A View From the Road: Unreasonably Dedicated
- Thread starter John Funk
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Basically Funk is saying that when I ask someone a favor and that someone asks me a favor in a later time, I should not help him/her because in this day and age it is more practical since it saves me time, effort, and money. I'm not saying that IW/Activision owes us, it's just that the features that were removed in MW2 are "staggering!". Most devs these days seem to forget that we(PC gamers) played the quakes, dooms, half-lifes(okay maybe not half-life, valve is awesome).
you make a good point, that its backwards, afterall, shouldnt IW be striving to make the game great in ALL aspects, not downgrading it because 'consoles make do without ded servers'MR T3D said:
I dunno, i actually played it, and the only thing i missed is the huge 20v20 matches, they were what made the experience for me, but really im happy with the fact that you dont have to put up with whinging servers special rules
The thing that put me off though is the MW player base...all they do is moan about camping or grenade launchers...right winds me up
I don't care what it concerns, the majority of consumers in the world will feel robbed if you take away anything that you once gave them. I have worked a number of customer service jobs where I had to inform customers that a bs "rewards" program that never offered any real benefits has changed slightly, in my experience (which is not to be considered exhaustive) maybe 7 of 10 people share some sense of wrongdoing on my behalf, probably 3 of those 7 are straight up salty about it. It isn't a matter of PC gamers' attitudes it is a matter of consumer attitude, which if you ask me we need more of from the console gamers. I'd get one but its just a bad idea, how do you people put up with the limited features (most consoles can do much more than is being done) and console failure rates? These companies need consumer feedback, even if it is in the form of a screaming mob with pitchforks because it is the companies ethical responsibility to be as profitable as possible, which means giving us the least they can get away with generally. In turn it has to be our ethical responsibility as consumers to demand more, unless you like shelling out money for inferior products.
So this article is basically telling me I should be happy whenever a developer decides to throw PC gamers a bone and make a shitty port of a console game. So us PC gamers should be happy that developers are even noticing us at all?
Fuck that, I say. Fuck that.
Its articles like this that make me thank Christ that companies like Blizzard exist.
Fuck that, I say. Fuck that.
Its articles like this that make me thank Christ that companies like Blizzard exist.
I find it odd that this response didn't happen with Gears of War 2. In that game Epic put in a terrible matchmaking service that didn't work and as a result everyone just walked away from that game. A vast majority of my friends list is made from people I met on Gears of War while hosting some non-ranked games and hence the vast majority, if not all, of my online friends were playing Gears of War 2 when it came out but only maybe one or two at anyone time were playing after a week had passed. Gears 2 also stopped you from being able to join hosted non-ranked games from a list, to get to these games you needed to join from a friend. Because of this it was nearly impossible to host a fully alive non-ranked game and even if you could you would not meet new gamers. Nobody made a fuss about this, though, and everyone just kind of walked away from the game without making a sound. In many ways it destroyed what I was looking forward to from the original in a similar way that the removal of dedicated servers has done for PC fans of CoD4.
It's strange that Gears of War 2 gets so little outcry while the Call of Duty issue gets so much. I think that the reason why this may be is a lack of change on the PC gaming front.
It doesn't take much to see that the consoles now are extremely different to the consoles of five years ago and how those were different to the consoles of ten years ago. Many things change, new things are put in and old things are removed. Some of the greatest changes are the Wii Remote, the inclusion of online multiplayer on all consoles, motion control, online stores like XBLA and PSN store, the use of disc's, the inclusion of HDD, technology increases and of course changes in games themselves. Games, in particular multiplayer games, differ greatly from one another and also from their own sequels. An example would be the Gears of War one above and Halo. Halo on the Xbox had no online multiplayer as Xbox Live wasn't available at launch, while Halo 2 had a fully functioning Matchmaking system unlike Halo or (to the best of my knowledge) any other game. However assuming that Halo one and two was PC exclusive it would be most likely that both games would have supplied simple server listings and apart from new maps and weapons, standard changes for a sequel, there would be no difference. Console games also differ quite a lot from each other in regards to how their multiplayer is handled. Rainbow Six Vegas has the ability to host a dedicated server while barely any other games have the same option. Many games have the ability to choose from a ranked or casual (non-ranked) game from a list while CoD4 puts you into a game and only allows you to play non-ranked games via invite, similar to Gears of War 2. More changes are on the way from games like MAG which plan to change it even further. The way that mutiplayer works in one game is very different to how multiplayer works in another game. I don't think that this exists on the PC.
