Evening Reading: Yakuza 3's Pyrrhic Victory
Now for the bad news. Somehow, despite their displeasure with sales for the prior two installments of Yakuza and the long time since the release of this game in Japan (it came out there all the way back in Feb.), Sega set the North American release for March 2010. Yes, the same March that sees both God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 release. Now granted, not everyone who would pick up Yakuza also wants the other two but seriously, I don't think I'm out on a limb saying that you're basically asking PS3 gamers to bump their payout for games that month up to $180 to include Yakuza 3.
Folks, that's not happening. I've been a vocal supporter of the series and for the life of me I can't figure out Sega's approach to handling it. The second game suffered a similarly long delay in its journey west releasing in Dec of 2006 to Japan and not making it to America until Sep of 2008 -- almost two years later. By that time the next generation of consoles had taken firm hold leaving a high production value game like Yakuza 2 out of place on the PS2.
I guess their thinking goes that the fans are the only ones really interested and they'll buy it anyway -- which we definitely should. The decision to keep the Japanese language voiceovers and subtitle also points to that explanation. But fans or otherwise it sure would have helped for there to be some consideration of the rest of the release schedule. Of course this is the same Sega that delayed the North American release of Bayonetta until just after the holidays.
No delays for us today. There's plenty of news to go around:
- World of Warcraft Patch 3.3.0 Released
- TF2 Update Includes Meaningful Announcer Comments No One Has Figured Out
- Unofficial BioShock 2 In-Game Footage
Remember Andy, Alex's cute little brother on Family Ties? Well, he might be looking for Gary Coleman's digits to make a Cash Call after getting arrested for assault. That tattoo is really working for the look.
Things have gone completely wacky in Copenhagen for the Climate Summit where they non-ironically have a limo shortage and, "the local sex workers' union -- they have unions here -- has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning."
And if you think your neighbors have weird pets, at least they don't have a baby honey bear, a leopard cat and a slow loris primate.
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R4di4ti0n.
replyDear Infinity Ward…
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What happened? Did you fire all of the people who made CoD:MW and replace them with the people that Treyarch wouldn’t even pay? Modern Warfare 2 is such a disappointment I can hardly believe that you put this out. I knew the Call of Duty franchise wasn’t above putting out crap, but I thought that at least your studio was? I hate to say it, but maybe it was your infinite spawn boxes that actually made your campaigns fun. Without them your game is much too easy. I was able to beat veteran as easy as I beat hardened 2 years ago. Also, I’m not sure if you fired your original writers, but this newest batch of “story†is nearly as bad as Indiana Jones and the Alien Skulls of Doom. Its full of so many cliché “twists†that you are actually making M. Night look like a genius. That, and the fact that I beat your game by the time that most of America was waking up for work on launch day leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
As far as multiplayer, clearly the only “skill†you needed to have when designing the maps was “took an entry level game design class.†That’s a lie, I’m sorry. The maps aren’t Gears of War 2 terrible, but they are definitely the severely handicapped cousins of your CoD:MW maps. Every single map is one giant maze-like labyrinth of too-similar buildings with more holes in them than Swiss cheese. I know you were probably trying to prevent camping, but giving every room 7 entrances was a poor solution. I would have preferred the maps to be flooded with immulsion to drive out campers than getting gang raped by 5 people coming in through windows and stairs like I’m some sort of Columbian drug lord and they are the A-Team.
Speaking of the A-Team and their crazy unbelievable antics, you know what else is crazy and unbelievable? Carrying 2 Shotguns. Yeah, I’m sure somewhere along the line, someone was like “hey, my favorite pistols in counterstrike are the dual elites. We should put that in our game†At that point you should have slapped them for not using the Deagle and then continued on with your meeting. Instead you put it in your game. Terribly. And then, instead of limiting it to pistols, you gave it to half of the arsenal in the game. Awesome. I am honestly surprised that there isn’t dual Javelins or something, but hey, there are two map packs coming to add those in, so who knows.
I’m also still amazed at the fact that despite your maps having somewhere near 60 or more distinct spawn points, you still manage to find the point that drops me directly in front of the enemy, while they are in the middle of a knife swing. Between your terrible spawns and the constant air support spewing hot metal rain upon my frail soldiers body, I’m surprised that my KDR isn’t 0.01
Literally the only aspect of the game that isn’t a complete letdown when compared with CoD:MW is Spec Ops. Of course, this is incredibly unfair to say, because it wasn’t even included in that game. Honestly though, the Mile High level was more fun than the entire Spec Ops mode, and a hell of a lot more creative too. “Kill 15 Juggernauts on this oil platform. You will die. Ha.†Wow. Must have taken a while to come up with that one. I’m sure it was the same jackass who thought to implement dual weapons. But hey, the stealth missions are at least fun. All 3 of them, and their 15 minutes total of combined gameplay.
