.

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.

.

Kind of Not a Big Deal (Guild Wars)

This last weekend, the Guild Wars servers had to be hopping with the Friday bomb of the Hall of Monuments information. People were filling holes in on their point sheet, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the miniature pet market so lively (and expensive). Overall, the community has reacted pretty positively to the reward scheme. I have also opened my Help-An-Old-Blogger-Out Armbrace Donation Drive if anybody is interested.  One armbrace is all it takes to feed a Ravious until Guild Wars 2.

Before I get in to the meat of this post, I did want to comment on how, if any, speculations for a Guild Wars 2 release date have clarified. Before the Guild Wars 2 FAQ changed, the old FAQ said that Hall of Monuments information would “when we’re closer to the launch of [Guild Wars 2].” Now, in a recent mmorpg.com interview ArenaNet said “I think we felt the sooner we could get that information to the players, the better, so that they could know what to expect, and understand, and have a lot of time to play Guild Wars 1 before Guild Wars 2 comes out, to check all that stuff out, to try and fill up their Hall of Monuments.” Interesting to try and puzzle that one out, but it is irrelevant with regard to the Hall of Monuments rewards, as players can gain new Guild Wars Hall of Monument tiers well after Guild Wars 2 launches.

Continue reading Kind of Not a Big Deal (Guild Wars)

City of Heroes: Recent and Upcoming

City of Heroes: Going Rogue seems to be more of the same. The “same” is still as good as it ever was, but as a multi-year veteran, I have about gotten my fill. The familiar people are not in my familiar haunts, so it feels empty to me even if the servers seem more full than I was used to (welcome back weekend).

The new content is a new level 1-20 area, which is good considering how much altoholism there is in CoX. It also unified CoX by allowing heroic or villainous characters of all archetypes, from the beginning in Praetoria and with switching sides for existing characters. A unified Praetoria start is probably a good thing for an older game, because heroes and villains are not divided into separate areas, although now there are three possible divisions. There are two transitional “alignments” between hero and villain, and I don’t see the benefit of being a pure hero/villain versus a vigilante/rogue (alignment vendors somewhere? There is a vigilante mission called “Beat down Westin Phipps,” which any CoV player should appreciate). Going Rogue also brought a variety of quality of life enhancements for what is already the most convenient game around.

Issue 19 looks really promising. That really will be something new, plus more of the same and more convenience. CoX is getting an endgame, with alternate advancement and 50-only content. Six years later, they decided that was a good thing. The big change across the levels will be making the Fitness pool all inherent powers at level 2, which effectively adds several powers to almost every build out there. The big graphic change is letting you customize some power animations, in addition to the existing power color customization.

: Zubon

Plausibly One-Time

Whatever you do twice will be perceived as a permanent policy decision. If you do something once that others have adopted as a permanent policy decision, you will likely be perceived as having adopted the same.

That is, expectations matter and create second-order effects, and previous actions set future expectations. This becomes self-reinforcing once people start acting upon those expectations and your choice becomes fulfilling those expectations or dealing with the many who feel as though they have been cozened, even if you explicitly told them not to have the expectation.

The ad hoc becomes an institution. Continue reading Plausibly One-Time

Hall of Monumental Rewards Calculator

Amazingly enough, ArenaNet dropped one of the most sought after Guild Wars 2 bits on a Friday. The Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator is now available for Guild Wars players to peruse the goals and rewards. Simply head to the Calculator and put your character’s name in, and the Calculator will do the rest.

There are 50 available points, and each accomplishment will give various amounts of points. For example, putting any statue in to the Monument of Honor gives 2 points, 5 statues gives 3 points, but then 10, 15, 20, etc. statues only nets 1 point each tier. Therefore, the point curve is weighted towards easy to get started, but hard to complete.

Continue reading Hall of Monumental Rewards Calculator

Shared Loot Table

I have seen quite a few debates about random drops versus tokenization. Should bosses have a 2% chance to drop the Ubersword of Epicness or should they drop 2 badges (and a vendor in town exchanges the Ubersword for 100 badges)? There are merits in each direction, although I tend to favor tokenization because random drops tend to encourage endless grinding of a single dungeon/boss.

Let me, as I often do, mention a third-way solution used in City of Heroes (and a fourth). City of Heroes has used both, but the most sought after items (purple crafting recipes) are random drops from a shared loot table. CoX applies it even to trash mobs, but you could restrict it to bosses and let all of them have a chance to drop all the rare items. That would be an even larger lottery, but you would not have only one boss in the game that dropped the one item you want. Of course, players might replicate “grind one dungeon endlessly” by optimizing for the most time-efficient dungeon, but I am not in the mood to ponder people who want to spend their $15/month doing something they do not consider fun (if you like grinding the efficient dungeon, hey, double-win for you). OTOH, I can understand why you might prefer fewer rolls with higher chances to many rolls with a lower chance of that specific item.

Several games use a menu as a middle-ground between drops and tokens. When you win, you pick one item from a short list. WAR chests are a good example. Another implementation is to give a token that can be redeemed for one of several items, rather than tokens you accumulate as currency. CoX combines menus with randomness by including “a random pick from pool D” as an option on the prize menu. Another middle ground is to have a fixed drop that is variable by class, usually done as a barter item that some or all classes can trade in for their equivalent of the item.

My thought is that players want both fixed and random elements in their game rewards. They want to know that they are going to get something, and little nuggets of achievement are encouraging, but they also want some chance to hit it big. Slot machines make a lot of money, and developers can embrace that without making everything random.

: Zubon

A Bit of Perspective

There is a reason Zubon’s seminal post “A Fable” is consistently the biggest draw to our humble little blog. It brings perspective. A perspective that a fellow gamer, significant other, or concerned friend might feel is missing. The big message underneath the three short paragraphs, for me at least, is to be mindful of my actions, especially with regard to time-consuming MMO games. Last week I received a huge dosage of perspective. My skinny, non-smoking 30-year old wife had a stroke.

Continue reading A Bit of Perspective

Monument of Many Valors (Guild Wars)

If you play Guild Wars, check out the Guild Wars War in Kryta survey. It seems that not only is ArenaNet listening to the over ten thousand responses, but they are already acting in response to the results. One question was “how happy were you with the rewards from the War in Kryta content.” Apparently the masses were not happy with the value of the Oppressor’s weapons, which take some considerable time to receive. In response, ArenaNet allowed the Oppressor’s weapon to be added to the Monument of Valor in the Hall of Monuments. This happened before fans received any Guild Wars 2 Hall of Monuments reward schemes, however ironically soon they may come.

Continue reading Monument of Many Valors (Guild Wars)