That's an unfortunate symptom of our two-party tradition. In the two-party system, you aren't forced to figure out who you really want to vote in as president; you can simply decide who you don't want and vote for the other alligator.
Obama might have gotten votes due to racism, but he also got votes just because McCain sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"
On #5 -- it makes no sense that a shopowner in Fallout 2 could remain in business, and continually restock his inventory, when the Chosen One robs him of all of his coins every time he sells his inventory off (to the Chosen One, incidentally, making the Chosen One rather rich). The shopowner would run out of money, close up his shop, and become another jet-addicted junkie on the sidewalk. What, does that guy have like, a billion coins buried in the middle of the wasteland somewhere or something? Why does a guy with that kind of capital keep dumping it all into getting robbed blind by some psychotic tribal? It really just makes no sense at all.
Also, I always hated that in Fallout 1/2, you could barely get away with crime at all. In Fallout 2, The Den was really the only place where that sort of thing would fly - if you got caught stealing from someone, you just beat them to death, nobody cared; in all other towns the entire town would hostile on you (permanently, ruining all quests there). Fallout 3 seems to have a more realistic system of crime detection; it's much easier to get away with a silent murder, and thereby perhaps snuff the life of the victim of a pickpocketing gone wrong... well, I suppose it's more realistic except for the part where if you wait around several days, people stop killing you on sight for gunning down their Sheriff.
But it sure as hell is fun! ha. Maybe they were scared. I killed 'em all eventually, anyhow.
P.S. Fallout 3's real-time/VATS system reminds me of Fallout Tactics. Now, a lot of people didn't like Fallout Tactics, for many reasons. I loved it's party-based system, open-ended character design/recruitment mechanics, and combat mechanics (including the real-time mode with the AP regeneration mechanic); I just hated the fact that it was mission-based instead of free-roaming. It had a couple of alternate endings, but they both culminated in the same place, so to call it "open-ended" would be a farce.
You can only get the story once, and then what have you got? Replayability isn't a requirement, but certainly it's better with it than without it, no?
You also only addressed my first point. Sure, stories are important, but Bethesda's game seems to have an engaging one. Saying that random encounters are "pointless", however, is folly. They were a huge part of Fallout 1 & 2 - the theme of the wastelands is that there is no law & order, the whole world is some high-noon spaghetti western, and filled with dangerous people trying to rob you, enslave you, kill you, eat you, turn you into a mutated super-soldier, or any other number of horrific things.
They were also the only real safeguards built into the game to keep people from getting to high-level, end-game locations rather quickly (Fallout 3 keeps up this tradition by only letting you fast-travel to previously visited locations, and making the area around Rivet City quite dangerous). You either needed exceptional outdoorsman abilities (similar to having a high perception in Fallout 3) to avoid encounters, or a powerful laser rifle. Or a lot of patience and a lot of saving/reloading to get from Arroyo to Navarro without any random encounters with enclave soldiers wielding laser beams to end your life prematurely (and keep you from getting that wonderful, wonderful power armor).
I like that in Fallout 3 you can loot practically anyone's armor, unlike the earlier games. However because of the equipment "condition" mechanic, the armor is often damaged, and therefore you have to accumulate several suits of power armor/combat armor/metal armor/whatever armor, and scrap some for parts to construct a high-quality suit of armor that actually grants a reasonable damage resistance bonus.
I'd agree with all of that. And I can especially see how some fans of the old games would be disappointed if they aren't into fancy graphics and run older systems, and how you could be seriously disappointed by the inability to have 4-5 companions. Heck, even I am a little.
It's a different game, for sure. But there are too many RPG elements to call it "just an FPS" like the OP did. Your skills affect your abilities in combat, there are still multiple solutions to most quests (combat/diplomacy/stealth, like the originals), if you suck at aiming you can use VATS, and you can play a scientifically- or socially-oriented character while using a combat-oriented companion NPC as a bodyguard (I love Jericho more than words can describe). And while the mechanics have changed, it's very true to the Fallout setting and atmosphere.
I just want to make sure that people who haven't tried it yet realize that there's more to it than mouse-mashing. There are a lot of naysayers out there who aren't saying much about why they don't like it, and that could give someone the wrong impression of the game.
And you're right -- I love stealth games, FPS games, RPG games, and especially games with sandbox elements. So Fallout 3 really is my perfect cup of tea. But that's coming from an avid fan of the first two games.
You said: "When all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail" and all Bethesda has is a FPS engine.
I said: Somebody with low weapons skills still does poor damage, even if they're a crack shot with the mouse.
