seems like a natural, uh, application, for the freenet project;)
Well, I have to admit, I only downloaded freenet a few days ago so maybe my node is still learning its way around or whatever but it takes about 20 minutes to download a webpage on a cable modem on freenet. Downloading a 206 MB Zip file would probably take 2 months which doesn't make it such a great application for Freenet. I do love the concept of freenet though (for the freedom of spech aspect/helping out people in countries that censor the internet), and will continue to run it in hopes that it's doing some good somewhere.
Not to mention, it's fun to surf pages on freenet and pretend I'm still on a 2400 baud modem. It really brings the 1994 WWW back to me.
The main argument you see on the subject of PVP/PK is a small minority of players for PVP, and a larger majority for PVE (player vs enviroment also known as "carebear"). Now that always wins the debate in the developers eyes, so they tend to swing the game in favor of the majority of their playerbase. The point you bring to the table, is that in the more mainstream gamer world, the FPS tends to dominate the RPG. I don't have hard numbers off hand, and correct me if i'm wrong, but I seem to recall counter-strike having a playerbase of something around 1-2 million
CS has a huge player base, I'm not sure what it is, but the game is at least 6-7 years old and it is the most played FPS.
whereas the top (US) mmo's cap out at around 100,000-400,000 subscribers. This brings a whole new angle on the dead horse debate of whether the majority of gamers are for pvp or against it, really I think there is a large untapped resource waiting.
I think most casual players would actually be for it. Look at how many online games involve some sort of killing.
Although I still think it will be a few years til they get the formula right, as we saw with planetside just merging RPG and FPS doesn't work.
I think planetside was a first attempt, but not a very good one from what I've heard. There is actually a Counter Strike mod out there where you gain experence per kill and can gain all sorts of special powers by your experence. The server remembers who you are, so you can come back and still have everything you have earned.
Games like Savage come to mind also, but I don't think that will ever reach the level of games like Unreal, Quake, Counter-Strike or Battlefield 1942.
I think it could, but the games that have tried have been kludgy. There was a cyberpunk game that tried to be a fps/mmo but it didn't workout too well either. First tries aren't always successful like UO was though. The problem is, except for sony most of the gaming companies who would try this sort of thing would be start ups. Established companies don't want to risk anything on a "new" game. Especially a MMO which takes up so much in resources to make.
I think the largest factor that holds MMO's back is the monthly cost. A lot of gamers see that 11-14$ a month and are scared off immediatly.
I think it's cost per month, plus the cost of software. The best thing MMO's could do is realize they are selling the service and give away the software for free over the net with a free 2 week trial period. Most MMO's do this after being on the market for a year or two. But by then not as many people care.
Over the next few years as bandwith increases in availability possibly those prices can be brought down. That doesnt solve the problem of paying the staff for support and continued developement though.
As a player, I wouldn't mind the $10-$15 a month, but $10-$15 a month on top of 50 up front kinda sucks.
I would really like to see an open-source type MMO to come out, Neverwinter Nights kinda took that approach with being able to "link" worlds together , but that never really launched into "mmo" proportions to my knowledge. If we could get a game like planetside, but without the monthly costs I could really see it being the next "big" thing.
It's funny that MMO's haven't caught on with the open source community. I see so many people saying "I want to write my own MMO!" but it's nearly impossible for one person to code something like that. It seems like the perfect project to do open source if you could get 25-50 programmers to put in the time to code small pieces of it.
But not because MMO's have hit their peak. It's that all of the MMO's are the same. As another poster pointed out, they all have the same classes. But on top of that, they pretty much all have the same rules. No, or very limited PKing. Horrid point and click combat systems which don't appeal to the mainstream gamer. I think MMO's will really take off when they are blended correctly with fps games. Picture a MMO where combat is like Quake or Unreal but you can gain experence and new items/powers/gold from killing people/NPC's ala a RPG. Sure your level 60 character might be able to kill that level 1 guy, unless level 1 guy happens to be thresh.
Most of the MMO's now cater to the care bears, have too many rules, are overly complex, have poor combat systems,and are a time sink. Once this stuff goes, MMO's will really go mainstream.
