Lifehacker? I would have gone with huffington post or "Bob Villa's Craftsman Fixeroos and Gabber Gobs" guidebooks (now only $19.99 with purchase of the craftsman multi-tool kid)
None of these are "hacks", chief. Not unless you're part of the federation of sad people who want to have 'engineer' in their work title despite their job having nothing to do with creating solutions to technical problems.
Meanwhile, the iMedical Device will either throw you a worthless message with a skull and crossbones, then lock itself out until you reboot it... or it will spontaneously melt itself when you run too many monitoring devices. But hey, that's why you bought AppleCare for $50 billion, right?
Just imagine if the Military contracted targeting systems with Sprint? All our guided-weaponry would bombard some random address, probably a good, wholesome family of 5.
As many raindrops join to form a great river of water, many souls join their highest intent to form the river of evolved consciousness. - Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Also.... “No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.”
Don't worry. Kaz Hirai is on the case. He'll raise prices so painfully high that consumers will "need to get 10 jobs just to earn the right to use our products".
ACtually, if you follow Indoctrination Theory, 2/3 of the choices probably lead to indoctirnation. The only question is.. do you become their Saren champion or do you become a Husk. I feel like Synergy = Husk.:)
Actually, most people aren't mad because the ending is sad/tragic. Way to buy into propaganda. If you bother to read what everyone has said or listened to the countless youtube comments, there's one united message:
The endings are discontinuous in flow from the rest of the games.
It's not that people die. Most people are okay with people dying. It's that the game shifted from one which choice mattered and character endings were explained concisely to one in which there are more questions than answers. For instance, why were my crew, whom were completely loyal to me through the games and fought to their bitter ends on every other mission... suddenly running from battle? Especially the squad mates that were with me on the ground battle, charged with me to the citadel matter stream, saw me get cut down.. so what? Joker flies the partyvan by and tells everyone that it's time to peace out? That kinda personality change is very inconsistent. Every single person would continue fighting until the job was done. You don't ride in with every races' best ships to war just to chicken out when it counts.
It's not that people are yellign about inability to change a major storyline. To teh contrary, people are upset because the major storyline WAS changed, in the span of 14 lines of dialogue delivered by a 11th hour new villain who has the power to end it all and leaves it up to you, Neo, to rejoin the source. Really? A last minute super villain that supplants the existing villain armada? That's introduced in 14 lines?
Cool story, bro.
My advice? Stop reading Bioware's interpretation of people's anger and actually read what people have to say. What's funny is that despite BioWare saying that they are listening, all the angry people are saying THE SAME EXACT THING, and yet BioWare pretends that they don't hear it.:)
In Mass Effect, you have the main conflict, which is "We need to stop the reapers from killing all advanced races". This carries over three games. In the end, in the last 15 minutes and 14 lines of dialogue, the conflict objective completely changes to "You need to choose whether to condemn all sentient machines, control them (but lose yourself in the process... essentially merging yourself with the reapers -- else, how will you control them post-mortem?), or "return to the source" and add your own energy into the collective stream and force conformity to all life in the universe.
In the Matrix, Neo's entire conflict was "We need to stop the matrix/Agents/machine/Colonel sanders from enslaving humanity/destroying zion". That is, up until the last portion of the second movie, where an abruptly new character, Colonel Sanders, changes the decision to "Join the source and continue the cycle or watch us destroy humans." Sure, you can argue that they sorta did introduce the Architect earlier in the movie, but it was only hinted to here and there. You don't really meet him until the end. And even then, he replaces the main villain? Sorta kinda? Or offers a different kind of salvation? It's a really weak ending.. a deus ex machina.
In both cases, a last-minute introduced character offers an universal reboot with limited scope options. And for Mass Effect, a game built on the premise of your choice impacting the universe, to have that completely retconned in an ending where 2/3 choices involved rejoining the source, it's.. very weak. And Deus Ex machina?
