I think that is pretty much my idea of an ideal marriage, and is how my wife and i exist as well. Like anything, open communication and giving each other space are keys to co existing. That is really the only trick, being respectful to one another, not making your partner cease activities they previously enjoyed before the marriage, and being honest about things. I find that every few years my wife and I have had to re evaluate our relationship and talk it out.
We have had some tough issues to work through, but the times we have suffered for it are when we both internalize and step well clear of our trouble area and stick to the easy, fun places. Every time we pick at the sore, sometimes we get into heated words, but at the end of those nights are usually when we are closest, and have taken huge strides to eliminating the sores, all of which would have grown worse if we had let them sit and fester.
But that's pretty much life. In my opinion marriage is a pretty unrealistic promise. I got married at 24, and here I am, telling someone how things are going to be between us for another 50+ years (hopefully). That was twice as long as I've exist, and even less years that I was 'aware' of the world. A lot can happen to change a person in a year, or even a month, how can you realistically predict that you will still love each other in 50 years? You can't, you can only be optimistic about it and commit to trying.
And lets be realistic... how interesting is one person for years and years down the line? I think over time they become a rock that you need/use to weather the storm together, but you've been clinging it to it for so long you know every nook and cranny. It has the comfort of home and familiarity, but everybody likes to travel for a few weeks at a time. Marriage is in a sense battling against our nature. I know some couples have worked that out, but still... it's a losing battle.
I think many people don't take the time to at least establish a solid, realistic foundation for their marriage, and instead get caught up in the fact that our society sort of pushes out this idea that there is something wrong if you are 30+ and not married. I think people get wrapped up in the idea that they need to be married and have this happily ever after ending, they don't stop and take a real hard look at how each person treats each other in the relationship.
Long term relationships are HARD. Look at your family, its great and sad all at the same time, right? Not easy, but all you can do is keep talking to each other, let each other have a little bit of space, and keep interested in one another, and hopefully, it'll stretch out over the years.
I actually really hate those ads. I don't mind the brand advertisement all over the game for the boxing gear you get, it is a boxing game afterall. But those sidebars of low res, horribly designed ads on the left and right of the screen between rounds floating in space is jarring and pulls you right out of the game immersion. It makes their UI look like a piece of shit instead of something designed by a professional. Hell the main EA website doesn't even show those kinds of shitty ads. Last night while I was getting the shit pounded out of me by some ai boxer with 100 in ever stat, I had to look at a dumb ass skull and crossbone, text 5555 TO GET THIS ON YOUR PHONE!!!!! ads.
I hate it, they don't belong, and it's total bullshit. I MIGHT, MIGHT tolerate shit like this if the game is not 60 dollars full price. But it is, so...get those fucking JARRING ads out of your games.
I agree 100% and I have no clue why anyone would buy a kindle after spending 5 seconds looking at the way the device is set up. I saw a friend's kindle and thought it was amazing, then I asked about how it works.
Digital distribution is one thing, but digital distribution where you don't exclusively control the device upon which your digital copy is stored? Who would spend money on a broken model like that? Things EXACTLY like in this article were bound to happen.
Because it is annoying when dev's try to cram an RTS or RPG game into a console control scheme and release it on the pc. I usually grab EA sports games and beat em ups for consoles and rts, rpg's, and strat games for the pc. It is annoying to play a game with the 'wrong' control scheme. It would be like trying to play god of war with a mouse and keyboard, it just won't work.
When they do cross platform development, the console player is working with a 1024x768 fixed screen, and the 'standard' controller layout. The PC resolution and control can be the same joystick as the console, the keyboard, or some crazy flight stick. It can be anything.
Naturally they have to design the UI and controls towards the more limited area, the console.
What this means is that in general, the UI's fonts are bigger and take up much more screen area then a standard pc game would. The amount of inputs are limited on the controller, so UI's tend to have more 'flip' screens then a controller.
IMHO the biggest offense was in Oblivion. On most pc games, pressing I brings you to your inventory instantly. In oblivion the best you could do is press a key to take you to the sub-menu with 4 different screens. So if you were looking at your INV last it is up first, but if you were in say the map, the map would come up, so you needed to locate the inv icon and press it in addition.
Very easily they could have added a key binding to "i" for that menu screen, but they didn't and left the console 'flip' menus. On top of this, moving things in and out just wasn't as fluid as it could have been with pc, instead the whole system is constrained by what you can easily do with a joypad, not a mouse and keyboard.
Another thing you don't see too often on console games is drag and drop functionality. It is just not an easy to do thing with the analog sticks, consequently, they don't think to place it in the pc version.
Console port's UI's also don't behave as you would expect on a PC. Example might be when you move the stick, or press keys, it highlights which menu item you are on. If you move the mouse, the button doesn't light up on mouse over.
Either way, it is frustrating to a PC gamer who has had years of UI's tailored to their system, only to grab these console ports where you pretty much want to just plug a 360 controller in your pc and play it that way rather then wrestling with some tacked on keybindings that 'kinda sorta' feel like they would with the joystick.
I know people say this all the time but I'm similar to you. But you know what, that is our fault as an old foggie. I was going to say watch "kids" but these kids are really all in college and graduating now a days, who grew up starting with n64 and xbox. Halo was HUGE and set the standard for console FPS control. To them, snapping a headshot with a joystick with NO autoaim is just as easy as it would be for us with a mouse and keyboard ( well not easy for me with the m+kb).
I actually had a very difficult time in quake. I tried to play online like I played doom, my hands crammed around the arrow keys, using to straf, thinking I was elite for having those key bindings. My first game, I had to aim up to a ledge to shoot someone, and tried to do so with page up lol.
Although painful, I had to train myself into the m+kb. The only thing I could liken it too was playing daggerfall using the mouselook sometimes, or a flight simulator. I think that is the reason that I used to have to play inverted.
In some sense controlling with the a controller is easier. I have a tendency to dip my mouse crosshairs low as I walk, meaning to shoot someone quickly, I have to bring the cross up a bit to the head level, then shoot, plenty of time to miss. On a console it is much easier for me to leave the aim part at around head level, and I tend to think a head about where to aim when entering corners since it is hard for me to move the aim. With the mouse I don't think too much about where to aim since I can get the mouse there so fast, but that fraction of a second can make a big difference.
I think objectively the mouse is better then a right analog stick as it allows finer and more configurable movement. But I will give the left analog stick as a more flexible 'walk' control then asdw.
Ultimately it is what you grew up with though. What you first put your hands on is what ends up feeling 'natural' to you, while the other, awkward.
I kind of have the opposite view. I hate the trend in multiplayer lately that EVERY game is co op in some way shape or form. WoW is actually well balanced between solo content and group content. Beating dungeons and tough bosses as a group is fun. Most of the new content being developed is for groups and cooperative play.
I want some more solo - multiplayer games. I miss quake FFA style servers, where you shoot everything that moves. Now a days there are 2 teams and half the player on a server you cant shoot at. I miss subspace with 80 people to lob bombs at rather then 1. Some days I just want to zone into a mindless killfest after work. You can't really do that as much online now a days.
There seem to be certain formats you see now a days for multiplayer. I kind of agree though with the shaping of the formats.
*FFA - Very rare now a days. A shame, this mode is fun to relax in. *2 teams vs each other. - Common as hell. But some varation now a days like left for dead with 4 players vs AI and players, or at least both teams being very different play experiences (splinter cell). *Human vs AI co op ---Finally starting to see light of day. This way of playing is great esp when you have weaker players, when you are ALL on the same team everyone can have fun. I like this one a lot and hope to see a lot more of this play.
