Exactly. I don't really pay much attention to the reviews opinion or the score. I usually look at the leading digit to get an idea (7, 8, 9 ) how they felt. When I read the review I look for a feature list, and try to get a general idea of what happens in the game in terms of a play experience.
If those features intrest me, I continue on and look at screen shots. If I am starting to feel like I will want to purchase it, I go ahead and download all the movies of the game (I use gamespot).
This about seals the deal for me in terms of if I want to try buying the game or not.
I know others have said they check message boards, but I find them to usually be on two polar oppasites, with fans really praising up the game, while others are saying how it's completly opposite.
I find that sticking to the facts of the game are the ways I find what I like. Sometimes the theme of a game can really improve it for me. My best example I can think of is one of my favorite games, mark of kri, for the ps2. It was generally poorly recieved in terms of reviews that I read, but when I picked it up it quickly became one of my favorite's ever.
So, use your own judgment, personal preference goes a long long way. Just do SOME sort of research before dropping 50 bucks on something:)
Wierd he balked on the last one. That was the only colossus that was really "evil looking" as opposed to many of the others. Perhaps one of my favorite ones and probably ones i felt were the most docile was the flying desert one you had to use Agro to catch up to becuase he flew around so fast. That guy never once attacked you, you just rode him down and slaughtered him. I guess he had no problem with that one and the giant fireball spewing monster at the end gave him a sudden dose of morality.:)
Same here in NJ when it snows. I remember a few days leaving work early in the rush down the parkway. People in suvs doing things that they wouldnt even contemplate doing when it was sunny out, now they do it in a blizzard with half a foot of snow on the ground already.
SUV's tailgating constantly. SUV's passing in the left break down lane?!?! SUV's plowing through the snow across the friggen local/express median!!?!? I couldn't believe this crap. It was amazing.
People suck at driving, is what it comes down to, I guess.
I've always found it wierd that there is no time to live type boundry or something hardcoded into sl so such a task would be impossible?
I think it would probably take just a few lines of scripts to bring the whole world down if all you had to do was flood it with physics enabled objects?
There are already a few scripts or discussions about how fast someone can spread 1 object to every simulator on the grid. So what if someone just takes that code, sets a timer, and when everythings all spread over the grid, puts them in an infinate loop spewing physics objects in random directions which are also spewing physics objects who spew physics objects ect ect ect.
They really should have some sort of hardcode method in there to prevent such a simple "attack". Some limit to the amount of objects you can rez hour or something. Any kind of throttle will do.
They try to whore money because that is how the company makes cash. But I've had a basic account there now for around 5 months or so and haven't payed a cent besides the initial 10 dollar sign up fee (which isnt even around anymore).
Its neat, and for 10 dollars it was worth trying for me.
The only thing you can't do without money is own land. So you cant put your prims down in a perminate location, unless you happen to find a friend who will share their land with you, which is very possible.
There are sandbox areas where you can build whatever you want and then throw them in your inventory.
So you can do all of sl without paying a cent. Your 50 linden a week stipend should cover some upload fees and what not, but again, this is a social game, and many residents you befriend are very willing to assist you with some lindens.
It's a neat thing, worth trying if you are interested in the concept, with no pressure to spend your US at all.
The other reply mentioned the stilly culture, but there are a great variety of people to meet in SL, and not all of them are as such. It may take some searching, but there are some pretty interesting and nice people in the game.
I'm sorry for being ignorent about mini's, but what is to stop you from playing the version of the game you have already purchased? Is it because you have to go to a game store to play and they only play the current version? Otherwise I would think you and your friends should be able to just play with the old stuff and the old rules and to hell with their new onslaught of crap?
That is exactly why I finally quit daoc. I played very heavily around release time. I unfortunatly ended up trying all the realms, and sometimes starting new characters when a friend would start playing.
The result is I ended up with a bunch of mid to high level characters scattered throughout, and I couldn't participate in any rvr (and actually enjoy it).
On release, I was like 10 levels off the upper curve of the players. So at the start you really could go out and rvr around level 20. But by the time I got up in level, so would everybody else, and the slide just over took me, and then my buddy decided he wanted to play on another realm, and then it was all over.
Anyway, I just threw in the towel, I didn't want to grind forever just so I could play the aspect of the game that I joined it for. After a few months of playing and not being able to get out there and really try it out without getting ganked in 2 seconds, it was time to move on.
I read this and thought about what it would be like to go see all the new stuff they've added to a game I really enjoyed in the past. Then I thought about going from 1 - whatever the max level is now and it put the idea far far far away from me.
I would like to add examples of times we have all probably been physically goofing around with our friends, perhaps wrestling or something like that.
It was all fun and games, and then someone might get hurt accidently. All of a sudden, play stops, and everybody checks in on the injured person, and the appropriate care level is reached.
A good example to build off of yours would be, while your mom was expirmenting hitting the clown, another person in the room was struck by the clown and somehow injured.
Perhaps as a young kid, they may run and hide because they are ashamed of what they did, or fear the concequences. Or they might go to the person and try to make it better somehow.
I would think the only response that bears concern would be if she laughed and struck the clown again and inflicted more damage on the person.
That would be something to be concerned about, where they cause real harm to another person, and did not express any care or concern for the person, and a step worse, continued it.
Anything short of that is just playing and joking around. I would not be convinced that a guy who spends all day team killing in video games is going to shoot me in the back should we ever be fighting in real life. They are two toally different things and bear no resemblence.
So, again, good points, and I enjoyed the short story from your parent's past.
