+- Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net)
+-- Forum: Tendo City: Metropolitan District (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=42)
+--- Thread: Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive (/showthread.php?tid=3330)
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - N_A - 7th November 2005
I've been reading about the online gaming for the NDS games like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. Seems like Nintendo is ramping up privacy way too much that it restricts to this friends list. You can't even connect to other people unless you know them, and thats a particular drag, as with Animal Crossing. You can't just connect to random people like how most other online games work... What the hell ? How is anyone supposed to play online without so much grief ?
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - EdenMaster - 7th November 2005
That seems a bit odd. I'd been hearing a lot about McDonalds partnering with Nintendo to put Wifi hotspots specifically for use with DS systems to make finding a wireless opponent easier. This would seem to counteract that entire campaign.
If true, this is classic Nintendo shooting themselves in the foot.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 7th November 2005
Animal Crossing is the one that you can only connect to people if you give them your address. In Mario Kart there are ladders and stuff... but I don't think it has any form of ingame chat. And to add people to your "friends list" you need to enter in their long code number (that they are assigned by the game)... doesn't exactly seem like the most user-friendly interface... you're right that it seems like they started with the idea "we must insulate people from all the potential ills of online gaming (rude people, etc)" and took it too far by applying it to everyone in a somewhat annoying manner.
Oh yes, and to play at a non-official hotspot (that is, not one like the McDonald's ones that Nintendo has said will work), you might need a laptop with one of those Nintendo USB Router things to get it to work...
To make this easier, the Nintendo USB Routers are only going to be sold online.
Helpful, aren't they!
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - N_A - 8th November 2005
Hopefully, future games will relax these restrictions. I'm sure games like Worms DS among other 3rd party online games won't be as restrictive as Nintendo's and Nintendo will probably observe and see how much they can relax their privacy protection because it seems extremely annoying at this point.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 8th November 2005
http://www.planetgamecube.com/mailbag.cfm?action=profile&id=141
Animal Crossing: Must trade long numeric ID codes, or first connect in a local network (non-internet multiplayer), to be able to visit someone's town (play the game online). However, once in you can chat.
Mario Kart: Has random ladders and stuff, for online play against anyone -- but the "friends" list is, as far as I know, just those long numeric passwords, not actual names... unless it is, but I haven't heard that it is (some of the responses to questions in that link suggest that this isn't set yet). And there is no form of ingame chat whatsoever. Also, there is a four player maximum in online play, only 20 of the 32 tracks are available in internet play, you can't drag items behind the karts, and there is no battle mode (see link).
In both cases: You'll need a laptop and nintendo router to use wifi at pay hotspots that Nintendo doesn't have a specific deal with (McDonalds, etc).
Also, friends lists, etc, are seperate for every game, so being online in one won't show you online to people playing other ones, PGC says, so I guess there's no unified service...
Oh, and friend codes are based on both your system and gamecard, so you've got to use the same card in the same system for you to keep your same friend code (number).
On the non-wifi front, there also is no two player grand prix... but there are bots available in battle mode it sounds. :) And a wins counter, which helps make up for the lack of multiplayer circuits...
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Smoke - 8th November 2005
Well what did you expect? Nintendo has to protect their userbase from the online predators. Gotta protect the kiddies!
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 8th November 2005
Actually, that IS their line of reasoning. But it is stupid.
If you must, just password protect the online features of the game so the parents have to unlock it willingly. Make it that way from the start. Something simple, like "as an adult, what is the secret password to hidden magic adult land, that kids don't know actually exists?".
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Great Rumbler - 8th November 2005
Why would you want random idiots to come to your Animal Crossing town and potentially mess everything up?
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - N_A - 8th November 2005
You get to allow whomever you want and kick whomever you want from your town anyways, does it really matter ?
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 8th November 2005
Exactly. Though, I must ask, didn't GR at one point say that was something he was going to do the second he got the game? That is, run into other people's towns and wreck up the place?
Now, I plan on keeping officer barksley or whatever his name is on high alert for those of terrorist decent (wow, that's a loaded phrase, loaded with HATRED) or maybe just looking out for terrorists. I hardly want anyone ruining it. However, at the same time I would like to invite anyone I choose a lot more easily than basically swapping IP addresses. Why not simply add an option to "lock" or "unlock" your town? At the flip of a switch, you can make your town visitable by strangers or just not shown at all on the list of available towns.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Great Rumbler - 8th November 2005
A lot of people would abuse an open system, coming into people's town and wrecking everything before they get booted out. Animal Crossing is more of a social game than most, as it has very few actual goals to accomplish, and as such wouldn't you want people in your town that you actually KNEW?
