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.
.She will whine at great length and volume about any closed door or other obstruction to her freedom of movement. She has high expectations about coming attractions and how responsive to her desires others should be. Once past an obstruction, she will do exactly the same thing that she did in the previous room.
: Zubon
The Slab King is probably the single best character for exemplifying the setting of Borderlands 2. He is needlessly violent, friendly and silly, occasionally profane, psychopathic, and devoid of introspection. He has cheerful stories about people he has killed with his bare hands. He shouts rants against Jack. He fails to understand worldviews beyond his own amusements. His plans involve punching people in the face, blowing things up, or ideally both at once. He will call you during missions with advice on how to look like more of a badass. He seems to view existence as an action movie, and the world supports him; after you follow his advice, someone immediately recognizes how badass that move was. He happily reminisces, “I’ve killed a lotta people.” He is brutal, petty, helpful, and loves dogs. He is too bloodthirsty for what passes for polite society in a bandit-infested wasteland, someone who thinks nothing of the deaths of his closest allies, one of your loyal allies, and one of the last hopes for the world.
It’s that kind of world.
: Zubon
You could expect some spoilers in the comments, except that we do not get comments on the non-MMO posts. I seem to write these for my own amusement.
Returning to the topic of simple mechanics with big impacts, consider the Test of the Obelisk in A Tale in the Desert. Most of you have never played, so let me explain. Some particulars may have changed between Tellings, so I am going with the one I remember best, from the original ATitD.
To pass the Test, you must build an obelisk. It must be at least 7 cubits tall, and it must be at least 1/7 larger than any obelisk within 1000 yards, and it must remain the tallest for a week. The building cost of an obelisk increases geometrically, mostly in bricks and boards but also involving ash, linen, and other materials.
It is the first and simplest Test of Architecture. The devil, as ever, is in the details. Continue reading The Test of the Obelisk
Borderlands 2 is silly but also darker than the first one. Most things are, upon a moment’s reflection, at least creepy and sometimes horrifying. There is lots of comedic sociopathy and black comedy that usually works best when it crosses the line twice. You may be distressed if you pause halfway or reach one of the moments when the game looks back.
For example, Tiny Tina wants to have a tea party. It involves luring a psycho into a trap and torturing him to death … while having a tea party with some dolls. The psychos are goofy insane, and we have a little girl who talks like the internet going over the top, so it’s funny. Did you notice the little name cards at the table, indicating that this psycho got her parents killed? How about that sidequest later on where you get recordings of their deaths when they were captured as test subjects for medical experiments? Or the other recordings from that quest?
On the creepy side, there are Moxxi posters in one (?) of the bandit bathrooms.
The tone is usually pretty light, and the game rarely dwells on these moments. Keep it moving, before the players dwell upon what happened there. Did you notice at the start of the game that all the Vault Hunters were on that train? All the survivors are in your group. Based on my Steam friends, it looks like most people are playing BL2 solo. You may have noticed the similar fate of all but one of the Claptrap units on the planet. Okay, next joke and/or explosion, go!
: Zubon
I think of Spiral Knights as the Zelda MMO. The gameplay takes me back to Nintendo and Super Nintendo days. The setting is obviously rather different.
What if you took Zelda in a different direction and decided that chopping down tall grasses in search of rupees was the heart of the game? I give you: Bush Whacker 2. Zelda, minus the monsters and game elements, plus the standard social media energy mechanic and cash shop. I do not have endgame experience, but I think I just summarized the whole thing. (It also has a quick-whack button, in case you find tedium tedious.)
: Zubon
It is strangely hypnotic. I have yet to research what happened to Bushwhacker 1.
To-hit rolls are an RPG mechanic inherited from pen-and-paper systems. They represent an obvious intuition (attacks can miss) and use a binomial mechanic with a random chance. Many non-RPG computer games use a different mechanic: did the sword, shot, spell, or whatever hit the target?
One of the City of Heroes developers remarked that, had he to do it over again, he would not have included a to-hit roll or an accuracy stat. Every attack would hit unless some defense caused it to miss, and then you would have an indicator of why you missed. Continue reading To-Hit Rolls
Last weekend was a big step in Guild Wars 2 because it had an event centered around new, permanent content. Instead of creating a quest chain to introduce every player on their own time, ArenaNet created a story revolving around the event. It is this story that gives players the reason to explore the new zone Southsun Cove (as well as the new dungeon). For a good rundown of the event head over to Inventory Full.
Crowd Energy
Hunter’s Insight puts what I feel is the most important reason to have these one-time weekend events: putting a lot of people together is a lot of fun. There is something quite unique in knowing that this is it, this can’t be spoiled, when I see it it will be my first time and everybody else’s. The flow of reactions through the player mob compounds this feeling. I see comments of first impressions, which are sometimes the most honest comments available. Even bad content can be fun when played together.
