JP Powers

So here’s the idea: A split screen view of two different people, both of them alone in their little split screen rooms. They’re both feeling a little sick and decide to pop a couple dayquil or whatever. They both swallow wrong and start choking. They both pull out smart phones, one’s 4G the other is 3G. The 4G guy finds directions on how to self-Heimlich and laughs in the face of death. The 3G guy is dead. Smash cut to carrier logo.

Google Plus has been, so far, quite a triumph for Google. It’s gotten a fair bit of media attention, there’s a visible clamor for invites on other social networks, and, most importantly, it’s a great product. A lot of people are still trying to it figure out. Google included, I imagine. What’s perfect as is? What’s lacking? And where? how are the masses going to use it? There are a number of features that the current batch of Google Plus beta testers have talked about in depth, but a few I feel have been ignored. Chiefly, Sparks.

To understand what I want from Sparks, I think I need to clarify a bit of my personal history with online news consumption in the last couple of years. I was a Digg user for some time, but stopped using it not long after version 4 was released. Originally, for my purposes, Digg was just a news aggregator. Other users posted news, other users voted on if it was good or not, and it’d end up on the front page where I’d read it.  I voted, too, but rarely in the Upcoming sections. I could go to digg.com at 2pm, see one batch of news, and come back at 6pm and see all new stuff that had been shared since. Digg 4 took it all in a more “social” direction, focusing too heavily on some abstract community. Also, they tried to cater to news outlets by including some archaic system for users to follow Cracked or The Wall Street Journal, but it was some sort fo all or nothing game. The way I was using Digg was virtually impossible now. So, I went to reddit. Reddit is built from the ground up for it’s community, but community references itself ad nauseum. Although I’m still using it, it falls far short of how I want to consume my news, but does hit a few key points.

My ideal system is that I follow certain key interests I have. Video games, MMO’s, Formula 1, sports cars, world news, national politics, books, movies, television, etc. Users submit stories from around the internet to these topics, and other users vote it up or down based on how “good” the story is. Very reddit “subreddit” inspired, I know. The difference to me is that I’d don’t ever want to see comments, user names, anything that identifies the user that submits it, the users voting on it, anything. Just a headline, a blurp, and the score it’s gotten. I just want the bits and pieces from around the web. For instance, I don’t care about what some guy says about what a girl did after she heard about what her mom said the president was going to do. I care about what the president is going to do, and MAYBE what someone’s reaction is if it’s poignant (or funny). To me, if you’re opinion on the matter is valuable to the internet, then you should take the time and write something in depth. People will submit it and vote it up if it’s good. If it’s not, then shut the hell up.

Now, to get back to Google Plus. Sparks has been, at least from my point of view, widely ignored. I see SO MUCH potential for Sparks to fill this void in “just the news.” As Sparks works right now, I search for the topic I want to see a Spark about, Formula 1 for instance, and hit “Add Interest.” Now I have a nice little news feed of F1 news. The current problem is there aren’t enough news sources parsed, which can be fixed easily enough for the automated side of things. However, half of the point of Google Plus has been the +1 button. There’s a voting system already built into the thing, why aren’t they using it in Sparks? They could easily hit on every point I’m looking for with some (I imagine) subtle changes. Have the Sparks pull in more news sources, probably using Google News’ as a starting bed. Then allow user submitted material. As the system sees certain sites being submitted regularly, it gets parsed if it wasn’t already. Users can then vote for all the news with +1’s. Each Spark has two tabs, Top News and Upcoming. Freshly submitted pieces go in upcoming, and things that are getting a lot of +1’s or shares goes in top. You could even create another one of those annoying “share it!” buttons for webpages to include, a “Spark it” button. The user can go to a Cheezburger network site, hit Spark it, pick the Spark for it to go it, and they submit and +1 it at the same time.

I see a lot of potential in Google Plus as a whole. I can treat it like a Twitter/Facebook cross over, potentially dropping a service or two in time. If Sparks grows and develops in the right ways, I can replace a lot of news sources I hit multiple times a day, too. I don’t remember the last time I was actually excited to see where one of these projects goes, there’s so much potential and I think everyone knows it.

why does it take 3-4 days to process a credit card payment? You ask the bank if I have it, they say yes, you do it. SYN/ACK my money, dudes.

So on Tuesday night I got bored and was dicking around in the settings for my Seagate NAS. It has a DLNA feature I thought I turned on but seemed to never work because I never saw anything showing up where it should. I’m stumbling thru settings until I find a button “Sort Media.” “Oh, I see. I guess the drive needs to parse my data, find file extensions, and build a database of the locations of the files. Of course, that makes perfect sense.” So I hit the button. Half an hour later I’m trying to play a song and it’s throwing errors about not being in the known location. Sure enough, it’s not. Turns out all of the 17,000-ish songs aren’t where they belong. Where are they? Why, the folder My Music, which I found out early on you can’t even delete. Now I know why.

Upon further inspection I find that every video, audio, and image file has been moved to My Videos, My Pictures, and My Music. Not neatly, either. They were all dumped into the folders haphazardly, seeming to only rely on metadata for organization. I’ve spent years saying, “no no no, a proper file and directory structure is more important than 100% accurate metadata. I’ll keep good ID3 tags in the music, but why waste the time on photos?” Well, that fucking backfired in my face. I’m still at a loss for who in their right mind relies ENTIRELY on metadata for organizing. It’s putting all your faith in whatever manages your metadata (iTunes, for example) to be your one and only method of using the files. I’m sure that’s possible for some people, and I know with an Apple lifestyle choice it’s probably not hard assuming you also keep good backups, but it’s ridiculous none the less.

After a night of stewing in an angry, red mist directed at Seagate, I started formulating a plan of recovery. I, being the lazy shit I am, refuse to do this one by one. I needed to find an automated method for the brunt of the work. I was debating using a long series of Linux tools, which would also require a ton of hand coded scripting. Or, I could make life a bit easier with a few tools and a wise methodology for my attack if I go with two Windows apps. One is for the ID3 tags themselves, and the other is to automate the creation of a better file tree structure.