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 8th November 2005
Not necessarially... I understand that there is more reason in Animal Crossing to want to restrict things in some way, but still, there has to be a better system than what they came up with...
Quote:Well what did you expect? Nintendo has to protect their userbase from the online predators. Gotta protect the kiddies!
That and the stuff they say about 'Japanese people not really liking online so convincing them that it's a harmless type of online play is helpful', etc... just more excuses about why they're being overcautious, really.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 8th November 2005
GR, you completely ignored what I said.
Read it again.
Quote:I hardly want anyone ruining it. However, at the same time I would like to invite anyone I choose a lot more easily than basically swapping IP addresses. Why not simply add an option to "lock" or "unlock" your town? At the flip of a switch, you can make your town visitable by strangers or just not shown at all on the list of available towns.
There, now that THAT is out of the way, let me explain something. Sure I want people I know, but I would also like the option of actually having some random people show up that I just might want to make friends with, or perhaps visit some random town. Mostly, I'd like to visit some sort of central "hub" where people talk to each other and can decide who to invite. It could be a trading port too, so that in-game item trading can happen on a pretty fast and exciting pace. There's no way you can say that would be a bad thing.
Remember my quote, and you will see any complaints about wrecking up the towns is made completely moot by incorporating a VERY simple little option.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 8th November 2005
Quote:However, at the same time I would like to invite anyone I choose a lot more easily than basically swapping IP addresses.
That's a good analogy, actually... this is like PC distance gaming, circa 1994 -- you know, like Doom or Warcraft II (the original version), where either you had to be on a network or know the other person's IP...
Did I mention that I played Warcraft II multiplayer via IP exactly once?
Yeah, it's not exactly the best system, really...
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 9th November 2005
Times you've played the first version of WC2 in multiplayer is equal to times I did the same. And that was what won me over about the game, a 3 way match of infinite power, wherein one person had only played one RTS before this, Dune 2, the building of a single player dynasty. I learned something that day. Humans are different. There's no load button.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 9th November 2005
And they let you build walls. :)
I did play original WCII multiplayer... once I discovered Zone.com (now mainly a site for flash games and stuff, but it used to be a real online gaming site) and its IPX emulation that let you play stuff like WCII over a gaming service... but that was a while later, at least summer '97, and maybe '98 or later, when I first did that (versus buying WCII in summer '96). But yeah, actual IP-to-IP? Just once.
I can't remember if I ever played any other game via IP, ever... hmm... maybe something once or twice sometime that I can't remember... but very, very rare. The hassle of coordinating the game is a major pain... it only works under certain circumstances which for someone like me were not at all realistic.
Here? Well, Mario Kart has random racing so there's that... but coordinating to play against actual people would be as much of a pain as it always is. This is where online services really help... I mean on PC you can just also be on IM so people can contact you as long as you're online (no matter what game you're playing), but there's nothing like that on a handheld console...
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 9th November 2005
When you say "random racing", do you mean you don't get any choice as to what vehicle you command or what track you race on? Now, a random option is nice, but it should never be forced. They don't do that in normal multiplayer, what possible excuse could justify that sort of thing on online multiplayer that doesn't apply to standard multiplayer? Oh and, I am familiar with this as the system link mode of Double Dash did this.
