MasterDex

Completely agree, so stop pretending like you can know the future by saying that you know you wouldn't have bought the game. I'm going to do some soothsaying right now and show that I know the future. I will never buy MW2 or MW3 or Black Ops. Ever. Until the day I die, no money will pass from my hands for those games. I know this for a fact. I will never buy NFS Shift. I pirated that game, played it for 30 minutes and decided that I didn't like it. I'll never buy it and never would have bought it if I hadn't pirated it anyway due to past experiences with the NFS series. These things I know for certain. I'm not pretending, I'm not kidding myself. I know these things to be true just as I know I have blood coursing through my veins.

You're still acting in a responsive way or due to a momentary feeling. As someone who started smoking as a teenager from peer pressure, I can say that it wasn't just a momentary feeling. There was about 4 months where all my friends were smoking and I wasn't and for around the last month of that four months I had been actively contemplating starting smoking to be "cooler" and to fit in with them more, etc. Suffice it to say, I thought about starting to smoke, due to peer pressure, before I began smoking and I imagine it's the same for others who start smoking due to peer pressure. There's forethought behind it that leads to the decision to begin smoking. I didn't just wake up in the morning thinking "I'm going to start smoking because all my friends do" and just start.

This. As for justification, you can boil everything we do down to justifications. I'm in no way trying to legitimise my acts of piracy, It's an illegal activity. So is smoking weed over here but I still do it and I do so for my own reasons. I think there's a big difference between trying to legitimise something and explaining your personal reasons for something. If you start smoking from peer pressure or stress then you haven't started smoking impulsively, there's forethought. To start smoking impulsively would be something along the lines of going in to a shop to buy milk and leaving with a box of fags.

I'm loving The Binding of Issac and myself and Excel had some great fun playing Portal 2 co-op last night. I'm glad I held off getting it early. I knew I'd be able grab it for a grand cheap price soon enough.

You wouldn't have felt that you'd have felt insulted if you didn't do what I alleged that you did do which you discount by saying my conclusion has no basis. On time and money: It's value is different for everyone. I find that for me, the value of a videogame is usually around $20 so that's usually what I spend on them. That value isn't contingent upon my enjoyment though. I'm purchasing the opportunity for enjoyment. You're trying to guarantee enjoyment though an illegal download. I was referring to your conclusion that one would "clearly have no concept of the value of time or money or both", regardless of the preconditions leading to it which led me to ask what you believe the value of time and money is. You answered correctly as "It's value is different for everyone." Implying that someone clearly has no concept of the value of time or money when the value of time and money differs from person to person is insulting, I believe. I'm trying to guarantee enjoyment through an illegal download, yes but very rarely do I do such and only in cases, like I've said, where I find myself unable to make a value judgement. I won't just purchase something and hope I enjoy it unless I have some belief that I will enjoy it. If I had the disposable income to do such, I likely would but I'm currently unemployed and living on benefits so I have to be wiser than that with my money. In a topic with such contrasting opinions, I think it's only natural that things get heated. I don't think we need to close the thread. I believe we're all mature enough here to be able to move on and get back on topic.

I'm glad you asked. In honesty I was tempted to buy an R4 device. I thought if I had one I could play some games I didn't actually want to buy. Then I thought about this a little longer and asked myself, why would I waste my time playing games that weren't even worth my money? That resolved my question then and there. Do I still occasionally buy a game that I don't love? Yeah, sometimes. I can't remember ever really not enjoying a game that I bought to the point of feeling cheated or ripped off though. Maybe Uncharted 2. That wasn't an answer to my question. It's a straightforward question, you should be able to provide a straightforward answer. I'm asking you to quantify the value of time and money. To discuss what you typed however. You're making a value judgement before having played the game so I agree, what's the point in trying the game when you've made that value judgement. If I want to check a game out, it's because I have yet to make a value judgement. Except that's the opposite of what you stated you do. You claim that you pirate a game so that you don't spend any money on it until you know you'll enjoy it. You'll notice also that I didn't specifically call you out as a fool and I did that on purpose. I don't pretend to know what you personally do but I stand by my statement that someone who spends his time on things that aren't worth his money is a fool and if by your own admission you accept that you do this then you're the one feeling convicted. Try reading what I said again. *=Europa Universalis This second quote is basically the same as saying I wouldn't pay to play a demo except I'm making the personal choice (In many cases the only choice), to pirate the game to try it out before I buy it. Please quote where I admit that I spend time on things that aren't worth my money.

