Parabellum
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Posts posted by Parabellum
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LulzSec takes down the CIA website
I'm fairly certain that LulzSec has just waded into waters that are far too deep. Their hubris will be their undoing.
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Perhaps this is a dumb question, but would it not be feasible to use 100-round magazines w/ the 416? Gunners could get the best of both worlds that way.
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There's no arguing against that logic, Apex. Companies like Sony, who acted with reckless irresponsibility with customer information, certainly bear partial responsibility. One thing has been made clear to me: Corporations do not care about the security of their customers' information. They care about the bottom line. Period. I'd like to think that the recent string of hacks will force companies to take better steps to protect customer information, if only to protect their own bottom line, but I'm not naive enough to think that's going to happen. I'd also like to see the presidents of SCEA and SOE fired and successfully sued, but that's never going to happen, either.
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Their recompense is coming. Soon enough, they'll screw up, and be exposed for the pimple-faced, basement-dwelling neckbeards that they are. Then, their new cellmates will be the ones having the lulz.
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I'm sick today. My wife was kind enough to pass the stomach flu to me. She's such a generous person, I tell you. Aside from that, I'm good; I'm going back to school, this time to get back into the insurance business.
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Wow, some of those screens are amazingly good! Now, hopefully BIS can actually animate the characters well, so that they no longer look like updates of the same OFP animations that we've had for years.
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Welcome to the forums, Theo!
First of all, you personally facing the storm here at GR.net instantly earns you the title "Ubisoft Developer of the Year" in my book. Before I can begin to address your thoughts on game mechanics etc. I have the fundamental need to express my deepest gratitude for this mere effort alone. You have no idea how many times I wished that someone at the development helm of Ubisoft would finally take it upon himself to face the music like this, and I'm pretty sure that many in the GR fan community feel the same way.
Moreover, that you acknowledge the need for Ubisoft to put their money where their mouth is for once, is an altogether flabbergastingly impressive experience. We've had (more than) our fair share of PR lingo dumped on us in the past, without any facts backing up the claims, so for you to admit to the obligation of convincing us earns you my additional respect.
Kudos, Theo! May the dialogue be a productive one!
Cheers,
Apex
Very much agreed, Apex. Welcome to GR.net, Theo.
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Very nice.
Always wanted to get a fish tank, but the wife says no. Something about cats and fish tanks, apparently. Funny enough, our eldest cat is named Kiki. -
Sony has been hacked, again! Once again, they've been caught using unencrypted, plain-text customer data. Hopefully, the Suits at Sony will eventually figure out that they need to start taking security precautions. That, or the company is going to go under, IMO.
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Thanks for the good laughs, guys! I think Sony needs to the the nerd with the "kick me" sign on his back, though.
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We wanted to achieve a lot of cover-to-cover engagements, where teams squared off against each other, and it becomes a kind of “tactical combat puzzle” of how to break through the front line with your squad.
How about UbiSoft let players decide how they want to play the game? That's part of what made Ghost Recon a great game; you could play it how you wanted. You don't create great game play by forcing people into scenario A, and giving them choices X,Y, and Z. You create great game play by making something that's fun and memorable, and then letting people play it as they wish.
I know that you wanted to criticize the awful trend of on-rails shooters, but you have to recognize that the real art of video games is in the selection of means to interact with the environment. Put another way, the environmental designer is tasked with producing a setting that remains interesting even when mediated by a limited set of permissible interactions. Ghost Recon does not provide total freedom of interactions. You are limited to walking around things, shooting at things, or dropping objects next to things. In that sense, their gameplay design is more expansive than your ideal because now you can gain another set of interactions (or more conservatively, you get different versions of the original interactions) while still allowing the original interactions. Honestly, I wish Ghost Recon had a more robust cover system, because it seems a little silly to me that basic cover interactions have to be so error prone. I don't like approaching a corner, pressing the lean key, discovering that I haven't approached the corner closely enough, walking a little bit farther over, pressing the lean key again, discovering (again) that I haven't approached the corner closely enough, walking further still, having the enemy spot my shoulder as it comes around the corner although my vision without lean is still blocked by the wall I'm attempting to lean out from, and promptly being shot in the face when I lean out and finally see past the corner.
As for the rest of the post, tactics in the real world typically reduce to finding ways to suppress and outflank your opponents, and Ghost Recon modeled that especially well despite its now-apparent shortcomings in its cover system. Thus, if Ubi observed that most fun part is that cover battle, and made their interaction option choices so as to encourage that, then good for them for finding a way to force the fun sequence in a way that is authentic, rather than implementing some ridiculous, unrealistic system (or as is often the case, writing a two-sentence suggestion in the manual) that forces the player to do so in a way that reminds the player that they are, in fact, playing a game.
I'm still not impressed with the description of the game (seriously, Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2? And its still called Ghost Recon? Ugh!), but I think you're throwing bile without really considering your words first.
We can agree to disagree, my friend. I chose my words carefully.
