Jay Wilson was the lead designer on Impossible Creatures and Dawn of War and did a fair-sized chunk of the multiplayer design on Company of Heroes. He's over at Blizzard now. I haven't talked to him in a while, but I'm assuming he's working on StarCraft 2. Your job is to contact him immediately and report back to us with some inside scoop information. Screen shots, concept art, copies of alpha builds...you know. Go ahead. We'll wait.:)
Speaking of Relic, let's not forget Dawn of War. I much preferred their approach of a unit being a squad of men,... Agreed. After watching some video snippets of Zergling attacks, I'm wondering if Blizzard will institute a sort of Zergling "squad" as opposed to individual units. Although I was initially cautious when I first encountered squad units, DoW and CoH have both completely sold me on them. Critical in this, I think, is that squad members should display at least a modicum of AI, such as seeking cover and not blocking each other.
It will be interesting to see whether Blizzard will move to squads for the assorted infantry units or leave them as individuals. What I've seen thus far--and clearly the sample is very small--suggests that Blizzard is taking pains not to stray too far from the original game. My completely unfounded guess at this point is that we're going to see a Starcraft with new graphics, units, and physics, but with the other fundamentals left in place to ensure continued viability as a competitive game. The coverage so far seems to support this, with Gamespot reporting from the Blizzard Q&A session that:
the game will appeal to hardcore fans by being geared toward "highly competitive, skill-based gameplay," Regardless of how Blizzard proceeds, I'm definitely looking forward to SC2.
Bzzzzzzzt! Wrong. As one of the developers of this game (worked mostly on character animation algorithims), I can tell you that you are wrong. We wanted to make a game that was enjoyable if played in a strategic fashion or in a more tactical way. There's nothing worse than a know-nothing who tries to make dumb guesses about someone's intention. First, due to the full understanding that I am a "know-nothing", I included the qualifier "as I understand it", clearly implying an opinion versus a fact. Second, some of the hype surrounding SupCom was very clearly on the strategic versus tactical levels of play.
From your own website:
Supreme Commander is the first RTS game that has you developing and executing actual strategies. Mere tactics are no longer enough; rushing head-on into an fortified enemy position will do nothing but chew up valuable units. and
Plan, coordinate, and unleash strategic ground, naval and air attacks in a true display of combined-arms tactics. From Gamespot:
This is a game that's less concerned with the aesthetics of combat than it is with capturing a sense of awesome scale...It's real-time strategy supersized. Massive maps, automated unit loading and routing, powerful waypoint system, and time-coordinated attacks. Yes, clearly my interpretation that strategic play was emphasised over tactical play was completely unwarranted. Now, if you'll excuse me, one of Relic's devs is doubtless waiting to inform me that my comments regarding CoH's excellent tactical play are dumb because the map cut-scenes clearly demonstrate that the game's strategic roots.
No, this is lame. Blizzard had the chance to redefine computer gaming by coming out with a truly great, futuristic MMO, but instead decided to do another rehash of a game from nearly ten years ago that looks exactly like the old version. Woohoo. The fanboys from Korea who've been playing the same game for 10 years are happy, but the rest of us were told to suck it. Hardly. There are a lot of people who are very, very happy that SC2 has been announced. I'll admit that I would have been happy with either SC2 or a SC MMO, but my preference was definitely SC2. While I have no doubt that they've been rioting in the streets in Korea, there's definitely a lot of excitement in the rest of the world too.
With respect to your first point, what makes you think that Blizzard is precluded from developing a SC MMO? It's been fairly common knowledge that they've been hiring on for a "next-gen" MMO and it would seem to follow that a focus on the Starcraft universe at the company for the RTS would be a great segue into an MMO. Storylines, concept artists, writers, and so on could very easily serve as a further foundation for your futuristic MMO.
Perhaps, then, instead of complaining about SC2, you might consider taking heart from the fact that Blizzard has once again turned its eye towards the universe we both appreciate and that your hopes for Worlds of Starcraft have never been closer to fruition. Starcraft players the world over have many reasons to rejoice and I'd encourage you to remember that their gain is not necessarily your loss.
