Planetside's FPS skill-set is pretty much limited in utility to Planetside--no locational damage, little (or no) randomization of shot damage, very well-defined shot cones, incredibly short-range and cramped inside engagements, very slow-moving players, limited weapon choice. Other FPS rely pretty heavily on very quick kills and/or acrobatic (i.e. skilled at quick movement) players--look at The Specialists, CS, or even simple HL2DM. Planetside would've been a nice FPS if it played a bit more like one (and, frankly, if the devs could get things balanced--or at least to the point where people stopped crying constantly about imbalance).
In an RPG/FPS hybrid (such as Oblivion), the RPG elements have to do _something_ or else they may as well not be present. That means that a level 50 player is assumed to have some natural advantage that makes her superior to a level 1 player, meaning that the former more or less will always beat the latter. The level system is supposed to represent character skill, whereas in an FPS what's most important is player skill. Perhaps it's not a natural combination to try to have a level system in an FPS at all. But it's a pretty narrow definition to say that RPGs are about grinding. MMORPG, yes, because there's a monetary incentive to giving players very slow level processes.
RPGs are supposed to be about story more than anything else. You PLAY a ROLE in the GAME. Although RPGs are traditionally associated with classes and levels, that's just a way to model the characters and their growth--the game part requires that the development of the characters be somehow modeled; classes and levels are the way in which RPGs traditionally do this. This is why Huxley and the new Shadowrun are so disappointing. There's no story to really be found in those walls. Sure, you have magic (in Shadowrun at least) and experience points, but who really cares about earning experience points for the sake of experience points (MMORPG players aside)? I played Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy (the older ones) for the plot, to see what interesting new places and monsters and characters I'd come across. It's sad to see what this generation of gamers thinks an RPG should be.
Huxley reminds me of Gunz (a Korean-made Third-person shooter), what with its "tier" based system of levels x to y fighting in their tier. Of course, the acrobatics aren't there, and neither are the sword and dagger. Still, you don't see much in the way of FPS (or TPS, either) with character levels (Planetside, really).
Folks, let's PLEASE keep in mind that you don't actually change the speed of light. What you're changing is the _apparent_ speed of light. Light appears to slow in a medium because stuff is absorbing and re-radiating it, holding it for a short while and changing its apparent speed. You never actually make photons move any slower.
One of the better video cards I had was an ATI 9500. I got a little screwed on the price--$150 or so--if you only consider the age of the card--it's not so bad if you consider how long I happily used that card (several years). Since I usually don't give a crap about anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, and that high-performance-hit nonsense (I'd rather play at 1280x1024 with a smooth frame rate, even if the textures are a little less sharp fifty virutal feet away), that card served me well even through DooM3.
At the moment, I'm working with an X800XL, which I think I found for around $200. It's not as great of a deal as I thought it was going to be--Oblivion starts to bog down in some areas even though I've tried to tweak the hell out of the thing (and I'm only running at 1280x1024), but it does a great job with Mount & Blade and HL2! (I do wish it supported SM3, but that's not a huge sticking point.)
This requires ISPs to LOOK at everything their customers do. They don't right now, otherwise what ISP would watch someone download child porn and say nothing about it?
Considering you can't confess to seeing child porn in the past or presently, you certainly can't draw a comparison. Neither can I (because I'm not a pedophile), and neither can anyone else, except a pedophile, who certainly can't be trusted to be non-biased.
Didn't the AG admit to seeing child porn? Does that make him a pedophile? What if a guy was employed by an ISP to look at every picture passing through their pipe and he saw child porn on a daily basis? Does that make him a pedophile?
I'm never surprised to see that it's from Florida. What's with those people? Is corruption and stupidity among governmental officials, like, MORE prevalent there than everywhere else?
So basically, you pay $50 up front for the game and would rather pay for content as you go and as they add it regularly. I might be missing something, but I fail to see how this is different from a monthly fee?
Most MMOs I remember buying recently (Earth and Beyond, FFIX, CoH) charged me $50 up front for the game plus one month's service--so about $40 for the game--and then also charged a monthly fee. One advantage that GW has is that so long as the servers are running you can still play the game--you don't _have_ to buy into the expansions, which is more or less what you agree to do with a monthly fee. Then, you get hit with the cost of REAL expansion packs on top of "ongoing improvements" paid for by your monthly fee.
