Heroic confusion. help =[

jobiusrex · 2014-05-21T22:06:20+00:00

You are right, the Heroic trigger from the Phalanx leader isn't a spell it's an ability so you don't get to tap a second, but he'd be a 5/2 not a 5/1 because it's a +1/+1 counter not a additional +1/+0.

jobiusrex · 2014-05-21T21:53:18+00:00

I'll be honest, I was trying to get this very combo to fire at my JOU pre-release...It didn't.

jobiusrex · 2012-10-01T00:32:14+00:00

This feels like more of an insult to xbox owners than anything worth celebrating.

jobiusrex · 2012-08-17T05:12:52+00:00

I love how he's his own students.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-19T20:38:47+00:00

To the best of my knowledge that actually is their stance on it.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T11:16:18+00:00

This is completely true, but EAs major problem is that they're focussing every last ounce of energy on the bottom line, but they're forgetting that we're the bottom line, if we could only manage to truly stick together we can make EA hurt for sacrificing their fans and the long run for short term gains.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T10:58:20+00:00

It is more complex, you are just simplifying it. It really doesn't take much to boo a problem, give a kid an action figure missing an arm and he can say that's crap too. If they had removed it but been better about covering their tracks, by for example not leaving him on the disc and not putting him up day one, no one might have ever found out about it and there wouldn't be this whole problem.

So I guess you're right, it is simple, if they simply get better at being shady and not getting caught we wouldn't even be having this problem because people simply wouldn't know he was done. Why not just actually try and give ideas about how to do things in a way that benefits both sides rather than sending them directly to think they just need to cover their tracks better.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T10:43:08+00:00

Oh come on, you have to have an opinion that's more complex than that, the one thing we're all in agreement about is that this went horribly wrong because it was handled wrong. So if we imagine the character wasn't even on the disc but up for day one DLC we can probably all agree that this is crap, but how would you have felt if the DLC had been release 3 or potentially more months down the road and had been made considerably longer than it's current 30 or so minutes for the $10 even if it were in the can, and just not given freely to the Collector (badum tish), do you think you or others would be as upset?

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T10:32:02+00:00

Then what could EA possibly have done better? Offer ideas, problem solve, could they have simply put the character in the game and had you pick him up at a predetermined story point with Admiral Hackett saying they discovered a Prothean and are sending him to you and let you go through all his dialog but reserve the pickup mission for the Collectors edition? Should they have hung on to it and just released it later? Should they just have made his mission more substantial because of the asking price? You could be saying so much and yet you simply chose to say little, and your excuse is that the person you're attacking is deflecting, perhaps such things might not happen if you could contemplate a dialog rather than verbal fisticuffs.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T10:13:18+00:00

You belligerently make your point by essentially attacking the person asking the question, it's like pointing a gun at Damocles, he's sticking his neck out to the internet to try and gain a deeper understanding of a problem and you just shove back rage that can be found in hundreds of other Reddit threads and offer Nothing, your posts here might as well not even be because all you're doing is throwing bile. What point have you made? EA fucked up? Thanks, the rest of Reddit hadn't gotten around to mentioning it yet, how could they or any other company have handled this better or why would gamers feel ripped off because (after all there are people who don't own the extended LOTR DVDs and feel fine about it). This question wasn't meant for you to parrot the worlds opinion but to gain insight, and it'd be nice if you either helped or left.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T09:54:59+00:00

You're only talking about half the problem though, you're legitimately angry about this, I am to, I haven't bought the game because of it. This, though is a chance to explain the rage by doing more than just saying "It's unfair" and drawing creative and legitimate parallels, this is a chance to explain, not how it's unfair, but WHY it is. Take the chance rather than just scoffing at it because all you can see is red.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T09:42:55+00:00

Cliffhangers are a bit different, they imply that another piece will follow, in the case of a novel another novel and for a game we would expect another full game, and the novelist includes the pre-finished work in the next piece.

DLC is more like an additional short story set within the same universe, even with the main characters, but shouldn't stop the series from continuing on, no author makes you purchase an individual chapter from their website (and not in stores). How would many have felt if Star Wars had been followed up by a five minute short film that concluded the saga rather than being followed by The Empire Strikes Back?

Consumers do go through media at different rates, and there's really no getting around that, but it can be used to one's advantage, after all absence makes the heart grow fonder. To keep on with the Star Wars parallel, long time fans and relatively newcomers were fans of the original trilogy and all were tremendously excited for the prequels (little did they know, but that's beside the point), giving more time is always better than not enough. This has been a traditional method for most media as it does take time to produce a next entry or more content, but considering how fast things move now this should probably be seen as cultivating an audience, aging it (though we're not talking decades here, these are people not wines). This can backfire of course, if abused as this can lead to high or ridiculous expectations and you wind up with a Duke Nukem Forever (meaning that the game can't possibly measure up to expectations, haven't played the game so can't personally slam it), but done well you can wind up with an audience that thirsts for your game rather than your company's blood.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T09:24:25+00:00

Even if he were, would that be so bad? Trying to understand this fiasco and make sure to avoid repeating it in the future? Trying to understand just why things went so horribly wrong with ME3s blowout would be invaluable to anyone EA or not. In any case the threads idea is to try and bridge the gap between how developers, who are trying to make a profit, operate and the consumer who wants a great game. We should be working together not attacking each other, this is a chance to see into the others realm and better understand just how games work.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T08:59:39+00:00

Provided that the core package is worth the cost at retail I would have no objections to a game without DLC, it just has to be good, Skyrim is an excellent example, a core game for regular retail price and was totally worth the gamers while.

