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[GW2] Pre-release Cash Shop

Guild Wars 2 has been testing the gem (cash) shop in each of the BWEs. In this final BWE, they are doing it for real: you really buy gems, which you can use this weekend and then they will be reset for release. I find this an interesting economic model, and not necessarily a bad plan on their part, but I’m only as far as thinking, “…interesting.”

If you’re going to pre-sell the game, why not pre-sell the bonus toys, too?

: Zubon

Character slots seem to be $10 each, but I’m not sure where folks got the quote of 800 gems/slot. The game launches with 5 races, 8 classes, and 5 character slots (across all servers, characters are not server-bound except for WvW purposes).

Experimentation

As near as I can tell, this summer’s Steam sale is less about making money and more about economic experiments. Sure, the revenue is nice, but the long-term value to Valve will come from seeing how people react and buy. There are flash sales, community choice, today’s deals, pack deals, and a few other ways to see sales. They vary in discount, placement, and duration, but you’ll see the same sales appearing multiple times in multiple places. Missed that flash sale? No problem, it’s tomorrow’s daily deal, and you’ll get a chance to vote to bring it back in a few days.

It is a real time experiment in marketing with millions of people paying to participate.

: Zubon

[DayZ] Why Is This Fun?

There is no point to DayZ.  

There are no objectives.   You can’t win, nor progress, nor develop any significant power advantage over the environment, PvE, or other players.   You invest hours on end only to lose it all in the blink of an eye.  

All you can do is try to survive. 

You never thrive in DayZ.   You are always one meal away from death. Around every bend in the road, in every building,  every step you take brings you closer to your eventual demise.   You will die.  There is no survival.

Why then do I find myself on the tail end of a ten-hour DayZ marathon, wishing I could skip sleep and work and log in for another ten?

~Cyndre

Missing Puzzle Piece

I increasingly find myself Googling the solutions to quests and puzzles on the assumption that they are broken. I sometimes find that I have been outwitted, but more often something is wrong with the game. That could be a technical error or a design flaw.

The Secret World has had some trouble with broken quests, and it is always upsetting to solve a puzzle and later find out the computer was not accepting the correct answer. You usually find that out after trying 20 “well maybe” guesses after the right one. I was just playing QUBE, which is enjoyable but has a couple of points requiring very precise jumps, which can be difficult when you apparently have no feet; you can look down and see yourself levitating somewhere off the platform you are standing on. Google, YouTube… okay, yep, I was doing exactly the right thing just 3 pixels off. Dodgy game physics are a related issue. Google, YouTube… okay, yep, just keep repeating that sequence of moves until the box slides instead of teleporting away.

On the design side, frequent readers know some of my pet peeves. The broken logic of adventure games is classic, as is that article, if you haven’t read it yet. Other games substitute “guess or brute force all options” for logic. Another old favorite is when you missed something because it was two pixels wide. Oh, I need a coin to proceed, and it was the slightly brown line in the sidewalk crack from seven screens ago? You know, I don’t feel bad for not taking the time to find that one. I’ve probably spent enough time trying to figure out what I was supposed to be finding.

I recall the early days of LotRO, which launched with many early quests involving things to click on the ground: a sack of bandit loot to reclaim, a mushroom to pick, a body to bury. With the newbie zones heavily populated, you could run to exactly the right spot and not find the quest objective because it was still respawning. Players cleared entire camps of dwarves without realizing that the clicky was by the first campfire, and how amazing that bodies could disappear and resurface! Modern tech has mostly solved this problem: the clicky disappears for you when you click it, but other players can also do so without rivalry.

: Zubon

Origin

I was hesitant when Steam launched. Let me get this straight: I will need a dedicated internet connection to play or access my games, I get no physical media, and if Steam goes away or cuts off my access — best of luck? What’s the upside here?

As it turns out, Steam has been an excellent corporate partner in my life. It has been reliable and has continued to improve over the years. It provides sales, updates, cloud storage, and matchmaking. The biggest downside is that its sales model encourages impulse purchases of marginal quality games. The only time I was not liking Steam was when I damaged a RAM slot on my computer, so everything loaded slowly; Steam pops up advertisements (“Updates”!) when you close a game, so Steam was refusing to close and let me have my computer back until it threw ads at me. Now I prefer digital distribution to physical media, because I lose CDs more often than Valve goes out of business. To the extent that you can say it about a corporation, I trust Valve.

I was hesitant when Blizzard moved everything to BattleNet, for all the same reasons. I might trust Blizzard, but Activision-Blizzard? I refused to buy SC2 until I found a rather good sale, and I do not own D3. I’m still not convinced that golden goose will go un-slain.

Does anyone trust EA? At all? About anything?

: Zubon

[GW2] Satiation Point

After wandering around for a while, you know what? I’m good. I could take this zone to 100% or try another few, but as a likely player of Guild Wars 2, I’m set until launch. I’m content to break at this point.

As a buyer, I am happy with the state of the game. It is obviously incomplete, notably the two missing races and the late game, but the content I have seen is in an enjoyable, playable state. A rather harsh judge commented that it was “good enough” two months ago. I could comfortably start playing now, with a solid commitment that the intended launch content will not become DLC, although I think the mass market would explode with shouts of “FAIL!” if the game launched with this much missing, to say nothing of the howls that would come from post-launch rebalancing on the needed scale.

As a tester… I’m not much of a tester. While ArenaNet really is treating this as testing, I mostly gave up betas years ago. I could try a buggy, poorly balanced version of content (not so bad, here) I’d be repeating shortly after anyway, or I can just wait for launch. I have other games I can play while I wait.

It’s been a good little time. I’ll poke at the next BWE to see what has changed, but mostly I’ll just look forward to August.

: Zubon

[GW2] Beta Weekend Event 3 Key Contest on Twitter

This is it. The last Guild Wars 2 beta key contest ever for Kill Ten Rats. Instead of getting nuked by ArenaNet’s laser of death and destruction (as gleeful as it makes Rubi), we will be hosting the giveaway via Twitter. Follow @KTR_Ravious and throughout the day today and tomorrow I will be asking various trivia questions related to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 lore, mechanics, and development. Some will be silly, some hard, and plenty will be answerable with little knowledge or research.

Lawler-stuff: This key is only good for the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event 3 (July 20-22), and not any stress tests, etc. Contestants must follow me so that I can DM the key. First correct answer to the question gets the key, and one key can be won per contestant.

Those who get a code can register here.  Once registered, you can download the client after logging into your account on this page.  For technical and account support, head over to this handy place.   For general questions, you can view the FAQ.

–Ravious