It's cool Chobot is in the game, I think she's great when she does Feedback podcasts for G4. This whole cast is great and sometimes drool-worthy. Yvonne Strahovski...*drool*. I laughed when I saw Freddy Prince Jr. though lol. I'm sure his voice acting is great, but when I look at him I just see a douche I grew up watching in 90s flicks as a kid.
Awesome! I think it looks beautiful and fun. I'm not sure why they are flying around, it doesn't appear to be a zero-g environment, but I guess the more important question is, "Why not fly around?". I'd rather the game be super fun and have a dicey story or concept than the other way around. It appears to have a cover system and I hope conventional movement on the ground is available, but with that said I'm glad there is a focus on the flying and less conventional movement. You can fly to cover, shoot while moving and flying, and do lots of cool things it seems. That makes it distinct and seperate from Gears of War and other 3rd person shooters with a cover system.
I was also intrigued by the screens showing the upgrades or strategy/rpg elements of the design. It appears you have a rank, gain experience, can upgrade weapons, upgrade bases, strengthen drones (not sure what they are yet), complete tasks to gain in game credits similar to Halo Reach, and there are kill streaks and elements similar to a CoD. Looks like they're going for a shooter with a fresh spin on mechanics, combat strategy, and lots of replayability. I'd love to play this and see what it's all about.
Sad face indeed. I wrote a blog about it last week and what games I'm playing in the meantime and put it up here at the site.
Yea the LotR aesthetics aren't anything special but the eagles look superb, I love the eagles in the game they blow me away. Your main buddy eagle that helps you out in combat is awesome, I just want to cuddle up to him lol.
@Julian A sequel to Champions would be awesome. My 360 went down before I got through War in the North but for the several hours I put into the game it was nice even on single player. I bet it would be much better in co-op. War in the North's skill trees and the dynamics of the three characters work similar to how a Gauntlet would work. From what I played it's not as deep as a Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance or Champions because I don't think you can create custom armor or weapons in War in the North. The skill trees and combat works by letting you gain and add multiple levels into offensive and defensive abilities. Like with the ranger you can add points to increase arrow capacity, bow abilities that would be activated like left trigger + B. I was saying to Jesse in his review of the game that I thought that all the skill trees were pretty well done. When I level up a character and I'm looking through the tree for something to invest in I often have a difficult time prioritzing and picking the upgrade I want the most. They are all usefull and there's no filler or useless skills.
@Mike Glad you like the quote Mike lol. I've had so many experience that exemplify that philosophy. I've won matches that made me feel terrible, and I've lost matches that made me feel amazing. The people you play with is paramount to any positive online experience.
I agree with you and I think people who run the community infrastructure, like developers, should take some proactive steps to get involved and aid the players in making the system more positive for everybody. I don't have a lot of respect for companies that take their hands off and say, "Not my responsibility, nothing I can do about anything, leave me out of this." I haven't played League of Legends but the system you described sound pretty nice. You have to give players a sense of democracy and ownership, but you also can't let players have complete control because than we end up where we started with certain people abusing the system and making other players suffer for it. I think a balance could be arranged that would make the system work better. It would never be perfect, perfectly fair, efficient, or make everybody happy, but I think using the kind of policies you and I mentioned could make a system that works at least better than what we have now in most games.
For years online gaming communities have often been like the wild west. I think we can take steps to make it more positive than the wild west while still allowing many freedoms, privacies, diversity, democracy, and choice.
I think it was Joaquim that was talking about Oblivion gates and questing through the Oblivion areas once you're through the gates. I hate Oblivion (as in the area) and I avoid Oblivion gates as much I can whenever I would play the game. I just don't like it. It's very unique...ish, with all the red, black, bodies hanging from towers, lava, dangerous plants, boob traps, and ascending the towers. It sounds cool in theory but I grew to hate going to Oblivion and I don't like the aesthetics or the level designs once you go through a gate into the realm. There's only 4 or 5 different level designs and layouts for Oblivion areas and they keep getting recycled as there are like dozens of gates to close I think (I always kept running into them and never figured out if they stop). I love the rest of the game mostly, and so I avoid the gates as much as I can.
