MMOs apparently start out entertaining for many before turning into more of an obsession than entertainment. I can't really speak for them because I get bored pretty quickly. No idea if an MMO could be designed in a way that would make me care but I do believe so.
You're No True Scotsman-ing the term "gamer" there because there are millions of people who do want these games and since they're playing games that makes them gamers.
Or maybe just area level caps, if you go into an area that's for lower level characters you get dropped to their level automatically for the duration of your stay.
What's the point of pwning people in MMOs when that usually amounts to "my level is higher than yours, I win"? It's not a demonstration of skill, it's just a demonstration of how long you have played before that battle.
Only in a peer-to-peer situation. Server-client games update the client status regularly anyway and only the server's results matter, the client never relies on calculations for so long that the floating point errors matter.
To use a car analogy, trying to play a true FPS game on a console is like rigging up a knob on your dash that controls the speed of a motor turning your wheel.
Great, you made me remember that old C64 Formula 1 game where the joystick turned the wheel instead of the car and you have to manually move it back to neutral after you're done turning...
Mice are better at translating the player's intention into an ingame action when it comes to things like turning or aiming. While I could accept slow analog aiming on something like a turret with motors that need to align the barrel with the target first it doesn't really make sense for humanoid characters, a human won't turn like that. The simulated object is a gun in the hands of a human and that's probably closest to something like the Wiimote and still closer to a mouse than an analog stick (because the movements of your arm translate 1:1 to the movements of your weapon with those controls). The mouse controls the position of the aim and facing, the Wiimote controls the position of the aim and the speed of the facing (one derivative) and the analog stick controls the speed of the aim and the facing (both one derivative). Those derivatives add a step of abstraction that the player's brain has to cope with and are unnatural.
I wonder if it would be viable to use the analog stick's position like the cursor in a Wii FPS, move the stick to move the aim and if you leave the inner deadzone the whole view starts to move... That way you could have absolute controls for the aim within a certain area instead of relative controls.
The issue is that these aren't XBL or PSN users, they're users on the publisher's server seeing it through a PSN or XBL front-end.
And yes they deserve criticism, we are the customers and we are disadvantaged by that locking, we don't care what their motivations for it are, we only know that it isn't a technical reason that's keeping us separated.
Sony and Nintendo don't seem to care much, you run the servers, you do the matchups (though a PS3/Wii crossplatform game would likely have major version differences that would prevent multiplayer anyway). AFAIK MS is the problem with their paid-for XBox Live service.
Maybe in resort bowling. In Wii sports bowling the control is shit. Four of us stood around throwing bowling balls and not really knowing what was working and what wasn't, because throws which felt like we did the same thing produced entirely different results. Maybe my problem is that I've actually bowled, though.
Worked fine for us all. I think it reacts to how you hold and turn the remote during the swing.
That's a whole lot of talk about media capabilities but you know, I buy videogame consoles for videogames and so do most other people. Listing hardware features is silly. The Wii has the least features on paper (though it has the non-gaming feature I use the most: A weather channel that doesn't require booting the PC or following the TV broadcast schedule) but people buy it at a higher price than the 360 because it has games they want. Listing hardware features is like telling someone they need to get a Mac when they want to run all their Windows-only programs.
Yeah, I guess 20GB would suck... I've got one of those 60GB ones, that's plenty but I think I have less than 40GB free. The pricedrop means that now all 360s with HDDs come with the 120 GB one so a pricedrop on that part probably won't do that much.
Supposedly they have, you have to consider that stat is over the entire lifetime of the thing (and probably on a biased sample but that aside) and it doesn't matter what the reliability of the current ones is since all the old ones still figure into the stat.
That's 60€ in Europe... I have no idea why it's so much more expensive but I know I'm not paying that much considering I tend to play online maybe once or twice a month.
It also seems as though Nintendo has begun to hit market saturation with the Wii at its current price. The sales have been down over the last few months and there's still no word of a price cut. I'm expecting one around Christmas, but they may be running out of steam. If anyone needs to come out with a new piece of hardware it's Nintendo.
No, they just went without a killer app for too long. Their strategy does not allow for pricedrops that quickly, especially when it's known what needs to be done to restore the sales without a pricedrop (namely releasing more killer apps). Besides, they just came out with a new piece of hardware called the Motion Plus. Since they don't consider graphics and processing that important they won't release a new system just to upgrade those.
Perhaps a big problem with coin operated machines in the US is the coin value? From the sounds of it the quarter is the largest common coin, for e.g. the Euro common sizes include 2€, 1€ and 50 cents so paying larger amounts in coins is much more feasible. Why did the dollar coin get phased out in the US?
I don't see where those complaints about privately-owned parking spaces come from, they've got plenty of private parking areas that charge money here. Of course seeing the ticket machines called "smart parking meters" seems strange to me too as there's about zero intelligence in those things and all they do is add whatever time your money translates to on the current time and print it on a slip of paper. I don't even see regular mechanical parking meters anymore (and who would want to stamp one of these every three meters when you can just put one machine per street or something?).
Maybe the issue is that they sold all the spaces to ONE company? AFAIK the private parking spaces here aren't all owned by the same company so the competition keeps the prices reasonable (though they can get quite unreasonable in some cities while others are dirt cheap...).
Slashdot Mirror
You don't get to decide "I'm not at the level cap, I don't want to engage in PvP" because it's enough that the other guy decides to attack you.
MMOs apparently start out entertaining for many before turning into more of an obsession than entertainment. I can't really speak for them because I get bored pretty quickly. No idea if an MMO could be designed in a way that would make me care but I do believe so.
