Agreed. Hated it starting with Quake 1. According to blizz, diablo 3 is trying to achieve the mood of the game through art direction, rather then all dark colors. From watching the artwork there, I agree they have captured it. My personal preference when gaming is to be drawn into a colorful, fun to look at world. I LIKE playing in bright happy colors.
What happened to Slashdot that this was modded insightful and not funny?
Seriously?
Why is everybody ripping on sl? Does nobody appreciate the "geek" factor of what it is? I keep up on news for it because the idea of it is awesome. A metaverse? A 3d browser? A place where someone can define a virtual world for me to walk around in? A place where I can go see a vision of people's ideal places to live? I can look at how people would portray themselves given no constraints (other then what content providers have made).
Sure, there are limitations, sure there is a metric ton of BAD content, but SL Works(TM). I can get in it for free, and do most everything except keep my shit on the ground 24-7.
I don't know why everybody is so hung up on what some of the user bases is doing there and not the potential that SL is. I mean seriously, is there ANYTHING like sl even in development? Croquet? I guess?
There is nothing in existence quite like it, and I find that reason enough to check beck every few months and see what they are doing.
And now open source simulator? Awesome, i was expecting Open SL Client or something, not a server!
As soon as they smooth out the server a bit with more dev time, I'm going to install and run one on my other computer. Then I'll spend time making random ass artificial life creatures that run around and do random shit.
You know, like that island Svarga in secondlife that has its own eco system programmed in by one guy where there are pollinating bees, clouds, plantlife growing in specific area, all in a closed system..
Or the fish, the one who created schools of fish that evolve certain genetic dispositions as they breed over time, flocking together and running from predators that also sustain themselves on the schools of fish.
While i'm at it, have you seen the giant cube that is a building with 4 dimmensions? Your buddy sits in one room, you walk left 4 times and come in the right side of the cube. You walk up or down, you eventually walk into the room upside down on some stairs.
There is shit like this all over secondlife. So why? What is the purpose of all this? Because its fucking geeky and fun. I can't belive NOBODY on this "NEWS FOR NERDS" is going to sit there like a bunch of football jocks and make fun of secondlife.
Seriously, why don't you stop posting on slashdot and do something cool like posting on your tech blog about how you were shocked and disgusted to find out that people like something different then you. (Ha you thought i'd say "go watch a football game, fooled you).
Seriously. I almost quit java forever when I had a class that had me hand writing it all out, just for the simple fact alone all the god damn class names were so long with 5 million.'s between them. System.out.println(" for fucking out put, jesus christ! And the names for window listeners and god knows what else. I was going to blow my brains out! I failed tests because my hand crampped up and I ran out of paper room writing stuff down.
Luckily years later I've now given java its due, and can see how it is an excellent tool for many jobs out there. But man, handwriting java is not for the faint of heart!
Excellent point which I think exactly sums up the problem described in the article in a way most of us can relate to.
I think the solution to the problem is the same I had when first using a GPS. I would miss turns, almost run a red light, turn too early, make turns down streets that I wouldn't normally drive down, all cause the gps was really distracting in its precision. Moreover, I missed lots of roadsigns, didn't have the same focus I did normally when trying to memorize where I'm going or pay attention to that innate direction sense we have that says, "I made 2 lefts, and i'm sort of paralleling that one road I was going down, so I can probably take a side street here and get back to it."
After a while, I learned how to use it properly, and ignore it most of the time. When I'm completely lost, it's a guide to get me out of a trap, and a guide to help me when I make a wrong turn to get me where I need to. Overall, it really makes my navigation a lot better, but I had to learn to continue using the tools I had, along with the GPS, to find a "better" way to navigate.
I think the same will be true with the upcoming army tools. Information overload, until we learn to naturally process out what is not relevant, and instantly find what is, and knowledge of the devices to know when to IGNORE what it is telling you to do.
Eventually over time the devices will have better algorithms, will know when to ignore data itself, and deliver the most pointed message to the user. It is like any new technology, we have to learn to incorporate it into our life, and the tool has to adapt to our uses over time.
And that, like anything, takes hard work! *guiltily goes back to work*
Ironically enough, I played every GTA up till vice city before I was aware you could "bang a prostitute", and only then from reading news articles about having sex with them and getting your money back by killing them. It's funny how there is so much sensationalism about such a SMALL part of the game.
I agree with what you say 100%, and while (looking at your sites linked) that lifestyle is not for me, I don't see why it has to be something so shocking. I mean what is upsetting is reading the number of comments so far about something like public nudity, all very insightful, about accepting something outside your comfort zone as long as it is not harmful, all ending with the "unless the guy's fat".
