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Of course, they debate and not fight, lol
It's just weird, that it's on this thread and not a more... Appropriate one... At least because of the title, lol
[font=courier][color=#FF0000]Tech[/color][/font]
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Go read the TESB crawl, it specifically says, Freedom Fighters, led by Luke.
Yes, blaster is his go to, but that doesn't mean he didn't train.
I'm not against Rey being instinctual. Like I said, you're right, she's a main character. I just don't believe people hold Luke to a lower standard. Though I do believe there are people who want to make Rey better than Luke.
He got one hit in and it was a glance on Vader's shoulder. I wouldn't say that put him close to what Rey did after two days.
Now, while I do believe Luke would've trained during that 3 years, I would have to say Rey at least trained with a melee weapon often before realizing she used the force. I doubt Luke trained with a melee weapon before he met Obi-Wan.
There are many ways to lead. Mon Mothma leads the entire rebellion, she's not on the front lines. Leia leads the resistance, she's not getting into fist fights.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Yes, but going by what you said and what the movie shows us, the movie out right says Luke is leading them.
"Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice planet of Hoth."
Now, the story tells you right there, Luke has gone from X-Wing pilot who destroyed the Death Star, to a leader of freedom fighters and set up the Hoth base.
It does not say, he's the leader of a small group of pilots.
That's going by your own thought that it has to be spelled out in the movies. Which, it's spelled out right there. Luke is leading them in a pretty big way.
I have not once contested that Luke led this group of freedom fighters. It never says -how- Luke led them.
For all we know Luke only led the establishment of the base on Hoth, something that requires no fighting.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
So leaves him plenty of time to train?
Hunt for food.
And that group was a huge group with all those ships.
We still have no way of knowing if Luke even attempted further training in the way of the force on his own. There's not a line of dialogue to indicate that he did. Given how much he wanted to learn from Yoda it's likely that he believed that only a Jedi could teach him and that he'd be foolish to try by himself. Be kinda like trying to teach yourself Boxing completely on your own after having a couple of hours of a boxer tell you about the importance of footwork. Like, completely on your own no looking it up online, no watching videos, no reading about it, just knowing that Boxers were good fighters who use boxing gloves.
"There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser!" So probably not much hunting, they probably brought food with them. I don't even think tauntauns are native to the planet. According to Wookieepedia they are, but who knows if that information is canon anymore.
It's doubtful all the rebels we see on Hoth were sent to establish the base. Likely it was a smaller number just to get set up then everyone else came afterwards. But who knows at this point.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Back on thread topic: How about Atlas? Think that company counts as AAA?
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
Well, didn't TLJ go and show us all the rebels together in one group?
I'd say it was canon for when the film was released. Sure, Disney could change it NOW.
Hiding out on Hoth, nothing to do, time to get a little self training in with the blast helmet and floating ball.
I don't recall TLJ showing us much of the rebels.
It might have been, in the movie there's no way of knowing if Tauntauns were native to the world, given that they die at night I'd say that they're probably not? But they might huddle together at night for warmth.
The ball and helmet were found on the falcon, Han was off dealing with some bounty hunters prior to being on Hoth (he says so in the movie) so unless Luke took the ball with him (I assume x-wing helmets have their own blast shielding) he wouldn't be able to train with it.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
And what would The Last Jedi have to say about Hoth and whether or not Luke was able to train between A New Hope and The Emjpire Strikes Back?
Not that I have a bacterium in this culture either way; it just seems that a TLA got swapped with TRI and neither of you noticed...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I don't follow a lot of gaming companies except for the game that I currently play, and even then not really. What did or does Atlas do?
Atlas is a publisher, most notable I believe for the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I did make mention that I didn't recall TLJ having anything to do with the rebels.
Also TLA and TRI? I'm drawing a blank on either of those.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
No, the game Atlas, made by Wildcard.
The people that made Ark: Survival Evolved.
Atlas is currently in Early Access on Steam, but it turns out it's just a DLC for Ark, packaged separately so people with the Ark Season Pass don't get it.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
So not the company Atlas. Like you said. But a game called Atlas made by not a company called Atlas. Right.
ARK Survival had a bunch of issues while in development. Most notably having paid DLC while the game was still in Early Access.
They're indy devs, definitely not AAA.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Brand X mentioned it; I couldn't tell if your reference to that was based on any more or less knowledge than I had.
TLA=Three Letter Acronym, and TRI=Three Random Initials. My theory is that Brand X (unless I'm completely off base with this theory) typed the wrong three letters, and that another movie (Empire Strikes Back, maybe?) was intended.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
The Last Jedi, they talked about all those ships and people were all that was left of the rebels (though they did have allies out there).
Seeing as how that was all the rebels of TLJ, I see no reason not to believe that what we saw on Hoth wasn't all the rebels hiding out there.