Now, the gameplay elements obviously differ from each game. Doom is greatly different to every FPS coming out today and you are going to get a different experience from TF2 than from Quake 3. However the way that multiplayer is handled and controlled appears to not have changed over the past, what, 15 years nearly. Multiplayer is still handled over sever listings often with options to pick and choose what you want, ping, maps etc. This is a system that has proven to work well and has kind of resulted in 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality of many developers. When someone does try to change it outcry results.
The outcry isn't purely based from the fact that it's a change, there are a lot of other reasons, but the reason that this wouldn't gather so much attention on a console is because this change is expected. We expect for games to differ greatly in how multiplayer is handled in each game. Sometimes games change and bomb, sometimes they change and succeed, happens all the time. If a game fails than that's that and everyone stops carrying. PC games don't rock the multiplayer boat every often (not as IW is doing) so PC gamers aren't as used to having games fail in this regard and, for some reason, get very worked up about it.
I wouldn't necessarily call it entitlement, not for everyone anyway*. It's more a concern about the nature behind this change and what it will do for gaming. The truth is very little, I think.
*There are some people who believe that IW does owe PC gamers a better experience because they started on the PC. While it did start off with Call of Duty on the PC it's sequel scored better reviews and as far as I know performed better on the 360, encouraging CoD4 to be multiplatform, resulting in the massive popularity of CoD4 and making them all rich. They probably owe more to the 360 owners that bought it than the PC gamers that bought number one. Besides, saying that a developer owes something to the platform is stupid and only used as a convenience in an argument. Nobody claims that Epic and Bungie owe the PC gamers Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 because that's the platform those developers started out on because they probably don't care about those games.
It's strange that Gears of War 2 gets so little outcry while the Call of Duty issue gets so much. I think that the reason why this may be is a lack of change on the PC gaming front.
It doesn't take much to see that the consoles now are extremely different to the consoles of five years ago and how those were different to the consoles of ten years ago. Many things change, new things are put in and old things are removed. Some of the greatest changes are the Wii Remote, the inclusion of online multiplayer on all consoles, motion control, online stores like XBLA and PSN store, the use of disc's, the inclusion of HDD, technology increases and of course changes in games themselves. Games, in particular multiplayer games, differ greatly from one another and also from their own sequels. An example would be the Gears of War one above and Halo. Halo on the Xbox had no online multiplayer as Xbox Live wasn't available at launch, while Halo 2 had a fully functioning Matchmaking system unlike Halo or (to the best of my knowledge) any other game. However assuming that Halo one and two was PC exclusive it would be most likely that both games would have supplied simple server listings and apart from new maps and weapons, standard changes for a sequel, there would be no difference. Console games also differ quite a lot from each other in regards to how their multiplayer is handled. Rainbow Six Vegas has the ability to host a dedicated server while barely any other games have the same option. Many games have the ability to choose from a ranked or casual (non-ranked) game from a list while CoD4 puts you into a game and only allows you to play non-ranked games via invite, similar to Gears of War 2. More changes are on the way from games like MAG which plan to change it even further. The way that mutiplayer works in one game is very different to how multiplayer works in another game. I don't think that this exists on the PC.
Now, the gameplay elements obviously differ from each game. Doom is greatly different to every FPS coming out today and you are going to get a different experience from TF2 than from Quake 3. However the way that multiplayer is handled and controlled appears to not have changed over the past, what, 15 years nearly. Multiplayer is still handled over sever listings often with options to pick and choose what you want, ping, maps etc. This is a system that has proven to work well and has kind of resulted in 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality of many developers. When someone does try to change it outcry results.
The outcry isn't purely based from the fact that it's a change, there are a lot of other reasons, but the reason that this wouldn't gather so much attention on a console is because this change is expected. We expect for games to differ greatly in how multiplayer is handled in each game. Sometimes games change and bomb, sometimes they change and succeed, happens all the time. If a game fails than that's that and everyone stops carrying. PC games don't rock the multiplayer boat every often (not as IW is doing) so PC gamers aren't as used to having games fail in this regard and, for some reason, get very worked up about it.
I wouldn't necessarily call it entitlement, not for everyone anyway*. It's more a concern about the nature behind this change and what it will do for gaming. The truth is very little, I think.
