lord of flies

"Hmm, should I spray and pray my way through the level?" With finite ammo, you wouldn't get this choice.

What did I tell you about TVTropes, Oner? And of all the pages you could have put up, you picked a "Moment of Awesome" page? Goddamn it. Just... god damn it.

Yeah, exactly. The pistol had infinite ammunition, but when I play (and I'm very good at Metal Slug, btw) I stab the **** out of people, even when I'm just jumping around with the pistol. It's less likely to miss, can take out enemies with shields, et cetera. The assumption that you can enough ammo to shoot people is common, even in FPSs with weapon libraries that are limited at any given point in time (e.g. Halo). Imagine playing Halo and having no ammo. It's truly a horrifying prospect. AP has you running around with your custom weapons (and, IIRC, they've cut down the number of weapons you carry on a given mission to keep Mike from looking like the Terminator), with no particular guarantee that the enemies will be using appropriate weapons.

Ever played Metal Slug? Melee has advantages, like no reload time and (generally) more damage. Ammunition concerns are not the primary motivation for players to use melee attacks in video games, since they are designed based upon the assumption that the player will have ammunition the whole game. Hmm, no, it isn't. Forcing health to return to 100% means that encounters can be more carefully calibrated, since in addition to knowing enemy types, numbers, and environment, the designer also knows how much HP the player has (all of it). Only if regeneration occurs shortly after the last time you took damage, enemies don't have the intelligence to flank you while you're hiding, and your total hit points are high enough for you to be suicidal for a couple seconds. As opposed to normally, where fighting one lone grunt and moving on is very easy?

This is a good thing? Seems rather dull to me. Imagine designing an encounter. It has a particular amount of difficulty, carefully calibrated by enemy types, environment, stuff lying around, et cetera. Now imagine that you start that encounter with 8 out of 100 hit points left. It will be tooth-grindingly painful to make your way through it. Haven't you ever had that experience? Running around in HL1 with your hitpoints in the single digits, wearing through your hard drive making saves every few seconds? It sucks.

Shooters have more and more regenerating life bars, even though they used to have "resource management" of hit points. Why? Because it allows the designers to design along the assumption that, going into an encounter, the player has full health. If there are no extra-powerful weapons such as rocket launchers which necessitate ammunition in order to force the player to use a more baseline weapon, it would not unbalance the game to say that the player simply has "enough" ammunition. Resource management is good for SKoreans playing pro SC, not for my video game where I run around slamming people's faces into tables.

What was the name of the gun you could take from that European wanker? Maribelle? Heh. That thing was so imbalanced; I killed the final boss just shooting him over and over. Poor sucker never had a chance.

Yeah, except Jade Empire is the closest thing to a "good game" that Bioware ever came. You could actually make Closed Fist choices that were kind of good, and Open Palm choices that were kind of evil. And you could score a threesome; I don't mean that in a horndog way, it's a positive decision to model relationships that exist outside of our western bourgeois binary-sexuality-serial-monogamy bull****. OK, forget your wacky views on politics, now I know you are absolute bat **** crazy. No one in their right mind would consider Jade Empire one of BioWare's best. I remember being genuinely impressed when I played Jade Empire and saw a dialogue option which was both clearly Closed Fist and clearly a moral decision to make. I have never felt that way about the racism, insulting and needless aggression that was "Renegade" in Mass Effect, and definitely not the Dark Side in KotOR. The combat was acceptable, the setting was fairly interesting and unique, and the dialogue did not require you to behave like a moron. What was so bad about it? Also, two of your companions were bi, so that was nice.

edit: not getting this dragged off topic. Continue the discussion of Jade Empire's ****tiness or not-so-****tiness here.

On Topic: He holds his SMGs like he's driving a motorcycle! Yeah, except Jade Empire is the closest thing to a "good game" that Bioware ever came. You could actually make Closed Fist choices that were kind of good, and Open Palm choices that were kind of evil. And you could score a threesome; I don't mean that in a horndog way, it's a positive decision to model relationships that exist outside of our western bourgeois binary-sexuality-serial-monogamy bull****. Off Topic: Actually, socialism (and by extension revolutionary socialism, such as in Nepal) is one of the fastest growing political ideologies in the world. The Internationale unites the human race. Ugh. I like you alright, Oner, but if you post another link to TVTropes, I may have to revise my opinion.

Hmm, so an advantage of limited ammo is that its disadvantage (not having ammo for your favorite gun) can be lessened? Oops, that's not an advantage at all!

Interesting that the most solid arguments you've ever posted are made in ridicule. Quite telling, my friend, quite telling.What a coincidence, the most cognizant points you've ever posted were quotes of me. Infinite ammo doesn't interfere with disbelief. Here's how much ammo you have: enough. Boom, belief suspended. I am shooting my gun and not glancing at the lower right corner of my screen every few seconds. I am having a good time because if I want to I don't have to use my submachine guns as burst weapons. I don't run out of ammo for my shotgun in the middle of the mission because I fire it when the enemies is further away than a meter sometimes. I can use whichever of my weapons I like because the ammo drops aren't weighted towards guns that I don't like. Et cetera. Advantages of Infinite Ammo: Promotes player choice, enables and somewhat encourages various behaviors which are not objectively better or worse (spray and pray isn't that good a way to shoot your SMGs), allows player to use his specialized weapons consistently and enables level design to assume that a player is experienced with whatever weapon he is currently using. Disadvantages of Infinite Ammo: Fat nerds don't think they can suspend their disbelief for the quarter of a second they normally spend glancing down at their ammo counter.