I already know of and have used one of my tools, MusicBrainz Picard. It’s a smart ID3 tagger based on an international database, MusicBrainz. I used it about a year ago to try fixing up a large portion of my collection’s tags which were out of order. It either auto-fills or auto-corrects missing tag data. When I used it originally it messed up a hand full of my albums, but it also corrected a lot more. I relied too much on it’s automation last time, which is what caused most of the problems I had. This time I’ll be more involved.

The other tool is MediaMonkey. Although I could do this with EasyTag on Windows or Linux, MediaMonkey is far more widely used and well documented, so I’ve been able to find some scripts to help further automation of the tagging, as well as it’s ability to parse the library to find things that require editing. Easier automation is my goal this time around, and it makes more sense.

The plan is pretty straight forward:

1. Clear out anything that is obviously not where it’s supposed to be. Since Seagate’s little automated data-fucker task moved every last audio file on my NAS into the same folder, there’s not just a lot of misplaced music, but also a lot of random crap from years ago I’ve been meaning to delete but never get around to. I need to move these else where for now. This was done by hand, just reordering the file listings until I knew what was an wasn’t from an album directory and moving them in large enough chunks to scrub folders.

2. Separate the easy albums from the hard ones. Quite a lot of the music is well tagged since my last go around with MusicBrainz, so most of it should be able to be cleaned up very quickly. MediaMonkey did this with it’s Auto-Organize Files tool, but it took me a while to plan it out right so that when I hit go it wouldn’t make a bigger mess, but also get as much as possible in the right places. So I spent a lot of time going thru the entire library it made to make sure album artist tags were right. Right before I was ready a nice Tornado Watch/Warning was thrown up, too. Had to hold on hitting OK for a while, because if it started and crashed part of the way thru it’d be even harder to start it over. Once it was done I breezed thru it once more to clear out some oddities that shouldn’t have happened, like 2pac and 2Pac folders being made and track numbering not leading with 0 on single digits.

3. Get ALL the easy stuff out of the way first. With all the easy fix albums organized into a nice file structure, I moved any fragments left over to another garbage/scrub folder. I’m currently going thru what’s here (lost somewhere between 500 to 1000 tracks) and trying to clean up further inconsistencies in the tagging. Making sure disc numbers are set right, proper years and genres, etc, etc. Going to throw MusicBrainz at what’s here again, to see if I try and spend more time on it instead of letting it’s do it’s thing how much better the tagging will be.

4. Redownload what I have to. If some of the hard stuff is simply bad tagging I can get around with an hour or so of work, no big deal. But I already know a lot of it is going to be complex figuring out what album it came from out of an entire discography, or why this Weezer album has Orbital tags (thanks MusicBrainz/assholes all naming their album “Blue Album”). So, if there isn’t too much of it, I’ll just spend an hour or so making a list of what I need to re-obtain.

I already cleaned up my videos. They were pretty easy considering anything besides movies or tv shows I have could be deleted because I forget they even existed. What scares me is the My Pictures folders. There are thousands of pictures, many of which have incredibly cryptic file names like IMG0002.jpg or DSC14003.JPG. All the pictures from all the cameras I’ve had, as well as archives of wallpapers, screenshots, and other crap. Not including the image files from old web sites and designs I’ve done. All of it dumped in one folder, which zero metadata. I have nothing to go on by file sizes and modification dates if I want to automate any of it. There’s a good chance I won’t ever touch it. It’ll be my elephant grave yard, a reminder to not trust anything that lacks documentation.

All in all this is a clusterfuck Seagate’s put me in. I put in the following support ticket:

I recently hit the “sort media” button on one of my shares by accident. The NAS proceeded to take my roughly 17,000 track MP3 collection, that was organized quite neatly into folders dictated by artist name and album name, and put each individual track into one “My Music” folder. The folders I had created are now simply empty. Anything resembling organization is gone.

Please, for the love of whatever invisible man in the sky you pray to, tell me that I don’t have to spend some ungodly number of hours reorganizing these files one by one? I see in my future filtering thru a thousand albums trying to place each track in the correct folder. I seriously doubt it, but is there anything resembling a undo button for this action, or a data log of the file moves so I can at least write a script or something to reverse it?

and received this reply:

Thank you for contacting Seagate.

I am sorry that you are having an issue with your Seagate product. I understand that you selected the media sort option and then moved the files into that share. Unfortunately the only solution to this would be to recopy the data after updating the firmware.

The latest firmware revision removes the sort media option box. I am sorry to say this but you will have to manually arrange the files back to their original structure.

Below is a link with information on how to upgrade the firmware on your Nas.

<cutting out a link and a further Thank You>

The reason I can never recommend a single Seagate product ever again is simply that I can’t believe how bad this situation is. There is no explanation of what the sort button does, the help files on the NAS don’t even reference that the button is there. The feature is apparently so bad that they removed it from the latest firmware. That means I’m not alone in this problem. The logic of what it did is non-existent. It’s simply DUMB. Every time anyone asks me, “Western Digital or Seagate?” I’ll say something along the lines of, “I can go on if you want, but the short of it: Seagate and I have badblood between us.”

Today I rung a guy out for an iPad 2. Afterward, his friend tried to hand me a couple pages that looked torn out from a book. He asked me if I was a believer, and I realized what he was doing. I handed it back to him, saying simply, “Hey man, it’s cool. I’m an atheist. You might want to hold these for someone else?” and handed it back. He started questioning me about it, trying to get me to listen to whatever … stuff he was talking about. I had to drop the, “I don’t want to get in an argument with a customer about this stuff, so… yeah.” and continued to just nod at him for a bit. He left, but the whole thing’s been on my mind since.

What I WANTED to do was drop something simple: I’ve spent a very long portion of my life as a nonbeliever. I’ve discussed it with my Catholic parents, I’ve talked to priests, reverends, imams, rabbis, and others, including family and friends. I’ve spent at least 10 years, more like 12 or 13, considering myself an atheist, and longer then that just not knowing what to call it. What could one random stranger POSSIBLY say that would suddenly change my mind? If he honestly thinks he could, that is a level of self pride that clearly falls in the seven deadly sins definition of pride, which is kind of ironic to me.

So, anyways, if you ever think atheists seem depressed and you think it’s because they don’t have God in their lives, realize it has more to do with having to put up with crap like this all the time.

Just watched Sucker Punch. For free, thanks to an HP event.