Well, there is always 2011. Please make MW3 not suck.
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I love how so many people are bitching about the game, and they keep bitching about opposite things. Somebody just bitched yesterday about how the maps were full of 12844987 camping spots and now you're bitching about there being TOO MANY entrances to places making camping harder.
Dual 1887's are fucking ridiculous, but that's a function of the gun itself being WAY too accurate.
Yeah, the spawn logic is still absolute bullshit. I've been spawned in the corner of the map where there were 3 enemies and the other half of the map had no enemies anywhere near.
You're completely wrong about Spec Ops. Coop slo-mo breaching? Yes. COOP FUCKING AC-130 MISSION, FUCK YES. The helicopter one is also awesome, as are the 3 stealth missions. Playing a modified version of the 'Ghillies in the Mist' mission coop is amazing. Mile High Club was one fucking single player mission 60 seconds long.-
Yeah, there has been a lot of complaining about stupid shit going on here lately
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that one guy was complaining both that there were too many campers AND that rooms had too many entrances to them. In the same post, I forget who it was but I just shook my head and moved on. Some people are just fucking bad at video games, nothing you can do about it.
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Derail and Rundown stand out to me as extreme camping maps. There's very little visual contrast and most fighting takes place at range.
Favela and Invasion stand out to me as extreme flanking maps. There's a lot of visual obstruction and most fighting can be forced indoors.
All maps "allow" all general tactics, but it'd be foolish not to admit that they favor certain ones.-
Also, I think I may understand the "air rape" complaints, as well. Obviously, if you're being air-raped, you have already lost. The opposing team is overpowering you and you would not stand a chance even without the rape. However, being air-raped is just not fun. Your average life is shorter and combat is much less direct, and it is abundantly clear that your team has no chance.
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No, air rape doesn't mean you've already lost - the enemy can get a lucky streak of care packages, for instance.
If you bitch about air rape it means you don't know how to avoid airborne threats, either by way of perk or map geometry. Yes, you can get an unlucky streak of spawn, but if you recognize that there's a threat in the air you should have a Cold Blooded class ready to go before you spawn again. -
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its a simple fix, you pull out your stinger or javelin and kill all their air support. Harriers, pavelows, hinds, chopper gunners, and UAV's go down to one missile. The AC-130 goes down to 2 fired very close to each other. If however your team is composed to people who just assume someone else will take care of it instead of everyone immediately switching and handling the situation then you deserve to be dominated over and over by the air support because you and your team are retards.
In addition, I disagree that you have no chance if you are being hit by TONS of air support, ive played more than my fair share of games where there was a 3-5 minute period where they had the sky filled with death, and were able to jump out to a big lead, but we were then able to fight back with our own air support and tie the game up and win.
I think most of the air-rape comment folks need to play to a higher level where they have a stinger at least, and also until they have the flow and ebb of the gameplay down and realize that you can overcome most situations through teamwork.-
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Yes there is default AA, but obviously it is not as good as a javelin or stinger which are basically 2 second lock on's and fire and forget and will hit their target 90% of the time, plus stinger unlocks are level 30 which is like 8-10 hours of playtime doing mediocre-poor in every game and like 5-6 hours if you are good.
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I disagree with Invasion being a 'flanking' map - most games I've seen have revolved around holding the embassy.
As far as 'favoring' a tactic, to me that means that it lessens the effectiveness of another tactic and I have not found that to be true at all. Yes, more people 'camp' on Derail and Wasteland, but that doesn't lessen the effectiveness of other tactics.-
I play mostly domination because it forces you to control certain points, at the same time gives the attackers an idea of where the defenders will be camping. I find Derail on domination to have literally almost no camping other than people protecting their points, but i think domination facilitates less camping because those idiots who pick a corner and snipe it the whole game for kills end up losing the game anyways because they arent assaulting and defending points, just picking off a random guy here and there.
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Dear (radiation in leet speak form)...
Next time the front page has a MW2 story, post this. It will work better there. -
Right on man I can get behind this
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SpecOps mode itself is great, but the fact that there is no matchmaking for it is fucking stupid. I'd love to see how you MW2 apologists spin this.
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Well, I didn't say all that....
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Hitler was nice to his girlfriend FrayLo.
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If the game sucks, don't play it. Better, don't buy it. If you're some random dude bitching about a game on the shack, odds are you're a console kid anyway. Just fucking rent shit from blockbuster and save your allowance instead of helping us with all the drama.