I'd feel better about buying MMOs if I didn't have to shell out for a product that's worthless once I stop paying the fee, or if game support is ceased (take, for example, my E&B disc, which is now a mostly useless relic). I also think that by the time I've paid for the cost of another whole game in monthly fees, the developers more or less owe me new content--I'll give them leeway for maintenance and staff costs, of course, but at some point I expect to look back and say that I've gotten something for my monthly fee other than permission to continue playing.
I'm only really bitter about FFXI. It's the only FF game that I won't be able to simply go back and play around with later on. I wouldn't be so let down if there were some kind of offline mode for it--but then why play online?
I maintain that it's a form of snake oil, although a much less blatantly unethical one. "Causal" buyers could easily be duped into overspending on what is for them a worthless product--if you never use the overclocking features of your processor, either because you don't know of them or because you don't want to risk a fried chip, you've paid for nothing. If you expect a performance increase because you've purchased what you were led to believe was a superior processor, when it is actually just a processor that's _possibly_ capable of higher performance (and thus you see no enhanced performance simply by buying the higher grade of processor) I would say that you've been duped. Sure, the gold cables have no actual benefit no matter how you use them, but neither does equipment you can't or don't use--and let's keep in mind that we're talking about the average customer, who will often pay extra to get a piece of equipment that has some better capability even if they have no idea what that extra capability is supposed to be. For the casual PC builder (probably even for people who buy PCs pre-built from companies that offer this level of customization), it's a borderline sham.
I also think it's a little shady to distribute unlocked versions of technology for a higher price, but that's a different debate. Further, like you've said, 2-5 fps is a debatable improvement, so I won't even get into discussing if that's worth an extra $100 outlay. Better not to tread there as much as I'd like to argue the point. Also, someone else has mentioned the whole "let's put LEDs on it and sell it for more" bit, so I don't need to point that out again.
Suffice to say there's already plenty of gotchas out there for someone on the outside of PC gaming looking in--no wonder console games are so popular these days. Then again, someone wants to sell you gold component video cables for your PS2...
I'm going to get Overclockers jumping down my throat for this, but I think we PC gamers already have to worry about stupid crap like this. We have processors that are specially branded for overclocking, memory sticks specially branded for fiddling with latency timings, and all that sort of stuff. Complete snake-oil BOARDS would be a new thing, but there's plenty of iffy investments out there for PC gamers these days.
Someone who doesn't know that electromagnetic fields include magnetic fields will likely not be able to comprehend a deep mathematical development of the fact. Unless they're a math major, they won't even get past Grandparent's "tensor" in his first paragraph. Science gets a black mark every time a scientist responds to a layperson's question with a development that buries the layperson in what they will take to be garbage.
I think a better response would be "No, they are the same thing. The proof is extremely boring, but maybe this example/anecdote/etc. will make it clear." Use a thought experiment if you can; don't give a full treatment unless you know you're talking to someone that should have a background that will allow them to understand what you're saying. Failure to do so makes scientists look arrogant and detached from reality, and the last thing any scientist needs these days is to be dehumanized.
Too late. I hold the patent on all non-running software. You either must pay the monthly licensing fees for not running my software, or purchase and run my software, which itself requires the additional purchase of monthly update packages.
Hopefully the nice part of this little story is that someone somewhere who _was_ elected had to appoint him directly or indirectly. When _that_ person starts getting complaints, _then_ this Chief will lose his job.
Does anyone remember a bug-plagued little Windows 3.11 game called Inner Space? I loved that game, even though it was a little repetitive and rather frustrating to keep running.
Others:
Fallout 2
Deus Ex
FF9 (Freya owns you)
Quake
Half-Life
Morrowind!
Man, I love Morrowind. Take all the crazy crap USERS have made for the game and add it to the already huge and lore-rich world Bethsoft made. Wonderful. How can you not like a game that has a bunch of _moogles_ as a fan plugin?
There're just too many to name. I really, really want to love Planetside with its promise of forbidden MMO-FPS love... but PS makes it so hard, what with the AirCav whores and everything.
Someone remembers Tyrian! I wish I would've bought that game back in the day--I was stuck with that tiny little demo that I can't get running these days. Of course, not having a credit card or bank account would've made it hard to order.
It's not really a security threat: after the employee leaves the company, or if you suspect he's been "compromised," just pop him in the walk-in microwave in the canteen for a minute or so to disable the chip. As a bonus, you might just scramble his neurons so he can't walk away with trade secrets.
