Month: October 2012

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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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Estimating Difficulty

When A Tale in the Desert introduced barley as a growable crop, they also added a technology that could be unlocked by donating 100,000 barley to a university. How did they get the number 100,000? Nekhmet (one of the developers) grew a bunch of barley, they figured that the players would learn more efficient techniques (ATitD uses player skill-based crafting), and then they multiplied to get a large but not ridiculous number of hours of work. It turned out that Nekhmet was a prodigy at growing barley, at that technology was unavailable for months until ad hoc additions to the game allowed barley output to double and triple.

When Guild Wars 2 introduced pumpkin carving, a few hundred pumpkins were hidden around the world. It was an exploration achievement: find 150 to unlock the title. A technological problem let the same pumpkins respawn after carving, and they spawned on a per-character basis for a per-account achievement, so you could get the title without leaving Lion’s Arch.

When The Lord of the Rings Online introduced Mines of Moria, the dungeon fights that were its endgame were a mass of bugs and exploits, some of which were obviously unintended (stand in a doorway while a door closes: your weapons are on one side, your body is on the other, and the boss cannot hit you) while others surprised the players when they were declared “unintended” (kite the boss around his throne so that it is between the two of you when he uses his devastating area effect attack).

When City of Heroes introduced the Hamidon raid, players found a variety of ways to beat it, ranging from sniping it from beyond its range to capitalizing on teleportation and invulnerability to avoid damage. For months, every technique used was patched away as an unintended exploit. Some developers claimed that there was an intended way to beat Hamidon, but the players never seemed to find the “intended” one, and it is not clear whether it would have actually worked. Hamidon was later reconfigured into a fight with a more obvious “intended” approach.

Guild Wars 2 has a pop-up warning when you start the cooking crafting skill, telling you that it is more expensive in terms of time, silver, and karma than the other trade skills. Cooking is the fastest, cheapest, easiest craft to take to 400 skill, notably having the last points available for a few hundred karma worth of peaches where other skills require dozens of drops or even globs of ectoplasm.

Can you cite a dozen examples from your gaming history where “hard” content was trivial while “easy” content was literally impossible at release? Can you see why I am suspicious of any player claims about how hard something is supposed to be, what the developers’ intent was, or who this is for?

: Zubon

[LOTRO] Horse Vectors

I am at least halfway through The Wold in Lord of the Rings Online (“LOTRO”). The Wold is one of the subzones for Eastern Rohan, and it is intended for characters between levels 75-77. So it is still early in the expansion for me. I do however have my warhorse.

Mounts are a pretty key feature in LOTRO. Before the Riders of Rohan expansions there were two types. A personal mount, horse or goat, could be called nearly anywhere. Its movement controls were basically the same to a dismounted character. The only differences were a significant speed boost and a small health pool for the mount before characters would get knocked off by attackers. The other type was a fast travel mount which followed a set path between towns like a railway car. The only control available was dismounting along the way. Continue reading [LOTRO] Horse Vectors

#tylertweets [GW2] Edition

  • In the twilight of the WoW era (is it?), we must ask again whether mailboxes are essential to the online social dancing experience.
  • The deeper message of the bots is that the game really is that shallow.
  • Vendor+1c: the ultimate expression of ZMP workers?
  • A human plays a charr. The charr wears a Halloween costume. We reveal our selves by the ways we disguise ourselves.

: Zubon

Incomplete explanation, but it’s really just a bit of inter-blog silliness.

[GW2] …Because he was hung over!

I made sure to be in Lion’s Arch at noon, server time, on Sunday. I was not disappointed. The animation and eruption of the Mad King out of the lion fountain was just breathtaking. I was on the edge of my seat. Then it was over. I saw a lot of fuss over the fact that there would be such an event, and ArenaNet made sure that it was a non-essential, momentous experience. For those that missed it, YouTube provides.