So let me talk a second about MMO PVP. I love PVP, I enjoyed shadowbane, and look forward to trying DFO when it gets us servers and has had a lil bit of patch time. But man, let me say, PVP in an MMO sucks.
For it to be even a reasonably interesting game, it needs to have either no levels (ala quake or even just small like cod4), or a skill system. And by skill system I mean that as you level up you increase versatility, not lethality. What I mean is that at level 1 I can hit you as hard with a sword as anybody else, but that is all I can do. At level 50 you have 100 other ways to kill me. This makes for an interesting game for all players.
Second, in the MMO format, without doing these instanced or set up 'arcade' battlegrounds, you never get an even fight. "World pvp" is fun because it is random and silly, but as a day and day again format it doesnt hold up. First, you have a huge world, where is everybody? You could walk all day back and forth and keep missing each other. Next, group balance. Pretty next to impossible to maintain balance between 1v1, 2v2, 1v15 combat. Which leads into...world style pvp is often a gank fest. Most fights are always hugely unbalanced, 15 players run up and gank 5. While that playstyle is fun, its not as fun as an even set up game.
It is sort of like why we play games. We have fun with them because we are all constrained by the same ruleset, and one team manages to work the rules better with their strategy and end up winning. In the 'world pvp' style it can be very much like the end of wargame. You know that point you hit in your strat game where you made all the right moves, now it is just a matter of time before you win. Except in an MMO it was usually someone else playing the overall strat game, and you are on either landslide winning or losing side, and are just along for the ride.
If a dev puts a way to spring back, often it then takes away the fun of having played the strat game correctly. Great, I can make all the right moves and overwhelm them, but as soon as I do that they push the I win button and heave back.
Honestly, the design implications for making a 'fun' mmo pvp game is hard as hell. And the sad part is there is not a big audience for it.
Cause you know why? The majority of gamers do not want to play another human. Humans are HARD. When you play people unless you are VERY GOOD, your win % is slightly above 50%. When you play AI you usually ride 75% up winning (made up stats but is an in general), and guess like, people like to win.
Maybe that's my jaded psychology, but when I find a game I like, I play, get a little better then average, then either buddy up with the other good players or steer clear of the, cause you know what, at the end of the day, I just want to relax, not get owned in the face and teabagged in my limited spare time. Dev's know this, and the mulitplayer games that have come out this past decade reflect it.
One thing I'm curious about, have they released the artwork, models, animations etc for this game? I am not sure if there is a large library of nicely developed/organized stuff like this out there to say use in your own game. I have myself finally started trying to write my own game in XNA, and while XNA really helps a newbie with the game logic, the "art" that i'm putting on the screen is just plain terrible.
Artwork has kinda been what's stopped me from figuring out game programming. While I know for me all the programming hurdles were something I could overcome and understand, I just can't train my hand to move in a straight line and look at the world correctly to flatten it and make it on paper. I can make your typical 'programmer art', ie use computer drawing prorgrams to their full extent, but nothing makes up for the artist's eye for color, composition and plain ol drawing experience.
I like how this game looks, and would be phenomenal to have a library of RTS models with their own animations and UV maps.
I think tossing out LAN sucks for the same reason I don't like paying for xbox live or the fact I was annoyed at half life 2 and steam verification.
But look at the reality. Firstly, there will be a battle.net emulator in some capacity that you will be able to download on your network and play. No question. With a game this popular, someone will make it. Problem solved.
Second, as has been mentioned before, sc2 is peer to peer. Though, I am not 100% certain this is going to work behind a nat. I'm not 100% certain how nat works over your router, while everyone is 192.168.1.100 and.101 etc, battle.net might only know you as your router's ip address and not what is behind it... though, if the packets going out are routed right to your buddies nat ip, ie you are on.100 and packet is going to.101, I'm pretty sure the router is not going to send the packet along on the next hop towards blizzard, but instead back into your lan to your buddy. If that is the case, the only thing that happened is online authentication, enough that a modem could probably handle 15 people easily.
But again, if not is hiding the internal ip and blizz only sees the router ip for every person, maybe the routing will not work so hot.
*shrug* either way, the problem will get fixed, by someone. And trust me, if you still like a game enough to want to play it 10 years later, there will be a nice 'click me once to play' package someone has made out there.
I think it goes beyond matching the chassis, and really gives you something to identify mechs in the multiplayer.
Pardon me while I butcher what mechs were (been a while), but say if I saw, what was it, the nova? walking over the hill, chances are it has 7 erlarge lasers on it and was going to alpha burst me. Or maybe I saw a diasii and he fired 3 gause cannons at me, I probaly know what kind of loadout he is sporting now.
Or what about the thor, I knew it has a giant ballistic arm, so I knew there might be a giant uac loaded down on it, take out that arm or keep my distance. If someone had a catapult out around max range, chances are it was missle boat coming at me.
In older mechs, you had 50 guns stuck on the legs and torso and never put any weapons on the arms, just disposable parts cause you knew they'd get blown off easily. Sure you saw a dire wolf coming over the little ega mountain there, but you'd have no clue what the hell was on it, depended on the player, not the mech. It really didn't matter what mech was coming at you then, only the player. Boring.
Hardpoints are great, they give the mech character due to the limited load out (otherwise whats the difference between a mech besides visuals and tonage? ), and they curb 'munchkin' building SOMEWHAT, at least enough that if you wanted to snipe or get in their face, or be a laser boat, or missile boat, you had several options, but had to conform to certain mechs. Meaning, there was a REASON to take certain mechs over another. Much better then just pick any random mech in your desire tonage and using the same configuration.
Just reading this thread and his article I pretty much have summed this guy up. Smart ass troll. I should know, I am a smart ass by trade, and I can smell my own kind. The guy is trying to deliver the kind of BS I love to deliver on people with a smile on my face to be funny.
I think what brings this guy to a new level is that COH is not really too popular of an MMO, so it is easy to buy into his distortion of his 'research' when you do not understand the particulars of PVP or the in game culture of it in regards to his tactics.
It is one thing if the guy is going around the zone and straight out killing chatting villans, it is another to sit in a safe zone and tp people in to get killed by invulnerable guards while they take EXP loss. Further, it is almost unethical to persist in his 'research' after it is very apparent that other players do not appreciate his violation of the social norms.
A few polite inquiries to the guy said, hey, just so you know this is how things work here, people on your side and on the other side don't play like that, please stop. He doesnt stop. People try to us in game methods to stop him, but due to game mechanics the only way to stop him is when he is bored and logs off for the night. Then it is just plain out hate, oh look, here comes this jackass again.
Once people are plain out annoyed at you and what you are doing, what kind of research are you conducting? Hey, if i piss people off, people threaten me! I am shocked, shocked I say! Watch that video, look how old the guy is, he doesn't know by now that if you log into a game with the sole intention of spending all time there wrecking other player's time, people wont like you? What the hell?
This is not like camping in quake was. This is real EXP loss due to finding a loophole in the dev design. Obviously the devs do not want you to lose EXP for pvp since you don't lose it for 'normal' pvp, but hey, this guy found a way to really twist the knife when he kills players. The fact that his tactics got patched out of the game just goes to show how far he was from 'playing the game by the rules'. The devs themselves, by patching out the tactic said that it is not fun game play and shouldn't be there.