This is likely an important concept to ArenaNet’s business model. Get people excited, and get them together. Excitement bleeds out across the internet for new sales. It also loosens pocketbook strings of existing accounts. I would guess from a developer standpoint, player excitement can be an excellent drive to create better content. It is clear that given the Lost Shores update was started after launch along with the amount of bugs, this content was driven hard.
Timely Invisible Bugs
The worst thing about this weekend was the amount of bugs and system strain. The opening event was a karka attack on Lion’s Arch. This was quite a treat given that all cities have nothing to fight. The ancient karka brought a swarm, and we had to drive them back off of Lion’s Arch real estate. The system lag was so bad that people were saying they could not get off their auto-attacks. My own auto-attacks seemed to be separated by a good 3-4 seconds, and using utility skills was practically out of the question.
This was a big disappointment because ArenaNet could have modified the overflow capacity so that there would be less players per instance, and also less system lag. Instead it seemed like each Lion’s Arch map was capped for normal play. The system did not like a combat scenario for the normal amount of Lion’s Arch players. Systemic issues also arose in the final event where player and monster culling was ridiculous. I could only see a fraction of the players and monsters at any given time.
My favorite moment to love and hate was when a veteran karka appeared on the karka hive’s stairwell a couple feet away. Rolling at me. It was such a “rocks fall, everybody dies” moment that I had to just laugh. Thankfully, I was grouped up with Massively’s Lis, who crashed, and our party rejoined in a less populated overflow where culling did not seem to be as big of an issue. It seriously made all the difference, and ArenaNet either needs to tighten the population cap on overflows for future events or they need to fix how player culling is handled. I would prefer a bit of both actually.
The other bugs were the progress blocking bugs from Phase 1 where players are sent across Tyria to learn about the devious Consortium corporation and the mysterious karka threat. The events for each quest bit simply did not work. Some players accidentally killed an NPC outright (who should’ve stuck around for some post-defeat commentary). Some NPCs decided to leave their protective entourage and vacate the quest area completely. Bugs being bugs, this issue was made exponentially worse because time was an issue.
A player having an hour to play on Friday night would have easily made it through the quest chain if it was bug free. A player only having an hour to play for Phase 1 would have basically missed out on most of it without much of a recourse.
Let’s Call It A Duck
Savvy readers, such as yourself, probably noticed that I used the “q”-word in the last section. Quests are one of the best storytelling mechanics in an MMO. Guild Wars 2 own personal story line is essentially an instanced-based quest chain spanning across 80 levels. Much of Phase 1 of the Lost Shores event was also quest-based except I needed to hear about it by mail.
Lionguard Kiel’s investigation bordered on so clunky it was humorous. All told it was a decent investigation quest in to figuring out what went wrong with the Consortium, a trading company rival of the Black Lion Trading Co. I would hit the next bit of content, such as badgering Blingg in to dumping some critical information to me, and I would get some mail. This mail for all intents and purposes was a vanilla quest turn-in screen, with the only difference being that I could retain or delete it when I wanted.
Clearly ArenaNet values quest-based mechanics to tell stories. I don’t understand why then we don’t get a “event only” personal story. Instead I get quests-by-mail. It feels like a full step backwards. ArenaNet has a quest (the personal story). They have sidebars that can act like quest updaters and guides. However, they then use the mailing system instead to guide players on a quest. Hopefully ArenaNet can find a better way to tell these small linear stories for future events.
Content
This being a review of the event and not the Southsun Cove area, I was pretty pleased with the weekend event’s content. Phase 1 was an interesting storytelling exercise in the clash between Lion’s Arch and the Consortium, and the mega-event involving the ancient karka was pretty fun as a massive group event.
My favorite part of Phase 1 was getting to know the three “friendly” aquatic races a bit better. There were three events relating to quaggan, hylek, and largos, respectively. Each event had its own style which reflected the race. The Lionguard vs. Consortium story turned out to be realistically silly. The Consortium headed to Southsun Cove, whacked the karka’s hornet nest, and fled to the safest place they knew: Lion’s Arch. The karka retaliated against Lion’s Arch, and the Consortium didn’t want to say why. So I had to beat out a few answers.
Phase 3 involving the ancient karka was really fun, but it was horribly marred. Lionguard finally realize the Consortium sucks, and they have to kill the ancient karka to protect Lion’s Arch from further karka incursion. They do this by planting explosives in the karka hive, except this tactical maneuver rouses the ancient karka out of the hive. The next two hours are then spent as players are trying to move this ancient karka donkey back to it’s hole.