If it's a bad game, fine, but don't get your panties in a twist over it. Christ, it's like they fucked your dog and kicked your mother.-
Breathe
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lol
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His dog's name is Hope, and his mother is very dedicated.
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So says the 2 month old shacker with < 200 comments. Must be true.
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Maybe he lost all his shack cred in the switch.
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I was going to nuke this for being so retarded, but instead I'm going to try and get something through to you people.
Do you fuckers enjoy games? Why are you people here? This is a gaming website. This constant childish whining about consoles and PCs and DUUUUUUUUUURURRUDDDDUUUUUUUUR. What the hell is wrong with you people? This is my official warning, I'm not speaking on behalf of the other mods here, I'm about to start nuking the unholy fuck out of posts like this. They are stupid and part of the problem. If you like games on the pc, good for you you beautiful snowflake being bastards. No one else gives a shit. Console gamers, no one cares which multinational corporation you want to give your money to because the other corporation doesn't properly express yourself as a modern woman on the go. All of you shut up and quit being so goddamned retarded. I think people who like games on their phones might be the last people out there who like games.
PS if any of you post about global warming I hope you get spinal meningitis for Xmas.
PPS old and busted vs the new hotness sucks a bag of hot dicks as a user name.-
[inf'd]
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IAWTI
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A DS silly! It fits in a handbag nicely.
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Shack needs a big ol'MOD tag for when mods post all ex cathedra and stuff.
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Ty sir I love you , now Im going up a few replys to dig a little
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No I think you are.
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FrayLo? More like JayLo with an ass like DAT!
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hahaha, awesome
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I have a serious question: what do we do about developer marketers who lie to us? Months and months of MW2 video footage, and the "PC will be the same as it always was" quote from Robert Bowling ( http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1200 ), and then IWNet is announced. That got plenty of PC gamers angry, myself included.
So I guess you're saying we can't even discuss how we're disappointed at this. I'll still push for maintaining the customizability that has been the identity of the PC FPS platform until recently. I just wish that there could be more developers on board for this cause, but their bosses don't seem to think it's economically viable.-
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well i guess it was also about whiners in general, anyway I'm pretty sure rational well thought out posts will always be welcome even if they express disappointment about stuff, but the level of discourse on various subjects has been absolute dogshit for the past few weeks with a lot of name calling and ridiculous shit like "IW IS HITLER ASSRAPING ME BY MAKING MODERN WARFARE 2, THE GAME THAT IS WORSE THAN THE HOLOCAUST TIMES 9/11"
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My problem is that people with legitimate complaints sometimes get knee-jerk labeled as "PC whiners". I'm getting real sick of people with legitimate feature complaints getting shut out with "Go buy a 360" or "Your platform doesn't have enough sell-through to matter in the design phase".
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"Your platform doesn't have enough sell-through to matter in the design phase" That's kind of a legit comment. I play games on the PC and all 3 consoles. Sometimes games work better on one platform than another. If your system isn't moving units in the scale other systems are what do you expect?
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I come from the school of "something worth doing is worth doing well". I don't think that "not enough sell-through" is a valid reason to phone it in, cut features, or implement them badly. I can understand games working better on one platform than another, but I disagree with intentionally making all three platforms equal, especially since each platform has differing standards.
In the next few days, I'm going to start writing a standards document for PC FPS game control options and basic HUD guidelines. Basically targeting things like the "unindexed mouse sensitivity slider" and "giant flashing RELOAD indicator that can't be disabled". Even if it serves no one else, I want to get all of these thoughts into one coherent document.-
a few million sales and plenty of previous haters here now enjoying it seems to suggest they did the PC version plenty well, even if it wasn't up to your exacting standards.
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PC gamers are like heroin addicts and MW2 is like bad heroin in a world where no good heroin exists, got it.
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Thats cool that you have some principles, but unless you are currently a game designer, I would have to say that you don't know what you are talking about. Wanna make enough money to stay open in a highly competitive business? Sometimes, you have to "phone it in" on some things just to get by.
Like I said, as soon as you start releasing your own multiplatform games, I'll start listening to you. But right now, what you have to say about "valid reasons" is about as relevant as me trying to tell Ford how to build and sell cars.
A platform not having enough sell though is a completely valid reason regardless of how you feel about it. No one is going to risk sinking their company to satisfy the smallest portion of their potential market. It's cool if they can, but c'mon, companies die all the time because of unrealistic and lofty principles.
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"Your platform doesn't have enough sell-through to matter in the design phase".
IT DOESN'T!. Believe me, as someone who grew up as a PC gamer, some choices that are being made with PC games these days frustrate the hell out of me as well. But, instead of pretending that I'm a beautiful and unique snowflake who makes up 99% of the market, I realize that I enjoy a hobby that makes up a small percentage of overall gaming sales. Hell, 3 years of working in the industry have showed me that.