*There are some people who believe that IW does owe PC gamers a better experience because they started on the PC. While it did start off with Call of Duty on the PC it's sequel scored better reviews and as far as I know performed better on the 360, encouraging CoD4 to be multiplatform, resulting in the massive popularity of CoD4 and making them all rich. They probably owe more to the 360 owners that bought it than the PC gamers that bought number one. Besides, saying that a developer owes something to the platform is stupid and only used as a convenience in an argument. Nobody claims that Epic and Bungie owe the PC gamers Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 because that's the platform those developers started out on because they probably don't care about those games.
So basically we're getting the shaft and this guy is saying "take it." Great editorial from the useless gaming press. It comes down to getting less for your money. That part's obvious. Then you have people like bobby kotick spouting off at the mouth about how they can milk folks for more money by mercilessly pumping out uninspired sequels; about how game development needs to have the fun taken out of it to whip production into shape for the sequel monster. They're telling us to pucker up, cause we're gonna nickle and dime you to death.
So we get mad. If you think that's shameful, can I get some of what you're smoking?
So we get mad. If you think that's shameful, can I get some of what you're smoking?
Though really how much public outcry is there for this? I haven't heard crap about it until I saw the article/forum posts here. I don't read any gaming mags but we all know how compromised they are anyhow, how many not-overly-impressionable gamers do you actually hear getting upset about this? This whole situation stinks of a synthetic issue to me.
and that is where mr. Funk gets it wrong.
If you want to get attention, you have to make yourself heared.
Not buying buy the game, without letting the games industry know why, is a the first step in making sure they will never learn why.
Detractors usually don't get what they want.
Stay quiet and you won't even be considered worth catering for, because all the publishers will know is: you're not buying their stuff.
People who shout stand a much better chance to get their way.
How the heck has this issue ended up turning into a console v's PC gaming issue ? It's pathetic. I have a PC, 360 and PS3, I buy a game based upon the strengths of each platform and which one I feel has the best version of any game.
For most FPS games with a strong online mode then that usually means I go for the PC version. But IW/Activision have basically decided to remove everything that is good about using the PC as a gaming platform from their game by striping out dedi's and mod support.
Oh, and maybe this is tinfoil hat time, but seriously I believe the real reason this is happenening is so that these features can be introduced on the consoles as a pay to play option. Whether it is in the future with MW2 or with the release of MW3 I think features such as dedicated servers (under complete control of IW/Activision) will return but at a cost.
There is already evidence that Activision are looking to turn CoD games into pay to play and I believe this is the first step. They need to strip dedicated servers and mod support away from the PC game so that they don't look like idiots when they reintroduce it with MW3 and ask us all to pay £10 / Month for it. This is about erasing the history of dedicated servers from the PC game so that the console players don't point fingers when they get charged for it and start demanding it for free like PC players used to get.
So rather than being an issue that divides console and PC gamer, this is something that we should be getting together to fight against. It is a certainty that other games developers are watching with interest and will follow Activisions lead, ID software are already doing this with RAGE. Is this what we want the future of gaming to be ? Where you go and buy some new FPS game at £60 for box, but then have to pay £10 / month for access to features such as dedicated servers and mods, plus you can bet they'll still charge ontop for premium content.
Lets stop fighting amongst ourselves and stop this before it is too late.
For most FPS games with a strong online mode then that usually means I go for the PC version. But IW/Activision have basically decided to remove everything that is good about using the PC as a gaming platform from their game by striping out dedi's and mod support.
Oh, and maybe this is tinfoil hat time, but seriously I believe the real reason this is happenening is so that these features can be introduced on the consoles as a pay to play option. Whether it is in the future with MW2 or with the release of MW3 I think features such as dedicated servers (under complete control of IW/Activision) will return but at a cost.
There is already evidence that Activision are looking to turn CoD games into pay to play and I believe this is the first step. They need to strip dedicated servers and mod support away from the PC game so that they don't look like idiots when they reintroduce it with MW3 and ask us all to pay £10 / Month for it. This is about erasing the history of dedicated servers from the PC game so that the console players don't point fingers when they get charged for it and start demanding it for free like PC players used to get.
So rather than being an issue that divides console and PC gamer, this is something that we should be getting together to fight against. It is a certainty that other games developers are watching with interest and will follow Activisions lead, ID software are already doing this with RAGE. Is this what we want the future of gaming to be ? Where you go and buy some new FPS game at £60 for box, but then have to pay £10 / month for access to features such as dedicated servers and mods, plus you can bet they'll still charge ontop for premium content.
Lets stop fighting amongst ourselves and stop this before it is too late.
