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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

RMT

Years ago, goldsellers were the great plague of gaming. They were everywhere, they were annoying, they were criminal conspiracies that were hacking accounts and credit cards. I flipped the eff out when WAR launched without a working /ignore function and the majority of chat was goldspam during off-hours. Pitchforks and torches appeared when one of our former writers patronized a goldseller.

I know they’re still out there, so why don’t I hear much about them? I regularly get phishing spam at an address not even associated with a WoW account. I do not know how long ago I last saw goldseller ads, because they no longer mentally register, but my sense is that I have seen them recently. Account security is still a big thing, particularly for WoW.

Is it mostly a WoW thing at this point? There is only so much profit available in niche markets. Maybe companies have gotten better about anti-goldspam techniques.

I just don’t hear much about RMT in a F2P environment, and most MMOs have gone F2P or hybrid. If a player won’t pay for the game itself, you probably will not be able to sell him much gold. If a player is willing to pay to get ahead, s/he now can usually pay the developer directly.

: Zubon

Maybe it’s just me.

[GW2] Within Reach

With this Author Exchange, we’ve paired with Guild Wars 2 Hub to bring you an original editorial from outside of our regular authorship. The Author Exchange is intended to bridge the gap between existing Guild Wars 2 communities and websites to bring a new set of opinions, ideas and content to readerships that might not necessarily know one another. In this Author Exchange Lewis B from Guild Wars 2 Hub brings you an editorial on how he will miss the buzz and excitement of the Guild Wars 2 beta.

Continue reading [GW2] Within Reach

City of Steam interview and impressions

I was lucky enough last week to take part in the City of Steam Alpha preview event, offered by the guys at Mechanist. I came out pleasantly surprised by it. Even in such an early Alpha state it shows polish and potential, so I thought (in true investigative journal fashion) to shoot some questions to the Mechanist crew about City of Steam. We discuss the game, optimizations and frank views on elves and fantasy.

Mike Wallace, eat a bee.

Continue reading City of Steam interview and impressions

It Goes Without Saying

No it doesn’t! For any completely obvious observation you might make, you can also find someone who has obviously forgotten or failed to observe it, and you can probably find someone who sincerely disagrees with it. You can find someone who has failed to observe it at high stakes, like millions of dollars or at the risk of his/her life. People mess up the obvious all the time.

This observation probably also seems obvious to you. You know that people make obvious mistakes all the time. And yet you are still surprised by it sometimes. You can be oblivious to the obviousness of obviousness.

The Declaration of Independence holds these truths to be self-evident and then goes on to spell them out. It seemed kind of important to make them explicit. Also, you can name more than a dozen countries where you can still be killed for saying all of them in public.

So Ravious’s title is quite apt, and even if the principles seem patronizingly obvious, how long will it take you to name a dozen games that violate them? How many seconds will it take you to name a company that spent nine-digit sums developing a single-player MMO? You’ve seen me post about the obvious or trivial or review years-old games. Beyond the (obvious) fact that there are always new people to whom old insights are new, we forget old insights or forget to apply them because they seem so obvious. There are new implications to be found in old data. There are unknown knowns.

: Zubon

[GW2] We Hold These Truths…

I read Ben Miller’s blog post today. ArenaNet’s golden rules of development sound like they would be stone-forged on the groundbreaking of any MMO studio. I’ll rewrite the rules real quick : 1) prop world is boring, 2) solo MMOs will never be as good as single-player games, 3) pixel bitching sucks, especially in MMOs, 4) copying World of Warcraft is dumb, 5) slap-shod work is only worthy of seppeku, and 6) love thy customer.

Seems pretty obvious for the most part. I think the big missing link is why Miller took the time to write what gamers would think would be as evident as kindergarten rules. Except for rule 6, they can all be distilled in to the conundrum of all work. Quality, cost, speed – pick two. Continue reading [GW2] We Hold These Truths…