Video Game News and Miscellany
- Thread starter figmentPez
- Start date
GasBandit
Staff member
I was mostly being smartassed... in that the game's art style is clearly anime-ish, "cartoons are for kids," and "hentai is anime porn," and thus any cartoon/anime matter that involves any adult-oriented/sex-related content at all qualifies.
From what I understand, it's basically about as porny as a "brief nudity" R-rated film.
Added at: 17:49
More from my google reader recommended feed -
Goonswarm Shocks EVE Markets
from Terra Nova by Edward Castronova
More evidence that an MMO can look like the real world! Compare the Enron saga to the following story sent in by Goonswarmer endie. Thanks endie!
***
Basically, this is about some emergent gameplay that we in Goonswarm (it's always Goonswarm) are running right now. It requires a touch of background for the non-Eve player, but is fairly easily comprehensible to the non-Eve constituency. There are three basic things to understand:
1- In Eve, "POS Towers" (essentially small space stations) are at the core of much manufacturing, being used to react various compounds to make the building blocks of advanced construction. Of the four Eve races' towers, by far the most efficient for this task are Gallente. Gallente towers are thus used almost exclusively for high-end compound reactions. Without the results of these reactions - many essential items from interdictors to jump freighters - simply cannot be built.
2 - Gallente towers use a specific type of ice which is predominately mined in Gallente empire space (it spawns in a few other places but is economically unrewarding to mine there until prices become vastly higher). By filtering on various criteria, we were able to determine that only seventeen of all of Eve's thousands of systems were suitable for the methods used to mine almost all Gallente ice (automated botting by large numbers of ice-mining accounts). I'll spare you the details of what those criteria were unless you are particularly interested.
3 - The automated bots use ships that themselves require at least thirty or so hours of mining to pay for their own capital investment, when fitted. Ironically, they rely on CCP's own mechanics for protection: if you shoot them in empire space then "Concord" (an external, invincible force of NPCs: essentially town guards) will spawn very quickly and destroy you. However, it is possible to fit certain ships so as to deal sufficient damage sufficiently rapidly to destroy one or more miners before Concord arrive. For obvious and predictably tasteless Goonswarm-cultural reasons this is known as Jihading.
We have therefore announced and begun a campaign aimed at preventing anyone mining for Gallente ice in Empire space. Since we have thousands of members, we have proved able to shut ice-mining operations down almost entirely.
Although prices have already risen dramatically and proceeded to fluctuate wildly (I can provide graphs if you want) we estimate that this is not yet because of a genuine shortage in reserves of ice, but mainly down to panic-buying, deliberate price tampering (by us: we bought up stocks in advance of the campaign) and short-term shortages. We think that the lead time for buying is usually a week and that most major players have between two and three weeks of stocks in reserve. After that is used-up the knock-on effect on a range of items will be fun to watch: unreacted moon minerals will drop; moon reaction output will rise; other components (such as datacores) used in "Tech 2" manufacturing will presumably fall, while the finished products will become more expensive. This will affect virtually all of the hundreds of thousands of Eve accounts.
As someone working for an oil- and energy-market research company I've been watching the related price shock, market hysteria, speculation and rumour-fed manipulation with delight and a strong sense of déjà vu. One post I made in the Goonswarm alliance director forums before we started kinda sums it up in formal terms:
"What [a fellow director] is saying is that while there is a limited degree of elasticity in supply, short- and medium-term spare capacity is inadequate to replace any interruption of current productive capacity, demand is extremely inelastic in the short term, bunkers are inadequate for any prolonged shortage and the cost of removing dependence is high both in immediate terms and in the context of ongoing costs. The market is therefore extremely vulnerable to price shock."
And there aren't many MMOs you can say that about.
***
No there aren't! But now if someone asks me whether an important policy and regulatory issue can be replicated in a virtual world, I can say that some players replicated energy market manipulation just for kicks.
figmentPez
Staff member
GOG.com is teasing the next game to be added to their catalog. Their clues are:
- I've seen the future of GOG, and it looks...kind of purple.
- Predicting tomorrow's release involves numbers between 419 & 451
Voters on Facebook seem to think that it's Day of the Tentacle, but that seems like wishful thinking to me. The forum thread on GOG.com is guessing Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy, but that game is from 2005, and doesn't seem old enough for GOG's catalog.
- I've seen the future of GOG, and it looks...kind of purple.
- Predicting tomorrow's release involves numbers between 419 & 451
Voters on Facebook seem to think that it's Day of the Tentacle, but that seems like wishful thinking to me. The forum thread on GOG.com is guessing Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy, but that game is from 2005, and doesn't seem old enough for GOG's catalog.
O
Overflight
Yup. It's Farenheit:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/08/fahrenheit-indigo-prophecy-now-on-gog/
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/08/fahrenheit-indigo-prophecy-now-on-gog/
Couldn't have said it better myself. Alternatively:
I actually heard they were being pressured by Atari to push it out before it was done, which is why things go shit crazy in the last hours. To be fair the game was already in development for FAR too long, so it's hard to blame Atari.
That seems to be Quanticdream's biggest problem: They can tell a story and they have the technology to present it well, but they take WAY too fucking long to deliver because they are absolute perfectionists. Though it's ironic that the best game of this type (LA Noire) wasn't even developed by them...
