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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.

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[GW2] Wandering, Geographically and Mechanically

I really enjoyed my evening with Guild Wars 2: Beta Week Event 2. (In case other people on your RSS feed are talking about GW2 BWE2, that’s what it stands for. You’re welcome. We love you, too.) I was moving through settled territory, so it was not exactly testing the cutting edge, but it was nice to see how some items had changed since BWE1; “Dat Effin’ Shaman” was retooled, although “Dat Effin’ Effigy” was carving a path through the soloers until it reached a concentration of players.

I was not playing with anyone, but I was rarely alone. I participated in at least a dozen events and hearts over the course of a couple of hours, just wandering around the Plains of Ashford. I may start using Wandering as a term for the low-key version of Exploring. Doot dee doo, there’s a piece of the map I haven’t explored, a heart I haven’t filled. Let’s go over there. Oh, there’s a monster type I haven’t killed this weekend, let’s get one of those. Hey, event, why not? I completed perhaps a third of the zone and gained a few levels. I noticed that my effective level changed as I moved about, which could be a bit more visible, but you just operate on the principle that the content will always be relevant-level instead of ROFLstomp.

For those not playing, you may have read that your skills are weapon-based. Change weapons, and you change skills (for your first five). I was playing an elementalist, so I could wield a staff (2h), scepter (main hand), focus (off hand), and/or dagger (either or both hands). That gives me five combinations of fifteen skills, plus another five using a trident underwater. You unlock them through use, so kill X things with weapon Y to open all your options. But wait, there’s more! The elementalist’s special feature is having four elements, so you can swap between them. Each element has its own set of skills, so the elementalist has 80 skills rather than 20. You can see how you can spend an evening just flipping between weapons, unlocking skills, experimenting, and occasionally making intelligent use of the ones you like. Event with 10 people around? Hello AE skills!

There have been quite a few improvements to the game’s functionality, and one or more of us will post about those in the coming days.

: Zubon

[Eve] The J221447 Contract

The residents of the C3 were beset upon all sides by the invasion forces of Cockroach Industries.   The large Amarr Tower had been brought online while they slept, and before they could stage a resistance, the found themselves out-manned, outgunned and under siege in their own home.   With nowhere to run, and the last shreds of hope fading, they reached out to the skilled wormhole mercenaries of Surely You’re Joking to see if there was anything that could stop the invasion…

Within the hour, our fleet was formed and burning through HiSec to the static wormhole entrance to lay siege to the invaders, and expel them from our client’s home system.

Continue reading [Eve] The J221447 Contract

NDA Drop

Hey, Ravious! Scrolling through the archives, I noticed this gem from 2009. Since the link in there died, let me quote Mark Jacobs:

As to NDAs, the rule I’ve always gone by is my “time before release rule” in order to judge the confidence the publishers have in their new game (doesn’t apply to ports or games that are already out in other places). I add a +1 for every week prior to release that the game’s NDA has been lifted and come up with a score. If <4, there’s a lack of confidence in the product, if you are >8, they really believe in the game. WoW had a great score (the highest I believe) and some of the MMOs that failed, had, as expected, low scores. A score of 4 is just about the minimum you should expect from a MMO publisher.

So where does that put GW2?

: Zubon

[GW2] Beta Weekend Upgrades

Holy moly has ArenaNet been hard at work on Guild Wars 2. I simply find it amazing that whole systems are changing and evolving between beta weekends. Sure, this coming weekend there is another zone opened up at the top end of content, but I feel that the zone was in the hopper so to speak. When core systems advance post open beta, I think it definitely adds points to ye ol’ beta score scale. Let’s take a look…

Continue reading [GW2] Beta Weekend Upgrades

Shootmania Storm

Since we’re on the subject of other gaming genres, I wanted to point out Shootmania Storm with a killer announcement trailer. It’s a first-person shooter (FPS) which is built in the vein of pure arena FPS like Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament. The palette is pretty pure with hit counts instead of health, recharge instead of ammo, and a sprint. Yet, when the gameplay is so focused it still retains very tight variants.

The recent E3 tournament focused around a variant called Elite. It’s 3v3 attack/defend except each round is actually 1 elite vs. 3 defenders. The elite gets 3 armors and an insta-kill rail gun, and the defenders get no extra armor and a slower moving rocket launcher with small splash damage. Defenders can fire off 4 rockets at once, while the elite’s rail gun has a couple second recharge between each shot. The elite has about 45 seconds to scout the flagpole capture point and then about 15 seconds to capture the flag. If the elite gets eliminated (3 rocket hits) or the defenders all die (one rail gun hit each) the round can also be over. It’s a really nice twist on arena gameplay, which requires very high skill.

My favorite announced variant is Joust, which is a 1v1 map with two opposing capture points. Each player has limited ammo (5 shots or so) that can only be refilled at the capture points along with a rail gun with one shot. Points are gained per hit. I’ve heard in other previews that if a player doesn’t touch a capture point within 30 seconds the match is lost. The announcement trailer showcases another variant which seems more akin to team deathmatch with capture points.

Just like Nadeo’s Trackmania series, Shootmania Storm will have easy map-making tools, scripting tools for servers, and ‘casting/machinimas capabilities. It’s slated for release later this year, but you can sign up for beta now. It’s got me pretty excited.

–Ravious

Crit and Botch

Regular readers know that I love little differences with big effects. Elegance in design is a thing of beauty, and tracing the secondary effects of a small change can yield big results.

Our friend Tesh has a good example with critical hits in Zomblobs! (under development):

Criticals in Zomblobs! happen when all of the dice you roll show the same number. … Most curiously, these criticals are easier to score the fewer dice you roll. Weaker attacks have greater potential to hit a little bigger. This particular “crit” design is therefore more of an “underdog” mechanism, rather than a “win more” mechanism. Instead of harder hits probably hitting even harder, it’s the weak hits that are most likely to slip in a little extra punch.

Simple, elegant, effective. On the other side, it reminds me of the old World of Darkness botch mechanic. Under the previous generation of their system, 1s cancelled out successes, and having negative successes led to a critical failure. Higher skill gave you more dice to roll, and higher difficulty meant needing a higher number to succeed. The net effect was that, for very difficult tasks, having more dice meant a greater botch chance. In some sense, this made sense. If you are an utter novice, it is hard to get far enough in to really mess things up; it is the middling-low range of competence that is really dangerous. On the other hand, you can see the statistical perversity of a system where getting better can hurt you. The designers there did not have the numeracy and/or interest to trace through the effects of their system.

: Zubon