In short: Google for “Vanessa Hudgens naked” and you’ll be happier with what you see. Synder basically wrote a bunch of fun scenes and attempted to connect them, and failed miserably.

In detail (attempting to avoid spoilers): The movie’s based around one very cute girl losing her shit. She develops an intensely surreal fantasy world(s) in order to cope. The individual fantasy scenes are neat, beautiful, and interesting. The (not so) subtle connections between them, both the connections to the real world that’s developed and the fantasy in between each, are poorly contrived. Foreshadowing is too obvious, the twist is nearly impossible to not see coming, and the story arch is broken. Synder took a lot of archetypes and smashed them together. If I were 14 I’d hate myself for saying any of this, because it’s got Nazi zombies, guns, hot chicks, swords, dragons, robots, bombs, etc, and that OBVIOUSLY makes it an Oscar worthy movie.

If they were able to lock a few higher profile (better) actors, which would be hard because no one worth it would agree to what it is, it might of been more enjoyable. If Synder developed a few story boards and gave it to someone to write, it would have been a lot better. However, all he did was prove “I can make movies based on comics that are fucking awesome, but I can’t write for shit.” I really think getting a higher profile secondary writer in, besides this guy that hasn’t done anything (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0793122/), would have done this movie a world of credit in the direction of not sucking.

With AT&T buying T-Mobile, there are three national carriers left in the USA. Sprint’s the odd man out now. As a current Sprint user, I think they need to do 3 things in order to stay competitive:

1. Switch from WiMax to LTE yesterday. They need to get themselves onto the same data network as the other providers. Verizon learned from the mistake that is CDMA, and now Sprint needs to as well. When the entire world uses one standard using anything else hurts you. AT&T’s spent a long time being a favorite with travelers. Although they’re not a huge market share, they’re out there. LTE is going to be the new GSM, and although WiMax has it’s advantages, LTE will win.

2. Become the “anything but iPhone” provider. With AT&T and Verizon both having the iPhone, there’s already people calling Sprint a dead man walking. If Sprint can’t get the iPhone, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to become the niche for people that don’t want an iPhone. Get the latest and greatest Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, and Nokia smartphones, and they have a chance of being what AT&T was before the iPhone existed: Maybe not the best, but definitely had the best selection of phones. Just having the phones isn’t enough, though…

3. Become the nerd’s paradise. With AT&T and Verizon both becoming more and more restrictive on their data plans, Sprint needs to go in the opposite direction if they want to stay afloat. They always promise there won’t be data caps, soft caps, throttling, etc, and that’s good. Next is including tethering for free on smartphones that support it, either USB or wireless. Tethering is a growing demand, and if they can shout from the roof tops that theirs is free and the other guys charge an EXTRA $30 on top of the data plan, they’ll turn enough heads. Grow this out to being more open and friendly to the jailbreaking/rooting/”I want full control of my phone” community, and they’re a bastion for nerds and geeks. We already have seen that where we go is where the public eventually ends up with gadgetry, and grassroots effort can work wonders if done right.

So there’s this game out called Game Dev Story. It’s from a Japanese developer, out for iOS, Android, and PC. The idea of the game is you start out as an up and coming game developer and you pump out games. Hire staff, put out more games, move to bigger offices, put out more games, etc, etc. It’s one of those “this won’t be fun…” games and then all the sudden it’s an hour later and you’re like “GAH! Stupid coder just got a hot streak of bugs! dick!”

My favorite part of the game is naming games. For instance, I made a War Shooter called simply X of Y. Or my series of RPG Dating games, “+1 to Love.” The sequels were +2 to Love, etc. The fact that dating games are real in Japan seriously depresses me.

Anyways, so there’s a point in the game where you can start making sequels to your hit games, and later you can put out your own console(s). So I’m on my second console and I named it “Sell your Soul.” As in, you have to sell your soul to get one because it’s god damned expensive. I’m trying to level up as many game types as I can so I’m on the third installment of my Table Harbor game (no, I have NO earthly idea what the hell kind of game that actually is but apparently it sells SUPER well). So the game’s finished, the little pop up comes up to let me rename the game or just go ahead and publish it. Current Title: Sell Your Soul - On A Boat 3.

THIS is the reason I’m playing this game. It’s cheap, stupid, total time waster, and funny.

Your welcome.

I picked it up on 360 because that’ll be the only way to play with the majority of my friends, but quick review of multiplayer:

plays exactly like CoD:MW2 multiplayer. Only real difference I’ve “felt” so far is that it SEEMS like there aren’t any really “true” sniper perches. I definitely haven’t played all the maps yet, but of the ones I have I only found 2 perches I felt comfortable sniping in. It bugs me a lot because MW2’s maps were often played out in the tight spots, submachine guns, spray and pray, which is the opposite of how I like to play. However, in those maps, there were at least 2 sniping perches that let you see a large portion of the map that was moderately well defended. In Black Ops it feels like most of the perches give you a far more narrow point of view of the map. It’s probably that i haven’t had a chance to play enough yet, but who knows.

The only other difference is that in MW2 you leveled up and unlocked access to guns, kill streaks, etc. Now you unlock access to guns, but also have to use credits to buy them. So levels give you access, credits let you actually use it. The thing I like is all the gun attachments and crap are just available to you, you just have to buy them, instead of the whole “get 150 kills with FMJ to unlock this other thing” bullshit.

I haven’t done zombie mode yet, waiting for some of my friends to be online.

edit: oh yeah, single player. I only played for… maybe half an hour, probably less than that. I’m tempted to actually finish it though, the story looks really interesting. The first level is Cuba ‘61, you’re part of the Bay of Pigs strike team. What I did felt awesome, I just wanted to hop in the multiplayer because I know that’s where i’m gonna spend most my time.

Weekend Confirmed’s Garnett Lee agrees with me, Fable 1 is the best of the series. I dunno if we come to the conclusion in the same way, but we agree on that much.

I felt that the change from F1 to F2 was far too big. The combat system was completely reworked. Melee/ranged combat is better with F2’s system, but F1’s magic system was far, far better. F3 adjusted the magic system from F2 to be more enjoyable. Feature wise, I prefer most of F1’s mechanics over F2 or 3 otherwise. I enjoyed F2 a lot, but the HUGE shift in the story bugged me. The idea is that it takes place 200 years later. My problem? it’s far, far more than 200 years later. More like 1500 years later, minimum. F1 is more like a Author/Merlin era story, and F2 is more Robin Hood, maybe even past that. There’s so little to do with the first game.

