Archive for the 'Rift' Category

Languished Thoughts

Posted by Ravious on May 19, 2012 in EVE Online, Guild Wars 2, Real Time Strategy, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Storybricks and Torchlight. 11 Comments

I am withering away waiting for the next Guild Wars 2 beta event. I have dreams of a dagger-charged necromancer or elementalist that I can’t wait to realize. Yet, the gaming world seems to be darkening as the light of the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event is receding. I am trying to shake the feeling as best as I can with Steam sales, and the like. Then I hear what is going on in the news.

Scarlet “MMO”

Except for the aforesaid exception, the MMO genre seems to be bleakening. With a gracious nod to Beau Hindman, I would say that this only seems to be the case for so-called “AAA” titles as F2P titles seem to flood across the land like a scute mob. Continue reading ‘Languished Thoughts’

The Most Exciting Post You Will Read All Week About Pretending To Fish

Posted by Zubon on April 26, 2012 in Rift. 5 Comments

Check it out at The Ancient Gaming Noob. Bonus content:

Trion added in another skill with the patch called Survival. Survival seems primarily focused on giving you something to do with the fish you catch. It is basically cooking… seafood… along with the ability to make some camping gear. When the female survival trainer said, “Do you need help pitching a tent?” I thought perhaps I mis-heard… or that it was some sort of reference to the Diablo III demon hunter… everybody seems to be mentioning that.

: Zubon

Quote of the Day

Posted by Zubon on February 18, 2012 in Rift. 5 Comments

…I often play female characters in MMOs: not because I want to look at a cute bottom, but because I enjoy the juxtaposition of taking such an incarnation of loveliness, wrapping her in a hulking suit of armour, and having her kick the ten living arse bells out of a muscleheap of ogres.
— Melmoth

[Rift] Soul Train

Posted by Zubon on February 10, 2012 in Rift. 3 Comments

This sounds like a really good idea, and it sounds like it is being implemented well. Kudos.

I wondering about crossing this (or the Guild Wars skill templates) with a standard mod sharing interface. You would open up a menu of builds in use, possibly player-built but why not just automatically pull the data on what is in use? Is there some sane way to show the central tendency of other players? You would not want specially named builds, and perhaps souls provide too much granularity for an effective display. Perhaps something like X is the most popular skill/soul/whatever, 30% of players choose combination ABC as three of their GW2 warrior skills, etc. I would also want some index beyond popularity, say xp earned or kills using that build, to keep people from intentionally messing with stats by, say, making Uber Warrior Build as a main then filling every slot on every other server with a level 1 using a crap build. I don’t know if enough people would do that to seriously throw off stats, but I can see the effort being made to break any game system.

: Zubon

2012 Predictions

Posted by Zubon on December 19, 2011 in Darkfall Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Dust 514, EVE Online, Everquest 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, League of Legends, Lord of the Rings Online, Minecraft, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Agency, The Secret World, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, Wizard101 and World of Warcraft. 10 Comments

I will now get the highest score of any MMO pundit making predictions. Ready? “It will not go live in 2012.” Whatever we’re talking about, I’m predicting that it will slip into 2013, or later, or just never ship. The game, the expansion, whatever: not in 2012. I’m going to lose a few points, since something will ship in 2012, but I don’t see how anyone can beat my accuracy rate here.

: Zubon

[Rift] Defeating the Defeatist

Posted by Ravious on October 26, 2011 in Global Agenda, Rift and Team Fortress 2. 16 Comments

Jaradcel writes up another in-depth guest post on Rift PvP. Enjoy! –Ravious

Lately with the amount of PvP I have been doing, it feels like my brain is beginning to bleed “learn2play” attitudes. I have caught myself replying to obvious troll bait yells or even doing so myself.

Upon consideration, I feel like one of the root causes of this, which is far less prevalent in a PvE aspect, is because of the way developers tend to design for PvP. There are several reasons, but to start the ball rolling: Developers tend to cater to the defeatist.

Continue reading ‘[Rift] Defeating the Defeatist’

[GW2] Space for Failure?

Posted by Ravious on October 18, 2011 in Guild Wars 2 and Rift. 37 Comments

I’ve been mulling this for a little bit. It’s an evolution of The Essential Scatter found in Rift. Is there room in the design for player failure in the event system in Guild Wars 2?

Let’s point a finer point on it. We know that events can fork when there is failure. If centaurs are attacking a fort and there is no player defense, then the system is set up so that the fort will fall. There is also the scenario of an elite event occurring with only one or two active players. Those occurrences are more like branching scenarios than actual failure. What I am talking about is an occasion where the players are simply too ragtag, unskilled, uncooperative, or not lucid enough to beat the event. Is ArenaNet ready to punish them?

Continue reading ‘[GW2] Space for Failure?’

[Rift] We All Fall Down

Posted by Ravious on September 9, 2011 in Rift. 13 Comments

Jaradcel writes up another in-depth guest post on Rift news. Enjoy! –Ravious

This week marks a massive riot in the world of Rift. The proverbial straw came in the form of news of another new change to PvP, one that was implemented not two days after its announcement. With only a few hours of test realm testing before it was pushed live, many feel like the choice was rushed, sloppy, and a band-aid. Is it true?  Continue reading ‘[Rift] We All Fall Down’

[Rift] To Make Us Feel Epic

Posted by Ravious on August 2, 2011 in Rift. 5 Comments

Jaradcel writes up a guest post on Rift news. Enjoy! –Ravious

Rift has released its state of the union address on the game. Some additional info slipped out from a conference call to journalists, and the most intriguing information is below.

The two biggest highlights include Chronicles, a form of solo to small-group content focusing on the lore of the world, and the possibility of Alternate advancement experience sometime in the near future. A lot of what I’ll be talking about is theorycrafting based on available information (of which there really isn’t a lot of)

First off, Chronicles. These are listed as instances for players from one to three, and are meant to be finished relatively quickly. They will do things such as have players interact, fight alongside or work against famous in-game non-player characters. It will also allegedly flesh out the lore for players who prefer that, rather than loot or bashing heads in. Unfortunately, there is very little beyond the bullet point information to go on. Serrain at RiftJunkies reflects a lot of my concerns regarding this introduction, such as whether it’s for max-level characters only, how it will be implemented et al.

Continue reading ‘[Rift] To Make Us Feel Epic’

[Rift] Valor Be My Shield!

Posted by Ravious on June 21, 2011 in Rift. 8 Comments

Jaradcel writes up a guest post on the upcoming update for Rift. Enjoy! –Ravious

Rift is to have its third major update in 1.3 come June 22nd, and besides a new raid in Hamerknell, also features major revamps to warriors and mages. Of note however, was the originally planned overhaul to PvP as well, which was scrapped after a massive outcry from the forums. I’ll skip the first two, and look at the results and issues of the third since I happen to be PvPing alot lately.

As in other MMO’s, Rift has its own special stat for PvP players – Valor. The more you have the less damage you take from other players. There are six ranks to gain at level 50, called prestige ranks, which subsequently unlock better valor gear as players rank up.
Initially, patch 1.3 was slated to drastically readjust how Valor worked.

Continue reading ‘[Rift] Valor Be My Shield!’