Personally, when the kid tells me I can ONLY kill ALL of the reapers. Or ONLY do this. or that. with no varying level of options and controls, it just felt wrong. And for the starchild to watch the galaxy evolve around itself, including have evidence that AI and Biological units can coexist walking in its superstructure (hello EDI/Joker, Legion/Tali) and for it to continue on it's assumption that humans and robots can't coexist.. makes little sense. On top of that, the circular logic of "Machines kill advanced species so they can't create machines that kill advanced species" just hurts my brain. No, it's not that it is a thing I cannot comprehend. It's just poor logic. It's sloppy logic.
Instead, I took Option 4. I sat there emptying my clip at the starchild. Sure, the war raged on, but at least my shepard did something that is true to his nature: he used violence to solve stupidity. Oh yeah!
At the end of ME2, EDI downloads specs of Harbringer from the Collector Base (this is what Joker hands Shepard at the end, assuming Shep survives. If not, Joker still has this technical info).
When the Normandy was handed over to the Alliance, these specs were handed over as well. That means the Alliance/Citadel council races had specifications on how to kick reapers in the teeth. Sure, not all their weapons could have been upgraded, but some may have had time to do some massive improvements.
Not to mention all of the council races upgraded their fleets and added dreadnought-class warships en masse.
Plus recall that 1 Maw Thresher took out a reaper... the Quarian fleet took out a reaper and in the battle for Earth, the entire galactic victory armada had combined navies of many, many races.
Who's to say it wasn't Casey Hudson's design genius that envisioned the end of the reapers through detonating eezo-driven mass relays, thus causing catastrophic system-wide explosions, just to perpetuate an adam-and-eve scenario with Tali, Liara, any-member-of-my-team-that-Joker-could-normally-not-get-a-date-with-but-in-my-absense-he-can?
I wonder if Mass Effect 4 will just be like Age of Empires or something.
Though, if Bioware really IS listening but wanted a quick out, they should just release an official DLC.... ported to Minecraft. Call it... "Build a home with Tali on Rannoch.
Or, at least, postpone your game release until NaNoWriMo, so that your fans can outlet their frustration of an unsatisfactory ending through fan fiction. That would be pretty neat. Foolish, but neat. Instead of "We are listening", change your catch phrase to "Write your own ending".
Regardless of what people think of the ending, I think the issue here is EA and BioWare leadership's handling of this situation. If they had simply not made statements that people could hang onto, such as Casey Hudson's pre-release comment that users would not get a finite set of endings (and that the endings they would receive would be very different), a lot of the gamers would not feel as much disappointment. On top of that, the massive PR effort stating "We are listening", and then turning around and ignoring the fanbase that wants new endings (essentially.. NOT listening) by announcing that your new release will just add more scenes to try and explain the ending that the fans have expressed dissatistaction with... and again, adding that THEY ARE LISTENING..
I think this is what is causing the unending grief. It's like hanging out with an overtly flirty girl with ample figures who constantly teases, giving off false hopes each time she declines people.
True, the game is their Intellectual Property and "creative art piece". But they need to realize that their game ends where the executable code stops, and that PR is not an art form that they can willy nilly play around with. Especially since there's a huge fan base that has fallen in love with the work.
Personally, I love Mass Effect 3. The game made me replay 1 and 2, just because of how fantastic the writing was throughout the game. Until the end. For me, the ending was discontinuous and poorly written - completely changing the central theme and providing barely any resolution to the main plot at hand. I had the same reaction to the Matrix Reloaded. For me, BioWare pulled a Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions. And then, depending on your score, even retconned things that were stated in the ending for the sake of a cliffhanger. It was just a jarring ride of failure, but it's their jarring ride of failure, and I respect their right to make that their creative direction. I've written poor stories before, i understand.
But I don't understand the PR jerking around, or the attempt to not build bridges with the fans you've hit with a wall of discontent. It seems... very unprofessional. Again, I think this is the key to fueling the rage... is that PR jerk arounds and bad decisions on wording reopens fresh wounds.