So, I had an idea. A series of thoughts. To understand this, you have to have played Fable 1, at least. Fable: The Lost Chapters would be better considering the longer story arc. I’ll also be referencing mechanics from the second and third games, so … really, if you haven’t played all of them, you probably won’t get this.

I want a Fable prequel MMO on the console.

The basic story:

In Fable 1 we learn that the Guildmaster took over the Hero’s guild, allowing for heroes to do as they wish. No forced goodness. You’re a “Hero-classed” person, but you can be a hero or a villain. I want the prequel to take place around this time, of the guild being “refreshed.” Maybe the “starting zone” is the actual fight to take over, you’re helping the Guildmaster. Then the Guildmaster goes “kk, we won. Go out in the world, do stuff, help the Guild rebuild a name with the people… or whatever.” Then you’re out, leveling, doing stuff. Evil or Good, your choice.

One of the problems I had with F2 and 3 was that the new environments/maps/zones/levels or whatever you want to call it, at best, have little “nods” to a zone in the previous game. Example: In Fable 2, when you’re running around Wraithmarsh, you run over a bridge… The bridge from Oakvale in the first game. Otherwise, Oakvale doesn’t exist, at all, whatsoever. In Fable 3 Bowerstone has been COMPLETELY reordered, the only thing that looks familiar is the “center” of Bowerstone Market, the clock tower, the bridge, the stupid pig statue thing even got moved to another area. Brightwood’s lake is now Mourningwood, but developed with housing and whatnot.

Obviously, places like Bowerstone will grow/expand over time. That’s fine. The MMO could include “ancient” versions of all of the zones from each of the three games, interweaving them bit by bit so if you’ve played them you can go “OOOHHH, so Darkwood is east of Brightwood…” Part of the problem with each game is certain zones have names VERY similar to previous games, but they’re very different zones. I’d like to see some sort of thing along the lines of “It’s not that these zones changed so much in 50 years, it’s just you weren’t going thru them.” Why am I, as the gamer, stuck trying to figure out “ok… so Bowerstone’s here, but this new zone… where the hell was this in the last game? It looks COMPLETELY different, there wasn’t a lake here…” I understand it’s a new game, you can’t just rehash old maps with new textures because people will be pissed… but it still bugs me.

Mechanics:

Four person parties. A tank, healer, and two damage. Four people so that you can use the d-pad to target your party members to heal or buff.

Use the targeting system for melee/ranged combat of the first game, but for magic use the system from the third game. Bring back gear that effects your stats, not just how handsome/pretty you are. Plate is for tanks, +health stuff. Mail increases ranged attack stats, leather for melee stats, and cloth for “caster” stats.

The magic system from F2, where they merged spells into “don’t target it for AoE, or target it and it hits one guy” was a great idea. I like that a lot. the problem is it’s too hard to change spells on the fly. Bring back Fable 1’s use of a modifier button (pull a trigger, your A B X Y buttons now cast spells instead of … whatever else) for more spells for casters/healers. Add in some more spells that are some kinds of buffs, or change them so they’re in some way specific to filling a roll. Like, ghost swords do crap damage but do loads of threat. Multi-arrow for ranged damage, double swing for melee. Then things like lightning/fire/etc are for caster dps.

I wouldn’t want to see WoW style talent trees in a Fable MMO, but you could get the same effect with something like Global Agenda’s method of talents. I’m thinking for Fable, being x level means you have y number of spells to get. Besides gear, the only thing that “defines” you as a class is the spells you can cast. You can have 4 spells (effectively 8 if you can tinker some for balanced “target a mob for direct damage or no targeting for AoE”), that’s it. So, caster’s and healers wear the same gear, but they’ll use very different spells.

Otherwise, it’s all a matter of blending in standard MMO tropes (read: rip off WoW) and blending in your Fable-ness. You already have zones, you can pretty easily do a sort of “instancing” like WoW does. You have a rich story with lots of background to build off in many different directions. You can do things in a sort of Global Agenda method of “generic bosses at end of dungeon” or you can do a sort of Fable/WoW blend of bandit dungeons, hobb dungeons, balverine dungeons, etc, etc with specific bosses at each end. You can keep the strong Good vs. Evil vibe of all Fables pretty easily. Everyone’s a member of the Guild but the Guild is factioned. Continuing on WoW references, the Guild is your Shattrath/Dalaran type places, and Temple of Skorm/Temple of Avo are your Orgimmar or Stormwind.

Anyways, for me part of why I think Fable 1 is the best of the series is it’s story. It’s not the best gaming story ever, but it was perfect for what it was. It hit every point it was trying to, weaved wonderfully with the game mechanics, and really made for a fun game. I think a Fable MMO, blending together mechanics from each of the three games, could be amazing. I really think that the story would have to a prequel to the first game, though, because 2 and 3 have gone in such a far direction it’ll be leaving the realm of “classic fantasy.”

The credits are rolling right now for Fable 3. I just beat it. I have more than a couple of thoughts I want to spill out, because this ending really struck a defining opinion in me. I’m assuming you already know the premise for Fable 3, and have played at least Fable 2, if not 1 as well.

Changes versus Fable 2

First of all, the extra bit of polish that went onto Fable 2’s engine really helped out. It has the same look of 2, but it feels more put together. There were a couple of “they didn’t fix that?” points, but I noticed less of those then the overall graphical/environment problems I had with 2. The biggest two problems:

1. I could see environment stitching. There were a few times where I noticed the textures for the ground or building had a very noticeable white line between them. It’s obviously a limitation of the engine, because they were in Fable 2, as well, but I noticed it far, far less this go round.

2. More then a couple points of bad hitbox collisions. For those unaware, hitbox collision is where a part of a character, say their leg, interacts with either another character’s hitboxes or the environment. Good hitbox collision is noticed when you NEVER notice it. Bad is when you go “…ok seriously fuck this rock I think I’m stuck on.”

Nothing too drastic, just little problems. When they happened it sucked but they happened rarely enough I didn’t care.

Otherwise the largest changes to Fable 2 was the new interfacing and experience system.

