@redness19 I remember back in the day in Quake III/Unreal Tournament you had to memorize timings of power-ups that appeared on the map, memorize the routes to get to those power-ups, etc. I even know of a few players that ran maps blind (from spawn) to ensure their muscle memory and timings were perfect to hit the places they wanted to. This also applies to enemies - know their routes, know all the locations they're likely to take, and you can have a rocket heading their way before they even pop out from behind that corner. You alo had to know exactly how far your cursor would move if you moved your mouse. You have to memorize how long projectile weapons take to reach their target. How many hits to which parts of the body would kill. Quite a bit of work really, and not all of it is fun.
Pro SC2 and SFIV are great fun to watch. Watching the current crop of CoD thumbstick warriors pretending to be pros is boring as hell unfortunately. None of them deserve the title "pro gamer". They're slow, inprecise, and inaccurate and have only a passing understanding of the maps. Watching Zero4 go 12-0 as an opener in the finals at QuakeCon '01 was exhilarating. His powerup control was spot-on, with almost perfect timings. His reads on where his opponent would be were superb. His railgun shots were things of beauty. In modern FPS games their idea of map control is knowing approximately where you and your opponent will spawn, and learning the weapons just means minor recoil adjustments. Of course it's going to be boring to watch. Aside from slightly superior reflexes, all these so-called "pros" are essentially pubstar players with good communication. Give any one of them a year with a mouse & keyboard and throw them into a Quake Live game - they'll rage-quit on the livestream within minutes after they go 0-20.
Game's great fun, glad to see they're upping the ante when it comes to equipment and weapons. Reminds me of the days when shooters took a bit more skill instead of people arguing over which hitscan weapon is best to shoot slow-moving targets with. The old QIII pros must be laughing their heads off at how easy games like Call of Duty 8 and Battlefield 3 are.
@Skacore_Al It's not elitism if it truly is a superior platform. Aside from ignorance there's simply no reason to opt for a console over a PC. It's cheaper, it can do everything a console can and more, and it allows for a wider user base. Anyone with a desktop less than 5 years old can get Diablo 3 running for the cost of one year of Xbox Live. And likely at superior settings to what the console version will have if one ever comes out. All without having to worry about PSN getting hacked or Microsoft's absurdly restrictive policies. @emanwell This game isn't delayed because of the auction house. Blizzard just made some MAJOR changes to the core gameplay, balancing those out isn't going to be easy.
If a game is made so that it can easily support a controller, it's almost certainly dumbed down control-wise. I'm not going to debate whether or not simpler controls are a good or bad thing since I haven't played this game beyond the demo, but generally speaking, my experience with PC games that are forced intro controller-complex schemes hasn't been good. After all, this game might not be balanced for lean either.
"DLC is going to get a lot bigger. It’s a great move for both consumers and developers--we’ll spend less time worrying about shipping content upfront and more time on tweaking the game according to player response." Yeah, you better start dropping upfront games prices then.
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