BioWare, do your extended endings. Just be clear that you aren't really listening per se, or at least... tell how you're listening and what you're looking for in terms of input. If you just say "We are listening", you provide a huge window of hope. And when you crush that hope and, in the same message, reiterate that you are still listening... that's just insult upon injury. Come on, you're medical doctors at the top.
Wow, and you don't think the rest of the content would speak volumes about the person? For every person an arrogant screener shoots down due to a dumb email address, there's three more they let pass whom use a "professional" email address, impressive-looking resume, but are absolute crackheads.
One company I worked for was staged to hire a lady whom was an expert in the field of research. She managed to get through most of the process (though her phone interview wasn't super strong), and she was supposed to begin training at work.
Cept, she didn't. Didn't bother to call in, hell, the number she gave us ended up being disconnected after a while. Never heard from her again.
Guess that email filtering technique would have caught that one, huh?
So basically, evolution favors those that outbreed. Which explains why there are so many idiots in the world (look at the media -- ABC news in particular... they've been reporting on things like "breaking news: new studies show that smoking while pregnant increases chances of birth defects" and "new studies show that drinking causes irresponsible behavior"... and "New studies show that texting while driving is more dangerous than talking on the phone"). Pretty soon, our world will be run by Carl's Jr and Brawndo! IT'S GOT ELECTROLYTES!!
Slashdot Mirror
Lifehacker? I would have gone with huffington post or "Bob Villa's Craftsman Fixeroos and Gabber Gobs" guidebooks (now only $19.99 with purchase of the craftsman multi-tool kid)
None of these are "hacks", chief. Not unless you're part of the federation of sad people who want to have 'engineer' in their work title despite their job having nothing to do with creating solutions to technical problems.
Meanwhile, the iMedical Device will either throw you a worthless message with a skull and crossbones, then lock itself out until you reboot it... or it will spontaneously melt itself when you run too many monitoring devices. But hey, that's why you bought AppleCare for $50 billion, right?
Will give you the Frowny face :( when your patient dies, citing an error in BREATH_INITIALIZATION.
Then it really will be a blue screen of DEATH
I wonder if this is what Sprint does when people want to leave them for another carrier. Or are considering leaving.
John Carmack: The Kanye West of Video Game Programming.
"Imma let you finish your Dragonborn DLC in a minute, but DOOM 3 has the cleanest source code of all time. OF ALL TIME!"
Just imagine if the Military contracted targeting systems with Sprint? All our guided-weaponry would bombard some random address, probably a good, wholesome family of 5.
As many raindrops join to form a great river of water,
many souls join their highest intent to form
the river of evolved consciousness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Also....
“No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.”
A better approach is to just use time travel to correct mistakes. :D
Great Scot!
Or buy a cell signal inhibitor. They're on sale today!
http://www.cellphoneshop.net/blocker.html
Don't worry. Kaz Hirai is on the case. He'll raise prices so painfully high that consumers will "need to get 10 jobs just to earn the right to use our products".
ACtually, if you follow Indoctrination Theory, 2/3 of the choices probably lead to indoctirnation. The only question is.. do you become their Saren champion or do you become a Husk. I feel like Synergy = Husk. :)
Actually, most people aren't mad because the ending is sad/tragic. Way to buy into propaganda. If you bother to read what everyone has said or listened to the countless youtube comments, there's one united message:
The endings are discontinuous in flow from the rest of the games.
It's not that people die. Most people are okay with people dying. It's that the game shifted from one which choice mattered and character endings were explained concisely to one in which there are more questions than answers. For instance, why were my crew, whom were completely loyal to me through the games and fought to their bitter ends on every other mission... suddenly running from battle? Especially the squad mates that were with me on the ground battle, charged with me to the citadel matter stream, saw me get cut down.. so what? Joker flies the partyvan by and tells everyone that it's time to peace out? That kinda personality change is very inconsistent. Every single person would continue fighting until the job was done. You don't ride in with every races' best ships to war just to chicken out when it counts.