Interactions with NPCs are completely redone, in a far more simple manner. However, with each step along the path of building a relationship with a NPC, you now have to preform quests of some sort. It’s cool for a couple times, but after a while I hate it and don’t care. The old games, you had different outfits and expressions that you could use to make dozens of people fall in love with you all at once, now you actually have to work for each one. I get the idea of that, it makes way more sense then the old system, but in the Fable world I think it’s pointless to pick that as a point of “we gotta be realistic.” I mean, you’re a fucking HERO. If Justin Bieber can get 12 year old girls to flip shit over him, I think a guy that’s trying to save the damned world (for realsies) can do the same.

The new “Sanctuary,” which is literally the new start menu, is pretty neat. At first I thought “ok. this is … cool, I guess.” After about the fifth time in I was thinking “Yeah, I’d of been perfectly happy just having a god damned menu. This walking around to stuff is a little lame.” Towards the end I was used to it and it didn’t bother me. The lack of a mini map, or easily accessed map, made things daunting. Having to go to the Sanctuary, the up to the map to do anything… not fun. Granted, Fable 1 and 2 didn’t have what you could call “accurate renderings of the game world” as maps, but I felt I got more from them than Fable 3’s little 3D Risk map thing. It’s neat, I can see it becoming a popular “main map” format, but I still want a minimap. I know the breadcrumbs kind of make them pointless, but I like having it.

The whole “there’s no more experience” thing is kind of BS. It used to be that as you started the game, quest would grant you 500 experience, and killing things would grant a few XP here and there (or something, I’m making the numbers up to make a point). As you leveled up you earned more. Now, you earn 5 “Guild Seals” and as you get further in the game you earn more. Same shit, new name, new generic valuing. The difference is you have less stuff to spend it on that actually helps you thru the game, and more stuff that in Fable 2 was in books. So, now you just rank up your melee/ranged/magic combat or buy new spells. You also spend (granted, lots less) to upgrade your skills in the jobs to earn money, or to be able to do things like new expressions, dye your clothes, buy/sell buildings, etc. Easier, yeah. Better? Arguably. I say arguably because you earn GS’s by completing quests, killing stuff (much, much slower rate than it should be I think), and ranking up relationships with NPCs. The problem is, which you’ll hear me complain about later, is … there’s not enough things to earn GS’s.

I do like how a few of the spells are now in the form of potions. That was a big complaint of mine in Fable 2. In 1, I’d be blast off two or three spells at a time that were timed spells, meaning I use them, they last for x amount of time, then they’re over. My goal for every fight was “blow Slow Time first, ghost swords if they’re not up already, and fireball or enflame when I need it.” In 2, that still worked, but you had to program your spell casting set in order so that you could “stack” the spells, which never really worked. I ended up giving up on Slow Time in 2 because it wasted more time trying to stack it with other spells. Now, in Fable 3, a couple of the spells are potions, so they “function” like they did it 1. Also, you put on gloves to use your spells, and you can pair them together to make a Fire Vortex or Shock Swords (my two favorite combos, btw). Neat fix, I DEFINITELY used magic more in 3 then I ever did in 2 because of it. I still like Fable 1’s magic system best, because as you leveled up you reached a point where it was super overpowered. I understand why they turned that off, but that was why I liked it. You were so OP nothing ever stood a chance.

Gameplay

I don’t want to spoil anything (or as little as possible, at least), so I’m going to talk about the generics of game play. I won’t talk about the story in detail.

The opening is kind of typical, I enjoyed the nearly immediate “shit hits the fan!” moment. I really don’t think ANYTHING I did in Fable 2 effected the Fable 3 world. From what I could tell, at least. I have 3 or 4 heroes saved in Fable 2, and if it DID use one of those saves, it obviously just picked the first one. At least, I didn’t see anything that let me choose one, and the previous king in 3 was obviously a good guy, which is my main game save in Fable 2.

Anyways, I’ve only played thru the game once so far, and I’m not sure what happens when you do evil. In the beginning it REALLY felt like it was leaning more in the direction of the first game. In the first, so many of the quests ended with you earning lots of positive moral points. While building your revolution against the King, the same is happening. Once you ARE king, that’s when you realize that whole idea of being good is kind of meaningless in the beginning. You’re HIGHLY encouraged to turn to the extreme evil side. What pisses me off is, from what I can tell, there’s no middle line anymore. Fable 2 had a great middle road you could always choose in almost every case. The little side quests, crap that doesn’t matter, you had either good or evil chooses. The BIG things though, you could pick a middle road that was neither evil or good. The effect was if you did all good otherwise, you were still all good, and vis versa. When I realized what was happening, I gave up on trying to actually getting shit done but still being good and just went full on good, hoping it would end with some sort of “OHAI SUPER AWESOME NICE GUY, HERE’S SOMETHING THAT’LL TOTALLY SAVE THE DAY!” Guess what never happened? Yeah. There are a few points where there’s a “neutral” choice, but I never picked it because it does NOTHING to help the situation. It probably would help if I were playing evil to not be SUPER evil, but what’s the point then?

So anyways, I think I avoided spoiling, and I’m just gonna bitch about two things now.

1. Total game time played was around 10 hours. Maybe 15, I dunno for sure. The big hitch for Fable 3 is the whole “revolt against the king, then PLAY as the king! LE GASP! SUCH AN ORIGINAL IDEA!” (it is, I guess, an original idea, I’m just not sure it was a good one) The problem I have is that in Fable: The Lost Chapters, even having played it now 5 times or more, I can do nearly the same “completion” rate in … maybe 20 hours, best. Takes longer. The big difference is I’ll complete the game with EVERY spell and piece of gear maxed about 6-10 hours into game play time. That’s mostly because I know the game in and out that well now, but it’s also because there’s FUCKING SHIT TO DO. If I IGNORED entire sections of Fable:TLC I could finish it in 15-ish hours. Fable 3, although there ARE side quests, there’s SO FEW I could hardly max out anything before the end of the game. The whole revolt then king thing? Being the king is about a quarter of the game. I did all of that today in 2 hours, maybe 3. The worst part is WHILE you’re king you sit there and just say yay or nay to something. Of the 4 (was it 5? I’m sticking with 4) game time days that you’re king, you don’t even get to go do shit between them. Your little butler asshole has a day “scheduled,” and once you do the last one you go onto the next schedule. I GUESS I was supposed to ignore the schedule and just go do whatever the fuck I wanted, because it’s an RPG and you know there’s no actual time schedule to keep. Comparing it to Fable 2 is even worse. I think my total played time in fable 2, ignoring expansions, was like 20-25, maybe 30 hours. I’m pretty sure Fable 2 is twice as long as Fable 3, and I’m not counting DLC because 3 doesn’t have any DLC yet. Now, MAYBE I just happened to skip WAY more shit then I was supposed to, although I really tried to only skip things I felt would end in earning me evil moral points. This shit was way too short. I’m SERIOUSLY hoping that playing evil makes for a completely different playing experience, because that’s the only way I can rationally justify such a short game.