MMO makers need to get off their high horse of "Creating Virtual Worlds" and focus on the fact that they are creating games. The thing to remember when making games is "Easy to play/learn, difficult to master". The current MMO's are "Difficult to learn, easy to master" (as long as you are willing to spend the time)
There is no alternative. You either sign up with RIAA, or you get no record, no air time, and no tour dates.
That's why the RIAA was formed, to monopolize the production of (bad) music.
Agreed, to take it a step further, if you download music from an artist you normally wouldn't listen to or buy (ie britney spears), decide you like it, and go to their concert aren't you actually helping out the artist since they get more money from the concerts than from CD's that you would have never bought anyway.
This is a lot like the warez pupz that download Visual Studio and don't do anything with it and don't even know how to code. Sure, microsoft claims that as a "lost sale" due to piracy, but the person would have never bought the thing anyway, there was no sale to lose.
The Record Industry isn't losing money at all. This is simply a monopoly leveraging it's power.
Just wait. Our tax system can not survive a large influx of people who pay next to no taxes and most of the new jobs in the US don't pay enought to require those working at them to pay federal income tax. Something will have to change
Yes, but do you or your children want to be around before that change happens? It could get nasty. Instead of waiting do something about it...
We are going to take our country back in a few years. This isn't a flamebait, or a troll just a statement of fact. Check the signature if you don't believe me.
The arcades fell when the fighting game Genre died. Part of what killed it was most of the fighting game fans moved on to online Computer games at home (at least it seems that way around here...) . In order to bring gamers back, the arcade needs to offer a better experence than gamers can get at home.
Personally, if it happens I think it will be Arcade games that are networked with other games across the country (and world) allowing for competitive play with worldwide rankings. This is better than playing at home because you don't have to deal with the cheaters, and you will most likely have a better connection.
No matter what it is that arcades manage to offer in the future, it will have to be worth getting people off their ass to go to the arcades. In the past it was competition and better graphics than the home systems.
Midway releasing a new Mortal Kombat game, and announcing there would be a networked tournament in a years time with a $100,000 grand prize to the winner would probably do the trick. Of course, Midways coin-op division is dead.
Sorry man, xenophobia only creates problems, it never solved any. Where does you sense of entitlement come from?
Xenophobia is not immigration reform. For some reason the attitude of the press and many US citizens is that any anti-immigration stance is considered racist and xenophobic. This simply isn't true. I believe the INS is a clusterfuck, and hasn't been doing their job for years. I think Illegal immigration is a security threat for obvious reasons, and on top of that it's unfair to the people who wait to immigrate legally.
I would like to see immigration halted for a few years until we have an INS and immigration system that isn't easly abused. I am for immigration, I just think the current state of the system is a mess. I would like to see illegal immigration cracked down on, and eventually, MORE legal immigration allowed. I have no problem with people coming to this country and working here. I do have a problem with people sneaking into the country and working for $2 a day. I have a BIGGER problem with the people who hire them and basically use them as slave labor.
The argument that Americans wont do these jobs (housecleaning, hard labor) is total horeshit.
On the common topic that comes up on slashdot, the H1-B visa, I'm not crazy about that either. It's clearly being used to hire cheap labor from India. It's not a matter of India having better programmers, it's a matter of the CEO's trying to save a few nickels to put in their own pockets.
I say, forget the visa's, bring them over here make them US citizens and let them compete in our market and have to pay for housing and food over here. Either that, or force the Indian government into allowing one American to immigrate to India and work for every one Indian
that has some kind of work visa here. You see, the funny part is that the Indian governement DOESNT give work visas. So if an American programmer wanted to move to india and work from there to take advantage of the low income housing and food, he/she couldn't!
I pesonally have a job in IT, which I have no threat of losing to outsourcing. However I feel for those coming out of college, and those who aren't taking computer science in college because they fear they won't be able to get a tech job.
You can claim Xenphobia, or call me a racist but nothing is further from the truth. It's like todays McCarthyism in the US press. God forbid you say anything that the left, or some minorty group might not like. You get branded a racist.
