On that note; Happy New Year everyone..

I’m still very keen on creating my own custom blogging software as I posted previously and it’s something that I definitely am going to get around to but its slow going.  I’ve been working on it about an hour each night if the time is available.

But, I have to admit I’ve been playing a lot of the new Star Wars game the Old Republic (the new massively multiplayer online awesomeness by Bioware) and it’s really quite a lot of fun. It has problems but it’s addicting and it’s new, if nothing else.  It’s not fantasy which is one of my biggest complaints about all the other games that are out there,  I was so fantasy-ed out that I’m glad I’m finally playing something that’s space related and futuristic.  To be honest, it’s actually quite good.   I have been filing bugs and and making suggestions and hopefully some of them will get listen to but honestly the game is pretty good straight out of the gate and should be a huge win for Bioware.  Blizzard should be concerned.

And also I wanted to talk briefly about Christmas, I got an iPad2 for Christmas I have to admit it’s the greatest piece of hardware I’ve ever had.. It’s actually a lot of fun. I kind of see it as just a toy right now but the more I play with it the more I can see myriads of useful business and social applications for it.  No matter what you say, it has a lot of potential and there’s a lot of really neat stuff you can do with it.   If I were to use  a single word to describe the iPad I would call it “clever”.

I’ve been digging around on the Internet and asking my friends about good apps for the iPad and two of them come immediately to the four as being awesome. One of them is called flipboard which basically turns all of your social media and websites and the Internet in general into a magazine that you can kind of peruse at your leasure and the other one is oddly enough, dragon dictation which does just what you’d expect;  you can just talk at your iPad and it translates everything you’re saying into text (which by the way is how I’m posting this now).  It’s not perfect the Dragon NaturallySpeaking solution though is better than any I’ve ever seen and so I can see a lot more postings coming in the future since now I can just talk to my blog.

It’s definitely not perfect I have to do a little bit of filtering and word replacements but I actually think it’s pretty damn good.   If anything my one complaint is that it’s pretty bad about punctuation.

Recently Adobe announced that they would be offering their software at rental subscription prices and I was excited!   What a great idea!!  But did they do it right?  I don’t think so.. but they are so close!

Lets take Adobe Flash Professional as an example of whats going on, and their likely reasons behind it;  If you purchase the full version it costs $799 and the simple fact of the matter is, most individuals wont want to pay that kind of money for a piece of software.  So really the only purchasers of their code were companies that could easily absorb that cost (or the rare individual like myself that is willing to pay).   At $799 even “honest joe” will pirate the software if he really wants it.

At that price point they have completely alienated the casual user.   More over that price point only serves to encourage the casual user to pirate the software because its not even remotely affordable.  I’m not saying its right to pirate by any stretch, but I am saying that even an honest person can rationalize doing so when the price point is so far out of their reach.   Many would say eight hundred or eight million, it makes no matter so screw it.

More over, most software companies look at each pirated copy of their software as lost revenue, thus as a general rule they resort to raising the price even higher so that the companies that do make the purchase help to recoup costs and offset the fact that the software is pirated so much.. causing a vicious cycle.  Ubisoft is very guilty of this..

So the question becomes, how do you get the casual user?   What is the price point most people are willing to throw at a piece of software?  And in the subscription model;  How much are people willing to spend monthly on something?

Lowering the cost of the software to something the casual user would be able to afford simply isn’t the answer because then suddenly they lose all the money they were getting when companies were purchasing the software.  So even though it sure would be nice to get Adobe Flash Professional for $50.. it wont happen..heh

So the subscription model really does seem like a good option as it allows those who have the money to purchase the full software to do so, and those who want to try the software out or to keep an active subscription to do so without breaking the bank.

But here is where they are missing a huge opportunity that most MMO game creators have already figured out..  Something I like to refer to as the 10% rule or the 90/10 rule (maybe related to the Pareto Principle?).

And that is simply, if you set the monthly subscription rate at the correct price point a vast majority of people wont bother to ever cancel it because it’s beneath their notice.    According to my sources inside, Blizzard has about 10% of their accounts that remain open and paid for, but they are never played simply because the monthly fee is low enough that it’s below the radar of the consumer.

