Power/Rangers vs Saban Brands

For those of you who have not heard or watched yet, Adi Shanker recently released a fan film based on the original Mighty Morphing Power Rangers we are all familiar with. In cast you haven't seen it, I'll embed the video below. It may not be there forever though, and I'll explain that in a bit.



For those of you who don't know, Power Rangers is a long running series created originally by Saban Entertainment. Half of the show's footage is taken from an even longer series of TV shows called Super Sentai. Power Rangers has one of the biggest and most dedicated fan bases of a children's television show. I would even go so far as to take a guess that the fan base is bigger than Bronies, although I could be wrong on that since there hasn't been any data collected on it.

Anyway, Saban has a bit of a bad habit that's been popping up lately. If you have ever followed Square Enix before, it will sound very similar. You see, Saban is VERY invested in it's brand. Especially after buying it back from Disney. Ever since, they have been doing everything they can to keep the image of their show squeaky clean. Last year, Saban Entertainment went after a recent Kickstarter game called Chroma Squad. The game is a turn based tactical game making fun of/paying homage to both Super Sentai and Power Rangers. Saban Entertainment gave them an ultimatum, either Saban would buy their company and the rights to the game or they would bury them in court cases so that the game never comes out. The company choose the first option.

Now Saban Entertainment is going after Power/Rangers, most likely due to it's highly graphic language and gore. You can find the original story at the following link. Many of you are probably already saying, "Big deal. They own the rights to it. They can tell him to knock it off." Here is the thing though, this video technically doesn't break any copyright laws.

In order to break the law, the film would have had to use previously used footage from Power Rangers or would have to be making money off of the brand name without the permission of Saban Entertainment. If you actually watched the video, you would see that while the costumes do resemble the original Power Ranger's, they are different enough that you could claim that they aren't using the original image. Also, Shanker didn't recieve any sort of funding or profit from this film. It was all paid out of his own pocket in order to pay homage to a series that has been enjoyed by millions.

I find it also funny that Saban is working so hard to keep this image of purity when if you look over seas at the original footage, you'll see they aren't afraid to make fun of themselves. Enter Hikōnin Sentai Akibarenjā. Roughly translating to Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger, the show was a spin off series made to make fun of Super Sentai's tropes and appeal to older fans of Super Sentai. The show is filled with alcoholic references, dirty humor and over the top slap stick.

I don't think what Saban Entertainment is doing is right. Trying to limit the creativity of a fan base is a very fast way to alienate it. While I hate to talk about Bronies in any positive light, I will admit that the creators embraced their fan base and let them basically do whatever they wanted. The return was immense and now you can't take five steps through the internet without stepping into Pony shit.  If Saban's actions will cause a lot more harm then good. I personally have sent a tweet to the official Power Rangers twitter asking them to stop this nonsense. I would suggest that you do the same.

AT Plays Silent Hill Alchemilla Part 1

Hope you all enjoy my lets play. When I'm done with the game, I'll be compiling them all into a Play List and write up my final thoughts.

Console Exclusives: When is it okay to release on only one console.

UPDATE

It has been confirmed that the console exclusivity for Rise of the Tomb Raider is temporary and the game will come out for the PS3 and PS4 at a later date. That date has not been announced yet though. 

In case you haven't heard, a lot of people are rather angry at Square Enix, this time due to a controversial announcement at this years Gamescon. Specifically to make the sequel to the relaunch of Tomb Raider to be Xbox One exclusive. The previous game was launched on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A "Definitive Edition" was released later on for the PS4 and the Xbox One.

Now I'm not going to sit here and claim that every game should release on every console. In fact many console exclusives are what saved previous consoles from being completely ignored. I'm also not going to say that we should only have one console choice. Not only would that be outright illegal in most countries, due to anti-monopoly laws, but it would also hurt the gaming industry as a whole since there would no longer be any reason to improve the product. If you're the only person out there making games, you have no one to compete with so why bother. Instead I'm going to be focusing on why people are angry and when it's a good idea to be console exclusive.

WHY ALL THE DRAMA?