I thought the conversation around gaming communities was great and a lot of the variables were revealed when it comes to how tough it would be to police online experiences and communities. I think it was Jesse that brought up the realization that online gaming is still very new and it wasn't long ago that multiplayer gaming meant sitting on the couch with your friends.
Online gaming had been around for a while and in some ways it was slowly building momentum, but for the most part it was a niche community for PC gamers it seems. Online gaming finally exploded and hit mass appeal when Xbox LIVE went.......live lol, and Halo 2 in 2004 was the first game to use it to full advantage and invent the matchmaking system it used. Suddenly playing Halo started replacing poker nights and everybody of all ages was playing this new online gaming experience they most likely never had before on any platform or with any game. Before Halo 2 when most people wanted to play co-op or competitively they would come hang out on the couch and play split screen in a small tight knit community that very well could've only consisted of 2 people even. The online features and experiences became a sensation pretty much overnight, players wanted more of it, and developers & publishers wanted to give more of it, and so it happened. Online gaming was officially a trend/craze, everybody around the world was connected and playing together, but one thing people don't often realize is that even with all this popularity and use, the online infrastructures and systems themselves were practically brand spanking new. It wasn't a fleshed out, well polished system, and there wasn't handbook for developers to flip through to get tips or guidance from past mistakes or experience. They created and added as they went, basically rolling with it all.
Pretty much online console gaming and the craze we have going on right now was created, in its infancy, and from day one it hit the ground running with millions of people using it and clamouring for more. It's still so new and it's been such an intense ride that most people haven't taken the time to ask questions about the infrastructure, about policing issues, responsibilities, etc. Another thing we have to take into account is the fact that when online services like XBL went active, the number one goals for the system were to A: be stable and simply work, and B: get players into matches as quickly as possible with as little hassle as possible. Engineers and designers spent more time trying to get the service stable, framerates stable, gameplay balanced, matchmaking times reduced, and bugs removed, and so they weren't able to care as much about gamers that complained of being harassed.
I think Julian was pretty accurate with his statement that it's a bad idea for companies to try and police their consumers when it comes to online play. You would have to pay groups of people to most likely run forums/phonelines where players would go to complain and air their issues. It would be flooded with a bunch of, "I played this guy and he was racist, sexist, and I hate him!". It would be subjective, inefficient, one guys word against another, and a lot of time and money would be spent getting nowhere fast. You can't police an online user base the way a policeman would mediate a fight or sort out two people on the streets. It inevitably ends up with banhammers and other tactics that don't exactly work.
There are things a company can do to try and give players more options. For example with each new Halo release Bungie would add new things to the online infrastructure to address problems people were having with the community and system. I think it was in Halo 3, among many other things, Bungie added the ability for players to mute other players (first time I saw the feature in any game, and other companies started using it after the fact). Another feature Bungie added was the filtering in Halo Reach. In Reach you can start being picky about the people the system searchs for. The game asks you how you play and what kind of people you would like to be matched with. I can tell the game I am a quiet, team-player, that is in it for a good time. Or I can tell the game I'm a loud and mouthy, lone-wolf, in it to win and act aggressively. There are 3 filters I think and you can choose a couple options in each filter to try and personalize a search. Early in my comment I stated that at the founding of online services like XBL, the goal was to make matches quickly and reduce filters. Nowadays we can start adding filters, likely at the expense of matchmaking turnover time, in order to let players choose the kind of people they want to play with and see if they are out there.
For me personally, I would be willing to add filters to a search and wait a few extra minutes to find a good match, as opposed to hurling myself into random matches and using a system of "Get into as many matches as possible and as quickly as possible". I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it's not practical or realistic to "police" an online community or "change" and online community. There are plenty of douches out there and people I don't want to play with, and so once I realize that I come to the conclusion that: If there are douches out there... programming, HR reps, forums, and rules of conduct texts won't necessarily fix that. Instead of trying to make the douches more nice, the infrastructure itself should allow me to choose who I want to play with, who I don't want to play with, and see if there are matches out there for me that prioritize criteria on my terms.