I would like to see the dev's get thier stuff together for secondlife. It has great potential but they drop the ball on a lot of stuff.
There's been lots of promises of things that are supposed to be out in the next update, then it comes, and there is no mention of it.
These things include html on prims, new havok physics engine, and a new rendering engine.
Interestingly I don't see the new features being developed helpping the main features of secondlife. Building and socalizing. I see no mention of work on improving building tools. They are very simple to use, but also have some issues that make it a big pain in the butt.
They ought to work on the socializing aspect. A lot of people like to go on and chat and goof around with friends. Yet avatars cant realy intereact with each other. The current hack is to have an animation (bvh file) play from your avatar. It is impossible to move avatars where you want except when they sit on something. So you sit on a poseball that puts you in the right spot and plays the right animation, and if it isn't too laggy you'll end up having a dance, hug, or whatever with another person.
It is very clumsy, and I don't see anybody pointing out some developer changes to facilitate the process and make it easier. I'm not sure what they can add, and I can appreciate the techical hurdles (who knows what the heck the other avatar is going to look like in terms of shape and size), it still should be something they are working on.
The other problem is lag. SL has a great physics system where you can build some intersting cars, planes and boats. The problem is that anywhere you use it it is so laggy that the controls stink and you just end up ramming into some geomentry that just rezed in front of you which wasn't there a second before.
I have no clue how to fix this since the landscape in sl is as untame as the web, yet you still have to stream in all this content to make sure a wall might be there or not.
SL is a very cool 3d chat room, and thats about all I see it as. If you want to make something big and exciting, sl isn't the platform to do it on, but if you want to just get in and meet some wacky people and see some crazy stuff for free, it's a great place.
I really like sl for what it is trying to do. I'm just waiting for someone else to come along and do it better now.
Exactly, what many christians fail to graps it that morality and religion are two separate things. You can be moral and not religious, but many fail to grasp this, and the political church does all it can to enforce that athiesim is immoral, which is very false.
My wife and I get at odds with language. She is catholic and I am nothing. She is against my cursing, but has gotten used to it.
I tell her my thoughts on it, they are just words which we use when we are angry to express that. That is the point of words. Curse words must exist, because how else do we show frustration?
Eventually if we band the word fuck, we will find a new word to replace it. We will all use that word at a time of great anger and hate, and the word will evolve over time to be just as "bad" as the word fuck. It is unavoidable. Ban one word and another will rise in its place.
Retarded was supposed to be the nice way to refer to handycapped people. Now we use special and retarded is bad. In another 5 or so years special will be a no no and we will have a new word.
Banning a word is silly, it is like saying you aren't allowed to express your anger.
Anger is a natural human emotion, we all have it, we all have to manage it. If someone is managing it verbally, it is much better then someone managing it physically. Bring on the curse words.
So I just played the original COD a while ago. I never played it online at all. I got COD2 and thought it was a fantastic single player experience. I have no plans to play online.
I don't know what the issues are. The only things I've seen are it isn't as good as the expansion and there is no punkbuster.
I found the single player experience to be pretty exciting. The game is a visual treat as you fight through a bunch of great looking maps with your squad. They call out gun emplacments and germans alike as you advance. They yell out to the closest man by name to cover them while they reload.
So lots of great details come together, while the overall map design is fantastic, as you'll push into an area and often have to defend it or fall back as waves of enemies charge at you.
So I don't know what the other game had. Someone complained about grenade indicators and the icon that comes up when you can hop a wall. I enjoy both of these features. In the campaign the computer really does a great job tossing grenades into your camping areas, and many a time you miss the fact that the grenade was tossed. So the indicator is nice, and kept the pace of the game going very smoothly rather then blowing up every 5 sec when grenades got thrown.
The jumpping over the wall indicator seemed fine too. This is a video game and I never know when it is going to allow me to hop over a wall or if I am instead on the edge of a map and it doesn't want me to move over it. The icon is non intrusive and helps.
Another fun feature is the autosaves. Normally when playing an FPS I quicksave very frequently, esp after a particuarly tough spot. In COD2 it is as though the developers went through and marked all the spots someone would quicksave at. Whenever I felt the urge to quicksave, the game would already be saying "saved" for me, hence, I was able to play the whole game through with no frustrating restarts, and at the same time, I didn't have to bother with saving. Not handing the saving and just playing really helpped the immersion.
So, perhaps mp sucks. I don't know. But the game is worth it if just for the SP experience.
In the games they talk about in this article like quake and painkiller, there are multipl spawn points. If there are like 5 spawn points on a whole level, I fail to see how the person can instantly kill you ever spawn. Sure, you may get a bad spawn through dumb luck and have the get you right away, but it won't happen twice in a row. Then it comes down to your ability to regain control of the map and hopefully do the same to the other person.
In a game like battlefield 2, you can prevent spawn campping by not being a retard and spawning into the same base that has 5000 red dots behind cover with their fingers on the trigger waiting for you to spawn in. Spawn in behind them.
If that is your last base you have already failed as a team to control the map and chances are you are going to lose anyways.
I am assuming the spawn campping cry I hear so often is for games like battlefield. Often times it is because people aren't paying attention. They spawn in and let the sniper on the airfield run out of ammo, or even more fun they get sniped, then instead of finding and killing the sniper, they go stand over by the runway and wait for a plane again.
I started playing fps's online since doom 2 and I've yet to have a problem being spawn campped in any of them.
