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.

.

Sapped

Having played GW1 pretty hardcore for the start of the year, burnout was approaching along with the GW2 BWE. Post-BWE I have basically run out of urge to log in. I’ve seen where we’re heading. It’s right over there. It feels pointless to mill about over here. It’s like cleaning something before you set fire to it. GW1 will still be there, but I have my 30+/50, so the value of Achieving has fallen, and I have Explored almost everything. It’s hard to Socialize when most others seem to be in the same state (or furiously completing their 30 or 50), and who wants to Kill against people with 7 more years of experience? I like the Jade Quarry, but my most effective strategy has become dull.

Cleaning the garage is feeling strongly competitive with MMOs right now.

: Zubon

[GW] The Humans Deserve To Lose

or “NPCs I’m glad are dead for GW2”

On a scale of 1 to suicidal, Prince Rurik is one of the worst escort NPCs in the universe. He’s actually not a bad fighter, but he feels free to dive into large groups of enemies, and if he sees you fighting one group while you try to be his bodyguards, he will take a sharp turn to find more. You must protect him in quite a few missions, and his suicide will lead to mission failure despite the way he dies a completely pointless death a mission or two later. Sara Oakheart from LotRO was a great competitor for “worst escort NPC ever,” as she charged quickly ahead and then cowered, also appearing quite often, but her death meant that you failed an optional side quest, not that the main story arc of the game came to a pause.

I think Nolani Academy is my favorite Rurik moment. He lives in a fort so well planned that a charr scout starts inside and you find the back door by following it out. The idea is to clear the front so that Rurik can come out and proceed safely. If you over-leveled normal mode and are going back, there is a convenient “just let them all come” lever to open the front gate. The problem is that, if Rurik sees you approaching, he will open the front gate to greet you, no matter that there are more than a dozen Charr between you and the gate. That is still the “just let them all come” lever, and Rurik will of course try to solo a dozen enemies that are all higher level than him. The image the game wants you to have is the sneaky skirmisher or assassin, taking out the charr in their encampments, but you are really hiding from the idiot prince.

Many guildmates can be drawn into helping others complete Prophecies just for the chance to kill Prince Rurik when he comes back. I don’t know if GW2 has escort NPCs; I hope not. I don’t know if Undead Rurik will be a dungeon or raid boss in GW2; I hope so. I also don’t know if the charr deserve Ascalon, but the humans certainly deserved to lose it.

: Zubon

Levels of Concern

This applies to gaming as well. It is occasionally helpful to remember that most people just don’t care all that much. In increasing order of “you really don’t represent the average player,” we have people who read the forums, [people who post regularly on the forums, people who read the blogs,] and people who write gaming blogs. (I’m not sure of the ordering of those middle two.) You are odd in Western society if you spend 10+ hours a week pretending to kill pigs as an imaginary elf or orc. You are odd within that minority if you spend additional hours reading commentary on imaginary pig slaughter.

You and your friends are weirder than you think, even after taking into account the fact that you and your friends are weirder than you think.

: Zubon

Salem

Now in its 10th year, the most hardcore PvP MMO out there is A Tale in the Desert. How many other MMOs do you know with permadeath? I remember a couple from the First Telling, where the wife was using poison to get around the problem that Egyptian marriage really was ’til death do you part. Good times. It is now in its 6th iteration; the developer is actually willing to end the world and start over periodically. (I have not checked in with Teppy lately, but its hardcore PvP status was maintained through a mix of encouraging cooperation for the community to advance and then actively shaking the ant farm and providing incentives to act against the community.)

Setting aside the social experimentation, another MMO seems to be interested in following the path that ATitD has blazed rather than making Yet Another Fantasy Theme Park: Salem. The little info I have (scroll about half-way down) sounds like ATitD meets Darkfall in colonial New England. Heartless introduced me to it, and as I said there, I have immediate concerns about a F2P game where the Goonswarm could conceivably visit for a weekend and completely despoil an area, a cross-game version of Burn Jita. You need a way to welcome new people but let existing players protect the game from them. (As much as we want players to be able to make meaningful decisions, we do not want players to drive themselves away through bad decisions that undermine the game.)

At this point, I need an RSS or something to subscribe for Salem info. I stopped actively paying attention to game development years ago. All MMOs should be assumed to be vaporware until you can log in, and maybe then you should wait for them to be live a few months before getting emotionally committed. I assume I should check back in a few years or something? I avoided paying much attention to GW2 before the past couple of months, and my friends & family had already pretty much told me I was buying it.

: Zubon

On the Same Team

There were two feelings I really liked when trying the GW2 beta. The first is the playground between the sandbox and the theme park. The second, and I have not felt this for a long time in an MMO or even most team-based games, is that the players were all on the same team.