So, instead of whining, bitching, crying, starting internet petitions, starting hate sites, etc., etc., etc., I realize that "Hey! I'm getting to play an awesome game, even if it doesn't have every option and function that that game I liked in 1998 had!" instead of whining, bitching, crying, etc., that gaming has actually changed in the past decade. I swear, the bitch persona that the PC gaming community has adopted in the past few years is making me more and more of a console gamer.
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First things first, you learn the valuable lesson that marketers lie. People selling products lie. Once you're at that point feel free to discuss the game not meeting your expectations like a grownup. If you get into the whole "WELL OBVIOUSLY THIS GAME WAS DUMBED DOWN BECAUSE ANYONE PLAYING GAMES ON A CONSOLE MUST BE A FLIPPER BABY OMGSRSLY!" then enjoy the post because it will be the last one for a few hours.
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OK, I can live with that. The whole IWNet thing was one HELL of a lie; I guess they wanted to keep it confidential until just before launch, but they forgot about the huge PC dedicated server following that they had.
The closest analogy I can think of (but probably a bad analogy, I'll admit) is Nissan saying that there's a Launch Control feature on the GT-R, and then basically making it finanically impossible to use the feature as intended.-
Dude, everyone knew about the IWNet shit long before launch. I know this because I had to read all the bitching all over the internet for several weeks before release.
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Was "long before launch" before October 17, 2009? That was the day of the BASHandSlash webcast where Bowling revealed IWNet.
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Um, no, it really was announced late in development, and did legitamitely surprise the community. Not saying that any of the childish nonsense is warranted or justified. I've always said that the community had reasons to be upset, but what they did was the exact behaviour of a 10 year old and thats really dumb and annoying.
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But Rauol Duke, if you aren't playing [INSERT X GAME] on a PC at 12932x230120 resolution with 10k keymappings than you are obviously a pussy bitch who doesn't like games! I mean, it can't be that some people enjoy the games themselves, the platform on which they are played is obviously the most important part and people who don't like [INSERT X PLATFORM] as much as I do are all teenaged bitchy pussy-ass fake gamers!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!
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But I don't like the message that it's sending to IW and Activision. I feel that it's basically saying, "Yes, please take away more features that us PC gamers used to take for granted in PC releases." I haven't heard any post-release developer interviews to reassure us that they won't be pulling back yet more features in their next efforts, but it's probably far too early to tell.
There's also competition. Bad Company 2 is coming out, and DiCE is marketing the hell out of their use of dedicated servers, now that it's a competitive advantage (though I thought I read somewhere that you could only rent dedicated servers from a company, and not host them yourself; I hope this isn't true). Brink got delayed, but it's going to have dedicated servers. We haven't heard any details from Treyarch's Vietnam-based CoD title; perhaps they're integrating with IWNet, and perhaps they're going to use dedicated servers; we don't know yet.
A question I keep asking is "Do developers even listen to actual gamers anymore?" No one's going to step out and answer me directly. There are some developer employees lurking on this forum and others. The MW2 PC debacle has been covered by the gaming press, though each source seems to get really really sick of going into details beyond a few minutes. I've been steaming over this whole thing for the past 6 weeks.-
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Okay, that's what it was, ranked = rented. I'm okay with that, as it enforces the purity of the server for the ranks.
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A question I keep asking is "Do developers even listen to actual gamers anymore?"
People have answered that numerous times, and it comes up in plenty of developer interviews. Of course they listen to actual gamers. You seem to mistake that for meaning they have to implement everything 'actual gamers' suggest. Just because they didn't do something you wanted doesn't mean they didn't listen or weren't aware that some people wouldn't like the decision.-
I think the bigger picture here isn't whether or not they "listen to actual gamers." It's that the hardcore market isn't the one paying the bills. To the average end user, dedicated servers don't mean anything at all. They want to click "Join Game" and be in a game. They have no concept of one server being different from another, except for when they join a wacky one and wonder why the fuck everything is low-grav-knives-only.
The average user experience is vastly improved when the game is controlled. Unfortunately, that's not the experience that you want.-
Oh I completely agree. I made this exact same argument for weeks on end when this whole shitstorm started. Some people don't want to believe it is the case (numerous people replied to me saying it's impossible that someone wouldn't understand ping, or be able to find favorite servers without frustration, or that matchmaking has any advantages, etc) and/or believe their 'side' is a far greater piece of the pie than it is (thus 'why aren't you listening to us?!')
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You could do both you know... Have a normal server browser option that any normal FPS player would use and a matchmaker for the rest.