Is the point we keep coming back to. I'm not discounting the rest of what you said and it's a fine point you made that I can't disagree with but I think just this first sentence sums up how grey the area of piracy is. Take books for example. Books began as extreme luxury items. They gained mass appeal and many ensured themselves as classics in the minds of the masses through piracy. Back then, it was no different to now. Copyright was there but piracy still represented a grey area, ethically, as it does now. Legally, we can say with full confidence that the issue is black and white but ethics differ and it would be incorrect to make the blanket statement that piracy is ethically wrong because ethics are often personal. Because if you're spending hours of your life on something that's not even worth $1 to you then you clearly have no concept of the value of time or money or both. You're assuming I'm spending hours (there was no need to add "of your life", that's just unnecessarily hyperbolic) playing the games I pirated. You're also assuming that I've made a value decision before downloading/playing the game. You then used those assumptions to come to, what I feel is, a rather insulting conclusion and I would have felt insulted if that conclusion had any real basis but it doesn't. Since you brought it up however, I have to ask. In your opinion, what is the value of time and money? See, this is what's telling. The rest of your argument is simply to justify this statement. You have to contrive a justification for the fact that you're unwilling to part with any money lest you find that you wasted it on a game you didn't like. Why would I need to contrive a justification? I stated that I'm unwilling to part with any money unless I think I'm going to enjoy the game. I expanded on my opinion more to help explain my point of view. Saying that it's a fact that I'm unwilling to part with any money lest I find that I wasted it on a game I didn't like is ridiculous because it isn't a fact. You can't prove it's a fact and I know it's not a fact because, you know, it's myself I'm talking about. 9/10, I feel pretty confident whether I'll like a game or not and so I purchase it. Sometimes, that works out bad for me and I find that I didn't enjoy the game. Most of the time, and I put this down to how well I know my own preferences, I find I've made the right decision. The rest of the time, I'm entirely unsure whether I'll enjoy the game, whether the game is worth anything to me personally and so I might try out a pirate copy. This is where I go back to that second assumption you made above (i.e. That I've made a value judgement before downloading/playing a game). The point of downloading the pirate copy is to make that value judgement because I don't feel I can make the judgement without first trying the game. Disagree with me all you like but please try to avoid stepping over the line into claiming that your opinion holds any greater value than mine. I say that because I feel you're coming close to doing that. I respect your opinion, please respect mine. I think that touches a deeper concern on whether the price they ask for a game is too much. But that's another argument for another thread. But as Masterdex has already honestly admitted, even $1 is too much for him.... See, now you're stepping over that line I've just talked about. You're twisting my words to make the point you want to make. I never admitted that $1 is too much for me. I can't continue this discussion with you if you're going to continue to argue like this.

Whether or not your would play it is irrelevant. You clearly have interest in the game enough to download it. If you remove the option of piracy then it simply becomes a question of price. How much would you be willing to pay to try the game in order to see if you like it? $20? $10? $1? Someone who is bothering to pirate a game that wouldn't be worth even $1 to them is a fool wasting his own time. Whether or not I would play it is relevant. If I don't think I'm going to play or enjoy a game, I won't purchase it. I have enough interest to try it out but not enough interest to buy it. How much would I be willing to pay to try the game in order to see if I liked it? Nothing. The point of trying it out is to decide if the game is worth my money. Why am I a fool for not wanting to hand over any money, even if it's as little as a dollar, if I'm not sure whether I'll like it or not. After trying the game, I may have decided that the game isn't even worth a dollar to me. If I had spent a dollar to try it then I'd come to the conclusion that spending that dollar was a waste. It's not as if I'm going around pirating every game I see. I purchase 99% of the games I play. The other 1% is made up of free games and games I pirated before deciding I didn't like them. You may not believe me but I like to support developers but if I'm unsure whether a game is worth my money, I'm not going to waste my money on it. Recently I've been listening to the audiobooks for A Song of Ice and Fire. I didn't pay for them but I've enjoyed them so much that I'm ordering the expensive slipcase editions. Ultimately, my point is that piracy isn't as black and white as many make it out to be, which is a big reason why this thread has gone on as long as it has.