Rebels generally seem to be a rather small group compared to what the Empire has to offer.
Considering the rebels left Hoth to reuinite with the Rebel fleet (which had ships not seen on Hoth) I'm going to go out on a limb and say that wasn't the entire rebellion.
Also Merry Xmas forum peeps!
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I remember playing Nocturne and the Digital Devil Saga games, which Nocturne was amazing and DDS was kinda 'meh'.
You're right.
That still leaves Luke leading them on Hoth.
I'd still say he self trained in those three years to some extent. Also, with his fight with Vader, he got a glancing blow against someone actively trying not to kill him. I wouldn't call that people holding Luke to a lower standard.
Which is what I disagree with you on. Totally agree Rey is main character, so skills up the wazoo are generally par for the course.
Daisy's acting, bad writing, and the current times is the reason for lots of Rey hate imo.
Also, Merry Christmas.
People claim a bunch of unfounded stuff about Rey.
"She's not a trained fighter!"
"She's never flown before!"
"She just suddenly uses a force technique without being trained!"
Which actually do apply to Luke and then some.
Luke isn't a trained fighter and does well against a much better opponent.
Luke has only flown an air speeder and yet takes part in a battle against a battlestation in a much more complicated vehicle in an environment he's not familiar with.
And lastly Luke uses a force power without being trained in it and should have no idea such a thing was even possible.
And yet Rey is the character that is a Mary Sue and not Luke. Even though the complaints against Rey more apply to Luke.
I don't find her acting or the writing of the new movies bad. Especially when compared to the prequels. The current times I'll agree with as some folks seem to think "It stars a woman = bad" or that having women and/or minorities in something makes it political. On the latter note somehow actively not having women or minorities in something -isn't- political to the same people. Enforcing the status quo is still a political stance, making something apolitical (as difficult as that would be) is still, by definition, a political stance.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Luke is said to be a pilot already in ANH. "I'm not such a bad pilot myself." spoken to Han. So, we get told already he's a capable pilot.
Rey just gets in and takes off.
Luke gets basic and not much else from Obi-Wan, then gets a 3 year gap. Luke didn't show any fighting skills in ANH.
Obi-Wan again gave him a bit of a lesson on the MF on the way to the DS. Then as a force ghost, "Let go Luke." "Use the force Luke." For his shot.
Rey knew the MF was a piece of junk. But it's made out she went in it enough times to know what the previous owner did with it.
Rey is shown fighting with the staff. So we know she has some sort of melee skill (I felt the scene felt more like blindly hitting at things with a stick, than real training, but hey go with it).
It's the Force Abilities that Rey just pops off with. Tell me when you see Luke really use Force abilities like that in 2 days.
The prequels were not bad. Bad dialogue, but they weren't bad.
As for the political aspect of something. I don't agree. I think most people can tell when it's a matter of being political or not.
For instance, while some may have scoffed at the idea of the woman kicking all the ass of bigger males (which being an action movie, come on, give leeway to just kick ass action) who are supposed to be well trained themselves, I don't recall hearing "This movie has a female lead because of politics" when it came to Atomic Blonde and Peppermint.
Not to mention, they promoted TLJ as a political statement. They did it all over with Rose. "Asian representation in SW! We never did it before!" Nevermind, Asians are an Earth only thing, so it was just about getting an Asian face on the screen and mostly for the Asian countries and less Asian American's (5% of the pop and all) as they wanted to improve SW following in Asian countries.
So yeah, pay attention to their press releases, watch the movies, listen to them promote it, you get an idea of it.
And back to the TLJ, it's the worst written of all the SW movies. Sorry, but it went back and forth on everything...
Holdo self sacrifice to save them all? YAY! Bravest thing ever!
Finn self sacrifice to save them all? NO! That's not what you do!
However, I agreed with you. Never called Rey a Mary Sue. I just disagree with Luke held to lower standard. Sorry. He had three years of leading rebels to train. Rey had two days. You're holding Rey up, when compared to Luke, when Luke even had Yoda train him.
Going to slightly disagree, but in fairness there's context. Just after Ben dies, suddenly Luke is a super marksman with a pistol. At the 1:30:30 mark on the Silver Screen edition, Luke squeezes off 4-5 shots, 3 of which are shown landing accurately. Han even notices and tells him to "Blast the door kid!" Plotwise this keeps Vader from getting in the way of their escape. AND it certainly doesn't carry over into the skirmish with the TIE fighters. Overall this burst of ability only lasts 30 seconds of screentime. (At least in the original film.)
Yeah, Luke brags that he's not such a bad pilot and said that he's flown an air speeder later in the movie. So he's never flown a space ship, let alone a starfighter, and they let him participate in the battle with the death star? This is like someone who knows how to drive a car being given a jet fighter.