UbiSoft has a long history of making crappy, linear, arcade shooters, slapping "Rainbow Six" or "Ghost Recon" on them, and calling them good. GRAW 2, Lockdown, and R6:V2 were some of the worst shooters that I have ever played, for instance. The company is, in my opinion, incapable of making a game that's not a linear, arcade shooter. -
GR Online sounds horrible, in my opinion. I'm not sure which made the game sound worse to me, the PCG hands-on, or the Theo Sanders interview. Let me provide a few examples, first from the interview:
We wanted to achieve a lot of cover-to-cover engagements, where teams squared off against each other, and it becomes a kind of “tactical combat puzzle” of how to break through the front line with your squad.How about UbiSoft let players decide how they want to play the game? That's part of what made Ghost Recon a great game; you could play it how you wanted. You don't create great game play by forcing people into scenario A, and giving them choices X,Y, and Z. You create great game play by making something that's fun and memorable, and then letting people play it as they wish.
During our earlier experiments with more open-ended maps, we had a much more run & gun flavor of game play that just didn’t feel right. Part of the problem is the player’s expectation of a moderate amount of safety when they use cover. If you’re consistently getting shot from behind, while in cover, you quickly stop using it.Someone should be watching your flanks and your rear. That someone should be one of your teammates. With an 8-man team as described by Mr. Sanders, clearly there are enough people to have someone watching your back. 360 security is called 360 security for a reason. If players are that horrible that they can't even coordinate security, then they need to be shot.
To be frank, when we started the GRO development, we weren’t convinced we could get away with third person. However, we had a very clear idea of what we wanted the game to ultimately feel like and, on paper, third person had a lot to offer to achieve that flow. The problem was – it has never been done very well on PC (especially multiplayer).No, 3rd person hasn't ever been done very well, at least not by UbiSoft. Suddenly, after ten years of destroying Tom Clancy titles left and right, UbiSoft has gotten it right? Yes, and Conan O'Brien's hair no longer looks stupid. Er....
Jumping back to the PC Gamer hands-on:
The cover system is surprisingly good – you see a highlight on the patch of wall you’ll hug, then press the cover key to move to it. If you then hit ‘Aim’, you can peer round bit by bit in first-person, so you only expose as much of yourself as you need to.Where have I seen this before? Oh, I know! The diarrheal abyss of a title known as Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. UbiSoft did the same thing in that game: They forced you into head-on confrontations with the AI enemies, where you essentially used the cover system and slugged it out with the enemy while trying to figure out how to outflank them. In the process, sometimes you had no choice but to get shot X number of times. The only thing memorable about R6V:2 is how bad it was. I can only surmise that if GR Online plays anything like R6:V2, then it'll be just as forgettable.
Two things really impressed me about the way abilities work in GRO. One, that Assault shield-charge is immediately fun. The previously vicious kill zone becomes a hilarious playground with you as the bully, smacking people down as they try to scramble away from you. If you stop to finish one off, that’s the end of your charge. But if you have a team-mate covering you, you can keep bashing people while your friend finishes them off.So, the Ghost Recon series has gone from a tactical, thinking-man's shooter, to a futuristic "Oh, look at the pretty lights!" shooter, to a "Rawr! Hulk Smash!" shooter where you take a riot shield and pummel everything you see. Right. Got it. Funny, when I read "tactical combat puzzle" in the interview, I wasn't thinking of charging through enemy lines with a riot shield. Maybe "tactical" means something else at UbiSoft.
You unlock new weapons, upgrades and abilities as you play, but not necessarily for cash. Senior producer Hugues Ricour says “a player that decides to never pay can have the full game and the complete experience. We don’t want a paying user to have a competitive advantage.” You don’t buy weapons earlier than you’d normally earn them, but you can buy consumables like grenades. Ricour says the other stuff you can spend money on includes new uniforms, special ammo, armour boosts and extra inventory space to store this stuff.Here, we have yet another gem where someone from UbiSoft is saying two things - one out of each side of his mouth. First, he says that they don't want paying users to have a competitive advantage. Then, he says you can buy consumables like grenades. It's good to know that those extra grenades won't give the other guy an advantage over me. Perhaps when they detonate, said grenades will pepper the air with confetti that spells "I used my mommy's credit card to buy this!" instead of peppering my character with shrapnel. Awesome. Also, it's good to know that special ammo and armor boosts won't give the enemy an advantage over me, either. Perhaps the armor boost will just flash a screen message to the wearer proclaiming "You are being shot! Move, you idiot!" that I wouldn't get on my screen, since I haven't shelled out for the awesome armor. It's refreshing to know that the armor boost won't ... you know ... make the guy harder to kill, thus giving him an advantage over me.