I would say the number one reason why people are angry is the fact that the previous Tomb Raider game came out for all consoles (except the Wii U which probably wouldn't have had the processing power to run the game). Most people can't afford to own both the Xbox One and the PS4. Some can't even afford one or the other. *cough cough me cough cough* Because of this, a lot of PlayStation owners are feeling a bit left out. Not to mention that before the Xbox line of consoles even existed, Tomb Raider was primarily a PlayStation game. 

Another big reason is that the logic behind it doesn't make a lot of sense. Square Enix has said that it was disappointing with the sales numbers for Tomb Raider. Going console exlusive in that respect makes no sense since it will limit the amount of people who can buy it by more than half. (The most recent sales numbers show that the PS4 is ahead in console sales). Not only that, people who prefer playing with a mouse and keyboard are left out to. 

Finally, many people smell the stench of money behind this, specifically Microsoft's money. I haven't dug too far into this so take this as a rumor (unless otherwise revealed to be true later) that Microsoft paid Square Enix quite a bit of money for this exclusive deal. Something that Microsoft has been known for doing in the past, most specifically the DLC Map Packs for the Call of Duty line of games. 

SHOULD I BE MAD TO?

I don't know, do you like Tomb Raider? 

WHEN IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO GO EXCLUSIVE?

I believe there are a few rules when it comes to deciding whether a game should be exclusive or not. If the Intelectual Property is owned by that console maker, like Mario or Master Chief, then it makes sense that the game will be exclusive to that console. Another reason is if the console manufacturer specifically came to you asking you to make a game for their system. This will usually happen when they hand an IP over to a 3rd party developer for a one game contract. Or in some cases a multi game contract. Metroid Other M is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that fits that description.

There is also the idea that maybe the game will only WORK on one of the consoles. Usually these instances will fall to motion games. I can't imagine a game like Bomb Blocks working on the Xbox 360. Maybe on the PS3 with the move controller but it probably wouldn't sell.  

WHEN IS IT A BAD IDEA?

Really any other time it would be a terrible idea to go console exclusive. It limits your audience as well as revenue stream. Maybe if you were a small indie developer and could only afford the developers kit for one system. Most of those types of games are released on the PC first for that exact reason. No cost unless you're using someone else game engine. 

Now of course there are a variety of other reasons why a company may decide to go exclusive vs not. Maybe there is some bad blood between the two companies. Maybe you don't want people to have to pay for Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus in order to play your game. But those seem to be the most common. Anyway, I highly doubt that the Tomb Raider sequel will stay "exclusive" for long. The only question is will people still buy it at that point. 

Breaking the MMO, why World of Warcraft will soon be unplayable.

So many of you have already heard about the new service to boost your character right to level 90 that Blizzard will be offering in their MMO titan, World of Warcraft. This boost will cost the player $60 in the US (apparently Blizzard calculated out how much time people usually take getting to level 90 and based the amount you pay on that). I recently read an article on PC Gamer about the new service and I have to say, the level boost experience is as bleak as I expected.

HOW IT WORKED BEFORE.

The basic premises of any level system is very simple, it reflects the in player's experience. But at another level, it also helps to ease the player into the mechanics. In a sense, the experience bar also reflects the player's ability to control the character. When you start a level 1 character in an MMO, you have 1 ability. That one ability is your bread and butter and is usually the core ability to your class. I haven't played WoW since I quit Mists of Pandara and started playing Final Fantasy 14, so in this instance, I'll use the Lancer/Dragoon class to teach you about what I mean. 

A level one lancer starts with one ability, True Thrust. It is a very simple ability, it allows you to do an attack worth 150% of your base attack and can be used once every 2.5 seconds. This helps get you into the groove of your abilities, as all of them for the Lancer are spaced about by 2.5 seconds. It helps you to build a rhythm that you will be using all the way to the high end raid bosses. 

At level 2, you get your first new ability, Feint. In truth, this one won't be used as much later in the game but it basically slows down your enemy a bit, increasing your survival rate in certain fights. This fate does give you a glimpse into the other abilities you will be using late on, specifically abilities that put a DOT on the enemy. Te be more specific, putting damage over time affects on your enemies and keeping them up when they run out. 

