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[QuakeIV]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

'Starfleet HQ' failed to respond to attempted contact over the course of several days.  They were then evicted.  They retook their city, then I arrived and burned the place to the ground before taking it again.

I love the action in the new universe, so much is happening.

[Idranel]

Ooh I never expected Shores to get resurrected.

Its one of the few multiplayer games where exploits turn into the best features
On the other hand calling it a game is maybe stretching the definition too far.

[Neonivek]

On the other hand calling it a game is maybe stretching the definition too far.

While I probably have the strictest definition of "Videogame" on this entire website, in that I don't consider "Walking along a straight narrow path to look at trees while someone narrates to you about a completely unrelated series of events with nothing connecting the narrative to what is happening on screen" to be a game.

I don't see how Shores of Hazeron disqualifies itself from that. It still has implied goals and gameplay.

[Shadowlord]

Why do you think calling it a game would be stretching the definition too far, Idranel?

I think it's simple: It's a game because you play it. In fact, those words (game and play) are related or similar in many other languages:
german: spiel and spielen
russian: игра and играть
italian: gioco and giocare
french: jeu and jouer
greek: παιχνίδι (according to bing translator, they're the same word). Google translate gives παίξουν for play.
and so on.

[Idranel]

Why do you think calling it a game would be stretching the definition too far, Idranel?

Because once you've managed to establish yourself within the rule set it quickly turns into an exercise of breaking the rules. A game is confined to an agreed upon and commonly known rule set but Shores is not. There also is no consequence to breaking rules in Shores.

Any serious conflict within the game will devolve into massive, ludicrous time sinking as there is no way of defining a place and time for meaningful battles w.r.t. some larger goal or objective under the rule set.
Additionally its required to know how to apply or defend against as many exploits as you can.
And if that wasn't enough, its incredibly easy to continue to troll an empire into submission without owning any assets whatsoever if you know of enough exploits.

It always comes down to who can break the rules better, who is willing to waste the most time and who gets frustrated to the point of giving up first.

[Sting_Auer]

~!SNIP!~

Would you also say that EvE online is not a game?

[Shadowlord]

Why do you think calling it a game would be stretching the definition too far, Idranel?

Because once you've managed to establish yourself within the rule set it quickly turns into an exercise of breaking the rules. A game is confined to an agreed upon and commonly known rule set but Shores is not. There also is no consequence to breaking rules in Shores.

Any serious conflict within the game will devolve into massive, ludicrous time sinking as there is no way of defining a place and time for meaningful battles w.r.t. some larger goal or objective under the rule set.
Additionally its required to know how to apply or defend against as many exploits as you can.
And if that wasn't enough, its incredibly easy to continue to troll an empire into submission without owning any assets whatsoever if you know of enough exploits.

It always comes down to who can break the rules better, who is willing to waste the most time and who gets frustrated to the point of giving up first.

That doesn't make it not a game. It just makes it a game that you refuse to play. Also, the only rules are the ones the game allows, not the ones you think the game should allow. (Unless Haxus bans you for "exploiting," which he doesn't, but he does ban you for making his wife angry on the forums )

[Chiefwaffles]

Shores of Hazeron is definitely a game. As Shadow said, you may not like how it works, but since people play it, it's a game.

[Chiefwaffles]

Bumping this to mention that there's a basic CITY MANAGER UI NOOW.
Right now it just allows you to control all processes(/labor?) things from one building, which is really awesome, but it also has potential.

[SkyMarshal]

I am encouraged by Haxus's work so far, but I am still not... convinced, I guess is the best word... that it is worth it to pay for Hazeron.  I guess only time will tell.

[Chiefwaffles]

That makes no sense at all.
Take a look at Hazeron 1+ years ago and take a look now and notice how much has changed and improved. And this was at a slower pace than now.

[Shooer]

The game needs work on what exists, not new features.  The majority of the last few years updates have just been useless at making the game better.  Making it look better as opposed to run better, changing city building to be freeform over rigid instead of I providing any kind of management.  All that hasn't truley made the game better.

I don't trust Haxus as a developer to actually improve anything, just continue to add new features and functions that don't help the gameplay.

[Harlander]

changing city building to be freeform over rigid instead of I providing any kind of management.

Funny you should mention that - a new city management GUI has just been added.

[Shadowlord]

That's nice, but it won't get me to come back and throw money at Haxus. In the time I played, and since, I've seen Haxus show a seeming belief in his own infallibility, leading him to "fix" bugs, declare them fixed without verifying that his fix works at all, and to then ignore further reports of that bug because he already "fixed" it.

I've also seen him disable existing functioning features, implement new features that make no sense at all, don't work properly or don't even work, and then leave them that way for a year or more.

He also has a habit of saying completely absurd things, which almost explain some of the absurd features in Hazeron.

The fact is, government does not contribute to the economy. All they do is redistribute wealth that is earned by the non-government portion of the economy.

Apparently willfully ignoring everything that the Federal Reserve does, and also that the Treasury Department mints/prints new currency.

Elsewhere he says that fiat currency is terribad and metal currency is the best, and so this is what Hazeron uses now, except that because he thinks it's impossible to use up all the resources on a planet, all the mines are infinite and you can mint currency forever, and yet he did not implement inflation. He understands it, as far as it goes with fiat currency, anyways:

When a government wants your private wealth in a fiat currency system, they simply print more dollars. Due to the way it is valued, all the fiat currency in existence is uniformly devalued by the act of printing more of them. The effect is called inflation.

But he thinks gold has intrinsic value:

Hard currency is a commodity with intrinsic value that is broadly accepted in trade. It is a natural progression of a barter system, where one commodity sort of becomes the "default" commodity for trade. Historically, gold and silver have filled this role most often, though other commodities have been used.

...

The price of gold gets quoted a lot. Everyone gets excited when the price rises or falls. Did that ounce of gold get bigger or smaller? No, it is the same ounce of gold it was 10,000 years ago. It is the value of the fiat currency that is falling or rising, inversely to the "price" of the gold, a commodity with intrinsic value. That "value" does not change from day to day.

Hmm, it occurs to me, are the subscription prices for Hazeron in gold or dollars? Do the dollar prices fluctuate because they're fixed to gold, or the other way around?

[NullForceOmega]

1) The Federal Reserve is a privately funded, non-government entity made up of banking institutions that manages the US currency since the creation of fiat money.

2) Fiat currency is unbelievably bad as a system that is contributing very heavily to the world-wide economic slowdown.

3) Material based currency does have intrinsic value.  Hence 'material (metal) based'.

4) What in the name of Hel does a persons opinion (rather well informed from the sounds of it) have to do with his/her capacity as a programmer?