I've felt lost lately in DOTA2 playing against heroes that I have never seen in a game before. At the same time I was getting frustrated playing the same heroes over and over because I felt comfortable with them and ending up with completely different results. One game I will dominate as Viper and the next one I can't even scratch my laning opponent. To force myself to expand a bit and help learn about the numerous heroes in DOTA2 I have switched to playing Single Draft mode. Each player is randomly given a choice of three heroes to choose from (one hero per main attribute type: intelligence, agility, or strength).
Since this change I have played games as Phantom Lancer, Nightstalker, Omniknight, and a few others I have almost never seen in pub games before. I found myself doing well with some such as Phantom Lancer, but not feeling like I really knew why I was doing well. That forced me to research the heroes a bit and actually learn something (like how to control illusion minions!).
Out of all the things I've done in DOTA2, this is easily the change that has resulted in the most knowledge gained on my part. It has also wisened me up to some intricacies of DOTA2 which I can explore more as I find heroes I enjoy playing. My end goal is to have at least ten heroes I feel comfortable playing in a pub game, which is about where I was with League of Legends (though in LoL I felt like I could far more easily pick up new heroes).
For anyone playing DOTA2, I highly recommend some time in Single Draft mode to open your opportunities to try and learn other heroes. Its a surprise each time you load up a game and if you care about team composition, single draft's randomness can land you some wonderful learning opportunities.
NOTE: Yes, I understand this makes some players angry as they don't want "scrubs" using Single Draft as a sort of testing bed. However, the fact that the picks are random, there is always the chance of a team being shafted. This makes the match all the more fun in my opinion.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
PC Upgrade
My PC died two weeks ago, so its upgrade time:
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA/benchmarks/
CPU: AMD FX-6100 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.99 @ Amazon)
Hard Drive: Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Case: Antec One ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: OCZ 650W ATX12V Power Supply ($92.65 @ Amazon)
Total: $276.62
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Too Many Assumptions: EU Court Ruling Allows for Re-sale of Used Digital Games by End-Users
There is a stir in the online PC gaming community today over a EU court ruling that allows for the resale of digital licenses. Read up here. The important part of the ruling is: "Therefore, even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy." This is big news. HUGE news for software copyright. The immediate Internet conclusion is that Steam or any other digital distribution platform for games will have to allow end users to resell their games for profit. However, its all being taken too far in regards to digital distribution. This will not and cannot change anything with digital distribution.
I won't claim to be an expert in copyright law, but I do consider myself a logical thinker. Thinking this out a bit, I don't see anything in the ruling that forces a digital distribution platform to allow another user access to a game license bought by one of its other users. The license to a game can be transferred to another user, but access via a digital distribution platform is under a completely different license. The ruling may force the likes of Steam to allow user account sales, but it does not in any way look like it forces Steam to allow a different user access to a license you've resold. Theoretically, as you no longer own the license, Steam could deactivate your access to the game while the new owner is forced to procure the game files and installation methods independent of Steam.
In fact, it would be like buying a new game from Walmart and then having a law forcing Walmart to resell that game for the purchaser, deliver it to the new owners house, set it up for them and ensure it is in brand new cloned working order, and then provide all the monies to the original purchaser. It makes zero sense. Walmart sold you the game and if you resell it, it is up to you to figure out how to get it to the new owner and its then up to the new owner to have a method to use it.
Oh and there is a little United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling (basically then upheld by the Supreme Court) for Vernor v Autodesk in the good ole' US of A which pretty much puts the kibosh on the reselling of software licenses.
Even if we were in fairy-tale land and the resale of used digital games was allowed, I wouldn't want it. The sale of used physical copies of games already forced developers into the models we currently have. Downloadable content (DLC) and the piecemeal sale of games is a direct result of developers looking at ways to get around used game sales. Every developer now is building or has built online service platforms around their game franchises to lock features behind pay walls.
I much prefer the path the PC gaming industry is actually on: free 2 play (F2P). Players want to pay for games and are more than willing to happily spend away on games that keep them engaged. The F2P model allows them to try before they buy and then show the developer in a tangible way what they like about the game.
