Sounds like that will just be for initial setup of the account, and passing the basic licensing/drm codes to the system.
Much like how steam requires you to at least get online once to setup your account (and grab a game).
It was already confirmed that older 360 peripherals, such as wheels, will not work on the XB1. This is also true for the PS4 last I checked.
However, I expect the manufacturers of certain higher end wheels to have conversion boxes available. Let's be frank, it's a wheel, the inputs and outputs can't be that different. Either that, or they'll just do a patch to allow them.
Seems like everything is going to those snappy rectangles with gradient backgrounds everywhere. I mean everything...
That said, I'm okay with that, just so long as they can figure out how to use that style effectively and develop a common, shared visual language.
The worst thing we can have happen this gen is all these OSes, and sites using this common info rectangle design, but every one is using a different way of interacting with it.
Considering that this announcement means that they have less to implement, not more, they can make this change. It won't exactly be easy, and there's stuff they've had to back away from that developers will now have wasted effort on, but it's easier than the other way around.
Although I wonder how much it is actually listening to consumers (or rather, trying to head off the total crap storm of bad publicity), and how much was that they were behind on implementing these systems in the first place. All reports indicate that they were way behind on development.
Still yes, a good thing overall. As much as I hate it now, I did make the same argument years ago with the PS3 that competition is going to be a good thing overall. Look at Sony back when it was on top of the heap, it was making mistakes just as bad. But, all through this console generation the competition between these two giants funded a plethora of games, and drastically increased the support developers got as these giants battled for exclusives, content, and market share.
If, and only if, Kinect 2 is as accurate and responsive as they say, then in the long run it may be a good (maybe not better) choice for MS since they can secure a market that Sony can't touch. Although I'm not sure how much of a market there is for motion control games for a $500 console.
Thing is, digital is not going away. I foresee over half my games this coming generation being bought directly from MS and Sony digital stores. Especially so with the new streaming tech allowing you to play the game before it's fully downloaded (a must with the sizes of these modern games). I would't be surprised if they had pre-loading for games as well.
But the thing is, going back to no DRM means that console traditionalists aren't left out in the cold in this transitional console generation. The generation after this one, I don't think consoles will have disc drives, or even be recognizable as gaming consoles.
I am holding it against Sony. If they had tried to launch at $500, it would have been a PC only year. Likewise, if they hadn't shown a new controller, and had two announcement events that dealt with almost every flaw the PS3 had. Then again, if they hadn't done everything this new generation right, then MS would still have been in a position to keep this DRM scheme as people would avoid the PS4 for its faults. And in either case, I could certainly put $400 to upgrade my PC, or put it towards a new laptop.
I can concur with Tilt's PS3 grudge, I believe we went at it on these forums for quite some time. Of course, I took longer to develop the grudge.
What needs to be forgiven was the complete anti-consumer policies they originally had, which is indicative of an overall tone from the top that is anti-consumer. It's really not that hard to see that needs forgiving. Also, all the media they were putting out had a stubborn arrogance to it. Telling people to go buy 360s, for instance.
There's a reason why people have aversions to convicted felons, even if they have served their time. Sure, they have paid, and perhaps truly changed, but the initial sense of danger is there. Let's see if MS actually fully follows through.
This is just like the 360 red ring hardware situation. Way too quick to forgive, most likely only because people were set into the system. Now's the chance to chose beforehand. It wasn't the fact that they did replace MOST of the systems, but rather systems would be failing at high rates even after the warranty extensions, and they shouldn't be failing in the first place.
Also, keep in mind, it's still $100 over, still has Kinect required (not exactly a bad thing), and there are still grey areas in the wording of their backsteps.
That link is apparently not fully updated, there's supposed to be another link that has properly updated info.
People will forgive them just like they forgave the massive hardware failures. Then again, my housemates will never touch an Xbox again after it failed twice on him in the middle playing his most anticipated games.
So, I think some damage has been done. Overall, while I was avoiding the Xbox anyway, this doesn't change my buying decisions, nor does it change much for Sony. They already did the damage they needed with the core, first adopters. All they have to do is follow up with games. All this means is I may be trying Xbox One games earlier rather than later.
Some Xbox defenders may have just exploded their heads, but in a good way. Overall it's good for console gamers to get one more generation of proper consoles. If there is a next gen, it will be purely PC-like. But that'll be okay then since people will be used to it.
