<![CDATA[NiftyHost Forums (Archive) - Games]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/ Thu, 17 Sep 2026 21:10:33 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Starcraft 2]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1498.html Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:50:30 +0000 br0wnie]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1498.html <![CDATA[Poker [Texas Hold'em Mostly]]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1497.html Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:18:43 +0000 br0wnie]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1497.html
So, discuss! Also discuss strategies, tips, and general conversation about poker if you'd like! Texas Hold'em preferred conversation, but other poker games are welcome!]]>
So, discuss! Also discuss strategies, tips, and general conversation about poker if you'd like! Texas Hold'em preferred conversation, but other poker games are welcome!]]> <![CDATA[Anyone play HoN / Dota2? ]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1496.html Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:16:40 +0000 br0wnie]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1496.html
I'm interested in what you have to say! :)]]>
I'm interested in what you have to say! :)]]> <![CDATA[Which game is your favorite game?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1487.html Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:18:41 +0000 Serial Thrilla]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1487.html
my favorite games are:

1. Battlefield Bad Company 2 & Battlefield 3
2. Half-Life 2 Series
3. Portal 2
4. Deus Ex - Human Revolution + DLC

What are your favorite game(s)?
]]>
my favorite games are:

1. Battlefield Bad Company 2 & Battlefield 3
2. Half-Life 2 Series
3. Portal 2
4. Deus Ex - Human Revolution + DLC

What are your favorite game(s)?
]]> <![CDATA[Do you think games could become a waste of time?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1437.html Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:07:50 +0000 Gabriel]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1437.html
There is people who get addicted to any type of game!

Wether on FB, game sites, video game, ETC...

but they don't have auto control and they end up leaving important stuff like home work or actual work for LATER and most of the time end up doing bad in the real life because they were to busy playing a game.

Games can also ruin relationships, if one doesn't know how to control it!]]>
There is people who get addicted to any type of game!

Wether on FB, game sites, video game, ETC...

but they don't have auto control and they end up leaving important stuff like home work or actual work for LATER and most of the time end up doing bad in the real life because they were to busy playing a game.

Games can also ruin relationships, if one doesn't know how to control it!]]> <![CDATA[BF3 simulator]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1419.html Tue, 18 Oct 2011 04:31:48 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1419.html
]]>
]]> <![CDATA[Ragnarok Online]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1408.html Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:07:10 +0000 fcuro]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1408.html <![CDATA[Since when is camping illegitimate?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1395.html Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:36:37 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1395.html

A lot of people tell me they think camping is cheap in any FPS. I can’t help but think this is simply because they are killed by campers a lot and because they game on a console.

I see nothing wrong with it. There is nothing about constant running and gunning that gives you a significant advantage in a game like CoD. Whether it’s defending a particular room or just waiting for someone to come around the corner, camping is handy near constantly.

Like with many other things, I blame consoles and CoD for this recent anti-camping trend. It’s another virus that has infected the FPS genre born from the CoD franchise. On consoles it is harder to aim and shoot when you’re on the move; much harder than with a mouse and keyboard. In fact many PC FPS are so fast paced that it is more beneficial to be on the move constantly for aiming than it is to be dormant.

When camping in a console FPS like CoD you actually do gain a significant advantage since you gain the element of surprise and more precise targeting since you don’t have to worry about location and movement. Therein, camping is a tactical style of gameplay since you are adapting to the game you are playing. The reason this conflicts with games like CoD on consoles is because the typical run & gun style that people typically utilize is a non-tactical style of gameplay. It is chaotic and only requires reflexes and accuracy.

The problem is that someone employing tactics will always beat someone who is not. People only dislike camping because it works. It only works so well in CoD though because CoD is geared around strictly run & gun gameplay rather than tactical gameplay. There are no anti-camping deterrents in the designs of the maps and the gameplay itself as they were designed without camping in mind. Therefore campers can take full advantage of that and dominate.

Aka, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops are horribly designed games and if you are someone who plays them and dislikes campers then you can only blame the developers and not the campers themselves since they are actually smarter than you with how they play. Say what you want about camping but some people don’t care about childish things like disregarding certain tactics because they are seen as noobish. If they get more kills than you in the end without hacking or glitching then you are clearly using an inferior tactic and should probably mature a bit before you consider yourself a good CoD player. Good FPS players learn to adapt to the game they’re playing. While you’re at it you should also move on to a game that isn’t unbalanced and doesn’t give campers a massive advantage.