I think you must have missed something somewhere. Tell me, in your opinion, was Deus Ex "just an FPS engine?" Fallout 3 is more like Deus Ex than it is like Crysis.
I disagree with your disagreement... I put in almost 18 hours on the game just on October 28th alone, and it's been completely awesome so far. Way better than Oblivion, and while very different (in terms of game mechanics) from Fallout 1 & 2, in many ways it is better than those games as well.
I agree with that. I think that filtering sites at the work internet connection is a poor solution to reducing downtime, though. It's like trying to fine-tune a computer with a hammer -- you're just going to ignore the original problem while making a dozen new problems for yourself.
and the hit location (and thus damage) is determined by your skill level.
Actually, the hit location is determined by what you were aiming at. If you shoot for the head and hit, you get a headshot, along with all of the benefits that entails, like the chance of disabling the opponent's head and the higher chance of a critical strike. However, your base damage with the weapon is set by your weapons skill, and (I'm not 100% on this) it seems like your weapon skill influences how accurate your bullets are in relation to where your crosshair is aiming (especially with burst weapons).
I have noticed that it is rather hard to miss with things like rocket launchers. However, that isn't unlike Fallout 1/2 (even a miss with a nade or rocket would usually land near the target, causing splash damage), and your damage with the missile/grenade/whatever is set by your weapons skill.
Everything else is dead-on, though. Dan obviously hasn't played the game, he just looked at the screenshots and made the ridiculous assumption that since it isn't isometric and it isn't 100% turn-based, it must not be an RPG. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Fallout 3 is, in many ways, like a free-roaming, post-apocalyptic Deus Ex. I don't recall anybody trying to say that Deus Ex wasn't an RPG.
The internet has all the capabilities of cable television; you can watch great, syndicated shows just for the price of watching a few commercials. But wait, there's more! You DON'T have to "pay per view," or buy something fancy like a TiVO, in order to watch something on your own time or pause it!
So maybe they are a little stuck up about not having a television. But my question is - why would I want a television?
Southparkstudios.com
Hulu.com
TheDailyShow.com
adultswim.com
The list goes on... get on board, stop letting NBC and Fox set your schedule and overcharge you for basic services on an obsolete medium.
There are some changes. But if you examine it in an unbiased fashion, they have actually improved several game mechanics from the first two games.
1) You have to get power armor training to wear power armor. This prevents people from making a 1st level character with a high outdoorsman skill and walking to Navarro to get Adv. Power Armor, completely breaking the game. And knowing that it was there, and that you could, made any replay of the game feel totally contrived at that point.
2) Medicine. Changing the mechanic of medicine skills was a Good Thing. In Fallout 2, First Aid/Doctor were much faster in terms of game time. But in terms of player time spent clicking, just slapping "rest until party healed" was faster, so people didn't use those skills much. Now, since Medicine impacts stimpack effectiveness, people will both use the skill AND value it more, regardless of their build.
3)Healing mechanics. Not being able to rest in the wasteland without a bed means finding food, water, or stimpacks to regenerate HP. In Fallout 1/2, you could just use the pipboy to rest a lot, in almost any location, and therefore avoid the need to use stimpacks at all. Ample use of resting in the game often lead to me having huge stockpiles of 200-300 stimpacks simply because I didn't have to use them. They became less of a commodity.
3)Weapon skills. Weapon skill ratings affect both your accuracy in VATS, as well as your damage in real-time and outside of VATS. This means a couple of things; it means that a level 1 character can't use a laser rifle to much effect, in or out of VATS, without a high energy skill. This means that, as with the power armor, you can't break the game by finding a plasma rifle early on. It also means that you can use VATS to get out of playing an FPS, but you can't avoid using VATS to get out of playing an RPG. Somebody with low weapons skills still does poor damage, even if they're a crack shot with the mouse.
4) Weapon conditions. First, repairing weapons gives a lot more use to out of the repair skill. It also seems more realistic than having weapons and armor that never degrade, despite years of use (Fallout 1/2). Secondly, this makes weapons more of a commodity than they were in the first games -- since you have to constantly acquire weapons to repair your own, it creates more financial expenses for your character (which is good because it makes bottlecaps more of a commodity).
5) Stealing mechanics. In Fallout 3, you can't rob a vendor of their shop inventory without killing that vendor first (as in Oblivion). This may seem unrealistic, and it is, but it is important to maintaining game balance (and thereby fun/replayability). In Fallout 1/2, you could often eliminate scarcity for your character simply by buying something at a store (say San Francisco), then stealing all of your bottlecaps back from the shopkeep, and then repeating over and over until you had more armor, weapons, medical supplies, and ammo than you could possibly carry. Combined with the possibility of scoring free Adv. Power Armor in the early stages of Fallout 2, this made the game unenjoyable rather quickly once you knew about these locations and how you could exploit them.
