A lot of hubbub has been circulating around the recently announced iPhone 6 and its feature set. Firstly, most analysts point out how its not so innovative. Second, seeing as there were 4 million pre-orders, at a measly $240 profit per phone (40% margin on a $600 unsubsidized price), that stands to net Apple a cool $1 billion in profit....on predorders. It literally has not shipped yet but already made a billion dollars.
Here's where I think things get interesting: there's chatter about how there's nothing really all that new about what the iPhone 6 does: it has all of the features that Samsung phones do from two years ago. And it's absolutely true: NFC has existed for 10+ years, so there's nothing new here. Call it the Android fanboy in me that sees that on paper, it's a hilarious 1:1 match for a Samsung Galaxy Note...from 2012.
However, the innovation is not in features, it's not in specs. Apple innovates on user experiences. Did no one learn anything about Mac specs always being slightly behind PCs? It wasn't about how many gigahertz the processor was clocked at, or how much RAM it sported, it was "how pleasant is this thing to use?", "how much of my time does it take to maintain?", or "what apps all come for free?"
I think the same applies to the iPhone 6: it's not about how Android phones had NFC years ago -- they did, as did many other implementations a decade ago -- but rather the user experience sucked because no merchants really invested in accepting it. How useful is an NFC feature if no store takes it? Apple's innovation here is getting merchants to lean in and finally do it -- because if their competitor "works with Apple" to adopt NFC and they don't, they look terrible. Simply by making NFC relevant again, Apple uses their bodyweight and momentum to get others to play ball....innovation without even a drop of technology.
The same goes for the other numerous "copycat" features: larger screen, messaging, apps, photos: they didn't invent this stuff, each feature has already been done, sometimes better, by another competitor. However, the innovation isn't on the feature: it's on the software experience, and that's what competitors miss. Messaging is simple and no where near the awfulness that is Hangouts. Photos are easily taken and easily sync'ed (modulo being hacked) rather than depending on Google+, that you may not want. I already mentioned NFC. No bloatware added by the OEM. And so on and so forth. The features aren't new, a non-shitty software user experience is. And that is something that competitors haven't understood for 20 years, even longer than NFC has existed. (Affectionately known as "it just works")
I won't be buying an iPhone 6 myself -- it costs more for a phone than a laptop for crying out loud, and I live in the Google ecosystem. But I will attest that Apple is pushing the user experience innovation forward.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Elder Scrolls Online Review
I've been a bit quiet on the blog for a while, and it's mainly because I got my hands on Elder Scrolls Online (an MMO, like World of Warcraft) for the last month or so. But I'm now done with it. Since it's on me to catch up on a month-plus of blogging, I'll at least start with my own personal review of ESO.
I feel like reviewing ESO is almost cliche now, since it has been reviewed a gazillion times by a gazillion people. But I feel like I have to give an on-the-ground view of what the game is like for someone who has limited time to play: If you can only play when your kids are asleep, is it worth it? (perhaps I should make a series out of this kind of review?)
First, since I started up after the game launched, I did not have any of the pre-signup issues that people complained about. That said, I had the "premium" version that let me play a Breton in the Aldmeri Dominion (Elf-land). After creating my character and stumbling through the intro/training area, I started hunting around and doing quests in the starting area.
First, I'm glad the quests were not of the typical MMO variety ("kill 10 bears"), which grow boring quickly. However, quests are still mind-numbingly empty: simply click through all the discussion-tree options, and then follow the marker on the map to whatever you need to kill or examine. The story behind every quest is completely inconsequential -- just click through the options and you're done, who cares what they say or what the background of the problem is? Wash, rinse, repeat. They could fix this by simply removing the "goal marker" on the map and forcing people to read what they say. Even those quest choices that make you choose a permanent choice (usually "do you kill this person or not") have little to no difference on results and rewards.
The options for customizing a character through the skill tree are awesome: the options go far, far beyond just what is available to your class, so you can create a bow-wielding battle-mage or a magic-wielding, mace-favoring assassin regardless of what class choice you made. Seriously, every MMO should let you customize your character this way, rather than forcing you into 2-3 builds that work for your class. However, having played Skyrim, I wanted a customization tree that was as deep and customizable like Skyrim's.
Crafting is ok, but confusing. There are a lot of options, and you pick up a lot of crafting ingredients to do every craft. But it's not clear which one you should do. It's almost like I felt I had to do all of them because I had so many crafting ingredients. I ended up creating a lot of my own equipment, but I also just bought a bunch from vendors. Do I need to do this to max out my character? Yes? Maybe? No?
Which brings me to one of my biggest gripes: no game-wide auction house. I had a slew of junk that would be useful to someone else that was worthless to me. But you have to join guilds and then sell only to guildmates who want to buy your stuff. This is completely worthless, and provides absolutely no value to the game. I joined guilds just to get access to sell things in their stores, not to socialize or join a group. I ended up accumulating a stack of gold that I couldn't use to buy anything, and a stack of [crafting] items I couldn't use. There is no need for this crap in the game, and the designers should simply do away with it.
And speaking of crap, there are bots, and many of them. This is all over tons of articles, but it was never a big problem for me. It was annoying getting gold-spam, but at the same time, the spam was for selling me gold I couldn't use because there was no auction house. Why did botters/spammers choose this game to automate? Pretty dumb. It was fun to steal their kills, though.