At level 4, you get the biggest and probably the most important addition to your arsenal. Vorpal Thrust. On its own, this technique is not anything special. It does an attack that hits for as much as your normal attacks do. Pretty useless. However if you read the text on the ability, you will learn something very special. If you use True Thrust first, you remember that one from way back in level 1, it will place a little dotted lining around the icon for Vorpal Thrust. If you use Vorpal Thrust next, you will then deal 150% of your normal damage. This is called a combo and is the main way that the Lancer will do his/her damage. This extends even further with an ability that you gain at level 26 called Full Thrust. On it's own, it only does normal damage but if added onto our 1, 2 combo we just used above, it will do a whopping 330% damage. 1, 2, 3 POW!

All of this is learned just by leveling your character which prepares you for the real game, post level 50 content. I use about 15 different abilities during my rotation. Almost all of them are a part of a similar combo structure. Now what do you think would happen if I dropped someone in front of my keyboard and said, "There you go, have fun!"

THE STORM.

Blizzard has stated that they will eventually have players who pay for level 90 to go through an hour to two hour quest to teach players how to play the class they just paid for. A sort of crash course in being bad ass if you will. While that will help alleviate some of the problem that occurs when sticking someone with a character they have NO idea how to play, it's not actually out yet. At this moment, if you buy a level 90 character, you are simply dropped into the appropriate capital city on the continent of Pandaria. There is no indication where the player should go, no explanations of what these buttons do and little regard for making sure that this wild child is up to speed. 

From what I am to understand, this has become a major problem in the game's matchmaking system, Looking for Group, since a large majority of people who join have no idea how to play their class. This is especially bad if you choose a Tank or Healer role since skill is a major part of those two roles. It's very easy for an inexperienced player to ruin the fun for everyone in the dungeon or raid. 

WHY DID THEY DO THIS?

There are a few reasons why Blizzard decided to implement this feature. The biggest one in my opinion is the fact that the amount of "new" players, specifically those who have never played WoW and sign up for an account, are very low. In fact, I can guarantee that a majority of those "new" players are gold sellers who need to get there presence back into there game after being banned for advertising illegal real money transactions. 

There is also apparently the push to make it so people can play the newest expansion NOW. A friend of mine explained it as, "you bought it, why shouldn't you get to play it now." That is not an exact quote by the way. While I like the idea of getting players into new content right away, just selling them a level 90 character comes with a ton of problems of it's own that the developers are going to have to fix. Not quite the most elegant of solutions. 

HOW WILL THIS AFFECT NEW PLAYERS?

The biggest way this will affect new players has already been explained above. Another one that I feel a lot of people are going to experience is an inflated sense of how much this game is going to cost. While you do get a free upgrade with your purchase of Warlords of Draenor, the new expansion coming out god knows when, any future characters must be leveled up the old fashioned way or pay $60 for another level 90. That's already on top of the $19.99 you will need to pay for the base game which now comes with the first 3 expansions it seems, $19.99 for Mists of Pandara and $49.99 for the new expansion pack. To a person looking out from the inside, just to enter the game costs $89.97. That doesn't include the monthly fees you will be paying after your first month of play. That is a steep asking price.

In truth, they don't really NEED to charge that much for the expansions. The majority of money that WoW makes is from there monthly subscriptions. Just one year of the monthly fee on a month by month basis DOUBLES what they make on buying the base game and expansions. $179.88 to be exact. If you compare that to the entry fee of other MMO's, it seems abysmal.

Final Fantasy XIV

Price of entry: $39.99
Monthly Fee: $12.99 for entry level (1 character per server, 8 characters total)
$14.99 for Standard (8 characters per server, 40 in total)
Additional Content: Character Transfer to another server $18
                               Changing your characters appearance $10
                               Veteran Rewards are provided free depending on how long you have been subscribing.
                               Additional Retainers are $2 per month.