Fallout 3 may be different, but I think it's better. I bought my copy to support Bethesda, and I sincerely hope they release expansions and/or Fallout 4.
Ordering people to use your local mail server for work-related e-mails for security reasons is one thing; trying to filter the internet to keep your sysadmin/computer lab technician/receptionist/whoever from using their computer to check personal e-mails is another. People aren't busy 100% of the time, even if you need them there... sometimes they're on-call for internal tech support, compiling code for debugging, rendering video, or just eating their lunch on a break. Why can't they check their facebook for non-work-related e-mails during that downtime?
At best, filtering the internet will lead to employees staring at a wall or reading a book during their downtime; at worst, you will inspire animosity amongst the workforce which will surely impact intrinsic motivation levels... that is sure to impact productivity much more than a youtube video here or there.
And I challenge you to demonstrate that the latter is so, with something better than the claimed "benevolence" of some corporate managers.
I challenge you to actually read what I said, and realize that I didn't suggest they were benevolent. And nevermind that I've already demonstrated that the barriers are low; there is no way for a monopolistic force in the advertising sector to hoard the means of production. Therefore, if they raise prices unreasonably, new firms will join the market.
And this is all besides the original point - you need to explain WHY what Russia is doing is IN ANY WAY related to the downturn in the American economy. Otherwise your argument is basically "they're doing something differently, so that must be why we're doing poorly!" There isn't an ounce of analysis in that whatsoever.
Excuse me, but the two situations are mutually exclusive. (You even subsequently say they have an "iron fist" on email client advertising.) Sorry, but the left side of your mouth does not seem to understand what the right side has been saying.
Wow, you are fucking stupid. You present no evidence of anything, then routinely ignore my logical conjectures and examples, and accuse me of presenting no evidence.
Some textbook somewhere told you that those situations are mutually exclusive. Wow, you're so insightful!
Nevermind trying to analyze the situation at hand, let's just apply an algorithim to it that we learned in college, and call anyone who suggests anything otherwise an idiot, and if they ask for evidence of our claims, we'll just say "history" and explain nothing, while ignoring all of their arguments!
A) I never suggested that, dickwad. I am simply pointing out that it is hypocritical to say capitalism only rewards those who put forth effort, when we support inheritance laws.
B) I never suggested that, dickwad. I merely said that it isn't a bad thing that Obama has a friend who can think of ways to criticize America. How did you get from that, to the idea that background checks should be rendered invalid? I merely disagree with your opinion. Blind, propaganda-addled "patriots" (like you) shouldn't be in charge of the country.
C) Different is better if by "different" you mean, we elect a president who isn't a warmonger.
D) Engaging in diplomacy with criminals != giving criminals rights. It isn't a bad thing to sit down at a table with the enemy and try to talk it out. Why do you think we can't get anywhere diplomatically with other nations? It's because our negotiation policy is to make "demands" of countries before we speak with them. For example, we refuse to even talk to North Korea until they abandon their nuclear program. How is that productive? It may not always lead to a resolution, but I want a president willing to at least try diplomacy. Maybe you don't, but that's why you're too stupid to lead us.
First, you say that you did not assume that you can rely on them for anything, then in the next sentence you say that you can rely on them to be profit-maximizing.
I meant that we couldn't rely on them to be benevolent, but we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. Wouldn't you agree? Isn't that sound logic? You do agree, you're just being a bitch again because you think you've "caught" one of my screw-ups. Why don't we pay attention to the real issue at hand?
Then, you state that the internet ad business "has low barriers to entry"... when you have already described the company as having a near-monopoly position
There you go parroting classical economics again. Monopoly != barrier to entry by itself. They are simply correlated with barriers to entry, since monopolies tend to like to construct those in order to retain their position. However, it is impossible to purchase all of the means of production when the means of production are simply creativity and a computer. If Google has a monopoly position, why are people paying so much for advertising space over at penny-arcade.com?
My economic model is simple; allow the customers of the service to set the price of the service by engaging in auctions. Hardly an economic model that "has never existed." Now, I never said that anti-trust regulators forced Google to hold auctions. I merely suggested that perhaps Google decided to hold auctions, since they didn't want to draw the ire of anti-trust regulators. I'm also suggesting that perhaps controlling prices is a way for anti-trust legislators to do their job, without having to knee-jerk with "MONOPOLY BAD" at ever turn.
