I never played swg. I saw what kind of game it was before it was release by reading and keeping up on the reviews/reactions and such. I also saw the beta at a friends house and was surprised it was even being release. Anyway, I knew for myself to stay away, but really, I am still pretty shocked at what they did to the game with the NGE.
The ONLY sacred thing about an mmo is your character. All your time goes into these guys. When you've played something 5 years you look at your character slots as trophies of the time you've invested into the system.
Well, they violated the character with the NGE. To take your class and your characters away, your experience, your loot, your items, all of that, is just insane. CU was a change (from what i read) but they still at least kept something of the old game. With the NGE they totally deleted your mmo guy and changed the game. That is SICK. Imagine what would happen if wow did that? Imagine if your old EQ 1 account got "upgraded" to a "new game experience" and you lost all your max level guys? Who wouldn't be pissed?
I don't know if this is a silly thing to think of, but I've always had a problem when people touch my monitor and leave a hoard of finger prints across the display area. When you have a touch screen, those things get even nastier. All the human hand grease starts to obscure the display, and they are usually a pain in the ass to clean. I guess they probably have some sort of easy clean surfaces on touch devices (not much experience with them), but still...
I mean I know a few people I wouldn't want touching my mouse or keyboard...you know the guys that leave a grease hand print permanently on your desk if they ever lean on it? Yeah, I wouldn't want those guys smearing their hands all over my display.
Anyway, neat implementation of a touch interface. I think though that they better add some sorting features to the photos, cause digging through a virtual pile will probably be as annoying as going through your own photo drawer.
In fact, why even select the barracks at all? I noticed c&c3 does this. Just select the build unit tab and it builds. I haven't played it enough yet (just got it) to build with 2 barracks to see if it does load balancing in this manner, but I suspect that it might.
I really agree with the idea of taking the hyperactive out of SC. I guess I am more interested in unit combinations and proper use of them rather then clickity click click to be "skillfull". Even focus firing should be an option. Just have mode toggle, focus fire, or spread. This way if you have units selected, hit attack, click on the bad guy, everybody shoots at him, then successively each closest enemy.
I havent played SC since it's release, so I'm probably pretty in the clueless area, but I recall in sc to focus fire you'd waypoint each badguy with a right click, and I'm pretty spastic with my clicking, so I'd miss click a bunch on the tiny units running around.
Well anyway, sounds like they know just what kind of game they want to make with SC2, and I think it'll be a hit either way.
You shouldn't really care what the words are because of the source. If some 16 year old calls you a homo because he killed you in a video game, and you are seriously hurt by this, then you need to rethink your opinion of yourself. Who cares what this kid thinks. Just ignore them and laugh at them to yourself. I laugh all the time at the dumb stuff kids say to me.
And just learn a few rules to win all arguments by. If you are better at the game then the kid, just beat him, then tell him that you beat him. "Did you just die? I think you are dead! That's rough! My favorite part is how you act like you have a chance to kill me, but you really don't, thats so cute!"
If you aren't better at the game, just tell tell him "Sorry I couldn't spend all day getting good at a video game. But hey, look at you, you have a sweet kill to death ratio in halo, good job, you've really made something of yourself."
That ought to shut most people up and/or get the rest of the server laughing at them. But most of the time, the stuff they say is pretty stupid. If the conversation still makes you uncomfortable,/ignore. If no ignore, learn to ignore it.
A lot of people in this world are going to piss you off. Learn to deal with it. I learned in high school when people said this bullshit to my face. Now it doesn't bother me, and I've had a much happier adult life then in my teen years.
If this STILL bothers you, join one of the many adult gaming communities out there. Meet some great people, and play with some mature gamers who are going to be a lot better then the trash talkers.
And while I'm on it, why is everybody so nuts about this. We should censor the internet? We need to moderate it? What the hell? Let the server owner decide how he wants to run his server. Word filters are dumb. On siera's freestyle basketball I cant say "white", it gets filtered out, that's pretty hilarious, and the people who talk shit are the first ones to know how their favorite word can be typed to get around the filter.
But cmon people, why are we talking away the last bastion of anonymity and freedom we have left? I guess it's already gone. I'm sure glad I got on the net 12 or so years ago, before people were going batshit insane over a few bits shooting back and forth over the net.
Easy to process that information when you are behind your desk picturing yourself in the situation. But I know how I used to be in early morning classes. Zonked out, thinking about going back to bed. If someone kicked in the door and started shooting and killing people I know I'd probably freeze up. I haven't seen any "real" blood before, I haven't seen anybody die before, and the whole process would just be information overload. I doubt many people would be able to assess the situation and act within the time required to save their lives. And the people who could do it, would probably have had some military training to get them there.
Also, the paintball guy above is crazy to compare moving around a paintball field the same as moving around a battlefield. I am willing to bet that 75% of the tactics used on the paintball field wouldn't fly when real bullets are in the air. In paintball you sit out a round. In the real world, you're done, and people know that, and I'm sure act very differently because of it.
But whatever, we are all internet tough guys. It's all easy to make the logical choices back out of the situation, but when your life depends on what you do next, thats a hell of a lot of pressure to be thinking clearly.