I have to admit I was pretty sceptical about a free-to-play Ghost Recon. I was imagining a drearily realistic online shooter with a bare-minimum design philosophyDrearily realistic sounds much better than some fool with a riot shield shouting Leroy Jenkins as he charges the enemy and I crouch down behind cover and wait for the "I don't know what this class does" specialist to sneak up on us and kill us. Drearily realistic also sounds a lot like Ghost Recon. While it wasn't that "realistic", in many ways, Ghost Recon was - and is - a much better game than anything else to come out of the rectal regions of UbiSoft. I can't see this title being any better than RS:V2, except that this time, we know it's coming. That's more than I can say for some of UbiSoft's other diarrheal encounters.
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Great article. I'm glad that the dumbing down of the series was mentioned. GRAW was bad enough. GRAW 2 was an abortion, and FS looks worse.
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Let us not forget those who've paid the ultimate price for us. Memorial Day is an American holiday, but let us remember our many allied friends who've given their lives for our freedom. May they never be forgotten.
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My credit card company sent me a replacement card today, along with a letter stating that the old one is being cancelled, due to the company's suspicion that my card may be at risk for fraud. The only thing I use this card for is to pay my Sony Online Entertainment subscription fee. I'm seriously considering switching to game cards, rather than giving them yet another CC number.
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The wife and I saw Pirates last evening. I thought it was moderately good, while she loved it. While I can't quite put my finger on it, something about the film was distracting. Maybe it was the pace or the slightly disjointed story. Depp and Rush were excellent, as always. However, Johnny Depp's dialogue was somewhat flat in comparison to previous Pirates films. His delivery was as funny as always, but his actual lines weren't as witty or verbose as they have been in previous films.
Penelope Cruz wasn't as bad as I thought that she'd be, but she's so .... flat (obviously not flat, but you take my point). She spit out her lines with little emotion, aside from the occasional fiery Latina rant, with which any man who is married to a Latina (such as myself) is all too familiar. She did have a couple of truly funny moments, but they were few and far between. For the most part, I think that Penelope Cruz was there so that guys would be distracted by her cleavage, which always seems to be generously exposed, as well as the focal point of the close-up shots that she's in.
The sub-plot with the preacher and the mermaid made absolutely no sense to me. It came out of nowhere, was left undeveloped, and in my opinion, was left unresolved. The filmmakers needed a way to get a mermaid's tear, so they came up with this bit of story. At least Astrid Berges-Frisbey is easy on the eyes, unlike Penelope Cruz.
All in all, it was a decent film, but it wasn't up to par with previous Pirates films. I felt that 'On Stranger Tides' was more or less a serious of briefly funny moments scattered between two and a half hours of moderately-entertaining filler.
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Nintendo can claim to own users' content all it wants. No one owns your intellectual content but you. I see this as coming back to bite Nintendo. Hard.
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Another day, another pooch screwed by Sony. I'm waiting for their SOE division to take their products back off-line again. They're sure to screw their own pooch in the near future.
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I'm not sure what version of ACE I'm running. I'll check.
By ACE in-game menu, I do indeed mean the one you reach by pressing ESC.
I did not rebuild my userconfig files. For the time-being, I've simply disabled ACE. I really don't care for it, anyway. The lack of Czech voices persists, however. That clearly isn't an ACE issue, but it's highly annoying.
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I'm really stoked to see those screenshots, they look amazing! ArmA 2 was a massive step upward from ArmA, and if ArmA 3 files suit, then the game is sure to be astounding! I do wonder why BIS is depicting American soldiers using a bullpup rifle though. BIS are usually pretty adamant about trying to be realistic, and I can't say that I've ever seen American soldiers using bullpups.
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I've noticed a couple of oddities with the 1.59 patch. First, the ACE in-game menu is gone for me. I don't use ACE very often, but now it's pretty well unusable. Secondly, I can no longer hear any Czech voices or radio calls in the game. All of the other voice sets - both radio and spoken word - work fine.
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Anything new ever happen with your work, Marcinko? I was looking forward to seeing what you came up with.
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me and mum are seeing it on Wednesday the 18th
as you can tell by her sig, she is a big johnny fan, god that sounds rude! 
i am more of a Geoffrey Rush person myself, but that's me.anyway, even though i hate the living guts out of Penelope Cruz i have to say, she really suits the pirate look and i am actually looking forward to seeing how her character unfolds.
i think the best part of numéro quatre is WILL AND ELIZABETH AREN'T IN IT! they annoyed the living hell out of me, and it looks like Cap'n jack is back to his old self.
who else is seeing it?
That's quite funny, because neither my wife nor myself can stand her, either. I think she's ugly, personally. On the other hand, a beak-nosed wench is probably perfect for a pirate flick. I hope to take the wife to see Pirates this weekend, time permitting.
I'll continue to wish that Selma Hayak had been cast instead of Penelope Cruz, however. -
I think it's an outstanding poem, Ruin. It's raw, honest, and thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Steam support for free-to-play titles
in PC Gaming Software
Posted
So, you can purchase an entire game for $30-50, or purchase one item for $15... It's easy to see why companies are going to F2P models, but at the same time, it's certainly not much value for a customer's money.