In a more balanced game such as Battlefield, campers do not have as much of an advantage. Sure, there are ‘hot spots’ in Battlefield maps that are ideal for camping but the element of surprise does not guarantee you a kill and there are plenty of anti-camping methods you can employ. This keeps someone from staying in one spot for too long. Someone may have a much more powerful weapon than you and overpower you despite getting the jump on them. This is not the case in CoD as the weapons are essentially all copy pasted with very little difference statistically between each one.

It is also much more likely in Battlefield that if you stay in one spot you may go quite a long time without seeing anybody since the maps are much larger. Only the most dedicated of snipers can wait that patiently and frankly, snipers should be camping in the first place since they are usually ill-equipped for run & gun combat. So while everyone is off completing objectives and getting kills, you are waiting around in an empty area not knowing if any enemies will even show up any time soon. This is not the case in CoD as the maps are tiny and there are guaranteed enemies at many points of the map at seemingly all times.

In the end the main lesson you need to learn is that there is no style of gameplay that is superior than another to the point where you can use it 100% of the time and expect to win all the time. Run & gun only works in CoD if everyone else is doing it as well. Balanced games require balanced usage of both camping and movement while games like CoD reward camping and other games like Unreal Tournament that make it almost impossible to camp for very long.

Aka I do not endorse camping anymore than I do R&G but I obviously do not consider it a noob tactic either. It is only noobish to camp 100% of the time, but it is equally noobish to do the opposite 100% of the time.

If you want to be a good FPS player, you have to adapt. When you let the opinions from other players about your tactics influence how you play, you lose. If you can’t deal with it then stop playing a crappy game filled with idiots who shun a perfectly legitimate gameplay tactic simply because they can’t stand losing to it and are unwilling to adapt.

-Jesse Leigh aka OmarFW via Gamer MC]]>

A lot of people tell me they think camping is cheap in any FPS. I can’t help but think this is simply because they are killed by campers a lot and because they game on a console.

I see nothing wrong with it. There is nothing about constant running and gunning that gives you a significant advantage in a game like CoD. Whether it’s defending a particular room or just waiting for someone to come around the corner, camping is handy near constantly.

Like with many other things, I blame consoles and CoD for this recent anti-camping trend. It’s another virus that has infected the FPS genre born from the CoD franchise. On consoles it is harder to aim and shoot when you’re on the move; much harder than with a mouse and keyboard. In fact many PC FPS are so fast paced that it is more beneficial to be on the move constantly for aiming than it is to be dormant.

When camping in a console FPS like CoD you actually do gain a significant advantage since you gain the element of surprise and more precise targeting since you don’t have to worry about location and movement. Therein, camping is a tactical style of gameplay since you are adapting to the game you are playing. The reason this conflicts with games like CoD on consoles is because the typical run & gun style that people typically utilize is a non-tactical style of gameplay. It is chaotic and only requires reflexes and accuracy.

The problem is that someone employing tactics will always beat someone who is not. People only dislike camping because it works. It only works so well in CoD though because CoD is geared around strictly run & gun gameplay rather than tactical gameplay. There are no anti-camping deterrents in the designs of the maps and the gameplay itself as they were designed without camping in mind. Therefore campers can take full advantage of that and dominate.

Aka, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops are horribly designed games and if you are someone who plays them and dislikes campers then you can only blame the developers and not the campers themselves since they are actually smarter than you with how they play. Say what you want about camping but some people don’t care about childish things like disregarding certain tactics because they are seen as noobish. If they get more kills than you in the end without hacking or glitching then you are clearly using an inferior tactic and should probably mature a bit before you consider yourself a good CoD player. Good FPS players learn to adapt to the game they’re playing. While you’re at it you should also move on to a game that isn’t unbalanced and doesn’t give campers a massive advantage.

In a more balanced game such as Battlefield, campers do not have as much of an advantage. Sure, there are ‘hot spots’ in Battlefield maps that are ideal for camping but the element of surprise does not guarantee you a kill and there are plenty of anti-camping methods you can employ. This keeps someone from staying in one spot for too long. Someone may have a much more powerful weapon than you and overpower you despite getting the jump on them. This is not the case in CoD as the weapons are essentially all copy pasted with very little difference statistically between each one.

It is also much more likely in Battlefield that if you stay in one spot you may go quite a long time without seeing anybody since the maps are much larger. Only the most dedicated of snipers can wait that patiently and frankly, snipers should be camping in the first place since they are usually ill-equipped for run & gun combat. So while everyone is off completing objectives and getting kills, you are waiting around in an empty area not knowing if any enemies will even show up any time soon. This is not the case in CoD as the maps are tiny and there are guaranteed enemies at many points of the map at seemingly all times.

