Month: February 2011

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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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Fun-damentally Flawed

You know it’s going to be a bad PvP match when you see all the opposing players have the same guild tag over their head. Many guilds, mine included, enjoy group PvP, yet very few games support it natively. Group PvP is fun in that you have now taken the game to a completely different strategic level, on top of whatever landscape/npc/event challenges the developers have built into the zone/event/area. I’ve been in one or two truly epic guild vs guild battles.

I know as a pick-up PvP player, getting repeatedly beat into the ground is not fun. I don’t mean because I need to “learn2pvp carebear”, but because the other team is well versed in each other’s strategies, abilities, and works well as a team while I am trying to figure out if my teammates can find the attack button. At least, I would hope that the other team is not enjoying it. Bullying usually stops being fun around third grade.

Elsewhere in Patch Notes

City of Heroes has made it this far with very few raids (Hamidon, Cathedral of Pain, Rikti mothership). They are adding another, the Behavioral Modification Facility, as part of the Incarnate alternate advancement system. This is currently under testing along with actual raid groups (“leagues”). Really old school raiders might be familiar with games where raids are just fights in which multiple groups are participating, with any link between the groups, raid UI, etc. City of Heroes has been run that way; everyone in the zone goes after the Hamidon. The next big update will have official raid mechanics as well as an event queuing system.

Of course, normal City of Heroes groups are eight characters, while other games have ten-character raids, so we are talking about really big fights here.

: Zubon

[GW] A Whirling Change

The Nightfall professions in Guild Wars always felt the most separated from the core professions. There were definitely times were the paragons and dervishes were some of the most powerful entities on the battlefield, but they always felt like some mirror-world offspring of the core warrior profession. Well ArenaNet has been working hard on two huge updates, and last night the valiant leader of the Guild Wars Live Team posted a huge preview for the dervish changes. The goal of the dervish update was to give it’s style of play more meaning and to cultivate the essence of a dervish, rather than having an enchantment heavy warrior.

Continue reading [GW] A Whirling Change

Sweet Mother of Patch Notes!

Lord of the Rings, on test. Notables:

  • The radiance system has been removed from the game.
  • 3 class updates
  • Legendary Item update, including reducing relic tiers, making all IXP runes work on all LIs, and having deconstructed LIs yield legacy scrolls so that you can combine across LIs to build the one you really want.
  • Moria epic chain update for a post-Moria world (not the official title)
  • Volume III, Book 3
  • 5 new instances, 1 new raid

: Zubon

[GW2] NCSoft 4Q Conference Call and Release Date Speculation

In the midst of the Guild Wars 2 human week, many fans are experiencing some other very real human emotions. Thanks to GigaShadow, the contents of the NCSoft 4Q 2010 Conference Call have been picked for any Guild Wars 2 information. It seems that Guild Wars 2 (and Blade and Soul) are objectively set to finish development by the end of 2011. However, NCSoft is ready to put both games at a later launch to make sure they are able to fully react to the very subjective open and closed beta feedback.

This is not to say that a 2011 release for Guild Wars 2 (and Blade and Soul) will not happen because NCSoft says they have scenarios already planned for such a release. However, they warn shareholders that 2011 revenue might not be impacted by the games. This, of course, explains why ArenaNet has refused to say Guild Wars 2 will launch in 2011 because they aren’t even 100% sure.

I think this is bittersweet. Of course I want Guild Wars 2 now now now, but I also want it to be a mindblowing game. In a recent Rift interview, Trion Worlds said that the game is on such a stable base that the devs are actually able to work on requested game improvements that are received through beta feedback rather than trying to plow through work that should have been done before beta. I hope that this is where Guild Wars 2 will be when they start the beta process.

–Ravious

The Eyes Have It

Last night a friend sent me a 10-day pass to DCUO so I downloaded and played it briefly this morning. After what seemed like a 15 minute introduction movie, and several other movies, I struggled through the character creation process. I found it to be somewhat unforgiving. When it came to the selection of custom powers/uniform or copy a DC character, I clicked Luthor out of randomness, then the others. For some reason, DCUO really wanted me to be Luthor, as my “Superman” model was still green and purple and bald. It took about 10 minutes to undo the changes, and then the first item I looted overwrote what I was wearing. Lego Universe has this same thing, which is very annoying. Why even give me the option to select custom boots, gloves, chest, etc, if it will be overwritten by any gear I wear? In any case, I made it through the very long intro (which did a good job of explaining the controls), and found I really hated the permanent mouselook model it apparently is on. If there’s a way to turn this off, it’s not in the Control menu, so please let me know.