It's not that people are yellign about inability to change a major storyline. To teh contrary, people are upset because the major storyline WAS changed, in the span of 14 lines of dialogue delivered by a 11th hour new villain who has the power to end it all and leaves it up to you, Neo, to rejoin the source. Really? A last minute super villain that supplants the existing villain armada? That's introduced in 14 lines?
Cool story, bro.
My advice? Stop reading Bioware's interpretation of people's anger and actually read what people have to say. What's funny is that despite BioWare saying that they are listening, all the angry people are saying THE SAME EXACT THING, and yet BioWare pretends that they don't hear it. :)
Well, the comparison to the Matrix is pretty apt.
In Mass Effect, you have the main conflict, which is "We need to stop the reapers from killing all advanced races". This carries over three games. In the end, in the last 15 minutes and 14 lines of dialogue, the conflict objective completely changes to "You need to choose whether to condemn all sentient machines, control them (but lose yourself in the process... essentially merging yourself with the reapers -- else, how will you control them post-mortem?), or "return to the source" and add your own energy into the collective stream and force conformity to all life in the universe.
In the Matrix, Neo's entire conflict was "We need to stop the matrix/Agents/machine/Colonel sanders from enslaving humanity/destroying zion". That is, up until the last portion of the second movie, where an abruptly new character, Colonel Sanders, changes the decision to "Join the source and continue the cycle or watch us destroy humans." Sure, you can argue that they sorta did introduce the Architect earlier in the movie, but it was only hinted to here and there. You don't really meet him until the end. And even then, he replaces the main villain? Sorta kinda? Or offers a different kind of salvation? It's a really weak ending.. a deus ex machina.
In both cases, a last-minute introduced character offers an universal reboot with limited scope options. And for Mass Effect, a game built on the premise of your choice impacting the universe, to have that completely retconned in an ending where 2/3 choices involved rejoining the source, it's.. very weak. And Deus Ex machina?
Personally, when the kid tells me I can ONLY kill ALL of the reapers. Or ONLY do this. or that. with no varying level of options and controls, it just felt wrong. And for the starchild to watch the galaxy evolve around itself, including have evidence that AI and Biological units can coexist walking in its superstructure (hello EDI/Joker, Legion/Tali) and for it to continue on it's assumption that humans and robots can't coexist.. makes little sense. On top of that, the circular logic of "Machines kill advanced species so they can't create machines that kill advanced species" just hurts my brain. No, it's not that it is a thing I cannot comprehend. It's just poor logic. It's sloppy logic.
Instead, I took Option 4. I sat there emptying my clip at the starchild. Sure, the war raged on, but at least my shepard did something that is true to his nature: he used violence to solve stupidity. Oh yeah!
Assimilation is the wrong genre. This isn't star trek.
The word you're looking for is Indoctrinated.
At the end of ME2, EDI downloads specs of Harbringer from the Collector Base (this is what Joker hands Shepard at the end, assuming Shep survives. If not, Joker still has this technical info).
When the Normandy was handed over to the Alliance, these specs were handed over as well. That means the Alliance/Citadel council races had specifications on how to kick reapers in the teeth. Sure, not all their weapons could have been upgraded, but some may have had time to do some massive improvements.
Not to mention all of the council races upgraded their fleets and added dreadnought-class warships en masse.
Plus recall that 1 Maw Thresher took out a reaper... the Quarian fleet took out a reaper and in the battle for Earth, the entire galactic victory armada had combined navies of many, many races.
There are actually 5 options
Paragon
Neutral
Renegade
Paragon-Only (If you have enough paragon points)
Renegade-Only (If you have enough renegade points)
Sometimes, there's a sixth option to get more information. But no one really chooses that.
Who's to say it wasn't Casey Hudson's design genius that envisioned the end of the reapers through detonating eezo-driven mass relays, thus causing catastrophic system-wide explosions, just to perpetuate an adam-and-eve scenario with Tali, Liara, any-member-of-my-team-that-Joker-could-normally-not-get-a-date-with-but-in-my-absense-he-can?
