City of Heroes' new Mission Architect system can be *gasp* used exploitively for powerleveling. It's also piling up a lot of junk content. Neither of these are much of a surprise and both Syp and PvD are laughing at Paragon Studio's reactionary response. I'm chuckling a bit here too.

So here's my chance to show I'm better than everyone else at Design 101. Nah, not really. I'm just stating some obvious stuff and there's bound to be a bunch of other methods as well. There are plenty of lessons available from established so-called Web 2.0 apps, ala Wikipedia etc..

How to do Player-Generated Content right in an MMORPG:

Three Easy Steps

Step One: Scale Rewards

Come up with a formula where players are rewarded by time & effort that isn't so easily exploitable. The simple mob killing = exp isn't going to cut it when you're giving players control over their own content. Cap the rewards if necessary. This would be a lot easier for a game designed from the ground-up for player-derived content. As it is, CoH may be a bit hardwired.

Step Two: Peer Review

Elevate some players to status for reviewing content. Either let them all review (that's likely a mess), or create a filter team to get rid of the junk content. Perhaps make content compete, with a sort of ladder / tournament system that keeps players along for the ride watching which content climbs its way to the top.

Step Three: Limit New Content

Put limits on new content. Time limit it. Limit it to friends-only. Maybe even limit how many times it can be played through. Then reduce the limits as it climbs up the review scale. Delete content (after a week or so?) that hasn't been favourably reviewed.

. . .

Paragon Studios has their work cut out for them trying to kludge in any new controls and/or filters now that they have a mountain of content to deal with. Hopefully it doesn't bog down an otherwise great game / content platform. The plus side is that future projects can do it better.

Even I had a bit of faith that Microsoft might come to their senses and make Windows 7 more lean and mean, but frankly it's just a slightly more matured version of Vista with a new name.

I've been under the assumption that I'd finally trade XP for Windows 7 and just skip over Vista, but most likely I'll be sticking with XP for awhile still.

My PC blazes brightly enough, but I don't see much sense in trading framerate in games for slightly better shadows with DX10, especially at the tune of a couple hundred bucks for a new OS.

Marketing-wise (or should I say marketing machine-wise), Microsoft is going to do really well with this. Windows 7 will perform better simply because the average PC is catching up, although it'll still be a dog on most laptops. In other words, buy a new PC this year with Windows 7 and it will run faster than a PC from last year with Vista: The PC itself is faster.

I think Microsoft is doing their customers a disservice though, the minor tweaks and improvements just aren't much. A whole lot of current laptop owners will upgrade to (desperately?) push their performance a little bit more, no matter how small. And for some of them, it could be the threshold they need, although for many others they won't see much difference at all. Either way, the mainstream press has been run over by Microsoft's marketing steamroller.

Apple could have capitalized on this at MacWorld, but they're being dumbasses this season, going back to their old passive-aggressive nature instead of the simply aggressive stance they took against Vista. Oh I'm sure there will be a bit of rumblings, but it's after the fact at this point. It's like they're Microsoft customers themselves, playing wait-and-see. That'll be too late, Microsoft will win this round and it may be the end of Apple's recent upward curve unless they can leverage another iPhone-like device.

I was also a little delusional last year thinking I could maybe switch to Linux on my desktop once Wine catches up to DX10, but once again I overestimated desktop usage on Linux overall, I think it's almost moving backwards in usability while the geeks keep adding flashy gadgetry.

*sigh*

Update: If you want to try it for yourself, the Windows 7 Beta should be available (starting tomorrow afternoon) at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

Another Update: The Beta is available again after being offline for a day or so.

Update: It looks like Windows 7 will be going modular. Whether that's just to sell extra features or to solve the bloat problem remains to be seen.

  ·  ·  ·

There's an en masse revolt per se against the bloatware of Vista. People who intend to stick with Windows XP, at least for now. Sooner or later, most of them will feel forced to upgrade, whether it be for new software, games, or lack of support.

This begs the question: What is being added to the basic OS that we really need?

The Home Analogy

OSes are often compared to cars, but I'd liken them more to a house. A house has a foundation, walls, a roof, entrances and windows to the outside, plus a bunch of plumbing and wiring to make things work inside of it. Once you move into your home, you settle in and deal more with your stuff inside than the home itself.

You notice your home most when it has problems, like a leaky roof or fire hazards. You should feel relatively safe within your home, although you may install smoke detectors and/or an alarm system.

A great home should make you feel comfortable, need little maintenance and has enough room for your daily activities. You should be able to paint and decorate it as you wish, choosing gaudy or subtle furnishings on your own whims. Sooner or later, after the thrill of moving in is gone, it becomes the sturdy backdrop and you pay more attention to you HDTV and other toys.

Just One More OS?

What I'm trying to say is your OS should take a background, desktop role. There hasn't been any revolutionary OS developments for about a decade, so the OS makers are trying to sell you on flashy new looks and features you rarely need, want or even use. Some people do treat their OS like a toy and they may be happy with the new gloss, but for most of us it's just bloat.

What we need is a lean, mean OS that has the underlying features so we can forget about it and just enjoy using our PCs. An OS that does away with the old cruft and stops trying to reinvent the wheel. Or perhaps reinvents it one last time to get rid of those ugly square corners that were added because someone thought they looked cool.

It's very unlikely that OS will get made.

Microsoft and Apple wouldn't see real money in it, profit from upgrading the OS is much easier than creating new and clever applications. And the open source crowd loves fiddling with software toys more than anyone: Linux (and the various BSD flavours to a lesser extent) will forever be in flux.

There are some smaller OS projects out there trying to achieve this very idea, but the two main barriers are device drivers and the various APIs for existing software (IE: DirectX) which Microsoft has a virtual lockdown on.

Stick with XP

It's nice to dream, but the perfect subtle OS isn't likely to be made. Maybe, just maybe Microsoft will come to their senses with Windows 7. Meanwhile XP will be the standby version that most of us will continue to use.