Preaching for pennies.

Written in response to the final episode of All Your History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3VqWJQIZg

End of a great YouTube series on gaming history. And now to share my own thoughts about the show.

1. I know the various people who were a part of the show still have ties to Machinima but to say that the the number of people who disliked the change in the show’s direction is a minority is a HUGE understatement. This is the only time I’ve ever seen an unpopular change in a YouTube series/channel result in:

• repeated downvotes (almost outnumbering the upvotes on a weekly basis which is unheard of),
• endless negative comments (deserved or not and oftentimes removed by Machinima even when comments were informative about the change in the show’s style),
• and a large enough drop in viewership (subscriber count + the effect of poorly liked shows on YouTube which will effect the parent channel) that a series was actually cancelled.

So let me make this clear. I have no negative feeling towards any of the show creators (even Chris Lockey), but saying the dislikes were a minority is being dishonest. Sure it may be a technical minority (< 50%) but it clearly was > 40% due to the like counts and comment ratio (and estimated drop in subscribers), but this group of fans deserve to be labelled as an important part of the viewership. Hell for all you know, the other 60% may be a 30/30 split between positive and neutral making the “minority” an actual majority. So don’t play the PR game and call those viewers a minority. Minorities do not get shows cancelled.

2. As a representative of the quiet masses who were willing to let Season 5 cook for a while before returning, I gotta say that yes, we noticed the change in Season 4. The main reason why many didn’t speak up about the slight change in style was because we saw it as a positive change and it did not deviate from the spirit of the show. As Brian & Brian combo even said, they mostly kept to the same style even though they made a few changes. It is human nature to be quiet and not speak up when changes aren’t bad.

Season 5, on the other hand, did not take a gradual approach. It made a huge change in style from the start which was bad for several reasons. Many of them are actually terrible business decisions so I’m not sure how those changes were approved.

1. Abrupt change with very little lead in will always generate harsh feedback. Unless you’ve tested your changes against focus groups to make sure they are actually positive in the long run, it is a terrible business idea to make such large changes at once. Examples? See any fucking big change to a website, TV Show, comic, etc. EVER. You use Facebook, right? Remember all those times they made huge changes to their UI, privacy settings, etc. and the negative feedbad that caused? Yeah, that is what you should expect. The difference between All Your History Season 5 and Facebook? Facebook does a shit load of testing and even does a small beta rollout to random users over time to fix things before going all out.
2. To cut staff down to one person and expect them to maintain quality is simply a poor business decision. It reeks of cost cutting and greed. The quality of every aspect of the show is guaranteed to go down by doing this so I’m not sure how Machinima expected the show to keep subscribers going into Season 5.
3. If you cut staff, it is generally a safe business decision to stick to the tried and true until changes stabilize. So telling Lockey to go with his style from the start is again, a terrible business decision. Example? I’ve been in 2 companies that downsized. During periods where we downsized, we put any huge features involving major changes to our product were delayed just so we could make sure we can maintain the same quality of our current product. It’s just safe business practice.
4. The changes to the show were across the board – intro, narrator, writing, show content/focus, and production style. If you are going to change everything, you might as well change the title too because that is all that is left of the spirit of the show. This is essentially a new series at this point so using the name “All Your History” is a pretty goddamn poor business decision. You are telling your fanbase to expect one thing while providing a completely different product. NOT SMART BUSINESS!

Seriously, I 100% bet that if Machinima allowed Brian & Brian to continue the show using whatever hypothetical changes they wanted to make, the change in narrator to Chris Lockey would not have been all that negative. In fact, since those two proved they understand the audience, I bet their changes would have worked out in the long run and have had a better chance at increasing viewership (clearly the goal of Machinima). So I’m very curious to hear from Machinima why those two were not allowed to execute their vision for Season 5.

