Obviously we have different ideas of immersion. I find the music immersive, and the people who have conversations as you walk by.
I don't find clicking a button to swap tools every 30 seconds immersive. I find it annoying and pointless.
By this logic, I should also have to push a button to change from my sword to my lute in order to cast a Minstrel spell. Funny how the game does that automatically without destroying immersion, eh?
Except they haven't re-released Secret of Mana in any form. I mean we're on the what, THIRD rehash of FF4 now?
If they won't go out and re-release it as a seperate thing, the VC seems like a cheap way for them to do it instead. I can guarantee there's a market for the game, despite all the bad things they've done to it with stuff like Children of Mana.
While I think sucks is a bit harsh, "polished" is the last word I'd use to describe this game. Where's the UI scaling option (its way too small on my monitor)? Hell, how do I get a clock on screen? Why do I have to change tools every time I switch between mining copper and chopping wood? I mean really, can't the game figure out that obviously I want to use the axe in my bag to chop wood?
Why does somebody with a really long name and title make it harder to right click on anything around them? Why does right clicking on them by accident (while trying to reach the mailbox their enormous name is in front of) cause a "General Error"? Why do quests tell me to go in the exact opposite direction of where I need to go, to fight Boars 12 levels below the quest level and thus not give XP?
Hell, why does a base stat (Fate) not work? Hello reviewer, a BASE STAT doesn't work! Thats not polished!
Why do I have a deed to kill 60 things in a swamp in the Lone Lands (followed by another deed to kill 120 of them if the pattern holds) when there are only seven spawns in the entire zone? The numbers worked fine for bandits (which there are lots of), but 180 kills with seven spawns? Even if there was no competition (and said mobs are a quest target too, so there is a lot of competition) that'd still take hours. Why does fast travel between zones have a level requirement, and normal horse travel take so bloody long?
Seriously folks. There is a lot of things to like in this game, but its certainly not "polished" yet. It could be a decent diversion if you're bored from WoW, but I think the reviewer was too busy drooling over the graphics to notice some major problems. (God forbid if he tries to level up Scholar, he'll have to spend days at a time camping low level ruins fighting bandits to search old pots, because you can't find the items you need anywhere else.)
All you have to know to understand Americans these days (particularly politicians) is that they've lost all ability to view things in perspective. Thats why every time something new is made illegal (especially if its completely innane, like this), the sentences for breaking said law are so completely out of line as to be laughable. Just wait, pretty soon pirating a HD DVD will be right up there with rape (if its not there already).
The problem with WoW balance is that its really two games in one: PvE and PvP. Balancing one often means breaking balance in the other.
Though in some cases both are out of whack: Holy/Disc Priests have the worst 31 and 41 talents in the game, in any situation. (They're also the least popular, fully 84% of Holy Priests skip their 41, and 77% skip the 31 too.)
For all the people who played and loved Starcraft, they'll be comparing Starcraft 2 against the feelings they got playing Starcraft ten years ago, colored by the fact that after ten years its really easy to remember things more fondly then how you felt about them originally.
They could make the best RTS on the market, and it still wouldn't "top" Starcraft in the eyes of many of the fans. Its an impossible goal, because there is no real way to judge it.
Hopefully they'll just focus on trying to make a good game in the spirit of Starcraft. If they can do that, I'll be happy.
Definitely, wish I could go back and edit the post now to add it in.:) Addons add a lot to the game. They create a community, allow people to do really neat new things, make the game more personalized, and at this early stage in a games release, allow the community to fix UI problems.
Back in WoW 1.0 the first mod almost everybody downloaded was one that let you have more then one action bar. I wonder who these people were that actually only played with 12 buttons.
I own the game, and played it for a while. But the other day I cancelled, and went back to WoW. The main issue was simply a lack of polish in the UI. Things like the UI itself being too small on my display (a UI scaling option is sorely missed), having to change tools constantly (Explorers have two gathering professions, basically forcing me to leave a bag open all the time to swap between a mining pick and an axe), the chat text box losing focus constantly, and so on.
