Rebuttal to Jack Dorsey’s Women in Tech
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey recently offered up some thoughts on women in tech. Or, more specifically, about there not being enough women in tech. I’m happy he’s bringing up the topic, but unfortunately, he hasn’t brought up the whole topic that needs to be addressed. With plenty of personal experience under may own belt in the professional world, having worked in tech since 1991 and with first hand experience working with many women along the way, here are some observations about women working in tech. Let’s explore.
Young Women and First Jobs
As women in their 20s and 30s seek their first, second and third jobs, they also seek something else to fulfill their lives: love, a relationship, a partner, marriage and kids. There’s nothing wrong at all with seeking to have a family. There’s nothing wrong with getting married. There’s also nothing wrong with getting a job. I’m all for having both a career and a family. But…
Jobs and Family
There is something wrong with getting a job just to support your maternity goals. I call that scheming. And, of that, I do not approve. If you are intent hiring onto a job, you need to plan to be there at least 1-2 years (preferably longer) before ever considering having a baby. Yes, I realize biological clocks are ticking, but if that’s your primary concern and not your employment, you shouldn’t be working at all.
So comes one primary issue with women in tech and this situation becomes painfully obvious when specifically hiring women who’ve never had a child. This specific problem typically manifests at the most inopportune time, usually when they are a valued and relied on team member…. and then they get pregnant. When the baby is due, that leaves a hole in the team for at least 3-6 months while she goes on maternity leave and has no contact and does no work. Worse, it leaves the company obligated to hold that position open unfilled while she’s on leave which ultimately makes the situation even worse for the remaining team members.
Unfair to those who still have passion for tech
This is a completely unfair situation to the team who still has their jobs to get done during her maternity period, but now that team is forced to function with one member less. It also makes it doubly more difficult if that person happened to be a significant contributor. It also means that now-on-maternity co-worker, who may have been a star producer, is now a zero producer during maternity leave.
Career or Family
I have no qualms with women wanting to have children, but I would expect them to also use some professional and common courtesy. Don’t sign onto a job and then 9 months later leave the rest of your team in the lurch while you’re off having child for 3-6 months. I find this behavior completely ludicrous, yet it is fully tolerated. In fact, the laws mandate that it be tolerated by the company. This behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at all out of a man, yet women get special dispensation in this area. If you already know you are planning to have a child, don’t join onto a job simply to ‘take advantage’ of the maternity perk 9 months later. While the laws force businesses to support maternity leave, it also leaves that team off balance until she gets back. So then, it’s no wonder that there are women who come back only to find they’ve now been moved into a role that doesn’t matter. Not to mention, being gone for 3-6 months requires the returning team member to spend another month catching back up on all of the new projects and the work that they missed. It’s like hiring the position all over again. Tech moves far too fast to support that long of an absence away from a company.
Firsthand experience
In this, I have personally witnessed a woman who went from being a star code producer, to getting pregnant and going on maternity leave (a zero producer). When she returned, her attitude had completely changed and she was no longer that star producer. On top of her lack of passion, she set off a series of unreasonable demands for extra time off to tend to both of her children, higher pay, working remotely and after not producing for several months, was ultimately fired. This isn’t really because of the baby more than because of her views on work-life balance. Instead of having passion for and focusing on the work, she chose instead to focus on child and family instead of work. The tech job then becomes secondary and the star player who used to do whatever it took to get something done at work becomes an average to low producer, working only 8 hour days (or less), doing the minimum and taking more time off to tend to family matters. And again, leaving the team in the lurch to find a new star player. It happens far too often than not. While this can happen with men and family, it happens far less often with men than with women.
[Update: 12/17/2014] I have just had this same exact experience described above a second time. Another co-worker recently had a child. Her second child. She took approximately 6-8 weeks time off for her maternity leave. When she returned, a week later than when she said she would return, she worked at the office for 2 weeks. She then suddenly needed a month off to return to her home country for a family crisis. She was again gone for another month. When she returned this second time, it was obvious her work ethic had substantially changed and it was inevitable that she would request yet more time off. She asked for four additional months off. Her manager didn’t allow it which left her to make a choice. Stay on and do the work she was hired to do or leave the company. She opted to leave. This is apparently an all-too-common thread among some mothers. It seems that this is especially true of mothers with two small children at home. This is the almost the identical scenario that played out in the first example above.
It’s clear, having children and hiring female tech workers don’t mix. Any hiring manager who chooses to hire a female tech worker must weigh these risks. If you’re looking for someone who has long term staying potential with the company, hire a male. If you wish to hire a female to be long term, you should hire females beyond their child bearing years or who have already had all the children they plan to have. Hiring a female who is still in the getting married-having child phase, you’re opening yourself up to scenarios exactly like the above, ultimately letting that person go and leaving a new hiring hole to be filled. A hiring hole, that I might add, that may take months to fill.
Courtesy first
As a comment about society in general, values have changed, manners have been lost and far too many people have lost any idea of professional and common courtesy for their fellow man especially when it comes to the workplace. For many people, it’s now only about what the company can do for them, not about what they are doing for (or to) the company. Courtesy and manners have been lost and devices like cellphones prove that fact out. I digress.
For these reasons, I encourage any woman who is contemplating having a child (or who is already pregnant) to remain out of the tech workforce until your baby days are behind you, you have your tech career passion back and you have your work and career priorities straight. Let your husband carry the maternity expense on his company’s health plan. If, as a woman, you want to have a long career in tech, and specifically you like the position you are currently holding and wish to have longevity in that job, you need to rethink any baby decision you may be contemplating. Once you’re pregnant, it’s too late to be thinking about your career.
Yes, I understand why women use maternity leave in companies in the way that they do, at the same time it also makes those who are active contributing team members resent you during that long absence and for your lack of work passion when you return. While your team is generally happy that you had a baby, the reality is your team doesn’t care that you now have a family. Your co-workers only care that you get your job done timely, that you do it well and that you continue to do it well after you return from your maternity leave.
Loss of Passion
Having a baby is stressful and time consuming. We get that. You need to change diapers, feed and clothe the baby, cuddle it, nurse it, keep it healthy and do all the right things to make your baby happy and grow into a toddler, child, young adult and ultimately an adult. We get all of that. However, at a workplace, that’s not anyone’s problem but your own. And, you need to leave that at home. Unfortunately, having a child is a huge time commitment that isn’t to be taken lightly. Yet, many women jump into it not realizing how much time, energy and money is drained by being a parent. Additionally, we also get that you want to spend as much time with your child as possible. But, that leaves less time for giving passion to your job at work.
Passion requires focus. Worrying about whether your baby is doing well, is being properly cared for, etc, diverts attention away from focusing on the tech job whether that be writing code or managing systems. Focus is important to do a job well, do it correctly and remain attentive to details. Diversions easily cause loss of focus and loss of details.
Split Attentions
Unfortunately, there are many women are not good at a split focus situation. And, something usually gives. When the choice has to be made, it is usually home and family life which is given preference. This clearly becomes evident when projects are delayed, work isn’t getting done timely, pieces of projects are being held open or other people have to do your work because you are at home dealing with home and family issues. As I said, the star player who was previously dedicated to work and getting things done amazingly well is now focused on continually wondering if little baby fell down and got bruised. While that is important as a parent, it’s not important to getting work done.
Laws have forced companies into keeping returning mothers on board when they are no longer the contributor they once were (at least to a point). However, don’t expect to come back from maternity leave and have everything exactly as it was. That won’t happen. Projects move on, managers change, people reorganize and the company changes. Oh, your payroll job will be there as mandated by law, but the job you’d hired into may not. You may find that you’ve been put into a role that has nothing to do with why you were hired. That’s what can happen when you have an extended absence. Time and work marches on with or without you.
High tech and after hour requirements
Let’s just get right down to the heart of the matter. As a member of a high tech profession, one thing you will quickly realize is how much extra time, effort and stress is involved. And, I’m not talking about the 9-5 hours. I’m talking about what happens outside of that. If you write code and that code breaks, you need to expect to be called looking for a fix at any time of the day or night. You are expected to drop whatever it is you are doing, including sleeping, open your computer and look for a fix. It could be 2PM or 2AM.
Now consider being a mom with a newborn. If your baby is continually waking up all hours of the night and you get called to fix your code, what are you going to do and how will you respond? Additionally, when on conference calls under a ‘fix it’ situation, the rest of your team really doesn’t want to hear your newborn burst into the cry song the entire conference call, nor do we want you to leave the call every 2 minutes to attend to your baby. Split attentions don’t work in these situations.
I know this may seem heartless, but business marches on and the company needs undivided attention from team members to solve problems quickly. Just think of this section as your wakeup call to reality. Having babies and being in high tech don’t mix. They both require similar hours and similar attentions, but you’re one person and can only divide your attentions so far. For this reason, you need to fully grasp what it takes to write code for a service that’s 24/7 always on. And, you need to grasp what’s most important, your career or your family. If you answer family, you need to find a job that is not in a high tech startup. You need to find a job where you aren’t required to be on-call to fix your code. You need to find a job where you can stroll in at 9 and stroll out at 5 (or whatever 8 hour period works within your day care requirements) and forget your job until 9 the next day.
Hiring into a high tech job won’t be a long term career goal for you unless you are 100% committed to the job and you are willing to let someone else manage your home and family (like dad or a nanny).
Non-performers and tech
There is no real resolution to this problem from an HR perspective. HR is simply required to comply with all laws. However, that doesn’t mean that every company will tolerate lack of work ethic when a woman gets back from maternity leave. Some companies are very stringent towards non-performers and get rid of them quickly. If you are contemplating working in a tech career, you need to find out what that company’s stance is on non-performers. Some companies are willing to pay very high salaries, but only to the best performers. Anyone not performing sees the door and quickly. You also need to evaluate your own personal views on having a baby. If you think your own views will sway towards family once the baby is born, you should not hire onto a job in high tech which demands tons more time and attention than you may be able to give once your baby is born. You should, instead, look for a job role that is already 9 to 5, limits after hour requirements and doesn’t require staying late.
Career Goals
It makes no sense to commit to a 9 month stint at a high tech company strictly so you can have a baby, which may ultimately end your career in high tech. Placing yourself into this position with a company and your co-workers, you are doing a disservice to yourself, your co-workers, the company and your professional career. It also means you may have to put a firing on your resume. This is never a good thing for a resume. Do yourself a favor and properly plan your career and look for jobs that work on concert with your family goals.
Coincidence or Unexplained Event?
I’m focusing this article on some recent events I’ve personally had. They are a bit on the creepy side, but this one is, amazingly enough, not a rant.
Recently, I’ve had two unexplained events one might deem as coincidences. The first one I had definitely chalked up to coincidence. The second one, I’m not quite so sure. I typically don’t go in for the metaphysical aspect of life. I’ve also never been known to have any clairvoyant tendencies. But, these two events are so similar in what they are and how they manifested, I feel compelled to write this article. Let’s explore.