There is so much doom-casting about the current gaming industry that we are all missing the fact that the PC gaming industry has completely transformed itself over the past two years. Reselling of digital licenses for digital games would be a huge derailment.
I won't claim to be an expert in copyright law, but I do consider myself a logical thinker. Thinking this out a bit, I don't see anything in the ruling that forces a digital distribution platform to allow another user access to a game license bought by one of its other users. The license to a game can be transferred to another user, but access via a digital distribution platform is under a completely different license. The ruling may force the likes of Steam to allow user account sales, but it does not in any way look like it forces Steam to allow a different user access to a license you've resold. Theoretically, as you no longer own the license, Steam could deactivate your access to the game while the new owner is forced to procure the game files and installation methods independent of Steam.
In fact, it would be like buying a new game from Walmart and then having a law forcing Walmart to resell that game for the purchaser, deliver it to the new owners house, set it up for them and ensure it is in brand new cloned working order, and then provide all the monies to the original purchaser. It makes zero sense. Walmart sold you the game and if you resell it, it is up to you to figure out how to get it to the new owner and its then up to the new owner to have a method to use it.
Oh and there is a little United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling (basically then upheld by the Supreme Court) for Vernor v Autodesk in the good ole' US of A which pretty much puts the kibosh on the reselling of software licenses.
Even if we were in fairy-tale land and the resale of used digital games was allowed, I wouldn't want it. The sale of used physical copies of games already forced developers into the models we currently have. Downloadable content (DLC) and the piecemeal sale of games is a direct result of developers looking at ways to get around used game sales. Every developer now is building or has built online service platforms around their game franchises to lock features behind pay walls.
I much prefer the path the PC gaming industry is actually on: free 2 play (F2P). Players want to pay for games and are more than willing to happily spend away on games that keep them engaged. The F2P model allows them to try before they buy and then show the developer in a tangible way what they like about the game.
There is so much doom-casting about the current gaming industry that we are all missing the fact that the PC gaming industry has completely transformed itself over the past two years. Reselling of digital licenses for digital games would be a huge derailment.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Friday, June 08, 2012
Rift is World of Warcraft
There has been a long running discussion that World of Warcraft just copied Everquest which just copied DIKU MUD and therefore the current flood of WoW clones is expected. I disagree with this line of thinking. Everquest's biggest achievement is that it brought the DIKU MUD to 3D graphics. Other than that, I would argue Everquest was a pretty terrible game. World of Warcraft's biggest achievement was that it refined the DIKU model into something that made sense with a massively online game that is beyond a doubt one of the best games ever released. Secondly, WoW brought MMO to the mainstream.
These other games: Rift, Aion, etc. They are all clones; none of them bringing anything significant to the genre. They aren't even trying to bring something to the genre. They are all fighting to carve out a piece of the table scraps of players that Blizzard ends up shoving off the table where they keep the money hats.
Does this make these games bad? Not really, but after an hour of playing Aion I was done; having decided if I wanted this experience I would just go back to play World of Warcraft. Rift? Same story.
Yet, the worst part is each and every game tries to sell itself as though its the "next big thing". That its ONE THING IT WILL DO DIFFERENTLY is the NEXT PILLAR OF WHAT IS GOOD IN GAMES. It's annoying. These developer's need to just shut up and tell gamers that they really liked World of Warcraft and wanted to make a game that emulates it. I would be far less pissed off about the state of the MMO industry if the big players would just come out and admit they are riding WoW's coattails
Rift is World of Warcraft. I don't care if the game gets better in the later levels or has some whiz-bang new idea that you get to enjoy at some point. Give me something different that as soon as I start playing the LAST thing I think of is the other game I played before it. When I played DOTA 2, I didn't think "oh man, this is League of Legends". DOTA 2 is it's own game. It defines itself as something unique. AND DOTA 2 IS A LITERAL CLONE OF ANOTHER GAME!
Fuck it, Valve make me a god damned MMO already.
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