After all, if Monopolies are always SO terrible, why does our gov't hand out monopoly rights to public utilities like candy? Are they ignoring the issues monopolies present? Or are they using other controls to mitigate the monopoly effect, like price controls?
Monopolies and low barriers to entry are not mutually exclusive. There are hardly any barriers to entry in the world of online media. You make something engaging, you host a website for $20/year, you sell some advertisements, you're in business. Google could never do anything that would keep competitors from entering the market that way, even if they currently had no competitors.
You're heralding Russia's block of their acquisition because you assume they can somehow create barriers to entry with a majority market share when there seems to be NO feasible way to do so.
In summary, you've put no thought into this Google situation at all, you've just repeated lines from an economic textbook at me and expected me to accept them as self-evident. Well, fuck you, I say.
And if you are counting on "the market" to control even a "benign" monopoly, you are going to be very disappointed. Hey, man. Society has been there, done that, many times in history, and it DOES NOT WORK for any length of time.
This seems to be your sole evidence, despite the fact that you're dealing with an entirely new service in an entirely new market that is fundamentally different from all markets that have existed in the previous centuries. What we are doing with the internet is unprecedented, and to point to the history of monopolies as an indication of what will happen on the internet in the future is folly. The paradigm is totally different.
you assume that you can rely on them for anything.
I didn't say that. I said we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. If maintaining a fair pricing scheme is profit maximizing because it keeps them in business despite anti-trust regulators looking for excuses to take them down, then we can rely on them to maintain a fair pricing scheme. If fair pricing is not profit maximizing... well, then, we can rely on unfair pricing. Our goal should be, therefore, to stimulate fair pricing schemes; that is, after all, the ultimate goal that CAUSED us to have all of these negative biases towards monopolies. Try not to forget the ultimate goal. And don't try to paint me as "naive" for saying we could rely on Google to be benevolent. That isn't the case, and it's not what I said.
Please, present evidence. Your statement alone is not sufficient. There have been incidences which constitute evidence against this assertion.
"Incidences" huh... well, I'm convinced! I figured it would be self-evident that the internet marketing business had low barriers to entry... all I have to do to enter it is create a compelling website and draw visitors. Sure, Google has an iron fist on the world of e-mail client advertising, but don't forget that e-mail client advertising is a relatively new idea. Look to sites like southparkstudios.com, thedailyshow.com, and hulu.com for examples of what makes internet advertising contestable.
You didn't write anything. You didn't define what a "better job" was. You just vaguely pointed to Russia and said "see? They're doing better!"
Never mind that the current economic downturn in the states probably has more to do with the subprime crisis than with lackluster anti-trust regulation.
And your arguments in the other threads are so drenched with the stink of classical economics that you can smell it from a mile away. When Smith was writing about the "invisible hand", he wasn't thinking goods as in technology services, he was thinking goods as in bananas.
I posit that barriers to entry in the advertising market are low or non-existent because the means of production are available to anyone, and the business spending in the advertising sector is enormous. If Google raised prices on adspace drastically, the money would start to move to other outlets, and those firms would gain more traction and capital. Google would flounder, especially because it relies heavily on its advertisement business to generate revenue. It can't afford to let that slip.
All I have to do to compete for online advertising bids is create some sort of online content (or recycle old content from other mediums; see southparkstudios.com), gain a user base, and then sell my adverts. It's harder to contest, say, the oil market - you have to find an oil well first.
And this is all besides the point that another poster made in which he brought our attention to Google's use of auctions to set prices.
Your folly is that you assume every monopoly and oligopoly that ever is will act like every one that ever was. History is a good predictor of the future, but it isn't always accurate, and we shouldn't throw logic to the wind when considering these things and just revert to old classical algorithms like "MONOPOLY BAD, MANY COMPETITORS GOOD." It robs us of our ability to change, evolve, adapt, and grow by testing different business models.
After all, while monopolies tend to abuse pricing, isn't it true that a monopoly is theoretically possible of achieving the most efficient economy of scale in its sector?
Slashdot Mirror
That's an unfortunate symptom of our two-party tradition. In the two-party system, you aren't forced to figure out who you really want to vote in as president; you can simply decide who you don't want and vote for the other alligator.
Obama might have gotten votes due to racism, but he also got votes just because McCain sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"
It sounds like you assumed "re-writing the rules of the internet" to mean something that it doesn't without bothering to RTFA.
