Might be over-reacting. I RTFA, and it's peppered with "mights" and "maybes". I'd wager that hitting the limit of emails in a certain time period is only going to make them put a magnifying glass on you for a while. They have access to enough information to ascertain whether you are sending legitimate emails or spam, that's for sure.
As a side benefit, this will help them help their customers that get hit with email worms... some people may not even know they are spamming, no?
IANAL either, but it seems to me that at the very least it sends a message that you can't abuse the DMCA without paying the fiddler. If companies like Diebold thought they could get away with sending worthless C&D letters to scare people, and then retracting it at the last minute before the case fell through, that's bad news. If the EFF's lawsuit puts some fear of god into at least one litigious corporate numbskull, then it's for the good of everyone, imo.
One of my favorite uses for a USB key is for showing off Opera to people still using IE. It installs perfectly, plays nicely, and doesn't throw things in weird locations. You're right about complex software, but that's no real surprise.
The networks are pretty wily. They are already starting to shore up things with products placement directly in TV shows, of course. I read an article in Forbes about it (there were a pair of related ones in the same issue) at end of September, around when the new season was rolling out. For those of you interested and not allergic to registration, they are here and here.
When I first saw this story, that's what my initial thought was: market saturation. But the numbers don't play out. The MMO industry is a gravy train for certain kinds of people, and apparently there's still a lot of room left.
I remember when DAoC was first coming out, and you had EQ fanbois on one side of the fence claiming that DAoC would die a slow death, and DAoC fanbois on the other side claiming that EQ's days were numbered. Of course, two years later, both games are wildly successful. Earlier this year, along comes SWG, and while the entry of a new MMO always dings subscriber numbers a bit, they always seem to come right back up. I'll admit that Lucasarts could put a brick in a box, and it would sell a million copies if it had a Wookie on the cover, but offline success doesn't equate to MMO success (see The Sims Online for a perfect example).
Now we have four or five major players (EQ, DAoC, SWG, FFXI), three of which are essentially clones of each other, all dominating the market. I wonder if industry experts are as confused as I am. Where are all of these people coming from? The games aren't cannibalizing from each other to any significant degree, even though logic would dictate they should. It reminds me of Tab vs. Diet Coke, I suppose I will never understand the mind of the consumer.
What does this have to do with Rubies of Eventide? It sounds as if their problem is mostly related to a poor-quality game, not a saturated MMO market. Game-stopping bugs are the calling card of the MMO, but at least they look pretty. I think RoE fails the second test.
Eliminating or severely reducing these provides games with a higher percentage composition of both plot and challenging gameplay. If tedium was eliminated from RPGs, wouldn't this improve the genre?
A better solution, I think, would be to incorporate challenge into the random battles, and get rid of the tedium. Some element of treadmill will always be found by the min/maxers (the grind is in your mind), but making battles more interesting will make things more fun, where removing them just gets you closer to watching a movie. I'm not sure anyone has hit the sweet spot yet, but it's only a matter of time.
I played it. Loved the game, though I can see where people would take fault with it. The battle system was nice, and it never broke immersion. You come up to a group of baddies, and if you can't avoid them, combat starts, but you don't screen-wipe to some generic background. You rough it up with the monsters right there on the turf you found them on, with the terrain as it exists. I loved it. Especially since some of the special moves were location based, and you couldn't move location in battle, so battles would frequently make you be creative, instead of mashing the attack button (though you could do that if you really wanted to).
Maybe it's the nature of an editorial, but some of these things are just poorly written. I know that editorials are opinionated by definition, but seeing "Chrono Trigger Sucks" in the title made me wary of the content. Unfortunately, he never qualifies it at any point in the article (just repeats it again at the end). So, for the mindless attention-grab that it obviously is, I'm labelling him a putz. If it was a post here, I'd mod him "Flamebait" without a second thought.
