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[Jonathan S. Fox]

+Valve time.

So, you mean it'll be released next year, in a half complete state, then they'll say that they're releasing a sequel that's got all of the things they promised in the original but you have to pay 50 bucks for it?

What does that have to do with Valve?

Left 4 dead 2

I learned to program at a game development school. Making games is my profession. It shouldn't be surprising then that my perspective comes down squarely on the side of the developers in things like this.

Valve gave everything they promised in Left 4 Dead. While it may seem untactful of Valve to release a sequel so soon after the original, that is all they can be criticized for. When you buy a game, you pay for the man-hours the company has already poured into it, not an unbounded hypothetical effort that stretches indefinitely into the unprofitable future. Complaining about insufficient free content add-ons in a commercial game is like complaining that I'm not updating LCS enough. You have the technical right to complain all you want, but it carries no moral weight -- the company can release as much or as little as they want. They certainly don't owe you six months or a year of continued full-scale development on a released title, which is what is going into L4D2.

If Valve hadn't decided to put the bulk of the Left 4 Dead team on Left 4 Dead 2 shortly after release, they would have put the bulk of the team on something else instead. There is no parallel universe in which the same amount of effort that went into making L4D2 goes into an update for L4D1 instead.

Valve will likely learn from this backlash, but the lesson they take from it may not be what you're hoping for.

[G-Flex]

I would normally agree, except it seems that Valve actually did promise to release more downloadable content, then opted to release it all as a sequel instead.

I personally do think they can be criticized for this, since you have people buying a game with the understanding that more content will be created for it - content which never actually comes.

[muwahahaha]

I understand your views Jon, and I agree that there's no real weight behind any of the arguments made by the 'anti left 4 dead 2'. In fact, I think that the main reason complainers are just hardcore elitists.

That said, in my honest opinion, I don't think that L4D2 is worth the price tag they have put on it. We can argue about this all day long but I'd rather not since it would derail the thread so I'll just chuck this stuff down and accept whatever you guys say.

From what I've seen of L4D2, it looks a lot like L4D but with a few little addons and the like. Really, the characters look like they just reskinned the originals (and TBH, the new characters don't have the same feel), the atmosphere is done thanks to bright sunny daylight and hillbilly music and the gameplay looks to be pretty much the same thing again.

That said, there are a few things I like about it. Primarily the new 'gauntlet' crescendos and the improved AID. Even so, in my mind, that doesn't justify me spending the money on it, however if anyone else wants to I won't stop them or judge them on it.

In the end I believe that the outrage from the elitists is because they bought the game and were told they would get new content. That, in their mind means that the developer is supposed to dedicate themselves to it for a while. Which, as you said, is entirely untrue, but nonetheless, when a developer says that they will continue releasing new content, coming up and saying that the fans have to pay for a new game less than a year after is bound to make them lose a few people.

Yanlin: I agree, L4D was, and is still epic. But I think the underlying problem with L4D2 in a lot of people's minds is that it is essentially still just L4D but with a few little bells and whistles added on.

G-Flex: Again, I agree there, they can be criticized for the way they handled this (people were already getting peeved because of the constant survival pack delays, then when it came out, it was glitch filled and by the time everything was fixed, people were finished with it). That said, it is like Jon explained, you buy a game because of the already included content, not because of what you're expecting to be added.

[balrogkernel]

I finally beat this version of the game lcs_win32_3.19.4 but when I got to the final screen that says "Press L to view the high score list ".  The game froze and didn't do anything after that. 

Additionally, the original founder of the squad got arrested and was sentenced to death.  I busted him out of prison but was then arrested for loitering naked in the police station.  When his trial came up, he was charged with only escape from prison and loitering.  He got a life sentence instead of death.  Wondering if this was a bug or not.

Also, is the loitering issue a bug too?  If you get the dislike political violence meter down enough, all you need to do is free some servants or clothes makers or strip down other members, send them to a site, have them hang around for a long enough time and then the conservatives will go berserk and kill everyone.  The trick is to never let your LCS fight, and just keep pushing letter S.  Eventually everyone will want the country to go totally liberal. 

Other bugs I noticed were the location scrolling bug, where if I kept pushing Z I couldn't do a rotation of all of my potential locations. 