The whole reason nwn runs like crap is so that you can have a flexible toolset like the one that it has.
NWN also had YEARS of development and patches to add content and functionality to it, while NWN2 just came out.
I don't how you can say nwn2's campaign was crap compared to nwn. Did you even play the first nwn campaign? It was HORRIBLE and boring, I couldn't even finish it. NWN2 has some problems, and I haven't finished it all the way, but being mostly towards the end, it is leaps and bounds ahead of nwn1.
And finally the outdoor areas look great, and the flexibility to have your own terrain map is awesome, much better then the tilesets of nwn1.
That said, yes, NWN2 does need a lot of work still, and it is of coarse behind the years of development and content generation that NWN1 had, but I think it is a good foundation for continued improvment.
I recall reading somewhere, I think in a halo 2 on the pc article, that gamers were using the 360 controller in combination with the mouse. I guess they liked using the analog stick to move around and having that precision (unlike the keyboard, as you mentioned) in combination with the easier aiming of the mouse.
Which, really, is a great idea. I agree with you that the keyboard is just not as accurate as a nice 360 degree stick in your left hand. Sometimes you cant even use key combos togehter like if I want to straf left and hit R to reload my gun its just not possible for my fingers (if i was using standard asdw). I know, some people use sdfe or something, but still, it takes a lot of manual dexterity.
I think I am very comfortable with the idea of moving my character around on the left, and taking action on the right. So why not the best of two worlds? Why not a nice stick in the left hand, and a mouse with more then 3 buttons on the right? I wouldn't want to work out the erganomic nightmare of finding a good spot for a lot of buttons on a mouse, but I know it could be done.
I guess the Wii is close to this, but I think I'd prefer being able to point my hand wherever i want, or itch my face without making the game go wacky. I havent used a wii controller that much, so I don't know if its a realistic complaint or not, but since this is slashdot, I'll still make it:)
If you are a mage, make use of the mages guild to create customized spells that match your abilities.
Like my favorite spell, "Camp Fire". This little gem consisted of a long duration firespell that did a few points of damage. It also did some fatigue damage as well. This kept the mana cost somewhat low. When you encounter a bad guy, the first trick would be to hit him with some powerful fatigue drain effects, until he hits the ground, passed out. Then, run close and drop the camp fire on him. He will lay on the ground, unmoving, happily toasting away to his death. Sometimes it takes a while, so feel free to pull out marshmallows and toast accordingly.
Oh, should fire not get the job done, you could try the sister spell to Camp Fire, entitled, "Electric Chair".:)
Im right there with you. Usually it takes an amazing game that will get me playing it enough, out of fun, to learn well enough to not lose all the time.
But with that few and far between, another solution to the problem is to play the game right after release. Most games that come out now a days have incredibly similar mechanics to older games, so if you've been gaming a while, chances are you will figure out how to win a lot faster then some of the youngens.
So for a month or two, you get some blissful noob owning and get to play online the way it was meant to be played. And if you had fun doing it that long, you'll already have all the knowledge you need to keep playing the game at an even w/l record when the curve catchs up to you.
I've found that most games are too smiliar to ones I've already enjoyed, with just a few little changes here and there, so nothing has really tweaked my fancy. The last "unique" online game I played was splinter cell, pandora tomorrow, as sneaking past or looking for my buddies was a new experience for me (much more exciting then the wait game that is single player stealth). Otherwise... blah, show me something new to do online!!:)
I really wanted to get good at this game, and at least beat it. It was so well done.
I got to the level, maybe the 4th level, that had you approaching the spinning base. I took one look at it, realized there was one more level after this, and, very calmly, put the game away forever. No thank you. Thats probably one of the few times in 20+ years of gaming that i was intimidated by difficulty. Maybe I'm just getting old.
Ninja gaiden, I put it down not due to difficulty, but frustration at repetition. I realize that playing a spot over and over forces you to get good, but sometimes I would rather just have a save game right at the boss, or whatever tough spot it is, and keep dieing over and over again until I get it.
Sometimes I'll do ridiculous challenges over and over again for hours if I can restart them fast. If I have to wait 1 to 5 minutes before I can get to the hard part again, the games going back on the shelf.
I mean I remember the NES days where getting to the boss was the thrill, a new part, you were shaking, new attack patterns, and what a great feeling. But I'm kinda over that. Its not new anymore, just let me save the game where I want. Hell, half the reason I liked COD 2 (single player) was cause it autosaved for me and I never had to touch a load or save button and was able to just play right through the game with minimal effort.
Oh, and one last HARD game.. Grand turismo, license tests, trying to get perfect score on them all. I never knew it was so hard to take one fucking corner in my life.
Yes, this was a game I read more about then actually played. I loved the concept, but it sort of fell flat on its face (for me) in gameplay. The ship fights sort of ended up as circle strafing in space.
But really, as far as I can tell, this was your first natural selection/savage type game, where you had a commander building bases, upgrading, and divying out bombers and other expensive ships to players.