First Event
I had been recently interested in both contemporary and past vocalists. Don’t know why, I was just tired of the same old rock and wanted a change. Specifically, I had been listening to Michael Bublé, Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
In the past, I had never really gone out of my way to buy or listen to Whitney Houston when she was big in the 90s. Though, it was hard not to hear any of her music as it was playing everywhere. I’d pretty much heard all of her hits just strictly because most of them had been played on the radio, but I had never purchased a single album. While I was going through all of these vocalists, it popped into my head that I should get Whitney’s greatest hits. I hadn’t heard her music in quite some time and I should give it a fair shake with objective ears. I also realized that her voice in recent years wasn’t that great, but I still wanted to hear her early stuff. So, I placed an order on Feb 6th, 2012 for her CD. I ordered it Amazon Prime with 2 day shipping and was playing the CD by the 8th of Feb 2012. I was diggin’ it. Though, I will say at the time she was really a scream-singer. But, she had such style around it, it really worked for her.
On February 11, 2012 came word that Whitney Houston had passed away. We were all a bit shocked and saddened by this news. Though, considering the life she choose to lead, it was not at all unexpected. Note that some of my co-workers had seen me open the CD package on the 8th and were just a tad bit freaked out on the 11th. I had opened the package just 3 days before. Granted, I was a bit freaked too. For years I had largely ignored Whitney Houston’s music and 5 days before her death, it pops into my head to buy her music. It’s creepy yes, but I simply chalked it up to coincidence.
Second Event
Fast forward to 2014. August 1st, I’m poking around on various videos on YouTube and I happen across random videos in the suggestion panel. Sometimes I click. This time I happened upon a video of the creation of Marvel’s Ultron character. For whatever reason while watching that video, it popped into my head ‘nanooo nanooo’ (like saying it all slow). I don’t know why. I don’t really see any relationship to Marvel’s Ultron and that phrase, but it just popped in. I realized that nanu-nanu was what Mork used to say on Mork and Mindy. So, I searched for a full episode on YouTube. I found and watched the opening intro, then one full episode and part of another. And, that’s where it ended for me. Content with having gotten that out of my system, I moved onto many other other unrelated videos and forgot all about it.
Note that I haven’t seen a Mork and Mindy episode since it was originally on the air. I also hadn’t seen a Robin Williams movie in probably 5 years or longer. I haven’t seen Pam Dawber in anything since Mork and Mindy. So, it’s not like I’d recently had any inkling to go watch Robin Williams, Pam Dawber or a Mork and Mindy episode until I thought ‘nanooo nanooo’.
August 11 rolls around only to find out Robin Williams is dead by asphyxiation. When I first heard the news, I actually thought it might be a hoax because few major sites were yet reporting it. It wasn’t until about an hour later that it was officially being reported on all major news sites.
Again, a creepy coincidence. Yet, because this is the second one of these I’ve had, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something else at work.
Coincidence?
But wait, it gets even creepier. Reviewing the dates of these two deaths, they both happened on the 11th of a month. February 11th, 2012 and August 11th, 2014. That leads to an 11 11. If you do the math around all the numbers here it’s also somewhat creepy.
One more event, but not at the same level. Tonight on the way home, I happened to look up at the clock at precisely 11:11PM and then precisely again at 11:21PM. While tonight’s event isn’t related to the previous two events in type, it is related by the number 11.
I don’t know how to explain these off as mere coincidence. I want to. One event like this I might be able to chalk to coincidence. But two with almost the same signature? The first was basically 5 days before the event. The second was 10 days before the event. Usually things tend to come in threes. So, I am now on the lookout for the third going forward. But, it may again take 2 years before the third happens. Now, I’m just waiting. If a third doesn’t happen, maybe these are coincidence. Is it a message?
Comment if you can suggest any insight or have any experience with events like these.
How not to run a business (Part 7.1): Learn by Example
The above is a real customer call between Ryan Block and a Comcast customer retention representative. Keep in mind that Ryan Block’s significant other had previously been on the phone for 10 minutes prior to this conversation, who then got frustrated and handed Ryan the phone. In Ryan’s quest to cancel service, the 8m 14s conversation that ensues is an amazing listen.
To Comcast’s credit, they have issued an apology to Ryan. However, the above may indicate a newly emerging industry trend that may need to be identified within your own organization. Heavy handed tactics only lead to bad customer PR and, again, the above is a prime example of ‘What Not To Do’.
In the spirit of this series of articles, this call is also a prime example of how not to run customer service within your business. Let’s explore.
Do not allow your telephone representatives to run amok
Record all your customer facing calls and review these calls daily, preferably with the representatives in question. After listening to a call of this nature, the supervisor should have pulled this representative aside and called out this insane performance. This representative should have been immediately pulled from the phones and sent back to remedial training on how to work with customers. If this behavior continues, further disciplinary action should be taken.
What’s not completely clear is how much of this agent’s behavior and line of questioning was of his own volition and how much was a managerial and/or company mandate within his local organization or Comcast as a whole. It’s clear that Ryan seems to think this behavior is not by this agent’s own accord. He believes it to be wider problem within Comcast and this ARS technica article shows that this may be true.
Do not teach or reward your representatives’ bad behaviors
No matter where this type of behavior spawned, it is not welcome in any organization. If a customer calls to request service closure, it’s fine to ask a few questions to understand the nature of the request. However, if the customer declines to answer reason type questions, simply make a note of that in your records. Then, promptly accept and follow through with the request. Representatives are not there to argue, banter, delay or in any way hold the customer hostage by not following through with the service closure request.
If your representatives refuse to follow through with the request for closure, this is tantamount to extortion. Refusing to stop service may also be illegal and may also be considered in breach of your contract. If the customer has followed all contractual obligations to you for notifications and payments and your representative will simply not stop service, you should also expect a call from a lawyer.
Do not expect your customer retention team to act like this representative
This call underlines a lot of things all at once. Once thing it clearly underlines is this conversation method is not the path to customer retention or customer satisfaction. Customer retention is about offering a deal or set of deals to keep the person as a customer. Customer satisfaction is earned supporting requests, if possible, timely. When the customer declines all offered deals, there is nothing else with which you can barter. Your retention team’s job is done. At that point, the service closure should proceed unhindered per the customer’s request.
In a memo that was leaked via The Consumerist, Comcast Chief Operating Officer Dave Watson writes:
“[I]t was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it. Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast.”
Though he also admits:
“The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him — and thousands of other Retention agents — to do.”
Of this behavior, ARS Technica writes:
“Comcast employees have financial incentives to act the way the agent on the call did. An anonymous reddit user who claimed to be a Comcast employee wrote that “these guys fight tooth and nail to keep every customer because if they don’t meet their numbers they don’t get paid.”
Bottom line, do not pay your representatives to act in this way.
Do not allow your representatives to bring bad PR to your company
Another thing this call underlines is just how badly a call like this can backfire on your organization. With call recording technologies, internet sharing sites and viral media, your organization can now suffer a swift backlash. If you’re trying to keep your brand relevant, popular and selling, such bad public relations can easily bring your brand down and, along with it, bad press and legal ramifications.
Do not underestimate the power of social media
Social media is the new billboard and can make or break the reputation of your business. It only takes a one or two viral backlash campaigns and your company’s reputation is tarnished for at least a year. It will take that amount of time to rebuild your company’s brand, quality and reputation. In other words, don’t expect to get any J.D. Power awards after such a negative media event. Just as one bad email campaign to the wrong set of email addresses can tarnish your marketing reputation, one bad customer service experience posted to social media can tarnish your customer service reputation and with it, your brand, products and services.
Social media is a great white shark and those teeth hurt a lot when they bite you unexpectedly.
← Part 7 | Chapter Index | Part 8 →
Game Review: Watchdogs
Lately, I’ve decided that I don’t want to know anything about the AAA titles before they are released so I can be surprised. Going into Watchdogs, I knew nothing (other than it had some hacker theme). Well, I’m somewhat disappointed in this title. Let’s explore.
Grand Theft Auto
I don’t mind playing Grand Theft Auto clone games, but games that don’t expand that idea enough beyond jacking cars really don’t do it for me. That, and I’d only recently finished playing Grand Theft Auto 5. Yes, I know, I play games slowly and in steps. Just prior to that, I had finished Saint’s Row the Third, also another GTA derivative.
Rehashed Ideas
It’s not that I have a problem with game developers taking some ideas from games and using them in new creative ways. But, when you just abscond with the entire control system and gameplay mechanics nearly unchanged, that’s when it treads far too near plagiarism. Though, adding the ‘hacking’ gimmick to divert your attention away from Ubisoft’s blatantly ripping a page straight from Rockstar’s GTA book doesn’t mean I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m definitely not okay with this. We already had the original GTA and Saint’s Row, do we really need another GTA? It’s a cool game structure and all, as long as it’s under the Grand Theft Auto name. I forgave Saint’s Row only because of it’s satirical nature. Anyone who can add irony and satire to a derivative game franchise will always make me want to play it.
But, that’s no where to be found in Watchdogs. Watchdogs is as serious as serious games come. It makes no attempt at hiding the fact that it’s a GTA clone, but it doesn’t make fun of that fact either. It’s just a straightforward ripoff with no apologies.
Road Layout and Car Handling
If you’re going to spend time writing a GTA clone, then make the road maps accommodate driving a car. More specifically, driving a car fast. The one thing that really irks me about Watchdogs is the crappy road layout of the city. Seriously, if Rockstar got anything right with GTA5, it was the roads and how they work in relation to vehicles. With the exception of the Vinewood Hills area in GTA5, the rest of the roads had easy and realistic curves that work quite well with high speed driving.
Unfortunately, the maps are an extremely sore point in Watchdogs. You simply can’t do high speed driving in Watchdogs. Nearly every city road runs into literally an L turn. And I’m not talking about a curve like (. No, I’m talking about an L. If you’re doing high speed to avoid the cops, the road abrubtly L turns and you’re crashing into a barrier or coming to a crawl to make the turn. Bad bad design. It’s clear, Ubisoft’s level designers put no thought into the road design. You can drive maybe 2 blocks before encountering yet another L turn. The subdivisions are just not conducive to high speed driving. Sure, I expect some L turns on some roads. And even then, they were occasionally in GTA5. But, they were the exception, not the rule. In Watchdogs, the roads are nearly L turns at every dead end.
Another thing Rockstar finally got right was the driving feel of the vehicles. Not so much in Watchdogs. The cars careen all over the road in unrealistic ways. In fact, the handling is so bad, it feels like a game from the 90s or maybe GTA 1 or 2. It doesn’t matter what car you jack, they all drive like crap. Ubisoft just didn’t get the driving or the roads right at all.