The fallacy is that you can never actually make the assumption that they wouldn't have bought it. It's a caveat that makes the statement meaningless. Unless that person is yourself thus the statement holds true. I just recently "acquired" Europa Universalis III. I can say with absolute certainty that I would not have bought it because I had no idea whether it would be a game I would play or not. Having played it, I'm still unsure if I'd buy it but there's now a chance that I might.

Camaros! Not just any Camaros!

I agree with that sentiment but I still feel it gimps teamwork. A good solution, I think, would be to allow inner-squad comms but also inter-squad comms through the squad leader. Ah vell, at least we're getting the commorose back. Oh and this: http://bf3blog.com/2011/10/battlefield-3-getting-in-game-squad-management-after-all/

I don't care what people choose to gripe about on a forum. I just don't want to hear it while I'm trying to play the game. Ohhh, right. Yeah. Not such an issue on console as you can only bitch to your squad. You can't type a message to the world at large. That reminds me of another gripe with the game! You can only voice chat with people in your battlelog-made party, not even your squad, let alone the rest of the team on PC. Remember when sequels built upon their predecessors?

I don't think it's just a problem with Battlefield but rather any big shooter. Tensions are raised and due to high popularity the ratio of dumbass:cooldude is greater so you're bound to get people complaining about a shitty team, etc. Just for the record though, sometimes the person complaining about a shitty team is spot on.

It's not so absurd. For BF2142 we allowed BF2 players to reserve their name. I recall. I was able to maintain my name thanks to that. What I was referring to though was an internet-wide decree of sorts where I could claim MasterDex anywhere - like trademarking a brand - That would be as absurd I think as much as it would be impossible to implement.

Good lord. This. I really don't want to be blinded by my own teammates, thanks. And you are looking at my username for everything. (Unless someone is using it for their Youtube...) The lights and lasers need to be reworked. First off, it's nonsensical that they default to on. Secondly, they have no charge so noobs just keep them on which results in blinded teammates and positions being revealed. Just setting the default state to off and limiting how long the light can be on for should help in teaching people to be more careful with using it. You're lucky to have been able to use your own username. I've been the only MasterDex in Battlefield until this game. As absurd as it sounds, I'd love if you could claim digital rights on a username.

That's so annoying! I've noticed on PC that calling for ammo only works like a quarter of the time as well so I'm forced to resort to knifing the dumb shits to get their attention. Throw down ammo, even if you don't need it. Just throw it the fuck down. Any time I come to a stop (as Assault), I drop a medkit. People around me? I drop a medkit. It gives me points and keeps my team alive. Man, I lament the death of teamwork in these games, it seems since Call of Duty became the big thing, no one cares about helping their team. That said, I got in a squad with a very good player earlier and we both owned the leaderboards for the few rounds we played together. I think I'll send him a friend request. And as I remember it, can I get all your soldier names for friend requests? Mine is MasterrDex if you'd rather just add me.

Same here. This is the problem with publishers. They'd rather blame piracy than listen to what their consumers are telling them. Sure, consumers can be a whiny bunch at times and unreasonable to boot but the truth of the matter is that Ubisoft's lack of sales on PC is as a direct result of their treatment of the platforms consumers.

What's the damage against vehicles like though? They may have nerfed the damage against infantry to avoid a repeat of the spamfest of BC2.

Oh! You're so witty! I can guarantee that very little will change as far as design decisions go. Sure, there may be some changes but the first patch will likely be all bugfixes and balancing and as is often the case with DICE, we'll be waiting forever for any major changes to design to happen and even then, we'll just get one or two changes and they likely won't be anything major.

Ha That pic is spot on. I have to agree with you on the lrn2play bit. Having no unlocks at the start may seem like an overwhelming disadvantage but I find it does a good job of teaching players not to rely on their unlocks to succeed and instead focus on smart play. After playing a couple more hours of the game, I'm starting to appreciate it and hate it in equal measure. There are some design decisions I love but some that I think are absolutely retarded like having no squad management menu in-game, separating battelog-made parties even when they're on the same team, having the flashlight and lasers on as default, not having a charge on the flashlight or lasers to ensure careful use, grenades defying gravity and travelling slower than a feather through air, needing to wait for the end-game countdown and then needing to deploy just to exit the game. And that's just what I can remember right off the bat. I don't know what DICE was thinking with these design decisions but it's most certainly going to affect my enjoyment of the full game.