Slashdot Mirror
Planetside's FPS skill-set is pretty much limited in utility to Planetside--no locational damage, little (or no) randomization of shot damage, very well-defined shot cones, incredibly short-range and cramped inside engagements, very slow-moving players, limited weapon choice. Other FPS rely pretty heavily on very quick kills and/or acrobatic (i.e. skilled at quick movement) players--look at The Specialists, CS, or even simple HL2DM. Planetside would've been a nice FPS if it played a bit more like one (and, frankly, if the devs could get things balanced--or at least to the point where people stopped crying constantly about imbalance).
In an RPG/FPS hybrid (such as Oblivion), the RPG elements have to do _something_ or else they may as well not be present. That means that a level 50 player is assumed to have some natural advantage that makes her superior to a level 1 player, meaning that the former more or less will always beat the latter. The level system is supposed to represent character skill, whereas in an FPS what's most important is player skill. Perhaps it's not a natural combination to try to have a level system in an FPS at all. But it's a pretty narrow definition to say that RPGs are about grinding. MMORPG, yes, because there's a monetary incentive to giving players very slow level processes.
RPGs are supposed to be about story more than anything else. You PLAY a ROLE in the GAME. Although RPGs are traditionally associated with classes and levels, that's just a way to model the characters and their growth--the game part requires that the development of the characters be somehow modeled; classes and levels are the way in which RPGs traditionally do this. This is why Huxley and the new Shadowrun are so disappointing. There's no story to really be found in those walls. Sure, you have magic (in Shadowrun at least) and experience points, but who really cares about earning experience points for the sake of experience points (MMORPG players aside)? I played Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy (the older ones) for the plot, to see what interesting new places and monsters and characters I'd come across. It's sad to see what this generation of gamers thinks an RPG should be.
Huxley reminds me of Gunz (a Korean-made Third-person shooter), what with its "tier" based system of levels x to y fighting in their tier. Of course, the acrobatics aren't there, and neither are the sword and dagger. Still, you don't see much in the way of FPS (or TPS, either) with character levels (Planetside, really).
Folks, let's PLEASE keep in mind that you don't actually change the speed of light. What you're changing is the _apparent_ speed of light. Light appears to slow in a medium because stuff is absorbing and re-radiating it, holding it for a short while and changing its apparent speed. You never actually make photons move any slower.
Are you kidding?! This is a revolution in gamepads!
Are you kidding? That little foxgirl sprite was HOT!
One of the better video cards I had was an ATI 9500. I got a little screwed on the price--$150 or so--if you only consider the age of the card--it's not so bad if you consider how long I happily used that card (several years). Since I usually don't give a crap about anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, and that high-performance-hit nonsense (I'd rather play at 1280x1024 with a smooth frame rate, even if the textures are a little less sharp fifty virutal feet away), that card served me well even through DooM3.
At the moment, I'm working with an X800XL, which I think I found for around $200. It's not as great of a deal as I thought it was going to be--Oblivion starts to bog down in some areas even though I've tried to tweak the hell out of the thing (and I'm only running at 1280x1024), but it does a great job with Mount & Blade and HL2! (I do wish it supported SM3, but that's not a huge sticking point.)
This requires ISPs to LOOK at everything their customers do. They don't right now, otherwise what ISP would watch someone download child porn and say nothing about it?
Considering you can't confess to seeing child porn in the past or presently, you certainly can't draw a comparison. Neither can I (because I'm not a pedophile), and neither can anyone else, except a pedophile, who certainly can't be trusted to be non-biased.
Didn't the AG admit to seeing child porn? Does that make him a pedophile? What if a guy was employed by an ISP to look at every picture passing through their pipe and he saw child porn on a daily basis? Does that make him a pedophile?
The SCV pilots were black?
Stupidity and corruption transcend petty human notions of party lines.
I'm never surprised to see that it's from Florida. What's with those people? Is corruption and stupidity among governmental officials, like, MORE prevalent there than everywhere else?
So basically, you pay $50 up front for the game and would rather pay for content as you go and as they add it regularly. I might be missing something, but I fail to see how this is different from a monthly fee?
Most MMOs I remember buying recently (Earth and Beyond, FFIX, CoH) charged me $50 up front for the game plus one month's service--so about $40 for the game--and then also charged a monthly fee. One advantage that GW has is that so long as the servers are running you can still play the game--you don't _have_ to buy into the expansions, which is more or less what you agree to do with a monthly fee. Then, you get hit with the cost of REAL expansion packs on top of "ongoing improvements" paid for by your monthly fee.
I'd feel better about buying MMOs if I didn't have to shell out for a product that's worthless once I stop paying the fee, or if game support is ceased (take, for example, my E&B disc, which is now a mostly useless relic). I also think that by the time I've paid for the cost of another whole game in monthly fees, the developers more or less owe me new content--I'll give them leeway for maintenance and staff costs, of course, but at some point I expect to look back and say that I've gotten something for my monthly fee other than permission to continue playing.