I always find this line of thinking curious...How does being for immigration reform = xenophobia?
Having never gotten into wireless yet (Yeah, I've had a cell phone, but never read up on how it works)...how easy is it to build a jammer? They sell for about 220 dollars, it seems like they should be a lot cheaper.
Another thought, could you do this to wireless routers? If you can, then if you have a large enough signal/range, could you go DoS-Driving?
"Microsoft is after all the largest tech company in the world"
I think IBM may have issues with this.
This is a bit off topic, but perhaps I could have phrased it better. Microsoft Windows is the most run software (if you count OS's as software) in the world might have been more accurate.
I could make an argument for Microsoft being bigger than IBM, based on the fact that their Market Value is larger than IBM and despite the fact that IBM makes more in Sales, Microsoft makes more in profits. which is what counts.
To jump back on topic, the fact remains that most home users run Microsoft windows, so they might be interested in this news. It is far more interesting to the general public, than the current CNN front page technology offerings...
Can technology build a better Buffett?
FCC starts rewriting Internet rules
Heck CNN has an article on how one of the dixie chicks is pregnant in their "top stories" section. This is a top story? Bigger than the OS that has 85-90% market share getting it's source code stolen? The OS that most "common" people run? I would say the microsoft story is much more interesting than a dixie chick getting knocked up. That could be my tech bias talking though.
ask yourself why it isn't on the front page of cnn? Or at least on the front page under techology. Isn't the microsoft source code leak a bigger story than some silly write up on stock market AI and the FCC screwing with the internet?
Microsoft is after all the largest tech company in the world, and windows is it's flagship product. I wonder why this isn't being covered more by the mainstream press. Maybe it's my geekiness talking, but this is a big story at least the biggest tech story of the day.
agree - UT had some serious issues, and of course was popular with players who liked to abuse those issues. Many of the CTF maps were unplayable due to the sniper action, and obsurd due to the teleporting action. I think the UT2k3 fixed that. IMHO, the weapon and gametype changes in UT2k3 were excellent.
These were only issues for people who didn't want to go through learning how to get around them. Unfortunatly the squeeky wheel gets the oil first so the translocator and the sniper rifle were nerfed in UT2k3. As was the rocket launcher, and the ASMD. Heck, ut2k3 was like UT: Nerf edition on speed. Which is why many UT players never switched over to UT2K3.
IMHO, the problem with 2k3 was that they decided to get the Quake players - they made it faster, louder, more "hardcore" - and lost all those nice gamer girls who liked the easy, fuzzy FPS. I used to be able to use UT to convert women into gamers.
The Original UT was pretty fast for a FPS game. I wouldn't say it wasn't hardcore. If you were looking for a slow paced FPS, Jedi Knight 2 would have fit that bill back then.
Plus, I just find the whole "adrenaline" thing just silly. It adds an unnecessary and uncomfortable complication to the game.
Agreed, it's like relics, but not nearly as much fun. The silly special moves to 'activate' them were annoying as well.
Still, I wasn't disappointed with 2k3. I thought UT had a better style to it (sleek and fun) but it was still a worthy successory. Its not like the real tragic sequels (AvsP 2, Tribes 2, Total Annihilation Kingdoms, Star Control 3) that completely destroyed a good game.
While I was disappointed with UT2K3, (Probably because I enjoyed the original too much) I agree it wasn't tragic, or a total bomb. Plenty of people enjoy it, It just doesn't seem to be as sucessful or popular as UT was in its first few years. I did think bombing run was fun.
Being a long time player, I will give this demo a shot and if I like it buy UT2k4.
"The white hat/black hat dichotomy of heroes and villains (PC and NPC) in most games is no longer sufficiently believable to the player, but is still theoretically acceptable given the earlier limitations of the medium", and goes on to argue: "Audiences respond poorly to blatant noseleading, and increasingly demand escalating shades of gray."