I mean, it's crazy, there is no escape from this. It is like the human prison. Everything has to look "THE SAME" or we flip out, and want to correct it. The sad part is how varied "THE SAME" can be from one place to the next. From one point in time to the next. This is ok in india. This is ok in my small town. That is ok in the large town next door.
Maybe we all find what is comfortable for us and move around to find it. You have the retreats you go to, where you are safe to be who you want to be. But what happens if the above poster you responded too wanted to come too, and he was a pretty public practitioner of something that bothers your group (mainstream religions?). You would almost feel the need to protect your safe haven, perhaps making laws. Then what if your group becomes the majority, and you have your own country?
You can see where I am going here. There really is no escape, is there? Something is always going to bother us no matter who we are. If we are tolerant of all things we'll definitely hate people who aren't tolerant. So maybe the only real solution is what we have here, a loose set of communities all living by their own standards, with a nice warm blanket of rules over us all to set the definite limit of what is acceptable or not (murder/rape etc). I guess our problem is to watch for when the blanket gets too heavy and overbearing and lighten it up.
No matter which way you spin it, someone or something is going to get oppressed.
You just have to think out what you are willing to do, and you won't be disillusioned at the end. I played wow way back, got to 60, ran 1 instance, saw that all I had to look forward to was minuscule gear upgrades (no bgs or pvp at the time) and doing the same thing over and over again, so I quit, having fully enjoyed my time playing. I just started again about 2 months ago, and now at 70, am doing some gear grinding and what not, because I find the experience more enjoyable this time around, esp playing with a few more friends. If the game gets too grindy for me, I just shut it off and do something else.
So, just be aware of how you are feeling at the game, and how much time you want to put into something, and as long as you aren't letting yourself get overwhelmed, no reason to look back with regret. I mean, it's fun to get so obsessed with something you don't want to even leave to go eat food. How often do we get into something that much? Not very. Enjoy it, just dont let it wreck every other part of your life:)
Agreed 100%. It's funny planetside messed itself up backwards. They gave you a perfect system to play in (early on anyways), and a horrible sandbox to play in. I think i quit solely based on the fact that every base looked the same, and then they rubber stamped the same 5 bases on every continent. Then they did a poor job having a reason for you to fight on all the nice terrain they made, so essentially they drew you in to be fighting over the same set of gray walls and corridors every time.
Sadly, all of my memories of that game involve getting from one combat to the next with my squad. The time we were all packed into a sunderer and a lone reaver picked us up, frantically on the guns trying to shoot him down while the driver swerved all over taking evasive action. Hot dropping into combat from a drop pod, and surging forward with the troops. Dropping from a galaxy with a bunch of other guys on top of a tower and fighting your way down for control. Even laying prone sniping outside a base, watching as a weakened galaxy lumbered overhead and landed for repairs, calling out its position, and watching your crew roll in and take him out while you sniped the driver.
If planetside had had a different base design for each continent, I would have played it WAYYYYYY longer then I did, like, A TON. It is so funny too, because most MMO's have beautiful landscapes and worlds to discover, but the game mechanics behind it get frustrating after a time. In planetside's case, the system was awesome, but the game world was stale and uninspired. Granted, the varied landscape of the continents was good, just, every fight brought you ultimately to the same base.
I think that is really the path to having a pvp game where you don't feel cheated out too much, leveling up == more utility.
Shadowbane with skills made me feel this way. I can max sword skill and hit like a max level, but I sure suck at other things. Same with planetside. I can use this one type of armor, and be a light vehicle driver. Later on I can drive my vehicle, hop out, put on a super max suit, and ground pound with the troops.
So again, leveling up == more versatility, rather then more power, tends to make me feel better about the style of the game i'm playing. Good ideas!
Because guitar is hard as fuck. Before I eventually got rock band (play drums all the time now ) I've had zero musical training, and had just bought a guitar and was trying to teach myself via videos/books whatever. All I ended up being able to do is play a few chords and bore myself trying to learn scales. So after a few months I could finally comfortably get into chord positions, and kinda sort switch in a second or two (not fast enough to play a song correctly), I still couldn't play ANYTHING I wanted to play. Every time I tried to get tabs, people would all be like, oh this song is easy, and it did look easy, and then I tried to play it, and I just did not have the hand speed to keep the rhythm of the song.
So guitar hero in 3 minutes i'm "playing" a song that I like. Real guitar, a few months in I just put the thing down out of frustration. I kinda half want to play the guitar, but I don't really want to take the years it would take to do it right.
Now, someone trying to learn guitar hero III on expert, i can see, maybe they should seriously think about picking up a real guitar, but if someone just wants to have a good time playing on med/hard difficulty, theres no sense in learning the real thing unless you want to.
I agree. I've found done right, micro transaction games work out. Usually you get an MMO environment you would be paying 15 a month for, for free. And often times you can stick around and play at the level you want for free. Then later if you want to be more competitive or do more, you pay for that access.