Back when XBL launched, the biggest selling point to it that was a part of all the advertisements were taglines like, "Play with your friends!". I should choose what kind of friends I would like to make, what kind of people I want to play, etc. Because of the quick birth of the infrastructure and the explosion of popularity online gaming had, the focus was on stability and speed. Now that we have had a while to experiment with stability and speed, we should explore ways to give players more control over the system, how they interact with it, and how to personalize it.
To talk about my own personal online experiences, the best online game I've ever played has been Team Fortress 2. I think Mike was giving shoutouts to TF2 in the episode. I like seing love for TF2, yay TF2! I met a lot of cool people and played dozens of hours of fascinating matches. Sometimes a capture the flag match, king of the hill, or something would go on for like an hour and it was amazing. Experimenting with classes is great, contributing to the team effort, and working together like a Medic/Heavy combo is exciting. I love all the classes, love the gameplay, and love the community for the most part. There was one match where I was with some strangers and we were protecting our base, working together, and killed like a half hour talking about gaming over our mic's. We protected the base, watched each other's backs, and talked about what we thought of Halo 3 all at once lol.
I think the worst and most insulting online experience I ever had was on Gears of War multiplayer. We ran into these couple guys that had more insults than you could believe and they were not only infamously disgusting and terrible human beings, but they were very consistent and imaginative with it. One of the most absurd dialogues during that match went as such. These guys were being sexist and racist with everybody in the lobby and at some point I sighed and went, "Oh god, is there a mute button in Gears?" and this guy said, "Boy you have a deep voice dog, you sound like a child molestor son" Lol and he went on to describe how I would molest a child in detail. It wasn't funny at the time but it's hilarious now, and that's about the only positive I could take from that whole match. It was miserable and some people are just awful. My team ended up winning the match but it didn't matter. The quality of people you play against is far more important than winning. I'd rather loose to honorable people than defeat a bunch of barbarians. I've never been interested in playing Gears of War online ever since, and that's probably a shame because I'm sure it's fun.
On a lighter note, I love RTS games like Command & Conquer, Battle for Middle Earth, and the Halo RTS, but for no reason at all I'm really really scared of the RTS community. I love strategy games but I suck at them. My goal isn't ever to dominate and win as you would think of it. In RTS games I love building things, planning bases, defenses, upgrading things, managing resources, and massing armor units and forces. But I do it all for show basically lol, when it comes to actual combat and strategy I don't have much experience and I'm terrified of going up against anybody online. When I play C&C 3 I just mine tiberium, build a huge base, amass Mammoth tanks, set up defenses, and I'm basically a turtle that is too scared to leave the home base. I have an irrational fear of RTS warfare and actually leaving base lol. I've never played an RTS online or competitively but I have a fear of it.
Bad story, odd difficulty spikes, streamlined RPG action, laughable dialogue, fabulous co-op, and time spent on the couch with a buddy gaming away. To me it sounds like my experience with Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows back on the Xbox in 2005. I loved that game and experience of Gauntlet. It sucked playing it alone, but when my buddy came over we would power through Gauntlet it about 4 hours and even though it was so short and so mediocre, it was unforgettable and a lot of fun. We liked it enough to play through it at least twice. Dungeon Siege III sounds like a similar kind of game and I think that's pretty cool. There's nothing like a nice co-op experience. It can take a mediocre game with lots of flaws and make it transcend expectations. In fact I still have my copy of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows to this day.