Of course it depends on the story you are trying to tell, but if you watch most movies you will see "pure good and evil" in the characters. Why? That makes them more compelling. Take for instance, Darth Vader. Ultimate badguy, down to the outfit. If he were a "shade of gray" through the movies then his turn at the end of Return of the Jedi wouldn't have been as piviotal as it was. (It turns out now, with the prequals they are showing his "grayness").
Ultimate "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys" are more compelling because you don't see them in the real world. Even Ultimate good guys have their flaws, and ultimate "Bad Guys" usually don't believe they are bad in real life.
In the end, as a gamer I don't care what NPC's are like, they should be whatever the storyline dictates they should be. The "Ultimate bad guy" is a bit cliched, but it's still fun. I'm more worried about what I can do. If I start acting evil, I'd like to see NPC's react differently because of that behavior.
AOL got opinionplace.com to do the survey for them. Now if you look behind the BS that opinionplace and AOL throw at you about how "scientific" their data is, go to the opinion palace webpage and check out their FAQ. They give people AADVANTAGE miles for every survey they fill out. What are AAdvantage miles? They are American Airlines miles used twards getting a discount on flights.
This skews the data in all sorts of wierd ways, starting with the people taking it are the types who would sign up for such programs on the internet. Not to mention, how many 15 year old males care about Frequent flyer miles? Hell, how many savvy internet users would give their personal information up for some survey scam?
The conclusion drawn from this survey should be "Women over 40 are more likely to have gator installed on their machine and participate in stupid online surveys for some minimal payoff".....ok maybe that was a bit harsh....
If there is one truth about statistics in general, it's that if you play around with the numbers enough you can make surveys say whatever you want.
women over 40 are the biggest online gamers, according to a study conducted by AOL.
Most serious gamers wouldn't be on AOL, and most likely would be on a local ISP or some type of broadband.
What's even more interesting than being outnumbered by middle aged and older women is..
Not really, since the study is skewed by only surveying AOL'ers who tend not to be or use AOL for online gaming. AOL online gamers may mostly be middle aged women, but that doesn't mean all online gamers are mostly middle aged women.
It would be like doing a study in a urban area, like say Detroit and from those statistics trying to prove all of America is a ghetto. It just doesn't fit.
midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.' I thought that was prime time for FPS kids."
of course, because male or female, old or young, if they wanted to play a FPS, MMO, etc they would migrate off of AOL to a local dialup where they would get better bandwidth, or more likely to a broadband connection
Attempt to do this study to comcast, speakeasy, roadrunner, etc and you will end up with the typical 18-30 year old males being the most common type of gamer. It would be interesting to see the genre breakdown though.
...impossible to read rant snipped...
So my advice to you is to sit down and learn the games well. Or don't play online. Don't whine don't complain ask intelligent questions and you will find players like myself who will help you learn to play games better.
what does this have to do with what I said? Did you mean to reply to the parent? You have the typical attitude of an average FPS player by the way. Its funny to watch how pissy the legit middle tier players get over bots.
Both postal 2 and Jedi Acadamy both seem to have plenty of "new" players and not too many that are very skillful. Postal 2 "Share the Pain" has a free multiplayer Demo that is worth checking out, if you don't mind the blood and guts.
Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, etc are usually hackfests, or you run into people who have been playing since the game came out. You are much better with a lesser known FPS for your first online FPS game.
Most online FPS use punkbuster or something similar now, and cheats are almost non-existant.
You are joking right? This should have been modded as funny. Counter Strike has aimbots and hacks that get around punkbuster, and Unreal Tournament has hacks that get around Pure and Client Side Hack protection. (The two types of UT "punkbusters").
Where in NJ? I'm in North NJ (probably why I'm getting 4 telemundos) and we get no tech TV. I actually know a girl who works customer service for comcast and told me everyone calls and bitches about it in my area.
Slashdot Mirror
This is easly the most insightful post ever on slashdot.
seems like a natural, uh, application, for the freenet project ;)
Well, I have to admit, I only downloaded freenet a few days ago so maybe my node is still learning its way around or whatever but it takes about 20 minutes to download a webpage on a cable modem on freenet. Downloading a 206 MB Zip file would probably take 2 months which doesn't make it such a great application for Freenet. I do love the concept of freenet though (for the freedom of spech aspect/helping out people in countries that censor the internet), and will continue to run it in hopes that it's doing some good somewhere.