So I get to try the game for free, and if I really like it, I have no problem spending upwards of 40 - 50 dollars to unlock stuff, because normally i'd have payed that just to try it out in the first place!
I think the problem with innovating is the high cost of maintaining and designing an mmo. It is a very risky venture, and how do you successfully break the mmo forumla? I mean, most character based games work the same way, auto attack something. Use skills to make it more interesting. What next? Guild wars changed it up a bit in that you could instantly get into end game content and start trying new skill combos for free.
I honestly don't know what new thing an mmo could do. I felt like shadowbane was a huge step in the right direction for a different feeling mmo. The ffa pvp, city building, quick leveling (skill based so once you get 1 skill up high you can hurt high level players), and forcing you to join a guild past level 35 all lent itself to a very exciting, dynamic world, that you could participate in almost immediately. Unfortunately the tech wasn't there to keep it going.
Planetside also had huge potential. It has a great combat system going with the guns and vehicles available, but the developers forgot to build an interesting game world to play in, leading to boredom and repetition. There were perhaps 5 or so base types, stamped all over the game world. Instead of making the bases look different on each continent, all they did was add new landmasses and spread the player population out more. This was another mmo on the edge of being something great and unique that failed.
I wonder if mmo's can continue to look towards muds for examples? I remember reading about achea (sp?) mud's wonderful combat system and couldnt help but think it would be a very cool graphic game. I tried to get into the mud, but a mud requires too much attention to keep up with the scrolling text, and I can't shut the world out like that (even though that can be fun:) ).
My MMO flags are pointed towards darkfall online, hoping they can show me something new, but I have a feeling it is going to end up like shadowbane.
In the future if we ever get more bandwith, MMO's might play around and start to give us more action content, like when I swing my sword it will actually do some sort of collision detection, and I can roll and dodge between an ogres legs as he swings his big club at me.
I guess the more they can visualize and put in the players control what the stats are doing in an MMO, the more interesting it'll be. Nut that takes more and more bandwith and development time to be able to do that.
But hey, maybe one day we can both win the lottery, found our own mmo company, and make that unique mmo we are waiting for!
Seriously. I mean, it's OK to take 200 bucks and go out and shoot some guy and about 8 of his friends, all because some coked up dude told you to do it. If someone is going to have a problem with the game, shouldn't their first protest be the casual violence, and not "drunk driving"? Hell, the fact that you only get in a car by punching out some dude and/or using your gun to threaten them, and then steal it, is not a problem?
But MADD made a good move here. Because their name is in the papers, and therefore they are visible, getting their message out. If I were working for MADD, i'd have trolled to get the name out the same way they just did. It's a smart thing to do.
"AND ON TOP OF THAT I gave him his own room for electronics. He has a rack."
Jesus I hate people. Side rant. You GAVE him his own room? What, you two don't both work and pay for your house? If hes unemployed, ok, you can "GIVE" him a room. I am just so disgusted at the amount of men out there with this attitude that what they love to do, is something you need special permission to have a room for. I know a guy who is married, and loves nascar, he is "allowed" one god damn poster in the garage, and even then he gets comments about it. I don't understand how anyone can live like this. But, to each their own I guess.
I think the idea is that if the REST of the game is fun, and being a big powerful sorcerer is not something you need to do to have fun, it adds an element to the game world that makes it more believable. I mean part of the mmo problem is everybody wants to be different, but you really cant be, impossible to design it. This at least creates an element of mystery when you SEE a sorcerer in the game. Maybe the sorcerer won't live longer then 3 sec cause half the battlefield would swarm over him and kill him.
I guess what the grandparent is trying to say is, he would like to be in a world where there is some mystery and uniqueness. where there is something he CAN'T achieve, but it sure is cool to see it.
If you think this is lunatic behavior, then please take a long hard look at the billions of sports fans in the world, at music fans, any kind of fan. I doubt very many of them will be on the field making the plays, but it sure is fun to be a part of that team by watching. And hell, in the game, I probably always know that there is an EASY way for me to be a rock star, as opposed to rl where the path to superstardom is often closed due to bad genetics, before you even get a chance to have the skill to compensate.
But again, wow succeeds because the path to all the content in the game is open to most people, but I still think there is room for games that play out like the original poster suggested.
1. Keyboard 2. Mouse 3. High res display output. 4. Free networking. 5. Access to lots of odd ball interface devices. 6. Access to the game's files on hard drive. 7. Free games.
I agree with you up until the point that a game addicts me. This doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it used to, but once a game becomes something I want to come home and play over and over again for months, I really want to get into customizing it as much as possible, whether it be something a simple as grabbing screen shots, to finding/making a mod for it.
