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I posted this at another board, and didn't get much response, so I'm going to post it here and see what you guys think. 
----- No, I'm serious. Be quiet. I'm tired of it. Don't start with me about how 'BroadBand is on the rise' and how 'Dial-up will be rendered obsolete by 2007'. I've heard it all before, and I have to say, I don't trust ya. The fact of the matter is, some people will always have 56k, whether they want high speed internet access or not. Whether their locations don't permit it, or they just cannot afford it, there never will be ONLY BroadBand across the world. And, as it is, studies show that 55% of internet users have Dial-up; more than half of the 945 million+ internet users worldwide. That's about than 519 MILLION Dial-up users worldwide. Think about it. With over 100 million current gen-game consoles installed worldwide; assuming that about 55% of these game players have dial up, about 55 million gamers are using dial up. You could increase your userbase by HUGE amounts if you allowed these players to join in the frenzied, online gaming action. And with the extra money you gained from the increased amount of people buying the game, you could, oh, I don't know, make your company's next creation even better. Many Dial-up players wish they could fight against a human opponent instead of playing against the sometime overly redundant AI enemies. And you can't get the sheer thrill of beating someone down in a football game or First Person Shooter when that 'someone' is simulated. EVEN IF Dial-up is rendered obsolete, think about what you're saying--2007 is three years away. By that time, the next generation consoles (PS3, XBox Next, and the next Nintendo system) will have already been released, if all goes according to plan. You have to focus on what's going on right now, as opposed to waiting for what you see as inevitable. Oh, and I don't want crap about how 'our games take up too much bandwidth to be played by 56kers! It won't work!' Now maybe you can tell me WHY it won't work--because the only reason I see it not working is lazy netcode programming on the development front. Let's go back in history to the Dreamcast, shall we? You remember that? Good. SEGA had set up an entire ISP devoted to Dial-up users known as SEGANet. At it's peak, it had more than 200,000 subscribers, mostly all 56kers that were eager to play online in whatever way necessary. What a great way to make money and devote it to making the network portions of games simple, Dial-up compatible, and fun. Anyways, the Dreamcast had lots and lots of online games ALL of which supported 56k. I can remember one game in particular--AlienFront Online--that supported eight players AND voice chat. Speaking of player counts, I look at BroadBand only games, and I see that most of them only support 8 players or less (yes, there are exceptions, I'm getting to that). Let's look, shall we (all BB only)? Medal of Honor: Rising Sun: 8 players, Trivial Pursuit: Unhinged: 6 players, XIII: 4 players, Deer Hunter: 4 players, THUG: 8 players...you see what I'm saying here? Oh yeah, I know what you're about to say: what about those games like Soldier of Fortune, Rainbow Six 3 (XB), that allow for more players? You're right...that might be a little bit tough on Dial-up users, but it's not like we've never seen 24-32 players in an online game that supports Dial-up before. Tribes: Aerial Assualt has special 32 player dedicated servers and it has FULL Dial-up support. Massively Multiplayer games, such as FFXI and Everquest Online Adventures support thousands of players online at any given time. Come on now. Get serious: when you take a game online, not all servers are going to be full with 16-32 players at any given time; and I know games like RBS3 give you warnings on player counts, based on your connection speed. What are you complaining about now? You really want to include voice chat support? Like I said, AlienFront Online supported such chatter in three second bursts WITH Dial-up players. Another nifty contraption, known as DreamCall, allowed two players to talk together, much like a phone, with no charges at all. Hmm...you want FULL online support with numerous players chatting? *sigh*... If you're really desperate to include full voice chat support (which I feel no need for, a lot of players I know are shy and would prefer using a keyboard, and can simply express themselves better when they don't expose their voices), why don't you do what Risk: Global Domination did; that is, allow BroadBand users to chat in certain rooms that permit it, and allow 56k users to join other rooms where voice chat is not allowed. I guess what I'm trying to say here, is, well, you BroadBand-only games need to broaden your horizons. Reach out. Why don't you get off your lazy ass and throw in 56k support for your games too? Sound good? God I hope so. Oh, and one more thing...Trivial Pursuit: Unhinged is freaking BroadBand only? That's weak man, that's weak. |