In the end the main lesson you need to learn is that there is no style of gameplay that is superior than another to the point where you can use it 100% of the time and expect to win all the time. Run & gun only works in CoD if everyone else is doing it as well. Balanced games require balanced usage of both camping and movement while games like CoD reward camping and other games like Unreal Tournament that make it almost impossible to camp for very long.

Aka I do not endorse camping anymore than I do R&G but I obviously do not consider it a noob tactic either. It is only noobish to camp 100% of the time, but it is equally noobish to do the opposite 100% of the time.

If you want to be a good FPS player, you have to adapt. When you let the opinions from other players about your tactics influence how you play, you lose. If you can’t deal with it then stop playing a crappy game filled with idiots who shun a perfectly legitimate gameplay tactic simply because they can’t stand losing to it and are unwilling to adapt.

-Jesse Leigh aka OmarFW via Gamer MC]]> <![CDATA[The Freemium Trend - Why F2P games could save quality gaming]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1391.html Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:37:37 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1391.html Quote:It seems that more and more games nowadays are being converted to free to play games or becoming ‘freemium’ if they aren’t starting out that way already.

What that means if you aren’t familiar is that the game is free to play forever, requiring no subscription or initial fee, but there is a cash shop from which you can purchase premium items, gear, clothing etc. This concept has actually been around for quite a long time but only utilized in the realm of small time MMORPGs mostly. Popular indie MMOs like Rappelz and Maplestory, while still not having the massive playerbase of titles like World of Warcraft or EVE Online, are still thriving simply because they are free so they attract not only the normal crowd of gamers but also people who cannot afford a monthly subscription or costly expansion packs. Eventually MMOFPS titles like War Rock, Gunz: The Duel and the more recent APB: Reloaded have begun to pop up and increase in popularity over the years as well.

The question is does this make money and do people actually buy cash shop items? The quick answer is yes.
[continued...]

http://gamermc.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/...ium-trend/]]> Quote:It seems that more and more games nowadays are being converted to free to play games or becoming ‘freemium’ if they aren’t starting out that way already.

What that means if you aren’t familiar is that the game is free to play forever, requiring no subscription or initial fee, but there is a cash shop from which you can purchase premium items, gear, clothing etc. This concept has actually been around for quite a long time but only utilized in the realm of small time MMORPGs mostly. Popular indie MMOs like Rappelz and Maplestory, while still not having the massive playerbase of titles like World of Warcraft or EVE Online, are still thriving simply because they are free so they attract not only the normal crowd of gamers but also people who cannot afford a monthly subscription or costly expansion packs. Eventually MMOFPS titles like War Rock, Gunz: The Duel and the more recent APB: Reloaded have begun to pop up and increase in popularity over the years as well.

The question is does this make money and do people actually buy cash shop items? The quick answer is yes.
[continued...]

http://gamermc.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/...ium-trend/]]> <![CDATA[Unlimited Detail technology – Is it the real deal?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1381.html Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:32:38 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1381.html
This of course was met with skepticism as our industry has always been ruled by the polygon and the limitations it has presented since the first 3d game ever came out. A processor can only put out so many polygons at a time. The more powerful the processor the more polygons it can display obviously, but even the most powerful cards on the market right now have a limit and cannot render the kind of detail that Euclideon was suggesting. Needless to say, if what they promised is actually possible then games of the future would look about 500x better than they do now. Modern games already look pretty impressive but when it comes down to it you can still notice the tricks and techniques that developers put into their engines to save on polygons and increase performance- much at the cost of detail in ways you wouldn’t typically notice while actually gaming.

While some people don’t care about the graphics on that kind of level and no one should ever really prioritize graphics ahead of gameplay, the fact still remains that graphical capabilities in modern gaming are improving much too slowly. This is mostly because of cooling limitations. Fans can only do so much and the faster you make a GPU the harder it is too cool. The release of DirectX 11 proved an impressive attempt at sustaining the longevity of modern gaming engines but it really failed to fix the real problem visually.

After one year of purposefully staying out of the media spotlight and seemingly disappearing they have come back with another demonstration to show just how far their technology has advanced.

