The problem is that I have gamed with some 'real noobs' as some would put it (and I mean, seriously, I got mom addicted and the most she was playing online at the time was backgammon, and ALMOST got grandma addicted who didn't even have a computer) and I kinda paid attention. Especially to those family members. If nothing else, because I ended up having to answer questions instead of just muttering something self-flattering about stupid noobs and why they don't just RTFM. It was an enlightening experience in what people think when they're not uber-l33t.

And point in case, I never got the feeling that they got so much achievement from clicking through the talent trees. It was just some never-ending frustration, because the game kept asking them to choose something they hadn't even figured out yet.

And as an aside, even as a veteran gamer, I still have that frustration. I have the TOR skill trees very fresh in memory, and a LOT of time the choices I have contain stuff like "reduces the cooldown of skill X by 0.Y seconds"... but I don't have skill X and have no idea even when I'll get it. Turns out I'd only get skill X in 10-20 levels. So what cooldown will it have? Do those 0.Y seconds actually make much of a difference? How often will I use skill X in that nebulous future? Will I even use it at all? WTH are they expecting from me? Clairvoyance?

I find even myself spending hours on various sites to try to figure it out, instead of actually playing. And those newbies spent even more... ... and then I have to tell them that they misunderstood horribly. (No, mom, Arms spec is NOT the dual-wield spec.)

Now I'm no Betazoid counsellor ;) but I can tell you it's not satisfaction or accomplishment they were feeling there.

Why not make it so all classes have 1 button names "I Win", and the character plays itself when you're not there?

At what point do you stop fucking with stuff and stop dumbing down the game?

Did you miss the part where some classes actually used to be played with one button? I guess nostalgia is a funny thing. It makes thing look great in retrospect that were probably the #1 whine back then.

But anyway, "when" is a good question... Let me propose a when: when the meaningless chores are gone?

I'll actually go with Brian Reynolds there. You may have heard of him as the designer of such games as Colonization or Civ 2. He actually had an article back then on IGN way back about game design, though sadly it seems to be gone by now.

He said something like that something is not really a choice, if all but one one of the alternatives aren't viable. Like, if a piano is falling towards you and you have the choice to get out of the way, or stay there, that's not really a choice. You WILL choose to get out of the way.

Or let's put it another way: "dumbed down" implies that previously it was somehow "smarter". And it wasn't.

There wasn't anything smart about, say, running back to the quest giver to get your rewards and take the next quest in the arc. It wasn't even much of a choice, much less one that required any intelligence. You COULD have just dropped the quest after you completed it, but it wasn't really a viable choice for most people.

There wasn't anything smart either about, say, running back to the trainer to learn Arcane Shot 2 or then 3, instead of sticking with 1. There wasn't even any viable choice about it, much less one that requires any kind of intelligence to make. It's not like you could come to a raid and convince anyone that having all skills at 1 is some kind of smart (or even viable) alternate way to build your character. You just HAD to run back and do that.

Exactly how does their absence count as "dumbing down"? In what way was it smarter when you had such "options", because that's the implication? Did doing those mandatory chores actually count as a mental exercise? Anyone who considers those to require applying intelligence, and the lack of them to be "dumber"... well, if that's intelligent for them, then they must find it downright challenging to figure out what to do with the power on button to start the computer, not to mention the really smart puzzle of how to use shoelaces to make the shoes stay on :p

Well, before I start, I'm not (or rather for a long while no longer) a WoW fan, but I did briefly try it again recently. So, you know, I'm only having a superficial impression. I don't think I'll bother much with it, but...

I think that as far as "dumbing down" goes, it really sounds worse than it really is, when you do the Vulcan thing and think about it logically.

1. Most of the stuff you'll only notice if you've played it before and have any particular attachment (even if just for nostalgia sake) about the old system. Truth is, I most other recent games are just about as "dumbed down".

You can play TOR for example as a DPS Trooper with little more than Grav Round, Full Auto and High Impact Bolt as the only three buttons you'll ever have to press. Heck, you could play it with Grav Round only, if you don't mind losing a little DPS. Trust me, that's actually less skill needed than WoW even now. (And obviously the Bounty Hunter is the same deal, just with different names on the buttons you press.)