Giant rumor popped up saying MS will reverse all their DRM plans in an announcement today. However the only reputable site that has reported it is giant bomb, with the original report coming from a no name place whatHiFi. That site may be fishing for hits though.
GB reports that their info comes from a reputable source but they've been wrong before.
Going to a more powerful system would make their complex engine run faster, that means the input lag and such would be greatly reduced, as well as a higher stable framerate to allow the player's mind to more accurately track targets.
That would be he main benefit of Naughty Dog working on PS4 hardware. They already have a really nice painterly style that they could use on the PS4, which means that even after they make everything look pretty, and the characters animate interestingly, they have more left over to put towards quickly processing input and frames.
At this point, for this game, I'm fine with the trade off. However, their games could definitely get better with a silky smooth framerate and no input lag. I also think players will put up with it less as the new generation of games comes to light.
Hate to pull directly from GAF, but here's a relevant post:
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How would AI and physics unloading work practically anyway?
Say that there are five million users that will be using data from the cloud. Every cloud server has 10x the oomph of the Xbox one. Let's day that each server runs at $1000. That is five billion dollars that needs to be pulled on from somewhere. Say that each server uses a 700w power supply and that the load due to the global audience of the Xbox will be roughly even over the day (practically there will be local servers and such, but never mind that now). Counting cooling at a factor two (that we assume is running at max) we arrive at 126 GWh a day and 12cent per kWh that is 15 million per day on electricity costs. Or $20 a month per currently paying gold subscribers.
Fast and very very dirty, so my apologies for all of the errors.
This is why the cloud is bullshit in this context. That's not how "the cloud" works, well at least it won't work for things like physics that rely on very low latency. The cloud can be used to parallelize a large compute task across 100 or 1000s of machines. If there are millions of people playing a game simultaneously it's ridiculous to assume that any meaningful sort of processing the local machine's CPU/GPU could do would be magically offloaded to the cloud.
The cloud thing would work if, say, you had a massively multiplayer game where 1000s of users are somehow altering the environment and those changes are constantly streamed to the cloud for calculations to reflect those changes across all users. Things like that which can be queued up and batch calculated work fine and will scale even under peak usage. If you think the cloud will get you better graphics or physics you're dead wrong. That's OnLive territory and that sort of experience is sub-optimal, to put it lightly.
Source: I'm on a team that is building a giant private cloud infrastructure.
A technical answer dumbed down for us types that aren't actually working with real cloud based systems.
Replaying this after finishing it, I think people's valid complaints about its shooting, and a lot of Naughty Dog's shooting being off or poor is valid.
However, I don't think the basic mechanics as planned and designed are poor, but as I've said before, it's the system that's the problem. They've hit the limit, and no amount of tricks can replicate things like solidly high FPS and control responsiveness. That's the biggest problem for people, and rightly so. Naughty Dog seems to always sacrifice those aspects for more fidelity in graphics and animation.
Give me next gen. Heck, budget to let Naughty Dog do the long porting process to being TLoU to PS4, or see any of these games on PC, and I think the problems people had with shooting would go away once they can simply push the stick in the direction they want to aim and see a reaction that doesn't take an unbearable half second to respond.
Of course, the odd sensitivity on the PS3's thumb sticks don't help.
It's likely publishers, and studios, are being cautious about these next gen consoles, so are focusing on single games. Once they sort out the costs for developing this next gen, then they'll start building up again.
Some collectibles just have bits of dialog when you collect, or look at them.
I'm finished with the game.
I have to say, late in the game, some encounters get a bit ridiculous, definitely drop down the difficulty if you have issues with it to preserve the flow of the story. Much harder to sneak through as well.
As for the ending:
Spoiler for Hiden:
Apparently, there's different ways to handle the surgeons. I need to test it, but you can shoot near the surgeon, to make him drop the scalpel. But that's just a rumor I'll have to test.
Sad thing is, medically, there was no reason to require Ellie's death. In fact, the best scientists, even ones that are psychpathic mad scientists, would recognize that Ellie being alive in the hospital for a long stay with lots of tests over the years is worth more than a hack job of a surgery to cut out infected parts of her brain.
You literally do not need to get an entire sample of the cordyceps parasite directly from the brain. You just get a sample from her blood or other bodily fluid, it's the exact same thing. Then there's this thing called "culturing" where you take a basic strain of something and just grow more for lab use, not a big deal.