The first time I had watched this I was rather unfamiliar with the different kinds of graphics technologies out there and needless to say I was very impressed and excited that this kind of technology was being developed. Why? Because I had figured that after years of development using the same technology continuously (namely DirectX and OpenGL) someone would have finally developed some kind of graphical breakthrough by now. While the CryEngine and Frostbite engine are definitely impressive, they are hardly breakthroughs. They look good simply because of overlays and filters that have been developed alongside greater texture size capabilities. Those are simply band-aids to the graphics problem though, not cures. The core problem lays in the fact that modern rendering is based on polygons which is an aging technology. Euclideon seemed to present the kind of technology I had been waiting to pop up and I initially believed it to be true.

Not long after the video was released the creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson aka Notch put up a blog making some very good points against Euclideon’s claims and made a counter-claim that it was all a scam.

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

Essentially his point was that this is not new technology, simply voxel renders and they only created this demonstration to try and get funding. They had not created anything new or revolutionary like they had claimed to.

Quote: “In the video, you can make up loads of repeated structured, all roughly the same size. Sparse voxel octrees work great for this, as you don’t need to have unique data in each leaf node, but can reference the same data repeatedly (at fixed intervals) with great speed and memory efficiency. This explains how they can have that much data, but it also shows one of the biggest weaknesses of their engine.”

“Another weakness is that voxels are horrible for doing animation…”

“They’re hyping this as something new and revolutionary because they want funding. It’s a scam. Don’t get excited.

Or, more correctly, get excited about voxels, but not about the snake oil salesmen.”

This seemed like a legitimate argument against the demonstration since nowhere do you ever see any animation. There is also plenty of duplicated content multiplied many times to form the shape of the island. While this is definitely far more impressive looking than any voxel engine I’ve ever seen, the evidence against it was very strong.

This blog was followed up by an interview done by HardOCP TV with Bruce Dell the CEO of Euclideon to give a more detailed and interactive demonstration of the technology.

First off, Euclideon was the recipient of about $2 Million in grants when they came together so the idea that they are scammers going after grant money is somewhat out of question. I am content enough with what I see in this interview to give the technology another chance rather than be a skeptic but only time will tell if this is genuine so I’m certainly not going to endorse it as such until then.

There are just some things I find fishy about their presentation of the technology. There are many things they could do to present it in a way that deters people from being skeptical about it. The brand ‘Unlimited Detail’ sounds a bit arrogant as if the technology expects recognition in a ‘too good to be true’ way which is exactly what I would expect from a scam. They could have gone with a different name while also highlighting the supposed ‘unlimited detail’ it’s capable of. I also don’t understand why they aren’t more involved with the media. They say they are going to leave the spotlight for another period of time while they continue developing the technology. Why not release development videos demonstrating their progress in the meantime? Why are they so secretive? They seem to present things in a manner akin to saying “ooo look it’s fueled by magic!” That is not something people can get behind. When it comes to not appearing like sleazy salesman, they are not doing a very good job. If they want people to believe their claims they should show people how the technology works.

I do definitely hope this technology is real but I am not going to support it without reasonable evidence to. Putting something we gamers have wanted for a while now in front of our noses only to be scamming everyone by slapping a new label on something old would be akin to a kick in the nuts. So is their technology a hoax? I would not say no but until a game is released that utilizes it I would not say yes either.

All in all, this kind of technology is coming eventually. Even if it doesn’t come within the next few years from Euclideon, it will come. We need to move on from the polygon if we want to progress in gaming graphically.

-Jesse Leigh aka OmarFW via GamerMC]]>
This of course was met with skepticism as our industry has always been ruled by the polygon and the limitations it has presented since the first 3d game ever came out. A processor can only put out so many polygons at a time. The more powerful the processor the more polygons it can display obviously, but even the most powerful cards on the market right now have a limit and cannot render the kind of detail that Euclideon was suggesting. Needless to say, if what they promised is actually possible then games of the future would look about 500x better than they do now. Modern games already look pretty impressive but when it comes down to it you can still notice the tricks and techniques that developers put into their engines to save on polygons and increase performance- much at the cost of detail in ways you wouldn’t typically notice while actually gaming.

While some people don’t care about the graphics on that kind of level and no one should ever really prioritize graphics ahead of gameplay, the fact still remains that graphical capabilities in modern gaming are improving much too slowly. This is mostly because of cooling limitations. Fans can only do so much and the faster you make a GPU the harder it is too cool. The release of DirectX 11 proved an impressive attempt at sustaining the longevity of modern gaming engines but it really failed to fix the real problem visually.

After one year of purposefully staying out of the media spotlight and seemingly disappearing they have come back with another demonstration to show just how far their technology has advanced.

