Posts by Thrik

Heh, yeah I do agree it is a pretty cheesy trailer. Dawn of War wasn't really known for its story though, and more its excellent gameplay. I think most people played Dawn of War online, which is where it really shone as at the forefront of RTS gaming. It pretty much laid the foundation for Company of Heroes, which more people might have played(?).

Pity they didn't match the quality of the original game's cinematic. I loved that, and think it captured the 'huge scale RTS' nature of the game a lot better.

Certainly!!

It might be worth clarifying that I was dead serious with my last comment. Dawn of War was one of the highest calibre RTS games around, and as legendary as Starcraft may be I reckon Starcraft 2 will have its work cut out beating it.

One critical problem with the design discussion is the way our forums are organised. I've been looking at detailed statistics I've been gathering for a few months now, and the overriding message seems to be that we have too many design forums. People are diluted too thinly between them, and a lack of activity in each discourages people to start new threads.

I did suspect this was a problem before I gathered actual data, back when I did the first major restructure/prune of various forums. I considered making changes then but decided not to disrupt people too much and just restructured the more general forums.

I think what I'll do is just go ahead and fiddle with the design forum structure a bit tonight/tomorrow. I think trialling a different arrangement I have in mind could very well increase activity.

Edit: Actually I'll do this next week or so as I'll have more time to actively keep an eye on the changes and their effects.

This will be the finest RTS of 2009.

There're two reasons I've not made significant moves on modifying the forum front page/index Frie, and those are:

• 
  [*:301eivbn]I've been incrementally streamlining and improving the forums themselves by taking note of features people want and implementing them, culling less active forums, making the recruitment process more understandable, etc. I have spent quite a considerable chunk of time working on the forums during the several months I've had access.
  

  
  

  [*:301eivbn]phpBB3 is still relatively new, and as such I've avoided making major template changes as the first few phpBB3 updates are more likely to interfere with stuff (and indeed they have, resulting in me having to redo various things).

I may be the only one really doing much with the forums in quite some time, but I don't want to annoy people by moving too quickly with changes that people may or may not like. By doing things gradually it's less jolting. It also means I can better gauge reactions to changes.

The next thing I'd like to do is get the spotlight back up there towards the top of the page, pretty much as skdr just summarised. This is clearly the single most in-demand feature. Then once that's working properly and fits in nicely other things can be looked into such as the news (I really like the idea of having headlines based on what people have posted in the gaming discussion forum), and maybe eventually a more unique design.

I know I need to be less verbose. Just making sure you know how things stand. Transparency is good, right?

I don't see how having a standalone page just for the spotlight and some screenshots is a good thing. All it does is make it harder to access the forums and forces people to go to a separate area to view stuff like the latest spotlight gallery. I honestly cannot see why you'd possibly prefer to do that rather than have the spotlight thumbs built into the header so you can see the latest ones every time you visit the forums.

We'll just end up with what we did before, where lots of people bookmark the forum directly and completely ignore the front page. This means less exposure for those featured in the spotlight.

I also can't see why adding some stuff like the spotlight into the forum header would make us look like every other site out there. It certainly couldn't be any worse than we are now, using a mostly default phpBB skin.

Perhaps you're misinterpreting what I said. The front page of the forums would mostly look like it is now: a forum. It'd just also have a nice area at the top for the spotlight, quick headlines that're actually threads in the gaming discussion forum, etc. If it helps, another example of this kind of thing can be found here (although this way too bulky):

http://forums.cgsociety.org/

There was hardly any news beyond the job postings, which we replaced with the much better recruitment forums. The spotlight was also rarely updated. All in all, the front page didn't receive much interest and took focus away from where the real activity is: the forums. Indeed, when you came across the front page before it was hardly even apparent there was a very active and fun community behind it — it was just a dull page that looked dead.

MapCore isn't really a site IMO, and hasn't been for many years. It's a community, and so to me that seems like what should be on the front page. Why hide what the site really is behind a boring news page? It's best to keep the forums front and centre, show off the nice active community, etc. We might as well be honest with ourselves: MapCore is a community first, and possibly a news site second. It'll never be the other way round.

The general concept I had in mind was a fairly conventional forum listing on the front page much like we have now, but with the top area much more developed to include a spotlight section, a proper page menu, news headlines, etc. Similar to Interlopers but with more focus on the data coming from the forums themselves.