Rey on the other hand knows the Millennium Falcon. She knows where the turrets are, she knows how to start it, she knows where and what mods were installed, and we know she's flown before by her stating that she has flown before but never off world. So Rey flies a familiar craft in a familiar environment.
Rey fights 2-3 dudes and does so well that someone who thought she needed help stops and doesn't help because he sees she's got this.
Rey learned force abilities by reading them from Kylo and being subjected to them herself. Kylo lifts her with the force, knocks her out with the force (affecting her mind), then tries to pull information from her with the force (affecting her mind). After learning she has the same kind of power as Kylo she attempted using this power, all she has to do is do the same thing she did to Kylo when she read his mind (more or less) and after a couple of failed attempts she succeeded. Then later she moves a lightsaber with the force and is very surprised she succeeded.
Asians are an earth only thing? You do realise these movies are made on earth right? You might as well say that white people are an earth only thing. There's also no space england either and yet people have english accents in space. And people complained about Holdo's hair even though it's starwars which has red people, blue people, and green people but purple hair is too far for some. Also a company doing something for money (the asian market is huge) isn't political, it's what companies do.
And yeah, Holdo's sacrifice took out a bunch of ships and crippled the First Order's capital ship, Finn would have just died. Also their reasons for sacrificing themselves were very different. Throwing your life away, pointlessly, as a means of redemption isn't a good thing.
Never said that you claimed Rey was a Mary Sue, I don't know why you feel the need to mention that if it doesn't apply to you. You keep bringing up the two days thing and she had two days to train for what? Lifting some rocks? Fighting a bunch of dudes? Cause that's about all she did post training. Fighting a bunch of dudes is something weve seen her do before so now that she's more attuned to the force, more confident in her abilities, with not much holding her back any more there's no reason she shouldn't do well there. Then she lifted some rocks not really a Herculean task considering Luke was able to lift a bunch of rocks (while doing a one handed handstand) after a short time with Yoda. And Rey is supposed to be like, frighteningly powerful in the force like Kylo "I can stop a blasterbolt mid shot" Ren is.
And the prequels are terrible. Palpatine's plan makes no sense, you can skip The Phantom Menace and miss nothing, most of Attack if the Clones is boring as all heck, Anakin's heel turn in RotS makes no sense, most of the acting is terrible, most of the dialogue is terrible, people do things that make no sense for their character, some of the effects are really bad even for the time and it looks even worse now. The best things to come from the prequels are both of the Clone Wars shows.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Now your being obtuse. You knew what I meant when I said it. There is no ASIANS in Star Wars. There is however people of all colors. If you couldn't understand that part, you're not as smart as I'm giving you credit for. So yes, in fact, Asians are an Earth only thing, as let's remember...no one is called white because of where they're from. They are however, called Asian, because of where they're from.
Finn's sacrifice could've gotten the rest of the rebels to safety.
You keep bringing it up. You keep bringing up Rey being a Mary Sue, not me.
Pffft. I love the prequels. I was saddened that the lightsaber fights didn't continue over to the new movies.
There aren't any Asians in Star Wars, but there are humans of all different kinds. Even several species of near humans. Hell in RotJ there was an asian A-wing pilot who, iirc, crashed into the bridge of a star destroyer bringing it down. In Star Wars they wouldn't be Asians they'd just be humans from whatever planet. Iirc Samuel L Jackson made a big deal about being a Black Jedi Master in the prequels and they more or less only had him in there (as underutilized as he was) to get black people to come see the movies. Anyway when they said "an asian character in star wars" they meant "a character played by an asian actress" to come at them for that is just being pedantic.
Finn ramming the cannon would have done no damage as most of his craft would have been destroyed before getting close, or the thing would fire before he impacted, granting the resistance no extra time and bringing them down a hero, or at least someone thought of as one.
I have not once said that you've brought up that Rey is a Mary Sue. Only that people (in general) have. Do I really need to spell these things out for you (Brand)?
You can love the prequels all you want. That doesn't magically make them better movies. I found the lightsaber fights in them to be flashy with no substance or emotion behind them (save for maybe the far too long fight at the end of RotS). Jedi's Luke Vs. Vader and Kylo + Rey Vs. Those guards are my top two, Luke vs. Vader has a ton of emotion and atmosphere in it, and Rey and Kylo vs. Guards is just fun as hell with a lot of great moments. The best Lightsaber fights to come from the prequels are the ones in the 2D animated Clone Wars miniseries and they'd be Grievous vs. a bunch of Jedi and Anakin vs. Ventres. Both of those fights are so good, and if you haven't checked them out you really should.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Which is exactly my point. They didn't just cast an Asian. They made a big spectacle of casting an Asian. Articles on it. Articles about how they where doing for it PC reasons. Articles about how they were doing it to try to get the Asian market more invested (which doesn't work, just look at how they passed on Crazy Rich Asians) in the SW universe.
