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[PA Comic] Friday, December 6, 2013 - Incorporated
The non animus stuff gets a lot more interesting once you can hack terminals.
Even if it's the best part of the game, I can sympathize. If I want to be a pirate, I'm going to be very offended every time the game makes me NOT be a pirate.
It could be way worse, though. Most of the pirate themed games I've played over the years end up involving entirely too little high seas action to hold my interest. There's one pirate themed game on Facebook my wife got me to try - the naval combat's pretty fun, the seige combat isn't bad, but the game keeps insisting that you micromanage the economic minutiae of a fledgling preindustrial island nation.
No, I don't want to trade your fucking silk, buddy. Go upgrade your own damn iron mines, I want to take that ship and go sink other ships.
Essentially my problem with every Assassin's Creed game ever: Just let me climb buildings/stab people/plunder booty, stop interrupting me with your asinine framing story.
The non animus stuff gets a lot more interesting once you can hack terminals.
Even if it's the best part of the game, I can sympathize. If I want to be a pirate, I'm going to be very offended every time the game makes me NOT be a pirate.
It could be way worse, though. Most of the pirate themed games I've played over the years end up involving entirely too little high seas action to hold my interest. There's one pirate themed game on Facebook my wife got me to try - the naval combat's pretty fun, the seige combat isn't bad, but the game keeps insisting that you micromanage the economic minutiae of a fledgling preindustrial island nation.
No, I don't want to trade your fucking silk, buddy. Go upgrade your own damn iron mines, I want to take that ship and go sink other ships.
I feel like this might have been sort of the same reason that I stopped playing Burning Seas so long ago.
The "real world" bits in this new game are worse than ever, because now the player isn't even playing a character. The player is playing some nameless, faceless, personalityless floating clipboard.
The non animus stuff gets a lot more interesting once you can hack terminals.
Even if it's the best part of the game, I can sympathize. If I want to be a pirate, I'm going to be very offended every time the game makes me NOT be a pirate.
It could be way worse, though. Most of the pirate themed games I've played over the years end up involving entirely too little high seas action to hold my interest. There's one pirate themed game on Facebook my wife got me to try - the naval combat's pretty fun, the seige combat isn't bad, but the game keeps insisting that you micromanage the economic minutiae of a fledgling preindustrial island nation.
No, I don't want to trade your fucking silk, buddy. Go upgrade your own damn iron mines, I want to take that ship and go sink other ships.
What game is this? I don't do Facebook games much at all, and I'd love to see my prejudices about such games be unfounded.
Essentially my problem with every Assassin's Creed game ever: Just let me climb buildings/stab people/plunder booty, stop interrupting me with your asinine framing story.
I thought the modern day/impending 2012 catastrophe story stuff was pretty interesting until AC3 ruined it, and almost ruined the franchise.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
The non animus stuff gets a lot more interesting once you can hack terminals.
Even if it's the best part of the game, I can sympathize. If I want to be a pirate, I'm going to be very offended every time the game makes me NOT be a pirate.
It could be way worse, though. Most of the pirate themed games I've played over the years end up involving entirely too little high seas action to hold my interest. There's one pirate themed game on Facebook my wife got me to try - the naval combat's pretty fun, the seige combat isn't bad, but the game keeps insisting that you micromanage the economic minutiae of a fledgling preindustrial island nation.
No, I don't want to trade your fucking silk, buddy. Go upgrade your own damn iron mines, I want to take that ship and go sink other ships.
What game is this? I don't do Facebook games much at all, and I'd love to see my prejudices about such games be unfounded.
Pirates of the Caribbean. There's actually at least two PotC licensed games on Facebook, it's the one from Playdom.
It's not Sid Meier's Pirates by a long shot, but the combat does sort of feel like a heavily simplified version of it, sort of what Star Trek Online's is to Legacy or Bridge Commander. However, it won't kill your prejudices - it's basically one of those timesink town building games, except that when you're locked out of doing anything for 8 hours while your central building is upgrading, you can send your fleets out pillaging... Until you cap your resources and still have 7 hours of wait before you can upgrade that. The townbuilding aspect killed my interest in the game within the first week, and it was never worth anything more than passing lunch breaks.
It's not Sid Meier's Pirates by a long shot, but the combat does sort of feel like a heavily simplified version of it, sort of what Star Trek Online's is to Legacy or Bridge Commander.
