Caliostro said:
I honestly don't know what you're talking about because, as I said earlier, I'm a fairly new fan to the franchise. That said, and while I'd despise something like what you mentioned, I'll still take it to simply selling half a game for over the normal full price with no prospects of having the other half fixed(i.e: MWII).
Dice offered up a lot of DLC such as maps, guns and what have you/ However the guns available through DLC were much better than the guns with the game. People who bought the DLC could play with those that didn't so obviously a balance issue was there. As BF games are extremely competitive and often find themselves played by clans everyone would have had to get the DLC if they wanted to be on an even playing field. As an all online game you can expect for essentially everyone to buy those guns. They were essentially planning to nickle and dim every single person that bought that game. How you could prefer that is beyond me.
Matchmaking as an option is ok, as a replacement to server browsers it can burn in hell as it's just plain inefficient. I personally dislike Matchmaking with every fiber I have, but then again I seem to be one of the rare few (sadly) to whom a menu isn't something mind shatteringly complex.
Why? Matchmaking finds me a game (in CoD4) in under 20 seconds. This time is actually a Godsend as it always me to check my classes are adapted to the gametype, putting Bomb Squad on for S&D for example. The games are always balanced enough. One thing a friend has brought up is that on his sever Spetznaz or OpFor almost always wins because the new comers always choose 'the good guys' leaving the more experienced players to group up on the other team. Matchmaking doesn't have this problem and you if you are bad at the game you will join games with other people who are bad. Good and you have other good players. In the Call of Duty 4 beta there was a 'True skill' shown next to your level. This skill would determine who played against who. I never found people with vastly different true skills playing together, unless they partied. The party system is another thing which you either don't know about or don't care. It allows for friends to play together in a game and keeps clans and what have you strong. Despite this I have never seen a party with different skill levels enter a game in which some are too weak or some are too strong. It seems to balance everything out perfectly. If you have a problem with parties in matchmaking you can go with Mercenary gametypes anyway.
I will grant you that the choice is somewhat gone, true, but the choice was never really there on the PC anyway. While you could choose whatever sever you wanted, you tend to favourite a few servers and hang around with those. You don't really have a choice concerning the maps on those servers. In the matchmaking system you can vote away a map that comes up, while you have to play the map that comes up after it, you will most likely get a map that you like. If you find yourself not liking a lot of the maps than I wonder why you are playing the game anyway. Another good thing about matchmaking is that you don't have to worry about the server being filled.
That said, when it's all said and done you guys are still playing in a downgraded PC basically. Not to mention that for the most part you don't have dedicated servers, you've just been conditioned to "take it". Having to pay memberships to play online, half-baked controller systems, half the content for full price, higher prices...etc.
In the BF:BC example it was the consoles getting the DLC and it was the consoles that changed that fact. Console gamers haven't been conditioned to 'Take it', at least not anymore so than PC gamers. While consoles do have some faults, I'm not ignoring that, these faults are so minimal that they don't have any real effect on the gaming experience or the quality. While things would be better if they were cheaper you can't just demand for things to be cheaper, services cost money to perform. Kind of like in WoW in which you have to pay $15 (here anyway) a month to play their game. WoW costs more per year than Xbox Live does (and the PS3 is free don't forget) but you wouldn't say that the WoW players are just 'taking it'. Servers cost money to run, people need to be fed and it would make sense for an MMO to constantly charge a fee. Don't forget that PC games are constantly requiring new technology. While it's possible to be ahead of the curve for two years or so eventually the tech will catch up to you and you have to buy something else. I don't see many PC gamers going 'no, this is bullshit, I refuse to buy a new graphics card. How about you PC developers work to improve the limitations of an older series than moving onto a new one'. Nope, it seems to me that quite often PC gamers are too happy to 'take it' from all sorts of groups.
I don't see a problem with controllers, in fact I find them better than the mouse and keyboard combo. Controllers have been designed with gaming in mind while the mouse and keyboard has not. While I admit that both has their advantages and disadvantageous and that those depend on the person, the term half-baked is the wrong to use. if anything the M&K is half-baked as it has had no though put into it as far as gaming is concerned.
I have no idea what you mean by half the content, especially judging from the crappy PC ports of some games (no one 'stands up' to them, ehh). Some games play better on the PC, sure, but that's the nature of the platform. Some games perform better on the console, which is also the nature of the platform. This is being fixed by some developers such as Bioware who appear to have made DA:O as good on the consoles as it has on the PC, to the best of their ability. And getting a console port of a better PC game isn't 'taking it' from Microsoft or Song, it's not taking it from companies such as Nvidia or Radeon who want you to buy their technology and developers who expect for you to buy their games twice.
PC games are cheaper, but by very little. In the grand scheme of things however it is cheaper to not have a PC and game on a console than to game on a PC with no console. A PC can do more things so it gets a bit grey when comparing price against worth.
I honestly don't care much for lean, but it's another example of cutting content for no good reason.
You don't know that the content is being cut for no good reason. The game may well play better this way, as I said earlier. They wouldn't take things out to go 'screw you PC gamers', it would be easier to not worry about throwing in a matchmaking service. They're doing this for a reason.
Another example of being conditioned to take it. Your standard price there is 120 bucks due to shipping issues AND BECAUSE YOU TAKE IT. If tomorrow Australian gamers said "fuck you, we're not buying any games till you price them decently" the price would fall faster than Michael Atkinson's approval ratings as of late.