Ultimiatly I think it killed itself as when you bought the game, you had to play on the msn zone, which had two sections, a "free" lobby that was supposed to be limited, and a for pay one, where I think there was a subscription fee to use. So the already small user base was split in two.
The game was creative though, and different, but had/has a steep learning curve to it. If you like the theme and idea of it, def check out their open source version of it now, definitely worth it.
I saw some people mention age of wonders and age of wonders II shadow magic, which are about as close to MoM gameplay as you are going to find.
But, there may be some hope. I seem to recall reading the developer log over at galciv2.com where he was mentioning that stardock was trying to acquire rights to "a certain fantasy themed game similar to moo" or some other abstract way of putting it. But basically they were trying to grab the MoM licenses for a sequel.
If there is anybody out there right now to do this sequel, stardock is the one. Check out galciv2 if you have not, it is basically what you wanted MOO 3 to be, minus your favorite races. They definitely understand the elements that made moo and mom to be the hits that they were.
You don't even need two accounts. I was just surfing around looking for tips for rockstar's table tennis game, and just about any forum I ran into was full of posts "Help me get xx wins" and people exchanging gamer tags so that the two of them take turns losing to each other. I guess it just sort of shocked me since those were almost the ONLY types of posts I saw, and very rarely did I see one where a person was discussing how they actually play the game. Sad.
Consol fps games are a different experience due to being a LAN in the box for 4+ players, as was said above. Internet gaming is cool, but I didn't know the goodness of LAN play until I went to college and blew someone's head off in unreal, only to hear "FUCK" shouted down the hall. What great feedback that was.
I hated bond at first, controls sucked, graphics sucked, the little tiny box in the corner of my scren sucked. But I kept at it, and by the end of the year 007 matches happened all the time, and I have great memories of it.
Halo is the same thing, one of the best consol FPS's out there. A lot of people are new to gaming, and halo is their first taste of it, and in turn, it has become their religion.
So, let them have their memories. We are the lucky ones, we got to watch the gaming explosion that happened through the late 90's first hand. Back then I was on new genera overload. Not so much anymore. Don't ruin the book of halo for people!:)
You must be an older gamer. I grew up in your generation too. I have the same issues as yourself. Everything gaming related is a waste of time, right? Everything else is "cooler", and more fullfilling? I notice this pressure is less severe as it used to be, but, that feeling still sticks with us.
Maybe you should just allow people to do something that they enjoy. It is not harming other people for them to get pumpped up about campping out a new game system.
Maybe people think standing online for skiing is dumb? While I enjoy snowboarding, I certainly don't enjoy it on a crowded mountain. A nightclub? Maybe I don't want to choke on secondhand smoke and watch people have to down alchohol before they are comfortable enough to get out and move their feet. Wait in line for the gym? Why, so you can towel off some other guys back sweat before you add your own to the mix?
Personally, I don't understand people's need to have technology before there are really any games out for it. I'll get one of the new systems as soon as there is an exclusive that I really want to play, otherwise, there is no point for myself to have a new expensive toy.
But, despite this, if people want to get excited and spend their money, and their time, to sit online, why not? If anything, standing online for something like this is a great way to meet people. Any time I have been online for something, I've ended up talking to at least 5 to 10 strangers. When I go out dancing, I talk and dance with my friends/wife, and don't end up meeting anybody at all.
So, to each their own. As long as it's not causing harm, let people be excited about something. I mean god, we spend 40+ hours a week as someone else's slave, just let us have a little bit of fun every now and again.
I really enjoyed the knife fight sequence in re4. You had to first fight the urge to put the controller down as the cinimatic plays, but also, as you are listening to the plot being revieled as the other character talks to you, he'd all of a sudden lash out with his knife, and you'd have to dodge the attack by pushing the correct buttons. It was really immersiver as you were on edge the whole time, just as the character would be in that sequence.
Granted, a whole game of instant death via this manner would be very frusterating, but used in moderation, it is a great technique.
You are 100% correct. While probably not dating back as far as you, I had a first webpage about 10 or 11 years ago and, as you said, along with the rants, I put up some far side comics that I had scanned in because I thought they were really funny. I even wanted to make sure that I didn't take some wierd credit for the pictures, and put in the book title, author, and page numbers of each comic. It was my thoght if people liked them they might want to go find whole book and read the rest, and addtionally could locate the funny comics in their own copies by going to the page number.
Well this sat somewhere online for about 10 years or so while I completly forgot about it, until sometime last year, the isp hosting the site informed me that they had received a cease and desist letter from some company who is out to protect the far side ip. To be save the ISP blocked the site until I took down the photos, but I just told them to go ahead and delete it since I lost the password a long while ago.
But still, crazy to see something done 10 years ago catching up with you like that. Back then it was no big deal, now, apparently I was destroying thier intelectual property.
Haha yeah the school house is waht killed me too! I don't think I've ever been that creeped out before during a video game before in my life. I was handling version 1 of the school reasonably well. But then when it get all metalic and demonic, *shiver*.