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| U are right about lazy devlopers and i had alot of hate because eveything supported BB. I use to play BB only games by using ICS and most of them worked ok execpt for like the voice chat part of it. sumtimes it wouldnt work right in socom and i could only play 10players and the most and i mean this is the peak anymore and it will be a lagfest. I hate 2 say it man but dial-up is going out eventually just like the color tv replaced the black and white tv. We just got DSL about 2 weeks ago and man am i loving it no more long dls and i can play any online games i want. The truth is dial-up is dying man more and more ppl are geting BB and its predicted that DSL will expand greatly this year and i think this is true. Maybe u should think about upgrading and looking for the best price in your area because dsl is worth every penny. Dont lye to yourself man u know u want BB i use to be just like u sometimes u gotta go with the flow. | ||||
| _________________ Play 2 Win Not 2 Have Fun |
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And to add to what SolidSnake said, it is easier and cheaper for developers to develop online games that are broadband only. People have to remember that the online gaming feature is optional for developers. Developers such as Sony and Microsoft look at the statisics of how many Americans have online access, which is about 60% of the population, and then look at how many people own their consoles. Then they'll do the math and see how many people have dial-up internet access and how many people have broadband service. Then, they'll look at the price of server costs. If a server lags a lot from dial-up users then it can cause difficulities for other players to enjoy their online gaming experience; but like SolidSnake said, eventually we're going to have to go with the flow. Technology is changing rapidly, and along with it so do we. | |||
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| I do have BroadBand. And yes, it's obvious that developing for BroadBand only is easier--maybe not cheaper--but by including that userbase, wouldn't it more than overcome the deficit? | ||||
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| If u have BB that what the hell are complaining about!!! | ||||
| _________________ Play 2 Win Not 2 Have Fun |
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Just you wait. Broadband will be the future. No more phones, even. All telecommunications will be done over TCP/IP enabled devices. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocal) will replace the phones. Telephone lines wil become obselete, sometimes i think they're even obselete now. Or at least that's my vision of the future.... | |||
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SolidSnake wrote:
If u have BB that what the hell are complaining about!!! I'm complaining because I had Dial-up for 6 years of my life, and I realize that some people ARE unable to obtain it, yet still want to game online. satoshi wrote:
Just you wait. Broadband will be the future. No more phones, even. All telecommunications will be done over TCP/IP enabled devices. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocal) will replace the phones. Telephone lines wil become obselete, sometimes i think they're even obselete now. Or at least that's my vision of the future.... That's a very valid vision of the future...but I'm talking about NOW, when the majority of gamers have Dial-up. |
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lol i had to get in on this conversation since i am a die -hard 56k user till i die... the first post summed it up all even tho cable and dsl are taking over and its the best way to play online.. not everyone has this.. or maybe cant afford broadband. me its cus my computer is barebones and it wouldnt work with my current specs also it cost money.. u look at dialup ok just like when seganet was in i had some of the best onlin experiences ever on seganet thru dial up with all gamesi remmber when i would have a almost full bar on quake3 when seganet first launched text is nuthing for a 56k modem and thats really all u need it fo...other than voice and a faster ping.... which i really think is cool but its just another form of communicating and typing to each other has been the standard of communication.. thru consoles and pc's for a long time.. i can easily or maybe better express my self typing then i can talking on a microphone. i dont have anything against broadband at all but when im online playing for FREE... and everything is working fine and doesnt effect game play... well i do get lag spikes sometimes but thats the beauty of dial up lol and now im on my computer with dial up and a web accellerator and i thank god i didnt get dsl cus this machine flys like it has dsl as far as surfing online. i also cant stand to see these playstation 2 games support bb only that is the most retarded thing i have ever seen ... why do that... all the dial up users.. there are and their just not gonna buy the game cus that stupid developer didnt include or suport dial up... there the ones losing i mean the more ppl online to play the better... right. also this is still to this day why i didnt buy a xbox how u gonna make a system with no modem support for 56k players totally stupid... thats why i havent got that piece of **** yet... dial- up will never die it was the standard for anything... online !!
