Thursday, August 23, 2012

Just wanted to Thank my Community! You know who you are!

 

        Hey everyone just wanted to thank you for all your views and support.  I know I don’t say nearly enough but we just hit over 55,000 hits since the site opened a couple of years ago.  And while in the grand scheme of things this is a VERY small amount.  I am thrilled that I have been able to touch so many people in this period of time.  So for all of you that have been with me since the beginning and for all of those who have just looked into one post or one series of posts.  THANK YOU.

       Please free to hit me up on Twitter: @timothpecoraro or just write a comment on this post if there is anything you would like to see more of.  I will do my best to do it.  I know text sites are dying and everyone is moving to video.  So thanks for being interested enough to ACTUALLY read my articles and reviews.

          Thanks Again, can’t wait for the next 55,000.  Hopefully it won’t take another 3 years.

Why I Love/Hate Diablo 3

        There are, I’m sure people who have put in many more hours into Diablo 3 than I have.  In fact, due to my complete lack of play since all of the hacks; I’m sure there are probably more people than ever, that have more time invested.  But considering Diablo 3 is the first game that I have put in over 100 hours into I feel like I need to say a few things about it.  Diablo 3 was my most anticipated game of 2012.  And since the beta I was able to play, I was even more excited.  I hadn’t played too much of the previous installments and was waiting for the third to get really engrossed.  I was fine with the all ways on DRM, because as most people tend to gloss over Starcraft 2 has an all ways on DRM.  So I was not really thrown off by Diablo 3 having it.

         Things changed a little the day that Diablo 3 came out.  I was out of work so I stayed up late and spent four hours trying to get connected and finally being able to play a little bit at 4 AM on launch day.  Which was fine.  I played for two hours and then went to bed.  I was in love.  There was nothing more interesting to me than just busting through the campaign the first time.  But I didn’t know which character I wanted to play.  So I started one campaign for each.  Yes, I did what most people said what exactly not to do.  Many of my game journalist friends in fact are now in Inferno with the character they created on day 1.  And haven’t touched any of the other characters at all.  I felt this was a big loss.  Why not beat the game at least once with every character.  I had no problem going through the story five times.  No problem at all.  I was able to share gear and gold throughout my account and made good use of rare drops and legendaries on my all of my characters.  But this WAS in fact, the wrong decision.

        By the time my favorite character, the Wizard got about half way through Nightmare.  The Auction House was a mess.  Anything worthwhile for her or any of my other characters cost around 100,000 gold.  Where it used to only cost around 20-30,000.  This was an insane price jump and one that didn’t jive with the rest the rate of gold my characters were earning.  I’m certainly over-geared at this point.  But I LIKE being over-geared.  And I know that I will hit a hard stop around the end of Hell or so.  Also, the real gold Auction House was useless to me s people were only buying Inferno level gear and nothing else.  So, until the prices dropped I decided I would stop playing.  Most of my characters were around level 35-39 so I figured I’d just come back for PVP.  But this was not to be.

       When the cheats, hacks, etc… Began being reported was near the tail end of my overall playtime.  I had gotten a second job, so I didn’t have time to play anything except that which was for work.  So Diablo 3 had taken a backseat.  When I heard about the hacks, I knew that the auction house prices would be even more ridiculous and not to bother even logging in until all this was patched and straightened out.  And for the most part Diablo 3 had completely gone out of my mind.  This game that I really loved, was just a memory and even though I occasionally saw it on my desktop I didn’t have any desire to play it at all.

        Recently, Patch 1.0.4 came out and there were lots of balance changes, new Paragon system, etc…   All of this was just what I needed to log back into Diablo 3(besides another Battle.net hack that required me to change my password).  I played for about 2 hours last night with my Wizard and was just about to snag another new level when I decided to stop and watch some Fringe on DVD instead.  Yes, Diablo 3 has been relegated to a tier below old television.    I’m afraid this means that I will probably never see Inferno difficulty and my copy of Darksiders 2 is still calling to me as I write this.  My September will be a balancing act between Guild Wars 2 and Borderlands 2.  Do I ACTUALLY think I’m going to have time to play Diablo 3? No… I won’t…