I didn't get to level 50 before I started trying out PvP, but the game scales up your level. I was lucky to choose a "campaign" of PvP where my side was winning -- I would jump into the PvP area, try to find a group, and then run to where everyone was fighting. I liked that PvP was a viable way to earn skill points, stat points, and experience, which is rare for MMOs. You could just not do the usual PvE experience and still get to 50. However, I spent most, if not all, of my time in PvP running from a friendly-owned keep to a contested keep. Die, run back to battle for 10 minutes, die, repeat. Maybe there was some point to getting lots of PvP points, but I got nothing from it, so it was lost on me. Why would I spend my time on this? I guess to try to gamble on more items, but what a waste of time.
There also seemed to be few people around. I tried to do one of the earliest "group" dungeons, and I just couldn't find another living soul who wanted to do it...and I wasn't on a backwater server. Did the entire world already level up and skip this dungeon? It seemed so odd, considering in other MMOs (WoW) how the first group dungeon is packed and run by teams repeatedly. I guess ESO is just a ghost town.
Beyond that, there were "little bugs" that made it hard to play. Some characters that wouldn't follow or show up. Switching quickslot actions sometimes wouldn't work. Rewards for PvP were randomly worthless. It exposes rough edges that other MMOs have smoothed out.
I didn't renew my subscription to ESO. I don't care what happens to any of the characters in the story, and PvP is a repetitive grind at best. There are some cool ideas within: customizing specialization paths, but under the surface, it's not all that unique of an MMO.
I feel like reviewing ESO is almost cliche now, since it has been reviewed a gazillion times by a gazillion people. But I feel like I have to give an on-the-ground view of what the game is like for someone who has limited time to play: If you can only play when your kids are asleep, is it worth it? (perhaps I should make a series out of this kind of review?)
First, since I started up after the game launched, I did not have any of the pre-signup issues that people complained about. That said, I had the "premium" version that let me play a Breton in the Aldmeri Dominion (Elf-land). After creating my character and stumbling through the intro/training area, I started hunting around and doing quests in the starting area.
First, I'm glad the quests were not of the typical MMO variety ("kill 10 bears"), which grow boring quickly. However, quests are still mind-numbingly empty: simply click through all the discussion-tree options, and then follow the marker on the map to whatever you need to kill or examine. The story behind every quest is completely inconsequential -- just click through the options and you're done, who cares what they say or what the background of the problem is? Wash, rinse, repeat. They could fix this by simply removing the "goal marker" on the map and forcing people to read what they say. Even those quest choices that make you choose a permanent choice (usually "do you kill this person or not") have little to no difference on results and rewards.
The options for customizing a character through the skill tree are awesome: the options go far, far beyond just what is available to your class, so you can create a bow-wielding battle-mage or a magic-wielding, mace-favoring assassin regardless of what class choice you made. Seriously, every MMO should let you customize your character this way, rather than forcing you into 2-3 builds that work for your class. However, having played Skyrim, I wanted a customization tree that was as deep and customizable like Skyrim's.
Crafting is ok, but confusing. There are a lot of options, and you pick up a lot of crafting ingredients to do every craft. But it's not clear which one you should do. It's almost like I felt I had to do all of them because I had so many crafting ingredients. I ended up creating a lot of my own equipment, but I also just bought a bunch from vendors. Do I need to do this to max out my character? Yes? Maybe? No?
Which brings me to one of my biggest gripes: no game-wide auction house. I had a slew of junk that would be useful to someone else that was worthless to me. But you have to join guilds and then sell only to guildmates who want to buy your stuff. This is completely worthless, and provides absolutely no value to the game. I joined guilds just to get access to sell things in their stores, not to socialize or join a group. I ended up accumulating a stack of gold that I couldn't use to buy anything, and a stack of [crafting] items I couldn't use. There is no need for this crap in the game, and the designers should simply do away with it.
And speaking of crap, there are bots, and many of them. This is all over tons of articles, but it was never a big problem for me. It was annoying getting gold-spam, but at the same time, the spam was for selling me gold I couldn't use because there was no auction house. Why did botters/spammers choose this game to automate? Pretty dumb. It was fun to steal their kills, though.
I didn't get to level 50 before I started trying out PvP, but the game scales up your level. I was lucky to choose a "campaign" of PvP where my side was winning -- I would jump into the PvP area, try to find a group, and then run to where everyone was fighting. I liked that PvP was a viable way to earn skill points, stat points, and experience, which is rare for MMOs. You could just not do the usual PvE experience and still get to 50. However, I spent most, if not all, of my time in PvP running from a friendly-owned keep to a contested keep. Die, run back to battle for 10 minutes, die, repeat. Maybe there was some point to getting lots of PvP points, but I got nothing from it, so it was lost on me. Why would I spend my time on this? I guess to try to gamble on more items, but what a waste of time.
There also seemed to be few people around. I tried to do one of the earliest "group" dungeons, and I just couldn't find another living soul who wanted to do it...and I wasn't on a backwater server. Did the entire world already level up and skip this dungeon? It seemed so odd, considering in other MMOs (WoW) how the first group dungeon is packed and run by teams repeatedly. I guess ESO is just a ghost town.
Beyond that, there were "little bugs" that made it hard to play. Some characters that wouldn't follow or show up. Switching quickslot actions sometimes wouldn't work. Rewards for PvP were randomly worthless. It exposes rough edges that other MMOs have smoothed out.
I didn't renew my subscription to ESO. I don't care what happens to any of the characters in the story, and PvP is a repetitive grind at best. There are some cool ideas within: customizing specialization paths, but under the surface, it's not all that unique of an MMO.
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