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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[GW2] Weekend WvW: Demoralized Populations

For Isle of Janthir (NA Silver), this is one of the three weeks of Season One when we are not pitted against the Big Two of Fort Aspenwood or Stormbluff Isle. We are, however, again pitted against #3 (Yak’s Bend) and doing so with a population that has been beaten down by pre-season transfers and guaranteed losses.

All three of our relatively easy weeks pit us against North Shiverpeaks. This is potentially one of the more interesting competitions in NA Silver because we are unarguably the #8 and #9 servers in the league, but it remains an open question which is #9. Continue reading [GW2] Weekend WvW: Demoralized Populations

[GW2] Chamber of Nightmares Thanks and Bug Report

Logan Thackeray is one of the potential end boss fights in the Chamber of Nightmares mini-dungeon. This single factor may make this one of the most popular updates in GW2 history. In my guild, Logan’s popularity polls around that of Rurik, so the chance to kill him is celebrated.

Logan is, however, a decent opponent, rather than being completely useless, and I do not recall him whining at all. This makes it entirely too obvious that it is a hallucination.

: Zubon

MMO Accounting

You know how I love real world applications of game principles and applying game principles to real world analysis. Today’s news provides a good one: healthcare.gov enrollment numbers were reported. While I fear mentioning politics, visible cartoon exclamation points appeared over my head when I saw the US government copying an F2P game press releases in announcing how many people signed up at the website but refusing to mention how many of them are actually paying customers.

: Zubon

The comments are not a forum for arguing for or against policies, but feel free to discuss PR, the presentation of data, game business models, or the prospect of time-traveling pandas.

[GW2] Crowd Control in the Tower of Nightmares

The interior of the Tower of Nightmares has periodic group events. These collect players into groups, which is necessary because trying to run through solo is nigh unto suicide.

There is a group event at the entrance. This groups up people like in the tutorial. The event ends, and a small zerg descends upon the maze. Halfway through, a champion awaits, and dispersed players unite to defeat it. Thus gathered, they proceed to the second section, now able to safely proceed as a group rather than dying in a thin line. And so on.

This is good design. It organically groups people without their even noticing it’s happening. It promotes and rewards doing the right thing to succeed.

: Zubon

We led a guild group through the tower a few times to help people unlock the travel points. I had a chant of “If you run ahead, you will die alone. Don’t stop to rez those people or you will die too.” We would built up a large enough group behind us to stop and rez the people who still charged ahead into the mass of death.

Exit and Voice

A principle sometimes used to contrast economics and politics is that exit is more powerful than voice. That is, the capacity to take your business elsewhere has a stronger influence on most companies than asking them to change things. This is contrasted with politics because your exit options are smaller in political situations: you might leave your town, but things need to get pretty dire before you leave your country. (It is a related truism that you can quickly judge the freedom and prosperity of a society by which way the border guards face. No one was trying to sneak into East Germany.)

Gamers treasure voice. I mean, here we are on an online gaming blog, so we talk at length about what we like and would prefer. The advantage of voice is that you can send a more precise message. “I think it was a bad idea to add the Living World PvE content to the WvW zones. Please remove it.” Exit is a blunt weapon: you leave, and the company can draw its own conclusions. Of course, the discerning company is going to draw its own conclusions anyway, because what people say and what they do often differ (another major economic principle).
Continue reading Exit and Voice

[SC2] Verbally Raised Stakes

The cut scenes in StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm reminded me of Borderlands 2, and more particularly Yahtzee’s review of it. Every boss is a more powerful threat than you’ve ever faced. I apparently broke into the three most heavily defended locations in Dominion space and fought at least three beings who were more unimaginably powerful and/or cunning than any opponent I had ever faced. Of course, all the fights were easy, and almost all the bosses died in cut scenes. But hey, all the other cut scenes talk about how Kerrigan is now more powerful than the Queen of Blades ever was, than has even been witnessed, etc.

: Zubon

In the United States, every presidential campaign is The Most Important Election Of Our Lives.

[SC2] F2

I am playing StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and its user interface has the zerg-iest thing ever: F2 to select all combat units. When you get that button, the game gives you about 100 zerglings and tells you to have fun storming the castle. This is a horrible thing to teach players to use in a game that rewards skilled micromanagement of attack units, but it works just fine in normal difficulty of the campaign, and nothing is more zerg than just taking every unit on the map and throwing it at the enemy in a massive rush.

RP via interface: love it.

: Zubon

Nightmare Fuel

This is the Halloween unlimited harvesting tool in GW2. It is a jack-in-the-box clown with a scythe. I picked one up just after they became available and equipped it on the latest character I have been leveling. I didn’t think that one through. I don’t think I even watched a video of the animation.

A week later I had a nightmare involving a seven-foot-tall Joker with a scythe. Reading about New 52 Joker couldn’t have helped that.

Fast-forward to the latest Living World content, released while that scythe is for sale. Groups of 4-5 toxic seedling harvest nodes appear together. They tend to sprout up near the Living World events, so picture the 40-person zergs that swarm those the first night. 5 or 6 people in the event zerg have the jack-in-the-box. In less than a minute, thirty scythe clowns pop out of nowhere to harvest. Listen to that wheezing laugh again, and imagine dozens of them, slightly offset and overlapping, repeating the whole time.

Emergent behavior: creating quality Halloween creepiness.

: Zubon

[GW2] Predetermined Outcomes

I should be about done commenting on GW2 WvW Season One. I have been wondering all weekend why I can’t just give up, but I may be getting there. Like all seven weeks of Season One, my server of Isle of Janthir has no chance of winning this week, but this is the first week we have been up against either of the two servers that have a chance to win NA Silver. It is a ridiculous mismatch; during times when I play, Stormbluff Isle outnumbers us on every map including our borderlands, usually to the point of having the official Outnumbered buff. One night, I went to try a bit of yakslappiong in SBI BL, and there were full groups parked at all the exits from our spawn in case anyone came out to play. It’s not like they have anything better to do in WvW when they already control most of the map.

I think the weight class discussion summarizes the week-to-week matchup problems. You can argue about the fine details, but you know who the top servers are in each league, so you can pick who is going to win most weeks. The first and seventh weeks look potentially interesting, but most of the weeks for most of the servers you can pick out the winners in advance. I had said that in the abstract, but I had not taken the schedule and plotted it out. Merus told us, and folks plotted out Gold, and right now there is a very narrow range at the top of the NA leagues.
Continue reading [GW2] Predetermined Outcomes