Comment PS3? (Score 2) 255
My 4 year old has turned my PS3 into a Netflixstation 3. Though I'm just as guilty; it is just so damned convenient!
My 4 year old has turned my PS3 into a Netflixstation 3. Though I'm just as guilty; it is just so damned convenient!
I would rather do that, than be Found On Road Dead.
Why not make parents pay for it? Up until 2010 high school in Japan was not 'free'. Take a typical class of 30 kids charge them $2k/year for extended hours. That is $60,000 per avg. class size. Even with a 50% attrition you still have enough money to pay for that 30% increase. Its not a panacea but it would do the job.
Student apathy is the major player in this; and parents whom want their kids to learn or kids that NEED that time could surely see a difference. Recently I've heard rumblings about Chicago (CPS) wanting to SHORTEN the school week to 4 days. While the mayor is getting huge pushback from the union about wanting/imposing longer school days.
The biggest problem FF14 had was a most serious case of consulitus. Considering the game is still not ready for the PS3 after a year, that was a really dumb mistake but one Japanese are prone to make. For some reason, games from the east just don't have the polish, technical polish, that we have come to take for granted in the west.
Part of the reason might be that the japanese just don't do PC's. Most western game companies started on the PC or similar user controlled machines like the amiga or mac. We have come to take for granted that a PC game might have to run without sound because there is no sound card and so most games come with a mixer panel to mix not just music, but speech, special effect, environment and music. Many DS games I played don't even allow you to turn the music off and sound is a hardware slider affecting all sound the same.
It is more then just simple missing configurations. I was quite shocked when recently caved and bought a PS3 by the BLACK saving screens... wtf? When was the last time a PC game even had to pause while saving? Oh wait, Rage, another game with a serious case of consilitus (try changin ammo on your equipped but not in the quick set, weapon. It will switch to weapon in your quickset instead of changing ammo).
How does this relate to FF14? Simple:
Config: Changing resolution or ANY other setting requires you to quit the game and launch a seperate config utility. This utility is NOT launched during first or indeed any startup. You have to dig for it.
Character loading screen, not just akward it takes AGES. Just to render three chars. I can run any game with full details but FF14 bring my PC to its knees.
Monthly fee? If you want more then one character, you pay more. You quickly pay a monthly fee far higher then any other mainstream game. If this game was the best in its class, that might be okay... but it is not.
Classes, you create a character, either a fighter or a crafter. Maybe... as everywhere else in the game, explanation is zero. That is what fans call hardcore. I call it needlessly complex. Every MMO explains with simple text what your choices are during config. FF14 makes it guessing game.
The chat system. Apparently there is one. Good luck on figuring it out. 99% of MMO's use an IRC like system. Two did not. Age of Conan and FF14. Gosh, what else do they have in common?
The menu... I know consoles don't have keyboards... oh wait, the PS3 can use keyboards just fine and you can get a working one for 5 bucks... so WHY the menu on a PC? The menu hursts us.
The game feels full of potential but they need to hire some white nerds to make it into a product that is not a pain to use. I know the Japanese committed horrible war crimes but come on, it has been over half a century, STOP punishing yourselves! Enjoy the comforts of the modern age, buy a chair and use common sense design in your computer games.
Having played the game in the Alpha, It was obvious from the first test that the game WAS ready for PS3. However, due to the immediate changes to the battle system that was implemented in alpha 2 it completely broke the ps3 version. Running XIV in its alpha form (no config save for shadows enabled in a random
Let us also not forget the man in charge of FFXIV Hiromichi Tanaka. While responsible for the (opinion) awesomeness that was XI. He was also the person that chiefly held it back. Citing the infamous "PS2 limitations". This guy is a sadist when it comes to MMOs. It wasn't until the proliferation of wiki like websites that information on the game was a potpourri of relevant information and conjecture. It wasn't until he left to do XIV (officially in 2010 but I can assume day to day stuff was a lot sooner) That we got massive inventory upgrades (deemed impossible by him), and the refreshing abyssea expansions.