Other things: as far as random encounters are concerned in specific games, I think a game worth mentioning (since everyone else here is) is Wild ARMs 3. it has random encounters, however:
- An exclamation point appears over your head, and you can choose to avoid the battle by hitting a button. - Avoiding a battle drains your Encounter gauge depending on the monster's relative strength in comparison to your party (sort of). - You can't avoid battles if your gauge runs out. - Resting at an "inn" will replenish the gauge, and fighting monsters will slowly raise it in the field. - You can avoid battles with trivial monsters for free. It makes zipping through earlier portions of the game a snap. - Exploring and finding hidden rooms with a particular kind of item makes the cost of avoiding battles cheaper. Brilliant.
Also, in regards to saving, you can save anywhere that's not a battle on a cutscene. You just need to spend a Gimel coin, which you can find dungeon crawling or from monster drops (the point being that you use it for emergencies, since saving in town is free). I think random combat is one of the things that WA3 did right.
As far as random combat in general, it doesn't bother me in the least, if it's fun. I like bumping into new types of monsters and working on ways to defeat them in different or creative ways. I never found the combat in FFX tedious, for example, because I always tried new ways to wipe the floor with mobbies, and lots of them did interesting things that I had to adapt for.
My gut reaction: if you are so impatient to get monster battles over with, you're probably playing the wrong (type of) game. I have a simliar issue with things like racing games ("is this thing over yet?"), so I don't even bother unless there's an interesting twist to it.
In enforcing their TOS, they appear to be disabling legimate and illegitimate purposes at the same time. They are within their right (probably, not familiar with Florida state law), but it's a bad precedent, and as word gets around to the community, they may be costing themselves in the end.
It's probably not good word choice to say "censor", but you get the idea: they are toeing the line on what is appropriate for an institution to do. I don't see how you can say there is nothing shady about it... consider that they are indiscriminately blocking access. What next? Students can't visit nra.org, to avoid enraging some anti-gun activist alumni with deep pockets? The implications of what could happen, even that extreme example, are the scary part, because this is academia we're talking about.
People are worried about losing the information on the web: but all that is really happening is that the URLs are no good after a while, you lose the snapshot. The information is not necessarily going anywhere. If there is a need or a want, someone will throw it up, or another will host it. That's the beauty of the web, you get the good with the bad, but time has a way of getting rid of the chaff.
What would be interesting would be a website that archives those snapshots for posterity. Well, what do you know, there are several such sites already! Looks like we're in good shape. The sky is not falling.;)
So basically, if you are on the UF network kazaa is blocked for all intensive purposes. I don't know why they don't just BLOCK kazaa instead of screwing students over in this manner. However, I'm a student, not a suit, so what do I know, right?
That's more or less what my university did. First, they outright blocked it. Then, someone clued in OIT about some bandwidth-throttling hardware. Now, during the day, P2P gets the dregs of bandwidth left over from normal usage, and everyone is mostly happy. This ICARUS program (from reading the comments) appears to be a roundabout way of blocking indiscriminately, except with more overhead. Go figure.
... even more than the loss of student's privacy, is the fact that other universities have approached these people about buying this ICARUS program.
I'm all for respecting the copyright, but that doesn't extend to censoring my computer. It sounds a little shady to me. What they may end up doing is forcing students to add internet connectivity options to the college-selection process, which is a shame.
The Republican vs. Democrat thing goes all the way back to Jefferson. It's an interesting read, but it has nothing to do with any of this, heh.
I agree that saying "the dictionary is incorrect" is silly, which is why I didn't say it. I think the definition is not 100% accurate, meaning that it's misleading, if that makes you feel better. It comes down to calling things what they are: speak plainly. Maybe it's nit-picking, but I think the distinction is important. This isn't Greece, we don't have all people eligible to vote having a direct impact on laws. I didn't vote on the DMCA. This isn't about the difference between "potato" and "potatoe", it is two completely different things being bandied about using the same word, which is wrong.