It's okay Angelo no worries. I agree with you completely. The fists in the air and outcries are just reactionary and anticipatory it seems. Restricted content makes people really mad (like with Catwoman in Arkham City I think it was) and when people read articles about a publisher taking content in an offline game and keeping it exclusive for a certain online demographic it seems unfair. In Amalur's case, this situation seems to avoid the pitfalls of earlier online pass follies because it's just suppose to be early free DLC which is pretty sweet. The restricted content is said to not to detract from the experience and it was planned as future DLC tacked onto the disc in addition to the already full and finished game experience. That's not bad at all and it lets us know that this particular situation isn't as bad as we thought it might be. The people buying it new will get the DLC early and free, but eventually it should be available to everybody.
Amalur's case isn't that bad and now that I know more about it, it doesn't make me too upset. However, this is a rare case of when it doesn't bother me. These kind of tactics can easily go wrong and rub people in a bad way. I just don't want to see pulishers categorizing their consumers and giving the "best" experience to people who buy it the way the publisher wants them to. Tactics using online passes and exclusive content are good and bad. On the business side it gives players incentives to use their money they way the publisher wants the players to, therefore making more money for the publisher and other beneficiaries. However the bad side to it is that it becomes more and more exclusive. With online pass and exclusive content strategies it urges players to all be the same, have internet connections, keep up to date on their bills, have the console, have the affiliated online gaming service and possible fee (like Xbox's yearly fee), buy the game itself new, and jump through all the right hoops to get the best game experience possible.
That kind of system benefits pretty much everybody it would seem because the publisher gets their fortunes, the console makers get theirs, and people spend money to use the online services, plus they buy the game and everything else. It benefits a lot of people, but it's a bit of a hassle for the gamer and gamers have to invest a lot into it. All the people out there who don't have internet, don't have an online service to use their games with, and all the people who will buy the game used, all these people get scoffed at a little bit and pushed to the margins as if they are less important consumers and gamers. There's good and bad to the whole situation and the bad parts of it make some gamers feel left behind and less important. It's not surprising though because EA has shown that it's not worried about having gamers respect them or like them, EA wants to make good games that people will buy, and use those games to milk as much money out of consumers as possible. EA is an effective and extremely profitable business, gamers hate them for it, but we have to keep using their system and business because more often than not EA is making pretty good games that a lot of us want to play. EA keeps making their fortunes in the most effective ways they choose to, and when it goes badly developers get blamed and screwed, gamers get screwed, and EA just keeps on truckin to find other ways to bring the profit in and make up the losses.
You're not off your rocker, everything you said was true. I never said I have a problem with the developer or the game, it's all about EA, and I know both sides of the coin and how the developer would suffer. Every time you don't buy a game a developer suffers, and none of us buy every game out there, so it's not exactly a protest that I'm doing. There's other games I'd rather play, Amalur can wait or maybe I won't play it at all, it depends on if I still care about it in a year or more. I've waited for plenty other good games like Fable 3, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, Dark Souls, Dead Space 2, and many others. Amalur is the kind of game I'll wait a year or so for price drops. Also since Wii U is coming this year and new Sony and Microsoft consoles might be announced, it's possible Amalur might not even matter to me by the time it starts to go down in price. EA is trying to use tactics that will entice me to go buy it new from them right away, and on their terms, and I'd rather keep my options open and use my money on my terms. Gamers don't want to be told how to buy their games. In the grand scale of things this whole first day DLC isn't a big deal, but when gamers feel like a company is telling them how to buy the game and what the "best" choice is, they get upset.
38 Studios's explanation behind the "day one DLC" makes sense, but I still don't like it. It feels like it's just a chance for EA to flash around their online pass authority once again. If I don't get pissed at it now, what will it take? Will I just get conditioned to it and over time if EA keeps doing it I'll just be complacent with it? I really want to play Amalur but this online pass stuff rubs me the wrong way. I liked back when games were suppose to ship finished and the experience was on the disc and it was either great, bad, or inbetween. Online passes and hidden content are just frills to me and I hate frills. If I have to I won't have a problem overlooking Amalur and not buying it.
There's plenty other good games out there to compete with and I for one am extremely excited about The Witcher 2 coming to 360, and I also really want to get Dark Souls. I wouldn't have a hard time ignoring Amalur, and I just might do that.