The scene was being played out as one of self sacrifice and Rose just got in the way. You can say all you want "Well, it wouldn't have done anything." but then, nothing in Star Wars ever suggested what Holdo did, would do what Holdo did. In fact, I believe some of the complaints have been, it wouldn't have worked that way in SW lore.
Bethesda is at it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRYt6EkPJhE
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
Yeah the ongoing "slow motion train wreck" that is Fallout 76 has been a spectacle to behold. Between offering super-cheap/deceptive physical swag to buggy gameplay to banning innocent people while letting serious mod-cheaters go free it seems that if Bethesda can find a way do something wrong with Fallout 76 they'll make sure that's the only way they'll do it.
The company is supposedly working on games like Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 but at this rate they may seriously lose the confidence of the general public long before those games see the light of day.
There's likely a good object lesson for MWM buried in there somewhere...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Avoid any swag past shirts and bags? :p
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Representation matters.
Crazy Rich Asians didn't do well in the Chinese market because that market already has a bunch of wholly Asian productions. An American made movie staring an all Asian cast would have to be exemplary to gain traction over there (it apparently did alright in Singapore which is also where the movie is set). It did, however, resonate well with Asian American viewers over here likely because they are not usually represented in movies over here.
I mean Rogue One did alright in China: "Rogue One generated some local excitement with the meaningful roles and well received performances of its Chinese co-stars, Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen."
So it does work.
Star Wars as a whole hasn't done well in China because they didn't really get the Original Trillogy over there, The Force Awakens got a bit of traction because people wanted to see what this whole Star Wars thing was about, then Rogue One got some traction because of it's Chinese actors. Last Jedi was released along side a very popular local movie, so it was overshadowed.
Rose didn't get in the way, she saved him. Finn wouldn't have done anything. His craft was melting around him, he had no weapons, and that cannon was about to fire. Poe (a much more experienced pilot) told him it wouldn't work. It wouldn't have worked.
Nothing in the lore contradicts the Holdo Maneuver. Han in A New Hope was worried about potentially hitting things in Hyperspace ergo you can hit things in hyperspace. He was worried about hitting the planet in TFA and using hyperspace to leave a hanger was also said to be incredibly risky in that same movie.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
So back to the topic of AAA companies. The financial crowd is weighing in and it is NOT good for the current big boys.
https://www.investopedia.com/why-video-game-stocks-face-their-worst-year-in-two-decades-4584647?utm_campaign=quote-yahoo&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&yptr=yahoo
EA exec trying to spin Q3 results.
https://archive.fo/bCplR
Stock analyst on EA. "EA's strong revenue and profit growth is coming from the erosion of EA's most valuable asset, customer trust."
https://archive.li/QgadI#selection-1001.170-1001.279
So, they make more money by losing customers?
That’s a funeral home’s business plan.
Hehe
Well last year it started with loot boxes being declared gambling by Belgium after EA badly misstepped with them in Star Wars Battlefront 2. With other countries looking at following suit (Belgium was the only one I could quickly confirm), this is just bad news for EA which makes 67% of it's income on online purchases. THEN came Battlefield 5.
DISCLAIMER: As we have seen previously in this very thread, opinions and passions can run high on this game. So to avoid repeating that divisive behavior I plan to stick to easily verified facts here. Yes I too have strong opinions but our sense of community is highly valued as well.
Battlefield 5 was delayed by 2 months which made it harder to gain traction in the market against games that had made their release dates. Soon it was being DEEPLY discounted by retailers, sometimes reaching 50%. In addition to shipping late, it also shipped without all it's gameplay modes. (Battle royale mode will debut later this month.) Customers responded about as well as expected to a company that breaks it's promises more than once on a particular game, leading to dismal sales.
Everyone's upset about how Bethesda has fumbled Fallout 76 as well.
I've always been a big Fallout franchise fan but with Fallout 76 they (the company) have done just about everything wrong you can imagine. Even the latest patch got screwed up when they allowed elements of a much older previous build (with lingering bugs from several patches ago) to leak back into the latest baseline so that they had to release a quick hotfix to [i]re-fix[/i] a bunch of things that had [i]already[/i] been fixed. To call something like that "grossly unprofessional" would be an understatement - we had automated version control tools that would catch issues like that 25+ years ago at this point.
The problem is that Fallout 76 was always meant to be a sort of interim/holdover game while we all wait for the real sequel which will be Fallout 5. But because so many people feel totally burned by the way Fallout 76 was mishandled the chances that Fallout 5 has been "pre-tarnished" in the minds of the player community is pretty high.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
They failed merging branches ????
Or they build everything on the master branch ????
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That's my point: A so-called "AAA game company" shouldn't be making mistakes like this. No one should given how relatively easy version control is now. Sure merges can fail but you're supposed to catch those -before- you release them.