The first time I had watched this I was rather unfamiliar with the different kinds of graphics technologies out there and needless to say I was very impressed and excited that this kind of technology was being developed. Why? Because I had figured that after years of development using the same technology continuously (namely DirectX and OpenGL) someone would have finally developed some kind of graphical breakthrough by now. While the CryEngine and Frostbite engine are definitely impressive, they are hardly breakthroughs. They look good simply because of overlays and filters that have been developed alongside greater texture size capabilities. Those are simply band-aids to the graphics problem though, not cures. The core problem lays in the fact that modern rendering is based on polygons which is an aging technology. Euclideon seemed to present the kind of technology I had been waiting to pop up and I initially believed it to be true.

Not long after the video was released the creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson aka Notch put up a blog making some very good points against Euclideon’s claims and made a counter-claim that it was all a scam.

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

Essentially his point was that this is not new technology, simply voxel renders and they only created this demonstration to try and get funding. They had not created anything new or revolutionary like they had claimed to.

Quote: “In the video, you can make up loads of repeated structured, all roughly the same size. Sparse voxel octrees work great for this, as you don’t need to have unique data in each leaf node, but can reference the same data repeatedly (at fixed intervals) with great speed and memory efficiency. This explains how they can have that much data, but it also shows one of the biggest weaknesses of their engine.”

“Another weakness is that voxels are horrible for doing animation…”

“They’re hyping this as something new and revolutionary because they want funding. It’s a scam. Don’t get excited.

Or, more correctly, get excited about voxels, but not about the snake oil salesmen.”

This seemed like a legitimate argument against the demonstration since nowhere do you ever see any animation. There is also plenty of duplicated content multiplied many times to form the shape of the island. While this is definitely far more impressive looking than any voxel engine I’ve ever seen, the evidence against it was very strong.

This blog was followed up by an interview done by HardOCP TV with Bruce Dell the CEO of Euclideon to give a more detailed and interactive demonstration of the technology.

First off, Euclideon was the recipient of about $2 Million in grants when they came together so the idea that they are scammers going after grant money is somewhat out of question. I am content enough with what I see in this interview to give the technology another chance rather than be a skeptic but only time will tell if this is genuine so I’m certainly not going to endorse it as such until then.

There are just some things I find fishy about their presentation of the technology. There are many things they could do to present it in a way that deters people from being skeptical about it. The brand ‘Unlimited Detail’ sounds a bit arrogant as if the technology expects recognition in a ‘too good to be true’ way which is exactly what I would expect from a scam. They could have gone with a different name while also highlighting the supposed ‘unlimited detail’ it’s capable of. I also don’t understand why they aren’t more involved with the media. They say they are going to leave the spotlight for another period of time while they continue developing the technology. Why not release development videos demonstrating their progress in the meantime? Why are they so secretive? They seem to present things in a manner akin to saying “ooo look it’s fueled by magic!” That is not something people can get behind. When it comes to not appearing like sleazy salesman, they are not doing a very good job. If they want people to believe their claims they should show people how the technology works.

I do definitely hope this technology is real but I am not going to support it without reasonable evidence to. Putting something we gamers have wanted for a while now in front of our noses only to be scamming everyone by slapping a new label on something old would be akin to a kick in the nuts. So is their technology a hoax? I would not say no but until a game is released that utilizes it I would not say yes either.

All in all, this kind of technology is coming eventually. Even if it doesn’t come within the next few years from Euclideon, it will come. We need to move on from the polygon if we want to progress in gaming graphically.

-Jesse Leigh aka OmarFW via GamerMC]]> <![CDATA[Pre-order? I'll pass]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1368.html Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:06:25 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1368.html
The first real pre-order incentives ever included with a game were actually noteworthy. Merchandise was often included that you would only see today in the most expensive exclusive editions of a game. These were the days when publishers actually rewarded their most dedicated consumers. Pre-ordering before a certain date often came with a discount as well to reward you for being one of the dedicated few. These were days when pre-ordering was actually a smart thing to do; like buying movie tickets ahead of time.

Today things are different. Pre-ordering a AAA title gets you nothing; sometimes even less. Modern Warfare 3 lacks even a slight discount for pre-orders on Steam. More games are released with exclusive pre-order content that was originally included in the game by default. Battlefield 3 was one of those games until a recent boycott on /r/gaming persuaded EA to not do so by showing that doing so would result in a reasonable loss of sales. Not to mention, exclusive content is worthless if the game itself is worthless so saying that exclusive DLC justifies pre-ordering a game is a load of crap.