There is an inverse relationship between commonness and That Special Feeling. If the cinematic was present at the beginning of each entrance to the Mad King boss battle, it would be less special. If people entering Lion’s Arch for the first time on Sunday saw the cinematic, it would be less special. That people were coming together for a single shared experience that could not be spoiled… that was special. Continue reading [GW2] …Because he was hung over!

[GW2] Annals of Wonderful Art Design: Mad King’s Clock Tower

A downside of making the Mad King’s Clock Tower time-limited (both the 90 seconds per run and the 1 week per year) is that it is beautifully done. It has just enough kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria without being too busy. You get a ruined clocktower where the ruins hang in the sky, with gears and rubble swirling, along with green mists, skeletal arms, and constant movement. It feels like there is more than there is, but except for the initial jumble of rubble, it has an elegant simplicity. You want more time to stand in that initial jumble and appreciate the art.

I had hoped for a vista at the top or some way to regard the structure, but you end up inside the tower. You do start with a vista of sorts, a quick pan up the side that shows the path of the jumping puzzle. (There is not a lot of “puzzle”; execution under adverse conditions is the hard part.) It is definitely worth visiting for a look, although do not expect to finish a 90-second run in under an hour.

: Zubon

[GW2] Annals of Horrible Game Design: Mad King’s Clock Tower

We have a new contender for the worst piece of content ever put into a game. The Mad King’s Clock Tower is the holiday jumping puzzle for Guild Wars 2.

Begin your mix with every problem caused by character models and camera movement. Add in a map with lots of spinning, with ups and downs, so the camera will definitely be moving around things and objects will be between the camera and your character. Add in a time limit.

Now come the brilliant part: make it impossible to run alone, so that other players’ characters block your view of your character and the platforms. Let any of those characters throw up a speech bubble to block the rest of the view. Implement it during a holiday event and make it available for a limited time so that more players will run it, and all the Achievers and completionists will keep running to make sure the population stays high. Just in case they pass it, add a great reward at the end that is available per-character so they have a reason to keep coming back, with little rewards along the way to give them even more incentive to keep filling the map and blocking the view. Don’t advertise that the jumping puzzle is not a requirement for the holiday meta-achievement.

Take a game designed around the idea that we are all on the same team, then make it so that having anyone around makes things much harder, especially the 2/5 of the races that are much bigger than the others. Not only does having other players around make the content harder and worse, there is no way to avoid them except moving to a low population server and playing during off hours so that there are fewer.

Note that there is no combat. This is actively anti-social Socializer content.

: Zubon

Update: many people (mostly elsewhere, since we do not have many comments yet) are confusing the argument “hard because of bad design” with “hard means bad design.” The difficulty is not the problem — the source of the difficulty is what makes it a problem, somewhat the interface issues but mostly the design that makes the content worse as more people play it. That is a rather critical flaw in a multiplayer game.

Quote of the Week: Leeky Dragons

It is very typical of the GW2 experience that you might run off to pick vegetables in the middle of a boss fight.
— Spinks

I know the spawn she is talking about, and I frequently pick those leeks during the Claw of Jormag fight. You can also see a dozen players pause between dragon crystals to mine the rich mithril vein. Everyone who did not stop mined it during the last dragon pre-event.

: Zubon

[GW2] Prepping for Halloween

This week has been all about playing through the first Act of the ongoing Guild Wars 2 event. So far it’s been really nice, but at the same time I am wondering if there is something meatier coming. Act 1 is definitely the opening scene, but I feel it’s a tad weird for the opening scene to last for half of the whole play.  Act 2 starts tomorrow, with things ramping up fast after that.

Much of Lion’s Arch and the Heart of the Mists were changed to add Halloween paraphernalia. There are pumpkins and candles everywhere. Children wearing costumes run about, and the evil Zommoros “The Sink” Genie, has turned into a huge witch’s kettle. Like most of ArenaNet’s art, it is a beautiful sight to behold. My favorite are the floating candle bridge lights. New music has also been added, which is very evocative of the Halloween celebration. I am not sure why this isn’t playing constantly in Lion’s Arch. Continue reading [GW2] Prepping for Halloween