Even something as simple as modding the skin on your car in Forza is pretty hard to do compared to what you can do with a.tga file and photoshop. Instead you have to go through tons of menus and lists with the controller to change it up. Still possible to make nice designs, but not as easy as with the pc.
Another big one is roster updates for sports games. I have no doubt that on the pc I can find a roster update for most EA sports games to bring me to the current season of whatever sport I am in. I can't do this on the console without modding the hardware (to make it act more like a pc).
I guess the consoles are moving towards this trend, giving us just a tad more access to it then before, but there is still a long way to go.
I think each platform has its pluses and minuses. If you looked at my game library, you would see mostly action, sports, and console RPG style games in my console library, while my pc games are all mostly bioware style rpg, online fps, and rts/strategy games. While there is some cross over for the big name games, when I have a choice for platform, I'll split them out by the above categories.
No reason to get rid of one or the other yet, or ever.
My bank has an online pay where you select the date you want the bill to go out, so I pay the bill as soon as I get it, but the money doesn't leave my hands until the last possible moment it is due, kind of the best of both worlds I guess. I can always stop it if I need to, but I guess not having enough money for your monthly bills is a separate issue.
I agree, G15 is great when a game supports it. My two favorite uses of it include the clock for when I'm gaming so I can see that I actually need to get to bed on time (No clock on the wall in pc room) and the support for fraps so I can check my fps all the time without disturbing the picture.
There are even some miranda-im plug ins that show what people are chatting to you (so you can view while gaming) and I believe there is a teamspeak plug in that will show who is currently talking.
There are just a ton of little nifty features that fit perfectly into the need for info to view while glancing away from the screen for a moment, without taking up any real estate on screen. The macro support on the keyboard is also fantastic. All around the g15 is a great product for a gamer.
lol. That happened to us with the Boston song. By the end of the night we were like NOOO BOSTON!!! Every first random song was that. I figured something was wrong, and I went ahead and turned the machine off, then back on, and lo and behold, boston stopped coming up. I hope that that doesnt happen with persistence though, cause I'd hate to always play boston every first time we have a random song:)
Done right, sure. They can whore themselves out as much as they want, so long as the game play is fun. I don't really care if when I need health instead of drinking soda pop X, I get mountain dew. Whatever. Hell, what if in a level I got into a firefight inside a mcdonalds with huge mcdonalds advertisements all over the store. Cool.
Just don't do stuff like they did with fight night 3, like having the BK guy in my ring corner, or a dodge mini van as the sponsor for a boxing game. I thought it was cool with the under armor ads all over, sweet, fits the genera, but, no bk please.
So, target the ads, it'll make me like the product, instead of hating it. This would be good for game makers and advertisers.
The other thing to watch for is the "micropayment" items. As long as the micro item doesn't offer a crippling advantage to other players, i'm all for it, esp if the game is free. I really enjoyed sierra's freestyle basketball game they grabbed from a korean game maker, and the free game + micro payments for little stat boosts worked fine. I had no problem buying the game and a few items (about 25 bucks all together) after I had clocked like 30 hours in the thing as is without paying a cent.
We had first aid training in our gym class. It probably varies by school. But I have never had to use any of that training, nor encountered any situation where I could even watch it (thankfully), so any knowledge I had at the time is long gone. About all I can remember from the steps is to make sure the situation is safe before you go in yourself, and uh, if you are telling someone to do something, point at them and pick out specific people to help, rather hten saying "someone call 911" you point at a guy and go "you, call 911!". So, not much help I would be:(
But either way, our gym class had it for a week or two, where we got partners, practiced the (mock) rescue breathing, assumed cpr positions (yeah and by the way how do you expect hs guy to pay attention when you are giving a lecture while their attractive female partner is straddling their body...:( ), and we also had a cpr dummy to practice the real motions on.
Afterwards we had a test we had to take, going through the steps and demonstrating it to the teacher, who would then "free" us to go play something out in the main gym. If you did well enough the teacher was also offering to help you get a real certification for cpr rather then the "you passed" you got from him.
So, CPR training does exist in some schools, other's not. It all really depends on the high school, and, more importantly, who the teachers are.
The first way I heard of dwarf fortress was when I read about Boatmurdered. A bunch of forum goers pass around a game of dwarf fortress and write pretty hilarious stories about their time with the fort. It is a hilarious read, as well as pretty informative about what you can do in the game.
Another way this was handled was in the fire emblem games. In between missions you could save and load like normal. During the mission you could only "suspend" the game. Which meant it saved your game, then took you to the menu. When you loaded the game, it erased your suspended state. This way you have the difficulty, while also being able to stop instantly without losing progress. More games that use save points as check points in gameplay, should have this suspend option. Although it might just be for technical or time limitations that these features can't be added.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Hated it starting with Quake 1. According to blizz, diablo 3 is trying to achieve the mood of the game through art direction, rather then all dark colors. From watching the artwork there, I agree they have captured it. My personal preference when gaming is to be drawn into a colorful, fun to look at world. I LIKE playing in bright happy colors.