[Image: battlefield-3-special-pre-order-bonus_1.jpg]

These are not the biggest crimes committed in the past few years though. If a game is stripped of content to have it thrown into pre-order DLC I simply don’t buy the game. What I hate about pre-ordering today is that it has become a marketing tool to convince gamers into buying a game before they even know if it’s good.

Publishers like EA and Activision have managed to turn their audience into a bunch of Justin Bieber fans. No matter what they throw out to the masses they can count on people throwing their money away to get it. Smart people obviously still pay attention to reviews and feedback to see if they should buy a game since buying a bad game is dumb. People who pre-order are paying money for words. The publisher has told them that the game will be good and they are willing to take their word for it.

Would a publisher ever market a game as a bad one? Don’t you think advertisements make games look awesome for a reason? It’s not rocket science. Since marketing will only ever give you one kind of portrayal of a game what makes you think you can trust it as a reliable source to evaluate the quality of a game? If you simply aren’t evaluating a game at all before purchasing it then you have no right to complain about it being bad; except that is exactly what you do when you pre-order since you cannot evaluate a game that has not been released yet.

When you pre-order a game you are paying for what might be faulty product without any speculation on your part on whether or not it is actually a good game. You are gambling. You are no better than someone sitting at a slot machine slowly throwing their money away.

I hate to break it to you but even a game as impressive looking as Battlefield 3 can end up a pile of garbage. Clearly the graphics are impressive, but do you play Battlefield because it looks good? Of course not. You play it because generally the Battlefield series provides great gameplay. Battlefield has a history of great games behind it, but does that mean that Battlefield 3 is guaranteed 100% to be good? No! Any game series can be ruined with the next release. Any aspect of the gameplay gone wrong can ruin a game despite all the other aspects being solid. All the pieces of the puzzle have to fit. Any game breaking exclusive DLC content can ruin a gameplay experience no matter how prestigious. Dice has already tried to introduce elements into BF3 such as 3d spotting, effectively giving you the ability to wallhack. That is a game breaking feature folks. Why would you pay 60 bucks for a game that might be good? That is lunacy. As far as I’m concerned if you pay 60 dollars for a game you are paying for a guaranteed quality title and anything less is not worth the money.

Just look at the giant catalog of crappy or underwhelming games being released today and try to tell me that the chances of a game ending up bad are low. There are no franchises that are immune to this. Only you can be responsible for making sure your gaming experience is a good one; the publishers certainly aren’t going to do it for you.

If a game ends up bad and you pre-ordered it, you have wasted 60 bucks. You could have waited until you heard from reviews or peers to see if you should shell out the dough but instead you took a gamble and ended up with nothing.

If a game ends up bad and you didn’t pre-order, you simply don’t buy it. You can then use that 60 bucks for something more worth it.

Take Black Ops for example. Many people pre-ordered that for 60 bucks before release. Was it really worth it though? Did it live up to your expectations and provide the same amount of entertainment that the previous Call of Duty’s did? Many fans have said no. That 60 bucks could have been spent on a better game (or two) but instead it went towards funding Activisions next big project to shake you down for even more money. It wasn’t a flop game by any means but it certainly doesn’t have that action packed feel to it that previous CoDs had and it certainly wasn’t worth throwing down 60 bucks for.

Stop gambling and praying to the game gods for a quality title. Your money is not some sort of sacrificial offering that will improve the quality of the title you have been promised. The best stuff out there does not come with stripped out content being sold as exclusive DLC. You wouldn’t buy a car you haven’t seen yet from a salesman who claims that it’s awesome.

Anywhere there is a game being milked for money, there will be a lack of quality.

Take a tip from Tripwire Interactive. Not only is the upcoming Red Orchestra 2 only selling for only 40 bucks but here is what you get for pre-ordering.

A free copy of the original Red Orchestra.
Some RO TF2 hats.
10% discount

Plus you get an extra 20% off if you already own the original Red Orchestra as well as day 1 unlocks of the Kar98 and 9130 Nagant (non-exclusive but unlocked more quickly) and some special in-game badges. That is called rewarding your fans and thanking them for their support. I know many people who would still go out and buy this game even if it cost 60 bucks like every other title. Tripwire is only losing money by giving away their original game and providing these discounts but unlike Activision, Tripwire actually cares about things like making sure their fans are satisfied with what they get for the amount they pay.