I think that about makes my point as clear as I can make it. Geez, now I feel like RMS.:)
I know you are making a jab at the justice system, but it's funny you mention the 2000 presdential election. If it were a true democracy, Al Gore would be president, because he won the popular vote. The business down in Florida would not even have mattered, it's the electoral college that threw everything out of whack.:D
It's democratic, but not a true democracy. Pure democracy really only exists in small towns (like in the Northeast) these days. The dictionary definition is not completely accurate. The US is a republic. You can look that one up at m-w.com also if you wish.
You'd have to paste all of those signs on the members of Congress, too, because the United States has a representative government, not a democracy.
Re:slashdot readers?
on
Superball!
·
· Score: 3, Funny
This is presuming you can get close enough to the webserver without needed a hazard suit and a commercial-grade fire extinguisher.
Thousand of hits
on
Superball!
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I hope some of you folks in the club are also taking pictures of your webserver from different angles, as thousands of people hit it. I've gotten faster transfer rates using two cans and a string. Poor thing.:D
You can turn off the Slashdot part. And, for the record, Opera 7 kicks the crap out of Opera 6, it's been re-written, I am told. It's time to upgrade, friend. I'm browsing from it now.:)
"This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power. It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behavior.
I love these guys. While this subject (and others like it) will be debated about until the end of the civilized world, I don't think the important point is ever going to come to light: the difference between a cause and a correlation. I don't mean to portray mass media or videogame makers as blameless, but honestly, they are largely giving the public what they want. Some people like games (and movies) where you speed around in cars, and do absurd things you could never realistically do yourself in real life. It's a form of escape.
Some people are quick to argue that this sort of game encourages the same behavior in real life. I'd argue that the fantasies people have about this sort of thing create a need for these games, and software devs and movie producers are more than happy to cash in.
Take a look at some of the more absurd games that have been created in response to things people like to do. We have a bazillion low-quality "Deer Hunter" games (Huh?), and Paintball PC games, which, when you think about it, is a simulation of a simulation. It's no surprise to see the GTAs or the Gran Turismos of the world being so successful.
Thank goodness it's a only a guest editorial, I usually like GameSpot's official stuff. The article isn't even cohesive, and at points appears to contradict itself. I won't repeat what's already been said, but wanted to add my two cents on the subject.
I hope the author knows what "RPG" stands for, but I wonder if he knows what that means. I'd hate to think it's based some wrongheaded perception of the genre, but since he already fits into the braindead twitch gamer stereotype, I'm probably setting myself up to be disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, 1981
Might be over-reacting. I RTFA, and it's peppered with "mights" and "maybes". I'd wager that hitting the limit of emails in a certain time period is only going to make them put a magnifying glass on you for a while. They have access to enough information to ascertain whether you are sending legitimate emails or spam, that's for sure.
As a side benefit, this will help them help their customers that get hit with email worms... some people may not even know they are spamming, no?
IANAL either, but it seems to me that at the very least it sends a message that you can't abuse the DMCA without paying the fiddler. If companies like Diebold thought they could get away with sending worthless C&D letters to scare people, and then retracting it at the last minute before the case fell through, that's bad news. If the EFF's lawsuit puts some fear of god into at least one litigious corporate numbskull, then it's for the good of everyone, imo.
The easy answer is that I prefer Opera, having tried both at some point. I also like supporting them. Firebird works too, though. :)
One of my favorite uses for a USB key is for showing off Opera to people still using IE. It installs perfectly, plays nicely, and doesn't throw things in weird locations. You're right about complex software, but that's no real surprise.
The networks are pretty wily. They are already starting to shore up things with products placement directly in TV shows, of course. I read an article in Forbes about it (there were a pair of related ones in the same issue) at end of September, around when the new season was rolling out. For those of you interested and not allergic to registration, they are here and here.
When I first saw this story, that's what my initial thought was: market saturation. But the numbers don't play out. The MMO industry is a gravy train for certain kinds of people, and apparently there's still a lot of room left.
