Category: General

Human beings are surprisingly poor at estimating how happy something would make us. It turns out that your long-term happiness is largely fixed and resilient to shocks. Winning the lottery or losing a limb does affect your happiness, but not nearly as much as you might expect.

A major problem in estimating a change in happiness is that we are envisioning the moment of the change itself, rather than the average change over time. A cookie makes you happy right now, but that effect goes away within the hour. Losing a limb makes you unhappy right now, but that effect also usually fades over time (more than an hour).

In-game, you are envisioning the moment you get a really great drop. That is a really great moment, winning a small lottery. But how much happiness does that bring you over time? Moving up to “best in slot” is often a tiny percentage improvement. You need quite a few of those best-in-slot drops for the effect to be noticeable, and what you envision there is the item grind.

Or maybe gameplay will become too easy after that, so your great moments create an average decrease over time. Remember, you’re surprisingly poor at estimating what makes you happy. Don’t worry, that effect also fades over time as the new best-in-slot gear is added, at which point you can start pursuing that.

: Zubon

My attitude towards questions in general chat is a mix of sympathy and scorn. I see where Endgame Viable is coming from, because people ask some fundamentally stupid and lazy questions, ones where the answer was probably already on-screen but they clicked past it instead of reading (or asking that exact “endgame viable” question in a newbie zone). I am also the veteran of a dozen MMOs where broken quests were the norm rather than the exception, so it seems reasonable to ask whether you have the right answer. I suppose my dividing line is between “is this the right answer?” and “what is the right answer?”

I just played Anna – Extended Edition. (Quick review: creepy atmosphere, nice story breadcrumbs, some interface dodginess.) It has some of the classic adventure game insanity I described in the linked post and Old Man Murray described in the post linked therein. It matters which of several bladed objects you use to cut particular objects, and essential items are hidden in drawers (but some desks’ drawers are purely decorative and cannot be opened). I am pretty sure this is a game where the atmosphere is the point more than the game itself, and I felt only the most minimal shame in having a walkthrough open on my second monitor. While the point of a puzzle game is to solve the puzzle, I do not feel lessened because I did not guess I was supposed to find baby hair in an object in one of the cribs, nor that I did not independently guess which dark brown rectangles on one of fifteen shadowy shelves per room was a book.

In MMOs, the social aspect of the game is supposed to be part of the game. If content is meant to be puzzled out on your own, not in cooperation with others, it pretty much needs a big sign over it saying, “Go in unspoiled!” because our default is to collaborate. You could solo the scavenger hunt, or you could work with your friends. And with 100,000 “friends” playing, at least 100 of whom will update a wiki or post a comment, it seems little wonder that people expect the guide to be written for them.

I am all for asking for a nudge, direction, or confirmation in general chat. I think my wife gets a better puzzle game experience than I do because I either force my way through it or Google the help, while she has someone in the room she can ask, “Am I doing this wrong, or am I doing the wrong thing?” I wish we had a better way of teaching new players to ask that question rather than “tell me how to do it.” Whatever your thoughts about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish, “can you fish in rivers or just lakes?” seems like a fair question.

: Zubon

I have been playing as Wolverine lately. I’ve come to realize that he does not have a great diversity in tactics. He’s pretty good at it, though.

: Zubon

At one point, PvP was seen as the solution for community problems. Yes, the developers and moderators could take action against problem customers, but nothing says “you’re fired” quite like killing someone and setting fire to all their stuff. You can also see why giving players that power could be problematic, for example in the officially non-PvP Sims Online where mafias would extort resources from new players under threat of mass-downrating them as griefers. In practice, apart from A Tale in the Desert, most recent games have made the consequences players could impose on each other small, avoiding having players driven out and instead implementing things like automatic group-finding that minimize any social consequences for sociopathy.

In an environment of anonymity, low consequences, and high competitiveness, PvP communities are often quite toxic. I have known people to use trolling as a form of crowd control, as a quick comment or two can leave a target typing for minutes and agitated for an entire round.

One approach occasionally in use is asynchronous PvP. “Asynchronous” means “not at the same time,” so one player sets up a computer-controlled challenge and other players face the challenge. Elements has an an arena, so the computer controls a player-built deck. Marvel Puzzle Quest remembers which team you last used to attack and controls it as your team for defense.

This converts PvP to another form of PvE. In many circumstances, there is not even a way to tell which opponent used your defense as a challenge target. You might talk smack out-of-game, but in-game there is no direct interaction with your PvP target.

The advantages of player-built, computer-controlled teams are known. Some strategies work better or worse in the hands of a computer, and building around the computer’s AI is a skill in itself. Tricks tend to work less well because the computer is not in on the trick, but items needing precision application can safely be left in the hands of a pilot who “thinks” in micro-seconds.

: Zubon

I was absolutely sucked in to A Dark Room yesterday, and I am still blown away at what the developer came up with. It is called a minimalist text adventure. What is amazing is the progression of game and story that the developer packed in to a relatively small space. I will do my best not to spoil much below.