It is the same reason that MMO's have health and mana. When that runs out you are in trouble, it is an interesting gameplay mechanic. If you find a way to never lose health and mana, the game isn't very fun anymore. The only reason this jackass kept it up night after night was because he enjoyed pissing people off.
I could even analyze further that he gets such pleasure from angering people because he never figured out how to get people to like him for better qualities, and he found the only way he could get a reaction out of people was to insult them, rather then befriend them. The man probably doesn't have the capacity to do that.
Either way, as long as this paper isn't taken seriously by anybody, alls the well, but I would hate to see someone duped into thinking this man is a serious researcher in any way, shape, or form.
I played heavily in the 1.2 patch. I know with successive patches the saberist became more vulnerable, but for myself I enjoyed playing heavily with the saber out in FFA styles. I agree with the main poster about the community. At first, the whole 'honor' thing wasn't that crazy, just one odd ball or two per server. I think the patching is what really killed the game off, ending up with only honor RPG style servers.
For myself I loved to jump into the FFA pits and often came out leading kill counts by +20 or so on random servers, it was great fun. The game itself was very balanced with all the weapons, each with their place. I primarily got most of my kills with the saber, since heavy swings and the DFA attack (they needed to remove the air swivel with that, little OP ) would kill someone very fast.
For blaster shots you could face the person in light stance and reflect or block almost everything coming in at you. Vs the blue ball gun (forget the names) you could force push one ball back and then you had to evade behind a wall or out of range since they could fire faster then you could push.
Fletchet gun was deadly against you, if they were spamming grenades you can push them away and evade. If they fired the flack at you, you had to get out of the way. Rockets were no problem force push them back on them. Sniper was pretty easy, force vision if you were feeling perky, but mostly just moving fast and keeping your saber out would block the shot.
The real ones to worry about were repeater balls and fletchet spam. When this came at you, you just had to evade and get behind a wall or close to them. From that point you just roll in on them and force pull, grabbing the weapon right out of their hands. At that point you could just turn and fire on them or saber them to death.
I think combined with force heal being a bit OP as well, you could almost stay alive forever. If they were shooting you down a hall way you just back up around the corner, heal up, then come at them with force speed + protect and then pull the weapon out of their hands, and from there they are confused and need to swap up weapons, giving you plenty of time to control the situation and end it.
But anyway, I agree, saber dueling was one of the best parts of the game, but for me, so was standing out in the open with my saber being able to counter almost every weapon thrown at me from the corners.
What's really sad is that blizzard used to be your buddies. Anyone remember "spawned" copies of war2 and diablo? They would install just the multiplayer component of the game so you could play with your friends on a lan without needing your own cd key? How far we have fallen.:(
Gamecube is decent, but the game really has to be tailored to the controller to work well. Combos like b + x or y or the z button really become awkward. I also disliked the huge shoulder buttons as they took a lot of weight to push in, and usually resulted in cramped fingers for me after playing games like rogue squadron where I had to keep the button depressed for a long while.
I liked the dual shock ones when they came along, just for having the analog sticks there, but later came to like the xbox's analog stick placement.
The 360 controller has come to be my favorite (though i have yet to touch the ps3 one), though I would prefer that they flatten the tops of the buttons a bit so they don't hurt my fingers during long play sessions where you might be aggressively pressing them. The dpad gets the job done too, though I do like the playstation style d pad a lot.
I like having the bumper buttons available to hit with a different feel then the trigger in addition to the standard buttons and the analog sticks. Another big selling feature for me is how easily it works on the pc without having to go out and get anything funky to plug it in (I assume ps3 works this way as well?)
Either way, gamecube was nice, but only because most of the better games on it uses few of the buttons. It was a nice system for its games, but it was not as versatile as the other controllers.
Thanks for saying this. I was going to but I figured someone would point out the obvious. IDDQD, IDKFA , up up down down left right left right ab select start, whatever. As a kid I never played civ without a money cheat pegged on. I played star control with unlimited fuel so I could fill the screen with ammo. I didn't learn to play those games "correctly". I saw the same content someone else who spent hours mastering contra did.
And you know what...
I don't care. I think it is really sad that people are upset that someone didn't learn how to beat a level in mario. Talk about asinine things to worry about. Single player game = fun the way you want, cheats or no.
If you want the game hard, play it hard. Every game can be played in a hard mode if you self limit yourself. If you CANT stop yourself from using the 'autoplay' feature, then you know what, stop lieing to yourself and everyone around you about wanting a challenge, because if you really wanted one, you wouldn't 'cheat'./grumble grumble at people worrying about "today's youth". You know what, you guys all sound like your freaken parents. Seriously when they told you the worlds going to crap, and you rolled your eyes, and you turned out fine, now as you get older the younger generation isn't like ours, and boo freaken who, the world is going to shit, kids these days!! Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to becoming your parents.
I strongly agree with you in it's gimmicky feel. I think the same way as you right now with the demos they show for this type of thing.
But I can't help but feel that we just haven't seen a 'killer ap' for this kind of technology. I don't think it should be discarded entirely. I could see this type of tech being used instead as a different user experience rather then practical.
I could see perhaps in a store where there is a local network with the DB of store items, and every item on the shelf has a 'marker' of some sort. Point your phone at the marker and it fetches the content from the DB and gives you the extra information about the product you are looking at.
That is still gimmicky, but, I don't think it is necessarily a tech to dismiss right away, but yeah, the uncalled for excitement people have definitely should be shut down.
When we have "Augmented Reality" headsets my wife and I can wear so I look like jonny depp and she looks like megan fox, then we're talking;)
I credit this game and the Battle of Brittan one before its game manual as one of the best of all time. I was pretty young when it came out but I spent a lot of time reading that book learning about WWII and aerial maneuvers. Amazing game, lots of fond memories of it!
I've never understood the appeal of getting through the cracks of the terrain map. When I play a game the best views I find are the ones the artists created for me to see. Dropping through a crack and looking up under the terrain mesh is, well, like looking at it in a level editor. All the work, art, and trickery that immersed me in the game world is undone, and I'm reminded I'm looking at a video game.
I think the rabid defending of pvp and terms like carebear has to do with people meta gaming within a game, living by some 'code of honor'. I've seen that kind of stuff in multiplayer games over the year just destroy game after game.
It is odd, it is like a segment of the community who can't handle the mechanics of the game as intended by the developer decided to invent their own variation of rules to make it easier for them.
When I played warcraft 2, people complained about rushing. OMG it is so lame to get attacked by grunts. Most experienced players would deal with this, and what would be a 5 min game vs an inexperienced player turns into a 45 min epic fight. But wait, people don't like getting knocked out in 5 minutes, so, rather then getting better and dealing with rushing, they invent ogre rules. ONLY ATTACK WHEN YOU HAVE OGRES!! Meta gaming within the game you are playing.
When I played jedi outcast I would join FFA servers. This gamestyle is a competition for the most kills. It resulted in what I like to call 'frag pits' of people swinging all the f over the place. Kill as fast as possible by any means to top the frag chart. Then one day, people started running around with their saber turned off. Natrually you jump and kill these people asap to boost your frag count.
Suddenly you see "OMG YOU HAVE NO HONOR WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!!! REAPY IS ATTACKIGN ME WITH MY SABER DOWN!!!!!"