Though I will say that generally the discussions developers should have with choice players on gameplay issues do not really occur. Balancing stuff should given to the top tier competitive guys first, but most developers only "listen" to the screaming forum members if anything at all.
Valve started to get it a while ago, but has yet to make many (any?) of the improvements to fix the balance problems, and TF2 is already far better balanced then most games.
MW2 on the other hand may not even have a competitive side since there are so many thing against it, at least PC side. But I don't care about the game enough to investigate.-
yeah and you could have a 50 hour singleplayer campaign and 50 great multiplayer maps too, assuming time and money are irrelevant. And you could have the game perfectly balanced for competitive play and also be the most approachable game for new players at the same time, assuming you have unlimited time and money.
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It's not impossible assuming the desire is to make a lasting game.
Of all the things that make a long lasting game I'm pretty sure server browsers vs matchmaking is just about at the very bottom of the list.-
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except it hasn't been done numerous times. L4D is the only example I ever see people give of a game with both. Every other game has chosen one or the other.
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Let's see:
1) Assuming it costs 0 time and money to implement method 1 just because it's been done in the past even in the face of massive networking changes to the game to facilitate method 2.
2) Even if it's really low cost, what value does it provide? It completely duplicates the functionality of an existing system with the only added value being server favorites for a small minority of the playerbase (at the cost of a much more useful ability to most: skill based matchmaking).
3) Assuming both are equally secure, resilient to hacking, and equally maintainable over time
4) Assuming you don't mind the costs of support over time (via patches and support calls) for two redundant methods of multiplayer gaming.
I could go on.
Why don't you ask Blizzard why there's no LAN play in SC2? Surely it'd be practically free to add a menu option for it. After all they've done it in SC1 and WC3 already and it can't be that different, they use Battle.net as well. And there wouldn't be other design considerations like security.-
What you and others fail to grasp is that arguing from a business perspective isn't going to change anyone's mind when it comes to a particular user's experience. It's no secret that people who wanted dedicated servers (or at least, a hybrid model like L4D uses) generally reside in an ever-shrinking hardcore minority, but that won't stop them from voicing what they want and backing it up with some good reasons. If your target demographic has a short friends list and isn't interested in much more than simply getting in a game, then IWNet is satisfactory. I just feel like it sacrifices too much to focus on that one thing. I'd like to think there are better, more flexible ways to achieve the same goal.
Just based on my experience with it, the matchmaking as implemented in MW2 is great when playing alone or with a small group, but tends to cause more problems than it solves if you have a group larger than half the team size but too small to create a private game. Merging multiple groups requires waiting for everyone's game to finish and takes significantly longer than just having everyone right click on a name and click join a la TF2. Then there are the times when you remain with a matchmade group instead of returning to the lobby with your party; I haven't determined if this is by design, but I suspect it is. There are countless other quirks, and some only speak to a poor implementation rather than the model in general, but that's enough to make me wonder why they bothered. If you want to talk business for a moment, dedicated servers are practically free and a hybrid system would have been no more trouble than the complete overhaul they gave it. The only benefit they gain is more control.
That leads in to the issue of user-created content. Some of my best experiences with games have been the result of mods or user-created maps that would otherwise not have existed. BBall in TF2 and fy_iceworld for CS probably account for hundreds of hours of enjoyment despite being two of the simplest maps one could make. Official map are obviously going to be of a higher general quality tha user-created content, but you lose when it comes to variety. You could argue that too many mods and custom maps make it difficult to find a vanilla game, and I would concede that as a potential negative. That said, it has not proven to be an issue for me the vast majority of the time.
I suppose I should mention that the lack of dedicated servers was not a deal breaker for me in any way. I see a lot of people pointing at sales figures and ironic images of supposed boy-cotters all playing the game as a way of dismissing any criticism, and I don't think that is fair. You can argue against a part of something while still being generally happy with its whole. The iPhone is a fantastic piece of hardware and arguably the best of its kind, but iTunes for Windows is almost universally despised by people here, despite being practically necessary because of how controlled the platform is. The app approval process is another issue, though more specific to developers. Some people have left the iPhone due to these things, but most people seem to tolerate these detractions in spite of the obvious improvements that could be made because the phone is just that good. I suspect it's the same with MW2.
I'm sure there are other points I could touch on, but bed is calling.
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Balancing stuff should given to the top tier competitive guys first, but most developers only "listen" to the screaming forum members if anything at all.
You do realize that, under this method, balancing would be based upon about .01% of the user base of any given title, right?