I always feel sad when someone mentions the space combat in STO. It held me in that game far longer than I would have expected, because it was super fun. The rest of the game left me cold, though. /random
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miaAusaGOD Gamer Of DatersValhallaRegistered Userregular
edited December 2013
All I would ever play is the PVP space combat in STO I am way to addicted to that. Gabe looks great as a pirate I like how that is drawn, it's awesome : D
The "real world" bits in this new game are worse than ever, because now the player isn't even playing a character. The player is playing some nameless, faceless, personalityless floating clipboard.
Essentially my problem with every Assassin's Creed game ever: Just let me climb buildings/stab people/plunder booty, stop interrupting me with your asinine framing story.
I mean, at least with the Desmond stuff, they were committed since the first game to finish whatever arc his character had to go through. There was a story to be told there no matter how much I didn't give a damn about it.
But in AC4, the framing story is that they're researching to make a movie or some fucking thing? Compelling, worthwhile narrative at its finest. Just drop that inane shit and make a game that's straight-up about pirates plundering and pillaging and conspirating. That shit is fascinating by itself; you're not obligated to insert that future genetic memory nonsense to preserve some goddamned sense of narrative integrity at this point.
Oh, excellent. I was just signing in to express my dismay about PATV when I saw Khoo's post.
I'm sad to see PAR go because I always thought even if it wasn't a lot of content it was a good space and a nice site regardless. But I would have been majorly disappointed to see PA:TS go. I constantly come back to old episodes for entertainment and inspiration.
Oh, man, not having a forum thread for PATV shows is going to be rough. Where will I go for my weekly dose of lecherous comments about Kathleen and the most recent version of "man, Extra Credits really dropped the ball on this topic".
In all seriousness, I am going to miss PATV, but I have immense respect for a company willing to "downsize" to focus on what they really want to do. And this will make me finally get around to subbing to EC and checking out LRR's other content, both of which I really should have done long ago.
+1
GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
I guess I'll just have to bookmark LRR now instead of coming through here.
As for PAR, I really did enjoy what Ben and the rest of the crew were putting out. Really sad to lose it, but they'll land on their feet very soon. Some really high-quality talent about to hit the free agent market.
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
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faitsa panda eating cakeseattleRegistered Userregular
Oh, man, not having a forum thread for PATV shows is going to be rough. Where will I go for my weekly dose of lecherous comments about Kathleen and the most recent version of "man, Extra Credits really dropped the ball on this topic".
Well, on the bright side, we'll always have youtube comments.
ha ha just kidding they're usually pretty gross and I am a terrible person for even suggesting anyone wade into that mess
If it were any other website making such a massive change, I likely would have been a stereotypical raging fanboy vowing to never visit the site again (never, as in a few days then ignoring that it ever happened). But after reading so many posts over so many years here, and being able to take a brief glimpse at some of the lives of the PA crew through the show, I understand that these guys would never make this choice casually or on a mere whim. I understand that the reason that they are doing it for is one that they feel very strongly about, even if I bitterly disagree with it. Regardless, I totally respect their right to do whatever the hell they want to their own damn site/company.
Best of luck to the PAR folks. I hope to see more of their work real soon.
I was a daily PAR reader and am sad to see it closing up shop. I trust Khoo to have his financial ducks in a row, but given that Ben seemed to be running the content side of PAR without too much involvement from Ben and Jerry, I wish they'd tried something like an annual kickstarter to solve for what I assume were monetization problems.
Also PAR wasn't blocked at work for me, which is deeply strange because damn near everything else is. (Although any image not hosted on PAR itself was blocked, so I'd often have to loop back to a story at home.)
It's kind of lame to lay people off during the holidays.
The time that the public finds out is not the time that the people themselves found out, and the changes don't go through until January 1st. Everyone had plenty of notice.
Aw man Jerry's post
Guessing that means there goes a hope for more PA:TS and Strip Search S2.
If it's any consolation, the changes to PATV are for 3rd party content only. Season 4 of PA:TS will be launched in January.
That's a pretty awesome consolation Robert, thanks
As a recent convert to PATV I'd been really enjoying the platform, but can completely understand the business decision behind this move.
Will it just be the release of the latest PA:TS and then no more shows, or do you guys plan to continue your own formats? (Strip Search and PA:TS)
I'm a massive fan of both of these and it'd be really sad to lose them - they give me such good insights as a fellow business owner keen on making an enjoyable but hard working environment for our team.
