In the same way that having a seat belt and an air bag in my car, doesn't change my driving habits. Using safer functions, shouldn't change the testing required.
Drivers are going to try to drive safer with a steel spike in their face instead of a friendly pillow. If people assume that the safety measures in their car will prevent them from being killed, they'd likely accept an accident instead of trying to avoid it. I'm sure someone smarter in psychology and human behavior could argue that better than I just did.
I've had my fair share of bad players. I've also been pleasantly surprised by people in pick up groups. There will always be a small percentage of the community that "ruins" the game for the majority. It doesn't mean that we need to rewrite the game to avoid those situations. It just means you need a mechanism to avoid those that don't work well with others. A karma like system might work if it was done well. (ie: only those who gain a certain amount of karma can rate up a player or something) A proper LFG tool that allows you to filter out bad players (and friends of foes) would go a long way as well.
In guildwars, I can be anywhere in seconds. Seconds, at not cost. Is there anything more awesome MMO can do to help socialization? All people in friends list are one second away. I can join group for any dungeon/mission i fancy in seconds. World is huge for me, not limited by where i can travel during my gaming session.
You may think so, but then you segregate yourself to a few regular players and you find yourself depending on them and them alone. You build your character to support only groups with them (or a small group in your guild) and you find that you never play with anyone else. Why play an MMO if you always group with the same people?
Enabling fast transport feeds sites that provide quick leveling guides, easy experience places get filled with players (instancing makes this even more of a problem) because people soon learn that the best place to level from 15-20 is X location. In other words, metagaming. The game becomes finding data on how to play the game most efficiently. Lack of efficiency breeds community, playing with others to finish a goal, getting a group through some dungeon could have them adding you to their friend list. If you aren't on to play, they might look for another player (because their experience with you, a random stranger, got them an objective) instead of logging off because all their friends aren't on and they think they can't trust a PUG.
I'd much rather they have more areas to play than have instancing. Make the world huge, spread out the races, give them all their own economies, areas to grow, and go from there. Vanguard originally had this concept, but they eventually broke down and listened to the guilds cry about not having rapid transportation (which would kill the multiple economies and spreading player base because everyone would travel to the other areas they are familiar with or the quests are easier.)
One thing that was awesome about EQ was meeting your first Erudite or Troll. Or being a Dark Elf and working your way to the Wood Elf city... just because. If I wanted to stay in that area, I could go about killing Orcs in that area to make the Wood Elves accept me. All the races had their own starting area with their own characteristics and dungeons. They had factions as well, so you could die if you were a hated race. It wasn't like WoW where you only have two factions. It was complex and interesting. If you worked hard enough, you could even get your faction up to go to these towns that used to be enemies.
I've been waiting for a game with huge dungeons, huge world, complex factions, localized economies, armors, and creatures. I'd love even more to be able to ally with mob factions.
Depends on if you want a game or a game world. I prefer the game world concept. I hate instanced areas that segregate the community. Guild Wars always felt empty because there was never anyone playing in my areas. I remember holding instances in another game. I think it was EQ2. (Join a zone during peak hours and goof off or go AFK for a few hours while the players leave and the zone counts drop.) Why would you want this? Because you have a whole zone to yourself that no players would likely join. You had a better chance of getting rare mobs, collection items, etc. But it killed the game for me.
Instancing allows people to play their own game and not get involved with the community. Essentially, you are paying for a multiplayer game with friends instead of playing an MMO with a huge community of people.
Of course the publishers like this. (Less piracy, monthly income...) but it defeats the point of MMOs. Instancing, teleportation, and all the new "features" being put into MMOs are just breaking down the community and world feel. There's no point working with other players toward a goal. There's no point sticking with a group and completing a dungeon. You can just leave when your quest is done.
That's my point, I shouldn't have to make a Federal case out of it to send a radio signal 50 feet. And WiFi has proven that.
How else are they to add a level of bureaucracy and control another aspect of your life if they don't license everything?
On a story related note... I'm assuming it's possible to use a wifi card as a 2.4GHz spectrum analyzer considering it's a multi-channel radio device... why isn't there more software to allow people to see free space and possibly utilize it? Or even better, have their routers detect and utilize "quiet" space in the spectrum automatically.
If that could happen, why would we even need government regulation on radio waves?
There's a comment on that video that I found rather humorous, if not a little creepy: "See the three 6's in the pong ball?"