Cops
Just like GTA, if you go vigilante on the public, the wanted level goes up and the cops come after you… right down the Helicopter chasing you with a search light. It’s just a complete and utter rip off of GTA. Though, instead of the wanted stars, you get this flashing line bar. Effectively the same, though. And, like GTA, as long as you can outrun the cops or are good at hiding, you can eventually evade the cops. I even evaded the cops by jumping in a waterway and swimming away even when a helicopter was after me. This is something that would never have happened in any GTA game. The helicopters would have simply sent you to the hospital. Of which there is…
Dying
When your player character dies in the game, the game reloads back to the same point where your character died. So, for example, if your character happened to die in the middle of the freeway, that’s where the game places you after loading. No money lost, no trips to the hospital. I’m mixed on this, though. On the one hand, I like that I don’t lose my place where I was. On the other, placing my character in the middle of a busy freeway on foot is not really ideal.
Though, losing your place is one of the bigger problems I had with GTA5. If you happened to be in a part of the city where you’re not sure the exact location or weren’t paying attention to the map when your player character dies, you’re transported to the nearest hospital which might be a very long way from where you formerly were. So, on the one hand, I like that your character spawns where it died. At the same time, it’s not always practical to spawn in some of these locations. Overall, I’d say this is a miss by Ubisoft.
Hacking
Yes, Ubisoft did add the ‘phone hacking’ feature to Watchdogs as its primary gimmick. Note that hacking was actually a big part of Saint’s Row the Third, but offered up in a different way. The mechanics involving the cell phone hacking here is actually done very well. But, it doesn’t add so much to the game that you feel it’s a primary reason to play this game. The hacking is really to be thought of as another weapon that can help or hurt you as you progress through the game. Because the game is way overshadowed by the GTA5 feel, the hacking piece feels like an add-on that could have just as easily been added to GTA.
I would have preferred them rip off Assassin’s Creed’s climbing and or the quest system over GTA5. Give me the ability to climb the buildings over jacking cars, popping caps and joyriding.
Though, I will give credit to the camera hacking system. In fact, the entire game could have revolved around camera hacking. As long as you can ‘see’ another camera in the camera you’re viewing, you can hack into it. With this idea, you could string along camera hacking and ‘travel’ throughout the entire city without leaving the street corner. In fact, with this idea, it could have had other abilities like exploding street lights or hacking other devices that you might even be able to thwart crime simply by using the phone. While this infinite camera hacking idea wasn’t explored, it has a great potential at making a big part of a game. This is the one idea in this game that was left way underutilized but had immense potential. In fact, the camera hacking could have been a game unto itself.
Overall
Having just completed GTA5 and SR3, I’m still in my ‘I don’t really want to play another one of these games’ modes. I’ll snap out of it in a year or so, but for now it’s not really something I long to play at this point. GTA5 also had a whole lot going for it with the ability to mod vehicles and store them in garages and also supported switching between multiple player characters. While I don’t know if modding cars or storing cars is yet possible in Watchdogs, I’m not really planning on playing this game for a while to find out. I’m just a little burnt out on this style of gaming, but I’ll pick it back up eventually.
Because the roads are also not conducive to street racing, the game really made a huge blunder here. If the roads had been designed with more subtle curves to allow for high speed racing, chasing and escaping from cops, Watchdogs would have been a whole lot more fun with the cars. As the city roads are designed, it’s a chore to drive around the city. If you’re planning to rip off GTA (which is effectively a car-centric game wrapped in story), then you need to design the in-game roads to accommodate racing the cars. Right now, Watchdogs just doesn’t work well enough for that.
Recommendation: Rent or Buy
Gameplay: 5/10
Mechanics: 7/10
Car Racing: 2/10
Graphics: 10/10
Audio: 9/10
Overall: 7/10 (needs improvement)
Comment: Derives far too much if its play from GTA5. Road design is crappy and doesn’t work properly for racing.
Review: Man of Steel
While the Man of Steel has been out of the theaters for a while and is now available on blu-ray, I’ve decided an analysis of this film is now in order. It also showcases what’s wrong with Hollywood blockbusters in general. Man of Steel is an excellent poster child of the problems associated with today’s storytellers populating Hollywood. It’s all about the money and never about the quality. Though, let me start by saying the Superman suit is the least of this film’s problems. In fact, even though the suit is not at all in keeping with Superman, the suit itself is probably one of this film’s best features. Go costume department! Let’s explore.
Lois Lane
The script pieces surrounding Lois are quite unexpected. There’s nothing specifically wrong with Amy Adams’s portrayal of Lois Lane in terms of acting. In fact, she did a respectable job of acting Lois within the context of the role. Still, Margot Kidder’s and even more so Noel Neill’s Lanes seem much more human and in-line with being an actual reporter.
Unfortunately, the story behind Lois Lane in Man of Steel has created far more questions than answers. For example, every time Superman has landed after a long drawn out battle, flying at enormous speeds all over the city and destroying parts of perhaps 10s of buildings and then ultimately landing who knows where, Lois can be found standing right there within moments of touchdown. There is no way that’s possible unless Lois is not from Earth.
Also, she (seemingly) reluctantly agrees to be captured by Zod after a taunting comment by Colonel Nathan Hardy. After being taken aboard Zod’s ship, her lack of awe and concern seems dubious if not down right suspicious. Worse, she is pinpoint accurate firing a particle weapon (not found on earth) and not at all phased by it let alone killing said individual she fired upon. Most people put into that situation would not only have crumbled, but many might have fainted or gotten sick. Not Lois. She is as stoic about the whole thing as Superman. In fact, in some ways she is more stoic. It’s almost as if she knows what was going to take place in advance and her part in it.
Hidden Identity
We all know that Superman has his ‘hidden identity’ in Clark Kent, but that’s not the hidden identity to which I refer. In fact, we know that Superman is not good at hiding his identity. He practically opened up to Lois about the whole deal almost immediately upon meeting her. He certainly displayed his powers to her to heal her. Though, he verbally confirmed everything after the second meeting.
The fact that Lois is there at the discovery of the crashed Kryptonian scout ship in the ice means something suspicious with Lois is already afoot. How did she get there, how did she even know about it and how did she come to learn of that ship being there in the first place? If it’s a classified military secret operation, which it seemed to have been, why would a reporter have been notified? Also, why was Clark there? I think he was explained off as ‘yet another job’. But, that’s a separate issue entirely. The whole ‘dig up the 18000 year old ship from the ice’ plot device was far too convenient. But, that’s part of the reason Hollywood fails at making movies great. Things are inserted strictly for plot convenience, not because it makes sense.
In fact, I believe the true hidden identity here is Lois Lane. I don’t know if she an occupant from the original scout ship that landed there 18000 years ago (somehow preserved for many years), if she’s a descendent from someone on that ship (in which case there are probably more than a few) or if she’s from another world entirely. But, she’s definitely not of Earth. There’s just no way she can be all things considered.
Lois Lane from Krypton?
In fact, she seems to have the power of teleportation (being exactly where Superman is within moments). The power of clairvoyance (knowing where Superman is at all times). The power of people manipulation (able to convince military personal that she should be part of their secret projects and on board military aircraft). The power of memory manipulation (making people believe she’s always a helpless victim). She may even be a form of succubus seducing Superman at the end of the film.
There’s just no other way to explain how the Man of Steel Lois can end up doing the things she does. She cannot be of Earth. Yet, she’s obviously very good at hiding her true identity. For the same reason that Clark explains the need to work for the Daily Planet, it makes perfect sense for Lois to be there for that same reason. She can easily keep her finger on the pulse of the world and know where she needs to be and what she needs to do.
Though it’s quite clear. Lois doesn’t save people or interfere with humanity directly. She just watches, reports (within the limits of a real reporter) and lets mankind do whatever it’s going to do. That is, with the exception of Superman to which she has some kind of fascination and is willing to do all kinds of interfering. Of course, Superman is not of Earth and Lois knows this. So, if she has an official non-interference policy with the locals, then she can interfere with Superman all she wants as he’s not indigenous to Earth.
Lois Lane’s agenda?
Here’s the kicker. We don’t know. It’s clear that Lois seems to be on Earth for some agenda involving Superman. Perhaps she wants something Superman has or perhaps she knows he has the Kryptonian genetics key and needs it. Whether she’s malevolent or benevolent, we don’t yet know. Clearly, her manipulation of Superman is key to whatever reason she’s on Earth. But, it’s likely she’s from a planet that knows of Krypton and its fate.
This is not the same Lois we have come to know from the original Superman comics or indeed the Lois portrayed in the 50s, 60s or 70s. No, this Lois is a Lois who has powers of her own, but exercises them sparingly and out of sight. When she does use them in front of someone, she quickly manipulates their mind to cover what they saw (including the ability to manipulate Superman’s mind at certain emotional times). Though, it seems Superman can unknowingly resist her abilities.
Man of Steel destruction
On a separate topic, there’s all of the destruction surrounding Superman and Zod’s actions. It’s quite clear that the amount of destruction and human casualties in Man of Steel was quite large. While Superman always prides himself on saving people, the sheer carelessness of Superman in Man of Steel was quite unnecessary and appalling. We are seriously to believe that Superman would willingly throw an indestructible person through several buildings knowing they can’t be harmed or injured? And then do it again and again and again?
It’s clear that at the point where Superman first gets a hint that there might need to be violence, he would have excused himself and flown to, for example, the moon or a barren desert to battle it out. There is no other way to stop the unnecessary destruction than taking it somewhere remote. Why carry out such destruction in the middle of a city like Manhattan? Superman is way smarter than that. Of course, Zod could have insisted on destroying a large city anyway with his ships, but he can’t battle Superman if he’s not there.
Instead, this whole film treated Superman as if he didn’t have a brain in his head. That he was just some conflicted teenager unable to make heads or tails of any of his situations. That he’s some bumbling idiot with no thought to that level of destruction. No, Superman is a whole lot smarter and more reasoned than that. In fact, he’s probably the smartest person on earth, he just didn’t have the proper Kryptonian teaching. He should be able to at least make the proper strategic decision involving moving fights to places that cause the least amount of casualties and destruction.
Military
The whole film jumped the shark when Colonel Nathan Hardy proudly announces at 1:39:28, “This man is not our enemy”. Wait.. what? You’re standing in a pile of smoking burning rubble. He just caused enormous destruction and death in the middle of a city and that’s not considered being an enemy? Really? Yes, Zod was involved and aided in that destruction, but Superman could have easily moved the battle simply by flying somewhere else less populated.
Again, this influence on the Colonel must be the Lois Lane powers at work. There is no other explanation except Lois Lane’s protection of Superman. Even Superman has an incredulous look on his face when he says this. Lois is clearly protecting Mr. S for some reason and purpose yet to be explained. We already know she has the power of human manipulation and knowing where he is at all times. That’s the only explanation for that Colonel’s statement at that moment in the plot.
Overall
The special effects are reasonably well done, but the story has some huge holes that really make no sense. This is yet another Hollywood non-sensical romp that really doesn’t enhance the superhero genre in any notable way. In fact, it makes Lois out to be some kind of alien with some agenda involving Superman. I’m just waiting to find out what that agenda really is. Maybe there is no Lois at all and this is some other Superman enemy attempting to manipulate Superman for their own bidding?