Also, the immunity is within Ellie, or likely the interactions. Killing her removes that living interaction. All in all this kind of, "Oh no, getting the cure will kill you! Will you die to save us all?" has become a trope as much as letting the main character survive.
I would have loved to see it end instead on a note where you have a crazy scientist who wants all the credit for saving humanity there and then, trying to grab as much samples directly to speed up the process. Then, a more reasonable scientist trying to get Joel to help convince Marlene to put a stop to it. Marlene instead is just so tired and out her mind she authorizes the fast method so that she can see the world without the infected sooner than later.
In the end, they could still need to have a risky surgery. One where they don't know if it will be successful, and Ellie makes the choice to go through with it. Ellie and Joel have a really heartbreaking talk before the surgery. Then as she's being prepped and laid down on the table, you flash back to Joel laying the dying Sara down, coming to grips with his loss, and now potential loss of Ellie.
I cringed the moment I heard Marlene say some BS about needing to kill Ellie. If they'd gone with my route, we could also have skipped that terrible section where you're dodging soldiers in segments that were almost impossible to sneak through, or at least make me hate the soldiers even more.
In the end, knowing the science and medicine behind it could have led to a more interesting writing of the outcome. Not only that, if they wanted to leave more room for a sequel, it's easy enough to say, as others have pointed out, that a vaccine would take a long time to develop, and even if there was one it would take a long time to distribute.
With the current ending, there's the issue with Ellie still being infected, so have fun getting people sick by spitting on them Ellie. I feel sorry for when she ever gets a boyfriend and kisses him. Honestly, if they do a Last of Us 2, I suspect it will pickup right off from Ellie, now 19 or a 20 something, having been banished or runs away from the community after accidentally killing her boyfriend.
Physical servers or not, show me actual implementation. But the reality is, these servers are not the same as actual real-time processing, and that's key. It may give every games some MMO-like features, but every big games is already getting that. And they can't rely on it as well as they could actual hardware.
Key thing to note, the PS4 will still have just as robust an online collection of games. There's no indication that they aren't going to have that digital distribution service, just like MS. And they also have the same play as you download technology. Not all games will be able to use the play as you download tech, for both consoles. It really depends on the game. But, what is nice is that these features will be standard across both systems. I wonder when Steam will implement it since games now will be prepared ahead of time with play as you download in mind.
Bah, don't even get started with bait and switch from last gen. Any comments about not charging were for the PS3, and while it's sad that free online play is going away, there's plenty of other stuff you can get riled up about when you consider you were paying for the 360's glorified matchmaking. Would have been nice to have hardware without massive failure rates that were known about ahead of time, right? PSN may now cost money, but, at least you also get games and discounts from the deal for a confirmed lower cost than XBL. And this talk about the saving money drum beat can be applied just as easily to the 360, do you really want to go back to that talk?
So let's get on a topic that I think both sides can agree on.
2013 is the year they finally figured out the controllers.
Every report says that both companies have done away with any lingering issues for their controllers. From the dual shock 3's crappy triggers and weird analog sticks, to the 360s crappy dpad.
Even the DS4 is wider so people who use their thumb joint instead of the tips on the sticks can play without their thumb tips touching (that grip always seemed weird to me).
The One controller has the awesome impulse tech you were hearing about 4 years ago after the rumble patent lawsuit blew over. Everyone who has tried it says great things about it.
I think it may be that because TLoU is set in a painterly modern aesthetic, you don't get those amazing fantastical locations that really force you take in the environment as a whole. Stuff like the giant temple in Uncharted 2. Plenty of blurry textures there, but your eyes didn't notice, you were too busy taking in this giant freaking environment. All of Columbia was that grand scale environment that made you forget that the rose bush textures were horrible low res.
With TLoU, it's small towns in the South and decrepit versions of things anyone from the US has seen before. But, if you step back and look at everything, it all paints a bleak, yet interesting picture. Things like going through people's houses that are probably all now dead.
Eh, there is no avoiding blurry textures, period. Unless you're a completely linear corridor shooter that has a tiny narrow path through the game planned and can thus stream in every single exact high res texture.
For games like this, and say Bioshock Infinite, and others. If you fixate on a few, or a bunch of blurry textures, you lose sight of the whole art design.
I'm willing to deal with some blurry textures, for a whole lot more unique textures and environments, than the same damn high res texture over and over.