But man, downstairs on the "big tv" after everybody is in bed, with the lights off round 12am. That damned STATIC getting louder and louser! WHERE THE HELL IS IT?!?! DAMNED PS1 CLIPPING PLANE!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH Great game:)
Tech very limited. Anything physics tends to lag to hell, and scripts sometimes just decide to not work for the fun of it. I seriously wanted to do some interesting stuff in SL but everytime I started looking at it I saw problem after problem, and it really just made me start to think, why don't I just program it in "real life" and email it to my friends or something.
Well one area of SL that I think is interesting and still works are some aLife projects people are working on. Check out the sim Terminous (spelled wrong there) or Svarga for some intersting things people have done.
I really think everyone ought to experience sl once, it is a really intersting idea and it is fun to see the stuff that people make for themselves. It's an interesting look into the person, sort of like being able to go into someones house and look around their room to see what they have hung up on the walls.
After a while it gets boring, but it is definitly worth seeing at least once.
This type of behavior already exists in alchoholics. Most alchoholics still deal with their problems the same way they did right when they started drinking. It can be sad to see a 60 year old man deal with their emotional problems like an 18 year old, very sad indeed.
But at the same time, I can argue that not many of us learned some sort of special values through tag. The only thing I learned how to do was tag people back as soon as they tagged me because I couldnt run. I don't think that is much of a life lesson. Kids will probably learn all about competing with one another and injuring themselves when they join a sports team or get online gaming (RSI!:) )
I've played sl on and off for about a year now and I have to agree with the grandparent. SL is neat, but it doesn't add things to existing tools. SL at its heart is an irc chat room with avatars. A more useful learning tool would have a chat room with the ability to set up ad hock groups, and on demand whiteboards between the groups. Also have a wiki running in another window. Then have a file bin so you can drag and drop files on users or in a group storage to offer to everybody. Just put up a screen where you can easily give info to everybody and the group. Heck, even put up webcams on people if you want real expressions.
I don't see how having an avatar and a virtual space adds to the education enviorment besides spacial proximity, and I fail to see how that enhances education.
Also, I know that when I went to school, most of the time myself as well as half of the classes were not paying attention to the lecture. I've also been to educational confrences, and really the only benafit of them is that they take away your ability to do anything else but pay attention to the lecture.
Really the confrences do a better job of providing an enviroment for networking then anything, and that is just a product of who is there.
I think a really well run discussion with voice connections, a chat room, and a whiteboard, can do just as well as a class room. There is only so much space on the screen and the virtual house to sit in seems like a pointless place to be.
But you know what, being in a 3d space looks cool, and as we all know, the thing that looks cool is what gets the most attention. So yeah, 3d virtual learning classrooms!
3d worlds are a fantasy, they are made so you can go in and be someone else in a world that doesnt exist. It takes too much hard work to actually make your avatar looks like you, and I can't even begin to imagine the techincial and artistic skill required to actually make it act like you, especially when all you need to represent yourself is a 20 dollar webcam.
I think that the main problem is people, and not statistics. It does take some effort to overcome the pressure of having good statistics, but, statistics really are interesting to look at.
Getting rid of statistics is not the answer. Why take away featuers of the game? What needs to be done is keep BETTER statistics.
Stats put a lot of pressure on you to play a certain way. Currently, most games keep kill to death ratio, or points per minute, and these tend to encourage tactics that violate the spirit of the game. They undermine the intended play experience.
So make the stats push more towards the intended game play.
-Don't keep track of kills if kills are not the main point (not a deathmatch ffa) -Number of minutes played on a team with 10 more players the the other. -Wins where you were part of the team for 75% of round time.
Things like the above would work great. Keep track of all the times the player acted like a "good" player and executed well.
At the same time, I wish people could just "play normally" and forget about their stats, because when you do that, the stats can actually reflect the kind of player you are, and those are intersting numbers to look at.
Unfortunatly, this never seems to work in practice for the inexperienced players.
Usually the only frusterating time in an online game is learning how to play and getting through that initial ass beating you are going to receive when you sign into a server. We all know it's coming, and you really have to just hope the game is fun enough to endure it before you can start handing out judgment.
But what happens in ranking systems is they tend to appease the more talented players by allowing them to find good games with their stats, and crushing the newbies because lots of good players constantly resetting their stats or starting new accounts.
People do this to either have better stats, or to just have the satisfaction of playing against people who aren't any good at the game. I remember way back when playing subspace, people would create new accounts if they died once, trying to achieve some sort of 100:0 kill ration or whatever to brag to their friends.
From personal experience I saw this a lot in warcraft 3. Just trying to get a comparable team 2v2 match when we had no record was rediculous. From reading, it looks as though halo 2 also suffers from this problem.
Honestly the only way for this system to work is to make it extreemly difficult (or costly) to make a new account, which will work somewhat, or, completly hide the stats and never tell anybody that the system exists, though people will find out sure enough.
Well anyway, I guess the games are still better then completly unranked ones, and hopefully developers will keep coming up with ideas to curb the problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I never played swg. I saw what kind of game it was before it was release by reading and keeping up on the reviews/reactions and such. I also saw the beta at a friends house and was surprised it was even being release. Anyway, I knew for myself to stay away, but really, I am still pretty shocked at what they did to the game with the NGE.