Blizzard to me seems overly single minded. I loved Warcraft 2, and enjoyed Starcraft, and played Diablo 1 and 2 for a long long time. But they take a game and keep coming out with the same thing over and over and over. Can't they come out with anything new rather then just give it better graphics? Even WoW had nothing new, just find what sells best and hype it up. Alternatively, you can regard them as a company that just makes fun games. People have been pleading for a new Starcraft game for years now. If I want something new, I have SupCom, CoH, DoW, and many, many other RTS choices. For Diablo-style games, offerings such as Titan Quest are a fine alternative. For all of its faults, WoW is arguably the best thing to happen to MMORPGs ever, drawing in people who have never previously touched similar games before.
I understand your point, but I'd rather that Blizzard really take the time to concentrate on its monolithic intellectual properties than flail about looking for the next big thing. If Blizzard has the manpower to do justice to the game universes we know and love, while simultaneously having a team work on a completely new concept, then more power to them. But if I have to choose, give me more of the style, polish, and Blizzard presentation I've enjoyed thus far.
There's plenty of room for innovation in the gaming industry and I certainly cheer along with you when a truly innovative game hits the market. However, I don't think that incremental improvement upon well-loved games should necessarily be regarded as less valuable, or be sacrificed upon the altar of novelty simply for sake of making a different game.
With SupCom and the large armies you can field, things get more strategic. Indeed. As I understand it, the primary aim of SupCom was to create a strategic--rather than tactical--game. I played the hell out of TA back in the day and I have no doubt that I'll do the same with SupCom when my time (and video card) permit. Oddly though, I found the SupCom demo to be...soulless. I think a huge part of the Starcraft attraction is the universe. Everything is just so damned cool. However, I just didn't get that feeling from TA or SupCom. To be honest, I was rather underwhelmed with the graphics in SupCom because they were so damned bland. That's not intended as a slam, but more an aesthetic preference. I'm really looking forward to seeing high-resolution Zerg.:)
If Starcraft 2's going to be a Warcraft 3 with pylons, so be it; it'll probably sell millions in South Korea, and I don't doubt it will be a fine update of the balancing act that was Starcraft. Without something really new in the way battles are fought, though, I just can't imagine myself being that excited. That's fair enough. I've been saying for a while now that I'd actually be happy with exactly the same damned game with new graphics and maybe some neat physics. Starcraft was released an age ago in gaming terms and it's still resident on my drive simply because it's fun. I know that there are going to be a lot of unreasonable expectations for this game, but I think that as long as Blizzard can retain the core feel and gameplay of the original, they can't go wrong.
Was never taken with Starcraft, liked TA much better. Will be worth trying at least. Well, you must have been pretty happy with Supreme Commander, since it was essentially TA 2.0. I enjoyed the demo (although the dual screen functionality needed work) but haven't picked up a copy of it yet. Starcraft 2 has been a hell of a long time coming and I'm glad to see that it's been confirmed.
They should look at the original Ground Control for an idea of a good strategy game Actually, I hope they draw strong lessons from Company of Heroes and the Dawn of War series. Still, I have a lot of faith in Blizzard to make good games, so I'm not too worried.
However, the reports of having hundreds of zerglings makes it seem like it might be more of a macro scale RTS. No problem. Since 1998, I've upgraded my system somewhat. I can now spawn as many overlords as necessary!
It's kind of ironic, given that Americans had just fought their bloodiest war ever, to call it a more "civilized time". On the contrary, it was the most civil war we ever had.
As to your second argument, good idea, except for the slight problem of the pre-paid game time cards. At that point all that would happen is that all the gold farmers would go out and stock up on game cards and just cycle one in everytime they got an account ban. Of course, this might have an interesting side effect of drying up the game card market in China.
Hmmm, excellent point. I had forgotten about pre-paid game cards. Bans by credit card would certainly introduce another level of inconvenience for the gold farmers (no bad thing itself!) and would effectively take care of the troll problem, I think. The pre-paid card issue is certainly a tougher nut to crack.
I'm not familiar with the game cards, but unless the farmers/trolls purchased 30-day cards then it follows that they'd have a reduced return-on-investment upon a ban. With a month-to-month subscription, at worst the troll/farmer will lose $15. A ban falling on a sixty day card would be up to $30, and so on. With the current price of gold, items, and characters, I wonder what the tipping point would be for reasonable profitability.
