states.
Sorry I took these out of order. But a candidate wouldn't really "carry" all the people in Virginia no matter how often he were to visit.
I think that Electoral College should be reformed or throw out all together. As you mention, It seems like it was originally a consession to the smaller states. It is unfair that the smaller states get 3 electoral votes no matter what. This throws off how much weight an individuals vote actually has to an electoral vote.
A constitutional amendment was proposed in 1979 which would have allowed for direct elections...
I like everything about this plan, the only problem is if a recount or run-off is needed it will be hard to do. I suppose they could do a recount only in a disputed state if something like that should be needed. Another plan that could make sense is changing the electoral college so a state can split their votes according to how the states population voted. Maine and Nebraska already have a system like this in place. I also think that if the electoral college is kept, the amount of electoral votes should be determained by actual voter turnout, not total population. Any change to the electoral college should be made with the provision that presidential canidates must visit every state, to avoid the small states from losing out to the bigger ones when it comes to the canidates time.
Some oddities I found about the electoral college....
Voter turnout is different than the actual population of the states which determains the amount of votes in the electoral college, for example in the 2000 election.
2,438,685 people voted in Minnesota, which has 10 electoral votes and an population of 4,919,479
2,359,892 people voted in Missouri which has 11 electoral votes and an population 5,595,211.
So 2,438,685 people in effect counted for 10 votes, while 2,359,892 counted for 11! Clearly this doesn't work out the way it should.
the ratio of electoral voters to population is thrown off in other states also because of the "3 vote minimum" rule. For example Kentucky has a population of 4, 041, 769 and has 8 electoral votes
Maine has a population of 1,274,923 and has 4 electoral votes
Although Kentucky has about three times Maine's population they only have double the electoral votes... I think the electoral college either needs to be reformed, or replaced with a direct election
In no uncertain fashion he told Lucas, "I am not saying this shit", and just winged some of these lines.
Ford is actually good at winging lines and improv. In Indiana Jones he came up with the great ending to what would have been another boring swordfight scene..
One scene in particular has become a small legend for film geeks: The Swordfight Scene. In the scene, Indy is facing off against a clearly talented swordsman in an Indian market place. After the swordsman tosses of some incredible moves, challenging Indy to a fight, Jones pulls out his gun and shoots the man. What's "legendary" about this scene is not the witty way in which it ends, but for the fact that it was not the original ending. In the script, Dr. Jones does take on the swordsman, having an extended, bravura fight scene that ends with Indy as the winner. However, on the day the scene was shot, Ford had severe diahrhea- a result of eating some locale cuisine while on location- and he begged not to have to film the elaborate fight scene. He suggested to Spielberg that Indy simply take out his gun and "shoot the bastard", and the rest is film history (to use a ridiculous cliche).
I agree, but if you had the money and not a lot of time but enjoyed playing these types of games...it might be worth it to buy the char instead of spending all that time building him up.
I agree, I guess it all depends how much money you make. To me, I'd spend a days salary, maybe a few days on an account if it were super uber. I couldn't justify dropping a whole paycheck or more though. Especially since MMO character classes seem to get hit with the nerf bat often.
After reading this article I took a troll over to Ebay to check out what was up for auction. It appears someone is selling a SWG Jedi account for $2450 (current bid).
Now THAT is too much to pay for an account. While I could justify dropping like 100-200 dollars to buy something in a virtual world so I wouldn't have to grind, I couldn't see myself paying the price of a top of the line new computer for one.
It's not even a Jedi account, it's a Jedi Apprentice!
People don't pay a subscription charge in a PERSISTANT game to lose. If you want to play quake, play quake.
What is the subscription fee? Most of them are like $10 a month. Give me a break, people drop that in an arcade easily.
Think CounterStrike i just logon to a server buy a Desert Eagle and HS 2 or 3 of your teamates that have been winning for awhile and have full armor and mp5's. Unlikely? yes. has it happend? yes. Same situation in EverQuest I log on with my level 3 warrior you send your level 8 necro pet after me and start casting dot's... Their is no way i'm going to win this battle. And thats not very fun. The idea is cool but implementation is a MF'er
Point well taken I would submit to you that MMORPG's need some type of skill based combat, even if it's as basic as picking where to attack and guard to give newbies a chance against higher ranked players. Also a few low level characters could team up to take out a high level one.
While you are right, implementation is a Mother Fucker when it comes to MMORPG's and combat, I'd like to see someone take a new approach.
If a player was considered to be 'the bad guy' or 'the villian' then his goal would be, presumably, to 'destroy the world' or 'take over the world'. So what would happen if a clan/guild of 'bad guys' actually went out and succeed in that? The servers go down and never come up again, game over?