With all the other related problems with Fallout 76, both from a game design point of view as well as a "policy management" point of view Bethesda has made almost every mistake possible. The events of the past few months since its release has been practically a step-for-step checklist of everything you [i]shouldn't[/i] do as a game company. :(
Ironically the game itself is not -that- bad. It's just that Bethesda seems to be their own worst enemy when it comes to trying to support the game and generally pissing off their playerbase with everything from a horrible beta testing phase, arbitrary bans, silly PvP compromises, semi-questionable nerfs, cheap/trash physical swag, bad patches and so on.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The failure is symptomatic of a deficiency in the test verification procedures. Or probably more accurately in this day & age that they are relying too heavily on automated tests to verify builds. For the most part, automated verification can only really test if there is a fault (i.e. crash) given whatever steps are taken.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Sadly this particular problem was not really a failure of "automated testing". [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control]Version control[/url] applications (e.g. ClearCase) are specifically designed to prevent developers from working on and then attempting to re-merge the wrong versions of software back together. Basically someone had to practically [b][i]go out of their way[/i][/b] to baseline a part of the code that was [b]older[/b] than the already accepted/tested software which allowed previously fixed bugs to reappear.
This is very, very rookie league stuff we're talking about here - they're supposed to teach you how NOT to do stuff like this pretty much on your first day of ANY professional software engineering job. It's been a while since I earned my Computer Science degree but this is the kind of thing that's likely taught now-a-days in any first year comp sci curriculum.
Bugs are going to happen in games so I'm not faulting Bethesda for having them in Fallout 76. This was not a case of just a "bug" in a game - this was an engineering error due to someone not paying attention to what they were compiling and releasing to the live game servers. For a supposed AAA game company that's an effectively inexcusable mistake.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Being a triple A game company I'm sure they did the "right" thing and found someone they could say was responsible, sacked them, and then for good measure sacked the sacker.
"THE TITANS ARE COMIMG! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
Well to be fair even though it was clear Bethesda screwed up their software version control the actual ramifications of this particular screw-up were thankfully very short-lived and negligible. Turns out the most overt bug that briefly reappeared in the game involved, of all things, the inventory encumbrance weight of the lowly bobby pin.
For those unaware the Fallout franchise offers its player a cute little mini-game where you have to use bobby pins as make-shift lock picks to break into stash boxes to get loot. If you mess up you can break these pins and it turns out they are themselves relatively rare in the game world (at least as far as Fallout 76 goes). The specific issue was that they had originally set the weight of these pins at launch to be 0.1 pounds which in the scheme of things made them far heavier than they are IRL. An early post-launch patch had successfully fixed this so that the pins' in-game weight was set to 0.001 pounds which apparently made everyone happy.
Things were fine until the latest patch was applied and the bobby pin weight suddenly went back to 0.1 pounds. This of course made everyone start screaming bloody murder. To Bethesda's credit they got a hotfix put in place that corrected the issue within a couple of days. To be clear the bobby pin weight bug was not the -only- bug that reappeared - in reality this single version control mistake actually broke a wide range of things that needed to be re-fixed ASAP. It's just that the bobby pin element became the "poster child" for the entire situation and was the part of this that got most widely reported.
The point I'd make is that Bethesda basically got very lucky that their mishandled version control did not affect as much of the game as it could have. Also if Bethesda had not already badly mismanaged many other aspects of this game this particular "hiccup" might have otherwise slipped by without notice. Unfortunately since they've gotten so many people pissed about so many other issues this whole "bobby pin incident" simply added fuel to the bonfire already blazing against Fallout 76.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
EA was disappointed that Battlefield 5 sold 7.3 million copies. The AAA game industry is broken.
And Bethesda needs to stop being so lazy or just become a publisher and let Obsidian handle the development of their games. The Outer Worlds looks like it will be a lot of fun.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I can see echoes of the recording or motion picture industries here. If you sold 7 million copies of your first album, you would be thrilled. But the expectations from the money men keep growing and the pressure to increase those numbers keep getting higher. By your second or third release, only 7 million is considered a failure.
On and on and on...
[color=green]All Purpose Frog[/color]
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Seems every AAA publisher wants each game to sell at least 150% of what their last game did.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Not that I'm strictly defending the "mindset" of the big AAA game companies but I can at least understand why they tend to fall into that trap.
Unlike say a Walmart that sells millions of different products a day most of the time a game company is effectively betting their entire futures on just one or two products that each take years to produce. If I was the head of a company that basically only had one or two new products to sell per year I'd want those products to do as well as possible, even to the point of irrational exuberance and/or expectations.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Now that you mention it, EA is projecting that Anthem will sell 6 million units in 6 weeks. I have observed this being greeted with HUGE amounts of skepticism.
Unless the gameplay of Anthem is amazing I don't see it doing all that well.