3. I can tell that some of the people previously involved with making All Your History did not agree with the changes either. Of course, their responses are going to be politically safe and not bash the show outright but your feelings show in your responses when taken as a whole. It’s not my place to tell you how to answer questions, but I will say this, “Thank you for putting your heart and soul into the show.”

Bet you didn’t expect that right? Seriously, thank you guys for making the show. Anyone asking you guys to come back are being selfish. Hell, Chris Lockey probably isn’t that bad a guy and even I most likely fall on the “dislike” him side of his polarizing personality. However, it’s not his fault. If there is anyone to blame, I put the blame solely on Machinima for making poor business decisions that anyone with half a brain could tell would lead to the death of the show. So fuck you Machinima!

4. As a response to mainy of the YouTube commenters who are angry at seeing the show end – guess what? Ending the show was the goal of the negative fanbase. After the first few episodes, the responses illicited from Lockey and Talbert, and the realization that the changes were here to stay, negative fans decided that taking the dog out back and shooting it was the most humane thing to do. And that is why the dislikes and negative comments kept rolling in. No one is sorry that the show was cancelled. That was the goal. If you are going to be angry at anyone, be angry at Machinima for all the reasons I stated above. The show was primed for failure and that is what happened.

5. Lastly, I’d like to point out a key “draw in” factor about the show that the creators, crew, YouTube commenters, and really everyone missed. I haven’t seen a single person post this yet. As much as the style, informative nature of the show, narration, and quality were important to the show’s success, there is one other factor that drew in AND kept the current audience. Nostalgia. This is a show about gaming history. One of the things viewers of our type enjoy is reliving games from our past, learning things we didn’t know about them, and hearing about what the legacy of those games ended up being. Current games are simply not going to be as interesting to watch in a documentary as games from the past because nostalgia hasn’t built up and you aren’t going to be able to draw any good conclusions about the legacy of those games.

The fact that no one has brought this up in the final two episodes is a bit disappointing. It makes me think that everyone avoided pointing this out because it would show how big a fuck up Season 5 was because the shift in style ignored this very important “draw in” factor about the series. It is why the style from Season 1-4 was so successful. Keeping an old school feel was essential to providing the type of atmosphere that made viewers feel like they were reliving their past. I feel like this change was something one or two people were itching to say but didn’t for PR reasons (and I’m ok with that). But I feel like this really needs to be said and should be something for the clueless business people at Machinima to think about.

For my final farewell to All Your History, I’ll say one last thing:

“Thank you for being the most informative gaming history show I’ve ever watched. It is rare for a show to be both entertaining and enlightening but you managed to stick to fulfilling those two principles for 4 full seasons. That is amazing and this series will be sorely missed.”

Like most people, I’m following the PlayStation 2013 Event (albeit, filtered via Reddit updates) for news about what Sony has in store for us in 2013. And it’s interesting.

The rumored (leaked?) prices for the PlayStation 4 are $429 and $529. If true, that means the next gen consoles have finally entered into PC level pricing. Combine this with the move to x86, which will make it far easier for gamedevs of all levels (indie, AAA studios, etc.) to create cross-platform console/PC games, and potential up and coming consoles will have a much greater range of strategies to use to compete with PS4 and probably whatever Microsoft decides to come out with next for the Xbox. Specifically, the two big players to watch are the OUYA and SteamBox.

The OUYA is already clearly going to undercut the PS4 as it targets the market for low end and indie games. They are far cheaper as a console and much more portable making it easy to use as a LAN system. It will be interesting to see if the ability to play locally with friends can beat out playing over the net (the clear move Sony is making with the share button on their controller). In addition, gamedevs now have an interesting targeting choice for their primary platform – develop cheaply on the OUYA or put in cash to develop on Sony (which should be easier with the move to x86 but there is still a publishing cost associated with Sony). Indie devs will probably target the former while AAA studios stick with the latter mainly due to the impossibility of running AAA titles on an OUYA based on startup costs. However, it is full possible that there will be a shift for the AAA studios over the next few console generations depending on the performance of the SteamBox.