Until they said that, I never noticed that the circle in the middle with the three lines branching out could be interpreted as a "6". Personally, I don't care, but there are people that do.
I just don't understand what's so interesting/damning here. So a company is pitching it's product. Good for them. Maybe it will educate people (average people) to the fact that there are options.
I haven't used it myself as there's no Debian package for it and I'm not compiling it from source. Sorry.
While on the browser discussion, has anyone else noticed that the slashdot.org homepage triggers the live bookmark in Iceweasel/Firefox?
You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
I can't count the number of people complaining about lost exclusives and lack of obtaining them... now that they are stepping up, the stories come out on how it's bad...
So you have a choice. Piss of fanboys by not getting exclusives or piss off fanboys for getting them and obtaining sales.
I'm not a fan of exclusiveness in itself. It limits consumer choice. Choice in the best hardware to run their favorite games in this case. I personally think there's only one company right now that can win that war, and it's not Sony.
I'd argue that Windows would be much more expensive if they didn't have marketshare... there's no way they could spread the cost out over so few copies. <economy mode="simple"> Right now, they can charge $5 per copy and sell 100 million to OEMs to net $500 million. If they could only sell 1 million copies, they'd have to sell them at $500 each to make that much. </economy>
Personally, I feel MMOs are designed wrong in the first place. Skills should be obtained by playing the game and completing the events and areas. Guild Wars had a feature of skill learning where you had to fight the monsters that used those skills to learn from it. It was crude, but if implemented well, could open up a wide assortment of game play.
Personally, I'd love to have an MMO that you started off a blank character and had to gain your skills by adventuring, training at the local guilds or finding ancient texts for your skill-ups. I'd make unique mobs all over the world that cast different spells, used different melee techniques and required that you spend an extensive amount of time learning from them if you wanted your character to be proficient in the skill.
If you wanted to blow through all the content to get to the "end-game" content you could, but someone that spent time to learn the skills, utilize them and get the most out of an area should be far better suited in late game tactics (if there were such a thing) Technically you could create infinite amounts of content using this structure by simply making some defensive skills more powerful than offensive skills trained in an area beforehand. You could progress the player through difficulty levels of the game without levels by only allowing them to defeat monsters that they have proficient skill to do so.
Rewarding players for simply leveling is what drives people to want to get all the levels and all the skills. They'll do it at the cost of content and in the locations that serve them best.
Then you essentially start over from realm to realm? What's so different than having different games today? Carrying a name? That's about all you could carry from game to game without giving someone an advantage or messing with the content of another world. How incredibly unfitting would it be to have a Tauren Shaman in Anarchy Online or Tabula Rasa? These realms can be varied. Even if you did allow that, how do you handle the models and armor? If you take a Dark Elf from Everquest and put it in WoW, the WoW developers would have to make the assets for every possible layout of creature. Minions of Mirth allows you to play creatures and Horizons allowed you to play a dragon. Wouldn't it be a little out of place (or unbalancing) to have dragons flying around Everquest?
You have other things to do besides grinding for levels.
The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
Take no offense in this, but I hate people like you.;) Why do you feel the absolute need to "grind levels" and "get to the end game content"? Why not just enjoy the alternate story lines, take in the local environment, quests, and enjoy the unfamiliar?
So how do you control one world vs another? If I get a powerful weapon in one realm and find that another realm is handing them out like candy (or your weapon is useless), what's the point of going through the one I originally did?
Also, some government agencies (at least the ones I worked with) require special cabling for fire reasons. I can't remember if it's PVC or non-PVC coated wire that generates more smoke in a fire, but they were insistent that we ordered the specific type for building code reasons.
It's been nearly 10 years since I've done any of that, so it may have changed...but I still remember the color codes.:P
Slashdot Mirror
I should add... I mainly posted that to show that the driving analogy you posted might not be the best one for this situation.
In the same way that having a seat belt and an air bag in my car, doesn't change my driving habits. Using safer functions, shouldn't change the testing required.
Drivers are going to try to drive safer with a steel spike in their face instead of a friendly pillow. If people assume that the safety measures in their car will prevent them from being killed, they'd likely accept an accident instead of trying to avoid it. I'm sure someone smarter in psychology and human behavior could argue that better than I just did.