I overall like this new version.  It's a lot more balanced, money is easy to get and teaching others is fun.  Martial arts is a very cool skill to get experienced in.  The only thing I noticed is that there is no incentive to get anyone other than hippies to add to your squad.  They typically have way higher heart bonuses to everything, and because of that, they ultimately rake in way more money and are generally way more influential when writing or doing other practical things.  I then hire gang members and veterans to defend.  Once I got my persuasion skill high enough I was able to convince CIA agents to join the LCS by talking about issues to them.  I like this feature but it might be a bug too. 

[LiteralKa]

I finally beat this version of the game lcs_win32_3.19.4 but when I got to the final screen that says "Press L to view the high score list ".  The game froze and didn't do anything after that. 

Yeah, bug has been noticed. I am not sure if it has been fixed yet.

Additionally, the original founder of the squad got arrested and was sentenced to death.  I busted him out of prison but was then arrested for loitering naked in the police station.  When his trial came up, he was charged with only escape from prison and loitering.  He got a life sentence instead of death.  Wondering if this was a bug or not.

Probably not.

Once I got my persuasion skill high enough I was able to convince CIA agents to join the LCS by talking about issues to them.  I like this feature but it might be a bug too. 

Hehe, I get this too. I might reevaluate the weight of high level persuasion.

[G-Flex]

G-Flex: Again, I agree there, they can be criticized for the way they handled this (people were already getting peeved because of the constant survival pack delays, then when it came out, it was glitch filled and by the time everything was fixed, people were finished with it). That said, it is like Jon explained, you buy a game because of the already included content, not because of what you're expecting to be added.

I agree with that last sentence in theory, but seriously now: Someone releases a product saying that they will continue to add more content for you, for free, in the future. Then they don't. That is damn near fraudulent if you ask me. I mean, part of buying a product isn't just what you get in the box, it's whatever additional future support and so-forth is promised with it. If someone releases a game and says, hypothetically, "we're going to release triple the missions by next year for free", that promise is essentially part of the purchase. So yeah, I think the Valve guys did screw up big-time here, and shouldn't have made it sound like such a promise if they weren't willing to make good on it.

[balrogkernel]

I also noticed another bug, if you disband the liberal crime squad and then reform it, people who were locked up in prison actually break out (even if they had life sentences) and regroup at the homeless shelter.  This happened to my original founder that had a life sentence. 

[LiteralKa]

I also noticed another bug, if you disband the liberal crime squad and then reform it, people who were locked up in prison actually break out (even if they had life sentences) and regroup at the homeless shelter.  This happened to my original founder that had a life sentence. 

Haha, awesome.

[Liberal Elitist]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/museum.shooting/index.html

[LiteralKa]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/museum.shooting/index.html

Yeah, seriously. What the fuck is with all these shootings?

[Servant Corps]

Shootings happen all the time though. What's so important about these shootings?

Of course. Political motivations for some madman shooting some other people makes these shootings far more important than average, regular, run-of-the-mill shootings. Who knows? Somebody might actually get terrified that he might be murdered by a madman with a semi-coherent political ideology! Everyone knows that getting murdered by the Apolitical Crime Squad for business reasons is not at all terrifying.[/scarsam]

I hate Lone Wolf Terrorism, if you haven't noticed.

[LiteralKa]

Shootings happen all the time though. What's so important about these shootings?

Of course. Political motivations for some madman shooting some other people makes these shootings far more important than average, regular, run-of-the-mill shootings. Who knows? Somebody might actually get terrified that he might be murdered by a madman with a semi-coherent political ideology! Everyone knows that getting murdered by the Apolitical Crime Squad for business reasons is not at all terrifying.[/scarsam]

I hate Lone Wolf Terrorism, if you haven't noticed.

The only thing even in the slightest bit amusing about Lone Wolf is the reactions from the side that spawned the violence.

[LiteralKa]

I'm currently running through this function, though, now VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS has quite a bit of weight...

