Month: November 2010

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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.

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[GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 2

[continued from part 1]

I started out the second half of the interview on a mistake, and it was Peters turn to run my fumble to the endzone. I brought up the three different types of skills: weapon, utility, and elite. Actually, Peters said, there is another skill type: healing skills. (Lots of headsmacking then on my end.) Don’t ignore healing skills, warned Peters, heal skills can make builds. He said “there are some very varying heal skills that really change what you are going to do with your character.”

As an example, Peters brought up two of the warrior heal skills shown in the demos. Healing Surge heals the warrior and gives him adrenaline. Healing Signet heals the warrior on use, but also provides extra health regeneration when the signet is not recharging. Healing Surge makes for a very aggressive warrior because he is ramping up adrenaline for the burst skill so much faster than other warriors. Conversely, Peters said that when warriors are using Healing Signet they basically ignore all the little plinks, and they can keep plowing through mobs or players until the warrior gets focus fired upon. The developers are finding that the one player-decided healing skill has a huge impact on style of play. Peters then asked Cartwright to talk about weapon skills.

Continue reading [GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 2

Enedwaith

I may have underestimated the amount of new content since Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢, but it is hard to tell because my week back in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ has mixed that, revamped content, and old content that I had skipped. A week’s worth of content (or a hardcore weekend) still feels about right: one day per quest hub/sub-zone plus one for bringing Volume III to Enedwaith. It is almost entirely solo content, with repeatables for slow reputation grinding. I am not quite done with everything, but let me tell you what I have liked with minimal whining.

Continue reading Enedwaith

Volume III: Prologue Through Book Two

The story kernel of Volume III is a good one. We have a side story to the core Lord of the Rings tale: gathering the rangers scattered across Eriador and bringing them to their intersection with the main story. No-name rangers became minor personalities before, and now they are back. There is a brief Crowning Moment of Awesome after you have united the Grey Company when they dogpile on a couple of bosses. That’s right, buddy, this Hobbit has a pack of Dúnedain at her back.

The execution is mixed, neither the highs nor the lows being particularly extreme. You get to “nice” and “meh” but not “awesome” or “appalling.” Continue reading Volume III: Prologue Through Book Two

[GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 1

A few weeks ago, I had a coast-to-coast interview with ArenaNet. I sat on the one side, and a room full of people sat somewhere on that proverbial other coast. Two Guild Wars 2 developers, Jon Peters and Isaiah (“Izzy”) Cartwright and two ArenaNet community managers, Regina Buenaobra and Martin Kerstein crowded around a microphone for the interview on two big things. (A big thanks to Regina for setting this up!) Guild Wars 2 energy and skills were two concepts that were completely questioned and redesigned to escape the gravitational pull of the prequel, Guild Wars. These two concepts were also, in my opinion, of the most misunderstood when all the fans had was to imagine what it was like to play Guild Wars 2.

Cartwright took my early kick-off and ran straight for the goalposts, when all I had to say was “so, energy?” In the beginning of Guild Wars 2 development, there were no resources. Or rather, there was just skill recharge. They wanted to start as simple as humanly possible. After some testing, they decided that they did want another resource to balance encounters and give players some sort of encounter-success measure.  This measure was not really found in the original Guild Wars where the encounters were binary; players either won or wiped. Then the designers went crazy with ideas for resources including resources on skills, items as resources, “bars,” and all sorts of things. After a ton of brainstorming and iteration, they landed on the energy bar.

Continue reading [GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 1

Black Friday Recettear

My apologies for announcing this with only three hours to go, but I had not noticed that the Indie story pack at Steam includes Recettear and 4 other games for $5. I said I would buy it for $10, so this is a great deal.

Update: that day’s done, but it looks like the deal is still available. The new $5 indie pack of the day includes World of Goo. Torchlight is $5, if you missed that with last year’s sales. The gift packs are a fun notion, but not one I have occasion to really use: a bulk discount on buying copies of a game to give your friends.

: Zubon

Upcoming Changes: Lord of the Rings Online

The first part of that barter wallet I have been wanting is coming next week. They are starting with skirmish marks. It also includes a fix for one of my weekend complaints, the re-spawning final boss. If you did not buy the Lone-lands quest pack, congratulations: it will be free, which I think covers all the revamped low-level content.

This is a broad quality of life update. Our friend Eric Heimburg should be thrilled at how they let their systems designers loose. Revamps include two classes, farming, the crafting window, the vault window, a new quest sub-type, and more reputation gain opportunities.

: Zubon

Comment Spotlight

Crud, there’s a bug? Better go back to WoW.
— moondog548

How can so few words contain so many levels of meaning? I had wanted to comment on the usual lack of a middle ground between “dismissive” and “CRISIS!” but I think expectations are the more important point here. Every boss is bugged in a dungeon you visit for the game’s central quest line, more than a year after it went live? Par for the course. Any hope otherwise is risible, worthy of taking the time to publicly mock.

You really do get what you pay for, and you deserve it. If you are willing to pay for things as-is, or as-is plus a hope that they will get better, companies will happily sell them to you. Cryptic has been experimenting with how early in the development cycle you can start selling the game. WoW is what passes for highly polished in our genre; save the real “when it’s ready” for people who demand it.

: Zubon

Haven’t Got a Clue

As I established in my inaugural post, I’m a hobby game design nerd.  So given the opportunity to attend the Buffalo Bills vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game this weekend at Ralph Wilson Stadium, what do I look forward to?  That’s right…how the experience can apply to the browser-based game I’m working on.    Forget that I’ll be in club seating.  Forget that I’ll have a Fanvision on me.  Forget that I’ll probably drink enough beer to forget everything anyway…

I won’t bore you with my analytical break down of how the game of football could apply to the design of an MMO.  Instead, I wanted to talk about the design of my favorite game and get some feedback on yours…

Continue reading Haven’t Got a Clue

Shattered

Today is the sixth anniversary of that MMO. It’s also the day that the Shattering finally takes place and the game world of Azeroth changes.

A criticism levelled at a lot some new MMOs is that they are trying to be World of Warcraft (and I’m not referring solely to Alganon). SWG’s aforementioned NGE, for example, seemed to be inspired not in the least by WoW’s success. So it seems somewhat meta that Blizzard are reshaping their old world to be more like itself – only better. Taking lessons learned from two successful expansions, out go all those damned tedious quests which require you to traipse back and forth between continents and in come new storylines for zones that bring the questing experience more in line with Outland and Northrend zones.

Incidentally, The Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest that Jeff Kaplan admitted may have been a mistake in its original incarnation is still in the game. Now, however, you only have to collect one page instead of twelve.