The SteamBox is really just a PC under the hood. Early prototypes have already shown that they are targeting a small, portable form factor which will head on compete with the OUYA in terms of group play. However, they also have the Steam network built in which will allow them to compete, and in my opinion, trump Sony’s services. This leaves Sony to compete with the SteamBox on price and hardware platform to garner the attention of both gamedevs and consumers. Unlike the OUYA, which uses an ARM CPU, the SteamBox is most certainly going to use an x86 compatible CPU like the PS4. This will make it much easier for gamedevs to create cross-platform games on both the SteamBox (PC) and the PS4. Because of this, there is a very good chance that both indies and AAA studios will target both platforms by keeping the majority of their code base portable and using Greenlight as a measuring stick to see if polishing the game (porting any non-compatible code, testing, and control tweaks) for the PC is worth the cost. This puts the PS4 in a position of competing with hardware; a losing position in my opinion as the SteamBox now has plenty of pricing breathing room to outspec (or undercut) the PS4.

With Sony’s admitted failure of the Cell on the PS3, they realized that gamedevs have far more power over the success of their platform and that their name will not hold strong forever. So their move to x86 is both an indicator that they will concede power to gamedevs, and in a bigger move, Sony will be banking their future on their hardware platform and services (really, more the services than hardware). This isn’t a bad move as the very calculated risk can have great long term rewards for the company if pulled off well. By using their current market position, they can maintain a healthy lead in premier titles over unproven consoles (seen by having launch titles such as Destiny, Final Fantasy, and even Diablo III!) while at the same time repairing or building up good relationships with AAA studios. If they can use their market position to buy time to fix all the issues with their gaming & social services before their next gen console is released (most certainly going to completely close the console-PC gap for specs per price), then they can close the gap or overtake the Xbox (superior multiplayer) and Steam (superior social) as the gaming platform of choice. A very profitable market as everyone is moving to the online purchasing model (goodbye retailers, aka: GameStop).

On the flip side, if the SteamBox (or OUYA – unlikely) can draw indies and AAA studios to their platform, then this may mark the beginning of the era where consumers begin moving towards the PC as their gaming platform of choice.

Of course, this is all speculation and very much based on how the big AAA companies decide to move in terms of target platforms. This of course is based on how consumers will see the PS4 and either balk or swallow the price tag. Very circular but this definitely puts the standalone console market into interesting times as the way the next few years play out will definitely be discussed by and analyzed by the industry as a major turning point for consoles or explanation on why PCs failed.

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Why PCs failed? Wait what? Yes, this article doesn’t end here. There are a few other major players (aside from Xbox – the main competitor to Sony and potential industry changer) that can change the entire gaming ecosystem. They are iOS and Android (and maybe Ubuntu; we’ll see how they do. Random aside: I’ll write about Ubuntu in the future as I already switched my gaming desktop away from Win7 to test how well Ubuntu holds up now with Steam.). Yes, I’m talking about the mobile market (phones, tablets). They have already made a clear impact in the handheld gaming market previously dominated by Nintendo and only partially dented by Sony. Especially since Sony is again copying Nintendo and merging the PS Vita play experience with their console, the PS4. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular as casual gaming devices and if they can garner enough power, they may become a better platform for AAA gaming in the future due to their “play anywhere” capabilities (this will require innovation in gameplay but I’m certain this will happen). If this happens before the SteamBox can take flight (or after the SteamBox gets crushed by consoles), then PC gaming has a very good chance of straight up dying for the mainstream. Yes, there will always be a lot of PC gamers but the market will forever remain a niche as future games will increasingly move to other devices. Imagine if you can have great MMO gameplay on a mobile device that isn’t a clunky laptop. The social capabilities are endless.

So this may also mark the beginning of a shift in competing platforms from consoles vs PCs to consoles vs mobile (phones, tablets, and I forgot to mention, the web).