56k fo life!!! |
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Quote:
I'm complaining because I had Dial-up for 6 years of my life
So iv had dial-up for along time as well and the dial-upers can just use ICS if they want to play BB only games. And if they cant do that maybe they have no biss being online then. |
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| _________________ Play 2 Win Not 2 Have Fun |
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Tao wrote:
SolidSnake wrote:
If u have BB that what the hell are complaining about!!! I'm complaining because I had Dial-up for 6 years of my life, and I realize that some people ARE unable to obtain it, yet still want to game online. satoshi wrote:
Just you wait. Broadband will be the future. No more phones, even. All telecommunications will be done over TCP/IP enabled devices. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocal) will replace the phones. Telephone lines wil become obselete, sometimes i think they're even obselete now. Or at least that's my vision of the future.... That's a very valid vision of the future...but I'm talking about NOW, when the majority of gamers have Dial-up. The future is slowly becoming the present. You have broadband (or at least that's what I've gathered), get over the whole dial-up issue... Yes, it sucks for the dial-up users, but practically nothing can be done to change the fact. Either it's because the develops are lazy or because the game just DOES generate (and needs to generate) that much traffic, it doesn't really matter, the developers most likely won't listen to a few disgruntled gamers. Enjoy what you can with broadband, most people, when "upgrading" to broadband, rant and rave about how wonderful it is, not how develops give dial-uppers the shaft. |
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satoshi wrote:
Tao wrote:
SolidSnake wrote:
If u have BB that what the hell are complaining about!!! I'm complaining because I had Dial-up for 6 years of my life, and I realize that some people ARE unable to obtain it, yet still want to game online. satoshi wrote:
Just you wait. Broadband will be the future. No more phones, even. All telecommunications will be done over TCP/IP enabled devices. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocal) will replace the phones. Telephone lines wil become obselete, sometimes i think they're even obselete now. Or at least that's my vision of the future.... That's a very valid vision of the future...but I'm talking about NOW, when the majority of gamers have Dial-up. The future is slowly becoming the present. You have broadband (or at least that's what I've gathered), get over the whole dial-up issue... Yes, it sucks for the dial-up users, but practically nothing can be done to change the fact. Either it's because the develops are lazy or because the game just DOES generate (and needs to generate) that much traffic, it doesn't really matter, the developers most likely won't listen to a few disgruntled gamers. Enjoy what you can with broadband, most people, when "upgrading" to broadband, rant and rave about how wonderful it is, not how develops give dial-uppers the shaft. Yes, I have BroadBand. Yes, it does suck for Dial-up users. Yes, BroadBand is amazing and I'm thankful that I have it. Yes, I realize that this post most likely won't affect the developer's plans when adding online components to the game. As it is, if Dial-up support was added to more games, I strongly believe that more profit would be made--not to mention more players would be enjoying the game--and like I said, with the increased amount of money made through the game, the better future games could become. The future is of course becoming the present, but slowly. I'm talking about THIS GENERATION of consoles, not the next, when Dial-up is supposed to be obsoleted and the world is living happily amongst the numerous high speed connections. |
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| Well Japanese games won't/don't have dial-up because most people have better broadband connections than we do so they arn't just going to add the features in. | ||||
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But do you really expect any "progress" to be made by posting a rant on a (still relatively small) gaming message board? | |||
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I live in Central Texas which is a mainly rural area 90% of people I know can only connect at 56k unless they want to spend outragoues prices on satalite DSL 99 a month... Now if broadband were available everywhere like it was stated to be by 2004 then I would not mind BB only but a large portion of Texas haas no BB and Texas is the size of a small country... I have family in California that do not have access to BB and CA is stated to be the #1 state in Technology... HMMM where am I going with this you ask? Well if these places dont have BB yet what makes the developers think many others do? | |||
| _________________ No Gutz, No Glory! |
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It is my personal opinion that dialup games should have atleast 2-4 players online with the option of bots. For instance in TMB:O you can add bots so you can have 3-4 opponents in a game when it's 1 vs 1.
Broadband Games should have 12+ players online. No excuse. (unless of course the game doesn't support that player count in normal gameplay, ex: Risk) This should be the standard. Unfortunatly its not. In the end I fear it all comes down to 2 negative factors in all of this. Development time, and execs and their shitty focus groups and red tape not grasping the reality of the situation. We are all sitting around asking the following questions: Why isnt there dialup support? Why isn't there keyboard support? Why isn't there a qwerty onscreen kb for controller chat? (abcdefg sucks!) Why can't you password matches in some games? Will the HDD ever be supported more? ever? ever? Console companies FEAR of making their console seem similar in features to an online PC is what is currantly crushing online console gaming. A serious lack of features and control. And the Next Gen2 systems won't be any better. Sony will probobly mimic xbox live, and microsoft will probobly just continue with it, and who knows what Nintendo will do. Maybe Nintendo will take a fricken hint from sega and toss ass all over the place and make an online service that would remedy all these issues in their next system. Posted Sun May 02, 2004 12:53 pm: BTW I would also like to point out many of these problems are probobly because Sony is not communicating with the actual people who play online with their PS2's. They are only talking with average joe gamer. Who probobly only plays socom 2 or madden and is not a hardcore online player. Sony really need's to tap into the hardcore online community base more to find out what they need to fix with their gaming lineup. However this all poses yet another question. How much control is Sony having over the development process of the games they are publishing? Probobly not that much. I bet they just get companies to make online games and the developers just make them with whatever online features they feel they want to or can put in within the development period. There is a lack of standardization. So it is all hit or miss. |
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| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
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