scooby_dooby
Legend
As far as I'm concerned, what the market wants has been shown for the last 4 generations in a row: An affordable game system with the largest amount of good games. Everything else is secondary.
Optional "advanced" controller headed to the XB 360 at some point.
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
Aside from the potential gaming imbalance that Mouse/KB support potentially adds, ive heard on more than a few occasions that developers find it difficult to tune the controls and the game itself when having to plan for 2 very different control options.
One would think that Live Anywhere (e.g. Shadowrun) proves that incorrect but i wonder if some of the devs on here could comment on it?
We're not going to know if MS' strategy was the right one anytime soon. Only when they beat Sony to 199 and 149 down the road can we judge. Neither of them are wrong or right at the moment, they'll only be wrong or right in 2,3,4 years from now.
One would think that Live Anywhere (e.g. Shadowrun) proves that incorrect but i wonder if some of the devs on here could comment on it?
We're not going to know if MS' strategy was the right one anytime soon. Only when they beat Sony to 199 and 149 down the road can we judge. Neither of them are wrong or right at the moment, they'll only be wrong or right in 2,3,4 years from now.
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KB/MS is very simple to balance. Allow users to custom-map their keys first off. And for Mouse-look allow sensativity adjustments to the Y-axis and X-axis. Disable auto-aim, magnatism, acceleration, and other gamepad hacks. Some gamers may miss some auto-aim or magnatism, but scratch it up to the advantage of getting to use a better instrument.
Anyhow, I doubt this is a big deal. A LOT of FPS have allowed users to enable and disable auto-aim and adjust sensativity. I believe even a couple allowed you to turn of magnatism. Adding a new profile should be pretty simple work.
Well lets not forget the Wii..this dude could steal the whole show and MS direction with the controler may go towards covering this base (HD-DVD on Sony) as well.
Personally, I don't see how any of this is a big deal. Just let players have an option of setting up game servers with different properties. On one, you'd have the same general lack-of-restrictions that exist in the PC world, where basically your quality of components will affect your turning sensitivity et al, and on the other you just program in bits of auto-aiming, choke turning speed... Do what already IS done in gamepad-land where they want to keep the big-bad ol' kb/m folk away.
Auto-detection would be for convenience purposes online (after all, how would it pay to mask your device?), but otherwise... just let people play how they want. How in heck can THAT be either difficult or a bad thing? It would even let you do more funky stuff like linking the console and PC servers without worrying about it. Let the devs set up whatever they'd like.
You might have to label the servers properly--you know, not call one "Expert" and one "LOL NOOBZ!" or anything--but so long as people know what to expect...
Heck, it'd finally shut up those console folk apt to shout "there's no difference!" from every hilltop when they join the open servers and find out just how much difference there is.
Auto-detection would be for convenience purposes online (after all, how would it pay to mask your device?), but otherwise... just let people play how they want. How in heck can THAT be either difficult or a bad thing? It would even let you do more funky stuff like linking the console and PC servers without worrying about it. Let the devs set up whatever they'd like.
You might have to label the servers properly--you know, not call one "Expert" and one "LOL NOOBZ!" or anything--but so long as people know what to expect...
Heck, it'd finally shut up those console folk apt to shout "there's no difference!" from every hilltop when they join the open servers and find out just how much difference there is.
Bigus Dickus
Regular
Adaptive rankings.
Shouldn't be that hard to do. If you're implementing a filter, implement it in such a way that you can select to play only gamers using like controls, or gamers using any form of control.
After a sufficient number of matches, generating an adaptable and fair ranking algorithm should not be difficult at all. It would rely on the same principles of weighted strength of opponents, among other things, that virtually all ranking systems use (well, the good ones at least).
Say you have a thousand KB vs. KB matches, a thousand gamepad vs. gamepad matches, and then a thousand cross matches using the above players. You rank the KB players in a traditional way based only on KB vs. KB matches. Do the same for the gamepad players. Now use the cross matches to curve the two sets to equivalency. By doing this, the best KB only and the best gamepad only player will have roughly the same ranking... ditto for the worst and the mean. The distributions should be similar.
Now, this doesn't mean that a similarly ranked KB and gamepad player should be stalemate... after all, it could well be that the worst KB player could mop the floor with the best gamepad player. It should, however, allow for a handicap system (like in golf, for example) by which the match results can be fairly judged. If the similarly ranked KB player just squeaked by the gamepad player, it could be the case that he loses ranking points and the gamepad player gains points.
Anyway, it isn't a difficult thing to do, really. Handicapping has been used for decades successfully. The mathematics of normalizing two sets to allow for handicaps between differing input methods is trivial. The programming... who knows... supporting two control devices and having the console report the device plugged in to the match server are probably by far the more difficult parts.
I was thinking more along the lines of actual gameplay mechanics. For instance a developer may limit the amount of enemies that appear behind a gamepad user becuase of his limited ability to spin 180 degrees realtive to a KB. Gameplay testing might bear somethign like this out. That would almost require 2 tweaked versions of single player content in order to get the balance correct...
Keeping a slow enough rate of fire, knowing what weapons to use, using the right bullets/attacks for the right enemies. Most people raise the sensitivity level a lot after playing through the campaign.
what was the most expensive nextgen console again?
next prediction keyboard + mouse will come to the xb360 (as much as ms dont want to do it)
i cant wait if ms do release a tilt controller to see certain ppl backtrack + after months of slagging off the idea, actually say the idea has merit
next prediction keyboard + mouse will come to the xb360 (as much as ms dont want to do it)
i cant wait if ms do release a tilt controller to see certain ppl backtrack + after months of slagging off the idea, actually say the idea has merit
Your wording is disengenuous. With words such as "force" you are casting judgement.