I remember when DAoC was first coming out, and you had EQ fanbois on one side of the fence claiming that DAoC would die a slow death, and DAoC fanbois on the other side claiming that EQ's days were numbered. Of course, two years later, both games are wildly successful. Earlier this year, along comes SWG, and while the entry of a new MMO always dings subscriber numbers a bit, they always seem to come right back up. I'll admit that Lucasarts could put a brick in a box, and it would sell a million copies if it had a Wookie on the cover, but offline success doesn't equate to MMO success (see The Sims Online for a perfect example).
Now we have four or five major players (EQ, DAoC, SWG, FFXI), three of which are essentially clones of each other, all dominating the market. I wonder if industry experts are as confused as I am. Where are all of these people coming from? The games aren't cannibalizing from each other to any significant degree, even though logic would dictate they should. It reminds me of Tab vs. Diet Coke, I suppose I will never understand the mind of the consumer.
What does this have to do with Rubies of Eventide? It sounds as if their problem is mostly related to a poor-quality game, not a saturated MMO market. Game-stopping bugs are the calling card of the MMO, but at least they look pretty. I think RoE fails the second test.
I played it. Loved the game, though I can see where people would take fault with it. The battle system was nice, and it never broke immersion. You come up to a group of baddies, and if you can't avoid them, combat starts, but you don't screen-wipe to some generic background. You rough it up with the monsters right there on the turf you found them on, with the terrain as it exists. I loved it. Especially since some of the special moves were location based, and you couldn't move location in battle, so battles would frequently make you be creative, instead of mashing the attack button (though you could do that if you really wanted to).
Maybe it's the nature of an editorial, but some of these things are just poorly written. I know that editorials are opinionated by definition, but seeing "Chrono Trigger Sucks" in the title made me wary of the content. Unfortunately, he never qualifies it at any point in the article (just repeats it again at the end). So, for the mindless attention-grab that it obviously is, I'm labelling him a putz. If it was a post here, I'd mod him "Flamebait" without a second thought.
Other things: as far as random encounters are concerned in specific games, I think a game worth mentioning (since everyone else here is) is Wild ARMs 3. it has random encounters, however:
- An exclamation point appears over your head, and you can choose to avoid the battle by hitting a button.
- Avoiding a battle drains your Encounter gauge depending on the monster's relative strength in comparison to your party (sort of).
- You can't avoid battles if your gauge runs out.
- Resting at an "inn" will replenish the gauge, and fighting monsters will slowly raise it in the field.
- You can avoid battles with trivial monsters for free. It makes zipping through earlier portions of the game a snap.
- Exploring and finding hidden rooms with a particular kind of item makes the cost of avoiding battles cheaper. Brilliant.
Also, in regards to saving, you can save anywhere that's not a battle on a cutscene. You just need to spend a Gimel coin, which you can find dungeon crawling or from monster drops (the point being that you use it for emergencies, since saving in town is free). I think random combat is one of the things that WA3 did right.
As far as random combat in general, it doesn't bother me in the least, if it's fun. I like bumping into new types of monsters and working on ways to defeat them in different or creative ways. I never found the combat in FFX tedious, for example, because I always tried new ways to wipe the floor with mobbies, and lots of them did interesting things that I had to adapt for.
My gut reaction: if you are so impatient to get monster battles over with, you're probably playing the wrong (type of) game. I have a simliar issue with things like racing games ("is this thing over yet?"), so I don't even bother unless there's an interesting twist to it.
In enforcing their TOS, they appear to be disabling legimate and illegitimate purposes at the same time. They are within their right (probably, not familiar with Florida state law), but it's a bad precedent, and as word gets around to the community, they may be costing themselves in the end.
It's probably not good word choice to say "censor", but you get the idea: they are toeing the line on what is appropriate for an institution to do. I don't see how you can say there is nothing shady about it... consider that they are indiscriminately blocking access. What next? Students can't visit nra.org, to avoid enraging some anti-gun activist alumni with deep pockets? The implications of what could happen, even that extreme example, are the scary part, because this is academia we're talking about.
People are worried about losing the information on the web: but all that is really happening is that the URLs are no good after a while, you lose the snapshot. The information is not necessarily going anywhere. If there is a need or a want, someone will throw it up, or another will host it. That's the beauty of the web, you get the good with the bad, but time has a way of getting rid of the chaff.