If the design is working as intended,* everyone on the same server is on the same team. If someone is fighting, you should help him. There is no kill-stealing. If someone is on the ground, you should rez him. You’ll get experience points and achievement progress, and then there’s someone else around to help you with the event.

Continue reading On the Same Team

Default Appearances

Developers: use the character creation screen to show off the characters at different stages of their careers and in different activities. Instead of having one character model on screen, have three: one in the default starter outfit, one in a mid-game or cosmetic outfit, and one in your most splendid endgame gear. They all rotate when you click and drag. Give each of them different weapons, so you can show off the warrior with an axe, hammer, and sword & shield. Then have an “animate” button that puts them into a dance. This will let you show off your character animations and demonstrate how the character looks in motion. Have a choreographed skirmish between the three: baby ranger sends his/her pet in to fight while level 30 ranger is setting a trap and endgame ranger is using a fiery attack volley.

This will give your players a better idea of what they are getting into. It shows the growth of the hero over time and gives the player something to look forward to. It will give your art team a chance to show off a bit and not force them into picking one paper doll to show off each class, although it will significantly increase the work required if you are using a different outfit for each race/sex/class combination (you already have the newbie outfit, so pick one that looks good for most at mid/end, vary it on a case-by-case basis). It also lets you show each class in simple, sexy, and badass versions so that you can appeal to multiple audiences and avoid the kind of accusations that have been flying about the MMO blogosphere this week. This is how she looks in skull-covered black plate mail and this is how she looks in midriff-baring armor.

: Zubon

I swear I have seen a version of this before, but I cannot place it. Guild Wars 2 seems to approximate it by showing off the characters in spectacular armor then switching them to newbie gear once you actually pick, which feels like a bait and switch. (In terms of that hero’s journey, the human/norn female rogue apparently becomes less modest over time.)

Default Appearance

There is nothing wrong with having stripperific outfits in game. Many people like them. Just don’t make them the default option. I logged into the GW2 beta, and of all the female norn default appearances, only the engineer has invented the “covered midriff.” We justified half-naked norn by their tendency to turn into bears, so they can’t be encased in metal … except that the men are. The human women seem to be a good mix, mostly with reasonable outfits, although we have the Asian lass in the orange bikini with some sort of metal exoskeleton floating around her. Except for the mesmer, the rest are great, classically stylish. (The charr look silly, clothed, but silly. The furred race uses more cloth than the giants?)

If people really like the stripper outfits that much, put them in the cash shop. This benefits your bottom line and your first impressions. League of Legends had people lined up to demand the chance to pay for a bunnygirl outfit for Riven. I have no idea how much money Riot made off that, but it seems like a wise business decision. Give people pants for free. Make them pay to take them off.

: Zubon

The Most Exciting Post You Will Read All Week About Pretending To Fish

Check it out at The Ancient Gaming Noob. Bonus content:

Trion added in another skill with the patch called Survival. Survival seems primarily focused on giving you something to do with the fish you catch. It is basically cooking… seafood… along with the ability to make some camping gear. When the female survival trainer said, “Do you need help pitching a tent?” I thought perhaps I mis-heard… or that it was some sort of reference to the Diablo III demon hunter… everybody seems to be mentioning that.

: Zubon

High Heels

Digital high heels are entirely cosmetic. They are almost recursively cosmetic.

High heels serve certain functions in meatspace. They make someone taller. They make legs look longer and change their shape. They make it harder to run and present various other mobility problems depending on the specifics of the heel. Some like these cosmetic aspects or not.

Digital high heels do none of these things. If you want to make a taller character, you make the model taller. If you want the legs to look different, you can do that directly, too. When you look at a character in high heels, your simian brain is applying intuitions and judgments that have absolutely no applicability in a virtual world. Her shoes and leg appearance and entirely independent. If you just wanted her to stand on her toes and levitate a few inches off the ground, as if she were wearing invisible heels, that would be easier than implementing the high heels. It is all cosmetic, and it is completely independant of any physics.

This applies to both pro and con. Reasons I don’t like high heels? No applicability to digital high heels at all. She could have no feet and still play soccer; the game rules do not care about appearances. She cannot feel uncomfortable, and I can give her superspeed just as easily as any other character. The reasons you think high heels are sexy? No applicability to digital high heels at all. They are little pixels that have no effect on her leg shape or gait. It is purely fetishizing footwear, and imaginary footwear at that.

I need to work out how this affects my intuitions. We are primates, poorly adapted to virtual worlds. But until everyone else engages in introspection, we must also deal with all the primates who think that the digital high heels are sexy or marginalizing. The whole point of cosmetics is to affect perceptions, and those perceptions will drive players to or from your game.

: Zubon