Speaking of diversifying to other sites for former PATV content--does anyone know what (if anything) became of Lido and Ix? Is there any more beyond what's up on PATV, or has the creator moved on to another project?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Speaking of diversifying to other sites for former PATV content--does anyone know what (if anything) became of Lido and Ix? Is there any more beyond what's up on PATV, or has the creator moved on to another project?
Well, Episode 1 of Season 2 was released back in July. You'd think they'd advertise a little better considering the kickstarter. I think there's more episodes coming, just....slowly.....
I'm gutted by this. Extra Credits, Checkpoint and SUSD are three great shows I discovered through PATV and watch religiously, but I doubt I'll remember to check them out weekly when they head back to their own hosting. It's a damn shame that PATV can't even continue on as an aggregator of gaming content.
LRR is putting Checkpoint on indefinite hiatus. That's terrible news! I don't think there's really much else like it out there.
PATV's 3rd party content was nothing more than embedded YouTube videos. That means the only real cost to Penny Arcade came in the ad payment distributions going to those third parties. So, it sounds like they want to reinvest that money in more first party content instead.
What this suggests is that only the third parties were benefiting financially from this arrangement; analysis must show that PA didn't gain many new clicks by offering these features. Makes sense to drop it in that case. It also suggests that the "ad-free PA Kickstarter" was an absolutely terrible idea that should have instead focused entirely on the first-party content they're going to create this year.
Ah well. At least SU&SD is continuing. And Extra Credits had a home elsewhere before; I doubt they'll remain stuck in YouTube forever, unless they feel like they've about covered everything they wanted to.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
I gather that Checkpoint is being dropped for the moment so they can focus on their kickstarter projects. Effective immediately.
So as a checkpoint fan, that hurts a little
I was already checking out SUSD's new site (and now realize the impetus behind it), so that doesn't hurt so much.
It's kind of lame to lay people off during the holidays.
The time that the public finds out is not the time that the people themselves found out, and the changes don't go through until January 1st. Everyone had plenty of notice.
i'd also say this isn't exactly a layoff.
well, except maybe for Ben Kuchera, but he's a very talented writer who will likely land on his feet.
the rest of the videos and third party content seemed to be based on an ad-sharing system, if LRR's blog is any indication.
I gather that Checkpoint is being dropped for the moment so they can focus on their kickstarter projects. Effective immediately.
So as a checkpoint fan, that hurts a little
I was already checking out SUSD's new site (and now realize the impetus behind it), so that doesn't hurt so much.
@El Skid In the other thread they were saying Checkpoint is still being produced by whatever parent group does it, PATV just won't be around to carry it anymore.
Posts
Also, if they want to sell a textless print of the first panel, I will gladly buy it.
Even if it's the best part of the game, I can sympathize. If I want to be a pirate, I'm going to be very offended every time the game makes me NOT be a pirate.
It could be way worse, though. Most of the pirate themed games I've played over the years end up involving entirely too little high seas action to hold my interest. There's one pirate themed game on Facebook my wife got me to try - the naval combat's pretty fun, the seige combat isn't bad, but the game keeps insisting that you micromanage the economic minutiae of a fledgling preindustrial island nation.
No, I don't want to trade your fucking silk, buddy. Go upgrade your own damn iron mines, I want to take that ship and go sink other ships.
I feel like this might have been sort of the same reason that I stopped playing Burning Seas so long ago.
What game is this? I don't do Facebook games much at all, and I'd love to see my prejudices about such games be unfounded.
I thought the modern day/impending 2012 catastrophe story stuff was pretty interesting until AC3 ruined it, and almost ruined the franchise.
Pirates of the Caribbean. There's actually at least two PotC licensed games on Facebook, it's the one from Playdom.
It's not Sid Meier's Pirates by a long shot, but the combat does sort of feel like a heavily simplified version of it, sort of what Star Trek Online's is to Legacy or Bridge Commander. However, it won't kill your prejudices - it's basically one of those timesink town building games, except that when you're locked out of doing anything for 8 hours while your central building is upgrading, you can send your fleets out pillaging... Until you cap your resources and still have 7 hours of wait before you can upgrade that. The townbuilding aspect killed my interest in the game within the first week, and it was never worth anything more than passing lunch breaks.