DC Universe Online

Price of entry: Free
Monthly fee: not necessary but can get an all access membership for $14.99 a month. Players will have access to all DLC content.
Additional Content: $9.99 per expansion pack. Various ascetic items available for sale as well.

Guild Wars 2

Price of entry: $49.99
Monthly fee: none
Additional content: Can purchase gems which can then be used to purchase in game content. Players can gain these gems on there own at a slightly lower rate.

SO WHAT CAN BLIZZARD DO?

Well for starters, Blizzard can stop insulting its own product. The first thing you learn about public speaking is to not undermine yourself. To do so is to take away your credibility. You need to have confidence in what you are doing. That's not say you can't admit when something went wrong, like when the PSN was hacked. This is not one of those situations though. Instead of harping on the old team so much, they could have simply announced that they would be returning to the basics. It excites the player base without undermining your ability to still make the A plus content you are known for.

The second way would be to reduce the cost of entry. I would do away with charging for the expansion packs personally and just sell WoW as a base game. This is the way that Final Fantasy 11 and the original EverQuest are running there services now and it seems to work pretty well. It keeps the point of entry cheap so that the consumer doesn't feel like they blew a bunch of money away. It's true that it might be a gamble and would take a bit of revenue away from the company, but it would also show that you are trying to make the game open for new players. They could also remove or reduce the monthly fee so that players new and old can continue playing without having to worry about next months subscription. You could even take a queue from the cell phone companies and offer family subscriptions. This way, the whole family can enjoy the game without having to buy each person there own personal copy. While it's true that you could just share an account, they still wouldn't be able to play together so this would go a long way in trying to show that you want to give the family a gaming experience they can enjoy at a fair price.

Finally, get rid of the insta level 90. The hours spent leveling a character are pivital to teaching a person how to play the game. For some people, even that isn't enough. A 1 hour quest is going to make people feel overwhelmed and will put a pressure on the community that just isn't worth it. If you really want to get people to level 90 faster, start offering heirloom gear to people who haven't reached level 90 yet. Or reduce the amount of experience needed to get to level 90...again.

Sins of an MMO player.

It is incredibly frustrating when playing an MMO sometimes. Sometimes this can be due to poor mechanics like repetitive grinding for loot, poor balancing of characters or bugs that really should have been found and exterminated in bug testing. Sometimes though, its not the developers fault, sometimes it's the fault of your fellow players. Here are the 5 deadly sins of MMO players.

1. Lust for gear. 

I won't lie, epic gear is awesome. Part of the reason we like MMO's so much is for the gaining and then showing off of epic epic loot. But there is a point where you need to stop and realize, "You know what, maybe I shouldn't role need on this piece. I mean, I already have a higher level piece so what's the point. Maybe I should let this other guy have it since clearly he needs a replacement pare of pants." This isn't so much a problem very often but when it does show it's ugly head, it's a huge pain in the ass. Another version of this would be taking advantage of your other players time, asking for assistance with something but offering no assistance in return. I'm under the opinion that you get as much as you give and if you give your time to a guild, then you will benefit as well. 

2. Hatred against your  fellow player.

If any of you have played Call of Duty, you are already aware of the amount of homophobic, racist and sexist comments people are capable of uttering. This is the same in MMO's. There is a reason that the ESRB or its foreign counterparts don't claim to rate online interaction. But it needs to stop. There is no reason to talk to someone in the way some people do for the littlest things. However, you should not respond to hate with hate. It only feeds them and justifies them. I prefer to just report them. If a game developer is on top of things, they'll know that they loose more players then they gain by letting these players run free. If a player is suspended or banned, they learn that there actions have consequences. Or at least they should. From my experience in customer service, they will more likely paint themselves as a victim and then never return. It's a win win either way though for both the player and the game maker. The players have one less abusive person to deal with and those abusive players aren't driving people away from the game makers product. 

Oh and for those of you who claim that they were banned unfairly, well guess what.

YOU'RE LYING!

Companies like Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft, Square Enix, Activision or whoevers servers your playing on won't ban someone without proof. And being banned is basically the same as being denied service in real life. AKA, they don't want your money anymore. You have proven to be a vial human being and accepting your business is actually hurting there bottom line.  