I really do think that the subscription model is the future of software publishing and purchasing, but I really believe Adobe has missed the mark a tad by setting the price point too high.

In my humble opinion Adobe is a few dollars away from a goldmine..  If they were to set the price point for their new subscription model to $15 with a year contract or $25 (at most!) without, most people would never bother to cancel the subscription.   Then maybe they could also offer a $35 rent to own model or even a variable “choose your own rate” rent to own model as I’m sure there are folks who’d want that too..   But the current $49 month to month is just too high as the first month they don’t use it, they’ll notice and cancel it.

Even so I salute you Adobe for bringing your awesome software to the casual users again.. Thanks for that.   Now if you don’t mind I’m gonna go buy Flash Professional.

Ibanez Mandolin

I have always enjoyed wood working and have done a bit of wood turning in my time.   And as I have mentioned before (more than once), I have always wanted to play an instrument of some kind..   Recently it occurred to me that there was no reason I couldn’t combine these two activities..

To that end, I decided to try my hand at becoming a hobby luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) and make myself something to play..    I went back and forth considering all the options and decided that for my first instrument I’d like to make a Mandolin.  ( Dulcimer was a close second and I’ll likely make one of those in the future, as well as making a Viola if I can manage to do this with any proficiency.  )

So with that I purchased an inexpensive Ibanez Mandolin just to have an instrument to start learning on and use as a guide..  Since I have no experience what so ever, this instrument is what I will use to learn on and as a guide for what my instrument should sound like..  This wasn’t a very expensive instrument, and it sounds fine to me.   I’m sure the really expensive / nice mandolins that are out there sound better but at this point I simply don’t know the difference..   My end goal at this point is to make my home made mandolins sound as good as this one — better would be nice, but I just am not sure what that means yet.

This will be a hobby activity for me and I’ll very likely want to make more than one Mandolin, but first I need to attempt to make something that’s reasonably close just as a learning exercise.   Not the “finished” product by any stretch but rather the first “rough draft” instrument that I can screw up on without fear of anything lost other than my time..

Bluegrass Mandolin Construction Manual

I fished around on the internet for reading / instructional material as well as any kits and came across a very good book put out by Roger Siminoff (a man with “a little bit of experience” on the issue having been doing this forever) on the construction of an f-type bluegrass mandolin.  An excellent manual that basically walks you through the entire process one page at a time, complete with plans!   It’s a good purchase and I can highly recommend it..

Roger offers a really nice kit that seems to go with his book, but it costs over $500 and I just didn’t think that would be a good beginners project.  So I settled on getting an inexpensive Saga AM10 Mandolin Kit to experiment on which I got off ebay for less than $90..

Mandolin in Fixture

As kit’s go, I’d say this one is extremely rough, to the point of being bad, as very few of the parts matched up, even a little..  The instructions that came with it were meager at best, and very poor in most cases..  The strings it came with are worthless (the e string broke trying to bring it up to tension, I didn’t even get it close to tuned and it popped)..  The back didn’t fit the body at all, being undersized compared to the top and required a heck of a lot of work.. The neck didn’t fit the main body at all, again a lot of work..etc..

Bottomless Mandolin

I think a beginner woodworker would have had a very difficult time with this kit to be honest.. I have a lot of tools, experience and time with wood so it wasn’t too bad for me but even so I had to make a bunch of jigs and fixtures in order to get things to line up and work correctly.   But even with my best effort just due to how it was cut my neck isn’t correctly centered on the soundboard which will make stringing it interesting..   The tail piece is half an inch off center unfortunately which means the bridge is off center..etc..  I have no idea how that is going to affect the sound of the instrument but in all likelihood it won’t do it justice.

All things considered though, I’m actually happy with my results so far..  It’s taken me just shy of 3 weeks to get it all worked up and to the point of getting strings on it.  (Mostly working on the weekends and an hour or two in the evenings during the week when I could..