The struggle for control of a virtual world would be never ending. Even if one clan managed to rise to power and control the world in some way, you don't think there would be rival clans and people looking to knock them down? Infighting within the controling clan about who controls what? The game wouldn't end if one clan managed to take over the whole world, it would just be starting.
And in which case, being a bad guy would cease to be fun since you could never fully role play as 'the bad guy'.
Why not? When does slaughtering innocent people, trying to keep control of a world and ruling with an iron fist get boring?
Same with PVP systems. Whats to prevent PKers from camping newbie areas and smacking newbie down left and right? Sure it sounds fun to you with you level 50+ uber decked out wizard, but for the level 3 wooden sword equiped newbie its not
. This is a problem with how PvP systems are implemented in current games. Get rid of the newbie areas and don't allow players to see each others level and this problem takes care of itself. Why you ask? Because sure the level 50 wizards can roam around aimlessly trying to kill level 3 newbies with wooden swords but what happens when they run into my level 60 warrior who is carrying a wooden sword to fool them? At least then there is some risk/reward involved for the wizards. When MMO's try to implement things like "newbie" areas they are causing more trouble than the original problem to appease the whiners.
After seeing 6 people get killed at least 3 times each, and getting killed 4 times myself, I quit, I uninstalled, I unsubscribed, and I never looked back since.
Sorry to hear you had so much trouble. Did you ever think of grabbing all of the newbies you could and making a run for it together? Or even jumping the guys if there were enough of you? I guess that is too much work though, right?
You want PVP in a game? Go figure out a way to implement it into a game without fucking newbies in the ass.
In any skill based game, when you are new you are going to die/lose. You have to deal with that fact and play to get better. There are no exceptions.
Otherwise quit complaining and go play Morrowind if you wanna be an uber-god character and smack around some helpless NPCs.
Is morrowind a MMORPG? did I miss something? How about if you want a game you can be good at right away you go play paper/rock/scissors, ok?
Why would they? PvP isn't desired by the majority of people. Even the ones who do desire it don't like to lose most of the time. In a total PvP game, half of the players per combat will lose. People don't play [and pay] to lose most of the time.
Again this is a falsehood brought on by the whiners that now populate MMO's. People don't pay to lose? Tell that to all of the people who have dropped money playing any 2 player arcade game. Tell that to half of the counterstrike, ut2k4, Q3 fans. The majority of gamers will play to lose if they know it will make them better in the long run. Just because the MMO's are filled with PvE whining children who bitch about anything doesn't mean the whole gaming community is full of them.
The wild success of games like The Sims which lack PvP seems to strongly indicate that while a vocal minority of hard-core gamers demand PvP
I wouldn't say that the sims online is a wild success. EA was shooting for a userbase of 200,000 the most I ever read them having was around 80,000 and they are down to 50,000 now. I would also say that MMO's aren't bringing in new users at all. That is because the players that want PvP (Probably the majority) are playing other games. Most games are based on player vs player interactions, not player versus environment or co-op.
You've got it backwards, in the gaming world the people that want PvP are the silent majority. Just look at the majority of online games. The vocal minorty has their way now (the socializers and PvE'ers) because they are just more likely to speak their mind because that is what they do.
Now plenty of people say "OH IF YOU WANT PVP JUST PLAY COUNTERSTRIKE OR DIABLO" but what makes you think people don't want PvP in a RPG setting? The MMO market is closing out a huge demographic of players.
Another MMO game that is crying for PvP (super hero's vs Villans) that doesn't include it. Can someone please do something different than the PvE (player vs enviornment) friendly co-op mode all of these games are coming out in? Some of us want MMORPGs where combat against humans is allowed and maybe even (akk) encouraged.
I didn't buy (and have never bought) a computer with linux in mind. I guess I should resort to that at some point. I'll definatly try the cheat code you gave me. (knoppix alsa). I know what you mean about the free tech support stuff. It's enough of a pain in the ass just cleaning out the spyware, malware on my own machine never mind my friends/family who are constantly leaching my help.
I just might sack up and delete my windows partition and switch to fully to linux.
I think this is flame bait or something. I mean this sounds impossible. I have never had a Linux Distro not pick up a sound card, except for Gentoo which is for system admins. I have used Mandrake, SuSE and Red hat.
Well, I've had three different ones NOT pick up a soundcard. That doesn't make my post "flamebait". Did you ever think that just because it worked for you running on your hardware that it might not work for someone else on different hardware? Is this your line of thought - "It must be flamebait because it says something non-flattering about a product I like"?
Mod's really need to learn that "flambait" and "troll" aren't the same as "Disagree with" or "don't want to hear about".
Why would I make something like that up? Do you think I find joy in the fact that my soundcards are bastard children that linux ignores? Do you think I get off on linux not being compatable with my hardware so Bill Gates can fuck me up the ass while Steve Ballmer sodomizes my mother for another year or two? (I don't).