Not to mention, it's fun to surf pages on freenet and pretend I'm still on a 2400 baud modem. It really brings the 1994 WWW back to me.
The main argument you see on the subject of PVP/PK is a small minority of players for PVP, and a larger majority for PVE (player vs enviroment also known as "carebear"). Now that always wins the debate in the developers eyes, so they tend to swing the game in favor of the majority of their playerbase. The point you bring to the table, is that in the more mainstream gamer world, the FPS tends to dominate the RPG. I don't have hard numbers off hand, and correct me if i'm wrong, but I seem to recall counter-strike having a playerbase of something around 1-2 million
CS has a huge player base, I'm not sure what it is, but the game is at least 6-7 years old and it is the most played FPS.
whereas the top (US) mmo's cap out at around 100,000-400,000 subscribers. This brings a whole new angle on the dead horse debate of whether the majority of gamers are for pvp or against it, really I think there is a large untapped resource waiting.
I think most casual players would actually be for it. Look at how many online games involve some sort of killing.
Although I still think it will be a few years til they get the formula right, as we saw with planetside just merging RPG and FPS doesn't work.
I think planetside was a first attempt, but not a very good one from what I've heard. There is actually a Counter Strike mod out there where you gain experence per kill and can gain all sorts of special powers by your experence. The server remembers who you are, so you can come back and still have everything you have earned.
Games like Savage come to mind also, but I don't think that will ever reach the level of games like Unreal, Quake, Counter-Strike or Battlefield 1942.
I think it could, but the games that have tried have been kludgy. There was a cyberpunk game that tried to be a fps/mmo but it didn't workout too well either. First tries aren't always successful like UO was though. The problem is, except for sony most of the gaming companies who would try this sort of thing would be start ups. Established companies don't want to risk anything on a "new" game. Especially a MMO which takes up so much in resources to make.
I think the largest factor that holds MMO's back is the monthly cost. A lot of gamers see that 11-14$ a month and are scared off immediatly.
I think it's cost per month, plus the cost of software. The best thing MMO's could do is realize they are selling the service and give away the software for free over the net with a free 2 week trial period. Most MMO's do this after being on the market for a year or two. But by then not as many people care.
Over the next few years as bandwith increases in availability possibly those prices can be brought down. That doesnt solve the problem of paying the staff for support and continued developement though.
As a player, I wouldn't mind the $10-$15 a month, but $10-$15 a month on top of 50 up front kinda sucks.
I would really like to see an open-source type MMO to come out, Neverwinter Nights kinda took that approach with being able to "link" worlds together , but that never really launched into "mmo" proportions to my knowledge. If we could get a game like planetside, but without the monthly costs I could really see it being the next "big" thing.
It's funny that MMO's haven't caught on with the open source community. I see so many people saying "I want to write my own MMO!" but it's nearly impossible for one person to code something like that. It seems like the perfect project to do open source if you could get 25-50 programmers to put in the time to code small pieces of it.
But not because MMO's have hit their peak. It's that all of the MMO's are the same. As another poster pointed out, they all have the same classes. But on top of that, they pretty much all have the same rules. No, or very limited PKing. Horrid point and click combat systems which don't appeal to the mainstream gamer. I think MMO's will really take off when they are blended correctly with fps games. Picture a MMO where combat is like Quake or Unreal but you can gain experence and new items/powers/gold from killing people/NPC's ala a RPG. Sure your level 60 character might be able to kill that level 1 guy, unless level 1 guy happens to be thresh.
Most of the MMO's now cater to the care bears, have too many rules, are overly complex, have poor combat systems,and are a time sink. Once this stuff goes, MMO's will really go mainstream.