2. For that matter, it's not really dumber than WoW used to be to start with. Anyone remember the pre-Burning Crusade raids that some classes only needed one button to get through? Ironically, for all its reputation of a noob class, the Hunter was technically the most "complex" to play since it needed a whole THREE buttons. Yeah, you also needed to set the hunter mark and send the pet, so, yeah, that's a whole two whole extra buttons :p

(Not to mention you had more typing or talking to do than the raid leader, what with having to tell everyone that yes, the pet was on passive, every time anything went wrong, no matter who started it or what actually happened. You could be still running back from the cemetery when the rest of the group did something stupid, and they'd still insist that it's somehow the pet not being on passive that caused it. I mean, it wasn't even in the dungeon, but it must have caused it. Somehow.;))

Yeah, it didn't really start as a sort of modern day chess or go or other complex thinking game. Nor had the geekiest and smartest population. Really, it was from the start a game that 6 year olds can master.

So let's get on to what really changed:

3. So now for a bunch of quests you don't have to run back to the quest giver to get the next step of it. Well, it takes some getting used to it, but at the end of the day, it's not like running back and forth was actually the fun part.

4. You don't have to keep buying skill upgrades every 2 levels; they now increase in effect with your level. Not only it's like how a bunch of other games were working already (e.g., COH), but basically if you've been on the game long enough to have a valid whine about being used to the old system... guess what? Paying a few coppers to buy the skills on a new alt wasn't really a balance factor any more anyway.

Plus, again, running back to wherever your trainer was, and then back, was hardly something that added any fun.

5. The talent trees. Well, the issue with those is two-fold:

A) Most people were going for cookie-cutter builds from some site anyway. Not just in COH, but generally. Whether it's actually talent trees (e.g., TOR, RIFT, etc) or putting points in some skill (e.g., STO), most people just want something that works, not to solve a puzzle. If there had been some way to tell the computer "just go by this build off that site" automatically, most people would have just done it. And in effect that's what the new system does.

B) You haven't actually lost much. In addition to the choice every 15 levels now, many of which are actually new extras, a bunch of the old talents everyone took for a given spec are now automatic passive skills, that you get automatically when reaching a certain level. So, you know, you haven't actually lost them or anything, and they were not that much of a choice in the first place anyway. Now you just get them automatically instead of having to click through the tree.

C) Basically it doesn't let you make many mistakes. And believe me, a lot of people did make mistakes on their spec.

6. Stuff like that now hunters don't get a melee weapon too, or mages don't get a staff AND a wand. But if you think about it, those never really made a difference, except for causing all the drama about whether the hunter or the rogue should roll for those daggers.

Actually fighting with the staff auto-attacks was never viable past, say, the first 20 levels, as any of the magic classes, so that having both wand and staff didn't actually add any tactical choices or anything. It used to be just a meaningless extra accessory slot, and the new system just does the same thing with one less slot.

And for hunters it's not like it was much of a meaningful choice either.

Plus, again, it's not like the other choices of a game do it any differently. It's not like TOR lets you do any meaningful switching between rifle and melee weapons, for example. Even when you have vibro-knife as a second weapon (e.g., Imperial Agent), it's not like it's used for more than one situational attack that you do mechanically.

And so on.

Basically it seems to me like you haven't really lost anything in the process. If anything, the game is actually a bit more complex where it matters, namely dungeon tactics and the like, than when it started. The simplifications in the parts that at best offered an illusion of choice (e.g., the talents) don't even come close to offsetting that.

Plus in the meantime you actually do have more choices than when the game launched. Granted, it's not Pandaria-speciffic, but a lot of stuff that was previously at best a noob mistake to take, is in the meantime actually a viable choice.

E.g., have you actually tried to play a survival-spec hunter at launch? Yeah, it used to be the joke spec. Now it's a viable choice.

Oh, it can be an "investment" all right. Take my parents, for a start. No, seriously, take them ;)

They used to take trips into France and whatnot every weekend, buy the most expensive cameras to photograph stuff, etc. It cost a bunch, lemme tell you. They used to be in the red as far as their credit card limit went every month end.

Then I got them addicted to WoW. Fast forward some years of being on WoW every waking hour when the servers aren't off for maintenance. No really, they do most of the shopping on Wednesday mornings. And now they actually have money for a change :p

Sounds to me like getting to keep one's money would technically qualify as a return :p

Plus, with Blizzard skipping maintenance on some Wednesdays, I think they even lost a few kilos. Think of the health benefits, man. Surely that counts as a return :p

Or take my getting them addicted. Sure, I had to sink some time into answering stuff like "HELP! I'M DROWNING!" followed by (I swear I'm not making it up) "WHAT CAMERA TO TURN UPWARDS? NO, I DON'T HAVE A CAMERA! I LOOKED IN ALL BAGS AND I DON'T HAVE A CAMERA!!!!" But after that? They've been out of my hair for years now. Plus now mom has more interesting stuff to talk about when she calls. Not that she calls as much, either. Those newbies aren't gonna just kill themselves in the warzones, you know?