One string Mandolin

Today I added the very first string to the instrument and tuned it up just to see what it sounded like..  Shockingly it sounded like a D!  The instrument didn’t have any kind of odd barks or vibrations though it does sound slightly different than the Ibanez I purchased above.

I have added 4 other strings to it at this point and the difference in the sound is still there, but I simply am not articulate enough with sound and instrument theory to describe to you the difference.. it’s just slightly different.. Not better, not worse.. different.

Even so, I’m pretty happy so far with how things are going.

Frozen Synapse

I have always been a huge fan of the turn based tactical isometric games such as Jagged Alliance, JA2, Xcom..etc..  For whatever reason that style of meticulous gameplay always appealed to me, but I had always assumed I was alone in my passion because those games never seemed to last very long in favor of first person shooters or real time strategy games..etc..

In fact, the industry as a whole has completely moved away from turn based game play, which I find to be a shame. Well thank god there are awesome independent developers around to fill the void!

Frozen Synapse is just the turn based top down tactical game that I have been craving for years.  It has a wonderfully fun and even somewhat dark sense of humor and most importantly, awesome gameplay.

There is nothing better than a game with deceptively simple gameplay that provides hours and hours of fun because it’s extremely challenging to master..

Plus it’s multiplayer!!  How awesome is that?!

I can’t tell you the number of times I said that XCom needed to be multiplayer so that I could play against my friends.. And sure as heck they did it here..

The interface is a little confusing at first, as it takes some time to understand what all the different commands do..  Plus as a whole the interface is kinda weak, but other than that I think this is an excellent game.

I wish I could give each character more than the one weapon, but I understand why they did things the way they did and so I wont ding them on that.. All in all I think it’s a very good game guys.. well done.

4.5 out of 5 losing that half for some interface suckery..   Still, if you know me.. 4.5 is an awesome score.

Red Faction: Armageddon

I played Red Faction back in 2001 when it first came out and enjoyed the heck out of it.   It was the very first game to come out with the Geo-Mod game engine which allowed for massive destruction of the game models and levels.   The game itself was otherwise unremarkable, but the fact that you could destroy everything made it awesome.

I find it funny that one little thing like that can make or break a game entirely, and the massively destructable nature of the Red Faction games entirely “makes” these titles.

Red Faction II was one of those games that came out only a year or so later but it managed to skip my notice and the series sorta fell off my radar.

The other day I picked up the latest in the franchise; Red Faction: Armageddon.   And I’m glad to say that it’s up to the original games standards in all ways .. to include the shortcomings..

Let me start by saying that by all standards it’s a good game all things considered, and I did enjoy it.  But there are some cons:

This game is of course plagued by one of my common complaints with all games these days;  The game is too short.. by a long shot..  That’s typical of all games though so I think the industry as a whole is trying to bring our game length expectations down fraction by fraction until we get a 3 hour tour for the same $60.  Oh well.. This game is longer than some, and I realize that for every minute of gameplay it likely takes them months.. but still..  This game clocks in at about 10 hours.

And it also suffers from another common issue with games these days;  Its too easy..   My theory as to why this happens lately is because most of the modern games are first made for consoles, and then ported to PC.. as such the controls on a PC are much easier to use, so the situations you’re in are suddenly that much easier?  This is a wild guess, but it will likely seem logical to anyone who has tried (and failed horribly) to play a game on a console using those crap controllers..  I can see how any game would be difficult if you handicap someone with one of those damn things..

Most games have at least 4 difficulty settings; Easy, Normal, Hard and Expert.. Or some myriad of names that equate to the same thing..  And in just about every game out there, I know that I should start playing it on “Hard” because anything easier would be pointless.   I can’t imagine how simplistic and juvenile “Easy” must be on these games because “Hard” is anything but..  This game suffers badly in this area because even on “Hard” I didn’t find it remotely challenging.  ”Hard” should be difficult.  Make it a challenge so that I will want to play through again..

I think its likely that game makers are afraid of making their games actually difficult because then people might get frustrated and stop playing.. However, I’m of the opinion that making a game like this too easy even when set on “hard” in order to keep the game “fun” is akin to handing the little league losers a trophy for participation..   Reward me for doing well, not for just showing up.  If I set the game to “hard” I believe it’s reasonable to expect the game to actually be difficult.