Playing XIV coming from XI felt like a kick in the balls; everything regressed to a 2002 gameplay system. Including its engine design. Using that damned render-to-texture style system that XI had made me insane. XIV took everything that made people HATE XI and made it WORSE. Coupled with the "some" of the development outsourced really hurt the games credibility along with the games preemptive anti-RMT mechanics, killed it for most everyone.
All we (friends and I) wanted was for them to upgrade XI to a modern engine and graphics. What we got was so awful its going to take them 3 years after the initial "alpha" debut to fix it; and even then...
I started in in the first alpha test. It was VERY obvious that PC was a MAJOR afterthought in development of the UI. On the PC side of things the menu system was very similar to FFXI's. So, having to learn that wasn't to much of a hassle. However, Square thought nothing of hardware specs when sending people alpha/beta invites. Many people were on antiquated systems; or systems that were underpowered even though they just bought it "6 months" ago.
Square did not help themselves by ignoring the western player base. Many of whom were old FFXI players looking for a fresh start. The menu and UI systems were oddly tied to the overall framerate of the game. The game itself barely ran on two threads. The second thread being that of the UI. There was limited support for tweaking graphics; and it still used FFXI's antiquated "render-to-texture" system to display. Hence why you have "background" and "overlay" resolutions. Gameplay wise, Square ruined the party for everyone because they thought of combating RMT before they thought about the game. Since FFXI was so heavily plagued by RMT I can understand this measure. It ruined a lot of the experience; mostly through limiting how much a player could do in a X amount of time. Many of my friends who wanted to spend a lot of time at launch leveling doing as much as possible hit the brick wall of in game fatigue.
Many of the early testers on SLI and Xfire systems were left in the cold, also. The patch program was thrown together in a day or two. Many of us had to resort using uTorrent or whatever outside BT program just to download patches. Couple all of this with a gameplay structure that made me long for old time FFXI 10 hour grindfests.
I wanted a true sequel to FFXI. What we got was a devolution in all things except graphics. A lot of my FFXI friends would gladly pay $60 for a FFXI-2. FFXIV tried so hard to be different from FFXI that it failed to even be a decent game.
As some food for thought. You can begin to see some of the FFXIV gameplay influences in the FFXI expansion: Treasures of Aht Urhgan. Not only in equipment designs and NPC/MOBs but gameplay.
Much of FFXIVs "issues" have been massaged out of the past year. However many a good MMO have failed because of a shitty launch. I assume FFXIV will be no different. Sorry about the rant'ish post.
There's an app for that?
I believe its called Safari.
.... iOuija....
My Nokia 446xPro thanks you from its 1600x1200 @85hz from 1998 heart.
I wonder how many WoW players have been married on tuesday mornings...
(ATTN! compare to watching football with you buddies and sipping beer) through your anniversary helps, too.
That is why my wife and I got married in May - we both loathe baseball, and the NBA since jordan retired for the third time. Hockey is ok for us in small doses. But we both love football. so trying to plan a wedding during football season (late august - superbowl) was just nuts. Given that both our families are huge football fans.
At what point will they give up on the whole micro-transaction idea? When we have to pay one slip of gold pressed latinum every time we enter someones house or sit in a chair in a waiting room?
Some sources say that over 80% of desktop computers are infected with a virus called Windows.
It was 90% ten years ago. Virus removal takes a very long time. Just ask Symantec
I understand the need for people to show off their hard work. In this case however; they could have easily kept it internal/quiet, until the mod was released.
Once out in the open C&D letters aren't even worth the time for a lawyer to write them up.
Will this(among many others) start a trend of keeping these mods/hacks secret to avoid C&D letters?
Of course in a perfect world SE could have offered them a big fat check for all the new material.
They could even use WoTC as a digital distributor; they seem to be pretty goo- ermm wait...
Buy stock in Adobe!
How much would Google save if they actively removed duplicate videos? I for one find it highly annoying to find 1000 search results of the SAME thing! Not only does that muck up search results; but the "related" section also; I find to be flooded with either the same video, or something entirely not related to it.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