Speaking of casual gaming and mobile platforms, Nintendo is (and has been for a while) in a crazy interesting position. They clearly target a different kind of consumer – casual gamers of all ages. Their core market already doesn’t see a standard PC as an alternative because of the nature of their games (Wii still beats the Kinect and PS Move) and how family friendly their franchises are (Mario, Kirby, etc.). Mobile is their only threat which is why the Wii U was created (a clear counter to the growing mobile platform by making it so you can mobile style games on the Nintendo but with more gameplay design choices). The only thing holding them back from creating a stranglehold on that section of the market (and potentially crippling mobile platforms from competing with consoles & PCs) is how hard it is for gamedevs to create games for Nintendo. It will be interesting to see what moves Nintendo makes after seeing Sony move to x86 and giving up so much power to gamedevs.

DE rewrites fail due to many obvious reasons – bugs, new workflow, new paradigm, etc. But one of the less obvious failures is that a mature DE has had time to implement features and fixes for various corner cases. Things that effect maybe 1% of your userbase. When DEs go through a rewrite or complete redesign, a lot of those features are tossed aside and labeled as something to be worked on later. GNOME 3 has so far failed at addressing this. Instead they are relying on their Extensions framework as a way to try and rectify corner cases. This is poor, no actually, completely irresponsible design on their part. And this is why.

Corner cases are by definition a problem that effects very few users. The chances of a user within that small percentage being able to design, code, and maintain a solution for a particular use case is so infinitesimally small that it isn’t a proper solution. Then you add in the fact that GNOME 3 hasn’t found a way to not break extensions at each update and you get a 1% of users that cannot function using your DE.

Ok, so 1% is small. No biggie. This is a stupid way of thinking. You have to remember that there are various, sometimes overlapping, groups of 1% corner cases that cannot use your DE. All of these tiny groups add up to a very large percentage of inconvenienced users. Hence why GNOME Shell gets so much flak. You piss off every vocal minority group and offer no help to resolve their issues. Even going to far as to claim some are invalid (shutdown option debacle). These situations can be handled much better (Cinnamon is doing a great job of acknowledging concerns and Unity is at least better at this than GNOME, though not perfect) and until they are, I think GNOME Shell will eventually cause so much fragmentation in Linux DEs that Linux will never be able to catch up to Microsoft or even Apple in popularity. With Steam on Linux coming out soon, we have an opportunity to grain ground in the desktop space but with so many flat out idiots running crucial projects in Linux, I’m afraid we will blow out chance to maximize this opportunity.

Here’s to hoping one of the following groups pulls off a miracle during this crucial 1 year time frame – Canonical with Unity, Linux Mint with Cinnamon, anyone with KDE, and elementary with Pantheon. These are the people I’m pinning my hopes on (and I say this as an XFCE/Compiz user). I hope one of them manages to catch up to GNOME 2′s feature set and overall polish/simplicity this year. If not, Linux will forever remain a non-factor in desktop computing.

Disclaimer: I wrote this in a single, several hour long session without doing any editing or research. These are simply opinions that I felt like shouting out to the world. If you disagree, agree, or have suggestions on expanding this, feel free to comment below.

I’ve been thinking about why it is so hard to convince people to move to or even just try Linux whereas people are much more open to the idea of using OS X. Of course there are the usual suspects like gaming. But with Steam arriving on Linux, there are almost no games that my friends play that isn’t playable on Linux. Or drivers, but that has been a slowly improving situation. So long as you pick certified hardware, then this isn’t an issue. Then you have marketing creating misconceptions, but quick demos and a recommendation from the guy who fixes all their computers easily dismisses those incorrect notions. And of course there is the “I don’t want to reinstall everything” excuse. However, I’m only suggesting this to people getting new hardware and simply suggesting they try it out on a Live CD or VM (which I will setup). And yet, it is still very hard to change people’s minds. So what is it that Linux lacks or what scares people away from even trying Linux? I think it all comes down to stability, predictability, and support.