At first it was just complainers. Shrug, what is wrong with him? No honor, he wants to just duel. There is a duel server time, this is an ffa! Pretty soon though, it was next to impossible to find a ffa server, that was ffa! Meta rules. My saber is down don't attack me! I just want to play this one aspect of the game!
When I was in elementary school we used to play a game called 4 square. The game was a grid of 4 squares. The point was to let a kickball bounce in your square, then hit it to another square, who would let it bounce once then hit it to another. You get out if it hits your square and you dont hit it back, you hit it out, or a ball hit at you strikes you before bouncing. As someone gets knocked out everyone moves up a square, with 4 square being in charge.
I played it well enough in elementary school, and despite not having many friends and basically having most kids gang up to try to get me out, I figured out the tactics they used and were able to stay alive despite the odds. Well I moved to another school and they played here, but, all of a sudden the game changed.
First it was 'backstops', I could let the ball bounce once, then set myself up by hitting it gently into my square then slamming it into another square. Then later on people created rules that basically allowed players to pick the ball up and throw it into someone elses square to get them out.
Granted this is all kid stuff, but it destroyed the fun of the game. People couldn't contend with not winning in the ruleset, so they changed the rules to their advantage.
Most of these outcries, especially about PVP rpg games, just non stop call people griefers who beat them. That is what it ultimately comes down to, I just got beat by another person, let me think of some xyz "cheap" tactic he used but I refuse to learn to defend against it in the game. Posts like this pop up all over the place.
A long time ago someone coined this game phenomenon and called these people 'scrubs'. Look up the articles by 'sirlin' about competitive street fighter. He said it so long ago but it applies to almost all forms of gaming.
So when people yell GRIEFER!! and say there is something wrong with a person for utterly defeating them over and over again, it is a sad sad reminder of this 'everyone is a winner' philosophy that seems to be getting more and more prevalent in our society.
Everything in wow can be dealt with. Firstly, you either flagged yourself for pvp or joined a special ruleset server. So complaining about any form of world pvp is stupid in itself. It is like joining an ice hockey league and being pis
100% agreed. FFT's story was great. The leveling/combat system was great. I am probably biased since this was my first "tactics" style game I had played (were there ever really any of the same vein before it? ). Either way, the story really stands out in my mind, it was very complex and took you all over the place, and damn, did a lot of people end up dead. This game and Bushido blade 2 are the only ps1 games I still take out and play every now and then.
I bought a GB even though I hate portable gaming just to try FFTA and was super disappointed. I just cant buy a race with bunny ears, (f you too ff12). I even debated getting a psp just to try out the remake, but not worth it for just one game.
Taking this a step farther, with this kind of control you could take a wii fit game to a whole new level. Why learn just sword fighting? Why not learn yoga, thai chi, kendo, karate or any kind of martial arts? Imagine the awesome feedback the game could give you while going through the motions in the living room in terms of getting your body in the right position.
Besides that, I think that the game could do a lot of cool little gimmicky things that would be fun to play. Think of having a football throwing game where you can toss it down field for people to catch. Or some sort of wrestling game where you can do little gestures and basically beat the crap out of someone. Imagine you having your hands over your head IRL and in game you are holding up some 375lb dude and you throw your arms down and body slam him. Or doing a 'throwing' gesture to get the guy moving and then clothslining him on his way back. Done right, that could be pretty awesome.
Finally, I could see this as a really great hybrid controller. If you sit and play with your traditional controller, but at points in the game you stick an arm up and make a 'mouse' gesture to cast a spell. Sort of like black and white, except not sucking. An rpg / spell casting game could be really immerse if you add in elements like this.
Heck, even a mirrors edge style game, where you jump long distance, then you use your actual arms to position the character's arms to hook on to a building ledge or something. Shrug, it has potential, a lot more then the wii mote will let you get away with (if the tech demo is accurate).
But yeah, jumping around the living room kicking and flailing at stuff is just a bad, bad idea for a game. Even their painting thing is pretty lame. But the idea of being able to use your limbs to accurately move a character around has lots of potential.
It just goes to show that no one modded this up that the "everyone is right" opinions are frowned upon here. It's only when you type an inflammatory comment on one side or the other that you get attention (I find this applies to life in general as well )
For example, if you had said, VI is for real men, you bunch of faeries who use IDE's couldn't code your way out of a box, you might have got +5 informative.
You can't say stuff like, IDE's are great if you take the time to learn them and configure them, but sometimes they are overkill for small projects. Or things like, VI is great for me because I've worked with it for 20 years and there is no sense in me learning dvorak, er an IDE at this point.
Oh no, stick with the arguments, either list your 1000 tools your IDE has, or tell everyone they are morons for needing all the help. Hey, little girl, you want some water wings to help you get across the pool too?
Totally agree here. I unfortunately never really got a great education in terms of debugger use and had always stuck to print statements while in school. When I got out in the work world, I asked some of the other people how they debug and most of them just used print statements too. I thought they were just too old school to know how to use the 'new' tools (ha).
Seven years later I never use a debugger:( I used it a week or so ago when I was helping someone debug their code. I didn't know the code so just said stop it here and check stuff, and sure enough we found the error. I couldn't tell him what to try to print out since I didn't know what to try to print out.
When it's my stuff though, I'm not writing long term executing stuff, I can usually get right to the 'crash point' in a few seconds, so I just put a print in where I want to double check stuff, but for the most part, if you just look at the error, you know exactly what to fix.
I usually just build incrementally, just have a ton of milestones and check it as you go, so when you run into an error you know it's in the latest block of stuff you added in, and it is pretty easy to pinpoint what the error is, then just READ the code and figure it out.
Code is just a bunch of instructions, you just have to go back and look at your logic, you don't need to stop it and see that i is 15 right before your array out of bound exception error, you need to look and say, oh, i typed = when I needed in the for loop.
I like this debate that is going on here, but really it is just your standard apples to oranges. As they always say there is a proper tool for a job, find the right tool and use it.
I don't like IDE's since I write many small code projects. I never learned what all the extra files an IDE creates actually does, and I hate having things I don't need all over the place. I work on windows, and use ultraedit and a dos window I alt tab over to and build.
I like how and IDE does have the nice double click right to the error line functionality, but honestly hate the screen real estate it takes up. I prefer to alt tab over to see errors, and like the code itself to take up as much screen space as possible. I finally got a second monitor here and it's great, i have the command window on the other screen and I can have ultraedit take up the whole main monitor. I have a list of files across the top of open windows. I don't have to look at the whole project all the time, so if I am only working with 2 files, I have ONLY those 2 open, so when I move between them I just ctr tab I'm right there, even visually this is easier for me to pick from 4 files i'm working on rather then 15 that might be in the project.
I just have trouble wrapping my brain around a large amount of things and for me anything I can do to narrow down my vision on a project, I do it, so having everything separated out really helps me work faster, since I have to do less hunt and peck to find things.
See, if I was working on a larger apps... if the build time was in minutes and not seconds, if the bug I was looking for occurred after several minutes of run time, you bet your sweet ass I would want to work with a good IDE and would take the time to learn it.
But yeah, 10000 line programs, meh, text editor, "reading the code" debugging, and then print statements if needed, gets things done for me pretty quickly. It is just what you are comfortable with, and if it works, why try to fix it?
