Agent.X7 wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 19:27:
You don't like it just because they are now going to write more books? A bit hipsterish, if you ask me.

I thought my meaning would have been pretty obvious - the quality of the series has already been declining as they stretch out plot lines. I barely made it through Cibola Burn, let alone 6 more books. It is very difficult to tell a coherent story over the course of 10 volumes. More often than not it means padding out with filler, plotlines dragging, characterization problems just to have more volumes for the sake of it.

There is a trend in the sci-fi/fantasy genres to turn everything into a bookcase busting series despite more modest initial plans. Sometimes a well contained initial entry gets turned into a trilogy, sometimes a trilogy gets turned into an open ended book contract. I can't blame an author for wanting a meal ticket but overall I find very few stories are better as a result of these decisions.

On the subject of other books you listed:

Hobbs likes mopey protagonists too much for my taste, I don't need everyone to be a sword wielding GI Joe but shes too far on the other end of the spectrum. Hunger Games has been consistently terrible right out of the gate but I just don't care for YA. I agree about The Passage, great book and not a wonderful follow up. Wheel of Time got bogged down under its own weight and its pretty widely acknowledged to be a glaring example of unnecessary filler.

The Three by Sarah Lotz borrows heavily from the narrative style of World War Z and might interest some people here but it is definitely very divisive. I hope it doesn't turn into 5 book thing with a movie deal

This comment was edited on Jul 15, 2014, 12:40.

harlock wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 20:47:

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 19:56:
When it comes to genre fiction, the quality of a series is nearly always inversely proportional to the quantity of volumes.

dragonlance, forgotten realms.. - not "classics" but they had mountains of volumes and were more or less consistently ok

Um, Dragonlance was OK when Weis and Hickman were the writers. Some other writers had good entries, and most of the rest of it was shit. Forgotten Realms had some OK entries, but it was mostly shit.

As far as the number of volumes? Well, The Wheel of Time had a lot, but the writing was always great.

Song of Ice and Fire - Martin has been great, when he deems us worthy of another book.

Robin Hobbs' Farseer books and the other books written in the same world are consistently great. (All her stuff is pretty good, though)

The Expanse has been great so far. Of course, one of the authors is George R.R. Martin's assistant, so of course it was always going to be a long series.

Timothy Zahn's Quadrail series is a good read too, if you like Noir detective sci-fi.

I think more depends on the author's ability to keep a good thing going rather than the length of a series. Shit, some people can't even finish out ONE book without fucking it up at the end. Looking at you Stephen King. Under The Dome. Chapter 52 - I'm tired of writing this book and have run out of ideas, THE END.

Hunger Games? Volume One - Pretty good. Volume 2 - Oh shit, it was popular and I need to write a sequel. Um...I'll just rewrite book one. Volume 3 - Oh fuck. Fuck me. I have no idea. Um, vague political ideology...THE END.

The Strain? Book one and Two, excellent. Book 3 - Uh, yeah, SO busy with other books and Guillermo has that robot movie and uh, God steps in and saves the day! Whee! THE END.

The Passage? Excellent vampire apocalypse. The sequel? What not to do when tasked with writing a sequel.

This comment was edited on Jul 13, 2014, 22:37.

harlock wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 20:47:
dragonlance, forgotten realms.. - not "classics" but they had mountains of volumes and were more or less consistently ok

I'm not wanting to rip into your taste or anything, but you're setting a pretty low bar there. Yes, the Forgotten Realms books were of consistent quality, but even calling them "ok" is pushing it pretty far. They weren't unreadable by any stretch, and there are far worse books out there, but I just have a real hard time looking back on when I read the Crystal Shard and Moonshae trilogies as anything but throwaway summer reading for a nerdy middle schooler.

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 19:56:
When it comes to genre fiction, the quality of a series is nearly always inversely proportional to the quantity of volumes.

dragonlance, forgotten realms.. - not "classics" but they had mountains of volumes and were more or less consistently ok

Agent.X7 wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 19:27:
You don't like it just because they are now going to write more books? A bit hipsterish, if you ask me.

When it comes to genre fiction, the quality of a series is nearly always inversely proportional to the quantity of volumes. More rarely equals better when it comes to the printed word. Perhaps The Expanse, which I know nothing about, is an exception, but it would need to be just that, exceptional, to avoid the fate of similarly bloated, long-running series.

There's a reason why literary classics rarely have sequels.

Redmask wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 11:04:

harlock wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 08:55:

Agent.X7 wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 00:54:

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Firefly, Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Eureka, Warehouse 13, The Glades...

yes to all of this (except last 3, for me)

really looking forward to that "The Expanse" thing

but overall im glad scifi/fantasy/horror is being accepted again.. firefly especially had it rough because mainstream was hating on that kinda stuff at the time

The Expanse is getting terrible now that they turned what was supposed to be a trilogy into a 10 book deal. I have little hope that SyFy will do it justice either.

You don't like it just because they are now going to write more books? A bit hipsterish, if you ask me.

harlock wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 08:55:

Agent.X7 wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 00:54:

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Firefly, Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Eureka, Warehouse 13, The Glades...

yes to all of this (except last 3, for me)

really looking forward to that "The Expanse" thing

but overall im glad scifi/fantasy/horror is being accepted again.. firefly especially had it rough because mainstream was hating on that kinda stuff at the time

The Expanse is getting terrible now that they turned what was supposed to be a trilogy into a 10 book deal. I have little hope that SyFy will do it justice either.

Dev wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 08:00:

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:15:
Kinda like the 3rd season of Star Trek being moved to 10pm Friday night, and then being cancelled because -- surprise, surprise -- the ratings subsequently dropped.

