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[LOTRO] Enedwaith Half Time

I just finished Volume 3, Book 2 of the epic line in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), which means I am over the content hump in the Enedwaith region. I have a few thoughts in no particular order:

I am really digging the really different quest hub designs in Enedwaith. Sure, the chore hub of Maur Tulhau was the low point, but I agree with Vantec that, for at least this hub, chore quests are working as intended.  Echad Dagoras is the first quest hub that branches outward as saved Rangers phase in to the quest hub, while the tribal town of Lhaunuch compresses inward to a culmination of the quest hub in a well-written showdown between the tribesman and Isengard with me as the unbalancer.

My favorite place was the sub-zone of the Mournshaws. It was an overbearing forest at night, but during the day it was relaxed. The dichotomy was pretty well designed. There is no central hub per se, but the Wild Hunt quest chain to seek out the Elder Spirit was pretty good. Turbine has some really good lore expansions sometimes. I quite enjoyed the otherworldliness of the Gloomglens followed with spirit world offerings of the Mournshaws. Continue reading [LOTRO] Enedwaith Half Time

[GW] Guild Wars as Puzzle Game

One thing I am aware of but that has yet to fully become a part of me is that Guild Wars is not a game for “your build.” There is a baked-in expectation that you will vary your build to the circumstances, rather than seeing just how well build X works. My usual Ranger loadout has been based around the combo poison-bleed-Epidemic, so when half the enemies in a mission are fleshlessly immune to poison and bleeding, 3/8 of my skills are useless. I don’t see the game seeing this as a problem, because you can leave and come back with other skills or even another secondary profession. Different builds will play dramatically differently, but you cannot switch on the fly, so it is kind of like my old dream system of giving you many alt options painlessly without repeated level-grinding. But I need to get into the mindset that this is Schroedinger’s character, who is at one moment this, one moment that, and at all times all of them.

Looking for some recommendations on a Ranger build, I learned that Guild Wars players will design builds to farm exactly two spawns. This is a new degree of specialization beyond my habits.

Two other things I am learning about Guild Wars recommendations? They take into account that the game is about to turn 7. They expect that you have all the skills and probably all the elite skills. Commenters have helpfully been providing suggestions for my newb experience, but Guild Wars builds are based around elite skills, and I don’t even recognize the zone names where you can get those skills. Similarly, because of all the above points, the game seems to be balanced around the assumption that you know what you are about to fight (and will bring the appropriate skills/party). I refer to games/levels/etc. as being “fair” if you could reasonably beat them without knowledge from previous playthroughs. Some builds must have a larger margin of error for that, but Guild Wars does not share that principle, as with the missions in which 3/8 of your skills are useless for the boss fight. So these are some knowledge barriers to adapt to unless I am just exploring GW as a single player game.

: Zubon

[GW] Menagerie Filling

Something I haven’t seen in guides: is there reason to prefer one pet type over another? I have seen that some do slashing damage and some piercing, but other than that, I have not found anything saying that a bear is more effective than a flamingo is more effective than an iguana is more effective than a rabbit? While I love the idea of rampaging around with a bunny or lawn decoration, I’d hate to be missing out on special moa powers.

: Zubon

[GW, LoL] Half-Naked Women of the North

Having met GW’s Norns and LoL’s newest champion, I notice that Jora and Sejuani have about the same costumes, certainly in terms of square millimeters covered. The Norn men are similarly attired, so I presume they have human-looking skin that is actually warmth-preserving hide? They turn into bears, so I can see why you might not want to be encased in metal when you hulk-out. Sejuani must be hide-bound as well, because she is a mounted champion with no pants. She has big furry boots but no chaps. I might go for “maybe their shaggy boars are soft rather than prickly,” but she has a saddle. Any stories about how your legs felt the day after you rode a horse in just bikini bottoms? Not a gentle ride, mind you, since this is a war mount going full out, and she has no reins (and both hands full anyway), so she is steering a raging boar with her legs while also clinging on to anchor herself while swinging her flail. The big WoW shoulderpads that are presumably stapled to her bare shoulders are a nice touch.

Looking at the other snow-themed champions, Nunu (little boy) is in a full parka; Anivia is a bird; Frostfire Annie (little girl) gets a knee-length dress; Freljord Ashe (female) is just as covered as Ashe (mostly, with bare thighs and upper chest); Arctic Warfare Caitlyn (female) gets full marks for snug wool; Frost Queen Janna (female) is about as covered as Janna (bikini with some trailing cloth); Freljord Rammus is an armadillo; Volibear is a bear; and I don’t think most of the holiday skins (Snowmerdinger, Reindeer Kog’Mow, Festive Maokai, Candy Cane Miss Fortune, Silent Night Sona, Earnest Elf Tristana) count. I’m sure there are more examples, but I’m tired of looking through champion skins.