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I think that is pretty much my idea of an ideal marriage, and is how my wife and i exist as well. Like anything, open communication and giving each other space are keys to co existing. That is really the only trick, being respectful to one another, not making your partner cease activities they previously enjoyed before the marriage, and being honest about things. I find that every few years my wife and I have had to re evaluate our relationship and talk it out.
We have had some tough issues to work through, but the times we have suffered for it are when we both internalize and step well clear of our trouble area and stick to the easy, fun places. Every time we pick at the sore, sometimes we get into heated words, but at the end of those nights are usually when we are closest, and have taken huge strides to eliminating the sores, all of which would have grown worse if we had let them sit and fester.
But that's pretty much life. In my opinion marriage is a pretty unrealistic promise. I got married at 24, and here I am, telling someone how things are going to be between us for another 50+ years (hopefully). That was twice as long as I've exist, and even less years that I was 'aware' of the world. A lot can happen to change a person in a year, or even a month, how can you realistically predict that you will still love each other in 50 years? You can't, you can only be optimistic about it and commit to trying.
And lets be realistic... how interesting is one person for years and years down the line? I think over time they become a rock that you need/use to weather the storm together, but you've been clinging it to it for so long you know every nook and cranny. It has the comfort of home and familiarity, but everybody likes to travel for a few weeks at a time. Marriage is in a sense battling against our nature. I know some couples have worked that out, but still... it's a losing battle.
I think many people don't take the time to at least establish a solid, realistic foundation for their marriage, and instead get caught up in the fact that our society sort of pushes out this idea that there is something wrong if you are 30+ and not married. I think people get wrapped up in the idea that they need to be married and have this happily ever after ending, they don't stop and take a real hard look at how each person treats each other in the relationship.
Long term relationships are HARD. Look at your family, its great and sad all at the same time, right? Not easy, but all you can do is keep talking to each other, let each other have a little bit of space, and keep interested in one another, and hopefully, it'll stretch out over the years.
I actually really hate those ads. I don't mind the brand advertisement all over the game for the boxing gear you get, it is a boxing game afterall. But those sidebars of low res, horribly designed ads on the left and right of the screen between rounds floating in space is jarring and pulls you right out of the game immersion. It makes their UI look like a piece of shit instead of something designed by a professional. Hell the main EA website doesn't even show those kinds of shitty ads. Last night while I was getting the shit pounded out of me by some ai boxer with 100 in ever stat, I had to look at a dumb ass skull and crossbone, text 5555 TO GET THIS ON YOUR PHONE!!!!! ads.
I hate it, they don't belong, and it's total bullshit. I MIGHT, MIGHT tolerate shit like this if the game is not 60 dollars full price. But it is, so...get those fucking JARRING ads out of your games.
I agree 100% and I have no clue why anyone would buy a kindle after spending 5 seconds looking at the way the device is set up. I saw a friend's kindle and thought it was amazing, then I asked about how it works.
Digital distribution is one thing, but digital distribution where you don't exclusively control the device upon which your digital copy is stored? Who would spend money on a broken model like that? Things EXACTLY like in this article were bound to happen.
Holy crap, best game ever. I think I spent more time in the track edit mode then actually driving the insane creations I put together. Great game.
Because it is annoying when dev's try to cram an RTS or RPG game into a console control scheme and release it on the pc. I usually grab EA sports games and beat em ups for consoles and rts, rpg's, and strat games for the pc. It is annoying to play a game with the 'wrong' control scheme. It would be like trying to play god of war with a mouse and keyboard, it just won't work.
To answer you without the jaded commentary:
When they do cross platform development, the console player is working with a 1024x768 fixed screen, and the 'standard' controller layout. The PC resolution and control can be the same joystick as the console, the keyboard, or some crazy flight stick. It can be anything.
Naturally they have to design the UI and controls towards the more limited area, the console.
What this means is that in general, the UI's fonts are bigger and take up much more screen area then a standard pc game would. The amount of inputs are limited on the controller, so UI's tend to have more 'flip' screens then a controller.
IMHO the biggest offense was in Oblivion. On most pc games, pressing I brings you to your inventory instantly. In oblivion the best you could do is press a key to take you to the sub-menu with 4 different screens. So if you were looking at your INV last it is up first, but if you were in say the map, the map would come up, so you needed to locate the inv icon and press it in addition.
Very easily they could have added a key binding to "i" for that menu screen, but they didn't and left the console 'flip' menus. On top of this, moving things in and out just wasn't as fluid as it could have been with pc, instead the whole system is constrained by what you can easily do with a joypad, not a mouse and keyboard.
Another thing you don't see too often on console games is drag and drop functionality. It is just not an easy to do thing with the analog sticks, consequently, they don't think to place it in the pc version.
Console port's UI's also don't behave as you would expect on a PC. Example might be when you move the stick, or press keys, it highlights which menu item you are on. If you move the mouse, the button doesn't light up on mouse over.
Either way, it is frustrating to a PC gamer who has had years of UI's tailored to their system, only to grab these console ports where you pretty much want to just plug a 360 controller in your pc and play it that way rather then wrestling with some tacked on keybindings that 'kinda sorta' feel like they would with the joystick.
I know people say this all the time but I'm similar to you. But you know what, that is our fault as an old foggie. I was going to say watch "kids" but these kids are really all in college and graduating now a days, who grew up starting with n64 and xbox. Halo was HUGE and set the standard for console FPS control. To them, snapping a headshot with a joystick with NO autoaim is just as easy as it would be for us with a mouse and keyboard ( well not easy for me with the m+kb).
I actually had a very difficult time in quake. I tried to play online like I played doom, my hands crammed around the arrow keys, using to straf, thinking I was elite for having those key bindings. My first game, I had to aim up to a ledge to shoot someone, and tried to do so with page up lol.
Although painful, I had to train myself into the m+kb. The only thing I could liken it too was playing daggerfall using the mouselook sometimes, or a flight simulator. I think that is the reason that I used to have to play inverted.
In some sense controlling with the a controller is easier. I have a tendency to dip my mouse crosshairs low as I walk, meaning to shoot someone quickly, I have to bring the cross up a bit to the head level, then shoot, plenty of time to miss. On a console it is much easier for me to leave the aim part at around head level, and I tend to think a head about where to aim when entering corners since it is hard for me to move the aim. With the mouse I don't think too much about where to aim since I can get the mouse there so fast, but that fraction of a second can make a big difference.
I think objectively the mouse is better then a right analog stick as it allows finer and more configurable movement. But I will give the left analog stick as a more flexible 'walk' control then asdw.
Ultimately it is what you grew up with though. What you first put your hands on is what ends up feeling 'natural' to you, while the other, awkward.
I kind of have the opposite view. I hate the trend in multiplayer lately that EVERY game is co op in some way shape or form. WoW is actually well balanced between solo content and group content. Beating dungeons and tough bosses as a group is fun. Most of the new content being developed is for groups and cooperative play.
I want some more solo - multiplayer games. I miss quake FFA style servers, where you shoot everything that moves. Now a days there are 2 teams and half the player on a server you cant shoot at. I miss subspace with 80 people to lob bombs at rather then 1. Some days I just want to zone into a mindless killfest after work. You can't really do that as much online now a days.
There seem to be certain formats you see now a days for multiplayer. I kind of agree though with the shaping of the formats.
*FFA - Very rare now a days. A shame, this mode is fun to relax in.
*2 teams vs each other. - Common as hell. But some varation now a days like left for dead with 4 players vs AI and players, or at least both teams being very different play experiences (splinter cell).