The lack of chat limits the rest of us just to keep Nintendo from being sued. They argued for so long that the fun of multiplayer was in the human interaction more than the actual competition. I can see a lot coming from there and I agree to an extent. So, why would they take out human interaction almost completely leaving just the competition? It's hypocritical, a contradiction, a logical inconsistancy. Again, why not just password protect the thing? The purchaser of the game will be provided with a little pamphlet with the needed password to unlock whatever chat they have in the game. The buyer then has the ability to decide if that feature will be unlocked or not. The buyer should always be the parent if the parent is to have any sort of moral restriction on what content their children will be exposed to. The child should never just be tossed a wad of cash and told to "buy whatever game they want". In this scenario, the parent is to blame in all cases where the child is somehow exposed to a cursing idiot online (that and the idiot). I DO think people should be punished for ignorance. Well, that isn't accurate. I suppose more accurately, people should be held accountable for WILLING ignorance, that is, the decision not to seek out information readily available. Life is an active process, it isn't automatic! One must ACT to achieve goals, not expect them to happen just by wishing for them to be so! The extension of that is a parent that wants their children guarded must be an active part of it. The parent should not expect the entire world to simply do the guarding for the parent so the parent no longer needs to worry or act towards that goal. This isn't to say the police don't have a role. They are an extension of acting to achieve protection, in this case, setting up a force to seek out and apprehend those who commit crimes. Just trying to have the government out and out ban content is not going to do any good. An undesired restriction like that is one that people will attempt to work around. Morality should function not as a restriction but rather as a logical means of obtaining goals. If it is merely thought of as restricting, any person with such a set of morals will simply weasel around such morals to attain their goals. If the moral is "no murder", as such, one may simply play a game of semantics if they truly want to get rid of someone but are suddenly "burdened" by such a rule. It's not murder, it's cleansing the infidels. Murder I now redefine as kililng whoever I think doesn't deserve it. And with a definition like that, murder could never actually be committed anyway, and so murder would be a nonexistant concept void of any meaning in the real world. The moral has simply been phased into something that doesn't get in the way. Rather, a moral should be something more along the lines of both a guideline of actions and an explanation of how said actions will aid one in their goals. Violence leads to counter violence, lowered moral in people around you, lowered happiness in them, and in turn, lowered cooperation with you, leading to more violence. In the end, ending of lives around you only leads to a lack of one's own goals. The emotional desire for those around you to be happy is fine, but this moral has to stand on logical grounds or it will collapse. In this case, realizing exactly how it aids you in your goals is assurance that so long as you stay rational minded, you will adhere to it. Huh, whatd'ya know, rational thinking CAN provide a moral framework, even if it lacks that emotional appeal when expressed in such a fasion.
Wait, where was I? Oh yes, if they want to protect their children, they need to act in a way that will truly protect them. It is not in the best interests of the child to simply teach them that reality will conform to their will on how it should operate. Therefor, it is not in the best interests of the child for the parent to act as though it does and get mad at Nintendo for not removing an option like in-game chat completely. Therefor, any parent trying to get angry at something like that is damaging the child more than helping it.
What do you think of this? Is there some critical flaw in my thinking here that reduces everything I said into what could easily be compaired to a burning bag on the front porch? You know, disgusting but begging for attention, and when someone finally listens and goes for it, they ruin their shoes.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 9th November 2005
Quote:When you say "random racing", do you mean you don't get any choice as to what vehicle you command or what track you race on? Now, a random option is nice, but it should never be forced. They don't do that in normal multiplayer, what possible excuse could justify that sort of thing on online multiplayer that doesn't apply to standard multiplayer? Oh and, I am familiar with this as the system link mode of Double Dash did this.
You presumably can choose your character/car, but I don't know about tracks... maybe, maybe not? Maybe yes in some modes no in others? That's not the most important issue, though... think of Warcraft III, where the main online mode is the ladder which plays on random maps. (Custom, of course, doesn't, but no one else does anything like Blizz's Custom mode, PC or otherwise.)
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - Dark Jaguar - 9th November 2005
No one does anything like Blizz's custom mode? You should play at least a few more games. That's the norm from what I've seen. Someone makes a game, people jump into the game from a list of currently "open" games, some countdown starts, if you are on XBConnect people say "don't rush the count!" and then the game starts. There are others that have constantly running games where people actually jump in and leave while the game just lasts forever, like some Battlefield servers. However, custom game making is the norm in the games I play.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - A Black Falcon - 9th November 2005
Custom/UMS mode. Map editor that lets you massively edit the game, and then run those maps online. Does anything else have anything like it?
Some FPSes maybe, but that requires serious programming, not just a map editor...
But has anyone made an FPS mod in which you play Tetris? :) Or how about Kart racing? Et cetera.
Nintendo's WiFi service way too restrictive - N_A - 9th November 2005
Parents are to blame for a lot of moral decline in children, but then the problem at the same time is that those children grow to be poor parents and perpetuate the cycle. At times, there is a need for a morally superior force to step in and intervene. I guess Nintendo wants to situate itself as one of those judicators, but at the same time, I'm sure they're trying to cover their asses, at least in the early phases of their online venture.
I think in the long run, Nintendo will relax its privacy protection, but I think early on, they don't want to be bogged down by lawsuits regarding this and that about predators online from the get go.