I just barely made it out of the intro scenes when I had to log out, but one thing stuck with me, probably because it was constantly on the screen – why does Luthor’s “bad eye” keep switching? In the “current time” he has a lens covering an injured right eye, and in the “bleak future” he has no left eye at all, and a healthy right eye. Art error?

Also, I found it slighty humorous that DCUO’s entire story is based on the “time traveler trying to prevent apocalyptic future” story theme, which of course is the basis for the Defiant faction in Rift (and any number of sci-fi stories).

[GW2] Peace and Carrots

The content of Human Week started with an audio-filled blog post on the ArenaNet blog, which is a nice human-centric follow-up to an earlier post on these types of sounds. The sound bites aren’t combat grunts, death taunts, or NPC story time. Rather, they are the sounds a player would hear just running along the streets of the human capital, Divinity’s Reach. People talking about marriage, religion, strife, politics, war, and love all are included in this ear-filling offering. These additions are really a bittersweet symphony.

On the good side, they blow the game’s immersion levels through the roof. I can only imagine running along and actually stopping so I can hear the end of the conversation. The sound clips available in the post are really well-written and well-spoken. Some are very witty, and some are very interesting. Plus, if they are sprinkled with exciting tidbits that actually lead to something. “Wait, what?” you think, “The human hero dude got in a fight with evil politician’s guards.” Tell me more!

Yet, this huge immersion groundswell also makes me nervous. It’s a huge undertaking, and it will continue to be for every future expansion. Either that or expansions won’t have that level of detail, which would be a nice glaring hole. ArenaNet also has to be extremely wary of repetition and temporal stasis. I don’t want to hear about Minister Caudecus’s brilliant oration in Senate for the fifth time after I found out Caudecus was going to be the next Lich and slew him verily. Additionally, I hope that they have subtitles or chat bubbles for these asides for both the hearing-impaired and those that have to be listening to their wife.

Back to the good, this is a beautiful master stroke against quest text. All that background, lore, and hints at movements far larger than a character’s own can be hidden in these aural gems. The “quest” text can be left to something quickly and simply read. “Centaurs are burning my farm! Stop them!” is all we would need, instead of 200 words leading up to the climax of player action. All that stuff about why the centaurs are burning farms, taking breeding horses, Farmer Beau’s “grass,” and their northerly attitude can all be told elsewhere.

–Ravious
we goes together

Alphas, and Betas, and Demos, Oh My!

Rift is in alpha/beta mode. Guild Wars 2 has an new demo on the way, and that there BioWare game is secretly in alpha… we think. Even for those not playing any of the three upcoming games, they are all having some effect on bloggers and mortals alike. It is simple fact that by now a beta is as much a marketing tool as it is an engineering one. So how are they being handled? Ardwulf takes a few blogger samples and finds that the hype is staling or souring for Rift. He believes that Rift is teetering on overexposure, worries about the end game hidden away in alpha, and even compares Rift’s trajectory to the abject success of Warhammer Online. Killed in a Smiling Accident maybe responds by asking for just the facts, ma’am. Leave the emotional opinings at the doorstep. Continue reading Alphas, and Betas, and Demos, Oh My!

Aperture Science

As in many digital places, in Paragon City, you click on doors to go through them. City of Heroes has an unusual mechanic in that it is [click to open the door and walk through it] rather than [click to open the door] and [walk through the open door]. Okay, quarter-second saved per door by combining the two, yay? Well, no: you cannot do just the second half, so if the door is open, you usually must wait for it to close so you can [click to open the door and walk through it] rather than just [walk through the open door].

This becomes notable in task forces and other full-team affairs when everyone needs to go through the same door, particularly if the door open/close animation is long. With the addition of the Weekly Strike Target, this compounds as multiple groups might be using that door. The Statesman Task Force has three missions using the same submarine door. There is a constant traffic jam around that little circle.

: Zubon

[GW2] To Err Is…

It’s human week for Guild Wars 2! KillTenRats was able to sneak in this tasty morsel last week, but now it’s officially begun with a week-long menu for the Tyrian race. Humans in the Guild Wars 2 world have an interesting story. They were the strongest race in the world, but their light was quickly fading by the time of Guild Wars. In Guild Wars 2, they have been pushed back to a single nation on the continent of Tyria. As Jeff Grubb often says, “they’ve been knocked back but not knocked out.”

Their history is rich, and unlike the other 4 playable races, humans might be the only race not native to the world. Yet, the gods that may have brought them to Tyria, have taken the training wheels off and simply walked away. Well they aren’t doing that well now that the half-dozen divine training wheels are off. I am looking forward to this kind of treatment for all the races in Guild Wars 2, especially in a week-long blitz!

–Ravious
to arr is pirate