I've had my fair share of bad players. I've also been pleasantly surprised by people in pick up groups. There will always be a small percentage of the community that "ruins" the game for the majority. It doesn't mean that we need to rewrite the game to avoid those situations. It just means you need a mechanism to avoid those that don't work well with others. A karma like system might work if it was done well. (ie: only those who gain a certain amount of karma can rate up a player or something) A proper LFG tool that allows you to filter out bad players (and friends of foes) would go a long way as well.
In guildwars, I can be anywhere in seconds. Seconds, at not cost. Is there anything more awesome MMO can do to help socialization? All people in friends list are one second away. I can join group for any dungeon/mission i fancy in seconds. World is huge for me, not limited by where i can travel during my gaming session.
You may think so, but then you segregate yourself to a few regular players and you find yourself depending on them and them alone. You build your character to support only groups with them (or a small group in your guild) and you find that you never play with anyone else. Why play an MMO if you always group with the same people?
Enabling fast transport feeds sites that provide quick leveling guides, easy experience places get filled with players (instancing makes this even more of a problem) because people soon learn that the best place to level from 15-20 is X location. In other words, metagaming. The game becomes finding data on how to play the game most efficiently. Lack of efficiency breeds community, playing with others to finish a goal, getting a group through some dungeon could have them adding you to their friend list. If you aren't on to play, they might look for another player (because their experience with you, a random stranger, got them an objective) instead of logging off because all their friends aren't on and they think they can't trust a PUG.
I'd much rather they have more areas to play than have instancing. Make the world huge, spread out the races, give them all their own economies, areas to grow, and go from there. Vanguard originally had this concept, but they eventually broke down and listened to the guilds cry about not having rapid transportation (which would kill the multiple economies and spreading player base because everyone would travel to the other areas they are familiar with or the quests are easier.)
One thing that was awesome about EQ was meeting your first Erudite or Troll. Or being a Dark Elf and working your way to the Wood Elf city... just because. If I wanted to stay in that area, I could go about killing Orcs in that area to make the Wood Elves accept me. All the races had their own starting area with their own characteristics and dungeons. They had factions as well, so you could die if you were a hated race. It wasn't like WoW where you only have two factions. It was complex and interesting. If you worked hard enough, you could even get your faction up to go to these towns that used to be enemies.
I've been waiting for a game with huge dungeons, huge world, complex factions, localized economies, armors, and creatures. I'd love even more to be able to ally with mob factions.
Depends on if you want a game or a game world. I prefer the game world concept. I hate instanced areas that segregate the community. Guild Wars always felt empty because there was never anyone playing in my areas. I remember holding instances in another game. I think it was EQ2. (Join a zone during peak hours and goof off or go AFK for a few hours while the players leave and the zone counts drop.) Why would you want this? Because you have a whole zone to yourself that no players would likely join. You had a better chance of getting rare mobs, collection items, etc. But it killed the game for me.
Instancing allows people to play their own game and not get involved with the community. Essentially, you are paying for a multiplayer game with friends instead of playing an MMO with a huge community of people.
Of course the publishers like this. (Less piracy, monthly income...) but it defeats the point of MMOs. Instancing, teleportation, and all the new "features" being put into MMOs are just breaking down the community and world feel. There's no point working with other players toward a goal. There's no point sticking with a group and completing a dungeon. You can just leave when your quest is done.
That's my point, I shouldn't have to make a Federal case out of it to send a radio signal 50 feet. And WiFi has proven that.
How else are they to add a level of bureaucracy and control another aspect of your life if they don't license everything?
On a story related note... I'm assuming it's possible to use a wifi card as a 2.4GHz spectrum analyzer considering it's a multi-channel radio device... why isn't there more software to allow people to see free space and possibly utilize it? Or even better, have their routers detect and utilize "quiet" space in the spectrum automatically.
If that could happen, why would we even need government regulation on radio waves?
There's a comment on that video that I found rather humorous, if not a little creepy: "See the three 6's in the pong ball?"
Until they said that, I never noticed that the circle in the middle with the three lines branching out could be interpreted as a "6". Personally, I don't care, but there are people that do.
It only happens if I'm logged in and it just started for me recently so it has to be some setting... I just don't know which.
I just don't understand what's so interesting/damning here. So a company is pitching it's product. Good for them. Maybe it will educate people (average people) to the fact that there are options.
I haven't used it myself as there's no Debian package for it and I'm not compiling it from source. Sorry.
