N'Al on 23/9/2010 at 17:00
Now that the new site is up I have to ask: This is it? Really?!?
The new site doesn't exactly look that different to me, and the new features they've included - whilst nice - aren't that much to write home about either. Was it really worth it provoking the ire of so many loyal customers for this? If it had resulted in a major revamp, maybe (not that the site necessarily needed this in the first place, imo), but for this?
Personally, I'm not so principled :p annoyed that I won't ever use their services again, but this whole process strikes me as so very, very stupid.
Brian The Dog on 23/9/2010 at 17:10
Yeah, the updates on the front-end are a bit under-whelming, but I gather most of the effort has been on the servers and other behind-the-scenes stuff. The amount of server power when you're a small start-up is clearly different to that needed as an established provider.
Definitely wasn't worth the big hoo-hah though. Even if they have started selling Baldur's Gate.
TTK12G3 on 23/9/2010 at 19:31
GOG, you are dicks.
Alright, BG is a pretty good game, so maybe that's forgivable. Maybe.
Brian The Dog on 23/9/2010 at 19:50
Michal gave(
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/apologies_for_gogs_pr_stunt/page2) a response to the out-take on GOG's forum:
Quote:
Hi All,
We tried to make our action possible to predict (all hints, and previous information that this year we are going out of beta etc) but it seems that it was not enough of them.
But the biggest mistake we made in different assumption. We treat in GOG.com system as you pay and you get your installer file and the whole access to redownloading your games was initially invented as additional feature, kind of backup option in case you lose your file. So we thought that being not able to re download your games for a few days shouldn't be a big deal. I think that many users get so much used to steam like systems that they are treating constant access to your library as the base of the system. But here as we sell DRM free games we basically think that when you buy the game, you download it, and it is yours. Sure if you lost your installer you can always re download, but we thought that this is not the first and the most important thing.
And of course we could have made many things better, to be sure that this experience will minimize the suffering (although some of this we just couldn't resist to cause;) and maximize the anxiousness.
BTW It all also raised quite interesting question (repeated quite frequently on many places) about DRM systems in general. What would happen if you lose access to servers of the dd store with DRM games? Of course all the companies making their best to make system stable and accessible, but there are random events. They are not so likely, but you know, everything is good as long as it is good and nobody expect problems, but unexpected things happening, our internet provider may fail, there may be electricity shortage and servers go down, the company may get into financial problems and may be not able to secure enough of power and server bandwidth, there are even countries where government can cut your access. Things are not eternal on Earth, and what then? Since there was no big disaster with any of the top DRM stores not many people care about it, but if something like this happen and many gamers will get into troubles, this may show another dark side of DRM (which we don’t like here so much, as you know:-)
Cheers,
Michal
PS. Here you can also blame me about the whole event as I was the one who participated in inventing it;-) so really feel free to tell me how much you don’t like me:-\
PS2. it all doesn't mean that we won't do anything similar again! Maybe something causing less nerves and more excitement, but surely we want to take your emotions out from daily patterns from time to time:-) Most likely we don't pretend that we are dead once again;-) but be sure that we will invent something. We don't want to be another generic and boring place, so be sure that we will try to entertain you (and ourselves;-) in future as well:-)
Interesting that how they assumed users would have the service is different to how users actually use the service - they are essentially encouraging us to keep local copies of the games we buy.
mothra on 23/9/2010 at 21:37
that is exactly what I do (backup to HD & DVD). there is even a thread with mockup gog.com covers of which I printed out a few for some games. still, I don't have all downloaded and feared those were gone.
Yakoob on 24/9/2010 at 03:58
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
Michal gave(
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/apologies_for_gogs_pr_stunt/page2) a response to the out-take on GOG's forum:
Interesting that how they assumed users would have the service is different to how users actually use the service - they are essentially encouraging us to keep local copies of the games we buy.
= "Shit guys, we really fucked up, what kind of BS rationale can we come up with that makes us sound like this was totally accidental and we totally learned to appreciate our customers more?"
Thirith on 24/9/2010 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Koki
You've got to be kidding me. The only thing BG lacks, detail-wise, is the character banters. And dungeon crawls? Much more prominent in BG2 than BG.
Sorry, no kidding. Would I ever kid you, Koki? Would I?
Anyway: my memory may be skewed, but so is yours. Remember the class-specific quests in
BG2? Nothing like that in the first game IIRC. And yes, there were lots of dungeons in the sequel, but even in those there was more to do than running around and killing the last bunch of kobolds, bandits or whatever. You'd have encounters that amount to more than yet another battle.
It's been a long time since I played
Baldur's Gate, but I remember trying to play it again after
BG2 and coming away from it feeling that while there was lots of fighting, there was very little in the way of role-playing. In
BG2 they succeeded much better at making you feel that you had options, that you could do things in different ways.
Koki on 24/9/2010 at 08:07
Neither BG nor BG2 had any roleplaying to speak of, they were both dungeon crawlers with nice strong storyline. It's just that the dungeon crawling aspect was much less blatant in the first game.
june gloom on 24/9/2010 at 08:24
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Why would they integrate a DVD drive into the case? That's almost as dumb as mounting the hard drive sideways, under the 5.25 drive bay. I have a machine that shipped like that. I think it was done specifically to torture the person who ends up working on it (me). Ah well, at least I got it for free. The OEM (Sony) got nothing from me!
Why should you have to disassemble the whole drive bay to pull out the hard drive? These must be the same engineers who designed the game console where you must remove the battery to change the game. (NGage)
It's an Acer. That should be all the info you need.
Thirith on 24/9/2010 at 08:57
Quote Posted by Koki
Neither BG nor BG2 had any roleplaying to speak of, they were both dungeon crawlers with nice strong storyline. It's just that the dungeon crawling aspect was much less blatant in the first game.
Let's not get into the semantics of what constitutes roleplaying and what doesn't. There were definitely many times more decisions where you could take sides, be a dick or a shining paragon etc. in
BG2 than there were in the first game. The class you pick changes more in
BG2 than determining what your exact approach in combat is. Plus there's the companion banter, which you mentioned yourself. More situations could be resolved by combat or by conversation.
Is it iffy that this is what goes for roleplaying in a lot of CRPGs? Perhaps, but that's a different discussion.