After a few hours of play, I'm confident enough that I'll enjoy BF3 at least as much as BC2...but I'd feel I'm missing out if I didn't give my two cents so here it is. The server browser is probably the best they've ever done. It's annoying as hell to have to launch Origin then open the web browser and then start the game, closing the web browser however. Why the fuck couldn't they integrate this shit? I get that they want to get that community experience there but for feck's sake, they could have added a web browser into the game itself or go the full hog and integrate the lot without too much hassle. It's completely unnecessary to have to go through these steps. Equippable knife I like but the hit detection on it doesn't seem that great. I have a feeling I'll be playing Hardcore primarily again, I can appreciate some sponginess but the amount it takes to down an opponent coupled with the sometimes shoddy hit detection gets on my nerves. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I CREATE MY OWN SQUAD?! Earlier I was stuck in a game in a squad with 2 sniping camping fuckholes who wouldn't move past the first point, leaving me to spend most of that round running to the action. The loading is nice and fast, between rounds at least. Dice have improved loads in this department since the BF2, 2142 days...but then again, so has technology so maybe not too much credit due there. I like and dislike the movement, the weapons feel better than BC2 from first impressions but they don't feel great. Give me the precision I found in Hard Reset, that's what I want a PC FPS to control like. As for the movement, I like the extra actions - the slide to prone, PRONE!, the leap over obstacles...but going from prone to standing is a bit slower than it should be. No soldier in a battle is going to take that long to get off the ground. I better be able to set controls to my mouse buttons. Early on, I lost count of the amount of times I died because I went to use the knife with one of my mouse buttons. There are a few areas where crouching or going prone causes a hopping motion, I also think I've found a hole in the map but I'll have to check it out properly. I've been having a graphical glitch where the screen would quickly flash to a solid colour like sky blue or amber. It doesn't happen often and it's gone as soon as it appears and my temps, while high, are within bounds so I'm putting this down to driver support. I like how the round ends and how you die, I also like how leveling up, ranking up classes and using weapons more all have their own unlocks. It should mean I get more of what I want when I want it and keep me busy as I'll have something to strive for for a long time. All in all, I'm happy with the beta. It's certainly a step up from the horrid BC2 PC beta, that's for sure. That beta has so many problems, it wasn't even funny. Oh yeah, is there a conquest map in the beta? I can't seem to find any Conquest servers. PS. The flashlight is going to be a major griefing tool, mark my words.

Good! I really don't see this turning in Bethesda's favour in court and I'd be very disappointed if it did.