Which is unfortunate because if it doesn't do well EA will likely close down bioware. Because that's what EA does; gain a decent development team, constantly meddle with their products till people don't like those products, move the team to some project that doesn't match their skill set, close down the studio when it inevitably does poorly.
EA has the Starwars license -and- Bioware but they don't want to make a new single player KOTOR game because EA can't monetize the hell out of it.
Seems the only good AAA developer left is Nintendo and they still have royal screw ups rather frequently. It's no wonder the indie scene is doing so well, especially when the indie devs team up with Nintendo.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Can't just get capital, it has to be more and More and MORE and MOAR capital each year
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Avatar by MikeNovember
One time in an airliner my brother found one of those high-executive magazines, and read an article in it about IT budgeting. In short, it said "If your employees are not screaming about how bad IT is, your IT budget is too high. Cut it until everyone screams, then leave it that way." I think a lot of execs read that magazine.
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The hell? Great, just great. The guys from IT should boycott those companies doing that. Just start a riot, let them feel your wrath. I would be pissed anyway, I would make it public, so that company would get shitstormed by every kind of public platform. If it's TV, the internet or the papers. Even the radio, which is still often used here in Switzerland, especially for workers not using trains, etc.
I know it's not that easy, it's never that easy. But I think if there are businesses listening to that kind of... garbage, they shouldn't get the chance of getting good and qualified people.
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Pretty sure that stems from a mindset that IT is purely a cost-center, as in it's a "necessary" department but doesn't "produce" anything useful by itself, rather than seeing it as a tool to enhance every other part of the company. And if you are an IT-shop of some sort then cutting the IT budget to that degree is just suicide.
Although from what I have read over on [url=http://thedailywtf.com/]The Daily WTF[/url] it seems that some software dev companies took that advice to heart.
As a long-time IT support professional I’ll tell you that I’m familiar with the concept that you cut the budget for IT to the bare minimum. What then happens is that your IT staff is forced to take up the slack by working extra hard, then they get burned out, then they leave. Eventually you’ll panic as everything falls apart and you post job offers with good salary and decide to invest in it so that your company gets back on track. Eventually, if you’re lucky, things get back to normal. Until you stupidly decide to cut costs there again.
I think IT got the highest rate of burnouts, globally. And I can understand why, we get more and more work, but the pay stays the same or gets cut until there's nothing left.
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I'd be interested to know when that article was written. There was obviously a time just a few decades ago where the only thing an "IT department" did for a company is handle payroll and HR records on a big IBM mainframe in the basement. I could see where a "business person" raised in that era would see anything related to IT as just being a drain on the bottom line thus I could understand why they would think they could get away with cutting the budget for that to the bone.
Clearly things have radically changed in the last 20+ years. Instead of the IT department being a necessary evil for a business many businesses are now totally dependent on having a good online presence and excellent IT support.
Again my guess would be that the article in question was either relatively old or written by a relatively old and "out of touch" person.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Started strong with riot then lost me :p
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Well the riot is primary target. The rest is hopefully the achievement after the riot.
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Activision Blizzard is in the news for laying off hundreds of folks. Seems to be a solid business move presently because they didn't develop enough properties to have much coming out this year.
https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/12/activision-blizzard-to-lay-off-800-employees.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo
Activision Blizzard had a record year for profits.
Edit: and if they wanted to develop -more- properties they should be hiring more devs. But they don't. They want to make more money with less games.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
You're correct about the profits, but have made a slight error otherwise.
I'll explain. As CoT has more than shown us, these games take YEARS to develop. They can't just crank them out in a few months. So because they didn't invest in developing years ago, they have to shrink this year to keep going at an acceptable rate. If they want to develop more properties now, all they have to do is shrink less, and do it smartly. (Not every dev position is needed at conception.) The quoted article, and others I have read, do not say in either direction if they are doing this. Yeah there's spin about focusing on core assets, but the simple truth is a failure to plan.
And there's an old saying that a failure to plan is a plan to fail. So they ended up failing several hundred employees.
Pretty much every AAA game company wants to make less games that generate more money. Thats why we see so much DLC, season passes, micro transactions, and loot boxes shoved into more and more games. Less product, more money.
AAA game companies want to make "live services" they want cash cows like GTA Online and Destiny. The latter being the reason for both Fallout 76 and the upcoming Anthem.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Unfortunately at least in Fallout 76's case it's looking doubtful that Bethesda is going to fully realize that goal. :(
I love the Fallout franchise and for what it's worth I'm currently playing Fallout 76. Due to my work/travel schedule I only managed to seriously start playing it a couple of weeks ago (despite it launching back in November) so by that twist of fate I actually avoided a vast majority of the launch day bugs that plagued the game.