2. Did people complain about Fable 2 being too big of a game world or something? Fable 3 is fucking TINY. I know I harped on it a little bit, but there isn’t a GOD DAMNED thing to do in this game, and I can’t help but feel it’s because there’s so few zones that HAVE shit to do. It’s the kind of barren waste land of a map that makes me afraid that Lionhead is planning to just do a shit load of DLC. The problem is that DLC is gonna have to be cheap as hell, if not free, to make me want to pick up Fable 3 again (after I play evil once). They can’t have DLC add to the main story of the game, because that’s dumb (forcing me to replay the game in full just to see it? Yeah right). They’ll have to have a bunch of “tack on” DLC, like Fallout 3 did. DLC that’s completely unrelated to the actual story of the game. The problem with THAT is, unless playing on evil is seriously different, I’m not encouraged by the base game to download expansions. Same problem I had with Fallout 3. I beat it, didn’t like it, so I didn’t touch any DLC.

The following paragraph contains spoilers

What pisses me off about Fable 3 is that, RIGHT up until the point you become king, the game is fucking AWESOME. I was really enjoying myself. Each of the zones you’re in feels really well put together and fleshed out, the characters are well written and there’s AMAZING voice acting. The story feels EPIC, namely when you first land in Aurora. There’s some real greatest there. Everything goes downhill once you’re king though. The pace of what you ARE doing as king is slow and boring, then the artificial pace they put on the world is far, far too fast. You’re king for 4 playable days, but a year passes in that time. When I realized how much time passed so quickly, I thought about how I saw almost the entire game world I could access, and how little there was. I felt like while being king I should of been out in the world, expanding the kingdom’s borders, fighting off bandits from far off settlements, etc, etc. Once you’re at the point where you’re like “OK, well, that kind of sucked but at least this is what the game’s been building up to! Should be epic!” you’re let down. The final fight? I used UNMAXED magic spells to kill the final boss. Just 4 or 5 casts. Not even maxed out, I repeat. The race up to the final boss? Just an annoyance, at best. The whole thing was 100% anticlimactic. Then? The game’s just over. You sit there, you’re surrounded by the NPC’s all patting you on the back for being such a great dude, reminded that although you tried to be a nice guy the kingdom still got shit on BECAUSE you were a nice guy. Then the credits roll. After credits a window pops up that basically says “So like, you were a good dude and all, but because you were a nice guy nearly the entire kingdom is dead. Everyone left? They don’t like you, and you’re gonna be remembered as a shithead king.” Now, while I finished typing this, my guy’s hanging out in the Sanctuary.

END SPOILERS

I seriously was in love with Fable 3, right up until being king. That whole thing made the game shitty. I HOPE that playing thru again on evil will change my mind. Maybe playing good is a completely different game than playing evil thru out. I doubt it, but it’d be nicer. I also hope that the first couple DLCs are cheap enough that I’ll consider buying them just to see it, maybe they’ll fix something…

this week’s Weekend Confirmed included some discussion about how Microsoft “fixed” a part of Kinect before launch. Kinect was going to require standing, although this fix allows the system to actually recognize sitting properly. Launch titles won’t be able to use it, because they had to develop without it, but later titles will. So, the idea that the next Kinect Adventures would have a bunch of sitting things, like paddling in a boat, etc. Cannata, kind of in passing, throws out the idea of “Sit and Spin!” Those things you sit in, “spin” the little disc in the center, and you start spinning. Puke chairs, kind of.

So here’s my idea. What if BEFORE this Sit and Spin, Microsoft adds 3D to the 360 (3D-60?). So, you’ll be able to VIRTUALLY ride a Sit and Spin, IN THREE FREAKING DEE. The game will be simple steps:

1. You and your friends get shit faced

2. Put on the 3D glasses, start Sit and Spin

3. Vomit

4. Whoever puked the fastest WINS!

It’ll be incredibly popular with the bulimics.

</sarcasm>

I’m watching This Week in Tech, and they’re talking about Facebook, and the whole “Facebook is willing to push the envelope of what their users want” thing.

A thought struck me.

Remember in SimCity you would raise the taxes to something stupid high, the citizens would complain, then you’d drop it by 1% and they’d be instantly happy again? Once you did it once you did it again on purpose after that?

Facebook users are the citizens. Facebook is the evil 12 year old, now cackling.

It took a little while but I’ve kind of come to terms with what I liked about the older versions of digg, and what I don’t like about reddit.

On the old digg, if I had an account, I could say “don’t show me stories from this category” or “only show these categories.” Although at times I went into the upcoming streams, or into the comments, mostly I used digg for simply seeing a stream of news from around the internet. My list of categories to watch was nearly all of them. The front page algorithm “seemed” to be that once something was up for “promotion” it hit the stream, and although the diggs could keep rising or falling it’s place was mostly “cemented” on the front page, in front of stories that came thru the algorithm before it and behind stories that came after it. Sure, if it got enough buries it would fall off the front page, but that didn’t happen a whole lot. This is what I wanted from digg. A stream of news picked up by a larger community. I could read a headline and ignore it if I knew I didn’t care, or read thru the description/look at the thumbnail if it seemed interesting, then go thru farther if it piqued my interest.

Digg v4’s new “My News” system, although seemingly innovative, breaks the concept completely. It SOUNDS like a great idea, and for the first few days of beta I was really into it. Then I started noticing problems. It became a parser of sites. All their articles were thrown up on My News in the order digg found them. I was better off going to each individual site because then I could at least filter out these new fake digg advertisements much easier.