        Blizzard had their shot.  It came out 2 days after my Birthday when I was out of work and I played it for a solid month all most every single night for at least 5-7 hours.  But that was it.  Sorry guys…  A linear story, a terribly balanced economy, and a difficulty system that should have been rebalanced the moment it was considered.  But with all this I have to say that Diablo 3 is in my Top 10 games of the year for 2012 for sure.  Why?  Because with the exception of what I just mentioned it was a good enough game, with good enough systems for me to play longer than any other game I’ve ever played in life with the exception of World of Warcraft.  Which doesn’t count.  So if there was so much wrong with Diablo 3 why did I play for so long when other games of “supposed” superior quality have fallen by the wayside and even if I ever pick them up again I would never invest that kind of time in them; even if I could.  I usually have a hard time beating games and I’ve beaten Diablo 3, SIX TIMES.  Believe it or not, I put this to the incredible amount of polish that this game has.  The character models, the environments, the leveling system, and the bosses.  There is no where in Diablo 3 in the Normal or Nightmare difficulty where the player can get stuck.  Yes, there was never a point where I didn’t know what to do or got worried about getting lost.  These things seem like no big deal.  But they ARE the reason this game does design better than anyone out there.  Yes, the game is relatively simplistic.  But the point is that it isn’t TOO SIMPLISTIC.  It’s just simple enough to draw people in and keep them there.  Other games all ways have SOMETHING wrong with them.  Something that a person who isn’t “dedicated” to finishing the game will make them just drop the game and go do something else never to pick it up again.

       Some of my favorite games of all time do this.  Assassins Creed Franchise, Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw, Bayonetta, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, etc… Except of course, for my favorite games of all time Journey and Bastion.  They too know how design works.  But they are both very short experiences compared to Diablo 3.  I’m talking about two games that take less than 10 hours to beat and comparing them to a game that to finish completely would probably take over 200 hours.  This is an accomplishment that I think has been made too little of; by the press, by the designers, and even by players.  Everyone takes Diablo 2 as the comparison for Diablo 3.  But that is not a fair comparison, it is wrapped up in nostalgia and a familiarity that requires Diablo 3 to be a REVOLUTION rather than an EVOLUTION.  Games have changed SO MUCH in the past 10 years.  Hell, games have changed a lot in the past 5 years.  Diablo 3 is an incredible achievement.  And while many people look at it as more of the same.  I think most people who play Diablo 2 and then play Diablo 3 will find there is a significant difference between the two and in more than graphical quality.  Also, Diablo 2 has had over 10 years to get patched and changed.  I can only dream what Diablo 3 will look like in ten years.  All I know is that it won’t look anything like it does now.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Replay a show from Gameinformer. Oh and Warren Spector is on the show talking about Deus Ex.

  Yes, they are playing Deus Ex and Warren Spector the Creator of Deus Ex is on talking about it. No big…

Monday, August 13, 2012

(Public Service Announcement) To All my Friends on the Forums!

            Go on any major video game media site or YouTube and you will find a group of anonymous crazy immature overly aggressive nutcases.  These people act like they are 13 years old and have parents that have taught them that they are the greatest thing in the world.  Most of them can’t spell and have the grammatical ability of someone who learned English from drug dealers.  They will jump on anyone who doesn’t agree with the narrow short sighted opinion with everything from racist epitaphs to personal acts about your mother.    Yes, ladies and gentlemen, people on forums are awful.  This certainly isn’t just when it comes to video games but just about everything else as well.  But as time has gone on, (It wasn’t a bed of roses in 2004 either), rather than getting better it has actually gotten worse.  The more people who are using the internet it seems the worse it is getting.  I’m just getting so tired of it.  Every developer I’ve talked to who gets bombarded online finds that when he meets people in real life most people are kind, friendly, and incredibly grateful for the work the developer is doing.  What can we attribute all this craziness to then?  I see it as two big things and every site on the internet with forums must take some responsibility for this.  Journalists who have of late been complaining about it must also take some responsibility because they may have a part to play in this as well.