And finally my major complaint about the game is the weapons they give you.    Within the first minute or two of gameplay they give you the ONLY WEAPON YOU WILL EVER NEED; the gravity gun.   Now, I don’t want to complain about the gravity gun.. there is nothing more fun that hurling a whole building of destructive debris at an enemy.. and you generally have a reasonable expectation of doing fairly well when you use the same gun to hurl an enemy at a far wall only to watch him gib.     But, why do I need the other guns?

They give you a whole slew of other wizbang cool guns and more ammo than you can shake a stick at just lying around but I can honestly say I didn’t even start using ANY of them until near the very end of the game.  Up to that point I just used the gravity gun to do everything..   Either tossing the mobs around or throwing entire structures at them..  The other guns seemed pointless mostly.. and the ludicrous amounts of ammo lying around, doubly so.

This game is also extremely linear, so much so if you get out of the “area” you’re supposed to be in a countdown to your doom will appear.. better boogy back to where you’re supposed to be pronto..  I don’t really want to hold this up as a complaint though, this isn’t a sandbox game and like the original was never meant to be..   Still I can see how some might be put off by the count down thing..

All in all though I enjoyed the game.   There is still something very appealing about being about appease your darker side by waging wanton destruction on the carefully designed levels..  And if you’re not giddily giggling like a school girl over being about to toss mobs around like rag dolls to their ultimate doom, then you don’t know how to have a good time..  it was fun.  Though it’s replayability is pretty much zero.

I give this game 3.5 out of 5. (That’s a good score from me.)

MP3Car DSH-039-2

I have a Mercedes CLK 350 and it’s a pretty good car.   I’m fairly happy with it, but frankly I feel that the Mercedes COMAND system sucks and has to go..  Okay maybe “has to go” is a bit harsh, but it’s sub par to be sure.   I have seen other systems in other vehicles and I think most of them are better, if not perfect either. I believe that this particular system is in prime need of replacement and I have to wonder how hard that would be..  Plus if I’m unhappy with it others likely are too, or they are unhappy with their vehicles system and want a replacement..

This seems like a vacuum that needs to be filled.  A perfect environment for some clever folks to create maybe an open source product based on some free OS that you can install tools on to do what you want.. etc..  Even a “marketplace” like system that allows for custom apps to be installed..  Maybe android or linux based that would customize itself to he specific vehicle.. etc..  God that’d be awesome..

You’d need an inexpensive mini car computer that you could use for those vehicles that don’t have a system in need of replacement, but think of the market!  Think of the number of vehicles on the road today in America and around the world that you could be selling to..

Either way, during my research I found a dashboard replacement for my cars computer at MP3Car.com.  That and the mini-computer from above and.. I think we have a real possibility here!

The main issue is that I’m not sure that just uninstalling the computer that’s currently in there is a good idea or even an option as the entire car depends on it.  This thing is not just your media player, but its also the navigation system, settings, phone, etc..  It IS the car in many ways.  Replacement may not be an option..  Hell even setting the cars clock as to be done through this system..  Plus the LCD in the center of the console near my speedometer is controlled by it too!

It’d be a hell of a lot of work to get this thing installed and make sure that all the functionality that is currently there, is put back.. I know we could do better eventually but the car would likely be undrivable for a while..   Still it’s a cool idea..

Dragon Age II

So in my Dragon Age review I began by asking “Can Bioware do no wrong?”   Apparently the answer is “Yes.”

I had originally mocked Bioware in my first review for taking 4 years to produce the first game.. Now suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad idea, as Dragon Age II (DA2) the supposed successor, was rushed out the door in just over 8 months and it shows.  DA2 just doesn’t compare to Dragon Age – Origins (DA:O).

Now I realize that I’m giving the impression that I didn’t think DA2 was a good game, that’s not the case.. I think it was a good game by itself, but it just didn’t meet up with the expectations nor match the precedent that was set with DA:O.

