One and One Story, a game in which the mechanics change with the story and your relationship. “Hold it, hold it. What is this? Are you trying to trick me? … Is this a kissing game?”
On the microtransactions front, the soundtrack is available at standard MP3 rates.
: Zubon
Richard Bartle on EVE’s pivot:
“we look at what our players do and less of what they say” works only if your players aren’t the hardest-of-the-hard-core who do exactly what they say they’ll do
The post also includes a lovely, expandable economic model for game servers and customization, although MOBAs and modded games are covering a fair amount of that territory in the non-persistent world.
: Zubon
Heartless. on Star Wars: The Old Republic:
All you need to know is that the game is under tight NDA wraps with less than two months until launch.
Melmoth on Mists of Pandaria:
Werewolves in top hats, gnomes performing the dance moves from Bloodhound Gang’s Bad Touch, … ridiculous sexual dimorphism in PC races, non-combat pets, Haris Pilton, giant cow-men riding on chocobos, … shoulder pads you could hide a small village under, remote-controlled fighting robots, … escorting mechanical chickens, ludicrous retcons, kobold candles, Forsaken Death Knights, teleporters, steam car vs rocket car racetrack, … dressing up in a murloc suit, orbital death satellites, pink elekks…
And you’re worried about pandas?
Anjin on arguing about Mists of Pandaria:
When people argue that World of Warcraft is a silly game, they are talking about the world. When people argue that it is a serious game, they are talking about the systems.
On second thought, let’s not go to Azeroth. It is a silly place.
: Zubon
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.
This is a fundamentals post. You need those sometimes. Today’s goal is to know your powers of two.
For any readers who have not reached exponents in their math classes yet, this just means 2×2=4, 2x2x2=8, 2x2x2x2=16, 2x2x2x2x2=32, and so on. Even if you are completely innumerate, you have surely noticed that the numbers 128, 256, and 512 proliferate around computers. These are higher powers of two. Computers are binary (two-based), so everything tends to be in powers of two. We talk about gaming here, and lots of things in games are 50% chances, coin-flips, however they phrase it: it is all 2s, and if you know the basic math behind what is going on, you will better prosper and be emotionally and intellectually prepared for the likely outcomes. There are two that I want to focus on today.
2^5=32. 1 in 32 series of 5 coin flips will be all heads, another 1/32 all tails. If there is a 50-50 chance of something happening, there is a 1/32 chance of its happening (or not) 5 times in a row. That’s roughly a 3% chance: unlikely, but not exactly a rare event when you are doing something hundreds of times, so be ready for it. As a concrete example, if you are playing Tyrant and a Xeno Forcefield comes out, you can probably take it out in one attack. On average, it regenerates (refills its hit points) once, but about 3% of the time, you will need to knock that wall down 6 times before it stays down. Given how much you play whatever game it is, you may hit the 1 in 32 chance every day. Watch for it, plan for it.
2^10=1024. Ten doublings gives you a thousand. This is a convenient bit of quick arithmetic to keep in your head, mostly because it stacks. If ten doublings is one thousand, twenty is one million, and thirty is one billion (American billion or British milliard). Doubling adds up quickly. There is the old story about asking for a reward of a single grain of rice/wheat on the first square of a chessboard, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth, and so on. A chessboard has 64 squares, so it will still be a few from the end when we clear 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. Doubling is powerful, and most people lose track of how the exponents work. The easy math to remember is that 10 doublings gives you another set of ,000 on the end of a number. Use this to estimate large quantities.
: Zubon
Seriously? I’m kind of touched. And it’s part of the central epic chain!
: Zubon
Dungeon Defenders has many account-wide features rather than character-specific ones. Your characters share a single bank for money and items, and you can pass upgraded items to the next generation. Your tavern o’ achievements is the same for all characters, rather than suggesting that you repeat all the achievements on every character. You unlock levels for your account rather than your characters, so beat the game once to make everything available for all future characters. You probably cannot beat the end boss with your level 1, but the map is there.
One unusual feature is that you can swap characters during the Build Phase of each wave. The tip screen encourages you to combine towers from different heroes, which is a nice synergy bonus for having multiple characters. You can also have a tower-focused character build then a combat-focused character fight through the round. It’s a bit of micro-management, but what are optimizers if not micro-managers? (There are limits here. You cannot have unlimited build time on the highest difficulty, so you are limited by how quickly you can swap characters, run around the map, build, repeat.)
This lets you skip the low levels at which map difficulty scales poorly. My Squire is 40-ish and can clear the first level on Insane difficulty with a half-dozen towers. Start the map, clear the first wave (6 enemies), you now have enough mana to build the first round of defenses. Swap to your new, level 0 character. Watch the defenses clear a couple of waves, bring back the Squire to build the upper-level defenses. Swap back, watch the rest of the round happen. Congratulations, your new character is now level 13 with 40,000 experience points. It feels like an exploit, and the character has no useful equipment, but it does have all its basic tools to play for real rather than fumbling about with minimal mana and one tower.
: Zubon
In our occasional series on blatant objectification of women in gaming, we have the Dungeon Defenders contribution. The Apprentice and Monk are covered in cloth, the Knight has no visible skin except for his knees, and the Huntress is wearing this. The halter top is common enough female “armor” to escape comment, but note the line showing where the whale tail would be if she were not obviously commando under her skirt that droops around her hips.
Note also her pose. At the character select screen, the Apprentice spins his staff, the Squire brandishes his sword, the Monk floats meditatively, and the Huntress shakes her tush. The male gaze comes before the tutorial.
: Zubon
While I have no interest in playing Sequence, I like the combination of notions: an RPG using DDR as its combat mechanic. What mechanic you use to represent conflict in your game is essentially arbitrary. We already have several Puzzle Quest-like games where fights are won by something like Bejeweled. It’s all a mini-game anyway, so if you like rhythm games, here is one where you use it to vanquish your foes.
Where is the anime-style game using karaoke mechanics to let you defeat your opponents through the power of song? Giant robots and singing have been merged so successfully on the screen, why not on the PlayStation?
: Zubon
: Zubon