The ONLY sacred thing about an mmo is your character. All your time goes into these guys. When you've played something 5 years you look at your character slots as trophies of the time you've invested into the system.
Well, they violated the character with the NGE. To take your class and your characters away, your experience, your loot, your items, all of that, is just insane. CU was a change (from what i read) but they still at least kept something of the old game. With the NGE they totally deleted your mmo guy and changed the game. That is SICK. Imagine what would happen if wow did that? Imagine if your old EQ 1 account got "upgraded" to a "new game experience" and you lost all your max level guys? Who wouldn't be pissed?
I don't know if this is a silly thing to think of, but I've always had a problem when people touch my monitor and leave a hoard of finger prints across the display area. When you have a touch screen, those things get even nastier. All the human hand grease starts to obscure the display, and they are usually a pain in the ass to clean. I guess they probably have some sort of easy clean surfaces on touch devices (not much experience with them), but still...
I mean I know a few people I wouldn't want touching my mouse or keyboard...you know the guys that leave a grease hand print permanently on your desk if they ever lean on it? Yeah, I wouldn't want those guys smearing their hands all over my display.
Anyway, neat implementation of a touch interface. I think though that they better add some sorting features to the photos, cause digging through a virtual pile will probably be as annoying as going through your own photo drawer.
In fact, why even select the barracks at all? I noticed c&c3 does this. Just select the build unit tab and it builds. I haven't played it enough yet (just got it) to build with 2 barracks to see if it does load balancing in this manner, but I suspect that it might.
I really agree with the idea of taking the hyperactive out of SC. I guess I am more interested in unit combinations and proper use of them rather then clickity click click to be "skillfull". Even focus firing should be an option. Just have mode toggle, focus fire, or spread. This way if you have units selected, hit attack, click on the bad guy, everybody shoots at him, then successively each closest enemy.
I havent played SC since it's release, so I'm probably pretty in the clueless area, but I recall in sc to focus fire you'd waypoint each badguy with a right click, and I'm pretty spastic with my clicking, so I'd miss click a bunch on the tiny units running around.
Well anyway, sounds like they know just what kind of game they want to make with SC2, and I think it'll be a hit either way.
You shouldn't really care what the words are because of the source. If some 16 year old calls you a homo because he killed you in a video game, and you are seriously hurt by this, then you need to rethink your opinion of yourself. Who cares what this kid thinks. Just ignore them and laugh at them to yourself. I laugh all the time at the dumb stuff kids say to me.
/ignore. If no ignore, learn to ignore it.
And just learn a few rules to win all arguments by. If you are better at the game then the kid, just beat him, then tell him that you beat him. "Did you just die? I think you are dead! That's rough! My favorite part is how you act like you have a chance to kill me, but you really don't, thats so cute!"
If you aren't better at the game, just tell tell him "Sorry I couldn't spend all day getting good at a video game. But hey, look at you, you have a sweet kill to death ratio in halo, good job, you've really made something of yourself."
That ought to shut most people up and/or get the rest of the server laughing at them. But most of the time, the stuff they say is pretty stupid. If the conversation still makes you uncomfortable,
A lot of people in this world are going to piss you off. Learn to deal with it. I learned in high school when people said this bullshit to my face. Now it doesn't bother me, and I've had a much happier adult life then in my teen years.
If this STILL bothers you, join one of the many adult gaming communities out there. Meet some great people, and play with some mature gamers who are going to be a lot better then the trash talkers.
And while I'm on it, why is everybody so nuts about this. We should censor the internet? We need to moderate it? What the hell? Let the server owner decide how he wants to run his server. Word filters are dumb. On siera's freestyle basketball I cant say "white", it gets filtered out, that's pretty hilarious, and the people who talk shit are the first ones to know how their favorite word can be typed to get around the filter.
But cmon people, why are we talking away the last bastion of anonymity and freedom we have left? I guess it's already gone. I'm sure glad I got on the net 12 or so years ago, before people were going batshit insane over a few bits shooting back and forth over the net.
Easy to process that information when you are behind your desk picturing yourself in the situation. But I know how I used to be in early morning classes. Zonked out, thinking about going back to bed. If someone kicked in the door and started shooting and killing people I know I'd probably freeze up. I haven't seen any "real" blood before, I haven't seen anybody die before, and the whole process would just be information overload. I doubt many people would be able to assess the situation and act within the time required to save their lives. And the people who could do it, would probably have had some military training to get them there.
Also, the paintball guy above is crazy to compare moving around a paintball field the same as moving around a battlefield. I am willing to bet that 75% of the tactics used on the paintball field wouldn't fly when real bullets are in the air. In paintball you sit out a round. In the real world, you're done, and people know that, and I'm sure act very differently because of it.
But whatever, we are all internet tough guys. It's all easy to make the logical choices back out of the situation, but when your life depends on what you do next, thats a hell of a lot of pressure to be thinking clearly.
The whole reason nwn runs like crap is so that you can have a flexible toolset like the one that it has.
NWN also had YEARS of development and patches to add content and functionality to it, while NWN2 just came out.