Of course, the biggest question of all is why Blizzard hasn't moved on this. If I can come up with a scheme after a few minute's thought that'd cut down on the annoyances in WoW, the bright devs at Blizzard certainly have thought of that months ago. What reason, then, exists for the current state of affairs? Surely any potential revenue lost with an account cancellation due to Timmy's dad getting pissed off about a credit card ban would be more than mitigated by lots of people not cancelling their accounts due to annoying bastards like Timmy. I've heard people speculate that Blizzard has reasons for not wanting gold-farming to cease, but I don't buy the conspiracies. I am genuinely curious, though.
When a customer purchases a product there are certain minimum levels of performance guaranteed by state and federal consumer protection laws. Refusing to provide service to a user who has not done anything but modify his own personal property certainly has the potential run afoul of such laws. IANAL, but I think you're referring to things like warranties of merchantability, and warranties that the product must be fit for the intended purpose, etc. I also know that many products (especially electonics) explicitly state that the user modifying--or indeed just cracking the case of--the product immediately voids all warranties. While I have no doubt that the manufacturer's warranty is immediately voided, I don't know what the law says about state/federal-imposed warranties being similarly voided. I'd be interested to see if this has been tested in court yet.
Blizzard could solve most of the problems on servers by moving banning and ignoring up one level.
Ignores should be account-based, rather than character-based. This makes sense, as it's the player, not the character, that's the problem. Many times I've seen a player get ignored for harassing someone, then promptly switch to a new character and begin the harassment again. With nine characters per server and a tiny ignore list limit, the math just doesn't work out here.
Bans should not be by account (as they currently are) but rather by credit card. This will accomplish two things. First, gold-farmers will have a hell of a difficult time getting a new credit card number each time the ban stick comes down. Secondly, if little Timmy gets the entire family banned (assuming they're all on the same credit card) for three days because he was way over the line in General and ignored the warnings, I rather suspect that some real-world discipline and peer-pressure will be applied to correct the problem.
Fuck fuck fuck you in your fucking shit mother's shitty-ass fucking cockhole, you sperm-soaked fuck cock ass cock. Wow, it's like someone hooked up a speech-to-text translator to Halo voice-chat...
Still, I dislike articles that spread beyond two links. We're in full agreement here. Some of the tech review sites are infuriating in this regard, with a pretty picture and a few lines of text per page, and an article spanning sometimes upwards of 20 pages! I wonder, however, how long it's going to take these sites to really get tired of people just hitting the "print" link to avoid the ads. I'm certainly guilty of doing it and you are too, by the sound of it. Who will speak out when they come for the print links?!
I did indeed read the subject line and debated whether a reply was appropriate. I decided that some folks might share my "give a little, take a little" philosophy to web-surfing and a link wouldn't hurt. Soul-sucking registration aside, does the NYT really represent "the man" in your mind?:)
All on one page, no ads: Alternatively, you could have linked the one page" view directly under that, have a nicely formatted article, and let the NYT have at least one page-view for its advertisers, which seems a reasonable trade.
The amount of paper I've faced during the course of getting my degree has been verging on the obscene. If I could have a reasonably durable sheet of e-paper the same size as a standard sheet of regular paper, I'd do cartwheels! While I'm wishing, the device would have enough flash memory to store a few hundred sheet-images and a touch-screen with stylus for note-taking. A simple USB connector would let me transfer pages to and from my main system or laptop.
Tablet notebooks have definitely been a step in the right direction but they're definitely overkill for the lecture hall, as they're somewhat heavy, bulky, and power-hungry. Now if someone would just hold a gun to the heads of the textbook manufacturers to make cheaper electronic versions of their books to go along with the e-paper (and stop bringing out "new" editions every damned year), I'd be a happy student.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to assemble the several reams of old paper I've accumulated over the last semester for recycling.:P
As to the importance of mathematical proof: mathematics is the basis on which other sciences like physics are built...I agree with you that much of mathematics is a purely mental exercise, but that doesn't mean it can't be a basis for something practical. I must certainly agree with your excellent points. Mathematics is important for understanding many aspects of chemistry and biology, and my experience with physics was one primarily characterised by my struggle with the mathematics. When it comes to applied math, I tend to think of engineering, computer-based science (modelling, cryptography, etc.) and physics. I'm rather interested to hear that imaginary numbers are useful in EE, as I'd previously assumed that they existed more as a consequence of mathematics rather than a tool. I'll have to make a note to look that up when I have more time. Thanks for an informative reply!