*Human vs AI co op ---Finally starting to see light of day. This way of playing is great esp when you have weaker players, when you are ALL on the same team everyone can have fun. I like this one a lot and hope to see a lot more of this play.
So let me talk a second about MMO PVP. I love PVP, I enjoyed shadowbane, and look forward to trying DFO when it gets us servers and has had a lil bit of patch time. But man, let me say, PVP in an MMO sucks.
For it to be even a reasonably interesting game, it needs to have either no levels (ala quake or even just small like cod4), or a skill system. And by skill system I mean that as you level up you increase versatility, not lethality. What I mean is that at level 1 I can hit you as hard with a sword as anybody else, but that is all I can do. At level 50 you have 100 other ways to kill me. This makes for an interesting game for all players.
Second, in the MMO format, without doing these instanced or set up 'arcade' battlegrounds, you never get an even fight. "World pvp" is fun because it is random and silly, but as a day and day again format it doesnt hold up. First, you have a huge world, where is everybody? You could walk all day back and forth and keep missing each other. Next, group balance. Pretty next to impossible to maintain balance between 1v1, 2v2, 1v15 combat. Which leads into...world style pvp is often a gank fest. Most fights are always hugely unbalanced, 15 players run up and gank 5. While that playstyle is fun, its not as fun as an even set up game.
It is sort of like why we play games. We have fun with them because we are all constrained by the same ruleset, and one team manages to work the rules better with their strategy and end up winning. In the 'world pvp' style it can be very much like the end of wargame. You know that point you hit in your strat game where you made all the right moves, now it is just a matter of time before you win. Except in an MMO it was usually someone else playing the overall strat game, and you are on either landslide winning or losing side, and are just along for the ride.
If a dev puts a way to spring back, often it then takes away the fun of having played the strat game correctly. Great, I can make all the right moves and overwhelm them, but as soon as I do that they push the I win button and heave back.
Honestly, the design implications for making a 'fun' mmo pvp game is hard as hell. And the sad part is there is not a big audience for it.
Cause you know why? The majority of gamers do not want to play another human. Humans are HARD. When you play people unless you are VERY GOOD, your win % is slightly above 50%. When you play AI you usually ride 75% up winning (made up stats but is an in general), and guess like, people like to win.
Maybe that's my jaded psychology, but when I find a game I like, I play, get a little better then average, then either buddy up with the other good players or steer clear of the, cause you know what, at the end of the day, I just want to relax, not get owned in the face and teabagged in my limited spare time. Dev's know this, and the mulitplayer games that have come out this past decade reflect it.
One thing I'm curious about, have they released the artwork, models, animations etc for this game? I am not sure if there is a large library of nicely developed/organized stuff like this out there to say use in your own game. I have myself finally started trying to write my own game in XNA, and while XNA really helps a newbie with the game logic, the "art" that i'm putting on the screen is just plain terrible.
Artwork has kinda been what's stopped me from figuring out game programming. While I know for me all the programming hurdles were something I could overcome and understand, I just can't train my hand to move in a straight line and look at the world correctly to flatten it and make it on paper. I can make your typical 'programmer art', ie use computer drawing prorgrams to their full extent, but nothing makes up for the artist's eye for color, composition and plain ol drawing experience.
I like how this game looks, and would be phenomenal to have a library of RTS models with their own animations and UV maps.
I think tossing out LAN sucks for the same reason I don't like paying for xbox live or the fact I was annoyed at half life 2 and steam verification.
But look at the reality. Firstly, there will be a battle.net emulator in some capacity that you will be able to download on your network and play. No question. With a game this popular, someone will make it. Problem solved.
Second, as has been mentioned before, sc2 is peer to peer. Though, I am not 100% certain this is going to work behind a nat. I'm not 100% certain how nat works over your router, while everyone is 192.168.1.100 and .101 etc, battle.net might only know you as your router's ip address and not what is behind it... though, if the packets going out are routed right to your buddies nat ip, ie you are on .100 and packet is going to .101, I'm pretty sure the router is not going to send the packet along on the next hop towards blizzard, but instead back into your lan to your buddy. If that is the case, the only thing that happened is online authentication, enough that a modem could probably handle 15 people easily.
But again, if not is hiding the internal ip and blizz only sees the router ip for every person, maybe the routing will not work so hot.
*shrug* either way, the problem will get fixed, by someone. And trust me, if you still like a game enough to want to play it 10 years later, there will be a nice 'click me once to play' package someone has made out there.
I think it goes beyond matching the chassis, and really gives you something to identify mechs in the multiplayer.
Pardon me while I butcher what mechs were (been a while), but say if I saw, what was it, the nova? walking over the hill, chances are it has 7 erlarge lasers on it and was going to alpha burst me. Or maybe I saw a diasii and he fired 3 gause cannons at me, I probaly know what kind of loadout he is sporting now.
Or what about the thor, I knew it has a giant ballistic arm, so I knew there might be a giant uac loaded down on it, take out that arm or keep my distance. If someone had a catapult out around max range, chances are it was missle boat coming at me.
In older mechs, you had 50 guns stuck on the legs and torso and never put any weapons on the arms, just disposable parts cause you knew they'd get blown off easily. Sure you saw a dire wolf coming over the little ega mountain there, but you'd have no clue what the hell was on it, depended on the player, not the mech. It really didn't matter what mech was coming at you then, only the player. Boring.
Hardpoints are great, they give the mech character due to the limited load out (otherwise whats the difference between a mech besides visuals and tonage? ), and they curb 'munchkin' building SOMEWHAT, at least enough that if you wanted to snipe or get in their face, or be a laser boat, or missile boat, you had several options, but had to conform to certain mechs. Meaning, there was a REASON to take certain mechs over another. Much better then just pick any random mech in your desire tonage and using the same configuration.
Just reading this thread and his article I pretty much have summed this guy up. Smart ass troll. I should know, I am a smart ass by trade, and I can smell my own kind. The guy is trying to deliver the kind of BS I love to deliver on people with a smile on my face to be funny.
I think what brings this guy to a new level is that COH is not really too popular of an MMO, so it is easy to buy into his distortion of his 'research' when you do not understand the particulars of PVP or the in game culture of it in regards to his tactics.
It is one thing if the guy is going around the zone and straight out killing chatting villans, it is another to sit in a safe zone and tp people in to get killed by invulnerable guards while they take EXP loss. Further, it is almost unethical to persist in his 'research' after it is very apparent that other players do not appreciate his violation of the social norms.
A few polite inquiries to the guy said, hey, just so you know this is how things work here, people on your side and on the other side don't play like that, please stop. He doesnt stop. People try to us in game methods to stop him, but due to game mechanics the only way to stop him is when he is bored and logs off for the night. Then it is just plain out hate, oh look, here comes this jackass again.
Once people are plain out annoyed at you and what you are doing, what kind of research are you conducting? Hey, if i piss people off, people threaten me! I am shocked, shocked I say! Watch that video, look how old the guy is, he doesn't know by now that if you log into a game with the sole intention of spending all time there wrecking other player's time, people wont like you? What the hell?
This is not like camping in quake was. This is real EXP loss due to finding a loophole in the dev design. Obviously the devs do not want you to lose EXP for pvp since you don't lose it for 'normal' pvp, but hey, this guy found a way to really twist the knife when he kills players. The fact that his tactics got patched out of the game just goes to show how far he was from 'playing the game by the rules'. The devs themselves, by patching out the tactic said that it is not fun game play and shouldn't be there.