I don't how you can say nwn2's campaign was crap compared to nwn. Did you even play the first nwn campaign? It was HORRIBLE and boring, I couldn't even finish it. NWN2 has some problems, and I haven't finished it all the way, but being mostly towards the end, it is leaps and bounds ahead of nwn1.
And finally the outdoor areas look great, and the flexibility to have your own terrain map is awesome, much better then the tilesets of nwn1.
That said, yes, NWN2 does need a lot of work still, and it is of coarse behind the years of development and content generation that NWN1 had, but I think it is a good foundation for continued improvment.
Reapy
I recall reading somewhere, I think in a halo 2 on the pc article, that gamers were using the 360 controller in combination with the mouse. I guess they liked using the analog stick to move around and having that precision (unlike the keyboard, as you mentioned) in combination with the easier aiming of the mouse.
:)
Which, really, is a great idea. I agree with you that the keyboard is just not as accurate as a nice 360 degree stick in your left hand. Sometimes you cant even use key combos togehter like if I want to straf left and hit R to reload my gun its just not possible for my fingers (if i was using standard asdw). I know, some people use sdfe or something, but still, it takes a lot of manual dexterity.
I think I am very comfortable with the idea of moving my character around on the left, and taking action on the right. So why not the best of two worlds? Why not a nice stick in the left hand, and a mouse with more then 3 buttons on the right? I wouldn't want to work out the erganomic nightmare of finding a good spot for a lot of buttons on a mouse, but I know it could be done.
I guess the Wii is close to this, but I think I'd prefer being able to point my hand wherever i want, or itch my face without making the game go wacky. I havent used a wii controller that much, so I don't know if its a realistic complaint or not, but since this is slashdot, I'll still make it
If you are a mage, make use of the mages guild to create customized spells that match your abilities.
:)
Like my favorite spell, "Camp Fire". This little gem consisted of a long duration firespell that did a few points of damage. It also did some fatigue damage as well. This kept the mana cost somewhat low. When you encounter a bad guy, the first trick would be to hit him with some powerful fatigue drain effects, until he hits the ground, passed out. Then, run close and drop the camp fire on him. He will lay on the ground, unmoving, happily toasting away to his death. Sometimes it takes a while, so feel free to pull out marshmallows and toast accordingly.
Oh, should fire not get the job done, you could try the sister spell to Camp Fire, entitled, "Electric Chair".
Reapy
Silent Storm 1 and 2 are modern takes on XCOM style squad based gameplay. Something about them didn't really draw me in, but they are very well done.
Im right there with you. Usually it takes an amazing game that will get me playing it enough, out of fun, to learn well enough to not lose all the time.
:)
But with that few and far between, another solution to the problem is to play the game right after release. Most games that come out now a days have incredibly similar mechanics to older games, so if you've been gaming a while, chances are you will figure out how to win a lot faster then some of the youngens.
So for a month or two, you get some blissful noob owning and get to play online the way it was meant to be played. And if you had fun doing it that long, you'll already have all the knowledge you need to keep playing the game at an even w/l record when the curve catchs up to you.
I've found that most games are too smiliar to ones I've already enjoyed, with just a few little changes here and there, so nothing has really tweaked my fancy. The last "unique" online game I played was splinter cell, pandora tomorrow, as sneaking past or looking for my buddies was a new experience for me (much more exciting then the wait game that is single player stealth). Otherwise... blah, show me something new to do online!!
I really wanted to get good at this game, and at least beat it. It was so well done.
I got to the level, maybe the 4th level, that had you approaching the spinning base. I took one look at it, realized there was one more level after this, and, very calmly, put the game away forever. No thank you. Thats probably one of the few times in 20+ years of gaming that i was intimidated by difficulty. Maybe I'm just getting old.
Ninja gaiden, I put it down not due to difficulty, but frustration at repetition. I realize that playing a spot over and over forces you to get good, but sometimes I would rather just have a save game right at the boss, or whatever tough spot it is, and keep dieing over and over again until I get it.
Sometimes I'll do ridiculous challenges over and over again for hours if I can restart them fast. If I have to wait 1 to 5 minutes before I can get to the hard part again, the games going back on the shelf.
I mean I remember the NES days where getting to the boss was the thrill, a new part, you were shaking, new attack patterns, and what a great feeling. But I'm kinda over that. Its not new anymore, just let me save the game where I want. Hell, half the reason I liked COD 2 (single player) was cause it autosaved for me and I never had to touch a load or save button and was able to just play right through the game with minimal effort.
Oh, and one last HARD game.. Grand turismo, license tests, trying to get perfect score on them all. I never knew it was so hard to take one fucking corner in my life.
Reapy
Yes, this was a game I read more about then actually played. I loved the concept, but it sort of fell flat on its face (for me) in gameplay. The ship fights sort of ended up as circle strafing in space.
But really, as far as I can tell, this was your first natural selection/savage type game, where you had a commander building bases, upgrading, and divying out bombers and other expensive ships to players.
Ultimiatly I think it killed itself as when you bought the game, you had to play on the msn zone, which had two sections, a "free" lobby that was supposed to be limited, and a for pay one, where I think there was a subscription fee to use. So the already small user base was split in two.
