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Play To Type or Against?

I tend to play ranged support and damage classes, with a fondness for pets and turrets. I will be dabbling in Rift’s beta this week.

I could play to type and try to combine souls into a mage with ranged damage, a pet, healing, and buffs. I would have a large amount of experience to which to compare this character and how it plays. I would not add the unfamiliarity of a different role to a different game, mechanics, etc.

I could play against type and make a tank. I would have something relatively new to look forward to. I would not start with the “been there, done that” burnout of a character I have played in various versions for ten years.

I may not get much use out of healing, buffing, tanking, or taunting abilities unless I also become more social than usual and dive into grouping with unknown people who will disappear soon.

Recommendations?

: Zubon

Thoughts and Speculations on the Support Class

This is a guest article from Captain Scrat.
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For a long time we have known that ArenaNet; the makers of the fine game we all love, Guild Wars, have decided it is time to break the stone engraved rules of the holy trinity: The Tank (a player that will be able to hold the pressure of attacks from the NPC), The DPS (a very strong player that will deal as much as possible of damage per second) and The Monk (a key part of the trinity that will be able to keep the tank and the others alive). ArenaNet wanted to come up with a new concept of battle for their upcoming game: Guild Wars 2. They have always tried to distinguish themselves and make something different that the traditional MMO’s do not have. In this case, it was the idea of breaking the holy trinity.

Continue reading Thoughts and Speculations on the Support Class

ISO Tales Recommendations

TV Tropes has recommended the Tales (of Phantasia, of Destiny, of Symphonia, of Vesperia…) JRPG series to me with the statement that the games start out with cliches and then brutally, horribly subvert them.

TV Tropes also tells me that the series has more than a dozen games on various systems, most of them without localization but several with fan translations in various states of completeness, and then region-specific issues of release, localization, and region-specific DRM… Maybe I should brush up on my Japanese. Does anyone have a recommendation for how someone new should try approaching the series (in English)? Do I want the history from having gone through the earliest games, does it make more sense to jump in at Tales of X, will I be unable to appreciate X without having played Tales of Y…?

Not that I have gotten through all the other games I already own…

: Zubon

Zubon likes ellipses today…

Great Design Details

For the LotRO Yule event, come quests lock each other out until you complete the other. In one case, this is a bit of logic: you cannot both donate to the beggars and shoo them away. In another, it is a great design choice: you cannot have both the eating contest and cleaning the tables from the eating contest. If you did, you would have quest objectives from both on the same tables, and actually winning the eating contest would be far more difficult as you tried to click the right thing. The design keeps you from accidentally making yourself fail quests.

: Zubon

Holidays, etc.

Just dropped by real quick to wish our readers, commenters and writers a super fun 110% happy time holidays. Hope you get a lot of presents, be safe from evil fireworks and the whole lot.

2011 can’t be anything other than better.

Personal Value

Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive. If you take a photo, or weave a basket, or build a model train set, you get something out of the experience. This energy drives the world’s hobbyists. However, as [a medical advocate] notes, there’s great value in seeing that we are not alone. Adding the social motivations of membership and generosity to the personal motivations of autonomy and competence can dramatically increase activities. Now that people can share videos on YouTube, far more people make such videos than ever made them when sharing was harder and the potential audience was smaller. Because humans have fundamentally social as well [as] personal motivations…social motivations can drive far more participation than can personal motivations alone.
— Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

: Zubon

[GW2] Four in Shadows

Four unknown professions remain. We have a few official facts for all those speculating on the final Guild Wars 2 classes.

1. From the official site, we know there are three splats of professions: scholar, adventurer, and soldier. There will be three scholars, three adventurers, and two soldiers.

2. From an ArenaNet tweet: “Remaining four professions: at least one is a returning profession, at least one is similar with a different name, and at least one is new.”

3. Finally, ArenaNet gave us a little extra holiday gift when a community mananger announced the next profession reveal would be in January.

Continue reading [GW2] Four in Shadows

More Guild Polyamory

Is any game in the 2011 MMO crop going to break guild serial monogamy? A Tale in the Desert launched with the ability to join multiple guilds in 2003, and guild membership there meant a LOT more than just a chat channel and a tabard. 8 years later, games whose launch parties have larger catering budgets than the entire development of ATitD, and we still have games that are having trouble getting as far as alliance chat? Surely in this age of social media, someone in MMO land must have noticed that even we the introverts engage multiple social groups.

I have nothing meaningful to add to my post from almost two years ago. I am just perplexed that the situation has not changed at all, zero progress, not even an experiment.

: Zubon

The Rift Beta Tweet

In what really should be a tweet, I present to you my feelings on the upcoming Rift MMO. I would really like to experience more, but need a VIP key to do so (hint hint to Trion). Without further ado:

Rift MMO feels like a polished Warhammer Online with more dynamic public quests. I am going to get it.

Okay, I will shortly expand, but for a better impressions check out Syp’s. First off, the graphics, engine, and art style feel very Warhammer Online like. This is not a bad thing. In fact the game looks pretty good all around. There are a few issues like global cooldown and quest ganking, which is being looked at with a hard eye… but the dynamic content is the centerpiece for Rift.

Sadly, I did not experience enough of it to lay down The Wørd, but the little that I saw disappointed me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t because of the Rift system itself, which is quite awesome. It’s the old world mob tagging and grouping systems that seem to undercut this new world dynamic content.

Why do I have to be grouped to share in kills? Why is grouping not as easy as Warhammer Online? Why do I have to be grouped to even be able to participate in most of the dynamic content?  I believe these questions need a hard lookin’ at by Trion because I feel if they kowtow to the old ways too much it’s going to put some tarnish on their shiny.

–Ravious
(c) Kevin Siembieda

Tapas Gaming

Anybody that has followed this blog for awhile knows that we tend to have cycles of gaming and writing. I am currently going through a little downtime with MMOs. Perhaps it’s my subconscious prepping me for the intensity of 2011, the year of MMOs. I still have been gaming, even with MMOs. Yet, it’s been very different. I have not sat down for a long 2-4 hour session on a single game in quite some time. The seemingly endless Steam sale is only making it worse.

The games that are still on my short list all allow very quick bites of gameplay. I just beat Shatter’s story mode. It was a great buy for $2.50, and hopefully Steam will put it back up on sale. As that game left the short list, Super Meat Boy took its place. $15 is about $5 too expensive for my tastes, but the $4 I bought it for might as well have been free. The game is a fantastic, high-speed platforming romp. My favorite part is the combined replay of all my failures when I finally beat the level. It’s hilarious to see 10 out of 20 meat boys jump straight in to the nearest grind saw. Friend me up on Steam so you can see how much faster I am than you.

Continue reading Tapas Gaming