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I was just trying to say that you have posts almost every day about how much PC gamers are getting the shaft and how much you hate it. You're clearly really burned about this whole thing. Day in and day out you're not getting any different answers from people because as i said before, even the vehemently opposed PC gamers who ended up buying the game are having a blast. (whytefang i think even said it was now his GOTY after hating on it for a while)
it really comes down to, is it perhaps time to move on?-
It was time to move on before the game came out. If a marketing person saw archville's posts, they would still regard him as a customer. He hasn't moved on and IW is very happy about this. Right now, he isn't letting the buzz die down, he is keeping their advertising campaign going for free. He may not buy MW2, but his post shows willingness to buy IW products again, so why should they listen to his complaints?
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The message isn't sending, it has been sent. And the biggest message was sent by people like you, except to say, people like you who bought the game anyways. The message is "we'll buy it no matter how much we complain", and that message is coming from your trenches, man.
The only message that should have been sent was "Your are dumb (IW), and I am jumping ship. Whats up, DICE, wanna kick it?". That message has not been sent, and It's too late to send it.
Developers listen to gamers just like any other market: What sells? This can be seen in a good light or a bad light. The good light is a developer looking to their community for what the community wants the next big thing to be. The bad light is a developer taking what already sells and trying to make more money from it.
It is no one's fault but your own for not talking to the developer properly. Yes, I am saying that if this trend continues, the blame for it lies on the boycotters shoulders. If my son goes on and on about something I have restricted, like maybe I let him play CoD4 but he has to do some other chore or has a time limit, I know I've got him. If I put the choice in front of him and he won't stop bugging me about it, I know it has value and I can bargain with it. If he says well screw that and never brings it up, then I see no value in it and might cave later just so he doesn't think I'm too hard-ass.
I know it's a loose metaphor, but its what the entire problem with the "boycott" movement was. All it did was create a shit ton of publicity about the game, it got people talking about it, it got people engaged. MW2 discussions were happening where there would have been none otherwise.
Imagine if all the people who were upset about the PC details just washed their hands of it? What if discussions of other games didn't devolve into people complaining about why dedicated servers are so important to MW2? Moreover, what if the boycott held and PC sales never took off..?
Speaking of messages, you even acknowledge something that I don't think you did. There WAS a very clear message to the rest of the PC world, and that is that dedicated servers are important. The evidence that this is being heard shows in DICE advertising the shit out of their server setup. Now, if BC2 sells really well on the PC, then it will be a good message to the industry. It'll be an even better message if there is some kind of correlation with the BC2 sales and a drop in MW2 sales.
And last but not least, it's ONE developer doing this to ONE game. You were NEVER going to stop it, it was going to happen, and the best thing to do about it would have been to realize the importance of sending the right message in reply. Like I said eariler, that phase is done, the wrong message has already been sent.
Now is the time to look to the future, look at other developers reactions and act accordingly. Stop focising on the message to IW, that is done, you cannot fix the past. Focus on the message to other developers, focus on the message to the industry.
You really want to make a good dent in this, start an anti-pirate campaign for BC2 on the grounds that it has dedicated servers. I hear a changable FOV is also important (never messed with it myself), so you should probably include that. Make an anti-boycott, and FFS, be done with IW and CoD. None of this "what will they do in the future" nonsense, they have severly wronged you! Why are you even paying them any mind at all?
"I haven't heard any post-release developer interviews to reassure us that they won't be pulling back yet more features in their next efforts, but it's probably far too early to tell. "
That sentence alone tells IW "Yes, please take away more features that us PC gamers used to take for granted in PC releases.". YOU are sending that message by being willing to continue to care. I don't understand how you could not see it, but what you've basically said in that statement is "Ok, you fucked up and really fucked me over, but I'm still gonna stick by you and hope you do better". Being willing to be reassured they won't be pulling back more features shows that you have resigned to they current lack of features being the new standard.
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I don't think he's saying that at all. What I got from the post is that when people make the same goddamned thread 18 million times it ceases to be a legitimate gripe and starts to be an "OMGLETSALLSTARTANINTERNETPETITION!1!1!1!1!1!" post, which dumbs down the shack as a whole.
If someone likes console games: Awesome, good for you!
If someone like PC games: Awesome, good for you!
But these constant "PC is better because/Console is better because" posts recently show that the shack is less and less being populate by actual gamers, and more often filled with rejects from www.sandyvaginaforums.com-
You know, I got threatened with a banning for saying about the same thing. Only, I directed it at a person that I was accusing of having a sandy vagina, because he was just making a "OMG, Console gamer r totally fags" post. Oh well.
Couldn't agree with you more. I'm still 10x the "pc gamer" when compared to the "pc gamers" in this place, and I mostly game on a, *gasp*, xbox 360. What kills me is that these "PC gamers" have a lot of the mentalities that us "old school" "PC gamers" used to joke on. I firmly believe that we should stop using both terms because all it is being used for these days is a griping point when a game is being made for console then ported to the PC. Then it's "stupid console gamer" this and it's just dumb.