Elder Scrolls Online: What were they thinking?
[Updated: 8/30/2018 to cover Fallout 76]
[Previous update: 7/4/2014 to cover Cyrodiil and Craglorn]
I’m done playing the Elder Scrolls Online. What is it? It’s the newest installment to the Elder Scrolls video game series as a massive multiplayer online game (MMO). Though, my first question that comes to mind is, “What were they thinking?” This game is a huge step backwards for the Elder Scrolls Franchise in so many ways. I know a lot of players ‘like‘ the game (which is all subjective), but in this article we’ll try to understand why this game is not the caliber of a game that it should have been for an Elder Scrolls installment. Let’s explore.
Console Version — Delayed
The Elder Scrolls Online game was available on the PC first and eventually made its way to consoles such as the PS4 and the Xbox One. For the PC, the game was released on April 4th, 2014. For the consoles, the game had planned to release on June 15, 2015 . Zenimax originally announced a six month delay for the release of the console versions, but it took much longer. In lieu of that release, they have made an offer to let you play sooner. If you bought the PC version before the end of June, you were able to transfer your leveled character over to your console. This, of course, assumes everyone has a PC to play it on. Zenimax attempted to build a unified ESO universe where all players from all platforms are using the same world. It didn’t work. This explains the six month extension required to attempt a unified MMO across all platforms has never been attempted by any game developer to date. That Zenimax attempted this unified world was both ambitious and risky. It also meant trying to get Sony and Microsoft to allow this. It didn’t work. It was ultimately wasted time and effort.
It’s also worth noting that if you’re buy the Xbox One version, you will be required to buy an Xbox Live subscription ($59 for 12 months). If you’re playing on a PS4, you don’t pay anything extra. The PC game formerly required a credit card to enroll in a subscription to unlock that included 30 days. As the game has aged, Bethesda has changed its policies. Also note that many players whose time has expired have lost the ability to play when their credit card declined for unknown reasons. On consoles, it’s free to play.
Console vs PC
After having played this game nearly to completion, I definitely had second thoughts about marrying the console release and the PC release players together. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s a really bad idea and a recipe for disaster. Why is that?
Consider that it takes at most 2 months to complete the game and obtain veteran rank 1 (level 50). Yes, it’s a relatively short Elder Scrolls by comparison to previous installations. To obtain further veteran ranks, you simply have to grind, grind, grind. Most of this grinding is done by hanging around with groups of other people and doing laps. This means you’ll go from one battle to another (maybe 3 or 4 total) in a loop. This loop battling is, well, boring. It does level your player up, but it’s not really much fun after you’ve done it for a while.
If they had married the environments, it would mean that by the time the console players are eligible to get to Cyrodiil, all of the VR12 players will be picking off these ‘newbie’ console players one by one in PvP mode. It’s going to be quite a bit unfair to all of these new console players. In fact, I believe that it would be better at this time to completely isolate the console players into their own servers separately from the Mac/PC edition. Let the Mac/PC players continue in their own world but without the console players. It already is unfair when newbies try to even enter Cyrodiil if you try to play after the game had already existed for 2 months..
In fact, it would be a whole lot more fair to weed out the veteran ranked players from being able to see or interact with non-veterans.
Released too early?
The PC version? Yes, unfortunately. In fact, I played it on a quad core Mac mini (which has its own set of problems.. some related to the game, some not). That said, the game has lots of bugs, glitches and problems. Some quests have characters speaking German when the dialog printed to the screen is in English. There are times where parts of the environments don’t render correctly. The quests are sometimes haphazard and don’t appear to be in any way linked. Gaining skills and experience is random, though somewhat structured around these random quests. The game lag can get quite annoying at times. The script kiddies are already at it mining for gold, loot and experience.
Immersive Experience? Not quite.
In Skyrim, the environments had been working towards full interactivity and more realism. It wasn’t quite there yet, but you could pick up apples, heads of cabbage, weapons and armor. You could carry them around in your inventory, wear items or even move them around in the environment. It was a fully interactive and immersive experience. While some of this carried over to the Elder Scrolls Online (like crafting) far too many things didn’t (list below).
In Elder Scrolls Online, too much of that interactivity is missing. Sure there are containers to open, but you can’t kick the containers around, knock them over, break them, pick up apples or cabbages or weapons and move them around or even place things into the containers. In fact, far too much of the interactivity that was beginning to show in Skyrim was completely abandoned in the Elder Scrolls Online. So, what’s up with that?
Defiance
What does Defiance have to do with the Elder Scrolls Online? ESO seems to use the same MMO engine. Granted, Zenimax tailored the engine to its own purposes (within limits), but the underlying basics (things that cannot be easily changed) are still there. So, while this MMO engine provides relatively pretty environments, they’re static. You can’t do anything to the environments. The plants are fixed, the boxes are fixed, everything is fixed. There is nothing that the player can do to move anything around. The only thing that’s movable in the game is the player and a horse (and enemies).
One of the things I always enjoyed about Oblivion, and to a lesser degree in Skyrim, is that there are wandering enemies and friends. In fact, you don’t know which is which until you come upon them. One of the things I had been hoping for is a less ‘enemy’ based game. Meaning, no one should be an enemy until you make them so. Which means, nothing should attack you until you pick a side or provoke them. Alas, not here.
Based on Zenimax’s questionable choice of choosing the same engine that Defiance uses, that leaves the Elder Scrolls Online with less than satisfying in-game play. In fact, for some of the same reasons I abandoned playing Defiance, I abandoned playing the Elder Scrolls Online.
Game Mechanics
While the combat mechanics are similar enough between ESO and Skyrim, they are also different because multiple network players can jump in and help. Though, as I said, in some dungeons, multiplayer is not possible.
On the flip side of that, though, the multiplayer experience is weak and uninspired. The whole running around without collision is way less than realistic. Network players don’t collide and simply walk through one another like ghosts. I’d prefer a much more realistic collision detection. I’d also like an experience where people can participate in commerce, like owning shops and running them at a fixed location. I would also like to see network players be able to create quests, dungeons and bosses. Yes, player created content should be clearly labeled and excludable via preferences. But, it should be part of the universe.
Voice acting and the like
I’m not terribly impressed by this installment of the Elder Scrolls series. In fact, the choice of Michael Gambon (or a very close soundalike) was not a good one. His lines are inconsistent even between the same dialog in the same paragraph of spoken dialog. It sounds amateur and rushed. This is something I would never have expected from Zenimax/Bethesda.
Graphics
It’s funny. This game looks great in some places, and really bad in others. The landscapes, for the most part look spectacular with the sun shining. In the dark, however, it’s just flat and dull. There’s almost no lighting in most places when there’s no sunshine. Interiors are dull and lifeless. The lighting model used in this engine is, at best, fair. Again, this is what you get when you buy into an off-the-shelf engine. Instead, I would have preferred them modify a Crytek engine which has about the most realistic lighting model I’ve ever seen in a game. Unfortunately, this game suffers from the lack of quality lighting in far too many places.
For example, armor on knights looks great when in direct light or in sunlight, but in the dark there’s nothing to make it look volumetric. It just looks flat and dull.
Multiplayer Gaming
Because this is an MMO game, there are plenty of network players. Unfortunately, much of the game is focused on single player questing. Sure, your comrades can join you in defeating some monsters, but there are also plenty of dungeons where this is not possible. This is the same as Defiance and this is the single reason I stopped playing Defiance. You can easily wander into an unbeatable boss dungeon and simply have to abandon that quest leaving it unfinished. If that quest is part of a chain of quests, that whole quest-line is also dead. This is entirely frustrating and I won’t deal with games that do this.
More than this, the single most frustrating thing is that people leave their characters logged in all of the time and clutter up the environment. You’ll find hordes of network players hanging around banks, clothing creation tables, armor creation tables and other similar workbenches. Sometimes there are so many people that you can’t even get to the table to use it. Sure, you can walk through the players, but if you can’t get visible view of the table with the camera, you can’t target the table to work on it.
One of the other frustrating network player problems is that you’ll tend to find network players hovering around key quest giving NPCs trying to do the same thing you’re doing. The problem that falls out of this is trying to determine what character is actually the quest giver. Having hordes of people around something also gives away where that thing is. Also, it’s really stupid to hear a quest giver NPC saying something like “You’re the first person I’ve seen in ages.” Really? Like how many other network players are logged in right now playing this exact quest in this same dungeon? Stupid dialog such as this amazes me in a network multiplayer player game. Who at Zenimax didn’t get the memo that this is a network multiplayer game?
Which leads to one more problem… shared resources. Some items in the environment are basically ‘one player at a time’. That means if you find a Water Hyacinth and someone grabs it ahead of you, they get first dibs and it’s gone. This means you have to go find it somewhere else. This problem has happened far too many times during quests leading me off on scavenging tangents. In fact, a similar issue is when I’ve just started a quest and a minute later, the quest ends saying the quest is completed. I’m like, what the hell? Then I realize, someone else just finished that quest and it gave me the completion notice also. This is bad. You should always be required to finish whatever quests you start on your own unless that quest is explicitly labeled a multiplayer quest.
Cyrodiil
At the original time of writing this article, I hadn’t yet ventured into Cyrodiil. However, I now have. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t get any better in Cyrodiil. In fact, it really takes a turn for the worst. While all of the non-Cyrodiil zones are standard questing and dungeon crawler types, Cyrodiil is the antithesis of what Elder Scrolls has always been.
Yes, Cyrodiil offers a huge map that encompasses all of the cities we’ve come to know from Oblivion, but instead of being thriving quest giving communities, it’s a barren landscape of forts and castles, few and far between. In between these military installations is a whole-lotta-nothin’. Really. There is nothing there. While there are quests that are placed onto your area quest map, the quests are all campaign related. Things like, taking over a fort, capture the Elder Scroll, etc etc.
ZeniMax degrades Cyrodiil into yet another version of Hasbro’s board game Risk, only in MMO video game format. I’d liken it to another game like Civilization, but it’s less like Civilization and more like Risk. There are 3 factions: Red, Yellow and Blue. Depending on which faction you join, you’re responsible for making sure your ‘team’ captures the most stuff during any campaign.. with the idea being to capture the entire game area, just like Risk.
No, I’m not avert to playing a game like Risk, it’s just that I’ve already played Risk many many many times over the years. Risk is not what the Elder Scrolls series should become. Yet, here we are. The Elder Scrolls games should always be about questing and dungeon crawling, first. There are so many better multiplayer ideas that could have been used on the Cyrodiil land, but unfortunately we get Risk instead. This Risk game is not bad for what it is, but it’s just not creative nor in keeping with what I would expect from an Elder Scrolls title. It’s also far less than impressive than what I would expect from Bethesda.