My favorite leg of the event was planting boulders into steam vents, and then the steam vents would build up pressure to shoot the boulders out at the ultra-armored ancient karka. There was also a part where players felled a huge tree onto the ancient karka, and another party where players had to explode gas vents to scare the ancient karka back. Lots of fun, except that the bulk of the two hours was in two phases of killing karka reinforcements. This artificially extended the event, and I went AFK very often.
In fact, I rarely let my young girls play my character for fear of item destruction and armor repairs. I let my three year old play through much of the kill karka reinforcements periood because a) the event was getting too long, b) I was getting bored, and c) with people knowing to rez each other I felt my character was really in no serious danger. I feel that this event should have been timed to one-hour. That is a good “required” game period.
I liked that I was there to fell the ancient karka, and I took a lot of good snapshots. Overall, I am happy that I had time to do it. I would do it again with the same knowledge, but I would have a tad different control over my time.
Fleeting Rewards
I would be remiss not to discuss the “all I got was this t-shirt” rewards because players did get some pretty good stuff from participating until the brutal end. Everybody that received participation for killing the ancient karka received a 20-slot bag and a really nice account-bound trinket. They also received two exotics and two rares. Some people received precursors for the legendary weapon, which turned appearances of decent reward into “this reward was f’in critical”.
I don’t agree with the random loot, but I do think that the set loot was exceedingly good. Real quick, with the random loot the precursor drop rate was increased. Therefore, anything that will give an exotic, now has a better chance of giving a precursor. Hit that loot bag thousands of times, and yes people will get precursors. The same probably now goes for Orrian map completion.
The set loot, I feel, for most players is going to be a must equip. 20-slot bag is going in to luxury. My biggest bag was 15 slot, and I only had one. A 20-slot bag costs almost as much as a full set of exotic armor. The trinket is interesting because it ups every stat, and costs approximately 13 gold (1000 karka shells to trade with Lionscout Tynuli). So that’s over 20 gold worth of unmarketable, must-equip goodies for showing up at the right time.
It’s hard to place myself in a position as if I wasn’t there, and it’s harder to take people seriously that did receive the rewards but are complaining on the grounds of if they hadn’t. Between this and the Mad King’s rewards, I feel ArenaNet is still experimenting with finding the best possible route.
Fin Soup
The event is over, and we now have a fantastic new dungeon and a dangerous new zone. These I will discuss after the U.S. holiday since I will be out of internet commission for awhile. The event for me was mostly positive, but I did put too much work in to enjoying much of it. Some people are still really rubbed raw from the whole experience. Others, like me, see mostly sunshine.
I am looking forward to more content introductions in this way. It is exciting. It can be a lot of fun. I hope ArenaNet takes all the feedback and is able to iterate in a positive direction.
–Ravious
Something clearly better in small doses may not be better in large doses. I accidentally replicated the New Coke taste test problem last weekend when comparing the store and national brands of a soda flavor. The flavor I preferred in small quantity started seeming unpleasant when drinking an entire glass. Also, some of the merit of the small quantity may have been that I was already familiar with the national brand, so the store brand’s minor variation had a bit of novelty that was gone a few ounces in.
MMOs are typically designed to be played in thousands of hours but tested in dozens of hours. What is awesome in the beta, warts and all, may pale quickly once it becomes familiar, and then it will become far more than familiar when the developers multiply some numbers by 10 to create a theoretically satisfying grind. The only people who are going to repeat the same content ten times in beta are the ones who really really like that content or really really like that grind. This may not translate well to the median player once you go live, even if the beta feedback was entirely positive.
In program evaluation, we must constantly remind policymakers that average results will be worse than the pilot. The pilot project involved finding the most enthusiastic volunteers and setting them loose on the problem with the greatest room for improvement, and the specifics of the project were tuned to their capabilities. You are testing the best case scenario. In game development, beta testers (the ones actually testing) are the people so enthusiastic about the project that they are willing to work for free and then pay you for the output. These are not typical customers.
: Zubon
She usually does not want to interact, and heaven forfend you show her attention when she is otherwise occupied, but she hates being left alone and seems to like having people around (just at a safe remove).
: Zubon
I am still waiting for games to pick up this idea from 2009. Achievement systems have proliferated, tracking all kinds of things, but most games want to give you cosmetic items instead of unlocks. One specific item in that last post has been addressed by many games: a mount tab instead of making you carry mounts around. City of Heroes has always rewarded players by unlocking costume pieces, and Borderlands 2 lets you find/win/buy customization options.
With the upswing in F2P, however, life moves in the opposite direction. Storage space and cosmetic customization are ways they make money, so of course they charge you per item per change in appearance.
: Zubon