The Top News, which replaces the old front page, doesn’t feel right, either. It feels far, far more limited. I feel like I see a much more constrained version of the front page, there isn’t as much “random crap.” That sounds good, but really in my opinion it isn’t. The old random crap was “Top 10 reasons why you should totally get high and go watch Iron Man 2” and shit like that. Things I knew I could blow off from reading 3 words. Now, the new Top News is “all good content.” Again, that sounds good, but I don’t like it. Although I didn’t read half of what I saw on the front page, I liked seeing it there because I knew that it had “earned” it’s place on the front page. People dugg it up, so it was put on there. Now, it’s just a stream of entries from blogs I rarely — if ever — read, and about stuff I rarely — if ever — care about. This probably why so many people are complaining about “digg selling out.” I don’t think digg sold out, I think they worked out an algorithm so that the “everyone sees this” content is more mature, grown up. This is probably a good business move, but I don’t care for it.

I tried “replacing” digg with reddit, but it doesn’t fit my needs either. I like reddit’s system of subreddits, categories for specific news. I can make sure the pot group isn’t in my list and I’m moderately certain I won’t see random pothead crap. I add atheism to my list and sure enough, I see more atheism things. The problem is the front page itself feels like it’s taking all my subs, and haphazardly placing together a list. I’ll hit the front page, see something is listed as the second story. Later it’ll be fifth. Come back again it’s back up to the second. There isn’t one, consistent “this is ever last god damned thing that’s earned to the right to be on the front page” list that users than cherry pick what they do or don’t see from. Reddit’s “front page” doesn’t update nearly as often, it feels like, either. I got now at 11:45pm and see stuff in the same place it was at around 2pm today. It makes it feel far less “up to date.” I keep finding myself going to the individual subreddits, where the listing is far more logical, hoping to see something new. Although this isn’t ideal, I can understand the appeal. It’s more concise this way. The problem is reddit’s so ugly and poorly designed (navigation specifically), if I want to follow a large number of subreddits, I have to either click thru to the listing of subreddits and then open each of them individually, or make a firefox bookmarks folder with all of them so I can click the “open all in new tabs” thing. Either way it’s kind of ridiculous having to do that. The top bar that lists all of them is nice for someone who follows a short list of sub’s, but once there are more than my browser’s window sizes allows I have to thru extra steps to see them all.

It’s also obvious reddit’s far more involved in the discussion surrounding the news than the news itself. I’m not against this, I support the idea, I just don’t care to get in the discussion. On digg I commented sometimes, making random little comments I thought where funny, but I never paid attention to what random people have to say. That doesn’t mean that these discussions are invalid to me, it’s just I’m more concerned with the news itself, and seeing it in an orderly and timely fashion. If I want to talk about things then I talk about them with people I know.

Although I can dig what reddit is doing (pun moderately intended), and now that I’ve actually played with it more seriously, I at least am not adverse to using it. However, it doesn’t fill the void that digg v4 leaves behind with it’s new layout and design decisions. I don’t think there’s any other serious contenders, and I’m too lazy to go out and actually follow all of these sites myself.

Anyways, I give it a couple months until some other internet asshole that actually feels motivated crops up with something much like the older digg, and another year before it’s popular enough that it’s up/down voting system is reliable…

I’ve taken my Evo 4G into repair shops twice now for the same problem. The problem is that it’ll randomly start “tapping” the upper left corner, even if my hand is on the back of the phone and no where near the screen. They keep trying to call it a simple “software problem.” Even after resets and whatnot, and even with the rep’s seeing exactly what I’m talking about, they call it software. Then they run tests, can’t “see anything wrong” and hand me back my phone and shoo me off.

I understand why, they don’t have Evo’s in stock to do a hardware swap, but it’s a joke. They just don’t want to say it’s a hardware problem because they can’t figure it/swap it. Even when I say “So like, you see what’s going on right? You see how it has nothing to do with software because it’s … obviously… not software? If you had the Evo in stock you’d just swap it, or repair it if you had parts in, right?” No words spoken, but I get a shrugging nod.

I get it, it’s a popular phone, but at least stop giving me the run around. Start setting up a list for people to sign up for to swap phones or something. This is archaic.

A few shots from the Streetlight Manifesto show, including one of Dan Potthast.

I’ve almost run out of my first batch of game time in APB that you get for buying the game, and I’ve spent enough time on both Enforcers and Crims side to make some judgments I think.

To understand some of my points, you have to understand APB’s manner of rating a player. There’s your actual rank, which is increased by literally doing ANYTHING in the game. You can never enter an Action District and reach level 50 rank just by maxing out your Fashionista and Tuner achievements. The higher your rank the more things you have access to, like weapons, upgrades, etc. The Threat Rating is kind of new to me in an MMO. It’s more like actual MMO levels I think, however it CAN decrease. It’s like the “RealSkill” matchmaking system many XBox Live games use now, I guess. There is also the Star Ranks, which for Enforcers is called Prestige and for Crims Notoriety. This ranking is a “by play session” rank. You start out low (2.5 for Enforcers, 0 for Crims), and doing actions either increases or decreases this star rating. When you reach 5 stars a bounty is on you. For an Enforcer that means you can kill every Criminal, but they can all also kill you. For a Crim EVERYONE can kill you, and you can kill everyone. Crims star rating increases at a faster rate, which is why they start lower, but also decreases over time if they’re not committing crimes. Enforcers decreases for doing bad things (running people over, crashing into road signs, etc), but increases for pretty much anything “good.” Higher the rank, the higher your rewards.

