reisub wrote on May 5, 2011, 12:09:
Dammit. That shitty weapon-switching technique is obviously also in the PC version. WTF, id? You practically INVENTED using 1-9 for weapons, why did you come up with this horseshit? Oh, right, because the Xbox doesn't have 1-9 keys, and you couldn't be arsed to make a PC UI.

And the whole "shoot guys in the fucking head with an assault rifle and they're still not dead" is not a great gameplay mechanic.

AND regenerating health. Woohoo!

I'll wait for it to go on sale.

Creston

Overon wrote on Apr 27, 2011, 15:04:

Now you’re trying to mix apple with oranges, back then that was the standard of RPG gaming. Again, I didn’t hate this game; I just didn’t care for the mouse combat the way its setup. it always felt awkward and as Verno said, you really didn’t feel that you had any control over it. These guys did an amazing job with the original aurora engine, so I am curious how this new game will be but I’m dreading that the combat will be the same. I will be waiting on this for one to come down in price before I try it.

I didn't mean to accuse you of being a hypocrite. I hate and continue to hate the Diablo style click fest with potion and mana hotkeys. It's extremely boring. The loot drops is much of the reason why people played this game. It's very much like playing a slot machine. Boring but the excitement is whether you win anything after pulling the arm or clicking the button.

Overon wrote on Apr 27, 2011, 13:55:

Never said I didn’t like the game, I said I hated the mouse combat the way it is, to much click click click to get it working.

Did you hate the click click click of the Diablo series?

ASeven wrote on Apr 15, 2011, 12:47:
"The software side is the root of this, as they say sales of video and computer games fell 16% to $735.4 million, compared with $875.7 million a year earlier. "

As I said before, we are witnessing what may be the beginnings of the second gaming industry crash and all signs keep pointing into it.

The reason for this is that there are other alternative forms of entertainment, apps, which I really don't consider part of what gamers define as games. Apps, being cheap, on portable hardware and showing to be more and more competent at entertaining people is quickly becoming the greatest peril the industry faces. So either the industry changes business models or publishers will more than likely drop like flies.

So software sales dropped 16%, not 4%. And add the horrid sales of the 3DS and anyone with half a mind can see trouble in the horizon for the industry.

Shineyguy wrote on Apr 13, 2011, 16:22:
I am all for this form of "DRM". If you pirate a game, and the developer puts in a show-stopping bug only present in pirated copies; then oh freaking well ***hole.

Some legitimate customers may be affected, sure. In that case, post in the forums, with a copy of your receipt. That way you get actual technical help.

Also, post a disclaimer in the forums or on the website, saying what the specific show-stopping bug is and what it's purpose is. Communicate this out to reviewers.

necrosis wrote on Apr 13, 2011, 15:40:

SirKnight wrote on Apr 13, 2011, 15:26:

FreezeStrike wrote on Apr 13, 2011, 14:31:
Worked on a game; we put in several subtly broken feature that we knew pirates would miss when they generated cracked copies of the game. The game still ran, but you'd hit a non-progression bug after some regular gameplay.

On release day, ~20-30% of our tech forum issues were about the broken features that would only show up in cracked versions. Not only did these people not buy our game, they felt justified in asking the developers, directly, to spend time helping them fix their pirated software.

This reminds me of the FADE system Bohemia Interactive uses in their games (Operation Flashpoint, Arma, ...) where if they detect a pirated copy then the game over time will start to run really slow and wash out becoming unplayable.

I think the algorithm for detecting a pirated version activated a few times with legit copies, which is to be expected I guess. But, the few times this happens is pretty much negligible I'd think.

It would be nice if it were possible to construct a perfect algorithm for detecting pirates and when you do, format their drives. Muahaha! But that's not really possible and so non-pirates would be getting wiped out which would bring all kinds of hellfire on the devs then. Too bad b/c I'd love nothing more than to format an actual pirate's computer. Over and over again.

The problem with systems like FADE it is hard to tell if the game has a false positive or the game is glitching out. I have heard many situations like this and it only bites the developer in the ass.

Game gets pirated before launch, game glitches because its pirated, word gets out that the game is a pile of crap (despite being a pirated copy/leaked copy/beta/alpha), game gets bad press, no one buys game when it legitimately comes out.