What happened to Slashdot that this was modded insightful and not funny?
Seriously?
Why is everybody ripping on sl? Does nobody appreciate the "geek" factor of what it is? I keep up on news for it because the idea of it is awesome. A metaverse? A 3d browser? A place where someone can define a virtual world for me to walk around in? A place where I can go see a vision of people's ideal places to live? I can look at how people would portray themselves given no constraints (other then what content providers have made).
Sure, there are limitations, sure there is a metric ton of BAD content, but SL Works(TM). I can get in it for free, and do most everything except keep my shit on the ground 24-7.
I don't know why everybody is so hung up on what some of the user bases is doing there and not the potential that SL is. I mean seriously, is there ANYTHING like sl even in development? Croquet? I guess?
There is nothing in existence quite like it, and I find that reason enough to check beck every few months and see what they are doing.
And now open source simulator? Awesome, i was expecting Open SL Client or something, not a server!
As soon as they smooth out the server a bit with more dev time, I'm going to install and run one on my other computer. Then I'll spend time making random ass artificial life creatures that run around and do random shit.
You know, like that island Svarga in secondlife that has its own eco system programmed in by one guy where there are pollinating bees, clouds, plantlife growing in specific area, all in a closed system..
Or the fish, the one who created schools of fish that evolve certain genetic dispositions as they breed over time, flocking together and running from predators that also sustain themselves on the schools of fish.
While i'm at it, have you seen the giant cube that is a building with 4 dimmensions? Your buddy sits in one room, you walk left 4 times and come in the right side of the cube. You walk up or down, you eventually walk into the room upside down on some stairs.
There is shit like this all over secondlife. So why? What is the purpose of all this? Because its fucking geeky and fun. I can't belive NOBODY on this "NEWS FOR NERDS" is going to sit there like a bunch of football jocks and make fun of secondlife.
Seriously, why don't you stop posting on slashdot and do something cool like posting on your tech blog about how you were shocked and disgusted to find out that people like something different then you. (Ha you thought i'd say "go watch a football game, fooled you).
Seriously. I almost quit java forever when I had a class that had me hand writing it all out, just for the simple fact alone all the god damn class names were so long with 5 million .'s between them. System.out.println(" for fucking out put, jesus christ! And the names for window listeners and god knows what else. I was going to blow my brains out! I failed tests because my hand crampped up and I ran out of paper room writing stuff down.
Luckily years later I've now given java its due, and can see how it is an excellent tool for many jobs out there. But man, handwriting java is not for the faint of heart!
Excellent point which I think exactly sums up the problem described in the article in a way most of us can relate to.
I think the solution to the problem is the same I had when first using a GPS. I would miss turns, almost run a red light, turn too early, make turns down streets that I wouldn't normally drive down, all cause the gps was really distracting in its precision. Moreover, I missed lots of roadsigns, didn't have the same focus I did normally when trying to memorize where I'm going or pay attention to that innate direction sense we have that says, "I made 2 lefts, and i'm sort of paralleling that one road I was going down, so I can probably take a side street here and get back to it."
After a while, I learned how to use it properly, and ignore it most of the time. When I'm completely lost, it's a guide to get me out of a trap, and a guide to help me when I make a wrong turn to get me where I need to. Overall, it really makes my navigation a lot better, but I had to learn to continue using the tools I had, along with the GPS, to find a "better" way to navigate.
I think the same will be true with the upcoming army tools. Information overload, until we learn to naturally process out what is not relevant, and instantly find what is, and knowledge of the devices to know when to IGNORE what it is telling you to do.
Eventually over time the devices will have better algorithms, will know when to ignore data itself, and deliver the most pointed message to the user. It is like any new technology, we have to learn to incorporate it into our life, and the tool has to adapt to our uses over time.
And that, like anything, takes hard work! *guiltily goes back to work*
Ironically enough, I played every GTA up till vice city before I was aware you could "bang a prostitute", and only then from reading news articles about having sex with them and getting your money back by killing them. It's funny how there is so much sensationalism about such a SMALL part of the game.
I agree with what you say 100%, and while (looking at your sites linked) that lifestyle is not for me, I don't see why it has to be something so shocking. I mean what is upsetting is reading the number of comments so far about something like public nudity, all very insightful, about accepting something outside your comfort zone as long as it is not harmful, all ending with the "unless the guy's fat".
I mean, it's crazy, there is no escape from this. It is like the human prison. Everything has to look "THE SAME" or we flip out, and want to correct it. The sad part is how varied "THE SAME" can be from one place to the next. From one point in time to the next. This is ok in india. This is ok in my small town. That is ok in the large town next door.