So, I want to say that Yes, DA2 is a good game on its own merits.   But if you go in expecting DA:O version two, you’re going to be disappointed.

The thing I liked about DA:O was that it was an epic game, and epic in it’s story telling.  They did an excellent job in making the player feel like he was a part of a bigger world.   The game itself was fricken huge, with a lot of unique areas and places to go, things to see.. monsters to kill.. And there wasn’t a lot of repeating of those areas.

One of the biggest issues with DA2 is they constantly reused the same dungeon, cave, map over and over just blocking off areas to keep you from going there this time..  This gets old fast and the 10th time I went into a random cave only to be on the same map I have done previously, I got kinda fed up.  This was a really cheap way to reuse content and the game suffered a lot for it.   Take a couple extra months and give us more areas so we aren’t constantly walking in our own footsteps..

I did very much like how they told the story through the dwarf character, I thought that was quite clever indeed.. But it never “drew me in”.  I don’t really know why but I never really felt like I was part of the story, just an outside observer of it..

Plus they completely removed the customizability of the previous game with regards to gear and equipping your secondary characters, or even for your main character to have a secondary slot of weapons.. These things were staples of the first game, gone in the second.  Why?

Stability wise I think they missed the mark too as the game crashes on me quite a lot.  Of my friends though, apparently I am the only person that this happens to so I’m willing to accept that it’s me or my hardware.

Graphics and engine wise the game is as good as the first one, with the only notable difference is how you interact with your characters.   You can interact with your character more like a MMO than like the first game and that’s a good thing, though it may be playing a big role in how different the game feels.

Things that are better than the first game;

The Tactic System – The tactic system got better, thank you very much Bioware.  Huge points from me there.  However you still don’t have a “reset” tactic that can be used to turn stuff off when combat ends.   Still its better than the first game for sure and your characters seem to be smarter about following them.  I pretty much automated my characters completely and only played my main toon which was the whole point.  Every once in a while I had to actually pause the game and redirect, but for the most part that wasn’t necessary.   In the first game I pretty much paused every other second to redirect someone.

The Difficulty —  The game is actually fricken hard, when you play it on hard.   The first game I played on hard the first time through and impossible on the second time through without too much trouble.  This game, even hard is too dang hard.  That’s a good thing!  Hard should be hard.

Ranged Rogues — Ranged rogues don’t suck!  YAY!  Bows in the old game and ranged attacks in general were completely worthless..  The new game, not so much.. in fact not at all!  Thank you for this.

Magic — Magic in general seems much more impressive.  It not only does more damage but it does it with style.

etc..  Lots of little things that they did do better..  It’s just the feeling of the game is less epic.. Less grand..  Comparing it to another favorite franchise; Mass Effect 2 was a far better game than Mass Effect.   Dragon Age 2 wasn’t far better than Dragon Age – Origins.   It was just different…

I feel like if you loved Origins, you’ll hate DA2 or not really identify with it as much.  Where as if you really didn’t get into Origins, you’ll love DA2.

So it may be unfair to say that Bioware did wrong with DA2.  I just was expecting something different than I got..  I haven’t quite finished the game yet, I’ll knock it out and get back to you.

So in a fit of boredom last night I downloaded an indy game off Steam called “NightSky” for the low price of $9.

What a great game!  Extremely simple in concept, elegantly produced with a level of depth and complexity that a lot of modern big company games fail to match.

In NightSky the player controls a glowing sphere that they found on the beach through a nighttime shadowed series of mazes and puzzles.  You have limited and often changing control over the sphere, but most of the time you can accelerate and decelerate the sphere, make it go super fast or have a sticky like brake.  In some cases you can even invert gravity and in others there are pinball like flippers.  Fun!

The goal is to use the physics engine and your limited controls to guide the sphere through all of the different worlds which are divided into a number of three-screen sections with each section containing a challenge or puzzle.

My complaints for this game are few but you know me; I always have some.