;)
What would be interesting would be a website that archives those snapshots for posterity. Well, what do you know, there are several such sites already! Looks like we're in good shape. The sky is not falling.
That's more or less what my university did. First, they outright blocked it. Then, someone clued in OIT about some bandwidth-throttling hardware. Now, during the day, P2P gets the dregs of bandwidth left over from normal usage, and everyone is mostly happy. This ICARUS program (from reading the comments) appears to be a roundabout way of blocking indiscriminately, except with more overhead. Go figure.
... even more than the loss of student's privacy, is the fact that other universities have approached these people about buying this ICARUS program.
I'm all for respecting the copyright, but that doesn't extend to censoring my computer. It sounds a little shady to me. What they may end up doing is forcing students to add internet connectivity options to the college-selection process, which is a shame.
The Republican vs. Democrat thing goes all the way back to Jefferson. It's an interesting read, but it has nothing to do with any of this, heh.
:)
I agree that saying "the dictionary is incorrect" is silly, which is why I didn't say it. I think the definition is not 100% accurate, meaning that it's misleading, if that makes you feel better. It comes down to calling things what they are: speak plainly. Maybe it's nit-picking, but I think the distinction is important. This isn't Greece, we don't have all people eligible to vote having a direct impact on laws. I didn't vote on the DMCA. This isn't about the difference between "potato" and "potatoe", it is two completely different things being bandied about using the same word, which is wrong.
I think that about makes my point as clear as I can make it. Geez, now I feel like RMS.
I know you are making a jab at the justice system, but it's funny you mention the 2000 presdential election. If it were a true democracy, Al Gore would be president, because he won the popular vote. The business down in Florida would not even have mattered, it's the electoral college that threw everything out of whack. :D
It's democratic, but not a true democracy. Pure democracy really only exists in small towns (like in the Northeast) these days. The dictionary definition is not completely accurate. The US is a republic. You can look that one up at m-w.com also if you wish.
You'd have to paste all of those signs on the members of Congress, too, because the United States has a representative government, not a democracy.
This is presuming you can get close enough to the webserver without needed a hazard suit and a commercial-grade fire extinguisher.
I hope some of you folks in the club are also taking pictures of your webserver from different angles, as thousands of people hit it. I've gotten faster transfer rates using two cans and a string. Poor thing. :D
See my sig.
Also, remember the program they gave you called "Wordpad", which was sparse, but fully functional.
You can turn off the Slashdot part. And, for the record, Opera 7 kicks the crap out of Opera 6, it's been re-written, I am told. It's time to upgrade, friend. I'm browsing from it now. :)
"This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power. It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behavior.
I love these guys. While this subject (and others like it) will be debated about until the end of the civilized world, I don't think the important point is ever going to come to light: the difference between a cause and a correlation. I don't mean to portray mass media or videogame makers as blameless, but honestly, they are largely giving the public what they want. Some people like games (and movies) where you speed around in cars, and do absurd things you could never realistically do yourself in real life. It's a form of escape.
Some people are quick to argue that this sort of game encourages the same behavior in real life. I'd argue that the fantasies people have about this sort of thing create a need for these games, and software devs and movie producers are more than happy to cash in.
Take a look at some of the more absurd games that have been created in response to things people like to do. We have a bazillion low-quality "Deer Hunter" games (Huh?), and Paintball PC games, which, when you think about it, is a simulation of a simulation. It's no surprise to see the GTAs or the Gran Turismos of the world being so successful.
Thank goodness it's a only a guest editorial, I usually like GameSpot's official stuff. The article isn't even cohesive, and at points appears to contradict itself. I won't repeat what's already been said, but wanted to add my two cents on the subject.
I hope the author knows what "RPG" stands for, but I wonder if he knows what that means. I'd hate to think it's based some wrongheaded perception of the genre, but since he already fits into the braindead twitch gamer stereotype, I'm probably setting myself up to be disappointed.