PlanetSide 2: First Impressions

December 8, 2012 Leave a comment

I made a post a while ago about an MMOFPS/RTS. Turns out, this dream has come true, and it is PlanetSide 2 (it’s free-to-play. go download it right now!)

In the first two hours of play, I was zipping around in a dropship with a squad, capping points like crazy. I was rolling across vast plains in a tank convoy, or running along the ground with dozens of others as aircraft zipped overhead. I infiltrated an enemy compound and disabled a generator. I defended one of our larger complexes from a full-on siege. This game is amazing.

Actually a pretty typical thing to see.

It’s a little hard to get into, as you are just dropped into the action. You have to figure out what the vehicles do, the difference between classes, how the maps are laid out, what you are doing, etc. Basically, you have to figure out how the game works. But after you join an outfit (which are basically clans), the fun blossoms. You run and fight along side your teammates in giant, mile-wide maps. The 24/7 combat goes back and forth across a ravaged landscape. As you cower behind a rock and take potshots at the other factions, aircraft scream over head, blowing each other up. More than once I’ve had a smoking aircraft crash and break apart into a fireball meters from me.

The basic objective is to capture facilities, which are fairly far apart from each other. At the top-most level, the game is a back-and-forth struggle across a territory. The territory is broken in hex-shaped regions, which are linked to the nearest facility. Your platoon (under which there are squads) chooses where to focus their efforts, and then a blitzkrieg spearheads into fortified enemy territory and tears a hole in their defensive line. Overall, the best strategy is to keep a strong front line; if a facility gets isolated in otherwise enemy territory, it is usually much harder to defend.

Each facility has one or more capture points. In order to gain control of a facility, you need to hold all the capture points for a certain amount of time. One in control, facilities can have weapon-change stations, ground vehicle factories, or aircraft factories, depending on the size of the facility (larger facilities have more capture points). You get resources for kills (or assists) and captures. Resources allow you to buy equipment or vehicles. Different facilities give different resource bonuses to the owners.

The actual combat is OK. You can choose between a few classes: sniper, light assault (who gets a jetpack), medic (who can heal and revive people), engineer (who can build stuff) , and heavy assault (who gets a rocket launcher). At a equipment station, you can upgrade to mech-form, for a cost. Death bears little penalty, with only a short respawn and no deductions otherwise. In addition, medics can bring you back to life (for no cost). Each of the three factions gets different bonuses for each class, as well as different vehicles. The ground vehicles are a little annoying to control, and have a strange FOV. Aircraft are extremely hard to control, and I still haven’t figured out the best setup for them. But really the best part of the game is moving with a group of players; you feel like an insignificant part of the combat, not the star.

Really, that is the key part of this game. You understand that you are just one cog in the machine, that the battle doesn’t hinge on you. You also start to realize the scope of the battle raging around you. On the overhead map, you can see which territories are contested. You realize that at each one of those spots, there is a battle as massive and intense as the one you are in. Then you realize that there are two other maps on this server. At any point in time, someone is having a last-stand defense, someone is storming a citadel, someone is cruising over head in an aircraft and shelling ground forces, like an AC-130.

The only problem is that the game is fairly intensive graphically, and has some occasional issues with lag. Also, it is widely believed to have some sort of memory leak. But despite the shaky performance and occasionally flaky servers, this game is still a shining gem in today’s game industry.

9/10

Filed under Analysis, Blog, Games Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Richard Stallman is Wrong

March 18, 2012 14 Comments

I listened to an interview with Richard Stallman, and I truly believe he is wrong regarding the ethics of proprietary software and especially the fundamental beliefs behind computer and Internet usage.

Fundamentally, he assumes incorrect things. He says that people should be able to use computers for free. That doesn’t mean that having people pay to improve the experience is evil. I can decide to gnaw through a tree on my property for free, but I can obviously pay to have it cut down. Similarly, a user should be able to do anything they want for free, but should also be able to pay to either improve the experience, do it faster, or change the feel. The point at which you start getting involved with morality is when the development of proprietary software begins to interfere with the development of open-source software. However, I think that if proprietary software was somehow banned, the rate of development of open-source software would not increase by very much.

Stallman is fine with software developed for a single client, where the developer is paid for the development of free software, rather than the software itself. However, that is fundamentally the same as distributing proprietary software. The cost of the proprietary software represents the effort that went into making it, as well as upkeep for the company including other worker salaries and continued research and development. I do agree that such costs can get out of hand and that a ridiculous amount of money can end up going to those higher up on the corporate ladder. However, that is a necessary evil to keep high quality proprietary software pumping out at a rate faster that free software can be developed.

Although he demands that the functionality of ebooks mirror that of books, he doesn’t seem to make the same connection regarding proprietary software and its real world parallel: non-free services. Although you should be able to live in a house and use public transportation for minimal costs, you almost always buy furniture and hire services to make your life more comfortable. Similarly, proprietary software allows users to improve the aspects of their experience that they want to.

As I said before, Stallman discusses ebooks, and how you should be able to do the same with an ebook as you can with a regular book. However, as a completely different medium, you can’t just demand something like that. Suppose I demand that JPEGs be viewable in the same resolution as the paintings at a museum, for free. That doesn’t even make sense. Being a completely different medium, we need to approach ebooks in a completely different fashion. It would be nice to be able to easily share ebooks or sell them used. However, for an ebook to exist in an economic and material singularity similar to that of a paper book, proprietary software is absolutely necessary. Using Stallman’s logic, I can say that if you want a book to be freely available, write it yourself!

In some ways, open source philosophy (or at least Stallman’s) is like Communism. Everybody pools their resources and in return everybody gets the same, free software. However, as we see with many actual implementations of Communism, somebody who contributes resources may not need all the products. If I spend time coding, I want a video editor, not a database manipulator. The obvious solution is to have both developed and then have those who want the video editor to give their share of resources to that developer, and those who wanted the database software to the other.

Filed under Analysis, Blog Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,