1.  You can’t control the screen resolution.  The game is either Windowed at 600×340, Maximized which gives you a black screen with 600×340 in the center where the game is, or full screen in which it changes your monitor resolution down to that small.. Ugh.. Seriously?!   My Desktop resolution is 5520×1200..  This game looks like a postage stamp by comparison forcing me to play it in the full screen mode which jacks up my other two monitors..  I really don’t like this and seems an odd choice all things considered.

That’s it!  There it is.. the only complaint I can find..   If you read my game reviews I can always find a lot of things to complain about.. but I got nothing else..

All in all I give this game a 4.5 out of 5 and say get it!  It’s a lot of fun and considering how small a team put it together they deserve the money.  Yet another perfect example of how simple elegant game play will win over big budget massive game every time.  Take note big developers, game play wins!

To Nicklas Nygren and the Nifflas crew I say thanks a lot!  This is a keeper..

Tiger II

When I heard a buddy of mine tell me that he was playing a game called “World of Tanks” I thought he was kidding.. I thought he was making some reference to “tanking” in World of Warcraft or something.. But no, he was serious..

Who on Earth would name their game this?! Well.. Apparently Wargaming.net and BigWorld Technology that’s who..

World of Tanks is a real first person shooter style game currently in open beta in which you get to drive tanks, tank destoyers and/or self propelled guns around fairly large maps all with the goal of mass destruction, mayhem and general killing of your fellow man.  Booyah!  Who wouldn’t like that right?

I have to admit, its a lot of fun but has a lot of flaws that I’m concerned about..  But first the good!

They have a LOT of tanks.  Light, Medium, Heavy, Tank Destroyers of every flavor and even Artillery if that’s your speed..  You’re thrust on to one of a dozen or more (not sure how many all told) maps with 15 people per side and you fight it out until your team is the last standing..

You can currently choose from Russian, German and USA when buying your tanks and you’re never restricted to a side.  You can easily go up the Russian tech tree and the German tech tree at the same time.  By the time of release they have stated that they will have fleshed out the USA tree (its kinda broken at the moment and missing tank destroyers entirely), as well as adding French and Japanese tanks.  I even heard rumor of British.. Awesome..

It’s a lot of fun, and I liken it to a really slow first person shooter..  Unlike most FPS style games you go go go, but you have no choice but to go slower in this game as tanks don’t move that fast, barrels are slow to traverse, reload times are slow..etc..  And if you do manage to get in a light tank and zip up to the front line you’re likely to die very quickly as.. well.. light tanks are light for a reason..   So you have to play this game kinda slowly and carefully.. That’s appealing..

The games themselves are usually 5 to 15 minutes long and can never go beyond 15 minutes, plus if you do die early you can always bail on that game to start up another one while waiting for that game to finish.. So you’re never just sitting there waiting for the next round like some FPS games..  If at the end of 15 minutes there isn’t a resolution (all dead on one side or the flag is captured) then it’s a draw.  I have played over 300 games and this has happened once.

The objects on the terrain are completely destructible.. (for the most part)  Don’t like that house in your way?  Drive through it!! Or shoot it.. And it’s free to play!!  Even after release they have a free to play model but it will be slow going for you.. but still free is good..

But.. now we get to the bad.. You see the game has a lot of problems too that are starting to effect my fun:

Completely Silent Devs:  As with any game, the developers are non-existent.  We hear nothing as players and all our pleas, prayers and questions go unanswered.   This is the unfortunate trend in the gaming industry that has been going on for years and all it does is piss off customers.  Mums the word and that blows.

They also appear to have an extremely slow development cycle or their iterations are very long as patches seem to come rather infrequently.. If ever..

Zero Control:  Currently there is absolutely no way to choose which map you want to play on.  When you queue for a battle you’re thrown into the first available “room” with a random group of people in random vehicles, on a random map.  Okay Fight! This sucks and leads to a lot of issues where you’re in a room with people that have tanks 4 and 5 tiers above yours.   Many times have I felt like I brought a bb-gun to a bazooka-fest because I happened to be in my T3 tank going against t8 behemoths..

I want to be able to to decide what vehicle I’m in for what map.  If I’m in a heavy city fight, I don’t want to bring artillery..etc..   I want to be able to switch guns to suit the situation and you just can’t, you have to make due with whatever you’re given.