I don't know about you, but I'd say that's worth something. That's my return on investment right there :p

Or as the Bored Of The Rings version goes...

"He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. 'It's a pity I've run out of bullets', he thought"

Actually, the funny thing is that just about everyone agreed that dodo didn't taste very good. In fact, the accounts seem to be in agreement that while the breast and stomach were good enough, the rest of the bird was some rather tough and insipid meat. We have accounts like

"These we used to call 'Walghvogel', for the reason that the longer and oftener they were cooked, the less soft and more insipid eating they became."

Or

"These were given the name Walghvogel during Van Neck's voyage, because even with long stewing they would hardly become tender, but stayed tough and hard"

If the dodo had been most excellent eating, they would have been bred like turkeys. But as it was, the small amount of tasty meat on one made it not worth it. Or rather, it was worth every penny only if it was free. If you could just go club a bird over the head and make a bad meal out of it, well, it was free meat anyway.

But even so, actually there is very little evidence that they were hunted for meat much. There are actually very little dodo bones found around the human settlements. Even when they were hunted, a lot of times it was more or less just for the lulz of killing a mind-bogglingly defenseless and passive bird. I.e., humans being fucktards.

But be that as it may, the MAIN reason for the extinction of the dodo was more like habitat destruction and the inability to compete with animals introduced on the island by the Europeans.

But, really, think about it. It was a bird that was already as domesticated as you can possibly get. It was passive, flightless, didn't have any reflex to run away from humans, etc. It would have been even more trivial to keep in captivity than chickens are. I mean, you wouldn't even have to clip its wings. They were even trivial to get all in one place, whether for feeding or locking them up over night, or just to pick the most plump one, due to the fact that you could make one squawk a call to the others that made them gather.

If it had been tasty, SOMEONE would have put a few in a pen and raised them for meat, same as they did with turkeys elsewhere. Again, bearing in mind that it was trivial to do so with dodos, if you wanted to.

In fact, if it had been tasty, instead of being extinct, nowadays there would be millions of dodos raised on farms all over the world.

I don't think for many people it was about "cool". I've never used Foursquare myself, but I would assume I'd treat it more or less like a game.

In fact like any other game. Just because, say, Star Trek Online gives out achievements, it doesn't mean I'd define my self-worth based on those, or on anyone knowing I have those.

If I were to define anything "cool" about myself based on a game, it would be more like helping decrypt the binary .esm format in the early Fallout 3 days, before there even was a construction kit for it. Or stuff like making the first lightsabers for Fallout 3. (Yeah, I'm the same Moraelin as on the Nexus.) Or helping a buttload of newbies get started on modding.

Or my tens of thousands of hours sunk into studying history. Which, for game purposes, does give me enough knowledge to recreate an exact replica of a high-medieval European arming sword, or exactly an Edo period lady's naginata.

Not that even those would be my first choices to base self-worth on, but, you know, it's still actually involving more skills than visiting the same Starbucks every day. Stuff that if I were to brag about, it would still show, basically, "look at the skills I have! Look at the things I can DO!" Or something like that.

You know, stuff that takes some RL knowledge and skill.

Now I don't doubt that some people do base their self-worth on a game score, but not everyone, and in Foursquare's case I don't suspect there were that many who actually thought that their "cool" factor is based on how often they visited the same Starbucks. Even hipsters tend to think they're hip, you know, for doing other stuff than the rest of the population, not by some random thing that everyone else is doing.

What I'm getting at is that I don't think many people now deserve having their privacy violated and their personal data sold to the highest bidder, just for using a silly automated GPS game. Chances are a lot of those didn't even think they're "cool" for it, nor really used it for more than some silly lulz,

The problem with CFC is that it's duration is an insignificant blip at cosmic scales. We've used it a little, we're phasing it out because it ruins a rather important layer of the atmosphere.

Our planet will continue to exist for about 5 billion years after the point where we reasonably reached a point that some aliens could contact at all without coming all the way here. (For most of our time on the planet we couldn't receive radio and didn't have telescopes.) Out of that, we've been abusing CFC heavily for maybe 50 years.

Let's say that t would take a while to get weaned off them, and for the upper atmosphere to gradually clear of them. Like maybe 500 years instead of 50. But it's still 500 years out of 5 billions.

That's a chance of of 1 in ten millions that if a civilization is there, you'll detect it by CFCs.

Not really. And here's why:

We're just a little over a month before Christmas, a MAJOR point in times when people buy stuff. Even people who couldn't be bothered buying something for September, are likely to buy stuff for Christmas. Either for themselves or for someone else.

So I'd say expect to see more of this kind of advertising over the next month. Or actually more accurately: PR firms and departments generating buzz. In fact expect it to ramp up over the next month.