I'm only really bitter about FFXI. It's the only FF game that I won't be able to simply go back and play around with later on. I wouldn't be so let down if there were some kind of offline mode for it--but then why play online?
I maintain that it's a form of snake oil, although a much less blatantly unethical one. "Causal" buyers could easily be duped into overspending on what is for them a worthless product--if you never use the overclocking features of your processor, either because you don't know of them or because you don't want to risk a fried chip, you've paid for nothing. If you expect a performance increase because you've purchased what you were led to believe was a superior processor, when it is actually just a processor that's _possibly_ capable of higher performance (and thus you see no enhanced performance simply by buying the higher grade of processor) I would say that you've been duped. Sure, the gold cables have no actual benefit no matter how you use them, but neither does equipment you can't or don't use--and let's keep in mind that we're talking about the average customer, who will often pay extra to get a piece of equipment that has some better capability even if they have no idea what that extra capability is supposed to be. For the casual PC builder (probably even for people who buy PCs pre-built from companies that offer this level of customization), it's a borderline sham.
I also think it's a little shady to distribute unlocked versions of technology for a higher price, but that's a different debate. Further, like you've said, 2-5 fps is a debatable improvement, so I won't even get into discussing if that's worth an extra $100 outlay. Better not to tread there as much as I'd like to argue the point. Also, someone else has mentioned the whole "let's put LEDs on it and sell it for more" bit, so I don't need to point that out again.
Suffice to say there's already plenty of gotchas out there for someone on the outside of PC gaming looking in--no wonder console games are so popular these days. Then again, someone wants to sell you gold component video cables for your PS2...
I'm going to get Overclockers jumping down my throat for this, but I think we PC gamers already have to worry about stupid crap like this. We have processors that are specially branded for overclocking, memory sticks specially branded for fiddling with latency timings, and all that sort of stuff. Complete snake-oil BOARDS would be a new thing, but there's plenty of iffy investments out there for PC gamers these days.
It's not April yet.
Look at Planetside. They're still dragging it along, even though it probably has peak-user numbers in the hundreds.
Your post implies that hams aren't geeks.
Obligatory Deus Ex...
Someone who doesn't know that electromagnetic fields include magnetic fields will likely not be able to comprehend a deep mathematical development of the fact. Unless they're a math major, they won't even get past Grandparent's "tensor" in his first paragraph. Science gets a black mark every time a scientist responds to a layperson's question with a development that buries the layperson in what they will take to be garbage.
I think a better response would be "No, they are the same thing. The proof is extremely boring, but maybe this example/anecdote/etc. will make it clear." Use a thought experiment if you can; don't give a full treatment unless you know you're talking to someone that should have a background that will allow them to understand what you're saying. Failure to do so makes scientists look arrogant and detached from reality, and the last thing any scientist needs these days is to be dehumanized.
Too late. I hold the patent on all non-running software. You either must pay the monthly licensing fees for not running my software, or purchase and run my software, which itself requires the additional purchase of monthly update packages.
Hopefully the nice part of this little story is that someone somewhere who _was_ elected had to appoint him directly or indirectly. When _that_ person starts getting complaints, _then_ this Chief will lose his job.
...when there are men with heavy truncheons and jackboots watching every tiny thing you do.
Does anyone remember a bug-plagued little Windows 3.11 game called Inner Space? I loved that game, even though it was a little repetitive and rather frustrating to keep running.
Others:
Fallout 2
Deus Ex
FF9 (Freya owns you)
Quake
Half-Life
Morrowind!
Man, I love Morrowind. Take all the crazy crap USERS have made for the game and add it to the already huge and lore-rich world Bethsoft made. Wonderful. How can you not like a game that has a bunch of _moogles_ as a fan plugin?
There're just too many to name. I really, really want to love Planetside with its promise of forbidden MMO-FPS love... but PS makes it so hard, what with the AirCav whores and everything.
Someone remembers Tyrian! I wish I would've bought that game back in the day--I was stuck with that tiny little demo that I can't get running these days. Of course, not having a credit card or bank account would've made it hard to order.
Man, I miss the Foodship 9.
It's not really a security threat: after the employee leaves the company, or if you suspect he's been "compromised," just pop him in the walk-in microwave in the canteen for a minute or so to disable the chip. As a bonus, you might just scramble his neurons so he can't walk away with trade secrets.