It is the same reason that MMO's have health and mana. When that runs out you are in trouble, it is an interesting gameplay mechanic. If you find a way to never lose health and mana, the game isn't very fun anymore. The only reason this jackass kept it up night after night was because he enjoyed pissing people off.
I could even analyze further that he gets such pleasure from angering people because he never figured out how to get people to like him for better qualities, and he found the only way he could get a reaction out of people was to insult them, rather then befriend them. The man probably doesn't have the capacity to do that.
Either way, as long as this paper isn't taken seriously by anybody, alls the well, but I would hate to see someone duped into thinking this man is a serious researcher in any way, shape, or form.
I played heavily in the 1.2 patch. I know with successive patches the saberist became more vulnerable, but for myself I enjoyed playing heavily with the saber out in FFA styles. I agree with the main poster about the community. At first, the whole 'honor' thing wasn't that crazy, just one odd ball or two per server. I think the patching is what really killed the game off, ending up with only honor RPG style servers.
For myself I loved to jump into the FFA pits and often came out leading kill counts by +20 or so on random servers, it was great fun. The game itself was very balanced with all the weapons, each with their place. I primarily got most of my kills with the saber, since heavy swings and the DFA attack (they needed to remove the air swivel with that, little OP ) would kill someone very fast.
For blaster shots you could face the person in light stance and reflect or block almost everything coming in at you. Vs the blue ball gun (forget the names) you could force push one ball back and then you had to evade behind a wall or out of range since they could fire faster then you could push.
Fletchet gun was deadly against you, if they were spamming grenades you can push them away and evade. If they fired the flack at you, you had to get out of the way. Rockets were no problem force push them back on them. Sniper was pretty easy, force vision if you were feeling perky, but mostly just moving fast and keeping your saber out would block the shot.
The real ones to worry about were repeater balls and fletchet spam. When this came at you, you just had to evade and get behind a wall or close to them. From that point you just roll in on them and force pull, grabbing the weapon right out of their hands. At that point you could just turn and fire on them or saber them to death.
I think combined with force heal being a bit OP as well, you could almost stay alive forever. If they were shooting you down a hall way you just back up around the corner, heal up, then come at them with force speed + protect and then pull the weapon out of their hands, and from there they are confused and need to swap up weapons, giving you plenty of time to control the situation and end it.
But anyway, I agree, saber dueling was one of the best parts of the game, but for me, so was standing out in the open with my saber being able to counter almost every weapon thrown at me from the corners.
What's really sad is that blizzard used to be your buddies. Anyone remember "spawned" copies of war2 and diablo? They would install just the multiplayer component of the game so you could play with your friends on a lan without needing your own cd key? How far we have fallen. :(
Gamecube is decent, but the game really has to be tailored to the controller to work well. Combos like b + x or y or the z button really become awkward. I also disliked the huge shoulder buttons as they took a lot of weight to push in, and usually resulted in cramped fingers for me after playing games like rogue squadron where I had to keep the button depressed for a long while.
I liked the dual shock ones when they came along, just for having the analog sticks there, but later came to like the xbox's analog stick placement.
The 360 controller has come to be my favorite (though i have yet to touch the ps3 one), though I would prefer that they flatten the tops of the buttons a bit so they don't hurt my fingers during long play sessions where you might be aggressively pressing them. The dpad gets the job done too, though I do like the playstation style d pad a lot.
I like having the bumper buttons available to hit with a different feel then the trigger in addition to the standard buttons and the analog sticks. Another big selling feature for me is how easily it works on the pc without having to go out and get anything funky to plug it in (I assume ps3 works this way as well?)
Either way, gamecube was nice, but only because most of the better games on it uses few of the buttons. It was a nice system for its games, but it was not as versatile as the other controllers.
Thanks for saying this. I was going to but I figured someone would point out the obvious. IDDQD, IDKFA , up up down down left right left right ab select start, whatever. As a kid I never played civ without a money cheat pegged on. I played star control with unlimited fuel so I could fill the screen with ammo. I didn't learn to play those games "correctly". I saw the same content someone else who spent hours mastering contra did.
And you know what...
I don't care. I think it is really sad that people are upset that someone didn't learn how to beat a level in mario. Talk about asinine things to worry about. Single player game = fun the way you want, cheats or no.
If you want the game hard, play it hard. Every game can be played in a hard mode if you self limit yourself. If you CANT stop yourself from using the 'autoplay' feature, then you know what, stop lieing to yourself and everyone around you about wanting a challenge, because if you really wanted one, you wouldn't 'cheat'. /grumble grumble at people worrying about "today's youth". You know what, you guys all sound like your freaken parents. Seriously when they told you the worlds going to crap, and you rolled your eyes, and you turned out fine, now as you get older the younger generation isn't like ours, and boo freaken who, the world is going to shit, kids these days!! Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to becoming your parents.
I strongly agree with you in it's gimmicky feel. I think the same way as you right now with the demos they show for this type of thing.
But I can't help but feel that we just haven't seen a 'killer ap' for this kind of technology. I don't think it should be discarded entirely. I could see this type of tech being used instead as a different user experience rather then practical.
I could see perhaps in a store where there is a local network with the DB of store items, and every item on the shelf has a 'marker' of some sort. Point your phone at the marker and it fetches the content from the DB and gives you the extra information about the product you are looking at.
That is still gimmicky, but, I don't think it is necessarily a tech to dismiss right away, but yeah, the uncalled for excitement people have definitely should be shut down.
When we have "Augmented Reality" headsets my wife and I can wear so I look like jonny depp and she looks like megan fox, then we're talking ;)
I credit this game and the Battle of Brittan one before its game manual as one of the best of all time. I was pretty young when it came out but I spent a lot of time reading that book learning about WWII and aerial maneuvers. Amazing game, lots of fond memories of it!
I've never understood the appeal of getting through the cracks of the terrain map. When I play a game the best views I find are the ones the artists created for me to see. Dropping through a crack and looking up under the terrain mesh is, well, like looking at it in a level editor. All the work, art, and trickery that immersed me in the game world is undone, and I'm reminded I'm looking at a video game.
I think the rabid defending of pvp and terms like carebear has to do with people meta gaming within a game, living by some 'code of honor'. I've seen that kind of stuff in multiplayer games over the year just destroy game after game.
It is odd, it is like a segment of the community who can't handle the mechanics of the game as intended by the developer decided to invent their own variation of rules to make it easier for them.
When I played warcraft 2, people complained about rushing. OMG it is so lame to get attacked by grunts. Most experienced players would deal with this, and what would be a 5 min game vs an inexperienced player turns into a 45 min epic fight. But wait, people don't like getting knocked out in 5 minutes, so, rather then getting better and dealing with rushing, they invent ogre rules. ONLY ATTACK WHEN YOU HAVE OGRES!! Meta gaming within the game you are playing.
When I played jedi outcast I would join FFA servers. This gamestyle is a competition for the most kills. It resulted in what I like to call 'frag pits' of people swinging all the f over the place. Kill as fast as possible by any means to top the frag chart. Then one day, people started running around with their saber turned off. Natrually you jump and kill these people asap to boost your frag count.
Suddenly you see "OMG YOU HAVE NO HONOR WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!!! REAPY IS ATTACKIGN ME WITH MY SABER DOWN!!!!!"