I get what your saying but it's not just the whole dedicated server rage. Infinity Ward also pushed the price up for a game thats only 5-6 hours long. Even if you buy it just for singleplayer it's a bit steep. Also the piracy thing, the XBox version of MW2 was on torrent sites a week before the official release date but everyone has the PC set firmly in their crosshairs as the only platform that pirates games. Why is it whenever people talk about piracy they only mention PC Games?
When people vote with their wallets and not buy a game, the publisher or developer will ultimately blame piracy for lackluster sales.
They will never consider they made poor decisions or should meet consumer demands, telling people to screw off if they don't like it while at the same time crying about a shrinking market.
It also looks like some people in the gaming media seem to keep telling gamers to shut up or "get used to it" too whenever a publisher gets more and more greedy and takes away something gamers have always enjoyed and/or selling it back to them for extra money on top of a full priced game. Look at what's happend in just the last 10 years:
-typical gaming releases
-pc games get expansions
-consoles go online
-console online services offer free DLC as a bonus for paying for the service and game
-post release DLC begins to cost money
-DLC begins to increase in volume and cost
-DLC comes sooner and sooner after release
-fewer pc expansion packs released
-Day-one DLC, meaning content was created and witheld to be sold for more money (sims 3 and dragon age)
-tools and options removed from PC gaming that have always been available. (Starcraft 2 and MW2)
And what do we have to look forward to based on what publishers tell us?
-no more expansions, just smaller and more frequent DLC "episodes" that end up costing more money
-centralized multiplayer that takes away choices from gamers
-shrinking singpleplayer experience in full priced retail release so DLC can be sold to "extend game life and replayability"
-subscription based releases that are not MMOs
And we're told to just deal with it? I say let the corporates crumble, we need more risk and originality in games, not titles with growing numbers on the end, snowballing corporate greed and more washed out grey/brown "realism". People will always exist that want to create games, and smaller developers can actually compete in the industry again without being forced to focus on graphics engines and "safe" moneymakers by a CEO that is more interested in share holders than the game.
They will never consider they made poor decisions or should meet consumer demands, telling people to screw off if they don't like it while at the same time crying about a shrinking market.
It also looks like some people in the gaming media seem to keep telling gamers to shut up or "get used to it" too whenever a publisher gets more and more greedy and takes away something gamers have always enjoyed and/or selling it back to them for extra money on top of a full priced game. Look at what's happend in just the last 10 years:
-typical gaming releases
-pc games get expansions
-consoles go online
-console online services offer free DLC as a bonus for paying for the service and game
-post release DLC begins to cost money
-DLC begins to increase in volume and cost
-DLC comes sooner and sooner after release
-fewer pc expansion packs released
-Day-one DLC, meaning content was created and witheld to be sold for more money (sims 3 and dragon age)
-tools and options removed from PC gaming that have always been available. (Starcraft 2 and MW2)
And what do we have to look forward to based on what publishers tell us?
-no more expansions, just smaller and more frequent DLC "episodes" that end up costing more money
-centralized multiplayer that takes away choices from gamers
-shrinking singpleplayer experience in full priced retail release so DLC can be sold to "extend game life and replayability"
-subscription based releases that are not MMOs
And we're told to just deal with it? I say let the corporates crumble, we need more risk and originality in games, not titles with growing numbers on the end, snowballing corporate greed and more washed out grey/brown "realism". People will always exist that want to create games, and smaller developers can actually compete in the industry again without being forced to focus on graphics engines and "safe" moneymakers by a CEO that is more interested in share holders than the game.
Wake up, Funk. We're not demanding anything special.
What we're demanding is a simple dedicated server browser and advanced user console. These things have been in PC gaming since Counter-Strike 1.4 (or earlier? I don't know before then) and aren't at all hard to implement. But will we get these simple things? Absolutely not, as long as Bobby Kotick can try to squeeze out a $15/month subscription fee from us in the near future.
If smug douchebags like you weren't writing articles bolstering Infinity Ward's position on the internet purely for the attention value (after all, you get noticed a lot easier by going against the crowd), it's possible that people who know nothing about PC gaming would be able to sympathize with us instead of wrongfully thinking we're demanding too much from IW.
If you well and truly are a PC gamer as I am, I hope you enjoy your 200ms minimum on IWNet and see how broken the PC version of MewTwo really is.