I want to be able to see who/what is queueing so that I can decide to stay or go.. If I know I’m not going to be effective in a battle due to being in too small a kit then I need the ability to opt-out.  But you can’t, you’re in it for the fight until your tank gets turned into a smoking hole.. and it will..  This isn’t fun..

Physics Model:  The game has a very poor if non-existent physics model, as such it’s possible sometimes to hang a tank off a cliff and fire down the slope in such a way as to defy gravity..  In reality the tank would take a tumble.. This is silly and makes it impossible in some cases to be safe down a hill from someone.  Where as you should be safe because they can’t dip their gun low enough.. but.. no.

Graphics Engine:  The graphics engine itself is a tad dated.. It’s not bad looking by any stretch of the meaning, but it’s not the most modern thing either, add to that the pretty bad memory leak issues they can’t seem to plug and things start to fall apart fairly quickly.. Frustrating having to restart the client every hour or so..

Damage Model:  There seems to be some pretty big issues with the damage model right now too..  Huge tanks firing Volkswagen sized shells at smaller tanks quite often do no damage what so ever.. This is frustrating and leads to a lot of odd damage issues where you should be able to kill a tank 2 or 3 tiers your junior but can’t because for some reason they are impenetrable..  This is frustrating as hell..

Tank Tracks:  It seems that the tank tracks for any given vehicle are made of papier-mâché in that if you even bump another tank the damn things fall off and you have to just sit there and wait for your crew to fix it..  This is extremely annoying to say the least..

Line of Sight:  Easily the biggest issue though is the line of sight system they have implemented by which tanks constantly just up and vanish..  Unlike other first person shooters where people are always rendered as they run around the map and you have to spot them yourself.. this game has opted for a weird system by which enemy tanks are completely invisible (read: not rendered by the graphics engine) if your “crew can’t see them”..

THIS SUCKS.  This sucks because half the time you could be and often are a very short distance from an enemy tank that you would otherwise absolutely see.. but just doesn’t get rendered.. At all.  Until suddenly POP! There he is!  And it seems to be completely random for each individual..

So, for you the enemy tank is invisible.. But for him he sees you just fine, and is shooting you..  So you’re dying but you can’t see the enemy tank that’s shooting you mere feet away because your crew has their heads up their asses..

This is an absolute game breaker!  They have to fix this or the game will be doomed to fail.  And such an easy fix too!  Render everyone, all the time.  Done.

Grouping:  The game is “free to play” and as such anyone can download it and get in but in order to group up with a friend you have to have paid for the “Premium” access.  This sucks as it doesn’t allow players to introduce a friend to it for free.. This is dumb of them, they need to allow anyone to group, free player or paid player.

Not an MMO: They tout the game as an MMO but it’s very much not.  It’s more along the lines of “Counterstrike with Tanks”.  The largest battle you can have (the only battle you can have at this time) is a 15 on 15 battle, and 30 people aint massive.  It’s just a FPS, most FPS games are pay-once/play free games.   This game smacks of a company trying to get people to pay a monthly subscription for a really small amount of content that other games give away for free.  Imagine if Counterstrike, or Call of Duty tried to charge a monthly fee..

Match Making:  The match making system is broken right now in that I’m currently, as I type this, in a game where a tier 3 vehicle is on the same map as a tier 9 vehicle..  That’s completely silly as the tier 3 Marder can’t do anything to a tier 9 IS-4..

I mean come on, that’s not even remotely fair to the Marder player..  The biggest gun the Marder can fit fires an average pen of 158 points of damage using the expensive ammo that costs real money (118 for the free stuff that people are actually using) where as the armor on the IS-4 is 160..  So the Marder actually can’t do anything against this tank..    I’m pretty sure the Marder player didn’t join the game in the hopes of being cannon fodder..

The match tier range needs to be limited to one or two levels at most.. 3 at the absolute outside.. otherwise you end up with a bunch of folks on the map who can’t contribute to the match at all, but count as slots for that team.   Whats more is we have that one tier 3, and two tier 4s on our team where as the opposite team’s lowest tiered tank is a tier 6..   Guess which side won..