At first it was just complainers. Shrug, what is wrong with him? No honor, he wants to just duel. There is a duel server time, this is an ffa! Pretty soon though, it was next to impossible to find a ffa server, that was ffa! Meta rules. My saber is down don't attack me! I just want to play this one aspect of the game!
When I was in elementary school we used to play a game called 4 square. The game was a grid of 4 squares. The point was to let a kickball bounce in your square, then hit it to another square, who would let it bounce once then hit it to another. You get out if it hits your square and you dont hit it back, you hit it out, or a ball hit at you strikes you before bouncing. As someone gets knocked out everyone moves up a square, with 4 square being in charge.
I played it well enough in elementary school, and despite not having many friends and basically having most kids gang up to try to get me out, I figured out the tactics they used and were able to stay alive despite the odds. Well I moved to another school and they played here, but, all of a sudden the game changed.
First it was 'backstops', I could let the ball bounce once, then set myself up by hitting it gently into my square then slamming it into another square. Then later on people created rules that basically allowed players to pick the ball up and throw it into someone elses square to get them out.
Granted this is all kid stuff, but it destroyed the fun of the game. People couldn't contend with not winning in the ruleset, so they changed the rules to their advantage.
Most of these outcries, especially about PVP rpg games, just non stop call people griefers who beat them. That is what it ultimately comes down to, I just got beat by another person, let me think of some xyz "cheap" tactic he used but I refuse to learn to defend against it in the game. Posts like this pop up all over the place.
A long time ago someone coined this game phenomenon and called these people 'scrubs'. Look up the articles by 'sirlin' about competitive street fighter. He said it so long ago but it applies to almost all forms of gaming.
So when people yell GRIEFER!! and say there is something wrong with a person for utterly defeating them over and over again, it is a sad sad reminder of this 'everyone is a winner' philosophy that seems to be getting more and more prevalent in our society.
Everything in wow can be dealt with. Firstly, you either flagged yourself for pvp or joined a special ruleset server. So complaining about any form of world pvp is stupid in itself. It is like joining an ice hockey league and being pis
100% agreed. FFT's story was great. The leveling/combat system was great. I am probably biased since this was my first "tactics" style game I had played (were there ever really any of the same vein before it? ). Either way, the story really stands out in my mind, it was very complex and took you all over the place, and damn, did a lot of people end up dead. This game and Bushido blade 2 are the only ps1 games I still take out and play every now and then.
I bought a GB even though I hate portable gaming just to try FFTA and was super disappointed. I just cant buy a race with bunny ears, (f you too ff12). I even debated getting a psp just to try out the remake, but not worth it for just one game.
Still FFT is one of the best imho.
Taking this a step farther, with this kind of control you could take a wii fit game to a whole new level. Why learn just sword fighting? Why not learn yoga, thai chi, kendo, karate or any kind of martial arts? Imagine the awesome feedback the game could give you while going through the motions in the living room in terms of getting your body in the right position.
Besides that, I think that the game could do a lot of cool little gimmicky things that would be fun to play. Think of having a football throwing game where you can toss it down field for people to catch. Or some sort of wrestling game where you can do little gestures and basically beat the crap out of someone. Imagine you having your hands over your head IRL and in game you are holding up some 375lb dude and you throw your arms down and body slam him. Or doing a 'throwing' gesture to get the guy moving and then clothslining him on his way back. Done right, that could be pretty awesome.
Finally, I could see this as a really great hybrid controller. If you sit and play with your traditional controller, but at points in the game you stick an arm up and make a 'mouse' gesture to cast a spell. Sort of like black and white, except not sucking. An rpg / spell casting game could be really immerse if you add in elements like this.
Heck, even a mirrors edge style game, where you jump long distance, then you use your actual arms to position the character's arms to hook on to a building ledge or something. Shrug, it has potential, a lot more then the wii mote will let you get away with (if the tech demo is accurate).
But yeah, jumping around the living room kicking and flailing at stuff is just a bad, bad idea for a game. Even their painting thing is pretty lame. But the idea of being able to use your limbs to accurately move a character around has lots of potential.
Being social can be an addiction that can get you in a lot worse places then wow can.
It just goes to show that no one modded this up that the "everyone is right" opinions are frowned upon here. It's only when you type an inflammatory comment on one side or the other that you get attention (I find this applies to life in general as well )
For example, if you had said, VI is for real men, you bunch of faeries who use IDE's couldn't code your way out of a box, you might have got +5 informative.
You can't say stuff like, IDE's are great if you take the time to learn them and configure them, but sometimes they are overkill for small projects. Or things like, VI is great for me because I've worked with it for 20 years and there is no sense in me learning dvorak, er an IDE at this point.
Oh no, stick with the arguments, either list your 1000 tools your IDE has, or tell everyone they are morons for needing all the help. Hey, little girl, you want some water wings to help you get across the pool too?
Totally agree here. I unfortunately never really got a great education in terms of debugger use and had always stuck to print statements while in school. When I got out in the work world, I asked some of the other people how they debug and most of them just used print statements too. I thought they were just too old school to know how to use the 'new' tools (ha).
Seven years later I never use a debugger :( I used it a week or so ago when I was helping someone debug their code. I didn't know the code so just said stop it here and check stuff, and sure enough we found the error. I couldn't tell him what to try to print out since I didn't know what to try to print out.
When it's my stuff though, I'm not writing long term executing stuff, I can usually get right to the 'crash point' in a few seconds, so I just put a print in where I want to double check stuff, but for the most part, if you just look at the error, you know exactly what to fix.
I usually just build incrementally, just have a ton of milestones and check it as you go, so when you run into an error you know it's in the latest block of stuff you added in, and it is pretty easy to pinpoint what the error is, then just READ the code and figure it out.
Code is just a bunch of instructions, you just have to go back and look at your logic, you don't need to stop it and see that i is 15 right before your array out of bound exception error, you need to look and say, oh, i typed = when I needed in the for loop.
I like this debate that is going on here, but really it is just your standard apples to oranges. As they always say there is a proper tool for a job, find the right tool and use it.
I don't like IDE's since I write many small code projects. I never learned what all the extra files an IDE creates actually does, and I hate having things I don't need all over the place. I work on windows, and use ultraedit and a dos window I alt tab over to and build.
I like how and IDE does have the nice double click right to the error line functionality, but honestly hate the screen real estate it takes up. I prefer to alt tab over to see errors, and like the code itself to take up as much screen space as possible. I finally got a second monitor here and it's great, i have the command window on the other screen and I can have ultraedit take up the whole main monitor. I have a list of files across the top of open windows. I don't have to look at the whole project all the time, so if I am only working with 2 files, I have ONLY those 2 open, so when I move between them I just ctr tab I'm right there, even visually this is easier for me to pick from 4 files i'm working on rather then 15 that might be in the project.
I just have trouble wrapping my brain around a large amount of things and for me anything I can do to narrow down my vision on a project, I do it, so having everything separated out really helps me work faster, since I have to do less hunt and peck to find things.
See, if I was working on a larger apps... if the build time was in minutes and not seconds, if the bug I was looking for occurred after several minutes of run time, you bet your sweet ass I would want to work with a good IDE and would take the time to learn it.
But yeah, 10000 line programs, meh, text editor, "reading the code" debugging, and then print statements if needed, gets things done for me pretty quickly. It is just what you are comfortable with, and if it works, why try to fix it?