Besides, if we're making up hypotheses, maybe Cthulhu mugs and posters also actually make programmers more motivated to finish the project before Great Cthulhu rises from R'lyeh to kill us all with tentacles. See, it's not just coincidence that so many of us nerds are cultists of the Great Old Ones. What? Are you saying it's just me? ;)

I have no problem with trying to find out. It's just when something as wide-spread as drugs overlaps with pretty much everything happening at the time, just the overlap doesn't say much.

I mean, equally a lot of politicians did drugs and... err... wait, it would explain a few things ;)

Well, I should, but I spend far more time on an UBB based site, so by now it's a reflex to write things that way.

then Cthulhu t-shirts and mugs and solstice carols are good for programming.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for legalizing drugs. And I don't like it one bit that my tax money goes into making victims of some harmless pot smokers.

But [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc]cum hoc ergo propter hoc[/url] is a fallacy for a reason.

Actually, utilitarianism doesn't work that way either. A fictional entity doesn't count at all when the topic is how to maximize the happiness of the people on the whole.

Whether it makes a corporation happy is just about as irrelevant as whether it makes my Skyrim archmage happy, or whether it makes my imaginary army of zombie pirate ninja vikings happy. Which is to say, not at all. The fictive entity "corporation" doesn't count even as 1 person, it counts as exactly 0 (ZERO) persons for utilitarian considerations. Which, again, is what we're really talking about in such "the good of one vs the good of the many" scenarios.

What matters is sorta whether the net sum on the total of society. Including, of course, its employees, share holders, economic effect on the whole, etc.

And then not all transactions are created equal.

E.g., very oversimplified,

- if I'm a baker and you're hungry, selling you a sandwich is working out to be better for both of us. I want money more than I want another sandwich sitting there and getting spoiled, and you obviously want the sandwich more than you want the money it costs. Or you probably wouldn't buy it.

- if I hit you upside the head with a half brick in a sock to steal 100$ from your wallet, it's a net loss. You lost more than I gained. Possibly even your life. It's the kind of transaction you don't really want. Enough of that happening around, and society gets worse on the whole.

And that's not even counting the all too common case where I'd make a loss for you without gaining anything myself, or even making a loss too. E.g., a guy who just keys cars for the heck of it, and then goes to jail for it. I.e., it's not just detrimental, but stupid too.

And just so it's not completely off topic, really, the latter is what a lot of this raping privacy six ways to Sunday is all about. I'm under the impression that a lot of data being collected, and a lot of companies collecting it, don't even come with a plan as to how to make any gain out of it.

E.g., take the trend of needing to give all your data, down to exact birthday and street number and everything, just to be allowed to download a patch for a program you bought. Most of those companies don't actually plan to sell that to spammer or scammers, and it's too much detail even for data mining. You can get some meaningful correlation by age group or general geographic area, but you're never going to get some insight as to what those living at houses numbered 15 buy more than those living in houses numbered 17. It's trivia, not data, and as good as random noise for basing anything on.

So when they inevitably get pwned by some script kiddie, or some disgruntled IT worker sells the whole client database to a spammer, they made a lot of people a loss, but they still haven't gained anything out of it. And what for? Just because basically some marketroid drone is stupid.

Sorry, utilitarianism, because that's what it's all about, works at the scale of society. You don't get to gerrymander the groups arbitrarily to justify any kind of antisocial behaviour.

For a start, if you have a hundred million people preyed upon, you count a hundred millions, you don't do something as idiotic as counting each person as one injured for the benefit of a whole corporation. Even taking the short-sighted view that ignores collateral damage, you have to count some hundreds of millions on one side, vs a corporation of... what? A few thousand employees? Tens of thousands?

To see what's wrong with it, your exact same logic can be applied to a mafia don and his gangsters, extorting a few thousand shopkeepers. And occasionally, sadly, having to kneecap someone or fit them into cement shoes, to keep the others in line. Each individual victim is one victim, and their unwilling contribution is keeping a couple dozen gangsters fed, clothed and armed. So, you know, one versus many.

Except, as I was saying, it doesn't work that way. Even the most myopic view has to count both sides as a group. You have some thousands of people preyed upon, for the benefit of some dozens of gangsters. The utilitarian conclusion is to get rid of the gangsters, not to tell the victims that they had to put up with it because, you know, the good of the one vs the good of the many.

But even that's not taking into account other effects, which negatively affect the well being of more people than the thousands of extorted shopkeepers. E.g., the negative effect on the local economy. E.g., the fact that people have to fear of ending up being in the wrong pub when some gangster decides to machinegun it because it belongs to a rival gangster family. Etc.