MMO makers need to get off their high horse of "Creating Virtual Worlds" and focus on the fact that they are creating games. The thing to remember when making games is "Easy to play/learn, difficult to master". The current MMO's are "Difficult to learn, easy to master" (as long as you are willing to spend the time)
There is no alternative. You either sign up with RIAA, or you get no record, no air time, and no tour dates. That's why the RIAA was formed, to monopolize the production of (bad) music.
Agreed, to take it a step further, if you download music from an artist you normally wouldn't listen to or buy (ie britney spears), decide you like it, and go to their concert aren't you actually helping out the artist since they get more money from the concerts than from CD's that you would have never bought anyway.
This is a lot like the warez pupz that download Visual Studio and don't do anything with it and don't even know how to code. Sure, microsoft claims that as a "lost sale" due to piracy, but the person would have never bought the thing anyway, there was no sale to lose.
The Record Industry isn't losing money at all. This is simply a monopoly leveraging it's power.
cut out the "submenu" part in the urls.
u cation.htm
i on.htm
http://www.tancredo.org/issues/submenu1/issues-ed
doesn't work but
http://www.tancredo.org/issues/issues-transportat
works. I have to have a talk with their webmaster.
Just wait. Our tax system can not survive a large influx of people who pay next to no taxes and most of the new jobs in the US don't pay enought to require those working at them to pay federal income tax. Something will have to change
Yes, but do you or your children want to be around before that change happens? It could get nasty. Instead of waiting do something about it...
We are going to take our country back in a few years. This isn't a flamebait, or a troll just a statement of fact. Check the signature if you don't believe me.
The arcades fell when the fighting game Genre died. Part of what killed it was most of the fighting game fans moved on to online Computer games at home (at least it seems that way around here...) . In order to bring gamers back, the arcade needs to offer a better experence than gamers can get at home.
Personally, if it happens I think it will be Arcade games that are networked with other games across the country (and world) allowing for competitive play with worldwide rankings. This is better than playing at home because you don't have to deal with the cheaters, and you will most likely have a better connection.
No matter what it is that arcades manage to offer in the future, it will have to be worth getting people off their ass to go to the arcades. In the past it was competition and better graphics than the home systems.
Midway releasing a new Mortal Kombat game, and announcing there would be a networked tournament in a years time with a $100,000 grand prize to the winner would probably do the trick. Of course, Midways coin-op division is dead.
[akk more off topic! The mods will live]
Sorry man, xenophobia only creates problems, it never solved any. Where does you sense of entitlement come from?
Xenophobia is not immigration reform. For some reason the attitude of the press and many US citizens is that any anti-immigration stance is considered racist and xenophobic. This simply isn't true. I believe the INS is a clusterfuck, and hasn't been doing their job for years. I think Illegal immigration is a security threat for obvious reasons, and on top of that it's unfair to the people who wait to immigrate legally.
I would like to see immigration halted for a few years until we have an INS and immigration system that isn't easly abused. I am for immigration, I just think the current state of the system is a mess. I would like to see illegal immigration cracked down on, and eventually, MORE legal immigration allowed. I have no problem with people coming to this country and working here. I do have a problem with people sneaking into the country and working for $2 a day. I have a BIGGER problem with the people who hire them and basically use them as slave labor.
The argument that Americans wont do these jobs (housecleaning, hard labor) is total horeshit.
On the common topic that comes up on slashdot, the H1-B visa, I'm not crazy about that either. It's clearly being used to hire cheap labor from India. It's not a matter of India having better programmers, it's a matter of the CEO's trying to save a few nickels to put in their own pockets.
I say, forget the visa's, bring them over here make them US citizens and let them compete in our market and have to pay for housing and food over here. Either that, or force the Indian government into allowing one American to immigrate to India and work for every one Indian that has some kind of work visa here. You see, the funny part is that the Indian governement DOESNT give work visas. So if an American programmer wanted to move to india and work from there to take advantage of the low income housing and food, he/she couldn't!
I pesonally have a job in IT, which I have no threat of losing to outsourcing. However I feel for those coming out of college, and those who aren't taking computer science in college because they fear they won't be able to get a tech job.
You can claim Xenphobia, or call me a racist but nothing is further from the truth. It's like todays McCarthyism in the US press. God forbid you say anything that the left, or some minorty group might not like. You get branded a racist.