Castles and Rebuilding
The worst part of Cyrodiil’s Risk is its castles. The other teams can build catapults and other weapons to use against your castles. As the castles get bombarded, they break and fall down. If the castle falls down enough, the other team can capture it. To keep this from happening, all of the players must not only continually rebuild the castles, they must also use their own ‘money’ to rebuild it. If you want to rebuild a wall, you have to pay for it out of your own stash of money. No money? Can’t rebuild. Personally, I found this minutiae to be just too over the top and unnecessary.
Winning
Yes, while it’s important that your ‘team’ wins Cyrodiil during the campaign, there are a lot of sub-game types also embedded in the area like capture-the-flag and death-match all wrapped into this single area. It’s also worth noting that Cyrodiil is almost entirely PVP (Player vs Player). There is very little PVE (Player vs Environment) in Cyrodiil.
The problem with Cyrodiil is that it is far too sprawling with literally devoid of anything other than PVP gameplay. Seriously, this land is so big, trying to find enemy players in it can be as challenging as fighting the battles when you finally find them. The sore point when your player dies is that the spawn points are so few and far between, you’ll end up spending literally 10 minutes just trotting back to where you were on a horse simply to try that battle again. Because there are so few spawn points, it makes Cyrodiil a truly painful experience when battling. Definitely not a battle-friendly environment. This is a pretty huge fail on ZeniMax part. The spawn point is also entirely dependent on who kills you. If you’re killed by an environment NPC, then you spawn like you normally do. If you’re killed by another player, you’re forced to respawn at very selective spawn points owned by your faction… which could be on the other side of the map.
Worse, they’ve turned the Elder Scrolls themselves (the actual Elder Scrolls) into a game of capture-the-flag. Instead of being useful as scrolls, now they’re just tokens to carry around. It’s now the job of other teams to grab your team’s ‘Elder Scroll’ and take it back to their own land. It’s then your responsibility to go get that scroll and put it back into its home area. Yes, it’s degraded the Elder Scrolls into Capture The Flag. I mean, I don’t know how much more degrading it is to see the actual Elder Scrolls, which are supposed to be some of the most coveted and sacred of magical artifacts in Tamriel, treated like play toys.
If the Elder Scrolls themselves are such prized artifacts, why are they floating on an alter sitting out in the open under a dome? Shouldn’t they be in a library or underground protected? Who thought this would be a good idea?
On top of the derivative problems present in the Risk-like strategy aspect, it’s just far too sprawling to really make this area of any real value. The campaigns in Cyrodiil literally last 90 days. That’s 3 months. And it would take every bit that 3 months just to even try and take over the entirety of Cyrodiil. I guess if the only thing you’re trying to do is level your character up to Veteran Rank, then it’s worth it. Oh, and the only way to get Veteran Rank is to have taken part in Cyrodiil actively. Yes, that means rebuilding castles, as boring as that activity is.
Unfortunately, Cyrodill literally doesn’t thrill me. First, it trivializes the Elder Scrolls. Second, because the area is so sprawling with nothing else to do there but focus on taking buildings over, it’s really way outside of what I consider an Elder Scrolls game. I mean, the idea behind the battles is interesting. However, using a board game derivative to build your implementation is far less than impressive, Bethesda. It seems like the game developers just didn’t have any better ideas than ripping off the Risk board game.
Instead, I would have preferred to see several types of campaigns. Instead of 3 factions all working against one another (PVP), that they all work together towards a common goal… like taking the area back from the Daedra. I don’t mind PVP and I’m glad there’s an area here, but ZeniMax should at least offer up other methods of conquering Cyrodiil than simple-minded and derivative PVP gaming. If you really want to do PVP, I’d rather just have an arena somewhere. I mean, a small location with limited map sizes where gamers can simply go in and battle in an arena. In fact, Arena was one of the early Elder Scrolls titles. Why not offer an area as an homage to the earlier Arena battles? With multiplayer, it makes perfect sense. Yet, they give us the Risk-derived Cyrodiil. I continually find myself venturing back to the questing areas over being in Cyrodiil. I find myself bored to tears after spending even 15 minutes in Cyrodiil. Just give me the standard quests and don’t force me to rely on Cyrodiil to advance my player character.
Faction Lands
When you begin the Elder Scrolls Online, you will become part of a faction such as the Daggerfall Covenant, the Ebonheart Pact or the Aldmeri Dominion. Depending on which faction you end up in, certain parts of Tamriel will open and others remain locked. However, once you complete Cyrodiil as a veteran, you will be able to go through all of the rest of the closed lands. Personally, I think this is rather stupid. If, as a designer, you’re going to create a world with many lands, let all players go through all of the lands. Don’t selectively exclude gamers based on a faction. This is stupid. Of course, we can create and level up other player characters who end up on those other factions, but that’s means you have to manage 3 players all leveling up together. This is something I don’t want to do. I play a game no more than once, never three times.
Craglorn
After having recently reached Veteran Rank 1 (VR) — AKA Level 50, I was ‘invited’ to be transported to Craglorn (the recently released Veteran Rank area). Don’t expect Craglorn to be like any other land you’ve visited. Oh, no no no. Zenimax has once again changed the rules of the game. When you reach VR1, you might think you’re now reasonably strong. Again, no no no. Reaching Craglorn is like starting ESO all over again at Level 1 with no armor or weapons. In Craglorn, ALL of the enemies and I mean ALL of them are VR 11 or higher. Oh, but there’s one more change to this area. ALL of the enemies in Craglorn swarm. There is no way to get a single enemy alone to grind and rank up. Nope. If you hit one enemy, at least 4, 5 or more VR11 enemies come charging at you. Think about this for about 30 seconds and you’ll realize the problem… I’ll wait….
So, having thought through the problem, you quickly realize there is absolutely no place to grind here. None. The only way to grind here is to group with others and grind together. Even then, grouping VR1s together probably won’t be that successful. Effectively, you cannot quest solo in Craglorn until you’ve reached at least VR 12. Worse, the first quest given in the area has you fighting VR11 bosses… which are, in fact, VR20-somethings. Even worse then that, it takes killing a shit ton of enemies just to move the VR experience bar even a nudge. So, yeah. It’s unlikely a VR1 character is going to step into this area and win at anything let alone rank up fast. Expect to spend some gold on new VR ranked weapons before entering this area.
Craglorn is probably one of the worst ZeniMax fails around the entire ESO game. Though, I have to admit that ripping off the board game Risk is right up there with Craglorn’s design. But, setting your character up as VR1 in a primarily VR11 area is just simply insane. Again I must ask, “What were they thinking?” This is not challenging. It’s just an exercise in frustration. I’d have to say that Craglorn is probably game designing at its worst. Every other gaming area, they’ve had general enemies no more than 1-2 ranks higher than where you are. But, throwing a VR1 ranked character into a VR11 territory is just stupid.
About the only thing I have found to do is loot treasure in this area and join in on some world battles whenever I can find them. This way I can at least try to rank my character up very slowly. But, finding world battles around the area is fairly difficult because there aren’t that many people here questing and world battles are few. Even dolmens aren’t in Craglorn. Oh, there are dolmen’s marked, but they don’t work like the regular dolmens. Again, Zenimax changed the way this area works. Inconsistent to say the least.
Craglorn is really designed for grinding, pure and simple. If you go in there, expect to grind, grind, grind.
Gameplay Differences
Let’s understand some of what I consider broken between the Elder Scrolls Online compared to Skyrim. Some of you might like some of the changes listed below, but I preferred where Skyrim was heading. That is, moving towards making everything interactive and more like our reality with real physics. Taking a step back in gaming is never a good idea. Here’s my list (note this is not comprehensive):
ESO: Horses appear out of thin air and disappear into thin air
SKY: Horses are stabled, must be found, can die
ESO: Horse animation is stilted and cartoony
SKY: Horse animation looks at least more realistic than ESO
ESO: Containers are fixed and contain gold 1 max or food (not necessary)
SKY: Containers can contain jewels, gold > 20 or potions.
ESO: Food is unnecessary because magicka, health and stamina regenerate almost immediately after combat ends
SKY: Food is necessary until you get armor or enchantments that increase health regeneration which is typically very slow.
ESO: Objects are fixed and cannot be moved
SKY: Objects are movable in the environment: Apples, weapons, ingredients, etc
ESO: Defeating an enemy yields 1 gold and possibly a glyph or quest item (rarely armor and never armor the NPC was wearing)
SKY: Defeating an enemy yields gold sometimes and whatever armor and weapons they had. Their armor and weapons can be stripped.
ESO: Bows automatically come equipped with arrows. The bow holds the damage.
SKY: Bows and arrows are separate and have separate damage levels. Couldn’t craft arrows. They were always found.
ESO: Unknown if you can own a house
SKY: You can not only own houses, with Hearthfire you could build one from scratch.
ESO: 60 max slots for items and every item (including each ingredient) requires 1 slot (excluding some quest items). If you run out of slots, you have to use the bank which gives you only 60 more. Then you have to buy more with gold.
SKY: Expandable slots for items and unlimited items can be stored in containers in owned houses. Granted, houses cost at minimum 5000g, but once you buy a house the storage space is unlimited. You could get more slots by finding the Horse stone, scrolls, casting a spell or by wearing enchanted items (which can be found or created).
ESO: Soul Gems are very very scarce. Basically only available from sellers.
SKY: Soul Gems are easy to find. Specifically, they are usually found in dungeons with mages or necromancers.
ESO: Once in battle mode, there’s no way to sneak. The game simply won’t let you. If you do manage to hide in battle mode, the game takes you out of battle mode as though you had run away. The enemy’s health resets requiring you to start the battle over from the beginning. This includes bosses.
SKY: Once in battle mode, if you hide behind a rock or container you can usually hide. If you crouch and hide in battle mode, the game does not reset the enemy’s health unless they have regenerative capabilities or you leave the area.
ESO: An arrow’s range is a 5-6 feet. If you’re out of range, an arrow does nothing.
SKY: An arrow’s range is at least 50-100 feet. If you can see the enemy and you can aim, you can hit them.
ESO: If you’re in sneak and attack an enemy, you’re immediately taken out of sneak and the enemy knows exactly where you are and begins attacking you. The best you get is 1 sneak attack.
SKY: If you’re in sneak and attack an enemy, the enemy will come search for you, but you can move and avoid being found. You can continue to sneak attack as long as you remain undetected.
ESO: Equipping a new weapon is cumbersome.
SKY: Equipping a new weapon is through the weapon wheel (as long as it’s set up in advance).
ESO: Entering a menu to switch weapons or consume a potion doesn’t pause the action. Enemies continue to attack while trying to switch weapons or consume potions. You need to have them on hot keys.
SKY: Entering a menu during battle pauses the battle to allow switching or consumption of a potion.
ESO: Dying reduces durability of all equipped items.
SKY: Dying ends the game and you have to reload. Durability of items is determined by its use, not by player death.
ESO: Boss battles inside a dungeon trap you in the dungeon until the battle is done, you quit out of the game or you die. There is no way to flee an interior battle as exit doors aren’t usable.
SKY: You can always exit a dungeon even when in battle.. excluding certain bosses which lock you into an area (i.e., arena battles).