Maybe we all find what is comfortable for us and move around to find it. You have the retreats you go to, where you are safe to be who you want to be. But what happens if the above poster you responded too wanted to come too, and he was a pretty public practitioner of something that bothers your group (mainstream religions?). You would almost feel the need to protect your safe haven, perhaps making laws. Then what if your group becomes the majority, and you have your own country?
You can see where I am going here. There really is no escape, is there? Something is always going to bother us no matter who we are. If we are tolerant of all things we'll definitely hate people who aren't tolerant. So maybe the only real solution is what we have here, a loose set of communities all living by their own standards, with a nice warm blanket of rules over us all to set the definite limit of what is acceptable or not (murder/rape etc). I guess our problem is to watch for when the blanket gets too heavy and overbearing and lighten it up.
No matter which way you spin it, someone or something is going to get oppressed.
You just have to think out what you are willing to do, and you won't be disillusioned at the end. I played wow way back, got to 60, ran 1 instance, saw that all I had to look forward to was minuscule gear upgrades (no bgs or pvp at the time) and doing the same thing over and over again, so I quit, having fully enjoyed my time playing. I just started again about 2 months ago, and now at 70, am doing some gear grinding and what not, because I find the experience more enjoyable this time around, esp playing with a few more friends. If the game gets too grindy for me, I just shut it off and do something else.
:)
So, just be aware of how you are feeling at the game, and how much time you want to put into something, and as long as you aren't letting yourself get overwhelmed, no reason to look back with regret. I mean, it's fun to get so obsessed with something you don't want to even leave to go eat food. How often do we get into something that much? Not very. Enjoy it, just dont let it wreck every other part of your life
Agreed 100%. It's funny planetside messed itself up backwards. They gave you a perfect system to play in (early on anyways), and a horrible sandbox to play in. I think i quit solely based on the fact that every base looked the same, and then they rubber stamped the same 5 bases on every continent. Then they did a poor job having a reason for you to fight on all the nice terrain they made, so essentially they drew you in to be fighting over the same set of gray walls and corridors every time.
Sadly, all of my memories of that game involve getting from one combat to the next with my squad. The time we were all packed into a sunderer and a lone reaver picked us up, frantically on the guns trying to shoot him down while the driver swerved all over taking evasive action. Hot dropping into combat from a drop pod, and surging forward with the troops. Dropping from a galaxy with a bunch of other guys on top of a tower and fighting your way down for control. Even laying prone sniping outside a base, watching as a weakened galaxy lumbered overhead and landed for repairs, calling out its position, and watching your crew roll in and take him out while you sniped the driver.
If planetside had had a different base design for each continent, I would have played it WAYYYYYY longer then I did, like, A TON. It is so funny too, because most MMO's have beautiful landscapes and worlds to discover, but the game mechanics behind it get frustrating after a time. In planetside's case, the system was awesome, but the game world was stale and uninspired. Granted, the varied landscape of the continents was good, just, every fight brought you ultimately to the same base.
I think that is really the path to having a pvp game where you don't feel cheated out too much, leveling up == more utility.
Shadowbane with skills made me feel this way. I can max sword skill and hit like a max level, but I sure suck at other things. Same with planetside. I can use this one type of armor, and be a light vehicle driver. Later on I can drive my vehicle, hop out, put on a super max suit, and ground pound with the troops.
So again, leveling up == more versatility, rather then more power, tends to make me feel better about the style of the game i'm playing. Good ideas!
Because guitar is hard as fuck. Before I eventually got rock band (play drums all the time now ) I've had zero musical training, and had just bought a guitar and was trying to teach myself via videos/books whatever. All I ended up being able to do is play a few chords and bore myself trying to learn scales. So after a few months I could finally comfortably get into chord positions, and kinda sort switch in a second or two (not fast enough to play a song correctly), I still couldn't play ANYTHING I wanted to play. Every time I tried to get tabs, people would all be like, oh this song is easy, and it did look easy, and then I tried to play it, and I just did not have the hand speed to keep the rhythm of the song.
So guitar hero in 3 minutes i'm "playing" a song that I like. Real guitar, a few months in I just put the thing down out of frustration. I kinda half want to play the guitar, but I don't really want to take the years it would take to do it right.
Now, someone trying to learn guitar hero III on expert, i can see, maybe they should seriously think about picking up a real guitar, but if someone just wants to have a good time playing on med/hard difficulty, theres no sense in learning the real thing unless you want to.
I agree. I've found done right, micro transaction games work out. Usually you get an MMO environment you would be paying 15 a month for, for free. And often times you can stick around and play at the level you want for free. Then later if you want to be more competitive or do more, you pay for that access.