Just think a little bit before you spawn in, be aware of where you are spawning, and where hte other team is, and it is no big deal. Sure, you may spawn in through dumb luck on an artillery strike, or right when a tank rolled up on your spawn. Even then, lots of times you have a chance to go run and hide, then come back for it later.
And if it is really bad, your team cant get out of the start spawn cause your whole team is doing poorly, just go find another server.
Does anybody know any publications, online or off, that focuses on gamer's experiences?
I mean, I see stuff like this article, and they always tro to comment on the "bigger issues" behind the actions. But I've read 5 million "why do griefers do it" articles, and really, it is boring. There aren't very many shockingly great conclusions. When someone cause trouble it's because they are having fun doing it and there are no concequences, end of story.
But what I would really like to see, would be a publication that had articles like the mentioned "the great scam" or whatever it was called.
That was a great read for me, and it is often why when I am interested in a game I will lurk in forums looking for player experiences.
So I'd like to read about the particulars of certain games. I want to hear about how a group stole a dreadnaught in eve online. I want to read about the plague in wow. I want to read about a newbies perhaps unusual playing experience. Perhaps I could hear in detail how a group of battlefield 2 players swept around a map and were cleaing up at every angle.
I really just like hearing about what people are doing in games, and doing well at. Not just a factual breakdown, but with a little embelsihment to make it more personal then a list of events. Really that one linked article is the perfect example of how I'd like to see lots of gaming situations narrated.
Most every gaming article I see has to be some persons attempt at the sociology of gamers, or how gamers make money (but never give too many details), or a thousand other things that would relate to a "mainstream" audience.
I really would like to see some writing about games that does a great job describing the emotions we all feel as players when we are sitting around accomplishing things in our games. I want it to drag me in to make me feel like I'm actually accomplishing those objectives with the player.
Wishful thinking perhaps, but I just thought I'd get that out there.
Wow, very well said. I agree with you whole heartily, especially in terms of motion.
It's interesting that sometimes I am much more interested in older games with sprite animation then I am with some of the newer ones. Sometimes the artists details in their drawing does far more then the 3d rendering can do.
But yes, I would like to start seeing cpu power going towards gameplay enhancements. I am not to go with the usually moaning about graphics over gameplay. I actually think graphics can make a game very fun, if I am just shooting a room full of bad guys, watching a bullet fly out of a gun and impacting everything around me causing wanton destruction is fun, like controling a movie.
But lately, I've stopped being wowed by graphics. There was something to say when the first time I saw wing commander, or those intial pictures of strike commander. They made me go WOW. But as of late, the current crop of games really didn't make me go nuts over the graphics. Everything is just seems to be sharper and that is about it. I guess some of the more recent things I actually noticed would be games that have grass, that is a very nice atmospheric touch usually.
But now I'd like to see games start expanding outward. Give us more to do per game. Forget super graphics for a moment, take the current average graphics and really make the game bigger and better. More detail per square inch, all that.
Hrm, this is probably why the latest elderscrolls game gives me goose bumps. Bigger world, more items laying about, greater variety in landscape, radiant AI. Really, elder scrolls seems to be taking advantage of technology to create a more diverse and larger environment for us to play around in, rather then the same old formula with bigger and better explosions.
GTA did this well. I know some people didn't like SA, but if you really look at the amount of area and varity of things to do that they added to the game, it is quite an upgrade. If they keep going down this path, I'll keep buying their games too. They take a great concept, and expand what you can do in it with each iteration.
I'm sorry to have rambled too much to just say that I agree with the parent, but he really has hit the nail on the head with that post.
I'm glad some others have had the same experiences as me. I'm 26 and grew up in a similar setting. I was even worse since I played mostly pc games at the time. At some point nintendo was "ok" to talk about and acknowledge playing.
And like you said now I see a ton of kids on their computers playing games and its "ok" for whatever silly social rules kids have.
But man, it sure is tramatizing to love something you can't talk about for fear of retaliation. Still to this day I have trouble talking about it outside of groups of friends. I even get on edge walking in a game store because then "everybody knows i play games" It's totally f'ed up.
So I might have taken my damage but at least I know when I have kids and if they happen to enjoy games they won't have to worry about hiding it all day at school.
On to the topic at hand, I agree with you. As we start taking our parent's places, having grown up with our computer tech, and showing our kids our comp tech, the market can only grow.
But as for now, you can't really change a person's free time habits if they've already encoutered games and havent become a gamer by now. Maybe if you show a person who has never seen a game before and get them to play, they might become a lifer. But for the most part, if you just aren't into the idea of playing a game, you aren't going ot activly seek it out.
A lot of gamers are very specific in what they like. My wallot is cursed by my enjoyment of them all.
I loved all the elder scrolls games for their openness and ability to do what you wanted. I actually never followed the main plot in any of those games but clocked many hours to them.
I also loved final fantasy for its ability to tell me a great story and presnet it very cinimatically for me. In the newer ff's, the cut scenes were a great reward for me when i finally go to one, as I have always enjoyed squares ability to render a good movie.
The are both two different games, and no one is forcing either of you to buy or read about the other. But nobody is stopping you from sharing your opinions either:) Share on:)
I had high hopes for shadowbane. It is also the reason I stopped playing on non pvp servers when I tried mmos. I just couldn't go back to pve with no form of danger out there from other players. It's fun in it's own right, but the randomness that is pvp (yes even avoiding rampaging high level people) is very very thrilling indeed.
But SB's problem was it's techincal implementation. SB.exe errors to desktop garonteed for any pvp that was going to happen. I found this unbelievable that it would crash to desktop so frequently. I don't mind lagging out, the game slowing way down, whatever. But kicking you out of the game all the way, gah.