I always find this line of thinking curious...How does being for immigration reform = xenophobia?
Having never gotten into wireless yet (Yeah, I've had a cell phone, but never read up on how it works)...how easy is it to build a jammer? They sell for about 220 dollars, it seems like they should be a lot cheaper.
Another thought, could you do this to wireless routers? If you can, then if you have a large enough signal/range, could you go DoS-Driving?
"Microsoft is after all the largest tech company in the world"
I think IBM may have issues with this.
This is a bit off topic, but perhaps I could have phrased it better. Microsoft Windows is the most run software (if you count OS's as software) in the world might have been more accurate.
I could make an argument for Microsoft being bigger than IBM, based on the fact that their Market Value is larger than IBM and despite the fact that IBM makes more in Sales, Microsoft makes more in profits. which is what counts.
To jump back on topic, the fact remains that most home users run Microsoft windows, so they might be interested in this news. It is far more interesting to the general public, than the current CNN front page technology offerings...
Can technology build a better Buffett?
FCC starts rewriting Internet rules
Heck CNN has an article on how one of the dixie chicks is pregnant in their "top stories" section. This is a top story? Bigger than the OS that has 85-90% market share getting it's source code stolen? The OS that most "common" people run? I would say the microsoft story is much more interesting than a dixie chick getting knocked up. That could be my tech bias talking though.
ask yourself why it isn't on the front page of cnn? Or at least on the front page under techology. Isn't the microsoft source code leak a bigger story than some silly write up on stock market AI and the FCC screwing with the internet?
Microsoft is after all the largest tech company in the world, and windows is it's flagship product. I wonder why this isn't being covered more by the mainstream press. Maybe it's my geekiness talking, but this is a big story at least the biggest tech story of the day.
Does it (Unreal 2 XMP) play like UT or UT2K3?
agree - UT had some serious issues, and of course was popular with players who liked to abuse those issues. Many of the CTF maps were unplayable due to the sniper action, and obsurd due to the teleporting action. I think the UT2k3 fixed that. IMHO, the weapon and gametype changes in UT2k3 were excellent.
These were only issues for people who didn't want to go through learning how to get around them. Unfortunatly the squeeky wheel gets the oil first so the translocator and the sniper rifle were nerfed in UT2k3. As was the rocket launcher, and the ASMD. Heck, ut2k3 was like UT: Nerf edition on speed. Which is why many UT players never switched over to UT2K3.
IMHO, the problem with 2k3 was that they decided to get the Quake players - they made it faster, louder, more "hardcore" - and lost all those nice gamer girls who liked the easy, fuzzy FPS. I used to be able to use UT to convert women into gamers.
The Original UT was pretty fast for a FPS game. I wouldn't say it wasn't hardcore. If you were looking for a slow paced FPS, Jedi Knight 2 would have fit that bill back then.
Plus, I just find the whole "adrenaline" thing just silly. It adds an unnecessary and uncomfortable complication to the game.
Agreed, it's like relics, but not nearly as much fun. The silly special moves to 'activate' them were annoying as well.
Still, I wasn't disappointed with 2k3. I thought UT had a better style to it (sleek and fun) but it was still a worthy successory. Its not like the real tragic sequels (AvsP 2, Tribes 2, Total Annihilation Kingdoms, Star Control 3) that completely destroyed a good game.
While I was disappointed with UT2K3, (Probably because I enjoyed the original too much) I agree it wasn't tragic, or a total bomb. Plenty of people enjoy it, It just doesn't seem to be as sucessful or popular as UT was in its first few years. I did think bombing run was fun.
Being a long time player, I will give this demo a shot and if I like it buy UT2k4.
"The white hat/black hat dichotomy of heroes and villains (PC and NPC) in most games is no longer sufficiently believable to the player, but is still theoretically acceptable given the earlier limitations of the medium", and goes on to argue: "Audiences respond poorly to blatant noseleading, and increasingly demand escalating shades of gray."