What we're demanding is a simple dedicated server browser and advanced user console. These things have been in PC gaming since Counter-Strike 1.4 (or earlier? I don't know before then) and aren't at all hard to implement. But will we get these simple things? Absolutely not, as long as Bobby Kotick can try to squeeze out a $15/month subscription fee from us in the near future.
If smug douchebags like you weren't writing articles bolstering Infinity Ward's position on the internet purely for the attention value (after all, you get noticed a lot easier by going against the crowd), it's possible that people who know nothing about PC gaming would be able to sympathize with us instead of wrongfully thinking we're demanding too much from IW.
If you well and truly are a PC gamer as I am, I hope you enjoy your 200ms minimum on IWNet and see how broken the PC version of MewTwo really is.
The one flaw in this argument is that Infinity Ward didn't remove a feature when the introduced IWNet, they made that a feature and presented it as something better, it would have been easier to just make dedicated servers like the last game, but oh no.
My good sir, I welcome you to a world whhere the gaming industry is led by publishers who only have profit at heart and don't give a toss about the art form, rather than the developers, the geniuses who make the f*cking games! With each passing day, I support Valve more and more in the idea of players paying for the development of a game via preorders, rather than developers having to beg publishers for support. The publishers (In this case Activision) are the real reason gaming is turning into a profit industry, rather than the art form it once was!mark_t50 said:
matrix3509 said:
Whistler777 said:
Show me where I said that the current implementation is better than dedicated servers. Show me where I said that it wasn't worth complaining to IW about the removal of features.xDarc said:
But nobody has actually addressed the idea of "Why do we deserve what is far and away the best version of the game? Why should IW make its console audience clearly inferior to their PC overlords?"
That's the issue I take umbrage with, and the thing that ticks me off - the refusal to recognize that there are many more millions who will be buying this game for 360 and PS3. Why don't we ask all the people who bought TF2 for 360 how it feels to be clearly treated as second-class citizens, hmm?
Nobody has addressed it because you came out and said you were ashamed of pc gamers and to lose the attitude when we had every reason to be pissed off. Your loaded question was not at the forefront of my mind when responding to you. It's not about deserving to be superior. It's about some greedy god damn company taking away what has been a cornerstone feature since the relative renaissance age of FPS gaming.CantFaketheFunk said:
Consoles were always behind the curve. They should aspire to catch the fuck up. Not drag everyone else back down to their level when it's convenient for a publisher's pocketbook.
It's like this. If the companies who made toilet paper suddenly started trying to sell you a bag of leaves to wipe your ass with and it caught on... would you call those of us who still had to have toilet paper elitists? Too good for everyone else to give that broad bodied maple leaf a few passes across the ol angry spider?
No! Because even Ray Charles can see progress... or at least smell it.
Instead of asking me why I feel I must be superior to console gamers, ask why it's ok for developers to milk something like the 360 for around five years so that it doesn't require them to innovate- only regurgitate. Is it ok because more people play console now? I don't really see how it makes a difference.
Progress is what it is, it isn't fair- and you shouldn't hold it back just because a bunch of people want to wipe their ass with foilage.
Okay I'll bite. PC gamers "deserve" the best version of a game for two reasons.CantFaketheFunk said:
1) We have always, always have had more tools at our disposal. To not use these tools out of some misguided sense of egalitarianism is straight up retarded.
2) There is a commonly used phrase here at the Escapist when these kinds of issues rear their heads. That phrase happens to be: "Pandering to the lowest common denominator."
I shouldn't really have to say anything more here. Just because consoles don't have these clearly superior tools doesn't mean some lazy-ass corporation should be able to take these tools away from the PC crowd.
Oh how I revile "pandering to the lowest common denominator". It says a lot when "mouse and keyboard support, support for higher resolutions and text chat" are considered added features for which we should be grateful. Ha!matrix3509 said:
We have every right to be angry when we're offered up a crappy direct port of a console game, because it shows the developers made no effort whatsoever to differentiate their product for the PC market - it's a great big "screw you PC-gamers!". Should our version be 'better'? Not necessarily, but it damn well better be differentiated in some way that capitalizes on the specific advantages the PC platform offers or we will rightly call it a crappy direct port, because that's what it is. We can thank direct console ports for contrived 'save points' on the PC where we can usually just save bloody anywhere because hey, we all have hard-drives by bloody default. We can thank direct console ports for blurry low res textures that the community had to improve themselves, even though the texture memory limitations and lower operating resolutions of the console hardware are not intrinsic to the PC platform. I could do this all bloody day.