While on the browser discussion, has anyone else noticed that the slashdot.org homepage triggers the live bookmark in Iceweasel/Firefox?
You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
I can't count the number of people complaining about lost exclusives and lack of obtaining them... now that they are stepping up, the stories come out on how it's bad...
So you have a choice. Piss of fanboys by not getting exclusives or piss off fanboys for getting them and obtaining sales.
I'm not a fan of exclusiveness in itself. It limits consumer choice. Choice in the best hardware to run their favorite games in this case. I personally think there's only one company right now that can win that war, and it's not Sony.
Screw the naysayers...
All hot female naysayers, 18-36 please report to my house.
Did you catch it that time? ;)
*runs around stomping on all the crickets*
Dammit! I'm at work and I'm trying to sleep here!
I'd argue that Windows would be much more expensive if they didn't have marketshare... there's no way they could spread the cost out over so few copies.
<economy mode="simple">
Right now, they can charge $5 per copy and sell 100 million to OEMs to net $500 million. If they could only sell 1 million copies, they'd have to sell them at $500 each to make that much.
</economy>
What self respecting nerd/geek watches the NFL? Are you a spy for the jocks?
Now I need to find a town with Cablevision service to move to...
Personally, I feel MMOs are designed wrong in the first place. Skills should be obtained by playing the game and completing the events and areas. Guild Wars had a feature of skill learning where you had to fight the monsters that used those skills to learn from it. It was crude, but if implemented well, could open up a wide assortment of game play.
Personally, I'd love to have an MMO that you started off a blank character and had to gain your skills by adventuring, training at the local guilds or finding ancient texts for your skill-ups. I'd make unique mobs all over the world that cast different spells, used different melee techniques and required that you spend an extensive amount of time learning from them if you wanted your character to be proficient in the skill.
If you wanted to blow through all the content to get to the "end-game" content you could, but someone that spent time to learn the skills, utilize them and get the most out of an area should be far better suited in late game tactics (if there were such a thing) Technically you could create infinite amounts of content using this structure by simply making some defensive skills more powerful than offensive skills trained in an area beforehand. You could progress the player through difficulty levels of the game without levels by only allowing them to defeat monsters that they have proficient skill to do so.
Rewarding players for simply leveling is what drives people to want to get all the levels and all the skills. They'll do it at the cost of content and in the locations that serve them best.
Then you essentially start over from realm to realm? What's so different than having different games today? Carrying a name? That's about all you could carry from game to game without giving someone an advantage or messing with the content of another world. How incredibly unfitting would it be to have a Tauren Shaman in Anarchy Online or Tabula Rasa? These realms can be varied. Even if you did allow that, how do you handle the models and armor? If you take a Dark Elf from Everquest and put it in WoW, the WoW developers would have to make the assets for every possible layout of creature. Minions of Mirth allows you to play creatures and Horizons allowed you to play a dragon. Wouldn't it be a little out of place (or unbalancing) to have dragons flying around Everquest?
You have other things to do besides grinding for levels.
The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
Take no offense in this, but I hate people like you. ;) Why do you feel the absolute need to "grind levels" and "get to the end game content"? Why not just enjoy the alternate story lines, take in the local environment, quests, and enjoy the unfamiliar?
So how do you control one world vs another? If I get a powerful weapon in one realm and find that another realm is handing them out like candy (or your weapon is useless), what's the point of going through the one I originally did?
Just give me massively detailed dungeons with tons of routes, twists, and challenges. Not since EQ has there been challenging dungeons in any MMO.
So the logo on my coat that says: "Street Corner Cables, Inc." isn't working? I swear that sales picked up after I added that logo.
the crimping machine itself is pretty substantial and probably not something that you'd have in your house.
Maybe not in YOUR house, but I prefer to do things the professional way!
Now just let me wiggle back to industrial band saw to finish cutting my steak.
Whatever happened to quality custom workmanship? It's almost as if people expect that it can't be done anymore? WTF?
It's not that it can't be done anymore, but everyone expects it to cost a fortune.
Also, some government agencies (at least the ones I worked with) require special cabling for fire reasons. I can't remember if it's PVC or non-PVC coated wire that generates more smoke in a fire, but they were insistent that we ordered the specific type for building code reasons.
It's been nearly 10 years since I've done any of that, so it may have changed ...but I still remember the color codes. :P
WOrg,Org,WGrn,Blu,WBlu,Grn,WBrn,Brn