You don't know what you're talking about, do you?
or, go ahead and listen to the various unnecessary technical gymanstics you must perform offered in this thead.
You mean, "technical gymnastics" like typing in southparkstudios.com, clicking on the episode I want to watch, and clicking "play?"
You're either ignorant or stupid.
Well, you sound bitter.
On #5 -- it makes no sense that a shopowner in Fallout 2 could remain in business, and continually restock his inventory, when the Chosen One robs him of all of his coins every time he sells his inventory off (to the Chosen One, incidentally, making the Chosen One rather rich). The shopowner would run out of money, close up his shop, and become another jet-addicted junkie on the sidewalk. What, does that guy have like, a billion coins buried in the middle of the wasteland somewhere or something? Why does a guy with that kind of capital keep dumping it all into getting robbed blind by some psychotic tribal? It really just makes no sense at all.
Also, I always hated that in Fallout 1/2, you could barely get away with crime at all. In Fallout 2, The Den was really the only place where that sort of thing would fly - if you got caught stealing from someone, you just beat them to death, nobody cared; in all other towns the entire town would hostile on you (permanently, ruining all quests there). Fallout 3 seems to have a more realistic system of crime detection; it's much easier to get away with a silent murder, and thereby perhaps snuff the life of the victim of a pickpocketing gone wrong ... well, I suppose it's more realistic except for the part where if you wait around several days, people stop killing you on sight for gunning down their Sheriff.
But it sure as hell is fun! ha. Maybe they were scared. I killed 'em all eventually, anyhow.
P.S. Fallout 3's real-time/VATS system reminds me of Fallout Tactics. Now, a lot of people didn't like Fallout Tactics, for many reasons. I loved it's party-based system, open-ended character design/recruitment mechanics, and combat mechanics (including the real-time mode with the AP regeneration mechanic); I just hated the fact that it was mission-based instead of free-roaming. It had a couple of alternate endings, but they both culminated in the same place, so to call it "open-ended" would be a farce.
You can only get the story once, and then what have you got? Replayability isn't a requirement, but certainly it's better with it than without it, no?
You also only addressed my first point. Sure, stories are important, but Bethesda's game seems to have an engaging one. Saying that random encounters are "pointless", however, is folly. They were a huge part of Fallout 1 & 2 - the theme of the wastelands is that there is no law & order, the whole world is some high-noon spaghetti western, and filled with dangerous people trying to rob you, enslave you, kill you, eat you, turn you into a mutated super-soldier, or any other number of horrific things.
They were also the only real safeguards built into the game to keep people from getting to high-level, end-game locations rather quickly (Fallout 3 keeps up this tradition by only letting you fast-travel to previously visited locations, and making the area around Rivet City quite dangerous). You either needed exceptional outdoorsman abilities (similar to having a high perception in Fallout 3) to avoid encounters, or a powerful laser rifle. Or a lot of patience and a lot of saving/reloading to get from Arroyo to Navarro without any random encounters with enclave soldiers wielding laser beams to end your life prematurely (and keep you from getting that wonderful, wonderful power armor).
I like that in Fallout 3 you can loot practically anyone's armor, unlike the earlier games. However because of the equipment "condition" mechanic, the armor is often damaged, and therefore you have to accumulate several suits of power armor/combat armor/metal armor/whatever armor, and scrap some for parts to construct a high-quality suit of armor that actually grants a reasonable damage resistance bonus.
I'd agree with all of that. And I can especially see how some fans of the old games would be disappointed if they aren't into fancy graphics and run older systems, and how you could be seriously disappointed by the inability to have 4-5 companions. Heck, even I am a little.
It's a different game, for sure. But there are too many RPG elements to call it "just an FPS" like the OP did. Your skills affect your abilities in combat, there are still multiple solutions to most quests (combat/diplomacy/stealth, like the originals), if you suck at aiming you can use VATS, and you can play a scientifically- or socially-oriented character while using a combat-oriented companion NPC as a bodyguard (I love Jericho more than words can describe). And while the mechanics have changed, it's very true to the Fallout setting and atmosphere.
I just want to make sure that people who haven't tried it yet realize that there's more to it than mouse-mashing. There are a lot of naysayers out there who aren't saying much about why they don't like it, and that could give someone the wrong impression of the game.
And you're right -- I love stealth games, FPS games, RPG games, and especially games with sandbox elements. So Fallout 3 really is my perfect cup of tea. But that's coming from an avid fan of the first two games.
You said: "When all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail" and all Bethesda has is a FPS engine.