Stability

Let’s first look at stability. No, not stability in the sense of the computer crashing (BSOD anyone?) but rather in the sense of environment stability. In all major, popular versions of Windows (95, XP, 7, and perhaps 8 in the future), the desktop environment (I’m including the window manager, file manager, and absolute basics in here.) has been rock solid stable. There are very few bugs noticeable to the normal user. Windows itself may crash but Windows Explorer has been one of the least buggy interfaces I’ve ever used. Compare this with the primary default DEs in major Linux distros – GNOME, KDE, Unity, and Cinnamon. Also look at some other non-scary to Windows users DEs – XFCE, LXDE, Pantheon (Elementary OS’s DE). Out of all of these distros, how many have been the paragon of stability over the past 5, 10, 15 years?

GNOME 2.x – As much as I loved GNOME 2.x (with or without Compiz), it wasn’t exactly bug free. It was stable by time I started using it but I still ran into a lot of bugs that made me think, wtf? While it outpaced Windows Explorer in features, those new features often brought with it endless amount of annoying bugs.

GNOME 3.x – I like the idea of GNOME Shell but have been adamant since release that it was released too early. 3.0 should have been an Alpha test and they should have only moved this to a Beta after a few releases with extensions in place. Even now, they aren’t anywhere near RC state. For anyone who wants stability, I would steer clear of GNOME Shell. Too many bugs and too much jumping before thinking with how they handled extensions (who here has out of date extensions after upgrading?).

KDE 3.x – I wasn’t around for this so no comment here. However, the fact that it was dumped for a complete rewrite in KDE 4.x will be covered in my support section.

KDE 4.x – I tried this out when it was new and damn was that shit buggy. I’ve tried it on an off for years and I will say that it is fairly stable now. However, it does have performance issues and the sane defaults set by most major distros don’t make it standout from Windows Explorer because Windows 7 copied features from KDE (and did it without stability issues to boot). For KDE 4.x to really shine, you need distros to thoroughly customize KDE to vastly outshine Windows 7. This is possible but I have never seen any distro come out of the box with 1) well designed eye-candy settings that mesh super well like in Pantheon and 2) an easy to understand walkthrough of how to use the DE features in KDE. I’ve attempted doing both but for someone not well versed in KDE, the plethora of settings is just too overwhelming to wade through and create a polished DE.

Unity – I will admit, I like Unity because it is setup similar to how I use most of my DEs (launcher on side). However, this has the same problems as GNOME Shell in that it is still too buggy to use or suggest.

Cinnamon – I like the direction this is going but there is still a TON of polish and basic bugs that need to be ironed out before I would suggest this to someone coming from Windows. Hell, the text cursor in the menu still doesn’t blink and we are already at version 1.6. What is up with that?

XFCE – Version 4.10 finally caught up with Windows 7 (aero-snap) and Thunar 1.6 finally had them outshine Windows Explorer with tab support. However, as a full-time XFCE user, I will say that this environment is not 100% better than Windows 7. It is about even on features and stability. So telling friends to try out XFCE isn’t going to convince them to change.

LXDE – Same boat as XFCE but fits a slightly different niche. I wouldn’t except using this to convince anyone to use Linux over Windows.

Pantheon – The most interesting of the new DEs that I have been following since inception. It is still too new though and only recently went to Beta status, so again I wouldn’t suggest this to people who want a stable DE.

Looking at all of these DEs, it is clear that Linux is on the front of innovation. The problem with that is that too many bugs are introduced that screw with the user experience. If you pick a stable DE, then you end up with a situation where Linux is simply on par with Windows. And finally, the last piece of the puzzle – OS X. This DE takes a middle ground between Windows and Linux – it slightly more innovative than Windows, much more polished than Linux, and crazy stable like Windows. While it does require a paradigm shift to switch to OS X, users are content knowing that things will work as they expect. This is what will be needed by Linux DEs to convince users to switch away from Windows.