[Image: Untitled123.png]

That is pre-order incentive done right. They are rewarding you for taking a gamble, as they should. Accepting anything less is the action of a hoodwinked idiot.]]>
The first real pre-order incentives ever included with a game were actually noteworthy. Merchandise was often included that you would only see today in the most expensive exclusive editions of a game. These were the days when publishers actually rewarded their most dedicated consumers. Pre-ordering before a certain date often came with a discount as well to reward you for being one of the dedicated few. These were days when pre-ordering was actually a smart thing to do; like buying movie tickets ahead of time.

Today things are different. Pre-ordering a AAA title gets you nothing; sometimes even less. Modern Warfare 3 lacks even a slight discount for pre-orders on Steam. More games are released with exclusive pre-order content that was originally included in the game by default. Battlefield 3 was one of those games until a recent boycott on /r/gaming persuaded EA to not do so by showing that doing so would result in a reasonable loss of sales. Not to mention, exclusive content is worthless if the game itself is worthless so saying that exclusive DLC justifies pre-ordering a game is a load of crap.

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These are not the biggest crimes committed in the past few years though. If a game is stripped of content to have it thrown into pre-order DLC I simply don’t buy the game. What I hate about pre-ordering today is that it has become a marketing tool to convince gamers into buying a game before they even know if it’s good.

Publishers like EA and Activision have managed to turn their audience into a bunch of Justin Bieber fans. No matter what they throw out to the masses they can count on people throwing their money away to get it. Smart people obviously still pay attention to reviews and feedback to see if they should buy a game since buying a bad game is dumb. People who pre-order are paying money for words. The publisher has told them that the game will be good and they are willing to take their word for it.

Would a publisher ever market a game as a bad one? Don’t you think advertisements make games look awesome for a reason? It’s not rocket science. Since marketing will only ever give you one kind of portrayal of a game what makes you think you can trust it as a reliable source to evaluate the quality of a game? If you simply aren’t evaluating a game at all before purchasing it then you have no right to complain about it being bad; except that is exactly what you do when you pre-order since you cannot evaluate a game that has not been released yet.

When you pre-order a game you are paying for what might be faulty product without any speculation on your part on whether or not it is actually a good game. You are gambling. You are no better than someone sitting at a slot machine slowly throwing their money away.

I hate to break it to you but even a game as impressive looking as Battlefield 3 can end up a pile of garbage. Clearly the graphics are impressive, but do you play Battlefield because it looks good? Of course not. You play it because generally the Battlefield series provides great gameplay. Battlefield has a history of great games behind it, but does that mean that Battlefield 3 is guaranteed 100% to be good? No! Any game series can be ruined with the next release. Any aspect of the gameplay gone wrong can ruin a game despite all the other aspects being solid. All the pieces of the puzzle have to fit. Any game breaking exclusive DLC content can ruin a gameplay experience no matter how prestigious. Dice has already tried to introduce elements into BF3 such as 3d spotting, effectively giving you the ability to wallhack. That is a game breaking feature folks. Why would you pay 60 bucks for a game that might be good? That is lunacy. As far as I’m concerned if you pay 60 dollars for a game you are paying for a guaranteed quality title and anything less is not worth the money.

Just look at the giant catalog of crappy or underwhelming games being released today and try to tell me that the chances of a game ending up bad are low. There are no franchises that are immune to this. Only you can be responsible for making sure your gaming experience is a good one; the publishers certainly aren’t going to do it for you.

If a game ends up bad and you pre-ordered it, you have wasted 60 bucks. You could have waited until you heard from reviews or peers to see if you should shell out the dough but instead you took a gamble and ended up with nothing.

If a game ends up bad and you didn’t pre-order, you simply don’t buy it. You can then use that 60 bucks for something more worth it.

Take Black Ops for example. Many people pre-ordered that for 60 bucks before release. Was it really worth it though? Did it live up to your expectations and provide the same amount of entertainment that the previous Call of Duty’s did? Many fans have said no. That 60 bucks could have been spent on a better game (or two) but instead it went towards funding Activisions next big project to shake you down for even more money. It wasn’t a flop game by any means but it certainly doesn’t have that action packed feel to it that previous CoDs had and it certainly wasn’t worth throwing down 60 bucks for.

Stop gambling and praying to the game gods for a quality title. Your money is not some sort of sacrificial offering that will improve the quality of the title you have been promised. The best stuff out there does not come with stripped out content being sold as exclusive DLC. You wouldn’t buy a car you haven’t seen yet from a salesman who claims that it’s awesome.

Anywhere there is a game being milked for money, there will be a lack of quality.