3. Using pay for service (that aren't already apart of the game.)

A games economy, just like in real life, is incredibly difficult to balance. You have to make sure that higher end mats are harder to get, and therefore more valuable. That way there is an actual value to them as well as your currency. Part of that challenge is how repetitive it can be, or the fact that  you can only get a mat at a slower pace. But this is very quickly ruined with bots. It's apparently very easy to program a bot to do a repetitive task so that you don't have to and even giving you the ability to "play" for longer then the designer intended. In short, it gets you a bunch of shiny stuff without you having to do any work. And then what do people do? They offer those mats or gold or leveling services for real life money. Very quickly this will have an adverse affect on the games market, deflating the prices of high quality mats and taking some of the enjoyment out of the game for those who are gaining those mats legitimately. Thanks a lot CHINA!

4. Picking on the "newb/noob".

One of the biggest problems well established MMO's have is getting new players to join. This can be attributed for a few things. No problem is simple after all. One of the reasons is the griefing of new players. I never experienced griefing on my own when playing MMO's but I did experience it once over a forum, apparently my avatar didn't have enough fancy clothes to have a valid opinion. 

Screw you!

I never returned to that website. I didn't want to get involved with a community that put so much emphasis on buying drawings of clothes for my avatar. This same thing happens in MMO's. But here's the wonderful thing about being a new player, they can only get better. New players means new untapped talent and more revenue for the people who make your favorite online game which means more content for you. There is no reason to force new players away and that elite view is foolish at best and downright stupid at worst. 

5. Wasting other players time. 

This one is a big pet peeve for me. If you have a scheduled raid, don't wait until 5 minutes before to log on and get all your stuff ready. If I'm paying $15 a month to play this game, I want to play, not sit around and wait for you to get yourself ready. You aren't just wasting my time, your wasting my money. While I'm not against giving a dollar to a homeless person, throwing my money away is just wasteful. If you can't make an appointment, let someone know in advanced or don't agree to come to begin with. If you're not the type of person to do a weekly raid, then don't agree to do it. Is it really that hard. 

Streaming announcement.

For those of you interested. 

I will be streaming on my twitch channel every Monday from 8-10 mountain time. 

Go to my channel now and follow now!

Anime to watch update 2.

The more of the new anime I watch, the more I realize that just like Western television, anime seasons will present a slew of new and continuing shows and only 1 out of maybe 10 will be good. Quite a few more cuts from the list, if you don't see me talk about an anime then it's safe to assume that I'm probably not watching it anymore.

Tokyo Ghoul

Status: 

I think more than anything, this series has surprised me. It's not often that we deal with the idea of people getting eaten....well we used to not have to think about that until Attack on Titan came around. Not only that but it promises to have some very awesome fight scenes. Really hope this one is around for a while. 

Tokyo ESP

Status: Has no good images for me to use as a status picture! Still good though. 

This one I'm still on the fence, mainly due to the fact that it feels like we have two first episodes. Official episode 1 shows us a terrorist attack on Christmas and episode 2 shows us when the main character gets her powers. A lot has yet to be established so I'm still trying to figure out what type of show this one is going to be. Looking forward to it though. 

Argevollen

Status: 

I made it through three episodes of this show and I can safely say that I will not be watching this one any more. There where three things about this show that made me dislike it. 
1. Cliche Main Character
       If you've watched any TV during the last 10 years, you already know the main character of this anime. He's the green soldier who doesn't understand war and goes out of his way to try to save everyone. Been there. Done that. Boring.
2. My robot connects to my mind!
       Again, another major plot point that we've seen a million times before. NEXT!
3. WHY DO THESE PEOPLE NEVER FACE ANY CONSEQUENCES!
       Tokimune, the main character, disobeys direct orders so often, I often wonder how this army stayed together in the first place. I've never been in the army myself but even I know that if you disobey a direct order, that's grounds for court martial. But it NEVER HAPPENS! If these characters can get away with so much, what's the point of these laws anyway.