None of these individually are game breaking issues, but them and a host of other UI annoyances all pile up to make it a much less enjoyable experience then playing with WoW's incredibly smooth UI (which is even more so once you start using mods).
I'm curious if the developers are going to take some time to go back and improve the UI?
They started making games at one point that wouldn't react well to the turbo feature. I believe Megaman 3 was the first one, if you shot too fast the enemies would become immune for short bursts, so the turbo feature didn't really help you.
Otherwise I agree, the NES Advantage was an awesome stick.
Any government branch that releases information to the public (both "sensitive" and more mundane information) has a policy for how that information is to be released. That may be a set of instructions for how to make sure you're not unintentionally releasing extra information, or for more secured cases simply that the file must go through a group that does the process for you.
Obviously somebody skipped a step. Whats actually in the file is more interesting then how it got there, given that all we're talking about is human error.
Its a shame that the comment rating system stops at +5, the parent should be at +10 and tacked on to the summary itself. Maybe that would stop some of the nonsense that is being thrown around in here from people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.
No, it can't "use WINDOWS UPDATE ITSELF." For crying out loud, RTFA.
BITS is a service that can be told to download stuff. Windows Update uses it to download stuff. BITS can also be told to download other stuff. In this case, an already infected system uses it to download more infections, rather then say creating a HTTP connection itself.
You can set up a million hoops, clueless users who want to have flashing emoticons in their email (or whatever the current scams are) will still go through them.
There is no way to program around users that blindly say yes to every prompt. There is however a way to create users who blindly say yes to every prompt, and that is throwing a million prompts at them every time they want to update their video card driver.
Thats a lack of leadership. A lot about Vanguard's failure can be explained if you listen to the reports coming out now that Brad (CEO of Sigil and the "vision" guy) stopped coming to the office six months ago.
Class remakes at the last minute are caused by a lack of leadership and focus, not listening to the community.
That sounds interesting, but I find these types of ideas always run into problems when random asshats show up. Some jerk levels a character, then goes in and murders an entire village worth of NPCs.
The supporters of this game like to go on about "the vision" and Brad, and how that makes it good. In fact I saw one review give it an 8/10, while admitting that the game in its current state was flat out awful. The reason for the 8? Because of Brad, and that at some point it'd be good.
Without going into "the vision" or any of that stuff, the game as it stands right now simply isn't any good. Performance is its biggest problem, most people's machines simply can't play it effectively. Sorry folks, the market of people who buy new gaming rigs every six months isn't big enough to support a MMO.
Blizzard figured that out, and now they have a license to print money. Vanguard's makers didn't figure it out, and now they get a one way ticket to being dumped on Station Pass with a bunch of other games.
The best way to get into the game industry (not that I understand why anybody would want to given the horrid working conditions) is as something that has a part in the creation of the game. Development, artists, that sort of thing.
Testers are the people who annoy everybody by coming back with a build and saying "it doesn't meet xbox certification criteria 347-15a", thereby causing the developers to have to work another 12 hour day to fix it.
If you actually want to be a tester, then its fine. If your goal is to move into something like development, testing isn't a good place to start.
Because "price gouging" implies they actually have some kind of power to force you to buy it.
Oil companies can price gouge if they feel like selling gas for $10/gallon tomorrow. Most people need to drive to make a living, so they'll have little choice in the short term but to pay it. Water suddenly costs 10x more then it did yesterday? You can't really choose to stop requiring liquid to survive.
The Wii is a luxury. Nintendo could decide tomorrow to charge $1000 for it. You can decide to not pay it, and nothing bad happens.
The console market is highly competitive, and the Wii is already the cheapest console in it. How can anybody think that in a highly competitive market, selling a product for less then your competitors but at a profit amounts to price gouging?
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Obviously we have different ideas of immersion. I find the music immersive, and the people who have conversations as you walk by.
I don't find clicking a button to swap tools every 30 seconds immersive. I find it annoying and pointless.
By this logic, I should also have to push a button to change from my sword to my lute in order to cast a Minstrel spell. Funny how the game does that automatically without destroying immersion, eh?
Except they haven't re-released Secret of Mana in any form. I mean we're on the what, THIRD rehash of FF4 now?