ESO: Swimming yields no skill improvement.
SKY: Swimming improves strength
ESO: Diving in water not possible.
SKY: Diving not only possible, but required to reach some quests.
ESO: Mouth movements with dialogue are simple open close like a puppet
SKY: Mouth movements with dialogue use mouth phoneme animation to seem like they’re actually talking
ESO: Sneaking costs stamina, does not level up
SKY: Sneaking levels up as you use it near enemies, costs no stamina
ESO: Repairing armor is at least 5x more costly in comparison with the gold you obtain. Repairing all items might be 200G-300G and you might have 500-800G or so.
SKY: Gold is plentiful and repairs are 10G or so per item. It might cost 200-300G for all items, but you probably have 2000-5000G
ESO: Bots and script kiddies => a side effect of multiple players
SKY: No bots => no online play
ESO: Some dungeons don’t allow network players in. You’re left alone to complete the boss which can be challenging because you cannot sneak or hide in battle. Basically, you need to be a mage or warrior for these dungeons. Rangers and Thieves won’t easily work.
SKY: N/A.. but you can use alternative tactics like sneaking and sneak attacks which are not available in ESO once battle starts.
ESO: Map is tiny (about a quarter of the screen) and looks like a cartoon.
SKY: Map is full screen, makes it much easier to find things.
Though neither have a search feature which would make finding places on the map a whole lot easier.
ESO: Custom waypoints not available on map
SKY: Custom way points possible
ESO: No stealing, no pickpocketing
SKY: An intrinsic part of every other ES game since at least Morrowind
ESO: Fast traveling costs gold (costs more as game progresses)
SKY: Fast traveling is free
ESO: Books cannot be taken or stored. Though, Lorebooks disappear after reading them and end up in a ‘library’ on your character.
SKY: Books can always be taken (unless it’s specifically stuck to an area).
ESO: Can’t sit in chairs
SKY: Could sit in any chair
ESO: Can’t kill any NPCs
SKY: Can’t kill some NPCs (critical characters, kids, etc), but can kill most.
ESO: Items cannot be dropped and picked up later. They can only be destroyed.
SKY: Items cannot be destroyed, but can be dropped or sold to free up slots.
ESO: Travel only to waypoints at any time. Traveling not from a waypoint costs gold. All territories are infested with large numbers of constantly spawning enemies. Dungeons are not always set to the player level and are frequently set higher to encourage network co-op, otherwise it can be impossible with a single player.
SKY: Travel to any city at any time. Occasional enemies can be easily avoided. Dungeons were set at or close to the level of the player making some levels too easy to play. Though, some dungeons aren’t.
Frequent Updates
While I do realize this is a multiplayer game, some of the updates can be especially big and have long download times. For example, some updates are as large as 8GB (nearly the same size as the full game). Download updates are frequent at intervals usually once a week. So, expect to wait to play while the updates are downloading and installing.
If they’re planning on this many updates this frequently, then the game should come with a background updater to automatically download updates during idle times.
Overall
The Elder Scrolls online is, at best, a mediocre game. The choice of the Defiance MMO engine to drive ESO leaves a lot to be desired. I was actually hoping Zenimax wouldn’t use that engine as there are many problems with it. While Zenimax was able to customize some pieces better than Defiance was able to, there are simply some pieces that still don’t fit with the concept of an Elder Scrolls game. In fact, using this engine is far and away a step backward for an Elder Scrolls technology advance. It’s unfortunate too because I was actually liking where Skyrim was heading. And, taking what Skyrim was to a Next Gen console would have made the next installment spectacular. Instead, with the Elder Scrolls Online, what we’re getting is not the next step, but a lateral move that’s about as compelling to play as Morrowind.
Though, at the time Morrowind released, it was very compelling. Today, Morrowind seems antiquated, as does the Elder Scrolls Online. Unfortunately, Zenimax tried using something off-the-shelf and the result is less than stellar. It’s unfortunate too, because I was just getting into the Elder Scrolls series. If this is what we can look forward to in Elder Scrolls games, Zenimax, you can count me out.
As for Cyrodiil, it is basically boring empty space with mostly nothing to do. There is effectively no standard questing in Cyrodiil. All quests are military quests such as grabbing the Elder Scroll and moving it somewhere else or spying. Unfortunately, Cyrodiil is basically such an uninspired area, I find myself bored often and frequently leaving to find quests in other lands. Unfortunately, at level 46, I find myself actually running out of standard quests and no way to get to the other unopened territories. So, I’m actually kind of stuck for more stuff to do in the Elder Scrolls Online.
In fact, what I’ve been doing as of late is just finding resources and putting them up for sale in guild stores. At least there’s pretty much a never ending supply of resources, except on Cyrodiil where, again, there’s literally nothing but a huge and a big game of Risk.
Fallout 76
This section has been added here to discuss Bethesda’s newest MMO, Fallout 76. It’s highly likely that Bethesda/Zenimax has simply taken the ESO engine and used it to build Fallout 76. I haven’t played or seen any play of Fallout 76, but I’m not holding out hope that FO76 will be substantially better than ESO.
I’m certainly hoping that they have abandoned the Risk board game PVP mode. It was totally unnecessary and out of character even for an Elder Scrolls game. It will definitely be out of character in a Fallout game.
I will have to reserve my judgement of Fallout 76 until its release later in 2018.
↩︎
Adobe Creative Cloud: Adobe’s Stupid Mistake
In the process of upgrading to Adobe’s Creative Suite 6 (CS6) software package, I spoke with an Adobe representative who then tried to up-sell me into their monthly software plan labeled Adobe Creative Cloud. The representative also told me there would not be a CS7 or CS8 version released ever with the introduction of Adobe Creative Cloud. Let’s explore why offering only Adobe’s Cloud will ultimately become a huge blunder.
Adobe’s software has always been purchased!
The business model for Adobe software has always been to purchase the software and upgrade later by paying an upgrade fee. It’s a model that has fully worked for all of their versions up to CS6. This has been the software purchase model for years and years (not even just from Adobe). Yes, while it is how we have always purchased Adobe software packages, it is also how we have purchased software from every other software developer. In fact, for sellers other than Adobe, it’s still how we buy software. Basically, nearly every other software package out there is a one-time payment to own the version you are buying. So, what’s changed?
Adobe’s Clouded Mind
Adobe has now made the decision that they are no longer ‘selling’ software. They are now ‘renting’ it to you in exchange for a monthly or yearly fee. Clearly, this is an entirely different business model from their original purchasing model. This is not the software purchasing model we have come to know, understand and agree to. But, someone who thinks they are brilliant at Adobe has decided the old model is no longer valid and they are now wanting us to buy this purchase model. Because they have done away with purchased software, they are now forcing YOU to ‘rent’ their software through the cloud. No longer can you just ‘buy’ it.
The pricing model is currently $600 yearly or $50 monthly for their service. But, you have no guarantees that they won’t double or triple these prices in two or three years. Once your plan ends, they can charge you whatever they want and your software is invalidated if you don’t agree. You don’t get to keep your software that you’ve purchased during the plan. The money you’ve spent is entirely lost. However, when you previously bought the software, you own that software to use forever no matter what pricing they use later. When purchased outright, the software is on your system and can be used forever without further involvement of Adobe. This permanency in ownership is just as it should be with software.
The Mistake
Whomever at Adobe that made this decision must have done so without consulting us, the software buyers, because why would anyone want to rent software forever? Software that you cannot keep or use after you shut the plan off. It’s an entirely different business model and an entirely different way to manage software. I don’t want to use cloud based Adobe software. I want the software installed on my system to use for as long as I want. I want to be able to move around and not be dependent on a 24/7 always-on Internet connection. If I’m offline, I still want to be able to edit and create work.
If you’re already using this service, you know that the software requires checking in every 30 days for monthly subscriptions and every 99 days for yearly subscriptions. This is not what I want. I want software that works infinitely offline. I don’t want anything ‘checking home to mothership’ ever. If I need to get a new version, just notify me of it and, if there’s a fee I’ll pay and download it. This is the tried-and-true model. Why abandon it?
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
Seriously, why would any top level executive dump a fully functional business model that has sustained an entire company for years in exchange for an extremely risky new business model that may not be adopted by buyers? Why wouldn’t you want to carry both models? Clearly, there are those of us out here who still want to ‘buy’ software, not ‘rent’.
For example, renting a car for a day is fine, but the market still is a big enough place where you can also ‘buy’ cars. Why would you, as Adobe, decide to close down the entire ‘buy’ market in lieu of a ‘rent’ only market? Think about it, the cloud rental software is fully downloadable but hobbled to check in every 30 days. It’s like paying to use a never ending trial version. To carry both business models, it’s just semantics to set up the software to check in every 30 days, 99 days (as it does right now) or NEVER (to buy it outright.. which doesn’t exist). If I want to pay full price up front for a package, that’s my choice and I should have that choice available to me. If I choose not to rent, then that’s your loss when I choose not to rent. And believe, I won’t rent ANY software from any business.
But, Adobe has decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The model that they formerly and successfully used to sell their software they have entirely abandoned for this new ‘rental’ world. A world that is likely to not only backfire badly on Adobe, but likely to force them to completely rethink this idea. Some ideas need to die and rental software like this is one of those ideas that needs to go away as fast as possible. That someone thought it would be a great idea needs to be slapped sane.
Renting is not Acceptable
Rentable software is both a creepy ‘big brother’ privacy invading tactic (no thanks Adobe) and a crappy business model that, as I have already said, needs to die a horrific and fiery death. I understand why it exists (companies want residual income and to collect all sorts of creepy privacy metrics), but it’s not a model that I will ever endorse or use. Therefore, I do not accept this business model and thusly CS6 will be my LAST purchase from Adobe until this company comes to its senses.
If you agree with me on this, please leave a comment below. Adobe, if you’re reading, you need to wake up and realize that there are some of us out here who want to actually buy software, not rent it. We want to be able to use purchased software without having to check home to mothership ever (except for updates when I request it to check).
It always amazes me just how stupid some company executives can be. So long Adobe, it was nice knowing you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
The H1-B dilemma
I have recently heard that a common question among Silicon Valley CEOs towards government is, when is the H1-B allotment going to increase? Let’s explore exactly what this question ultimately means.
Foreign vs US Workers
The H1-B visa is a type of work visa granted to a foreign national to work within the United States for a specified period of time, that eventually expires and will need to be renewed. Asking to have more of these granted per year says only one thing: These Silicon Valley CEOs believe they cannot find domestic US talent to fill positions. Either that, or they mistakenly believe it’s for cost cutting purposes.
My problem with this situation is that someone in each of those organizations is telling the CEO that they cannot hire locally. This is a load of rubbish and the current limit on the issuance of H1-B visas is in place for a reason. If you are a company doing business in the US, the point is to …
Hire Domestically
The foreign visa limits are there to prevent hiring foreign workers over local US citizens (and thus, keep those wages inside the US to help the economy). That’s the entire point. If the US government were okay with letting companies hire foreign workers willy nilly, then there would be no limits on H1-B visas nor would this visa likely even exist. Instead, it is there for a purpose and that purpose is to limit foreign workers to force hiring of US citizens. This is exactly as it should be.
