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] Slow Creep

Last year, Guild Wars 2 was perceived as experiencing three-monther doldrums and had calls for increasing character advancement options. Lost Shores included the first Ascended items and Fractals of the Mists, a dungeon where rewards increased at deeper levels and an “agony” mechanic demanded item-based progression. Developers promised more character advancement, a higher level cap, and more tiers of loot. I flipped out and stormed off. I read that as the death of the horizontal endgame I signed up for. Respect for Ravious’s ongoing enjoyment was the main thing that kept me from posting daily screeds.

Fast forward six or eight months, and I became willing to give trust another chance. Now about half the slots have Ascended items, with many options and several ways to get them. The level cap has not increased. The endgame is still mostly horizontal, with expanded Achiever content through achievements, appropriately enough. I do not feel obliged to delve thirty layers into Fractals to have a worthwhile character in PvE or WvW. sPvP remains insulated.

I am still expecting more character advancement. Long before the latest update, a guildmate described anticipated crafting changes as a precursor to Ascended armor; we happened to get weapons first. I still think Ascended gear is a design mistake, but since the tier is here, sure, complete it. The slow pace implies that we will not be seeing a new tier several times a year, which is comforting. Several proposed changes are expanding character options, not creating a new layer of them. Again, comforting — “more options” is what I signed up for.

I do not know if I overreacted or if ArenaNet changed plans. I certainly heard “more progression” and “we never promised a horizontal endgame.” I saw the worst advancement schemes from WoW (item-based progression), LotRO (gloom), and DAoC (Trials of Atlantis) being planned all at once. If that change is coming at this pace, I can deal with it; that could actually feel like “progression” rather than “churn.”

I may still flip out and storm off again if character advancement pressures accelerate. I am already concerned about how they are affecting alt-friendliness.

In the long run, trying to retain players through planned obsolescence is just prolonging a death spiral. The further the endgame is from the start, the less attractive your game is to new players, and every time you have a gear reset to bring the new endgame back closer, you upset your existing players who can see the treadmill more clearly.

: Zubon

Good Title

To quote the developer:

I just finished a new [game], and it’s an introspective take on a personal life experience I once had that I think leaves me emotionally vulnerable, while encouraging the player to think about their own feelings and how they’re perceived by the people around them.

It’s called Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar.

You may be able to guess what the game is about.

: Zubon

The Treachery of Images

Regular readers know that I rarely include pictures in my posts. I am not a visual person. My mental world is verbal and quantitative, and embellishment usually strikes me as willful distraction preluding deception. I write about mechanics and gameplay and seem to be made suspicious by great graphics because what are you trying to hide?

I am unusual in this respect. I have poor vision and am somewhere in the bottom ten percent for mental imagery. Those with better sensory gifts may instead see that “embellishment” as the whole point, with the game mechanics there as a framework for the aesthetic experience.
Continue reading The Treachery of Images

Rivalry

Economists classify goods on a public-private spectrum based on the extent to which they are rivalrous and exclusive. Exclusivity is based on how easily one can be prevented from enjoying a good, and rivalry is based on whether my enjoyment of the good prevents you from enjoying it. National defense is a classic public good: any number of citizens can benefit from it at once, and there is no way to keep someone from enjoying the benefits. Food is a classic private good: we cannot both eat the same bite of food, and there are a variety of ways for me to keep you from eating my food.

Different MMOs place their mobs at different points on the public-private spectrum. In the early days, mobs tended to be rivalrous but not exclusive: whoever got the last hit got the prize, no matter who dealt the most damage, tanked, etc. The reigning solution to the problem was tapping so that you could claim property rights on an enemy, but claiming a camp was a matter of social convention rather than game mechanics. If you tapped the mobs out from under someone, they were yours. Instanced enemies are exclusive. Guild Wars 2 took the unusual step of making mobs mostly non-rivalrous: until the enemy runs out of hp, we can all get all the benefit from it. There is still some rivalrousness in the race to tag enemies or get to the event boss before it falls, but everyone in the fight shares in the fight. [Update: commenters have noted that other MMOs have followed suit to varying extents.]

: Zubon

[GW2] Guild Recruitment

In case you are not taking advantage of the “guild” part of Guild Wars 2, my guild is recruiting. We could use some new blood to rejuvenate the nightly events and fill out the guild missions on the weekends. Events are scheduled, so if you are just interested in guesting for them, that works.

The guild is Assured Mutual Destruction [ICBM] of Isle of Janthir. Rather than repeat the link, you can see our advertising copy there. You can apply online or in-game with a message to Leohan.

If you are not participating in a guild, you are missing pieces of the game. Some content is exclusive to guild missions, and I recommend guild commendations for acquiring ascended accessories. And let me level with you: with two more people consistently attending, we can start completing Guild Challenges, and with a dozen more even the hardest guild missions would become manageable.

: Zubon

[GW2] Scarlet vs. Kerrigan

The reigning villain in Guild Wars 2 is Scarlet Briar, a cross between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy with killer robots tossed in. And in her Playhouse, she gets a giant hammer, in case you did not think she was enough like Harley Quinn. And they case one of the Harley Quinns to voice her. I am rather fond of the character, and Tara Strong can only make things better.

After the Queen’s Pavilion put everyone in a huge zerg, that approach fails consistently in Clockwork Chaos. Players need to spread out to complete more events. Players tend to congeal into large groups and farm champions. Large groups spawn multiple Aetherblade champions, and champions’ survivability scales up with participation, so portals that should take a few minutes to clear take much longer. Invasion events rarely see Scarlet if:

  1. movement is difficult around the map (to get between portals)
  2. the map uses a lot of Z-axis (harder to get between portals, false paths lead players astray, bugs with spawning the enemies at different heights and around water)
  3. Aetherblades are the reinforcements in anything but the last wave (momentum stops as players farm Aetherblade champions).

I joked in chat that the last update was to remove champions. Two minutes later, patch notes said that champion spawns were being toned down. They still spawn enough to congeal zergs. Map chat gets fun and dramatic.

: Zubon

Tinker Metal Dice: Last Chance

Remember our buddy Tesh’s Kickstarter for metal gearpunk dice? It has gone ridiculously well, now past 2000% of its goal, so well that Tesh started making up new stretch goals and adding more tiers of dice to accommodate the need to have one of everything. You can still kick in $10 for the original idea, but some people went all the way up to $145 because they wanted one of everything, and for all I know some of those people paid even more to have more than one. There are now multiple shapes and colors and designs and…

You have a day (probably less by the time you read this) to join or increase your pledge. I’m figuring out if I need to add a few dice to play with finish options. I must not spend $145 on very fancy dice.

: Zubon

[GW2] Crafting Storage

The “collectibles” tab in the Guild Wars 2 bank seemed like a neat idea at launch, but it has become apparent that it is essential to the crafting design and that crafting as implemented would be completely untenable without the storage component. Alternately, one can take the lesson that storage problems are a feature, not a bug, and potentially see merits in competing designs.
Continue reading [GW2] Crafting Storage