If they won't go out and re-release it as a seperate thing, the VC seems like a cheap way for them to do it instead. I can guarantee there's a market for the game, despite all the bad things they've done to it with stuff like Children of Mana.
While I think sucks is a bit harsh, "polished" is the last word I'd use to describe this game. Where's the UI scaling option (its way too small on my monitor)? Hell, how do I get a clock on screen? Why do I have to change tools every time I switch between mining copper and chopping wood? I mean really, can't the game figure out that obviously I want to use the axe in my bag to chop wood?
Why does somebody with a really long name and title make it harder to right click on anything around them? Why does right clicking on them by accident (while trying to reach the mailbox their enormous name is in front of) cause a "General Error"? Why do quests tell me to go in the exact opposite direction of where I need to go, to fight Boars 12 levels below the quest level and thus not give XP?
Hell, why does a base stat (Fate) not work? Hello reviewer, a BASE STAT doesn't work! Thats not polished!
Why do I have a deed to kill 60 things in a swamp in the Lone Lands (followed by another deed to kill 120 of them if the pattern holds) when there are only seven spawns in the entire zone? The numbers worked fine for bandits (which there are lots of), but 180 kills with seven spawns? Even if there was no competition (and said mobs are a quest target too, so there is a lot of competition) that'd still take hours. Why does fast travel between zones have a level requirement, and normal horse travel take so bloody long?
Seriously folks. There is a lot of things to like in this game, but its certainly not "polished" yet. It could be a decent diversion if you're bored from WoW, but I think the reviewer was too busy drooling over the graphics to notice some major problems. (God forbid if he tries to level up Scholar, he'll have to spend days at a time camping low level ruins fighting bandits to search old pots, because you can't find the items you need anywhere else.)
Lets have less Turbographix games, and more Secret of Mana.
That is all.
All you have to know to understand Americans these days (particularly politicians) is that they've lost all ability to view things in perspective. Thats why every time something new is made illegal (especially if its completely innane, like this), the sentences for breaking said law are so completely out of line as to be laughable. Just wait, pretty soon pirating a HD DVD will be right up there with rape (if its not there already).
The problem with WoW balance is that its really two games in one: PvE and PvP. Balancing one often means breaking balance in the other.
Though in some cases both are out of whack: Holy/Disc Priests have the worst 31 and 41 talents in the game, in any situation. (They're also the least popular, fully 84% of Holy Priests skip their 41, and 77% skip the 31 too.)
For all the people who played and loved Starcraft, they'll be comparing Starcraft 2 against the feelings they got playing Starcraft ten years ago, colored by the fact that after ten years its really easy to remember things more fondly then how you felt about them originally.
They could make the best RTS on the market, and it still wouldn't "top" Starcraft in the eyes of many of the fans. Its an impossible goal, because there is no real way to judge it.
Hopefully they'll just focus on trying to make a good game in the spirit of Starcraft. If they can do that, I'll be happy.
Microsoft doesn't get the casual gamer.
Sony does better, on the PS2. The PS3 is way too expensive to even be considered as something a casual gamer might buy.
Are these the same analysts who predicted that Nintendo would be a distant third this cycle?
Funny how you don't see them making a statement of "Oops, sorry we had no clue what the hell we were talking about."
These analysts are as good at predicting the future as any random person off the street, they just get paid a lot more.
Pretty sure Blizzard fixed that recently. Buffs have been able to properly downrank for a while, at least.
Definitely, wish I could go back and edit the post now to add it in. :) Addons add a lot to the game. They create a community, allow people to do really neat new things, make the game more personalized, and at this early stage in a games release, allow the community to fix UI problems.
Back in WoW 1.0 the first mod almost everybody downloaded was one that let you have more then one action bar. I wonder who these people were that actually only played with 12 buttons.
You know what happens when you change resolutions on an LCD? Things get very, very ugly.
I own the game, and played it for a while. But the other day I cancelled, and went back to WoW. The main issue was simply a lack of polish in the UI. Things like the UI itself being too small on my display (a UI scaling option is sorely missed), having to change tools constantly (Explorers have two gathering professions, basically forcing me to leave a bag open all the time to swap between a mining pick and an axe), the chat text box losing focus constantly, and so on.
