[City of Heroes] I promised I would have a few words after the CoX free reactivation weekend. I played less than I might have hoped, due to travel and a LAN party, but here are ruminations as they strike me at 3:00am.
Quick version before the break: it’s a fun game when you can play it.
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: Zubon
[Crusade] David Allen wonders whether his upcoming game should restrict the number of trade skills you can have/master/use. I am going to vote for “no.” If you are already combining EVE’s time-based character development with a standard use-based character development, there is no need to place a hard cap on the number of skills you can learn. Time will do that.
In this case, you need to pick one of two routes. EVE’s route was to make so many skills that no one would ever be able to cap them all, since they keep adding new skills occasionally. You could also just decide that it is fine for someone to hit all the time-based caps, some number of years down the line. Of course, when it is “some number of years down the line,” you can change your mind and keep adding skills to push the horizon away. Just don’t do the Learning skills thing.
Also, if I may offer a bit of writing advice, never use the phrase “to the next level” twice in an essay that short. If your game promises to make the very concept of trade skills ding twice in one night, you better deliver something spectacular.
: Zubon
[City of Heroes] Their poor, hammered update servers. I will be able to connect someday. With any luck, this will be the party that the last free weekend should have been, relatively bug-free. I was just thinking of re-subscribing anyway! Good timing, except for that LAN party this weekend.
Since I am getting a little free playtime, I will give them a little free press. The first thing is that CoX will soon be introducing Veteran Rewards, stuff you get for having subscribed for a while. This includes wings, trenchcoats, and other mostly decorative touches. My special pre-order glowie-Sprint will no longer be quite as special. The other is that they are pimping the new combined CoH/CoV game, available only at Wal-Mart.
If you have an old account, see if you can log on. If you have never tried it, the “Good Versus Evil Edition” is a cheap way to try both. I will have nice things to say about it all next week, most likely.
: Zubon
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: Zubon
A cute free thing online: Gunbound. Gunbound is a battle of cute little tanks. It is turn based with an interface quite a bit like a golf game. You might ride on a glowing grub that shoots bouncing balls of death or a triceratops with explosive cabbage. When learning to play, I recommend Mage or Turtle, since they are the most straightforward mobiles.
Basic instructions: right/left to move, up/down to aim, space bar to fire, tab to switch weapons. You get gold for winning or making nice shots, which you can use to buy hats and such. You can also buy them with real cash. The items give bonuses, but half the rooms ignore those bonuses so you don’t have to compete against people who pay to play.
Servers are kind of very bad, with significant lag freezes between turns on many games. There is no more juvenile trash-talking than in most subscription-based games, but then maybe I have been lucky. I could use an ignore list some days. If the buddies list is working when you try it out, you can add me and we can shoot at each other. What are friends for?
: Zubon
PS: referral event at the moment. Feel free to tell them Zubon sent you, since I’m saving up to buy a cape. :)
Since I have been thinking about it anyway, I want to do the flip side of this post.
EVE on the other hand starts out kind of rough and ugly. Confusing at times and seeming as if there is nothing to do.
I will cite the problem in the opposite direction: there is everything to do. Once you exit the tutorial, you can run missions, mine, hunt baby rats, start training for trade runs, jump into corp politics, explore the galaxy, learn the market… Many people, when faced with unlimited choice, lock up and cannot handle it. If no direction is inherently more meaningful than any other, they may not even see a reason to move.
In economic terms, people feel opportunity costs. The more choices you have, the more things you need to give up to do anything else right now. If you are playing a Warrior, you have given up the other seven WoW choices (for now). If you are training Learning 1, there are over 300 other skills that you are not training, there are people several years ahead of you, and it will never be possible to cap every skill. From the instant you log on, you can check the market and see the multi-million ISK items out there, with the tier II items directly next to the ones you can use. If you see a level 10 in the WoW newbie zone, he’s slumming. WoW even has an eventual “win” condition. It has rules, and borders, and an end zone.
Freedom, opportunity, and choices scare a lot of people. There are enough places in real life where they are faced with radical existentialism, and they do not want to deal with it in a game. My mother yet to come to grips with Mario, who can move sideways and jump, or do both at the same time!
: Zubon
is your last name Zubon? or what… just wondering.
This is a fair question that I get every now and again. Why I am “Zubon” has a fairly random story, which appears after the break.
The Warlords expansion to Civilization IV adds Churchill and Stalin to the list of leaders available, helping you to recreate The War, although Italy is still represented by the Romans. You can round out the Allies with FDR running the Americans while Mao and Hirohito battle in Asia. Germany, of course, will be ruled by … … Bismarck.
Something seems to be missing here.
: Zubon
PS – Hirohito but no Tokugawa?
Moving along from that last post, you are now a game developer. MMOs are never completely done, and you are looking for ideas and feedback in making changes. You had cast a wider net during initial development, but now you mostly listen to your current players. These are the people who are willing to pay to play your game (or something very like it), rather than the great many who say they want something but never buy it.
You have a good game! You are successful! You are the next EVE Online, growing from a niche game into something of international note! Can you still get useful input from your playerbase?