The long and short of it is thus: Developers can get away with a barebones port if the game is bloody awesome anyways, but otherwise it doesn't really pass muster because consoles and PCs are not the same, and the limitations the console platform places on games developed for it often make absolutely no sense whatsoever when transplanted onto the PC. At best it's failing to capitalize on an opportunity, at worst it's a great big upraised middle finger in our direction. This scenario is clearly the middle finger one, as there's such a thing as "par for the course". Removing mod and dedicated server support from the PC version of MW2 makes it demonstrably worse than the lion's share of FPS titles currently out on the PC - that IW tried to spin this like it was somehow a benefit is the truly insulting part, since it's total and utter bullcrap.
We know we're not the dominant market force. We know that we're not your primary target audience. But you are trying to sell us games still, no? Then that gives us the right to expect you aren't going to gut titles of long standing industry standard features in favor of crappy console-centric substitutes that make no bloody sense* on the PC platform, since, you know, you'd actually like us to buy them.
The PC is not a homogeneous entity, with machines running the gamut from astonishingly terrible to freaking amazing, but only the most fanatical of fanboys will argue that a high-end PC isn't in fact superior (from a technical standpoint at least) to a console - the nature of the platform means it has capabilities the console platforms don't. Games that don't take advantage of those features are one thing, but sequels that cut platform specific features the previous games all had? There is just no call for that.
[small]*Of course that's not really true, since the obvious purpose behind stripping dedicated server and mod support from the PC version is to forcefeed us DLC by removing the option to make our own damn content and play with whoever we want to on the maps of our choosing, which makes plenty of sense if you're a soulless marketing drone. Nobody in their right mind will argue that it makes sense from a technical standpoint though.[/small]
Why stop there when you have games like Fallout 3 to cite? But of course this is stupid - how on earth is the solution to "Oh noes, consoles can't support all the cool mods the community makes/Microsoft won't let Valve release all the cool content updates they make without charging for it" going to be "We should just remove all those features from the PC then, now the poor benighted console owners can feel great knowing they've dragged everyone else down to second-class citizen status, huzzah!"?CantFaketheFunk said:
Your entire complaint is ludicrous - sure, console gamers may rightly feel snubbed on the TF2 front (raise hell with Microsoft on that one folks!), but the existence of that content on the PC side isn't why they don't have it. This is not a case where developers made the console version worse so the PC version could be better - they are not withholding you content because they love their PC brethren more and want you to suffer in envy: the limitations of your platform preclude them from providing it to you (again, thank Microsoft for that). Rather than just not give anyone new free stuff, they choose to release it on the platform that allows them to give that stuff away for free. It sucks to be you, but there's no logical reason to punish PC gamers equally for the sins of the console gatekeepers.
This is not a zero-sum game - the only ones who lose when PC-specific features are cut are the PC gamers, because the console title was never going to have those features anyways, and now nobody has them. Things like mod support and free content updates from developers who have their heads somewhere other than jammed up their hindquarters are specific competitive advantages of the PC platform, and not a whole lot to ask considering how many titles are given no more than the most cursory of ports, if they even make it onto the PC in the first place. It would be wonderful if consoles had those features too - and with the various advances made, there are less and less technical reasons they couldn't - but they don't.
Sucks to be them.
Would you complain that somebody with a high-end home theater system was receiving a "better audio-visual experience" than your crappy old TV and DVD-player could provide you, and suggest that the superior hardware should play the same crappy quality level you get on your low-end setup? You're a second-class citizen - the movie studios clearly care more about the people with expensive Blu-Ray players and home theaters! There are so many more people who only have DVD-players! Why should they all feel left out by the superior quality the way the hell more expensive systems provide, where's the justice?!
Seriously, if that analogy hasn't hammered home how stupid that whole argument is, nothing will.
You hit the nail on the head here. This is Activision's main goal with the removal of modding tools and dedicated servers. Just the mere fact that they are taking away one of the most attractive features of their past games is insulting enough. But trying to pass off these exclusions as a plus? Do they really think PC users are all as stupid as their normal consumer base? There are deliberately handicapping the replayability of their game and then trying to pass it off as a feature. I could come up with an almost endless number of games that have been going strong for over a decade on the strength of the community alone. But of course long lasting games are not at all what Activision is after. They have long since discovered that they can offer less and less content for ever increasing prices and get away with it, because most (not all) gamers will sell their own mothers into slavery if it meant continuing their hobby.Gildan Bladeborn said: