FIRST!

APRIL FOOLS

[Edited on April 1, 2010 at 12:07 AM. Reason : YOU GULLIBLE BITCHES]

4/1/2010 12:04:43 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 12:06:00 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 12:06:37 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 12:08:10 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 12:10:01 AM

4/1/2010 12:19:22 AM

HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN A HOT CHICK WORKING AT A TACO BELL????

4/1/2010 12:33:31 AM

I've never seen a white person working at Taco Bell.

4/1/2010 12:42:09 AM

ive gone into taco bells where it didnt seem like anyone was working at all

4/1/2010 12:42:55 AM

Once in western Texas the Taco Bell only had white chicks in it. With wonderful accents. Next road trip i go on i will definitely try to find that store, the chicks were all hot...

4/1/2010 1:43:44 AM

I realize this thread is about Lee Fowler....which I do not dispute. Hear me out, maybe I can offer some insight.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2010. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really)

Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors.

Local distributor disadvantages: easily beaten in price, array of commodities, array of technology, lack of trained staff, low cash flow, etc etc etc.

This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small.

I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.

4/1/2010 1:59:50 AM

lol

4/1/2010 2:05:33 AM

Some things I've gathered from reading up on/watching videos/watching a friend play the game (played a bit, but there's honestly not much difference between playing and watching):

The game was developed by a team led by the guy that made FF: Advent Children (Yoshinori Kitase... he has directed many past FF games, but this is one of the first times he's been given almost complete production control), and he's publicly announced that he didn't really think he was making an RPG, but more like something in a "new genre"...

Unfortunately his new genre seems to be interactive-combat-movie... and there were a few critical assumptions made that just didn't pay off. They assumed that people would care about the characters right off the bat, before getting to know them... so fairly early-on, people were given scenes meant to have an emotional impact before they were given any reason to care. They assume that players will automatically care about the world in which the game is set, even though during gameplay sequences, all they are ever shown of it is continuous hallways until late in the game. They assumed that anyone playing the game would take a deep interest in everything about it: You're expected to know something about the characters/setting/plot before the game ever begins, and you're expected to look in the Datalog as the game progresses (which is retarded). In many of these ways, the game was developed with a certain niche market in mind despite being Final Fucking Fantasy, one of the most popular and well-known franchises ever.

The game was designed linearly, which isn't a bad trait in and of itself, but apparently the studio entirely forgot to hire a level designer. Linearity to advance the plot a certain way is not bad, but it IS bad when something is linear to the point that it eliminates variety and entertaining gameplay. One could argue that the first 10 hours of almost any Final Fantasy game are very linear (with some exceptions), as you are funneled from town to field to dungeon as the plot demands... but there are branching paths in all of those things, and everyone has a slightly different experience (mostly ensured by random spawns, but variety is still possible with fixed enemies... for an example, see: Tales of Vesperia). The first 10 hours of FFXIII, with the exception of only one large room and occasionally small dead-ends, are comprised ENTIRELY of single-path hallways. Here is a map (spoiler-free): http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/192/ffxiiimap.jpg

As for the combat system... the system itself is phenomenally good. It demonstrates how to streamline a system without removing all depth. Unfortunately, it is implemented as poorly as possible... once again, it seems as though the studio forgot to hire level designers for the combat. The first 10 chapters of the game introduce concepts to you item-by-item, and then expect you to learn them through a lot of repetition. Besides some degree of monotony, they were so afraid that you might not understand that they hold your hand and turn down the difficulty for almost all of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Auto-Battle/ATB system (or whatever it's called), but when virtually every normal fight consists entirely of hitting X on Auto-Battle every time it pops up, the gameplay stagnates. The game forces you to pay attention and keep hitting the button, but it does very little to actually involve you in what is happening, and this is almost entirely the fault of the people who designed the monsters/fights. As for boss battles, many of them suffer the opposite problem from standard monsters... If you can't just flat-out auto-battle your way through them mindlessly, then there's generally one specific method that the designers want you to find out about that will let you win while most other strategies will get you killed. It adds variety, but the contrast is so stark that you either end up bored or frustrated with little room for fun in between.