TV Tropes has several hundred examples of chainmail bikinis and their variants in fiction (and some in real life). Sejuani seemed especially noticeable as someone wearing almost nothing (1) while going into combat (2) in the frozen north (3) riding on a saddle. Or is the idea that she actually wears clothing in the snow, but the Summoner’s Rift feels like the balmy tropics to her (but she really likes the furry boots)?

I’m thinking of putting together a variation on the Bechdel test for video games. For human-like player characters and major NPCs, take the number of male characters showing more than 20% of the skin below their necks and divide by the number of female characters covering more than 20% of the skin below their necks. This has the added bonus of automatically factoring in how many games have important male characters outnumber important female characters 3-to-1.

: Zubon

But I totally want Sejuani tanking and Ashe as our AD carry when I’m playing Anivia. Easy double-damage on E, woo!

[GW] ISO Healer

Is there any way to get the Guild Wars hero monks to focus their efforts on you? I’m repeatedly facing the problem that my entire party of heroes is at full health while I am dying. The enemies are frequently focus-firing me down at 250+ DPS while my monks are making sure my flamingo is topped off. The wiki says, “Heroes will pick the ally with the least health as target,” but that doesn’t seem to work for me, and they really don’t care that I have -(7+) health degredation.

Also, any comments on that monster AI vs players? Some fights, they really do just shoot me. I can then get resurrected, at which point all the enemies will drop their current targets, and focus fire me while the healers top off the flamingo. Or I will start a fight and have 6 hexes and conditions on me in less than a second.

: Zubon

Use the Medium

Two online collectible card games that Kongregate introduced to me are Elements and Tyrant. While Elements has more grinding and is more vulnerable to perverse randomization, I find it a superior game design. One of its virtues is that it takes advantage of being a computerized card game, rather than calling for physical cards.

This is typical with exporting existing things to new media or material. I recall the early encyclopedias on CD, some of which probably even made good use of hyperlinking, but they were largely a data dump of text into something more compact than a meter-high stack of books. In our gaming world, you had arcade ports to home systems without changing the dynamics built around “insert 25 cents to continue.”

Elements has cards that you could not exist in a physical CCG. Some of them are possible with a sufficiently large pre-made set, but let me give you some examples. Continue reading Use the Medium

[LotRO] Free Samples!

In a different part of the cash shop, LotRO has its weekly free sample. I forgot about this until earlier this year. This week, it is a free Greater Skill Deed Boost when you use the coupon code BVHH66. Just one, but they have tempted me to log on an alt and macro a skill deed or two to completion.

: Zubon

Because, hey, free stuff

[LOTRO] New In-Store Armors

Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) is an MMO with a few gray hairs showing. It’s not dying, fools that think that, but it is an old game that requires a certain agility to stay alive. It appears that in doing so Turbine is going back on their word that they would not sell armor with stats attached. Turbine’s Sapience responded that “[m]any players have given us feedback that there is a sparcity of [lower level] gear on the AH at these levels and they wanted an alternative. We’re trying to accomodate that.”

The Tier 3 versions appear to be on-level somewhere in the level 20-30 range. This isn’t low level armor, this is super low level armor. I tend to think that anything below 50 is definitively “low level” so Tier 3 versions won’t even last players through all the low-levels. So this offering is clearly not “pay to win.” It’s barely “pay to accelerate through much-needed leveling.”

What I am disappointed in is how Turbine handled it. First, they went back on their word. They are allowed to do that, but if they want to seem “not shady” then they should have preemptively issued a statement as to why. Some statement even just repeating what Sapience said above would at least show they weren’t going to slide this in without acknowledging they were crossing a line they had made. Continue reading [LOTRO] New In-Store Armors

[GW2] Ree: Focus on the Enemy

I admit I was a little concerned with the story of Guild Wars 2 within the game. Of the three starting zones we’ve seen, there seems to be absolutely no mention of Zhaitan, the Elder Dragon of Death. This seems very much unlike ArenaNet’s Guild Wars mode of storytelling where the crisis is told early on, such as the dragon-forged destroyers chasing players towards an asura gate. It really wasn’t until late last year at the big conventions did ArenaNet show us “the Enemy” with Sparkfly Fen and the Tequatl the Sunless zone boss. How would our character stories progress from racial issues to Big Bad Zhaitan? How much focus would there be on the villain that had the first Guild Wars 2 trailer dedicated to it?

Continue reading [GW2] Ree: Focus on the Enemy