So I get to try the game for free, and if I really like it, I have no problem spending upwards of 40 - 50 dollars to unlock stuff, because normally i'd have payed that just to try it out in the first place!
I think the problem with innovating is the high cost of maintaining and designing an mmo. It is a very risky venture, and how do you successfully break the mmo forumla? I mean, most character based games work the same way, auto attack something. Use skills to make it more interesting. What next? Guild wars changed it up a bit in that you could instantly get into end game content and start trying new skill combos for free.
:) ).
I honestly don't know what new thing an mmo could do. I felt like shadowbane was a huge step in the right direction for a different feeling mmo. The ffa pvp, city building, quick leveling (skill based so once you get 1 skill up high you can hurt high level players), and forcing you to join a guild past level 35 all lent itself to a very exciting, dynamic world, that you could participate in almost immediately. Unfortunately the tech wasn't there to keep it going.
Planetside also had huge potential. It has a great combat system going with the guns and vehicles available, but the developers forgot to build an interesting game world to play in, leading to boredom and repetition. There were perhaps 5 or so base types, stamped all over the game world. Instead of making the bases look different on each continent, all they did was add new landmasses and spread the player population out more. This was another mmo on the edge of being something great and unique that failed.
I wonder if mmo's can continue to look towards muds for examples? I remember reading about achea (sp?) mud's wonderful combat system and couldnt help but think it would be a very cool graphic game. I tried to get into the mud, but a mud requires too much attention to keep up with the scrolling text, and I can't shut the world out like that (even though that can be fun
My MMO flags are pointed towards darkfall online, hoping they can show me something new, but I have a feeling it is going to end up like shadowbane.
In the future if we ever get more bandwith, MMO's might play around and start to give us more action content, like when I swing my sword it will actually do some sort of collision detection, and I can roll and dodge between an ogres legs as he swings his big club at me.
I guess the more they can visualize and put in the players control what the stats are doing in an MMO, the more interesting it'll be. Nut that takes more and more bandwith and development time to be able to do that.
But hey, maybe one day we can both win the lottery, found our own mmo company, and make that unique mmo we are waiting for!
Seriously. I mean, it's OK to take 200 bucks and go out and shoot some guy and about 8 of his friends, all because some coked up dude told you to do it. If someone is going to have a problem with the game, shouldn't their first protest be the casual violence, and not "drunk driving"? Hell, the fact that you only get in a car by punching out some dude and/or using your gun to threaten them, and then steal it, is not a problem?
But MADD made a good move here. Because their name is in the papers, and therefore they are visible, getting their message out. If I were working for MADD, i'd have trolled to get the name out the same way they just did. It's a smart thing to do.
"AND ON TOP OF THAT I gave him his own room for electronics. He has a rack."
Jesus I hate people. Side rant. You GAVE him his own room? What, you two don't both work and pay for your house? If hes unemployed, ok, you can "GIVE" him a room. I am just so disgusted at the amount of men out there with this attitude that what they love to do, is something you need special permission to have a room for. I know a guy who is married, and loves nascar, he is "allowed" one god damn poster in the garage, and even then he gets comments about it. I don't understand how anyone can live like this. But, to each their own I guess.
I think the idea is that if the REST of the game is fun, and being a big powerful sorcerer is not something you need to do to have fun, it adds an element to the game world that makes it more believable. I mean part of the mmo problem is everybody wants to be different, but you really cant be, impossible to design it. This at least creates an element of mystery when you SEE a sorcerer in the game. Maybe the sorcerer won't live longer then 3 sec cause half the battlefield would swarm over him and kill him.
I guess what the grandparent is trying to say is, he would like to be in a world where there is some mystery and uniqueness. where there is something he CAN'T achieve, but it sure is cool to see it.
If you think this is lunatic behavior, then please take a long hard look at the billions of sports fans in the world, at music fans, any kind of fan. I doubt very many of them will be on the field making the plays, but it sure is fun to be a part of that team by watching. And hell, in the game, I probably always know that there is an EASY way for me to be a rock star, as opposed to rl where the path to superstardom is often closed due to bad genetics, before you even get a chance to have the skill to compensate.
But again, wow succeeds because the path to all the content in the game is open to most people, but I still think there is room for games that play out like the original poster suggested.
1. Keyboard
2. Mouse
3. High res display output.
4. Free networking.
5. Access to lots of odd ball interface devices.
6. Access to the game's files on hard drive.
7. Free games.
I agree with you up until the point that a game addicts me. This doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it used to, but once a game becomes something I want to come home and play over and over again for months, I really want to get into customizing it as much as possible, whether it be something a simple as grabbing screen shots, to finding/making a mod for it.
.tga file and photoshop. Instead you have to go through tons of menus and lists with the controller to change it up. Still possible to make nice designs, but not as easy as with the pc.