I'm having fun treating it more or less like a single-player game because sadly the "community" of other players comes off as non-existent. Part of that stems from the overall design of the game itself. When you play you're placed on a virtual server where there's only 24 players thrown together in a play environment that's admittedly gi-normous. Even after several dozen hours I've only seen like maybe 4 or 5 other players running around in the game.
Factor that situation in with the bugs/nerfs that still remain in the game and you get this overall sinking feeling that this isn't going to be a situation that will stand the test of time. Unless Bethesda does some semi-amazing damage control with some amazing new content or other fixes I fear this game is destined to just fade away into obscurity.
This could become a classic case study of what happens when an otherwise successful franchise is "shoehorned" into being a kind of game it's not really suited to be.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
CoT doesn't have the man power big AAA companies can put into a game.
Yeah, I didn't mind the idea of Fallout 76, playing fallout with friends, but the execution of it was so bad.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I believe that Bioware has stated that the plan is for free DLCs. In game purchases which are supposed to be only cosmetics and not play assets.
We'll just have to wait and see what happens in, what, 3 months and see if their promises are worth anything.
I think the quote is that it's Story Content that'll be free, which leaves it open for things like more Javelins to be available through the real money store. I think that's reasonable, though - The kind of work that goes into preparing an entirely new "class" is rough, and worth the expenditure. One could make a similar argument for story stuff, but hiding one of the two behind paywalls really does make sense, and is even acceptable to even deeply frugal people, since they can still playing with their basic javelins if they don't want to buy the extras.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
One of the the biggest "screw ups" of the design of Fallout 76 has been how they handled (mishandled?) the whole PvP situation.
To begin with I'm not an anti-PvP person. Nothing wrong with the idea of PvP and there are plenty of games out there that cater to it well enough. The problem was that Fallout was never really a franchise that was "geared" for PvP. Obviously up until now Fallout was always a single-player experience. Bethesda's attempt to introduce a version of PvP to Fallout 76 that would make true PVPers happy while still trying to "protect" those people who didn't want to mess with it has been a dismal, muddled mess.
Ideally what Fallout 76 should have allowed for is "optional cooperative multiplayer" - let people form optional teams so that they could enjoy a Fallout experience together against PvE. The idea of letting players engage in PvP was really a bridge too far and I suspect that relatively few players ever actually wanted it.
If you want serious PvP you can play Fortnite or any of the many other Battle Royale titles. Trying to "shoehorn" that style of play into Fallout 76 was as serious misstep on Bethesda's part.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The idea of a multi-player Fallout was great. But I imagined it differently. More like a civilization together. You could choose to play good and help your "government" or try to sabotage it and take the place as a leader.
In Fallout there were always different settlements, so the idea of creating your own settlement (kind of a guild or super group system) with friends and strangers, trying to survive and defend against Raiders, mutants, etc would have been way cooler... At least for me.
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From what I've read they are frantically working on producing "Survival servers" for Fallout 76 for those people who want a more overtly open PvP experience. This is probably what they should have considered from the beginning - if you want to engage in PvP you play on a server that supports it. Unfortunately it might be months before those dedicated servers are ready.
Ultimately the real "problem" here is that by all appearances Fallout 76 was probably released like 6 months too early. Again another case study in what "not" to do with a AAA game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think another problem is that previous Fallout games have leaned heavily on the mod community to solve problems. Now that they don’t have that option they’re struggling to solve issues on their own.
...And of course Bethesda are neophytes with supporting online content (ZeniMax managed Elder Scrolls Online for them) so they don’t know what they’re doing from that end.
But oh, how we'd love to. It reminds me of the old joke. a man is praying and says "Lord, you know I'm a humble man, but let me win the lottery so I can prove it."
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Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
So apparently Anthem can BRICK PS4s. More inf here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT186WOezYo
It’s crashing some PS4s which BioWare is working on but so far the bricking seems unconfirmed in various articles I’ve read. That claim seems based solely on a handful of posts on comment threads and discussion forums. I’ve had games crash my Xbox before, luckily not Anthem at this point.
Apparently it causes the ps4 to think the power cable was removed. Sometimes removing and reconnecting the cable solves the issue.
Other times it does not resulting in the console being bricked.
At least one person has had the console bricked, or so claimed. I doubt someone would bother lying about such a thing.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
You don’t have to lie to be wrong. Consoles die (my Xbox 360 just did a couple days ago, RIP) and a console may have died after crashing, but that doesn’t mean one caused the other. (That’s often called “correlation without causation”.) It’s a far cry to go from an anecdotal claim of a console being bricked to declaring a game is bricking consoles (which some sites are doing as clickbait).