Balance:  I realize fully that due to the sheer volume of different tanks and vehicles its going to be near impossible to balance the tanks.  And at some point you have to accept that certain tanks suck when compared directly with other specific tanks..etc..  But it really seems that all of the American tanks, suck horribly.. Where as all of the Russian tanks are pure liquid awesome..  And it’s a Russian made game.. Hmmmm..

It’s telling when the biggest gun my American tier 6 heavy can fit is a 76mm gun that does an average damage of 115 points, and the Russian tier 6 heavy can fit a 152mm gun that does 700 points!!!!!!   I mean come on!  That’s not even subtle, it’s to the point of being silly.. (Note: this gun is often called the “derp gun” in game cause its just stupid..)

It may be completely realistic and historically accurate (American tanks during this period did very much suck..)but at some point “fun” has to step in and be the guide..  This isn’t a tank simulator and isn’t meant to be..

Pay-to-Win:  The other issue I fear for is the Free-to-play model that they are employing..  The economic model they have chosen to use is confusing and messy.  There are multiple types of money to be used, money you buy and money you earn. You can convert money you buy into money you earn but both are used to buy things.  Some objects in the store are purchased with the earned money, some with the purchased money.  Experience is the same way in that there is earned experience for a given thing, and free experience that you can use on anything.  You can of course convert experience on a given thing to free experience but it costs money that you purchase.. etc..

It’s confusing to a new player even though I understand it now it still boggles a little. I honestly don’t know why they didnt just go to one type of money, one type of experience.. Done.   And to boot the cost for the gold money that you buy is too high compared to what you get, as well as them gouging you to convert experience to free experience.. it’s almost like they see that as a cash cow and are trying like hell to get folks to fork over the $$$..

Plus now they have added things like special tanks and ammo that you can purchase, and while it’s kind of expensive it’s nearly twice as good as the free stuff..  So sure, it’s free to play but you’re extremely gimped if you don’t pony up the cash..  Paid (Premium) players get 50% more experience, access to WAY better ammo and tanks as well as gear and experienced crew..etc.. basically they have tried to monetize the game into a pay-to-win model where by the player who buys the most stuff will win every time.   Not cool.

Okay enough.. you get the idea.. And having said all that, I still like the game.. It’s still fun!  But I wonder how much of that is just due to a novelty value of getting to drive around in tanks and blow shit up..

I just don’t see how it’s going to hold peoples attention in the long run.  The issues are out weighing the fun slowly.  The line of sight issue is easily the biggest with people just popping into and out of existence.. they have to get that one fixed or this game will be DOA..

My biggest concern at this point is that I just don’t see how they are going to get all the issues fixed in time for their release at the beginning of next month.

Mac Book Pro 15"

I have been in the market for a new laptop for a while.  The primary machine I had was a Lenovo w500 and before that a Lenovo t42p..  But both of those machines were property of IBM..  I didn’t own them, and I had to keep IBM software installed, as well as generally not use the machine for personal stuff..  It was time for a new machine.

Now I will say that the Lenovo machines were okay.  Not horrible.  But I did have a lot of issues with them, and the t42p just up and died one day.  It was only 3 years old when it died which I felt was an extremely short lifespan for a laptop.

I have a Sony Vaio that I got in 1999 that still works, it’s just really old at this point.  But that’s the kind of life time I expect of a piece of hardware like these. The only issue with the Sony is it’s age and it has a really small screen.. But still!  These are expensive machines and they should last.  It was completely unacceptable to me that the Lenovo’s didn’t even come close.  And most people I have talked to who had Lenovo’s of their own had a similar experience.

So, I splurged and purchased a 15″ Mac Book Pro.  This is a really nice piece of hardware.. I’m quite excited about it..  Everyone that I know that has a mac book is happy with it and they all say that hardware wise it’s easily the best laptop you can buy.. I have to agree.. It’s a rock solid laptop..

I went through and got all the software on it that I wanted and got my LAMP setup working so I can do some development on there..etc..  Good stuff..