Actually in formal sciences, like mathematics and logic, things get proven all the time. I think the discussion was pertaining more to what might be referred to as the natural sciences, guided as they are by the scientific method and the understanding that our ability to measure something is necessarily finite and imperfect. With all due respect to mathematicians, they cheerfully argue over imaginary numbers and things that, to a non-mathematician such as myself, seem dreadfully close to mental masturbation. I have a great respect for mathematicians, who are capable of mental feats of which I'm quite incapable, but I often fail to see how "proving" relationships between primes (or some other feat of reasoning) contributes to the practical understanding of the universe.
Sad but true... even with a pair of GeForce 7950 in SLI mode at 1280x720, it's tough to get reasonable framerates. Maybe once those super-fast 8800s drop in price next year I'll upgrade and try again. Yes, that's pretty much the boat I'm in. I've got a nice rig with a dual-core E6600, 2 gigs of RAM, SATA raid and the whole lot. The only weak spot is the 7600GT which still gives pretty solid service. Then I decided to finally upgrade to a flat-screen (to reduce eye strain) and splurged on a 22" widescreen with 1920x1080 native resolution. Oblivion, which had previously been reasonably playable at 1024x768 is now a damned slideshow in the outdoors area. Since half the point of playing Oblivion is enjoying the beautiful world, I'm not keen on turning down the graphical settings. Guess I'll be right there in line with you for the next-gen stuff once it becomes a little more reasonably priced!
The direction of the causation can sometimes be deduced reasonably too. It's rather logical to say that the Chicxulub meteor killed the dinosaurs, rather than the other way around! Even when we don't really have evidence from meteors causing extinction. Clearly you've never heard of the Giant-Meteor-Attracting Dinosaur Hypothesis, which elucidates the greatest example of an evolutionary dead-end (hah!). After all, we haven't had a giant meteor hit the earth and wipe out most life since those particular dinosaurs were annihilated. The only dinosaurs we have left are the birds, which are of course giant-meteor-repelling.
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It will be interesting to see whether Blizzard will move to squads for the assorted infantry units or leave them as individuals. What I've seen thus far--and clearly the sample is very small--suggests that Blizzard is taking pains not to stray too far from the original game. My completely unfounded guess at this point is that we're going to see a Starcraft with new graphics, units, and physics, but with the other fundamentals left in place to ensure continued viability as a competitive game. The coverage so far seems to support this, with Gamespot reporting from the Blizzard Q&A session that: the game will appeal to hardcore fans by being geared toward "highly competitive, skill-based gameplay," Regardless of how Blizzard proceeds, I'm definitely looking forward to SC2.
cheers.
From your own website: Supreme Commander is the first RTS game that has you developing and executing actual strategies. Mere tactics are no longer enough; rushing head-on into an fortified enemy position will do nothing but chew up valuable units. and Plan, coordinate, and unleash strategic ground, naval and air attacks in a true display of combined-arms tactics. From Gamespot: This is a game that's less concerned with the aesthetics of combat than it is with capturing a sense of awesome scale...It's real-time strategy supersized. Massive maps, automated unit loading and routing, powerful waypoint system, and time-coordinated attacks. Yes, clearly my interpretation that strategic play was emphasised over tactical play was completely unwarranted. Now, if you'll excuse me, one of Relic's devs is doubtless waiting to inform me that my comments regarding CoH's excellent tactical play are dumb because the map cut-scenes clearly demonstrate that the game's strategic roots.
With respect to your first point, what makes you think that Blizzard is precluded from developing a SC MMO? It's been fairly common knowledge that they've been hiring on for a "next-gen" MMO and it would seem to follow that a focus on the Starcraft universe at the company for the RTS would be a great segue into an MMO. Storylines, concept artists, writers, and so on could very easily serve as a further foundation for your futuristic MMO.
Perhaps, then, instead of complaining about SC2, you might consider taking heart from the fact that Blizzard has once again turned its eye towards the universe we both appreciate and that your hopes for Worlds of Starcraft have never been closer to fruition. Starcraft players the world over have many reasons to rejoice and I'd encourage you to remember that their gain is not necessarily your loss.
cheers.