I wonder if Mass Effect 4 will just be like Age of Empires or something.
Though, if Bioware really IS listening but wanted a quick out, they should just release an official DLC.... ported to Minecraft. Call it... "Build a home with Tali on Rannoch.
Perhaps there's a chair which powers a millenia old weapons platform. Better call MacGuyver to control it.
Or, at least, postpone your game release until NaNoWriMo, so that your fans can outlet their frustration of an unsatisfactory ending through fan fiction. That would be pretty neat. Foolish, but neat. Instead of "We are listening", change your catch phrase to "Write your own ending".
Regardless of what people think of the ending, I think the issue here is EA and BioWare leadership's handling of this situation. If they had simply not made statements that people could hang onto, such as Casey Hudson's pre-release comment that users would not get a finite set of endings (and that the endings they would receive would be very different), a lot of the gamers would not feel as much disappointment. On top of that, the massive PR effort stating "We are listening", and then turning around and ignoring the fanbase that wants new endings (essentially.. NOT listening) by announcing that your new release will just add more scenes to try and explain the ending that the fans have expressed dissatistaction with... and again, adding that THEY ARE LISTENING..
I think this is what is causing the unending grief. It's like hanging out with an overtly flirty girl with ample figures who constantly teases, giving off false hopes each time she declines people.
True, the game is their Intellectual Property and "creative art piece". But they need to realize that their game ends where the executable code stops, and that PR is not an art form that they can willy nilly play around with. Especially since there's a huge fan base that has fallen in love with the work.
Personally, I love Mass Effect 3. The game made me replay 1 and 2, just because of how fantastic the writing was throughout the game. Until the end. For me, the ending was discontinuous and poorly written - completely changing the central theme and providing barely any resolution to the main plot at hand. I had the same reaction to the Matrix Reloaded. For me, BioWare pulled a Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions. And then, depending on your score, even retconned things that were stated in the ending for the sake of a cliffhanger. It was just a jarring ride of failure, but it's their jarring ride of failure, and I respect their right to make that their creative direction. I've written poor stories before, i understand.
But I don't understand the PR jerking around, or the attempt to not build bridges with the fans you've hit with a wall of discontent. It seems... very unprofessional. Again, I think this is the key to fueling the rage... is that PR jerk arounds and bad decisions on wording reopens fresh wounds.
BioWare, do your extended endings. Just be clear that you aren't really listening per se, or at least... tell how you're listening and what you're looking for in terms of input. If you just say "We are listening", you provide a huge window of hope. And when you crush that hope and, in the same message, reiterate that you are still listening... that's just insult upon injury. Come on, you're medical doctors at the top.
Wow, and you don't think the rest of the content would speak volumes about the person? For every person an arrogant screener shoots down due to a dumb email address, there's three more they let pass whom use a "professional" email address, impressive-looking resume, but are absolute crackheads.
One company I worked for was staged to hire a lady whom was an expert in the field of research. She managed to get through most of the process (though her phone interview wasn't super strong), and she was supposed to begin training at work.
Cept, she didn't. Didn't bother to call in, hell, the number she gave us ended up being disconnected after a while. Never heard from her again.
Guess that email filtering technique would have caught that one, huh?
I agree.
-919192348@compuserve.com
AT&T and "reasonable plans" are words that do not belong in a sentence unless separated by a negative descriptor.
So basically, evolution favors those that outbreed. Which explains why there are so many idiots in the world (look at the media -- ABC news in particular... they've been reporting on things like "breaking news: new studies show that smoking while pregnant increases chances of birth defects" and "new studies show that drinking causes irresponsible behavior"... and "New studies show that texting while driving is more dangerous than talking on the phone"). Pretty soon, our world will be run by Carl's Jr and Brawndo! IT'S GOT ELECTROLYTES!!