But everything from the quick level ups to the skill based system and the player made cities, forcing you to join one to advance, made the game a ton of fun.
Ah but still, I guess it would take lots of special work to maintain a 24-7 persistant world and make it fun. People used to do silly stuff like setting the siege time to just after a scheduled reboot, meaning the defenders can just spawn right in by their city and rush out and take down the bane before the attackers could even spawn there.
Well anyway, lots of potential with shadowbane with a failed implemntation. I hope another company will try to make it work.
As for mmos', I'd like to see a focus on smaller groupos of people, 10 or less per team is a great number to provide thrilling action. When it gets to be 200 people, its just chaos, which is neat to see, but never as satisfying as smaller scale engagments.
Ohh, there are some new ones? I had some great memories from planetside, but they ultimatly ruined the game by not offering any variety (fight over the same 4 bases everywhere, arg).
Are there any more on the horizon that would aim to correct this? I'd be greatly interested if someone could do planetside the right way.
Sheesh what do you want? Morrowind should have that for you, except for getting married. I guess the top down perspective is what you want. You really ought to just play the ultimas again if thats what you are craving.
I'd stay on the look out for oblivion, but if elder scrolls games aren't your style, I guess steer clear.
You could try fable, but I hated it. The game world was just a series of interconnected zones, it really made me feel like I was just playing in little arenas.
I didn't like any of the characters, and the world was pretty boring, with not much to interact with at all.
But yeah as others said you could get online and just do tradeskills if thats something you are looking for. I'm not sure exactly what the best one for that is though.
Good luck!
Re:Too bad the installation is failing for people.
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It's the reason I couldn't play doom3 without cracking it. I don't know why I even bothered spending money on it, it would have worked much better to download it. I had similar issues with fear. I was finally able to get it running using SR7.Stop which worked great at hiding my virtual drives so my retail products could run.
Re:Wow that is interesting.
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This was posted as it's own story on slashdot a little while back. I think there were actually 2 stories, I don't recall.
He works for blizzard and creates many of the strategy pages they create for their games. He goes by Nebu, short for that whole name of the matrix ship that I can't spell:)
I agree with on deciding what types of games my kids will play. Until they are old enough, I would tone down the content of games they were allowed to see. Though, when I was young I recall my dad showing me many parts of liesure suit larry that weren't overly sexual, but highly comical, and making leave the room at other parts hehe.
I disagree with you about doing vs playing a video game. That is a matter of preference. I have snowboarded for many years, yet I still really enjoy playing snowboarding games, is just one example. It is a matter of prefernece and entertainment, not a matter of being a vergin.
I also fail to see the reason that being a vergin is a derogitory trait? But, I am sure you are very happy that you have obtained sex with a person and feel that it is a special thing to be prowd of. I don't feel it gives you the right to look down on others who are not having sex, though choice of their own or not of their own choice. It matters not.
I spoke like you when I finally met my first girlfriend and begain doing the things I had only fantasized about. But, I grew up beyond that, and my narrow view of the world expanded as I have met more people with many different levels of life experiences.
I know you were not overly cruel in what you said, and it was a stupid quip on slashdot, but, it still strunk a nerve all the same. But, we are men, and on some levels we have to find an angle to be "better" then other guys. We can't help it. So I'll just shup up trying to prove, like an idiot, that somehow I have greater morals then you.
Why? Because he desires sex? That makes a person childish? Most of the population desires sex, but does not admit to it.
Is there something disgusting about admiting that you enjoyed a sex dream you had? Why?
Why oh WHY is nudity EVIL? Childish? Immature. Whatever you want to call it.
I hate to make another violence vs nudity post since I see them all over slashdot, but here I go.
It is ok to make a game where the focus is shooting and killing, but we can not make a game where it invovles meeting someone and starting a relationship and having sex with them.
Heck, this is a game, meeting someone and having sex with them, forget the stuff.
It is entertainment.
So, to help the grandparent out, here are some places he can go look for things he has desribed. Oh, because I don't want to be deemed childish, I'll show you a bunch of games where you can "make money". Games about making money are ok, right?
I am lazy so I won't collect links but you can google for the names and find them asap:
Secondlife - You can make lots of money in this game. There are lots of other people out here who look to make money. They make lots of items and outfits that help with making money. It is a good place to make money as well as many other things, and is free.
Sexybeach - Ha, this one was funny. It is japanese and the idea is to meet different partners and make money with them. It is almost what dead or alive volleyball was trying to be. I found it somewhat humors and fun trying to make money in the game.
Socolotron (sp?) - The game is about making money. I have not personally played it, and it is light on the graphics department, but I have found the themes of it to be intersting, as making money is incorperated into the game as a skill.
Singles - The game allowed the couples to make money together. The gameplay is tedious though, and I did not have the patience to even play the clickfest through to the point where they actually started making money together. I'd probably avoid this one.
There are a few other social type games that are just about making money but I don't remember the names, sorry for that.
But yeah it would be funny to see an open source program like this, people contribute women and men and parts and scenarios to the "game".
But really a game simply about nudity makes for a shallow game, there has to be some other theme to it, which is often why mature content encorperated into an already well defined game works the best. Why not add a more detailed quest in the brothels of our favorite rpg game?
A good game is a mesh of a fun game mechanic with fantastic audio and visual feedback to your inputs. The adult theme would just provide the audio and visual, but the gameplay still has to be strong, otherwise, you might as well download videos of people making money and watch that instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. I don't really pay much attention to the reviews opinion or the score. I usually look at the leading digit to get an idea (7, 8, 9 ) how they felt. When I read the review I look for a feature list, and try to get a general idea of what happens in the game in terms of a play experience.