It could just be "choice".
scooby_dooby
Legend
The most expensive console is still the PS3.
MS requires that all perephrials have a chip in them. So MS has to certify them to work, and I doubt any dev would openly support a device that MS did not support.
i cant wait if ms do release a tilt controller to see certain ppl backtrack + after months of slagging off the idea, actually say the idea has merit
Certain people would be a very small minority, even here. I can only think of one Xbox fan/poster here who continually and habitually slags off the Wii-mote. I actually can think of more PS3 fans who dislike it actually. Some older threads on this you may wish to browse; that would put an end to the "if ms do release" comments because a good chunk of naysayers are on the other side of the fence as well. Some people will NEVER be happy. Even if most games played well they will pick on the one or two that don't. Of course rational people realize MANY games have poorly designed controls, so we should expect this with Wii, especially since it is new.
That said Wii-mote looks fun but looks to have some seriously large hurdles. I am rooting for it. That said MS has played with tilt and there is a video from a couple years ago of MS using a 3D remote, so MS is geniune in their comments that they have researched into this. Hard to fault MS or Sony for not going full bore on a 3D controller when it poses so many problems for established franchises; even Nintendo had to license the technology as well, so I don't think it is an easy off the shelf, proven solution anyone can just deploy. But I am uber excited about the first FPS that is intuitive with the Wii-mote.
IIRC, a few people on this forum are already using 3rd-party USB PC keyboards for things like text entry.
I'm not sure I get you.
Acert was saying MS is offering you all this choice etc. etc. etc. but my counter was that for some (most, currently, i.e. SDTV owners), they have no choice about paying for technology in 360 they don't necessarily need either. Further, consoles are about choices made by the platform maker for the collective good of the platform and its users, by establishing standards - if you give too much choice to the consumer, you risk fragmenting your market.
You can take issue with words like "forced" in so far as no one is forced to buy a videogames console, period. But that applies as much to PS3 as any other system.
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technology such as?
Developers are targetting HD resolutions for the (current) minority, and SDTV owners aren't seeing the intended benefit. If they were to target SDTV resolutions, they wouldn't need as powerful or as expensive a GPU to get the same results (sans the improvement in aliasing inherent in downsampling from HD, perhaps), for example.
SDTV owners don't have a choice about paying for technology targetted at HD with 360 and PS3. You could argue about the relative degree to which that is true with each system, but both are hitched to the HD bandwagon to less or greater degrees.
My main point is that to talk about consumer choice in the context of a console is always going to be a little contradictory. Consumers don't make the technological choices, they are always made for you at a base level in the console space. It's up to you to decide what mix suits you best. People are only making it a point about 'choice' now because of various technologies that aren't in one system that are in another (and are only making that point as far as those technologies go, funnily enough).
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I think what's happened with the PS3 is that the Blu-Ray drive has been explicitly linked to the higher price of the PS3 console. So whereas the 360 is sort of this general list of parts and chips that add up to a $299/$399 price point, the PS3 is at 499/599 and the obvious culprit is the BR drive. Thats where the 'forced' part comes in with Sony because the BR drive has no value-add to the gaming experience, its clearly just a lynchpin in Sony's other strategies.
As far as HD (or a better GPU/CPU/memory) goes, you could say that MS/Sony arent forcing anyone to pay for it, theyre footing the bill themselves becuase theyre losing money on each unit sold. As you said they feel its important to the platform so theyre going to pay for it. Compare this to Nintendo who isnt losing money on the hardware and arent offering HD either.
You've hit the nail on the head except I would view all of that as unfair singling out of Blu-ray just because it's a significant technology that its rival does not share. The things that will come in for most criticism in some quarters are the things that are potentially the greatest differentiators.
And the last sentence is nicely representative of the BS that gets thrown about regarding Blu-ray. How the heck can you say something as conclusive as "the BR drive has no value-add to the gaming experience" at this point? Again, people make points about these things that they might hope is true (kinda perversely), but in the end that's only something that will be knowable in the fullness of time. Not even MS seems clear on the issue looking at these recent reports.
If we're to extend that kind of understanding to CPUs/GPUs etc. then it should be extended to BD etc. in PS3. Sony is losing money on those too!
This isn't the same thing at all. What makes you think Xbox 360 or PS3 owners are forced into paying for higher resoloution out put? tehncally they aren't really paying for this. This is not like forcing people to pay for a BR drive that actually does increase the cost of the system. Or for a hard drive they might not need or want.
I'm sure you haven't forgotten that Xbox also supported high def resoloutions. Yes Xbox was cheaper at launch, but newer and more powerful technooogy comes at a higher price initially. You could argue the price difference is in the more powerful CPU , GPU and added RAM over the previous console generation, and that ANYONE no matter if you have a high def TV or not will see a benefit in the games from those improvements.
I think the point Dave was making is that there's a difference between being forced to pay for a feature many don't care about (i.e those people looking for a games machine and not a high def BR player.) and having the option to get exactly what you want and still buy addons if you feel the need in the future. i don't think the Xbox 360 forces people to pay for anything they weren't looking for. You don't want the hard drive or care about online, buy the core version. You don't want Highdef DVD, don't buy the addon drive. With PS3 you don't have a choice in the matter and you end up paying for it all.
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