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[GW2] Just Play, Quests as Hearts

There’s a pretty good thread over at MMORPG.com about The Tao of ArenaNet. It’s a nicely done, if a bit wordy, fan-made response to what the heck ArenaNet is doing. They are doing things different. No more quests is a huge one, yet their essence remains. Walk this way.

Since I am still waiting to play Guild Wars 2 (still, ArenaNet, still), I’ve been playing around my with my old flame, Lord of the Rings Online. It’s a good ol’ vanilla MMO with its own twists like World of Warcraft or Rift (possibly the new Star Wars MMO, which I haven’t played enough to include here). Like a good ol’ MMO, it has quest hubs which branch out to get players exploring the sub-zones. It’s a tried and true formula. Fill a sub-zone with enemies and problems, and then get players a reason to get out there. It’s fun, there’s constant activity, and it’s comfortable. Continue reading [GW2] Just Play, Quests as Hearts

[GW] Many Stop Shopping

In Guild Wars, you buy skills once, at that even unlocks them for heroes on the account. Guild Wars has the rather odd design feature that not every skill trainer has the same skills. If you want to get all the skills for your class, you need to tour around to different cities. Not all the cities and outposts have skill trainers. Secondary profession changers might be somewhere else entirely, and you need to have swapped to that profession to buy the skills. Some of the trainers are in explorable zones, so you cannot change your build after picking up the new skills.

Is there anything at all to recommend this design for skill training? I’m down with picking up elite skills from bosses, but aside from having a few early trainers with only a few options, which you could also do by hiding some skills until level X, what benefit is there to having this random spread of skills and trainers across the zones? And campaigns, because not all the basic skills are in all the campaigns.

: Zubon

[GW] Things You Get Used To

You can call the skills whatever you want. The effect is what matters. So why force players to re-learn the same skills by calling it “beast strike” or some such when you can just re-use the normal class skill?

That was presumably the thought process, but what was your reaction the first time you ran into groups of dinosaurs with necromantic powers?

: Zubon

saurian blood cultists on the next Jerry Springer show

SOPA Kills Ten Rats

This post is going up as huge sites are blacking out in protest against the horribly-created legislation in the U.S. Congress. This post is more than an assent; it is a warning.

As written SOPA (PIPA) could end Kill Ten Rats, and the countless other MMO blogs you enjoy. We create our posts based on copyrighted and trademarked materials. Screenshots, fantasy race names, locations, characters, etc. are all property of someone else. Sure, even with some criticisms most companies are pretty cool with our [fair] use because talking about their games is usually a good thing. Yet given the huge archive we are sporting, all it takes is one corporate suit angered at one post written three years ago to possibly shut Kill Ten Rats down if SOPA would be enacted.

We are firmly against piracy, as evidenced big time by our ridiculous Steam libraries. Yet, such strong legislation must also be made to strongly protect our free speech.  A “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (SLAPP) is already a thing this century, and SOPA would just make it worse.

Please consider writing a respectful, constructive note to your Congressperson or Senator on SOPA (PIPA) or head to the EFF to learn more. Many have feedback forms on their .gov websites making it fairly easy to have your voice heard.

Sincerely,

The Kill Ten Rats crew

[GW] Approaching Endgame

I’m not there yet, not having even completed a full campaign yet, but I can sort of poke at it. I am getting how it works in terms of hard modes and team builds and such, although in mostly abstract terms. It is interesting being able to watch it coalesce.

Items I keep reading about are becoming relevant. I acquired a couple of elite skills, my first Zaishen coins, and a couple of Gifts of the Traveler. I farmed something, which I have not done in an MMO in a long while. I met Professor Yakkington, although it turns out his degree is honorary.

I suppose the next step is finding a guild, now that I might be capable of understanding what they’re saying. [Update: tried the Heart of the Shiverpeaks mission. Yes, I either need humans or to advance quite a few things across the campaigns.]

: Zubon

[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!