:)
If those features intrest me, I continue on and look at screen shots. If I am starting to feel like I will want to purchase it, I go ahead and download all the movies of the game (I use gamespot).
This about seals the deal for me in terms of if I want to try buying the game or not.
I know others have said they check message boards, but I find them to usually be on two polar oppasites, with fans really praising up the game, while others are saying how it's completly opposite.
I find that sticking to the facts of the game are the ways I find what I like. Sometimes the theme of a game can really improve it for me. My best example I can think of is one of my favorite games, mark of kri, for the ps2. It was generally poorly recieved in terms of reviews that I read, but when I picked it up it quickly became one of my favorite's ever.
So, use your own judgment, personal preference goes a long long way. Just do SOME sort of research before dropping 50 bucks on something
Wierd he balked on the last one. That was the only colossus that was really "evil looking" as opposed to many of the others. Perhaps one of my favorite ones and probably ones i felt were the most docile was the flying desert one you had to use Agro to catch up to becuase he flew around so fast. That guy never once attacked you, you just rode him down and slaughtered him. I guess he had no problem with that one and the giant fireball spewing monster at the end gave him a sudden dose of morality. :)
But in the end... it's a freaken video game...
Same here in NJ when it snows. I remember a few days leaving work early in the rush down the parkway. People in suvs doing things that they wouldnt even contemplate doing when it was sunny out, now they do it in a blizzard with half a foot of snow on the ground already.
SUV's tailgating constantly. SUV's passing in the left break down lane?!?! SUV's plowing through the snow across the friggen local/express median!!?!? I couldn't believe this crap. It was amazing.
People suck at driving, is what it comes down to, I guess.
I've always found it wierd that there is no time to live type boundry or something hardcoded into sl so such a task would be impossible?
I think it would probably take just a few lines of scripts to bring the whole world down if all you had to do was flood it with physics enabled objects?
There are already a few scripts or discussions about how fast someone can spread 1 object to every simulator on the grid. So what if someone just takes that code, sets a timer, and when everythings all spread over the grid, puts them in an infinate loop spewing physics objects in random directions which are also spewing physics objects who spew physics objects ect ect ect.
They really should have some sort of hardcode method in there to prevent such a simple "attack". Some limit to the amount of objects you can rez hour or something. Any kind of throttle will do.
They try to whore money because that is how the company makes cash. But I've had a basic account there now for around 5 months or so and haven't payed a cent besides the initial 10 dollar sign up fee (which isnt even around anymore).
Its neat, and for 10 dollars it was worth trying for me.
The only thing you can't do without money is own land. So you cant put your prims down in a perminate location, unless you happen to find a friend who will share their land with you, which is very possible.
There are sandbox areas where you can build whatever you want and then throw them in your inventory.
So you can do all of sl without paying a cent. Your 50 linden a week stipend should cover some upload fees and what not, but again, this is a social game, and many residents you befriend are very willing to assist you with some lindens.
It's a neat thing, worth trying if you are interested in the concept, with no pressure to spend your US at all.
The other reply mentioned the stilly culture, but there are a great variety of people to meet in SL, and not all of them are as such. It may take some searching, but there are some pretty interesting and nice people in the game.
I'm sorry for being ignorent about mini's, but what is to stop you from playing the version of the game you have already purchased? Is it because you have to go to a game store to play and they only play the current version? Otherwise I would think you and your friends should be able to just play with the old stuff and the old rules and to hell with their new onslaught of crap?
That is exactly why I finally quit daoc. I played very heavily around release time. I unfortunatly ended up trying all the realms, and sometimes starting new characters when a friend would start playing.
The result is I ended up with a bunch of mid to high level characters scattered throughout, and I couldn't participate in any rvr (and actually enjoy it).
On release, I was like 10 levels off the upper curve of the players. So at the start you really could go out and rvr around level 20. But by the time I got up in level, so would everybody else, and the slide just over took me, and then my buddy decided he wanted to play on another realm, and then it was all over.
Anyway, I just threw in the towel, I didn't want to grind forever just so I could play the aspect of the game that I joined it for. After a few months of playing and not being able to get out there and really try it out without getting ganked in 2 seconds, it was time to move on.
I read this and thought about what it would be like to go see all the new stuff they've added to a game I really enjoyed in the past. Then I thought about going from 1 - whatever the max level is now and it put the idea far far far away from me.
I agree with this 100%.
I would like to add examples of times we have all probably been physically goofing around with our friends, perhaps wrestling or something like that.
It was all fun and games, and then someone might get hurt accidently. All of a sudden, play stops, and everybody checks in on the injured person, and the appropriate care level is reached.
A good example to build off of yours would be, while your mom was expirmenting hitting the clown, another person in the room was struck by the clown and somehow injured.
Perhaps as a young kid, they may run and hide because they are ashamed of what they did, or fear the concequences. Or they might go to the person and try to make it better somehow.
I would think the only response that bears concern would be if she laughed and struck the clown again and inflicted more damage on the person.
That would be something to be concerned about, where they cause real harm to another person, and did not express any care or concern for the person, and a step worse, continued it.
Anything short of that is just playing and joking around. I would not be convinced that a guy who spends all day team killing in video games is going to shoot me in the back should we ever be fighting in real life. They are two toally different things and bear no resemblence.
So, again, good points, and I enjoyed the short story from your parent's past.