The game was creative though, and different, but had/has a steep learning curve to it. If you like the theme and idea of it, def check out their open source version of it now, definitely worth it.
I saw some people mention age of wonders and age of wonders II shadow magic, which are about as close to MoM gameplay as you are going to find.
But, there may be some hope. I seem to recall reading the developer log over at galciv2.com where he was mentioning that stardock was trying to acquire rights to "a certain fantasy themed game similar to moo" or some other abstract way of putting it. But basically they were trying to grab the MoM licenses for a sequel.
If there is anybody out there right now to do this sequel, stardock is the one. Check out galciv2 if you have not, it is basically what you wanted MOO 3 to be, minus your favorite races. They definitely understand the elements that made moo and mom to be the hits that they were.
You don't even need two accounts. I was just surfing around looking for tips for rockstar's table tennis game, and just about any forum I ran into was full of posts "Help me get xx wins" and people exchanging gamer tags so that the two of them take turns losing to each other. I guess it just sort of shocked me since those were almost the ONLY types of posts I saw, and very rarely did I see one where a person was discussing how they actually play the game. Sad.
I will grudginly admit steam is ok. I think my initial problem with it was being required to verify my cd key online in order to play it.
:((
My biggest problem with is with source, which makes me want to throw up all over the place! I never made it through hl2, and I really wanted to.
Halo = Golden Eye for a younger generation.
:)
Consol fps games are a different experience due to being a LAN in the box for 4+ players, as was said above. Internet gaming is cool, but I didn't know the goodness of LAN play until I went to college and blew someone's head off in unreal, only to hear "FUCK" shouted down the hall. What great feedback that was.
I hated bond at first, controls sucked, graphics sucked, the little tiny box in the corner of my scren sucked. But I kept at it, and by the end of the year 007 matches happened all the time, and I have great memories of it.
Halo is the same thing, one of the best consol FPS's out there. A lot of people are new to gaming, and halo is their first taste of it, and in turn, it has become their religion.
So, let them have their memories. We are the lucky ones, we got to watch the gaming explosion that happened through the late 90's first hand. Back then I was on new genera overload. Not so much anymore. Don't ruin the book of halo for people!
You must be an older gamer. I grew up in your generation too. I have the same issues as yourself. Everything gaming related is a waste of time, right? Everything else is "cooler", and more fullfilling? I notice this pressure is less severe as it used to be, but, that feeling still sticks with us.
Maybe you should just allow people to do something that they enjoy. It is not harming other people for them to get pumpped up about campping out a new game system.
Maybe people think standing online for skiing is dumb? While I enjoy snowboarding, I certainly don't enjoy it on a crowded mountain. A nightclub? Maybe I don't want to choke on secondhand smoke and watch people have to down alchohol before they are comfortable enough to get out and move their feet. Wait in line for the gym? Why, so you can towel off some other guys back sweat before you add your own to the mix?
Personally, I don't understand people's need to have technology before there are really any games out for it. I'll get one of the new systems as soon as there is an exclusive that I really want to play, otherwise, there is no point for myself to have a new expensive toy.
But, despite this, if people want to get excited and spend their money, and their time, to sit online, why not? If anything, standing online for something like this is a great way to meet people. Any time I have been online for something, I've ended up talking to at least 5 to 10 strangers. When I go out dancing, I talk and dance with my friends/wife, and don't end up meeting anybody at all.
So, to each their own. As long as it's not causing harm, let people be excited about something. I mean god, we spend 40+ hours a week as someone else's slave, just let us have a little bit of fun every now and again.
I really enjoyed the knife fight sequence in re4. You had to first fight the urge to put the controller down as the cinimatic plays, but also, as you are listening to the plot being revieled as the other character talks to you, he'd all of a sudden lash out with his knife, and you'd have to dodge the attack by pushing the correct buttons. It was really immersiver as you were on edge the whole time, just as the character would be in that sequence.
Granted, a whole game of instant death via this manner would be very frusterating, but used in moderation, it is a great technique.
You are 100% correct. While probably not dating back as far as you, I had a first webpage about 10 or 11 years ago and, as you said, along with the rants, I put up some far side comics that I had scanned in because I thought they were really funny. I even wanted to make sure that I didn't take some wierd credit for the pictures, and put in the book title, author, and page numbers of each comic. It was my thoght if people liked them they might want to go find whole book and read the rest, and addtionally could locate the funny comics in their own copies by going to the page number.
Well this sat somewhere online for about 10 years or so while I completly forgot about it, until sometime last year, the isp hosting the site informed me that they had received a cease and desist letter from some company who is out to protect the far side ip. To be save the ISP blocked the site until I took down the photos, but I just told them to go ahead and delete it since I lost the password a long while ago.
But still, crazy to see something done 10 years ago catching up with you like that. Back then it was no big deal, now, apparently I was destroying thier intelectual property.
Haha yeah the school house is waht killed me too! I don't think I've ever been that creeped out before during a video game before in my life. I was handling version 1 of the school reasonably well. But then when it get all metalic and demonic, *shiver*.