Predictability

While innovation is great, it is clear that stability is more important. What innovation that does get introduced though, must be predictable. Both Windows and OS X only introduce new features that have been thoroughly tested by focus groups and tweaked to seamlessly integrate with the current DE. Innovation in Linux is like the wild wild west. New stuff is being implemented all the time but you have no idea where things are headed. In fact, it is often the case that Windows and OS X simply take the most popular new features in Linux, test it into the ground with focus groups, and then implement it in a super stable way months/years down the road. They are basically Debian but much faster. To give an example of what I mean, let’s walk through the DEs again.

GNOME 2.x – Very predictable. Nice! But it is no longer supported which leads to my third issue discussed later.

GNOME 3.x – Very unpredictable. Boo! In fact, this is the least predictable of all DEs I have ever encountered in my life. With each release, I have no idea what will change and what muscle memory I will need to retrain to use this DE.

KDE 3.x – Same comment as above.

KDE 4.x – Very predictable. Nice! But there is no tutorial to teach you what everything in the DE does. Seriously, I’ve looked everywhere for one and the information out there is simply too sparse and contains too few examples for anyone to learn KDE without trying everything out themselves.

Unity – Sort of predictable but Cannonical has shown that they aren’t afraid of making fairly big changes to the GUI (moving the min/max/close buttons anyone?). Since this DE is still fairly new, I would be afraid of suggesting it to anyone for fear that other big changes are in store.

Cinnamon, XFCE, LXDE, Pantheon – All very predictable. Nice! In fact, the reason why they are predictable is because it is easy to be predictable when a DE focuses on simplicity and getting a few things right at a time.

So we have a few candidates here which can be both innovative and predictable. However, they all fail the stability test above which is fairly important. They are also fairly young in most cases and that leads to my final problem.

Support

Let’s first get this out of the way. Microsoft is clearly not the paragon of support. Neither are the Linux Communities with the differing personalities leading the various software projects. I don’t know about Apple so I won’t comment on them. What I mean by support is expected longevity and ease of upgrade.

Windows generally doesn’t upgrade all that often and when it does, they are major upgrades that people expect to be a painful upgrade process (e.g., anything dealing with reinstallation). What they do well is that their OSes don’t have many major releases. Instead, you just continually get updates for as long as Windows is supported, which for Windows is a VERY long time. Hell, my older brother still uses Windows XP. Combined with how software updates don’t just stop on Windows, you can technically have the most recent version of all your software at all times on supported versions of Windows.

Apple, from what I understand, is an easy to upgrade system. In fact, I believe upgrading major versions is less painful than on Windows 7 and their support in helping you migrate is top notch. They are (fairly close to?) the ideal half-rolling release model.

Then there is Linux. You have a choice of normal release models (Ubuntu, Debian stable, Fedora, etc.) similar to Windows, half-rolling release models (Debian Testing, Chakra Linux, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, etc.) similar to OS X, and rolling release models (Arch, Gentoo, etc.). For each of these major models, I will break down the issues users have with Linux:

Normal Release Model – Updates are either too frequent (Ubuntu, Fedora) or too slow (Debian stable). Neither of these would be issues except for the fact that 1) software updates often slow down to a crawl or stop (Ubuntu PPAs alleviate this issue but you are at mercy of the maintainer) and 2) support even for LTS versions has never matched the longevity of Windows support. As someone who has used an LTS to end-of-life and simply never reinstalled (I get no updates on my netbook anymore), I will say that it sucks because all the repos die. Unlike Windows, it is a pain in the ass to install “new” (really old versions of software that is supported on your OS but must be manually compiled because repos are gone) software due to hunting down dependencies and compiling manually. Even if Win 95 isn’t supported anymore, it is still easy to install software so long as you get the installer.

