Author: Zubon

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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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The Two-Button Phase

I understand why your game goes through the two-button phase. It gives new players a moment to learn things before adding complexity. Maybe it is comforting for people on their first MMO. You have a little/auto-attack and a bigger attack. Maybe it is a melee attack and a ranged attack. Whatever it is, when you are in the tutorial, you have two things you can do other than moving around.

It is very important for your game to get past this phase as soon as possible. The longer I sit there with just two buttons, killing three flavors of rat ten times each, the less likely I am to think that anything awesome lies behind it all. Giving me something non-interactive next is fine. Armor, a defense, a buff or heal that I will not need in the intro, fine. Very soon after, give me something shiny to hit things with. If I am still in the two-button phase ten minutes into things, I am probably logging off and never coming back.

: Zubon

Evening Gaming

There seems to be a roughly 50/50 chance that gaming will go well. If I am playing alone, there is only the potential frustrations with the game itself, so my rate of enjoyment is more consistent, but multi-player games add all the things that can go wrong with other players. I’m calling it 50/50, my wife might guess lower, I would guess higher when I am on new game high (and exploration beats frustration).

If things go well, I will probably still be “on” when we finish. I go to bed with hobbits or pyros scurrying about my skull. With any luck, my wife is still awake, which can help flush games out of my mind in ways we do not discuss on family blogs. If not, I lie there, buzzing, unable to sleep. The plotting is fun, but work the next day may not be.

If things go poorly, they are likely to continue to. Even nights that go well head in this direction. If the marginal utility of playing is still high, keep playing! And you keep going until there are wipes, idiocy, or whatever drives down your utility from playing. Then the everything is ruined forever, and you can do naught but whine on your blog about it. Whine whine whine. So the night ends on a low point, and because we are most affected by beginnings (probably a stretch of waiting of group followed by a while to get rolling, followed by a while to try to fall into a groove) and endings (when it rolled over the cliff), the whole thing is a debacle.

Should I just stop gaming after 8pm, so nothing can send me to bed in bad state A or B?

: Zubon

Solution Failure

“Hey guys, the difficulty of our new ‘puzzle’ game varies randomly between trivial and ‘there is only one pixel on the screen that works.'”
“Let’s build in a video that shows where the one pixel is.”
*high five*

*facepalm*

: Zubon

Full disclosure: if you click and sign up at Kongregate, I get some kind of points that do nothing but put a number by my name. But, you know.

Good Night / Bad Night

We took down the turtle with a PUG, and I got the shoulders coin. 6/6, and I never need to enter the 16th Hall on that character again.

Then I tried to do 2.8.3. That is a three-person instance, and one of our members was a Lore-master who could not mez (traited it away), remove corruptions (necessary for the fight if you don’t keep them mezzed), deal damage (that we could notice), heal (he didn’t), or tank (he’s in a robe). But he could repeatedly apologize over voice chat for breaking others’ CC by misunderstanding “right” and “left.” In a 6-person group, you have room for one sub-par member. You do not 2-man a 3-person instance.

: Zubon