Figuring out new ways to make fun things suck.
I would like to see the dev's get thier stuff together for secondlife. It has great potential but they drop the ball on a lot of stuff.
There's been lots of promises of things that are supposed to be out in the next update, then it comes, and there is no mention of it.
These things include html on prims, new havok physics engine, and a new rendering engine.
Interestingly I don't see the new features being developed helpping the main features of secondlife. Building and socalizing. I see no mention of work on improving building tools. They are very simple to use, but also have some issues that make it a big pain in the butt.
They ought to work on the socializing aspect. A lot of people like to go on and chat and goof around with friends. Yet avatars cant realy intereact with each other. The current hack is to have an animation (bvh file) play from your avatar. It is impossible to move avatars where you want except when they sit on something. So you sit on a poseball that puts you in the right spot and plays the right animation, and if it isn't too laggy you'll end up having a dance, hug, or whatever with another person.
It is very clumsy, and I don't see anybody pointing out some developer changes to facilitate the process and make it easier. I'm not sure what they can add, and I can appreciate the techical hurdles (who knows what the heck the other avatar is going to look like in terms of shape and size), it still should be something they are working on.
The other problem is lag. SL has a great physics system where you can build some intersting cars, planes and boats. The problem is that anywhere you use it it is so laggy that the controls stink and you just end up ramming into some geomentry that just rezed in front of you which wasn't there a second before.
I have no clue how to fix this since the landscape in sl is as untame as the web, yet you still have to stream in all this content to make sure a wall might be there or not.
SL is a very cool 3d chat room, and thats about all I see it as. If you want to make something big and exciting, sl isn't the platform to do it on, but if you want to just get in and meet some wacky people and see some crazy stuff for free, it's a great place.
I really like sl for what it is trying to do. I'm just waiting for someone else to come along and do it better now.
Exactly, what many christians fail to graps it that morality and religion are two separate things. You can be moral and not religious, but many fail to grasp this, and the political church does all it can to enforce that athiesim is immoral, which is very false.
My wife and I get at odds with language. She is catholic and I am nothing. She is against my cursing, but has gotten used to it.
I tell her my thoughts on it, they are just words which we use when we are angry to express that. That is the point of words. Curse words must exist, because how else do we show frustration?
Eventually if we band the word fuck, we will find a new word to replace it. We will all use that word at a time of great anger and hate, and the word will evolve over time to be just as "bad" as the word fuck. It is unavoidable. Ban one word and another will rise in its place.
Retarded was supposed to be the nice way to refer to handycapped people. Now we use special and retarded is bad. In another 5 or so years special will be a no no and we will have a new word.
Banning a word is silly, it is like saying you aren't allowed to express your anger.
Anger is a natural human emotion, we all have it, we all have to manage it. If someone is managing it verbally, it is much better then someone managing it physically. Bring on the curse words.
So I just played the original COD a while ago. I never played it online at all. I got COD2 and thought it was a fantastic single player experience. I have no plans to play online.
I don't know what the issues are. The only things I've seen are it isn't as good as the expansion and there is no punkbuster.
I found the single player experience to be pretty exciting. The game is a visual treat as you fight through a bunch of great looking maps with your squad. They call out gun emplacments and germans alike as you advance. They yell out to the closest man by name to cover them while they reload.
So lots of great details come together, while the overall map design is fantastic, as you'll push into an area and often have to defend it or fall back as waves of enemies charge at you.
So I don't know what the other game had. Someone complained about grenade indicators and the icon that comes up when you can hop a wall. I enjoy both of these features. In the campaign the computer really does a great job tossing grenades into your camping areas, and many a time you miss the fact that the grenade was tossed. So the indicator is nice, and kept the pace of the game going very smoothly rather then blowing up every 5 sec when grenades got thrown.
The jumpping over the wall indicator seemed fine too. This is a video game and I never know when it is going to allow me to hop over a wall or if I am instead on the edge of a map and it doesn't want me to move over it. The icon is non intrusive and helps.
Another fun feature is the autosaves. Normally when playing an FPS I quicksave very frequently, esp after a particuarly tough spot. In COD2 it is as though the developers went through and marked all the spots someone would quicksave at. Whenever I felt the urge to quicksave, the game would already be saying "saved" for me, hence, I was able to play the whole game through with no frustrating restarts, and at the same time, I didn't have to bother with saving. Not handing the saving and just playing really helpped the immersion.
So, perhaps mp sucks. I don't know. But the game is worth it if just for the SP experience.
Depends on your game.
In the games they talk about in this article like quake and painkiller, there are multipl spawn points. If there are like 5 spawn points on a whole level, I fail to see how the person can instantly kill you ever spawn. Sure, you may get a bad spawn through dumb luck and have the get you right away, but it won't happen twice in a row. Then it comes down to your ability to regain control of the map and hopefully do the same to the other person.
In a game like battlefield 2, you can prevent spawn campping by not being a retard and spawning into the same base that has 5000 red dots behind cover with their fingers on the trigger waiting for you to spawn in. Spawn in behind them.
If that is your last base you have already failed as a team to control the map and chances are you are going to lose anyways.
I am assuming the spawn campping cry I hear so often is for games like battlefield. Often times it is because people aren't paying attention. They spawn in and let the sniper on the airfield run out of ammo, or even more fun they get sniped, then instead of finding and killing the sniper, they go stand over by the runway and wait for a plane again.
I started playing fps's online since doom 2 and I've yet to have a problem being spawn campped in any of them.