Don't hate the players, hate the game. At this point, I don't even want to be called a "gamer" anymore because it's now a negative word. To me, a "gamer" is a 12 year old screaming racial slurs at me in Halo. A "gamer" is someone calling me a retard because I'm buying <insert game> even though it has <insert feature> that I don't care about.
The term "gamer" is now for the immature people IMO. I love music, but I'm not a Music-er. I love movies, but I'm not a movie-er. I am a fan of music, movies and video games. In fact, I don't think anyone I know calls themself a "gamer" anymore. Thats a term for back when video games were taboo, a time when 50+% of my generation weren't playing video games. Now video games have grown to be just another media, and I have to wonder why we need to perpetuate this "gamer persona".
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you probably just need to learn to not care about video games so much.
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Have fun with your (soon to be) short lived regime as a mod.
Last time I checked, this was a gaming website. People are free to bitch or compliment games as they please. That's the point of having places like this.-
lol
nobody is saying you can't bitch or complain about games. in fact he said in his post that it would be awfully nice if people actually talked about games. what we don't want is people flinging pointless console vs. pc or console vs. console shit. it's in no way conductive to discussion, it's inflammatory and it only spawns worthless (but not entirely unwarranted) subthreads of people insulting a guy. that's all.
just talk about the fucking games and don't put down people who choose to play them on a different platform. if you think a game sucks or has problems that's fine, feel free to bitch about it, but leave your opinions about other players out of it.-
Why don't you try re-reading the original rant and pointing out the console vs. pc issues?
Oh wait, there aren't any.-
Really? So the whole "console kid" thing just went right past you eh?
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odds are you're a console kid anyway. Just fucking rent shit from blockbuster and save your allowance instead of helping us with all the drama.
if this is what you consider unbiased, productive conversation then I don't think you'll last long here -
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reading comprehension--
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I didn't have a problem with the OP. He had a list of things he didn't like about the game, whether or not you agree with him. WillSmithFan420 up there whipped out the old "consoles kiddies" shit which is the problem.
Also this is the site that made multisync and genjuro mods as well. We're the mods least likely to succeed anyway. -
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You don't understand, geedeck. You're outta here!
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Mod of the year award goes to: Rauol Duke
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I called this a while back am glad it's finally come.
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=21294587
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It is a gaming website. One on which I have a responsibilty to keep the comments riding at a certain discussion level. This isn't a democracy and the noise pollution has gotten bad. We're going to dial back the noise. Also I'm one of the most leniant mods usually. You have to do something really egregious for me to nuke it.
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R-Tards getting to the mods? Calgon take them away! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-E8ktcMg
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this is awesome. will this also include the FRONTPAGE?
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Jesus Christ, I wish I could INF a post more than once.
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I love you long time
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Thank you
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That must mean you have never in your gaming life thought a game sucked.
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I stopped reading at "console kid". That one phrase shows that you don't really care about games, but rather the elitism that you can project by supporting your chosen platform.
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MW2 was written by the same guy who wrote CoD4: Jesse Stern. He's also a producer and writer of Navy NCIS. He also seems to have a huge cold war obsession.
And no, they didn't fire all the guys who made CoD4. Mackey McCandlish is still there, Jason West is still there, and so on. They just probably got drunk on CoD4's success and thought that they could do no wrong. And since MW2 sold-through 5 million copies on day one, MW3 is almost certainly guaranteed to be worse, barring any sudden outbreaks of common sense.-
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They don't have to cripple the PC version to sell tons on the 360. They didn't have to do that with MW2, but they did it anyway, probably mostly out of the advice of executives who wanted to sell more DLC and "protect the brand" from the community who originally praised Infinity Ward when CoD4 came out.
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The only significant "good business reason" I can see out of what they did is the creation of Battle.Net for FPSes. That's probably exactly what Jason West and other Activision execs threw around at some meeting. And then they kept the whole thing secret until mid-October, basically shattering the expectations of thousands of PC gamers who had each played hundreds of hours on CoD4 dedicated servers. No mods, no developer console, no dedicated servers. And then they parade around the marketing effort as though nothing is wrong. It's an insult to the gamers who were deceived over the 5 months since the first trailer was released.
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I'm tempted to think the reason for not providing features on the PC is that they cost development and testing time. They don't get nearly the ROI on an hour of PC development time as they do on Console (or cross-platform) development time. I'm sure the orders are coming down from the top to maximize their numbers.