The game starts out seemingly as a kind of true text adventure. Press a button, get some text, and then continue. But, it quickly becomes more like a resource management game, where the player grows a village in a hostile environment. What really struck me was that playing through the website (the game is also available in iOS form) the stark screen really drove home the feeling of despair. Animals come and rip up your villagers, and it’s all just there in black text on a white background.

Not long after the game shifts again to the player journeying outside the “safety” of the village limits. The story grows from there as the player wanders further away, and the game shifts to a nice finale at the end.

Couple hints:

• Weapons are additive. Use the bone spear and later weapons all at once.
• In the “Dusty Trail” portion use recovered areas (“P”) to refresh your water and get more meat. Clever usage of these will allow you to traverse much further.
• There are two renewable resources that can only be obtained by exploring and clearing bad areas in the “Dusty Trail”. Once you clear them they can be utilized by the village.

Good Luck!

–Ravious

Marvel Puzzle Quest players use “tanking” to mean “intentionally losing matches” rather than “absorbing damage.” This is a method of manipulating the matchmaking algorithm, and it is reportedly quite effective.

The idea is this: if you win 95% of the time, you will be grouped with other players who win 95% of the time. It is easy to win almost every match because you can “skip” in PvP after seeing the opposing team, so you do not start matches you know you will lose. If you do that enough, you start seeing level 100 opponents in your first few weeks, at which point you can skip all you like without finding a good fight. So every now and again, you need to lose a tournament intentionally, just keep challenging and losing, and then your next few tournament groupings will be much easier. Otherwise, you will not make it into the top 10% of your tourney grouping to get the new heroes you need to have a chance against those harder opponents.

This is an unfortunate mechanic. We want matchmaking systems to provide evenly matched opponents, but the asynchronous PvP system that Marvel Puzzle Quest uses seems to encourage guaranteed victories until you hit a wall of very likely losses. Neither end of that pendulum is good game balance.

: Zubon

The other great early game hero you get in Marvel Puzzle Quest is Storm. Storm has two abilities that do a bit of damage but are really great for letting you make better matches. Her green ability randomly destroys tiles across the map. Her red ability destroys all the environmental tiles across the map. You look at the map and see if you can do better than “match 3”; if not, click green or red. Popping either of those abilities will often get you some instant matches, plus green counts as clearing those tiles, so you (1) do damage, (2) recharge abilities, and (3) get another chance at matching 4 or 5 at a time. If you match 5, you get another turn; rinse, repeat.

This can make Storm a really annoying opponent when the computer gets her. You know how the computer can somehow match up things that are not even on the screen? As in, when the computer makes a match, more matches will just fall from off-screen. I do not really think that the computer gets more of these magical chains of matches, but it certainly feels like it. It feels more like it when it gets to mix in Storm’s detonating half the field, which recharges the ability to detonate half the field, which sets off another chain of matches, which…

But when you get to do that, it is fun to down one or two opponents before they even get a turn. It’s just a shame that Wolverine also uses red and green abilities, so Storm does not synergize well with him. And her third ability does not work well with Moonstone, who I was getting to like during their “ladies only” weekend PvP event over the holidays.

: Zubon

I have been playing Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign. Black Widow is an unexpectedly amazing support hero to have on your team throughout the early and mid-game. Marvel Puzzle Quest effectively uses health as an energy mechanic. Therefore, healing and damage reduction are really great things to have: they let you win the round and then they let you play more rounds.

Marvel Puzzle Quest rates its heroes by stars, with more stars meaning a rarer, more expensive, and usually better hero (and they have higher level caps). Black Widow is available in one-star (modern costume), two-star (original costume), and three-star (gray suit) versions. You cannot have more than one of the same character on your team.

Modern Black Widow comes with a great stun. Once you fully upgrade it, it stuns one target for 5 turns and the rest of their team for 1 turn. It costs 9 blue, which is three blue matches, so you can potentially keep someone stunned indefinitely if blues keep falling. This is especially great because of the game’s tendency to have asynchronous PvP rounds with one super-buffed NPC on your side. Have the NPC tank and deal damage, pick off the opposing non-buffed characters, then paralyze the enemy for the rest of the fight.

When you advance to two-star play, the new Black Widow has a heal instead of a stun (that also increases timers, mostly a PvE benefit). The heal affects your whole team, and it is rather strong. Marvel Puzzle Quest recently did an event with super-buffed Black Widows, so one heal effectively refilled your entire team. This is especially great because you can pick which of the enemy you are targeting, while which hero is tanking for you is dependent on what colors you match. You can spread the damage around your team and pop the big AE heal just before finishing off the last enemy.

Once you get to three stars, Spider-Man takes both support roles with both a stun and a heal (and a defense buff), while gray suit Widow is a damage dealer. Building a good Spider-Man looks like one of the milestones on your path to the endgame. Damage gives big, sexy numbers, but support wins games and wins the war.

: Zubon