Just think a little bit before you spawn in, be aware of where you are spawning, and where hte other team is, and it is no big deal. Sure, you may spawn in through dumb luck on an artillery strike, or right when a tank rolled up on your spawn. Even then, lots of times you have a chance to go run and hide, then come back for it later.
And if it is really bad, your team cant get out of the start spawn cause your whole team is doing poorly, just go find another server.
Does anybody know any publications, online or off, that focuses on gamer's experiences?
I mean, I see stuff like this article, and they always tro to comment on the "bigger issues" behind the actions. But I've read 5 million "why do griefers do it" articles, and really, it is boring. There aren't very many shockingly great conclusions. When someone cause trouble it's because they are having fun doing it and there are no concequences, end of story.
But what I would really like to see, would be a publication that had articles like the mentioned "the great scam" or whatever it was called.
That was a great read for me, and it is often why when I am interested in a game I will lurk in forums looking for player experiences.
So I'd like to read about the particulars of certain games. I want to hear about how a group stole a dreadnaught in eve online. I want to read about the plague in wow. I want to read about a newbies perhaps unusual playing experience. Perhaps I could hear in detail how a group of battlefield 2 players swept around a map and were cleaing up at every angle.
I really just like hearing about what people are doing in games, and doing well at. Not just a factual breakdown, but with a little embelsihment to make it more personal then a list of events. Really that one linked article is the perfect example of how I'd like to see lots of gaming situations narrated.
Most every gaming article I see has to be some persons attempt at the sociology of gamers, or how gamers make money (but never give too many details), or a thousand other things that would relate to a "mainstream" audience.
I really would like to see some writing about games that does a great job describing the emotions we all feel as players when we are sitting around accomplishing things in our games. I want it to drag me in to make me feel like I'm actually accomplishing those objectives with the player.
Wishful thinking perhaps, but I just thought I'd get that out there.
Wow, very well said. I agree with you whole heartily, especially in terms of motion.
It's interesting that sometimes I am much more interested in older games with sprite animation then I am with some of the newer ones. Sometimes the artists details in their drawing does far more then the 3d rendering can do.
But yes, I would like to start seeing cpu power going towards gameplay enhancements. I am not to go with the usually moaning about graphics over gameplay. I actually think graphics can make a game very fun, if I am just shooting a room full of bad guys, watching a bullet fly out of a gun and impacting everything around me causing wanton destruction is fun, like controling a movie.
But lately, I've stopped being wowed by graphics. There was something to say when the first time I saw wing commander, or those intial pictures of strike commander. They made me go WOW. But as of late, the current crop of games really didn't make me go nuts over the graphics. Everything is just seems to be sharper and that is about it. I guess some of the more recent things I actually noticed would be games that have grass, that is a very nice atmospheric touch usually.
But now I'd like to see games start expanding outward. Give us more to do per game. Forget super graphics for a moment, take the current average graphics and really make the game bigger and better. More detail per square inch, all that.
Hrm, this is probably why the latest elderscrolls game gives me goose bumps. Bigger world, more items laying about, greater variety in landscape, radiant AI. Really, elder scrolls seems to be taking advantage of technology to create a more diverse and larger environment for us to play around in, rather then the same old formula with bigger and better explosions.
GTA did this well. I know some people didn't like SA, but if you really look at the amount of area and varity of things to do that they added to the game, it is quite an upgrade. If they keep going down this path, I'll keep buying their games too. They take a great concept, and expand what you can do in it with each iteration.
I'm sorry to have rambled too much to just say that I agree with the parent, but he really has hit the nail on the head with that post.
I'm glad some others have had the same experiences as me. I'm 26 and grew up in a similar setting. I was even worse since I played mostly pc games at the time. At some point nintendo was "ok" to talk about and acknowledge playing.
And like you said now I see a ton of kids on their computers playing games and its "ok" for whatever silly social rules kids have.
But man, it sure is tramatizing to love something you can't talk about for fear of retaliation. Still to this day I have trouble talking about it outside of groups of friends. I even get on edge walking in a game store because then "everybody knows i play games" It's totally f'ed up.
So I might have taken my damage but at least I know when I have kids and if they happen to enjoy games they won't have to worry about hiding it all day at school.
On to the topic at hand, I agree with you. As we start taking our parent's places, having grown up with our computer tech, and showing our kids our comp tech, the market can only grow.
But as for now, you can't really change a person's free time habits if they've already encoutered games and havent become a gamer by now. Maybe if you show a person who has never seen a game before and get them to play, they might become a lifer. But for the most part, if you just aren't into the idea of playing a game, you aren't going ot activly seek it out.
A lot of gamers are very specific in what they like. My wallot is cursed by my enjoyment of them all.
:) Share on :)
I loved all the elder scrolls games for their openness and ability to do what you wanted. I actually never followed the main plot in any of those games but clocked many hours to them.
I also loved final fantasy for its ability to tell me a great story and presnet it very cinimatically for me. In the newer ff's, the cut scenes were a great reward for me when i finally go to one, as I have always enjoyed squares ability to render a good movie.
The are both two different games, and no one is forcing either of you to buy or read about the other. But nobody is stopping you from sharing your opinions either
I had high hopes for shadowbane. It is also the reason I stopped playing on non pvp servers when I tried mmos. I just couldn't go back to pve with no form of danger out there from other players. It's fun in it's own right, but the randomness that is pvp (yes even avoiding rampaging high level people) is very very thrilling indeed.
But SB's problem was it's techincal implementation. SB.exe errors to desktop garonteed for any pvp that was going to happen. I found this unbelievable that it would crash to desktop so frequently. I don't mind lagging out, the game slowing way down, whatever. But kicking you out of the game all the way, gah.