Code: [Select]

/* politics - checks the prevailing attitude on a specific law, or overall */
int publicmood(int l)//XXX: VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS has quite a bit of weight in this...
{
   switch(l)
   {
      case LAW_ABORTION:
         return attitude[VIEW_WOMEN];//XXX: No VIEW_ABORTION! Do not forget this!
      case LAW_ANIMALRESEARCH:
         return attitude[VIEW_ANIMALRESEARCH];
      case LAW_POLICEBEHAVIOR:
         return (attitude[VIEW_POLICEBEHAVIOR]+attitude[VIEW_PRISONS])/2;
      case LAW_PRIVACY:
         return attitude[VIEW_INTELLIGENCE];
      case LAW_DEATHPENALTY:
         return attitude[VIEW_DEATHPENALTY];
      case LAW_NUCLEARPOWER:
         return attitude[VIEW_NUCLEARPOWER];
      case LAW_POLLUTION:
         return attitude[VIEW_POLLUTION];
      case LAW_LABOR:
         return attitude[VIEW_SWEATSHOPS];
      case LAW_GAY:
         return (attitude[VIEW_GAY]+attitude[VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS])/2;
      case LAW_CORPORATE:
         return (attitude[VIEW_CORPORATECULTURE]+attitude[VIEW_CEOSALARY])/2;
      case LAW_FREESPEECH:
         return attitude[VIEW_FREESPEECH];
      case LAW_TAX:
         return attitude[VIEW_TAXES];
      case LAW_FLAGBURNING:
         return (attitude[VIEW_FREESPEECH]+attitude[VIEW_POLITICALVIOLENCE])/2;
      case LAW_WOMEN:
         return (attitude[VIEW_WOMEN]+attitude[VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS])/2;
      case LAW_CIVILRIGHTS:
         return attitude[VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS];
      case LAW_DRUGS:
         return attitude[VIEW_DRUGS];
      case LAW_IMMIGRATION:
         return (attitude[VIEW_IMMIGRATION]+attitude[VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS])/2;
      case LAW_MILITARY:
         return attitude[VIEW_MILITARY];
      case LAW_TORTURE:
         return (attitude[VIEW_INTELLIGENCE]+attitude[VIEW_MILITARY]+attitude[VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS])/3;
      case LAW_GUNCONTROL:
         return attitude[VIEW_GUNCONTROL];

      case LAW_ELECTIONS:
      case LAW_RELIGION:
      default: //eg. -1
      {
         int sum=0;

         for(int v=0;v<VIEWNUM;v++)
         {
            if(v==VIEW_LIBERALCRIMESQUAD)continue;
            if(v==VIEW_LIBERALCRIMESQUADPOS)continue;
if(v==VIEW_STALIN)continue;
if(v==VIEW_CONSERVATIVECRIMESQUAD)continue;
            sum+=attitude[v];
         }

         sum/=(VIEWNUM-3);

         return sum;
      }
   }
}


[Jonathan S. Fox]

That wasn't really what I meant by Civil Rights as an issue when I added it, it was intended to be more focused on racial equality, as that is the primary context in which the term has been used in US history. It's admittedly ambiguous though, as the literal interpretation is much broader than that. Let's say we go with it being an umbrella issue instead -- that can be done, but then there are additional problems that will come up and need to be handled.

The primary issue that comes to mind is that if we were to move to a system where most laws are dependent on several issues, and the attitude[] value attached to the law is only part of what causes people to support that law (even if the attitude[] is very directly paralleling it, like the immigration attitude[] only being 50% of the immigration law), then the polls have to be changed so that they are inquiring using this function instead of checking attitude[] values directly. It simply won't do to tell the player on the polling screen "100% of people have a Liberal view on immigration", only to have half of vote Conservative on the issue in a ballot measure because people's opinion on immigration is only half of what they consider when voting on immigration.

[LiteralKa]

That wasn't really what I meant by Civil Rights as an issue when I added it, it was intended to be more focused on racial equality, as that is the primary context in which the term has been used in US history. It's admittedly ambiguous though, as the literal interpretation is much broader than that. Let's say we go with it being an umbrella issue instead -- that can be done, but then there are additional problems that will come up and need to be handled.

The primary issue that comes to mind is that if we were to move to a system where most laws are dependent on several issues, and the attitude[] value attached to the law is only part of what causes people to support that law (even if the attitude[] is very directly paralleling it, like the immigration attitude[] only being 50% of the immigration law), then the polls have to be changed so that they are inquiring using this function instead of checking attitude[] values directly. It simply won't do to tell the player on the polling screen "100% of people have a Liberal view on immigration", only to have half of vote Conservative on the issue in a ballot measure because people's opinion on immigration is only half of what they consider when voting on immigration.

Yeah, I was kinda hesitant to use VIEW_CIVILRIGHTS like that, could we possibly add a few minor views, to only be used in this function?