I understand your point, but I'd rather that Blizzard really take the time to concentrate on its monolithic intellectual properties than flail about looking for the next big thing. If Blizzard has the manpower to do justice to the game universes we know and love, while simultaneously having a team work on a completely new concept, then more power to them. But if I have to choose, give me more of the style, polish, and Blizzard presentation I've enjoyed thus far.
There's plenty of room for innovation in the gaming industry and I certainly cheer along with you when a truly innovative game hits the market. However, I don't think that incremental improvement upon well-loved games should necessarily be regarded as less valuable, or be sacrificed upon the altar of novelty simply for sake of making a different game.
cheers.
And yes, I'm a huge fan of Relic's work.
Indeed. Penny Arcade's Gabe will also continue to be able to see his family.
As to your second argument, good idea, except for the slight problem of the pre-paid game time cards. At that point all that would happen is that all the gold farmers would go out and stock up on game cards and just cycle one in everytime they got an account ban. Of course, this might have an interesting side effect of drying up the game card market in China.
Hmmm, excellent point. I had forgotten about pre-paid game cards. Bans by credit card would certainly introduce another level of inconvenience for the gold farmers (no bad thing itself!) and would effectively take care of the troll problem, I think. The pre-paid card issue is certainly a tougher nut to crack.I'm not familiar with the game cards, but unless the farmers/trolls purchased 30-day cards then it follows that they'd have a reduced return-on-investment upon a ban. With a month-to-month subscription, at worst the troll/farmer will lose $15. A ban falling on a sixty day card would be up to $30, and so on. With the current price of gold, items, and characters, I wonder what the tipping point would be for reasonable profitability.
Of course, the biggest question of all is why Blizzard hasn't moved on this. If I can come up with a scheme after a few minute's thought that'd cut down on the annoyances in WoW, the bright devs at Blizzard certainly have thought of that months ago. What reason, then, exists for the current state of affairs? Surely any potential revenue lost with an account cancellation due to Timmy's dad getting pissed off about a credit card ban would be more than mitigated by lots of people not cancelling their accounts due to annoying bastards like Timmy. I've heard people speculate that Blizzard has reasons for not wanting gold-farming to cease, but I don't buy the conspiracies. I am genuinely curious, though.
Blizzard could solve most of the problems on servers by moving banning and ignoring up one level.
Ignores should be account-based, rather than character-based. This makes sense, as it's the player, not the character, that's the problem. Many times I've seen a player get ignored for harassing someone, then promptly switch to a new character and begin the harassment again. With nine characters per server and a tiny ignore list limit, the math just doesn't work out here.
Bans should not be by account (as they currently are) but rather by credit card. This will accomplish two things. First, gold-farmers will have a hell of a difficult time getting a new credit card number each time the ban stick comes down. Secondly, if little Timmy gets the entire family banned (assuming they're all on the same credit card) for three days because he was way over the line in General and ignored the warnings, I rather suspect that some real-world discipline and peer-pressure will be applied to correct the problem.
- Music industry "Heya Tom, it's Bob, from the office down the hall..."
I did indeed read the subject line and debated whether a reply was appropriate. I decided that some folks might share my "give a little, take a little" philosophy to web-surfing and a link wouldn't hurt. Soul-sucking registration aside, does the NYT really represent "the man" in your mind? :)
Alternatively, you could have linked the one page" view directly under that, have a nicely formatted article, and let the NYT have at least one page-view for its advertisers, which seems a reasonable trade.
The amount of paper I've faced during the course of getting my degree has been verging on the obscene. If I could have a reasonably durable sheet of e-paper the same size as a standard sheet of regular paper, I'd do cartwheels! While I'm wishing, the device would have enough flash memory to store a few hundred sheet-images and a touch-screen with stylus for note-taking. A simple USB connector would let me transfer pages to and from my main system or laptop.
:P
Tablet notebooks have definitely been a step in the right direction but they're definitely overkill for the lecture hall, as they're somewhat heavy, bulky, and power-hungry. Now if someone would just hold a gun to the heads of the textbook manufacturers to make cheaper electronic versions of their books to go along with the e-paper (and stop bringing out "new" editions every damned year), I'd be a happy student.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to assemble the several reams of old paper I've accumulated over the last semester for recycling.