I always feel sad when someone mentions the space combat in STO. It held me in that game far longer than I would have expected, because it was super fun. The rest of the game left me cold, though. /random
Gamer Dater - My Video Game Dating Website full of Faygo
Strip Search Wastebasket of Broken Dreams App I made
Welcome to corporate America, man.
Or Canada, whatever.
Should have switched it to Ubisoft. Even the modern story itself outright mentions Ubisoft publishes the games in that universe.
I mean, at least with the Desmond stuff, they were committed since the first game to finish whatever arc his character had to go through. There was a story to be told there no matter how much I didn't give a damn about it.
But in AC4, the framing story is that they're researching to make a movie or some fucking thing? Compelling, worthwhile narrative at its finest. Just drop that inane shit and make a game that's straight-up about pirates plundering and pillaging and conspirating. That shit is fascinating by itself; you're not obligated to insert that future genetic memory nonsense to preserve some goddamned sense of narrative integrity at this point.
Guessing that means there goes a hope for more PA:TS and Strip Search S2.
If it's any consolation, the changes to PATV are for 3rd party content only. Season 4 of PA:TS will be launched in January.
I'm sad to see PAR go because I always thought even if it wasn't a lot of content it was a good space and a nice site regardless. But I would have been majorly disappointed to see PA:TS go. I constantly come back to old episodes for entertainment and inspiration.
Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Khoo.
In all seriousness, I am going to miss PATV, but I have immense respect for a company willing to "downsize" to focus on what they really want to do. And this will make me finally get around to subbing to EC and checking out LRR's other content, both of which I really should have done long ago.
As for PAR, I really did enjoy what Ben and the rest of the crew were putting out. Really sad to lose it, but they'll land on their feet very soon. Some really high-quality talent about to hit the free agent market.
Well, on the bright side, we'll always have youtube comments.
Best of luck to the PAR folks. I hope to see more of their work real soon.
My Pinny Pal's Lanyard
"Players are artists who create their own reality within the game." - Shigeru Miyamoto
Also PAR wasn't blocked at work for me, which is deeply strange because damn near everything else is. (Although any image not hosted on PAR itself was blocked, so I'd often have to loop back to a story at home.)
Godspeed Ben and crew.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
The time that the public finds out is not the time that the people themselves found out, and the changes don't go through until January 1st. Everyone had plenty of notice.
That's a pretty awesome consolation Robert, thanks
As a recent convert to PATV I'd been really enjoying the platform, but can completely understand the business decision behind this move.
Will it just be the release of the latest PA:TS and then no more shows, or do you guys plan to continue your own formats? (Strip Search and PA:TS)
I'm a massive fan of both of these and it'd be really sad to lose them - they give me such good insights as a fellow business owner keen on making an enjoyable but hard working environment for our team.
That's a pretty disingenuous way to frame the situation.
Well, Episode 1 of Season 2 was released back in July. You'd think they'd advertise a little better considering the kickstarter. I think there's more episodes coming, just....slowly.....
Also there is this thing
I'll need Strip Search Season 2 within the next six months though. At least an announcement. Otherwise I'll likely have slipped into a coma.
PATV's 3rd party content was nothing more than embedded YouTube videos. That means the only real cost to Penny Arcade came in the ad payment distributions going to those third parties. So, it sounds like they want to reinvest that money in more first party content instead.
What this suggests is that only the third parties were benefiting financially from this arrangement; analysis must show that PA didn't gain many new clicks by offering these features. Makes sense to drop it in that case. It also suggests that the "ad-free PA Kickstarter" was an absolutely terrible idea that should have instead focused entirely on the first-party content they're going to create this year.
Ah well. At least SU&SD is continuing. And Extra Credits had a home elsewhere before; I doubt they'll remain stuck in YouTube forever, unless they feel like they've about covered everything they wanted to.
So as a checkpoint fan, that hurts a little
I was already checking out SUSD's new site (and now realize the impetus behind it), so that doesn't hurt so much.
i'd also say this isn't exactly a layoff.
well, except maybe for Ben Kuchera, but he's a very talented writer who will likely land on his feet.
the rest of the videos and third party content seemed to be based on an ad-sharing system, if LRR's blog is any indication.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
@El Skid In the other thread they were saying Checkpoint is still being produced by whatever parent group does it, PATV just won't be around to carry it anymore.