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although this really doesn't explain IWNET, unless the idea is that by making something that closer mimics how the consoles work, making future networking development more cross-platform and decreasing costs that way. I don't know if that's the idea or not.
Maybe they do think it's just better (but I don't see why there isn't also an option for dedicated servers, even if they did so much as hid it in a console.-
I personally believe the idea was to decrease piracy and increase margins by forcing unlocks and DLC to be obtained through Steam. As far as I know, pirates still can't play on IWNet public servers, so they're locked out of a large part of the game.
It's a nod to the reasons why MMOs succeed at the same goals - if you can't stop piracy, but you can make the pirate product inferior to the purchased product, you may get more sales.-
I see how that could play a factor.
I've not played a CoD, so I may be asking obviously stupid questions here, but how I'm picturing this working is players have an account with IWNet, in which the player will progressively unlock new abilities/guns/whatever. Presumably this account data is stored on IWNet's servers so that it can't (easily) be spoofed.
The gameplay is hosted by one of the participants so no servers are needed once all parties have been connected?
I don't see what's stopping someone from simply granting all abilities to everyone in pirate/private games, but if it the Steam lock-out works and it does become a huge hassle to play pirated that migh increase some sales reduce some piracy.
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exactly.
1) learn the maps. it took a few days to learn the ins and outs of maps. you know where people will hide, you know all of the paths.
2) shotguns. double shotgun players tend to play like campers. they go to the same spots where they have an obvious advantage at close range, and where they will be able to get the jump on you when you encounter them. Use flashbangs/stun grenades or enter those areas from a different way.
The dual ranger shotguns are shit except at extremely close range, the 1887s are way OP but you can still counter them. I have said before that the akimbo weapons in general are pretty lame, but it doesnt make the game "disappointing."-
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People are complaining that Veteran is now actually beatable? I went back to 3 previous CoD games and found it impossible to beat on Veteran in parts because of really cheap bullshit.
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I can't believe people beat the previous CoDs on veteran. Masochists.
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Wow, this post is kind of perfect.
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Hi. Ass.
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As a general rule, I don't write replies that are more than 20 sentences. Further, when was the last time I bitched about a game COMPANY like this? Hold me accountable for all the retarded things I do, that's fine. But part of that is a little honesty on your part to only call me out when I do something wrong.
Besides, my character account is haiku.
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You learn the maps. Play more.
My only map-related complaint is that a couple of the buildings in Quarry look identical when you spawn in them and you have to look around for a second before you know which one you're in and which direction you're running in. That's frustrating if you need to run back to an objective to sort shit out, and they could've made that map better by making the interiors of the different buildings different colours or something.
Other than that, I love most of the maps. They seemed like complex mazes at first but good maps often do. You learn them as you play them. It's rewarding to have so many options available to both you and your enemy, meaning things don't become stale as quickly as they might.
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IAWTP. if you at least have a good knowledge of the maps then you shouldn't have much trouble find your way and you'll also have a sense of where most campers are. the only way to do this is to keep playing.
by far the worst map has to be Wasteland. fuck that map. usually you can manage to dodge air rapes but if your team sucks and can't shoot it down quickly, then you're fucked.
as for the respawning right in front of the enemy, yeah i've had that happen to me a bunch of times. sure it's stupid, but either you knife the bitch in front of you or you die.
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THREADJACK: I've logged around 45 hours and I've yet to play the rust or dust map. Is in not in IWnet's playlists?
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I kind of think that's the point. The maps are rare to come across and they're usually hilarious clusterfucks. I think it's a rare funny break in the action that isn't meant to take very serious.
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Yeah, yeah, you hated them before it was cool to hate them, we get it.
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You will never be the only one saying something, no matter what you say.
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I think people bitch about this game so much because they suck at it. I suck at it but I still enjoy playing the multiplayer
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Saying that people suck is always the response to some of these posts. I'd like to think I'm generally a decent FPS player, but If I suck then I suck. However, it still doesn't change the fact that this is one of the more frustrating games I've played.
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I love this game and am completed addicted to multiplayer. I just unlocked the AUG and its completely ridiculous. I had one domination map where I called 2 harrier strikes, 2 stealth bombers, 1 attack chopper, and an ac130.
Its taken me a long while to get used to FPS on the 360, but now that I am comfortable its not so bad. -
Serious MW2 Multi question. Lets say I hit level 70. There's still shit for me to unlock and challenges to complete. Where does that XP go? So if i were to prestige a week later, will my XP wrap around into my next levels? Aka play as level 70 for a while, prestige and then you gain a few levels from your old xp. Or does it just reset you at 1 and you gain XP from there on. Challenges seem kinda worthless once you hit 70 otherwise.
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good post man
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