What is the problem with infinite ammo for your normal weapons? Hmm, except Mass Effect 1 wasn't a good game and its only saving grace was its infinite ammo? It's a game about shooting*, but the shooting is actually pretty poorly balanced (Pistol should be called Machine Pistol once you've leveled up a little) and the cover system is garbage. I don't know about ME2, but I'm not dumb enough to buy a Bioware game (again? Maybe I once bought one. When I was five). * shooting comprises only maybe 30% of actually gameplay, rest is ****ty Mako driving, elevator rides, load screens, talking to bland two-dimensional characters, stupid plot, fake choices (Yes, Sure, Definitely; you can't even not act like a moron in front of the Council at the beginning, which I tried to do), and acting like an idiotic racist for no reason.

So, I've heard that you've removed the infinite ammo feature! What is this bull****? You realized (rightly, I might add) that limited ammo stocks are just **** moves to force the player to use other guns, but then you go and turn around to remove it? Why? Did a bunch of fat nerds who can't adapt to gameplay innovations complain? "Hurghh, I don't run out of ammo? Is this a magical gun from wonderland? I can't ****ing suspend my disbelief for five seconds!" My blood is boiling as bad as it would be if you had said "**** the proletariat" in one of your interviews, and I think we both know that's pretty bad. Unironically yours, lord of flies

The sights are on the top of the gun for a reason. He clearly doesn't aim. Yes, exactly. A trained US spy not aiming his guns properly? Your tax dollars at work, people.

The sights are on the top of the gun for a reason.

Ugh, is a highly trained US spy holding his dual wielded submachine guns sideways? Immersion ruined.

Even you must admit, there hasn't been much to like about Obama's administration or the 114th Congress. As for his ignorace on economics, take for example his comment about raising fees on banks that "pay their CEOs million dollar bonuses". He either does not realize (then he's ignorant) or dosen't care (then he's heartless) about who actually PAYS fees and taxes the government levies on banks, companies etc. It really is not hard to think the worst of people when that is all you recieve from them. From my perspective, I want small, limited, and non intrusive government at the federal level. The government with the most influence over me should be in Nashville, not Washington. Because that is the government I have the most influence over. That is NOT what Obama and the left is serving up. Far, far from it. THE LEFT. OOGA BOOGA. SOCIALISM. There is no left wing in the United States.

Lucky people... get better chances at success? No... no... no!!! By definition, lucky people have better chances, since the only thing that differs between a lucky person and an unlucky one is their luck, which is completely chance based. This is ridiculous. You think "equality of opportunity" means, what, no chance based aspect? The universe is causal. All our qualities, positive or negative, are eventually the consequence of things which are not of our own making. This is just a ridiculous definitions game.

My "fantasy"? Take a look through Farm to Factory, it's a pretty damn good analysis of Soviet industrialization and its key factors. I'll remind you that Japan was capable of competing with Britain in textile production when its economy was tied with Russia's in terms of GDP per capita (1910s-ish). Different country, different economics. As for West Germany, it's hardly a surprise that Germany has a large economy, it has had a large economy forever. I disagree, that's absolutely merit.

In the early Soviet Union, although they did not rely on the gold standard, the value of the ruble was ensured by their large gold supplies. When its value began to drop, they started selling lots of gold, and when it began to rise, they started buying it. Socialist societies control and manipulate market forces, unlike capitalist societies which are controlled by them. If that golden medal is for athletic ability, then yeah. I don't see why you're going into crazy mode about this, it's pretty rudimentary.

A mix of Gosplan and market forces.

Depends on the job. For coal mining, it's how much coal you mine. Much of what you say is true. However, a significant portion of capital should be invested in the democratically elected government, just as it is now (though probably a larger portion). Kaboom. Argument destroyed. Mao's Great Leap Forward was a single incident. China's economy nearly doubled from $614.00 per capita in 1950 to $1,186.00 per capita in 1973. Ooga booga. The USSR was not some 1984 Big Brother state where everyone was constantly caught in mind-numbing terror, after Khruschev's Secret Speech (and before the Great Purge), the Gulag system was hardly some insane massacre machine that put the fear of death into everyone. Cuba maintains a functional command economy (NK doesn't, but that's because of military stuff). Etc. No, that's "equality of outcome." Equality of opportunity means that everyone has the same chance to succeed, and will succeed or fail based upon their own merits.

Actually, I take a lot of economics and economics related courses for my degree, I probably know more about economics than you since I recognize that centrally planned economies have worked. "Gosplan? A fiction! Soviet industrialization? Bull****!" -Walsingham As for local planning committees, all power flows down. Organized broad plan, localized small application. Government says "we need to increase heavy industry by 22% by the end of next year," local planning committees get delegated the job of actually doing it, just like in a firmly centrally planned economy. That's how you give them power. If people can invest, they can accrue large amounts of raw capital, giving them an unfair political advantage, period.