None of these individually are game breaking issues, but them and a host of other UI annoyances all pile up to make it a much less enjoyable experience then playing with WoW's incredibly smooth UI (which is even more so once you start using mods).
I'm curious if the developers are going to take some time to go back and improve the UI?
They started making games at one point that wouldn't react well to the turbo feature. I believe Megaman 3 was the first one, if you shot too fast the enemies would become immune for short bursts, so the turbo feature didn't really help you.
Otherwise I agree, the NES Advantage was an awesome stick.
Any government branch that releases information to the public (both "sensitive" and more mundane information) has a policy for how that information is to be released. That may be a set of instructions for how to make sure you're not unintentionally releasing extra information, or for more secured cases simply that the file must go through a group that does the process for you.
Obviously somebody skipped a step. Whats actually in the file is more interesting then how it got there, given that all we're talking about is human error.
Its a shame that the comment rating system stops at +5, the parent should be at +10 and tacked on to the summary itself. Maybe that would stop some of the nonsense that is being thrown around in here from people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.
No, it can't "use WINDOWS UPDATE ITSELF." For crying out loud, RTFA.
BITS is a service that can be told to download stuff. Windows Update uses it to download stuff. BITS can also be told to download other stuff. In this case, an already infected system uses it to download more infections, rather then say creating a HTTP connection itself.
You can set up a million hoops, clueless users who want to have flashing emoticons in their email (or whatever the current scams are) will still go through them.
There is no way to program around users that blindly say yes to every prompt. There is however a way to create users who blindly say yes to every prompt, and that is throwing a million prompts at them every time they want to update their video card driver.
Thats a lack of leadership. A lot about Vanguard's failure can be explained if you listen to the reports coming out now that Brad (CEO of Sigil and the "vision" guy) stopped coming to the office six months ago.
Class remakes at the last minute are caused by a lack of leadership and focus, not listening to the community.
Lord of the Rings Online just had a very smooth launch. No lag, hardly any queues, and the game actually runs decently.
That sounds interesting, but I find these types of ideas always run into problems when random asshats show up. Some jerk levels a character, then goes in and murders an entire village worth of NPCs.
Now what?
The supporters of this game like to go on about "the vision" and Brad, and how that makes it good. In fact I saw one review give it an 8/10, while admitting that the game in its current state was flat out awful. The reason for the 8? Because of Brad, and that at some point it'd be good.
Without going into "the vision" or any of that stuff, the game as it stands right now simply isn't any good. Performance is its biggest problem, most people's machines simply can't play it effectively. Sorry folks, the market of people who buy new gaming rigs every six months isn't big enough to support a MMO.
Blizzard figured that out, and now they have a license to print money. Vanguard's makers didn't figure it out, and now they get a one way ticket to being dumped on Station Pass with a bunch of other games.
The best way to get into the game industry (not that I understand why anybody would want to given the horrid working conditions) is as something that has a part in the creation of the game. Development, artists, that sort of thing.
Testers are the people who annoy everybody by coming back with a build and saying "it doesn't meet xbox certification criteria 347-15a", thereby causing the developers to have to work another 12 hour day to fix it.
If you actually want to be a tester, then its fine. If your goal is to move into something like development, testing isn't a good place to start.
Does this mean I can finally when a nobel prize for attempted chemistry?
Because "price gouging" implies they actually have some kind of power to force you to buy it.
Oil companies can price gouge if they feel like selling gas for $10/gallon tomorrow. Most people need to drive to make a living, so they'll have little choice in the short term but to pay it. Water suddenly costs 10x more then it did yesterday? You can't really choose to stop requiring liquid to survive.
The Wii is a luxury. Nintendo could decide tomorrow to charge $1000 for it. You can decide to not pay it, and nothing bad happens.
The console market is highly competitive, and the Wii is already the cheapest console in it. How can anybody think that in a highly competitive market, selling a product for less then your competitors but at a profit amounts to price gouging?