Ideally, in an RPG, a player should want to continue gameplay to progress the story, but the gameplay should also be compelling enough that players want to continue the story so that it advances the gameplay as well (in simpler terms, fighting things to find out what happens next, but also wanting to get to new areas to be able to fight more new and different things). In FFXIII, in many ways, the gameplay comes off as an annoying necessity that just gets in the way between cut-scenes... It comes across as though the developers felt this way too... pesky gameplay, getting in the way of their movie. Players DO want to progress the story for new and different gameplay, but this is because they're disappointed and hoping that it gets better later (even the 10/10 reviews acknowledged that the game is slow, boring, and easy for the first 20 hours, making their overall rating kind of... questionable).

Everything about the first 2/3 or so of the game is so on-rails that the player can't feel much sense of accomplishment or involvement in what is going on... Why feel good about beating X boss when everything is so constrained that everyone else did it the exact same way, and it's simply what you're expected to do? In FF games, typically the player can feel involved and accomplished, because what they've experienced has mostly been their own... at the very least, there is at least an illusion of customization in the others. This can have surprisingly far-reaching consequences... people care about their party members not just from the dialog and character development, but also because the characters are a part of their party... the player has put some effort into making these characters not only stronger but also somewhat unique (again, this is sometimes just the illusion of customization, but it's still valuable), so they have even reason to care about what happens to them. FFXIII, on the other hand, expects players to care simply because the characters are in a Final Fantasy game and assumes that is the end of that... again, the game is so constrained that one player's characters are going to look almost identical to those of another player, which subtly reduces the value that the player places on those party members.

Plot-wise, I won't say much. This is meant as an objective review, and with characters and elements that players either love or hate, it's hard to quantify anything. Vanille, for example, was described by one player/reviewer as (paraphrased) "perfectly cast... lovable and cute in all the right ways." Another reviewer explained Vanille as "an abuse of the 'cute anime girl' cliche, voiced and scripted as obnoxiously as possible." I can't really say anything objective about her when some people wanted to hug her and others wanted to throw her off a cliff... besides perhaps that the characters are polarizing. The dialog, while not bad, maintains just enough cultural distance in the translation as to feel unrealistic to the player... for example, the words "Fal'cie, L'cie, Focus, Cocoon, Pulse, etc" are used so often that it becomes a notable over-use (largely due to issues inherent in translation... reluctance/ignorance of pronoun use and variety of phrasing).

Characters are very well-characterized (albeit through the relatively lazy method of flashbacks), but they experience virtually no character development. Also, the game lacks persistent plot-relevant NPCs and only just barely has a main villain. Basically the entire game, character-wise, is just the party members and their static personalities. These absences mean that the game has lost two huge elements of most FF stories: Character development and a villain/villains. Development-wise... Cloud matures in 7. Cecil becomes a paladin and develops morals in 4 (to say nothing of everything that Kain goes through). 5 and 6 feature a ton of this stuff, as well. Changing and maturing characters are important for an engaging and "epic" story such as the ones FF games always want to tell, but FXIII features relatively little of this. Also, villains are often some people's favorite parts of an FF game... Kefka was iconic, Sephiroth was more beloved by players than half of the party characters, and even if their motivation was simply "evil" or "nihilism", villains in FF games have almost universally been very strong characters. Again, FFXIII barely even has a main villain.

The graphics are phenomenally good, but graphics don't make a game... especially not a Final Fantasy game. When someone can get a more satisfying and emotional experience watching polygon-Cloud and friends or with sprites on the SNES, it really doesn't matter how realistic the hair looks, or that someone's skirt or cloak never clips through their legs. It's impressive, but ultimately useless. The music is good enough to add atmosphere, but nothing is really memorable or outstanding.

4/1/2010 2:06:57 AM

4/1/2010 2:10:45 AM

Got my hopes up for nothing

4/1/2010 2:47:45 AM

I've seen nothing but white people in the tega cay taco bell... but then again tega cay doesn't really have anything but rich white people

4/1/2010 3:24:37 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

are you serious!??!?!

please,

I have a match tonight

4/1/2010 7:54:13 AM

Fuck every one of you people.

4/1/2010 8:26:39 AM

the chick in that commercial is hot though

4/1/2010 8:35:19 AM