Half-Rolling Release Model – This has the least problems for Linux. In fact, I would consider this to be a very good tradeoff if it weren’t for this issue – software updates tend to stop coming along with the core updates. So while Windows and OS X are getting the latest versions of software, Linux ends up lagging behind. Chakra Linux is the only candidate that seems to do this right BUT they are not a stable distro. Their main issue is that they still haven’t released a GUI updater that is able to handle major upgrades without user intervention. Everything is still command line and involves editing of files (they derive from Arch so they have the same pain points of doing manual file editing when something in the core changes). LMDE, meanwhile, has a great updater but is based off of Debian Testing which is embarrassingly slow at getting software updates.

Rolling Release Model – Nothing like Windows or OS X and would blow them out of the water IF it were stable. Always having the latest and greatest is an issue because you don’t know how well a given piece of software is tested. As an Arch user, I’ll give a very recent example I had and still cannot solve. Ibus was upgraded in the Arch repos to an unstable version because GNOME 3.x did something to make the previous version of Ibus incompatible with it. Of course, the unstable version is… well, UNSTABLE. It literally does not work in all but one use case (Japanese Anthy) and even then, that is the only part of the software that works. Every other feature (configuration, appearance, etc.) is broken. Solution? None. You have to find a way to roll back to a stable version while resolving the dependency rollback yourself. All of this is manual and all of this is painful. Last point to make is that rolling release distros tend not to have any sort of easy to use graphical updater due to the nature of the model.

You can see that Linux is tantalizingly close to having a great model for releases, but none of them are perfect. They all fall short in major ways that make both Windows and Apple standout as competitors. But this isn’t the worst part about Linux support. What really stings is when the support for your DE dies before your distro does. Specifically:

GNOME – Support for 2.x ended and while stable, it isn’t bug free like Windows Explorer or OS X. This includes software like Nautilus. While Debian Wheezy will have GNOME 3.x,  Squeeze still has 2.x and there likely won’t be any way to upgrade it without upgrading the entire OS. MATE is an attempt at keeping this alive but that isn’t exactly bug free either. You can make endless comparisons about how Windows is worse than even GNOME 2.x, but all users of XP, 7, and eventually 8, will know that bug fixes won’t suddenly end before the OS itself is unsupported. This tying together of distro and DE support is something GNOME does not have and because of it, they should take into consideration end user usage instead of selfishly doing what’s best for the GNOME project. Hence why I still believe GNOME 3.x should be an alpha/beta instead of an actual released DE.

KDE – This is where the 3.x to 4.x move bothers me. Full rewrites are never bug free and often much buggier for a few years after release. The fact that KDE pulled the same thing as GNOME and released a fairly unstable 4.x line without maintaining the 3.x line simultaneously is something that really would have screwed end users. Again, they have no distro to tie support to (NetRunner and Kubuntu are close as they are sponsored by Blue Systems but there is no official KDE distro) so they really should consider end users over their own project’s interests. Trinity did pick up the 3.x line to continue support, but just like MATE, it isn’t exactly a good alternative except in the short term. Users will not want to deal with the hassle of converting to Trinity or MATE until the new line (4.x and 3.x respectively) becomes stable a few years down the road.

But there is hope. Outside of the big 2 (GNOME and KDE), there are other distros maintaining their own DE which means updates forever on their LTS versions. Unity, Cinnamon, and Pantheon all fall under this and for any user using those three, being able to see the DE slowly improve without having to upgrade the base OS is great. However, the keyword here is improve. As mentioned earlier, none of these DEs are stable enough to be suggested as alternatives to Windows or OS X.

Then there are the simple, stable DEs – XFCE, LXDE. Both of these are pretty distro independent and their updates are fully dependent on which release model you follow. But as mentioned earlier, they aren’t good candidates because they don’t offer a clear improvement over Windows or OS X.