1. Matchmaking is OFFENSIVELY broken. The match making system is either taking too much into consideration or not nearly enough. I feel like I’m constantly being put against groups that are far superior to me, either in gear, in skill, or both. The problem I THINK is that since it sees that my character rises in threat/star rating quickly, that I’m a skilled player (arguable mechanic there). What it’ll do in response to this is put me against opponents of a higher rank. The problem is if I’m low enough rank I don’t have access to certain guns or upgrades, let alone would I be able to afford them, but my opponents might, and usually do, have these things. The game is effectively attempting to say “you’re good enough to fight these guys with better shit.” The problem is, you do two missions like that and all the sudden you’re shithoused right back down a peg because the guns and upgrades instantly make your opponent overpowered compared. Sure, I’ve killed the people with better stuff, but it’s far rarer then getting railroaded.
2. Looking For Group isn’t remotely intelligent. The actual mechanic of the LFG interface placing you in a group is a failure. Of the 50 hours I’ve spent in the game so far (including pre-release time), I’ve spent about 5-10 of those hours playing on a team with 1-2 people of my skill level or better. The vast majority of others are far under my level. It also fails to take into consideration the AFKers who leave themselves in LFG (which stack the numbers of your group) but aren’t active, there in placing you against groups of higher numbers/skill. I’ve noticed a lot of the time this last week that if there’s an AFK player making us a 3 person team we only are fighting 2 people, but I think that’s more to do with “Call for Backups” not working right either. If I’m in a group with two other people, that are of equal rank/skill, but my rank/skill is rated at twice theirs, I’m an outlier that is effectively placing us against higher ranked teams. If they’re both bad players, I’m carrying the team and losing further progression in rank/rating because they’re keeping/slowing me down. In the same effect, I know I’ve held back other people I was grouped with far better than me.
3. Matchmaking fail + LFG fail = RAGEQUIT. If I’m in a bad group against a good group, I’m gonna rage quit. Plan and simple. I hate dealing with the frustration of slamming my head against a wall. Far too often I’ve been in a randomized group against a clan group, and it just pisses me the fuck off. Every MMO that has PvP, after a certain amount of time, has to admit that PUG’s can’t fight clan/guild groups. Many clan groups in games like this play more than just one game together, so they’ve spent a lot of time together learning each others moves and habits, and have developed a lingo between themselves. Even if the match is 4v4, and the PUG is all good players of equal skill, the clan group will win the vast majority of the time due to how well meshed they should be. I say should because I’m sure there’s just as many clans of “WANNA JOIN MY GUILD?!” people…
4. Poorly planned out missions make for a failure. There are more than a few missions that are simply poorly laid out. Too often it’s excessively easy to camp a point, or too easy to body camp. There are a number of buildings and clusters that create excessively difficult defensive or attack maneuvers for small teams. I’ve been in a few large matches (8v8) and these kinds of problems evaporated quickly because of the sheer number of angles you can take at once, but in smaller matches like 4v4, 3v3, 2v2, many of the places where mission objectives are in have limited entry points or odd angles for sniper perches where it really is just a matter of which side gets to the point first. This is acceptable in SOME situations, but over half the missions I’m in feel like the objectives are an uphill battle. I don’t just mean for me, I’ve been on the side that can just ROFLPWNT a ladder to fuck the other team up and I’m easily aware of how imbalanced it is.
5. The Unreal Engine, no matter how pretty it is, was a HORRIBLE choice. Unreal Engine games are beautiful, no argument. This was still a horrible, horrible decision. I have a Core 2 Quad Q8400, 8GB’s of DDR2-800, the fastest harddrive available before 10,000RPM drives and SSD’s, and a GTS 250. My system is pretty beast for an Unreal game. However, APB still runs like SHIT. Why? It’s an MMO with DISGUSTINGLY HUGE ENVIRONMENTS. There’s just TOO MUCH SHIT going on on screen. I have to set it at the lowest settings just to hold 24-35FPS, and if I find a nice little spot where there’s 5 matches all fighting at once in the same place, you better believe that shit drops to 10FPS or lower. It’s very pretty, even with the settings so low, but it’s not worth the shitty framerates. On more than a few occasions while driving I’ll run into something simply because it hadn’t drawn in game yet because Unreal Engine’s loading mechanic is poor.

Even after all that shit, I still LIKE the game, it’s just not worth picking up yet unless you’re a SERIOUS fan of the game type. When I do find a group that I mesh well with, and we’re up against opponents of our gear/skill level so it’s challenging, but not in a baby-punching way, the game is SO much fun. Problem is I spend FAR more time being angry at the little problems then I do having fun now.

For those unaware of the technology, Intel Wireless Display, AKA WiDi, is a new feature in many new laptops this summer. With a device that hooks up to your TV, you can wirelessly transmit what’s on your laptop’s display to the television.

At work, Best Buy, we’re using a Toshiba computer and HDTV, and the NetGear Push2TV as our display for WiDi.

Here’s an example situation: I have the WiFi on, so I’m connected to our wifi network and browsing the internet. The MyWiFi program (which is what actually controls the feature in Windows) is running but not yet connected to the NetGear. When I have MyWiFi start to connect to the NetGear, my connection to the wifi network drops and the TV will sync, now displaying what’s on the laptop’s screen, however it no longer is connected to the internet because the WiFi is now turned off. If I then try to reconnect to the WiFi to get online, the WiDi connection drops.

Literally: if WiDi is on, WiFi is off. If WiFi is on, WiDi is off. My coworkers and I are now under the assumption that’s just how the technology works, which is pretty lame. Are we wrong, @garryweil? Is this some sort of error?

I was really excited for Crackdown 2, but I’m already burned out on it. The largest complaint most people have is “it’s the first game, all over.” That doesn’t bother me. What does bother me at about it, at this point (little under 2/3’s done) is that it’s the same game, they just broke the environment. It’s still fun, I like it, just wasn’t worth the price of a full retail game. Should of been half priced.

I’m still playing and having fun with APB, but the problem at this point is that 90% of the people I get grouped with for missions are either complete shit, or they just stand there, AFKing in the game, and the LFG engine will just put them back in your group because there’s so few randomized groups going on at any one moment. It’s still a fun game, just not worth playing anymore because most the people I play with suck.

So yeah, seriously… lameness. Fable 3 come out nao plx.

WoW servers are currently down while patch 3.3.5 is being applied, and I suddenly had a thought for an “improvement” to the launcher.

Currently, to find out server status, there’s only a couple methods. You can either go to the status website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/), or keep trying to log in over and over. My thought is simply a little ticker, as in the scrolling thing on the bottom of CNN for stocks for instance, that lists server names in red for down, green for up. WoW now has far too many servers to do this with easily, however.

Now, some MMO’s now have you login thru the launcher, where as WoW loads the game and then the user logs in. Since the user can’t login thru the launcher, there’s no “easy” way for the launcher to know what server the user has characters on. So why not just an option to list which servers I’d like to see?

Just a thought, nothing special.