That seems to be Quanticdream's biggest problem: They can tell a story and they have the technology to present it well, but they take WAY too fucking long to deliver because they are absolute perfectionists. Though it's ironic that the best game of this type (LA Noire) wasn't even developed by them...
Even if they'd had time to present what happened with better pacing, it would've still gone off the rails and been stupid. If you look to earlier in the game, they were clearly intended those batshits changes of plot from the start; just not perhaps those changes in tone. I'm sure the whole police investigation would've factored into later things more than it did, but nonetheless, the change in plot focus was stupid and would've been so no matter how well it was told.
Yeah, it is.
Hey, I might get DCU now. That's a price I can agree it's worth.
Yeah, but they already started doing that way back when with the Power Ring power set. They knew it would come to this.
C
Chibibar
Yes you can. Basically DCUO went LOTRO route. The game has potential, but I think the devs are not seeing all of it (IMO)
C
Chibibar
single player has gotten better. You can do all the content (except those required to be 2 players+) even catwoman's quest is doable single player.
figmentPez
Staff member
Posting this multiple places:
SteamPowered User Forums have been hacked
Steam forums taken offline following possible security breach
If you use the same password for the Steam forums as you do anywhere else, especially your Steam account, you should change your password immediately.
SteamPowered User Forums have been hacked
Steam forums taken offline following possible security breach
If you use the same password for the Steam forums as you do anywhere else, especially your Steam account, you should change your password immediately.
C
Chibibar
I change my password anyways 
but I do use Steam Guard which helps (i.e. new users would need email code in order to log in)
but I do use Steam Guard which helps (i.e. new users would need email code in order to log in)
O
Overflight
Ladies and Gentlemen, Gaming Journalism in a nutshell:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/modern-game-journalism-the/723924
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/modern-game-journalism-the/723924
Holy shit, my favorite PnP RPG system Pathfinder is getting a video game. THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!! FUUUUUUUCKING AWESOME!
https://goblinworks.com/
About Pathfinder ONLINE, the new MMO...
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
https://goblinworks.com/
About Pathfinder ONLINE, the new MMO...
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
GSC (makers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R) is likely closing it's doors. This means Stalker 2 is most likely not going to happen. This is most likely because they kept failing to close deals for a console version and because of how hard it is for publishers in Eastern Europe to get published in the West.
However, there IS another rumored reason: The Ukrainian government (which is one of most corrupt in Europe) was going after the company's profits, as it was one of the most profitable companies in the country. This is certainly not out of the question, as things like this have happened before to other companies there. The current rumor is most of the dev team might be leaving the country to set up shop somewhere else.
However, there IS another rumored reason: The Ukrainian government (which is one of most corrupt in Europe) was going after the company's profits, as it was one of the most profitable companies in the country. This is certainly not out of the question, as things like this have happened before to other companies there. The current rumor is most of the dev team might be leaving the country to set up shop somewhere else.
Look at the top of the page. They were talking about Catherine. Enough said.
So, I found War for Cybertron to be a pretty good play. Graphics were decent and it was probably the best Transformers gameplay ever - which isn't saying much.
The sequel trailer came out a couple of days ago and I think Bay missed the boat not using some of the ideas...especially the last one
The sequel trailer came out a couple of days ago and I think Bay missed the boat not using some of the ideas...especially the last one
I would tend to agree. I think redesigns are 'okay' but they went far too overboard on a very ugly aesthetic under the pretense of 'realism'. Honestly, they're transforming robots from outer space, I don't think it's hard to have a throw away line to mass transference or some such pseudo-science to explain why cog A doesn't exactly align to gear B. And making complex-to-transform toys limits your market significantly to dextrous nerds like myself instead of kids. The fact it takes 10 minutes to transform something limits 'play' quite a lot.
Ha ha ha ha, holy shit. That looks like someone at High Moon was a big fan of the Gears of War trailers.So, I found War for Cybertron to be a pretty good play. Graphics were decent and it was probably the best Transformers gameplay ever - which isn't saying much.
The sequel trailer came out a couple of days ago and I think Bay missed the boat not using some of the ideas...especially the last one
I dug War for Cybertron and hope this game is more like it than High Moon's terrible, terrible Dark of the Moon game.
figmentPez
Staff member
figmentPez
Staff member
Gamefly has announced a new Unlimited PC Play portion to it's subscription. Right now the games look to be about the caliber of those that are found on GameTap, which is to say you'd be hard pressed to play enough games to make it a better option than shopping Steam sales (even if you never replay a single game). That is, unless you're already subscribing to GameFly for console games, in which case it's a nice bonus as there are some good games on the list.
figmentPez
Staff member
I was pretty happy with Gametap for a while. Especially during the period that Gametap was the only legitimate place to get Baldur's Gate without paying an arm and a leg for a used physical copy. Then I started keeping track of Steam sales, and realized most of the games on there could be had for $10 or less, and for keeps to boot. After that GOG.com kept expanding it's catalog, while Gametap's slowly shrunk. I canceled my GT subscription just in time (I'd been reluctant to let it go, since I was grandfathered in at $60 a year). Not long after I quit they lost a huge chunk of their library, and they've been adding mostly crap for new games ever since.