Author: Zubon

.

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.

.

MyJob Online

My workplace is planning to make the jump to “new media,” which is to say “online.” Buying banner ads on a few major commercial sites was a big step for them, and suddenly I have managers trying to figure out what Second Life is. They want to engage in participatory networks and have user interaction, although they are shaky on the vocabulary there.

I have been considering how to express “time to cock” in government-speak without saying, “cock.” My manager should know that we will be creating a tool by which ten-year-old boys can send each other crickets saying profane things, both aloud and in text. My current plan is just to go with it. To heck with all restraint, this will be the most often that penises have been discussed (on-topic) in a meeting. I will go in-depth on Second Life, including defining furries, Gor, pony slaves, “attachments,” “cyber rape porn,” and that copyright lawsuit about a sex table with many functions. In today’s meeting, I described how it can be used as a teleconference site, but I should give them an accurate picture. The majority of time and space in Second Life have been devoted to gambling and pornography, and they have been getting rid of gambling.

Or do you have a better idea?

: Zubon

CoX Guilds

Tobold has been thinking about how game design affects guild life. Foton already explained this one pretty well with respect to how WoW raiding has killed guilds.

In the Cities, we have supergroups (guilds) with 75 member caps. Do y’all have caps in other games? ATitD required you to pony up more bricks and boards to increase the guild cap, but I cannot recall caps in other games. I cannot imagine that in WoW, with 40-man raids and a 75-man cap. The 75 cap might have related to something at some point. I recall the claim that it was needed for supergroup PvP raid balance, or to prevent massive lag in said raids, but since said raids are two years late with no plans to implement them, it is just annoying to have alt supergroups into which to shuttle characters.

Am I mis-recalling the normal estimate that 1/5 of your subscribers are online during peak hours? That would mean a full CoX supergroup, with no alts, would average 15 members online. This is about two full groups, which is quite enough for a game that only recently added its second raid — there is not much to do with large groups. In our glory days, I recall our Teamspeak setting up rooms because we were running two full groups at once. We never went past that, despite a massive flurry of activity.

This seems like a combination of guild and game design. Your guild caps at 75, so your active guild playerbase caps around two full groups; letting alts in caps you around one full group. Since the full group is the standard unit for task forces and high-end play, that all falls together.

It all falls apart when people leave. You have an alt SG for alts, an elite SG for folks’ level-capped characters (now alts), and the main SG. Conveniently, you can communicate in a coalition channel or a global channel across the lot of them. When people leave, though, you are already that fragmented. You may only have a dozen members in these SGs, so any loses can kill the whole thing. Now the surviving members are spread across three guilds, each of which is a collection of alts and ghosts. I know one SG that made a half-dozen alt SGs for the various hero classes, then ended up with only a few active characters in each after the next wave of MMOs came out. Do you abandon the old base and everything that went into it? There are a lot of orphan supergroups out there, inhabited by long-dormant alts.

: Zubon

Ouroboros

The part of Issue 11 that I am most looking forward to is going back to old badge missions and story arcs. Not because I want to re-do content, but because I need not worry about missing content as I level. If I do not need to worry about out-leveling missions I want to run, then I can team with my friends freely and do whatever I feel like that night, without loss. That is remarkably freeing. They just need to expand that to Mayhem and Safeguard missions, and I will be set.

: Zubon

Good Things About the Rikti

I have announced my annoyance with the Rikti and Issue 10 for bring us more. What is good about having Rikti in the game?

First, they are the backstory. Before we turned to immortal spider-kings, nazis cum other fascists, and interdimensional duplicates, the original interdimensional attackers were the Rikti. The whole story behind the City is that the Rikti attacked. I like getting back to that story.

Second, there are some good Rikti stories. The Dark Watcher story arc (“The Horror of War”) is excellent, one of the best in the game. “Division: Line” and “The Organ Grinders” are fundamental arcs in getting the CoH backstory. Lady Grey’s Task Force does not have a great story, but it has interesting ideas and a great twist at the end.

When Rikti AttackThird, in terms of gameplay, they bring a lot to the table. There is something there for everyone, which is to say that there is something hard there for everyone. Their drones see through stealth. They have every type of crowd control, which is rough on squishies. They have lots of psychic damage, which is hard on most non-squishies. They have hordes of little monkeys to fight. They summon portals that are worth ridiculous amounts of experience. They have Guardians, who will give you nice buffs if you land a confusion power. The ideal anti-Rikti PC is probably a Spines/Dark Armor Scrapper: status protection, psychic resistance, PBAE damage toggle for the monkeys, and a single-target ranged attack to aggro without disrupting the portal summoning. That could explain part of why it is the flavor of the month.

: Zubon

Recent Searches

Previously

Due to popular demand after the last batch of search results, we hereby present more. As a note, if you are worried about your odd search being tracked back to you, do not worry. I have no idea how to do that with Google Analytics, if it is at all possible. This is purely anonymous mockery, combined with useful answering of questions. The five of you who came here searching for “zubon is my hero” can rest assured that your secret is safe with me. Such as it is. Also, you are not alone.

Again, let’s push this off the main page, since we will probably have a few naughty words.

Continue reading Recent Searches

LOLpocalypse

I stated before that lolcattery is a sign that this is the best time in history to be alive. Teh Holiez Bibul is a sign that perhaps history has come too far, and these are the end times. That is a thin line to cross.

: Zubon

Hat tip to Language Log. I am debating whether this is a new frontier in “bringing the word to them” or an ally of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I am waiting for the schism, as competing translations have spoke of “Invisible Man” and “Ceiling Cat.” lolheresy?

Character Contemplations 1: Frosta (Ice Blast/Devices Blaster)

In Case of Emergency, Call FrostaMy first level-capped hero was Frosta. It is the same character I made in beta, when my wife said I should name her after a She-Ra character. (I am far enough away from the namesake to be safe.) After playing a War Mace Tanker for a while, it was nice to have some real damage. At the time, I was in a supergroup with an Earth Controller named Heaven’s Hold, and I usually had someone keeping the enemies pacified. That makes it much easier to freeze the Hellions.

I played carefully to see as much content as possible. Whenever possible, Frosta completed every story arc available. I was quite bitter about the arcs that were bugged, but Issue 11’s Ouroboros will let me get back to them. This meant a fair amount of time soloing, which let me get through all the arcs without out-leveling them running others’ missions in teams. Conveniently, almost everyone from that original supergroup quit a couple of months in, leaving me lots of solo time.

Continue reading Character Contemplations 1: Frosta (Ice Blast/Devices Blaster)

Marginally On-Topic Music

At any given time, my wife has a musical addiction of the month. I will get a contact buzz or more, then try to figure out how to work it into a gaming-related post. I often give up, but this month’s is Rilo Kiley. Perfect: the lead singer is the girl from The Wizard, so keep your power gloves off her. (I was going to link to a song here, but the Portions For Foxes video distracts from the song a bit. That is the song my wife recommends, and you can play it at the Rilo Kiley link above.)

: Zubon

Two Hard Drive Notes

Today’s Nobel Prize in Physics is for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. This was discovered less than twenty years ago, and now you use it in your iPod. Less than twenty years from unknown to ubiquitous: The Singularity is Near. On that Nobel Prize link, note that the page 1 graph is logarithmic. That is a >100x improvement in a decade.

If you have an iPod and still have some money to toss around, why not convert your computer entirely to flash memory? Hard drives with moving parts are so unreliable, and that 320GB drive will cost a little less than $10,000.

: Zubon