I said: Somebody with low weapons skills still does poor damage, even if they're a crack shot with the mouse.
I think you must have missed something somewhere. Tell me, in your opinion, was Deus Ex "just an FPS engine?" Fallout 3 is more like Deus Ex than it is like Crysis.
I disagree with your disagreement ... I put in almost 18 hours on the game just on October 28th alone, and it's been completely awesome so far. Way better than Oblivion, and while very different (in terms of game mechanics) from Fallout 1 & 2, in many ways it is better than those games as well.
I agree with that. I think that filtering sites at the work internet connection is a poor solution to reducing downtime, though. It's like trying to fine-tune a computer with a hammer -- you're just going to ignore the original problem while making a dozen new problems for yourself.
and the hit location (and thus damage) is determined by your skill level.
Actually, the hit location is determined by what you were aiming at. If you shoot for the head and hit, you get a headshot, along with all of the benefits that entails, like the chance of disabling the opponent's head and the higher chance of a critical strike. However, your base damage with the weapon is set by your weapons skill, and (I'm not 100% on this) it seems like your weapon skill influences how accurate your bullets are in relation to where your crosshair is aiming (especially with burst weapons).
I have noticed that it is rather hard to miss with things like rocket launchers. However, that isn't unlike Fallout 1/2 (even a miss with a nade or rocket would usually land near the target, causing splash damage), and your damage with the missile/grenade/whatever is set by your weapons skill.
Everything else is dead-on, though. Dan obviously hasn't played the game, he just looked at the screenshots and made the ridiculous assumption that since it isn't isometric and it isn't 100% turn-based, it must not be an RPG. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Fallout 3 is, in many ways, like a free-roaming, post-apocalyptic Deus Ex. I don't recall anybody trying to say that Deus Ex wasn't an RPG.
Just because it's in first-person doesn't mean it isn't an RPG. You are experiencing a knee-jerk reaction.
The internet has all the capabilities of cable television; you can watch great, syndicated shows just for the price of watching a few commercials. But wait, there's more! You DON'T have to "pay per view," or buy something fancy like a TiVO, in order to watch something on your own time or pause it!
So maybe they are a little stuck up about not having a television. But my question is - why would I want a television?
Southparkstudios.com
Hulu.com
TheDailyShow.com
adultswim.com
The list goes on ... get on board, stop letting NBC and Fox set your schedule and overcharge you for basic services on an obsolete medium.
Have you played it yet? It's quite good.
There are some changes. But if you examine it in an unbiased fashion, they have actually improved several game mechanics from the first two games.
1) You have to get power armor training to wear power armor. This prevents people from making a 1st level character with a high outdoorsman skill and walking to Navarro to get Adv. Power Armor, completely breaking the game. And knowing that it was there, and that you could, made any replay of the game feel totally contrived at that point.
2) Medicine. Changing the mechanic of medicine skills was a Good Thing. In Fallout 2, First Aid/Doctor were much faster in terms of game time. But in terms of player time spent clicking, just slapping "rest until party healed" was faster, so people didn't use those skills much. Now, since Medicine impacts stimpack effectiveness, people will both use the skill AND value it more, regardless of their build.
3)Healing mechanics. Not being able to rest in the wasteland without a bed means finding food, water, or stimpacks to regenerate HP. In Fallout 1/2, you could just use the pipboy to rest a lot, in almost any location, and therefore avoid the need to use stimpacks at all. Ample use of resting in the game often lead to me having huge stockpiles of 200-300 stimpacks simply because I didn't have to use them. They became less of a commodity.
3)Weapon skills. Weapon skill ratings affect both your accuracy in VATS, as well as your damage in real-time and outside of VATS. This means a couple of things; it means that a level 1 character can't use a laser rifle to much effect, in or out of VATS, without a high energy skill. This means that, as with the power armor, you can't break the game by finding a plasma rifle early on. It also means that you can use VATS to get out of playing an FPS, but you can't avoid using VATS to get out of playing an RPG. Somebody with low weapons skills still does poor damage, even if they're a crack shot with the mouse.
4) Weapon conditions. First, repairing weapons gives a lot more use to out of the repair skill. It also seems more realistic than having weapons and armor that never degrade, despite years of use (Fallout 1/2). Secondly, this makes weapons more of a commodity than they were in the first games -- since you have to constantly acquire weapons to repair your own, it creates more financial expenses for your character (which is good because it makes bottlecaps more of a commodity).
