Month: July 2010

.

Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

.

Elements Decks

I am still enjoying Elements.

If you play un-upgraded, you have a good range of deck options even without the trainer. Building a strong un-upgraded deck costs in the 500-1000 electrum range if you start with none of the cards, so it does not take long to bootstrap yourself into having several options for excellent tier 3 decks. You will probably earn back what you spent well before you get bored with your new toy, and you will earn cards for your next toy along the way.

My difficulty remains the cliff of upgraded cards. Tier 3 is trivially easy with a fast deck, but difficulty ramps up quickly from there. Tier 5 brings in half the False God issues, including extra quanta, draws, and health plus scattered upgraded cards. Tier 5 is not terribly difficult once you upgrade a half-dozen key cards in your deck, although it requires a different plan because you cannot rely on blazing speed against a double-health target. The Tier 6 False Gods are that cliff, some of them able to deal 100 damage by turn 4-7. Bootstrapping there is a lengthier process.

Because a fully upgraded deck costs in the 50,000 electrum range, you have far fewer options when trying the upper tiers. Once I have a fully upgraded deck, it will be easier to get to a second one, but that is a lot of games with the one deck. There is the familiar, gratifying feeling of illusory accomplishment as each upgraded card improves that initial deck. But altoholism, as ever, means going back to the newbie areas; I cannot expect much against False Gods when using a deck with only a couple upgraded cards.

Is it a sickness that I am not just using the trainer? If all I care about is the gameplay, I can skip the first C of CCG. I seem stuck on the notion that it is not the “real” game.

: Zubon

Free Realms Housing Confusion

I grabbed a lifetime account on Free Realms for both of my kids. One of the perks of becoming a member is that you get a house as well as the free apartment everyone gets. Problem is, the house is only for one character and it is not shared over the account. Even though you can have 3 characters (I’m not sure why you’d want more than one) only one of them gets the house. The rest get apartments. I really do not understand why you wouldn’t share it to all 3 but hey that’s the rule.

The first thing my daughter does is create a new character (again it was a perk of gaining member status to get 2 more character slots) and the “you have an item to claim” icon shows up so she clicks it and next thing you know she has a house. Excitement! Decorating! Then she logs into the character she has been playing since the game came out and hey what’s this apartment thing? Where’s my house? She had no idea. So she deletes the new character thinking that the house will show up on the only character left. Oops! She just deleted her house. It’s gone for good. Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m sure it warned her that the house is tied to one character only when she claimed it but for whatever reason she did not digest that information.

SuperDad steps up to the plate and contacts Free Realms support. After a few emails back and forth they grant the house to her main character and remind me to remind her not to delete that character because if she did she would be out of luck and have to buy a house in the future.

I really only have one question for them: Why would you do it that way?

– Ethic

“No Cover Charge”

Informis, commenting at Keen and Graev’s:

Apparently, “free-to-play” these days really means “no cover charge.”

I assume it has been said before, but this is my first time seeing this phrasing, and I like it. Can we all start using that to refer to Wizard101, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and other games with the not-quite-F2P pricing model? I’m not sure that “NCC” will catch on as an acronym, although there would be a special glory in applying it to Star Trek Online…

: Zubon

Guild Wars – Battle for Lion’s Arch

The final-ish part of the War in Kryta chapter of Guild Wars Beyond dropped awhile go, but I didn’t have the time or sheer will to complete it until last night.  The Battle for Lion’s Arch might be one of the most intense instances in Guild Wars.  The road to this mini-mission (a quest with its own instance) can be long and frustrating, but the end result is very much worth it.  Even the rewards along the way are pretty nice.

Continue reading Guild Wars – Battle for Lion’s Arch

Dopamine

I am reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I need to read further to decide whether it will be worth recommending, but chapter 3 has some great insights for reward systems and game design. Chapter 3 is about errors, how our simian brains will vainly search for patterns in randomness and provide excessive neurochemicals to keep us focused on what is actually unpredictable.

We are a pattern-seeking species, with self-programming neurons that seek to predict risks and rewards. We are very good at developing intuitive understandings of situations in which we do not have enough time for a rational analysis, kind of like how your dog can catch a frisbee even if he cannot do the math of plotting three-dimensional vectors in real time. Unfortunately, we apply the same mental programming to completely random sequences, seeing patterns that do not exist and feeling bigger highs from wins strictly because they are unpredictable.

I say that again: unpredictable wins produce greater emotional reactions. Your brain is programmed to look for surprises, and if it really is a random system, success will always be surprising to some degree. Continue reading Dopamine

Engineer Achievements

Team Fortress 2 has been an interesting mess since the Engineer update. You can trade your sentry gun’s ability to upgrade for ridiculous building speed or its self-targeting for a remote control, but the greater change is letting all Engineers pack up their buildings and move them. Fully upgraded sentries are popping up all over the place, fast, while they are also being shot down faster than they can be reassembled. Two weeks ago, you might plead for a second Engineer, and now you’re considering moving to a server that caps them. You can be annoyed at the insanity or embrace it, being your team’s seventh Engineer or picking a class to counter them.

The attached achievements are actually healthy. I am used to seeing achievements for aberrant gameplay or freakish occurrences, like getting mid-air melee kills while rocket-jumping or encouraging medics to attack instead of using an uber-charge. The Engineer achievements are largely for things you should be doing anyway, and most of them encourage teamwork, particularly between Engineers. There are achievements for helping someone else build, for upgrading their buildings, for healing their buildings, for saving them from Spies, and from getting Engi-Engi kill assists. There are achievements demanding dispensers and teleporters. The Wrangler (remote control) gives an Engineer the Sniper’s narrowed focus, but the rest rewards a utility class for being team-focused. Excellent!

: Zubon