Of course it depends on the story you are trying to tell, but if you watch most movies you will see "pure good and evil" in the characters. Why? That makes them more compelling. Take for instance, Darth Vader. Ultimate badguy, down to the outfit. If he were a "shade of gray" through the movies then his turn at the end of Return of the Jedi wouldn't have been as piviotal as it was. (It turns out now, with the prequals they are showing his "grayness").
Ultimate "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys" are more compelling because you don't see them in the real world. Even Ultimate good guys have their flaws, and ultimate "Bad Guys" usually don't believe they are bad in real life.
In the end, as a gamer I don't care what NPC's are like, they should be whatever the storyline dictates they should be. The "Ultimate bad guy" is a bit cliched, but it's still fun. I'm more worried about what I can do. If I start acting evil, I'd like to see NPC's react differently because of that behavior.
AOL got opinionplace.com to do the survey for them. Now if you look behind the BS that opinionplace and AOL throw at you about how "scientific" their data is, go to the opinion palace webpage and check out their FAQ. They give people AADVANTAGE miles for every survey they fill out. What are AAdvantage miles? They are American Airlines miles used twards getting a discount on flights.
This skews the data in all sorts of wierd ways, starting with the people taking it are the types who would sign up for such programs on the internet. Not to mention, how many 15 year old males care about Frequent flyer miles? Hell, how many savvy internet users would give their personal information up for some survey scam?
The conclusion drawn from this survey should be "Women over 40 are more likely to have gator installed on their machine and participate in stupid online surveys for some minimal payoff".....ok maybe that was a bit harsh....
If there is one truth about statistics in general, it's that if you play around with the numbers enough you can make surveys say whatever you want.
women over 40 are the biggest online gamers, according to a study conducted by AOL.
..
Most serious gamers wouldn't be on AOL, and most likely would be on a local ISP or some type of broadband.
What's even more interesting than being outnumbered by middle aged and older women is
Not really, since the study is skewed by only surveying AOL'ers who tend not to be or use AOL for online gaming. AOL online gamers may mostly be middle aged women, but that doesn't mean all online gamers are mostly middle aged women.
It would be like doing a study in a urban area, like say Detroit and from those statistics trying to prove all of America is a ghetto. It just doesn't fit.
midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.' I thought that was prime time for FPS kids."
of course, because male or female, old or young, if they wanted to play a FPS, MMO, etc they would migrate off of AOL to a local dialup where they would get better bandwidth, or more likely to a broadband connection
Attempt to do this study to comcast, speakeasy, roadrunner, etc and you will end up with the typical 18-30 year old males being the most common type of gamer. It would be interesting to see the genre breakdown though.
...impossible to read rant snipped... So my advice to you is to sit down and learn the games well. Or don't play online. Don't whine don't complain ask intelligent questions and you will find players like myself who will help you learn to play games better.
what does this have to do with what I said? Did you mean to reply to the parent? You have the typical attitude of an average FPS player by the way. Its funny to watch how pissy the legit middle tier players get over bots.
Both postal 2 and Jedi Acadamy both seem to have plenty of "new" players and not too many that are very skillful. Postal 2 "Share the Pain" has a free multiplayer Demo that is worth checking out, if you don't mind the blood and guts.
Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, etc are usually hackfests, or you run into people who have been playing since the game came out. You are much better with a lesser known FPS for your first online FPS game.
Most online FPS use punkbuster or something similar now, and cheats are almost non-existant.
You are joking right? This should have been modded as funny. Counter Strike has aimbots and hacks that get around punkbuster, and Unreal Tournament has hacks that get around Pure and Client Side Hack protection. (The two types of UT "punkbusters").
How do you feel about the American programmers that are angry they lost their jobs to outsourcing? Do you think they have a right to be angry?
But hey, I'm mostly a docs guy
that explains everything.
Oh yeah, it's based on UNIX! Unix just came out A FEW YEARS AGO!
Where in NJ? I'm in North NJ (probably why I'm getting 4 telemundos) and we get no tech TV. I actually know a girl who works customer service for comcast and told me everyone calls and bitches about it in my area.