So there you have it. Why Windows and OS X beat out Linux even after decades of innovation. I still have hope that the community will eventually get it right (heck, even I’ve been trying to find the right combination of software to make an unbreakable XFCE Archlinux desktop) but who knows when that will happen. For now, I’ll continue following these distros in hopes that one of these will make that next big step into being THE perfect Linux distro. One with all of the right pros and none of the crushing cons.

• Linux Mint / Linux Mint Debian Edition w/ Cinnamon DE
• Ubuntu w/ Unity DE
• Chakra Linux w/ KDE
• Elementary OS w/ Pantheon DE

I have been following all of those since they’ve been created and the future looks bright. Let’s just hope it isn’t far away.

This game is all about farming, but end game farming is boring because:

1. Leveling is so easy that you don’t need to save up mid-range gear. You can get to 60 without much difficulty and on gear you get while playing. This means that there is no need for twinked characters to help them level up to equip endgame gear for the final grind. This kills the excitement players get from finding any good low or mid game gear. Hence why the AH is all about finding the best of the best and anything less just sucks (even if it is good).

2. No custom character builds (or rather, the options are very limited) cause niche items to simply not exist. This is compounded by how most weapons are interchangable no matter what skills you use (any 1 handed weapon is fine on a monk). Since no one is making a Dream Sorc or a Ranger Paladin in DIII, you won’t be finding any whacky items that may make people go, “I want to make X character build using this item.” This further reduces the chances of someone finding an item and going, “Not the best but cool!”

3. No stat points reduces the utility players get out of certain item modifiers. Finding a nice low req, high str/dex item in DII was much cooler than finding a similar item in DIII. This combines with #1 and #2 in that you don’t need such items to help you super twink a character for faster leveling.

4. Reduction in endgame goals has reduced DIII farming into a single goal – finding the ideal set of equipment for any character. In DII, you can get to the endgame and do many things:
farm for cool items
try to get to 99 in the ladder race
PvP
hunt Ubers
PK
goldfind for gambling
farm for crafting items
In DIII, your equivalent options are:
farm for top notch items
goldfind for buying on the AH
farm to craft items

As mentioned, farming is a lot less exciting because you are getting more “trash” now than in DII because of the limited utility from many stat modifiers. It should be obvious that goldfinding for gambling is much more exciting than for buying on the AH. Lastly, crafting is very different in DIII than in DII because the items you need to craft are a lot less varied. It also overlaps heavily with farming for good items in that any trash you find can be salvaged.

Then there are the missing endgame goals. No ladder means that you don’t need awesome items to clear areas faster for better exp. No PvP means you don’t need to look for specialized PvP gear. What you need items for are beating Inferno (once) and for faster farming. Since Inferno can only be so hard, that means you only need gear that is “good enough” because the game requires little to no skill to play (bosses and monsters are easy to read). Meanwhile for farming, if you are farming for better farming gear, it ends up being VERY pointless.
Thus you only have 2 endgame objectives to make the game “fun” of which one of them requires sitting in front of the AH looking for that exact item you want/need and the other is to farm just enough to beat the game.
Or… you farm for items to sell and make real world money.

5. The new stat point design, while nice in that it makes it easier for casuals, does not resolve the ultimate problem with DII stats – everyone still pumps vit and occasionally a primary (dex for zons, dex for block, strength for gear). DIII ends up being worse in that characters are so reliant on damage that they must pump their primary stat along with vit. Everything else is useless (def from str is pitiful, res from int is also pitiful, dodge from dex is pitiful). The further compounds the “stats rule all” theory I have for items in DIII. Everything else (save for a few useful mods like mf, all res, crit, leech, and attack speed) is useless. Then again, I haven’t seen enough other mods to know what else exists.

Overall, I’d describe the endgame goal of farming as… weird based on how Blizzard designed the game. There isn’t enough content right now to merit farming other than to make money. I just don’t see what the point is in farming with the current game.