If you look at the history, there was massive letter writing campaigns that brought it back (as many as 1 million letters). But they finally killed it for good after the 3rd season.

The letter writing campaign was towards the end of the 2nd season, when CBS was making rumblings that it was going to cancel the series at the end of the season. Due to the letter writing campaign, they approved a third season, but, despite promising Roddenberry a better timeslot and larger budget, after only a few episodes into the season, CBS abruptly moved the show into the Friday 10pm timeslot. When ratings dropped -- in 1968, you didn't have the internet, an on screen channel guide, or even TV Guide, to tell you why your show wasn't on at the regular time -- CBS cancelled the series before production of the last few episodes of the season were complete. In other words, it was a classic instance of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Agent.X7 wrote on Jul 13, 2014, 00:54:

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Firefly, Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Eureka, Warehouse 13, The Glades...

yes to all of this (except last 3, for me)

really looking forward to that "The Expanse" thing

but overall im glad scifi/fantasy/horror is being accepted again.. firefly especially had it rough because mainstream was hating on that kinda stuff at the time

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:15:
Kinda like the 3rd season of Star Trek being moved to 10pm Friday night, and then being cancelled because -- surprise, surprise -- the ratings subsequently dropped.

If you look at the history, there was massive letter writing campaigns that brought it back (as many as 1 million letters). But they finally killed it for good after the 3rd season.

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Me me me me me me me me me.

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Firefly, Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, SG-1, Eureka, Warehouse 13, The Glades...

Trevellian wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 20:53:

They'll do what Rockstar did with GTAV and PC will see it in a year.

Or sooner, but I suspect this will be the case as well.

harlock wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 23:11:
speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Never was a fan of it, but given how Fox handled the series, I totally see why the fans are bitter. Kinda like the 3rd season of Star Trek being moved to 10pm Friday night, and then being cancelled because -- surprise, surprise -- the ratings subsequently dropped.

speaking of old grudges - who's still bitter about Firefly getting cancelled?

Microsoft ruined the awesome thing Bungie showed at E3.

I'm not sure this is true, but Halo definitely changed and I think it's fair to lament that

Well in fairness, if it had not been for Microsoft there probably wouldn't have been a Halo at all. As it was released, Halo was basically half finished, i.e. everything after the infamous Library, which was itself just a gigantic copy-paste job, had you literally playing through previous levels backwards. While the E3 2000 demo showed off what Bungie could do with the game, given enough time and money, they simply ran out of the latter two. When Bungie was acquired by Microsoft, they were pretty much on the ropes financially, and it's doubtful they were particularly close to finishing Halo, as envisioned by the E3 2000 demo, any time soon. From what I've been able to gather over the years, it wasn't that Microsoft gutted that earlier design out of spite or anything, but that Microsoft needed Halo as a launch title for Christmas 2001, and the condition for their riding to Bungie's rescue was that the game be ready by then. Hence, why the game's latter 3 levels are literally earlier levels played in reverse, with reworked encounters, and why, more broadly, the game was a conventional linear shooter with vehicle sections, and VERY good AI for the time, as opposed to the open-world SciFi Arma that the E3 demo showed.

Still even though it likely was a choice between the Halo we got, and no Halo at all, when you factor in how MS handled porting the game, i.e. a bad port job two years after the fact, and the sheer promise of that E3 demo, it's hard not to feel a bit bitter. Plus, slapping a Vista requirement onto the Halo 2 port was just downright evil.

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 20:41:
I wasn't making a comparison. I was just concurring with Beamer that there is still some lingering bitterness over what happened to Halo following Bungie's acquisition by Microsoft back in 2001. The game that was being demoed back in 2000 was a completely different beast, an absolutely incredible looking beast that would have been way ahead of its time, than what eventually landed on XBOX.

Old-school Apple/Mac gamer here (though I had switched to PC gaming in the late '90s). Confirmed I am still bitter about what happened with Halo.

XBox gamers complaining about PS4 exclusive items/access...

Really. Tell me about your problems.

I'm a PC gamer who recalls seeing Halo originally announced at a 1999 Macworld. I'm a PC gamer who, along with my Mac gamer friends, brought Bungie up from infancy by playing and loving their games like Marathon and Myth. I'm a PC gamer who felt betrayed by Halo's sudden XBox exclusivity, and again insulted by the limp-wristed PC port of it that came eons later, and wasn't even ported by Bungie themselves.

So. Yes. You really have room to complain, XBox gamers. Now you know what it's like to get a slap in the face from a company you poured a lot of love into over the years, only to watch them turn on a dime and arrange platform exclusive deals that make them a ton of cash and spit in the faces of their fans.

I suppose I should be lucky that Blizzard still supports PC and Mac gamers as part of their company creed.

1badmf wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 20:55:
wait what??! destiny's a PS4 exclusive?? when did this happen??? i coulda sworn xbone was part of the beta.

(Can't tell if serious) xbone does get in on the beta, but at the end. See here.

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 18:35:

Beamer wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 18:14:

Dude, people still bitch, on this board, this week, about not having Halo on the PC.

I must admit that I'm still butthurt that the Halo PC/Mac game that was demoed at E3 2000 never came to fruition. The open world, high player count, vehicle based multiplayer sounded incredible. Fucking Microsoft.

I think there are three different Halo whines:
1) Microsoft ruined the awesome thing Bungie showed at E3. I'm not sure this is true, but Halo definitely changed and I think it's fair to lament that
2) Microsoft needs to shut up about caring about the PC when they obviously want/need system selling console exclusives and that comes first. Again, fair argument
3) Microsoft sucks for not bringing Halo 3 to PCs, fuck Halo, I hate Halo, Halo 1 sucked, Microsoft sucks, consoles suck, I want to play Halo 3 why can't I! This argument is moronic.