5) Stealing mechanics. In Fallout 3, you can't rob a vendor of their shop inventory without killing that vendor first (as in Oblivion). This may seem unrealistic, and it is, but it is important to maintaining game balance (and thereby fun/replayability). In Fallout 1/2, you could often eliminate scarcity for your character simply by buying something at a store (say San Francisco), then stealing all of your bottlecaps back from the shopkeep, and then repeating over and over until you had more armor, weapons, medical supplies, and ammo than you could possibly carry. Combined with the possibility of scoring free Adv. Power Armor in the early stages of Fallout 2, this made the game unenjoyable rather quickly once you knew about these locations and how you could exploit them.
Fallout 3 may be different, but I think it's better. I bought my copy to support Bethesda, and I sincerely hope they release expansions and/or Fallout 4.
Ordering people to use your local mail server for work-related e-mails for security reasons is one thing; trying to filter the internet to keep your sysadmin/computer lab technician/receptionist/whoever from using their computer to check personal e-mails is another. People aren't busy 100% of the time, even if you need them there ... sometimes they're on-call for internal tech support, compiling code for debugging, rendering video, or just eating their lunch on a break. Why can't they check their facebook for non-work-related e-mails during that downtime?
At best, filtering the internet will lead to employees staring at a wall or reading a book during their downtime; at worst, you will inspire animosity amongst the workforce which will surely impact intrinsic motivation levels ... that is sure to impact productivity much more than a youtube video here or there.
The Brotherhood of Steel needs a monopoly on it to restore order to the wastelands!
Wait, what's going on? I lost track of time. Do you guys know what day it is?
And I challenge you to demonstrate that the latter is so, with something better than the claimed "benevolence" of some corporate managers.
I challenge you to actually read what I said, and realize that I didn't suggest they were benevolent. And nevermind that I've already demonstrated that the barriers are low; there is no way for a monopolistic force in the advertising sector to hoard the means of production. Therefore, if they raise prices unreasonably, new firms will join the market.
And this is all besides the original point - you need to explain WHY what Russia is doing is IN ANY WAY related to the downturn in the American economy. Otherwise your argument is basically "they're doing something differently, so that must be why we're doing poorly!" There isn't an ounce of analysis in that whatsoever.
Excuse me, but the two situations are mutually exclusive. (You even subsequently say they have an "iron fist" on email client advertising.) Sorry, but the left side of your mouth does not seem to understand what the right side has been saying.
Wow, you are fucking stupid. You present no evidence of anything, then routinely ignore my logical conjectures and examples, and accuse me of presenting no evidence.
Some textbook somewhere told you that those situations are mutually exclusive. Wow, you're so insightful!
Nevermind trying to analyze the situation at hand, let's just apply an algorithim to it that we learned in college, and call anyone who suggests anything otherwise an idiot, and if they ask for evidence of our claims, we'll just say "history" and explain nothing, while ignoring all of their arguments!
A) I never suggested that, dickwad. I am simply pointing out that it is hypocritical to say capitalism only rewards those who put forth effort, when we support inheritance laws.
B) I never suggested that, dickwad. I merely said that it isn't a bad thing that Obama has a friend who can think of ways to criticize America. How did you get from that, to the idea that background checks should be rendered invalid? I merely disagree with your opinion. Blind, propaganda-addled "patriots" (like you) shouldn't be in charge of the country.
C) Different is better if by "different" you mean, we elect a president who isn't a warmonger.
D) Engaging in diplomacy with criminals != giving criminals rights. It isn't a bad thing to sit down at a table with the enemy and try to talk it out. Why do you think we can't get anywhere diplomatically with other nations? It's because our negotiation policy is to make "demands" of countries before we speak with them. For example, we refuse to even talk to North Korea until they abandon their nuclear program. How is that productive? It may not always lead to a resolution, but I want a president willing to at least try diplomacy. Maybe you don't, but that's why you're too stupid to lead us.
Too bad you're not too stupid to vote.
First, you say that you did not assume that you can rely on them for anything, then in the next sentence you say that you can rely on them to be profit-maximizing.
I meant that we couldn't rely on them to be benevolent, but we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. Wouldn't you agree? Isn't that sound logic? You do agree, you're just being a bitch again because you think you've "caught" one of my screw-ups. Why don't we pay attention to the real issue at hand?
Then, you state that the internet ad business "has low barriers to entry"... when you have already described the company as having a near-monopoly position
There you go parroting classical economics again. Monopoly != barrier to entry by itself. They are simply correlated with barriers to entry, since monopolies tend to like to construct those in order to retain their position. However, it is impossible to purchase all of the means of production when the means of production are simply creativity and a computer. If Google has a monopoly position, why are people paying so much for advertising space over at penny-arcade.com?