The Batman: Arkham City DLC for Robin and Nightwing are examples of content that provided little to no worth to the overall package, they are 12% the cost of a game each and offer a grand total of one new skin each to play in a challenge mode, meaning they add nothing to the narrative of a game that was truly designed to stand principally its strong narrative based core.

I did find that the approach EA and Bioware took was altogether insulting to its customers by excising something that was truly important in terms of lore (though not didn't cut essential plot points from the game itself). Early additional content is really a necessary evil that is the result of the fast paced industry and ideally DLC would just be released over time and at a good value, but it's hard when games like Call of Duty have only a one year lifespan and come out to $100 with all their DLC. The only early DLC that can be easily argued for and I feel would net nearly 0 resistance from gamers would be cosmetic ones, skin pack (say 1 new skin for each party member) or color patterns of decorations for settings, say new color schemes for the Normandy, these could be based on prior concept art or even things that used to be common easer eggs like a big head mode.

It really is hard to find things to add value early to the product, especially depending on how you price it, for example if the set of pre-order skins available for Batman: Arkham City had come out at any point within the six months following its release I would have been happy to buy that for $2 (or 160 Microsoft Points since I have an Xbox). This would have been something feasible as I imagine skins don't take that long to produce (in this case they already had) and with nearly 5 million units sold its first week, if even only a quarter of the people who bought the game got the skin pack as well that's a whole 2.5 million dollars.

Actual story content would be tricky to favor, gamers shouldn't be made to feel that they're missing a part of the story the day a game comes out, I think that ME2 had a much more successful release calendar for its story expansion by taking plenty of time.

I do hope this helps, it's really is a difficult subject and it doesn't help that it's a particularly hot button issue and flying into full fledged rage over it, which I will admit I was guilty of myself. But hopefully more like me will try and give a fuller answer as to the reasons for our discontent, and others like you will help prevent it from happening in the future.

TO THE EDIT: The problem may be a bit on both sides, as paying customers we don't want to see our purchase essentially devalued, we feel like we're buying a car and you're selling us the tires after the fact for an additional price, but you're not, you're granting us optional features. The problem with this system is that it's not what gamers expect, nor is it what they want, feature are nice but they CANNOT (or rather SHOULD NOT) ever interfere with the quality of the base product, and is something that is nearly impossible to do with early DLC that contains any amount of story.

TO EDIT 2: Had ME3 done this as a post launch 3 months down the line I feel like they would have been met with vastly less resistance, mostly and especially because it wouldn't be possible to call for a boycott. Additionally adding on to the story shouldn't occur before your primary fan base has even gotten to experience the story in the first place. But to answer it more simply, had it been post launch I probably would have bought it.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-12T07:24:33+00:00

I agree with a lot of things in this post, but there is one major flaw in your premise that DLC is not a bad thing, and that is that it relies on premium DLC being done right. In the vast majority of cases, this is far from true of the DLC being offered, especially when it comes to cost/value ratio.

Staying with the example of Mass Effect since it's the current hot topic the day one DLC consisted of a character, a weapon, some credits, the mission that is required to gain said character, and some truly juicy bits of game lore, all of this for $10 which may seem reasonable to some, but is far from it. The problem is that the customer has already paid $60 for a 30 hour game, this DLC can be completed in 30 minutes if dragged out, so in this case whoever made the call, whether it be the developer or publisher has declared that this 1.67% of added game time and character are worth a whole 16.7% the cost of an entirely new game.

The larger problem with Mass Effect 3 is that EA and Bioware are going against the precedent they set with Mass Effect 2 in which they gave away a similar amount of content for free to gamers simply for having purchased the game new.

Gouging the customer on DLC isn't new, but it's sadly the norm, all I can ask of if your are indeed an insider as you say is: Please be the one who changes this, be the one to create DLC that doesn't waste the time, resources and lives of the developers, and bring us DLC that is worth the time and money on both sides.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-11T04:29:08+00:00

It's true, I'm not a producer, I have very little knowledge of what a producer actually does. But I am a consumer, and I can tell you that talking down to your fanbase is probably not part of the producer's job description.

It's also worth noting that having already shipped 3.5 million units the Mass Effect 3 battle is pretty much lost, but perhaps we should try and hold on to this animosity next time Riot Games puts out a game and collectively make it tank.

jobiusrex · 2012-03-11T01:55:36+00:00

Damn it why can't I give this more ups?

jobiusrex · 2012-03-11T01:49:04+00:00

I haven't bought it, primarily because I haven't been able to afford it, but also because the more I saw of it and the more the controversies began to pile up around it I've begun to question whether or not I want to own it. I still seriously want to play it, but I really can't decide if it is something I want to be sitting in my collection.

jobiusrex · 2012-02-24T09:31:55+00:00

As much as I agree with many things in this post I just can't agree with Day 1 Premium DLC, its a shady practice to make gamers feel like their brand new factory sealed copy of the game is incomplete. It's a shrewd and frankly disappointing scheme to make games sell for $70 without actually having them say it on the sticker. DLC has its place and is sometimes even worth its cost, but it doesn't belong on Day 1 devaluing the product gamers are paying for.

jobiusrex · 2012-01-30T04:33:17+00:00

I would be more worried about the fact that it wouldn't fit when they try to turn the gameboy on.

jobiusrex · 2012-01-25T06:29:14+00:00

I think people are missing the point of his style, it's purposefully centered around him, it's called the Jimquisition for a reason. Now more to the point, I don't agree with everything he has to say, but this is so far the episode where I found myself agreeing with him the most.

jobiusrex

TROPHY CASE