You're No True Scotsman-ing the term "gamer" there because there are millions of people who do want these games and since they're playing games that makes them gamers.
You make the assumption that the hours in an MMO are entertaining.
Or maybe just area level caps, if you go into an area that's for lower level characters you get dropped to their level automatically for the duration of your stay.
What's the point of pwning people in MMOs when that usually amounts to "my level is higher than yours, I win"? It's not a demonstration of skill, it's just a demonstration of how long you have played before that battle.
Only in a peer-to-peer situation. Server-client games update the client status regularly anyway and only the server's results matter, the client never relies on calculations for so long that the floating point errors matter.
To use a car analogy, trying to play a true FPS game on a console is like rigging up a knob on your dash that controls the speed of a motor turning your wheel.
Great, you made me remember that old C64 Formula 1 game where the joystick turned the wheel instead of the car and you have to manually move it back to neutral after you're done turning...
Mice are better at translating the player's intention into an ingame action when it comes to things like turning or aiming. While I could accept slow analog aiming on something like a turret with motors that need to align the barrel with the target first it doesn't really make sense for humanoid characters, a human won't turn like that. The simulated object is a gun in the hands of a human and that's probably closest to something like the Wiimote and still closer to a mouse than an analog stick (because the movements of your arm translate 1:1 to the movements of your weapon with those controls). The mouse controls the position of the aim and facing, the Wiimote controls the position of the aim and the speed of the facing (one derivative) and the analog stick controls the speed of the aim and the facing (both one derivative). Those derivatives add a step of abstraction that the player's brain has to cope with and are unnatural.
I wonder if it would be viable to use the analog stick's position like the cursor in a Wii FPS, move the stick to move the aim and if you leave the inner deadzone the whole view starts to move... That way you could have absolute controls for the aim within a certain area instead of relative controls.
The issue is that these aren't XBL or PSN users, they're users on the publisher's server seeing it through a PSN or XBL front-end.
And yes they deserve criticism, we are the customers and we are disadvantaged by that locking, we don't care what their motivations for it are, we only know that it isn't a technical reason that's keeping us separated.
Sony and Nintendo don't seem to care much, you run the servers, you do the matchups (though a PS3/Wii crossplatform game would likely have major version differences that would prevent multiplayer anyway). AFAIK MS is the problem with their paid-for XBox Live service.
Maybe in resort bowling. In Wii sports bowling the control is shit. Four of us stood around throwing bowling balls and not really knowing what was working and what wasn't, because throws which felt like we did the same thing produced entirely different results. Maybe my problem is that I've actually bowled, though.
Worked fine for us all. I think it reacts to how you hold and turn the remote during the swing.
"u"? What is this, AOL?
That's a whole lot of talk about media capabilities but you know, I buy videogame consoles for videogames and so do most other people. Listing hardware features is silly. The Wii has the least features on paper (though it has the non-gaming feature I use the most: A weather channel that doesn't require booting the PC or following the TV broadcast schedule) but people buy it at a higher price than the 360 because it has games they want. Listing hardware features is like telling someone they need to get a Mac when they want to run all their Windows-only programs.
Yeah, I guess 20GB would suck... I've got one of those 60GB ones, that's plenty but I think I have less than 40GB free. The pricedrop means that now all 360s with HDDs come with the 120 GB one so a pricedrop on that part probably won't do that much.
Supposedly they have, you have to consider that stat is over the entire lifetime of the thing (and probably on a biased sample but that aside) and it doesn't matter what the reliability of the current ones is since all the old ones still figure into the stat.
That's 60€ in Europe... I have no idea why it's so much more expensive but I know I'm not paying that much considering I tend to play online maybe once or twice a month.
What's that? The X-Box 360 has by far the largest market share (other than the wii-toy)?
And Linux has by far the biggest desktop marketshare besides the proprietary crap. Insulting the market leader doesn't make him disappear.
It also seems as though Nintendo has begun to hit market saturation with the Wii at its current price. The sales have been down over the last few months and there's still no word of a price cut. I'm expecting one around Christmas, but they may be running out of steam. If anyone needs to come out with a new piece of hardware it's Nintendo.
No, they just went without a killer app for too long. Their strategy does not allow for pricedrops that quickly, especially when it's known what needs to be done to restore the sales without a pricedrop (namely releasing more killer apps). Besides, they just came out with a new piece of hardware called the Motion Plus. Since they don't consider graphics and processing that important they won't release a new system just to upgrade those.
I thought those set their text displays up to use something like 200 columns to make the most of their screen.
The bigger issue I see is whether it'll end up overwhelming the player.
The easiest solution is probably to duct tape them together and throw them into a volcano.
Perhaps a big problem with coin operated machines in the US is the coin value? From the sounds of it the quarter is the largest common coin, for e.g. the Euro common sizes include 2€, 1€ and 50 cents so paying larger amounts in coins is much more feasible. Why did the dollar coin get phased out in the US?
Depending on the size of the coil... EMP?
I don't see where those complaints about privately-owned parking spaces come from, they've got plenty of private parking areas that charge money here. Of course seeing the ticket machines called "smart parking meters" seems strange to me too as there's about zero intelligence in those things and all they do is add whatever time your money translates to on the current time and print it on a slip of paper. I don't even see regular mechanical parking meters anymore (and who would want to stamp one of these every three meters when you can just put one machine per street or something?).
Maybe the issue is that they sold all the spaces to ONE company? AFAIK the private parking spaces here aren't all owned by the same company so the competition keeps the prices reasonable (though they can get quite unreasonable in some cities while others are dirt cheap...).
I think they said 90% is average, neither high nor low.