It's like a movie set, even the greatest movies have issues with their sets, but the reason why they're rated in the 90+s is that the movie as a whole easily transcends that.
Yeah, Purge, all that you're talking about isn't some magical cloud, it's just server dedicated server processing that already exists.
I think the real difference isn't that this cloud system is magical and will allow new things.
But rather, now every game made for the Xbox will have a set amount of MMO-like dedicated server available for free to the developer. That's a better way to put things and will likely be the most common way this is implemented.
Another example is this, you talk about all those asteroids. But frankly, how is that different to the PC's galaxy simulator game/sandbox software? All those asteroids are basically just a point entity with movement values, aka a vector. 40,000 or even 300,000 may seem a lot, but we're in an age where your average game pushes millions of polygons, with a lot more vertexes, and many of those are animating. All those asteroids just don't seem that special.
I think a better example is that a small developer, typically unable to afford the money for dedicated servers, could make a game similar to say, Animal Crossing, and much like that game, he could have everything running in real-time, with his town being run even while he's offline. Likewise, if he's in a different area, other areas could still be simulated.
But they key is that, such things have already been done. Instead of fully simulating and area, it's way more efficient to simply have calls that change the area when you come back to it based on things like time, seasons, character movement, etc.
This really is just marketing hype. While it is very cool that every game will basically have what is equivalent to a dedicated server running stuff in the background without the publisher/developer setting one up, it's not some crazy tech that will change everything. Especially so when most games are already making use of their own dedicated servers for overarching gameplay elements (like The Division, Drive Club, Burnout Paradise, etc.)
It's 2013's version of Blast Processing. Well, not totally, since there is actually something to this, but it's definitely not as big as it seems.
As for kinect voice interfaces. Let's just say there's a reason why fighter pilots have all manual cockpit controls. Voice commands have some nice conveniences. I foresee them becoming popular in the long run, but not for everything.
The combat is about as good as it needs to be for now. I agree it definitely needs improvement, but knowing the current hardware limitations, we're literally the point where they had to sacrifice AI processor cycles and memory for their routines, along things like smoothness just to make sure all those unique textures are loading properly when you turn in place.
I do think that aspects like how fast you can actually shoot are deliberately toned down. You'll notice that without upgrades, your shotgun takes forever to fire again after a shot. That is one aspect that was definitely done deliberately, but the other stuff, like input lag and such, that's a sure fire sign of an engine and hardware pushed to its limits, which is sad.
This is why I was all for next gen consoles, regardless of which one. With the default spec of a gaming console or PC raised a reasonable amount, and with graphic fidelity rapidly hitting the point of diminishing returns, it's a better deal to put that extra hardware behind more gameplay.
I dunno... between the $599 price tag, the giant enemy crabs, "RIIIIDGE RACER" and the boomerang controller, Sony pretty much stunk the place up and had a similar reaction from gamers at the PS3 reveal. It just wasn't as amplified back then - we're far more connected now with social media and whatnot.
We were just as connected via social media back then, just different kinds of social media. I can assure you that the level of internet rage over Sony's announcements at the start of the PS3 is pretty much equal to the rage that's being felt at the start of the One. The only difference here is that if you're an Xbox fan, you're feeling the brunt of it, rather than being a bystander or participant.
Also, noise cancelling never works that well in real life, give me a boom mic any day. As much as I like the PS4, I actually am very interested in whether the Kinect 2 can actually deliver.
Nah, I don't think that the shooting mechanics are deliberately made bad. In this case, I think it's a real technical limitation. Naughty Dog have put so much into the world and setting, that they've had to sacrifice some of the snappiness to the controls that most shooters have. This has allowed them to create a world and character with detail and nuance that no game can match, but the shooting aspect suffers. I think I'm fine with that trade off, for now, but I don't want to see it continue for the PS4 era games when Naughty Dog gets around to that.
As above, the messy teammate AI, and it's immunity to most things like detection by AI enemies is a necessary evil. Again, this is pushing up against the hardware and practical limitations. It's near impossible to make a good stealthy AI that can do that, and follow the player around.
And, as per Tilt's response, the only time the AI shoots is when you were spotted, period. They know instantly when you were spotted, so it may seem like they shoot early.
Playing on Hard is still a good decision so far, I'm a good long ways into the game. You'll have to repeat some parts over, but it reloads instantly and feels fair.