:)
But man, downstairs on the "big tv" after everybody is in bed, with the lights off round 12am. That damned STATIC getting louder and louser! WHERE THE HELL IS IT?!?! DAMNED PS1 CLIPPING PLANE!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH Great game
Reapy
Tech very limited. Anything physics tends to lag to hell, and scripts sometimes just decide to not work for the fun of it. I seriously wanted to do some interesting stuff in SL but everytime I started looking at it I saw problem after problem, and it really just made me start to think, why don't I just program it in "real life" and email it to my friends or something.
Well one area of SL that I think is interesting and still works are some aLife projects people are working on. Check out the sim Terminous (spelled wrong there) or Svarga for some intersting things people have done.
I really think everyone ought to experience sl once, it is a really intersting idea and it is fun to see the stuff that people make for themselves. It's an interesting look into the person, sort of like being able to go into someones house and look around their room to see what they have hung up on the walls.
After a while it gets boring, but it is definitly worth seeing at least once.
I couldn't agree more.
:) )
This type of behavior already exists in alchoholics. Most alchoholics still deal with their problems the same way they did right when they started drinking. It can be sad to see a 60 year old man deal with their emotional problems like an 18 year old, very sad indeed.
But at the same time, I can argue that not many of us learned some sort of special values through tag. The only thing I learned how to do was tag people back as soon as they tagged me because I couldnt run. I don't think that is much of a life lesson. Kids will probably learn all about competing with one another and injuring themselves when they join a sports team or get online gaming (RSI!
Reapy
I've played sl on and off for about a year now and I have to agree with the grandparent. SL is neat, but it doesn't add things to existing tools. SL at its heart is an irc chat room with avatars. A more useful learning tool would have a chat room with the ability to set up ad hock groups, and on demand whiteboards between the groups. Also have a wiki running in another window. Then have a file bin so you can drag and drop files on users or in a group storage to offer to everybody. Just put up a screen where you can easily give info to everybody and the group. Heck, even put up webcams on people if you want real expressions.
I don't see how having an avatar and a virtual space adds to the education enviorment besides spacial proximity, and I fail to see how that enhances education.
Also, I know that when I went to school, most of the time myself as well as half of the classes were not paying attention to the lecture. I've also been to educational confrences, and really the only benafit of them is that they take away your ability to do anything else but pay attention to the lecture.
Really the confrences do a better job of providing an enviroment for networking then anything, and that is just a product of who is there.
I think a really well run discussion with voice connections, a chat room, and a whiteboard, can do just as well as a class room. There is only so much space on the screen and the virtual house to sit in seems like a pointless place to be.
But you know what, being in a 3d space looks cool, and as we all know, the thing that looks cool is what gets the most attention. So yeah, 3d virtual learning classrooms!
3d worlds are a fantasy, they are made so you can go in and be someone else in a world that doesnt exist. It takes too much hard work to actually make your avatar looks like you, and I can't even begin to imagine the techincial and artistic skill required to actually make it act like you, especially when all you need to represent yourself is a 20 dollar webcam.
I think that the main problem is people, and not statistics. It does take some effort to overcome the pressure of having good statistics, but, statistics really are interesting to look at.
Getting rid of statistics is not the answer. Why take away featuers of the game? What needs to be done is keep BETTER statistics.
Stats put a lot of pressure on you to play a certain way. Currently, most games keep kill to death ratio, or points per minute, and these tend to encourage tactics that violate the spirit of the game. They undermine the intended play experience.
So make the stats push more towards the intended game play.
-Don't keep track of kills if kills are not the main point (not a deathmatch ffa)
-Number of minutes played on a team with 10 more players the the other.
-Wins where you were part of the team for 75% of round time.
Things like the above would work great. Keep track of all the times the player acted like a "good" player and executed well.
At the same time, I wish people could just "play normally" and forget about their stats, because when you do that, the stats can actually reflect the kind of player you are, and those are intersting numbers to look at.
Unfortunatly, this never seems to work in practice for the inexperienced players.
Usually the only frusterating time in an online game is learning how to play and getting through that initial ass beating you are going to receive when you sign into a server. We all know it's coming, and you really have to just hope the game is fun enough to endure it before you can start handing out judgment.
But what happens in ranking systems is they tend to appease the more talented players by allowing them to find good games with their stats, and crushing the newbies because lots of good players constantly resetting their stats or starting new accounts.
People do this to either have better stats, or to just have the satisfaction of playing against people who aren't any good at the game. I remember way back when playing subspace, people would create new accounts if they died once, trying to achieve some sort of 100:0 kill ration or whatever to brag to their friends.
From personal experience I saw this a lot in warcraft 3. Just trying to get a comparable team 2v2 match when we had no record was rediculous. From reading, it looks as though halo 2 also suffers from this problem.
Honestly the only way for this system to work is to make it extreemly difficult (or costly) to make a new account, which will work somewhat, or, completly hide the stats and never tell anybody that the system exists, though people will find out sure enough.
Well anyway, I guess the games are still better then completly unranked ones, and hopefully developers will keep coming up with ideas to curb the problems.