        The biggest problem on every forum site is the absolute anonymity people are afforded.  What is the deal?  It isn’t 1993, we don’t need to worry that someone is going to hack us if we use our real names.  With Facebook and all the other social media sites everyone is everywhere on the internet.  But forums are still the bastions of the ignorant and the stupid because there are no names.  People who are ACTUALLY trying to have a conversation cannot over the din created by these racist halfwits.  Forum moderators should find their site accounts and ban them for life not for 30 days.  These are not people you want in your community and it isn’t a matter of freedom of speech.  It’s a matter of being a racist, narrow minded, psychopath that just wants to cause trouble and cyber bully people.  If your big company owns a website with forums it’s in the best interest of the company to keep people from acting this way on your forums.  Otherwise, you are not only enabling these people but you are; by doing nothing agreeing with the behavior.  There are lots of people out there reading this right now saying that well who decides these things.  After all, there were people banned on LucasArts forums for saying they hated the game the company was making at the time.  Well, lets see… People who spew racist, sexist, pornographic, or abusive language constantly are people I’m talking about.  People who purposely and consistently take the opposite opinion of everyone else just to make other people angry.  You know, TROLLS.  In 2012, there is absolutely no accuse for this behavior or the absolute inability of every site on the internet with a comments/forums section to deal with it.

       The other big problem here are the game journalists who constantly goad people into acting in this manner by creating stories purely to rile people up to get more hits.  Stories with titles like, “Developer X says gamers are idiots.” Or “Developer X has decided that game consoles are completely irrelevant and instead of making their AAA game they are going to make iOS games instead.”  Or my favorite,”Is the Console War Over?”   The last one is the best because journalists are the ones who created the Console War to begin with.  The actual console war ended way back when both Atari and Intellivision tanked after long life cycles.  There is no real story in any of these things and developers are often not only misquoted but simply taken completely out of context.  I’ve heard developers jokingly say something that is taken as a serious statement 48 hours later.  Its all to get hits and that’s fine for the site but the “community” around these topics just gets riled up and decides to go on a rant that this both ill informed and totally irrelevant.  The best part of all this for the website is that the more stories like this they run the more developers don’t want to talk to them at all and have PR speak instead.  Then the website complains that they have no access to developers.  “No kidding,” I wouldn’t want to talk to you either.

       Finally, as I said earlier things are getting worse, not better.  I think this summarizes the reaction of most normal people this days,

“Something slightly negative is discussed or is reported on dealing with the game industry,

  A bunch of site write stories about it,

  The internet goes CRAZY!”

       That’s about how it goes.  People get whipped up into a frenzy about practically nothing these days. 

      “My favorite dropped the multiplayer mode I didn’t want or ask for!”

      “Oh NO!“

      Start a petition to put it back in.

     It is completely short lived and completely unnecessary.  Developers usually ignore it and shake it off as most normal people do.  But when Bioware,, a company that was up to that point very well loved; decided to “change” the ending to Mass Effect 3 because of the public outcry about their “bad” ending.  It seemed like perhaps the mob had won for once.  But then the very worst part of all of this was that once they put out their new ending.  Nothing happened!  Their sales didn’t increase, public opinion didn’t shift their way.  Everyone had forgotten about it.  It no longer mattered.

    But the precedent it set, offered a legitimacy to this stupid and ridiculous behavior.  If these are things in life you are worried about you either live in a fantasy land or are 12 years old.  There is a crippling repression going on, no jobs, and military conflict on multiple fronts and you fools are worried about the ending to a video game.  Grow UP!  But I guess this is the same racist, sexist, minority that is so vocal on the forums of all these sites.  Which I guess makes sense; considering if you consistently act like your 12 years old, the concerns of adults fail to matter after a while.  I wouldn’t really know.  When I was 12, all I worried about was going outside to play with my friends and trying to date girls that were a year older than me.  The only video games I played were at arcades….

 

            A few things to consider if you are part of a video game website or company that provides forums for your fans, or perhaps the owners of a service like Twitch.tv, Ustream, etc and have a streaming chat.

  1. Have a policy against profanity and player bullying and here is the hard part ENFORCE IT!
  2. Remove all avatars and usernames, instead use the person’s real name as it appears on their form of payment or application when they signed up for your site or service.
  3. As a user of any of these services please TRY to simply ignore these people and carry on.  Another words, “DON’T FEED THE TROLL”
  4. Also as a user of these services remember just because you PERSONALLY might think something is funny when you are writing in a forum, social media, etc… That everyone else might not and might have a less than sterling opinion of you because of it.
  5. Remember that the users of your service/website are ultimately a reflection of your website/service to EVERYONE who uses it.
  6. Finally and most importantly, at the end of the day everything in this article is a prime example of not taking REAL WORLD issues seriously enough.  Things like racism, sexism, civil rights, war, etc… Are far more important and should be taken far more seriously than ANYTHING that happens on the internet.