But everything from the quick level ups to the skill based system and the player made cities, forcing you to join one to advance, made the game a ton of fun.
Ah but still, I guess it would take lots of special work to maintain a 24-7 persistant world and make it fun. People used to do silly stuff like setting the siege time to just after a scheduled reboot, meaning the defenders can just spawn right in by their city and rush out and take down the bane before the attackers could even spawn there.
Well anyway, lots of potential with shadowbane with a failed implemntation. I hope another company will try to make it work.
As for mmos', I'd like to see a focus on smaller groupos of people, 10 or less per team is a great number to provide thrilling action. When it gets to be 200 people, its just chaos, which is neat to see, but never as satisfying as smaller scale engagments.
Ohh, there are some new ones? I had some great memories from planetside, but they ultimatly ruined the game by not offering any variety (fight over the same 4 bases everywhere, arg).
Are there any more on the horizon that would aim to correct this? I'd be greatly interested if someone could do planetside the right way.
Sheesh what do you want? Morrowind should have that for you, except for getting married. I guess the top down perspective is what you want. You really ought to just play the ultimas again if thats what you are craving.
I'd stay on the look out for oblivion, but if elder scrolls games aren't your style, I guess steer clear.
You could try fable, but I hated it. The game world was just a series of interconnected zones, it really made me feel like I was just playing in little arenas.
I didn't like any of the characters, and the world was pretty boring, with not much to interact with at all.
But yeah as others said you could get online and just do tradeskills if thats something you are looking for. I'm not sure exactly what the best one for that is though.
Good luck!
It's the reason I couldn't play doom3 without cracking it. I don't know why I even bothered spending money on it, it would have worked much better to download it. I had similar issues with fear. I was finally able to get it running using SR7.Stop which worked great at hiding my virtual drives so my retail products could run.
This was posted as it's own story on slashdot a little while back. I think there were actually 2 stories, I don't recall.
He did.
:)
He works for blizzard and creates many of the strategy pages they create for their games. He goes by Nebu, short for that whole name of the matrix ship that I can't spell
Beating an old thread to death here but,
I agree with on deciding what types of games my kids will play. Until they are old enough, I would tone down the content of games they were allowed to see. Though, when I was young I recall my dad showing me many parts of liesure suit larry that weren't overly sexual, but highly comical, and making leave the room at other parts hehe.
I disagree with you about doing vs playing a video game. That is a matter of preference. I have snowboarded for many years, yet I still really enjoy playing snowboarding games, is just one example. It is a matter of prefernece and entertainment, not a matter of being a vergin.
I also fail to see the reason that being a vergin is a derogitory trait? But, I am sure you are very happy that you have obtained sex with a person and feel that it is a special thing to be prowd of. I don't feel it gives you the right to look down on others who are not having sex, though choice of their own or not of their own choice. It matters not.
I spoke like you when I finally met my first girlfriend and begain doing the things I had only fantasized about. But, I grew up beyond that, and my narrow view of the world expanded as I have met more people with many different levels of life experiences.
I know you were not overly cruel in what you said, and it was a stupid quip on slashdot, but, it still strunk a nerve all the same. But, we are men, and on some levels we have to find an angle to be "better" then other guys. We can't help it. So I'll just shup up trying to prove, like an idiot, that somehow I have greater morals then you.
Why? Because he desires sex? That makes a person childish? Most of the population desires sex, but does not admit to it.
Is there something disgusting about admiting that you enjoyed a sex dream you had? Why?
Why oh WHY is nudity EVIL? Childish? Immature. Whatever you want to call it.
I hate to make another violence vs nudity post since I see them all over slashdot, but here I go.
It is ok to make a game where the focus is shooting and killing, but we can not make a game where it invovles meeting someone and starting a relationship and having sex with them.
Heck, this is a game, meeting someone and having sex with them, forget the stuff.
It is entertainment.
So, to help the grandparent out, here are some places he can go look for things he has desribed. Oh, because I don't want to be deemed childish, I'll show you a bunch of games where you can "make money". Games about making money are ok, right?
I am lazy so I won't collect links but you can google for the names and find them asap:
Secondlife - You can make lots of money in this game. There are lots of other people out here who look to make money. They make lots of items and outfits that help with making money. It is a good place to make money as well as many other things, and is free.
Sexybeach - Ha, this one was funny. It is japanese and the idea is to meet different partners and make money with them. It is almost what dead or alive volleyball was trying to be. I found it somewhat humors and fun trying to make money in the game.
Socolotron (sp?) - The game is about making money. I have not personally played it, and it is light on the graphics department, but I have found the themes of it to be intersting, as making money is incorperated into the game as a skill.
Singles - The game allowed the couples to make money together. The gameplay is tedious though, and I did not have the patience to even play the clickfest through to the point where they actually started making money together. I'd probably avoid this one.
There are a few other social type games that are just about making money but I don't remember the names, sorry for that.
But yeah it would be funny to see an open source program like this, people contribute women and men and parts and scenarios to the "game".
But really a game simply about nudity makes for a shallow game, there has to be some other theme to it, which is often why mature content encorperated into an already well defined game works the best. Why not add a more detailed quest in the brothels of our favorite rpg game?
A good game is a mesh of a fun game mechanic with fantastic audio and visual feedback to your inputs. The adult theme would just provide the audio and visual, but the gameplay still has to be strong, otherwise, you might as well download videos of people making money and watch that instead.