My economic model is simple; allow the customers of the service to set the price of the service by engaging in auctions. Hardly an economic model that "has never existed." Now, I never said that anti-trust regulators forced Google to hold auctions. I merely suggested that perhaps Google decided to hold auctions, since they didn't want to draw the ire of anti-trust regulators. I'm also suggesting that perhaps controlling prices is a way for anti-trust legislators to do their job, without having to knee-jerk with "MONOPOLY BAD" at ever turn.
After all, if Monopolies are always SO terrible, why does our gov't hand out monopoly rights to public utilities like candy? Are they ignoring the issues monopolies present? Or are they using other controls to mitigate the monopoly effect, like price controls?
Monopolies and low barriers to entry are not mutually exclusive. There are hardly any barriers to entry in the world of online media. You make something engaging, you host a website for $20/year, you sell some advertisements, you're in business. Google could never do anything that would keep competitors from entering the market that way, even if they currently had no competitors.
You're heralding Russia's block of their acquisition because you assume they can somehow create barriers to entry with a majority market share when there seems to be NO feasible way to do so.
In summary, you've put no thought into this Google situation at all, you've just repeated lines from an economic textbook at me and expected me to accept them as self-evident. Well, fuck you, I say.
And if you are counting on "the market" to control even a "benign" monopoly, you are going to be very disappointed. Hey, man. Society has been there, done that, many times in history, and it DOES NOT WORK for any length of time.
This seems to be your sole evidence, despite the fact that you're dealing with an entirely new service in an entirely new market that is fundamentally different from all markets that have existed in the previous centuries. What we are doing with the internet is unprecedented, and to point to the history of monopolies as an indication of what will happen on the internet in the future is folly. The paradigm is totally different.
you assume that you can rely on them for anything.
I didn't say that. I said we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. If maintaining a fair pricing scheme is profit maximizing because it keeps them in business despite anti-trust regulators looking for excuses to take them down, then we can rely on them to maintain a fair pricing scheme. If fair pricing is not profit maximizing ... well, then, we can rely on unfair pricing. Our goal should be, therefore, to stimulate fair pricing schemes; that is, after all, the ultimate goal that CAUSED us to have all of these negative biases towards monopolies. Try not to forget the ultimate goal. And don't try to paint me as "naive" for saying we could rely on Google to be benevolent. That isn't the case, and it's not what I said.
Please, present evidence. Your statement alone is not sufficient. There have been incidences which constitute evidence against this assertion.
"Incidences" huh ... well, I'm convinced! I figured it would be self-evident that the internet marketing business had low barriers to entry ... all I have to do to enter it is create a compelling website and draw visitors. Sure, Google has an iron fist on the world of e-mail client advertising, but don't forget that e-mail client advertising is a relatively new idea. Look to sites like southparkstudios.com, thedailyshow.com, and hulu.com for examples of what makes internet advertising contestable.
You didn't write anything. You didn't define what a "better job" was. You just vaguely pointed to Russia and said "see? They're doing better!"
Never mind that the current economic downturn in the states probably has more to do with the subprime crisis than with lackluster anti-trust regulation.
And your arguments in the other threads are so drenched with the stink of classical economics that you can smell it from a mile away. When Smith was writing about the "invisible hand", he wasn't thinking goods as in technology services, he was thinking goods as in bananas.
I posit that barriers to entry in the advertising market are low or non-existent because the means of production are available to anyone, and the business spending in the advertising sector is enormous. If Google raised prices on adspace drastically, the money would start to move to other outlets, and those firms would gain more traction and capital. Google would flounder, especially because it relies heavily on its advertisement business to generate revenue. It can't afford to let that slip.
All I have to do to compete for online advertising bids is create some sort of online content (or recycle old content from other mediums; see southparkstudios.com), gain a user base, and then sell my adverts. It's harder to contest, say, the oil market - you have to find an oil well first.
And this is all besides the point that another poster made in which he brought our attention to Google's use of auctions to set prices.
Your folly is that you assume every monopoly and oligopoly that ever is will act like every one that ever was. History is a good predictor of the future, but it isn't always accurate, and we shouldn't throw logic to the wind when considering these things and just revert to old classical algorithms like "MONOPOLY BAD, MANY COMPETITORS GOOD." It robs us of our ability to change, evolve, adapt, and grow by testing different business models.
After all, while monopolies tend to abuse pricing, isn't it true that a monopoly is theoretically possible of achieving the most efficient economy of scale in its sector?