The bug crashing consoles is bad (really bad), they acknowledge it and are working on it (and they had better be). If someone can verify that the game is really bricking consoles that would be huge. Huge as in unprecedented; I’ve never heard of a game bug bricking a console in the history of console gaming (which goes back more than 40 years), but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
As an example of slimy clickbait, check out this article:
https://screenrant.com/anthem-bricking-ps4-ea-statement/
The title is, “EA Knows Anthem Is Bricking PS4 Consoles”. Wow, that’s a bombshell! But read the body of the article and it contains *nothing* about any consoles being bricked. This is what you typically see about this issue; hysteria which leads to juicy headlines bringing readers but (so far) it’s about nothing.
The closet thing I've heard to anything like this IRL is [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire]the classic legends/myths of the HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) commands[/url] that the old mainframes supposedly had. But even those stories were mostly exaggerated and never really led to any verifiable hardware damage.
I suppose even today it's theoretically possible that a piece of software could exercise a piece of hardware hard enough to cause a physical failure (via overheating?) but I would think the chances of that actually happening on purpose in the real world are effectively nil. Now computers (such as consoles) can and do certainly fail, but the reason for that is typically the failure of the cooling system or some other mechanical failure (i.e. popped MB/PS capacitor) not from running a funky program.
Another far more likely (but in reality very unlikely) possibility is that a bit of the console game code is somehow overwriting some kind of critical OS register/kernel data and corrupting it badly enough to cause the console to be unable to reboot. Still I'd be amazed if something like that (basically undetected malware) managed to get all the way to a released product in 2019.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Software update can absolutely cause hardware damage. A few years back (2011?) Nvidia pushed an update that had the potential to fry certain expensive video cards by working them to death (even if you were not running anything) combined with disabling the built in cooling system on them. It was a fiasco. My roommate was so proud of their new card at the time. They made sure to leave automatic update on to always have the latest drivers. While they went out of town for the weekend. Many tears were shed.
These days modern systems have a lot of failsafe features and software generally doesn't have direct access to hardware (that is what drivers do) like it did back in the day, but at the end of the day it is all made by human beings.
Going farther back in time stories like this get a lot more plentiful and colorful! So many crazy stories....
As you yourself point out hardware drivers have "direct access" to the functioning of the hardware itself. But in the context of this discussion hardware drivers are -not- console games. Obviously if someone updates a driver in such a way that it overheats the hardware AND ALSO disables the built-in cooling system then of course that's a recipe for disaster.
But to be clear what the last few posts were talking about was the question as to whether something like a computer game/app has enough direct access to hardware to cause physical damage. I still hold to what I said earlier that the chances a "game being able to brick hardware" is virtually nil. Hardware typically only fails when it's overheated for too long - games can't turn off a GPU's cooling system directly PRECISELY BECAUSE drivers stand between the hardware and the rest of the software running on the system.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
For sure! I was being more broad including drivers as software updates. You're right, not all software has that level of control.
To be fair, even minor issues (not just melting hardware) can be a big deal for most people since they aren't born with the technical knowledge to understand them. Something as generally easy to fix as a driver conflict or corrupt system file can feel catastrophic. People being people, the end user sees that their blinkenlights aren't blinken anymore and freaks out. A combination of passion on the subject and lack of knowledge can lead to misinformation and exaggeration as well even from well meaning witnesses. As you pointed out, this is compounded when "journalists" write clickbaity headlines about people's experience.
Headlining an article with something about "a game that can (supposedly) brick a console machine" is obviously going to be clickbait worthy. Until there's more info I would simply assume people are linking the random failures of their consoles with playing this particular game in question and jumping to conclusions.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I wouldn't be all that surprised if it was able to brick consoles.
Hell, some games have actually had computer viruses on the disk.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I would, at least to the point of damaging the -hardware- of the device.
There have been cases where computer games have been shipped with viruses. It is very, very rare and by now we would've been hearing official word from the company about it if that was the case. Even if a virus somehow caused any "bricking" it could still be argued it was not the "game's" fault.
Again I suspect in this case a few people suffered random console failures and figured it'd either be cute to blame the game or simply didn't bother to accept that their failures were completely coincidental.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The difference between hardware damage or a more minor issue isn't necessarily understood by your average player.
All they know is that it doesn't work. If their console doesn't boot up that is all they really care about.
Scapegoating is something people do, as is getting caught up in the moment and assuming things are true because lots of other people are saying it.
That being said.....if a large number of people report smoke it usually does mean there is a fire of some kind somewhere.
No developer wants their game to be "that game that bricks consoles" and even if the truth is somewhat less than that the solution should still be to investigate and fix whatever problems have been pointed out and take steps to earn back player goodwill.
Being complacent or outright hostile to customers never really pays off in the long term and even juggernauts of the game industry like sony online can and have been destroyed by such poor practices.
This thread isn't just about Anthem right? Because there have been a few AAA releases lately that have sucker punched fans.
No it's not just about Anthem. It just happens that Anthem is the latest topic. And if you wish to talk of other AAA releases that have... lowered the bar in some way, then you are welcome to bring them up here.
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