Even something as simple as modding the skin on your car in Forza is pretty hard to do compared to what you can do with a
Another big one is roster updates for sports games. I have no doubt that on the pc I can find a roster update for most EA sports games to bring me to the current season of whatever sport I am in. I can't do this on the console without modding the hardware (to make it act more like a pc).
I guess the consoles are moving towards this trend, giving us just a tad more access to it then before, but there is still a long way to go.
I think each platform has its pluses and minuses. If you looked at my game library, you would see mostly action, sports, and console RPG style games in my console library, while my pc games are all mostly bioware style rpg, online fps, and rts/strategy games. While there is some cross over for the big name games, when I have a choice for platform, I'll split them out by the above categories.
No reason to get rid of one or the other yet, or ever.
My bank has an online pay where you select the date you want the bill to go out, so I pay the bill as soon as I get it, but the money doesn't leave my hands until the last possible moment it is due, kind of the best of both worlds I guess. I can always stop it if I need to, but I guess not having enough money for your monthly bills is a separate issue.
I agree, G15 is great when a game supports it. My two favorite uses of it include the clock for when I'm gaming so I can see that I actually need to get to bed on time (No clock on the wall in pc room) and the support for fraps so I can check my fps all the time without disturbing the picture.
There are even some miranda-im plug ins that show what people are chatting to you (so you can view while gaming) and I believe there is a teamspeak plug in that will show who is currently talking.
There are just a ton of little nifty features that fit perfectly into the need for info to view while glancing away from the screen for a moment, without taking up any real estate on screen. The macro support on the keyboard is also fantastic. All around the g15 is a great product for a gamer.
lol. That happened to us with the Boston song. By the end of the night we were like NOOO BOSTON!!! Every first random song was that. I figured something was wrong, and I went ahead and turned the machine off, then back on, and lo and behold, boston stopped coming up. I hope that that doesnt happen with persistence though, cause I'd hate to always play boston every first time we have a random song :)
Done right, sure. They can whore themselves out as much as they want, so long as the game play is fun. I don't really care if when I need health instead of drinking soda pop X, I get mountain dew. Whatever. Hell, what if in a level I got into a firefight inside a mcdonalds with huge mcdonalds advertisements all over the store. Cool.
:)
Just don't do stuff like they did with fight night 3, like having the BK guy in my ring corner, or a dodge mini van as the sponsor for a boxing game. I thought it was cool with the under armor ads all over, sweet, fits the genera, but, no bk please.
So, target the ads, it'll make me like the product, instead of hating it. This would be good for game makers and advertisers.
The other thing to watch for is the "micropayment" items. As long as the micro item doesn't offer a crippling advantage to other players, i'm all for it, esp if the game is free. I really enjoyed sierra's freestyle basketball game they grabbed from a korean game maker, and the free game + micro payments for little stat boosts worked fine. I had no problem buying the game and a few items (about 25 bucks all together) after I had clocked like 30 hours in the thing as is without paying a cent.
So, bring on the free games
We had first aid training in our gym class. It probably varies by school. But I have never had to use any of that training, nor encountered any situation where I could even watch it (thankfully), so any knowledge I had at the time is long gone. About all I can remember from the steps is to make sure the situation is safe before you go in yourself, and uh, if you are telling someone to do something, point at them and pick out specific people to help, rather hten saying "someone call 911" you point at a guy and go "you, call 911!". So, not much help I would be :(
:( ), and we also had a cpr dummy to practice the real motions on.
But either way, our gym class had it for a week or two, where we got partners, practiced the (mock) rescue breathing, assumed cpr positions (yeah and by the way how do you expect hs guy to pay attention when you are giving a lecture while their attractive female partner is straddling their body...
Afterwards we had a test we had to take, going through the steps and demonstrating it to the teacher, who would then "free" us to go play something out in the main gym. If you did well enough the teacher was also offering to help you get a real certification for cpr rather then the "you passed" you got from him.
So, CPR training does exist in some schools, other's not. It all really depends on the high school, and, more importantly, who the teachers are.
And by the way, I set up a meeting to show the finished [vague notion] next week, get on it!
The first way I heard of dwarf fortress was when I read about Boatmurdered. A bunch of forum goers pass around a game of dwarf fortress and write pretty hilarious stories about their time with the fort. It is a hilarious read, as well as pretty informative about what you can do in the game.
Another way this was handled was in the fire emblem games. In between missions you could save and load like normal. During the mission you could only "suspend" the game. Which meant it saved your game, then took you to the menu. When you loaded the game, it erased your suspended state. This way you have the difficulty, while also being able to stop instantly without losing progress. More games that use save points as check points in gameplay, should have this suspend option. Although it might just be for technical or time limitations that these features can't be added.