If you think you need to hire foreign workers, feel free open a foreign office and hire all of the foreign workers there. Just keep them there and do not bring them onto US soil.
H1-B Workers
One of the other problems that I have with hiring H1-B workers is that most of these worker’s wages get sent back to the country where that worker calls home. Most of the money is not spent in the US. So, in general, H1-B workers do not, for the most part, help improve the US economy. But, they do help out their own country’s economy by sending much of their paycheck there. This is, if for no other reason, a big reason to hire US workers over any other type of worker. This all assumes that you value your US based business along with the US economy.
Again, if you really need to hire cheap labor, open an office in that region and hire to your heart’s content. As a CEO, nothing is stopping you (other than perhaps the board of directors) from making that decision. Asking the government to grant more allotment of H1-B’s is not the answer and never will be.
Lack of Talent
If anyone on your hiring team is telling you that there is lack of talent, the real lack of talent is actually in your hiring team. Meaning, when they’re not finding people it’s because they’re simply not trying. There are people all over the US who are talented and willing to work. Yes, you might have to pay them more in some cases, but if you want good talent, you pay for it.
Is hiring an H1-B worker actually cheaper? Not necessarily. If your company is choosing to sponsor a foreign worker (whether or not they plan to get a green card), your company is in for a large number of fairly pricey and somewhat time consuming legal proceedings at regular intervals. In other words, expect legal fees and lawyers to manage this process. So, what you’re not spending on that worker’s wage goes to your lawyer to keep that person legally in this country (and your business in compliance with the law). Worse, if that H1-B worker chooses to leave the country before your sponsorship is over, the legal fees you’ve spent are lost. If nothing else, the proceedings can interrupt both yours and that worker’s schedule to meet legal deadlines. Even worse, an H1-B holder can work at your company just up to the point of becoming a citizen, making your company foot all of the bills and then they jump ship leaving you without a worker and a set of legal bills you still need to pay. It happens. It’s not pretty. You can simply avoid this by hiring domestic US citizens.
Silly Valley
It’s called this for a reason. If Silicon Valley CEOs are claiming they need more H1-B visas, I call hogwash. There are plenty of talented US workers. The problem is not in the talent pool, it’s in the talent acquisition process. Either the job role is too overreaching, in which case you still won’t find someone or the job role is overly tiny, neither of which a foreign worker would turn down even when they’re not qualified. Considering the unemployment rate today, your hiring managers are not even trying. Meaning, because most hiring processes are severely broken, its difficult to find talent because it’s hard to spot talent. That’s why you have a 90 day new hire grace period. Put it to use. Hire people, take chances, let those go early who don’t work out. Many job description postings are looking for the swiss-army-knife of talent. For example, a guru in networking, databases, systems administration and software development all rolled into one. If your company is a startup, you might need someone like this because your staff is so small, but chances are you’re not able to hire H1-B staff that early in the company’s life.
Still, a swiss-army-knife of talent is hard to come by no matter the size of your business. Pick the role that you really need most and train the staff for the rest. Focus on the skills you find in your candidate rather than those that are not there. If you can find a database administrator separately from the systems administrator, hire two people. You still need to have the backup. If you place all of your eggs in one job role basket, when that person leaves (and they will because they’re in demand) you have a huge hole that’s, once again, hard to replace. Choose smaller more easily replaceable roles. You’ll also end up paying a high wage to the swiss-army-knife talent versus much less for the limited role talent.
Hiring Processes Broken?
Hiring managers can sometimes create some of the most difficult interview processes leaving would-be candidates unable to show they have talent because the hiring manager asked the wrong questions. Yet, given a chance, many people would not only do well, but they would excel at the job. Hiring managers don’t see the talent and then claim they can’t find talent. The HR people pass that feedback blindly along to the CEO who wholeheartedly believes he/she needs H1-B workers for all to be right with the world.
Nope. I completely advocate that you need to exhaust all of the talent pool in the US before you jump on the H1-B bandwagon. And no, hiring one Indian worker does not mean you need to hire more Indian workers no matter how convincing that first H1-B worker may have been. However, if you promote an H1-B worker to a managerial position, you need to expect them to reach out to their friends living in India and then want to hire their friends who will also require an H1-B. Your hiring handbook should be very clear on this point. You should only hire H1-B workers after you have exhausted all domestic US workers and this is as it should be.
The point is, your company doesn’t need H1-B workers. It just needs better processes to find citizens living in the US who are willing and able to work the role. If you still think you need H1-B workers, please re-read this article again and then comment on why you think so.
Game Review: Titanfall (taking gaming a step back)
It seems that many gamers, for whatever reason, have gone gaga over Titanfall. But, Titanfall represents everything that’s wrong with gaming in one single game and why it’s more aptly named Titanfail. Let’s explore what’s wrong with this game.
Gaming Industry Rags
The thing that really ruins gaming for me is the game industry review rags. I’m tired of their constant high marks for bad games. I’m tired of these rags getting paid by developers to write reviews and give them high marks knowing the game isn’t worth it. In general, I’m just tired of how the whole game rating system works. Yes, it needs a drastic overhaul. Worse, no one is discussing this issue. Unfortunately, it is just one in a big long line of problems that Titanfall brings to the table. That the review mags have given such high marks to this otherwise poor quality game says volumes about the state of the industry. An industry that is now officially very broken.
Titanfail
All of the Call of Duty fans seem to be going gaga over this game, but why? Is it because Respawn created it (the same developers who write Call of Duty)? Clearly, this game is not worth $60. By comparison, let’s understand what ‘worth’ means in the context of Titanfall. For example, for that same $60 when new, you could buy Halo 3 or Halo 4 (or any number of other similar FPS titles), take your pick. Inside these titles, you get the following:
- Single player campaign mode (at least 10 hours of play)
- Co-op campaign mode (another 10 hours of play)
- A level up system (customize your armor)
- Multiplayer including
- Death Match
- Team Death Match
- Capture The Flag
- King of the Hill
- Theater mode (watch clips, capture clips, sharing, etc)
Even Call of Duty offers many of the above modes.
For that same $60, Titanfail provides us with exactly one of the above gaming modes:
- Team Death Match
That’s it, one single game play mode. No campaign mode. No coop mode. No missions. Just full on 100% death match 100% of the time. A game with one single multiplayer mode is not even considered 1/5 of your average FPS title. Even Valve’s Team Fortress offered us more than Titanfail and it was included in The Orange Box which also included 3 Half Life campaign games, Portal along with Team Fortress for that same $60 when new.
Next Gen Gaming?
If this is any indication of the next gen level of gaming, the gaming industry can count me out. I have no intention of shelling out $60 for a game that’s clearly a failure. Oh, it’s probably making Respawn and EA a mint. For me, once bitten, twice shy. Won’t do this again. Respawn is clearly skating on thin ice. And, thin it is indeed.
Graphics
The one and only one saving grace of Titanfall is its graphics engine. The graphics on the Xbox One are stunning. But, that’s not enough to save this game title. When it finally comes to the Xbox 360, the benefit of those graphics will be lost. The only thing left is this one-tracked game.
Audio
For the most part, the sound is serviceable within the context of the game. Yes, it helps the tutorial, but the actual gameplay it can be annoying and only serves to add to the repetitive nature of the game. The voice work is average, but not outstanding. There are definitely better voice artists that could have been used.
Controls
In fact, the screen movement is way too sensitive. Even on the lowest sensitivity setting, you can still move the aiming reticle in unrealistic ways. In fact, moving the camera around on the highest sensitivity could actually make some people sick. As I said, it’s just too sensitive. The sensitivity needs to be dialed back a whole lot more. It’s almost impossible to aim precisely as fast as the screen moves with each small stick press.
Gameplay
As I’ve stated, Titanfall a one-tracked game. As someone else so eloquently stated,
Respawn is a one-trick pony
In fact, this game is far less than a one-trick pony. Titanfall only offers team death match for your $60. It’s even less of a game than what Call of Duty offers. Every new level is effectively the same game play except with different maps. Sure, there is supposed to be some agenda that the teams are to accomplish, but in fact, the agenda makes no difference. What it comes down to is how many other player characters can you kill. The so-called objectives of the level are moot. That ‘campaign’ stuff is just added as subtext to make you think you’re getting some extended gaming experience. In reality, you’re not.
Instead, what you’re really getting is a subpar one-tracked multiplayer death match game wrapped in a pretty bow that at best deserves a $15-20 download price tag on Xbox Arcade. Yes, this game is no better than your average Xbox Arcade title. In fact, some Xbox Arcade titles are actually better than Titanfall (i.e., Contrast).
Oh, the game developers claimed to add in a ‘campaign’ mode, but there’s no campaign here. There are very loose objectives during the death match play. In reality, it’s all about how many other player characters you can kill.
Tutorial
Even more insulting than offering death match for $60 is the opening tutorial. For the first 15 minutes, you are asked to walk through a combat tutorial. The tutorial isn’t really the problem. In fact, the tutorial is actually kind of cool showing you how to use the Titan armor in cool and creative ways.
What’s insulting is that they make you walk through this tutorial with the understanding that you will be able to use each and every one of the cool creative features. No. It’s team death match. As soon as you’re thrown onto the play field, only about 3-4 of the tutorials actually apply. You can use some of the moves regularly. Like, catching and launching projectile ammo back at your opponent. In fact, you would never find yourself hopping out of your mech, then walk through a series of gates, opening the gate for your mech and then getting back into your armor. Nope, not even close. As I said, insulting. By the time you could even get halfway through that gate maneuver, someone would have picked you off or your armor would be destroyed and you’ll be waiting again for your armor to show up.
The tutorial definitely leads you into a false sense that this game might actually be something good. Instead, once you begin the game play, you realize that the tutorial was merely a joke.
Titan Armor
So, this is the biggest gimmick in this game and also its biggest failure. It’s clear that this gimmick just doesn’t hold up. Let’s consider just how long it takes to actually spawn the armor once you’re on the level (minutes). At best, your armor spawns twice per level. Once it spawns, you’ll have on average 5 minutes of game play before your shields are gone or someone assassinates your character. The armor is as weak in it as you are on foot. Seriously, we’re expected to believe that if we had a mech like that, it could only withstand a few hits before being destroyed?
Though, if this game had a single player campaign mode where you could actually use all of the cool things taught during the tutorial, you might actually be able to use the armor for a purpose. Instead, against 13 or so other opponents whose sole intent is death match and who also have similar armor as you, there’s no point in having the armor. Once you’re in the armor, the other armored opponents just find you and find ways of getting you out of the armor as fast as possible leaving you firmly running around on the ground so they can stomp on you.