Resources are absolutely scarce, it forces you to use every trick in the book.
Because of that, I've had the most intense and creative fights ever.
Grabbed a guy, only to have his two friends turn around, and I only had one shot. Plugged one guy in the chest and my gun clicked empty. I shived the guy I was holding hostage and saw his friend charging me and I didn't have the health for a proper fight, so I quickly selected and throw my brick at his face and knocked him out with a single punch. However, his friend had recovered and gotten behind me, and grabbed me from behind, only to have Ellie brick the guy before my health ran out, allowing me to turn around and punch his lights out.
The entire game is made for there to be moments like these.
Quote from: Lordnine on June 15, 2013, 12:21:29 AM
I’ve gotta say, this is one of the first console games in a long time to hold my interest.
I’m a little surprised by the reports that it’s a long game though. The in game percentage tracker says I’m at 15% after only about an hour. That seems to imply only about 7 hours.
Listened to a podcast where a dedicated gamer said it tool him 17 hours, more than the usual 15. I suspect later encounters take longer to get through.
I'm playing on hard and so far, none of the usual difficulty spikes. I have died quite a few times, but this is one of the few games where hard feels hard without being arbitrarily unfair. Having watched some let's plays concurrently with the parts I've gone through, you definitely get a lot less loot from scavenging. Enemies are also much tougher in a good way. There is absolutely no way to shoot your way through any of the encounters. You just don't have the ammo.
Right now, the rulebook will not be available until early July. There's a beginner's box game available, but not worth it unless you have a group to play with.
I'll be handling basic character creation for now using the old beta rules they sold a long time ago, and once the full book comes out everyone gets to create their characters how they want.
If you have access to the old beta rules (it was sold in stores) then you can make your own character.
I'll be starting this in a week, next Saturday, since I have a script deadline this coming week.
Honestly, I don't see why any F2P game would decide to require PS+ unless there's some kind of odd benefit to doing so, perhaps they get some of that subscription fee?
But since these games are based around their microtransactions and other DLC purchases, the money gained from the fee is negligible in the face of more players to potentially buy content.
We can assume that Sony will get a cut of any in-game purchases regardless.
Funny thing is, I doubt the Drivatar system needs this cloud computing. I had some guy arguing that the system needed some magical machine learning algorithms that only massive server farms could do. But all that drivatars boil down to is AI that can use input scripts to change its behavior. You just track players actions and driving style during well known racing situations that have been sorted and classed by drivers and coaches in the sport, once you get that data, it's reasonably doable to just plug that data into into the AI so that when the AI encounters said situation that it can identify, it'll perform similar moves. You can throw on a level of statistical info about how often you mess up, which side of that particular track the player favors, etc.
On the other hand, there were some really cool tech demos involving star systems and such that they said was only due to cloud. But, how different is that from that galaxy simulator game.
It's a tech I'd like to see pan out into something interesting and useful, but I don't think MS has along anywhere near the level they're promoting.
Quote from: wonderpug on June 14, 2013, 02:45:15 PM
Yeah, I got fooled as well.
I don't know where we got the idea that Xbox Live Gold members would get two free games per month...
I never saw that image, wasn't paying attention, but I thought the wording they used when announcing those games sounded a bit iffy about whether it was just a one time thing or something they'd do from now on.
I've always considered XBL Gold to be a waste of money, it never had any decent services or features beyond just playing multiplayer, which amounts to matchmaking services. Complicated, but also cheap to run once setup. I suppose they also had NAT transversal servers and account storage too, which is fine. Both systems now have cloud save storage right? I think by this time it was only because of competition that it got to be somewhat worthwhile.
Anyone heard anything actually concrete about this nebulous cloud computing angle they've been pushing? So far, everything I've heard is stuff that's nothing new and easily handled by normal system use. Or stuff that couldn't possible by a real-time thing under full loads from millions of gamers. There are some nice tech demos, but tech demos are never indicative of real world use in games. Any other talk are from studio people who signed exclusive deals, which likely include promotion of the platform as part of the deal.
The level of XB1's CPU and GPU being underpowered might be more than previously thought due to hardware manufacturing issues. I think we've talked elsewhere about yield issues on the custom APU they have for the system.
The numbers for memory allocation I'd heard were closer to 1GB for each. However, unlike in the prior generation, that number is unlikely to drop as both companies are more likely to add features to the OS even as it becomes more efficient.
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