One idea I do like is basing news headlines on the gaming discussion forum. At the moment we have a cool mix of people posting various news-like threads and more generic gaming discussion, both of which usually generate nice discussion. I think it'd be good if mods could tick the best news-like threads and then they'd appear in the news headlines in a box at the top for everyone to see, thus kind of making everyone a news editor and ensuring news is frequent. An RSS feed and whatnot could be provided too. Perhaps people whose threads are picked often could receive a spotlight-like honour.

All ideas, anyway. I do think something can be done that everyone will be happy with, and I personally wouldn't want to see anything done that'd compromise what works pretty well right now so time needs to be taken to do it properly. If you have any things you'd like to see just post them here. The spotlight is an obvious thing everyone wants to see back.

You'll make a lot of children very happy with this game.

Heh.

I stopped buying Microsoft mice a number of years ago after having three of the bastards end up with the left mouse button not working after a year. The build quality of Logitech stuff has been so much better in my experience, feeling solid and still working fine two or three years later.

Welcome to the friend zone. Don't look for the exit, there isn't one.

What a hilarious load of shit. The TechCrunch article is hilarious.

Surprising, though. TechCrunch is an absolutely huge site and generally reputable.

Quote from Furyo

I actually think the iPhone would be perfectly capable of running it, but the subscription for the end user would be astronomical....

The iPhone doesn't meet WoW's 800MHz minimum CPU requirement.

It's certainly harder for me when everyone plays pyro because I generally play spy.

Have you actually played TF2 with any degree of regularity beyond the first few months? I have, and the game was becoming fairly boring. Even with new maps, I just wanted a new way to play the classes. I love the fact they're building up more depth, and this has been a sentiment echoed by the vast majority of regular players I've spoken to. Indeed, the only ones criticising them seem to be armchair critics who don't even play the game.

I do understand your arguments Taylor, but they seem like they're coming from someone who hasn't actually played TF2 since they started adding stuff. The introduction of new weapons and achievements has been an overwhelmingly positive experience from what I've seen. The best part is that classes people hardly ever touched have now become just as popular as the others, which is a direct benefit of the staggered system. It's no coincidence that the three least popular classes — Medic, Pyro, and Heavy — have been the first to get unlocks.

On paper what you're saying seems sound. In practice, Valve's way of doing things is just more fun.

Ooh, Broken Sword. Possibly the finest non-LucasArts adventure game of the 90s IMO (and its sequel).

Aye, I really do genuinely enjoy it. I can't wait for the heavies seeing as I'm an excellent spy.

It's also a testament to how balanced TF2 actually is, because even when you do have teams comprised primarily of a certain class it's always possible to counter them. I've seen entire teams of defending engineers be wonderfully smashed to pieces on Dustbowl thanks to a few synchronised ubers, whereas in TFC that could very easily have been inpenetrable. Thus, no need for those silly class limits that most TFC servers had.

Horses for courses, I guess.

It was intentionally hyperbolic to get the kind of response I was after. You have to admit that such a vague comment is going to be perceived as trollish.

From the sounds of it you like your games to be very routine, maybe even repetitive. Would you like TF2 more if it just remained the same and stale for several years? I personally loved it when loads of people started playing pyro after the pyro update, almost like reaching the last level in a single-player game where there's hard enemies everywhere.

I'm personally very appreciative of how Valve are staggering the updates. Can you imagine the sheer chaos of logging on and there being 27 new weapons floating around? And can you imagine how overwhelming it'd be for newbies if they weren't restricted from the extra weapons until they've become somewhat adept at the class?

I think Valve's approach is superb. I can't see how they could increase the complexity for die-hard players getting bored any more gracefully.

I really can't imagine them introducing nothing new in Warhead. Just because it looks the same superficially doesn't mean it's a clone. Look how good past efforts like Opposing Force have been, albeit as expansions (could have easily been standalone though).

I don't care either way and will probably never play it, but it seems like you're being a bit excessively critical of something Crysis fans will probably lap up. They're not marketing it as a full-blown sequel, having gone so far as to say it's not the second game in the planned Crysis trilogy.

Do you see not playing one of the finest multiplayer experiences ever as something take pride in? Why are you "so glad"?

It's not an add-on.

I may be wrong, but the impression I got from the original press releases and such is that this is a kind of 'Crysis Lite', geared towards all the people (ie: everyone) who couldn't run the original properly. This entails engine optimisations, but also a visual downgrade — something that seems to be the case in the trailer. Could end up on consoles as a result of this.