Once you’re on the ground out of the armor, which you are the majority of game play time, then it’s just about seeing how many other team members you can kill as it all comes down to being team death match. Note that there are many other multiplayer games, like Halo, that offer better ground combat experiences than Titanfall. Hanging out waiting for armor to spawn is just pointless.
Pairing System
When you’re sitting in the lobby waiting for a game to start, you’ll see the game pairing you up with other opponents. There are two teams, red and blue (sound familiar?). Anyway, the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ teams pair up on the playing field to begin team death match. Before that happens, though, you’ll notice that the game will pair level 2 players with level 40 players (and all levels in between). Clearly, there is also a huge disparity here. Again, another Respawn design failure.
And this is the single reason why many players are going gaga over this title. There is nothing better than leveling your player up for hours and hours and then having all of the weapons and armor to run around the playing field picking off level 2 and level 3 players. Not only is this no fun for the low level players, it’s completely unfair to those who just bought the game and are simply trying to figure out how to play it. There’s nothing fun about constantly having to respawn your character because some 13 year old sniper keeps picking you off from a hill.
Multiplayer gaming is clearly headed in the wrong direction. I’m not even sure what Respawn was thinking here. I can certainly see why some players love having this ‘advantage’. There are always people looking to game the game so they can play the game on their terms (and outside of what the developers had intended). Clearly, Respawn has given that type of exploitative gamer the perfect vehicle in Titanfall. For the rest of us, the game is a disaster.
Multiplayer gaming
MMO games have been around for quite some time. For example, World of Warcraft. Some MMO titles have even made it to the console like Defiance. I’m not here to say that MMO titles are in any way perfect. But, for a multiplayer experience, games like WOW and Defiance did a whole lot more right than wrong. For example and for that same $60, Defiance offers us a full campaign mode built into the multiplayer experience. So, if you want to run off and do your own solo thing, the single player campaigns are there. You can team up with multiple people and help others complete their campaign quests. There are even some side 4 player co-op games built-right in. Again, Defiance offered much much more than Titanfall. On top of all of that, Defiance offered regularly scheduled group events that everyone in the game could participate in.
Defiance was glitchy, the graphics were rudimentary and clearly didn’t offer up the perfect gaming experience. But, I believe that problem to be more naivety on the part of the developers than on being intentionally stupid. The developers seemed to cut some corners in producing Defiance and the in-game world suffered. Above all of that, though, Defiance still shines as an example of how multiplayer campaign can be done right and still give us value at $60. Now that the price on Defiance has dropped, it’s well worth the money to give it a play before the servers are taken down.
Team Death Match Mode
This is one of the oldest multiplayer modes ever conceived. It dates as far back as Doom. And believe me, Doom’s multiplayer death match is a whole lot more fun than Titanfall. The problem is, death match gets boring fast. Unless you’re hosting a lan party at your house and you have a bunch of systems strung together, death match is as boring as the day is long after an hour. Sure, it’s fun for about the first 30 minutes, but after that I want to do something different. Titanfall doesn’t offer that. It’s the same repetitive task over and over. For those people who have a touch of OCD, this is probably the perfect game. For those of us who don’t have that, repetitive gaming gets boring really fast.
The Problem with Next Gen
I hope that Titanfall is an anomaly on the Next Gen landscape. If this is the level of gaming that we have to look forward to, the Xbox One may find itself completely out of the running in the console wars. Clearly, paying $60 dollars for a game that’s worth at most $10-15 and that also belongs as an Xbox Arcade title is completely insulting to seasoned gamers looking for gaming value.
If you’re a gamer reading this and you’re feeling incensed over this review (and for whatever reason you absolutely love Titanfail), your anger is clearly misdirected. You need vent your frustrations at the gaming companies who keep finding ever more clever ways of ripping us off. Clearly, this game stands as the gaming industry’s crowning achievement in ripping the gamer off. Titanfall is the shining example of how not to produce a $60 game.
Thankfully, I invested in the $249 collector’s version that includes a large sized statue and art book. While I don’t necessarily want to show my support for this game on my desk, I can easily recoup my investment in this game by selling the statue on eBay as a collectible. This statue will likely easily increase in value unlike most games which only ever decrease. With Titanfall, I fully expect this game to decrease in used pricing faster than most (probably $20 by mid summer .. the price it really should have been).
Recommendation
If you absolutely must try game, rent. The only gamer type to whom I recommend this game is anyone who dearly loves multiplayer death match. If you’re looking for any other gaming experience, you won’t find it in Titanfall.
Rating
- Gameplay: 2/10 (Titans take too long to spawn, game controls are overly sensitive, death match only)
- Graphics: 9/10 (eye candy, but not perfect)
- Audio: 8/10 (voiceover work average, music reasonable)
- Overall Rating: 2/10 (not enough gaming value for the money)
- Overall Recommendation: Rental only. Save your $60 for real games.
Note: there is some discussion that Respawn is already contemplating DLC to add other modes like King of the Hill or Capture the Flag. But, it’s also likely you’ll have to buy a season pass to get these features that should have already been included in that initial $60.
Rant Time: Google Wallet Verification
So, I know how much everyone love my rants. Well, here’s another one. This falls under personal security and internet security common sense. Today, let’s explore the safety of Google Wallet and it’s so-called verification system.
What is Google Wallet?
Basically, it’s another type of payment system like Paypal or Amazon checkout. Effectively, it’s a way to pay for things or send money on the Internet using Google. That’s about as simple as it gets. Who uses it? I certainly don’t nor will I ever if Google doesn’t change its ways.
Verification of Identity
Like most other payment systems, they want to know who you are. Or, at least, that the person who is wanting to use the payment system owns the card or bank accounts added into their system. However, each one of these payment systems usually does verification in similar ways. For example, Paypal verifies you by requiring you to add a checking account (i.e., routing and account info) and then adding a small amount of money to your checking account. Later, you enter those two tiny amounts of money into their verification panel and you’re all set. That’s pretty much it for Paypal. This is similar to other financial institutions like E-Trade.
Google’s Verification = Stupid
And I thought Paypal’s verification was stupid. Leave it to Google to diverge and make it even more difficult. In the verification form, Google requires you to enter your social security number, your birth date, your home address, your phone number and various other information that could easily lead to identity theft. Then they require that you submit it. Information, I might incidentally add, that is not required for you to use an established credit card or bank account for payment. After all, banks are already required to identify you before opening an account. This is the whole reason why Paypal’s verification system is enough. Paypal merely hangs onto the coattails of the bank that has already previously verified your identity when you opened the account. I digress.
When their entry form doesn’t work, they require you to attach a PDF document of a government issued identification card. Not only is that stupidly manual, who the hell know what Google is going to do with that PDF file once you send it to them? Why would you want to do this anyway? Seriously, you’re not opening a bank account with Google. You’re not getting anything out of it by sending this to Google. And, you’re opening yourself up to huge personal risk by leaving PDF documents of your identification cards floating around on the Internet for hackers to find. Seriously, what is Google thinking here?
For me, that’s a big red flag and a BIG FAT NO to Google. I have no intention of providing any physical paperwork to a private corporation. If you can’t figure out proper method to identify the user electronically, that’s not my problem.
Legal Compliance?
I know that Google claims that this is all in the name of Federal compliance, but I’m quite sure the compliance laws don’t require you to verify a user using any specific implementation techniques. Clearly, Paypal is able to comply with these laws without requiring a PDF version of physical government issued identification. The reality is that Google also does not need a copy of this. That they claim that this is required to fulfill legal obligations is smoke and mirrors.
No, it’s quite clear, Google’s verification system is broken and completely unnecessary. They can certainly comply with all identity verification laws without resorting to asking for a copy of your identification be submitted to them in PDF or any other format.
Merchant Requirements
In fact, while credit card issuers like Visa and Mastercard don’t forbid asking for identification when using a credit card, the merchant must still accept the card for payment as long as it’s properly signed without seeing an ID. Because Google wallet requires actually seeing your identification before using some services with your credit card, this violates card issuer rules regarding the requirement for seeing identification before purchases. On the other hand, unlike a retailer who has the physical card in hand, Google cannot see your card and whether it’s signed. But, the spirit of this rule remains. Using a method of charging a small charge to the card and asking you to check the statement, then supply that dollar amount should be enough to verify that you own that card and that you have access to statements… just like Paypal and E-Trade.
Because a lot of statements have now become e-statements online, the small charge method doesn’t necessarily verify your physical address. Though, if they need to verify your physical address, they can simply send a postcard with a code. Then, have you enter that code into a verification panel once you receive it. In fact, this is really the only method that will verify your physical address is valid.
Google Wallet’s Usefulness?
With all of that said, Google has failed to make any traction towards becoming a defacto wallet. In fact, there are so few merchants that actually use Google Wallet, it’s probably safer not to verify with Google. Being as unused as it is around the Internet and seeing as Paypal is the primary method of paying for things today, it’s too much of a personal risk to submit PDFs of your passport or drivers license to a random corporation. You have no idea where that PDF might end up. Though, it will likely end up on Google drive because Google likely requires its employees to eat Google’s own dogfood (i.e., uses its own services).
And since the risk of using Google drive is as yet unknown with all of the Facebook-like features that Google has added (and continues to add), it wouldn’t surprise me to find Google internal documents accidentally shared through a Google employee’s personal account via Google+. This would obviously be bad for Google, but it wouldn’t surprise me. That’s why you don’t upload PDF files to corporations like Google. In fact, I wouldn’t share PDF files of that type on any network drive unless it’s encrypted and passworded. Better, don’t put it there in the first place.
Companies requiring copy of a personal ID
Personally, I won’t do this type of ‘give me a copy’ verification for any company unless I’m opening a bank account, credit card or need to provide it for some specific financial transaction. Even then, I will only transact that business in person and allow the person long enough time to see the documents to get what they need from it. And no, they are not allowed to photocopy it unless there’s some specific requirement.
I especially won’t do this with companies as big as Google or Microsoft when no transaction is involved. As companies grow larger and larger, employees get more and more careless in document handling. Asking for photocopies of identification cards, social security cards, credit card faces or any other issued card is not cool and I have no intention of ever providing that to a company for any identification purposes unless I’m actually performing a transaction. I won’t do it for ‘just in case’ services that I may never use. Doing so stupidly leaves a financial time bomb out there ready to be exploited.
The most they need is the number off of the face. If a company cannot make do with what’s printed on the face of the card (by being typed in), they get nothing. Just like giving your check routing information to a company such as Paypal is like writing a blank check, giving copies of physical documents to corporations is tantamount to identity theft. I simply don’t trust corporations with access to copies of my physical documents.
Though, were Google to set up a storefront and I could walk in and hand my card to someone to visually inspect and then maybe have them swipe it (although, I’d prefer not), I’d be somewhat okay with that. But, knowing a PDF file is floating around on the internet somewhere with a copy of my physical card, that’s not in any way cool. I will never do that for any corporation sight unseen no matter who they are. Since there’s no way to transact business with Google in person, there’s no way I’ll ever verify my identity for Google Wallet.
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
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