Take a tip from Tripwire Interactive. Not only is the upcoming Red Orchestra 2 only selling for only 40 bucks but here is what you get for pre-ordering.

A free copy of the original Red Orchestra.
Some RO TF2 hats.
10% discount

Plus you get an extra 20% off if you already own the original Red Orchestra as well as day 1 unlocks of the Kar98 and 9130 Nagant (non-exclusive but unlocked more quickly) and some special in-game badges. That is called rewarding your fans and thanking them for their support. I know many people who would still go out and buy this game even if it cost 60 bucks like every other title. Tripwire is only losing money by giving away their original game and providing these discounts but unlike Activision, Tripwire actually cares about things like making sure their fans are satisfied with what they get for the amount they pay.

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That is pre-order incentive done right. They are rewarding you for taking a gamble, as they should. Accepting anything less is the action of a hoodwinked idiot.]]> <![CDATA[True Crime is not dead!]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1360.html Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:35:15 +0000 OmarFW]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1360.html

True Crime, while being a series that attempts to capitalize on the success of GTA fairly blatantly, actually stands out in my mind more than GTA ever has (save for San Andreas). Both series are obviously similar but I consider them two different kinds of games in many ways so I don’t typically compare the two. I don’t consider True Crime necessarily better than GTA as it is much more confined than any GTA title but I consider it to be unique and great at what it does.

The recent shutdown of Luxoflux studios in 2010 meant the end of the long awaited third installment to the TC franchise, True Crime: Hong Kong and everyone at that point had said their goodbyes to the series.

However it has been taken up by United Front Games and the publishing rights have been bought by Square Enix. They did not however purchase the rights to use the True Crime name from Activision so this means it will most likely be published under a new name. Regardless of what they call it, I am happy to see this back in production. I can only hope that they stay true to the original formula that made True Crime one of the free roaming kings alongside GTA and Saints Row. With this recent change, the series is now quite literally a reboot rather than just a ‘long awaited sequel’.

Considering what it’s been through, the upcoming title has had very little publicity and even less gameplay footage and screenshots have been released. Without much to go on it’s hard to say if this title will come out solid but if they continue with the original ‘good cop bad cop’ formula there shouldn’t be much to worry about.

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True Crime, while being a series that attempts to capitalize on the success of GTA fairly blatantly, actually stands out in my mind more than GTA ever has (save for San Andreas). Both series are obviously similar but I consider them two different kinds of games in many ways so I don’t typically compare the two. I don’t consider True Crime necessarily better than GTA as it is much more confined than any GTA title but I consider it to be unique and great at what it does.

The recent shutdown of Luxoflux studios in 2010 meant the end of the long awaited third installment to the TC franchise, True Crime: Hong Kong and everyone at that point had said their goodbyes to the series.

However it has been taken up by United Front Games and the publishing rights have been bought by Square Enix. They did not however purchase the rights to use the True Crime name from Activision so this means it will most likely be published under a new name. Regardless of what they call it, I am happy to see this back in production. I can only hope that they stay true to the original formula that made True Crime one of the free roaming kings alongside GTA and Saints Row. With this recent change, the series is now quite literally a reboot rather than just a ‘long awaited sequel’.

Considering what it’s been through, the upcoming title has had very little publicity and even less gameplay footage and screenshots have been released. Without much to go on it’s hard to say if this title will come out solid but if they continue with the original ‘good cop bad cop’ formula there shouldn’t be much to worry about.

]]> <![CDATA[Mafia Games]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1355.html Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:28:02 +0000 MyDigitalpoint]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1355.html
I remember they were very popular some time ago, and the first time I heard about Facebook was through an invitation to play a Mafia game on site.

Today I don't see that game application and I have not heard anyone talking about those games so I wonder what happened with them.

Anyone here is enrolled in an online Mafia game? If so, which one?]]>
I remember they were very popular some time ago, and the first time I heard about Facebook was through an invitation to play a Mafia game on site.

Today I don't see that game application and I have not heard anyone talking about those games so I wonder what happened with them.

Anyone here is enrolled in an online Mafia game? If so, which one?]]> <![CDATA[Good Games for the Wii?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1316.html Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:52:48 +0000 teamtech]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1316.html <![CDATA[Does anybody play Tekken here?]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1311.html Sun, 07 Aug 2011 10:44:41 +0000 Cecil15]]> https://niftyhost.chary.us/support/thread-1311.html
So I am curious if you guys also play Tekken. Who's your favorite character and why? What version did you play?]]>
So I am curious if you guys also play Tekken. Who's your favorite character and why? What version did you play?]]>