I'm not seeing how those could be construed as elitist comments. "COD is supposed to be a PC game." - Call of Duty began life on PC, it was PC gamers that supported the first game in droves, I think it's only natural that those same people are annoyed when the focus shift means they get a game of lesser quality. Don't forget that people had worries about FFXIII moving to the 360, that PS3 owners were angry that Valkyria Chronicles 2 was a PSP game, that the 360 version of TF2 didn't get any updates and that the PS3 version of the Orange Box was a bad PC port. "The WORST dealbreaker IMO is the maps are Clearly MADE for a console NOT PC!" - Again, I don't see the elitism here. The game was clearly made for a console and not the PC, this is evidenced by the problems the PC version released with when compared to the console version. The maps are just another aspect of that, small contained maps and lower player counts makes for a more "focused" game according to the developers but the truth of the matter is that it's easier to handle for consoles. This comment isn't elitist, though it is asking for more. "As is becoming the trend, PC games are no longer developed with PC players in mind." - That's entirely true, a lot of games these days aren't made with PC gamers in mind but with console gamers in mind. The PC gamers then often get the short end of a stick with a PC version that's less than good. This goes past the inherent advantages that PCs have over consoles as shitty ports are often shitty because they don't even get the basic stuff right. It'd be like releasing a game on consoles that didn't support controllers properly. I'm going to assume that the reason you can't see these as valid complaints against the PC version of the game is because you don't have the experience with PC gaming to be able to do so. I never said that the complainers represent the majority, rather I posited that the complainers may represent the majority, just as the people with nothing but good to say may. I agree that people are more likely to complain than praise but that still doesn't make those complaints invalid. If people are more likely to complain than praise then surely a game with lots of complaints has something to complain about. If a game's rating remains generally positive despite more people liking to complain rather than praise then it must genuinely be a good game, no? To be fair, a lot of those reviews do comment on the buggy mess that the Black Ops PC release was and I'm all for that. I agree about weighing the validity of the complaints and the quotes above represent invalid complaints based of some stupid PC bias people have invented in their heads. If the release doesn't work and it's not being fixed then fine, give it a bad review. Just drop this stupid crap about how COD is supposed to be a PC game and dedicated servers are the only way to go. Some people don't like dedicated servers. I'm one of them. As I said above, I don't believe those complaints are invalid and I believe you misunderstand where they're coming from (which you shouldn't feel bad about as it's very common). They're not coming from a place of bias or "PC is the best" raving fanboys but from a place of frustration. Standards are being lowered and I'm not even talking about graphical fidelity or design complexity. I'll take the simplest, most basic console game out today and be happy with a PC version of it so long as sufficient care is taken with the PC version. By that I mean that I expect to be able to run the game in 16:10, just as a console gamer would expect to be able to run the game in 16:9. I expect the netcode to work, just as a console gamer would, I expect the controls will feel good, just as a console gamer would. That's where these comments come from. Sure, higher resolution textures and PC-specific features would be nice but these comments come more from a desire for a good quality port than a desire for anything more than the console version. Can I ask why you don't like dedicated servers?

I'm still not seeing what's so wrong with the negative views here and I dislike that you're so quick to use the term PC elitist the minute a PC gamer has a problem with something. The reviews there seem pretty articulate and in line with one another, for the most part. Maybe, just maybe, there was actually a problem with Black Ops on PC at the time those reviews were written. To call those people out as PC elitists because they have something negative to say seems a tad childish to me. In a previous comment you said that the vocal minority will post negative reviews and that: . The vocal minority are so called because they're the minority that are vocal about a product. It doesn't mean they're the only people that have a problem with a game, they're simply the ones that share their opinions, as opposed to the silent majority. There could still be a majority of end-users that feel the same way. That old business saying has to do with consumer satisfaction and capturing a bigger market. It's promoting the idea that you should strive to make your customers happy, it doesn't condemn those unhappy customers. The idea is that rather than look at those unhappy customers and say "We don't care about them because they're not our market", the intelligent businessperson looks at the unhappy customers and asks themselves "How can I make them happy?" because making them happy means more customers - and more than just the unhappy ones as they'll spread the word and convince others to pick up the game. This really does seem to go back to the idea that it's wrong to complain. For example, If a PC gamer complains, they're labelled as a PC elitist, regardless of how valid their complaint is. That's bullshit. As I mentioned in the Diablo III thread, we're consumers first and foremost and we have the right to complain about the products we buy. I really don't get the logic that positive and moderate user reviews and scores are fine but negative ones are not. It doesn't make sense. As I said, if the user reviews tend to point towards unhappiness, perhaps there's a reason for that? I think Metacritic is useful in showing that not every game is voted as generally unfavourable - The PC version of ME2, for example, is generally favourable. The information you can learn from user reviews may be information you know from keeping up with gaming news but what about the people that don't keep up with gaming news yet might take issue with something brought to light by a user review on Metacritic. This idea that we should only focus on the positive aspects of a product, that we should just accept what the developers worked so hard to give us, is asinine, in my opinion. It serves no one but the developers. Do you think we'd be where we are today if we didn't demand more from the games we get? If no-one complained about graphical quality and there was no desire for improved graphics, do you honestly think the industry would have been so quick to foot the bill to get us to the fidelity we have today? I'll finish with a link to this excellent RPS article from a couple of weeks ago: Actually, it's okay to complain

A bit of a douche? I'd say that's full on douchiness right there! If you're going to steal/be influenced by something, at least have the spine to admit it.