No, the reason for the price is because of a lack of competition. You don't think that Australia prints it's own games, that only America has the technology to put things on a DVD? Games and consoles here use PAL not NTSC so we would have to get the games printed either in Europe, Asia or here. I'm pretty sure that it's printed here, I actually heard of a printing company going under. Anyway, standing up and not taking the price increase wont do anything in the long run. It may lower prices for a short while but eventually they'll go back again. Would piracy be the better issue? What's actually happening is stores like JB Hi-Fi and Game are selling games for the price they should be around, seventy and eighty. It depends on the game really, with popular titles going for a little bit more, but the general trend is a drop in prices.
I find it odd that you expect not buying games will lower the shipping costs though.
Off course people will buy it. Your average person is much like a magpie, they'll buy anything shiny. Worse even is that there will be people who feel like they're taking the fat corporate dick straight up their backs and will STILL buy it. You know why? Because we're pussies! 60 years ago if a company of ANY kind pulled this kind of shit one of two things would happen: Best case scenario they'd be hailed as the spawn of Satan in the community and nobody would touch their products until a public formal apology was issued, or, worse case scenario angry people would show up at their offices wondering if they were trying to pull a fast one on them. But we're not those people. We can't be fucked being inconvenienced now due to principles. "what's that? we're being totally ripped off?... Now I'm SO angry I'm going to blog about it! right after I pick up my preorder!".
I didn't say that the game will sell, I said that it would be good. There is a difference. As I said before, I trust that IW will not go out of their way to make the game bad. You don't profit from making a game bad and no developer tries to make a bad game. Also, 'people', can think for themselves. if the game is bad it will do poorly, obviously sales from the first game will encourage people to buy it, but that's because a past track record indicates that it will do well. A football team will buy a new player based on how good he is at football, not based on how attractive he is. It's possible that a footballer has a good past record and is attractive and then fails when put on the new team, so then the player will be fired. Gamers would act the same way, if the game sucks, than they would dispose of it and future sequel sales will plummet.
I would imagine that if a company 60 years ago took dedicated servers out of their video games people would be wondering how they lost track of technology and would most likely be confused and not care. Besides, you don't know how people would act then and this hardly translates. I would imagine that if a product left something out all that would happen is that it wouldn't sell. People probably wouldn't have had the sense of entitlement that we have now and expect that the world, or game developers, owe them something. As people want to sell their wares it seems most likely that if they did take something it would have to be replaced so that people would still want to buy it, kind of like I said before.
As for trusting developers. This is Activision. Bobby Kotick's Activision. The man who basically said he doesn't give two shits about making good games, he just wants commercially successful games. He doesn't care about what makes a good game, and he makes a point of forcing that view on his employees. He wants profit. He'd sell you crack cocaine if it was legal.
First of all, Infinity ward is
developing this game, not Activision. Second of all, Bobby Kotick wants games that sell and good games sell, bad games don't. Hence it makes perfect sense that MW2 will be just as good if not better than it was before.
I think that this argument boils down to the similar argument concerning Teken 6 and FFXII. Play Station fans who paid an additional amount for their console so that they can play those games have had that additional cost and time spent arguing on forums wasted. Essentially, they aren't getting what they feel they deserve. It is the same thing here. PC gamers spent more money and maybe more time into their platform are getting the same experience as those who spent less in both accounts. PC gamers feel like they deserve a better experience than those lowly console dwellers and when that doesn't come around they get pissed off. This attitude of people feeling that the deserve something most likely did not exist 6o years ago, judging by the way people complain about it.
But because I feel like I have better things to do then defend IW I'm going to go devils advocate on my own post and suggest that the only reason why matchmaking is in place is so that IW can release DLC such as maps and make a little bit extra money. It would make sense, the one map pack on CoD4 was the most downloaded item on Xbox Live for a short while or so I am told and the CoD:WaW packs sold very well too. Activision wants money as said above so maybe they view this as a good way to make an extra what, 20 million assuming it sells for five bucks. Maybe more. Plus I don't think that Microsoft or Sony take a chunk from that.
I feel like I've gone full circle with my post and figure that I had might as well completely change what I said to start with (kind of). I like paid for DLC, hell I love it. When a game is good that DLC sells well. This extra boost of money encourages the publisher to put trust in the developer resulting in another great game. This extra money helps the developer make a better game, either by allowing for more staff to be hired, getting a writer, getting access to better technology, more voice actors etc. It also results in us getting new content. It has the potential to misused however, such as in BF:BC, Resident Evil 5 and Gears of War 2. In all of these cases however it has failed or at least didn't reach it's goal and I have a feeling that in the future we will see more DLC along the lines of what Bethesda, Rockstar and Bioware are contributing. Additional content that you don't need but is well worth the price without the intention of making a quick buck.
Apology for breaking the post up into smaller chunks. It was just easier that way.
Phew. That might have been the longest post I have ever made. I really didn't want to spend that much time defending a company but of well.
I wonder how many people are going to read this? Very few I'd imagine.
EDIT: It just hit midnight here meaning that MW2 is actually out. I'll probably be buying it 36 hours from now. I'm not that excited about it but I'd imagine that it would be a fun game and one that I will proudly have in my collection. DA:O will still my attention however.
